7 PM, THURSDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2O1o JACKSON HALL, MONDAVI
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7 pm, Thursday, 2 december 2010 Jackson hall, mondavi cenTer UC DAVIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA chrisTian baldini, music direcTor and conducTor PROGRAM Overture to La clemenza di Tito (1791) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) Sospiri (1914) Edward Elgar (1857–1934) Adagietto from Symphony No. 5 (1902) Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) intermission Symphony No. 3 in D Major (1815) Franz Schubert Adagio maestoso — Allegro con brio (1797–1828) Allegretto Menuetto: Vivace Presto vivace This concert is being recorded professionally for the university archive. Please remain seated during the music, remembering that distractions will be audible on the recording. Please deactivate cell phones, pagers, and wristwatches. Flash photography and audio and video recording are prohibited during the performance. ABOUT THE ARTIST The dynamic work of christian baldini, conductor and composer, has taken him around the world guest conducting concerts with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic (Argen- tina), the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, opera for the Aldeburgh Festival (United Kingdom), and as a featured composer at the Acanthes Festival in France. After conducting the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP, Brazil), critic Arthur Nestrovski from the Folha de Sao Paulo praised this “charismatic young conductor” who “conducted by heart Brahms’s First Symphony, lavishing his musicality and leaving sighs all over the hall and the rows of the orchestra.” Baldini’s music has been performed throughout Europe, South America, North America, and Asia by orchestras and ensembles including the Orchestre National de Lorraine (France), Southbank Sinfonia (London), New York New Music Ensemble, Memphis Sym- phony Orchestra, Daegu Chamber Orchestra (South Korea), Chronophonie Ensemble (Freiburg), and the International Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt). His music appears on the Pretal Label and has been broadcast on SWR (German Radio) as well as in the National Classical Music Radio of Argentina. He has also conducted and recorded contemporary Italian music for the RAI Trade label. Baldini’s work has received awards in several competitions including the top prize at the Seoul International Competition for Composers (South Korea, 2005), the Tribune of Music (UNESCO, 2005), the Ossia International Competition (Rochester, NY, 2008), the Daegu Chamber Orchestra International Competition (South Korea, 2008), and the Sao Paulo Orchestra International Conducting Competition (Brazil, 2006). He has been an assistant conductor with the Britten-Pears Orchestra (England) and a cover conductor with the Na- tional Symphony Orchestra (Washington, DC). After teaching and conducting at the State University of New York in Buffalo, Baldini is now an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, where he serves as the Music Director of the UC Davis Symphony Or- chestra. He regularly appears as a guest conductor with ensembles and orchestras through- out South America and Europe. Forthcoming projects include performances with the Israel Contemporary Players and Ensemble Plural (Spain), and conducting engagements with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London. NOTES Overture to La clemenza di Tito Mozart died on December 5, 1791, at the age of thirty-five. The cause of his death cannot be known with certainty but much has been written, said, and even filmed about it. Theories apart, the truth is that Mozart had an intensively busy schedule during the last year of his life. He usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. During the course of 1791 he had a year of great creative productivity. He composed many of his most famous works, including the Singspiel Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), the final Piano Concerto, KV. 595, the Clarinet Concerto, KV. 622, the Requiem, KV. 626 (unfinished), and some of his most beautiful chamber music (e.g., his last String Quintet, KV. 614), and the opera seria La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus or The Merciful Titus). In fact this is his very last opera, which he had begun after much of the Magic Flute had been written. La clemenza was first performed on September 6, 1791, at the Estates Theatre in Prague. La clemenza was based on the libretto by Pietro Metastasio, written half a century earlier; it had already been set by over thirty composers, among them Caldara and Gluck. In 1791 Mozart accepted the commission to write this opera from the impresario Domenico Guardasoni, who lived in Prague and who was in search of a new work to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King of Bohemia. Antonio Salieri had been Guardasoni’s first choice, but Salieri was too busy and thus Mo- zart accepted the commission (which paid him twice as much as he was usually paid in Vienna for an opera). 2 NOTES The overture is in contrast yet related to the overture of the Magic Flute. The use of fermatas becomes a crucial element at the beginning of the overture, as well as in the recapitulation, just like in the Magic Flute. In La clemenza, the fermatas also separate the culmination of the first theme with the beginning of the second theme. It does not have a slow introduction as do many of his opera overtures. Instead, it begins with a very majestic C-major chord, followed by grace notes leading to a unison C in the entire orchestra. The first chord might remind listeners of the beginning of the overture to Così fan tutte, which is in the same key. Another similarity with the Magic Flute: the grace notes leading to the unison C appear three times in total at the opening of the overture, just like the famous three chords in the Magic Flute, written almost simultaneously with Clemenza. Enough has been said about symbol- ism derived from Freemasonry, but it is worth remembering the three distinguishing pillars: virtue, honor, and mercy. Clemenza is a moral story in itself—a story about power, speculation, love, and manipulation. But it is also a story of clemency, and by the end of the opera, the great emperor Tito is admired by everyone thanks to his generosity and mercy. It is a true paradigm of forgiveness. Sospiri English composer Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934) was the son of a piano tuner and his mother was the daughter of a farm worker. He was the fourth of seven children. His father was also a violinist, and thus all of his children received a musical upbringing. Elgar was a fine violinist and pianist and performed also on the bassoon, as well as on other instruments. At the age of forty-two, he composed his best-known work, the “Enigma” Variations (op. 36), which would launch his international career and establish him as the most important composer in Great Britain after the death of Sir Arthur Sullivan in 1900. Elgar completed his intensely melodic Sospiri, op. 70, for Strings and Harp in 1914. The work was dedicated to a close friend who was concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra. It was premiered on August 15 of that year, just two weeks after the start of the First World War. Lady Elgar said the work was “like a breath of peace on a perturbed world.” Originally titled “Soup- ir d’amour” (sigh of love), Elgar himself Italianized the title when he offered it for publication to Breitkopf & Härtel. Sospiri is a delicate, yet intense sigh of beauty and melancholy written during a time of increasing violence and tumultuousness. Adagietto from Symphony No. 5 In November 1908, when Mahler arrived back in New York for his second season with the Metropolitan Opera, he shared the conducting load with a rising Italian star, Arturo Toscanini. Mahler’s relationship with the Metropolitan Opera was not a long one. By early 1909, he was named the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. His new position with the New York Philharmonic offered several advantages compared with his position at the Vienna Philharmonic. Since a cooperative plan no longer governed the New York musicians, the music director could select the best musicians. On the other hand, in Vienna the musicians still owned the orchestra under the cooperative, and they determined the music director. Unfortunately this new position did not last very long either: Mahler died in 1911. Mahler held conducting posts of great importance throughout his career, and given his busy schedule, he would compose almost exclusively during the summer months. He was highly regarded as a conductor, and his own compositions also attracted wide inter- est during his lifetime, but only occasionally did they receive popular approval. His first symphony premiered in 1889, and even ten years later, a critic in Dresden reviewed the work as “the dullest work the new epoch has produced.” The Fourth and Fifth Sympho- nies failed to receive general public approval, but Mahler was convinced that his Sixth would finally succeed. However, it received harsh criticisms for its unconventional use of percussion instruments and use of “Brass, lots of brass, incredibly much brass,” as critic Heinrich Reinhardt put it. The Symphony No. 5 was composed during the summer months of 1901 and 1902 in Mahler’s own, newly purchased villa along the lakeside of the Austrian province of Carinthia. He was one of the most influential men in the music world and held the post of Music Director of both the Vienna Court Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, which was regarded as one of the finest orchestras in the world. Also in 1901 he met Alma Schindler. By the summer of 1902, Alma had become his wife and was expecting their first child. The symphony received its premiere in October 1904 in Cologne. After the premiere, Mahler is reported to have said: “Nobody un- derstood it. I wish I could conduct the first performance fifty years after my death.” Such was his confidence and awareness that his music was ahead of his own time.