DECEMBER 8, 10, 11

Concerts of Thursday, December 8, 2022, 8:00pm Saturday, December 10, 2022, 3:00pm NATHALIE STUTZMANN, conductor

Sunday, December 11, 2022, 3:00pm JERRY HOU, conductor

Thursday’s concert is dedicated to PATTY & DOUG REID in honor of their extraordinary support of the 2021/22 Annual Fund.

Sunday’s concert is dedicated to

CONNIE & MERRELL CALHOUN

in honor of their extraordinary support of the 2021/22 Annual Fund. GEORGES BIZET (1838–1875) Prelude to Act I from Carmen (1875) 4 MINS GEORGES BIZET (1838–1875) Symphony No. 1 in C Major (1855) 27 MINS

I. Allegro vivo

II. Adagio

III. Allegro vivace

IV. Allegro vivace INTERMISSION 20 MINS

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) Suite No. 1 The Nutcracker, Op. 71a (1892) 24 MINS

I. Ouverture miniature (Miniature Overture)

II. Danses caractéristiques a. Marche (March) b. Danse de la Fée-Dragée (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) c. Danse russe: Trépak (Russian Dance) d. Danse arabe (Arabian Dance) e. Danse chinoise (Chinese Dance) f. Danse des mirlitons (Dance of the Reed Flutes)

III. Valse de fleurs (Waltz of the Flowers)

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

Prelude to Act I from Carmen This prelude is scored for piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion and strings.

First ASO performance: February 4, 1965 Henry Sopkin, conductor

Most recent ASO performances: May 14–18, 1998 Yoel Levi, conductor

First ASO performance: March 27, 1949 Henry Sopkin, conductor

Most recent ASO performances: September 22–24, 1994 Yoel Levi, conductor

Symphony No. 1 in C Major Symphony No. 1 is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two clarinets, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.

You might say that Providence smiled upon the French composer George Bizet. He was a child prodigy and wrote what might be the world’s most famous opera— but you would have to place an asterisk beside all this because he died without ever having tasted his success. In 1873, there were several rival opera companies in Paris. Bizet received a commission to write a show for Opéra-Comique, which specialized in productions that combined singing with spoken dialogue. For the story, he chose Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, about a miscreant nobleman and soldier who deserts his unit to run off with a Romani woman. Mérimée paints an explosive portrait, combining classism with a deadly cocktail of seduction and male aggression. Bizet’s choice outraged at least one company executive, M. Leuven. “It was Bizet who, in 1873, had the idea of extracting an opera libretto from the admirable novella of Mérimée,” wrote colibrettist Ludovic Halévy. “I went to see Leuven, and he actually interrupted me after the first sentence. ‘Carmen! Mérimée’s Carmen! Isn’t she killed by her lover? And these bandits, gypsies, and girls working in a cigar factory! At the Opéra-Comique! The family theater, the theater of wedding parties … You’ll frighten our audience away. That’s impossible.’ I insisted and explained to Mr. Leuven that ours was a Carmen, to be sure, but a toned-down, softened Carmen, and that we had actually introduced some characters perfectly in keeping with the style of the opéra-comique, especially a young girl of great chastity and innocence. There were indeed gypsies, but of the humorous variety (they really weren’t)…. Mr. Leuven acquiesced but after a prolonged struggle. And when I left his office, he said: ‘Please try not to let her die. Death at the Opéra-Comique. That’s never happened before, do you hear, never. Don’t let her die, I implore you, my dear child.’”

WIKIMEDIA

There is nothing chaste or “toned down” about Bizet’s Carmen. As the production took shape, M. Leuven tendered his resignation. The chorus, which was accustomed to standing and singing in place, objected to having to smoke cigarettes and behave “in character” like a slovenly throng. But the two principals who sang the roles of Carmen and Don José got behind the opera and threatened to quit if the company didn’t produce it without changes. Carmen opened on March 3, 1875. Some of the giants in French music were in attendance, including the composer›s boyhood friend Camille Saint-Saëns, his former teacher Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, and Léo Delibes. As it happened, many of the things that alarmed M. Leuven also shocked the public and the press; Carmen flopped at the Opéra-Comique. Three months later, Bizet suffered a heart attack and died.

