Colorado Symphony 2017/18 Season Presenting Sponsor:
LISTEN/HEAR • 2017/18 LISTEN/HEAR 101: DECODING CLASSICAL AND BAROQUE, BROKEN DOWN COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDRÉS LOPERA, conductor CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, host YI ZHAO, violin CATHERINE BEESON, viola Thursday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to David and Susan Seitz
Thursday, November 9, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 Movement I: [No tempo indicated] MOZART Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K.364 (320d) Allegro maestoso Andante Presto HAYDN Symphony No. 104 in D major, “London” Adagio – Allegro Andante Menuet: Allegro Spiritoso
— NO INTERMISSION —
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LISTEN/HEAR BIOGRAPHIES ANDRES LOPERA, conductor Colombian conductor Andrés Lopera is one of the leading Latin-American artists in the United States with nearly a decade of engagements in both North and South America. A passionate conductor who believes in the transformational power of music, Lopera is now the Assistant Conductor of the Colorado Symphony, having formerly led the Oregon Symphony, Toledo Symphony, New World Symphony, National Repertory Orchestra, and Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra. He has also appeared with professional and youth orchestras throughout Central and South America, including Honduras, where he led the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in a musical camp for both young and professional musicians. In 2012, Lopera was appointed Music Director of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, for which he oversaw 12 different orchestral ensembles with more than 450 students. Also an accomplished trombonist, Lopera’s musical development started with the Red de Bandas de Antioquia and Red de Escuelas de Musica de Medellin, both El Sistema like programs developed in Colombia. Lopera earned a Master of Music degree in Orchestral Conducting from New England Conservatory of Music and in Trombone Performance from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to these programs, he was awarded degrees in Conducting and Trombone from the Universidad EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia. His principal teachers were Hugh Wolff and David Loebel, with additional studies with Ludovic Morlot, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Marin Alsop.
CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, host Australian conductor Christopher Dragon is in his third season as the Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony and continues his position as Principal Guest Conductor with the Denver Young Artists Orchestra. For three years, Christopher previously held the position of Assistant Conductor with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, which gave him the opportunity to work closely with Principal Conductor Asher Fisch. Christopher works regularly in Australia and has conducted the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and West Australian Symphony Orchestras. His 2015 debut performance at the Sydney Opera House with Josh Pyke and the Sydney Symphony has been released on CD by ABC Music. In 2017, Christopher returns to the West Australian Symphony Orchestra for a subscription concert. In 2016, he made his Brazilian conducting debut with the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre. He has also conducted at numerous festivals including the Breckenridge and Bangalow Music Festivals, both resulting with invitations to return. At the beginning of 2016, Christopher conducted Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony as part of the Perth International Arts Festival alongside Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra. In 2014, Christopher was selected from 100 international applicants to conduct the Princess Galyani Vadhana Youth Orchestra in Thailand and earlier that year participated in the Jarvi Winter Academy in Estonia where he was awarded the Orchestra’s Favourite Conductor Prize. Christopher began his conducting studies in 2011 and was a member of the prestigious Symphony Services International Conductor Development Program under the guidance of course director Christopher Seaman. He has also studied with numerous distinguished conductors including Leonid Grin, Paavo and Neeme Jarvi at the Jarvi Summer Festival, Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, and conducting pedagogue Jorma Panula.
LISTEN/HEAR BIOGRAPHIES YI ZHAO, violin Born in Henan, China, Ms. Zhao has excelled in both solo and ensemble playing. At age 12, she was selected as one of China’s bests and entered the prestigious preparatory school program at the Central Conservatory in Beijing. From there on, she has studied with Zhou Qian and received her Bachelor’s of Music at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore in 2007 and recently finished her Master’s study under Cho-Liang Lin at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University in May 2013.
CATHERINE BEESON, viola Catherine Beeson has served as Assistant Principal Viola since 1999 and has directed the Community & Education Programs of the Colorado Symphony since 2014. Catherine comes from a family of musicians, educators, and community builders. She is ceaselessly devoted to the latter, connecting people of all walks of life through community and school residency programs that encourage music composition and performance.
