Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
MASTERWORKS • 2016/2017 RACHMANINOFF PERFORMED BY OLGA KERN COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDREW LITTON, conductor OLGA KERN, piano
This Weekend's Concerts are Gratefully Dedicated to Schmitt Music Company Friday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Magnolia Hotels Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Alan and Judy Wigod
Friday, February 3, 2017, at 7:30pm Saturday, February 4, 2017, at 7:30pm Boettcher Concert Hall
RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 Vivace Andante Allegro vivace — INTERMISSION —
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, "Leningrad" Allegretto Moderato – Poco allegretto Adagio Allegro non troppo
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES
JEFF WHEELER
ANDREW LITTON, conductor Andrew Litton is Music Director of the New York City Ballet and Principal Guest Conductor of the Colorado Symphony. He recently ended his twelve-year tenure as Music Director of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic. Under Litton’s leadership, the Bergen Philharmonic gained international recognition through extensive touring, making debuts at London’s BBC Proms, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and appearances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and New York’s Carnegie Hall. They recorded 25 CD records for Sweden’s BIS and Britain’s Hyperion labels. In acknowledgment of Litton’s service to the cultural life of Norway, Norway’s King Harald knighted Litton with the Royal Order of Merit. Now Bergen Philharmonic Music Director Laureate and Conductor Laureate of Britain’s Bournemouth Symphony, he carries on as Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, a post he has held since 2003. He guest conducts the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies, and has a discography of almost 130 recordings with awards including America’s Grammy,™ France’s Diapason d’Or, and many other honors. Litton was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 1988-1994. A Music Director of the Dallas Symphony from 1994-2006, he hired over one third of the players, led the orchestra on three major European tours, appeared four times at Carnegie Hall, created a children’s television series broadcast nationally and in widespread use in school curricula, produced 28 recordings, and helped raise the orchestra’s endowment from $19 million to $100 million. He has conducted the Colorado Symphony both as Music Director and Artistic Advisor since 2012. An accomplished pianist, Litton often conducts from the keyboard and enjoys performing chamber music with his orchestra colleagues. Passionate about jazz, and long an admirer of the late jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, Litton recorded his first solo piano album, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson, released in 2014.
PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES OLGA KERN, piano Russian-American pianist Olga Kern is now recognized as one of her generation’s great pianists. She jumpstarted her U.S. career with her historic Gold Medal win at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, as the first woman to do so in more than thirty years. First prize-winner of the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition at seventeen, Ms. Kern is a laureate of many international competitions. In 2016, she served as Jury Chairman of both the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition and first Olga Kern International Piano Competition, where she also holds the title of Artistic Director. In 2017, Ms. Kern will premiere her first American concerto Barber’s Piano Concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. Upcoming performances include orchestral appearances with Pacific Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, and Copenhagen Philharmonic, as well as recitals at the Virginia Arts Festival and in Milan, Glasgow, New Haven, San Francisco, and Scottsdale. In addition to opening the Baltimore Symphony’s 2015-2016 centennial season with Marin Alsop, Kern has appeared with the Royal Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, Rochester Philharmonic, Orchestre National De Lyon, and the San Antonio, Detroit, Nashville, Madison, New Mexico, Austin, and NHK Symphonies. She has toured South Africa with the Cape and KwaZulu Natal Philharmonics and Israel with the Israel Symphony. As an avid recitalist, she has appeared in solo and collaborative recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Symphony Hall in Osaka, Salzburger Festspielhaus, La Scala in Milan, Tonhalle in Zurich, Chatelet in Paris, Van Wezel Hall in Sarasota, 92nd Street Y, Meany Hall in Seattle, and the University of Kansas’ Lied Center. Ms. Kern’s discography includes her Grammy Nominated recording of Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations and other transcriptions (2004), Brahms Variations (2007) and Chopin Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 3 (2010). She was featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, Playing on the Edge.
