BOLCOM VIOLIN CONCERTO

Friday, November 19, 2021 at 7:30 pm • Saturday, November 20, 2021 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor

Ilana Setapen, violin

PROGRAM

SERGEI PROKOFIEV

Symphony No. 1 in D major, Opus 25 “Classical”

I. Allegro con brio • II. Larghetto • III. Gavotte: Non troppo allegro • IV. Finale: Molto vivace

WILLIAM BOLCOM

Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra

I. Quasi una fantasia: Tempo guisto – Allegro elegiaco • II. Adagio non troppo ma sostenuto • III. Rondo – Finale • Ilana Setapen, violin

INTERMISSION

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Overture to Idomeneo, K. 366

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG

Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene [Accompaniment to a Film Scene], Opus 34

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN

Symphony No. 96 in D major, H. 96 “Miracle”

I. Adagio – Allegro • II. Andante • III. Minuet: Allegretto • IV. Vivace

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.

ILANA SETAPEN

Since her solo orchestral debut at age 15, Ilana Setapen has been flourishing as a violinist with a powerful and original voice. She is hailed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a violinist with “a sparkling sound” and “the kind of control that puts an audience completely at ease.” She is currently the acting concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

In recent seasons, Setapen has had solo performances with the Milwaukee Symphony, Festival City Symphony, and the Amarillo Symphony, among others. She also held the assistant concertmaster position of the Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra in Chicago for 6 years and is a favorite guest concertmaster with the Chicago Philharmonic. In recent summers, she has performed at the Olympic Music Festival on Bainbridge Island and the Lakes Area Music Festival in Brainerd, Minnesota. She has also taught and performed as faculty at Center Stage Strings at the University of Michigan and the Luzerne Music Center summer festival in Lake Luzerne, New York.

At the age of 21, Setapen won the concertmaster position of the Riverside Philharmonic in Los Angeles. She has also held concertmaster positions with the Juilliard Orchestra, the Colburn Orchestra, the American Youth Symphony, the National Repertory Orchestra, and the USC Thornton Symphony.

As a committed chamber musician, Setapen is in demand as a collaborator throughout the Midwest. She performs frequently with Present Music and the duo Bowing Rogue. Solo and chamber music performances have taken her abroad to China, France, Brazil, Holland, England, Monaco, and Italy.

Setapen grew up in Amarillo, Texas. Her father is a conductor and her first violin teacher was her mother. She was a student of Robert Lipsett both at the University of Southern California and at the Colburn Conservatory. She received her Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School as a student of Donald Weilerstein and Ronald Copes. Also a dedicated educator, she teaches privately as well as at the successful Advanced Chamber Music Institute at the Wisconsin Conservatory.

In her spare time, Setapen enjoys spending time with her husband and their two sons and swing dancing.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

“Classical” music, both old and new, bookends tonight’s concert. In between, we’ll enjoy Bolcom’s jazz-infused Violin Concerto, a Mozart overture, and music to accompany an imaginary film – written by one of the 20th century’s most influential composers.

Sergei Prokofiev

Born 23 April 1891; Sontsovka, Russia • Died 5 March 1953; Moscow, Russia

Symphony No. 1 in D major, Opus 25, “Classical”

Composed: 1916-17 • First performance: April 1918; Petrograd (St. Petersburg), Russia • Last MSO performance: November 2014; Carlos Kalmar, conductor • Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings • Approximate duration: 15 minutes

In the last years of tsarist Russia, Sergei Prokofiev, still in his 20s, made his name as a composer of music both weighty and sardonic. Following the Revolution, making his home mainly in the United States and then Paris, his mode of expression progressively became more settled and, one might say, more polished. He spent the last 17 years of his life back in the Soviet Union, however, both spurred on and restrained by the cultural policies of Stalin’s regime. (Ironically, he died on the same day as Uncle Joe.) Throughout his life, he occupied himself with music for the stage, and was one of the 20th century’s most distinguished creators of symphonies, concertos, and piano sonatas.

The 26-year-old composer spent the summer of 1917 in a village on the outskirts of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), working on his first violin concerto and the Classical Symphony. Begun as an experiment in composing away from the piano, Prokofiev’s Opus 25 deliberately takes Haydn as its model, but with the addition of “something new.” Its appellation is the composer’s own, an admitted attempt to “tease the geese” – “but also in the hope,” states his biographer, Rita McAllister, “that the work would become a classic.” His wish came true, as the Symphony soon gained international acclaim.

