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Home , Franz Schubert, Philadelphia Orchestra

SEASON 2020-2021

SIGHT/ Jessica GriffinJessica SOUND/

October 8, 2020 SEASON 2020-2021 The Thursday, October 8, at 8:00 On the Digital Stage

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Refik Anadol Visual Design

Simon Fate Now Conquers World premiere—Philadelphia Orchestra commission

Beethoven from Symphony No. 7 in , Op. 92: II. Allegretto

Schubert Symphony No. 8 in , D. 759 (“Unfinished”) I. Allegro moderato II. Andante con moto

This program runs approximately 1 hour and will be performed without an intermission.

Support for the collaboration with Refik Anadol has been provided to The Philadelphia Orchestra by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM, and are repeated on Monday evenings at 7 PM on WRTI HD 2. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details. Our World

Lead support for the Digital Stage is provided by:

Elaine W. Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr. The CHG Charitable Trust The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Innisfree Foundation Gretchen and M. Roy Jackson Neal W. Krouse John H. McFadden and Lisa D. Kabnick Leslie A. Miller and Richard B. Worley Ralph W. Muller and Beth B. Johnston William Penn Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Peter Shaw Waterman Trust Constance and Sankey Williams Wyncote Foundation SEASON 2020-2021 ARTIST’S NOTE

For the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Sight/Sound/Symphony performance on its Digital Stage, Refik Anadol Studio has created Symphonic Dreams, a groundbreaking latent cinema experience that connects architectural aesthetics with the second movement of ’s glorious Symphony No. 7. Symphonic Dreams is part of the Studio’s most recent synesthetic reality experiments that utilize machine-learning algorithms trained on large datasets. The first step in the process was to collect, categorize, and refine a vast database of the publicly available images of every European architectural form built between 1300 and 1600 in Europe. The resulting dataset then transforms into a latent multi-sensory experience within various imaginary sacred spaces. The piece self generates pigments, shapes, and patterns in response to the visual input that the machine’s mind processes. Paying homage to the unbound poetic sublimity of both Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Renaissance architecture, the final work visualizes this mesmerizing latent space, and invites the audience to explore what, until now, only existed in the mind of a machine.

—Refik Anadol SEASON 2020-2021 The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Director Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair

Gabriela Lena Frank -in-Residence

Erina Yashima Assistant Conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados Fellow

Frederick R. Haas Artistic Advisor Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience

First Violins Amy Oshiro-Morales David Kim, Concertmaster Yu-Ting Chen Juliette Kang, First Associate Jeoung-Yin Kim Concertmaster Christine Lim Joseph and Marie Field Chair Marc Rovetti, Assistant Concertmaster Barbara Govatos Choong-Jin Chang, Principal Robert E. Mortensen Chair Ruth and A. Morris Williams Chair Jonathan Beiler Kirsten Johnson, Associate Principal Hirono Oka Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal Richard Amoroso Judy Geist Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair Renard Edwards Yayoi Numazawa Anna Marie Ahn Petersen Jason DePue Piasecki Family Chair Larry A. Grika Chair David Nicastro Jennifer Haas Burchard Tang Miyo Curnow Che-Hung Chen Elina Kalendarova Rachel Ku Daniel Han Marvin Moon Julia Li Meng Wang William Polk Mei Ching Huang Second Violins Hai-Ye Ni, Principal Priscilla Lee, Associate Principal Kimberly Fisher, Principal Peter A. Benoliel Chair Yumi Kendall, Assistant Principal Paul Roby, Associate Principal Richard Harlow Sandra and David Marshall Chair Gloria dePasquale Dara Morales, Assistant Principal Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair Anne M. Buxton Chair Kathryn Picht Read Philip Kates Robert Cafaro Davyd Booth Volunteer Committees Chair Paul Arnold Ohad Bar-David Joseph Brodo Chair, given by Peter A. Benoliel John Koen Dmitri Levin Derek Barnes Boris Balter Alex Veltman SEASON 2020-2021

