Program - Respighi Pines of Rome

2021/22 SEASON PRESENTING SPONSOR:

CLASSICS 2021/22 RESPIGHI PINES OF ROME JOSÉ LUIS GOMEZ, conductor JOYCE YANG, piano Friday, March 11, 2022 at 7:30pm Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 7:30pm Sunday, March 13, 2022 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 I. Allegro II. Larghetto III. Allegretto — INTERMISSION — RESPIGHI Fountains of Rome, P. 106 I. La fontana di Valle Giulia all’alba II. La fontana del Tritone al mattino III. a fontana de Trevi al meriggio IV. La fontana di Villa Medici al tramonto RESPIGHI Pines of Rome, P. 141 I. I pini di Villa Borghese II. Pini presso una catacomba III. I pini del Gianicolo IV. I pini della Via Appia CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 41 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 7 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT! Friday’s concert is dedicated to Nancy and Anthony Accetta.

Saturday’s concert is dedicated to John F. Estes III and Norma Horner.

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY SOUNDINGS

2021/22

PROGRAM I

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES JOSÉ LUIS GOMEZ, conductor The Venezuelan-born, Spanish conductor José Luis Gomez began his musical career as a violinist but was catapulted to international attention when he won First Prize at the International Sir Georg Solti Conductor’s Competition in Frankfurt in September 2010, securing a sensational and rare unanimous decision from the jury.

Gomez’s electrifying energy, talent and creativity earned him immediate acclaim from the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra where he was appointed to the position of Assistant Conductor, a post created especially for him by Paavo Järvi and the orchestra directly upon the conclusion of the competition.

In 2016, Gomez was named Music Director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Since taking the helm, the orchestra has seen a marked increase in subscribers and donors to the orchestra and Gomez has worked tirelessly to introduce innovative and exciting new outreach activities whilst continuing to nurture and support existing education projects. For example the unique Young Composers’ Project which sees students new to composing working closely with orchestra representatives to create new compositions, culminating in a public performance and recording.

Maestro Gomez is also a champion of many lesser-known composers from South America, programming their works sensitively with more recognized classical names, creating hugely interesting and unique concerts. He has also been responsible for commissioning new works, for example he and the orchestra were co-commissioners of a new concerto for orchestra and trumpet by Arturo Marquez which was given its US premiere with Trumpet soloist Pacho Flores under Gomez’s baton in 2019.

In The Americas he enjoys a close relationship with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and has also worked with such orchestras as the Houston Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, Vancouver, Colorado, Grand Rapids, Winnipeg, and Alabama Symphonies, the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio, Rochester & Louisiana Philharmonics, Pasadena and Elgin symphonies, and made his debut at Carnegie Hall with the Youth International Philharmonic. Further south, he has worked with Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre, Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Perú.

He has worked extensively at home in Europe with such orchestras as RTVE National Symphony Orchestra of Madrid, Weimar Staatskapelle, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Hamburg Symphony, Karlsruhe Staatstheatre Orchestra, Basel Sinfonietta, Orquesta Sinfonica do Porto, Castilla y Leon, Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, Sinfonia Varsovia, SWR Radio Sinfonie-orchester Stuttgart, Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, and in 2019 he made a very successful debut with Komische Oper Berlin with Gabriela Montero as soloist.

In Australasia he has worked with the Macau Orchestra and Nemanja Radulovic, New Zealand Symphony, Australian National Academy of Music in a Celebration of Bernstein, the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, the Daegu Symphony Orchestra, as well as conducting and curating the programme for the inaugural year of the Solasian Youth Orchestra at the Daegu Festival.

At the end of the 19/20 season he will make his debut with the Oslo Philharmonic. He will also embark on an extensive tour of the UK with the Flanders Symphony Orchestra with Milos Karadaglic as soloist. Another debut will take him to California to work with the Pacific PROGRAM II

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Symphony and Joyce Yang, and he will also work with both the Filarmónica de Malaga and the Phoenix Symphony for the first time.

