Page 47 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

June 28 & 29
PROGRAM NOTES

wildly out of key, followed by
four more strokes, but a half-step
below the original tone. Even two
centuries of familiarity have not
dulled the impact of those
“mysteriously quiet” strokes—nor
have they lessened the amazement
that follows as we realize that they
are actually melodic materials
that will evolve and develop
throughout the movement.
A second movement, marked
Larghetto, is laid out in classical
theme-and-variations structure,
but such information is no more
indicative of the movement’s
impact than to say that the
Parthenon is rectangular. A natural
peacefulness of unruffled stillness
and serenity, a dreamscape in
pastels, an open-ended amble
that somehow combines
meandering with an inescapable
sense of purpose. The ultimate
goal remains carefully unrevealed
until the very end of the
movement—or what passes for
the end, anyway, since it leads
directly to a brief cadenza and Johannes Brahms
hence into the last movement,
without a break.
Given the sublimely enigmatic
first movement and the meditative Johannes Brahms
stillness of the Larghetto, it only
makes sense that the finale Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90
would be a lighthearted and
straightforward Rondo in which a
th
dancelike primary theme alternates AT A GLANCE By the middle of the 19 century
with contrasting passages that the commentarial class had
include some delightful hunting Born: 1833 declared the symphony extinct
calls in the horns. This being Died: 1897 as a living, breathing genre.
Beethoven, a glorious romp of Date of Composition: 1883 Heralds had been proclaiming
a coda takes up a good half of its decline for decades and
the entire movement; it wanders Instrumentation: Symphony audiences had accepted the
about with matchless abandon yet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 is scored situation as given. It all came
manages eventually to return to for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, down to the impact of Beethoven’s
the movement’s original materials 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, nine symphonies, considered
and, in so doing, finds a perfectly 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, as the peak achievements of the
balanced and satisfying ending. timpani and strings. rapidly-coalescing “standard

Summer 2024 gtmf.org 45