Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 8:00pm Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 8:00pm Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 8:00pm Sunday, October 28, 2018 at 3:00pm George Weston Recital Hall Andrey Boreyko, conductor Alina Ibragimova, violin Nikolai Korndorf The Smile of Maud Lewis Felix Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 I. Allegro molto appassionato – II. Andante – III. Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace Intermission Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Suite from The Sleeping Beauty, Op.66a (selected by M. Pletnev) Introduction No. 1 Marche No. 15 Coda No. 2 Scene dansante No. 18 Entr’acte No. 4 Final No. 19 Entr’acte No. 5 Scene No. 20 Finale No. 6 Valse No. 8 Pas d’action – Adagio The Three at the Weston Series performances are generously supported by Margaret and Jim Fleck. OCTOBER 24, 25, 27 & 28, 2018 35 ABOUT THE WORKS Nikolai Korndorf The Smile of Maud Lewis Born: Moscow, Russia, January 23, 1947 14 min Died: Vancouver, Canada, May 30, 2001 Composed: 1998 Commissioned by the CBC, and premièred co-founded the Association of Contemporary on June 15, 2000, by the CBC Radio Orchestra Music in Russia, with such leading Soviet under Mario Bernardi in Vancouver, The Smile of composers as Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Maud Lewis was among Nikolai Korndorf’s final Schnittke among its members. In 1991, during compositions. In a program note, recorded by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Korndorf Don Anderson and published on the Canadian and his family moved to Burnaby, British Music Centre website, Korndorf explained that Columbia, where he continued to be active as he took as his inspiration his discovery of the a composer and educator. work, personality, and artistry of the celebrated Korndorf had an encyclopedic knowledge of Canadian painter Maud Lewis (1903–1970): Western classical music, which he brought “I was most impressed by three things. First, I to bear in his compositions through, as he was fascinated by her art: simple, ingenuous, described, “an attempt to synthesize elements of but very cordial, open-hearted, moving, gentle different styles and trends, sometimes opposite and full of light. Second, I was struck by the to each other.” Ultimately, his stated aim was circumstances of her very hard and unhappy “to create monumentalism and sound colour,” life. …But in spite of that, her art was full of through rigorous developmental processes. belief in love and it inhales optimism and light. This piece begins with the violins imitating East And the third thing, I was enchanted by her Coast fiddle tunes, a sonic reference to the rural smile. In spite of her specific facial features— Nova Scotia life that was the subject of Lewis’s she did not have the lower jaw—her smile vibrant paintings. Various motifs are slowly was full of gentleness and affability. …Maud introduced and developed through repetition— Lewis’s smile, and her art alike, showed that most notably, a pastoral melody, first played by she possessed a lofty, beautiful and rich soul, the piccolo, then flute, and later, an expansive, and therefore I called my piece this name. somewhat melancholy theme presented by …It was one of the most important cultural the clarinet and French horn. Thickening of experiences since my moving to Canada. ” contrapuntal texture, mode changes, and Born in Moscow, Korndorf studied volume, build in intensity, ultimately reaching composition at the city’s famed Conservatory, a climax. A joyful new tune emerges, piped by where he eventually taught musicology, recorder, and then the sparkling sounds of the theory, composition, and conducting from celeste bring the work to an ethereal close. 1972 to 1991. He was an active champion of contemporary music; in the 1980s, he Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley 36 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Felix Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 Born: Hamburg, Germany, February 3, 1809 28 min Died: Leipzig, Germany, November 4, 1847 Composed: 1844 Mendelssohn wrote two violin concertos. One while the violin provides the bass, a sustained was his very first concerto, a Mozartean work for tone on its lowest open string, G. The violin violin and strings composed when he was 13. The then takes the theme, and spins it out with other, this one, was his very last orchestral work, increasing ardour. The concise development composed in the summer of 1844, on holiday section, both turbulent and mournful, near Frankfurt. The première, on March 13, 1845, leads directly into the solo cadenza, which in Leipzig, featured the violinist Ferdinand David, Mendelssohn, unconventionally, puts just to whom the work was dedicated. before the recapitulation. The recapitulation is shortened but intensified, the coda stormy. Though often regarded as a “conservative” Romantic, Mendelssohn wrote