Basses Jeffry Kirschen Harold Robinson, Principal Ernesto Tovar Torres Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair Shelley Showers Joseph Conyers, Acting Associate Principal Tobey and Mark Dichter Chair Trumpets Nathaniel West, Acting Assistant Principal David Bilger, Principal Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair Michael Shahan Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal David Fay Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair Duane Rosengard Anthony Prisk Some members of the string sections voluntarily rotate seating on a periodic basis. Nitzan Haroz, Principal Flutes Neubauer Family Foundation Chair , Principal Matthew Vaughn, Co-Principal Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair Blair Bollinger, Bass Patrick Williams, Associate Principal Drs. Bong and Mi Wha Lee Chair Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair Olivia Staton Tuba Erica Peel, Piccolo Carol Jantsch, Principal Lyn and George M. Ross Chair Oboes Philippe Tondre, Principal Timpani Samuel S. Fels Chair Don S. Liuzzi, Principal Peter Smith, Associate Principal Dwight V. Dowley Chair Jonathan Blumenfeld Angela Zator Nelson, Associate Principal Edwin Tuttle Chair Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, English Percussion Joanne T. Greenspun Chair Christopher Deviney, Principal Angela Zator Nelson Clarinets Ricardo Morales, Principal and Celesta Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair Kiyoko Takeuti Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair Keyboards Socrates Villegas Davyd Booth Paul R. Demers, Bass Clarinet Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Joseph Chair Harp Elizabeth Hainen, Principal Bassoons Daniel Matsukawa, Principal Librarians Richard M. Klein Chair Nicole Jordan, Principal Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal Steven K. Glanzmann Angela Anderson Smith Holly Blake, Contrabassoon Stage Personnel James J. Sweeney, Jr., Manager Horns Dennis Moore, Jr. Jennifer Montone, Principal Gray Charitable Trust Chair Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Chair Christopher Dwyer SEASON 2020-2021 THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

Jessica Griffin

The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the world’s preeminent . It strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust educational initiatives, and an ongoing commitment to the communities that it serves, the ensemble is on a path to create an expansive future for , and to further the place of the arts in an open and democratic society.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now in his ninth season as the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the community.

Your Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, from Verizon Hall to community centers, the Mann Center to Penn’s Landing, classrooms to hospitals, and over the airwaves and online. The Orchestra continues to discover new and inventive ways to nurture its relationship with loyal patrons. SEASON 2020-2021 THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

In March 2020, in response to the cancellation of concerts due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orchestra launched the Virtual Philadelphia Orchestra, a portal hosting video and audio of performances, free, on its website and social media platforms. In September 2020 the Orchestra announced Our World NOW, its reimagined fall season of concerts filmed without audiences and presented weekly on its Digital Stage. Our World NOW also includes free offerings: HearTOGETHER, a series on racial and social justice; educational activities; and small ensemble performances from locations throughout the Philadelphia region.

The Philadelphia Orchestra continues the tradition of educational and community engagement for listeners of all ages. It launched its HEAR initiative in 2016 to become a major force for good in every community that it serves. HEAR is a portfolio of integrated initiatives that promotes Health, champions music Education, enables broad Access to Orchestra performances, and maximizes impact through Research. The Orchestra’s award-winning education and community initiatives engage over 50,000 students, families, and community members through programs such as PlayINs, side-by-sides, PopUP concerts, Free Neighborhood Concerts, School Concerts, sensory-friendly concerts, the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program, and All City Orchestra Fellowships.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador. It performs annually at , the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The Orchestra also has a rich history of touring, having first performed outside Philadelphia in the earliest days of its founding. It was the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of in 1973, launching a now-five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.

The Orchestra also makes live recordings available on popular digital music services and as part of the Orchestra on Demand section of its website. Under Yannick’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording, with seven celebrated CDs on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM.

