ANDREAS DELFS RETURNS

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Friday, November 5, 2021 at 11:15 am

Saturday, November 6, 2021 at 7:30 pm

Sunday, November 7, 2021 at 2:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Andreas Delfs, conductor

Olga Kern, piano

PROGRAM

RICHARD WAGNER/Humperdinck, Englebert / “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from Götterdämmerung

EDVARD GRIEG / Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16 • I. Allegro molto moderato • II. Adagio • III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato • Olga Kern, piano

INTERMISSION

SARAH KIRKLAND SNIDER / Something for the Dark

ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK / Hansel and Gretel, Orchestral / Suite arranged by Andreas Delfs

The 2021.22 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND. The MSO Steinway piano was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ.

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.

ANDREAS DELFS

Andreas Delfs has earned a stellar reputation as one of the most respected conductors in the orchestra world. He is widely recognized as both a successful, hands-on orchestra builder and as an imaginative and inspiring music director. His passionate and dramatic interpretations of the late romantic repertoire with orchestras in both North America and Europe have drawn critical acclaim, reflecting a constantly evolving artistic maturity marked by the insight, depth and integrity he brings to the podium.

Delfs was educated in the finest conservatories of the old and the new world and mentored by great conductors; his approach to conducting has been forged by decades of experience. At the same time, his love of new music and his commitment to discovering and exploring fresh voices have led him to establish close relationships with many of today’s composers and to conduct numerous world premiere performances. Delfs counts among his profound musical inspirations composers and musicians who span many decades; he has partnered with many of the world’s most renowned solo artists, including André Watts, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang, and Renée Fleming.

Delfs has held chief artistic posts with several orchestras in both North America and Europe. As music director and conductor laureate of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Delfs was instrumental in the orchestra’s rise to national prominence. He also led the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as music director and artistic consultant. He served as general music director of Hanover, Germany; music director of the Bern Opera; resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony; and music director of the Orchestre Suisse des Jeunes. Over the years Delfs has also led numerous distinguished ensembles.

Born in Flensburg, Germany, Delfs began studying piano and music theory at age five. He studied with Christoph von Dohnányi and Aldo Ceccato at the Hamburg Conservatory. At 20, Delfs became the youngest-ever music director of the Hamburg University Orchestra and Musical Assistant at the Hamburg State Opera. He enrolled at The Juilliard School; studied with Jorge Mester, Sixten Ehrling, and Leonard Bernstein; and won the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship.

OLGA KERN

With a vivid onstage presence, dazzling technique, and keen musicianship, Russian-American pianist Olga Kern is widely recognized as one of the great artists of her generation, captivating fans and critics alike. She was born into a family of musicians in Russia and began studying piano at the age of five, and at 17 was awarded first prize at the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition. In 2001, she jump - started her U.S. career, winning a historic Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas–the first woman to do so in more than 30 years.

A Steinway Artist, Kern is a laureate of a number of international competitions. In 2016, she was jury chairman of both the Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition and the first Olga Kern International Piano Competition, where she also holds the title of artistic director. Kern frequently gives masterclasses and since 2017 has served on the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. In 2019, she was appointed the Connie & Marc Jacobson Director of Chamber Music at the Virginia Arts Festival.

Kern has performed with many prominent orchestras, including the Moscow Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, D.C.), as well as the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Iceland Symphony, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, and the National Youth Orchestra of China, which marked her Chinese debut. She was also a featured soloist on US tours with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and during the 2017.18 season served as artist in residence at the San Antonio Symphony.

Kern’s discography includes a Harmonia Mundi recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra; her Grammy-nominated disc of Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations and other transcriptions; and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Warsaw Philharmonic. Other notable releases include Chopin’s Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 3, and, more recently, SONY’s release of the Rachmaninoff Sonata for Cello and Piano with Sol Gabetta. Kern is also featured in award-winning documentaries about the 2001 Cliburn Competition: Playing on the Edge, They Came to Play, and Olga’s Journey.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

Welcome back to Milwaukee, Maestro Delfs! Our Conductor Laureate has chosen a program of great adventure, beginning with music from Wagner’s “Ring” cycle and ending with the story of a gingerbread house and a wicked witch. In between, Olga Kern plays Grieg’s beloved Piano Concerto and Sarah Kirkland Snider takes inspiration from former U.S. poet laureate Philip Levine.

