I've already introduced examples of the concert overture a few times on this blog. Some years back, it occurred to me that this genre is in danger of disappearing altogether for a very interesting pair of reasons.
At one time, the concert overture appeared at the starting position of many, perhaps even most, orchestral concerts. This had a lot to do with tradition (the standard pattern of overture-concerto-intermission-symphony) and with the dominance of central European Romantic music in the repertoire of the world's orchestras (that location and era defines neatly the parameters of the rise and fall of the concert overture as a genre for composers).
Today, the appearance of a concert overture on a programme is an increasingly rare event. Music appreciation has broadened to incorporate more and more music from earlier and later eras, and from other regions.
On record, the concert overture reigned supreme as the most logical fill-up for a typical Romantic symphony which would occupy somewhere from 35 to 45 minutes on a long-playing LP record lasting for an hour. Today the focus has shifted, and the later generations of CDs were just as likely to incorporate a pair of symphonies, due to the longer 80-minute playing time of that format. New recordings of concert overtures, therefore, are also an increasingly rare event.
There are still a few concert overtures popular enough to withstand this shift in the musical tides. I think in this connection of the two by Brahms, several by Beethoven, a couple by Dvořák, and one by Mendelssohn, but not much else.
So this first part of a multi-part post is to introduce a few favourite concert overtures of mine which are not often heard, or recorded, or even known to many music lovers.
I'm starting with two overtures by Dvořák. His Carnaval and In Nature's Realm both continue to hold the stage, but the third partner of the trilogy is much less well known. Yet Othello, Op. 93, is a work of great substance and drama, well-structured, and well worthy of ranking with the other two. Perhaps the lack of overt "Czech" music has hindered it. At any rate, it does more -- developmentally speaking -- than either of its stable-mates with the melody which is common to all three. Here, that lovely lyrical idea (think of the opening of In Nature's Realm or the contrasting trio of Carnaval) is twisted around into the minor key, cut up into fragments, changes its shape, and finally is used to build up the dramatic crescendo into the catastrophic coda. It appears in the place of the second subject during the course of the overture, well-contrasted with the more abrupt first theme.
Another tune familiar from a different work is used to advantage in Dvořák's most overtly patriotic works, the concert overture Husitská ("The Hussite"), composed in 1883 for the festive opening of the National Theatre in Prague. It employs the hymn tune of the Hussite movement, "You Who Are Warriors of the Lord God". Lovers of Czech orchestral music will be already familiar with this theme, which forms the foundation of parts 5 and 6 of Smetana's cycle of tone poems, Má vlast. Dvořák imaginatively uses a restlessly energetic form of this tune to incorporate into the structure of a symphonic sonata-form movement. The overture develops a terrific head of steam, most of it in the minor key, until a crisis leads to the re-emergence of the hymn in a glorious major. This leads on to a powerful and ambitious coda in the form of a victory celebration.
Robert Schumann composed music for the theatre, and one opera, but these works are little heard today. Nonetheless, among all these works he did produce one unquestionable masterpiece in the overture to Manfred. This character, created by Lord Byron, is a kind of Romantic version of the man of vaunting ambition. His poem has been aptly described as "Faust without the Devil", since Manfred (a man of super-human force of will) succumbs entirely to his own flawed character without outside assistance.
Schumann's overture opens with three staccato fortissimo chords -- and these three chords have a peculiarly edgy sound to them. Without a score, you will not find out until much later on, when they recur in the full flow of the overture's coda, that these chords are actually written an eighth note ahead of the beat, forcing the orchestra to attack them more forcefully than if they were conventionally written on the beat.
There follows a questioning, seeking melody for the winds, incorporating some large leaps up and down. This slow, meandering tune eventually quickens to allegro tempo and becomes the principal theme of the overture, a turbulent and troubled piece of music which plainly foreshadows the anguished life of the principal character. It is combined effectively with a falling and rising arpeggio theme which generates plenty of energy in the music. In the coda, this arpeggio is combined with a completely new chordal theme which is heard twice and then does not reappear. The closing sombre pages recall the slow introduction and plainly depict the solitary death of Manfred.
Perhaps the most famous orchestral composition by Mendelssohn is the Hebrides Overture, also entitled Fingal's Cave. It's truly a masterpiece of the first order, and rightly prized by music lovers. How many of them, I wonder, know that Mendelssohn also composed several other concert overtures that are now almost unheard? The Fair Melusina is one of them. It's a lovely little tone poem depicting the story of the sea-nymph Melusina, who has the misfortune to fall in love with a mortal man. Central European mythology is full of tales where the mortal and immortal worlds mingle, almost inevitably with disastrous results (think of Dvořák's Rusalka for instance). The rippling opening plainly depicts Melusina's carefree life amid the waves. A second, more agitated and forceful theme intrudes and becomes the main substance of the overture. Plainly this new, somewhat rougher, music brings with it Melusina's lover and the trouble which his appearance sets off in both of their lives. In the end, of course, the overture slides neatly back into the nymph's music for the coda, as Melusina disappears once again below the waves.
Another Mendelssohn work concerned with the sea is his concert overture, Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt ("Becalmed Sea and Prosperous Voyage"). It's inspired by a little pair of poems by Goethe, poems which were interestingly set to music in a short choral work by Beethoven. The overture follows the shape of the poems closely. The first part is slow, dark, sombre, as befits the image of the sailing ship adrift in the vast ocean with no hint of breeze to stir the sails. And then, the wind rises most realistically from the orchestra and the music rouses to life along with it. The "prosperous voyage" is a lively allegro, in Mendelssohn's most spirited vein. The last line of the poem is "Already I see the land." Mendelssohn's coda seems to go farther than the text here, as the music slows down for a pompous march-like ending which (as Sir Donald Tovey so aptly remarked) sounds like some kind of official welcome for the voyagers. But Mendelssohn displays his true genius once more in the unexpected and poetic ending: three quiet chords forming a gentle cadence.
