BRONFMAN BEETHOVEN

CLASSICAL SERIES

FRIDAY & SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 & 28, AT 8 PM

NASHVILLE , conductor THANK YOU TO YEFIM BRONFMAN, OUR PARTNER

CROMWELL RADIO RICHARD WAGNER Overture and “Venusberg ” from Tannhäuser

TOBIAS PICKER Without Words Scene I: The Beloved SERIES PRESENTING PARTNER Scene II: The Minstrel Scene III: The Idol Scene IV: The Gladiator Scene V: The Farewell Nashville Symphony co-commission

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and , Op. 37 I. Allegro con brio II. Largo III. Rondo: Allegro Yefim Bronfman, piano

Tobias Picker’s Opera Without Words is being recorded live for commercial release. To ensure the highest-quality recording, please keep noise to a minimum.

INCONCERT 33 TONIGHT’S CONCERT RICHARD WHAT TO LISTEN FOR WAGNER AT A GLANCE he flesh-spirit dichotomy provided Wagner Born on May 22, 1813, in with an opportunity to evoke starkly Leipzig, Germany; died T differentiated sound worlds that represent RICHARD WAGNER on February 13, 1883, in Overture and Venusberg Music from Tannhäuser Venice, Italy dramatic extremes of experience, encapsulated here by the Overture and Venusberg music. CLASSICAL • Wagner was known for his groundbreaking work as a composer, as well as Opening with the chorale-like Pilgrims’ Chorus, his massive ego, German nationalistic views, anti-Semitism, and generally unfavorable personality. He was also a highly divisive figure among composers, Tannhäuser: Overture and Venusberg Music which signifies the steadfast assurance of the with some in favor of his focus on program music, and others siding with the faithful, the Overture soon turns its focus to more traditional Brahms, who advocated for a purely musical approach to composition. Composed: 1843-45; revised 1861 the anxious striving of Tannhäuser’s existential journey — the real pilgrimage of the opera. • This piece is taken from Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser, which is based on the First performance: Wagner’s first version of real-life 13th-century poet and musician. In the work, Tannhäuser returns to Tannhäuser premiered on October 19, 1845, in The orchestra swells into a triumphant full Germany after a stint in Venusberg, a magical realm named for the goddess of statement of the Pilgrims’ Chorus and then love. He partakes in a singing competition that ends in catastrophe and goes Dresden; the revised version was first performed to the pope to beg forgiveness for his sins. In the end, both Tannhäuser and on March 13, 1861, in Paris. diminishes as the penitents recede into the his true love Elisabeth die, but he is ultimately redeemed. First Nashville Symphony performance: distance. Wagner abruptly whisks us into the • The overture moves from the Pilgrims’ Chorus, a pure and atonal song from the October 27, 1953 at War Memorial Auditorium, erotic underworld of Venus. Her faster, highly end of the opera, into lush chromaticism representing Venusberg’s debauchery. with Music Director Guy Taylor (Overture); chromatic music entices with quivering • Wagner’s innovative use of leitmotifs has had great influence on film scores, October 15 & 16, 1993 at TPAC, with Music Director and surging rhythms — a jolt after the pilgrims’ including ’ Star Wars, in which specific characters or situations stable harmonies. Tannhäuser’s song in praise are accompanied by correlated musical themes. The author C.S. Lewis was also (Venusberg) a known fan of Wagner’s works. Estimated length: 25 minutes of the goddess rings out, framing an exquisitely enchanting interlude for solo and strings. TOBIAS PICKER In the first version of the opera for Dresden, the Opera Without Words Venusberg music is followed by a rousing recap of annhäuser was the first product of Wagner’s the Pilgrims’ Chorus. relatively stable period of employment at the • American composer Tobias Picker has been called “a genuine creator” by