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Home , E major, E minor, Garrick Ohlsson, Piano Concerto (Pierné)

CLASSICAL SERIES TCHAIKOVSKY’S FIFTH

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, AT 7 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 & 14, AT 8 PM NASHVILLE SYMPHONY GIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductor ,

ADOLPHUS HAILSTORK An American Port of Call - 10 minutes

SAMUEL BARBER Concerto for Piano and , Op. 38 - 26 minutes I. Allegro appassionato II. Canzone III. Allegro molto Garrick Ohlsson, piano

– INTERMISSION –

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 in minor, Op. 64 - 44 minutes I. Andante – Allegro con anima II. Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza III. Valse: Allegro moderato IV. Finale: Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace

This concert will run 1 hour and 55 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission.

PROGRAM SUMMARY Maestro Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony present composers whose search for a voice is bound up with issues of cultural identity. We begin with two American masters whose music manifests a sensibility rooted in what Adolphus Hailstork calls “the singing line.” Hailstork offers musical reflections on urban life and energy in An American Port of Call. Samuel Barber grafted his warmly lyrical voice to the tradition of Russian piano style in his only concerto for that instrument, winning one of the greatest victories of his career. Russian music itself is the focus of the second half of the program. Tchaikovsky sought to balance influences from the European mainstream with distinctively Russian impulses. With his epic Fifth Symphony, he created a masterpiece that has become one of the models of the genre.

24 SEPTEMBER 2019 CLASSICAL ADOLPHUS HAILSTORK An American Port of Call

Born on April 17, 1941, in Rochester, N.Y. First performance: 1985, by the Virginia Symphony Orchestra Currently resides in Virginia Beach, VA

First Nashville Symphony Estimated performance: Composed: length: These are the orchestra’s fi rst 1984 10 minutes performances.

“ he line to me is a new Americanism, Hailstork’s musical language, which is Tharking back to the early ’40s based on warmly lyrical, tonal, pulsing with energy, folk patterns of the African American,” and oft en driven by narrative, refl ects what Adolphus Hailstork observed in a 2003 he has described as “a double cultural interview by Bill Banfield surveying 40 experience, that of my standard European- important African-American composers. oriented education and that of my ethnic As a boy growing up in Albany, Hailstork heritage.” His oeuvre encompasses a rich fi rst played the , and he also studied range of genres, from songs and piano piano and organ, but the voice more than pieces to chamber pieces, choral music, tone anything else provided him with the urge poems, symphonies and other orchestral to express himself through music, thanks to works. He has also written operas exploring his involvement in the cathedral choir. “My American poets (Paul Laurence Dunbar: fundamental approach to music is lyrical, Common Ground), black cowboys in the Wild because I came up as a singer,” he points out. West (Joshua’s Boots), and the Underground “Th e vocal line, the singing line, is absolutely Railroad hero John Parker (Rise for Freedom). fundamental to my artistry.” Recalling to Banfield that he was taught In the 1960s, Hailstork’s studies took him nothing about African-American composers to Howard University, the Manhattan School during his own education, Hailstork observed of Music (with David Diamond), and a that “we need to create our own repertoire, summer with the legendary Nadia Boulanger and after we’ve created our sonatas, tone in France (who decades before had also poems, symphonies and whatever else we mentored a young Samuel Barber, as well as may invent….we would have created a black several generations of American composers). canon.… You see, we were left out of the Aft er service in the U.S. Army in Germany, he American school of composition…in the ’20s… completed his doctorate degree at Michigan or the ’40s of Copland. Now it’s time to make State University. Hailstork has devoted many our own impact and to add to the American years to teaching and in 2000 began his tenure repertoire, and that should include us.” as Professor and Eminent Scholar at the Old Dominion University School of Music.

