CLASSICAL�SERIES SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, AT 7 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8 & 9, AT 8 PM

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY THIERRY FISCHER, conductor STEPHEN HOUGH, piano

ANDREW NORMAN Unstuck – 10 minutes

FELIX MENDELSSOHN Concerto No. 1 in G Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 25 – 21 minutes Molto allegro con fuoco Andante Presto – Molto allegro e vivace Stephen Hough, piano

– INTERMISSION –

HECTOR BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 – 49 minutes Reveries and Passions A Ball Scene In the Country March to the Scaff old Dream of a Witches' Sabbath

This concert will last one hour and 55 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission.

This concert will be recorded live for future broadcast. To ensure the highest-quality recording, please keep noise to a minimum.

INCONCERT 19 CLASSICAL

PROGRAM SUMMARY How do young artists find a unique voice? This program brings together three works, each written when their respective composers were only in their 20s. The young American Andrew Norman was already tapping into his gift for crafting vibrantly imaginative, almost hyper-active soundscapes in Unstuck, the brief but event-filled orchestral piece that opens our concert. Felix Mendelssohn had already been in the public eye as a child prodigy before he embarked on a series of travels across Europe from which he stored impressions for numerous mature compositions — including the First Piano Concerto. Just around the time Mendelssohn wrote this music, his contemporary Hector Berlioz was refining the ideas that percolate in his first completed symphonic masterpiece. The Symphonie fantastique created a sensation of its own with its evocation of a tempestuous autobiographical love affair through an unprecedentedly bold use of the expanded Romantic orchestra.

ANDREW NORMAN Unstuck

October 31, 1979, in First performance: Grand Rapids, Michigan September 9, 2008, in Zürich, Switzerland, with Michael Sanderling conducting Currently resides in the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich Los Angeles, California

First Nashville Symphony Estimated performance: Composed: length: These are the orchestra’s fi rst 2008 10 minutes performances.

mong the most sought-aft er American composers such as John Adams, Norman Acomposers of his generation, the Los has mapped out a unique style. His works Angeles-based Andrew Norman was first additionally incorporate an understanding inspired to write music when he encountered of listening habits in the era of digitalization, John Williams’s Star Wars scores. His emergence video game music and YouTube. as a successful artist in his own right has been Unstuck was written on a commission from astonishingly rapid. Norman was a fi nalist for the Zurich-based Orpheum Foundation for the 2012 and 2019 Pulitzer Prize in music and the Advancement of Young Soloists. Norman was named Composer of the Year by Musical recalls being faced with a case of writer’s America in 2017. Th ough he has just turned block: “For a long time this piece languished 40, Norman has written orchestral, chamber, on my desk, a mess of musical fragments that vocal and theater music. The Los Angeles refused to cohere.” He found a way out when Philharmonic gave the American premiere of he chanced to read Kurt Vonnegut’s classic his fi rst opera, a children’s opera (also meant anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or Th e for adults) inspired by Georges Méliès’ 1902 Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death silent fi lm classic A Trip to the Moon. (1969). Th e Vonnegut novel mingles science Infl uenced by the milestones of Romantic fi ction fantasy with the author’s experiences orchestral music, as well as contemporary as an Allied soldier during the fi rebombing of

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Dresden in 1945. Th e protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, The composer writes: “I realized that escapes the linear flow of time, traveling my musical materials lent themselves to a backward and forward to the past and future. narrative arc that, like Vonnegut’s character, “I remembered one of its iconic sentences,” comes ‘unstuck’ in time. Bits and pieces of the writes Norman, “[and] had a breakthrough beginning, middle and end of the music crop realization. Th e sentence was this: ‘Billy Pilgrim up in the wrong places like the fl ashbacks and has come unstuck in time.’ ” He adds that this fl ashforwards that defi ne the structure and brought him an epiphany: “Th e realization was style of Slaughterhouse-Five.” that the lack of coherence in my ideas was to Norman also points to the implications of the be embraced and explored, not overcome.” In title, which suggests “the way that a few of the the score for Unstuck, Norman has inscribed piece’s musical ideas get caught in repetitive this line from Slaughterhouse-Five: “It is just loops,” he explains. “Th e orchestra, perhaps an illusion we have here on earth that one in some way dramatizing my own frustration moment follows another one, like beads on a with composing, spends a considerable amount string, and that once a moment is gone it is of time and energy trying to free itself from gone forever.” these moments of stuckness.”

