Blossom Music Festival 2015

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saturday August 8

BEETHOVEN’S EMPEROR CONCERTO The Cleveland Orchestra Gustavo Gimeno, conductor Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Beethoven in 1804, painted by W.J. Mahler

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Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

—Sergei Rachmaninoff Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. It is the wine of new creation and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for all and makes them drunk with the spirits.

—Ludwig van Beethoven

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Introducing the Concert

Blossom Music Festival

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BLOSSOM MUSIC FESTIVAL

Saturday evening, August 8, 2015, at 8:00 p.m.

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTRA G U S TAVO G I M E N O , conductor

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

BEETHOVEN

Leonore Overture No. 2, Opus 72a Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) in E-at major, Opus 73 1. Allegro 2. Adagio un poco mosso — 3. Rondo: Allegro GARRICK OHLSSON, piano

INT ER MISSION ANTONÍN DVORÁK (1841-1904)

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Opus 88 1.

2.

3.

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Allegro con brio Adagio Allegretto grazioso Allegro ma non troppo

Garrick Ohlsson’s appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra is made possible by a gift to the Orchestra’s Guest Artist Fund from Dr. and Mrs. Murray M. Bett.

This concert is dedicated to Jeanette Grasselli Brown and Glenn R. Brown, in recognition of their extraordinary generosity in support of The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2014-15 Annual Fund.

With this concert, The Cleveland Orchestra gratefully honors The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation for its generous support.

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 8

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Leonore Overture No. 2, Opus 72a composed 1804-05

B E E T H O V E N W R O T E O N LY O N E O P E R A , spending sev-

by

Ludwig van

BEETHOVEN born December 16, 1770 Bonn died March 26, 1827 Vienna

At a Glance Beethoven composed his Leonore Overture “No. 2” in 1804-05. This overture was most likely performed at the premiere of his opera Fidelio on November 20, 1805.

(Beethoven wrote three additional overtures or versions as he worked to improve or perfect the opera.)

This overture runs not quite 15 minutes in performance. Beethoven scored it for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets (and an additional one off-stage), 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

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eral difficult and challenging years creating it, revising it, and lovingly trying to perfect it. Fidelio is about a man wrongfully imprisoned, who is saved through the clever and daring efforts of his faithful wife, Leonore. The subject matter was close to Beethoven’s heart in the way that it clearly mirrored his belief in freedom from political oppression and the boundless power of human love.

In the opera, Leonore disguises herself as a man to become assistant to the jailer of the prison where she believes her husband, Florestan, is held as a political prisoner. She hopes that working inside will allow her to find her husband among the prisoners held in the dungeon. She is successful, and, just as the jailer has ordered her husband to be executed, a general reprieve of the prisoners comes from an uncorrupted governor — and all’s well that ends happily.

In the course of writing, producing, and revising the opera, Beethoven wrote three versions of an overture for it, all now known as the “Leonore” overtures. (Beethoven had, in fact, originally wanted to call the opera Leonore, but was dissuaded from doing so in order to avoid confusion with an already existing opera by that title.) Chemical testing and dating of the manuscript papers of the three “Leonore” overtures in the 20th century solved the long riddle as to what order they were actually written. “No. 2,” as it turns out, was the first — and was most likely what was performed at the opera’s premiere in 1805. It is a shorter and more condensed version of the popular No. 3.

In all three versions, Beethoven begins with a repeated grand gesture of chords and ominous music, which gives way to a second set of dramatic chords and is then cleared away by a great sweeping melody. At a crucial moment, an off-stage trumpet silences the orchestra — previewing the way a trumpet call announces the governor’s arrival to grant pardons in the opera itself — leading on to closing music of great fanfare and joy.

