Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

It took a lot to make the composer and critic Virgil Thomson happy. He was famous for savaging new works he didn't like, and the truth is, he didn't like very many new works at all. One exception was Bohuslav Martinů's very first symphony, written in 1942. Thomson said this: "The Martinů Symphony is a beaut. It is wholly lovely and doesn't sound like anything else."
The story of how this symphony came to be is as fascinating as the music itself, and it's perfectly in keeping with the relentless curiosity of Martinů as a composer. Martinů, a prolific composer who wrote nearly 400 works, had just arrived in the US in 1941 as a refugee from war-torn Czechoslovakia. He was 51 years old and had never written a symphony before. This delay wasn't a case of crushing self-doubt, as it was for Brahms. It was actually a seeming lack of interest in the symphonic genre, which was not unusual at the time. But in 1942, Martinů sent a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a friend to the dozens of refugee composers who had arrived from Europe during the early days of World War II. Koussevitzky commissioned Martinů to write a large-scale work, and Martinů responded with his First Symphony -- a perfect welcome to his new home, and to the grand adventure he was setting off on in a country he found intimidating, exciting, and full of opportunity. The result is a piece of remarkable contrast, energy, light, and boisterous hope, given the situation back in his homeland. As the sponsor of this episode, Pere Casan Bonet, put it, the symphony is "a pool of energy that makes me feel optimistic even at my lowest points."
We'll start today with a quick overview of Martinů's life and work, since he might not be the most familiar composer to you, and then we'll talk our way through this incredible First Symphony. Martinů has always been one of my favorite "underrated" composers, so it's a thrill to get to talk to you about him today. Join us!

Thence the universe resounds

With a joyful cry 
I AM.
These are the final lines of Alexander Scriabin's epic Poem of Ecstasy, a 300-line poem that takes nearly 10 minutes to read aloud and is one of the most surreal texts in the world. Scriabin wrote a Poem of Ecstasy in text and a Poem of Ecstasy in music simultaneously. Both are absolutely wild, with the musical Poem of Ecstasy being a 20-minute thrill ride that alternates between languid, sinewy, seductive music and some of the loudest, most over-the-top, and dramatic music that could possibly exist. I've always been fascinated by Scriabin, and so this week's episode is an opportunity to talk about his wild (I'm going to be using that word a lot today) life and the eclectic philosophy behind Scriabin's works, as well as to take you through this masterpiece of musical sensuality. Scriabin not only doesn't shy away from sensual aspects in music but instead fully embraces them; in fact, the original title for this piece was Orgiastic Poem! Thankfully, since the piece probably would have never been performed with that title, Scriabin changed the name to Poem of Ecstasy, and the piece has stayed in the repertoire of most big orchestras ever since. And big is the key word here, because this piece is written for an absolutely massive orchestra. Like a Mahler symphony, the Poem of Ecstasy is an event whenever it is performed, simply from seeing the sheer size of the orchestra on stage when you see this piece live in concert. It is truly an overwhelming experience to listen to this piece, and I can't wait to share it with you this week. Join us!

Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;
Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God,
And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.
These lines are affixed to the first page of Sibelius' tone poem Tapiola, a piece that is mysterious in many ways and stands as Sibelius' last completed major work. You might be expecting me to say that Sibelius died soon after its composition, but this is not the case. Sibelius wrote Tapiola in 1926, but did not pass away until 1957. Over the course of Sibelius' final 30 years, he wrote almost no music, a creative silence that has never been properly explained. There are many theories about this silence, but the answer to why Sibelius stopped composing might never be found. So, we have this final major piece, Tapiola, written at the very height of the composer's powers. Tapiola, a piece of around 15–20 minutes in duration, is concentrated Sibelius at its very best. It is a piece full of mystery, atmosphere, and most of all, the immense and overwhelming power of nature. Tapiola directly translates to "The Realm of Tapio," Tapio being the forest spirit that is prominent in the Finnish national epic myth, the Kalevala. Throughout this piece, Sibelius uses an incredible economy of ideas to create something wholly unique. There is not a single composer who sounds like Sibelius, and furthermore, no piece of Sibelius' that sounds like this one, save maybe for the 7th symphony, written just before Tapiola. It is a piece absolutely at odds with modern life, with the speed and energy of a city, with the short, attention-grabbing dopamine hits of social media, and even with our modern understanding of nature. As the writer Jay Goodwin says, "Like all art, music is chiefly a humanistic pursuit, meant to provide us with a window to our world. In this piece, however, there is the hair-raising sense that the paradigm has been reversed and that we are the ones being watched. There is the sense that the music is listening to us." I would only change one word in that quote: during Tapiola, I think we have the sense that nature is listening to us, because this music is, essentially, nature. I can't wait to talk you through this wonderfully enigmatic work. Join us!

In the aftermath of World War II, the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, who had been living in occupied Paris throughout the war, wrote a new symphony entitled "Liturgical." He wrote an extended commentary on the piece, which included these lines: "My intention in this work was to symbolize the reaction of modern man against the morass of barbarism, stupidity, suffering, machine-mindedness, and bureaucracy that has been besieging us for some years now. I have reproduced in musical terms the combat that is joined in man's heart between yielding to the blind forces that encircle him and his instinct for happiness, his love of peace, his apprehension of a divine refuge. My symphony is, if you like, a drama played out between three characters, whether real or symbolic: misery, happiness, and man. These are everlasting themes. I have tried to give them new life."
It doesn't get much clearer than that in terms of a "message" behind a piece, and the symphony reflects these feelings of Honegger's in almost every note. This is not a symphony to be taken lightly, and over the course of its roughly 30-minute runtime, Honegger explores these ideas from three different perspectives, all centered around the Catholic liturgy. In this symphony, we find an attempt at understanding after the unthinkable had occurred, a passionate condemnation of war, and a search for eternal peace. This is a symphony that, in its heyday, was fairly popular, with recordings by two of the world's great conductors, Herbert von Karajan and Charles Munch, but it slowly faded from concert stages and is now very rarely performed. Thanks to Staffan for sponsoring today's episode on this symphony, which was a discovery for me and which I think will be a discovery for many of you as well. Today we'll talk about the detailed program that Honegger attached to the symphony, the liturgical connections in the piece, and of course the music itself. Join us!

In 1872, at the age of 31, Dvořák wrote a Piano Quintet designated as Opus 5. Dvořák was not a prodigy like some other famous composers; instead, his development as a composer was slow and steady. Later in his life, he would look back at some of these early pieces with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment, burning some and revising others. In the case of the Op. 5 Piano Quintet, Dvořák decided to revise the piece in 1887, some 15 years after its original composition, at a point when he was approaching the peak of his creative powers. Soon, however, he cast aside the older quintet and decided to write an entirely new piece. What we were gifted was his Op. 81 Piano Quintet: a luminous, gorgeous, exciting, tragic, joyful, folk-like, classical, and flat-out masterful work that in some ways sums up what makes Dvořák such a wonderful composer, and why his music never really gets old.
The Dvořák Piano Quintet is the kind of piece that feels like an old friend from the moment you start listening. Forty minutes later, as it comes to its rollicking end, you feel as if you've been on a journey through a familiar tale told in the most illuminating way. I've always adored this piece, and now that I'm able to explore more chamber music on the show, I'm thrilled to share it with you this week. We'll talk about Dvořák's blend of folk-like sonorities with his adherence to classical forms, his inexhaustible melodies, and the intangibles that make his music so fresh and inviting. Join us!
Recording: Cleveland Quartet w/ Emanuel Ax