The Symphony No. 3 in C minor is a symphony for orchestra composed by Florence Price in 1938. The work was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Music Project during the height of the Great Depression. It was first performed at the Detroit Institute of Arts on November 6, 1940, by the Detroit Civic Orchestra under the conductor Valter Poole. The composition is Price's third symphony, following her Symphony in E minor—the first symphony by a black woman to be performed by a major American orchestra—and her lost Symphony No. 2. [1] [2] [3]
The symphony has a duration of roughly 30 minutes and is composed in four movements:
Price started writing the symphony in the summer of 1938, but later revised the work prior to its 1940 premiere. [1] It is notably different from her first symphony in that it uses less African-American themes; its beginning is almost Wagnerian. Some passages resemble Russian composers like Shostakovich. [4]
The work is scored for an orchestra comprising piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion, celeste, and strings. [1]
Contemporary reception for the symphony was positive. Reviewing the 1940 world premiere, J. D. Callaghan of the Detroit Free Press wrote:
Mrs. Price, both in the [piano] concerto and in the symphony, spoke in the musical idiom of her own people, and spoke with authority. There was inherent in both works all the emotional warmth of the American Negro, so that the evening became one of profound melody satisfaction. In the symphony there was a slow movement of majestic beauty, a third in which the rhythmic preference of the Negro found scope in a series of dance forms, and a finale which swept forward with great vigor. [1]
The piece is sometimes performed in an abbreviated form, suggested by Thomas Wilkins, called Symphonic Reflections. In this format, the first movement is omitted and the remaining three re-ordered (Juba: Allegro, Andante ma non troppo, Scherzo: Finale) to form a fast-slow-fast pattern. [5]
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭ major, Op. 83, by Johannes Brahms is separated by a gap of 22 years from his first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna. It took him three years to work on this concerto, which indicates that he was always self-critical. He wrote to Clara Schumann: "I want to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo." Ironically, he was describing a huge piece. This concerto is dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. The public premiere of the concerto was given in Budapest on 9 November 1881, with Brahms as soloist and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, and was an immediate success. He proceeded to perform the piece in many cities across Europe.
The Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, by Jean Sibelius is a symphony started in 1898, and finished in early 1899, when Sibelius was 33. The work was first performed on 26 April 1899 by the Helsinki Orchestral Society, conducted by the composer, in an original version which has not survived. After the premiere, Sibelius made some revisions, resulting in the version performed today. The revised version was completed in the spring and summer of 1900, and was first performed in Berlin by the Helsinki Philharmonic, conducted by Robert Kajanus on 1 July 1900.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21, was dedicated to Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an early patron of the composer. The piece was published in 1801 by Hoffmeister & Kühnel of Leipzig. It is not known exactly when Beethoven finished writing this work, but sketches of the finale were found to be from 1795.
The Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77, was originally composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1947–48. He was still working on the piece at the time of the Zhdanov Doctrine, and it could not be performed in the period following the composer's denunciation. In the time between the work's initial completion and the first performance, the composer, sometimes with the collaboration of its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, worked on several revisions. The concerto was finally premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 29 October 1955. It was well-received, Oistrakh remarking on the "depth of its artistic content" and describing the violin part as a "pithy 'Shakespearian' role."
The Symphony No. 9 in C major, D 944, known as The Great, is the final symphony completed by Franz Schubert. It was first published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1849 as "Symphonie / C Dur / für großes Orchester" and listed as Symphony No. 8 in the New Schubert Edition. Originally called The Great C major to distinguish it from his Symphony No. 6, the Little C major, the subtitle is now usually taken as a reference to the symphony's majesty. Unusually long for a symphony of its time, a typical performance of The Great lasts an hour when all repeats indicated in the score are taken. The symphony was not professionally performed until a decade after Schubert's death.
The Piano Concerto No. 4 in C minor, Op. 44 was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1875. It was premièred on October 31, 1875, at the Théâtre du Châtelet of Paris, with the composer as the soloist. The concerto is dedicated to Anton Door, a professor of piano at the Vienna Conservatory. It continues to be one of Saint-Saëns' most popular piano concertos, second only to the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor.
The two Serenades, Op. 11 and 16, represent early efforts by Johannes Brahms to write orchestral music. They both date from after the 1856 death of Robert Schumann when Brahms was residing in Detmold and had access to an orchestra.
The Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53, is a concerto for violin and orchestra composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1879. It was premiered in Prague on October 14, 1883. by František Ondříček, who also gave the Vienna and London premieres. Today it remains an important work in the violin repertoire.
Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto in D-flat major, Op. 38, was composed in 1936. It was his first work to bring him recognition in the West, and it immediately entered the repertoire of many notable pianists.
Alexander Glazunov composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Opus, 92, in 1911, during his tenure as director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The concerto is dedicated to Leopold Godowsky, whom Glazunov had heard on tour in St. Petersburg in 1905.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed his Orchestral Suite No. 3 in G, Op. 55 in 1884, writing it concurrently with his Concert Fantasia in G, Op. 56, for piano and orchestra. The originally intended opening movement of the suite, Contrastes, instead became the closing movement of the fantasia. Both works were also intended initially as more mainstream compositions than they became; the fantasia was intended as a piano concerto, while the suite was conceived as a symphony.
The Symphonic Variations, M. 46, is a work for piano and orchestra written in 1885 by César Franck. It has been described as "one of Franck's tightest and most finished works", "a superb blending of piano and orchestra", and "a flawless work and as near perfection as a human composer can hope to get in a work of this nature". It is a fine example of Franck's use of cyclic unity, with one theme growing into various others. The piano and orchestra share equally in the development of ideas. The work is in F♯ minor. Duration in performance is about fifteen minutes, and the instrumentation is piano solo and orchestra: pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons; four horns; two trumpets; timpani; and strings.
The Symphony No. 2 in F minor was written by Richard Strauss between 1883 and 1884. It is sometimes referred to as just Symphony in F minor. He gave it the Opus number 12, and it also appears in other catalogues as TrV 126 and Hanstein A.I.2. It is not listed in von Asow's catalog.
The Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 9, was completed by Ernő Dohnányi in 1901, when the composer was 24. It was his second venture into orchestral writing, his Symphony in F written in 1896 was not published. The symphony in D minor was premiered in January 1902 in Manchester, England, under the baton of Hans Richter. The Hungarian premiere followed in 1903. Although audibly influenced by the prevailing voices of the time, including Bruckner, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Mahler and Brahms, the work nonetheless demonstrates a formidable handling of complex compositional techniques and is a notable precursor to what would become Dohnányi's distinctive neoromantic style. As with most of his public work, Dohnányi published the composition under the Germanized version of his name, Ernst von Dohnányi. The symphony is 50–55 minutes in duration.
The Symphony in E minor is the first symphony written by the American composer Florence Price. The work was completed in 1932 and was first performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Frederick Stock in June 1933. The piece was Price's first full-scale orchestral composition and was the first symphony by a Black woman to be performed by a major American orchestra.
The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a piano concerto by the American composer John Corigliano. The work was commissioned by the San Antonio Symphony and was first performed on April 7, 1968 by the pianist Hilde Somer and the San Antonio Symphony under the direction of Victor Alessandro. The piece is dedicated to John Atkins.
The Symphony No. 4 in D minor is an orchestral symphony by the American composer Florence Price. Composed in 1945, the work was never performed during Price's life and was presumed lost until it was discovered among a stash of manuscripts in her former summer home outside of St. Anne, Illinois, in 2009. These manuscripts, along with journals, books, and other documents that were discovered, are now preserved at the University of Arkansas. The symphony was given a belated world premiere by the Fort Smith Symphony under the direction of John Jeter in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on May 12, 2018.
The Symphony No. 3 in B minor by the Ukrainian composer Borys Lyatoshynsky was completed in 1951, with the final movement themed "Peace will conquer war." The symphony was first performed in Kyiv on 23 October 1951, by the Kyiv Philharmonic, conducted by Natan Rakhlin. Criticised by the Soviet authorities on ideological grounds, the composer was forced to rework the symphony, and to remove the subtitle of the finale. The first performance of the revised version took place in Leningrad in 1955.
Thomas Wilkins's "Symphonic Reflections" omits the first movement and reorders the other three to form a fast-slow-fast triptych, beginning with the quick "Juba Dance" third movement, continuing with the Andante second movement, and ending with the finale, marked Scherzo