Created for children 5-10, these imaginative 30-minute performances, with narration and actors, introduce children to the world of music and instruments and impart life lessons through interactive stories. Following each concert, children are invited to try instruments at the Instrument Petting Zoo.
Following the Symphony Kids performances in September and February, the Helena Symphony Orchestra plays a brief FREE concert with the music from the Symphony Kids Program at 11:00 a.m.
Symphony Kids 1: The Grimm Princesses
Saturday, 28 September 2024
10:00 a.m. (with Dvořák’s String Serenade)
11:00 a.m. FREE performance of music from Dvořák’s String Serenade
Symphony Kids 2: The Four Musicians
Saturday, 2 November 2024
10:00 a.m. (the music of J.S. Bach)
Symphony Kids 3: The Billy Goats Gruff
Saturday, 1 February 2025
10:00 a.m. (the music of Gabriel Fauré)
11:00 a.m. FREE performance of music of Gabriel Fauré
Symphony Kids 4: Once Upon a Time
Saturday, 5 April 2025
Featuring the Helena Symphony Chorale
10:00 a.m. (with excerpts from Sondheim’s Into the Woods)
Sponsors Instrument
ANNUAL YOUTH CONCERT
Saint-Georges’ Sword & Bow
Wednesday, 16 April 2025 • 1:00 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
Tickets are not sold for this concert, as students attend through their school music program.
season AT A GLANCE
Saturday, 22 June 2024 • 5:30 p.m.
SPECIAL EVENT Masquerade!
Saturday, 20 July 2024 • 8:30 p.m.
NON-SERIES CONCERT 1 Symphony Under the Stars: The Music of Tina Turner
Saturday, 14 September 2024 • 5:30 p.m.
MASTERWORKS CONCERT I
Opening Night: Gershwin & 100 Years of Rhapsody in Blue
Saturday, 14 September 2024 • 7:30 p.m.
SPECIAL EVENT Opening Night After Party
Saturday, 28 September 2024 • 10:00 a.m.
EDUCATION CONCERT Symphony Kids 1: The Grimm Princesses
Saturday, 26 October 2024 • 7:30 p.m.
MASTERWORKS CONCERT II
Violinist Stephen Cepeda Plays Shostakovich
Saturday, 2 November 2024 • 10:00 a.m.
EDUCATION CONCERT Symphony Kids 2: The Four Musicians
Saturday, 16 November 2024 • 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 17 November 2024 • 2:00 p.m.
MASTERWORKS CONCERT III Hansel and Gretel
Monday, 2 December 2024 • 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, 3 December 2024 • 6:30 p.m.
NON-SERIES CONCERT 2 Christmas in the Cathedral
Friday, 24 January 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, 25 January 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
NON-SERIES CONCERT 3 Mozart by Candlelight
Saturday, 1 February 2025 • 10:00 a.m.
EDUCATION CONCERT Symphony Kids 3: The Billy Goats Gruff
Saturday, 22 February 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
MASTERWORKS CONCERT IV Pianist Roman Rabinovich, Prokofiev, & Dvořák
Saturday, 22 March 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
MASTERWORKS CONCERT V Behold the Sea!
Saturday, 5 April 2025 • 10:00 a.m.
EDUCATION CONCERT Symphony Kids 4: Once Upon a Time
“A concert with Maestro Scott is as intoxicating as you could wish and has that all-too-rare feeling of risk-taking spontaneity.”
– New Zealand National Radio
“Maestro Scott is on a mission to bring music to the people, and if his music is as infectious as he is, then it’s only a matter of time.”
– Independent Record
Currently in his twenty-second season as Music Director of the Helena Symphony Orchestra & Chorale, Maestro Allan R. Scott is one of the most dynamic figures in symphonic music and opera. He is widely recognized for his outstanding musicianship, versatility, and ability to elicit top-notch performances from musicians. SYMPHONY Magazine praised Maestro Scott for his “large orchestra view,” noting that “under Scott’s leadership the quality of the orchestra’s playing has skyrocketed.”
Maestro Scott has also become closely associated with the works of Gustav Mahler. He has conducted all of Mahler’s symphonies nationally and internationally with companies such as The National Orchestra of Romania and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra of New Zealand. New Zealand National Radio noted, “A concert with Maestro Scott is as intoxicating as you could wish..., and has an all-too-rare feeling of risk-taking spontaneity.”
In addition to making his debut with Marble City Opera this Season, Maestro Scott has appeared with such companies as The Tanglewood Music Center, Royal Opera of Netherlands, Portland Opera, Fairfax Opera Company, Kent Opera, The Bucharest National Opera, The National Radio Orchestra of Romania in Bucharest, New Zealand’s Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Firelands Symphony in Cleveland, Pottstown Symphony (PA), Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, New Artists Philharmonic (CO), and Fairfax Symphony. Maestro Scott will appear in upcoming performances with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra at the Nagoya Festival in Japan and with Opera Orlando.
Dividing his time between residences in Helena, Montana, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia native also begins his twenty-third season as Music Director of Pennsylvania’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony in addition to serving as the Principal Conductor of the Wilmington Ballet Company in Delaware for over decade.
Beginning his piano studies at age five and conducting studies at age fifteen, Maestro Scott developed his artistry under the guidance of some of the most prolific conductors of our time including Seiji Ozawa, and Charles Dutoit. He further refined his craft with Luis Biava, Zdenék Macal, Sir David Willcocks, and Jorge Mester at renowned institutions, among them the Tanglewood Music Center, California Conducting Institute, The Keene Music Festival, Ogontz Music Festival, and the Conducting Institute of South Carolina.
Managed in North America by Athlone Artists (Miguel Rodríguez, President).
Managed in Europe, Asia, and South America by Vienna Music Connection (Iván Paley, President).
MICHAEL MLEKO – Assistant Conductor
Michael Mleko was appointed Assistant Conductor in 2019. He has been a member of the Helena Symphony Orchestra for over 17 years, and has performed with most ensembles in the region, including Bozeman Symphony, Billings Symphony, Great Falls Symphony, Butte Symphony, Big Sky Strings, Big Sky Classical Music Festival Orchestra, and the Montana Ballet Company Orchestra.
With a career in music for over two decades, Mr. Mleko is a teacher and orchestra director with the Billings Public Schools. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Montana State University, in addition to studying with noted violinists Carrie Krause, Angella Ahn, and Stephen Cepeda. Michael currently conducts most of the Education Concerts of the Helena Symphony, and covers for and studies with Maestro Scott.
JUNE LEE – Staff Accompanist
Pianist June Lee joined the Artistic Staff of the Helena Symphony in 2007 as Staff Accompanist, accompanying guest artists in collaboration with Maestro Scott and the conducting staff in preparation for performance, serving as accompanist and substitute assistant conductor for the Helena Symphony Chorale, and performing in the Symphony. Ms. Lee held a staff accompanist position at Pacific Lutheran University, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance with emphases in accompanying and piano pedagogy. Then she held an assistantship in vocal accompanying at the University of Washington as she completed concurrent degrees of Master of Music in piano performance and Bachelor of Music in vocal performance. She currently maintains studios in Townsend and Helena, teaching piano and voice, and performs frequently as a collaborative pianist.
STAFF & BOARD
ARTISTIC STAFF
Allan R. Scott – Music Director & Conductor
Michael Mleko – Assistant Orchestra Conductor
Larry Sheldon – Assistant Chorale Conductor
June Lee – Staff Accompanist
ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF
Scott Kall – Director of Patron Services & Project Manager / Symphony Under the Stars
Cameron Betchey – Director of Development & Communications
Lisa Van Meter – Executive Assistant to the Music Director
Jules Schoebel – Events & Box Office Manager
Duane Johnson – Information Technology Manager
Ginny Emery – Staff Photographer
Wipfli – Accounting
ARTISTIC ADMINISTRATION
Rehanna Olson – Director of Artistic Planning
Nicholas Slaggert – Orchestra Librarian
Joshua Dickey – Chorale Manager
Anna Milburn – Education Coordinator
James Guglielmo – Operations Manager
John Murphy – Recording Engineer
Darla Sautter – Head Usher
Tom Rolfe – Artist Driver
MARKETING
Edge Marketing + Design
Deanna Johnson – Webmaster/Marketing Director
Diana Norton – Project Manager
Lori Pederson – Designer/Brand Manager
Rosemary L. Howell – Marketing Strategist
Allie Keleti – Marketing Strategist
OFFICERS
Ron Baldwin – President
Matt Dalton – Vice President
Alison Paul, Esq. – Treasurer
Victoria Cech – Secretary
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Ron Baldwin – Chair
Kathy Bramer
Art Bumgardner, D.M.A.
Sisi Carroll
Victoria Cech
Amber Conger
Matthew Dalton
David Genter
Christine Kaufmann
Stephen Mason
Ramon Mercado
Alison Paul, Esq.
Joan Poston, Esq., honorary
Chantel Schieffer
Allan R. Scott, ex officio
Darien G. Scott, honorary
William “Shrop” Shropshire
Eric Stern, Esq.
HELENA SYMPHONY FOUNDATION
Thomas C. Morrison, Esq. – President
Darien Scott – Secretary & Treasurer
Peter Bogy, Esq. – Assistant Treasurer
Joan Poston, Esq.
Patrick Keim
Cameron Betchey – ex officio
ORCHESTRA HELENA SYMPHONY
VIOLIN
Stephen Cepeda
Concertmaster
Hyeri Choi
Principal Second & Associate Concertmaster
THE ZANTO FAMILY CHAIR
Ali Schultz Levesque
Principal Second & Associate Concertmaster
Anne Wolfe
Assistant Concertmaster
Pamela Liu
Associate Principal Second
Devin Burgess
Rebekah Desta
Allison Elliott
THE ELEANOR PARKER CHAIR
Richard Ferguson
Jenna Kramer
THE HENRY VAN WORMER MEMORIAL CHAIR
Alyssa Lahoda
Lucas Martins
Zoe McLain
Michael Mleko
Lucinda Morris
Mary Murphy
Eleanor Parker
THE M.J. DAVIDSON MEMORIAL CHAIR
THE FRAN WADDELL CHAIR
Mary Papoulis
Chelsea Pierce
Maggie Price
Grace Solomon
Clara Weick
Amy Wright
VIOLA
Sara Schultz Levesque Principal
THE LINDA & PATRICK KEIM CHAIR
Christine Sherlock Associate Principal
Cristina Cruz-Uribe
THE ALLAN R. SCOTT SR. MEMORIAL CHAIR
Joseph Jewett
THE ELAINE & MARK TAYLOR CHAIR
Zac Masiba
Madeleine Mleko
Elisabeth Sibulsky
Marta Smith
THE PAM & LEE SHUBERT CHAIR
Richard Wells
String section players are listed alphabetically, as seating rotates.
CELLO
Linda Kuhn Principal
THE DANA HILLYER & ROBERT CALDWELL CHAIR
Carlton Colby
Associate Principal
THE SISI & WILL CARROLL CHAIR
THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS CHAIR
Zachary Boles
THE RAMON & REGINA MERCADO CHAIR
Katharine Cavanaugh
Fern Glass Boyd
David Harmsworth
Kelly Kuhn
THE LAURIE EKANGER & MARGARET BULLOCK CHAIR
Jonathan Lindsay
Diane Sine
Christine Sopko
Emily Wolfram
Carson Yahvah
BASS
Micah Stoddard Principal
THE HEIDI & DAVID GENTER CHAIR
Sarah Burdick
Ryan Davis
Fischer Friend
THE AMBER CONGER & NATE HAGEN CHAIR
Sam Fossum
Tom Larson
THE AUDRA & BILL SHROPSHIRE CHAIR
Cortney Peres
THE JILL & DAVID TEMPLETON CHAIR
Joel Schnackel
String section players are listed alphabetically, as seating rotates.
PICCOLO
Abby Easterling
THE ROSANA SKELTON CHAIR
FLUTE
Tiana Grisè Principal
THE JOAN POSTON CHAIR
Abby Easterling
Associate Principal
Kathy Chase
THE FRAN WADDELL CHAIR
OBOE
Becky Tipler Principal THE JENNIFER PRYOR & WILLIAM CRENSHAW CHAIR
Mary Robinson Associate Principal THE DUDLEY H. PAGE MEMORIAL CHAIR
Nicole Evans
Eleanor Rasmussen
ENGLISH HORN
Sue Logan THE TONI & BOB PERSON CHAIR
CLARINET
Jill Brischli Principal THE LEZLIE PEARCE-HOPPER & WARREN HOPPER CHAIR
Julia Klein Associate Principal THE PETER SULLIVAN CHAIR
Jennifer Skogley Jay Savoy
E-FLAT CLARINET
Klein
Dana Nehring Principal
THE MARILYN HUDSON CHAIR
Sam Macken Associate Principal
Alicia McLean-Brischli
Kirsten Kennedy
CONTRABASSOON
Kirsten Kennedy THE BARBARA HARRIS CHAIR
HORN
Erin Vang
THE SUSAN BENEDICT & SCOTT MAINWARING CHAIR
Maria D’Ambrosio Associate Principal
Madeleine Folkerts
Assistant Principal
Nathan Goldin
THE TRILLIUM CHAIR
Daniel Lande
Krista Smith
THE SHAW-QUIÑONES CHAIR
HELENA SYMPHONY
CHORALE
Susan Anderson
Fay Buness
Shiloh Corcoran
Laurie Ekanger
Jena Fetters
Julane Fihre
Starsha Frederickson
Joy Holloway
Fong Hom
Jody Isbell
Deanna Johnson
Kristina Jordan
Autumn Keller
Janet Kenny
Sarah Larsen
June Lee
Lia Leinonen
Carolyn Linden
Amy Balmain
Cathy Barker
Kathy Bramer
Alissa Chambers
Marj Clark
Val Colenso
Angela Conley
Connie Conley
Christina Dube
Rebecca Egeline
Sherry Held
Jen Jenkins
Nadia Jones
Christine Kaufmann
Rika Lashley
Beverly Magley
Michelle Maltese
Liz Moore
Stefanie Lineaweaver
Sharon Maynard
Patty Mazurek
Amy McDonald
Kate Mehrens
Susie Osborne
Laura A Pippin
Elizabeth Reynolds
Makenna Sellers
Gayle Sheldon
Coleen Smith
Mary Thomas
Abigail Vilhauer
Carol Waniata
Mary Williams
Lisa Williams Mathews
Helen Wolfe-Visnick
Judy Nakagawa
Debi Nason
Roberta Nelson
Jeannie Parr
Alison Paul
Stacy Perkins
Linda V Peterson
Beth Rolfe
Laurie Sarault
Mēghan Scott
Molly Severtson
Naci Spano
Maggie Stockwell
Martha Jane Thieltges
Lindsey Wilkerson
Cathy Wright
Dawn Zehr
Janet Zimmerman
Naylor Rehanna Olson
James Peruzzi
Skylar Shields
Dale Waniata
Joshua Wright
Ron Nelson
Terry Seabold
Lawrence Sheldon
Gordon Stockstad
Michael Swisher
Dick Weaver
Greg Zeihen
OPENING NIGHT: Gershwin & 100 Years of Rhapsody in Blue
Saturday, 14 September 2024
5:30 p.m. (note time) • Helena Civic Center
Featuring Pianist Kevin Cole, the leading Gershwin interpreter, and internationally renowned and GRAMMY ® Award-winning Soprano Sylvia McNair, Opening Night features an evening of music by American icon George Gershwin, including his jazz-inspired Rhapsody in Blue for its 100th anniversary. Celebrate 70 years of the Helena Symphony’s music-making with Gershwin, world-renowned artists, dinner, drinks, the Opening Night After Party, and your Helena Symphony Orchestra!
Sylvia McNair
Allan R. Scott Sylvia McNair Kevin Cole
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
SYLVIA MCNAIR – Soprano
KEVIN COLE – Piano
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA
GERSHWIN Gershwin’s Opening Night+
GERSHWIN Someone to Watch Over Me Ms. McNair, soprano
GERSHWIN Gershwin Medley+ Ms. McNair, soprano & Mr. Cole, piano
GERSHWIN Second Rhapsody+ Mr. Cole, piano
INTERMISSION
GERSHWIN An American in Paris
GERSHWIN How Long Has This Been Going On+ Ms. McNair, soprano
GERSHWIN The Man I Love+ Ms. McNair, soprano
GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue Mr. Cole, piano + = Helena Symphony Premiere Performance 7:30 p.m. • Helena Civic Center Ballroom Single Tickets Available at the Door: $70
OPENING NIGHT Join us! AFTER PARTY
Celebrate the 70-year legacy of the Helena Symphony with the dazzling Opening Night After Party! Join us immediately following the performance for a post-concert event in grand style, including exquisite catered cuisine, drinks, entertainment, and a thrilling live and silent auction! Tickets are on sale now.
