PROGRAM NOTES Season Opener WILLIAM INTRILIGATOR, Music Director & Conductor

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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 commissioned 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 piccolo 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 century 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 instruments, 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.

We will hear the eighth concerto from L’estro armonico, which is written for two violins. In A minor, it is one of Vivaldi’s finest by any measurement. Its first movement boasts an especially strong and varied part for the full ensemble, and the exquisite solo episodes charmingly imitate chirping birdsong. The Larghetto slow movement is a ravishing ex- tended melody for the two soloists, which is poised over a stately repeating passacaglia pattern in the orchestra introduced to us at the beginning. In the finalAllegro movement, listen for the solo violin’s beautiful, unexpected countermelody soaring against the agi- tated chatter of the other instruments. Symphony No. 5 in C minor – Ludwig van Beethoven

For many generations, Beethoven’s Fifth has defined the symphonic experience in the popular imagination, just as Hamlet stands for classical drama and Swan Lake for the ballet. It established the dramatic scenario of the symphony as a heroic progression from tragedy to triumph — and musically from the minor mode to the major — that was imitated by countless later composers from Brahms to Shostakovich. Moreover, it wages its epic battle with a breathtaking swiftness and a concentrated power its imitators could not match.

Europe was a troubled place when Beethoven wrote this work between 1806 and 1808. The Ludwig van Beethoven Napoleonic Wars surged across Europe, and the martial tone of many of the Fifth’s themes b. 1770, Bonn, Germany and the prominent role for trumpets and timpani reflected a society constantly on military d. 1827, Vienna, Austria alert. And, until Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, Beethoven lived on the losing side. In July 1807, when he was in his most intense phase of work on the Fifth, the signing of the Treaty of Instrumentation: Tilsit brought a temporary truce with the capitulation of Prussia and the cession of all lands piccolo (fourth movement between the Rhine and Elbe to France. This humiliation stimulated an uprising of patriotic only), two flutes, feeling among the German-speaking countries, and Beethoven shared in this fervor. Thus, it two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, is not surprising that the triumphant song of the Fifth’s finale seems as much a military victory contrabassoon (fourth as a spiritual one. movement only), two horns, two trumpets, three Beethoven himself gave the description of the four-note motive that pervades the Allegro con trombones (alto, tenor, and brio first movement: “Thus Fate knocks at the door!” he told his amanuensis Anton Schindler. bass, fourth movement only), timpani, and strings This is the most famous of the pithy rhythmic ideas that animated many of Beethoven’s mid- dle-period masterpieces; its dynamism as entrance is piled upon entrance drives this movement on its relentless course. The terseness and compression of this music are astonishing, conveying the maximum of expressive power with the minimum of notes. Beethoven only pauses for breath briefly as the violins introduce a gentler, more feminine second theme, and more tellingly later, as the solo oboe interrupts the recapitulation of the Fate theme — brought back with pulverizing power by the entire orchestra — with a plaintive protest of a mini-cadenza.

The Andante con moto second movement might be called Beethoven’s “War and Peace.” In an original treatment of the double-variations form devised by Haydn (two different themes alternating in variations), he mixes variants on a peaceful, pastoral melody with episodes of martial might in C Major that foretell the victory to come. Ultimately, even the pastoral music is trumpeted forth in military splendor. The movement closes with a haunting, visionary coda.

E.M. Forster’s novel Howard’s End contains one of the most eloquent passages ever written about classical music as it describes the Fifth’s quirkily ominous Scherzo. “The music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others followed him. They were not aggressive creatures ... They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendor or heroism in the world.” Horns respond to the cello goblins with a military fanfare derived from the Fate motive. After the comical trio section in which Beethoven for the first time asked double basses to be agile melodists (a feat beyond players’ capacities in his period though not today), the goblins return, even more eerily in bassoons and pizzicato strings. Then ensues one of Beethoven’s greatest passages: a dark, drum-filled journey grop- ing toward the light.

The music finally emerges into C-Major daylight with thefinale’s joyful trumpet theme. This is the grandfather of all symphonic triumphant endings and remains the most exhilarating and convincing. In a masterstroke, Beethoven brings back the Scherzo music to shake us from any complacency. E.M. Forster again: “But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.”