Program - Mozart's "Elvira Madigan" Piano Concerto No. 21

Colorado Symphony 2017/18 Season Presenting Sponsor:

CLASSICS • 2017/18 MOZART’S “ELVIRA MADIGAN” PIANO CONCERTO NO. 21 COLORADO SYMPHONY KEN-DAVID MASUR, conductor ORION WEISS, piano JESSICA RIVERA, soprano COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, DUAIN WOLFE, director Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Frank Y. Parce Sunday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to The Priester Foundation

Friday, May 11, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, May 12, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, May 13, 2018, at 1:00 p.m.

Boettcher Concert Hall

MOZART

Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 Allegro maestoso Andante Allegro vivace assai — INTERMISSION —

FAURÉ

Pavane, Op. 50

POULENC Gloria Gloria Laudamus Te Domine Deus Domine Fili unigenite Domine Deus Agnus Dei Qui sedes ad dexteram

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

BETH ROSS BUCKLEY

KEN-DAVID MASUR, conductor Ken-David Masur has been hailed as “fearless, bold, and a life-force” (San Diego Union-Tribune) and “a brilliant and commanding conductor with unmistakable charisma” (Leipzig Volkszeitung). He began the 2017/18 season leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and a fully staged production of the complete incidental music to Grieg’s Peer Gynt with the BSO, written and directed by Bill Barclay, at Symphony Hall. Guest engagements in 2017/18 include weeks with the Milwaukee, Colorado, and Portland (ME) Symphonies, returns to the Munich Symphony, where he is Principal Guest Conductor, to the Stavanger Symphony in Norway, and to the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Japan. This summer Masur debuts with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia in all-Tchaikovsky concerts and leads the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in a program of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kirill Gerstein and Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Masur led the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood last season (Tchaikovsky 6 and Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Renée Fleming) as well as the L.A. Philharmonic (Beethoven Symphony No. 5 and Korngold violin Concerto with Gil Shaham), and guested at the Orchestre National de France in Paris in a program with Anne-Sophie Mutter, and in Germany, Korea, and Moscow. As a sought-after leader and educator of younger players, Ken-David led training sessions with the Chicago Civic Orchestra, BUTI, New England Conservatory, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.

Ken-David Masur is Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony. Together with his wife, Melinda Lee Masur, he is founder and Artistic Director of the Chelsea Music Festival in New York, now in its ninth season.

ORION WEISS, piano One of the most sought-after soloists in his generation of young American musicians, the pianist Orion Weiss has performed with the major American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic. His deeply felt and exceptionally crafted performances go far beyond his technical mastery and have won him worldwide acclaim. Named the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year in September 2010, in the summer of 2011 Weiss made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as a last-minute replacement for Leon Fleisher. In recent seasons, he has also performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and in duo summer concerts with the New York Philharmonic at both Lincoln Center and the Bravo! Vail Valley Festival. In 2005, he toured Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Itzhak Perlman. Weiss’s impressive list of awards includes the Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Gina Bachauer Scholarship at the Juilliard School and the Mieczyslaw Munz Scholarship. A native of Lyndhurst, OH, Weiss attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Paul Schenly, Daniel Shapiro,

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

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Sergei Babayan, Kathryn Brown, and Edith Reed. In February of 1999, Weiss made his Cleveland Orchestra debut performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In March 1999, with less than 24 hours’ notice, Weiss stepped in to replace André Watts for a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He was immediately invited to return to the Orchestra for a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in October 1999. In 2004, he graduated from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.

