Season 2011-2012

The P hiladelphia Orchestra

Friday, January 6, at 2:00 Saturday, January 7, at 8:00 Sunday, January 8, at 2:00

D avid Zinman Conductor Choong-Jin Chang Viola

Torke Ash First P hiladelphia O rchestra perform ances

W alton Viola Concerto I. Andante comodo—Con spirito II. Vivo, con molto preciso III. Allegro moderato

Intermission

Beethoven Symphony N o. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 I. Allegro con brio II. Andante con moto III. Allegro— IV. Allegro

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes.

D avid Zinman is in his 16th season as music director of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. H e studied conducting with Pierre Monteux and made his first major conducting debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1967. Mr. Zinman was previously music director of the Rotterdam and Rochester philharmonics and the Baltimore Symphony, and principal conductor of the N etherlands Chamber Orchestra. H e was also music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School and American Academy of Conducting for 13 years.

Mr. Zinman recently performed with the N H K Symphony and H ong Kong Philharmonic and makes return engagements to the Sydney and N ew Zealand symphonies this season. H e has toured widely with many international orchestras and continues to tour in Europe, Asia, and the U .S. with the Tonhalle Orchestra. H is most recent opera performance was Offenbach’s The Tales of H offm ann at G eneva Opera.

Mr. Zinman’s extensive discography of more than 100 recordings has earned him numerous international honors, including five G rammy awards, two G rand Prix du D isque awards, two Edison prizes, the D eutsche Schallplattenpreis, and a G ram ophone Award. H e was also the 1997 recipient of the D itson Award from Columbia U niversity in recognition of his commitment to the performance of works by American composers. Mr. Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra recently completed Brahms and Mahler symphony cycles (the Mahler Symphony N o. 8 disc receiving a 2011 Echo Award), which followed Beethoven, Strauss, and Schumann cycles. A recording of all the Schubert symphonies is their current project for Sony/BMG .

In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture awarded Mr. Zinman the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in October 2002 he received the City of Zurich Art Prize, making him the first conductor and non-Swiss native to receive this award. More recently Mr. Zinman received the Thomas Theodore Award, and in 2008 he won the Midem Classical Artist of the Year Award.

A native of Seoul, Korea, Choong-Jin (C.J.) Chang joined The Philadelphia Orchestra as associate principal viola in N ovember 1994 and became principal viola in April 2006. H e made his performance debut as a 12-year-old violinist with the Seoul Philharmonic as winner of the grand prize in Korea’s Yook Young N ational Competition. In 1981, at the age of 13, he moved to the U nited States to attend the Juilliard School of Music. H e subsequently studied in Philadelphia at the Esther Boyer College of Music of Temple U niversity and at the Curtis Institute of Music, from which he received degrees in both violin and viola. H is primary teachers were Jascha Brodsky and retired Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Viola Joseph de Pasquale.

Mr. Chang made his solo debut recital at Carnegie H all in 2007 and since then has appeared in numerous recitals in the U .S. and South Korea. In 2008 he appeared as soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra in Seoul and Shanghai during its Asia Tour and its summer residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. The following year he made his Philadelphia Orchestra subscription debut as viola soloist, and last April he performed Berlioz’s H arold in Italy with the Busan Philharmonic in the final concert of Korea’s 2011 Orchestra Festival. As a chamber musician Mr. Chang performs with the world’s greatest musicians at many prestigious festivals throughout the U nited States and Asia.

Mr. Chang is a founding member of the Johannes Q uartet, whose debut performances at Philadelphia’s Ethical Society and at Carnegie H all received glowing reviews. Since 1997 the Q uartet has performed to audience and critical acclaim throughout the U nited States. The Q uartet recently premiered Esa-Pekka Salonen’s quartet H om unculus and W illiam Bolcom’s D ouble Q uartet with the G uarneri Q uartet.

Alongside his extensive performing activities, Mr. Chang is a respected violin and viola teacher. Among his former pupils are current members of The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as many winners of major competitions. H e currently serves on the faculties of Rutgers U niversity’s Mason G ross School of the Arts and Temple Music Prep.

