Program Notes: Mozart & Now

CLASSICS 2023/24 MOZART & NOW WITH PETER OUNDJIAN PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor MICHAEL THORNTON, horn JOHN SIPHER, trombone Friday, January 26, 2024 at 7:30pm Saturday, January 27, 2024 at 7:30pm Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

FRIDAY PROGRAM: MOZART Divertimento in D major, K. 136 I. Allegro II. Andante III. Presto MOZART

The Magic Flute: Overture, K. 620

CARLOS SIMON Troubled Water for Trombone and Orchestra I. Bird Calls II. By Water III. Wade

— INTERMISSION — MOZART Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 I. Molto allegro II. Andante III. Menuetto: Allegretto - Trio IV. Finale: Allegro assai CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 40 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION Friday’s concert is dedicated to Metropolitan State University of Denver PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

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CLASSICS 2023/24

SATURDAY PROGRAM: MOZART Divertimento in D major, K. 136 I. Allegro II. Andante III. Presto VALERIE COLEMAN

Umoja – Anthem of Unity

MOZART Concerto for Horn No. 4, in E-flat Major, K 495 I. Allegro moderato II. Romance: Andante cantabile III. Rondo: Allegro vivace — INTERMISSION — CHRISTOPHER ROUSE Symphony No. 6 1. Desolato 2. Piacevole 3. Furioso 4. Passacaglia

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 40 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION

Saturday’s Concert is dedicated to Norma Horner & John Estes

PROGRAM II

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CLASSICS 2023/24

SUNDAY PROGRAM: MOZART Divertimento in D major, K. 136 I. Allegro II. Andante III. Presto MOZART The Magic Flute: Overture, K. 620 MOZART Concerto for Horn No. 4, in E-flat Major, K 495 I. Allegro moderato II. Romance: Andante cantabile III. Rondo: Allegro vivace — INTERMISSION — MOZART Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 I. Molto allegro II. Andante III. Menuetto: Allegretto - Trio IV. Finale: Allegro assai

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 50 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION

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

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PHOTO: DALE WILCOX

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor Recognized as a masterful and dynamic presence in the conducting world, Peter Oundjian has developed a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, an eye towards collaboration, innovative programming, leadership and training with students and an engaging personality.

Strengthening his ties to Colorado, Oundjian is now Principal Conductor of the Colorado Symphony in addition to Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival, which successfully pivoted to a virtual format during the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021.

Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019. He led the orchestra on several international tours to Europe and the USA, conducting the first performance by a North American orchestra at Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall in 2014.

From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship. Oundjian led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances at the Bregenz Festival, the Dresden Festival as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their Music Director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.

Highlights of past seasons include appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Iceland Symphony, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With the onset of world-wide concert cancellations, support for students at Yale and Juilliard became a priority. In the 2022/2023 season, Oundjian conducted the opening weekend of Atlanta Symphony, followed by return engagements with Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, Colorado and Toronto symphonies, as well as a visit to New World Symphony.

Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, Oundjian regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis and New World symphony orchestras.

An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES MICHAEL THORNTON, horn Michael Thornton enjoys a distinguished and varied career as an orchestral performer, chamber musician, soloist, and pedagogue. He has performed on six continents with acclaimed ensembles and has presented master classes at the world’s most prestigious musical institutions.

Mr. Thornton joined the Colorado Symphony as Principal Horn in 1997.

H he has worked with classical and popular artists from Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and Renée Fleming to John Williams, Jack Black, One Republic, and the Wu Tang Clan. He has also performed and recorded with renowned ensembles including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, KBS Symphony (South Korea), Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and others.

Prior to his appointments in Colorado, Michael Thornton left his studies at The Juilliard School to become the Principal Horn of the Honolulu Symphony. A native of Long Island, NY, Mr. Thornton’s primary teachers included Randy Gardner, Jerome Ashby, and Julie Landsman.

An avid chamber musician and a recognized soloist internationally, Michael Thornton has been a featured performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival (NM), Mainly Mozart (CA), Spoleto (SC), Moab Music Festival (UT), Campos do Jordao International Winter Festival (Brazil), Medellin Festicamara (Colombia), among many others. He performs annually as the horn artist faculty for the Colorado College Summer Music Festival. As a soloist, in addition to his regular appearances with the Colorado Symphony, Mr. Thornton has performed with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, National Arts Center Orchestra (Canada), Melbourne Musician’s Chamber Orchestra (Australia), the New Symphony Orchestra (Bulgaria), the Cape Town Philharmonic (South Africa), and numerous orchestras in the US. He appears regularly as a master clinician and performer at conferences and horn symposia worldwide.

Appointed to the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999, Michael Thornton is currently Professor of Horn. In the summers he serves as the horn faculty artist for the Colorado College Music Festival and Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Mr. Thornton holds certification in Mental Toughness Training from the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida, and implements this training in his teaching. His students hold positions in orchestras throughout the United States and abroad, and have won numerous awards and competitions.

Professor Thornton has twice received the Marinus Smith Award, which is bestowed upon teachers at CU Boulder who have made significant contributions to their students’ development.

Michael is married to Colorado Symphony Piccolo player Julie Duncan Thornton. They have two children, and he is a founder of the Colorado Symphony Cocktail Club, enjoys gardening, and loves traveling with his family.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES JOHN SIPHER, TROMBONE John Sipher has been the principal trombonist of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra since 2015. Prior to his current position, he has held principal trombone positions with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and was a fellow at the New World Symphony.

A native of Roanoke, Virginia, he received his bachelor’s degree in Music Education with a minor in Jazz Studies from James Madison University and his Master of Music in trombone performance from Yale University. In addition to his orchestral appointments, he has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

As an educator, John has served as a trombone instructor at Hamilton College and the University of Northern Colorado, and has presented masterclasses and recitals across the country. John is an active contributor of music to the trombone repertoire, composing and arranging music primarily for trombone ensembles and for trombone and loop pedal. John is a Conn-Selmer performing artist.

Recordings, videos and sheet music can be found at his website at johnsipher.org.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Divertimento for Strings in D major, K. 136 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, and died December 5, 1791 in Vienna. He composed his D major Divertimento in Salzburg in 1772. Its first performance is unknown.

Duration is about 14 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece at Red Rocks on August 12-16, 2020, conducted by Christopher Dragon.

The Divertimento in D major, K. 136, is one of a set of three works (K. 137, 138 are the others) that Mozart wrote for string quartet in January 1772. He was at home in Salzburg after his second trip to Italy, and these pieces seem to have been written in preparation for a return visit scheduled to begin the following autumn. Knowing that he would be busy later in the year with the opera that had been commissioned for Milan, Lucio Silla, he put these charming works together in advance so that he would have ready some compositions that could provide a pleasant evening’s diversion or be easily expanded to modest symphonic proportions through the addition of wind parts. Unlike most divertimentos, this D major work has only three movements rather than the four or five most common in the genre. Significantly, the title “Divertimento” on the manuscript is not in Mozart’s hand, so we are left to speculate on what his exact classification of this music would have been. It mixes elements of quartet, symphony, sinfonia concertante and the various entertainment forms into a pleasing and mellifluous whole.

The opening movement is something of a virtuoso piece for the violins, almost a concertante duet.

The Andante, more pretty than profound, is in sonatina form (i.e., sonata without a development section). The finale, again a sonata form, races along with a quicksilver gait.

@ WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Overture to Die Zauberflöte (“The Magic Flute”), K. 620 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, and died December 5, 1791 in Vienna. He composed his last opera, The Magic Flute, during the summer of 1791 and directed its premiere at Vienna’s Theater-auf-der-Wieden on September 30th. The score calls for pairs of woodwinds, horns and trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 7 minutes.

The Magic Flute was last performed by the orchestra October 15-17, 2021, with Christopher Dragon conducting.

Early in 1791, Mozart was deeply in debt, troubled by the disinclination of the Viennese public to embrace his recent music and concert appearances, and suffering seriously from the kidney failure that would take his life before the year was out, so when Emanuel Schickaneder, a slightly shady actor and theater entrepreneur, suggested in May that they collaborate on a new opera that was sure to be a hit, the composer jumped at the chance. The Viennese public was especially fond at that time of comic pieces with Oriental or fantastic settings, and Schickaneder had achieved a fine success soon after he had arrived in town in 1789 with the “magic opera” Oberon by composer Paul Wranitzky and librettist Carl Ludwig Giesecke. For a sequel he S O U N D I N G S 2 0 2 3 / 2 4 PROGRAM VII

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES proposed to write the libretto for a Singspiel called Die Zauberflöte — The Magic Flute — a comic musical with spoken dialogue based on Liebeskind’s story Lulu from Wieland’s 1786 collection of Oriental fairy-tales called Dschinnistan, for which Mozart would provide the music.

