SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS IVES/BRANT A Concord Symphony COPLAND Organ Symphony Paul Jacobs, organ | 1 | | 1 | Henry Brant Photo: Katu, 1999 | 2 | | 2 | San Francisco Symphony Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor Paul Jacobs, organ Charles Ives (1874-1954) / Henry Brant (1913-2008) A Concord Symphony 50:05 I. Emerson 17:39 II. Hawthorne 13:46 III. The Alcotts 6:13 IV. Thoreau 12:26 Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Organ Symphony 27:02 I. Prelude: Andante 7:13 II. Scherzo: Allegro molto 7:40 III. Finale: Lento–Allegro moderato 12:08 A Concord Symphony recorded live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, February 3-6, 2010. Organ Symphony recorded live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, September 22-25, 2010. Producer: Jack Vad Post Production Support: Marie Ebbing, Electronic Media Manager: Edie Cheng Jonathon Stevens Engineering Support: Mark Donahue, Art Direction and Design: Alan Trugman Dirk Sobotka, Roni Jules, Cover photo: Davies Symphony Hall Uwe Willenbacher Ruffatti Organ, by Jeanette Yu All editorial materials © 2011 San Francisco Symphony, Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 552-8000 | 3 | | 3 | A Concord Symphony Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-60 Orchestrated by Henry Brant The Concord Sonata by Charles Ives (1874-1954), He reported: “From 1958 until 1994 I worked on a towering classic of piano literature, emerged into A Concord Symphony in odds and ends of spare time being over many decades. Its first sketches date to in between teaching, commercial orchestration and 1904 and its final revision to 1947, but mostly Ives my own experimental composing. In undertaking concentrated on it from 1916 to 1919. When he first this project, my intention was not to achieve a committed it to publication, in 1920, he described characteristically complex Ives orchestral texture it as “an attempt to present [an] impression of the (which in any case, only he could produce), but spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the rather to create a symphonic idiom which would ride minds of many with Concord, Mass., of over a half in the orchestra with athletic surefootedness and century ago.” He continued, “This is undertaken in present Ives‘s astounding music in clear, vivid, and impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, intense sonorities.” a sketch of the Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the Aaron Copland: fantastic side of Hawthorne.” Organ Symphony Extraordinary by any standard, this music was On January 11, 1925, Walter Damrosch led the New unimaginably idiosyncratic in the context of its time. York Symphony Orchestra through the premiere Much of it is written without bar lines, so free is of Copland’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra its rhythmic behavior. In the second movement the and then turned to the audience. “Ladies and pianist brings a wooden plank down on the keys to gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “I am sure you will agree produce tone clusters. Unexpected visits are (or can that if a gifted young man can write a symphony be) paid by a solo viola in the first movement of this like this at twenty-three, within five years he will be piano sonata and by a flute in the last movement. ready to commit murder.” Copland took no offense. “It was a joke, of course,” he later recounted, “and The Canadian-born composer Henry Brant (1913- I laughed along with the rest of the audience, but it 2008) was inspired by Ives’s ideas, and by the 1950s was also Damrosch’s way of smoothing the ruffled had grown so obsessed with the Concord Sonata feathers of his conservative Sunday afternoon ladies that he began transcribing it for full orchestra. | 4 | | 4 | faced with modern American music.” It is remarkable to think that Copland had received his first formal lessons in music theory and composition only seven years earlier. Since that time he had spent three years in France studying with the remarkable Nadia Boulanger. It was she who instigated the commission of this work and who traveled to America to perform as the organist in its premiere. “The organ,” wrote Copland, “is treated as an integral part of the orchestra rather than as a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment; yet, it always remains very much in the foreground.” Following its premiere the work became widely hailed as an important statement of Modernism, and Copland’s name was linked to those of Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and Edgard Varèse as an influential new voice in music. The nicest compliment of all came from the composer Virgil Thomson, who succeeded Copland as a student of Boulanger’s in France. Years later he would say, “The piece that opened the whole door to me was that Organ Symphony of Aaron’s. I thought that it was the voice of America in our generation.” But when the piece was new, Copland was delighted by the following exchange between Boulanger and Thomson: “When she asked Virgil Thomson his opinion of the Organ Symphony, he said, ‘I wept when I heard it.’ Nadia asked, ‘But why did you weep?’ Virgil replied, ‘Because I had not written it myself!’” — James M. Keller | 5 | | 5 | The SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY gave its first Great Performances. A Celebration of Leonard concerts in 1911 and has grown in acclaim under Bernstein (their Carnegie Hall 2008 opening gala a succession of music directors: Henry Hadley, concert) was also telecast nationwide and is Alfred Hertz, Basil Cameron, Issay Dobrowen, Pierre available on DVD. The San Francisco Symphony Monteux, Enrique Jordá, Josef Krips, Seiji Ozawa, performs regularly throughout the United States, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt (now Conductor Europe, and Asia, and in 1990 made stunning debuts Laureate), and, since 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas. at the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals. In 1980, the In recent seasons the San Francisco Symphony has Orchestra moved into the newly built Louise M. won some of the world’s most prestigious recording Davies Symphony Hall. 1980 also saw the founding awards, among them France’s Grand Prix du of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Disque, Britain’s Gramophone Award, and a series The San Francisco Symphony Chorus has been of Grammy®s for recordings of music by Brahms, heard around the world on recordings and on the Orff, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. The initial release in soundtracks of three major films: Amadeus, The the Mahler cycle, of the Symphony No. 6, received Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Godfather III. the Grammy for Best Orchestral Recording of 2002, Through its radio broadcasts, the first in America to and the recording of the Mahler Third was awarded feature symphonic music when they began in 1926, the Grammy for Best Classical Album of 2003. The the San Francisco Symphony is heard throughout recording of Mahler’s Seventh received Grammys the US, confirming an artistic vitality whose impact for Best Orchestral Recording and Best Classical extends throughout American musical life. Album of 2006, and the recording of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony has been honored with three 2009 Grammy awards, for Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance, and Best Engineered Classical Album. 2004 saw the launch of Keeping Score, a multimedia educational project on TV, DVD, radio, and the Web site keepingscore.org. For RCA Red Seal, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have also recorded Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, two Copland collections, a survey of Ives’s music, and a Gershwin collection including works they performed at Carnegie Hall’s 1998 opening gala, telecast nationally on PBS’s | 6 | | 6 | BSO’s Associate Conductor, then Principal Guest Conductor. He has also served as Director of the Ojai Festival, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, a Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Principal Conductor of the Great Woods Festival. He became Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1988 and now serves as Principal Guest Conductor. For a decade he served as co-Artistic Director of Japan’s Pacific Music Festival, which he and Leonard Bernstein inaugurated in 1990, and he continues as Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, which he founded in 1988. Michael Tilson Thomas’s recorded repertory reflects interests arising from work as conductor, composer, and pianist. His television credits include the New York Philharmonic Young MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS first conducted the San People’s Concerts, and in 2004 he and the San Francisco Symphony in 1974 and has been Music Francisco Symphony launched Keeping Score on Director since 1995. A Los Angeles native, he studied PBS-TV. Among his honors are Columbia University’s with John Crown and Ingolf Dahl at the University Ditson Award for services to American music and of Southern California, becoming Music Director of Musical America’s 1995 Conductor of the Year the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra award. He is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of at nineteen and working with Stravinsky, Boulez, France, was selected as Gramophone 2005 Artist of Stockhausen, and Copland at the famed Monday the Year, was named one of America’s Best Leaders Evening Concerts. In 1969, Mr. Tilson Thomas won by U.S. News & World Report, has been elected to the Koussevitzky Prize and was appointed Assistant the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Conductor of the Boston Symphony. Ten days later in 2010 was awarded the National Medal of Arts by he came to international recognition, replacing President Obama. Music Director William Steinberg in mid-concert at Lincoln Center. He went on to become the | 7 | | 7 | Association’s Arthur W. Foote Award. In 2003 he joined the faculty of The Juilliard School, and in 2004 he was named chairman of the organ department, one of the youngest faculty appointees in the school’s history.