Rhapsody in Blue
Rhapsody in Blue was originally composed for the Paul Whiteman Band and piano solo. Ferde Grofé later orchestrated the work for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, optional saxophones, three horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, glockenspiel, optional banjo, and divided strings.
Duration: 16 minutes
IPARALLEL EVENTS / 1924
Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin dies, and Soviet dictator Stalin rises to power
Calvin Coolidge is elected 30th U.S. President
Matisse paints Arabesque
U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are born
Largest U.S. stock market boom, with Ford Motor Company stocks equal to $1 billion
MGM film studios open
GEORGE GERSHWIN
Born: Brooklyn, New York, 26 September 1898
Died: Hollywood, California, 11 July 1937
About the Composer
At a late-night party typical of the Jazz Age, pianist George Gershwin was overheard pondering if his music would “be heard a hundred years from now.” “It will,” a friend remarked, “if you are around to play it.” It has been a century since Gershwin changed the music and helped give identity to American music with his legendary Rhapsody in Blue (1924), yet Gershwin has not been around to play his music for most of it (he died at 38 years old).
Born Jacob Gershowitz (later Gershwine) to Russian Jewish immigrants, George Gershwin began his music career as a high school drop out in Tin Pan Alley, New York’s famous songwriting district. As a “song-plugger” for the Jerome Remick Company, the young George was exposed to thousands of songs and limitless experience as a jazz pianist. As one of the first notable American composers, Gershwin made the first attempts to close the gap between “popular” music and “serious” music. While some classical music purists still do not fully accept Gershwin into the circles of classical music completely, no one can deny Gershwin’s uncanny ability as a songwriter.
Despite his Broadway success with his lyricist brother, Ira, George followed his less natural talents as a classical composer. Maurice Ravel, Nadia Boulanger, and Igor Stravinsky refused to teach Gershwin, so he had to eventually study composition, theory, and orchestration on his own.
Gershwin’s American Songbook
While working as a song-plugger, a 17-year-old George wrote his first song, “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Get ‘Em,” in 1916 and it earned him $5 (about $148 today). Soon after, Gershwin began collaborating with other lyricists, writing well known songs today such as “Swanee,” which sold over a million copies.
Gershwin’s greatest collaborator was with his older brother, Ira (1896-1983). Starting in 1924 with their first musical, La, La Lucille, the Gershwin brothers began producing musicals that contained some of the most memorable songs still performed today, including: “How Long Has This Been Going On” (from the musical Smarty), “Fascinating Rhythm” and “The Man I Love” (from the musical Lady, Be Good), “Someone to Watch Over Me” (from the musical Oh, Kay!), “Somebody Loves Me,” and “Stairway to Paradise."
By the 1930s, the Gershwin brothers were on a roll with new Broadway hits including musicals Strike Up the Band, Let ‘Em Eat Cake, and Of Thee I Sing, which became the first musical comedy to ever win the Pulitzer Prize. By 1937, the Gershwins moved to Hollywood and brought their musical theatre and song
writing popularity to the big screen. Working with legends like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, George and Ira wrote the music for films such as Shall We Dance, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, and They Can’t Take That Away From Me
Immediately after Gershwin’s death and throughout the 1940s through the 1950s, his songs essentially set the stage for some of the great performers, like Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett. There is not a cabaret singer, jazz musician, or jazz lover that does not hold Gershwin as the father of the American song. From airline commercials and dozens of films to remakes of nearly every kind (including hip hop, rock and roll, and rap), Gershwin’s music has remained in mainstream Americana for nearly a century.
Rhapsody in Blue
Bandleader Paul Whiteman commissioned Gershwin to write a “jazz concerto” to be included in a concert titled An Experiment in Modern Music in New York on February 12, 1924. With Gershwin performing the solo piano part, Rhapsody in Blue was an enormous success. Everyone who was anyone in the music world attended the concert, such as virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz, and composers Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky. All but Stravinsky loved the work immediately.
A rhapsody differs from a concerto in that it features one extended movement instead of the conventional three movements. Rhapsodies also often incorporate passages of improvisation and are irregular in form, with heightened contrasts and emotional exuberance. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is typical in that it certainly has large contrasts in musical texture, style, and color. The work ranges from intensely rhythmic piano solos to slow, broad, and lush orchestral sections.
Because Gershwin had only composed songs with piano scores until the Rhapsody commission, he was very hesitant to take on the project as he would have to write a full score. So, Whiteman offered the services of his arranger, Ferde Grofé, to help Gershwin with the orchestration.
Rhapsody in Blue became the Whiteman Orchestra’s signature tune. More importantly, at a time when classical music was still an overwhelmingly European art form, it introduced a uniquely American voice in a classical concert. While the age-old European classical music drew on national folk and popular music, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue began the infusion of American popular music
Continued on page 14
CELEBRATING OUR HELENA SYMPHONY
Thank you for making our community happier and healthier through music. sphealth.org/foundation
An American in Paris
An American in Paris is orchestrated for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, celeste, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tom-toms, triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel, xylophone, wood block, four taxi horns, and divided strings.
Duration: 18 minutes
An American in Paris’ standard orchestration is augmented by the saxophones, an array of percussion instruments, and on of Gershwin’s most prized souvenirs from his trip to Paris – a set of four French taxi horns.
GERSHWIN
Continued from page 13
into the classical tradition. More than the success of the work itself, Rhapsody in Blue legitimized jazz as a serious form of music, and soon classical composers were attempting to write “serious” music using jazz idioms.
Gershwin took a risk by using his musical influences, such as Scott Joplin’s ragtime, rhythmic improvisations from Harlem’s nightclubs, the folk music of the Yiddish theatre, Cuban rhythms coupled with Charleston dance, and the rich experimental harmonies of such composers as Ravel, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. “I heard it as a sort of a musical kaleidoscope of America,” explained Gershwin, “of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”
The famous clarinet trill and run up the scale was not composed by Gershwin. Clarinetist Ross Gorman felt that the opening of the work needed a bit more humor. Gershwin told him to keep it. Gershwin improvised himself, as he had yet to transcribe the piano part. By 1928, Whiteman’s band performed Rhapsody in Blue 84 times, and its recording sold a million copies.
Whether or not Rhapsody in Blue is “jazz” remains a muchdebated topic, but like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, Gershwin’s music has come to define American life and culture during the “roaring” 1920s.
An American in Paris
Soon after Rhapsody in Blue launched Gershwin’s career into the concert hall in 1924, the composer and two of his siblings made a European tour. Spending most of their trip in Paris, George brought with him an unfinished orchestra work that was being commissioned by Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Society.
Paris of the 1920s remained the center of the artistic universe; the city was host to a dazzling array of sculptors, painters, jazz musicians, dancers, writers, poets, and composers, including Ravel, Milhaud, Poulenc, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. Gershwin was still eager to be accepted as a “serious” composer in the classical music world, so spending so much time in Paris gave him the incentive to make his next work a serious piece for the concert hall.
PARALLEL EVENTS /
1928
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse is introduced
Amelia Earhart’s flight across the Atlantic
Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera premieres
Herbert Hoover is elected U.S. President
General Electric begins first regularly scheduled TV broadcasts
Since the premiere of his tone poem, An American in Paris has become a standard work of orchestral repertoire. The work is best explained by Gershwin himself who provided the following outline of the work:
This new piece, really a rhapsodic ballet, is written very freely, and is the most modern music I’ve yet attempted. The opening part will be developed in a typical French style, in the manner of Debussy, though the themes are all original. My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls around the city and listens to various street-noises and absorbs the French atmosphere.
As in my other orchestral compositions, I’ve not endeavored to represent any definite scenes in this music. The rhapsody is programmatic only in a general impressionistic way, so that the individual listener can read into the music such as his imagination pictures for him.
The opening gay section is followed by a rich blues with a strong rhythmic undercurrent. Our American friend, perhaps
after strolling into a café and having a couple of drinks has succumbed to a spasm of homesickness. His harmony here is both more intense and simpler than in the preceding passages. . This blues rise to a climax, followed by a coda in which the spirit of the music returns to the vivacity and bubbling exuberance of the opening part, with its impression of Paris. Apparently the homesick American, having left the café and reached the open air, has disowned his spell of the blues, and once again is an alert spectator of Parisian life. At the conclusion, the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant.
Gershwin’s use of the orchestra in An American in Paris is much more confident than in either the Rhapsody in Blue (which was arranged and almost entirely orchestrated by Frede Grofé) or the Piano Concerto in F. The influence of jazz is clearly audible, but the most prominent element is the variety of orchestra moods he projects and the ingenious ways he achieves them.
A Rhapsody in Rivets?
After the composing Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, Gershwin was on the artistic forefront of American concertgoers, jazz lovers, and music critics. He and his brother moved to Hollywood and were commissioned to write music for a new film, Delicious. Composed for piano solo and orchestra, the new work was cut in half by the film studio. Gershwin toyed with several titles including New York Rhapsody, Manhattan Rhapsody, and then Rhapsody in Rivets. The last one became the informal reference to the work as Gershwin wanted to create an urban scene with the noise of “riveters drumming your ear from every side.”
Gershwin kept the entire length of the work to be performed in concert, but unlike with Rhapsody in Blue, he wrote his own orchestration for his new composition. Renaming it Second Rhapsody, Gershwin said it was the “best thing I have written,” as his understanding of orchestration, form, and color greatly improved since 1924.
The Second Rhapsody opens with the piano solo playing the “riveting theme” while the orchestra launches into a busy urban sequence like the city-fun of An American in Paris. The piano solo does share some of the orchestra’s themes, but it also creates a quite contrast to the chaos too. Like with all of Gershwin’s works, the piano solo explores jazz-inspired virtuosic sections with blues passages. The Second Rhapsody foreshadows some of Gershwin’s next works, such some Latin music that would be the focus of his Cuban Overture, and the tender, love-song like melodies foretelling his epic opera Porgy & Bess.
The sweeping unaccompanied piano solo in the middle of the work eventually gives way to the Gershwin’s lush Americana sound until the “riveting theme” returns for the final moments and the Rhapsody in Blue-like ending brings his film score, New York Rhapsody, Manhattan Rhapsody, Rhapsody in Rivets, or just his rhapsody that his second to a close. If nothing else, we experience the signature sounds from a more seasoned composer that still capture the “soundtrack” to American life in the 1920s and 30s.
Sadly, the man who gave us the cheerful, fun-spirited, heartwarming music that has stayed with us for a century never lived long enough to enjoy it. Gershwin collapsed in July 1937, fell into a coma from which he never regained consciousness, and died of a brain tumor. He was 38.
Second Rhapsody
Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody was composed for solo piano, piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, drum set, xylophone, glockenspiel, woodblock, harp, and divided strings.
Duration: 16 minutes
PARALLEL EVENTS / 1931
China is proclaimed the People’s Republic of China
Mobster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison
The Star-Spangled Banner becomes U.S. national anthem
Frede Grofé composes Grand Canyon Suite
First volume of The Joy Cooking is published
Dick Tracy comic series is created
Baseball great Mickey Mantle, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, author E.L. Doctorow, and actors James Earl Jones, Gene Hackman, and James Dean are born
Inventor Thomas Edison dies Alka Seltzer is introduced
SYLVIA MCNAIR – Soprano
Two-time GRAMMY® Award winner and regional Emmy Award winner, Sylvia McNair lays claim to a stellar career in the musical realms of opera, oratorio, art song, jazz, cabaret, and musical theater. She is recognized as one of the most sought-after American artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her journey has taken her from the Metropolitan Opera to the Salzburg Festival, from the New York Philharmonic to the Rainbow Room, from the Ravinia Festival to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, from the pages of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the London Times and the cover of Cabaret Scenes. Having appeared as a soloist multiple times, sometimes more than once per season, with nearly every major opera company and symphony orchestra in the world, this songbird eventually flew the classical coop and successfully retraced her star route with Gershwin, Porter, Hamlisch, Bernstein, and Sondheim.
Ms. McNair has recorded for every major classical record label, garnering two GRAMMY® awards and six GRAMMY® nominations. Her recording, ROMANCE, a disc of Latin American jazz standards was released to rave review. A review of her performance with Marvin Hamlisch and the Milwaukee Symphony exclaimed:
“…she is that rare opera type who really gets the popular song. She reined in the vibrato and played to the microphone perfectly. Her matchless enunciation not only delivered the words and their sentiments, but also helped to etch the rhythms. Her wonderfully pure Summertime, purged of all diva carrying-on, is among the best I’ve ever heard.” (Third Coast Digest)
A proud Buckeye from Mansfield, Ohio, Sylvia earned a master’s degree with distinction from the Indiana University School of Music, she received honorary doctorates from Westminster College (1997) and Indiana University (1998), the Ohio Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Entertainment (1999), the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award (2011).
Sylvia McNair appears courtesy of JEJ Artists (Franklin, TN).
KEVIN COLE – Piano
Kevin Cole has performed with over 100 orchestras worldwide including sold out performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, BBC Concert Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall, and the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. He is regarded as the foremost interpreter of George Gershwin’s piano compositions and the first pianist to play all four of Gershwin’s works for piano and orchestra in one concert (Albany Symphony).
An award-winning musical director, arranger, composer, vocalist, archivist, recording artist, and producer, Mr. Cole has garnered the praises of some of America’s greatest songwriters: Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg, Hugh Martin, Burton Lane, Marvin Hamlisch, Stephen Sondheim, and members of the Jerome Kern and Gershwin families. He has collaborated with Marvin Hamlisch, opened for Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band, shared a concert evening with Broadway musical legend Barbara Cook, toured with GRAMMY® Award-winning soprano Sylvia McNair, performed at the invitation of the prestigious Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, and served as Artistic Director for Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute Musical Theatre Initiative. His collaborations with other creatives led to the 1996 Gramophone Album of the Year with soprano Dawn Upshaw (Oh, Kay! on Elektra/Nonesuch) and the smash hit revival of Babes in Arms with Broadway choreographer Randy Skinner (42nd Street) for Goodspeed Opera House.
Mr. Cole is a Steinway Artist and a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy. His many engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, Albany Symphony, Cincinnati Pops, Indianapolis Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Edmonton Symphony (Canada), Philharmonia Orchestra (UK), BBC Concert Orchestra (UK), Grant Park Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony and more. Among the conductors he has performed with are Stuart Chafetz, Robert Franz, Giancarlo Guerrero, Keitaro Harada, Lawrence Loh, David Alan Miller, Robert Moody, Edwin Outwater, John Morris Russell and Benjamin Zander.
Edward Jablonski, author of the Encyclopedia of American Music and renowned Gershwin scholar said, “Kevin is the best Gershwin pianist since Gershwin himself – no one can touch him.” Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune declared: “…Cole stands as the best Gershwin pianist in America today.”
Kevin Cole appears courtesy of JEJ Artists (Franklin, TN).
Violinist Stephen Cepeda Plays Shostakovich
Saturday, 26 October 2024
7:30 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
Stephen Cepeda brings the passion, fury, and dark humor of Shostakovich’s virtuosic Violin Concerto. The Helena Symphony Orchestra and Chorale then performs Ravel’s romantic drama Daphnis & Chloe along with La Valse, a waltz-gone-wild.
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The use of photographic and recording equipment is strictly prohibited. As a courtesy to the performers and fellow concert-goers, please silence all devices prior to the beginning of the performance. Latecomers and those leaving the hall during the performance will be seated at an appropriate time in the concert.
Allan R. Scott Stephen Cepeda
This concert
sponsored by generous support from:
Guest artist's appearances is sponsored by generous support from:
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
StepHeN CepeDA – Violin
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA & C H o RAL e
SHOSTAKOVICH
Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99
Mr. Cepeda, violin
I. Nocturne
II. Scherzo: Allegro III. Passacaglia — IV. Burluesque
INTERMISSION
RAVEL
Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2
I. Daybreak — II. Pantomime — III. General Dance
RAVEL La Valse+ + = Helena Symphony Premiere Performance
PHOTO: Ginny Emery
Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99
Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 is scored for solo violin, piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, tuba, timpani, xylophone, tambourine, tam-tam, harp, celeste, and divided strings.
Duration: 40 minutes
PARALLEL EVENTS
/ 1955
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus
Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of U.K.
Elvis Presley makes television debut
Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Little Richard, and John Coltrane all begin their careers
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings are published
Gunsmoke, The Honeymooners, Lawrence Welk Show, Mickey Mouse Club, and Captain Kangaroo all debut on television
Disneyland opens in California Board game Scrabble debuts
Scientist Albert Einstein, jazz musician Charlie Parker, and baseball player Cy Young all die
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
Born: St. Petersburg, Russia, 25 September 1906
Died: Moscow, Soviet Union, 9 August 1975
About the Composer
Some composers are often identified by their nationality or a national movement than by their own music. Verdi was uniquely tied with Italian unity, Copland with the American frontier, and Shostakovich with the former Soviet Union.
Described as “the conscience of the Soviet Union,” Dmitri Shostakovich has become one of the most discussed figures in music since the composer’s death, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the turn of the 21st century. Publicly Shostakovich was a member of the Communist Party and, unlike his Russian colleagues Prokofiev and Stravinsky who lived abroad, Shostakovich emerged because of, rather than despite of, the Soviet regime.
Shostakovich’s upbringing was rooted in music as his parents were both amateur musicians. After graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Shostakovich felt the need to choose between a career as a pianist or composer. Although composing did not come easily, he chose a career as a composer and quickly gained international attention with his First Symphony, which he composed when he was eighteen years old.
Like any artist, Shostakovich’s curiosities led him to seek other influences, especially the works of Prokofiev and Stravinsky who had become “Western-ized." Shostakovich’s discovery of modernism and post-modernism was quickly squashed by the Soviet government, as everything in the Soviet Union was viewed in political terms. Soviet musicologists proclaimed that the new Soviet Union awaited “a composer whose melodies will touch the hearts of all sections of the populations and…will not only warm the concert hall but the streets and fields as well, because it will be music with roots deep in Russian life…”
As Shostakovich’s early musical efforts became internationally recognized, the Soviet Union was quick to capitalize on Shostakovich’s success (how ironic!) and adopted Shostakovich as the country’s “musical spokesperson.” His music would provide propaganda for the Soviet government and the communist way of life to an international community.
The relationship between the Soviet government and Shostakovich was complex. His music suffered two official denunciations and periodic bans of his work. At one point, the Communist Party declared Shostakovich’s music offensive and harmful to Soviet citizens as it contained “decadent Western manners” and “formalist perversions." At the same time, he received several accolades and state awards, and served in the Supreme Soviet. Shostakovich was reminded by the Stalin regime that his duty was to compose for the Soviet people and his works should provide inspiration for the communist way of life. Despite the official controversy, Shostakovich remained the most popular Soviet composer of his generation.
Shostakovich reacted, at least publicly, by accepting the political ideology of the Soviet government and composed several works that, at least superficially, embraced the communist regime. He proceeded to speak out against Western music. Looking back and seeing the dreadful alternatives, he had no choice. While he composed some private works such as his string quartets and the tragic Tenth Symphony, Shostakovich mainly produced “acceptable” compositions, including the patriotic oratorio The Song of the Forests, the cantata The Sun Shines Over Our Land¸ and Symphony Nos. 5, 7 (titled Leningrad), 11 (titled The Year 1905), and 12 (titled The Year 1917).
After suffering from severe heart problems and from his lifelong bout with tuberculosis, Shostakovich ultimately died a painful death from lung cancer. His death coincided with the anniversary of the first performance of his Seventh Symphony and with the eleventh birthday of his grandson Dmitri, Maxim’s son.
Three decades after Shostakovich’s death and less than twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the West has rediscovered Shostakovich as a composer of immense integrity and of fearless perseverance and courage. Today we realize that he spoke through a mask of conformism using musical codes. Shostakovich gave the Soviet authorities what they demanded, yet he deliberately maintained a musical expression that spoke to his audience – the people who were suppressed by the communist government.
About the Music
After the Soviet government denounced Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other composers in 1948, charging them with the sin of “formalism,” the Soviet musical community went into a period of darkness that ended only with Stalin’s death five years later. While Shostakovich completed his first violin concerto in 1947, he waited until two years after Stalin’s death to unveil the work when there seemed to be a thaw from the Stalin years.
Composed for the renowned virtuoso violinist, David Oistrakh, the Violin Concerto was originally numbered as Opus 77, but because it did not premiere until 1955, it was renumbered as Opus 99. Toward the end of his life, Shostakovich decided to restore the original opus number to the Concerto in order to establish the work’s true chronology, while retaining the later number as well, in order to emphasize the point of the delay from the time of its composition to the time of its premiere, and to demonstrate to the world what he did to preserve his creativity for his own survival.
In Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, the controversial biography of Shostakovich, the composer explains the inspiration behind the First Violin Concerto:
Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it; it’s multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It’s almost always laughter through tears… [But] this is not purely a musical issue; this is also a moral issue. The Jews became the most persecuted and defenseless people of Europe [during World War II]. It was a return to the Middle Ages. Jews became a symbol for me. All of man’s defenselessness was concentrated in them. After the War, I tried to convey that feeling in my music.
While Jewish music is not specifically present in the Violin Concerto, the work invokes the Jewish spirit in a general way, with hints of ethnic flavor, specifically in the second and final movements.
Shostakovich considered his First Violin Concerto a “symphony for solo violin and orchestra,” given the somewhat unorthodox layout of the work in four movements in lieu of three. Likewise, it has such meaningful depth of expression and fully developed musical argument, that it has little in common with the conventional concerto. Even though Shostakovich would often begin a work with a slow movement, the opening of the Violin Concerto is unlike anything else he composed. With a hushed restraint, Shostakovich titles the first movement a Nocturne or “night music,” – typically reflective or somber at times. The ebbing and flowing of the lower strings give shape to the movement as the soloist speaks, and, at times, seems to pine with sense of longing. To capture an intensity, the writing for the solo violin is very high until the solo comes swirling down out of the darkness of the night music.
By contrast, the Scherzo movement is a wonderful, yet rough, dance that skittishly scampers the second movement to an unrelenting close. In the third movement, Shostakovich uses a passacaglia – a slow, grave dance with imposing majesty. With horn fanfares ringing in the movement, the woodwinds sing a somber tune before the solo violin enters with a sense of profound inwardness, and soars above the ominous subject below. The orchestra dies away, and the passionate theme yields to a lengthy unaccompanied solo for the violin (the cadenza). Simply marked “quiet but majestic,” the violin solo first plays a meditation on the passacaglia theme and then it gradually becomes faster and more agitated recalling the rigid rhythm and skittish theme from the scherzo until it launches into the final movement. Labeled a “burlesque,” the final movement implies a mocking or joking character, and almost sneering at times. With folk-like vigor and stinging sounds of the xylophone, the finale interjects Shostakovich’s defiant wit that has, if not entirely optimistic, certainly a triumphant ending.
At the time of the premiere performance in 1955, the violin soloist, David Oistrakh, explained that “the Concerto is a real challenge to the soloist: it may be likened to a Shakespearian role, demanding from the artist the greatest emotional and intellectual dedication… you can always sense the profoundest meditation on life, on the fate of mankind.”
STEPHEN CEPEDA – Violin
Violinist Stephen Cepeda has served as Concertmaster of the Helena Symphony Orchestra for nineteen years. He has appeared as soloist with the HSO on several occasions, including performances of violin concertos by Beethoven, Sibelius, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Korngold, Britten, and Tchaikovsky. Performing with Maestro Scott, Mr. Cepeda appeared as soloist with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony Orchestra on multiple occasions, and a performance the Lamont Symphony Orchestra at Denver University. In the summer of 2009, he completed a tour throughout Southeast Asia performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, including a recital at the United States Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Mr. Cepeda is a founding member of the award-winning Meritage String Quartet, which was featured on Emmy Award-winning television series 11th and Grant on PBS. Beginning his studies at the age of five with Daniel Reinker, Mr. Cepeda has studied with some of the nation’s finest violinists, including Stephanie Sant’ Ambriogio, and Julius Schulman. While attending University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, he studied with renowned violinist Andrzej Grabiec. Possessing a passion for teaching, Mr. Cepeda was an Adjunct Professor at Montana State University, and now maintains an active violin studio in Helena.
Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2
Ravel orchestrated his ballet Daphnis et Chloé for two piccolos, two flutes, alto flute, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, crotales, bass drum, cymbals, castanets, glockenspiel, xylophone, snare drum, military drum, tambourine, triangle, tam-tam, wo harps, celeste, divided strings, and mixed chorus.
Duration: 18 minutes
PARALLEL EVENTS / 1912
China becomes a republic
Titanic’s first and last voyage –more than 1,500 people killed
Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th U.S. President
New Mexico and Arizona become U.S. states
Territory of Alaska is organized
Mahler’s Ninth Symphony premieres
Tarzan of the Apes is published
First Keystone Kops film premieres
Actor Gene Kelly, artist Jackson Pollock, singer Woody Guthrie, Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun are born
Born: Ciboure, France, 7 March 1875
Died: Paris, France, 28 December 1937
About the Composer
There are very few composers who have the true gift of orchestrating a piece of music like a painting – complete with invention, craft, precision, and perfection of color. Maurice Ravel, one of the most quintessentially French composers, possessed the rare ability to express the ultimate goal of any artistic language –to capture the inexplicable or inexpressible through the delicate balance of craft and inspiration.
Like many other French artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Ravel was fascinated by Spanish culture, for Ravel’s mother was Basque and spent most of her youth in Madrid. The influence from the exotic lifestyles of Spain balanced well with Ravel’s love of precision, sense of symmetry, order, and perfection that came from his father’s engineering background.
As a student of Gabriel Fauré, the true predecessor of the musical impressionist era of Debussy, Ravel learned the intricate and rich colors of harmony and orchestration at the Paris Conservatoire. Yet despite his seemingly perfect orchestral works, Ravel did not want to be recognized for his dazzling precision of technique; for Ravel that meant a dry, detached, and artificial rather than warmly human and inspired imagination.
What Ravel wanted his peers and audience to remember was that his technique was merely a means to an end, and his music reveals all the tenderness and human emotion that lies inside the very private composer. Ravel proclaimed that “music made only with technique and intellect loses its special quality as the expression of human feeling. Music should always be first emotional and only after that intellectual.”
Ravel, who never married, remained a reserved and emotionally quiet man. Accordingly, any account of his life, to a large extent, is a list of external events. He suffered a tragic end for he was stricken with severe insomnia and anxiety, and rapidly lost the ability of certain physical movements (known today as Pick’s disease) which prevented him from composing. Ironically, the composer who kept most of his inner emotions trapped inside himself became trapped artistically from expressing any of his musical ideas. Upon listening to his own music the year he died, Ravel said in tears: “I’ve still so much music in my head.”
Ravel, in addition to orchestrating several other composers’ works (such as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition), is best known for his two operas, L’Heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges, the two piano concerti, two violin sonatas, a string quartet, a piano trio, several solo piano works and songs, and orchestral works including La Valse, Rapsodie Espagnole, Schéhérazade, the very popular Bolero, and his masterpiece – the ballet Daphnis et Chloé
A few years before World War I, the brilliant ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev descended from his native Russia on Paris with his ballet company, Ballet Russe. Today, Diaghilev’s work still impacts music, dance, and art, as he gathered together some of the most prolific artists of the day, including Picasso and Matisse, along with composers Falla, Stravinsky, Debussy, Prokofiev, Poulenc, and Milhaud. Diaghilev approached Ravel in 1910 to compose a ballet based on a pastoral romance derived from the writings of ancient Greek author Longus. Years later, Ravel explained:
I was commissioned to write Daphnis et Chloé, a choreographic symphony in three movements. My intention was to compose a vast musical fresco, and less about the archaic details of Greece, and instead, the Greece that is in my dreams, which is closely related to the Greece imagined and depicted by French painters at the end of the 18th century. The work is constructed like a symphony, with a very strict system of tonality, formed out of a small number of themes…”
The ballet’s story focuses on the passionate tale between Daphnis and Chloé, two shepherds who become close friends, and ultimately fall in love. Chloé is abducted by pirates, and Daphnis seeks the help of the god Pan, who rescues Chloé. The couple celebrates their reunion and give thanks to Pan by dancing the story of Pan and his love for Syrinx. The ballet concludes with the marriage of Daphnis and Chloé in an explosive dance.
Ravel’s score to the ballet is his lengthiest work and considered by most, his greatest masterpiece. Using his renowned abilities to orchestrate a work, he creates a world that envelopes the listener with elegant sensuality, mysteriousness, and dream-like atmospheres. Right from the outset of Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel establishes a faraway world using fragments of sounds, uncertain harmonies, and the seemingly disappearance of any definite rhythmic pulse. Throughout the work he creates unprecedented musical tapestries, including muted trumpets to capture playful pursuits; heavy sonorities of bassoons, timpani, and low strings to convey clumsy dances; an innocent violin solo; a rhapsodic clarinet duet; great orchestra outbursts; a wind machine; and a wordless chorus to create a supernatural presence.
The production itself seemed doomed from the early stages, as the composer (Ravel), the choreographer (Michael Fokine), the set and costume designer (Leon Bakst), and the principal dancer (the famed Vaslav Nijinsky) all had completely different visions for the work. Diaghilev even attempted to cancel the contract with Ravel’s publisher to not use Ravel’s score because the dancers had trouble understanding the difficult rhythms Ravel composed. One critic summed up the production stating that “the set and costume designer’s conception of Greece was unintelligible, the choreography was poor, and the music lacked rhythm."
Two suites were extracted from the complete ballet and remain popular in concert. The Second Suite portrays three sections from the ballet and performed without pause: the very opening of the ballet Daybreak; followed by Pantomime of Daphnis and Chloé acting out the story of Pan and Syrinx, with a flute solo referencing Syrinx who had been transformed into a reed pipe; and concluding with the deliriously exciting Danse Generale celebrating the reuniting of the two lovers.
The premiere performance of the stage production received a lukewarm reception because the only facet of the performance that was prepared was the orchestra, which was greeted with enormous enthusiasm. The score is still considered a brilliant, virtuosic masterpiece that is “rousing, rhythmically
La Valse
Ravel orchestrated La Valse for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, cymbals, castanets, tam-tam, tambourine, crotales, glockenspiel, two harps, and divided strings.
Duration: 12 minutes
PARALLEL EVENTS / 1920
Prohibition of alcohol in U.S. begins
U.S. gives women the right to vote
Warren G. Harding is elected 29th U.S. President
Matisse paints Marguerite Sleeping
Stravinsky’s Pulcinella ballet premieres
George and Ira Gershwin write their first song
Pope John Paul II, violinist Isaac Stern, Jazz musicians Dave Brubeck and Charlie Parker, actors Tony Randall, Yul Brynner, Walter Matthau, and Mickey Rooney are born
Good Humor ice cream bar is created
Belgium Godiva chocolates is founded
furious, audaciously orchestrated,” suggests program annotator Kevin Bazzana. Composer Igor Stravinsky even declared that “it is not only Ravel’s best work, but one of the most beautiful products in all of French music."
About La Valse
As with so many artists, World War I drastically rocked the life, outlook, and emotional well-being of Ravel. As a loyal Frenchmen, Ravel served as a truck and ambulance driver on the front line in battle. In addition to physical injuries, he suffered a prolonged depression over the brutality he witnessed. Every aspect of European life was forever changed because of the “war to end all wars." As the “Roaring 20s” emerged with overly optimistic, escapist entertainment, many artists first needed to express an emotional cleansing.
Ravel’s La Valse is one of most poignant post-War works that demonstrates the collapse of European innocence. Originally composed for two pianos, La Valse was first performed at the private residence of French painter Misia Sert for world-renowned choreographer Serge Diaghliev, and composers Francis Poulenc and Igor Stravinsky. Ravel hoped that Diaghliev (who had set other music of Ravel’s to dance) would produce La Valse as a ballet. “A masterpiece, but not a ballet,” said Diaghliev. “It’s a portrait of a ballet – a painting of a ballet." In addition, he said it would be too expensive of a production. Stravinsky did not say a word, and Ravel simply picked up his music and left. He never forgave Diaghliev, and the two never collaborated again.
In April 1920, the two-piano version of La Valse made its first public performance, and seven weeks later the orchestral version of the work premiered in Paris. Ravel began sketching music of La Valse in 1906 as a tribute to waltzes (what Ravel referred to as “useless occupation” of social dancing) and homage to “Waltz king” Johann Strauss. Waltzes not only were the most popular form of dance and entertainment prior to the World War I, but they symbolized Vienna as the mecca of cultural life. As every facet of life changed after the War, so did the entire concept of La Valse. Ravel now called the work “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, which is now mingled in my mind with a fantastic whirl of destiny."