SHAWN FLINT BLAIR

JESSICA RIVERA, soprano Possessing a voice praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for its “effortless precision and tonal luster,” Grammy Award-winning soprano Jessica Rivera is one of the most creatively inspired vocal artists before the public today. The intelligence, dimension, and spirituality with which she infuses her performances on great international concert and opera stages has garnered Ms. Rivera unique artistic collaborations with many of today’s most celebrated composers, including John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Nico Muhly, and has brought her together with such esteemed conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Bernard Haitink, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Ms. Rivera has long championed contemporary vocal music, and this season she appears at the Ford Theater in association with LA Opera to reprise her performance of Paola Prestini’s multidisciplinary The Hubble Cantata, which she premiered at the BRIC Festival in Brooklyn in August 2016. In 2017, Ms. Rivera gave the world premiere of Gabriela Lena Frank’s Requiem with the Houston Symphony and Chorus, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. The artist also performed John Harbison’s Requiem with the Nashville Symphony and Chorus under Giancarlo Guerrero, which was recorded for future release on the Naxos label. Ms. Rivera treasures a long-standing collaboration spanning over a decade with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; she joined Spano on Christopher Theofanidis’s Creation/Creator in Atlanta and at the Kennedy Center’s 2017 SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras, where she also performed Robert Spano’s Hölderlin Lieder, a song cycle written specifically for her and recorded on the ASO Media label. For additional information about Ms. Rivera, please visit www.jessicarivera.com.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES DUAIN WOLFE, director, Colorado Symphony Chorus Recently awarded two Grammys® for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Recording, Duain Wolfe is founder and Director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus and Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.

This year marks Wolfe’s 31st season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus.

The Chorus has been featured at the Aspen Music Festival for over two decades. Wolfe, who is in his 21st season with the Chicago Symphony Chorus has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, and the late Sir George Solti on numerous recordings including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which won the 1998 Grammy® for Best Opera Recording. Wolfe’s extensive musical accomplishments have resulted in numerous awards, including an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Denver, the Bonfils Stanton Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, and the Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Wolfe is also founder of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, from which he retired in 1999 after 25 years; the Chorale celebrated its 40th anniversary last season. For 20 years, Wolfe also worked with the Central City Opera Festival as chorus director and conductor, founding and directing the company’s young artist residence program, as well as its education and outreach programs. Wolfe’s additional accomplishments include directing and preparing choruses for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the Bravo!Vail Festival, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. He has worked with Pinchas Zuckerman as Chorus Director for the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra for the past 13 years.

COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS The 2017/18 Colorado Symphony Concert Season marks the 34th year 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 over the past three decades, into a nationallyrespected ensemble. This outstanding chorus of 180 volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous performances, and radio and television broadcasts, to repeat 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 Valley Music Festival, where it has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony. For over two decades, the Chorus has been featured at the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, performing many great masterworks under the baton of notable conductors Lawrence Foster, James Levine, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, and David Zinman.

Among the recordings the Colorado Symphony Chorus has made is a NAXOS release of Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 4. The Chorus is also featured on a recent Hyperion release of the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem and Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis. In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the Chorus on a 3-country, 2-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. The Colorado Symphony continues to be grateful for the excellence and dedication of this remarkable, allvolunteer ensemble! For an audition appointment, call 303.308.2483.discography includes her Grammy Nominated recording of Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations and other transcriptions (2004), Brahms Variations (2007) and Chopin Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 3 (2010). She was featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, Playing on the Edge.

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CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS Duain Wolfe, founding director and conductor Mary Louise Burke, associate conductor Travis Branam, Taylor Martin, assistant conductors Brian Dukeshier, Hsiao-Ling Lin, Danni Snyder, pianists Eric Israelson, Barbara Porter, chorus managers SOPRANO I Black, Kimberly Brown, Jamie Causey, Denelda Choi, LeEtta H. Coberly, Sarah Deskin, Erin Emerich, Kate A. Gile, Jenifer D. Gill, Lori C. Graber, Susan Guynn, Erika Heintzkill, Mary T. Hinkley, Lynnae C. Hittle, Erin R. Hofmeister, Mary Joy, Shelley E. Kim, Michelle Knecht, Melanie Long, Lisa Look, Cathy Maupin, Anne Medema, Stephanie Moraskie, Wendy L. Porter, Barbara A. Ropa, Lori A. Schawel, Camilia Schweitzer, Laura Sladovnik, Roberta A. Tate, Judy Wuertz, Karen Young, Cara M. SOPRANO II Ahrens, Anna Ascani, Lori Blum, Jude Bohannon, Hailey Borinski, Jackie Bowen, Alex S. Brauchli, Margot L. Coberly, Ruth A. Colbert, Gretchen Cote, Kerry H. Dakkouri, Claudia Gross, Esther J.

