SEASON 3 EPISODE 12
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5. I'm Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You're listening to ‘Major and Minor Masterpieces,’ where we will focus each week on a broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies and maybe even a touch or two of opera.
Today’s show takes a look at concert overtures, stand-alone symphonic pieces written for concert-hall performances that are not connected to larger works.
From at least the early Baroque period, composers have opened operas, ballets, oratorios, suites and other multi-movement orchestral works with an overture (from the French word “ouverture,” or”opening”).
Starting in the early 19th century, more or less coinciding with the birth of the Romantic era, composers started writing "concert overtures,” intended specifically as concert pieces without reference or connection to stage performance and often based on some literary theme — Robert Schumann’s “Manfred” Overture, to which we referred on an earlier show, is a good example.
Concert overtures frequently are the first items on orchestra programs — you might say in this usage that they’re still “openings,” after a fashion.
Aaron Copland composed “An Outdoor Overture” in 1938 for an ensemble at the High School of Music and Art in New York City, part of its director’s long-term plan to concentrate on “American music for American Youth.” Copland, meanwhile, was in the midst of changing his composition style from austerity and dissonance into more folk-centered, accessible, supremely American orchestral music like his ballets “Billy the Kid,” “Rodeo” and, of course, “Appalachian Spring.”
Let’s hear a performance by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra with Erich Kunzel conducting.
(AARON COPLAND’S “AN OUTDOOR OVERTURE”)
You’ve heard the Cincinnati Pops, with Erich Kunzel conducting, perform Aaron Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture.”
Johannes Brahms, in his long journey to finally come up with a symphony — in which he felt oppressed by the long, looming shadow of the late Ludwig van Beethoven — composed only a handful of orchestral works (a couple of early serenades, a set of variations on a theme he believed was by Haydn and a piano concerto).
He finally got that First Symphony under his belt in 1876. And in doing so broke a logjam that, in just a few years, resulted in 3 more symphonies, 3 more concertos and a pair of concert overtures.
The first of those, which Brahms titled “Academic Festival Overture,” you will hear later in the show. But he felt the need to counter that piece’s bright, boisterous and jolly music with something emotionally antithetical: Brahms wrote to his friend and publisher Simrock that “I could not refuse my melancholy nature the satisfaction of composing an overture to a tragedy.” And in describing this pair of concert overtures to another friend, he explained, “One of them weeps, the other laughs.”
Herbert Blomstedt conducts the Gewandhausorchestra of Leipzig in Brahms’ "Tragic Overture.”
(JOHANNES BRAHMS’ “TRAGIC OVERTURE”)
Herbert Blomstedt conducted the Gewandhausorchestra of Leipzig in the "Tragic Overture” by Johannes Brahms.
Brahms’ friend and protege, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, wrote nine symphonies and a handful of concert overtures, three of which formed a compilation that Dvorak called "Nature, Life and Love” — “In Nature’s Realm,” “Carnival” and “Othello.”
They premiered in the summer of 1891 as Dvorak was preparing to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to take up a position as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The three subsequent years he spent in the U.S. led to several masterpieces (think his Cello Concerto and New World Symphony) that fused Czech influences with the sounds he heard here, including spirituals and the music and rhythms of Native Americans.
Let’s hear that trio of concert overtures — “In Natures Realm,” “Carnival” and “Othello.” Semyon Bychkov conducts the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
(SEMYON BYCHKOV’S “IN NATURES REALM” “CARNIVAL” AND “OTHELLO”)
You’ve heard the Czech Philharmonic and conductor Semyon Bychkov perform three concert overtures — “In Natures Realm,” “Carnival” and “Othello” — by Antonin Dvorak on “Major and Minor Masterpieces,” here on Little Rock Public Radio and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
—PROGRAM BREAK—
[EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
SARAH BUFORD, PRODUCER:
Hey listeners, welcome back to Major and Minor Masterpieces. I’m your producer, Sarah Buford, and it's time for our show’s little educational session, in which we break down some of the terminology we use when describing classical music and its history.
Some expansion on this would probably be helpful Eric, we’ve focused from time to time on instruments of the orchestra. Please tell me about the bassoon.
ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Well, Sarah, the bassoon is a low instrument on the totem pole that is the family of double-reed wind instruments — unlike, say, the clarinet, which uses a single reed, or piece of cane, to produce sound, double reeds, as the name implies, use two. The family also includes the oboe and the English horn (which we’ve talked about in an earlier show).
