Tchaikovsky | Program Notes

MASTERWORKS • 2015-2016 TCHAIKOVSKY PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 COLORADO SYMPHONY ANDREW LITTON, conductor ALESSIO BAX, piano

This weekend is gratefully dedicated to Mary Rossick Kern and Jerry Kern Friday, September 18, 2015 at 7:30 pm Saturday, September 19, 2015 at 7:30 pm Sunday, September 20, 2015 at 1:00 pm Boettcher Concert Hall

SHOSTAKOVICH

Festive Overture, Op. 96

TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso — Allegro con spirito Andantino semplice — Prestissimo Allegro con fuoco — Intermission — SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 Moderato — Allegro non troppo — Moderato Allegretto Largo Allegro non troppo

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MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES

JEFF WHEELER

ANDREW LITTON, conductor Colorado Symphony Music Director Andrew Litton, newly appointed Music Director of the New York City Ballet, ends his twelve year tenure as Music Director of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic with a Gala Concert celebrating the Orchestra’s 250th Anniversary. Mr. Litton guest conducts the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies, and has a discography of over 120 recordings with awards including America’s Grammy®, France’s Diapason d’Or, and many other honors. Mr. Litton also serves as Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest and Conductor Laureate of Britain’s Bournemouth. Mr. Litton has also conducted many of the world’s finest opera companies, such as the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Australian Opera, and participated with the Bergen Philharmonic in founding the Bergen National Opera.

Litton was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony from 1988-1994, bringing it on its first American tour and producing 14 recordings, including the Grammy winning Belshazzar’s Feast. Music Director of the Dallas Symphony from 1994-2006, their Rachmaninov Piano Concerto recordings with Stephen Hough won the Classical Brits/BBC Critics Award. An accomplished pianist, Litton often conducts from the keyboard and enjoys performing chamber music with his orchestra colleagues. A longtime admirer of the late jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, Litton recorded his first solo piano album, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson, released in 2014. Mr. Litton is a graduate of the Fieldston School, New York, and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard in piano and conducting. The youngest-ever winner of the BBC International Conductors Competition, he served as Assistant Conductor at Teatro alla Scala and Exxon/Arts Endowment Assistant Conductor for the National Symphony under Rostropovich. His many honors in addition to Norway’s Order of Merit include an honorary doctorate from the University of Bournemouth, Yale University’s Sanford Medal, and the Elgar Society Medal. For further information, visit www.andrewlitton.com

ALLESIO BAX, piano Pianist Alessio Bax, First Prize winner at the Leeds and Hamamatsu international piano competitions, is a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient. He has appeared as soloist with over 100 orchestras worldwide, including the London Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, NHK Symphony in Japan, St. Petersburg Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle. Recent highlights include return engagements with the Dallas Symphony under Jaap van Zweden and the Royal Philharmonic on tour, performances with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Hans Graf and London’s Southbank Sinfonia led by Vladimir Ashkenazy, tours with Joshua Bell, and concerts with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in both New York and Boston. Among festival appearances are London’s International Piano Series, England’s Aldeburgh and Bath festivals, Switzerland’s Verbier, the Risør Festival in Norway, Germany’s Ruhr Klavier-Festival and BeethovenFest, and the U.S.’s Bravo! Vail, Music@Menlo, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Bax’s acclaimed discography includes Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and “Moonlight” Sonatas (Gramophone “Editor’s Choice”); Bax & Chung, featuring Stravinsky’s four-hand Pétrouchka; Mozart’s Piano Concertos K. 491 and K. 595; Alessio Bax Plays Brahms (Gramophone “Critic’s Choice”); Rachmaninov: Preludes and Melodies (American Record Guide “Critics’ Choice”); Bach Transcribed; and Baroque Reflections (Gramophone “Editor’s Choice”). At age 14, he graduated with top honors from the conservatory of his hometown, Bari, Italy, and after further studies in Europe moved to the U.S. in 1994. A Steinway artist, Mr. Bax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Lucille Chung, and their daughter.

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MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975): Festive Overture, Op. 96 Dmitri Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, and died in Moscow on August 9, 1975. He composed the Festive Overture in 1954. The work was premiered on November 7, 1954 at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, conducted by Vassili Nebolsin. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Duration is about 6 minutes. Last performed by the orchestra on May 21-23, 2004, with Jeffrey Kahane conducting.

