CLASSICS
2018/19
2018/19 SEASON PRESENTING SPONSORS:
BRUCH PERFORMED BY PINCHAS ZUKERMAN COLORADO SYMPHONY JAIME MARTÍN, conductor PINCHAS ZUKERMAN, violin Friday, November 16, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, November 17, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, November 18, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall
RAVEL Le Tombeau de Couperin Prélude Forlane Menuet Rigaudon BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 Prelude: Allegro moderato — Adagio Finale: Allegro energico — INTERMISSION —
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 Tempo molto moderato — Allegro moderato — Presto Andante mosso, quasi allegretto Allegro molto - Misterioso Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Dr. Christopher Ott and Mr. Jeremy Simons Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Adam Moore | LIV Sotheby's International Realty PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
SOUNDINGS
2018/19
PROGRAM 1
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
PHOTO: SONIA BALCELLS
JAIME MARTÍN, conductor Jaime Martín has risen quickly to international acclaim as a conductor following his prominent career as a flautist. Recently announced as Music Director Designate of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, he begins his tenure in September 2019. In 2013, he became Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Gävle Symphony Orchestra. He is also Chief Conductor of Orquestra de Cadaqués and Artistic Director of the Santander International Festival. Upcoming debuts include subscription performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Melbourne Symphony and Gulbenkian orchestras. He will also bring the Gävle Symphony Orchestra to the Concertgebouw and tour throughout Switzerland with the Orquestra de Cadaqués. Martín’s recordings include the Brahms Serenades with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra for Ondine as well as Songs of Destiny, a recording of Brahms choral works with the Gävle Symphony and Eric Ericson choir. He has also recorded Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, Montsalvatge’s Petita Suite Burlesca, Halffter’s Sinfonietta and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 with Orquestra de Cadaqués. In 2015 he recorded James Horner’s last symphonic work; “Collages” for four horns and orchestra. Solo recordings include Mozart concertos with Sir Neville Marriner, a premiere recording of the Sinfonietta Concerto for Flute and Orchestra written for him by Xavier Montsalvatge and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, Bach works for flute, violin, and piano with Murray Perahia and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields for Sony, and Mozart’s flute quartet for EMI. Born in Santander, Spain, Jaime Martín studied with Antonio Arias in Madrid and with Paul Verhey in The Hague, Holland.
PHOTO: CHERYL MAZAK
PINCHAS ZUKERMAN, violin With a celebrated career encompassing five decades, Pinchas Zukerman reigns as one of today’s most sought after and versatile musicians - violin and viola soloist, conductor, and chamber musician. He is renowned as a virtuoso, admired for the expressive lyricism of his playing, singular beauty of tone, and impeccable musicianship, which can be heard throughout his discography of over 100 albums. A devoted teacher and champion of young musicians, he has served as chair of the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music for twenty-five years. As a mentor he has inspired generations of young musicians who have achieved prominence in performing, teaching, and leading roles with music festivals around the globe. He singularly pioneered the use of distance-learning technology with the first technological installment at the Manhattan School and has established an advanced training program for gifted young artists as part of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. During the 2018-2019 season, Pinchas Zukerman’s marks his tenth season as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and his fourth as Artist-in-Association with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia. He leads the RPO on a tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland, conducting works by Mozart and Vaughan Williams and performing as soloist in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Zukerman joins the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor, on tour in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. He appears as soloist and conductor with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the symphony orchestras of Toronto and Indianapolis. Mr. Zukerman makes concerto appearances in North America with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Colorado PROGRAM 2
C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and in Europe with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Salzburg Camerata, and Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Zukerman conducts the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, and conducts and is soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on a tour of South Korea. As a founding member of the Zukerman Trio, along with cellist Amanda Forsyth and pianist Angela Cheng, Pinchas Zukerman appears in Baltimore and New York’s 92nd Street Y, tours Italy, including Bologna, Milan, and Naples, and gives performances in Germany, at Villa Musica in the Rhineland-Palatinate and in Mönchengladbach. Zukerman and Forsyth join the Jerusalem Quartet in a program of Strauss, Schoenberg, and Tchaikovsky sextets in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Princeton, Berkeley, and Vancouver. Mr. Zukerman also appears with Ms. Forsyth in performances of the Brahms Double Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and joins violinist Viviane Hagner and the National Centre Arts Orchestra for performances of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante. As part of the 70th-birthday celebrations honoring Mr. Zukerman during the 2018-2019 season, the Manhattan School of Music marks the 25th anniversary of the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program with a special tribute: a “25-70” concert of chamber and orchestral music performed by distinguished colleagues, former and present students. Zukerman, who initiated the National Arts Centre Institute for Orchestral Studies in Ottawa, an apprentice program for string players, serves as artistic director of the Young Artist Program and returns each summer to teach and lead master classes. He has taught prominent music educational programs in London, Israel, and China, among others, and was appointed as the first instrumentalist mentor in music of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Pinchas Zukerman has been featured in numerous television specials and national talk shows. He has been a performer and presenter at both the Kennedy Center Honors and the Grammy Awards ceremony and appeared with the Chicago Symphony on the PBS special Mozart by the Masters. In 2004, the CBC recorded a ten-segment series entitled “The Concerto According to Pinchas” which continues to be broadcast and rebroadcast around the world. A frequent performer on Live from Lincoln Center, Mr. Zukerman has collaborated with the English filmmaker Christopher Nupen on several projects including the Here to Make Music series, a Brahms series, a Schubert series and a documentary on Nathan Milstein. He appeared on CBC Television›s nationwide broadcast celebrating the opening concerts of the National Arts Centre’s 30th-anniversary season. Crossing Bridges, a documentary by Niv Fichman, followed his tour to the Middle East with the NAC Orchestra, and was awarded the prestigious Gold World Medal at the 2001 New York Festival. Mr. Zukerman’s violin playing can be heard on the film soundtracks for Prince of Tides and Critical Care. Born in Tel Aviv, Pinchas Zukerman came to the United States where he studied at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian as a recipient of the American-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship. An alumnus of the Young Concert Artists program, Mr. Zukerman has also received honorary doctorates from Brown University, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Calgary. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan and is a recipient of the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence in Classical Music. Pinchas Zukerman’s extensive discography includes more than 100 titles, for which he gained two Grammy® awards and 21nominations. His complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Philips were released in July 2016 in a 22-disc set comprising Baroque, Classical, and Romantic concertos and chamber music. Recent albums include Baroque Treasury on the Analekta label with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, cellist Amanda Forsyth, and oboist Charles Hamann in works by Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Tartini; Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 and Double Concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Ms. Forsyth, recorded live at Ottawa’s Southam Hall; and a critically acclaimed album of works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. SOUNDINGS
2018/19
PROGRAM 3
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937): Le Tombeau de Couperin Maurice Ravel was born March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France, and died December 26, 1937 in Paris. He conceived Le Tombeau de Couperin in 1914 as a suite for solo piano, but composed most of it in 1917. Marguerite Long gave the premiere of the keyboard version on April 11, 1919 in Paris. The composer orchestrated four of the six movements of the piano suite in 1920, and Rhené-Baton conducted the first performance, with the Pasdeloup Orchestra in Paris on February 28, 1920. The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, harp and strings. Duration is about 17 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra took place on January 17-19, 2014 with Jeffrey Kahane conducting. Ravel was tormented by the First World War. He was accepted into the armed forces despite his small stature and delicate health, but his physical constitution was not robust enough to withstand the rigors of combat and he was quickly discharged for medical reasons. Soon after he arrived home, his beloved mother lapsed into her final illness, and the shock of her death nearly prostrated him. His own failed health, his mental anguish over the war, and the loss of his mother kept him from doing much creative work during World War I. Le Tombeau de Couperin is his only important work of those difficult years. The inspiration for Le Tombeau came from two obsessions that filled Ravel’s mind in 1917 — the sorrow caused by World War I and the need to retain the sanity represented by the tradition of French culture. In the piano suite that was the first version of Le Tombeau, each of the movements was dedicated to one of six friends of the composer who had fallen on the battlefield, a musical memorial to his countrymen and, perhaps, to his late mother as well. (He orchestrated four of them in 1920.) In a similar way, composers of the French Baroque age, François Couperin (1668-1733) among them, paid tribute in music to recently deceased colleagues. Such a piece was called a “tombeau,” literally a “tomb,” and Ravel intended such an association here. Beside just a way of eulogizing his comrades, however, the association with Couperin also represented for Ravel the continuity of the logic and refinement of French civilization. It was in the great Gallic tradition that Ravel sought intellectual and emotional shelter from crushing contemporary events. The title of Le Tombeau de Couperin, therefore, has a triple meaning: it is a memorial to family and close friends; it is a revival of some aspects of the musical style of the French Baroque; and, probably most significant for Ravel, it is a continuation of the venerable tradition of French culture and thought in a time of despair and nihilism. Despite its heavy burden of associations, Le Tombeau de Couperin displays little of Ravel’s distraught mental state, especially in its effervescent orchestral version. Rather than a roiling, emotional document, Le Tombeau is a vision of the refined and elegant world of Versailles shimmering in retrospect through the medium of the dance, its most characteristic social manifestation. The succulently atmospheric orchestration and rich harmony clearly mark the modern origin of the work, but its buoyant rhythms and crystalline structure show the influence of the music of Couperin’s age. “This suite is a garland of musical flowers,” wrote Donald N. Ferguson, “grown from 17th-century seed in a 20th-century hothouse.” The gossamer Prélude contains some dazzling passages for the woodwinds led by the oboe. The Forlane is based on a dance of Italian origin popular among Venetian gondoliers before it crossed the Alps into France. The Menuet is the most durable of all Baroque dances. The Rigaudon is a vigorous duple-meter dance that originated in Provence. PROGRAM 4
C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES MAX BRUCH (1838-1920): Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 Max Bruch was born January 6, 1838 in Cologne, and died October 20, 1920 in Friedenau, near Berlin. He composed the G minor Violin Concerto in 1865-1866, and conducted its premiered on April 24, 1866 in Coblenz, with Otto von Königslöw as soloist. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. Duration is about 23 minutes. Joshua Bell was the soloist and Peter Oundjian conducted the orchestra when the concerto was last performed on September 18, 2011. 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 the 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. 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 the violinist over a pizzicato line in the basses. A contrasting theme reaches into the highest register of the violin, and is followed by scintillating passagework of scales and broken chords for the soloist. A stormy section for orchestra alone 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 opens with eighteen modulatory bars containing hints of the upcoming theme before the soloist proclaims the vibrant melody itself, enriched with copious multiple stops. A broad melody, played first by the orchestra alone before being taken over by the soloist, serves as the second theme. A brief development, based on the dance-like first theme, leads to the recapitulation. The coda, with some ingenious long-range harmonic deflections, recalls again the first theme to bring the work to a rousing close. Though a true showpiece for the master violinist, the G minor Concerto also possesses a solid musicianship and a memorable lyricism that make it a continuing favorite with performers and audiences alike. The eminent English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey succinctly summarized the talent of the composer of this work by simply saying, “It is not easy to write as beautifully as Max Bruch.”
