b'PROGRAM NOTESthe extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad. For the Allegro energico e passionato, Brahms wrote a chaconne with 32 variations and a coda. Hanslick described the last movement as exhibiting an astonishing harmonic and contrapuntal art never conspicuous as such and never an exercise of mere musical erudition. Brahms absolute mastery of form is revealed in this music of profound depth and power.LEONARD BERNSTEINSymphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra,The Age of AnxietyCOMPOSER: Born August 25, 1918, Lawrence, MA;died October 14, 1990, New York City WORK COMPOSED: Summer 1947March 20, 1948.Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and dedicatedto Serge Koussevitzky, in tribute.WORLD PREMIERE: April 8, 1949. Serge Koussevitzky led the Boston Symphony with Bernstein at the piano at Boston Symphony Hall.INSTRUMENTATION: Solo piano, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn,2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns,3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, celesta, pianino, bass drum, cymbals, drum set, glockenspiel, snare drum, tam tam, temple blocks, tenor drum, triangle, xylophone, harp, and stringsESTIMATED DURATION: 35 minutes W . H. Audens fascinating and hair-raising poem, The Age of Anxiety: a Baroque Eclogue, began immediately to affect me lyrically when I first read it in the summer of 1947, Leonard Bernstein wrote in an essay published with the score to his second symphony. From that moment the composition of a symphony based on The Age of Anxiety acquired an almost compulsive qualityBernsteins symphony features a solo piano and might, for that reason, have been mistaken for a concerto, but Bernstein explained, I imagine that the conception of a symphony with piano solo emerges from the extremely personal identification of myself with the poem. In this sense, the pianist provides an almost autobiographical protagonist set against an orchestral mirror . The work is therefore no concerto in the virtuosic sense, although I regard Audens poem as one of the most shattering examples of pure virtuosity in the history of British poetry. (Auden, however, did not reciprocate Bernsteins admiration. When asked his opinion of Bernsteins symphony, he replied, It really has very little to do with me. Any connections with my book are rather distant.)Audens 80-page Pulitzer prize-winning poem features four characters, Quant, Malin, Rosetta, and Emble, who explore issues of identity, purpose, alienation, and faith during a long night in a 3rd Avenue New York bar during WWII. Despite their dissimilarities, the four bond through their shared loneliness and conflicting impulses. Bernstein wrote, The essential line of the poem (and of the music) is the record of our difficult and problematical search for faith. In the end, two of the characters enunciate the recognition of this faitheven a passive submission to itat the same time revealing an inability to relate to it personally in their daily lives, except through blind acceptance. Bernstein did not intend to write an overtly programmatic symphony with specific musical illustrations of Audens text. However, Bernstein found many of Audens narrative elements had made their way srsymphony.org2024-2025 Season 21'