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Home , Baiba Skride, Claude Debussy, Jeux, La mer (Debussy), Lise Berthaud, Piano Concerto (Adès)

Toronto Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director

Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 8:00pm Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 8:00pm

Thomas Søndergård, conductor Baiba Skride,

Thomas Adès Dances from Overture Waltz Finale

Benjamin Britten REVISED 1954/65 Violin , Op. 15 I. Moderato con moto II. Vivace III. Passacaglia: Andante lento (un poco meno mosso)

Intermission

Francis Poulenc Les animaux modèles (Symphonic Version) 1. Petit jour: très calme 2. Le lion amoureux: passionnément animé 3. L’homme entre deux âges et ses deux maîtresses: prestissimo 4. La mort et le bûcheron: très lent 5. Le combat des deux coqs: très modéré 6. Le repas de midi

Claude I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea) II. des vagues (Play of the Waves) III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea)

OCTOBER 18 & 20, 2018 27 ABOUT THE WORKS

Thomas Adès Dances from Powder Her Face

12 Born: London, United Kingdom, March 1, 1971 min Composed: 2006

Adès’s two-act Powder Her Face (with waltz and tango, popular songs from the 1930s by Philip Hensher) is based on the colourful and 1950s, light orchestral music, and the life of Margaret Campbell, the Duchess of music of such composers as Berg, Stravinsky, Argyll. Once named débutante of the year, and Janáček—all freshly imbued with a vivid later becoming one of the most photographed and visceral edge. women in the world and a celebrated style Dances from Powder Her Face consists of three icon, Margaret gained notoriety in 1963 orchestral numbers that Adès extracted from when her second husband, the Duke of the and rescored, from the original Argyll, filed for divorce, citing her infidelity. 15-piece pit band, for full orchestra. Taken A scandal ensued when photographs were together, they form a musical snapshot of the discovered of the Duchess and a “Headless Duchess’s world. A lurid, acid-soaked tango, Man” in a compromising position, among the Overture features aggressively acerbic other sensational details of the Duchess’s sex musical gestures, especially from the brass, life. After the divorce, Margaret attempted to evoking the hotel staff mocking the Duchess maintain her extravagant lifestyle, but her at the beginning of the opera. The ensuing excesses soon forced her to sell her home Waltz has a surreal quality, a pale ghost of the and live in a hotel suite. She eventually died, real thing, as if belonging in a world of faded penniless, in a nursing home. dreams. Following the Duchess’s departure The opera frames the key events of the from the hotel, the Finale music, sardonic but Duchess’s life—in her prime as a débutante with an air of nostalgia, accompanies the hotel and socialite, and the tumult surrounding the staff as they strip her room to prepare it for the divorce—with scenes of her amid her decline, next occupant. about to leave the hotel where she had been Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley living for over a decade but at which she can no longer afford to stay. Adès has described Powder Her Face as being about “a woman who finally becomes entrapped in a world of perfume and fantasy and memory.” Musically, he renders this narrative with a score filled with references to the musical forms and styles of the Duchess’s lifetime—dances such as the

28 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA As a composer, Adès has been highly ABOUT THE COMPOSER regarded for his prodigious ability to Award-winning English completely absorb, master, and reinterpret composer, conductor, and a wide range of past and current techniques Thomas Adès has been and practices of contemporary music, described the The New York which he combines to often dazzling effect Times as one of today’s “most in his compositions. Some of them are accomplished overall musicians.” He studied practically bursting with layers of musical at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, references, though deftly set within a logical and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. In and rigorously formal framework. Among 2000, he became the youngest-ever recipient Adès’s major works to date are three — of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award; recently, Powder Her Face (1995), (2004), he was awarded a CBE in the 2018 Queen’s and The Exterminating Angel (2016)—all of Birthday Honours. From 1999 to 2008, he was which have been performed to great critical the Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival; acclaim worldwide; and significant orchestral today, he continues to coach piano and works such as Aslya (1997), (2007), annually at the International (2011), and (2013). Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove.