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Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé FEB 2-4 FRI-SAT 7:30 SUN 1:00 n
Brett Mitchell, conductor Jessica Rivera, soprano Colorado Symphony Chorus, Duain Wolfe, director DEBUSSY DEBUSSY ESA-PEKKA SALONEN RAVEL
Syrinx Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun Five Images After Sappho Daphnis et Chloé (complete ballet)
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Colorado Symphony 2017/18 Season Presenting Sponsor:
SPECIAL • 2017/18 RAVEL'S BOLÉRO & EDGAR MEYER COLORADO PREMIERE COLORADO SYMPHONY CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor EDGAR MEYER, double bass/composer Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Dr. and Mrs. David Campbell & Midge Korczak
Saturday, November 11, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall
TURINA Danzas fantásticas, Op. 22 Exaltación Ensueño Orgía EDGAR MEYER
New Piece for Orchestra — INTERMISSION —
BOTTESINI Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor Moderato Andante Finale: Allegro RAVEL
Boléro
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SPECIAL BIOGRAPHIES CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor Australian conductor Christopher Dragon is in his third season as the Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony and continues his position as Principal Guest Conductor with the Denver Young Artists Orchestra. For three years, Christopher previously held the position of Assistant Conductor with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, which gave him the opportunity to work closely with Principal Conductor Asher Fisch. Christopher works regularly in Australia and has conducted the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and West Australian Symphony Orchestras. His 2015 debut performance at the Sydney Opera House with Josh Pyke and the Sydney Symphony has been released on CD by ABC Music. In 2017, Christopher returns to the West Australian Symphony Orchestra for a subscription concert. In 2016, he made his Brazilian conducting debut with the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre. He has also conducted at numerous festivals including the Breckenridge and Bangalow Music Festivals, both resulting with invitations to return. At the beginning of 2016, Christopher conducted Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony as part of the Perth International Arts Festival alongside Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra. In 2014, Christopher was selected from 100 international applicants to conduct the Princess Galyani Vadhana Youth Orchestra in Thailand and earlier that year participated in the Jarvi Winter Academy in Estonia where he was awarded the Orchestra’s Favourite Conductor Prize. Christopher began his conducting studies in 2011 and was a member of the prestigious Symphony Services International Conductor Development Program under the guidance of course director Christopher Seaman. He has also studied with numerous distinguished conductors including Leonid Grin, Paavo and Neeme Jarvi at the Jarvi Summer Festival, Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, and conducting pedagogue Jorma Panula.
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C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G
SPECIAL BIOGRAPHIES
JIM MCGUIRE
EDGAR MEYER, double bass/composer In demand as both a performer and a composer, Edgar Meyer has formed a role in the music world unlike any other. Hailed by The New Yorker as “… the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively un-chronicled history of his instrument”, Mr. Meyer’s unparalleled technique and musicianship in combination with his gift for composition have brought him to the fore. His uniqueness in the field was recognized by a MacArthur Award in 2002. As a solo classical bassist, Mr. Meyer can be heard on a concerto album with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff featuring Bottesini and Meyer concertos both alone and with Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell. He has also recorded an album featuring three of Bach’s Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. Mr. Meyer was honored with his fifth Grammy® Award in 2015 for Best Contemporary Instrumental album for his Bass & Mandolin collaboration with Chris Thile. As a composer, Mr. Meyer has carved out a remarkable and unique niche in the musical world. His music has been premiered and recorded by Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Hilary Hahn, and the Emerson String Quartet, among others. Mr. Meyer began studying bass at the age of five under the instruction of his father and continued further to study with Stuart Sankey. In 1994 he received the Avery Fisher Career Grant and in 2000 became the only bassist to receive the Avery Fisher Prize. Currently, he teaches bass in partnership with Hal Robinson at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
