July 8

GABRIEL MARTINS, CELLO

Cellist Gabriel Martins has established himself as one of the world’s most compelling young artists, with a deep commitment to classical masterpieces. His artistry has been recognized through an extensive list of accolades, including the 2020 Concert Artists Guild – Young Classical Artists Trust Grand Prize, the 2020 Sphinx Competition Gold Medal, the David Popper International Cello Competition Gold Medal, the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians Silver Medal, the Schadt String Competition Gold Medal, the Orford Music Award, and the Prague Spring Czech Music Fund Prize. His successes have led to a number of high-profile debuts, including Wigmore, Carnegie, and Merkin Halls; 92nd Street Y; the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory; Maison Symphonique in Montréal; and the Arkansas, Memphis, Indianapolis, New Russian State, Pacific, and Phoenix symphony orchestras. According to legendary cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, he has “revealed heart, passion, intellect, and a finely-nuanced palette of colors in a compelling manner worthy of a seasoned artist.”

In 2021, Gabriel gave his first complete Bach Suite Cycle, in collaboration with Kaufman Center and the Alphadyne Foundation, playing all six Cello Suites backto-back in New York City. In 2022, he gave his first complete Beethoven Cycle, in collaboration with pianist Audrey Vardanega and the Lakes Area Music Festival, performing and recording all of the works for Cello and Piano. Additionally, he composes his own works and arranges many others. His “Songs of Solitude” received its world premiere in 2021 in collaboration with the Brooklyn Public Library, and his new cello arrangements of Bach’s Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas have received high acclaim and a feature in The Strad Magazine. Born of American and Brazilian heritage, Gabriel grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. He began playing the cello at 5, studying with Susan Moses at the Indiana University String Academy. He received his B.M. as a presidential scholar at the USC Thornton School of Music and his M.M. at the New England Conservatory of Music. He lives in Boston, with his partner and collaborator, violinist Geneva Lewis. He plays a composite Francesco Ruggieri cello, c. 1690, and a François Nicolas Voirin bow, c. 1880.

Miller Outdoor Theatre

STRAVINSKY'S FIREBIRD

C. SHAW Valencia for String Orchestra STILL Darker America PRICE Piano Concerto in One Movement STRAVINSKY Suite from The Firebird Christopher Rountree, conductor 27 | Houston Symphony Michelle Cann, piano

FRIDAY, JULY 8 - 8:30 PM

PRESENTED BY

GUARANTOR

City of Houston through the Miller Theatre Advisory Board

The Houston Symphony's Miller Outdoor Theatre concerts are endowed by The Brown Foundation, Inc. in memory of Hanni Orton and Stewart Orton

The Houston Symphony's sound shell ceiling is made possible through the generosity of the Beauchamp Foundation and the Fondren Foundation

Caroline Shaw, composer (1982)

Valencia for String Orchestra

• Caroline Shaw is an American composer, violinist, singer, and producer, currently based in Maryland. Her expansive career includes collaborations with the Los Angeles

Philharmonic, Yo-Yo Ma, and Kanye West, among many others. At age 30, Shaw won a Pulitzer

Prize for her cappella piece, Partita for 8 Voices, making her the youngest musician to achieve this recognition.

• Shaw originally composed Valencia, which she named after a common variety of orange, for string quartet, and released it as part of her debut album, Orange. She has since arranged it for string orchestra for its performance debut with the Houston Symphony.

• “There is something exquisite about the construction of an ordinary orange,” Shaw writes in her program notes. “Hundreds of brilliantly colored, impossibly delicate vesicles of juice, ready to explode. It is a thing of nature so simple, yet so complex and extraordinary...

• “Valencia,” Shaw writes, is “an untethered embrace of the architecture of the common

Valencia orange, through billowing harmonics and somewhat viscous chords and melodies. It is also a kind of celebration of awareness of the natural, unadorned food that is still available to us.”

Florence Price, composer (1899–1952)

Piano Concerto in One Movement

• Florence Price was an American composer, pianist, and pedagogue from Little Rock,

Arkansas. A gifted musician from a young age, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory at age 14, and would go on to write numerous successful songs, chamber pieces, and orchestral works. In 1933, she became the first African American woman to have her

work performed by a major American orchestra, with the premiere of her Symphony in E minor.

• Price completed her Piano Concerto in 1934 and premiered it that same year in Chicago, performing the piano part herself. However, like many of her compositions, the original manuscripts were lost after her death, and for decades, the piece was not performed. In 2011, the score was reconstructed by composer Trevor Weston, and in 2019, a complete manuscript was discovered at an auction.

• Despite being a single-movement work, Price’s Piano Concerto is organized into three distinct sections. The first is tentatively introduced by the orchestra before yielding to a piano cadenza. This highly virtuosic section features a continuous dialogue between the orchestra and piano, concluding with a brooding recapitulation of the opening material. After a pause, the hauntingly beautiful Adagio section begins, featuring a flowing melody primarily in the oboe which features elements of traditional Black American spirituals. The lively final section is built around a juba, a type of folk dance and precursor to ragtime brought to America by enslaved people from the Kingdom of Kongo.

Rapidly shifting solos are passed between the piano and wind sections before ending with an emphatic piano cadenza

William Grant Still, composer (1895–1978)

Darker America

• During his lifetime, American composer William Grant Still broke many boundaries. He was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have an opera performed (and broadcasted) by a major opera company, and the first to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. Despite these successes, his music was not readily accepted in academic circles, but has recently enjoyed a surge of interest from orchestras across the country.

• Still composed Darker America in 1924, and it was premiered at the Aeolian

Hall in 1926, conducted by Eugene Goossens. This brooding tone poem combines elements of jazz and spirituals with more modernist techniques like those of his mentor, Edgard Varèse.

The following are his notes on the piece from the 1926 premiere:

• “At the beginning the theme of the American Negro is announced by the strings in unison. Following a short development of this, the English horn announces the sorrow theme which is followed immediately by the theme of hope, given to muted brass accompanied by string and woodwind. The sorrow theme returns treated differently, indicative of more intense sorrow as

contrasted to passive sorrow indicated at the initial appearance of the theme. Again hope appears and the people seem about to rise above their troubles. But sorrow triumphs. Then the prayer is heard (given to oboe); the prayer of numbed rather than anguished souls. Strongly contrasted moods follow, leading up to the triumph and the people near the end, at which point the three principal themes are combined.”

Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882–1971) Suite from L’oiseau de feu (The Firebird)

• Stravinsky began composing his legendary score for the ballet The Firebird in 1909 at age 27. Stravinsky happened upon the commission by chance, only after several other composers turned down the role. The ballet was premiered in Paris in 1910, and its immediate success catapulted the young

Stravinsky into the public eye. He would continue to edit the music into an orchestral suite over the next several years, arranged for a less extravagant ensemble than was used during the premiere.

• The ballet tells the story of the Russian folk hero Ivan Tsarevich, who is granted protection from the benevolent spirit of the Firebird after sparing its life, and his struggle against the evil sorcerer Kaschei. This fairy-tale world is set by the introductory movement, which is cast in a veiled and mysterious tone by swelling tremolos and glissandi in the strings.

• The introduction transitions directly to the Firebird’s Dance, whose appearance is announced by tense, trembling passages in the strings and woodwinds. A swirling set of variations follow, characterized by glittering passages in the woodwinds, harp, and pizzicato strings.

• In the Princesses’ Round Dance, Ivan encounters 13 beautiful maidens imprisoned by Kaschei, the last with whom he falls deeply in love. This movement takes the form of a khorovod, a type of traditional Russian circle dance, which Stravinsky slowly unfolds with alternating passages in the woodwinds and strings. The reverie of the round dance is interrupted suddenly by the appearance of Kaschei and his army of monsters, which features the brass and percussion in a tumultuous, fiery dance. The movement ends with the arrival of the Firebird, heralded by a soft, sustained call in the woodwinds.

• In the languid and mysterious Berceuse, the Firebird sings a lullaby to put

Kaschei’s forces to sleep, represented by the bassoon. A tender horn solo transitions to the finale, which celebrates Ivan’s triumph over Kaschei and his marriage to the princess. The finale slowly grows into a grand orchestral fanfare, bringing the suite to a euphoric close.