Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
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ESTONIAN NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Sunday • November 17 • 3pm 2013-2014 62nd• SEASON Nikolai Alexeev, Conductor Narek Hakhnazaryan, Cello Program Veljo Tormis Overture No. 2 Dvořák Concerto in B minor for Cello and Orchestra Op. 104 Allegro Adagio, ma non troppo Allegro moderato Narek Hakhnazaryan, Cello Intermission Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 in E minor Op. 64 Andante. Allegro con anima Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenzaza Allegro moderato Andante maestoso. Allegro vivace The ENSO's 2013 USA tour is made possible through the support of the Estonian Ministry of Culture. www.erso.ee · Representation for Mr. Hakhnazaryan: Opus 3 Artists Season Sponsor: Symphony Guild of Daytona Beach Concert Grand Presenters: Compu Sys • Shirley & Mahyar Okhovatian Associate Sponsors: Fields BMW of Daytona • PNC Bank Speedway Custom Photo Lab • Lou & Marj Fiore Hospitality Sponsor: Carefree Catering Media Sponsors: AM1230 – AM1490 WSBB • Bright House Networks • Halifax Magazine Hometown News • Our Florida Magazine • WROD Radio 104.7FM Foundation and Public Support The Daytona Beach Symphony Society’s 2013-2014 Season is sponsored in part by grants from Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs; County of Volusia; City of Daytona Beach; Daytona Beach Racing and Recreational Facilities District. The photographing, video or sound recording of this concert is prohibited. Pre-Concert Talk – Rose Room, 2 pm Dr. Rose Grace, a Russian –born pianist, has concertized throughout the United States as a soloist and a chamber music recitalist. She has been featured as a guest artist at the Skaneateles Music Festival in New York, the Krannert Art Center in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and Morning Chamber Music Series at Kilborn Hall at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, to name but a few. For many summers she has taught on the high school piano faculty at the Interlochen Music Festival in Michigan. Dr. Grace is an assistant professor at the Bethune-Cookman University School of Music. Estonian National Symphony Orchestra The Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ENSO, known in Estonian as Eesti Riiklik Sümfooniaorkester – ERSO) started out as a small radio orchestra in 1926. Over the years, it has become Estonia’s representative orchestra and has powerfully increased its international scope, particularly in recent decades. Since 2010 it has been led by Principal Conductor and Artistic Director Neeme Järvi, while Paavo Järvi has been its Artistic Advisor since 2002, and Olari Elts its Principal Guest Conductor since 2007. The orchestra’s previous Principal Conductors were Olav Roots (1939–44), Paul Karp (1944–50), Roman Matsov (1950–63), Neeme Järvi (1963–79), Peeter Lilje (1980–90), Leo Krämer (1991–93), Arvo Volmer (1993–2001) and Nikolai Alexeev (2001–10). Most renowned guest conductors of the ENSO throughout the years have been Hermann Abendroth, Karel Ančerl, Paavo Berglund, Leo Blech, Albert Coates, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, Aram Khachaturian, Kirill Kondrashin, Dmitri Kitaenko, Nicolai Malko, Sir Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Kurt Sanderling, Leif Segerstam, Maxim Shostakovich, Leonard Slatkin, Igor Stravinsky, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yuri Temirkanov, Osmo Vänskä, etc. The high quality of ENSO’s recordings has been identified by several recognized music magazines, having won several awards including the Grammy Award for recording of Sibelius’ cantatas (Virgin Classics). In addition to close cooperation between ENSO and Virgin Classics, the orchestra has also recorded music for Alba Records, BIS, Antes Edition, Ondine, Finlandia Records, Melodiya and other companies. The orchestra has toured widely throughout the world and has taken part in numerous music festivals at home and abroad. ENSO went on its first international concert tour to Romania and Bulgaria in 1972, with Neeme Järvi and Roman Matsov conducting. In the 1970s and 1980s, ENSO toured the Soviet Union actively (including the Far East, and cities in Siberia and Transcaucasia) and was a regular performer in the renowned concert halls of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) and Moscow. Since then the orchestra has gone on more than 50 tours, the longest being the three-week tours of Italy (2003, conductor Nikolai Alexeev) and the USA (2009, conductors Eri Klas and Nikolai Alexeev). The most important festivals ENSO has performed at include Europamusicale in Munich, Musiksommer in Gstaad, the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm and Il Settembre dell’Accademia in Verona. In 2006, ENSO and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, conducted by Olari Elts, performed Arvo Pärt’s music in Turin Cathedral as part of the cultural programme of the XX Olympic Winter Games. ENSO’s home venue is the Estonia Concert Hall, which turned 100 years old in 2013. The orchestra also regularly performs in other large concert halls in Estonia and also