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07-19 Varese 1:Gp 3.qxt 7/8/10 2:37 PM Page 1 Sponsor Welcome to Lincoln Center Festival 2010. We have searched the world to bring you some of the best the performing arts have to offer. Over the 18 days of this month’s Festival, we present 45 performances by artists and ensembles from 12 countries, and expand our venues to include a new site on Governors Island. The Lincoln Center Festival opened with the pelling one-man tour-de-force Miroku , and Pichet North American premiere of Musashi , a lavish Klunchun brings his brilliant company from Noh-inspired drama. Yukio Ninagawa directed Bangkok this weekend for Chui Chai . The title, the late Hisashi Inoue’s reworking and revital - meaning “transformation,” is as much a ization of a traditional Japanese tale based on metaphor for Pichet’s own modernization of Thai the life of a real samurai warrior. classical dance as it is a description of the Ramayana, an Indian epic on which it is based. We take an unprecedented look at the complete work of 20th-century musical maverick Edgard Georgian writer, director, and master puppeteer Varèse with a two-night retrospective. A true Rezo Gabriadze returns this week with an pioneer, Varèse longed to “liberate sound” to encore of his elegant and elegiac The Battle of reflect in music the immense technological Stalingrad . Puppet theater for adults, it mixes changes of the last century, and the forces of humor and heartbreak to tell the story of one of the New York Philharmonic, International Con- the most devastating battles of World War II. temporary Ensemble, S o¯ Percussion, Musica Sacra, and the Oratorio Society reveal his suc - If we had a musical survivors series, it would cess . With the Festival debut of Germany’s undoubtedly include three groups who made Wuppertal Opera and the North American pre - Festival debuts this month: The Blind Boys of miere of Salvatore Sciarrino’s La porta della Alabama, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, legge , we continue to celebrate composers who and Emir Kusturica and The No Smoking break with convention. A master of harmonics Orchestra. The Blind Boys have inspired musi - and structure, Sciarrino challenges all pre-con - cians and music lovers of all tastes for decades, ceived notions of what opera can be. and over three nights we celebrated their con - tribution to the American music scene. Benin’s It is always a pleasure to present innovative Orchestre Poly-Rythmo and Sarajevo’s No work from the world of dance, and wonderful to Smoking Orchestra are hugely successful in wel come back the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane their homelands but have only recently burst Dance Company. Bill has never been one to shy onto the international scene. Both made their away from difficult subjects, and his Fondly Do U.S. debuts at the Festival last week. We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray is an inspiring and emotionally wrenching work. Dancer and Two dynamic directors gave new life to classics choreographer Saburo Teshigawara, who made from literature and film at our newest perfor - his Lincoln Center Festival debut in 2006, mance venue. An industrial warehouse on brought back his laser-like focus for the com - Governors Island was the dramatic backdrop for the North American premieres of Peter Stein’s marathon adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel The Demons and Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s Teorema , based on the film by Pier Paolo Pasolini and directed by Ivo van Hove. I am pleased that you are joining us and hope that you will visit often throughout the month. Nigel Redden Director Lincoln Center Festival Edgard Varèse Photographer credit: E.C. Kerby 07-19 Varese 1:Gp 3.qxt 7/8/10 2:37 PM Page 2 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 Varèse: (R)evolution The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse , Part I International Contemporary Ensemble July 1 9 ALICE TULLY HALL So¯ Percussion STARR THEATER Soprano Anu Komsi There will be one intermission Bass-Baritone Alan Held Flute Claire Chase Piano Mika Rännäli Cello Theremin Jonathan Golove Natasha Farny Musica Sacra Chorus Master Kent Tritle Conductor Steven Schick Made possible in part by The Grand Marnier Foundation and the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust. Lincoln Center Festival 2010 is made possible in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Sponsor 07-19 Varese 1:Gp 3.qxt 7/8/10 2:37 PM Page 3 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 Program Poème Électronique (1958) Un Grand Sommeil Noir (1906) Soprano Anu Komsi Piano Mika Rännäli Hyperprism (1923) Offrandes (1921) Soprano Anu Komsi Intégrales (1925) Ecuatorial (1934) Bass-Baritone Alan Held Cello Theremins Jonathan Golove , Natasha Farny INTERMISSION