Program - Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

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CLASSICS

2019/20

2019/20 SEASON PRESENTING SPONSOR:

TCHAIKOVSKY VIOLIN CONCERTO PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY BRETT MITCHELL, conductor ANGELO XIANG YU, violin Friday, November 22, 2019 at 7:30pm Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 7:30pm Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

Overture to La forza del destino

VERDI

JENNIFER HIGDON Concerto for Orchestra I II III IV V — INTERMISSION —

TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 Allegro moderato Canzonetta: Andante Finale: Allegro vivacissimo CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 29 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION.

FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 8 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT!

Sunday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Colorado Creative Industries PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PHOTO: ROGER MASTROIANNI

BRETT MITCHELL, conductor Hailed for delivering compelling performances of innovative, eclectic programs, Brett Mitchell was named the fourth Music Director of the Colorado Symphony in September 2016. He served as the orchestra’s Music Director Designate during the 16/17 season and began his four year appointment in September 2017.

Mr. Mitchell concluded his tenure as the Associate Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra in August 2017. He joined the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in 2013 and was promoted to Associate in 2015, becoming the orchestra’s first Associate Conductor in over three decades and only the fifth in its 98 year history.

In this role, he led the orchestra in several dozen concerts each season at Severance Hall, Blossom Music Center, and on tour. Mr. Mitchell also served as the Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO), which he recently led on a four-city tour of China, marking the ensemble’s second international tour and its first to Asia. In May, 2019 he returned to the Cleveland Orchestra to lead subscription performances of An American in Paris.

In addition to his work in Cleveland and Denver, Brett Mitchell is in consistent demand as a guest conductor. Recent and upcoming guest engagements include subscription debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Dallas, San Antonio, Vancouver and New Zealand symphonies and the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, as well as debuts with the Grant Park Music Festival in downtown Chicago and the Indianapolis Symphony during the orchestra’s summer festival at Conner Prairie. He has also appeared with the Detroit, National, Houston, Milwaukee and Oregon symphonies, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra among others.

From 2007 to 2011, Brett Mitchell led over one hundred performances as Assistant Conductor of the Houston Symphony. He also held Assistant Conductor posts with the Orchestre National de France, where he worked under Kurt Masur from 2006 to 2009, and the Castleton Festival, where he worked under Lorin Maazel in 2009 and 2010. In 2015, Mr. Mitchell completed a highly successful five-year tenure as Music Director of the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra, where an increased focus on locally relevant programming and community collaborations resulted in record attendance throughout his tenure.

As an opera conductor, Brett Mitchell has conducted nearly a dozen productions, principally during his tenure as Music Director of the Moores Opera Center in Houston, where he led eight productions from 2010 to 2013. His repertoire spans the core works of Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute), Verdi (Rigoletto and Falstaff), and Stravinsky (The Rake’s Progress), to contemporary works by Adamo (Little Women), Aldridge (Elmer Gantry), Catán (Il Postino and Salsipuedes), and Hagen (Amelia).

In addition to his work with professional orchestras, Mr. Mitchell is also well-known for his affinity for working with and mentoring highly talented young musicians aspiring to be professional orchestral players. His work with COYO during his Cleveland Orchestra tenure was highly praised and he is regularly invited to work with the orchestra at the Cleveland Institute of Music as well as at summer orchestral training programs such as the Texas Music Festival, National repertory Orchestra, Interlochen and Sarasota Music Festival.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Born in Seattle in 1979, Brett Mitchell holds degrees in conducting from the University of Texas in Austin and composition from Western Washington University, which selected him as its 2014 Young Alumnus of the Year. He studied at the National Conducting Institute and was selected

by Kurt Masur as a recipient of the inaugural American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation Scholarship. Mr. Mitchell was also one of five recipients of the League of American Orchestras’ American Conducting Fellowship Program from 2007 to 2010.

ANGELO XIANG YU, violinist Violinist Angelo Xiang Yu, recipient of both a 2019 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2019 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award as well as First Prize in the 2010 Yehudi Menuhin competition, has won consistent critical acclaim and enthusiastic audience response worldwide for his astonishing technique and exceptional musical maturity.

In North America, Angelo Xiang Yu’s recent and upcoming performances with orchestra include appearances with the San Francisco, Detroit, Toronto, Vancouver, Houston, Colorado, Puerto Rico, and Charlotte symphonies among others. Internationally, he has appeared with the New Zealand Symphony, Shanghai Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, Norwegian Radio Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and the Oslo Philharmonic.

In March 2017, Mr. Yu was chosen to be a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s prestigious The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). An active recitalist, he has performed in a number of world-renowned venues such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Louvre in Paris, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Victoria Theater in Singapore, Shanghai Symphony Hall, Oslo Opera House, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and Symphony Hall in Boston.

