ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER RENÉE AND HENRY SEGERSTROM CONCERT HALL Thursday –Saturday, February 25 –27, 2010, at 8:00 p.m.

PRESENTS

2009–2010 HAL AND JEANETTE SEGERSTROM FAMILY FOUNDATION CLASSICAL SERIES FANTASTIQUE ! CARL ST.C LAIR , CONDUCTOR JEFFREY BIEGEL , PIANO

BEETHOVEN Overture to Egmont , Op.84 (1770 –1827)

DANIELPOUR Mirrors for Piano and Orchestra (W ORLD PREMIERE ) (b. 1956) The Trickster The Witness The Gambler The Poet The Warrior JEFFREY BIEGEL

—INTERMISSION—

BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique (Fantastic Symphony), Op.14 (1803 –1869) Rêveries, Passions (Daydreams, Passions) Un bal (A Ball) Scène aux champs (Scene in the Country) Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold) Songe d’une nuit du sabbat (Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath)

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SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS Pacific Symphony P- 1 PROGRAM NOTES BY PETER LAKI , Program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra and Pacific Symphony

In the hands of Gluck, Mozart, and must be entirely hidden from him.” In Beethoven, the genre of the overture fact, the Overture to Egmont describes became capable of dramatic expression to the goal (victory) through a transition a degree never dreamed of by Lessing. from darkness to light not unlike those Beethoven discovered entirely new possi - in the earlier Fifth Symphony and the bilities in the overture, and when, between “Leonore” Overture No. 3. the second and third versions of his opera Fidelio , he turned to the spoken WHAT TO LISTEN FOR theatre to write Egmont , he incorporated The overture consists of three sections: incidental music into the drama like no a slow introduction, followed by a dra - one had ever done before. matic Allegro and a triumphant coda. The action of Goethe’s tragedy Egmont , The introduction is based on two themes, written in 1786, takes place in the 16th a forte chordal passage played by the century, when Flanders was occupied by strings and a doleful melody given to the the Spanish. Count Lamoral van woodwinds. A short transition leads into Egmont, scion of a noble family of the passionate Allegro, written in a hero - Flanders, was appointed governor of the ic style with reminiscences of the Fifth province by Spain’s King Philip II (the Symphony. The chordal passage from the Overture to Egmont , Op. 84 stepfather and rival of Don Carlos in introduction reappears as the Allegro’s (1810) Schiller’s tragedy and Verdi’s opera). second theme. Another dramatic transi - BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (BONN, 1770 - VIENNA, 1827) Seeing the suffering of his oppressed fel - tion ushers in the coda (concluding sec - low countrymen, Egmont turned against tion), in which the fanfare of the horns Instrumentation 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 the Spaniards and challenged the King to and trumpets proclaims the triumph of bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. give freedom to the Low Countries. In the cause of freedom. Performance time: 9 minutes. response, Philip had Egmont executed in Goethe’s tragedy ends as Egmont Brussels on June 4, 1568; this cruel act confronts his executioners without fear; hree years before Beethoven was touched off a war of independence that as the curtain falls, Goethe’s stage direc - Tborn, the German playwright eventually ended with the victory of the tion calls for a Siegessymphonie (sympho - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published an Flemish insurgents. ny of victory) to be played by the important theoretical work on theatre This story of a foreign oppression orchestra; and that is exactly what called the Hamburg Dramaturgy . In it, challenged could never have been timeli - Beethoven composed here. Lessing wrote at length about the role of er than in the Vienna of 1809, occupied music in spoken drama, an area in which by Napoleon’s forces. And surely no Mirrors for Piano and he felt substantial changes were needed. composer had treated the themes of Orchestra 18th-century aesthetics insisted not only oppression, struggle, and freedom as BY RICHARD DANIELPOUR on music’s power to express human often and as gloriously as Beethoven, (B. 1956) emotions, but also its obligation to do so whose opera Fidelio was about the libera - Program note written by the composer as fully as possible. According to Lessing, tion of a freedom-fighter from unjust music for spoken plays should express imprisonment and whose Fifth always loved writing for the piano, but the subject matter at hand, rather than Symphony climaxed in a breathtaking Iwith the passing years, after having just provide a background or a distract - transition from darkness to light. written three piano , my devo - ing entertainment. Lessing had written in the Hamburg tion to the more traditional format and In the same year, 1767, Christoph Dramaturgy: “The overture must only modus operandi of the “Piano ” Willibald Gluck wrote a preface to his opera indicate the general tendency of the play had become less attractive to me. Even Alceste , in which he said: “My idea was that and not more strongly or decidedly than back as far as 2000 with my third con - the overture ought to indicate the subject the title does. We may show the spectator certo, “Zodiac Variations,” written for the and prepare the spectators for the character the goal to which he is to attain, but the left hand in 13 movements, I had been of the piece they are about to hear.” various paths by which he is to attain it reaching for another way to make sense

