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Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director Friday, November 22, 2019 at 7:30pm Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 8:00pm An American in Paris Leonard Slatkin, conductor Jon Kimura Parker, piano Cindy McTee Double Play for Orchestra (Canadian Première) I. The Unquestioned Answer II. Tempus Fugit Samuel Barber Piano Concerto, Op. 38 I. Allegro appassionato II. Canzone: Moderato III. Allegro molto Intermission Leonard Bernstein Overture to Candide John Corigliano Elegy for Orchestra George Gershwin/rev. F. Campbell-Watson An American in Paris As a courtesy to musicians, guest artists, and fellow concertgoers, please put your phone away and on silent during the performance. NOVEMBER 22 & 23, 2019 33 ABOUT THE WORKS Occasionally, the quiet tension is disturbed by the brass and winds, their discordant passages erupting into hair-raising orchestral swells. Cindy McTee Out of the resolution of The Unquestioned Double Play for Orchestra Answer emerges the sound of wood blocks, (Canadian Première) which McTee likens to “the sounds of several pendulum clocks ticking at different speeds”: Born: Tacoma, Washington, USA, the beginning of Tempus Fugit (Time Flies). The Feb 20, 1953 pace accelerates until it stabilizes, on a driving Composed: 2010 17 rhythm that McTee says is borrowed from min Slatkin’s Fin for orchestra. The strings soon join in, with fast-moving repeated motives, on top of which winds and brass interject with “A charging, churning celebration of the rhythms and harmonies referencing bebop musical and cultural energy of modern-day jazz. Hi-hat and cowbells, amongst a large America,” says the Houston Chronicle, in array of other percussion, add timbres evoking describing the music of American composer machine metal, the soundscape of industry. Cindy McTee. According to notable American An episode with harried strings gives way band director Dr. David C. Fullmer, McTee’s to a brief interlude recalling the mood and compositional style is characterized by sonorities of The Unquestioned Answer. But it “humour; expectation denied; unexpected is only a moment’s respite before we return silences and rhythmic displacement; jazz to the noise and rush—the “multifaceted and textures; post minimalism. She believes… hurried aspects of 21st-century American that music either sings or it dances. She society,” in McTee’s words—as the music characterizes her music as intentionally sprints toward an exhilarating conclusion. playful and humorous.” Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley All these qualities are exhibited in full force in Double Play, an orchestral work with two contrasting movements, which can be Samuel Barber performed individually, or together as a linked whole. A Detroit Symphony Orchestra Piano Concerto, Op. 38 Double Play commission, is dedicated to the Born: West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, orchestra and its conductor Leonard Slatkin. Mar 9, 1910 The first part, The Unquestioned Answer, is an Died: New York, New York, USA, homage to American composer Charles Ives’s Jan 23, 1981 1906 orchestral miniature, The Unanswered Composed: 1961–1962 26 Question. Like Ives’s work, the strings min provide a sustained foundation of sonorities, with consonances glacially shifting into The Barber Piano Concerto received its first dissonances, against which a five-note theme TSO performance, by pianist John Browning, poses the question/answer. But McTee takes at the opening concert of the TSO’s 1963/64 this concept further: whereas the original season. This was almost exactly a year after Ives theme is intoned solely by the trumpet the work was premièred by the Boston and does not vary, in McTee’s piece, elaborate Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Erich transformations of this theme are presented by Leinsdorf, with the same soloist, in New various solo instruments—flute, clarinet, violin, York’s then- brand-new Philharmonic Hall in horn, oboe, bassoon, muted trumpet, etc. the Lincoln Center, on September 24, 1962. 34 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The score was commissioned by G. Schirmer, several themes heard throughout the entire Inc. (Barber’s publisher) in celebration of work lend a feeling of similarity among them, their 100th anniversary. In the 57 years since and hint at a subconscious evolution from one that New York City première, it has held its to the next. In the first movement, a bracing place as the most widely-acclaimed 20th- orchestral announcement of the opening century piano concerto composed on this rhythmic figure brings on the development side of the Atlantic, and a worthy example of section, involving much intense solo playing Barber’s ability to fuse traditional musical during concentrated exchanges between the concepts with his individual style. piano and the orchestra. This section comes to a climax in a brilliant cadenza that leads to In an effort to match the concerto’s technical a compressed recapitulation