Program Notes: Litton Conducts feat. the NYC Ballet

CLASSICS 2023/24

LITTON CONDUCTS FEATURING THE NYC BALLET PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDREW LITTON, conductor LAUREN LOVETTE, dancer AMAR RAMASAR, dancer Friday, January 12, 2024 at 7:30pm Saturday, January 13, 2024 at 7:30pm Sunday, January 14, 2024 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13 “Winter Dreams” I. Daydreams on a Winter Journey: Allegro tranquillo II. Land of Gloom, Land of Mist: Adagio cantabile ma non tanto III. Scherzo: Allegro scherzando giocoso IV. Finale: Andante lugubre; Allegro moderator; Allegro maestoso

— INTERMISSION —

Saturday’s concert is dedicated to Dr. David H. Wagner PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

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PROGRAM I

CLASSICS 2023/24 TCHAIKOVSKY

“Russian Dance” from Swan Lake

BORODIN

Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances

GERSHWIN

“The Man I Love” pas-de-deux from Who Cares?

STRAVINSKY Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra I. Marche II. Valse III. Polka IV. Galop TCHAIKOVSKY

“White Swan pas-de-deux” from Swan Lake

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 55 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!

Excerpt from Who Cares?, Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust.

The performance of “The Man I Love” from Who Cares?, A Balanchine © Ballet, is presented by arrangement with The Goerge Balanchine Trust and has been produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style® and Balanchine Technique®. Service standards established and provided by the Trust.

PROGRAM II

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PHOTO: DANNY TURNER

ANDREW LITTON, conductor Andrew Litton is Music Director of the New York City Ballet. He is also Conductor Laureate of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and was previously Music Director Laureate of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic.

Under his leadership the Bergen Philharmonic gained international recognition through extensive recording and touring, making debuts at the BBC Proms, at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and appearances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and New York’s Carnegie Hall. For his work with the Bergen Philharmonic, Norway’s King Harald V knighted him with the Norwegian Royal Order of Merit.

Andrew was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1988-1994.

During this time, he led the orchestra on their first American tour and produced 14 recordings, including the Grammy-winning Belshazzar’s Feast. As Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra 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 regularly guest conducts leading orchestras and opera companies around the globe and adds to his discography of over 140 recordings, which have garnered America’s Grammy Award, France’s Diapason d’Or and other honours.

In addition to conducting over fifty performances at the New York City Ballet, Andrew returns regularly to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (where he is a former Principal Guest Conductor) Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, and guest conducts with a wide range of international orchestras - recent and forthcoming highlights including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin, Dallas Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia, and the Royal Swedish Orchestra.

An avid opera conductor with a keen theatrical sense, Andrew has led major opera companies throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Australian Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin. In Norway, he was key to founding the Bergen National Opera, where he led numerous critically acclaimed performances. He often conducts semi-staged opera programmes with symphony orchestras. During his 14-year tenure as Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra Sommerfest, he concluded the festival with sold-out performances of Salomé, Der Rosenkavalier, Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Tosca, Rigoletto, La Traviata and others.

He conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the 2021 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.

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PROGRAM III

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Andrew’s work with New York City Ballet has earned praise from critics, dancers, and audiences, bringing new prominence to the Ballet’s orchestra. He began his ballet work while still a Juilliard student, performing as on-stage pianist for Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, and Cynthia Gregory. In 2023-24 Andrew will make his debut with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.

An accomplished pianist, Andrew often performs as piano soloist, conducting from the keyboard, most recently Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Singapore. An acknowledged expert on George Gershwin, he has performed and recorded Gershwin widely as both pianist and conductor and serves as Advisor to the University of Michigan Gershwin Archives. After leading the Covent Garden debut of Porgy and Bess, Andrew arranged his own concert suite of the work, which is now performed around the world. In 2014 he released his first solo piano album, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson, a testimony to his passion for jazz, particularly the music of that great pianist.

