Program - Beethoven Symphony No. 7

CLASSICS 2021/22

2021/22 SEASON PRESENTING SPONSOR:

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 7 VALENTINA PELEGGI, conductor PAUL HUANG, violin Friday, November 5, 2021 at 7:30pm Saturday, November 6, 2021 at 7:30pm Sunday, November 7, 2021 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

CLARICE ASSAD

Sin fronteras

BRUCH Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 26 I. Prelude: Allegro moderato II. Adagio III. Finale: Allegro energico

— INTERMISSION — BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 I. Poco sostenuto - Vivace II. Allregretto III. Presto IV. Allegro con brio CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 38 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! PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES VALENTINA PELEGGI, conductor Valentina Peleggi began her tenure as Music Director of the Richmond Symphony (Virginia, USA) in Summer 2020. Described by the BBC Music Magazine as a “rising star”, Peleggi has led orchestras from around the world including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Brussels Philharmonic, Orchestra della Toscana, Orchestra del Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She made her Garsington Opera debut in 2021 conducting a new production of Rossini’s Le Comte Ory with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the pit. She was a Mackerras Fellow at English National Opera in 2018 and 2019, conducting Carmen, Boheme, Orpheus in the Underworld and Dido and Aeneas. 2021 saw the release of her first CD, featuring a cappella works by Villa Lobos in a new critical edition for Naxos, guest edited by Ms Peleggi and performed by the Sao Paulo Symphony Chorus.

In 2021/22 she conducts a new production at the Opera de Lyon in her debut at the house and returns to the Teatro Verdi di Trieste for Rigoletto. Upcoming symphonic guest conducting includes: Residentie Orkest, Antwerp Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique Royale de Liege, Orquesta Gulbenkian, I Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, Norrkoping Symphony, National Symphony RTE and Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec.

Ms Peleggi previously served as Resident Conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the São Paulo Symphony Chorus. During her years with the Sao Paulo Symphony Peleggi conducted many subscription concerts and created innovative community projects. She won the APCA Prize in 2016 as Conductor of the Year from the Sao Paulo Society of Critics of the Arts and was voted “Young Talent of 2017” by readers of Brazil’s specialist music magazine Revista Concerto. Since 2019 she has been Music Director (responsible for Italian repertoire) of the Theatro Sao Pedro in Sao Paulo, where she has conducted L’Italiana in Algeri and Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto.

The first Italian woman to enter the conducting programme at the Royal Academy of Music of London, she graduated with distinction and was awarded the DipRAM for an outstanding final concert as well as numerous other prizes, and was recently honoured with the title of Associate.

She furthered her studies with David Zinman and Daniele Gatti at the Zurich Tonhalle and at the Royal Concertgebouw masterclasses. She won the 2014 Conducting Prize at the Festival International de Inverno Campos do Jordão, received a Bruno Walter Foundation Scholarship at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California, and the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship 2015-2017 under Marin Alsop.

Peleggi holds a Master in Conducting with honours from the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, and in 2013 was awarded the Accademia Chigiana’s highest award, going on to assist Bruno Campanella and Gianluigi Gelmetti at Teatro Regio di Torino, Opera Bastille Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro San Carlo. She also assisted on a live worldwide

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES broadcast and DVD production of Rossini’s Cenerentola with the Orchestra Nazionale della RAI. From 2005 to 2015 she was the Principal Conductor and Music Director of the University Choir in Florence and remains their Honorary Conductor, receiving a special award from the Government in 2011 in recognition of her work there.

Ms Peleggi is passionate about the arts and holds a master in Comparative Literature.

PHOTO: MARCO BORGGREVE

PAUL HUANG, violin Recipient of the prestigious 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, violinist Paul Huang is considered to be one of the most distinctive artists of his generation. The Washington Post remarked that Mr. Huang "possesses a big, luscious tone, spot-on intonation and a technique that makes the most punishing string phrases feel as natural as breathing," and further proclaimed him as "an artist with the goods for a significant career" following his recital debut at the Kennedy Center.

