The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin ConductorTruls Mørk Cello

Strauss Metamorphosen, A Study for 23 Solo Strings

Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107 I. Allegretto II. Moderato— III. Cadenza— IV. Allegro con moto

Intermission

Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”) I. Allegro con brio II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo (Allegro vivace) and Trio IV. Finale: Allegro molto—Andante—Presto

This program runs approximately 2 hours, 10 minutes.

The February 20 concert is sponsored by theHassel Foundation.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM.Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details.

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Season 2013-2014Thursday, February 20, at 8:00Saturday, February 22, at 8:00Sunday, February 23, at 2:00

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Please join us immediately following the February 23 concert for a Chamber Postlude, featuring members of The Philadelphia Orchestra.

M. Haydn Quartet in C major, for English horn, violin, cello, and double bass, P. 115 I. Allegro con spirito II. Adagio III. Rondo: Presto Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia English Horn Elina Kalendarova Violin Kathryn Picht Read Cello Robert Kesselman Bass

Beethoven String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 I. Allegretto II. Vivace III. Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo IV. Grave, ma non troppo tratto—Allegro Yayoi Numazawa Violin Daniel Han Violin David Nicastro Viola Ohad Bar-David Cello

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The Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world, renowned for its distinctive sound, desired for its keen ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences, and admired for a legacy of innovation in music-making. The Orchestra is inspiring the future and transforming its rich tradition of achievement, sustaining the highest level of artistic quality, but also challenging and exceeding that level, by creating powerful musical experiences for audiences at home and around the world.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin triumphantly opened his inaugural season as the eighth artistic leader of the Orchestra in fall 2012. His highly collaborative style, deeply-rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. Yannick has been embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the

community itself. His concerts of diverse repertoire attract sold-out houses, and he has established a regular forum for connecting with concert-goers through Post-Concert Conversations.

Under Yannick’s leadership the Orchestra returns to recording with a newly-released CD on the Deutsche Grammophon label of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Leopold Stokowski transcriptions. In Yannick’s inaugural season the Orchestra has also returned to the radio airwaves, with weekly Sunday afternoon broadcasts on WRTI-FM.

Philadelphia is home and the Orchestra nurtures an important relationship not only with patrons who support the main season at the Kimmel Center but also those who enjoy the Orchestra’s other area performances at the Mann Center, Penn’s Landing, and other venues. The Orchestra is also a global ambassador for Philadelphia and for the U.S. Having been the first American orchestra

to perform in China, in 1973 at the request of President Nixon, today The Philadelphia Orchestra boasts a new partnership with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The Orchestra annually performs at Carnegie Hall while also enjoying annual residencies in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and at the Bravo! Vail festival.

Musician-led initiatives, including highly-successful Cello and Violin Play-Ins, shine a spotlight on the Orchestra’s musicians, as they spread out from the stage into the community. The Orchestra’s commitment to its education and community partnership initiatives manifests itself in numerous other ways, including concerts for families and students, and eZseatU, a program that allows full-time college students to attend an unlimited number of Orchestra concerts for a $25 annual membership fee. For more information on The Philadelphia Orchestra, please visit www.philorch.org.

Jessica Griffin

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Music DirectorYannick Nézet-Séguin triumphantly opened his inaugural season as the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra in the fall of 2012. His highly collaborative style, deeply-rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called Yannick “phenomenal,” adding that under his baton “the ensemble … has never sounded better.” In his first season he took the Orchestra to new musical heights. His second builds on that momentum with highlights that include a Philadelphia Commissions Micro-Festival, for which three leading composers have been commissioned to write solo works for three of the Orchestra’s principal players; the next installment in his multi-season focus on requiems with Fauré’s Requiem; and a unique, theatrically-staged presentation of Strauss’s revolutionary opera Salome, a first-ever co-production with Opera Philadelphia.

Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most exciting talents of his generation. Since 2008 he has been music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic, and since 2000 artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. In addition he becomes the first ever mentor conductor of the Curtis Institute of Music’s conducting fellows program in the fall of 2013. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s most revered ensembles, and has conducted critically acclaimed performances at many of the leading opera houses.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Deutsche Grammophon (DG) enjoy a long-term collaboration. Under his leadership the Orchestra returns to recording with a newly-released CD on that label of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Leopold Stokowski transcriptions. Yannick continues a fruitful recording relationship with the Rotterdam Philharmonic for DG, BIS, and EMI/Virgin; the London Philharmonic for the LPO label; and the Orchestre Métropolitain for ATMA Classique.

A native of Montreal, Yannick Nézet-Séguin studied at that city’s Conservatory of Music and continued lessons with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini and with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors; a Royal Philharmonic Society Award; Canada’s National Arts Centre Award; the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the highest distinction for the arts in Quebec, awarded by the Quebec government; and an honorary doctorate by the University of Quebec in Montreal.

To read Yannick’s full bio, please visit www.philorch.org/conductor.

Nigel P

arry/CP

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SoloistCellist Truls Mørk made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1996 and has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Rotterdam and New York philharmonics, the Boston and Chicago symphonies, and the Cleveland Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors Myung-Whun Chung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Simon Rattle, and Christoph Eschenbach, among others. Recent and upcoming performance highlights include concerts with the London Philharmonic and Vladimir Jurowski; the Berlin Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert; the Philharmonia Orchestra and Jakub Hruša; the Vienna Symphony and the Czech Philharmonic with James Gaffigan; the Frankfurt Radio Symphony with David Zinman; and the Munich Philharmonic with Lionel Bringuier. In 2014 Mr. Mørk tours with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Mariss Jansons to London and Paris, and with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Neeme Järvi, performing Brahms’s Double Concerto with violinist Vadim Repin. He also makes returns to both the Melbourne and Sydney symphonies, followed by a European tour with the Melbourne Symphony and Andrew Davis.

Mr. Mørk is a committed performer of contemporary music and in 2012 gave the U.K. premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Towards the Horizon with the BBC Symphony. Other premieres have included Pavel Haas’s Cello Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic; Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto for Three Cellos with the NHK Symphony; and Haflioi Hallgrímsson’s Cello Concerto, co-commissioned by the Oslo Philharmonic, the Iceland Symphony, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Towards the Horizon was recorded for Ondine with the Helsinki Philharmonic and John Storgårds and nominated for a Grammy Award. Mr. Mørk’s recording of the C.P.E. Bach cello concertos for Virgin Classics with Les Violons du Roy was awarded a 2011 ECHO Klassik Award. His recording of the Britten cello suites, also for Virgin Classics, won a Grammy Award in 2002.

Initially taught by his father, Mr. Mørk continued his studies with Frans Helmerson, Heinrich Schiff, and Natalia Schakowskaya. His numerous awards include the Norwegian Critics’ Prize in 2011 and the 2010 Sibelius Prize. Mr. Mørk plays the 1723 Domenico Montagnana “Esquire.”

Virgin Classics/S

tephane de Bourgies

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Framing the ProgramWith today’s concert The Philadelphia Orchestra continues its multi-season pairing of works by Beethoven and Shostakovich, and also continues its two-season Beethoven symphony cycle, performing all the master’s works in this genre.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the monumental “Eroica,” marked a turning point in the composer’s life as well as in the history of the symphony. It was the signal work ushering in his “heroic” middle period and broke with many of the expectations of what a symphony should be. The piece at first baffled many because of its length, complexity, and unusual form: an imposing first movement, a gigantic funeral march, a lively scherzo with playful horn trio, and a formidable concluding set of variations. Despite some of the initial bewilderment, the Symphony within a few years became one of the most performed and influential pieces of orchestral music ever composed.

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote two cello concertos for his compatriot and friend Mstislav Rostropovich. One month after the First Concerto’s successful premiere in Leningrad in October 1959, the great Russian cellist performed the United States premiere in the Academy of Music with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Shostakovich was present and then oversaw the first recording of the piece with those same forces.

The concert opens with one of the last works of Richard Strauss, his Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, composed in the wake of German defeat in the Second World War and amidst the cultural and physical destruction of the composer’s world. The qualities of elegy and lament become explicit at the end when Strauss briefly quotes the opening of the funeral march from the “Eroica” and at that point in the score marks: IN MEMORIAM!