While the principal theme of La Valse strongly resembles a Strauss waltz, a sense of demise and melancholy slow permeate the work as it progresses (or perhaps digresses). The flowing joyousness of a traditional Viennese waltz easily sweeps the naïve pre-War world back into the present; however, without fail, the panache and courtly past relentlessly crumbles within itself. Ravel explains in his preface to the score:
Viennese waltz rhythm. Drifting clouds allow a restricted vision of waltzing couples. The clouds gradually disperse, and we see an immense room filled with a whirling crowd. As the rhythm becomes clear, the scene takes on more illumination, until the light of the chandeliers bursts forth. It takes place in an imperial court about 1855.
In the end, Ravel’s “fantastic whirl of destiny” wonderfully, thrilling, horrifically, and tragically collapses, and along with it the innocence of Europe. ”
SHROPSHIRE FAMILY OPERA
SERIES
Hansel and Gretel
Saturday, 16 November 2024
7:30 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
Sunday, 17 November 2024
2:00 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
The whimsical Brothers Grimm masterpiece comes to life in this staged production featuring the coming of age of Hansel and Gretel and their journey through the forest, a battle with the mysterious witch, a dream ballet, and learning about greed, trust, and overcoming fears. This family-friendly opera, performed in English, is perfect for all ages.
William Kenyon
Kira Dills-Desurra
John Green
Matthew DiBattista
Nola Richardson
Mary-Hollis Hundley
Tascha Anderson
Nola Richardson Kira Dills-Desurra
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
GRANt pReISSeR – Stage Director & Set Designer
HeAtHeR ADAMS – Choreographer
WILLIAM KeNYoN – Lighting Designer
Hansel
Gretel
KIRA DILLS-DESURRA – Mezzo Soprano
NOLA RICHARDSON – Soprano
Father JOHN GREEN – Baritone
Mother
Witch
Sandman & Dew Fairy
MARY-HOLLIS HUNDLEY – Soprano
MATTHEW DiBATTISTA – Tenor
TASCHA ANDERSON – Soprano
I R o NH o RS e Y out H M u SIC o pe RA C H o R u S
Carson Yahvah, Chorusmaster
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA
HUMPERDINCK Hansel and Gretel
Act I: At Home
Act II: The Wood
INTERMISSION
Act III: The Witch’s Gingerbread House
Performed in English with English subtitles.
Duration: 90 minutes plus one Intermission.
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, glockenspiel, small bells, tam-tam, thunder machine, castanets, xylophone, tambourine, cymbals, bass drum, harp, divided strings, three sopranos, two mezzo sopranos, tenor, baritone solos, and children’s chorus.
Duration: 90 minutes
ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK
Born: Siegburg, Germany, 1 September 1854
Died: Neustrelitz, Germany, 27 September 1921
Even though the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck is remembered for his opera masterpiece Hänsel and Gretel, his name has lived on in popular culture as British pop singer Arnold Dorsey (born in 1936) adopted the name “Engelbert Humperdinck” in honor of the late composer (or as a joke). And the Grimm’s Brothers’ Fairy Tales are so familiar to people today in part because of the success of Humperdinck’s opera.
Humperdinck started composing at a young age, writing a piano duet at age seven and his first music for the stage at age ten. While his parents hoped their son would become an architect, they did allow him to study with Ferdinand Hiller, who founded the Cologne Conservatory and was childhood friends with Felix Mendelssohn and Johann Hummel (former student of Beethoven’s). In his early 20s, Humperdinck moved to Munich to study at the Royal Music School where he was impacted by Richard Wagner’s music. After serving as an assistant Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival for the premiere of Parsifal, Humperdinck was well prepared to write his own stage work.
PARALLEL
EVENTS / 1893
Grover Cleveland becomes the 24th U.S. President (was also 22nd)
New Zealand is first country to grant voting rights to women
Thomas Edison constructs first motion picture studio
Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, premieres
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, premieres
Composer Cole Porter, dancer
Martha Graham, Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung are born
Former US President
Rutherford B. Hayes, and composer Peter Tchaikovsky die
First electric car
The music for Hänsel and Gretel started as a favor for Humperdinck’s sister, Adelheid Wette, who wanted music for a children’s play. Adelheid adapted the story from the Brothers Grimm 1812 fairy tale. Since the early 1800s societal views of children and childhood had changed by the end of the century, so Adelheid made changes to the narrative, including removing the wicked stepmother, Hänsel’s imprisonment, and the children looting the Witch’s house after murdering her. New characters were also added, such as the Sandman and the Dew Fairy who watch over the children and serve as benevolent guides. The original story, in fact, was considered unsuitable for younger readers. The revised story shielded the children from life’s bitter realities, and the two characters are recast as virtuous and resourceful as they rescue themselves and other children from the evil Witch.
Using two German folk songs as the basis for the incidental music, Humperdinck felt the music was so successful that he and his sister expanded the concept to a full opera. While Humperdinck used a similar musical language and texture as his mentor Wagner, he was not as methodical about creating a system of musical themes (“leitmotifs”) to represent certain themes or characters throughout. The Father’s four note “La-lala-la” theme is the most recognizable theme that reoccurs, along with childlike music that the main characters sing to portray their youth. The well-known “Evening Prayer” not only captures one of the most reflective moments in the opera, but theme is used in the Prelude, during the opera, and at the conclusion to suggest the children’s innocence and even coming of age.
The Prelude is worth highlighting as it introduces the audience to important moments of the story. Beginning with a dreamy
Gretel is singing to herself as she works, while Hänsel teases her and singing the same tune about his hunger and for his mother to come home. Gretel reminds him of what their faither says, “when the need is greatest, God puts out His hand.” As Hänsel complains they cannot eat words, Gretel lets her brother know that their mother was given milk from the neighbor, and they will be able to make dinner. So excited, Hänsel forgets work and begins to dance with Gretel.
The Mother returns and is upset that the children have not finished their chores. She knocks over the container of milk and chases the children into the woods to pick strawberries. Feeling sorry that she cannot properly feed her family, she prays to God, as Father is heard happily singing from afar. He enters drunk and hungry, kissing his wife. He has brought plenty of food for the family and asks for his children. When he learns they are in the woods he is concerned as he has heard about a witch who puts a spell on children and then turns them into gingerbread. Mother and Father depart for the woods to find Hänsel and Gretel.
Interlude: The Witch’s Ride
ACT II – The Wood
Hearing a cuckoo singing in the distance, the two children decide to eat all the strawberries they are collecting. Deep in the woods, Hänsel admits that he has lost the way, and the two children grow frightened as the forest seems to come to life. The Sandman enters and puts them to sleep by sprinkling sand over their eyes as the children sing their evening prayer. While asleep, 14 little angels appear protecting the sleeping children.
Intermission
ACT III – The Witch’s Gingerbread House
The Dew Fairy comes to wake the children, singing how wonderful it is to be alive in the morning with the beauty of the forest. As Hänsel and Gretel recall their dream of the angels they notice a gingerbread house with several life size, yet frozen gingerbread children around the house. Unable to resist the temptation, they take bites of the house. The Witch captures Hänsel and wants to fatten him up as she puts a spell on him. Gretel breaks the spell and frees her brother. When the Witch asks Gretel to look in the oven, Gretel pretends she does not know how to and asks the Witch to show her how. When the Witch peers into the oven, Hänsel and Gretel push the Witch inside and shut the door. The oven explodes and the gingerbread children come back to life. Mother and Father arrive, and all express their gratitude as the tale ends happily ever after.
THE END
seductiveness from the opening sounds of the four horns that evoke the theme of the children’s evening prayer, a trumpet then interrupts with the witch’s spell as a sense of conflict emerges. Several other themes appear in the Prelude including scenes where Hänsel and Gretel are eating the witch’s gingerbread house, as well as the final moment of the chorus of the rescued children. The Prelude weaves together like Wagner’s prelude to Meistersinger, demonstrating Humperdinck’s skills. More than any scene, however, is the Prelude’s introduction to themes of innocent, adventure, danger, and coming of age that make it a magical beginning to the opera.
Composer Richard Strauss conducted the premiere in 1893, and eventually composer Gustav Mahler led several performances. The entire opera was instantly a success. Mahler proclaimed Hänsel and Gretel a masterpiece and a “delightful addition to opera.” It was produced in more than 50 different theatres in the first year after its premiere. The fairy-tale opera concept was a welcome relief from the intense seriousness of Wagner’s dramas as well as the verismo operas (real life stories) of composers like Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo. Today, Hänsel and Gretel stands alongside Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet as a Christmas favorite for audiences.
GRANT PREISSER – Stage Director & Set Designer
Grant Preisser is the artistic director for Opera Orlando, where he supervises all production and marketing efforts. He directs and designs across the country, recently staging Wichita Grand Opera’s Rusalka, and providing scenic design for all-new productions of Macbeth, Cendrillon, and Treemonisha for Opera Orlando. Mr. Priesser also directed a site-specific production of Werther and a double bill of a one-act version of Beatrice and Benedict, for which he is also developing a new translation in collaboration with Alan Olejniczak, paired with Cavalleria Rusticana
In the 2023-24 season Mr. Preisser was scenic designer for Tosca, Frida, and The Juniper Tree, and was stage director for productions of Rusalka and Lucia di Lammermoor, all with Opera Orlando. In October of 2023, he provided scenic design for Florida State Opera’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, and in June of 2024, he designed and directed Lucia di Lammermoor for St. Pete Opera.
Mr. had directed and designed productions of The Magic Flute, Gianni Schicchi, the world premiere of Death of Ivan Ilych, and La Traviata, as well as designing productions of Carmen, Rigoletto, The Daughter of the Regiment, and the world premiere of The Secret River. Additionally from 2018-2020 Mr. Preisser was guest faculty at University of Michigan, directing The Marriage of Figaro and directing and designing productions of Alcina and Die Fledermaus
WILLIAM KENYON – Lighting Designer
William Kenyon serves as Head of the Lighting Design Program in the School of Theatre at Penn State. An active professional designer, he has designed over 200 plays, operas, and dances, along with over a dozen national and international tour seasons with several theatre and dance companies.
Mr. Kenyon has been involved in Native American theatre and dance for over 25 years, serving as resident Lighting Designer for the American Indian Dance Theatre, and was involved in the complete reimagining of Unto These Hills, a massive outdoor spectacle celebrating the history of the Cherokee Tribe.
While primarily a Lighting Designer, Mr. Kenyon also works as a Scenic & Projections designer, Sound Designer, Technical Director, and Stage Manager. He is the author of Theatre & Stage Photography, a new book addressing the challenges of photography for live performance. He is thrilled to be back in Montana again, having previously served as the Lighting Director for the Helena Symphony Performance of Sweeney Todd in 2023.
HEATHER ADAMS – Choreographer
Choreographer Heather Adams is the Executive Director of Arts Missoula. She honed her artistic talents in Phoenix, at South Mountain Center for the Performing Arts High School, Phoenix School of Ballet and Ballet Arizona before venturing to Philadelphia, PA, where she earned her BFA in Dance from the prestigious University of the Arts.
Embracing the vibrant energy of New York City, Ms. Adams embarked on a journey of professional growth, training at Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor. However, the allure of Missoula’s artistic spirit and close-knit community beckoned her in 1999. Since then, she has been an unwavering advocate for arts education, performance, and cultural enrichment within the Missoula community.
Immersing herself in the local arts scene, she found herself directing and choreographing musical theater productions both locally and regionally. Her dedication to giving back to the community has led her to volunteer and produce non-profit fundraisers, demonstrating her commitment to supporting the arts at all levels. Her love for dance transcends the stage, sharing her expertise in various styles at local studios and the University of Montana as well as across the region and as far as South Africa and Malawi. Recognizing the transformative power of dance, she founded the Downtown Dance Collective and served as its Executive Director for 13 years, nurturing budding artists and fostering a thriving dance community, producing an Artist in Residence series, and creating an inviting space for people to engage in and support the arts. Her extensive involvement in the arts has led her to become an essential figure in Missoula’s artistic landscape. As a testament to her impact, she currently serves on the University of Montana College of Arts and Media Advisory Council, contributing insights to shape the future of arts education and collaboration at the collegiate level.
Ms. Adams’ passion for the arts extends beyond local borders, as she takes on the role of State Captain for Montana in the esteemed Americans For The Arts organization based in Washington, DC. In this capacity, she actively champions the importance of the arts on a national level, advocating for the preservation and advancement of creative expression in communities across the country.
Montana’s Brand of Banking
KIRA DILLS-DESURRA – Mezzo Soprano
Hailed as a nuanced singer and talented comedic stage actress by the San Diego Union Tribune, Kira Dills-DeSurra is a vibrant American mezzo-soprano whose magnetic stage presence communicates effortless charm and authenticity.
A champion of new and rarely performed works, she has appeared in many American operas including Gerald Cohen’s Steal a Pencil for Me, as “Vera Boronel” in The Consul, “Isolde of the White Hands” in Frank Martin’s Le Vin Herbé, and “Nurse” and “Secretary” in The Perfect American by Phillip Glass. Her professional recordings include Lori Laitman’s The Three Feathers, Joe Illick’s Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World, Tom Cipullo’s After Life, Amy Beach’s Cabildo, and The Perfect American by Phillip Glass.
Recent roles include “Cherubino” in Le nozze di Figaro and “Lola” in Cavalleria Rusticana. She has performed with Opera Idaho, Opera Colorado, Chicago Opera Theater, and Long Beach Opera. Her versatile talents continue to shine on stage, earning her acclaim for her dynamic interpretations of diverse operatic roles. Dills-DeSurra is a graduate of the Chicago Opera Theater Young Artist Program. Kira Dills-DeSurra appears courtesy of Athlone Artists (Lenox, MA).
NOLA RICHARDSON – Soprano
Making her return to Helena, Australian/American Nola Richardson is known for making her mark as an “especially impressive” soprano (The New York Times). She has won First Prize in all three major American competitions focused on the music of J.S. Bach: Bethlehem Bach in 2016, Audrey Rooney Bach in 2018, and the Grand Rapids Symphony Linn Maxwell Keller Award in 2019. These honors have catapulted her to the forefront of Baroque ensembles and orchestras around the country, where she has been praised for her “astonishing balance and accuracy,” “crystalline diction,” and “naturalsounding ease” (Washington Post).
In recent seasons she has made debuts with the Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Colorado Symphonies in performances of Handel’s Messiah, and made appearances at the Lincoln Center with the American Classical Orchestra. She has performed with a wide range of Baroque ensembles, including the American Bach Soloists, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica, and the Colorado Bach Ensemble.
Her past highlights include a debut at the Kennedy Center with Opera Lafayette as “Fraarte” in Handel’s Radamisto, which drew praise for her “particularly appealing freshness and directness” (Washington Post), and a “standout” performance (Opera News) as the “First Lady” in Die Zauberflöte with the Clarion Music Society. She is the first and only soprano to receive the prestigious DMA degree in Early Music Voice from Yale, where she attended the Institute of Sacred Music.
Nola Richardson appears courtesy of Athlone Artists (Lenox, MA).
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JOHN GREEN – Baritone
Hailed at his Carnegie Hall debut for his “rich and deep sound,” versatile baritone John Robert Green returns to Helena, having enjoyed his time performing with the Helena Symphony on numerous occasions. Highlights of Mr. Green’s operatic credits include the title role in Falstaff, “Don Fernando” in Fidelio, “Caleb Plummer” in Zandonai’s Il Grillo del Focolare, “Bardo” in Cilea’s Gloria, “Basilio” in Il barbiere di Siviglia, “Jack Rance” in Fanciulla del West, “Gunther” in Götterdämmerung, “Tarquinius” in The Rape of Lucretia, “Father” in Hänsel und Gretel, the title role in Gianni Schicchi, “Escamillo” in Carmen, “Guglielmo” in Cosi fan tutte, “Marcello” in La bohème, “Dr. Rappaccini” in La Hija de Rappaccini, “Count Almaviva” in Le nozze di Figaro, and the title role in Don Giovanni with companies including New York City Opera, Salt Marsh Opera, St Petersburg Opera, Israeli Opera, Teatro Grattacielo, Gulfshore Opera, and Winter Opera St Louis.
