PENINSULA MUSIC FESTIVAL PROGRAM 7

Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 7:30 p.m.

Alastair Willis, Guest Conductor Maya Anjali Buchanan, Violin

LOS ANGELES TO NEW YORK

WILLIAMS The Cowboys Overture

KORNGOLD Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 Moderato nobile Romance: Andante Finale: Allegro assai vivace

— INTERMISSION —

RODGERS “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” from On Your Toes orch. Bennett

GERSHWIN Promenade, Walking the Dog

HERRMANN Suite from Psycho Prelude The City The Rainstorm The Madhouse The Murder The Water The Swamp The Stairs The Knife The Cellar Finale

WILLIAMS “Adventures on Earth” from E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial) Selections from Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens March of the Resistance — Rey’s Theme — Jedi Steps “The Rebellion Is Reborn” from Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

This concert is sponsored by Gail Fischer in memory of her son, Gregory B. Boulanger (1965-1985).

Mr. Willis appears by arrangement with William Reinert Associates, Millerton, NY.

Photography and audio recordings of this concert are strictly prohibited. Please, no cell phones during the concert.

— 26 — PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

Program 7 appeared as piano soloist. Korngold was an international celebrity at thirteen. The Cowboys Overture In 1915 and 1916, Korngold wrote the first two of John Williams (born in 1932) his five operas:Der Ring des Polykrates, a comedy, and Composed in 1972. Violanta, a tragedy. Following a two-year stint in the Austrian army playing piano for the troops during World John Williams was born in New York in 1932, stud- War I, Korngold turned again to opera, producing his ied at Juilliard and UCLA, and by the early 1960s was dramatic masterpiece, Die Tote Stadt (“The Dead City”), composing for feature films and television, as well as which was premiered simultaneously in Hamburg (where working as a pianist, arranger and conductor in Los An- he served as conductor for three years after the war) and geles. His music began to receive wide recognition when Cologne on December 4, 1920; Die Tote Stadt was the he won Emmys for his scores for the television movies first German opera performed at the Met after World War Heidi and Jane Eyre. He has since composed music and I. After Korngold returned to Vienna in 1920, he was ap- served as music director for well over 300 movies and pointed professor of composition at the Staatsakademie. television shows, receiving 51 Academy Award nomina- In 1934, the Austrian director Max Reinhardt was tions (the most of any living person and second only to conscripted by Warner Brothers in Hollywood to film a Walt Disney) and winning five Oscars, 24 Grammys, four version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He chose to Golden Globes and three Emmys, as well as numerous use Mendelssohn’s incidental music as background, gold and platinum records. In addition to his film music, and took Korngold along to arrange the score. Korn- Williams has written many concert works. From 1980 gold, who, as a Jew, felt increasingly uneasy in Austria, to 1993, he was conductor of the Boston Pops and has accepted other offers in Hollywood, and, when the Nazi also appeared as guest conductor with major orches- Anschluss in 1938 prevented him from returning home, tras. Among Williams’ many distinctions are twenty he settled permanently in California. (He became a honorary degrees, induction into the Hollywood Bowl United States citizen in 1943.) For the next seven years, Hall of Fame, a Kennedy Center Honor (America’s high- he devoted his talents to creating a body of film music est award for artistic achievement), Golden Baton Award that set a standard for Hollywood composers, and won for Lifetime Achievement from the League of American two Academy Awards (for Anthony Adverse and The Orchestras, and National Medal of Arts. Adventures of Robin Hood). His father’s death in 1945, The Cowboys Overture is based on music from the however, caused him to re-evaluate his career, and he 1972 film of the same name directed by Mark Rydell and returned to writing concert music with concertos for starring John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, Bruce Dern, violin and cello, and a large symphony. Korngold died on Colleen Dewhurst and Slim Pickens. The outer sections November 29, 1957, and his remains were interred in the of the sparkling Overture are vigorous and optimistic, Hollywood Cemetery, within a few feet of those of