Boston University Symphony Orchestra

BOSTON UNIVERSITY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Wednesday, October 2, 2019 Tsai Performance Center BOSTON UNIVERSITY Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 33,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 16 schools and colleges, along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University’s research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. With programs in Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, CFA prepares students for a meaningful creative life by developing their intellectual capacity to create art, shift perspective, think broadly, and master relevant 21st century skills. CFA offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, as well as a range of online degrees and certificates. Learn more at bu.edu/ cfa. BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS SCHOOL OF MUSIC Founded in 1872, Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Music combines the intimacy and intensity of traditional conservatory-style training with a broad liberal arts education at the undergraduate level, and elective coursework at the graduate level. The school offers degrees in performance, conducting, composition and theory, musicology, music education, and historical performance, as well as artist and performance diplomas and a certificate program in its Opera Institute. PERFORMANCE VENUES CFA Concert Hall • 855 Commonwealth Avenue Marsh Chapel • 735 Commonwealth Avenue Tsai Performance Center • 685 Commonwealth Avenue Boston Symphony Hall • 301 Massachusetts Avenue October 2, 2019 Tsai Performance Center BOSTON UNIVERSITY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Joshua Gersen, conductor Siegfried’s Rhine Journey Richard Wagner (1813–1883) from Götterdämmerung Arr. Engelbert Humperdinck Four Sea Interludes Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a I. Dawn II. Sunday Morning III. Moonlight IV. Storm Tamara Dworetz, conductor Intermission Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Op. 13, “Winter Daydreams” (1840–1883) I. Dreams of a winter journey: Allegro tranquillo II. Land of desolation, land of mists: Adagio cantabile ma non tanto III. Scherzo: Allegro scherzando giocoso IV. Finale: Andante lugubre—Allegro maestoso PROGRAM NOTES Siegfried’s Rhine Journey from Götterdämmerung On October 4, 1848, the thirty-five-year-old Second Court Conductor at the Dresden Opera, who was also the composer of several stage works, among them Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, jotted down a brief sketch for a music-drama on the Nibelungen myth. It would be five years before he composed the first note of music for this project, twenty-six years before it was finished, and twenty-eight years before it was staged in its entirety. Complex in subject and execution, Der Ring des Nibelungen—four evenings in the theater and something like seventeen hours of music altogether—is one of the stupendous achievements of Western art. For the rest of the nineteenth century and into the present, composers would struggle to find their own artistic identities outside the long shadows cast by such works as the Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal. In the excerpt from Götterdämmerung [the final opera of the Ring cycle] that we hear, Siegfried and Brünnhilde have awakened from their first night together. In recognition of their union, Siegfried has taken a gold ring off his own finger and placed it on Brünnhilde’s: This is in fact the ring of the title, the ring about whose changing ownership the whole saga revolves. But Siegfried is not about to settle down in domestic bliss. Leaving Brünnhilde on the rock where he found her and where they consummated their marriage, Siegfried descends the mountain to the Rhine (along the way passing through the ring of fire he had braved to reach Brünnhilde). He is searching for a new adventure and finds it, but it will be his last. The music we hear as he makes his way along the river is the interlude that links Siegfried’s and Brünnhilde’s heroic duet and the scene at the court of the Gibichungs, where Siegfried will meet his death. The jubilant outburst with which the Rhine Journey begins is a grand transformation of Siegfried’s horn call. The music proceeds vigorously, recalling Brünnhilde, the swirling water of the Rhine, and the hymn of the Rhinemaidens to the gold they failed to protect. —Michael Steinberg for San Francisco Symphony (exerpted) Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes “For most of my life,” Benjamin Britten wrote, “I have lived closely in touch with the sea. My parents’ house in Lowestoft directly faced the sea, and my life as a child was colored by the fierce storms that sometimes drove ships on our coast and ate away whole stretches of neighboring cliffs. In writing [my opera] Peter Grimes, I wanted to PROGRAM NOTES express my awareness of the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livlihood depends on the sea—difficult as it is to treat such a universal subject in theatrical form.” For Peter Grimes, the leading character of the opera, life was more than a struggle against the sea. Endowed with a surly nature and explosive temper, Grimes, an outsider, was feared and distrusted by the people in a fishing village on the bleak Suffolk coast of England. Unjustly accusing him of murdering his two apprentices, the townspeople finally force Grimes to sail out to sea where he purposely sinks his boat and perishes. The premiere of the opera in London on June 7, 1945 was a triumphant success. Exactly one week later, Britten conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Four Sea Interludes from the opera to equally enthusiastic acclaim. Dawn. This section is heard between the Prologue, a coroner’s inquest into the death at sea of Grimes’ first apprentice, and Act I, in which the fishermen express their common fears as they prepare to go to sea. The cold and forbidding music, pervaded with suggestions of sea gull cries and crashing waves, comes to a close as the rising sun majestically ushers in another day. Sunday Morning. In the opera, this prelude to Act II is set in front of the church as the villagers, in a festive mood, gather for services. Despite the joyous pealing of the church bells—suggested by French horns and high woodwinds—there is a growing sense of tragedy as Grimes appears on the scene with his new apprentice. Moonlight. The introduction to Act III takes place outside the warm, brightly-lit hall where the townspeople are dancing, but somehow the music casts a dark, ominously forbidding mood. Storm. Played between the two scenes of Act I, this interlude conjures up a storm at sea that erupts with terrifying violence and fury. —Melvin Berger for Long Island Philharmonic Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13, “Winter Daydreams” Probably no other work ever cost Tchaikovsky as much effort as his first symphony. At the beginning of 1866, the 26-year-old composer moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow to teach harmony at the newly founded Conservatory. He wrote his symphony nights and between classes, often working until exhaustion. This first major orchestral work caused him such anguish that he soon suffered from nervous PROGRAM NOTES disorders and hallucinations. But when he thought the symphony was finally finished, the drudgery was by no means over. Nikolai Rubinstein, the despotic director of the Conservatory (and Tchaikovsky’s landlord as well), demanded extensive changes before he would even consider performing it. In December 1866, the Scherzo, at least, found his approval; two months later, he accepted the second movement. But it wasn’t until February 15, 1868 that Rubinstein performed the work in its entirety. After further revisions, a first edition was published in 1874; in 1888, 22 years after Tchaikovsky had begun the composition, its final version came out. Despite all of these problems, Tchaikovsky still retained a positive attitude towards his first symphony. “Although it is immature in some respects, I consider it to be fundamentally better and richer than many other, more mature works,” he wrote in a letter. Tchaikovsky’s poetic imagination can be seen in his sub-titles. He named the entire piece “Winter Daydreams.” The first movement is entitled “Dreams of a winter journey” and the second is called “Land of desolation, land of mists.” But these titles are presumably only general associations and do not point to the musical realization of any concrete “story.” The opening “Allegro tranquillo,” for example, is a conventional sonata-form movement with two contrasting themes —while mostprogram music uses unconventionalforms. Both themes are introduced by the woodwinds, the first by the flute and bassoon and the second by the clarinet. The second movement is based on a traditional melody first presented by an oboe, then taken up by various instrumental groups and expanded upon. Oddly enough, the last two movements no longer have any titles. Tchaikovsky took the Scherzo from a piano sonata in C-sharp Minor that he had composed one year before the symphony, changing only very little. The Trio of this movement, however, is new. It seems almost to be a prototype for the later orchestral waltzes of Tchaikovsky’s that would become so successful. Like the first movement, the Finale is also a sonata-form movement with two themes. It is based on the Russian folksong Flowers bloom, which Tchaikovsky later published in an arrangement for piano.

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