St. Louis Symphony
|
David Robertson
conductor
|
Christian Tetzlaff
violin
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
“The Unanswered Question”
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39
The “perennial question of existence” is what Charles Ives poses in his short orchestral work, “The Unanswered Question”—a question that is intoned seven times by a solo trumpet, while impatiently urgent interjections from the woodwinds represent man’s hunt for the “invisible answer.” Could it be that Ludwig van Beethoven knows what it is? Yehudi Menuhin once remarked that the second movement of his Violin Concerto, the Larghetto, reminded him of a prayer. Jean Sibelius will then guide us into an entirely different world of belief with his First Symphony, which was composed in 1898-99, around the time of his famous tone poem “Finlandia.” Here faith involves the quest for a national musical identity, through which he hoped to lend support to his homeland’s aspirations toward autonomy in the face of Russian rule. Still, Sibelius preferred not to supply a program for his First, however vivid the sound world it creates: “For me, music begins at the point where the word ends. A scene can be expressed in painting, a drama in words; a symphony should be first and last music.” And that, too, is a tenet of faith.
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