P- 2 Pacific Symphony of the relationship between the piano outright battle between the conservatives movements, Berlioz wrote an extensive and orchestra in my work. and the defenders of the new work. Then, literary program that he insisted should Enter “Mirrors,” a 22-minute, five- in July, the fighting hit the streets as the be distributed to the audience in the movement suite for piano and orchestra revolution broke out. The Bourbon concert hall. which uses personality archetypes as dynasty, overthrown in the Great In the first edition of 1845, the pro - points of departure for the prevailing Revolution of 1789 but restored to power gram read as follows: character of each movement. The piece is in 1815, was finally ousted for good, and called Mirrors because of the internal Louis-Philippe, the “Citizen King,” The composer’s intention has been (and external) conversation between the assumed the throne to preside over an era to treat the various states in the life piano and orchestra which is present of modernization. On December 5, of an artist, insofar as they have throughout. The piano represents the Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique was per - musical quality. Since this instru - more private, internal aspects of the formed for the first time at the mental drama lacks the assistance character in question while the orchestra Conservatoire. The premiere was some - of words, an advance explication of gives voice to a more public side. And what overshadowed by the political its plan is necessary. The following sometimes, the private and the public events, but the 27-year-old Berlioz’s first program, therefore, should be come together as one. The work is also large orchestral work, written in the wake thought of as if it were the spoken called Mirrors because these various of the Hernani scandal and shortly before text of an opera, serving to intro - themes find their way into each of the the July Revolution, clearly exudes the duce the musical movements and five movements, giving voice to the revolutionary spirit of the time. to explain their character and notion of the I that is We, and by exten - Berlioz claimed to “take up music expression. sion and with equal parts thanks to where Beethoven had left it off.” The Martin Buber, I, and Thou. Fantastique is certainly indebted to Episode in the Life of an Artist Mirrors was composed throughout Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (“Pastorale”), the summer of 2009 for Jeffrey Biegel, an in which a fifth movement had been First Movement: Daydreams — Passions old friend and classmate from my days at added to the usual four, and each move - The composer imagines that a young The . ment had a programmatic title. But musician, troubled by that spiritual sick - Berlioz took the idea of program music ness which a famous writer* has called —Richard Danielpour, December 2009 much further than Beethoven had done. “le vague des passions,” sees for the first In addition to providing titles for the time a woman who possesses all the Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 symphony as a whole (“Episode in the charms of the ideal being he has dreamed (1830) Life of an Artist”) and its individual of, and falls desperately in love with her. BY HECTOR BERLIOZ By some strange trick of fancy, the (LA CÔTE-SAINT-ANDRÉ, FRANCE, 1803 - PARIS, 1869) beloved vision never appears to the artist’s mind except in association with a Instrumentation: 2 flutes (second doubling piccolo), musical idea, in which he perceives the 2 oboes (second doubling English horn), 2 clar - inets, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 same character—impassioned, yet refined trombones, 2 ophicleides (an obsolete brass instru - and diffident—that he attributes to the ment now replaced by tubas), timpani, percussion object of his love. (cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, and bells), 2 This melodic image and its model harps, and strings. Performance time: 50 minutes. pursue him unceasingly like a double idée fixe . That is why the tune at the begin - ighteen-hundred thirty was an ning of the first allegro constantly recurs Eextraordinary year in the political and in every movement of the symphony. cultural history of France. On February The transition from a state of dreamy 25, the Comédie-Française premiered melancholy, interrupted by several fits of Hernani by the 28-year-old Victor Hugo, a aimless joy, to one of delirious passion, drama that openly challenged the conven - with its impulses of rage and jealousy, its tions of classical drama, and it came to an returning moments of tenderness, its

