Weingartner, Felix

[ gemeint ist die Tonart E-Dur] setzt sich aus den Anfangsbuchstaben unserer Vornamen F [ für Felix ] und L [ für Lucille ] zusammen. […] Einigen Themen sind geheime Worte unterlegt, die nur wir Beide zu lesen verstanden. Am Schluss des Finale, eines Variationensatzes, wob ich kontrapunktisch eine Tanzmelodie ein, die, obwohl sie aus dem Vorangehenden herauswächst, an ein Motiv der „Fledermaus“ anklingt. So huldigte ich der Stadt, der ich, wenn auch sehr indirekt, ein neues Leben verdanke. Niemals hatte ich ein Werk von so grossen Dimensionen geschaffen, niemals verwendete ich ein so riesiges Orchester. Nur in solcher Form konnte ich aussprechen, was hier auszusprechen war. Ich vollendete die Skizze in der kurzen Zeit von fünf Wochen.“ Wenigstens im Falle des „Fledermaus-Zitats“ lassen sich die geheimen, unterlegten Worte doch recht gut dingfest machen, dort heißt es im Original „Wonne, Seligkeit, Entzücken! Oh, wie macht dies Wort mich froh! Gattin, laß ans Herz dich drücken…..“.

Die weitere Fertigstellung des Werkes ist einem wesentlich profaneren Umstand zu verdanken. Ein Unfall auf der Bühne der Wiener Hofoper, bei dem sich Weingartner einen Beinbruch zuzieht, verschafft die nötige Ruhe, um die Symphonie zu instrumentieren. Die fertige Partitur ist mit „Wien, 9. Mai 1910“ datiert. Sie wird umgehend dem Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel zugestellt und noch im selben Jahr veröffentlicht. Die Uraufführung findet am 27. November 1910 statt. In seinen „Lebenserinnerungen“ weiß Weingartner zu berichten: „ Die Uraufführung meiner neuen Symphonie, die wir heimlich „Le Serment d’Amour“ getauft hatten, fand in einem Wiener philharmonischen Konzert statt. Sie trug festlichen Charakter. Ich erinnere mich, viel Schönes darüber gelesen zu haben. […]. Der Anklang an Johann Strauss erwarb ihr bald den Titel einer „Wiener Symphonie“.“

Wie schon oben von Weingartner selbst angedeutet, kommt der „Liebesschwur“ ( Le Serment d’Amour) nicht eben in einer intimen Form daher, und 241 Seiten Partitur dürften deutlich länger sein als die meisten Eheverträge. Mit etwa 65 Minuten Spieldauer und einer Orchesterbesetzung, die einer Oper von Richard Strauss zur Ehre gereichen würde (einschließlich eines Heckelphons, einer äußerst selten geforderten Art Tenoroboe, und der Orgel, die im zweiten Satz mit vollem Werk intoniert- obwohl nur „ad libitum“ ! ), stellt das Werk hohe Anforderungen an Ausführende wie Zuhörende gleichermaßen. Die Viersätzigkeit sowie die Handhabung von Tempo- und Tonartwahl sind noch traditionell wie bei den beiden vorhergehende Symphonien Weingartners. Aber mit Ausnahme des zweiten Satzes, der als eine Art Walzer die Scherzofunktion einnimmt, ist die Binnenstrukturierung der Sätze deutlich innovativer und recht komplex. Insbesondere der Aufbau der Ecksätze ist mit den herkömmlichen Formmodellen nur schwer zu fassen, auch wenn man für den ersten Satz bei genauem Studium noch die Grundzüge der Sonatenhauptsatzform ermitteln kann. Daher ist für den nur hörenden Rezipienten das Werk zunächst etwas sperrig, sodass die vorliegende Partitur eine willkommene Hilfe darstellen mag, die Gesamtkonzeption besser zu erfassen- und zu genießen!

Wolfgang Eggerking, 2015

Aufführungsmaterial ist von Breitkopf und Härtel, Wiesbaden, zu beziehen.

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Felix Weingartner
(b. Zara/Zadar, Dalmatia, 2 June 1863 – d. Winterthur, 7 May 1942)

Symphony No. 3 in E major, op. 49

Preface
“Felix Weingartner: conductor, composer, pianist, writer”: thus the information that music lovers find in every scholarly publication, whether printed or digital, when they seek facts on Weingartner. If his versatility is already remarkable, the order of his professional designations is even more revealing: today, too, Weingartner is mainly perceived as a conductor. Only recently, thanks to the increasing number of CD releases of his works and the reissuing of his scores, is his music becoming available to a broader listenership.

Weingartner’s musical training began roughly at the age of five. After moving away from his native city to Graz, his mother, now a single parent after his father’s death, gave her son his first piano lessons. When he entered high school he received instruction in piano and composition from Wilhelm Mayer (also known by his nom de plume, W.A. Rémy). The boy proved an eager learner; his earliest piano pieces date from this period and were submitted with his application for a state scholarship. After assessing the works, the jury (including Brahms, Goldmark, and Hanslick) awarded the pupil a three-year scholarship for his labors. After graduating from high school, Weingartner used the scholarship to study in Leipzig (1881-83). For the moment, however, his sights were not set on becoming a professional musician: besides his instruction at Leipzig Conservatory, where his studies included composition with Carl Reinecke, he took courses in philosophy at the university. His meetings with Wagner, and especially with Liszt, who also became his teacher, inspired him fundamentally and left a mark on most of his large-scale compositions, including his first opera, Sakuntala.