Andrew’s Dallas Symphony Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto recordings with Stephen Hough, widely hailed as the best since the composer’s own, won the Classical Brits/BBC Critics Award.

He also received a Grammy nomination for his recording of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic and Patti Lupone.

Born in New York City, Andrew graduated from the Fieldston School and earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School in Piano and Conducting. He served as assistant conductor at La Scala and at the National Symphony under Rostropovich. His many honours in addition to Norway’s Order of Merit include Yale’s Sanford Medal, the Elgar Society Medal, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bournemouth.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES LAUREN LOVETTE, dancer Lauren Lovette personifies the intertwining of dance and choreography, moving seamlessly from one to the other. As dance maker, performer, collaborator and director, she fluidly crosses boundaries and defies categorization.

For more than a decade, Lovette danced with New York City Ballet, rising quickly from the corps de ballet to soloist and then principal. Her roles ranged from the purely classical to abstract and contemporary, from dramatic to comic. The youngest principal, her presence brought lumnious energy, elegance and vivacity to the stage. She continues to dance, guesting, self-creating or dancing with other companies.

In 2022, Lovette received the distinct and historic honor of being named the very first choreographer in residence at the renowned Paul Taylor Dance Company. In this capacity, she will create work in a ground-breaking partnership with dancers steeped in a style far different from that of classical ballet.

Born in Thousand Oaks, California, Lovette began studying ballet at the age of 11 at the Cary Ballet Conservatory in Cary, North Carolina. She enrolled at SAB as a full time student in 2006.

In October 2009, Ms. Lovette became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in September 2010. Ms. Lovette received the Clive Barnes Award for dance in December 2012 and was the 2012-2013 recipient of the Janice Levin Award.

Promoted to soloist in February 2013 and to principal dancer in June 2015, she stepped down from her position at the company in 2021 in order to embark on a career devoted to dance and choreography in more equal measure.

Since childhood, Lovette has felt compelled to make dance, and her first opportunities have lit the path to her future. At the 2007 School of American Ballet student choreography show, Lovette debuted her first piece. Another ballet for the next year’s SAB showing followed, and in 2009, an invitation was extended to create a work for the New York Choreographic Institute.

Lovette’s early work led to the moment in 2016 when, as a relatively new principal dancer, she was asked to choreograph her first piece for the company for the New York City Ballet’s annual Fall Fashion Gala, an event that pairs choreographers with fashion designers to collaborate on create new work and highly original costumes.

In 2017, Lovette choreographed for the Vail International Dance Festival, the NYCB Fall Fashion Gala, and the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company. She was awarded the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU in fall of 2018, and a year later created a work for the 2019 Fall Fashion Gala at NYCB. Her work at NYCB has been noteworthy, forging a path for other female choreographers in an area of dance that has notably been predominantly male.

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PROGRAM V

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Her work has been commissioned and performed by leading dance companies and festivals, including the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, the Vail International Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Nevada Ballet Theatre, as well as a self-produced evening entirely of her own work in which she also danced, Why It Matters.

AMAR RAMASAR, dancer Amar Ramasar was born in the Bronx, New York and began his studies at the School of American Ballet (SAB) in 1993. In addition, he studied at the American Ballet Theatre Summer Program. Mr. Ramasar became an apprentice with New York City Ballet in 2000 and joined the Company as a member of the Corps de Ballet the following year. He was promoted to Soloist in 2006 and Principal Dancer in 2009. While dancing with the Company Mr. Ramasar was featured in numerous works by George Balanchine including: Agon, Divertimento No. 15, The Four Temperaments, George Balanchine’s The NutcrackerTM, Romeo + Juliet, and Swan Lake. He was also prominently featured in works choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, Jerome Robbins, and Christopher Wheeldon. In addition, Mr. Ramasar originated several roles in works by Mauro Bigonzetti, Wayne McGregor, Benjamin Millepied, Justin Peck, and Alexei Ratmansky, among others.

