11 minute read
BEETHOVEN PIANO & PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Friday, February 9, 2024 at 7:30 pm
Saturday, February 10, 2024 at 7:30 pm
ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL
Iván López-Reynoso, conductor
Jorge Federico Osorio, piano
Program
SILVESTRE REVUELTAS/arr. Erich Kleiber
Suite from Redes [Nets] for small orchestra
I. The Fishermen; The Child’s Funeral
II. Segunda Parte: Molto adagio – Allegro agitato
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Concerto No. 1 in C major for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 15
I. Allegro con brio
II. Largo
III. Rondo: Allegro
Jorge Federico Osorio, piano
INTERMISSION
MODEST MUSSORGSKY/orch. Maurice Ravel
Pictures at an Exhibition
Promenade
I. The Gnome
Promenade
II. The Old Castle
Promenade
III. Tuileries (Children’s Quarrel after Games)
IV. Cattle
Promenade
V. Ballet of Little Chicks in their Shells
VI.“Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle”
VII. Limoges – The Market (The Good News)
VIII. Catacombs: Roman Tomb
With the Dead in a Dead Language
IX. The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba Yaga)
X. The Great Gate of Kiev
The 2023.24 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION
The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours.
Guest Artist Biographies
IVÁN LÓPEZ-REYNOSO
Iván López-Reynoso serves as the chief conductor of the Orchestra of Teatro Bellas Artes in Mexico City and is proud of being the youngest conductor to have assumed this position. Additionally, he has held the post of principal guest conductor of the Oviedo Filarmonía in Spain since 2017. Prior to these positions, he held various roles with orchestras in Germany and Mexico.
He has led performances with renowned orchestras such as the Philharmonia Zürich, Oviedo Filarmonía, Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, Filarmonica Gioachino Rossini, Navarra Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, Staatsorchester Braunschweig, Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, Orchestra and Choir of Mexico’s Bellas Artes Theater, Mexico State Symphony Orchestra, Xalapa Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City, Symphony Orchestra of Mineria, Philharmonic Orchestra of National University OFUNAM, and Jalisco Philharmonic, performing at venues like Opernhaus Zürich, Santa Fe Opera, Teatro Real de Madrid, Rossini Opera Festival, Teatro de la Maestranza de Sevilla, and the Royal Opera House Muscat.
López-Reynoso’s symphonic repertoire showcases remarkable versatility, spanning from the late Baroque to contemporary composers like Thomas Adés, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Kaija Saariaho. Notably, he has been praised by the press for his performances of Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie and Don Quixote, along with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (“Leningrad”) and Ravel’s suite from Daphnis et Chloe.
A frequent collaborator in concerts with Javier Camarena, López-Reynoso has also partnered with pianists Yulianna Avdeeva, Gabriela Montero, and Conrad Tao, as well as Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist Alex Klein, violinist Michael Barenboim, and vocalists Ildar Abdrazakov, Alessandro Corbelli, Irina Lungu, Ute Lemper, and Ramón Vargas.
His conducting career commenced early after graduating summa cum laude from the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Mexico City, complemented by studies in piano, violin, voice, and percussion. Among his upcoming endeavors are multiple projects to return to the U.S., his debut with Spain’s National Symphony, his debut in Austria and Bergamo (Italy), and his return to Zurich.
Education in music and fostering emerging artists hold significant importance for LópezReynoso, who frequently conducts masterclasses, serves as a competition jury member, and involves young artists and composers in his projects. In recognition of his contributions to music, he received the Diego Rivera State Prize of the Arts in 2018.
JORGE FEDERICO OSORIO
Recipient of the prestigious Medalla Bellas Artes, the highest honor granted by Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts, Jorge Federico Osorio has been lauded throughout the world for his superb musicianship, powerful technique, vibrant imagination, and deep passion. He has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras and has collaborated with such distinguished conductors as Alsop, Frühbeck de Burgos, Conlon, Haitink, Honeck, Maazel, Ken-David Masur, Mester, Prieto, Spano, and van Zweden, among others. He has performed at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Royal Festival Hall, and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, to name a few.
