Wagner’s “Ring” Without Words An Orchestral Adventure Friday, September 24, 2010 8 pm Saturday, September 25, 2010 8 pm Sunday, September 26, 2010 2:30 pm Jones Hall Hans Graf, conductor J. Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony INTERMISSION Wagner/Maazel Der Ring ohne Worte (The Ring Without Words) DOCTOR ATOMIC SYMPHONY John Adams Born: Feb 15, 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts Work composed: 2006 Recording: David Robertson conducting the Saint Louis Symphony (Nonesuch) Instrumentation: two flutes, piccolo, three oboes (third doubling English horn), three clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet and E-flat clarinet), three bassoons (third doubling contrabassoon), four horns, four trumpets (fourth doubling piccolo trumpet), three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta and strings Over the last century, composers have occasionally extracted and re-fashioned excerpts from their operas as “opera symphonies,” designed to bring the music of their stage works to a broader segment of the public by having it played in concert form. The most famous 20th- century example is Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony, which has become one of his most popular orchestral works, while his full opera on the life of German painter Mathias Grünewald is still rarely performed onstage. Alban Berg’s Lulu Symphony filled the gap in his unfinished opera for a half-century after his death, until his sketches of its third act were fleshed out in full vocal/orchestral dress. John Adams followed suit with this 25-minute single-movement symphony based on his opera, Dr. Atomic, following the San Francisco Opera’s 2005 world premiere of the work about the development of the atomic bomb. Thus far, Adams’ opera on the moral conflicts weighing upon the conscience of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer has also fared fairly well in its stage version, with four additional productions by the Netherlands, Chicago, Metropolitan and English National opera companies. As recounted in Adams’ autobiographical publication, Hallelujah Junction, the opera and its subject matter were commissioned by San Francisco Opera director Pamela Rosenberg, who requested an “American Faust” kind of opera. She suggested the story of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lonely scientist caught in the power of a military machine bent upon ending the bloodshed of World War II by quick blows of mass destruction. The idea appealed to Adams, whose previous operas, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, also dealt with the broad world consequences of events surrounding the actions of individual humans. The emotional tone of the symphony Adams extracted from the two-act opera is unfailingly ominous, whether it is portraying the huge moral dilemma weighing upon Oppenheimer’s conscience, or the real panic suddenly visited upon the whole Los Alamos community when a violent midnight thunderstorm erupted around the exposed bomb, waiting to be detonated on the New Mexican desert test site the following morning. It is a significant challenge to adapt the musical/dramatic structure of an opera to the abstract implications of a symphony, with its abstract plan of motivic growth and development, and its progress through stages of repose and excitement to a final summation of its tonal thought processes. Adams intensified the challenge by choosing a single-movement symphonic structure. His Dr. Atomic Symphony begins with an implacable slow introduction, releasing it into the agitated second-act “panic” music from the opera’s storm scene. The lower brass instruments are prominent throughout the center of the work, in solo as well as ensemble playing, and are highlighted by a trombone solo representing the laboratory’s overbearing military commander. A faster section suggests a corn dance from the nearby Tewa Indian reservation. Toward the end of the work, Oppenheimer’s troubled conscience is bared during a long solo trumpet transcription of the opera’s main aria, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God” which drew upon the text of John Donne’s famous Holy Sonnet and caused Oppenheimer to name the desert bomb site “Trinity.” The final frenzied measures represent the count- down to the pre-dawn moment that brought the atomic age into being. DER RING OHNE WORTE (THE RING WITHOUT WORDS) Richard Wagner Born: May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany Died: Feb 13, 1883, Venice, Italy Arranged for symphonic orchestra: Lorin Maazel Work composed: 1853-1874 Recording: Lorin Maazel conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (Telarc) Instrumentation: piccolo, three flutes (third doubling second piccolo), three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, eight horns (four doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, bass trumpet, stierhorn (offstage), four trombones, bass tuba, timpani (two players), percussion, two harps and strings Richard Wagner was arguably the most significant orchestral composer of the 19th century, but his great orchestral masterpieces are imbedded in the vocal-orchestral texture of his vast music dramas. His artistic philosophy even attributed