One cannot base aesthetic judgments about musical works solely on scale and size. There is nothing inherently better or more successful about Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling or Bierstadt’s massive, wall-encompassing canvases of the American West in comparison to countless Dutch miniatures or incredibly detailed small portraits. Likewise, we cannot compare musical quality on duration alone. For who is to say that a four-hour Wagnerian drama achieves more (or less) than Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge or Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano, both clocking in at about 15 minutes? As long as writing has existed, we have had maxims stating that brevity can be valuable in and of itself:

“Brevity is the soul of wit.” ― Shakespeare

“Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought.” ― Nietzsche

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” ― Pascal

The first half of tonight’s concert moves back and forth between a series of short pieces from various ages. Think of it as a musical buffet, as we pick and choose from a diverse selection of musical delicacies. Given the scale of the single work occupying our second half (Schubert’s Ninth Symphony), perhaps a better metaphor is to say, “We’ll start with some appetizers, please . . . .”

George Gershwin (1898-1937) grew up in Brooklyn as the second son of Jewish/Ukrainian immigrants. Beyond rudimentary music instruction as a young boy, his first taste of live music-making came in his late teens when he took work as a “song plugger” around Broadway. This quickly spilled over into creating original songs and full-length shows and a more serious interest in learning composition. At the time, ambitious American composers sought guidance from prominent Europeans. Gershwin was no exception, and he spent a short time in Paris in the mid-1920s petitioning Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger to take him on. Both declined, for they recognized that severe classical instruction would impede Gershwin’s mature command of American song and jazz. Indeed, he had already composed the successful Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and put pen to paper for An American in Paris while he was living out that description himself.

Among Gershwin’s solo compositions, none are better known than his Three Preludes for piano. Originally intended to be part of a much larger set, these pieces were first played publicly by the composer in 1926 at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel. The first and third Preludes are up-tempo and surround a slow, dolorous piece in the middle. Prelude No. 1 in B-flat major is incredibly vigorous though it opens with a spicy blues motif played out of time. Similarly, Prelude No. 3 in E-flat starts with a brief introduction of crescendoing chords that pause and linger wonderfully on the flat-6th scale step. Gershwin’s virtuosic riffs and jazzy syncopation almost make one forget that these are not flashy improvisations. The first Prelude passes in a 90-second blur; the third sprints by in even less time.

Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 1926) was born the same year Gershwin’s Preludes appeared. He moved to Budapest as a young man to study at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Apart from a brief but important stay in Paris following the 1956 Revolution, Kurtág has never lived outside Budapest. Nearing age 100, Kurtág remains active and is, without question, among the most celebrated and critically acclaimed living composers.  He once commented how he would love to have more time to stop and listen intently to nature.  Such impressions, generally gleaned in just minutes of available introspection, have become for Kurtág the most meaningful moments in his life.

During his Paris period, Kurtág rediscovered a passion for the writing of Franz Kafka, author of Metamorphosis, The Trial, and other seminal works. Kurtág was fascinated by Kafka’s personal letters and private musings, and these became the basis for a series of 40 intense miniatures. The Kafka Fragments offer a riveting, introspective narrative for voice and violin. Not surprisingly, the small scale and heightened craftsmanship reveal Kurtág’s study of composers like Berg and Webern, who also sought to extract the utmost expression from brief, dense musical forms. In some songs, the voice and violin seem at odds. In “Nevermore” both performers mimic each other, with the violin leading off through rapid falling / rising arpeggios and the soprano answering with huge vocal leaps. “Dreaming Hangs the Flower” meditates on a few musical ideas. The violin vacillates between high and low pitches, frequently also using harmonics, while the voice doubles certain chromatic intervals (such as F to F-sharp) that appear in the violin.

