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Home , City Noir

SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT Cristian Măcelaru, conductor

January 20 and 22, 2017

IGOR STRAVINSKY Symphony in Three Movements Quarter Note = 160 Andante – Interlude Con moto

JOHN ADAMS City Noir The City and Its Double The Song is for You Boulevard Night

INTERMISSION

AARON COPLAND Quiet City Andrea Overturf, english horn Micah Wilkinson,

LEONARD BERNSTEIN Symphonic Dances from West Side Story Prologue “Somewhere” Scherzo Mambo Cha-Cha Meeting Scene “Cool” Fugue Rumble Finale

THE BIG ORANGE AND THE BIG APPLE

This concert is a tale of two cities. The first half brings music from Los Angeles. Stravinsky composed the Symphony in Three Movements at his Hollywood home in 1945, incorporating into it music that he had originally planned as a film score. ’ City Noir, inspired by moody film noir movies set in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s, was composed specifically for ’s first concert as music director of the . The second half of the concert takes us across the country to New York City. Copland’s Quiet City is an urban mood-piece, evoking the solitude of a New York night, while Bernstein’s classic West Side Story re-tells Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in the process transporting it from Verona to the Upper West Side of New York City.

Symphony in Three Movements IGOR STRAVINSKY Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum Died April 6, 1971, New York City

We expect a symphony written near the end of a major war to make a statement about the time from which it springs, and there were a large number of symphonies composed around the end of World War II that registered some reaction to that tumultuous time. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and Copland’s Third were hailed because they captured the spirit of that moment so successfully (at least for the victors); Shostakovich’s Ninth got into trouble precisely because it did not. The relation of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements to World War II is more complicated. He began work on the first music that would become part of the symphony in 1942, shortly after America’s entry into the war, and he composed music that would eventually find its way into the symphony across the span of the war. He finished the Symphony in Three Movements as the war came shuddering to its conclusion (Stravinsky actually completed the score on August 7, 1945, between the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and he led the premiere with the New York Philharmonic on January 24, 1946. Stravinsky was normally adamant that there was no connection between his music and extra-musical events, but in his program note for the premiere he was willing to soften this usually severe stance: “This Symphony has no program, nor is it a specific expression of any given occasion; it would be futile to seek these in my work. But during the process of creation in this, our arduous time of sharp and shifting events, of despair and hope, of continual torments, of tension and, at last, cessation and relief, it may be that all those repercussion have left traces in this Symphony. It is not I to judge.” Yet eighteen years later, in 1963, Stravinsky was quite ready to judge. Now he drew direct connections between moments in the symphony and events from the war, particularly as they had appeared in newsreel footage. The opening of the first movement, he said, was composed in reaction to a newsreel about “scorched-earth tactics in China,” while its second theme-group was inspired by scenes of “the Chinese people scratching and digging in their fields.” The fugue in the third movement had an even sharper topical reference, said Stravinsky: “The immobility at the beginning of this fugue is comic, I think – and so, to me, was the overturned arrogance of the Germans when their [war] machine failed. The exposition of the fugue and the end of the Symphony are associated in my plot with the rise of the Allies, and the final, rather too commercial, D-flat sixth chord – instead of the expected C – in some way tokens my extra exuberance in the Allied triumph.” This discussion of the inspiration of specific moments – and of an underlying “plot” – would seem to make the Symphony in Three Movements program music, but at this point Stravinsky drew back, saying coolly that this music “does and does not ‘express my feelings’ [about the war]” and then finally insisting: “the Symphony is not programmatic. combine notes. That is all.” Certainly the symphony did not take shape in one unified arc, and – in retrospect – its composition seems somewhat haphazard. The earliest section to be composed had been at first planned as an orchestral movement with an important concertante part for ; Stravinsky set this aside, but it would later reappear in the first movement of the symphony. The following year, novelist Franz Werfel invited Stravinsky to compose music for a movie based on that writer’s Song of Bernadette. Stravinsky abandoned that project as well, but music he sketched for the “Apparition of the Virgin” sequence in the movie – music with an important solo part for harp – would reappear in the second movement of the symphony. Stravinsky returned to these movements in the spring of 1945 (as the Allies triumphed in Europe) and composed the finale of what had now become a symphony, trying in the process to fuse the solo parts for piano and harp in the finale. Some have questioned whether the resulting work is a symphony at all, suggesting that it lacks the organic relation of parts and the harmonic evolution that characterize true symphonic writing. Stravinsky himself was aware of this, conceding that “perhaps Three Symphonic Movements would be a more exact title.” A brief survey of that symphonic landscape: the Symphony in Three Movements comes to life with a violent rip up the scale of an augmented octave, and this slashing opening introduces the swaggering march that constitutes the first theme. This music is very fast; though Stravinsky gives the movement no Italian tempo marking, this opening is set at quarter-note=160. The second theme-group (at half the opening speed) arrives in strings and solo piano above murmuring horns, and the active development reaches its climax on great wrenching chords. The furious scales from the very beginning return at the coda, but now that opening fury feels spent; the music collapses, and finally the murmurs its way to the movement’s subdued close on a quiet string chord. The Andante is in ternary form, and the concertante role normally given to the piano in the opening movement is here assumed by the harp. The poised opening, announced by second and , gives way to a slightly faster central episode of more somber character as solo dances gravely above harp accompaniment. An abbreviated return of the opening leads to a seven-measure Interlude that takes us directly into the concluding movement. Marked simply Con moto, the finale opens with another march, the one Stravinsky felt had been inspired by newsreels of strutting Nazis. (Such marching automatons seemed to be a feature of the symphonic imagination at this moment: another symphony composed at precisely this same time, Arthur Honegger’s Third, also has a finale that begins with the ominous march of dehumanized robots.) Soon comes a buoyant, dancing figure in the high winds that Stravinsky linked with the motion of “war machines,” and at the center of the movement is the fugue – laid out at first only by , piano and harp – that the associated with the defeat of the Nazis. The symphony then powers its way to the close on great blocks of rhythm and sound. Shortly before writing this movement, Stravinsky had revised the “Sacrificial Dance” of The Rite of Spring, and some have heard the savage sounds of that music in this symphony’s closing moments. At the end, the Nazis have been crushed, the Allies are triumphant, and the symphony pounds its way to the “extra exuberance” of that final chord. In this sense, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements is driven by some of the same shining spirit that blazes through two other exuberant symphonies written as World War II swept to its close: the Fourth Symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů and David Diamond. The Symphony in Three Movements may not be a true symphony (as some have charged), and it may not – as its composer believed – be program music, but it is a worthy participant in the distinguished symphonic discourse that registered the monumental events of 1945.

