TOWARD THE SEA

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

WATER FESTIVAL

Friday, February 3, 2023 at 7:30 pm

Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Ken-David Masur, conductor

Sonora Slocum, alto flute

Julia Coronelli, harp

Catherine Van Handel, bassoon

PROGRAM

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

The Hebrides Overture, Opus 26 (“Fingal’s Cave”)

TŌRU TAKEMITSU

Toward the Sea II (Umi e II)

The Night / Moby-Dick / Cape Cod

Sonora Slocum, alto flute Julia Coronelli, harp

DAVID LUDWIG

Pictures from the Floating World for Solo Bassoon and Orchestra

I. Submerged Cathedral Interlude 1: Sirens

II. On the Boat Interlude 2: Sails

III. Reflections in the Water

Catherine Van Handel, bassoon

INTERMISSION

HELEN GRIME

Virga

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

La mer [The Sea]

I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer [From Dawn to Noon on the Sea]

II. Jeux des vagues [Play of the Waves]

III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer [Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea]

The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours.

The 2022.23 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND.

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

SONORA SLOCUM

SONORA SLOCUM

Appointed principal flute of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 2012 at the age of 22, “Sonora Slocum has wonderful resonance and a delightfully relaxed vibrato. It’s easy to love such vocal playing, and any orchestra is blessed to have her big sound” (American Record Guide). Slocum has performed as guest principal flute with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has also appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as well as the Philharmonia Orchestra of New York at Lincoln Center.

In addition to her debut album Return with Affetto Records, Slocum has released a new album, Mozart Flute Quartets, recorded with members of the Dover and escher Quartets with Acis Productions. Both albums are available on all platforms.

With music publisher Hal Leonard, Slocum has compiled a collection featuring popular flute repertoire by French composers and a collection of Moyse Exercises for flute.

Born into a musical family, Slocum grew up in New York City where she attended The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music Pre-College Division. Slocum holds a bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and master’s degree in orchestral performance from the Manhattan School of Music. She attended the Music Academy of the West, as well as the Aspen and Pacific music festivals. Slocum studied with Jeffrey Khaner and Robert Langevin.

JULIA CORONELLI

JULIA CORONELLI

Born and raised in the city of Chicago, Julia Coronelli is the principal harpist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Previously, she held positions as principal harpist of the Sarasota Orchestra, as well as the New World Symphony in Miami Beach. Her playing has been described by The New York Times as “precise and shimmering,” and as “exquisite,” “exceptional,” and “stunning” by The Miami Herald. She has performed in the role of principal harpist in many of the world’s greatest halls, including Teatro alla Scala (Milan), Musikerverein (Vienna), Philharmonie de Paris (Paris), Kolner Philharmonie (Cologne), Philharmonie Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Teatro San Carlo (Naples), Teatro Maggio del Musicale Fiorentino (Florence), Lugano Arte e Cultura (Lugano, Switzerland), Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo), Symphony Hall (Birmingham, UK), Oriental Art Center (Shanghai), National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing), National Concert Hall (Taipei), Festival Hall (Osaka), Carnegie Hall (New York), and Orchestra Hall (Chicago). Additional performance credits include concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (UK), St. Louis Symphony, and San Diego Symphony. Coronelli has joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on four recent tours under the direction of Riccardo Muti, including two international tours as guest principal harpist. She holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Chicago College of Performing Arts.

CATHERINE VAN HANDEL

CATHERINE VAN HANDEL

Catherine Van Handel was appointed principal bassoon with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 2017. Prior to this position, she was the associate principal bassoon of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Van Handel has performed with numerous orchestras across the country including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, among many others.

As a soloist, Van Handel appears regularly with the Milwaukee Symphony. She has also had solo engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, “ The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, and The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Orchestra.

Van Handel serves on the bassoon faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During her summers, she has participated at prestigious music festivals such as Marlboro Music School and Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Mainly Mozart Festival by invitation of violinist David Chan, among many others.

