Shostakovich Piano Concerto No.2, Op.102 | Anna Tsybuleva

Prokofiev for Beginners: 10 Pieces to Make You Love Prokofiev

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Sergei Prokofiev was born on 23 April 1891 in Sontsivka, present-day Ukraine. He became one of the famous rebellious enfant terribles of twentieth-century Russian music.

Sergei Prokofiev

Here are a few facts about his life and career:

• Prokofiev’s music blended steely modernism and traditional Russian character. He often combined dissonance and complex rhythms with more melodic and folk-inspired ideas.
• Prokofiev was a child prodigy who began composing at an early age. When he was accepted into the Moscow Conservatory, he was several years younger than his fellow students. (He would irritate his older peers by keeping track of their mistakes.) He cultivated a reputation as a misfit and a rebel.
• Prokofiev had a complicated relationship with Russia and the Soviet Union. He left his homeland in 1918 after the Russian Revolution but, homesick, returned in 1936. He ran into trouble with Soviet bureaucracy, and his ex-wife was even sent to a gulag after attempting to defect.
• In his later years, his health was poor. Prokofiev died on the same day as Joseph Stalin, so his death received relatively little attention.

Intrigued? Hope so! Here are ten works by Sergei Prokofiev to immerse yourself in his word.

Prokofiev began his first piano concerto as a cocky twenty-year-old.

In 1914 he played this concerto at a piano competition. He figured he probably wouldn’t win if he performed a canonical piano concerto, but he might stand a chance if he entered with an impressive performance of his own little-known work. (And yes, he did in fact win.)

This work is fifteen minutes long and in one movement. It’s dramatic, powerful, spiky, and spicy. 

In this work, Prokofiev takes a form that was invented in the late sixteenth century – the toccata – and brings it squarely into the mechanized twentieth.

Toccatas have always been fleet and virtuosic, but in his Toccata, Prokofiev brings those adjectives to another level, never allowing the performer (or the audience) a single moment to breathe. It’s a cold-blooded and deeply satisfying work.

Symphony No. 1 in D Classical, Op. 25 (1916–17) 

Many composers are terrified to write their first symphony, given the storied history of the genre and the weight of expectations. Brahms, for example, took over twenty years to write and perfect his.

Young Prokofiev, however, turned those expectations on their head when he breezily wrote his brief but enchanting first symphony, nicknamed the “Classical.”

As the name suggests, this symphony is in a neoclassical style that pays tribute to the works of Haydn and Mozart, while putting a modern spin on the genre.

Sergei Prokofiev in 1900

On April 18, 1918, he wrote a typically confident entry in his diary about the premiere: “Rehearsal of the Classical Symphony with the State Orchestra, I conducted it myself, completely improvising, having forgotten the score and never indeed having studied it from a conducting perspective.”

Despite its composer’s devil-may-care attitude, the premiere was a success.

Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Op. 19 (1916–17) 

Prokofiev’s first violin concerto is like the soundtrack to a twisted fairytale, with long lush lines interplaying with repetitive, machine-like virtuosity.

It was composed against the backdrop of the oncoming Revolution. Despite the turmoil in the streets, 1917 turned into the most creatively productive year of Prokofiev’s life.

In 1918, he departed Russia for America, crossing via the Pacific and arriving in California. He made his way across North America, eventually finding himself in Paris, where his violin concerto was belatedly premiered in 1923.

Unfortunately, Parisian audiences in that particular time and place were hoping for something with a little more avant-garde bite, and the fairytale-like first violin concerto wasn’t their cup of tea. But time has been kind to it, and the concerto remains in the repertoire to this day.

Suite from “Lieutenant Kijé”, Op. 60 (1934) 

In 1936, Prokofiev returned permanently to his homeland. However, before the move, he embarked on a series of long visits.

During one of these, he wrote the soundtrack to a film called Lieutenant Kijé, a satire set in 1800 tracing the misadventures of a fictional lieutenant who is created when a clerk mis-writes a name in a ledger.

This was Prokofiev’s first time writing for film, and, typically, he had very specific ideas about how he wanted to go about composing for this new genre. “I somehow had no doubts whatever about the musical language for the film,” he wrote.

The Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra asked Prokofiev to adapt his soundtrack into a full orchestral suite, which he did. The suite remains popular in concert halls today.

Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2, Op. 64ter (1936) 

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet had a rocky beginning.

One of its choreographers resigned from the Kirov Ballet; the project was then moved to the Bolshoi; government bureaucrats were unconvinced about the ballet’s retooled happy ending; and everyone was generally jumpy after a 1936 Stalinist denunciation of renowned composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Due to these delays, the music was heard before the actual ballet was produced.

That music is, like so much of Prokofiev’s output, both mesmerizing and terrifying. The lumbering bass of the Montagues and Capulets is especially legendary (at 2:45 in the recording above).

Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 (1936) 

One might not have expected this from the infamous enfant terrible of Soviet music, but in 1936, Prokofiev wrote one of the most famous educational works in music history, Peter and the Wolf.

It was commissioned by the director of the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow. She wanted Prokofiev to write a special symphony for children.

The protagonist Peter plays in a meadow, listening to a whole menagerie of animals symbolized by various instruments.

Peter’s grandfather warns him of a gray wolf who might come to attack him. On cue, the wolf makes an appearance, but with the help of his animal friends, Peter is able to catch it.

Hunters come out of the forest, ready to kill the wolf, but Peter convinces them to put the wolf in a cage and bring it to a zoo instead. They do so, in triumphant, animal-parade formation.

The work has proven to be one of the most popular in the entire repertoire and is often used even today as an introduction to the orchestra and orchestral instruments.

War and Peace, Op. 91 (1941–52) 

After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Prokofiev teamed up with his new wife, poet/translator Mira Mendelson, to write a massive opera based on Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

He submitted a score to the Soviet Union’s Committee of the Arts in 1942. They wanted more patriotism, but Prokofiev was loath to substantially revise the opera, so he sprinkled in some patriotic marches instead.

Despite the changes, full-throated Party support of the opera was never forthcoming, and the massive project gradually lost steam.

Prokofiev would never actually get to see the entire thing fully staged. But it’s still a fascinating glimpse into how he treated large-scale projects and how politics affected art.

Symphony No. 5 in B♭, Op. 100 (1944) 

Prokofiev wrote his fifth symphony in 1944, the summer of the Normandy landings. The long war was reaching a turning point, and this was reflected in his fifth symphony.

Publicly, at least, Prokofiev described the work as “a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.”

He also wrote, “I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamoured for expression. The music matured within me. It filled my soul.”

At its January 1945 premiere, celebratory artillery was heard in the distance. Prokofiev didn’t begin the performance until the gunfire was over.

Later, the musicians and audience learned that the explosions had been a celebratory signal: Soviet troops had crossed into Germany, signaling a successful invasion. The war ended in Europe a few months later.

Even though this was a work written in a very particular time and place, its themes of overcoming struggle and battered optimism still resonate on a more universal level.

Symphony No. 7, Op. 131 (1951-52) 

By the 1950s, Prokofiev’s health was declining. Nevertheless, he still managed one last symphony, his seventh. Somewhat ironically, his final symphonic testament was commissioned by the Soviet Children’s Radio Division.

One can hear a wistful melancholy and a world-weary resignation in this music, even in its more flamboyant passages. The bold aggression of the teenaged Prokofiev has mellowed considerably.

Prokofiev was pushed into altering his work. Originally the ending was quiet and sad. However, a conductor friend told Prokofiev that he should tack on a brief happy ending, which would make him more likely to please bureaucrats and win the Stalin Prize and its 100,000 ruble payout.

Prokofiev reluctantly agreed, but he told the friend, “Slava, you will live much longer than I, and you must take care that this new ending never exists after me.”

Prokofiev’s seventh never won the Stalin Prize, and he died before he could try again with his eighth.

Conclusion

Grave of Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev died on 5 March 1953, about an hour before Joseph Stalin. So many mourners were busy paying tribute to Stalin that his death went largely unnoticed for a long time.

There were no musicians available to play at his funeral, so his family played a recording of his own Romeo and Juliet suite instead. He was sixty-one years old.

10 Pieces of Classical Music About Freedom

by Emily E. Hogstad

Classical music has been used for political purposes countless times, both in oppressive regimes (like in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) and in battles for self-determination and freedom (like in the Finnish independence movement). European revolutions have had classical music as their soundtrack for a very long time.

© jewishjournal.com

Today, we’re looking at ten pieces of classical music about freedom, from Beethoven’s opera set in prison to Undine Smith Moore’s defiant piano music about the experience of being Black in America.

Let’s get started:

Ludwig van Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 (1806)

In Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, a Spanish nobleman named Florestan threatens to expose the corruption of a colleague named Pizarro. Pizarro wrongfully imprisons Florestan and tells the rest of the world that he has been killed.

However, Florestan’s wife, Leonore, refuses to believe the news. So she dresses up as a boy, renames herself Fidelio, and gets a job in the prison to find out what really happened to her husband.

By the end of the opera, Leonore ends up in front of her husband just before Pizarro actually goes to kill him. Pizarro, enraged, threatens to murder both husband and wife, but Fidelio/Leonore one-ups him by pulling out a gun, which puts an end to Florestan’s unjust imprisonment.

Beethoven had trouble writing an overture for this opera, and he wrote and discarded several versions. This one – known as the Leonore Overture No. 3 – is sometimes played after Leonore’s rescue of her husband.

Giuseppe Verdi: “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco (1841) 

Verdi’s opera Nabucco tells the Biblical story of the Israelites’ exile in oppressive Babylon.

In the opera, the Israelite slaves sing it as they work, describing how, even in exile, their thoughts are with their homeland.

However, this was not the music’s only potential meaning in mid-nineteenth-century Italy. At that time, a movement for Italian independence and unification was gaining steam, and art and music helped to contribute to national pride and identity.

In 1844, a few years after the premiere of Nabucco, two brothers named Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were working for Italian unification when one of their followers betrayed them. They were taken into custody and died by firing squad, becoming martyrs for the cause.

Verdi did not necessarily endorse such a movement, but whether he liked it or not, his music likely contributed to the atmosphere that ultimately made the revolution possible.

Frédéric Chopin: Heroic Polonaise (1842) 

Chopin was very proud of his Polish ancestry.

However, when he was twenty years old, he chose to leave Warsaw to make a musical career in a bigger city.

No sooner had he left for Vienna with his dear friend, political activist Tytus Woyciechowski, than Warsaw broke out into armed conflict.

The November Uprising in Warsaw lasted from November 1830 until October 1831. (Woyciechowski, for his part, as soon as he heard about the uprising, returned to Warsaw. Chopin stayed behind.)

The Poles fought their occupiers, the Russians, but were ultimately crushed.

Chopin was devastated when he heard about the outcome. He wrote in his journal, “Oh God! … You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!”

Over the years that followed, he became increasingly obsessed with Polish identity. He began incorporating polonaises – a dance form that originated in Poland – into his piano music.

He also began dating Paris-based authoress George Sand, who backed the Polish cause in her writings. After he wrote the Heroic Polonaise, she drew a direct line between the Polonaise and other countries’ fights for freedom and self-determination, writing, “The inspiration! The force! The vigour! There is no doubt that such a spirit must be present in the [1848] French Revolution. From now on, this Polonaise should be a symbol, a heroic symbol.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture (1880) 

The overture was commissioned to celebrate the completion of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in St. Petersburg.

Construction of the cathedral had started generations earlier as a gesture of thanksgiving to God after Napoleon’s ill-fated attempt to overtake Russia in 1812.

To celebrate the Russians’ preservation of their freedom, Tchaikovsky wrote an overture about the fight, featuring excerpts of the Marsaillaise and Russian folk songs.

He underlined the importance of the victory by writing parts for large orchestra, brass band, church bells, and even cannons.

Jean Sibelius: Finlandia (1899) 

Finlandia is Sibelius’s single most famous work. It was written for the Press Celebrations of 1899, a Finnish event that protested press censorship by the Russian Empire.

In order to sidestep Russian censorship, the piece was initially performed under over-the-top innocuous titles like “Happy Feelings at the Awakening of Finnish Spring.”

However, the piece was not just about happy feelings; it was clearly also a rebellious call to arms against oppression.

