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8.571210 Prokofiev Booklet 4P.Indd Gerard Schwarz SEATTLE SYMPHONY Gerard Schwarz has a vast repertoire that includes major commitments to Germanic, COLLECTION Russian and American music. He was Music Director of the Seattle Symphony from 1985 to 2011. He currently serves as Seattle Symphony Conductor Laureate and Music Director of the Eastern Music Festival. Previously, he was Music Director of New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony, as well as Artistic Advisor to Tokyu Bunkamura with the Tokyo Philharmonic. His considerable discography of over 330 releases showcases his collaborations with some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the London Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Tokyo Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony and the Seattle Symphony, among others. Schwarz has served ©Yuen Lui Studio ©Yuen on the National Council on the Arts. He has received two Emmy Awards, thirteen GRAMMY® Sergey nominations, six ASCAP Awards, and numerous Stereo Review and Ovation Awards. In addition, he holds the Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University, was the fi rst American named Conductor of the Year by Musical America, and has received numerous honorary doctorates, including one from his alma mater, The Juilliard School. In 2002, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers honored Schwarz with its Concert Music Award, and, in 2003, the Pacifi c Northwest branch of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences gave Schwarz its fi rst “IMPACT” lifetime achievement award. PROKOFIEV Seattle Symphony The Seattle Symphony, founded in 1903, has gained international prominence with more than 140 recordings, twelve GRAMMY® nominations, two Emmys and numerous other awards. Under the leadership of Music Director Ludovic Morlot Romeo and Juliet: Suites 1 & 2 since September 2011, the Seattle Symphony performs in one of the world’s fi nest concert venues – the acoustically superb Benaroya Hall – in downtown Seattle. Gerard Schwarz led the orchestra from 1985 to 2011, and is now Conductor Laureate. The Seattle Symphony is internationally recognized for its innovative programming and extensive recording Pushkin Waltz No. 2 history. From September through July, the Symphony is heard live by more than 315,000 people. For more information on the Seattle Symphony, visit www.seattlesymphony.org. Seattle Symphony 8.571210 4 Gerard Schwarz Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953) Mercutio have come to that event in disguise, and Masks that the Veronese nobles had West Indian slave girls, a depicts them in a brief intermezzo that again features the conceit unsupported by Shakespeare’s text or by history, Romeo and Juliet: Suites Nos. 1 and 2 • Pushkin Waltz No. 2 clarinet. but which allowed them to insert some exoticism into their Romeo and Juliet gives us music for the most scenario. This second suite concludes with music from Sergey Prokofiev’s career as one of the most dynamic composition in the spring of 1935. He completed the famous portion of Shakespeare’s drama, the Balcony the ballet’s final scene. Romeo at the Tomb of Juliet, composers of the first half of the Twentieth century entire ballet score, some two and a half hours of music, in Scene. Prokofiev depicts the meeting of the young lovers features the memorable love theme that Prokofiev had century unfolded in three stages. It began in Russia September of that year. in passages that are by turns tender and picturesque: already established earlier in the ballet. Here, however, it during the final years of Czarist rule. A precociously But the arduous process of bringing Romeo and there is ardent love music, but we also hear the nurse is overwhelmed by music of a more funereal character. A accomplished pianist and composer, Prokofiev became Juliet to the stage was only beginning. First the Kirov gruffly interrupting the lovers’ discourse and Juliet’s reply soft C major chord in the closing measures intimates the known as something of an enfant terrible among younger and then Moscow’s Bolshoy Ballet cancelled productions. to appease her. This first suite closes with perhaps the reconciliation of the feuding families. Russian musicians, many of his works displaying a brash When the Kirov again took up the work, the rehearsals ballet’s most dramatic episode, The Death of Tybalt. Besides being an outstanding musician, Prokofiev sense of irony. Shortly after the Russian Revolution of were unusually trying and contentious. Even so, the Prokofiev’s music suggests Juliet’s cousin confronting was intelligent, cultured and well read. He cherished 1917, the composer embarked on the second phase company’s production, presented in Leningrad in January Romeo’s friend, the impudent Mercutio, then furiously the great works of Russian literature, several of which of his career, leaving his homeland to live and work in 1940, proved