SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY Michael Tilson Thomas Music Director and Conductor
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UMS PRESENTS SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY Michael Tilson Thomas Music Director and Conductor Thursday Evening, November 13, 2014 at 7:30 Hill Auditorium • Ann Arbor 16th Performance of the 136th Annual Season 136th Annual Choral Union Series Photo: San Francisco Symphony; photographer: Bill Swerbenski. 3 UMS PROGRAM Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 7 in e minor Slow — Allegro risoluto ma non troppo Nachtmusik I: Allegro moderato — Molto moderato (Andante) Scherzo: Schattenhaft (Like a shadow) Nachtmusik II: Andante amoroso Rondo — Finale: Allegro ordinario — Allegro moderato ma energico This evening's concert will be performed without intermission. Endowment support provided by the Essel and Menakka Bailey Endowment Fund. San Francisco Symphony residency activities supported by the Wallis Cherniack Klein Endowment Fund for Student Experiences. FALL 2014 FALL Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Media partnership is provided by WGTE 91.3 FM, WRCJ 90.9 FM, and Ann Arbor’s 107one FM. Special thanks to Libby Seidner, U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance Class of 2015, for speaking at this evening’s Prelude Dinner. Special thanks to Emily Avers, Melody Racine, and the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance for their support of the San Francisco Symphony Residency. Special thanks to Tom Thompson of Tom Thompson Flowers, Ann Arbor, for his generous contribution of lobby floral art for this evening’s concert. NOW THAT YOU’RE IN YOUR SEAT… In his important Mahler monograph published in 2011, Jens Malte Fischer offers the following thumbnail description of Symphony No. 7: “At the start...the listener appears to set foot on firm ground, but this is undermined by the shadows of the night, and at the end, our night vision finely attuned, we are blinded by a dazzling sun and deafened by the battery of noise unleashed by the brass and percussion.” Often considered an “enigma” or even a “stepchild” among the Mahler symphonies, the Seventh is in fact the composer’s most radical and forward-looking work, one that breaks new ground both by its harmonic innovations and by its bold juxtaposition of extreme characters, puzzling SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY SAN FRANCISCO some critics while delighting many others. 4 BE PRESENT Symphony No. 7 in e minor (1905) and third are each called Nachtmusik. Gustav Mahler It was with these two night musics Born July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, near that Mahler began this score in the Humpolec, Bohemia summer of 1904. But with summer’s end, Died May 18, 1911 in Vienna a typically busy year began for Mahler, whose work as Europe’s most famous UMS premiere: This symphony has never conductor occupied him throughout the been performed at UMS concert. concert season. In June 1905, Mahler headed back to his summer residence at Orchestration: Four flutes and two Maiernigg, on the Wörthersee, to continue piccolos (doubling second and third work on his Seventh Symphony. He could flutes), three oboes and English horn, high not find the way into the composition. clarinet in E-flat, four clarinets in A and He took off for the Dolomites, hoping to B-flat, bass clarinet in A and B-flat, three release his creative energies, but nothing bassoons and contrabassoon, tenor horn, happened. Profoundly depressed, he four French horns, three trumpets, three returned. He stepped from the train trombones, bass tuba, timpani, bass drum, and was rowed across the lake. With the cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, glockenspiel, first dipping of the oars into the water, tambourine, cowbells, low-pitched bells, he recalled later, “the theme of the two harps, mandolin, guitar, and strings. introduction (or rather, its rhythm, its atmosphere) came to me.” Performance time: about 80 minutes. From that moment forward he 2014 FALL worked like a man possessed, as indeed SNAPSHOTS OF HISTORY…IN 1905: he must have been to bring this gigantic • Revolution of 1905: The Imperial Russian Army opens fire structure under control, even if not on a meeting at a street market in Tallinn (Governorate of finished in detail, by mid-August. His Latin Estonia), killing 94 and injuring over 200 • The Trans-Siberian Railway officially opens after its message to his friend, the musician Guido completion in July 1904 Adler, was jubilant. In English translation, • Albert Einstein works on the special theory of relativity it reads: “My Seventh is finished. I believe as well as the theory of Brownian motion • Fauvist artists, led by Henri Matisse and André Derain, this work to be auspiciously begun and first exhibit, at the Salon d’Automne in Paris happily concluded. Many greetings to • Rotary