London Symphony Orchestra: Online Concert Programme | Thu 13 February 2025

William Walton (1902-1983): Cello Concerto

Walton’s Cello Concerto was commissioned by Gregor Piatigorsky with a generous fee (for the time) of $3,000. Walton gleefully told Ivor Newton – who had been Piatigorsky’s intermediary – that, as a professional composer he would ‘write anything for anybody if he pays me … Naturally, I write much better if I’m paid in dollars.’ Whether it was the excellent fee or Piatigorsky’s playing which inspired Walton, the result is one of his most evocative and sun-drenched works. Composed between February and October 1956, it was his first major orchestral piece since the Violin Concerto of 1938–9 (written for Piatigorsky’s friend Jascha Heifetz). Piatigorsky gave the world premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Munch, on 25 January 1957, and gave the London premiere a couple of weeks later on 13 February, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Malcolm Sargent.

After the London premiere, the Cello Concerto was described by the critic Colin Mason as ‘entrancing, the work of a man refreshed in spirit’. Not everyone shared this view at the time (it did not appeal to the more aggressive apostles of 1950s modernism), but the concerto – written at Walton’s home on the island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples – does indeed seem to exude the freshness and warmth of Mediterranean air (Walton’s biographer Stephen Lloyd wrote that it had ‘a new-found serenity’), and it reveals the composer’s melodic gifts at their most lyrical. This is apparent right from the start of the opening Moderato: a delicate splash of vibraphone and harp, and a gently ticking ostinato, over which the soloist unfolds the movement’s supple and seductive main theme. The second movement is a kind of serious-minded scherzo, marked Allegro appassionato: spiky and energetic (with a couple of more reflective passages), the orchestral writing deft and transparent. The finale is a theme with four free variations (or ‘improvisations’), of which the second and fourth (one a virtuoso display, the other a rhapsodic reflection) can be thought of as substitutes for a conventional cadenza. The fourth improvisation leads into the coda where the music (and the mood) of the first movement returns to telling effect. The concerto ends with a long low C on the cello, coloured by quiet, sultry chords on vibraphone, celesta and harp.

© Nigel Simeone

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 1 in D major (‘Titan’)

1. Langsam. Schleppend [Slow. Dragging] – Immer sehr gemächlich [Always at a very leisurely pace]
2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell [With strong movement, but not too fast] – Trio: Recht gemächlich [Quite leisurely] – Tempo primo
3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen [Solemn and measured, without dragging]
4. Stürmisch bewegt [Stormy]

When Gustav Mahler began his First Symphony in 1884, ‘modern music’ meant Wagner, while the standard by which new symphonies were judged was that of Brahms, the arch ‘classical-romantic’. In a Brahmsian symphony there was little room for Wagnerian lush harmonies, or sensational new orchestral colours. In fact the orchestral forces Brahms employed were basically the same as those used by Beethoven and Schubert in their symphonies, three-quarters of a century earlier.

So for audiences brought up on Brahms, hearing Mahler’s First Symphony would have been like stepping into a new world. The opening can still surprise even today: one note, an A, is spread through almost the entire range of the string section, topped with ghostly violin harmonics. Other unusual colours follow: distant trumpet fanfares, high clarinet cuckoo-calls, a plaintive cor anglais, the bell-like bass notes of the harp. All this would have been startlingly new in Mahler’s time. And there’s nothing tentative or experimental about this symphonic debut: at 24, Mahler knows precisely the sound he wants, and precisely how to get it.

Still, there’s much more to Mahler’s First Symphony than innovative orchestral colours and effects. When the symphony was first performed it had a title, ‘Titan’ – taken from the once-famous novel by the Germanromantic writer Jean Paul (the pen name of Johann Paul Richter). For Richter the ‘Titan’, the true genius, is a ‘Heaven-Stormer’ (Himmelsstürmer) an obsessive, almost recklessly passionate idealist. The idea appealed strongly to Mahler, but so too did Richter’s vividly poetic descriptions of nature. For the premiere, Mahler set out his version of the Titan theme in an explanatory programme note, which told how the symphony progressed from ‘the awakening of nature at early dawn’, through youthful happiness and love, to the sardonic gloom of the funeral march, and then to the finale, subtitled ‘From Inferno to Paradise’. And it was clear that Mahler’s interest in Richter’s theme was more than literary. Behind the symphony, he hinted to friends, was the memory of a love affair that had ended, painfully, at about the time he began work on the symphony.

But Mahler soon began to lose faith in programmes. ‘I would like it stressed that the symphony is greater than the love affair it is based on’, he wrote. ‘The real affair became the reason for, but by no means the true meaning of, the work.’ In later life he could be blunt: when someone raised the subject at an evening drinks party, Mahler is said to have leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘Perish all programmes!’. But for most listeners, music that is so passionate, dramatic and so full of the sounds of nature can’t be fully explained in the detached terms of ‘pure’ musical analysis. Fortunately the First Symphony is full of pointers to possible meanings beyond the notes. The main theme of the first movement – heard on cellos and basses after the slow, intensely atmospheric ‘dawn’ introduction – is taken from the second of Mahler’s four Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfarer’), written as a ‘memorial’ to his affair with the singer Johanna Richter (no relation of the novelist, but the name connection is striking). In the song, a young man, jilted in love, sets out on a beautiful spring morning, hoping that nature will help his own heart to heal. For most of the first movement, Mahler seems to share the young man’s hope. The ending seems cheerful enough. But at the heart of the movement comes a darkly mysterious passage, echoing the ‘dawn’ introduction, but adding sinister new sounds: the low, quiet growl of a tuba, ominous drum-beats, and a repeated sighing figure for cellos. For a moment, the music seems to echo the final words of the song: ‘So will my joy blossom too? No, no; it will never, never bloom again’.

Dance music dominates the second movement, especially the robust, earthy vigour of the Ländler (the country cousin of the sophisticated urban Waltz). There are hints here of another, earlier song, Hans und Grete, in which gawky young Hans finds a sweetheart at a village dance – all innocent happiness. But the slower, more reflective Trio brings more adult expression: nostalgia and, later, sarcasm (shrill high woodwind). The third movement is in complete contrast. This is an eerie, sardonic funeral march, partly inspired by a painting by Jacques Callot, ‘The Huntsman’s Funeral’, in which a procession of animals carry the hunter to his grave. One by one, the orchestral instruments enter quietly, playing a famous old nursery tune, Frère Jacques – which sounds like another interesting name connection, except that Austrians like Mahler would have known the tune to the words ‘Brother Martin, are you sleeping?’. At the heart of this movement, Mahler makes a lengthy quotation from the last of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The song tells in soft, gentle tones of how a young man, stricken with grief at the loss of the girl he loves, finds consolation in the thought of death. This is the dark heart of the First Symphony.

But this is not the end of the story. In the finale Mahler strives onward – in the words of the discarded programme, ‘From Inferno to Paradise’. At first all is turbulence, but when the storm has died down, strings present an ardent, slower melody – unmistakably a love theme. There’s a brief memory of the first movement’s ‘dawn’ music, then the struggle begins again. Eventually massed horns introduce a new, radiantly hopeful theme, strongly reminiscent of ‘And he shall reign’ from Handel’s Messiah. More reminiscences and still more heroic struggles follow, until dark introspection is finally overcome, and the symphony ends in jubilation. Mahler’s hero has survived to live, and love, another day.

© Stephen Johnson