MUSIC

FESTIVAL CONCERT

Gaillard Municipal Auditorium June 8 at 7:30pm

Anne Manson, conductor Stephen Prutsman, piano Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra

PROGRAM

Petrushka (1947 Version) Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)

FIRST TABLEAU I. Introduction II. The Crowds III. The Charlatan’s Booth IV. Russian Dance

SECOND TABLEAU I. Petrushka’s Room

THIRD TABLEAU I. The Moor’s Room II. Dance of the Ballerina III. Waltz – The Ballerina and the Moor

FOURTH TABLEAU I. The Shrove-tide Fair (Near Evening) II. Dance of the Wet Nurses III. Dance of the Peasant and the Bear IV. Dance of the Jovial Merchant and Gypsy Girls V. Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms VI. The Masqueraders VII. The Fight: The Moor and Petrushka VIII. The Death of Petrushka IX. The Police and the Charlatan X. Apparition of Petrushka’s Ghost

INTERMISSION

Piano Concerto No. 1 n B-flat minor, Op. 23 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93) I. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso II. Andantino simplice III. Allegro con fuoco

Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor (“Farewell”) Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) I. Allegro assai II. Adagio III. Menuet. Allegretto – Trio IV. Finale. Presto

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PROGRAM NOTES Piano Concerto No. 1 n B-flat minor, Op. 23 (Tchaikovsky) This concert presents two colorful Russian masterpieces, one a The plummeting fanfares and ascending piano chords that specimen of late Romanticism, the other of early modernism. open Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto herald what is probably Because Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky have dramatically different the most popular Romantic concerto in the repertory, both in styles, their affinities are often overlooked. In their early careers live performance and recordings. Full of passion, lyricism, and both were deeply immersed in Russian folk music, as these works technical bravura, the piece was Tchaikovsky’s first work to demonstrate, and both made their fame with ballet scores that achieve international acclaim. It was premiered not in Russia became symphonic concert pieces. Stravinsky admired Tchaikovsky but in Boston and was the rousing climax of Tchaikovsky’s 1891 more than one might think: his The Fairy’s Kiss is an homage to opening of Carnegie Hall. Tchaikovsky, and as a conductor he championed Tchaikovsky’s Yet the concerto suffered the same kind of miserable composition “Little Russian” Symphony before it became a concert staple. history that tormented Tchaikovsky in so many other works, including the First, Fifth, and Sixth symphonies. In this case, the Petrushka (Stravinsky) culprit was not the public or his own self-doubt, but his “friend” and Stravinsky’s Petrushka is often regarded as a transitional piece mentor, pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, for whom Tchaikovsky played bridging the late Romanticism of The Firebird and the explosive the concerto on Christmas Eve 1874. According to Tchaikovsky’s modernism of The Rite of Spring (both performed in recent famous letter to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, Rubinstein seasons at Spoleto Festival USA). Yet Petrushka stands on its own responded to the piece with stony silence, then denounced it as a unique and vivid work. In fact, the remarkable thing about with a “torrent” of invective: “It turned out that my concerto was all the ballets from Stravinsky’s “Russian Period” (especially if we worthless and unplayable; passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, include the neglected Song of the Nightingale) is how different, so badly written that they were beyond rescue; the work itself was how supremely separate, each is from the others. It is difficult to bad, vulgar…only two or three pages were worth preserving. The think of any composer besides Stravinsky, especially a young one, rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten.” who crammed so much change and innovation into so few years. Tchaikovsky’s resolute response was, “I shall not alter a single Despite its sardonic sensibility—like Pierrot Lunaire, presented note”—a far cry from