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 3
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943): Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 (1890-1891) Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873, in Oneg, district of Novgorod, Russia, and died on March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California. He composed his First Piano Concerto in 1890-1891 and was soloist in its premiere, on March 17, 1892, in Moscow, conducted by Vasily Safonoff. The work was revised in 1917. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 26 minutes. The concerto was last performed on October 16, 2009, with Olga Kern as soloist and Jeffrey Kahane conducting the orchestra. In the summer of 1890, while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff began a grand Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor. (He had abandoned a similar attempt two years earlier.) The first movement was finished quickly, but he did not return to the piece until the following year. On July 20, 1891, he wrote to Mikhail Slonov, “On July 6th, I fully completed composing and scoring my Piano Concerto. You can imagine what a job that was! I wrote from five in the morning till eight in the evening, so after finishing the work I was terribly tired. Afterwards I rested for a few days. While working I never feel fatigue (on the contrary — pleasure). With me fatigue appears only when I realize that a big labor is finished. I am pleased with the Concerto.” Rachmaninoff gave the work’s premiere in a student concert at the Moscow Conservatory on March 17, 1892; the school’s director, Vasily Safonoff, conducted. “At the rehearsals, the 18-yearold Rachmaninoff showed the same stubbornly calm character that we knew from our comradely gatherings,” wrote his fellow student Mikhail Bukinik. “Safonoff, who ordinarily conducted the compositions of his students, would brutally and unceremoniously change anything he wished in these scores, cleaning them up and cutting parts to make them more playable…. But Safonoff had a hard time with Rachmaninoff. This student not only refused categorically to accept alterations, but also had the audacity to stop Safonoff (as conductor), pointing out his errors in tempo and nuance. This was obviously displeasing to Safonoff, but being intelligent, he understood the rights of the author, though a beginner, to make his own interpretation, and he tried to take the edge off any awkwardness. Besides, Rachmaninoff’s talent as a composer was so obvious, and his quiet selfassurance made such an impression on all, that even the omnipotent Safonoff had to yield.” The new Concerto enjoyed little success at its premiere, though one reviewer allowed that it showed “taste, tension, youthful sincerity and obvious knowledge; already there is much promise.” Rachmaninoff himself thought the work in its original version to be flawed. Though he played the Concerto frequently, his dissatisfaction with it remained, and, after talking about doing so for years, he finally undertook its revision in October 1917 — just as the Russian Revolution erupted in the streets around his Moscow flat. “I sat at the writing table all day without troubling about the rattle of machine guns and rifle shots,” he noted in his diary. In December, he fled to Finland with other members of the aristocracy, supported himself for a year in Scandinavia by giving concerts, and settled in the United States in 1918. The revision of the First Concerto (which was undertaken after the composition of the Second and Third Piano Concertos) was extensive, especially in its alterations to the work’s form and orchestration. The Concerto’s thematic material, however, with its sense of bursting, youthful impetuosity, was largely retained. Though the opening movement follows the traditional concerto form, its greatest appeal arises from the melancholy nature of its themes, a quality at which Rachmaninoff excelled from his earliest works, and the virtuosic pianism required of the soloist, most notably in the mountainous PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES solo cadenza that occurs near the end. The brief Andante is rhapsodic in spirit and lyrical in style, with the piano strewing sweeping arabesques upon the subdued orchestral accompaniment. The finale is aggressive and virtuosic, with a quiet center section to provide contrast before the brilliant closing pages of the work.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975): Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, “Leningrad” (1941) Dmitri Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg and died on August 9, 1975, in Moscow. He composed the first three movements of his Seventh Symphony in September 1941 in Leningrad, and completed the finale on December 27th in Kuibyshev. The premiere was given in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942, by conductor Samuel Samosud and the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, in refuge from Moscow. The score calls for three flutes (second doubling alto flute, third doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three B-flat clarinets (third doubling E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, six trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, piano, and strings. Duration is about 70 minutes. The last performance of the symphony was conducted by Marin Alsop on September 15-17, 2000. Early in the summer of 1941, Hitler turned his attention from his western front in France and the Low Countries to his eastern front and giant Russia, where his earliest and most brutal fury fell on Leningrad. The first bombs exploded in the city on June 22nd and signaled the beginning of a one-and-a-half-year siege that is remembered as the most devastating in modern times. Boris Schwarz described the horror in Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970. “This city of three million people was cut off, encircled, and condemned to death by starvation. The blockade lasted from September 1941 to February 1943; but even after the blockade was broken, the Germans were entrenched only two miles from the Kirov works. During the eighteen months of the blockade, 632,000 people died of hunger and privation, according to official figures. Unofficially, the estimate is closer to one million deaths, or one-third of the population.... In addition to hunger and cold, the city was subjected to shelling and air raids. The winter of 1941-1942, when the official food rations — if they could be obtained — were reduced to under 500 calories a day for many adults, was particularly cruel. People died everywhere, on the street, at work, in offices and factories. Water pipes burst and people had to drink the infested water of the Neva or of the canals. Electric power