Season 2011-2012
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Season 2011-2012 The Philadelphia Orchestra Saturday, June 23, at 8:00 Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Stokowski Celebration at the Academy of Music Bach/orch. Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 Tchaikovsky from Suite from The Nutcracker, Op. 71a: III. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy VII. Dance of the Reed Flutes V. Arabian Dance VI. Chinese Dance IV. Russian Dance VIII. Waltz of the Flowers (with Fantasia) Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (with Fantasia) Intermission Bernstein/orch. Ramin and Kostal Symphonic Dances from West Side Story Igor Stravinsky Suite from The Firebird (1919 version) I. Introduction—The Firebird and its Dance II. The Princesses’ Round Dance III. Infernal Dance of King Kastcheï— IV. Berceuse— V. Finale Wagner “The Ride of the Valkyries,” from Die Walküre This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes. Presentation licensed by Disney Music Publishing © Disney Named one of “Tomorrow’s Conducting Icons” by Gramophone magazine, Yannick Nézet-Séguin has become one of today’s most sought-after conductors, widely praised for his musicianship, dedication, and charisma. A native of Montreal, he made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2008 and in June 2010 was named the Orchestra’s next music director, beginning with the 2012-13 season. Artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, he became music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic in 2008. In addition to concerts with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s 2011-12 season included his Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, debut; a tour of Germany with the Rotterdam Philharmonic; appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and Netherlands Opera; and return visits to the Vienna and Berlin philharmonics and the Dresden Staatskapelle. Recent engagements have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, and the Orchestre National de France; Vienna Philharmonic projects at the 2011 Salzburg, Montreux, and Lucerne festivals; and debut appearances at the Bavarian Radio Symphony and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s Rotterdam Philharmonic recordings for EMI/Virgin comprise an Edison Award-winning disc of works by Ravel, the Beethoven and Korngold violin concertos with Renaud Capuçon, and Fantasy: A Night at the Opera with flutist Emmanuel Pahud. Recent releases with BIS Records include Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Four Last Songs and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Death of Cleopatra. Mr. Nézet-Séguin has also recorded several award-winning albums with the Orchestre Métropolitain for ATMA Classique. Mr. Nézet-Séguin studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductors, most notably Carlo Maria Giulini. He also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s honors include a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, an Echo Award, the Virginia-Parker Award from the Canada Council, and the National Arts Centre Award. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Quebec in Montreal in 2011. Symphony V.0 Stage Director James Alexander has had an extensive career in the performing arts, where among other things he founded a music theater company in his native Scotland, managed the Boston Pops on international tours, and directed both plays and musicals in London’s West End. Mr. Alexander has also been on the A&R team at the Decca Record Company, managed classical soloists and conductors, and produced television and staged operas on three continents with a large number of prestigious companies, orchestras, and conductors. In Europe his productions and engagements range from staging Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to various productions with Scottish Opera, Opera North, the Gabrieli Consort & Players, and to the Olivier Award-winning production of Carmen Jones at London’s Old Vic Theatre. In the U.S. Mr. Alexander has been a long-time collaborator with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, where he helped create stagings of Strauss’s Elektra and Salome, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Mozart’s Idomeneo, and the 50th Anniversary production of Britten’s Peter Grimes at Tanglewood. More recently he collaborated with conductor Roger Norrington on a highly-acclaimed production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro for Cincinnati Opera. Recently Mr. Alexander staged a Theater of a Concert presentation of John Adams’s opera A Flowering Tree for the Atlanta Symphony. This summer he will create a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Aspen Music Festival, for which he has written new dialogue in English. In early 2012 Mr. Alexander became artistic director for Symphony V.0, a production company he founded that is dedicated to realizing revolutionary technological presentations with symphony orchestras and opera companies. Symphony V.0 is a collective of creative professionals