FRAMIN G TH E P ROG RAM

The Philadelphia Orchestra inaugurates the N ew Year with a Beethoven Celebration, presenting beloved symphonies and concertos over the course of three weeks of concerts. Today spotlights the monumental Fifth Symphony, which was the featured composition on the very first concert the Orchestra gave in 1900. The Fifth traces a thrilling trajectory, from its ominous opening motif (“Fate Knocking at the D oor,” in the words of one of the composer’s colleagues) to its heroically triumphant conclusion.

The program opens with Ash, which American composer Michael Torke composed in 1988 when he was in mid-20s. It is a work that looks back in various ways to the Classical past of Beethoven’s era, all the while projecting a vibrant contemporary sound.

Sixty years earlier another composer in his mid-20s, W illiam W alton, composed his Viola Concerto. H e conducted the premiere with no less than composer and viola virtuoso Paul H indemith as the soloist. Two ruminative movements frame a dazzling scherzo in this deeply felt work.

P arallel E vents 1807 Beethoven Symphony N o. 5 Music Spontini La vestale Literature Byron H ours of Idleness Art Turner S un R ising in a M ist H istory Britain abolishes slave trade

1928 W alton Viola Concerto Music Ravel B olero Literature Lawrence Lady C hatterly’s Lover Art Chagall W edding H istory Fleming discovers penicillin

Ash

Michael Torke Born in Milwaukee, September 22, 1961 N ow living in N ew Y ork City

At the time he wrote this piece, in 1988, Michael Torke was still in his mid-20s, but already a seasoned professional. H is first major performance had come five years earlier, at Tanglewood, and after that he was commissioned by the Brooklyn Philharmonic (Ecstatic O range, 1985), the Milwaukee Symphony (G reen, 1986), and N ew York City Ballet (P urple, 1987). As those titles suggest, he was seeing his music in terms of color, and it was this vibrancy, coupled to a driving pulse, that brought him so much early attention. The term “post-minimalist” was coined to describe his style, how repetitive patterns suggestive of Steve Reich or John Adams would be given a rhythmic energy out of rock together with technicolor orchestration. It was Adams, not at all coincidentally, who conducted the first performance of Ash, given by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in St. Paul on February 3, 1989. By then Torke had received two further prestigious premieres, both in the spring of 1988: C opper, for brass quintet and orchestra, commissioned by the D etroit Symphony, and another score for N ew York City Ballet, B lack and W hite. Ash, too, was taken up by that company in 1991, and, listening to it, one can well understand its appeal to dancers and choreographers. Indeed, it almost dances itself, with its shifts of beat, harmony, color, and motif.

Looking Back W hile Looking Forward Torke chose his title aptly, to indicate a more subdued color scheme than in most of his works of this time, and to suggest, too, a somber tone that comes from the prevalence of F minor. The work is scored for an orchestra on the scale of two centuries before, the scale of late H aydn, Mozart, or early Beethoven, with pairs of oboes and bassoons, solo flute, clarinet, and trumpet, three horns, timpani, and strings, joined by an electronic synthesizer as the contemporary equivalent of the harpsichord or piano a Classical-period composer might have expected in the ensemble. If one wanted to pile up the labels, one could call the style “post-minimalist neo-classicism,” in that Torke restores and revitalizes the means of earlier times, rather as Prokofiev did in his “Classical” Symphony or Stravinsky in his Symphony in C. And in looking back to the great Viennese classics, Torke’s work looks back also to these nearer ancestors, especially in some of its more piquant harmonies. At the same time, the composition’s insistent pulse, its almost constant repeating notes, and its jagged syncopations make it very much a conception of its own period, while its expressive ambiguity would be unusual in any age, at once excited and anxious.

