FOUNTAINS OF ROME

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Friday, November 12, 2021 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, November 13, 2021 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

William Eddins, conductor

Karen Gomyo, violin

PROGRAM

NINO ROTA

Concerto for Strings / I. Preludio: Allegro ben moderato e cantabile • II. Scherzo: Allegretto comodo • III. Aria: Andante quasi adagio • IV. Finale: Allegrissimo

OTTORINO RESPIGHI

The Fountains of Rome [Le fontane di Roma] / I. The Fountain of Valle Giulia at Dawn • II. The Triton Fountain in the Morning • III. The Trevi Fountain at Midday • IV. The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset

INTERMISSION

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Concerto No. 1 in A minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 99 / I. Nocturne • II. Scherzo • III. Passacaglia • IV. Burlesca • Karen Gomyo, violin

The 2021.22 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND.

The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra can be heard on Telarc, Koss Classics, Pro Arte, AVIE, and Vox/Turnabout recordings. MSO Classics recordings (digital only) available on iTunes and at mso.org. MSO Binaural recordings (digital only) available at mso.org.

Guest Artist Biographies

WILLIAM EDDINS

William Eddins is the music director emeritus of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and a frequent guest conductor of major orchestras throughout the world.

Engagements have included the New York Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Boston, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Houston, as well as the Los Angeles and Buffalo philharmonics.

Internationally, Eddins was principal guest conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland). He also has conducted the Berlin Staatskapelle, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Welsh National Opera, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra.

Career highlights include taking the Edmonton Symphony Orchestras to Carnegie Hall in May of 2012, conducting RAI Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale on Italian television, and leading the Natal Philharmonic on tour in South Africa with soprano Renée Fleming. Equally at home with opera, he conducted a full production of Porgy and Bess with Opera de Lyon both in France and at the Edinburgh Festival.

Eddins is an accomplished pianist and chamber musician. He regularly conducts from the piano in works by Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin, and Ravel. He has released a recording on his own label that includes Beethoven’s Hammer-Klavier Sonata and William Albright’s The Nightmare Fantasy Rag.

Eddins has performed at the Ravinia Festival with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Festival Orchestra. He has also conducted the orchestras of the Aspen Music Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, Chautauqua Festival, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

KAREN GOMYO

Violinist Karen Gomyo has captivated audiences in North America, Europe, and Australasia with her musical integrity, technical assurance, and compelling interpretations.

Gomyo has worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Houston, Vancouver, Indianapolis, and Oregon symphonies, among many others.

Internationally, Gomyo has appeared with the Philharmonia in London, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Bamberg Symphony, Danish National Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and the Polish National Radio Orchestra in Europe; and in Australasia with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, and West Australia (Perth) symphonies, as well as on tour with the New Zealand Symphony. In October 2020, she made her debut with the Czech Philharmonic and returns to Prague to work with the orchestra again in December 2021.

Strongly committed to contemporary works, in May 2018, Gomyo performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’s Chamber Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She also performed the North American premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s Concerto No. 2 “Mar’eh,” as well as Peteris Vasks’s “Vox Amoris” with the Lapland Chamber Orchestra. In April 2022, she will premiere a double concerto written for her and trumpet player Tine Thing Helsmeth composed by Xi Wang with the Dallas Symphony.

Karen Gomyo is deeply interested in the Nuevo Tango music of Astor Piazzolla, and collaborates with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist and tango legend Pablo Ziegler. She also performs regularly with the Finnish guitarist Ismo Eskelinen.

Born in Tokyo, Gomyo studied in Montreal and in New York at The Juilliard School. She plays on the “Aurora, exFoulis” Stradivarius violin of 1703 that was bought for her exclusive use by a private sponsor.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

On this evening’s concert, a picturesque stroll through Respighi’s Rome balances the demonic fire of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Concert music by a renowned film composer gets us off to a pleasing start.

