Pacific Symphony Proudly Recognizes Its Official Partners
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CLASSICAL SERIES september 22nd–24th SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall Sunday, September 22nd–24th, 2011, at 8:00 pm Preview talk with Alan Chapman at 7:00 p.m. presents 2011–2012 HAL & JEANETTE SEGERSTROM FAMILY FOUNDATION CLASSICAL SERIES CARL ST.CLAIR • CONDUCTOR SARAH CHANG • VIOLIN JAMES NEWTON HOWARD I Would Plant A Tree (revised) (b. 1951) FELIX MENDELSSOHN Concerto in E Minor for Violin & Orchestra • Op. 64 (1809 - 1847) Allegro molto appassionato Andante Allegretto non troppo - Allegro molto vivace Sarah Chang INTERMISSION HECTOR BERLIOZ Roman Carnival Overture (1803 - 1869) Pines of Rome • P.141 OTTORINO RESPIGHI The Pines of the Villa Borghese (1879 - 1936) Pines Near a Catacomb The Pines of the Janiculum The Pines of the Appian Way THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY SOUTH COAST PLAZA Pacific Symphony proudly recognizes its official partners Pacific Symphony broadcasts are made possible by a generous grant from The Saturday, September 24th, performance is broadcast live on KUSC, the official classical radio station of Pacific Symphony. The simultaneous streaming of this broadcast over the internet at kusc.org is made possible by the generosity of the musicians of Pacific Symphony. Pacific Symphony gratefully acknowledges the support of its 11,000 subscribing patrons. Thank you! Pacific Symphony · 01 NOTES by michael clive “This is a soul-cleansing process for me,” he told Burlingame, “to be able to write completely unrestricted, provide my own narrative and work with Carl St.Clair and an orchestra the caliber of the Pacific Symphony.” Many Pacific Symphony instrumentalists are in demand for film orchestras, and al- ready knew and liked Howard’s style. The work’s title came to Howard when he remembered a quotation from Martin Luther: “Even if I knew that tomor- row the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Howard told Burlingame “I was struck by the overwhelming positivity of that statement in the face of the possibility of the world ending. The world is in deep crisis now in so many ways, I wanted [‘I Would Plant a Tree’] to be about grace in the face of tremendous difficulty.” Timothy Mangan, music critic of the Orange County Register, took note of the composition’s undeniable confidence and polish, describing it as “…tonal and melodic and athletically rhythmic and highly decorative…it sparkles and scintil- I Would Plant a Tree (revised) Tree Plant a Would I HOWARD NEWTON JAMES 1951) (b. lates.” Does it have a characteristically cinematic sound? No less, perhaps, than the work of Howard’s great Hollywood Instrumentation: 4 flutes (fourth doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, predecessors such as Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang English horn, 3 clarinets (third doubling on bass clarinet), Korngold, Miklós Rósza and Alex North, all of whom also contrabass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, wrote for the concert hall, the opera house, or both—as well 9 trumpets, 4 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, 4 percussion, as film. 2 harps, keyboard, strings Performance time: 21 minutes he accomplishments of American composer James Newton Howard are beyond question, as is the cer- T tainty that you have heard his music: he has written the scores for some 100 films like “Michael Clayton,” “The Village” and “Batman: The Dark Knight” (for which he won a Grammy) as well as the hit television series “ER,” and has been nominated eight times for the Academy Award. Though he is a frequent collaborator with M. Night Shyamalan, his range extends far beyond horror films to other genres; recent scores include “I am Legend” and “Green Lantern.” Still, you may not have heard Howard in the concert hall. His 20-minute “I Would Plant a Tree,” a deeply felt composition that could be called a tone poem, was his first commission for an abstract work written to stand on its own in an or- chestral program. It was commissioned by Pacific Symphony in 2009. Violin Concerto in E Minor FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809 - 1847) A native of Los Angeles, Howard pursued music studies from an early age in Ojai and at the Music Academy of the West Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, (Santa Barbara) before majoring in piano performance at 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, strings, solo violin USC. During the 1970s and 80s he toured with Elton John Performance time: 26 minutes and with Crosby, Stills and Nash. His facility and range in film work made him one of the most sought-after composers hen the bicentennial of Mendelssohn’s birth came in Hollywood. But after working within the industry’s highly round in 2009, the music world did more than just constrained demands, Howard told interviewer Jon Burlin- W celebrate. It reassessed the life and career of this game of the Los Angeles Times that he found the commission’s remarkable composer, whose works have sometimes been freedom to be “terrifying.” more