Closing Concert

Programme note  

The symphonies of GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911) stand on the boundary line between programme and absolute music, two of the movements characterising 19^th century orchestral writing. Ludwig van Beethoven, a master of musical structure, endured as a major compositional example and, under the influence of literature, philosophy and other spheres of knowledge, new subject matter found its way into music. Mahler wrote Symphony No. 3 in the years 1892–1896. Its individual parts originally had programme titles, and the symphony as a whole was to have been called The Gay Science after the book of the same name by Friedrich Nietzsche. The first movement “Pan Awakes. Summer Marches In” was a celebration of the rebirth of nature; the second was known as “What the Wild Flowers Tell Me”; the third was “What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me”; the fourth movement originally bore the designation “What Man Tells Me”, followed by “What the Angels Tell Me”; and the final Adagio was entitled “What Love Tells Me”. Mahler later abandoned his titles, however, they were not forgotten and the symphony’s programme subtext remained.

On 22 December 1808 the Theater an der Wien in Vienna hosted the premieres of two symphonies by LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827), Symphony No. 5 in C minor Op. 67, which later received the nickname “Fate”, and Symphony No. 6 in F major Op. 68, with its subtitle “Sinfonia pastorale”. Both symphonies were written almost concurrently and were published with successive opus numbers. The two works have much in common yet, in many respects, they are also diametrically opposed.

Symphony No. 6 in F major “Pastoral” is a programmatic work. In Beethoven’s time such compositions were not exceptional; there were numerous pieces in existence bearing titles suggestive of natural phenomena or events. Beethoven’s innovative approach lay in the way he combined his non-musical subject matter with the cyclical symphonic form. The composer also gave his work a subtitle, “Erinnerung an das Landleben” (Recollections of Country Life). By adding the note “mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei” (rather expressive of sensations than of painting), however, he was expressing the wish that his symphony would not be wrongly attributed as “music with a story”. All the same, one cannot ignore tangible examples of explicit tone colour: the depiction of a thunderstorm in the fourth movement or the clearly identifiable imitative bird calls. In his pastoral symphony Beethoven created a succession of genre images. From a formal perspective, by including five movements instead of the usual four, he was inclining towards the structure of a classical drama in five acts. The symphony later provided a model for Hector Berlioz and his Symphonie fantastique, and naturally – including the non-musical aspect – also for Gustav Mahler.

Beethoven’s era perceived the symphony as a drama, and Beethoven’s symphonic oeuvre reinforced this perception through structure, thematic treatment and inner cohesion. Carl Friedrich August Mosengeil (1773–1839) from Meiningen, whom history remembers chiefly as one of the inventors of stenography, was also a writer; when the Pastoral Symphony was published in 1809, he wrote a fervent article in which he consistently referred to Beethoven as a poet, while he described the individual movements as acts in a play. In his view, Beethoven’s musical images differed from what was customary for the time, “in the same way the work of a painter who idealises nature is distinguished from that of an ordinary copyist of it”. In the first movement “Beethoven, whose difficult compositions often make the most accomplished musicians fainthearted, is here so easy and comprehensible, so simple and childlike.” In the second movement the poet Beethoven takes a rest by a stream; the composer was later portrayed in this way in a famous lithograph. Of the third movement Mosengeil states that no-one had hitherto crafted a more authentic representation of nature. The fourth movement provides a contrast to the other movements with its harmonic fluctuations and, within the work as a whole, has the character of a sonata-form development founded on modulation. Here Mosengeil compared Beethoven, the musical dramatist, to Shakespeare. Finally, the storm recedes to make way for the popular image of a pastoral idyll, leaving the listener with “an unforgettable memory which awakens a kind of homesickness.” Mosengeil’s verbal accompaniment to the symphony wasn’t the only piece of writing inspired by Beethoven’s music; other commentaries did not differ greatly from his account, which would nevertheless still be acceptable to today’s audiences.

Vlasta Reittererová

English translation by Karolina Hughes

Petr Nekoranec

Established on the international concert and opera scene, Nekoranec is a prominent member of the young generation of singers. In the years 2014–2016 he worked with the Bavarian State Opera company in Munich and its affiliated Opera Studio, where he took on a number of vocal parts, including the title roles in Rossini’s opera Le comte Ory and Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring. His interpretation of Albert Herring garnered him the Bavarian Art Prize. He also holds the Classic Prague Award 2017 in the category “Talent of the Year”. For a period of two years (2016–2018) he was the first Czech participant in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, a project run by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. From 2018 to 2020 he was engaged as a soloist at the Stuttgart State Opera, where he assumed such roles as Count Almaviva (The Barber of Seville), Don Ramiro (La Cenerentola) and Ernesto (Don Pasquale).

Nekoranec had a busy schedule planned for the 2020/2021 season yet, as has been the case for so many artists, his engagements were adversely affected by the pandemic and a number of his commitments were rearranged for a more auspicious time. These involved a tour with Cecilia Bartoli, a guest appearance at the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, and concerts in Slovakia. He will nevertheless be appearing in the opening concert of the Smetana’s Litomyšl festival and in the Czech Philharmonic’s open-air concert in June; next season, 2021/2022, he returns to the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth for the city’s Baroque Opera Festival, where he will reprise the role of Asprando in Porpora’s opera Carlo il Calvo. Forthcoming events include his debuts at Prague’s National Theatre (Almaviva in The Barber of Seville and Ferrando in Così fan tutte), at the National Theatre in Brno he will sing the role of Tamino (The Magic Flute), and in Toulouse’s Théâtre du Capitole he again takes on the part of Count Almaviva. In the spring of 2022 he will make guest appearances at the Stuttgart Opera as the Yurodivy in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.