Prokofiev sets the work in the traditional four movements and employs classical forms. However, he wryly juxtaposes the conventional melodic gestures of Haydn’s era with his own 20th-century harmonies, rhythms, and orchestral colors. The opening movement is set in sonata-allegro form; a Mannheim rocket sets the work in motion, then the Allegro’s two delightful themes are presented. A grand pause before the development section is another nod to the Mannheim school. The graceful Larghetto is set in A major in 3/4 time; following a four-bar introduction, the violins sing an elegant melody that is restated by the flute. In place of a minuet, Prokofiev gives us a stately D-major Gavotte; it is music he would later repurpose for his Romeo and Juliet ballet. The moto perpetuo Finale is rife with witty, unexpected modulations; its bright-hued orchestration sparkles as this delightfully quirky movement dashes to its conclusion.

William Bolcom

Born 26 May 1938; Seattle, Washington

Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra

Composed: 1983 • First performance: 3 June 1984; Saarbrücken, Germany • Last MSO performance: September 1996; Sian Edwards, conductor; Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin • Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nddoubling piccolo); 2 oboes (2nddoubling English horn); 2 clarinets (1stdoubling e-flat clarinet, 2nddoubling bass clarinet); 2 bassoons (2nddoubling contrabassoon); 2 horns, 2 trumpets (1stdoubling piccolo trumpet); trombone; bass trombone; timpani; percussion (chimes, crotale, cymbals, high hat, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam tam, tambourine, tom tom, wood block); harp; celeste (doubling piano); strings • Approximate duration: 23 minutes

American composer William Bolcom has written nine symphonies, four operas and several musical theater works, 12 string quartets, four violin sonatas, two film scores, incidental music for stage plays, as well as fanfares and occasional pieces. His catalogue also includes an impressive array of chamber, choral, and vocal works. Bolcom’s setting of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a full evening’s work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra, culminated 25 years of work on the piece. Recorded live in performance in April 2004, the Naxos CD won four Grammy Awards in 2005. He retired from the University of Michigan in 2008, following 35 years of teaching there.

Bolcom wrote his Concerto in D for the Romanian-born violinist Sergiu Luca (1943-2010), who premiered the work and later recorded it. From 1983 to his death, Luca taught at Houston’s Rice University. In this work, the composer blends popular styles of music (ragtime, R&B, bluegrass, et al.) with the classical idiom, both juxtaposing and integrating them. The first movement’s title, Quasi una Fantasia, tells us that it is fantasy-like in form, through-composed, and improvisatory in nature. An opening ostinato paves the way for the soloist’s effusive entrance; a “macabre waltz” (Bolcom) soon follows and metrically modulates to a fast gigue. “It is,” Bolcom explained, “the tension between the tragic and more positive opening moods that animates and builds the form of the piece.”

The poignant Adagio is dedicated to the memory of pianist Paul Jacobs (1930-1983), a dear friend of Bolcom’s who died of an AIDS-related illness. The violin melody that permeates the movement is a tune the composer heard whistled by a drunken Hispanic man while he was in New York. The soloist spins out a long, elegiac line against a recurring two-note “sigh” motif marked piangendo (“crying”), an appropriate term in light of the dedication. Listen, too, for a “ghostly discourse” (Bolcom) between the solo violin and an offstage D trumpet.

The playing style of the great jazz violinist Giuseppe “Joe” Venuti (1903-1978) influenced the final Rondo. (In April 1978, Luca, Bolcom, and Joan Morris (Bolcom’s mezzo-soprano wife) had been invited to sit in with Venuti for a night of jazz improvisation at Michael’s Pub in New York. It was a memorable experience for Bolcom, who admired Venuti as a technician and innovator.) Elements from the first movement are incorporated, tying the concerto together cyclically. Ragtime, jazz, R&B, and bluegrass fiddling – there’s even a nod toward “Heart and Soul” – are included within the overall classical idiom, “alternated in rondo fashion until the stretta at the end, where the soloist’s brilliant passagework ends the concerto” (Bolcom). Born 27 January 1756; Salzburg, Austria Died 5 December 1791; Vienna, Austria

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born 27 January 1756; Salzburg, Austria • Died 5 December 1791; Vienna, Austria

Overture to Idomeneo, K. 366

Composed: 1780-81 • First performance: 29 January 1781; Munich, Germany • Last MSO performance: May 2013; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor • Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings • Approximate duration: 5 minutes

In the summer of 1780, Mozart was delighted to receive a commission to compose an opera seria for the Court Theatre in Munich. The Italian libretto was penned by the Salzburg cleric Gianbattista Varesco, based on Antoine Danchet’s French-language Idomenée, which had been set to music by André Campra in 1712. The work premiered two days after Mozart turned 25.

Mozart’s stage work tells the story of Idomeneo, king of Crete, who promises Neptune that, if spared from a shipwreck, he will sacrifice the first person he sees. He faces quite a dilemma when, upon making it safely to dry land, he is met by his son Idamante. In his opera, the composer – who set great store by it – depicted sincere, noble emotion. He made ample use of the chorus. And because he had the virtuoso Mannheim orchestra, now at Munich, at his disposal, Mozart employed a rich orchestral palette. Reflecting the dignity and stature of the characters involved, the D-major Overture immediately establishes the opera’s intense seriousness.

