SEASON 2020-2021

An Evening with Esa-Pekka Salonen

August 5, 2021 Jessica GriffinJessica SEASON 2020-2021 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, August 5, at 8:00 On the Digital Stage

Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Yefim Bronfman Piano

Berio Four Original Versions of Luigi Boccherini’s The Night Retreat of Madrid, superimposed and transcribed for orchestra First Philadelphia Orchestra performance

Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major Adagio sostenuto assai—Allegro agitato assai—Un poco più mosso—Allegro moderato—Allegro deciso—Marziale, un poco meno allegro—Allegro animato

Salonen Stockholm Diary First Philadelphia Orchestra performance

Sibelius Symphony No. 7, Op. 105 (In one movement)

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 10 minutes, and will be performed without an intermission.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM, and are repeated on Monday evenings at 7 PM on WRTI HD 2. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details. Our World

Lead support for the Digital Stage is provided by:

Claudia and Richard Balderston Elaine W. Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr. The CHG Charitable Trust Edith R. Dixon Innisfree Foundation Gretchen and M. Roy Jackson Neal W. Krouse John H. McFadden and Lisa D. Kabnick The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Leslie A. Miller and Richard B. Worley Ralph W. Muller and Beth B. Johnston Neubauer Family Foundation William Penn Foundation Peter and Mari Shaw Dr. and Mrs. Joseph B. Townsend Waterman Trust Constance and Sankey Williams Wyncote Foundation SEASON 2020-2021 The Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Music Director Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair

Nathalie Stutzmann Principal Guest Conductor Designate

Gabriela Lena Frank Composer-in-Residence

Erina Yashima Assistant Conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados Conducting Fellow

Charlotte Blake Alston Storyteller, Narrator, and Host

Frederick R. Haas Artistic Advisor Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience

First Violins Amy Oshiro-Morales David Kim, Concertmaster Yu-Ting Chen Juliette Kang, First Associate Jeoung-Yin Kim Concertmaster Christine Lim Joseph and Marie Field Chair Marc Rovetti, Assistant Concertmaster Violas Barbara Govatos Choong-Jin Chang, Principal Robert E. Mortensen Chair Ruth and A. Morris Williams Chair Jonathan Beiler Kirsten Johnson, Associate Principal Hirono Oka Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal Richard Amoroso Judy Geist Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair Yayoi Numazawa Renard Edwards Jason DePue Anna Marie Ahn Petersen Piasecki Family Chair Larry A. Grika Chair Jennifer Haas David Nicastro Miyo Curnow Burchard Tang Elina Kalendarova Che-Hung Chen Daniel Han Rachel Ku Julia Li Marvin Moon William Polk Meng Wang Mei Ching Huang Cellos Second Violins Hai-Ye Ni, Principal Kimberly Fisher, Principal Priscilla Lee, Associate Principal Peter A. Benoliel Chair Yumi Kendall, Assistant Principal Paul Roby, Associate Principal Richard Harlow Sandra and David Marshall Chair Gloria dePasquale Dara Morales, Assistant Principal Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair Anne M. Buxton Chair Kathryn Picht Read Philip Kates Robert Cafaro Davyd Booth Volunteer Committees Chair Paul Arnold Ohad Bar-David Joseph Brodo Chair, given by Peter A. Benoliel John Koen Dmitri Levin Derek Barnes Boris Balter Alex Veltman SEASON 2020-2021

Basses Harold Robinson, Principal Trumpets Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair David Bilger, Principal Joseph Conyers, Acting Associate Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair Principal Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal Tobey and Mark Dichter Chair Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair Nathaniel West, Acting Assistant Principal Anthony Prisk David Fay Duane Rosengard Trombones Some members of the string sections voluntarily Nitzan Haroz, Principal rotate seating on a periodic basis. Neubauer Family Foundation Chair Matthew Vaughn, Co-Principal Flutes Blair Bollinger, Bass Trombone Jeffrey Khaner, Principal Drs. Bong and Mi Wha Lee Chair Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair Patrick Williams, Associate Principal Tuba Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair Carol Jantsch, Principal Olivia Staton Lyn and George M. Ross Chair Erica Peel, Piccolo Timpani Oboes Don S. Liuzzi, Principal Philippe Tondre, Principal Dwight V. Dowley Chair Samuel S. Fels Chair Angela Zator Nelson, Associate Principal Peter Smith, Associate Principal Jonathan Blumenfeld Percussion Edwin Tuttle Chair Christopher Deviney, Principal Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, English Horn Angela Zator Nelson Joanne T. Greenspun Chair Piano and Celesta Clarinets Kiyoko Takeuti Ricardo Morales, Principal Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair Keyboards Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair Davyd Booth Socrates Villegas Paul R. Demers, Bass Clarinet Harp Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Elizabeth Hainen, Principal Joseph Chair Librarians Bassoons Nicole Jordan, Principal Daniel Matsukawa, Principal Steven K. Glanzmann Richard M. Klein Chair Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal Angela Anderson Smith Stage Personnel Holly Blake, Contrabassoon James J. Sweeney, Jr., Manager Dennis Moore, Jr. Horns Jennifer Montone, Principal Gray Charitable Trust Chair Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Chair Christopher Dwyer Jeffry Kirschen Ernesto Tovar Torres Shelley Showers SEASON 2020-2021 THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