The T But Wagner remained unsatisfied with his New Yorker, and BBC Music Magazine has hailed his “distinctively soulful Dresden Opera, before his participation in the style.” He is equally accomplished in the worlds of opera and orchestral music. score, periodically coming back to revise it Revolution of 1849 would force him into exile. It throughout his life. For a staging of the work • Picker composed his Opera Without Words with librettist Irene Dische’s lyrics, also marked his first foray into medieval Germanic before removing all the words to create a purely orchestral score. The music- in Paris in 1861, the composer decided a major legend for source material. drama represents, through five scenes, people from the composer’s life. In overhaul of the introductory scene depicting Picker’s own playful words, “I will never reveal who the characters in this work Tannhäuser remained among Wagner’s best- are, lest anyone I know or love feels slighted by not being included.” his hero’s dalliance with Venus was especially loved through much of the 19th century, important. By then, his musical technique had • Premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra in March 2016, this work is cementing his reputation and wielding a strong being recorded by the Nashville Symphony for future worldwide release on expanded enormously thanks to the recent effect on French artists in particular. It’s one of Naxos. composition of Tristan und Isolde. The rich new the great paradoxes of Wagner’s public reception palette of colors and ambiguous harmonies — in view of the composer’s notorious anti- Wagner pioneered in that score could now be No. 3 Semitism — that Theodore Herzl, founder of the applied to his more mature vision of Tannhäuser. Zionist movement, claimed that a performance of • Beethoven was influenced by Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, The Bacchanale, a new ballet introduced as part Tannhäuser at the Paris Opera in 1895 inspired his and similarities can be heard between the two works — specifically, in the of the revision, expands the depiction of Venus’ continuation after the first movement’s cadenza and a quote in the strings. vision of a modern Jewish state. Even so, Beethoven’s signature style shines through in the pianist’s dramatic luxurious realm devoted to the senses and their Wagner based his opera about the search for runs and the surprising use of timpani. fulfillment. redemptive love on a cautionary tale from the • The concerto was supposed to premiere at Beethoven’s first major public Wagner refused to situate the ballet later in Crusades involving a knight who seeks repentance concert in 1800, but he mysteriously decided to change that plan and keep the opera, where Parisian convention dictated revising the work until its actual premiere in 1803, alongside his Symphony after having sinfully indulged his senses in the No. 2. According to his page-turner, Beethoven was still working on it even it should occur. In this revised version of the dark, subterranean domain of Venus. This is as he performed it during the premiere, with much of the pages blank or opera, the Overture instead segues directly from indecipherably scribbled. the “Venusberg” where, according to medieval the Venusberg music into the Bacchanale ballet topography, the pagan gods were believed to have • Internationally recognized as one of today’s most acclaimed pianists and a as the curtain rises. Wagner even borrows the 1991 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, GRAMMY® winner Yefim retreated in the face of Christianity. But Wagner four-note rising chromatic motif that pervaded Bronfman has performed with the world’s major . He’ll return to cast his Tannhäuser as an outsider artist figure Nashville to perform as featured soloist on this work. Tristan as an emblem of desire. The ballet depicts — Corinne Fombelle who yearns for full experience.

