Between Wagner and Brahms

January 19, 2025 | Svetlanov Hall of the MIPAC
Soloist – Alexander Ghindin, piano
Conductor – Arsenty Tkachenko
Wagner. "Faust" Overture
Liszt. Concerto No. 1 for piano and orchestra in E-flat major
Liszt. "Totentanz", S. 126
Brahms. Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68

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Within the period of the 60s-80s years of the 19th century agitated considerations and discussions about the future of music split creators, as well as their supporters, and put them onto the opposite sides of the barricade. Brahms and his antagonists Wagner and Liszt, whose oeuvre and significance are still debated, put their colleagues before the choice: either the absolute (“pure”) music, which follows only its inner laws, or the “program” music closely interacting with other arts in all their diversity. Conductor Arsenty Tkachenko and the NPR offer the possibility of making the choice themselves to nowadays music lovers by discovering various sides of the music art of that epoch and presenting in the same concert works of the combative camps.

The night will start with Richard Wagner's Faust Overture, his earlier work which marked the composer's transition to the creative maturity but had been written before the appearance of his music dramas. The Overture was highly praised by Tchaikovsky who described it as one of “the superb works of the German symphony literature … a wonderful, profoundly memorable music opus which might be put into the row with the best creations by Beethoven and Schumann”. 

Then the orchestra will be joined by the brilliant pianist Alexander Ghindin who will play with the NPR two virtuoso works by Ferenc LisztConcerto no.1 and Totentanz for piano and orchestra. Liszt, the great instigator of piano art and master of orchestration, devised a new type of piano concerto called after Henry Litolff Concerto symphonique. In the free one-movement composition, Liszt combined all sections of the sonata cycle introducing all themes from the same melodic source (the so-called monothematic exposition). After the premiere of Concerto no.1 in Weimar in 1855 with the author as soloist conducted by Berlioz, Liszt made the final edition of his opus, which has become a staple part of the piano repertoire till our days.

Liszt was inspired to compose his Totentanz when he saw the “Triumph of Death” fresco by Italian painter Andrea di Cione (1308-1368), named Orcagna. The artist depicted Death as an ugly hag with bat wings and a scythe just hanging over another victim. Liszt, like earlier Berlioz, used the Medieval sequence Dies irae, but as the main theme rather than an episode. Handling his large arsenal of technical methods Liszt creates a blazing, picturesque and, at the same time, philosophical image in the spirit of the religious mysticism of the Middle Ages.

In Part 2, the NPR directed by Arsenty Tkachenko will play Symphony no.1 by Johannes Brahms. Initially the symphony was referred to Byron's Manfred. However, it took Brahms 15 years to finally complete the work. Brahms treated the composition in the Beethoven traditions that is as an instrumental drama with all the movements united by one poetic idea. The framing movements bear in them the conflict, which is to be settled, while the middle movements are given the roles of lyric and genre intermezzo. One of the symphony themes (the Finale variations) reminds intonationally of the Joy theme from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. All this allowed Hans von Bulow calling Brahms's opus “Beethoven's Tenth Symphony”. 

 

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