In 1884, having completed his education, Weingartner began a career as a conductor. At first this caused him to move from place to place at roughly two-year intervals (Königsberg, Danzig, Hamburg, Mannheim). Finally, in 1891, he arrived in Berlin, where he was court conductor at the Opera until 1898. He was also in charge of the concerts of the Royal Orchestra, which he directed with much sensitivity and skill, especially as regards repertoire and performers, and which, despite a few mishaps, granted him long-term success. He was also creative in other fields, producing several large-scale musical compositions as well as philosophical essays and publications on the art of conducting.

In 1897-98 Weingartner left the Berlin opera world to become head of the Kaim Orchestra in Munich (the predecessor of the present Munich Philharmonic). Yet he remained in charge of the concerts of the Royal Orchestra until 1906.

From 1900 on Weingartner stood at the zenith of his fame. His conducting style received almost universal acclaim; he advanced to become a recognized authority on Beethoven with his performances of all nine symphonies; and he continued his activities as a writer. In the 1907-08 season he succeeded Gustav Mahler as head of the Vienna Court Opera and took charge of the Vienna Philharmonic. But as before in Berlin, the concert hall proved more to his liking than the opera house; he retired from his position at the Court Opera in 1911 while remaining true to the Vienna Phil until 1927. He also made guest appearances all over the world, including several trips to South America. His life style, noteworthy for his frequent changes of position, places of residence, and, as some biographers disparagingly note, wives (he married five times), entered more tranquil waters in 1927 when he moved to Basel. There he continued to conduct as head of the Basel Orchestra Society and became director of the Conservatory. Now teaching became a main focus of his work. He changed residence twice within Switzerland, moving to Interlaken (1936) and Lausanne (1938). Extended trips with his last wife, Carmen Studer, took him as far as Japan, enriching the final chapter of his life. In March 1942 he gave his final concert in Lausanne, and on 7 May 1942 he died in Winterthur, where his grave is located today.

Those searching for Weingartner on sound recordings will primarily discover him as a performer, particularly of Beethoven (the earliest was made in 1924), where his readings are highly prized by the experts. As Weingartner’s language is that of the orchestra, it comes as no surprise to find that he also made a great many orchestral arrangements. Being an admirer of Schubert, he was particularly concerned with the Symphony in E major (D 729), which was left behind mainly in the form of sketches, and which he orchestrated and presented for the first time to a broader public. His own music, though fairly voluminous, has only gradually taken hold in the record market. Weingartner wrote in practically every genre, leaving behind operas, songs, chamber music, several works for large orchestra (including seven symphonies and two concertos), and a few piano pieces. His idiom, noteworthy for its echoes of Franz Liszt, is also marked by elements of classicism. Though less innovative than the music of such contemporaries as Gustav Mahler, it is by no means uninspired. The accusation of Kapellmeistermusik that Mahler, too, had to suffer in his day, is completely inapplicable.

“Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh”: thus the heading that might apply to discussion below, for Weingartner was deeply in love with his “third,” referring both to his third wife Lucille Marcel and his Third Symphony, sketched in Bad Kreuth in 1909. The new love affair triggered previously unimagined creative forces within him; Weingartner later described it as follows in his memoirs:

The “E” of its tonic key is composed from the initials of our first names: F for Felix, and L for Lucille. […] Several of its themes are given secret words that only we two knew how to read. At the end of the finale, a set of variations, I contrapuntally interwove a dance tune which, though derived from the preceding music, alludes to a motif from Die Fledermaus. Thus did I give homage to the city to which, if very indirectly, I owed a new life. Never before had I created a work on such a large scale, and never before had I used such a gigantic orchestra. Only in this form was I able to express what had to be said. I completed the sketch in the brief period of five weeks.

At least in the case of the Fledermaus quotation the secret words can be quite easily pinned down. In the original they read, “Wonne, Seligkeit, Entzücken! Oh, wie macht dies Wort mich froh! Gattin, laß ans Herz dich drücken…..”, or in translation: “Delight, bliss, enchantment! Oh, how happy these words make me! Wife, let me press you to my heart!”

The circumstances surrounding the work’s completion were far more mundane: Weingartner broke his leg in an accident on the stage of the Vienna Court Opera, thereby obtaining the necessary leisure to orchestrate the symphony. The finished score, dated “Vienna, 9 May 1910,” was immediately dispatched to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel and appeared in print that same year. The première took place on 27 November 1910. Again to quote the memoirs:

The première of my new symphony, which we secretly christened “Le Serment d’Amour” [The Love Vow], took place in a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. It was festive in character. I remember reading many wonderful things about it. […]. The allusion to Johann Strauss quickly earned it the title of a “Viennese symphony.”

As suggested above by Weingartner himself, the “love vow” appears not exactly in an intimate form, 241 pages of full score being considerably longer than most marriage contracts. With a performance duration of some sixty-five minutes and orchestral forces that would do honor to an opera by Richard Strauss (including a heckelphone, an extremely rare form of tenor oboe, and an organ which resounds plein jeu in the second movement, albeit only ad libitum), the work poses severe demands on performers and listeners alike. The four-movement design and the treatment of tempo and key are as traditional as in Weingartner’s previous two symphonies. But apart from the second movement, a sort of waltz with the function of a scherzo, the internal structure of the movements is far more innovative and fairly complex. The design of the outside movements in particular is difficult to grasp in terms of conventional formal models, even if the opening movement, on closer inspection, still reveals the basic outline of sonata-allegro form. Only to the listener is the work thus somewhat ungainly at first hearing, and the present study score may be a welcome aid to heighten the understanding and enjoyment of its overall conception.

Translation: Bradford Robinson

For performance material please contact Breitkopf und Härtel, Wiesbaden.