MTT’s From the Diary of Anne Frank & Beethoven's Eroica

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS
From the Diary of Anne Frank  1990  |  36 mins
MTT offers these comments: "From the Diary of Anne Frank is a melodrama in the form of symphonic variations. It was written for Audrey Hepburn. Audrey had grown up in occupied Holland; she was exactly the same age as Anne Frank and identified strongly with her—and with the suffering of all children. This work was written as a vehicle for Audrey in her role as an ambassador for UNICEF. It takes its shape primarily from the diary passages that Audrey and I selected and read together. While some of the words concern tragic events, so many of them reflect the youthful, optimistic, inquisitive, and compassionate spirit of their author. Above all, we wanted these qualities to come through in the piece, and so I have derived the themes . . . from turns of phrases in traditional Jewish music, especially the hymn to life, Kaddish. . . . I now realize that so much of this work is a reflection not only of Anne Frank, but of Audrey Hepburn. Audrey's simplicity, her deeply caring nature, the ingenuous sing-song of her voice are all present in the phrase shapes of the orchestra. The work would never have existed without her, and it is dedicated to her."  MORE  
 

BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Opus 55, Eroica  1804  |  50 mins
In May 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French. That bold move disenchanted Ludwig van Beethoven, who angrily scratched out his dedication to Napoleon of the newly completed Third Symphony. The score was published instead as a sinfonia eroica—a “heroic symphony . . . composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.” Its first performances were met with conflicting sentiment, with some shocked at the piece’s “lawlessness.” Beethoven had given his audience plenty to talk about—among which included writing a symphony twice as long as they would have expected, with unprecedented demands for orchestral virtuosity, tremendously complex harmonies, and an unbridled force of rhetoric. LISTEN FOR: The symphony’s first audiences questioned weird details like the famous “wrong” French horn entrance during the first movement (the horn confidently reaches an E-flat chord before the rest of the orchestra manages to get there!). In its day, another major departure from form was the shift of the music’s center of gravity from the first movement to the work's finale. Today, we hardly notice this, as Beethoven’s empowering Third set new standards for all symphonic music that followed. As it hurdles to the end, we experience Beethoven fulfilling his “heroic symphony” triumphantly in the affirmative.  MORE  
 

JEANETTE YU is Editorial Director at the San Francisco Symphony.