Benjamin Britten , Op. 15

Born: Lowestoft, United Kingdom, November 22, 1913 32 Died: Aldeburgh, United Kingdom, December 4, 1976 min Composed: 1939

Benjamin Britten wrote seven concerto works in September 1939, during the first weeks of spanning almost the whole of his career: World War II. the first, the , Op. 13, was Britten wrote his bravura Piano Concerto of composed in 1938, when he was not yet 25; 1938 to exploit the resources of the piano the last, the Lachrymae for and strings, and show himself off as a pianist, but in Op. 48a, was completed in 1976, just months later concerted works he sought a closer before his death. He began the Violin Concerto, integration of soloist and orchestra. The Violin Op. 15 in November 1938, and was still working Concerto, its brilliant and taxing solo part on it the following May, when he left England notwithstanding, is already a more symphonic for a three-year stay in North America with work, and when Britten revised it, years later, his companion, the tenor Peter Pears. Before it was to tame the more indulgent solo writing heading to New York, they spent the summer and further enhance the music’s unity. in Canada, where Britten wrote several works including Canadian Carnival. The Violin The three movements, all unusual by Classical Concerto was completed at St.-Jovite, Quebec, standards, are played without a break.

OCTOBER 18 & 20, 2018 29 ABOUT THE WORKS

The first, urbane and moderately paced, opens rhythmically driving, angular and dissonant, with a rhythmic “snap” in the that sparely but brilliantly scored. (The transition becomes an important motif—there is as much from the more relaxed Trio section back to the development of rhythmic ideas as of themes in is plain weird, scored for two piccolos, this piece. (According to the Spanish violinist , and trembling string harmonics.) The Antonio Brosa, who gave the première in New lone solo cadenza serves as a link to the finale, York in 1940, this “snap,” and the movement’s which marks Britten’s first use of a favourite frequent sombreness, reflected Britten’s visit form: the passacaglia (variations on a ground to Spain in 1936, where he witnessed the civil bass). Three —saved until now— war.) Britten had a gift for irony and parody, announce the noble, arching ground bass, and, and it shows in the spiky scoring, pointed in the brilliant series of variations that follows accompaniments, animated rhythms, and tart the theme, is reworked with astonishing dissonances. imagination. The result is not a series of isolated little pieces, however, but a massive The second movement is an aggressive movement of impressive cumulative power. scherzo—biting and even grotesque, Program note by Kevin Bazzana

Francis Poulenc Les animaux modèles (Symphonic Version)

Born: , , January 7, 1899 20 min Died: Paris, France, January 30, 1963 Composed: Original ballet, 1940–1942; orchestral suite, 1942

Poulenc’s melodic flair, coupled with a 1. Petit jour (Dawn): Impressionistic harmonies sophisticated use of an extended tonal palette, depict a July dawn in rural Burgundy, as makes his music as appealing to audiences farmers pick up their tools and leave for the today as it was during his lifetime. Deeply fields. rooted in the Parisian artistic scene—from the techniques of his fellow French composers to 2. Le lion amoureux (The amorous lion): The popular styles of the music hall and the café— beautiful Elmire is seduced by a “lion,” who is, his music is nevertheless uniquely his own. in fact, a very handsome and virile man. They dance a “waltz-java,” a faster, more sensual The ballet Les animaux modèles was composed dance popular in the early 20th century. while Poulenc was splitting his time between German-occupied Paris and his country house 3. L’homme entre deux âges et ses deux at Noizay. Based on the fables of Jean de la maîtresses (A middle-aged man with two Fontaine, it is structured as a suite of dances, mistresses): High-energy music reminiscent of each a twist on a popular musical style; his music hall dance tunes evokes a pas-de-trois experience in writing film music is also evident. of a middle-aged man whose head is picked bald by his two mistresses—one old, one young.

