Berliner Philharmoniker

Program Notes

Rachmaninoff – The Isle of the Dead, op. 9

The Isle of the Dead, op. 9
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Born April 1, 1873, Staraya Russa, Russia
Died March 8 1943, Beverly Hills, California, USA

In 1880 the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin painted one of the spookiest images ever committed to canvas, and over the next few years he would produce four variations of that painting, which would come to be known as Die Toteninsel: “The Isle of the Dead.” All versions of the painting show essentially the same thing. Against a dark and threatening sky, a small island reflects the late afternoon sun, which illuminates its rock cliffs and towering cypresses, a tree identified with cemeteries and with death. In the foreground a small boat approaches the island. A dark-clad oarsman sits in the stern, and in front of him a figure shrouded in pure white stands slightly hunched over a long white box garlanded (in some versions of the painting) with red flowers. Some have seen the painting as a depiction of Charon bearing the dead across the River Styx, but Böcklin refused to offer an explanation of his work. He is reported to have told a friend that “it must produce such an effect of stillness that anyone would be frightened to hear a knock on the door.”

Among those haunted by the painting was Sergei Rachmaninoff, who composed his tone poem The Isle of the Dead in 1909. The Isle of the Dead begins quietly and slowly, with the 5/8 meter catching perfectly the sound of softly-lapping water as the oarsman directs the boat toward the forbidding island. A lonely horn solo sets the bleak mood, and this figure is quickly taken up solo oboe and then trumpet. The music builds to a great brass chorale on this shape, and soon a dancing violin melody arcs high above. This has been called the “life theme,” a counterbalance to the dark opening, though one should not interpret this music too literally. The Isle of the Dead builds to a huge climax on great chords spit out by brass and timpani. In the aftermath of that violence, tremolo strings gloomily intone the Dies Irae motif, the music winds down on a quiet wind chorale, and on the rocking 5/8 meter from the very beginning The Isle of the Dead fades into mysterious silence.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Korngold – Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35

Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Born May 9, 1897, Brno, Czech Republic
Died November 9, 1957, Hollywood, California, USA

Probably no child composer—including Mozart—has been as precocious as Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The son of a leading music critic in Vienna, the boy demonstrated his incredible gift very early. Korngold’s cantata Gold, composed when he was 10, amazed Mahler, and those impressed by his abilities included Richard Strauss and Puccini, who said: “That boy’s talent is so great, he could easily give us half and still have enough left for himself!” Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt, composed when he was 20, received simultaneous premieres in Hamburg and Cologne, and in the 1920s Korngold was one of the most admired young composers in Europe. And then his career took a completely unexpected turn, one that would re-define him as a composer.

In 1934, Max Reinhardt invited Korngold to Hollywood to arrange Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music for use in a film, and Korngold discovered that his neo-romantic idiom was perfectly suited to the movies. With the rise of the Nazis in Europe, Korngold moved his family to Hollywood and over the next decade wrote a succession of brilliant film scores. These included music for such swashbuckling epics as The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk, and Korngold’s success was rewarded with several Oscars.

It was the violinist Bronislaw Huberman who in 1937 first suggested that Korngold write a violin concerto, but when Korngold got around to composing that concerto, his thoughts turned to the violinist who was one of his neighbors in Los Angeles, Jascha Heifetz. Korngold’s Violin Concerto, completed in the summer of 1945, was written with Heifetz’s silky tone and breathtaking virtuosity in mind, and it was Heifetz who gave the premiere in Saint Louis on June 15, 1947.

A distinguishing feature of this “serious” composition is that it is largely based on music Korngold had written for movies produced during the late 1930s. The concerto is in the expected three-movement form, with the solo violin entering in the first instant on a theme drawn from Another Dawn, an Errol Flynn film released in 1937. This theme arcs grandly upward and then soars dramatically—it is a theme perfectly suited to show off the violin (and a good violinist!). The second subject of this movement is taken from Korngold’s music for the film Juarez (1939). The movement is classical form, complete with development and recapitulation of these ideas, a cadenza, and a grand close.

The main theme of the central Romance comes from the film Anthony Adverse (1936), for which Korngold won an Oscar. The finale, a rondo marked Allegro assai vivace, is built on music from yet another Errol Flynn film, The Prince and the Pauper (1937). In the movie, this theme accompanied the hunt for the royal seal—here it becomes the basis for a brilliant concluding movement, full of violinistic fireworks. The ending is guaranteed to send everyone involved—soloist, orchestra, and audience—out the door with their hearts racing.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Dvořák – Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, op. 70

Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, op. 70
Antonín Dvořák
Born September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Czechia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Czechia

In June 1884 the Philharmonic Society of London nominated Dvořák for membership and invited him to compose a symphony that he would conduct in London. Shortly after beginning work on the score, Dvořák wrote to a friend: “Now I am occupied with my new symphony (for London), and wherever I go I have nothing else in mind but my work, which must be such as to shake the world and God grant that it may!” The premiere in London on April 22, 1885, was a tremendous success: “The enthusiasm at the close of the work was such as is rarely seen at a Philharmonic concert,” wrote one critic.

This symphony has been called Dvořák’s most “Brahmsian” work, but that term needs to be understood carefully. This is not an imitative work, but it does have the same grandeur, seriousness of purpose, and dark sonority that we associate with the symphonies of Brahms, who would remain a close friend of Dvořák throughout his life. Those dark sonorities are evident from the first instant of the Allegro maestoso: over a deep pedal D, violas and cellos sound the brooding opening idea. The movement is in the expected sonata form, but Dvořák uses that form with unusual freedom—his themes are not so much clearly-defined single ideas as they are groups of ideas that spin off a wealth of material for development. In the first moments of this symphony we hear not just that ominous opening melody, but also the violins’ rhythmic “kick,” a sharply-rising figure, and a turn-figure first spit out by violins and eventually taken over by the solo horn. The second subject arrives as a gently-rocking melody for flutes and clarinets that Dvořák marks dolce. The movement builds to a grand climax, then falls away to an impressive close as two horns sound the dark opening theme one last time.

The Poco Adagio stays in D minor. Woodwinds, singly or as a choir, announce most of the melodic material here. This music may be gentle on its first appearance, but this movement too grows to a series of great climaxes, and it is left to the cellos to sing the relaxed reprise of the main theme as the music makes its way to the quiet close.

The real fun of the Scherzo (and this is a fun movement) lies in its rhythmic vitality. Dvořák sets it in the unusual meter 6/4 and marks it Vivace, but then complicates matters by placing accents where we don’t expect them—sometimes this meter is accented in two, sometimes in three, and sometimes both simultaneously. The music dances madly into the trio section, which seems to begin quietly and simply (some have heard the sound of birdcalls here) but soon introduces complexities of its own; Dvořák makes a powerful return to the scherzo proper and drives the movement to a resounding conclusion.

The Finale, marked simply Allegro, returns to the ominous mood of the beginning of the first movement. The cellos’ arching-and-falling opening idea will shape much of this movement, and Dvořák winds tensions tight and then releases them with a timpani salvo that launches this movement on its way. Cellos eventually provide relief with one of those wonderfully amiable themes that only Dvořák could write, and from this material he builds another extremely dramatic movement. In fact, Dvořák stays relentlessly in D minor as the movement nears its climax, and it is only in the final seconds that he almost wrenches it into D major for a conclusion that truly does—as Dvořák hoped—“shake the world.”

Program note by Eric Bromberger