On Monday evening I went to David Geffen Hall to hear the last concert in my Great Performers subscription series. This performance was given by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by its music director, violinist Joshua Bell. Unfortunately, it was a huge disappointment as scheduled guest violinist Pamela Frank had suffered a "minor injury" and was unable to appear. As a result, the work I had been most interested in hearing, J.S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, Strings, and Continuo in D minor, BWV 1043, was scrapped from the program and the Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, the "Classical Symphony," by Sergei Prokofiev inserted in its place.
Prokofiev, even at the very beginning of his career, possessed a mordant wit and keen sense of humor. In such works as the Second Piano Concerto and the Scythian Suite, he thoroughly enjoyed provoking the critics and defying their expectations. Nowhere is this trait more apparent than in this first symphony written in 1917 while the composer was on holiday. Here Prokofiev addressed the problem of using his innovative and sometimes iconoclastic style within a traditional form. While the work retains the structure of a classical symphony and employs the orchestration typical of that genre, it is in fact a purely modernist work that sometimes seems more a tongue-in-cheek send up of Haydn than a tribute to the revered composer. This is ultimately, of course, very much in the spirit of Haydn himself who delighted in many of his works in surprising the audience with sudden unexpected twists of his own.
The next work on the program was Tchaikovsky's ever popular Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 (1878). Music history is full of ironies. Eduard Hanslick, champion of Brahms and discoverer of Dvořák, was usually quite astute in his reviews and deservedly one of the most influential critics of the late nineteenth century. Today, however, he is remembered primarily for his dyspeptic appraisal of Tchaikovsky's concerto:
"The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is surely not an ordinary talent, but rather an inflated one, with a genius-obsession without discrimination or taste. Such is also his latest, long, and pretentious Violin Concerto. For a while it moves soberly, musically, and not without spirit. But soon vulgarity gains the upper hand and asserts itself to the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played; it is pulled, torn, drubbed. The Adagio is again on its best behavior, to pacify and to win us over. But it soon breaks off to make way for a finale that transfers us to a brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian holiday. We see plainly the savage, vulgar faces, we hear the curses, we smell the booze. Friedrich Visser once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear."
His was not the only negative voice. Violinist Leopold Auer, the original dedicatee, declined the honor and reportedly termed the piece "unplayable." Even violinist Iosif Kotek who was at the composer's side as he wrote it, refused to play the work and claimed that to do so would hurt his career. The concerto was eventually premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic with Adolph Brodsky as soloist and gradually won wide popularity it still enjoys today. This is not to say the early criticism was entirely without merit. Inspired to write it after having heard Lalo's Symphonie espagnole, Tchaikovsky was far more interested in penning a work that would be pleasant to hear than in constructing a carefully balanced masterpiece. In the end, he succeeded brilliantly in creating a lyrical work that never fails at its conclusion to bring its listeners to their feet in rapturous applause.
After intermission the orchestra returned to perform the final work on the revised program, Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93 (1812). This is one of the more puzzling works in the composer's oeuvre. It was written well into his late period and yet is classical in form and looks back to the time when he was still a student of Haydn. While 1812 was not the happiest time in Beethoven's life (witness his letter to the Immortal Beloved), the symphony itself is fairly carefree; it contains no slow movements nor any hints of deep introspection. It was not enthusiastically received at its premiere, but that is most likely because it was performed after the Seventh Symphony which also premiered at that same concert. One would have to agree with the audience on that occasion that this is really not the work with which to close a concert. Indeed, when the Berliner Philharmoniker performed the complete Beethoven cycle in November at Carnegie Hall, the orchestra opened one concert with the Eighth and then closed it with the Sixth, a much more effective placement. To have given over the entire second half of Wednesday evening's concert to performing this short work, especially after having ended the first half with Tchaikovsky's crowd pleasing concerto, was decidedly anticlimactic.
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