innovative A short but striking transition leads into the concertos that influenced many later slow movement, which is simple in form but composers. In his two piano concertos from profoundly expressive. The principal theme the 1830s, he dispensed with the Classical is noble and (in the best sense) sentimental, separation of solo and orchestra; instead, he with the directness of popular song, and the had the two forces cooperate from the start violin develops it, through the whole range of in presenting and developing ideas. And he the instrument, in several minutes of unbroken asked that all three movements be played melody. The middle of the movement, with without breaks, sometimes with connecting its own theme, is darker, more agitated, and transitions. By the mid-1840s, this model dissonant, and even more intensely expressive; of concerto form was second nature for when the opening theme returns (now in a Mendelssohn, and, in the Violin Concerto, he richer setting), it has the effect of a balm. handled it with new ease and imagination. The scherzo-like finale is pure fairy music— He even incorporated a cyclical element: the the Mendelssohn of A Midsummer Night’s searching Allegretto non troppo that introduces Dream. The first theme scampers and flutters; the finale unmistakably recalls the mood of the second is all tongue-in-cheek pomp, the first movement, and even its first theme. like a fairy’s wedding march. The scoring is The first movement’s soaring, passionate main enchanting, and the two main themes are theme follows a mere three beats of quiet, developed ingeniously in an atmosphere of throbbing vamp in the orchestra, and is then unrelenting high spirits, though, in the bustling developed at length. The poignant second coda, the music also attains real nobility. theme, in a major key, is strikingly scored: a clarinet (above the flutes) takes the melody Program note by Kevin Bazzana OCTOBER 24, 25, 27 & 28, 2018 37 ABOUT THE WORKS Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Suite from The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66a (selected by M. Pletnev) Born: Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840 48 min Died: St. Petersburg, Russia, November 6, 1893 Composed: 1888–1889 Of Tchaikovsky’s three monumental theatrical piano of Tchaikovsky’s ballets (The Nutcracker dance pieces, Swan Lake (1877), The Sleeping is the other) by Russian pianist, conductor, and Beauty, and The Nutcracker (1892), The composer Mikhail Pletnev, a personal friend Sleeping Beauty is performed less often than of tonight’s conductor, Andrey Boreyko, under the other two, but many authorities, including whose baton this version was premièred. Igor Stravinsky, consider it his finest orchestral (Pletnev’s virtuosic piano arrangement of the achievement in the form. It was commissioned suite, performed by him, can be found in the by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Philips Classics 1998 anthology Great Pianists Theatres in St. Petersburg, who wanted to stage of the 20th Century.) it in the style of Louis XIV, “with melodies in the This suite includes nine sections from the ballet spirit of Lully, Bach, Rameau and such-like.” score. The first three (numbered 1, 2, and 4) The première at the Mariinsky Theatre in are all drawn from the ballet’s Prologue, The St. Petersburg on January 15, 1890, was met Baptism of Aurora, interpolating a dance scene with indifference by public and press—too cool between the opening processional and the and sophisticated, too “French” for their taste. famous showdown between the evil Carabos The tide of opinion turned quickly, though; and the Lilac Fairy. We then leap forward to within a year, The Sleeping Beauty’s popularity Aurora’s 16th birthday celebration. had soared. Sections No. 5 and 6 are a foreboding contrast: Well before then, Tchaikovsky had raised with the ballet’s Scene des tricoteuses (Knitting his principal music publisher, Pyotr Jurgenson, Women) and the Grande valse villageoise (a.k.a. the idea of creating a Sleeping Beauty concert The Garland Waltz). The Coda (No.15) then suite. Having done so, though, he couldn’t decide bridges 100 years to act II, scene I, where we what to leave out. It was several years after his meet Prince Florimund out hunting. death that a five-movement suite was published Act II, scene II is the narrative climax of the as Op. 66a (TH 234). ballet, Tchaikovsky at his dramatic orchestral Performed by the TSO in 2003, the 20-minute best. Three consecutive sections (No. 18, 19, 20) version is sturdy enough. But not only does of the original score take us from Florimund’s this 48-minute version have a more nuanced vision of Aurora (end of act II), through his arrival emotional through-line, it also has an at the Castle of Sleep, to the magical awakening interestingly circuitous genesis of its own. It that is the story’s dramatic climax. started life as one of two transcriptions for Program note by David S.