Jessica Griffin

The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the world’s preeminent orchestras. It strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust educational initiatives, and an ongoing commitment to the communities that it serves, the ensemble is on a path to create an expansive future for classical music, and to further the place of the arts in an open and democratic society.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now in his ninth season as the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the community.

Your Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, from Verizon Hall to community centers, the Mann Center to Penn’s Landing, classrooms to hospitals, and over the airwaves and online. The Orchestra continues to discover new and inventive ways to nurture its relationship with loyal patrons. SEASON 2020-2021 THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

In March 2020, in response to the cancellation of concerts due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orchestra launched the Virtual Philadelphia Orchestra, a portal hosting video and audio of performances, free, on its website and social media platforms. In September 2020 the Orchestra announced Our World NOW, its reimagined season of concerts filmed without audiences and presented on its Digital Stage. Our World NOW also includes free offerings: HearTOGETHER, a podcast series on racial and social justice; educational activities; and Our City, Your Orchestra, small ensemble performances from locations throughout the Philadelphia region.

The Philadelphia Orchestra continues the tradition of educational and community engagement for listeners of all ages. It launched its HEAR initiative in 2016 to become a major force for good in every community that it serves. HEAR is a portfolio of integrated initiatives that promotes Health, champions music Education, enables broad Access to Orchestra performances, and maximizes impact through Research. The Orchestra’s award-winning education and community 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, sensory-friendly concerts, the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program, and All City Orchestra Fellowships.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador. It performs annually at Carnegie Hall, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The Orchestra also has a rich history of touring, having first performed outside Philadelphia in the earliest days of its founding. It was the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China in 1973, launching a now-five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.

The Orchestra also makes live recordings available on popular digital music services and as part of the Orchestra on Demand section of its website. Under Yannick’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording, with nine celebrated releases on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM.

For more information, please visit philorch.org. SEASON 2020-2021 CONDUCTOR

Minna Hatinen/Finnish National Opera and Ballet

Esa-Pekka Salonen, who made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1986, is constantly driven by his restless innovation to reposition classical music in the 21st century. He is known as both a composer and conductor and is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as principal conductor and artistic advisor of London’s Philharmonia. He is conductor laureate of both the Swedish Radio Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was music director from 1992 until 2009. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School in Los Angeles, he develops, leads, and directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. He co-founded—and from 2003 until 2018 served as artistic director of—the annual Baltic Sea Festival.

As a conductor and leader, Mr. Salonen has become known for his groundbreaking approach to presenting and performing music, joining cutting-edge technological innovation with adventurous curation and meticulous performance. His past projects have included the Philharmonia’s Virtual Orchestra, the first major virtual-reality production from a UK symphony orchestra; the award-winning RE-RITE and Universe of Sound installations, which have allowed people all over the world to conduct, play, and step SEASON 2020-2021 CONDUCTOR

inside the orchestra through audio and video projections; and the iPad app The Orchestra. He has recently launched the interactive AI opera installation Laila with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. Mr. Salonen is known for his inventive and cerebral compositions, ranging from playful early works such as UNESCO Rostrum Prize- winning Floof to the Grawemeyer Award-winning Violin Concerto and recently recorded Cello Concerto.

