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Home , Piano Concerto (Busoni), Sergei Rachmaninoff

Season 2020111111----2020202011112222

The Philadelphia

Friday, February 117777,, at 888:008:00:00:00 Saturday, February 118888,, at 8:00

Charles Dutoit Conductor Nikolaï Lugansky

Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by I. Allegro II. “,” Scherzo: Moderato—Lebhaft III. Andantino IV. Marsch

Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 a. Dawn— b. Of the Backworldsmen— c. Of the Great Longing— d. Of Joys and Passions— e. Grave-Song— f. Of Science— g. The Convalescent— h. The Dance-Song— i. The Night-Wanderer’s Song

Intermission

Rachmaninoff Piano No. 2 in , Op. 18 I. Moderato II. Adagio sostenuto III. Allegro scherzando

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 55 minutes.

In the 2010-11 season The celebrated its 30-year artistic collaboration with Charles Dutoit, who has held the title of chief conductor since 2008. With the 2012-13 season, the Orchestra will honor Mr. Dutoit by bestowing upon him the title of conductor laureate. Also artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic, Mr. Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world’s pre-eminent and soloists. He has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, and Erato, and his more than 200 recordings have garnered over 40 awards and distinctions.

From 1977 to 2002, Mr. Dutoit was artistic director of the Montreal . Between 1990 and 2010 he was artistic director and principal conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra's summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and from 1991 to 2001 he was director of the Orchestre National de France. In 1996 he was appointed music director of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony; today he is music director emeritus. Mr. Dutoit has been artistic director of both the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival and the Miyazaki International Music Festival in Japan, as well as the Canton International Summer Music Academy in Guangzhou, China, which he founded in 2005. In 2009 he became music director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra. While still in his early 20s, Mr. Dutoit was invited by to conduct the Vienna State . Mr. Dutoit has since conducted at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

In 1991 Mr. Dutoit was made an Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1995 he was named Grand Officier de l’Ordre National du Québec, and in 1996 Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. In 1998 he was invested as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award of merit, and this past May was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music.

Mr. Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his extensive musical training included , , piano, percussion, music history, and composition in Geneva, Siena, Venice, and Boston. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art, and architecture, Mr. Dutoit has traveled all the nations of the world.

Pianist Nikolaï LuganskyLugansky’s upcoming engagements include appearances with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the , the Chicago Symphony, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and Tokyo’s NHK Symphony. He also gives recitals at the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the State Conservatory, London’s Wigmore Hall, Prague’s Rudolfinum, and the Vienna Konzerthaus, and collaborates in with violinists Vadim Repin and Leonidas Kavakos.

Last season in North America Mr. Lugansky made his debut with the National Symphony in addition to a return engagement with the Montreal Symphony and a cross-country tour with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. In Europe he appeared with the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, and on tour with and the Philharmonia Orchestra. He also performed recitals at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Concertgebouw, and the Royal Festival Hall and Southbank Centre in London.

Mr. Lugansky records exclusively for the Naïve-Ambroisie label; his disc of solo works by Liszt is now available on that label. His previous releases include an all-Chopin recital for Onyx and a disc of chamber music with Mr. Repin for Deutsche Grammophon, which won the 2011 Edison Klassiek Award and the chamber music category award of the 2011 BBC Music Magazine Awards. Mr. Lugansky’s recordings of works by and Chopin on the Warner Classics label have garnered the Diapason d’Or, the German Record Critics Award, and the Echo Klassik Award.

Mr. Lugansky studied at the Central School of Music in Moscow, where his principal teachers included Tatiana Nikolaeva and Sergei Dorensky. Mr. Lugansky has been a prizewinner in several international competitions, including the International Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1988, the All-Union Rachmaninoff Competition in 1990, and the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1994. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2008 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

FRAMING THE PROGRAM

The program tonight features three master composers who enjoyed personal ties with The Philadelphia Orchestra. The Orchestra gave the world premiere of two compositions by Paul Hindemith, who conducted the ensemble himself in 1939. The concert opens with his Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, which imaginatively transforms pieces Weber composed in the early .

