RETURN OF THE FLUTE AND THE MOST NOTABLE MR. BRAHMS



Jacques Ibert
1890-1962

Jacques Ibert
Flute Concerto

Jacques Ibert was one of the most prolific and eclectic French composers of the last century, leaving behind works in nearly every musical genre. He considered music “The expression of an interior adventure,” and his approach to composition could best be summed up in his own words: “All systems are valid, provided that one derives music from them;” he adopted a certain style only when it suited his purpose for the composition at hand. Consequently, he never joined any of the movements so popular in France in the 1920s and ‘30s. It was said of Ibert that he only agreed to write the sort of music that he was happy listening to himself.

Born into a well-to-do family, Ibert started the violin at age four. After obtaining his baccalaureate he decided to become a composer, earning his living as a cinema pianist, accompanist and program note annotator. His studies at the Conservatoire were interrupted by World War I, during which he was first a nurse and stretcher-bearer at the front, then a naval officer stationed at Dunkirk. A Mediterranean cruise inspired his most popular work, Escales (Ports of Call).

From 1937 to 1940 Ibert served as director of the French Academy in Rome. In 1940 his music was banned by the Vichy Government and for a while he lived in exile in Switzerland. After the liberation of Paris in August 1944, Charles De Gaulle summoned him back to Paris. In 1955 he was appointed as Director of the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux (Assembly of National Lyric Theaters), which put him in charge of both the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique; he had to resign after a year because of ill health.

The Flute Concerto was composed in 1932-33 and premiered in Paris by famed flutist Marcel Moyse in February 1934, a performance that was broadcast over Radiodiffusion française, The French broadcasting system.

The Concerto combines an angular, almost acrobatic style with flowing lyrical – but seldom tuneful – lines, showing off the instrument to great effect. The first movement is in standard sonata allegro form. Unlike in the classical concertos of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the soloist presents the lively first theme

with a contrasting second theme swiftly following.

The flute then engages in a duet with the clarinet, the latter repeating the second theme while the flute scampers around it in playful counterpoint.

One of the elegant features of the second movement, a classic ABA form, is the slow build from wistfulness to melancholy, emphasizing the flute's alter ego. It spins out aa long wistful melody that seems never to end.

The middle section turns darker with a new theme with two oboes.

The A section is repeated, varied with a similar device as the flute/clarinet duet from the first movement , but this time with a solo violin taking the theme as the flute weaves in sinuous counterpoint around it.

Three sharp chords in the orchestra and a little riff for the brass

kick off the final movement, which incorporates a few jazz harmonies. It is the pièce de résistence for the soloist, a virtuosic display of two themes in rapid triplets.

Towards the middle of the movement, however, the perpetual motion comes to a sudden halt, as the flute turns pensive again in a slow waltzing duet with the solo winds in turn, starting with the bassoon.

The movement returns to a recapitulation of the allegro and a cadenza, ending with a repeat of the opening chords.



Johannes Brahms
1833-1897

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73

Unsure of his ability to compose symphonies, Brahms took fourteen years to finish his first in 1876. Its critical and popular success, while far from overwhelming, gave him the confidence to try his hand at a symphony again, and this time with much greater assurance; thus it took him just a few months in the summer and fall of 1877 to compose his second. The contrast between the two can be compared to that between Beethoven’s fifth and sixth symphonies, and the parallel can be extended to the environment that gave them birth. Brahms spent the summer of 1877 in Pörtschach, an out-of-the-way village in the Austrian countryside, from where he wrote to Eduard Hanslick: “So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to step on them.” The symphony’s sunny spirit – especially the last two movements – and relatively transparent orchestration harks back to the young Brahms of the two orchestral serenades (1856-60), and has less of the dense orchestration that permeates much of Brahms’s symphonic writing. It induced one of Brahms’ friends to exclaim: “It is all rippling streams, blue sky, sunshine and cool green shadows. How beautiful it must be at Pörtschach!”. But true to Brahms’s nature, the symphony has its darker moments. Clara Schumann commented on the somber mood in parts of the first movement, and when a friend objected to the gloom and harshness of the trombones in the second movement, the composer replied that it reflects his habitual melancholy.

Brahms kept all but his closest friends in the dark about the character of the new work, hinting that it was tragic, somber, dirge-like, and - adding facetiously - would require the orchestra members to wear black crêpe armbands. The premiere in Vienna on Dec. 30, 1877, under the baton of Hans Richter, was an unqualified success, the ebullient third movement having to be repeated at the insistence of the enthusiastic audience.

The Symphony presents many original and ingenious variations on traditional symphonic forms, including ways of integrating the movements thematically. It opens with a gentle, lilting theme,

the opening three notes of which, in the cellos and basses, comprise a motivic element that pervades the first movement.

The motive appears sometimes in the melody, at others as an accompanying figure.

Yet, offsetting this persistent kernel is a considerable array of themes, some of which find the little motive embedded within them, as in this rhythmically varied version that opens the second theme.

Once audiences are attuned to listen for it, they can find it everywhere. The second theme in f-sharp minor is one of those places where Hanslick's perceived sunshine temporarily hides behind the clouds of Brahms's melancholy.

There is also a heart of darkness in the development. Nevertheless, good weather prevails by the end with a gentle coda recalling the recurring motto and ending with a restatement of the first theme.

Like the preceding movement, the Adagio non troppo is packed with thematic material, but this time the sunshine pretty much stays behind the clouds from the start.

Here Brahms breaks down two longer themes into fragments, using the three-note motto from the first movement as an integral part of the second thematic group.

The reprise of both sections is in free variation, reminiscent of the slow movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The movement concludes with a wistful coda.

The Scherzo opens with a beautiful allegretto grazioso solo for the reed woodwinds, accompanied by pizzicato cellos.

The Trio sets the traditional contrast of mood with a change from triple to duple meter and an abrupt increase in tempo and new orchestration emphasizing the strings. Brahms, however, does not use the customary new thematic material for the Trio, but rather a radical transformation of the Scherzo theme.

The Trio gradually winds down in tempo to blend smoothly into a free variation of the Scherzo reprise.

The finale, the most festive movement Brahms ever wrote, begins, however, with a sotto voce rhythmic variation of the three-note motto from the opening movement, here as the once again in the cellos and basses.

The movement is in modified sonata-rondo form with the following second theme.

Brahms freely develops both themes in the intervening episodes, ending with an ebullient coda and a final trumpet fanfare.