Mozart threw himself into composing the music for The Magic Flute in May and June. Most of the composition was completed by July, when he received two more commissions — one for an opera seria on Metastasio’s old libretto La Clemenza di Tito, to commemorate the coronation in Prague of the new Emperor, Leopold II, as King of Bohemia; the other, a mysterious order for a Requiem Mass, the work that was to cast such an ominous pall over Mozart’s last months. As Tito was needed for performance on September 6th, he had to begin the music immediately, and was still composing the score when he and Constanze left for Prague in mid-August, only three weeks after she had given birth to Franz Xaver. When they returned to Vienna a month later, Mozart began the final preparations for the premiere of The Magic Flute, which included composing the overture, always the last part of his operas to be written. The full score was finished on September 28th, and the premiere given successfully on September 30th.

The Overture to The Magic Flute is one of the supreme orchestral works of the 18th century.

Rich in sonority, concise in construction, profligate in melodic invention, and masterful in harmonic surety, it balances the seemingly polar opposites of the opera — profundity and comedy — with surpassing ease and conviction. The slow introduction opens with the triple chords associated with the solemn ceremonies of the priests, the overture’s only thematic borrowing from the opera. The Allegro is built on a tune of opera buffa jocularity treated, most remarkably, as a fugue. The complementary theme, initiated by the flute, is characterized by its sensuous ascending chromatic scales. The balance of the overture follows traditional sonata form, with the triple chords of the priests reiterated to mark the beginning of the development section.

@ CARLOS SIMON (BORN IN 1986) Troubled Water for Trombone and Orchestra Carlos Simon was born on April 13, 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia. He composed Troubled Water in 2022.

The work was premiered on May 7, 2023 by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jader Bignamini, with Kenneth Thompkins as soloist. The scores calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 25 minutes. This is the premiere performance by the orchestra.

Carlos Simon was named Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence in April 2021 and serves in that position for three years. Simon’s music was first heard at Kennedy Center in April 2018, when then Resident Composer Mason Bates included the string quartet An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave (2015), honoring the lives of shooting victims Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in his “JFK Jukebox Series.” The following year, Washington National Opera, as part of its American Opera Initiative, commissioned a one-act opera from Simon, and his Night Trip, with a libretto by Sandra Seaton, was premiered in January 2020. During his residency, Simon will compose and present music for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National PROGRAM VIII C O LO R A D O S Y M P H O N Y.O R G

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES Opera, act as an ambassador for new music, and participate in educational, social impact, community engagement, and major institutional initiatives.

Carlos Simon, born in Atlanta in 1986, grew up playing organ at his father’s church, immersed himself in music in high school, earned degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College, and completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Evan Chambers and Grammy-winning composer Michael Daugherty. Simon also studied in Baden, Austria and at the Hollywood Music Workshop and New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop. He taught at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta before being appointed in 2019 to the faculty of Georgetown University, which also commissioned him to compose Requiem for the Enslaved, a multi-genre tribute to commemorate the 272 enslaved men, women and children sold by the University in 1838. Requiem for the Enslaved was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for its 2022 recording on Decca.

In addition to his recent opera, Simon has composed works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo voice, chorus, concert band and film, several of them on commissions from such noted organizations as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra; the gospel-influenced Amen! (2017) was commissioned by the University of Michigan Band in celebration of the university’s 200th anniversary. Simon has also performed as keyboardist with the Boston Pops, Jackson Symphony and St. Louis Symphony, toured Japan in 2018 under the sponsorship of the United States Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation performing in some of that country’s most sacred temples and important concert venues, served as music director and keyboardist for Grammy Award-winner Jennifer Holliday, and appeared internationally with Grammy-nominated soul artist Angie Stone.

