Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin

Thursday, November 18, 2010 8 pm Saturday, November 20, 2010 8 pm Sunday, November 21, 2010 2:30 pm Jones Hall

Hans Graf, conductor Augustin Hadelich, violin

Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin, Opus 19 Chausson Poème for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 25 Ravel Tzigane

INTERMISSION

Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major, Opus 90

Program Notes

THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN, OPUS 19 Béla Bartók Born: Mar 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary Died: Sep 26, 1945, New York, NY Work composed: 1918-19 Recording: Sir George Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony (London) Instrumentation: three (two doubling piccolo), three (one doubling English horn), three (second doubling E-flat , third doubling ), three (two doubling ), four horns (two doubling Wagner ), three , three , , , percussion, harp, , celesta (doubling organ) and strings

If there is a watershed in Bela Bartok’s stylistic development, its mark is to be found in the violent pantomime tale of a Chinese mandarin coaxed into a brothel where he is robbed, suffocated, stabbed and hung by three thugs, but refuses to die until he has embraced the woman who lured him there.

Bartok encountered the libretto by Melchior Lengyel in a literary magazine in 1917 and was fascinated by this tale of an urban love-death. In the final turbulent days of World War I, he sketched out a scenario and completed a piano sketch of the music by May 1919, during a time of political upheaval and human displacement in his native Hungary. But the work lay unperformed for the next seven years, partly because of his delay in orchestrating the piano version. On November 27, 1926, the pantomime finally achieved a single performance at the Cologne Opera House, on a double-bill with Bartok’s opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. However, audience reaction was so violent that further performances were banned by the city’s mayor, Konrad Adenauer. The pantomime was successfully produced in Prague the following year, but was never performed in Budapest during Bartok’s lifetime. Modern productions have included former Houston Ballet artistic director Ben Stevenson’s realistic staging in 1985. The work begins with an agitated portrayal of three thugs ordering the woman out into the street to attract customers. Her siren dancing is represented by elaborate clarinet solos, as she lures two penniless victims in quick succession – a ridiculous old rake and a student – both of whom are quickly thrown back out by the thugs. When the mandarin enters after the third clarinet solo, the orchestra becomes convulsed in expressing the woman’s conflicting emotions. She is under orders to entice him further, but is repelled by his fixed stare. She dances a seductive waltz, and he responds by chasing after her during a relentless Bartokian fugue. The final portion of the music is broken into shorter sections representing alternating attempts to kill the mandarin. When his desire is finally satisfied, the brutal energy of the musical score suddenly evaporates in a quiet ending.

POÈME FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA, OPUS 25 Ernest Chauuson Born: Jan 20, 1855, Paris, France Died: Jun 10, 1899, Limay, near Mantes, Yvelines, France Work composed: 1896 Recording: Leila Josefowicz, violin; Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martinin- the-Fields (Philips) Instrumentation: pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings

Though Ernest Chausson’s music is infrequently heard in the concert hall, he is regarded as the most refined among the group of late French romantic composers who were influenced by the style of Richard Wagner. His works were composed with fastidious care, and the richness of his harmony was balanced by a sense of restraint and a blooming lyricism. The Poeme for Violin and Orchestra was one of his later works, composed in 1896, just three years before his sudden, untimely death from a cycling accident at age 44. Noted Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye championed the work in several early performances following its completion. The structure of this rhapsodic piece is well planned, but elusive to the ear. It is based on two thematic ideas. The first is presented by the solo violin and then by the orchestra during the slow introduction. The second theme is stated in the solo violin several measures after an elaborate cadenza leads into a faster section of the music. From there on, the work blends elements of rondo and sonata principles, spacing partial restatements of the two themes between transitional interludes that fragment and develop its melodic elements. Finally, the themes appear in a climactic ending to the Poeme. Interestingly, all these sections are subsumed into an ever-changing tide of music, flowing under a nearly continuous solo violin line that blends considerable technical display into its long, lyrical melody.

