Holiday Classics: Nutcracker Sweet 2018-19 Hal & Jeanette Segerstrom Family Foundation Classical Series
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HOLIDAY CLASSICS: NUTCRACKER SWEET 2018-19 HAL & JEANETTE SEGERSTROM FAMILY FOUNDATION CLASSICAL SERIES Pacifi c Symphony Brahms PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 Carl St.Clair, conductor Allegro non troppo Markus Groh, piano Allegro appassionato Andante Allegretto grazioso Markus Groh Vaughan Williams FANTASIA ON A THEME BY THOMAS TALLIS Intermission Tchaikovsky SELECTIONS FROM TCHAIKOVSKY’S THE NUTCRACKER AND ARRANGEMENTS OF TCHAIKOVSKY’S MUSIC BY DUKE ELLINGTON AND BILLY STRAYHORN Overture – Original & Ellington/Strayhorn Versions March of the Toy Soldiers – Original Sugar Rum Cherry – Ellington/Strayhorn Trepak (Russian Dance) – Original Volga Vouty ‑ Ellington/Strayhorn Coffee (Arabian Dance) – Original Tea (Chinese Dance) – Original Toot Toot Tootie Toot – Ellington/Strayhorn Dance of the Reed Flutes – Original The Waltz of the Flowers/Dance of the Floreadores – Original & Ellington/Strayhorn Preview talk with Alan Chapman at 7 p.m. Thursday, December 6, 2018 @ 8 p.m. Friday, December 7, 2018 @ 8 p.m. Saturday, December 8, 2018 @ 8 p.m. Segerstrom Center for the Arts This performance is generously sponsored by the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall Michelle F. Rohé Distinguished Pianists Fund. Offi cial Hotel Offi cial TV Station Offi cial Classical Music Station This concert is being recorded for broadcast on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2019, at 7 p.m. on Classical KUSC. 1 PROGRAM NOTES JOHANNES BRAHMS: with immediate success. PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 This concerto is a work of virtuosic demands but not of virtuosic display. One RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: When Brahms began formidable challenge for the soloist lies in FANTASIA ON A THEME BY sketching themes for his its four-movement form: not just a test of THOMAS TALLIS Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1878, endurance (though it is that), but also an he was 44 years old and interpretive hurdle, requiring the soloist to In a sense, Vaughan already a revered composer. integrate the scherzo into the concerto’s Williams, Brahms and Despite his relatively young overall structure. (Other concertos that go Ellington all reached age, he was adopting the posture of a grand beyond the traditional three-movement across musical eras. In old man of music, ursine and curmudgeonly. structure, such as Lalo’s Symphonie composing his second Yet he remained sensitive to public and Espagnole, are not so tightly constructed.) piano concerto, Brahms critical opinion, harboring a nervousness Brahms gives the scherzo its own expressive was acutely aware that it was the most he never really outgrew. Even successes identity, with an energy that must follow grandly scaled concerto since Beethoven’s, did not put him at ease—much less the very seamlessly from the drama of the first and his self-effacing comments on it only unenthusiastic reception that his first piano movement without competing with it. emphasize the burden of music history he concerto had received in 1859, when Brahms, The first movement, marked allegro felt. Ellington, too, reached back about 70 still in his mid-20s, was already a respected non troppo, opens serenely with a dignified years in adapting Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. pianist. statement in a single horn. But Brahms’ In composing his Fantasia on a Theme by His nerves are evident in the long time development becomes passionate and Thomas Tallis, the 20th-century English he spent developing his second piano even stormy. In contrast with Beethoven’s composer Ralph (pronounced “Rafe”) concerto and his almost superstitious piano concertos, the piano voice does not Vaughan Williams was inspired by sacred reluctance to discuss it except in ironic struggle with the orchestra or stand out music dating from 1557 by Thomas Tallis— terms. Three years after he began as its antagonist; instead, it plays as the his hymn “Why Fumeth in Fight?,” the third composing it, he described it in a letter to foregrounded voice in a unified ensemble. of nine chants Tallis compiled for the his friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg as Then, as the scherzo unfolds in the second Archbishop of Canterbury in that year. “a tiny little piano concerto with a wisp of movement, it extends the stormy mood of Tallis was one of the greatest a scherzo.” Hardly! It was, as he well knew, the first movement’s darkest passages. composers England ever produced, and one of the most expansive and ambitious In the third movement, marked andante, fortunately for the monarchs he served— concertos since Beethoven’s “Emperor,” the contemplative mood of the concerto’s from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I—he was and its scherzo—anything but wispy—poses opening bars returns with a tender melody long-lived and prolific. Vaughan Williams interpretive hurdles for any pianist who introduced as a cello solo. A softly voiced encountered the Tallis psalm settings early attempts it. Like Beethoven, whose shadow cadenza develops this theme; Brahms in his career, while