SCHEHERAZADE

Friday, September 27, 2024 at 7:30 pm Saturday, September 28, 2024 at 7:30 pm Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 2:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor Simon Trpčeski, piano

PROGRAM

DOBRINKA TABAKOVA Orpheus’ Comet

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 1

I. Vivace

II. Andante

III. Allegro vivace

Simon Trpčeski, Piano

INTERMISSION

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade, Opus 35

I. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship

II. The Story of the Kalendar Prince

III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess

IV. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman

The 2024.25 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION. The MSO Steinway Piano was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ.

The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours. All programs are subject to change.

Guest Artist Biographies

SIMON TRPČESK

Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski (pronounced terp-CHESS-kee) has established himself as one of the most remarkable musicians to have emerged in recent years, praised not only for his powerful virtuosity and deeply expressive approach but also for his charismatic stage presence. Launched onto the international scene 20 years ago as a BBC NewGeneration Artist, his fast-paced career has seen him collaborate with over a hundred different orchestras on four continents with appearances on the most prestigious stages.

Trpčeski is a frequent soloist with the major North American orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Minnesota orchestras, and the Chicago, San Francisco, National, St. Louis, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, and Baltimore symphonies, among others. Engagements with major European ensembles include all the major London orchestras, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Dresden Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Elsewhere, he has appeared with the New Japan, China, Seoul, and Hong Kong philharmonics and the Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, and New Zealand symphonies. The long list of prominent conductors Trpčeski has worked with includes Lorin Maazel, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, Christian Măcelaru, Gianandrea Noseda, Vasily Petrenko, Charles Dutoit, Jakub Hrůša, Vladimir Jurowski, Susanna Malkki, Andris Nelsons, Antonio Pappano, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and David Zinman.

Trpčeski’s fruitful collaboration with EMI Classics, Avie Records, Wigmore Hall Live, Onyx Classics, and currently Linn Records has resulted in a broad and award-winning discography that includes repertoire such as Rachmaninoff’s complete works for piano and orchestra and the Prokofiev piano concertos, as well as composers such as Poulenc, Debussy, and Ravel. Variations, his latest solo album released in spring 2022, features works by Brahms, Beethoven, and Mozart.

Born in Macedonia in 1979, Trpčeski is a graduate of the School of Music at the University of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Skopje, where he studied with Boris Romanov. Committed to strengthening the cultural image of his native country, his chamber music project, Makedonissimo, is dedicated to introducing audiences world-wide to the rich traditional Macedonian folk roots, which weave the Macedonian folk music tradition with highly virtuosic, jazz influenced riffs and harmonies into one unique sound world. Since its successful premiere in 2018, Makedonissimo has performed to audiences world-wide and released a CD on Linn Records.

With the special support of KulturOp — Macedonia’s leading cultural and arts organization — Trpčeski also works regularly with young musicians in Macedonia to help cultivate the talent of the country’s next generation of artists. In 2009, Trpčeski received the Presidential Order of Merit for Macedonia and in 2011, he became the first-ever recipient of the title “National Artist of Macedonia.”

Program notes by Elaine Schmidt

DOBRINKA TABAKOVA

Born 1980; Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Orpheus’ Comet

Composed: 2017

First performance: 27 November 2017; Johannes Wildner, conductor; BBC Concert Orchestra

Last MSO performance: MSO Premiere Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons (2nd doubling on contrabassoon); 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 2 trombones; bass trombone; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, glockenspiel, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, temple blocks, tom-tom, vibraphone, wood block, xylophone); strings

Approximate duration: 5 minutes

Arts writers love to love the music of Bulgarian-born, Grammy Award-nominated composer Dobrinka Tabakova, describing it with such phrases as: “radiant tonal color” and “close harmony, gentle dissonances, tonal parallelism, and often-unresolved tonal suspensions,” noting that “there is something immediate and personal about her music.”

Tabakova received music degrees in London, from the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as well as a doctorate in composition from King’s College. She has held a series of prestigious residencies, including: Artist-in-Residence with The Hallé, the orchestra of Manchester, England, and Composer-in-Residence positions with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Utrecht International Chamber Music Festival, and festivals in Latvia and Austria. She has received commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Society, BBC Radio 3, the Cheltenham Music Festival, the Britten Sinfonia, Wigmore Hall, and others. Recordings of her music appear on the Hyperion, Avie, and ECM labels.

Tabakova wrote Orpheus’ Comet in 2017 during her British Broadcasting Corporation residency, explaining that the piece, commissioned by the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union, has Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo at the heart of the work’s concept. She writes that the piece has “a regal, upbeat opening — exactly what you would wish from a fanfare.”