Houlihan, Mary Kraft, Lisa D. Kushnir, Marina Machusko, Rebecca E. Montigne, Erin Myers, Heather H. Nyholm, Christine M. O’Nan, Jeannette R. Pflug, Kim Rae, Donneve S. Rider, Shirley J. Ruff, Mahli Saddler, Nancy C. Timme, Sydney Travis, Stacey L. Von Roedern, Susan K. Walker, Marcia L. Weinstein, Sherry L. Woodrow, Sandy Zisler, Joan M. ALTO I Adams, Priscilla P. Branam, Emily M. Braud-Kern, Charlotte Brown, Kimberly Clauson, Clair T. Conrad, Jayne M. Daniel, Sheri L. Dunkin, Aubri K. Franz, Kirsten D. Frey, Susie Gayley, Sharon R. Groom, Gabriella D. Guittar, Pat Haller, Emily Holst, Melissa J. Hoopes, Kaia M. Kim, Annette Kraft, Deanna Lawlor, Betsy McNulty, Emily McWaters, Susan Nordenholz, Kristen Passoth, Ginny Pringle, Jennifer

Rudolph, Kathi L. Ryman, Sarah A. Stevenson, Melanie Thayer, Mary B. Virtue, Pat Voland, Colleen Zelinskaya, Alia ALTO II Cox, Martha E. Deck, Barbara Dominguez, Joyce Eslick, Carol A. Gangware, Elizabeth Golden, Daniela Hoskins, Hansi Jackson, Brandy H. Janasko, Ellen D. Kibler, Janice London, Carole A. Maltzahn, Joanna K. Marchbank, Barbara J. Nittoli, Leslie M. Schalow, Elle C. Scooros, Pamela R. Worthington, Evin TENOR I DeMarco, James Dougan, Dustin Gordon, Jr., Frank Hodel, David K. Jordan, Curt Moraskie, Richard A. Muesing, Garvis J. Nicholas, Timothy W. Reiley, William G. Roach, Eugene Zimmerman, Kenneth TENOR II Babcock, Gary E. Bradley, Mac Carlson, James Davies, Dusty R. Fuehrer, Roger

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Gale, John H. Guittar, Jr., Forrest Kolm, Kenneth E. Mason, Brandt J. McCracken, Todd Meswarb, Stephen J. Milligan, Tom A. Ruth, Ronald L. Seamans, Andrew J. Sims, Jerry E. BASS I Adams, John G. Bernhardt, Chase Boyd, Kevin P. Cowen, George Drickey, Robert E. Gray, Matthew Hesse, Douglas D. Jirak, Thomas J. Mehta, Nalin J. Quarles, Kenneth Ravid, Frederick Smith, Benjamin A. Struthers, David R. Wood, Brian W. BASS II Friedlander, Robert Grossman, Chris Israelson, Eric W. Jackson, Terry L. Kent, Roy A. Millar, Jr., Robert F. Moncrieff, Kenneth Morrison, Greg A. Nuccio, Eugene J. Phillips, John R. Potter, Tom Skillings, Russell R. Skinner, Jack Swanson, Wil W. Taylor, Don

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Two Titans: Bernstein & Mahler MAY 25-27 FRI-SAT 7:30 ■ SUN 1:00 Brett Mitchell, conductor Yumi Hwang-Williams, violin BERNSTEIN BERNSTEIN MAHLER

Overture to Candide Serenade (After Plato’s Symposium) Symphony No. 1 in D major, “Titan”

COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791): Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg and died December 5, 1791 in Vienna. He composed The Marriage of Figaro during the winter of 1785-1786, and directed its premiere at the Burgtheater in Vienna on May 1, 1786. The Overture calls for woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs, timpani and strings. Duration is about 4 minutes. Last performance by the orchestra was on February 11-13, 2005, with Adam Flatt conducting.

On April 12, 1782, Pietro Metastasio, dean of 18th-century Italian opera librettists, died in Vienna. The following year, the poet Lorenzo da Ponte, a Venetian-born Jew who converted to Catholicism as a young man and took priestly orders but lived a life profligate enough to be dubbed “a kind of minor Casanova” by Eric Blom, arrived in the Imperial City to fill the void.