Finlandia portrays struggle, then transitions into a serene melody symbolizing the noble spirit of the Finnish people. That serene melody might sound like an old hymn, but it was actually composed by Sibelius specifically for this work. The work ends with rousing energy.

Amy Beach: A Song of Liberty (1902) 

American composer Amy Beach wrote A Song of Liberty for piano and women’s choir. In it, she set lyrics by Frank Lebby Stanton, the first poet laureate of Georgia.

The song traces themes about American national identity and liberty and how, in the narrator’s view, the American penchant for liberty stretches “from sounding sea to sea”, in words that echo Katharine Lee Bates’s lyrics for what later became known as “America the Beautiful.”

Hail to our Country! strong she stands,
Nor fears the war drum’s beat.
The sword of Freedom in her hands,
The tyrant at her feet!

Ethel Smyth: March of the Women (1910) 

Composer Ethel Smyth was born in 1858 in Kent. She was a rebel from childhood, demanding to be allowed to study music in Europe and locking herself in her room until her father let her go.

Not surprisingly, she was a major supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. (She even taught activist Emmeline Pankhurst how to throw stones at windows.)

In 1910, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and actually went so far as to give up her musical career for two years to contribute to the movement.

She returned to music briefly in 1911 when she composed the March of the Women. During this time, she was arrested for her activism and imprisoned in Holloway Prison. Her fellow suffragettes would march in the prison yard singing the March while she’d conduct them leaning out the window with a toothbrush.

Undine Smith Moore: Before I’d Be A Slave (1953) 

African-American composer Undine Smith Moore was born in Virginia in 1904 and died in 1989. By the end of her prolific career, she was known as “the Dean of Black Women Composers.” She often wove themes of the Black American experience into her work.

In 1953, she wrote a piece for solo piano called Before I’d Be a Slave. She described the program of the work:

It follows a program which I would hope is evident in the music without verbal explanation – in general:

In frustration and chaos of slaves who wish to be free

In the depths – a slow and ponderous struggle marked by attempts to escape-anyway-being bound-almost successful attempt at flight

Tug of war with the oppressors

A measure of freedom won – some upward movement less lacerating

Continued aspiration-determination-affirmation.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 (1957) 

In his eleventh symphony, Dmitri Shostakovich turned to the story of the 1905 Russian Revolution for creative inspiration.

This symphony has often been described as a soundtrack without a movie. It’s easy to see why: the work lasts for an hour with no breaks, and every movement contains a program.

Demonstrations before Bloody Sunday © Wikipedia

The first movement is about the quiet in the Palace Square before unarmed protesters marching to the palace were shot by imperial forces. The second movement depicts the forces beginning to attack the crowd, while the third movement is a memorial to those who have just lost their lives. The finale hints at the 1917 revolution – in which the royal family was defeated once and for all.

It is possible – although not certain – that Shostakovich was inspired to write this symphony at least in part because he had sympathy for the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Testimony about his political positions is abundant and often contradictory. But aside from all of that, it is very easy to read a narrative of struggle, liberty, and self-determination into this music.

Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975) 

Some people believe that this is among the greatest sets of themes and variations ever composed! It was written by composer Frederic Rzewski, an American composer who lived between 1938 and 2021.

This work consists of a Chilean protest song, ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! (The people united will never be defeated!), and 36 variations on it.

Rzewski wrote the work as a commentary on the popular resistance to oppressive dictator Augusto Pinochet, who came to power with the support of the American government in 1973.

The work is massive, lasting an hour, and is also massively demanding. For one, the score asks the pianist to whistle and slam the piano lid!

Conclusion

Whenever people feel oppressed by any force, it is second nature to create or take comfort in music that expresses the pathos, fury, tragedy, and occasionally triumph that can arise when seeking freedom…and these ten works of classical music about freedom prove it!

What’s your favorite classical music about freedom?

Yuja Wang: Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102.

Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin October 6, 2021 Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium 00:35 I. Allegro 08:00 II. Andante 13:54 III. Allegro

5 Ways to Love Shostakovich

Presenting my 5 entry-points to discovering the amazing world of Shostakovich!