a triumph, and Romeo and Juliet went on to pursuing him through the streets of Verona. Tybalt’s fatal informed his work. Dostoyevsky provided the story for his the United States and Western Europe, chiefly in Paris. become one of the most popular ballets of the Twentieth clash with Romeo follows, and the movement concludes early opera The Gambler. Tolstoy furnished the subject Over the course of the next decade, he established an century. with the funeral procession that bears the scion of the of his greatest such work, War and Peace. Above all, international reputation with such compositions as his Prokofiev, meanwhile, had adapted his music to Capulet family to his tomb. however, Prokofiev admired Alexander Pushkin, the Third Piano Concerto, the Scythian Suite and the opera the concert hall. In 1936, shortly after the Bolshoy’s The Second Suite opens with a musical portrait of “Russian Shakespeare.” Following his return to the Love for Three Oranges. decision to abandon Romeo and Juliet, he extracted a Verona’s two feuding clans. Montagues and Capulets Soviet Union, Prokofiev attempted to write music for three In 1927 Prokofiev visited Soviet Russia for the first pair of concert suites from his full score. (Ten years later begins with an introduction heavy with foreboding. renditions of works by Pushkin: a film version of the story time since his departure, nine years previously. His he would adapt a third suite, though this proved less Swaggering rhythms then suggest the proud bearing of the The Queen of Spades, and stage adaptations of the novel concert tour, during which he performed and conducted popular.) Even more than the ballet itself, these suites Veronese nobles, while a more restrained central episode Eugene Onegin and the historical tragedy Boris Godunov. his own music, was highly successful, the composer have achieved exceptional favor with audiences around offers an initial glimpse of Juliet. Shakespeare’s heroine Unfortunately, none of these projects came to fruition, finding a degree of enthusiasm for his work beyond the world and now stand with the Classical Symphony and is sketched more fully during the ensuing movement, The and Prokofiev’s only setting of Pushkin was a set of three anything he had experienced abroad. Several other visits the Lieutenant Kijé Suite among Prokofiev’s most familiar Young Girl Juliet. Prokofiev portrays her as still very much songs to the great writer’s verses. to his homeland followed during the ensuing years, and compositions. Both suites from 1936 are presented on a child, indulging in play (the lively music at the start) and In 1949, Prokofiev received a commission from the in 1936 Prokofiev took the decisive step of repatriating, this recording. falling easily into reverie. Next comes a portrait of Friar Moscow Radio Orchestra for a piece commemorating the becoming a citizen of the Soviet Union. With this began These two suites do not present numbers from the Laurence, author of the well-intentioned but ultimately 150th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth. He responded with a the final stage of his career, that of a leading Soviet ballet in chronological order, so they imply no linear disastrous scheme to spirit Romeo away from Verona pair of symphonic waltzes. Perhaps because he had been composer. It is to this period that perhaps the most narrative sequence. This First Suite commences with a and feign Juliet’s death. The following movement, titled singled out in a Communist Party denunciation of modern popular of Prokofiev’s compositions belongs, the ballet Folk Dance that occurs at the start of the ballet’s second simply Danse, is another of the numbers performed at the music the year before, Prokofiev wrote these dances in a Romeo and Juliet. act. This scene expands Shakespeare’s plot to include a Capulet ball in the ballet’s first act. Prokofiev’s delicate melodious, accessible vein. The second waltz, recorded The genesis of this work actually predated street fair, where the town’s residents dance and make scoring suggests a nocturnal revel. here, partakes of a dark wistfulness that, in certain Prokofiev’s full repatriation. In the summer of 1934, merry. We then turn to the opening moments of the ballet. The lovers meet for the last time in Romeo with Juliet passages, reminds one of Tchaikovsky. during a trip to Russia, the composer was approached by A Scene evokes a street in Verona as a new day begins. before Parting. Already the song of a lark, heard in the Sergey Radlov, a director at the Kirov Ballet, successor to The music starts quietly with a pizzicato line for harp and flute, warns of the coming of dawn. The expressive viola Paul Schiavo the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg, about collaborating low strings but soon moves to a broad melody introduced solo in the middle of the movement is based on Romeo’s on a choreographic treatment of Shakespeare’s play.
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