Peace, Love, Mozart & Beethoven
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Peace, Love, Mozart & Beethoven January 22, 2017 California Symphony Peace, Love, Mozart & Beethoven Lesher Center for the Arts, Hofmann Theatre January 22, 4:00 PM Donato Cabrera, Music Director Maria Radutu, piano Theofanidis (b. 1967) .......................Peace Love Light YOUMEONE (2001) 5 minutes Mozart (1756–1791) .........................Piano Concerto No. 23, KV 488 26 minutes Maria Radutu, piano INTERMISSION Beethoven (1770–1827) ..................Symphony No. 4, Op. 60 34 minutes The total running time for this concert is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission. Please silence your cell phones. Support for this concert is provided by January 2017 5 The California Symphony Orchestra Dan Flanagan VIOLA Paul Hale Sergi Goldman-Hull Marcel Gemperli, Robert Hoexter Principal Holly Heilig-Gaul Leslie Meeks Darcy Rindt, Acting Laurien Jones Elizabeth Struble Assistant Principal Christina Knudson Nicole Welch Daria D’Andrea Akiko Kojima Patricia Drury is in Katy Juneau BASS her 28th season as Michelle Maruyama Andy Butler, Principal a violinist in the Betsy London California Symphony. Patricia Miner Michel Taddei, Janet Lynch In addition to her Assistant Principal performing career, David Steele Catherine Matovich Patty is the Orchestra Timothy Spears Sarah Wood Director at Dougherty Elizabeth Prior Valley High School in Carl Stanley SECOND VIOLIN San Ramon where her CELLO Orchestra students Philip Santos, Principal Raymond Vargas Leighton Fong, have established a Kristin Zoernig mentorship with the 3Patricia Drury Principal children of our Sound Minds program. Noah Strick Julie Feldman Sharon Wood Dawn Foster-Dodson FIRST VIOLIN Jennifer Cho, Acting William Harvey has been performing with the California Concertmaster Symphony since 1994. He’s also Principal Trumpet with Oakland Symphony and Opera San Jose, and represents Andrew Davies the Musicians Union as Union Steward and Delegate to the Alameda Labor Council. He also teaches at Cal (Go Josepha Fath Bears!) and is married to California Symphony violinist Josepha Fath. 6 California Symphony Orchestra FLUTE BASSOON TROMBONE Monica Daniel-Barker, Douglas Brown, Donald Benham, Principal Principal Principal Alexandra Miller Carla Wilson Thomas Hornig Michelle Caimotto HORN David Ridge OBOE Douglas Hull, Principal TUBA Clark W. Fobes has Laura Reynolds, Nicky Roosevelt Forrest Byram, Principal played clarinet with the Principal Meredith Brown California Symphony PERCUSSION for 29 of our 30-year James A. Moore III TRUMPET Mark Veregge, Principal history, and also Elizabeth Merrill Telling helped to negotiate Mark Grisez, Principal Victor Avdienko our very first union CLARINET 3William Harvey Allen Biggs musicians contract. He also performs Jerome Simas, Principal Scott Macomber HARP with San Francisco 4Clark Fobes Opera Orchestra, San Naomi Hoffmeyer, Francisco Symphony, Principal and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. KEYBOARD What’s extra special Marc Shapiro, Principal though is that he is also highly recognized internationally as a fine clarinet craftsman with his own brand of professional clarinet mouthpieces. January 2017 7 Program Notes Christopher Theofanidis (b. 1967) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Peace Love Light YOUMEONE (1756–1791) (1995/2001) Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 Mozart and Beethoven wrote within the established norms of a fairly homogenous mu- Although composers of Mozart’s era were sical culture in which listeners knew what to expected to write in a wide spectrum of expect, at least in broad outline, from any new genres—symphony, opera, chamber, keyboard, piece. But our contemporary musical culture is choral—individual preferences for particular polyglot, cosmopolitan, and multicultural. We genres were fairly common. Some composers don’t know what to expect from new music. If were partial to opera; others waxed symphon- anything, we’re primed to expect the unfamil- ic; others still were keyboard specialists. The iar. Which is why a simple C Major scale comes truly impartial jack-of-all-trades composer was as such a surprise. rare, if not actually nonexistent. But that’s precisely the way Peace Love Light In Mozart’s case we find a strong gravitational YOUMEONE opens, and that’s precisely the pull towards two genres. Opera was Mozart’s way it ends. A C Major scale emerges, blooms, native language, as it were; he was first and and slowly morphs into subtle variations foremost a composer for the musical theater and dialects, acquiring new notes and lush, and possessed an operatic sensibility that unexpected harmonies. The mood is generally informs all his work, regardless of genre. calm and Apollonian, although with occasional Mozart’s second favored genre was the piano moments of (slight) angst. concerto, a preference dictated as much by “Out of clutter, find simplicity. practicality as by personality. Mozart was a From discord, find harmony.” pianist, indeed the first of the great com- – Albert Einstein poser-pianists, a noble lineage that includes Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff. Peace Love Light YOUMEONE, originally