Other memorable performances included debuts at the Moscow State Conservatory Great Hall, the widely televised New Year’s Eve concert in Sofia, and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in their New Year concerts.

Opera highlights have included La Bohème at Frankfurt Opera and a new production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at Stuttgart Opera, of which he also conducted the revival in the following season, La Forza del Destino in Tokyo with the New National Theatre, Don Carlo and Norma at The State Opera in Tbilisi, Georgia, La Traviata in concert with Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni with Teatro Sociale di Como, with whom he also closed their season with a spectacular production of Cavalleria Rusticana.

He has also featured with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, recording Bela Fleck’s Second Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra “Juno Concerto”, and conducted the MGD CD release of the Nielsen, Francaix and Debussy Clarinet Concertos with clarinetist Vladimir Soltan and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.

Maestro Gomez was the Principal Conductor of the Orchestra 1813 Teatro Sociale di Como between 2012 and 2015 where he curated a new symphonic season, which resulted in a new and enthusiastic audience, conducting concerts to full houses. He is Musical Director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra where his contract has been extended to the end of the 23/24 season.

Face masks and proof of vaccination required Welcome Back We are looking forward to seeing you at Boettcher Concert Hall this season!

COVID-19 Protocols To protect audiences and the community from illness and to slow the transmission of COVID-19, the Colorado Symphony joins the resident companies of the Denver Performing Arts Complex — Colorado Ballet, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and Opera Colorado — in requiring both proof of full vaccination and face masks to attend indoor public performances starting October 1, 2021. Please see Coloradosymphony.org for full details.

Please see Coloradosymphony.org for full details.

SOUNDINGS

2021/22

PROGRAM III

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES JOYCE YANG, piano Blessed with “poetic and sensitive pianism” (Washington Post) and a “wondrous sense of color” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Grammynominated pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism, and interpretive sensitivity.

She first came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards: Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet), and Best Performance of a New Work. In 2006 Yang made her celebrated New York Philharmonic debut alongside Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall along with the orchestra’s tour of Asia, making a triumphant return to her hometown of Seoul, South Korea. Yang’s subsequent appearances with the New York Philharmonic have included opening night of the 2008 Leonard Bernstein Festival – an appearance made at the request of Maazel in his final season as music director. The New York Times pronounced her performance in Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety a “knockout.”

In the last decade, Yang has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), showcasing her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians through more than 1,000 debuts and re-engagements.

She received the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant and earned her first Grammy nomination (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance) for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn & Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich (“One can only sit in misty-eyed amazement at their insightful flair and spontaneity.” – The Strad). She has become a staple of the summer festival circuit with frequent appearances on the programs of the Aspen Summer Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest and the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

Other notable orchestral engagements have included the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin, the BBC Philharmonic, as well as the Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, and New Zealand symphony orchestras. She was also featured in a five-year Rachmaninoff concerto cycle with Edo de Waart and the Milwaukee Symphony, to which she brought “an enormous palette of colors, and tremendous emotional depth” (Milwaukee Sentinel Journal).

In solo recital, Yang’s innovative program has been praised as “extraordinary” and “kaleidoscopic” (Los Angeles Times). She has performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Chicago’s Symphony Hall and Zurich’s Tonhalle. In 2018, Musica Viva presented Yang in an extensive recital tour throughout Australia.

As an avid chamber musician, Yang has collaborated with the Takács Quartet for Dvořák – part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series – and Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with members of the Emerson String Quartet at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. Yang has fostered an enduring partnership with the Alexander String Quartet, which continues in the 2018/2019 season with performances in Davis, Tucson, San Francisco, Dallas, Aliso Viejo, Rockville and Seattle. Following their debut disc of Brahms and Schumann Quintets, their recording of Mozart’s Piano Quartets was released in July 2018 (FoghornClassics). Jerry Dubins of Fanfare Magazine wrote that the renditions were “by far, hands down and feet up, the most amazing performances of Mozart’s two piano quartets that have ever graced these ears.”