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Norfolk, Virginia, where I live.” Hailstork’s WHAT TO LISTEN FOR vibrant orchestration and well-judged contrasts convey his vision of “the strident ossibly Hailstork’s best-known (and occasionally tender and even mysterious) Porchestral score, An American Port of energy of a busy American port city.” An Call resulted from a commission in the American Port of Call takes its place with mid-1980s from the Virginia Symphony other enthralling American orchestral Orchestra to write an independent concert landscapes that blend an open-hearted, overture. While he relies on a conventional optimistic depiction of modern life with classical form that presents contrasting touches of poetic reminiscence. ideas, considers them from varying angles, and reintroduces them with fresh vigor, An American Port of Call is scored for 3 fl utes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 , 2 , Hailstork brings a distinctive personality and 3 (3rd doubling contrabassoon), energy to his material. 4 horns, 3 , 3 , tuba, timpani, The immediate point of departure was 3 percussionists, piano and strings. his inspiration observing “the great port of

SAMUEL BARBER , Op. 38

Born on March 9, 1910, in First performance: West Chester, Pennsylvania September 24, 1962, at the new in New York, with John Browning as the soloist and Died on January 23, 1981, Erich Leinsdorf conducting the in Boston Symphony Orchestra

First Nashville Symphony Composed: Estimated performance: length: 1959-1962 January 20 & 21, 1964, with 26 minutes music director Willis Page and soloist John Browning

ike Hailstork, Samuel Barber was guided In retrospect, what some observers criticized L by a profoundly lyrical sensibility as Barber’s overly “conservative” outlook turned enhanced by meticulous craftsmanship. out to herald a dramatic reassessment of While he remained out of step with the musical values from the past. Th is reassessment modernist revolution that swept across the crystalized after Barber's death with the classical music world, Barber succeeded in emergence of the “neo-Romantic” movement, earning a position among the most admired which continues to unfold among composers and performed living composers in the open to an eclectic spectrum of infl uences. West during his lifetime. His status among Barber’s Piano Concerto dates from the American composers was in several respects very height of his career, and its spectacular comparable to that of . reception further boosted his eminence. In

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1963, the year after its premiere, the new work composer’s exceedingly difficult Piano Sonata garnered Barber his second Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Browning became a prodigious in Music (the first had been for his opera champion of the Piano Concerto over the Vanessa). To date, only three other composers decades and performed the Nashville premiere have won more than one Pulitzer for music. less than two years after its world premiere The catalyst for the Piano Concerto was a in New York; he also made two acclaimed commission to mark the 100th anniversary recordings of the work. of Barber’s publisher, . Schirmer, which was “I write what I feel. I’m not a self-conscious founded in the U.S. in 1861 by a German- composer,” Barber recalled much later. born immigrant. As its prize composer at the Still, he faced some blocks in completing time, Barber was given the honor of the the Piano Concerto. Horowitz (according commission. The premiere was also a much- to Browning) suggested revising some noted occasion because it took place during unreasonably demanding passages in the the opening month of the newly built Lincoln finale, the movement that gave Barber the Center concert hall (now known as Geffen most trouble. Personal grief over the death Hall). It must have been a moment to savor of his sister delayed concentration on this amid overshadowing Cold War fears — less capstone. So did obligations as a cultural than a month later, the Cuban Missile Crisis ambassador — Barber was invited to the caused the world to shudder. Ironically, Soviet Union to attend a meeting there. As a another Lincoln Center commission — result, he completed the finale only two weeks Barber’s grand opera Antony and Cleopatra, before the premiere date. Browning’s triumph which he wrote for the opening of the new is all the more remarkable in view of the solo Metropolitan Opera House four years later part’s extreme hurdles. — turned into a crushing fiasco that largely derailed his career. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR The Piano Concerto is Barber’s third and final fully solo orchestral concerto, following arber wrote his Piano Concerto largely his still popular Violin Concerto (1939) and Bwith the great late-Romantic models in unfairly neglected Concerto (1945). mind (think Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff), Before receiving the commission, he already but he touches on a more daringly “up-to- had it in mind to write a piece for the American date” harmonic language and spikier rhythmic virtuoso John Browning (1933-2003). Barber patterns as well, with clear influences from had first encountered Browning, a fellow Prokofiev, especially in the last movement. student of Rosina Lhévinne, along with his Impulses from American jazz are additionally peer Van Cliburn, in a performance of music by present. As biographer Barbara . Heyman Rachmaninoff, traces of whose piano concerto observes, Barber combined such traits with “a style are apparent in this score. typically American directness and simplicity.” Thanks to Lhévinne — who also numbers The first movement — lasting as long as the among the teachers of this evening’s soloist, other two combined — opens with the pianist Garrick Ohlsson — Browning was shaped giving a call to attention in a solo passage. This by the aesthetic of the Old Russian School of presents three basic musical ideas, including piano playing. As a result, Barber consciously two important rhythmic motifs. We’re already set out to customize the solo part to the a bit in before the orchestra intervenes with Russian School, which was also exemplified by the actual main theme. Barber has both the Vladimir Horowitz, who had premiered the orchestra and piano continually develop

