Peter Oundjian is the Linda and Paul Lee Guest Artist.
Leon Fleisher is the Bruce Anderson Memorial Guest Artist.
The concert of Friday, March 17, is underwritten in party by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Walter G. Shifrin.
The concert of Saturday, March 18, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from the Mr. and Mrs. T. Danis Charitable Trust.
The concert of Sunday, March 19, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mary and Oliver Langenberg.
The concert of Saturday, March 18, is sponsored by Thompson Coburn.

Classicism and Neo-Classicism
BY PAUL SCHIAVO 

            During the 19th century, the Romantic ethos that dominated artistic expression produced an expansion of all aspects of music. Orchestras grew larger, compositions longer and more elaborately scored, and musical gestures more effusive. Moreover, the metaphysical implications of music--its apparent embodiment of passion, drama, and literary scenarios--also grew progressively more ambitious. This trend culminated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the epic music dramas of Richard Wagner, the hardly less epic symphonies of Mahler and Bruckner, and the tone poems of Richard Strauss and the young Arnold Schoenberg.

            Inevitably, the movement toward ever more extravagant musical expression produced a reaction, as composers sated with the grandiosity and intense emotionalism of Romanticism sought to recapture the clarity and grace they perceived in music of the 18th century. To this end, they deliberately reduced their instrumental forces, adopted lean contrapuntal textures, and frequently employed antique dance forms or simple sonata and rondo procedures. Neo-classicism, as the reaction came to be called, emerged in works by 19th-century composers writing, ironically enough, in the period of Romanticism’s flood tide. We find neo-classical reaction in several compositions by Tchaikovsky, notably his “Mozartiana” Suite for orchestra, his Serenade for Strings, and his Variations on a Rococo Theme; in the serenades for small orchestra or wind ensemble by Brahms and Dvořák, which deliberately evoke 18th-century models; and in occasional pieces like Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, which harkened back to musical forms and style of the 18th century.

            These early instances notwithstanding, neo-classicism became a significant force in composition only after the second decade of the 20th century, when it provided an attractive alternative to what was regarded by certain composers as the excesses of the late-Romantic period. In its most obvious manifestation, 20th-century neo-classicism took the form of parodying bygone musical styles--Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony is a prime example--or pastiche, the borrowing and reworking of older music typified by Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella and Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, both of which are based on pieces by pre-Classical Italian musicians. But in time the neo-classical impulse attained more subtle expression, becoming a general set of musical ideals to guide composers in creating entirely original work. Those ideals included brevity and compression of scale (a deliberate rejection of late-Romantic loquaciousness); clear textures, achieved not only through a lean style of scoring but also through incisive rhythms; and an avoidance of any hint of grandiloquence.

Our program examines 20th-century neo-classicism manifested in the work of three of its chief practitioners. But first, it seems appropriate to begin with the composer who most perfectly represents the original classical ideal in music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His Piano Concerto in A major, K. 414, is one of a trio of keyboard concertos--K. 413, 414, and 415-- Mozart composed during the winter of 1782-83 and performed in a series of concerts he offered in Vienna during the early part of 1783. In a frequently cited letter to his father, Mozart described these three works as

            … a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to   the ear, and natural without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which the    connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the         less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.

“Brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural without being vapid”--this certainly describes the Concerto in A major, K. 414. As was his practice, Mozart cast this work in the traditional three‑movement concerto form. The fast outer movements are handsome and spirited, with the rondo finale imbued with the character of 18th‑century opera buffa. The slow second movement is the most richly poetic portion of the concerto. Its principal theme, introduced in the opening moments, begins by reproducing almost exactly the first portion of a melody from an overture by Johann Christian Bach, a composer Mozart knew and admired. J. C. Bach had died around the time this concerto was written, and it may be that Mozart intended this movement as a tribute to his late friend.

Mozart’s successor in the line of Viennese Classical composers, Beethoven, brought about a dramatic expansion of the piano concerto in terms of its length, orchestral forces, sonority, gestures, and character. That trend continued throughout the 19th century in the concertos of Liszt, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky (among others), culminating in the sweeping works of Rachmaninoff and the huge Piano Concerto of Ferruccio Busoni. But even as Rachmaninoff and Busoni were writing their concertos, in the early years of the 20th century, other composers were adopting a neo-classical approach to the genre. Maurice Ravel, for example, sought Mozartean poise and elegance in his Piano Concerto in G, whereas Stravinsky evoked J. S. Bach in his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments.