Nino Rota

Born 3 December 1911; Milan, Italy • Died 10 April 1979; Rome, Italy

Concerto for Strings

Composed: 1964-65; revised 1977 • Last MSO performance: MSO premiere • Instrumentation: strings • Approximate duration: 16 minutes

Nino Rota was born Giovanni Rota Rinaldi. His grandfather, Giovanni Rinaldi (1840-1895), was one of the most noted Italian pianists of his time. Nino began his musical training at age eight, and just a few years later composed an oratorio – based on the story of John the Baptist – for soloists, choir, and orchestra. In 1923, he entered the Milan Conservatory, where he studied with Ildebrando Pizzetti, later attending the St. Cecilia Academy in Rome to take lessons with Alfredo Casella. Fritz Reiner was his conducting teacher at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute in 1931-32. He eventually returned to Milan, subsequently landing at the conservatory in Bari (1950-78) where he taught harmony and composition and later became director. He died in Rome in 1979.

From age 22 to the end of his life, Nino Rota devoted much of his creative skill to the big screen. Indeed, his celebrity is based on the many film soundtracks he penned for the foremost directors of the latter half of the 20th century: Fellini, Visconti, Zeffirelli, and of course Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather franchise. Nevertheless, he composed a considerable body of works – including several operas – unrelated to the cinema. One of these is the Concerto for Strings, written in 1964-65.

Commissioned by the acclaimed Rome-based chamber ensemble I Musici, the Concerto is set in four movements. As with much of Rota’s music, its melodies and rhythmic patterns are straightforward, as are its harmonic progressions. The composer’s precision, his spontaneous expression, and clear formal delineations are on full display.

The opening Preludio begins softly, as two musical ideas – an arching eighth-note phrase and dotted-rhythm motif – are elegantly combined; later, unison 16th-notes add vigor. The G-minor Scherzo is set in 3/8 meter; the violins sing above a pizzicato accompaniment and, as in the first movement, the music becomes more animated as it proceeds. The Aria, in D major, features a cantabile melody for the first violins; its middle sections is marked “a little more animated,” and the gentler opening mood returns at the end. The initial descending bass accompaniment is a clear tribute to the well-known “Air” from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No.3, BWV 1068. The Finale is a relentless dance; listen especially for the dialogues between the first and second violins. An accented G-major chord brings this entertaining Concerto to a fitting end.

Ottorino Respighi

Born 9 July 1879; Bologna, Italy • Died 18 April 1936; Rome, Italy

The Fountains of Rome [Le fontane di Roma]

Composed: 1916 • First performance: 11 March 1917; Rome, Italy • Last MSO performance: March 2005; Gregory Vajda, conductor • Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (chimes, cymbals, glockenspiel, suspended cymbals, triangle); 2 harps; celeste; piano; strings • Approximate duration: 15 minutes

Born into a musical family in Bologna, Ottorino Respighi entered the Lice Musicale there at age 12, studying violin, viola and, later, composition. In 1900, he visited Russia for the first time; in St. Petersburg, he played viola in the opera orchestra and took lessons in composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. (The latter experience proved to be a profound influence on the young Italian’s approach to orchestration.) He was in Berlin in 1908-09, absorbing much from that city’s abundant musical milieu and attending lectures by the composer Max Bruch. By his mid-30s, though, Respighi had settled permanently in Rome.

Respighi is best-known for what we might call “musical photographs.” The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, Botticelli Triptych, and Church Windows – among others – are programmatic music in the truest sense of the word, colorfully and lavishly orchestrated, in a harmonic idiom firmly rooted in the 19th century.

The Fountains of Rome offers musical depictions of his adopted city. The work is a virtuoso showcase in the art of symphonic instrumentation. The four movements are performed without a pause. Respighi described each in the first edition of the score, published by G. Ricordi, stating that he had “endeavored to give expression to the sentiments and visions suggested to [him] by four of Rome’s fountains, contemplated at the hour in which their character is most in harmony with the surrounding landscape.”

Thus, we hear depictions of the Fountain of the Valle Giulia at Dawn, “a pastoral landscape… droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh damp mists of the Roman dawn.” A salvo from the horns heralds the Triton Fountain in the Morning, “summoning troops of naiads and tritons, who come running up, pursuing each other and mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of water.” Suddenly, “trumpets peal,” announcing the famous Trevi Fountain at Midday. “Across the radiant surface of the water there passes Neptune’s chariot, drawn by sea horses and followed by a train of sirens and tritons. ” The Fountain of the Villa Medici is introduced by “a sad theme, which rises above a subdued warbling.” Chimes sound as the sun sets, and the music fades slowly into silence.