He was so successful that he was named poet to the Imperial Theaters the following year by Emperor Joseph II, whose taste in opera ran more to the traditional Italian variety than to its more prosaic German counterpart.

Mozart, who claimed to his father to have searched through “hundreds of plays” to find a subject for a new opera, met da Ponte in 1783 and the writer agreed to furnish him with a new libretto. That promise bore no immediate fruit, but in 1785 Mozart approached da Ponte again with the idea that a recent satiric comedy of manners called La Mariage de Figaro by the French writer Beaumarchais might well make a fine opera buffa. The play in its original version was written around 1781 but was not given for some three years because of Louis XVI’s objections to the manner in which it attacked the aristocracy. (Napoleon described it as “the revolution already in action.”) Though Louis vowed, “Cela est détestable, cela ne sera jamais joué,” La Mariage was indeed staged in Paris in April 1784. It was a hit. Reportedly, some dozen German translations of the play appeared within a year, though the piece was banned in Austria for its anti-aristocratic stance. Mozart, however, thought the characterizations excellent, and he convinced da Ponte to join his plan to base an opera on it.

The pair set to work in the fall of 1785, not knowing if the result would be approved for production. Da Ponte continued the story in his Memoirs, written late in his life, after he had settled in the United States. (He died in New York in 1838.) “As fast as I wrote the words,” wrote da Ponte, “Mozart wrote the music, and it was all finished in six weeks. [The Overture, however, was completed only two days before the May 1, 1786 premiere.] The lucky star of Mozart willed an opportune moment and permitted me to carry the manuscript directly to the Emperor. ‘What’s this?’ said Joseph to me. ‘I have already forbidden the German company to give this play, Figaro.’

‘I know,’ I replied, ‘but in turning it into an opera, I have cut out whole scenes, shortened others, and been careful everywhere to omit anything that might shock the conventionalities and good taste. In a word, I have made a work worthy of the theater honored by His Majesty’s protection.

As far as I can judge, it seems to me a masterpiece.’ ‘Very well,’ said the Emperor. ‘I trust your taste and prudence. Send the score to the copyists.’”

The premiere of Figaro was set for May 1, 1786 in Vienna’s Burgtheater. Opera was Mozart’s first love and his highest professional ambition, and he threw himself completely into the work’s preparations. Michael Kelly, the English tenor who sang the roles of Don Basilio and Don Curzio in the first performance, recalled that he would “never forget Mozart’s little animated countenance when lighted up with the glowing rays of genius; it is as impossible to describe as it would be to paint sunbeams.” The premiere went on as scheduled, and it proved to be a SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES fine success — the audience demanded the immediate encores of so many numbers that the performance lasted nearly twice as long as anticipated. “Never was anything more complete than the triumph of Mozart and his Nozze di Figaro,” reported Kelly. Intrigues against both Mozart and da Ponte, however, managed to divert the public’s attention to other operas, and The Marriage of Figaro was seen only eight times more during the year. It was not given in Vienna at all in 1787, though its stunning success in Prague led to the commissioning of Don Giovanni for that city. It was revived in Vienna in 1789 at the request of Emperor Joseph II (Mozart and da Ponte were commissioned to write Così fan tutte as a result of its success), by which time it had also been staged in Italy and Germany. Performances followed in Paris (1793), Amsterdam (1794), Madrid (1802), Budapest (1812), London (1812) and New York (1824), and The Marriage of Figaro became an integral part of the operatic repertory during the following years. In the biographical sketch of Mozart that the French novelist and music lover Stendhal published in 1815, he wrote of the essential quality that continues to distinguish The Marriage of Figaro as one of the supreme masterworks of musical theater: “Mozart, with his overwhelmingly sensitive nature, has transformed into real emotions the superficial inclinations that amuse Beaumarchais’ easy-going inhabitants of [Count Almaviva’s castle] Aguas Frescas…. All the characters have been filled with feeling and passion. Mozart’s opera is a sublime mixture of wit and melancholy that has no equal.”

The noted American critic Henry Edward Krehbiel (1854-1923) called the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro “the merriest of opera overtures ... putting the listener at once into a frolicsome mood.” It was the last part of the score Mozart wrote, and captures perfectly its aura of sparkling good spirits and fast action. Originally Mozart provided the Overture with a slow middle section based on a sentimental 6/8 tune for the solo oboe, but, feeling that this music detracted from the overall character of the piece, removed it before the premiere.

The effervescent music that remained, in a compact sonatina form (sonata-allegro without development section), is one of the greatest and most apposite of all operatic curtain-raisers.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 Mozart completed this Concerto on March 9, 1785 in Vienna, only one day before he performed it in the National Court Theater. The score calls for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. The concerto was last performed on September 19-21, 2008, with Jonathan Biss as the piano soloist and Jeffrey Kahane on the podium.

“We never go to bed before one o’clock and I never get up before nine.... Every day there are concerts; and the whole time is given up to teaching, music, composing and so forth. I feel rather out of it all. If only the concerts were over! It is impossible for me to describe the rush and bustle. Since my arrival, your brother’s forte-piano has been taken at least a dozen times to the theater or to some other house.” Father Leopold Mozart had reached a rather brittle 66th year when he sent these lines off to his daughter, Maria Anna, from Vienna on March 12, 1785, just two days after Wolfgang had premiered his C major Piano Concerto (K. 467) at the Court Theater.

Leopold had ventured from Salzburg to the busy Austrian capital city to visit Wolfgang and his wife, and to check on their growing brood, including the most recent addition — Karl Thomas, born the preceding September. (Mozart had six children in the nine years of his marriage; only two survived him.)

Leopold, who arrived in February after repeated invitations from Wolfgang, was both pleased and exhausted by his son’s frantic schedule. Since theatrical and operatic performances were proscribed during Lent in 18th-century Catholic countries, the late winter was always the busiest time of the year for instrumental music. The younger Mozart, who depended heavily for his livelihood on the success of his concerts during these months, produced his own programs, acting as impresario, composer, pianist, accompanist and conductor. The year of this paternal visit — 1785 — proved to be a good one for Mozart, probably the best he knew in Vienna. His list of subscribers was longer that spring than any other; his music was in demand; and he had invitations to perform at some of the city’s best houses. Perhaps the single greatest thrill for Leopold in all this activity, however, was hearing the praise of his son from the most respected living musician in Europe. On February 12th, soon after Leopold’s arrival, the venerated Joseph Haydn appeared at a reading session of the last three quartets that Wolfgang had dedicated to him (K. 458, 464 and 465). It was at this soirée that Haydn dispensed his famous evaluation of Mozart’s unique talent, as proudly reported in Leopold’s next letter to his daughter: “I declare to you before God, and as I am an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by name.” They were probably the sweetest words ever to come into Leopold’s ear. Concerts, popularity, good prospects, and the unstinted praise of a great man — father and son must have been delighted to share this time together, the pinnacle of celebrity in Wolfgang’s career.

Leopold wrote to Maria Anna that the new C major Concerto (K. 467) had an excellent reception at its first performance on March 10th. The applause, he allowed, was “deafening,” and the audience was even moved to tears. Amid the acclaim, however, the sensitive, professional musician in Leopold sensed a disturbing element in much of his son’s recent music. He felt that this Concerto was not only “astonishingly difficult,” but that it also held an expressive undercurrent which would not continue to please the Viennese public. When the copyist dropped off the parts for the work, for example, Leopold questioned him about some of the harmonies, assuming that many of the flats and sharps were in error. They were not, he was assured. These curious new SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES harmonies were what Mozart had written. The deeply felt emotionalism of the D minor Concerto (K. 466), completed only three weeks before this one, was proving to be not simply an experiment or a temporary aberration, but an integral element in Mozart’s mature style. As time passed, the Viennese, like Leopold, were bewildered by this music and its incipient Romanticism, and the success of 1785 soon faded. Mozart composed three more piano concertos in the following year, but then his subscribers melted away. No longer able to secure support for his own concerts, the need for concertos evaporated, and he wrote only two more during his last five years. By 1785 Mozart was composing his most important works to please only his own Muse. That he did so proved to be a tragedy for him but a treasure for us.

