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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saturday July 25

TCHAIKOVSKY’S FOURTH The Cleveland Orchestra Stéphane Denève, conductor Paul Lewis, piano

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks h k to the h richness h off Cleveland’s l l d cultural l l heritage and the excellence of The Cleveland Orchestra, literally millions of men, women, and children have expreienced p such a dawn . . . and it is unfogettable. g Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc. We are: Hyster and Yale forklift trucks; Nuvera fuel cells and hydrogen generators

NACCO Industries, Inc. We are: The North American Coal Corporation; Hamilton Beach Brands small electric appliances; and The Kitchen Collection retail stores

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BLOSSOM MUSIC FESTIVAL

Saturday evening, July 25, 2015, at 8:00 p.m.

THE CLEVEL AND ORCHESTRA S T É P H A N E D E N È V E , conductor

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)

Dumbarton Oaks Concerto Concerto in E-at major (for chamber orchestra) 1. Tempo giusto 2. Allegretto 3. Con moto

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 1. Allegro affettuoso 2. Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso 3. Allegro vivace PAUL LEWIS, piano

INTERMISSION PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Opus 36 1.

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Andante sostenuto — Moderato con anima Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco

This concert is sponsored by Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc., a Cleveland Orchestra Partner in Excellence.

Paul Lewis’s appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra is made possible by a gift to the Orchestra’s Guest Artist Fund from The Payne Fund.

This concert is dedicated to JoAnn and Robert Glick 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 William Bingham Foundation for its generous support.

Media Partners: Northeast Ohio Media Group and WCLV Classical ideastream®

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

The Cleveland Orchestra

Concert Program: July 25

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Dumbarton Oaks: Concerto in E-at major (for chamber orchestra) composed 1937-38

by

IGOR

STRAVINSKY born June 17, 1882 Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg died April 6, 1971 New York

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W H A T A P R E S E N T for a wedding anniversary — to commission one of the greatest composers to write a concerto for chamber orchestra! The lucky couple was Robert Woods Bliss and his wife, Mildred Barnes Bliss. He was a former U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, she one of the most prominent arts patrons in Washington D.C., once known as “the Queen of Georgetown.”

The lucky composer, of course, was Igor Stravinsky.

At this stage in his life (he was 55 when he wrote Dumbarton Oaks), Stravinsky had long since abandoned the revolutionary ways of The Rite of Spring, by then a quarter-century old. The switch from the “barbarian” Russian idiom to “neo-Classicism,” which had occurred in the 1920s, seemed one of the most drastic changes any composer’s style had ever undergone. Yet more qualities of Stravinsky’s writing carried over into the new period than is often acknowledged. These have to do mostly with technical details, such as the treatment of rhythm and small melodic fragments, yet they are responsible for our distinct feeling that Stravinsky is always Stravinsky, whether he chooses Russian folk songs or Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos as his starting point.

For this anniversary work, Bach was definitely in his mind.

The beginning of the opening movement, which manages to telescope parts of the Second and Third Brandenburg Concertos into one motif, leaves us no doubt. Stravinsky himself told a friend, when asked what he was working on: “A small concerto in the style of the Brandenburg Concertos” — and it is this older use of the word “concerto” to signify a concerted group of instruments playing together that is meant here, rather than the usual modern sense of a work for solo instrument and orchestra.

Even with the Bach connection clearly in place, by comparing Dumbarton Oaks with other works by other composers from the mid-20th-century (such as Ernest Bloch, Paul Hindemith, or Bohuslav Martinů) who were also inspired by Baroque concertos, it is easy to appreciate the unique qualities in Stravinsky’s approach to the task.

For one thing, Stravinsky didn’t hesitate to mix his “Brandenburg mode” with other sources of inspiration, as in the first movement’s second theme (for two horns), which have less to do with Bach than with band music. The Brandenburg theme About the Music

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returns, and there is even a short fugato (voices imitating one another). Yet the rhythmic irregularities keep increasing in a very un-Bachian way. At the end of the movement, both the meter and the E-flat major tonality seem to become more stable than before, but Stravinsky avoids closure. A bridge passage for strings alone unexpectedly changes keys to prepare for the second movement, which follows without a break.

The second-movement Allegretto moves even further away from Bach (in fact, Italian composer Alfredo Casella was reminded of a passage from Verdi’s opera Falstaff ). A playful little tune is repeated, passed from instrument to instrument with the sparsest of accompaniments. In the second half of the movement — following a brief interlude of slow, long chords — the same material is replayed in a richer instrumentation, with a virtuoso variation for solo flute at the end.

