SOUNDINGS 2022/23 PROGRAM I Friday's concert is dedicated to nancy and tony accetta CLASSICS 2022/23 GERSHWIN’S RHAPSODY IN BLUE WITH PETER OUNDJIAN PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor JON KIMURA PARKER, piano Friday, September 16, 2022 at 7:30pm Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 7:30pm Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 7 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT! JOHN ADAMS Short Ride in a Fast Machine STILL Poem for Orchestra GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue — INTERMISSION — RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 I. Non allegro - Lento - Tempo I II. Andante con moto (Tempo di valse) III. Lento assai - Allegro vivace CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 50 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
PROGRAM II COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
WILCOXDALEPHOTO:
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.
PETER OUNDJIAN,Recognizedconductoras
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.
Anorchestras.outstanding
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 2022/2023 season Oundjian will conduct 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
JON KIMURA PARKER,PianistpianoJonKimura
SOUNDINGS 2022/23 PROGRAM III
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
A committed educator, Mr. Parker is Professor of Piano at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. His students have won prizes in major competitions internationally, and given concerto performances in the US, Europe, Russia and China. He has also lectured at The Juilliard School, and given master classes at Yale. This season he also chaired the jury of the Hilton Head International Piano Parker’sCompetition.discography
of a dozen albums features music ranging from Mozart and Chopin to Barber, Stravinsky and John Adams. His most recent recording “Fantasy,” built around Hirtz’s Wizard of Oz Fantasy, was described by Musical Toronto as giving “a big, clear picture window of a rich soul and great artistic depth.” His YouTube channel features a series of Concerto Chat videos, which explore the piano concerto repertoire. In addition, his Whole Notes series, featuring performances of great composers, is available on Amazon Prime Video. He is now recording master class videos for Tonebase, on major works of the piano concerto repertoire.
Jon Kimura Parker studied with Edward Parker and Keiko Parker, Lee Kum-Sing at the Vancouver Academy of Music and the University of British Columbia, Marek Jablonski at the Banff Centre, and Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School. Winner of the Gold Medal at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition, Parker is an Officer of The Order of Canada and has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of British Columbia and the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto. Known to friends – new and old – as “Jackie,” Parker is married to violinist/violist Aloysia Friedmann, and their daughter Sophie graduated from Rice University in 2021. For further information, please visit jonkimuraparker.com,
montrosetrio.com, offthescore.com, minnesotaorchestra.org, tonebase.co, oicmf.org, and honens.com
MCMULLENTARA
Highlights of Jon Kimura Parker’s 2021-22 season include concerto appearances with the Phoenix, Peninsula, San Antonio, Rhode Island, and Kansas City orchestras, a special appearance with the Galilee Chamber Orchestra in Toronto, recitals at series including Portland Piano International, and performances with Cho-Liang Lin at Chamber Music International in Dallas, and with Paul Huang at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. He also tours as a member of the Montrose Trio, which he founded with Martin Beaver and Clive Greensmith.
Parker is known for his charisma, enthusiasm, and dynamic performances. A veteran of the international concert stage, he has performed regularly in the Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, London’s South Bank, the Sydney Opera House, and the Beijing Concert Hall. He is the Creative Partner of the Minnesota Orchestra, having hosted and given seven concerto performances with them in July 2021 with Osmo Vänska, Karina Canellakis, Ken-David Masur. He is Artistic Director of the Honens International Piano Competition and Artistic Advisor for the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival.
A collaborator in a wide variety of styles, Jon Kimura Parker has performed with Doc Severinsen, Audra McDonald, Bobby McFerrin, Pablo Ziegler, and Sanjaya Malakar. As a founding member of Off the Score, he also performed with Stewart Copeland – the legendary drummer of The Police – for the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival’s 20th Anniversary Season, featuring his own arrangements of music by Prokofiev, Ravel and Stravinsky. He has accompanied Frederica von Stade, Susan Graham, and Luca Pisaroni in recital.