TZIGANE Maurice Ravel Born: Mar 7, 1875, Ciboure, Lower Pyrenees, France Died: Dec 28, 1937, Paris, France Work composed: 1924 Recording: Leila Josefowicz, violin; Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin-inthe- Fields (Philips) Instrumentation: pairs of flutes (second doubling piccolo), oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns, , percussion, harp, celesta and strings

During the early 1920s, Maurice Ravel made several concert tours to England. Following one of his public appearances in July 1922, there was a private musicale where the composer met the young Hungarian violinist, Jelly d’Aranyi, who was the grand-niece of famed 19th-century violinist Joseph Joachim. Ravel scholar Arbie Ornstein recounts a story told by Gaby Casadesus, that Ravel repeatedly asked the violinist to play gypsy melodies – all night long; in fact, until the exhausted partygoers finally went home at 5 a.m.! The seed of Ravel’s Tzigane was evidently sown in his mind that night, though this gypsy rhapsody did not take shape until two years later. Like many of Ravel’s orchestral compositions, Tzigane originated with a keyboard accompaniment. Later that year, it was transcribed into the orchestral version heard tonight. The piece opens with a long, slow, guttural solo passage, the first half of which is played on the low G string of the violin. It continues through a gauntlet of other technical challenges before the tempo picks up speed and the orchestra joins in. Several of the thematic ideas presented in the opening violin solo are taken up and modified during later sections. The work comes to its climax in a long, perpetual-motion coda.

SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN F MAJOR, OPUS 90 Born: May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany Died: Apr 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria Work composed: 1883 Recording: Christoph Eschenbach conducting the Houston Symphony (Virgin Classics) Instrumentation: pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings

Some scholars divide Brahms’ four symphonies into two general categories, ascribing a tragic/heroic character to the C minor and E minor symphonies and a pastoral mood to the two middle symphonies in D major and F. Actually, the Third Symphony encompasses all these moods in a wondrous interplay of shadow and sunlight. Significantly, its broad range of expressive values is also contained within a shorter time span than any of Brahms’ other three symphonies. Like Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Dvorˇak’s Eighth Symphony, the first movement begins with a melodic motto, which is extensively developed and later serves as a milepost marking off the exposition, development, recapitulation and coda of the movement. The three-note motto, F, A-flat, F, not only poses the movement’s light-versus- darkness conflict between F major and F minor, but also symbolizes Brahms’ personal philosophy, “Frei aber froh”/”free but happy.” This musical acrostic served as Brahms’ response to the famed musical motto, F, A, E (“Frei aber einsam”/”free but alone”) adopted by his longtime friend, violinist/conductor Joseph Joachim. The tightly structured movement is full of the sinewy counterpoint that lends so much strength to Brahms’ music. Though the heaving polyphony of the opening set of themes gives way to a gentler, more relaxed subsidiary theme, struggle and tension dominate much of the development, recapitulation and the powerful coda, which surprisingly resolves the tonal conflict in a quietly descending F major at the very end. The slow movement is a marvel of gentle, deeply personal, even mysterious musical ideas. Its opening clarinet theme has the deceptive simplicity of a folksong, but is belied by its highly irregular phrases and cadence patterns. Stillness overtakes the music as clarinets and bassoons intone the modal theme of the middle section, which finally blooms into a soaring, richtextured melody. The opening theme returns in a much fuller orchestral arrangement and is followed by a quiet coda. The character of the third movement is more akin to a wistful waltz or intermezzo than a scherzo or minuet. Its yearning cello theme is repeated by the violins and then the high winds. A quaint wind trio section intervenes before the opening melody returns, this time featuring the solo horn, and finally the strings. The moody finale is the most dramatic of the four movements, reasserting the frowning tonality of F minor in a furtive introductory section that incorporates the middle theme of the second movement. The principal theme suddenly erupts in snarling melodic leaps, propelling almost the entire movement forward in a state of high agitation. As a golden sunset to this orchestral storm, the music finally calms itself in a shimmering, quasi-Wagnerian coda that yields up the symphony’s opening motto in a peaceful F major tonality.

