Concert Program: September 2025
in which we play it safe but interesting and rewarding
Photo by Natalia Y. on Unsplash
For this month’s program, I thought it would be a good idea to stick to basics, but some basics that maybe aren’t the constant concert-filling warhorse go-tos. It’s one way of being in crowd pleasing territory with familiar names but still being dedicated to showing pieces that might get less attention than they deserve. That said, we’re only barely, if at all, off any beaten path here.
In some online discussion forum somewhere, someone listed Haydn as the most under-appreciated composer. He’s certainly not neglected, but the sentiment was that no matter how much you appreciate him, it’s still not enough, considering what he did for music and the influence he had on everyone who came after him, so then it’s a bit shameful for me to admit that I really know so very little of Haydn’s oeuvre.
One challenge, actually, to getting to know a composer like Haydn, at least for me, is the sheer volume of his output: the man’s got over 100 symphonies and 68 string quartets. In contrast, the output of someone like Beethoven, with only 138 opus numbers in his catalogue, is punctuated by the nine symphonies and five piano concertos, for example, making it much easier to get an overview of his entire output in the form. With over 100 symphonies of Haydn, though, the very real question is, “Where do I start?”
We could start with any of the named groups he has, or the symphonies with titles, but we’ll get around to that another time. For now, in keeping with the idea of picking comparatively lesser-performed works from famous composers’ catalogues, we’re having a look at his 88th symphony this month. It’s one that may be familiar to you from a famous conductor famously conducting the finale with only his famous face.
Two of these three works come from the Season One lectures that I did in 2021-22. Is that part of the reason they’re here, to plug other stuff I have related to them? Absolutely. Do I also think they make a wonderful little thematic German concert program on their own? Also absolutely.
It’s worth noting that the Schumann symphony isn’t a ‘rare’ or neglected piece at all, but it doesn’t get a name like his ‘Spring’ or ‘Rhenish’ symphonies. Schumann is also a composer who I generally just don’t much care for, as I will discuss below, so I’m a listener who is often rather happy to neglect him, but I really do love this symphony, so it’s on the program in place of, say, Brahms’ first or something. That will come.
As mentioned before, there’s more that’s also going to be included with these concert programs. For (I don’t know how else to say it) paid subscribers, there will be:
This introductory article, probably with the link to the Spotify playlist with the specific recordings I’ve chosen for each piece
Individual articles on each of the pieces on the program
My lecture notes/slideshow for each of the pieces if/when available
The animated score video (broken down by movement unless played without pause) for the piece with all the notes I made about structure, entries, etc. as a sort of listening guide if you can (and even if you can’t) score read
That’s subject to change, but it’s what I have in mind now to create, slowly but surely, a sort of library of introductions or guides or whatever for pieces, ideally in reasonable, logical chunks (e.g. the Beethoven symphonies [all of which I already have but may need some revisiting] and concertos; Chopin ballades; Rachmaninoff piano concertos; Scriabin piano sonatas, etc.) for reference and edification. But most of that extracurricular media stuff will necessarily be for paid subscribers.
Last thoughts before we begin discussing the individual pieces? You know the Plinko-type carnival games where you drop a ball down through a set of pins and it lands in one of a number of pockets or holes? Making these programs or lists of lectures or whatever reminds me a bit of that: it’s iterative, in a way. We can start from Haydn and do one through-line that takes us to Mozart and Beethoven (the standard First Viennese School) and then to Schumann then Brahms, or we can go a different direction and throw in Dittersdorf, Wanhal, and others. They’re all related in a six-degree sort of way, so the through-line that I’ve curated looks this way and this one representational journey of many feels interesting and delightful to me. (Two of them also have numbers that are not representative of the order in which they were written, too, so that’s a connection.)
Let’s begin.
Intermission
For ease of navigation, even though I’ve linked it above, you can click the link below (and at the bottom of each of the subsequent articles to get to the next piece on the program).