Mercè Pons (Composer and GACOMUS music comprehension cabinet director) 

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770- 1827) 
Egmont Overture, op. 84 

At the time when Spain ruled Flanders, Count Egmont (1522-1568) was a Flemish nobleman who nobly served the Spanish king. He later became more liberal and fell out with the Duke of Alba. He was executed in Brussels and remembered as a national hero, being the figurehead of Goethe’s drama Egmont in 1788. As an admirer of Goethe, Beethoven composed the stage music for a drama in five acts, first performed in Vienna in 1810.

The score includes an opening (which we will hear tonight) and nine pieces (four intermissions, two lieder, two melodramas and a Victory Symphony).

Beethoven’s Egmont shows us great, exciting and eloquent music, rarely performed in its entirety. 

The opening, however, with its transcendent heroism (which contradicts the sometimes-indecisive character of the hero), is part of every symphonic ensemble’s repertoire. 

This opening condenses the action on a dramatic and psychological level, concluding with motifs from the Symphony of Victory, which is how the drama ends. 

The composition’s structure takes the form of an introduction, which is followed by a sonata ensemble and ends with a coda. Each of these parts has a different tempo and time signature. 

The introduction Sostenuto ma non troppo, in 3/2-time signature, consists of two themes. The first represents the struggle against tyranny (the struggle of the Spanish Netherlands for emancipation in the 16th-century, under the impetus of Egmont). Then follows the second piece, which symbolises “the aspiration for freedom.” The sonata Allegro, in 3/4, also has two themes, the first symbolising “revolt” and the second the idea of “destiny.” The main theme is repeated in the re-exposition of this sonata format, and the theme of “destiny” is followed by an expectant pause and a very subtle retort. Freedom’s cause has failed, for the moment, but we reach the coda Allegro con brio, in 4/4, which is the brilliant victory speech (Egmont goes to the gallows without bowing to the judges’ arbitrariness). The flute changes to piccolo in the instrumentation for a brighter, more incisive effect. A victorious, triumphant finale, in which the whole orchestra participates, and the violins play in a very high-pitched tessitura which had never, until then, been used for orchestra, as it was considered “unplayable.” 

Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856) 

Concerto for piano and orchestra in A minor, op. 54 

Shortly after the First Symphony, Schumann composed a Fantasy in A minor for piano and orchestra for his beloved Clara at the beginning of 1841. This piece was to become the first movement of the Piano Concerto, completed in 1845 and dedicated to the pianist Ferdinand Hiller. It was first performed by Clara Schumann on the piano in Leipzig on 1 January 1846, with the dedicatee as conductor, ensuring the work’s success. 

This concerto is a composition in which melody emerges with spontaneous splendour. It is one of the most beautiful and significant compositions emanating from Schumann’s genius. Far removed from the Beethovenian dramatism and virtuosity so prized at the time, the score has “something between a concerto, a symphony and a grand sonata,” according to Schumann himself. 

The score is a sort of musical poem where the piano is in harmony with an open orchestra, never intrusive, and easily interacts with each instrumental group. This masterpiece retains both a pre-eminent place in the repertoire of concert pianists and the favour of the public, which is constantly won over by its gentleness and extreme lyricism.

The first movement, Allegro affettuoso, has a very free structure, in which a variation theme prevails. The second movement, Intermezzo. Andantino grazioso is poetically rich, and here Schumann shows the special affection he always felt for chamber music since the soloist’s dialogue with the orchestra is more like a placid conversation between equals than a struggle which was the typical form in the romantic virtuosic concerto. We arrive without pause to the third movement, Allegro vivace, where the profusion of melodies (all of them extremely beautiful, and on more than one occasion not far removed from Chopin’s style) does not, curiously enough, leave the impression of a rhapsodic character, but everything in it appears as if by incontestable logic, the fruit more of its expression than of having to be subjected to a structure such as a sonata form. 

Antonin DVOŘÁK (1841 – 1904) 

Symphony No. 8 in G major, op. 88 

This symphony’s idea of birdsong and the feeling of relaxation and happiness hint at the label “Dvořák’s Pastoral.” Here the composer’s desire to bring freshness to the symphonic format is highlighted.

When Dvořák accepted an honorary doctorate of music from Cambridge University in 1892, he offered this work as his compulsory ‘exercise.’ However, it was not a new score, as Dvořák had conducted its first performance in Prague on 2 February 1890. 

The symphony was composed between 26 August 1889 and 8 November of the same year, at Dvořák’s country house in Vysoká, near Prague. 

The work represents the most characteristic Czech work by the composer, as it is inspired by folk songs and dances from his homeland. Otakar Šourek, the composer’s biographer, explains that Dvořák had “his own garden in Vysoká, which he loved ‘as divine art itself.’ It was here that he absorbed poetic impressions and moods, here that he withdrew from life and grieved over its inevitable decay, here that he indulged in philosophical reflections on the substance and meaning of the interrelationship between nature and life”.

Symphony no. 8 is structured in a typical four movements. 

At the beginning of the first movement, Allegro con brio, a sustained, sombre melody for the cellos, quickly gives way to a bold flute solo. Without ever subduing the dramatic element, Dvořák unleashes the poetic side of his nature throughout the movements of this score, from the rhetorical, often melancholic second movement, the Adagio, to the folk-flavoured, waltz-like Allegretto grazioso of the third movement, to the energetic theme with variations of the last movement, Allegro ma non troppo, leading to an exciting finale, where the brass and percussion come to the fore.