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PROGRAMME NOTES Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY HAYDN, OP. 56A Brahms's friend Carl Ferdinand Pohl, the author of an important early biography of Joseph Haydn, first showed Brahms the theme that he would later make famous in this orchestral work. It was contained in a set of six recently discovered wind serenades which Pohl attributed to Haydn. Brahms had always been interested in older music, and the second movement of one of these works, in B flat major, particularly attracted him. He wrote it out and placed it in a folder la bei led 'copies of outstanding masterpieces of the 16th—18th centuriesfor study purposes'that he had been compiling for several years. He wrote the words'Chorale Saint Antoni' next to the theme. In May 1873, Brahms started to compose a set of variations on the Saint Antoni theme for two pianos. On 20 August, he and Clara Schumann played through the work together. (Brahms often gave Clara previews of his new works: he would send her manuscripts, the ink scarcely dry, or invite her to read his compositions at the piano with him, valuing her opinion as well as her Company.) Düring this summer, Brahms also began an orchestral Version of these variations and sent the finished score to his publisher Simrock on 4 October. This work was first performed on 2 November by the Vienna Philharmonie Orchestra with the composer conducting, and received a rapturous reception. The two versions are identical in content, but one is Brahms's last major work for piano, the other his first composition for orchestra without a soloist. With this score, Brahms signalled his move from the personal world of chamber music to the public stage, symbolised by the orchestra and especially the symphony.This critical turning point in his career was a move he had long been struggling to make. The two orchestral Serenades composed during the late 1850s were essentially chamber music on a large scale.The D minor Piano Concerto, completed around the same time, is the first work in which Brahms confronted the full resources of the 19th-century orchestra, although that piece similarly was first conceived for the more familiär sound of two pianos. Brahms refined his art of Orchestration with the accompaniments to A German Requiem, completed in 1869, and several smaller choral works. The Haydn Variations represent the critical breakthrough, as well as one last testing of the waters, before Brahms finished the symphony - his First - that had been a preoccupation for nearly two decades. Brahms begins with Haydn's theme, gently parodying the original scoring for oboes, bassoons, horns, and the obsolete serpent - a kind of bass horn and for which Brahms substituted the contrabassoon. With its memorable five-bar phrases, changing half-way through to more conventional groups of four bars, it is easy to see what attracted Brahms to this genial tune. Eight variations and a finale follow the initial Statement. As the work proceeds, Brahms takes over and Haydn gradually disappears.The theme, too, sometimes becomes obscured, although it is always present.The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick once said that the theme in certain variations by Brahms was as difficult to recognize as the face behind the composer's new beard. Brahms carefully paces his eight variations.The first three are energetic; the fourth, in the minor mode, slows to andante (but con moto - with motion). In Variations five and six the tempo picks up: five is a nimble scherzo; six, with its galloping rhythms and wild horns, recalls hunting music. In Variation seven tempo and dynamics are held back: this is a delicate siciliana, the only Variation slower than the theme. Variation eight, a return to the minor key, is quick, quiet, and suspenseful - the perfect prelude to a grand finale, in which Brahms does something completely new. From the original theme he creates a five-bar bass line that he repeats, unchanged, 17 times - the strietness ofthisformula inspiring him to new heights of invention.This set of variations within another creates a magnificent sense of excitement as Brahms builds toward a final Statement (exuberantly welcomed by the patient triangle) of the theme that he understood he had borrowed from Haydn. Regarding the work's title, as Haydn research developed during the 20th Century, scholars began to doubt the authenticity of the serenades which Pohl had discovered. It is now thought that the theme used by Brahms was the work of one of Haydn's pupils, Ignaz Pleyel. No one has ever discovered the precise source or meaning of the Saint Antoni Choräle subtitle. However this did not prevent one of Brahms's earliest biographers, the otherwise rational Max Kalbeck, from hearing in this score a musical depiction of the temptation of Saint Anthony. Samuel Barber (1910-1981) VIOLIN CONCERTO, OR14 I. ALLEGRO II. ANDANTE III. PRESTO IN MOTO PERPETUO The American composer Samuel Barber was born in 1910, and was playing the piano and cello by theageof six. Heentered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia at the age of 14, and studied piano, singing and composition. His compositions started to be played publicly from 1933 onwards. In 1935 he won a Pulitzer scholarship and in 1936 the American Academy's Prix de Rome. Toscanini gave the first performances of his Adagio forStrings and the