February 28th, Great St. Mary's Church, 8pm

Balakirev Overture on Three Russian Songs

Mozart Sinfonia Concertante (Guy Button and Rosie Ventris as soloists)

~~Interval~~

Beethoven Symphony No. 4

Balakirev: Overture on Three Russian Songs

Balakirev was somewhat notorious for taking long periods of time to finish works; for instance, his "Sonata in B flat minor" was written over the course of 50 years. Nevertheless, he managed to produce a large body of work, much of which is rarely performed today. His works consist largely of songs and collections of folk songs, but include two symphonies, two symphonic poems, and four overtures, and a number of piano pieces. His orchestral works are generally pieces of programme music in a style developed by Balakirev's disciples, such as Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. After an exhilarating opening, this wonderful overture presents three short Russian folk songs, each with a unique character: the first tender and gentle, the second rustic, and the third triumphant.

Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola

Mozart most likely intended to play the viola part himself, as the viola was his preferred instrument in string ensembles. The emphasis on sonority is the hallmark of the piece. Charles Rosen, in The Classical Style, writes: "The sonority of the Sinfonia Concertante ... is unique. The very first chord -- the divided violas playing double-stops as high as the first and second violins, the oboes and violins in their lowest register, the horns doubling cellos and oboes -- gives the characteristic sound, which is like the sonority of the viola translated into the language of the full orchestra. This first chord alone is a milestone in Mozart's career: for the first time he had created a sonority at once completely individual and logically related to the nature of the work."

This majestic opening Allegro maestoso is followed by an Andante in which the solo instruments exchange a warm, lyrical dialogue. The structure is deliberately loosened to allow for a chain-like succession of glorious melodies that are shared equally by the two soloists. The mood is consequently expansive, permeated by a recurrent feeling of tragedy that is finally dispelled in the finale, as the brisk Rondo closes the piece with virtuoso brilliance. Certainly Mozart never wrote a more lyrical work.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B flat

In the fall of 1805, when Beethoven received Count Oppersdorff's commission for a new symphony, his first thought was to present him with the Symphony in C minor whose first two movements he had sketched the previous year. Instead, however, he set the C-minor aside and began this totally new and utterly different Symphony in B-flat, which he completed within a few months. It is one of his very few major works for which no preliminary sketches seem to have been made.

The composer of the Eroica might not have been expected to make any further gesture toward the Classical notion of the symphony, but in the Fourth Beethoven built on the Classical structure an edifice as distinguished by its originality as by its grace. The suspenseful Adagio introduction may be more or less according to Haydn's formula, but it could not possibly be mistaken for Haydn, and the thrust and colour of the first movement proper stamp this music even more surely as Beethoven's and his alone. Here the delicious writing for the winds celebrates the lyric impulse that is to illumine the Pastoral Symphony (No. 6), and the rhythmic assertiveness looks ahead still farther, to the Seventh.

A side of the same character that is both softer and, in two quite different senses, darker greets us in the slow movement, a nobly flowing Adagio with nocturnal colouring, caressing themes, and an inspired use of the drums to set the lyric phrases in high relief. A more animated middle section brings an unexpected touch of dramatic urgency, with the drums providing both contrast to and continuity with the movement's opening section. Once this passes, the second half is even more intimate in feeling than the first, right up to the ruminative passage for winds that leads to the emphatic conclusion. This is a device characteristic of Haydn's symphonic slow movements, but again the language is so clearly Beethoven's that the similarity is noted only in passing.

Beethoven did not label the third movement a scherzo; as with the corresponding movement of his First Symphony, he called it a minuet. While it is clearly more of a Beethoven scherzo than a Classical minuet, a Classical sense of order seems to provide a rein against boisterousness. The trio section is Beethoven at his most genial and ingratiating, but very clearly on his own terms. The final movement, at once high-spirited and elegant, begins with a sort of perpetuum mobile tune, which is contrasted almost at once with a more lyrical and expansive one. These two themes and their offspring sustain the Symphony's dual character of vivacity and geniality to the end, which comes about with a touch of Haydnesque humor that Beethoven, yet again, succeeded in making his own.