As a young boy, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) showed prodigious skill at the piano, which gained him entry to the Paris Conservatory. Yet his forays into original composition brought little encouragement from teachers, and it was not until Debussy was well into adulthood that recognition finally came his way. He will forever be labeled as the greatest composer of musical Impressionism, though he disliked the reference and was at least a generation younger than figures like Degas, Monet, Manet, and Renoir. Still, the connection bears retaining for Debussy wrote numerous musical works inspired by landscape, nature, and evocative imagery. Such is clearly relevant when considering his Préludes for solo piano, two of which are performed this evening in new arrangements for solo harp by Sivan Magen.

Debussy composed two books of Préludes between 1909 and 1912. He places the title of every prelude at the end of each score, thus allowing the pure music to take precedence but still reaching out to performers and listeners with a poetic or visual clue about the composer’s own inspriation. Bruyères (Bk. II No. 5) evokes pastoral warmth in homage to the heather that covers coastal meadows in northern France.  Something of the broad coastal landscape comes through in Debussy’s sweeping chords, notated across three staves of music. La fille aux cheveux de lin (Bk. I No. 8) is commonly translated as The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.  Curiously, Debussy’s harmonies – often relying on pentatonic scales – somehow suffuse a golden light over the entire work, which has become one of his most popular creations.

Heinrich Biber (1644-1704) was one of the most significant composers of the High Baroque and, apart from Mozart, ranks as the most accomplished musician that called Salzburg home. Though noted for his sacred works as well as his pioneering approach to violin writing, Biber also wrote fabulous music for brass. Biber was among very few composers who featured brass instruments in a big way in his music. Residing at the main Transalpine crossroads, he also brings together the advances in instrumental virtuosity developed in northern Italy with a native tradition of wind music that permeates the Tyrol region to this day.  His many sonatas and duets for two trumpets demonstrate a masterful control of the instrument, which was valveless in this era.   Each duet lasts less than a minute – a mere whisper and it’s gone.

Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) is probably best remembered today as the towering music theorist of the early 18th century. But during his life Rameau was esteemed as France’s premiere opera composer and second only to François Couperin at the harpsichord. Very little is known of Rameau’s early life except that he came from a musical family in Dijon, traveled for a time in Italy, and had his first professional jobs as an organist (following his father’s example). Better documented is his career after 1722, when he settled in Paris and published his profoundly influential Treatise on Harmony. Success in opera followed a few years later, though Rameau continued to work in smaller, private genres.  He published two significant volumes of harpsichord music in 1724 and 1728. Among the D-Major Suite we find a sumptuous and expansive binary meditation titled L’entretien des muses,or The Muses’ Conversation.

INTERMISSION

For the last 200 years, there has been a special significance to Ninth Symphonies. With the inclusion of a massive choral finale and inspiring “Ode to Joy” theme, Beethoven’s remains, of course, the superlative example. Bruckner and Mahler also wrote nine, and the latter attached a kind of morbid significance to reaching that milestone. In reality, this numerological magic has mainly been concocted by later critics and promoters. Bruckner actually never finished his Ninth Symphony, and both Beethoven and Mahler drafted significant portions of their Tenth Symphonies before death reached their doorstep. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) also drafted a Tenth after completing his impressive Ninth Symphony in C Major. Thus it would be erroneous to see his Ninth as a symphonic “last will.”

Schubert’s Ninth carries the subtitle “The Great” ostensibly because of its sophistication and length. Size is clearly to the point here, for Schubert himself referred to the Ninth Symphony as “die Große” in order to distinguish it from an earlier, more modest symphony (i.e., his Sixth) in the same key. The “Great” C Major work was never performed in Schubert’s lifetime, and many orchestras for the next decade scoffed at the difficulties and massive scale. It took the combined efforts of Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, who led the premiere in 1839, to bring Schubert’s Ninth to public attention.

At the time of composition (1826), Schubert was just shy of his 30th birthday, already the author of hundreds of exceptional songs, chamber works, piano pieces, and other symphonies. Following the Unfinished Symphony in B Minor of 1822 (cataloged as No. 8), the C Major Symphony would be his next extensive symphonic project, occupying him from late 1824 until it was given a private sight-reading by a Viennese music society in late 1827. We know nothing more about that event, but suffice it to say the musicians were probably ill-prepared for the grandeur of Schubert’s form.

