Episode 53: Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony
A child prodigy, Saint-Saëns was not only a gifted composer but an accomplished pianist who could perform all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory by the age of ten. Composed for the Philharmonic Society of London, his Symphony No. 3, Organ, is dedicated to his friend Franz Liszt.
Episode 52: Bruckner's 5th Symphony
Anton Bruckner grew up an unsophisticated teacher’s son. By the time he reached Vienna and the composition of his Symphony No. 5, he had a sound combining Beethoven’s sense of mystery and suspense, Schubert’s harmony, and Wagner’s breadth in unfolding, plus a symphonic vision all his own.
Episode 51: Mozart's Symphony No. 40
Mozart composed his Symphony No. 40 during the very productive summer of 1788, when he also completed his Symphony No. 39 and Symphony No. 41—the last symphonies he would compose. After a series of revisions, including Mozart’s addition of clarinet parts for his friend, the clarinetist Anton Stadler, numerous versions existed (including an autograph score, with clarinets, that ended up in the hands of Johannes Brahms), confusing editors until their eventual straightening out of the parts in 1930. Symphony No. 40 is in the key of G minor is one of only two symphonies Mozart wrote in a minor key, and according to Robert Schumann, has a “weightless, Hellenic grace.”
Episode 50: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5
Perpetually self-conscious, Tchaikovsky worried in spring 1888 that his imagination had dried up, and that he had nothing left to express through music. Vacationing at his home in Frolovskoe provided all the inspiration he needed, and by August, his Symphony No. 5 was complete.
Episode 49: Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major
During a wildly successful tour of the United States in 1928, Maurice Ravel met American composer George Gershwin, and listened to jazz in Harlem and New Orleans. These influences plus his Basque heritage (already exhibited in his Rapsodie espagnole and Boléro) are easily heard in his Piano Concerto in G major. Ravel modeled it after the light, divertimento-like concertos of Mozart and Saint‑Saëns. The Spanish-tinged jazz riffs of the first movement are followed by a gentle and delicate Adagio, and the concerto closes with a bang in its irresistible finale.
Episode 48: Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien
In 1911, Claude Debussy wrote the incidental music for a mystery play by Gabriele d'Annunzio. Written for the Belle Époque figure Ida Rubinstein, who was muse to numerous artists and musicians, the play chronicles the martyrdom of the Roman archer Sebastian, who was killed by his own troupe of archers after being discovered to be a Christian. Rubinstein, said to have owned a black tiger cub and drink champagne out of Madonna lilies, had been a member of the Ballet Russe known for her suggestive roles (including Cleopatra and opposite Nijinsky in Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Scheherazade). Attendance at the premiere of this play was banned by the Archbishop of Paris on threat of excommunication.
Episode 47: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1
First symphonies usually serve as stepping stones on the way to greater things. Tchaikovsky’s First was already great, written in a bold and assured manner the composer would not achieve again until his later symphonies. But even Tchaikovsky admitted the work gave him more trouble than any of his others. He revised it numerous times, and it was rejected several times, before it was finally performed almost twenty years after he began composing. With melodies that look ahead to the Waltz of the Flowers from his ballet The Nutcracker and borrowing music from his Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, the symphony carries the subtitle Winter Daydreams.
Episode 46: Wagner's Götterdämmerung
Wagner, taking inspiration from Nordic mythology, wrote the Ring Cycle to tell the epic tale of the magical golden ring of the Nibelung. Granting its owner the power to rule the world, the ring is coveted by many, including Wotan, the ruler of the Gods. The saga of the ring is chronicled in four operas--Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. This final opera opens as morning dawns on the lovers Siegfried and Brünnhilde , continues to his betrayal of her in pursuit of the ring, and finally ends with Brünnhilde’s Immolation, when she casts herself on the fire of Siegfried’s funeral pyre to rid the ring of its curse and return it to the Rhine Maidens, its rightful owners.
Episode 45: Brahms's Piano Quartet (orch. Schoenberg)
Although his own compositional techniques are considered avant garde, Arnold Schoenberg viewed himself as a direct extension of the German tradition of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. He was 22 when Brahms died, and his particular affinity for Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 led him to the task of orchestrating the work in 1937. In a letter to the San Francisco Symphony’s program annotator, he stated his reasons: he liked it, it was seldom played, and he wanted to be able to hear all the parts. He vowed to remain strictly within Brahms’ style and to use only elements he believed Brahms would have; the results are a work that is a co-authorship of peers.