Doug- reminiscent in about equal amounts of hoe-down and las Fairbanks, Sr., D.W. Griffith and Rudolf Valentino. Coplandesque Americana, while the central portion is The first work Korngold undertook upon his return more lyrical and nostalgic. to composing concert music was a concerto written at the urging of the Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 who, like the composer, had been driven from Europe to Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) America by the war. The piece was written largely dur- Composed in 1945. ing the summer of 1945, but its premiere was delayed Premiered on February 15, 1947 in St. Louis, conducted until early 1947, by which time Huberman had returned by Vladimir Golschmann with Jascha Heifetz as soloist. home. Jascha Heifetz was therefore enlisted as solo- ist for the first performance, on February 15 in Saint Erich Wolfgang Korngold (his middle name honored Louis, an event that one local critic reported inspired the Mozart) was the younger son of Julius Korngold, one of greatest ovation in his experience; he predicted the new Vienna’s most influential music critics at the turn of the Concerto would endure as long as that by Mendelssohn. 20th century. By age five, Erich was playing piano duets When Heifetz subsequently played the work in New with his father; two years later he began composing, and York, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere, audience at nine, he produced a cantata (Gold) that convinced his reaction was uniformly enthusiastic, but critical opinion father to enroll him at the Vienna Conservatory. When was sharply divided. It was not until the 1970s, with the Gustav Mahler heard Erich play his cantata the following revival of interest in Korngold’s film and concert music, year, he proclaimed the boy “a genius” and arranged for that the Concerto secured its place in the violin reper- him to take lessons with Alexander Zemlinsky. Korn- tory. Upon its publication in 1950, Korngold dedicated gold made remarkable progress under Zemlinsky — his the score to Alma Mahler-Werfel, the widow of Gustav Piano Sonata No. 1 was published in 1908, when he had Mahler and wife of the writer Franz Werfel, who is best ripened to the age of eleven. The following year he wrote remembered for the novel The Song of Bernadette, the a ballet, Der Schneemann (“The Snowman”), which was source of the popular 1943 movie. Korngold had be- staged at the Vienna Royal Opera at the command of friended the Werfels when they arrived in Los Angeles in Emperor Franz Josef. In 1911, the budding composer 1940, and he made a gift of the Concerto to Alma on her gave a concert of his works in Berlin, in which he also 69th birthday, in 1948. — 27 — Korngold’s Violin Concerto has an abundance of two Most Beautiful Girl in the World and My Romance. qualities essential in a work of its species — melody Once Jumbo was on the boards, Rodgers and Hart and virtuosity. The brilliance and difficulty of the writing worked their ballet-cum-musical scenario into a script for the soloist are evident throughout, while the work’s titled On Your Toes for Shubert, who brought in George lyricism is inherent in its thematic material, which the Abbott, already well established on Broadway as a top- composer borrowed from four of his best film scores. notch director of fast-paced musicals, to sharpen the (Korngold’s advantageous contract with Warner Broth- story and brighten the dialogue. As it turned out, Shu- ers allowed him to retain the rights to his scores.) The bert was already too heavily committed to produce On haunting first theme of the opening movement is from Your Toes himself, so he turned the whole project over the 1937 picture Another Dawn, a desert-outpost drama to another experienced Broadway impresario, Dwight whose most memorable component is Korngold’s music. Deere Wiman. On Your Toes was revolutionary in that it To provide a contrasting element in this loosely woven called not just for conventional Broadway dancing but sonata form, the composer used the gently yearning also for two extended sequences of ballet, so Tamara love theme from Juarez, the 1939 film biography of Geva, one of the leading ballerinas of the Ballet Russe, the Mexican statesman and hero, which was based in was engaged to star opposite Ray Bolger; the brilliant part on Franz Werfel’s play Juarez and Maximilian. The George Balanchine, former master of the Diaghilev Bal- second movement (subtitled Romance) is initiated by let and the Ballet Russe de Mon Rózsa te Carlo (and a poignant melody from Korngold’s Academy Award- recently