Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director
Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 8:00pm Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 8:00pm
Majestic Bruckner
Donald Runnicles, conductor
Richard Wagner Siegfried Idyll
Intermission
Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 7 in E Major, WAB 107 I. Allegro moderato II. Adagio: Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam III. Scherzo: Sehr schnell IV. Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht schnell
As a courtesy to musicians, guest artists, and fellow concertgoers, please put your phone away and on silent during the performance.
FEBRUARY 20 & 22, 2020 23 ABOUT THE WORKS enriched by the sensuous harmonies and luxuriant chromatic counterpoint typical of late Wagner, but with not a trace of Wagnerian Richard Wagner bombast. (This is the Wagner of choice for people who hate Wagner.) Wagner’s scoring is Siegfried Idyll delicate and discriminating, and every detail Born: Leipzig, Germany, May 22, 1813 counts—when, after 35 bars for strings alone, Died: Venice, Italy, Feb 13, 1883 the first wind instrument (the flute) enters
Composed: 1870 with a new motif, the effect is magical. The 17 Idyll can be played as Wagner played it, with a min chamber ensemble of just 13 performers, one to a part, but even in an orchestral setting, with a larger body of strings, it conveys the The Siegfried Idyll was Wagner’s Symphonia intimacy of chamber music. domestica, an orchestral fantasy on The Idyll is structured as a single great domestic themes. It grew out of his personal arch. Wagner gradually introduces a series circumstances at Tribschen, the lakeside of themes and motifs, and subjects all of villa near Lucerne where he and his wife them to perpetual (though unobtrusive) Cosima spent six of the most contented and metamorphosis—freely varying, extending productive years of their lives. The story of the and reharmonizing them, combining them Idyll is one of the most touching in all music— in counterpoint while maintaining an no less so for its familiarity. Here is Ernest uninterrupted lyrical flow—that “endless Newman’s account of it, from his magisterial melody” for which he is celebrated. The four-volume Life of Richard Wagner: mounting intensity of the music reaches a “For the Christmas Day of 1870, which was also brief fortissimo climax near the middle—the Cosima’s 33rd birthday, Wagner had prepared only passage in which the trumpet appears. an affectionate surprise. Wholly unknown to Then, over the last 100 bars, the music grows her he had been working up some old musical slower and quieter, its themes sounding material, intimately associated with her in ever more like lullabies. All tension gradually his mind, which in 1864 he had designed dissipates, and the work closes in a state of for a string quartet. He now re-fashioned perfect peace. and enlarged this material to constitute The Idyll draws its principal themes from the what is known today as the Siegfried Idyll. third act of its namesake—Wagner’s Siegfried; [The conductor Hans] Richter had secretly the theme given out by the first violins in rehearsed in Zürich, then in Lucerne, a small the opening bars (the most important idea orchestra of musicians...consisting of a few in the work) is the opera’s so-called “Peace” strings, a flute, an oboe, two clarinets, a theme. Already in Wagner’s day, analysts trumpet, two horns, and a bassoon. On the made a sport out of finding in the Idyll sources morning of the 25th the players grouped for the leitmotifs and other elements from themselves on the stairs leading to the upper Siegfried and other operas. While some such floor, where, in the presence of the astonished connections are indisputable, the Idyll had Cosima, the children and [the philosopher far more important personal meaning for Friedrich] Nietzsche, Wagner conducted the Wagner. He once told Cosima that he had first performance of the lovely work.” conceived the first theme long before the “Lovely” is an understatement. The Idyll third act of Siegfried—in 1864, when the two is a work of surpassing tenderness and of them had first met. About 100 bars in, the heartbreaking beauty, with lithe melodies oboe introduces a lovely, pastoral melody in
24 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA a gently rocking rhythm. It is a melody that Bruckner began sketching the Seventh on Wagner had sketched in 1868 as a cradle song, September 23, 1881—he had completed his set to a text beginning “Schlaf, Kindchen, Sixth Symphony just 20 days earlier—and schlafe” (Sleep, little child, sleep). Its the work was completed two years later, in interpolation here is Wagner’s private homage September 1883. Typically for Bruckner, the to his new son Siegfried, born in June 1869 Seventh was conceived on a grand scale, and while his father was completing his opera of comprises four large movements in a scheme the same name. that betrays the influence of Beethoven’s Ninth: a highly dramatic first movement; In short, everything about the Idyll is tied up a long, intense slow movement based on with Wagner’s private life, so much so that we two main themes; a scherzo of somewhat are lucky to have this piece in the repertoire, “demonic” character; and an eventful and for such was never the composer’s desire. highly original finale. As Newman puts it, “The Tribschen Idyll—its original title—was not a Siegfried Idyll in the The first movement is nominally in E major, present acceptation of that term, but a series and the magnificent, arching opening theme of domestic confidences centring in happy begins with the cellos sounding an E-major Tribschen as a whole, and never intended for triad over the span of three octaves; but in hearing by anyone but the family and a few fact E major is scarcely established before it intimates. It was not until 1878 that Wagner, is pushed aside. There are three main themes greatly to his own distress and Cosima’s, in the exposition—the cello theme; a quiet, allowed the work to be published, and then lyrical theme (oboes and clarinets); and a only under financial duress.” bouncing, somewhat grotesque march-like theme (strings)—all of them harmonically Program note by Kevin Bazzana wayward, wandering through many keys before (reluctantly) making a cadence. The exposition comes to a brassy climax, and in Anton Bruckner the quiet section that follows, each of the three themes, in turn, is briefly developed. Symphony No. 7 in E Major, Though the latter part of the movement WAB 107 looks like a conventional development, recapitulation, and coda, Bruckner’s strange Born: Ansfelden, Austria, Sep 4, 1824 harmonic plot overrides these divisions: the Died: Vienna, Austria, Oct 11, 1896 movement describes a single great arch, Composed: 1881–1883 64 away from and then, at the last minute min (in the concise coda), back to the key of E major. Bruckner underscores this harmonic achievement with a timpani roll that sounds In the early 1880s Bruckner was still earning throughout the last 50 bars (he has withheld his living as an organist and teacher in the timpani until this point). Vienna, and had yet to make a major impact The second movement, marked “Very solemn as a composer, even within Austria. Only the and very slow,” is monumental and powerfully devoted championship of pupils and friends expressive. In scale and rhetoric the music is kept his name before the public. He did not often recognizably Wagnerian—no surprise, achieve real fame until he was 60, with the for in the summer of 1882, while immersed première of the most beautiful and accessible in the Seventh, Bruckner visited Bayreuth, of his symphonies, the Seventh, in Leipzig, on to attend the première of Wagner’s last December 30, 1884. opera, Parsifal, and to speak with his great
