Program Notes: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3

CLASSICS 2023/24

RACHMANINOFF PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3

PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY

KAREN KAMENSEK, conductor

NATASHA PAREMSKI, piano

Friday, April 26, 2024 at 7:30pm

Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 7:30pm

Sunday, April 28, 2024 at 1:00pm

Boettcher Concert Hall

FAZIL SAY Grand Bazaar

R. STRAUSS Intermezzo, Four Symphonic Interludes, TrV 246, Op. 72

I. Travel Fever and Waltz Scene

II. Dreaming by the Fireplace

III. At the Card Table

IV. Happy Ending

— INTERMISSION —

RACHMANINOFF

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30

I. Allegro ma non tanto

II. Intermezzo: Adagio

III. Finale: Alla breve

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 45 MINUTES. INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION.

FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 19 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT!

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

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KAREN KAMENSEK, conductor

Grammy Award-winning conductor Karen Kamensek’s expansive artistry coupled with her deep commitment for championing composers of the 20th and 21st century is reflected in her work in both the opera house and on the concert stage. This season, as a testament to her remarkable versatility as a musician, she makes several important debuts. From Puccini’s Tosca with London’s Royal Opera House to the world premiere of Adam Schoenberg’s Cool Cat with the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Seattle Symphony and soloist Jan Lisiecki, each debut showcases her unique ability to adroitly straddle a diverse repertoire.

Ms. Kamensek’s 2023/24 season is one of no less than nine debuts and several high-profile and welcome returns. In addition to her first time leading the Royal Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Seattle Symphony she will also make debuts with the Sydney Symphony, Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquestra Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE, and Colorado Symphony. In September she begins her season with Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Marsalis’ Violin Concerto in collaboration with violinist Nicola Benedetti for her debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In October she appears for the first time with the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra in an eclectic program that features the Raschér Saxophone Quartet performing Philip Glass’ Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra. Also on the program are Camille Pepin’s Vajrayana and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. She ends the calendar year debuting with the Royal Liverpool

Philharmonic presenting works by Strauss, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky in December. Following her debut at Covent Garden with the Royal Opera in February, she will then head to Spain for her debut with the Orquestra Filarmónica de Gran Canaria in a concert that includes Glass’ Itaipu and Waltons’ Symphony No. 1 in March. She makes two debuts in April. Her first with the Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE leading the ensemble in a concert featuring Gabriela Ortiz’s Antrópolis and Respighi’s The Fountains of Rome and his Pines of Rome. She will end the month with her debut with the Colorado Symphony in a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Natasha Paremski as soloist.

In October Ms. Kamensek makes the first of her four returns in 23/24 leading a program that includes Anna Clynes’ This Midnight Hour and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. She will also conduct Clyne’s work on a concert that features Glière’s Concerto for harp and orchestra in E flat major opus 74 with soloist Xavier de Maistre and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 for her return performance leading the Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier in April. In May she will return to Canada’s Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra to present a program that features Weber’s Bassoon Concerto with bassoonist Antoine St-Onge and Walton’s Symphony No. 1. Karen will bring her 23/24 season to a close with a return to the Tiroler Symphonierorchester Innsbruck in July.

Ms. Kamensek served as the Music Director of the Staatsoper Hannover from 2011-2016. She has also served as the 1st Kapellmeister at the Volksoper Wien (2000-2002), Music Director of the Theater Freiburg (2003-2006), Interim Music Director at the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor (2007-2008), and Associate Music Director at the Staatsoper Hamburg (2008-2011). Frequently in demand as a guest conductor with many of today’s most prominent opera

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companies and orchestras, Ms. Kamensek’s recent opera highlights include her performances with: the English National Opera in Glass’ Akhnaten and Satyagraha; Welsh National Opera in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Bernstein’s Candide; the Metropolitan Opera in Glass’ Akhnaten—for which she won a 2022 Grammy—and Verdi’s Rigoletto; the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte; and the Royal Swedish Opera leading Victoria Borisova-Ollas’ Dracula. Her most recent debuts include the Opéra National du Rhin in the world premiere of Glass ballet Alice choreographed by Amir Hosseinpour and Johnathan Lunn and Bernstein’s Wonderful Town with the Norwegian Opera & Ballet.

Recent orchestral highlights include a return to the BBC Proms with the English National Opera Orchestra, for a unique project that combines music, dance, theatre, video, audio soundscapes and haute couture conceived by counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo featuring a world premiere by Philip Glass. Her first appearance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall in London with an eclectic program that included the world premiere of The Peacock Pavane by David Bruce. Her debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at the Ultraschall Festival, for a program featuring York Höller’s Concerto for Cello, Piano and Orchestra with cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and pianist Martin Helmchen.

Ms. Kamensek regularly collaborates with singers, directors, and instrumentalists from across the globe. She has worked with such renowned singers as Joseph Calleja, J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Andrzej Dobber, Elza van den Heever, Brandon Jovanovich, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Patricia Racette, Stuart Skelton, and Klaus Florian Vogt. She has partnered with such groundbreaking directors as Guy Joosten, Harry Kupfer, Uwe Eric Laufenberg, Phelim McDermott, and Olivier Tambosi. She has led performances featuring critically acclaimed instrumentalists such as Michael Barenboim, Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, David Aaron Carpenter, Lynn Harrell, Louis Lortie, Olli Mustonen, Benjamin Schmid, and the “Jimi Hendrix of the bagpipes”, Carlos Nuñez.

NATASHA PAREMSKI, piano

With her consistently striking and dynamic performances, pianist Natasha Paremski reveals astounding virtuosity and profound interpretations. She continues to generate excitement from all corners as she wins over audiences with her musical sensibility and a powerful, flawless technique.

Natasha is a regular return guest of many major orchestras, including Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Grant Park Festival, Winnipeg Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Elgin Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with whom she has performed and toured frequently since 2008 in venues such as Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, and Cadogan Hall. She has performed with major orchestras in North America including Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Houston Symphony, NAC Orchestra in Ottawa, Nashville Symphony. She has toured extensively in Europe with such orchestras as Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Vienna’s Tonkünstler Orchester, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre de Bretagne, the Orchestre de Nancy, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester in Zurich, Moscow Philharmonic, under the direction of conductors including Thomas Dausgaard, Peter

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Oundjian, Andres Orozco-Estrada, Jeffrey Kahane, James Gaffigan, JoAnn Falletta, Fabien Gabel, Rossen Milanov and Andrew Litton. In addition, she has toured with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica in Latvia, Benelux, the United Kingdom and Austria as well as appearances with National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra in Taipei.

Natasha has given recitals at the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Wigmore Hall, Schloss Elmau, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Verbier Festival, San Francisco Performances, Seattle’s Meany Hall, Kansas City’s Harriman Jewell Series, Santa Fe’s Lensic Theater, Ludwigshafen BASF Series, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Tokyo’s Musashino Performing Arts Center and on the Rising Stars Series of Gilmore and Ravinia Festivals.

A passionate chamber musician, Natasha is a regular recital partner of Grammy winning cellist Zuill Bailey, with whom she has recorded a number of CDs. Their Britten album on Telarc debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Chart, remaining there for a number of weeks, in addition to being featured on The New York Times Playlist. She has been a guest of many chamber music festivals such as Jeffrey Kahane’s Green Music Center ChamberFest, the Lockenhaus, Toronto, Sitka Summer Music, and Cape Cod Chamber Music festivals to name a few.

Natasha was awarded several prestigious prizes at a very young age, including the Gilmore Young Artists prize in 2006 at the age of eighteen, the Prix Montblanc in 2007, the Orpheum Stiftung Prize in Switzerland. In September 2010, she was awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year. Her first recital album was released in 2011 to great acclaim, topping the Billboard Classical Charts, and was re-released on the Steinway & Sons label in September 2016 featuring Islamey recorded on Steinway’s revolutionary new Spirio technology. In 2012 she recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Fabien Gabel on the orchestra’s label distributed by Naxos.

