Juilliard Orchestra John Adams , Conductor
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Monday Evening, December 10, 2018, at 7:30 The Juilliard School presents Juilliard Orchestra John Adams , Conductor KAIJA SAARIAHO (b. 1952) Ciel d’hiver (2013) JOHN ADAMS (b. 1947) Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007) The Laboratory Panic Trinity Intermission JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833 –97) Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1884–85) Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionate Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 35 minutes, including an intermission The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. Information regarding gifts to the school may be obtained from the Juilliard School Development Office, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-6588; (212) 799-5000, ext. 278 (juilliard.edu/giving). Alice Tully Hall Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. Notes on the Program create timbres that subtly mix with those produced by acoustic instruments. by Thomas May This spectralist background, however, is Ciel d’hiver (2013) only one dimension of the unique aesthetic KAIJA SAARIAHO that Saariaho has developed. “Rich timbral Born October 14, 1952, in Helsinki, Finland nuances, focused musical material evolv - Currently resides in Paris ing into unique musical forms as well as works that call for careful listening remain “There was always one wise old guy with her musical fingerprints,” writes musicolo - a bald head, the male authority whose aes - gist Pirkko Moisala. Saariaho’s meticulous thetics or politics ruled … I felt squeezed attention to textures and resonances, to to be something I’m not,” Kaija Saariaho the weight of sound itself, taps into a rich once remarked, referring to the culture of potential that involves a great deal more her native Finland—with the imposing, than “color,” pushing beyond conventional patriarchal figure of (the very bald) Jean musical parameters . Sibelius clearly in mind. Growing up in a family that was not particularly interested The result is notably different from the sen - in music, she nevertheless found herself suous qualities often attributed to French as a child drawn to the wondrous worlds Impressionism. At times suggesting an that could be evoked by sounds and, austerity and sense of expansive spaces, despite a sexist environment, became Saariaho’s music can convey a sensation the only woman in the class of Paavo of hovering as it imbues sounds and their Heininen at the Sibelius Academy in contexts with an uncanny and ghostlike Helsinki. Heininen belonged to the mod - tangibility—mesmerizing mirages that shift ernist generation reacting against Sibelius, about the listener like mobile sculptures. while, for her part, Saariaho joined up with fellow composers Esa-Pekka Salonen, Relying on a purely acoustic orchestra, Ciel Magnus Lindberg, and others in an exper - d’hiver (“Winter Sky”) is an outstanding imental collective known as Korvat Auki! example of Saariaho’s soundscapes. It is a (“Ears Open!”)—a society intended to reworking of the second movement of encourage experimentalism. Orion , a work for large orchestra written in 2002 for the Cleveland Orchestra. Her Like those compatriots, Saariaho chose a largest symphonic composition to date at life of exile, resettling in Paris in the early that time, Orion was inspired by the mytho - 1980s and finding a new artistic home at logical hunter—the mortal son of Poseidon Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM Institute for musi - who was made into a constellation. cal research after discovering the advances of the French spectralists. Spectralism Saariaho returned to this score to com - refers to the processes developed by a plete a new commission in 2013, making loosely associated group of composers Orion ’s contemplative second movement such as G érard Grisey and Tristan Murail . into the independent orchestral work Ciel They devoted attention to the behavior of d’hiver . Her unpredictable blends of timbre sonic spectra, using computer-assisted spec - and nuanced effects against a seemingly tral analysis of sound. Some of Saariaho’s static background convey sensations of compositions also employ microtonality transformation and timelessness alike—a and electronic sources or “ extensions ” to contemporary music of the spheres. Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007) says has exerted “an immense effect on JOHN ADAMS my compositional thinking.” Born February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts An apocalyptic jangle of darkly ominous, Currently resides in the San Francisco Bay shardlike harmonies ( The Laboratory ), drawn area from the opera’s overture, conjures the alien environment of a nuclear landscape In November 2017 John Adams unveiled superimposed on the desert setting where his most recent opera, Girls of the Golden the Trinity test is scheduled to take place. West , at San Francisco Opera. It was for Coils of dissonance are underscored by the same company that Adams had returned timpani and eerie fanfares that may call the to writing for the opera stage, after a long beginning of Brahms’ First Symphony to hiatus, with Doctor Atomic , which pre - mind: a secular Day of Judgment proclaimed. miered in 2005. Three years later Doctor Atomic became the first work by Adams to Immediately after comes the longest of be presented at the Metropolitan Opera. the Symphony’s subsections ( Panic ). This music comes from the opera’s nocturnal Doctor Atomic is a two-act opera that second act, just hours before the bomb is revolves around the figures involved in to be tested, as a powerful electrical storm the first atomic bomb test during the fran - whips across the desert. The potentially tic final months of the Second World War. dire consequences of a mishap trigger J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who grim debate among the scientists. Adams’ directed that project, is the protagonist. frenzied rhythms and anxious pauses sug - The opera climaxes with the final count - gest varieties of nervousness. down before the detonation itself, which took place in the New Mexican desert in As the men in this unrelentingly gender- summer 1945. segregated environment worry over the outcome of the test, Pasqualita, a Doctor Atomic Symphony , composed in Tewa Indian maid who works for the 2007, is no mere pastiche or suite of excerpts Oppenheimers, comforts the children of from Adams’ opera. It approaches material Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, with a from the opera score from a purely orches - lullaby and is reminded of the Corn Dance tral perspective, developing ideas accord - ceremony of the Tewa, whose ancestral ing to a musical logic independent of the home is the desert landscape about to drama. During the opera’s initial produc - be demolished by the explosion. (The tion, Adams came to realize that certain indige nous peoples whose health was musical ideas in Doctor Atomic ’s score adversely affected by the testing remain, seemed to be cut short and remain under - to this day, without compensation from developed as the result of practical neces - the federal government.) sity: the pace of action onstage had to take priority over what was happening in the pit. A trumpet conveys the voice of Oppenheimer in the Symphony’s final The symphony unfolds in a single move - sec tion ( Trinity ). It gravitates toward a ment, subdivided into three sections. As tragic, fateful D minor. The corresponding a precedent for the sustained, single- scene (which ends the opera’s first act) movement structure, Adams refers to the depicts the physicist, a passionate devo - Seventh Symphony of Sibelius—a work he tee of poetry and the arts, in an agony of self- doubt. The text comes from one of his once right into the heart of the matter, with beloved poets, John Donne (the poem no preliminaries. The first movement as a that, historically, prompted Oppenheimer whole unfolds as varying processes of to name the test site “Trinity”: “Batter development. Brahms continually trans - my heart, three-person’d God … ”). Two forms and remixes his material—and in a ideas, in different tempos, alternate: a distinctly individual way. You couldn’t mis - complex rhythmic pulsation and a reflec - take this for Beethovenian development tive, neo-Baroque elegy, which ends (Brahms having long since overcome what Doctor Atomic Symphony on a note of was anyway an exaggerated inferiority humanist melancholy. complex). The late composer/conductor Gunther Schuller compared the complex Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 layering of Brahmsian development here (1884–85) to the Fourth Symphony of Charles Ives. JOHANNES BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany For example, the subtle alterations that Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria prepare the moment of recapitulation or that press the coda along enhance the “I’m rather afraid that it tastes like the cli - tragic implications inherent in the main mate here,” Brahms wrote about his latest theme. However abstractly Brahms’ pro - work-in-progress while summering in cesses of variation can be classified, an southern Austria. “The cherries don’t ripen intense physicality is built into the Fourth in these parts; you wouldn’t eat them!” as well. Along with the “sighs” of the The slyly cautionary metaphor was apt. opening theme, dance impulses that Despite containing some of the most emerge elsewhere tether the music to the impassioned, even exuberant, moments in organic, patterned rhythms of the body. Brahms’ entire output, the Fourth (com - posed in the summers of 1884 and 1885) Starting with a modal horn tune with an conveys an aura of implacable tragedy. No insistent rhythmic profile, the second sweetener is mixed in to palliate the harsh movement can also suggest an invitation truths of this music. Even its brief to the dance, albeit a rather solemn one. moments of joy emerge more as jolts of Brahms blends instrumental timbres, surprise than relief. developing his thematic material through contrasts of light and shade and creating What’s more, Brahms’ nature metaphor stirring effects of sonic chiaroscuro.