was cut to a minimum and there were no lights in houses and offices.” In August 1941, at the height of the shelling, Shostakovich undertook a symphony that he intended as both an emotional outpouring of his feelings about the war and an inspiration to those who heard it. The “peaceful life of the people” is portrayed, according to the composer, in the opening movement of the “Leningrad” Symphony by the two themes of the exposition, the first one energetic and full of leaping intervals, the second (presented quietly by the strings over a rocking accompaniment) is simple and flowing. Instead of the expected development section, Shostakovich substituted a marching tune that is played a dozen times at a gradually rising dynamic level. This portrayal of the advancing German army, urged on inexorably by the military cadence of the snare drum, builds from a soft, remote threat to an overpowering fusillade of SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES sound. The march section ends with a violent conflagration as invaders clash with defenders. The recapitulation of the opening theme turns from the bright C major of the exposition to the mourning of C minor. The solo bassoon intones the moving plaint for those who perished, with a hint of the continuing conflict given by the drumbeat that closes the movement. “The second movement,” noted the composer, “brings back pleasant memories of happy days. [The music] is meant to confirm that life and art continue despite the war.” This is the Symphony’s three-part scherzo. The first section — partly jovial, partly somber — has two themes; the first is heard in the strings, the second in the solo oboe and English horn. The tumultuous central section, in rapid triple meter, features some thrilling writing for brass. The final section returns the opening themes accompanied by glacial chords in the flutes. Shostakovich continued, “The Adagio expresses rapture with life and admiration of nature, impressions of the unforgettable view of Leningrad, the steady flow of the Neva River, its granite banks, the well-proportioned buildings of the Admiralty and the Winter Palace, and of avenues receding into the distance.” The chorale of the beginning, evoking an almost religious solemnity, is followed by a long melody initiated by the solo flute. A worried character, conveyed by syncopations and brittle dotted rhythms, pervades the central section. This music builds to a mighty climax with augmented brass before the chorale returns to subdue the apprehension and leave the movement poised on an unresolved harmony. Three soft taps on the gong connect this movement to the finale without pause. “The fourth movement,” said Shostakovich, “is dedicated to our victory of lofty humanism over monstrous tyranny.” Though often given to dark moods and mournful thoughts, especially in its central portions, this finale affirms the faith in the ultimate triumph over the enemy. Its blazing closing pages were the nourishment the Russian soul needed so desperately in 1942, and which, with its positive and forceful optimism, can still move listeners today. *** Since the appearance in 1979 of his explosively controversial memoirs, Testimony, no writing on Shostakovich is complete without an amendment that includes the thoughts expressed there. The book was “related to and edited by” Solomon Volkov, a Russian musicologist now living in the United States. Some — including the highest levels of the Soviet government — contended that the book is a total falsehood, that it does not represent Shostakovich’s beliefs, and that it is nothing but a publicity-seeking rag manufactured entirely by Volkov. Volkov insisted that Testimony accurately reflects Shostakovich’s thoughts. When Volkov completed the entire manuscript, he fled Russia. Publication brought angry denials of the contents of the book and official condemnation for Volkov from the Kremlin. Testimony became a best-seller in the West. The book is a chilling view into the obscure inner workings of the Soviet system in the middle decades of the 20th century and the agonies that politics created for Shostakovich throughout his life. Even if only partly true, it is still a frightening document about the loss of human freedom and dignity to a political machine whose only interest was in its own undisturbed self-preservation. It is, however, a book that speaks of the great courage of the composer and of the resilient indomitability of his creative spirit. Testimony is an important book, worthy of careful consideration. Shostakovich made three important points about the “Leningrad” Symphony in his memoirs. PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES First, the work was conceived before the Second World War began, and is as much a reflection of the atrocities of Stalin as of Hitler. “It’s about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and that Hitler merely finished off,” he said. Further, the march theme in the development of the first movement, which refers to a ditty from Lehár’s The Merry Widow, a passionate favorite of Hitler, also invokes Stalin. “I was thinking of other enemies [than Hitler, i.e., Stalin] when I composed the theme.” Second, Shostakovich dreaded the fame that the Seventh Symphony would bring because he was certain that it would lead to reprisals against him and his music. He knew that Stalin, jealous and maniacal, could not bear anyone receiving greater acclaim than himself and would bring the celebrity down by whatever means were necessary. The denunciations did come, inevitably, soon after the war. Third, Shostakovich believed that the popularity of the “Leningrad” in the West was a ploy by the Allies to divert attention from Russia’s request to them to open a second front. The West’s attitude was, he felt, “See how much we love your Dmitri, and how widely we play his music. What more do you want from us?” These ideas run counter to what has always been accepted as the “real” Dmitri Shostakovich, Soviet artist par excellence. The truth probably lies somewhere between the traditional “party line” and the iconoclastic Testimony. Perhaps the important aspect of Testimony, however, is that it gives a different viewpoint of the meaning of the life and works of one of the greatest modern symphonists. The book is a portrait of a heroic but bitter artist existing under an oppressive social and political system that sought to “neutralize” those who opposed it. After reading these memoirs, we approach the music of Shostakovich with a deeper sympathy and a heightened awareness of the basic human values that it embodies. ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
SATURDAY . APRIL 29 . 2017
6 pm :: Fillmore Auditorium :: Denver, Colorado presenting sponsor
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