Among the grand symphonies, concertos, operas and chamber works that Dmitri Shostakovich produced are also many occasional pieces: film scores, tone poems, jingoistic anthems, brief instrumental compositions. Though most of these works are unfamiliar in the West, one — the Festive Overture — has been a favorite since it was written in the autumn of 1954. Shostakovich composed it for a concert on November 7, 1954 commemorating the 37th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, but its jubilant nature suggests it may also have been conceived as an outpouring of relief at the death of Joseph Stalin one year earlier. One critic suggested that the Overture was “a gay picture of streets and squares packed with a young and happy throng.” As its title suggests, the Festive Overture is a brilliant affair, full of fanfare and bursting spirits. It begins with a stentorian proclamation from the brass as preface to the racing main theme of the piece. Contrast is provided by a broad melody initiated by the horns, but the breathless celebration of the music continues to the end.

o PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893): Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia, and died November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg. The Piano Concerto No. 1 was composed in 1874-1875 and revised in 1889. The score is dedicated to Hans von Bülow, the pianist for the premiere, in Boston on October 25, 1875; Benjamin Johnson Lang conducted. The score calls for woodwinds and trumpets in pairs, four horns, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 32 minutes. Last performed by the orchestra on October 26, 2012, with Lang Lang as the piano soloist and Scott O’Neil conducting.

At the end of 1874, Tchaikovsky began a piano concerto with the hope of having a success great enough to allow him to leave his irksome teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory.

By late December, he had largely sketched out the work, and sought the advice of Nikolai Rubinstein, Director of the Moscow Conservatory and an excellent pianist. Tchaikovsky reported the interview in a letter: “On Christmas Eve 1874, Nikolai asked me to play the Concerto in a classroom of the Conservatory. We agreed to it. I played through the work. There burst forth from Rubinstein’s mouth a mighty torrent of words. It appeared that my Concerto was utterly worthless, absolutely unplayable; the piece as a whole was bad, trivial, vulgar.” Tchaikovsky was furious, and he stormed out of the classroom. He made only one change in the score: he obliterated the name of the original dedicatee — Nikolai Rubinstein — and substituted that of the virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow, who was performing Tchaikovsky’s piano pieces across Europe. Bülow gladly accepted the dedication and asked to program the premiere on his upcoming American PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2015-2016 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES tour. The Concerto created such a sensation when it was first heard, in Boston on October 25, 1875, that Bülow played it on 139 of his 172 concerts that season.

Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto opens with the familiar theme of the introduction, a sweeping melody nobly sung by violins and cellos above thunderous chords from the piano. Following a decrescendo and a pause, the piano presents the snapping main theme.

(Tchaikovsky said that this curious melody was inspired by a tune he heard sung by a blind beggar at a street fair.) The clarinet announces the lyrical, bittersweet second theme. The simplicity of the second movement’s three-part structure (A–B–A) is augured by the purity of its opening — a languid melody in the solo flute. The center of the movement is of very different character, with a quick tempo and a swift, balletic melody. The languid theme and moonlit mood of the first section return to round out the movement. The crisp rhythmic motive presented immediately at the beginning of the finale and then spun into a complete theme by the soloist dominates much of the movement. In the theme’s vigorous full-orchestra guise, it has much of the spirit of a robust Cossack dance. To balance the vigor of this music, Tchaikovsky introduced a romantic melody first entrusted to the violins. The dancing Cossacks repeatedly advance upon this bit of tenderness, which shows a hardy determination. The two themes contend, but the flying Cossacks have the last word.

o DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 Dmitri Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, and died August 9, 1975 in Moscow. The Fifth Symphony dates from 1937. Yevgeny Mravinsky conducted the Leningrad Philharmonic in the work’s premiere on November 21, 1937 as part of a festival celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat and two B-flat clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano (doubling celesta), and strings. Duration is about 45 minutes. Last performed by the orchestra on October 9-11, 2005, with Marin Alsop conducting.

“COMPOSER REGAINS HIS PLACE IN SOVIET,” read a headline of The New York Times on November 22, 1937. “Dmitri Shostakovich, who fell from grace two years ago, on the way to rehabilitation. His new symphony hailed. Audience cheers as Leningrad Philharmonic presents work.”