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these ideas — in dialogue, in solo moments any sort of creative block at this point. Its for the ensemble (with the presenting a jagged, pounding rhythmic contour (in second, songlike theme), and in intricate solo 5/8 meter) recalls both jazz syncopation cadenzas for the piano. At fi rst, Barber wrote a and the aggressive character of Prokofi ev’s subdued ending, but he allowed the conductor Seventh Piano Sonata from 1942. Barber sends Erich Leinsdorf to talk him into replacing it his themes crashing, tempest-tossed, over with a more standard dramatic declaration. a repeating gesture in the bass. Contrasting Along with its brilliant pianism, the Concerto moments for solo and fl utes, trombones shows off Barber’s exceptional lyrical gift s, and harp promise relief, but the powerful most notably in the slow movement. Titled repetitive fi gure keeps coming back. Canzone, it reworks an earlier piece for fl ute and piano that he had composed for one of In addition to solo piano, the Concerto is scored his lovers, the German fl utist Manfred Ibel, to for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, whom Barber dedicated the Piano Concerto. 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, snare drum, Th e piano fi gurations, in dialogue with muted bass drum, cymbals, suspended cymbal, antique strings, are especially beguiling here. cymbals, tam-tam, tom-tom (low), triangle, Th e rousing character of the fi nale makes it xylophone, whip, harp and strings. hard to imagine that Barber had encountered

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28 SEPTEMBER 2019 CLASSICAL ABOUT THE SOLOIST

GARRICK Munich, , Luxembourg and Prague. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and OHLSSON cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding piano member of the San Francisco-based FOG ince his triumph Trio. Passionate about singing and singers, S as winner of Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such the 1970 Chopin legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye International Piano Competition, pianist Norman and Ewa Podles. Garrick Ohlsson has established himself Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, worldwide as a musician of magisterial RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, interpretive and technical prowess. Although Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion and long regarded as one of the world’s leading Virgin Classics labels. His 10-disc set exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, for Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, Bridge Records, has garnered critical which ranges over the entire piano literature. acclaim, including a GRAMMY® for Vol. 3. A student of the late , he has Most recently on Hyperion are Scriabin’s come to be noted for his masterly performances Complete Poèmes, Smetana’s Czech Dances, of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well and études by Debussy, Bartok and Prokofi ev. as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at The latest CDs in his ongoing association his command more than 80 concertos, ranging with Bridge Records are the Complete from Haydn and Mozart to works of the Scriabin Sonatas; Close Connections, a 21st century, many commissioned for him. recital of 20th-century pieces; and two CDs Th is season Ohlsson launches an ambitious of works by Liszt. project spread over two seasons exploring the A native of White Plains, N.Y., Ohlsson complete solo piano works of Brahms in four began his piano studies at age 8 at the diff erent programs. Th e cycle will be heard Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13, in New York, San Francisco and Montréal, he entered Th e in New York with individual programs in London, Warsaw City. His musical development has been and cities across North America. In concerto infl uenced by a succession of distinguished repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Brahms, teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Rachmaninoff , Barber and Busoni, he will Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, return to the New York Philharmonic; Th e Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. He was ; and the Philadelphia, awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and Boston, Baltimore, Houston and Seattle received the 1998 University Musical Society symphonies. He will conclude the season Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor. in Indianapolis with all the Rachmaninoff He is also the 2014 recipient of the Jean concerti programmed in one weekend. Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance An avid chamber musician, Ohlsson has from the Bienen collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson School of Music. and Tokyo string quartets, and in the spring Ohlsson is a Steinway Artist and makes he will tour with the Takacs Quartet and the his home in San Francisco. Boston Chamber Players to Istanbul, Berlin,