For more information, please visit philorch.org. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSIC DIRECTOR

Jessica Griffin

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead The Philadelphia Orchestra through at least the 2025–26 season, a significant long-term commitment. Additionally, he became the third music director of New York’s Metropolitan in 2018. Yannick, who holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair, is an inspired leader of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His intensely collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. has called him “phenomenal,” adding that “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.”

Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling talents of his generation. He has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, and in 2017 he became an honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now honorary conductor) and was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic from 2008 to 2014. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s SEASON 2020-2021 MUSIC DIRECTOR

most revered ensembles and at many of the leading opera houses. Yannick signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2018. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with seven CDs on that label. His upcoming recordings will include projects with the Philadelphians, the , the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Orchestre Métropolitain, with which he will also continue to record for ATMA Classique.

A native of Montreal, Yannick studied piano, conducting, composition, and at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster College. Among Yannick’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada; an Officer of the Order of Montreal; ’s 2016 Artist of the Year; and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec, the Curtis Institute of Music, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, McGill University, the University of Montreal, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Todd Rosenberg SEASON 2020-2021 VISUAL DESIGN

Serge Hoeltschi

Refik Anadol is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. Born in 1985 in Istanbul, he currently resides in Los Angeles, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio and RAS LAB, the Studio’s research practice centered around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives and artificial intelligence. He is also a lecturer and researcher at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts, from which he obtained his Master of Fine Arts.

Mr. Anadol’s body of work addresses the challenges and possibilities that ubiquitous computing has imposed on humanity and what it means to be a human in the age of AI. He explores how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing now that machines dominate our everyday lives. He is intrigued by the ways in which the digital age and machine intelligence allow for a new aesthetic technique to create enriched immersive environments that offer a dynamic perception of space. By proposing the possibility of “post-digital architecture,” he invites his audience to imagine alternative realities by redefining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural elements. Residing at the crossroads of SEASON 2020-2021 VISUAL DESIGN

art, science, and technology, his site-specific three-dimensional data sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms. Entire buildings come to life; floors, walls, and ceilings disappear into infinity; breathtaking aesthetics take shape from large swaths of data; and what was once invisible to the human eye becomes visible.

Mr. Anadol’s projects have received numerous awards, including the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art, Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, the German Design Award, the UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award, and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award. His site-specific performances have been seen at Concert Hall, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the Hammer Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Florence Biennale, the International Digital Arts Biennial, Art Basel, the Ars Electronica Festival, the Zollverein | SANAA School of Design Building, the Santral Istanbul Contemporary Art Center, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and Sydney City Art, among others. SEASON 2020-2021 FRAMING THE PROGRAM

The concert opens with the world premiere of the young American composer Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers. This Philadelphia Orchestra commission was meant to be paired with performances last spring of Beethoven’s , but was cancelled. Simon’s title is drawn from a line in Homer’s Iliad that attracted Beethoven and that he copied into his diary. Simon said that in this piece he uses “musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate: jolting stabs along with frenzied arpeggios in the strings that morph into an ambiguous cloud of free-flowing running passages depicting the uncertainty of life that hovers over us.”

Beethoven premiered his Seventh Symphony in 1813 at the height of his popular fame and success. By then he was generally recognized as Europe’s greatest composer and in this work, unveiled as victory in the was close at hand, he brilliantly captured the celebratory spirit of the time. During Beethoven’s life it was his most successful symphony, especially the miraculous second movement we hear today, which was immediately encored at the premiere and which one critic called “the crown of instrumental music.”

