REQUIEM & SONG

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Friday, May 20, 2022 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 7:30 pm

Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 2:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor

Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano

John Brancy, baritone

Milwaukee Symphony Chorus

Cheryl Frazes-Hill, chorus director

PROGRAM

TŌRU TAKEMITSU

Requiem for Strings

JOSEPH CANTELOUBE

Chants d’Auvergne (Songs of the Auvergne)

La delaïssádo (The Deserted Girl)

Lo fiolairé (The Spinning Girl)

Lou boussu (The Hunchback)

Malurous qu’o uno fenno (Unhappy He Who Has a Wife)

Baïlèro (Shepherd’s Song)

Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano

John Brancy, baritone

MISATO MOCHIZUKI

Musubi II

INTERMISSION

MAURICE DURUFLÉ

Requiem, Opus 9

I. Introit I

I. Kyrie

III. Domine Jesu Christe

IV. Sanctus

V. Pie Jesu

VI. Agnus Dei

VII. Lux aeterna

VIII. Libera me

IX. In Paradisum

Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano

John Brancy, baritone

Milwaukee Symphony Chorus

Cheryl Frazes-Hill, chorus director

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

KELLEY O’CONNOR

KELLEY

O'CONNOR

Possessing a voice of uncommon allure, the GRAMMY® Awardwinning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor is one of the most compelling performers of her generation. She is internationally acclaimed equally in the pillars of the classical music canon – from Beethoven and Mahler to Brahms and Ravel – as she is in new works of modern masters – from Adams and Dessner to Lieberson and Talbot.

In the 2021.22 season, O’Connor returns to the Concertgebouworkest for performances of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs led by Stéphane Denève, and a robust North American concert calendar includes performances of Mozart’s Requiem with Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Asher Fisch and the Seattle Symphony, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Jun Märkl and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Juraj Valčuha and the Minnesota Orchestra and with Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony. Additional performances bring her together with Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the Houston Symphony for Mahler’s Second Symphony, and with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for Mahler’s Third Symphony.

John Adams wrote the title role of The Gospel According to the Other Mary for Kelley O’Connor and she has performed the work, both in concert and in the Peter Sellars fully staged production, under the batons of John Adams, Gustavo Dudamel, Grant Gershon, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Simon Rattle, and David Robertson. She has sung the composer’s El Niño with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and continues to be the eminent living interpreter of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs, having given this moving set of songs with Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra, with Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Robert Spano and the Minnesota Orchestra, and with David Zinman and the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, among many others.

Past performances include Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with Matthias Pintscher and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Bernstein’s Songfest for her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut under the baton of Bramwell Tovey, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony, Mahler’s Des knaben Wunderhorn with Krzysztof Urbański and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Das Lied von der Erde with the symphonies of Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, and Glasgow, among many others.

JOHN BRANCY

JOHN

BRANCY

GRAMMY Award-winning baritone John Brancy is known for his intense musicality and communicative power. Hailed by The New York Times as “a vibrant, resonant presence,” Brancy is equally at home in staged opera, concert performance, and recital, with a wide-ranging repertoire that includes classical, contemporary world premieres, and musical theater.

During the 2021.22 season, Brancy returns to the San Francisco Opera as Guglielmo in Michael Cavanagh’s production of Così fan tutte, conducted by Henrik Nánási; sings the role of Franz Wolff-Metternich in the world premiere of La Beauté du monde, by playwright Michel Marc Bouchard and composer Julien Bilodeau, at Opéra de Montréal under the baton of Jean-Marie Zeitouni; performs the world premiere of the Boston Symphony Orchestra-commissioned work Cantata, by Michael Gandolfi, with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, soprano Sophia Burgos, and pianist Alessio Bax; joins the Rundfunkchor Berlin for performances of human requiem, a scenic realization of Johannes Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem staged by Jochen Sandig and members of Sasha Waltz & Guests, at the Ludwigsburg Festival; and reprises his portrayal of Guglielmo for the San Diego Opera production of Così fan tutte led by Bruce Stasyna. In concert, Brancy will appear as soloist at Carnegie Hall in Orff’s Carmina Burana with Cecilia Chorus of New York conducted by Mark Shapiro.