Dimitri Shostakovich

Born 25 September 1906; St. Petersburg, Russia • Died 9 August 1975; Moscow, Russia

Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 99

Composed: 1947-48 as Opus 77; revised 1955 as Opus 99 • First performance: 29 October 1955; Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Russia • Last MSO performance: April 2015; Edo de Waart, conductor; Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin • Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo); 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn); 3 clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet); 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon); 4 horns; tuba; timpani; percussion (tam tam, tambourine, xylophone); 2 harps; celeste; strings • Approximate duration: 39 minutes

Widely regarded as the greatest symphonist of the mid-20th century, the Russian master Dmitri Shostakovich wrote 15 works in that genre. Additionally, his impressive compositional catalogue includes six concertos for various instruments, chamber music (including 15 string quartets), solo piano music, two operas and an operetta, several cantatas and oratorios, three ballets, 36 film scores, incidental music for 11 plays, choral music, and songs.

In 1948, several prominent Russian composers – including Prokofiev and Shostakovich – were accused by Andrey Zhdanov, the commissar in charge of artistic matters, of representing the “cult of atonality, dissonance and discord… infatuation with confused, neurotic combinations that transform music into cacophony.” The reprimanded composers recanted, and the creative life of Soviet music was dealt a stunning blow. Not wishing to offend the party hierarchy, they exercised hypervigilance. For Shostakovich, this meant employing two disparate approaches to composition: one was simpler and more accessible, to meet the demands of the decree; the other, meant to uphold his own artistic standards, was more esoteric and abstract.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 falls into the latter category. Written for David Oistrakh (1908- 1974), Shostakovich first played the work for the renowned Soviet violinist in 1948. To avoid a public controversy, the composer withheld the work until after Stalin’s death (in 1953). In the intervening years, he solicited Oistrakh’s input on technical matters and made a few changes. That is why the concerto has two opus numbers. Its delayed premiere came in 1955, with Oistrakh as soloist; Yevgeny Mravinsky led the Leningrad Philharmonic. It was an “extraordinary success,” both in Russia and abroad.

Shostakovich eschews the usual three-movement scheme, opting instead for a slow-fast-slowfast layout. The opening Nocturne is ominous and dark-hued, as the soloist makes her lonely way through a moonless night. The plangent colors of the woodwinds – clarinet and bass clarinet, bassoon and contrabassoon – add to the sense of foreboding. The end of this nightsong feels desolate: the violinist ascends to an ephemerally high harmonic note while harp and celeste toll quietly below.

The term “scherzo” means “joke,” and with this relentless dance, the punchline must surely be harshly sarcastic – perhaps Shostakovich’s mocking response to the repressive regime that surrounded him. About a minute in, we hear his famous musical signature (DSCH), when the woodwinds taunt the violinist with this motive. She later hurls it back at them. Oistrakh characterized the second movement as “demonic.” Indeed! Its frenetic energy demands exacting virtuosity from both soloist and orchestra.

A passacaglia is a Baroque-era form in which a melodic pattern is repeated, usually in the lowest voice, as variations unfold above it. Shostakovich’s 17-bar theme is first presented by the cellos and basses, accented by timpani. It is fragmented into two-bar phrases, separated by horn fanfares. This melody gradually makes its way through the orchestral texture. (Even the soloist gets her eventual turn, played in accented double-stopped octaves.) Atop the passacaglia theme, the soloist and other instruments intone affective, expressive melodies. The latter part of the movement is taken up with an extensive cadenza, one of the longest and most demanding in the violinist’s repertoire.

The cadenza gradually accelerates directly into the final Burlesca, as the orchestra takes the lead. Originally, Shostakovich had the soloist continue here, but even the estimable Oistrakh begged him for a moment’s respite to “at least wipe the sweat off my brow.” A burlesca is defined as “a humorous piece involving parody and grotesque exaggeration,” and this movement fits that description to a T. Its darkly comic music and manic, virtuosic writing bring the concerto to a thrilling – if somewhat unsettling – conclusion.