FEBRUARY 20 & 22, 2020 25 ABOUT THE WORKS
friend and champion for what turned out to figure (strings); a four-bar fanfare (trumpet); be the last time. Wagner, who once praised and a snatch of lilting waltz (violins and Bruckner as the only contemporary composer clarinet). As the music unfolds, the implacable “who measures up to Beethoven,” vowed to fanfare motif appears increasingly ominous conduct the Seventh when it was finished, and monumental. but by then Wagner was ill, and Bruckner had The work’s finale is so original and dramatic a premonition “that before long the Master that it seems hardly pertinent to speak of would die.” From that premonition sprang the it in terms of conventional forms at all. It opening theme of the movement—melancholy is replete with distinctive ideas, juggled in and funereal, but including a noble, hymn- unexpected ways, and always reappearing like phrase in the strings. Bruckner makes in fresh guises. But as in the first movement the connection to Wagner explicit by scoring the overriding structural idea is the quest for the theme for a quartet of “Wagner tubas,” confirmation of the work’s main key, E major. instruments Wagner invented for his Ring The opening theme (violins, with lighthearted, cycle. (Bruckner had never used them perhaps tongue-in-cheek variation on the before.) The second theme is a luxuriant, triadic opening theme of the first movement) Mahlerian outpouring in the violins, and in begins in that key, but moves quickly away the subsequent development both themes from it; there is a chorale-like theme, for are greatly intensified. The recapitulation is instance, introduced by the violins in A-flat. spacious and Wagnerian—the first theme is As in the first movement, the confirmation reprised beneath flowing scale figures in the of E major is deferred until the very end. The first-violin part—building to a climax marked monumental closing pages should be heard by the introduction of timpani, triangle, and as the resolution of the harmonic meandering cymbals. On February 13, 1883, by which point of the whole symphony, and, in the last nine the movement was finished except for the bars, Bruckner makes this clear through one coda, Wagner died. Bruckner returned to the of those cyclical gestures so beloved of 19th- coda with the intention of memorializing his century composers: he brings back the soaring friend, drawing again on the Wagner tubas in theme with which the grand adventure of his what he would always refer to as “the funeral Seventh Symphony had begun more than an music for the Master.” It is a brief, simple, lean, hour before. yet immensely moving dénouement. Program note by Kevin Bazzana The third movement is in a conventional three-part form (Scherzo-Trio-Scherzo) with the opening section reprised unchanged. The Scherzo is a potent ancestor of those “diabolical” scherzos familiar from symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich—and of course Beethoven’s Ninth hovers in the background. As in most such movements, a small fund of motifs is intensively developed in busy contrapuntal textures that shift quickly from key to key. In fact, all of the basic material of the Scherzo appears in the first dozen bars: a brusque, one-bar repeated
26 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA THE ARTISTS
Donald Runnicles conductor Donald Runnicles made his TSO début in March 1994.
Donald Runnicles is the general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival, as well as principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In 2019 Runnicles also took up post as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever principal guest conductor. He additionally holds the title of conductor emeritus of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, having served as chief conductor from 2009–2016. Runnicles enjoys close and enduring relationships with many of the leading opera companies and symphony orchestras, and he is especially celebrated for his interpretations of Romantic and post-Romantic repertoire, which are core to his musical identity.
In the 2019/20 season, Runnicles will return to the Toronto Symphony and make his début with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, in addition to his regular concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. At the Deutsche Oper, highlights of Runnicles’s season include the début of Das Rheingold as part of an ambitious new Ring Cycle extending through 2021, as well as a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which continues Runnicles’s Britten cycle at the house. He also conducts seven revival titles and brings the company to the Edinburgh Festival in a performance of Manon Lescaut.
Donald Runnicles’s previous posts include music director of the San Francisco Opera (1992–2008), during which he led world premières of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, Conrad Susa’s Les Liaisons dangereuses, and the US première of Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise; principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (2001–2007); and general music director of the Theater Freiburg and Orchestra (1989–1993).
Mr. Runnicles’s extensive discography includes complete recordings of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Mozart’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Britten’s Billy Budd, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, and Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. His recording of Wagner arias with Jonas Kaufmann and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin won the 2013 Gramophone prize for Best Vocal Recording, and his recording of Janáček’s Jenůfa with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin was nominated for a 2016 GRAMMY® award for Best Opera Recording. Most recently, he released a recording of Aribert Reimann’s new opera L’invisible.
Donald Runnicles was born and raised in Edinburgh. He was appointed OBE in 2004, and holds honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
FEBRUARY 20 & 22, 2020 27