CONCERT PROGRAM January 18-20, 2013
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CONCERT PROGRAM January 18-20, 2013 Leonard Slatkin, conductor Courtney Lewis, conductor (January 20) St. Louis Symphony Chorus Amy Kaiser, director CINDY MCTEE Double Play (2010) (b. 1953) The Unquestioned Answer— Tempus Fugit STRAVINSKY Symphony of Psalms (1930) (1882-1971) Exaudi orationem meam— Expectans expectavi Dominum— Alleluia. Laudate Dominum St. Louis Symphony Chorus Amy Kaiser, director INTERMISSION HOLST The Planets, op. 32 (1914-16) (1874-1934) Mars, the Bringer of War Venus, the Bringer of Peace Mercury, the Winged Messenger Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age Uranus, the Magician Neptune, the Mystic Women of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus Amy Kaiser, director ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Leonard Slatkin is the Monsanto Guest Artist. Amy Kaiser is the AT&T Foundation Chair. The St. Louis Symphony Chorus is the Essman Family Foundation Guest Artist. The concert of Friday, January 18, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Drs. Dan and Linda Phillips. The concert of Saturday, January 19, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Michael F. Neidorff. The concert of Sunday, January 20, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. David L. Steward. Pre-Concert Conversations are presented by Washington University Physicians. These concerts are part of the Wells Fargo Advisors Series. Large print program notes are available through the generosity of Mosby Building Arts and are located at the Customer Service table in the foyer. A CENTURY OF MUSIC BY PAUL SCHIAVO The three compositions on our program span nearly a century: the earliest dates from 1916, the most recent from 2010. That chronology places these works in the broad historical era TIMELINKS of modernism, a period that many concertgoers once regarded with antipathy. But with the 1914-16 passing of time, the music of the early 20th HOLST century has become more familiar, and that The Planets familiarity has caused it to seem no longer World War I engulfs abrasive or confounding. Instead, we are Europe today able to appreciate the originality, the expressiveness, even the melodiousness of music 1930 STRAVINSKY by the early modern masters. Symphony of Psalms We also can perceive the individuality of German physicists these composers. Certainly it would be difficult to discover the neutron find two personalities more dissimilar than Igor Stravinsky and Gustav Holst. The former was a 2010 thoroughly cosmopolitan musician. Born into CINDY MCTEE Double Play a cultured Russian family, Stravinsky lived and Haitian earthquake worked in Paris during the years in which that creates widespread city was the world’s most vibrant cultural center, devastation and he traveled widely, conducting his music in major cities throughout Europe and America. Holst, by contrast, was modest and retiring. He spent much of his career as a schoolteacher, and used his spare time to study philosophy, religion, and other metaphysical subjects. The two large compositions on our program reflect these differences. Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms sets texts that have long held a revered place in Judeo-Christian worship, and its music is scored with a restraint that underscores its prevailing sense of stark majesty. Holst’s The Planets, on the other hand, takes its inspiration from the zodiac and revels in instrumental color and sonic energy. Understanding and appreciation of the early modernists also makes the music of our own time more accessible. Our concert begins with a recent piece by American composer Cindy McTee. Although one would hardly confuse her Double Play with the work of Stravinsky or any other musician of the early 20th century, its rhythms, harmonic idiom, and instrumental colors could hardly exist without the pathbreaking innovations of her musical predecessors. CINDY MCTEE Double Play A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN COMPOSER Described as a “fresh and imaginative voice” in the world of concert music, Cindy McTee grew up in a musical family in the Pacific Northwest. Her mother played clarinet and saxophone, her father the trumpet, and McTee spent childhood hours hearing them rehearse jazz standards. After earning a degree in music from Pacific Lutheran University, in Tacoma, Washington, she did post- Born graduate work at the Yale School of Music and February 20, 1953, Tacoma, the University of Iowa. She also completed a year Washington of study in Poland with one of that nation’s most Now Resides significant contemporary composers, Krzysztof Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Penderecki. McTee subsequently taught for more First Performance than 25 years at the University of North Texas. June 3, 2010, in Detroit, She recently retired her post as Regents Professor Leonard Slatkin conducted of Composition there. In 2011 she married the the Detroit Symphony conductor Leonard Slatkin, a longtime champion Orchestra of her music. STL Symphony Premiere McTee’s works have been performed by many This week orchestras, including the St. Louis Symphony. Scoring The composer has received numerous awards, 2 flutes including fellowships from the Guggenheim and piccolo Fulbright Foundations, American Academy of 3 oboes Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment 2 clarinets E-flat clarinet for the Arts. She also won the 2001 Louisville 3 bassoons Orchestra Composition Competition. 