narrative and descriptive values to purely orchestral music, but he never came closer to composing an “opera symphony” than the charming little Siegfried Idyll, a chamber ensemble piece that was partially extracted from the third opera in his famed Ring Cycle. Though orchestral excerpts from the Ring have joined the overtures, preludes and orchestral episodes from Wagner’s remaining operas and music dramas as a standard part of the symphonic repertoire, it has been left to conductor Lorin Maazel to reduce the orchestral portions (and some vocal-orchestral excerpts) from the 19 hours of music in Wagner’s mythical tetralogy into this 70-minute Ring Without Words. According to Maazel’s own account, the idea gestated in his mind for nearly 30 years. While conducting a preliminary rehearsal of the orchestral accompaniment to Wagner’s Lohengrin at Bayreuth in 1960, he was surprised to find the composer’s grandson, Bayreuth Festival director Wieland Wagner, sitting in to hear the rehearsal. At that time, he explained to Maazel that Wagner’s orchestral music formed a subconscious text-behind- the-text of his operas and music dramas. Wieland Wagner’s views gained full meaning for Maazel five years later, when he was director of West Berlin’s German Opera Company, preparing a production of the complete Ring Cycle for performance. At that time, he realized that the orchestral score to the Ring, with all its thematic “leading motives” is really a coded version of the full operatic tetralogy and its story of greedy Nordic gods exemplifying the maxim that money is the root of all evil. Sometime during the next 22 years (the date is uncertain), Maazel assembled almost all of the Ring Cycle’s purely orchestral music into a continuous chronological sequence, joining them where necessary to other segments that originally contained vocal lines. He used only music that Wagner had originally composed and sought to match the sequence of themes, tempo markings and proportions heard in Wagner’s unabridged version. Maazel recorded his Ring Without Words on the Telarc label in December 1987. While some episodes are missing from Wagner’s sprawling tale of conniving gods, humans and subterranean creatures, the orchestral score represents a opulent musical travelogue from the glistening depths of the Rhine up to the heavenly palace in Valhalla, down into the caves of Nibelung slaves and snorting dragons, and back to the watery grave where the stolen gold is finally returned by the true-hearted Brünnhilde. ©2010, Carl R. Cunningham Musician Biographies Hans Graf, conductor Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf – the Houston Symphony’s 15th Music Director – is one of today’s most highly respected musicians. He began his tenure here on Opening Night of the 2001- 2002 season. Prior to his appointment in Houston, he was music director of the Calgary Philharmonic, the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra and the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. A frequent guest with all of the major North American orchestras, Graf has developed a close relationship with the Boston Symphony and appears regularly with the orchestra during the subscription season and at the Tanglewood Music Festival. He made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Houston Symphony in January 2006 and returned leading the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in March 2007. He and the Houston Symphony were invited to appear at Carnegie Hall in January 2010 to present the New York premiere of The Planet—An HD Odyssey. Internationally, Graf conducts in the foremost concert halls of Europe, Japan and Australia. In October 2010, he leads the Houston Symphony on a tour of the UK to present the international premier of The Planets—An HD Odyssey. He has participated in the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bregenz and Aix en Provence and appeared at the Salzburg Festival. In summer 2010, he conducted the opening concert of the Aspen Music Festival and returned to Tanglewood and Chicago’s Grant Park Festival. An experienced opera conductor, Graf first conducted the Vienna State Opera in 1981 and has since led productions in the opera houses of Berlin, Munich, Paris and Rome, including several world premieres. Recent engagements include Parsifal at the Zurich Opera and Boris Godunov at the Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg. Born in 1949 near Linz, Graf studied violin and piano as a child. He earned diplomas in piano and conducting from the Musikhochschule in Graz and continued his studies with Franco Ferrara, Sergiu Celibidache and Arvid Jansons. His career was launched in 1979 when he was awarded first prize at the Karl Böhm Competition. His extensive discography includes recordings with the Houston Symphony, available through houstonsymphony.org: works by Bartók and Stravinsky, Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, Berg’s Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite and a DVD of The Planets—An HD Odyssey. Graf has been awarded the Chevalier de l’ordre de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government for championing French music around the world and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria.