Overture in C Major

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel

Born November 14, 1805, Hamburg: Died May 14, 1847, Berlin

Fanny Mendelssohn was born into a distinguished family whose wealth and social status afforded her every opportunity the world could offer. She quickly proved to be a gifted musician, prompting comments that she was more capable than her now-famous younger brother, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, but her father quickly put a stop to any idea that she might pursue music in the future, writing in 1820, “Music will perhaps become a profession for your brother Felix, but for you it can and must be only an ornament.” Felix agreed with his father that women should not be professional musicians, but also recognized that his sister was incredibly talented and would occasionally – with her permission – publish her works under his name. When she married painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829, he encouraged Fanny to publish her pieces and gave her increased control over her own musical activities. Her musical life was further expanded when she assumed much of the responsibility for organizing the famed musical gatherings held at the Mendelssohn family home, in which she participated in as a performer, arranged concert versions of operas by Mozart and cantatas by J.S. Bach, and lead performances from the piano.

Fanny is best known today for her songs and piano music, but she did compose few orchestral works. It is not clear exactly when she composed the Overture in C Major, but it is likely that she wrote it sometime between 1830 and 1832 for use in one of her family’s musical soirees. For whatever reason, that performance is not mentioned in her correspondence, but she does describe a family concert held in early June, 1834, during which she was unexpectedly called upon to conduct the Overture herself. As she wrote to Felix, “Mother has certainly told you about the Königstadt orchestra on Saturday and how I stood up there with a baton in my hand…had I not been so shy, and embarrassed with every stroke, I would’ve been able to conduct reasonably well. It was great fun to hear the piece for the first time in two years and find everything the way I remembered. People seemed to like it—they were very kind, praised me, criticized a few impractical passages, and will return next Saturday. Thus I took part in an unexpected pleasure.”

Like most of Fanny’s almost 500 works, the Overture remained unpublished during her lifetime. It was unearthed from the Mendelssohn Archive in Berlin after Judith Rosen, board member of the former Women’s Philharmonic of San Francisco, secured permission for the piece to be copied from the autograph manuscript, after which the work was reconstructed and published in 1994. Fanny’s delightful overture opens with a graceful slow introduction and then bursts forward into a sonata-form main section that explores several themes with quick changes of texture and dynamic, making this charming gem of a piece an offering of pure delight.

Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Opus 60

Ludwig van Beethoven

Baptized December 17, 1770, Bonn: Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Out of Beethoven’s nine masterful symphonies, his Fourth is possibly the least well-known, mostly by virtue of the somewhat unfortunate timing of when it was written. Sandwiched between the weighty Third Symphony and the titanic Fifth, the genial Fourth Symphony does not seem to shine as brightly as its powerful siblings at first glance. Its well-balanced classical organization appears deceptively easy to understand, making the Fourth Symphony feel like more of an intellectual pursuit rather than one propelled by emotion-shaking drama. Lacking the extramusical messages found in the heroic Third or the Fifth’s “fate knocking at the door,” the Fourth does not offer any overt elements of psychology that might reveal some deeply philosophical meaning to the music. Even worse for the Fourth, the symphonies were not its only competition, having been written in the same time frame as some of Beethoven’s other power-house pieces including the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the three “Razumovsky” string quartets, the “Appassionata” Sonata, and the opera Fidelio, all works that easily overshadowed the hospitable Fourth Symphony with their impassioned outpourings.

The Fourth Symphony was composed in the summer and early fall of 1806 during a time when Beethoven was in his stride as a composer, working on numerous pieces simultaneously and producing new works faster than he ever had before. He made very few preliminary sketches for this symphony, and those that do exist show surprisingly little in the way of editing or rewriting, indicating that he conceived the work with relative ease. Beethoven spent the summer of 1806 at the country estate of his patron Prince Lichnowsky in Silesia (now part of Poland), during which the composer paid a visit to the Prince’s neighbor, Count Franz von Oppersdorff, sometime in September. Oppersdorff was a devoted music lover – so much so that he required all of his household staff to be proficient in an instrument so that he could fill out his private court orchestra for special events – and he was delighted to have Beethoven as a guest at his estate, honoring him with a performance of the composer’s Second Symphony, much to Beethoven’s great delight. Even better, Oppersdorff offered the composer 500 florins as a commission for a new symphony, which Beethoven gladly accepted. Rather than use the partially completed Fifth Symphony to fulfill Oppersdorff’s request, Beethoven briefly stopped work on the Fifth to produce the classically inspired Fourth Symphony instead, likely as a response to hearing the Haydn-esque Second Symphony at Oppersdorff’s estate and assuming that it was the style his patron preferred.