Equally at home on the concert stage, Mr. Green has garnered accolades for his performance of “Elijah” in Mendelssohn’s Elijah. He has appeared as a featured soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Bach’s Mass in B minor, Christmas Oratorio, and St. John Passion, as well as Handel’s Messiah and as the title character in Handel’s Saul. He also gained critical acclaim for his performances of Haydn’s The Creation, and Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony
John Green appears courtesy of Wade Artist Management (Marietta, OH).
MARY-HOLLIS HUNDLEY – Soprano
Mary-Hollis Hundley is currently in her first season on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera as a cover of “Sister Catherine” and “Sister Lillian” in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. She has received awards from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, George London Foundation, Gerda Lissner Young Artist Institute, James M. Collier Vocal Competition,Wagner Society of New York, Santa Fe Opera, and Sarasota Opera Guild.
In recent seasons, her highlights include the roles of “Kayla” in Taking Up Serpents (Glimmerglass Festival), “Frau Schmidt” in The Sound of Music (The Glimmerglass Festival and Arizona Opera), “Freia” in Das Rheingold, (Dayton Opera), “Gertrud” in Hänsel und Gretel (Detroit Opera), “Helena” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Virginia Opera), and three exciting covers: Christine Brewer’s Ariadne auf Naxosat (Kentucky Opera), Jennifer Rowley’s “Medea” in Mayr’s Medea in Corinto (Teatro Nuovo), and Susan Graham’s title role of Blitzstein’s Regina (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis).
Ms. Hundley’s mainstage credits include “Meg Page” in Vaughan William’s Sir John in Love (BronxOpera), “High Priestess” in Aïda (Sarasota Opera), “Musetta” in La bohème (Tulsa Opera), and “Vitellia” in La clemenza di Tito (Opera in the Heights). Her other roles include “Mother” in Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Female Chorus in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, “Governess” in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, and the title roles in Puccini’s SuorAngelica and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta
Mary-Hollis Hundley appears courtesy of Athlone Artists (Lenox, MA).
MATTHEW DIBATTISTA – Tenor
Described as “brilliant” by Opera News, tenor Matthew DiBattista is continually in demand on some of the world’s most prestigious stages, having performed opera and concert works throughout the United States, as well as Italy, France, and Portugal. He has sung with such conductors as Charles Dutoit, Seiji Ozawa, Andris Nelson, Sir Andrew Davis and Robert Shaw. Known for an exceptionally varied repertoire, he has performed over 70 different roles to date spanning the operatic repertoire from early to new. 2024 includes his San Francisco Opera debut as the “Doctor” in The Handmaid’s Tale, his Carnegie Hall debut as the “Teacher” in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk with the Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded on Deutsche Grammaphon, and a GRAMMY® Nomination for Odyssey Opera’s recording of Lord of Cries
Matthew DiBattista has been on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera and performed several seasons as a principal artist with Lyric Opera of Chicago where he recently sang “Normano” in Lucia di Lammermoor. Other successes include several performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Glimmerglass Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Cincinnati May Festival, Boston Pops, New Orleans Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Opera Omaha, Tulsa Opera, Opera Boston, Virginia Opera, Opera Colorado, Tanglewood Music Center, Boston Lyric Opera, Wichita Symphony, Fresno Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, Charleston Symphony, Long Beach Opera, and he has appeared for nine straight seasons as principal artist with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
TASCHA ANDERSON – Soprano
Praised by Opera News as “a warm, elegant mezzo,” Tascha Anderson originally hails from Helena, Montana, and has been esteemed as “emotionally rich,” “a brassy mezzo with flair,” and “vivacious.” Being a new opera and contemporary music advocate, a highlight of Tascha’s career is premiering the role of “Pamela” in Evan Mack’s Roscoe with Albany Symphony alongside Deborah Voigt. The Times Union admired her premiere as “a vocal standout.” She also toured the lead role in Mack’s Angel of the Amazon in Washington, D.C., Vancouver, and Nashville, shortly following and performed with the GRAMMY® Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project in the Boston premiere of Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
A few of Ms. Anderson’s other notable opera credits and favorite roles include the title role in The Tragedy of Carmen (Tri-Cities Opera and Charlottesville Opera), “Older Alyce” in Glory Denied (TriCities Opera), and “Jacqueline” in Le médecin malgré lui (Odyssey Opera). The Boston Globe applauded Tascha’s debut with Odyssey as “quite memorable” and OPERA magazine said she brought about an “alert, present, well-honed, and agile mezzo.”
Ms. Anderson earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Pepperdine University and her Master of Music degree from The Boston Conservatory. While pursuing degrees, she was appointed several leadership awards and received voice performance scholarships at both schools. She serves as an adjunct voice professor at Carroll College, holds a private voice studio, and works in marketing, and enjoys camping and hiking with her family in her free time.
2 NON-SERIES CONCERT
Christmas in the Cathedral
Monday, 2 December 2024
6:30 p.m. • Cathedral of St. Helena
Tuesday, 3 December 2024
6:30 p.m. • Cathedral of St. Helena
Usher in Helena’s longest and greatest holiday tradition for an evening of reflection, celebration, and sounds of the season in the profoundly reflective Cathedral of St. Helena.
The use of photographic and recording equipment is strictly prohibited. As a courtesy to the performers and fellow concert-goers, please silence all devices prior to the beginning of the performance. Latecomers and those leaving the hall during the performance will be seated at an appropriate time in the concert.
Allan R. Scott Kelly Curtin
Wesley Morgan Logan Tanner
Charles Robert Stephens
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
KELLY CURTIN – Soprano
LOGAN TANNER – Countertenor
WESLEY MORGAN – Tenor
CHARLES ROBERT STEPHENS – Baritone
HANDEL Messiah
PART I
Overture
Tenor Accompagnato: “Comfort ye my people”
Tenor Air: “Every valley shall be exalted” Chorus: “And the glory of the Lord”
Bass Accompagnato: “Thus saith the Lord”
Bass Air: “But who may abide the day of His coming”
Chorus: “And He shall purify”
Alto Recitative: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive”
Alto Air & Chorus: “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion”
Bass Accompagnato: “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth”
Bass Air: “The people that walked in darkness”
Chorus: “For unto us a Child is born”
Pastoral Symphony
Soprano Recitative: “There were shepherds abiding in the field”
Soprano Accompagnato: “And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them”
Soprano Recitative: “And the angel said unto them”
Soprano Accompagnato: “And suddenly there was with the angel” Chorus: “Glory to God in the highest”
Soprano Air: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion”
Alto Recitative: “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened”
Alto and Soprano Duet: “He shall feed His flock”
Chorus: “His yoke is easy, His burthen is light”
INTERMISSION
PART II
Chorus: “Behold the Lamb of God”
Alto Air: “He was despised”
Chorus: “Surely, He hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows”
Chorus: “And with His stripes, we are healed"
Chorus: “All we like sheep, have gone astray"
Tenor Accompagnato: “All they that see Him, laugh Him to scorn”
Chorus: “He trusted in God”
Tenor Accompagnato: “Thy rebuke hath broken His heart”
Tenor Air: “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow”
Tenor Recitative: “Unto which of the angels said He at any time”
Chorus: “Let all the angels of God worship Him”
Chorus: “The Lord Gave the Word”
Bass Air: “Why do the nations so furiously rage together”
Chorus: “Let us break their bonds asunder”
Tenor Recitative: “He that dwelleth in heaven”
Tenor Air: “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron”
Chorus: “Hallelujah”
PART III
Soprano Air: “I know that my Redeemer liveth”
Chorus: “Since by man came death”
Bass Accompagnato: “Behold, I tell you a mystery”
Bass Air: “The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be rais’d”
Thomas Lee, trumpet
Alto Recitative: “Then shall be brought to pass”
Alto and Tenor Duet: “O death, where is thy sting?”
Chorus: “But thanks be to God”
Soprano Air: “If God be for us, who can be against us”
Chorus: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain”
Chorus: “Blessing and honor, glory, pow’r be unto Him”
Chorus: “Amen”
Mozart by Candlelight
Friday, 24 January 2025
7:30 p.m. • St. Paul's United Methodist Church
Saturday 25 January 2025
7:30 p.m. • St. Paul's United Methodist Church
An overture and a symphony by Mozart are paired with Beethoven’s witty and cheerful Fourth Symphony – and all by candlelight.
This concert is sponsored by generous support from:
SEE INSERT FOR PROGRAM NOTES
The use of photographic and recording equipment is strictly prohibited. As a courtesy to the performers and fellow concert-goers, please silence all devices prior to the beginning of the performance. Latecomers and those leaving the hall during the performance will be seated at an appropriate time in the concert.
Allan R. Scott
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA
MOZART La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621: Overture+
MOZART
MOZART
BEETHOVEN
Divertimento in D major, K. 136+
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Presto
Symphony No. 28 in C major, K. 200+
I. Allegro spiritoso
II. Andante
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Presto
INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60
I. Allegro
II. Adagio – Allegro vivace
III. Allegro molto e vivace – Un poco meno allegro
IV. Allegro ma non troppo + = Helena Symphony Premiere Performance
PHOTO: Ginny Emery
Pianist Roman Rabinovich, Prokofiev, & Dvořák
Saturday, 22 February 2025
7:30 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
World-acclaimed Israeli Pianist Roman Rabinovich returns to perform Prokofiev’s explosive Piano Concerto No. 3, described by the composer as “devilishly difficult.” Dvořák’s emotionally profound Seventh Symphony brings the concert to a close as a personal reflection on grief and joy.
This concert is sponsored by generous support from: Guest artist's appearance is sponsored by generous support from:
JEANNE & RON BALDWIN
Roman Rabinovich
The use of photographic and recording equipment is strictly prohibited. As a courtesy to the performers and fellow concert-goers, please silence all devices prior to the beginning of the performance. Latecomers and those leaving the hall during the performance will be seated at an appropriate time in the concert.
Allan R. Scott Roman Rabinovich
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
RoMAN RABINoVICH – Piano
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA
PROKOFIEV
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26
Mr. Rabinovich, piano
I. Andante
II. Andantino
III. Allegro ma non troppo
INTERMISSION
DVOŘÁK
Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Poco adagio
III. Scherzo: Vivace
IV. Finale: Allegro
PHOTO: Emily Rund
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26
Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is scored for solo piano, piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, castanets, tambourine, and divided strings.
Duration: 30 minutes
Prokofiev, the Soviet Union’s greatest artistic hero, died on the same day Joseph Stalin died – the Soviet Union’s evilest villain.
PARALLEL EVENTS /
1921
Warren G. Harding becomes 29th U.S. President
Former U.S. President William H. Taft becomes Chief Justice of Supreme Court
Franklin D. Roosevelt contracts polio
Adolf Hitler becomes president of Nazi Party
Benito Mussolini declares himself leader of Fascist Party
Charlie Chaplin’s film The Kid premieres
Astronaut John Glenn, singer Mario Lanza, novelist Mario Puzo, comedian Rodney Dangerfield, and actors
Steve Allen, Carol Channing, Maureen O’Hara, and Charles Bronson are born
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Born: Sontsovka, Russia, 23 April 1881
Died: Moscow, Russia, 5 March 1953
About the Composer
Without question, Sergei Prokofiev contributed more works of music to the standard symphonic repertoire than any other single composer of the 20th century. Moreover, Prokofiev’s musical voice cannot be forced into one, two, or even three types of styles. His music has been categorized as post-romantic, anti-romantic, nationalistic, neoclassical, eclectic, cold, sarcastic, innocent, savage, lyrical, epic, sarcastic, mischievous, and ironic. Despite all the many contradictions within these descriptions, praises, and criticisms, Prokofiev’s composing style was all these things. For example, in his Ten Pieces for Children and his well-loved Peter and the Wolf, his music is innocent and perhaps a bit sarcastic. The score to the film Alexander Nevsky, opera War & Peace, and The Russian Overture demonstrate Prokofiev’s nationalistic and epic imagination, while his Scythian Suite and Symphony No. 2 reveal his brashness and savagery. His greatest ballets, Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella, are warm and lyrical, and even profoundly tragic (in terms of the former)!
It was Prokofiev’s love for all the musical genres that enabled him to poignantly compose operas, ballets, film scores, concertos, sonatas, symphonies, children’s music, songs, choruses, quartets, orchestral suites, marches for military bands, and even a composition for four bassoons! Prokofiev was not a late developer. In fact, he was fully matured as a composer by the age of 23. Originally home schooled by his well-off parents, Prokofiev began piano lessons with his mother before entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he challenged teachers like Rimsky-Korsakov.
Prokofiev left his homeland as the Russian Revolution broke out. For several years he toured Japan, Europe, and the United States before living a self-imposed exile from Russia in France for seventeen years. In 1934, Prokofiev returned home to the Soviet Union where he was initially welcomed back like the prodigal son. After World War II, Prokofiev’s music fell victim to the Stalinist attack on Western “formalist” styles and his music was officially banned, though that was rarely enforced. It was the arrest and imprisonment of Prokofiev’s wife, and not the artistic rejection, that caused Prokofiev to compose works that reflected a cold, anti-Stalin sentiment.
During the summer of 1944 the Soviet government moved its most prominent artists to a retreat house in the countryside to get them away from the noise of World War II. Located about 150 miles from Moscow, Prokofiev joined several other Russian
Praised by The New York Times for his “uncommon sensitivity and feeling”, the eloquent young pianist Roman Rabinovich was top prizewinner of the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel in 2008. He made his Israel Philharmonic debut under Zubin Mehta at the age of 10, and has since appeared as a soloist throughout Europe and the United States, most recently with orchestras including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Sir Roger Norrington, the Meiningen Hofkapelle, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra and Szczecin Philharmonic in Europe, and the Seattle Symphony, the Sarasota Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony, the Sinfonia Boca Raton in the U.S.
He has given recitals in Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre in New York, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and the Terrace Theater of Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and has participated in festivals including Marlboro, Lucerne, Davos, Prague Spring, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and MecklenburgVorpommern. An avid chamber musician, he is also a regular guest at ChamberFest Cleveland. Through the 2020-21 global pandemic, Rabinovich and his wife, violinist Diana Cohen, gave a very successful series of free weekly concerts from their front yard in Calgary.
Mr. Rabinovich has earned critical praise for his explorations of the piano music of Haydn. At the 2018 Bath Festival, he presented a 10-recital, 42-sonata series, earning praise in The Sunday Times Prior to that, in 2016 as artist in Residence at the Lammermuir Festival in Scotland, he performed 25 Haydn sonatas in 5 days, and he has also performed a complete sonata cycle in Tel Aviv. His recording projects include the complete sonatas for First Hand Records, the with the second volume released in July 2021.
Born in Tashkent, Roman Rabinovich immigrated to Israel with his family in 1994 where he began his studies with Irena Vishnevitsky and Arie Vardi, and at age 10 made his Israel Philharmonic debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta. He went on to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Seymour Lipkin, and earned his Master’s Degree at the Juilliard School where he studied with Robert McDonald.
Roman Rabinovich was a top prizewinner at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2008, while in 2015, he was selected by Sir András Schiff as one of three pianists for the inaugural “Building Bridges” series, created to highlight young pianists of unusual promise. Dubbed “a true polymath, in the Renaissance sense of the word” (Seen & Heard International, 2016), Rabinovich is also a composer and visual artist, who regularly enhances his performances and CDs with his own artwork. He currently resides in Canada with his wife, violinist Diana Cohen, and daughter, Noa. Roman Rabinovich appears courtesy of Victoria Roswell Artist Management (London, England).
artists, including composers Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, and Shostakovich. Despite the hardships during the War, the years 1939-1945 were some of the most productive for Prokofiev as a composer. In addition to a string quartet, two piano sonatas, and a flute sonata, Prokofiev composed seven symphonies, eleven concertos, eight film scores, nine ballets, fourteen operas, and dozens of other works for orchestra, chorus, and solo instruments.
About the Work
Prokofiev’s popular Third Piano Concerto took shape over several years. Much of the thematic material was composed between 1911-1916 (much of which was originally intended for other works). Appalled by the mayhem caused by the Bolshevik Revolution, Prokofiev left Russia in 1918 for the United States in hopes that his works and performances as a pianist would appeal to American audiences like Rachmaninoff was doing. American audiences, however, were not used to hearing Prokofiev’s bold, and often unmannered, style of playing, let alone his compositions.
Making his way to Chicago, Prokofiev formed relationships with the Chicago Opera and Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was commissioned by both to compose new works (his opera Love for Three Oranges and the Piano Concerto No. 3). The reception was less than enthusiastic, and Prokofiev left the U.S. for Europe until he returned to Russia for the remainder of his life.