editing a new English he couldn’t seem to escape, Brahms was would draw upon this melody again later hymnal. His setting of Tallis’ chant was once again pushing a classical form beyond in his career, in the song “Immer leiser an immediate success when it premiered its traditional boundaries. wird mein Schlummer.” Any lingering in 1910 at England’s annual Three Choirs The concerto made its way into the memories we may have of the concerto’s Festival, and it remains one of Vaughan world gradually, first in a two-piano version early strains of melancholy are overcome Williams’ most popular works. that Brahms performed with a friend in in its spirited fourth movement. Marked As we listen to the Fantasia, a private concert. When the eminent allegretto grazioso, it is, like many concerto reverberations of Elizabethan England conductor Hans von Bülow caught wind of finales, structured as a rondo—in this case, seem to surround us. In its orchestration it, he invited Brahms to rehearse the work a grandly scaled rondo of seven parts we can hear the influence of Vaughan with this orchestra in Meiningen. The public (A-B-A-C-A-B-A). It brings the concerto to a Williams’ studies with Maurice Ravel, one premiere followed in November 1881 in brilliant, spirited close. of the greatest of all orchestral colorists. Budapest with Brahms at the keyboard. In With the originality and boldness of youth, contrast with his first piano concerto, it met Vaughan Williams scored the Fantasia for Johannes Brahms Ralph Vaughan Williams Born: 1833. Hamburg, Germany Born: 1872. Gloucestershire, England Died: 1897. Vienna, Austria Died: 1958. London, England Piano Concerto No. 2 Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Composed: 1881 Composed: 1910 World premiere: Nov. 9, 1881, with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra World premiere: Sept. 10, 1910, at Gloucester Cathedral, and Brahms as soloist with Vaughan Williams conducting Most recent Pacific Symphony performance: Sept. 23, 2012, with Most recent Pacific Symphony performance: Feb. 27, 1997, with André Watts as soloist Carl St.Clair conducting Instrumentation: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, Instrumentation: strings 2 bassoons; 4 horns, 2 trumpets; timpani; strings; solo piano Estimated duration: 15 minutes Estimated duration: 46 minutes 2 DECEMBER three string ensembles of differing sizes to neither Tchaikovsky nor his critics were the “Chinese Dance” becomes “Chinoiserie” play simultaneously: a full string section, a easy on it. “Tchaikovsky did not think highly (note Ellington’s elegant French touches); group of nine players, and a quartet. Hearing of the music he wrote for The Nutcracker,” the “Arabian Dance” becomes a witty this unusual tripartite scoring transports the authoritative 1980 edition of The New “Arabesque Cookie;” and most famously, us to the resonant listening spaces of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians the beloved “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” great English cathedrals. It is a listening tells us, “rightly ranking it below that of becomes a suggestive “Sugar Rum Cherry.” experience to be cherished that cannot be The Sleeping Beauty.” Still, Tchaikovsky Care for a canapé with that highball? duplicated at home. appreciated its appeal well enough to Like Mozart’s Magic Flute, Duke compose an orchestral suite based on Ellington’s adaptation of The Nutcracker 20 of its most popular numbers. And so proves that fairy tales are not just for kids. did the great Duke Ellington, America’s Reaching across the decades, Strayhorn incomparably debonair genius of jazz. and Ellington have added a very grown-up PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY/ Ellington led his famous orchestra dimension to a child-friendly favorite. EDWARD KENNEDY “DUKE” ELLINGTON from the keyboard for five decades, a SELECTIONS FROM remarkable achievement for any maestro, THE NUTCRACKER introducing jazz compositions that have Michael Clive is a cultural reporter living become classics and presenting them in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. He is Tchaikovsky’s entry into with sophistication and verve. Behind the program annotator for Pacific Symphony and the world of ballet came in scenes, his longtime collaborator was Louisiana Philharmonic, and editor‑in‑chief 1875 with the commission the equally remarkable Billy Strayhorn, a for The Santa Fe Opera. for Swan Lake. He was brilliantly talented composer and arranger inspired by the French who was classically trained. It was composer Leo Delibes, Strayhorn who, in 1960, came up with the THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR: whose innovative scores for the ballets improbable idea of a swingin’ adaptation of THE MICHELLE F. ROHÉ DISTINGUISHED Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876) showed Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. PIANO FUND that the music for danced dramas could In composing for the ballet, Tchaikovsky be more interesting than had earlier been was hemmed in by numbers and colleagues Michelle Rohé is one of the great supposed. But the scenarios for those with competing interests on the production patrons of the arts in Orange County. ballets were less ambitious than those team.