Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 2016-2017 Mellon Grand Classics Season October 7 and 9, 2016 MANFRED HONECK, CONDUCTOR PINCHAS ZUKERMAN, VIOLIN JAMES MacMILLAN Britannia MAX BRUCH Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra in G minor, Opus 26 I. Prelude: Allegro moderato II. Adagio III. Finale: Allegro energico Mr. Zukerman Intermission EDWARD ELGAR Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36 “Enigma Variations” Enigma: Andante Variations: I. "C.A.E." L'istesso tempo II. "H.D.S.- P." Allegro III. "R.B.T." Allegretto IV. "W.M.B." Allegro di molto V. "R.P.A." Moderato VI. "Ysobel" Andantino VII. "Troyte" Presto VIII. "W.N." Allegretto IX. "Nimrod" Moderato X. "Dorabella - Intermezzo" Allegretto XI. "G.R.S." Allegro di molto XII. "B.G.N." Andante XIII. "*** - Romanza" Moderato XIV. "E.D.U." - Finale JAMES MacMILLAN Fanfare for Pittsburgh A special commission to celebrate the Pittsburgh Symphony’s 120th Anniversary and the opening of the 2016-17 season. Oct. 7-9, 2016, page 1 PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA JAMES MACMILLAN Britannia (1994) Sir James MacMillan was born in Kilwinning, Ayshire, Scotland on July 16, 1959. Britannia was composed in 1994 as a celebration of British orchestras. It was premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra in Barbican Hall on September 21, 1994, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. These performances mark the Pittsburgh premiere of Britannia, and mark the first of four MacMillan compositions to be performed in the 2016-17 season as the Pittsburgh Symphony Composer of the Year. The score calls for piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Performance time: approximately 13 minutes. Scottish composer James MacMillan, born in Kilwinning, Ayshire on July 16, 1959, was educated at the University of Edinburgh (B.Mus., 1981) and the University of Durham (Ph.D., 1987), where his principal teacher was John Casken. After working as a lecturer at Manchester University from 1986 to 1988, MacMillan returned to Scotland, where he has since fulfilled numerous important commissions and taught at the University of Edinburgh and Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. He has also served as Artistic Director of the Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust, Affiliate Composer of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Composer/Conductor with the BBC Philharmonic, and Visiting Composer of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Artistic Director of its contemporary music series, Music Today; he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic in 2010. In 1993, MacMillan won both the Gramophone Contemporary Music Record of the Year Award and the Classic CD Award for Contemporary Music; he was made a CBE in 2004, given the 2008 British Composer Award for Liturgical Music, named an Honorary Patron of the London Chamber Orchestra in 2008, and was awarded a Knighthood in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours. In October 2014, MacMillan inaugurated the Cumnock Tryst, a festival of international scope that he organized in his boyhood home in southern Scotland. Macmillan’s compositions, many of which incorporate traditional Scottish elements and bear some stamp of either his religion (Catholicism) or his politics (socialism), include two operas, a St. John Passion, concerted works for piano (The Berserking), percussion (Veni, Veni, Emmanuel), cello, clarinet, organ and trumpet, orchestral scores, chamber works and pieces for solo voices and chorus. Of his creative personality, MacMillan wrote, “There are strong Scottish traits in my works, but also an aggressive and forthright tendency with a strong rhythmic physicality, showing the influence of Stravinsky, Messiaen and some minimalist composers.... I respect tradition in many forms, whether cultural, political or historical, and in keeping up a continuous, delicate scrutiny of old forms, ancient traditions, enduring beliefs and lasting values one is strengthened in one’s constant, restless search for new avenues of expression. The existence of the influence of the old alongside the experiments of the new should not appear incongruous. Therefore, in ideological terms, my works express the timeless truths of Roman Catholicism alongside a fierce social commitment. And musically one can hopefully sense the depths of times past integrating with attempts at innovation.” MacMillan composed Britannia in 1994 on commission from British Telecommunications and the Association of British Orchestras “as a celebration,” according to the composer, “of a major force in our musical life, the British orchestra. Britannia is an orchestral fantasy based on ‘patriotic themes.’ There is no program or story as such but the work’s tapestry of popular melodies and resonant allusions may provoke, given their new and unfamiliar contexts, some surprising scenarios in the mind of the listener, particularly at a time when petty chauvinism threatens to rear up once again throughout Europe. The piece grows out of a short sketch written in 1994, Mémoire Impériale, which is based on a march tune by General John Reid, an 18th-century British army officer who established the music department at Edinburgh University. Reid’s theme and the ‘imperial’ themes of Elgar and Arne are thrown into a volatile concoction with other materials — an Irish reel (which becomes a jig), a Cockney drinking song, other march tunes and a hazy Celtic modality. All the main ideas are presented in quick and stark succession during the fast opening section. The slow middle part begins with a serene canon [i.e., a melody in exact imitation] that is gradually undermined by military allusions on brass and percussion. This confrontation leads to the work’s climax, which is followed by an unsettled coda.” Oct. 7-9, 2016, page 2 MAX BRUCH Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra in G minor, Opus 26 (1865-1866) Max Bruch was born in Cologne on January 6, 1838 and died in Friedenau (near Berlin) on October 20, 1920. The first sketches for Bruch’s G minor Concerto date from 1857; the work was mostly composed in 1865-1866. It was premiered on April 24, 1866 at the Music Institute in Coblenz, with Otto von Königslöw as soloist and the composer conducting. Bruch revised the score the following year, and Joseph Joachim gave the first performance of this definitive version on January 7, 1868 in Bremen. The Pittsburgh Symphony gave its first performance of the G minor Violin Concerto in November 1897 with soloist Friedrich Voelker and Frederic Archer conducting. This past summer, Pinchas Zukerman performed the concerto with Manfred Honeck and Pittsburgh Symphony during their residency at the Aspen Music Festival on August 23, 2016. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. Performance time: approximately 26 minutes. Max Bruch, widely known and respected in his day as a composer, conductor and teacher, received his earliest music instruction from his mother, a noted singer and pianist. He began composing at eleven, and by fourteen had produced a symphony and a string quartet, the latter garnering a prize that allowed him to study with Karl Reinecke and Ferdinand Hiller in Cologne. His opera Die Loreley (1862) and the choral work Frithjof (1864) brought him his first public acclaim. For the next 25 years, Bruch held various posts as a choral and orchestral conductor in Cologne, Coblenz, Sondershausen, Berlin, Liverpool and Breslau; in 1883, he visited the United States to conduct concerts of his own choral compositions. From 1890 to 1910, he taught composition at the Berlin Academy and received numerous awards for his work, including an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. Though Bruch is known mainly for three famous compositions for string soloist and orchestra (the G minor Concerto and Scottish Fantasy for violin, and Kol Nidrei for cello), he also composed two other violin concertos, three symphonies, a concerto for two pianos, various chamber pieces, songs, three operas and much choral music. The G minor Violin Concerto brought Bruch his earliest and most enduring fame. He began sketching ideas for the piece in 1857, when he was a nineteen-year-old student just finishing his studies with Ferdinand Hiller in Cologne, but they only came to fruition in 1865, at the start of his two-year tenure as director of the Royal Institute for Music at Coblenz. The piece was not only Bruch’s first concerto but also his first large work for orchestra, so he sought the advice of Johann Naret-Koning, concertmaster at Mannheim, concerning matters of violin technique and instrumental balance. The Concerto was ready for performance by April 1866 with Naret-Koning slated as soloist, but illness forced him to cancel and Otto von Königslöw, concertmaster of the Gürzenich Orchestra and violin professor at the Cologne Conservatory, took over at the last minute. That public hearing convinced Bruch that repairs were needed, so he temporarily withdrew the Concerto while he revised and refined it during the next year with the meticulous advice of the eminent violinist and composer Joseph Joachim (who was to provide similar assistance to Johannes Brahms a decade later with his Violin Concerto). Joachim was soloist in the premiere of the definitive version of the Concerto, on January 7, 1868 in Bremen; he received the score’s dedication in appreciation from Bruch. The Concerto was an enormous hit, spreading Bruch’s reputation across Europe and, following its first performance in New York in 1872 by Pablo de Sarasate, America. Its success, however, hoisted Bruch upon the horns of a dilemma later in his career. He, of course, valued the notoriety that the Concerto brought him and his music, but he also came to realize that the work’s exceptional popularity overshadowed his other pieces for violin and orchestra. “Nothing compares to the laziness, stupidity and dullness of many German violinists,” he complained to the publisher Fritz Simrock in a letter from 1887.