at open air concerts in summer. The repertoire at ENSO includes music ranging from the Baroque period to première performances of modern works. ENSO has performed the premieres of the symphonic pieces of almost all Estonian composers including Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Eduard Tubin, Eino Tamberg, Jaan Rääts, Lepo Sumera, Tõnu Kõrvits, Helena Tulve and others. In addition to Estonian musicians, the orchestra performs with many renowned conductors and soloists from around the world. Program Notes Overture No. 2 VELJO TORMIS (b. 1930) Veljo Tormis is an Estonian composer, regarded as one of the greatest living choral composers and one of the most important composers of the 20th century in Estonia. Internationally, his fame arises chiefly from his extensive body of choral music, which exceeds 500 individual choral songs, most of it a cappella. The great majority of these pieces are based on traditional ancient Estonian folksongs (regilaul), either textually, melodically, or merely stylistically. Tormis has famously said of his settings of traditional melodies and verse: “It is not I who makes use of folk music, it is folk music that makes use of me.” His composition most often performed outside Estonia, Curse Upon Iron (Raua needmine) (1972), invokes ancient Shamanistic traditions to construct an allegory about the evils of war. Some of his works were banned by the Soviet government, but because folk music was fundamental to his style most of his compositions were accepted by the censors. Veljo Tormis’ Overture No. 2 is an early, purely orchestral piece that premiered in 1959, it was the first work of an Estonian composer performed at the prestigious Warsaw Autumn Festival (Poland), in 1961. With the Overture No. 2, you hear something truly unique. Tormis claims that he has “never composed “pure music,” music for music’s own sake. Even the meaning in the often performed Second Overture is to be found elsewhere, not in the music itself. I have never just “made music.” I have always had some other reason – an idée fixe – a wish to speak up, to express some idea, even a political idea, but not a solely musical one.” ( Jonathan D. Kramer) Cello Concerto in B minor ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904) Dvořák began his cello concerto in New York on November 8, 1894; he completed the score on February 9, 1895, revised the ending that June, and conducted the first performance, with Leo Stern as soloist, on March 19, 1896, in London. It is remarkable that despite this chamber-music quality, the concerto has a certain symphonic grandeur one doesn't find in most other Romantic cello concertos (Schumann, Saint-Saëns). Dvorák continues the Beethoven-Brahms tradition in which solo passages (including several prominent ones for the flute) are balanced by full-fledged orchestral statements. The orchestra's role is not restricted to mere accompaniment: it always shares the limelight with the soloist and often even takes center stage. That is because, clearly, this concerto is much more than a virtuoso showpiece for the soloist. It is in many ways a dramatic, even tragic, work, from its somber opening to the unprecedented closing section of the finale. We have a great deal of evidence to show that Dvorák was grappling with important life issues as he was writing it. In the second movement of his cello concerto, Dvorák quoted one of his own songs ("Lasst mich allein" [Let Me Be Alone], Op. 82, No.1) which, according to leading Dvorák biographer Otakar Sourek, was a favorite song of Josefina's and its appearance here is a personal tribute. This view is supported by the fact that this melody returns at the end of the concerto, in the part that Dvorák revised after his return to Bohemia, and after Josefina's death. Here Dvorák made the almost unheard-of decision of inserting a wistful and elegiac slow section in the middle of a finale that has up to this point been dominated by a spirited dance melody. What is more, the solo cello is joined here by a second solo voice coming from the concertmaster: the combination of violin and cello (high and low) creates unmistakable associations with an operatic love duet. Precisely at the moment when one would expect a final presto to begin, the music drifts more and more into sadness. The dramatic first theme of the opening movement is recalled, as is a variant of Josefina's song. It is apparently only with some effort that Dvorák gathers up enough momentum for a few measures of Allegro vivo to end the concerto. Program Notes Symphony No. 5 in E minor Op. 64 PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–1893) Tchaikovsky approached his Fifth Symphony from a position of extreme self-doubt, nearly always his posture vis-à-vis his incipient creations. In May 1888, he confessed in a letter to his brother Modest that he feared his imagination had dried up, that he had nothing more to express in music. Still, there was a glimmer of hope: “I am hoping to collect, little by little, material for a symphony.” Tchaikovsky was spending the summer of 1888 at a vacation residence he had built on a forested hillside at Frolovskoe, not a long trip from his home base in Moscow.