Richard Wagner

Born 22 May 1813; Leipzig, Germany • Died 13 February 1883; Venice, Italy

“Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from Götterdämmerung

Composed: 1869-74 (opera) • First performance: 17 August 1876; Bayreuth, Germany (complete opera)

Last MSO performance: May 1986; Paul Polivnick, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, glockenspiel, triangle); harp; strings • Approximate duration: 10 minutes

Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a monumental tour de force in the history of Western classical music. Comprised of four operas and something like 16 hours of music altogether, it is complex both in its story line and implementation. Along with Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, its influence on composers of subsequent generations cannot be overestimated.

“Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” comes from the last of the Ring operas, Götterdämmerung [Twilight of the Gods]. It serves as an orchestral interlude between the prologue and Act 1, portraying the hero’s voyage down the river to the castle of the Gibichungs, where he ultimately will be murdered by Hagen. The Journey begins with an exultant blast based on Siegfried’s horn call. The music moves ahead vibrantly, citing earlier leitmotifs that conjure Brünnhilde, the swirling water of the Rhine, and the Rhinemaidens’ paean to the gold Alberich stole from them to fashion the Ring, setting in motion the whole protracted saga.

Edvard Grieg

Born 15 June 1843; Bergen, Norway • Died 4 September 1907; Bergen, Norway

Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16

Composed: 1868 • First performance: 3 April 1869; Copenhagen, Denmark

Last MSO performance: November 2015; Lawrence Renes, conductor; Jon Kimura Parker, piano

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; timpani; piano; strings • Approximate duration: 30 minutes

Edvard Grieg was the most important Norwegian composer during the nationalist-Romantic era. First and foremost a master melodist, his compositions show the influence of native folk idioms. To discover this, one needs to look only as far as the felicitous Lyric Pieces (ten sets) for piano and the incidental music for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt – particularly the poignant “Solvejg’s Song” and the poetic “Morning Mood.” Likewise, the Piano Concerto in A minor shows folk influences, as we shall see.

Numbering among Grieg’s earliest important works, the concerto was written by the 25-yearold composer in 1868 in Søllerød, Denmark, during one of his visits there to benefit from the climate. (All his life, Grieg suffered from ill-health – respiratory troubles stemming from an attack of pleurisy in 1860.) Grieg’s concerto is often compared to Robert Schumann’s – they share the same key, the opening descending flourish on the piano is similar, and the overall style is considered to be closer to Schumann than any other composer. Incidentally, in his teen years, Grieg had heard Schumann’s concerto played by Clara Schumann in Leipzig’s Gewandhaus. And he was greatly influenced by Schumann’s style in general, having studied the piano at the Leipzig Conservatory with Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel, a close friend of Schumann.

The concerto was given its triumphant premiere in April 1869. That autumn, Grieg received a grant from the Norwegian government that enabled him to travel to Italy for further study. While there, he met Franz Liszt, who was then living in semi-retirement in Rome. At their second meeting, Grieg showed Liszt the score of the concerto, which Liszt played a prima vista and gave Grieg the warmest encouragement. Today it is one of Grieg’s most popular works and is among the most often performed of all piano concertos. It also holds the distinction of being the first piano concerto ever recorded – by Wilhelm Backhaus in 1908, in a heavily abridged six-minute version.

Set in three movements, the piece opens with a crescendo roll from the timpani, which culminates in a crashing chord from the full orchestra. The soloist enters with a flourish based on a falling minor second followed by a falling major third, a motif that is typical of Norwegian folk music. The main theme of the movement is then introduced by the woodwinds with punctuations from the strings, and is soon taken up by the piano. After a short bridge passage, the second theme is played by the cellos against soft wind harmonies. The brief development section is based almost entirely on the main theme of the movement. The recapitulation is little more than a literal restatement of the exposition. The movement concludes with a brilliant and exciting cadenza and a brief coda.

The nostalgic Adagio begins with an extended passage for muted strings, after which the piano enters with a theme of its own. The piano and strings then engage in a melodious dialogue and are soon joined by the winds. After a loud restatement of the opening theme by the piano and orchestra, the mood grows calmer and the music quietly ebbs away.

The Finale, a loosely constructed rondo, follows without pause. Its refrain is an energetic theme with the rhythmic characteristics of the hallingdansen, a Norwegian folk dance in strongly accented duple meter. The songful middle section is ushered in by a solo flute over tremolo strings. After this material is rhapsodically developed by the piano and orchestra, the halling melody returns. In the final section of the movement, the theme is transformed into triple meter, thereby taking on the characteristics of the springdans, another Norwegian folk dance. Virtuoso scale passages in the piano lead into the broadly majestic coda, bringing the concerto to it glorious conclusion.

