Brahms Festival
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Tuesday, October 11, 7:30 pm
Cordiner Hall, Whitman College Campus
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Johannes Brahms —Academic Festival Overture
Learn more about Brahms
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Academic Festival Overture (German: Akademische Festouvertüre), Op. 80, by Johannes Brahms, was one of a pair of contrasting concert overtures — the other being the Tragic Overture, Op. 81, written to balance it as its pair. Brahms composed the Academic Festival Overture during the summer of 1880 as a musical "thank you" to the University of Breslau, which had awarded him an honorary doctorate the previous year.
Initially, Brahms had contented himself with sending a simple handwritten note of acknowledgment to the University, since he loathed the public fanfare of celebrity. However, the conductor Bernard Scholz, who had nominated him for the degree, convinced him that protocol required him to make a grander gesture of gratitude. The University expected nothing less than a musical offering from the composer. "Compose a fine symphony for us!" he wrote to Brahms. "But well orchestrated, old boy, not too uniformly thick!" Brahms, who was known to be a curmudgeonly joker, filled his quota by creating a "very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs à la Suppé" in an intricately designed structure made to appear loose and episodic, thus drawing on the "academic" for both his sources and their treatment.
The work sparkles with some of the finest virtues of Brahms's orchestral technique, sometimes applied for comic effect, such as the bassoons that inflate the light subject of "Fuchslied" (Was kommt dort von der Höh?). The inventive treatment includes tunes appropriated from the student ditties "Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus", "Fuchslied", and most memorably, the broad, triumphant finale on "Gaudeamus igitur", which succinctly engages Brahms's sophisticated mastery of counterpoint, further fulfilling the "Academic" aspect of his program, cheekily applied to the well-worn melody. Brahms manages to evoke ravishing euphoria without sacrificing his commitment to classical balance. The Overture consists of four continuous sections:
- Allegro (C minor)
- Maestoso (C major)
- Animato (G major)
- Maestoso (C major).
The composer himself conducted the premiere at a special convocation held by the University on January 4, 1881, to the chagrin (and mischievous delight) of many of the academics in the audience. Due to its easily-grasped structure, its lyrical warmth, as well as its excitement and humor, the work has remained a staple of today's concert-hall repertoire. A typical performance lasts around ten minutes.
--Wikipedia
Johannes Brahms — Violin Concerto in D Major
Haroutune Bedelian, violin
Listen to the third movement of this
piece
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 is a violin concerto in three movements composed by Johannes Brahms in 1878 and dedicated to his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. It is Brahms's only violin concerto, and, according to Joachim, one of the four great German violin concerti. The work was premiered in Leipzig on January 1, 1879 by Joachim, who insisted on opening the concert with the Beethoven Violin Concerto, written in the same key, and closing with the Brahms. Joachim's decision could be understandable, though Brahms complained that "it was a lot of D major—and not much else on the program." Joachim was not presenting two established works, but one established one and a new, difficult one by a composer who had a reputation for being difficult. The two works also share some striking similarities. For instance, Brahms has the violin enter with the timpani after the orchestral introduction: this is a clear homage to Beethoven, whose violin concerto also makes unusual use of the timpani.
Brahms conducted the premiere. Various modifications were made between then and the work's publication by Fritz Simrock later in the year.
Critical reaction to the work was mixed: the canard that the work was not so much for violin as "against the violin" is attributed equally to conductor Hans von Bülow and to Joseph Hellmesberger, to whom Brahms entrusted the Vienna premiere, which was however rapturously received by the public. Henryk Wieniawski called the work "unplayable", and the violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate refused to play it because he didn't want to "stand on the rostrum, violin in hand and listen to the oboe playing the only tune in the adagio."
Against these critics, modern listeners often feel that Brahms was not really trying to produce a conventional vehicle for virtuoso display; he had higher musical aims. Similar criticisms have been voiced against the string concerti of other great composers, such as Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Hector Berlioz's Harold in Italy, for making the soloist "almost part of the orchestra."
from Wikipedia - Learn More
Haroutune Bedelian is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, where, at age twenty, he won the first prize in the BBC Violin Competition. He has performed in major cities, festivals, and concerts in major cities, festivals, and concert halls throughout North and South America, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Middle East, and has appeared in numerous radio and television broadcasts
Among his critical accolades are the following: "Alert, subtle artist as well as a superb instrumentalist" (New York Times). "The result was a powerful music making, virtuosity going hand in hand with unswerving loyalty to the composer" (The Strad Magazine). "Virtuosity comes to him as second nature, but it is used as a means to the interpretive freedom and sense of style that characterizes his playing above all else" (The London Times). "Refined and sensitive musician. Controlled, clean and effortless playing making light of the most formidable difficulties" (The London Guardian). "Technical and musical resources of virtuoso class" (Los Angeles Times).
Prior to joining the faculty at UC Irvine, Mr. Bedelian was Professor of Violin at the Royal Academy of Music, London.
2007 saw the release of J. S. Bach's 6 Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin in its entirety for the first time on DVD, performed by Mr. Bedelian
Johannes Brahms - Symphony No. 2 in D Major
Listen to the Allegro non troppo (part 1) from this piece
The Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1877 during a visit to Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a town in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Its composition was brief in comparison with the fifteen years it took Brahms to complete his First Symphony. The cheery and almost pastoral mood of the symphony often invite comparisons with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, but Brahms mischievously wrote to his publisher on November 22, 1877, that the symphony "is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning." The premiere was given on December 30, 1877 in Vienna under the direction of Hans Richte. A typical performance lasts between 40 and 50 minutes
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