Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director Toronto Symphony Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 8:00pm Orchestra TS Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:00pm Saturday, January 11, 2020 at 8:00pm Beethoven 7 Sir Andrew Davis, conductor Seong-Jin Cho, piano Ludwig van Beethoven King Stephen Overture, Op. 117 Ludwig van Beethoven ENTER. EMBARK. EXPERIENCE. Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 I. Allegro moderato II. Andante con moto Music, mashups, and magic! Join the TSO for III. Rondo: Vivace EVENING EPIC—our daring annual party in support of TSO music-education programs. Intermission Featuring the unmistakable sound of JUNO-nominated Ludwig van Beethoven singer-songwriter iskwē alongside the brilliant Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 I. Poco sostenuto – Vivace musicians of the TSO. Party ticket includes music, II. Allegretto whimsical and adventurous spotlight performances, III. Presto and fantastic food and drink. IV. Allegro con brio Early-bird tickets on sale now! March 26, 2020 The Carlu Appearances of Sir Andrew Davis this season are generously supported by Hans and Susan Brenninkmeyer. As a courtesy to musicians, guest artists, and fellow concertgoers, please put your phone away and EveningEpic.ca on silent during the performance. JANUARY 8, 9 & 11, 2020 9 Thursday, March 26, 2020 The Carlu, 444 Yonge Street Toronto, ON 6pm Private cocktail reception 7pm Patrons’ Dinner 9pm Performances by TSO 20 20 26, ch Mar y, hursda T eet Str onge Y 444 Carlu, he T onto, ON onto, r To n tio p ce re cocktail Private pm 6 ons’ Dinner ons’ tr Pa pm 7 O TS by erformances P pm 9 Thursday, March 26, 2020 The Carlu, 444 Yonge Street Toronto, ON 6pm Private cocktail reception 7pm Patrons’ Dinner 9pm Performances by TSO 20 20 26, ch Mar y, hursda T eet Str onge Y 444 Carlu, he T onto, ON onto, r To n tio p ce re cocktail Private pm 6 ons’ Dinner ons’ tr Pa pm 7 O TS by erformances P pm 9 20 20 26, ch Mar y, hursda T eet Str onge Y 444 Carlu, he T onto, ON onto, r To n tio p ce re cocktail Private pm 6 ons’ Dinner ons’ tr Pa pm 7 O TS by erformances P pm 9 ABOUT THE WORKS plays, with the first performance of King Stephen taking place in February 1812. The King Stephen overture was first performed Ludwig van Beethoven by the TSO in November 1974, under the baton King Stephen Overture, Op. 117 of Andrew Davis, who was in his first full season as the orchestra’s conductor, in the season Baptized: Bonn, Germany, Dec 17, 1770 prior to assuming the role of Music Director. In Died: Vienna, Austria, Mar 26, 1827 his program note for that performance, Godfrey Composed: 1811 8 Rideout wrote: “Neither of the above works min [King Stephen and The Ruins of Athens] could be considered Beethoven at his best. They are pot-boilers, but it should be noted that a Beethoven pot-boiler, because of the brilliance August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue of workmanship, is still a cut above those of was born in May 1761 to a respected Weimar other composers.… A remarkable feature of the merchant family, and became, in his time, King Stephen overture is its opening (repeated a popular and sometimes controversially later): a series of notes, each one a fourth below satirical writer of essays, novels, and historical its predecessor and each given to different works, as well as more than 200 plays. In instruments. A march follows which leads and out of diplomatic positions throughout into the allegro proper. Another factor worthy his adult life, von Kotzebue was a strong of remark is the second thematic group: a advocate in Germany for Russian affairs, theme that looks forward to the finale of the and a less than ardent supporter of nascent Choral Symphony.” German nationalism in the opening decades of the 19th century. He also fathered 18 Program note by David Perlman children. One of them, the explorer Otto von Kotzebue, gave his name to Kotzebue Sound in northwestern Alaska while searching for Ludwig van Beethoven the Northwest Passage, in the service of Piano Concerto No. 4 in the Russian Empire, in 1818. This was the G Major, Op. 58 year before his father was assassinated, in Mannheim, as an “enemy of the German Composed: 1805–1806 people,” by Karl Ludwig Sand, a theology 34 min student enraged by von Kotzebue’s attacks on, among other things, the antisemitism latent in German student nationalism. Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto had its Hungary’s capital, Budapest, straddles the première in Vienna on December 22, 1808, Danube, with Pest to the east and Buda to with the composer conducting from the the west. To celebrate the opening of the New keyboard—the last time he performed a Theatre in Pest, in 1811, the management concerto in public. (He “played astonishingly commissioned two dramatic pieces from von well at the fastest possible tempos,” one Kotzebue: King Stephen, or Hungary’s First listener noted.) In this most lyrical, poetic, Hero, and The Ruins of Athens. Kotzebue had and fantastical of his concertos, Beethoven just turned down a proposal from Beethoven does not abandon Mozartian concerto form, to write the libretto for an opera about Attila but imbues it with a genuinely Romantic the Hun; instead he commissioned Beethoven voice, reconceived in ways all the more to write the incidental music for these two expressive for their audacity. The work is 10 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA rich in themes, some of them appearing as The whole work, in fact, may relate to the dreamy digressions or with piquant details Orpheus myth; it would explain certain of harmony, texture, and ornamentation. All curious features in the outer movements. The three movements feature sudden shifts of meditative chords for unaccompanied piano in mood; the work is ardent and melancholy, the opening bars—in a striking departure from heroic and ethereal, anguished and whimsical. concerto convention—perhaps evoke Orpheus Beethoven draws novel, vibrant colours from tuning his lyre (Czerny recommended that both orchestra and piano. This was his first the chords be broken, harp-like). Beethoven concerto to exploit the tonal resources of the scholar Owen Jander, for one, views the whole new six-octave Viennese fortepiano, and the work as a cycle—an “Orpheus concerto”— relationship of the two forces is unusually and relates the outer movements to other complex and dramatic. The piano writing episodes of the myth: the first movement to is brilliant and rhapsodic, full of sensuous “the Song of Orpheus” (during which Orpheus melodies, sweeping scales and arpeggios, and amazes all of nature), and the closing rondo decorative figuration in the highest register. to “the grisly tale of Orpheus torn limb from limb by the vengeful Bacchantes.” The playful In the Andante con moto, an astonishingly original and dance-like finale seems to undercut the conception, the two forces play utterly different Orphean argument. Yet there may be at least music: the orchestra (strings only) makes jagged, one telling correspondence: according to forceful pronouncements to which the piano Ovid, the Bacchantes drown out Orpheus’s replies with quiet chords and poignant melody, magical lyre by playing “wind instruments, and, as this dialogue unfolds, the strings brass instruments, and drums”; Beethoven are calmed by the piano’s entreaties. (At the pointedly withholds the trumpets and drums première, Beethoven “sang on his instrument of his orchestra until bar 32 of the finale. with a deep melancholy feeling.”) The rhetoric of protagonist and antagonist and the recitative- No documentary evidence proves that like textures hint at a dramatic situation. Indeed, Beethoven wrote this concerto with Orpheus many commentators have heard this movement in mind; though the correspondences between as a meditation on the myth of Orpheus, who, myth and music are so compelling, and shielded by the music of his lyre, braves the make sense of so many strange departures Underworld to retrieve his dead beloved, from Classical models, that they are difficult Eurydice, winning over hostile Furies with his to dismiss as coincidental. Regardless, this song, guiding Eurydice through the gloom, but music is unusually vivid, picturesque, and losing her again when he breaks his vow and imaginative—that much is undeniable. looks back at her. (Note the piano’s heartrending Program note by Kevin Bazzana dissonance on the downbeat of the last bar.) YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERT: Perfect for kids BEETHOVEN LIVES UPSTAIRS ages February 2 5–12! Based on the award-winning recording, this concert features a lively exchange of letters between young Christoph and his uncle about the “madman” who has moved in upstairs. TSO.CA 416.593.1285 JANUARY 8, 9 & 11, 2020 11 ABOUT THE WORKS a monumental new approach to the standard Classical orchestra, and the result is a work of unprecedented power and excitement. Ludwig van Beethoven A long, weighty, slow introduction establishes Symphony No. 7 in A Major, the massive sonorities, ample proportions, and elevated rhetoric of this symphony. A striking Op. 92 transition then prods the music by degrees Composed: 1811–1812 toward the boisterous jig-like rhythm of the 36 main part of the first movement. At length min the main theme of the Vivace appears, first quiet and light-hearted, then exploding with new energy. One melodic motif after another Beethoven began his Seventh Symphony tumbles out in rapid succession, but recurring around the summer of 1811, and completed rhythmic figures serve to unify the music. That it the following spring; it had its première in main theme, when we first hear it (solo flute), December 1813.