Blossom Music Festival 2015

S U M M E R

H O M E

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THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTR A

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BLOSSOM MUSIC FESTIVAL P R E S E N T E D

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sunday August 30

SHAHAM PLAYS BRUCH & DE WAART CONDUCTS MAHLER The Cleveland Orchestra Edo de Waart, conductor Gil Shaham, violin

Mahler, in a photograph taken in 1909 in New York

The point is not to take the world’s opinion as a guiding star, but to go one’s way in life and to work unfalteringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

—Gustav Mahler

2O15

BLOSSOM MUSIC FESTIVAL

Sunday evening, August 30, 2015, at 7:00 p.m.

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTRA E D O d e WA A R T , conductor

MAX BRUCH (1838-1920)

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 26 1. Prelude: Allegro moderato 2. Adagio 3. Finale: Allegro energico GIL SHAHAM, violin

INTER MISSION GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)

Symphony No. 1 1. Langsam, schleppend: wie ein Naturlaut [Slow, dragging: as if spoken by nature] 2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell [With powerful movement, but not too fast] 3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen — [Solemn and measured, without dragging —] Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise [Very simple, like a folk-tune] 4. Stürmisch bewegt — Energisch [Agitated in storm — Energetic]

This concert is sponsored by Littler Mendelson, PC. This concert is dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Healy and to Mrs. Becky Dunn in recognition of their extraordinary generosity in support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2014-15 Annual Fund.

Media Partner: Northeast Ohio Media Group

The 2015 Blossom Music Festival is presented by The J.M. Smucker Company.

The Cleveland Orchestra

Concert Program: August 30

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Edo de Waart Dutch conductor Edo de Waart is chief conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He also holds the title of conductor laureate of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2016, he takes on the responsibilities as music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Mr. de Waart first led The Cleveland Orchestra in July 1975 and most recently appeared here at concerts in December 1991 at Severance Hall.

Edo de Waart came from a musical family, and studied oboe with Haakon Stotijn and conducting at the Music Lyceum in Amsterdam. In 1961, he became co-principal oboe of the Amsterdam Philharmonic and two years later, associate principal of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He continued his conducting studies with Franco Ferrara, and made his professional debut with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1964. That same year, he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conductors’ Competition in New York, which resulted in a year-long appointment as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He subsequently served in that position for the Concertgebouw Orches-

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tra and made his recording debut with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, which he founded in 1967.

Across the decades, Mr. de Waart has also held conducting positions with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

He is artistic director of the Netherlands Dutch Radio and Television Organization.

He also maintains regular relationships with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

In addition, Edo de Waart has led opera performances with Paris’s Bastille Opera, Bayreuth Festival, Metropolitan Opera, London’s Royal Opera House, Salzburg Festival, and Santa Fe Opera. He was chief conductor of De Nederlandse Opera, 1999-2004.

Recent additions to Edo de Waart’s extensive discography include Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, and an album of Wagner including the Symphony in C, Siegfried Idyll, and music from Tristan and Isolde with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted the first recording of John Adams’s Nixon in China, which won a Grammy Award in 1988. An advocate of modern and contemporary music, Mr. de Waart has conducted compositions by Britten, Reich, Torke, and Wuorinen.

Guest Conductor

Blossom Music Festival

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 26 composed 1857-1867

At a Glance

by

Max

BRUCH born January 6, 1838 Cologne, Germany died October 2, 1920 Friedenau, just outside Berlin

The Cleveland Orchestra

Bruch made initial sketches for what would become his G-minor Violin Concerto in 1857 at the age of 19, but did not finish the work until nearly a decade later. The first performance took place on April 24, 1866, in Coblenz; Otto von Königslöw was the violinist and the composer conducted. Bruch revised the score considerably after consultations with Joseph Joachim, who was the soloist for the premiere of the final version on January 7, 1868, in Bremen, with Karl Reinthaler conducting.

This concerto runs just over 20 minutes in performance. Bruch scored it for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings, plus the solo violin.

The Cleveland Orchestra first performed Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 on October 31, 1920, at a “Popular Concert” in Masonic Hall, with Antonio Ferrara as the soloist and Nikolai Sokoloff conducting.

The most recent performances were given in August 2011 at Blossom, with Baiba Skride as the soloist, conducted by Bramwell Tovey.

About the Music B R U C H ’ S V I O L I N C O N C E R T O in G minor is the work of a young man of 28, who already had several successful compositions to his credit. These included an opera, Die Lorelei, that had been performed in several German theaters. With his violin concerto, Bruch — who had recently been appointed as music director in the city of Coblenz — intended to confirm his position as a prominent composer of the Schumann-Mendelssohn school.

