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CLASSICS • 2017/18 RACHMANINOFF'S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 WITH NATASHA PAREMSKI COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDREW LITTON, conductor NATASHA PAREMSKI, piano This Weekend's Performances are Gratefully Dedicated to Bessie C. Burghardt Charitable Unitrust Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Sharon and Jim Butler Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Dr. Christopher Ott and Mr. Jeremy Simons Sunday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to CoBiz Financial
Friday, November 17, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, November 18, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, November 19, 2017, at 1:00 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall LIADOV
The Enchanted Lake, Legend for Orchestra, Op. 62
RACHMANINOFF
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Allegro ma non tanto
Intermezzo: Adagio
Finale: Alla breve — INTERMISSION —
PROKOFIEV
Symphony No. 5, Op. 100
Andante
Allegro marcato
Adagio
Allegro giocoso
SOUNDINGS
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PROGRAM 1
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
JEFF WHEELER
ANDREW LITTON, conductor Andrew Litton currently serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Colorado Symphony, Artistic Advisor of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of the New York City Ballet, Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, and Conductor Laureate of Britain’s Bournemouth Symphony. He was also Music Director of the Dallas Symphony from 1994-2006. He guest conducts the world’s leading orchestras and has a discography of over 120 recordings with awards including America’s Grammy®, France’s Diapason d’Or, and many British and other honours. Litton has also conducted many of the world’s finest opera companies, such as the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Australian Opera. In 2011, in recognition of his work with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, King Harald V conferred the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit on Andrew Litton. Under him the orchestra has made appearances at the BBC Proms, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and New York’s Carnegie Hall. Besides his Grammy®-winning Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with Bryn Terfel and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, he also recorded the complete symphonies by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, a Dallas Mahler cycle, and many Gershwin recordings, as both conductor and pianist. For Hyperion Andrew Litton’s recordings include piano concertos by Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Grieg with Stephen Hough; by Shostakovich, Shchedrin, and Brahms with Marc-André Hamelin; and by Alnæs and Sinding with Piers Lane; Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto and Symphony-Concerto with Alban Gerhardt; Viola Concertos by Bartók and Rózsa with Lawrence Power; the complete symphonies by Charles Ives and orchestral works by Joseph Schwantner. Andrew Litton received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard in piano and conducting. He is an accomplished pianist, and often conducts from the keyboard and enjoys performing chamber music with his orchestra colleagues. For further information, please visit www.andrewlitton.com.
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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES NATASHA PAREMSKI, piano Born in Moscow, Natasha moved to the United States at the age of eight and became a U.S. citizen shortly thereafter. Natasha was awarded several prestigious awards at a very young age, including the Gilmore Young Artists prize in 2006, and the Prix Montblanc in 2007. In September 2010, she was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year. Her first recital album was released in 2011 and it debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart. In 2014 Natasha Paremski opened the Grant Park Festival with a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Carlos Kalmar conducting. She was immediately re-engaged for 2015 to perform Schoenfield’s Four Parables for Piano. Natasha’s performance of Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 and Chopin Concerto No. 1 with the Minnesota Orchestra in July 2014 was followed by a return in November 2015 to perform Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1; Andrew Litton conducting on both occasions. Natasha has performed with major orchestras in North America including Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra as well as Toronto, Baltimore, Houston, and Nashville Symphonies. She tours extensively in Europe with such orchestras as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester, and Moscow Philharmonic. Natasha has given recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Schloss Elmau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Verbier Festival, Seattle’s Meany Hall, Kansas City’s Harriman Jewell Series, Santa Fe’s Lensic Theater, Ludwigshafen BASF Series, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Tokyo’s Musashino Performing Arts Center, and on the Rising Stars Series of Gilmore and Ravinia Festivals.
