SHEPHERD SCHOOL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

LARRY RACHLEFF, Music Director JERRY HOU, Conductor

Friday, November 7, 2014 8:00 p.m. Stude Concert Hall PROGRAM

Geschwindmarsch by Beethoven Paul Hindemith (Paraphrase from Symphonia Serena) (1895-1963)

Sinfonia No. 5 in B Minor, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Wq 182/5 for Strings and Continuo (1714-1788) Allegretto Larghetto Presto (Coached by Kenneth Goldsmith)

PAUSE

Carlo (Music for strings, sampler and tape, 1997) Brett Dean (b. 1961) Jerry Hou, conductor

Special thanks to Kurt Stallmann, Chapman Welch, REMLABS, and Francis Schmidt for their support in realizing the electronic elements of this work.

The reverberative acoustics of Stude Concert Hall magnify the slightest sound made by the audience. Your care and courtesy will be appreciated. The taking of photographs and use of recording equipment are prohibited. SHEPHERD SCHOOL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA String seating changes with each concert. Percussion listed alphabetically.

Violin I Oboe Dorothy VanDine Ling Ling Huang, Katherine Hart concertmaster June Kim Sampler Jordan Koransky Yvonne Chen Boson Mo English Horn Tianjie Lu Elizabeth Hebert Timpani Emma Terrell Eugeniu Ceremus Clarinet Rebecca Tobin Violin II Percussion Nicolas Chona Timothy Steeves, Keith Hammer principal Bass Clarinet Logan Seith Joanna Duncan Nicholas Davies Eva Dove Orchestra Manager and Librarian Paola Vazquez Bassoon Kaaren Fleisher Shellie Brown Kyle Olsen Hunter Gordon Production Manager Mandy Billings Chi Lee, Contrabassoon Jessica Goldbaum principal Assistant Production Megan Wright Horn Manager Christiano Rodrigues Natalie Fritz Brian Figat Brian Mangrum Chris Lee Cello Ernesto Tovar-Torres Francis Schmidt Joshua Halpern, Markus Osterlund principal Recording Engineer Maxwell Geissler Trumpet Andy Bradley Katherine Audas Daniel Egan Daniel Taubenheim Double Bass *C.P.E. Bach only G. Paul Matz* Trombone **Brett Dean only Charles Paul** John Romero Gregory Hammond Flute NOTE: Wind/brass list- ings are by assignment. Christen Sparago Tuba Mark Teplitsky Christopher Torrisi

Piccolo Celeste James Blanchard Frances Lee

Harpsichord

PROGRAM NOTES

Geschwindmarsch by Beethoven Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith was born on November 16, 1895 in Hanau, Germany. He studied composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles, who recognized and encouraged Hindemith’s talent, later fostering the relationship between Hindemith and Schott Music Publishers. However, it was not until Hindemith was 24 years old that he truly began to believe in his compositional ability. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1940, Hindemith began teaching at Yale and lecturing at Harvard, where he developed and refined his compositional theo- ries. Hindemith believed in the Eigenkraft und Eigenwille der Töne (force and will of the tone), and sought to compose his music based on the natural proper- ties of the material of music. In order to determine these natural properties, Hindemith first looked to the overtone series. Through a number of mathemati- cal calculations using the numerical representations of the pitches in the overtone series, he determined the relationship between tones and the relative harmonic and melodic values, tensions, and forces of intervals and chords. Hindemith laboriously codified his theories, asserting that “in all the music I write and play, I strive for nothing more than clarity and honesty.” Geschwindmarsch by Beethoven: Paraphrase, scored for wind ensemble, is the second movement of Hindemith’s Symphonia Serena, of 1946. Hindemith paraphrases Beethoven’s Yorkscher Marsch (1808-09) fragmenting the theme between various groupings within the ensemble throughout the movement. Al- though Hindemith finally quotes theYorkscher motive in full (in the trumpets) at the end of the movement, it remains obfuscated by the opaque atmosphere created by the textures he crafted throughout the movement, a technique char- acteristic of much of Hindemith’s music.

Sinfonia No. 5 in B Minor, Wq 182/5 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Tonight’s performance contains works from three composers, one born in each of the past three centuries. Despite having been written many years apart and contrasting greatly in style and orchestration, the underlying com- positional techniques and intentions of C.P.E. Bach, Hindemith, and Dean nonetheless unite what on the surface appears to be a disparate program. Carl Philipp was born March 8, 1714 in Weimar, Germany. Throughout his childhood, Carl Philipp received keyboard and composition instruction from his father, was constantly surrounded by a multitude of distinguished musi- cians seeking an audience with his father, and even helped him copy scores and parts to be used by his father’s performers. Combined with his natural talent, Carl Philipp’s immersion in the world of music from an early age steered him down the path of his father, composing and performing for the majority of his journey through life. Written in 1773, Sinfonia No. 5 in B Minor, commissioned by Baron Gott- fried van Swieten, embodies Bach’s Empfindsamer Stil (“sensitive style” - focused on expressing “true and natural” feelings, featuring sudden contrasts of mood) and participates fully in the Sturm und Drang movement (movement in which individual subjectivity and extremes of emotion were given free ex- pression). This piece, performed tonight without a conductor, features elegant variety and contrast, not only in dynamics and affect, but also in the surpris- ingly chromatic twists and turns within phrases and at cadences. Perhaps the most interesting example of the sudden mood swings characteristic of Empfindsamer Stil is created by Bach’s instructions to the performers that the movements be played attacca. The lack of pause between movements cre- ates the illusion of the work being one large movement with three large-scale mood changes that have shifts in mood within themselves.

