Program - Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue

CLASSICS • 2017/18 Colorado Symphony 2017/18 Season Presenting Sponsor:

GERSHWIN’S RHAPSODY IN BLUE COLORADO SYMPHONY BRETT MITCHELL, conductor KEVIN COLE, piano

This Weekend’s Performances are Gratefully Dedicated to Schmitt Music Company Friday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Col. Philip Beaver and Mrs. Kim Beaver Saturday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to University of Denver Sunday’s Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Mr. Gene Child

Friday, September 22, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 23, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, September 24, 2017, at 1:00 p.m.

Boettcher Concert Hall MISSY MAZZOLI

These Worlds In Us

GERSHWIN/Grofé

Rhapsody in Blue for Piano and Orchestra

— INTERMISSION — TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 Andante — Allegro con anima Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza Allegro moderato Finale: Andante maestoso — Allegro vivace

SOUNDINGS 2017/18 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES BRETT MITCHELL, conductor Hailed for delivering compelling performances of innovative, eclectic programs, Brett Mitchell begins his tenure as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony with the 2017-18 season. Prior to this four-year appointment, he served as Music Director Designate during the 2016-17 season.

Mr. Mitchell’s recently announced inaugural season as Music Director of the Colorado Symphony features such guest artists as Renée Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a significant commitment to a broad range of American music, from Copland, Bernstein, and Gershwin to Kevin Puts, Mason Bates, and Missy Mazzoli. Other highlights include Mahler’s First Symphony, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé, and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra. Mr. Mitchell will also lead Handel’s Messiah, Wagner/Maazel’s The Ring without Words, and a two-part celebration of the music of John Williams, featuring a program of Mr. Williams’s concert works and a live-to-film performance of his score for Jurassic Park.

Mr. Mitchell is also currently in his fourth and final season as a member of The Cleveland Orchestra’s conducting staff. He joined the orchestra as Assistant Conductor in 2013, and was promoted to Associate Conductor in 2015, becoming the first person to hold that title in over three decades and only the fifth in the orchestra’s hundred-year history. In this role, he leads the orchestra in several dozen concerts each season at Severance Hall, Blossom Music Center, and on tour. From 2013 to 2017, Mr. Mitchell also served as the Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, performing full subscription seasons at Severance Hall, and leading the orchestra on a four-city tour of China in 2015, marking the ensemble’s second international tour and its first to Asia.

In addition to these titled positions, Mr. Mitchell is in consistent demand as a guest conductor.

Recent and upcoming guest engagements include the orchestras of Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Oregon, Rochester, Saint Paul, San Antonio, and Washington (National Symphony Orchestra), among others. His Summer 2017 festival appearances include the Blossom Music Festival with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago, the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Texas Music Festival in Houston. He has collaborated with such soloists as Rudolf Buchbinder, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Leila Josefowicz, and Alisa Weilerstein.

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

As an opera conductor, Mr. Mitchell has served as music director of nearly a dozen productions, principally at his former post as Music Director of the Moores Opera Center in Houston, where

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES he led eight productions from 2010 to 2013. His repertoire spans the core works of Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute), Verdi (Rigoletto and Falstaff), and Stravinsky (The Rake’s Progress) to contemporary works by Adamo (Little Women), Aldridge (Elmer Gantry), Catán (Il Postino and Salsipuedes), and Hagen (Amelia). As a ballet conductor, Mr. Mitchell most recently led a production of The Nutcracker with the Pennsylvania Ballet in collaboration with The Cleveland Orchestra during the 2016-17 season.

Born in Seattle in 1979, Mr. Mitchell holds degrees in conducting from the University of Texas at Austin and composition from Western Washington University, which selected him in as its Young Alumnus of the Year in 2014. He also studied at the National Conducting Institute, and was selected by Kurt Masur as a recipient of the inaugural American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation Scholarship. Mr. Mitchell was also one of five recipients of the League of American Orchestras’ American Conducting Fellowship from 2007 to 2010. brettmitchellconductor.com

KEVIN COLE, piano Kevin Cole is an award-winning musical director, arranger, composer, vocalist, and archivist who garnered the praises of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg, Hugh Martin, Burton Lane, Stephen Sondheim, Marvin Hamlisch, and members of the Jerome Kern and Gershwin families. Engagements for Cole include: sold-out performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl; BBC Concert Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall; National Symphony at the Kennedy Center; San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra (London); Hong Kong Philharmonic; Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra; New Zealand Symphony, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Australia), Ravinia Festival, Wolf Trap, Savannah Music Festival, Castleton Festival, Chautauqua Institute, and many others. Kevin was featured soloist for the PBS special, Gershwin at One Symphony Place with the Nashville Symphony. He has shared the concert stage with William Warfield, Sylvia McNair, Lorin Maazel, Itzhak Perlman, Barbara Cook, Liza Minnelli, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, and friend and mentor Marvin Hamlisch.

SOUNDINGS 2017/18 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 3

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES MISSY MAZZOLI (B. 1980): These Worlds In Us Missy Mazzoli was born on October 27, 1980, in Abington, Pennsylvania. These Worlds In Us was composed in 2006 and premiered in New Haven, Connecticut, on March 1, 2006, by the Yale Philharmonia. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, percussion, harp, and strings. Duration is about 9 minutes. This is the first performance by the Colorado Symphony.