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Yang’s wide-ranging discography includes the world premiere recording of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto, created expressly for Yang and commissioned by the Albany Symphony. Yang has also “demonstrated impressive gifts” (New York Times) with the release of Wild Dreams (Avie Records), on which she plays Schumann, Bartók, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff, and arrangements by Earl Wild. She recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra that International Record Review called “hugely enjoyable, beautifully shaped … a performance that marks her out as an enormous talent.” Of her 2011 debut album for Avie Records, Collage, featuring works by Scarlatti, Liebermann, Debussy, Currier, and Schumann, Gramophone praised her “imaginative programming” and “beautifully atmospheric playing.”

In 2018/2019, Yang has focused on promoting creative ways to introduce classical music to new audiences. She will serve as the Guest Artistic Director for the Laguna Beach Music Festival in California, curating concerts that explore the “art-inspires-art” concept – highlighting the relationship between music and dance while simultaneously curating outreach activities to young students. Yang continues her unique collaboration with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet with performances of Half/Cut/Split – a “witty, brilliant exploration of Robert Schumann’s Carnaval” (The Santa Fe New Mexican) choreographed by Jorma Elo – a marriage between music and dance to illuminate the ingenuity of Schumann’s musical language. The group will tour in Aspen, Santa Fe, Dallas, Denver, Scottsdale, and New York.

Also in 2018/2019, Yang will share her versatile repertoire, performing solo recitals and performing 12 different piano concertos all throughout North America. Yang will reunite with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Edo De Waart for five concerts in New Zealand, following up a successful 2017 collaboration in which Yang displayed “fabulous lyricism” and “assured technique” (Otago Daily Times).

Born in 1986 in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at the age of four. She quickly took to the instrument, which she received as a birthday present. Over the next few years won several national piano competitions in her native country. By the age of ten, she had entered the School of Music at the Korea National University of Arts, and went on to make a number of concerto and recital appearances in Seoul and Daejeon. In 1997, Yang moved to the United States to begin studies at the pre-college division of the Juilliard School with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky. During her first year at Juilliard, Yangwon the pre-college division Concerto Competition, resulting in a performance of Haydn’s Keyboard Concerto in D with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra. After winning the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just twelve years old. She graduated from Juilliard with special honor as the recipient of the school’s 2010 Arthur Rubinstein Prize, and in 2011 she won its 30th Annual William A. Petschek Piano Recital Award.

Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She is a Steinway artist.

SOUNDINGS

2021/22

PROGRAM V

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES GABRIELA LENA FRANK (born in 1972) Apu, Tone Poem for Orchestra Gabriela Lena Frank was born on September 26, 1972 in Berkeley, California. She composed Apu in 2017. It was premiered on July 21, 2017 at Carnegie Hall in New York City by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, conducted by Marin Alsop. The score calls for piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion, piano, harp and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes. This is the Colorado Symphony premiere of this piece.

The compositions of Gabriela Lena Frank, born in Berkeley, California of Peruvian parents in 1972, incorporate elements of Latin American mythology, archeology, art, poetry and folk music into traditional Classical forms in works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, chorus and vocal solo. In addition to the inaugural Sackler Music Composition Prize of the University of Connecticut in 2002, Frank has received many commissions, grants and awards and held residencies with orchestras, schools and festivals in North America and throughout Latin America; she was Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra through 2021.

Since 2010, she has taught at the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy. Frank received the 2009 Latin Grammy Award for Best Classical Music Composition (Inca Dances) and a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Crossover Album as one of the composers who contributed to YoYo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble 2011 CD, Off the Map. In 2017, she founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, a non-profit training institution that offers emerging composers short-term retreats at her farms in California, and was included in the Washington Post’s list of the “35 Most Significant Women Composers in History.” Born with a moderate-to-profound neurosensory hearing loss, Frank served as the keynote speaker at the national convention of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults in September 2005 in Salt Lake City. San Diego Opera premieres Frank’s first opera, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, with a libretto by Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright Nilo Cruz, during the 2022-2023 season.