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Born 8 October 1973; Princeton, New Jersey

Something for the Dark

Composed: 2016 • First performance: 14 April 2016; Detroit, Michigan

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; English horn; 3 clarinets; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 4 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (tam tam, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, triangle, bass drum, suspended cymbals, cymbals, crotale, sleigh bells, chimes, snare drum, tom tom); harp; piano; celeste; strings • Approximate duration: 12 minutes

Born and raised in Princeton – where she still lives – Sarah Kirkland Snider earned a master’s degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University. In 2006, she was a Schumann Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. She has studied composition with, among other, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, and Christopher Rouse. Her catalogue includes works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, voices (both solo and choral), and musical theatre. Something for the Dark was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra after Snider won their Lebenbom Award for Female Composers in 2014. She offers the following insights about the piece:

"Thinking about Detroit led me to think about resilience, and what it means to endure. After a brief hint of passing doubt, Something for the Dark opens with a bold, heroic statement of hope and fortitude in the horns and trombones. I think of this music as the optimism of a very young person. Initially, I envisioned this motif journeying through a bit of challenge and adversity to arrive at an even stronger, bolder version of itself: Growth! Triumph! A happy ending! But that wasn’t what happened. Early into its search for glory, the motif finds itself humbled beyond recognition: a delicate, childlike tune in the flute, harp, and celeste arises in its stead. This new version of hope is then put through a series of challenges that roil and churn it like the sea tossing a small boat – testing it, weathering it, even taunting it with memories of its early hubristic naïveté. Eventually, the music finds its way to solid ground, and though its countenance has now darkened, its heroism a distant memory, there is serenity and some wisdom – and perhaps, even, the kind of hope that endures.

"The title of the piece comes from a poem by Philip Levine, the Detroit-born-and-raised, former U.S. poet laureate who was best known for his poems about Detroit’s working class. The last two lines of his poem 'For Fran' struck me as an apt motto for his many clear-eyed reflections on endurance. In preparing the flower beds for winter, Levine’s wife becomes a symbol of the promise of renewal: 'She packs the flower beds with leaves/Rags, dampened papers, ties with twine/The lemon tree, but winter carves/Its features on the uprooted stem… I turn to her whose future bears/The promise of the appalling air/My loving wife, Frances Levine, Mother of Theodore, John, and Mark/Out of whatever we have been/We will make something for the dark.'"

Englebert Humperdinck

Born 1 September 1854; Siegburg, Germany • Died 27 September 1921; Neustrelitz, Germany

Hansel and Gretel, Orchestral Suite arranged by Andreas Delfs

Composed: 1890-93 • First performance: 23 December 1893; Weimar, Germany (complete opera)

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, tam tam, castanets, xylophone, glockenspiel, cuckoo, thunder sheet); harp; strings • Approximate duration: 25 minutes

Englebert Humperdinck was born in Siegburg, a stone’s throw away from both Bonn and Cologne. He studied at the conservatories in Cologne and Munich, later winning the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin, which afforded him the opportunity to travel to Italy. There, he met Wagner in Naples in 1880, later becoming his musical assistant in preparation for the first performance of Parsifal (Bayreuth, 1882). In addition to his steady output as a composer – operas, incidental music, dozens of songs, choral music, instrumental and chamber works – he taught at several conservatories, was a music critic, and for a time was adviser to the publishing firm B. Schotts Söhne. (During his two years with them, he prepared new editions of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and advocated for Hugo Wolf’s lieder.)

Hansel and Gretel, Humperdinck’s best-known work, began in 1890 as song settings for his sister, Adelheid Wette, who wrote the libretto. Her original wish was to have a Singspiel (musical song-play) for her children to enact; this eventually morphed into the fully-fledged opera we know today. Its Weimar premiere was conducted by Richard Strauss, and it enjoyed immediate success, with productions at over 50 theatres in the first year; the work was especially wellreceived in Vienna. To this very day, it is a December holiday staple in the German-speaking countries.

Though the music is delightfully tuneful – and, at times, dancelike – its Wagnerian harmonic and textural influences are unmistakable, as its melodies are assimilated into a refined, seamless fabric. The suite on today’s program, fashioned by Maestro Delfs, includes excerpts from – among others – the Overture, the Dream Pantomime, the Witch’s Ride, and the Crisp Waltz. It’s all quite enchanting!