A Closer Look The score is marked “Aggressive, strong, with conviction,” and under this heading the music sets out in a moderately fast march rhythm that is pretty much unchanged to the end. D efining ideas are presented right away, including a repeating pattern of two quick notes followed by a longer one (dit-dit-da, dit-dit-da, etc.) and the exhilarating sound of a gesture rising through the steps of an arpeggio (from F to A-flat to C in F minor). These ideas give rise to others, which may take on lives of their own, but the piece remains absolutely consistent in its harmony and rhythm—a single thrust, propelled by the circling of short segments. Though edges of color show through, and though there are patches where the texture clears, the orchestration is mostly full during the first few minutes, with the keyboard synthesizer joining in occasionally to strengthen the bass.

A big climax, with arpeggios running up and down in most of the orchestra, opens the way, through a further big tutti, to the middle section, which is more lightly scored. Longer lines come forward here, especially in a passage where a solo oboe is joined by the second oboe and first bassoon in a trio for winds—a passage that may particularly recall Bach, or recall Stravinsky recalling Bach. Absent from this section, the synthesizer returns as the piece moves back into its opening groove, where it stays, forging on with determination to the end.

The composer’s own note takes us further into his technical means and thinking:

In trying to find a clear and recognizable language to write this piece, I have chosen some of the most basic, functionally tonal means: tonics and dominants in F minor, a modulation to the relative major (A-flat), and a three-part form which, through a retransition, recapitulates back to F minor. W hat I offer is not invention of new “words” or a new language but a new way to make sentences and paragraphs in a common, much-used existing language. I can create a more compelling musical argument with these means because, to my ears, potential rhetoric seems to fall out from such highly functional chords as tonics and dominants more than certain fixed sonorities and Pop chords that I have used before. My musical argument is dependent on a feeling of cause and effect, both on a local level where one chord releases the tension from a previous chord and on the larger structural level where a section is forced to follow a previous section by a coercive modulation. The orchestration does not seek color for its own sake, as decoration is not a high priority, but the instruments combine and double each other to create an insistent ensemble from beginning to end. Only occasionally, as in the middle A-flat section, do three woodwind instruments play alone for a short while to break the inertia of the ensemble forging its course together.

—Paul G riffiths

Ash was composed in 1988.

These are the first P hiladelphia O rchestra perform ances of the w ork.

The score calls for an orchestra of flute, tw o oboes, clarinet, tw o bassoons, three horns, trum pet, tim pani, synthesizer, and strings.

P erform ance tim e is approxim ately 15 m inutes.

V iola Concerto

W illiam W alton Born in Oldham, Lancashire, March 29, 1902 D ied in Ischia, Italy, March 8, 1983

Though a favorite instrument of composers as diverse as Mozart and Paul H indemith, Carl Stamitz and Richard Strauss, the viola has only infrequently been favored as a solo instrument for concertos. W hile violinists, pianists, and even cellists have hundreds of concerted works to chose from, violists had almost none. D uring the 20th century this picture changed considerably, however, as prominent composers began to take this marvelous instrument’s warm, burnished tone more seriously as a solo “voice.” W e now have a wide variety of fine works by H indemith, Béla Bartók, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jacob D ruckman, Luciano Berio, Morton Feldman, Karel H usa, Frank Martin, Bohuslav Martinů, W alter Piston, W olfgang Rihm, Alfred Schnittke, and Tōru Takemitsu.

One of the most frequently heard is the Viola Concerto by W illiam W alton, a composer who was not a violist but clearly had some command of the instrument’s capabilities and limitations. Known throughout his life for the great care he lavished upon each of his works, W alton died at the age of 80, leaving a small but rich corpus of well-crafted, highly approachable pieces. To this day he is known chiefly through a handful of them: the Piano Q uartet, Façade (settings of Edith Sitwell’s poems; 1923), the Sinfonia concertante for piano and orchestra (1927), the choral masterpiece B elshazzar’s Feast (1931), and several film scores including music for the classic Laurence Olivier versions of Shakespeare’s R ichard III, H enry V, and H am let.