Dance for Burgess (1949; ed. Chou Wen-chung , 1998) Étude pour Espace (1947; orch. and arr . for spatialized live performance by Chou Wen-chung , 2009) Soprano Anu Komsi Musica Sacra Chorus Master Kent Tritle Density 21.5 (1936) Flute Claire Chase Déserts (1954) 07-19 Varese 1:Gp 3.qxt 7/8/10 2:37 PM Page 4 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 International Contemporary So¯ Percussion Ensemble Eric Beach Violins Erik Carlson, Jennifer Curtis Josh Quillen Viola Wendy Richman Adam Sliwinski Jason Treuting Cello Kivie Cahn-Lipman Bass Randall Zigler Musica Sacra Chorus Piano Jacob Greenberg Sopranos Lianne Coble, Margery Daley, Percussion Nathan Davis , Doug Perkins Amy Justman, Kathryn Lewek, Harp Jacqui Kerrod Kathy Theil, Elena Williamson Flutes Claire Chase, Eric Lamb Altos Biraj Barkakaty, Ory Brown, Clarinets Campbell MacDonald , Katie Geissinger (Soloist) , Misa Iwama, Joshua Rubin , Alicia Lee Silvie Jensen, Karen Krueger Oboe Nicholas Masterson Tenors Steven Fox, Drew Martin (Soloist), Douglas Purcell, David Ronis Bassoon Rebekah Heller Basses Frank Barr, Matt Boehler, Horns David Byrd-Marrow , Neil Netherly, Gregory Purnhagen, Adam Krauthamer , Danielle Kuhlmann Christopher Roselli, Arizeder Urreiztieta Trumpets Peter Evans , Gareth Flowers , Christopher Coletti, Brandon Ridenour Choral Contractor Karen Krueger Trombone Mike Lormand, Assistant to Kent Tritle Michael Sheetz Nathan Mayland, David Nelson , Jack Schatz Tuba Dan Peck , Chris Hall Organ Kent Tritle* Sound Engineer Ryan Streber *Guest Artist 07-19 Varese 1:Gp 3.qxt 7/8/10 2:37 PM Page 5 Lincol n Cente r Festiva l 2010 About the Composer reluctantly returned to his parents for good and started his school life. Edgard Varèse (1883 –1965) did not want his biography to be written. When John Between the ages of 8 and 20 , Varèse lived Cage asked him for a bio to accompany a with his family in Turin, Italy, where his published interview, including a complete father moved for business. At 11 , he made list of works with dates of publication and his first compositional attempt—an Italian performance, Varèse responded, “I think it opera called Martino Paz based on a short is time to pay more attention to music than story text by Jules Verne. His friends would to promotion of personality, and as for the act out the roles, with Varèse accompany - dates of performance or publication I think ing on the mandolin and another boy on the it is almost a pedantic necrophilia.” Yet violin. Varèse’s father was abusive, and Varèse lived an important life that deserves their family life was filled with tension. The telling. He was mentored as a young man death of his mother when he was 12 years by Ferruccio Busoni, Claude Debussy, old was a traumatic event that plunged him Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gustav Mahler, into despair. Her dying wish was that he Auguste Rodin, Romain Rolland , and look after his four younger brothers and sis - Richard Strauss. Later in life Varèse was ters. Music was his salvation, and at age 15 championed by Leopold Stokowski, and in he enrolled at the Turin Conservatory his old age he was revered by Charlie where he studied composition, counter - Parker and Frank Zappa. His historical sig - point , and conducting. There he met nificance lies partly in the fact that he liber - Toscanini, the tenor Tamagno , and other ated the percussion section of the orches - famous musicians. Eventually the father tra, putting it on a level playing field with remarried, and three more children joined the other instruments; his Ionisation the family. opened that genre for all later composers. He also dreamed of electronic music In 1904 Varèse left Italy and never looked decades before that genre existed and back. His destination was Paris, where he wrote three of its early masterpieces. And hoped to meet Debussy. He enrolled at the well before Cage, Varèse sought to break Schola Cantorum, and stayed for one aca - down the distinction between art and life . demic year. He then transferred to the Conservatoire but didn’t graduate. He suf - Although born in Paris on December 22, fered from frequent nervous breakdowns, 1883, Varèse considered himself a and didn’t show up for the year-end exami - Burgundian. His parents had a troubled nations. He also began the Prix de Rome marriage, and for the first five years of his competition, but abandoned the effort. His life Varèse was raised by his maternal rela - real education came from the people he tives in Le Villars, a small village in the wine met: the writers Apollinaire and Marinetti, country. The Romanesque cathedral, the and the artists Rodin, Picasso , and vineyards, the river Saône—all of these Modigliani. He performed in private soirées would become the composer’s happy musicales and conducted a people’s chorus.

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