Ultimately, Beethoven came to understand that his “Leonore” Overtures were too big for the opera itself — that they had so fully encapsulated the action of the opera in music that they made watching the opera superfluous. He then wrote a brief and expectant Overture to Fidelio that sets just the right

About the Music

2015 Blossom Festival

mood, leaving the three “Leonore” Overtures as perfect and big-hearted material for symphonic concerts. (The once common practice of performing “Leonore” No. 3 in opera productions between scenes in Act Two, popularized but not begun by Gustav Mahler, has died out in recent years, because there, too, the music overwhelms — and brings to an extended pause — the dramatic acting out of the opera onstage.)

—Eric Sellen © 2015

Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) in E-at major, Opus 73 composed 1809

L I K E M O Z A R T before him, Beethoven wrote his concertos for

by

Ludwig van

BEETHOVEN born December 16, 1770 Bonn died March 26, 1827 Vienna

The Cleveland Orchestra

piano and orchestra as vehicles for displaying his own dazzle as a performer. In those times — before radio and recordings and copyright, and when public concerts were less frequent than today — new music was all the rage. Composing your own ensured that you had fresh, unique material to perform.

Your biggest hits, from last year or last week, were meanwhile quickly appropriated by others through copied scores — and with the best tunes arranged for street organ grinders and local wind ensembles. It is little wonder, then, that Mozart kept some scores under lock and key, and left the cadenzas for many of his concertos blank, so that only he could fill them in authentically with his own brand of extemporaneous perfection.

Beethoven moved to Vienna at the age of 22 in 1792. He’d hoped to get to Europe’s musical capital sooner and to study with Mozart, but family circumstances had kept him at home in Bonn helping raise his two younger brothers (around a father who . . . simply drank too much). It was as a performer that Beethoven forged his reputation in Vienna, and within a year he was widely known as a red-hot piano virtuoso.

This set the stage for writing his own concertos. For the first three, written between 1795 and 1802, he followed very much in Mozart’s footsteps with the form. In the 1780s, Mozart had turned the concerto into a fully-realized and independent genre, sometimes churning out three or four each season.

But whereas Mozart, over the course of thirty or more works for solo piano or violin, had developed the concerto into sublime products, Beethoven (with just five works for piano and About the Music

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At a Glance Beethoven composed his Piano Concerto No. 5 in 1809.

The first known performance was given in Leipzig on November 28, 1811, with Friedrich Schneider as soloist and Johann Philipp Christian Schulz leading the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

This concerto runs about 40 minutes in performance.

Beethoven scored it for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings, plus the solo piano.

The “Emperor” Concerto was the first of Beethoven’s five piano concertos to be performed by The Cleveland Orchestra, in January 1922, with pianist Josef Hofmann under the direction of Nikolai Sokoloff. Since that time, it has been a frequent work on the Orchestra’s programs, at home and on tour, with many of the world’s greatest pianists, including Arthur Rubinstein, Artur Schnabel, Claudio Arrau, Rudolf Serkin, Rudolf Firkusny, Robert Casadesus, Leon Fleisher, Daniel Barenboim, Emil Gilels, Alicia de Larrocha, Murray Perahia, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Horacio Gutiérrez, and Radu Lupu.

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one for violin) strived to make the form individual and handmade again. Mozart created the molds and set the standards, and only occasionally over-filled or over-flowed them. Beethoven at first worked within and around those earlier definitions, but the thrust of his musical creativity eventually shattered tradition in order to offer up the first magnificently supercharged concertos of the Romantic 19th century.

Beethoven’s last piano concerto (No. 5) marked a change in the composer’s life onstage. The Fourth was the last concerto that Beethoven premiered publicly. By the time of the Fifth’s debut, his hearing was so far gone that, even if able to play the solo part, he could no longer hear and coordinate the orchestra playing around him. For the premiere in November 1811, the solo part was handled by Friedrich Schneider in Leipzig, and for the first Viennese performance Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny played it, in February 1812.

But between the Fourth and Fifth concertos, something even more important happened than the further closing off of Beethoven’s hearing. In 1809, he was given a brand-new piano (the manufacturer saw it as a promotional opportunity), which, despite his increasing deafness, helped paved the way for the overwhelming grandness of his last concerto.

The fortepiano as an instrument had been invented at the start of the 18th century, transforming the earlier harpsichord and clavichord, which could play each note at one set volume, into a sensitive and dynamic instrument that could play any note softly or loudly or anywhere in between. While the new instrument took some time to catch on, it also underwent some evolutionary changes in design at the end of the century (including the introduction of an iron sounding board and steel strings), which gave it an expanded range of notes and dynamics. Mozart had written his concertos very carefully, so that the piano would not be drowned out by too many instruments playing at the same time. But Beethoven, concerto by concerto, was able to write more and more for an instrument that could play directly against a full orchestra.

And in the Fifth Piano Concerto, the first movement opens big — with orchestral chords and piano flourishes. This is not, however, just ornamentation, for the thematic material of the entire movement derives out of these opening calls and response.

Ingeniously, Beethoven builds the movement (the longest he wrote in any concerto) on a sense of increasing tension and cliAbout the Music

2015 Blossom Festival

max, and with notable use of rhythms of two beats set against three.

After this big opening comes one of the most heavenly of slow middle movements ever written, with the orchestra integrally interwoven into the piano’s lovely, lovingly, longing, lingering phrases. This is directly connected to the third-movement finale, which features one of classical music’s most irresistible and memorable tunes — although this characterization is not to suggest that it would be easy to sing a song to the jaunty stepping phrases of this movement’s main theme.

Orchestra and piano share a discourse over this compelling material and its derivations, bringing the work to a close with requisite bluster and bang, and showing off soloist, orchestra, and Beethoven in equal proportions.

N A M E S A N D I N N OVAT I O N S

The origins of the nickname “Emperor” for this concerto are uncertain. Until the latter half of the 20th century, the name was not well-known or often-used outside of English-speaking countries.

Handed-down explanations for the nickname include a story that at the first Viennese performance (February 12, 1812) a French officer was: 1.) so overwhelmed by the concerto that he proclaimed it “an emperor among concertos” (or words to that effect), or 2.) that the same mythical (or intoxicated) French soldier was so moved by some of the march-like music in the concerto or recognized a short phrase in the concerto so similar to La Marseillaise that he stood up and/or proclaimed that Emperor Napoleon’s presence was in the music. An early publisher or performer is a more likely, if less poetic, source for the name, which, whatever its origins, seems well justified by the concerto’s size and grandeur.

In the context of listening to any of Beethoven’s five piano concertos, and while contemplating the composer’s innovations and evolution in the artform, it is worthwhile noting that there is a sixth piano concerto by Beethoven. This is an arrangement that he made (or helped supervise) of his own Violin Concerto, Opus 61, for a generous Italian publisher. Known as Opus 61a, it is infrequently programmed.

Few soloists have bothered to learn the part, and, admittedly, some portions of it don’t really work. It is, nonetheless, a strangely interesting work to hear in performance or recording — and a sure way for many modern listeners who feel too well-acquainted with Beethoven’s concertos to be startled again, as his audiences were, on hearing something unexpectedly familiar but different.

—Eric Sellen © 2015

Blossom Music Festival

About the Music

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Symphony No. 8 in G major, Opus 88 composed 1889

by

Antonín

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

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S O M E T H I N G R E M A R K A B L E happened in the history of music during the 19th century. Composers of symphonic music increasingly turned away from happy or cheerful feelings in favor of dramatic or even tragic ones. Instead of the light and unclouded tone found in many major works by Haydn or Mozart, Romantic composers used darker and darker colors. Lightness was gradually pushed to the periphery of classical music — and taken up by new popular genres such as operetta — while largescale symphonic works increasingly emphasized high passion and brooding melancholy.

There were two great exceptions to this general trend: Felix Mendelssohn in the first half of the century, and Antonín Dvořák in the second half. Both had the unusual gift of writing radiantly happy music in an era where such an approach was often taken for conservatism or naïveté. But it was neither — here it was merely a sign of a different artistic personality and temperament.

If we compare Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony from 1889 to some of the great symphonic works written around the same time, the difference becomes readily apparent. In the previous year, 1888, Tchaikovsky completed his Fifth Symphony (in E minor), in which he was grappling with grave questions about Fate and human life (certainly his own fate and life). The same year, César Franck introduced his Symphony in D minor, whose complex emotional journey leads from self-doubt to eventual triumph. Johannes Brahms had finished his fourth and last symphony (in E minor) just a few years earlier, in 1885.

In a sense, Dvořák continued the work of Brahms, his friend and mentor. After his previous effort, the intensely dramatic, “Brahmsian” Seventh Symphony in D minor, Dvořák turned to the more cheerful major mode for his Eighth. Not that there aren’t serious moments in this work. But if Dvořák’s stated purpose was to write a work “different from other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way,” his unstated intention may have been to write a symphony with mostly sunny and happy feelings, while still being “serious” music.

The Eighth Symphony’s first movement opens with an expressive melody in G minor that prepares the entrance of another theme, a playful idea in G major first given to the solo About the Music

The Cleveland Orchestra

flute. A dynamic sonata exposition soon gets underway; it is characteristic that Dvořák “overshoots the mark” as he bypasses the expected secondary key, D major, in favor of a more remote, but even brighter-sounding B major. The development section works up quite a storm, but it subsides when the playful main theme returns, now played by the english horn instead of the flute (two octaves lower than before). The recapitulation ends with a short but very energetic coda.

The second movement (Adagio) begins with a simple string melody in darker tonal regions (E-flat major/C minor) that soon reaches bright C major, where it remains. The main theme spawns various episodes, in turn lyrical and passionate. After a powerful climax, the movement ends quietly.

The third movement (Allegretto grazioso) is neither a minuet nor a scherzo but an “intermezzo” like the third movements of Brahms’s First and Second Symphonies. Its first tune is a sweet and languid waltz; its second, functioning as a Trio (or middle section of three) sounds more like a Bohemian folk dance. After the return of the waltz, Dvořák surprises us by a very fast (Molto vivace) coda section, in which commentators have recognized a theme from one of Dvořák’s earlier operas.

But this section actually consists of exactly the same notes as the lilting Trio melody, only in a faster tempo, with stronger accents, and in duple instead of triple meter. It is interesting that, in the third movement of his Second Symphony, Brahms had transformed his Trio theme in exactly the same way.

A resounding trumpet fanfare announces the fourth movement (Allegro ma non troppo), a complex theme-and-variations with a central episode that sounds at first like contrasting material but is in fact derived from the main theme. Dvořák’s form-building procedures have their antecedents in the last movements of Beethoven’s Third and Brahms’s Fourth, but he filled out the form with melodies of an unmistakably Czech flavor and a joviality few composers at the time possessed. The variations differ in character. Many are in the major mode, though the central one, reminiscent of a village band, is in the minor.

The music is always cheerful and optimistic, yet it doesn’t lack grandeur. The ending seems to be a long time coming, with an almost interminable series of closing figures. When the last chord finally arrives, it still sounds delightfully abrupt due to its unusual metric placement.

—Peter Laki © 2015

At a Glance Dvořák composed his Eighth Symphony between August and November 1889. It was first performed on February 2, 1890, in Prague, under the composer’s direction.

Dvořák was not satisfied with the low fee offered for the symphony by his German publisher, Simrock, and instead sold the work to Novello in London, who published the symphony in 1892 with a dedication to the Czech Academy of Science, Literature, and the Arts, to which Dvořák had been elected in 1890.

The symphony runs about 35 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, and strings.

Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony was introduced to The Cleveland Orchestra’s repertoire in October 1938

by Artur Rodzinski. The most recent performances by the Orchestra at Severance Hall were given in February 2007 under the direction of Iván Fischer. It was most recently heard at Blossom in August 2012, led by Jakub Hrůša.

Copyright © Musical Arts Association

Blossom Music Festival

About the Music

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Gustavo Gimeno Spanish conductor Gustavo Gimeno becomes principal conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg with the 2015-16 season. He is making his Cleveland Orchestra debut with this evening’s concert.

Gustavo Gimeno was born in Valencia, Spain, and currently lives in Amsterdam. From 2002 to 2013, he was principal percussionist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He was also a member of the Amsterdam Percussion Group, European Community Youth Orchestra, and the National Youth Orchestra of Spain. As a chamber musician, he performed with the Katia and Marielle Labèque piano duo and formed a percussion duo with Lorenzo Ferrandiz. He also taught at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the Musikene School of Music in the Basque Country.

Mr. Gimeno’s international conducting career began in 2012 as assistant to Mariss Jansons with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; his conducting debut with that orchestra was in 2014. He also spent several years assisting Claudio Abbado with Bologna’s Orchestra Mozart, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In 2013, he also worked with Bernard Haitink at the Orchestra Mozart. Gustavo Gimeno stud-

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ied conducting at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, participated in masterclasses with Iván Fischer, Ed Spanjaard, and Hans Vonk, and was chief conductor of the Amsterdam-based Con Brio Symphony Orchestra and Het Orkest Amsterdam.

During the past two seasons, Gustavo Gimeno has made debuts conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Hague Philharmonic, Hannover Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie Herford, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orchestre Giuseppe Verdi Milan, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta de Valencia, Australia’s Queensland Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Japan’s Sendai Philharmonic, Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Tonhalle Orchestra. This past spring, he led Bellini’s Norma at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia.

Gustavo Gimeno has worked closely with a number of composers, including George Benjamin, Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Theo Loevendie, and Jacob ter Veldhuis. He conducted the European premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Second Piano Concerto with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Yefim Bronfman, and works by Britta Byström with the Swedish Symphony Orchestra.

Conductor

2015 Blossom Festival

Garrick Ohlsson Since winning the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, American pianist Garrick Ohlsson has been hailed worldwide for his technical prowess and artistic mastery. He made his Cleveland Orchestra debut in March 1975 and most recently performed here in May 2014.

A native of White Plains, New York, Garrick Ohlsson began piano studies at age 8, attended the Westchester Conservatory of Music, and at 13 entered the Juilliard School.

His teachers include Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne, Tom Lishman, and Irma Wolpe. Among Mr. Ohlssen’s honors are first prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition and 1968 Montreal Piano Competition, and the 1994 Avery Fisher Prize.

Regarded as a leading exponent of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson performed in celebrations of the 2010 bicentenary of Chopin’s birthday, including a gala at Chopin’s birth house in Warsaw and recitals in Berkeley, La Jolla, New York, and Seattle.

For the bicentenary of Franz Liszt’s birth during the 2011-12 season, Garrick Ohlsson presented recitals in Chicago, Hong Kong, London, and New York. 2015 marks the centenary of the death of Alexander Scriabin, whose music he is performing

The Cleveland Orchestra

Soloist

in Chicago, London, New York, and San Francisco.

From his repertoire of some eighty different concertos, Mr. Ohlsson performs with symphonies all around the world, including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Halle Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Salzburg Mozarteum, Sydney Symphony, and Warsaw Philharmonic. His recent North American engagements included concerts with the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minnesota, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco.

In recital, Mr. Ohlsson has performed the complete Beethoven piano sonatas at the Ravinia, Tanglewood, and Verbier festivals. He has also appeared with vocalists Jessye Norman, Magda Olivero, and Ewa Podles, among others.

As a chamber musician, Garrick Ohlsson collaborates with the Emerson, Takács, and Tokyo string quartets. Along with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, Mr. Ohlsson is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio.

A prolific recording artist, Garrick Ohlsson can be heard on the Angel, Arabesque, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Hyperion, Nonesuch, RCA Victor Red Seal, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. Volume 3 of his 10disc Bridge Records set of the complete Beethoven sonatas was given a Grammy Award.

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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