Tonight’s concert is full of doublings. We begin, unconventionally, not with a single opener but with a pair of them. First up is the gripping 1807 Coriolan Overture by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), originally intended to introduce a tragedy by Heinrich Joseph von Collin. The play, which would be entirely forgotten were it not for Beethoven’s contribution, portrays the turmoil of a Roman general caught between the demands of family and politics. And from the unforgettable opening gesture (a unison C held by the strings for two measures, followed by a chord ...

Tonight’s concert is full of doublings. We begin, unconventionally, not with a single opener but with a pair of them. First up is the gripping 1807 Coriolan Overture by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), originally intended to introduce a tragedy by Heinrich Joseph von Collin. The play, which would be entirely forgotten were it not for Beethoven’s contribution, portrays the turmoil of a Roman general caught between the demands of family and politics. And from the unforgettable opening gesture (a unison C held by the strings for two measures, followed by a chord snapped out by the full orchestra), Beethoven reflects the drama with such urgency and ferocity that the Fifth Symphony may seem temperate by comparison. Even the sweet second theme—often thought to represent Coriolan’s mother, who tries to persuade him to step back from violence—can’t check the forward momentum.

The Coriolan Overture is followed by subito con forza (Suddenly with Power), composed in 2020 by Unsuk Chin (b. 1961)—and if you were attending the concert without knowing the program, you might at first think that Larry Loh and the orchestra were treating us to a second helping of the Coriolan Overture. For subito con forza begins with precisely the same gesture that Beethoven’s overture does—except that the full-orchestra chord is now overlaid with clattering percussion. From then on, subito con forza moves in its own direction—but in both subtle and obvious ways, it’s constantly grounded in Beethoven.

Some of that grounding lies in references to Beethoven’s music (not only the Coriolan Overture, but also the Fifth Symphony, the Emperor Concerto, and more). The piece, however, is even more beholden to Beethoven’s spirit. It was written to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth, and it takes its inspiration from his conversation books as much as from his scores. These conversations books were the notebooks that—during his later years when he was deaf—served both as reminders (for instance, they included shopping lists) and as a form of communication with people he couldn’t hear. Those that have survived give tremendous insight into his daily life and state of mind. Chin was especially taken with a brief comment: “Dur und Moll. Ich bin ein Gewinner” (“Major and minor. I am a winner.”). But she has also, more generally, echoed what she calls Beethoven’s “enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme serenity.” All in all, this brief work, only about five minutes, covers a lot of territory and will leave you dizzy. In its unusual mirroring of Beethoven, it may also leave you with a new perspective on his art.

We might call the doubling in subito con forza “external”—that is, the piece echoes something outside itself. Our next piece, Schicksalslied (The Song of Destiny) (1868-71) by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), engages in internal doubling. He wrote this choral work shortly after completing his beloved German Requiem. Schicksalslied is similar in sound and spirit, although much more compact: choral director John Warren sees it as a kind of “mini-Requiem.” It’s based on a poem by the German writer Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), taken from his novel Hyperion. Brahms stumbled upon the text while visiting his friend Albert Hermann Dietrich (not coincidentally, the man who arranged for the first performance of the Requiem), and he was immediately moved to set it to music.

Schicksalslied falls into two distinct sections that mirror each other—what John calls “polar opposites.” Introduced by an orchestral passage underpinned by throbbing timpani (reminiscent, perhaps, of the opening of his First Symphony), the first section features some of Brahms’s most radiant music, reflecting, as John puts it, “the gods in the heavens, living a life of luxury, beauty, and peace.” Then the tone changes dramatically to something “minor, angular, and fast.” We’re suddenly thrust, in the words of the poem, from a world of “eternal brightness” that is “free from fate” into one of suffering, in which humankind is “dashed, year after year, down into the unknown.”

At this point, Brahms was stymied. He was too much of a humanist to end with this vision of misery—but he was not prepared to damage the poem. In the end, he decided to add a third section, a purely orchestral ending that repeats the opening section (yet another doubling), although it is more luminously orchestrated, bringing us to a peaceful conclusion.

The doublings that we hear in subito con forza and in Schicksalslied are fairly straightforward compared to the interlocking series of doublings we encounter after intermission in the Symphony No. 4 in D Minor by Robert Schumann (1810–1856). These doublings occur along several axes. First, it’s a work by a composer who was himself split. He saw himself as possessing multiple personalities, even going so far as to give names to his primary selves, most notably Eusebius for his poetical and introspective side and Florestan—named after the fiery political prisoner in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio—for his outgoing side. Much of his music, as well as much of his writing, explicitly incorporates these alter egos. Usually, they are presented in the same whimsical spirit with which he played with musical anagrams. But this division was tied to something more disquieting: he had frequent episodes of mental illness, tried to kill himself in 1854, and spent his final years confined (at his own request) to a sanitarium.

Second—and this takes on a special resonance in the context of Schumann’s last years—the Fourth serves as a kind of grim double of his First Symphony, although the contrast is nowhere near as stark as that between the first two sections of Schicksalslied. Schumann wrote the First Symphony (which we performed almost exactly a year ago) in 1841 soon after his long-sought-after marriage to Clara Wieck. Sketched out in just four days, it’s a cheerful and upbeat work in bright B-Flat Major describing springtime, even though it was written in mid-winter. He drafted the Fourth quickly, too, in less than a week; but even though it was written in late summer of the same year, it’s in tragic D Minor, as dramatic and intense as the First is ebullient.

Why is it called the Fourth if it was composed right after the First? Here’s a third way in which the symphony is tied to doubling. Schumann was dissatisfied with the first performance, so he put the score aside for revision. It took ten years before he produced the second version, during which time he wrote the symphonies now known as the Second and Third. As a result, when the D-Minor Symphony was finally finished in 1851, it was published as his Fourth.

The revisions were substantial, both in the symphony’s details and in its overall feel. Most obviously, besides adding weight to the orchestration, he tightened the music’s form. The first version already tended to minimize the breaks between the movements (indeed, the third movement has a long transition to the finale, obviously modeled on the Beethoven Fifth). But the revision strengthens the links, increasing the sense that the four-movement work is a single span of sound. Schumann’s protégé Brahms preferred (and published) the 1841 version (much to Clara Schumann’s annoyance), and over the past few years, it’s been performed and recorded with increasing frequency. The 1851 version remains the “standard” version, however, and that is the one you will be hearing tonight.

The links between the movements go beyond the way Schumann runs them together—and here we find yet another kind of doubling. Inspired in part by Schubert’s piano masterpiece the Wanderer Fantasy and, perhaps, by Mendelssohn’s Third Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphony fantastique, Schumann creates thematic links among the movements. Two moments of déjà vu (or déjà entendu) are especially striking: the trio section of the third movement, which is a variant of the middle section of the second movement; and the transition to the finale, which looks back to the first movement. But the more you listen, the more connections you find. For example, the main theme of the first movement, introduced when the music picks up its pace, is drawn from the slow introduction (it may, some have argued, be cryptographically related to Clara’s name). There are others as well. All in all, it’s one of the tightest symphonies written up to that time. It is also, in the end, one of the most uplifting: for all its D-Minor sturm und drang, it builds, like the Beethoven Fifth that clearly influenced it, to triumph in its finale.

Peter J. Rabinowitz
Have any comments or questions? Please write to me at prabinowitz@SyracuseOrchestra.org