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES ANATOLY LIADOV (1855-1914) The Enchanted Lake, Legend for Orchestra, Op. 62 Anatoly Liadov was born on May 11, 1855 in St. Petersburg and died on August 28, 1914 in Polynovka. The Enchanted Lake was composed in 1905-1909 and premiered on February 21, 1909 in St. Petersburg. The score calls for three flutes, two oboes, three clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, timpani, bass drum, celesta, harp, and strings. Duration is about 7 minutes. The piece was last performed on September 29, 30, and October 1, 2006 with Jeffrey Kahane conducting. Anatoly Liadov, one of the most important figures in Russian music during the generation between Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, was the son of a conductor at St. Petersburg’s Maryinsky Theater and the grandson of the director of that city’s Philharmonic Society. His first music lessons were with his father, and in 1870 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied piano, violin, counterpoint and composition. Liadov was admitted to the composition class of Rimsky-Korsakov, who spoke highly of his new pupil’s ability, but he was soon ejected for absenteeism. He was allowed to re-enter the Conservatory early in 1878, and showed such skill in taking the graduation examinations that he was hired that same year by the school as an instructor of elementary theory. He proved to be a brilliant teacher, counting Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, Asafiev and other notable Russian composers among his students, and remained on the school’s faculty until his death in 1914. Liadov also garnered a reputation as a conductor and champion of Russian music, assuming direction of the Imperial Russian Music Society concerts during the 1890s. In 1897, he undertook a journey to collect folk music for the Imperial Geographical Society, and published his findings as some 120 songs arranged for voice and piano. Liadov was shy, diffident and short on self-confidence, but the personal characteristic that bore most directly on his music was his monumental indolence, often attributed to his dreamy, otherworldly nature. Around 1880, he told friends he had begun an opera with the provisional title Zorushkya, but during the remaining 35 years of his life, he managed to finish for it only two instrumental miniatures — The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora. The subject on which Liadov proposed to write his endlessly gestating opera grew from the legendary tale Kikimora by the folklorist Ivan Sakharoff. “The phantom Kikimora,” the composer noted, “is brought up by a sorceress in the mountains. In his youth, he is beguiled, from early morn to late at night, by the tales of foreign lands told by the sorceress’ Magic Cat. From night to dawn, Kikimora is rocked in a crystal cradle. In just seven years, the phantom grows to maturity. Shiny and black, its head is as small as a thimble, and its body as thin as a straw. Kikimora makes all manner of noises from morning to night, and whistles and hisses from early evening to midnight. Then, the phantom spins till daylight; spins and stores up evil in its mind against all mankind.” Liadov, wrote a miniature tone poem inspired by (and titled after) Kikimora that he intended to use in the opera, and also spent time dabbling with a libretto, in which the dark land of the phantom would meet the realms of three other figures — the House Spirit, the Wood Spirit, and the Water Spirit — at a crossroads near an enchanted lake. The scenario for Zorushkya never got any further than these vague ideas, but Liadov did complete a luminous musical depiction of The Enchanted Lake that evokes the light shimmering on the water’s surface and the rippling motions of ebullient nymphs playing in its depths.
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943) Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 Sergei Prokofiev was born on April 1, 1873 in Oneg (near Novgorod), Russia and died on March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California. The Third Piano Concerto was composed in 1909 and premiered in New York on November 28, 1909, conducted by Walter Damrosch with the composer as soloist. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 40 minutes. Olga Kern was the soloist and James Judd conducted the orchestra when the concerto was last performed on October 10-12, 2014. The worlds of technology and art sometimes brush against each other in curious ways. In 1909, it seems, Sergei Rachmaninoff wanted one of those new mechanical wonders — an automobile. And thereupon hangs the tale of his first visit to America. The impresario Henry Wolfson of New York arranged a thirty-concert tour for the 19091910 season for Rachmaninoff so that he could play and conduct his own works in a number of American cities. Rachmaninoff was at first hesitant about leaving his family and home for such an extended overseas trip, but the generous financial remuneration was too tempting to resist. With a few tour details still left unsettled, Wolfson died suddenly in the spring of 1909, and the composer was much relieved that the journey would probably be cancelled. Wolfson’s agency had a contract with Rachmaninoff, however, and during the summer finished the arrangements for his appearances so that the composer-pianist-conductor was obliged to leave for New York as scheduled. Trying to look on the bright side of this daunting prospect, Rachmaninoff wrote to his
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES long-time friend Nikita Morozov, “I don’t want to go. But then perhaps, after America I’ll be able to buy myself that automobile.... It may not be so bad after all!” It was for the American tour that Rachmaninoff composed his Third Piano Concerto. The Concerto consists of three large movements. The first is a modified sonata form that begins with a haunting theme, recalled in the later movements, that sets perfectly the Concerto’s mood of somber intensity. The espressivo second theme is presented by the pianist, whose part has, by this point, abundantly demonstrated the staggering technical challenge that this piece offers to the soloist, a characteristic Rachmaninoff had disguised by the simplicity of the opening. The development section is concerned mostly with transformations of fragments from the first theme. A massive cadenza, separated into two parts by the recall of the main theme by the woodwinds, leads to the recapitulation. The earlier material is greatly abbreviated in this closing section, with just a single presentation of the opening melody and a brief, staccato version of the subsidiary theme. The second movement, subtitled Intermezzo, which Dr. Otto Kinkleday described in his notes for the New York premiere as “tender and melancholy, yet not tearful,” is a set of free variations with an inserted episode. “One of the most dashing and exciting pieces of music ever composed for piano and orchestra” is how Patrick Piggot described the finale. The movement is structured in three large sections. The first part has an abundance of themes that Rachmaninoff skillfully derived from those of the opening movement. The relationship is further strengthened in the finale’s second section, where both themes from the opening movement are recalled in slow tempo. The pace again quickens, and the music from the first part of the finale returns with some modifications. A brief solo cadenza leads to the coda, a dazzling final stanza with fistfuls of chords propelling the headlong rush to the dramatic closing gestures.
