Programnotes Falla Nightsinga
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, May 12, 2016, at 8:00 Saturday, May 14, 2016, at 8:00 Charles Dutoit Conductor Javier Perianes Piano Daniela Mack Mezzo-soprano Ravel Alborada del gracioso Falla Nights in the Gardens of Spain In the Generalife Distant Dance— In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba JAVIER PERIANES INTERMISSION Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Falla The Three-Cornered Hat Introduction Part One Afternoon Dance of the Miller’s Wife (Fandango) The Grapes Part Two The Neighbors’ Dance (Seguidilla) The Miller’s Dance (Farruca) The Corregidor’s Dance Final Dance (Jota) DANIELA MACK The appearances of Daniela Mack and Javier Perianes are endowed in part by the John Ward Seabury Distinguished Soloist Fund. Saturday’s concert is sponsored by S&C Electric Company. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France. Alborada del gracioso Maurice Ravel was born redundant at first. But, perhaps more than any in the French Pyrenees, musician of his time, Ravel had an extraordinary only a few miles from the ear for sonority and color. The newly redecorated Spanish border, a geo- Alborada is one of his greatest sonic achievements. graphical boundary he often crossed in his music. lborada means morning music, just Even though his family as serenade means night music. It’s moved to Paris while he related to the French aubade and the was still a baby, Ravel troubadour’sA alba (literally “white of dawn”), by came by his fascination which means lovers are warned of the approach- with Spain naturally, for his mother was Basque ing dawn in time to dampen their passions and and grew up in Madrid. (His Swiss father part company. (This requires the participation inspired in his son a love for things precise and of a loyal watchman or friend—like Brangäne in mechanical that carried over into his impeccable Tristan and Isolde, whose warnings are famously music, provoking Stravinsky to dismiss him as ignored.) In the more common Spanish tradi- a “Swiss watchmaker.”) tion, it’s simply any music performed at day- In 1905, Ravel composed a set of five piano break, often to celebrate a festival or to honor a pieces he called Miroirs (Mirrors), which included person—or both, such as a bride on her wedding some of the earliest of the Spanish music he day. To his Alborada, however, Ravel adds del wrote from the comfort of his Paris apartment. gracioso, or “of the buffoon,” clouding the picture Alborada del gracioso, one of the three pieces with the introduction of the standard grotesque which he later transcribed for full orchestra, lover, akin to Don Quixote of ancient Castilian immediately became one of his most popular comedy. And so we have a highly spirited, almost works. The original piano version, with its impos- outrageous dance that begins with the strum- sibly fast repeated notes (it remains a challenge ming of a guitar (here given to the pizzicato to all but the most skilled pianists), is so rich and strings and the harp) and concluding with a evocative that orchestrating it must have seemed grand and glorious racket. COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1905, for piano; orchestrated in 1918 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME July 26, 1990, Ravinia Festival. 7 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE Gianluigi Gelmetti conducting May 17, 1919; Paris, France CSO RECORDINGS February 27, 28 & March 1, 1957. Fritz Reiner conducting. RCA 2014, Orchestra Hall. Marcelo FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Lehninger conducting 1968. Jean Martinon conducting. RCA March 6 & 7, 1925, Orchestra Hall. Frederick Stock conducting 1991. Daniel Barenboim conducting. INSTRUMENTATION Erato July 15, 1938, Ravinia Festival. Willem three flutes and piccolo, two oboes van Hoogstraten conducting and english horn, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, crotales, triangle, tambourine, castanets, side drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, two harps, strings 2 Manuel de Falla Born November 23, 1876, Cádiz, Spain. Died November 14, 1946, Alta Gracia, Argentina. Nights in the Gardens of Spain In 1921, when he was the Ravel’s works, suggested that Falla turn the most celebrated Spanish nocturnes into a piece for piano with orchestra. composer alive, Falla Falla took his recommendation to heart, but this settled in Granada, in a change in direction further delayed completion cottage surrounded by of the score. As Falla became better known in roses, honeysuckle, and Paris, particularly after the success of his opera jasmine, with an arbor La vida breve in 1913, the long-awaited work and a small fountain. At became legendary in the city’s music circles. the top of a nearby hill sat When Falla fled to