divorced from Geva), agreed to do the chore- winning score for Anthony Adverse, the 1936 film about ography. On Your Toes opened at the Imperial theater an orphan who struggles to overcome the adversities on April 11, 1936, played for 320 performances, and of life in early 19th-century America. The score is one became enshrined in Broadway legend. It was revived in of the most extensive ever composed for a Hollywood 1954 and again in 1983, for which the original jazz-age movie, containing no fewer than 43 themes and provid- orchestrations by the prolific Hans Spialek (147 shows ing almost continuous background music for the film’s for Broadway, twelve of them for Rodgers and Hart) were 136 minutes. The Concerto’s finale is a sparkling rondo reconstructed and heard for the first time in nearly fifty whose witty main theme is a tarantella melody from The years. Prince and the Pauper, the 1937 screen recreation of In the story, Junior (the Ray Bolger role), who had Mark Twain’s well-known story. danced with his family in vaudeville as a kid, is a mu- sic professor at WPA Extension University. A student “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” from On Your Toes of his, Sidney Cohn, has composed a jazz ballet titled Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which takes a mob hit as Composed in 1936. its subject, and wants to get it performed. There is a Premiered on April 11, 1936 at the Imperial Theater in growing mutual attraction between Junior and another New York City. of his students, Frankie Frayne (their numbers include There’s a Small Hotel), and she introduces him to Peggy Dick Rodgers and Larry Hart spent the years from Porterfield, the principal benefactor of the Russian 1931 to 1935 away from troubled Broadway in the Ballet. Junior would like to have the company produce largely Depression-proof creative enclave of Hollywood, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, so Peggy takes him to meet writing the music and lyrics for three feature films and Vera Baronova (Tamara Geva), the prima ballerina, and contributing songs to several others; their Hollywood Sergei Alexandrovich, the impresario. When Junior later hits included Blue Moon, Lover, Mimi and Isn’t It Roman- turns up to see Sergei’s Arabian Nights ballet called La tic? By early 1935, Rodgers and Hart were envisioning a Princesse Zenobia, he is pressed into duty by Peggy to new kind of musical, one that would integrate the songs replace an ill slave, and almost ruins the performance. into the story, reveal character and move the action After the debacle, Sergei is hardly in the mood to stage forward, and to try out their ideas they came up with Sidney’s ballet, but Peggy informs him that she will with- a scenario about a former vaudeville hoofer who gets draw her financial support if he does not, and the matter drawn inadvertently into the formal world of ballet. They is then quickly settled. During rehearsals for Slaughter pitched their draft to Pandro Berman, head of RKO, as on Tenth Avenue, Vera incites the jealousy of Konstan- a vehicle for Fred Astaire, but the world’s most famous tine Morrosine, the company’s male lead whose affair dancer turned it down because he felt that the required with her is on the rocks, by encouraging Junior’s interest ballet sequences would not fit his top-hat-and-tails in her. Konstantine becomes so enraged that he hires a image. When Rodgers and Hart returned to New York real-life hit man to knock off Junior during the premiere that spring, they presented their idea to producer Lee of the new ballet. The climax of On Tour Toes comes Shubert. Shubert liked their concept since it would give with the performance of Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, with a leading role to a young dancer named Ray Bolger he its pretend murder on stage and its threatened murder in was then grooming for stardom, but he told them that it the wings. Junior, however, is tipped off about the plot, would have to wait until he had staged a revue titled At and he keeps the band repeating the last section of the Home Abroad featuring Beatrice Lillie. Rodgers and Hart ballet long enough for the police to arrive. The thug is therefore made their return to Broadway with the score carted off, the ballet is a success, and all the couples are for Billy Rose’s circus spectacle Jumbo, which opened properly matched — Junior and Frankie, Vera and Kon- at the Hippodrome Theater on November 16, 1935 and stantine, Peggy and Sergei — before the final curtain. produced the soon-to-be standards Little Girl Blue, The

