Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director
Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 8:00pm Friday, April 12, 2019 at 7:30pm Saturday, April 13, 2019 at 8:00pm
Kerem Hasan, conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, violin
Claude Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)
Karol Szymanowski Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35
(In one movement) Vivace assai – Lento – Vivace
Intermission
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 “Eroica” I. Allegro con brio II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace IV. Finale: Allegro molto
As a courtesy to musicians, guest artists, and fellow concertgoers, please put your phone away and on silent during the performance.
APRIL 10, 12 & 13, 2019 9 ABOUT THE WORKS
Claude Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)
Born: St. Germaine-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862 10 Died: Paris, France, March 25, 1918 min Composed: 1892–1894
This masterpiece of musical atmosphere long moment, after imposing silence on the heralded the emergence of Debussy’s mature audience, then our marvellous flutist Barrère style. Poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote “L’après- unrolled his opening theme. Suddenly I felt midi d’un faune” in 1876. When Debussy behind my back a completely captivated encountered it some 10 years later, he recognized public! The triumph was complete, so much in it a style similar to his view of music. so that I did not hesitate to break the rule forbidding encores. The orchestra was The words of the poem are those of a faun delighted to repeat this work, which it had or satyr, a lazy, pleasure-loving half-man, come to love and which, thanks to them, half-goat creature from Classical mythology. the audience had now accepted.” Debussy described his musical reflection as “a very free rendering of Stéphane Mallarmé’s The grateful Mallarmé gave Debussy a copy beautiful poem. It does not purport to contain of the poem, inscribed with a verse which may everything that is in the poem. It is rather a be translated as: succession of scenes in which the desires and Oh forest god of breath primeval dreams of the faun pass through in the heat of the afternoon. Then, tired of chasing the If your flute be true, frightened nymphs and naiads, he gives in to Listen now to all the light intoxicating sleep.” Debussy will breathe through you. Music as free and as sensuous as this had never been heard before. Its improvisational Program note by Don Anderson quality would become a Debussy trademark. Conjured out of silence by the unaccompanied call of the faun’s flute, it evokes Mallarmé’s hazy, dream-like ideas with effortless tonal magic. Short phrases melt one into the other; solo winds take the spotlight in turn; coolness alternates with passion. Recalling the première, conductor Gustave Doret wrote, “There was a vast silence in the hall as I ascended the podium with some emotion, but full of confidence. I waited a
10 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Karol Szymanowski Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35 Born: Tymoszówka, near Kiev, Ukraine, October 3, 1882 24 Died: Lausanne, Switzerland, March 29, 1937 min Composed: 1916–1917
Karol Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 is trills and left-hand tremolos; multiple stops; one of the Polish composer’s most distinctive double-stop glissandos; triple and quadruple and original works, notable for its innovative pizzicato; and simultaneous pizzicato in the structure and its unusually vivid sound world. left-hand with bow to string. For the latter, Szymanowski took inspiration The Concerto’s “nightingale’s song” is a kind of from the poem “Noc majowa” (May Night) by “continuous rhapsody” that progresses over five the Polish mystic poet Tadeusz Miciński. This sections or “spans,” each leading to climaxes is alluded to at the very beginning of the work that progressively get more ecstatic. The first with a musical quotation from “Scheherazade”, four spans proceed as sections of rapid changes a piece from his piano cycle, Masques, in in mood and tempo—from shimmering textures which these lines of the poem are referred and kaleidoscopic colours to sensuously to: “Once I wandered through those pillars/ winding melodies in the violin solo—alternating That Abderrahman created for his beloved,/ with dreamy episodes of lyrical song. In the Shéhérazade, in the amethyst night…” fifth and final span, thematic material from In this concerto, the sensuous scene is evoked the third span is integrated with material from through Szymanowski’s deft merging of two the first and second, building to cumulative musical styles that had significantly influenced effect. The cadenza, which was written by his compositions between 1914 and 1917: the Kochański, muses on material from the first expressive melodies and expanded tonality of the and third spans, after which the orchestra takes late-Romantic works of Richard Strauss; and the over, bringing the work to its climax. Before atmospheric sonorities, refined textures, and non- the end, the violin-nightingale, spent, warbles Western sounds that coloured the impressionistic one final song, and with a final trill and flourish, music of Debussy, Ravel, and Scriabin. disappears into the ether. Szymanowski himself described this concerto Following the world première on November 1, as “a rather lonely song, joyous and free, of 1922, by the Warsaw Philharmonic directed by a nightingale singing spontaneously in the Emil Młynarski with the violinist Józef Ozimiński, fragrant Polish May Night.” The nightingale is Szymanowski wrote to Kochański, stating represented by the solo violin part, on which that “The sound is so magical that people he collaborated with his close friend, the Polish here were completely transfixed....It is my violinist Paweł Kochański (1887–1934), who is greatest triumph!” Audiences and critics alike also the work’s dedicatee. Together, they had enthusiastically agreed. In 1924, Kochański sought to create, as the composer wrote in a and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by tribute to Kochański, “a new style, a new mode Leopold Stokowski, gave the American première. of expression for the violin, something in this For two years afterward, it was performed and respect completely epoch-making.” The “new heard all over Europe and the North America; mode of expression” also served to highlight today, it remains an established part of the Kochański’s technical talents. The part is repertory of violinists and orchestras. suffused with virtuosic violin techniques for Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley the soloist: natural and artificial harmonics;