Pacific Symphony P- 3 PROGRAM NOTES (continued)

tears, and its religious solace, is the sub - end of the march, the first four bars of actress playing Shakespearean roles in an ject of the first movement. the idée fixe recur like a last thought of English company in Paris. Berlioz fell love interrupted by the fatal stroke. madly in love with Smithson after seeing Second Movement: A Ball her on stage just once, and his passion The artist is placed in the most varied Fifth Movement: Dream of a Witches’ was burning for several years even though circumstances: amid the hubbub of a car - Sabbath he had never met her in person. (They nival, in peaceful contemplation of the He sees himself at the witches’ sab - did eventually meet; they got married, beauty of nature—but everywhere, in bath, in the midst of a ghastly crowd of had a son, were unhappy ever after, and, town, in the meadows, the beloved vision spirits, sorcerers, and monsters of every finally, separated—but that’s quite anoth - appears before him, bringing trouble to kind, assembled for his funeral. Strange er story.) his soul. noises, groans, bursts of laughter, far-off The Symphonie fantastique reflects shouts to which other shouts seem to Berlioz’s intense feelings at the time of his Third Movement: Scene in the Country reply. The beloved tune appears once infatuation with Harriet Smithson; yet One evening in the country, he hears more, but it has lost its character of some of the work’s themes came from in the distance two shepherds playing the refinement and diffidence; it has become earlier compositions. The tune of the ranz des vaches †; this pastoral duet, the nothing but a common dance tune, triv - opening Largo was taken from a song of effect of his surroundings, the slight rus - ial and grotesque: it is she who has come Berlioz’s adolescence, and parts of the idée tle of the trees gently stirred by the to the sabbath... A roar of joy greets her fixe may be found in an early cantata. wind, certain feelings of hope which he arrival... She mingles with the devilish Most importantly, the fourth-movement has been recently entertaining—all com - orgy... Funeral knell, ludicrous parody of March seems to have come from Berlioz’s bine to bring an unfamiliar peace to his the Dies irae, sabbath dance. The sabbath unfinished opera Les Francs-Juges (“The heart, and a more cheerful color to his dance and the Dies irae in combination. Self-Appointed Judges,” 1826), a tale thoughts. He thinks of his loneliness; he about a band of vigilantes in medieval hopes soon to be alone no longer... But Anyone having read this program is Germany (we have only indirect knowl - suppose she deceives him!... This mixture likely to remember the witches, the exe - edge of this connection since the march of hope and fear, these thoughts of hap - cution and the ball, but it is easy to forget does not survive in its original form). piness disturbed by dark forebodings, the very first sentence, according to which Some critics have argued that the pres - form the subject of the Adagio. At the these figures and events are represented ence of these self-borrowings diminishes end, one of the shepherds again takes up “insofar as they have musical quality” ( dans the relevance of the program (after all, the ranz des vaches; the other no longer ce qu’elles ont de musical ). In other words, some of the music was originally com - answers... Sounds of distant thunder... the program isn’t really an “extra-musical” posed with other ideas in mind), but in solitude... silence... one, since it builds upon musical types reality, the program and the new context such as dance, march or plainchant, effectively change the meaning of these Fourth Movement: March to the Scaffold endowing them with some more concrete borrowed themes which fit in perfectly The artist, now knowing beyond meanings. Music and program are strongly with the newly composed materials. doubt that his love is not returned, poi - interdependent: the musical style of the sons himself with opium. The dose of the symphony, with its many unusual features, WHAT TO LISTEN FOR narcotic, too weak to take his life, would hardly make sense without the pro - To start at the beginning—the slow plunges him into a sleep accompanied by gram, but the program itself is full of introduction to the first movement— the most terrible visions. He dreams that musical references. there is so much more to it than that he has killed the woman he loved, and Some of the dreams described in the tune taken from a childhood essay. It that he is condemned to death, brought program were undoubtedly Berlioz’s own contains some highly agitated passages to the scaffold, and witnesses his own (and we know that he had tried opium where the conventional melody is sud - execution. The procession is accompa - shortly before writing the symphony). denly swept away by utterly new sounds. nied by a march that is sometimes fierce There was a woman in real life who The Allegro agitato has been said to be a and somber, sometimes stately and bril - seemed to him to “possess all the charms fairly regular sonata movement; yet the liant; loud crashes are followed abruptly of the ideal being”; this idée fixe was exposition is extremely brief and consists by the dull thud of heavy footfalls. At the named Harriet Smithson, an Irish-born merely of the first appearance of the idée