Simon received the 2021 Medal of Excellence of the Sphinx Organization, which is dedicated to promoting and recognizing Black and Latinx classical music and musicians. His additional honors include the Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Award, Theodore Presser Foundation Award, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, fellowships from the Sundance Institute and Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music, and a residency at the 2021 Ojai Festival.

Simon wrote of Troubled Water, “In January 2020, Kenneth Thompkins, Principal Trombonist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, asked me to write a concerto for him. He suggested a piece about the Underground Railroad since Michigan was one of the last states for escaping enslaved persons to reach before getting to freedom in Canada. The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid19th century. It was used by enslaved African-Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. Troubled Water was inspired by the stories, accounts and experiences told by many enslaved people and abolitionists.

“I. Bird Calls. We know that Harriet Tubman used the call of an owl to alert refugees and her freedom seekers that it was safe to come out of hiding and continue their journey. It would have been the Barred Owl, or as it is sometimes called, a ‘hoot-owl.’ To evoke the nature of this call, I have used the trombones in the orchestra to mimic the sound of the ‘hoot owl’ coupled with short bird calls in the woodwind section. [Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery along the Underground Railroad in 1849 and then returned to the South thirteen times to lead some seventy other enslaved people to freedom. She was a scout and spy for the Union during the Civil War and, in the years before her death, in 1913, she became an activist for women’s suffrage.]

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES “II. By Water. The ‘Saltwater Railroad’ refers to the coastal waterway followed by many enslaved people escaping from the Southern slave states into the British-controlled Bahamas.

The Saltwater Railroad served a similar function as the Underground Railroad, a land pathway that allowed enslaved people to flee to northern states and ultimately to Canada. For this movement, I used the rhythmic motion of the traditional barcarolle to imitate moving through water along with the melody from the spiritual Steal Away.

“III. Wade.

Wade in the water, Wade in the water, God’s gonna trouble the waters.

“Wade in the Water is possibly the most well-known spiritual birthed out of the horrors of slavery. The song originated in the southern U.S. in the mid-1800s as a spiritual sung by enslaved African-Americans. In those communities, spirituals were more than just expressions of religious devotion. Some spirituals would be sung to alert freedom-seekers when it was safest to escape, without slaveholders (‘masters’) knowing that information was being communicated. The lyrics of Wade in the Water refer to the Biblical story of the Israelites crossing the River Jordan, but the lyrics also remind those seeking freedom to walk in the rivers along their journey so that tracking dogs and slave-catchers could not follow their footprints or their scent. I decided to quote the melody with the brass section under a bed of chaotic, agitated moving passages in the woodwinds and strings to ‘trouble the water.’ A short fugal passage leads to a climactic ending playing the main theme.”

@ WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 Mozart completed his G minor Symphony in the Viennese suburb of Währing on July 25, 1788. The date of the first performance is uncertain, though it may have taken place at a concert Mozart directed in Leipzig in May 1789. The work was originally scored for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings; Mozart added parts for two clarinets in a revision. Duration is about 35 minutes. Douglas Boyd was the conductor the last time the orchestra performed this piece November 8-10, 2019.

At no time was the separation between Mozart’s personal life and his transcendent music more apparent than in the summer of 1788, when, at the age of 32, he had only three years to live. His wife was ill and his own health was beginning to fail; his six-month-old daughter died on July 29th; Don Giovanni received a disappointing reception at its Viennese premiere on May 7th; he had small prospect of participating in any important concerts; and he was so impoverished and indebted that he would not answer a knock on the door for fear of finding a creditor there.

Yet, amid all these difficulties, he produced, in less than two months, the three crowning jewels of his orchestral output — Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 and 41. The G minor alone of the last three symphonies may reflect the composer’s distressed emotional state at the time. It is among those PROGRAM X

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES great works of Mozart that look forward to the passionately charged music of the 19th century while epitomizing the structural elegance of the waning Classical era.

