2014 Blossom Music Festival July 5

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saturday July 5

FESTIVAL OPENING: DVOŘÁK’S NEW WORLD The Cleveland Orchestra Hans Graf, conductor Renaud Capuçon, violin A fireworks display by American Fireworks Company will take place immediately following this concert, weather permitting.

BLOSSOM WOMEN’S COMMITTEE The Blossom Women’s Committee is a volunteer organization dedicated to promoting and financially supporting The Cleveland Orchestra’s performances at Blossom Music Center.

Each summer, we present a trio of Gourmet Matinee luncheons at Blossom in Knight Grove. We invite you to attend this special series of meet-the-artist afternoon luncheons, featuring performances by Cleveland Orchestra musicians.

Please call 440-354-8603 for reservations and more information.

We are extremely proud to sponsor this evening’s concert

by The Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Hans Graf, and wish you a very joyous musical evening.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Claire Frattare, President Lis Hugh, First Vice President Mary Ann Devine, Second Vice President Carol Eiber, Recording Secretary Sylvia Armstrong, Corresponding Secretary Nena Hankins, Treasurer Phyllis Knauf, Ex-Officio, Past State Chair Emily McCartney and Sylvia Oliver, Honorary State Chairs

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Blossom Music Festival

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BLOSSOM MUSIC FESTIVAL

Saturday evening, July 5, 2014, at 8:00 p.m.

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTRA H A N S G R A F , conductor

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

JEAN SIBELIUS (1865-1957)

Capriccio Italien, Opus 45 Violin Concerto in D minor, Opus 47 1. Allegro moderato 2. Adagio di molto 3. Allegro, ma non tanto RENAUD CAPUÇON, violin

INTERMISSION ANTONÍN DVORÁK (1841-1904)

Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) in E minor, Opus 95 1.

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Adagio — Allegro molto Largo Allegro con fuoco Molto vivace

On the advice of his physician due to treatment required to his right shoulder, Jaap van Zweden has cancelled his scheduled appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra at this concert. Conductor Hans Graf has graciously agreed to step in and lead the originally announced program.

This concert is sponsored by the Blossom Women’s Committee.

This concert is dedicated to Dr. and Mrs. Hiroyuki Fujita in recognition of their extraordinary generosity in support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2013-14 Annual Fund.

Media Partners: WKSU 89.7 and The Plain Dealer

Blossom Music Festival

Program: July 5

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Capriccio Italien, Opus 45 composed 1880

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Pyotr Ilyich

TCHAIKOVSKY born May 7, 1840 near Votkinsk, Russia died November 6, 1893 St. Petersburg

At a Glance Tchaikovsky wrote the Italian Capriccio in Rome in January and February 1880, and revised it in Russia in May of the same year. The work was premiered in Moscow on December 18, 1880, under the direction of Nikolai Rubinstein.

The Capriccio Italien runs about 15 minutes in performance. Tchaikovsky scored it for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, percussion, harp, and strings.

I N N O V E M B E R 1 8 7 9 , Tchaikovsky left Russia for a trip that took him to several European countries. After stays in Berlin and Paris, he reached Rome on December 20, where he began work on the Italian Capriccio the following month. He had a distinguished precedent to follow in evoking Mediterranean melodies in a symphonic work — Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857), revered as the “father of Russian music,” had written two Spanish overtures in the 1840s, which were well known to every Russian musician. For his own Capriccio, Tchaikovsky collected melodies from printed collections and also used tunes heard in the streets.

The work begins with a quote of the cavalry bugle Tchaikovsky heard every evening while staying at a hotel next to the barracks of the Royal Cuirassiers. The first melody, played by the strings and then by the woodwinds, is slow and meditative.

It is followed by what may be called the main melody of the piece, a tune started first by a pair of oboes over an “oom-pah” bass and gradually growing into a tremendous fortissimo in the entire orchestra. Here and throughout the piece, Tchaikovsky shows his extraordinary gifts of orchestration as he mixes instrumental timbres in a way quite unique to him. At the repeat, he entrusts the main tune to the cornet. (The cornet is a relative of the trumpet, but the shape of its stem and mouthpiece are slightly different, and so is its sound color, which produces a singular effect at this point in the Capriccio.)