Most of these compositions were written before W orld W ar II, and although W alton continued to produce a series of fine works for nearly a half-century afterward, none has earned the acclaim of the early masterworks, and none of these is as popular as the Viola Concerto, one of the most distinguished works for this thorniest of soloist-ensemble genres.

The Culmination of E arly Maturity W alton completed the first version of the Viola Concerto during the years he spent as a “houseguest” of Edith Sitwell and her brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, whom he had known during his years at Oxford and who welcomed him into their home for lengthy periods. (H e never completed his degree at Oxford, by the way, though he had attended for eight years.) H e used the Sitwill estate as a place of tranquil retreat, and it was at this quiet refuge that he developed his distinctively individual musical voice during the 1920s.

Initially prompted to write such a piece by the conductor Thomas Beecham, W alton began composing it in late 1928. “I have been working hard at a Viola Concerto suggested by Beecham and designed for Lionel Tertis,” he wrote to his friend Siegfried Sassoon on D ecember 5. “It may be finished by Christmas and is I think by far my best effort up to now.” Apparently progress was not as swift as expected, for in early February he wrote, again to Sassoon: “I finished yesterday the second movement of my Viola Concerto. … If only the third and last movement works out well—at present I am in the painful position of starting it.” The finale was completed later that month.

The Concerto was warmly received at its first performance in London (October 3, 1929), in which the composer was conductor and the soloist was no less a violist than H indemith. But W alton was not satisfied with the piece, and in 1961 he subjected it to a thorough revision, reducing the wind choir and adding an important part for the solo harp. This new version was presented the following year, on January 18, with violist John Coulling, conductor Malcolm Sargent, and the London Philharmonic. This latter has become the standard edition used.

A Closer Look As in his later concertos for violin (1939) and cello (1956), W alton’s Viola Concerto begins with a slow movement, continues with a scherzo central movement, and concludes with a densely structured finale. At the outset (Andante comodo) the two primary themes are presented by the soloist, in prominent fashion, before being taken up and worked out by the orchestra in turn; after a central section of developmental material, the music ends peaceably, again with a tender restatement of the two themes by the soloist. The scherzo-like V ivo, con molto preciso follows, a vivacious storm of busy activity with unmistakable tinges of the jazz music in which W alton had immersed himself beginning around 1923 (as had almost everyone else!). Some have also heard allusions to W alton’s elder contemporaries as well. The lengthy finale (Allegro moderato) contains a variety of tempos and meters, beginning in an upbeat mood but quickly moving toward a more serious outlook. The concluding surprise is a striking return of the first movement’s main theme, repeated almost verbatim—bringing the movement and the Concerto to a neat, “cyclical” completion.

—Paul J. H orsley

W alton com posed his Viola C oncerto betw een 1928 and 1929 and revised it in 1961.

Eugene O rm andy led the first P hiladelphia O rchestra perform ances of the Viola C oncerto, on M arch 3-4, 1944, w ith the violist W illiam P rim rose in his P hiladelphia O rchestra debut. M ost recently on subscription concerts, the O rchestra perform ed the w ork in N ovem ber 1999, w ith R oberto D íaz and D avid Zinm an conducting.

The 1961 version of the w ork is scored for an orchestra of tw o flutes (II doubling piccolo), oboe, English horn, tw o clarinets (II doubling bass clarinet), tw o bassoons, four horns, tw o trum pets, three trom bones, tim pani, harp, and strings, in addition to the solo viola.

The C oncerto lasts approxim ately 26 m inutes in perform ance.

Symphony N o. 5

Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably D ecember 16, 1770 D ied in V ienna, March 26, 1827

Beethoven’s Fifth did not immediately become the world’s (or even the composer’s) most famous symphony. D uring his lifetime the Third, the “Eroica,” was performed more often and the second movement of the Seventh (movements were often heard separately) deemed “the crown of instrumental music.” But over the course of the 19th century the Fifth gradually came to epitomize both Beethoven’s life and musical style. It often appeared on the inaugural concerts of new orchestras, such as when The Philadelphia Orchestra first performed in N ovember 1900. The Fifth Symphony picked up further associations in the 20th century, be they of Allied victory during the Second W orld W ar or through its appearance in commercials and popular culture.

