The violin concertos K. 211, 216, 218 and 219 were all composed within a few months, between June and December 1775, while Mozart was in the employ of the Archbishop of Salzburg. In his Violin Concerto No. 3 K. 216, Mozart began allocating a more demanding role to the orchestra, striving for the effect of a dialogue between soloist and accompaniment. Without leaving the French-influenced style behind completely, he began to find his own voice in this piece, elaborating it with a breadth and detail that had previously been lacking. Particularly outstanding in this work is the emotionally turbulent development section of the first movement, the lyrical, woodwind-colored theme of the Adagio movement, and the many imaginative intermezzi between the rondo themes of the last movement. After having devoted himself to Baroque music for many years, Nikolaus Harnoncourt began turning increasingly to the orchestral works of Mozart in the 1980s. Here, too, Harnoncourt’s views differed radically from those of traditional Mozart reception. For him, Mozart is “the most romantic composer of all”, his music “dramatic, dynamic, often strikingly and exceedingly emotional”. In Gidon Kremer, Harnoncourt found a partner who shared his views. The German-Russian violin virtuoso has also sought his own path in his Mozart interpretations. In 1970 the then 23-year-old virtuoso attained the first peak of his career by winning the first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He has since become one of the most sought-after violinists in the world. It should also be noted that the Vienna Philharmonic, celebrated for its natural and graceful Mozart style, initially opposed Harnoncourt’s unconventional concepts. However, the orchestra was soon won over by the unusual stylistic approach often concertizes with Harnoncourt today.
Schubert, Symphony No.4 in C minor “Tragic”, D. 417
Schubert was only 19 years old when he composed his Symphony No. 4, to which he himself appended the name “Tragic.” The slow introduction is pervaded by a powerful feeling of melancholy, which gives way to the storminess of the Allegro vivace. Schubert scholars, who find the shadow of Beethoven throughout the “Tragic” Symphony, compare this theme to Beethoven’s C minor String Quartet Op. 18 and the Coriolanus Overture in the same key. A typically Schubertian, lyrical theme dominates the Andante movement. After a Menuetto and Trio, the closing Allegro presents a main theme, a stormy development and a resplendent conclusion that are related to the first movement. Nikolaus Harnoncourt was born in Berlin in 1929. His dissatisfaction with conventional interpretations of early music led him to found the Concentus Musicus with his wife Alice in 1953. The unusual, radically different musical style of the ensemble, combined with its insistence on using only historical instruments, quickly earned it a prominent reputation. Its international concert tours met with triumphal acclaim. In addition to leading his ensemble, Harnoncourt regularly conducts such prestigious orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and others. In contrast to the convention of playing the romanticised versions of Franz Schubert’s symphonies edited by Johannes Brahms, Harnoncourt seeks to revive the original character of the music as Schubert intended it. He goes back to Schubert’s original manuscripts, comparing and readjusting, ridding the score of all disfiguring changes made since it was written. The results of this restoration are striking: music that is full of drama and a dynamic range much broader than we are familiar with – Schubert in his purest form.
Introduction to Brahms, Symphony No.2 in D major, op.73
Brahms’s sunny Second Symphony is as warm and lyrical as his First had been stormy and dramatic. It quite possibly reflects the idyllic nature around Lake Wörth in Austria, where Brahms composed it in the summer of 1877. Brahms himself, however, called attention to the melancholy current that undermines the pastoral serenity (“You’ve never heard anything as world-weary as this”, he wrote to his friend Schubring). Despite the apparent simplicity of the symphonic writing, the work is strengthened and enriched by many thematic threads that run from one movement to another. It has been a special favorite among music lovers since its premiere in Vienna on 30 December 1877. The celebrated 19th-century music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that it was for “all who long for good music, whether they understand its complexity or not”. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Symphony No.3 in F major, op.90
A particularly mellow, burnished glow radiates from Brahms’s F major Symphony. The work was written chiefly in Wiesbaden, where Brahms spent the summer of 1883. He had just turned fifty – and had possibly fallen in love with the much younger singer Hermine Spiess, who happened to live in Wiesbaden. Like most of his symphonies, the Third is also permeated by a melodic motto. This one consists of three notes which not only open the symphony but are frequently woven into its texture and return with dramatic emphasis at crucial moments in the later movements. The unexpectedly quiet close of the Third sets it off against the previous two symphonies and calms the electrifying tension of all four movements before reaching a tension-releasing “transfiguration” (Clara Schumann). Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Symphony No.4 in E minor, op.98