In the next section, the three flutes, the first horn, and the first violin carry the first tune, and the strings, the entire orchestra, and then a pair of horns (with the instruction “soft but sensitive”) play the second one. The introductory meditative tune returns, only to give way to a dashing tarantella (a folk dance from Southern Italy). The latter is interrupted momentarily by the main tune played triple forte, and then returns, getting ever faster and louder to the end.

In a letter sent to his brother Anatoly on February 12, 1880, Tchaikovsky wrote: “I have written a delightful Italian Fantasy for Orchestra! — Delightful! He is boasting, you will say!” Concert audiences around the world for well more than century would say that he was not.

—Peter Laki Copyright © Musical Arts Association

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About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

Violin Concerto in D minor, Opus 47 composed 1903, revised 1905

lovely themes for a violin concerto,” Sibelius wrote to his wife, Aino, in September 1902. The Finnish composer, at 37 already a national figure and the recipient of an annual pension from the Finnish government, had been asked by the celebrated German violinist Willy Burmester to write a violin concerto. Despite the “lovely themes” Sibelius had, however, the concerto wasn’t coming along as expected. The difficulties had to do with the composer’s alcoholism, which around this time began to alarm his family seriously. The addiction, in turn, seemed to stem from a deep sense of inner insecurity. It was a year before Sibelius sent the piano score to Burmester, who responded enthusiastically: “I can only say one thing: Wonderful! Masterly! Only once before have I spoken in such terms of a composer, and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto.”

Exactly what happened next is rather challenging to explain. Burmester was expecting to play the world premiere of the new work in the spring of 1904, but Sibelius, for financial reasons, pushed for an earlier date even though Burmester wasn’t available sooner (and the orchestration of the concerto wasn’t even finished). Sibelius completed the concerto sometime before the end of 1903, and gave it to a local violin teacher, Viktor Nováček. All accounts agree that Nováček was hardly more than a mediocre player. Leading Sibelius biographer Erik Tawaststjerna writes that at the Helsinki premiere, in February 1904, “a red-faced and perspiring Nováček fought a losing battle with a solo part that bristled with . . . difficulties.”

Sibelius had been trying to pacify Burmester by saying that “Helsinki doesn’t mean a thing,” and still promised him performances in Berlin and elsewhere. But after the Helsinki premiere, Sibelius was dissatisfied with the work and decided to revise it entirely. After the definitive version was completed, he sent it off to his German publisher, who suggested Karl Halíř as the soloist. Sibelius acquiesced, passing Burmester over for the second time. Greatly offended, Burmester never played the work whose composition he had initiated.

Karl Halíř, the concertmaster of the Berlin Court Opera, and a professor at the conservatory there, was a fine violinist but not a virtuoso of the highest caliber. And so it fell to an

“I’VE GOT SOME

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Jean

SIBELIUS born December 8, 1865 Hämeenlinna, Finland died September 20, 1957 Järvenpää, Finland

The Cleveland Orchestra

About the Music

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At a Glance Sibelius composed his violin concerto — his only concerto for any instrument — in 1903. It was first performed on February 8, 1904, in Helsinki, with the composer conducting and with Viktor Nováček as soloist. Following its original publication, in early 1905, Sibelius revised the concerto extensively.

The revised score was first heard on October 19, 1905, in Berlin, conducted by Richard Strauss, with Karl Halíř as the soloist. Sibelius made some further changes before its final publication several years later. The published score is dedicated to Ferenc Vecsey, who first played the work at age 17 in 1910, and in many subsequent performances (including The Cleveland Orchestra’s first performances) helped establish the work’s place in the standard repertoire.

This concerto runs about 30 minutes in performance.

Sibelius scored it for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings, and solo violin.

exceptionally gifted 17-year-old Hungarian named Ferenc Vecsey to become the work’s first international champion — and it is to him that the printed score is dedicated.