INCONCERT 35 assorted classical figures— satyrs, fauns, nymphs The Overture and Venusberg Music are scored the title Opera Without Words is not merely a hymns, for example — but these are threads and bacchantes — engaging in a frenzied orgy. The for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 , 2 , 2 , metaphor. The work was conceived as an actual woven into a larger fabric. Picker himself followed CLASSICAL sequence ends with a drawn-out post-coital glow 4 horns, 3 , 3 , , timpani, opera, from which the voices and text have been a similar procedure in his Concerto from while a “rosy mist” fills the stage and a Chorus of cymbals, triangle, tambourine, castanets, harp and withdrawn (save some of the stage directions, 1999, into which he incorporated orchestrations Sirens praises the bliss of love. strings. which are left in as instructions to the musicians). of a few songs he had previously written. He’s also The issue at the heart of the matter here — which worked in the reverse direction: he transformed comes first, the words or the music? — famously (1986), one of his most TOBIAS Composed: 2015 underlies the whole of opera history, and it has frequently performed orchestral pieces, into an CLASSICAL First performance: March 10, 2016, with Christoph long extended to the concert hall as well, in the achingly poignant aria for his heroine in PICKER Eschenbach conducting the National Symphony form of the debate over “programmatic” versus (1996). Orchestra “absolute” music. Picker approached Opera Without Words by Born on July 18, 1954, in First Nashville Symphony performance: Yet what sets Picker’s new project apart is the contrast, as an actual, complete opera; merely by City; currently These concerts mark the first performances by actual operatic inspiration for a purely orchestral removing the text, it became an unprecedented resides in Rhinebeck, the Nashville Symphony. New York score that is not a “derivative” or abridgment: form of music drama for orchestra. “For me, music Estimated length: 25 minutes Unlike the entire genre of suites drawn from in opera has to push the drama forward and to be pre-existing opera scores, this work is the final the drama, not an accompaniment to words,” he Opera Without Words composition as intended by its composer. There says. “It must have the power to communicate the are precedents for some aspects of the creative deeper emotional life of the characters; the words process Picker describes below — J.S. Bach are just an ornament to hear the beauty of the escribed as “a genuine creator with a fertile a new orchestral work. By then, Picker’s opera inscribing into an instrumental score wordless . The music should be telling Dunforced vein of invention” by The New career, which he launched at with “parodies” of melodies associated with particular t h e s t or y.” Yorker, Tobias Picker has drawn performances and Emmeline in 1996, had become his central focus. Opera Without Words commissions by the world’s leading musicians, Commissioned by the , An orchestras and opera houses. American Tragedy in particular had prevented IN THE COMPOSER’S WORDS Picker’s operas have been commissioned by Picker from taking up Eschenbach’s request for the Santa Fe Opera (Emmeline), time-being. (Fantastic Fox), Dallas Opera (Thérèse Raquin), The conversation was reinitiated when he composer has provided the following “opera without words” is no more a misnomer () and Eschenbach started his tenure with the National Tcommentary on Opera Without Words: than a “concerto for orchestra.” I concluded that the Metropolitan Opera (An American Tragedy), Symphony Orchestra, and eventually, Opera It has been said that composers can be divided there are far more similarities than differences as well as many other distinguished companies. Without Words was co-commissioned by the into three categories: those who write for the stage, between the two and decided to focus on those Picker has additionally composed numerous National Symphony Orchestra and Nashville those who write concert music and those who similarities by removing the singers from the symphonic works, which have been commissioned Symphony. Picker wanted to write “something I write both. I belong to the third group. I’ve written opera. by the Chicago Symphony, The Cleveland could really sink my teeth into, in a way I hadn’t three ; four piano concertos; concertos I thought about composers of the past. Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New done before.” Eventually, he opted for a radically for , , cello; tone poems; a melodrama; Mendelssohn wrote Songs Without Words without York Philharmonic, , new form, creating a purely instrumental work that a large body of ; two ballets; and any text in his mind whatever. There are several and various European alludes to the medium of opera. five operas. I have seen a lot of the purely orchestral recordings of Puccini operas orchestras, among others. In addition to three The result is a major new achievement for world and have had the privilege of working with without words. Lorin Maazel created a version of symphonies, he has composed concertos for violin, Picker, one that synthesizes his gifts for orchestral many great artists — including, over the past 30 Wagner’s Ring called The “Ring” Without Words. viola, cello, and piano, as well as a widely virtuosity and large-scale structure with the years, , who invited me One of my principal teachers, , once toured ballet, , based on the book by wisdom accumulated from being one of the to compose a piece for the National Symphony wrote a short piece called Phonemena for . most active opera composers on the scene today. Orchestra featuring soloists within the orchestra. in which the singer has no words, just phonemes. Picker’s numerous distinctions include lifetime Ultimately, explains Picker, “There’s a gap between At first, I started thinking about a Concerto He was trying to merge his own complex membership in the American Academy of Arts these disparate worlds of the symphony orchestra for Orchestra and found myself reviewing the compositional technique with the jazz form and Letters, and residencies with the culture and the opera culture. I’ve inhabited differences and similarities between a concerto known as scat singing. I remembered how another Symphony, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival these two worlds for a long time and have seen for an orchestra and an opera. A concerto is a of my principal teachers, , had and the Pacific Music Festival. In 2010, he founded how they tend to be unaware of each other. So by composition for a solo instrument or instruments introduced me to his notion of instrumentalists as OPERA San Antonio and was named artistic returning to one of those worlds now, after a hiatus accompanied by an orchestra. An opera is a “characters” or “players in a drama.” advisor of the newly reorganized of more than two decades, I want to bridge that composition in which singers and musicians And so I approached my first purely orchestral Opera in 2016. gap for myself and, hopefully, for others by giving perform a dramatic work combining text and work in 22 years as I would an opera. I hired a Around 16 years ago, Picker recalls, conductor musicians a piece that has roots in both.” musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. An librettist, Irene Dische. We had long discussions Christoph Eschenbach began asking him to write As Picker remarks in his commentary below,