P- 4 Pacific Symphony fixe, followed by what could be described herds’ haunts and listen to the shawms and finally transformed into a dance tune as transition material (containing some and alphorns; that’s exactly the way they by the woodwind. The witches begin a truly hair-raising modulations). The sound.” The movement’s main theme is round dance which is eventually com - development section is interrupted by a introduced by the flute and the first vio - bined with the “Dies irae” and brings the passage in which all thematic relation - lins (the same combination that played symphony to a truly blood-curdling close. ships are suspended: all we hear is the idée fixe for the first time!) and Many listeners in the 1830s were ascending and descending chromatic brought to a climax by the full orchestra. completely taken aback by the novelties scales in the strings, with frightening The idée fixe is then heard again in the of Berlioz’s symphony. The musicologist interjections from woodwinds and horns. flute and the oboe. The meadow scene François-Joseph Fétis wrote a scathing Then, a three-measure general rest fol - has a symmetrical structure; after the idée review, but even as great a musician as lows, after which all the rules of the fixe , the main theme returns, followed by Mendelssohn found it “utterly loath - sonata form are thrown overboard. It is at a coda in which we hear the ranz des some” and depressing, even though he this point that we hear the only com - vaches again. had met Berlioz and found him a thor - plete recapitulation of the idée fixe (but The fourth movement, “March to the oughly likable person. It is all the more not in the home key), followed by more Scaffold,” is one of the wonders of surprising that Schumann devoted one of development, including a wonderful orchestration, with effects such as the the longest and most analytical of his counterpoint to the idée fixe played by pizzicatos (plucked strings) of the divided critical essays to the Fantastique . Schumann the solo oboe (we are told that it was a double basses and the innovative tremo - had not heard the piece and knew it compositional afterthought). The idée los of the timpani. The movement’s first only from Liszt’s published piano tran - fixe , in varied form, is soon taken up by idea is a seven-note descending scale fig - scription. His review, written in response the whole orchestra, but by this time we ure superimposed on a six-note rhythmic to Fétis’ attack, was full of admiration. are clearly in the coda of the movement. pattern—because of this discrepancy, the Although he did see some flaws in the The first segment of the idée fixe and a music never repeats itself exactly. The work, he was one of the first to recog - series of C-major and F-major chords second idea is a regular march theme nize Berlioz’s genius. As a direct result of end the movement, to be played, accord - dominated by the distinctive sonority of his article, the French composer’s name ing to Berlioz’s instructions, “as soft as the brass, especially the trombones and became widely known in German musi - possible.” ophicleides (tubas). At the end of this cal circles, and his international career The second movement (“A Ball”) had movement, the solo clarinet intones the was under way. originally stood in third place, but Berlioz idée fixe, as the artist’s last thought before soon reversed the two movements, so the guillotine comes down on him with * The “famous writer” is François-René Chateaubriand that a central slow movement is now a fatal blow. (1768-1848), whose René was widely read at the time. In this book, Chateaubriand defined “the flanked by a dance and a march. The ball It is perhaps in the last movement that vagueness of passion” as an emotional state that scene starts with a transition from the Berlioz went the farthest in his innova - “precedes the development of great passions, when first movement’s C major to A major, the tions of both sound and musical form. all the faculties, young, lively, and whole, but closed, key of the waltz that follows. The dance The slow introduction to this movement have only acted on themselves, without aim and is twice interrupted by the idée fixe that with its special uses of percussion and without object.” appears in foreign keys to “disturb the novel wind effects creates an eerie sus - † The ranz des vaches is “a type of Swiss mountain artist's peace of mind.” pense, into which bursts a cruel parody melody played on the alphorn by herdsmen to The ranz des vaches that opens the of the idée fixe, first scored for C-clar - summon their cows.” ( Harvard Dictionary of Music ) third movement (“In the Meadows”) is a inet, and then for the shrill-sounding dialogue between the English horn and small E-flat clarinet. It is the image of the oboe (the latter positioned, according the artist’s beloved turned into a witch to the instructions, behind the scene). It and showing up at the sabbath! The is not an actual quote from an Alpine “devilish orgy” begins with the Gregorian folksong; yet Robert Schumann found it melody of the “Dies irae,” the sequence so convincing that he wrote in his from the Mass of the Dead , presented in famous review of the symphony: “Just slow notes by the bassoons and tubas, wander about the Alps and other shep - repeated in a faster tempo by the horns,

