Season 20102010----20112011

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Thursday, February 33,, at 8:00 SaturSaturday,day, February 55,, at 888:008:00:00:00

Fabio Luisi Conductor Hélène Grimaud Piano

Weber Overture to Der Freischütz

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 I. Allegro moderato II. Andante con moto— III. Rondo: Vivace

Intermission

SchSchmidmidmidtttt Symphony No. 4 in C major Allegro molto moderato—Adagio—Molto vivace—Tempo I—Ritard. e poco a poco sempre più lento

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 55 minutes.

Fabio Luisi began his appointment as chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony in 2005 and recently extended his contract until 2013. He is also music director of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Mr. Luisi was general music director of the Dresden Staatskapelle and Sächsische Staatsoper (2007-10), artistic director of the MDR in Leipzig (1999-2007), music director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (1997-2002), chief conductor of the Tonkünstlerorchester in Vienna (1995-2000), and artistic director of the Graz Symphony (1990-96). He was recently appointed principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera beginning in fall 2010, and he begins his position as music director of the Zurich Opera with the 2012-13 season.

During the 2010-11 season, Mr. Luisi debuts with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Opera Liceu in Barcelona with Verdi’s Falstaff, the Royal Opera Covent Garden with Verdi’s Aida , and the Orchestra of the Teatro Lirico Cagliari. He also returns to the Metropolitan Opera for Verdi’s Rigoletto and Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, appears with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and tours with the Vienna Symphony.

Last season Mr. Luisi’s guest engagements included Puccini’s Tosca at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and Tosca, Strauss’s Elektra, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and Berg’s Lulu at the Metropolitan Opera. He also made his debuts with the Boston Symphony, the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne, and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London.

Mr. Luisi’s recordings include rare Verdi operas, Salieri's La locandiera, Bellini's I puritani, and symphonic repertoire of Honegger, Respighi, and Liszt. He also recorded all the symphonies and the oratorio The Book with the Seven Seals by the neglected Austrian composer Franz Schmidt. Mr. Luisi has recorded several works by Strauss for Sony Classical and Bruckner's Ninth Symphony with the Dresden Staatskapelle.

Born in Genoa in 1959, Mr. Luisi began his piano studies at the age of four and received his diploma in 1978 from the Conservatorio Nicolò Paganini. He later studied conducting with Milan Horvat at the Conservatory in Graz.

Pianist Hélène GrimaudGrimaud’s 2010-11 season is highlighted by an international recital tour encompassing Europe, the U.S., and Japan; performances in Moscow with Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; a return to St. Petersburg for a performance with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra; and an appearance with David Zinman in New Year Gala Concerts in Beijing. In June 2011 she will perform and record Mozart piano concertos with Claudio Abbado and Orchestra Mozart in Bologna. Other highlights include return appearances with the San Francisco Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and a European tour with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko. This year she also appears as Artiste Étoile in five concerts at the Lucerne Festival. The 2011-12 season will include concerts with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Vienna Philharmonic.

An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon recording artist since 2002, Ms. Grimaud’s most recent release features Bach's solo and concerto works in which she directed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from the keyboard. Previous recordings include a Beethoven disc with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Vladimir Jurowski, Reflection, Credo, and a disc of Chopin and Rachmaninoff sonatas. Ms. Grimaud also appears on two recent DVD releases, the 2010 ECHO Klassik award-winning DVD of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with Mr. Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and Ravel's Piano Concerto with Mr. Jurowski and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Recipient of numerous awards worldwide, Ms. Grimaud received the Musikfest Bremen Award in 2009. She was appointed Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2002 and Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Mérite in 2008. In 2004 she received a Victoire d'honneur at the Victoires de la Musique and in 2005 she won the ECHO Instrumentalist of the Year Award. Author of two books, Variations sauvages and Leçons particulières, Ms. Grimaud champions many charitable causes, including the Wolf Conservation Center, which she founded in New York State in 1999; the International Children's Camp Villa San Souci; the Worldwide Fund for Nature; and Amnesty International. She made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2000. For more information, please visit www.helenegrimaud.com.

FRAMING THE PROGRAM

The all-German program tonight suggests ways in which instrumental music can evoke associations in a listener’s mind. The atmosphere of Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz is closely connected to the story of the opera, a variety of whose melodies are quoted. Horns evoke hunting and forests, ominous chords suggest a demonic and magical world, and the celebratory conclusion reflects the happy end of the story.

Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto is unusual among his works in the genre not only due to its marvelous opening for solo piano, but also for the dramatic qualities of the brief middle movement. The tension between the soloist and orchestra, in which the pianist eventually triumphs, has been likened to the mythic struggle of Orpheus as he tries to tame the furies and enter the underworld to retrieve his wife, Eurydice.

Franz Schmidt was a colleague of Mahler’s whose magnificent music is becoming more familiar to audiences today. The Fourth Symphony, his last, dates from 1932 and was composed soon after the death of his daughter at age 30. The funereal mood of the Adagio section of the Symphony offers a touching memorial.

Parallel Events 1805 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 Music Spontini La vestale Literature Chateaubriand René Art Turner Shipwreck History Victory at Trafalgar

1821 WebeWeberrrr Overture to Der Freischütz Music Mendelssohn Sinfonia No. 7 LLLiteratureLiterature Scott Kenilworth Art Constable Hay Wain History Bolivár defeats Spanish

1932 Schmidt Symphony No. 4 Music Ravel Piano Concerto in G major Literature Hammett The Thin Man Art Liebermann Professor Sauerbruch History Lindbergh baby kidnapped

Overture tttoto Der Freischütz

Carl Maria vvvonvon Weber Born iiinin Eutin, nnnearnear Lübeck, November 18, 1786 Died iiinin London, June 5, 1826

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was written (perhaps created is the better word) in 1818 and is just one famous manifestation of the burgeoning Romantic interest in the Gothic, the grotesque and supernatural so often evident in the literature, art, and music of the time. Opera, with its combination of story, staging, and sound, provided the perfect medium to explore these themes in the performing arts. This is no doubt one reason Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter) immediately captured the imagination of audiences in Europe and beyond, beginning with its premiere in June 1821 at the newly built Schauspielhaus in Berlin. Weber did not score a comparable success in the remaining five years of his life, although the overtures to his later Euryanthe and Oberon became repertory standards. In these operas, and in less familiar compositions, his masterful orchestration and compelling evocation of mood helped usher in a new Romantic sensibility in music.

Romantic Gothic Weber was born after, but died before, Beethoven (like Mozart, he died in his 30s), and his music looks both backward and forward. Der Freischütz profoundly influenced Berlioz, Wagner, and other later Romantics; indeed, Berlioz made a performing version of it in the late 1830s, with newly composed recitatives replacing the original dialogue. Weber, of course, was himself subject to influences. The supernatural had been a part of opera ever since its invention in the early 17th century, where a deus ex machina saved many an ending. Zauberopern (magic operas) were all the rage in Mozart’s time, with his about the enchanted flute being the only one that remains regularly performed today.

The early Romantics added darker, more sinister elements in their Gothic stories, which had musical consequences for what audiences heard at the opera. Louis Spohr’s Faust (1813) and E.T.A Hoffmann’s Undine (1816) provided operatic models for Weber, who had his librettist Friedrich Kind adapt a ghost story from a recent collection by Johann Apel and Friedrich Laun for Freischütz. His opera effectively evoked the weirdly supernatural, especially in the famous Wolf’s Glen Scene that ends the second act. At the urging of the evil Kaspar, Max, the opera’s protagonist, goes to a scary woods at midnight to forge magic bullets that make the “freeshooter” hit any mark. Max hopes they will allow him to win a shooting contest the next day and with it the hand of his beloved, Agathe. He invokes the demon Samiel to appear and makes a pact with the devil.

A Closer Look The Overture is a study in contrasts, between the natural and supernatural, light and dark, slow and fast, major and minor. It begins with a slow introduction that is initially mysterious and then evokes a natural scene with hunting horns before turning to Samiel’s darker realm—throughout the opera he is associated with the sound of a diminished seventh chord, typically punctuated with funeral drum strokes. The following molto vivace draws upon two of the main arias in the work, one by Max that exclaims the “powers of darkness are weaving around me!” and the other from the end of Agathe’s great

scene in Act II where she proclaims, “All my pulses are beating, and my heart pants wildly, full of sweet enchantment at [Max’s] approach!” The rousing coda anticipates the final moments of the opera with its great choral conclusion: “Whoever is pure of heart and guiltless in life may, childlike, trust in the gentleness of the Father!”