She further explains that her research led her to one of the earliest mentions of the Orpheus legend in Book IV of Virgil’s Georgics. Virgil’s passages about the life of bees, along with the role of the beekeeper in Eurydice’s death, stayed in her mind. The bee sounds first appear as a buzzing in the horns, gradually morphing into chord clusters and “accent sparks,” which are passed around the orchestra. This dialog continues until a solemn chorale appears out of the shifting texture. The chorale is taken up by the strings and grows to include the buzzing ideas, which are transformed to almost-hypnotic rhythmic loops. A soaring melody in the flute and clarinet rises above the orchestra as momentum starts to build. Trombones support this buildup and set the stage for the piece’s finale, and the arrival of Monteverdi’s theme, along with a modern twist.

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born 1 April 1873; Semyonovo, Russia

Died 28 March 1943; Beverly Hills, California, United States

Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 1

Composed: 1891

First performance: First movement premiered on 17 March 1892; Vasily Safonov, conductor; Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano; Moscow Conservatory Orchestra. Revised version premiered on 29 January 1919; Modest Altschuler, conductor; Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano; Russian Symphony Society Orchestra.

Last MSO performance: 3 March 2013; Edo de Waart, conductor; Joyce Yang, piano

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

Approximate duration: 27 minutes

As a boy, Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff was groomed to become an army officer — until his father bankrupted and then abandoned the family. Rachmaninoff’s cousin, noted pianist and conductor Alessandro Siloti, saw the boy’s aptitude for music and set him up with a piano teacher in Moscow. Rachmaninoff also took general music courses at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating at age 19.

Once out of school, Rachmaninoff charmed the Russian concert-going public with his performances and compositions. He rose to international fame as a triple-threat: a conductor, the last of the great, Russian, Romantic composers, and one of the preeminent concert pianists of the era. But plagued by depression and self-doubt, he frequently spoke disparagingly of his three-pronged career with phrases such as, “I have chased three hares. Can I be certain that I have captured one?”

Rachmaninoff fled Russia following the 1917 Russian revolution. As the principal performer of his own compositions, he traveled extensively, giving as many as 70 performances per year, and developed close ties to the Philadelphia Orchestra. Yet he felt musically and culturally homeless, referring to his former life in Russia as his “happiest years.”

Rachmaninoff wrote the first movement of his Piano Concerto No. 1 when he was just 17, completing the second and third movements the following year. He revised the piece 26 years after he wrote it, as a much more experienced and polished composer than he had been as a teenager. He wrote to a friend about the revisions, explaining, “It is really good now — it plays itself so much more easily.”

Rachmaninoff had enormous hands, which were slightly larger than Franz Liszt’s famously huge hands. It was long assumed that Rachmaninoff had Marfan syndrome, although without a definitive diagnosis. Many scholars now believe that he had acromegaly, which would also explain the melanoma that ended his life. Like Beethoven, Liszt, and many others before him, Rachmaninoff wrote piano music for himself to perform. Pianists with average-sized hands have long struggled to perform his works, given that he could easily cover a full octave-and-a-half on the piano — with each hand.

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV

Born 18 March 1844; Tikhvin, Russia

Died 21 June 1908; Lyubensk, Russia

Scheherazade, Opus 35

Composed: 10 January – 24 May 1893

First performance: 3 November 1888; Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, conductor; Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Society

Last MSO performance: 14 January 2016; JoAnn Falletta, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on 2nd piccolo); piccolo; 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tambourine, triangle); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 42 minutes

Russian composer, teacher, and editor Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov began his professional life with a three-year tour of duty in the Russian Navy, following his graduation from the Russian Naval Academy. He left the Navy at age 21, settling in St. Petersburg to pursue a career in music, through which he became known as one of foremost teachers and composers in the country. He became a member of an influential group of Russian composers known as The Five, made great strides in establishing a national style of Russian classical music, wrote 15 operas, and became quite famous as an editor, arranger, and orchestrator of the music of others. He wrote the definitive orchestral version of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, which he completed about five years after Mussorgsky’s death. Rimsky-Korsakov had a profound influence on the work of many Russian composers, as well as composers outside Russia, including Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Ottorino Respighi, and Paul Dukas.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a title you may also see in a French spelling, is a fourmovement orchestral suite. Each movement is a musical impression of images and stories from the One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of stories compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age (the 8th through 13th centuries). The stories are bound together by an overarching tale of a woman whose sultan husband has a history of marrying young women and then having them executed after their wedding night, to ensure they will never be unfaithful to him. The work is essentially a story about stories, as Scheherazade cleverly tells the sultan one story per night, ending with a cliff-hanger moment near sunrise and promising to finish the story the next night. She then begins another story, repeating the cliff-hanger ploy 1,000 times. Eventually, Scheherazade runs out of stories to tell, but after 1,001 nights of storytelling, and the birth of three children, the sultan cannot bear the thought of losing her, which is an ending similar to “...and they lived happily ever after.”