Pacific Symphony P- 5 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

JEFFREY BIEGEL 1999, assembled over 25 orchestras to cel - range of orchestral, ebrate the millennium. He performed the chamber, instrumental, PIANO Boston premiere of the restored, original ballet, and vocal works. 1924 manuscript of George Gershwin’s He has been commis - effrey Biegel is one of “Rhapsody in Blue” with the Boston sioned by a Who’s Who today’s most revered J Pops. He also transcribed Balakirev’s “Islamey of international musical artists, having created a Fantasy” for piano and orchestra, which he institutions, festivals, and multi-faceted career as a premiered with the American Symphony artists, and his music has pianist, composer and Orchestra in 2001, followed by Charles been championed by Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye arranger. His electrifying Strouse composing a new work titled Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, technique and mesmer - “Concerto America” for Biegel, pre - , , izing touch has received miered with the Boston Pops in 2002. He , the Kalichstein-Laredo- critical acclaim and garners praise world - arranged the piano part for Billy Joel’s Robinson Trio, the Guarneri, Emerson, wide. Leonard Bernstein himself said of “Symphonic Fantasies” in 2006, with per - and American String Quartets, and con - Biegel: “He played fantastic Liszt. He is a formances at the Eastern Music Festival, ductors Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, splendid musician and a brilliant per - the Boris Brott Festival and with other , David Zinman, Zdenek former.” The pianist won the First Grand U.S. orchestras. He has also recorded new Macal, and . His first Prize in the 1989 Marguerite Long editions of Schumann’s Scenes from opera, Margaret Garner , with Nobel International Piano Competition and First Childhood, a new Sonatina album, Laureate , was hailed as a Prize in the 1985 William Kapell/University Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and triumph during its recent sold-out runs at of International Piano Competition. Prokofiev’s Music for Children, Opus 65 for the Michigan Opera Theater and Composer Richard Danielpour created Schirmer’s Performance Editions. Cincinnati Opera, commissioners with tonight’s premiere especially for Biegel, Biegel joined 18 co-commissioning Opera Company of . who will also premiere William Bolcom’s orchestras for Lowell Liebermann’s Danielpour has received a Grammy “Prometheus for Piano, Orchestra and Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra, Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award Chorus” with Pacific Symphony during composed exclusively for him for the and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the its 2010-11 season. Long known for his 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons. The world American Academy of Arts & Letters, a standard-setting performances, Biegel premiere took place with the Milwaukee Guggenheim Award, Bearns Prize from stepped in on short notice in 2009 to per - Symphony Orchestra, and the European Columbia University, and grants and resi - form Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Premiere featured the Schleswig-Holstein dencies from the Barlow Foundation, with the Orquesta Filarmonica de Bogota Symphony Orchestra MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland in Colombia, with Muhai Tang conduct - A graduate of The Juilliard School, as House, and the American Academy in ing. His recent recordings include Leroy an infant Biegel was unable to hear or Rome. He was one of the first composers Anderson’s “Concerto in C” conducted speak until corrected by surgery at the age invited for a coveted residency at the by Leonard Slatkin with the BBC Concert of three. This “reverse Beethoven” phe - American Academy in Berlin. He was Orchestra, along with solo Vivaldi tran - nomenon can explain Biegel’s life in only the third composer—after Stravinsky scriptions, a CD of “Classical Carols” and music, as he heard only musical vibrations and Copland—to be signed to an exclu - the complete sonatas of Mozart. Biegel is in his formative years. Biegel is cur rently sive recording contract by Sony Classical, currently assembling a global commission - on the piano faculty at the Brooklyn and his music can also be heard extensive - ing project for Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s next Conservatory of Music at CUNY ly on Delos, Koch, Harmonia Mundi, work for piano and orchestra for the Brooklyn College, as well as CUNY’s New World, and Reference Recordings. 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons. In 2010, Graduate Center. Visit his website at Danielpour is an active educator and Naxos will release Biegel’s world premiere www.jeffreybiegel.com believes deeply in the nurturing of young recording of Zwilich’s Millennium Fantasy musicians. Beyond serving on the faculties (2000) and Peanuts Gallery . 2010 also sees of both the Curtis Institute of Music and the release of Biegel’s Hanukah Fantasy for RICHARD DANIELPOUR the Manhattan School of Music, he also SATB/piano. COMPOSER spends a great deal of time giving master Biegel’s career has been marked by classes throughout the country, and coach - bold, creative achievements and highlight - mong the most honored composers of ing and mentoring young musicians. ed by a series of firsts: He initiated the Ahis generation, and a previous compos - first live internet recitals in and er-in-residence with Pacific Symphony, Amsterdam in 1997 and 1998, and, in Richard Danielpour has written a wide Pacific Symphony P- 7