Program Notes 7:30Pm Saturday, March 14, 2015 Heritage Center 2:00Pm Sunday, March 15, 2015 University of Dubuque

Home , Eugene Onegin (opera), Flute Concerto (Rouse)

Program Notes 7:30pm Saturday, March 14, 2015 Heritage Center 2:00pm Sunday, March 15, 2015 University of Dubuque

WILLIAM INTRILIGATOR, Music Director & Conductor

Polonaise from Eugene Onegin PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

“If ever music was written with sincere passion, with love for the story and the characters in it, it is the music for Onegin,” wrote Tchaikovsky in January 1878. “I trembled . . . with inexpressible delight while writing it.”

Composed in 1877-78 during a very troubled period in his life, Tchaikovsky’s greatest opera, Eugene Onegin, was inspired by Pushkin’s classic novel of 1833. Both opera and novel tell a tale of unrequited love and the damage it wreaks in several young lives. A sheltered, country-bred young woman, Tatiana, falls desperately in love with Onegin, a b. 1840, Votkinsk, Russia d. 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia handsome, worldly visitor from St. Petersburg; when she confesses her love in a passionate letter, he coolly spurns her. He then provokes a quarrel with Tatiana’s sister’s fiancé and kills him in the ensuing duel. Years later, a melancholy Onegin attends a ball at Prince Gremin’s palace in St. Petersburg. There he is smitten with Princess Gremin, whom he recognizes as Tatiana, now transformed into an elegant, sophisticated society woman. In the opera’s final scene, he begs Tatiana to elope with him; though she confesses she still loves him, she declares her loyalty to her husband and dismisses him. In despair, Onegin realizes that his earlier rejection of Tatiana had been a terrible mistake.

An example of Tchaikovsky’s genius for dance music, the Polonaise — a stately couple dance from Poland — opens the opera’s third act at Prince Gremin’s palace. As the guests process into the ballroom to this suavely elegant music, Onegin sees Tatiana again and is dazzled by her newfound poise and charm.

Flute Concerto CHRISTOPHER ROUSE

Christopher Rouse is a prolific contemporary American composer. Rhythmic complexity, intense musical content, and rich orchestral color characterize his works.

Mr. Rouse was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1949. He studied with some heavy weights in music composition including Richard Hoffmann at the Oberlin Conservatory, George Crumb, and Karel Husa at Cornell University. His career as a composer is well-established and decorated with fellowships and grants, a Grammy Award (2002), a Pulitzer Prize in Music (1993), and numerous commissions from b. 1949, Baltimore, Maryland major symphony orchestras around the world. He was named the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic in 2012.

Symphonic works and concertos are the two main driving forces behind Christopher Rouse’s popularity and success, and some of his music can be categorized as modern romanticism. Mr. Rouse frequently experiments with mixing atonal and tonal harmonies in his works and he does not shy away from his fondness for rock and pop music. His flute concerto demonstrates many of these compositional traits. Mark Lehman, a well-known music critic, commented on Christopher Rouse’s music as “big, splashy, violent, and often tragic”.

Rouse’s flute concerto was completed on August 15, 1993 in Fair Port in New York. Like many of his works from the 90’s, it may have been inspired by a series of deaths and tragic events. Through a joint commission from Richard and Jody Nordlof and Borders Inc., this piece was composed for Carol Wincenc and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. It was premiered in October, 1994 with Carol Wincenc and the Detroit Symphony under guest conductor Hans Vonk. This concerto is constructed in five movements which are loosely arranged in an arch form. The outer movements bear the same title “Amhrán” (Gaelic for “song”), and they share similar motivic materials. In these movements, the melodic line of the solo flute floats on top of a sustaining and pale canvas of string sonority from the orchestra. Christopher Rouse is trying to evoke an “Irish” association from the listeners without composing Irish music specifically. Mr. Rouse stated that he was inspired by Enya, a new age pop musician who is not generally recognized as a folk musician.

In an arch form, just as the first and fifth movements imitate each other, the second and fourth movements correspond with one another. They do not share melodic motives as the first and fifth movements do, but they both possess driven rhythmic motives. These rhythmic motives can at times be erratic due to the fast tempo. The second movement is an upbeat march and the fourth movement is a scherzo with a building Irish jig in the end section. Both movements are highly chromatic and dissonant while showcasing their percussive rhythmic motives. The third movement, Elegia, is the longest movement of the concerto. It serves as both the structural and emotional center of this piece. Mr. Rouse was closely following the James Bulger case in England while composing this piece. He was deeply affected by the senseless nature of the event, children murdering children, and reflected his feelings through powerful music. Regarding this movement, Mr. Estep from the American record Guide wrote “it is the keystone of this work’s arch structure, altering our perception and understanding of the music that follows it.”