Episode 44: Brahms's "German Requiem"
Although not a conventionally religious man, Johannes Brahms knew his Bible well and assembled the text for his German Requiem himself, choosing passages that suited his means perfectly. By titling it the German Requiem, Brahms meant that it was for the German people, in a language that they could understand—he also mentioned in his letters an alternate title of the Human Requiem. Although technically a mass for the dead, the work does not mention death until the penultimate movement, and even then addresses the living with a sense of reassured faith rather than anxiety.
Episode 43: Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" (arr. Mahler)
Years before there was Photoshop, there was Gustav Mahler, and his infamous "retouchings" of respected scores to bring them up to modern listening standards. Known in his day more as a conductor than a composer, Mahler would make revisions to the music he was performing—an instrument added here, a note changed there—ideas that were not always popular with listeners. However, in the case of Schubert’s Quartet in D Minor, Death and the Maiden, a theme and variations on his lieder of the same name, the work definitely remains more Schubert’s. Mahler reinforced the bass line, changed double stops into rich string textures, and brought this intimate chamber work into the large concert hall. This podcast uses a recording of the original quartet, performed by SFS musicians Sarn Oliver and Amy Hiraga, violins; Nanci Severance, viola; and Peter Wyrick, cello.
Episode 42: Schumann's Symphony No. 2
By the time he wrote what we now know as his Symphony No. 2, Robert Schumann had already completed his Symphony No. 1, his Overture, Scherzo, and Finale, and the first version of the work that would eventually be published as Symphony No. 4. However, by summer 1844, Schumann began to be ruled by his mood swings and phobias (including fear of blindness, heights, death, and poison), effectively halting his creative activity. But then, midway through 1845, he wrote a letter to Felix Mendelssohn about dreams of blaring trumpets in C. Finally, in December 1845, he wrote, in three weeks, the essentials of Symphony No. 2, and the symphony was premiered in November 1846.
Episode 41: Beethoven's Symphony No. 8
Much like his fifth and sixth symphonies, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his seventh and eighth symphonies in quick succession. Compared with Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 9 (which would not be completed for twelve more years), Symphony No. 8 seems like a look back to Classical times, with nods to Beethoven’s teacher, Josef Haydn. However, the Eighth is more a study in compactness: there is just as much music packed into fewer notes, a sentiment that Beethoven himself echoed--when asked why the Seventh was so much more popular, he responded, “…because the Eighth is so much better.”
Episode 40: Verdi's Requiem
In mid-nineteenth century Italy, Alessandro Manzoni, a poet and humanist, was one of the central figures in Italian cultural life. Not only was he a great writer, but he had been elected to the first Senate of the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Upon his death, in 1873, the country entered a period of national mourning. Giuseppe Verdi, having not yet written much of anything other than opera, volunteered his services to compose a Requiem mass. He offered the public not a strictly liturgical work but a concert piece, and it was greeted with applause both at its premiere in Milan’s St. Marco Cathedral and at its second performance, three days later, at La Scala.
Episode 39: Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Originally composed for solo piano (and later orchestrated by Ravel), Pictures at an Exhibition was written by Modest Mussorgsky after he visited a retrospective exhibit of the works of his friend Victor Hartmann. The collection of pieces represents a promenade from painting to painting, pausing in front of works called The Gnome, Ancient Castle, and Great Gate of Kiev. Mussorgsky was a member of a nationalistic, anti-conservatory group of young musicians, and he had an unusual ability to interpret visual art in musical expression.
Episode 38: Elgar's Symphony No. 1
Born the son of a piano tuner and educated by playing in and conducting small amateur bands (including that of the Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum), Sir Edward Elgar had already written the Enigma variations, four Pomp and Circumstance marches, and the oratorio Dream of Gerontius before composing his Symphony No. 1 in 1908 at the age of fifty. While his colleagues Vaughan Williams and Holst encouraged a return to folk music, Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 pushed English music into the romanticism of the rest of the European community, and earned Elgar the nickname “the English Mahler.”
Episode 37: Stravinsky's "Petrushka"
Upon visiting Stravinsky in late 1910, expecting to find him immersed in composing the Rite of Spring, Serge Diaghilev, director of the Ballet Russe, was quite surprised to find him instead composing the ballet of an anthropomorphized puppet. The story recounts the rise and fall of mischievous Petrushka, a puppet brought to life by a magician as he courts the Ballerina and fights the Charlatan. The work was premiered one hundred years ago, with Nijinsky dancing the title role. Former SFS Music Director Pierre Monteux conducted the work’s world premiere.