Franz Schubert revered Beethoven above all other . He was 27 years Beethoven’s junior, but they died just 20 months apart. Schubert left many compositions unfinished, the most famous being the Symphony in B minor, which he composed in 1822 but put aside after completing two movements and starting a third. The “Unfinished” Symphony was first performed in 1865, nearly 40 years after the composer’s death. Its nickname can be viewed as emblematic of Schubert’s “unfinished” career, cut short in 1828 at age 31.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world with three weekly broadcasts on SiriusXM’s Symphony Hall, Channel 76, on Mondays at 7 PM, Thursdays at 12 AM, and Saturdays at 4 PM. SEASON 2020-2021 PARALLEL EVENTS

1811 Beethoven Symphony No. 7 Music Meyerbeer Gott und die Natur Literature Austen Sense and Sensibility Art Ingres Jupiter and Thetis History Venezuela declares independence

1822 Schubert Symphony No. 8 (“Unfinished”) Music Rossini Semiramide Literature De L’Amour Art Prud’hon Crucifixion History Turks invade Greece SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Fate Now Conquers

Carlos Simon Born in Atlanta, Georgia, April 13, 1986 Now living in Washington, D.C.

Writing of his 1823 visit to Beethoven, the London businessman Johann Reinhold Schultz noted, “He is a great admirer of the ancients. Homer, particularly his Odyssey, and Plutarch he prefers to all the rest; and, of the native poets, he studies Schiller and Goethe, in preference to any other.” Indeed, alongside Goethe, inarguably the ’s greatest German poet, and Schiller, whose poem “An die Freude” Beethoven set in the transcendent finale of his Ninth Symphony, Homer occupied a place in Beethoven’s personal pantheon of great men of letters. He copied passages from the Odyssey and the Iliad into his diary, including this 1815 entry:

But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share In my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit forcned upon And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.

—Iliad, Book XXII

Strength and Resolve amid Adversity The resonance of these words with the notoriously embattled Beethoven is not difficult to comprehend. They capture both the cosmic adversity he felt and the defiant spirit that would define his worldview, and characterize his art, at the dawn of the new century. “Your Beethoven is leading a very unhappy life,” he confided to a friend upon recognizing the onset of deafness, “and is at variance with Nature and his Creator.” Yet, at the nadir of despair, the composer declared, “I will seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely.”

Beethoven’s spiritual resilience and artistic determination animate American composer Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers, a tightly compressed paean to the indomitability of the SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

human will. A composer active in both concert and film music, Simon injects a riveting cinematic energy into this five-minute orchestral score, rife with slashing melodic fragments and wild arpeggios, roiling atop a persistent, anxious rhythmic pulse. Fate Now Conquers is among a series of works commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra from Composer-in-Residence and alumni of her Creative Academy of Music (GLFCAM), to reflect on Beethoven’s legacy as part of the Orchestra’s celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday. The work was to have received its world premiere in March 2020, on a program with Beethoven’s Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth symphonies, but those concerts were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simon is a 2017 GLFCAM Composer Fellow. He earned his doctorate at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers, and also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. Additionally, he studied in Baden, , at the Hollywood Music Workshop, and at New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop. As part of the Sundance Institute, he was named a Sundance Institute and Time Warner Foundation Artist Fellow in 2018. His string , Elegy, honoring the lives of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner, was recently performed at the Kennedy Center for the Mason Bates JFK Jukebox Series. Other recent accolades include being a composer fellow at the Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music, winning the Underwood Emerging Composer Commission from the American Composers Orchestra, the Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Award, and the Presser Award from the Theodore Presser Foundation. Recent commissions have come from Washington National Opera, the Reno Philharmonic, and Morehouse College in celebration of its 150th anniversary. A former member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College, he now serves as assistant professor at Georgetown University.

A Closer Look Fate Now Conquers unfolds breathlessly as a single thrilling scene, as if capturing an intricate action sequence in one take. After the work’s opening orchestral salvo—a fusillade of repeated notes in the violins and violas, pianissimo, agitato, punctuated by fist- shaking timpani strikes and muted trumpets—the woodwinds and cellos whisper a mysterious melodic fragment. This sequence of SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

descending thirds, borrowed from the enigmatic introduction to Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, here achieves an ominous sonic effect, underpinned by the nervous moto perpetuo in the strings and brass.