— 28 — Promenade, Walking the Dog George Gershwin (1898-1937) several radio series, including Orson Welles’ Mercury Composed in 1937. Theater. (Herrmann was a collaborator on the famous 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast that panicked the George Gershwin, born Jakob Gershvin in Brooklyn, nation.) When Welles moved to Hollywood to produce New York to a Russian immigrant father, rose from plug- Citizen Kane, he took along Herrmann as his composer. ging songs in Tin Pan Alley as a teenager to become The music that Herrmann provided for that epochal Broadway’s brightest light, the toast of Hollywood and movie became the touchstone of his work in Hollywood, one of society’s darlings. But that was not enough for and a paragon of the sweeping, symphonic film score him — he had to prove himself in the concert world precisely integrated to the drama on the screen. For the as well. First there was the Rhapsody in Blue of 1924, next quarter century, Herrmann was one of the busiest which, according to Walter Damrosch, “made a lady composers in Hollywood, creating perhaps his most out of jazz.” A year later came the Concerto in F. There outstanding work for the medium with Alfred Hitch- followed An American in Paris (1928), A Cuban Over- cock’s The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too ture (1932), and, in 1935, Porgy and Bess. The legacy Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, that Gershwin left is as fresh and invigorating today as Psycho and Marnie; Herrmann also provided music for when it was new. The words of the novelist John O’Hara, Hitchcock’s television series. In 1966, with fashion and written just after the composer’s death, are still valid: commercial expediency prompting studio executives to “George Gershwin died last week. I don’t have to believe abandon the traditional symphonic film score in favor of it if I don’t want to.” a more saleable collection of potentially popular tunes, For the 1937 RKO filmShall We Dance, starring Fred Herrmann had a falling out with Hitchcock over the Astaire and Ginger Rogers, George and Ira Gershwin music for Torn Curtain, which was scrapped in favor of provided such memorable songs as Let’s Call the Whole a more conventional score by John Addison. Herrmann Thing Off, They All Laughed and They Can’t Take That moved to London, where he continued to write for films Away from Me. To accompany a ship-board stroll of and to conduct and record his own music as well as Astaire and his pooch, George wrote an instrumental works by other composers. In 1975, he returned to Hol- interlude called Walking the Dog, which was later pub- lywood to record the soundtrack for Taxi Driver; he died lished in a piano version as Promenade. of a heart attack just hours after finishing the sessions. In addition to his widely known work as a film com- Suite from Psycho poser, Herrmann also created concert and stage works Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975) throughout his life. His creative catalog includes a ballet Composed in 1960. (The Skating Rink, inspired by the 19th-century prints of Currier & Ives), an opera drawn from Emily Brontë’s All who have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho or Wuthering Heights, a symphony, a violin concerto, sever- Vertigo, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane or The Magnificent al orchestral pieces (some incorporating music from his Ambersons, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or any other movies), works for chorus and orchestra (including one of the 56 movies for which he provided the background based on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) and a few cham- scores know the music of Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann ber compositions. Herrmann’s music, whether intended was not only among the most prolific, and one of the to be heard in the dark or in the light, always grew from greatest, of all the native-born composers for American his strongly held belief in the essentially communicative films during the golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s power of his art. “Musically I count myself as an individ- and 1950s, but he also wrote a sizeable body of concert ualist,” he said. “I believe that only music which springs and stage music, and was one of the most enterprising out of genuine emotion is alive and important. I hate all conductors of his generation. cults, fads and circles. I feel that a composer should be Bernard Herrmann, born in New York City in 1911, true to his own innate instincts and tastes, and develop studied violin as a youngster and won a $100 prize for a these to the best of his ability, no matter what the pres- song titled The Bells in a composition competition when ent vogue may be.... I am not interested in music, or any he was thirteen. That success decided him on a career work of art, that fails to stimulate the appreciation of life in music, and he studied composition as an undergradu- and, more importantly, pride in life.” ate at New York University with Philip James and Percy Though it became Herrmann’s most famous score, Grainger, and later with Bernard Wagenaar at Juilliard, and one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest commercial suc- where he also took conducting lessons from Albert cesses, Psycho almost never reached the movie screen. Stoessel. Herrmann made his debut as composer and Hitchcock made the film, based on a grisly novel by conductor on Broadway with his score for a ballet scene Robert Bloch, as an experiment in what he wryly termed in the 1932 show Americana; two years later, he was ap- “black comedy” on a tight budget and in stark black- pointed to the musical staff of CBS. In 1933, he founded and-white. Paramount Studios and Hitchcock both dis- the New Chamber Orchestra, which he directed for sev- liked the first cut of the film and thought that it should be eral years in adventurous concerts featuring the music edited to one hour and “got rid of” as a television show. of Ives, Cowell, Varèse and other modernists, an activity When Hitchcock screened that initial version for Her- for which he received awards for broadening the musical rmann in December 1959, however, the composer had repertory from the department store Lord & Taylor and an idea, and he told the director to “go away for your the Society of American Composers. At CBS, Herrmann Christmas holidays, and when you come back we’ll re- was responsible for providing background music for cord the score and see what you think.” Herrmann’s idea