With a strong focus on new music, Natasha’s growing repertoire reflects an artistic maturity beyond her years. In the 2010-11 season, she played the world premiere of a sonata written for her by Gabriel Kahane, which was also included in her solo album.

Natasha continues to extend her performance activity and range beyond the traditional concert hall. In December 2008, she was the featured pianist in choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s Danses Concertantes at New York’s Joyce Theater. She was featured in a major two-part film for BBC Television on the life and work of Tchaikovsky, shot on location in St. Petersburg, performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and other works. In the winter of 2007, Natasha participated along with Simon Keenlyside in the filming of Twin Spirits, a project starring Sting and Trudie Styler that explores the music and writing of Robert and Clara Schumann, which was released on DVD. She has performed in the project live several times with the co-creators in New York and the U.K., directed by John Caird, the original director/adaptor of the musical Les Misérables.

Natasha began her piano studies at the age of four with Nina Malikova at Moscow’s Andreyev School of Music. She then studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music before moving to New

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York to study with Pavlina Dokovska at Mannes College of Music, from which she graduated in 2007. Natasha made her professional debut at age nine with El Camino Youth Symphony in California. At the age of fifteen she debuted with Los Angeles Philharmonic and recorded two discs with Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.

Born in Moscow, Natasha moved to the United States at the age of eight, becoming a U.S. citizen shortly thereafter, and is now based in New York City where she is Artistic Director of the New York Piano Society, a non-profit organization that supports pianists whose professions lie outside of music.

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FAZIL SAY (b. 1970)

Grand Bazaar, Op. 65

Fazil Say was born on January 14, 1970 in Ankara, Turkey. Grand Bazaar was composed in 20152016 and premiered on February 25, 2016 in Seville, Spain by the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, conducted by John Axelrod. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 10 minutes. This is the premiere performance by the orchestra.

Fazil Say has established himself as one of Turkey’s most accomplished musicians with celebrated international careers as both pianist and composer. Say, born in Ankara in 1970, was a child prodigy, playing a popular Turkish song on a toy flute at age three with no instruction, starting piano lessons soon thereafter with Mithat Fenmen, a student of Alfred Cortot in Paris, and making up his own pieces at the keyboard during the following years so fruitfully that he was able to compose a complete piano sonata by fourteen, when he was a student at the Ankara Conservatory. Say went to Germany in 1987 to continue his studies with pianist and composer David Levine at the Musikhochschule in Düsseldorf and later privately in Berlin, where he also attended master classes with Menahem Pressler. In 1994, Say won the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York with a performance that included his own Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja, Op. 1. He has since performed and recorded as soloist and with major orchestras on five continents in repertory ranging from Bach through Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and the Romantics to contemporary music, including his own piano compositions. Among his collaborators are such noted artists as Maxim Vengerov, Minetti Quartet, Nicolas Altstaedt and Marianne Crebassa, and a continuing duo partnership with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Say’s creative catalog encompasses four symphonies, concertos for piano, clarinet, violin, guitar, trumpet, jazz quartet and ney (an ancient flute played continuously in Egypt for over 4,000 years), two oratorios, many chamber works, solo piano compositions, songs, film and theater music, cadenzas for concertos by Mozart and Beethoven, and numerous transcriptions and arrangements, including an orchestration of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. He has held residencies

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as pianist, composer or both in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey and Japan, and received many prestigious awards for his performances, recordings and cultural contributions; in 2016 in Bonn, Say was awarded the International Beethoven Prize for Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, Poverty Reduction and Inclusion.

Say composed Grand Bazaar in 2015-2016 on commission from the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, which premiered it on February 25, 2016 in Seville under the direction of John Alexrod. A note in the published score reads, “This virtuoso concert piece takes its inspiration from one of the emblems of Istanbul and the Silk Road: the Grand Bazaar. This is an enclosed district of shops and streets, humming with tourists and color, a magnificent ‘oriental’ building that has been standing proudly for centuries. From spices to jewelry, leather goods to antiques, from its status as a Turkish bourse to its housing of small businesses, the Grand Bazaar is a center where trade of all kinds is conducted. One of things that most readily springs to mind about the Grand Bazaar is the protracted and lively arguments that take place between the sellers and buyers.

“This work endeavors to portray the oriental colors and Turkish rhythms with modern music techniques and a new language for orchestration. The first thing to catch the attention of the listener will be the irregular time signatures (such as 7/8, 21/16, 12/8). The work is written as a virtuoso piece for orchestra and, with its diverse themes and changeable tempos, takes the form of a rhapsody.”

@RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949)

Four Symphonic Interludes from Intermezzo, Op. 72

Richard Strauss was born on June 11, 1864 in Munich, and died September 9, 1949 in GarmischPartenkirchen. The opera Intermezzo was composed in 1918-1923 and premiered on November 4, 1924 in Dresden, conducted by Fritz Busch. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion, harmonium, harp and strings. Duration is about 23 minutes. This is the premiere performance by the orchestra.

The concept for Intermezzo first occurred to Strauss in the spring of 1916, when he was completing his panoramic “magic fairy-tale” opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (“The Woman Without a Shadow”). He had an idea for a libretto based on an incident from early in his married life, when his wife, Pauline, had — wrongly — thought him guilty of infidelity. It seems that she had opened by mistake a letter addressed to him, and found it filled with endearments from one “Mitzie Mücke,” an opera groupie in Berlin. Pauline had already hired a lawyer to file for divorce before it was discovered that the letter had actually been intended for the conductor Josef Stransky, whose similar name Mitzie had confused with that of the composer. Richard and Pauline were reconciled, but that did not spare him a tongue-lashing in which she recounted the emotional pains he had unwittingly inflicted. (Strauss once allowed that he could build ten plays and five operas around the character of his wife.) Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the librettist of Die Frau ohne Schatten, begged off the project immediately, but he suggested that Strauss consult the Austrian dramatist Hermann Bahr. Since Strauss envisioned the libretto for Intermezzo as

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based in the everyday speech of his household (the finished score was subtitled “a bourgeois comedy”), he mocked up some scenes as models for Bahr, who found them so convincing and personal that he advised the composer to finish the job himself. Strauss began the text and music of Intermezzo in 1918, and worked on them for the next five years, slowed by his duties as joint director (with Franz Schalk) of the Vienna Opera; the score was completed in August 1923 in Buenos Aires, while Strauss was on tour in South America with the Vienna Opera. The premiere, in Dresden on November 4, 1924, created a considerable furor because of the opera’s biographical elements, but it soon faded from production, and is now rarely staged.

The story of Intermezzo begins with the conductor Robert Storch leaving his home on the Grundlsee for concerts in Vienna. In his absence, his wife, Christine, entertains herself by accepting a friend’s invitation to go tobogganing. On the sledge-run, she collides with Baron Lummer, whose family was known to her parents. Lummer ingratiates himself with Christine, they innocently see each other a few times, and he subsequently writes to her requesting money. When he arrives at Christine’s house to see how his petition was received, he is given a stern reprimand. Christine’s tirade is interrupted by the delivery of the post and her discovery of a letter addressed to her husband from one Mieze Meier that is filled with loving phrases. Christine fumes, vows divorce, and shoots off a telegram with that message to her husband. Act II opens in Vienna at a session of skat (Strauss’ favorite card game) during which a lawyer, a singer, a businessman and a conductor named Stroh discuss their colleague Storch’s home life with the shrewish Christine. Storch enters and receives Christine’s telegram. Stroh is amazed that Storch also knows Mieze. Stroh hurries off to check out this coincidence with the lady, and he returns with the information that the letter was actually intended for him and had been mistakenly addressed to Storch. They head for Grundlsee and Christine to untangle the misunderstanding, and the opera ends with a loving reconciliation between husband and wife.