Arnold Schoenberg

Born 13 September 1874; Vienna, Austria • Died 13 July 1951; Los Angeles, California

Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene [Accompaniment to a Film Scene], Opus 34

Composed: 1929-30 • First performance: 28 April 1930; Frankfurt Germany (radio performance) 6 November 1930; Berlin, Germany (public performance) • Last MSO performance: MSO premiere • Instrumentation: flute (doubling piccolo); oboe; 2 clarinets; bassoon; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; trombone; timpani; percussion (xylophone, glockenspiel, snare drum, tambourine, cymbals, triangle, tam tam, bass drum, suspended cymbals); piano; strings •. Approximate duration: 8 minutes

The name Arnold Schoenberg can strike fear into the heart of even the most dedicated concert-goer. Too often, it evokes images of craggy, dissonant, incomprehensible noise. While it’s true that his 12-tone compositions can prove challenging, when approached with an open mind, music that is challenging at first hearing can later provide meaning and edification. Such is the case with the piece at hand, Accompaniment to a Film Scene.

Schoenberg wrote his Opus 34 in the winter of 1929-30, when he was teaching composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. The silent film for which it was written existed only in his imagination. In the work, he does not depict specific actions or groups of people. Instead, he paints in broader strokes, outlining the program as “Threatening Danger – Fear – Catastrophe.” This emotional trajectory is evoked through dramatic changes in tempo, texture, dynamics, and transformations of the basic tone row. Though Schoenberg does not indicate in the score where the three descriptors occur, the piece seems to fall into the three sections of a sonata form, exposition-development-recapitulation.

It has been suggested – though we can’t be sure – that the program of Opus 34 was motivated by Schoenberg’s personal reaction to the social and political problems of rising anti-Semitism in 1930s Germany. In any case, he was obliged as a Jew to leave Berlin in 1933. He went to Paris and later the same year arrived in the United States, settling in Los Angeles in 1934 and teaching at UCLA for nearly a decade.

Franz Joseph Haydn

Born 31 March 1732; Rohrau, Austria • Died 31 May 1809; Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 96 in D major, H. 96 “Miracle”

Composed: 1791 First performance: 11 March 1791; London, England • Last MSO performance: November 2016; Cristian Macelaru, conductor • Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings • Approximate duration: 20 minutes

For nearly 30 years, beginning in 1761, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy was Haydn’s patron and employer. The Esterházy family was among the richest and most influential of the Hungarian nobility, and Nikolaus’s musical tastes and requirements shaped the traditions at the Esterházy court. Across the years, at various times and in various combinations, Haydn’s duties – both as composer and music director – included instrumental music (symphonies, concerti, divertimenti, chamber music, etc.), church music, opera, and cantatas to commemorate special occasions.

Prince Nikolaus died on 28 September 1 Prince Nikolaus died on 28 September 1790. Prince Anton, his son and successor, did not share his father’s love of music. He dismissed the orchestra, retaining only the Feldmusik (wind band for out-of-doors music). Haydn was kept on at full salary, as the titular Kapellmeister. Lacking obligations of any kind, he decided to move from Eszterháza to Vienna, where he intended to live a quiet life.

His plans quickly changed when J.P. Salomon, a German-born violinist turned London impresario, showed up on Haydn’s doorstep unannounced. “I am Salomon from London and have come to fetch you. Tomorrow we shall reach an agreement.” And so it went. By 15 December, Haydn and his new “manager” were on their way to England, where they arrived on New Year’s Day 1791.

In London, Haydn took full advantage of the city’s cosmopolitan atmosphere. Its rich musical life impressed him deeply. But the primary focus of his sojourn was Salomon’s concerts. After two postponements, the series began on 11 March in the posh Hanover Square Rooms. Haydn conducted his new Symphony No. 96, the featured work. (By number, it is the fourth of the 12 London symphonies, Nos. 93-104, but was the first to be written and performed. And the “miracle” that gave this work its nickname actually occurred at the premiere of No. 102: a chandelier crashed from the ceiling without injuring anyone, because the enthusiastic audience was crowding the stage to get a closer view of Haydn.)

In typical Haydnesque fashion, a slow introduction soon gives way to a lighthearted Allegro, set in sonata form. Two themes take shape, though one takes a more prominent role in the movement’s development. Listen for Haydn’s comically dramatic grand pause before a false recapitulation. The Andante is a three-part form in G major. The sylvan outer sections are contrasted with a turbulent, contrapuntal middle section in G minor; an orchestral cadenza spotlights two solo violins and the principal winds. The minuet, courtly and vigorous at the same time, features an extended oboe solo in its trio. The closing Vivace is a capricious rondo that is all smiles, with a mock-serious minor section and a brief wind-band solo near the end. Haydn himself reportedly stressed the movement’s need for “the softest piano and a very quick tempo.”