Czech Philharmonic • Tom Borrow

In 1826, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy wrote the overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at the same time Hector Berlioz was writing the first works from his series of concert overtures. The one-movement concert overture soon became an obligatory part of concert programmes, usually as the opening number, actually serving as an “overture to a concert”, where it took the place of opera overtures that had formerly played that role. In 1829, Mendelssohn visited Scotland, and his impressions from the experience are reflected in his Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish Symphony”) and the concert overture The Hebrides (also known as Fingal’s Cave). Fingal’s Cave is a geological formation on the island Staffa in the Inner Hebrides archipelago. It is associated with the Celtic legend of a king who lost his miraculous powers when he refused to help a wounded friend. Fingal (Fionn) is the hero of a cycle of epic poems by James Macpherson, famed as the “discoverer” of the songs of the historical bard Ossian. In reality, Macpherson invented both Ossian and the supposed Celtic (Scottish-Irish) legend. Doubts over the authenticity of Macpherson’s discovery began to appear early on, but the mysterious atmosphere of the legend and the geographical site inspired painters, poets, and musicians; the tale even found its way into the Czech arts in a literary treatment by Julius Zeyer, whose Legend of Erine became the basis of an opera with the same title by Otakar Ostrčil. 

Every composer faces the problem of how to handle musical structure when choosing extramusical subject matter. One must find a balance between the basic principles of musical form and the subject chosen as the work’s content, which could be the description of an emotional event, the telling of a story from a work of literature, or the depiction of a landscape. That Mendelssohn was searching is apparent from the several revisions of The Hebrides. The overture is built in sonata form, but the composer was long dissatisfied with parts of the development that, as he put it, “have a scent more redolent of counterpoint than of fish oil and seagulls, but the opposite should be the case”. The first version was performed in 1832 in London, and the final revision was first heard on 10 January 1833 in Berlin. Coincidentally, it was also heard back then on a programme with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, and Felix Mendelssohn served as both soloist and conductor, performing the work “soulfully, vividly, and perfectly beautifully”.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote five piano concertos (a sixth remained unfinished). Advancements in piano design enabled him to enrich the solo part with new elements, and he also gave greater depth to the integration of ideas between the individual movements while expanding the harmonic language. The first sketches for the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, date from 1802, at the same time as the sketches for the Eroica Symphony, but his concentrated effort to write the concerto came in the first half of 1806. The work was first heard in March 1807 before a private audience at Prince Lobkowitz’s palace in Vienna. The public premiere took place on 22 December 1808 at the conclusion of the first half of Beethoven’s four-hour benefit concert at the Theater an der Wien, where it was heard along with the concert aria Ah, perfido!, the Fifth Symphony, the Sixth Symphony, part of the Mass in C major, and the Choral Fantasy. This was Beethoven’s last appearance as a piano soloist with orchestra; his worsening deafness prevented him from any more performing.

The concerto opens with the solo piano playing a calm, concentrated chordal idea that serves as a kind of motto for the entire work. It almost sounds like a spontaneous improvisation, a fleeting idea, from which a remarkable structure gradually emerges. The orchestra then takes up the opening motif and builds an exposition from it. When the soloist joins back in, the piano part again seems like an improvisation, but it immediately develops its full brilliance. The second theme alternates between the major and minor modes, and the piano asserts itself ever more strongly, then the dialogue between the soloist and orchestra climaxes with a solo cadenza. The main theme is then heard again, and the orchestra closes the movement. The second movement opens with an energetic unison of the orchestra and with contrasting, hesitant responses by the piano. According to the account of one of Beethoven’s contemporaries, the movement has a programmatic basis; it was meant to evoke the struggle of the legendary figure Orpheus against the underworld. In the rondo third movement, the composer again makes the impression of developing a fleeting idea. The piano part loses its soloistic character and becomes a part of the orchestral score.

Following the success of the first Prague performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, which took place in December 1786 at the Nostitz (Estates) Theater, “a group of great connoisseurs and lovers of music” – as Leopold Mozart wrote to his daughter on 12 January 1787 – invited the composer to Prague. Mozart did indeed come to Prague the following month, saw his Figaro and conducted the performance himself on 22 January 1787. Three days before, on 19 January, he had held a musical academy at the Nostitz Theater, during which he played the piano and performed his Symphony in D major (KV 504), which later became to be known as the Prague Symphony. Mozart scholars are still not agreed on the original purpose for which it was composed, perhaps for the (undocumented) academy in Vienna. This would suggest that Mozart sketched the final movement as early as the spring of 1786, but then set the work in progress aside. Further information about the new symphony is in Mozart’s own list of compositions from early December 1786. Whether the work was completed for a forthcoming trip to Prague or for another occasion, the Prague concert is in any case its first demonstrable performance. The symphony is in three movements, without a dance movement, and even on this point musicologists are not agreed; some believe that Mozart deliberately returned to an earlier type of Italian sinfonia, others claim that during the course of the work he felt the minuet to be too different in style, or that he excluded it because it was no longer “fashionable”, or that the reason was simply the lack of time. The first movement in sonata form begins with a slow introduction, the longest Mozart ever wrote, which foreshadows the overture to Don Giovanni; the allegro section is one of the most beautiful examples of Mozart’s polyphonic artistry, the rhythmical aspect of which is characterized by forward rushing syncopations. The second movement’s quiet, highly chromaticized andante, orchestrated without trumpets and timpani, is also in sonata form and is followed by a buffo finale. Its opening theme is reminiscent of the duet of Susanna and Cherubino from Act II of Le nozze di Figaro, so for the Prague audience it was a reference to a work they knew well. Like in the previous movements, Mozart works only with the main theme in the sonata development. The musicologist Alfred Einstein considered the finale of the Prague Symphony to be “one of those peculiar Mozartian movements that, in spite of seeming joyfulness and perfection, leave a wound in the soul: here, beauty is associated with death.”