Carlo (Music for strings, sampler and tape, 1997) Brett Dean Born in , Australia on October 23, 1961, Brett Dean is a contem- porary composer, violist, and conductor. After graduating from Queensland Conservatory in 1982, he played in the from 1985-99. He now lives and works in Australia, but continues to travel around the globe in the roles of both composer and performer. Carlo is scored for 15 solo strings, sampler, and tape, drawing inspira- tion from Carlo Gesualdo, the infamous 16th-century Italian prince/composer/ murderer. Though many historians attempt to distill Gesualdo’s compo- sitional characteristics from his infamy as a criminal, Dean believes that Gesualdo’s music and life are intrinsically interrelated; this relationship is the premise of the work. Dean’s mixture and manipulation of live and pre- recorded music ingeniously reflects reality - the audience experiences pure Gesualdo in the form of samples, distorted at times through the clouded veil of history, created on stage by the re-interpretation of Gesualdo’s motives through extremely demanding solo string parts full of metric variety and extended technique. Although you will hear the original samples recorded and processed by Dean in 1997, the equipment used in tonight’s performance is modern. In place of tapes, discrete samplers, and zip-disks is a MacBook running Ableton Live 9. In my opinion, the most fascinating aspect of perfor- mances that mix live and recorded audio is the layering of space-time associ- ated with the music that happens as a result of the mixture. In this case, the first layer of space-time is the present, from which you are experiencing the realization of a work written in 1997 (second layer), which includes record- ings created in ‘97 (third layer) of music first published in 1611 (fourth layer). Because the music of Gesualdo is Dean’s compositional point of depar- ture, Carlo connects with the other two pieces on the program, despite how different it sounds. When listening to the music of Gesualdo, we hear chro- maticism that doesn’t reappear in Western music until the late 19th century, and even some striking similarities to the music of Hindemith. This is, in part, because Hindemith sometimes made use of medieval compositional principles due to his fascination with Early Music. I’d like to believe, how- ever, that the strength of the connection is based on the fact that all three composers strove to write “natural” music. C.P.E. Bach wrote in Empfind- samer Stil, Hindemith rejected the “unnatural” rules and conventions of music composition that had evolved over previous centuries, and Gesualdo composed in a reality before the rejected conventions existed -- a world in which our species was more primal and in touch with nature as compared to the worlds C.P.E. and Hindemith knew. – Notes by Julian Nguyen

BIOGRAPHY

Associate Conductor for the Shepherd School of Music, JERRY HOU is quickly gaining recognition as a versatile and exciting young conductor. For the past two seasons, he has worked closely with the St. Louis Symphony and their music director David Robertson, including assisting the orchestra and an all-star cast of singers at Carnegie Hall for an acclaimed concert performance of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. Mr. Hou also made his debut with the or- chestra last season, in the US premiere of John Cage’s Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras. Other debuts this past season included concerts with Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Slee Sinfonietta in a portrait concert of Bernard Rands at the June in Buffalo Festival. Previously, Mr. Hou served as an assistant/cover conductor with the Roch- ester Philharmonic Orchestra for two seasons. In this capacity, he worked closely with guest conductors and conducted the orchestra in family and educational concerts. In the summer of 2013, Mr. Hou served as an assistant conductor for the Lincoln Center Festival , working with conductor Brad Lub- man, Ensemble Signal, and director Chen Shi-Zheng in the festival production of the opera Monkey: Journey to the West. He has also worked as assistant conductor of the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Mr. Hou has collaborated with composers such as Bernard Rands, Mark-Anthony Turnage, , Brett Dean, , Benedict Mason, Peter Eötvös and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. Last fall, he recorded several works of Zohn-Muldoon for a CD that will be released this month. Mr. Hou has conducted orchestras such as the St. Louis Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Rochester Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Luxem- bourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. This season he will return to work with the St. Louis Symphony as well as assist with Luca Francesconi’s opera, Quartett, in the South American premiere at the Teatro Colón.

UPCOMING ORCHESTRA CONCERTS

Sat., Nov. 8, 8:00 p.m. – SHEPHERD SCHOOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Larry Rachleff, music director. PROGRAM: Elgar Enigma Variations, Op. 36 and Strauss Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40. Stude Concert Hall. Free admission.

Thurs., Dec. 4, 8:00 p.m. – SHEPHERD SCHOOL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Larry Rachleff, music director. PROGRAM: Ligeti Concert Romanesc (Jerry Hou, conductor); Ravel Mother Goose Suite; and Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, “Jupiter”. Stude Concert Hall. Free admission.

Fri., Dec. 5, 8:00 p.m. – SHEPHERD SCHOOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Larry Rachleff, music director. PROGRAM: Stravinsky Jeu de cartes; Ravel Piano Concerto in D Major; and Debussy La Mer. Stude Concert Hall. Free admission.

Wed., Jan. 14, 8:00 p.m. – SHEPHERD SCHOOL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA STUDENT COMPOSERS CONCERT Larry Rachleff, music director; Jerry Hou, conductor. PROGRAM: Daniel Zajicek Grand Variations (2012); Charles Halka Impact (2013); and Joungbum Lee Dream Collage (2014). Stude Concert Hall. Free admission.

Sat., Jan. 31, 11:00 a.m. – SHEPHERD SCHOOL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA FAMILY CONCERT Larry Rachleff, music director. PROGRAM: Strauss Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme Suite. Stude Concert Hall. Free admission.