Strut for String Orchestra (1989) MICHAEL DAUGHERTY ■ BORN IN 1954

Michael Daugherty, born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has been Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan since 1991; he taught at Oberlin College during the preceding five years. While pursuing his undergraduate degree at North Texas State University from 1972 to 1976, Daugherty played jazz piano in the school’s lab bands and was encouraged to study composition by James Sellars. He received his master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music in 1978, and spent the following year on a Fulbright Fellowship studying and composing computer music at IRCAM in Paris. From 1980 to 1982, he continued his professional training at the Yale School of Music; he received his doctorate from Yale in 1984. Daugherty has received awards from the NEA, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, BMI, Tanglewood and ASCAP; in 1989, two of his compositions, SNAP! and Blue Like an Orange, received awards from the Friedheim Competition at Kennedy Center. In 2011, the Nashville Symphony’s Naxos recording of Daugherty’s Metropolis Symphony and Deus ex Machina received three Grammys, including Best Classical Contemporary Composition. The composer described Strut as “energetic and funky,” exuding a buoyant, jazzy rhythmic drive, distinctly American in its vibrant syncopations and its exhilarating enthusiasm.

Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 (1903, revised 1905) JEAN SIBELIUS ■ 1865-1957

In March 1902, just after the premiere of his Second Symphony, Sibelius developed a painful ear infection. Thoughts of the deafness of Beethoven and Smetana plagued him, and he feared he might be losing his hearing. (He was 37 at the time.) He nevertheless forged ahead with his Violin Concerto. The ailments continued to plague him until 1908, when a benign tumor was discovered. It took a dozen operations until it was successfully removed, and anxiety about its return stayed with him for years. (Sibelius, incidentally, enjoyed sterling health for the rest of his days and lived to the ripe age of 91.) The Violin Concerto’s opening movement employs sonata form, modified in that a succinct cadenza for the soloist replaces the usual development section. The Adagio is among the most avowedly Romantic music in Sibelius’ works for orchestra. The sonatina-form finale launches into a robust dance whose theme the English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey thought could be “a polonaise for polar bears.”

Rapsódico for Violin and Orchestra (2014) World Premiere ROBERTO SIERRA ■ BORN IN 1953

Roberto Sierra, one of the leading figures in American music today, was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico on October 9, 1953. After graduating from the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico in 1976, he attended the Royal College of Music and the University of London (1976-1978), and then pursued further study at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland. From 1979 to 1982, he was a pupil of György Ligeti in Hamburg. Sierra returned to Puerto Rico in 1982, serving first as Director of the Cultural Activities Program at the University of Puerto Rico and later as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. In 1992, he joined the composition faculty at Cornell University, where he is now Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities. Sierra’s distinctions include two Grammy nominations for Best Contemporary Composition (Missa Latina, 2009; Sinfonia No. 4, 2014) and awards from the International Composers Competition of the Budapest Spring Festival, Aliènor Harpsichord Composition Competition, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Kenneth Davenport Competition. In 2008, his Viola Concerto was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize; in 2010, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The composer wrote, “Rapsódico, commissioned by the Allentown Symphony Orchestra for its 2015 Schadt String Competition was first performed in a piano accompaniment version as a required work. The commission included the orchestral version being heard at today’s concert. Both versions are the same in terms of the material, the main difference is the accompaniment. The first three notes the soloist plays are a basic motive that is heard throughout the work, providing structural unity and cohesion in a piece that is very spontaneous, virtuosic and rhapsodic.”

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 (1888) PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY ■ 1840-1893

Tchaikovsky was never able to maintain his self-confidence for long. More than once, his opinion of a work fluctuated between the extremes of satisfaction and denigration. The unjustly neglected Manfred Symphony of 1885, for example, left his pen as “the best I have ever written,” but the work failed to make a good impression at its premiere and Tchaikovsky’s estimation of it tumbled. The lack of success of Manfred was particularly painful, because he had not produced a major orchestral work since the Violin Concerto of 1878, and the score’s failure left him with the gnawing worry that he might be “written out.” The three years after Manfred were devoid of creative work. It was not until May 1888 that Tchaikovsky again took up the challenge of the blank page, collecting “little by little, material for a symphony,” he wrote to his brother Modeste. He worked doggedly on the new symphony, ignoring illness, the premature encroachment of old age (he was only 48, but suffered from continual exhaustion and loss of vision), and his doubts about himself. He pressed on, and when the Fifth Symphony was completed, at the end of August, he said, “I have not blundered; it has turned out well.” Tchaikovsky never gave any indication that the Symphony No. 5, unlike the Fourth Symphony, had a program, though he may well have had one in mind. In their biography of the composer, Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson reckoned Tchaikovsky’s view of fate as the motivating force in the Symphony No. 5, though they distinguished its interpretation from that in the Fourth Symphony. “In the Fourth Symphony,” the Hansons wrote, “the Fate theme is earthy and militant, as if the composer visualizes the implacable enemy in the form, say, of a Greek god. In the Fifth, the majestic Fate theme has been elevated far above earth, and man is seen, not as fighting a force that thinks on its own terms, of revenge, hate, or spite, but a wholly spiritual power which subjects him to checks and agonies for the betterment of his soul.” The structure of the Fifth Symphony reflects this process of “betterment.” It progresses from minor to major, from darkness to light, from melancholy to joy — or at least to acceptance and stoic resignation. The Symphony’s four movements are linked by a recurring “Fate” motto, given at the beginning by clarinets as the brooding introduction to the first movement. The sonata form starts with a melancholy melody intoned by bassoon and clarinet. A romantic tune for the strings, an aggressive strain given in dialogue between winds and strings, and a languorous string melody round out the exposition. All of the materials from the exposition are used in the development. The solo bassoon ushers in the recapitulation. The Andante calls to mind an operatic love scene. Twice, the imperious Fate motto intrudes upon the starlit mood of this romanza. A flowing waltz dominates much of the third movement; the central trio exhibits a scurrying figure in the strings. Quietly and briefly, the Fate motto returns in the movement’s closing pages. The finale begins with a long introduction based on the Fate theme cast in a heroic mood. A vigorous exposition, a concentrated development and an intense recapitulation follow. The long coda uses the motto in its major-key, victory-won setting. ©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda