NOVEMBER 10, 12

Concerts of Thursday, November 10, 2022, 8:00pm Saturday, November 12, 2022, 8:00pm HANNU LINTU, conductor

GIL SHAHAM, violin JEAN SIBELIUS (1865–1957) The Oceanides, Op. 73 (1914) 10 MINS

ERICH KORNGOLD (1897–1957) Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 (1937, rev. 1945)25 MINS

I. Moderato nobile

II. Romance: Andante

III. Finale: Allegro assai vivace Gil Shaham, violin INTERMISSION 20 MINS

JENNIFER HIGDON (b. 1962) Concerto for Orchestra (2002)

I

II

III

IV

V 32 MINS

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

The Oceanides, Op. 73

The Oceanides is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two These are the first oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, four ASO performances

horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, two harps and strings.

“The natural surroundings had not been disturbed but were reverently protected from the advance of civilization,” wrote the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in 1914. “It was as romantic and mysterious as it had been two hundred years earlier. There was an atmosphere of poetry over the large, sleeping woods that was unique.” These were his impressions of Norfolk, Connecticut, a small town nestled in the lower Berkshires. According to the 2020 census, Norfolk has only 1,588 residents. Nevertheless, it punches above its weight in arts and culture. It is home to Yale University’s tuitionfree summer music and art schools as well as the nation’s oldest internationally renowned music festival—all thanks to the work of one enterprising family. In the 19th century, a local business magnate named Robbins Battell (1819–1895) took steps to give Norfolk and the surrounding county of Litchfield its unique identity: he started a singing school, built a hotel, and personally financed a concert series on the village green. After his death, Battell’s daughter, Ellen, took up her father’s work and ran with it. Together with her husband, Carl Stoeckel, she built the summer concert series into an international destination—the first internationally acclaimed music festival in the Americas. Drawing top musicians from around the Northeast and beyond, they commissioned works from such composers as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Max Bruch, Camille SaintSaens, and the present work by Jean Sibelius (right). In August of 1913, the Stoeckels enlisted Horatio Parker, dean of the Yale School of Music, to contact Sibelius and request a new piece for the 1914 festival. Eager to see America, Sibelius accepted Parker’s offer. Throughout his career, the composer had written music derived from the stories of the Kalevala, a collection of Finnish folktales, epic poems and mythology. For the American commission, Sibelius turned to a different source: Greek mythology. The Oceanids or Oceanides are a group of 3,000 water nymphs. They are the daughters of the sea goddess Tethys and the Titan

WIKIMEDIA

god Oceanus, whose river encircles the earth. (Oceanus is famously represented in the Trevi Fountain in Rome.) These Oceanides are said to preside over the earth’s fresh water—rivers, streams, lakes, rain, etc. Sibelius sat down to write The Oceanides while staying in Berlin in early 1914. After completing the first version, he sent the score ahead to Parker in New Haven but began to have some doubts. Rushing to rewrite the piece ahead of his Atlantic crossing, he barely finished in time to hand it over to a copyist, only to make further revisions (he was inspired by his ocean voyage). Traveling to Norfolk, Sibelius led an orchestra made up of players from the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Opera and raved about the quality of the players. Throughout his time in the U.S., he received a celebrity’s welcome and visited a number of sites, including Niagara Falls.

First ASO performances: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 September 16–18, 1999 In addition to the solo violin, this concerto is scored Yoel Levi, conductor for two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes (one Gil Shaham, violin doubling English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two Most recent bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), four horns, ASO performances: two trumpets, one trombone, timpani, percussion, October 22–24, 2009 harp, celeste and strings.

Donald Runnicles, conductor The life of Erich Wolfgang Korngold begins like a James Ehnes, violin Hollywood screenplay: he was a child prodigy born to a prominent family. His incredible gifts were celebrated by all the right people. Sadly, this story has a horrible villain. Korngold was born in the city of Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czechia). His father was a prominent music critic—well networked to help a preternaturally gifted son. When Erich was just 11 years old, he wrote his ballet-pantomime The Snowman, which was then performed in 1910 by the Vienna Court Theater with the Emperor in attendance. Throughout his youth, Korngold’s genius was affirmed by the greatest musical talents in Europe, including Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini and Jean Sibelius. In 1921, his third opera, Die tote Stadt, debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The composer was just 24. One can just imagine what a 24-year-old hotshot might have expected from life: all around him, the lions of music were making headlines, hopping trains and boarding steamships to reign over the

world’s most storied opera houses. But through the 1920s, the Nazi menace festered in Weimar, and Korngold was Jewish. In 1934, the director Max Reinhardt lured Korngold to Hollywood to arrange music by Mendelssohn for a screen adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the time, most film scores were little more than a pastiche of existing music. A year later, Warner Bros. offered the composer an exclusive—and lucrative—contract. He accepted, providing he could maintain his composing career in Europe. For him, that was a good arrangement until the German National Socialists annexed Austria in 1938 (the Anschluss). Sensing the danger, Korngold sent for his family and remained in Southern California for the duration of the war.

During his 12 years in Hollywood, Korngold inspired directors to reimagine the role of music in the cinema. He pioneered the sumptuous, sweeping melodies that came to define Hollywood’s Golden Age and won two Academy Awards. At war’s end, he announced his retirement from film and a return to concert music.