Richard Strauss conducted the Philadelphians on both of his trips to America: in 1904 and 1921. His music has long been a staple of the Orchestra, which concludes the current season with performances of the opera Elektra later this . Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) has one of the most famous and impressive openings in the orchestral repertoire and goes on to explore elements drawn from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Strauss remarked that through his music he hoped to convey “an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origins, through the various phases of its development, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the Orchestra as a composer, , conductor, and recording artist. The concert tonight concludes with his thrilling No. 2, composed at a crucial juncture in his career. The spectacular failure of his First Symphony when it premiered in 1897 sent the 22-year-old composer into deep despair that was eventually relieved through daily sessions of hypnosis and auto- suggestion. After nearly three years of compositional paralysis the immediate success of the Second Piano Concerto heralded Rachmaninoff’s reemergence and ushered in the most productive period of his career.

Parallel Events 1896 Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra Music Puccini La bohème Literature Chekhov The Sea Gull Art Leighton Clytie History Utah becomes a state

1900 Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 Music Elgar Dream of Gerontius Literature Chekov Uncle Vanya Art Sargent The Sitwell Family History Boxer Rebellion in China

1943 Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis Music Copland A Lincoln Portrait Literature Willkie One World ArtArtArt Benton July Hay History World War II Symphonic Metamorphosis ooofof Themes bbbyby Carl Maria vvvonvon Weber

Paul Hindemith Born iiinin Hanau, Germany, November 16, 1895 Died iiinin Frankfurt, December 28, 1963

Exiled from his native Germany, Hindemith arrived in the United States in early 1940 to begin a new life and a new career. Known the world over for startling theater works such as Mathis der Maler (Mathis the Painter) and Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murder, the Hope of Women), and for orchestral and chamber works that established new approaches to tonality, he had been perhaps the central musical figure in Germany during the pre-war period. As an influential professor at the Berlin Hochschule he had devised revolutionary methods for the teaching of and composition. (His classic The Craft of Musical Composition was used as a textbook for many years, both in Europe and in the United States.) During the 1920s and early ’30s he had also carved out a niche as a composer and performer from whom the public could always expect to be surprised. A musical polymath, he mastered many instruments, including piano, violin, viola, and .

A New Life iiinin Exile It was no surprise, though, that the National Socialists found his unconventional music decadent, his methods suspect, and (perhaps the real point) his refusal to disassociate himself from Jewish musicians intolerable. Though he had strong allies in musical circles, his prominent position in German life became impossible to sustain. In 1940, like so many others, Hindemith made his way to New York. During his first months in the United States he taught composition at several universities in upstate New York (Buffalo, Cornell, Wells College in Aurora). Finally in 1941 he received a permanent appointment as professor of counterpoint and composition at Yale.

Hindemith was not one to live dreamily in the past. He forged a new life, building a studio of talented students and growing into a figure every bit as influential in the New World as he had been in the Old. His compositions from 1940 on were marked by the same rigor of design and mastery of that had characterized his earlier music. His application of quasi-socialist ideals to musical pedagogy—spawned of his upbringing in a working-class neighborhood of Frankfurt—fit nicely into post-war American life. (“The performing amateur who seriously concerns himself with musical matters,” he had written in 1930, “is just as important a member of our musical life as the professional.”) And in fact the essential presuppositions of his teachings, namely that music should be useful (and by inference that art for art’s sake was dalliance) still seem like distinctly “American” ideas.

The Work’s Origins The work on tonight’s concert was composed during the composer’s first American years. In 1939, while still living in Europe, Hindemith had contracted with Leonide Massine, the eccentric genius of the Ballets Russes, to compose a ballet based on paintings of Pieter Brueghel. Later, he and Massine discussed the idea of a scenario employing paraphrases of the music of Carl Maria von Weber, much in the manner of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. But when the composer happened to see—in a ballet performance in Buffalo, New York—Massine’s production of the bacchanale from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, he was so turned off by the choreographer’s “hallucinatory” style that he immediately set about trying to get out his agreement. (Hindemith said he found the ballet “simply stupid.”) Though in addition to the Brueghel music, he had also begun sketching out music for a ballet based on several pieces by Carl Maria von Weber, when he learned that Massine planned to employ Salvador Dali (who had designed the Wagner scene) for the decor, he withdrew from his contract.

