Peninsula Music Festival Program 7
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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.