He issued the Violin Concerto in 1945. Not unlike Mahler and Richard Strauss, Korngold wasn’t above a little recycling. Many of the concerto’s themes are drawn from his own film scores. The piece opens with a tune from the 1937 Errol Flynn melodrama Another Dawn. A second theme had originally accompanied Bette Davis in the 1939 historical drama Juarez. In the slow movement, one of the themes comes from Korngold’s Oscar-winning score for the 1936 feature Anthony Adverse. The finale lifts a tune from the 1937 film The Prince and the Pauper. Korngold went home to Vienna in 1949 but scarcely recognized the place. Due to a waning interest in the music of the late Romantics, he never regained his popularity in the concert hall. People dismissed him as being old-fashioned or “too Hollywood.” Today, musicians are rediscovering his works. In 2007, Katy Korngold Hubbard, granddaughter of the composer, addressed the Jewish Museum in Vienna:

“Fifty years ago, Korngold died in Hollywood, brokenhearted, believing himself a forgotten man. I would like to . . . [articulate] how deeply gratified our family is to know that Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the man and his music, have been welcomed once again to Vienna, the city he knew and loved so well. Indeed, the child prodigy has, at last, come home again.”

WIKIMEDIA

Concerto for Orchestra

First ASO performances: Concerto for Orchestra is scored for three flutes (one October 1–3, 2015 doubling piccolo), three oboes, two clarinets, bass Robert Spano, conductor clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three Most recent trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, ASO performances: harp, piano, celeste and strings.

September 18–22, 2019 Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed Robert Spano, conductor and most frequently performed living composers. She is a major figure in contemporary classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018 Grammy for her Viola Concerto and a 2020 Grammy for her Harp Concerto. In 2018, Higdon received the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University, which is given to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. Most recently, the recording of Higdon’s Percussion Concerto was inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works, and blue cathedral is today’s most performed contemporary orchestral work, with more than 600 performances worldwide. Her works have been recorded on more than seventy CDs. Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording was nominated for two Grammy awards. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

From the composer:

The Concerto for Orchestra is truly a concerto in that it requires virtuosity from the principal players, the individual sections, and the entire orchestra. Built from the inside out, the third movement was written first, and it is the movement that allows each principal player a solo, before moving into section solis. The winds are highlighted first, which are followed (after a tutti) by the strings, and then the brass. Each solo has its own unique material, some of which is utilized in the tutti sections of the movement. The second movement was written next, inspired by the string sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra. This movement is like a scherzo in character, written in a jaunty rhythm and tempo that celebrates the joyous sound of strings. The movement begins with everyone playing pizzicato and then slowly integrates an arco

sound, first through soloists, and then with all of the players. It continues to romp through to the end, where a snap pizzicato closes out the movement. The fourth movement is a tribute to rhythm and the percussion section of the orchestra (harp, celesta, and piano are included in this movement). Since this piece was completed at the beginning of the 21st century, it seemed very fitting to have a movement that highlights the one section of the orchestra that has had the greatest amount of development during the 20th century. Ironically, the opening of this movement is the quietest and stillest part of the entire work, which is not what one might expect from percussion. The movement opens with bowed vibraphone and crotales…opening the way for the percussion to move through many of its pitched instruments (as well as collaborating with the harpist and celesta player, who are percussive in their nature). Eventually, the musicians move to nonpitched percussion, which is emphasized by the movement’s tempo speeding up at key moments. This progression in the tempi will carry this movement from an extraordinarily slow start (quarter equals 42) through to the fifth movement, which continues the progression of increasing tempi, until the end of that movement, which arrives at a quarter equals 160–180 on the metronome. These tempo increases occur at specific moments, usually covering two measures, and are meant to resemble the effect of a victrola being wound up. The fifth movement, which begins with the entrance of the violins, highlights the entire orchestra and has its rhythm set up through an ostinato in the percussion, which has been carried over from the previous movement. The various sections of the orchestra converse in musical interplay throughout, while the tempo continues to increase. This occurs to such an extent, that a primary theme that is stated within the first minute of the movement will eventually come back in rhythmic values that are twice as long, but with the increased tempo, will sound like it did at its first appearance. Surprisingly, the first movement was the last to be composed. It took writing the other four movements to create a clear picture of what was needed to start this virtuosic tour-de-force. The opening of the piece begins with chimes and timpani, sounding together, and then a quick entrance by the strings in energetic scale patterns (octatonic), which moves the orchestra up through the winds and finally adds the brass in major chords, a major second apart [this is a sound the composer has been working with for years]. This movement is primarily tutti in its use of instruments, but there are small chamber moments, in recognition of the fact that it takes many individuals to make the whole of the orchestra. Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra as part of its Centennial Celebrations. Funding was provided by The National Endowment for the Arts, The Philadelphia Music Project (funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by Settlement Music School) and Peter Benoliel. Premiered June 12, 2002, Verizon Hall, Philadelphia, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conducting.

VEIKKO KÄHKÖNEN

CHRIS LEE HANNU LINTU, CONDUCTOR

Maestro Hannu Lintu is Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. The appointment followed a series of successful collaborations with the company. In 2021 his season included Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Lintu recently completed his eighth and final season as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor. In the 2021/22 season, Lintu made his debut with Opéra National de Paris, conducting

Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer. Lintu also regularly conducts at the Savonlinna Festival, most recently for productions of Verdi’s Otello (2018) and Sallinen’s Kullervo (in 2017, as part of Finland’s centenary celebrations). Guest highlights of the 2021/22 season included returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich,

Gulbenkian Orchestra, and Tampere Philharmonic. Lintu also guest conducts the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. GIL SHAHAM, VIOLIN

Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy® Award-winner, also named Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors. Appearances with orchestra include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San

Francisco Symphony. Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. His most recent recording in the series 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2 was nominated for a Grammy Award.

He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.