Madeline Plays Mendelssohn

Madeline Plays Mendelssohn TIMPANOGOS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JOHN PEW MUSIC DIRECTOR CELEBRATING Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto 10 YEARS Schubert, Unfinished Symphony February 12 & 13, 2021 7:30 pm Timberline Middle School Concert Program Donna Diana Overture (1894) Emil von Reznicek (1860-1945) Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished” (1822) Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1845) Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) 1. Allegro molto appassionato 2. Andante 3. Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace Madeline Adkins, violin 1 Violinist Madeline Adkins joined the Utah Symphony as Concertmaster in 2016. Prior to this appointment, she was a member of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, performing as Associate Concertmaster for 11 seasons. She was also Concertmaster of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra from 2008-2016. Adkins performs on the "ex-Chardon" Guadagnini of 1782, graciously loaned by Gabrielle Israelievitch to perpetuate the legacy of her late husband, former Toronto Symphony concertmaster, Jacques Israeliev- itch. She has served as Guest Concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, and the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra in Chicago. Adkins has also been a guest artist at numer- ous festivals including the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival in South Africa, the Sarasota Music Festival, Jackson Hole Chamber Music, Music in the Mountains, and the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, as well as a clinician at the National Orchestral Institute, the National Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and the Haitian Orchestra Institute. In addition, she has served as the Music Director of the NOVA Chamber Music Series in Salt Lake City. A sought-after soloist, Adkins has appeared with orchestras in Europe, Asia, Africa, and 24 US states. Her recording of the complete works for violin and piano by Felix Mendelssohn with pianist Luis Magalhães on the TwoPianists label was released to critical acclaim in 2016. American Record Guide notes that Adkins and Magalhães are "ardent and spontaneous" and "their fierce coordina- tion is breathtaking." The daughter of noted musicologists, Adkins is the youngest of eight children, six of whom are professional musicians. She received her Bachelor’s summa cum laude from the University of North Texas and her Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory where she studied with James Buswell. When not on stage, Madeline is passionate about animal rescue, and has fostered over 100 kittens. She also volunteers regularly for the Utah Food Bank, International Rescue Committee, and Best Friends Animal Society. 2 Thanks We’d like to thank the Kenneth and LaRae Savage Family Foundation for their generous support of the Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra - 2020-2021 Season. We would also like to thank the following sources of support: Member FDIC Rocky Mountain Power Foundation We’d like to thank the Utah County Cares Non-Profit Grant Program for its generous COVID relief funding. 3 Program Notes Emil von Reznicek, Donna Diana Overture Austrian-German composer Emil von Reznicek (1860-1945) is best known for this short overture, typically performed as a standalone piece rather than with the comic opera for which it was composed in Prague in 1894. The opera, based on a German translation of a Spanish comedy, tells the story of the haughty Donna Diana, daughter of the Count Sovereign of Barcelona, who, after repeatedly rejecting her primary suitor Don Cesar, finally succumbs to his wit and charm. Reznicek spent much of his life in Germany, primarily in Berlin. He was a friend and colleague of Richard Strauss and was respected as an important composer through the 1920s, but his star fell in the following decades, as younger composers ventured into serialism and other post-tonal techniques. It didn't help that Reznicek was wrongly accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. (His youngest son Emil had been, but his daughter Felicitas was a member of the German resistance and one of the most important informers for the British MI-6, and Reznicek, whose wife was part Jewish, did not support the Nazi regime.) In the 1970s, conductor Gordon Wright reintroduced Reznicek's music to the stage and, together with Felicitas, founded the Reznicek Society, of which Utah Symphony conductor Maurice Abravenel was a prominent member. A sprightly romp in triple meter (3/16), the overture begins with a false start of sorts, before rising in scales to its bouncy first theme. This theme, played first by flute and violin, is echoed later in the woodwind counterpoint to the lyrical second theme, also premiered by the high strings. Elements from both themes, and an unsure melody in oboe and clarinet, sound a more suspenseful tone in the middle development section. After a recap of the two main themes, the piece drives to a conclusion (as had the exposition) with rising and falling scales and arpeggios, including brass fanfares. The final lines ring somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a characteristic of Reznicek's music as a whole. Though much of his oeuvre has remained sadly neglected, Reznicek's overture has found a home on the concert stage, as well as in media broadcasting. It furnished the theme for the American radio series Challenge of the Yukon (1947-1955) and its television counterpart, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (1955-1958), and was used during the BBC's Children's Hour for Stephen King-Hall's discussions of current affairs. Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 8 in B minor, “Unfinished” (D. 759) Schubert began his “unfinished” (unvollendete) symphony in 1822, but left only two complete movements when he died six years later. A scherzo also remains, nearly complete, in piano score but was only orchestrated in part. 4 Program Notes (continued) As for a fourth movement, some scholars have suggested that Schubert originally composed the longest entr’acte from his incidental music for Rosamunde, a piece also in B minor and in a similar style, as the symphony's final movement. Speculation as to why Schubert never finished the work has led to several suggestions, including his dissatisfaction with the uncharacteristically consistent triple meter of the known movements, distraction due to his work on his Wanderer Fantasy for solo piano, and his association of the work with the onset of the syphilis that (many historians believe) ultimately brought about his untimely death, at age 31. The work's early history also remains opaque. In 1823, Schubert sent a copy to his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, in recognition of his having been granted an honor- ary doctorate by the Graz Music Society of which Hüttenbrenner was a leading member. But Hüttenbrenner never notified the society or had the work performed. Only decades later, in 1865, did he share the work with conductor Herbert von Herbeck, who premiered the work that December in Vienna, incongruously capping off its two movements with the finale of Schubert's Symphony No. 3 in D Major. The premiere was a success, and the score was first published in 1867. Though left incom- plete, Schubert's Symphony No. 8 is often called the first true Romantic symphony due to the power of the lyricism that dresses and shapes its classical forms and to the colorful and innovative timbres brought together not for function but for effect. The haunting B minor first movement, “Allegro moderato,” proceeds in typical sonata-allegro form, playing with tonal expectations and thematic tension in a way suggestive of inner struggle, even “a dark night of the soul,” on Schubert's part. It is known for its mysterious low-string opening and haunting first theme, played by oboe and clarinet, a pairing we find again, in succession, in movement two. In his characteristic manner, Schubert transitions to the more settled second theme almost abruptly: here, by a short modulation in the horns that introduces the lyrical cellos. A dramatic closing group, innovative development section, harmonically inventive recapitulation, and cyclical coda bring the unsettled movement to a satisfying, if dark conclusion. While more peaceful, the E major second movement, “Andante con moto,” nevertheless cycles through moments of melancholy (the lyrical but restless second theme), as well as outright drama and tension (the slow, rising low brass notes, punctuated by unison strings in syncopation, then intensified by harried running of second violins and violas). The movement unfolds in sonatina form, or sonata form without the normal development section. Notable, again, is the abrupt transition to the second theme: this time, just four sustained unison notes in the violins. The transition from minor (clarinet) to major (oboe) statements of the second theme is characteristic of Schubert's harmonic slides. An extensive coda at the end, with its own new theme, takes on the role of a misplaced development. 5 Program Notes (continued) Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin in E Minor (Op.64) was inspired by his friendship with Ferdinand David, whom he had appointed as Concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra after he took over as conductor in 1835. In a letter to David from July 1838, Mendelssohn wrote, “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace." The work took shape over the following six years and was premiered on 13 March 1845 by Ferdinand David, the violinist who had inspired Mendelssohn in the first place and collaborated with him throughout the compositional process. The composer, unfortunately, was sick and unable to conduct the premiere, leaving the performance in the hands of his assistant, Danish composer and conductor Niels Gade. David and Mendelssohn performed the work together for the first time later that year, on 23 October 1845.

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