Weber described at length the distinctive mood he intended for the work:

There are in Der Freischütz two principal elements that can be recognized at first sight—hunting life and the rule of demonic powers as personified by Samiel. So when composing the opera I had to look for suitable tone colors to characterize those elements. … The tone color of the scoring for the forest and hunting life was easy to find: the horns provided it. … The most important part, to my mind, is in Max’s words “the powers of darkness are weaving around me!” for they showed me what chief characteristic to give to the opera. I had to remind the hearer of those “dark powers” by means of tone color and melody as often as possible. … I gave a great deal of thought to the question of what was the right principal coloring for this sinister element. Naturally it had to be a dark, gloomy color—the lowest register of the violins, violas, and basses, particularly the lowest register of the clarinets, which seem especially suitable for depicting the sinister, then the mournful sound of the bassoon, the lowest notes of the horns, the hollow roll of drums or single hollow strokes on them.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Weber composed Der Freischütz from 1817 to 1821.

The first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Overture to Der Freischütz were in November 1902; Fritz Scheel conducted. The most recent subscription performances were in March 2007, with Ingo Metzmacher on the podium.

The Philadelphia Orchestra recorded the Freischütz Overture with Eugene Ormandy in 1946 for CBS.

The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

The Overture runs approximately 10 minutes in performance.

Piano Concerto No. 4

Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770 Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto holds a special place in the unfolding of his career. It was the last of his five solo keyboard concertos that he wrote for his own use as a performer and even though it dates from his “heroic” middle period, it is an unusually intimate expression. He had composed his first three piano concertos relatively early in his career, during years of rising fame as a piano virtuoso and promising young composer. In these works he brought to a glorious culmination the Classical tradition of Mozart and Haydn, both of whom he knew personally. The Fourth and Fifth concertos are fully mature works that represent Beethoven’s style at the height of his popular success and as he forged new paths toward Romanticism.

Struggles and Triumphs As he entered his 30s, Beethoven’s personal and professional life began to change, and so, too, did his music. In the fall of 1801 he revealed the secret of his looming deafness for the first time. He provided his childhood friend Franz Wegeler with a detailed account of his symptoms and lamented the constraints the condition placed on his social life and profession (“… if my enemies, of whom I have a fair number, were to hear about it, what would they say?”). The following fall he penned the remarkable “Heiligenstadt Testament” in which he described further social, personal, and professional consequences of his affliction: “… a little more and I would have ended my life. Only my art held me back. It seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt was within me.”

The personal challenges Beethoven faced at this crucial juncture in his professional career can be sensed in much of the music he wrote over the next decade. While at first Beethoven kept his hearing problems hidden, by 1806 he could write in a sketch of one of his string quartets, “Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art.” Yet not every work offered impassioned struggles and affirmative victories. Unlike the bold openings of so many middle period compositions, the Fourth Piano Concerto has a quiet, meditative start. (In fact, the opening plays with the same rhythm—three shorts/long—best known in the Fifth Symphony.)

Beethoven first played the Fourth Concerto privately in March 1807 at the Viennese palace of his patron Prince Lobkowitz. Although he would continue to perform song accompaniments and chamber music on occasion for some years to come, his final appearance as a concerto soloist was playing the Fourth at a mammoth concert on December 22, 1808, which also included the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies and of the “Choral” Fantasy, Op. 80.

A Closer Look The unusual manner in which the Fourth Concerto opens (AllegroAllegro moderatomoderato)—with a reserved, resonant, and noble statement for the piano alone—seems particularly appropriate in regard to this final public appearance, but also marks something

else. No previous concerto had begun quite this way, although Mozart’s in E-flat major, K. 271, is often mentioned as a precedent for giving opening prominence to the piano.

The brief second movement (AndanteAndante con motomoto) might be considered a lengthy introduction to the rondo finale. But as commentators remarked in the 19th century, there seems to be something else going on. The alternation between the quiet statements of the soloist and the emphatic responses of the orchestra suggest a dialogue. As the encounter progresses, the piano’s eloquence and prominence increase, and the orchestra eventually gives way to the soloist. Beethoven left no hints of a hidden program in the sketches, the manuscript, or letters and other writings, but critics, beginning with A.B. Marx in the late 1850s, began to associate the movement with the story of Orpheus, pleading with the furies to permit him entrance to the underworld so that he can retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice. More recently, musicologist Owen Jander has examined various versions of the Orpheus story and has provocatively argued that the movement is “Beethoven’s most elaborate venture into the realm of program music. … It may well be the most totally programmatic piece of music—great art music—ever composed.”

