Weekly SpinOn: Time

Time is an essential element of music. Music is the only art form that depends entirely on time. A painting or sculpture stands still, but a piece of music only exists as it unfolds. Its shape depends on our ability to remember what came before and to connect it with what comes next. The ear listens forward; the mind looks back. Without time — and our sense of it — there would be no melody, no rhythm, no movement at all.

This week’s playlist follows that idea through four very different works recorded by Herbert von Karajan. Each piece captures a distinct aspect of musical time: Grieg’s look into the past, Haydn’s ticking mechanism, Beethoven’s steady pulse, and Ponchielli’s dance through the hours of the day.

Track 1: Holberg Suite, Op. 40 – I. Präludium – Edvard Grieg

Grieg’s Holberg Suite opens this week’s playlist for two reasons: it looks back in time and it moves with a clear, forward-driving pulse. The composer wrote the work in 1884 to celebrate the 200th birthday of the Norwegian writer and philosopher Ludvig Holberg (1684 – 1754), one of the leading figures of the Scandinavian Enlightenment. The original title was “Fra Holbergs tid, Suite i gammel stil” (From Holberg’s Time, Suite in the Old Style). To mark Holberg’s century, Grieg adopted musical forms from the 18th century – dances such as the Sarabande, Gavotte and Rigaudon – and arranged them in a five-movement suite. The opening Präludium serves as an introduction in Baroque style and establishes the rhythmic pattern that gives the whole work its sense of motion.

Grieg first composed the suite for piano and later orchestrated it himself in 1885. The orchestral version highlights the steady rhythm and clear counterpoint typical of Baroque dance music, but presented in late-Romantic orchestral colors. Because it unites two centuries and two musical languages – Baroque form and Romantic expression – the Holberg Suite fits naturally into a playlist about time.

Herbert von Karajan recorded the Holberg Suite with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon in 1981. It was his only recording of the piece, although he valued the music of the Scandinavian composers Grieg and Sibelius very highly. The recording was later reissued in several collections of Karajan’s Nordic repertoire.

Track 2: Symphony No. 101 in D major “The Clock” – II. Andante – Joseph Haydn

The second track is one of Haydn’s most recognisable slow movements, famous for the steady “ticking” rhythm that later gave the symphony its popular title, The Clock. Haydn did not give it that name himself; the nickname appeared only after his lifetime, probably in early 19th-century London concert programmes, where audiences immediately associated the repeating rhythm of the second movement with a clock’s mechanism.

Haydn composed the symphony in 1793–1794 during his second visit to London, where he wrote a group of twelve works now known as the London Symphonies. Symphony No. 101 was the ninth in this series and combines the elegance of Classical structure with the humour and invention that define Haydn’s late style.

The Andante in G major is built on a regular pulse created by pizzicato strings and staccato woodwinds. This rhythmic pattern continues almost without pause, forming the image of a clock at work. The movement also shows how subjective time can feel: in the opening section the steady ticking seems endless, while in the more dramatic middle part, musical events make time appear to move faster.

Herbert von Karajan recorded The Clock with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon in 1981, during the same period in which he was preparing his new Beethoven cycle. Although Haydn represented only a small part of his repertoire, Karajan approached the composer with the same focus on structure, balance and clarity that shaped his recordings of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. The result remains one of his few but carefully realised interpretations of Haydn’s symphonies.

Track 3: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 – II. Allegretto – Ludwig van Beethoven

Speaking of Karajan’s 1980s cycle, the third track comes from his 1982–1984 recording of Beethoven’s symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. It was the conductor’s fourth complete Beethoven cycle and is often noted for its clarity of texture and polished ensemble sound.

Beethoven composed his Seventh Symphony in 1811–1812, while spending time in the Bohemian spa town of Teplice, where he sought rest for his health. The work was premiered in Vienna on 8 December 1813 at a charity concert for Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in the Napoleonic wars. The same programme also included Beethoven’s orchestral piece Wellington’s Victory, inspired by the Battle of Vittoria earlier that year, when the Duke of Wellington’s army defeated the French forces in northern Spain.

The Seventh Symphony was an immediate success. The second movement, Allegretto, was so well received that it had to be repeated. Beethoven’s pupil Anton Schindler later recalled: “The cheers during the A major symphony […] surpassed everything one had heard before in a concert hall.”

The movement’s repeating rhythmic figure and gradual build of intensity create a continuous sense of forward motion. Its balance between a steady pulse and an evolving dynamic line makes it particularly fitting for this week’s theme — a reminder that time can move with both constancy and momentum.

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was one of Karajan’s central works. He performed it 129 times, second only to the Fifth, and recorded it 22 times for studio, broadcast and film. In the version heard here, his 1980s recording for Deutsche Grammophon, the phrasing is spacious and transparent, the rhythm firm and unhurried. It remains one of his most refined and enduring interpretations of this symphony.

Track 4: La Gioconda – “Dance of the Hours” – Amilcare Ponchielli

The final track of this week’s playlist comes from the ballet sequence “Dance of the Hours” in Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda. Premiered at La Scala, Milan, in 1876, the ballet appears in the third act of the opera and represents the passage of time within a single day: morning, daylight, evening and night. The music moves through these four sections with sharply contrasting moods and tempos, from graceful lightness to energetic brilliance.

The piece quickly became popular outside the opera house and is still often performed as a separate concert work. Its vivid orchestration and rhythmic variety made it a favourite example of late-Romantic ballet music. For the theme of time, the “Dance of the Hours” closes the playlist with a literal depiction of the day’s cycle — a musical reminder that time never stops.

Herbert von Karajan recorded Dance of the Hours three times — in 1954, 1960, and 1971 — the last with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon as part of the album Invitation to the Dance. It was one of several collections in which Karajan explored orchestral showpieces and ballet music from opera.

—  Pia Bernauer (Karajan Institute, Salzburg)