©2010, Carl R. Cunningham

Biographies

Hans Graf, conductor Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf – the Houston Symphony’s 15th Music Director – is one of today’s most highly respected musicians. He began his tenure here on Opening Night of the 2001- 2002 season. Prior to his appointment in Houston, he was music director of the Calgary Philharmonic, the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra and the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. A frequent guest with all of the major North American orchestras, Graf has developed a close relationship with the Boston Symphony and appears regularly with the orchestra during the subscription season and at the Tanglewood Music Festival. He made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Houston Symphony in January 2006 and returned leading the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in March 2007. He and the Houston Symphony were invited to appear at Carnegie Hall in January 2010 to present the New York premiere of The Planet—An HD Odyssey. Internationally, Graf conducts in the foremost concert halls of Europe, Japan and Australia. In October 2010, he led the Houston Symphony on a tour of the UK to present the international premiere of The Planets—An HD Odyssey. He has participated in the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bregenz and Aix en Provence and appeared at the Salzburg Festival. In summer 2010, he conducted the opening concert of the Aspen Music Festival and returned to Tanglewood and Chicago’s Grant Park Festival. An experienced opera conductor, Graf first conducted the Vienna State Opera in 1981 and has since led productions in the opera houses of Berlin, Munich, Paris and Rome, including several world premieres. Recent engagements include Parsifal at the Zurich Opera and Boris Godunov at the Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg. Born in 1949 near Linz, Graf studied violin and piano as a child. He earned diplomas in piano and conducting from the Musikhochschule in Graz and continued his studies with Franco Ferrara, Sergiu Celibidache and Arvid Jansons. His career was launched in 1979 when he was awarded first prize at the Karl Böhm Competition. His extensive discography includes recordings with the Houston Symphony, available through houstonsymphony.org: works by Bartók and Stravinsky, Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, Berg’s Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite and a DVD of The Planets—An HD Odyssey. Graf has been awarded the Chevalier de l’ordre de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government for championing French music around the world and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria. Hans and Margarita Graf have homes in Salzburg and Houston. They have one daughter, Anna, who lives in Vienna.

Augustin Hadelich, violin

Winner of the 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant and gold medallist of the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Augustin Hadelich has established himself as a rising star among the new generation of violinists. In 2009, Hadelich debuted with the playing Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole; a return engagement to perform the Mendelssohn Concerto is scheduled for March 2011. Other upcoming highlights include his Paris recital debut at the Louvre, a BBC young artist’s debut recital at The Sage Gateshead, a debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic, a return engagement with the at the Hollywood Bowl and debuts next season with the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Seattle, Utah and Vancouver. Hadelich made three Carnegie Hall appearances in 2008: his orchestral debut performing the Brahms Double, his recital debut in March, and a performance of Mozart’s No. 5 on Christmas Eve. He has performed with the Houston Symphony at Miller Outdoor Theater. Internationally, he has performed with the Capetown Philharmonic, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie/Saarbrucken-Kaiserslautern, Dresden Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Museumsorchester Frankfurt, Nuremberg Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico, Sao Paulo Symphony, Staatsorchester Stuttgart, Tokyo Symphony and chamber orchestras of Bavaria, Berlin, Budapest, Cologne, Hamburg, Kiel, Lucerne and Toulouse. He has recorded two highly acclaimed CDs for Naxos and a CD of masterworks for solo violin for AVIE, with a second disc to be released in 2011. An enthusiastic recitalist, Hadelich has appeared at leading venues in New York, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, Austin and Tokyo. As a chamber musician, he has participated at the Marlboro, Ravinia and Seattle festivals. Born in in 1984 to German parents, Hadelich holds a graduate diploma and Artist Diploma from The . He plays on the 1683 ex-Gingold Stradivari violin. For more information, please visit augustinhadelich.com.