TCHAIKOVSKY’S ROMEO & JULIET

Friday, January 24, 2025 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor

Jinwoo Lee, violin

PROGRAM

CARL NIELSEN

Pan and Syrinx, Opus 49

JEAN SIBELIUS

Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 47

I. Allegro moderato

II. Adagio di molto

III. Allegro, ma non tanto

Jinwoo Lee, violin

INTERMISSION

ANNA CLYNE Within Her Arms

PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, TH 42, ČW 39

The 2024.25 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION.

The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. All programs are subject to change.

Guest Artist Biographies

JINWOO LEE

Jinwoo Lee, a native of South Korea, began playing the violin at the age of four. He is an international concert violinist with recitals and concerts with orchestras in the U.S., Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria, to name a few.

He is a frequent prizewinner of international competitions, including first prize at the Eric Sorantin Young Artists Competition (2007), second and special prizes at the 20th International Rodolfo Lipizer Violin Competition (2001), special prize at the International Georg Kulenkampff Violin Competition (1999), second, audience, and Bach prizes at the 33rd Tibor Varga International Violin Competition (1999), first and special prizes at the 2nd International Louis Spohr Competition for Young Violinists (1998), first prizes in the solo violin and chamber music categories at the German Jugend musiziert competition (1998), and special prize at the 7th International Yfrah Neaman Competition (1997). He was the winner of the Manhattan School of Music concerto competition (2008) and the Waldo Mayo Memorial Violin Competition (2009). He and his duo partner Eunice Kim were awarded the prize for Best Duo at the 20th International Violin & Piano Masterclasses of the Music Academy of Lausanne, Switzerland (2010).

Lee graduated from the Humboldt Grammar School in Cologne, Germany, in 2001. He studied with Stephen Clapp and Donald Weilerstein at The Juilliard School, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 2006. Two years later, Lee received his master’s degree from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Robert and Nicholas Mann. He continued his studies with them at the Manhattan School of Music, where he received his Artist Diploma in 2009 and doctoral degree in 2016. His former teachers include Michael Davis, Maria Giesy, Christiane Hutcap, Hyo Kang, Jongsuk Li, Igor Ozim, Jaegwang Song, and Viktor Tretjakov. He has had masterclasses with Pierre Amoyal, Bruno Canino, Pamela Frank, Miriam Fried, Leonidas Kavakos, Masao Kawasaki, Herman Krebbers, Cho-Liang Lin, Martin Lovett, Yfrah Neaman, and Sylvia Rosenberg.

He formerly served as the first concertmaster of the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen in Germany. He was a violin faculty member at the Robert Schumann Musikhochschule in Düsseldorf from 2018 until 2022. In 2023, he was appointed concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Program notes by Elaine Schmidt

CARL NIELSEN

Born 9 June 1865; Sortelung, Denmark

Died 3 October 1931; Copenhagen, Denmark

Pan and Syrinx, Opus 49

Composed: January – 6 February 1918

First performance: 11 February 1918; Carl Nielsen, conductor; Copenhagen, Denmark

Last MSO performance: MSO Premiere

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling on English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; trombone; timpani; percussion (cymbals, glockenspiel, ratchet, snare drum, tambourine, triangle, xylophone); strings

Approximate duration: 9 minutes

Danish composer, conductor, and violinist Carl Nielsen was born into a poor family, but one that had a deep appreciation for music. Although he became known as a composer and violinist, he began his musical career as an army brass player during his teens. He eventually turned back to the violin and entered Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Music. He joined the Royal Danish Orchestra at age 24, taking a position in the second violin section. Nielsen went on to become the most respected and famous Danish composer of his time, with his likeness on Danish currency for many years.

Nielsen’s Pan and Syrinx was one of his few ventures into programmatic music. Although we think of tone poems as the purview of the German Romantics, his Pan and Syrinx was dubbed “Debussy-esque” by critics for the French composer’s strong influence on Nielsen’s writing. Debussy had, years earlier, written two pieces based on retellings of the Pan and Syrinx legend: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, for orchestra, and Syrinx for solo flute. But for Nielsen, the piece was more than a tone poem — it bridged the styles of his fourth and fifth symphonies.

Pan and Syrinx, based on the ancient tale of the Greek god Pan and the nymph Syrinx, was written for an all-Nielsen concert scheduled for February 1918. He had found the story while reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the story, Pan, who is smitten with Syrinx, chases her through the forest, terrifying her. Her sisters, seeing what is happening to her, turn her into a reed plant. Pan, frustrated, hears the sound the wind makes as it blows through the reeds and snaps off a few to make musical sounds himself. Hence the birth of the pan flute.

Nielsen procrastinated, not starting the piece until very close to its deadline. He had missed the deadline for a piece he was writing for the previous all-Nielsen concert. Despite the late start, he met this deadline, creating a piece that became a favorite throughout Scandinavia for many years.

JEAN SIBELIUS

Born 8 December 1865; Hämeenlinna, Finland

Died 20 September 1957; Järvenpää, Finland

Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 47

Composed: 1903 – 1904; revised 1905

First performance: 8 February 1904 (original version); Jean Sibelius, conductor; Victor Nováček, violin; Helsinki Philharmonic Society; 19 October 1905 (revised version); Richard Strauss, conductor; Karel Halíř, violin; Berlin Court Orchestra

Last MSO performance: 21 September 2019; Ken-David Masur, conductor; Augustin Hadelich, violin

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 31 minutes

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius began his musical studies on the piano with his aunt as his teacher. But he proved an exasperating student. Rather than learning the pieces assigned to him, he preferred to improvise at the piano. It was in his teens that he discovered the violin, saying, “When I play, I am filled with a strange feeling; it is as though the insides of the music opened up to me.” He decided that he was meant to be a virtuoso violinist and studied quite seriously until his early 20s, but he had started too late in his life to become a true virtuoso and was crippled by stage fright. He returned to the violin some years later, this time as a composer, not as a performer. The result was one of his finest works, his Violin Concerto in D minor. Sadly, stage fright was not the only issue that plagued Sibelius. He developed an alcohol dependency while he was a student. That, combined with his tendency to spend money far too freely, made it difficult to support his wife and three children and triggered episodes of depression.

