Four Centuries of Great Music January 26, 2025 Adagios

Recently I was at a live performance of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and said to myself, this adagio movement is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever.  Then I got thinking of other adagio movements that I just love.  And recently on my show Evening Eclectic I was chatting with Daniel Ching of the Miró Quartet about two adagios on their “Home” album.  So I came up with this idea of doing this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music of just adagios.  OK so I used several of my favorite adagios on last week’s program, but there are so many wonderful adagios that I have another show full of them.

So lets begin with the adagio that triggered this idea and that is the second movement, adagio from Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.  As the story goes this work as inspired as a prayer by Joaquín Rodrigo for his still born first child and his wife who seriously ill as a result of that still birth.  But despite the sadness of it’s origin it is one of the most inspirational and hopeful adagios that I an think of.

Here is a performance of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, second movement adagio by

Rodrigo: Concierto De Aranjuez - II. Adagio
John Williams, guitar and Louis Frémaux conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra
Rodrigo: Concierto De Aranjuez, Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre
Sony


Next in our celebration of adagio movements is the second movement “Air” from Johann Sebastian Bach:  Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068:  It is said that Bach wrote out the first violin and continuo parts on the autographed score of this work and a  student Johann Ludwig Krebs wrote out the second violin and viola parts.  So it was originally thought to be a work for strings and continuo.  But then Bach’s C.P.E. Bach wrote out the trumpet, oboe, and timpani parts bringing us to the work we have here today.

Johann Sebastian Bach:  Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: II. Air
Virtuosi Saxoniae & Ludwig Güttler
J.S. Bach: Complete Edition, Vol. 1/10
Brilliant Classics

One of the most wonderful solo piano adagios is of course the first movement from Beethoven’s moonlight sonata.  The first edition of the score is headed Sonata quasi una fantasia ("sonata almost a fantasy”). Grove Music Online translates the Italian title as "sonata in the manner of a fantasy". "The subtitle reminds listeners that the piece, although technically a sonata, is suggestive of a free-flowing, improvised fantasia."

Many sources say that the nickname Moonlight Sonata arose after the German music critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab likened the effect of the first movement to that of moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne.  This comes from the musicologist Wilhelm von Lenz, who wrote in 1852: "Rellstab compares this work to a boat, visiting, by moonlight, the remote parts of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. The soubriquet Mondscheinsonate, which twenty years ago made connoisseurs cry out in Germany, has no other origin.”   Taken literally, "twenty years" would mean the nickname had to have started after Beethoven's death. In fact Rellstab made his comment about the sonata's first movement in a story called Theodor that he published in 1824: "The lake reposes in twilit moon-shimmer [Mondenschimmer], muffled waves strike the dark shore; gloomy wooded mountains rise and close off the holy place from the world; ghostly swans glide with whispering rustles on the tide, and an Aeolian harp sends down mysterious tones of lovelorn yearning from the ruins.”  Rellstab made no mention of Lake Lucerne, which seems to have been Lenz's own addition.   Rellstab met Beethoven in 1825, making it theoretically possible for Beethoven to have known of the moonlight comparison, though the nickname may not have arisen until later.


By the late 1830s, the name "Mondscheinsonate" was being used in German publications  and "Moonlight Sonata" in English  publications. Later in the nineteenth century, the sonata was universally known by that name.

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN:  Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor  Op. 27 No. 2 (Moonlight) - I. Adagio sostenuto
Alice Sara Ott, piano
Beethoven
Deutsche Grammophon

Let’s go to the string quartet and one of the most famous adagios from String Quartets is the second movement of Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, Op. 11.  Most people know this as the string orchestra version.  Barber wrote the String Quartet, Op. 11 in 1936 while he was spending a summer in Europe with Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian composer and Barber's partner since their student years at the Curtis Institute of Music. It is one of the most recognizable pieces of American music - I think of it as an American Beethoven’s Fifth.   It has a very simple form  with almost all stepwise motion: a line up, then back down, then up again.  As he worked on the quartet, Barber wrote to his friend cellist Orlando Cole at Curtis, “I have just finished the slow movement of my quartet today — it is a knockout!”   After finishing the quartet, he wrote the string orchestra transcription of the second movement as “Adagio for Strings”.  And indeed it was a knockout because only two years later, in its arranged form for string orchestra the “Adagio for Strings” was performed by the NBC Symphony orchestra under the baton of conducting legend Arturo Toscanini and in this form it became one of Barber’s most popular, beloved and enduring works. At once tragic, mournful and comforting, having moments both of calm and of ecstasy, this is extremely powerful, even life changing, music.

