I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key? I'll give you one, but please comment others below: Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony. Well, how about this one: how many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end in a minor key? The answer? Just one, Op. 59, No. 2, the subject of today's show. And that minor key is hugely important to this darkest of the three Op. 59 quartets, three towering achievements that changed the string quartet repertoire for good.

Beethoven, as I've said many times on the show, was a revolutionary within limits, always expanding, rethinking, and reshaping what was possible without breaking anything beyond repair. But make no mistake: the Op. 59 quartets were revolutionary works. No one had written anything like them before in terms of scope, emotional intensity, difficulty, and complexity. In fact, like a few of Beethoven's greatest works, they were received with confusion and, in some cases, anger by musicians, audiences, and critics. Famously, the cellist of the first string quartet to receive the parts of Op. 59, No. 1 saw the Morse code-like, one-note theme of the second movement, threw the music aside, and stomped on it!

These quartets were Beethoven going out on a limb, applying the intensity and drama of his Middle Heroic Period to a genre that had been at least partly the province of amateur musicians, but not anymore. Op. 59, No. 2, as I said, is the darkest of this group: four movements all centered around the key of E, and with the exception of the glorious second movement, all in minor, presenting a seriousness and directness of purpose that is powerfully compelling. This might be my favorite of the Op. 59 quartets, and so I'm very excited to dig into it with you today. We'll discuss the enigmatic and ecstatic aspects of this quartet, as well as Beethoven's own philosophical views on life, which come to light in the second movement, one of Beethoven's greatest creations.

Recording: Cleveland Quartet

Brahms spent much of his adult life battling with his ambition to write the next great symphony and his terror at the shadow of Beethoven standing behind him. Brahms tortured himself for 14 years with his first symphony, and only published it when he was 49 years old. But when that symphony finally came out, it was a relative success for a new work, and with immense relief, Brahms quickly turned out another symphony in just 4 months. Brahms' first symphony was quickly dubbed "Beethoven's 10th" something that annoyed Brahms to no end. When told that the main theme of the last movement resembled the Ode to Joy, he notoriously responded, "any ass can see that!" But all the same, Brahms had been re-anointed as Beethoven's successor with the symphony, and so therefore his second symphony would also be given a Beethovinian name, Pastoral. The question since the symphony has been written has been this: just how pastoral and idyllic is this symphony? Many commentators see an unadulterated joy and gentleness in the piece, with some melancholy moments to be sure. But overall, the piece is as sunny as it seems on its surface, with just the typical battles between happiness and sadness that mark every symphony. But there's another school fo thought with this symphony, and that is that it is marked by shadows and tremors that go way beyond simple sadness and happiness, and that these shadows and tremors leave a mark that can't be ignored. I tend to believe in the second theory, but we're going to discuss this symphony with this framework in mind; whether this piece is as sunny as some people would have you believe, or if the shadows are the lasting impression we get as we walk away from the concert hall. We'll also discuss Brahms' innovations with form, and his evergreen ability to write some of the most stunning melodies on the planet. Join us!

The story of Alexander von Zemlinsky's The Mermaid begins with a passionate love affair and ends in heartbreak of the most unabashedly big-R Romantic kind. In 1900, the young, fabulously talented, and famously beautiful Alma Schindler came to Zemlinsky's home to study composition. Wildly passionate feelings soon developed between them, and Alma wrote the following in her diary: "I would gladly be pregnant for him, gladly bear his children. His blood and mine, commingled: my beauty with his intellect. I would gladly serve him in his professional life, live for him and his kith and kin, breathe [for him], attend to his every happiness, serve him with a gentle hand. God give me the strength and the willpower to do so."

The relationship lasted a little over a year, until one night when Schindler attended a party that happened to be frequented by a brilliant conductor and composer twenty years her senior: Gustav Mahler. The rest is history.

Zemlinsky was devastated and poured his energies into a tone poem based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. The source may seem surprising, but as we'll see later on, it proved to be the perfect vehicle for Zemlinsky to exorcise the tortured memories of this turbulent relationship. For a long time, however, the score was lost. It wasn't until the 1980s that the full work was reconstructed, and it has since become one of Zemlinsky's most frequently performed pieces.

And it's not hard to see why. The Mermaid is a forty-minute tone poem that, from start to finish, overflows with fin-de-siècle romanticism, very much in the vein of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). It is a work of irresistible beauty and passion, and it is being played more and more as Zemlinsky's name begins to take its rightful place in the standard canon of composers.

Today on the show, I'll tell you a bit more about Zemlinsky in case you're not familiar with him, read more of the unbearably passionate letters and diary entries from both Zemlinsky and Alma Schindler, and, of course, walk you through the heartbreakingly beautiful music of The Mermaid, showing how Zemlinsky balances narrative and abstract form, and how he created this opulent, lush, and profoundly moving score. Join us!