The average bassoon is about four and a half feet in length, though if you uncoiled the double tube inside it would come to about twice that. It produces a low, reedy sound in the bass register, and if you are composing something and want that sound to come out even lower, you would score your music for the contrabassoon, which plays about an octave lower and curves twice around on itself.
You will hear the bassoon in solo parts in many symphonic works; notable is its use by composer Sergei Prokofiev to represent the grumpy grandfather in his “Peter and the Wolf.”
SARAH: Thank you so much, Eric, let’s get back to more Major and Minor Masterpieces.
[END OF EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT]
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
ERIC: Danish composer Carl Nielsen wrote his "Helios Overture” in 1902, while accompanying his wife, sculptor Anne Marie Broderson, to Greece, after she had received a rarely-granted authorization to copy bas reliefs at the Acropolis in Athens.
Watching the sun rise over the Aegean Sea, Nielsen drew inspiration from Helios, the Greek god of the sun, who transported it across the sky every day in a four-horse chariot.
The overture begins with low swells in the basses evoking the black pre-dawn sea, followed by rising intervals in the horns announcing the dawn as the strings stir the morning breezes. Mid-work, we hear brass fanfares and a lyrical hymn in the strings and winds, followed by a fugue, and finally the descent of the chariot into the west and eventual darkness.
The Danish National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Thomas Dausgaard perform Nielsen’s “Helios Overture.”
(CARL NIELSEN’S “HELIOS OVERTURE”)
You’ve heard the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Thomas Dausgaard, perform Carl Nielsen’s “Helios Overture.”
Brahms wrote his "Academic Festival Overture” in response to the awarding in 1879 of an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Breslau in Germany — after it became clear that a simple postcard of thanks to the faculty would be insufficient, and that they expected him to express his gratitude in some musical form.
Brahms described the piece as “a very boisterous potpourri of student songs,” with sections based on four student beer-hall tunes — the grand finale being the “Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum summus” (“Let us rejoice, therefore, while we are young”).
Once again, Herbert Blomstedt conducts the Gewandhausorchestra of Leipzig.
(JOHANNES BRAHMS’ “ACADEMIC FESTIVAL OVERTURE”)
Herbert Blomstedt conducted the Gewandhausorchestra of Leipzig in Johannes Brahms’ "Academic Festival Overture.”
Felix Mendelssohn was born into a wealthy family in Berlin — his father was a banker — and thereby had the time and means to travel extensively. His 1829 visit to the British Isles included a stop at the Scottish island of Staffa, in the Hebrides, some fifty miles off the Scottish coast. There he visited a basalt sea cavern known as "Fingal's Cave," named for a third-century Celtic king whose castle there had long since succumbed to the sea. The composer reportedly jotted down the opening theme on the spot.
The subsequent concert overture, which Mendelssohn originally titled “The Lonely Island,” emerged the following year under the title of “The Hebrides,” but as the title “Fingal’s Cave” also appeared on the orchestral parts and on the score, that name has stuck as well.
Claudio Abbado conducts the overture — however it’s named — with the London Symphony Orchestra.
(FELIX MENDELSSOHN’S “HEBRIDES OVERTURE”)
Claudio Abbado conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the “Hebrides Overture” (also known as “Fingal’s Cave”) by Felix Mendelssohn on a Deutsche Grammophon box set that includes all five Mendelssohn symphonies and several of his overtures.
And we’ll close with another celebratory concert overture by a Russian composer.
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov combined his musical career with that as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, which gave him the opportunity to see a lot of the world. Some of his travels surfaced in his music — in particular his “Capriccio Espagnole” and his four-part tone poem “Scheherezade.”
Back home, he delved into the Russian Orthodox celebration of Easter, which in the Russian tradition is referred to as“the bright holiday.” The composer incorporates Russian Orthodox musical themes to represent the prophecies of the coming Savior in the biblical book of Isaiah, and the subsequent resurrection of Christ, while also reflecting the pagan merrymaking at the coming of spring.
Let’s hear the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Eugene Ormandy in Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture.”
(NICOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV’S “RUSSIAN EASTER OVERTURE”)
The Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Eugene Ormandy have performed Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture” to close out this week’s Major and Minor Masterpieces.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLINKSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for tuning in. I've been your host, Eric Harrison, of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Our producer is Sarah Buford. And our transition and credit music is by our friend Wojciech Chiselinski.
Tune in again next week for Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio and classical KLRE-FM, 90.5.