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March 14 & 15, 2020 PROGRAM NOTES | MARCH 14 & 15, 2020 By Don Reinhold, CEO, Wichita Symphony Chris Rogerson LUMINOSITY In his own words, Rogerson describes Born in Amherst, NY, 1988 Luminosity as follows: First performances by the Wichita Symphony Luminosity opens with an energetic gesture Already hailed as a leading composer that is reminiscent of fireworks. After the punchy of his generation, Chris Rogerson has and rhythmic opening, the piece relaxes into a received commissions and performances middle section that is more lyrical and songlike. from orchestras such as the San Francisco This material is then reimagined as the heroic Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Kansas and majestic climax of the piece, which features City Symphony, and over two dozen other a repeated downward gesture in the percussion, orchestras in addition to many solo artists strings, and winds – my attempt at evoking slowly and chamber ensembles. As the 2010 – 2012 falling willow-like fireworks. The opening rhythmic Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence, drive and energy return to close the work. his works were performed on the YCA Series in both New York and Washington, DC. Luminosity is scored for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, four horns, Rogerson started playing the piano at the two trumpets and two trombones, tuba, age of two and cello at eight. He studied at timpani and percussion, harp, and strings. the Curtis Institute, Yale School of Music, and The work lasts about five minutes. Princeton University with composers Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Maurice Ravel and Steve Mackey. He currently serves on the PIANO CONCERTO IN G MAJOR Musical Studies Faculty of the Curtis Institute. Born in Ciboure, Basses Pyrénées, France, March 7, 1875 Upon receiving a commission from the Buffalo Died in Paris, France, December 28, 1937 Philharmonic Orchestra, Rogerson composed Last performed at the Wichita Symphony Luminosity in 2010. The work celebrated by pianist Kirell Gerstein with Music Director the long-time Buffalo staff conductor Paul Andrew Sewell on January 17 and 18, 2009. Ferington, who was also a friend and mentor to Rogerson. Ferington, described as “one Already considered France’s most famous of those rare people whose joy of life is living composer, Maurice Ravel celebrated contagious to everyone around him,” is the the New Year of 1928 with his arrival in the inspiration for this joyful work that is “a portrait United States for a four-month concert tour of the light and excitement Paul exudes.” PROGRAM NOTES | MARCH 14 & 15, 2020 that took him to twenty-five American cities Ravel worked on both works simultaneously, to conduct his music with orchestra and occasionally incorporating ideas in one work perform recitals of his piano music and songs. that he had rejected for the other. He even stopped in Kansas City to present a well-attended recital in the ballroom of the It is interesting to compare the two Hotel Meuhlebach. concertos, both of which display the influence of jazz. TheLeft Hand Concerto is a When he wasn’t performing on his tour, dark work, foreboding, and tension-filled with Ravel spent much time absorbing the sounds many jazz harmonies and rhythmic elements, of American jazz, which he confessed to whereas the G Major is brilliant, bright, and enjoying far more than he did grand opera. infused with dance and jazz-like rhythms. Jazz had been introduced to Parisians by Ravel described the G Major as “a concerto the African American regimental bands in the most exact sense of the term” and one during World War One, and by the 1920s “written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint- had become all the rage in Paris. In New Saëns. It includes some elements of jazz, but York City, Ravel met George Gershwin and only in moderation.” accompanied him on visits to the Cotton Ravel intended to perform the premiere of Club and Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. At a the G Major Concerto himself, using it as a party celebrating Ravel’s birthday, Gershwin showcase for a planned second tour of the entertained guests with an impromptu United States, which did not occur. Due to performance of his Rhapsody in Blue and the declining and fragile nature of his health, several song arrangements. LikeDvořák three Ravel turned the premiere over to Marguerite decades earlier, Ravel encouraged Americans Long, who performed the work in Paris on to embrace their native music and specifically January 14, 1932, with Ravel conducting only to “take jazz seriously,” for it was “bound to nine days after the premiere of the Left Hand influence modern music.” Concerto by Wittgenstein in Vienna. Except for a set of three songs about Don Quixote, these Upon returning home from his American would be the last works that Ravel completed tour in April 1928, Ravel set about writing before his death in 1937. the G Major Concerto. Shortly after