IN NATURE’S REALM: JOYCE YANG PLAYS MOZART

Friday, May 5, 2023 at 11:15 am

Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Yaniv Dinur, conductor

Joyce Yang, piano

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

In Nature’s Realm, Opus 91

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Concerto No. 24 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, K. 491

I. Allegro

II. Larghetto

III. Allegretto

Joyce Yang, piano

In Termission

WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI

Concerto for Orchestra

I. Intrada

II. Capriccio notturno e Arioso

III. Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale

The MSO Steinway Piano was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ. The 2022.23 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND.

The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour and 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

JOYCE YANG

Joyce Yang first came to international attention in 2005 when, as the youngest contestant at 19 years old, she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and a year later made her New York Philharmonic debut.

Yang received the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant and earned her first Grammy® nomination for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn, and Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich.

Notable orchestral engagements have included the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and BBC Philharmonic, among others.

As a recitalist, Yang has performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Chicago’s Symphony Center, Zurich’s Tonhalle, and all throughout Australia.

In the 2022.23 season, Yang shares her versatile repertoir, performing with the Milwaukee Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Charlotte Symphony, and Florida Orchestra, among others, and in recital, in numerous cities including Berkeley, San Diego, and at the Aspen Music Festival.

Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She is a Steinway artist.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

The MSO’s resident conductor Yaniv Dinur is on the podium for a program that includes a symphonic poem by Dvořák and Lutosławski’s powerful Concerto for Orchestra. Audience favorite Joyce Yang plays Mozart’s colorful Piano Concerto No. 24.

Anton N Dvo K

Born 8 September 1841; Nelahozeves, Bohemia

Died 1 May 1904; Prague, Bohemia

In Nature’s Realm, Opus 91

Composed: 1891

First performance: 28 April 1892; Prague, Bohemia

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, triangle); strings

Approximate duration: 13 minutes

We wouldn’t be far off the mark if we called Antonín Dvořák the most versatile composer of the Romantic era. The Czech master’s list of works includes operas, chamber music, choral music and songs, symphonies, concertos, tone poems, and other orchestral music.

Dvořák’s V přirodĕ [In Nature’s Realm] is part of a cycle of three concert overtures Dvořák premiered at a farewell concert in Prague just prior to his departure to the U.S. to head the new National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The other two are the brilliant Carnival, Opus 92 – one of the master’s most popular compositions – and the intensely passionate Othello, Opus 93. He conducted all three during his first winter on this side of the Atlantic. From its opening measures – a pedal-tone F in the basses – above which woodwind solos evoke warbling birds, we are surrounded by the beauties of the composer’s Bohemian homeland. The scoring is light and airy, and the piece is set in sonata form, a splendid symmetrical arc that will bring back the quiet opening at the work’s end. In the exposition, listen for the characteristic interval of a descending minor third, one that evokes the sounds of Moravian folk yodeling, a motif that appears in various instruments and registers as the music increases in intensity. The development is about half as long as the exposition, but its disposition is more dramatic, employing intense harmonic progressions and counterpoint. As we’d expect, the recapitulation repeats the thematic content of the exposition, but instead of adding severity, the mood becomes more tranquil, and the piece ends quietly.

Dvořák dedicated In Nature’s Realm to Cambridge University – a thank-you card for an honorary doctorate he had received shortly before.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born 27 January 1756; Salzburg, Austria

Died 5 December 1791; Vienna, Austria

Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491

Composed: 1786

First performance: April 1786; Vienna, Austria

Last MSO performance: January 1999; Keith Lockhart, conductor; Robert Levine, piano

Instrumentation: flute; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 31 minutes

It is an axiom among music lovers that Beethoven’s greatest, most profound musical utterances are to be found in his late string quartets and late piano sonatas. The same is said of Mozart’s late operas and late piano concertos. Such is certainly the case with the C minor concerto (K. 491), the penultimate among what are considered the great 12 piano concertos he penned between 1784-86. Mozart completed the work on 24 March 1786. This concerto is one of only two such works in a minor key. (Interestingly, only three pieces in his entire output are in C minor.) Composed about the same time as The Marriage of Figaro (K. 492), it has been postulated that Mozart chose to write a concerto in a minor key to provide himself a personal anodyne to all the major-key music in the opera. In his 1977 biography of the composer, Wolfgang Hildesheimer notes that minor-key works rarely occur in Mozart’s oeuvre, and when they do, they are of uncommon weight. “… when we do come upon them, we prick up our ears and search for a particular motivation … Is it really a decision for ‘the tragic’? Since we have no definition for a musical equivalent of what we call in words ‘the tragic,’ this question cannot be answered.”