SOUNDINGS
2018/19
PROGRAM 5
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES JEAN SIBELIUS (1865-1957): Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 Jean Sibelius was born December 8, 1865 in Hämeenlinna, Finland, and died September 20, 1957 in Järvenpää, Finland. He composed his Fifth Symphony in 1915 and conducted its premiere on December 8, 1915 at a concert in Helsinki honoring his fiftieth birthday. The work was extensively revised in 1916, 1918 and 1919. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 35 minutes. The last performance of the Symphony took place on May 20-22, 2005, with Jeffrey Kahane on the podium. For the three years after he issued his brooding Fourth Symphony in 1911, Sibelius was largely concerned with writing program music: The Dryad, Scènes historiques, The Bard, The Océanides, Rakastava. He even considered composing a ballet titled King Fjalar at that time, but ultimately rejected the idea. As early as 1912, he envisioned a successor to the Fourth Symphony, but did not have any concrete ideas for the work until shortly before he left for a visit to the United States in May 1914 to conduct some of his compositions at the Norfolk (Connecticut) Music Festival. (The Océanides was commissioned for the occasion.) He returned to Finland in July; war erupted on the Continent the next month. In September, he described his mood over the terrifying political events as emotionally “in a deep dale,” but added, “I already begin to see dimly the mountain I shall certainly ascend.... God opens the door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.” He could not begin work on the piece immediately, however. One of his main sources of income — performance royalties from his German
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PROGRAM 6
C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES publisher, Breitkopf und Härtel — was severely diminished because of the war-time turmoil, and he was forced to churn out a stream of songs and piano miniatures and to undertake tours to Gothenburg, Oslo and Bergen to pay the household bills. Early in 1915, Sibelius learned that a national celebration was planned for his fiftieth birthday (December 8th), and that the government was commissioning from him a new symphony for the festive concert in Helsinki. He withdrew into the isolation of his country home at Järvenpää, thirty miles north of Helsinki (today a lovely museum to the composer), to devote himself to the gestating work, and admitted to his diary, “I love this life so infinitely, and feel that it must stamp everything that I compose.” He had to rush to finish the work for the concert in December, even making changes in the parts during the final rehearsal, but the Symphony was presented as the centerpiece of the tribute to the man the program described as “Finland’s greatest son.” Sibelius’ birthday was a veritable national holiday, and he was lionized with speeches, telegrams, banquets, greetings and gifts; the Fifth Symphony met with great acclaim. The concert was given three additional times during the following weeks to satisfy the demand to hear this newest creation of the country’s most famous musician. Theorists have long debated whether Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony is in three or four movements; even the composer himself left contradictory evidence on the matter. The contention centers on the first two sections, a broad essay in leisurely tempo and a spirited scherzo, played without pause and related thematically. The opening portion is in a sort of truncated sonata form, though it is of less interest to discern its structural divisions than to follow the long arches of musical tension and release that Sibelius built through manipulation of the fragmentary, germinal theme presented at the beginning by the horns. The scherzo grows seamlessly from the music of the first section. At first dance-like and even playful, it accumulates dynamic energy as it unfolds, ending with a whirling torrent of sound. The following Andante, formally a theme and variations, is predominantly tranquil in mood, though punctuated by several piquant jabs of dissonance. “There are frequent moments in the music of Sibelius,” wrote Charles O’Connell of the Symphony’s finale, “when one hears almost inevitably the beat and whir of wings invisible, and this strange and characteristic effect almost always presages something magnificently portentous. We have it here.” The second theme is a bell-tone motive led by the horns that serves as background to the woodwinds’ long melodic lines. The whirring theme returns, after which the bell motive is treated in ostinato fashion, repeated over and over, building toward a climax until it seems about to burst from its own excitement — which it does. The forward motion abruptly stops, and the Symphony ends with six stentorian chords, separated by silence, proclaimed by the full orchestra. ©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
SOUNDINGS
2018/19
PROGRAM 7
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