Join us on Sunday, Feb. 18 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you Haydn’s Horn Concerto No. 1 and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6. On the podium is guest conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a brilliant young Lithuanian conductor who has garnered rave reviews in the decade since she first came to international attention.
The Orchestra’s principal horn, Jennifer Montone, is featured in the First Horn Concerto by Franz Joseph Haydn. As prolific as Haydn was in the forms of string quartet (nearly 70) and symphony (more than 100!) — both of which he brought to a new level of sophistication — he spent little time composing concertos. The musical needs of the princely Esterhazy family tended to dictate his compositional choices, and symphonies and chamber music were a priority.
When Haydn did set out to write a concerto, it was generally intended for one of his own orchestra musicians, with whom he shared close bonds. And the concertos that survive are very fine indeed. Such was the case with the First Horn Concerto in D major. Haydn penned it for Joseph Leutgeb, who would later inspire the horn concertos of Mozart. Leutgeb was briefly a member of the Esterhazy musical establishment, but remained only for a month in 1762. He was already a renowned soloist in Vienna, and perhaps he found the Esterhazy country palace too remote for his taste. But a month was long enough for Haydn to create a solo vehicle for the supremely gifted virtuoso. The concerto is a favorite of Montone, as she told WRTI’s Alex Ariff in an interview for this broadcast. “There’s a lot of joy in the outer movements,” she says, while the second movement is “really magical and very spiritual and simple, but just absolutely stunning.”
The program concludes with the Sixth Symphony in A major by Anton Bruckner. By the time he began working on this symphony in 1879, Bruckner had been living in Vienna for more than a decade, teaching at the conservatory and producing a succession of symphonies. But he was not truly part of the city’s musical establishment. Born and educated in the countryside, Bruckner lacked any urbane sophistication and surely seemed out of place in a major European cultural capital. He was always plagued by a sense of inferiority, intensified amid the largely negative reaction to his symphonies. It so happened that Vienna’s most influential critic fervently opposed the audible influence of Richard Wagner in Bruckner’s symphonic writing.
Even those who supported Bruckner tended to undermine his confidence, making helpful suggestions to “improve” his works. The self-critical composer internalized their input, and in 1877 he stopped writing new works altogether. For two years he devoted himself to revising the symphonies he had already produced — a process that has since led to much disagreement about which versions should be definitive. As Bruckner emerged from this period of re-evaluation, he embarked on a new symphony. Perhaps this work benefited from the process that had consumed him for two years, because the Sixth is the only symphony that Bruckner never revised, indicating a new level of confidence in his own strengths as a composer.
PROGRAM:
Haydn: Horn Concerto No. 1 in D major
Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 in A major
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, conductor
Jennifer Montone, horn
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer
Joseph Patti: Broadcast Engineer
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts every Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, streaming at WRTI.org, on the WRTI mobile app, and on your smart speaker. Listen again on Mondays at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Listen for up to two weeks after broadcast on WRTI Replay.