In many ways, Sibelius really wrote this concerto for himself. As a young man, he had hoped to become a concert violinist, and gave up his dreams only with great reluctance. Thus, unlike the composers of most of classical music’s other best-known violin concertos, Sibelius did not need to ask others for advice on technical matters. As one scholar has written, Sibelius truly “identified himself with the soloist in the Violin Concerto and this may well explain something of its nostalgia and romantic intensity.” This is indeed a good description for Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. Written in the first years of the 20th century, it looks back to the great Romantic concertos of the 19th, while also showing Sibelius’s own more modern musical style.

The beginning of the first movement, with D-minor tremolos of muted first and second violins, over which the soloist plays a wistful melody, is unabashedly old-fashioned. Simple and song-like at first, the violin part gradually becomes more and more agitated, erupting in a short virtuoso cadenza. The orchestra introduces a second musical idea, which the violin soon takes over in a slower tempo. This is followed by a third, purely orchestral section, lively and energetic, which ends very quietly with the cellos and basses repeating the single note of B-flat. Next comes a prominent solo cadenza for the violin, after which the first, second, and third melodies are re-visited, but with changes in orchestration, tempo, and feeling.

The second movement is based on a combination of two themes, one played by the two clarinets at the beginning, the other by the solo violin a few measures later. The clarinet theme later grows into an impassioned middle section and only at the very end does the melody find its initial peace and tranquility again.

Writing about the third-movement Finale, it is nearly impossible not to quote Sir Donald Francis Tovey’s characterization of its main theme as a “polonaise for polar bears.” The mental image is right on target — Tovey’s words capture the singular combination of dance rhythms with a certain heavyfootedness in parts of the movement. Again, there are two themes, one in a polonaise rhythm, and one based on the alternation of 6/8 and 3/4 time. From these materials, Sibelius weaves a heartfelt and fun-filled dance to the end.

—Peter Laki Copyright © Musical Arts Association

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About the Music

2014 Blossom Festival

Renaud Capuçon French violinist Renaud Capuçon is known as both an orchestra soloist and chamber musician. He is making his Cleveland Orchestra debut with this evening’s concert.

Born in Chambéry, France, in 1976, Renaud Capuçon began studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at age 14, winning many awards during his five years there. He subsequently moved to Berlin to study with Thomas Brandis and Isaac Stern, and received the Berlin Academy of Arts Prize. In 1997, Claudio Abbado named him concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra.

He played with the ensemble for three summers, working with Franz Welser-Möst and other conductors.

Since that time, Mr. Capuçon has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras around the world, including those of Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Leipzig, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Montreal, Munich, Paris, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. He has appeared at the Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg, Saratoga, Tanglewood, and Verbier festivals, among others.

Renaud Capuçon tours extensively in recital, and recently performed the complete Beethoven violin sonata cycle with pianist Frank Braley. This collaboration resulted in a Virgin Classics recording. In chamber music, Mr. Capuçon partners with Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Yefim Bronfman, Khatia Buniatishvili, Hélène Grimaud, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and his brother, Gautier.

An exclusive EMI/Virgin Classics recording artist, Renaud Capuçon’s recordings include the Brahms and Berg concertos. His album of Fauré’s complete chamber music for strings and piano received a 2012 Echo Award. His discography also includes works by Beethoven, Korngold, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann.

Renaud Capuçon is co-founder and artistic director of the Festival de Pâques d’Aix-en-Provence, which showcases chamber music and orchestral performances and also commissions and premieres new works. Since 2007, he has served as an ambassador for the Zegna & Music project, which was founded in 1997 as a philanthropic activity to promote music.

Mr. Capuçon plays the Guarneri del Gesù “Panette” (1737) that belonged to Isaac Stern; it was purchased for him by the Banca Svizzera Italiana (BSI). In 2011, the French government appointed him Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite.

Renaud Capuçon is married to French journalist Laurence Ferrari, and they have a two-year-old son.

Blossom Festival 2014

Soloist

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ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK 1841-1904

TOP HALF OF PAGE:

The house where Antonín Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) in 1841; Dvořák as a young man; and Dvořák with his wife, Ottilie, in 1886 in London.