The Symphony’s pervading mood of tragic restlessness is established immediately at the outset by a simple, arpeggiated figure in the violas above which the violins play the agitated main theme. This melody is repeated with added woodwind chords to lead through a stormy transition to the second theme. After a moment of silence, a contrasting, lyrical melody is shared by strings and winds. The respite from the movement’s driving energy provided by the dulcet second theme is brief, however, and tension soon mounts again. The wondrous development section gives prominence to the fragmented main theme. The recapitulation returns the earlier themes in heightened settings. The Andante, in sonata form, uses rich chromatic harmonies and melodic half-steps to create a mood of brooding intensity and portentous asceticism. Because of its somber minor-key harmonies, powerful irregular phrasing and dense texture, the Minuet was judged by legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini to be one of the most darkly tragic pieces ever written. The character of the Minuet is emphasized by its contrast with its central trio, the only untroubled portion of the entire work. The finale opens with a rocket theme that revives the insistent rhythmic energy of the opening movement. The gentler second theme, with its piquant chromatic inflections, slows the hurtling motion only briefly. The development section exhibits a contrapuntal ingenuity that few late-18th-century composers could match in technique and none surpass in musicianship. The recapitulation maintains the Symphony’s tragic mood to the close.

@ VALERIE COLEMAN (BORN IN 1970) Umoja, Anthem for Unity Valerie Coleman was born on September 3, 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky. She composed Umoja originally for women’s choir in 2001, revised it for woodwind quintet in 2019; and orchestrated it in 2019. The quintet version was premiered by Imani Winds in 2001; the orchestral version was premiered on September 19, 2019 by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick NézetSéguin. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano and strings. Duration is about 13 minutes. This is the premiere performance by the orchestra.

Valerie Coleman, Performance Today’s “2020 Classical Woman of the Year,” was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1970 and began her music studies at age eleven; within three years she had written three symphonies and won several local and state flute competitions. Coleman received bachelor’s degrees in both composition and flute performance from Boston University, and earned a master’s degree in flute performance from the Mannes College of Music in New York. She made her Carnegie Hall recital debut as winner of Meet the Composer’s 2003 Van Lier Memorial Fund Award; among her additional distinctions are the Aspen Music Festival Wombwell Kentucky Award, inaugural Sahm Memorial Award from the Tanglewood Music SOUNDINGS 2 0 2 3/ 24

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES Festival, first recipient in the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Mentorship Program, and ASCAP Concert Music Award. Coleman was also founder of the Grammy-nominated Imani Winds and the ensemble’s flutist and resident composer until 2018, and continues to perform as soloist and chamber musician. Her rapidly expanding creative catalog includes works for orchestra, concert band, chamber ensembles, ballet (Portraits of Josephine Baker), and arrangements for woodwind quintet; in September 2021, she was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera along with two other Black composers — Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson — to develop new works in collaboration with the Lincoln Center Theater. She has taught at Juilliard and the University of Miami, and in 2021 was appointed Clara Mannes Fellow for Music Leadership at the Mannes School of Music in New York.

Coleman’s Umoja was originally written in 2001 as a women’s chorus and then revised for a woodwind quintet. The work has come to exist in many versions, which she says “are like siblings to one another,” reflecting her ever-evolving perspective. The orchestral version was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and premiered in September 2019. Coleman wrote, “In its original form, Umoja, the Swahili word for ‘Unity’ and the first principle of the African Dispora holiday Kwanzaa, was composed as a simple song for women’s choir: Listen my people,/ Children of ALL/It’s time for Unity/Hear the Winds call./Oh a-hum, a-hum Nkosi ah …/Oh a-hum, a-hum Nkosi ah. It embodied a sense of ‘tribal unity’ through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional ‘call and response’ form, and the repetition of a memorable singsong melody.

“Almost two decades after the original, the orchestral version brings an expansion and sophistication to the short and sweet melody, beginning with sustained, ethereal passages that float and shift, supporting the introduction of the melody by solo violin. Here the melody is sung sweetly in its simplest form, with a directness and sincerity reminiscent of Appalachian music. The melody then dances and weaves through the instrumental families, interrupted by dissonant viewpoints led by the brass and percussion that represent the injustice, racism and hate that threaten the world today. Spiky textures turn into an aggressive exchange between upper woodwinds and percussion before a return of the original melody serves as a gentle reminder of kindness and humanity. With the brass leading the full ensemble, the journey ends with a bold call of unity that harkens back to the original anthem. Now more than ever, Umoja has to ring as a strong and beautiful anthem for the world we live in today.”

@ WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat major, K. 495 Mozart composed the Horn Concerto No. 4 in 1786. The first performance is unknown. The score calls for pairs of oboes and horns plus strings. Duration is about 16 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece December 4-5, 2009. Julian Kuerti conducted and Michael Thornton was featured on horn.

Among the friendships from his Salzburg days that Mozart renewed when he moved to Vienna early in 1781 was that with the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, who had left his post as PROGRAM XII C O LO R A D O S Y M P H O N Y.O R G

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES a colleague of Wolfgang and his father, Leopold, in the orchestra of Archbishop Colloredo to tour successfully through Germany, France and Italy performing his own Horn Concerto before settling in Vienna in 1777. Leutgeb found it impossible to make a living from music, however, so he purchased a cheesemonger’s shop from his wife’s family with the help of a loan from Leopold Mozart. (When Leopold saw Leutgeb’s tiny establishment, he quipped that it was “the size of a snail shell.”) The nature of Wolfgang’s relationship with Joseph may be surmised from the jocular dedication of the Horn Concerto No. 2, K. 417 that he wrote for his friend: “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has taken pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox and simpleton, Vienna, May 27, 1783.” They must have had a merry time together, but there was also a deep, mutual concern, because when the horn player-cheese maker fell behind in his loan payments, Wolfgang defended his friend to his straightlaced father. Things apparently went well for Leutgeb in later years, however, and he died in prosperity in 1811.

The Horn Concerto No. 4 is in the traditional three movements. The opening movement is a sonata-concerto form in the “singing allegro” style that Mozart learned while still in knee pants from John Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, who had settled in London and met the touring Mozarts there when Wolfgang was only eight. The second movement, titled “Romanza,” is a lovely song that utilizes the burnished sonority of the solo horn. Its lyrical theme, presented immediately by the soloist, returns twice after intervening episodes. The finale, brimming with high spirits and bounding energy, is a rondo in the hunting-horn style that recalls the distant ancestors of the concert instrument. Never was a friendship immortalized in music of greater charm and geniality.

@ CHRISTOPHER ROUSE (1949-2019) Symphony No. 6 Christopher Rouse was born on February 15, 1949 in Baltimore, and died on September 21, 2019 in Towson, Maryland. His Symphony No. 6 was composed in 2019 and premiered on October 18, 2019 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Louis Langrée. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, fluegelhorn, three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 25 minutes. This is the premiere performance by the orchestra.

Christopher Rouse, a native of Baltimore, was largely self-taught in music before entering the Oberlin Conservatory in 1967; he received his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin in 1971. Following two years of private study with George Crumb in Philadelphia, he enrolled at Cornell University, where his teachers included Karel Husa and Robert Palmer. He graduated from Cornell in 1977 with both master’s and doctoral degrees, and a year later joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. Rouse taught at the Eastman School of Music from 1981 to 2002, and was on the composition faculty of the Juilliard School from 1997 until his death. Among his many distinctions are the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music (for the Trombone Concerto), 2002 Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition (Concert de Gaudí for guitarist Sharon Isbin), three S O U N D I N G S 2 0 2 3 / 2 4 PROGRAM XIII

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES BMI/SCA Awards, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Music, Friedheim Award of Kennedy Center, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002), and recognition as Musical America’s 2009 “Composer of the Year.” He was Composer-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic from 2012 to 2014. * * * Death has been woven through the history of music from time immemorial, in the plots of countless tragic operas, in sacred and secular works meant to remember the departed and console the living, and in compositions that grieve for humanity (Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, “Babi Yar,” about the Nazis’ slaughter of thousands in Ukraine in 1941, or Britten’s War Requiem, inspired by pity over World War I), but there have been few instances in which composers have directly addressed their own deaths in their music.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s last work was The Art of Fugue, which he planned to close with a stupendous Fuga a Tre Soggetti (“Fugue on Three Subjects”). His health and eyesight had failed completely by then, however, and he could not get beyond the 26th measure. He asked a scribe to head those final pages of his life’s work with the title Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich — “I Come Before Thy Throne” — and then dictated the chorale prelude (BWV 668) he had created some thirty years before on Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (“When We’re in Greatest Need”). Bach took his last Communion at home on July 22, 1750, and died on the evening of July 28th following a stroke.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart worked intermittently on his Requiem Mass during the last months of his life, when he suffered from swelling limbs, feverishness, pains in his joints, and severe headaches caused by a still-uncertain disease. He became obsessed with the Requiem, referring to it as his “swan-song,” convinced that he was writing the music for his own funeral: “I know from what I feel that the hour is striking; I am on the point of death; I have finished before I could enjoy my talent.... I thus must finish my funeral song, which I must not leave incomplete.”