Episode 36: Mahler Symphony No. 3
In summer 1895, Gustav Mahler went on vacation. He’d had a busy year conducting in Hamburg, and went to his cabin to do what he always did in his free time—compose. He outlined a program for his new work—Pan’s awakening, the Bacchic entrance of summer—but leaves the movement titles out of the program. In this Symphony No. 3, the largest and longest in the current symphonic repertoire, he leaves the story up to the listener—according to Mahler, “you just have to bring along ears and a heart and—not least—willingly surrender to the rhapsodist.”
Episode 35: Brahms's Symphony No. 1
Beethoven’s first symphony premiered when he was 30. Schubert wrote his first at 16, and Mozart’s was composed when he was only 8. But Johannes Brahms, at 43, had yet to finish his Symphony No. 1, which he’d begun writing more than twenty years previously. A notorious perfectionist, he burned many of his early works and sketches; it was not easy living in the shadow of the giants before him. His many years of preparation were worth it—upon the work’s premiere in 1876, the Vienna press called it “Beethoven’s Tenth.”
Episode 34: Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis"
To set about composing his Missa Solemnis, Beethoven looked to the past. He obtained a copy of the score to J.S. Bach’s B Minor Mass, at that time still unpublished, and also studied the sacred music of C.P.E. Bach. After countless sketches and spiritual preparation, Beethoven composed this work for large orchestra and chorus, dedicating more time to it than to any other work he composed. Written simultaneously with the Symphony No. 9, the Missa Solemnis is considered one of the most significant mass settings in classical music.
Episode 33: Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2
Following the relative unpopularity of his Piano Concerto No. 1, Bela Bartók returned to his roots for the composition of his next piano concerto, which he called an “antithesis” to the first. This second concerto takes more of a classical form, with a sonata structure and a simpler treatment of the themes. Bartók was well-versed in this kind of writing, having himself made several student editions of music by Bach, Scarlatti, and Couperin. Despite the more traditional form, Bartók’s Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra still maintains the folk music-infused sonorities that have been a consistent hallmark of his music.
Episode 32: Mahler's Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection"
Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, by Gustav Mahler opens with a first movement originally composed as a stand-alone work entitled Todtenfeier (Funeral Rites). Five years later, following his appointment as principal conductor in Hamburg, Mahler realized that this was, in fact, the first movement of his second symphony. Following Symphony No. 1, which tells the story of a Hero’s life, the second symphony opens with the funeral rites of the Hero. The second and third movements are retrospective intermezzos, and the fourth and fifth movements depict the Last Judgment and Resurrection.
Episode 31: Mahler's Symphony No.6
In summer 1903, Mahler was at his happiest time of life. Married to the beautiful Alma and father to two healthy daughters, it doesn’t seem like the time when one would compose a symphony often called the Tragic. However, in an eerily prescient stroke, this is exactly what Mahler does. In the years that followed, Mahler suffered the death of a child, the loss of his position in Vienna, and learned of his debilitating heart disease—three blows of fate predicted by the blows of the drum that fell the Hero at the close of Symphony No. 6.
Episode 30: Mahler's Symphony No. 9
Almost exactly one hundred years ago, on May 18, 1911, the great composer and conductor Gustav Mahler died of a blood infection just weeks before his fifty-first birthday. His last complete work, the Symphony No. 9, was composed following a whirlwind period of great loss and supreme achievement, including the composition of his “symphony without a number,” Das Lied von der Erde. Symphony No. 9 reaches the greatest apex of Mahler’s compositional catalogue, exhibiting his characteristic subtle transition, expansion, and continuous variation at their fullest.
Episode 29: Brahms's Symphony No. 3
After composing Serenade No. 1, Johannes Brahms waited fifteen years before he wrote another purely orchestral work for large ensemble. Infamous for his harsh self-criticism and haunted by the feeling that he was living in Beethoven’s shadow, Brahms finally broke his symphonic silence at the age of forty-two with the Haydn Variations, a musical experiment with the arrangement of sonic shapes. By the time he composed his Symphony No. 3, ten years later, he had fully realized his true voice as a symphonic master.
Episode 28: Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique"
A man spots a woman across the room at a party and falls instantly in love with her. In a fit of despair over his unrequited love, he poisons himself and fantastic dreams and visions result. This is the story, inspired by his own love for the actress Harriet Smithson, that Hector Berlioz portrays in his Symphonie fantastique, premiered in 1830. Using recurring musical motifs to represent characters and brand new instrumental colors, Berlioz worked on foundations laid by Beethoven to bring music fully into the Romantic era.