Mr. Salonen has an extensive and varied recording catalog, which includes works by Dutilleux, Lutosławski, Stravinsky, and his own compositions. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Siena Prize, given by the Accademia Chigiana; he is the first conductor to receive it. Other honors include the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award; the Litteris et Artibus medal, one of Sweden’s highest honors; the rank of Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French government; the Pro Finlandia Medal and Commander, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland; the Helsinki Medal; Musical America’s Musician of the Year 2006; and an appointment as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. SEASON 2020-2021 SOLOIST

Dario Acosta

Internationally recognized as one of today’s most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman’s commanding technique, power, and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1977 and has performed regularly with the ensemble ever since. Highlights of his 2019–20 season included appearances with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the opening concerts of Carnegie Hall’s season with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst. Mr. Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Jurowski, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Summer engagements have regularly taken him to the major festivals of Europe and the United States. Always keen to explore chamber music repertoire, his partners have included Pinchas Zukerman, Martha Argerich, Magdalena Kožená, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Emmanuel Pahud.

Mr. Bronfman has been nominated for six Grammy awards, winning in 1997 with Mr. Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for their SEASON 2020-2021 SOLOIST

recording of the Bartók piano concertos. His catalog of recordings includes works for two pianos by Rachmaninoff and Brahms with Emanuel Ax, the complete Prokofiev concertos with the Israel Philharmonic and Mr. Mehta, a Schubert/Mozart disc with the Zukerman Chamber Players, and the soundtrack to Disney’s Fantasia 2000. Recent releases include the 2014 Grammy-nominated recording of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2, commissioned for him and performed by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert on the Da Capo label; a recital disc, Perspectives, complementing Mr. Bronfman’s designation as a Carnegie Hall “Perspectives” artist for the 2007–08 season; and all the Beethoven concertos.

Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union in 1958, Mr. Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with Arie Vardi. In the United States he studied at the Juilliard School, the Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music, under Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. A recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, Mr. Bronfman also holds an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music. SEASON 2020-2021 FRAMING THE PROGRAM

While Esa-Pekka Salonen may be best known as a conductor—he has led The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1986, 2012, and 2019—he is also a celebrated composer. Juggling dual careers places him in a distinguished tradition that has largely disappeared in our time. He was commissioned to write Stockholm Diary for a festival in the Swedish capital devoted to his music in 2004.

Eighty years earlier Stockholm was where Jean Sibelius, Salonen’s great Finnish forbear, premiered his Seventh Symphony, his last, which ends the concert today. The Philadelphia Orchestra enjoyed historic connections with Sibelius. Leopold Stokowski led the United States premieres of his last three symphonies and while on a tour to Finland in 1955 Eugene Ormandy and members of the Orchestra visited the aging composer at his country estate.

Salonen opens the concert with an imaginatively charming work by Luciano Berio, one of the towering composers of the late 20th century. Four Original Versions of Luigi Boccherini’s The Night Retreat of Madrid takes the last movement of a popular chamber piece by the 18th-century Italian composer and superimposes different versions to depict the retreat of soldiers to their barracks at curfew.

Rounding out the concert is Franz Liszt’s brilliant Second Piano Concerto. An astounding piano virtuoso since his childhood, Liszt moved at the age of 10 from his native Hungary to study in Vienna with Antonio Salieri and Carl Czerny and had the chance to meet Beethoven. In the decades that followed his keyboard music came to define instrumental virtuosity, readily apparent in the dazzling Concerto we hear today.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is the only orchestra in the world with three weekly broadcasts on SiriusXM’s Symphony Hall, Channel 76, on Mondays at 7 PM, Thursdays at 12 AM, and Saturdays at 4 PM.

SEASON 2020-2021 PARALLEL EVENTS

1857 Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 Music Brahms Serenade No. 1 Literature Thackeray The Virginians Art Millet The Gleaners History Indian mutiny against British rule

1924 Sibelius Symphony No. 7 Music Respighi The Pines of Rome Literature Shaw Saint Joan Art Braque Sugar Bowl History Lenin dies

1975 Berio Four Original Versions of Luigi Boccherini’s The Night Retreat of Madrid Music Gubaidulina Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings Literature Doctorow Ragtime Art Nevelson Transparent Horizon History Vietnam War ends SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Four Original Versions of Luigi Boccherini’s The Night Retreat of Madrid Luciano Berio Born in Oneglia, Imperia (Italy), October 24, 1925 Died in Rome, May 27, 2003

Near the end of his life Giuseppe Verdi wrote to the celebrated German conductor Hans von Bülow, long associated with his “rival” Richard Wagner, that the “artists of the north and south have different tendencies.” Verdi said that the Germans are the “sons of Bach” and his own countrymen the “sons of Palestrina.” In this letter Verdi touched upon a longstanding opposition between a northern instrumental heritage and a southern lyrical one or, more glibly, between brains and beauty. Among the great achievements of the 20th-century Italian composer Luciano Berio was his ability to master both traditions and create pieces of beautiful intelligence.