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Unstuck is scored for 2 fl utes and piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets (2nd doubling bass he materials for Unstuck burst on the scene clarinet, 3rd doubling E-fl at clarinet), 3 bassoons, Tand seem to be pulled in contradictory 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, directions. Th e score calls for “recklessly fast” vibraphone, tom-toms, tin cans, snare drum, playing as these sonorities fracture at whiplash cymbals, tam-tam, crotales, bass drum, cowbells, speed, amassing a kaleidoscopic array of timbre temple blocks, bongos, metal tins, washboard, ratchet, piano and strings. and energy. SUPPORT MUSIC IN TENNESSEE WITH AN ARTS PLATE

INCONCERT 21 CLASSICAL FELIX MENDELSSOHN Concerto No. 1 in G Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 25

Born on February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, Germany First performance: October 17, 1831, in Munich, with the composer as the soloist. Died on November 4, 1847, in Leipzig, Germany

First Nashville Symphony performance: Estimated April 18 & 19, 1986, with Music Composed: length: Director Kenneth Schermerhorn 1830-31 21 minutes and soloist David Bar-Illan

n addition to his gifts as a composer, of the latter is his linking of all three IFelix Mendelssohn led an active musical movements into a single interconnected life as a conductor and virtuoso concert totality. Mendelssohn opens the Concerto pianist in demand across Europe. Th e First by giving the soloist a sudden early entrance Piano Concerto originated during a happy aft er just a few measures of fi ery dramatics and stimulating period of travel across from the orchestra. This ploy adds to the Europe. It draws on sketches the composer sense of urgency and reinforces the agitated, jotted down while in Rome — though, driving emotions of the fi rst movement. Like according to his biographer R. Larry Todd, Mozart, Mendelssohn knew that the piano Mendelssohn composed the bulk of the score could allure just as powerfully with simple, and orchestrated it while staying in Munich, restrained poetry (note the second theme) as where he gave the premiere. it could with rocketing octaves and rippling Th e First Piano Concerto was very well- scales. Near the end of the fi rst movement, received, and Clara Schumann became a the dotted rhythm of the main theme gives powerful champion. Indeed, it became so way to a fanfare from the trumpets and horns. popular in this period that, over in Paris, This fanfare is used as a linking device Hector Berlioz parodied it in his Evenings between the movements. It clears the space with the Orchestra, in a passage that imagines for a piano solo that leads to a placid Andante, a fi ne Erard concert grand possessed with the which features reduced, pastel-like scoring spirit of the G-minor Concerto. In Berlioz’s to enhance the intimate rapport between the own words: “Th ey took the keyboard out of the soloist and ensemble. As a unifying device, instrument — and the keys were still moving Mendelssohn alludes to the dotted-rhythm up and down by themselves….” pattern of the fi rst movement’s main theme. The fanfare returns after a long, hushed WHAT TO LISTEN FOR pause to launch the fi nale. Its joyful, G-major theme poses a counterbalance to the G-minor he Classical-Romantic balance that is passions that had opened the concerto. Ta signature of Mendelssohn’s style is Mendelssohn not only alludes to the dotted- apparent in his mixture of poise and discreetly rhythm pattern of the opening movement’s innovative structural ideas. Th e most obvious first theme but also, near the end, has the

22 NOVEMBER 2019 CLASSICAL soloist echo that movement’s second theme In addition to solo piano, the Piano Concerto — as if chancing upon it while improvising. No. 1 is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, An exuberant coda revels in the glittering bassoons, horns and trumpets, plus timpani and strings. virtuosity that characterizes this movement.

