El Amor Brujo, Clearfield, and the Guitar
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Sunday, March 31 | 2:30 Monday, April 1 | 7:30 El amor brujo, Clearfi eld, and the Guitar Classical Conversations Post-Concert Q&A Sunday, March 31 Please join Maestro Dirk Brossé and Jordan Dodson for an informal and informative Q&A session following the matinée in the Perelman Theater. Concerts & Cocktails Post-Concert Mixer Monday, April 1 Join us after our Monday evening performances at the Kimmel Center Encore Bar for Concert & Cocktails, where you can mingle and get to know the Chamber Orchestra over drinks. PROGRAM Manuel de Falla El amor brujo Suite I. Introduction & Scene VIII. Scene III. The Ghost X. Pantomime IV. Dance of Terror VI. Midnight V. The Magic Circle VII. Ritual of Fire Dance Heitor Villa-Lobos Concerto for Guitar I. Allegro preciso II. Andantino e andante III. Alegretto non troppo – Vivo Intermission Emmanuel Chabrier Habanera Steven Gerber Homage to Dvořák from Spirituals for String Orchestra Jordan Dodson Interlude for solo Electric Guitar Andrea Clearfi eld Composer-in-Residence GLOW* for Electric Guitar and Chamber Orchestra I. SING II. STREAK III. GLOW * World Premiere ORCHESTRA Violin 1 Bassoon Meichen Liao-Barnes, Acting Concertmaster Michelle Rosen, Principal Luigi Mazzocchi, Acting Assoc. Concertmaster Igor Szwec French Horn Joseph Kau man John David Smith, Principal Alexandra Cutler-Fetkewicz Lyndsie Wilson Natalie Rudoi DaSilva Trumpet Rodney Marsalis Violin 2 , Principal Elizabeth Kaderabek, Acting Principal Brian Kuszyk Guillaume Combet Donna Grantham Trombone Catherine Kei Fukuda Bradley Ward, Principal Lisa Vaupel Timpani William Wozniak Viola , Principal Matthew Cohen, Acting Principal Yoshihiko Nakano Percussion Kathleen Foster Barry Dove, Principal Alexandr Kislitsyn Piano Matthew Brower, Principal Cello Glenn Fischbach, Acting Principal Elizabeth ompson Branson Yeast Bass Miles B. Davis, Principal Anne Peterson Flute Edward Shultz, Principal Frances Tate Oboe Geo rey Deemer, Principal Clarinet Rié Suzuki, Principal Robert Huebner PROGRAM NOTES El amor brujo Bassoon Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) Michelle Rosen, Principal Manuel de Falla was the most highly regarded Spanish composer of the French Horn early 20th century. His music was infl uenced by both impressionism (he John David Smith, Principal spent seven years in Paris, where he was befriended by Debussy, Ravel and Dukas) and Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, but the greatest infl uences were the Lyndsie Wilson angular rhythms and sinuous melodies of traditional gypsy and fl amenco music. He was not a prolifi c composer, but the years around World War Trumpet I were his most productive and saw his most popular pieces, including Rodney Marsalis, Principal the 1914 Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) and the 1917 comic ballet El sombrero de tres picos (The Three- Brian Kuszyk Cornered Hat), which was produced by Diaghilev with sets and costumes designed by Picasso. He began a collaboration with poet and playwright Trombone Federico García Lorca to collect fl amenco song and in 1922 organized the Bradley Ward, Principal El Concurso de Cante Jondo (The Contest of the Deep Song), a two-day music festival that celebrated the art of fl amenco. Timpani El amor brujo (Love, the Magician) was commissioned in 1914 by the William Wozniak, Principal famous gypsy fl amenco dancer Pastora Imperio, with a scenario based on stories supplied by her mother. Falla created an expanded fl amenco, Percussion with the traditional dancing and singing augmented by actors, narration, and a small pit band. It premiered to mixed reviews in 1915, and Falla Barry Dove, Principal immediately began tinkering with the production. He felt the music was constrained by the small pit band so he expanded the ensemble, Piano removed the dialogue and narration, and cut most of the songs for a more Matthew Brower, Principal successful 1916 version. In 1924, he again expanded the orchestration and rearranged the music to create a one-act fl amenco ballet, which has become the version most often heard today. The score is atmospheric and evocative, ominous, frenetic and serene by turns, capturing both the spirit and folkloric quality of the story, and is one of Falla’s masterpieces. In the story, the young woman Candelas is haunted by the ghost of her former lover, who was both faithless and jealous in life, and he makes her dance with him every night (Dance of Terror). This poses a serious impediment to her budding romance with Carmelo. She attempts to break the spell with magic, but even a protective dance (Ritual Fire Dance) proves ineffective. Carmelo persuades the gypsy girl Lucia, who once had an affair with the lover, to intervene, and when the ghost appears, Lucia begins to fl irt with the spectre. He has a roving eye in death as in life, and dances off with Lucia (Dance of the Game of Love). Carmelo and Candelas are fi nally able to share the kiss of love which breaks the spell, proving that love is indeed the most powerful magic of all. Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) The life of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was as colorful as his music, at least in his retelling. His father was an avid amateur musician who regularly hosted chamber music sessions at his house, took his son to the opera and theater and taught him cello and clarinet. This tutelage came to an abrupt end when his father suddenly died of malaria. The young Villa- Lobos helped support the family by playing cello in theater orchestras. He had learned guitar and honed his skills jamming in chôros, improvisational music played by street musicians. At 18, he began traveling throughout Brazil, studying and collecting local music. His stories of taking a boat alone up the Amazon and barely escaping a cannibal tribe may be somewhat embellished, but he returned to Rio in 1912 with a deep appreciation for the unique mélange of Amerindian, African and Portuguese influences that is Brazilian music. Despite being completely self-trained, Villa-Lobos began composing music ranging from piano and chamber works to symphonies and ballets at a furious pace, in a style heavily flavored with Brazilian rhythms and melodies. His music was not particularly well received, but he soon gained a reputation a leading avant-garde composer. In 1923, he traveled to Paris, not to study but to present his own music. The French adored his exotic style, and his music was widely performed and published. He made important contacts. Stokowski programmed his music in Philadelphia and New York. The Spanish guitar virtuoso Segovia asked Villa-Lobos to compose an etude for him. He responded with an extraordinary set of 12 etudes whose wealth of musical invention and technical difficulty have made them a significant part of the guitar literature. In 1951, Villa-Lobos composed a three-movement Fantasia concertante for guitar and orchestra and dedicated it to Segovia. As the story goes, Segovia was reluctant to perform it because it did not contain a cadenza to showcase his virtuosity. Villa-Lobos finally capitulated and provided a cadenza in 1955, placing it as a separate movement and renaming the work Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. Stokowski had taken up the music directorship of the Houston Symphony, and he invited Villa-Lobos to conduct a concert of his works, including the Guitar Concerto with Segovia as soloist, and the work was finally premiered in February, 1956. Villa-Lobos scored the concerto for a small orchestra so its sonorities would balance that of the solo instrument. There is a flavor of Bach in much of the writing, with sharp, syncopated Brazilian rhythms alternating with atmospheric, chorale-like melodies supported by rapid scales and arpeggios, as if Villa-Lobos were looking back to his most popular compositions, the Bachianas Brasileiras. The three original movements unfold in a traditional concerto format, despite the Fantasia title, the first two in a quasi ABA pattern and the third with a theme that repeats in a series of modulations. The interpolated cadenza is written in four sections, each suggestive tempo markings (quasi allegro, andante, quasi allegro and poco moderato) but no barlines, providing flexibility of expression for the soloist. If the cadenza movement looks back at all, it is to his ferocious 1929 Etudes, and is brilliant enough that it is sometimes excerpted as a recital piece. Habanera Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) There was an unusual interest in Spanish music among French composers of the late 19th century: Lalo’s 1874 Symphonie Espagnole, Bizet’s 1875 Carmen, with its sensuous Habanera and Seguidilla arias, Saint-Saëns’ 1887 Havanaise. But the most popular by far was Emmanuel Chabrier’s signature work, the lively, ebullient rhapsody España. Despite a late start as a composer, Chabrier wrote a substantial amount of orchestral and piano music, songs and even a dozen operas or operettas, and his colorful, innovative style and idiosyncratic orchestrations influenced generations of French composers well into the 20th century. Chabrier started piano lessons at six and began composing by eight. Although his teachers felt he was talented enough to pursue a musical career, his father insisted he should study law. Chabrier continued private lessons in piano, violin and composition while he was at law school, and joined the Ministry of the Interior upon graduation in 1861. By the 1870’s he had begun to receive some recognition as a composer – two operas were produced and Saint-Saëns played some of his piano music in concert. It was after a pilgrimage to Munich in 1880 to see Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde that he decided to leave the Ministry and devote himself full-time to composition. In 1882, Chabrier and his wife went on an extended vacation in Spain, and he returned with a notebook full of melodies he had transcribed.