Pacific Symphony Proudly Recognizes Its Official Partners
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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) Pacific Symphony proudly recognizes its Official Partners: Official Airline Official Hotel Official Television Station The Saturday, February 27, performance is broadcast live on , the official classical radio station of Pacific Symphony. The simultaneous streaming of this broadcast over the internet at kusc.org is made possible by the generosity of the Musicians of Pacific Symphony. The Pacific Symphony broadcasts are made possible by a generous grant from 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 concertos, 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 Concerto” 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 Juilliard School. 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.