Missy Mazzoli is a gifted artist of wide-ranging talents whose works, according to her publisher, the distinguished New York firm of G. Schirmer, “reflect a trend among composers of her generation to combine styles, writing music for the omnivorous audiences of the 21st century.”

Mazzoli was born in 1980 in the Philadelphia suburb of Abington and studied at Boston University, Yale University School of Music, and Royal Conservatory of the Hague; her composition teachers included Louis Andriessen, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Charles Fussell, Richard Cornell, Martin Amlin, and John Harbison. Mazzoli taught composition at Yale in 2006 before serving for the next three years as Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York, an organization dedicated to promoting the work of young composers; in 2010, she was appointed to the faculty of New York’s Mannes College of Music. She was a Composer-Educator Partner with the Albany Symphony in 2011-2012 and has held residencies with Gotham Chamber Opera, Music Theatre-Group, and Opera Philadelphia, which premiered her Breaking the Waves, based on Lars von Trier’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning 1996 film of the same name, in September 2016; her most recent opera, Proving Up, premieres at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in January 2018. She is also active internationally as a pianist, often performing with Victoire, an ensemble she founded in 2008 to play her own compositions; the group has released two CDs that have earned positive reviews from both the classical and indie rock communities. Mazzoli has received four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, the Detroit Symphony’s Elaine Lebenbom Award and grants from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Barlow Endowment, and fulfilled commissions from such noted ensembles, institutions and artists as the Kronos Quartet, Young People’s Chorus of New York City, Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Whitney Museum of Art, cellist Maya Beiser, and pianist Emanuel Ax. Mazzoli wrote These Worlds In Us in 2006 for premiere by the Yale Philharmonia; the work won Yale University’s Woods Chandler Prize for Best Orchestral Composition for the Yale Philharmonia as well as the 2007 ASCAP Young Composers Award. Of it, she wrote, “The title These Worlds In Us comes from James Tate’s poem The Lost Pilot, a meditation on his father’s death in World War II: (excerpt) My head cocked towards the sky, I cannot get off the ground, and you, passing over again, fast, perfect and unwilling to tell me that you are doing well, or that it was a mistake that placed you in that world, and me in this; or that misfortune placed these worlds in us.

PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2017/18 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES “This piece is dedicated to my father, who was a soldier during the Vietnam War. In talking to him it occurred to me that, as we grow older, we accumulate worlds of intense memory within us, and that grief is often not far from joy. I like the idea that music can reflect painful and blissful sentiments in a single note or gesture, and sought to create a sound palette that I hope is at once completely new and strangely familiar to the listener. The theme of this work, a mournful line first played by the violins, collapses into glissandos almost immediately after it appears, giving the impression that the piece has been submerged under water or played on a turntable that is grinding to a halt. The melodicas (mouth organs) played by the percussionists in the opening and final gestures mimic the wheeze of a broken accordion, lending a particular vulnerability to the bookends of the work. The rhythmic structures and cyclical nature of the piece are inspired by the unique tension and logic of Balinese music, and the march-like figures in the percussion bring to mind the militaristic inspiration for the work as well as the relentless energy of electronica drum beats.”



GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937): Rhapsody in Blue for Piano and Orchestra Orchestrated by Ferde Grofé (1892-1972) George Gershwin was born on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York, and died on July 12, 1937, in Hollywood, California. Rhapsody in Blue was composed in 1924 and premiered on February 12, 1924, in New York, conducted by Paul Whiteman with the composer as piano soloist. The score, orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, 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. Duration is about 18 minutes. The last performance took place on May 18, 2013, with Andrew Litton serving as both soloist and conductor.

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 suggested that the young composer provide a piece for piano and jazz orchestra. Gershwin, who was then busy with the final preparations for the upcoming Boston tryout of Sweet Little Devil and somewhat unsure about barging into the world of classical music, did not pay much attention to the request until he read in The New York Times on New Year’s Day that he was writing a new “symphony” for Whiteman’s program. After a few frantic phone calls, Whiteman finally convinced Gershwin to undertake the project, 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. Themes and ideas for the new piece immediately began to tumble through Gershwin’s head, and late in January, only three weeks after it was begun, the Rhapsody in Blue was completed.

SOUNDINGS 2017/18 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES 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 music had a brilliant success. “A new talent finding its voice,” wrote Olin Downes, music critic for The New York Times. Conductor Walter Damrosch told Gershwin that he had “made a lady out of jazz,” and then commissioned him to write the Concerto in F. There was critical carping about laxity in the structure of the Rhapsody in Blue, but there was none about its vibrant, quintessentially American character or its melodic inspiration, and it became an immediate hit, attaining (and maintaining) a position of popularity almost unmatched by any other work of a native composer.



PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893) Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia, and died on November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg. The Fifth Symphony was composed in 1888 and premiered on November 17, 1888, in St. Petersburg, conducted by the composer. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs plus piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 45 minutes.

