Program Notes: An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma and the Seattle Symphony

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  
Egmont Overture, Op. 84  
BORN: December 16, 1770, in Bonn  
DIED: March 26, 1827, in Vienna  
WORK COMPOSED: 1810  
WORLD PREMIERE: June 15, 1810, in Vienna. 

What to Listen For:  

• This overture’s characteristic tone is that of tumultuous strife and ultimate triumph. At the dramatic climax, violins represent the fall of the executioner’s ax, yet every bit as vivid is the victorious finale that closes the work.  

This overture’s characteristic tone is that of tumultuous strife and ultimate triumph. At the dramatic climax, violins represent the fall of the executioner’s ax, yet every bit as vivid is the victorious finale that closes the work.  

Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Overture to Goethe’s drama Egmont for a new production of that play in Vienna in 1810. The composer had been acquainted with Goethe’s writings since his youth and regarded the poet as one of the great spirits of the age. “Goethe’s poems have tremendous power over me,” he once declared, adding: “I am tuned up and stimulated to composition by this language, which builds itself into higher orders as if through the work of spirits, and already bears in itself the mysteries of harmonies.” Egmont, moreover, provided two themes that were especially attractive to the composer: the martyrdom of a hero in the cause of liberty, and the selfless devotion of a woman who loves him. Beethoven was no stranger to these ideas, having already dealt with them at length in his opera Leonore (Fidelio).  

Beethoven’s Overture begins with an introduction in slow tempo, where massive initial chords express a feeling of power and crisis. From these great blocks of sound emerge plaintive woodwind figures that accelerate into the main body of the work. Here, a certain kinship with the composer’s famous Fifth Symphony becomes evident. The music conveys the same sense of elemental struggle encountered in the Fifth’s first movement, and it even makes use of the famous four-note rhythm that dominates that piece. Later, the parallel between the two compositions becomes unmistakable. Like the symphony’s finale, the Egmont Overture’s conclusion emerges from a mysterious, dark realm to soar triumphantly on rising scales and the brilliant tones of trumpets.  

Paul Schiavo © 2007, revised 2025 

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK 
Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, B.141 
BORN: September 8, 1841, in Nelahozeves, Czechia 
DIED: May 1, 1904, in Prague, Czechia 
WORK COMPOSED: 1884–1885 
WORLD PREMIERE: April 22, 1885, at St James's Hall in London by the Royal Philharmonic Society, with the composer conducting. 

What to Listen For:  

• The first movement entails music of dramatic contrasts: a stormy first theme versus pastoral sounds, including imitations of bird song. In the second movement, note the organ-like sonorities of the winds as they play a hymn-like melody at the outset. Dvořák’s love of Czech folk music is evident in the third movement. The finale ends on a triumphant note.  

The first movement entails music of dramatic contrasts: a stormy first theme versus pastoral sounds, including imitations of bird song. In the second movement, note the organ-like sonorities of the winds as they play a hymn-like melody at the outset. Dvořák’s love of Czech folk music is evident in the third movement. The finale ends on a triumphant note.  

On December 13, 1884, Antonín Dvořák wrote to a friend from his home in the Czech countryside: “I am occupied at present with my symphony, and wherever I go I think of nothing except my work, which must be such that it will shake the world — and with God’s help it will.” 

The composition Dvořák referred to was his Symphony No. 7 in D minor, which he completed in March of 1885. His ambitious, world-shaking intent is borne out by the music. This is a dramatic, powerful, at times sternly tragic work, and it is regarded by many authorities as the greatest of Dvořák’s nine symphonies. Its creation had been prompted by Dvořák’s triumphant visits to England in the mid-1880s, which initiated a steady crescendo of international acclaim for the Czech composer and his music. During the first of these trips, in the spring of 1884, performances of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater and other works generated such enthusiasm that the Royal Philharmonic Society decided to commission a new symphony from him. 

The importance Dvořák attached to this request partly explains the seriousness with which he approached the work and the unusual degree of effort he put into it. (The composer’s draft of the score reveals a high number of false starts and revisions, and his correspondence concerning it suggests an unusually arduous labor.) But there were other factors. Chief among these was Dvořák’s now firmly established friendship with Johannes Brahms, who was widely considered the foremost living musician, and his desire to live up to that composer’s expectations. A letter Dvořák wrote to his publisher in February 1885 indicates that he had discussed his D-minor Symphony with Brahms: “I have spent a long, long time on my new symphony, but I want to justify Brahms’s words when he said ‘I imagine your symphony will be quite unlike this one [the placid Sixth Symphony in D-major].’ There will be no grounds for thinking him wrong.” 

We can detect Brahms’ influence in the sober tone and expansive scope of Dvořák’s symphony. Yet there are more concrete signs of the affinity between the two composers. The opening moments of Dvořák’s symphony — with their stormy principal theme, sustained bass note and restless pulse — recall those of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, in the same key of D-minor. And the second theme of this movement, a gentle melody given to the woodwinds, corresponds for its first nine notes exactly with the famous cello solo that begins the slow movement of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, which had been published in 1882. 