Robert Schumann described the Fourth Symphony as “a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants,” a statement that is certainly true in one respect but also downplays many of the symphony’s best qualities, such as its jovial wit, understated grandeur, and economy of means. The Fourth Symphony is clearly a descendant of Haydn’s symphonic tradition with well-balanced themes and a compact structure all infused with a dose of mischievous humor. The melodies are graceful and song-like, supported by conservative shifts of key delivered by a smaller, more intimate orchestra. Since Beethoven started work on the Fourth Symphony after the Fifth was already well underway, it was composed with the same progressive mindset as the Fifth despite its very different character. It is just as forward looking and experimental as the Fifth in its development of themes, broad scope, and musical process, displaying Beethoven’s maturity as a composer and his confidence in his compositional skills.

The first movement opens with an introspective introduction that is unsettled and mysterious in its sparse scoring for strings and woodwind chords. In contrast, the Allegro vivace bursts out of the shadows with a lively energy that vigorously propels the movement forward but is never out of control. The second movement is both majestic and tender, with a stately air punctuated by a recurring rhythm in the strings. Beethoven did not call the third movement a scherzo specifically, but its quick pace and dance-like tunes leave no doubt to its nature as it bounds along through dizzying cross rhythms and interplay between instruments. The finale is a perpetual motion of scurrying passagework and hilariously unexpected shifts of harmony, mood, and instrumentation that form a series of clever musical jests even the master trickster Haydn himself would have admired, but still infused with Beethoven’s unmistakably unique brand of bold, uninhibited strength.

Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58

Ludwig van Beethoven

Baptized December 17, 1770, Bonn: Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

 In 1808, Beethoven decided to hold a massive benefit concert of his own works from which he would keep the proceeds. His life had been in disarray for some time, and a benefit concert seemed like a good way to get things back on track personally and professionally. Much to Beethoven’s dismay, his idea seemed to generate nothing but struggles, with every aspect of preparation making additional stress for the harried composer. Vienna’s concert halls were booked solid, but Beethoven cashed in a favor owed to him for some charity work and managed to secure the evening of December 22, 1808, at the Theater an der Wien for his performance. The demands of the busy holiday season put a strain on the available musicians, so Beethoven’s orchestra contained a mix of amateur players and professionals, forcing rehearsals of the challenging music to progress slower than normal. His frequent rages from the podium soon angered the orchestra to the point that they rebelled and demanded that the concertmaster run the rehearsals, stubbornly ignoring the composer’s comments (and curses) from the sidelines. His tantrums also drove the soprano soloist quit, and she had to be replaced at the last minute with a young, less-experienced singer.

Audience members who attended the concert on that chilly December night arrived at the hall to discover that the heating system had broken down, forcing them to sit through the entire performance in the intense cold. Those who managed to stay to the end heard a staggering amount of music including the premieres of both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the public premiere of the Fourth Piano Concerto, a variety of vocal works, excerpts from the Mass in C, a series of keyboard improvisations by Beethoven, and the premiere of the Choral Fantasy. Overall, the music was grossly under rehearsed and the orchestra played badly, getting so lost during the Choral Fantasy that they had to stop mid-performance and restart. In all, the marathon performance lasted more than four hours, about which composer and music critic J.F. Reichardt later wrote: “There we sat from half-past six until half-past ten in the most bitter cold, and found by experience that one might have too much even of a good thing.” It is unknown if Beethoven made any profit on the venture but, more importantly, this concert would be the last time that Beethoven appeared on the stage as a soloist due to his quickly advancing deafness.

Though gentle and soft-spoken, the Fourth Piano Concerto breaks with many of musical conventions of Beethoven’s era, making vast strides in terms of form and musical structure. Audiences must have been quite shocked when the composer, acting as piano soloist, marched up to the piano, seated himself, and immediately began to play from the opening measures of the piece. It was an unprecedented deviation from the protocol of the Classical concerto, where the soloist was expected to sit quietly though a long orchestral introduction. In addition, Beethoven chose to write parts for both the piano and orchestra that were sensitive and expressive rather than focusing on virtuosity, creating an interrelationship of solo and accompaniment that was considerably more nuanced than previous examples. The concerto’s first movement is built around a simple theme similar to the rhythmic pattern that opens the Fifth Symphony, a piece Beethoven worked on at the same time as the Fourth Piano Concerto. In the Fifth Symphony, the famous short-short-short-long rhythm is said to represent Fate knocking at the door, but here it is serene and noble without any forcefulness. The second movement is a dramatic dialogue between piano and strings that Franz Liszt and other prominent Romantic composers associated with the legendary character of Orpheus. Though the orchestra is aggressive at first, the soothing melodies of the piano calm the ensemble, just as Orpheus’s harp tamed the violent creatures of the Underworld. The third movement emerges from the second without pause, another novelty for Classical audiences. If the first two movements were a study in emotional restraint, then the third is an exercise in playful vigor releasing a torrent of joyful energy.

Program Notes by Heike Hoffer