Here is a performance of
Samuel Barber: String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 - II. Molto adagio
Miró Quartet
Home
Pentatone Records

But let’s listen to this work also in the “Adagio for Strings” version.  This is from the concert recorded live at The Metropolitan opera. on March 14, 2022 in a performance by Yannick Nézet-Séguin Leads The Met Orchestra and Chorus, and Star Soloists in a performance where the proceeds from the performance and the subsequent album’s sales were donated to charities supporting Ukraine relief efforts.   Here is the performance of

Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
A Concert for Ukraine
Deutsche Grammophon


And the Miró Quartet also had another “knockout” adagio on their Home album and this is the second movement Molto adagio from George Walker:  String Quartet No. 1.  This was the originally titled “Lament” in early versions of the quartet and was written in memory of his grandmother Malvina King, who was born a slave in the American South and whose life story was an inspiration to George with whom she was very close. George always referred to this work as “my grandma’s piece”; we all can relate to the deep emotions of family loss, love and memory that are so beautifully captured in this movement. It is a powerful work, whose hushed opening leads into lush music full of reminiscence and love…a consolation to every one of us who has someone in our heart whom we miss dearly. Walker wrote his String Quartet No. 1 in 1946 while he was a graduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music.  So another great adagio associated with the Curtis Institute of Music.  And this work became famous as a piece for string orchestra -Lyric for Strings in 1990.

George Walker:  Quartet No. 1 - II. Molto adagio
Miró Quartet
Home
Pentatone Records

I also love the second movements -  adagios  - from music by Antonin Dvorak.  Last week I played the second movement of DVORAK:   Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 (From the New World)  which is technically a largo and not an adagio and I played that last week.  But to support the blanket statement I  just made about loving adagios  from music by Antonin Dvorak, this week I am going with the second movement from his Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70 - II. Poco adagio


DVORAK Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70 - II. Poco adagio
Gustavo Dudamel conducting the  Los Angeles Philharmonic
Antonin Dvorak: Symphonies No. 7-9
Deutsche Grammophon

And another Dvorak adagio is the second movement of his Concerto in B minor for cello and orchestra, Op.104


Antonín Dvorak:  Concerto in B minor for cello and orchestra, Op.104 - II. Adagio, ma non troppo
John-Henry Crawford, cello and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra,
Martin West, conductor
John-Henry Crawford: Dvorak and Tchaikovsky
Orchid Classics

And speaking about cello concertos and favorite adagios - there is the first movement of the Elgar Concerto in E minor for cello and orchestra, Op. 85.  Oh OK, the main theme of that movement is marked moderato.  So let’s go with the third movement of that same concerto.  The third movement starts and ends with a lyrical melody, and the one theme runs through the entire movement.

Edward Elgar:  Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85: III. Adagio
Inbal Segev, London Philharmonic Orchestra & Marin Alsop
Anna Clyne: DANCE - Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto
Avie Records


And when I talk to people about my love of adagios - I always say give me a Mahler adagio anytime.   So I a ending today’s Four Centuries of Great Music with a Mahler adagio

The finale balances the first movement in the symphony’s overall structure – it, too, is about 20 minutes in length. The movement, with its often fervent atmosphere and reflective tone, lends itself to the interpretation of the symphony as a farewell – the warm, nostalgic, horn-led half-cadence during the opening string saturated theme is a case in point. There is darkness in the symphony’s finale as well, for example in the contrabassoon led counter subject we hear about four and- a-half minutes in. The movement ends with a vision of the beyond, as the first violins quote a melodic fragment from the end of the fourth song of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children): “…in the sunshine! The day is fair on those hills in the distance.”

Bruno Walter, who conducted the work’s posthumous premiere on June 26, 1912, with the Vienna Philharmonic, described this last movement as “a peaceful farewell; with the conclusion, the clouds dissolve in the blue of heaven.” Walter had never seen the score of the Ninth during Mahler’s lifetime; he only received it when Mahler’s widow Alma approached him about giving the premiere. He went on to become one of the work’s most eloquent exponents. Many consider his 1938 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, made live on the eve of the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria, to be one of the high watermarks in recorded Mahler performance, and Walter returned to the work during his “Indian summer” in Los Angeles, re-recording it with the “Columbia Symphony Orchestra,” a pickup band that included studio musicians and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at the American Legion Hall on Highland Avenue just south of the Hollywood Bowl in early 1961.


Symphony No. 9 in D Major: IV. Adagio (Sehr langsam)
Boston Symphony Orchestra & Seiji Ozawa
Mahler: Symphony No. 9 - Symphony No. 10 (Adagio)
Universal International Music