Composed during the summer months of the years 1884 and 1885 in Mürzzuschlag, southwest of Vienna, the Fourth Symphony tended to disconcert the public at first and had to prove itself in the concert circuit before gaining recognition as a masterwork of epoch-making stature. What Brahms’s contemporaries regarded as difficult and bewildering were above all the extreme constructive density of the score, the unusual layout, especially of the third and fourth movements, a number of archaic elements pointing back to the formulae and techniques of “early music” (the passacaglia in the fourth movement) and the austere, elegiac mood that permeates the entire work. The premiere of the Fourth Symphony performed by the Meiningen Court Orchestra in Meiningen under Brahms’s direction on 25 October 1885 was a great success. The work became the chief feature of the orchestra’s ensuing tour, with Brahms conducting it in nine cities. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Academical Festival Overture op.80
“A merry medley of student songs à la Suppé” is how Johannes Brahms characterized his Academic Festival Overture, which he wrote in 1880 as a musical “thank-you note” for the honorary degree conferred upon him by the University of Breslau in 1879. The overture focuses on four traditional German student songs, which are integrated with subtly related themes of Brahms’ own invention. The first student tune, “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus”, is a nostalgic lament for the glorious days of the student associations or “Burschenschaften”. The next two songs are the “Hochfeierlicher Landesvater” and the initiation song “Fuchsenritt”. After a brief development, the principal themes are reprised and merge into an exhilarating coda built on the joyous “Gaudeamus igitur”. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Introduction to Brahms, Serenade No.2 in A major
Just like the Serenade No. 1, its companion piece Op. 16 was also written in the little princely residence town of Detmold chiefly in the summers of 1858 and 1859. Brahms, then a young man in his mid 20s, enjoyed the summers he spent there in the employ of the princely family, and the result was works marked by a filigree lightness and a dancing lilt. They are both gentle scores, so modest in physical volume of sound, so tender, idyllic in mood that they suggest a conscious reaction against the monumentalism of their immediate predecessor, the Piano Concerto in D minor. Brahms enjoyed his Serenade No. 2 and wrote: “I felt absolutely blissful… I have rarely composed with such exhilaration – the music flowed so sweetly and gently inside me that I was filled with joy through and through.” The work was premiered in Hamburg on 10 February 1860. It was performed in New York by the New York Philharmonic two years later, on 1 February 1862. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.
Weber, Overture to “Euryanthe”
Among the operas composed by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), only “Der Freischütz” still enjoys unbroken popularity on the world’s stages today. Other operas, such as “Euryanthe,” which he worked on for about two years in the early 1820s, were popular in their day but did not establish themselves in the repertoires of major opera houses. Although the opera “Euryanthe” contains many musical gems, it is its overture that is most often played today, a rousing work with gallant tunes, lyrical melodies and even some early-Romantic ghost music. Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in this recording produced at the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna in 1983.
Haydn, Symphony No.92 in G major “Oxford”
Having decided to award Haydn an honorary doctorate, the University of Oxford announced the performance of a new symphony as the highlight of the degree ceremony. However, the Oxford Symphony was in fact far from new: Haydn had already sold it to two other patrons. One of the previous customers was the Comte d’Ogny, a prominent Paris music lover who had included it in one of his own concerts; the other was the German aristocrat Prince von Oettingen-Wallerstein, who had been asking Haydn to write him a symphony for some time. The original manuscript of the work, which was only rediscovered in 1956, is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Leonard Bernstein began conducting Haydn’s orchestral works when he was still Music Director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, his interpretations of the symphonies have consistently met with unreserved critical acclaim. He, of all conductors, possessed precisely the qualities which Haydn’s music requires: grace, charm and a generous measure of wit. This production with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was recorded in 1984.
Bach, Coffee Cantata BWV 211
In this concert, Nikolaus Harnoncourt reveals something of the mystery and fascination of Bach’s compositional art in the domain of non-sacred music. With his Concentus musicus Wien and the vocal soloists Janet Perry, Peter Schreier and Robert Holl, Harnoncourt interprets Bach’s delightful “Coffee Cantata”. “In my view, Bach is a total musician. No matter in what musical domain he lands, he immediately deploys his full resources and creates the greatest music that is imaginable in his time in this respective domain. […] I feel that sacred and secular music are of equal value in the lives of all significant composers, because an important composer of that time was a believer, and he didn’t make any distinction between the spiritual and the secular. In his secular life, he is just as pious as in his spiritual one, and when he eats and drinks, when he lives and loves, he is as much of a Christian as when he goes to church to pray on Sunday. He considers life as a whole, and he will write a symphony or a dance for the greater glory of God to the same extent that he would a Passion. […] German musicians… repeatedly attempted to combine the dance-like, short-winded style of French music with the eruptive, spontaneous and passionate, wild style of the Italians. The result was a well-pondered, ‘composed’ music – the Germans of that time called it ‘worked out’ – and when one hears these expressions, and knows who the greatest master of this music was, namely Bach, then one can say: this music is ‘worked out’ music. But in reality it is fulfilled music, music which comes from the innermost and the highest of man.” (Nikolaus Harnoncourt)