APRIL 10, 12 & 13, 2019 11 ABOUT THE WORKS
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 “Eroica” Born: Bonn, Germany, December 15, 1770 47 Died: Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827 min Composed: 1803
Beethoven composed his Third Symphony in recalls French Revolutionary funeral music 1803 in honour of Napoleon, but hearing that and, in the middle, a glimpse of the heavenly Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor, he rest that awaits the fallen hero. (Listen as the became enraged: the self-made general and main theme “dies”—breaks into fragments—in democrat he had admired had proved to be the final bars.) The whirling scherzo suggests an ordinary tyrant. He erased the “Bonaparte” the spirit of the hero reborn out of his ashes, from the symphony’s title page so vigorously and the finale, an unusual and uncommonly that he tore the paper—yet still admitted, dramatic set of variations, sweeps toward a later, that “the title of the symphony is really grandiose conclusion. Bonaparte.” By the time it was published, Never had there been a symphony so long in 1806, Austria and France were at war, or structurally complex, so theatrical or however, so it appeared with a generic title, deeply expressive. (A reviewer of the first Sinfonia eroica, and the subtitle “Composed performance, in 1805, called it “garish to celebrate the memory of a great man.” and bizarre in too many places” and “a Beethoven’s feelings about Napoleon were very expansive, wild, and bold fantasy.”) always ambivalent, and it may be that his Haydn once said he wished that someone Heroic Symphony owed as much to sources like would think up a new kind of minuet; in the Homer’s Iliad and the Prometheus legend. (The “Eroica” Beethoven thought up a new kind of finale is based on a theme he had used in his symphony, re-conceiving the most important ballet The Creatures of Prometheus.) Indeed, instrumental genre of his day both as a whole Beethoven himself, having recently weathered and in all of its parts. The “Eroica” is an a crisis over his deafness and renewed himself expansion of the classical symphony, but it creatively, is a good candidate for the real hero is also the birth, fully-formed and mature, of of this symphony. the Romantic symphony. Though a familiar The four movements form a narrative and revered fixture of the canon, it has never depicting a hero’s struggles, death, rebirth, lost its freshness and power. It seems as bold and apotheosis. The first movement is now as it ever did—and that, surely, is the gigantic, exciting, and bursting with ideas, mark of a masterpiece. which Beethoven develops intensively, forging Program note by Kevin Bazzana a sort of symphonic poem that is as unified as it is eventful. The slow movement is a funeral march of unparalleled gravity and rhetorical power, with a terrifying climax whose scoring
12 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA THE ARTISTS
Christian Tetzlaff violin Christian Tetzlaff made his TSO début in February 1991.
An artist known for his musical integrity and intelligent, compelling interpretations, Christian Tetzlaff has for many years been internationally recognized as one of the most sought-after violinists on the classical music scene. From the outset of his career, he has performed and recorded a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas, to 19th-century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Brahms; and from 20th-century concertos by Bartók, Berg, and Shostakovich, to world premières of contemporary works such as the Jorg Widmann Violin Concerto. A dedicated chamber musician, he frequently collaborates with distinguished artists including Leif Ove Andsnes and Lars Vogt, and is the founder of the Tetzlaff Quartet, which he formed in 1994 with violinist Elisabeth Kufferath, violist Hanna Weinmeister, and his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff. Christian Tetzlaff works regularly with the world’s leading conductors, including Christoph Eschenbach, Andris Nelsons, Antonio Pappano, Robin Ticciati, Vladimir Jurowski, Paavo Järvi, and Manfred Honeck. In North America, he performs with the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, and Montreal, among many others. He performs with major European ensembles including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony and London Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He also appears at the world’s most prominent summer music festivals, including Verbier, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Edinburgh, The Proms, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. During the 2018/19 season, Christian Tetzlaff returns to Tanglewood to work with the Boston Symphony under Thomas Adès, as well as to the Cleveland and National Arts Centre Orchestras, and the Detroit and New World symphonies. He is the featured soloist on a US tour with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, and also tours the US and Canada with his trio partners, Tanja Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt. Internationally, he tours Vietnam with the NHK Symphony Orchestra; appears with the London Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Munich Philharmonic, and Helsinki Philharmonic; and is Artist-in-Residence at London’s Wigmore Hall. He has received numerous awards for his many recordings, including the “Diapason d’or” in July 2018 and the MIDEM Classical Award in 2017. Most recently, his recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos with the Helsinki Philharmonic and Hannu Lintu was chosen as the Gramophone Concerto Recording of the Year. Christian Tetzlaff performs on a violin modeled after a Guarneri del Gesu made by the German violin maker, Peter Greiner.
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