PROGRAMME NOTES 2003: FANTASY AND REVOLUTION Few compositions have been as influential in the development of Western classical music as Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony, which in 1803 not only opened up new formal horizons for a still-young genre, but also launched the idea that a symphony could convey an important and far-reaching extramusical message. 200 years later, Jörg Widmann’s Lied for Orchestra, like many of his works, is
2003 ‘Schubert’s music brings tears to the eyes without questioning the soul: the music invades us completely without us even noticing. We cry without knowing why; because our lives are not as the music promises us they will be’. Thus wrote Theodor Adorno.
Jörg Widmann was immediately clear about his task when he was commissioned by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra to write a piece on the theme of Schubert: the work should be centred on melody. ‘Schubert is a melodic genius’, said Widmann; nothing pleased Schubert more than experimenting with melodies, deriving new and wonderful ways of manipulating ideas. To Schubert a melody should not just be beautiful but should draw the listener in with immense intensity. It was with this in mind that Widmann’s original idea was conceived: this was to be a piece in one movement that should allow the orchestra to become one voice in which all the instruments sing, creating a type of continous melody. He wanted to create a work without the safety net of traditional form, as if one were stripping a Schubert song of its accompaniment.
10 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
a modern-day response, an imaginary dialogue with the underlying emotionalism of the great Classical masters, in this case Schubert in particular. In between these two pieces comes Shéhérazade, one of the most heady yet typically controlled creations to have come from that ravishing musical orchestral colourist and lover of the exotic, Maurice Ravel.
Jörg Widmann (born 1973) Lied for Orchestra Commissioned by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, who gave the premiere, conducted by Jonathan Nott, in Bamberg, Germany, on 10 December 2003.
As the compositional process progressed, Widmann’s original ideas underwent certain changes. For example, rather than keeping strictly to the idea of the orchestra singing with one voice, he in fact changed this: in places the orchestra divides, with the main melodic material at fff, and a barely-audible pppp harmonic foundation. Widmann concentrated on certain aspects of Schubert’s compositional style: the characteristic ideas of ‘searching’, travelling harmonically and frequently being ‘lost’ yet still ‘continuing’. Instead of incorporating specific Schubert works, he chose instead to hint at some: Schubert’s String Quartet and the Octet, for example. The resulting orchestral piece captures Schubert’s soundworld and emotional atmosphere through his compositional technique, while unquestionably bearing its composer’s own stamp. Programme note by Torsten Blaich. English translation by Lindsay Chalmers-Gerbracht.