Episode 27: Vaughan Williams's "A London Symphony"
In 1903, Ralph Vaughan Williams began collecting folk songs. His dedication to his English heritage was evident early on in his career, from his editions of Purcell’s music for the Purcell Society to his assembling, editing, and contributing to The English Hymnal. It is fitting, then, that his first instrumental symphony should be called A London Symphony. Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 2 is inspired by the vibrant city life of London, and has been described as the musical equivalent of Claude Monet’s paintings of the sun rising over the foggy Thames.
Episode 26: Sibelius's Symphony No. 2
At the close of the nineteenth century, Finnish natives were enjoying a renaissance of their native culture, in opposition to their Russian occupiers. Jean Sibelius was swept up in this nationalistic fervor, and composed several patriotic tone poems, including Finlandia. Symphony No. 2, misinterpreted at its premiere as a commentary on the Finnish political conflict, was composed mostly in Italy, where Sibelius was renting a studio. Working with fragments and sketches intended for four separate tone poems, Sibelius then assembled the pieces into this full-fledged symphony.
Episode 25: Dvořák's New World Symphony
In June 1891, Antonín Dvořák was invited to direct the newly-formed National Conservatory in New York City. Leaving four of their six children behind in Bohemia, Dvořák and his wife made their new home on East 17th Street in cacophonous Manhattan, just a few blocks from the new school. Through his diverse student body and the advent of the polyrhythmic ragtime, Dvořák first encountered African American and Native American music. He was particularly taken with those cultures’ spirituals. He borrowed musical elements from diverse popular sources for many of his compositions, including his Symphony No. 9, From the New World.
Episode 24: Bach’s Mass in B minor
Bach’s Mass in B minor can viewed as a compendium of all of the musical styles in which the composer was fluent. The work encompasses many different styles popular in the Baroque era, including polyphonic choral textures, instrumental solos, and operatic aria solos for the vocalists. A work of huge scale, it is unlikely that Bach ever heard the Mass performed in its entirety. Composed at intervals throughout his life and finally compiled into a complete work just before his death, the B minor Mass stands as an embodiment of Bach’s genius.
Episode 23: Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4
On an extended journey through Italy in 1830 and 1831, Felix Mendelssohn began work on his Fourth Symphony. A wildly talented composer who wrote his famous Octet when he was only sixteen, Mendelssohn was prompted to finish the work when the London Philharmonic Society requested a symphony from him (and offered payment of a hundred guineas). Mendelssohn called it the jolliest music he had ever composed. Although he remained dissatisfied with the symphony and planned numerous revisions, the Italian Symphony still stands as one of his most easily recognizable works.
Episode 22: Brahms's Serenade
In 1857, Johannes Brahms assumed the post of Clara Schumann, recently departed for Berlin, as piano teacher at the court of Prince Leopold. His pupils and members of his choir loved him, and at the court he reveled in his time to compose, conduct, and study the repertory. It also afforded him a period of cooling off following the death of his mentor Robert Schumann, and allowed him to work towards his great goal of composing symphonies. This first Serenade was called a “Symphony-Serenade” by Joseph Joachim, and is a fresh, inventive, and spirited work.
Episode 21: Mozart's Requiem
Mystery and myth surround Mozart’s Requiem. It was left uncompleted at the composer’s somewhat sudden death, and no one quite knows exactly how much music he left behind. His widow, Constanze, was set with the task of finding another composer to complete the work, while still promoting it as a Mozart composition (in order to receive the full commission fee). After Joseph Eyeler, one of Mozart’s students, was unable to complete the Requiem, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, another former student, finally completed a working version, which stands as the most popular of the many versions still performed today.
Episode 20: Mozart's Symphony No. 33
Throughout Mozart’s childhood, his father Leopold paraded him around the courts of Europe in the hope of gaining the boy’s employment, and therefore a steady cash flow for his family. After many years of traveling, he was hired for a full time position in their hometown of Salzburg. In spring 1779, Mozart met a traveling theater troupe that performed many of his operas and symphonies. It’s likely that this Symphony No. 33, which Mozart composed while employed at the court at Salzburg, was meant as just that: an overture to a theatrical production.
Episode 19: Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1
Following encouragement from his teacher to immerse himself in the works of Mozart and Haydn, Sergei Prokofiev composed his Symphony No. 1, Classical, in 1916-17. Harkening back to his forbears in the realms of form and structure while using the expanded harmonic language of his contemporaries, Prokofiev for the first time composed away from the piano keyboard, lending a more compact and transparent orchestral sound to the work. Written just before the composer left Russia following the abdication of the Tsar and Lenin’s ascent to power, the Classical symphony foreshadowed the neoclassicism of the 1920s and became one of the composer’s most frequently performed works.
