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Home , Dance of the Hours

23 Season 2019-2020

Friday, January 3, at 7:00 Saturday, January 4, at 7:00 The Philadelphia Sunday, January 5, at 2:00

Aram Demirjian Conductor

Bach/orch. Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

Tchaikovsky from Suite from , Op. 71a: (excerpts with film) III. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy VI. Chinese Dance VII. Dance of the Reed Flutes V. Arabian Dance IV. Russian Dance VIII. Waltz of the Flowers

Beethoven from Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67: (excerpts with film) I. Allegro con brio

Stravinsky from Suite from (1919 version): (excerpts with film) II. The Princesses’ Round Dance III. Infernal Dance of King Kastcheï— IV. Berceuse— V. Finale

Intermission 24

Ponchielli “Dance of the Hours,” from (with film)

Debussy/orch. Stokowski “Clair de lune,” from Suite bergamasque

Beethoven from Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (“Pastoral”): (excerpts with film) III. Allegro—Presto (Merry gathering of peasants)— IV. Allegro (Tempest, storm)— V. Allegretto (Shepherds’ hymn—Happy and thankful feelings after the storm)

Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (with film)

This program runs approximately 2 hours.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM, and are repeated on Monday evenings at 7 PM on WRTI HD 2. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details. 25 The Philadelphia Orchestra Jessica Griffin

The Philadelphia Orchestra community centers, the Mann Through concerts, tours, is one of the world’s Center to Penn’s Landing, residencies, and recordings, preeminent . classrooms to hospitals, and the Orchestra is a global It strives to share the over the airwaves and online. ambassador. It performs transformative power of The Orchestra continues annually at Carnegie Hall, music with the widest to discover new and the Saratoga Performing possible audience, and to inventive ways to nurture its Arts Center, and the Bravo! create joy, connection, and relationship with loyal patrons. Vail Music Festival. The excitement through music The Philadelphia Orchestra Orchestra also has a rich in the Philadelphia region, continues the tradition of history of touring, having across the country, and educational and community first performed outside around the world. Through engagement for listeners Philadelphia in the earliest innovative programming, of all ages. It launched its days of its founding. It was robust educational initiatives, HEAR initiative in 2016 to the first American orchestra and an ongoing commitment become a major force for to perform in the People’s to the communities that it good in every community that Republic of China in 1973, serves, the ensemble is on a it serves. HEAR is a portfolio launching a now-five-decade path to create an expansive of integrated initiatives commitment of people-to- future for classical music, that promotes Health, people exchange. and to further the place champions music Education, The Orchestra also makes of the arts in an open and enables broad Access to live recordings available on democratic society. Orchestra performances, and popular digital music services Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now maximizes impact through and as part of the Orchestra in his eighth season as the Research. The Orchestra’s on Demand section of its eighth music director of The award-winning education and website. Under Yannick’s Philadelphia Orchestra. His community initiatives engage leadership, the Orchestra connection to the ensemble’s over 50,000 students, returned to recording, with musicians has been praised families, and community five celebrated CDs on by both concertgoers and members through programs the prestigious Deutsche critics, and he is embraced such as PlayINs, side-by- Grammophon label. The by the musicians of the sides, PopUP concerts, Free Orchestra also reaches Orchestra, audiences, and Neighborhood Concerts, thousands of radio listeners the community. School Concerts, sensory- with weekly broadcasts on Your Philadelphia Orchestra friendly concerts, the School WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For takes great pride in its Partnership Program and more information, please visit hometown, performing for the School Ensemble Program, www.philorch.org. people of Philadelphia year- and All City Orchestra round, from Verizon Hall to Fellowships. 26 Conductor

David Bickley Armenian-American conductor Aram Demirjian is music director of the Knoxville Symphony (KSO). He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut with School Concerts in October 2016. In addition to these current performances, highlights of his 2019–20 season include subscription debuts with the Tucson and Portland symphonies and the Orlando Philharmonic. He also appears with the KSO at the Kennedy Center in a performance featuring soprano Julia Bullock in Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 as well as Knoxville poets R.B. Morris and Rhea Carmon (RheaSunshine); the program, entitled “Knoxville: Artists at Home,” is part of the Kennedy Center’s SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras. Mr. Demirjian is the eighth music director of the KSO. His visionary programming during the three years of his tenure emphasizes collaboration, including projects with nationally renowned organizations such as Violins of Hope, the American Modern Company, and PROJECT Trio, plus regional partnerships including the Appalachian Ballet Company, contemporary ensemble Nief Norf, and the Big Ears Music Festival. Recent programming featured Jessie Montgomery’s Banner and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with students from the Tennessee School of the Deaf performing the “Ode to Joy” in American Sign Language. In his second season as music director, he founded KSO: UnStaged, a series of experiential, multi-sensory events in non-traditional settings, co-curated by community partners including craft breweries, yoga studios, and museums. For the current season, the KSO and the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA) have jointly commissioned a new violin concerto by Michael Schachter inspired by Richard Jolley’s glass-art opus Cycle of Life: Within the Power of Dreams and the Wonder of Infinity, on permanent display at the KMA. The concerto will be premiered by Grammy-nominated violinist Philippe Quint. From 2012 to 2016 Mr. Demirjian served as associate conductor at the Kansas City Symphony. He holds a joint Bachelor of Arts in Music and Government from Harvard University and a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the New England Conservatory. 27 THE HISTORY OF : A Breakthrough in Motion Pictures and Sound

In 1940, 12 years after astounded audiences by whistling in synchronized sound, Walt Disney released Fantasia, a film that was to become a milestone, not only in art, but also in the history of motion picture sound. For the first time, a multi-channel soundtrack surrounded audiences with a form of stereo separation.

Disney had used classical music in his “” cartoons, which he regarded as stepping stones toward full-length animated features. However, after Snow White, he realized that he could not return to the “Silly Symphony” format and began to seek a different direction with music that suggested strong visual images. Walt finally decided on Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

When he approached , music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra, Walt soon discovered that Stokowski had ideas about instrumental coloring that were perfect for animation and that he had already experimented with revolutionary methods of sound recording for the movies.

Work on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” began in late 1937 and was finished in 1938. By that time, costs had so far exceeded projections that they could not be recouped if the film was released as a short. Disney began conceptualizing a full-length feature using short separate numbers in a single presentation as a sort of “visual musical concert.”

Disney enlisted the help of Stokowski and noted music critic and composer to select a program. The three men listened to hundreds of hours of music and studied world-famous art masterpieces before making their final decisions.

Both Disney and Stokowski wanted to experiment with new projection and sound techniques. Although Disney’s dream of using wide-screen projection proved 28

economically unfeasible, he continued development of a stereophonic sound system. The music was recorded in “” on nine optical recorders using eight music tracks plus a click track for animation timing. Stokowski conducted a studio orchestra for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in 1938, and in 1939, he led The Philadelphia Orchestra in recording the remaining soundtrack.

Because the sound system required use of multiple speakers, theaters had to be specially equipped at great expense, making a limited roadshow distribution necessary. The completed film premiered on November 13, 1940, at the Broadway Theater in New York. Audiences were “confronted for the first time on any large scale with two major innovations: an ingenious partnership between fine music and animated film, and an immeasurably improved method of sound reproduction,” wrote Theatre Arts critic Hermine Rich Isaacs.

Although limited distribution kept Fantasia from becoming profitable for nearly 30 years, today it is considered a genuine cinema classic and has been in constant reissue since 1969. 29 30 Tickets & Patron Services

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