Composer Galina Ustvolskaya: The Shostakovich-Trained Iconoclast

By Emily E. Hogstadt, Interlude

Composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) has been called “the lady with the hammer” and is known for her connection to Dmitri Shostakovich.

Galina Ustvolskaya and her dog

But she was so much more than this. She was also fiercely independent, staggeringly talented, and completely unafraid. She not only refused to fit in a musical mold but threw out that mold entirely.

Today, we’re taking a look at the life and times of Soviet composer Galina Ustvolskaya.

Ustvolskaya’s Childhood

Galina Ustvolskaya was born on 17 June 1919 in Petrograd to an unmusical family. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother was a teacher from impoverished nobility.

Her childhood was lonely and full of financial pressures.

“I would wear an old coat of my father’s (which was too long for me) and his muffler, which I gave to a young friend. I loved to give gifts, although we did not have anything to spare. Since childhood, I could not tolerate these kinds of pressures.”

Her desire for financial security would later impact her career choices.

She loved music deeply from an early age. When she was young, her parents took her to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, but the family had to leave when she started crying. “I want to be an orchestra,” she told them.

Time with Shostakovich

Ustvolskaya studied at a school for young people associated with the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1939, when she turned twenty, she joined Dmitri Shostakovich’s composition class. That year, she was the only woman in that class.

Shostakovich was intrigued by her and in awe of her talent. “I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve world fame and be valued by all who hold truth to be the essential element of music,” he wrote once. He also said, “It is not you who are under my influence, but I who am under yours.”

He valued her opinion so much that he asked for her feedback on his own compositions. He also used a theme from her clarinet trio in his fifth string quartet (from 1952) and his Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti (from 1974, toward the very end of his life). 

Ustvolskaya studied in his class twice – once from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1947 to 1948. That six-year break coincided with the war, as well as the devastating two-and-a-half-year siege of Leningrad.

A month into the siege of Leningrad, Shostakovich was evacuated to Moscow and Ustvolskaya to Tashkent, the current-day capital of Uzbekistan, along with others linked to the Conservatory. In 1943, she worked in a hospital in the city of Tikhvin, two hundred kilometers from St. Petersburg.

Galina Ustvolskaya

She later made it very clear that she was not keen on an association with Shostakovich. She called his music “dry and lifeless” and wrote to her publisher, “One thing remains as clear as day: a seemingly eminent figure such as Shostakovich, to me, is not eminent at all, on the contrary, he burdened my life and killed my best feelings.”

Her distaste for him may have been rooted in extra-musical reasons. She later claimed that Shostakovich proposed marriage to her, but she turned him down.

Later, she went even further: “There is no link whatsoever between my music and that of any other composer, living or dead,” she once proclaimed. 

Ustvolskaya and Soviet Propaganda

From 1947 to 1977, she taught composition at the Leningrad Conservatory. She didn’t think of herself as a particularly talented professor – composition was her true calling – but teaching was a way to make a living.

In February 1948, a resolution went out from the Soviet government, accusing some composers of Formalism (i.e., failing to compose music that fully supported the state).

After this, she split her creative self into two parts. One composed propaganda pieces acceptable to Soviet leadership, while the other wrote secret avant-garde works that she knew might never be heard. 

Writing music to please the authorities was soul-destroying, but she was apparently very good at it. Her tone poem Stepan Razin’s Dream opened the Leningrad Philharmonic’s 1949 season, to acclaim. She was even nominated for the Stalin Prize.

However, in 1962, she hit her limit. From that time on, she vowed to only write what she truly wanted to write, and she worked to destroy all traces of everything she ever wrote for political reasons.

Fortunately, later in the century, the Soviet Union started being easier on modernist composers, and allowing them to share some of their more controversial music. Ustvolskaya slowly began sharing some of the music she’d been keeping hidden.

Ustvolskaya’s Later Years

Galina Ustvolskaya

By the 1970s the Leningrad Union of Composers began presenting evenings of her music, and critics were impressed.

Her music has several distinguishing features, including extreme dynamics, unusual instrumentation, and brutal and relentless repetition.