Nevertheless he was able to use material from the Weber sketches for the later Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, completed in the summer of 1943 and first performed the following year by Artur Rodzinski and the . The work takes a substantially different approach to the variation form. An expression of the composer’s acute and lifelong awareness of the music of the past, from Medieval and Renaissance counterpoint to 18th-century Classicism, this piece was Hindemith’s most important composition between Mathis (1934-35) and the Whitman Requiem (“When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,” 1946). It is an affectionate homage to the past, as well as a wry reflection on Weber and his time. Yet at the same time it is conceptually subtle and formally ingenious.

A Closer Look The work is cast in four movements, with each individual movement built on principles of variation rather than of -form. For thematic material the composer has drawn upon three different sources from Weber’s works: two sets of pieces for piano duet (Opp. 10 and 60) and incidental music for a stage production of Turandot (Schiller’s translation of the Carlo Gozzi play). The first movement (AllegroAllegroAllegro) shapes one of the Op. 60 pieces into a vigorous passage requiring great instrumental virtuosity. The Scherzo: Turandot makes plain its “oriental” intent through the use of a tune from the Overture of Weber’s Turandot music—a , interestingly, that Weber himself had derived from a collection of “genuine” Chinese tunes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionaire de musique. Hindemith’s transformation of Rousseau’s and Weber’s naïve tune is one of the great tours de force of 20th-century orchestral music. A slow movement (AndantinoAndantinoAndantino) follows, based on one of Weber’s Op. 10 piano duets, and containing echoes of the Baroque siciliano . It is capped by a florid solo for . The final March returns to Op. 60 for its inspiration; the square march rhythm gradually gives way to a dashing triplet figure that closes the work in a sea of sonority.

—Paul J. Horsley

Hindemith composed the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber in 1943.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first performance of the work took place in November 1955, under ’s baton, in a concert commemorating Hindemith’s 60th birthday. Most recently, Neeme Järvi and the Orchestra performed the work in November 2006.

The Orchestra recorded the Symphonic Metamorphosis three times: in 1961 with Ormandy for CBS; in 1977 with Ormandy for EMI; and in 1994 with Wolfgang Sawallisch for EMI.

The score calls for , two , two , English , two , clarinet, two , contrabassoon, four horns, two , three , , , percussion (bass drum, , , large tom-tom, orchestra bells, small cymbals, small , side drum, snare drum, , triangle, wood block), and strings.

Running time is approximately 21 minutes.

Also sprach Zarathustra

Richard Strauss Born in Munich, June 11, 181864646464 Died in GarmischGarmisch----Partenkirchen,Partenkirchen, September 8, 1949

Strauss’s telling statement that Nietzsche’s philosophical tract Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) “offers much aesthetic enjoyment” can help us gain a proper perspective on the significance of the book’s bizarre world-view to the composer’s own. True, the young Strauss had showed a passionate interest in the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche during the 1890s, and he loved nothing more than to become absorbed in animated conversations with his literary and musical friends on art, philosophy, and the nature of man. But as with his other musical treatments of “heavy” subjects (such as the earlier Death and Transfiguration, or the later Ein Heldenleben ), a streak of Bavarian self- parody tends to undercut any excess of pomposity or over-seriousness that may threaten the purely musical discourse. Strauss initially inscribed his musical setting of Zarathustra with the following ironic and elusive subtitle: “Symphonic optimism in fin-de-siècle form, dedicated to the 20th century.”

