Day 310: Overtures, Variations, and Serenades (Oh, My!)

BrahmsCD4I liked this CD from the get-go.

The music is interesting, varied, and bold.

These overtures and variations seem to be better composed than Brahms’ symphonies. At least, to my ears, they’re infinitely more compelling.

The musicians on today’s CD are:

 

London Symphony Orchestra
Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, conductor

Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester
Gunter Herbig, conductor

Dresdner Philharmonie
Heniz Bongartz, conductor

The compositions on today’s CD are broken down into four main sections, covering some 17 tracks:

1. Academic Festival Overture Op. 80
2. Tragic Overture Op. 81
3. Variations on a theme by Haydn Op. 56 “St. Anthony Variations”
4. Serenade No. 2 in A Op. 16

According to its entry on Wikipedia:

Academic Festival Overture (German: Akademische Festouvertüre), Op. 80, by Johannes Brahms, was one of a pair of contrasting concert overtures — the other being the Tragic Overture, Op. 81, written to balance it as its pair. Brahms composed the Academic Festival Overture during the summer of 1880 as a musical “thank you” to the University of Breslau, which had awarded him an honorary doctorate the previous year.

Initially, Brahms had contented himself with sending a simple handwritten note of acknowledgment to the University, since he loathed the public fanfare of celebrity. However, the conductor Bernard Scholz, who had nominated him for the degree, convinced him that protocol required him to make a grander gesture of gratitude. The University expected nothing less than a musical offering from the composer. “Compose a fine symphony for us!” he wrote to Brahms. “But well orchestrated, old boy, not too uniformly thick!”

Brahms, who was known to be a curmudgeonly joker, filled his quota by creating a “very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs à la Suppé” in an intricately designed structure made to appear loose and episodic, thus drawing on the “academic” for both his sources and their treatment.

The work sparkles with some of the finest virtues of Brahms’s orchestral technique…

According to its entry on Wiki:

The Tragic Overture (German: Tragische Ouvertüre), Op. 81, is a concert overture for orchestra written by Johannes Brahms during the summer of 1880. It premiered on 26 December 1880 in Vienna. Most performances last between twelve and fifteen minutes.

Brahms chose the title “Tragic” to emphasize the turbulent, tormented character of the piece, in essence a free-standing symphonic movement, in contrast to the mirthful ebullience of a companion piece he wrote the same year, the Academic Festival Overture. Despite its name, the Tragic Overture does not follow any specific dramatic program. Brahms was not very interested in musical storytelling and was more concerned with conveying and eliciting emotional impressions. He summed up the effective difference between the two overtures when he declared “one laughs while the other cries.” Brahms quotes some material from the last movement of the Second Symphony in this overture.

Brahms was 47 when he composed the Academic Overture and the Tragic Overture.

According to its entry on Wiki:

The Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, (German: Variationen über ein Thema von Jos. Haydn), now also called the Saint Anthony Variations, is a work in the form of a theme and variations, composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1873 at Tutzing in Bavaria. It consists of a theme in B-flat major based on a “Chorale St Antoni”, eight variations, and a finale. The work was published in two versions: for two pianos, written first but designated Op. 56b; and for orchestra, designated Op. 56a.

The orchestral version is better known and much more often heard than the two-piano version. It is often said to be the first independent set of variations for orchestra in the history of music, although there is at least one earlier piece in the same form, Antonio Salieri’s Twenty-six Variations on ‘La folia di Spagna’ written in 1815.

Brahms was 40 when he composted these variations.

According to its entry on Wikipedia:

The two Serenades, Op. 11 and 16, represented two of the earliest efforts by Johannes Brahms to write orchestral music. They both date from the 1850s when Brahms was residing in Detmold.

The second serenade was written in 1859 and dedicated to Clara Schumann. It was revised in 1875. It is scored for a chamber orchestra, including double woodwinds but omitting violins, trumpets, trombones, and percussion. The five movements take approximately thirty minutes to perform.

Brahms was 29 when he composed Serenade No. 2.

The entire CD is worth listening to. I think it would make perfect background music for writing – far better than the cackling from the table of old ladies sitting behind me in the restaurant as I type these words.

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