Parallel Events1803BeethovenSymphony No. 3

1945StraussMetamorphosen

1959ShostakovichCello Concerto No. 1

MusicSpohrViolin Concerto No. 1LiteratureSchillerDer Braut von MessinaArtWestChrist Healing the SickHistoryLouisiana Purchase

MusicKodályMissa brevisLiteratureOrwellAnimal FarmArtMooreFamily GroupHistoryEnd of World War II

MusicMessiaenChronochromieLiteratureGrassThe Tin DrumArtInoueFishHistoryCastro becomes premier of Cuba

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The MusicMetamorphosen

Richard StraussBorn in Munich, June 11, 1864Died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, September 8, 1949

During the closing, losing years of the Second World War in Germany, and then during the time before his death in 1949 at age 85, Richard Strauss produced a remarkable series of valedictory works that seem untimely, yet timeless. He declared them “without an iota of music-historical significance” and was utterly unconcerned with breaking new ground. After decades devoted almost exclusively to writing operas, Strauss returned to songs and instrumental music. He did not give these works opus numbers, viewing his last opera, Capriccio (1941), as his official farewell statement. (His next piece, he quipped, would be “scored for harps.”) The Second Horn Concerto, two sonatinas for winds (subtitled “From an Invalid’s Workshop” and “The Happy Workshop”), the Duet-Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon with String Orchestra and Harp, the Oboe Concerto, and Metamorphosen are the major instrumental compositions from these amazing final years, which conclude with the ethereal Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra.

Born from Despair Metamorphosen appears to have been born less from the personal trials of illness, boredom, and daily hardship, and more from sheer existential despair at the destruction of German cultural ideals and monuments. The composer immersed himself in the complete works of Goethe, his favorite writer: “I am reading him as he developed and as he finally became, not tasting here and there.” This engagement made the destruction of the poet’s home all the more painful: “I am in a mood of despair,” Strauss wrote to a friend on March 2, 1945. “The Goethehaus, the world’s greatest sanctuary, destroyed! My beautiful Dresden, Weimar, Munich—all gone!” The Munich house in which Strauss was born, the opera theaters in which he first encountered the masterpieces of German art and in which his own operas premiered, were damaged or obliterated. “My life’s work is in ruins,” he stated. Nostalgia reigns in much of Strauss’s late music and in Metamorphosen the mood is even more elegiac and tragic. He confronts ends: of the war, his own life, and also of an entire era in music.

Paul Sacher, the Swiss conductor and philanthropist responsible for commissioning works from many leading

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20th-century composers, asked Strauss to write a work for his Collegium Musicum Zürich and invited him to conduct the premiere. Strauss had been working in the summer of 1944 on a choral piece based on Goethe that he partially adapted for the new string composition. Other projects intervened and Strauss only took up the commission again in early 1945. A preliminary score was completed by the beginning of March, entitled: “Metamorphoses/Andante/Andante (for two violins, two violas, two cellos, and one double bass).” The seven string instruments were ultimately expanded to 23 (10 violins, five violas, five cellos, three double basses) and the number even included in the formal title: “A Study for 23 Solo Strings.” He completed Metamorphosen in mid-April, but was only permitted to travel to Switzerland in October. Sacher gave the first performance at the Zurich Tonhalle on January 25, 1946. Strauss asked Sacher if he might conduct the final rehearsal, which he did with great emotion for all present. The piece apparently was too personal for him to lead in performance; indeed, Strauss did not even attend the premiere the following day.

A Closer Look Metamorphosen is in one continuous movement with a middle agitato—più allegro section framed by two adagios. The luminous string writing is a polyphonic marvel—as the title notes, all 23 strings are soloists, although parts are sometimes doubled.

Strauss had written a great amount of program music early in his career but gave little indication concerning the meaning of his late works. The title of this piece probably relates to Goethe’s writings about metamorphosis in nature. As musicologist Timothy Jackson has explored, the choral work that Strauss adapted for it was a setting of one of Goethe’s late “sayings” (Sprüche), “Niemand wird sich selber kennen” (No person can really know himself). Commentators have heard allusions to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, to Brahms, and to his own opera Arabella. The musical core of the work is derived from the funeral march of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. At the very end Strauss quotes it literally in the basses and at that point wrote in the score: IN MEMORIAM!