June 2021 marked the release of a collaboration between Vocal Arts DC and Avie Records, The Journey Home: Live from the Kennedy Center, which presents Brancy and pianist Peter Dugan in a recital program inspired by the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. The recital was also filmed and aired on the new PBS app AllArts TV over Memorial Day. Additional highlights of the 2020.21 season included recording selections from Hanns Eisler’s Hollywooder Liederbuch with pianist Victoria Kirsch under the auspices Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra in Los Angeles for online streaming and joining forces with Tony Award–winning composer Adam Guettel to create a short film titled Medusa as part of his song cycle Myths and Hymns, produced by MasterVoices, which also featured artists Dove Cameron, Renée Fleming, and Cheyenne Jackson.

The 2019 release of Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project with an all-star cast of singers led by Brancy and conducted by Gil Rose, won the 2020 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

Vocal music, both solo and choral, is featured on today’s concert: Canteloube’s disarmingly beautiful Songs of the Auvergne and Duruflé’s exquisite setting of the missa pro defunctis. Instrumental works by Japanese composers Takemitsu and Mochizuki round out the program.

Tōru Takemitsu

TORU

TAKEMITSU

Born 8 October 1930; Tokyo, Japan • Died 20 February 1996; Tokyo, Japan

Requiem for Strings

Composed: 1957 • First performance: June 1957; Toyko, Japan • Last MSO performance: January 1999; Jun’ichi Hirokami, conductor • Instrumentation: strings • Approximate duration: 9 minutes

One of the most prolific composers of the second half of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu was the first Japanese composer fully recognized in the West. His impressive list of works includes over 180 concert pieces, 93 film scores, and several works for theater and dance. His early influences were Debussy, Webern, and Messiaen, but his later music reflects a preoccupation with tone color and an understated, crystalline sound. Precision is ever at the forefront, and silence is fully organized.

Takemitsu’s brief Requiem – dedicated to his colleague, the film composer Fumio Hoyasaka – is the composition that first introduced his music to the West. While on tour in Japan in 1959, Igor Stravinsky heard the work, pronouncing it a masterpiece and praising its sustained intensity. The rest, as ’tis said, is history.

Cast in a single pseudo-rondo (A-B-C-A) movement, the Requiem opens with muted strings, as static lower voices support intertwining melodies in the violins and violas. These come and go, and the section ends with a brief viola solo. After a transitory pause, the now-unmuted instruments continue the chordal texture, but with a richer sound. In the third section, lyrical passages interrupt a busy rhythmic motif. The piece concludes with a reprise of the opening music, somewhat shortened.

Joseph Canteloube

JOSEPH

CANTELOUBE

Born 21 October 1879; Annonay, France • Died 4 November 1957; Gridny, France

Chants d’Auvergne (Songs of the Auvergne)

Composed: 1923-30 • Last MSO performance: MSO premiere • Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; trumpet; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, sleigh bells, suspended cymbals); piano; strings • Approximate duration: 16 minutes

The French composer Joseph Canteloube was born in the Auvergne region of south-central France, where his ancestors had long resided. From 1901, he studied at the Paris Schola Cantorum with its founder, the composer Vincent d’Indy. In addition to a meticulous foundation in compositional technique, d’Indy encouraged an all-embracing study of music of the past. Prompted by this influence, Canteloube traveled throughout his homeland collecting folksongs, making artful arrangements of them. The most widely known and admired of these are the Chants d’Auvergne, which were published in five volumes.

The Songs of the Auvergne are sung in the distinctive langue d’oc dialect, which combines characteristics of the early Celtic tongue with Latin introduced by Roman invaders. In his vibrant orchestrations, Canteloube melds the timbres of ancient instruments with the color palette of the modern orchestra to create works of singular beauty. We’ll hear five of these charming songs on today’s concert.