INCONCERT 29 CLASSICAL Symphony No. 5 in , Op. 64

Born on May 7, 1840, First performance: in Votkinsk, Russia November 17, 1888, in St. Petersburg, with the Died on November 6, 1893, composer conducting in Saint Petersburg, Russia

First Nashville Symphony performance: Composed: Estimated December 12, 1950, length: May-August with Music Director 1888 44 minutes William Strickland

s with the two American composers supplied an elaborate program detailing the A on the first half of this program, “content” of each movement that focused on Tchaikovsky’s search for a voice was bound the idea of Fate, as symbolized by the fanfare up with issues of cultural identity — of that blazes at the outset. For the benefi t of fi nding the right balance between infl uences his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, he wrote from the dominant European mainstream that this musical idea represents “the decisive and, in his distinctly Russian context, staking force that prevents our hopes of happiness out a cultural space independent of the from being realized, which watches jealously traditions of German art music and its forms. to see that our bliss and peace are not complete Th e genre of the symphony in particular and unclouded….” remained deeply associated with Austro- The most programmatic of all his German norms and so was of little interest symphonies, the unnumbered Manfred to the more radical composers like Modest Symphony followed next, in 1885. Th e work Mussorgsky who sought an authentic Russian was based on Lord Byron’s poetic drama voice within uniquely Russian cultural about the tragic fate of its doomed hero, traditions. Tchaikovsky managed to address who wanders alone among the Alps like the this issue by fusing his training in Western Flying Dutchman, desperate to end the models with a sensibility for Russian folk music. suff ering that is his life. “Tchaikovsky displays the rapprochement of While sometimes approached as yet Russian individuality with this proudest of another example of Tchaikovsky’s Western genres,” the biographer Roland John preoccupation with the power of “Fate,” the Wiley writes of his approach to the symphony. Fifth Symphony is a unique achievement The Russian composer’s first three that, like its two predecessors, stands apart symphonies teem with charms of their on its own terms. Each of these symphonies own, but with the epic scale of his Fourth sets off on an entirely different journey, Symphony (1878), he achieved a giant leap establishing a vastly diff erent soundscape in forward — in terms of technique and personal the process. Contrast the opening measures expression alike. For his Fourth, Tchaikovsky of the Fift h Symphony, for example, which