Osorio has appeared on Chicago’s distinguished Symphony Center Piano Series on four occasions. He has also given two recitals in New York City at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, both highly acclaimed by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times. North American festival appearances have included the Hollywood Bowl, Mainly Mozart, Bard, Newport, Grant Park, and Ravinia, where he performed all five Beethoven concerti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Osorio has recorded a wide variety of repertoire. Orchestral recordings include Beethoven’s five piano concerti and Choral Fantasy; both Brahms concerti; and concerti by Chávez, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Rodrigo, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Weinberg. Osorio’s acclaimed solo recordings on Cedille Records include Final Thoughts – The Last Piano Works of Schubert & Brahms; Russian Recital; Salón Mexicano; a disc of music by Ponce; a set of Debussy and Liszt; Piano Español; The French Album, and the recently released Conciertos románticos, with concerti by Manuel M. Ponce and Ricardo Castro.
Program notes by Elaine Schmidt
SILVESTRE REVUELTAS/arr. Erich Kleiber
Suite from Redes [Nets] for Small Orchestra
Composed: 1934 – 1935
First performance: 1936
Last MSO performance: 15 November 2008; Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor
Instrumentation: flute; piccolo; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 2 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, Indian drum, tam-tam); strings
Approximate duration: 15 minutes
Born in Santiago Papasquiaro, Mexico, composer, teacher, and violinist Silvestre Revueltas was a violin prodigy in his youth. He left Mexico in 1916, at age 17, to continue his musical studies in Austin, Texas, and then at the Chicago Musical College. He built a career as a violinist and conductor in the United States until 1929, at which time he returned to Mexico to become the assistant conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de México. He continued composing and teaching in Mexico, as well. By 1936, Revueltas had shifted his attention to film music. In 1937, he followed his political leanings to Europe, where he became involved with the Socialists, who were fighting fascism during the Spanish Civil War. Revueltas died in Mexico City in 1940 from the effects of alcoholism.
As a composer, Revueltas blended creative, colorful orchestrations with an expressive, engaging use of rhythm, and had a signature style of referencing folk idioms without actually quoting specific songs. Aaron Copland, known as “the dean of American composers,” said, after Revueltas’s death, “Revueltas was a man of the people, with a wonderfully keen ear for the sounds of the people’s music.”
Redes, which Revueltas began working on in 1934, was the composer’s first film score. Redes (the word means “nets,” but the film was released in the United States as The Wave) premiered in 1936, as did the composer’s concert arrangement of the score. The film tells the story of exploited fishermen fighting the businessman, the politician, and the system that are exploiting them. They devolve into two arguing factions until one of their leaders is killed, which ends the infighting and unites the fishermen.
Today, the concert version of the Redes score that is most often heard is not the one Revueltas created, but an arrangement of it by Austrian-Argentine conductor Erich Kleiber, who left the prestigious post of music director at the Berlin State Opera in 1933 in protest of Nazi policies. He moved his family to Argentina and spent the rest of his life guest conducting internationally and championing new music.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Concerto No. 1 in C major for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 15
Composed: 1795 (revised 1800)
First performance: 18 December 1795; Vienna, Austria
Last MSO performance: 16 April 2011; Gilbert Varga, conductor; Kirill Gerstein, piano
Instrumentation: flute; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings
Approximate duration: 36 minutes
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is not the first piano concerto he wrote. He wrote one at age 14, and another as an adult, before writing what we know as the Concerto No. 1 in 1795. He liked it more than the actual first concerto of his adulthood, so he revised it a bit and published it first — hence the non-chronological numbering.