Mr. Ramasar was a recipient of the Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer in 2015, and a Mae L. Wien Award recipient for 2000. Ramasar additionally works collaboratively with many international choreographers expanding his own training and enriching his collaborators worlds. In 2018, Ramasar played Jigger Craigin, one of the lead roles in the revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel on Broadway. He performed the Tony award winning choreography live for the 72nd annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. In 2019, Ramasar was a Principal guest artist with the Teatro dell Opera di Roma and originated the role of Don José in its brand new, full length production of Carmen, choreographed by Jiří Bubeníček. Most recently, Ramasar was a Principal guest artist with the company, Ballet Next, for its 2019/20 New York season at New York Live Arts.

In 2020, Ramasar starred as Bernardo, Leader of the Sharks, in the revival of West Side Story on Broadway. Ramasar is a faculty member of the New York City Musical Theater Summer Intensive of Joffrey Ballet School. Following his career as Principal dancer at the New York City Ballets since May 2022, Ramasar has been traveling worldwide setting works of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins approved by their respective Foundation and Trust.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893) Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13, “Winter Dreams” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, and died November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg. He composed the Symphony No. 1 in 1866 and revised it in 1874. The premiere of complete Symphony on February 15, 1868 in Moscow was conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein; Rubinstein had conducted the second and third movements in St. Petersburg on February 11, 1867. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Duration is about 44 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra February 27-29, 2004, with Alastair Willis conducting.

In 1859, Anton Rubinstein established the Russian Musical Society in St. Petersburg; a year later his brother Nikolai opened the Society’s branch in Moscow. Since one of the important aims of the Society was to encourage musical education in Russia, it instituted classes almost immediately in both cities. St. Petersburg was first to receive an imperial charter to open a conservatory and offer a formal curriculum of instruction, and Tchaikovsky, who had quit his job as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice to devote himself to music, was in the first class of students when the school was officially opened in 1862. By January 1866, he had completed his studies in theory and composition, principally with Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, and was in need of a job. On the basis of his academic work, which included a cantata for the graduation examinations courageously based on the same Ode to Joy text by Schiller that Beethoven had set in his Ninth Symphony, Rubinstein recommended Tchaikovsky to Nikolai as a teacher for the music classes in Moscow. The official opening of the Moscow Conservatory was still some months off, so Nikolai was running the program from his own home and was able to pay his instructors only a pittance. Though reluctant to leave the rich cultural milieu of St. Petersburg for more provincial Moscow, Tchaikovsky accepted the much-needed position.

As soon as his St. Petersburg studies were completed in mid-January, Tchaikovsky departed for Moscow, where he was greeted at the train station like an old friend by Nikolai Rubinstein.

Nikolai immediately took the young musician under his wing, lending him clothes (including a frock coat left behind by violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski on a recent visit), introducing him to his wide circle of acquaintances, offering him a room in his home, and lavishing upon him every hospitality. (Rubinstein also included Tchaikovsky in his nightly rounds of tavern-hopping, during which each impressed the other with his capacity for alcohol.) Nikolai encouraged Tchaikovsky to supplement his teaching duties by continuing his creative work, and the first project he suggested was a revision for full orchestra of the Overture in F major written at the end of the preceding year. Tchaikovsky had conducted the original chamber orchestra version of the work as a student in December, shortly before he left the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The success of the revised version when it was conducted in Moscow by Nikolai on March 4th (the first public performance of one of Tchaikovsky’s compositions) was such that he was motivated to begin writing a symphony that same month. Though working on such a large scale was a daunting challenge for the young composer, the new symphony was completed by November, and premiered by Nikolai in Moscow on February 15, 1868 “with great success,” reported the composer to his brother Anatoli. The work was inscribed “Winter Dreams” and the first two movements S O U N D I N G S 2 0 2 3 / 2 4 PROGRAM VII

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES were titled “Reveries of a Winter Journey” and “Land of Desolation, Land of Mists”; the closing movements are without sobriquet. There is no specific program apparent in the music, though Tchaikovsky may have intended that this be his contribution to the many depictions of the harsh Russian winters that have always been popular subjects in that country’s literature and art.