Berio was born into a musical family in an Italian port town in 1925 and first trained at home. An injury to his right hand during the war thwarted a career as a pianist and forced him to concentrate on composition. He soon emerged as an important new voice on the international scene and lived accordingly—traveling, participating in the preeminent music festivals, and teaching at Juilliard, Harvard, and elsewhere.

Transforming the Past Many of Berio’s pieces exhibit his widely varied musical passions and influences, ranging from early music to jazz and the Beatles. While he was a leading figure of the fashionable Modernist avant-garde, experimenting with electronic music and associating with cutting-edge figures of the time (now mainly relegated to the history books), his uncanny ability to work across centuries of tradition allowed him to craft a distinctive profile. He did not neglect the Romantics, as did most of his post-war contemporaries, and made brilliantly effective transformations, arrangements, and completions of works by Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Puccini, and others. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Drawing upon such a diverse body of music to inspire his own pieces served him well in creating musical collages, most famously his Sinfonia (1968). He was a composer, teacher, writer, and conductor (he led The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1993 in a concert of Mahler, Beethoven, and his own music), and the extraordinary range of his creative gifts and professional activities won him recognition as one of the leading international figures in contemporary music until his death in May 2003 at the age of 77.

Inspired by a Fellow Italian Berio was commissioned by La Scala Theatre Orchestra to write a short opening piece for the 1975 season. He decided to look to an earlier Italian composer, Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805), a virtuoso cellist who toured widely and spent extended periods in England, France, Spain, and Germany. Publishers eagerly released a considerable amount of Boccherini’s chamber music, including countless string quartets and quintets, as well as cello concertos, which he primarily wrote for his own concert use. He also composed more than two dozen symphonies, as well as a variety of vocal compositions, among them cantatas, oratorios, and operas.

Although overshadowed by the leading German composers, Boccherini’s position in his own time, and the recent revival of interest in and access to his music, reveal an important figure. Charles Burney, the noted English music historian from this period, wrote in 1789 that Boccherini “has perhaps supplied the performers of bowed instruments and lovers of music with more excellent compositions than any other masters of the present age, except Haydn. His style is at once bold, masterly, and elegant.”

A Closer Look Although Italian, Boccherini spent much of his career in Spain and died in Madrid. One of his most popular chamber pieces was the String Quintet in C major, Op. 30, No. 6, known as Musica notturna della strade di Madrid (Night Music of the Streets of Madrid). In the score Boccherini notes, “This little quintet depicts the music heard at night in the streets of Madrid, from the bells sounding the Ave Maria to the Retreat [of the soldiers]. And everything here that does not comply with the rules of composition should be pardoned for its attempt at an accurate representation of reality.” The considerable success of the piece led him to write other instrumental versions of the Quintet. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Berio had the inspired idea to superimpose four different versions of the final movement, “Ritirata,” which evokes soldiers returning to their barracks at curfew, as a grand orchestral composition. Boccherini indicates here that “one should imagine that the Retreat begins to be heard in the distance, so that it must be played piano, so softly that it is scarcely audible.” Thus Berio begins very quietly with just two military drums and solo violin before presenting the jaunty theme, elegantly ornamented. There follow 11 variations, unfolding initially as a gradual crescendo and then retreating in a decrescendo before a coda. (The opening percussion repetition of a theme, and gradual increase in volume, inevitably bring to mind Maurice Ravel’s Bolero.) Berio’s stratification of the different versions makes this not a straightforward orchestration but rather something strange and wonderful.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Berio composed the Four Original Versions of Luigi Boccherini’s The Night Retreat of Madrid in 1975.

This is the first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of the work.

The score calls for three flutes (III doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, snare drums, triangle), harp, and strings.

Performance time is approximately seven minutes. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Piano Concerto No. 2

Franz Liszt Born in Raiding (Doborján), Hungary, October 22, 1811 Died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886

The almost supernatural power of the musical virtuoso evokes images of a pact with the devil. More than one 19th-century critic thought Niccolò Paganini possessed by demonic powers, and around the time Franz Liszt turned 20 he witnessed the great Italian violinist dazzle audiences in Paris with his technical prowess. What the young Liszt heard—and saw—inspired not only his own new piano compositions, which broke ground in “transcendental” technique, but also provided a concrete model of what a solo virtuoso could do with his career. It did not take long before critic after critic dubbed Liszt the “Paganini of the Piano” and likewise invoked allusions to demonic powers. (The connections made to Paganini were perhaps to be expected, as the violin had traditionally been the devil’s instrument, but Liszt seems to have expanded the instrumental possibilities for satanic possession.)