The Symphony was last performed on October 3-5, 2014, with Andrew Litton on the podium.

Tchaikovsky was never able to maintain his self-confidence for long. More than once, his opinion of a work fluctuated between the extremes of satisfaction and denigration. The unjustly neglected Manfred Symphony of 1885, for example, left his pen as “the best I have ever written,” but the work failed to make a good impression at its premiere and Tchaikovsky’s estimation of it tumbled. The lack of success of Manfred was particularly painful, because he had not produced a major orchestral work since the Violin Concerto of 1878, and the score’s failure left him with the gnawing worry that he might be “written out.” The three years after Manfred were devoid of creative work. It was not until May 1888 that Tchaikovsky again took up the challenge of the blank page, collecting “little by little, material for a symphony,” he wrote to his brother Modeste.

He worked doggedly on the new symphony, ignoring illness, the premature encroachment of old age (he was only 48, but suffered from continual exhaustion and loss of vision), and his doubts about himself. He pressed on, and when the orchestration of the Fifth Symphony was completed, at the end of August, he said, “I have not blundered; it has turned out well.”

Tchaikovsky never gave any indication that the Symphony No. 5, unlike the Fourth Symphony, had a program, though he may well have had one in mind. In their biography of the composer, Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson reckoned Tchaikovsky’s view of fate as the motivating force in the Symphony No. 5, though they distinguished its interpretation from that in the Fourth Symphony. “In the Fourth Symphony,” the Hansons wrote, “the Fate theme is earthy and militant, as if the composer visualizes the implacable enemy in the form, say, of a Greek god. In the Fifth, the majestic Fate theme has been elevated far above earth, and man is seen, not as fighting a

PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2017/18 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES force that thinks on its own terms, of revenge, hate, or spite, but a wholly spiritual power which subjects him to checks and agonies for the betterment of his soul.”

The structure of the Fifth Symphony reflects this process of “betterment.” It progresses from minor to major, from darkness to light, from melancholy to joy — or at least to acceptance and resignation. The Symphony’s four movements are linked together through the use of a recurring “Fate” motto theme, given immediately at the beginning by unison clarinets as the brooding introduction to the first movement. The sonata form proper starts with a melancholy melody intoned by bassoon and clarinet over a stark string accompaniment. Several themes are presented to round out the exposition: a romantic tune, filled with emotional swells, for the strings; an aggressive strain given as a dialogue between winds and strings; and a languorous, sighing string melody. All of the materials from the exposition are used in the development. The solo bassoon ushers in the recapitulation, and the themes from the exposition are heard again, though with appropriate changes of key and instrumentation.

At the head of the manuscript of the second movement Tchaikovsky is said to have written, “Oh, how I love … if you love me…,” and, indeed, this wonderful music calls to mind an operatic love scene. (Tchaikovsky, it should be remembered, was a master of the musical stage who composed more operas than he did symphonies.) Twice, the imperious Fate motto intrudes upon the starlit mood of this romanza.

If the second movement derives from opera, the third grows from ballet. A flowing waltz melody (inspired by a street song Tchaikovsky had heard in Italy a decade earlier) dominates much of the movement. The central trio section exhibits a scurrying figure in the strings. Quietly and briefly, the Fate motto returns in the movement’s closing pages.

The finale begins with a long introduction based on the Fate theme cast in a heroic rather than a sinister or melancholy mood. A vigorous exposition, a concentrated development and an intense recapitulation follow. The long coda uses the motto theme in its major-key, victory-won setting.

©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

SOUNDINGS 2017/18 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7

MOZART’S REQUIEM

WAGNER:

THE RING WITHOUT WORDS

Mozart’s Requiem

Wagner: The Ring Without Words

OCT 13-15

APR 20-22 FRI-SAT 7:30 n SUN 1:00

FRI-SAT 7:30 n SUN 1:00

Jun Märkl, conductor Yulia Van Doren, soprano Abigail Nims, mezzo Derek Chester, tenor Andrew Garland, baritone Colorado Symphony Chorus, Duain Wolfe, director Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 R. STRAUSS MOZART Requiem, K. 626 After leading a lauded performance of our 2014 All-Beethoven program, Jun Märkl returns to Boettcher Concert Hall to conduct the internationally praised Colorado Symphony Chorus in Mozart’s immortal Requiem. Ironically, Mozart died before finishing his Requiem, and supposedly wrote instructions for completion on since-lost “little scraps of paper.” However mythical the conclusion of this masterpiece may be, its dramatic and captivating spirit endures. Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration — a tone poem depicting the death of an artist — complements the immortal Requiem in a program that proves the longevity of brilliance.

Brett Mitchell, conductor WAGNER/ arr. Maazel The Ring Without Words Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung notoriously takes days to perform in its entirety. In this unique treatment created by conductor and composer Lorin Maazel, Music Director Brett Mitchell leads the orchestra through the fundamental sequences of Wagner’s Ring cycle in a once-in-a-lifetime performance. (Mitchell will describe the leitmotifs in a musical demonstration at the top of the concert, preceding a condensed performance without words.)

This is an illuminating and rare performance of The Ring that will resonate with all audiences.

COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG