Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra Larry
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SHEPHERD SCHOOL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA LARRY RACHLEFF, Music Director SUSAN LORETTE DUNN, Soprano THOMAS HONG, Conductor ZHU ZHU, Piano Thursday, April 24, 2014 8:00 p.m. Stude Concert Hall PROGRAM Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major Franz Liszt Allegro maestoso. Tempo giusto (1811-1886) Quasi Adagio Allegretto vivace Allegro marziale animato Zhu Zhu, soloist Thomas Hong, conductor INTERMISSION Chants d’Auvergne (selections) Joseph Canteloube Malurous qu’o uno fenno (1879-1957) Lo Fiolairé Pastourelle La Pastoura als Camps Baïlèro Lou Coucut Susan Lorette Dunn, soloist Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, “Unfinished” Franz Schubert D. 759 (1797-1828) Allegro moderato Andante con moto The reverberative acoustics of Stude Concert Hall magnify the slightest sound made by the audience. Your care and courtesy will be appreciated. The taking of photographs and use of recording equipment are prohibited. SHEPHERD SCHOOL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA String seating changes with each concert. Winds, brass, percussion and harp listed alphabetically. Violin I Double Bass (cont.) Trumpet Sarah Arnold, Evan Hulbert William Gerlach concertmaster Renaud Boucher- Philip Hembree Dorothy Ro Browning Trombone Anastasia Sukhopara Charles Paul * Madeleine Doyon Lijia Phang Flute Robitaille Ling Ling Huang James Blanchard Gregory Hammond Rebecca Reale Douglas DeVries Stephen Houck Michelle Black Amanda Galick Ryan Rongone Emily Nebel Christen Sparago Bass Trombone Amulet Strange Violin II Richard Stiles Geoffrey Herd, Kelly Zimba principal Piano Piccolo Rebecca Nelson Yvonne Chen Kayla Burggraf Natalie Gaynor Douglas DeVries Timpani Jacqueline Kitzmiller Lucas Sanchez Sophia Cho Oboe Michael Stubbart Eric Gratz Leah Craft Michael Ferri Gina Alice Ford Percussion Titus Underwood Colin Ryan Viola Wei Wang Lucas Sanchez Jill Valentine, Michael Stubbart principal English Horn Daniel Wang Titus Underwood Orchestra Manager Rebecca Lo and Librarian Clarinet Leah Gastler Kaaren Fleisher Nicholas Davies Anthony Bracewell Sean Krissman Production Manager Cello Lin Ma Mandy Billings Benjamin Stoehr, Assistant Production principal Bassoon Conrad Cornelison Manager Erik Wheeler Jessica Goldbaum Brian Figat Ariana Nelson Michael Severance Chris Lee Maxwell Geissler Francis Schmidt Benjamin Francisco Horn Everett Burns Recording Engineer Double Bass Andrew Du Comb Andy Bradley Michael Fuller, Markus Osterlund principal Spencer Park * playing Schubert only PROGRAM NOTES Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 . Ludwig van Beethoven Upon hearing the title of this piece, one may wonder whether it is connected with Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The stormy dramatic nature of the music itself will further confirm such suspicions. TheOverture is, however, modeled after a play by Heinrich von Collin, an Austrian civil servant who was unaware that Shakespeare had written about the same tragic warrior. Both versions of this story are roughly the same except for their endings. Coriolanus is exiled from Rome and leads the Voluscians on a ruthless attack against the city. Meanwhile, his mother, Volumna, begs him to have mercy on Rome. Coriolanus eventually gives in to her entreaties, which causes his downfall and ultimately his death. In Shakespeare’s version of the story, Coriolanus, after comprehending the difficul ty of his position, fatally stabs himself. In Collin’s version, the warrior is killed by the Voluscians whom he has betrayed. Beethoven’s extremely programmatic overture captures the spirit of Coriolanus and his life’s continuous strife. Until about 1800, the overture as a genre was used as a specific device to call the audience to attention before a theatrical or operatic performance, but it had little to do with the storyline of the actual theatrical work that it intro duced. Later composers, however, tried to reflect the general mood of the dra ma in the overture. Although Beethoven did this in the Coriolan Overture, he did not create it for an actual performance of the play. Collin’s Coriolan was first performed in 1802 and was not performed at all after 1805. There were no further plans to revive the play when Beethoven composed the overture in 1807. Beethoven must have been inspired by the story after reading the play, and he composed the overture as a concert piece that could represent the life and struggles of Coriolan. This tumultuous, agitated piece is characterized by continuous tension that seems never to resolve. The first theme emerges after a loud and crashing intro duction. Perhaps representing Coriolan and his struggles, it is a nervous sound ing theme comprised of short, frantic eighth notes in the strings. The theme gradually builds as the lower strings continue to repeat the first motive, add ing to the feeling of agitation and tension. The lyrical, flowing counter theme of fers some contrast and may be seen as representing Coriolan’s mother’s plea for mercy. After