For 10 years, beginning in 1838, Liszt led what was essentially the 19th-century version of the life of a touring rock star. (Ken Russell’s 1975 movie Lisztomania shrewdly cast the Who’s Roger Daltrey in the title role.) He published mainly solo piano works and enjoyed a brilliant social life hobnobbing with Europe’s artistic, cultural, and political elite. But by the late 1840s, Liszt decided to settle down and prove himself as a composer by writing more substantial pieces. He took the leading musical position in Weimar, which, although something of a backwater, had historically been the city of Goethe and Schiller. Liszt turned primarily to writing orchestral, and later still, religious music. Abandoning the devilish life of the performer, he took minor religious vows in 1865 and became the Abbé Liszt.

Piano with Orchestra Liszt’s responsibilities in Weimar as conductor of the orchestra made continual demands for fresh orchestral music and this may SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

have prompted him to look back to sketches for various earlier works featuring piano and orchestra. Having chiefly composed virtuosic solo piano music up to this time, Liszt initially lacked confidence in writing for orchestra and therefore employed the assistance of more skilled orchestrators, although the degree of their involvement has often been exaggerated. He began composing a series of symphonic poems in which he quickly mastered a delicate but rich orchestral palette and eventually became a skilled and imaginative orchestrator himself.

Although various compositions are lost or were never finished, Liszt wrote some 17 works for piano and orchestra. Some are original compositions, such as two numbered concertos, while others are based on pre-existing music, including a fantasy on themes from Berlioz’s Lélio, another one drawn from Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens, a Polonaise brillante based on a theme by Carl Maria von Weber, and the best known: Totentanz, a set of variations on the medieval chant “Dies irae” (Day of Wrath).

Some of these works date back to the mid-1830s, although most assumed their final form only in the later Weimar years. Liszt completed a version of his First Piano Concerto in E-flat in 1849, which he revised in 1853 and 1855 before publication. The successful premiere took place in Weimar in February 1855, with the composer at the piano and no less a musician than his friend Berlioz on the podium. Sketches for the A-major Concerto we hear today also date back to the 1830s, and this Concerto likewise went through many revisions before its publication in the early 1860s. Liszt conducted the premiere in Weimar in January 1857 with the dedicatee—the composer’s young pupil Hans von Bronsart—as soloist.

A Closer Look Central to Liszt’s revolutionary concept of “cyclic” music is the transformation or metamorphosis of a single theme, so that throughout a piece it gradually evolves into something completely new, shedding layers of “musical skin” each time it emerges in a fresh form. Elements of this technique are found throughout Western music—from the motto Mass of the Renaissance to symphonies of Haydn that bring thematic elements of the first movement into later movements. But Liszt’s immediate models are to be found in the music of Beethoven and Schubert. The latter’s “Wanderer” Fantasy for piano—a long piece based on a single theme—made such a deep impression that Liszt fashioned his own arrangement SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

of it for piano and orchestra (thus producing the closest thing to the Schubert Piano Concerto that Schubert himself never wrote). In many of his works for piano and orchestra Liszt was clearly experimenting with form, trying to write something more substantial than just a virtuoso showpiece. The title “Concerto symphonique” on a manuscript of the A-major Concerto gives an indication of his ambition.

The Second Piano Concerto is cast in several fluidly interwoven sections of contrasting character that are played in a continuous gesture. The work’s two main themes, which are obliquely related, are both heard early on. The principal theme appears at the outset, in the first clarinet, accompanied by clarinet, flutes, and bassoons (Adagio sostenuto assai); a pianistic elaboration and cadenza follow. The second theme emerges from the latter cadenza (L’istesso tempo). Tension then builds to a scherzo-like Un poco più mosso, with strings in unison sounding a resolute transformation of the second theme; in the subsequent Allegro moderato, the strings present a new version of the latter, and usher in a florid piano elaboration. The potency of the following march (Marziale, un poco meno allegro), which borders on bombast, is necessary in order to re-establish, with unmitigated assertiveness, the pre-eminence of the first theme. The work concludes with a dashing and gloriously pianistic transfiguration of the main theme in all of its guises.