It is easy to account for both the popularity and the representative status of the Fifth. The celebrated music critic D onald Francis Tovey called it “among the least misunderstood of musical classics.” W ith the rise of instrumental music in the 18th century, audiences sought ways to understand individual works, to figure out their meaning. One strategy was to make connections between a piece of music and the composer’s life. In this, no life and body of work has proved more accommodating than Beethoven’s, whose genius, independence, eccentricities, and struggles with deafness were already well known in his own time.

Music and Meaning In the fall of 1801, at age 30, Beethoven revealed for the first time the secret of his increasing hearing loss and stated in a letter that he would “seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crush me completely.” It has not been difficult to relate such statements directly to his music. The struggle with “Fate” when it “knocks at the door,” as he allegedly told his assistant Anton Schindler happens at the beginning of the Fifth, helped endorse the favored label for the entire middle period of his career: H eroic. The Fifth Symphony seems to present a large-scale narrative. According to this view, a heroic life struggle is represented in the progression of emotions, from the famous opening in C minor to the triumphant C-major coda of the last movement. For H ector Berlioz, the Fifth, more than the previous four symphonies, “emanates directly and solely from the genius of Beethoven. It is his own intimate thought that is developed; and his secret sorrows, his pent- up rage, his dreams so full of melancholy oppression, his nocturnal visions and his bursts of enthusiasm furnish its entire subject, while the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and orchestral forms are there delineated with essential novelty and individuality, endowing them also with considerable power and nobility.”

In Beethoven’s Time Beethoven wrote the Fifth Symphony over the space of some four years, beginning in the spring of 1804, during the most productive period of his career. Among the contemporaneous works were the Fourth and Sixth symphonies, Fourth Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, Mass in C, three “Razumovsky” string quartets, and the first two versions of his lone opera Fidelio. Large-scale pieces like the opera, or commissions like the Mass, interrupted his progress on the Fifth, most of which was written in 1807 and early 1808.

The Symphony was premiered later that year together with the Sixth (their numbers in fact reversed) at Beethoven’s famous marathon concert at Vienna’s Theater an der W ien on D ecember 22. This legendary event also included the first public performance of the Fourth Piano Concerto (the composer was soloist), two movements from the Mass, the concert aria Ah! P erfido, and the “Choral” Fantasy, Op. 80. Reports indicate that all did not go well. Second-rate musicians playing in third-rate conditions after limited rehearsal had to struggle their way through this demanding new music, and things fell apart during the “Choral” Fantasy. But inadequate performance conditions did not dampen enthusiasm for the Fifth Symphony, which was soon recognized as a masterpiece. The novelist, critic, and composer E.T.A. H offmann wrote a long and influential review in which he hailed “Beethoven’s Romanticism … that tears the listener irresistibly away into the wonderful spiritual realm of the infinite.”

A Closer Look Another reason for the great fame and popularity of the Symphony is that it exemplifies the fingerprints of Beethoven’s heroic style. One of these identifying features is its “organicism,” the notion that all four movements seem to grow from seeds sown in the opening measures. W hile Beethoven used the distinctive rhythmic figure of three shorts and a long in other works from this time (Tovey remarked that if this indeed represents fate knocking at the door it was also knocking at many other doors), here it unifies the entire Symphony. After the most familiar of openings (Allegro con brio), the piece modulates to the relative major key and the horns announce the second theme with a fanfare using the “fate rhythm.” The softer, lyrical second theme, first presented by the violins, is inconspicuously accompanied in the lower strings by the rhythm. The movement features Beethoven’s characteristic building of intensity, suspense, a thrilling coda, and also mysteries. W hy, for example, does the oboe have a brief unaccompanied solo cadenza near the beginning of the recapitulation? Beethoven’s innovation is not simply that this brief passage may “mean” something, but that listeners are prompted in the first place to ask themselves what it may mean.

