13 minute read
January 21 & 22 — Classics
STAGE TO SCREEN
Friday, January 21, 2022 at 7:30 pm Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 7:30 pm ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL
ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD/Patrick Russ
Suite from Captain Blood I. Main Title II. Sold Into Slavery III. Meeting on the Ocean IV. Tortuga V. Peter and Arabella IV. Finale
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Violin Concerto, Opus 15 I. Moderato con moto – II. Vivace III. Passacaglia: Andante lento (un poco meno mosso) [played without pause]
Augustin Hadelich, violin
IN TERMISSION
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
The Golden Age (Suite), Opus 22a I. Introduction II. Adagio III. Polka IV. Dance
PAUL HINDEMITH
Mathis der Maler [Mathis the Painter] – Symphony I. Ruhig bewegt (Angel Concert) II. Sehr langsam (Entombment) III. Sehr langsam, frei im Zeitmass (Temptation of St. Anthony)
The 2021.22 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND. The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours. 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
AUGUSTIN HADELICH
Augustin Hadelich is one of the great violinists of our time. From Bach to Brahms, from Bartók to Adès, he has mastered a wide-ranging and adventurous repertoire. Named Musical America’s 2018 “Instrumentalist of the Year,” he is consistently cited worldwide for his phenomenal technique, soulful approach, and insightful interpretations. Hadelich’s 2020.21 season culminated in performances with the San Francisco Symphony of the Brahms Violin Concerto, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Starting off Hadelich’s 2021.22 season will be his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with Gustavo Gimeno on the podium. Shortly thereafter, he will perform with the South Netherlands Symphony Orchestra the premiere of a new violin concerto written for him by Irish composer, Donnacha Dennehy. Augustin Hadelich has appeared with every major orchestra in North America, including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. His worldwide presence has been rapidly rising, with recent appearances with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra/Munich, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Danish National, Orquesta Nacional de España, Oslo Philharmonic, São Paulo Symphony, the radio orchestras of Finland, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken, Stuttgart, and Cologne, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Engagements in the Far East include the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, NHK Symphony (Tokyo), and a tour with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Hadelich is the winner of a 2016 Grammy Award™ – “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” – for his recording of Dutilleux’s Violin Concerto, L’Arbre des songes, with the Seattle Symphony under Ludovic Morlot (Seattle Symphony MEDIA). A Warner Classics Artist, his most recent release is a double CD of the Six Solo Sonatas and Partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in Italy, the son of German parents, Augustin Hadelich is now an American citizen. He holds an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Smirnoff. After winning the Gold Medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, concerto and recital appearances on many of the world’s top stages quickly followed. Augustin Hadelich plays the violin “Leduc, ex-Szeryng” by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù of 1744, generously loaned by a patron through the Tarisio Trust.
Program notes by J. Mark Baker
Our three-concert ’30s Festival opens with an eclectic selection of European music – Austrian, British, Russian, German. Selections from a film score, a ballet, and an opera combine with Britten’s early Violin Concerto – played by guest artist Augustin Hadelich – to create a satisfying whole.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Born 29 May 1897; Brno, Moravia Died 29 November 1957; Hollywood, California
Suite from Captain Blood
Composed: 1935 First performance: December 1935 (film release) Last MSO performance: MSO premiere Instrumentation: 2 flutes (both doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 3 clarinets (2nd doubling on alto saxophone, 3rd doubling on bass clarinet and tenor saxophone); 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 4 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, crotale, cymbals, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tambourine, temple blocks, triangle, vibraphone, xylophone); harp; celeste; strings Approximate duration: 16 minutes
As a child in Vienna, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was celebrated as a wunderkind. When he was only ten years old, Mahler pronounced him a genius and sent him to study with Alexander Zemlinsky. He drew subsequent praise from Richard Strauss for his early orchestral works; Puccini was likewise impressed by his opera Violanta (1916). The height of his early fame came with Die tote Stadt, composed when he was 20 and internationally acclaimed after its premiere in 1920. A few years later, he assumed a teaching post in Vienna and a 1928 poll named Korngold and Schoenberg as Austria’s two greatest living composers. In 1934, the stage/screen director Max Reinhardt took Korngold to Hollywood. A Jew in the time of rising Nazi power, he thought it prudent to remain there. As a film composer, he wrote some of the choicest music ever heard on the big screen, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), The Prince and the Pauper (1937), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and The Sea Hawk (1940). Two scores – Anthony Adverse (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – received Oscars. Korngold returned to composing absolute music after World War II, most notably a splendid Violin Concerto (1946), premiered by Jascha Heifetz. Captain Blood (1935) starred Errol Flynn (Peter Blood) and Olivia de Havilland (Arabella). Its plot surrounds a young Irish doctor who is exiled to Barbados as a slave; there, he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the most feared pirate of the Caribbean. Following the suite’s swashbuckling “Main Title,” the mood shifts drastically for “Sold into Slavery,” with its unsettling harmony and string-section statement of the opening fanfare motif, now in a minor key. In “Meeting on the Ocean,” Blood chances upon the rival pirate ship that contains Arabella; he allows it to pass without attack. “Tortuga” is the island where Blood and his crew take refuge after fleeing slavery. “Peter and Arabella” comes near the end of the film; Romanticera evocations underscore how deeply in love they are. Brass fanfares herald the “Finale,” and soaring string melodies whisk the music forward as the once-estranged lovers are reconciled.
