Colorado Symphony 2017/18 Season Presenting Sponsor:
CLASSICS • 2017/18 TCHAIKOVSKY'S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 WITH OLGA KERN COLORADO SYMPHONY BRETT MITCHELL, conductor OLGA KERN, piano This Weekend's performances are Gratefully Dedicated to Liberty Global Inc. Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Elizabeth and Steve Holtze & Elyse Tipton and Paul Ruttum Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Mr. Paul E. Goodspeed and Ms. Mary Poole Sunday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Dr. Jan Marie Crawford
Friday, March 2, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 3, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 4, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall
KILAR
Orawa
LUTOSŁAWKI Concerto for Orchestra Intrada Capriccio notturno e arioso Passacaglia, toccata e corale INTERMISSION
TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso Andantino semplice Allegro con fuoco
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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES BRETT MITCHELL, conductor Hailed for delivering compelling performances of innovative, eclectic programs, Brett Mitchell was named the fourth Music Director of the Colorado Symphony in September 2016. He served as the orchestra’s Music Director Designate during the 2016/17 season, and began his fouryear appointment in September 2017. Mr. Mitchell concluded his tenure as Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra in August 2017. He joined the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in 2013, and was promoted to Associate Conductor in 2015, becoming the first person to hold that title in over three decades and only the fifth in the orchestra’s hundredyear history. In this role, he led the orchestra in several dozen concerts each season at Severance Hall, Blossom Music Center, and on tour. Mr. Mitchell also served as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) from 2013 to 2017, which he led on a four-city tour of China in June 2015, marking the ensemble’s second international tour and its first to Asia. In addition to his work in Cleveland and Denver, Mr. Mitchell is in consistent demand as a guest conductor. Recent and upcoming guest engagements include his debuts at the Grant Park Music Festival in downtown Chicago, with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Auckland and Wellington, and the San Antonio Symphony, as well as appearances with the Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, National, and Oregon symphonies, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others. He has collaborated with such soloists as Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Rudolf Buchbinder, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Leila Josefowicz, and Alisa Weilerstein. From 2007 to 2011, Mr. Mitchell led over one hundred performances as Assistant Conductor of the Houston Symphony, to which he frequently returns as a guest conductor. He also held Assistant Conductor posts with the Orchestre National de France, where he worked under Kurt Masur from 2006 to 2009, and the Castleton Festival, where he worked under Lorin Maazel in 2009 and 2010. In 2015, Mr. Mitchell completed a highly successful five-year appointment as Music Director of the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra, where an increased focus on locally relevant programming and community collaborations resulted in record attendance throughout his tenure. As an opera conductor, Mr. Mitchell has served as music director of nearly a dozen productions, principally at his former post as Music Director of the Moores Opera Center in Houston, where he led eight productions from 2010 to 2013. His repertoire spans the core works of Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute), Verdi (Rigoletto and Falstaff), and Stravinsky (The Rake’s Progress) to contemporary works by Adamo (Little Women), Aldridge (Elmer Gantry), Catán (Il Postino and Salsipuedes), and Hagen (Amelia). As a ballet conductor, Mr. Mitchell most recently led a production of The Nutcracker with the Pennsylvania Ballet in collaboration with The Cleveland Orchestra during the 2016-17 season.
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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES In addition to his work with professional orchestras, Mr. Mitchell is also well known for his affinity for working with and mentoring young musicians aspiring to be professional orchestral players. His work with COYO during his Cleveland Orchestra tenure was highly praised, and he is regularly invited to work with the highly talented musicians at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the orchestras at this country’s high level training programs, such as the National Repertory Orchestra, Texas Music Festival, and Sarasota Music Festival. Born in Seattle in 1979, Mr. Mitchell holds degrees in conducting from the University of Texas at Austin and composition from Western Washington University, which selected him in 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. For more information, please visit www.brettmitchellconductor.com
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 the first Olga Kern International Piano Competition, where she also holds the title of Artistic Director. Kern serves as Artist in Residence to the San Antonio Symphony’s 2017-18 season, appearing in two subscription weeks as well as solo recital. She will also perform with Madison Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Austin Symphony, New Mexico Philharmonic, Arizona Musicfest Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, and Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Kern will premiere her first American concerto Barber’s Piano Concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. She will give recitals at the University of Arizona, the Lied Center in Lincoln, NE, the Sanibel Music Festival in Sanibel, FL, and abroad in Mainz and Turin. Additionally, Ms. Kern will perform in the Huntington Estate Music Festival with Musica Viva in Australia. 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
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES WOJCIECH KILAR (1932-2013): Orawa for String Orchestra Wojciech Kilar was born July 17, 1932 in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) and died December 29, 2013 in Katowice, Poland. Orawa was composed in 1986 and premiered on March 10, 1986 in Zakopane, Poland, conducted by Wojciech Michniewski. Duration is about 9 minutes. This is the first performance of the piece by the orchestra. The name Wojciech Kilar may not be familiar to many American listeners, but anyone who has seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady, or Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden or The Ninth Gate has heard his music — after scoring his first movie in his native Poland in 1958, Kilar contributed to more than 150 feature films and television shows while maintaining a parallel career as one of his country’s most respected concert composers. Kilar, born on July 17, 1932 in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), studied piano and composition at the Katowice Academy (1950–1955) and the State Higher School of Music in Krakow (1955–1958) before winning a grant from the French government to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1959-1960). He returned home to teach at the Katowice State College of Music and to join Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Górecki, Tadeusz Baird and others in charting the path that made Polish music some of the most daring and experimental being composed anywhere during the 1960s. Despite his forays into serialism, extended vocal and instrumental techniques, and other avant-garde practices, Kilar’s works always displayed simple structures, immediacy of expression and an influence in Polish folk music, and those qualities gained increasing prominence in his music after the late 1960s, when he began devoting much of his creative energy to writing for the cinema. Many of his works after that time testify to his religious belief (in 1981, he scored a television documentary about Pope John Paul II titled From a Far Country; in 1996, he composed Requiem Father Kolbe, inspired by the beatification of the Polish priest and religious publisher Maximilien Kolbe) or his fascination with the spirit and the music of the Tatra Mountains, which straddle Poland’s southern border. Among Kilar’s numerous international distinctions were the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award of Boston (1960), Jurzykowski Foundation Award of New York (1983), a Polish State Award Grade I (1980), two awards from the Polish Minister of Culture (1967, 1976), Prize of the Polish Composers’ Union (1975), an ASCAP Award for his score for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2008). The title of Kilar’s Orawa, according to Andrzej Chtopecki, the leading authority on the composer’s music, is “a word derived from a Highlander term for a slope in the Podhale region of the Tatra Mountains [centered around the southern town of Zakopane] where the grass has been scythed. When the grazing season is over, the remaining grass is cut down and the slope thus prepared becomes a place for celebrating the end of the shepherds’ work with music and dancing.” The folk essence of Orawa is inherent in the short, small-interval phrases of its melodic material, the driving, repetitive nature of its rhythms, and the sonorous, open-interval quality of its harmonies. These elements are presented simply and without ornament at first, but are whipped into an increasing frenzy as the work progresses (the final pages of the score bear the performance instructions feroce — furioso — ferocissimo — ardente) until a final shout from the orchestra caps this evocation of a harvest-time celebration in Poland’s most rugged and beautiful region.
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI (1913-1994): Concerto for Orchestra Witold Lutosławski was born January 25, 1913 in Warsaw and died there on February 7, 1994. The Concerto for Orchestra was composed between 1950 and 1954; Witold Rowicki and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra gave the work’s premiere on November 26, 1954. The score calls for three flutes (second and third doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling English horn), three clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons (third doubling contrabassoon), four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, two harps, piano and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. The last performance took place on April 3-5, 2003, with Jeffrey Kahane leading the orchestra. Witold Lutosławski was among the giants of late-20th-century music. Born into a highly cultured family in Warsaw, Poland on January 25, 1913, Lutosławski took up piano and violin as a teenager before entering the Warsaw Conservatory to study keyboard and composition. His first important work, the Symphonic Variations (1938), dates from the year after his graduation. He supported himself during the difficult years of World War II, when he was in constant fear of deportation, as a pianist in the Warsaw cafés. At that time, he also worked on his First Symphony, which was condemned following its 1947 premiere for not conforming to the governmentprescribed style of “socialist realism.” Many of his works of the following decade avoided “formalism” by deriving their melodic and harmonic inspiration from folk songs and dances, a period that culminated in the splendid Concerto for Orchestra of 1950-1954. After the Funeral Music for String Orchestra of 1957, Lutosławski’s music was written in a more decidedly modern idiom, akin in some respects to 12-tone serialism but still individual in its formal strength, colorful sonority, lucid texture and emotional power. His last works, notably the Third (1983) and Fourth (1992) Symphonies and the Piano Concerto (1987), turned to an idiom that is less dissonant, dense, complicated and unpredictable, and more lucid and obviously melodic than the compositions of the preceding two decades. In summarizing the style of Lutosławski’s music, Bohdan Pociej wrote, “For him sound is primary, but this does not mean that he tends in the direction of impressionism; rather the superior position given to sound quality is combined with an unusually acute sense of proportion and of the expressive capacities of shape. The sources of his music may be traced to the deepest and most vital European traditions, and he has renewed and developed currents of musical thought basic to those traditions: the idea of form in sound as a manifestation of beauty and the idea of dramatic form generated by conflict.” The composer gave the following account of the genesis of his Concerto for Orchestra: “In 1945, the Polish Music Publishing Company — which had just been established — asked me to compose a series of easy pieces based on Polish folk song and dance themes. I readily accepted this proposition and began for the first time to introduce elements of folk music into my work. Soon afterwards I accepted several similar commissions and in this way I came to compose a series of works based on Polish folk tunes. Among these are my ‘Little Suite’ for orchestra, ‘Bucolics’ for piano, etc. I did not attach any great importance to these works and treated them merely as a side-line to my real work as a composer. At this time I was busy above all on my First Symphony and later on my Overture for Strings and on problems of composition technique which were entirely unconnected with folk music. At the same time, however, the whole series of ‘functional’ pieces which I wrote based on folk themes gave me the possibility of developing a style which though narrow and limited, was nevertheless characteristic enough. SOUNDINGS
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES This mainly involved blending simple diatonic motifs with chromatic atonal counterpoint, and with non-functional, multicolored, capricious harmonies. The rhythmic transformation of these motifs, and the polymetrical texture resulting from them together with the accompanying elements are a part of the characteristic style which I have mentioned. In doing all this, I thought at the time that this marginal style would not be entirely fruitless and that despite its having come into being while I was writing typical ‘functional’ music, I could possibly make use of it in writing something more serious. A suitable opportunity for putting this into practice soon turned up. This was in 1950. The director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Witold Rowicki, asked me to write something especially for his new ensemble. This was to be something not difficult, but which could, however, give the young orchestra an opportunity to show its qualities. I started to work on the new score not realizing that I was to spend nearly four years on it. Folk music and all that follows with it — of which I have already spoken — was to be used in my new work. Folk music has in this work, however, been merely a raw material used to build a large musical form of several movements which does not in the least originate either from folk songs or from folk dances. A work came into being, which I could not help including among my most important works, as a result of my episodic symbiosis with folk music and in a way that was for me somewhat unexpected. This work is the Concerto for Orchestra. It seems to me that my possibilities of making use of folk themes have been almost completely exhausted in this score.” Like Bartók’s familiar work of the same title, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra allows each orchestral section solo opportunities, creating a richly varied kaleidoscope of instrumental colors enlivened by a clear and invigorating harmonic palette and a bursting rhythmic energy. The first movement is titled Intrada, a term used in the 16th and 17th centuries for the festive opening piece of a musical evening. Lutosławski’s Intrada begins over a gigantic sustained pedal-point in the basses and proceeds through several sections that are played in reverse order after the movement’s central point to create a symmetrical, mirror-like structure with the pedal-point and its decorating themes returning at the end to round out the form. The second movement (Capriccio notturno e Arioso) opens and closes with skittering music that brings to mind the whirrings and buzzings of a country summer night. The Arioso at the movement’s center, initiated by unison trumpets, is an extended melody given above heavy accompanimental punctuations. The finale comprises three continuous sections — Passacaglia, a set of increasingly elaborate variations around an unchanging melody, first played by the basses; Toccata, a vibrantly rhythmic stanza commencing after the Passacaglia fades into silence; and Chorale, begun by oboes and clarinets and growing through the full ensemble to stentorian proportions.