International is founded you and yours, also from my wife. G.M.” Thinking about the first performance, “Three night pieces; the finale, bright day. Mahler considered the New York As foundation for the whole, the first Symphony, which he would be conducting movement.” in the 1907–08 season, but soon realized that this would be madness in a city and — Mahler to the Swiss critic William Ritter a country that knew so little of his music. A festival in Prague to celebrate the 60th Mahler began Symphony No. 7 in the year on the throne of the Emperor Franz middle. As a glance at the program Joseph provided a more suitable occasion. page and Mahler’s own summary for Prague offered a less than first-rate William Ritter tells us, the structure orchestra; on the other hand, Mahler had is symmetrical. The first and last ample rehearsal time, and the worshipful movements — both on a large scale — young conductors — among them Artur flank three character pieces, which are Bodanzky, Otto Klemperer, and Bruno themselves symmetrical in that the first Walter — who attended the preparations 5 UMS recounted how, refusing all help, he used Nachtmusiken is a minute of preparation every night to make revisions on the basis and search. A tremendous skid of that day’s experience. He was always the downwards through five-and-a-half most pragmatic of composer-conductors. octaves calls the proceedings to order. The Nachtmusiken and the “Scherzo” This artfully stylized version of an made their effect at once; the first and orchestra warming up turns into a tidy last movements were harder nuts to crack presentation of the theme that has been and in Prague the reception was more adumbrated. The theme itself is part respectful than enthusiastic. Mahler march, part song, given a piquant flavor himself conducted the Seventh only by that mix of major and minor we find once more, in Munich, a few weeks after so often in Mahler’s music. In later years, the concert at Prague. It is still the least the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg known of his symphonies. said that in this movement Mahler had The Seventh is a victory symphony, been inspired by Rembrandt’s so-called not a personal narrative but a journey Night Watch, but the composer Alphons from night to day (it is sometimes called Diepenbrock, also one of Mahler’s “Song of the Night”). The focus is on nature. Amsterdam friends, both clarified and If the Seventh is a Romantic symphony, subtilized the issue: one should add that the “distancing” effect produced by the outward-pointing, It is not true that [Mahler] wanted actually non-narrative character of the music can to depict The Night Watch. He cited the also be perceived as Classical. painting only as a point of comparison. [This movement] is a walk at night, and The opening is music in which we he said himself that he thought of it as may hear not only the stroke of oars, but a patrol. Beyond that he said something FALL 2014 FALL the suggestion of cortege. Here Mahler different every time. What is certain is that carries us from a slow introduction it is a march, full of fantastic chiaroscuro — into the main body of a sonata-allegro hence the Rembrandt parallel. movement, adhering to the design that afforded symphonists from Haydn The initial march theme is succeeded through Bruckner a broad range of by a broadly swinging cello tune. Like expressive possibilities. Settling into a many such themes by Mahler, this one, new key, he brings in a gorgeous theme, heard casually, seems utterly naïve; a highly inflected violin melody full of closely attended to, it proves to be full of yearning and verve, rising to a tremendous asymmetries and surprises of every kind. climax, to merge into the music of the Watch for the return of this tune, even second of the three marches we have more lusciously scored and with a new heard. More such merges lie ahead. At counter-theme in the woodwinds. Distant the focal point of the development comes cowbells become part of the texture, what must be the most enchanted minute suggesting the Sixth Symphony, in which in all Mahler, a transformation of the they play such a prominent part. Suddenly second march from focused to veiled, that great tragedy-in-music intrudes even and an ecstatic vision of the glorious lyric more as a fortissimo trumpet chord of C theme. A sudden plunge of violins returns Major droops into minor. This sound of us, shockingly, to the slow introduction. major falling into minor is the expressive The recapitulation has begun. It is tautly and sonorous signature of the Sixth. The SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY SAN FRANCISCO compressed. The coda is fierce and abrupt. string figurations collapse, there is a 6 The opening of the first of the stroke of cymbals and tam-tam, and then BE PRESENT nothing is left but a cello harmonic and a misunderstand him completely, for ping on the harp. example to mistake humor for ineptness.