The website Ustvolskaya.org writes, “Ustvolskaya’s music is unique, unlike anything else; it is exceedingly expressive, brave, austere, and full of tragic pathos achieved through the most modest of expressive means.” 

Unfortunately, for years, hardly anybody outside the Soviet Union heard it. But in 1989 her work was performed at the Holland Festival, and it made a big impression on audiences.

She was living as a bit of a hermit by the 1990s, but she traveled to Amsterdam to watch performances of her work. Although she hated interviews, she agreed to one with journalist Thea Derk. But when the time for the interview came, she nearly backed out, and only agreed to partake after she was assured she could answer questions with monosyllables, without elaboration. (Luckily, Derk was able to get more than that out of her.)

She was asked how she liked the performance she’d heard. “Not very much,” she said bluntly. She elaborated: “The acoustics were not favourable, so that the piano didn’t come out properly, and the five double basses should have been placed more to the front. Moreover, the ensemble, recruited more or less ad hoc from members of the Concertgebouw orchestra, hadn’t as yet properly mastered the score, and the reciter wasn’t adequately amplified. But yesterday it was better and I hope it will again be better tonight.”

Ustvolskaya’s Death and Legacy

A perfectionist iconoclast to the end, Galina Ustvolskaya died in 2006 in St. Petersburg. She was eighty-seven years old.

In 1998 she gave a description of her life to an interviewer that serves as a kind of thesis statement about her music:

“The works written by me were often hidden for long periods. But then if they did not satisfy me, I destroyed them. I do not have drafts; I compose at the table, without an instrument. Everything is thought out with such care that it only needs to be written down. I’m always in my thoughts. I spend the nights thinking as well, and therefore do not have time to relax. Thoughts gnaw me. My world possesses me completely, and I understand everything in my own way. I hear, I see, and I act differently from others. I just live my lonely life.”

"Festive Overture" by Dmitri Shostakovich

Top 10 Symphony Composers

 

Est 1923

• Top 10 Symphony Composers

After the extraordinary musical developments of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven the composition of a symphony became a daunting challenge, for many years the ultimate challenge for any composer. Many rose magnificently to that challenge, not least Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius and Shostakovich

Johannes Brahms

As Richard Bratby notes in his article What is a Symphony?: 'Few musical terms carry such baggage. And to write a symphony, now as then, means engaging with Western music’s most ambitious ongoing attempt to create meaning out of sound; declaring to the world that you have something important to say – and are about to deploy all your creative powers to say it.' 

We hope that the gathering of the 10 composers below serves as a informative introduction to the vast universe of symphonic writing, outlining the diverse ways that the greatest composers have responded to the task of writing a symphony, from the 18th century to the 20th. There are many outstanding symphonists to explore outside this initial list of 10 (Mendelssohn, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Copland, Carl Nielsen, Florence Price, Per Nørgård, Malcolm Arnold, John Adams – to name just a few), but we hope that this guide will set you off an an inspiring listening journey. 

We have recommended both a complete symphony-cycle and a recording of an individual symphony for each composer.

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Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Haydn’s contribution to musical history is immense, he was nicknamed ‘the father of the symphony’ (despite Stamitz’s prior claim) and was progenitor of the string quartet. Like all his well-trained contemporaries, Haydn had a thorough knowledge of polyphony and counterpoint (and, indeed, was not averse to using it) but his music is predominantly homophonic. His 104 symphonies cover a wide range of expression and harmonic ingenuity.

Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra / Adám Fischer (Brilliant Classics)

Read the review

Haydn 2032, Volume 4 – Il Distratto

Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini (Alpha)

Gramophone Award winner – Orchestral category (2017)

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

There is less than half a century between the death of Handel (1759) and the first performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio (1809). Bach and Handel were still composing when Haydn was a teenager. To compare the individual ‘sound world’ of any of these four composers is to hear amazingly rapid progress in musical thinking. Without doubt, the most important element of this was the development of the sonata and symphonic forms. During this period, a typical example generally followed the same basic pattern: four movements – 1) the longest, sometimes with a slow introduction, 2) slow movement, 3) minuet, 4) fast, short and light in character. Working within this formal structure, each movement in turn had its own internal structure and order of progress. Most of Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas, symphonies and chamber music are written in accordance with this pattern and three-quarters of all Beethoven’s music conforms to ‘sonata form’ in one way or another.

