Thursday, April 26, 2018 • 8:00 P.M. WIND ENSEMBLE Cliff Colnot, conductor DePaul Concert Hall 800 West Belden Avenue • Chicago Thursday, April 26, 2018 • 8:00 P.M. DePaul Concert Hall WIND ENSEMBLE Cliff Colnot, conductor PROGRAM Josef Mysliveček (1737-1781) Octet No. 3 in B-Flat Major (ca. 1770) Allegro Larghetto con un poco di moto Presto Wilhelm Berger (1861-1911) Serenade in F Major, Op. 102 (1910) Moderato Scherzo Menuett Romanze Finale Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) Déserts (1954) WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2018 PROGRAM NOTES Josef Mysliveček (1737-1781) Octet No. 3 in B-Flat Major (ca. 1770) Duration: 9 minutes Josef Mysliveček (1737-1781), known as “Il Divino Boemo” (The Divine Bohemian), was a colorful figure among Classical era composers. His life has been the subject of novels and an opera, Il Divino Boemo (1912), by the Czech composer, Stanislav Suda. In truth, very little of his biographical background, especially during his early years, has been verified. Much of what is known about Mysliveček comes from correspondence with Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, whom he befriended while the three were living in Bologna, Italy in 1770. Mysliveček was born into a family of millers. His family was quite prosperous and could afford to arrange for him to study music and to send Josef and his twin brother Jachym to Charles University. He did not complete his studies, he and his brother apprenticed in the family trade. By 1763, Mysliveček gave up milling, and with the financial support of his brother and a local noble man, he traveled to Venice to pursue a career composing opera. By the time he met the Mozarts, Mysliveček was quite successful. Although he was best known for his operas, he composed several symphonies and chamber works in an Italianate classical style. The octet you hear tonight was one of three composed by Mysliveček in Bavaria during the period, 1777–78. Harmoniemusik was very popular in the courts of Central Europe, so Mysliveček likely wrote these octets for an existing ensemble or hoped to use them to attract the attention of a wealthy patron. The Octet in B-flat Major has three contrasting movements: an opening allegro, a lyrical larghetto, and a dancelike presto, and they showcase Mysliveček’s compositional style. Wilhelm Berger (1861-1911) Serenade in F Major, Op. 102 (1910) Duration: 24 minutes The Serenade in F, Op. 102 (1911) by Wilhelm Berger (1861–1911) shows how music for wind ensemble evolved over the century since Mysliveček completed his octet. Berger, the son of German immigrants, was born in Boston in 1861, but his family returned to Germany soon after. Berger studied first in Bremen and then at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik from 1878 to 1882. Berger enjoyed a successful career as a composer, court pianist, and music professor. He is best known for his works for voice and piano, and his style is most closely associated with Brahms. WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2018 PROGRAM NOTES The serenade was Berger’s last composition, and he passed away before it was performed. Berger composed for a band of twelve musicians. He augmented an octet with a pair of flutes and an additional pair of horns, which mirrors the instrumentation of Richard Strauss’s Serenade for Winds, Op. 7 (1881/82). Berger’s writing is inventive. He further departs from the conventional forms associated with wind serenades. The serenade includes both a scherzo and a menuetto following the opening movement, and he saves the dark romanza for the fourth movement. The piece concludes with a bright finale. The harmonic language and use of color reflect Romantic era style. Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) Déserts (1954) Duration: 17 minutes Edgard Varèse (1883–1965), a French-born American, is well respected as an experimental composer. He composed Déserts late in his career, completing it in 1954, eighteen years after the premiere of his previous piece, Density 21.5 (1936). Varèse began composing the instrumental parts of Déserts in 1949, but he only completed it in 1954 at the studios of Radiodiffusion Télévision Française. Déserts was the first concert to be broadcast live and in stereo by French radio. Varèse intended the work to evoke “not only physical deserts of sand, sea, mountains and snow, outer space, deserted city streets; but also this distant inner space…where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude.” Varèse conceptualized Déserts as a multimedia work of art, and he was intrigued by the possibilities offered by electronic technology. Although tonight, you hear only the four instrumental sections composed for an ensemble of fourteen winds, piano, and percussion, Varèse composed three instrumental tape interludes to be interpolated between each instrumental section. In 1953, Varèse received an Ampex tape recorder from an anonymous donor that enabled him to collect sounds from church organs, percussion instruments, and factories, which he later manipulated to create the