Michael Ludwig, Violin Buffalo Philharmonic
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572323 bk Suk 20/12/10 11:12 Page 4 Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Photo: Enid Bloch The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1935 and makes its home in Kleinhans Music Hall, a National Historic Landmark with an international reputation as one of the greatest concert halls in the United States. Through the decades the orchestra has grown in stature under a Josef number of distinguished conductors including William Steinberg, Josef Krips, Lukas Foss, Michael Tilson Thomas, Julius Rudel, Semyon SUK Bychkov, and Maximiano Valdès. As Buffalo’s cultural ambassador, the BPO has performed across the United States, Canada and Europe, including concerts at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Boston’s Symphony Hall, San Francisco’s Davies Hall and 22 appearances in Carnegie Hall. Fairy Tale The orchestra’s European tour included two sold-out performances in Vienna’s Musikverein, and concerts in Milan, Geneva, Zurich and Frankfurt, among other venues. The BPO performs 120 concerts annually and is heard by Fantasy in G minor millions on radio broadcasts across the United States and beyond on American Public Media’s Performance Today. For more information, please visit www.bpo.org Fantastic Scherzo JoAnn Falletta JoAnn Falletta currently serves as music director of both the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony and has guest conducted over a hundred orchestras in North America, and many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, South Michael Ludwig, America and Africa. Recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, winner of the Stokowski Competition, and the Toscanini, Ditson Violin and Bruno Walter conducting awards, JoAnn Falletta has also received ten awards from the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) and serves on the U.S. National Council on the Arts. A champion of American music, she has presented nearly five hundred works by American composers including over a Buffalo hundred world premières. Her Naxos recordings include the double GRAMMY® Award winning disc of works by John Corigliano (8.559331) and GRAMMY® nominated discs of works of Kenneth Fuchs, Franz Schubert, and Ottorino Respighi. Philharmonic For more information, please visit www.joannfalletta.com Orchestra Photo: Mark Dellas JoAnn Falletta 8.572323 4 572323 bk Suk 20/12/10 11:12 Page 2 Josef Suk (1874-1935) Slavonic Dances of Dvor˘ák. Sheer delight. In Zeyer’s stage Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Chopin, and Mahler later Fantasy in G minor • Fairy Tale • Fantastic Scherzo play, the death of the King brings a mortal reminder to on, the scherzo became a genre unto its own. Translated Radúz and Mahulena. To achieve the effect, Suk relies on from Italian, scherzo means playful or joking, and is Josef Suk took his earliest lessons on the violin and piano tone poem had gained wide favor in Europe, with the symbolism of eternal swans, portrayed in the third usually a bright-hearted scamper out for fun. But by the from his father, a local schoolmaster. By the age of eleven examples as diverse as Smetana’s Ma Vlast, Richard movement, Funeral Music. The mood and setting is a clear late nineteenth century, the form was often ironic or he was ready for the Prague Conservatory, where, during Strauss’s Don Juan and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. reflection from the last act of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, urgent, at times even sinister. For his part, Suk conjured a his final year, he was fortunate to study composition under Moreover, evocative titles like Fantasy, Rhapsody or that is the scene where Prince Siegfried fears he has forever symphonic canvas replete with impromptu vignettes. The Antonín Dvor˘ák, who had just joined the faculty. The Caprice were very alluring, in part because they were not lost his beloved Odette. To complete the suite, Suk piece is masterfully scored, with droll character rôles for acquaintance was propitious, in that Suk later married usually tied to a particular storyline. Rather, the music provides a rhapsodic finale titled Runa’s curse and how it the various sections of the orchestra. Throughout the Dvor˘ák’s daughter, Otilie. While at the Conservatory, Suk could suggest a progression of moods on the wing, was overcome by true love. The music begins with harsh work, blithe fancy is on the wing, with a piquant middle also studied chamber music with the celebrated cellist carrying the listener to the realms of reverie and fancy. heralding in the lead trumpet and lower brass, answered by section for contrast in mood and tempo. The gambit Hanus Wihan. In 1892 the latter recruited Suk to become Suk’s Fantasy begins with a robust introduction in startled strings and martial rhythms in the percussion. In begins with wispy snippets in the forest reeds via the second violinist of the Czech Quartet (later renamed in veiled G minor, with a deft change of key into F sharp the play, while wandering