The Symphony’s first movement opens as the flute and bassoon present the doleful main theme above the murmurings of the violins. The complementary melody, more lyrical in phrasing and brighter in mood, is presented by the clarinet. The development section, typically Tchaikovskian in many of its orchestral techniques, combines true motivic elaboration with a certain amount of boisterous, newly invented figuration. The recapitulation returns the themes of the beginning and ends with the hushed whispers of the first measures. A chorale-like passage for strings opens and closes the second movement. Within this frame are set two folklike melodies: the first, a plaintive tune, intoned by the oboe, has hints of the Volga Boatmen; the other is a more flowing strain given first by the flutes and violas. The Scherzo, indebted to Mendelssohn for its effervescent writing, is based on a movement from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, composed in 1865; the central trio is the first of Tchaikovsky’s waltzes for orchestra. The finale is a display of orchestral color and rhythmic energy. It begins with a slow introduction (“lugubrious,” notes the score) during which the violins present the Russian folk song The Gardens Bloomed. A vivacious main theme in fast tempo is given by the full orchestra before the folk song returns to serve as the second theme. Twice the tempo is increased in the closing pages to close the Symphony in high spirits.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY “Russian Dance” and “White Swan Pas-de-Dux” from Swan Lake, Op. 20a Swan Lake was composed in 1875-1876 and premiered on March 4, 1877 in Moscow, conducted

by Stepan Ryabov. These excerpts are scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

The duration of these two selections is about 13 minutes. This is the premier performance of this excerpt by the orchestra.

Act I of Swan Lake is a festival celebrating the coming of age of Prince Siegfried the following day, when he must choose a bride. Attracted by a flight of swans over the castle, Siegfried and his friends form a hunting party and leave the festivity. At the beginning of Act II, Siegfried arrives at the lake to see the swans, led by Odette, the Swan Queen, glide across the surface. Just as Siegfried is about to unleash his crossbow, Odette appears to him not in avian form, but as a beautiful princess. She tells him that she and the other swan-maidens live under a curse by the evil magician Rothbart which lets them take human shape just from midnight to dawn. The spell can be broken, she says, only by one who promises to love her and no other. Though Rothbart vows to undo them both, Siegfried promises his love to Odette. Act III is again set in the castle. Amid the birthday celebration, Rothbart, in disguise, suddenly enters with his daughter, Odile, who appears to Siegfried in the exact image of Odette. Odette, hovering at the window, tries to warn Siegfried of the deception, but to no avail. Siegfried asks for Odile’s hand in marriage. Rothbart and Odile exult in their vile triumph. Siegfried realizes he has been trapped. Odette seems doomed. In Act IV, Odette returns to the lake, prepared to kill herself. The other maidens urge her to wait for the Prince. He appears, and again vows his love to her, but she knows that Rothbart’s power can only be broken by death. She throws herself from the parapet of a lakeside fortress. Siegfried, his life meaningless without her, follows. Rothbart’s enchantment is destroyed by the power of love. At the final curtain, Odette and Siegfried are seen sailing off together on a beautiful, celestial ship, united forever.

The Russian Dance occurs during the party scene in Act III. The White Swan Pas-de-deux in Act II is the music in which Siegfried learns of Odette’s evil enchantment.

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PROGRAM IX

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES ALEXANDER BORODIN (1833-1887) “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor Alexander Borodin was on born November 12, 1833 in St. Petersburg, and died there on February 27, 1887. He composed Prince Igor in 1869-1887; it was completed by Alexander Glazunov and premiered on November 4, 1890 in St. Petersburg, conducted by Karl Kuchera. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, percussion and strings. Duration is about 14 minutes.

RossenMilanov conducted when the orchestra last performed this piece Apr 26-28, 2019.

