Season 2015-2016 The Philadelphia

Tuesday, May 24, at 7:30 National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, China

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Lang Lang Piano

Sibelius Finlandia, Op. 26

Rachmaninoff Piano No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 I. Vivace II. Andante III. Allegro vivace

Intermission

Rimsky-Korsakov Sheherazade, Op. 35 I. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship (Largo e maestoso)—Allegro non troppo II. The Tale of the Kalander Prince (Lento— Allegro molto III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess (Andantino quasi allegretto) IV. Festival at Baghdad—The Sea—The Ship Is Wrecked—Conclusion (Allegro molto)

The

The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the preeminent in the world, renowned for its distinctive sound, desired for its keen ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences, and admired for a legacy of imagination and innovation on and off the concert stage. The Orchestra is transforming its rich tradition of achievement, sustaining the highest level of artistic quality, but also challenging—and exceeding—that level by creating powerful musical experiences for audiences at home and around the world.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s highly collaborative style, deeply-rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike since his inaugural season in 2012. Under his leadership the Orchestra returned to recording, with two celebrated CDs on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, continuing its history of recording success. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of listeners on the radio with weekly Sunday afternoon broadcasts on WRTI-FM.

Philadelphia is home and the Orchestra nurtures an important relationship with patrons who support the main season at the Kimmel Center, and also with those who enjoy the Orchestra’s area performances at the Mann Center, Penn’s Landing, and other cultural, civic, and learning venues. The Orchestra maintains a strong commitment to collaborations with cultural and community organizations on a regional and national level.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, presentations, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador for Philadelphia and for the . Having been the first American orchestra to perform in China, in 1973 at the request of President Nixon, The Philadelphia Orchestra today boasts a new partnership with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing and the Shanghai Oriental Art Centre. The ensemble annually performs at and the Kennedy Center while also enjoying summer residencies in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Vail, Colorado.

The Philadelphia Orchestra serves as a catalyst for cultural activity across Philadelphia’s many communities, as it builds an offstage presence as strong as its onstage one. The Orchestra’s award-winning Collaborative Learning programs, including the recently announced HEAR initiatives, engage over 50,000 students, families, and community members through programs such as PlayINs, side-by-sides, PopUP concerts, free Neighborhood Concerts, School Concerts, and residency work in Philadelphia and abroad. The Orchestra’s musicians, in their own dedicated roles as teachers, coaches, and mentors, serve a key role in growing young musician talent and a love of classical music, nurturing and celebrating the wealth of musicianship in the Philadelphia region. For more information on The Philadelphia Orchestra, please visit www.philorch.org.

Music Director

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair, is an inspired leader of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and he has renewed his commitment to the ensemble through the 2021-22 season. His highly collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called him “phenomenal,” adding that under his baton, “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.” Highlights of his fourth season include a year-long exploration of works that exemplify the famous Philadelphia Sound, including Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 and other pieces premiered by the Orchestra; a Music of Vienna Festival; and the continuation of a commissioning project for principal players.

Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling talents of his generation. He has been music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic since 2008 and artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000. He also continues to enjoy a close relationship with the London Philharmonic, of which he was principal guest conductor. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s most revered ensembles, and he has conducted critically acclaimed performances at many of the leading opera houses.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Deutsche Grammophon (DG) enjoy a long-term collaboration. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with two CDs on that label; the second, ’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Daniil Trifonov, was released in August 2015. He continues fruitful recording relationships with the Rotterdam Philharmonic on DG, EMI Classics, and BIS Records; the London Philharmonic and Choir for the LPO label; and the Orchestre Métropolitain for ATMA Classique.

A native of Montreal, Yannick studied at that city’s Conservatory of Music and continued lessons with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini and with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honors are appointments as Companion of the Order of Canada and Officer of the National Order of Quebec, a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, Canada’s National Arts Centre Award, the Prix Denise- Pelletier, Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year, and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Westminster Choir College.

To read Yannick’s full bio, please visit www.philorch.org/conductor.

Soloist

Superstar pianist Lang Lang has played sold-out concerts in every major city across the globe, from intimate recital halls to the grandest of stages—including the 2014 World Cup concert in Rio de Janeiro with Plácido Domingo; the 2014 and 2015 Grammy Awards, where he performed with Metallica and Pharrell Williams; the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where more than four billion people viewed his performance; the last night of the Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall; and the Liszt 200th birthday concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Charles Dutoit, which was broadcast live in more than 300 movie theaters around the U.S. and 200 cinemas across Europe. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Lang Lang is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Vienna, Berlin, and New York philharmonics and is a regular soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his debut with the Philadelphians in 2001; performed with them on tour in Asia in 2001, 2005, and 2008 (and also this month); and most recently appeared with the ensemble in 2014.

