559365 bk Foote US 3/5/09 12:18 PM Page 5 nominations, six ASCAP Awards, and numerous Stereo Review and Ovation Awards. In addition, he holds the Other Seattle Symphony – Gerard Schwarz recordings: Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University, was the first American named Conductor of the Year by AMERICAN CLASSICS Musical America, and has received numerous honorary doctorates, including from his alma mater, The Juilliard School. In 2002, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers honored Schwarz with its Concert Music Award, and, in 2003, the Pacific Northwest Branch of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences gave Schwarz its first “IMPACT” lifetime achievement award. Arthur SEATTLE SYMPHONY 2006–2007 SEASON FOOTE First Violin Viola Flute Horn Maria Larionoff, Susan Gulkis Assadi Scott Goff John Cerminaro Concertmaster Dorothy Shapiro Judy Kriewall Mark Robbins Francesca da Rimini John Weller Arie Schachter Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby Jeffrey Fair Simon James Timothy Hale Adam Iascone Air and Gavotte • Suite in E major Jennifer Bai Vincent Comer Piccolo Susan Carroll Mariel Bailey Penelope Crane Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby Scott Wilson Cecilia Poellein Buss Wesley Anderson Dyring Four Character Pieces after the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Jun Liang Du Mara Gearman Oboe Trumpet Ayako Gamo Rachel Swerdlow Nathan Hughes David Gordon Timothy Garland Ben Hausmann Geoffrey Bergler Peter Kaman Cello Stefan Farkas Richard Pressley Seattle Symphony • Gerard Schwarz Leonid Keylin Joshua Roman Mikhail Shmidt Susan Williams English Horn Trombone 8.559162 8.559317 Clark Story Theresa Benshoof Stefan Farkas Ko-ichiro Yamamoto Jeannie Wells Yablonsky Walter Gray David Lawrence Ritt Arthur Zadinsky Bruce Bailey Clarinet Roberta Hansen Downey Christopher Sereque Bass Trombone Second Violin Vivian Gu Laura DeLuca Stephen Fissel Michael Miropolsky David Sabee Larey McDaniel Kathleen Stern Amos Yang Tuba Gennady Filimonov E-Flat Clarinet Christopher Olka Stephen Bryant Bass Laura DeLuca Linda Cole Jordan Anderson Timpani Xiao-po Fei Jonathan Green Bass Clarinet Michael Crusoe Wesley Fisk Jonathan Burnstein Larey McDaniel Sande Gillette Jennifer Godfrey Percussion Artur Girsky Nancy Page Griffin Bassoon Randolph Baunton Virginia Hunt Luce Joseph Kaufman Seth Krimsky Michael Clark Eric Scott Sandra Lambert Paul Rafanelli Ron Johnson Andrew Yeung Ronald Simon Mike Gamburg Harp The revolving members of the string sections Contrabassoon Valerie Muzzolini are listed alphabetically. Mike Gamburg Keyboards Kimberly Russ, piano Joseph Adam, organ 8.559378 8.559610 8.559365 5 6 8.559365 559365 bk Foote US 3/5/09 12:18 PM Page 2 Arthur Foote (1853-1937): Francesca da Rimini, Op. 24 • Air and Gavotte Serenade, Op. 25, which also derives from earlier Prefaced by what will undoubtedly be the most Allegro comodo is followed by a movement titled in the some highly ingenious rhythmic transformations, Four Character Pieces, Op. 48 • Suite in E major for string orchestra, Op. 63 works) for performance as a pair; their probable original familiar quotation from the poem for most listeners – published score in German Pizzicato und Adagietto. suggestive at times of the finale fugue in Brahms’s composition dates are 1889 for the Air and, for the Characteristically resourceful in its rhythmic variety, the Handel Variations. Like all of the music recorded here, The notion that American music began with Aaron Some two-thirds of Foote’s copious output was Gavotte, 1866, when Foote was only thirteen years old. A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, opening and closing Pizzicato section, marked the Suite transcends what might be regarded as traditional Copland (or, depending on your tastes, with George published in his lifetime. Of the three works in this In 1900 Foote revised a set of his piano pieces to A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou Capriccioso – Allegretto, encloses an eloquent Adagietto aims to show us a composer as individual in inspiration as Gershwin or perhaps Cole Porter) dies hard, but it recording that thus carry opus numbers, the earliest is create the Four Character Pieces after the Rubáiyát of Beside me singing in the Wilderness – enhanced, like the first movement of the Air and Gavotte, he was well-schooled in technique. ignores a number of excellent composers who flourished the “Symphonic Prologue” Francesca da Rimini, based Omar Khayyám, thereby producing what has remained Oh, Wilderness, were Paradise enow! by neatly propulsive contrapuntal touches. Again titled in before any of those men were born. Even if we discount on the story of the doomed lovers Francesca and Paolo one of his most popular works. As romantic in German, the third and last movement, Fuge, treats an the musical creativity of two signers of the