his participation in the denigration of later in this season’s Intermezzi series, its protagonist is a clown— masterpieces like The Nutcracker. He did touch up an orchestral Petrushka was an immediate success with Diaghilev’s Ballets passage here and there and made a few piano passages stronger: Russes when it received its premiere in 1911, occasioning none rolled chords at the very beginning, for example, became explosive of the outrage that erupted two years later at the premiere of shards that make the concerto go off like a bomb. The Rite of Spring. Nevertheless, Diaghilev worried about the Beginning with Hans von Bülow, piano virtuosos have pounced ballet’s reception. “Diaghilev fought to have me change the last upon the concerto for its combination of technical display and four pizzicato notes,” Stravinsky later wrote, “in favor of ‘a tonal Romantic sensibility, and it has become a pianistic proving ground ending,’ as he so quaintly put it, though two months later, when for well over a century. Horowitz’s interpretation with Toscanini Petrushka was one of the ballet’s greatest successes, he denied he set new standards for terrifying speed; the young American had ever been guilty of his original criticism.” pianist Van Cliburn rocketed to international fame by winning the Stravinsky originally conceived Petrushka as a short piano first Tchaikovsky Competition with his 1958 performance—much concerto depicting a “puppet suddenly endowed with life, to the dismay of Soviet cultural czars—and Vladimir Ashkenazy exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades (despite his stated distaste for the big octave passages) won the of arpeggios.” Immediately sensing the dramatic potential in the competition in a draw with John Ogden in 1962. Russian version of Punch and Judy—and flush with the popular It’s easy to see why the piece is such a favorite. This is the reception of The Firebird—Diaghilev talked Stravinsky into working Romantic concerto with everything: an epic first movement that the piece into a ballet. The elaborate, rambunctious piano part resembles a full-blown tone poem, an enchanted slow movement remained a prominent aspect of the score; as Diaghilev predicted, that rivals Tchaikovsky’s most delicate ballet scenes, and a super- the folk-oriented carnival scenes proved ideal for ballet treatment. charged finale in high Russian style. Tchaikovsky was skeptical Still, as with Stravinsky’s other three Russian ballets, Petrushka about the sound of a piano against an orchestra, but the two is programmed most frequently as concert music. Since Stravinsky coexist in perfect tension and balance. originally conceived Petrushka as abstract rather than theater The concerto is also—especially for a warhorse—surprisingly music, its presentation in the concert hall is entirely appropriate. original in structure. The celebrated opening theme, imperious The churning ostinato rhythms and vivid orchestral colors of the as it is, never returns in the course of the work (though recent carnival sections, as well as the more harmonically “advanced” musicologists purport to find intervallic traces of it). It blazes music in the second tableau, are exhilarating on their own, forth, then burns itself out. The concerto is so bursting with without the ballet format. The famous bitonal “Petrushka chord” memorable ideas that Tchaikovsky doesn’t need this glorious is at once a burlesque gesture and the first of numerous serious tune again. Yet he manages to provide codas for the first and harmonic experiments that, to this day, retain their bite. last movements that are so dramatic we don’t miss the theme’s It is the mocking, nose-thumbing sense of mischief in Petrushka mysterious disappearance. (subtitled “Burlesque scenes in four tableaux”) that remains its most Tchaikovsky even manages to work in folk-song quotations of endearing characteristic. Stravinsky said he wanted the dialogue for the kind that were so fashionable among his colleagues in “The trumpets in two keys at the end to show that Petrushka’s “ghost is Five” (Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin): still insulting the public.” The public, obviously, still loves it. these are not just pretty scenery, as is sometimes the case with