This is not to accuse Dvořák of plagiarism, nor to imply that his work lacks originality. On the contrary, he handles his melodic materials in a style distinctly his own, one that entails something that Brahms would never have ventured: a certain veiled but undeniable Czech character. The initial theme hints at Bohemian folk music. Elsewhere throughout the first movement, rustling figures in the strings, together with woodwind calls apparently inspired by birdsong, evoke the Czech countryside where Dvořák composed this symphony. 

Dvořák’s early training was not as a composer but as a church organist, and he had once served in this capacity at a modest church in Prague. The initial phrase of the second movement, a simple hymn-like melody in the low woodwinds, seems a remembrance of that experience. From this unassuming beginning, the movement unfolds with richness and depth of feeling, as it must to balance the symphony’s substantial opening. 

Even more vividly than in the opening movement, the ensuing Scherzo has about it an unmistakably Czech flavor. Its music conveys the spirit of a Bohemian country dance, but exalted through symphonic textures. The central section brings more pastoral impressions. (Once again, the winds evoke birdsong.) This prepares a dramatic finale that begins with stern music in D-minor but turns, in the final measures, brightly to D-major, allowing a triumphant conclusion. 
 
Paul Schiavo © 2014, revised 2025 

 
EDWARD ELGAR 
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 
BORN: June 2, 1857, in Lower Broadheath, England 
DIED: February 23, 1934, in Worcester, England 
WORK COMPOSED: 1919  
WORLD PREMIERE: October 27, 1919, in London by the London Symphony Orchestra, with cellist Felix Salmond performing as soloist and Elgar conducting. 

What to Listen For:  

• The concerto opens with a somber soliloquy for the solo cello, lightly accompanied by the orchestra. This introductory passage establishes the prevailing spirit of the piece, and Elgar conspicuously recalls its music in the finale. 

The concerto opens with a somber soliloquy for the solo cello, lightly accompanied by the orchestra. This introductory passage establishes the prevailing spirit of the piece, and Elgar conspicuously recalls its music in the finale. 

Edward Elgar completed his Cello Concerto in 1919 and once described the “meaning” of its music as “a man’s attitude to life.” Typically of the composer, that statement reveals little by itself. Any man’s outlook will, of course, depend on his experiences and circumstances and may change with them. Elgar’s, at the time he wrote this work, were less than happy, and his elusive characterization of the concerto may well have been his way of hinting, however obliquely, at the bitterness and disillusion that were overtaking him in the autumn of his life. 

This was, in a sense, the best of times and the worst of times for the composer. Now past 60, he could take satisfaction in his accomplishments and his recognition as the foremost English musician of his time. Yet this recognition had come only after years of neglect and discouragement, and it brought relatively little in the way of material reward. Worries over his finances and health plagued Elgar throughout the years of the First World War, and he composed little of consequence during that period. Some idea of his state of mind can be gathered from a letter written in December of 1916: “Everything pleasant & promising in my life is dead,” he lamented. “I am more alone and the prey of circumstances than ever before.” The war depressed him greatly, and even the signing of the Armistice, in November 1918, brought little consolation. “I do not feel drawn to write peace music somehow,” he stated at the time, adding “the Heavenly Spirit ... is cruelly obtuse to individual sorrow and sacrifice — a cruelty I resent bitterly and disappointedly.” 

Still, life was not entirely bleak. Before the end of the war, Elgar moved with his wife to a peaceful country house, and the proximity to nature cheered him considerably. Here at last he began to compose again, completing several pieces of chamber music in 1918. In June of the following year, he informed a friend: “I am frantically busy writing & have nearly completed a Concerto for Violoncello — a real large work & I think good & alive.” 

Elgar finished the concerto during the summer of 1919, and the work was first performed in October at a concert in London. The audience and critical responses were cool, partly due to a poorly rehearsed performance, but also because the concerto sounded so unlike Elgar’s pre-war music. Works such as the famous Enigma Variations and Pomp and Circumstance marches were extroverted, confident and social in spirit. But the tone of the Cello Concerto is one of solitary and at times quite somber meditation. As such, it is arguably a more convincing expression of Elgar’s “attitude to life,” as well as a more personal, complex and rewarding piece of music. 

The concerto is in four movements, confirming Elgar’s announcement of “a real large work.” A brief recitative for the solo instrument prefaces the first movement. This prologue establishes the character of the piece and leads to the main body of the movement, which, despite the lilting rhythms of its themes, is earnest and solemn. The return of the opening recitative, now played pizzicato rather than bowed, provides a transition to the scherzo-like second movement. There follows an intensely lyrical Adagio that offers a poignant song for the solo instrument.   

The finale is preceded by a brief introductory flourish and another recitative-like cadenza. The soloist goes on to announce the movement’s principal theme, which manages to sound energetic yet melancholy. Several contrasting episodes provide the concerto’s most obvious displays of virtuosity. But as if Elgar regards such sport unseemly, all athleticism is suddenly cut short by a return to the elegiac strains of the Adagio.  

The composer now develops this remembered material at some length; but it, in turn, is interrupted by the reappearance of the recitative that opened the concerto. Having brought the composition full circle to its point of departure, Elgar has only to append a brief coda passage to conclude the proceedings. This he does in a quick dash by soloist and orchestra to the final measure. 

Paul Schiavo © 2011, revised 2025