Originally born in Taipei, Taiwan, Catherine Van Handel began her musical studies playing the piano and cello. Van Handel moved with her mother and siblings to the U.S. when she was six years old. She continued playing both piano and cello until beginning to play the bassoon at age 14. Van Handel later received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Born 3 February 1809; Hamburg, Germany / Died 4 November 1847; Leipzig, Germany

The Hebrides Overture, Opus 26 (“Fingal’s Cave”)

Composed: 1829-33

First performance: 10 January 1833; Berlin, Germany

Last MSO performance: February 2019; Alexander Shelley, conductor

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

Approximate duration: 10 minutes

In the summer of 1829, the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his friend Karl Klingemann went on a walking tour of Scotland. They also traveled to the Hebrides Islands, off the country’s west coast, and later to Fingal’s Cave on the Island of Staffa. It is said that, after seeing the breathtaking scenery there, Mendelssohn composed the opening bars of his overture and sent them to his sister Fanny, writing, “In order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, I send you the following, which came into my head there.” The composer completed the overture’s first draft in Rome, late in 1830. Unhappy with this initial endeavor, he worked on the piece over the next few years. It was premiered in London in 1832, then further revised before its publication in 1833.

Set in sonata form, the overture does not tell a story, but rather evokes the sea and the scenery Mendelssohn encountered. The undulating rhythmic pattern, an arpeggiated fragment in B minor, depicts the sea’s ebb and flow. Dramatic crescendi and sforzandi represent the crashing waves. The second theme, set in D major, first appears in the cellos and bassoons. It is unfettered and more expansive, deemed “the greatest melody Mendelssohn ever wrote” by the ever-quotable Sir Donald Francis Tovey. At the end of our voyage, the clarinet offers a wistful statement of the opening motive, then defers to the flute, who has the last word with its ascending B minor arpeggio above hushed pizzicato strings.

TŌRU TAKEMITSU

TŌRU TAKEMITSU

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

Toward the Sea II (Umi e II)

Composed: 1981

First performance: 27 June 1982; Hokkaido, Japan

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere Instrumentation: strings

Approximate duration: 15 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.

In the early 1980s, Takemitsu became increasingly absorbed with tonality – not the functional dominant-to-tonic sort of harmony that defines so much of Western music, but one more aqueous, as evidenced in Toward the Sea. Commissioned by the Greenpeace organization for their Save the Whales campaign, he once described it as “an homage to the sea which creates all things and a sketch for the sea of tonality.” Built on a three-note motif – E-flat, E, A – that translates to S-E-A in German parlance, the piece is divided into three sections, each of which references Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby-Dick.

The work exists in several versions. Takemitsu originally scored the piece for alto flute and guitar, later arranging it for alto flute and marimba and alto flute and harp. The version we’ll hear on today’s concert is deliciously scored for alto flute, harp, and string orchestra. Debussy’s influence on the work is unmistakable. The composer has created an Impressionistic tone poem that simultaneously invokes a sense of quiet majesty and the great whales of the deep.

DAVID LUDWIG

DAVID LUDWIG

Born 1974; Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Pictures from the Floating World

Composed: 2013

First performance: 1 November 2013; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; tenor trombone; timpani; percussion (almglocken, bass drum, cymbals, medium gong, sizzle cymbal, tam tam, triangle, vibraphone, wood block); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 18 minutes

The American composer David Ludwig boasts an impressive musical heritage: his grandfather was the pianist Rudolph Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. Having received numerous commissions and held positions with nearly two-dozen orchestras in the United States and abroad, he currently serves at the dean of music at The Juilliard School. His choral piece, The New Colossus,was performed at an official prayer service on the morning of Barack Obama’s 2013 presidential inauguration.

Pictures from the Floating World was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra for conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and for David Matsukawa, its principal bassoonist. In preliminary discussions, Matsukawa told Ludwig that bouncy pieces like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Dukas) had “done us in.” He desired a work that would show off the bassoon’s lyrical capabilities, likening it to the human voice – itself a wind instrument that has different timbres based on what part of the range is being utilized.