The second movement (Andante con moto) is a rather unusual variation form in which two themes alternate, the first sweet and lyrical, the second more forceful. Beethoven combines the third and fourth movements, which are played without pause. In earlier symphonies he had already replaced the polite minuet and trio with a more vigorous scherzo and trio. In the Fifth the Allegro scherzo begins with a soft ascending arpeggiated string theme that contrasts with a loud assertive horn motif (again using the fate rhythm). The trio section features extraordinarily difficult string writing, in fugal style, that defeated musicians in early performances. Instead of an exact return of the opening scherzo section, Beethoven recasts the thematic material in a completely new orchestration and pianississim o dynamic. The tension builds with a long pedal point—the insistent repetition of the same note C in the timpani—that swells in an enormous crescendo directly into the fourth movement Allegro, where three trombones, contrabassoon, and a piccolo join in for the first time in the piece. This finale, like the first movement, is in sonata form and uses the fate rhythm in the second theme. The coda to the Symphony may strike listeners today as almost too triumphantly affirmative as the music gets faster, louder, and ever more insistent. Indeed, it is difficult to divest this best known of symphonies from all the baggage it has accumulated through nearly two centuries and to listen with fresh ears to the shocking power of the work and to the marvels that Beethoven introduced into the world of orchestral music.

—Christopher H . G ibbs

B eethoven com posed his S ym phony N o. 5 from 1807 to 1808.

Fritz S cheel conducted the first P hiladelphia O rchestra perform ances of the Fifth, in N ovem ber 1900, as part of the O rchestra’s first concert. A series of em inent conductors have led the piece here over the years: Artur R odzinski, Fritz R einer, O tto K lem perer, José Iturbi, Fritz R einer, Erich Leinsdorf, K laus Tennstedt, D aniel B arenboim , Zubin M ehta, M ichael Tilson Thom as, and, of course, Leopold S tokow ski, Eugene O rm andy, R iccardo M uti, W olfgang S aw allisch, C hristoph Eschenbach, and C harles D utoit. M ost recently on subscription concerts, R afael Frühbeck de B urgos led the w ork in January/February 2010.

The P hiladelphia O rchestra has recorded the S ym phony four tim es: in 1931 w ith S tokow ski for R C A; in 1955 and 1966 w ith O rm andy for C B S ; and in 1985 w ith M uti for EM I.

The piece is scored for piccolo, tw o flutes, tw o oboes, tw o clarinets, tw o bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, tw o trum pets, three trom bones, tim pani, and strings.

The Fifth S ym phony runs approxim ately 35 m inutes in perform ance.

Program notes © 2012. All rights reserved. P rogram notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Paul G riffiths.

G E N E RAL TE RMS Arpeggio: A broken chord (with notes played in succession instead of together) Cadenza: A passage or section in a style of brilliant improvisation, usually inserted near the end of a movement or composition Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones Coda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finality D ominant: The fifth degree of the major or minor scale, the triad built upon that degree, or the key that has this triad as its tonic Fugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different places Minuet: A dance in triple time commonly used up to the beginning of the 19th century as the lightest movement of a symphony Modulate: To pass from one key or mode into another 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. P edal point: A long-held note, usually in the bass, sounding with changing harmonies in the other parts Recapitulation: See sonata form 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.). Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” U sually 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 in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Sinfonia concertante: An instrumental piece that combines features of the concerto grosso and the symphony Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications. Syncopation: A shift of rhythmic emphasis off the beat Tonic: The keynote of a scale Trio: See scherzo Tutti: All; full orchestra

TH E SP E ED OF MU SIC (Tempo) Allegro: Bright, fast Andante: W alking speed Comodo: Comfortable, easy, unhurried Con brio: Vigorously, with fire Con molto preciso: W ith much precision Con moto: W ith motion Con spirito: W ith spirit Moderato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow V ivo: Lively, intense

TE MP O MOD IFIE RS Molto: Very

D Y N AMIC MARK S Crescendo: Increasing volume P ianississimo (ppp): Very, very soft