Five years ago, the prominent British cellist Adrian Brendel was asked to identify the greatest challenge of his career thus far. “Without a doubt,” he answered readily, “bearing the surname of my father, with whom I have always got on very well.” He was referring to Alfred Brendel, a Czech-born Austrian pianist, composer and scholar, whose prestigious achievements set a high bar for young Adrian to clear, and a drive to prove his musical worth on his own terms.
“The flip side of this very private struggle,” Adrian added, “was a rich immersion in culture in the widest sense. My father and I still meet regularly to discuss and listen to music, watch films and look at art together.” In 2004, father and son recorded Beethoven - Complete Works for Piano & Cello, meeting with considerable acclaim.
A selection from that album, the Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major, will appear in the 4 p.m. hour of WRTI’s programming on Sunday — part of a special edition of Sunday Classical in honor of Father’s Day. Hosted by John T.K. Scherch from 3 to 6 p.m., the program will highlight notable fathers in classical music, some pieces of music about fatherhood, and a handful of father-and-child pairings, from the Brendels to the Bachs and more.
Our celebration begins with a dedication: “In My Father’s Garden,” which Alma Mahler (née Schindler) composed around the time of her early courtship by Gustav Mahler. It’s the second of her Five Songs for Voice and Piano, each of which features text from a different poem. “In My Father’s Garden” is based on a poem by Otto Erich Hartleben, and pays tribute to Alma’s father, Emil Jakob Schindler, a revered Austrian landscape painter whose most prominent works depict images similar to those evoked by the lyrics of this song: a vision of beauty with a sense of something looming.
Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the more prolific patriarchs in classical music, also naturally factors into our programming. Hear his Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, as performed by Ensemble Caprice with conductor Matthias Maute, shortly before 3:30 p.m. Then listen for a handoff to one of J.S. Bach’s most prominent composerly progeny: Johann Christian Bach, his youngest son, who was born in Leipzig and eventually known as “The English Bach” for his service to the King’s Theatre in London. We’ll hear the overture of his Amadis de Gaule as performed by the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic led by Reinhard Goebel.
The lauded Estonian conductors Neeme Järvi and his son Paavo Järvi will be played in succession around the midpoint of our broadcast, both leading works by Jean Sibelius. First, Neeme conducts the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Andante Festivo, followed by Paavo leading the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in Lemminkäinen’s Return, the fourth movement from the Lemminkäinen Suite. The similarities in this back-to-back are stacked: a father and son composer duo, both leading Swedish orchestras over which they previously held the title of principal conductor in respective works from a common composer (who had an active hand in the classical communities of the cities where the orchestras reside).
Rounding out our Father’s Day classical broadcast is a pairing of father and daughter composers, whose respective pieces are as different in length as the composers are in their realized potential. The first is a short piano composition by Otilie Suková, daughter of Antonín Dvořák, titled Ukolábavka, or “Lullaby” in English. It’s a gentle, touching piece that retroactively speaks to the tragically early end of Suková’s life, at just 27 years old in 1905. As a talented pianist and composer surrounded by music her whole life (she was also married to composer Josef Suk), she would have likely gone on to publish world-spanning works of her own.
Following this is Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96, or the “American.” In a letter, the composer enthusiastically wrote that he “would never have written [his] new symphony… if [he] had never seen America!” The nickname is derived not only from its inception during Dvořák’s visit to Spillville, Iowa in 1893, but also from its inclusion of elements commonly attributed to African American and Native American music, such as the pentatonic character of its themes and its ostinato rhythms.
Tune in to Sunday Classical, 3 to 6 p.m., to hear these and other pieces in the spirit of Father's Day.