What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVB)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVB)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 April

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IVB)

Part IVA was a preview of Beethoven, with his familiar Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55, which is being brought to us (at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday 11 April 2015) at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx), by celebrated conductor Christoph Koenig (coupled with Elgar’s less-performed concerto, for violin and orchestra, played by Pinchas Zukerman, a truly legendary soloist) – this is a resting-place for a gratuitous Epilogue to that preview...


One will notice that the preview itself steered quite clear of the question of the (rescinded) dedication to Napoleon Buonaparte – for several reasons. One is that [the nature / meaning of] commissions or dedications, such as that which gives us the name of The Razumovsky Quartets (for the three that his Opus 59 comprises) – or, with Bach, BWV 988 and BWV 1046 to 1051 (respectively, the so-called Goldberg Variations and Brandenburg Concertos) – are sometimes pretty questionable.

What appears to be the title-page of the autograph score

Another is that it is arguably more interesting to realize of the poet whom William Wordsworth became that, from 1792 (and not for a little while afterwards), he did far more to support The French Revolution and [notions of] La République française than Beethoven probably did in, say, flirting with offering his work in progress to Napoleon (what does this actually tell us about the 3rd ?)*.

The last, and most persuasive, conjoins these points, i.e. that the music – as any music worth its name – transcends such temporal considerations : the Op. 59 quartets may have been dedicated to Razumovsky (and have sought to please / flatter him), but what does that really tell us other than about the patronage that supported Beethoven as a composer (and what scholars choose to try to read into the works on the basis of having this knowledge) ?


I should like to suggest that we might get as much understanding of this ‘Eroica’ symphony (completed in early 1804) by turning to the heroism of Leonora in Fidelio (whose character gave us no fewer than three overtures [link to, and data from, All About Ludwig van Beethoven]: No. 1, Op. 138 (1805), No. 2, Op. 72a (1805), No. 3, Op. 72b (1814).

Or by asking what impulse in Beethoven (in 1807) gave us, with another heroic (but also tragic) figure, his overture Coriolan** (Ouvertüre zu Coriolan), Op. 62 ?


End-notes

* Or, maybe, that Byron wrote an 'Ode To Napoleon Buonaparte', which Schoenberg set as his Opus 41 (initially in 1942, in versions (with narrator and piano) for string quartet, and string orchestra, the latter of which was first performed in November 1944).

** Also mentioned here, earlier in the season.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The series opens with the excellent Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline), again as The Corn Exchange's Orchestra in Residence (reviewed here, at the end of the previous series (earlier in the year), when Nicholas Collon conducted them in an all-British programme of Elgar, Britten, and Vaughan Williams…)


The programme for Friday is as follows:


First half

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) : Manfred Overture (please see below for a more accurate title) [mainly written in 1848, but first performed in 1852]

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) : Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 [apparently written in July / August 1934, and first performed that November]


Second half

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) : Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 [more than fifty years earlier, in 1877, but otherwise as with the Rachmaninov : started in the summer, and first performed later that year – please see below]


Extra : Please look here for a further connection, of sorts, between Brahms and Rachmaninov (plus a plethora of other Opus Numbers !)…

This posting – much delayed by the exigencies of trying to write up The 34th Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) – looks essentially at the reasons why we have the Overture as an isolated piece, whereas those about the Brahms is now linked here, and about the Rachmaninov here, are more personal responses (plus some more music history)


If one stops to investigate the phenomenon, it is remarkable that some pieces achieve a life beyond the work for which they were written :

Not so much in the case of a lovely aria, such as the famous ‘Erbarme dich’ (in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, BWV 244) or Gluck’s equally well-known ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ (from his Orfeo ed Euridice (from 1762)), where it is obvious that the strength of the writing has given birth to a lovely expression of feeling – although it is probably still best understood (first of all, at least) in context.

No. One has in mind, say, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 – or, as the Germans more style it, Ouvertüre zu Coriolan (Overture to Coriolan). The question of naming apart (though as true of the Manfred Overture in this concert), the music was written in 1807 for Heinrich Joseph von Collin's drama Coriolan.

Here, nothing suggests that there was any other incidental music. The complete works of von Collin (Gesammelte Werke, in six volumes) appeared between 1812 and 1814, and are still in print (so presumably still studied), but what really seems to survive with any life is the Overture*.


In the case of Schubert**, maybe his incidental music to Rosamunde*** (Op. 26, D. 797) has survived a little better. Yet the production, withdrawn after two nights, scarcely deviated from his other general lack of success in writing for the stage. Regarding this programme’s piece by Robert Schumann, it is, yet again, an extract – seemingly surviving largely on its own.

The ‘Overture’ is taken from Manfred : Dramatic Poem (with Music) in Three Parts (in the original German, Manfred. Dramatisches Gedicht in drei Abtheitungen), Op. 115, and is a setting of the dramatic work of that name by George, Lord Byron (published in 1817), mainly written in 1848.

Pictured is the title-page of the edition of Manfred that was prepared by Clara Schumann, Robert’s wife (and then widow), and it indicates that it had pretensions to be amongst his greater vocal works. Despite Hugo Wolf’s apparent appreciation for Manfred (Wolf lived from 1860 to 1903), its availability as a score (although modern scores are of the 'Overture' alone) and even as a recording, and the fact that academics are still writing about it (and, inevitably – it appears – with Schumann, his mental state at the time of writing it), the focus remains this ‘Overture’.

Curious creature, @thekatiederham - in introducing Lunchtime Concert, interchangeably pronounced Wolf as if written Wölf, @onradio3now...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2014

Can I guess, though, that Schoenberg may creatively become Schonenberg, @thekatiederham @onradio3now... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2014

The result, seemingly, is that the whole Manfred is not allowed to stand alongside compositions such as Liederkreis, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben (all earlier, being from 1840).


So it is does not even seem, after all, that this 'Overture' was separated from its musical home quite in the same way as for the other works considered above : they were attached to something that has not really survived, whereas this piece, by being picked out as the best part, has been severed from the body of Manfred and kept alive before us on the concert platform...


End-notes

* Likewise, to stay with Beethoven, his score to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 – the Overture is certainly in the concert repertoire, but what about the rest of the score (maybe only on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), where it has been broadcast), let alone the ballet itself ?

** If one does not check, Schubert (1797–1828) may seem more contemporary with Schumann (1810–1856) than with Beethoven, but Schubert’s life in fact much overlapped with that of Beethoven (1770–1827), since Schubert died before he was 32, and Schumann lived for more than 25 years beyond him. (As is well known, Schubert both felt himself in Beethoven’s shadow (as did Brahms (1833–1897), and was one of the great man’s torch-bearers.)

*** In full, the play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern [Countess of Cyprus], by Helmina von Chézy.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)