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893): Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia and died November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg. The Piano Concerto No. 1 was composed in 1874-1875 and premiered on October 25, 1875 in Boston, with Hans von Bülow as soloist; Benjamin Johnson Lang conducted. The score calls for woodwinds and trumpets in pairs, four horns, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 36 minutes. The concerto was last performed on September 18-20, 2015, with Alessio Bax as the piano soloist and Andrew Litton on the podium. These days, when the music of Tchaikovsky is among the most popular in the repertory, it is difficult to imagine the composer as a young man, known only to a limited public and trying valiantly to solve that most pressing of all problems for the budding artist — making a living. In 1874, he was teaching at the Moscow Conservatory and writing music criticism for a local journal. These duties provided a modest income, but Tchaikovsky’s real interest lay in composition, and he was frustrated with the time they took from his creative work. He had already stolen enough hours to produce a sizeable body of music, but only Romeo and Juliet and the Symphony No. 2 had raised much enthusiasm. At the end of the year, he began a piano concerto with the hope of having a success great enough to allow him to leave his irksome post at the Conservatory. By late December, he had largely sketched out the work, and, having only a limited technique as a pianist, he sought the advice of Nikolai Rubinstein, Director of the Moscow Conservatory and an excellent player. Tchaikovsky reported on the interview in a letter: “On Christmas Eve 1874 ... Nikolai asked me ... to play the Concerto in a classroom of the Conservatory. We agreed to it.... I played through the first movement. Not a criticism, not a word. Rubinstein said nothing.... I did not need any judgment on the artistic form of my work; there was question only about its mechanical details. This silence of Rubinstein said much. It said to me at once: ‘Dear friend, how can I talk about details when I dislike your composition as a whole?’ But I kept my temper and played the Concerto through. Again, silence. “‘Well?’ I said, and stood up. There burst forth from Rubinstein’s mouth a mighty torrent of words. He spoke quietly at first; then he waxed hot, and at last he resembled Zeus hurling thunderbolts. It appeared that my Concerto was utterly worthless, absolutely unplayable; passages were so commonplace and awkward that they could not be improved; the piece as a whole was bad, trivial, vulgar. I had stolen this from that one and that from this one; so only two or three pages were good for anything, while the others should be wiped out or radically rewritten. I cannot produce for you the main thing: the tone in which he said all this. An impartial bystander would necessarily have believed that I was a stupid, ignorant, conceited note-scratcher, who was so impudent as to show his scribble to a celebrated man.” Tchaikovsky was furious, and he stormed out of the classroom. He made only one change in the score: he obliterated the name of the original dedicatee — Nikolai Rubinstein — and substituted that of the virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow, who was performing Tchaikovsky’s piano pieces across Europe. Bülow gladly accepted the dedication and wrote a letter of praise to Tchaikovsky as soon as he received the score: “The ideas are so original, so powerful; the details are so interesting, and though there are many of them they do not impair the clarity and unity of the work. The form is so mature, so ripe and distinguished in style; intention and labor are everywhere concealed. I would weary you if I were to enumerate all the characteristics of your
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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES work, characteristics which compel me to congratulate equally the composer and those who are destined to enjoy it.” After the scathing criticism from Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky was delighted to receive such a response, and he was further gratified when Bülow asked to program the premiere on his upcoming American tour. The Concerto created such a sensation when it was first heard, in Boston on October 25, 1875, that Bülow played it on 139 of his 172 concerts that season. (Remarkably, Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto was also premiered in this country, by Madeleine Schiller and the New York Philharmonic Society conducted by Theodore Thomas on November 12, 1881.) Such a success must at first have puzzled Rubinstein, but eventually he and Tchaikovsky reconciled their differences over the work. Tchaikovsky incorporated some of his suggestions in the 1889 revision, and Rubinstein not only accepted the Concerto, but eventually made it one of the staples of his performing repertory. During the next four years, when Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake, the Rococo Variations, the Third and Fourth Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, and, in 1877, met his benefactress Nadezhda von Meck, he was not only successful enough to leave his teaching job to devote himself entirely to composition, but he also became recognized as one of the greatest composers of his day. Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto opens with the familiar theme of the introduction, a sweeping melody nobly sung by violins and cellos above thunderous chords from the piano. After a brief cadenza for the soloist, the theme — which is not heard again anywhere in the Concerto — is presented a second time in an even grander setting. Following a decrescendo and a pause, the piano presents the snapping main theme. (Tchaikovsky said that this curious first theme was inspired by a tune he heard sung by a blind beggar at a street fair.) Following a skillful discussion of the opening theme by piano and woodwinds, the clarinet announces the lyrical, bittersweet second theme. A smooth, complementary phrase is played by the violins. This complementary phrase and the snapping motive from the main theme are combined in the movement’s impassioned development section. The recapitulation returns the themes of the exposition in altered settings. (The oboe is awarded the second theme here.) An energetic cadenza and a coda derived from the second theme bring this splendid movement to a rousing close. The simplicity of the second movement’s three-part structure (A–B–A) is augured by the purity of its opening — a languid melody wrapped in the silvery tones of the solo flute, accompanied by quiet, plucked chords from the strings. The piano takes over the theme, provides it with rippling decorations, and passes it on to the cellos. The center of the movement is of very different character, with a quick tempo and a swift, balletic melody. The languid theme and moonlit mood of the first section return to round out the movement. The crisp rhythmic motive presented immediately at the beginning of the finale and then spun into a complete theme by the soloist dominates much of the last movement. In the theme’s vigorous full-orchestra guise, it has much of the spirit of a robust Cossack dance. To balance the impetuous vigor of this music, Tchaikovsky introduced a contrasting theme, a romantic melody first entrusted to the violins. The dancing Cossacks repeatedly advance upon this bit of tenderness, which shows a hardy determination to dominate the movement. The two themes contend, but it is the flying Cossacks who have the last word to bring this Concerto to an exhilarating finish. ©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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