Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Enoch Arden, Opus 38
RICHARD STRAUSS
Born June 11, 1864, Munich
Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Early in 1897, while he was at work on Don Quixote, Richard Strauss took up an entirely different project. He had become good friends with the actor and reciter Emil von Possart, and now he conceived a work that they could perform together as pianist and actor. For his text, Strauss chose Alfred, Lord Tennyson‘s Enoch Arden, which had been published in 1864. That long poem in free verse is built on one of the oldest of literary archetypes: a traveler (in this case a seafarer) leaves his family behind, departs on a long voyage, and returns many years later to find his home and his old life transformed. The most famous example of this archetype, of course, is The Odyssey, but where Odysseus returns to Ithaca to find that his wife Penelope and son Telemachus have remained loyal to his memory, the shipwrecked Enoch Arden meets a crueler fate. After many years of waiting for him, his wife had married his best friend, they have a child of their own, and Enoch‘s own children have grown up. Life has gone on without him, and – unwilling to destroy his wife and children‘s new happiness – Enoch keeps his identity hidden and dies in obscurity. Strauss completed Enoch Arden at the end of February 1897, and he and von Possart gave it a number of successful performances in a German translation by Adolf Strodtmann (at this performance it is heard in the original English).

Strauss cast Enoch Arden as a melodrama, a term that a century ago did not have the pejorative association it has today. For Strauss, it meant simply a drama with music, and he wrote a piano part that sometimes accompanies, sometimes complements Tennyson‘s poem. If that poem occasionally edges into sentimentality (particularly in its final minutes), it nevertheless has many virtues. These include Tennyson‘s beautiful command of the English language (it is a joy just to hear some of this language read well), as well as three sharply-defined major characters and a wide range of minor figures. Enoch Arden provides ample opportunity for a good actor to assume these many different roles and to breathe life into quite different characters and emotions. Enoch Arden is a poem that should be heard rather than read, and it is a tour de force for a first-class actor.

In Strauss‘ version, there is some musical scene-painting (the crash of the waves at the very beginning, for example), and Strauss creates distinctive themes for his three main characters: Annie Lee is given a sprightly rising figure, the miller‘s son Philip Ray has a modest melody, and the bluff Enoch Arden is depicted with a strong chordal sequence. Each of these themes accompanies the introduction of the children at the very beginning, and these theme-shapes will evolve and sometimes combine across the span of the drama; the “ocean” theme that opens Enoch Arden also becomes a participant in the music-drama, returning at key moments. The two parts of Enoch Arden are each introduced by a piano prelude, each is rounded off by a piano postlude and for long, long stretches it remains silent as the actor presents Tennyson‘s poem.

Tennyson‘s narrative and language are so clear and Strauss‘ music so well-suited to the tale that Enoch Arden does not require detailed description. This is a substantial work – it lasts well over fifty minutes – and over that span listeners may take pleasure in such things as Tennyson‘s creation of his three main characters as children, the leap in point of view from Philip and Annie to Enoch at the start of Part II, the way Strauss subtly develops his themes as the characters grow and change, and the host of minor characters who come to life and swirl through this tale. The melodrama as a form has virtually disappeared, and if Enoch Arden seems to come from a different era, it reminds us that even forgotten forms can have an unexpected emotional power.

Click here to read the complete text of Tennyson's Enoch Arden

Isoldès Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, S. 447
FRANZ LISZT
Born October 22, 1811, Raiding
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth

Liszt and Wagner shared a long and – at times – difficult relationship. During his years as music director in Weimar, Liszt championed Wagner‘s music and led a number of his operas, including the premiere of Lohengrin. But in 1865 Liszt‘s daughter Cosima abandoned her husband Hans von Bülow, ran off with Wagner, and eventually married him. Liszt was furious with both Cosima and Wagner and remained estranged from them until a reconciliation was worked out in 1872.

If Liszt could disapprove of Wagner‘s actions, he nevertheless admired his music, and he made piano transcriptions of music from eleven of Wagner‘s operas. Liszt wrote a number of what have been called paraphrases or reminiscences of music from the operas of many composers – often these were completely original compositions in which the opera music served only as the starting point for Liszt‘s own virtuosity. But Liszt‘s transcriptions of excerpts from Wagner‘s operas were much more respectful – they were almost always straightforward and literal. Liszt‘s intentions here were generous: he liked this music and felt that he could make it better known by creating piano versions of works that would be heard only rarely in their original form.

Liszt made his transcription of Isoldès Liebestod in 1867, only two years after the premiere of Tristan und Isolde (and during his period of estrangement from Wagner and Cosima). Isolde‘s final scene is of course best-known as the Liebestod (or “love-death”). At the end of the opera, as Tristan lies dead before her, Isolde sings her farewell to both Tristan and to life. This music has become familiar as one of the most famous orchestral excerpts from Wagner‘s operas: as Isolde finds ecstatic fulfillment in death, Wagner surrounds her with a shimmering, glowing orchestral sound. Liszt‘s transcription of this scene is remarkable for its fidelity to Wagner‘s music and for his subtle approach to the sonority of the piano.

Piano Trio in C Minor, Opus 101
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

Brahms wrote this trio – his last for violin, cello and piano – during the summer of 1886, which he spent at Hofstetten on Lake Thun in Switzerland. From the windows of his room, Brahms could look out over the lake to the immense glaciers of the Bernese Oberland, and some have felt that the elemental power of that craggy vista made itself felt in the music Brahms composed there. Certainly the Piano Trio in C Minor communicates tension from its opening instant. A description of an early performance of this trio, with Brahms at the piano, suggests the composer‘s own intensity in this music: “A simple room, a small upright pianino, the three giants, and Clara Schumann turning over the leaves . . . I can see [Brahms] now looking eagerly with those penetrating, clear, grey-blue eyes, at Joachim and Hausmann for the start, then lifting both of his energetic little arms high up and descending ‘plump‘ on that first C minor chord . . . as much as to say: ‘I mean THAT.‘” For all its power, though, the Trio in C Minor is probably Brahms‘ most concise work: despite being in four movements, it is almost the shortest of his twenty-four pieces of chamber music.

The opening of the Allegro energico explodes off the page, driving forward on the triplet rhythm that will energize much of the movement. A warmer second subject, marked cantando and scored for the strings in octaves, brings some relief, but this movement remains taut throughout: Brahms omits the exposition repeat and keeps both development and recapitulation quite short. The opening theme returns only in the closing moments and drives the movement to an unrelenting close.

The Presto non assai, also in C minor, is more restrained. Brahms mutes the strings and marks the beginning semplice (“simple”); the music skims along fluidly in the piano, with the strings following and echoing. The middle section, with arpeggiated pizzicato chords riding above the staccato piano, is particularly effective.

Much has been made of the rhythmic complexity of the Andante grazioso. Brahms originally thought the movement should be set in the unusual meter 7/4 but later changed this to one measure of 3/4 followed by two measures of 2/4; the middle section, marked quasi animato, continues the rhythmic complexities, switching between 9/8 and 6/8. Brahms alternates sonorities throughout this movement, the melodic line flowing back and forth between the piano and the combined strings.

The Allegro molto finale returns to the mood and the C-minor tonality of the first movement. There is nothing of the cheerful rondo-finale here (the movement is in modified sonata form): the flickering half-lights of the subdued opening quickly give way to the same craggy outbursts that marked the opening movement, and only in its final moments does Brahms relent and let the music break free to end in the tonic major. Rarely has C major sounded so fierce.