Later that year, productions of Carmen began to pop up across Europe until it eventually made its way back to Paris. By then, the opera was a triumph. Today, the average American can spot its irresistible melodies in everything from Super Bowl ads to the Muppets, Family Guy, The Bad News Bears, Gilligan's Island, the Marx Brothers, Disney/Pixar’s film Up; Carmen: A Hip Hopera with Beyoncé singing and more.

Early Life

Both of Bizet’s parents were musicians. Young Georges was so precocious the Paris Conservatoire bent the rules to admit him before his tenth birthday. Soon, he landed in the classroom of the prominent composer Charles Gounod who hired him to make piano arrangements of his works. Through this association, Bizet honed his skills while Gounod profited from selling sheet music of his most popular works. Bizet had just celebrated his seventeenth birthday when he sat down to write his Symphony in C. At the time, he had been working on a piano arrangement of Gounod’s First Symphony in D. In a month’s time, Bizet completed his first symphony. The piece owes a great debt to that of Gounod; however, young Bizet’s melodies already hint at Carmen, The Pearl Fishers, and L’Arlesienne. At nineteen, Bizet won the prestigious Prix de Rome competition and enjoyed an extended stay at an academy in Rome. By all accounts, Bizet was a terrific pianist and was exceptionally good at reading orchestral scores on sight. In all likelihood, he could have had a brilliant piano career, but this didn’t interest him. He was

a composer at heart and suffered many years of frustration, not quite hitting his stride. (His life’s work is a graveyard of abandoned opera projects). For years after his death, Bizet’s youthful compositions languished. It took a person with 1930s sensibilities—one who knew the massive footprint of Carmen—to recognize the value of a long-lost Bizet score. The French musicologist Jean Chantavoine had been rifling through the archives of the Paris Conservatory when he discovered the Symphony in C. He shared it with Bizet biographer Douglas Charles Parker who passed it along to conductor Felix Weingartner. With Weingartner on the podium, the Symphony received its world premiere in 1935, drawing comparisons to the early works of Felix Mendelssohn (another great prodigy). Meanwhile, the modernist giant Igor Stravinsky recommended Bizet’s score to Georges Balanchine, founder of the New York City Ballet. Choreographing the piece in just two weeks, Balanchine debuted the ballet Symphony in C in 1946. It remains a staple of the New York City Ballet. Suite No. 1 The Nutcracker, Op. 71a First ASO performance: This suite is scored for three flutes (one doubling December 22, 1946 piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass Henry Sopkin, conductor clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two cornets, three Most recent trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste ASO performance: and strings. December 19–20, 1957

Begrudgingly. That’s how Tchaikovsky began the Arthur Fiedler, conductor creation of one of the best-loved scores of all time. The job came to him as a twofer: he could write the one-act opera Iolanta if he’d close the evening with a ballet. It was a legendary collaboration: Choreographer Marius Petipa supplied very specific instructions (“The sentry fires. One or two bars. The dolls are in a tumult. 2 bars of fright.”), and Tchaikovsky filled the page with his timeless melodies. Based on The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann, this was to be their third collaboration, starting with Swan Lake in 1877, followed by Sleeping Beauty in 1890. So successful was Sleeping Beauty plans for The Nutcracker began immediately. By many accounts, Tchaikovsky overcommitted himself in the early months of 1891. But Petipa’s scenario exacerbated his anxiety. E.T.A. Hoffmann was a well-known writer. His Nutcracker is a darkly nuanced, decidedly adult story. Petipa chose to ignore this

WIKIMEDIA famous narrative in favor of a more child-friendly, French version by Alexandre Dumas, père. In Petipa’s version, all the substance of the drama erupts and resolves before the end of the first act. A child's fantasy occupies the second act, far away from the tension and conflict which seemed (to Tchaikovsky) so essential to storytelling. “These images do not gladden, do not excite inspiration,” complained

Tchaikovsky, “but frighten, horrify, and pursue me, waking and sleeping, mocking me with the thought that I shall not cope with them.” Of course, he did, but not before he suffered some more.