Mr. Huang's recent highlights have included acclaim debut at Bravo!Vail Music Festival stepping in for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 with Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin, appearances with the Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev, Detroit Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, Houston Symphony with Andres Orozco-Estrada, Baltimore Symphony with Markus Stenz, and recital debuts at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and Aspen Music Festival.

During the 2021-22 season, Mr. Huang will open the Nürnberger Symphoniker season as well as appearances with the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Lahav Shani and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan with Tan Dun. Other highlights will include engagements with the Colorado, Eugene, Charlotte, Tucson, Knoxville, Des Moines, Brevard, and Reading Symphonies.

2021-22 season recital and chamber music performances will include Mr. Huang’s returns to both the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Camerata Pacifica, a recital debut at the Savannah Music Festival with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, a recital tour in Taiwan with pianist Helen Huang, and his first appearance at the Schubert Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Mr. Huang's recent recital engagements included Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series and return engagement at the Kennedy Center where he premiered Conrad Tao's Threads of Contact for Violin and Piano during his recital evening with pianist Orion Weiss. He also stepped in for Midori with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony to critical acclaim. Mr. Huang has also made debuts at the Wigmore Hall, Seoul Arts Center, and the Louvre in Paris.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES A frequent guest artist at music festivals worldwide, he has performed at the Seattle, Music@ Menlo, Caramoor, La Jolla, Santa Fe, Moritzburg, Kissinger Sommer, Sion, Orford Musique, and the PyeongChang Music Festival in South Korea. His chamber music collaborators have included Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin, Nobuko Imai, Mischa Maisky, Jian Wang, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Kirill Gerstein and Marc-Andre Hamelin.

Winner of the 2011 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Huang made critically acclaimed recital debuts in New York at Lincoln Center and in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center. Other honors include First Prize at the 2009 Tibor Varga International Violin Competition Sion-Valais in Switzerland, the 2009 Chi-Mei Cultural Foundation Arts Award for Taiwan’s Most Promising Young Artists, the 2013 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and the 2014 Classical Recording Foundation Young Artist Award.

Born in Taiwan, Mr. Huang began violin lessons at the age of seven. He is a recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees under Hyo Kang and I-Hao Lee. He plays on the legendary 1742 “ex-Wieniawski” Guarneri del Gesù on extended loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago and is on the faculty of Taipei National University of the Arts. He resides in New York.

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.

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES CLARICE ASSAD (born in 1978) Sin Fronteras (“Without Borders”) Clarise Assad was born on February 9, 1978 in Rio de Janeiro. She composed Sin Fronteras in 2017, and it was premiered on September 17, 2017 by the Chicago Sinfonietta at Wertz Concert Hall at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. The score calls for three flutes, three oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes. This performance is the Colorado Symphony premiere.

Composer, pianist, vocalist and educator Clarice Assad, daughter of renowned guitarist Sérgio Assad, was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1978 and has performed professionally since the age of seven. She studied piano, jazz and traditional Brazilian styles with Sheila Zagury and Leandro Braga, and continued her education with Natalie Fortin in Paris and at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, Roosevelt University in Chicago, and University of Michigan; her composition teachers include Ilya Levinson, Stacy Garrop, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers and Claude Baker. Among Assad’s many honors are residencies with the Albany Symphony, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, MacDowell Colony and Moab Music Festival, Aaron Copland Award, Gould Young Composer Award, Samuel Ostrowsky Humanities Award, several ASCAP awards in composition, Meet the Composer’s Van Lier Fellowship, McKnight Visiting Composer Fellowship, and a 2009 Latin Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Composition.

Clarice Assad’s music, which blends classical and jazz elements subtly infused with the Latin rhythms of her native Brazil, has been commissioned and performed by such leading artists and organizations as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Louisville Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, New Century Chamber Orchestra, violinists Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Iwao Furusawa, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, soprano Melody Moore, pop singer Insooni, guitarist Denis Sungho, mandolinist Mike Marshall, LA Guitar Quartet, Turtle Island String Quartet and Concordia Chamber Players, and recorded on the Sony Classical, Universal Music, NSS Music, Nonesuch, Chandos, Telarc and Rob Digital labels. As a pianist and vocalist, Clarice Assad has received acclaim for her performances of both her original compositions and her arrangements and performances of popular Brazilian songs and jazz standards. She has appeared throughout her native Brazil, the United States and Europe at such distinguished venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in Chicago, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts in California, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Le Casino de Paris and Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Clarice Assad has also developed a pioneering music workshop called VOXPlorations, which explores new ways to create, teach and understand music for both musicians and non-musicians.

