Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director
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Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director Thursday, January 10, 2019 at 8:00pm Saturday, January 12, 2019 at 8:00pm Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 3:00pm, George Weston Recital Hall David Robertson, originally scheduled to conduct this program, has had to withdraw from these concerts due to personal reasons. Mr. Robertson sends his warmest regards to the TSO musicians and audience. We are grateful to conductor Ludovic Morlot for stepping in. Ludovic Morlot, conductor Leila Josefowicz, violin Kurt Weill Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Suite from The Threepenny Opera) I. Overture II. The Murderous Deed of Mackie Messer III. Instead-of Song IV. The Ballad of Pleasant Life V. Polly’s Song Va. Tango-Ballade VI. Cannon Song VII. Threepenny Finale Igor Stravinsky Concerto in D Major for Violin I. Toccata II. Aria I III. Aria II IV. Capriccio Intermission Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 I. Allegretto II. Andante, ma rubato III. Vivacissimo IV. Finale: Allegro moderato The Three at the Weston Series performances are generously supported by Margaret and Jim Fleck. As a courtesy to musicians, guest artists, and fellow concertgoers, please put your phone away and on silent during the performance. JANUARY 10, 12 & 13, 2019 9 ABOUT THE WORKS Kurt Weill Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Suite from The Threepenny Opera) Born: Dessau, Germany, March 2, 1900 20 Died: New York, New York, USA, April 3, 1950 min Composed: 1929 On February 5, 1929, Kurt Weill wrote a letter to James M. Keller, program annotator for the UE (Universal Edition), his music publisher: New York Philharmonic, describes the basis of the chemistry between them: “In the late “I heard the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (I 1920s [they were] both prowling about Berlin’s deliberately avoided using the word ‘suite’) jazz-age Bohemia. The two met in 1927 [and] yesterday at rehearsal; I am very content recognized shared aesthetic sympathies.... with it. There are eight numbers in all-new, Brecht provided bitter cynicism, wealth- concert versions, with some new intermediate scorning social commentary, and the ability strophes and an entirely new orchestration: to elevate the lowest of the downtrodden two flutes, two clarinets, two saxophones, to the level of universal human myth. Weill two bassoons, two trumpets, one trombone, responded with masterful scores of generally one tuba, banjo, percussion, piano. I believe scaled down proportions: rhythmically the piece can be played an awful lot, since nervous, jazz-tinged, and rich in cabaret- it is precisely what every conductor wants: inflected melodies.” a snappy piece to end with.” Their source for The Threepenny Opera was It is, equally, as we shall hear tonight, a snappy a 1728 English stage piece, The Beggar’s piece to begin with! Opera, by librettist John Gay and composer Kleine Dreigroschenmusik premièred in Johann Christian Pepuch, which had itself Berlin two days later, on February 7, 1929, achieved enduring fame by taking a story of with Otto Klemperer conducting the the seamier side of London life and rendering Preussische Staatskapelle (Royal Prussian it in parodic operatic form, with tunes drawn Court Orchestra), barely five months after from popular ballads of the day. In a 1956 the work from which it was derived, Die essay titled “That was a Time!”, Lotte Lenya, Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) had who rocketed from obscurity in the role of premièred on August 31, 1928, also in Berlin. Jenny in the 1928 production, recalls: “It was The Threepenny Opera remains, to this day, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Bert Brecht’s secretary the best-known of the works Weill created in and vigilant shadow in the mid-twenties, who partnership with the individual who, more than first read of the great success in London of a any other, helped shape Weill’s unique musical revival of The Beggar’s Opera. She promptly voice—the playwright Bertolt Brecht. ordered a copy and...began a rough translation whenever she had a few free moments, giving 10 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA the German text to Brecht one scene at a declined to do), in the tradition of opera suites time...these bawds, bully boys and beggars for winds from Mozart’s day. of 18th-century London were creatures to Kleine Dreigroschenmusik reduces the opera’s delight his heart: why not make them speak his 55 minutes of music, spread out over 21 language in the fullest sense of the word?” songs, into eight movements with a combined In Brecht and Weill’s hands, the focus of the duration of just over 20 minutes. The first story remains English—Macheath (Mack the seven movements reflect key sung moments Knife), a murderer and seducer in Victorian from the opera, alternately savage, cynical, London—but the focus of the opera’s satire