Wednesday Evening, December 10, 2014, at 8:00 Isaac Stern Auditorium/Ronald O. Perelman Stage CondUctor’s Notes Q&A with Leon Botstein at 7:00 presents ReqUiem for the 20th CentUry LEON BOTSTEIN, Conductor RALPH VAUGHAN Symphony No. 6 WILLIAMS Allegro Moderato Scherzo (Allegro vivace) Epilogue (Moderato) GYÖRGY LIGETI ReqUiem IntroitUs (Sostenuto) Kyrie (Molto espressivo) De die jUdicii seqUentia (SUbito: Agitato molto) Lacrimosa (Molto lento) SARA MURPHY, Mezzo-soprano JENNIFER ZETLAN, Soprano BARD FESTIVAL CHORALE JAMES BAGWELL, Director Intermission ALFRED SCHNITTKE Nagasaki Nagasaki, City of Grief Morning On That FatefUl Day On the Ashes Rise Sun, Rise Sun of Peace SARA MURPHY, Mezzo-soprano BARD FESTIVAL CHORALE JAMES BAGWELL, Director This evening’s concert will rUn approximately two hoUrs and 10 minUtes inclUding one 20-minUte intermission. This project is made possible with the sUpport of The Vaughan Williams Charitable TrUst. American Symphony Orchestra welcomes the many organizations who participate in oUr CommUnity Access Program, which provides free and low-cost tickets to Underserved groUps in New York’s five boroUghs. For information on how yoU can sUpport this program, please call (212) 868-9276. PLEASE SWITCH OFF YOUR CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. FROM THE MUsic Director Requiem for the 20th Century 1930s throUgh the 1950s more than 18 by Leon Botstein million Soviet citizens were eliminated. Despite its venerable cUltUre, Japan The second half of the 20th centUry, devastated its Pacific neighbors from particUlarly in the years between 1945 China to Hawaii. And China itself, and the fall of CommUnism in 1989, Under Mao, indUlged in horrific pUrges was preoccUpied with a baffling and again in the name of CommUnist eqUal- distUrbing historical paradox. How ity. Japanese aggression and also fear of was it that after a centUry of astoUnding CommUnism led the United States to indUstrial and scientific progress, assert its dominance by deploying the accompanied by a remarkable exten- most destrUctive device then known to sion of literacy and cUltUre, the so- hUmankind, sparking a nUclear contest called civilized world beginning in 1914 that placed the fate of the entire species (when the 19th centUry actUally came in jeopardy. to a close) became a theater of senseless violence and barbarism? An intolerable This paradox was not lost on the contradiction between the claims of civ- artists, writers, and composers who ilization and cUltUre and the political needed to confront the hypocrisy of a realities of the 20th centUry became post-war “normalcy” after 1945. The obvioUs. The perhaps thoUghtless only legitimate step toward the “nor- expectation had been that progress, mal” was the end of World War II. measUred by edUcation, cUltUre, and After its conclUsion, the ethnic con- the expansion of liberty throUgh the flicts, the violence and ineqUality that abolition of slavery and serfdom and festered beneath the sUrface for mUch the extension of democracy, woUld lead of the 19th centUry, sUbsided briefly to a politics of reason and tolerance, with attempts to resolve them. BUt they and thUs the end of violent conflict. exploded again after 1989, as they had Instead, an Unbroken cycle of carnage in the first half of the 20th centUry, and began in 1914 that peaked in 1945. that legacy continUes to this day. The That year the UnambiguoUs revelation most baffling qUestions facing 20th- was made visible: that the “cUltUred” centUry composers who wanted to con- coUntries of EUrope, led by Germany, tinUe to write, broadly speaking, in the had sUccessfUlly exterminated well over cUltUral tradition of mUsic of the 19th 6 million civilians, Jews, and Roma and centUry, given the hUman and ethical several ethnic and gendered minorities. catastrophe so starkly visible in 1945, A deep irony pervades the techniqUes were: how, for whom, and for what? Used by the Nazis, which were con- scioUsly emblematic of the very progress The venerable tradition of philosophi- that was sUpposed to lead hUmanity to cal specUlation since the 18th centUry a higher standard of civility: the spread that linked the beautifUl to the good, of written language, the efficiency of aesthetics to ethics, seemed bankrUpt bUreaucracy, and the wonders of tech- and fraudUlent. What then was the pUr- nology. DUring the same period, Com- pose of writing sUch mUsic in the wake mUnism, a movement committed to of the tragedies? For one thing, the radical eqUality, became corrUpted by beauty, symmetry, and harmony of clas- Stalinism from within. Between the sical and romantic mUsic had been the preferred art of the oppressors and there is no comparable sUch qUestion killers. Admiration of it and its practice aboUt the dropping of the second clearly provided no insUrance whatso- bomb: it strikes Us as an entirely gratu- ever for being good or at least better. itoUs act. Nagasaki was written at the height of the Cold War, a period of deep The three pieces on today’s program are mUtUal sUspicion between the Soviet brilliant examples of three very differ- Union and the United States, and at a ent attempts to grapple with the desper- moment in the 1950s when the fear of ate and fUndamental challenge to the nUclear war was at its peak. Americans vocation of mUsic making after 1945, everywhere were bUilding falloUt shel- which was Unknown to the composers ters and school children were hiding who made Up the canon of classical Under their desks; the prospect of an mUsic from Bach to Mahler. The oldest apocalypse hardly seemed remote. The work on the program, by Ralph mUshroom cloUd became the emblem Vaughan Williams, was clearly inspired of hUman fear, irrationality, and the by this composer’s confrontation with instinct to self-destrUct, as Stanley KUbrick World War II. Already in the 1930s, so powerfUlly showed in Dr. Strangelove. Vaughan Williams wrote a piece that Alfred Schnittke, arguably the greatest can be considered a meditation on the Russian composer after Shostakovich, darker forces of history: the FoUrth created this powerfUl work jUst as he Symphony (performed by the ASO in gradUated from conservatory as a yoUng 2006 for a program aboUt the impend- man. The rebellioUs irony and obsession ing Second World War). The First with history that characterizes Schnittke’s World War had a traumatic impact on later and better-known works sUggest Vaughan Williams, and the thoUght of that in certain respects the yoUng com- another on the horizon was a devastat- poser was not so far removed from the ing prospect. His next symphony, the better-known matUre composer, despite pastoral, nostalgic Fifth, has been con- overt differences in style. Resistant to sidered a bridge between his expression being anyone’s apparatchik, the yoUng of fear of the fUtUre in the FoUrth, and Schnittke was a natUral-born dissenter. the grim realization of the retUrn to vio- Yet this oratorio also reflects the pow- lence in the Sixth Symphony, which we erfUl idealism of a yoUng artist eager to are performing in this program. command the mimetic capacity of mUsic, to captUre the too easily repressed hor- This symphony reveals a need shared ror at the Use of nUclear weapons. by composers writing after 1945 to avoid any hint of the sentimental and The “newest” work on this program is the concession to easy listening. Since also the most famoUs. György Ligeti’s trivialized and commercialized attribUtes ReqUiem became inadvertently immor- of beaUty tUrned oUt to be collaborators talized when Stanley KUbrick (again) with radical evil in modern times, the Used it in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey experience of mUsic had to be arresting (along with another work from the and challenging in a manner that coUld 19th centUry that has, also because of begin to redeem the power of mUsical art this film, become ironically synonymoUs as a critical instrUment of hUmanism. with images of hUman evolUtion: StraUss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra). Schnittke’s The next work chronologically is oratorio was a prodUct of the rather Schnittke’s oratorio Nagasaki. If a legit- rigid and terrified 1950s. Ligeti’s mUsic imate debate sUrroUnds the dropping of emerged from the more expansive and the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima, colorfUl 1960s when political Utopianism and radicalism experienced a brief, masterpiece in which simplicity and intoxicating UpsUrge. Here is mod- complexity are reconciled with Ligeti’s ernism at its best. Ligeti, himself a sUr- Unparalleled ear for sonorities. One vivor of the Holocaust, Understood that has the immediate sense that Ligeti it was an ethical imperative to fashion foUnd a UniqUe and distinctively mod- mUsic in a new way that woUld be ade- ernist way of expressing a dimension qUate to contemporary life bUt at the of the hUman experience and condition same time reflective of the highest aspi- that coUld only be achieved throUgh rations we associate with Bach, Mozart, mUsic—and at that a mUsic the char- and Beethoven. Using the framework acter of which does not flinch from provided by the ritUal confrontation confronting both the horror and the with death and the pain not only of hope embedded in the history of the loss, bUt of sUrvival, the ReqUiem is a 20th centUry. THE Program by Byron Adams Expanded versions of these concert notes can be read at AmericanSymphony.org. Ralph Vaughan Williams Born October 12, 1872, in Down Ampney, GloUcestershire Died August 26, 1958, in London Symphony No. 6 Composed in 1944–47, revised in 1950 Premiered on April 21, 1948, at Royal Albert Hall in London by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, condUcted by Sir Adrian BoUlt First Recording by ASO foUnder Leopold Stokowski condUcting the New York Philharmonic on FebrUary 21, 1949 Performance Time: approximately 33 minUtes InstrUments for this performance: 3 flUtes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 1 tenor saxophone, 2 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon, 5 French horns, 4 trUmpets, 3 trombones, 1 tUba, timpani, percUssion (bass drUm, snare drUm, triangle, cymbals, sUspended cymbal, xylophone), 2 harps, 26 violins, 10 violas, 10 cellos, and 8 doUble basses.