The thirteen scenes of Intermezzo change with almost cinematic rapidity, so Strauss depended on symphonic interludes to thread them together and lend the opera formal unity. He detached several of the interludes for concert use, and arranged them into a four-movement suite. Travel Fever and Waltz-Scene conflates music from three orchestral episodes: the opening of the opera, when Robert is preparing to leave for Vienna; the interlude before Christine’s tobogganing expedition; and the introduction to the scene of a ball that she attends with Lummer. Träumerei [“Dreaming”] by the Fireside occurs in Act I after Lummer visits Christine, when her thoughts turn fondly to her absent husband. At the Card-Table is concerned with the music of the card-playing scene in Act II. Happy Ending, the final entr’acte, summarizes the reconciliation achieved at the opera’s end.

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SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873 in Oneg (near Novgorod), Russia, and died on March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California. He composed his Third Piano Concerto between June and October 1909 and was the soloist in the first performance, on November 28, 1909 with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Duration is about 39 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece January 24-26, 2020, conducted by Brett Mitchell with Lukas Vondracek on piano.

The worlds of technology and art sometimes brush against each other in curious ways. In 1909, it seems, Sergei Rachmaninoff wanted one of those new mechanical wonders — an automobile. And thereupon hangs the tale of his first visit to America.

The impresario Henry Wolfson of New York arranged a thirty-concert tour for the 19091910 season for Rachmaninoff so that he could play and conduct his own works in a number of American cities. Rachmaninoff was at first hesitant about leaving his family and home for such an extended overseas trip, but the generous financial remuneration was too tempting to resist. With a few tour details still left unsettled, Wolfson died suddenly in the spring of 1909, and the composer was much relieved that the journey would probably be cancelled. Wolfson’s agency had a contract with Rachmaninoff, however, and during the summer finished the arrangements for his appearances so that the composer-pianist-conductor was obliged to leave for New York as scheduled. Trying to look on the bright side of this daunting prospect, Rachmaninoff wrote to his long-time friend Nikita Morozov, “I don’t want to go. But then perhaps, after America I’ll be able to buy myself that automobile.... It may not be so bad after all!” It was for the American tour that Rachmaninoff composed his Third Piano Concerto.

The Concerto consists of three large movements. The first is a modified sonata form that begins with a theme, recalled in the later movements, that sets perfectly the Concerto’s mood of somber intensity. The expressive second theme is presented by the pianist, whose part has, by this point, abundantly demonstrated the staggering technical challenge that this piece presents to the soloist, a characteristic Rachmaninoff had disguised by the simplicity of the opening. The development section is concerned mostly with transformations of fragments from the first theme. A massive cadenza, separated into two parts by the recall of the main theme by the woodwinds, leads to the recapitulation. The earlier material is greatly abbreviated in this closing section, with just a single presentation of the opening melody and a brief, staccato version of the subsidiary theme.

The second movement, subtitled Intermezzo, which Dr. Otto Kinkleday described in his notes for the New York premiere as “tender and melancholy, yet not tearful,” is a set of free variations with an inserted episode.

“One of the most dashing and exciting pieces of music ever composed for piano and orchestra” is how Patrick Piggot described the finale. The movement is structured in three large sections. The first part has an abundance of themes that Rachmaninoff skillfully derived from those of the opening movement. The relationship is further strengthened in the finale’s second section, where both themes from the opening movement are recalled in slow tempo. The pace again quickens, and the music from the first part of the finale returns with some modifications. A brief solo cadenza leads to the coda, a dazzling final stanza with fistfuls of chords propelling the headlong rush to the dramatic closing gestures.

©2024 Dr.

Richard E. Rodda