October | Notes from The Orchestra

Many of America’s most prominent music schools—including Juilliard, the Eastman School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, Interlochen, and Berklee College of Music—rose to prominence during the 20th century. But efforts to establish great American music conservatories began much earlier. Some of these ambitious institutions struggled financially and ultimately disappeared.

One of the most remarkable was the National Conservatory of Music of America, founded in New York City in 1885 by philanthropist Jeannette Meyers Thurber. Modeled in part after the prestigious Paris Conservatoire, Thurber’s school had an unusually progressive mission: to provide world-class musical instruction while helping to foster a distinctly American tradition of classical music.

Admission was based on talent without regard to race, gender, creed, or physical disability, and scholarships and free tuition made instruction available to gifted students who otherwise could not afford it. In this respect, the National Conservatory was a remarkably democratic institution for its time.

It was precisely this vision of an American musical culture that helped attract the world-renowned Czech composer Antonín Dvořák to New York. Thurber offered him the extraordinary salary of $15,000 per year—roughly equivalent to more than half a million dollars today and vastly more than he had been earning in Prague—to become the Conservatory’s director. Dvořák accepted, arriving with his family in New York in 1892.

Dvořák already had a deep interest in folk music. Much of his earlier work had drawn inspiration from the songs, dances, and musical traditions of his native Bohemia. In America, he became fascinated by the possibility that a distinctive American school of classical music could similarly grow from the country’s own musical traditions.

At the Conservatory, Dvořák became acquainted with Harry T. Burleigh, a gifted African American baritone and composition student who later became an important composer and arranger in his own right. Burleigh sang African American spirituals for Dvořák and introduced him more deeply to this musical tradition. Dvořák was profoundly impressed by what he heard and came to believe that spirituals, along with Native American musical traditions, could provide inspiration for a distinctly American classical style.

The most celebrated result of Dvořák’s American experience was his Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World.” Composed in New York in 1893, the symphony received its premiere at Carnegie Hall on December 16 of that year.

Rather than simply quoting American folk songs, Dvořák created original melodies that reflected musical characteristics he associated with the traditions he had encountered in America. Particularly memorable is the famous English horn solo in the second movement, Largo. Its haunting, melancholy melody became one of the most recognizable themes in classical music and was based upon the pentatonic scale predominately used in African music.

The premiere was an extraordinary success. Contemporary accounts describe enthusiastic applause following the movements, with Dvořák repeatedly acknowledged by the audience. The New World Symphony quickly became his best-known work and remains one of the most frequently performed symphonies in the repertoire.

Years later, Dvořák’s student William Arms Fisher adapted the English horn melody from the Largo into the song “Goin’ Home.” Because the melody sounds so much like a traditional spiritual, the song is sometimes mistakenly assumed to have existed before Dvořák’s symphony. In fact, the reverse is true: Fisher’s song was based on Dvořák’s melody.

Unfortunately, Dvořák’s American adventure coincided with serious economic turmoil. The Panic of 1893 damaged the Thurber family’s finances and placed the National Conservatory under increasing financial strain. Dvořák’s salary payments became uncertain, and after three years in America he returned to his beloved Bohemia in 1895.

Thurber continued her efforts to sustain the National Conservatory and had even succeeded in obtaining a federal charter from Congress. But the institution never received the level of government financial support she had hoped for. It gradually declined and ultimately disappeared during the era of the Great Depression.

The Conservatory itself did not survive, but its most famous director left America with an enduring musical legacy. In the New World Symphony, Dvořák demonstrated how the traditions of one culture could inspire the music of another—and helped open a debate that would continue for generations: What should American classical music sound like?

Marie Jaëll: Cello Concerto in F, First Movement – Allegro moderato

Marie Jaëll was born Marie Trautmann on August 17, 1846, in Steinseltz, Alsace, a culturally mixed region shaped by both French and German influences. A gifted pianist from an early age, she studied at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire, where she won the Premier Prix in piano in 1862. Even as a child and teenager, she toured extensively throughout France, Germany, Russia, and Switzerland.

In 1866, she married Alfred Jaëll, an internationally known Austrian pianist fourteen years her senior. Their marriage brought Marie into contact with many of Europe’s leading musicians, including Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The virtuoso-piano couple toured widely throughout Europe and frequently performed together.

During the 1870s, Marie increasingly devoted herself to composition, studying with César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns. She eventually produced a catalogue of approximately 70 known works. About half were written for piano, but she also composed concertos, chamber music, songs, choral and orchestral works, a symphonic poem, and even began an opera. In 1887, she became one of the first women admitted to the Société des Compositeurs de Musique in Paris.