cherished by the public than by critics. The very 02 · Pacific Symphony qualities that make Mendelssohn’s compositions so popular— bullet-speed while the E minor melody is played by the full inspired melodies in abundance, youthful vigor and grace, vivid orchestra. In passages such as this one, the soloist serves as emotional directness—sometimes led scholars to question accompanist—but the playing is spectacular. its “importance.” Wagner rejected Mendelssohn in particu- As the excitement of the opening allegro movement subsides, lar as a Jewish composer of decorative, sentimental music the bassoon continues to sustain its note—a B—as the rest unworthy of true German culture, and though these views of the orchestra is silent. Moving up a tone to middle C, the eventually were widely repudiated, they certainly did not help bassoon leads us without pause into the concerto’s middle Mendelssohn’s critical standing. movement, a serene andante in C major. The movement’s lyri- Upon reconsideration, we find Mendelssohn to be one of cal beauty, which opens from E minor into C major before those geniuses who proves that beauty and accessibility do incorporating a darker middle section in A minor, incorpo- not equate with shallowness. Behind the sunny disposition rates fleet passagework for the soloist. But for many listen- of his music lies the seriousness of one of the great musical ers, it serves mainly as a transitional movement between the intellects of all time, whose impossible precocity in childhood concertos sweetly melancholy opening and its joyful closing was on par with Mozart’s. In his tragically short life (he died movement, an effervescent vivace in E major that sounds at age 38 in 1847), Mendelssohn achieved a statesmanlike like a merry chase through sunny fields. A boisterous coda position in European culture, directing one of the continent’s concludes the concerto. most important orchestras (the Leipzig Gewandhaus) and Speaking on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1906, the spurring revivals of interest in the music of Mozart and J.S. great violinist Joseph Joachim aptly described the world’s Bach. Most of all, Mendelssohn composed more than his affection for the Mendelssohn violin concerto: “The Germans share of indestructible all-time hits of the classical reper- have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromis- toire—works like the violin concerto, the octet, the “Italian” ing is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in serious- symphony, the incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s ness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. Dream” with its wedding march now a universal symbol for But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.” matrimony. Remarkably for such a popular composer, there is much more about Mendelssohn’s music, especially his majes- tic choral works, waiting to be discovered. Not so his gorgeous violin concerto, one of the three or four most beloved staples of the violin repertory, and universally regarded as one of the greatest of all violin concertos. Its singing melodies traverse an arc from poetic sadness to sheer joy. Once we hear these tunes, they are ours forever. Or do they possess us, as they seem to have possessed Mendelssohn himself? “I would like to write a violin concerto for you next winter,” he famously told his longtime friend the violinist Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, in 1838. “One in E minor runs through my head, the begin- ning of which gives me no peace.” That beginning is the concerto’s dazzling opening, which plunges into a sweetly melancholy statement in the solo violin without the drama- building introduction that precedes the soloist’s entrance in most romantic concertos. This songlike opening statement quickly gives way to a bravura display of notes that swirl downward until the opening theme Roman Carnival Overture BERLIOZ HECTOR (1803 - 1869) is restated in the orchestra. From then on, the concerto packs in abundantly virtuosic writing. The movement contains an Instrumentation: 2 flutes (second doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes adventurous, complex development through highly chromatic (second doubling on English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, modulations, introducing a second melody that answers the 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 coronets, 3 trombones, timpani, concerto’s initially melancholy E minor statement with an 4 percussion, strings answer in tranquil, glowing G major. On the way back to the Performance time: 8 minutes opening E minor theme, Mendelssohn leads the soloist through an innovative cadenza that is fully notated (no improvising allowed). Of this movement’s beautiful features that were t’s almost as if Hector Berlioz led two lives in music. modern for their day, note especially the “ricocheting” His mature, measured insights as a critic contrast bow, which oscillates over the strings to voice arpeggios at I sharply with the almost demonic energy, flamboyance Pacific Symphony · 03 and ambition of his own compositions.