While he was working on the concerto, he confided to his former teacher Ferdinand Hiller in a letter, “My Violin Concerto is progressing slowly — I do not feel sure of my feet in this terrain. Do you not think that it is in fact very audacious to write a Violin Concerto?”

Eventually Bruch sought the advice of Joseph Joachim, one of the greatest violinists of the day, who had also helped Brahms and Dvořák with their concertos. The correspondence between Bruch and Joachim contains extensive musical notation and reveals just how many details were changed before the concerto assumed its final form.

Bruch may have been a traditional composer, but he was not one to follow the conventions slavishly. The form of his first movement, which bears the title Vorspiel (“Prelude”),

About the Music

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Bruch lived for more than 50 years after completing his G-minor concerto.

He wrote a hundred other compositions.

Yet this rst violin concerto is what has kept his name rmly in the standard repertoire.

The composer, who sold the rights to this work to the publisher for a onetime lump payment, no doubt came

is much looser and more fantasy-like than the first movements of most concertos. It begins, after just a few rumbling and low chords in the orchestra, with a solo violin cadenza, followed by the main theme, which also has a certain cadenza-like freedom to it, despite its strict rhythm marked by the timpani and the double bass. The lyrical second theme evolves into a section filled with scintillating passagework, followed by a dramatic section for orchestra alone. After this, the initial cadenza returns, and a short orchestral transition leads directly into the second-movement Adagio, warmly lyrical and exceptionally rich in melodic invention.

The theme of the third-movement Finale begins after an introduction of a few bars. It is a brilliant melody full of virtuosic double-stops (playing two strings simultaneously) and arpeggios, followed by a dramatic second theme. The movement follows the rules of Classical sonata form, although the development section is extremely brief. There is a substantial coda, however, bringing some harmonic surprises and previously unheard variations on the two themes. The concerto ends in a faster tempo.

Bruch lived for more than 50 years after completing his G-minor concerto. He wrote a hundred other compositions, including the popular Scottish Fantasy (for violin and orchestra), the Kol Nidrei (for cello and orchestra), and two more violin concertos. Yet this first concerto for violin and orchestra is what has kept his name firmly in the repertoire since the day of its premiere over 140 years ago. The composer, who sold the rights to this work to the publisher for a one-time lump payment, no doubt came to regret his financial naïveté in later years.

—Peter Laki © 2015

Copyright © Musical Arts Association

to regret his nancial naïveté in later years.

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About the Music

2015 Blossom Festival

Gil Shaham American violinist Gil Shaham is among the foremost violinists of our time. In demand throughout the world for concerto, ensemble, and recital performances, he made his Cleveland Orchestra debut in April 1988. His most recent appearances with the Orchestra were at Severance Hall in February 2009, Blossom in August 2013, and Miami in January 2014.

Born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971, Gil Shaham later moved to Israel with his family. At age 7, he began violin studies at the Rubin Academy of Music with Samuel Bernstein. In 1981, while studying with Haim Taub in Jerusalem, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic. That same year, he began working with Dorothy DeLay and Jens Ellerman at Aspen. In 1982, after receiving first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition, Mr. Shaham became a scholarship student at the Juilliard School, where his teachers were Ms. DeLay and Hyo Kang. He also studied at Columbia University. His honors include the 1990

The Cleveland Orchestra

Guest Soloist

Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2008 Avery Fisher Prize, and 2012 Instrumentalist of the Year Award from Musical America.

For six seasons, Mr. Shaham has been exploring the violin concertos of the 1930s.

His recent performances include works by Barber, Bartók, Berg, Britten, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky with the orchestras of Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as the BBC Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Staatskapelle Dresden.

In addition, he has performed the world premieres of concertos by David Bruce and Bright Sheng. Also an avid recitalist and chamber musician, he appears in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

Mr. Shaham’s more than two dozen concerto and solo recordings have earned many awards, including multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award. His recent albums include concertos by Barber, Berg, and Stravinsky, available on Canary Classics, a label he founded in 2004. His newest recording, 1930s Violin Concertos, Volume 1, features live performances.

Mr. Shaham plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.

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Symphony No. 1 in D major composed 1884-1889

At a Glance

by

Gustav

MAHLER born July 7, 1860 Kalischt, Bohemia (now Kalištì in the Czech Republic) died May 18, 1911 Vienna

Mahler’s first sketches of what was to become the First Symphony probably date from 1884 or 1885.

The actual composition took place largely in February and March 1888.

The first performance, under the title “Symphonic Poem in Two Parts,” was given on November 20, 1889, in Budapest, with Mahler conducting.

At the second performance (Hamburg, October 27, 1893), the work was renamed “Titan, Tone-Poem in the Form of a Symphony.” In 1896, Mahler discarded the second of the work’s five movements (“Blumine”), and the four-movement “Symphony in D major” was performed in Berlin on March 16, 1896. Mahler revised the work further in 1906-07. He conducted the first performances in the United States on December 16, 1909, with the New York Philharmonic.

This symphony runs about 50 minutes in performance. Mahler

scored it for 4 flutes (third and fourth doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (third doubling english horn), 4 clarinets (third doubling bass clarinet and E-flat clarinet, fourth doubling E-flat clarinet), 3 bassoons (third doubling contrabassoon), 7 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 2 sets of timpani, harp, percussion (triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam), and strings.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 was first presented in Cleveland four years before the founding of The Cleveland Orchestra, on December 15, 1914, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock. The Cleveland Orchestra first played it in 1942, under the direction of Artur Rodzinski. The most recent performances by the Orchestra were given at Severance Hall in March 2013 led by Christoph von Dohnányi.

About the Music D U R I N G H I S L I F E T I M E , the majority of Mahler’s fame and

fortune came from his great skill as a conductor. Following a few short years of apprenticeship among the provincial opera houses of Europe, he quickly emerged as one of the foremost conductors of his time — and eventually became music director of the Vienna State Opera and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, and then chief conductor in New York at the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.

It took the world far longer to accept Mahler’s genius as a composer. Indeed, a number of his late works were not premiered until after his death — and it was well into the second half of the 20th century before his symphonies became standard fare at concerts throughout the world.

The First Symphony is a product of Mahler’s “wandering years” as a young composer. Like the hero of his first great

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About the Music

2015 Blossom Festival

song cycle, Songs of a Wayfarer, he was himself a “wayfarer” in the 1880s, moving from city to city and from conducting job to conducting job until finally, in 1888, he landed his first important post as director of the Royal Opera in Budapest at the age of 28.

Mahler’s outward success as a conductor, however, did not translate into understanding for his First Symphony, which was especially poorly received at its early performances. Audiences in Budapest (1889), Hamburg and Weimar (1893), and Vienna (1900) were equally bewildered by what they heard as total musical chaos and an unacceptable mixture of conflicting emotions and ideas. This may be surprising to us today, given the great popularity of Mahler’s music in our time, but 100 years ago Mahler’s departures from classical form were too great — or too unexpected — for his contemporaries to grasp hold of immediately.

Other composers had written masterpieces in their twenties, but few had been so independent from their models as Mahler. As the composer himself once remarked, Beethoven had started out as a Mozartian composer and Wagner as a follower of Weber and Meyerbeer; but he, Mahler, “had been condemned by a cruel fate to being himself from the start.” To Mahler — as to Beethoven before him — symphony was a form of drama. In later years, he was to speak about the universality of the symphony and the necessity for it “to embrace everything.” This heaven-storming attitude is already evident in the First Symphony. It accounts in no small part for the difficulties encountered by Mahler during the work’s genesis, both before and after the Budapest premiere in 1889.

The first performance of this work was given under the title “Symphonic Poem in Two Parts” (with five movements grouped together into two halves). This title alluded to the existence of a literary or dramatic inspiration, but Mahler did not reveal the source. When the symphony was performed again in 1893, Mahler gave it a new title, “Titan,” after a novel by a German Romantic writer named Jean Paul (1763-1825).

After 1896, however, he removed the title and arranged the movements as we know them today (eliminating one).

Mahler also withdrew the story-like explanations of the symphony’s program that he had written — and subsequently disavowed all such programmatic discussions of his later symphonies. Mahler was all too aware of the dangers inherBlossom Festival 2015

About the Music

During Mahler’s lifetime, the majority of his fame and fortune came from his great skill as a conductor.

It took the world far longer to accept Mahler’s genius as a composer — and it was well into the second half of the 20th century before his symphonies became standard fare at concert halls throughout the world.

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To Mahler — as to Beethoven before him — symphony was a form of drama.

In later years, he was to speak about the universality of the symphony and the necessity for it “to embrace everything.” This heaven-storming attitude is already evident in the First Symphony.

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ent in such commentaries, for they rarely do justice to the music and, in addition, they often create a false impression that they actually explain what is “happening” during the symphony’s music. The so-called “programs” that he did write can perhaps best be understood as attempts on Mahler’s part to verbalize — often after the fact — the kind of emotional sensibilities that the music evoked in his mind while composing.

In fact, the real “story” in this symphony is how far Mahler went in expanding conventional symphonic forms to produce a complex and monumental work.

The symphony’s first movement utilizes the basic melody of one of Mahler’s early songs, from his Songs of a Wayfarer group. This song, “Ging heut’ morgens übers Feld” (“I Walked This Morning Through the Field”), depicts a happy summer morning with flowers blooming and birds singing. From this, and other writings by Mahler about the symphony, we understand that the entire movement can be seen to describe the gradual awakening of spring. We hear the musical interval of a perfect fourth (Mahler called it “a sound of nature” in the score) — and everything grows out of this one interval, like a tree from a small seed. Even the call of the cuckoo bird, evoked by the clarinet, is a perfect fourth (although real cuckoos sing an interval closer to a third).

The second movement is based on the Austrian country dance called the Ländler, and is one of many Mahlerian movements inspired by this type of dance. A simple tune, rather unassuming in itself, is played with great rhythmic energy, and is soon taken up by the full orchestra, with a large brass section comprising seven horns and four trumpets, and with the tempo marking “Wild.”

Mahler called the third movement by several different titles, including “À la pompes funèbres” (“In the Manner of a Funeral March”) and “Funeral March in Callot’s Manner” (Jacques Callot was a 17th-century French engraver whose satirical etchings anticipate those of Goya by a century). The immediate inspiration came from a then-popular woodcut (shown on page 11) by Moritz von Schwind called The Huntsman’s Funeral, in which the hunter is buried by the animals of the forest.

The first audiences had much trouble with this movement’s somewhat odd structure and form, but they certainly recognized the popular “Frère Jacques” melody. The “alienation” of this familiar tune played here in the minor mode yields a spicy About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

mixture of humor, tragedy, mystery, and irony.

This grotesque funeral march evolves into an openly parodistic section whose unabashedly schmaltzy themes, played by oboes and trumpets, are reminiscent of Eastern European Jewish klezmer folk music. The melodies of two more of Mahler’s Wayfarer songs (“By the Road Stands a Linden Tree” and “My Sweetheart’s Two Blue Eyes”) are juxtaposed against this material, creating an interesting atmosphere of contrast that is at times painfully nostalgic. A more subdued recapitulation of the “Frère Jacques” tune and the klezmer material ends this unusual movement.

The fourth-movement Finale, which follows the funeral march without a pause, is the longest and most complex movement in the symphony. Like the last movements of many earlier symphonies, it represents a progression from tragedy to triumph, but here the contrasts between the various emotions are exceptionally polarized. The fabric of this movement includes a lyrical second theme that — as in several of Mahler’s later symphonies — seems to introduce us to a completely different world. There are also exuberant climaxes followed by relapses into despair, plus numerous recurrences of materials from the first movement. Finally, the work ends in a radiant D-major coda proclaiming a final victory.

The Huntsman’s Funeral, a19thcentury woodcut by Moritz von Schwind, which helped inspire the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony.

—Peter Laki © 2015

Copyright © Musical Arts Association

Blossom Festival 2015

About the Music

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5470

Blossom Music Center opened on July 19, 1968, with a concert that featured Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the direction of George Szell.

20%

OVE R

B LO S S O M M U SIC CENTER

1968

SEATS

25

and under

The portion of young people at Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Blossom has increased to 20% over the past five years, via an array of programs funded through the Orchestra’s Center for Future Audiences for students and families.

Blossom’s Pavilion, designed by Cleveland architect Peter van Dijk, can seat 5,470 people, including positions for wheelchair seating.

(Another 13,500 can sit on the Lawn.)

The Pavilion is famed for the clarity of its acoustics and for its distinctive design.

BY THE NUMBERS

19 million ADMISSIONS

Blossom Music Center has welcomed more than 19,000,000 people to concerts and events since 1968 — including the Orchestra’s annual Festival concerts, plus special attractions featuring rock, country, jazz, and other popular acts.

1,000+

The Cleveland Orchestra has performed just over 1,000 concerts at Blossom since 1968. The 1000th performance took place during the summer of 2014.

1250 tons of steel

12,000 cubic yards concrete 4 acres of sodded lawn

The creation of Blossom in 1966-68 was a major construction project involving many hands and much material, made possible by many generous donors.

Blossom’s 50th Anniversary Season in 2018 will bring to a close the Orchestra’s 100th Season celebrations during 2017-18, and mark the beginning of The Cleveland Orchestra’s second century serving Northeast Ohio.

2018