Programme Notes

Winter Concert 28th February 2025

Richard Wagner - Siegfried Idyll, WWV. 103

Cosima Wagner, the composer's wife and daughter of Franz Liszt, celebrated her 33rd birthday on Christmas Day 1870.  She awoke to a 15-piece orchestra playing this piece on the stairs leading to her room.  It was Richard's way of thanking her for their marriage 4 months earlier (though they had been together since 1864) and for the birth of their first son, Siegfried, who was by now 18 months old.  The family named it Tribschen Idyll after their house, and it would have remained within the family had not financial pressures forced Wagner to seek publication in 1877.  The Siegfried title was acquired about this time, and Wagner provided a sub-title "a Symphonic birthday greeting".  It is the most played of Wagner's instrumental works and contains a theme from act III of Siegfried complemented by a lullaby composed, presumably for his son, by Wagner in 1868. Programme notes provided by Rod Berrieman, Making Music The orchestra is tonight using scores originally owned by Geoffrey Emerson. We are indebted to him for this and many other scores and orchestral parts he has so generously donated to the Borders Chamber Orchestra.

J.S. Bach - Concerto for Violin, Oboe and Strings in C Minor, BWV. after 1060
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro

The original version of this concerto was probably written for a concert in Zimmermann's Coffeehouse in the Catharinenstrasse, during the Leipzig Fair, in the early 1730s, soon after Bach had been appointed director of the Collegium Musicum. The concerto played on that evening has come down to us as a work for two harpsichords and strings, but it has kept musical scholars busy for many years and now there is fairly general agreement that this was not its original form. It could have been a concerto for two violins, but it is more likely that Bach wrote it as we now hear it, for violin and oboe, partly confirmed by the ease with which the right hands of the two harpsichords revert to these instruments. In three movements – fast, slow, fast – the concerto is in the style of Vivaldi.

The opening Allegro is cast in typical Baroque form, with a recurrent main theme for the orchestral tutti alternating with lighter episodes for the solo oboe and violin. The Adagio is a rather melancholy duet for the solo instruments, in vocal style, with discreet string accompaniment. In the same basic form as the first movement, but even more brilliant, the final Allegro is a fiery piece with a gradual build-up of tension until the opening theme makes its last appearance.
Programme notes provided by John Dalton, Making Music


INTERVAL


Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 4 in B flat, Op.60
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Allegro ma non troppo

Little is known of the circumstances of the composition of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony except that it was commissioned by Count Oppensdorf on the understanding that it would be in the style of the Second Symphony. Although the composer was already engaged in writing his Fifth he readily put that aside in order to earn a fee of 350 florins. We know that it was written in 1806 and first performed in March 1807 at the home of his patron Prince Lobkowitz, in Vienna. Apart from the Fifth Symphony, it also occupied Beethoven's thoughts at the same time as the opera Fidelio, the Violin Concerto and the First Rasumovsky Quartet. Together with the usual strings, it is scored for double wind, except that only one flute is required.

The odd-numbered symphonies by Beethoven are generally more weighty than those with even numbers, but all are of equal importance. Schumann described the Fourth as "a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants", but he was thinking, perhaps, more of the lyrical slow movement and the charm of the trio in the scherzo, ignoring the masculine vigour of the outer movements. It opens with a dark, mysterious, slow introduction in B flat minor, an opening which brought from Weber sarcastic remarks as to its sparseness of notes. There is a dramatic effect as a sudden move to the dominant seventh heralds the main Allegro. Swift detached notes on the strings alternate with a smooth legato phrase on the woodwind to form the main theme. Cheerful ideas, allocated mostly to the wind, and inter-related – although this is not immediately obvious – form the second theme. The timpani have an important role in the harmonic structure of the development until the recapitulation arrives with an exciting crescendo.

Music of tenderness and happiness comes with the main theme of the Adagio set against an accompanying rhythmic figure which suggests an underlying strength. A second theme is introduced by the clarinet and taken up by the remainder of the wind, and then we have the double basses reminding us of the original rhythmic figure which comes to dominate the scene. The closing pages of the movement contain music of unsurpassed beauty. For the first time in the symphonies the third movement scherzo is repeated twice, latterly in an abridged form, and so the intervening trio appears twice. Cross rhythms alternate with unison phrases in the scherzo sections, while the elegance of the two trio sections brings lyrical, playful exchanges between wind and strings.

The final movement is a sort of perpetuum mobile, starting with the opening semiquaver subject and later taxing the bassoon in the recapitulation, and the double basses in the coda. High spirits and good humour mark the whole movement.
Programme notes provided by John Dalton, Making Music

The orchestra would like to acknowledge the generosity one of our percussionists, Fiona Neary, who kindly allows the orchestra to use her timpani even when she is not performing with us.