Declaration related by Dante in the fifth Canto of The Inferno. atmosphere as his Francesca da Rimini was classical, – the Comodo third movement evokes the trance-like Allegro giusto subject that may at first sound square to Bernard Jacobson of Independence, Francis Hopkinson and (attributively) Dating from 1890, this was the composer’s second these pieces add harp and percussion to the orchestral mystery suggested by those words with hypnotic rising Benjamin Franklin, and that of still earlier substantial published orchestra work. It is a fine example of his forces, and give much more prominence to the octave figures, coming to rest in repeated harp tones composers like John Antes and his Moravian brethren or command of broadly conceived structure as well as of atmospheric qualities of individual instruments. A enveloped by immobile A-major harmonies high in the Seattle Symphony William Billings of Boston, we should not forget the his powerfully expressive musical language. The piece chromatically inflected clarinet solo dominates the first strings. achievements of more than a dozen talented composers branches out from a dark-hued Andante sostenuto piece, an Andante comodo headed by the following The final piece is again in ternary form. The outer Photo courtesy of Yuen Lui Studio Seattle Symphony, founded in 1903, has been under the ranging in date from Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829- opening in C minor to incorporate Allegro assai sections verse from the Rubáiyát: sections, Andantino ben marcato, offer some teasingly artistic leadership of Music Director Gerard Schwarz since 1869) and John Knowles Paine (1839-1906) to Charles punctuated by forceful passages in recitative style. The unpredictable variations on a seemingly simple 6/8 1985. In 1998, the Orchestra began performing in the Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920), and including such scoring, for a standard symphony orchestra with double Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose, pulse. The poetic heading here is: acoustically superb Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle. The notable figures as George Whitefield Chadwick, woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, And Jamshyd’s Sev’n-ring’d Cup where Symphony is internationally recognized for its adventurous Edward MacDowell, Charles Martin Loeffler, Horatio tuba, timpani, and strings, is fastidiously detailed. A no one knows; Yon rising Moon that looks for us again – programming of contemporary works, its devotion to the Parker, Amy Beach, Daniel Gregory Mason, John Alden characteristic subordinate theme exults in a near- But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine, How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; classics, and its extensive recording history. Seattle Carpenter, and Carl Ruggles. It is tempting to include Elgarian succulence and grace, and demonstrates And many a Garden by the Water blows. How oft hereafter rising look for us Symphony has made more than 100 recordings, garnered 12 Charles Ives in this list also, but though he was Foote’s willingness to flout conventional tonal schemes Through this same Garden – and for one in vain! Grammy nominations and received two Emmy Awards. composing busily before Copland was born, it took by first appearing in an expectable E-flat major but Much more forceful in manner, the second movement From September through July, the Symphony is heard live by years for his work to make any substantial impact on recurring first in E major and finally, shortly before the might almost be called Foote’s answer to Brahms’s The central Molto allegro is headed by more than 315,000 people. For more information on Seattle American musical life. work’s ppp conclusion, in C major. Hungarian and Dvofiák’s Slavonic Dances. After a Symphony, visit www.seattlesymphony.org. Among those named above, Paine served at Harvard If the stylistic background of Francesca da Rimini driving first section, marked Allegro deciso, illustrating: Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit as the first music professor in the United States, and the is to be found in Brahms, the pieces that follow it on this Of This and That endeavor and dispute; composer who concerns us here, Arthur Foote, studied disc, the Air and Gavotte for strings, take their They say the Lion and the Lizard keep Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Gerard Schwarz with him and graduated in 1875 with the first MA degree inspiration from a much earlier source. The Air, in The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit. in music ever bestowed by an American university. particular, can be heard as a conscious study based on And Bahrám, that great Hunter – the Wild Ass One of the leading conductors of his generation, Gerard Schwarz has a vast repertoire Foote was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and