Named one of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people in the world,” Lang Lang has formed enduring musical partnerships with numerous artists, from conductors such as Daniel Barenboim and Gustavo Dudamel to artists from outside classical music, including singer Julio Iglesias, jazz titan Herbie Hancock, and hip hop dancer Marquese “Nonstop” Scott. He served as the first official ambassador of the YouTube Symphony, a role that combined two of his great loves: music and outreach through technology. An exclusive recording artist with Sony Music Entertainment since February 2010, Lang Lang’s latest releases include an all-Mozart CD and Lang Lang in Paris, featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Bach, and Chopin.

Lang Lang credits the Tom and Jerry cartoon “The Cat Concerto” (featuring Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2) with introducing him to that composer’s music. He retains a childlike excitement about what he calls “his second career” bringing music into the lives of children around the world through his work for charities such as UNICEF and through the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. A Steinway piano, specially designed for early music education, has been named for him. And his biography, Journey of a Thousand Miles, includes a version for younger readers.

The Music

Finlandia

Jean Sibelius Born in Hämeenlinna, Finland, December 8, 1865 Died in Järvenpää (near Helsinki), September 20, 1957

Finland has produced many accomplished composers during the last two centuries, but abroad we rarely hear the music of any of them, save one. By becoming one of the great composers of the 20th century—indeed, of any century— emerged a national hero in this nation of only five million inhabitants. In fact, by composing such works as Finlandia and the Violin Concerto, he became perhaps the most famous Finn who ever lived.

A Unique Compositional Voice When Sibelius wrote Finlandia in 1899, he had spent nearly a decade forging an extraordinarily dense orchestral style—in epic symphonic poems constructed on a formidable scale. Pieces such as En saga (1892) and the massive Lemminkäinen Suite (first version, 1893-95), had brought him much fame at home. His position as Finland’s most prominent citizen is one he has maintained to this day, more than a half-century after his death.

In his younger years he had immersed himself in a wide range of musical styles, including those of the Viennese Classicists, of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, and of Wagner, whose operas he had heard at Bayreuth in 1894. If his early style contained much of these composers’ outlooks, it also struck out on a singular path, with a musical style that is as readily identifiable as any composer of the 20th century.

A Nationalistic Rallying Cry To call a work Finlandia in the Russia-dominated Finland was a subversive and even dangerous act. Imperial Russia still officially ruled over Finland; in 1899 the had declared Finnish rights null and void, and nationalist sentiment against the situation reached an all-time high. Sibelius composed a number of patriotic pieces, among them the Song of Athenians, the text of which echoed the sentiment of the majority of Finns at the turn of the 20th century: “Rise with thy strong arm furious. Rise to fight for thy country. Hasten to yield up thy life, life for the races to come!” Alas, Finland was not to break free from Russia’s grip for some time.

The same year came Sibelius’s most beloved orchestral tone poem, Finlandia, which at various times appeared under other titles in early performances. Composed in a quick burst of inspiration just after the completion of the First Symphony, it was received with fanatical enthusiasm at a benefit concert in Helsinki for the Press Pension Fund on November 4, when it was called Finland Awakes. The music accompanied the final tableau in a series of seven pieces chronologically representing crucial moments in Finnish history. With heavy revisions Sibelius extracted this finale to create a separate tone poem; it was performed in Helsinki the following July and published in 1901 as Finlandia . There are good reasons to think the title was meant to place the work in the tradition of Liszt’s Hungaria, Smetana’s Má vlast (My Country), and Balakirev’s Russia. In the years that followed, Finlandia evolved into a sort of rallying cry for Finns, containing the potent meanings that Verdi’s or Smetana’s or Tchaikovsky’s nationalistic statements had for their respective audiences.

Sibelius’s tone poem relies on folklike themes; they were all of his own invention. The principal subject is known to nearly every listener today, and has been used for countless vernacular settings, especially Protestant hymns. Finlandia is a blaze of brass and stirring themes, and is orchestrated with all of the composer’s orchestral and motivic acumen.

—Paul J. Horsley/Christopher H. Gibbs

Finlandia was composed in 1899.

Leopold Stokowski conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the piece, in November 1914.

