Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
SPECIAL • 2016/2017 TYRANT'S CRUSH: STEWART COPELAND WITH THE COLORADO SYMPHONY COLORADO SYMPHONY BRETT MITCHELL, conductor STEWART COPELAND, trapset Saturday, February 25, 2017, at 7:30pm Boettcher Concert Hall
JOHN ADAMS
The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra)
STRAVINSKY Suite from Pulcinella Sinfonia Serenata Scherzino Tarantella Toccata Gavotta Minuetto Finale — INTERMISSION — STEWART COPELAND Tyrant’s Crush for Trapset and Orchestra Poltroons in Paradise Monster Just Needed Love (but ate the children anyway) Over the Wall (or up against it) RAVEL
La Valse
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1
SPECIAL BIOGRAPHIES
LAND+LOCK
BRETT MITCHELL, conductor Hailed for delivering compelling performances of innovative, eclectic programs, Brett Mitchell has been named the fourth Music Director of the Colorado Symphony, beginning in the 2017/18 Season. Prior to this fouryear appointment, he will serve as Music Director Designate during the 2016/17 Season. Mr. Mitchell is also currently the Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. He joined the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in 2013, and was promoted to his current position in 2015, becoming the orchestra’s first Associate Conductor in over three decades and only the fifth in its 98-year history. In this role, he leads the orchestra in several dozen concerts each season at Severance Hall, Blossom Music Center, and on tour. Mr. Mitchell also serves as the Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, which he recently led on a fourcity tour of China. In addition to these titled positions, Brett Mitchell is in consistent demand as a guest conductor. Recent and upcoming guest engagements include the orchestras of Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Oregon, Rochester, Saint Paul, and Washington (National Symphony Orchestra), among others. He has collaborated with such soloists as Rudolf Buchbinder, James Ehnes, Leila Josefowicz, and Alisa Weilerstein, and has served as cover conductor and musical assistant at The Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Born in Seattle in 1979, Brett Mitchell holds degrees in conducting from the University of Texas at Austin and composition from Western Washington University, which selected him as its Young Alumnus of the Year in 2014. He also studied at the National Conducting Institute, and was selected by Kurt Masur as a recipient of the inaugural American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation Scholarship. Mr. Mitchell was also one of five recipients of the League of American Orchestras’ American Conducting Fellowship from 2007 to 2010.
SHAYNE GRAY
STEWART COPELAND, trapset/composer Stewart Copeland has spent three decades in the forefront of contemporary music as a rock star, acclaimed film score writer, and composer in the disparate worlds of opera, ballet, world music, and chamber music. In 1977, Stewart formed The Police, a band that became a defining force in rock music. He spent twenty years as a successful film and TV composer, working for the likes of Francis Ford Coppola on Rumblefish and Oliver Stone on Wall Street. Stewart went on to form Animal Logic with Stanley Clarke and Oysterhead with Trey Anastasio and Les Claypool, meanwhile finding time to win the Archie David Cup with his polo team. His first opera, Holy Blood and the Crescent Moon, was commissioned for the Cleveland Opera in 1989. In April 2011, he wrote a short opera based on the Edgar Allen Poe story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. This season Stewart premieres his new percussion concerto, Tyrant’s Crush, with the Pittsburgh Symphony followed by performances with the New West Symphony. He remounts his score for MGM’s silent film classic, Ben-Hur, performing with the Seattle Rock Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, and Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. Awards include the keys to the city of Milan, The Chevalier of the Order of Arts & Letters (France), five Grammys® and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Through it all, a sense of humor and appreciation for his utterly unique career has shone through as he has enjoyed working in a remarkable array of genres. PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
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SATURDAY . APRIL 29 . 2017 6 pm :: Fillmore Auditorium :: Denver, Colorado
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SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES JOHN ADAMS (b. 1947): The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) (1985) John Adams was born on February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Chairman Dances is what Adams called a “by-product” of his opera Nixon in China, premiered in Houston in October 1987. The Chairman Dances was composed in 1985 and premiered on January 31, 1986, in Milwaukee, conducted by Lukas Foss. The score calls for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp, and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra was on April 1 and 2, 2016, with Jose Luis Gomez on the podium. John Adams is one of today’s most acclaimed composers. Audiences have responded enthusiastically to his music, and he enjoys a success not seen by an American composer since the zenith of Aaron Copland’s career: a recent survey of major orchestras conducted by the League of American Orchestras found John Adams to be the most frequently performed living American composer; he received the University of Louisville’s