tape interludes. He had hoped to incorporate film into Déserts, even going so far as to approach Walt Disney as a possible collaborator, although a film component was never realized. Déserts evokes the spare landscape of a desert. Like a desert, what might at first appear austere or empty is rich in subtle details upon closer examination. Through much of the work, Varése uses sustained chords and single pitches, often punctuated with a sharp attack. The orchestration is quite delicate. The pitched percussion instruments – the piano, glockenspiel, tubular bells, WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2018 PROGRAM NOTES vibraphone, and xylophone – often double the melodies of the winds. The percussion instruments provide not only complex rhythmic figures, but also a wide palette of timbres. The attack and decay of notes across different instrumental timbres emerges as one of the important musical ideas in this work. Déserts caused considerable controversy. Many music critics compared its premiere to that of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring forty years earlier. In the live radio broadcast of Déserts, listeners could hear both the cheers and jeers of the audience in the hall. One music critic wrote “The audience was exceptionally patient; they only protested after a few minutes.” Varèse was not invited back to work in France, and the national radio company considered cutting the funding for the studio where he completed the work. However, today Déserts is considered one of Varèse’s most influential compositions. It marks the first time he realized his interests in electronic music through the use of tape, and it represents his mature compositional style. Notes by Katherine Brucher. WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2018 BIOGRAPHY In the past decade Cliff Colnot has emerged as a distinguished conductor and a musician of uncommon range. One of few musicians to have studied orchestral repertoire with Daniel Barenboim, Colnot has served as assistant conductor for Barenboim’s West- Eastern Divan Workshops for young musicians from Israel, Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries. Colnot has also worked extensively with the late Pierre Boulez and served as assistant conductor to Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He regularly conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom he recorded Richard Wernick’s The Name of the Game for Bridge Records, and he collaborates with the internationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird. Colnot has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW ensemble since its inception and was principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, an orchestra he conducted for more than twenty-two years. Colnot also conducts Contempo at the University of Chicago, and the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, and the Chicago Philharmonic. Colnot is also a master arranger. His orchestration of Shulamit Ran’s Three Fantasy Pieces for Cello and Piano was recorded by the English Chamber Orchestra. For the chamber orchestra of the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, Colnot has arranged the Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande (both published by Universal) and Manuel De Falla’s Three Cornered Hat. For ICE, Colnot arranged Olivier Messiaen’s Chants de Terre et de Ciel for chamber orchestra and mezzo- soprano, also published by Universal. For members of the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Colnot arranged Shulamit Ran’s Soliloquy for Violin, Cello, and Piano, to be published by Theodore Presser. Colnot re-orchestrated the Bottesini Concerto No. 2 in B Minor for Double Bass, correcting many errors in existing editions and providing a more viable performance version. He has also been commissioned to write works for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Percussion Scholarship Group. His orchestration of Duke Ellington’s New World Coming was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim as piano soloist in 2000, and Colnot also arranged, conducted, and co-produced the CD Tribute to Ellington featuring Barenboim at the piano. He has also written for rock-and-roll, pop, and jazz artists Richard Marx, Phil Ramone, Hugh Jackman, Leann Rimes, SheDaisy, Patricia Barber, Emerson Drive, and Brian Culbertson. WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2018 BIOGRAPHY Colnot graduated with honors from Florida State University and in 1995 received the Ernst von Dohnányi Certificate of Excellence. He has also received the prestigious Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University, where he earned his doctorate. In 2001 the Chicago Tribune named Cliff Colnot a “Chicagoan of the Year” in music, and in 2005 he received the William Hall Sherwood Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts. Most recently, Colnot has been awarded the 2016 Alice M. Ditson Conductor’s Award of Columbia University in recognition for his excellent commitment to the performance of works by American Composers.