aimlessly in the woods, Prince woodwinds in gnomic guise. In turn, middle strings and honour of Smetana). Remarkably, Suk maintained his minor at the entrance of the solo violin. Indeed – as Radúz has lost all living memory of Mahulena. But a cellos intone one of those haunting Czech tunes which membership of the quartet for the next 41 years, fantasy dictates – the music blends from romantic nuance mystic desire leads him to a poplar tree, which he decides endear and linger long in the heart. The central section performing in more than 4,000 concerts until his into gusto and dash. Another character of the score is the to cut down for fire wood. He is not aware that the soul of offers a brook-side interlude, with frills and trills, again in retirement in 1933. pastoral ambiance of woodland effects, underscored by his beloved Mahulena has taken refuge in the boughs, and the reeds and flutes. Low register strings add a tender With encouragement from Dvor˘ák and Brahms, the the soloist with dance-like accents. At every point along as the sap begins to flow, her spirit regains his heart. They enchantment before the breezy energy of the opening is renowned publisher Simrock began to release editions of the way, the virtuoso rôle for the solo violin is at once are united at last. After a series of colourful fragments regained, again borne by the enchanted folk tune heard Suk’s music, beginning with his Serenade for Strings, Op. spectacular and dramatic, tone-painted over a rich replayed as memoirs, the music returns to the love aria earlier. Brassy fanfares escort the closing coda into a 6. The continued exposure placed Suk among the orchestral landscape. from the first movement, again in the solo violin, as the shower of accented rhythms and sparkling color. Splendid. important composers of the modern Czech school. The Fairy Tale, Op. 16 (Pohádka) is an orchestral suite curtain closes gently in E major. term ‘modern’ is significant, in that Suk extended the derived from incidental music Suk wrote in 1898 for a Composed in 1903, Fantastic Scherzo in G minor, national banner well into the twentieth century. Although theatre piece titled Radúz a Mahulena by the Czech poet Op. 25, is among Suk’s most evocative works. After Edward Yadzinski the Czech school had been established by Smetana and Julius Zeyer (1841-1901). The allegorical storyline is Dvor˘ák, Suk fully embraced the breakaway trends based on an old legend from Eastern Europe, which Zeyer Michael Ludwig epitomized by the music of Richard Strauss in Berlin, spins through seven lavish scenes in four acts. In sum, the Gustav Mahler in Vienna, and the Impressionist colours of tale is about a dashing young prince Radúz, who desires Michael Ludwig enjoys a multi-faceted career as a soloist, recording artist, and chamber Claude Debussy in Paris. Moreover, Suk departed from the hand of princess Mahulena from a rival mountain musician. A highly sought-after soloist, he has performed on four continents, including the practice of relying on folk-music as a source for his kingdom. However, before they can achieve eternal appearances with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Pops, Buffalo original compositions. happiness, the would-be lovers must endure certain rites of Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, and London Symphony, collaborating with such Relatively late in his career, at the age of 48, Suk was passage demanded by a sorceress queen. conductors as JoAnn Falletta, Sir Georg Solti, and John Williams among others. appointed as professor of composition at the Prague The music begins with a luxuriant portrait of Radúz Engagements take him to Israel, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Poland, and throughout Conservatory, where he taught several important and Mahulena, with idyllic colours set in deep-amber the United States, and his critically acclaimed discography includes recordings of composers, including Bohuslav Martinuº. For many years, strings and woodwinds. In the manner of Sheherazade, a Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Dvor˘ák’s Romance with the Virginia Symphony, John Suk also served as a member of the Czech Academy of solo violin offers a love song without words. But the Corigliano’s Violin Concerto, ‘The Red Violin’ with the Buffalo Philharmonic, the world Sciences. Suk’s compositions reveal a diverse collection foreboding challenges to Radúz and Mahulena capture the première recording of Marcel Tyberg’s Piano Trio, and the violin concertos of Ernö von of works which are almost entirely tonal-poetic in nature, scene with daunting figures and pointed timbres, before Dohnányi with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he has most of them for orchestra or piano. reverie returns for assurance. In the second movement The shared the stage with acclaimed artists, including Christoph Eschenbach, Wolfgang A fine example of Suk’s amalgamated style is the game of swans and peacocks, a bucolic setting is rendered Sawallisch, Yefim Bronfman, Sarah Chang, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.