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Strauss composed Metamorphosen from 1944 to 1945.

The work was not performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra until December 1964, with William Smith conducting. The only other Orchestra performances were in February 1978 with Eugene Ormandy, in April 1999 with Wolfgang Sawallisch, and, most recently, in January 2005 with Christoph Eschenbach.

The Orchestra recorded Metamorphosen in 1978 for RCA with Ormandy.

Strauss’s score calls for 10 violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses.

Performance time is approximately 30 minutes.

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The MusicCello Concerto No. 1

Dmitri ShostakovichBorn in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 25, 1906Died in Moscow, August 9, 1975

Shostakovich numbered among his friends the leading musical performers of the Soviet Union—Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, the Oistrakhs, Galina Vishnevskaya, and Mstislav Rostropovich. Many of his major works were created in collaboration with them, and in these compositions he responded directly to the artistry of each performer, imbuing the solo parts with a distinctive character that was, in part, a reflection of various aspects not only of their specific faculties and strengths, but also of his friendship with each. Nevertheless they were also works that have, in the interim, proven to be durable in the hands of other soloists. Perhaps this is the ultimate test of a “classic”—whether a piece holds up to an infinite variety of interpretations from artists all over the world, over a long period of time.

Composed for Rostropovich Shostakovich created both of his cello concertos for Rostropovich, the peerless Russian cellist with the big, vibrant tone who continued to champion the cause of the composer’s music—and of these concertos—long after his death in 1975. These works have proven to be some of the most fascinating concertos written in the 20th century.

“The major work in my immediate plans is a cello concerto,” Shostakovich had said to a correspondent for Sovetskaya Kultura in the spring of 1959, when the First Concerto was still in embryonic form. “Its first movement, an Allegretto in the nature of a scherzo-like march, is ready. I think the Concerto will have three movements, but I am at a loss to say anything definite about its content. … It often happens that in the process of writing a piece, the form, expressive media, and even the genre of a work undergo a marked change.” His early reluctance to predict the form proved justified, for in the end the Concerto assumed a unique shape indeed.

Taking as its inspiration the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra of Prokofiev (another work written for Rostropovich), as well as his own Violin Concerto of a few years before, the Cello Concerto is cast in four movements, the third of which is a long cadenza that creates a gradual but inexorable acceleration toward

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the final Allegro con moto. “I was greatly attracted by Prokofiev’s work,” the composer wrote, “and decided to try my hand in the genre.” Despite this, the end result was something altogether different from the work’s model.

Completed in mid-1959, the First Cello Concerto quickly became well-known both in the Soviet Union and in the West. Its unique formal aspects were immediately recognized, as was its relationship to the First Violin Concerto. “The Cello Concerto seems to continue the line of Shostakovich’s recent Violin Concerto,” wrote the conductor Kirill Kondrashin in the Moscow News after the work’s premiere in October 1959. “They have much in common: originality of form (particularly in regard to the position and function of the cadenza, which develops and continues the idea of the preceding movements of the Concerto), and the colorful music of the finales, which seem to picture the passionate gaiety of folk festivals, and the concentrated lyricism of the slow movements. … But while the Violin Concerto gives the impression of being a personal reflection of the artist himself, the concerto for cello appears to me to be an active struggle for the ultimate triumph of his idea.”

One month after the Concerto’s successful premiere in Leningrad in October 1959, Rostropovich performed the United States premiere in the Academy of Music, with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra. It was one in a long succession of first performances by the Orchestra of Shostakovich’s major compositions—which has also included United States premieres of no fewer than seven of the 15 symphonies and that of the First Piano Concerto as well.

The first performance of the Cello Concerto, on November 6, 1959, was one of the most significant and most heavily publicized American musical events of the Cold-War period. In attendance was an impressive array of Russian and American composers: Shostakovich, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Tikhon Khrennikov, Henry Cowell, Roger Sessions, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Paul Creston. Rostropovich and the Orchestra recorded the work at that time—the first time in history that a Soviet composer had supervised a commercial taping of one of his own works in the U.S.

