PROGRAM NOTES

Romeo and Juliet

Fantasy Overture

Composed 1880 | Premiered May 1, 1886

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

B. May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia

D. November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. (Approx. 21 minutes)

Thoughhe is enormously celebrated today, Tchaikovsky was plagued throughout his life by doubts about his talent and the worth of his music. Occasionally, he would suffer periods of malaise and selfdoubt that prevented him from composing at all, and a particularly acute episode hit him in the summer of 1869. Tchaikovsky had recently suffered scathing receptions of several major works and was so dejected by their failure that he destroyed most of the music. “Not one passable musical idea has entered my head in months,” he wrote that October.

But Tchaikovsky found a new ally and mentor, one whose encouragement prompted him to resume working. Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev was a composer of comparatively modest talent, but he had an enormous impact on the development of 19th-century Russian music. He became the leader and spokesman of a group of nationalist composers that would eventually include Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Mussorgsky, and he was tireless in arguing for a new kind of music, one based on dramatic ideas rather than abstract classical modes imported from Western Europe. Tchaikovsky, whose training had steeped him in the classical tradition, was at first mistrustful of Balakirev’s school of thought. But the two men took a liking to each other when they met in person, and soon began a fruitful exchange of musical ideas.

Balakirev suggested that Tchaikovsky consider an overture based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The tale of the tragic, star-crossed lovers would have been particularly inviting to Tchaikovsky, who was highly sensitive and very well-read. In devising music for the play, Tchaikovsky focused on three principal elements of the drama. The long introductory section conveys a sense of resigned spirituality, very much in character with Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence. A violent episode follows this, complete with cymbal crashes, to represent the clash of Montague and Capulet swords. Finally, the love of Romeo and Juliet is presented in a soaring melody—the one we all know from countless films, television shows, advertisements, and so on.

Balakirev, ironically, was not happy with the work. The opening was too tame, he said, and the love theme lacked ardor! Early audiences evidently agreed. The overture was received with indifference at its first performance in Moscow and fared no better (and sometimes far worse) in the West. But Tchaikovsky lived to see that judgment reversed, and today his Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture is among the most popular works in the orchestral repertory.

The DSO most recently performed Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture during the Tchaikovsky Festival in February 2015, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. The DSO first performed the piece in January 1916, conducted by Weston Gales.

Glasslands

Composed 2022 | Premiered 2022

Anna Clyne

B. March 9, 1980, London, United Kingdom

Scored for solo saxophone, 2 flutes (one doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, percussion, and strings. (Approx. 25 minutes)

Grammy Award nominee

Anna Clyne is one of the most in-demand composers today, working with orchestras, choreographers, filmmakers, and visual artists around the world. She currently serves as Composerin-Residence with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Trondheim Symphony

Orchestra, and will serve in the same role with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra next season.

Clyne has been commissioned and presented by the world’s most dynamic and revered arts institutions, including the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, MoMA, Philharmonie de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet, and the Sydney Opera House; and her music has opened such events as the Edinburgh International Festival, The Last Night of the Proms, and the New York Philharmonic’s 2021–2022 season.

Clyne often collaborates on creative projects across the music industry, including Between the Rooms, a film with choreographer Kim Brandstrup and LA Opera, as well as the Nico Project at the Manchester International Festival, a stage work about pop icon Nico’s life that featured Clyne’s reimagining of The Marble Index for orchestra and voices. Clyne has also reimagined tracks from Thievery Corporation’s The Cosmic Game for the electronica duo with orchestra, and her music has been programmed by such artists as Björk.

Several recent projects have explored Clyne’s fascination with visual arts, including Color Field, inspired by the artwork of Mark Rothko; Abstractions, inspired by five contemporary artworks; and Woman Holding a Balanc e, a film collaboration with artist Jyll Bradley. Other recent collaborators include such notable musicians as Martin Fröst, Pekka Kuusisto, and Yo-Yo Ma.

Clyne’s music is represented on several labels and her works Prince of Clouds and Night Ferry were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2015. Her cello concerto, DANCE, recorded by soloist Inbal Segev, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Marin Alsop, has garnered more than seven million plays on Spotify. Clyne’s music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

Clyne’s Glasslands conjures an imaginary world of three realms governed by the banshee—a female spirit who, in Irish folklore, heralds the death of a family member, usually by wailing, shrieking, or keening in the silence of the night.

This performance marks the world premiere of Glasslands by Anna Clyne, with Jess Gillam as soloist.

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

Composed 1937 | Premiered November 21, 1937

Dmitri Shostakovich

B. September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg, Russia

D. August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia

Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, orchestra bells, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, xylophone, two harps, piano, celeste, and strings.

(Approx. 46 minutes)

ASoviet composer at the height of communist rule in his native Russia, Shostakovich is the prime example of a creative artist forced to operate within a totalitarian system. Though subject matter and style were often dictated by the government, he managed to produce works of great strength and beauty.

During the notorious Stalinist purges of the 1930s, when more than 10 million people were executed or exiled, Shostakovich was severely rebuked for his experimental Fourth Symphony, which the State deemed not to be proper music. The composer was forced to make a difficult decision: either face artistic (and possibly personal) persecution or compromise his standards in favor of “rehabilitation.” After several years of political anonymity, he staked his entire salvation on a single work, the Fifth

Symphony.

With this work, composed between April 18 and July 20, 1937, Shostakovich produced a broad, expansive fourmovement symphony very much in the 19th-century Romantic tradition. Dissonance gave way to a firmly rooted tonality, and experimentation to strict symphonic form. The composer said that his Fifth Symphony was conceived “lyrically from beginning to end,” to suggest the progress of a life’s journey from tragedy to a climactic finale of optimism and joy.

Throughout history, artists have thumbed their noses at authorities who were too dense to see through parody and satire, and Shostakovich was no different. Of the finale, Shostakovich wrote in his memoirs (smuggled out of Russia after the composer’s death): “The rejoicing is forced, created under threat...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.”

Critical and popular reaction to the Fifth Symphony, however, was almost hysterically enthusiastic and the piece has since become one of Shostakovich’s most popular works, a favorite of audiences around the globe.

The DSO most recently performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in May 2015, conducted by Hannu Lintu. The DSO first performed the piece in February 1945, conducted by Karl Krueger.