who design rich interactive experiences for orchestras and opera companies across the world. Symphony V.0 uses the latest technology in light and video to create a hybrid of symphonic music and operatic staging to inspire a new generation of audiences. James Alexander, Artistic Director Brian Pirkle, Director of Production Ryan Richards, Technical Director Jeff Sandstrom, Director of Creative Services Dorian Usherwood, Director, Business Development Jon H. Weir, Lighting Designer Brad Sitton, Content Developer Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (orch. Stokowski) Composed probably around 1708 Johann Sebastian Bach Born in Eisenach, March 21, 1685 Died in Leipzig, July 28, 1750 Born in London of a Polish father and an Irish mother, Leopold Anthony Stokowski (1882- 1977) would become one of the most original musicians of his generation. While still in his 20s, he emigrated to the United States to take up the post of organist at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, and in 1912 he accepted an offer from the relatively new Philadelphia Orchestra to become its conductor. For the next quarter century he brought the Orchestra to a level of unsurpassed excellence, establishing a tradition of virtuosity and brilliantine sonority that continues to this day. He was also a bit of a celebrity in his younger years, appearing in Hollywood movies, courting Greta Garbo and Gloria Vanderbilt, and presenting highly publicized world and U.S. premieres of works by Stravinsky, Berg, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Ives, and others. Among his favorite activities during his tenure with the Philadelphians was to transform music he loved into lush, vibrantly colored orchestrations of his own. The sources of these “recompositions” range widely, from cantatas and organ works of J.S. Bach to operatic arias, from ancient plainchant to piano music of Chopin and Debussy. The approaches to orchestration are wide-ranging, too. In Debussy’s piano music, for example, he responds to that composer’s delicate coloristic palette to create richly transparent tone-pictures. For Bach’s organ music he was more inclined to create a thick, aggressive tone that at times sounds like a gigantic pipe organ. Completed in late 1925, Stokowski’s rendering of J.S. Bach’s well-known D-minor Toccata and Fugue was first performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra in February 1926. Since then it has become the stuff of legends—as well as an important part of Disney’s 1940 animated feature Fantasia, which opens with a striking image of Stokowski conducting the work with the help of a well-known mouse. It was a piece that Stokowski felt strongly about: “It is among the freest in form and expression of Bach’s works,” he wrote. “The Toccata probably began as an organ improvisation in the church of St. Thomas in Leipzig. In this lengthy, narrow, high church the thundering harmonies must have echoed long and tempestuously, for this music has a power and majesty that is cosmic. Of all the creations of Bach this is one of the most original. Its inspiration flows unendingly. Its spirit is universal … it will always be contemporary and have a direct message for all men.” Stokowski’s chronology is a bit skewed (the piece apparently dates not from Bach’s Leipzig period, but from much earlier, probably before 1708), but he was correct in his analysis of the work’s power and drama. His transcription, which uses a gigantic orchestra, brings the drama of this piece decisively into the present age. —Paul J. Horsley Suite from The Nutcracker, Op. 71a Composed from 1891 to 1892 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Born in Kamsko-Vodkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840 Died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893 Tchaikovsky’s last years were marked by melancholy and joy—by growing emotional depression and by great artistic successes. With five of the numbered symphonies under his belt, and with splendid operas and ballets such as Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty bringing him growing public acceptance, he could only feel satisfaction at the progress of his life as an artist—despite the turmoil and frustrations of his inner life. Indeed, one can’t help hearing a certain exhilaration in the music of The Nutcracker, which Tchaikovsky composed between February 1891 and April 1892. The miracle of these last years, in fact, is that the same person who expressed such ebullient lebensfreude in this ballet score could compose, just a few months later, the torridly tragic strains of the Sixth Symphony, full of the most painful premonitions of death. The composer would die in late 1893, less than a year after the Nutcracker first appeared on the stage, and just a few weeks after completing the Symphony. Reception of the two-act ballet was tepid at its St. Petersburg premiere in December 1892. But The Nutcracker would take on a life of its own, primarily through the 20-minute suite that the composer had cobbled together in February 1892; it would become his most familiar and frequently performed score.