Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
MASTERWORKS • 2016/2017 MOZART & STRAVINKSY CONDUCTED BY DE RIDDER COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDRÉ DE RIDDER, conductor NADIA SIROTA, viola Friday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to University of Denver Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to BeneFactor
Friday, February 17, 2017, at 7:30pm Saturday, February 18, 2017, at 7:30pm Boettcher Concert Hall
MOZART Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338 Allegro vivace Andante di molto Allegro vivace NICO MUHLY Viola Concerto Part One – Part Two Part Three — INTERMISSION —
STRAVINSKY Pétrouchka The Shrovetide Fair Pétrouchka’s Cell The Moor’s Cell The Fair (towards evening)
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES
MARCO BORGGREVE
ANDRÉ DE RIDDER, conductor Born in Berlin, de Ridder is the Artistic Director of Musica nova Helsinki and founder of the groundbreaking ensemble stargaze. He has given premieres of works by Bryce Dessner, Kaija Saariaho, Donnacha Dennehy, Mica Levi, Wolfgang Rihm, and Nico Muhly, amongst many others. He is a regular at such festivals as Edinburgh International Festival, Sydney Festival, and Holland Festival, and conducts such orchestras as New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, BBC Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. With stargaze, his appearances include Ruhrtriennale with Owen Pallett, Sacrum Profanum Festival with These New Puritans, Holland’s Rewire Festival, Paris Philharmonie, BBC Proms, and the ensemble’s own festival at Volksbühne-Am-Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. His discography includes Max Richter's The Four Seasons Recomposed (DG), works by Bryce Dessner and Jonny Greenwood (DG), and Africa Express Presents: In C Mali (Transgressive), a recording he produced of Terry Riley’s In C with Malian and western artists including Brian Eno and Damon Albarn.
SAMANTHA WEST
NADIA SIROTA, viola Violist Nadia Sirota’s varied career spans solo performances, chamber music, and podcasting. In all branches of her artistic life, she aims to open Classical music up to a broader audience. Nadia’s singular sound and expressive execution have served as muse to dozens of composers, including Nico Muhly, Donnacha Dennehy, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, and Marcos Balter. Recently, Nadia won a 2015 Peabody Award, broadcasting’s highest honor, for her podcast Meet the Composer, from Q2 Music, which deftly profiles some of the most interesting musical thinkers living today. This season, she releases two new records, one featuring Nico Muhly’s Viola Concerto with the Detroit Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, and one featuring Donnacha Dennehy’s groundbreaking work for viola and microtonal viola da gamba consort, Tessellatum, featuring gambist Liam Byrne. Nadia is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic and the chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound, and has lent her sound to recording and concert projects by such artists and songwriters as Anohni, Jónsi, and Arcade Fire. In 2013, she won Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Prize, awarded to pioneering artists and scholars with an emerging international profile. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, studying with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang. “If the ancient and unassuming viola is having a renaissance in contemporary music, it’s thanks largely to Nadia Sirota, who specializes in, well, anything a composer can throw at her.” (New York Magazine)
PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
save the date
SATURDAY . APRIL 29 . 2017 6 pm :: Fillmore Auditorium :: Denver, Colorado
presenting sponsor
info: coloradosymphony.org
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791): Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338 (1780) Mozart was born on January 27, 1756. in Salzburg and died on December 5, 1791, in Vienna. He composed the Symphony No. 34 in August 1780, and it was probably performed soon thereafter in Salzburg. The score calls for pairs of oboes, horns and trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 25 minutes. The symphony was last performed on January 19-21, 1996, with Carl St. Clair conducting. This sparkling Symphony was composed in August 1780, during the last year of Mozart’s “Salzburg Captivity,” as the frustrated young musician rather injudiciously dubbed his position as composer, violinist, pianist, and orchestral leader in the archiepiscopal musical establishment of his home town. He felt belittled and confined in provincial Salzburg, knowing that he had the talent to conquer the musical world but unable to find a suitably important post from which to launch the attack. In January 1779, he returned from a long, disappointing job hunt that had taken him as far as Paris, where his mother died, and to Mannheim, where he was jilted by his first serious love, but had produced no position. He reluctantly resumed his duties in Salzburg while longing constantly for something greater, especially something that would allow him to create operas. The C major Symphony (K. 338), written just nine months before he resigned his Salzburg post, shows Mozart’s uncanny ability at synthesizing the musical styles of his time into a work that would please the particular audience for which it was composed. (Virtually everything that Mozart or any of his contemporaries wrote was for a specific occasion; composed, essentially, on commission.) He tempered the progressive tendencies he had come to admire in the Mannheim composers — refined part-writing, independent treatment of the woodwinds and horns, delicacy of detail, use of crescendo and decrescendo, contrast of piano and forte — for the conservative tastes of his Salzburg audience, who preferred the old-fashioned three-movement symphony (lacking the minuet increasingly popular elsewhere) and a certain opera buffa style characteristic of the earlier Italian sinfonia. Such was Mozart’s mastery, even at the age of 24, that he could juggle these contemporary idioms with inimitable panache. The structure of the opening movement is essentially sonata-allegro, with a martial proclamation as a main theme and a teasing little strain for contrast. In its formal subtleties, however, the movement is as close to the Italian opera overture as to the newer German symphonic sonatas of Haydn. As with the overture form, it lacks the usual exposition repeat, has a development section based on new material rather than on previously heard themes, and extensively elaborates the exposition melodies on their recapitulation. The Andante Mozart provided for the Symphony was “the richest slow movement he had as yet produced, and which he did not often surpass in subtlety,” assessed the esteemed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey. The movement was originally for strings only, but when Mozart added bassoons to the scoring he not only strengthened the bass line but also imbued the music with a burnished, moonlit sonority. So taken was Saint-Foix with this haunting nocturne that he found in it “a delicacy and emotion ... never paralleled, even in the work of Mozart.” In the original manuscript, Mozart began sketching a minuet as the second movement of the Symphony, but he broke off after some dozen bars, probably deciding that the Salzburgers’ distaste for symphonic minuets would make the effort unrewarding. (“When I play in Salzburg
PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES or when any of my compositions are performed there, the audience might just as well be chairs and tables,” he once complained.) In 1782, however, after moving to Vienna, he returned to the Symphony and added to it a newly composed minuet, now entered separately in the catalog of his works as K. 409. The rollicking, sonata-form finale could well serve as the introduction to some farcical opera buffa. The rhythm of this moto perpetuo movement recalls the tarantella, the traditional Italian dance whose violent motions (producing copious perspiration) were said to expel the venom from the body of a tarantula bite victim. Nothing quite so threatening lies behind this finale, however, which brings this delightful Symphony to a spirited close.
NICO MUHLY (b. 1981): Viola Concerto (2014) Nico Muhly was born on August 26, 1981, in Tunbridge, Vermont. His Viola Concerto was composed in 2014 and premiered on February 6, 2015, by Orquesta Nacionales de España in Madrid, Spain, conducted by Nicholas Collon with Nadia Sirota as soloist. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano (doubling celesta), and strings. Duration is about 24 minutes. This is the first performance by the orchestra. Nico Muhly is one of the rising stars of American music: subject of a feature article in the February 11, 2008, New Yorker, when he was 26; a full-evening concert of his music at Carnegie Hall in October 2007; inclusion on New York magazine’s “Best of 2005” list for his cantata based on Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style (premiered at the New York Public Library); a publishing contract with the venerable British firm Chester/Novello; broadcasts of his music in England and performances by the American Symphony Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Boston Pops, Paris Opéra Ballet, and American Ballet Theater; his first opera, Two Boys, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater, was premiered in London in 2012 and critically acclaim, during its run at the Met in autumn 2013. Muhly was born in 1981 into an artistic family that split their time during his childhood between an 18th-century farmhouse in rural Vermont and a home in Providence, Rhode Island; his mother, Bunny Harvey, is a well-known painter on the faculty of Wellesley College; his father, Frank Muhly, is a documentary filmmaker. Nico began playing piano when he was eight and organ two years later, and joined a church choir soon thereafter. During high school in Providence, Muhly studied composition with David Rakowski, a professor at Brandeis, and attended the summer program at Tanglewood. After graduation, he enrolled in a joint program at Columbia, where he received a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 2003, and Juilliard, where he studied with Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano and got his master’s degree in 2004. From his sophomore year until 2008, Muhly worked for Philip Glass as editor, MIDI programmer, keyboardist, and conductor for numerous film and stage projects; he conducted excerpts from Glass’ epochal Einstein on the Beach for a new ballet by Benjamin Millepied at the Opéra de Paris in November 2006. Nico Muhly wrote of his Viola Concerto (2014), written for violist Nadia Sirota on a joint commission from the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España (Madrid), Detroit Symphony SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES Orchestra, Festival de Saint Denis (France) and National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), “My Concerto has a traditional structure: a fast movement, a slow movement, and a very fast third movement. The first movement begins with the solo viola at the center of a crystalline structure of harp, piano, celesta, glockenspiel, vibraphone and woodwinds playing competing polyrhythms. Jagged unison brass interrupts these delicate episodes, and the brass and crystalline material compete vigorously. Occasionally, the viola plays a quick duet with the timpani — a spatial displacement across the orchestra. About four minutes in, the viola and orchestra enter into a more traditional relationship between soloist and accompaniment, outlining a long series of descending chords. A trumpet solo emerges from this, and suddenly the whole thing breaks down into insect-like tuned percussion and the solo violist playing in a quartet with the three front-most orchestral violists. “The second movement is a series of slowly shifting drones in the strings, with a long, plaintive viola solo. The violist’s intervals expand and expand, culminating in a vertiginous tuba solo and a large orchestral explosion. Out of this, a dreamy landscape comes into view and fades away. The third movement is pulse-based and precise, and constantly plays with rhythms existing in three, four or six cycles, resulting in a seemingly friendly surface with a slightly menacing undercurrent. Eventually, all the friendly material vanishes and two different kinds of ‘panic’ music are left — bright flashes of poly-rhythms from the percussion (here, the crystalline structures have become razor-like) and giant vertical chords from the brass. The viola’s cadenza here is quiet, tense and fragile, and gives way to an extended passage during which the convivial instrumental pairings from the first movement become volatile and extreme. The piece ends in a state of frozen panic in which all the material heard before is antagonized, snarled at and damaged."