The Philadelphians have recorded Finlandia seven times: in 1921, 1930, and 1940 with Stokowski for RCA; in 1950 and 1968 with for CBS; and twice in an arrangement that includes chorus (in 1958 with Ormandy and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for CBS, and in 1972 with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra Chorus for RCA).

The work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle), and strings.

Performance time is approximately eight minutes.

The Music

Piano Concerto No. 1

Sergei Rachmaninoff Born in Semyonovo, Russia, April 1, 1873 Died in Beverly Hills, , March 28, 1943

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born to a wealthy family that assiduously cultivated his prodigious musical gifts. Although he composed a fair amount of juvenilia, he thought fit to publish his First Piano Concerto as his official Opus 1. The 17-year-old began writing it in 1890 at his family’s pastoral estate Ivanovka, some 300 miles south of Moscow. “I am composing a piano concerto,” he wrote to a friend the following March: “Two movements are already written; the last movement composed, but not yet written; I will probably finish the whole concerto by late spring and then orchestrate it during the summer.” (This letter suggests an interesting distinction between what he felt was “composing” a work and “writing” it down.)

As anticipated, by mid-July Rachmaninoff reported success: “I could have finished it earlier, but after the first movement I idled for a long time and began to write out the other movements only on July 3. I wrote down and orchestrated the last two movements in two and a half days. Just imagine: I wrote from five in the morning until eight in the evening, after finishing the work I was so terribly tired. … I am pleased with the Concerto.”

A Path to Revision Rachmaninoff premiered the first movement of the piece in March 1892 at the . He dedicated the work to his cousin, the distinguished pianist Alexander Siloti, who proceeded to perform the piece frequently. Although Rachmaninoff published the Concerto a couple years later in a two-piano version, he cooled on the work and declined to play it himself. A decade later he said that he needed to take it “in hand, look it over, and then decide how much time and work will be required for its new version, and whether it’s worth doing, anyway.”

Now in his mid-30s, Rachmaninoff was a famous composer. The Second Piano Concerto (1901) had helped secure that stature and people were curious to hear what his first effort in the genre was like—hence the reassessment: “It is so terrible in its present form that I should like to work at it and, if possible, get it into decent shape.” But the Third Concerto (1909), which proved yet another triumph when he premiered it in New York, sidetracked Rachmaninoff again. It was not until 1917, just before he left revolutionary Russia for the West, that he returned to his youthful concerto. The revisions involved a thinning out of the orchestration, making some structural modifications, writing a new cadenza for the opening movement, and recasting the finale to a considerable extent. Rachmaninoff gave the first performance of the new version that year at Carnegie Hall with Modest Altschuler the Russian Symphony Orchestra Society.

Despite the attractions of an early work tempered by mature second thoughts, it was not able to dislodge Rachmaninoff’s famous Second and Third . As the composer confessed to Alfred Swan, the first professor of music at Haverford College: “I have rewritten my First Concerto; it is really good now. All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto, they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third.”

A Closer Look Despite the composer’s revisions, the First Concerto still sounds like the Rachmaninoff whose music audiences so embraced, chronologically situated, as it is, both before and after its phenomenally famous siblings and his brilliant Second Symphony (1906–07). Because the original version of the Concerto survives we know that the revision remains close to what the teenage Rachmaninoff initially composed. Even at such a young age many fingerprints of his mature style are already evident, beginning with the lushly expansive first theme of the first movement ( Vivace ) that follows a dramatic opening—a brass fanfare leading to massive double octaves loudly proclaimed by the piano soloist. This and other parts of the Concerto seem to be modeled on Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, which it seems Siloti was diligently practicing while spending the summer of 1890 at Ivanovka with the composer. The brief second-movement Andante offers a lyrical and nocturnal interlude before the vibrant finale ( Allegro vivace ).

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Rachmaninoff composed his First Piano Concerto from 1890 to 1891 and revised it in 1917.

Rachmaninoff himself gave the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of his First Concerto, on March 28, 1919, with Leopold Stokowski conducting.

The composer returned to Philadelphia during the late 1930s for a series of performances of the piece, during which he recorded the work with Eugene Ormandy and the Orchestra for RCA. The Philadelphians also recorded the Concerto for CBS in 1963, with Philippe Entremont and Ormandy conducting.

The score calls for solo piano, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion (cymbal, triangle), and strings.

Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto runs approximately 25 minutes in performance.

