Program Notes: Yo-Yo Ma

SPOTLIGHT 2023/24

YO-YO MA WITH THE COLORADO SYMPHONY

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

YO-YO MA, cello

Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 7:00pm

Boettcher Concert Hall

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

I. Andante – Allegro con anima

II. Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza

III. Valse: Allegro moderato

IV. Finale: Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace

— INTERMISSION —

ELGAR

Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85

I. Adagio; Moderato

II. Lento; Allegro molto

III. Adagio

IV. Allegro; Moderato; Allegro, ma non troppo

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

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

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

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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.

PHOTO: DALE WILCOX

SPOTLIGHT BIOGRAPHIES

YO-YO MA, cello

Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.

Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society.

Yo-Yo is an advocate for a future guided by humanity, trust, and understanding. Among his many roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, a member of the board of Nia Tero, the US-based nonprofit working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements worldwide, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad.

His discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as “Hush” with Bobby McFerrin and the “Goat Rodeo Sessions” with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Yo-Yo’s recent releases include “Six Evolutions,” his third recording of Bach’s cello suites, and “Songs of Comfort and Hope,” created and recorded with pianist Kathryn Stott in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yo-Yo’s latest album, “Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97 ‘Archduke,’” is the third in a new series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.

Yo-Yo was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age four and three years later moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), Kennedy Center Honors (2011), the Polar Music Prize (2012), and the Birgit Nilsson Prize (2022). He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration.

Yo-Yo and his wife have two children. He plays three instruments: a 2003 instrument made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.

SPOTLIGHT PROGRAM NOTES

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, and died on November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg. He wrote the short score of his Fifth Symphony between late May and July 4, 1888, and completed the orchestration on August 27th; he conducted the orchestra of the Russian Musical Society in St. Petersburg in the premiere, on November 17, 1888. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs plus piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. Duration is about 45 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece January 21-23, 2022, with Peter Oundjian conducting.

Tchaikovsky was never able to maintain his self-confidence for long. More than once, his opinion of a work fluctuated between the extremes of satisfaction and denigration. The unjustly neglected Manfred Symphony of 1885, for example, left his pen as “the best I have ever written,” but the work failed to make a good impression at its premiere and Tchaikovsky’s estimation of it tumbled. The lack of success of Manfred was particularly painful, because he had not produced a major orchestral work since the Violin Concerto of 1878, and the score’s failure left him with the gnawing worry that he might be “written out.” The three years after Manfred were devoid of creative work. It was not until May 1888 that Tchaikovsky again took up the challenge of the blank page, collecting “little by little, material for a symphony,” he wrote to his brother Modeste. Tchaikovsky worked doggedly on the new symphony, ignoring illness, the premature encroachment of old age (he was only 48, but suffered from continual exhaustion and loss of vision), and his doubts about himself. He pressed on, and when the orchestration of the Fifth Symphony was completed, at the end of August, he said, “I have not blundered; it has turned out well.”

Tchaikovsky never gave any indication that the Symphony No. 5, unlike the Fourth Symphony, had a program, though he may well have had one in mind. In their biography of the composer, Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson reckoned Tchaikovsky’s view of fate as the motivating force in the Symphony No. 5, though they distinguished its interpretation from that in the Fourth Symphony. “In the Fourth Symphony,” the Hansons wrote, “the Fate theme is earthy and militant, as if the composer visualizes the implacable enemy in the form, say, of a Greek god. In the Fifth, the majestic Fate theme has been elevated far above earth, and man is seen, not as fighting a force that thinks on its own terms, of revenge, hate, or spite, but a wholly spiritual power which subjects him to checks and agonies for the betterment of his soul.”

The structure of the Fifth Symphony reflects this process of “betterment.” It progresses from minor to major, from darkness to light, from melancholy to joy — or at least to acceptance and resignation. The Symphony’s four movements are linked together through the use of a recurring “Fate” motto theme, given immediately at the beginning by unison clarinets as the brooding introduction to the first movement. The sonata form proper starts with a melancholy melody intoned by bassoon and clarinet over a stark string accompaniment. Several themes are presented to round out the exposition: a romantic tune, filled with emotional swells, for the strings; an aggressive strain given as a dialogue between winds and strings; and a languorous, sighing string melody. All of the materials from the exposition are used in the development. The

SPOTLIGHT PROGRAM NOTES

solo bassoon ushers in the recapitulation, and the themes from the exposition are heard again, though with appropriate changes of key and instrumentation.

At the head of the manuscript of the second movement Tchaikovsky is said to have written, “Oh, how I love … if you love me…,” and, indeed, this wonderful music calls to mind an operatic love scene. (Tchaikovsky, it should be remembered, was a master of the musical stage who composed more operas than he did symphonies.) Twice, the imperious Fate motto intrudes upon the starlit mood of this Romanza

If the second movement derives from opera, the third grows from ballet. A flowing waltz melody (inspired by a street song Tchaikovsky had heard in Italy a decade earlier) dominates much of the movement. The central trio section exhibits a scurrying figure in the strings. Quietly and briefly, the Fate motto returns in the movement’s closing pages.

The finale begins with a long introduction based on the Fate theme cast in a heroic rather than a sinister or melancholy mood. A vigorous exposition, a concentrated development and an intense recapitulation follow. The long coda uses the motto theme in its major-key, victory-won setting.

EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)

Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85

Edward Elgar was born on June 2, 1857 in Broadheath, England, and died on February 23, 1934 in Worcester. He began his Cello Concerto during the winter of 1918-1919 and completed it in August 1919. The composer conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the premiere on October 27, 1919, with Felix Salmond as soloist. The score calls for piccolo, two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece November 4-6, 2022, with conductor Peter Oundjian and cellist Sterling Elliot.

The First World War was among the most traumatic events in the history of Western civilization. Wars, intrigues, religious upheavals, disasters of every ilk had regularly wreaked havoc upon Europe from the beginnings of recorded history, many reshaping political boundaries, changing ruling houses, or even redirecting basic philosophies. Nothing previous to The Great War, however, so profoundly altered the assumptions on which our civilization is founded. Between 1914 and 1918, three royal lines — Habsburg, Hohenzollern, Romanov — lost their thousand-year birthrights; the awesome destructiveness of modern technological warfare became stunningly apparent; social repression of ancient ancestry sought redress. World War I shaped not only political boundaries; it shaped our modern world. It taught us not about the fragility of human life (our most primitive ancestor who chiseled the first spear-point knew that), but about the fragility of our institutions, our culture, our civilized order — about the razor’s-

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edge on which they balance. When added to these profound concerns, the personal grief of death, deprivation and destruction left no one in the West untouched. Edward Elgar was no exception.

It seemed that Elgar’s world was crumbling in 1918. The four years of war had left him, as so many others, weary and numb from the crush of events. Many of his friends of German ancestry were put through a bad time in England during those years; others whom he knew were killed or maimed in action. The traditional foundations of the British political system were skewed by the rise of socialism directly after the war, and Elgar saw his beloved Edwardian world drawing to a close. (He resembles another titan among fin-de-siècle musicians, Gustav Mahler, in his mourning of a passing age.) His music seemed anachronistic in an era of polychords and dodecaphony, a remnant of stuffy conservatism, and his 70th birthday concert in Queen’s Hall attracted only half a house. The health of his wife, his chief helpmate, inspiration and critic, began to fail, and with her passing in 1920, Elgar virtually stopped composing. His friends drifted away. He became a lonely old man, given to flinging about caustic remarks, even concerning his own music. At a rehearsal of the Cello Concerto in 1923, he turned to Ralph Vaughan Williams and said, “I am surprised that you came to hear this vulgar music.”

The Cello Concerto, written just before his wife’s death, is Elgar’s last major work, and seems both to summarize his disillusion over the calamities of World War I and to presage the gnawing unhappiness of his last years. Wrote New York Times critic Harold Schonberg, “In the elegiac Cello Concerto it is hard to escape the notion that Elgar — consciously or otherwise — was making a final statement, retreating into a private world from which he was never to emerge.” The adjectives “mellow,” “autumnal,” “resigned,” “meditative” all attach themselves appropriately to this introspective Concerto, which Elgar said mirrors “a man’s attitude to life.”

Large sections of the Concerto are given over to the solitary ruminations of the cello in the form of recitative-like passages, such as the one that opens the work. The forms of the Concerto’s four movements only suggest traditional models in their epigrammatic concentration. The first movement is a ternary structure (A–B–A), commencing after the opening recitative. A limpid, undulating theme in 9/8 (Moderato) is given by the lower strings as the material for the first and third sections, while a related melody (12/8, with dotted rhythms) appears first in the woodwinds in the central portion. Elgar’s biographer Michael Kennedy wrote of the poignant mood of this movement, “This is overpoweringly the music of wood smoke and autumn bonfires, of the evening of life.”

The first movement is linked directly to the second (Allegro molto). It takes several tries before the music of the second movement is able to maintain its forward motion, but when it does, it proves to be a skittering, moto perpetuo display piece for the soloist, Elgar’s closest approach to overt virtuosity in this work. It is music, however, which, for all its hectic activity, seems strangely earth-bound, a sort of wild merriment not quite capable of banishing the dolorous thoughts of the opening movement.

The almost-motionless stillness of the following Adagio returns to the introspection of the opening movement. It, in the words of Herbert Byard, “seems to express the grief that is too deep for tears.” Its calm resignation lays open a window into the soul of the composer that was usually well-shuttered by the vigor and complexity of much of Elgar’s other music.

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The finale, like the opening, is prefaced by a recitative for the soloist. The movement’s form following this introductory section is based on the Classical rondo, and makes a valiant attempt at the “hail-and-well-met” vigor of Elgar’s earlier march music. Like the scherzando second movement, however, it seems more a nostalgic recollection of past abilities than a potent display of remaining powers. Toward the end, the stillness of the third movement creeps over the music, and the soloist indulges in an extended soliloquy. Brief bits of earlier movements are remembered before a final recall of the fast rondo music closes this thoughtful Concerto.

Michael Kennedy wrote, “Here is the elegy for an age. The slaughter of war ... had grieved Elgar, but this requiem is not a cosmic utterance on behalf of mankind, it is wholly personal, the musical expression of his bitterness about the providence that was ... cruelly obtuse to individual sorrow and sacrifice. There is no massive hope for the future in this music, only the voice of an aging, embittered man, a valediction to an era and to the powers of music that he knew were dying with him.” This is music that our own disordered age would do well to experience with a receptive heart.

©2024 Dr. Richard E. Rodda