A Closer Look Shostakovich’s music can now be seen, in retrospect, as standing squarely in the center of Western tradition. His use of symmetrical musical “mottos” takes its inspiration partly from the Baroque period, and

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partly from later composers such as Schumann. The best known of these mottos in Shostakovich’s music is the famous D-Es-C-H motif (D. SCHostakovich, derived from the German spelling of the pitches D, E-flat, C, B) found in a number of his works—a sort of musical anagram of his own name.

The First Cello Concerto employs a similar four-note motto, G, F-flat, C-flat, B-flat, which although it seems to function completely outside the key of E-flat nevertheless forms the primary building-block of the first movement’s relentless motivic development. The opening Allegretto is one of Shostakovich’s most inspired creations, exploiting not only the penetrating instrumental color of the accompanying woodwinds (with no brass) but also the “collaborative” solo parts for clarinet and horn—which is perhaps a reflection of the work’s debt to Prokofiev. The soloist then presents the tough, lean first theme; thereafter the cellist is hardly allowed a moment’s rest throughout the movement.

The second, third, and fourth movements are played without pause. The initial Moderato slows the pace to allow the soloist and the solo horn to sing a lyrical melody, to a light accompaniment of strings and winds. The Cadenza movement (also Moderato) gradually works its way into the spirit of the fourth movement (Allegro con moto), thus forming a sort of bridge between widely divergent moods. It is followed directly by a dynamic perpetuum mobile of great energy and drive, in which the first movement’s main theme recurs.

—Paul J. Horsley

Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto was composed in 1959.

Mstislav Rostropovich gave the United States premiere of the Concerto with The Philadelphia Orchestra, in November 1959 with Eugene Ormandy conducting. Most recently on subscription it was played by Alisa Weilerstein, with Christoph Eschenbach on the podium, in November 2006.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has recorded Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 twice: in 1959 for CBS with Rostropovich and Ormandy and in 1982 with Yo-Yo Ma and Ormandy, also for CBS.

The composer scored the work for solo cello, two flutes (II doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons (II doubling contrabassoon), one horn, timpani, celesta, and strings.

The Concerto runs approximately 30 minutes in performance.

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The MusicSymphony No. 3 (“Eroica”)

Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

The monumental “Eroica” Symphony represents a turning point not only in Beethoven’s career, but also in the history of music, a stature shared by few other compositions. The work raises fascinating biographical issues: the personal circumstances of its genesis at a crucial juncture in Beethoven’s life; its relationship to the political events of the day, specifically to Napoleon; and the ways in which audiences at the time first received what many found to be a “horribly long” and “most difficult” piece of music.

It is striking that early critics, those writing during the initial 10 years or so of the work’s existence, did not talk about the issues most often discussed today: the Symphony’s relation to Beethoven’s life or to Napoleon. They viewed the “Eroica” as a bizarre but original composition, more sublime than beautiful. Its unprecedented length, technical challenges, and uncompromising aesthetic stance seemed to aim beyond entertainment, forcing Beethoven’s contemporaries to rethink what a symphony should be and do.

A Personal Turning Point During the summer of 1802 Beethoven’s doctor suggested that he move to the suburb of Heiligenstadt so as to escape the heat and hassles of Vienna. It was there, in the early fall, that Beethoven poured out his heart in an unsent letter to his brothers:

O you men who think or say that I am hostile, peevish, or misanthropic, how greatly you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause that makes me seem so to you. From childhood on, my heart and soul were full of tender feeling of goodwill, and I was always inclined to accomplish great deeds. But just think, for six years now I have had an incurable condition, made worse by incompetent doctors, from year to year deceived with hopes of getting better, finally forced to face the prospect of a lasting infirmity (whose cure will perhaps take years or even be impossible).

This so-called Heiligenstadt Testament has exerted a tremendous influence on posterity’s view of Beethoven. The anguished words also had a powerful effect on the understanding of his music, especially a work like the “Eroica,” which seems to express in music the struggles that the composer, never a fluent writer, had tried to put in prose.