Rouse program notes by Hsing-I Ho

Symphony No. 5 in E Minor PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

More than a decade elapsed between the composition of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Fifth symphonies. The composer who sat down in May 1888 to create his Fifth had grown enormously in fame and confidence during this period. In 1877, he was still recovering from his disastrous marriage and suicide attempt; in 1888, he was world famous and had just returned to Russia from a highly successful European tour conducting programs of his works before cheering audiences from London to Berlin. Czar Alexander III had recently acknowledged his importance to Russia with a handsome life pension. b. 1840, Votkinsk, Russia d. 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia And yet Tchaikovsky was still plagued by doubts about his creativity and the morbid nervousness that was the dark side of his genius. In 1887, he had rushed to the bedside of a dying friend, Nikolai Kodratyev, and for a month was tormented nearly as much as the poor victim: “Painful, terrible hours! Oh, never will I forget all that I have suffered here.” To his benefactress, Nadezda von Meck, he wrote despairingly: “Can it be that we are all so afraid when we die?” As he began his new symphony, he wrote again: “I am dreadfully anxious to prove not only to others but also to myself, that I am not yet played out as a composer.”

Far from being played out, Tchaikovsky found that, once he’d begun, inspiration flowed in abundance, and by the end of August, the Fifth Symphony was completed. The composer himself led the premiere in St. Petersburg on November 17, 1888; both the audience and the orchestra gave him a prolonged ovation. Yet even then, he continued to have doubts about the work, particularly about its finale, which some critics had disliked. “There is something repellant in it, some exaggerated color, some insincerity or fabrication ... “ Leaping to extremes, he pronounced the work “a failure”; for listeners then and now, however, it was an unqualified success.

Like the Fourth, the Fifth Symphony has a motto theme that appears in all movements and is also associated with the concept of Fate. Here fate begins as a menacing force, threatening the composer’s happiness, but is ultimately transformed into a major-mode song of triumph. We hear it immediately, played in the minor by two clarinets in their deepest chalumeau register, in the first movement’s slow introduction. Then the tempo accelerates for the sonata form proper. A duo of clarinet and bassoon introduce the rhythmically intricate first theme, a halting march. The contrasting second theme, sung by the violins, is a tender syncopated melody in Tchaikovsky’s best lyric vein that taps wells of passion as it builds to a vigorous climax.

After a short, intense development based mostly on the first theme, the solo bassoon ushers in the recapitulation. The lengthy coda is fascinating. Beginning with a sped-up, frenzied treatment of the halting-march theme, it descends into the orchestral basement (lower register) for a surprisingly quiet ending, veiled in deepest black.

The Andante cantabile second movement is one of the most beautiful Tchaikovsky ever wrote, and the ardor and yearning of its two main themes seem to link it with romantic love. As a homosexual unreconciled with his nature, Tchaikovsky found love an ideal nearly always out of reach. In a letter to Mme von Meck, he wrote: “I disagree with you absolutely that music cannot fully express the feelings of love. On the contrary — only music can do so. You say that words are needed. No, words are not enough, and where they are powerless, comes full-armed a more eloquent language — music.” The horn soloist opens with the famous yearning principal theme. Soon violins pour out the passionate second theme: an upward-aspiring melody reminiscent of the music Tchaikovsky created for his most passionate balletic pas de deux. A lighter middle section, featuring woodwind motives decorated with oriental arabesques, is suddenly smashed by the trumpets loudly proclaiming the Fate motto. The violins recover to sing the horn melody on their rich-toned low G-strings. But again Fate rudely intervenes, this time in the trombones, and the movement ends in very subdued tones. The waltz third movement also belongs to Tchaikovsky’s beloved world of ballet. He wrote that the main theme was inspired by a tune sung by a street urchin in Florence, but that street song surely lacked the smoothly flowing sophistication we find here. By contrast, the middle trio section is nervous, agitated music based on brusque string scales. The Fate motto makes a discreet appearance toward the end in the clarinets, but causes little disruption.

Fate is vanquished in the finale as the movement opens with a majestic statement low in the strings and now in E major, rather than minor. The Allegro vivace main section returns to the minor with an off-the-beat principal theme that seethes with aggressive energy — Tchaikovsky mastering his fears with a vengeance! A huge coda brings the Fate theme back again — and again! — in majestically slow E major and, upon accelerating to Presto, reprises the first movement’s halting-march theme, now blazing away in brass splendor. Here Tchaikovsky perhaps overplays his triumph, but audiences happily succumb to his joy.