The Concerto concludes with Beethoven’s preferred form, a rondo (VivaceVivaceVivace) that has a somewhat more assertive nature (trumpets and timpani appear for the first time in the Concerto), but that also further explores the work’s tender musical persona.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Beethoven composed his Fourth Piano Concerto from 1805 to 1806.

The Piano Concerto No. 4 was first performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra in January 1905, with pianist Eugene d’Albert and Fritz Scheel. The most recent subscription performances were in November/December 2008, with pianist Garrick Ohlsson and Andrey Boreyko.

The Orchestra has recorded the Fourth Concerto four times, all for CBS: in 1947 with Robert Casadesus and Eugene Ormandy; in 1955 and 1962 with Rudolf Serkin and Ormandy; and in 1966 with Eugene Istomin and Ormandy. A recording of the Fourth Concerto from 1938 with Josef Hofmann and Ormandy can also be found in The Philadelphia Orchestra: The Centennial Collection (Historic Broadcasts and Recordings from 1917-1998).

The composer scored the work for an orchestra of one flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, in addition to the solo piano.

Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto runs approximately 35 minutes in performance.

Symphony No. 4

Franz Schmidt Born iiinin Pressburg ((nnnnowow Bratislava), December 22, 1874 Died iiinin Perchtoldsdorf, nnnearnear Vienna, February 11, 1939

Even though Gustav Mahler’s famous prediction that his “time would come” is usually taken out of context, the astounding ascendance of his music over the last 50 years is undeniable. Far less celebrated is Franz Schmidt, a composer who played cello under Mahler’s direction at the Vienna Court Opera. While Schimdt’s music has not yet enjoyed a comparable reassessment, there are indications his time may also be coming. More and more of his compositions are being performed and recorded, prompting some to ask why he has been neglected for so long.

Reassessing 20th20th----ccccenturyentury Music Among the various reasons were musical and world politics. Schmidt was born just two months after Arnold Schoenberg, less than 40 miles away, yet the two occupied different aesthetic and ideological worlds. As we look back with greater perspective now on the music of the last century, the dominant historical stature of Schoenberg and his followers has gradually begun to recede, while the reputations of more conservative figures whose music is actually more often performed have risen. Slowly, history is being rewritten so as to resonate more harmoniously with present-day aesthetic tastes.

For much of the 20th century the most hotly contested pairing in modern music was between Schoenberg’s atonal and serial approach versus Stravinsky’s Franco-Russian and Neo-Classical styles. Schoenberg represented himself as fulfilling the next logical step in the progression of great German masters, stretching from Bach to Beethoven to Wagner, Brahms, and beyond. His most celebrated modernist competition in Germany either died early (Mahler at age 50 in 1911) or retreated (Richard Strauss around that same time). His students in Europe and America, including Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and John Cage, furthered avant-garde trends.

There were, of course, figures outside the German tradition, such as Elgar, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, and Copland, who generally wrote music with more direct audience appeal. Some critics, however, dismissed their works as historically irrelevant. There was also a group of German composers who seem to fall into this category, once popular figures who were largely forgotten after mid-century. Franz Schmidt is one of them, together with Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Alexander Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Schmidt’s Emergence Franz Schmidt’s artistic gifts were multifaceted. The distinguished English music critic Hans Keller described him as “the most complete musician” he had ever met. Although Schmidt began his studies as a pianist, playing and teaching the cello became his initial professional career. He was praised for his astonishing abilities on both instruments. (In a concert with the celebrated Rosé Quartet he performed the cello in Schubert’s C-major String Quintet and the piano in the “Trout” Quintet.) Mahler greatly

admired his playing, and always wanted him to perform the cello solos in the operas he was conducting. His skills as a pianist may have been even more impressive. Asked to list the greatest pianists of the age, keyboard virtuoso Leopold Godowsky is said to have replied, “The other one is Franz Schmidt.”

