Like comparable works by Spohr, Hummel and others, Schubert's irresistible Octet is a late offshoot of the eighteenth-century tradition of serenades scored for mixed wind and strings. And together with the B flat Piano Trio, D.898, it comes closer than any of his other late instrumental works to the popular image of the companionable, echt-Viennese composer pouring out a stream of spontaneously inspired melody. We owe its existence to Count Ferdinand Troyer, a talented amateur clarinettist who was chief steward at the court of Beethoven's friend and pupil, Archduke Rudolf. Early in 1824 the count proposed that Schubert write a follow-up to Beethoven's Septet, which to its composer's intense irritation had become a runaway success. (When Beethoven learnt of its triumph in England he was heard muttering that the work should be burned.) Schubert duly obliged, adding a second violin to the Septet's line-up of clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass, and broadly following Beethoven's six-movement plan: he likewise prefaced the outer movements with a slow introduction, included both a scherzo and a minuet, and between them inserted a set of variations on a popular-sounding theme.
After visiting the composer some time during February 1824, the painter Moritz von Schwind wrote to their mutual friend Franz von Schober: "Schubert has now long been at work on an octet, with the greatest enthusiasm. If you go and see him during the day he says ‘Hello. How are you?’ and carries on working, whereupon you leave". Schubert completed the score on 1 March, and the first performance took place at the home of a Viennese nobleman, Anton, Freiherr von Spielmann, later that month. Besides Troyer himself, the players included the renowned violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh and several others who had given the premiere of Beethoven's Septet nearly a quarter of a century earlier. Although there was another private performance of the Octet at the home of Franz Lachner in 1826, its first public airing, with most of the original players, was not until April 1827, in the hall of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Some contemporary reports found it too long, though the Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung called it "friendly, agreeable and interesting", and "worthy of the composers well-known talents" – a revealing counter to the old myth that Schubert worked in virtual obscurity, appreciated only by a circle of close friends.
With its melodic and rhythmic elan and its kaleidoscopically varied colours, the Octet, like Mozart's great wind serenades, raises the hedonistic spirit of the late eighteenth-century divertimento to a supreme level. Its scoring is endlessly inventive: at times, especially in the outer movements and scherzo, Schubert uses the ensemble like a small orchestra, with the two violins in octaves and sharp contrasts between solo and tutti sonorities; at others, especially in the Adagio and minuet, string and wind colours are blended with the finesse of true chamber music. If the Octet, in keeping with its divertimento origins, is fundamentally genial and relaxed, the work is shot through with that sense of yearning, of the evanescence of beauty, that haunts Schubert’s later music; and once or twice – in the brooding coda of the Adagio, or the slow introduction of the finale – we glimpse the dark, depressive world of the String Quartets in A minor and D minor that Schubert composed virtually simultaneously with the Octet.
The imposing, tonally wide-ranging introduction immediately announces a dotted motif which is to permeate the following Allegro and influence many of the ideas in later movements. Just before the Allegro clarinet and then horn sound a rising octave figure, again in dotted rhythm, which likewise has echoes later in the work. For all its breezy exuberance, the Allegro itself is tightly argued and unified – reminding us of a much-quoted letter to the painter Leopold Kupelwieser in which Schubert declared that he had composed the Octet and the two quartets of 1824 in preparation for "a grand symphony". The ubiquitous opening phrase of the first theme underpins the second subject, sounded on the clarinet in a plangent D minor and then repeated by the horn in F major. With typical unorthodoxy, Schubert long delays settling in the expected dominant key, C major, which only arrives, with a flurry of violin semiquavers, after protracted ruminations on the main theme. The tautly worked development – so much for Schubert's supposed prolixity – glides immediately into the strange and remote key of F sharp minor: here the second subject acquires a yearning continuation on the clarinet, and is then transformed more radically, first by the clarinet, then by second violin and viola in imitation, against the pervasive leaping dotted figure on the first violin. After a breathtaking sideslip to A flat major the wind trio intones a chorale-like theme rhythmically akin to the slow introduction; the connection is underlined when Schubert brings back the introduction's opening phrases just before the recapitulation, reinforcing the close integration of introduction and Allegro. A speeded-up version of the main theme launches the coda, promising a rousing send-off. But then, in a moment of pure romantic poetry, the pulse relaxes for a final, nostalgic reminiscence of the second subject, sounded on the horn as if from the depths of the forest.
