BOMBASTIC BRAHMS



Russell Peck
b.1945

Russell Peck
Timpani Concerto Harmonic Rhythm

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“A timpani concerto is a challenging assignment. Having only 5 tuned drum notes with which to build a solo, compared to the piano's 88 keys, and the orchestra's thousands, it is an utterly stringent economy-of-means situation…” Russell Peck

The title of the Concerto, Harmonic Rhythm, refers to the rhythm of chord changes in music. Peck writes: “As a bass instrument, the timpani usually functions as a means of accenting harmonic rhythm in the orchestra. Thus, I felt the greatest challenge was to have the solo timpani be as convincing as other concerto instruments in the traditional sense of presenting major melodic material and having a coherent voice in dramatic partnership with the orchestra. The virtuoso aspect includes rapidly changing the pitch of the drums with foot pedals while playing fast and difficult striking patterns, and use of multiple mallets. Like a cello, I wanted the timpani to carry real lines of musical thought, and explore nuance and phrasing, in which the timpani has special capabilities because it commands the most extended dynamic range. To avoid the orchestra from distracting with its own facile virtuosity, I tried to keep it often in a clear accompaniment role, and in general to use textural simplicity as one way for the timpani's natural economy of means to speak with greater meaning.”

Ironically, part of the genesis of Harmonic Rhythm emerged from the pressure on Peck to write a symphony, with the result that the Concerto parallels the form of a Haydn Symphony. A slow introduction, which sets out one of the principal themes that threads through the entire piece, is followed by an allegro based on the same theme. The sections all connect and share musical material as well: a slow cantabile section, then tuneful lighter dance music, and an upbeat finale. In the middle of the piece, after the cantabile section, is an optional cadenza for unaccompanied timpani.

Peck is a Magna cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan, where he also received Master and Doctoral degrees in composition. Among his teachers were Gunther Schuller and George Rochberg. His compositions have been performed around the world and many have been recorded. His The Thrill of the Orchestra, a narrated orchestral demonstration piece that was recorded for the Discovery series by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Portuguese, Korean and Cantonese.

The composition of Harmonic Rhythm, premiered in 2000, was supported by a commissioning consortium of over 39 American orchestras, the largest consortium in history including major orchestras.



Johannes Brahms
1833-1897

Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1 in c Minor, Op. 68

“You don’t know what it is like always to hear that giant marching along behind me,” Brahms wrote to the conductor Hermann Levi, in reference to Beethoven. As a classically oriented composer who revered Beethoven, Brahms found writing a symphony a daunting proposition. It took fame, respectability, middle age and numerous false starts before he finally finished his First Symphony at age 43, after at least 14 years’ gestation. An earlier attempt at a symphony, in 1854, ended up, after numerous transformations, as part of the d minor Piano Concerto and the German Requiem.

Despite Brahms’s reputation and the positive anticipation of the public, the Symphony, premiered in 1876, was at first coolly received. The rigorous classical form baffled the public and critics, who expected something more romantic and innovative. Wagner, Liszt and programmatic music were all the rage and most critics considered the classical form backward looking and reactionary. But it was not long before the Symphony’s riveting power was recognized, along with its own contribution to symphonic innovation.

If, indeed, the First Symphony cannot strictly be considered program music, it nevertheless unfolds with great drama – even, one might say, a musical plot. While the typical classical symphony gave the greatest weight to the first movement, ending with a faster rousing finale, often a dance, Mozart, in his last three symphonies, and Beethoven in the Third, Fifth and especially the Ninth Symphonies, recast the pattern. In these works, the finale provides the culmination to the entire symphony. When listening to Brahms’s First, one can easily imagine the composer’s reticence at treading in the great man’s shadow. Nevertheless, his combined sense for musical drama and structure prevailed as he launched what conductor Hans von Bülow called “The Tenth.” Only Mendelssohn in his Symphony No. 3, “The Scottish,” had trod that path.

The ominous pounding of the timpani under slow ascending and descending chromatic scales,

fragmentary motives

and the ambiguous tonality of the Introduction poses a musical question – actually more of a demand – that remains unresolved until the final movement. It is one of the most spine-chilling introductions in all of classical music, made more so by the contrasting secondary theme, a trio for the oboe, flute and cellos – which, incidentally, is never heard again

. The following Allegro fleshes out motives from the Introduction into a full-fledged theme, developing it with an almost savage energy that threatens to obscure the traditional sonata form

. But Brahms was a classicist and introduces two new subsidiary themes into the Allegro, a gentle oboe theme, the mate to the one in the Introduction,

followed by another stormy chromatic one with an ascending chromatic scale and its resulting tonal ambiguity, in keeping with the overall mood of the movement.

The middle two movements are a respite from the drive of the first. The Andante sostenuto second movement, a classic ABA form, is in E major, although with a highly modified repeat, reminiscent of Beethoven's variations in the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony. The theme of this movement is in two phrases, the first concluding with a motive that Brahms uses in different musical contexts throughout.

The end of the second phrase recalls the opening of the Allegro in the first movement.

The oboe solo is a mate to the solo for the same instrument in the introduction,

beginning what becomes a pattern for Brahms in this symphony of foreshadowing and recalling motivic elements from movement to movement. Shortly afterwards, he hints at the main theme of the third movement to come in a brief duet for flute and oboe.

All in all, it is lovely, albeit melancholy, and still fraught with the unresolved tension of the work as a whole.

The third movement, a modified scherzo form, is more of an intermezzo that opens with a lilting clarinet theme, suggested already in the preceding movement.

It does, however, include a trio.

The contrapuntal accompaniment to the repeat of the clarinet theme, after the Trio section, foreshadows the principal theme from the Finale.

Rumbling timpani now returns us to the serious business of resolving the tensions raised in the first movement,

and the resolution appears none too optimistic with its creeping pizzicato strings and sforzando appoggiaturas in the winds.

This return to the mood of the first movement Allegro reminds us of the unresolved issues, but suddenly, as if from behind a cloud, an alpenhorn calls out, answered by the flute,

turning the turgid c minor into a resounding C major chorale-like melody.

The alpenhorn solo has its own little history. In 1868, eight years before the Symphony was premiered, Brahms had quarreled with his friend, and probably secret love, Clara Schumann, about whether she should cut back on her concretizing to spend more time at home with her eight children. That September, he sent her a mollifying postcard with the alpenhorn theme scrawled on it to the words, ”High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousand fold.”

Of course, the introduction of the chorale tune is not the final statement. Brahms develops it and a series of subsidiary themes with emotional force, but with less brutality than the first movement

. The chorale does battle with the music from the stormy introduction

to emerge triumphant in an exultant coda, again reminiscent of Beethoven's excited finales.