Program Notes: Xian Zhang Conducts Hilary Hahn

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  
Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 61 
BORN: December 16, 1770, in Bonn 
DIED: March 26, 1827, in Vienna 
WORK COMPOSED: 1806  
WORLD PREMIERE: December 23, 1806, in Vienna. Franz Clement, for whom Beethoven had written the piece, was the soloist.  

What to Listen For: 

• The concerto opens with four notes sounded quietly by the timpani. This motif returns in different guises again and again throughout the first movement, a thread linking its various themes and sections.  

The concerto opens with four notes sounded quietly by the timpani. This motif returns in different guises again and again throughout the first movement, a thread linking its various themes and sections.  

Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Violin Concerto in 1806 at the request of a violinist named Franz Clement, who performed it during a concert the same year it was completed. Clement was then one of the most respected musicians in Vienna, where the composer lived, and was by all accounts a virtuoso of no mean ability. Indeed, Beethoven reportedly did not finish the piece until just before the concert, and Clement, astonishingly, played the solo part without benefit of practice or a rehearsal. Violinists who have struggled with the work’s more difficult passages are, naturally, skeptical about this anecdote, which probably exaggerates the truth of the situation. 

But despite its technical hurdles, this concerto is neither a virtuoso showpiece nor an occasional composition produced quickly to flatter a renowned performer. It is, rather, the first of the great 19th-century German concertos for the violin. Those that followed it — the violin concertos of Mendelssohn, Bruch and Brahms — could scarcely have been conceived without the precedent of its breadth and the heroic character of its violin part. 

As in his Fifth Symphony, with its famous four-note “da-da-da DA” motif, Beethoven builds the concerto’s first movement around a signature figure. It consists of four notes introduced quietly and in even rhythms in the opening moments. Beethoven returns to this motif repeatedly during the first movement. Its unifying influence is important because this portion of the concerto unfolds on an expansive scale, as its lengthy orchestral exposition promises. A passage suggesting leisurely improvisation brings the solo instrument to the proceedings, and the violin joins in exploring and developing the melodic ideas that the orchestra has already set forth. 

In contrast to the extended and thematically rich first movement, the ensuing Larghetto reveals a simple and quite economical premise: a set of variations on a hymn-like theme first intoned by the muted string choir. Over each successive statement of this subject, the soloist spins increasingly ornate countermelodies, its line soaring serenely above the orchestra. A feeling of profound tranquility prevails. Only in approaching the cadenza — the featured performer’s soliloquy — do we encounter a moment of harmonic tension typical of Beethoven. However, the real surprise is not in the two measures of searching chords that precede the cadenza but rather, in what follows it. For instead of offering a closing paragraph to conclude the movement as we might expect, Beethoven jumps directly into the lively finale. 

This features a jaunty principal theme alternating with several contrasting episodes. The latter offer a variety of musical references: hunting calls from the orchestral winds; robust double-stops in the solo part to suggest a gypsy violin; and a minor-key lament in a rather operatic vein. Even more than Beethoven’s skill in binding these diverse musical ideas into a coherent whole, the sheer momentum of the music — its feeling of inevitable progression through each idea and finally to its conclusion — makes this one of the most satisfying finales in the concerto literature.  

Paul Schiavo © 2018, revised 2025 

SERGEY PROKOFIEV
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100 
BORN: April 23, 1891, in Sontsovka, Ukraine 
DIED: March 5, 1953, in Moscow 
WORK COMPOSED: 1944 
WORLD PREMIERE: January 13, 1945, in Moscow by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, with Prokofiev conducting. 

What to Listen For:  

• The initial theme of the first movement appears in stark textures. Only with subsequent statements does the composer flesh out its harmonies to reveal its essentially heroic character. By contrast, the movement’s second idea conveys a relaxed sensuality. The ensuing scherzo has a rather manic character, while the slow third movement opens and closes with dream-like music recalling Prokofiev’s popular ballet Romeo and Juliet.  

The initial theme of the first movement appears in stark textures. Only with subsequent statements does the composer flesh out its harmonies to reveal its essentially heroic character. By contrast, the movement’s second idea conveys a relaxed sensuality. The ensuing scherzo has a rather manic character, while the slow third movement opens and closes with dream-like music recalling Prokofiev’s popular ballet Romeo and Juliet.  

Sergey Prokofiev wrote his Fifth Symphony during the summer of 1944, which he spent at the Soviet Composers’ Retreat near the city of Ivanovno. “I conceived it,” the composer later said, “as a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit.”  

We can be more specific about the impulse behind this work. Prokofiev was famously apolitical and self-absorbed, with only the most superficial awareness of the larger events of his day, but even he was deeply affected when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Three years later, the tide of the conflict had turned decisively. Although Ivanovo lies well east of Moscow and therefore escaped the devastation that the war had inflicted on much of the Soviet Union, Prokofiev could not have been unmindful of the military struggle still going on, nor of the triumph that was at last in sight. Both the accessible style of the Fifth Symphony and its unmistakable feeling of optimism suggest that the “human spirit” it extols is that of the Russian people in their hour of victory. 

This notion received a kind of uncanny confirmation when Prokofiev conducted the premiere performance, in Moscow, on January 13, 1945. Sviatoslav Richter, the great Soviet pianist, was present on the occasion and remembered that “when Prokofiev had taken his place on the podium and silence reigned in the hall, artillery salvos suddenly thundered forth. His baton was raised. He waited and began only after the cannons had stopped. There was something very significant in this, something symbolic. It was as if all of us — including Prokofiev — had reached some kind of shared turning point.” 

The cannonade that delayed the performance that day was ceremonial, signaling that the Red Army had begun crossing the Vistula River, an important milestone on its march into Nazi Germany. For the Soviet people, it marked the regaining of their country. The same might be said for Prokofiev. The Fifth Symphony proved his most successful work since his return to the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s, after some 15 years of living in Europe and America. In this work, he reached out to a large audience of his compatriots on a high artistic level, creating his most successful symphonic score. 

Without fanfare or introduction, the main theme of the opening movement sounds in the flute and bassoon. Prokofiev explores this melody at length before presenting a second, rather more intimate subject in the oboes and flutes. The development of these ideas frequently involves different thematic fragments set against each other in counterpoint. Although Prokofiev achieves a variety of moods, colors and textures, the overall impression is one of epic grandeur. 

The scherzo-like second movement is a throwback to the style of Prokofiev’s pre-Soviet period. We hear not only his characteristic humor in the opening clarinet solo, but the brittle textures, driving rhythms and colorful orchestration that gained the composer notoriety during the 1920s. 

There follows a lyrical Adagio whose principal melody first appears over a rhythmically steady accompaniment in the strings. A contrasting central section moves toward darker thoughts, culminating in wrenching discords and anguished cries plummeting from the upper registers of the woodwinds. The abrupt and seemingly effortless return to the initial idea seems like a sudden flood of sunlight over a cloud-darkened landscape. 

A brief prelude in slow tempo, built around recollections of the symphony’s opening measures, introduces the finale. This movement also uses two principal subjects: a melody presented at the outset by Prokofiev’s favorite instrument, the clarinet; and a more pastoral idea heard in the flute and clarinet. These light-hearted themes alone might have imparted too carefree a character here, but Prokofiev balances them with a more sober thought that rises hymn-like from the low strings midway through the movement. 

Paul Schiavo © 2015, revised 2025