The Adagio, somewhere between a barcarolle and a lullaby, is one of Schubert's loveliest, opening with a dream of a melody for his clarinettist patron and constantly enriched by the composer's genius for devising ravishing countermelodies. Though the movement is cast in abridged sonata form (without a central development), the abiding impression is of a timeless flow of glorious, almost improvisatory lyricism. After the reprise of the main theme, first on the violin in counterpoint with the horn, then on cello and clarinet, Schubert offsets the lack of a formal development section in dramatic series of modulations. The coda begins serenely enough, with the violins playing in canon; but then a sudden violent off-beat accent for pizzicato cello and bass heralds a weird, disquieting passage where, in a slow crescendo, the clarinet broods obsessively on the movement's opening phrase over anxiously palpitating strings.
This momentary glimpse of the abyss is summarily banished in the bracing scherzo, a delightfully bucolic movement with overtones of the hunt (and more dotted rhythms) – though amid the alfresco jollity Schubert is always likely to surprise us with sudden shifts to distant keys. High spirits are more subdued in the trio, with its smooth, shapely melody, initially for string quartet alone, over a stalking cello line. For his variation movement Schubert pilfered a cheerful, homely duet from his unperformed comic opera of 1815, Die Freunde von Salamanka ("The Friends from Salamanca"). Following classical precedent, the first four variations, all rooted to the home key of C major, are essentially decorative, with first violin, horn and cello in turn taking the limelight. But the fifth in C minor – eerie, scurrying night music that pre-echoes the "Ride to Hell" in Berlioz's Damnation of Faust – and the sixth in A flat, which dissolves the theme in tender, luminous polyphony, are romantic character pieces. Sentiment is wickedly undercut in the final variation, where the winds do a comic take on a village band against a hyperactively cavorting violin.
Like some of Beethoven's minuets – most famously that of the eighth Symphony – Schubert's fifth movement is a stylized, faintly nostalgic re-creation of the classical courtly dance. It is surely no coincidence that the initial dotted figure is identical to the pervasive motif of the opening movement. The first section closes with a naggingly memorable cadential phrase featuring both triplets and dotted rhythms; in the second part, after a poetic dip from C to A flat, this is deliciously expanded by the clarinet before the music dissolves in a chromatic haze. The lolloping Ländler trio (whose opening phrase inverts the minuet's dotted upbeat) again conjures up village band associations. After a repeat of the minuet the hushed, twilit coda introduces a romantically evocative horn solo that inevitably calls to mind the close of the first movement.
With its ghostly tremolandos, steepling crescendos and labyrinthine tonality, the finale's introduction creates a scene of high drama. Shades, perhaps, of the Wolf's Glen in Weber's Der Freischütz, a favourite opera of Schubert's. But the doom-laden dotted figures in wind and upper strings also echo the bleak Schiller setting "Die Götter Griechenlands" ("The Gods of Greece") which Schubert quoted in the contemporary A minor Quartet. Grand guignol or a personal confession? Whatever the composer's intent, this introduction is startling in the context of such a generally cheerful work. After the music has subsided to a ppp shudder, the tonality clears to a cloudless F major for the brisk, bristling march theme of the Allegro. A smoother subsidiary idea, still in F major, leads to a chirpy second subject (linked to the main theme by its persistent trilling motif) that could have fast-talked its way straight out of a Rossini opera. But the comedy quickly takes a serious turn as Schubert puts the trilling figure through its paces in strenuous imitation. Another plunge from C to A flat signals the development, where the march theme is subjected to tense contrapuntal treatment through an audacious series of modulations. Then, after a lull and an exciting protracted crescendo, the recapitulation enters, à la Beethoven, in a triumphant fortissimo.
Schubert reserves his biggest dramatic coup for the closing pages, where the music of the slow introduction crashes in without warning, now made even more ominous by eerie flourishes from the first violin. But the oppressive atmosphere is quickly dispelled by the coda, which speeds up the march theme and transforms it into an increasingly riotous rustic dance.
Source: Richard Wigmore, 2002 (hyperion-records.co.uk)
The live broadcast is over
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
♪ Octet in F major, D.803 (1824)
i. Adagio – Allegro
ii. Adagio
iii. Allegro vivace
iv. Andante
v. Menuetto: Allegretto
vi. Andante molto – Allegro
Musicians of Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra:
Alexandra Soumm, violin
Giorgos Banos, violin
Alkistis Missouli, viola
Anastasia Deligiannaki, cello
Konstantinos Sifakis, double bass
Dionysis Grammenos, clarinet
Andreas Anthopoulos, bassoon
Angelos Sioras, horn
Megaron Athens Concert Hall, Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall, 11-13.03.2021
Premiere: 11.03.2021, 20:30 (Live streaming)
(HD 1080p)
The Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra, founded in 2017 by conductor Dionysis Grammenos, consists of young Greek musicians from all over Greece as well as Greek musicians living abroad. Based on European standards, the GYSO is mainly aimed at the identification, guidance, education and promotion of talented young musicians in the symphonic and operatic repertoire under the guidance of internationally renowned soloists and principals of Greek and major European orchestras.