Episode 18: Schubert's Symphony No. 5
At 17, Schubert composed his art song masterpiece Gretchen am Spinnrade. The following year, he composed more than 145 more, including Erlkönig. By the time he reached age 19, in 1816, he had already composed a treasure trove of art songs and instrumental sonatas in addition to his first four symphonies. Following a series of personal setbacks, including receiving no response after sending Goethe a packet of songs based on his poems, Schubert composed his Fifth Symphony. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, one of only two he wrote in a minor key, was one of Schubert’s favorites, and is echoed in the fiery minuet movement.
Episode 17: Beethoven's Symphony No. 1
Arriving in Vienna in 1792, with a stack of music he’d composed in Bonn, young Beethoven settled down to study composition with Josef Haydn. By the time he premiered his first symphony in 1800, he had already published an impressive catalogue, including 10 piano sonatas, two cello sonatas, three violin sonatas, five string trios, and six string quartets. Symphony No. 1 opens on a dissonant chord and includes featured wind solos and a third movement scherzo, all reflecting a musical personality that foreshadows Beethoven’s impending departure from his Classical education.
Episode 16: Beethoven's Symphony No. 4
In summer 1806, Beethoven had to give up his summer vacation home in order to pay off his and his family’s debts. Despite the financial turmoil, the year was an extraordinarily productive one for him: the composer wrote many of his great works in that year, including the Razumovsky string quartets, the revision of what became Fidelio (including the Leonore Overture No. 3), the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. The Fourth Symphony, often overshadowed by the Third and the Fifth, is perhaps his least frequently performed symphony. The work is a return to the grace and relative simplicity of Beethoven’s earlier classical style. At the middle of the second movement stands an episode that distinguished musical analyst Donald Francis Tovey called “one of the most imaginative passages anywhere in Beethoven.”
Episode 15: Rachmaninoff's 'Symphonic Dances'
In summer 1940, while enjoying a very busy career as a pianist and conductor, Rachmaninoff finally found time to compose while vacationing on Long Island. Following the successful dance production of his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, choreographed by Mikhail Fokine, Rachmaninoff started work on what he called his Fantastic Dances, planning a Philadelphia Orchestra premiere complete with Fokine’s choreography. After the death of Fokine, this last work of Rachmaninoff’s became the Symphonic Dances, a three-movement work which showcases Rachmaninoff’s mastery of orchestral color and includes buried secret references and codes.
Episode 14: Prokofiev's Scenes from "Romeo and Juliet"
Following multiple failed agreements with various ballet companies (including the Bolshoi, which declared the music impossible to dance to), Sergei Prokofiev reduced what would eventually become his most popular ballet to three orchestral suites. Romeo and Juliet “is a great lyrical symphonic epic, one in which Prokofiev used his unique gift for beautiful melody to give life to all the characters,” says Michael Tilson Thomas. Prokofiev’s work uses character and emotional motifs to capture the dramatic action in Shakespeare’s classic love story.
Episode 12: John Adams's "El Niño"
After witnessing the whirling emotions of his wife’s pregnancy, the pain of labor, and their culmination in the birth of his daughter, John Adams was inspired to re-tell the story of the most famous birth of all: the birth of Jesus. Narrated by a woman, El Niño is a Nativity story you won’t find in the Bible. Commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 2000, the oratorio uses texts drawn from English, Spanish and Latin sources, ranging from mystic and author Hildegard von Bingen to the pioneering Mexican poet and novelist Rosario Castellanos.
Episode 11: Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1
In 1854, Robert Schumann, friend and mentor to a young Johannes Brahms, attempted suicide by drowning in the Rhine River. Thrown into emotional turmoil by Schumann’s resulting institutionalization and his unrequited love for Robert’s wife Clara, young Brahms began sketching his first major orchestral work. Brahms reflects his struggle with a tormented opening, a slow movement he described as a “lovely portrait” of Clara, and, in the finale, his acceptance of reality. Perhaps afraid to attempt a form so masterfully executed by Beethoven, Brahms first wrote a sonata for two pianos, which evolved finally into his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor.
