MAX BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26

SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT

November 6, 7 and 8, 2015

JUDD GREENSTEIN Change

MAX BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Vorspiel; Allegro moderato
Adagio
Finale: Allegro energico

Sarah Chang, violin

INTERMISSION

PIOTR ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74: Pathétique
Adagio; Allegro non troppo
Allegro con grazia
Allegro molto vivace
Finale: Adagio lamentoso

[Note on Judd Greenstein work is forthcoming.]

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
MAX BRUCH
Born January 6, 1838, Cologne
Died October 2, 1920, Friedenau

Max Bruch appears fated to remain a one-work composer. His choral compositions are
still admired in Germany, and one hears the Scottish Fantasy from time to time (including on last
year’s Jacobs Masterworks opening concert), but Bruch’s reputation today rests squarely on the
fame of one work, his First Violin Concerto. Ironically, this concerto was a product of his youth
– he began work on it at age 19, finished the first version nine years later, and had it in final form
in 1868, when he was only 30. Joseph Joachim, the dedicatee, gave the successful premiere of
this version, and the concerto’s instant popularity overwhelmed everything else Bruch wrote
thereafter. He is said to have reacted with exasperation when young violinists came to play for
him, for they always played this concerto. He was left complaining that he had written some
other pieces for violin.

There are several good reasons for this concerto’s continuing popularity. Bruch writes
gorgeous melodies for the violin here – this is late German romanticism at its most lyric. He is
then able to build these simple melodies into climaxes of tremendous power and excitement.
Last, and certainly not least, this concerto is beautifully written for the violin: it sits gracefully
under the fingers, and while the Concerto in G minor is very difficult, it is also very grateful to
play. This concerto has an evergreen quality that will keep it fresh forever.

The form is slightly unusual, and the opening movement gave Bruch a great deal of
trouble. The first two movements are joined, and Bruch worried that the opening section was not
a complete movement. He called it Vorspiel (Prelude), and it is in an unusual form. It begins
with a slow orchestral introduction, and the violin enters with a cadenza-like recitative. The
music soon rushes ahead on soaring themes and dramatic writing to a great climax, and then
Bruch brings back the recitative of the very beginning to lead the way into the middle movement.

The Adagio is one of the great slow movements in all the violin concerto literature, and it
shows Bruch’s considerable melodic gift. There are three separate themes, all gentle and
yearning, and all of them well-suited to the violin’s lyrical nature. Bruch weaves them into a
climax of considerable power before the movement ends quietly. The finale, aptly marked
Allegro energico, is a rondo-like movement in G Major. The orchestra’s introduction leads to the

impressive violin entrance, reminiscent of gypsy fiddling. Once again, Bruch offers some terrific
writing for the violin, and his performance markings tell the tale: passages marked appassionato
or con fuoco or con forza alternate with material marked dolce or tranquillo e grazioso. The
movement races to its close on a Presto coda that sends the solo violin soaring to the very top of
its range.

Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74: Pathétique
PETER ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY
Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk
Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg

Tchaikovsky made a successful visit to America in the spring of 1891, when he was one
of the guest conductors at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York City. During these years he
frequently conducted abroad, including appearances in France, Belgium and Poland, but
Tchaikovsky was always homesick for his native land when he was on tour, and he rushed back
to Russia in 1892. At his home in the village of Klin, north of Moscow, Tchaikovsky drafted the
first three movements of a symphony in E-flat Major, but he was dissatisfied and abandoned it,
plunging once again into his perpetual terror that he had written himself out and would never
compose again.

Then in February 1893 he began another symphony. This one grew out of a note he had
written to himself the previous year: “The ultimate essence of the plan of the symphony is LIFE.
First movement – all impulsive passion, confidence, thirst for activity. Must be short. (Finale
DEATH–result of collapse.) Second movement love; third disappointments; fourth ends dying
away (also short).” This note was the seed for Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, though the plan
would be considerably modified in the course of composition. To his nephew Tchaikovsky
wrote, “I had an idea for a new symphony, this time with a program – but a program of a kind
that will remain an enigma to all. Let them guess it who can…This program is permeated with
subjective feeling…While composing it in my mind, I wept frequently.”

The draft of the symphony was complete by April 1893, and the orchestration was done
in August. Though he was perpetually unsure about his new works, this time Tchaikovsky was
confident that he had written well: “I love it as I have never loved a single one of my offspring…
Never have I been so pleased with myself, so proud, so happy in the knowledge that I have

created something good.”
Clearly, the new symphony was important to its creator, and he wished to take measure

of its emotional significance with a suitable nickname. At first he wanted to call it “Program”
Symphony, but he was quickly talked out of so bland a suggestion. His brother Modest
suggested the subtitle Tragic, but the composer disliked that. Then Modest suggested Pathétique,
and the composer agreed immediately. The term pathétique is difficult to translate into English,
and its automatic rendering as “pathetic” is misleading; as Tchaikovsky understood the term, it
meant more nearly “emotional” or “passionate.” Yet the “meaning” of this symphony remains
elusive. A generation or so ago, it was almost a convention that recordings of the Pathétique
would feature a jacket illustration of a lugubrious hooded figure descending steps into the depths
of a gloomy cloister. That image had nothing to do with the music, but it seemed a sort of visual
equivalent of this music’s unsettling emotional impact.

The Pathétique begins in darkness. Over the contrabasses’ open fifth, solo bassoon sings
the somber opening melody, and this smoothly evolves into the movement’s main subject at the
Allegro non troppo. The second episode is built on one of the most famous themes Tchaikovsky
ever wrote, a heartfelt falling melody for strings that he marks “tenderly, singing, expansive”;
these two ideas will form the basis of this vast sonata-form movement. The exposition trails off
in the woodwinds – Tchaikovsky wants the solo bassoon to play so quietly that he marks its part
with SIX piano signs – but the opening of the development is the most violent in the symphonic
literature. Out of that silence, the orchestra explodes (this is a moment famous for terrifying
dozing concert-goers), and the tumultuous development centers on the opening theme. The
climax comes on two huge smashes of sound – the first like a crack of thunder, the second
exhausted and falling away – and finally a noble brass chorale draws this lengthy movement to
its consoling close.

The second movement, Allegro con grazia, is a waltz, but instead of writing it in the
waltz meter of 3/4, Tchaikovsky casts this one in 5/4. Despite the sour critic who claimed that
this waltz could be danced only by someone with three feet, this is graceful music. Tchaikovsky
keeps the flowing trio section in 5/4 as well, and its lightness is set off by a deep contrabass line
that throbs along beneath the easy flow of melody.

The Allegro molto vivace, one of Tchaikovsky’s most exciting movements, is both a
scherzo and a march. It opens with skittering triplets, and solo oboe quickly sounds the

sharp-edged march tune. This movement is beautifully controlled: Tchaikovsky gradually builds
these simple materials into a powerful march that drives to an incandescent close.

It is a close that inevitably brings a burst of applause, but the true ending is still to come.
And it is dark indeed, for this symphony concludes with a grieving and dark slow movement that
Tchaikovsky significantly marks Adagio lamentoso. The almost sobbing violin theme at the
beginning is remarkable for its sound projection: Tchaikovsky has it played jointly by the two
violin sections, and the melodic line moves back and forth between them at each note – in effect,
neither section has the theme, which is heard only as product of their combined effort. The
movement rises to an agitated climax, then slowly slips back into the blackness from which the
symphony began. Tchaikovsky takes an artistic risk here, closing with slow and bleak music
rather than with the traditional excitement. Yet his instincts proved correct, and this symphony’s
vanishing into the darkness – however strange it must have seemed to that first audience – makes
for a powerful conclusion.

Tchaikovsky led the premiere on October 28, 1893, before a St. Petersburg audience that
could make little sense of so unexpected an ending. Nine days later Tchaikovsky was dead at the
age of 53, apparently the victim of cholera, though the exact circumstances remain uncertain. At
a second performance of this symphony twelve days after his death, the audience was
overwhelmed by music that had left them mystified only a short time before, and the proximity
of Tchaikovsky’s death to the premiere of this dark music gave rise to all kinds of retroactive
interpretations of its meaning. Tchaikovsky himself gave no indication beyond his cryptic
comment: “Let them guess it who can.”

-Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Why This Program? Why These Pieces? – by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist

When I interviewed Jahja Ling for these notes, he had not yet received the score for the new
Judd Greenstein work. He, of course, could say little about it, other than it had been
recommended by trustworthy sources, and he was looking forward to conducting its local
premiere. This is also the first time that any of this composer's music has been played by the San
Diego Symphony Orchesttra.

As to the Bruch Violin Concerto, our conductor reminisced: “This was the first piece I
ever heard played live, when I was a child in Jakarta, at a rehearsal of an amateur orchestra. I left

that hall and could not get that beautiful melody from the middle movement out of my head. It
stayed with me, and became part of the impulse I later developed to pursue a conducting career.
From the beginning, I wanted to conduct it because I certainly could not have become that kind
of violinist. The piece really had a great impact.”

The ever-popular Tchaikovsky Pathétique Symphony, as Jahja Ling recalled, was the
first symphony he learned as a Yale Music School student, and afterwards “...was the first
Tchaikovsky symphony I conducted with a fine orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, in 1983.
When I learned it at Yale, my teacher, Otto Werner-Mueller, taught it to me. He was a student of
the great conductor, Igor Markevich, world-recognized as a Tchaikovsky expert. Again, it is a
situation of a teacher passing down a great tradition to the student, a process I treasure.”

**********
Judd Greenstein's Change, a new work co-commissioned by this orchestra and the North
Carolina Symphony, is receiving its West Coast premiere at these concerts. The deservedly
popular, beautiful Violin Concerto in G minor by Max Bruch was first played by the original San
Diego Symphony Orchestra under Buren Schryock, its first music director, in1915. Arnold
Krauss was the violin soloist. The reconstituted, post-war San Diego Symphony first played it
under the direction of Fabien Sevitzky during the 1949 season, with Jerome Kasin as soloist.
Since then it has been repeated here ten times, most recently under Jahja Ling's direction (when
Glenn Dicterow was the soloist) during the 2006 season.
Tchikovsky's enormously popular Symphony No. 6: Pathétique began its extensive run
here when it was led by Fabien Sevitzky during the 1959 season. Notably, when he was music
director here in the 1980s, David Atherton led it during four seasons of his tenure. Ken-David
Masur led it here most recently during the 2013-14 season, when the San Diego Symphony
Orchestra gave it its fifteenth presentation.