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SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES JOAQUÍN TURINA (1882-1949): Danzas fantásticas, Op. 22 Joaquín Turina was born December 9, 1882 in Seville and died January 14, 1949 in Madrid. The Danzas fantásticas were composed in 1920. Their premiere was given on February 13, 1920 in Madrid, conducted by Bartolome Perez Casas. The score calls for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. Duration is about 18 minutes. Juanjo Mena was on the podium when the piece was last performed April 8-10, 2011. With the works of Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados during the decades around the turn of the 20th century, Spanish music emerged as an integral part of the international cultural scene. In the years before World War I, Albéniz and Granados were joined in creating a national musical style by Manuel de Falla and Joaquín Turina, who, like their older colleagues, went to Paris both to study the traditional ways of music-making and to be inspired by the exciting modernities of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and the other important composers then making that city the most vibrant center of art and culture in Europe. Turina was especially attracted to formal academic study, and he enrolled at the Schola Cantorum as a pupil of the eminent pedagogue and composer Vincent d’Indy. Turina returned to Spain in 1914, and he soon came to be regarded as one of the leading musical figures of his country. Though he was best known during his lifetime for his compositions, he also gained fame as a pianist and chamber music player, as a professor at the Madrid Conservatory, as director of the performances of the Ballet Russe in Spain, as a music critic, and as a member of the Spanish Academy of Arts. The Danzas fantásticas of 1920 comprises three movements, each of which Turina headed with a quotation from the Spanish poet José Más: Exaltación (“Ecstasy”) — “It seems as if the figures in that incomparable picture were moving like the calix of a flower.” Ensueño (“Daydream”) — “The guitar strings, when struck, sounded like the lament of a soul that could no longer bear the weight of bitterness.” Orgía (“Revel”) — “The perfume of flowers is mingled with the fragrance of chamomile and the bouquet of tall goblets filled with incomparable wine. From this, like an incense, the dances rises.” Exaltación opens with an atmospheric veil of string chords that serve as introduction to the swaying dance strain of the main theme. The movement passes through several episodes before the return of the opening music, into which is woven a reminiscence of the dance melody. The Ensueño is built on a theme of tantalizingly ambiguous rhythmic character displayed in vibrant, Impressionist orchestral sounds. The central section is marked by sliding string harmonies from which emerges a theme of slightly melancholy cast. Delicate taps on the drum, a sigh from the flute, and a distant chime bring the movement to a close. The closing Orgía evokes the fiery, heel-stomping music of the flamenco cante hondo, played here in the primary-color, sun-baked sonorities also familiar from the works of Turina’s contemporary, Manuel de Falla.
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C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G
SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES EDGAR MEYER (B. 1960): New Piece for Orchestra Edgar Meyer was born on November 24, 1960 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. New Piece for Orchestra was composed in 2016-2017 and premiered on March 16, 2017 by the Nashville Symphony, conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 18 minutes. This is the first performance by the Colorado Symphony. Meyer composed New Piece for Orchestra in 2016-2017 on commission from the Nashville Symphony, which premiered the work on March 16, 2017 at Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero. New Piece is Meyer’s first work for orchestra without soloist. “As the years have gone on,” he explained, “I found I was having the most fun when there was no soloist, when I wasn’t part of the picture. It’s been a lot of fun to conceive a piece for the orchestra without having to worry about the soloist. A solo player limits the scope of the orchestra… At the heart of it, you have to think of enough ideas to engage eighty people for the duration of the piece. Keeping the ideas compact, interrelated and organized is easier for me than having enough ideas and variety… [For New Piece] I wanted to conceive something that had a lot of energy but with some atmospheric music — slow music, with lots of pretty sounds — though no more than was necessary to balance the piece… I often envisioned the orchestra playing in concert. And I do not think of a section as happy or sad. The piece is conceived as an emotional journey, but not one that I can put into words.” Thomas May, in his annotation for the premiere of Meyer’s work in Nashville, wrote, “New Piece for Orchestra unfolds as a pair of interrelated movements of about the same length, which are bridged by a shorter interlude of contrasting material. The core musical idea is heard at the outset, against a restless pulsation in the strings: a fidgety motif of small intervals that gradually climb the scale. Similar intervals fuel the second part as well, but there the rhythmic identity is recognizably distinct and the harmonic context becomes more diatonic. Meyer varies these ideas by contrasting timbres or orchestral sections and by processes that slow down, speed up, turn ideas upside down, and present them in overlapping statements, all the while continuing the musical argument.”
