Honeck in a time of reflection
From Dvořák’s mournful, spellbinding fairytale opera, Rusalka, to Schubert’s and Richard Strauss’s songs, it is a concert characterized by story-telling, by longing and love. The opera’s unfortunate lovers, the water nymph who falls in love with a human prince, is perhaps comforted by Schubert’s tender Litanei or, for that matter, Strauss’s Allerseelen about longing and the yearning for a departed loved one. Brahms’s romantic Symphony No. 4 rounds off the concert in a grand and dignified fashion.
Once again, Berwaldhallen will be welcoming the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s former chief conductor Manfred Honeck and the young baritone Andrè Schuen, who we last heard in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Honeck has long wanted to do a Dvořák programme, and has been personally involved in putting together the suite with music from Dvořák’s opera Rusalka.
The libretto is based on a Slavic fairy tale about a water nymph who falls in love with a prince. In the most famous aria from the opera, “O silver moon”, she wishes to become human, and her wish is granted. However, the conditions are that both she and the prince will die if she does not find her love. Unfortunately, the story has a sad ending.
Strauss’s song of youth Allerseelen also deals with unrequited love, as the narrator wishes to regain his beloved and her love on All Souls Day. Strauss is perhaps best known for his symphonic poems from the 1890s and also later for his operas. But throughout his life he wrote songs and orchestrated many of them himself. Ruhe meine Seele was orchestrated as late as 1948. The talk of “difficult times” in the writings might reflect Strauss’ reflections on the fate of Germany.
“Vier Lieder”, which include Morgen and Ruhe meine Seele, were written by Strauss for his wife as a gift on their wedding day on September 10, 1894. The texts were chosen from the young avant-garde poets that had befriended on a trip to Berlin. The musical style is now regarded as Art Nouveau, meandering and richly ornamental. Traum durch die Dämmerung, characterized by rapture, ecstasy and delight, also belongs to this creative period. After 1906, he takes a break and does not compose any more songs for twelve years.
Schubert’s beloved, Litanei, with its simple, tender and comforting song “to the memory of all souls”, is the result of his newly acquired experience of the bel canto style, following lessons with Antonio Salieri. Des Fischers Liebesglück is about the fisherman’s fortunes in love, while at the same time the key of A minor betrays something else: loneliness and isolation. Schubert often used A minor in his works to describe this.
The crowning glory of the concert is Brahms’s final symphony. In 1885, he was considered to be Beethoven’s heir, and he considered himself to be the end point in a long golden age. He was not fond of the new, avant-garde music with Wagner at the helm. He did not even approach the musical drama and the programme music was alien to him. Instead, he can be seen as a romantic, but one who moulds his works into a classicist form. He derives the melodics from the popular folk roots. In Symphony No. 4, his thoughts converge on a conclusion, but not a sad one, one with the head held high. An autumn song with references to his major sources of inspiration: Palestrina, Bach and Beethoven.
Text: Andreas Konvicka
Participants
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.
Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.
Manfred Honeck has firmly established himself as one of the world’s leading conductors, whose distinctive and revelatory interpretations receive great international acclaim. He is now entering his 15th season as Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where his contract was extended last year to run through the 2027-2028 season. Guest appearances regularly include Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, as well as the major venues of Europe and festivals such as the BBC Proms, Salzburg Festival, Musikfest Berlin, Lucerne Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn, and Grafenegg Festival.
Born in Austria, Manfred Honeck completed his musical training at the University of Music in Vienna and was a member of the viola section in the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera for many years. He began his conducting career as assistant to Claudio Abbado and as director of the Vienna Jeunesse Orchestra. Subsequently, he was engaged by the Zurich Opera House, where he was awarded the European Conducting Prize in 1993. He has since served as one of three principal conductors of the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, as Music Director of the Norwegian National Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm.
Manfred Honeck also has a strong profile as an opera conductor. In his four seasons as General Music Director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, he conducted premieres of operas by Berlioz, Mozart, Poulenc, Strauss, Verdi, and Wagner. Beyond the podium, Manfred Honeck has designed a series of symphonic suites, including Janáček’s Jenůfa, Strauss’s Elektra and Dvořák’s Rusalka, all of which he recorded with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and regularly performs around the globe.
As a guest conductor, Manfred Honeck has worked with the leading international orchestras around the globe, including Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, New York Philharmonic, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Programme
Johannes Brahms wrote his symphonies in pairs: the first and second during the years 1876-1877 and the third and fourth between 1883 and 1885. The first three were immediately highly successful, but Brahms himself was initially dubious about the fourth. Such was the composer’s need for a second opinion that he made an arrangement for two pianos that he and the pianist and composer Ignaz Brüll performed to a small, select group of friends.
But the work was not warmly received. After the first movement the music critic Eduard Hanslick, who was otherwise so positive about Brahms’s music, is said to have stated: “Throughout the movement it felt as if I was being beaten up by two terribly intelligent people.” His good friend Max Kalbeck was deeply disappointed, and begged Brahms to scrap the two middle movements, which he found inappropriate. The violinist Joseph Joachim, another close friend and collaborator, was likewise bemused. But in the course of time, after having heard the orchestral version, they all changed their minds and came to consider the fourth symphony one of Brahms’s very greatest works.
It’s easy for today’s music aficionados to dismiss these initial reactions as being ill‑considered, but if the response is instead taken seriously it actually provides a key to understanding the work. Joachim had the idea of starting the first movement with two bars of held chords. This suggestion indicates an important feature, namely that the symphony begins abruptly, in medias res, as if opening the door on an orchestra that has already played several bars. Hanslick’s reaction draws attention to the violent nature of the first movement. The symphony is sometimes deemed to be tragic, but it can equally be described as being acerbic or astringent.
Kalbeck, who criticised the middle movements, was the only one to approve of the final movement even after only having heard the piano version. Others did not think it could hold its own as a symphonic finale, in part probably because it remains in the minor throughout, even ending with a minor chord – something that was, and is, relatively unusual. Another reason may have been the fact that the last movement is a passacaglia – a form deriving from a dance popular during the Baroque period and comprising a series of variations over a bass line or chord sequence.
Text: Tore Eriksson
Concert length: 2 h 20 min incl. intermission
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