The bridge section from the end of the first movement returns to introduce the third-movement finale. Over the single accented notes of the cellos and basses, we hear a simple, repetitive theme, which functions as (but doesn’t sound anything like) a Baroque ritornello (a recurring passage), with fugal, fanfare-like, and faux Rococo episodes. A richly orchestrated, expanded version of the ritornello closes the delightful work.

—Peter Laki © 2015

Copyright © Musical Arts Association

Peter Laki is a visiting associate professor at Bard College and a frequent lecturer and writer on music.

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About the Music

At a Glance This work for chamber orchestra was commissioned in 1937 by Robert Woods Bliss, former United States Ambassador to Argentina, and his wife, and is named after the Blisses’ estate near Washington D.C. (In 1944, an important international conference was held at Dumbarton Oaks, out of which grew the United Nations.)

Stravinsky began his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto during the winter of 193738 and finished it in the spring of 1938. It was first performed privately, on the 30th wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, May 8, 1938, under the direction of Nadia Boulanger. Stravinsky, who was being treated for tuberculosis at the time, could not travel to the United States for the premiere, but did conduct the first public performance in Paris a few weeks later.

The Dumbarton Oaks Concerto runs about 15 minutes in performance.

Stravinsky scored it for a group of 15 solo instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, 3 violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos, and 2 double basses.

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Paul Lewis British pianist Paul Lewis is regarded among the leading pianists of his generation. He is making his Cleveland Orchestra debut with this evening’s concert.

Born in Liverpool, Paul Lewis began his musical studies as a cellist and at 10 began to focus on piano. He studied with Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London before working privately with Alfred Brendel.

Mr. Lewis’s many awards include the Diapason d’or de l’année, two Edison awards, three Gramophone awards, Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year, and the South Bank Show Classical Music award.

Paul Lewis performs regularly as a soloist with many of the world’s great orchestras, including those of Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mahler Chamber, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony, London’s Philharmonia, and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He is also a frequent guest at the Edinburgh, Klavier Ruhr, Lu

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cerne, Mostly Mozart, Rheingau, La Roque d’Antheron, Salzburg, Schubertiade, and Tanglewood festivals and at London’s BBC Proms, where in 2010 he became the first pianist to perform a complete Beethoven piano concerto cycle in one season.

In recital, Paul Lewis appears in the world’s foremost musical venues, including engagements in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Vienna, and Zurich.

Along with his wife, Norwegian cellist Bjørg Lewis, Mr. Lewis is artistic director of Midsummer Music, an annual chamber music festival held in Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom.

For Harmonia Mundi, Paul Lewis has recorded a multi-award winning discography. His repertoire includes the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, concertos, and Diabelli Variations, Liszt’s B-minor Sonata along with other late works, and all the major piano works from the last six years of Schubert’s life (including the three big song cycles with tenor Mark Padmore).

Future recording projects include the Brahms D-minor Piano Concerto with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and solo works by Mussorgsky and Schumann.

For more information, visit www. paullewispiano.co.uk.

Soloist

2015 Blossom Festival

Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 composed 1839-45

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Robert

SCHUMANN born June 8, 1810 Zwickau, Saxony died July 29, 1856 Endenich, near Bonn

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R O B E R T S C H U M A N N had little patience for the hordes of virtuoso pianists who showed off their brilliant fingerwork and dazzled audiences all over Europe on the new-fangled instruments that were much bigger and brighter than anything Mozart had known. Even Beethoven sensed the potential of the new upper octaves, which could be heard (though not by himself, of course) at the back of large halls and could compete on equal terms with the modern orchestra. Schumann’s early piano music felt the lure of this brilliant style, but he soon championed the cause of expression and feeling in the face of virtuosity and brilliance.

In 1839, Schumann wrote, when a particular concerto offended him: “We must await the genius who will show us in a new and brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, and how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.”

Schumann’s gift for prophecy, so accurate when proclaiming the genius of the young Chopin and the young Brahms, was this time pointing with equal accuracy to himself. In 1839, he had in fact begun to sketch a piece for piano and orchestra for his beloved Clara, and it was finished in 1841 under the title Fantasie. There was no opportunity to perform it, however, and three publishers declined to print it. Four years later, he added an Andantino section, linking to a Rondo, to make a three-movement concerto. And in this form, once it had been performed by Clara in Leipzig on New Year’s Day, 1846, it was successful everywhere — and came to be one of the best-loved of Romantic piano concertos.

The first movement betrays the character of a Fantasie in many ways, since the main theme, heard first in the winds with the piano’s immediate response, reappears in many guises. It serves as the second subject in the major key, now on the clarinet over the piano’s rippling accompaniment, and also as an interruption before the development, when the theme is passed back and forth between the clarinet and the piano in a marvelously languorous mood. Finally, after the cadenza, it appears in a brisk closing coda.