Mozart composed 41 symphonies and in the later ones (try the famous opening of No 40 in G minor) enters a realm beyond Haydn’s – searching, moving and far from impersonal.

Recommended recordings

Complete Symphonies (Nos 1-41)

The English Concert / Trevor Pinnock (Archiv)

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Symphonies Nos 29, 31, 32, 35 & 36

Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Sir Charles Mackerras (Linn Records)

Gramophone Awards shortlist (2010)

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Ludwig van Beethoven coupled his genius for music with profoundly held political beliefs and an almost religious certainty about his purpose. With the possible exception of Wagner, no other composer has, single-handedly, changed the course of music so dramatically and continued to develop and experiment throughout his entire career. His early music, built on the Classical paths trod by Haydn and Mozart, demonstrates his individuality in taking established musical structures and re-shaping them to his own ends. Unusual keys and harmonic relationships are explored, while as early as the Third Symphony (Eroica), the music is vastly more inventive and cogent than anything Mozart achieved even in a late masterpiece like the Jupiter. Six more symphonies followed, all different in character, all attempting new goals of human expression, culminating in the great Choral Symphony (No 9) with its ecstatic final choral movement celebrating man’s existence. No wonder so many composers felt daunted by attempting the symphonic form after Beethoven and that few ever attempted more than the magic Beethovenian number of nine.

Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Arnold Schoenberg Choir / Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Teldec)

Gramophone's Recording of the Year (1992)

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Symphonies Nos 5 & 7

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Carlos Kleiber (DG)

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Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

On March 26, 1828, in the Musikverein of Vienna, there was given for the first time a programme entirely devoted to Schubert’s music. It was put on by his friends, of course, but though successful, was never even reviewed. Less than eight months later, Schubert died of typhoid, delirious, babbling of Beethoven. He was 31 and was buried as near to him as was practicable, with the epitaph ‘Here lie rich treasure and still fairer hopes’. Schubert left no estate at all, absolutely nothing – except his manuscripts.

It was only by chance and the diligence of a few musicians that some of it came to light – in 1838 Schumann happened to visit Schubert’s brother and came across the great Symphony in C (the Ninth) and urged its publication; the Unfinished Symphony was not heard until 1865, after the score was found in a chest; it was George Grove (of Grove’s Dictionary fame) and the young Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) who unearthed in a publisher’s house in Vienna Schubert’s Symphonies Nos 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, 60 songs and the music for Rosamunde. That was in 1867. Over a century later, in 1978, the sketches for a tenth symphony were unearthed in another Viennese archive.

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Karl Böhm (DG)

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Symphonies Nos 3, 5 & 6

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Thomas Beecham (Warner Classics)

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Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

‘I never had a more serious pupil than you,’ remarked Bruckner’s renowned teacher of counterpoint, Simon Sechter. Certainly, no one could ever accuse Bruckner of being frivolous and quite how this unsophisticated, obsequious boor came to write nine symphonies of such originality and epic splendour is one of music’s contradictions. You don’t turn to Bruckner the man or the musician for the light touch. His worship of Wagner verged on the neurotic for, really, there is something worrying about his debasement before the composer of Tristan. The dedication of his Third Symphony to Wagner reads: ‘To the eminent Excellency Richard Wagner the Unattainable, World-Famous, and Exalted Master of Poetry and Music, in Deepest Reverence Dedicated by Anton Bruckner’; before the two men eventually met, Bruckner would sit and stare at his idol in silent admiration, and after hearing Parsifal for the first time, fell on his knees in front of Wagner crying, ‘Master – I worship you’. His soliciting of honours, his craving for recognition and lack of self-confidence, allied with an unprepossessing appearance and a predilection for unattainable young girls, paints a disagreeable picture. The reverse of the coin is that of the humble peasant ill at ease in society, devoutly religious (most of his works were inscribed ‘Omnia ad majorem Dei gloriam’) and a personality of almost childlike simplicity and ingenuousness. God, Wagner and Music were his three deities.

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Herbert von Karajan (DG)

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Symphony No 9

Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Claudio Abbado (DG)

Gramophone's Recording of the Year (2015)

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Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Not all composers fell under Wagner’s spell. Brahms was the epitome of traditional musical thought. His four symphonies are far nearer the style of Beethoven than those of Mendelssohn or Schumann, and the first of these was not written until 1875, when Wagner had all but completed The Ring. Indeed Brahms is by far the most classical of the German Romantics. He wrote little programme music and no operas. It’s a curious coincidence that he distinguished himself in the very musical forms that Wagner chose to ignore – the fields of chamber music, concertos, variation writing and symphonies.

Gewandhaus Orchestra / Riccardo Chailly (Decca)

Gramophone's Recording of the Year (2014); Recording of the Month (October 2013)

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Symphony No 3

Budapest Festival Orchestra / Iván Fischer (Channel Classics)

Gramophone Editor's Choice (August 2021)

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Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Mahler is the last great Romantic symphonist, music conceived on the grandest scale and employing elaborate forces. He wanted to express his view of the human condition, to set down his lofty ideals about Life, Death and the Universe. 'My symphonies represent the contents of my entire life.'

CBSO; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle (Warner Classics)

Gramophone's Recording of the Year (Symphony No 2, 1988); Gramophone's Recording of the Year (Symphony No 10, 2000)

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Symphony No 9

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Herbert von Karajan (DG)

Gramophone's Recording of the Year (1984)

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Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

To most people Sibelius is the composer of Finlandia and the Karelia Suite; to others he is one of the great symphony composers; to the people of Finland he is these things and a national hero. While he was still alive the Finnish government issued stamps with his portrait and would have erected a statue to him as well had not Sibelius himself discouraged the project. Probably no composer in history has meant so much to his native country as did Sibelius. He still does. ‘He is Finland in music; and he is Finnish music,’ observed one critic.

BBC Philharmonic / John Storgårds (Chandos)

Gramophone Awards shortlisted – Orchestral category (2015)

Symphonies Nos 3, 6 & 7

Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä (BIS)

Gramophone Awards shortlisted – Orchestral category (2017); Editor's Choice (September 2016)

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Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Vaughan Williams emerged as an adventurous, unmistakably English composer with a distinct voice of his own. His discovery in the early 1900s of English folksong, through the recently formed English Folk Music Society, focused his style. VW and Gustav Holst, his lifelong friend whom he’d met at the Royal College, went out seeking the source of their country’s folksongs; many had never been written down before and the cataloguing and research that VW and Holst undertook in this area was of considerable cultural significance. His music now took on a different character. Apart from war service (for which he volunteered, although over 40), Vaughan Williams devoted the rest of his long life to composition, teaching and conducting.

Vaughan Williams worked on into old age with undiminished creative powers – his Eighth Symphony appeared in 1955 (the score includes parts for vibraphone and xylophone) while his Ninth, composed at the age of 85, uses a trio of saxophones.

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Bernard Haitink (Warner Classics)

Gramophone Award winner – Orchestral category (Sinfonia Antartica, 1986); Gramophone Award winner – Orchestral category (A Sea Symphony, 1990)

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A London Symphony (original 1913 version)

London Symphony Orchestra / Richard Hickox (Chandos)

Gramophone's Recording of the Year (2001)

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Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Following his death, the government of the USSR issued the following summary of Shostakovich’s work, drawing attention to a ‘remarkable example of fidelity to the traditions of musical classicism, and above all, to the Russian traditions, finding his inspiration in the reality of Soviet life, reasserting and developing in his creative innovations the art of socialist realism and, in so doing, contributing to universal progressive musical culture’. The Times wrote of him in its obituary that he was beyond doubt ‘the last great symphonist’.

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko (Naxos)

Editor's Choice (Symphonies Nos 5 & 9, December 2009); Gramophone Award winner – Orchestral category (Symphony No 10, 2011); Gramophone Awards shortlist – Orchestral category (Symphony No 4, 2014); Recording of the Month (Symphony No 4, November 2013); Editor's Choice (Symphony No 14, June 2014)

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Symphony No 10

Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons (DG)

Gramophone Award winner – Orchestral category (2016); Recording of the Month (August 2015)

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