It’s hard to believe that, in the 19th century, Mozart’s piano concertos were rarely heard. Seemingly, only the Concerto in D minor (K. 466) – the other minor-key concerto – appealed to Romantic-era sensibilities. It was held in high regard (both Beethoven and Brahms wrote cadenzas for it) and found a place in the concert repertoire. That scenario has changed since the 1950s, and today we have access to many recordings of the complete body of work.

Cast in the typical three-movement format (fast-slow-fast), K. 491 is unique in its orchestration, calling for both oboes and clarinets. The opening Allegro is, as we would expect, set in sonataallegro form; unusually, though, for a first movement, its time signature is 3/4. In the Classical era, rondos were usually reserved for the final movement, but Mozart employs the form in the Larghetto, set in five parts (ABACA) in the relative key of E-flat major. Having exhausted his rondo option, for the final Allegretto, the master creates a theme-and-variations movement. It is a jaunty cut-time march that allows the composer – having both oboes and clarinets at his disposal – to create some delightfully outdoorsy wind-band music. Following the cadenza, the sparkling coda is set in compound (6/8) meter.

Speaking of cadenzas, Mozart would have improvised his own, and generations of pianists have followed his lead in that regard. Joyce Yang has stated that the cadenzas she plays in the K. 491 were inpsired by legendary Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha (1923-2009).

Witold Lutos Awski

Born 25 January 1913; Warsaw, Poland

Died 7 February 1994; Warsaw, Poland

Concerto for Orchestra

Composed: 1950-54

First performance: 21 November 1954; Warsaw, Poland

Last MSO performance: November 2012; Christoph König, conductor

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolo); 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn); 3 clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet); 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon); 4 horns; 4 trumpets; 4 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tambourine, tam tam, tenor drum, tom tom, xylophone); 2 harps; celeste; piano; strings

Approximate duration: 28 minutes

The Polish composer and conductor Witold Lutosławski was one of the most important European composers of the second half of the 20th century. As a conductor, he often led performances and recordings of his own music. At the same time, he lectured at some of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions and received several honorary doctorates – from the universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Warsaw, among others. His compositions include works written especially for baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, pianist Kristian Zimmerman, and oboist Heinz Holliger. His Symphony No. 3 (1981-83) was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Sir George Solti, and premiered in September 1983.

Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra – the title refers to Bartók’s piece of the same name – is his best-known composition. Lutosławski’s earliest works, from the late 1930s, display a folk-like quality in which diatonic melodies are harmonized with chords that lack functional relationships – not unlike the music of Bartók. The Concerto was composed at the behest of conductor Witold Rowicki, who wanted a piece to showcase the newly-formed Warsaw Philharmonic. The premiere was a triumph for the composer, conductor, and orchestra.

Set in three movements, Lutosławski’s masterwork is a model of compositional directness and expert skill. Its architecture displays balanced proportions, its orchestration is innovative, there is stylistic variety, and its shifting moods, silences, and dramatic contrasts keep us on the edge of our seats. Folk music elements, diatonicism, chromaticism, and even occasional Romantic and Impressionistic idioms are employed.

The ominous opening of the Intrada is soon followed by more pastoral melodies, and the cumulative fabric of the opening draws on several brief melodies to create textures and harmonies that alternate between glowering and bucolic moods. By contrast, the scampering nocturnal Capriccio is almost Mendelssohnian. In its central section, however, Lutosławski can’t resist a more threatening tone, and its folklike melody is harshly refashioned. This is not what we’d consider a typical Arioso!

Two clear sections, which share the same principal folk theme, delineate the closing movement: a Passacaglia that leads to a Toccata and Chorale. Lutosławski seems to take Bach’s organ Passacaglia in C minor (BWV 582) as his model. Listen as the theme is presented in the lowest voices (basses, doubled by the harp) and moves through a waxingly animated orchestral texture until it reaches the piccolo’s highest notes. As the music shifts to the Toccata, the main theme is joined by an impudent folk melody in duple time (low strings). The Chorale follows shortly, and the work comes to an exciting end in a series of linked codas.

When we realize that the Concerto was written during the Cold War, Lutosławski’s achievement becomes all the more impressive. Like Shostakovich, he was able to surmount the hurdles of “socialist realism” to create music that was truly unique. “In its passage from darkness to light,” opined Polish music specialist Adrian Thomas, “it is an allegory of the hope of individual creativity, but also a work that acknowledges the precepts of its cultural-political context.” This writer would put it more succinctly: “Wow! What a piece!”