Frank wrote of Apu, composed in 2017 for the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America and premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York, conducted by Marin Alsop, “In Andean Perú, spirits are said to inhabit rocks, rivers and mountain peaks with the intent of keeping a watchful eye on travelers passing through highland roads. The rarely seen Apu is one of the better-known spirits that is sometimes portrayed as a minor deity with a mischievous side. Simple folksong and a solemn prayer often successfully placate the Apu to ensure safe passage through the mountains.

“Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra begins with a short folkloric song inspired by the agile ‘pinkillo’ flute, a small, slender instrument that packs well into the small bags of travelers who must travel light. It is followed by the extended haillí of the second movement, a prayer to the Apu, which flows without pause to the third movement, in which the Apu makes its brief but dazzling appearance before disappearing once again into the mountain peaks.”

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, and died on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. He composed the C minor Concerto in 1786, and was soloist at its premiere on April 7th of that year at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The score calls for flute, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani and strings. Duration is about 31 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra on March 17, 2006, with Jeffrey Kahane conducting and playing piano.

As Mozart reached his full maturity in the years after arriving in Vienna in 1781, his strongly emotional manner of writing, whose chief evidences are the use of minor modes, chromaticism, PROGRAM VI

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES rich counterpoint and thorough thematic development, appeared in his compositions with increasing frequency. This style had regularly been evident in the slow movements of his piano concertos, but in 1785, he actually dared to cast an entire work (the Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466) in a minor key, though he did relieve its austerity somewhat by concluding it with a third-movement coda in a bright, major tonality. “An experiment, just an aberration,” thought the Viennese public, who recognized Mozart’s talent, if not its full range and power. They assumed he would return to the more popular and accepted means of expression the following season, and subscribed to his 1786 concerts in large numbers. In March, he presented his patrons with the beautiful and deeply felt A major Concerto (K. 488), with a passionate middle movement in the key of F-sharp minor. A month later he introduced the Concerto in C minor (K. 491), which, unlike the earlier D minor Concerto, maintains its tragic mood to the last measure. “It is hard to imagine the expression on the faces of the Viennese public when on April 7, 1786, Mozart played this work at his subscription concert,” wrote Alfred Einstein. Having thus stirred the doubts of Viennese audiences about the artistic path he was following, it is little wonder that Figaro received only small applause when it was premiered at the Burgtheater on May 1st. The following year his concert subscription list was returned almost blank. The year 1786, which had begun with high hope for great success, ended with frustration. The noble C major Concerto (K. 503) of December was the last such work he was to play at one of his own concerts, after which he was never again able to secure enough patrons to sponsor another similar venture.

The extravagant chromaticism and wide leaps of the main theme of the C minor Concerto’s opening Allegro, one of the largest sonata-form movements composed before the “Eroica” Symphony, recall the music of Bach, which Mozart had studied with great profit after he was introduced to it by Baron van Swieten in 1782. The mood of what Hermann Abert called “titanic defiance” continues undiminished throughout the movement, superbly balance in its heated intensity by the cool perfection of the form. The tranquil serenity of the Larghetto is heightened by the music’s placement between two large movements of tragic grandeur, a characteristic juxtaposition of shadow and light that invests many of Mozart’s late works with an enormous range of emotional expression. The finale, a set of variations on a dolorous theme of sighing intervals, ends with a coda whose jaunty 6/8 meter seems almost an ironic taunt to its solemn melodic and harmonic content.