As a model of how soloist and orchestra may be combined, the middle movement Intermezzo splits its theme between

About the Music

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At a Glance Schumann composed the first movement of his Piano Concerto during the spring and summer of 1841 as a “fantasy” for piano and orchestra. He added the second and third movements four years later, and the concerto was first performed in Dresden on December 4, 1845, with Clara Schumann at the piano and Ferdinand Hiller conducting. (The score was published with a dedication to Hiller.)

This concerto runs about 30 minutes in performance.

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

these forces, who continue the conversation until it is time for a new theme. This is presented by the cellos with elegant interjections from the soloist. At the end, as the movement fades to nothing, oboes and clarinets bring back the first movement’s main theme in a hesitant manner, recalling the equivalent moment in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto (No. 5), before the finale bursts in with new energy.

The last movement’s theme is a thinly disguised version of the concerto’s opening theme, and the soloist is soon engaged in traversing the keyboard with a stream of notes that comes close to the domain of virtuosity. But the melodic sweep is always present, and a contrasting theme exploits a different kind of skill, the control of rhythmic dislocation. Schumann’s passion for the teasing effects of cross-rhythms puts both soloist and orchestra on their mettle, but they emerge from it with a new rush of energy that drives them together to the close.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2015 Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis and is a noted authority on French music. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, and Scriabin.

The Cleveland Orchestra gratefully acknowledges these generous organizations, whose support is recognized in connection with the Blossom Music Festival.

BakerHostetler The William Bingham Foundation Blossom Women’s Committee The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Mary and Dr. George L. Demetros Charitable Trust Eaton Corporation FirstEnergy Foundation Forest City Enterprises, Inc. Frantz Ward LLP GAR Foundation Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc. NACCO Industries, Inc. KeyBank The Lehner Family Foundation

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Littler Mendelson, P.C. The Lubrizol Corporation Medical Mutual of Ohio The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation Olympic Steel, Inc. M.G. O’Neil Foundation PNC Bank The Charles E. and Mabel M. Ritchie Memorial Foundation James G. Robertson Fund of Akron Community Foundation The Sisler McFawn Foundation Lloyd L. and Louise K. Smith Memorial Foundation The J.M. Smucker Company Timken Foundation of Canton The Welty Family Foundation

About the Music

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Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Opus 36 composed 1877-78

F E W W O R K S in the orchestral repertory carry such a strong

by

Pyotr Ilyich

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

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emotional charge as Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies — Nos. 4, 5, and 6. Audiences respond in an almost personal way to the capacity of this music to move us to the depths.

As for reading their deeper meaning, the task is made easier for us by the composer’s frank acknowledgement that such works are bound to provoke the listener’s imagination in realistic and dramatic ways. Of course Beethoven’s Fifth has a program, he asserted, when asked if his own Fourth was similarly programmatic: “My symphony rests upon a foundation that is nearly the same, and if you haven’t understood me, it follows only that I am not a Beethoven, a fact which I have never doubted.” The main point Tchaikovsky wanted to make follows at once: “There is not a note in this symphony which I did not feel deeply, and which did not serve as an echo of sincere impulses within my soul.”

To his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, with whom he kept up a close correspondence for over fourteen years without ever meeting (except twice, briefly, and by accident), he explained the program of the Fourth Symphony in great detail. According to this analysis, the gloomier parts of the work are concerned with fate (represented in the opening passage for brass) and depression, and the eternal struggle to rise above it. There are some brighter moments, and the finale supposedly presents the joy of others as something that might be shared, a cure for the self-hatred and despair that otherwise invades the soul.

But it is not likely that Tchaikovsky intended for Madame von Meck or us to take this program too seriously. Nor should we assume that the symphony is a record of the emotional and psychological crisis that he suffered at the time of its composition. Certainly the year 1877 brought him to a point where suicide was at least a possibility, but how far the music reflected these events is not easy to determine.

In the summer of 1876, at the time he attended the opening of the inaugural Bayreuth Festival with the first performance of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Tchaikovsky declared his determination to get married, without anyone in particular in mind as his partner. That winter, he started work on the Fourth Symphony, completing the draft of the first three movements before he met the young lady who was to become his wife. The About the Music

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At a Glance Tchaikovsky began composing his Fourth Symphony in February 1877 in Russia, completing the first three movements by summer. He wrote the final movement in Italy later in the year and finished the orchestration in Venice in January 1878. The work was first performed on February 22, 1878, in Moscow at a concert of the Russian Musical Society conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein.

This symphony runs about 40 minutes in performance. Tchaikovsky scored it for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle), and strings. The score was published in 1880 with a dedication “to my best friend” (Nadezhda von Meck).