“The first movement [of the C major Concerto],” wrote Abraham Veinus, “is in truth majestic.

The orchestra has breadth and grandeur, the solo part dignity and brilliance, and the movement as a whole is anchored in a kind of firm and magnificent pride.” Its orchestral introduction opens with a soft, martial strain for unison strings answered by the winds. Other themes follow in abundance before the entry of the soloist, who accompanies the return of the martial melody in its use as the main theme of the exposition. A brief excursion into the shadowy key of G minor by the pianist leads to the second theme in the bright, expected G major. Alfred Einstein estimated that the development, “with its modulations through darkness to light, is one of the most beautiful examples of Mozart’s iridescent harmony and of the breadth of the domain embraced in his conception of C major.” The unison strings tiptoe in once again with the martial theme to begin the recapitulation.

The Andante, which achieved great popular fame as the music for the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan, is one of Mozart’s most sensually beautiful creations. The muted strings, the pulsating triplet rhythms of the accompaniment that gently oppose the meter of the melody, the exquisite scoring, and the rich harmonic palette fill this music with a dreamlike quality that presages the tender Romanticism of Schumann and Schubert. The sparkling rondo-finale joins the rollicking spirit of the opera buffa and the intensity and wealth of expression of the symphony with the virtuoso elements of the concerto to bring this radiant work to a bounding close.

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924): Pavane for Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 50 Gabriel Fauré was born on May 12, 1845 in Pamiers, Ariège, France and died November 14, 1924 in Paris.

The Pavane was composed in 1887 and premiered on April 28, 1888 in Paris, conducted by Charles Lamoureux. The score calls for woodwinds and horns in pairs and strings. Duration is about 6 minutes.

The last performance of the Pavane took place on October 29-31, 1999, with Duain Wolfe conducting.

On September 12, 1887, Fauré wrote to Marguerite Baugnies, hostess of one of the city’s most important salons, with some charming words about his three-year-old son (“there is no sweeter, more intelligent, more sensitive, more discerning creature than he, and I cannot resist the temptation to tell you so”) and an explanation: “You’ll kill me but I still have done no composing since summer! I have not stopped going to La Madeleine [where he was assistant organist]; I’ve not stopped giving lessons, and our pupils are at Versailles, at Ville-d’Avray, at Saint-Germain, at Louveciennes! I have been having, on average, three hours’ train travel per day. I should really need to get away from it all, to see other landscapes than the ever-lasting Saint-Lazare station, other people, not to hear any more Sonatas for a while, to have a change of air in every sense! ... The only new thing I have been able to compose during this shuttlecock existence is a Pavane.”

Fauré originally composed his Pavane as a purely orchestral work for Jules Danbé, conductor of the Opéra-Comique and director of the Conservatoire concerts. There is no record, however, that Danbé performed the work, and Fauré came up with another plan for it.

On September 29, 1887, he wrote to Countess Elisabeth Greffulhe, “Robert de Montesquiou [the model for Proust’s Baron Charlus and an ‘aristocrat, scholar, aesthete and dandy,’ as he was described in a recent exhibition about him at the Musée d’Orsay], whom I have had the great fortune to meet in Paris, has most kindly accepted the egregiously thankless and difficult task of setting to this music, which is already complete, words that will make our Pavane fit to be both danced and sung. He has given it a delightful text in the manner of Verlaine: sly coquetries by the female dancers, and great sighs by the male dancers that will singularly enhance the music.

If the whole marvelous thing with a lovely dance in fine costumes could be performed, what a treat it would be!” Fauré, however, did not see his Pavane staged until 1919, when he included it in the one-act divertissement for Monte Carlo, Masques et Bergamasques, though the score was earlier performed, with voices, at Charles Lamoureux’s concert in Paris on April 28, 1899.

The chorus parts, which were grafted onto an already finished composition in the first place, are seldom heard today.

The pavane was a 16th-century court dance from Padua (“Pava” in the local dialect, hence “pavane”) of a stately, processional nature. Carried across the Alps, the form reached its highest point of artistic perfection in the works of the Elizabethan virginalists, and then fell from favor.