A new concert hall, financed by Andrew Carnegie, was under construction in Midtown Manhattan. Positioning the new facility as a cultural touchstone, developers asked Tchaikovsky to headline the grand opening. He accepted with the knowledge that he would have to keep writing throughout his trip in order to meet his deadlines. En route, Tchaikovsky conducted concerts in Berlin and Paris. Days before setting sail to America, his brother Modest came to deliver some bad news. Finding the composer anxious and homesick, Modest opted to withhold the information. As luck would have it, Tchaikovsky picked up a newspaper and learned about it anyway—their sister had died. “Even more than yesterday and the day before,” he wrote, “I feel absolutely incapable of depicting [The Nutcracker's fairy tale kingdom].” The distraught composer sailed to New York and received an extension on his deadline.

“It turns out that in America I am far better known than in Europe,” he wrote. “Here I’m an important bird!” His hosts made every effort to entertain him, taking him to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Niagara Falls. While on the trip, Tchaikovsky suffered from persistent homesickness and performer's anxiety but admitted: “If I were younger, I would probably derive great pleasure from staying in this interesting, youthful country.” He did return from his sojourn ready to write. It was a chance encounter that would yield one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest inspirations. He wrote to his publisher in June of 1891: “I have discovered a new instrument in Paris.... You can only buy it from the inventor, Mustel.... Have it sent direct to Petersburg, but no one there must know about it. I am afraid Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov might hear of it and make use of the new effect before I can.” Mustel’s invention had been unveiled only five years before, but

it was about to become a cultural icon. Petipa had indicated to Tchaikovsky that he wanted Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy to sound like “drops of water shooting out of fountains.” Tchaikovsky found that sound in Mustel’s celesta.

He premiered the suite to The Nutcracker in March of 1892. The complete ballet and the opera, Iolanta, followed in December of that year.

Legacy

It's worth considering The Nutcracker’s impact on the art form for which it was written. For a number of ballet companies, revenues from their annual Nutcracker production exceed those of all other productions combined. But more elemental than that, The Nutcracker is the Everest for ballet dancers. As wee little children, they begin a journey, rising through the ranks of its enormous cast. Starting, perhaps, as mini mice, they progress over the years from toy soldiers to roles such as the Mouse King. The most talented become Spanish dancers, Arabian dancers, Russian dancers, the Mirlitons, the Dew Drop Fairy (Waltz of the Flowers), the prince, and the role on which careers are made: the Sugar Plum Fairy. Critics of The Nutcracker have complained that Petipa’s scenario lacks a real story, while fans wallow in its magic. It is, after all, a story told from a child's point of view, a perspective very close to the late children's author Maurice Sendak, who created a Nutcracker production for Pacific Northwest Ballet. In it, he went back to the original story by E.T.A. Hoffmann. “It had bite and muscle,” he told to National Public Radio in 1984, “the way the Grimm fairy tales do.” What surprised him was how readily the Tchaikovsky score aligned with the Hoffmann version of the tale. “His music, bristling with implied action, has a subtext alive with wild child cries and belly noises,” wrote Sendak. “It is rare and genuine and does justice to the private world of children. One can, after all, count on the instincts of a genius.”

NATHALIE STUTZMANN, CONDUCTOR See biography on page 7 JERRY HOU, CONDUCTOR

Recognized for his dynamic presence, insightful interpretations, versatility and commanding technique, Taiwanese-American conductor Jerry Hou joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as ASO Associate Conductor and Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra in September 2020. He has conducted the Dallas Symphony, Houston Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Teatro Colon, Rochester Philharmonic and San Antonio Symphony, among others.

In the summer of 2018, Hou lead to much acclaim the opening concerts of the Grand Teton Music Festival, in a program of Copland, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with renowned soloist Daniil Trifonov. Known for his flexibility in many styles and genres, he has conducted a wide range of repertoire from classical to contemporary. Last spring, Hou led performances of a new collaboration between composer Steve Reich and artist Gerhart Richter to commemorate the opening of New York City’s new performing arts space and center for artistic invention, The Shed. A leading interpreter and conductor of contemporary music, he has collaborated with internationally acclaimed composers such as Steve Reich, John Adams, Steve Stucky, John Harbison, George Lewis, Bernard Rands, Gyorgy Kurtag, Helmut Lachenmann, Unsuk Chin, Brett Dean, Mark Anthony-Turnage and Peter Eötvös. In addition, he worked closely with the next generation of leading composers including Kate Soper, Anna Clyne and Andrew Norman. Hou has conducted leading contemporary music ensembles Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Signal, Remix Ensemble, Musiqa and Alarm Will Sound. He is on the faculty of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston, Texas.