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) Symphony No. 5, Op. 100 Sergei Prokofiev was born on April 23, 1891 in Sontzovka, Russia and died on March 5, 1953 in Moscow. The Fifth Symphony was composed in 1944 and premiered on January 12, 1945 in Moscow, conducted by the composer. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp, and strings. Duration is about 40 minutes. Jeffrey Kahane was on the podium when the piece was last performed on November 21-22, 2008. “In the Fifth Symphony I wanted to sing the praises of the free and happy man — his strength, his generosity and the purity of his soul. I cannot say I chose this theme; it was born in me and had to express itself.” The “man” that Prokofiev invoked in this description of the philosophy embodied in this great Symphony could well have been the composer himself. The work was written in the summer of 1944, one of the happiest times he knew. His home life following marriage to his second wife four years earlier was contented and fulfilling; he was the most famous and oftenperformed of all Soviet composers; and Russia was winning the war. In fact, the success of the premiere of this work was buoyed by the announcement immediately before the concert that the PROGRAM 6
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES Russian army had just scored a resounding victory on the River Vistula. The composer’s mind was reflected in the fluency and emotional depth of his music. Prokofiev never hinted that there was a program underlying the Fifth Symphony except to say that “it is a symphony about the spirit of man.” During the difficult years of World War II, Soviet music, according to Boris Schwartz, “was meant to console and uplift, to encourage and exhort; nothing else mattered.” Though some, like Martin Bookspan, find “ominous threats of brutal warfare” lurking beneath the surface of Prokofiev’s music, there is really nothing here to match such symphonies born of the violence of war as Shostakovich’s Seventh and Vaughan Williams’ Fourth. Rather it is a work that reflects the composer’s philosophy after he returned to Russia in the 1930s from many years of living in western Europe and America. In his 1946 autobiographical sketch, he wrote, “It is the duty of the composer, like the poet, the sculptor or the painter, to serve his fellow men, to beautify human life and point the way to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.” The Symphony’s opening movement is a large sonata form in moderate tempo that begins without introduction. The wide-ranging main theme is presented simply by flute and bassoon before being taken up by the strings; flute and oboe sing the lyrical second theme. Two brief motives close the exposition. One, characterized by its dotted rhythms, arrives on the crest of the movement’s first climax; the other is an angular, skittish fragment tossed off by high woodwinds, violins and cellos. The development gives prominence in its first portion to the opening theme and the skittish motive from the end of the exposition; it later focuses on the second theme and the arch-shaped complementary melody. The recapitulation is heralded by the stentorian sounds of the brass choir announcing the main theme. The second-movement scherzo is one of those pieces Prokofiev would have classified as “motoric”: an incessant two-note rhythmic motive drives the music forward through its entire first section. The movement’s central section is framed by a bold, strutting phrase from the woodwinds adorned with the piquant “wrong notes” that spice so much of Prokofiev’s quick music. The brooding third movement is in a large three-part design. The outer sections are supported by the deliberate rhythmic tread of the low instruments used as underpinning for a plaintive melody initiated by the clarinets. A sweeping theme begun by the tuba serves as the basis for the middle section. The finale opens with a short introduction comprising two gestures based on the main theme of the first movement: a short woodwind phrase answered by the strings, and a chorale for cellos. The main body of the movement is a sonata-rondo structure propelled by an insistent rhythmic motive. The movement accumulates a large amount of thematic material as it progresses, though it is the solo clarinet playing the main theme that begins each of the important structural sections of the form. A furious, energetic coda ignites several of the movement’s themes into a grand closing blaze of orchestral color.
©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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