Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 8:00pm Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 8:00pm Thomas Søndergård, conductor Baiba Skride, violin Thomas Adès Dances from Powder Her Face Overture Waltz Finale Benjamin Britten REVISED 1954/65 Violin Concerto, Op. 15 I. Moderato con moto II. Vivace III. Passacaglia: Andante lento (un poco meno mosso) Intermission Francis Poulenc Les animaux modèles (Symphonic Version) 1. Petit jour: très calme 2. Le lion amoureux: passionnément animé 3. L’homme entre deux âges et ses deux maîtresses: prestissimo 4. La mort et le bûcheron: très lent 5. Le combat des deux coqs: très modéré 6. Le repas de midi Claude Debussy La mer I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea) II. Jeux des vagues (Play of the Waves) III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea) OCTOBER 18 & 20, 2018 27 ABOUT THE WORKS Thomas Adès Dances from Powder Her Face 12 Born: London, United Kingdom, March 1, 1971 min Composed: 2006 Adès’s two-act Powder Her Face (with libretto waltz and tango, popular songs from the 1930s by Philip Hensher) is based on the colourful and 1950s, light orchestral music, and the life of Margaret Campbell, the Duchess of music of such composers as Berg, Stravinsky, Argyll. Once named débutante of the year, and Janáček—all freshly imbued with a vivid later becoming one of the most photographed and visceral edge. women in the world and a celebrated style Dances from Powder Her Face consists of three icon, Margaret gained notoriety in 1963 orchestral numbers that Adès extracted from when her second husband, the Duke of the opera and rescored, from the original Argyll, filed for divorce, citing her infidelity. 15-piece pit band, for full orchestra. Taken A scandal ensued when photographs were together, they form a musical snapshot of the discovered of the Duchess and a “Headless Duchess’s world. A lurid, acid-soaked tango, Man” in a compromising position, among the Overture features aggressively acerbic other sensational details of the Duchess’s sex musical gestures, especially from the brass, life. After the divorce, Margaret attempted to evoking the hotel staff mocking the Duchess maintain her extravagant lifestyle, but her at the beginning of the opera. The ensuing excesses soon forced her to sell her home Waltz has a surreal quality, a pale ghost of the and live in a hotel suite. She eventually died, real thing, as if belonging in a world of faded penniless, in a nursing home. dreams. Following the Duchess’s departure The opera frames the key events of the from the hotel, the Finale music, sardonic but Duchess’s life—in her prime as a débutante with an air of nostalgia, accompanies the hotel and socialite, and the tumult surrounding the staff as they strip her room to prepare it for the divorce—with scenes of her amid her decline, next occupant. about to leave the hotel where she had been Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley living for over a decade but at which she can no longer afford to stay. Adès has described Powder Her Face as being about “a woman who finally becomes entrapped in a world of perfume and fantasy and memory.” Musically, he renders this narrative with a score filled with references to the musical forms and styles of the Duchess’s lifetime—dances such as the 28 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA As a composer, Adès has been highly ABOUT THE COMPOSER regarded for his prodigious ability to Award-winning English completely absorb, master, and reinterpret composer, conductor, and a wide range of past and current techniques pianist Thomas Adès has been and practices of contemporary music, described the The New York which he combines to often dazzling effect Times as one of today’s “most in his compositions. Some of them are accomplished overall musicians.” He studied practically bursting with layers of musical piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, references, though deftly set within a logical and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. In and rigorously formal framework. Among 2000, he became the youngest-ever recipient Adès’s major works to date are three operas— of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award; recently, Powder Her Face (1995), The Tempest (2004), he was awarded a CBE in the 2018 Queen’s and The Exterminating Angel (2016)—all of Birthday Honours. From 1999 to 2008, he was which have been performed to great critical the Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival; acclaim worldwide; and significant orchestral today, he continues to coach piano and works such as Aslya (1997), Tevot (2007), chamber music annually at the International Polaris (2011), and Totentanz (2013). Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove. Benjamin Britten Violin Concerto, Op. 15 Born: Lowestoft, United Kingdom, November 22, 1913 32 Died: Aldeburgh, United Kingdom, December 4, 1976 min Composed: 1939 Benjamin Britten wrote seven concerto works in September 1939, during the first weeks of spanning almost the whole of his career: World War II. the first, the Piano Concerto, Op. 13, was Britten wrote his bravura Piano Concerto of composed in 1938, when he was not yet 25; 1938 to exploit the resources of the piano the last, the Lachrymae for viola and strings, and show himself off as a pianist, but in Op. 48a, was completed in 1976, just months later concerted works he sought a closer before his death. He began the Violin Concerto, integration of soloist and orchestra. The Violin Op. 15 in November 1938, and was still working Concerto, its brilliant and taxing solo part on it the following May, when he left England notwithstanding, is already a more symphonic for a three-year stay in North America with work, and when Britten revised it, years later, his companion, the tenor Peter Pears. Before it was to tame the more indulgent solo writing heading to New York, they spent the summer and further enhance the music’s unity. in Canada, where Britten wrote several works including Canadian Carnival. The Violin The three movements, all unusual by Classical Concerto was completed at St.-Jovite, Quebec, standards, are played without a break. OCTOBER 18 & 20, 2018 29 ABOUT THE WORKS The first, urbane and moderately paced, opens rhythmically driving, angular and dissonant, with a rhythmic “snap” in the timpani that sparely but brilliantly scored. (The transition becomes an important motif—there is as much from the more relaxed Trio section back to the development of rhythmic ideas as of themes in scherzo is plain weird, scored for two piccolos, this piece. (According to the Spanish violinist tuba, and trembling string harmonics.) The Antonio Brosa, who gave the première in New lone solo cadenza serves as a link to the finale, York in 1940, this “snap,” and the movement’s which marks Britten’s first use of a favourite frequent sombreness, reflected Britten’s visit form: the passacaglia (variations on a ground to Spain in 1936, where he witnessed the civil bass). Three trombones—saved until now— war.) Britten had a gift for irony and parody, announce the noble, arching ground bass, and, and it shows in the spiky scoring, pointed in the brilliant series of variations that follows accompaniments, animated rhythms, and tart the theme, is reworked with astonishing dissonances. imagination. The result is not a series of isolated little pieces, however, but a massive The second movement is an aggressive movement of impressive cumulative power. scherzo—biting and even grotesque, Program note by Kevin Bazzana Francis Poulenc Les animaux modèles (Symphonic Version) Born: Paris, France, January 7, 1899 20 min Died: Paris, France, January 30, 1963 Composed: Original ballet, 1940–1942; orchestral suite, 1942 Poulenc’s melodic flair, coupled with a 1. Petit jour (Dawn): Impressionistic harmonies sophisticated use of an extended tonal palette, depict a July dawn in rural Burgundy, as makes his music as appealing to audiences farmers pick up their tools and leave for the today as it was during his lifetime. Deeply fields. rooted in the Parisian artistic scene—from the techniques of his fellow French composers to 2. Le lion amoureux (The amorous lion): The popular styles of the music hall and the café— beautiful Elmire is seduced by a “lion,” who is, his music is nevertheless uniquely his own. in fact, a very handsome and virile man. They dance a “waltz-java,” a faster, more sensual The ballet Les animaux modèles was composed dance popular in the early 20th century. while Poulenc was splitting his time between German-occupied Paris and his country house 3. L’homme entre deux âges et ses deux at Noizay. Based on the fables of Jean de la maîtresses (A middle-aged man with two Fontaine, it is structured as a suite of dances, mistresses): High-energy music reminiscent of each a twist on a popular musical style; his music hall dance tunes evokes a pas-de-trois experience in writing film music is also evident. of a middle-aged man whose head is picked bald by his two mistresses—one old, one young. 30 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 4. La mort et le bûcheron (Death and the hens. (Poulenc inserted the melody of the song woodcutter): A woodcutter, heavily burdened “No, no, you will not have our Alsace-Lorraine”, with a bundle of sticks, calls upon Death to played on trumpet, as a “protest song” to the deliver him. Death in the guise of a very elegant German officers who would have heard it at the woman appears. Death takes off his mask.