At a Glance
Anders Hillborg’s Kongsgaard Variations was originally writ- ten for a Napa Valley wine- maker whose label featured a few bars from Beethoven’s last piano sonata. Hillborg naturally incorporated Beethoven’s motif into his work, “but whereas Beethoven produces a set of rigorous variations with a steadily increasing intensity curve,” Hillborg notes, “my Kongsgaard Variations are more like meditations, with no directional process.”
In his final years, Richard Strauss composed two sonatinas for identical groups of sixteen wind instruments. The second, subtitled Fröhliche Werkstatt (Happy Workshop), is a big-boned piece in four movements, running about forty minutes. World War II was continuing while he developed the first and last movements, and he completed the second and third just after hostilities ceased in 1945. Though it was a stressful time for Strauss, one senses little but cheerfulness in the charmed pages of the Sonatina No. 2, which the com- poser inscribed “To the spirit of the divine Mozart at the end of a life filled with gratefulness.”
Listeners of Ludwig van Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto may entertain recollections of an earlier C minor Piano Concerto, the brooding, even despairing one that Mozart composed in 1786. Beethoven was an admirer of the Mozart work, and his own C minor Piano Concerto, which was not completed until 1803, displays a strikingly unified vocabulary and taut structure. One might argue that it is the first of his five piano concertos really to sound like the mature Beethoven.
From notes by James M. Keller
For more information, including full program notes, visit the San Francisco Symphony’s digital program book platform at https://sfsymphony.ihubapp.org/ or text “SFS Concert” to 55741.
In his final years, Richard Strauss composed two sonatinas for identical groups of sixteen wind instruments. The second, subtitled Fröhliche Werkstatt (Happy Workshop), is a big-boned piece in four movements, running about forty minutes. World War II was continuing while he developed the first and last movements, and he completed the second and third just after hostilities ceased in 1945. Though it was a stressful time for Strauss, one senses little but cheerfulness in the charmed pages of the Sonatina No. 2, which the com- poser inscribed “To the spirit of the divine Mozart at the end of a life filled with gratefulness.”
Listeners of Ludwig van Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto may entertain recollections of an earlier C minor Piano Concerto, the brooding, even despairing one that Mozart composed in 1786. Beethoven was an admirer of the Mozart work, and his own C minor Piano Concerto, which was not completed until 1803, displays a strikingly unified vocabulary and taut structure. One might argue that it is the first of his five piano concertos really to sound like the mature Beethoven.
From notes by James M. Keller
For more information, including full program notes, visit the San Francisco Symphony’s digital program book platform at https://sfsymphony.ihubapp.org/ or text “SFS Concert” to 55741.
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