4 horns 3 trumpets QUESTION AND ANSWER Double Play was 3 trombones written to fulfill a commission from the Detroit tuba Symphony Orchestra and was first performed timpani in June 2010 by that ensemble, conducted by percussion harp Slatkin. The piece consists of two movements, strings which can be played independently or, as we hear them now, together. McTee calls the first Performance Time approximately 17 minutes movement “The Unquestioned Answer.” That title evokes one of the most famous American compositions of the 20th century, Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question, and McTee’s music is a gloss on Ives’s iconic work. As in The Unanswered Question, melodic phrases unfold over complex sustained sonorities, provided mainly by the strings. Those phrases are variants of the fivenote theme of Ives’s piece, which, McTee notes, “is heard in both its backward and forward versions throughout the work.” And as in The Unanswered Question, a feeling of contemplation and mystery pervades the movement. Those qualities carry over into the opening minutes of “Tempus Fugit,” the second part of Double Play, where music redolent of the previous movement sounds against clockwork percussion figures moving at different speeds. But the character of events suddenly changes, as the tempo accelerates and the proceedings grow animated, even frenetic. Here, McTee notes, “jazz rhythms and harmonies, quickly-moving repetitive melodic ideas and fragmented form echo the multifaceted and hurried aspects of 21st- century American society.” Midway through, the fast-paced music pauses for a recollection of the preceding movement; but it soon recaptures its momentum and races to an exciting conclusion. IGOR STRAVINSKY Symphony of Psalms A SYMPHONY TO SING Igor Stravinsky was, among many other things, one of the 20th century’s outstanding composers of religiously inspired music. His stature as such rests in no small part on his Symphony of Psalms. Stravinsky wrote this work in 1930 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For this occasion the composer wanted to write a symphony, but not the traditional kind. As he explained in his 1936 autobiography: “My Born idea was that my symphony should be a work June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, with great contrapuntal development, and for Russia that it was necessary to increase the media at Died my disposal. I finally decided on a choral and April 6, 1971, New York City instrumental ensemble in which the two elements First Performance should be on an equal footing….” December 13, 1930, in Brussels, Having settled on a symphony with voices, Ernest Ansermet conducted Stravinsky came “quite naturally,” as he described the Société Philharmonique it, to the psalms for its texts. He started setting de Bruxelles orchestra and verses from three of them in Slavonic translations chorus but soon came to favor the sound of Latin. The STL Symphony Premiere resulting Symphony of Psalms was performed in January 20, 1956, Vladimir Boston, on December 19, 1930, six days after Golshmann conducting, with the Sumner High School receiving its premiere, in Brussels. a capella Choir under the In scoring his music, Stravinsky direction of Kenneth Billups deemphasized the role of the string instruments in favor of winds and percussion. Violins and Most Recent violas are absent entirely from his orchestra, STL Symphony Performance while the cello and bass parts are largely November 19, 2006, David limited to accompaniment figures that support Robertson conducting, with the St. Louis Symphony more conspicuous foreground events. This Chorus under the direction instrumental deployment affects not just the of Amy Kaiser composition’s spectrum of aural colors but Scoring also its rhetorical character. The music conveys mixed chorus an austerity and remote grandeur to which the 5 flutes traditionally warm and intimate tone of violins piccolo and violas is unsuited. It is notable, in view of 4 oboes this, that Stravinsky deplored what he called English horn the “lyrico-sentimental” view of the psalms, 3 bassoons contrabassoon describing them instead as “magisterial verses.” 4 horns 4 trumpets CHRIST, ELIJAH, AND BACH Stravinsky composed piccolo trumpet the first movement, he remembered, “in a 3 trombones state of religious and musical ebullience.” Its tuba initial gesture is an incisive chord that returns timpani bass drum periodically to punctuate both the arching harp instrumental lines of the opening measures and 2 pianos the entreaties of the chorus. cellos The second movement offers contrapuntal basses treatment of two themes, one given out by the Performance Time orchestra, the other, somewhat later, by the approximately 21 minutes chorus. Stravinsky evidently was inspired by the great chorus-with-orchestra movements of J.