Simon additionally invokes the Allegretto movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, which we hear next on this concert. The composer explains: “Using the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, I have composed musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate.”

Colossal brass chords power the music through the score’s central march-like sequence. These grow increasingly dissonant; turbulent woodwind triplet figures, fortissimo and ferocious, further amplify the Beethovenian . A swirl of rising and falling scales set in high voices—flutes, clarinets, violins, absent the gravitational pull of cellos and basses—conjures leaves twisting helplessly in the wind. A plaintive solo sets the work on a path toward its inevitable final .

—Patrick Castillo

Fate Now Conquers was composed in 2019.

This is the world premiere performance of the piece and the first time the Orchestra has performed any work by the composer.

The score calls for piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Performance time is approximately five minutes. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Second Movement from Symphony No. 7

Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770 Died in , March 26, 1827

Many of what are today considered Beethoven’s most highly esteemed compositions, especially ones from late in his career, were initially received with a mixture of admiration, bewilderment, and resistance. But there were also works that were immediately popular, or at least aimed to be so. These pieces tend to be much less familiar in our time, but were the favorites of his contemporaries: Wellington’s Victory, the Christ on the Mount of Olives, the , and his best-loved , “Adelaide.” Occasionally Beethoven wrote something that was recognized as both artistically monumental and hugely popular. An example is the second movement of his Seventh Symphony, a piece that was sometimes performed separately from the complete Symphony and that may well have been Beethoven’s most prized orchestral composition. It also exerted extraordinary influence on later composers, as the slow movements of Schubert’s “Great” C-major Symphony and E-flat , Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, and other works attest.

“The Crown of Modern Instrumental Music” After its premiere in December 1813, the Seventh Symphony was repeated in Vienna three times during the following 10 weeks; at one of the performances the “applause rose to the point of ecstasy,” according to a newspaper account. The prestigious Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that “the new symphony (A major) was received with so much applause, again. The reception was as animated as at the first time; the Andante [sic] (), the crown of modern instrumental music, as at the first performance, had to be repeated.” The Symphony’s appeal is not hard to understand. In scope and intensity, it is fully Beethovenian, and yet it does not place as many demands on the listener as does the “Eroica.” The ambition of the first SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

movement, beauty of the second, the breathlessness of the , and relentless energy of the finale greatly impressed audiences. Beethoven himself called it “one of the happiest products of my poor talents.”

Beethoven wrote the Seventh Symphony in 1811–12. He premiered it at one of his most successful concerts, given on December 8, 1813, to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau six weeks earlier. Paired with it was the first performance of Wellington’s Victory, also known as the “Battle Symphony.” Enjoyment of the event was hardly surprising given what most members of the Viennese audience had been through during the preceding decade. Napoleon’s occupations of Vienna in 1805 and 1809 had proven traumatic, but the tide had recently turned. In June the Duke of Wellington was triumphant against Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s younger brother, in the northern Spanish town of Vittoria, and within the year the Congress of Vienna was convened to reapportion Europe in the aftermath of France’s defeat. After so much conflict and misery, impending victory could be honored and celebrated.

Later writers characterized the Seventh Symphony in various ways, but it is striking how many of the descriptions touch on its frenzy, approaching a bacchanal at times, and on its elements of dance. famously talked of it as “the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone.”

As biographer has keenly observed, the descriptions of Wagner and others seem to have a common theme:

The apparently diverse free-associational images of these critics—of masses of people, of powerful rhythmic energy discharged in action or in dance, of celebrations, weddings, and revelry—may well be variations on a single image: the carnival or festival, which from time immemorial has temporarily lifted the burden of perpetual subjugation to the prevailing social and natural order by periodically suspending all customary privileges, norms, and imperatives.

A Closer Look The Symphony’s dance elements, vitality, and sense of celebration are conveyed principally through rhythm. It is not so much the melodies that are striking and memorable as it is the general SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

sense of forward movement. (At times there is no melody at all, but simply the repetition of a single pitch.)

The famous A-minor Allegretto is framed by the same unstable chord to open and close the movement. The form is ABABA with the opening section using a theme that is once again more distinctive for its rhythmic profile than for its melody. The movement builds in intensity and includes a fugue near the end.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Beethoven composed his Seventh Symphony from 1811 to 1812.

Fritz Scheel conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Symphony, in March 1903. The most recent subscription performances were in May 2018, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium.

The Orchestra has recorded the work five times: in 1927 for RCA with ; in 1944 and 1964 for CBS with ; and in 1978 and 1988 for EMI with . A live recording from 2006 with is also available as a digital download.

The Symphony is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The second movement runs approximately nine minutes in performance. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Symphony No. 8 (“Unfinished”)

Franz Schubert Born in Vienna, January 31, 1797 Died there, November 19, 1828

For nearly 40 years after Franz Schubert’s death, an unfinished symphony in B minor lay forgotten in the possession of the Hüttenbrenner family in , completely unknown to the rest of the world and only dimly remembered by a few of the composer’s friends. “Anselm possesses a treasure, in the form of Schubert’s B-minor Symphony,” wrote Schubert’s friend Josef Hüttenbrenner, “which we rank with his great C-major Symphony … and with all the symphonies of Beethoven—except that it is unfinished. Schubert gave it to me for Anselm to thank him for having sent the diploma of the Graz Music Society through me.” Schubert had sent the manuscript in 1823, not long after its composition, to Josef, who had passed the work on to his older brother, Anselm.

The brothers understood the importance of the piece (Anselm even made a four-hand piano ), although they may have believed that its incomplete state limited its value to the world. The conductor Johann Herbeck paid Anselm a visit in 1865 to see the treasure for himself (of which rumors had already been circulating for years), and diplomatically secured the work from Anselm for performance. (The diplomacy involved performing an composed by Hüttenbrenner on the same program.)

The belated premiere of the two completed symphonic movements later that year astonished and delighted Viennese audiences. Eduard Hanslick, the city’s leading critic, had previously warned of “over-zealous Schubert worship and adulation of Schubert relics,” but he hailed this work and its performance, which “excited extraordinary enthusiasm” and “brought new life into our concert halls.” According to Hanslick, after hearing only a few measures “every child recognized the composer, and a muffled ‘Schubert’ was whispered in the audience … every heart rejoiced, as if, SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

after a long separation, the composer himself were among us in person. The whole movement is a melodic stream so crystal clear, despite its force and genius, that one can see every pebble on the bottom. And everywhere the same warmth, the same bright, life-giving sunshine.”

Why “Unfinished”? The inception of the “Unfinished” Symphony goes back to the early 1820s, a period in which Schubert was spending much of his energy on opera projects. He and his friend had placed great hopes in their collaboration on Alfonso and Estrella, hopes that were dashed when the work failed to achieve a Viennese performance due to a new wave of Rossinimania that eclipsed German . Shortly after completing the music for Alfonso, Schubert sketched two movements and part of a third for a B-minor symphony; in the autumn of 1822 he orchestrated what he had written, despite not having finished the sketch.

The B-minor Symphony is not Schubert’s only unfinished symphony. In addition to the “Seventh” in E major (D. 729)—the sketches of which reveal what might have become an impressive work—the composer left several other orchestral fragments and drafts. This has led to some confusion in the numbering of his symphonies, with the B-minor “Unfinished” variously called the Seventh or Eighth. Schubert was composing a remarkable “Tenth” Symphony (D. 936A) at the time of his death; reconstructions by various composers, and an imaginative fantasy on its themes by titled Rendering, give some idea of Schubert’s very last musical thoughts.