this theme enters, the music never seems to resolve, since no strong cadence occurs. The music finally resolves on a somber C minor chord repre senting Coriolan’s defeat and submission to his fate. The rest of the piece marks a sharp contrast as slow, lugubrious string and bassoon passages whisper the death of a once great warrior. – Note by Rebecca L. Rockwood Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major . Franz Liszt Franz Liszt was born on October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Hungary. His father, an amateur musician, immediately recognized his son’s prodigious musical gifts and became his first piano teacher. Liszt’s status evolved quickly after studying in Vienna, then Paris. He became the nineteenth century concert music’s version of today’s pop superstar. His image was framed around with flamboyant cos tumes, a bejeweled sword and medaled chest, velvet gloves, facial contortions, a tossed-around mane of hair, and frequent, public love affairs. By the late 1840’s a successful, wealthy Liszt had tired of his glamorous and lucrative interna tional concertizing career—he called it a “circus” life. He was appointed court music director at Weimar, composer and teacher for Albéniz, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Smetana and legions of other historically prominent musical figures. In short, he lived a restless, dynamic, exciting life that included stints in various offices such as politician, abbe (minor order of priesthood), charity concert provider, teacher, conductor and literary scholar. He died from pneumonia on July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth, Germany. Franz Liszt composed his first piano concerto over a 26-year period. The main themes are written in a sketchbook dated from 1830; the final version dates from 1849. On February 17, 1855, Liszt premiered the piece himself, under the baton of Hector Berlioz. Liszt made yet more changes before the concerto’s publication in 1856. This concerto unfolds as a single continuous drama, yet is comprised of four discrete movements that mimic the movements of a Classical symphony (fast, slow, scherzo, fast). Each of the first three movements has its own themes, but the march-like finale is made up entirely of themes from the previous movements, though completely transformed. The full orchestra announces the first theme that opens the entire concerto. It is said that Liszt and his son-in-law, the brilliant pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, set the opening theme to words (most likely directed toward Liszt’s philosophical opponent, Brahms and his camp): “Das versteht ihr alle nicht, Haha!” (None of you understand this, Haha!). The theme immediately repeats itself a step lower, in a startlingly different harmony. At this point, the pianist makes her presence known in an imposing cadenza. Liszt returns to this opening theme again and again in this movement, and each time it leads to something new—a recitative, a lyric melody, thundering octaves, and finally to weight lessly glittering passagework that ends the movement in a puff of smoke. The strings lead off in the second movement, and suggest a lyrical melody that the piano then fills in with vintage Romantic rhapsodic expression. When this sequence comes to its close, the orchestra restates its suggestive beginning, more urgently this time. The piano responds with a declamatory recitative. As the passions calm, the movement ends with the clarinet restating the melody from the beginning of the movement. Then, an interruption: silence. The ping of a triangle, and the dancing reply of plucked strings, introduce the basic idea of the Scherzo. Liszt breaks the Scherzo off for a cadenza. The pianist recalls the beginning of the concerto, and suddenly those pages loom large again in a dramatic and developing restatement, which in turn opens the way for the martial finale. The fourth movement presents nothing new; all its musi cal material is ingenious transformation and recapitulation. This movement, said Liszt, is a recapitulation of what has come before, only quicker, and with a springier rhythm. In his own words: “This binding and rounding off a piece at its close, is a technique I have made my own, but it is justified by the musical form. The trombones and basses take up the second part of the adagio’s motif. The piano passage that comes after this is the motif just played in the adagio by flute and clarinet. The final passage is a variation and major-mode development of the scherzo’s motif. At last the very first theme comes in with a trill accompa niment, to conclude the whole.” – Note by Zhu Zhu Chants d’Auvergne (selections) . Joseph Canteloube Although a composer by training, Marie Joseph Canteloube was known primarily for his arrangements of French folksongs and particularly the five vol ume series Chants D’Auvergne from which tonight’s program is selected. His first exposure to folk music was as a child in Auvergne, the region of France in which he was born in 1879. From the time he was very young he studied piano, first with his mother and then with Amélie Doetzer, a friend of Chopin’s.