Four Centuries of Great Music May 7, 2023 Recently Released Classical Music

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are continuing our series of recently released classical music.

First is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550

The first movement (Molto allegro) does not open with a majestic, expansive introduction, as we hear in Symphony No. 39. Instead, it begins with a pulsating rhythmic motor in the low strings and a haunting, restless melody in the violins. This hushed, breathless opening theme is made up of a three beat pickup leading to a sighing resolution. Soon, the woodwinds enter and the theme takes new, unexpected turns. Following a flowing, chromatic second theme, fragments of the first theme return as a vibrant orchestral conversation (1:18). From the abrupt opening bars, this music takes us on a turbulent and unpredictable journey. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the harmonically adventurous development section. Listen to the sneaky way the development melts away, returning us “home” at the beginning of the recapitulation (4:40).

The second movement (Andante) initiates a sublime conversation between instrumental voices. Beginning with the violas and rising through first and second violins, each voice makes its individual entrance, propelled forward by a walking bass line in 6/8 time. This musical conversation covers a range of dramatic territory, from tenderness and mystery to deep reverence and awe. Woven together with sensuous chromaticism, the movement unfolds in sonata form, giving it a sense of weight equal to the first movement. Many of the slow movements of Beethoven’s symphonies give us a sense of blazing intensity and striving that seems to push past perceived limits. Something similar happens in Mozart’s development section.

We might expect the third movement (Menuetto. Allegretto – Trio) to be stately and elegant. Instead, we get a dark and ferocious dance filled with wild syncopation and competing contrapuntal voices. With jarring hemiola (a rhythmic juxtaposition of three against two, simultaneously), this snarling, exhilarating music is anything but polite.

Sonic sparks fly in the wild and virtuosic final movement (Finale. Allegro assai). This music is filled with the fun-loving abandon we hear in the swirling “Turkish dance” section of Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto. It begins with an exuberant rising “Mannheim rocket” arpeggio line. (Beethoven seems to have paid homage to this theme in the third movement of his Fifth Symphony). The beginning of the development section (28:14) nearly spins out of control with something close to a twelve tone row. What follows seems like a warmup for the contrapuntal fireworks that unfold in Mozart’s next symphony, the “Jupiter.” The final bars surge to a fiery and emphatic conclusion.



Let’s close out this first  hour with Franz Schreker: Romantische Suite op. 14

Austrian-German composer Franz Schreker (1878 - 1934) composed his Romantische Suite in 1903, shortly after graduating from the Vienna Conservatoire. The published score listed four movements -- "Idylle," Scherzo, Intermezzo, and "Tanz" -- but the Intermezzo is actually an independent and separate piece that for a time was incorporated into the suite, but was later excised and published as Op. 8. The three remaining movements of the suite were premiered in 1910 by the Vienna Philharmonic with Schreker conducting. Of the suite's three movements, the "Idylle" is by far the most characteristic of the mature Schreker. Marked Andante, the nearly ten-minute movement is a melancholy meditation on the evanescence of happiness and love couched in Schreker's lushes melodies and harmonies. The two succeeding movements, the Scherzo and the "Tanz," are both finely composed works but without much personality; although their melodies are charming, they could have been written by any fin-de-siècle Hapsburg composer from Schmidt to Dohnányi, and although the harmonies are piquant, they could have been written by any post-Wagner composer from Dukas to Glazunov. While the Romantische Suite is a well-composed and thoroughly professional work, only in the "Idylle" does the future composer of Die ferne Klang and Die Gezeichneten reveal himself.


Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are continuing our series of new releases. Let’s open this second hour with
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL: Suite No. 2 in F major HWV 427 from 8 Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, 1720

Handel published his first volume of Suites for keyboard in London in 1720. The works had already been published without his permission in Amsterdam the previous year and Handel published them himself in London to protect his royalties. Also called Suites de pieces pour le Clavecin, the suites most often are sets of stylized dances. The Suite in F major, however, is not a set of dances, but rather a stylized church sonata in four movements: Adagio, Allegro, Adagio, and Fuga. The opening Adagio is a thoughtful and expansive movement with an exquisitely embellished melody above wide-ranging modulations starting in F major, but ending in A minor. The following Allegro is a rapid, racing movement in F major with few modulations. The following Adagio is a dramatic movement in D minor with a highly expressive melody above widely spaced chords. The closing Fuga Allegro is in four independent voices with an aggressive subject.