As the riches of ancient music began to be uncovered in the late 19th century by pioneering musicologists, interest among composers in such old forms as the pavane was stirred. SaintSaëns included an example of the genre in his opera Etienne Marcel of 1879, and a few years later Fauré contributed his interpretation of the early dance, marking it with his characteristic blend of yearning sensuality and cool classicism that Marcel Proust described as “a mixture of lechery and litanies.” The piece is in a simple three-part form, with the return of the haunting opening flute melody following a stern middle section. In 1903 Debussy, who, as man and musician, knew whereof he spoke, said, “The play of the graceful, fleeting lines described by Fauré’s SOUNDINGS

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES music may be compared to the gesture of a beautiful woman without either suffering from comparison.”

C’est Lindor! c’est Tircis! et c’est tour nos vainqueurs!

C’est Myrtil! c’est Lydé! les reines de nos coeurs.

Comme ils sont provocants!

Comme ils sont fiers toujours!

Comme on ose régner sur nos sorts et nos jours!

Faites attention!

Observez la mesure!

O la mortelle injure!

La cadence est moins lente et la chute plus sûre.

Nous rabattrons bien les caquets!

Nous serons bientôt leurs laquais!

Qu’ils sont laids!

Chers minois!

Qu’ils sont fols!

Airs coquets Et c’est toujours de même, et c’est ainsi toujours.

On s’adore, on se hait!

On maudit ses amours!

Adieu Myrtil, Églé, Chloé, dedémons moqueurs!

Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs!

Et bons jours!

It is Lindor, it is Tircis, it is all our vanquishers!

It is Myrtil, it is Lydia! the queen of our hearts!

How provoking they are, how proud they always are!

How dare they hold sway over our fate and our life!

Take heed!

Be moderate!

O mortal injury!

The accents are less steady and the fall becomes more certain.

We shall make them eat their words!

We shall soon be their slaves.

How ugly they are!

Charming faces!

What fools they are!

Winning graces!

It is always the same, it is always like this!

One loves, one hates, One curses one’s love.

Farewell Myrtil, Églé, Chloé, mocking demons!

Farewell then, and good fortune to the rulers of our hearts!

And good fortune!



PROGRAM 12

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

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963): Gloria for Soprano, Chorus and Orchestra Francis Poulenc was born on January 7, 1899 in Paris and died there on January 30, 1963. He composed Gloria in 1959. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on January 20, 1961 in Boston under the direction of Charles Munch. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings. Duration is about 28 minutes. The piece was last performed on October 29-31, 1999, with Duain Wolfe leading the orchestra and chorus.

Poulenc was raised in a home that valued religion deeply. His father was committed to his Catholicism, but, the composer added, “in a very liberal way, without the slightest meanness.”

When Francis left home for military service in 1918 and later jumped into the heady life of artistic Paris, however, his interest in religion declined. “From 1920 to 1935, I was very little concerned with the faith,” he admitted. In 1936, though, he underwent a rejuvenation of his religious belief when his colleague Pierre-Octave Ferroud was killed in an automobile accident.

Deeply shaken, he wrote, “The atrocious extinction of this musician so full of vigor left me stupefied. Pondering on the fragility of our human frame, the life of the spirit attracted me anew.” He rejoined the Church and thereafter expressed his faith frequently and unashamedly. “I am religious by deepest instinct and heredity,” he said. “I feel myself incapable of ardent political conviction, but for me it seems quite natural to believe and practice religion. I am a Catholic. It is my greatest freedom.” During the last three decades of his life, a series of wonderful musical works on religious themes, including the Mass, the Stabat Mater, the Gloria and The Dialogues of the Carmelites, sprang from his ardently renewed vision.

Poulenc’s faith, like the music it engendered, was simple, direct, optimistic and joyous. He once told friends, “I have the faith of a country pastor,” and he always preferred quiet meditation or prayer in a rural church to the structured services of the urban cathedral. It was through his music that he shared his devotion. “I want the religious spirit to be expressed clearly, out in the open, with the same realism that we see in Romanesque columns,” he said. “I try to create a feeling of fervor and, especially, of humility, for me the most beautiful quality of prayer.... My conception of religious music is essentially direct, and, I dare say, intimate.” When an interviewer once commented on the high quality of his choral and sacred works, he replied, “I think I’ve put the best and most genuine part of me into them.... If people are still interested in my music fifty years from now it’ll be more in the Stabat Mater than in the Mouvements perpétuels.”

