LCCMF 9.16 — OurConcerts.live

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): String Trio in G Major, op. 9, no. 1 (1797-98)
Adagio – Allegro con brio
Adagio ma non tanto e cantabile
Scherzo. Allegro – Trio
Presto

Soovin Kim, violin
Jessica Bodner, viola
Marcy Rosen, cello

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949): Four Last Songs (1948)

Frühling
September
Beim Schlafengehen
Im Abendrot

Arianna Zukerman, soprano
Gloria Chien, piano

Beethoven: String Trio in G Major, op. 9, no. 1 (1797-98)

A few months before composing his first collection of string quartets, Beethoven tried his hand at the string trio. A string trio lacks the second violin present in a quartet, making it less full-sounding and arguably a more challenging ensemble for composers to manipulate. The op. 9 string trios fall into Beethoven’s early period. His works from that time used the musical language of his contemporaries Haydn and Mozart, but Beethoven pushed at the outer edges of the genre in several ways. Early on his music featured the harmonic complexity, length, and dramatic shifts in mood that would later come to define his most famous works.

An example of Beethoven’s innovative approach to harmony appears in the first movement of op. 9, no. 1. After a slow introduction, the lively first theme is, of course, in G major. Instead of traveling to the traditional dominant key of D major, however, the second theme appears in D minor. At the time, this would have been more surprising to listeners than it feels to us today.

The expressive, elegant second movement is in the key of E major—distant to this work’s home key of G major, and a larger-scale example of Beethoven’s harmonic experimentation. This movement also features some of the intense shifts in mood that factor in much of Beethoven’s output, although they are softened here by the rhythmic steadiness of near-constant triplets.

The length of this trio also foreshadows the breadth of Beethoven’s future works. String trios of this time period were typically three movements long. In all three trios of op. 9, however, Beethoven opted for the weightier four-movement structure. The third movement of op. 9 no. 1 is a lighthearted scherzo, merry and certainly not dramatic. Beethoven saves the drama for the Presto finale. The forward momentum here is unstoppable, although a soaring secondary theme, doubled at the octave by the violin and viola, functions as a beautiful distraction. The composer’s joy is evident in this finale, and the spectacle comes from the musical material rather than from the composer’s personal turmoil. The most intense struggles of Beethoven’s life were still to come.

Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs (1948)

Richard Strauss did not title his so-called Four Last Songs. In fact, each of these songs were written individually in 1948, collected and labeled as a cycle only after the composer’s death. Perhaps this helps explain why each song ends with a strong cadence that lingers for a long while on its final chords. That’s an unusual feature, one that here underscores the firm sense of finality behind the music.

Strauss may not have explicitly conceived of these as “last” songs, but they are undeniably a farewell. By 1948, Strauss had lived through both world wars, and his attempts to emerge unsullied by their politics were not successful. Strauss came under fire for accepting an appointment to the Nazi regime’s State Music Bureau, though he was later released from the position for refusing to remove the name of his Jewish friend and librettist, Stefan Zweig, from publicity materials. Whatever we choose to make of Strauss’ actions in the face of the Nazis, Strauss himself regarded the Second World War as “the most terrible period in human history.” The music Strauss wrote after the war was notably retrospective: it returns to a traditional Romantic style, much more like the music of his youth than some of his more modern offerings.

Familiar Romantic lyricism pervades this song cycle, which is marked by an aesthetic less tragic than it is wistful. These Four Last Songs are scored for soprano, a fitting choice considering Strauss’ life-long love affair with the soprano voice. This must have been inspired at least in part by Strauss’ wife Pauline de Ahna, herself a famous soprano.

Each of the poems in this work—the first three by Siddhartha author Hermann Hesse and the last one by Schumann favorite Joseph Eichendorff—deals with death in some way. The first in the cycle is Frühling (Spring), which Hesse opens by placing its speaker in darkness (sometimes translated as “shadowy crypts”). Strauss meets this image with a push and pull of familiar Romantic harmonies to represent the contrasting allusions to darkness and spring. The second poem, September, concludes with the image of summertime closing its weary eyes to rest. Strauss offers a lush, peaceful musical mood throughout this second song, depicting the gentle dying of a season.

The third and fourth songs in this cycle also invoke the familiar metaphor of sleep as death. Hesse’s Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep) tells the tale of a weary person sinking to slumber whose soul soars into the night’s magic. Strauss’ musical setting briefly implies activity and weariness before relaxing into an expansive repose. The final song, Im Abendrot (At Sunset) was actually the first of the last songs Strauss wrote. It is the only one whose poem explicitly mentions death.

When death finally arrives in “Im Abendrot,” Strauss marks the moment with a quote from his tone poem Death and Transfiguration. Strauss wrote that piece in his 20s. By quoting it here at the end of his life, this great master—who wrote his first song at age six and this last at 84—brings his music full circle.