“An Homage to Nietzsche’s Genius” Though there seems little question as to the basic earnestness of intent in his Zarathustra, Strauss shows himself a true modernist by making its centerpiece the Dance of the Superman, in which frail Zarathustra rises from his sickbed and dances to a tune that could be the product of another Strauss, the Waltz King himself, Johann Strauss, Jr. By placing Nietzsche’s sixth-century-B.C. Persian mystic in a Viennese ballroom ca. 1880, Strauss has humanized him for us, at the same time making him (perhaps unwittingly) into someone that we might just as easily ridicule as harken to. Through his compositional mastery, Strauss forces us to sit up and take notice of this philosophic oddity, yet his touch of whimsy allows us to enjoy the music without embracing Nietzsche’s ideas. “I did not intend to write philosophical music or to portray Nietzsche’s great work in music,” he wrote. “I wished to convey by means of music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origins, through the various phases of its development, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman. The whole symphonic poem is intended as an homage to Nietzsche’s genius, which found its greatest expression in his Also sprach Zarathustra. ”

Strauss had probably begun reading Nietzsche during his early years as an opera conductor at ; but it was not until his travels through Greece, Egypt, and Sicily in 1892-93— when he was recovering from a serious illness—that he had completely immersed himself in philosophy and mysticism, using the surroundings of noble antiquity to stimulate his reflections on ancient thinking and on contemporary philosophy as well. Several things in Nietzsche aligned with the direction in which Strauss’s own thoughts were moving, particularly the rejection of organized religion and the embracing of Man as agent of his own “regeneration” into near-deity. On one level the composer’s tone poem did indeed become an oblique statement of faith, though it was not squarely in line with Nietzsche’s own.

The Inspiration Nietzsche uses the figure of Zarathustra, whom the Greeks called Zoroaster, as a sort of mouthpiece for his own musings on mankind’s place in nature and the universe. This peculiar philosophical masterpiece, first published between 1883 and 1885, is cast in the form of some 80 short “proclamations,” each with a title indicative of its content (“Of Virtue,” “Of Science,” “Of Chastity,” etc.), and each ending with the words “Also sprach Zarathustra.” Over the course of Nietzsche’s work, Zarathustra passes through various levels of spiritual development, from the basest of “natural” conditions through religion and worldly delights and finally to a sort of nervous breakdown, the aftermath of which is a period of visionary convalescence followed by a transfiguration into the Superman. “Man is a thing to be surmounted,” Zarathustra says. “What is the ape to man? A jest or a thing of shame. So shall man be to the Superman. … Man is a rope stretched between beast and Superman—a rope over an abyss. Man is great in that he is a bridge not a goal. … The Superman is the meaning of the earth.”

Strauss recognized the musical potential of Nietzsche’s great work immediately. For his tone poem he selected eight of Zarathustra’s “proclamations” to use as an abridged outline of the work’s spiritual progression. He began sketching ideas for the composition as early as February 1894 in Weimar, continuing these sketches in Cortina d’Ampezzo the following year; but most of the music for Zarathustra —the sixth of his great succession of tone poems—was written in the spring of 1896 in his native city of Munich.

“A Philosophy of Life” At the work’s premiere, which the composer conducted in Frankfurt on November 27, 1896, neither the Zarathustra quote printed in the score nor the eight subtitles were reproduced in the program book. Nevertheless Strauss spoke openly and often about the work’s programmatic apparatus. “Taken musically,” he said, “ Zarathustra is laid out as an alternation between the two remotest keys.” This alternation takes the form of a juxtaposition of C major, standing for elemental nature, with B major, representing Man and his struggle. Thus, in the words of the biographer Willi Schuh, “a philosophy of life, a Weltanschauung, takes concrete form in musical terms.” Just exactly what this philosophy embraces becomes apparent only through an examination of the work’s individual movements. Though modern listeners have difficulty separating Strauss’s music from the accrustation of later associations—Stanley Kubrick’s use of its opening in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the Nazis’ use of language similar to Nietzsche’s in their talk of a Master Race—Strauss’s piece will always remain more the product of a young composer “spreading his wings” than an idealistic tract for the future.