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A New Path The “Eroica” helped launch the middle period of Beethoven’s career, which lasted for roughly a dozen years. These were years of astounding—one could say heroic—productivity: “I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started; the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time.” His problems were initially hidden, denied, and fought, but by 1806 Beethoven wrote in a sketch: “Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art.”

Beethoven began the Symphony around the time he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, and did the most concentrated work starting in May 1803, some seven months later. It was the first of his symphonies for which he gave public indications of an extra-musical program. Originally he planned to dedicate it to Napoleon and call it Bonaparte. Disillusioned when the French military leader crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven so vigorously scratched out the title that his pen tore the manuscript paper. In the end the work was published as “Sinfonia Eroica … composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.” It was initially heard in private and semi-private performances, the first of which took place in August 1804 at the Viennese palace of his patron, Prince Lobkowitz, to whom the work is dedicated. The public premiere was on April 7, 1805, at the Theater an der Wien.

First Hearings The early reviews show that most critics wanted to praise the composer and work, but were often confused by what he was trying to do. A critic commented that general opinion was sharply divided:

One group, Beethoven’s very special friends, maintains that precisely this symphony is a masterpiece, that it is in exactly the true style for more elevated music, and that if it does not please at present, it is because the public is not sufficiently educated in art to be able to grasp all of these elevated beauties. After a few thousand years, however, they will not fail to have their effect. The other group utterly denies this work any artistic value and feels that it manifests a completely unbounded striving for distinction and oddity, which, however, has produced neither beauty nor true sublimity and power.

The critic goes on to discuss a “middle” group of commentators, who admire its many excellent qualities, but are dismayed at the disjointed surroundings and at the “endless duration of this longest and perhaps most difficult of all symphonies, which exhausts even connoisseurs and becomes unbearable for the mere amateur.”

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Within a couple of years, however, the tone began to change. It often takes time before musicians and the public feel comfortable with the demands of difficult new music. In the case of the “Eroica,” as a Leipzig critic remarked, “One must not always wish only to be entertained,” a sentiment echoed by another: “But the connoisseur will only enjoy it as a complete work (and a repeated hearing doubles his spiritual enjoyment) the deeper he penetrates into the technical and aesthetic content of the original work.” Musicians in particular seem to have gone out of their way to embrace “this most difficult of all symphonies.” Regarding a Leipzig performance in 1807, we are informed that “the orchestra had voluntarily gathered for extra rehearsals without recompense, except for the honor and special enjoyment of the work itself.” A few years later a critic commented that the Symphony “was performed by the orchestra with unmistakable enjoyment and love.”

A Closer Look The innovations of the “Eroica” begin with the two striking tonic chords of the first movement (Allegro con brio), ushering in a sweet cello melody that is soon derailed by an unexpected note—C sharp—which does not belong to the “home key.” The motivic, metric, and harmonic surprises continue throughout this lengthy movement. A “new theme” (in fact related to the opening) appears during the development that has elicited comment for two centuries now. There are other unexpected details: The French horn seems to enter prematurely in the recapitulation, an effect that Beethoven’s contemporaries initially thought to be a mistake.

The second movement (Adagio assai) is a funeral march and one of the most influential pieces of music Beethoven ever composed. Schubert alluded to it in two late works (his song “Auf dem Strom” and in the second movement of his Piano Trio in E-flat) to honor Beethoven’s death, just 20 months before his own. Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and others would also write marches, often funereal in character, within their symphonies that can in many ways be traced back to Beethoven. The C-minor opening presents the somber theme in the violins, over a drum-like bass, that is taken up by the oboe. The tone brightens at moments in the movement, notably in sections in major keys, but also becomes more austere with a fugal passage of extraordinary intensity. The opening theme returns at the end, deconstructed so that only fragments remain.

An energetic scherzo (Allegro vivace) changes the tone (confusing some commentators—why the mirth after a funeral?), but not the intensity. Beethoven plays with metric

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ambiguities—is the movement in duple or triple time?—and also gives the French horns a chance to shine in the middle trio section.