Sibelius began his violin concerto with great hopes, in part because a famous German violinist of the time, Willy Burmester, had agreed to play the premiere. But financial problems forced him to move up the premiere date, which meant a lesser violinist would be playing the premiere. Known today as one of the most difficult violin concertos ever written, it proved too much for the replacement violinist, particularly given the short span of time he had to learn it. Although the opening night audience took kindly to it, the Helsinki critic decidedly did not. A dismal review cut audiences dramatically at upcoming performances. Sibelius felt he had no choice but to withdraw the concerto. His wife explained that it was an embarrassment of riches — “too many competing ideas.”

A reworked version of the concerto had a successful performance in 1905, conducted by Richard Strauss. Even so, it wasn’t until 1935, when Jascha Heifetz recorded the piece, that it found a delighted, global audience.

ANNA CLYNE

Born 9 March 1980; London, England

Within Her Arms

Composed: 2008 – 2009

First performance: 7 April 2009; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Los Angeles Philharmonic

Last MSO performance: 6 February 2016; Edo de Waart, conductor

Instrumentation: strings

Approximate duration: 14 minutes

British-born American composer Anna Clyne has made a powerful name for herself in the fields of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. She is known for resonant musical imagery and tremendous musical momentum, combined with explosive bursts of sound and energy, and for occasionally creating a painting of what she wants to express and then translating that painting into a piece of music.

Speaking about her music, which has been called “unabashedly melodic,” Clyne has said, “I think it [melody] is a way to connect human beings. Perhaps a controversial statement is that music is a universal language, but there’s something about melody that connects to the human voice.”

Clyne was working on what she describes as a “chaotic, energetic piece” when she received a call with the news that her mother had died unexpectedly. Within Her Arms, a musical meditation on loss and grief, grew out of that terrible loss.

“I sat at the piano with a candle and a beautiful photo of her from that week,” Clyne has explained. “And I just wrote music over the next 24 hours. It was my instinct to process this by writing music. I felt very close to her through that process of writing. Out of a lot of sorrow came something that I’m able to share with other people.”

Within Her Arms is one of Clyne’s most-often-performed works. She frequently receives comments telling her how deeply listeners have been affected by it.

Clyne’s own program note on the piece includes:

Within Her Arms is music for my mother, Colleen Clyne, with all my love.

Earth will keep you tight within her arms dear one—

So that tomorrow you will be transformed into flowers—

The flower smiling quietly in this morning field—

This morning you will weep no more dear one— For we have gone through too deep a night.

This morning, yes, this morning, I kneel down on the green grass—

And I notice your presence.

Flowers that speak to me in silence.

The message of love and understanding has indeed come.

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

(From “Message” in Call Me By My True Names, 1999, with permission of Parallax Press)

PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Born 7 May 1840; Votkinsk, Russia

Died 6 November 1893; Saint Petersburg, Russia

Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, TH 42, ČW 39

Composed: October – November 1869; revised July – September 1870 and August 1880

First performance: 16 March 1870 (first version); Nikolai Rubinstein, conductor; Russian Musical Society; 17 February 1872 (second version); Eduard Nápravník, conductor; Russian Musical Society; 1 May 1886 (third version); Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, conductor; Russian Musical Society

Last MSO performance: 31 January 2015; James Feddeck, conductor

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

Approximate duration: 19 minutes

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was 29 years old when he wrote his Romeo and Juliet overture, which is often called the Romeo and Juliet concert overture or fantasy-overture. This may not sound terribly young, until you consider that virtually all the pieces of his that we consider famous today had not yet been written. Many would not be written for 20 years. Tchaikovsky was hardly the only composer to turn to the works of Shakespeare for inspiration. The Bard was a brilliant observer of the human condition. In Romeo and Juliet, the facet of the human condition Shakespeare was observing was heartbreak, a topic he already knew quite well. We know that Tchaikovsky was a rather nervous man, likely owing in great part to a closeted lifestyle and tortured relationships.

Tchaikovsky was a gay man living in a society that had no room for gay men. He fell in love with a relative of one of his students, resulting in an affair that went horribly wrong. He also married a woman, hoping to hide his true nature. That, too, went horribly wrong. Romeo and Juliet did not exactly jump off the page for him, either. He made extensive alterations to the piece over a decade, settling on the final version that premiered in 1886, more than 15 years after “completing” the piece and subtitling it “overture-fantasia.”

Three principal themes appear in the piece: the striding pride of the Montagues and Capulets, the families of Romeo and Juliet, respectively; the prophetic words of Friar Laurence, the spiritual advisor to the young lovers; and the sweeping, lush love theme of Romeo and Juliet.

Regardless of how much of the Romeo and Juliet overture had its roots in Shakespeare’s play or in Tchaikovsky’s unhappy life, it remains a favorite of concert audiences. The overture was the first substantial piece of Tchaikovsky’s music to enter the concert repertoire. He would go on to write symphonies, operas, ballets, concertos, choral pieces, and chamber music, as well as songs and piano pieces. All of his music exhibited the same melodic brilliance found in his Romeo and Juliet.