He intended his piano concertos for himself, commissioned by the California Symphony typically as part of the lengthy (and remu- in 1995, is the work of a former Young nerative) subscription concerts that brought American Composer-in-Residence. Since then, him substantial income during the decade Christopher Theofanidis has gone on to a (1781–91) of his golden years in Vienna. spectacular career that includes Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships and the Rome Prize. And no years were more golden than 1786–7, In 1997 Theofanidis repurposed this work as the period of The Marriage of Figaro and Don part of his string quartet Visions and Miracles. Giovanni, of the E-flat major Piano Quartet, of the “Kegelstatt” Trio for piano, clarinet and viola, of Symphony No. 38 “Prague”, of the 8 California Symphony Orchestra BITE SIZE PROGRAM NOTES Peace Love Light YOUMEONE was originally commissioned by the California Symphony. Theofanidis is a former Young American Composer-in- Residence who’s gone on to even The opening page of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 greater acclaim with Guggenheim beloved “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, of the C Major and C Minor string and Fulbright quintets, of canons and rondos and sonatas and quartets and dances Fellowships, the and variations and lieder. Rome Prize, and now a GRAMMY™ And the period of three magnifi cent piano concertos, including the nomination. lithe Piano Concerto No. 23, written in A Major, a key that seems to have triggered particularly effulgent lyricism in Mozart. The fi rst movement Peace Love Light opens with an orchestral exposition that leads to the piano’s entrance, YOUMEONE is all according to established formal procedures. After a discreetly chilly simple yet complex, slow movement, a spirited rondo brimming with optimism and good like an Appolonian Gasket (shown cheer brings all to a radiant, yet still elegant, close. below). Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Symphony No. 4 in B-fl at Major, Op. 60 Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, written in 1806, is a product of his “mid- dle period”—a time when he was regularly casting thunderbolts and reshaping Western consciousness as to the role of music in society. But it was also a time for intense personal turmoil in Beethoven’s life—well, Mozart was on fi re more intense than his typical everyday chaos—inasmuch as it involves when he wrote one of his most tantalizing biographical mysteries: the “Immortal Piano Concerto No. 23. This was from Beloved” of his only known (and undated) love letter. “My heart is full the same period of so many things to say to you,” he rhapsodized, “there are moments as The Marriage when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all.” That he was head of Figaro and Don over heels in love with somebody is certain. But who was she? The Giovanni. January 2017 9 BITE SIZE PROGRAM Program Notes NOTES You may find search for her identity has long been among music history’s hottest (as it has been potatoes, producing a steamy cottage industry of supposition that claimed) the never quite seems to cool. Piano Concerto No. 23 is quite The Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, dedicatée of the celebrated lyrical and “Moonlight” Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, was an early-on favorite but has features a since dropped out of the running. Esteemed 19th-century Beethoven memorably biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer opted for the Hungarian-born introspective aristocrat Josephine Brunsvik, erstwhile Beethoven pupil, and possibly slow movement. the most important woman in Beethoven’s life, love letter or no love letter. Her claim remained strong for decades until modern-day Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon made an impassioned and deeply researched case for Antonie Brentano, to whom Beethoven would later dedicate his magnificent “Diabelli” Variations, Op. 120. The 1994 film Immortal Beloved would have it that she was Johanna Reiss Beethoven, the sister-in-law with whom Beethoven battled over the custody of nephew Karl. There have Title page of the first been numerous other candidates. But of late the edition of the score, Beethoven’s odds have returned in Josephine Brunsvik’s favor, No. 4 is a dedicated to Giulietta after some significant new discoveries in European Haydnesque Guicciardi, published symphony, in 1802 archives since 2002. almost a Robert Schumann, surely one of the most perceptive of all writers throwback to an on music, described Symphony No. 4 as “a slender Grecian maiden earlier period. between two Nordic giants,” i.e., the towering Third (“Eroica”) and Fifth This is the symphonies. More slender the Fourth may be, but its relative lightness first time the does not imply relative weakness. As Robert Simpson has put it, if the California Eroica is a purebred stallion, then the Fourth is a member of the cat Symphony is family—fast, fleet, powerful, even dangerous. performing Beethoven IV After a pedal-to-the-metal rush of breathless excitement in the first in our 30-year movement, a leisurely Adagio alternates a lyrical main body with highly history.