ALL THAT JAZZ

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Friday, January 28, 2022 at 7:30 pm. Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Thomas Wilkins, conductor Timothy McAllister, saxophone

PROGRAM

ROY HARRIS

Symphony No. 3, in One Movement

ERWIN SCHULHOFF/Richard Rodney Bennett

Hot-Sonate for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra

I. Moderato

II. Vivo

III. Andante

IV. Molto vivo

Timothy McAllister, saxophone

JACQUES IBERT

Concertino da camera for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra

I. Allegro con moto

II. Larghetto – Animato

Timothy McAllister, saxophone

INTERMISSION

HOWARD HANSON

Symphony No. 2, Opus 30, “Romantic”

I. Adagio – Allegro moderato

II. Andante con tenerezza

III. Allegro con brio

The 2021.22 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND.The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour, 45 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

THOMAS WILKINS

THOMAS

WILKINS

Thomas Wilkins is principal conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the Boston Symphony’s artistic advisor, education and community engagement, principal guest conductor of the Virginia Symphony, and holds Indiana University’s Henry A. Upper Chair of Orchestral Conducting. He completed his long and successful tenure as music director of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra at the close of the 2020.21 season.

Other past positions have included resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony and Florida Orchestra, and associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony. He also has served on the music faculties of North Park University, the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Devoted to promoting a life-long enthusiasm for music, Wilkins brings energy and commitment to audiences of all ages. He is hailed as a master at communicating and connecting with audiences. Following his highly successful first season with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Globe named him among the “Best People and Ideas of 2011.” In 2014, Wilkins received the prestigious “Outstanding Artist” award at the Nebraska Governor’s Arts Awards. In 2018 Thomas Wilkins received the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society, and in 2019, the Virginia Symphony bestowed Thomas Wilkins with their annual Dreamer Award.

During his conducting career, he has led orchestras throughout the United States, including the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cincinnati Symphony, and the National Symphony. Additionally, he has guest conducted the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras, the symphonies of Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, San Diego, and Utah, and the Buffalo and Rochester philharmonics, as well as at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.

His commitment to community has been demonstrated by his participation on several boards of directors. Currently he serves as chairman of the board for the Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund and as national ambassador for the non-profit World Pediatric Project headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, Thomas Wilkins is a graduate of the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He and his wife Sheri-Lee are the proud parents of twin daughters, Erica and Nicole.

TIMOTHY McALLISTER

Timothy

McAllister

Hailed by The New York Times as a “virtuoso … one of the foremost saxophonists of his generation”, “brilliant” (The Guardian, UK), and “a sterling saxophonist” (The Baltimore Sun), Timothy McAllister is one of today’s premier soloists, a member of the renowned PRISM Quartet, and a champion of contemporary music credited with dozens of recordings and more than 150 premieres of new compositions by eminent and emerging composers worldwide. His rise to international fame came in 2009 with his celebrated work in John Adams’s City Noir, filmed as part of Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the world premiere of John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto in August 2013 with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Subsequent critically acclaimed U.S. premieres with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony followed with engagements with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra at the London Proms, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony, among others.

McAllister has recently been soloist with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Elgin Symphony, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Royal Band of the Belgian Air Force, United States Navy Band, Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia, Tokyo Wind Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and the Nashville Symphony, among others. An in-demand orchestral saxophonist, he has toured in the U.S. and abroad with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among many others.

A renowned teacher of his instrument, he has served as professor of saxophone at Northwestern University, a Valade Artist Fellow for the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and is a clinician for the Conn-Selmer and D’Addario companies. In September 2014, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Music, succeeding his legendary mentor, Donald Sinta. McAllister’s work can be heard on the Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammphon, Naxos, OMM, Stradivarius, Centaur, AUR, Albany, Parma, New Dynamic, Equilibrium, New Focus, and Innova record labels.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

Guest conductor Thomas Wilkins continues our celebration of the 1930s, the decade in which the Warner Theater was constructed. Two enduring American symphonies – Harris’s No. 3 and Hanson’s No. 2 – bookend jazz-inspired music by Schulhoff and Ibert. Welcome, Timothy McAllister!

