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The Salzburg Easter Festival 2007: Notes on the Concert Programme

At this year’s Easter Festival the Berlin Philharmonic will be conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and Bernard Haitink in performances of such renowned works as Beethoven’s Missa solemnis (premiered in St. Petersburg) and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. Moreover they are focusing especially on music from Eastern Europe composed during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. A thematic thread runs from the Czech composers Dvořák and Janáček to the works by the Russian composers Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. The concert programmes include piano concertos by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, symphonies by Brahms and the Sinfonietta by Janáček.

Rachmaninov probably reached the climax of his compositional art in his Piano Concerto No. 3. Artur Rubinstein described it as an “elephant of a concerto”. Nevertheless the piano part is not merely a display of bravura technical virtuosity; delicate nuances are equally important. Prokofiev takes a completely different approach in his Piano Concerto in C, a work that combines a humorous spirit with a masterful compositional technique.

The Fourth Symphony by Brahms represents the zenith of his creativity. It combines the composer’s characteristic variation technique with his inclination for classical principles of form. The situation was different for Janáček when he was composing his Sinfonietta. He felt bound by patriotism and this is clearly evident in the Sinfonietta which he composed in 1926. It contains hints of an avant-garde spirit interspersed with tunes from Janáček’s Moravian homeland. He dedicated the work, which he composed for a major national gymnastics festivity in Prague, to the Czechoslovakian army. However, the attribute ‘Military Sinfonietta’ never took hold. The composition shows Janáček’s close patriotic links with “his” city of Brno.

The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra conducted by Myung-Whun Chung follows the Eastern European theme of the concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic in a special concert. Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra will be performed as well as the Double Concerto by Brahms. In his final concerto – the Double Concerto, composed in 1887 – Brahms attempted to achieve a balance between the violin and the cello. The Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra is an example of the great extent of Brahms’s musical maturity.

A similarly wise work of old age is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Bartók was already seriously ill and unhappy about having to live in exile and had taken a two-year break in composing but he composed this concerto from August to October 1943 at the insistence of the conductor Serge Koussevitzky. It is one of the most extensive works Bartók ever wrote.

The programmatic concept of the chamber concert series Kontrapunkte, which will be performed by the chamber music ensembles of the Berlin Philharmonic, is in sharp contrast to this year’s opera production of Das Rheingold in the Grosses Festspielhaus. Richard Wagner is usually associated with operas of huge proportions rather than chamber music but the concerts in the Mozarteum will focus on his works in this genre. On the programme of the first concert are works Wagner composed himself and chamber music arrangements of his œuvre. People used to be very sceptical about arrangements but in the 19^th century they had an important function. By performing arrangements of major orchestral works in small circles at home people familiarised themselves with the music and were able to study it.

From the time of the Viennese Classical period musical innovations occurred in chamber music. In this genre musicians could take a much more progressive approach to composing than in the major orchestral works. Audiences were consequently more open-minded and did not eschew discussion about progress. The two other chamber concerts are symptomatic of the admiration and rejection of Wagner; subsequent generations of artists were greatly divided into for and against his music and his person. Either one was an advocate of Wagner’s art, for instance like Schreker and Schoenberg, or one was critical towards it, such as Schulhoff, Hindemith and Veress. However, there is no way of getting around Wagner’s œuvre.

Wagner stood there firm as a rock. After Wagner not only the musical world was different but art as a whole had to come to terms with his œuvre, his sophisticated demands and his philosophy. He still stirs up emotions nowadays and unleashes heated debates.

Patrick Kast