Season Opening with the Swiss Orchestra

A classical symphony orchestra features lyrical violins, warm violas, noble cellos and ponderous double basses; then there are frisky flutes, wistful oboes, mysterious clarinets and sonorous bassoons; and they’re all rounded off by resplendent horns, brilliant trumpets, majestic trombones and thundering timpani. Oh, and of course, there’s one more: the triangle. The poor triangle has had to put up with more than its fair share of ridicule. The Austrian cabaret singer Georg Kreisler even once devoted a strophe in a song to the triangle player in an orchestra: “I don’t come in till page 89 / Yes, I’ve got plenty of time / I could get out a book and read a bit, but now the conductor’s looking at me / And straightaway I stand up and go [ping]”. At least the triangle player’s work-life balance is in a pretty decent spot.

But there’s one work where the triangle player has a lot more to do: Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, more specifically the beginning of its third movement, where the triangle’s role is transformed from a tiny character part into a joint protagonist. And in this case, it was the composer himself who became an object of scorn on account of his unusual use of the instrument. His concerto was even derided as a “triangle concerto accompanied by piano and orchestra” – a quip attributed appropriately to the witty but scurrilous doyen of music critics Eduard Hanslick. His target wasn’t just Liszt’s orchestration here, but the aesthetics of programme music as championed by Liszt and Richard Wagner. Hanslick was of the opinion that it’s not music’s role to express feelings or tell stories, but is complete in itself instead. He was an advocate of its aesthetic autonomy. Thus, for example, he also held Beethoven’s symphonies in the highest possible regard – except for the Sixth, the Pastoral, on account of its programmatic content.

And what about Joachim Raff, a native of Canton Schwyz – how did he position himself in the debate about the future of music that dominated the scene in the 19th century? As a sometime disciple of Liszt, he gave most of his symphonies descriptive titles. But a critical book that he published on Wagner in 1854 also annoyed the adherents of programme music. When he was made the first director of the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, he made sure to keep a balance between musical progressives and conservatives among his staff (perhaps a quality of his that was typically Swiss?). And in his Orchestral Suite No. 1, op. 101 that features on our programme here, he – prudently, perhaps – refrained from writing for the triangle!