Born 22 November 1913; Lowestoft, England Died 4 December 1976; Aldeburgh, England
Violin Concerto, Opus 15
Composed: 1939 First performance: 28 March 1940; New York, New York Last MSO performance: January 2017; Carlos Kalmar, conducting; Elina Vähälä, violin Instrumentation: 3 flutes (2nd doubling on 2nd piccolo, 3rd doubling on 1st piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tenor drum, triangle, bass drum, tambourine); harp; strings Approximate duration: 31 minutes
Benjamin Britten has been hailed as “the greatest English composer since Purcell.” His prodigious output includes operas, solo vocal music, chamber music, concertos, symphonic works, film music, and choral music. Britten’s opera Peter Grimes (1945) is a singular masterpiece in the genre, and his War Requiem (1961) is one of the towering works of the 20th century. In May 1939, Britten and his life partner, Peter Pears – a tenor whose unique artistry was to inspire many of the composer’s song cycles and operatic roles, including Peter Grimes – left England for North America. They went first to Canada, where they became “legal British immigrants.” The couple spent several enjoyable weeks in Toronto and arrived in New York in late June. In Toronto, Britten had continued to work on his Violin Concerto, begun in England the previous year. At his new digs on Long Island – staying at the Amityville home of William and Elizabeth Mayer – the music continued to take shape, and was finished in September while the composer was on vacation in St. Jovite, Québec. After submitting the new concerto for consideration to Jascha Heifetz, who pronounced it unplayable, Britten turned to an old friend – and a fellow student of the English composer Frank Bridge – the Spanish virtuoso Antonio Brosa. (Along with the composer, Brosa had given the premiere of Britten’s Suite for Violin and Piano in 1936.) Brosa premiered the work at Carnegie Hall the following March, with the New York Philharmonic and Sir John Barbirolli. The concerto is set in three movements, but eschews the usual fast-slow-fast configuration; instead, a central Vivace is surrounded by movements at slower tempos. A short phrase for timpani, answered by the cymbal, opens the Moderato con moto. This becomes the accompaniment for the violin’s haunting chromatic tune and recurs during the movement. The second subject is more angular, more rhythmic. At the movement’s climax, a melodic cadenza descends from the violin’s highest notes, with double- and triple-stops based on the opening percussion motif. The second-movement is a take-no-prisoners scherzo in E minor. Vigorous and energetic, it is forceful and at times extravagant in its brilliance. A pleading middle section in A minor provides contrast before a slow crescendo to an orchestral tutti introduces a blazing cadenza. This leads directly to the valedictory Passacaglia, Britten’s first use of the Purcellian form that was to become an integral part of his compositional vocabulary. Its theme – a scale ascending and descending in alternating whole- and half-steps – is announced by the trombones, heard for the first time in the concerto. Nine continuous variations then follow. Its serious musical expression casts the movement as a threnody. An ardent pacifist, Britten seems to pour out his sorrow over the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, where the fighting was at its bloodiest when he was completing the concerto.
“It is at times like these,” the 26-year-old composer said, “that work is so important – so that people can think of other things than blowing each other up!... I try not to listen to the radio more than I can help.” Though the concerto received mixed reviews, one person who heard a distinctive voice was the American composer Elliott Carter, who wrote that “nobody could fail to be impressed by the remarkable gifts of the composer, the size and ambition of his talent.” Prescient words, indeed.