In Borodin’s opera, Igor is captured while trying to rid Russia of the Polovtsi, an invading Tartar race from Central Asia. The leader of the Polovtsi, Khan Kontchak, treats Igor as a guest rather than a prisoner, and entertains him lavishly. Khan offers him his freedom if he will promise to leave the Polovtsi in peace, but Igor refuses. Igor nevertheless effects his escape and returns triumphantly to his people. Borodin wrote that Prince Igor is “essentially a national opera, interesting only to us Russians, who love to steep our patriotism in the sources of our history, and to see the origins of our nationality again on the stage.” To make his opera as authentic as possible, he studied the music, history and lore of Central Asia, where the opera is set, and sought out travelers with first-hand knowledge of the region. His colorful, “Oriental” writing for the Polovtsi was influenced not only by authentic Caucasian melodies, but also by music from the Middle East and North Africa. The Polovtsian Dances are the centerpiece of the Khan’s entertainment for Igor in Act II.

@ IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra Igor Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, and died on April 6, 1971 in New York City. The two Suites for Small Orchestra are orchestrations of the Eight Easy Pieces Stravinsky wrote for piano duet between 1914 and 1917; the composer premiered the music in that version with José Iturbi in Lausanne on November 8, 1919. He scored the four brief movements of the Suite No. 2 in 1921. The work was premiered during the 1926-1927 season of the New York Symphony.

The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, tuba, percussion, piano and strings. Duration is about 6 minutes. This is the orchestra permiere of this excerpt.

Stravinsky wrote his Eight Easy Pieces for piano duet in two sets: one in 1914-1915, the other in 1916-1917. In arranging what became the Second Suite for Small Orchestra, he took three short movements from the earlier group of piano pieces that were intended as caricatures of his friends Diaghilev, Satie and the Italian composer Alfredo Casella. Stravinsky wrote that he

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES pictured Diaghilev in the Polka as “a circus ring-master in evening dress and top hat, cracking his whip and urging on a rider on horseback.” The Valse, Stravinsky recalled in Dialogues and a Diary, is “in homage to Erik Satie, a souvenir of a visit with him in Paris. Satie had suddenly become old and white, a very touching figure for whom I felt profound sympathy. I wrote this little ice cream wagon Valse for him.” Stravinsky, who was never given to modesty, credited the saucy little March he composed for Alfredo Casella with having a direct influence on Casella’s espousal of neo-classicism. To the March, Valse, and Polka, Stravinsky added a Galop from the later set of Easy Pieces to complete the Second Suite. This Galop, Stravinsky wrote, “is a caricature of the St. Petersburg Folies Bergères, which I had watched in the Tumpakov, a semi-respectable nightclub in the Astrava, the islands in the Neva.”

@ GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937) “The Man I Love” from the ballet Who Cares?

Orchestrated by HERSHY KAY (1919-1981) George Gershwin was born on September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York, and died on July 12, 1937 in Hollywood, California. He composed The Man I Love in 1924. The ballet Who Cares?, based on Gershwin’s music, was arranged and orchestrated by Hershy Kay in 1970 and premiered on February 5, 1970 by the New York City Ballet. The score calls for triple woodwinds, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano and strings. Duration is about six minutes.

This is the orchestra permiere of this piece.

In his Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, choreographer George Balanchine wrote of Who Cares?, “This ballet is a set of dances to some songs by George Gershwin that I have always liked very much. Who Cares? [the song that gave the ballet its title] goes back to 1931 and the musical Of Thee I Sing. In Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s, we all knew Gershwin’s music and loved it; it is very beautiful, very American, too. Before I came to America I saw the Gershwin musical Funny Face in London and admired it. I did some work in musical comedies in London after that and continued to make dances for them after I came to New York. I don’t think I would have done that if it had not been for George Gershwin’s music. There are popular songs and popular songs; Gershwin’s are special.” ©2023 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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