Why didn’t Schubert complete the B-minor Symphony? First, the sheer size of the first two movements must have seemed daunting, for he probably felt that only a scherzo and finale of similar proportions would have served to balance the work. A proposed theory that it was intended as a two-movement symphony— that it is, in fact, complete—is disproved by the existence of the beginning of the third movement. A stark biographical fact may be significant in understanding the events of 1822: Schubert fell ill, almost certainly with , and for the first time his life appeared in danger. Some scholars have speculated that he associated the B-minor Symphony with the disease, and thus wanted nothing more to do with it. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

A Closer Look The two completed movements herald a new Romantic sound in the use of the orchestra, provide an unparalleled example of Schubert’s lyrical instrumental writing, show yet again his harmonic daring, and project a haunting quality that conveys a remarkable range of emotions. He begins the Allegro moderato on an epic scale, with a mysterious melody in the cellos and basses that strikes the ear as neither theme nor introduction. The opening theme, in B minor, is played by oboe and clarinet, which are joined by the rest of the winds; strings accompany. It is much like a Schubert song (and indeed very similar to his “” about a dwarf) in that the strings play what is like a piano while the woodwinds “sing” the vocal line. There is barely any transition to the second theme, again a songlike melody with accompaniment, which arrives in an unexpected key.

The Andante con moto shows Schubert’s debt to the spirit of Beethoven’s slow movements. The tuneful atmosphere of the first theme is clouded by the second, begun by solo clarinet, and by a vigorous shift to C-sharp minor. The movement closes inconclusively, with little fanfare, again making it fairly certain that the Symphony was, from the composer’s standpoint, “unfinished.

—Paul J. Horsley/Christopher H. Gibbs

Schubert composed his B-minor Symphony in 1822.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first performance of Schubert’s “Unfinished” was in November 1904, under ’s baton. More recently it was presented on a subscription program by Yannick Nézet-Séguin in September 2016.

The Symphony No. 8 has been recorded five times by the Orchestra: in 1924 and 1927 with Leopold Stokowski for RCA; in 1947 with for CBS; in 1956 with Eugene Ormandy for CBS; and in 1968 with Ormandy for RCA.

The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 25 minutes.

Program notes © 2020. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Patrick Castillo. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

GENERAL TERMS

Arpeggio: A broken chord (with notes played in succession instead of together)

Cadence: The conclusion to a phrase, movement, or piece based on a recognizable melodic formula, harmonic progression, or dissonance resolution

Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones

Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord

D.: Abbreviation for Deutsch, the chronological list of all the works of Schubert made by

Dissonance: A combination of two or more tones requiring resolution

Fugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different places

Harmonic: Pertaining to chords and to the theory and practice of harmony

Harmony: The combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions

Intonation: The treatment of musical pitch in performance

Legato: Smooth, even, without any break between notes

Meter: The symmetrical grouping of musical rhythms

Moto perpetuo (perpetual motion): A musical device in which rapid figuration is persistently maintained

Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition.

Oratorio: Large-scale dramatic composition originating in the 16th century with text usually based on religious subjects. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

Oratorios are performed by choruses and solo voices with an instrumental accompaniment, and are similar to operas but without costumes, scenery, and actions.

Scale: The series of tones which form (a) any major or minor key or (b) the chromatic scale of successive semi-tonic steps

Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Also an instrumental piece of a light, piquant, humorous character.

Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications.

Sturm und Drang: Literally, storm and stress. A movement throughout the arts that reached its highpoint in the 1770s, whose aims were to frighten, stun, or overcome with emotion.

Timbre: Tone color or tone quality

Tonic: The keynote of a scale

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo)

Agitato: Excited Allegretto: A tempo between walking speed and fast Allegro: Bright, fast Andante: Walking speed Con moto: With motion Moderato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow

DYNAMIC MARKS

Fortissimo (ff): Very loud Pianissimo (pp): Very soft