Spain as war broke out in the great Alhambra—the August 1914 (he was in such a hurry to catch a fortress of the Moorish kings that Falla had train that he lost his toupee en route) the noc- famously drawn in music in his Nights in the turnes, now called Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Gardens of Spain. At the time he began the score, were still unfinished. Shortly after returning to more than a decade earlier, Falla was living in his homeland, Falla visited the Alhambra for the Paris and had never even been to Granada; he first time, in the company of his friend Maria knew about the Alhambra only from an inexpen- Martínez Sierra, who noticed his “satisfaction at sive book he bought at a bookstall on the rue de having guessed, with the help of some book, the Richelieu. (He was so captivated that he stayed charm which he had never seen before.” up all night reading it.) After settling briefly in Madrid, Falla lived for Nights in the Gardens of Spain began as a set of several months in the beach town of Sitges, near nocturnes for solo piano. Falla started sketching Barcelona, where he put the finishing touches in 1909, the year his colleague Isaac Albéniz on Nights in the Gardens of Spain. He worked on died, depriving Spain of one of its best-known an old, out-of-tune piano in El Cau Ferrat, the composers. (When Enrique Granados died in home of the popular painter Santiago Rusiñol, 1916, less than a month before the premiere of fine-tuning his sense of orchestral color in a Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Falla was thrust house filled with his host’s evocative canvases of into his new role as the country’s preeminent Spanish gardens. (It was once believed, errone- composer.) Ricardo Viñes, the great Catalan ously, that these paintings were the inspiration pianist who introduced many of Debussy’s and for the score.) COMPOSED MOST RECENT APPROXIMATE 1909–15 CSO PERFORMANCES PERFORMANCE TIME August 2, 1996, Ravinia Festival. Alicia 23 minutes FIRST PERFORMANCE de Larrocha as soloist, Christoph April 9, 1916; Madrid, Spain Eschenbach conducting CSO RECORDINGS 1997. Daniel Barenboim as soloist, May 31, June 1, 2 & 5, 2012, Orchestra FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES Plácido Domingo conducting. Teldec Hall. Stewart Goodyear as soloist, December 11 & 12, 1925, Orchestra Ludovic Morlot conducting 1997. Daniel Barenboim as soloist, Hall. Rudolph Reuter as soloist, Plácido Domingo conducting. Arthaus Frederick Stock conducting INSTRUMENTATION Musik (video) July 14, 1949, Ravinia Festival. solo piano, three flutes and piccolo, William Kapell as soloist, Fritz two oboes and english horn, two Reiner conducting clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, cymbals, triangle, celesta, harp, strings 3 rushing torrents.” And they’re all gathered here in Falla’s wondrously evocative and fragrant music. The second movement, set in an unidentified distant garden, is an exotic dance. The piano, with its arabesques, trills, arpeggios, and stomping octaves, suggests a guitar, then a dancer, and later a singer. Without pause, Falla transports us to festivities in the Sierra de Córdoba. Music historians like to attribute this brilliant finale to the zambra gitano—a night festival characterized by lively Granada’s Alhambra, with the Sierra Nevada in the background gypsy dancing and singing traditionally held for the feast of Corpus Christi. But Falla, ights in the Gardens of Spain is neither a no fan of explicit program music, didn’t care to concerto, although it’s scored for a solo be pinned down. As he wrote: piano with orchestra, nor a tone poem, Neven though it vividly portrays the spirit of a If these “symphonic impressions” have place. Falla referred to it simply as “symphonic achieved their object, the mere enumeration impressions.” The piano role, prominent but of their titles should be a significant guide to rarely dominant, is characterized by elaborate, the hearer. Although in this work—as in all brilliant, and eloquent writing. (Falla’s piano which have a legitimate claim to be consid- teacher studied with a pupil of Chopin.) The ered as music—the composer has followed a score is dedicated to Viñes, who didn’t play the definite design regarding tonal, rhythmical, first performance, but, like the composer himself, and thematic material . the end for which often performed the work in public in later years. it was written is no other than to evoke The orchestral writing is lush but never excessive; places, sensations, and sentiments. it’s Falla’s most “impressionistic” (and arguably his most “French”) score, and as an evocation of The themes employed are based (as is much atmosphere and setting, it ranks with Debussy’s of the composer’s earlier work) on the rhythms, and Ravel’s greatest symphonic works.