City Noir JOHN ADAMS Born February 15, 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts

John Adams’ City Noir was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was composed for a specific Los Angeles occasion (Gustavo Dudamel’s first concert as music director of the Philharmonic), and Adams looked to Los Angeles’ past for his inspiration. Specifically, he found that inspiration in the film noir classics set in Los Angeles during the 1940s, movies like Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Murder, My Sweet. That genre, which explored the dark underside of Los Angeles, would continue in the television series Dragnet in the 1950s and would be revisited in such later films as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential. Dudamel’s inaugural concert may have been a festive occasion, but in this music Adams evoked the dark side of Los Angeles’ past. The composer has said that audiences can approach City Noir in two ways: they can listen to it as “a three-movement symphony” or they can understand it as “a film score to an imaginary film.” Adams builds City Noir on quite different kinds of music, all associated with the atmosphere of those classic noir films. This is music with an edgy, hard-driving menace as well as haunting nocturnal interludes. But central to Adams’ sense of that era is jazz, and in City Noir he combines the resources of a full symphony orchestra with big band jazz. There is a leading role here for alto sax, as well as solos for drum set, trumpet, trombone and . He also calls for a vast number of percussion instruments – this is a very high-energy (and sometimes very loud) score. The title of the first movement, The City and its Double, evokes both the sunny surface of Los Angeles and the darkness beneath that shining exterior. We hear the sound of big bands from the forties, led by the alto sax; quiet interludes for strings alternate with great blasts of activity. Its energy spent, the music glides into the central movement, The Song is for You, which Adams has described as “a more reflective, blues-influenced movement”; it features prominent solos for trombone and – once again – alto sax. City Noir concludes with Boulevard Night, which the composer calls “among the wildest, most garish music I’ve ever composed.” For all its furious energy, though, the movement gets off to a subdued beginning, and Adams has noted that the trumpet solo at the beginning takes its cue from Jerry Goldsmith’s classic writing for trumpet at the beginning of Chinatown. The composer has called this movement “a very violent urban event…with all pistons firing at top speed,” and it drives City Noir to a wild, almost extravagant, finish. Adams, who has for some years served as Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, dedicated City Noir to the orchestra’s executive director, Deborah Borda. Gustavo Dudamel led the premiere of City Noir as the opening work on his first concert as music director of the Philharmonic on October 8, 2009; those interested in this music should know that that concert is available on DVD.

