MASTERWORKS • 2016/2017 Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO. 4 COLORADO SYMPHONY MARCELO LEHNINGER, conductor VADIM GLUZMAN, violin
Friday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Dale and Marguerite Bussman / Elyse Tipton and Paul Ruttums Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Jim Shpall / Roger and Susan Bowles
Friday, March 17, 2017, at 7:30pm Saturday, March 18, 2017, at 7:30pm Boettcher Concert Hall
TCHAIKOVSKY
Marche slav, Op. 31
PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63 Allegro moderato Andante assai Allegro, ben marcato — INTERMISSION —
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuto — Moderato con anima Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES MARCELO LEHNINGER, conductor
TERRY JOHNSTON
Brazilian-born Marcelo Lehninger is the newly-appointed Music Director of the Grand Rapids Symphony. He previously served as Music Director of the New West Symphony in Los Angeles, for which the League of American Orchestras awarded him the Helen H. Thompson Award for Emerging Music Conductors. Marcelo was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra by James Levine, and was later promoted to Associate Conductor. Earlier in his career, Marcelo served as Associate Conductor of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic in Brazil, and Music Advisor of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. Mr. Lehninger’s 2016-17 season includes debuts with the Sydney, Melbourne, Colorado, Hawaii , Toledo, and Portland Symphonies; the Colorado Springs Philharmonic; and Symphony Nova Scotia; as well as return engagements with Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, Minas Gerais Philharmonic, Slovenian Philharmonic, New Mexico Philharmonic, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and the Bard Orchestra, the orchestra of his alma mater. Career highlights include North American guest conducting engagements with the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston, Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, Toronto, Milwaukee and National Symphony Orchestras; and in Europe, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Lucerne Symphony, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and tours with the Concertgebouw Orchestra assisting Mariss Jansons; and Orchestre National de France, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and NY Philharmonic assisting Kurt Masur. Marcelo has conducted all major orchestras of Brazil and across South America.
VADIM GLUZMAN, violin Vadim Gluzman’s extraordinary artistry brings to life the glorious violinistic tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries. Gluzman’s wide repertoire embraces new music and his performances are heard around the world through live broadcasts and a striking catalogue of award-winning recordings exclusively for the BIS label. The Israeli violinist collaborates regularly with leading conductors including Christoph von Dohnányi, Tugan Sokhiev, Sir Andrew Davis, Neeme Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Semyon Bychkov, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Paavo Järvi, Hannu Lintu, and Peter Oundjian. He has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and other major symphony orchestras. Mr. Gluzman’s festival appearances include performances at Tanglewood, Verbier, Ravinia, Lockenhaus, and the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in Illinois, which was founded by Gluzman and pianist Angela Yoffe, his wife and recital partner. Highlights of the current season include appearances in London at The Proms with the BBC Symphony and Edward Gardner, with the Chicago Symphony under Neeme Järvi, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Hamburg under Christoph von Dohnányi, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Tugan Sokhiev, and with the Orchestre de Paris under Juraj Valčuha. Mr. Gluzman appears in New York’s Carnegie Hall with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and leads performances of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, where he continues his third year as Creative Partner and Principal Guest Artist. This season, Gluzman gives world premieres of concertos by Sofia Gubaidulina with the NDR Radio Philhamonic in Hannover under Andrew Manze, and by Elena Firsova with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Tugan Sokhiev. Accolades for his extensive discography include the Diapason d’Or of the Year; Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice; Classica Magazine’s esteemed Choc de Classica award; and Disc of the Month by The Strad, BBC Music Magazine, ClassicFM, and others. Vadim Gluzman plays on the legendary 1690 ‘ex-Leopold Auer’ Stradivari on extended loan to him through the generosity of the Stradivari Society of Chicago. PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893): Marche slav, Op. 31 (1876) Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk and died November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg. He composed Marche Slave in 1876; it was premiered on November 17, 1876, in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein. The score calls for flutes, piccolos, oboes, clarinets and bassoons in pairs plus four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 10 minutes. Marche slav was last performed by the orchestra on October 16 & 17, 2010, with Peter Oundjian on the podium. The ancient feud between the Turks and the peoples of the southernmost Slavic nations erupted into violence once again in 1876. The Turkish reform government of Abdul Aziz was deposed in that year by reactionaries within the country, and Abdul Hamid II, who came to be known as “Abdul the Damned” for the brutality of his 33-year rule, was installed as sultan. Christian nationalists in the neighboring Balkan nations still ruled by Turkey agitated against the oppression Hamid undertook to reassert the dominance of the crumbling Ottoman Empire in the region, and were mercilessly slaughtered. The massacres were especially cruel and effective in Serbia, and a massive wave of sympathetic Pan-Slavism swept through Eastern Europe and Russia for military support of the small country. (Commemorative ceremonies are continued in Russia to this day by the descendants of those who were killed.) A concert to benefit the victims of the Turks (and to raise public sentiment against Turkey and encourage the Czar to join Serbia and Montenegro in their declared war against Russia’s old southern enemy) was scheduled by the Russian Red Cross for Moscow in November 1876. Nikolai Rubinstein, head of the Moscow Conservatory, was enlisted to conduct the orchestra of the Russian Music Society, and he in turn asked Tchaikovsky to contribute a new piece to the event. Tchaikovsky had little interest in political affairs, but the situation in the Balkans drew from him surprisingly strong feelings. On September 24, he wrote to his brother-in-law, Lyov Davidov, “We expect a declaration of war at any hour.... It is at once terrifying and gratifying that our beloved country has at last decided to uphold its honor.” Several months passed before the Czar ordered his troops into battle, but Turkey was eventually subdued and Russia regained some of the territory it had lost in the Crimean War. Serbia became independent in 1878. Inspired by the situation, Tchaikovsky chose as the basis for his new work three Serbian folk tunes and Lvov’s familiar Russian national anthem, God Save the Emperor (which he also included in the 1812 Overture of 1880). He finished the score on October 7, just five days after it was begun, and asked Rubinstein that it be titled “Russian-Serbian March” at its premiere the following month. The score was published by Jurgenson in February 1880 as Marche slav (French was still the language of culture in Russia at the time), and it has remained one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular short works.
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 3
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953): Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63 (1935) Prokofiev was born on April 23, 1891, in Sontzovka and died on March 5, 1953, in Moscow. He composed his Second Violin Concerto in 1935; Robert Soetens was the soloist in the premiere on December 1, 1935, with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Arbós. The score calls for woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 26 minutes. Chee-Yun was the soloist and Jeffrey Kahane conducted the orchestra when the concerto was last performed on February 27 & 28, 2009. When Prokofiev returned to Russia late in 1933 after his long residency in the West, full of allegiance to the socialist cause, he dedicated his art to fulfillment of the dream of the Revolution. In his brief Autobiography of 1946 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 as I see it.” He had already mapped out (in an article for Izvestia in 1934) the stylistic direction that music should follow in order to achieve his lofty aim: “The question of what kind of music should be written at the present time is one that interests many Soviet composers today.... It is not easy to find the right idiom for this music. To begin with, it must be melodious; moreover, the melody must be simple and comprehensible, without being repetitive or trivial. Many composers have difficulty in composing any sort of melody; all the harder is it to compose a melody that has a definite function. The same applies to the technique and the idiom: they must be clear and simple, but not banal. We must seek a new simplicity.” Once back in his homeland, Prokofiev wasted no time in putting into practice his theory of creating music that would communicate simply and directly to listeners, and within three years, he wrote some of his most enduringly popular scores: Lt. Kijé, Romeo and Juliet, Peter and the Wolf — and the Second Violin Concerto. The commission for the Concerto came from a group of admirers of the Belgian violinist Robert Soetens just at the time Prokofiev was considering such a work, and the proposal was accepted quickly. The work was an immediate success at its premiere in Madrid late in 1935, and so moved the Boston audience when Jascha Heifetz first played it in America two years later that many wept openly at the sentiment of the slow movement. Heifetz called it one of the half dozen greatest concerted works ever written for the violin, grouping it with the examples of the form by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Elgar. The Concerto’s direct lyrical expression and clean formal lines are evident from its first gesture. The slightly melancholy main theme, built around a simple triadic configuration, is presented simply by the unaccompanied violin. The orchestra takes over the melody, allowing the soloist to apply to it some figurative arabesques that serve as the transition to the second subject. This theme, one of Prokofiev’s greatest melodic inspirations, is sung by the violin above a quiet, undulating accompaniment in the strings. The development section, an elaboration of the two main themes, achieves a masterful balance of flashing virtuosity, thematic manipulation and lyrical effusion. The recapitulation is begun by cellos and basses, and continues with the second theme soaring high into the soloist’s range. A brief coda, based on the main theme, brings the movement to a hushed, mysterious close. The second movement is one of the most rapt, transcendent inspirations of 20th-century music, and, like the opening movement,
PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES is unabashedly romantic and filled with a haunting bittersweet emotion. The finale is in the traditional rondo form. Its theme is an ebullient dance melody that exudes some of the fiery spirit of a Gypsy fiddler.
PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 (1877-1878) Tchaikovsky composed his Fourth Symphony between April 1877 and January 7, 1878; Nikolai Rubinstein, Director of the Moscow Conservatory, conducted the premiere in Moscow on February 22, 1878. The score calls for pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 45 minutes. Andrew Litton conducted the orchestra when the symphony was last performed on April 13 & 14, 2012. The Fourth Symphony was a product of the most crucial and turbulent time of Tchaikovsky’s life — 1877, when he met two women who forced him to evaluate himself as he never had before. The first was the sensitive, music-loving widow of a wealthy Russian railroad baron, Nadezhda von Meck, who became not only the financial backer who allowed him to quit his irksome teaching job at the Moscow Conservatory to devote himself entirely to composition, but also the sympathetic sounding-board for reports on the whole range of his activities — emotional, musical, personal. Though they never met, her place in Tchaikovsky’s life was enormous and beneficial. The second woman to enter Tchaikovsky’s life in 1877 was Antonina Miliukov, an unnoticed student in one of his large lecture classes at the Conservatory who had worked herself into a passion over her professor. Tchaikovsky paid her no special attention, and had quite forgotten her when he received an ardent love letter professing her flaming and unquenchable desire to meet him. Tchaikovsky (age 37), who should have burned the thing, answered the letter of the 28-year-old Antonina in a polite, cool fashion, but did not include an outright rejection of her advances. He had been considering marriage for almost a year in the hope that it would give him both the stable home life that he had not enjoyed in the twenty years since his mother died, as well as to help dispel the all-too-true rumors of his homosexuality. He believed he might achieve both those goals with Antonina. He could not see the situation clearly enough to realize that what he hoped for was impossible — a pure, platonic marriage without its physical and emotional realities. Further letters from Antonina implored Tchaikovsky to meet her, and threatened suicide out of desperation if he refused. What a welter of emotions must have gripped his heart when, just a few weeks later, he proposed marriage to her! Inevitably, the marriage crumbled within days of the wedding amid Tchaikovsky’s searing self-deprecation. It was during May and June that Tchaikovsky sketched the Fourth Symphony, finishing the first three movements before Antonina began her siege. The finale was completed by the time he proposed. Because of this chronology, the program of the Symphony was not a direct result of his marital disaster. All that — the July wedding, the mere eighteen days of bitter (non-) conjugal farce, the two separations — postdated the actual composition of the Symphony by a few months. What Tchaikovsky found in his relationship with this woman (who by 1877 already showed signs of approaching the door of the mental ward in which, still legally married to him,
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES she died in 1917) was a confirmation of his belief in the inexorable workings of Fate in human destiny. After the premiere, Tchaikovsky explained to Mme. von Meck the emotional content of the Fourth Symphony: “The introduction [blaring brasses heard immediately in a motto theme that recurs throughout the work] is the kernel of the whole Symphony. This is Fate, which hinders one in the pursuit of happiness. There is nothing to do but to submit and vainly complain [the melancholy, syncopated shadow-waltz of the main theme, heard in the strings]. Would it not be better to turn away from reality and lull one’s self in dreams? [The second theme is begun by the clarinet.] But no — these are but dreams: roughly we are awakened by Fate. [A blaring brass fanfare over a wave of timpani begins the development section.] Thus we see that life is only an everlasting alternation of somber reality and fugitive dreams of happiness. The second movement shows another phase of sadness. How sad it is that so much has already been and gone! And yet it is a pleasure to think of the early years. It is sad, yet sweet, to lose one’s self in the past. In the third movement are capricious arabesques, vague figures which slip into the imagination when one has taken wine and is slightly intoxicated. Military music is heard in the distance. As to the finale, if you find no pleasure in yourself, go to the people. The picture of a folk holiday. [The finale employs the folksong A Birch Stood in the Meadow.] Hardly have we had time to forget ourselves in the happiness of others when indefatigable Fate reminds us once more of its presence. Yet there still is happiness, simple, naive happiness. Rejoice in the happiness of others — and you can still live.” — ©2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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Beeth b y yo u r performed y m p h o ny ! Colorado S
PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:
INSIDE THE SCORE • 2016/2017 INSIDE TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO. 4 COLORADO SYMPHONY CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor Today's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Thomas J. and Shirley Gibson
Sunday, March 19, 2017, at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuto — Moderato con anima Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco
SOUNDINGS 2016/2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7
INSIDE THE SCORE BIOGRAPHY CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor Australian conductor Christopher Dragon is in his second season as the Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony and commences 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.
SATURDAY . APRIL 29 . 2017
6 pm :: Fillmore Auditorium :: Denver, Colorado presenting sponsor
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info: coloradosymphony.org