embellished by requirements to the talents of his soloist, more virtuoso playing from the soloist. Barber invited Browning to visit him and play through much of his performance The slow middle movement was expanded repertoire. Barber also incorporated certain from an elegy Barber had composed three technical facets of Browning’s playing, which years earlier for Manfred Ibel, a young he learned from the pianist’s celebrated German art student, amateur flute player, teacher, Rosina Lhévinne, including some and the concerto’s dedicatee. Above all formidable runs. this gentle movement displays Barber’s affinity for a post-Romantic idiom, and In its florid, flamboyant character, the his great skill in weaving all the melodic concerto reflects the keyboard styles of and accompanying materials from a single Chopin and Liszt as much as Rachmaninoff thematic motif. Flute, oboe, and, finally, the and Prokofiev. Lyrical melody, figurative piano involve themselves in its lyrical theme, accompaniments, and traditional 19th- with the soloist eventually taking centre century virtuosity are as important to stage in a searching, elaborately ornamented its unfolding as are the massive chords exploration of its pensive implications. associated with concertos of the late- Romantic period, and the percussive The finale is the most dissonant, percussive, keyboard style adopted by many 20th- hard-edged movement in the concerto. century composers. The concerto also Essentially, it is a five-part rondo with two leans upon tradition in aspects of form. The contrasting episodes (ABACA), the first being first-movement sonata form of the opening, shorter than the second. Both episodes second-movement song form, and rondo are set off by a sudden slower pace. The finale have all been adapted to Barber’s first contrasting episode is particularly special vision of a concerto. noteworthy for its instrumental setting: a clarinet solo accompanied by a repeated The work begins with a solo passage rhythmic figure in the xylophone. The presenting two thematic ideas—the first movement is set in the irregular meter of declamatory, the second rhythmic—that are 5/8, but it is a tribute to Barber’s economy developed extensively later on. However, of means that he was able to express all of it appears that Barber did not consider his thematic ideas within that single meter— these to be the most important themes of not constantly shifting to others as many the movement. In his program note for the of his contemporaries would have done. première, he identified the first theme played Needless to say, the soloist is kept busy with by the orchestra as the main idea, and a all manner of virtuosic challenges sprinkled slower, lyrical theme presented by the solo throughout the movement. oboe as the secondary idea. Certain melodic leaps and rhythmic features common to Program note by Carl Cunningham NOVEMBER 22 & 23, 2019 35 ABOUT THE WORKS Candide is a young man who believes in the philosophy, set out by his teacher, that everything that happens must be for the Leonard Bernstein best. His adventures take him around the world and involve him in a long series of Overture to Candide catastrophes. In the end, he renounces his Born: Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA, former outlook and resolves to build a new, Aug 25, 1918 honest, and hopeful life. Died: New York, New York, USA, Bernstein’s bright and witty music has Oct 14, 1990 always been Candide’s strong suit. It pays Composed: 1953–1956 5 satiric homage to the play’s period setting min through take-offs on the classical dances and the empty-headed operatic conventions of the story’s period. The overture weaves Conductor, composer, pianist, author, together snippets of the score’s themes into broadcaster, humanitarian—Leonard a bright, vivacious potpourri that makes it Bernstein left indelible marks on an the perfect curtain-raiser, before or after astonishing range of endeavours. He was intermission, in concerts of many kinds. the New York Philharmonic’s music director Program note by Don Anderson from 1958 to 1969, the first American- born conductor to take charge of a major US orchestra. In later years, his guest- conducting engagements earned him as John Corigliano lofty an international reputation as the one Elegy for Orchestra he enjoyed in America. Born: New York, New York, USA, He composed music throughout his Feb 16, 1938 career, ranging from witty, light-hearted Composed: 1965 songs and superb stage musicals to 8 substantial operas, ballets, concertos, and min symphonies. What unites them is a strong sense of communication, reflecting his In his own program note for this work, John deep understanding and celebration of the Corigliano wrote: human condition. The Broadway musicals Candide and West Side “My Elegy is based on an incidental score Story came into being during the same period. I wrote for an off-Broadway production of West Side Story won success from the start, Wallace Frey’s Helen—an account of the aging but Candide has had a troubled history. The Helen of Troy.