Season 20 Season 2010-2011

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Season 20 Season 2010-2011 Season 202010101010----20202020111111 The Philadelphia Orchestra FriFriFriday,Fri day, October 11,, at 777:007:00:00:00 Beyond the Score ®®®: Is Music Dangerous? Charles Dutoit Conductor Gerard McBurney Host David Howey Actor A multimulti----mediamedia exploration of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 Intermission ShosShostakovichtakovich Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43 I. Allegretto poco moderato—Presto II. Moderato con moto III. Largo—Allegro This program runs approximately 2 hours, 15 minutes. Beyond the Score® is made possible by support from the Hirschberg-Goodfriend Fund in memory of Adolf Hirschberg as established by Juliet J. Goodfriend and by the Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation. Additional funding comes from the Annenberg Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. Beyond the Score® is produced by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Gerard McBurney, Creative Director, Beyond the Score Martha Gilmer, Executive Producer, Beyond the Score Cameron Arens, Stage Manager Acknowledgments David King Collection Footage Farm Ltd. Kaleidoscope Images In the 2010-11 season The Philadelphia Orchestra celebrates its 30-year artistic collaboration with Charles Dutoit, who made his debut with that ensemble in 1980, and who has held the title of chief conductor since 2008. With the 2012-13 season, the Orchestra will honor Mr. Dutoit by bestowing upon him the title of conductor laureate. Also artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic, Mr. Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and soloists. He has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, and Erato, and his more than 200 recordings have garnered over 40 awards and distinctions. From 1977 to 2002, Mr. Dutoit was artistic director of the Montreal Symphony. Between 1990 and 2010 he was artistic director and principal conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra's summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and from 1991 to 2001 he was music director of the Orchestre National de France. In 1996 he was appointed music director of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony; today he is music director emeritus. Mr. Dutoit has been artistic director of both the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival and the Miyazaki International Music Festival in Japan, as well as the Canton International Summer Music Academy in Guangzhou, China, which he founded in 2005. In 2009 he became music director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra. While still in his early 20s, Mr. Dutoit was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct the Vienna State Opera. Mr. Dutoit has since conducted at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. In 1991 Mr. Dutoit was made an Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1995 he was named Grand Officier de l'Ordre National du Québec, and in 1996 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. In 1998 he was invested as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award of merit. Mr. Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and his extensive musical training included violin, viola, piano, percussion, music history, and composition in Geneva, Siena, Venice, and Boston. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art, and architecture, Mr. Dutoit has traveled all the nations of the world. A native of England, Gerard McBurney studied in Cambridge and at the Moscow Conservatory before returning to London, where he worked for many years as a composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher, and writer. He is artistic programming advisor for the Chicago Symphony and creative director of Beyond the Score. Mr. McBurney’s original compositions include orchestral works, a ballet, a chamber opera, songs, and chamber music, as well as many theater scores. He also is well known for his reconstructions of various lost and forgotten works by Dmitri Shostakovich. As a scholar Mr. McBurney has published mostly in the field of Russian and Soviet music. His journalistic work includes articles on many different musical subjects. For 20 years he created and presented hundreds of programs on BBC Radio 3, as well as occasional programs for other radio stations in the U.K., Europe, and the former Soviet Union. He has also written, researched, and presented more than two dozen documentary films for British and German television channels. For many years Mr. McBurney lectured and taught, first at the London College of Music and then for more than 10 years at the Royal Academy of Music. He has also acted as advisor and collaborated with many orchestras and presenters, including Lincoln Center, the Emerson String Quartet, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. McBurney joined the staff of the Chicago Symphony in September 2006 and made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut last season. David Howey is head of the Acting Program at the Brind School of Theatre at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He was an actor in England for 30 years, appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre Company, in London’s West End, and in numerous TV series and films. He has appeared on Broadway twice and performed Shakespeare across the United States, including the title role in Macbeth at the Annenberg Center, Prospero in The Tempest at Arcadia University, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Howey has performed with the Walnut Street Theatre, Bristol Riverside, 1812 Productions, Interact, the Arden Theatre Company, and the Wilma Theater. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2002 as the Colonel in Tom Stoppard and André Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, a collaboration between the Orchestra and the Wilma Theater. BEYOND THE SCORE ® Begun in 2005, the Chicago Symphony’s Beyond the Score seeks to open the door to the symphonic repertoire for first-time concertgoers as well as to encourage an active, more fulfilling way of listening for seasoned audiences. The lifeblood of Beyond the Score is its firm rooting in the live tradition: musical extracts, spoken clarification, theatrical narrative, and hand-paced projections on a large central screen are performed in close synchrony—an arresting and innovative approach that illuminates classical music more idiomatically than other methods (program notes, pre-concert lectures, filmed documentary, etc.). After each 60-minute program focusing on a single masterwork, audiences return from intermission to experience the piece performed in a regular concert setting, equipped with a new understanding of its style and genesis. This format’s potential was quickly recognized by orchestras in the United States and abroad; a rapidly expanding licensing program has since brought Beyond the Score to audiences throughout the United States, as well as in Canada and Holland, presented by organizations of many sizes. Recognizing that a large population is economically or geographically unable to attend these performances in person, the Chicago Symphony also offers digital video downloads of selects programs from its website at www.beyondthescore.org. In September 2008, the Chicago Symphony released Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, led by its principal conductor, Bernard Haitink, on its CSO Resound label. Accompanying this Grammy Award-winning recording of the Symphony is a free bonus DVD video of the Beyond the Score production examining Shostakovich’s controversial and powerful work— the first commercially released video from this acclaimed concert series. IS MUSIC DANGEROUS? Shostakovich composed his Fourth Symphony in the Soviet Union under the dark shadow of Stalin. Rehearsals began in earnest, but the work was withdrawn before the premiere and it was not performed for 25 years. What about this work did the Soviet government find dangerous? Or was it Shostakovich himself who withdrew it because he feared for his life? It’s often the case that great art can emerge only through great suffering. In Shostakovich’s Soviet Union, darkened by the shadow of Stalin, music was essential—it expressed the ideas and feelings of a people that otherwise had no voice. Perhaps this is why the Fourth Symphony lay dormant, unperformed, for 25 years after its completion. Parallel Events 1936 Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 Music Barber Symphony No. 1 Literature Auden On This Island Art Mondrian Composition in Red and Blue History Spanish Civil War begins SSSymphonySymphony No. 4 Dmitri Shostakovich Born iiinin St. Petersburg, September 25, 1906 DiDiDiedDi ed iiinin Moscow, August 9, 1975 “This game could end badly.” No artist likes getting a bad review, but in January 1936, when Dmitri Shostakovich read those words at the end of an article attacking his popular and acclaimed opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, he realized he was dealing with more than mere aesthetic criticism. This amounted to an official warning that he had to take deadly seriously. The article was entitled “Muddle Instead of Music” and appeared in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. Although unsigned, the composer knew that Stalin had walked out of a performance of Lady Macbeth a few days earlier and he immediately understood that this attack was written at Stalin’s behest and perhaps even with his direct participation. Criticism in Dangerous Times For the brilliant 29-year-old composer, whose fame had risen steadily over the previous decade, the Pravda article, which was soon followed by another one criticizing his ballet The Limpid Stream, was a bitter personal and professional blow. The horrors of the Stalinist era were becoming ever more evident and such matters were literally ones of life and death. Associates, friends, and family of Shostakovich disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances. As the fate of such prominent writers as Maxim Gorky, Osip Mandelstam, Isaak Babel, and the brilliant theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold would make clear, no one, no matter how celebrated, was safe.
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