November 9, 2024, Kleinhans Music Hall

By Frank Housh
Media Room

1935 was an eventful year. Parker Brothers introduced “Monopoly,” RADAR was first demonstrated, a “Black Sunday” Dust Bowl storm ravaged the high plains and Hitler ordered German rearmament in violation of The Treaty of Versailles.

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s first official concert on Thursday, November 7, 1935, took place on a cool, dry evening, nearly identical to the that of the BPO’s 90th Anniversary Celebration (November 9, 2024) at Kleinhans Music Hall.

The 1935 concert included Beethoven’s Overture to Goethe’s play Egmont, Claude Debussy’s “Three Nocturnes,” and Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90. The BPO recreated that program Saturday night before a well-attended Kleinhans Music Hall.

Debussy

Just as a “nocturne” is a musical form evoking night (made famous by Chopin), it is also a style of painting depicting evening landscapes. Debussy re-orchestrated his “Three Nocturnes” into three movements in 1894 (“Clouds,” “Festivals,” and “Sirens”) after seeing a painting exhibition by James Whistler (below).

Debussy rejected the “impressionist” composer category, a convenient shorthand borrowed from the visual arts. He described himself as a “musical realist,” seeking to capture the world in sound.

As BPO Music Director JoAnn Falletta pointed out from the stage, when “Three Nocturnes” debuted in 1899 it was “new music”; in 1935, it was as distant to them as the music of 1988 is to us.

The BPO skillfully rendered his musical descriptions of “clouds” and “festivals” and conveyed them as Debussy intended, objects outside of a particular time and space.

“Sirens” refers to the nymphs of Ancient Greece who sang so beautifully that mariners would crash their vessels on the rocky coast as they sought the source of their heavenly sound. The Women of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus gave lovely voice to these alluring deities of ancient myth.

You can hear “Three Nocturnes” performed by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France here.

Brahms

Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 is a masterpiece, filled with color and emotion. Many commentators attribute its power to Brahms’ unrequited love for Clara Schumann and the love triangle which included Clara’s husband Robert until his death in 1856. Brahms and Clara were close for the next 40 years.

The BPO delivered a note-perfect performance of this notoriously complex composition. Brahms filled his Third Symphony with high drama and pathos, but it can only be produced by carefully focused, high-level professionals.

The mood shifts from one powerfully expressed emotion to another in what we might now call “manic depression.” Brahms expresses regret, serenity, euphoria and sadness, building to a triumphant finale filled with rolling kettle drums, pivoting on a dime to a soft, wistful end.

You can listen to a 1983 recording of Leonard Bernstein leading the Vienna Philharmonic in Brahms’ Third Symphony here.

Setting: July 5, 1809, Vienna.

Napoleon’s First Empire is at its height but fighting on two fronts: a “peninsular war” on the Iberian Peninsula against Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, and a second front in Central Europe against Austria.

During the Battle of Wagram, Vienna was battered with a brutal, unrelenting artillery barrage. The stalwart Viennese citizens who remained in the great city during the siege included one Ludwig Van Beethoven who had abandoned his studio to take refuge in a cellar with his brother Carl, at one point covering his ears with pillows to protect his degenerating hearing.

The trauma of the shelling and military occupation of Vienna affected Beethoven deeply; he recalled “nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts,” admitting “it affected me body and soul.”

Beethoven wrote incidental music for a revival of Goethe’s play “Egmont” as an expression of solidarity with those who fought for the emancipation of mankind from the tyranny of corrupt, oppressive authority.

Goethe’s “Egmont” is a political manifesto in which Count Egmont, a tolerant authority figure who advocates a multi-racial democracy, is cruelly and publicly executed by the authoritarian Duke of Alba who insists on violently enforcing extreme political and religious dogma.

You can hear a 2020 recording of Karina Canellakis leading the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture here.

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The BPO’s dazzling reprise of its debut performance nine decades later was anything but inevitable. Indeed, when Lajos Shuk’s baton dropped in 1935, the BPO’s existence likely seemed fragile.

Ninety years ago a catastrophic global war approached, the life-sustaining farmland of the prairies was literally blowing away, and there must have been precious little reason to believe that the BPO would last another nine decades.

The Orchestra remains with us because we have believed in it, and over the decades thousands of us have dedicated ourselves to its success.

As Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture filled Kleinhans just a few days after the presidential election, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fragility of our republic whose endurance, just a few years ago, seemed inevitable.

I think Beethoven knew his music still be performed in 1935, even in 2024; I think he would have enjoyed Saturday’s performance.

It must also be said that Beethoven would be deeply disappointed that we have failed to nurture our political freedom, that we have turned our back on his Count Egmont and opened the gates to our own Duke of Alba.

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s 90th Anniversary Celebration
concert repeated Sunday, November 10, 2024.
More information can be found here.

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By Frank Housh · Launched 4 years ago

Captivating writing about the arts and current events from a former classical musician, civil rights attorney, and law professor.