36 OCTOBER 2017 INCONCERT 37 about the characters, the role of the chorus (in some 75 additional terms only an opera singer is CLASSICAL this case, a double chorus), and issues of text accustomed to seeing. A passage may be marked WHAT TO LISTEN FOR setting and stage directions, characterization “pompous,” “doting,” “defensively,” “upbraiding,” and motivation. I then set her words not to “terrified,” “self-righteously,” even “aside to the Regardless of the anecdote’s authenticity, Also innovative is the shift to a relatively voices but to musical instruments, unfettered audience,” and so on. there can be no doubt that the aura of Mozart’s remote key (E major) for the Largo, a movement by considerations of vocal range and technique. Opera Without Words is composed of five dark-hued work haunted Beethoven as he of delicately shaded orchestration and singing When I finished the opera with words, I removed scenes entitled The Beloved, The Minstrel, The was conceiving his own C-minor Concerto — pianism: here the soloist is presented as a CLASSICAL them all. I kept a separate copy so that Opera Idol, The Gladiator and The Farewell. nowhere more so than in the contour of the rhapsode, as Beethoven writes music of lofty, Without Words could (with some adjustments for Opera Without Words is dedicated to the main theme announced at the start, during the Elysian beauty. the human voice) theoretically be performed as an blessed memory of my mother, the artist Henriette extended orchestral exposition. This is, however, the eye of Beethoven’s storm, opera with words, the original words and staging Simon Picker, 1917-2016.” Yet Mozart’s model is by no means the only which returns full force in the finale: a rondo restored. point of reference for the drama underlying this propelled by a tersely angular theme, but calmed Having done away with the words and stage Opera Without Words is scored for 3 flutes (all concerto. For all the expansiveness of the first by playful episodes. An anxiously contrapuntal directions, I decided to leave in traces and artifacts 3 flutes doubling on piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd doubling movement, the concision of material throughout version of the rondo theme resummons of the deleted libretto. Terminology of an unusual English horn), 3 clarinets (3rd doubling points ahead to the Fifth Symphony in the same the Furies, while the coda presents another nature (for instrumental musicians) remains. clarinet), 3 bassoons (3rd doubling ), key. Perhaps anticipating another, similar process Beethovenian marvel of ingenious simplicity: Instrumentalists are accustomed to standard 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 2 in the Fifth, Beethoven also insinuates the terse the insistent A-flat of the main theme respelled terminology such as dolce, espressivo, legato, percussionists, harp, piano (doubling celeste) and (short-long) rhythm at the tail of his opening as a decorative tic, while the theme itself is recast staccato, cantabile, etc. But in this work I added strings. theme — a powerful source of momentum for and speeded up to clinch the breakthrough into what is to come — into the lyrical second theme. unalloyed C major. Beethoven matches his inspiration from LUDWIG VAN Composed: 1800 (possibly until 1803) Mozart with remarkable innovations, such as In addition to solo piano, the C-minor Concerto First performance: April 3, 1803, in Vienna, with the passage leading from the solo cadenza into is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, BEETHOVEN Beethoven as the soloist the coda of the first movement. In lieu of the bassoons, horn and trumpets; timpani; and strings. First Nashville Symphony performance: conventional reappearance of the ensemble Born on December 16, March 5 & 6, 1962, at War Memorial Auditorium, playing the theme, we encounter an ominous — Thomas May, the Nashville Symphony’s 1770, in Bonn, Germany; with Music Director Willis Page sonority as the terse rhythmic idea (one well- program annotator, is a writer and translator who died on March 26, 1827, suited to drums) is played, with barely suppressed covers classical and contemporary music. He blogs in Vienna Estimated length: 38 minutes menace, by the timpani. at memeteria.com. Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 ABOUT THE ARTIST