distinguished Grawemeyer Award in 1995 for his Violin Concerto; in 1997, he was the focus of the New York Philharmonic’s Composer Week, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and named “Composer of the Year” by Musical America Magazine; he has been made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture; in 1999, Nonesuch released The John Adams Earbox, a critically-acclaimed ten-CD collection of his work; in 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and was also recognized by New York’s Lincoln Center with a two-month retrospective of his work titled “John Adams: An American Master,” the most extensive festival devoted to a living composer ever mounted at Lincoln Center; from 2003 to 2007, Adams held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall; in 2004, he was awarded the Centennial Medal of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “for contributions to society” and became the first-ever recipient of the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, which included residencies and teaching at Northwestern University; he was a 2009 recipient of the NEA Opera Award; and he has been granted honorary degrees by the Royal Academy of Music (London), Juilliard School, and Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern universities, honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and the California Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) is a by-product of Adams’ opera Nixon in China, premiered in 1987. The opera, explained Michael Steinberg in his liner notes for the recording of The Chairman Dances on Nonesuch Records, is “neither comic nor strictly historical though it contains elements of both. It is set in three days of President Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, one act for each day. The single scene of the third act takes place in the Great Hall of the People, where there is yet another exhausting banquet, this one hosted by the Americans. “Act Three, in which both reminiscing couples, the Nixons and the Maos, find themselves contrasting the vitality and optimism of youth with their present condition of age and power, is full of shadows; Jiang Ching’s and Mao’s foxtrot in the opera is therefore more melancholy than The Chairman Dances. This is, uninhibitedly, a cabaret number, an entertainment, and a funny
PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES piece; as the Chairman and the former actress turned Deputy Head of the Cultural Revolution make their long trip back through time they turn into Fred and Ginger. The chugging music we first hear is associated with Mao; the seductive swaying-hips melody — La Valse translated across immense distances — is Jiang Ching’s. You might imagine the piano part at the end being played by Richard Nixon.”
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971): Suite from Pulcinella (1919-1920) Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, Russia and died on April 6, 1971, in New York City. He began Pulcinella in 1919 and completed it on April 21, 1920. The ballet’s premiere was conducted by Ernest Ansermet on May 15, 1920, with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe in Paris. The Suite from Pulcinella is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, and strings. Duration is about 22 minutes. The piece was last performed on October 1-3, 1999, with Marin Alsop leading the orchestra. The plot of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella was based on an 18th-century manuscript of commedia dell’arte plays discovered in Naples. The composer provided the following synopsis: “All the local girls are in love with Pulcinella; but the young men to whom they are betrothed are mad with jealousy and plot to kill him. The minute they think they have succeeded, they borrow costumes resembling Pulcinella’s to present themselves to their sweethearts in disguise. But Pulcinella — cunning fellow! — has already changed places with a double, who pretends to succumb to their blows. The real Pulcinella, disguised as a magician, now resuscitates his double. At the very moment when the young men, thinking they are rid of their rival, come to claim their sweethearts, Pulcinella appears and arranges all the marriages. He himself weds Pimpinella, receiving the blessing of his double, who in his turn has assumed the magician’s mantle.” Much of the ballet’s score consists of reworkings of pieces borrowed from the Neapolitan composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) and some of his contemporaries. The movements of the suite serve as a précis of the ballet’s music and story. The exuberant Sinfonia (Overture) is based on the opening movement of Pergolesi’s Trio Sonata No. 1 in G major. The movements that follow accompany the entrances of the Neapolitan girls who try to attract Pulcinella’s attention with their dances. (The Serenata derives from a pastorale in Act I of Pergolesi’s opera Flaminio; the Scherzino, Allegro and Andantino are all borrowed from trio sonatas by the Venetian violinist and composer Domenico Gallo.) The Tarantella (from the fourth movement of Fortunato Chelleri’s Concertino No. 6 in B-flat major) portrays the confusion when Pulcinella is apparently restored to life. The five movements that close the suite accompany the events from the point when the young men claim their sweethearts until the end of the ballet. The Toccata and Gavotte are based on anonymous harpsichord pieces; the Vivo on Pergolesi’s F major Cello Sonata; the Minuetto on a canzone from his comic opera Lo frate ’nnamorato; and the Finale on a trio sonata by Gallo.