John Adams is one of today’s most acclaimed composers. Audiences have responded enthusiastically to his music, and he enjoys a success not seen by an American composer since the zenith of Aaron Copland’s career: a recent survey of major orchestras conducted by the League of American Orchestras found John Adams to be the most frequently performed living American composer; he received the University of Louisville’s distinguished Grawemeyer Award in 1995 for his Violin Concerto; in 1997, he was the focus of the New York Philharmonic’s Composer Week, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and named “Composer of the Year” by Musical America magazine; he has been made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture; in 1999, Nonesuch released The John Adams Earbox, a critically acclaimed ten-CD collection of his work; in 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and was also recognized by New York’s Lincoln Center with a two-month retrospective of his work titled “John Adams: An American Master,” the most extensive festival devoted to a living composer ever mounted at Lincoln Center; from 2003 to 2007, Adams held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall; in 2004, he was awarded the Centennial Medal of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “for contributions to society” and became the firstever recipient of the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, which included residencies and teaching at Northwestern University; he was a 2009 recipient of the NEA Opera Award; he has been granted honorary doctorates from the Royal Academy of Music (London), Juilliard School and Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and Northwestern universities, honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and the California Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.
JOHN ADAMS (BORN IN 1947)
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
For the recording of this work by the San Francisco Symphony on Nonesuch Records, Michael Steinberg wrote, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a joyfully exuberant piece, brilliantly scored for a large orchestra including two synthesizers. Commissioned for the opening of the Great Woods Festival in Mansfield, Massachusetts, it was first played on that occasion, 13 June 1986, by the Pittsburgh Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas. The steady marking of a beat is typical of Adams’ music. Short Ride begins with a marking of quarters (woodblock, soon joined by the four trumpets) and eighths (clarinets and synthesizers), but the woodblock is fortissimo and the other instruments play forte. Adams describes the woodblock’s persistence as ‘almost sadistic’ and thinks of the rest of the orchestra as running the gauntlet through that rhythmic tunnel. About the title: ‘You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?’ It is, in any event, a wonderful opening music for a new American outdoor festival.”
PROGRAM IV COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
John Adams was born February 15, 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts and now lives in Berkeley, California. He composed this brief work in 1986 in celebration of the opening of the Great Woods Performing Arts Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony there in the work’s premiere on June 13, 1986. The score calls for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, four clarinets, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, percussion, two synthesizers and strings. Duration is about 4 minutes. The Orchestra last performed this piece November 1-2, 2014, conducted by Marin Alsop.
Short Ride in a Fast Machine (Fanfare for Great Woods)
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
Poem for Orchestra
Still’s Poem for Orchestra, written in 1944 on commission from the Cleveland Orchestra, was inspired by a poem of his wife, Verna Arvey, which the composer inscribed on the flyleaf of his score:Soul-sick and weary, Man stands on the rim of a desolate world. Then from the embers of a dying past Springs an immortal hope. Resolutely evil is uprooted and thrust aside; A shining new temple stands Where once greed and lust for power flourished.
William Grant Still was born May 11, 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi and died December 3, 1978 in Los Angeles. His Poem for Orchestra was composed in 1944 and premiered on December 7, 1944 by the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Rudolph Ringwall. 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, celesta, harp and strings. Duration is about 14 minutes. This is the Colorado Symphony premiere performance of this piece.
WILLIAM GRANT STILL (1895-1978)
Still received many awards for his work: seven honorary degrees; commissions from CBS, New York World’s Fair, League of Composers, Cleveland Orchestra and other important cultural organizations; the Phi Beta Sigma Award; a citation from ASCAP noting his “extraordinary contributions” to music and his “greatness, both as an artist and as a human being”; and the Freedom Foundation Award. Not only was his music performed by most of the major American orchestras, but he was also the first Black musician to conduct one of those ensembles (Los Angeles Philharmonic, at Hollywood Bowl in 1936) and a major symphony in a southern state (New Orleans Philharmonic in 1955). In 1945, Leopold Stokowski called William Grant Still “one of our great American composers. He has made a real contribution to music.”
SOUNDINGS 2022/23 PROGRAM V
William Grant Still was born in 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi, where his father was town bandmaster. At sixteen, Still matriculated as a medical student at Wilberforce University in Ohio, but soon switched to music and graduated in 1915; two years he later entered Oberlin College. In 1921, he moved to New York as oboist with the orchestra of the Noble Sissle–Eubie Blake revue Shuffle Along, and there studied with Edgard Varèse, ran Black Swan Records, and in 1928 received the Harmon Award for that year’s most significant contribution to Black culture in America. While continuing to compose large-scale classical pieces, Still also wrote and arranged for radio, Broadway shows and Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw and other popular bandleaders. After moving to Los Angeles in 1934, he arranged for films (Lost Horizon) and television (Gunsmoke, Perry Mason). Still continued to hold an important place in American music until his death in 1978.