Participation of young musicians in GYSO's programmes is free of charge through the funding that GYSO secures. Alongside the Orchestra's work, special attention is given to educational programmes for the youth audience as well as to the young audience's accessibility to its concerts, as it wishes to pass on to the new generation the quality and values that this kind of music stands for. The GYSO aspires in this way to contribute to the creation of a music-loving flow and a musical platform for young musicians and the youth audience, thus enhancing the musical dialogue of the new generation.
During its three years of existence, more than 100 Greek musicians have been selected, after auditions, to perform with the orchestra, and over 1,500 young people have attended its educational activities. So far, the GYSO has given nine concerts in Greece, featuring world-class soloists, and two composers have been commissioned to write new works for the Orchestra.
Recent highlights include the recording of Beethoven's Symphony No.5 and Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No.2, featuring the internationally acclaimed Greek pianist Vassilis Varvaressos, as well as the participation of GYSO's musicians under Ricardo Muti for performances of Beethoven's Symphony No.9 in Athens and Ravenna, in cooperation with the Athens & Epidaurus Festival.
The work of the GYSO has recently been recognised with its nomination as a new member of the European Federation of National Youth Orchestras (EFNYO). Through its collaboration with EFNYO, the GYSO will give its musicians the opportunity to represent the orchestra abroad, partnering with other European National Youth Orchestras within the framework of the MusXchange exchange programme, which is co-funded by the European Commission's Creative Europe Program.
The Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra operates with funding from the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation. The GYSO is supported by The Hellenic Initiative (THI) and the Non-Profit Civil Company AEGEAS. Since October 2020 it is the new Orchestra in Residence at Megaron – the Athens Concert Hall.
Source: megaron.gr
Hailed by "Die Welt" as "one of the most promising stars of tomorrow", the young Greek conductor Dionysis Grammenos made his debut at the age of twenty-one with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra.
Recent highlights include his debut with the Cameristi della Scala and Khatia Buniatishvili, his return to the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto to work with Johannes Debus on a production of Eugene Onegin and to the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, with a program including Brahms' Second Symphony and Elgar's "In the South". He conducted the Athens State Orchestra for the opening concert of the season (Brahms' First Symphony) and made his debuts with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and the Chamber Orchestra of Belgium (Mozart's Magic Flute).
For the 2020-2021 season, Grammenos will be the Principal Conductor of the English Touring Opera, for the production of Puccini's La Bohème and will conduct the Athens State Orchestra in a concert dedicated to the 200 years since the Greek revolution. In addition, he will conduct a video recording of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony and Skalkotas Violin Suite, with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra.
Grammenos has conducted orchestras such as the Festival Strings Lucerne, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Hofer Symphoniker, Odessa Philharmonic, Junge Philharmonie Wien, Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Malta Philharmonic and the New Symphony Orchestra of Sofia.
In 2016, he received a Conducting Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival and was recently selected by David Zinman to conduct the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, as part of his annual masterclass. He has been mentored by conductors including Bernhard Haitink, Patrick Summers and Robert Spano.
Dionysis Grammenos is Founder and Music Director of the Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra. Founded in 2017, the orchestra aims to showcase and educate young talented Greek musicians in the symphonic and operatic repertoire. The GYSO is a member of the European Federation of National Youth Orchestras and has been invited to perform at the Berlin Konzerthaus, for the opening concert of the Young Euro Classic Festival. Since October 2020, it is the new Orchestra in Residence at Megaron – the Athens Concert Hall.
Passionate about opera, Grammenos has made his opera conducting debut in Würzburg with Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and has conducted a gala programme including Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni with the Greek Youth Symphony. Further operatic experience includes Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Canadian Opera Company and La Clemenza di Tito at the Aspen Music Festival, as well as Verdi's Il Trovatore at the Theatre Vorpommern.
Initially trained as a clarinetist at the University of Music "Franz Liszt" in Weimar, Grammenos was the first ever wind player to win the Grand Prix d'Eurovision from the European Broadcasting Union and the title of "European Young Musician of the Year". In 2013-2014 he was selected for the ECHO Rising Stars program, which took him to some of Europe's most prestigious venues.
As a soloist, he has worked with orchestras such as the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra, ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Cameristi del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie, among others, and has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Barbican London, KKL in Lucerne and the Philharmonie Berlin.
His debut CD as a clarinetist on the Naïve label features works by Spohr, Nielsen and Debussy with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Ari Rasilainen. He has also recorded transcriptions by Schumann and Schubert in collaboration with the harpist Anneleen Lenaerts for Warner Classics.
Dionysis Grammenos has been honoured with the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts and the Gold Medal of the City of Athens. He was recently selected for the European Young Leaders programme, under the patronage of Jean-Claude Juncker.
Source: dionysisgrammenos.com
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