Prospero's Rooms

2020 FEB HADELICH PLAYS PAGANINI 2019-20 HAL & JEANETTE SEGERSTROM FAMILY FOUNDATION CLASSICAL SERIES Michael Francis, conductor Rouse PROSPERO’S ROOMS Augustin Hadelich, violin Paganini VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 1 IN D MAJOR Allegro maestoso Adagio Rondo: Allegro spiritoso Augustin Hadelich Intermission Rachmaninoff SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN A MINOR Lento—Allegro moderato—Allegro Adagio ma non troppo—Allegro Allegro—Allegro vivace Thursday, February 27, 2020 @ 8 p.m. Friday, February 28, 2020 @ 8 p.m. The appearances of Augustin Hadelich and Saturday, February 29, 2020 @ 8 p.m. Michael Francis have been generously underwritten by Segerstrom Center for the Arts a gift from Sam and Lyndie Ersan. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR This concert is being recorded for broadcast on Sunday, March 15, 2020, on Classical KUSC. PacificSymphony.org FEB 2020 5 PROGRAM NOTES in the world of atonality; yet he was also a influenced his compositional as well as rock’n’roll fan (Led Zeppelin was a favorite) his playing style. and taught a class on the history of rock None of this even begins to suggest Christopher Rouse: while on the faculty at the Eastman School the nature or extent of Paganini’s of Music. celebrity, which spread through Italy Prospero’s Rooms Regarding Prospero’s Rooms, Rouse and then took Europe by storm. After an Lovers of classical noted on his website: “In the days when I 1813 concert at Milan’s La Scala opera music lost one would have still contemplated composing house, he was spoken of in the same of their own in an opera, my preferred source was Edgar reverential tones as other great violinists, 2019 when the Allan Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death.’… including Charles Philippe Lafont and Pulitzer Prize- However… I decided to redirect my ideas Louis Spohr. But Paganini had a unique winning composer into what might be considered an overture brand of virtuosity. On stage he cut Christopher to an unwritten opera. The story concerns a lean, charismatic figure and had a Rouse died just a vain Prince, Prospero, who summons demonstrative, athletic playing style. weeks before the his friends to his palace and locks them Offstage, he was a notorious womanizer. premiere of his in so that they will remain safe from the The cult of the superstar performer can Symphony No. 6. Red Death, a plague that is ravaging the arguably be traced to the screaming, At age 70, Rouse, who had renal cancer, countryside. He commands that there be hysterical fans who were known to faint continued to refine the symphony until just a ball—the ‘masque’—but that no one is to at the sound of his trill. And the legend days before his death, which came on the wear red. But of course a figure clad all in of the magically skilled musician who got last day of summer. red does appear; it is the red death, and it his chops in a deal with the devil—as in With his often unpredictable and always claims the lives of all in the castle.” the myth about the legendary American passionate music, Rouse achieved both bluesman Robert Johnson—starts here broad popularity and critical acclaim. as well. Could anyone really play the violin Born in 1949, he showed musical talent Niccolò Paganini: like that without supernatural help? early, and was largely self-taught before Not surprisingly, Paganini composed entering the Oberlin Conservatory in Violin Concerto No. 1 in his violin concertos to impress us as 1967. There he studied composition with well as for our enjoyment. The melodies Richard Hoffmann and Randolph Coleman, D Major Sometimes it’s best are pleasing, but it’s all about the receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1971. not to let the facts virtuosity: the skills they require are truly Before enrolling for graduate studies get in the way of a spectacular. Paganini began composing at Cornell, he took two years of private good story. From the Concerto No. 1 in 1817, when he was study with George Crumb in Philadelphia; the facts of Niccolò 35—not an advanced age for a violin then, after completion of his master’s and Paganini’s life, we soloist. But its densely chromatic double- doctorate degrees, he joined the faculty might expect him and triple-stops reveal that his technical of the School of Music of the University of to be just another skills were already mature, possibly Michigan in 1978. He taught at the Eastman virtuoso violinist surpassing anything that had previously School of Music from 1981 to 2002, and was and composer: born been heard. on the composition faculty of The Juilliard in 1782, third of six Program listings generally show School since 1997. children and tagged as a musical prodigy this concerto without a key signature. Many of today’s composers are by the time he was 5. Niccolò’s father was Paganini composed the orchestral parts described