— 29 — was to match the tense, shocking images and the mono- they fly ‘over the moon.’ The more sentimental music chrome look of the film with music for strings alone, “to that follows accompanies the dialogue as E.T. bids fare- complement the black-and-white photography of the well to his earthling friends. This is followed by timpani film with a black-and-white score” (and to fit Hitchcock’s and brass fanfares as the orchestra brings the film to a tight budget restrictions). With Herrmann’s score height- close.” ening the movie’s drama and providing it with continuity, Star Wars is a phenomenon, the most successful film Psycho not only created a sensation when it was re- series of all time and a cultural icon of almost mythic leased the following year, but quickly became an icon of proportions. George Lucas’ original movie, now titled Hollywood film-making. Episode IV: A New Hope, created an unprecedented Herrmann’s score has lost none of its power to sensation when it was released in 1977. Lucas had disturb and to shock, and Psycho still offers one of the conceived a screen epic of six films, with the original most chilling experiences available to the movie-goer. Star Wars as its centerpiece, that would tell the full The present suite for strings provides both an example tale of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Darth of the composer’s technique of developing short motives Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and the galaxy of beings, into substantial blocks of music as well as an emotional machines and planets they encounter in the struggle distillation of several of the film’s most memorable to save the universe from the evil Empire. The entire scenes. (Herrmann’s screaming violins, which mirror original series was completed by 2005, but the endur- Janet Leigh’s terror during the murder-in-the-shower se- ing popularity of Star Wars led Walt Disney Studios, who quence, make one of the scariest sounds ever created. had acquired the franchise, to start a new trilogy with Hitchcock, by the way, reportedly helped the actress’ re- Episode VII: The Force Awakens in 2015. action at the crucial moment in that scene when he had The essential conflict of theStar Wars epic is estab- ice water pumped, unannounced, through the plumbing.) lished in Episode I: The Phantom Menace: a group of “33% of the effect ofPsycho was due to the music,” dissident worlds has broken away from the Galactic Re- Hitchcock calculated. public and allied themselves in an attempt to control the universe. The Jedi warriors sworn to protect the Repub- “Adventures on Earth” from E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial) lic have overcome the Empire by the end of the original Selections from Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens series, but in Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), “The Rebellion Is Reborn” from Star Wars VIII: The set thirty years later, a new enemy has arisen in the First Last Jedi Order. Princess Leia, now General of the Resistance Main Title from Star Wars IV: A New Hope John Williams forces, continues to search for her long-missing brother, Composed in 1982, 1977, 2015 and 2017. the Jedi master Luke Skywalker. Rey, a resourceful scavenger, and Finn, a ex-stormtrooper, find a droid with Director Steven Spielberg’s E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial) knowledge of Luke’s whereabouts, and they enlist the (1982) is the enchanting story of ten-year-old Elliot help of Han Solo and his furry sidekick Chewbacca, the (played by Henry Thomas), who befriends a gentle, unlikely heroes of the very firstStar Wars episode, to get lovable alien stranded on earth when his space ship it to Leia. The First Order, however, also wants to find hurriedly leaves without him. These two unlikely friends Luke, and the film sets the main characters’ adventures learn to communicate intimately, and they form a close within the clash between the Resistance and their new and very special relationship, which ends poignantly adversaries. John Williams’ music, his fifth Oscar nomi- when E.T.’s ship returns to take him home. E.T. (The Ex- nation for the Star Wars series (he won for the first, in tra-Terrestrial) was nominated for nine Academy Awards, 1978), weaves themes associated with characters seen including Best Picture, and John Williams’ memorable in earlier installments through a brilliant new score. score won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award. Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), the second install- The film captured hearts around the world, earning back ment of the franchise’s sequel trilogy and one of the its $10 million dollar budget in its first weekend and half most critically and financially successful entries of the again that amount in the first three days of its re-release entire series, finds Rey trying to recruit the self-exiled in 2002; its total U.S. gross alone is estimated at well Luke Skywalker to join the Rebellion’s struggle against over $400 million dollars. Roger Ebert wrote of E.T., “This the First Order. Luke, at first feeling that the Force can- movie made my heart glad. It is filled with innocence, not overcome the First Order and that the Jedi should hope and good cheer. It is also exciting and wickedly become extinct, is visited by the ghost of Grand Master funny. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is a movie like The Wiz- Yoda, who convinces him that Rey should be trained as ard of Oz, that you can grow up with and grow old with, a Jedi. Luke assents. He joins the Rebellion and dies and it won’t let you down.” after a lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren, leader of the First Of the sequence titled Adventure on Earth, Williams Order, but Rey is now prepared to carry on the fight as wrote, “The music was designed to accompany the a Jedi. John Williams received his sixth Star Wars Oscar bicycle chase near the end of the film. As the young nomination for The Last Jedi, which was judged by many cyclists reach escape velocity, E.T.’s theme is heard as to be among his finest work of the epic series. ©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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