Roy Harris

Roy

Harris

Born 12 February 1898; Lincoln County, Oklahoma Died 1 October 1979; Santa Monica, California

Symphony No. 3, in One Movement

Composed: 1937

First performance: 24 February 1939; Boston, Massachusetts

Last MSO performance: May 2008; Andreas Delfs, conducting

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; 2 tuba; 2 timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle, vibraphone, xylophone); strings

Approximate duration: 18 minutes

Roy Harris’s extensive compositional catalogue includes orchestral music, songs and choral works, chamber and instrumental music, three ballets, and a film score. Fourteen symphonies, written across 42 years (1933-75), constitute the core of his output. He studied privately with Arthur Farwell and later – with the encouragement of Aaron Copland – with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, courtesy of two Guggenheim fellowships. Across a long teaching career, he held posts at various universities in the United States, notably Juilliard, Indiana, and UCLA.

Born in rural Oklahoma, Harris’s family moved to a small farm in California when he was six years old. As a boy, he played the piano and the clarinet, but enjoyed football and baseball just as much; as a young man, he farmed for a while and drove a milk truck for a dairy. Perhaps it was the influence of this upbringing that, from the outset, has led his music to be identified as distinctly American – in its ruggedness, its expansiveness, and its hymn-like modal melodies.

Composed in 1937, the Symphony No. 3 had its premiere with Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The conductor called it “the first great symphony by an American composer.” Harris himself said that the work “happened to come along when it was needed.” In 1939, as the Great Depression wore on and storm clouds gathered over Europe, what the country needed was a vision of its own greatness. In the broad melodies of this work, one senses the wide-open spaces of the American West.

Cast in a single movement, Harris denoted five connected sections. These are given below, with brief commentary.

Tragic: low string sonorities. A long-lined melody in the cellos, reminiscent of medieval plainchant, is decorated by bare fourth and fifth intervals. As the harmonies begin to fill in, major chords are inflected by minor and modal sonorities.

Lyric: strings, horn, woodwinds. A singing melody in the violins is supported by the rich colorings of the horns, woodwinds, and lower strings.

Pastoral: woodwinds with a polytonal string background. A solo flute marks the beginning of this section, and woodwind and brass solos punctuate the shimmering string accompaniment.

Fugue–Dramatic. Brass and percussion are predominant. The back-and-forth dialogue of the brass instruments brings to mind the polychoral textures of Gabrieli.

Dramatic–Tragic. The strings and woodwinds are in canon above the brass and percussion. In the coda, earlier material is developed over the pedal tones of the timpani.

Harris’s Third Symphony – with its felicitous melding of plainsong, polyphony, folksong, and hymnody – is a work that was immediately accessible to its audiences. It soon established itself in the repertoire of American orchestras and propelled the composer to international recognition.

Erwin Schulhoff

Erwin

Schulhoff

Born 8 June 1894; Prague, Bohemia

Died 18 August 1942; Wülzburg, Germany

Hot-Sonate (Jazz Sonata)for Alto Saxophone and Chamber Ensemble

Composed: 1930

First performance: Undocumented

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on alto flute and piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 2 clarinets (2nd doubling on bass clarinet); 2 bassoons (2nd doubling on contrabassoon); 2 horns; 2 trumpets; 2 trombones; tuba; percussion (cowbell, drum set, temple blocks); double bass

Approximate duration: 15 minutes

The Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff studied at the Prague Conservatory, then later in Vienna, Leipzig, and Cologne; subsequently, he took lessons with Max Reger and Claude Debussy. Among his works – which display a variety of styles – are six symphonies and other orchestral music, an opera, a ballet, incidental music, chamber pieces, and piano music that includes jazz etudes and two sonatas.

By his mid-30s, he had returned to his natal city, teaching piano, orchestration, and score reading. A gifted pianist, he gave many recitals of new music and, from the early 1920s, was active as a jazz pianist. Schulhoff joined the communist party in the first years of the 1930s, later becoming a Soviet citizen. His political views and Jewish heritage led to his eventual deportment to a Nazi concentration camp, where he died of tuberculosis.

Schulhoff often used jazz idioms in his compositions, perhaps nowhere more blatantly than in his Hot-Sonate of 1930, written when he was teaching at the Prague Conservatory. His choice of the solo instrument immediately displays the influence of jazz, as does its crisp rhythms, flamboyant harmonies, and playing techniques such as grace notes and glissandi. The Sonate is set in four movements that alternate in style and tempo: moderate – fast – moderate – very fast. Originally for alto saxophone and piano, the accompaniment has been arranged – more than once – for chamber ensemble. Tonight, we’ll hear the one by the fluent British composer Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012).