beginning work on the concerto, Ravel was approached The first movement (allegramente, or by the one-armed pianist and World cheerfully) contrasts brilliant themes reflecting War One veteran Paul Wittgenstein, who Ravel’s fascination with mechanical devices commissioned from Ravel a piano concerto with themes that are languid and somewhat for the left hand. Thus, for several years PROGRAM NOTES | MARCH 14 & 15, 2020 “bluesy.” The opening snaps us to attention intensity with piano filigrees around the with a whip and a perky piccolo melody that melody until the opening theme returns in the trumpet repeats. The contrasting theme an extended solo for the English horn. The from the piano is reminiscent of qualities in movement dies away on a trill in the piano. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The movement is in the traditional sonata-allegro form of the The third movement (presto, very quickly) classical era concerto with an exposition of is a perpetual motion piece that whirls away the themes, a brief, energetic development, with clock-like motion. Bass drum, snare drum, and a recapitulation that loosely repeats the and woodblock interject their percussive opening themes while adding cadenzas for sounds, and Ravel treats the orchestra in a the harp and piano. Tension and momentum kaleidoscope of color with melodic fragments build to the end until the piece finally unravels tossed about in a veritable free-for-all. in a descending scale punctuated at the The piano writing is virtuosic and brilliant. bottom by the bass drum. The bass drum once again punctuates the final cadence. The Piano Concerto in G lasts The second movement (adagio assai, or approximately 23 minutes and is scored for very slow) is one of Ravel’s most beautiful solo piano, piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, creations. It opens with an extended, B-flat and E-flat clarinets, two bassoons, two unaccompanied piano solo. This poignant, horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, triangle, bittersweet waltz recalls the Gymnopédies snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, of Satie and the Berceuse of Chopin with its woodblock, whip, harp, and strings. ostinato left hand and a spun-out melody in the right that runs for thirty-six measures, Was Ravel an Impressionist Composer? far longer than the usual four or eight-bar Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy are often phrases. A painstaking composer, Ravel rarely linked together as the two major proponents completed anything in a flash of inspiration, of the French Impressionist style of musical and the opening of this spontaneous- composition. The term “impressionism” sounding slow movement was no different. emerged in 1874 from an 1872 painting of Ravel stated, “The flowing phrase…How I Claude Monet titled “Impression: Sunrise.” worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed As a term to describe atmospheric paintings me!” Eventually, the woodwinds enter with concerned with light and color, it is associated each principal taking up the melody in turn with painters like Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, in a seamless manner that is the mark of a and others. It later became used to describe master orchestrator. While the bass rhythms the music of Debussy and Ravel written remain constant, Ravel increases the textural between the 1890s and World War One. PROGRAM NOTES | MARCH 14 & 15, 2020 To label Ravel as an impressionist composer about here that one must be careful not is somewhat misleading. Ravel, like to tread on them.” With that as inspiration, Debussy, disliked the term and never used Brahms set to work writing his melodious and it to describe his music. While works, such most accessible Second Symphony. as Ravel’s Miroirs, Gaspard de la Nuit, and Daphnis and Chlöe use the impressionist When it came to writing symphonies, Brahms styles of color and imagery in music, was said to be haunted by the ghost of Ravel was just as likely to be drawn to the Beethoven. He was 43 before he completed influences of the French clavecin school his first symphony in 1876 after working on it of the 18th century, Mozart, folk music, for fifteen years. The influence of Beethoven and contemporary idioms such as jazz. was so prevalent in this work that some critics Much of Ravel’s music, particularly some dubbed it as “Beethoven’s Tenth.” However, of the works composed after World War once Brahms had made his symphonic One, lead the way to the neoclassic style of breakthrough, he completed the Second composers like Stravinsky. Symphony in four months. Johannes Brahms Compared to the First Symphony, the SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN D MAJOR, Second is more pastoral and sunnier. Despite OPUS 73 the success of the work, some critics were Born in Hamburg, Germany, May 7, 1833 disappointed that the symphony lacked the Died in Vienna, Austria, April 3, 1897 epic scope of the First.
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