LOWER HALF OF PAGE: Dvořák in 1885, a few years before he came to New York; the Statue of Liberty, erected in New York harbor in 1886, greeted Dvořák upon his arrival in 1892; Dvořák’s funeral procession in Prague in 1904.

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Antonín Dvořák

The Cleveland Orchestra

Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) in E minor, Opus 95 composed 1892-93

by

Antonín

DVOŘÁK born September 8, 1841 Nelahozeves, Bohemia died May 1, 1904 Prague

Blossom Festival 2014

T H E C R E D I T F O R bringing Dvořák to the United States belongs to Jeanette M. Thurber, wife of a wealthy New York businessman. Mrs. Thurber (1850-1946), was one of those dedicated philanthropists to whom the musical life of the United States has always owed so much. In 1885-86, she founded both the National Conservatory of Music and the American Opera Company. One of her greatest achievements was a scholarship program for minority students, which enabled many African Americans and Native Americans to become professional musicians. Another was to persuade Antonín Dvořák to come to the United States from his native Bohemia and become the director of the new Conservatory.

After a long round of negotiations, Dvořák arrived in the United States in 1892, for what would be a stay of three years.

He was accompanied by his wife, two of his six children, and a secretary. His duties at the Conservatory were not very demanding. He had to teach composition three mornings a week and conduct the student orchestra on two afternoons. This schedule left him enough time for conducting at public concerts as well as composing.

Mrs. Thurber later claimed it was at her suggestion that Dvořák first started to work on his Symphony in E minor. As she recollected: “He used to be particularly homesick on steamer days when he read the shipping news in the Herald. Thoughts of home often moved him to tears. On one of these days I suggested that he write a symphony embodying his experiences and feelings in America — a suggestion which he promptly adopted.

This prompting would hardly have sufficed, had Dvořák himself not felt ready to “embark” on a new symphony. But embark he did, and when the score was finished the next spring, he made the following inscription on the last page of the manuscript: “Praise God! Completed 24th May 1893 at 9 o’clock in the morning. The children have arrived at Southampton (a cable came at 1:33 p.m.).” The four children Dvořák had left behind joined their parents in New York a few days later. Thus, both the beginning and the end of this symphony’s composition seem to be connected with ships leaving and arriving.

Much ink has been spilled over the question as to whether About the Music

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At a Glance Dvořák wrote his “New World” Symphony in New York City between December 1892 and May 1893. He added the subtitle Z Nového světa, meaning “From the New World,” in November 1893, shortly before the work’s premiere at Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Anton Seidl.

This symphony runs about 45 minutes in performance. Dvořák scored it for 2 flutes (second doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (second doubling english horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals and triangle), and strings.

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the E-minor Symphony incorporates any melodies Dvořák heard in the United States, and whether the symphony is “American” or “Czech” in character. Dvořák’s interest in both Negro spirituals and American Indian music was evident, but he actually knew very little about the latter and, as far as the former was concerned, relied mainly on a single source of information. Harry T. Burleigh, an African-American student at the Conservatory, who later became a noted composer and singer, performed many spirituals (and also Stephen Foster songs) for Dvořák, who was very impressed. Still, Dvořák’s knowledge of American musical traditions must have remained limited. The composer did not claim to have used any original melodies, trying instead to “reproduce their spirit,” as he put it in an interview published three days before the symphony’s premiere.

We will understand what Dvořák meant by this if we compare the famous english horn solo from the symphony’s slow second movement with the spiritual “Steal Away,” which was probably among the songs Dvořák had heard from Burleigh.

Many years later, H.C. Colles asked Burleigh to sing to him the songs he had sung to Dvořák, and noted that “the sound of the english horn resembled quite closely the quality of Burleigh’s voice.” Both melodies share the same rhythmic patterns and the same pentatonic scale. It is no wonder that Dvořák’s melody was subsequently adopted as a spiritual in its own right under the title “Goin’ Home,” with words provided by one of Dvořák’s New York students, William Arms Fisher. Several other melodies in the symphony have similar songlike shapes, suggesting folk inspiration. One instance where a possible model has been identified is the first movement’s second theme, which is strongly reminiscent of the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

Another link between the “New World” Symphony and the New World has to do with an aborted opera project based on The Song of Hiawatha. It was another one of Mrs. Thurber’s suggestions that Dvořák write an opera on Longfellow’s poem, with which he had long been familiar, having read it in Czech translation 30 years before. The opera never quite got off the ground, but it has recently been shown that the slow movement of the symphony was conceived with Minnehaha’s Forest Funeral from Hiawatha in mind. Additionally, the Scherzo movement was inspired by the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis from Hiawatha.