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OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879-1936) Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome Ottorino Respighi was born on July 9, 1879 in Bologna, and died on April 18, 1936 in Rome. The Fountains of Rome was composed in 1916, and premiered on March 11, 1917, conducted by Antonio Guarnieri. The Pines of Rome was composed in 1923-1924, and premiered on December 14, 1924 in Rome, conducted by Bernardino Molinari. Their combined instrumentation calls for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, celesta, piano, organ, six off-stage “bucinae” or ancient Roman war trumpets ad lib (playable on flugelhorns), strings, and a recording of the song of a nightingale. Duration is about 38 minutes. The orchestra last performed Fountains of Rome on January 25-27, 2013, conducted by Justin Brown, and Pines of Rome was last presented on January 19-21, 2018, with Brett Mitchell conducting.

Fountains of Rome is the earliest of the Roman trilogy of symphonic poems by which Respighi is primarily represented in the world’s concert halls. (Pines of Rome followed in 1924, Roman Festivals in 1929.) It was also his first great public success, though his notoriety was not achieved without a certain difficulty. Arturo Toscanini had agreed to conduct the premiere of Fountains late in 1916. Germany and Italy were at war then, and there had been recent SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES bombings of Italian towns that resulted in heavy casualties. Despite heated anti-German feelings, however, Toscanini refused to drop from his programs selections by that arch Teuton Richard Wagner. When he began Siegfried’s Funeral March on one November concert, grumbling arose in the audience, and finally erupted with a shout from the balcony: “This piece is for the Paduan dead.” The infuriated Toscanini hurled his baton at the unruly audience and stormed off the stage and out of Rome. Plans for the premiere of Fountains of Rome were therefore delayed, and the work had to wait until the following March to be heard, in a concert conducted by Antonio Guarnieri. Respighi’s wife, Elsa, reported that the premiere was not a success. Indeed, the composer, whose music had not yet found much favor, expected as much. Trying to make light of the possibility of failure, he warned one of his friends to “take your umbrella and galoshes” to the premiere of this modern-day “Water Music.” It was with Toscanini’s performances in Milan and Rome of the following year that Fountains of Rome — and Respighi’s reputation — were established.

Respighi prefaced the orchestral score of Fountains of Rome with the following description of the music: “In this symphonic poem, the composer has endeavored to give expression to the sentiments and visions suggested to him by four of Rome’s fountains contemplated at the hour in which their character is most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or in which their beauty appears most impressive to the observer.

“The first part of the poem, inspired by the fountain of Valle Giulia, depicts a pastoral landscape: droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh damp mists of a Roman dawn.

“A sudden loud and insistent blast of horns above the whole orchestra introduces the second part, The Triton Fountain. It is like a joyous call, summoning troops of naiads and tritons, who come running up, pursuing each other and mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of water.

“Next there appears a solemn theme borne on the undulations of the orchestra. It is the fountain of Trevi at mid-day. The solemn theme, passing from the woodwind to the brass instruments, assumes a triumphal character. Trumpets peal: across the radiant surface of the water there passes Neptune’s chariot drawn by sea-horses, and followed by a train of sirens and tritons. The procession then vanishes while faint trumpet blasts resound in the distance.

“The fourth part, The Villa Medici Fountain, is announced by a sad theme that rises above a subdued warbling. It is the nostalgic hour of sunset. The air is full of the sound of tolling bells, birds twittering, leaves rustling. Then all dies peacefully into the silence of the night.” * * * Pines of Rome is the second work of Respighi’s trilogy on Roman subjects; the last, Roman Festivals, dates from 1928. He wrote that Pines of Rome “uses nature as a point of departure, in order to recall memories and visions. The centuries-old trees that dominate so characteristically the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life. 1. The Pines of the Villa Borghese. Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of Ring around the Rosy; mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to ...

2. The Pines near a Catacomb. We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which re-echoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced. 3. The Pines of the Janiculum. There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightingale sings. 4. The Pines of the Appian Way. Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet’s fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.”

— ©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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