JANUARY 19, 21

Concerts of Thursday, January 19, 2023 8:00 PM

Saturday, January 21, 2023 8:00 PM

SIR DONALD RUNNICLES, conductor

JONATHAN BISS, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)

Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor,

K. 466 (1785) 31 MINS

I. Allegro

II. Romanza: Andante

III. Rondo: Allegro assai Jonathan Biss, piano

INTERMISSION

20 MINS

ANTON BRUCKNER (1824–1896), ed. Leopold Nowak Symphony No. 8 in C Minor (1890) 78 MINS

I. Allegro moderato

II. Scherzo: Allegro moderato — Trio: Langsam

III. Adagio: Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend

IV. Finale: Feierlich, nicht schnell

The use of cameras or recording devices during the concert is strictly prohibited. Please be kind to those around you and silence your mobile phone and other hand-held devices.

by Noel Morris

Program Annotator

Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 First ASO performance: In addition to the solo piano, this concerto is scored December 15, 1961 for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two José Iturbi, conductor trumpets, timpani and strings. and piano

On March 31, 1795, the celebrated pianist Ludwig Most recent van Beethoven walked onstage to play a benefit ASO performances: for Mozart’s widow. Beethoven’s choice of repertoire January 27–29, 2011 was a favorite of his: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 Donald Runnicles, conductor in D minor. Over the coming years, the Romantic era Robert Spano, piano would take hold and displace the likes of Mozart; his music would be mostly forgotten—but not this concerto. There was something in its turbulent, minor-key affect that agreed with the Romantics. Of his roughly two-dozen piano concertos, Mozart wrote only two in a minor key. The key of D minor was one he used for some of his most harrowing music, including the Requiem and Don Giovanni’s journey to hell. This is not to say that Mozart was personally struggling when he wrote the Concerto. In fact, he was at the WIKIMEDIA top of his game in a splashy, urban playground. At the age of 29, Mozart had been a keyboard soloist for more than two decades. He was only 8 when he was entertaining kings and queens across Europe. All along, his father’s greatest ambition was to see him working in the service of a ranking nobleman—possibly a royal. Yet the elder Mozart had unwittingly groomed the boy for life as a freelancer. Carting him from city to city, Leopold Mozart pushed young Wolfgang to jockey for projects from members of the nobility. In this way, Leopold grew the family coffers well beyond his own earnings. (Both Leopold and Wolfgang were lowranking servants of the Archbishop of Salzburg.) Wolfgang grew accustomed to fine clothing and elite company. In 1781, he broke with his father, broke with Salzburg, and moved to Vienna where the piano concerto became a primary source of income. Mozart’s life in Vienna was beyond hectic. Often, he taught ladies of the nobility by day and gave concerts at night, all the while pushing out piles of music. Living around the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, his world was strictly controlled by the Church. As such, theaters closed during Lent, creating an opportunity for a different form of entertainment. For the Lenten season of 1784, Mozart sold subscriptions and gave more than a dozen public concerts, with the piano concerto serving as the major draw. In the fall, he began a push to write more concertos culminating in concerts for the Lenten season of 1785, where he premiered his Piano Concerto No. 20—

while the ink was still wet.

In a letter to Mozart’s sister, Leopold Mozart wrote: “[I attended the premiere of] an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got there, and your brother didn’t even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation.” The cadenzas of the concerto were improvised, leaving large gaps in the piece as it exists today. In the coming years, Beethoven offered his own improvisation. Other cadenzas were written by Brahms, Hummel, and Busoni. The tradition continues today with the occasional performer opting to perform original cadenzas.

Symphony No. 8 in C Minor Symphony No. 8 is scored for three flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), eight horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Anton Bruckner inspires a level of fandom that is rare among classical composers. If his music stirs you to the core, you are not alone. And, typical of fan culture, there are places to feed your most zealous feelings, such as the Bruckner Society of America, abruckner.com, and the Bruckner Journal. His symphonies are said to be “cathedrals of sound”; they step outside the fast-paced rhythm of life to forge their own relationship to space and time and carry the listener into unexpected places—an unsettling proposition that has engendered detractors and devotees since Bruckner started issuing symphonies at the age of 43. Although Bruckner was a newcomer to the concert hall, he was not new to music. In fact, he was by then among the greatest organists alive. His father had been an organist, and Anton learned to play as a boy. When he lost his father at 13, he enrolled at the school that would become his spiritual home, the monastery at St. Florian, where he started as a choirboy and eventually matured into roles as teacher and organist. St. Florian, located in Upper Austria, proved to be an ideal environment for him. He was deeply religious. He thrived in the solitude of the organ loft and found an accepting and nurturing community. (Bruckner was not neurotypical; he had an obsessive nature that drove him to count things such as roof tiles and cobblestones). St. Florian offered a magnificent library and a fine

First ASO performances: January 6–8, 1983

Hiroyuki Iwaki, conductor Most recent ASO performances: January 27–29, 2011 Donald Runnicles, conductor WIKIMEDIA

pipe organ (now called the Bruckner Organ), which helped to feed his soul.