Later in life, Jaëll turned much of her attention to the physical and psychological processes involved in piano playing. Her research eventually developed into what became known as the Marie Jaëll Method, emphasizing conscious tactile, visual, and auditory perception and mental preparation rather than purely mechanical repetition. Elements of her approach continue to be taught today.

Jaëll’s Cello Concerto in F major, written in 1882, is believed to be the earliest known cello concerto composed by a woman. Its creation coincided with an extraordinarily difficult period in her life. Her husband Alfred died from complications of diabetes in February 1882, only a few months before the concerto received its premiere.

The surviving manuscripts reveal an intriguing history. Jaëll appears at one point to have conceived the concerto in four movements, including a slow second movement marked Lento. Yet she never completed the orchestration of the Lento, and the concerto was premiered and subsequently performed in only three movements. Why she abandoned the movement remains unknown. Because of its dark, funeral-march character and its proximity to Alfred’s death, some scholars and performers have suggested that the music may have reflected her grief. It is an appealing theory, but one for which no definitive documentary evidence has yet been found.

The concerto premiered on May 13, 1882, at the Salle Érard in Paris, with Jules Delsart as soloist and the Orchestre Lamoureux conducted by Charles Lamoureux. Remarkably, the performance took place less than three months after the death of Jaëll’s husband, Alfred. The first documented recording of the concerto was made in 2015 and released in 2016, featuring cellist Xavier Phillips with the Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by Hervé Niquet. That recording presents the same three-movement version heard during Jaëll’s lifetime.

The opening Allegro moderato immediately demonstrates one of the concerto’s most attractive qualities. The orchestra establishes a warm Romantic atmosphere before the solo cello enters and expands the musical material into an increasingly lyrical and expressive conversation. Jaëll’s orchestration remains remarkably transparent, allowing the cello to sing above the ensemble rather than struggle against it. The result is music that is rich, warm, melodic, and immediately approachable.

Recently, the missing Lento has been reconstructed from Jaëll’s surviving piano and partial orchestral manuscripts by pianist and arranger Julian Riem. A beautiful recent performance of the resulting four-movement version can be found online, performed by cellist Raphaela Gromes with the Staatsorchester Darmstadt, conducted by Oscar Jockel.

For today, however, we return to the concerto's first movement as Marie Jaëll herself presented it in 1882. Please enjoy the opening Allegro moderato, featuring Logan Kelley, cello, with the Bremerton Westsound Symphony, conducted by Maestro Alan Futterman.

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3, First Movement

Allegro con brio – C minor

Maxwell Buerger, piano

Written between 1800 and 1803, Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto premiered in Vienna on April 5, 1803, with Beethoven himself as both composer and soloist. The first movement, Allegro con brio, is often described as dark and dramatic, containing hints of the powerful C-minor musical language Beethoven would later bring to his celebrated Fifth Symphony.

Beethoven’s concerto owes a clear debt to Mozart’s great C-minor Piano Concerto, K. 491, a work he greatly admired, but Beethoven transforms the Classical model with greater rhythmic force, orchestral weight, and dramatic tension.

The movement begins with an extended orchestral introduction that establishes its brooding character and principal themes. After the orchestral introduction, the piano makes a dramatic entrance and quickly takes center stage. What follows is an increasingly energetic dialogue between soloist and orchestra, developing at times into an almost military-like rhythmic intensity. The orchestra and virtuosic piano trade, challenge, and transform related themes as the movement drives toward its stormy conclusion.

The historical setting is also intriguing. Beethoven composed the concerto during the turbulent aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s dramatic rise to power. At roughly the same time, Beethoven was working on his Third Symphony, the Eroica, which was famously associated with Bonaparte. Beethoven initially admired Napoleon as a symbol of revolutionary and republican ideals, but according to a well-known account, he angrily removed the dedication when Napoleon proclaimed himself Emperor in 1804.

Against this turbulent historical backdrop, the concerto’s first movement—with its dark C-minor opening, martial rhythms, dramatic contrasts, and vigorous exchange between piano and orchestra—offers an early glimpse of the bold musical voice that would soon define Beethoven’s heroic period.

For the complete Concerto, we recommend listening to Rudolf Serkin, Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1, Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy Conducting, Piano Concerto No. 3, New York Philharmonic, Lenard Bernstein Conducting, 1986 Sony BMG Music Entertainment

-John Puryear