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Friday Evening, March 8, 2019, at 7:30 The Juilliard School presents Juilliard Pre-College Symphony Adam Glaser , Music Director David Robertson , Conductor Robert McDuffie , Violin Julia Bruskin , Cello Orli Shaham , Piano GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 –1868) Overture to William Tell LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 –1827) Concerto in C major for Violin, Cello, and Piano, Op. 56 (“Triple”) Allegro Largo Rondo alla Polacca ROBERT MCDUFFIE, Violin JULIA BRUSKIN, Cello ORLI SHAHAM, Piano Intermission MODEST MUSSORGSKY (1839 –81) Night on Bald Mountain (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov) PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840 –93) Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes, including an intermission The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. Information regarding gifts to the school may be obtained from the Juilliard School Development Office, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-6588; (212) 799-5000, ext. 278 (juilliard.edu/giving). Alice Tully Hall Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. Notes on the Program grief the Swiss have for their fatherland. The second section is tempestuous, depict - (Program notes for this evening’s concert ing the scene where William Tell kills were written by students from the Juilliard Gessler . Rossini’s dramatic work demon - Pre-College honors seminar taught by Ira strates here how Tell would be unfazed by Taxin and Daniel Ott.) the greatest forces of nature and how his oppressors would be helpless in the face Rossini: Overture to William Tell of it. The next section follows with a pas - by Alexander Leonardi toral call to the cattle in the beauty of the Swiss countryside, suggested by a delicate William Tell is based on a folk tale dating to and bright duet between the flute and the 13th century when the Swiss were English horn. Finally, the overture concludes under Austrian control. Furious with how with its famous call-to-arms heralded by the his country is under siege, the expert bow - trumpets, which announce the revolt led by man William Tell leads a rebellion to create William Tell and depict the struggle the a free Switzerland. His enemy is Gessler, a Swiss must endure for independence. bailiff and formidable foe who forces Tell to shoot an apple off his son’s head for not Alexander Leonardi is a third-year organ major bowing to Gessler’s hat, lest he hang for at Juilliard Pre-College studying with Matthew disrespect. Tell succeeds but is then Lewis. In addition to music, he is deeply inter - ordered to prison. A storm breaks out while ested in languages of all types, ranging from Tell is being ferried across a lake and Japanese and Chinese to programming lan - Gessler is convinced to release him, as he guages such as Java and Python. is the only one who can control the boat in the storm. Shortly thereafter, Tell flees , and Beethoven : Concerto in C major for with Gessler in pursuit, Tell shoots and kills Violin, Cello, and Piano, Op. 56 him. This story is an integral part of (“Triple”) Switzerland ’s folk history, shown through by Felicia He extensive references to the beauty of the Swiss Alps and negative views of the For Beethoven, the year 1803 brought Austrian oppressors. enormous productivity and creativity. Mas - ter pieces from this period include the In 1829, after finishing Le siè ge de Corinthe, “Eroica” Symphony, both the Waldstein Rossini started writing his 39th opera, and Appassionata Piano Sonatas, his opera William Tell . At the time, the composer Fidelio , and finally the “Triple” Concerto for declared it would be his last opera, and Piano, Violin, and Cello in C major, Op. 56. lthough he lived for almost another 40 Among his near dozen other completed years, he never composed another. The works for soloist and orchestra, this con - opera is based on the folktale but was certo remains the only one composed for adapted more closely from a play by multiple solo instruments. Although built in Schiller. The libretto is entirely in French the tradition of the Baroque concerto and it was premiered at the Paris Opèra. grosso and Classical sinfonia concertante , a concerto essentially for a piano trio was, The opera’s overture has remained an audi - in Beethoven’s own words to his publisher, ence favorite for generations. It is struc - “indeed something new.” tured in four distinct sections that parallel the opera’s four acts. The first section is The work is dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, very somber, using cellos to express the a well-known patron of Beethoven. However, the composer’s first biographer, Anton to the texture in the lower voices. The Schindler, speculated that Beethoven tempo indication is Largo , an unusual wrote the piece for his young piano stu - marking for Beethoven, and serves to sug - dent, the archduke of Austria. In fact, the gest the same dignified character found in first performance—which did not take the first movement. Near the end of the place until 1808 in Vienna—featured the second movement, the three-way exchanges archduke alongside two of the most yield once again to the cello, who plays a famous musicians of the time, violinist Carl string of repeated notes allowing for a nat - Seidler and cellist Anton Kraft. Some say ural accelerando into the final movement, a the premiere made the archduke a star, grand polonaise marked Rondo alla Pollacca . and some say that his technical abilities The new tempo transforms the dignified could not keep up with Beethoven’s writing rhythms of the previous movements into a for the piano. However, all can agree that more swaggering character. Between the Beethoven was successful in writing a dancing rondo refrains and whirling sixteenth - concerto that was brilliantly conceived to notes, there is hardly an idle moment for any feature the three soloists both individually soloist. Towards the end of the movement, and as a group. Beethoven surprisingly changes the stan - dard 3/4 time of the polonaise to a 2/4 The first movement is jubilant and grand, meter, giving the music even more urgency and its span of nearly 18 minutes makes it before falling back into a jovial dance to fin - one of the composer’s longest concerto ish with a stirring coda. Playing as one, the movements. It starts out tentatively, with soloists battle with the orchestra to reach a only the lower voices introducing a slow, huge C-major cadence, an appropriate con - climbing first statement that grows into a clusion for a triumphant work. semi-heroic theme in dotted rhythm. After the expansive orchestral tutti , the solo Felicia He is a junior at the Brearley School cello strikingly enters with a reiteration of and studies piano with Yoheved Kaplinsky the first theme and soon merges with the at Juilliard Pre-College. She is a 2019 Young violin to beckon in the piano. This paves Arts winner and also enjoys playing cham - the way for the rest of the movement, in ber music, skiing, and baking. which the orchestra and soloists are in near-constant dialogue, with the trio often Mussorgsk y: Night on Bald Mountain playing alone or with very minimal orches - by Chinmay Deshpande tral accompaniment. The emphasis on chamber music is especially apparent dur - Modest Mussorgsky was among the first ing the development, when the soloists Russian composers to develop a distinctly engage in an incessant exchange of furi - native style, and was a member of a group ous arpeggios, as well as at the end of the of iconoclastic composers known as the movement, when the trio is in a complete “Mighty Five.” During the Romantic period unison of ascending and descending C-major in which they lived and worked, an empha - scales that culminate in an exuberant finish. sis on narrative clarity over formal struc - ture was manifested in the creation of a The second movement, although short, radically new orchestral form, the sym - features the chamber-music quality in an phonic tone-poem. These single-move ment even more obvious way. Beginning from orchestral works depicted some extra- its beautiful introductory theme with the musical content, such as a poem, novel, or focus on the cello, our attention is directed play. The nascent Russian musical scene was somewhat late to the adoption of this basing his work upon the “ Dream Inter - new form, but in 1867 Mussorgsky, ever mezzo, ” but re-working many elements the pioneer, was the first Russian composer that Balakirev had criticized. The resulting to write a tone-poem, and the resulting creation proved itself wildly popular. In work— Night on Bald Mountain —is perhaps modern times it has entered into the com - his most famous. mon consciousness mostly due to its inclu - sion, re-arranged by Leopold Stokowski, in The piece has as its program a morbid and Disney’s 1940 masterpiece, Fantasia , in fantastical scenario: a witches’ sabbath on which the cartoon it accompanies is closely St. John’s Eve (also known as Midsummer’s based on Mussorgsky’ s original program. Eve), located on the Lysa Hora, a mountain near Kiev. This story was identified by the Chinmay Deshpande, a junior at the composer himself as a Russian legend, Collegiate School in New York City, is a making its use in keeping with Mussorgsky’s composition student of Eric Ewazen at nationalistic tendencies. The work begins Juilliard Pre-College. He also studies piano with a dramatic repeated passage in the with Marina Obukovsky, and his other strings, onto which Mussorgsky interpo - interests include cross-country running lates a diabolical scale in the woodwinds.

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