Episode 10: Strauss's Ein Heldenleben
Richard Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) is regarded by many as a musical self-portrait. Its vivid sketches of the characters and events depict the hero himself, in a soaring E flat-major horn solo; his adversaries, played by stumbling tubas; and, in what is generally thought to be a portrait of Strauss’s opera diva wife, Pauline, a violin solo that runs from loving and playful to emotional and nagging. Written after winning a ten-year contract with the Berlin Court Opera, Strauss’s sky-high spirits are evident in this adventure of a work.
Episode 9: Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major
During a wildly successful tour of the United States in 1928, Maurice Ravel met American composer George Gershwin, and listened to jazz in Harlem and New Orleans. These influences plus his Basque heritage (already exhibited in his Rapsodie espagnole and Boléro) are easily heard in his Piano Concerto in G major. Ravel modeled it after the light, divertimento-like concertos of Mozart and Saint‑Saëns. The Spanish-tinged jazz riffs of the first movement are followed by a gentle and delicate Adagio, and the concerto closes with a bang in its irresistible finale.
Episode 8: Orff's 'Carmina burana'
With a libretto based on a collection of poems discovered in a Benedictine monastery, Carl Orff’s Carmina burana (“Bavarian Songs”) elaborates on many topics familiar to both 13th century and current listeners: springtime beauty, going out for a night on the town, and girls in red dresses and the boys who chase them. Ever popular with audiences, Orff considered this cantata his best work.
Episode 7: Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1
Franz Liszt may have been one of the nineteenth century’s most exasperating underachievers, to say nothing of committing the unforgivable sin of success on a staggering scale. But he was a genius, as this concerto can remind us. It was begun in 1835 at the ripe old age of 24, but Liszt did not complete his first piano concerto until nearly twenty years later. A final draft appeared in 1849, which was revised before the 1855 premiere (conducted by Hector Berlioz), and then revised yet again before its publication in 1856. Béla Bartók called the concerto "the first perfect realization of cyclic sonata form, with common themes being treated on the variation principle."
Episode 6: Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1
After advocating for Beethoven's concerto, advising on the composition of Brahms', and performing Mendelssohn's more than two hundred times, celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim lent his musical talents to a fourth great German violin concerto: Max Bruch's. Described by Joachim as the "richest and most seductive" of the four works, this emotional, sensual music is Bruch’s most popular composition.
Episode 5: Walton’s Symphony No. 1
The tumult and melancholy in William Walton’s first symphony have roots in perhaps the most familiar of all artistic inspirations: unrequited love. He wrote the first three movements after his girlfriend left him (including markings such as con malizia and con malinconia). Finally, Walton could compose no further, and the work was performed several times in its incomplete state. Luckily for several conductors who were anxiously awaiting a completed symphony, Walton soon was romancing a new lady, and he finished the finale in a tone markedly different from the heartbroken opening.
Episode 4: Beethoven's Symphony No. 7
The premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was perhaps his greatest rock-star moment. Buoyed by the excited troops in whose honor the concert was being performed, Beethoven “tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder ... at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air” (according to orchestra violinist and composer Louis Spohr). The work’s explosive energy and Beethoven’s expansion of symphonic structures to emphasize certain key areas make Symphony No. 7 an important stepping stone on his path towards Romanticism.
Episode 3: Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette was composer Hector Berlioz’s attempt to write the next great choral symphony after Beethoven’s Ninth. In this “symphonie dramatique,” Berlioz uses the orchestra and the chorus not as dramatic actor and accompaniment, but as two equals. From the starting Allegro, depicting the warring houses of Montague and Capulet, to the Finale’s oratory oath of reconciliation, this work uses the (then new) language of programmatic orchestral writing to tell the oldest love story in the world.
Episode 2: Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony
Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony is a musical diary of his emotional life during a period of intense personal crisis. “I was down in the dumps last winter when the symphony was in the writing, and it is a faithful echo of what I was going through at that time,” he wrote to the work’s dedicatee, Nadezhda von Meck. Though his external life was not extraordinarily tumultuous, Tchaikovsky’s hypersensitive nature made him feel every event keenly, and this intensity of experience forms his first orchestral masterpiece from beginning to end.
Episode 1: Mahler's Symphony No. 5 with Michael Tilson Thomas
San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, a passionate interpreter of Mahler's music, describes the composer's Symphony No. 5. The San Francisco Symphony is part of the global commemoration of Mahler's birth and death anniversaries during the 2010-11 season, including performances at home and abroad of Mahler's music, the release of Songs with Orchestra, its final CD of the Grammy-winning Mahler recording cycle, and new Mahler episodes for its acclaimed Keeping Score national PBS television series.