Mahler & Brahms
PROGRAMME NOTES
written by AURÉLIE WALSCHAERT
Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D-major, op. 77 (1878)
Gustav Mahler Symphony No.1 in D-major, ‘Titan’ (1888)
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[all programme notes]
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16.07.2024 CONCERTGEBOUW AMSTERDAM
"A SYMPHONY MUST BE LIKE THE WORLD. IT MUST CONTAIN EVERYTHING"
In a conversation with Sibelius in 1907, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) set out what exactly he considered that a symphony must contain. Mahler’s symphonies do indeed encompass a wide range of genres and emotions. But these extreme mood swings were not popular with the audience at the première of his First Symphony in 1889. The listeners were used to Brahms, rather than the quirky world that Mahler presented them with. Critics were harsh in their judgment and described the composition as ‘an incomprehensible and disagreeable cacophony, an endless series of long, sustained notes and unbearable dissonances’.
TITANIC WORK
Mahler spent four years developing the first sketches of his Symphony No. 1 into a full-fledged composition. His flourishing career as a conductor took up too much of his time, so that he rarely got around to composing. Only in 1888 did his first symphony, under the title Symphonic Poem in Two Parts, have its première in Budapest, where he had just been appointed musical director of the opera. But the mixed reception prompted him to take up his pen again. He changed the title to Titan – a poem in the form of a symphony, after the novel of the same title by one of his favourite authors, Jean Paul, in which a hero is brought down by his own pride. He gave the movements the respective subtitles of Spring without end, Blumine, Under full sail!, Stranded: Funeral march in the manner of Callot and Dall’inferno al paradiso (From hell to heaven). In 1896, Mahler would in turn remove the title Titan, thus stripping the symphony of any extra-musical context. The same year, he reduced the symphony to the four traditional movements by deleting Blumine. The definitive version was ultimately published in 1899.
Mahler’s First Symphony is full of allusions to the German musical tradition, including his own work. For example, the song Ging heut’ Morgens übers Feld from his earlier cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) contains almost all the thematic material for the first movement. After an aethereal opening in which nature awakens – in the distance, we hear a cuckoo – the folk song reappears. But among the optimistic notes (‘I walked across the fields today; dew still hung on the grass. The song of a finch declared that the world is beautiful’), the first threatening sounds are heard. In the second movement, Mahler drew on the tender song Hans und Grethe from his Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit (Songs of Youth), now hidden among the dance-like notes of a Ländler.
The innocent delight makes way for a funeral march in the third movement. Mahler says he was inspired here by a drawing from the children’s book The Huntsman’s Funeral. It tells how animals from the forest drag a hunter to his grave. A well-known but strange melody is heard: Mahler used the children’s song Frère Jacques, but in a minor key. This is followed by a melodious fragment based on Die Zwei blauen Augen (The two blue eyes) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, in which a young man laments the loss of his beloved and finds solace in the thought of death. But this melody ends suddenly in a dark lament. Mahler described this part of the symphony as follows: ‘The piece now swings between an ironic, humorous mood and an eerie, brooding mood. This is followed immediately by ‘Dall’ Inferno ’(Allegro furioso). The movement represents the sudden outburst of despair from a deeply wounded heart.’ After a turbulent beginning, reminiscences from the first movement come to the fore, and end in hopeful final chords.
Drawn from life
Of his first two symphonies, Mahler said that they contained a summary of his whole life:
‘My whole life is contained in them; I have set down in them my experience and my suffering … to anyone who knows how to listen, my whole life will become clear, for my creative works and my existence are so closely interwoven that if my life flowed as peacefully as a stream through a meadow, I believe I would no longer be able to compose anything.’
In the case of this symphony, there were rumours that Mahler’s passionate relationship with the singer Johanna Richter were the foundation; after all, that relationship ended just as he was finishing the symphony. But Mahler relativised this theory: ‘I should like to emphasise that the symphony is more important than the love affair on which it is based. The real life experience was the reason for the work, but certainly not the true meaning of the work.’
A CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA
Brahms composed his Violin Concerto during the summer of 1878 at his summer residence on the Wörthersee. The similarities with Beethoven’s violin concerto are striking: the work is in the same key (D Major), it has structural similarities, and most of all, it is not conceived as a demonstration of virtuosity. During the première on 1 January 1879 the audience were instantly able to compare the two, since both concertos were on the programme. Unlike most concertos, the soloist and orchestra are treated as equal partners, as two secondary characters that interact and thereby contribute to the musical drama. When she heard the first movement, Clara Schumann was immediately enthusiastic: "As you can well imagine, it is a concerto in which the orchestra blends flawlessly with the soloist; the mood of the movement bears a strong resemblance to that of the Second Symphony, also in D Major."
"THE MOST IMPORTANT VIOLIN CONCERTO SINCE THAT OF BEETHOVEN AND MENDELSSOHN."
— EDUARD HANSLICK, 1879
EXPRESSION OF HIS MUSICAL IDEAS
While composing the work, Brahms sought advice from the Hungarian-German violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom he had developed a close friendship since 1853 and to whom he dedicated the concerto. And yet Brahms did not always follow his friend’s advice. For him, the expression of his musical ideas took precedence over what was well suited to the instrument. The Violin Concerto is therefore a technically challenging work, with difficult double stops and great leaps in short succession at a fast tempo. Even the talented Joachim had difficulty with this unusual concerto. After the première, a critic noted that he “visibly had to struggle to preserve the technical difficulties and precarious equilibrium of the solo part.” But during the tour of European cities that followed, Joachim acknowledged to Brahms that he came to like the Violin Concerto more and more, and especially the first movement. And indeed, even the cadenza at the end of the first movement, improvised by Joachim, met with increasing success – and today this version of the cadenza is the one that is most often played.
Brahms had initially planned a concerto in four movements, but in the end, he limited himself to three – he replaced the original scherzo and andante of the middle with an adagio (he would later recycle the abandoned scherzo in his Second Piano Concerto, his next large-scale work). In the adagio, it is not the violin but the oboe that introduces the main theme. This led the 19th-century violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate to the stubborn refusal to perform the violin concerto: “I don’t want to stand on stage, violin in hand and listen to the oboe playing the only tune in the adagio." The most technically challenging movement is the finale, a lively rondo based on a Hungarian gypsy tune, in homage to Joachim. Here, too, virtuosity is not an end in itself, but is entirely at the service of musical expression.