27 Season 2012-2013 Thursday, October 18, at 7:00 The Philadelphia Orchestra Opening Night Yannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Renée Fleming Soprano attrib. J.S. Smith/ “The Star-Spangled Banner” orch. Ormandy Ravel Shéhérazade I. Asie II. La Flûte enchantée III. L’Indifférent Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante moderato III. Allegro giocoso—Poco meno presto—Tempo I IV. Allegro energico e passionato—Più allegro Strauss “Mein Elemer!” from Arabella, Op. 79 First Philadelphia Orchestra performance This program runs approximately 1 hour, 25 minutes, and will be performed without an intermission. Musicians of The Philadelphia Orchestra are graciously donating their services for tonight’s concert. 228 Story Title The Philadelphia Orchestra Jessica Griffin Renowned for its distinctive vivid world of opera and Orchestra boasts a new sound, beloved for its choral music. partnership with the keen ability to capture the National Centre for the Philadelphia is home and hearts and imaginations Performing Arts in Beijing. the Orchestra nurtures of audiences, and admired The Orchestra annually an important relationship for an unrivaled legacy of performs at Carnegie Hall not only with patrons who “firsts” in music-making, and the Kennedy Center support the main season The Philadelphia Orchestra while also enjoying a at the Kimmel Center for is one of the preeminent three-week residency in the Performing Arts but orchestras in the world. Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and also those who enjoy the a strong partnership with The Philadelphia Orchestra’s other area the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Orchestra has cultivated performances at the Mann Festival. an extraordinary history of Center, Penn’s Landing, artistic leaders in its 112 and other venues. The The ensemble maintains seasons, including music Philadelphia Orchestra an important Philadelphia directors Fritz Scheel, Carl Association also continues tradition of presenting Pohlig, Leopold Stokowski, to own the Academy of educational programs for Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Music—a National Historic students of all ages. Today Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Landmark—as it has since the Orchestra executes a and Christoph Eschenbach, 1957. myriad of education and and Charles Dutoit, who community partnership Through concerts, served as chief conductor programs serving over tours, residencies, from 2008 to 2012. With 45,000 annually, including presentations, and the 2012-13 season, its Neighborhood Concert recordings, the Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin Series, Sound All Around is a global ambassador becomes the eighth music and Family Concerts, and for Philadelphia and for director of The Philadelphia eZseatU. the United States. Having Orchestra. Named music been the first American For more information on director designate in 2010, orchestra to perform in The Philadelphia Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin brings a China, in 1973 at the please visit www.philorch.org. vision that extends beyond request of President Nixon, symphonic music into the today The Philadelphia 29 Soloist Decca/Andrew Eccles The glamour and excitement of a gala performance may well be embodied in soprano Renée Fleming, and this is her fifth such appearance with The Philadelphia Orchestra. She made her Orchestra debut in 1998 at the 141st Academy of Music Anniversary Concert with Wolfgang Sawallisch. In 2004 she sang with the Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach at both the Orchestra’s Opening Night and at Opening Night of Carnegie Hall. She returned to the Academy of Music in 2011 for the 154th Anniversary Concert. Known as “the people’s diva,” Ms. Fleming was named 2012 Female Singer of the Year by the German ECHO awards. This fall at the Metropolitan Opera, she sings Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello. Her fall concert and recital schedule includes performances throughout South America and in Paris, Geneva, London, and Vienna. Ms. Fleming has hosted a variety of television and radio broadcasts, including the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series and Live from Lincoln Center on PBS. She has performed on numerous distinguished occasions, including the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Also in 2008 she became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline an opening night gala. In January 2009 Ms. Fleming was featured in the televised “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.” Earlier this year she sang on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in the Diamond Jubilee Concert for Queen Elizabeth II. A three-time Grammy Award winner, Ms. Fleming won the 2010 Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Performance. Among her other accolades are the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, Sweden’s Polar Prize, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, and Honorary Membership in the Royal Academy of Music. In 2010 she was named the first Creative Consultant at Lyric Opera of Chicago. She is currently curating the