ABOUT THE SOLOIST STEPHEN National and Zürich Tonhalle orchestras. In recent seasons, Hough has been especially HOUGH focused on exploring Beethoven’s five piano piano concertos. To celebrate the 250th anniversary ver the course of the composer’s birth, he recently recorded all Oof his career, five concertos with Hannu Lintu and Finnish Stephen Hough has distinguished himself as Radio Symphony Orchestra for release by a true polymath, not only securing a reputation Hyperion Records in May 2020. as a uniquely insightful concert pianist, In recital, Hough performs a program that but also as a writer and composer. Hough is explores the theme of death — a topic that commended for his mastery of the instrument, “people are often reluctant to talk about,” he as well as an individual and inquisitive mind says, but which “has always been a central that has earned him a multitude of prestigious subject [in the arts] resulting in the most exalted awards and a longstanding international and inexhaustible expression.” The program following. comprises the Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D Hough became the first classical performing minor, Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque, Chopin’s artist to win a MacArthur Foundation Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Liszt’s Funérailles, Fellowship in 2001. In 2008, he was awarded Bagatelle sans tonalité, and Mephisto Waltz Northwestern University’s Jean Gimbel Lane No. 1, and Hough’s own Sonata No. 4 (Vida Prize in Piano and went on to win the Royal Breve). He performs this program in Santa Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award Barbara, New Orleans, Fort Worth, Kingston in 2010. In December 2013, he was made (Ontario) and at Caramoor in Katonah, New a Commander of the Order of the British York. International performances take place Empire (CBE). in Germany, Taiwan, and the U.K. Since taking first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Hough has composed for orchestra, choir, Competition in New York, Hough has chamber ensemble and solo piano, and his appeared with major American and European compositions are published by Josef Weinberger, orchestras and has given recitals at the Ltd. A noted writer, he has contributed articles most prestigious concert halls around the for The New York Times, The Guardian, The world. Among other ensembles, he has Times (U.K.), Evening Standard, The Tablet, appeared with the BBC, Czech, London, Los Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. For Angeles, Netherlands, New York and Royal seven years, until 2016, he wrote more than philharmonics; the Atlanta, Baltimore, 600 articles for his blog on The Telegraph. A BBC, Boston, Chicago, Montréal, National, major anthology of essays by Hough titled NHK, San Francisco, St. Louis and Toronto Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More symphonies; and the Budapest Festival, will be published in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus Cleveland, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Russian and Giroux in February 2020.

INCONCERT 23 CLASSICAL HECTOR BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

Born on December 11, 1803, in First performance: La Côte-Saint-André, France December 5, 1830, in Paris, with François Habeneck conducting Died on March 8, 1869, in Paris

Composed: First Nashville Symphony Estimated performance: 1830; length: revised frequently October 26 & 27, 1959, with 49 minutes between 1830-55 Music Director Willis Page

hen he fi nally succeeded at winning A good deal of that impact had to do with Wthe Prix de Rome in 1830 (following the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who played multiple attempts), Hector Berlioz made Ophelia and Juliet — and who became the his first trip abroad. In Italy, he had a object of the composer’s obsession. This chance to meet Mendelssohn during the encounter kindled a love for Shakespeare period of his First Piano Concerto. While that lasted throughout Berlioz’s life and in Italy, the French composer also made inspired several major works. A little later, the first of numerous revisions to his still he experienced a similar epiphany when the fresh Symphonie fantastique — one of the symphonies of Beethoven were introduced most remarkable early achievements by to Paris. any composer. Indeed, it defies belief that The Symphonie fantastique premiered Berlioz was still only in his late 20s when he in December 1830, only three years after composed the Symphonie fantastique. Beethoven’s death and just a half-year aft er This score marks a Romantic revolution the Paris revolution. It incorporates Berlioz’s in harnessing music’s power to convey desperate love for Smithson and the sense autobiographical, subjective expression. Even of music’s untapped power that Beethoven on a strictly musical level, the Symphonie revealed to him. One of the many novelties fantastique is autobiographical in the sense of the work is its layout in fi ve movements, that it recycles material from some of Berlioz’s for which Berlioz had a model in Beethoven’s earlier compositions. Sixth Symphony (the “Pastoral”). In the fall of 1827, a London theater company In Berlioz’s original concept, the Symphonie took Paris by storm, performing a handful of fantastique centers around an unnamed Artist’s Shakespeare plays in English at the Th éâtre de obsession with a woman who represents his l’Odéon on the Left Bank. Berlioz, who had ideal of love. He initially published an elaborate deserted the study of medicine to follow his program that lays out a narrative about the bliss, didn’t even know English at the time, but Artist. Aft er the Artist’s confl icting emotions the experience was like a divine revelation: are explored in the fi rst movement, he fi nds “Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, himself “in the tumult of a festive party and struck me like a thunderbolt,” Berlioz wrote in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful decades later in his Memoirs. sights of nature — yet everywhere, whether in