Part of the power expressed by this symphony stems from the simple, restrained opening horn duet. The work grows from humble beginnings, filling out first into a three-part slow introduction. During this section, Schubert tips his hand regarding important tonal gambits that will recur later in the work. The first main theme in C major is rhythmic and chordal, and it is followed by a misterioso, transitional theme in E minor punctuated by strident outbursts from the full ensemble. Schubert then suggests a move to G major but veers strikingly away to A-flat minor for the second main theme. We do reach G major (the conventional second key for a C major movement) only for a brief closing section. The development also begins with a shift to A-flat, the first of many modulations. Later, the recapitulation – restating the three exposition themes – surveys C major, C minor, and D-flat major before a highly chromatic coda and radiant final cadence.

Now, all this fuss over keys and modulations can easily leave the listener disoriented. And in all candor, Schubert’s expansiveness runs a definite risk of becoming bloated. Yet, given how effective he could be in smaller forms, we should at least recognize the scale of Schubert’s attempted tonal architecture in this symphony. We must acknowledge that he was trying something very grand, something that would rival Beethoven.

The second movement, beginning in A minor, enters a very different aesthetic world. The dolorous sound of this Andante’s solo oboe melody resurrects a sound familiar from the earlier Unfinished Symphony. As heard during the E minor theme in the first movement, this material also combines an intimate, minor-mode theme in chamber music scoring against periodic blasts from the full orchestra. The second theme changes to A major for a pastoral reverie. Its similarity to passages from Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances (written some 50 years later) suggest either that the Czech master took inspiration from Schubert’s Symphony or that Schubert resurrected something of his own Bohemian origins. A third theme in F major subtly echoes melodies already presented, though it gains on those by virtue of its animated character and greater contrapuntal sophistication. To round off the movement, Schubert reprises the A minor theme once more with new counter-themes, including an audible brass tattoo. The scale of this slow movement reinforces the point: the epithet “Great” was primarly applied to this symphony for structural reasons.

The Scherzo opens with an agitated motif in the strings answered immediately by the winds and modulating quickly to G major. After repeating the passage, Schubert again steers this musical Titanic into A-flat major, a key encountered several times already, before returning to conclude in radiant C major. But lost in such a pat resolution is the fact that Schubert is exploding – from the inside outward – a conventional form into a multi-part structure. Usually the Scherzo precedes and follows a contrasting Trio section to create an A-B-A form. Here, the A section itself already contains at least three distinct parts. Furthermore, the dance-tinged Trio embraces both a first theme in A major and a second theme in C-sharp minor, followed by a repeat of the complete Scherzo. Schubert’s so-called “Heavenly length” (as described by Schumann) is perhaps a polite way of saying that he sometimes loses his way in bigger forms.

The Finale, marked Allegro vivace, strides forth in valedictory tones. Schubert uses the brass prominently to deliver the main, dotted-rhythm motif. It is paired with a “throw-away” triplet figure in the strings that Schubert leans upon to generate instant momentum, spilling forth in a glorious three-chord statement from the full ensemble. The energy of this theme seems almost unrestrainable, and it flows without pause into the second theme, led by the winds and brass. Once again, Schubert is content to luxuriate in this music. The exposition (not repeated) dissolves from tempest to timidity, and the development slides in with a tonal shift toward A-flat major. This section builds considerable momentum, bursting forth in the “wrong” key (E-flat major) with one of the most powerful passages in the entire work. Schubert will get back home to C major eventually, but clearly his extended sonata form tactic cannot be limited by such conventions. Finally, as one would expect in a work with such ambitions, Schubert’s Ninth includes an extended coda featuring a final shout-out to A-flat major and powerful brass blasts that looks forward to Berlioz and Mussorgsky.

Jason Stell, © 2025