The background of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is well known. His career began before he was twenty with the cheeky First Symphony; he was immediately acclaimed the brightest star in the Soviet musical firmament. In the years that followed, he produced music with amazing celerity, and even managed to catch Stalin’s attention, especially with his film scores. (Stalin was convinced that film was one of the most powerful weapons in his propaganda arsenal.) The mid-1930s, however, the years during which Stalin tightened his iron grip on Russia, saw a repression of the artistic freedom of Shostakovich’s early years, and some of his newer works were assailed with the damning criticism of “formalism.” The opera The Nose, the ballets The Golden Age and The Bolt and even the blatantly jingoistic Second and Third Symphonies were the main targets. The storm broke in an article in Pravda on January 28, 1936 entitled “Muddle Instead of Music.” The “muddle” was the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mzensk District, a lurid tale of SOUNDINGS 2015-2016 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES adultery and murder in the provinces that is one of Shostakovich’s most powerful creations. The nature of the criticism may be judged from the title of the article, though no reason was given why it did not appear until two full years after Lady Macbeth had been premiered in January 1934 and been running successfully for the entire interval. The denunciation, though it urged Shostakovich to reform his compositional ways, also encouraged him to continue his work, but in a manner consistent with Soviet ideals. As “A Soviet composer’s reply to just criticism” — a phrase attributed to Shostakovich by the press, though it does not appear in the score — the Fifth Symphony was created and presented to an enthusiastic public. Shostakovich had apparently returned to the Soviet fold, and in such manner that in 1940 he was awarded the Stalin Prize, the highest achievement then possible for a Russian composer.

Following the appearance in 1979 of Shostakovich’s purported memoirs (Testimony), however, the above tale needed reconsideration. The prevailing interpretation of the Fifth Symphony had been that generally it represented triumph through struggle, à la Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, and specifically the composer’s renunciation of his backslidden ideological ways. Only three months after the premiere, Shostakovich wrote in an official publication, “The theme of my Symphony is the stabilization of the personality. In the center of this composition — conceived lyrically from beginning to end — I saw a man with all his experiences. The Finale resolves the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements into optimism and joy of living.” With that statement, the Soviet authorities were given exactly the explanation that they demanded, and Shostakovich was “rehabilitated.”

The story seemed so pat that it went unquestioned for years. However, some re-thinking after Shostakovich’s death led Ray Blokker, in his book on the composer’s symphonies, to conclude, “The Fifth was a challenge rather than an apology, despite the way in which the state received it.” Why, for example, did Shostakovich not write a patriotic cantata loaded with folk songs and nationalistic bombast if his sole aim were his return to grace? Why an abstract, supranational work like a symphony? Was there some hidden power or message in the music that could speak to the individual heart while remaining beyond the censor’s wrath? In Testimony, Shostakovich, bitter, ill, disillusioned, gave a ringing affirmative answer to this last question: “I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the [finale of the] Fifth Symphony. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you rise, shaky, and go marching off muttering, ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.’ What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.... People who came to the premiere of the Fifth in the best of moods wept.” One of his greatest fears when the Fifth Symphony was new was that his true intention — the deep, soul-burning irony of the work — was so obvious that someone would inform on him. No one did. Stravinsky once said that Soviet composers were good, but that they could not afford the luxury of integrity. He seems to have been wrong about Shostakovich.

Shostakovich’s thoughts about the Fifth Symphony bear directly on the listener’s perception of the work. The key to the meaning of the score, its finale, can no longer be seen as a transcendence or negation of the tragic forces invoked in the earlier movements, especially the third, but becomes an affirmation of them. The boisterous trumpets and drums are not those of a festival or a peasant dance, but of a forced death march — Stalin’s “exterminations” outnumbered those of Hitler. The Fifth Symphony arose not from Shostakovich’s glorification of PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2015-2016 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES his nation. It arose from his pity.

The sonata form of the Symphony’s first movement begins with a stabbing theme in close imitation. A group of complementary ideas is presented before the tempo freshens for the second theme, an expansive melody of large intervals. The sinister sound of unison horns in their lowest register marks the start of the development. The intensity of this section builds quickly to a powerful, almost demonic march. The recapitulation rockets forth from a series of fierce brass chords leading to a huge, sustained climax after which the music’s energy subsides to allow the second theme to be heard in a gentle setting for flute and horn. Quiet intensity pervades until the movement ends with ethereal scales in the celesta. The scherzo has much of the sardonic humor that Shostakovich displayed in such movements throughout his life.

The Symphony’s greatest pathos is reserved for the Largo. This movement is best heard not in a specific formal context but as an extended soliloquy embracing the most deeply felt emotions.

For much of its length, the expression is subdued, but twice the music gathers enough strength to hurl forth a mighty, despairing cry. The finale is in three large sections, determined as much by moods as by themes. The outer sections are boisterous and extroverted, the central one, dark-hued and premonitory. Whether the mood of rough vigor of this framing music or the tragedy of the central section stays longer in the mind is a matter listeners must determine for themselves. The delicate formal balance that Shostakovich achieved here could be tipped in either direction depending on the experience the individual brings to it. Only great masterworks can simultaneously be both so personal and so universal. ©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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