—Paul J. Horsley/Christopher H. Gibbs

Liszt composed his Second Piano Concerto from 1839 to 1861.

Richard Buhlig was the pianist in the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Concerto, in January 1908, with Carl Pohlig conducting. The work’s most recent appearance on subscription concerts was in October 2013, with Lise de la Salle as pianist and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos on the podium.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has recorded Liszt’s Second Concerto twice: in 1959 for CBS with Philippe Entremont and Eugene Ormandy, and in 1970 for RCA with Van Cliburn and Ormandy.

The work is scored for an orchestra of three flutes (III doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals), and strings, in addition to the solo piano.

Performance time is approximately 22 minutes. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Stockholm Diary Esa-Pekka Salonen Born in Helsinki, June 30, 1958 Now living in San Francisco and London

Celebrated early in his career as one of the finest conductors of his generation, Esa-Pekka Salonen thought at first that his musical path would be as a composer. He was a horn student at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki while studying composition privately with the Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara. Later, he studied in Siena with Franco Donatoni and in Milan with Niccolò Castiglioni.

Salonen enjoyed early success as a director of new music ensembles, having had some conducting lessons as a student, but it was a role he took on primarily so he could oversee performances of his own work. Then, in 1983, he filled in at very short notice for a London performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony (without having studied the score beforehand), and his career as a world-class conductor was assured. Still, in the rare and brief periods of free time between conducting engagements, Salonen occasionally returned to composing.

An Advocate of Contemporary Music Even as a conductor, Salonen was a committed advocate of contemporary music. In collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as music director from 1992 to 2009, his concert programming and recordings showed clearly where his musical preferences lay. Twentieth-century Modernists such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Lutosławski, Ligeti, Adams, and Messiaen were favorites, and he also worked extensively with contemporaneous Nordic composers including Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, and Anders Hilborg.

In 1996 Salonen composed his L.A. Variations for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and its triumphant premiere the following year prompted him to return to composition more diligently. He even SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

took a year’s leave of absence from the orchestra in 2000 to concentrate on composition. Salonen’s time in Los Angeles as a conductor had helped him break free from the rather strict avante-garde Modernism of his earlier compositions, and he felt increasingly emboldened to revisit traditional elements of melody, harmony, and regular pulse. He reflected, “Only after a couple of years here [in Los Angeles] did I begin to see that the European canon I blindly accepted was not the only truth. Over here, I was able to think about this rule that forbids melody. It’s madness. Madness!” In the wake of this realization, Salonen’s compositional style turned more inclusive and eclectic, drawing from elements as diverse as Neo-Romanticism, serialism, and minimalism, while reflecting the influences of Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Berio.

Official appreciation of Salonen’s work as a composer followed soon after. His 2012 Violin Concerto for Leila Josefowicz won him the Grawemeyer Award, one of the most prestigious compositional prizes. From 2015 to 2018, he served as composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic. And in 2020, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

Celebrating Two Cities and Two Orchestras In 2004, while still serving as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Salonen completed a commission to write a piece for the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra. This commission was the culmination of a major retrospective of the composer’s work being celebrated in the Swedish capital. The piece, Stockholm Diary, was premiered by the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra under the composer’s direction in October 2004.

Though it’s not immediately clear how this piece for string orchestra might be considered a “diary,” Salonen had a direct connection to Stockholm dating from early in his career, when he served as music director of the Swedish Radio Orchestra beginning in 1984. He had, in fact, first led the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a guest conductor that same year. And Salonen appears to celebrate his historical connection with these two cities in Stockholm Diary by briefly quoting from his own Wing on Wing, an orchestral work he wrote earlier in 2004 to celebrate the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

A Closer Look Stockholm Diary opens simply—a solo violin traces a rising modal scale, suggesting emergence and growth, which is sustained into a harmonic cluster by the rest of the string orchestra. Then the violin teeters in multi-stopped figures that strive for upward release. After a series of three chorale-like statements, the orchestra embarks on a boisterous, virtuosic rhapsody of contrapuntal string writing that mixes broad, sweeping melodic lines with fidgety counter-figures and insistent ostinatos. The unassuming modal scale that opened the piece proves to be the source of multiple interlocking energies that swoop, bump, and dance vigorously with each other throughout the episodes. The scale-figure returns, embellished, fragmented, and harmonized in lush post-Romantic progressions, before driving in repeated rhythms toward what feels like should be an explosive pinnacle. Instead, just as the momentum reaches its peak tension, all the energy is released to evaporate into stratospheric stillness.

—Luke Howard

Stockholm Diary was composed in 2004.

This is the first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of the piece.

The work is scored for strings only.

Performance time is approximately 12 minutes.

SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

Symphony No. 7

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

Perhaps Jean Sibelius should have retained his original title for the Seventh Symphony. “I’ve completed my Fantasia sinfonica,” he wrote in his diary on March 2, 1924, of the piece that would later take on its more conventional numerical designation. Later that month he conducted the work’s premiere in Stockholm—still under the unusual title that reflects perfectly the work’s unconventional structure: “Symphonic Fantasy.” A far cry from “Symphony No. 7, Op. 105.” But sometime between that first performance and the work’s publication the following year, the composer had given it the more traditional title by which it is known today. Was there a musical significance to the change? Or was it made simply to satisfy Sibelius’s publishers, who probably felt they could more easily sell a composition called “Seventh Symphony”?

Thematic Metamorphosis One thing is certain: The composer’s use of the term “symphony” has inspired all manner of rigorous but mostly pointless attempts to explain the piece in terms of a three-movement, four-movement, or even five-movement structure. Scholars, analysts, and even the occasional program annotator—in the earnest quest to lend the work a too-simplistic coherence—have missed the essential truth that many non-technical listeners know intuitively: that this Symphony’s special quality derives from the way in which it “makes its musical point” in a single, sustained gesture. Its unity is complete precisely because it thwarts sectionality, its seamlessness resulting from a truly organic control: Each new musical idea “grows from” the previous, thematically, harmonically, rhythmically.

The same cannot be said of other “one-movement” symphonies, most of which in fact do break down into multiple movements that are simply played with no pauses in between. Sibelius’s genius SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

lay in achieving here what one writer has called “thematic metamorphosis,” which works “at such a level of sophistication that a listener is barely aware of it.” The themes are interrelated in such a way as to give credence to Gustav Mahler’s admiration of Sibelius’s music, for the “profound logic that creates an inner connection between all the motifs.” In this last of Sibelius’s seven resplendent symphonies, this unique Finnish composer created a genre that was to have lasting, worldwide ramifications. The one-movement symphonies of Samuel Barber or Howard Hanson, or more recently Christopher Rouse, might never have happened without Sibelius’s model.

In a famous letter of 1924, during a fecund period in which Sibelius produced the Sixth and Seventh symphonies, the composer described the latter thus: “The Seventh Symphony—Joy of life and vitality, with appassionato passages. In three movements, the last a ‘Hellenic rondo.’ … The plans may be altered according to the development of the musical ideas. As usual, I am a slave to my themes and submit to their demands.” The plans for this work were indeed altered, for the final symphony is neither in three movements nor does it contain a “Hellenic rondo,” whatever that is. (Some commentators have even suggested that this passage is a discussion of the “Eighth Symphony,” a mysterious work that the composer appears to have destroyed.) Soon after the Stockholm performance, the piece was played in Chicago and Boston, but first of all by The Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. It was only after these American concerts that the Seventh was finally performed in Helsinki, in 1927.

A Closer Look The first section (Adagio), built from a rich contrapuntal texture that brings to mind the church polyphony of the 16th century, is mournful and dense, with divided strings. The musical substance seems to arise from nowhere, in the ascending scale in the strings with which the movement opens. Some hear this as the “first theme”; others believe the principal subject to be the more active theme heard about a minute into the piece (also in the strings); still others believe the trombone motif heard shortly thereafter to be a sort of idée fixe running through the whole Symphony. All three are elusive and ever-changing, like motifs in Wagner’s late scores; also as in Wagner, the sense of harmonic and emotional “arrival” is continually frustrated. This long, tensely wound first section gives way, finally, to a livelier segment (Un pochettino SEASON 2020-2021 THE MUSIC

meno adagio), in which a huge climax is forged in both strings and winds. (Some commentators hear this as the beginning of the “second movement.”) At the point where the woodwinds begin to break the opening ascending-motif into small fragments, the tempo changes to Vivacissimo, but we maintain our bearings through echoes of the opening ascending subject. A return to the opening Adagio tempo ushers in another huge climax.

