Schubert & Beethoven

Violin I

Eugene Kim, Concertmaster
Kirsten Dalboe
David Engel
Ruth Erbe
Dawn Levy
Jessica Milli

Violin II

Rachel Lane, Principal
Sarah Brittman
Wendy Chun
Richard Hong
Sachi Rosenbaum
Seiichi Takedai

Viola

Michael Garrahan, Principal
Stephen Fisher

Cello

Debra Anker, Principal
Stephanie Herman
Philip Hopko
David Zelinsky

Bass

Dale Houck, Principal
Kimberly Williams

Flute

Eric Abalahin
Colleen Darkow

Oboe

Jane Hughes
Leslie Jewell

Clarinet

Karin Caifa
Susan Sandler

Bassoon

Katrien van Dijk
Bill Jokela
Walter Wynn

Horn

Wendy Chinn
Jim McIntyre
Ilycia Silver

Trumpet

Chris Erbe
Bruce Stanly

Timpani

James Adams

Stage Manager

Debra Anker

Music Director of the Tulsa Philharmonic from 1980 to 1983, Joel Lazar has also appeared with the orchestras of San Antonio, Louisville, Pasadena, Oklahoma City, Richmond, Harrisburg, Wheeling, and Johnstown, with Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston, and was Music Director of the Richmond Philharmonic from 1990 to 1992. During a period of European residence he conducted the BBC Philharmonic, the Danish National Orchestra, the Tivoli Orchestra, and the Scottish Baroque Ensemble in concerts, broadcasts, and recordings. His concerts and feature interviews have been broadcast by the BBC, Danmarks Radio, Bayerischer Rundfunk, WCLV-FM (Cleveland, Ohio), and National Public Radio.

A native New Yorker, Joel Lazar received undergraduate and graduate degrees in music from Harvard University, where he studied with Pierre Boulez, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson. In conductors’ courses at Aspen and Tanglewood he worked with Izler Solomon, Walter Susskind, Richard Burgin, and Erich Leinsdorf, and at the Shenandoah Festival with Richard Lert. From 1961 until 1971 he taught and conducted at Harvard, New York University, and the University of Virginia.

In 1969 Joel Lazar was elected to honorary membership in the Bruckner Society of America. Through colleagues in the Society he met the legendary Jascha Horenstein, master interpreter of Mahler and Bruckner and, in 1971, received a fellowship enabling him to spend two years overseas as Horenstein’s personal assistant, the only young conductor ever to serve in this capacity. After Horenstein’s death in 1973, he acted as his mentor’s artistic executor, inheriting his extensive music library and completing his recording of Carl Nielsen’s opera, Saul and David, with an international cast including Boris Christoff.

Gramophone Magazine published his major retrospective article on Horenstein’s life and work in November 2000; he currently writes insert notes for the ongoing BBC Legends series of Horenstein broadcast performances, for Vox Records’ reissues of Horenstein recordings from the 1950s, and for archival releases on the Music & Art and Doremi labels. Joel Lazar’s notes have appeared in the program books of concert series in Washington and New York. He is a contributor to the final volume of the late Henry-Louis de la Grange’s monumental life and works of Mahler.

Schubert wrote his first six symphonies over six years, 1813-1818, completing the First Symphony on October 28, 1813, according to his date in the manuscript. These are relatively straightforward compositions to some extent within the outlines of the high Classical tradition, modeled on works he had played as a student. Four of them, the First, Second, Third and Sixth, call for a standard late Haydn/Mozart or early Beethoven orchestra in which pairs of woodwinds, trumpets and horns join strings and timpani. The Fourth, in C minor, saturated with the stereotypical rhetoric, passion, and harmonic idiom associated with that key, uses four horns. The best-known of this group, the Fifth, however, adds only a flute and pairs of oboes, bassoons, and horns to the strings. In their reverence for and emulation of Classical prototypes, they are unlike music by any other composer written in the early years of the nineteenth century, although with hindsight it is easy to identify in them stylistic traits of the mature Schubert.

Until the mid-twentieth century, most scholars and critics were tempted to devalue these works, except insofar as they foreshadowed the masterpieces of his later years. Indeed, none other than Johannes Brahms, who edited the symphonies for the Breitkopf and Härtel Collected Edition in the 1880s wrote to the publishers “I have made no secret to you of the fact that I take no particular pleasure in preparing these [early] symphonies for appearance in print. I feel that these sorts of labors, or preliminary studies, rather than being published, should be piously cherished and perhaps made available to a few people in the form of handwritten copies.” (cited in Arnold Feil’s preface to the New Schubert Edition score of the Sixth Symphony, 1998).

The First Symphony displays a characteristic combination of features reminiscent of other works, unexpected allusions to compositions of earlier composers, and compositional traits later to become habitual in Schubert’s mature works. A particularly striking formal feature of the first movement, otherwise in traditional sonata-allegro form, is the nearly literal reprise of the opening of its slow introduction at the recapitulation. The second theme of this movement bears a fleeting resemblance to the contradance tune which forms the basis of the variations of the finale of the “Eroica”; Schubert rarely alludes in his early works to music of Beethoven’s middle period. On the other hand, the slow movement of Mozart’s “Prague” symphony is an obvious model for Schubert’s slow movement, and the generic late-classical minuet and trio, with woodwind solos, is the basis for his third movement.

A fascinating study by the Welsh musicologist David Wyn Jones shows that the symphony as a genre was neglected in Vienna by composers and audience alike in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Schubert’s first six are “…a noticeably large number for any composer in Vienna…But the circumstances of their composition and performance are so peculiar to Schubert as not to link in with any broader development. The performances were all private ones, the works were never published, and no public performances took place until after his death…[T]he symphonies…ignore certain characteristics of the genre that had evolved in the first years of the nineteenth century…Schubert’s formative experiences of the symphony…were based on performances by a school orchestra of a repertoire that was quite old...”. The orchestra’s repertoire and library in fact emphasized Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven; it seems not even to have included many other lesser figures of the period. (The Symphony in Beethoven’s Vienna, 2006)

It appears that Schubert went through a compositional crisis between 1818 and 1822; during these years he left not only four symphonies unfinished, including “The Unfinished” but also drafted and abandoned string quartets, string trios, piano sonatas and piano fantasias.  In his magisterial survey of orchestral literature, A. Peter Brown points out that there were twice as many incomplete instrumental works as completed ones during these four years (The Symphonic Repertoire, II, 2002). It is not until resolution of these issues that Schubert begins to complete large-scale compositions with the specific intent of emulating the dramatic and structural sweep of Beethoven’s …but this is quite another story, which pertains to another body of music.

Over the years we have performed all of Schubert’s symphonies except for the “Great” C major, D. 944, designated variously as the Seventh, Eighth, or Ninth, whose scope and sound-world would be beyond our resources. This is our first performance of the First Symphony.

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“Eighteen hundred and three was the main year of composition of the “Eroica” Symphony, the centerpiece of the great stylistic transition that emerged out of Beethoven’s personal and artistic crisis of 1802… In the Third Symphony, Beethoven’s ‘new path’ ascended to a lofty summit with a commanding position in the history of the symphonic genre.” (William Kinderman, Beethoven, 1995)

“The first of Beethoven’s immense expansions of classical form is the “Eroica” Symphony, finished in 1804… The symphony, much longer than any work in that form that preceded it, provoked some displeasure at its first public performance. The critics complained of its inordinate length, and protested against the lack of unity in this most unified of works… The public, indeed seems to have been ill-natured at the first performance and the work immediately divided its hearers into two furiously opposed factions.” (Charles Rosen, The Classical Style, 1997)

“In the winter of 1803–4 Beethoven plunged into full-time work on the symphony. It now grew to a length that dwarfed any previous symphony by him anyone else… The work expanded the time space of the symphony as never before, demanding an unprecedented degree of patience and concentration from concert audiences. But what marks the “Eroica” as pathbreaking is not only its epic length. At least equally important is the unity of musical ideas…” (Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (2003))

“With Beethoven’s… “Eroica” Symphony, we know we have crossed irrevocably a major boundary in Beethoven’s development and in music history as well… Beethoven took music beyond what we may describe as the pleasure principle of Viennese classicism; he permitted aggressive and disintegrative forces to enter musical form: he placed the tragic experience at the core of his heroic style. He now introduced elements into instrumental music that had previously been neglected or unwelcome. A unique characteristic of the “Eroica” Symphony—and of its heroic successors—is the incorporation into musical form of death, destructiveness, anxiety, and aggression, as terrors to be transcended within the work of art itself. And it will be this intrusion of hostile energy, raising the possibility of loss, that will also make affirmations worthwhile.” (Maynard Solomon, Beethoven, 1977)

Notes by Joel Lazar ©2024

Philanthropic Support

The Washington Sinfonietta is a group of professionally trained musicians who dedicate their time and talent to the music lovers who attend our performances and the contributors who support our activities. We invite you to become a member of the Washington Sinfonietta Friends by making a gift today.

Donate at the box office, by mail to Washington Sinfonietta, P.O. Box 6740, Falls Church, VA 22046, or give online at: washingtonsinfonietta.org/donate

The Washington Sinfonietta is a non-profit corporation and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Your contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

The Sinfonietta wishes to thank the following Washington Sinfonietta Friends for their generous contributions and support:

Individuals

Debra and Anthony Anker*
Dominic Argentieri
Barbara Bankoff
Barbara Burrell*
Eric Cline*
Kirsten Dalboe
Mr and Mrs Jonathan Davis*
Stephen Fisher
Sheryl and David Friedlander
Eve Farber*
Rosanne and Douglas Gochman
Charlotte Goldy*
Tibor and Tania Ham
Sandra Harris*
Mariah Heinzerling*
Stephanie Herman
Gerald Hodgkins
Ilene Klinghoffer

Joel and Susan Lazar
Dawn Levy*
Jody Maxmin*
Jim McIntyre and Leila Rao
Edwina Moldover
Sarah Morris*
Mitch Muhlheim
Robin Ngo*
Jennifer Radin*
Susan and Laurence Ramin*
Scott Silverman*
Avery Staples
Robert Staples
Seiichi Takedai
Jon Teske
Nina Uzick*
Walter Wynn

*in memory of Diane Cline

Corporations/Organizations

City of Falls Church
Blackbaud Giving Fund

Facilities

Father Burl Salmon and Jeff Drake, The Falls Church Episcopal

Volunteers

Those who have thoughtfully volunteered for us in seasons past include:

Debra Anker
Richard Hong
Emilia Jurzyk
Alexia Kauffman
Ilene Klinghoffer
Alice Lieberman
Lucy Lieberman
Charles Manning