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES STEWART COPELAND (B. 1952): Concerto No. 1 for Trapset, Three Percussionists and Orchestra, “The Tyrant’s Crush” (2012-2015) Stewart Copeland was born on July 16, 1952 ,in Alexandria, Virginia. The Tyrant’s Crush was composed 2012-2015. Poltroons in Paradise was premiered on May 23, 2014, at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vasily Petrenko; the complete work was premiered on February 19, 2016, at Heinz Hall by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marcelo Lehninger. The composer was soloist at both performances. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, three oboes, (third doubling English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano (doubling celesta), and strings. Duration is about 31 minutes. This is the first performance by the orchestra. The “Tyrant’s Crush” Concerto began with an orchestral passacaglia titled Monster Just Needed Love that Copeland composed in 2012; the following year he wrote Poltroons in Paradise on a commission from the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall as a solo piece for himself and three other percussionists and orchestra. The Concerto No. 1 for Trapset, Three Percussionists and Orchestra reached its finished state in response to a 2015 commission from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with Poltroons as the opening movement, a reworking of Monster as a concerted piece, and the newly composed Over the Wall (or up against it) as finale. Copeland provided the following discussion of the work, which speaks of the profound social awareness he finds inherent in music: “Poltroons in Paradise is the cheerful part of the story, about those who ride in on the back of a revolution and then discover the temptation of things against which they had revolted. [A ‘poltroon’ is an utter coward.] A cadre of starving, hitherto excluded intellectuals swagger through the palace of the fallen regime. The chandeliers, the brocades, and the gilded furniture all inspire a grand buffoonery that hides a sneaking desire. “Monster Just Needed Love (but ate the children anyway). The Monster is at his desk, with so much to discuss and few to trust. Kill or cure? Eat or feed? It’s hard to tell who is who these days. His comrades are at the bon-bons while the nation creaks. His epaulettes are hanging on for dear life. Why is he sitting here making decisions about … plumbing? What is Gradenko doing right now? Something beautiful, no doubt. Surely there is someone in all of our prisons who knows how to run this machine! Did I eat them all? “Over the Wall (or up against it). Implacable forces converge. The butler’s hand is shaking as he pours the last beer. Like me he’s wondering how to get out of here.
PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
SPECIAL PROGRAM NOTES
The palace halls are empty and the scene outside is surly. My transgressions are mounting up, and I can hear them weaving through this catastrophe. The counties don’t respond and the generals are vague. Escape is possible though maybe not. Will she meet me there? How well do I know even her? Over the wall or up against it.”
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937): La Valse, Poème choréographique (1919-1920) Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France, and died on December 28, 1937, in Paris. La Valse was composed between December 1919 and March 1920, and premiered in Paris by the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 12, 1920, under the direction of Camille Chevillard. The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes. Jeffrey Kahane conducted the last performance on January 17-19, 2014. Ravel first considered composing a musical homage to Johann Strauss as early as 1906. The idea forced itself upon him again a decade later, but during the years of World War I he could not bring himself to work on a score he had tentatively titled “Wien” (“Vienna”), and it was not until January 1919 that he was immersed in the composition of his tribute to Vienna — “waltzing frantically,” as he wrote to a friend. He saw La Valse both as “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz” and as a “fantastic and fatefully inescapable whirlpool.” The “inescapable whirlpool” was the First World War toward which Vienna marched in three-quarter time, salving its social and political conscience with the luscious strains of Johann Strauss. Ravel completed La Valse in piano score by the end of 1919, and then made a piano duet version and undertook the orchestration, which he finished in the spring of the following year. A surrealistic haze shrouds the opening of La Valse, a vague introduction from which fragments of themes gradually emerge. In the manner typical of the Viennese waltz, several continuous sections follow, each based on a different melody. At the half-way point of the score, however, the murmurs of the introduction return, and the melodies heard previously in clear and complete versions are now fragmented, played against each other, and are unable to regain the rhythmic flow of their initial appearances. The musical panacea of 1855 cannot smother the reality of 1915, however, and the music becomes consumed by the harsh thrust of the roaring triple meter transformed from a seductive dance into a demonic juggernaut. At the almost unbearable peak of tension, the dance is torn apart by a violent five-note figure, a gesture so alien to the triple meter that it destroys the waltz and brings this brilliant, forceful, and disturbing work to a shattering close. ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7
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