For Ludwig, the idea of cantabile lines led to the thoughts of water, which led to thoughts of floating, Japanese art, and Debussy – himself fascinated by the woodblock prints he saw at the World Exhibition in 1881. (Earlier on, Ludwig had intended to pursue an art history degree, but switched to composition.) He took as his point of departure five of Debussy’s “water music” pieces, casting the bassoon concerto into five continuous movements. Each flows unabatedly into the next:

• Submerged Cathedral

• Sirens (interlude for bassoon and two cellos)

• On the Boat

• Sails (interlude for bassoon and two cellos)

• Reflections in the Water

The soloist “sings” over the entire 20 minutes of the concerto, as the orchestra undergirds with

Debussy-influenced harmonies and timbres. “Going back to the idea of the ‘Floating World,’” the composer writes, “there is something poetic for me, as we in the modern world tend to float through our days as one passes into the next, losing definition into memory. (Debussy had an especially keen sense of this.) This piece is a journal, of sorts, to describe that feeling, gliding on time in a world of fleet impressions.”

HELEN GRIME

HELEN GRIME

Born 1981; York, England

Virga

Composed: 2007

First performance: July 2007; London, England

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling on piccolo); 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; trombone; bass trombone; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, crotale, cymbals, glockenspiel, marimba, suspended cymbals, tam tam, triangle, whip, wood block, xylophone); celeste; strings

Approximate duration: 6 minutes

A Scottish composer born in England, Helen Grime’s catalogue of works includes concertos, orchestral music, piano works, vocal and choral music, an opera, and chamber and ensemble music. She studied at the Royal College of Music and, in 2008, was a Leonard Bernstein Fellow at Tanglewood. Currently, she is a professor of composition at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Virga was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra; it was named one of the best ten new classical works of the first decade of the 21st century by the Royal Scottish National Opera. Grime has offered the following insights into this brief but captivating work:

Virga opens with a striking gesture in woodwind and tuned percussion that is to become a recurring feature throughout the piece. In this fast-moving five-minute long piece, there is much rapid passagework in the strings, in particular a series of turbulent cascading runs, as well as a stately chorale in the brass. About half way through the piece, there is an extended melody for the first violins, at first unaccompanied and later colored by other sections of the orchestra. The extremes of register that were available to me in the orchestra are amplified and highlighted during the small time-scale and were essential in determining the shape of the piece.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

Born 22 August 1862; Sainte-Germain-en-Laye, France / Died 25 March 1918; Paris, France

La mer

Composed: 1903-05

First performance: October 1905; Paris, France

Last MSO performance: June 2019; Matthias Pintscher, conductor Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; 3 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 2 cornets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam tam, triangle); 2 harps; strings

Approximate duration: 23 minutes

“We must agree that the beauty of a work of art will always remain a mystery. In other words, we can never be absolutely sure ‘how it’s made.’” These words by Debussy seem especially appropriate when considering his set of three “symphonic sketches,” La mer. Neither a “normal” symphony nor a complete disavowal of the form, it nevertheless is a brilliant opus in the orchestral repertoire. (The Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter named it one his top three favorites, along with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Wagner’s Ring cycle.) These pieces are not programmatic in a traditional sense. That is, they don’t tell a story that follows a normal time line – though Debussy’s friend Eric Satie wryly quipped that, in “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” he “particularly liked the bit at a quarter to eleven.” In this work, “the story” is all about color, texture, and nuance.

In the opening segment, as the morning progresses, listen for the sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, changes in lighting and atmosphere. In “Play of the Waves,” notice the shimmering surface of the water, feel the rocking of the waves and unexpected shifts of the current. In “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” there’s a storm a-coming. The orchestra swells in great washes of sound as air and water collide. Ultimately, though, the sun breaks through the clouds. Calm is restored.