As with so many composers, Prokofiev wrote his keyboard works so he could perform them himself. Today, his Third Piano Concerto remains one of the most popular piano works of the last century, despite the initial response to the work. Known for his incredible energy, Prokofiev’s spirit is very much embedded in the entire Concerto.
Even more than the spirited flair, Prokofiev wrote some of the most technically demanding and virtuosic passages for the soloist, so that the Concerto needs to be seen as well as heard. The work simply sparkles throughout the entire thirty minutes with running passages, pounding chords, and contrasting emotions. The Concerto “profiles the composer’s own pianism – ranging from exuberant and extroverted to poetic and introspective,” explains Musicologist Mary Ann Feldman. “The work’s contrasting ideas that are joyous, soulful, sometimes reveling in the grotesque, all attest to the broad range of emotional responsiveness characteristic of Prokofiev’s humanity.”
Opening with the simplicity of a solo clarinet followed by a lyrically expressive sigh-like passage from the orchestra, the piano joins in and they launch into a roller-coaster ride of excitement. Scales, running passages, percussive chords, and snappy rhythmic melodic ditties are all infused into the ten-minute movement until one final outburst of mockery and fun crashes the movement to a close. Prokofiev sets the second movement to a light, march-like theme along with several variations on it. The variations invoke the excitement of the first movement as well as explore more contemplative moments. The playfulness of the bassoon and the plucking of the strings begin the final movement; this is a blustery storm which is equally humorously frantic as it is passionately reflective. The result is an amazing thirty minutes of virtuosity for the pianist, and great excitement and fun for the audience.
Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and divided strings.
Duration: 40 minutes
PARALLEL
EVENTS / 1885
Grover Cleveland becomes 22nd U.S. President
Sino-Japanese War ends
Boston Pops Orchestra is founded
Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado premieres
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published
Brahms’ Fourth Symphony premieres
U.S. General George Patton, Broadway composer Jerome Kerns, poet Ezra Pound, and novelist Sinclair Lewis are born
U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and novelist Victor Hugo die
Born: Nelahozeves, Czechoslovakia, 8 September 1841
Died: Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1 May 1904
About the Composer
Without question Antonín Dvořák is one of the most prolific symphony composers of all time and the greatest of all Czech composers. His contribution to symphonic and chamber music ranks alongside that of the most commanding nineteenth century masters.
Born in a small Bohemian Czech village to an innkeeper and part-time butcher, Dvořák’s upbringing instilled in him a love for the countryside and its people – a love that he never lost, and a love that would be his greatest inspiration. As a small boy he learned the violin, sang in the local church choir, played in orchestras, and composed marches and waltzes for the town orchestras. As his compositional studies progressed, Dvořák became highly proficient on the piano, organ, and viola. Like most of the late-Romantic composers, he quickly succumbed to the spell of Richard Wagner’s music and ideas.
Dvořák’s career as a composer began slowly, so he served as an organist at a church in Prague and played viola in several orchestras. After the performance of his Seventh Symphony (originally numbered No. 2), several string quartets, and a few operas, Dvořák became well respected as a major composer throughout Czechoslovakia.
As several other nationalist movements in music took shape, specifically in Russia, Hungary, England, Italy, and France, Dvořák assumed the mantle of the Czech nationalist movement that was started by composer Bedřich Smetana. As Dvořák began to benefit from his celebrity status, honors were heaped on him at home and abroad – the University of Prague presented him with an honorary degree, and the Prague Conservatory named him Professor of Composition.
In England, Dvořák conducted his works for several years, and he was invited to head the newly founded New York National Conservatory of Music. After giving into much persuasion, Dvořák embarked for the United States in 1892, and the next three years would become one of his most productive periods as a composer.
Upon witnessing the growth of music in America, Dvořák asked American composers, “What is American music? What are its origins?” This question would shape American artists for the next century, particularly Aaron Copland. The distance from Europe gave Dvořák perspective on his homeland and during his tenure in the United States he made his own attempt to identify the roots of American music. His internationally loved Symphony No. 9 was subtitled From the New World and this work, along with his cello concerto and two more string quartets, secured Dvořák’s place among the greatest composers of the late-Romantic era, and as an equal to Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Nielsen.
Since then, Dvořák’s music has generally been represented in concert halls outside of Prague only by these last great works, as the Ninth Symphony in many ways has blinded audiences to the
existence of his eight others. Only during the last thirty years or so have orchestras throughout the world performed these earlier works, which have been met with amazement by audiences.
About the Work
In the spring of 1884, Dvořák traveled to London at the invitation of the London Philharmonic Society, where he was greeted with much affection and elected an honorary member. To commemorate the occasion, they commissioned a new symphony from Dvořák. Approaching the new project with real zeal, Dvořák said he hoped to create a work that would “shock the world." All the while, Dvořák had just witnessed a performance of Brahms’ Third Symphony and was determined to write a symphony as superb as the symphonies of his colleague, mentor, and friend – saying, upon finishing the new work, that “I don’t want to let Brahms down."
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 was the first of his nine symphonies to capture and hold public approval (although his first four symphonies were not published in his lifetime). Even though Dvořák’s From the New World Symphony (Symphony No. 9) remains the most loved of his nine, the Seventh is arguably his finest artistic achievement. “It remains unsurpassed among Dvořák’s works for profundity of conception and consummate craftsmanship,” states musicologist Beth Fleming. “The development in inspiration and mastery that it shows is one of those miracles of creative progress that can only be explained in terms of genius rather than logic.”
The new work could hardly have been more different from Dvořák’s wonderfully optimistic Sixth Symphony. The early 1880s were very turbulent for Dvořák; in fact, he called this period a time “of doubt and obstinacy, silent sorrow and resignation.” His mother had died in 1882, and he was quite stressed over the steady mental decline of Bedřich Smetana, the founding father of modern Czech music, who eventually died in 1884. Furthermore, Dvořák was anxious over the recent success of his own career, where he felt pressured to turn from a provincial composer into a more prominently noted artist. As a result, Dvořák subtitled the Seventh Symphony “From Sad Years,” and today it is often referred to as “The Tragic.”
Each of the four movements of the Seventh Symphony has a sense of pent-up, inner tragedy. The first movement opens with a theme that creeps in and that is as dark as it is determined. The atmosphere is immediately defined by a low, sustained note by the horns, timpani, and basses. The movement maintains a bold, intense crisis throughout and, as program annotator Phillip Huscher suggests, it ends “not with the tragic power which it has so brilliantly harnessed, but in a sudden demise." In the second and longest movement of the Seventh Symphony, Dvořák composed some of his most inspirational music. Opening with a religious-like chant, the movement becomes a sorrowful song that is passionately led by a longing horn solo until it gently ends.
As a contrast to the first two intricately dense movements, the third movement (scherzo) implores listeners to want to dance from the very opening moments. The sense of two separate themes on top of one another gives the movement a real sense of magical excitement; where the one sweeping melody is clearly in three beats and the other theme is in two. The middle section adds another brilliant contrast, whereby Dvořák creates a peaceful pastoral that includes bird sounds from the woodwinds, echoing hunting calls, and a sprightly whirling dance. The opening themes return with a sense of relaxed yet determined energy. If the third movement seems to be free of tragedy, then the conclusion of the movement returns the Symphony to a sense of contemplation and anxiousness.
A huge cry of pent-up anguish opens the final movement, and it leads directly to a tormented, almost violent, march. While the tension attempts to relax throughout, the sinister-like opening fury continues to interrupt. The movement culminates in a storm of energy and concludes, not with triumph as one would hope, but with overwhelming grief.
SEASON
70 AFTER PARTY IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED IN PART BY
Behold the Sea!
Saturday, 22 March 2025
7:30 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
Debussy’s landmark La Mer captures the shimmering mysteriousness and power of the sea, and Englishman Ralph Vaughan William’s A Sea Symphony is an epic masterpiece blending the poetry of Walt Whitman with a transformative voyage of the human spirit.
The use of photographic and recording equipment is strictly prohibited. As a courtesy to the performers and fellow concert-goers, please silence all devices prior to the beginning of the performance. Latecomers and those leaving the hall during the performance will be seated at an appropriate time in the concert.
Allan R. Scott Leah Partridge Evan Bravos
This concert is sponsored by generous support from:
Guest artists' appearances are sponsored by generous support from:
ART & RENA BUMGARDNER
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
LeAH pARtRIDGe – Soprano e VAN BRAVOS – Baritone
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA & C H o RAL e
DEBUSSY La Mer
I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Noon to Dawn on the Sea) II. Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves) III. Dialgoue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and Sea)
INTERMISSION
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony
Ms. Partridge, soprano
Mr. Bravos, baritone
I. A Song for All Seas, All Ships II. On the Beach at Night, Alone
III. Scherzo: The Waves IV. The Explorers
Performed in English with English subtitles.
MASTERWORKS CONCERT V
La Mer (The Sea)
Debussy’s La Mer is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, glockenspiel, two harps, and divided strings.
Duration: 24 minutes
PARALLEL EVENTS / 1905
Theodore Roosevelt begins first full term as 26th U.S. President (he completed William McKinley’s term after his assassination)
Russia Revolution begins
Norway declares independence from Sweden
Alfred Einstein presents theory of relativity
Richard Strauss’ opera Salome premieres
Mahler’s completes his Seventh Symphony
Picasso paints Boy in a Collar
Baseball great Ty Cobb makes major league debut
Actor Henry Fonda, industrialist and aviator Howard Hughes, and band leader Tommy Dorsey are born
Rotary Club is founded
DEBUSSY
Born: Saint Germain-en-Laye, France, 22 August 1862
Died: Paris, France, 5 March 1918
There are very few defining moments in music history that drastically altered the future of music. Certainly, Beethoven’s Third and Ninth Symphonies, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Faun, which premiered 22 December 1894.
In a single ten-minute work, the grandiose late-Romantic era shaped by Richard Wagner collapsed, and the sounds of twentieth century were ushered in and, as modern composer and conductor Pierre Boulez often claims, “the art of music began to beat with a new pulse.” The 32-year-old pianist, Claude Debussy indeed did create a completely new sound of music with this tone poem that was inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the same name written almost two decades earlier. The subject matter of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, however, is not the main interest of the composer; rather, it is the images left over from the faun’s dreams that Debussy attempts to capture, or as Debussy states, “it is the general impression of the poem.” The effect of this sensuous, fluid, subtly constructed music and supremely refined style of composition became known as impressionism in music, and thereby linking Debussy with painters such as Monet, Renoir, and Seurat.
For Debussy, music was rooted in memory. In a letter to a pupil, Debussy wrote: “Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralize variations of color and light within a single picture.” This very statement became Debussy’s credo, mirroring statements from the impressionist and post-impressionist painters.
Earlier in his largely self-taught compositional career Debussy won the coveted Prix de Rome for composition in 1884; composed in Italy (even playing for Liszt); discovered and rejected the growing Wagnerian cult; then returned to Paris more focused and musically mature. It was then that he composed his well-known string quartet and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. While Debussy’s music contains the color and ambiguity of Wagner’s harmonies, he avoids its emotional tensions.
Through his own discoveries, musically and otherwise, Debussy learned to prefer suggestion to direct statement. He trusted no “lifeless rules invented by pendants,” as Debussy said; rather, it was his instinct that he followed, and in the process, he brought to music a unique world of sensibility.
In addition to his landmark Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Debussy is most recognized for the tone poem La Mer (The Sea). In many ways La Mer has become the work most connected with the composer. It is astonishing that La Mer is only Debussy’s seventh major orchestra work, as is a sophisticated, well-constructed three movement staple of twentieth century music.
Organized in three movements (which are never performed alone, unlike Debussy’s Nocturnes), La Mer is the closest Debussy gets to composing a symphony. Subtitled Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra, the tone poem is a masterpiece of suggestion and
subtlety as it depicts the ocean and its motionlessness, unpredictability, and power. Debussy gives some insight to his overwhelming adoration of the sea as he refers to the ocean as “that great blue Sphinx.”
Musicologist Caroline Potter in Debussy & Nature explains that Debussy’s depiction of the sea “avoids monotony by using a multitude of water figurations… They evoke the sensation of swaying movement of waves and suggest the pitter-patter of falling droplets of spray.” The work opens with a movement titled “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” where a slow introduction depicts the sea taking shape from the darkness of morning to the bright sun of midday. The slower introduction “floats in on rippling violins and violas and more deeply undulating cellos…bringing a variety of themes along with extraordinary climax of conflicting rhythms,” explains program annotator Gerald Larner. The movement culminates as the most important themes gloriously emerge to a brilliant sunrise.
Titled “Play of Waves,” the second movement is the most thrilling of the three, yet in many ways seems at times the least “Debussy-like." Puccini referred to La Mer as “Debussy’s revolt against Debussyism.” Rooted in a more realistic scene and less of an image, “Play of Waves” captures the unpredictable changes in the wind and the waves. Debussy captures the changes, both subtle and not, and the playfulness of the sea with a dance-like English horn, decorative violins trilling, rhythmic figures in the woodwinds, and the call of a trumpet until a waltz-like figure ensues in the strings. The result is images of color and reflections foreshadowing the sudden coming of dusk. Instead of the wind making the sea dance, the third movement portrays a “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea.” In a tempestuous dialogue, there is little calm in the final movement of La Mer. As the low rumble of the cellos and basses convey the approaching storm and the woodwinds give a gust of wind, the theme from the opening movement returns and the natural forces of the sea are mysteriously and wildly unleashed.
La Mer was not well-received at its premiere performance, partially because the orchestra was under rehearsed and partially because Parisians were publicly outraged at Debussy for leaving his wife for a singer. Critics also did not praise La Mer, saying the work was “rubbish,” “cacophonous,” and it was a “symphonic pictures of seasickness.” Despite that Debussy was often only admired exclusively for his harmonies, it was his images that were guided by clear melodic passages that contributed to his popularity. Many of Debussy’s works were criticized as being “boneless tonal vibrato,” yet his music was capable of powerful, but controlled eruptions when needed. La Mer remains one of the greatest tone poems in all of music today, picturing the peaceful, turbulent, uncontrolled, all-consuming, reflective, shimmering, dramatic, endless motion of the mysterious ocean.
Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony
The Sea Symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, organ, two harps, divided strings, mixed chorus, and soprano and baritone solos.
Duration: 67 minutes
While Vaughan Williams premiered his Sea Symphony on his 38th birthday (12 October 1910), it did not reach American shores until 1970.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM by Allan R.
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Born: Down Ampney, England, 12 October 1872
Died: London, England, 26 August 1958
Born into a family with strong intellectual ancestry (lawyers on his father’s side and Josiah Wedgewood and Charles Darwin on his mother’s), Ralph Vaughan Williams studied organ, piano, and music theory at a fairly young age. By the age of 15, he had already decided to become a composer and, after hearing a performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde, he was so impressed and overwhelmed that his long career as one of England’s greatest organists, composers, and teachers began.
Studying under other British greats, such as Charles Stanford and Hubert Parry, and major composers such as Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel, Vaughan Williams and classmate Gustav Holst forged a friendship that would prove to be one of Vaughan Williams’ most influential relationships.
Vaughan Williams was fortunate in having a private income, although he devoted himself to composition in a professional manner, working regular hours, setting himself high standards, revising extensively. He was also in demand as a scholar, contributing articles to Grove’s Dictionary, giving lectures, and editing the English Hymnal (1906), where Vaughan Williams contributed several tunes inspired by his lifelong interest in English folk melody.
PARALLEL EVENTS / 1910
China ends slavery
George V becomes King of England
Glacier National Park is established
Picasso’s cubist period
Stravinsky composes
The Firebird
New York City’s Pennsylvania Station opens
King of England Edward VII, nurse Florence Nightingale, novelists Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy die
His music was profoundly affected by the melodic shape, rhythmic character and, above all, the atmosphere which he found in folk song: “The art of music above all other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation,” he declared. Vaughan Williams’ collected works include incidental music and film scores, nine symphonies, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, The Lark Ascending for violin solo and orchestra, Fantasia on Greensleeves, many songs and choral works, settings of carols and chamber music, and several operas including Sir John in Love, Riders to the Sea, and The Pilgrim’s Progress
After World War I and his military service, Vaughan Williams joined the teaching staff of the Royal College of Music, along with taking the post of conductor of the Bach Choir in 1921, making his American conducting debut in 1922 with a performance of his Pastoral Symphony.
