San Diego Symphony Orchestra a Jacobs Masterworks Concert
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SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT March 18-20, 2016 GABRIELA FRANK Five Scenes (world premiere commissioned by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra) Malashock Dance ALBERTO GINASTERA Harp Concerto, Op. 25 Allegro giusto Molto moderato (Tempo I) Libramente capriccioso; Vivace Yolanda Kondonassis, harp INTERMISSION IGOR STRAVINSKY Suite from The Firebird (1945 version) Introduction Prelude and Dance of the Firebird Variations (Firebird) Pantomime I Pas de deux (Firebird and Ivan Tsarevich) Pantomime II Scherzo (Dance of the Princesses) Pantomime III Rondo (Khorovod) Infernal Dance Lullaby (Firebird) Final Hymn Five Scenes (world premiere) GABRIELA LENA FRANK Born September 1972 A program note from the composer: Five Scenes for orchestra is a compilation of arrangements created from various of my chamber works especially for choreographer John Malashock. John and I met through an "arranged marriage" kindly brokered by Tommy Philips of the San Diego Symphony, and it was a fortuitous meeting, indeed! As a composer, it is always a pleasure to meet a kindred spirit likewise invested in storytelling and emotional connection, and I found John's previous work to be, in a word, beautiful. From the beginning, I loved his approach to our project, taking inspiration from my music (which he selected) but departing in new directions wholly his own. In these five arrangements from works inspired by scenes of Spanish and Peruvian life, I tried to brighten the music with colors newly offered in an orchestral palette. Harp Concerto, Op. 25 ALBERTO GINASTERA Born April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires Died June 25, 1983, Geneva Albert Ginastera composed his Harp Concerto over a number of years, and the story of its creation is complex. That story began in 1956 when Edna Phillips, for many years the harpist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, commissioned a concerto from the Argentinian composer. Phillips was an unusual musician: she was only 22 when Leopold Stokowski invited her to become the first female member of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1930, and over the years she worked hard to enlarge the repertory of her instrument, commissioning works from many composers. Ginastera was intrigued by the thought of writing a harp concerto, but he had many other projects at hand, including the composition of his magnificent Second String Quartet (1958). Phillips would continue to inquire about his progress on her concerto, and Ginastera would send her sketches, but he never quite got around to composing it. Finally the great Spanish harpist Nicanor Zabaleta saw these sketches and pressed the composer to finish the concerto. By this point Phillips had given up performing professionally, and it was Zabaleta who gave the first performance on February 18, 1965, with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The music was a success on that occasion, and it has gone on to become one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all harp concertos. The stereotype of the harp is as a delicate instrument, but Ginastera re-imagined completely the idea of what a harp concerto might be. Ginastera was moving in these years toward serial music, but in the Harp Concerto he reverted to the powerful rhythmic style of such early works as his ballet Estancia, full of pulsing energy and color. The harp in this concerto is not the stereotypical instrument of silvery runs and graceful arpeggios, but a much more aggressive and athletic instrument with a sonority centered around percussive strikes of sound. While the orchestra is small, it features a large percussion section that will give the concerto much of its character. We hear this from the first instant, when the concerto bursts to life on fierce cracks of sound from the orchestra. Ginastera’s fondness for asymmetric rhythms is much in evidence here, with the orchestra and harp dancing wildly (but always gracefully) along these rhythms. This drives to a pause, and the harp – now alone – responds with a haunting melodic line. Gradually the orchestra rejoins the soloist as this movement, sectional in construction, alternates its opening energy with this more reflective material before finally fading into aural mists. The central movement is in ternary form. Lower strings provide a dark introduction with their terraced entrances before the soloist takes up the musical line. The mood here is somber and unsettled, an atmosphere unrelieved by the middle section, which sets the harp above constantly trilling strings. A return of the opening material leads to an extended cadenza for the soloist, and this virtuoso passage will function as a bridge to the finale, where sudden strikes of sound plunge us back into the athletic, pointillistic manner