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folk-music borrowings by Borodin and others, but fully developed for New York City Opera; Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and the U.S. thematic kernels in the manner of Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” premiere of Jonathan Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio at Symphony from the same period. Minnesota Opera; Mozart’s Così fan tutte for San Francisco Opera; The lure of the Concerto in B-flat minor became so great and Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers, Rorem’s Our Town, and the that grumpy Nikolai Rubinstein himself eventually began U.S. premiere of Peter Maxwell-Davies’ Kommilitonen!, all at The performing it in Russia—no doubt, one of the sweeter moments Juilliard School. Anne Manson is presently the Music Director of in Tchaikovsky’s career. Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, with whom she has led two hugely successful tours with world-famous soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor (“Farewell”) (Haydn) and percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. She also recently made Like Petrushka, Haydn’s Symphony No. 45, from 1772, was her debuts with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie conceived as a witty pantomine, but it is also strangely moving. Hall and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and she works regularly Dubbed the “Farewell” Symphony, it is a radically destabilizing with the Orquesta de Extremadura in Spain. work by a composer known for classical order and balance. It is full of asymmetrical structures and concludes with everyone STEPHEN PRUTSMAN (piano) moves gradually wandering off the stage, including the conductor. The easily from classical to jazz to world music as darkly churning opening movement ends abruptly, making way a pianist, composer, and conductor, seeking for a harmonically unpredictable slow movement that is twice as common ground in the music of all cultures. long and a Minuet that suddenly fades into a breathless Presto; From 2004 to 2007 he was Artistic Partner this too trails into nothing, making way for the symphony’s with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where famous vanishing act. he conducted concertos from the keyboard, The rationale behind this bold experiment is documented performed in chamber ensembles, led works by Haydn’s biographer, G.A. Griesinger, who was with Haydn in of living composers, arranged collaborations 1799, and whose accounts of Haydn’s remarkable career have in contemporary and world music, and wrote several new been confirmed by other sources. Griesinger reports that Haydn’s works for the orchestra. From 2009 to 2012 he was the Artistic orchestra was “thoroughly dismayed” over news that Prince Director of the Cartagena International Festival of Music, South Esterházy planned to keep the players an extra several weeks at America’s largest festival of its kind. In the early ’90s Prutsman his court, having obliged them to leave behind their wives. They was a medal winner at the Tchaikovsky and Queen Elisabeth asked the maestro to do something, and he quickly came up with piano competitions, and received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. a scheme: “Haydn had the inspiration of writing a symphony Since then he has performed the classical concerto repertoire in which one instrument after another is silent…each of the with many of the world’s leading orchestras, and his discography musicians was instructed as soon as his part was finished to blow includes acclaimed recordings of the Barber and MacDowell out the candle and leave with his instrument under his arm.” concerti. A native of Los Angeles, Prutsman first began playing the Astonishingly, the gesture worked: “The Prince and all those piano by ear at age three. In his teens and early 20s he was the present immediately understood this pantomine, and the keyboard player for several art rock groups, a solo jazz pianist, and following day the order arrived that they would be leaving music arranger for a nationally syndicated televangelist program. Esterháza.” When Mendelssohn revived the symphony in 1838— He studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and with his own Gewandhaus Orchestra blowing out their candles the Peabody Conservatory of Music. As a composer, Prutsman’s and leaving the stage just as Haydn’s did—he called the symphony long association with the Kronos Quartet has resulted in over 40 “a curiously melancholy little piece.” For Haydn’s players, however, arrangements and compositions. He has also collaborated with it had an entirely happy outcome. leading classical artists, including Leon Fleisher, Emanuel Ax, Program notes © 2012 Jack Sullivan Dawn Upshaw, Yo-Yo Ma, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and with such diverse personalities as Tom Waits, Joshua Redman, and Jon Anderson of Yes. Active in promoting arts education, he ANNE MANSON (conductor), hailed by is involved in several projects to create artistic and recreational The New York Times for her “significant environments for autistic children and their families. Prutsman achievements in the international opera lives in San Francisco. world,” has come to the forefront as one of the most exciting interpreters of opera in THE SPOLETO FESTIVAL USA ORCHESTRA appears America today. Of her recent performance at the Festival in many different configurations, performing in of Poulenc’s Les dialogues des Carmélites opera, symphonic, choral, chamber, and contemporary music at The Juilliard School, the New York Daily performances. Formed anew each year through nationwide News reported that Manson’s “magnificent” auditions, the orchestra comprises young professionals and conducting delivered “one of the most thrilling musical experiences advanced students of many nationalities. Alumni of the I’ve ever had.” Manson conducted and recorded Philip Glass’s Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra are on the rosters of leading Orphée for Portland Opera, where she returned this season for orchestras throughout the world, including the Metropolitan productions of Madama Butterfly and Glass’s Galileo Galilei. Other Opera Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland recent opera projects include Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony, among others. Dream with the Canadian Opera Company; Barber’s Vanessa

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