24 NOVEMBER 2019 CLASSICAL town or in the countryside, the Beloved’s image menacing weather. keeps haunting him.” He finds a temporary The first two movements focus on the Artist’s respite in the countryside as he listens to two love — an ideal whose fulfillment leaves shepherds playing their pipes. him frustrated. The final two movements But fear that his Beloved has betrayed him go in the polar opposite direction. If the gnaws at the Artist. In despair, he takes opium Beloved promises an image of heaven, the to commit suicide but ends up having a fever music here traces a descent into hell. The dream that he has murdered the Beloved and fourth movement, “The March to the Scaffold,” is witnessing his own execution. The final presents a chilling image of the barbaric crowd movement takes the nightmare into hell, where eager to witness his execution. At its climax, the Artist is caught up in a witches’ Sabbath Berlioz shifts from the Artist’s perspective celebrating his funeral. Even the Beloved takes to a crowd shot: the clarinet replays the idée part in their revels. fixe as the artist’s “final thought of love.” Afterward comes a graphic depiction of the WHAT TO LISTEN FOR guillotine’s blade snapping down — and the Artist’s head rolling. n the first movement (“Rêveries – Passions”), The final “Witches’ Sabbath” includes a I a long, slow, melancholy introduction hideous distortion of the idée fixe into a evokes the Artist in his solitude, incomplete mocking, squawky taunt on E-flat clarinet. without this love; muted strings and uneasy This launches the orgy of the witches’ dance pauses set the tone perfectly. When the Allegro itself, while the funeral is signaled by the Dies starts several minutes in, Berlioz presents Irae melody used in the Catholic Requiem a musical code for the Beloved (flutes and (first in the tuba, after the bells begin to violins), whom he sees for the first time in toll). Even the Dies Irae gets turned into a real life after dreaming of her. He calls this parody in an orgiastic fugue that combines the idée fixe. It’s a “fixed idea” because it not it with the witches’ dance. The Artist never only represents the artist’s obsessive image awakens from this horror, but in 1831 Berlioz of the Beloved, but also plays a key part in provided a sequel whose protagonist does: the musical structure, coming back at crucial Lélio, ou le Retour à la Vie (“Lélio, or the moments, in varied contexts that affect how Return to Life”). Here, music provides its own it is presented. The melody’s yearning quality antidote to the poisonous, drug-like effects suggests how much the idée fixe is actually a that win out in the Symphonie fantastique’s projection of the Artist’s own desire. jarring conclusion. The harp-tinged textures of the dance- centered second movement, “A Ball,” bring The Symphonie fantastique is scored for 2 flutes out the “classical” side of Berlioz, who (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 clarinets (2nd doubling E-flat also numbered Mozart and Gluck among clarinet), 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, his idols. The third movement, “Scene in 3 trombones, 2 (bass) tubas, timpani, bass drum, the Countryside,” is the longest and most snare drum, cymbals, bells, 2 harps and strings. enigmatic. Here the inspiration from Beethoven’s Pastoral is most obvious, but so — Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony’s program annotator. is Berlioz’s originality in taking a different tack. The oboe and English horn play the dueting shepherds. The natural setting translates the Artist’s subjective angst into

INCONCERT 25 CLASSICAL ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR THIERRY Carnegie Hall for the fi rst time in 40 years and released a CD of newly commissioned FISCHER works by Nico Muhly, Andrew Norman and conductor Augusta Read Th omas. hierry Fischer Highlights of summer 2019 included Fischer’s Thas been music debut with Th e Cleveland Orchestra, and a director of the Utah Symphony since 2009 revelatory Strauss and Sibelius program with and will finish his term in summer 2022, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment becoming music director emeritus. He has at London’s Southbank Centre. He has a been principal guest conductor of the Seoul significant presence this season at Flagey Philharmonic since 2017, and in March 2020 in Brussels. he begins a new position as music director Fischer started out as principal flute in of the São Paulo Symphony Hamburg and at the Zurich Opera. His Fischer has led Utah Symphony in annual conducting career began in his 30s, when he single composer cycles including Mahler, Ives replaced an ailing colleague, subsequently and Nielsen; he has also released acclaimed directing his first few concerts with the performances of Mahler’s symphonies 1 and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, where he 8 on Reference Records, the latter with the was principal fl ute under Claudio Abbado. Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Th is year saw the He served as principal conductor and artistic fi rst release of a Saint-Saëns symphony cycle on advisor of the Ulster Orchestra in 2001-06, Hyperion as part of an ongoing collaboration. and he was principal conductor of the BBC He has conducted the orchestra in Utah’s fi ve National Orchestra of Wales from 2006-12. national parks and forged outreach links in In 2008-11, he was chief conductor of the Haiti. In celebration of its 75th anniversary Nagoya Philharmonic, where is now honorary season in 2016, he brought the orchestra to guest conductor.

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