as “eclectic,” but the breadth a struggling trader who supplemented in E-flat, but the solo part in D major with of Christopher Rouse’s music goes far his income as a mandolin player; Niccolò the violin to be tuned a semitone high beyond that. After graduating from Oberlin picked up the instrument at age 5, (scordatura). Ask any fiddler: playing and Cornell, he studied composition mastered it within two years and went on some of these solo passages in E-flat with Karel Husa and George Crumb, both to the violin. He went on to study with the would be virtually impossible. rigorous musical experimenters at home most prominent violin teachers in Italy, who Christopher Rouse Niccolò Paganini Born: 1949. Baltimore, Maryland Born: 1782. Genoa, Italy Died: 2019. Towson, Maryland Died: 1840. Nice, France Prospero’s Rooms Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major Composed: 2011 Composed: 1817-18 World premiere: April 17, 2013, with Alan Gilbert leading the World premiere: March 31, 1819 with Paganini as soloist New York Philharmonic Most recent Pacific Symphony performance: Sept. 23, 2004, with First Pacific Symphony performance: Feb. 27, 2020 Carl St.Clair conducting Instrumentation: 3 flutes including piccolo, 3 oboes including Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons including English horn, 3 clarinets including bass clarinet, 3 bassoons including contrabasoon; 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones; timpani, percussion; contrabasoon; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani, strings; solo violin percussion; harp; strings Estimated duration: 35 minutes Estimated duration: 8 minutes 6 FEB 2020 PacificSymphony.org Sergei Rachmaninoff: that survived his depression. He would initial disaster for the second symphony’s Symphony No. 3 in A Minor later describe the premiere of this premiere, this time conducting it himself to symphony as “the most agonizing hour critical and public acclaim. Rachmaninoff of my life,” one that plunged him into Almost 30 years after that triumph, understood a mental state that would certainly be Rachmaninoff arrived at his newly-built symphonic diagnosed today as clinical depression. retreat on the shores of Switzerland’s composition The core of his identity—belief in his beautiful Lake Lucerne for the express not only as an calling as a composer—was gone. Initial purpose of composing a third symphony. All artistic challenge, sketches for another symphony and an signs augured well: the house was dazzling, but as a career opera based on Dante’s tale of Francesca his spirits were good and his initial sketches prerequisite. His da Rimini were shelved. (Tchaikovsky, for the work went well. But soon, delays potential as a whom Rachmaninoff greatly admired, had began to deter him, including a three-week conductor and composed a tone poem on that subject). rest-cure at a spa in Baden-Baden in July pianist was not Every attempt at new work brought blank and a two-week interruption the following in question, but he was committed to aridity, and it seemed Rachmaninoff month. By summer’s end he had fallen far composition above all, and a symphony might never compose again—least of all a behind, and did not finish the symphony was a critically important milestone for his symphony. until the following summer in 1936. career. He first approached the form when Rachmaninoff’s creative stasis lasted The symphony opens with a haunting he was 22, fashioning an ambitious work about three years. It ended as famously theme, half-prayer and half-chant, that is in the tradition of forebears he admired, as it began, with what we might now call richly cloaked in the textures of stopped including Tchaikovsky and Borodin. It an intervention: a group of concerned horns, cellos and clarinets. As the was ardent, poetic and a disaster, thanks individuals including an aunt, various movement unfolds, it daringly combines to a premiere performance that was an cousins and a family friend confronted him both slow movement and scherzo. utter shambles. Led by the composer in 1900 and persuaded him to consult the Critics often describe this symphony as and conductor Alexander Glazunov, the physician Nikolai Dahl, who specialized “surprising”; instead of the long sweeps of symphony’s first public performance was in treating alcoholic patients via romantic melody that we might expect from said to be the product of an excess of hypnotherapy. Dahl treated Rachmaninoff Rachmaninoff, it gives us inner voices of vodka and a shortage of rehearsal time. for three years with repetitive hypnotic contemplation and even modernity, finally Given the time and place—St. Petersburg affirmations that could have come from returning us to the suggestive, quasi- in still-frigid March 1897—it’s a facile the mouth of Svengali, the demonic religious feelings with which it opens.

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