satirical, and tender (although not necessarily becomes the Weimar Germany of their own in plot sequence), while the finale masterfully time. blends several elements from the opera’s thoroughly Brechtian ending: Macheath, about Despite an initially poor reception, it became to be hanged, sings bitterly about the injustice one of the most popular works of the period, of it all, then, in rapid succession, begs all men playing 400 times in the next two years. It also for forgiveness, is pardoned by the queen, and travelled to North America as a film by G. W. is given a pension. Pabst (readily available on YouTube for the curious), which opened in New York in 1931; As a German Jew, Weill’s fortunes turned sour its Broadway première followed two years in the early 1930s, as the new Nazi regime later, at the Empire Theatre, on April 13, 1933 ramped up a propaganda campaign against (a run that, it should be noted, closed after 12 his popular, politically subversive works. He performances). Within five years, it had been fled first to Paris in 1933, then to the United translated into 18 languages and performed States in 1935, where he continued an active more than 10,000 times in Europe. career as a musical-theatre composer, collaborating with Ira Gershwin and Langston Very early on, The Threepenny Opera had, Hughes, among others, until his death of a perhaps somewhat paradoxically, also heart attack at age 50. attracted the attention of the serious-music establishment in Germany. As Lotte Lenya Program note by David Perlman observes: “Kurt had written three operas which had been applauded by the most austere music critics, Weill, Krenek, Hindemith were rated as the three most gifted young opera composers in Germany. But Kurt felt strongly that serious composers had withdrawn into too rarefied an atmosphere. He insisted that the widening gap between them and the great public must be bridged at all costs.” Just four months after its première, conductor Otto Klemperer commissioned Weill to create the work on tonight’s program—a “concert suite,” as Klemperer called it (and as Weill JANUARY 10, 12 & 13, 2019 11 ABOUT THE WORKS Igor Stravinsky Concerto in D Major for Violin Born: Oranienbaum, Russia, June 17, 1882 22 Died: New York, New York, USA, April 6, 1971 min Composed: 1930–1931 Stravinsky composed his Concerto in D for the substance. I am very fond of the Bach Polish violinist Samuel Dushkin. After meeting Concerto for Two Violins, as the duet of the Dushkin in October 1930, he began jotting soloist with a violin from the orchestra in the down ideas for a violin concerto the next day, last movement of my own Concerto possibly and insisted that Dushkin live nearby and offer may show. But my Concerto employs other advice on the solo part during composition. The duet combinations, too, and the texture is concerto was completed in September 1931, almost always more characteristic of chamber and Dushkin gave the première on October 23, music than of orchestral music.” in Berlin, with Stravinsky conducting the Berlin He goes on to say that he did not compose a Radio Orchestra. Later, the two performed cadenza, “not because I did not care about the concerto around Europe and in the United exploiting violin virtuosity, but because the States (sometimes in Stravinsky’s own violin- violin in combination was my real interest.... piano arrangement). Virtuosity for its own sake has only a small role The Concerto in D Major for Violin is in some in my Concerto, and the technical demands of respects a throwback, modelled more closely the piece are relatively tame.” on the Baroque keyboard concerto than on “Tame” is something of an overstatement. its more immediate Romantic predecessors. The soloist does not stand apart from the Stravinsky’s own program note for the work, orchestra to the degree it does in many reprinted in his 1963 autobiographical concertos, but the solo part is difficult, and Dialogues and a Diary, co-written with Robert the violin plays in almost every bar—“first Craft, says: among equals,” sometimes subsumed into “The Violin Concerto was not inspired by or the overall texture, as in a Baroque concerto. modeled on any example. I did not find that The violin style could be described as defiantly the standard violin concertos—Mozart’s, anti-Romantic: more angular than lyrical; lean, Beethoven’s, Mendelssohn’s, or even incisive, precisely attacked; at times brittle or Brahms’s—were among their composers’ even scratchy; suspicious of Romantic clichés best work. (The Schoenberg Concerto is an like vibrato and portamento (though making exception, but that is hardly standard yet.) frequent and innovative use of harmonics and The subtitles of my Concerto—Toccata, Aria, pizzicato). Capriccio—may suggest Bach, though, and The hard bite of this violin style is apparent so, in a superficial way, might the musical from the opening salvo of the Concerto in D, 12 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA a strange, bitter chord that Stravinsky called trademark rhythmic complexities.