Branching Out / Vol. 9

What to listen to next, based on our recent experiences with the melancholy music of Mozart and Beethoven.

Natalia Goncharova (Russian, 1881–1962). La forêt (The Forest), c. 1913. Oil on canvas. National Galleries of Scotland. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025

Welcome to the ninth edition of Branching Out — where works recently featured in Shades of Blue become your launching point for discovering more melancholy music that cultivates calm, connection, and healing. (If you're a new subscriber, head over here to explore previous installments.)

To grow our tree of classical music knowledge this month, we'll explore music inspired by our experiences listening to the serene serenade at the heart of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and the mystical variations of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio.

So let's dig in and branch out …

If you enjoyed discovering the clarinet's uncanny ability to mimic the human voice in Mozart's concerto, then listen to …

Franz Schubert / The Shepherd on the Rock (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen)

Like Mozart, Franz Schubert was bewitched by the clarinet's versatile timbre, both crystalline and burnished, and the ways it mirrored the expressivity of the human voice. Although he had given the clarinet a prominent role in soprano arias from his operas and sacred music, it's the final entry in the Austrian composer's vast song catalog that best showcases his ability to interweave these two voices.

Over the course of his short career, Schubert transformed the German folk song tradition into the form we now know as the art song (Kunstlied) — a marriage of music and poetry that became just as important a genre in Western classical music as the symphony, sonata, and string quartet. But in his final art song, The Shepherd on the Rock (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen), he pushed the boundaries of his own innovation even further to craft a large-scale song that not only develops a dramatic monologue for soprano, but complements the singer's voice with that of the clarinet.

The song's text, stitched together from two poems by Wilhelm Müller and Karl August Varnhagen, transports us to a pastoral setting in nature's wild. Surrounded by sloping hills and picturesque valleys, a solitary shepherd sings of intense longing and loneliness, the echo of his voice across the cavernous vista — brought to life by the clarinet — serving as his only companion.

When I stand on the highest rock,
Look down into the deep valley
And sing,

From far away in the deep dark valley
The echo from the ravines
Rises up.

The further my voice carries,
The clearer it echoes back to me
From below.

As the shepherd spins his florid tune, the clarinet mirrors every melodic curve and impassioned outburst. Alas, that distant echo can offer only so much comfort, and in the central section — where major-key wonder turns to shadowy minor — the shepherd is consumed with grief at the distance separating him from his beloved:

I am consumed by deep sorrow;
My joy has gone,
My hope on this earth has vanished;
I am so alone here.

So fervently the song resounded through the forest,
So fervently it resounded through the night;
It drew hearts heavenwards
With its wondrous power.

But with the realization that spring's warm breezes and radiant sunshine will soon break winter's long spell of sorrow, the shepherd's song turns from sorrow to hope, and together soprano and clarinet anticipate the blossoming of spring.

Sadly, Schubert would not live to experience another spring or perform his final song. Just weeks after completing Shepherd on the Rock in October 1828, the 31-year-old composer died after a long period of declining health. His brother Ferdinand, who spent more than a year cataloging the mountain of manuscripts Franz left behind, delivered the song's score to Anna Milder-Hauptmann — the celebrated soprano who had commissioned the work and, in 1830, gave the overdue premiere of Schubert's final expression of longing and renewal.

Anna Lucia Richter, mezzo-soprano
Matthias Schorn, clarinet
Gerold Huber, piano
Follow along with the German text and English translation.

If you were inspired by the story of Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio, and how the composer continued to create music during a time of profound change and hardship, be sure to spend some time with …

Dmitri Shostakovich / Violin Concerto No. 1

Under Joseph Stalin's rule, Soviet Russia became an increasingly hostile place for its composers. Crackdowns on artistic dissent intensified throughout the 1930s, and the Great Terror campaign — which resulted in the execution of as many as 1.2 million Soviet citizens — turned music-making into a matter of life and death. Those twin specters of persecution and execution haunted Dmitri Shostakovich for the majority of his career.

At the start of 1936, Shostakovich was on top of the world: His wife was pregnant with the couple's first child; he was hard at work on his sprawling Fourth Symphony; and his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had been selling out opera houses across Moscow for two years. But fate would serve Shostakovich a harrowing reversal of fortune when, on January 26, Stalin and his entourage attended Lady Macbeth, only to leave halfway through the performance.

Two days later, a scathing editorial appeared in the official Communist Party newspaper, Pravda. Titled "Muddle Instead of Music," the tirade — which some believed was penned by Stalin himself — called Shostakovich's music a poison to the Soviet people and accused the composer of catering to the "perverted tastes of the bourgeoisie." Lady Macbeth closed immediately, future engagements evaporated, and Shostakovich suffered continuous attacks in the press. Professionally isolated and wracked with anxiety, the composer slept in the stairwell outside his apartment to shield his family from witnessing his expected arrest.

Although Soviet leaders were appeased by Shostakovich's next work, his Fifth Symphony, he was forced to endure an emotionally crippling see-saw of praise and condemnation from the Kremlin for the next 15 years. In that time, Shostakovich realized the only way he could ensure his safety was to compose in two different styles. The first would fulfill — at least on the surface of the music — Stalin's strict demands for Socialist Realism, which called for patriotic tunes and accessible harmonies to uplift the Soviet people. The other would stay true to his personal style of fiery, hyper-expressive modernism.

Those latter works, however — profoundly personal statements in which we can hear Shostakovich reacting in real time to the violence and oppression of his age — had to remain under lock and key. Such was the case with his first concerto for solo violin and orchestra.

Shostakovich was in the regime's good graces when he began working on a commission from a close friend, the Odessa-born violinist David Oistrakh, in the summer of 1947, but by the time he completed the work six months later, the composer was again under siege. The Soviet Union had enacted the Zhdanov Doctrine, a set of brutal cultural policies named after the Central Committee secretary Andrey Zhdanov, who had denounced Shostakovich's music for years.

Almost overnight, Shostakovich's new work became too dangerous to perform, given the renewed scrutiny of Soviet composers — and the Jewish folk tune he had quoted in the concerto's second movement, a coded protest of the State-sanctioned persecution of Jews. The score remained hidden in the composer's desk drawer for seven years.

The fear, anxiety, and secrecy that ran through Shostakovich's veins are laced throughout the concerto's meditative opening movement. Under the title of "Nocturne," Shostakovich presents an extended aria for the soloist, who navigates a haunting orchestral landscape of deep strings and distant bells as the violin unfolds its melody of mourning. The music builds to a climax of searing dissonance, but ultimately returns to the reflective opening mood, where, in the Nocturne's final moments, the violin ascends to the ethereal heights of its register, levitating above a haze of hollow harmony in the orchestral strings.

The First Violin Concerto received its long-delayed premiere to rapturous ovation in 1955, two years after Stalin's death and the start of the Soviet Union's cultural thaw. Following the concerto's premiere in Leningrad, the usually meek, hand-wringing composer enjoyed a rare fit of glee. As he celebrated the occasion with friends over stale pies and vodka served in plastic mugs, Shostakovich paced around his apartment, muttering again and again, "I am so glad, so happy. I'm so utterly, utterly happy."

David Oistrakh, violin
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Maxim Shostakovich, conductor

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