Prom 69: Boston Symphony Orchestra Bernstein and Shostakovich – 3.09.18

[Serial_Apologist]

Listening to the utube right now - quite a revelation: it very much anticipates that second orchestral suite: advanced Strauss harmonies (but without the annoying Strauss clichés Szymanowsky was unable to resist in his second symphony).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rChTn4hiplw

Thanks Bryn for bringing this to the detention!

[Bryn]

Listening to the utube right now - quite a revelation: it very much anticipates that second orchestral suite: advanced Strauss harmonies (but without the annoying Strauss clichés Szymanowsky was unable to resist in his second symphony).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rChTn4hiplw

Thanks Bryn for bringing this to the detention!

I only knew of its existence due to the TtN broadcasts. I think Bartok only completed the scherzo in orchestration. How the orchestral version on Youtube came about, I do not know, and the smartphone I am using does not help with further info.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oddly enough (maybe) I would disagree about Varèse, Carter and Bartók, all three of whom I would place closer to the Austro-Germanic tradition - or the ways in which Schoenberg was channelling that tradition - than to the Russian and/or the French.

I would say that the "Austro-German Tradition" is characterised by the idea of "organicism", that a piece of Music is the working out of a single "melos", a line of Musical argument whose basic shape is set out at or near the start. By contrast, the "Franco-Russian tradition" is based on modular structuring, with works created by juxtaposing contrasting blocks of material, with these often broken up and reorganised during the course of the piece. Schönberg deliberately evolved his "System of composing with the twelve notes of the chromatic scale related only to each other" precisely so that he could write the sort of extended structures that he felt he was heir to (the heir to Wagner's "endless melody", the 20+ minute Symphony movements of Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler, and which he couldn't achieve/sustain with the micro-structures of "Free Atonality".

In this light, I'd still claim that Varese and Carter, for all that the saturated chromaticism of their (very different) Music has similarities with the "Atonal" harmony of Schönberg and Berg (if not Webern), are much more closely "affiliated" to the Franco-Russian tradition than to the Austro-German. The European post-War Avant-Garde took the elements of both Traditions that were most useful to their own expressive requirements; essentially Serialism and Modular structuring - and abandoned those elements which it had no use for, and the Sonata Principle and the "long line" were things that they felt were spent in expressive possibilities and academic. The composer of A la nue accablante tu could have no "connection" with a work such as Shostakovich's Tenth, or Martinu's Fourth - not simply because of their essentially Tonal/Modal melodic/harmonic language, but also because of the "single-mindedness" of their "long lines". The individual virtues of Shostakovich's composing techniques contain nothing that would appeal to or interest Boulez - in the terms of his own considerable individual virtues, there were much more interesting things to absorb his attention elsewhere.

[ahinton]

advanced Strauss harmonies (but without the annoying Strauss clichés Szymanowsky was unable to resist in his second symphony).

Oh, that's hardly fair to KS! Yes, the Strauss influence there is potent but no part of the work could ever seriously be mistaken for Strauss. The real case of that is Szymanowski's Concert Overture, Op. 12, which actually sounds (at least to my ears) more like Strauss than even Strauss himself ever could! I could almost imagine Strauss adamantly refusing to conduct it...

[edashtav]

Oh, that's hardly fair to KS! Yes, the Strauss influence there is potent but no part of the work could ever seriously be mistaken for Strauss. The real case of that is Szymanowski's Concert Overture, Op. 12, which actually sounds (at least to my ears) more like Strauss than even Strauss himself ever could! I could almost imagine Strauss adamantly refusing to conduct it...

Yes, I agree with you, ahinton, over the opus 12 overture. Robert Markow, in a programme note fir a performance at the Kennedy Centre penned:

“ The Concert Overture was Szymanowski's first orchestral composition, completed in September, 1905. The first performance was given in Warsaw on February 6 of that year. Szymanowski revised the orchestration in 1912-13.The work bears comparison with Richard Strauss's tone poem Don Juan of 1888, also written when the composer was in his early twenties. Both works are drenched in hyperemotional romanticism, are saturated with densely packed orchestral polyphony, feature wildly twisting melodic lines, require a large orchestra, and loosely follow sonata-form structure. The ecstatic, exuberant nature of Szymanowski's work is apparent from the opening theme, proclaimed by strings and six horns (again, much as in Don Juan). Performance directions like estatico, amoroso, zornig (angrily) and affetuoso pepper the score. The exultant, energetic quality of the principal theme is balanced by the quiet restraint of the second, marked dolce amoroso. Another Straussian feature is the use of the solo violin, whose ardently expressive qualities within an orchestral context Szymanowski would later exploit more fully in two violin concertos.

Like many of Szymanowski's instrumental works, the Concert Overture was inspired by a literary work, in this case the poem "Witez Wlast" (The Knight Witez) by Tadeusz Micinski, described by musicologist Jim Samson as "a Nietzschean affirmation of man's power over the old gods." The stylistic affinity for Strauss, as well as for Wagner, Mahler and Reger, derive from Szymanowski's visit to Berlin in 1905.”