Program Notes

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
Duration: ca. 33 minutes

What to listen for:

• Note the similarity between the opening of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and the beginning of Zarathustra.

Had Richard Strauss written an autobiography, he might have called it My Brilliant Career. He was, after all, an enormous talent (with an ego to match) whose sensuous and often bombastic storytelling symphonies and operatic shockers commanded the stages of Europe for three decades.

He continued the legacy of Franz Liszt by taking the tone poem to new heights and made quite a racket along the way. You don’t need to be inside Morsani Hall or Mahaffey Theater to enjoy Strauss; his music can be heard a mile away.

After the success of Don Juan in 1889, Strauss was crowned the heir to Wagner, and from then on was more or less unstoppable, giving us Death and Transfiguration, Der Rosenkavalier, A Hero’s Life, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Salome, Symphonia Domestica, Elektra, Don Quixote and the piece you are about to hear, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. By the 1920s, Strauss was not only the most famous composer alive, but the wealthiest.

Strauss composed Zarathustra in 1896 as a musical response to a work of philosophical fiction by Friedrich Nietzsche, but only in the broadest sense, such as the conflict between man (B major) and nature (C major). Nietzsche, who based his book on an ancient seer, depicted a series of personal improvements that would lead, ultimately, to a society of ubermensch, or a super race of humans.

One of the composer’s most intricate tapestries, Zarathustra begins ominously with a low grown of organ, cellos and basses before a brass fanfare ascends in a three-note octave in the bright key of C major – immortalized in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Along with the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, also on this program, Zarathustra’s “Mountain Sunrise’’ is probably the most renowned start in the classical canon.

“Strauss had a flair for beginnings,’’ notes Alex Ross in his book The Rest is Noise. “The (opening) draws its cosmic power from the natural laws of sound – the interval of the octave.’’

The following eight sections take us to a number of realms, from the Dwellers of the World Beyond to Joys and Passions to The Night Wanderer’s Song. However, unlike the accompanying Beethoven symphony, which resolves its minor-key tension into the major, Zarathustra in the end offers no respite, as the relationship between humanity and nature remains irreconcilable and mystical.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
Duration: ca. 31 minutes

What to listen for:

• Beethoven builds a symphonic world around just four notes that launch the work and keep its structure bound together.

What’s this? Another run at Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony? What can be said, heard or felt about music’s most celebrated orchestral work, a ubiquitous earworm that continues to excite audiences after 215 years and energizes the box office like a Taylor Swift tour stop?

The Florida Orchestra returns to one of its most performed symphonies, loved for its defiant spirit, economy of expression and transition from darkness to light. So much has been written about the work that it seems to be in a state of constant reinvention, with each successive generation discovering something new.

In his book The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth and the Human Imagination, Matthew Guerrieri devotes nearly 300 pages to the opening moments alone. What does this music mean and why is it so persuasive? The electrifying motto that jumpstarts the music is “short enough to remember and portentous enough to be memorable,’’ he notes, “seeming to unlock the symphony’s meaning but leaving its mysteries temptingly out of reach, saying something but admitting nothing.’’

In other words, Beethoven’s Fifth is abstract and intangible, so it’s up to you, the listener, to interpret these four iconic bursts of sound – da da da dum! Fate knocking at the door? Victory over tyranny? A deaf composer shaking his fist at his lot in life? Or, is it just ink on a page, as the conductor Arturo Toscanini once suggested: “To some, it’s Napoleon. To some, it’s a philosophical struggle. To me, it’s allegro con brio.’’

Regardless of its cultural interpretations, the work as a whole – four economical and interrelated movements – has aged without wrinkles since its first performance on Dec. 22, 1808 in Vienna. The all-Beethoven concert was a marathon. It stretched four hours and included the Symphony No. 6; the aria Ah! Perfido; two sections from the Mass in C; the Piano Concerto No. 4 with the composer at the keyboard; a piano improvisation; and the Choral Fantasy for Piano, Orchestra and Chorus.

The audience had heard nothing like the Fifth. The opening launched an arcing design in which form takes precedence over melody. Cast in the dark key of C minor ─ which left the audience flabbergasted ─ the four notes serve as connective tissue, the tendon, that holds everything together, a motif recycled over the next 35 minutes.

“The compaction of material flows from the first gestures,’’ notes Jan Swafford in his 2014 biography Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. “In the symphony’s first movement, we hear the primal rhythmic figure that will dominate … to the end.’’

While the opening allegro explodes with inexorable drive, the second movement in A-flat major is a calm in the storm, a series of double variations that take us on a gentle ride. A scherzo follows, the symphony’s pivot point. It echoes the opening theme in hushed strings and muted timpani before unleashing a fusillade of horns, ushering in the fourth movement without a break. The gloom of C minor suddenly gives way to the radiance of C major – and one of the most riveting climaxes in music.

Quarter note: For the upcoming TFO performances, Music Director Michael Francis will be using a score retouched by the composer/conductor Gustav Mahler, who felt that Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth symphonies needed instrumental doubling to accommodate larger orchestras and halls and improved instruments. For most people used to hearing a modern orchestra, any change in sound will be negligible.

Program notes by Kurt Loft, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America who has written about the arts in the Tampa Bay area for more than 40 years.