30 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 4. La mort et le bûcheron (Death and the hens. (Poulenc inserted the melody of the song woodcutter): A woodcutter, heavily burdened “No, no, you will not have our Alsace-Lorraine”, with a bundle of sticks, calls upon Death to played on , as a “protest song” to the deliver him. Death in the guise of a very elegant German officers who would have heard it at the woman appears. Death takes off his mask. The performance but may not have recognized it.) lumberjack recoils in terror and takes up his 6. Le repas de midi (Noon-day repast): The bundle again. farmers return slowly to the house, tired of 5. Le combat des deux coqs (The battle of heat and work, put down their tools, and bring the two roosters): Pointillistic music evokes out a long table, where they sit and eat. two roosters fighting for the affections of their Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley

Claude Debussy La mer

Born: St. Germain-En-Laye, France, August 22, 1862 21 Died: Paris, France, March 25, 1918 min Composed: 1903

In childhood, Debussy had considered spoke in explicitly Impressionist terms of becoming a sailor, as his father once had been. his quest to convey “light and colour” in the Begun in the summer of 1903 and completed work, and , in his seminal in March of 1905, La mer was the principal book Debussy: His Life and Mind, calls it the product of a period in which Debussy’s first and greatest example of an Impressionist creative life was as fertile as his private life orchestral work. was tumultuous. In 1904, he left his wife, Lilly, Labels aside, in La mer, Debussy cultivated for , an amateur singer whom a radical musical style. He sought musical he had met the year before, and when Lilly’s that were intentionally blurred, despair drove her to attempt suicide, Debussy vaporous, diffuse, and dreamy, in order to found himself at the centre of a scandal that, depict fleeting, remembered impressions of he was convinced, was the source of much of the sea. Melodically, the music is tentative the widespread hostility that greeted La mer at and fragmented: motifs emerge and recede its première in Paris on October 15, 1905. as though shrouded in fog. Harmonically, the At the time La mer was composed, the music does not drive toward clear cadential relationship between painting and music goals, but instead seems to “float,” fluid but was still a hot topic of conversation among directionless; keys are suggested rather than French aesthetes, even though the term asserted. In terms of rhythm and texture, “” had been applied (not the music seems vague, ambiguous, and always flatteringly) to music as early as the unarticulated. Like the sea itself, it undulates 1880s. By 1905, it was commonplace to use constantly, yet seems curiously static; it is a it in comparing Debussy with contemporary perfect union of subject, form, and style. painters like Monet, but it is still particularly Debussy’s is crucial to the work’s apt in the case of La mer. Debussy himself effect, though, remarkably, he achieved his

OCTOBER 18 & 20, 2018 31 ABOUT THE WORKS

countless novel effects of tone-colour using and other exotic scales, modal harmonies, and an orchestra that was small by late-Romantic parallel chord progressions—is particularly standards, albeit with a few special colours strong in the first movement, perhaps hinting added—English horn, (or celeste), at the East, where the sun rises.) and two voluptuous-sounding harps. Yet for The restless second movement, the “scherzo” the most part, he draws radical and evocative of this “symphony,” captures the play of sonorities from largely conventional forces. waves brilliantly, though, ironically, this is The orchestration, as he once put it, is “as the one movement in which there is any real stormy and varied as the sea.” development in the Classical sense. The finale, La mer has been described as the greatest “Dialogue of the wind and the sea”, the most symphony ever written in France, a country conventional “tone poem” among the three that had no thriving symphonic tradition, and movements, adds a cyclical element to the despite Debussy’s modest subtitle, “Three structure by recalling motifs from the first Symphonic Sketches”, the work has the scale, movement, a stirring reminder that Debussy’s depth, and drama of a symphony. Despite early familial experiences of the sea were its movements’ descriptive titles, it has no sometimes dangerous and terrifying, and real programmatic narrative. Even the first that his regard for the sea combines passion, movement tells no story, once past its lovely wonder, and awe—and maybe just a little fear. evocation of sunrise. (The “Oriental” element Program note by Kevin Bazzana of Debussy’s Impressionist style—pentatonic

THE ARTISTS

Thomas Søndergård conductor Thomas Søndergård made his TSO début in April 2016.

Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård is Music Director of Royal Scottish National Orchestra, after six seasons as Principal Guest Conductor. He served as Principal Conductor of BBC National Orchestra of Wales (BBCNOW) from September 2012 to August 2018, and prior to this, as Principal Conductor and Musical Advisor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra for three seasons. Søndergård has conducted many leading , including London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Royal Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, , Orchestra, Göteborgs Symfoniker, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker; leading tours with Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and European Union Youth Orchestra; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest,

32 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, ; Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National d’Ile de France; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The 2018/19 season includes his débuts with Chicago Symphony Orchestra joined by Alexander Gavrylyuk, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, and Tapiola Sinfonietta. He makes return visits to Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bayerische Staatsoper (Turandot), and Deutsche Oper Berlin (Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet). Plans with RSNO include tours to China and the United States, premières of new commissions, and Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with Nicola Benedetti. Recent highlights include débuts with Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Gurzenich-Orchester Köln, SWR Baden-Baden, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, and return visits to Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, and the revival of The Magic Flute with Norwegian Opera. Thomas Søndergård is also an experienced opera conductor at home in mainstream and contemporary repertoire. Previous opera includes Bayerische Staatsoper (Turandot), Norwegian Opera (Die Zauberflöte), and Deutsche Oper Berlin (world première of Scartazzini’s Edward II) and Tosca, Turandot (Nina Stemme), and Les dialogues des Carmelites for Kungliga Operan (Royal Swedish Opera). He was described as “a sensation” at his début with the Royal Danish Opera Ruders’s opera Kafka’s Trial: “He is one of the best things that has happened to the art of opera for many years.” Subsequent productions there have included Il barbiere di Siviglia, Le Nozze di Figaro, La bohème, Cunning Little Vixen, and Il viaggio a Reims. Releases with BBCNOW include Sibelius 1, 2, 6 & 7 and, most recently, a disc that shines light on Sibelius’s tone poems and theatre music, featuring Finlandia and Valse Triste (Linn Records). Other noteworthy recordings include Vilde Frang’s celebrated first recording for EMI, and Ruders’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on Records, which was nominated for a Gramophone Award in 2011. In 2011, he was awarded the prestigious Queen Ingrid Foundation Prize for services to Music in Denmark. Due for release shortly are the Lutoslawski and Dutilleux with Johannes Moser and Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin for Pentatone.

Baiba Skride violin Baiba Skride made her TSO début in February 2016.

Baiba Skride’s natural approach to her music-making has endeared her to some of today’s most important conductors and orchestras worldwide. She is consistently invited for her refreshing interpretations, her sensitivity and delight in the music. The list of prestigious orchestras with whom she has worked includes, among many others, the Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, , Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre de Paris, and London Symphony

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Orchestra. Notable conductors she collaborates with include Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Ed Gardner, Susanna Mälkki, , Andres Orozco-Estrada, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, , Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Tugan Sokhiev, John Storgårds, and Simone Young.

Summer 2018 saw Baiba Skride return to the NHK Symphony Orchestra with Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and to the Tanglewood Music Festival performing Bernstein’s Serenade with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, before they began the 2018/19 season together on a distinguished tour. Further highlights included her return to Münchner Philharmoniker, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa, and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as to Baltimore, Houston, Vancouver, and Utah Symphony Orchestras. In spring 2019, Skride anticipates the world première of Sebastian Currier’s violin concerto, a co-commission by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Skride also continues to champion Sofia Gubaidulina’s Offertorium and Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and bayan, and will celebrate the piece’s Spanish première with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia. Skride is an internationally sought-after chamber musician. In 2018/19, invitations take her Skride Quartet with Lauma Skride, Harriet Krijgh, and Lise Berthaud to Schubertiade Hohenems, London, Louvre Paris, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, amongst others. Further afield, the Quartet looks forward to a US tour in March 2019. In the same season, she also performs in trio with Daniel Müller-Schott and Xavier de Maistre in Innsbruck, Budapest, St Pölten, Hannover, Coesfeld, and Düsseldorf. To add to her prolific discography, Baiba Skride anticipates the releases this season of her American disc featuring Bernstein, Korngold, and Rózsa with the Gothenburg Symphony and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Santtu-Matias Rouvali, her Bartók recording with the WDR Sinfonieorchester with Eivind Aadland, and the début recording of the Skride Quartet, all under the Orfeo label. Skride was born into a musical Latvian family in Riga where she began her studies, transferring in 1995 to the Conservatory of Music and Theatre in . In 2001, she won the First Prize of the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Baiba Skride plays the Yfrah Neaman kindly loaned to her by the Neaman family through the Beare’s International Violin Society.

34 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA