The Four Seasons, in contrast, is saturated with natural descriptions. Thus, whatever the psychological insights of Brahms’s Rhine journey, it doesn’t reflect the natural beauties of the river. Most important, though, the Vivaldi is a pre-eminent example of program music (instrumental music that tells a story or describes something visual), a musical technique that Brahms studiously avoided. It’s outgoing where the Brahms is inward it’s constantly bursting with new musical ideas where the Brahms concentrates on developing a limited store of material it’s ornate and virtuosic where the Brahms is austere. The Four Seasons, a set of four three-movement violin concertos composed around 1715 by Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), is radically different. And even here, despite what Larry calls its “predictable lilt,” the mood is slightly unsettled, with “the angst primarily in the harmonic and melodic leaning.” But while, in the end, it is the least extroverted, it’s only in the third movement-which was taken up for songs by Frank Sinatra and Carlos Santana/Dave Matthews-that the music relaxes. Then, too, there’s far more thematic integration here than there is in its siblings, a stronger sense of a larger organic whole. In fact, all the movements of the Third end quietly. And it’s the only one that ends quietly-without the despair of the Tchaikovsky Sixth, certainly, but without the heroic uplift that marks the other three. The Third stands out from the other three Brahms symphonies in further ways, too. Robert’s Third is upbeat, bright, ebullient Brahms’s is dark and anguished from the opening, which, as conductor Larry Loh puts it, “has a turbulence and rhythmic angst that carry all the way into the finale.” More than any of Brahms’s other symphonies, the Third gives a sense that we’re witnessing some deep autobiographical secrets. It’s no surprise, either, that while both symphonies are arguably fueled by love for Clara, their tones are radically different. And even well after Robert died, he was a continuing presence in what remained a triangular relationship: Brahms and Clara devoted endless time to editing Robert’s music and making sure that it remained in the public eye. True, Brahms’s relationship with Clara was apparently never consummated but their attachment was passionate and profound, on both the personal and artistic levels. Robert had been Brahms’s mentor-and Brahms had long been in love with Robert’s composer-pianist wife Clara. Brahms, after all, was still deeply entangled with the Schumann family. It’s actually no surprise that the two symphonies are linked. But Brahms’s decision to interweave the two symphonies by lifting his first theme from “The Rhenish” points to a profound connection. At first, this might seem like little more than coincidence. Years later, his protégé Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) took a trip to a spa on the Rhine-and was inspired to compose his Symphony No. In 1850, Robert Schumann, inspired by his move to Dusseldorf (and, even more, by visiting the Cologne Cathedral), wrote his Third Symphony (“The Rhenish”) to celebrate the Rhine and its environs. Tonight, it’s the Rhine that runs through the center of our program. At our last concert, we celebrated the Danube River.
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