Earth is young again, and on the wings of its re-birth Man draws closer to God. Still limned this paean to the hoped-for victory during the closing months of World War II with a three-part musical composition, arranged slow–fast–slow. A syncopated motive for brass is heard with accompanying figures in the high woodwinds and violins at the outset before the
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)
COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
Rhapsody in Blue for Piano and Orchestra Orchestrated by Ferde Grofé (1892-1972)
PROGRAM VI
George Gershwin was born September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York and died July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California. He composed the Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 and was the soloist at its premiere, on February 12, 1924 at Aeolian Hall in New York City, conducted by Paul Whiteman. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two alto saxophones, tenor saxophone, two bassoons, three horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. The Orchestra last performed Rhapsody in Blue September 22-24, 2017, conducted by Brett Mitchell. Kevin Cole was the pianist.
violins intone a lyrical theme that leads to a fanfare for the horns. A sudden fortissimo begins the quicker central episode, which makes use of themes from the opening section to achieve a powerful climax. The work’s closing chapter, based on an eloquent new theme in the divided strings, rises to an impassioned conclusion.
For George White’s Scandals of 1922, the 24-year-old George Gershwin provided something a little bit different — an opera, a brief, somber one-acter called Blue Monday (later retitled 135th Street) incorporating some jazz elements that White cut after only one performance on the grounds that it was too gloomy. Blue Monday, however, impressed the show’s conductor, Paul Whiteman, then gaining a national reputation as the self-styled “King of Jazz” for his adventurous explorations of the new popular music styles with his Palais Royal Orchestra. A year later, Whiteman told Gershwin about his plans for a special program the following February in which he hoped to show some of the ways traditional concert music could be enriched by jazz, and convinced Gershwin to undertake a work for piano solo (to be played by the composer) and Whiteman’s 22-piece orchestra — and then told him that it had to be finished in less than a month. The premiere of the Rhapsody in Blue — New York, Aeolian Hall, February 12, 1924 — was one of the great nights in American music. Many of the era’s most illustrious musicians attended, critics from far and near assembled to pass judgment, and the glitterati of society and culture graced the event. Gershwin fought down his apprehension over his joint debuts as serious composer and concert pianist, and he and his Rhapsody in Blue had a brilliant success.
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)
World War I was inevitably a trial for Rachmaninoff and his countrymen, but his most severe personal adversity came when the 1917 Revolution smashed the aristocratic society of Russia — the only world he had ever known. He was forced to flee his beloved country for America and he pined for his homeland the rest of his life. He did his best to keep the old language, food, customs and holidays alive in his own household, “but it was at best synthetic,” wrote American musicologist David Ewen. “Away from Russia, which he could never hope to see again, he always felt lonely and sad, a stranger even in lands that were ready to be hospitable to him. His homesickness assumed the character of a disease as the years passed, and one symptom of that disease was an unshakable melancholy.” By 1940, when he composed the Symphonic Dances, he was worried about his daughter Tatiana, who was trapped in France by the German invasion (he never saw her again), and had been weakened by a minor operation in May. He nevertheless felt the need to compose for the first time since the Third Symphony of 1936, and the Symphonic Dances were written quickly at his idyllic retreat on Long Island Sound that summer. Still, it was the man and not the setting that was expressed in this music. “I try to make music speak directly that which is in my heart at the time I am composing,” he once told an interviewer. “If there is love there, or bitterness, or sadness, or religion, these moods become part of my music, and it becomes either beautiful or bitter or sad or religious.”
©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
The first of the Symphonic Dances, in a large three-part form (A–B–A), is spun from a tiny three-note descending motive heard at the beginning. The middle portion is given over to a folklike melody initiated by the alto saxophone. The return of the opening section, with its distinctive falling motive, rounds out the first movement. The waltz of the second movement is more rugged and deeply expressive than the Viennese variety. The finale begins with a sighing introduction for the winds, which leads into a section in quicker tempo. The movement accumulates rhythmic energy as it progresses and virtually explodes into the last pages, a coda based on an ancient Russian Orthodox chant.
SOUNDINGS 2022/23 PROGRAM VII
Sergei Rachmaninoff was born April 1, 1873 in Oneg (near Novgorod), Russia and died March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California. He composed the Symphonic Dances in 1940 and dedicated it to Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who gave the premiere on January 4, 1941. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat alto saxophone, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings. Duration is about 35 minutes. This piece was last performed by the Orchestra September 20-22, 2019, with Brett Mitchell conducting.
COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG An Evening with Bernadette Peters and your Colorado Symphony NOV 12 | SAT 7:30