Born and raised in Bonn, Beethoven arrived in Vienna in November 1792, the year after Mozart’s death. He intended to study music with the best possible instructors, which included Franz Joseph Haydn, and to eventually make a name for himself in the imperial capital. Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, who had befriended Beethoven in Bonn and had provided financial support to him, wrote to the young musician as he was preparing to leave for Vienna, saying, “…you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” Waldstein was right. One can hear the structure, clarity, and character of Mozart’s later works in Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1, but also some of the mercurial personality and expressive fire that we know Beethoven would develop — as though he had one foot in the Classical era and one in the Romantic era that lay ahead.
Understanding that his first impression on Viennese audiences and critics would be critical, Beethoven studied, practiced, and waited to perform in Vienna until he felt quite ready. He introduced himself to audiences as a pianist, often playing his own works because they showcased his prowess at the piano.
We cannot, of course, listen to a recording of his playing, but we can take note of what was written about his performances at the time. Czech pianist, teacher, and composer Carl Czerny, who studied with Beethoven and later became known as “the father of modern piano technique,” wrote, “Nobody equaled him in the rapidity of his scales, double trills, skips, etc.” He also wrote, “Beethoven’s performance of slow and sustained passages produced a magical effect on every listener.” Czech pianist Václav Jan Tomášek also heard Beethoven play, writing afterward, “Beethoven’s magnificent playing and particularly the daring flights of his improvisation moved me strangely; indeed, I felt so humbled that I did not touch my own piano for several days.”
MODEST MUSSORGSKY/orch. Maurice Ravel
Pictures at an Exhibition
Composed: 2 – 22 June 1874 (orchestrated by Ravel in 1922)
First performance: 19 October 1922; Paris, France
Last MSO performance: 18 January 2020 (orch. Gorchakov); Ken-David Masur, conductor
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (2nd doubling on 2nd piccolo, 3rd doubling on 1st piccolo); 3 oboes (3rd doubling on English horn); 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; alto saxophone; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, chimes, cymbals, glockenspiel, gong, ratchet, slapstick, snare drum, triangle, xylophone); 2 harps; celeste; strings
Approximate duration: 35 minutes
Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky is familiar to audiences today for Night on Bald Mountain, his opera Boris Godunov, and, of course, his Pictures at an Exhibition. He was an innovator in creating a uniquely Russian Romantic sound in his music and was particularly respected for his vocal writing and the deft way he tailored music to suit Russian lyrics. For quite a while after his 1881 death, much of his music was known only in arrangements by other composers, or, in the case of pieces he left unfinished, in versions completed by other composers. Over time, much of his music eventually became known and respected in his original versions.
Mussorgsky originally wrote Pictures at an Exhibition as an homage of sorts to his dear friend, the artist, architect, and designer Victor Hartmann, who died of an aneurysm in 1873 at age 39. Mussorgsky, who was a very active composer at the time, and had joined forces with composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Mily Balakirev to form a group known as “The Mighty Handful,” “The Mighty Five,” or simply “The Five,” slid into a deep depression after Hartmann’s death.
The following spring, Mussorgsky loaned two of Hartmann’s paintings that were in his possession to a Saint Petersburg exhibition of 400 of his friend’s painting. In June 1874, he documented his time walking through the collection in Pictures at an Exhibition, writing it for solo piano. Although it is played by several virtuoso pianists today, the piece was not performed during Mussorgsky’s lifetime. In the early 1920s, Maurice Ravel came upon it, thought it was fabulous, and brought it to the attention of Russian-born Serge Koussevitzky, who was a well-established conductor, composer, and double-bassist by then. Koussevitzky promptly commissioned Ravel to orchestrate the piece and then toured the work around the world, popularizing it by conducting it wherever he could, beginning with its 1922 premiere with the Boston Symphony.
Several other composers have orchestrated Pictures, but none of those versions have become nearly as popular with orchestras and audiences as Ravel’s. Mussorgsky included several promenades in the piece, which depict his walk through the exhibit of Hartmann’s paintings. The remaining movements are titled for paintings within the exhibit. Ravel’s later orchestration is built of rich sonorities, driving accents, feather-light, delicate passages, and plenty of ringing brass lines.