More than one writer has attempted to characterize the subsequent Allegro molto moderato as a sort of “scherzo.” It marks the appearance of the most easily grasped melody so far, a Straussian gesture first heard in the flutes and clarinets. This motif is employed to build toward a new climax, leading to a hugely textured coda (which includes a return of the trombone motif)—a restless series of tempos and themes that bring us back, exhausted and exhilarated (Largamente), to the work’s initial mood. Sibelius’s archetype for the one-movement symphony ends with reconciliation.

—Paul J. Horsley

Sibelius composed his Seventh Symphony in 1924.

Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra gave the United States premiere of the Seventh Symphony on April 3, 1926. The Orchestra has since performed the Symphony many times, including on numerous tours. Eugene Ormandy conducted it in honor of Sibelius’s 80th birthday in 1945, as well as for his 90th in 1955. That same year, Ormandy and the Orchestra played it in Helsinki. Sibelius was too frail to attend but heard it on the radio and invited the conductor and musicians to visit him en masse. The most recent subscription performances were led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin in September 2018.

Ormandy recorded the work twice with the Philadelphians: in 1960 for CBS and 1976 for RCA.

The Symphony is scored for two flutes (both doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 21 minutes.

Program notes © 2021. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Luke Howard. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

GENERAL TERMS

Aria: An accompanied solo song (often in ternary form), usually in an opera or oratorio

Cadenza: A passage or section in a style of brilliant improvisation, usually inserted near the end of a movement or composition

Cantata: A multi-movement vocal piece consisting of arias, recitatives, ensembles, and choruses and based on a continuous narrative text

Chorale: A hymn tune of the German Protestant Church, or one similar in style. Chorale settings are vocal, instrumental, or both.

Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones

Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord

Coda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finality

Contrapuntal: See counterpoint

Counterpoint: The combination of simultaneously sounding musical lines

Diatonic: Melody or harmony drawn primarily from the tones of the major or minor scale

Fantasy: A composition free in form and more or less fantastic in character

Harmonic: Pertaining to chords and to the theory and practice of harmony

Harmony: The combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions

Idée fixe: A term coined by Berlioz to denote a musical idea used obsessively

Minimalism: A style of composition characterized by an intentionally simplified rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic vocabulary

Mode: Any of certain fixed arrangements of the diatonic tones of an octave, as the major and minor scales of Western music SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

Modernism: A consequence of the fundamental conviction among successive generations of composers since 1900 that the means of musical expression in the 20th century must be adequate to the unique and radical character of the age

Octave: The interval between any two notes that are seven diatonic (non-chromatic) scale degrees apart

Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition.

Oratorio: Large-scale dramatic composition originating in the 16th century with text usually based on religious subjects. Oratorios are performed by choruses and solo voices with an instrumental accompaniment, and are similar to operas but without costumes, scenery, and actions.

Ostinato: A steady bass accompaniment, repeated over and over

Polonaise: A Polish national dance in moderate triple meter

Polyphony: A term used to designate music in more than one part and the style in which all or several of the musical parts move to some extent independently

Recitative: Declamatory singing, free in tempo and rhythm. Recitative has also sometimes been used to refer to parts of purely instrumental works that resemble vocal recitatives.

Rondo: A form frequently used in symphonies and concertos for the final movement. It consists of a main section that alternates with a variety of contrasting sections (A-B-A-C-A etc.).

Scale: The series of tones which form (a) any major or minor key or (b) the chromatic scale of successive semi-tonic steps

Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Also an instrumental piece of a light, piquant, humorous character. SEASON 2020-2021 MUSICAL TERMS

Serialism: Music constructed according to the principle pioneered by Schoenberg in the early 1920s, whereby the 12 notes of the scale are arranged in a particular order, forming a series of pitches that serves as the basis of the composition and a source from which the musical material is derived

Symphonic poem: A type of 19th-century symphonic piece in one movement, which is based upon an extramusical idea, either poetic or descriptive

Tonic: The keynote of a scale

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo)

Adagio: Leisurely, slow Agitato: Excited Allegro: Bright, fast Animato: Lively, animated Appassionato: Passionately Brillante: Sparkling, spirited Deciso: Bold, forceful Largamente: Broadly Marziale: Martial, military Moderato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow Più mosso: Faster Sostenuto: Sustained Vivacissimo: Very lively

TEMPO MODIFIERS

Assai: Much Meno: Less Molto: Very Un pochettino: A very little Un poco: A little

DYNAMIC MARKS

Crescendo, decrescendo: Increasing or decreasing volume