In “La delaïssádo” (The Deserted Girl), expressive woodwind solos lend plangent tone colors to the tale of a woeful shepherdess, deserted by her lover. “Lo fiolairé” (The Spinning Girl) features another shepherdess; this maiden is lighthearted, and the movement of her spinning wheel is vividly depicted in the orchestra. Canteloube’s piquant orchestration of “Lou boussu” (The Hunchback) is a perfect example of his ability to turn the simplest strophic folksong into an entertaining work of art. “Malurous qu’o uno fenno” (Unhappy He Who Has a Wife) is a bourée, a French folk dance in 3/8 meter; its instrumental interlude appropriately summons the rustic sounds of rural life. The oft-recorded “Baïlèro” (Shepherd’s Song) is probably the best-known of the Auvergne songs; it is an affecting dialogue between a shepherd and his distant lady-love, richly scored.

Misato Mochizuki

MISATO

MOCHIZUKI

Born 31 January 1969; Tokyo, Japan

Musubi II

Composed: 2013 • First performance: 21 September 2013; Besançon, France • Last MSO performance: MSO premiere • Instrumentation: 3 flutes; 3 oboes; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; percussion (bass drum, crotale, glockenspiel, plastic blocks, roto toms, sandpaper blocks, tam tam, 2 vibraphones); strings • Approximate duration: 13 minutes

Equally active in Europe, North America, and Japan, Misato Mochizuki’s musical vocabulary is a unique combination of Occidental tradition and the Asiatic sense of breathing – developing electrifying rhythms and unique sounds in a manner that allows great freedom, in terms of both style and form. Her catalogue contains nearly 60 works, including 16 orchestral compositions and 15 pieces for ensemble.

Between 2011 and 2013 Misato Mochizuki was composer-in-residence at the Festival international de musique de Besançon, where she hosted numerous workshops and conferences. Mochizuki was also on the jury panel for the renowned young conductors’ competition. Musubi II was written as a text piece for the finalists.

The term “musubi” means to forge a relationship. In this work, Mochizuki turns to the simplicity of ancient Gregorian chant, utilizing a variety of instrumentation to generate several layers of engaging tone colors. “My wish,” she said, “was that this piece would somehow be a musical manifestation of the energies of various beings and periods of time.”

Maurice Duruflé

MAURICE

DURUFLE

Born 11 January 1902; Louviers, France • Died 16 June 1986; Paris, France

Requiem, Opus 9

Composed: 1947 • First performance: 1947; Paris, France • Last MSO performance: MSO premiere • Instrumentation: 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn); English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, suspended cymbal, tam tam); harp; celeste (doubling on organ); strings • Approximate duration: 45 minutes

Though greatly beloved by church organists and choral singers, Maurice Duruflé is probably not a household name. This is due in part to his own fastidiousness and high standards; he published just over a dozen works across a lifetime of 84 years. As the man himself stated, “[I feel] incapable of adding anything significant to the piano repertoire, view the string quartet with apprehension, and envisage with terror the idea of composing a song after the finished examples of Schubert, Fauré, and Debussy.”

Born in the small village of Louvier, at age ten he became a chorister at Rouen Cathedral. The choral plainsong tradition there was a strong and lasting influence on Duruflé. Moving to Paris at age 17, he studied with Charles Tournemire and, subsequently, at the Paris Conservatoire with Eugène Gigout. In 1927, he became Louis Vierne’s assistant at Notre Dame and two years later was appointed titular organist at Saint-Ètienne-du-Mont, a post he held for the rest of his life. A world-class organist by any standard, he gave the premiere of Poulenc’s organ concerto (1939), and advised the composer on the registrations of the organ part.

Duruflé’s Requiem dates from 1947, and is dedicated to the memory of his father, a music-lover who recognized his young son’s precocious talent – as a preschooler, he’d come home from mass and pick out the plainchants on the family harmonium – and enrolled him in the choir school at Rouen. In each of the movements, Duruflé makes use of the Gregorian chant melodies from the missa pro defunctis. His sensuous harmonies suffuse every note with heartfelt emotion.

“This Requiem is not an ethereal work that sings of detachment from human concerns,” he wrote in 1980. “It reflects, in the unchanging form of Christian prayer, the anguish of man faced with the mystery of his final end. It is often dramatic, or filled with resignation, or hope or terror, like the same words of the scripture used in the liturgy. It tries to translate the human feeling in front of their terrifying, inexplicable, or consoling destiny.” Indeed, the Requiem presents the whole spectrum of human emotion. But most especially it offers great consolation, and has brought comfort and solace to countless thousands across its 75-year lifetime.