The Orchestra E Have Faded Away
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OCT. 20, 21, 22 classical series SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall Concert begins at 8:00 p.m.; Preview talk with Alan Chapman at 7:00 p.m. presents 2011 –2012 HAL & JEANETTE SEGERSTROM FAMILY FOUNDATION CLASSICAL SERIES GIANCARLO GUERRERO • CONDUCTOR | JEREMY DENK • PIANO BARRY PERKINS • TRUMPET | JOSÉ FRANCISCO SALGADO • VIDEO CHOREOGRAPHER ALAN HOVHANESS Prayer of St. Gregory (1911 –2000) Barry Perkins WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Concerto No. 21 in C Major for Piano and Orchestra, K. 467 (1756 –1791) Allegro Maestoso Andante Allegro vivace assai Jeremy Denk INTERMISSION RICHARD STRAUSS Also Sprach Zarathustra (1864 –1949) Einleitung (Introduction) Von den Hinterweltlern (Of the Backworldsmen) Von der großen Sehnsucht (Of the Great Longing) Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften (Of Joys and Passions) Das Grablied (The Song of the Grave) Von der Wissenschaft (Of Science and Learning) Der Genesende (The Convalescent) Das Tanzlied (The Dance-Song) Nachtwandlerlied (Song of the Night Wanderer) JOHANN STRAUSS, JR. On the Beautiful Blue Danube (1825 –1899) José Francisco Salgado Patrons are cordially invited to remain after the performance for an organ postlude played by Christoph Bull. The Friday, October 21, concert is generously sponsored by Tom and Vina Williams Slattery. PACIFIC SYMPHONY PROUDLY RECOGNIZES ITS OFFICIAL PARTNERS Official Airline Official Hotel Official Television Station Pacific Symphony broadcasts are made possible by a generous grant from The Saturday, October 22, performance is broadcast live on KUSC, the official classical radio station of Pacific Symphony. The simultaneous streaming of this broadcast over the internet at kusc.org is made possible by the generosity of the musicians of Pacific Symphony. Pacific Symphony gratefully acknowledges the support of its 11,000 subscribing patrons. Thank you! 2 • Pacific Symphony NOTES by michael clive Gregory” we hear the most significant elements that marked Hovhaness’ life and work: the distinctive voice, the aura of mystery, the melodies and harmonies that seem tinged with the exoticism of eastern cultures expressed with elegant, elemental simplicity. The redis - covery of his Armenian roots awakened his interest in Armenian com - posers and became a major influence on his compositional style; they also led him to take the name Hovhaness, adapted from his paternal grandfather. Hovhaness pursued these interests determinedly at a time when his contemporaries such as Bernstein and Copland, and his S composition teacher Roger Sessions, were earnestly pursuing a char - S acteristically American style. To this day, many listeners think of him E as more closely associated with Armenian than American music. N A In truth, Hovhaness, like any accomplished composer, had other H influences that stretched far beyond his own origins. These included V Sibelius (Hovhaness was a longtime, close friend and admirer) and ) O classical Indian music (he became an excellent sitar player under the 0 0 H tutelage of the virtuoso Uday Shankar). But his “Prayer of St. Gregory” 0 2 is the product of what has been called Hovhaness’ “Armenian N – 1 period.” He composed it as an intermezzo in an opera on Armenian A 1 themes, “Etchmiadzin,” which premiered in New York in October L 9 1 1946. With its serene tempo and chords that seem to resonate with A ( deep faith, the work depicts St. Gregory the Illuminator, who brought Prayer of St. Gregory Christianity to Armenia in the fourth century. The deliberative trum - Instrumentation: strings, solo trumpet pet melody could be the voice of St. Gregory himself bringing faith Performance time: 5 minutes and enlightenment to the nation of Hovhaness’ paternal ancestors. he life of the prolific American composer Alan Hovhaness, with its Tstreak of rugged individualism, has an appealingly Yankee character. Concerto No. 21 in C Major But the sound of his music conveys the opposite impression: moody, for Piano and Orchestra, K. 467 exotic and mysterious, with long melodic lines and a style that conveys an Instrumentation: flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, eclectic, international sophistication through simplicity. In what he did and timpani, strings, solo piano what he composed, Alan Hovhaness crossed boundaries and went his own Performance time: 29 minutes way. His “Prayer of St. Gregory” is a case in point, haunting and evoca - tive and totally unexpected in the way it combines string ensemble with t seems Mozart was writing beautiful music almost from the the voice of a single trumpet. It has been played fairly consistently since I cradle. He never reached the age when we expect great com - its composition shortly after World War II. But in 2011, the centennial of posers to produce their most profound pieces — artworks that Hovhaness’ birth (he died in 2000 at the age of 89), “Prayer