Stravinsky's the Fairy's Kiss
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STRAVINSKY’S THE FAIRY’S KISS CONCERT DEEP DIVE Wednesday, November 13, 2019 Performance #140 Season 5, Concert 12 Fisher Center at Bard Sosnoff Theater PLEASE KEEP PHONE SCREENS DIM Silence all electronic devices PHOTOS AND VIDEOS ARE ENCOURAGED but only before and after the music ENTER TO WIN TICKETS by signing up for TŌN email in the lobby INSPIRE GREATNESS by making a donation at theorchestranow.org GET SOCIAL by sharing your photos using @theorchnow and #theorchnow wrote his three tone poems: Pacific 231, THE MUSIC Rugby, and Symphonic Movement No. 3. Although not as well-known in America ARTHUR HONEGGER’S due to his untimely death in 1955 on the RUGBY eve of a major American tour, he is widely Notes by TŌN bassist Kaden Henderson known and appreciated in Europe, where his face adorned the 20-Franc banknote from 1996–2017. He was a member of Les Six, a group of French composers, including Poulenc and Milhaud, that paved the way for modern French classical music in the 20th century. Full Contact Music Honegger’s second tone poem, entitled Rugby, which we will be hearing today, was Matt Dine Matt composed in 1928. Although it bears the name Rugby, the composer himself insisted The Composer that this work was not programmatic in a When thinking about the great orchestral traditional sense. Despite what Honegger tone poems in our repertoire, the mind may have said, it takes little imagination immediately drifts to the likes of Richard to find oneself in the middle of the pitch Strauss and works like Don Juan, Also dodging tackles left and right from the very sprach Zarathustra, and Don Quixote. Often first note. Immediately from the downbeat overlooked, however, is Arthur Honegger, it is apparent that Honegger is not alluding a Swiss composer who largely composed to two-hand-touch rugby, but rather the in France during the early-to-mid 20th sport in its full contact, “hold no prisoners” century. It was in France that Honegger variety. The very first notes from the strings THEORCHESTRANOW.ORG THE ORCHESTRA NOW CONCERT DEEP DIVE hit the audience like a ton of bricks as the OTHMAR SCHOECK’S The Music Piano Concerto No. 3 while also conducting cascading strings sweep us into a musical Schoeck crafts the music to aptly guide the piece, becoming one of the first dogpile. Violent rhythms and loud brass BURIED ALIVE and represent the narrative. He uses many modern artists to do so. This concert also proclamations provide an energetic Notes by TŌN horn player Luke Baker instrumental effects to directly depict the marked the premiere of his Concerto backdrop for the strings to demonstrate poetic action, such as the slamming of a Grosso. Mitropoulos joined the Minnesota their virtuosic feats of agility and precision. door or the high-pitched clarinets imitating Symphony in 1936 and the New York Honegger really shines in the way he is able his nagging wife. The work is held together Philharmonic in 1949, where he continued to craft dissonant and often grotesque by many ositnati and repeating baselines to programming and commissioning new chords into something that is nothing short create formal passacaglias and chaconnes. contemporary works. of brilliant and endlessly entertaining. What is Man? The Instrumentation Lyrical Beauty A few years before his death, Schoeck Instead of the traditional concerto Unlike his more dreamy and impressionistic discussed this work in conversation with instrumentation, where a soloist counterparts in Les Six, Honegger seems Dine Matt a friend. He said “Lebendig begraben in is accompanied by the orchestra, to thrive in a darker landscape. This work my opinion has as its theme: What is man? Mitropoulos’ Concerto Grosso passes is loud, brash, and orchestrated very Retaining Tonal Style What is our life? Where do we come from, the musical materials between small heavily. The pointillist bass line offers an Composition in the first half of the 20th where are we going?” groups of the ensemble. The orchestra is almost conversational rebuttal against century was marked by the innovation of significantly smaller in size than what one the cascading violins, much like playful many new atonal styles by composers like DIMITRI MITROPOULOS’ would typically expect; there are no flutes, banter on the field between friends. Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. During oboes, or low brass. You can also hear nods Although Honegger often employs these years, the Swiss composer Othmar CONCERTO GROSSO to Mitropoulos’ interest in Bach’s organ Notes by TŌN clarinetist Viktor Tóth striking dissonance, there are moments Schoeck retained an essentially tonal music, which he sometimes arranged for of exceptional lyrical beauty. My favorite compositional style using conventional orchestra. moment comes about half way into the formal structures with careful and effective work, after a rather heated argument use of dissonance. The vast majority of A Baroque Beginning between the bass section and the his compositions are musical settings of The beginning of the first movement bassoons. Just as it sounds there is about poetry in the form of lieder, song cycles, follows the structure of the traditional to be a physical altercation, listen for the and operas. baroque overture, based on Bach’s violins to sweep in to calm the growing orchestral suites. The rhythmic patterns tension with a melody that sounds straight The Story of the beginning—long-held notes being out of a Tchaikovsky ballet. Moments like This particular work is a setting of 14 interrupted by extremely fast and sharp these are sure to bring smiles to the faces short notes between the string and horn poems by Swiss writer Gottfried Keller. The Dine Matt of Schoenberg and Rossini lovers alike. through-composed musical score carries sections—create two masses of sounds Now put on your helmet, secure your elbow the soloist seamlessly from each scene The Composer competing with each other, each trying to pads, and get ready for a musical sporting to the next. The subject matter of these Dimitri Mitropolus demonstrated his outrun the other one. During the baroque match like you’ve never heard before! poems are quite dark, depicting thoughts exceptional musical skills at a very early era, composers used this technique to of a man who has been mistakenly buried age. While in secondary school, he hosted express royal grandeur and majesty. The alive after falling into a coma and being informal musical gatherings at his house traditional second part of the baroque pronounced dead. The early songs are filled every Saturday afternoon. After studying overture is represented here by the with the erratic, panic-stricken thoughts of piano, harmony, and counterpoint in the introduction of the fugue theme in the the narrator, which eventually give way to Athens and Brussels Conservatories, he second movement. First, the trumpets recollection and contemplation of fond returned to Greece and was well-known announce the main theme in a seven- memories of youth and love. At the close, for premiering unfamiliar contemporary eight meter that was not commonly used he accepts his fate and metaphorically works. Mitropoulos established his in baroque pieces. This gives some kind of casts his soul into eternity. international reputation with the Berliner uncertainty, but it also helps the different Philharmoniker in 1930 when he stepped orchestral parts to intertwine in a very in at the last minute to perform Prokofiev’s natural way. 2 / NOV 2019 / THE ORCHESTRA NOW THEORCHESTRANOW.ORG / NOV 2019 / 3 THE ORCHESTRA NOW CONCERT DEEP DIVE Imitating the Organ he orchestrated the same music into the MICHAEL NAGY baritone Mitropoulos’ admiration of the organ is the concert suite which you will hear today. The THE ARTISTS most prominent in the third movement. He concert suite contains approximately half does not use the organ in this piece at all, of the music from the original ballet. LEON BOTSTEIN conductor but rather the compositional technique of it. The clarinets with their different Adaptation and Admiration intervals and then the bassoons imitating The ballet itself was Stravinsky’s adaptation the clarinets’ materials resemble the sound of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The of organ pipes. Later on, these instruments Ice Maiden, and was Stravinsky’s chance ornate and develop the strings’ slow choral to pay homage to Tchaikovsky. Despite his melodies. The last part of the piece could derision of romanticism, Stravinsky had long be called the fast and furious movement. It admired Tchaikovsky, treasuring a childhood Höfler Monika sounds like pure chaos with the wide slides memory of when he caught a glimpse of Upcoming: three revivals at Zurich Opera of the strings that the percussive piano and the great composer at a concert in St. Matt Dine Matt House and Bavarian State Opera; recitals in trumpets attempt to organize. Petersburg. In The Fairy’s Kiss, Stravinsky Barcelona, London, and Zurich combined fragments from Tchaikovsky with Leon Botstein brings a renowned career as his own composition so persuasively that IGOR STRAVINSKY’S both a conductor and educator to his role Recent: Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte at Stravinsky later said he lost track of what as music director of The Orchestra Now. He Zurich Opera House, Amfortas in Parsifal at DIVERTIMENTO, THE FAIRY’S belonged to whom. has been music director of the American the Bavarian State Opera under Kirill Petrenko KISS SUITE Symphony Orchestra since 1992, artistic Notes by TŌN cellist Sarah Schoeffler The Music and Story codirector of Bard SummerScape and the Performances: Komische Oper Berlin, The Divertimento is comprised of four Bard Music Festival since their creation, Frankfurt Opera, major stages in Vienna, movements: Sinfonia, Danses suisses, and president of Bard College since Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Geneva and Zurich Scherzo, and Pas de deux.