PROGRAM NOTES Season Opener WILLIAM INTRILIGATOR, Music Director & Conductor
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SAT Oct 14 at 7:30pm SUN Oct 15 at 2:00pm Five Flags Theater Downtown Dubuque PROGRAM NOTES Season Opener WILLIAM INTRILIGATOR, Music Director & Conductor The Three-Cornered Hat, Suite 1 – Manuel de Falla As an adolescent, Spain’s most celebrated composer, Manuel de Falla, became acquainted with the music of Edvard Grieg, and surprisingly its strong Norwegian character inspired in him “an intense desire to create one day something similar with Spanish music.” He trained at the Madrid Conservatory, then in 1902 began studying with Felipe Pedrell, the founding father of Spanish musical nationalism. In 1907, de Falla left for Paris to broaden his culture and absorb the radical new ideas of Debussy and Ravel. When he finally returned to his homeland in 1914, his knowledge of Spanish traditional music had been enriched by con- temporary techniques, especially French composers’ refined and imaginative handling of Manuel de Falla the orchestra. b. 1876, Cádiz, Spain d. 1946, Alta Gracia, Argentina The old Spanish folktale about a virile miller, his pretty wife, and their triumph over a bum- bling corregidor or magistrate who tries to seduce the wife, as told in a novel by Pedro de Instrumentation: Alarcón in 1875, had long attracted de Falla. In 1916–17, he turned the story into a musi- 2 flutes/piccolo, 2 oboes/ cal pantomime La Corregidor y la molinera. Always looking for new scenarios, the Russian English horn, 2 clarinets, ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev convinced de Falla to expand the music into a full ballet 2 bassoons, 2 horns, score. Renamed Le Tricorne or The Three-Cornered Hat (the 18th-century three-cornered 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, hat was the traditional headgear of Spanish magistrates), the ballet debuted in London on strings July 22, 1919. The sets were by Picasso, the choreography by the brilliant young Leonid Massine — who also danced the role of the Miller with bravura enhanced by lessons with a Spanish flamenco master — and the evening was a smashing success. That same year, he drew two orchestral suites from the score; tonight we will hear the sequences of the First Suite which come from the ballet’s first act. As the ballet opens, it is a sultry afternoon about siesta time in a village of Andalusia, Spain’s most southern province. The town magistrate, impersonated by a self-important bassoon, marches through town and spots the miller’s comely wife. She mocks him by dancing a seductive fandango, “The Dance of the Miller’s Wife,” a spirited dance in triple meter. Taking advantage of his clumsy ardor, she then teases the magistrate with a bunch of grapes, but trying to reach for them he falls flat on his face. The wife, the miller, and townsfolk laugh in derision, and the miller and his wife triumphantly resume the fandango at an even faster tempo. Finlandia – Jean Sibelius The year 1899 opened ominously for Finland, at that time a dependency of the mighty Russian Empire. Under Czar Nicholas II, the Finns began feeling the weight of Russian rule as never before, and in February, the Russian government issued the so-called Feb- ruary Manifesto, removing Finland’s autonomy and severely curtailing the rights of free speech and assembly. An ardent patriot, Jean Sibelius was increasingly active in the fight for Finnish freedom, and his music became a rallying point for the movement, providing a cultural camouflage for underground political activity. Jean Sibelius b. 1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland For the evening of November 4th, the Finnish press association announced a “Press Pen- d. 1957, Järvenpää, Finland sion Celebration” — a series of “Historical Tableaux,” with texts by Eino Leino and Jalmari Finne, and music by Sibelius — ostensibly to raise money for journalists’ pensions, but Instrumentation: more importantly to rally support for a free press. Sibelius composed introductory music 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, for six historical scenes, the last of which was significantly titled “Finland Awakes!” But 2 bassoons, 4 horns, not wishing to provoke the Russian censors, he changed the title to Finlandia, when he 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, revised it a year later as a free-standing tone poem. Although he called it a “relatively cymbals, triangle and strings insignificant piece,” it became his most popular work and its central melody an unofficial national anthem for the Finns. The text that originally accompanied this music saluted Finnish progress during the 19th century and included these words: “The powers of darkness menacing Finland have not succeeded in their terrible threats. Finland awakes.” And the musical plan of this nine- minute work powerfully expresses this idea. Dark, savage chords for trombones and horns suggest a giant force trying to rouse itself. As the tempo accelerates, the music awakens to bustling, purposeful activity. This soon gives birth to a gravely beautiful hymn melody in the woodwinds: an anthem for a free Finland. Trumpet Concerto – Michael