In October 1811, a new German theater was due to be opened in Pest (now part of Budapest); and Beethoven was commissioned to write the inaugural music for the event. The King Stephen Overture, named after the Hungarian King, begins with a slow introduction. Then follows a lively Hungarian tune and a “Friss,” a quick and melodic section of the “csárdás.” Indeed, Leonard Bernstein has described this overture as “a charmer and a curiosity, a cross between Béla Bartók and Shortnin’ Bread.” This recording is part of Leonard Bernstein’s Beethoven cycle, recorded primarily with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the early 1980s. Writing in The New York Times, critic John J. O’Connor stated: “As Mr. Bernstein says, there is ‘no single body of work in the universe of orchestral music that is in any way comparable to this one.’ Conducted with intense dedication and soaring spirits by Mr. Bernstein, these recordings are superb, both visually and aurally.”
Beethoven, Music from the ballet “The Creatures of Prometheus”, op. 43
The Creatures of Prometheus, a ballet produced in Vienna in 1801, was not well received at its first performance. Today, aside from the overture, the ballet music is rarely heard. This work was composed during a time of intense personal crisis for Beethoven. In 1801 he wrote a friend, “I am leading a miserable life; for almost two years now I have been avoiding all social functions simply because I feel incapable of telling people that I am deaf.” The ballet is based on the myth of the god Prometheus, who stole the fire from the heavens and gave it to mankind, along with the knowledge of arts and sciences. In writing the Prometheus score, Beethoven had to adhere to the conventions of ballet music, which required a chain of relatively short pieces. This recording is part of Leonard Bernstein’s Beethoven cycle, recorded primarily with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the early 1980s. Writing in The New York Times, critic John J. O’Connor stated: “As Mr. Bernstein says, there is ‘no single body of work in the universe of orchestral music that is in any way comparable to this one.’ Conducted with intense dedication and soaring spirits by Mr. Bernstein, these recordings are superb, both visually and aurally.”
Wendung
“Schubert saw himself as a wanderer, as a guest on this earth. Many of his works mark the stations of his wanderings – phases of his roaming about in the darkness. For the immediate goal is death, but the later goal the immeasurable heaven he has carried with him in his mind’s eye since his childhood. The composer has varied and glorified this idea of death as the gentle friend of youth. And it comes through again in many of his movements, not only the slow ones, where this glorification and gracious melancholy are no less clear, even when it is only implied and seems secret. It is Schubert’s most profound acknowledgement of this life and the life to come.” (John Neumeier) The ballet was recorded at the Hamburg State Opera in the fall of 1979.
Ponchielli, Dance of the Hours, from “La Gioconda”
Brahms, Hungarian Dance No.5
Vivaldi, Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons)
In a career now spanning more than a quarter of a century, Gidon Kremer has confirmed his reputation as an artist of international stature and as a markedly individual personality. Kremer was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1947. At the age of 18, he auditioned for David Oistrach and was one of the few pupils chosen by the maestro to study under him at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1967 Kremer won his first international prize at the Reine Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. This was followed by further awards in Montreal and Genoa, and culminated in the first prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1970. In 1981 Kremer founded the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, where he gathers around him a varying, but always dynamic group of chiefly young musicians to discover new pieces and rediscover the standard works through new interpretations. Kremer is also actively committed to contemporary composers from Russia and Eastern Europe, such as Schnittke, Denisov, Gubaidulina and Pärt. In this recording, Kremer not only plays the solo part, but also leads the renowned English Chamber Orchestra. The recording was made in April 1981 in the splendid Baroque library of the monastery in Polling near Munich.
Mozart, Piano Concerto No.17 in G major, K. 453
Throughout his life, Leonard Bernstein had held the music of W.A. Mozart in the highest esteem and particularly enjoyed conducting the piano concertos from the keyboard, playing the solo part himself, as in this recording. In a televised lecture-concert with the New York Philharmonic from Venice’s La Fenice Opera House in 1959, Bernstein played the second and third movements of the Piano Concerto in G major K. 453, which he prefaced with the words: “If I absolutely had to name my all-time favorite piece of music, I think I would vote for the Andante we are to hear now. It is Mozart at the peak of his lyrical powers, combining serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity in one great lyric improvisation. You will hear the tranquillity of a Schubert Lied, the filigree of a Chopin, the brooding of a Mahler. And I would like you to be aware, particularly, of the beauty of its orchestration. This concerto is orchestrally rather modest, even within the already limited frame of the 18th-century orchestra. For instance, it employs neither trumpets nor drums nor clarinets; and yet, wait till you hear the wonders Mozart produces with three solo woodwinds, blending like three glorious voices in an operatic trio, or the rich pathos he can create with a little inner melody played by the violas. Again, even in his orchestration Mozart has transcended his time. […] And now we emerge from the contemplation and mystery of that almost sacred Andante, into the brilliant light of the Finale. Brilliant – that is the word for this marvelous rococo set of variations. The whole movement is bathed in a glitter that could have come only from the 18th century, from that age of light, lightness, and enlightenment. It is a perfect product of the age of reason – witty, objective, graceful, delicious. And yet, over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart’s – the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering – spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all the ages.”
Brahms, Academic Festival Overture in C minor, op.80
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. For Bernstein, Brahms was “a true Romantic, containing his passions in classical garb”, but also a “North-German classicist swept away to Vienna, and fired by Danubian, Carpathian and gypsy passions”. Bearing this dualism in mind, 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. For the concertos, Bernstein enlisted the services of some of the finest Brahms interpreters of the time: the violinist Gidon Kremer, the cellist Misha Maisky and the pianist Krystian Zimerman.
Brahms, Tragic Overture in D minor, op.81
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. For Bernstein, Brahms was “a true Romantic, containing his passions in classical garb”, but also a “North-German classicist swept away to Vienna, and fired by Danubian, Carpathian and gypsy passions”. Bearing this dualism in mind, 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. For the concertos, Bernstein enlisted the services of some of the finest Brahms interpreters of the time: the violinist Gidon Kremer, the cellist Misha Maisky and the pianist Krystian Zimerman.
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major, op.73 “Emperor”
Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, his longest and most forceful, was composed in 1809. The opening movement immediately proclaims the concerto’s air of command, with its unexpected beginning by the soloist alone. This very long first movement is followed by a compressed, intense second movement. Over a sustained, expectant low note held by the horns at the very end of the movement, the piano begins to build a theme which turns out to be the choppy, powerful rondo theme of the third movement. This work represents a synthesis of all the contrary forces at work in Beethoven’s oeuvre. Though it is often called the “Emperor” in English-language music literature, Beethoven did not call it thus. The work was premiered in Leipzig on 28 November 1811. Soloist Maurizio Pollini is one of the most distinguished pianists of our time, who has performed with the world’s leading orchestras. A committed advocate of contemporary music, Pollini frequently performs works by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Nono, Boulez and Stockhausen. However, he has also given complete cycles of the Beethoven sonatas in Berlin, Milan, New York, Munich and other cities. On the occasion of a performance of the Beethoven concertos at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra presented him with its “golden ring”, a rare distinction awarded to only few musicians.