The Music

Sheherazade

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Born in Tikhvin, Russia, March 18, 1844 Died in Lyubensk (near St. Petersburg), June 21, 1908

Of the five Russian composers who constituted the “Mighty Handful”—Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Musorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov—all but one were amateur musicians. Only Balakirev worked as a professional. The rest were largely self-taught and proud of it, firmly skeptical of academic musical training. It was somewhat surprising then when Rimsky-Korsakov, a sea-faring officer in the Imperial Navy, accepted an appointment as professor of composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1871.

Folksong and Folk Tales Before his appointment, Rimsky-Korsakov had written some large-scale works including a symphony and several orchestral tone poems, though composing was at this point in his career a largely intuitive process. He had read Berlioz’s treatise on orchestration, but had never studied counterpoint, did not know the names of musical intervals or chords, and couldn’t harmonize a chorale. But he had a natural gift for orchestration, and an affinity for the raw, untutored brand of music based on Russian folksong and folk tales that was a defining feature of the “Mighty Handful.”

Once he started work as a professor, Rimsky-Korsakov became (as he put it) “possibly the very best pupil” at the Conservatory, learning as much as he could about compositional theory and technique. He began a thorough self-education in Western musical practices and genres, attempting to stay at least one step ahead of his students. He also remained in naval service for a while, serving as inspector of naval bands (a civilian post), which allowed him to increase his familiarity with brass and wind instruments.

One Thousand and One Nights With this blend of nationalist vigor and a recently acquired grounding in Western composition, Rimsky-Korsakov became a resolute advocate of Russian music. But that fierce nationalism didn’t prevent him from exploring exotic and foreign themes of the kind that also excited so many other composers in the late-Romantic era. And there was nothing more exotic in 19th-century Europe than One Thousand and One Nights, a popular collection of ancient folk tales from the Middle East. These stories, translated from the original Arabic into French in 1704, shaped much of the Western attitudes about Arabic culture and religion during the 18th and 19th centuries. Russian composers in particular also identified closely with the exotic “otherness” of Middle Eastern cultures as a kind of parallel to their own distinctiveness from Western European musical and cultural traditions.

This celebrated series of Arabian tales is framed by the story of the Sultan Shahriar who, enraged by his wife’s infidelity, executes her and declares all women to be unfaithful. He then marries a series of virgins only to execute them in turn the morning after each wedding. Sheherazade, the beautiful daughter of one of the Sultan’s chief advisors, agrees to marry the Sultan to try and disabuse him of this brutal misogyny, even if it almost certainly will result in her own death. But she has a plan. On their wedding night Sheherazade tells the Sultan only half of a story. The Sultan, eager to hear the end, gives her a reprieve until the following night, when she finishes the first story and begins a second, again leaving it unfinished. This prolongs her life for 1001 nights until the Sultan finally relents and agrees to pardon her.

A Closer Look In the summer of 1888, Rimsky-Korsakov worked on an orchestral suite based on some of these famous tales. Although he was thinking of specific stories when he wrote each movement, the evocative music does not illustrate them in a strictly programmatic manner. Instead, the composer noted that he was creating a “kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images” that were meant to fire the exotic fantasies of the listener in a more general fashion. But he did admit that the solo violin, heard throughout the suite, represents Sheherazade herself.

The four movements approximate the traditional four-movement format of a classical symphony. The opening Largo e maestoso—Allegro non troppo includes sea imagery associated with the story of Sinbad which, though it is a genuinely ancient Middle Eastern tale, was not included in the Arabian manuscripts of One Thousand and One Nights. (It was, instead, interpolated into the first French edition by the translator.) The scherzo-like second movement (Lento—Allegro molto ) creates musical pictures associated with the story of the “Kalander Prince,” a nobleman disguised as a fakir at an Arabian bazaar. In the lyrical slow movement (Andantino quasi allegretto ) are echoes of the Young Prince and the Young Princess, who were so much alike that they might be mistaken for twins. Several stories are combined for the exuberant Allegro molto finale, but it’s fitting that Rimsky-Korsakov, the former naval officer, should return to evocations of the sea to close this colorful, panoramic suite.

—Luke Howard

Sheherazade was composed in 1888.

Fritz Scheel conducted The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first performances of Sheherazade, in October 1906.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has recorded the complete Sheherazade seven times: in 1927 and 1934 with Stokowski for RCA; in 1947, 1953, and 1962 with Ormandy for CBS; in 1972 with Ormandy for RCA; and in 1982 with Muti for EMI. The Orchestra also recorded excerpts from the work in 1919 and 1921, with Stokowski for RCA.

The score calls for piccolo, two flutes (II doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam-tam, tambourine, triangle), harp, and strings.

Sheherazade runs approximately 50 minutes in performance.

Program notes © 2016. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.