The work had a profound effect on 20th-century composers, too, most notably Béla Bartók, who counted its 1902 Hungarian premiere as among the decisive moments of his career: “My creativity was in stagnation at the time,” he wrote. “Freed from Brahms, I could not find the way past Wagner and Liszt. I was aroused as by a flash of lightning by the first Budapest performance of Zarathustra. At last I saw a way that would lead me to something new. I threw myself into a study of Strauss’s scores and began composing again.”

A Closer Look Strauss’s score is inscribed with an introductory passage from the Zarathustra prologue, describing the philosopher’s withdrawal from his home and his self- imposed exile to the wilderness. One morning he awakens and proclaims his new-found wisdom to the rising sun; Strauss’s work thus begins with a splendid sunrise (DawnDawnDawn), the famous arching introduction in C major, with the C-G-C ascent that the composer called his “universe” theme. (As the sun rises over the elemental wasteland of prehistoric knowledge, we become aware that Kubrick and his screenwriters knew just enough Nietzsche to get them into trouble.) The first section proper, OOOfOf the Backworldsmen, is a depiction of man in a state of nature, unknowing and guided by fleeting and inchoate longings (in the “human” key of ); the sounding of a Gregorian Credo melody in the horns suggests that traditional religion is among these ephemerae. Here Strauss divides his into a grand chamber ensemble of 16 parts, a technique to which he would return throughout his career. Of the Great Longing is Zarathustra’s yearning for fulfillment of human urges; in addition to the Credo we are treated here to a tune as well. Of Joys and Passions places the soul on an earthier level, with a fiercely passionate theme in C minor for upper strings, horn, and . The GraveGrave----Song,Song, which again divides the strings into a multi- voiced , portrays Zarathustra’s sorrow and loss; at one point the C-G-C theme breaks forth, as if to challenge the dim demeanor of the human struggle in B minor.

Of Science is, appropriately, a that begins as deep utterings of lower strings, on a subject that not only includes all 12 tones of the chromatic scale, but which juxtaposes the C-major nature-theme with the “human” B minor. The work climaxes with The ConvalescentConvalescent—in which the hero heals his soul through breakdown and recovery, growing ever more animated and energetic to the accompaniment of music from the 12-note “Science” theme—and The DanceDance----Song,Song, our fin-de-siècle apotheosis of the waltz. Any remaining seriousness is dispelled in this closing dance, which culminates in the sounding of the midnight bell and with the ethereal NightNight----Wanderer’sWanderer’s Song.

—Paul J. Horsley

Strauss composed Also sprach Zarathustra from 1894 to 1896.

The work received its first Philadelphia Orchestra performance on November 15, 1921, in New York with the composer on the podium. Most recently it was heard on subscription in December 2008 with David Zinman.

The Orchestra has recorded Zarathustra four times: in 1963 with Eugene Ormandy for CBS; in 1975 with Ormandy for RCA; in 1979 with Ormandy for EMI; and in 1996 with Wolfgang Sawallisch for EMI.

Strauss scored the piece for piccolo, three flutes (III doubling piccolo II), three oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, , three bassoons, contrabassoon, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two , timpani, percussion (bass drum, chime, cymbals, glockenspiel, triangle), two harps, organ, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 30 minutes.

Piano Concerto No. 2

Sergei Rachmaninoff Born in Semyonovo, RussiaRussia,, , 1873 Died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943

Sometimes an early failure can be so devastating to a young artist that it discourages the full flowering of his or her creativity. This very nearly happened to the young Sergei Rachmaninoff, whose First Symphony was received so disastrously that it nearly ruined him. “There are serious illnesses and deadly blows from fate that completely change a man’s character,” wrote the composer of the Symphony’s 1897 premiere. “When the indescribable torture of the performance had at last come to an end, I was a different man.” Conducted by , who was reportedly drunk at the time, the concert and its aftermath drove Rachmaninoff into a deep depression. “Lying for days on end on a couch, he kept gloomily silent,” wrote his friend Sofia Satina, “showing almost no reaction either to consolation or attempts to persuade him that he must pull himself together.”