During his last years, Poulenc became increasingly fatalistic and, consequently, turned more to the Church. Throughout his life, he was subject to attacks of acute depression, and the one he suffered while working on The Dialogues of the Carmelites during the mid-1950s resulted in a nervous breakdown. He largely recovered, but he thereafter viewed his existence as fragile.

“What shall I write next? Undoubtedly nothing else,” he lamented to his biographer Henri Hell in 1961. A year later, however, he wrote to the singer Pierre Bernac, “I now feel completely, happily free, and I can await Providence.” The Gloria of 1959 naturally reflects some of Poulenc’s deeper thoughts, but it also shows the buoyant, confident feelings inherent in his faith and his music. It is a wholly appropriate piece for a man who was once described as “half monk, half bounder.”

In the Gloria, written on commission from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky, Poulenc said that he “tried to write a joyous hymn to the glory of God.” His text, taken from the second section of the Mass Ordinary, SOUNDINGS

2 0 1 7/ 1 8 PROGRAM 13

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES is the set of traditional songs dating from the fifth century sung by the angels on the night of the Nativity in praise of the Christ child. Before beginning composition, Poulenc immersed himself in the ancient words, reciting them over and over to himself, listening, noting breathing places, marking stresses, looking for inner rhythms of the syllables and deeper meanings of the ideas. The Gloria, like all great vocal music, grew from the sense and sounds of its text — the words, after all, were there before the music. Poulenc reinterpreted those venerable words and heightened their message by wrapping them in music that again demonstrated his remarkable lyrical gift, which has often been compared to that of Schubert, a composer he greatly admired.

Wrote Roger Nichols, “For Poulenc the most important element of all was melody and he found his way to a vast treasury of undiscovered tunes within an area that had, according to the most up-to-date musical maps, been surveyed, worked and exhausted.”

The Gloria opens with a brilliant fanfare for full orchestra as preparation for the entry of the voices. The sentiment of the movement is one of joy tinged with a soupçon of nostalgia, one of Poulenc’s most characteristic moods. Of the lighthearted Laudamus te, Poulenc recalled, “The second movement caused a scandal; I wonder why? I was simply thinking, in writing it, of the Gozzoli frescoes in which the angels stick out their tongues; I was thinking also of the serious Benedictines whom I saw playing soccer one day.” This robust movement also serves to set in relief the following Domine Deus, music of profound awe and intense emotion. The bright wit and chuckling insouciance of the Laudamus te return in the fourth movement, Domine fili unigenite, which, like the earlier movement, is followed by music of a serious and moving nature — the Domine Deus, Agnus Dei. The final movement, Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, is divided into three sections, each based on the same text. The movement opens with jubilant choral shouts echoed by chords spread across the full orchestra. The celebratory mood continues into the next section, a vibrant rhythmic essay punctuated by the fanfare figure that opened the first movement. Poulenc closes his masterful Gloria with the final treatment of the Qui sedes text, this last one suffused with prayerful devotion and peaceful benediction. ©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

PROGRAM 14

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

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES I. Gloria Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.

II. Laudamus te Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.

Gratias agimus tibi gloriam tuam Laudamus te.

We praise you, we bless you, we worship you, we glorify you.

We give you thanks for your great glory.

We praise you.

III. Domine Deus Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Lord God, heavenly King, Pater omnipotens, God the Father almighty, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater, Heavenly King, God the Father, Pater omnipotens, Deus Pater, God the Father almighty, Gloria. Gloria.

IV. Domine Fili unigenite Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe.

The only-begotten Son, Lord Jesus Christ.

V. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, Rex caelestis qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis; suscipe deprecationem nostram.

Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, heavenly King, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; receive our prayer.

VI. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris: miserere nobis.

Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, Amen.

Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu, in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.

You are seated at the right hand of the Father: have mercy on us.

For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, Amen.

You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

SOUNDINGS

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