In Germany, the neo-classical approach was championed by Paul Hindemith, whose Klaviermusik mit Orchester (“Piano Music with Orchestra”) we hear now. This piece has an unusual history. Its composition was commissioned in 1922 by Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist (and brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) who had lost his right arm in the First World War. Not wanting to abandon music, Wittgenstein commissioned a number of prominent composers to write keyboard works, principally for piano and orchestra, utilizing the left hand only. Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand is the most famous composition to result from this project, but Prokofiev, Britten, Richard Strauss, and other composers also contributed.

Hindemith wrote to Wittgenstein in May 1923, announcing that he had substantially completed the piece requested of him. He must have suspected that its style might be problematic for Wittgenstein, for he added “you might find it a bit strange to listen to at first [but] I wrote it with a great deal of love and like it very much.” Hindemith’s concerns were not unfounded. Wittgenstein apparently found the music not to his taste, for he never performed it. But he--and, later, his estate--retained the score, refusing to release it to another pianist. Only in 2002 did the composition become available for publication and performance. The premiere finally took place two years later.

Although nominally in four movements, Klaviermusik mit Orchester more or less upholds the traditional three-movement concerto design, since the opening, which Hindemith calls “Einleitung,” or “Introduction,” is just that, a preface to the more substantial movement that follows. Next comes a remarkable slow movement that updates compositional procedures of the Baroque period. As indicated by its title, “Trio, Basso ostinato,” this music consists of three lines entwined in counterpoint. One, played by orchestral cellos and basses, plays a repeating bass-line melody, or “basso ostinato.” Over its continually circling and evenly paced sequence of 12 notes, the piano and English horn weave flowing countermelodies. Midway through the movement there is a cadenza passage for the piano alone. The contrapuntal discourse then resumes, with the flute taking over for the English horn. The finale is propelled by a strong recurring three-note figure.

            Another composer strongly associated with twentieth-century neo-classicism was Serge Prokofiev. Indeed, his previously mentioned “Classical Symphony,” written in 1917, stands as a landmark in this strain of music. Although Prokofiev did not adhere to neo-classical principles consistently, he did so in many of his compositions. One of the most popular is his Lieutenant Kije Suite, op. 60.

            Prokofiev wrote this work in 1933, upon returning to his native Russia after 15 years of living in the United States and western Europe. In the Soviet Union, where Prokofiev now was welcomed as a comrade Soviet composer, a doctrine of “socialist” art was just replacing the atmosphere of daring creative experimentation which had arisen following the revolution of 1917. For musicians, this dictated easily grasped melodies, a firm tonal base, and a bold, straightforward use of rhythm and instrumental colors. These qualities were precisely Prokofiev’s strengths, and while they had caused his work to be overshadowed in the West by the more audacious compositions of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others, they were welcomed in his homeland as exemplary of the new musical ideal. 

            Prokofiev was quite conscious this ideal and how well it coincided with his own values. Discussing his notion of Soviet music in the state newspaper Izvestia, shortly after his return to Russia, he wrote: “I would describe the music needed here as ‘light serious’ or ‘serious light’ music; it is by no means easy to find the term which suits it. Above all, it must be tuneful, simply and comprehensibly tuneful.”

            The first composition Prokofiev undertook upon his repatriation was a score to a film titled Lieutenant Kije. It could hardly have fulfilled his own prescription for Soviet music more perfectly. The work abounds with catchy tunes and is at once humorous and artful, “light” and “serious.” The film was based on a popular story set in the time of Tsar Paul I, who misreads a name in a battle report as “Kije.” Rather than contradict the ruler, his courtiers are forced to invent a fictitious lieutenant by that name. In time, the Kije legend grows and begins to take on a life of its own. Tales of his birth, marriage, and adventures are circulated. When the Tsar finally becomes so intrigued that he asks to meet this colorful officer, his underlings must quickly arrange Kije’s death.

            In 1934, Prokofiev extracted a symphonic suite from his film score. Each of its five movements relates a scene from Kije’s life. His birth is announced by a distant trumpet call and a wry march. This is followed by the charming “Romance,” in which the amorous Kije is represented primarily by a saxophone, and a comic wedding scene. The “Troika” movement treats us to a sleigh ride through the Russian winter. Finally, the good soldier is put to rest with full military honors. As his life is recalled, so are the themes from the earlier movements.

            Bohuslav Martinů, whose Symphony No. 6 concludes our program, was born in the small Bohemian town of Polička--more specifically, in a church tower, where his family lived after his father was appointed the village fire watch. As an adolescent he went to Prague for study and soon secured a post as violinist with the Philharmonic there. But in 1923 Martinů gravitated to Paris. Partly through Albert Roussel, with whom he briefly studied, but also through hearing the works of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and other composers active there, Martinů quickly absorbed the neo‑classical aesthetic then ascendant in the French capital.