Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4

06/08/23 • 59 min

2 Listeners

Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

Welcome to episode number 200 of Sticky Notes!!

On December 22nd, 1808, a day that would live in classical music lore forever, Ludwig Van Beethoven sat down for his very last appearance as a solo pianist to play this new piano concerto, his 4th. This performance was not only the premiere of the new piano concerto, but the premiere of two new symphonies as well, the 5th and the 6th. It featured many other new works, and the concert itself lasted nearly 4 hours, all inside of the cold and dark Theater an Der Wien with an underprepared and underrehearsed orchestra. The concert, despite featuring 3 works that would go on to be some of the most performed works in the history of classical music, was not a success. It was too long and too cold, featuring too many premieres and too much difficult music. It was criticized severely in all quarters, and Beethoven considered the concert a failure. And even that new concerto, the one that surprised so many people with its supremely gentle character, didn’t catch on quickly at all. It wasn’t until 1836 when Felix Mendelssohn, who we have to thank for so many of these situations, revived the piece. Today it is known as one of the most beloved concertos in the entire piano repertoire, partly due to the fact that it is so surprising, but not for the reasons one normally would expect. In the 4th piano concerto, Beethoven turns his entire musical brand so to speak upside down. Instead of a blazing fire, we get a gentle warmth, instead of drama, we get tenderness. And instead of virtuosity, we get a practically transcendental level of simplicity. Other than the short second movement, which does give us some of the old Beethoven fire, it is one of the most tender creations of Beethoven’s entire career. Join us to learn all about it today!

Welcome to episode number 200 of Sticky Notes!!

Previous Episode

Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8

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What did Dmitri Shostakovich intend to portray in his music? There is probably no more debated a question in all of 20th century Western Classica lMusic than this one. On the surface, it seems to have an easy answer. Shostakovich portrayed his own thoughts and feelings in his music, just as any other composer would. And that is certainly true. Shostakovich, above anything else, was truly one of the great composers in history. HIs mastery of form, meldoy, strcuture, pacing, and his ability to find a near universal expression of grief and passion is practically unparalelled among composers. That much is clear to those of us who love Shostakovich’s music. But everything else, including that thorny question of what his music MEANS, is much, much, much less clear. Practically Shostakovich’s entire life was lived under the shadow of Soviet Russia, and naturally his musical career was lived under that shadow as well. This means that a sometimes impenetrable layer of secrecy, mystery, and doubt always lies under the surface of Shostakovich’s music.

In 1960, Kruschev, who had been loudly trumpetting Shostakovich’s name to Western Press as an example of a free Soviet artist post the excesses of the Stalin regime, decided that Shostakovich should be the new head of the Russian Union of Composers. The catch was that Shostakovich would need to join the Communist Party in order to take the job. Shostakovich, who had long resisted becoming a full Party member, agreed. Shostakovich was clearly disappointed in himself, as his friend Lev Lebedinsky wrote this: “I will never forget some of the things he said that night [before his induction into the Party], sobbing hysterically: ‘I’m scared to death of them.’

Why does all this matter? Because just a few days after joining the Commhnist party and after meeting with his friends Isaac Glikman and Lev Lebedinsky, Shostakovich traveled to East Germany -- specifically to Dresden — to work on a film which would commemorate the destruction of the city during World War II. He was supposed to write music for this film, but instead, Shostakovich sat down, and in THREE DAYS, he wrote his 8th string quartet. He would later write to Glikman: “However much I’ve tried to draft my obligations for the film, I just couldn’t do it. Instead I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet that nobody needs. I reflected that if I die it’s not likely anyone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself. You could even write on the cover: ‘Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet.” Today on the show we're going to explore this remarkable piece together - join us!

Next Episode

Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition

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Have you ever been to an art museum and wished that you had music to accompany your experience? Music that made the art you were looking at more vivid, more immediate, and more emotionally intense? Well, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is the piece for you. Inspired by his late friend Victor Hartmann’s paintings and designs, Mussorgsky composed a series of 10 miniature pieces for piano based on Hartmann's works. Unlike many other collections of miniature pieces that have thematic or structural connections, Pictures at An Exhibition doesn’t feature that at all, keeping with Mussorgsky’s often rebellious ways as a composer. Instead, the music is connected by movements called Promenades, as if Mussorgsky literally walks you to the next painting at the exhibition. Mussorgsky’s remarkably imaginative piece is justly famous and often played by pianists, but what is perhaps the most fascinating thing about this piece is the creativity that it has inspired in other composers. Pictures at an Exhibition, or parts of it, has been arranged more than 50 times for any number of configurations of musicians. So today, we’re going to explore each picture in detail, talking about what Mussorgsky actually does to make these works of art come to life in such a compelling way. At the same time, we’re going to compare the original piano piece to some of the arrangements, focusing of course on the most famous of them all, the explosion of color that is Maurice Ravel’s arrangement. We’ll also talk about Mussorgsky himself, his compositional reputation at the time, and the brilliant creativity of this one of a kind piece.