Discussions of the ethnic background of Dvořák’s themes should not, however, divert the attention from other aspects of About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

this symphony that are at least equally compelling. Because beautiful melodies alone, whatever their provenance may be, do not a symphony make. In his Ninth, Dvořák proved not only his supreme melodic gifts, but also his mastery in organizing his melodies into coherent and wellbalanced musical structures.

The opening horn theme of the first movement, already hinted at in the preceding slow introduction, serves as a unifying gesture that returns in each of the symphony’s movements. In the second-movement Largo, it appears at the climactic point in the faster middle section, shortly before the return of the english horn solo. In the third-movement Scherzo, it is heard between the Scherzo proper and the movement’s Trio section; this time, the energetic brass theme is transformed into a lyrical melody played by the cellos and the violas. Between the Trio and the recapitulation of the Scherzo, the theme resumes its original character. The same melody can also be found in the fourth-movement finale shortly before the end, in a coda that incorporates quotations from the second and third movements as well. Thus, the ending of the symphony, then, combines the main themes from all four movements in a magnificent synthesis.

—Peter Laki Copyright © Musical Arts Association

BANDWAGON GIFT SHOP Music is in the air! Take advantage of the moment and browse our large selection of musical gifts and Cleveland Orchestra signature items. Open before each Blossom Festival concert, at intermissions, and for post-concert purchases, too! We have a selection of new summertime merchandise — and a special bargain table every night. Plus CDs and DVDs of artists and music being presented this summer. Stop in, and take the music home!

Blossom Festival 2014

About the Music

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Hans Graf Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, Austrian conductor Hans Graf was appointed music director of the Houston Symphony in 2001 and concluded his tenure in 2013 as the longest-serving music director in the orchestra’s history. He now holds the title of conductor laureate with the Houston ensemble and is in frequent demand as a guest conductor around the world. He made his Cleveland Orchestra debut in August 1999 and most recently conducted the Orchestra in July 2011.

Before his appointment in Houston, Mr. Graf served as music director for eight seasons with the Calgary Philharmonic and for six years with the Bordeaux Aquitaine National Orchestra. He was also music director of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra 1984-94.

Hans Graf has led North America’s major orchestras and participated in this country’s most prestigious summer festivals. Internationally, he appears in the foremost concert halls of Europe, Japan, and Australia, leading many of the world’s great orchestral ensembles. He has led performances at European festivals including Aix-en-Provence, Bregenz, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and the Salzburg Festival, where he conducted for twelve consecutive seasons.

Mr. Graf began coaching at the Vienna State Opera in 1977 and made his conducting debut there in 1981. He has since led productions in the opera houses of Berlin, Munich, Paris, and Rome. His extensive opera repertoire includes several world premieres. Recent engagements include Wagner’s Parsifal at Zurich Opera and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg.

Hans Graf’s discography includes the complete works of Dutilleux, the complete symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, and the premiere recording of Zemlinsky’s opera Es war einmal. He has recorded for BMG Arte Nova, Capriccio, CBC, EMI, Erato, JVC, Koch International, Naxos, and Orfeo. Mr. Graf and the Houston Symphony can be seen on a DVD titled The Planets — An HD Odyssey.

Born near Linz, Hans Graf first studied violin and piano. After receiving diplomas in piano and conducting from the Musikhochschule in Graz, he continued his studies in Italy with Franco Ferrara and Sergiu Celibidache and in Russia with Arvid Jansons. Mr. Graf has been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government for championing French music around the world, as well as the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria. In October 2013, he became a professor of orchestral conducting at the University Mozarteum Salzburg.

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Conductor

The Cleveland Orchestra