Let’s close today’s four centuries of great music of new classical music releases with Franz Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 21 in Bb, D 960

I. Molto Moderato
This movement employs a three-key exposition. The first theme introduces a G♭ trill[27] that anticipates the following harmonic events – a shift to G♭ major in the central section of the main theme, and, after a return to the tonic, an enharmonic shift to F♯ minor at the start of the second theme.[28] After a colorful harmonic excursion, the third tonal area arrives in the traditional dominant key (F major).

In contrast to the previous sonatas, here the development section elaborates on several different themes from the exposition. It reaches a dramatic climax in D minor, in which the first theme is presented, fluctuating between D minor and the home key, in a manner similar to the parallel passage from the previous sonata (see above). In the recapitulation, the bass line in the first theme rises to B♭ instead of descending to F (as in the exposition), and the second theme enters in B minor, instead of F♯ minor. The rest of the exposition is repeated without alterations, transposed a fourth up, meaning that it returns to the home key, B♭, for the third tonal area. The coda once again recalls the first theme, although only fragmentarily.

II. Andante Sostenuto
This movement is written in ternary form, and is in the key of C♯ minor – "the most tonally remote inner movement in Schubert's mature instrumental works in sonata form".[29] In the main section, a somber melody is presented over a relentless rocking rhythm in a texture swimming in pedal. The central section is written in A major and presents a choral melody over an animated accompaniment; it later touches upon B♭ major, the sonata's home key. The main section returns with a variant of the original accompanying rhythm. This time, the tonal scheme is more unusual: after a half cadence on the dominant, a sudden, mysterious harmonic shift introduces the remote key of C major. This eventually turns into E major, and proceeds as before. The coda shifts to the tonic major but is still haunted by glimpses of the minor mode.


III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza – Trio

The first part of the scherzo proper cadences not in the tonic or dominant but in the subdominant. The second, B part, continues to modulate by ascending fourths, until it reaches the key of D♭ major. In this key, a new theme is presented, emphasizing the local subdominant (G♭ major, a further fourth upward) – first in the major mode, then in the minor, with an enharmonic shift to F♯ minor. This harmonic excursion eventually leads, through A major and a B diminished triad, back to the tonic and the opening section. The trio is in binary form and in B♭ minor, the first presentation of the tonic minor in the sonata.


V. Allegro ma non troppo – Presto
The finale has the same structure as that of the previous sonata. Many elements of this movement imply large-scale resolution of harmonic and thematic conflicts established earlier in this and even the two previous sonatas. The main rondo theme opens with an 'empty' octave on G, which resolves to C minor, subsequently interpreted as ii in B♭ major. Alfred Brendel asserts that this theme, beginning in the ambiguous G/Cm, functions as a resolution of the troubling G♭ trill presented in the very beginning of the sonata, using G♭ to resolve to F major as dominant of B♭.[citation needed] The second theme, in ternary form, is written in the traditional key of the dominant, with a central section in D major; it consists of an extended, characteristically Schubertian stepwise melody played over an uninterrupted flow of semiquavers. This second theme uses the same melodic contour (5–8–7–6–6–5–(5–4–4–3)) of the remarkable C-major modulation in the final A section of the second movement, implying further connotations of conflict resolution.

After an abrupt end to the second theme and a pregnant pause, a minor dotted-rhythm chordal theme in F-minor suddenly enters fortissimo, elaborating and modulating before sublimating into a pianissimo version of itself in the parallel major. This third theme is highly similar in rhythm and melodic contour as well as left-hand pattern to the tarantella of the C minor sonata, which may not be a coincidence when considering the overall high level of cyclic connection between the sonatas. This theme evolves into a rhythmic segue that leads seamlessly back to the main theme of the rondo.

The development section, based entirely on the rhythmic pattern of the main rondo theme, is characterised by juxtaposed eighth notes and triplets, reaching a climax on C♭ major, from which the bass descends in chromatic modulation eventually to G in an extended diminuendo to return to the main theme.
In the coda, the main theme is fragmented in a manner also similar to the finale of the previous sonata; in a highly chromatic and unstable progression, the octave on G here descends through G♭ to F, in an extension of the G-G♭-F resolution of the theme. After finally reaching this dominant preparation for the final time, the movement closes with an exceedingly triumphant and affirming presto section that totally resolves all dramatic conflicts in the sonata and the series.