GIOVANNI BOTTESINI (1821-1889): Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor Giovanni Bottesini was born on December 24, 1821 in Crema, Lombardy and died on July 7, 1889 in Parma. His Double Bass Concerto No. 2 was composed in 1845. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 17 minutes. This is the first performance by the Colorado Symphony. Giovanni Bottesini, composer, conductor and the pre-eminent double bass virtuoso of the mid-19th century, was born on Christmas Eve, 1821 in the small town of Crema, in the northern Italian province of Lombardy. His father, Pietro, a clarinetist and composer, early taught his son the rudiments of music, and before he was eleven, young Giovanni had sung in several choirs, played timpani in the local theater orchestra, and studied violin with one of the town’s leading performers. Bottesini’s father took his precocious son to Milan in 1835 with hope of enrolling
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SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES him in the Conservatory, but they learned upon their arrival that scholarships remained only for players of bassoon and double bass. Giovanni applied himself with such vigor to the latter instrument that he was accepted into the school only a few weeks later, and he began his formal studies there on November 1, 1835. He left the Conservatory after four years, having obtained a graduation prize for his solo playing. With his winnings, Bottesini purchased a fine instrument made by the old Milanese master Giuseppe Testore that, legend has it, the young musician found beneath a pile of rubbish in a puppet theater. (Bottesini’s instrument had only three strings, tuned a tone higher than usual so that he could more easily adapt much of the cello repertory for his use.) During the decade after 1839, while he was perfecting his technique, Bottesini lived as a free-lance musician, a period that included a residence in Havana in 1846 as principal bassist of the orchestra of the Teatro Tacon, the production there of his first opera (based, appropriately, on the subject of Cristoforo Colombo), and a sensational tour of the United States. (One enterprising jeweler got rich peddling pins in the likeness of the visiting virtuoso.) Bottesini returned to Europe, and he was so successful in his concert debut in Crema in 1849 that he was soon in demand as a soloist across the Continent and in England. That same year, he was appointed principal bassist of the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, where he befriended Giuseppe Verdi. Bottesini’s playing, with its extraordinary agility, purity of tone, precision of intonation and exquisite phrasing, continued to astound audiences for more than four decades — he was universally known as the “Paganini of the Double Bass.” In addition to his performing engagements, Bottesini also held several important conducting assignments, gaining special notice for his interpretations of Italian opera in Paris, London, Barcelona, St. Petersburg, Madrid and New Orleans (he visited the United States three times, and was named an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society of New York in 1850). The high point of his podium career came when he conducted the premiere of Verdi’s Aida on Christmas Eve 1871 in Cairo to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. The last months before his death, on July 7, 1889, were spent as director of the Parma Conservatory. Bottesini’s compositions encompass a dozen Italian operas, a Requiem, an Englishlanguage oratorio (The Garden of Olivet) for the Norwich Festival, several short orchestral pieces, eleven string quartets and numerous other chamber works, and a large quantity of music for the double bass, including two solo concertos, the Grand Duo Concertante for violin and bass, virtuoso fantasies on operatic themes, and miscellaneous scores with the accompaniment of piano or orchestra. His works, like those of Verdi, are characterized by their emphasis on lyricism, plangent harmonies and straightforward emotional appeal built with solid craftsmanship. The Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor is testament both to Bottesini’s considerable craft as a composer and to his breathtaking performance technique, which emphasized not only his agility on the orchestra’s most recalcitrant instrument but also the high, baritonal register that was his specialty. The Concerto opens with a fantasia-like movement built from the doleful arching melody given by the bass at the outset, with formal balance provided not by conventional thematic contrast but by elaborate passages of figuration for the soloist. The Andante is a sweetly sentimental, basso profundo aria without words, a concert-hall analog to a scene from one of Bottesini’s operas. The finale is a brilliant showpiece for double bass whose Gypsy-inflected thematic material and vibrant, dancing spirit recall the fiery Hungarian czárdás.
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SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937): Boléro Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France and died on December 28, 1937 in Paris. He composed Boléro in 1928 as a ballet on commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who performed the premiere at the Paris Opéra on November 20, 1928; Walter Straram conducted. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two B-flat clarinets (second doubling E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, harp, and strings. Duration is about 16 minutes. Boléro was last performed February 1-3, 2013, with Peter Oundjian conducting. Ravel originated what he once called his “danse lascive” at the suggestion of Ida Rubinstein, the famed ballerina who also inspired works from Debussy, Honegger, and Stravinsky. Rubinstein’s balletic interpretation of Boléro, set in a rustic Spanish tavern, portrayed a voluptuous dancer whose stomps and whirls atop a table incite the men in the bar to mounting fervor. With growing intensity, they join in her dance until, in a brilliant coup de théâtre, knives are drawn and violence flares on stage at the moment near the end where the music modulates, breathtakingly, from the key of C to the key of E. So viscerally stirring was the combination of the powerful music and the ballerina’s suggestive dancing at the premiere that a near-riot ensued between audience and performers, and Miss Rubinstein narrowly escaped injury. The usually reserved Pitts Sanborn reported that the American premiere, conducted by Arturo Toscanini at Carnegie Hall on November 14, 1929, had a similar effect on its hearers: “If it had been the custom to repeat a number at a symphonic concert, Boléro would surely have been encored, even at the risk of mass wreckage of the nerves.” Ravel wrote, “Boléro constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction. It consists wholly of ‘orchestral tissue without music’ — one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, there is practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution. The themes are altogether impersonal… folktunes of the usual Spanish-Arabian kind, and (whatever may have been said to the contrary) the orchestral writing is simple and straightforward throughout, without the slightest attempt at virtuosity.”
©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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