creation of a world-premiere opera based on Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel Bel Canto for Lyric Opera’s 2015-16 season. For tonight’s performance Ms. Fleming’s gowns are by Angel Sanchez and her jewelry is by Ann Ziff for Tamsen Z. For more information visit www.reneefleming.com. 30 Framing the Program The festive Opening Night Concert of The Philadelphia Parallel Events Orchestra’s 113th season heralds the inauguration of 1885 Music Yannick Nézet-Séguin as the ensemble’s eighth music Brahms Franck director in a program featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Symphony Symphonic Johannes Brahms, and Richard Strauss. No. 4 Variations Literature Few 19th- and 20th-century French composers resisted Haggard the allure of the East. From Berlioz and Bizet, through King Solomon’s Debussy and Ravel, to Messiaen and beyond, the Mines exoticism of both a real and an imagined Asia inspired Art countless compositions. For his magnificent song cycle Van Gogh Shéhérazade, Ravel set three French poems by Tristan The Potato Klingsor that were based on One Thousand and One Eaters Nights, in which the legendary Persian queen forestalls History death by telling marvelous tales perpetually “to be continued.” Galton proves individuality of Brahms, after many years of delays, finally completed his fingerprints Symphony No. 1 at age 43. With his writer’s block broken, and acclaim for the work overwhelming, he wrote his other 1903 Music three symphonies within the decade. The final Fourth Ravel Delius Symphony, dating from the summers of 1884 and 1885, Shéhérazade Sea Drift proved a masterful culmination, looking back to Bach and Literature Beethoven all the while forging compositional innovations London that inspired the next generation of composers. The Call of the Wild No 20th-century composer wrote as gloriously for the Art female voice as did Richard Strauss, who was married Kandinsky to a noted soprano. From the magical conclusion of Der The Blue Rider Rosenkavalier to the ending of his last opera, Capriccio, History and the magnificent Four Last Songs, Strauss incomparably Ford Motor weaved the voice into a gorgeous orchestral fabric. The Company concert tonight concludes with the solo aria at the end founded of Act I of Arabella, in which the title character muses on 1929 Music her many suitors but is most intrigued by a mysterious Strauss Walton stranger who has just arrived for carnival time in Vienna. Arabella Viola Concerto Literature Cocteau Les Enfants terribles Art Chagall Love Idyll History “Black Friday” 31 The Music Shéhérazade Fascination with “the Orient,” as it was known then, took many musical forms during the 19th and early 20th centuries: generalized exoticisms such as those in Alexander Glazunov’s Oriental Rhapsody, settings of ancient and obscure Eastern poetry such as that of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, and specific retellings of folktales such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade. The impressionists in France found particular resonance with the delicately shaded poetry and modal scales of the Far East, and reveled in the perfumed exoticism that was Maurice Ravel so close in its affinities to the fin-de-siècle aesthetic. Of Born in Ciboure, Lower course few of the Europeans who were creating these Pyrenees, March 7, 1875 picturesque scenes of far-off lands had ever actually Died in Paris, December 28, 1937 been to Asia, but this didn’t stop them from depicting it in poetry, painting, and music. Ravel was especially fascinated with Asia, partly because he felt a strong sympathy with native peoples who were often living under oppressive colonial rule. Composed in 1903 on poems by the poet Arthur Justin Leon Leclère (Tristan Klingsor), Ravel’s Shéhérazade was an orchestral song cycle imbued with colorfully fragile and perhaps stereotypical images of life in Asia. An Unrealized Opera In 1899 Ravel had already composed an overture to a projected opera on the subject of Sheherazade, the plucky Arab woman whose 1001 nights of romantic storytelling had more than once captured the imagination of composers of the 19th century. The operatic project was never realized, however, and the music was put aside. Ravel began anew with the present cycle, and this project occupied him for some time. The three Shéhérazade settings were first performed in Paris in 1905, with the soprano Jane Hatto and an orchestra conducted by the pianist Alfred Cortot. As a guide to idiomatic text-setting, Ravel enjoined Klingsor to read the poetry to him aloud, so that he might learn to imitate his vocal inflections in as precise a manner as possible. The poet was highly pleased with the resulting music, and credited Ravel with having “transformed the poems into expressive recitative, exalting the inflections of the texts into song.” The result was no less than a masterpiece of song. 32 Ravel composed Shéhérazade A Closer Look The first song, Asia, presents Ravel with in 1903. a perfect opportunity to show off his rapidly expanding The work was first performed orchestral aplomb, in scoring that reflects the whole by The Philadelphia Orchestra spectrum of this poem’s multi-hued subject matter.