of the opening movement. Once again we are in a world of dancing energy, percussive cracks of sound and virtuoso writing for the soloist. At the end, Ginastera presses this brilliant movement forward on a coda marked Vivace. Suite from The Firebird (1945 version) IGOR STRAVINSKY Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum Died April 6, 1971, New York City In 1909, following a successful visit of the Ballets Russes to Paris, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev and his choreographer Michel Fokine made plans for a new ballet to be presented in Paris the following season, based on the old Russian legend of the Firebird. They at first asked Anatoly Lyadov to compose the music, but when it became clear that the notoriously lazy Lyadov would never get around to it, they decided to take a chance on a young composer who had orchestrated some pieces for the Ballets Russes the year before. His name was Igor Stravinsky, and he was virtually unknown. Recognizing that this was his big chance (and terrified that he would not be up to the challenge), Stravinsky set to work in November 1909 at a dacha owned by the Rimsky-Korsakov family (to which he had gone, as he said, “for a vacation in birch forests and snow-fresh air).” He finished the piano score in St. Petersburg in March, and the orchestration was complete a month later. The first performance took place in Paris on June 25, 1910, eight days after the composer’s twentieth-eighth birthday, and was a huge success. Stravinsky would go on to write quite different music over the course of his long career, but the music from The Firebird remains his most popular creation. The Firebird tells of a young prince, Ivan Tsarevich, who unknowingly pursues the magic Firebird – part woman, part bird – into the garden of the green-taloned Kastchei, most horrible of all ogres: Kastchei captures and imprisons maidens within the castle and turns all knights who come to rescue them to stone. Ivan captures the Firebird, but she begs to be released, and when he agrees she gives him a magic feather and vanishes. The prince sees a group of 13 princesses playing with golden apples, and when dawn breaks and they have to return to Kastchei’s castle, he follows them. Instantly he is confronted by the hideous fiends who inhabit the castle and is about to be turned to stone himself when he remembers the feather. He waves it, and the Firebird returns, puts all the ogres – including Kastchei – to sleep and shows him where a magic egg is hidden in a casket. When Ivan smashes the egg, Kastchei and his fiends disappear, the petrified knights return to life, the maidens are freed, Kastchei’s castle is transformed into a cathedral, and Ivan marries the most beautiful of the 13 princesses. Stravinsky drew three orchestral suites from his complete score to The Firebird. The first, in 1911, uses the original orchestration but eliminates the pantomimes that connect the scenes and (strangely) ends with the dance of Kastchei’s fiends as they try to resist the Firebird’s spell. For the second suite, made in 1919, Stravinsky greatly reduced and simplified the opulent orchestration of the original ballet, took out some of the earlier sections, and added the Berceuse and the Finale; this version has become by far the most popular of the suites. In 1945, at age 63, Stravinsky returned to this score one final time and prepared a third suite from The Firebird; this is the version heard at the present concerts. For the 1945 version, Stravinsky began with the five-movement 1919 suite and made some very small changes in the orchestration. The major change, however, was that he re-introduced certain scenes and pantomimes from the original ballet, placing them between the first and second movements of the familiar 1919 suite. Stravinsky’s motives were clear: he wanted to create an orchestral suite that would offer a more complete selection of music from The Firebird and at the same time would be scored for the smaller orchestra of the 1919 version. The 1945 version was premiered in New York City on October 24, 1945, under the direction of Jascha Horenstein. A brief description of the action and music of the 1945 suite: the ominous Introduction, in the unusual key of A-flat minor, hints at the music that will be associated with the monsters. Near the end of this section comes one of Stravinsky’s most striking orchestral effects, a series of rippling string glissandos played entirely in harmonics. The music proceeds without pause into the shimmering, whirling Dance of the Firebird and The Firebird’s Variation, which were Stravinsky’s own favorite music from this score. Now begin the interpolations of the 1945 version. The brief Pantomime I leads to the languorous Pas de Deux, danced by the Firebird and Ivan Tsarevich. Pantomime II, also brief, leads to the Scherzo, or The Dance of the Princesses, which bustles along energetically on its steady rhythmic pulse.