Quiet City AARON COPLAND Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn Died December 2, 1990, Westchester, New York In 1939 Aaron Copland was asked by his longtime friend Harold Clurman to provide incidental music for a production at the Group Theater in New York of Irwin Shaw’s experimental play Quiet City. Shaw (1913-1984) was then a struggling young playwright who later abandoned the stage and achieved his greatest success as a writer of fiction; among his works are a novel about World War II, The Young Lions, and a wonderful short story, “The Eighty-Yard Run.” Quiet City, however, was a failure. A combination of realism and fantasy, it tells of a young trumpeter, David Melnikoff, who (in Copland’s words) “imagined the night thoughts of many different people in a great city and played trumpet to express his emotions and to arouse the consciences of the other characters and of the audience.” After two dress rehearsals before unenthusiastic audiences, the play was dropped. For that production, Copland wrote a brief work for clarinet, , trumpet and piano, first performed at the initial presentation of the play on April 16, 1939. Copland liked the music enough that the following year he arranged it for trumpet, English horn and string orchestra. This version, premiered in New York on January 28, 1941, by the Saidenberg Little Symphony, has remained one of his most frequently performed works. Quiet City may be thought of as an urban nocturne, similar in its lonely mood to Edward Hopper’s famous painting Nighthawks. It is built on two themes: an evocative trumpet call, vaguely reminiscent of jazz trumpet music, and a dotted figure for strings, said by the composer to represent “the slogging gait of a dispossessed man.” To give the trumpet player a chance to rest, Copland included interludes for English horn, and that instrument’s haunting sound beautifully catches the lonely atmosphere of this little mood-piece.

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story LEONARD BERNSTEIN Born August 25, 1918, Lawrence, MA Died October 14, 1990, New York City

Though West Side Story has become one of the most popular musicals ever, its creation involved a number of risks. Central among these was the decision to adapt Romeo and Juliet to a contemporary New York setting: the warring Montague and Capulet families are transformed into rival street-gangs, the Sharks and the Jets, while Romeo and Juliet become Tony and Maria. And the grim ending of Shakespeare’s play made for a conclusion seldom experienced in a Broadway musical. Yet West Side Story – first produced in Washington, D.C. on August 19, 1957 – turned out to be a huge success (it ran on Broadway for over a thousand performances), and Bernstein’s music is probably his most memorable score. Central to the original conception of West Side Story was the importance of dance. Jerome Robbins was both choreographer and director of the original production, and some members of the cast were chosen for their abilities as dancers – their singing ability was considered of secondary importance. The dance sequences remain some of the most impressive parts of the musical. Several years after the premiere, Bernstein – with the assistance of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal – made an orchestral suite of the dances from the musical, and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story were first performed by Lukas Foss and the New York Philharmonic on February 13, 1961. The dances follow the action of West Side Story and in some movements incorporate bits of the songs. A brashly energetic Prologue (which requires fingersnapping from the orchestra) leads to a section based on the song “Somewhere,” which envisions a more peaceful world. A Scherzo leads to Mambo, set at the high school dance which both the Sharks and Jets attend. Tony and Maria dance together in the Cha-Cha (which quotes the song “Maria”), and their Meeting Scene is depicted by a quartet of muted violins. Tensions rise in the eerie, twisting “Cool” Fugue, and Rumble accompanies the fight in which the rival gang-leaders Bernardo and Riff are killed. A flute cadenza prefaces the Finale, which incorporates Maria’s “I Have a Love,” and – after so much vitality and violence – the Symphonic Dances come to a subdued close. -Program notes by Eric Bromberger

PERFORMANCE HISTORY by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist Yoel Levi conducted the San Diego Symphony when it gave its first performance of Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements during the 1987-88 season. During the 1993-94 season, Yoav Talmi conducted the piece, and Jahja Ling led it during Season 2013-14. Miguel Harth-Bedoya was the guest conductor here during the 2009-10 season when he led the orchestra in its only performance to date of Copland's beautiful and reflective Quiet City. David Atherton conducted the orchestra in its first performance of Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story during Season 1985-86. Since then, Jahja Ling has conducted three presentations of the very popular suite, most recently during the 2012-13 season.