Mr. Yu is a frequent guest at summer music festivals in the US and Europe, including the Ravinia Festival, Music@Menlo, Sarasota Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Bridgehampton Music Festival, as well as at the Verbier and Bergen Festivals in Europe. In the summer of 2019, he made his debuts at the Aspen Music Festival and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and returned to Music@Menlo and the Sarasota Music Festival, where he opened the festival playing the three Brahms sonatas with Jeffrey Kahane at the keyboard.

Born in Inner Mongolia, China, Angelo Xiang Yu moved to Shanghai at the age of 11 and received his early training from violinist Qing Zheng at the Shanghai Conservatory. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees as well as the prestigious Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory of Music where he was a student of Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried and served as Mr. Weilerstein’s teaching assistant. He joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory Department in 2016.

Mr. Yu resides in Boston and performs on a 1729 Stradivarius violin generously on loan from an anonymous donor.

Please visit Angelo Xiang Yu’s website at www.angeloviolin.com

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813--1901): Overture to La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny) Giuseppe Verdi was born on October 10, 1813 in Le Roncole, near Busseto and died on January 27, 1901 in Milan. He composed La Forza del Destino, his 22nd opera, in 1861-1862 and oversaw its premiere on November 17, 1862 at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. The score calls for flute, piccolo, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, and strings. Duration is about 8 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra took place on October 19-21, 2012, with Maximiano Valdés on the podium.

La Forza del Destino is set in 18th-century Spain. Alvaro has accidentally killed the father of his beloved, Leonora, during the lovers’ attempted elopement. Separately, they flee. Leonora’s brother, Carlo, swears vengeance on both her and their father’s murderer. Leonora first seeks refuge at a convent, and then goes to live as a hermit in a cave. Carlo and Alvaro meet during a military encounter, and Carlo discovers the true identity of his adversary just after Alvaro is carried away, wounded. Alvaro joins the Church as a monk, but he is followed by Carlo who enrages Alvaro to the point of a duel. They fight near Leonora’s cave, interrupting her prayers, and she goes to see what is causing the commotion. As she emerges from her cave, the lovers recognize each other, and Alvaro cries that he has spilled the blood of yet another of her family.

She rushes off to help her fatally wounded brother, but Carlo, with his last bit of strength, stabs Leonora, and she dies in Alvaro’s arms.

For this melodramatic tale, Verdi provided one of his most richly expressive scores. The Overture, utilizing several themes from the opera, reflects the strong emotions of the work, though it does not follow the progress of the story. It opens with a stern summons of six unison notes, after which appears the agitated theme that Verdi intended to represent Fate. This motto recurs throughout both the Overture and the opera as a symbol of the workings of destiny on the principal characters. The brief introduction is followed by an expressive, lyrical melody for woodwinds over pizzicato string accompaniment (sung later in the opera by one of Alvaro’s fellow priests) under which are heard the mutterings of the Fate theme. The violins then give an impassioned phrase from Leonora’s Act II prayer. The Fate theme reappears in a menacing guise before the woodwinds sing a reminder of the priest’s melody. Another of Leonora’s themes, given by clarinet over a rustling harp background, is interrupted as the brass intone a chorale.

Leonora’s melody continues in a slower setting for full orchestra and is then treated to another variation in staccato eighth notes combined with the Fate motive. An energetic coda brings this stirring Overture to a close.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES JENNIFER HIGDON (B. 1962): Concerto for Orchestra Jennifer Higdon was born on December 31, 1962 in Brooklyn, New York. She composed her Concerto for Orchestra in 2001. It was premiered on June 12, 2002 by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted

by Wolfgang Sawallisch. The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), three oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano (doubling celesta), harp, and strings. Duration is about 35 minutes.

The last performance of Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra took place on January 26 & 27, 2007, with Jeffrey Kahane conducting.

Jennifer Higdon, born in Brooklyn, New York on New Year’s Eve 1962 and raised in Atlanta and Tennessee, is one of America’s foremost composers. She took her undergraduate training in flute performance at Bowling Green State University, and received her master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from the University of Pennsylvania; she also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her teachers have included George Crumb, Marilyn Shrude, David Loeb, James Primosch, Jay Reise, and Ned Rorem in composition, Judith Bentley and Jan Vinci in flute, and Robert Spano in conducting. Higdon joined the composition faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1994 after having served as conductor of the University of Pennsylvania Orchestra and Wind Ensemble and Visiting Assistant Professor in music composition at Bard College; she now holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition Studies at Curtis. She also served as Karel Husa Visiting Professor at Ithaca College in 2006-2007 and Composer-in-Residence at the Mannes College for Music at The New School in 2007-2008.

Her distinctions include two Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Among her recent projects is the opera Cold Mountain, with a libretto by Gene Scheer based on Charles Frazier’s best-selling novel, which premiered at Santa Fe Opera in 2015.

