Program - Holst The Planets Conducted by Peter Oundjian

2021/22 SEASON PRESENTING SPONSOR:

CLASSICS 2021/22 HOLST THE PLANETS CONDUCTED BY PETER OUNDJIAN

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor JAN LISIECKI, piano COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, MARY LOUISE BURKE, associate director Friday, March 25, 2022 at 7:30pm Saturday, March 26, 2022 at 7:30pm Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

The Oak

PRICE

GRIEG Piano Concerto No. 24 in A minor, Op. 16 I. Allegro molto moderato II. Adagio III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato — INTERMISSION — HOLST The Planets I. Mars, the Bringer of War II. Venus, the Bringer of Peace III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger IV. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity V. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age VI. Uranus, the Magician VII. Neptune, the Mystic The custom Allen Digital Computer Organ is provided by Mervine Music, LLC CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 54 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 Elyse Tipton and Paul Ruttum Saturday’s concert is dedicated to Normie and Paul Voillequé PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES 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.

In February 2022, Oundjian was named Principal Conductor of the Colorado Symphony. Now carrying the title of 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, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With the onset of world-wide concert cancellations support for students at Yale and Juilliard and the creation of a virtual summer festival in Boulder where he is Music Director of Colorado Music Festival became a priority. Winter 2021 saw the resumption of some orchestral activity with streamed events with Atlanta, Colorado, Indianapolis and Dallas symphonies.

The 2021/22 season anticipates return visits to Toronto, Kansas City, Seattle, Colorado, Detroit, Baltimore and Indianapolis.

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 conducted the Yale and Juilliard Symphony Orchestras and the New World Symphony during the 2018/19 season.

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 JAN LISIECKI, piano Jan Lisiecki’s interpretations and technique speak to a maturity beyond his age. At 27, the Canadian performs over a hundred yearly concerts worldwide, and has worked closely with conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Daniel Harding, and Claudio Abbado (†).

Following his acclaimed Night Music recitals, Lisiecki will present a new allChopin recital programme in over 30 cities around the globe in 2021/2022.

Recent return invitations include Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for performances at Carnegie Hall and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Lisiecki recently performed a Beethoven Lieder cycle with baritone Matthias Goerne, among others at the Salzburg Festival, and has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony and London Symphony Orchestra.

At the age of fifteen, Lisiecki signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The label launched its celebrations of the Beethoven Year 2020 with the release of a live recording of all five Beethoven concertos from Konzerthaus Berlin, with Lisiecki leading the Academy of St Martin in the Fields from the piano. His Beethoven Lieder cycle with Matthias Goerne, released shortly after, was awarded the Diapason d’Or. Lisiecki’s eighth recording for Deutsche Grammophon, a double album of Frédéric Chopin’s Complete Nocturnes, appeared in August 2021 and immediately topped the classical charts in North America and Europe. His recordings have been awarded with the JUNO and ECHO Klassik.

At eighteen, Lisiecki became both the youngest ever recipient of Gramophone’s Young Artist Award and received the Leonard Bernstein Award. He was named UNICEF Ambassador to Canada in 2012.

MARY LOUISE BURKE, associate director, Colorado Symphony Chorus Mary Louise Burke is in her 28th season as Associate Director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. In addition to assisting Chorus Director Duain Wolfe, she also prepares the chorus for various Colorado Symphony pops concerts and special projects. She was the Associate Director of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, participating in hundreds of concerts and dozens of the Chorale’s regional, national and international tours.

She is now Vocal Director of the Children’s Chorale, where she provides specialized vocal coaching and opera preparation. With an expertise in vocal technique, Burke frequently conducts seminars in vocal and choral techniques for area church and community choirs. She is the Vocal Advisor at Montview Presbyterian Church and has taught classes in Find Your Authentic Voice at the University of Denver. She has a Doctorate in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Colorado.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS The 2021-2022 Colorado Symphony concert season marks the 38th season of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe at the request of Gaetano Delogu, then the Music Director of the Symphony, the chorus has grown into a nationally respected ensemble. This outstanding chorus of volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous performances each year, to repeated critical acclaim.

The Chorus has performed at noted music festivals in the Rocky Mountain region, including the Colorado Music Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, where it has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony, under conductors Alan Gilbert, Hans Graf, Jaap van Zweden, and Yannick NézetSéguin. For over two decades, the Chorus has been featured at the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, performing many great masterworks under the baton of conductors Lawrence Foster, James Levine, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Robert Spano.

Among the eight recordings the CSO Chorus has made is a NAXOS release of Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 4. The Chorus is also featured on a Hyperion release of the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem and Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis. Most recently, the Colorado Symphony and Chorus released a world-premiere recording of William Hill’s The Raven.

In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the chorus on a three-country, two-week concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi Requiem in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl and Prague; and in 2016 the chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg and Munich featuring the Fauré Requiem.

In the summer of 2022, the chorus will return to Austria to do concerts in Vienna, Graz and Salzburg.

COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS Duain Wolfe, Founding Director and Conductor Mary Louise Burke, Associate Director Taylor Martin, Assistant Conductor Hsiao-Ling Lin, ShaoChun Tsai, pianists Eric Israelson, Barbara Porter, Chorus Managers SOPRANO 1 Coberly, Sarah Collins, Suzanne Dobreff, Mary Hedrick, Elizabeth Hittle, Erin Jones, Kaitlyn Jordan, Cameron Sladovnik, Roberta

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SOPRANO 2 Coberly, Ruth Headrick, Alaina Lang. Leanne Kermgard, Lindsey Pflug, Kim Rooney, Andi Roth, Sarah Ruff, Mahli Schauer, Elise Woodrow, Sandy

ALTO 1 Braud-Kern, Charlotte Conrad, Jayne Friedman, Anna Giger, Audrey Groom Gabriella Long, Tinsley Major, Alice McNulty, Emily Virtue, Pat

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ALTO 2 Golden, Daniela Maltzahn, Joanna Nelson, Annélise

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES FLORENCE B. PRICE (1887-1953) The Oak Florence Beatrice Price was born on April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and died on June 3, 1953 in Chicago. She composed The Oak in 1943. Its first known performance was on March 25, 2000 in San Francisco by the Women’s Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Apo Hsu. The score 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, harp, celesta and strings.

Duration is about 12 minutes. The is the premiere performance of this piece by the orchestra.

Florence B. Price was a musical pioneer — one of the first African-American students to graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music, the first African-American woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major American orchestra, the first winner of the composition contest sponsored by the progressive Wanamaker Foundation.

Florence Beatrice Smith was born in 1887 into the prosperous and cultured family of a dentist in Little Rock, Arkansas, and received her first piano lessons from her mother, a schoolteacher and singer; Florence first played in public when she was four. She later also took up organ and violin, and at age fourteen was admitted to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she studied with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse, two of their generation’s leading composers, wrote her first string trio and a symphony (now lost), and graduated in 1907 with honors for both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate.

She returned to Arkansas, where she taught at Arkadelphia Academy and Shorter College before being appointed music department chairman at Clark University in Atlanta in 1910. She returned to Little Rock two years later to marry attorney Thomas J. Price, and left classroom teaching to devote herself to raising two daughters, giving private instruction in violin, organ and piano, and composing.

In 1927, following racial unrest in Arkansas that included a lynching, the Price family moved to Chicago, where Florence studied composition, orchestration, organ, languages and liberal arts at various schools with several of the city’s leading musicians and teachers, and published four pieces for piano soon after settling there. She was also a frequent guest at the home of physician Dr. Monroe Alpheus Majors and organist and music teacher Estelle C. Bonds, and became both friend and teacher to their gifted daughter, Margaret. In 1932, Price and Bonds (then just nineteen) won respectively first and second prize in the Wanamaker Foundation Composition Competition, Price for her Symphony in E minor and Piano Sonata and Bonds for her song Sea Ghost. The performance of Price’s Symphony on June 15, 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, was the first by a major American orchestra of a symphonic work by an African-American woman; the CSO repeated the performance at the Chicago World’s Fair later that year. She continued to compose prolifically — three more symphonies and two more piano concertos, a violin concerto, chamber, piano and organ pieces, songs, spiritual arrangements, jingles for radio commercials — and received numerous performances, including her arrangement of the spiritual My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord that Marian Anderson used to close her historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 1939. Florence Price died in Chicago on June 3, 1953.

Price’s The Oak was unknown until its undated manuscript score was discovered in the Sibley Library of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in the late 1990s. It was SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES transferred to the Price Archive at the University of Arkansas, which determined that it had been composed in 1943 but could find no record of a performance during Price’s lifetime. The discovery of The Oak came to the attention of the enterprising Taiwanese-American conductor Apo Hsu, then Music Director of the Women’s Philharmonic Orchestra in San Francisco, who was always searching for unfamiliar and appropriate selections to conduct with the orchestra. She led what was probably the world premiere of The Oak on March 25, 2000 and recorded it the following year on the Koch label; it was the first commercial recording of Price’s orchestral music.

The score was published in 2019 and is gaining performances nationwide.

There is no indication of Price’s intention in giving The Oak its title. It was composed during one of the darkest times of World War II, and may have expressed her hope that the Allies would stand “sturdy as an oak,” one of nature’s strongest trees. Another reference to a tree, a deeply troubling one, may have been the memory of the lynching that drove Price from Arkansas to Chicago in 1927. That specter, never absent in the Black community, had been given prominence when Billie Holliday released her recording of Strange Fruit in 1939. Such was the impact of the song that the FBI, in an attempt to silence Holliday, brought her to trial on drug charges in 1947 and imprisoned her for a year. The Oak, while not specifically programmatic, invites speculation about both of these patriotic and racial references, and others as well. Gustav Mahler once said, “What is important in music is not in the notes.” Price’s music is far more than just notes.

The Oak is one of Price’s darkest works, eschewing her characteristic gospel references.

It begins with an ominous passage of unsettled chromatic lines whose mood and music are recalled throughout, which are balanced musically and emotionally by more optimistic and forceful passages. The Oak is also a masterfully crafted composition, unified motivically, evocative and balanced in expression, and expertly built in its overall cumulative structure. We are lucky that the voice of Florence Price is now being heard with a frequency and prominence that had been so limited during her own lifetime.

 EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907) Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 Edvard Grieg was born on June 15, 1843 in Bergen, Norway, and died there on September 4, 1907. He began his only Concerto during the summer of 1868; it was completed the following spring. Edmund Neupert, to whom the score is dedicated, was the soloist in the first performance, on April 3, 1869 in Copenhagen. The score calls for pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. The last performance of this piece was January 10-12, 2020, conducted by Brett Mitchell with pianist Olga Kern.

Grieg completed his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1863. Back in Norway, his creative work was concentrated on the large forms advocated by his Leipzig teachers and by 1867, he had produced the Piano Sonata, the first two Violin and Piano Sonatas, a Symphony (long unpublished and made available only as recently as 1981) and the concert overture In Autumn.

He arranged to have the summer of 1868 free and took an extended vacation at a secluded PROGRAM VI

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES retreat at Sölleröd, Denmark, where he began his Piano Concerto. He thoroughly enjoyed that summer, sleeping late, taking long walks, eating well, and tipping a glass in the evenings with friends at the local inn. The sylvan setting spurred his creative energies, and the new Concerto was completed by the time he returned home in the fall.

The Concerto’s first movement opens with a bold summons by the soloist. The main theme is initiated by the woodwinds; the second theme is a tender cello melody. An episodic development section is largely based on the main theme. The recapitulation returns the earlier themes before the stern introductory measures are recalled to close the movement. The Adagio begins with a song filled with sentiment and nostalgia played by the strings. The soloist weaves elaborate musical filigree above a simple accompaniment before the lovely song returns. The themes of the finale’s outer sections use the rhythms of a popular Norwegian dance, the halling, while the movement’s central portion presents a melodic inspiration in the flute that derives from the dreamy atmosphere of the preceding movement.

 GUSTAV HOLST (1874-1934) The Planets, Op. 32 Gustav Holst was born on September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham, and died on May 24, 1934 in London. He composed The Planets between 1914 and 1917. The work was first heard at a private performance (underwritten by Holst’s friend and fellow composer Balfour Gardiner as a farewell gift before Holst departed for non-combative military duties in the Middle East) on September 29, 1918 in Queen’s Hall, London; Adrian Boult conducted. The score calls for two piccolos, four flutes, bass flute, three oboes, English horn, bass oboe, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tenor and bass tubas, timpani, percussion, celesta, xylophone, two harps, organ, strings and female choir. Duration is about 51 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece Jun 29, 2017 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with Christopher Dragon conducting.

Holst’s interest in writing a piece of music on the attributes of the astrological signs was apparently spurred by his visit in the spring of 1913 with the writer and avid star-gazer Clifford Bax, who noted that Holst was himself “a skilled reader of horoscopes.” Of the music’s inspiration, Holst noted, “As a rule I only study things which suggest music to me. That’s why one time I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.” Despite his immediate attraction to the planets as the subject for a musical work, however, he took some time before beginning actual composition.

He once wrote to William Gillies Whittaker, “Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you,” and it was not until the summer of 1914, more than a full year after he had conceived the piece, that he could no longer resist the lure of The Planets.

“Once he had taken the underlying idea from astrology, he let the music have its way with him,” reported Imogen Holst of her father’s writing The Planets. The composition of the work occupied him for over three years. Jupiter, Venus and Mars were written in 1914 (prophetically, Mars, the Bringer of War was completed only weeks before the assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the start of the First World War); Saturn, Uranus and Neptune followed in 1915, and SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES Mercury a year after that. Except for Neptune, all the movements were originally written for two pianos rather than directly into orchestral score, probably because Holst was then having painful problems with his writing hand due to severe arthritis. For the mystical Neptune movement, he considered the percussive sounds of the piano too harsh, and wrote it first as an organ piece.

All seven movements were orchestrated in 1917 with the help of Nora Day and Vally Lasker, two of the composer’s fellow faculty members at St. Paul’s School in London, who wrote out the full score from Holst’s keyboard notations under his guidance.

Holst wrote of The Planets, “These pieces were suggested by the astrological significance of the planets. There is no program music in them, neither have they any connection with the deities of classical mythology bearing the same names. If any guide to the music is required, the subtitle to each piece will be found sufficient, especially if it is used in a broad sense.” The staggering hammerblows of Mars, the Bringer of War are followed by the sweet luminosity of Venus, the Bringer of Peace. Mercury, the Winged Messenger is a nimble scherzo. Within Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity co-exist a boisterous Bacchanalian dance and a striding hymn tune to which Elgar stood godfather. Holst declared the lugubrious Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age to be his favorite movement in the suite. Uranus, the Magician is shown as a rather portly prestidigitator.

Neptune, the Mystic is a disembodied siren song for the female chorus floating away to inaudibility among the spheres. ©2021 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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