of St. seem to illuminate what it means to be human or to challenge the Gregory” has found renewed popularity. way we listen rather than just delight us with melodic and harmonic invention. But as with all things Mozart, his “late” period came early A native of Massachusetts, Hovhaness was born to a family of high and was astoundingly productive, marked by insights that simply intellectual standards, but no particular musicality — his father, who had wouldn’t seem to be available to someone with only 25 or 30 years’ Armenian roots but was born in Turkey, was a respected professor of chem - experience of life. His Piano Concerto No. 21 — composed in a mat - istry at Tufts University; his mother, of Scottish extraction, was a Wellesley ter of weeks when he was 29 and writing other works simultaneously alumna. But young Alan showed a musical obsessiveness we often see in — came during this period crowded with masterpieces. composers who are child prodigies: inspired by a Schubert song at age 4, he taught himself musical notation so he could write his own music. He Scholarship sometimes treats them as mysteries, searching for a “key” started with an Italian-style cantata and never stopped for long. to all of the late symphonies, operas and piano concertos in genre or another. Indeed, more than one author has suggested that the opening Unlike some parents faced with a musical child, Haroutioun and movement of this concerto points toward the opening of Mozart’s great Madeleine Scott Chakmakjian encouraged their son Alan to follow Symphony No. 40. But more than anything else, the Piano Concerto his talent and his own inclinations, which led him to piano studies No. 21 is known for the sublime beauty of its central andante move - with Heinrich Gebhard, a student of the great Theodor Leschitizky, ment, which seems to suspend time as we listen. and to the New England Conservatory of Music, where he won the Samuel Endicott Prize for composition for his “Sunset Symphony.” Though the concerto conforms to the fast-slow-fast arrangement of move - He would go on to write about 60 more, a huge number for a 20th- ments typical of the era, it opens with a quiet melody in the strings that century symphonist, closer to Haydn than to Beethoven — after whom, takes shape gradually, seeming to belie the movement’s allegro marking. according to the musical rule of thumb, nine is the limit. Woodwinds, brass and percussion answer the strings, opening the movement to inspired wandering from one theme and instrumental family to another. In the brief six minutes or so that it takes to listen to “Prayer of St. Pacific Symphony • 3 NOTES When the slower second movement begins in F major (the concerto’s outer movements are in C major), hushed strings initiate a long-lined, flowing melody underscored by murmuring triplets passed from one instrumental family to another — the inner strings, the woodwinds, the piano’s bass line. In its initial, major statement, the melody has a beauty that seems subdued yet ecstatic, as if it has surpassed the temporal realms of the everyday and could purl on forever. But as it roams and modulates, its restatement in F minor strikes a note of earthly reality, like the shadow of a cloud on a sunny landscape. For all its hushed, lyric intensity, this is a melody that argues against those who say the operas S are the key to Mozart’s late masterpieces: this theme cannot be sung S like the tune of an aria, only played by a pianist with a very good legato. U A A melody to die for? Perhaps. The Swedish film director Bo Widerberg R may have thought so when he chose this movement to provide the leitmotif T S for the romantic passion between Elvira Madigan, a tightrope walker in the ) circus, and Bengt Edvard Sparre, a respectably married count and lieu - D 9 4 tenant in the Swedish cavalry. Based on their real-life story, Widerberg’s R 9 A 1967 film “Elvira Madigan” depicts Madigan’s idyllic tryst with Sparre 1 – H on a Danish island. Suspended in their private reality, their month of love is 4 6 so perfectly expressed in the music of this concerto’s second movement C 8 I that the concerto itself gained new popularity and a new nickname: “The 1 R ( Elvira Madigan Concerto.” Without Mozart’s genius, the inevitable end of Sparre’s and Madigan’s affair — when their money ran out, they choose to Also Sprach Zarathustra die rather than part and rejoin the world — might not have seemed quite Instrumentation: 3 flutes (third doubling on piccolo), piccolo, 3 oboes, so well justified to swooning movie audiences around the world. horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, Unlike Sparre and Madigan, listeners to the Piano Concerto No. 21 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, 3 percussion, re-enter the world joyfully in its third movement, a zesty finale with a pri - 2 harps, organ, strings mary theme suggesting a gavotte, but rendered in a speedy allegro vivace Performance time: 33 minutes tempo that’s more like a gallop.