Gilbertson Since DSO audiences first met him as a highly gifted teenage composer, the career of young Dubuque native Michael Gilbertson has been flourishing. The DSO originally commissioned his Overture for Orchestra (2005) and Hodie (2004), both written when he was still a student at Hempstead High School. Tonight we will hear his latest commis- sioned work for Dubuque, the Trumpet Concerto. Having recently earned his master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Mu- sic, Gilbertson is receiving commissions and performances by orchestras and chamber Michael Gilbertson ensembles across America. He has also studied at New York’s Juilliard School under the b. 1987, Dubuque, Iowa noted composers John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse, at Columbia University, and at the Tanglewood Institute, the prestigious training program at the summer home of the Instrumentation: Boston Symphony. His music has been performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Solo trumpet, 2 flutes, Minnesota orchestra, among many others, and his opera Breaking was premiered at 2 clarinets, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, Washington’s Kennedy Center by the Washington National Opera in 2013. 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, Gilbertson’s orchestral piece Vigil won the 2007–08 Palmer-Dixon Prize, awarded by the 2 percussionists, strings Juilliard composition faculty to the most outstanding work composed by a student during the year. His Sonata for Flute and Piano was premiered at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2008. His music also appears in the documentary film Rehearsing the Dream, nominated for an Academy Award in 2006. He has been honored with five Morton Gould awards from ASCAP (the American Society of Composers and Publishers) and the Israel Prize from the Society for New Music. In 2009, Gilbertson founded a music festival that brings young classical musicians to Dubuque for concerts and educational outreach each year. This festival is a fundraiser for the Northeast Iowa School of Music, where Gilbertson taught for several years. “Communication is what my music is all about,” says Gilbertson, and indeed, this young Iowan writes music that is tonal, melodious, lusciously and expertly scored, and immedi- ately appealing. Though his Tragedy Tomorrow, heard here last season, was a descriptive orchestral tone poem, his Trumpet Concerto is a more abstract work of purely musical in- spiration. In his words: “My Trumpet Concerto aims to capture the trumpet’s wide breadth of color and character. The first movement begins and ends with fanfares inspired by the brass music of the Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli, including a passage for pic- colo trumpet. The second movement shifts to soft, lyrical jazz. The third movement begins very slowly, but quickly accelerates into a brisk, virtuosic troika [a Russian dance].” Concerto in A minor for Two Violins, RV 522 – Antonio Vivaldi The popularity of the music of Antonio Vivaldi shows no sign of waning as the 20th cen- tury has changed into the 21st. Almost forgotten by the world for two centuries after his death in 1741, this Venetian Baroque master suddenly soared to the top of the classical hit parade in the early 1950s when The Four Seasons began appearing on countless concert programs and filling the grooves of the newly invented LPs. And unlike many rediscovered composers, Vivaldi wasn’t loved simply for this one work. After all, he had written more than 500 concertos, dozens of operas, and an extensive catalogue of church music. If the operas failed to catch on, certainly the concertos did — becoming the party background music that proved one’s taste and sophistication in the 1960s and ’70s. Antonio Vivaldi b. 1678, Venice, Italy Known as the “Red Priest” for his flaming locks, Vivaldi took holy orders, but never of- d. 1741, Vienna, Austria ficiated at the altar (he claimed ill health prevented him from fulfilling those duties!). Instrumentation: Instead, his entire career was spent as a virtuoso violinist, teacher, and composer. For Two solo violins, strings, some three decades, he presided as music master at Venice’s L’Ospedale della Pietà, a continuo (harpsichord) charity school for orphaned and indigent girls, and he made its concerts one of Venice’s leading cultural attractions. Superbly trained as singers and instrumentalists, the young ladies amazed Venetians and foreign visitors with their virtuosity. And the composer’s alleged health problems did not prevent him traveling far beyond the Pietà to purvey his performing and creative talents throughout Italy and Austria. In 1711, the publication in Amsterdam of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico (“The Harmonic Fancy”), a set of 12 daringly expressive concertos for various combinations of instru- ments, swiftly spread the composer’s fame beyond the borders of his home city. Like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos of about the same period, these concertos were almost certainly not composed as a set but were chosen by Vivaldi as being superior works with which to advertise his talents to the world.