Season 20102010----20112011 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, December 22,, at 8:00 Friday, December 33,, at 2:00 Saturday, December 44,, at 8:00 Gianandrea Noseda Conductor Garrick Ohlsson Piano Smetana Hakon Jarl, Op. 16 First Philadelphia Orchestra performances Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 5 in G major, Op. 55 I. Allegro con brio II. Moderato ben accentuato III. Toccata: Allegro con fuoco (più presto che le prima volta) IV. Larghetto V. Vivo Intermission Respighi The Fountains of Rome I. The Fountain of Valle Giulia at Dawn— II. The Triton Fountain at Morn— III. The Fountain of Trevi at Mid-day— IV. The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset Respighi Roman Festivals I. Circenses II. The Jubilee III. The October Festival IV. The Epiphany This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. Gianandrea Noseda currently serves as music director of the Teatro Regio in Turin, chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, Victor de Sabata Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, principal conductor of the Orquesta de Cadaqués, and artistic director of the Stresa Festival. Formerly principal guest conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 1999 to 2003 and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI from 2003 to 2006, he became the first foreign principal guest conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1997 and later was co-founder and principal conductor of the Mariinsky Young Philharmonic. Born in Milan, Mr. Noseda appears all over the world with orchestras such as the New York, Oslo, and Israel philharmonics, and the Chicago, Boston, London, and NHK symphonies. In Italy he regularly conducts the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Filarmonica della Scala, and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra. Future engagements include his debuts with the National Symphony in Washington and the Orchestre de Paris. These current performances mark his Philadelphia Orchestra debut. Mr. Noseda is an exclusive Chandos recording artist and his extensive discography includes music by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Karlowitz, Dvořák, Smetana, Shostakovich, and Mahler. He has also made recordings of works by such Italian composers as Respighi, Dallapiccola, Wolf-Ferrari, and Casella, in addition to a complete cycle of Liszt’s symphonic works. Mr. Noseda’s recordings with the BBC Philharmonic on Chandos include live performances of Beethoven’s complete symphonies as well as the complete symphonies of Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Brahms. Mr. Noseda works closely with youth orchestras worldwide, including the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España, the Orchestra of the Royal College of Music in London, the National Youth Orchestra of the United Kingdom, the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana of Fiesole, and the European Union Youth Orchestra. For his activity in Italy and abroad, Mr. Noseda has received the honor of Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana. Garrick Ohlsson opened his 2010-11 season at Carnegie Hall with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, followed by return visits to the orchestras of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington, Milwaukee, Toronto, San Diego, and the New World Symphony in Miami. In Europe he will visit orchestras in Sweden, Denmark, and Spain. In recognition of the bicentenary of Chopin’s birthday, Mr. Ohlsson will present a series of all-Chopin recital programs in Seattle, Berkeley, and La Jolla culminating at Lincoln Center. In conjunction with that project a documentary featuring Mr. Ohlsson, The Art of Chopin, has recently been released. In the summer of 2010, he was featured in all-Chopin programs at the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals as well as in appearances in Taipei, Beijing, Melbourne, and Sydney. Mr. Ohlsson is an avid chamber musician who has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács, and Tokyo string quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco- based FOG Trio. Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. His undertaking of the complete Beethoven sonatas for Bridge Records has already resulted in eight discs, the third of which won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance. Hyperion has also re- released his 16-disc set of the complete works of Chopin as well as a disc of Brahms piano works. A native of White Plains, NY, Mr. Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of eight. He attended the Westchester Conservatory of Music and at 13 entered the Juilliard School. Among his teachers are Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne, and Irma Wolpe. Winner of first prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montreal Piano Competition, his Gold Medal at the 1970 Chopin Competition in Warsaw brought him worldwide recognition. That same year he made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994, and in 1998 he received the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI. He makes his home in San Francisco. FRAMING THE PROGRAM The three composers on today’s program are all closely identified with their homelands— Smetana with Bohemia, Prokofiev with Russia, and Respighi with Italy. Yet each of them lived abroad for extended periods and had experiences that profoundly affected their art. Smetana’s Hakon Jarl is the last of a trilogy of symphonic poems he composed while living in Sweden for five years in his mid-30s. In this piece, which depicts a contest between pagan and Christian leaders, Smetana drew upon the latest in German compositional techniques and was particularly inspired by Franz Liszt. Prokofiev left Russian soon after the 1917 Revolution and spent nearly the next 20 years in the United States and Europe. He composed his Fifth Piano Concerto a few years before moving back to the Soviet Union in 1936. Prokofiev was the soloist for the premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Respighi is justly recognized for his brilliant orchestrations, a skill he learned in part as a young composer studying with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia. Today’s concert concludes with two of his so-called Roman Trilogy: The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals. Parallel Events 1861 Smetana Hakon Jarl Music Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 Literature Eliot Silas Marner Art Whistler Wapping History Civil War begins 1916 Respighi The Fountains of Rome Music Korngold Violanta Literature Burroughs The Beasts of Tarzan Art Monet Water Lilies History National Park Service established 1931 Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 5 Music Varèse Ionisation Literature Buck The Good Earth Art Brancusi Mlle. Pognany History George Washington Bridge completed Hakon Jarl BedBedřřřřichich Smetana Born in Litomysl, Bohemia, March 2, 1824 Died in Prague, May 12, 1884 Although Bedřich Smetana is widely viewed as the first great Czech composer, other lands and languages helped to shape his early career. Born near Prague, Smetana, like many upper-class Bohemians, was raised speaking German. In a letter written at age 35, during the time he was composing the piece we hear today, he confessed: Educated from my youth in German, both at school and in society, I took no care, while still a student, to learn anything but what I was forced to learn, and later divine music monopolized all my energy and my time so that to my shame, I must now confess that I cannot express myself adequately or write correctly in Czech. The “divine music” to which Smetana refers was not that of the Czech lands, but rather that of the great German tradition. His musical language therefore also had a heavy German accent. Mozart was his idol and a life changing experience came at age 16 when he heard a performance by Franz Liszt, the leader of the so-called New German School. The Swedish Symphonic Poems Smetana vowed to become “a Liszt in technique and a Mozart in composition.” He found, however, that the Czechs were initially unreceptive to his music, notably his Piano Trio in G minor, which Liszt praised highly when visiting Prague in 1856. “Prague did not wish to acknowledge me, so I left it,” Smetana informed his parents at the end of the year as he emigrated to Göteborg, Sweden. The Swedes embraced him and he pursued new compositional paths, further spurred by a trip to Weimar to see Liszt, whose innovative symphonic poems became his model. And thus were born a trilogy of Smetana’s own symphonic poems written in Sweden. He began with Richard III (1858), inspired by Shakespeare’s play and emulating Liszt’s Hamlet; there followed Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp, 1859), after a play by Friedrich Schiller that presented a military struggle akin to Liszt’s Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns). The final symphonic poem, Hakon Jarl (Earl Hakon, 1861), is also based on a play, one by the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger. Smetana saw the drama performed several times and told a friend, “I can assure you that the impression made on me was so powerful that I tried to present at least the plot of the tragedy in symphonic form.” Smetana finished Hakon Jarl in March 1861 and soon returned to Bohemia, where he spent the rest of his life. He achieved recognition as his country’s greatest composer through his chamber music, operas, and later orchestral works, most notably the six-part cycle Má vlast (My Country). He continued to be greatly influenced by Liszt, and his Swedish years left their mark on his most famous piece. The principal theme of Vlatava (Moldau in German) is not based on a Czech folk song, but rather a Swedish one. In the 1890s, after Smetana’s death, the melody was transformed into Hatikvah (The Hope) and adopted as the anthem at the First Zionist Congress.