eethoven was not immune to anxiety over concertos (likely the D minor Concerto, K. 466, conducted by for concerts during the YEFIM BRONFMAN Bbeing original, even if the very idea of a a work that deeply fascinated him). Another orchestra’s U.S. tour in the fall, including Carnegie PIANO repertoire set in stone as we know it was only eight years passed before Beethoven introduced Hall, followed by concerts in Munich, London and beginning to emerge during his lifetime. Mozart’s his Third Piano Concerto. The musicologist Vienna with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra trailblazing freelance career path furnished a Leon Platinga has argued that the major creative nternationally and Mariss Jansons, another frequent partner and practical model when the young Beethoven set effort for Op. 37 took place later than has been Irecognized as one of collaborator. out to make his name after settling in Vienna in traditionally thought, between May 1802 and today’s most acclaimed and In addition to returns to the orchestras of 1792: the model of a celebrity pianist introducing March 1803. admired pianists, Yefim New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, his own concertos for the instrument. On Sunday, Mozart’s only other minor-key piano Bronfman stands among a Pittsburgh, Washington, Indianapolis and Toronto, March 29, 1795, Beethoven made his public debut concerto, K. 491 in C minor, also loomed large in handful of artists regularly Bronfman will tour with the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna performing a work billed as “a new Beethoven’s imagination and has direct links to his sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors and and Andrés Orozco-Estrada in a special program concerto on the piano-forte.” Op. 37. A frequently retold bit of lore depicts him recital series. His commanding technique, power celebrating his 60th birthday in the spring. The bar had been set almost impossibly high confessing to one of his keyboard rivals, Johann and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently In Europe he can also be heard in Berlin with by Mozart’s piano concertos, which cast their spell Baptist Cramer, that “we’ll never be able to do acknowledged by the press and audiences alike. the Philharmonic, as well as in recital and on over the young German. During the same month, anything like that!” with reference to K. 491. In recognition of a relationship of more than 30 tour with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra Beethoven performed one of his late predecessor’s years, Bronfman will join the Israel Philharmonic conducted by Andris Nelsons. A tour in Asia with

38 OCTOBER 2017 INCONCERT 39 CLASSICAL

Mozart’s model is by no means the only point of reference for the drama underlying this concerto. For all the expansiveness of the first movement, the concision of material throughout points ahead to the Fifth Symphony in the same key.

the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea his emigration to Israel at age 15. That same year, Noseda closes his season in June. he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, Bronfman has also given numerous solo one of the highest honors given to American recitals in the leading halls of North America, instrumentalists. In 2010, he was honored as the Europe and the Far East, including acclaimed recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano debuts at Carnegie Hall in 1989 and Avery Performance from Northwestern University. Fisher Hall in 1993. In 1991 he gave a series of Born in Tashkent in the , Yefim joint recitals with in Russia, marking Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family Bronfman’s first public performances there since in 1973.

PARKS MANOR (RIGHT HAND. OPPOSITE OF SHOW NOTES.)

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