Over the last thirty years of his life, the prolific composer’s reputation grew in fame and honors, and Vaughan Williams was eventually dubbed at the age of 85 as the “grand old man of English music.” Americans, as well, greatly took to him as a “Miltonic figure” whose music had “splendor without tinsel.” Vaughan Williams was in some sense a nationalist composer, like Bartók in Hungary, Verdi in Italy, or Manuel de Falla in Spain. He wrote in 1942 that “the love of one’s country and customs was essential.” But folk music never shackled his individuality, and works such as his Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies are English-sounding only in a way in which a Brahms’ symphony sounds German.
Orchestrating Better Communities Celebrating the Arts
LEAH PARTRIDGE – Soprano
Celebrated for her “full, rich voice, captivating in its beauty and grace” (Opera Now) and her “clear, agile soprano” (Chicago Sun Times), Leah Partridge has garnered worldwide critical acclaim for her compelling interpretations of over forty of opera’s leading ladies.
Ms. Partridge has performed “Helena” in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy; “Ellen Orford” in Peter Grimes at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Spain; and “Musetta” in La bohème with Washington National Opera and Atlanta Opera, about which the Atlanta Journal Constitution raved, “Leah Partridge gives us a Musetta that’s proud and brazen, but also intuitive and sympathetic, a blend of trash and class, a flash of color and self-determination in an otherwise dingy city.”
Highlights of her career include performances of “Violetta” in La Traviata with Semper Oper Dresden, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor with Teatro Colòn in Buenos Aires, and her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008 followed by several return engagements and live in HD broadcasts, including “First Niece” in Peter Grimes and “La Charmeuse” in Thaïs. She has performed in concert with the Orchestras of Atlanta, Boston Baroque, Cleveland, and San Diego Symphony, and can be heard on the 2011 art song recording Finding Home with Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon.
Leah Partridge appears courtesy of Athlone Artists (Lenox, MA).
EVAN BRAVOS – Baritone
Greek-American Baritone Evan Bravos, marked as a “talent to watch” by the Chicago Tribune, has received critical acclaim for his “lovely lyric baritone” (Opera News) in artful interpretations of opera, oratorio and art song repertoire. Mr. Bravos’ 2022-23 season included a reprise as “Count Almaviva” in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, a featured role with Chicago Opera Theater as “Ivan Ivanovich/Countess’ Lackey” in Shostakovich’s The Nose with legendary director, Francesca Zambello; and a debut with Helena Symphony on Rachmaninoff’s The Bells with Allan R. Scott. Career highlights for Mr. Bravos include performing in the West Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain at the Music Academy of the West; performing the role of “Hannah Before” in the 50th production of As One with Opera Santa Barbara; and playing “El Dancaïro” in Carmen at Chicago Opera Theatre alongside Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe. Performances with Virginia Opera as “George Jones” in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene and as “Masetto” in Don Giovanni led Broadway World to proclaim, “If the future of opera sounds like Bravos, the art boasts a bright future indeed.”
Mr. Bravos has been a soloist in Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Milwaukee Symphony), Copland’s Old American Songs (Madison Symphony), Orff’s Carmina Burana (Chippewa Valley Symphony), Handel’s Messiah (Santa Fe Symphony), and in the Fauré Requiem on tour with the Colorado Symphony Chorus in Paris, Strasbourg and Munich.
A native of St. Charles, IL, he studied at Lawrence University Conservatory (B.M.) and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music (M.M.), where he earned his Doctorate in Musical Arts this year.
Evan Bravos appears courtesy of Athlone Artists (Lenox, MA).
Despite his knowledge and love for English poetry, Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 1, A Sea Symphony, uses the great American poet Walt Whitman. Whitman’s words appealed to Vaughan Williams because Whitman’s poetry was free in form and did not dictate a metrical scheme. But more compelling was Whitman’s freedom and unconventionality of thought. As musicologist Michael Kennedy states, “Whitman’s humanitarian outlook, together with a spiritual vision allied to no particular religious dogma, was just what many composers were looking for. In Vaughan Williams’s nature there was a strong vein of mysticism veiled by a thoroughly down-to-earth common sense approach to his art. He was a romantic; he was also an agnostic, a questioner; he believed in the strength of national roots, and he looked to the past to venture into the future.”
Originally titled Songs of the Seas and then Ocean Symphony, A Sea Symphony occupied Vaughan Williams’ efforts for six years, during which he composed several other works and studied with Maurice Ravel in Paris. While critics often cite clumsiness and awkwardness in the Sea Symphony, it remains an extraordinary, moving work. Its nobility and visionary qualities, its largeness of conception and execution, its reflection of the composer’s own personality, generous and humane, and its broad expressive range all combine to make the work a spiritual and musical experience of remarkable intensity and satisfaction.
The Sea Symphony’s four movements draw on Whitman’s poetry to illustrate both the natural majesty and splendor of the sea itself (especially in the third movement) and the sea as a metaphoric setting of man’s soul and its voyage into eternity. The Symphony’s opening is a moment of Vaughan Williams’ genius – a brass fanfare heralding the chorus’ exultant cry of “Behold, the sea itself,” followed by a broad orchestral passage which illustrates the swelling ocean’s “limitless heaving breast” on which the ships of all nations sail. The themes in this introduction reoccur in various guises throughout the work. The baritone soloist invokes thoughts of the sailors while “the soul of man” theme is assigned to the soprano soloist. The chorus contemplates those who “went down doing their duty” and the movement ends with a triumphant tribute to the “emblem of man elates above death.”
In the second movement, a slow and somber nocturne, the baritone and chorus contemplate the “vast similitude” of the universe, while in the third movement, a scherzo (the traditional third movement of a symphony that is very lively and quick), the chorus describes the exhilaration of a stormy sea and the thrill of the sight of a fine ship carving her way through the waves. In this movement Vaughan Williams provides a magnificent virtuoso passage for a symphonic chorus. The brilliant and breathless tone painting of the third movement speaks of “whistling winds,” “undulating waves,” and “many a fleck of foam.”
The final movement is the longest, riskiest, and greatest movement. Beginning with a rapturous vision of the planet “swimming in space,” it continues with a “sad incessant refrain” about the creation of man and reaches a climax with the arrival of the “poet worthy of that name, The true son of God…singing his songs.” The soloists embark on an almost operatic duet in which philosophy, spirituality, and human love inter-react until the soprano’s climatic “Bathe me, O God, in thee.” Now is the time for the longest voyage of all. “Away O soul! Hoist instantly the anchor!” the chorus exclaims, exhorting mankind to “steer for the deep waters only.” After a mighty reaffirmation – “Sail forth” – the soloists, echoed by the chorus, begin the quiet conclusion which slowly fades to inaudibility as the vessel disappears over the endless watery horizon and the man’s quest for eternity drifts into a quiet infinity.
We are proud to support the Helena Symphony
Beethoven’s Emperor &Pictures at an Exhibition
Saturday, 3 May 2025
7:30 p.m. • Helena Civic Center
Experience the heroic grandeur of Beethoven’s immortal Emperor Piano Concerto with noted Pianist Rodolfo Leone, before taking the colorful musical journey of Mussorgsky’s epic Pictures at an Exhibition.
The use of photographic and recording equipment is strictly prohibited. As a courtesy to the performers and fellow concert-goers, please silence all devices prior to the beginning of the performance. Latecomers and those leaving the hall during the performance will be seated at an appropriate time in the concert.
Allan R. Scott
Rodolfo Leone
Guest artists' appearances are sponsored by generous support from:
Rodolfo Leone
This concert is sponsored by generous support from:
ALLAN R. SCOTT – Conductor
RoDoLFo LeoNe – Piano
H e L e NA S YM p H o NY o RCH e S t RA
BEETHOVEN
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, Emperor Mr. Leone, piano
I. Allegro
II. Adagio un poco mosso —
III. Rondo: Allegro
INTERMISSION
MUSSORGSKY / Ravel orch. Pictures at an Exhibition
Promenade —
I. Gnomus Promenade —
II. The Old Castle Promenade —
III. Tuileries
IV. Bydło Promenade —
V. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells
VI. “Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle”
VII. Limoges: The Market —
VIII. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum –Cum mortuis in lingua mortua
IX. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga) —
X. The Great Gate of Kiev
PHOTO: Jeff Fasano
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, Emperor
The Emperor Piano Concerto is scored for solo piano, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, divided strings.
Duration: 40 minutes
The first documented performance took place on November 28, 1811, at a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert with pianist Friedrich Schneider and conductor Johann Schulz.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born: Bonn, Germany, 16 December 1770
Died: Vienna, Austria, 26 March 1827
About the Composer
Beethoven once described himself as someone “who did everything badly except compose music,” and yet he aroused intense personal devotion not only by his music but by his personality, rough and ill-mannered, violent and wrong-headed though his actions often were. The nature of his personality and the fact he was virtually uneducated, gave his musical utterance a simplicity and a sincerity that are without parallel among the great composers. It is these qualities, combined with a strong sense of humanity and an inexhaustible power of striving for the ideal, that have earned him his unique place in affections of music-lovers of all types.
Determined to survive as a free-lance musician, Beethoven eventually ended his career as a performer for full time composing due to the gradual onset of incurable deafness. Dedicating himself principally to composition from the early 1800s, he supported himself partly by public concerts, in which he presented his works and his skill as an improviser, and partly through dedication fees, sales of publications, and generous gifts from patrons.
PARALLEL
EVENTS / 1809
James Madison becomes fourth U.S. President
Territory of Illinois is created Napoleon defeats Austria and captures Vienna
Abraham Lincoln, naturalist Charles Darwin, author Edgar Allan Poe, Louis Braille, inventor of reading system for the blind, are born
Explorer Meriwether Lewis mysteriously dies at age 35
Essayist Thomas Paine and composer Franz Joseph Haydn die
Like his musical idol, Handel, Beethoven best represented his own musical era, its most valid embodiment, and at the same time contributed to the overall progression of music in technique and artistic form. Unlike Handel (and even Mozart) however, Beethoven did not have the luxury of speed and instantaneous perfection in his composing; several drafts, versions, and edits were made to most of his works. Certain pieces were often started, interrupted by other projects, and finished much later, at times, several years later. Beethoven’s large output of works in all genres includes much occasional music, some of which is rather mediocre.
In every genre, however, there are works of the greatest mastery, and the finest of them are unmatched in originality and expressiveness. His works include one opera (Fidelio), incidental music (Egmont, The Ruins of Athens), two ballets, nine symphonies, two mass settings (Mass in C and Missa Solemnis), oratorios, including Christ on the Mount of Olives, and other choral works, five piano concertos, a violin concerto, string quartets and quintets, chamber music with winds, sonatas for violin and cello, piano trios, 32 piano sonatas, many variation sets for piano, works for solo and two pianos, dance sets, concert arias and songs, and canons.
The Father of Romanticism ~
What chiefly distinguishes Beethoven from his predecessors is his uncanny personal connection to his art. Recognized as the father of the Romantic Era in music (the period between 1820 and the early 1900’s), Beethoven’s biography is best told
and understood by gaining an insight to his works, particularly his symphonies, string quartets, and Missa Solemnis
With Romanticism, the art and the artist are inseparable. This has become the driving force that most music has thrived on for the past two centuries, whereby music strives to attain the unattainable, the ideal, the larger-than-life qualities.
This is not to suggest that Beethoven surrendered the structures and forms established by Haydn and Mozart; rather Beethoven has become the link between the era of form and reason (Classical era, 1750-1820) and the Romantic era of emotion over reason and “art for art’s sake.”
Beethoven’s own personal ideas, hopes, and faith, or lack thereof, are represented in his symphonic output. He wrestled with his own fate in Symphony No. 5; strove to obtain ideal heroism in Symphony No. 3; and held true to the notion that the city of man can and should be equal to the city of God in Symphony No. 9.
About the Emperor Piano Concerto
Before Beethoven resigned himself to a career as a composer, he was better known as a keyboard virtuoso. Naturally then, much of his earlier compositions were written for piano to showcase his own abilities as a soloist and improviser.
Since Beethoven the pianist was much less oriented towards technical perfection than to originality and expressiveness, he became one of the most popular pianists in Vienna. Some claimed that the young Beethoven performed beyond the improvisational abilities of even Mozart.
The title “Emperor,” has been known since the early 19th century. According to the story, a French army officer stationed in Vienna attended the first performance of the work in the Austrian capital and was so moved by the grandeur of Beethoven’s music that he cried out: “C’est l’empereur!” (“It is the Emperor!”).
Even if this story were true and even if Beethoven was able to hear the exclamation – by this time he was quite hard of hearing – the comparison with Napoleon would hardly have flattered the composer. Once an ardent admirer of Bonaparte, Beethoven had become bitterly disenchanted as the French ruler’s ambition revealed itself. The most famous evidence of this change of heart is the
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CONCERT IV IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED IN PART BY
well known account of how the composer, after hearing that Napoleon had declared himself emperor, changed the title of his Third Symphony from its original homage, Bonaparte, to the anonymous Eroica (“Heroic”). Beethoven’s antipathy toward the French ruler hardened during the spring of 1809, the year he composed his fifth and last piano concerto, and the year when Napoleon captured Vienna.
But despite the unfortunate political connotation, “Emperor” does not seem an inappropriate title for the E flat Piano Concerto. In 1809, this work far surpassed any and all other concertos in its expression of majesty and heroism, and it retains an imperious position among compositions in its genre even today. During the first decade of the 19th century, Beethoven had transformed the piano concerto as thoroughly as he had the symphony. His first two keyboard concertos, like his First Symphony, were framed in a Mozart and Haydn-like Classical period of structure and form. These were attractive, skillfully constructed scores, but they spoke the relatively restrained musical language of the previous generation. In his Third and Fourth Piano Concertos, however, Beethoven succeeded in creating works that were more sweeping in scope and grander in sonority than any concerto thus far imagined. The Fifth Piano Concerto crowned his endeavors in this field.
Beethoven also confronted a more personal conflict while writing the Concerto No. 5. Near total deafness effectively prevented him from playing piano in public. Therefore, unlike his earlier piano concertos, this last composition could not possibly have functioned as a self-serving virtuoso piece, the genre’s traditional role. In fact, Beethoven played the first public performances of all his piano concertos with the exception of the Fifth
The lordly character of the “Emperor” Concerto is established in its opening moments, as three sonorous orchestral chords each give way to cadenza like flourishes from the piano. But although the solo instrument is heard from the start, Beethoven does not abandon the convention of the orchestra introducing the principal theme. The movement’s impressive opening gesture serves as a prelude to the expected orchestral paragraph, one of the grandest and longest in any concerto (600 measures!). The first movement is an extraordinary utterance. From the start, Beethoven conveys a sense of heroic scale and treats the piano less as a championed soloist than as sonority within the orchestra that leads down many paths of extended themes, but always sustains the initial feeling of inherent greatness.
Upon this shining hill of the first movement then dawns another light, the expressly tender second movement. Here the piano acts as narrator, with the orchestra adding its backdrop of softly muted color. Beethoven creates a moment of sunrise, gentle, giving, embracing, a serene and deeply devout meditation, and one of Beethoven’s and all of music’s most beautiful and tender creations. It concludes with a final musing by the piano that evolves magically into the principal theme of the third movement.
As the second movement becomes the final movement, the splendid energetic finale dances free. The orchestra and piano share the movement’s many varied themes and variations, abundant with a sense of exhalation and joy. During the closing moments, the piano finally gets its cadenza (the unaccompanied solo), of sorts, but with an unexpected accompanist, the timpani. The wonderful and novel moment between the piano and timpani slowly wind down from the movement’s exuberance. As tempo and harmony finally come to a halt, a last joyful exclamation ends one of music’s most cherished concertos.
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RODOLFO LEONE – Piano
Described as a “true sound philosopher” (Oberösterreichische Nachrichten), the brilliant young Italian-born pianist Rodolfo Leone, whose career is supported by the Amron-Sutherland Fund for Young Pianists at the Colburn School, was the firstprize winner of the 2017 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna. He released his debut album on the Austrian label Gramola in May 2018 and “Piano Jewels” featuring works of Muzio Clementi on Naxos in January 2022.
Mr. Leone’s recent seasons include a collaboration with James Conlon and LA Opera and debuts with the San Diego Symphony (Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1) conducted by Michael Francis, Pasadena Symphony (Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21) with conductor David Lockington, and Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5, “Emperor”) with Sascha Goetzel; he also performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Walt Disney Hall under the baton of Xian Zhang.
In May 2019, he gave a recital tour in Austria, culminating in a performance in Vienna at the BrahmsSaal of the Musikverein. He also performed recitals in Los Angeles and Naples, Florida, and appeared on the chamber music series Le Salon de Musiques in Los Angeles. As a 2018-19 Performance Today Young Artist in Residence, his live recordings were broadcast nationally throughout the United States.
A native of Turin, Italy, Mr. Leone made his orchestral debut in 2013 performing with the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento (Italy). Mr. Leone has performed extensively throughout Europe, North America, and China. He made his North American debut in 2014 performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Toronto Concert Orchestra. Since then, he has performed with, among others, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra with Stéphane Denève and the Colburn Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall; and recitals at Festival Napa Valley and the Soka Performing Arts Center. He has also performed chamber music with Lynn Harrell, Fabio Bidini, Andrew Schulmann, and the Viano String Quartet.
A top-prize winner of several major piano competitions, he was awarded top prizes at the 2014 Toronto International Piano Competition and the 2013 Busoni International Piano Competition. Pianist magazine described his concerto performance during the 2017 International Beethoven Piano Competition as a “communion with the orchestra” that “was raptly convincing… robust and joyful.”
Mr. Leone is currently based in Los Angeles where he previously studied at the Colburn Conservatory of Music. He holds both a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from Colburn, where he studied with Fabio Bidini. He previously studied at the Hans Eisler School of Music in Berlin, Germany and at the G. Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, Italy.
Rodolfo Leone appears courtesy of MKI Artists (Burlington,VT).
Pictures at an Exhibition
Originally composed for solo piano, Maurice Ravel later orchestrated Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, alto saxophone, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, side drum, bass drum, rattle, whip, cymbals, triangle, tamtam, glockenspiel, chimes, xylophone, celesta, two harps, and divided strings.
Duration: 35 minutes
PARALLEL
EVENTS / 1874 & 1922
First electric street trolley (1874)
First ice cream soda is sold (1874)
First zoo in U.S. opens in Philadelphia (1874)
Poet Robert Frost, magician Harry Houdini, U.S. President Herbert Hoover, and Winston Churchill are born (1874)
Russia renamed U.S.S.R (1922)
Benito Mussolini becomes Fascist dictator of Italy (1922)
Author Jack Kerouac, jazz musicians Al Hirt and Charles Mingus, and actors Judy Garland and Jason Robards are born (1922)
MODESTE MUSSORGSKY
(orchestrated by Maurice Ravel)
Born: Karevo, Russia, 21 March 1839
Died: St. Petersburg, Russia, 28 March 1881
About the Composer
More so than composition or piano playing, Modeste Mussorgsky perfected the art of heavy drinking, which ruined his health, musical career, and eventually his own life. In his short 42 years, the composer completed only one of his compositions – his opera, Boris Godunov. Most of Mussorgsky’s contemporaries considered the clumsy, half-educated, and illiterate Mussorgsky to be undisciplined, lacking any musical knowledge, and degraded the world-respected Russian tradition in music that was quickly emerging.
While Mussorgsky could have had a successful career as a pianist and a composer, he spent most of his life working as a government clerk and part-time accompanist. Most of his works were never finished because he would abandon them for drinking. It is known that he attempted to write two piano sonatas (which have disappeared), a symphony that was considered mediocre at best, nearly a half a dozen songs (also vanished), and several unfinished operas.
Mussorgsky’s aim in composition was naturalism and the avoidance of the popular Romantic creed “art for art’s sake.” Consequently, his orchestrations and his harmonies had a roughness to them. Finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the external world, Mussorgsky developed a defensive selfmockery and a bizarre sense of humor. He was overly romantic in that he was morbid, introspective, over-sensitive, and plagued with an inner demon, his drinking, that destroyed his life.
Perhaps Mussorgsky was no different than other great Romantic artists stricken with their turmoil – Beethoven and his deafness, Schumann and his insanity, poet John Milton and his blindness, Tchaikovsky and his bouts of depression and sexual confusion, and Brahms and his loneliness, to name a few.
It was Mussorgsky’s colleague, roommate, and close friend Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov that salvaged the music and legacy of Mussorgsky. Convinced that his friend’s awkwardness and illiteracy obscured his genius, Rimsky-Korsakov rewrote most of Mussorgsky’s works, including the opera, Boris Godunov. RimskyKorsakov painted over the raw, overly harsh sounds of Mussorgsky’s original orchestrations, making them more accessible to most audiences. Today, however, it is becoming more popular to perform some of the original harsh orchestrations of Mussorgsky.
About the Work
In 1874, Mussorgsky was immersed in composing his huge opera Khovanshchina when he received word of a memorial art exhibit of works by the artist and architect Victor Hartmann, who had died a year earlier. Organized by the Russian music critic, Vladimir Stassov, the exhibit was promoted by Stassov
and Mussorgsky in memory of their artist friend who had died somewhat unexpectedly at the age of 39. Hartmann’s works included architectural drawings and pictures of scenes that interested Russians throughout the world.
After visiting the gallery where Hartmann’s works were displayed, Mussorgsky resolved to pay his own tribute by writing a set of piano pieces inspired by the drawings. Referring to the composition as Hartmann, Mussorgsky wrote to Stassov saying that “My Hartmann is boiling….Sounds and ideas fill the air, and I can barely scribble them down fast enough.” Mussorgsky worked with remarkable speed (uncanny for Mussorgsky) and completed the lengthy set of variations for solo piano on 22 June 1874.
The finished work represented ten of Hartmann’s images, a format which might have made for a loose suite of unrelated movements. To unite the independent musical ideas, Mussorgsky wrote a prelude that appears throughout the work. Using this unifying theme, titled “Promenade,” is where Mussorgsky imagines himself “roving through the exhibition – now leisurely, now briskly – in order to come close to a picture that has attracted my attention, and at times sadly thinking of my departed friend.” The “Promenade” not only ties the whole work together, but it also forms the subject of several interludes between the movements and reappears in two sections: for example, the mysterious “Catacombs” and the triumphant “Great Gate of Kiev.”
Pictures at an Exhibition, like so much of Mussorgsky’s music, was rarely performed during the composer’s lifetime. Mussorgsky’s then radically advanced harmonies and strange melodic twists were scarcely appreciated in his native Russia, and even less so in the West. The work was not published until five years after Mussorgsky’s own death, and while it received little attention from pianists for some time, its orchestral possibilities were noticed immediately. Mussorgsky’s piano writing is as picturesque as can be, achieving mystery, frenzy, humor, and grandeur – it is a work that cries out for orchestral color.
Given Rimsky-Korsakov’s appreciation and close relationship with Mussorgsky, one might expect Rimsky-Korsakov to have taken on the challenge of orchestrating Pictures at an Exhibition himself. He did, however, supervise the first orchestration of the work undertaken by his pupil, Mikhail Tushmalov, and Rimsky-Korsakov conducted the premiere performance of the orchestrated work in 1891. In 1913, composers Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky were jointly orchestrating Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina, when Ravel became fascinated by Mussorgsky’s music. In 1922, Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky (renowned music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) commissioned Ravel to orchestrate Pictures at an Exhibition
Ravel’s orchestration, which is as original as Mussorgsky’s composition, perfectly captures the character of each movement. Ravel’s choice of instrumentation was inspirational and somewhat unorthodox at the time as well: for example, the presentation of the mournful melody of “The Old Castle” by the alto saxophone is as effective as unexpected; and the folk tune heard in “Bydlo” (whose title refers to a three-wheeled cattle cart) is both ponderous and lyrical using the high register of the tuba. It was through this orchestration, and through Koussevitzky’s frequent and brilliant performances, that Pictures at an Exhibition became an indispensable part of orchestral repertoire and an all-time favorite work of audiences.
Several of Hartmann’s works in the 1874 exhibit were fantastic and bizarre, which fascinated and appealed to Mussorgsky, and influenced which of Hartmann’s works would appear in Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky did not attempt to be strictly faithful to the visual model in every instance, but he took liberties to underscore the personal nature of his ties with Hartmann and his feelings on the loss of his friend. The use of the Promenade, which introduces the suite, incorporates Mussorgsky’s own personality and, as the composer states, is “my own physiognomy and peeps out through the work.” An uneven rhythm serves as the chief characteristic of the “Promenade,” and the “Promenade” becomes the energetic statement that interjects in between the individual movements, appearing five times in various guises.
The opening “Promenade” is broken off abruptly by a confrontation with Hartmann’s drawing of a nutcracker in the form of a gnarled, little bow-legged creature, and malevolent old gnome. According to the exhibit organizer, Victor Stassov, Gnomus represents “a child plaything, fashioned, after Hartmann’s design in wood, for the Christmas tree at the Artists’ Club….It is something in the style of the fabled Nutcracker, the nuts being insert into the gnome’s mouth. The gnome accompanies his droll movements with savage shrieks.” Mussorgsky’s music mirrors the gruesome gnome’s movement with awkward, limping sounds.
The “Promenade” returns in a more wistful mood, leading to a water-color painting of a medieval castle where a troubadour sings a melancholy ballad on a lute. While the Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle)
was not one of Hartmann’s works included in the exhibition, it presumably refers to one of several architectural watercolors created during a trip Hartmann took to Italy. The “Promenade” leads into a wispy little scherzo, The Tuileries, which reminds listeners of the perceptive feeling of children. Mussorgsky presents a lively, high-spirited game and chase to portray the children playing and quarreling on a path in Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Both Mussorgsky and Ravel have tapped into the playfulness of children in other works: Mussorgsky in his song-cycle The Nursery; Ravel in his Mother Goose Suite and L’Enfant et les sortileges
Mussorgsky explained to Stassov that Hartmann’s picture Bydło (Polish for “cattle”) represents an oxdrawn wagon with enormous wheels but added that “the wagon is not inscribed on the music.” Instead, Mussorgsky’s powerful and ponderous music gives appropriate weightiness to the huge beasts drawing the cart. Based on the ballet Trilby, Hartmann’s Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells is a sketch of a costume design for one of the scenes in the ballet that was choreographed by the renowned Marius Petipa. In the scene of the ballet, children dance as baby canaries try to break out of their shells. Preceded by a tenuous, fluttery statement of the “Promenade,” first in the woodwinds and then in the strings, Mussorgsky creates a silly depiction of the scene that seems right out of Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals.
Mussorgsky combined Hartmann’s sketches of two men in the Sandomierz ghetto, one obviously well-to-do and full of himself, the other just as clearly little more than a beggar. “Samuel” Goldenberg and Schmuyle has quotation marks around the pretentious German form of the rich man’s name (actually the same name as the poor man’s Yiddish name), and was originally regarded as being so blatantly anti-Semitic that Stassov altered the title before Mussorgsky’s score was published, changing the title to “Two Polish Jews, One Rich, and the Other Poor.” By whatever title, the movement is more of a broad-based study in contrasts between pomposity and self-importance versus timidity and submissiveness. In Mussorgsky’s inventive setting, the two characters are in conversation and seem to be quarreling. Ravel depicts the more pompous one by exaggerated, sweeping gestures of the strings and the more obsequious character by a bizarre trumpet solo.
Women gossiping at The Marketplace at Limoges is the focus of the next work in the parade of Hartmann’s pictures. Mussorgsky captures the scene in another light, frenzied scherzo that is complimentary to the earlier movement of children playing in the Paris garden. Mussorgsky jots some imagination in the margin of his manuscript to capture the gossip: “Great news! Monsieur de Puissangeout has just recovered his cow….Mademoiselle de Remboursac has just acquired a beautiful new set of teeth, while Monsieur de Pantaleon’s nose, which is in his way, is as much as ever the color of a peony.” Interestingly, Ravel omits the “Promenade” that originally preceded The Marketplace at Limoges
With a great whirl wind by Ravel’s orchestration, Mussorgsky plunges directly into The Catacombs, Sepulchrum romanum (Roman Graves). Hartmann’s sketch shows a view of the artist, lantern in hand, examining the ancient Roman catacombs in Paris, where he sees several skulls. In his piano score, Mussorgsky wrote the title in faulty Latin, in which he tried to explain (in even worse Latin) the heading of the ghostly transformation of the “Promenade” that follows, Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language). Mussorgsky’s music has a dark sonority to give this deathly outlook and writes in the margin of his manuscript that “the creative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads me to the skulls and calls to them; they begin to glow with a soft light.” More than a direct portrayal of Hartmann’s sketch, Mussorgsky creates a reaction to going to the catacombs.
The Hut of Fowl’s Legs is the residence of Baba-Yaga, the grotesque witch of Russian fairytales, who rode through the air in a mortar of glowing iron. She has hen’s legs so that she can turn in any direction. The title is a bit misleading in that Hartmann designed a face of a clock showing the witch’s hut, but Mussorgsky captures the witch’s ride in another frenzy-like movement, where the witch seems to be cackling through the woods and on the trail to find naughty children to eat.
Without pause, the music takes us to a grand finale in a massive hymn of thanksgiving. The Great Gate of Kiev is an architectural sketch Hartmann submitted in a competition held by the city of Kiev to erect a monument in order to commemorate Tsar Alexander II’s escape from assassination. Even though the gates were never built, Hartmann’s design of tinted brick seems to pale in comparison with Mussorgsky’s vision for the finale. Mussorgsky favored this sketch above the others and drew from it the inspiration for some of his most powerful music. The “Promenade” returns in a majestic and jubilant ending section where the spirit of almost liturgical chants is evoked, suggesting a phantom chorus intoning a Russian hymn of praise to the glorious heroes of times past.
Between Mussorgsky and Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition is far more than a musical depiction of a walking tour through a museum, but a musical exhibition in its own right that ranges from sublime to colossal, built from a century of musical expertise.
T H A NK YOU for your continuing support and generosity
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Linda Nelson
Virginia Nollmeyer
Lenora Jocobson & Mae Novak
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Kathrine Orr
Phillip Oscarson
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Michelle Rush
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Gayle Shanahan In Memory of Kay Flynn Taylor In Memory of Ron Lukenbill
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Kimmy Skiftun
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Judy Morgan & K. Paul Stahl
Marie Stark
David Stolarz
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Virginia Talley
David Morey & Janet Tatz
Joan & Dennis Taylor
Marli Taylor
Sadie Taylor
Marty & Richard Thieltges
Sara Toubman
William Tuck
Lisa Tucker
Heather & John Tupper
Lisa Van Meter
Robert Van Meter
Kihana & Scott Van Diest
Laura Wagner
Shirley J. Warehime
Wendy & Gregg Wheeler
Karen Willis
Constance & Richard Wine
Robert Worthy
Cathy Wright
Sue & Duane Wright Ostinato Circle
April Yahvah
Demerry Yates
Karen & Hugh Zackheim
Judy Ziegler
FRIENDSHIP
$1 TO $100
Corneilia Adair
Jonathan Ambarian
Jeanne & Joe Annarelli
Mandy Applebaum
Amy Balmain
Terri Barclay
Barbara & James Benish
Kay Bills-Kazimi
Jan Bloxsom
Danielle Broelinck
Carol Bruderer
Candace Cain
Amanda Cepeda
Katie Clark
Claudia Clifford
Vernetta & Fred Dalbec
Kelly Darr
June Davis
Jane Demaray
Ken Knudson & Christine Deveny
Dylan Dickson
Olivia Drumm
Carol & Gary Duval
Christie Eden
Retta Fasbender
Joe Ferris
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Mike Fine
Jose Flores
Denise Frechette
John Gartland
Holly Geiger
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Richard Harris
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Kay McOmber
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Paul Smietanka
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Suzanne Trainor
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Linda L. Vaughey
Jim Voytilla
Robyn Watson
Suzanne Weiland
Ginny Winters
Anne Wolfe
Ronald Young
Frances Zuelke
Gwen Zuelke
#1 FOUR-YEAR GRADUATION RATE
#1 MEDICAL SCHOOL PLACEMENT
#1 RETENTION RATE #1 GRADUATE LIFETIME EARNINGS #1 NET IMPORTER OF TALENT #1 NURSING NCLEX PASS RATE
Being a Helenan means being there for your family, friends and neighbors. It’s a way of life.
That’s why AARP Montana is committed to helping great communities become even better by granting funds through our Community Challenge Grants and working with you to improve public transportation and trails, create safer streets and even a new fitness park in East Helena!
We also connect you with resources and information as well as help connect you with others who share your interests and passions, like music! As a main sponsor of the Helena Symphony’s 70th season, we’re proud to help bring quality concerts to the community.
We offer a rich lineup of fun, free events ranging from in-person community events like Movies for Grownups to virtual events like Estate Planning, Fraud Fighting and HomeFit webinars. Find all our events at aarp.org/MTevents.
AARP Montana looks forward to continuing to serve you and the Helena community.