Of her Concerto for Orchestra, composed in 2001 on a commission celebrating the centenary of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Higdon wrote, “The Concerto for Orchestra is truly a concerto in that it requires virtuosity from the principal players, the individual sections, and the entire orchestra. Surprisingly, the first movement was the last to be composed. It took the actual writing of the other four movements to create a clear picture of what was needed to start this virtuosic tour-de-force. The movement begins with chimes and timpani sounding together followed by a quick entrance by the strings in energetic scale patterns. The music then moves up through the winds and finally adds the brass. This movement is primarily tutti [all together] in its use of instruments, but there are small chamber moments in recognition of the fact that it takes many individuals to make the whole of an orchestra.

“The second movement, for strings alone, is like a scherzo in character, written in a jaunty rhythm and tempo that celebrate the joyous sound of strings. The movement begins with everyone playing pizzicato [plucked] and then slowly integrates an arco [bowed] sound, first through soloists, and then with all of the players. It continues to romp through to the end, where a pizzicato snap closes the movement.

“The third movement allows each principal player a solo before it moves into section solos.

The winds are highlighted first, followed (after a tutti) by the strings, and then by the brass. Each solo has its own unique material, some of which is utilized in the tutti sections of the movement.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES (harp, celesta, and piano are included in this movement). Since this piece was completed at the beginning of the 21st century, it seemed fitting to have a movement that highlights the one section of the orchestra that had the greatest amount of development during the preceding century. Ironically, the opening of this movement is the quietest and stillest part of the entire work, which is not what one might expect from percussion. The movement opens with bowed vibraphone and crotales [small, thick cymbals of definite pitch], opening the way for the percussion to move through many of its pitched instruments (as well as collaborating with the harp and celesta, which are percussive in their nature). Eventually the musicians move to non-pitched percussion, which is emphasized by the movement’s tempo speeding up at key moments. This progression in the tempi will carry this movement from an extraordinarily slow start (quarter note = 42 [beat per minute]) through to the fifth movement, which continues the progression of increasing tempi, arriving ultimately at quarter note = 160-180. These tempo increases occur at specific moments, usually covering two measures, and are meant to resemble the effect of an old Victrola being cranked up.

“The fifth movement, which begins with the entrance of the violins, highlights the entire orchestra and has its rhythm set up through an ostinato [repeated figure] in the percussion that has been carried over from the previous movement. The various sections of the orchestra converse in musical interplay throughout, while the tempo continues to increase. This speeding-up occurs to such an extent that a primary theme stated within the first minute of the movement eventually comes back notated in rhythmic values that are twice as long, but with the increased tempo it sounds exactly the same as at its initial appearance.”

 PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893): Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia and died on November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg. He composed his only Violin Concerto in March and April 1878. It was premiered

by Adolf Brodsky and the Vienna Philharmonic on December 4, 1881, Hans Richter conducting. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 32 minutes. Vadim Gluzman was the soloist and Hannu Lintu conducted the last performance of the concerto on March 4 & 5, 2011.

In the summer of 1877, Tchaikovsky undertook the disastrous marriage that lasted less than three weeks and resulted in his emotional collapse and attempted suicide. He fled from Moscow to his brother Modeste in St. Petersburg, where he recovered his wits and discovered he could find solace in his work. He spent the late fall and winter completing his Fourth Symphony and the opera Eugene Onégin. The brothers decided that travel outside Russia would be an additional balm to the composer’s spirit, and they duly installed themselves at Clarens on Lake Geneva in Switzerland soon after the first of the year.

In Clarens, Tchaikovsky had already begun work on a piano sonata when he heard the colorful Symphonie espagnole by the French composer Edouard Lalo. He was so excited by the

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES possibilities of a work for solo violin and orchestra that he set aside the sonata and immediately began a concerto of his own. By the end of April, the composition was finished. Tchaikovsky sent the manuscript to Leopold Auer, a friend who headed the violin department at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and who was also Court Violinist to the Czar, hoping to have him premiere the piece. Much to the composer’s regret, Auer returned the piece as “unplayable,” and apparently spread that word with such authority to other violinists that it was more than three years before the Violin Concerto was heard in public. It was Adolf Brodsky, a former colleague of Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatory, who first accepted the challenge of this Concerto when he premiered it with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1881.

The Concerto opens quietly with a tentative introductory tune. A foretaste of the main theme soon appears in the violins, around which a quick crescendo is mounted to usher in the soloist.

After a few unaccompanied measures, the violin presents the lovely main theme above a simple string background. After an elaborated repeat of this melody, a transition follows which eventually involves the entire orchestra and gives the soloist the first opportunity for technical display. The second theme begins a long buildup leading into the development, launched with a sweeping presentation of the main theme. The soloist soon steals back the attention with breathtaking leaps and double stops. The sweeping mood returns, giving way to a flashing cadenza as a link to the recapitulation. The flute sings the main theme before the violin it takes over, and all then follows the order of the exposition.

The Andante begins with a chorale for woodwinds that is heard again at the end of the movement to serve as a frame around the musical picture inside. On the canvas of this musical image is displayed a soulful melody for the violin suggesting a Gypsy fiddler. The finale is joined to the slow movement without a break. With the propulsive spirit of a dashing Cossack Trepak, the finale flies by amid the soloist’s show of agility and speed. ©2019 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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