Starting in 1855 he took composition lessons with Simon Sechter in Vienna and then with Otto Kitzler in Linz. By this time, he was approaching his 40th birthday. When Sechter died in 1868, Bruckner, the perennial student, assumed Sechter’s teaching post at the Vienna Conservatory. There, he started producing symphonies. For Bruckner, Vienna was a harsh place. People tittered at his country accent and baggy suits. They found him socially awkward. And as he started presenting his symphonies, the Vienna Philharmonic declined to play them. Poor Bruckner was ill-equipped to handle the criticism and became an obsessive reviser of his works.

Nevertheless, 1884 was a banner year. The conductor Hermann Levi saw merit in the Seventh Symphony and began introducing the piece around Europe. With that, the sixty-year-old Bruckner finally tasted success as a symphonist. Feeling vindicated and empowered, he launched into his next Symphony and presented it to Levi in 1887 with a gushing letter. “Halleluja!” Bruckner wrote. “The Eighth is finished at last and my ‘father-in-music’ must be the first to hear the news.” Alas, his “father in music,” Levi, found the Eighth Symphony baffling and declined to perform it. Bruckner, who had already started writing his Ninth Symphony, was crushed. Within a month, he had put the Ninth aside and launched into extensive revisions of the Eighth as well as some of his earlier symphonies. It was a process that occupied him for more than two years. Tragically, by the time he returned to the Ninth, he had reached the end of his life.

“Today, Bruckner’s Eighth should still be controversial,” wrote Tom Service in The Guardian. “This is a piece that is attempting something so extraordinary that if you’re not prepared to encounter its expressive demons, or to be shocked and awed by the places Bruckner’s imagination takes you, then you’re missing out on the essential experience of the symphony.” As the last completed symphony of Anton Bruckner, it is ironic that he altered the ending of the first movement, changing it from a bold, heroic ending to one that tapers off into something dark and unsettling. “This is how it is when one is on his deathbed,” wrote Bruckner, “and opposite hangs a clock, which, while his life comes to its end, beats on ever steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock.”

BENJAMIN EALOVEGA Bruckner dedicated his Eighth Symphony to Emperor Franz Joseph I. Hans Richter led the Vienna Philharmonic in the first performance in December of 1892. SIR DONALD RUNNICLES, CONDUCTOR

Sir Donald Runnicles is the General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Music Director of the Grand Teton Music Festival, as well as Principal Guest Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In 2019 Runnicles also took up post as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever Principal Guest Conductor. He additionally holds the title of Conductor Emeritus of the BBC

Scottish Symphony Orchestra, having served as Chief Conductor from 2009-2016. Runnicles enjoys close and enduring relationships with many of the leading opera companies and symphony orchestras, and he is especially celebrated for his interpretations of Romantic and post-Romantic repertoire, which are core to his musical identity. Sir Donald Runnicles was born and raised in Edinburgh. He was appointed OBE in 2004, and was made a Knight Bachelor in 2020. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. JONATHAN BISS, PIANO

Jonathan Biss is Co-Artistic Director alongside Mitsuko Uchida at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he has spent fifteen summers. He also recently led a massive open online course (MOOC) via Coursera, reaching an international audience of over 150,000. Biss has authored four audio- and e-books, including UNQUIET: My Life with Beethoven (2020), the first Audible Original by a classical musician and one of Audible’s top audiobooks of 2020. During the 2022-23 season, Biss gives solo recitals in cities including Cologne, New York, and Philadelphia, performing works by Berg, Schumann, and Schubert, and appears as soloist with the Atlanta Symphony, Budapest Symphony, and the Rochester Philharmonic, as well as with the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”). In 2020, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Biss concluded over a decade-long immersion in the composer’s music, which included concert series, recordings, writings, lectures, and commissions of Beethoven-inspired works, and recorded the composer’s complete piano sonatas. He began his piano studies at age six, and has studied with Evelyne Brancart at Indiana University and Leon Fleisher at the Curtis Institute of Music.