Symphony No. 1 in E major

Program notes

About the Work

The Symphony in E major, composed between 1878 and 1880, was Rott’s most ambitious undertaking and the work that cost him everything. He submitted the first movement to the Conservatory’s composition competition shortly after turning twenty, but it won no prize; he then completed the remaining movements, pouring into them all his hopes and despair.

The symphony lay forgotten for over a century until the score resurfaced in the Austrian National Library in the late 1980s. Its world premiere came only in 1989, when Gerhard Samuel conducted the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra, 105 years after Rott’s death.

What makes this symphony so remarkable is how clearly it anticipates Mahler’s musical world, composed before Mahler had written a single symphony of his own. The third movement bears a remarkable resemblance to the second movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, written eight years later. Yet the symphony is no mere historical curiosity; it speaks with its own distinctive voice, combining Bruckner’s grand scale, Wagner’s dramatic intensity, and Brahms’s craft into something genuinely new.

What to listen for tonight:

• First movement: The movement grows from an expansive, hymn-like theme, 28 bars long. Listen for how it returns in later movements, binding the symphony together.

• Second movement (Adagio): A profound slow movement that closes with a noble, chorale-like hymn.

• Third movement (Scherzo): The movement most famously connected to Mahler. Listen for the ghostly waltz and the way Rott constantly delays the expected return of the opening music, building irresistible forward momentum.

• Fourth movement: Rott’s most original conception. Slow sections frame a busy, contrapuntal central passage, the work of a trained organist. Listen for a broad theme that many listeners compare to the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony (the very composer who rejected him). The cyclic theme from the first movement gradually infiltrates the closing pages, one of Rott’s most ingenious inventions, as the work settles into a Wagnerian, resigned peace.