Hypnosis as a Cure Among the projects that moldered during this fallow period was a new piano concerto, a follow-up to the relatively successful First Concerto. The pianist Alexander Goldenweiser had even expressed interest in performing the piece—but alas, the morose composer continued to hold him at bay. “Because I don’t yet have this concerto,” he wrote in the spring of 1898, “and because all my intensive work on it has got nowhere, I want to ask for your permission to give you a final answer in the middle of August.”

Not until he sought the medical services of a Dr. Nikolai Dahl did Rachmaninoff begin to pull himself out of depression. Dahl specialized in the use of hypnosis as a therapeutic technique, a sort of auto-suggestion to create an atmosphere of productivity. The composer described the experiment thus: “My family and friends had told Dr. Dahl that he must at all costs cure me of my apathetic condition and achieve such results that I would again begin to compose. Dahl had asked what manner of composition they desired and had received the answer, ‘a concerto for piano.’ … Consequently I heard the same hypnotic formula repeated day after day while I lay half asleep in an armchair in Dahl’s study. ‘You will begin to write your concerto. … You will work with great facility. … The concerto will be of excellent quality.’ It was always the same, without interruption. Although it may sound incredible, this cure really helped me. Already at the beginning of the summer I began again to compose.”

After five months of daily sessions, Dr. Dahl’s patient began to show improvement. At the same time, the composer rapidly accumulated material for a C-minor piano concerto, and by 1901 he had completed the piece that would be perhaps his most enduring masterpiece. “I felt that Dahl’s treatment had strengthened my nervous system to a miraculous degree,” the composer wrote. “Out of gratitude I dedicated my Second Concerto to him.” The piece was a huge success at its first performance in Moscow in November of that year, with the composer at the piano and . This success had the further effect of inspiring a whole series of excellent compositions, including the Second Suite for two , the Sonata, Op. 19, the “Spring” Cantata, and the brilliant for piano, Op. 23.

A Closer Look Previous generations popularized two of the Second Concerto’s main themes, one each from the first and last movements. The opening Moderato, with its dreamy opening chords in the piano, presents in the strings the heavy, foot-dragging theme that called “the most strikingly ‘Russian’ of themes … the figure of rising up to her full height.” But it is perhaps the central Adagio sostenuto movement that represents the young Rachmaninoff at his most inspired. The Allegro scherzando finale is a bracing and virtuosic roller-coaster ride.

—Paul J. Horsley

Rachmaninoff composed his Second Piano Concerto from 1899 to 1901.

Ossip Gabrilowitsch was pianist in the first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of the Second Concerto, in November 1916 in Cleveland; conducted. Rachmaninoff performed the piece here in 1921, and again on other occasions during the late and early ’40s. The most recent subscription performances were in December 2008, with André Watts and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

In addition to Rachmaninoff’s and Stokowski’s 1929 recording of the work, the Orchestra recorded the Concerto in 1956 for CBS with Eugene Istomin and Eugene Ormandy; in 1971 for RCA with and Ormandy; and in 1989 for EMI with and . The second and third movements only were also recorded by Rachmaninoff and Stokowski for RCA in 1924.

Rachmaninoff scored the work for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, side drum), and strings, in addition to the solo piano.

The Second Concerto runs approximately 35 minutes in performance.

Program notes © 2012. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

GENERAL TERMS Cadence: The conclusion to a phrase, movement, or piece based on a recognizable melodic formula, harmonic progression, or dissonance resolution : 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 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 Counterpoint: A term that describes the combination of simultaneously sounding musical lines Dissonance: A combination of two or more tones requiring resolution 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 Meter: The symmetrical grouping of musical 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. 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 Rondo: A form frequently used in and 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 in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Siciliano: A Sicilian dance in 6/8 meter and fairly slow 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. Tonic: The keynote of a scale Triad: A three-tone chord composed of a given tone (the “root”) with its third and fifth in ascending order in the scale Triplet: A group of three equal notes to be performed in the time of two of like value in the established rhythm

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo) Adagio: Leisurely, slow Allegro: Bright, fast Andantino: Slightly quicker than andante Lebhaft: Animated, lively Moderato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow Scherzando: Playfully Sostenuto: Sustained