Jacques Ibert

Jacques

Ibert

Born 15 August 1890; Paris, France

Died 5 February 1962; Paris, France

Concertino da camera for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra

Composed: 1935

First performance: 2 May 1935 (first movement); 11 December 1935 (complete)

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere Instrumentation: flute; oboe; clarinet; bassoon; horn; trumpet; strings

Approximate duration: 13 minutes

Jacques Ibert’s sizeable oeuvre includes comic operas and songs, ballets, chamber music, orchestral works, piano music, film scores, and incidental music for plays. His refined style suggests – at various times – Debussy, Poulenc, or Stravinsky. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won the Prix de Rome in 1919; years later, he returned to the Italian capital as director of the French Academy there (1937-60).

The Concertino da camera was written for saxophone pioneer Sigurd Rascher (1907-2001), a German-born American who became an important figure in furthering the 20th-century repertoire for the classical saxophone. He premiered many new works, and labored to increase the instrument’s range and expressive capabilities.

According to Rascher, Ibert spoke of the Concertino as his “favorite child.” It was a distinctive addition to the literature for saxophone, and is notable for its large range, one that requires the instrument’s highest notes. The work is published in two movements; the segmented nature of the second, though, makes it seem like there are three major divisions. The opening Allegro con moto is sprightly and energetic, requiring great technical expertise from the soloist; it is cast in a three-part (A-B-A) form. The lyrical Larghetto contains two themes and features soaring lines in the instrument’s upper register. A brief cadenza connects to the final Animato molto, set in sonata form.

Howard Hanson

Howard

Hanson

Born 28 October 1896; Wahoo, Nebraska

Died 26 February 1981; Rochester, New York

Symphony No. 2, Opus 30, “Romantic”

Composed: 1930

First performance: 28 November 1930; Boston, Massachusetts

Last MSO performance: October 2007; Xian Zhang, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; 3 bassoons (3rd doubling on contrabassoon); 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, suspended cymbals); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 28 minutes

“My aim, in this symphony, has been to create a work young in spirit, Romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.” –Howard Hanson (1930)

Howard Hanson was a tireless advocate for American music. Director of the Eastman School of Music for 40 years (1924-64), he was able to balance the various aspects of his career – composer, conductor, teacher, administrator – so that each enhanced the others. Hanson estimated that, during his time at Eastman, 2000+ works by 500+ American composers were premiered. An unapologetic neo-Romantic, his own melodic and harmonic style shows the influence of Sibelius, Grieg, and Respighi (his orchestration teacher in Rome in the early 1920s). Among his works are seven symphonies, chamber music, piano music, symphonic poems, choral music, and songs.

The Symphony No. 2 was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that institution. (Koussevitzky often asked him to conduct the BSO.) It since has become Hanson’s best-known orchestral work. One of its themes is performed at the conclusion of all concerts at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. The same theme was used for the end credits in the 1979 film Alien.

Set in three movements, thematic material is shared among them to create a cohesive cyclic whole. An atmospheric Adagio, based on a three-note rising motto, opens the work. This soon yields to a horn fanfare (Allegro moderato) and a faster main theme in the brass. A transition leads to a tender melody in the strings (the so-called “Interlochen Theme”) and a counter-subject in the solo horn. The English horn steers us into the development section, where the themes are varied and the alternation of gentle and more forceful episodes combines to create a beautifully flowing narrative.

The slow and tender Andante con tenerezza begins with its main theme in the woodwinds, with soft string accompaniment. A brass interlude, derived from the work’s introduction, is interrupted by flourishes in the woodwinds; the gentler music returns to fulfill the “Romantic” implications of the work’s subtitle. Four horns proclaim the Allegro con brio’s main theme, and the basses repeat it. Cellos announce the secondary theme (Molto meno mosso) before it is taken up by the English horn. A section marked Più mosso begins with pizzicato accompaniment in the lower strings; horn calls, trumpet fanfares, and whirling woodwinds lead to a dramatic climax above pounding timpani. A brief coda leads to a final glorious fanfare.