Dimitri Shostakovich
Born 25 September 1906; St. Petersburg, Russia Died 9 August 1975; Moscow, Russia
The Golden Age (Suite), Opus 22a
Composed: 1927-30 First performance: 26 October 1930; Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Russia (complete ballet) Last MSO performance: MSO premiere Instrumentation: flute; piccolo; oboe; English horn; clarinet; bass clarinet; Eb clarinet; bassoon; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam tam, triangle, xylophone, wood block); harmonium; strings Approximate duration: 16 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, three operas, several cantatas and oratorios, three ballets, 36 film scores, incidental music for 11 plays, choral music, and songs. In his early 20s, Shostakovich became preoccupied with dramatic music in all its various guises, writing an opera (The Nose, 1927-28), a film score (New Babylon, 1928-29), incidental music for a play (The Flea, 1929), and the ballet at hand, The Golden Age [Zolotoy vek]. This, his first ballet score, is based on a three-act libretto by Alexander Ivanovsky. Its over-the-top story line is a satirical look at the social and political upheaval in Europe and Russia in the late 1920s. A Soviet soccer (football) team travels to a corrupt Western city. There, they are subjected to every sort of debauched temptation – moral, financial, political – by a coterie of unsavory characters that includes the Diva, the Fascist, the Agent Provocateur, and others. The virtuous football players fall victim to game-rigging and badgering by the police. Ultimately, they are incarcerated by the unscrupulous bourgeoisie – until a brave uprising of the local working class triumphs over the vile capitalists, affording the sportsmen’s release. The sardonic “Introduction” comes from the ballet’s overture, sounding as if it might be the soundtrack to a Buster Keaton film. The “Adagio,” a seductive dance by the Diva, features a soprano saxophone. Subtitled “Once upon a time in Geneva” in the ballet, the wonderfully quirky “Polka” makes fun of diplomats at the League of Nations. The concluding “Dance” comes early in the complete score, accompanying the Soviet footballers soon after their arrival in the West. It’s all cynical fun. And Shostakovich himself was a soccer fan, dubbing the sport “the ballet of the masses.”
Born 16 November 1895; Hanau, Germany Died 28 December 1963; Frankfurt, Germany
Mathis der Maler [Mathis the Painter] – Symphony
Composed: 1934 First performance: 12 March 1934; Berlin, Germany (symphony) 28 May 1938; Zurich, Switzerland (opera) Last MSO performance: November 2012; Michael Francis, conductor Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle, glockenspiel, snare drum); strings Approximate duration: 25 minutes
Paul Hindemith became one of the leading German composers between the two World Wars. A prolific composer by any standard, he wrote in every genre imaginable: operas, ballets, orchestral music, chamber orchestral works, chamber music, solo piano pieces, choral music, and songs. A gifted violinist, violist, conductor, and pedagogue, he began teaching at the Berlin Conservatory in 1927. When the Nazis came to power, however, the independent-minded Hindemith began to have problems with the regime almost immediately. Forced from his teaching position, in 1938 he left Germany for good, first settling in Switzerland and then in the United States. From 1940 to 1953, when he retired, he taught composition and led the Collegium Musicum at Yale University. He returned to Switzerland for the final decade of his life. In 1932, Hindemith began planning an opera about the great German painter Mathis Gothardt Nithardt – better known as Matthias Grünewald (c1460-1528) – who lived during the turbulent early years of the Protestant Reformation. The German Peasant Revolt (1525) and the strife between Catholics and Protestants mirrored Hindemith’s own predicament in the early years of Nazi power: How should an artist react to evil and violence? This had prompted Hindemith to seek for a way to give dramatic shape to this difficulty. Enter conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who asked Hindemith to write an orchestral work for the Berlin Philharmonic’s 1933-34 season. The composer decided to use this opportunity to contribute to the opera that was taking shape in his imagination, rather than dragging him away from it. Grünewald’s masterwork, the Isenheim Altarpiece, a two-sided triptych, served as a guiding principle: The opera is cast in tableaux that treat the images as allegories of the artist’s career and the events of his day. The music of the Symphony’s three movements – each of which corresponds to an image on the altarpiece – was later incorporated into opera. The opening “Engelkonzert” (Angels’ Concert) later became the opera’s Prelude. Grünewald’s painting shows three angels singing and playing to the Virgin and Child. Following a tranquil, luminescent opening, Hindemith’s employs an old German folksong, “Es sungen drei Engel” (Three angels sang), first played by the trombones. What follows is a sonata-form Allegro of merry, wide-eyed innocence, rife with imaginative contrapuntal development. “Grablegung” (Entombment), a solemn nocturne, refers to Mathis’s painting of Christ being laid in the sepulcher. It, too, is set in sonata form. A slow march rhythm supports a somber theme that yields to a number of melancholy woodwind solos. The march returns to build to an ascetic climax, and the movement concludes in a state of lamentation. An extended melody in the muted strings opens the third movement, cast in ternary form. The frenetic music that follows depicts “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” paralleled in the opera with Mathias as Anthony and the other characters as his tormentors. All is not lost, however, for an energetic fugato in the strings soon undergirds the plainsong chant “Lauda Sion Salvatorem” (Praise thy Savior, O Zion) and the brass section proclaims a jubilant closing Alleluia.
