Season 2020111111----2020202011112222 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, April 1212,, at 8:00 Friday, April 1313,, at 2:00 Saturday, April 1414,, at 8:00 Gilbert Varga Conductor Yefim Bronfman Piano Mendelssohn Hebrides Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”), Op. 26 Bartók Piano Concerto No. 2 I. Allegro II. Adagio—Presto—Adagio III. Allegro molto Intermission Stravinsky Petrushka (1947 version) I. The Shrovetide Fair (First Tableau): The Magic Trick—Russian Dance II. Petrushka’s Room (Second Tableau) III. The Moor’s Room (Third Tableau): Dance of the Ballerina—Waltz IV. The Shrovetide Fair, Toward Evening (Fourth Tableau): Dance of the Nursemaids—Dance of the Coachmen and the Stable Boys—The Mummers This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. Gilbert Varga, son of Hungarian violinist Tibor Varga, studied under three very different and distinctive maestros: Franco Ferrara, Sergiu Celibidache, and Charles Bruck. In recent seasons Mr. Varga’s reputation in North America has grown swiftly; in the 2011-12 season he makes his debut with the Houston Symphony and returns to other orchestras, including the Indianapolis, Colorado, Utah, and Nashville symphonies, and the Minnesota Orchestra, which he conducts every season. Other ongoing relationships continue with the Atlanta, Saint Louis, Milwaukee, and Baltimore symphonies. Mr. Varga made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2005. In Europe he regularly conducts the major orchestras in Berlin, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Cologne, Budapest, Lisbon, Brussels, and Glasgow, among others. In the earlier part of his conducting career Mr. Varga concentrated on work with chamber orchestras, particularly the Tibor Varga Chamber Orchestra, before developing a reputation as a symphonic conductor. He was chief conductor of the Hofer Symphony between 1980 and 1985, and from 1985 to 1990 he was chief conductor of the Philharmonia Hungarica in Marl, Germany, leading its debut tour to Hungary with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. From 1991 to 1995 Mr. Varga was permanent guest conductor of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and from 1997 to 2000 he was principal guest conductor of the Malmö Symphony. From 1997 to 2008 he was music director of the Basque National Symphony, leading it on tours across the U.K., Germany, Spain, and South America. Mr. Varga’s discography includes recordings with various labels including ASV, Koch International, and Claves Records. His latest recording, released in January 2011, of concertos by Ravel and Prokofiev with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin and pianist Anna Vinnitskaya on Naïve Records was given five stars by BBC Music Magazine. Pianist Yefim BronfmanBronfman’s 2011-12 U.S. season includes engagements with the orchestras of Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Portland, and Kansas City; a residency with the Cleveland Orchestra; and a tour with the New York Philharmonic. A winter recital tour culminated in a performance at Carnegie Hall followed by the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. In Europe Mr. Bronfman performs Bartók’s piano concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra; visits Spain, Turkey, Denmark, and London with flutist Emmanuel Pahud; gives concerts with the London Symphony; and tours with the Bavarian Radio Symphony. In recognition of the 75th anniversary of the Israel Philharmonic he joined that orchestra in two orchestral concerts and in a solo recital last December. Mr. Bronfman’s discography includes a Grammy Award-winning recording of the three Bartók concertos with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas; all five of Prokofiev’s piano concertos, nominated for both Grammy and Gramophone awards; and Rachmaninoff’s Second and Third piano concertos. Mr. Bronfman’s most recent releases are Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony; a recital disc, Perspectives; and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concertos, as well as the Triple Concerto with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk, and the Tonhalle Orchestra under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label. Mr. Bronfman was born in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union, in 1958 and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. In Israel he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States he studied at the Juilliard School, the Marlboro Music School, and the Curtis Institute of Music, and with Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. Mr. Bronfman was a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist in 2007-08, and in 2010 he was honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize from Northwestern University. In 1991 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Bronfman became an American citizen in 1989. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1977. FRAMING THE PROGRAM The young Felix Mendelssohn recorded impressions of his European grand tour in vivid letters, beautiful drawings, and marvelous music. The time the 20-year-old composer spent in Scotland inspired several compositions, including the evocative Hebrides Overture (also known as “Fingal’s Cave”), which captures an experience he had in a stormy steamship crossing to the island of Staffa. Béla Bartók emphasized that in his first two piano concertos he “wished to realize absolute equality between solo instrument and orchestra.” The Second Concerto is a brilliant and unusually demanding piece for a virtuoso pianist (Bartók premiered the work himself) while at the same time being a kind of “Concerto for Orchestra,” to invoke the title of the composer’s famous later work. Petrushka was Igor Stravinsky’s second ballet for Sergei Diaghilev’s legendary Ballets Russes, coming between the dazzling Firebird of 1910 and the revolutionary Rite of Spring of 1913. He originally conceived of the work as a concert piece for piano and orchestra. The piano is prominently featured in the ballet, which turned into a story concerning a puppet who comes to life, and that influenced Bartók’s later Concerto heard on the first half of today’s program. Parallel Events 1829 MendelssohMendelssohnnnn Hebrides Overture Music Rossini William Tell Literature Balzac Les Chouans Art Turner Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus History Slavery abolished in Mexico 1911 Stravinsky Petrushka Music Strauss Der Rosenkavalier Literature Wharton Ethan Frome Art Braque Man with a Guitar History Chinese Republic proclaimed 1930 Bartók Piano Concerto No. 2 Music Hindemith Viola Concerto Literature Hammett The Maltese Falcon ArtArtArt Wood American Gothic History Pluto discovered Hebrides Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”) Felix MendelssMendelssohnohn Born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809 Died in Leipzig, November 4, 1847 The 20-year-old Mendelssohn was a fully formed artist when he embarked in 1829 on what he called his “Grand Tour” of Europe. In addition to being a virtuosic prodigy on the piano, the precocious youth had already composed operas, symphonies, and concertos; chamber and piano music; and his first overtures. It was his financially comfortable parents who insisted that he make an extended tour of the Continent, and during the subsequent three years Mendelssohn performed concerts and rubbed shoulders with Europe’s leading artistic and intellectual figures. He frequently found himself in the company of the most brilliant literary and musical figures of the day, including Goethe, Heine, Cherubini, Berlioz, Chopin, and Schumann. Perhaps just as important as whom he met and what he heard were the visual impressions of the sights he saw. Musical Landscapes Mendelssohn recorded his impressions in a variety of artistic media: in marvelously vivid letters, in drawings, and, of course, in music. Some of his most famous works—such as the so-called “Scottish” and “Italian” symphonies—capture characteristics of the places he visited. In fact the composer already knew something of the music of Scotland even before he first visited there in August 1829 and began to sketch his Hebrides Overture. But it was not the Scottish music that left its mark on this brilliant piece, nor did his “sketch” only involve, as it usually did, jotting down musical ideas. The visual landscape captivated him, in this case the isolated coast and later the experience he had in a steamship crossing to the island of Staffa during a storm. There he saw Fingal’s Cave, which gave the Overture one of its several alternative titles. Mendelssohn, who in addition to his musical talents could draw marvelously, made a pen- and-ink sketch of the coast, the mysterious branches of a large tree in the foreground, a castle in the distance, and far beyond the sea and its isles. He also set about trying to express this all in music. He informed his parents on August 7, “In order to make you realize how extraordinarily the Hebrides have affected me, the following came to my mind.” He then wrote out essentially the first 21 measures of the Overture, going so far as to specify instrumentation and dynamics. The opening indeed does create a vivid picture, with the constant motion of the water represented by a descending arpeggiated minor triad and subtle layering of instruments. A much more expansive second theme, first stated by the cellos, suggests broader visions. It would take Mendelssohn some years to get the Overture into its final state. He continued work in Rome in 1830 and was still polishing it in Paris two years later. As he wrote his parents, “The so-called development section smacks more of counterpoint than of train-oil, seagulls, and salt cod, and it should be the other way around.” The Overture received its triumphant premiere in London that year. A critic writing at the time for the music magazine the Harmonicon noted: “The idea of this work was suggested to the author while he was in the most northern part of Scotland, on a wild, desolate coast, where nothing is heard but the howling of the wind and roaring of the waves; and nothing living seen, except the sea-bird, whose reign is there undisturbed by human intruder.