Beethoven employs another formal innovation for the finale (Allegro molto), which he casts as an unusual set of variations. The theme takes some time to emerge, with initially only its harmonic skeleton given in the bass. For the theme proper Beethoven returned to a melody he had already used in three previous pieces: in one of his contredanses, in his ballet music for The Creatures of Prometheus, and as the theme for the Piano Variations in E-flat, Op. 35. Beethoven referred to these as the “Prometheus” Variations and the work is closely related to the last movement of the Symphony. Indeed, as Lewis Lockwood has observed, the finale was conceived of first and became the “springboard” for the entire work. It seems natural that Beethoven was attracted to—dare we say identified with?—Prometheus, the rebellious Greek Titan who incurred the wrath of the gods of Mount Olympus by stealing their sacred fire. Prometheus resisted, took risks, and suffered in order to help humanity. That mythic hero’s music provides a fitting conclusion for this heroic symphony.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Beethoven composed his “Eroica” Symphony in 1803.

Fritz Scheel conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the work, in January 1903. Its most recent appearance on a subscription series was in March 2013, with Christoph von Dohnányi conducting. The “Eroica” has become one of the most frequently performed works by the Orchestra, appearing almost every season, and the work was chosen to be performed in memory of both Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Among the distinguished conductors who have led the Symphony with the Philadelphians are Leopold Stokowski, Willem Mengelberg, Clemens Krauss, Eugene Ormandy, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner, Bruno Walter, Georg Solti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Klaus Tennstedt, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Christoph Eschenbach, and Simon Rattle.

The Orchestra has recorded the “Eroica” three times: in 1961 with Ormandy for CBS; in 1980 with Ormandy for RCA; and in 1987 with Muti for EMI, the first complete recording of the Beethoven symphonies on compact disc.

The work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 50 minutes.

Program notes © 2014. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

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Musical TermsGENERAL TERMSCadenza: A passage or section in a style of brilliant improvisation, usually inserted near the end of a movement or compositionChord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tonesDevelopment: See sonata formFugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different placesMarcia funebre: Funeral marchMeter: The symmetrical grouping of musical rhythmsOp.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition.Perpetuum mobile: A title sometimes given to a piece in which rapid

figuration is persistently maintainedPolyphony: A term used to designate music in more than one part and the style in which all or several of the musical parts move to some extent independentlyRecapitulation: See sonata form Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Sonata: An instrumental composition in three or four extended movements contrasted in theme, tempo, and mood, usually for a solo instrumentSonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed

by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications.Sonatina: A diminutive sonata, with fewer and shorter movements than the normal typeTrio: See scherzo

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo)Adagio: Leisurely, slowAgitato: ExcitedAllegretto: A tempo between walking speed and fastAllegro: Bright, fastAndante: Walking speedCon brio: Vigorously, with fireCon moto: With motionModerato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slowPresto: Very fastVivace: Lively

TEMPO MODIFIERSAssai: MuchMolto: VeryPiù: More

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TICKETS Call 215.893.1999 or log on to www.philorch.org PreConcert Conversations are held prior to every Philadelphia

Orchestra subscription concert, beginning 1 hour before curtain.

All artists, dates, programs, and prices subject to change. All tickets subject to availability.

February/March The Philadelphia Orchestra

Firebird and CinderellaFebruary 28 2 PM March 1 8 PMStéphane Denève Conductor Eric Le Sage Piano The Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco) Joan Myers Brown Executive Artistic Director

Stravinsky Dumbarton Oaks Poulenc Aubade Prokofiev Excerpts from Cinderella Stravinsky Suite from The Firebird

The March 1 concert is sponsored by Medcomp.

Beethoven and ShostakovichMarch 6 & 8 8 PM March 7 2 PMStéphane Denève Conductor Nikolaj Znaider Violin

Beethoven Violin Concerto Shostakovich Symphony No. 10

Enjoy the ultimate in flexibility with a Create-Your-Own 4-Concert Series today! Choose 4 or more concerts that fit your schedule and your tastes. Hurry, before tickets disappear for this exciting season.

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Jessica Griffin

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