The Cleveland Orchestra first performed this symphony in November 1921, during a pair of subscription concerts at Masonic Hall.

The Orchestra has presented it many times since, at home and on tour, most recently at Severance Hall concerts in the autumn of 2011 and on tour in Europe under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction.

Jahja Ling led a performance in Florida in January 2014.

Andris Nelsons led the most recent Blossom Festival performance, in 2008.

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bizarre circumstances of their meeting, their almost immediate marriage, and the composer’s appalling realization that instead of curing him of his homosexuality as he perhaps hoped, marriage turned out to be a hell even worse than Dante’s version, which he had so recently depicted with great vividness in his musical tone poem Francesca da Rimini.

Tchaikovsky fled, first to his relatives in the country, then to Switzerland and Italy, where he completed the symphony and finished the orchestration. In such circumstances many creative artists would have abandoned their art in a haze of self-pity. But Tchaikovsky’s muse never let up. Not only did he complete the Fourth Symphony at this time, he also composed his finest opera, Eugene Onegin, with the exquisite Violin Concerto to follow soon after. There were occasional fallow periods in his career, but the year 1877, however dramatic in domestic affairs, was not one of them. To the end of his life, he sustained the habit of composing for several hours every day, producing one of the most varied and appealing bodies of work of any composer of his generation.

THE MUSIC

At the very start of the first movement, the forthright statement on horns and bassoons grabs the listener’s attention.

We are not likely to overlook its recurrence at critical points in this and later movements — and we are not supposed to. But the music settles into a plaintive flow in a halting triple rhythm, overwhelmingly committed to the minor key. The first movement offers some striking contrasts of mood and key, such as the clarinet’s gentle waltz-tune with playful responses from the other winds, and a swaying figure in the violins accompanied by a pair of drums. But the motto theme returns, and the symphonic argument leads to the first of many stupendous climaxes in this work.

The second movement is not a profound moment of soulsearching, but a tender intermezzo featuring the solo oboe (later other winds), very lightly accompanied. There is a strong Russian flavor in this movement and no laughs. A lighter mood is provided by the third-movement scherzo, one of Tchaikovsky’s neatest inventions. The conventional division of orchestras into the three families of strings, woodwinds, and brass gave him the idea of featuring each in turn, each with its own melody, its own tempo, and its own character. The strings, furthermore, About the Music

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are plucked throughout, pizzicato. The divisions are not watertight, for snatches of one kind of music keep intruding on the others. The impression is of a teasing game, full of humor, and free from dark thoughts of any kind.

The noisy finale features in its midst a Russian folksong based on a descending minor scale answered (sometimes) by two solid thumps. In due course, the solemn motto theme makes its dramatic appearance, but it cannot stem the tide of high spirits that close the symphony, leaving Tchaikovsky’s depression (real or imagined) far behind.

—Hugh Macdonald © 2015

ABOVE

Tchaikovsky with his wife Antonina Miliukova, during their brief and ill-fated marriage in 1877.

RIGHT

His patroness, Nadezhda von Meck.

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About the Music

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Stéphane Denève French conductor Stéphane Denève is chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

This coming September, he also becomes chief conductor of the Brussels Philharmonic and director of its Centre for Future Orchestra Repertoire.

He served as music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, 2005-12.

He first led The Cleveland Orchestra in March 2007, and most recently appeared here in July 2013.

A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, Mr. Denève was awarded a unanimous First Prize there in 1995. That same year he became Georg Solti’s assistant with the Orchestre de Paris and the Paris National Opera, where he later assisted Georges Prêtre. Mr. Denève also worked with Seiji Ozawa at the Saito Kinen Festival. After his 1997 debut at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Stéphane Denève was a member of the conducting staff there for two seasons. He made his United States conducting debut in 1999 at the Santa Fe Opera, and has subsequently led productions at the Cincinnati Opera, Gran Teatro de Liceu, Glyndebourne Festival, La Monnaie, Netherlands Opera, Opéra National

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de Paris, London’s Royal Opera, and La Scala.

Stéphane Denève has guest conducted major orchestras around the world. Recent engagements include the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

At home in a range of repertoire and a champion of new music, Mr. Denève has a special affinity for the music of France. As a recording artist, he has been acclaimed for conducting works by Connesson, Debussy, Franck, Poulenc, and Roussel on the Chandos, Naïve, and Naxos labels. A double winner of the Diapason d’or de l’année, he was shortlisted in 2012 for Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year Award, and won the prize for symphonic music at the 2013 International Classical Music Awards.

Mr. Denève works regularly with young student artists at Tanglewood Music Center and the New World Symphony. For further information, visit www.stephanedeneve.com.

Conductor

2015 Blossom Festival