Schmidt’s four symphonies, two operas, organ and chamber music, and the magnificent oratorio The Book with Seven Seals garnered a good amount of popularity and critical esteem during his lifetime. His music was eagerly promoted by the Nazis in the years following his death in 1939, which tarnished his reputation. Also problematic was that in 1938, just months after the German annexation of Austria, the ill and naïve Schmidt accepted a commission to produce a cantata called The German Resurrection, but died during the early stages of its composition. There was talk of Pfitzner finishing it, but the task fell to one of Schmidt’s students. The cantata was enthusiastically received at its Vienna premiere in April 1940. Schmidt had actually composed very little of the work, but it was presented as his final utterance.

The Symphonic Output Schmidt composed his First Symphony between 1896 and 1899, during his early years playing cello in Vienna. Mahler assumed the directorship of the Court Opera and promptly turned the place around: “With him came a time of unparalleled stimulus and splendor,” Schmidt later recalled. Despite Mahler’s admiration for Schmidt’s playing, they eventually had a falling out. Schmidt reports he “vegetated for fully 10 years more in the Vienna Court Orchestra” and that he left so that he would be “taken seriously as a composer.”

Liberated from the regular routine of orchestral life, Schmidt turned more to composition and teaching. His Second Symphony dates from 1911 and the Third followed in 1928. Schmidt began the Fourth in 1932, the year he suffered the devastating loss of his 30-year-old daughter, who died in childbirth. This Symphony is quite different in tone from the preceding ones and was written as a requiem in her memory.

A Closer Look The longest of Schmidt’s symphonies, the Fourth unfolds in one continuous movement with four distinct sections. The framing outer two sections present shared mood and themes, most notably the extended trumpet solo that opens the Symphony. In between are a heart-felt slow section and a lively scherzo.

The trumpet theme that opens the first section (AllAllegroegro molto moderatomoderato) provides melodic material that will reappear in the third and fourth sections as well. A lyrical second theme, marked passionato, is first presented by the violins and has a Brucknerian quality. The second section (AdagioAdagioAdagio) emerges out of the first, beginning with an eloquent cello solo (Schmidt’s own instrument, of course). The middle of this slow section offers what appears to be the most obvious memorial to the composer’s daughter: a funeral procession with drum-like repetitions.

The tempo and mood change notably in the following scherzo (MoltoMolto vivacevivace), which commences with a fugal theme in the strings. A violent climax near the end ushers in the

finale (TempoTempo III)I and the reappearance of the trumpet theme that began the first section, played now by the French horn. The finale recapitulates earlier parts of the composition and eventually fades away as the solo trumpet softly intones fragments of the melody that opened the Symphony and that has haunted it throughout.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Schmidt composed his Fourth Symphony from 1932 to 1933.

The first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Symphony were in October 1990 with Franz Welser-Möst on the podium. The only other time the work was performed was in March 2007, with Yakov Kreizberg.

The work is scored for two flutes (II doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam-tam), two harps, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 40 minutes.

Program notes © 2011. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

GENERAL TERMS Atonality: A term used to describe music that is not tonal, especially organized without reference to key or tonal center Cadence: The conclusion to a phrase, movement, or piece based on a recognizable melodic formula, harmonic progression, or dissonance resolution Cadenza: A passage or section in a style of brilliant improvisation, usually inserted near the end of a movement or composition Cantata: A multi-movement vocal piece consisting of arias, recitatives, ensembles, and choruses and based on a continuous narrative text Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones Coda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finality Development: See sonata form Diminished seventh chordchord:: A chord formed from a diminished triad with added diminished seventh, for example B—D—F—A-flat Fugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different places Recapitulation: See sonata form Recitative: Declamatory singing, free in tempo and rhythm Rondo: A form frequently used in symphonies and concertos for the final movement. It consists of a main section that alternates with a variety of contrasting sections (A-B-A-C-A etc.). Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Serialism: Music constructed according to the principle pioneered by Schoenberg in the early 1920s, whereby the 12 notes of the scale are arranged in a particular order, forming a series of pitches that serves as the basis of the composition and a source from which the musical material is derived Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications.

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo) Adagio: Leisurely, slow Allegro: Bright, fast Andante: Walking speed Con moto: With motion Lento: Slow Moderato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow Passionato: Impassioned, very expressive Ritardando: Becoming slower and slower Vivace: Lively

TEMPO MODIFIERS Molto: Very

Più: More Poco a poco: Little by little Sempre: Always