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971): Pétrouchka, Ballet in Four Tableaux Igor Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg and died on April 6, 1971, in New York City. He composed Pétrouchka in Switzerland, on the Riviera, in St. Petersburg and in Rome during the first months of 1911, completing the score on May 26th. The premiere followed only eighteen days later, on June 13th, given by the Ballet Russe at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris; Pierre Monteux conducted, and Karsavina and Nijinsky headed the cast in Fokine’s choreography. The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta, and strings. Duration is about 35 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra took place on February 23-25, 2007, with Christian Arming on the podium. Stravinsky burst meteor-like onto the musical firmament in 1910 with the brilliant triumph of his first major score for the Ballet Russe, The Firebird. Immediately, Serge Diaghilev, the enterprising impresario of the troupe, sought to capitalize on that success by commissioning Stravinsky to write a second score as soon as possible. Stravinsky was already prepared with an idea that had come to him even before finishing The Firebird. “I saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite,” he recalled in his Autobiography of 1936. “Sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring. Such was the theme of Le Sacre du Printemps.” Diaghilev was as excited about this vision as was Stravinsky, and he sent the composer off to write the score with all possible haste. Stravinsky continued the story in his Autobiography: “Before tackling The Rite of Spring, which would be a long and difficult task, I wanted to refresh myself by composing an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part — a sort of Konzertstück. In composing the music, I had a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life.... Having finished this piece, I struggled for hours to find a title which would express in a word the character of my music and, consequently, the personality of this creature. One day I leaped for joy, I had indeed found my title — Pétrouchka, the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries. Soon afterwards, Diaghilev came to visit me. He was much astonished when, instead of the sketches of the Sacre, I played him the piece I had just composed and which later became the second scene of Pétrouchka. He was so pleased with it that he would not leave it alone, and began persuading me to develop the theme of the puppet’s sufferings and make it into a whole ballet.” Though his progress on the score was interrupted by a serious bout of “nicotine poisoning,” Stravinsky finished the work in time for the scheduled premiere on June 13, 1911. The production was a triumph. Tableau I. St. Petersburg, the Shrove-Tide Fair. Crowds of people stroll about, entertained by a hurdy-gurdy man and dancers. The Showman opens the curtains of his little theater to reveal three puppets — Pétrouchka, the Ballerina and the Blackamoor. He charms them into life with his flute, and they begin to dance among the public. Tableau II. Pétrouchka’s Cell. Pétrouchka suffers greatly from his awareness of his grotesque appearance. He tries to console himself by falling in love with the Ballerina. She visits him in his cell, but she is frightened by his uncouth antics, and flees. Tableau III. The Blackamoor’s Cell. The Blackamoor and the Ballerina meet in his tent. Their love scene is interrupted by the arrival of Pétrouchka, furiously jealous. The Blackamoor tosses him out. Tableau IV. The Fair. The festive scene of Tableau I resumes with the appearance of a group of wet-nurses, a performing bear, Gypsies, a band of coachmen, and several masqueraders. At the theater, Pétrouchka rushes out from behind the curtain, pursued by the Blackamoor, who strikes his rival down with his sword. Pétrouchka dies. The Showman assures the bystanders that Pétrouchka is only a puppet, but he is startled to see Pétrouchka’s jeering ghost appear on the roof of the little theater. ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7
STUDENT TICKETS! Students and teachers receive
$10
[ Limitations apply ]
with valid school I.D.! Learn more at: coloradosymphony.org 303.623.7876 box office mon-fri: 10 am - 6 pm :: sat: 12 pm - 6 pm