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 at the two and two , , 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, 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, , March 7, 1875 Upon receiving a commission from the Buffalo Died in , 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 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, , 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, , 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. The writer Richard Last performed by the Wichita Symphony Specht went so far as to describe the work as a March 15 and 16, 2008 with guest conductor “serenade,” implying that it lacked symphonic Grant Cooper. dimensions. Others saw an analogy in the relationship of Brahms 2nd to his 1st Like many other composers, Brahms valued symphony that closely paralleled Beethoven’s his summer vacations as a time when he 6th Symphony, the “Pastoral,” that followed could accomplish his serious composing his 5th Symphony. But these first impressions away from the hectic schedules of the merely scraped the surface of the far more concert season. The summer of 1877 found complex and elegiac nature of the work. Brahms vacationing in his first of three summers at Pörtschach on Lake Wörth in If the Second Symphony marks a return to a the southern Austria state of Carinthia. Aside more youthful style and optimistic view of from his ability to take a daily swim in the life, it also possesses an awareness that the lake’s pristine waters, Brahms wrote that it past is not obtainable, recognition of life’s was an area where “so many melodies fly mortality, and the inexorable march of time. PROGRAM NOTES | MARCH 14 & 15, 2020

By his admission, Brahms was a melancholic mostly for accents of color. His horn writing, individual who wrote of “black wings except for the occasional foray into a melody, constantly flapping above us.” In his music, hasn’t changed all that much from Beethoven this translates into a mix of major and minor and the early Romantics. The low brass modes, and occasionally Phrygian (a minor- instruments stand out. The tuba adds depth to like scale from E to E on the white keys of a the trombones, and this is the only symphony piano). There are also rhythmic and metrical where Brahms adds it to his color palette. The ambiguities that often seem to deny the trombones, which Brahms saves for the fourth presence of a bar line. Try tapping your foot movement in his First Symphony, appear to a three-beat pattern in the first movement early here and add solemnity to the opening and wait for the disruptions! movement. The low tones have the effect of casting shadows on the generally idyllic Another characteristic that bears notice mood of the work. Compare the opening is Brahms’s orchestration. Except for the movement’s brass to the brilliance we hear in addition of a tuba, the orchestration is the finale when the trombones shift into their identical to Beethoven and other early upper range and are abetted by the trumpets, Romantics. The winds are “in two,” meaning particularly as the work reaches its spine- that there are two each of flutes, oboes, tingling conclusion. clarinets, and bassoons. Prominent solos and massed choirs for wind instruments create a Like Beethoven, Brahms’ compositions contrast to the strings and help to delineate possess a quality of inevitability in which the contrapuntal writing. The brass section there are no wasted notes. Each one flows consists of four horn parts, two trumpets, from its predecessor as if no other note three trombones, and tuba. Brahms uses would do. Also revealing of Beethoven’s timpani, but no other percussion. Brahms influence is Brahms’ economy of means utilizes the usual 19th-century string section in the construction of his symphony. The and writes for it with a lushness of sound. first movement, and indeed, the entire Note the beautiful and extended cello symphony, spring forth from the opening melody that opens the second movement. It’s three motives, or ideas: a four-note snippet a standard requirement on all auditions for in the low strings, the following idea heard cellists to gain acceptance into an orchestra. in the horns outlining triadic material, and an answering motive in the winds that The brass section receives special treatment. features scale material. Through the process Brahms never used his brass like Bruckner or of development, sometimes called “motivic Wagner. In that respect, he was conservative play,” Brahms expands on these ideas through and even regressive. The trumpets are used compositional methods such as sequencing PROGRAM NOTES | MARCH 14 & 15, 2020

(repeating the pattern beginning on different into the gaiety, but it was mostly for show.” notes), inversion (turning an idea “upside Brahms was a complex individual. The shadows down,” augmentation (lengthening) and that followed him would only deepen in the last diminution (shortening). Brahms’s treatment decades of his life. of details rewards careful listening. A listener unaccustomed to following the intricacies The Vienna Philharmonic, with Hans of composition might do well to listen to Richter conducting, premiered the Second how the opening three notes of the first Symphony on December 30, 1877. motive are used in patterns to propel the first movement forward. - Don Reinhold © 2020

The second movement begins with a beautiful theme in the cellos. The music has an ebb and flow that moves between moments of serenity and contrasting sections of greater activity. Inspired harmonic and rhythmic ambiguities keep us off balance, and achieve tension and resolution.

The third movement is a quasi-scherzo that has the lyrical grace reminiscent of Schubert’s Ländler, a gentle dance predecessor to the Viennese waltz. Two presto sections featuring plucked strings and the woodwind choir contrast the lilting first section.

The finale is in sonata-allegro form and uses material from the earlier movements. The music swirls in a breathless quality and concludes in a blaze of glory. But for all its extroverted qualities, one suspects all is not as it seems. Some writers have found music’s happiness forced and “almost violently brilliant.” Jan Swafford writes, “the finale is like Brahms on a Prater merry-go-round, or laughing and drinking with friends in a café. He threw himself