Assad composed Sin Fronteras (“Without Borders”) in 2017 on a commission from the Chicago Sinfonietta with the collaboration of Cerqua Rivera Dance Theater, which based a new work on the music; the Chicago Sinfonietta premiered Sin Fronteras on September 17, 2017.

The composer wrote, “Sin Fronteras emerged from a utopian state of mind in which I found myself one day, daring to erase imaginary lines that disconnect us geographically, culturally and morally: Boundaries that the human race has willingly subscribed to for thousands of years. But

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES what would happen if the walls that separate us from really getting to know one another were not there? While in the real world, this idea would generate a fair amount of confusion, in the realm of music of the 21st century, this does not need to be so!

“As a South American woman living in the United States for two decades, I chose sounds of places that felt closest to home: The Americas. In Sin Fronteras, we journey from the bottom of South America, traveling up both coasts and navigate all the way to the Northern Hemisphere via Central America. The piece follows no storyline, but its main concept begins with a shocking reaction between two or more distinct cultures coming into contact for the first time. After the initial resistance, everyone collectively begins aggregating each other’s ethnic fragments into their own culture-spheres to create something new — while still preserving their original roots.

“Sin Fronteras accomplishes this amalgamation effect by taking advantage of an old time favorite musical form: Theme and Variation. Though it may not fit exactly into the cookie-cutter format of that old tradition, there are several moments in the piece where familiar sounds, melodies and motifs come and go, grounding the listener for a moment before morphing into something new.”

 MAX BRUCH (1838-1920) Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 Max Bruch was born on January 6, 1838 in Cologne, and died on October 20, 1920 in Friedenau, near Berlin. The first sketches for his G minor Concerto date from 1857; the work was mostly composed in 1865-1866. It was premiered on April 24, 1866 at the Music Institute in Coblenz, with Otto von Königslöw as soloist and the composer conducting. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. Duration is about 24 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra November 16-18, 2018, with Jaime Martin conducting and Pinchas Zukerman performing.

Max Bruch, widely known and respected in his day as a composer, conductor and teacher, received his earliest music instruction from his mother, a noted singer and pianist. He began composing at eleven, and by fourteen had produced a symphony and a string quartet, the latter garnering a prize that allowed him to study with Reinecke and Hiller in Cologne. Bruch held various posts as a choral and orchestral conductor in Cologne, Coblenz, Sondershausen, Berlin, Liverpool and Breslau, and in 1883, he visited America to conduct concerts of his own compositions. From 1890 to 1910, he taught composition at the Berlin Academy and received numerous awards for his work, including an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.

Though Bruch is known mainly for three famous compositions for string soloist and orchestra (the G minor Concerto and Scottish Fantasy for violin and Kol Nidrei for cello), he also composed two other violin concertos, three symphonies, a concerto for two pianos, various chamber pieces, songs, three operas and much choral music.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES The G minor Violin Concerto is a work of lyrical beauty and emotional sincerity. The first movement, which Bruch called a “Prelude,” is in the nature of an extended introduction leading without pause into the slow movement. The Concerto opens with a dialogue between soloist and orchestra followed by a wide-ranging subject played by violin over a pizzicato line in the basses. A contrasting theme reaches into the instrument’s highest register. A stormy section for orchestra recalls the opening dialogue, which softens to usher in the lovely Adagio. This slow movement contains three important themes, all languorous and sweet, which are shared by soloist and orchestra. The music builds to a passionate climax before subsiding to a tranquil close. The finale begins with eighteen modulatory bars containing hints of the upcoming theme before the soloist proclaims the vibrant melody itself. A broad theme, played first by the orchestra before being taken over by the soloist, serves as the second theme. A brief development, based on the dance-like first subject, leads to the recapitulation. The coda recalls again the first theme to bring the work to a rousing close.

