Program Notes for KCO February 7

Dvořák: Slavonic Dance Opus 72 #1 -Notes by Jennifer Minnich

In 1875, the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák attracted the attention of Johannes Brahms, who was so impressed with Dvořák’s Moravian Duets for piano that he wrote to his own publisher, Simrock, who asked Dvorak to write more pieces in similar “folk” style. Dvořák turned to Brahms’ Hungarian Dances for inspiration for these pieces. The Slavonic Dances were originally composed in 1878 as piano duets, and Dvorak orchestrated them soon afterwards. He wrote to Brahms in March 1878: “I have been commissioned by Mr. Simrock to write some Slavonic Dances. Since, however, I did not know how to begin this properly, I have taken the trouble to procure your famous ‘Hungarian Dances,’ and I shall take the liberty of using these as an exemplary model for the arrangement of the corresponding Slavonic.”
The ensuing popularity of these works marked Dvořák’s rise to fame beyond the borders of the Czech provinces, and even outside the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Slavonic Dances very well received in Germany, and after their publication, Dvořák became increasingly in demand as a composer.

Mozart: Piano Concerto in A Major, K. 488 -Notes by Andrew Shurman

Mozart was not only the finest composer in his day; he was also the greatest pianist, organist and conductor, and he could write a new composition while thinking out another. At the peak of his popularity, while working away on the Marriage of Figaro, Mozart composed three of his greatest piano concertos and appeared as soloist at the premieres.
The A-Major concerto lives up to Mozart’s wry advice to his father from a letter dated 1782: “In order to garner applause with this happy medium (for true perfection in all things is no longer known or prized), you must write music that is either so simple a coachman could sing it, or so unintelligible that audiences like it simply because no sane person could understand it.” The melodies are abounding, yet the subtleties certainly challenged the audience of the time. Before Beethoven and the Romantics, most music was not even printed, and so a new work had to be grasped at first hearing.
Especially since leaving Salzburg and his domineering father in 1781, Mozart’s works contain a depth and complexity that often went unappreciated. “Too beautiful for our ears, and far too many notes, my dear Mozart,” were the immortal words of Emperor Joseph II.

Brahms: Symphony No. 4 –Notes by Eric Stumacher

Brahms completed his Fourth, and last, Symphony, in the Styrian resort town of Murzzuschlag in the summer of 1885. He presented the work for the first time, in Vienna in a two-piano performance with Ignaz Brull as his keyboard partner, in early October 1885, for a small group of his closest friends. The selected audience – conductor/pianist Hans Richter, surgeon Theodor Billroth, music critics Eduard Hanslick and Max Kalbeck— reacted to the work in stony silence.
Brahms conducted the orchestral premier in Meningen on October 25, 1885, and the audience roared its approval. But at the work’s first performance in Vienna, on January 17, 1886 under the baton of Hans Richter, the audience was as cold as his friends had been in early October.
Eleven years later, on March 7, 1897, less than four weeks before Brahms’ death, Richter conducted the Fourth Symphony in Vienna to an overwhelming outpouring of respect, love, and affection. Florence May, a piano student of Brahms and his subsequent biographer, captured the event in this passage from her “Life of Brahms”:
"A storm of applause broke out at the end of the first movement, not to be quieted until the composer, coming to the front of the artists' box in which he was seated, showed himself to the audience. The demonstration was renewed after the second and third movements, and an extraordinary scene followed the conclusion of the work. The applauding, shouting house, its gaze riveted on the figure standing in the balcony, so familiar and yet in present aspect so strange, seemed unable to let him go. Tears ran down his cheeks as he stood there in shrunken form, with lined countenance, strained expression, white hair hanging lank; and through the audience there was a feeling as of a stifled sob, for each knew that they were saying farewell."

Last Modified: Feb 04, 14:48