30 SEPTEMBER 2019 CLASSICAL intone one instance of a “Fate” motif, with coloring. It relies on Tchaikovsky’s mature the Judgment Day summons from the craftsmanship in his use of the orchestra. horns that launches the Fourth. The Fifth So much so, that it’s easy to set aside all presents a slow, brooding introduction of programmatic considerations and experience tentative melancholy and is utterly unlike this music as a study in instrumental textures, that frightening outburst, with its echo of proportions and rhythms. Subdued palettes, Beethoven’s Fifth (itself widely regarded as moments of balletic grace and violent an expression of the struggle with fate). outbursts alternate throughout the score. To better understand Tchaikovsky’s own Fifth Symphony, it’s worth recalling another WHAT TO LISTEN FOR statement he made about his Fourth — in this case, to his fellow composer Sergei Taneyev: he slow introduction has a clear “This program is such that it cannot be Tkinship with the main theme of the formulated in words. Should not [a symphony] Allegro con anima first movement, which is express everything for which there are no shaped as a lilting dotted rhythm and is first words, but which the entrusted to clarinets soul wishes to express, and bassoons. A close and which requires to listening reveals that be expressed?” the introductory music Tchaikovsky composed shares some features his Fifth Symphony at with this theme. After great speed, between laying out a profusion May and August 1888. of ideas, Tchaikovsky It occupies something ends the first section of a middle ground with a thrilling climax between his earlier that restores focus. confessional approach This exuberant and his later impulse to outburst is like a be secretive. He supplied prematurely optimistic a minimal description protest against the in his working notebook, suggesting that resignation with which the movement the opening motto represents “complete opened — a ploy Tchaikovsky will introduce resignation before Fate.” As for the Sixth again in the Fifth’s closing measures. Just Symphony (Pathétique), the composer gave as we seem poised for a fully orchestrated this famous response to queries about its restatement of the theme in the coda, the programmatic meaning: “Let them guess.” The volume dims and the texture darkens “Fate” motto in the Fifth recurs at significant into a kind of anticlimax, as if to indicate moments throughout the work, echoing a a hopeless circle being traced back to the structural ploy that has its origins in the brooding depths where we began. This is an Romantic experiments of Hector Berlioz unexpected exit. It in turn foreshadows the in his Symphonie fantastique and in Franz even more radical anticlimax of despair in Liszt’s tone poems. the Pathétique Symphony. The sound world of the Fifth Symphony is The Andante begins with another variation one of maximal contrasts and theatrical on the deep melancholy of the opening. climaxes, along with vibrant instrumental Tunesmiths from the 1930s crafted a popular

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hit out of this melody, which suggests a which the fate theme periodically emerges. gently amorous nocturne. A counter-theme, Finally, aft er a notorious “false” stop several fi rst presented as a call-and-response by oboe minutes before the end, the music courses and horn, almost imperceptibly enters into ahead in a rush of frenzied, joyful abandon. the picture as well. About halfway through, This seems to replay the trusted minor- the fate theme stealthily returns, only to erupt to-major paradigm of struggle leading to with full power in the brass. It later returns spiritual enlightenment — the paradigm with brutal violence. Th e lyrical music becomes established by Beethoven in his Fifth fragmented, unable to recapture its original Symphony, which moves from minor to serene glow. an overwhelmingly affirmative C major. In the third movement, instead of a scherzo But has unequivocal victory really been proper, Tchaikovsky explores a dreamy achieved? In the very last measures, sensibility, spinning it out in the manner of Tchaikovsky even revives the main theme one of his characteristic waltzes. Th is music of the fi rst movement, also now steel-plated introduces a disarming naïveté that looks harmonically in , and adds a pompous ahead to Mahler’s symphonic universe. In rhetorical flourish, as if to underscore comparison with the length of the other three “Th e End.” movements, the Valse’s brevity underscores Th ere’s at least a hint of irony, of protesting the fl eeting nature of this respite — a wistful too much — perhaps foreshadowing reprieve. We are nearly lulled to the point Shostakovich’s strategy in his own Fifth of not noticing the understated appearance Symphony. Tchaikovsky, in any case, voiced of the fate theme as it steals in near the very his doubts about the effectiveness of this end. Against the plucked strings’ waltz, it ending. In his next, and fi nal, symphony, he appears in low, dark colors. would reverse its apparent optimism with The finale mirrors the same overall music of inescapable doom. structure as the fi rst movement, with a slow introduction leading to the main movement, The Fifth Symphony is scored for 3 flutes but here the anticlimactic ending is reversed (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, by a triumphant breakthrough. In the tuba, timpani and strings. introduction, the fate theme is pronounced with majestic, major-key bravado. With — Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony’s some help from the timpani, this segues into program annotator. an Allegro vivace of breathtaking energy in

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