 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770 in Bonn, and died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna. He composed the Seventh Symphony between the autumn of 1811 and June 1812, five years after the Sixth Symphony, and conducted its premiere on December 8, 1813 at a Viennese concert to benefit the Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in the struggle against Napoleon at the Battle of Hanau. The score calls for woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs, timpani and strings. Duration is about 36 minutes. The piece was last performed March 1-3, 2019 with Brett Mitchell conducting.

In the autumn of 1813, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, the inventor of the metronome, approached Beethoven with the proposal that the two organize a concert to benefit the soldiers wounded at the recent Battle of Hanau — with, perhaps, two or three repetitions of the concert to benefit themselves. Beethoven was eager to have his as-yet-unheard A major Symphony of the preceding year performed, and thought the financial reward worth the trouble, so he agreed. The concert consisted of this “Entirely New Symphony” by Beethoven, marches by Dussek and Pleyel performed on a “Mechanical Trumpeter” fabricated by Mälzel, and an orchestral arrangement of Wellington’s Victory, a piece Beethoven had concocted the previous summer for yet another of Mälzel’s musical machines, the clangorous “Panharmonicon.” The evening was such a success that Beethoven’s first biographer, Anton Schindler, reported, “All persons, however they had previously dissented from his music, now agreed to award him his laurels.”

The Seventh Symphony is a magnificent creation in which Beethoven displayed several technical innovations that were to have a profound influence on the music of the 19th century: he expanded the scope of symphonic structure through the use of more distant tonal areas; he brought an unprecedented richness and range to the orchestral palette; and he gave a

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES new awareness of rhythm as the vitalizing force in music. It is particularly the last of these characteristics that most immediately affects the listener, and to which commentators have consistently turned to explain the vibrant power of the work. Perhaps the most famous such observation about the Seventh Symphony is that of Richard Wagner, who called the work “the apotheosis of the Dance in its highest aspect ... the loftiest deed of bodily motion incorporated in an ideal world of tone.” Couching his observation in less highfalutin language, John N. Burk believed that its rhythm gave this work a feeling of immense grandeur incommensurate with its relatively short forty-minute length. “Beethoven,” Burk explained, “seems to have built up this impression by willfully driving a single rhythmic figure through each movement, until the music attains (particularly in the body of the first movement and in the Finale) a swift propulsion, an effect of cumulative growth which is akin to extraordinary size.”

A slow introduction, almost a movement in itself, opens the Symphony. This initial section employs two themes: the first, majestic and unadorned, is passed down through the winds while being punctuated by long, rising scales in the strings; the second is a graceful melody for oboe.

The transition to the main part of the first movement is accomplished by the superbly controlled reiteration of a single pitch. This device both connects the introduction with the exposition and also establishes the dactylic rhythm that dominates the movement. The Allegretto scored such a success at its premiere that it was immediately encored, a phenomenon virtually unprecedented for a slow movement. In form, the movement is a series of variations on the heartbeat rhythm of its opening measures. In spirit, however, it is more closely allied to the austere chaconne of the Baroque era than to the light, figural variations of Classicism.

The third movement, a study in contrasts of sonority and dynamics, is built on the formal model of the scherzo, but expanded to include a repetition of the horn-dominated Trio (Scherzo – Trio – Scherzo – Trio – Scherzo). In the sonata-form finale, Beethoven not only produced music of virtually unmatched rhythmic energy (“a triumph of Bacchic fury,” in the words of eminent English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey), but did it in such a manner as to exceed the climaxes of the earlier movements and make it the goal toward which they had all been aimed. So intoxicating is this music that some of Beethoven’s contemporaries were sure he had composed it in a drunken frenzy. An encounter with the Seventh Symphony is a heady experience. Klaus G. Roy, former program annotator for The Cleveland Orchestra, wrote, “Many a listener has come away from a hearing of this Symphony in a state of being punch-drunk. Yet it is an intoxication without a hangover, a dope-like exhilaration without decadence.” To which the composer’s own words may be added. “I am Bacchus incarnate,” boasted Beethoven, “appointed to give humanity wine to drown its sorrow.... He who divines the secret of my music is delivered from the misery that haunts the world.” ©2021 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

PROGRAM VIII C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G