Mozart was unable to finish the Requiem before he died on the morning of December 5, 1791, six weeks shy of his 36th birthday.

The most significant composition of such creative self-awareness for Christopher Rouse in his Symphony No. 6 is the Ninth Symphony of Gustav Mahler, written in 1908-1910, when he was not yet fifty but already suffering from a serious heart condition that would end his life in May 1911. Mahler was acutely aware of his own mortality during those years but refused to curtail his strenuous schedule, which then included full seasons conducting the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera. Realizing that the pace of his career would probably soon cost him his life, he embedded in the Ninth Symphony a message of farewell and an acceptance of his own approaching death. Leonard Bernstein, a successor to Mahler as Music Director of the Philharmonic and a masterful interpreter of his music, wrote a “personal introduction” to the Ninth Symphony that he titled Four Ways to Say Farewell. “In the Ninth,” Bernstein wrote, “each movement is a farewell: the 1st is a farewell to tenderness, passion — human love; the 2nd and 3rd are farewells to life — first to country life, then to urban society; and the finale is a farewell to life itself.” * * * PROGRAM XIV C O LO R A D O S Y M P H O N Y.O R G

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES “One final time my subject is death, though in this event it is my own of which I write,” wrote Christopher Rouse when he had completed the Symphony No. 6 at his home in Baltimore on June 6, 2019. He died three months later, in hospice on September 21st, and the Sixth Symphony was premiered on October 18th by Music Director Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which had commissioned the work. “I realized that I had largely avoided the standard four-movement form,” Rouse continued, “and recognized that this would be the time to tackle it. (To be fair, my Fifth Symphony does also exhibit many elements of four-movement structure.)

I first chose to bookend the piece with two slow movements, and it then occurred to me that by placing a moderate-tempo movement second and a fast one third I would have replicated overall the architecture of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, though in a much more modest time span.

(My Symphony lasts only about 40% as long as Mahler’s.) An immediate decision was required vis-à-vis how referential I would be in relation to the Mahler, and I elected not to employ any actual Mahler quotations. As in Mahler’s second movement, I would in mine present music in both slow and fast tempi, but my third movement would consist of fast music only. Throughout my piece I would make subtle reference to the ‘stuttering’ motive that opens the Mahler Symphony.

“My choice of an ‘unusual instrument’ in the Sixth Symphony was the fluegelhorn. The timbre of this dark-tinged member of the trumpet family seemed right for the elegiac quality of the Symphony’s opening idea, and it is a color that will return at various stages during the piece.

My intent was to imbue the opening movement with a feeling of yearning as it strives to find an anchor in a sea of doubt. Each of the middle movements serves as an interlude in its own way, neither working with nor against the expressive grain of the opening Adagio. (For me, this is also how Mahler’s two middle movements largely function within the span of his Ninth Symphony; the essential connection in both symphonies is that between the opening and the closing movements.) The music continues its path towards the end. Ultimately there is a valedictory passage featuring the strings over a long droning E in the contrabasses. The drone is the lifeline.

Fear and doubt give way to an uncertain serenity. Still the life drone sounds. Love adds its grace and its healing power. The drone continues. Gradually all begins to recede but for the drone. The drone holds and holds. At the end, the final step must be taken alone. The drone continues … and continues ... until it stops.”

The last note of the Sixth Symphony is a stroke on the gong alone, distinct but neither loud nor soft, marked “funesto” (“fatal”). In place of the legend Rouse usually placed beneath the last line of a score — Deo gratias (“Thanks be to God”) — he inscribed “Finis.”

“My main hope,” Rouse said, “is that the Symphony will communicate something sincere in meaning to those who hear it.” ©2023 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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