17 minute read
Poulenc Gloria
CLASSICS • 2017/18
POULENC GLORIA
COLORADO SYMPHONY KEN-DAVID MASUR, conductor JESSICA RIVERA, soprano COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, DUAIN WOLFE, director
Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Frank Y. Parce Sunday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to The Priester Foundation
ORIGINAL PERFORMANCE DATES: Friday, May 11, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 12, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 13, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. Boettcher Concert Hall
POULENC Gloria
Gloria
Laudamus Te
Domine Deus
Domine Fili unigenite
Domine Deus Agnus Dei
Qui sedes ad dexteram
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
KEN-DAVID MASUR, conductor
Ken-David Masur has been hailed as “fearless, bold, and a life-force” (San Diego Union-Tribune) and “a brilliant and commanding conductor with BETH ROSS BUCKLEY unmistakable charisma” (Leipzig Volkszeitung). He began the 2017/18 season leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and a fully staged production of the complete incidental music to Grieg’s Peer Gynt with the BSO, written and directed by Bill Barclay, at Symphony Hall. Guest engagements in 2017/18 include weeks with the Milwaukee, Colorado, and Portland (ME) Symphonies, returns to the Munich Symphony, where he is Principal Guest Conductor, to the Stavanger Symphony in Norway, and to the Yomiuri
Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Japan. This summer Masur debuts with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia in all-Tchaikovsky concerts and leads the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in a program of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Kirill Gerstein and Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
Masur led the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood last season (Tchaikovsky 6 and Strauss’ Four Last
Songs with Renée Fleming) as well as the L.A. Philharmonic (Beethoven Symphony No. 5 and
Korngold violin Concerto with Gil Shaham), and guested at the Orchestre National de France in
Paris in a program with Anne-Sophie Mutter, and in Germany, Korea, and Moscow. As a soughtafter leader and educator of younger players, Ken-David led training sessions with the Chicago
Civic Orchestra, BUTI, New England Conservatory, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.
Ken-David Masur is Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony. Together with his wife,
Melinda Lee Masur, he is founder and Artistic Director of the Chelsea Music Festival in New York, now in its ninth season.
JESSICA RIVERA, soprano
Possessing a voice praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for its “effortless precision and tonal luster,” Grammy Award-winning soprano Jessica Rivera is one of the most creatively inspired vocal artists before the public today. The intelligence, dimension, and spirituality with which she infuses her performances on great international concert and opera stages has garnered Ms. Rivera unique artistic collaborations with many of today’s most celebrated composers, including John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Nico Muhly, and has brought her together with such esteemed conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Bernard Haitink, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Ms. Rivera has long championed contemporary vocal music, and this season she appears at the Ford Theater in association with LA Opera to reprise her performance of Paola Prestini’s multidisciplinary The Hubble Cantata, which she premiered at the BRIC Festival in Brooklyn in August 2016. In 2017, Ms. Rivera gave the world premiere of Gabriela Lena Frank’s Requiem with the Houston Symphony and Chorus, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. The artist also performed John Harbison’s Requiem with the Nashville Symphony and Chorus under Giancarlo Guerrero, which was recorded for future release on the Naxos label. Ms. Rivera treasures a long-standing collaboration spanning over a decade with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; she joined Spano on Christopher Theofanidis’s Creation/Creator in Atlanta and at the Kennedy Center’s 2017 SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras, where she also performed Robert Spano’s Hölderlin Lieder, a song cycle written specifically for her and recorded on the ASO Media label. For additional information about Ms. Rivera, please visit www.jessicarivera.com.
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
DUAIN WOLFE, director, Colorado Symphony Chorus
Recently awarded two Grammys® for Best Choral Performance and Best Classical Recording, Duain Wolfe is founder and Director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus and Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. This year marks Wolfe’s 31st season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus. The Chorus has been featured at the Aspen Music Festival for over two decades. Wolfe, who is in his 21st season with the Chicago Symphony Chorus has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, and the late Sir George Solti on numerous recordings including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which won the 1998 Grammy® for Best Opera Recording. Wolfe’s extensive musical accomplishments have resulted in numerous awards, including an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Denver, the Bonfils Stanton Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, and the Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Wolfe is also founder of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, from which he retired in 1999 after 25 years; the Chorale celebrated its 40th anniversary last season. For 20 years, Wolfe also worked with the Central City Opera Festival as chorus director and conductor, founding and directing the company’s young artist residence program, as well as its education and outreach programs. Wolfe’s additional accomplishments include directing and preparing choruses for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the Bravo!Vail Festival, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. He has worked with Pinchas Zuckerman as Chorus Director for the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra for the past 13 years.
COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS
The 2017/18 Colorado Symphony Concert Season marks the 34 th year of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe at the request of Gaetano Delogu, then the Music Director of the Symphony, the chorus has grown over the past three decades, into a nationallyrespected ensemble. This outstanding chorus of 180 volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous performances, and radio and television broadcasts, to repeat critical acclaim. The Chorus has performed at noted music festivals in the Rocky Mountain region, including the Colorado Music Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, where it has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony. For over two decades, the Chorus has been featured at the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, performing many great masterworks under the baton of notable conductors Lawrence Foster, James Levine, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, and David Zinman. Among the recordings the Colorado Symphony Chorus has made is a NAXOS release of Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 4. The Chorus is also featured on a recent Hyperion release of the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem and Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis. In 2009, in celebration of the 25 th anniversary of the Chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the Chorus on a 3-country, 2-week concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi Requiem in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl, and Prague, and in 2016 the Chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg, and Munich. The Colorado Symphony continues to be grateful for the excellence and dedication of this remarkable, allvolunteer ensemble! For an audition appointment, call 303.308.2483.discography includes her Grammy Nominated recording of Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations and other transcriptions (2004), Brahms Variations (2007) and Chopin Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 3 (2010). She was featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, Playing on the Edge.
SOUNDINGS 2019/20
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS Duain Wolfe, founding director and conductor Mary Louise Burke, associate conductor Travis Branam, Taylor Martin, assistant conductors Brian Dukeshier, Hsiao-Ling Lin, Danni Snyder, pianists Eric Israelson, Barbara Porter, chorus managers
SOPRANO I
Black, Kimberly Brown, Jamie Causey, Denelda Choi, LeEtta H. Coberly, Sarah Deskin, Erin Emerich, Kate A. Gile, Jenifer D. Gill, Lori C. Graber, Susan Guynn, Erika Heintzkill, Mary T. Hinkley, Lynnae C. Hittle, Erin R. Hofmeister, Mary Joy, Shelley E. Kim, Michelle Knecht, Melanie Long, Lisa Look, Cathy Maupin, Anne Medema, Stephanie Moraskie, Wendy L. Porter, Barbara A. Ropa, Lori A. Schawel, Camilia Schweitzer, Laura Sladovnik, Roberta A. Tate, Judy Wuertz, Karen Young, Cara M.
SOPRANO II
Ahrens, Anna Ascani, Lori Blum, Jude Bohannon, Hailey Borinski, Jackie Bowen, Alex S. Brauchli, Margot L. Coberly, Ruth A. Colbert, Gretchen Cote, Kerry H. Dakkouri, Claudia Gross, Esther J. Houlihan, Mary Kraft, Lisa D. Kushnir, Marina Machusko, Rebecca E. Montigne, Erin Myers, Heather H. Nyholm, Christine M. O’Nan, Jeannette R. Pflug, Kim Rae, Donneve S. Rider, Shirley J. Ruff, Mahli Saddler, Nancy C. Timme, Sydney Travis, Stacey L. Von Roedern, Susan K. Walker, Marcia L. Weinstein, Sherry L. Woodrow, Sandy Zisler, Joan M.
ALTO I
Adams, Priscilla P. Branam, Emily M. Braud-Kern, Charlotte Brown, Kimberly Clauson, Clair T. Conrad, Jayne M. Daniel, Sheri L. Dunkin, Aubri K. Franz, Kirsten D. Frey, Susie Gayley, Sharon R. Groom, Gabriella D. Guittar, Pat Haller, Emily Holst, Melissa J. Hoopes, Kaia M. Kim, Annette Kraft, Deanna Lawlor, Betsy McNulty, Emily McWaters, Susan Nordenholz, Kristen Passoth, Ginny Pringle, Jennifer Rudolph, Kathi L. Ryman, Sarah A. Stevenson, Melanie Thayer, Mary B. Virtue, Pat Voland, Colleen Zelinskaya, Alia
ALTO II
Cox, Martha E. Deck, Barbara Dominguez, Joyce Eslick, Carol A. Gangware, Elizabeth Golden, Daniela Hoskins, Hansi Jackson, Brandy H. Janasko, Ellen D. Kibler, Janice London, Carole A. Maltzahn, Joanna K. Marchbank, Barbara J. Nittoli, Leslie M. Schalow, Elle C. Scooros, Pamela R. Worthington, Evin
TENOR I
DeMarco, James Dougan, Dustin Gordon, Jr., Frank Hodel, David K. Jordan, Curt Moraskie, Richard A. Muesing, Garvis J. Nicholas, Timothy W. Reiley, William G. Roach, Eugene Zimmerman, Kenneth
TENOR II
Babcock, Gary E. Bradley, Mac Carlson, James Davies, Dusty R. Fuehrer, Roger Gale, John H. Guittar, Jr., Forrest Kolm, Kenneth E. Mason, Brandt J. McCracken, Todd Meswarb, Stephen J. Milligan, Tom A. Ruth, Ronald L. Seamans, Andrew J. Sims, Jerry E.
BASS I
Adams, John G. Bernhardt, Chase Boyd, Kevin P. Cowen, George Drickey, Robert E. Gray, Matthew Hesse, Douglas D. Jirak, Thomas J. Mehta, Nalin J. Quarles, Kenneth Ravid, Frederick Smith, Benjamin A. Struthers, David R. Wood, Brian W.
BASS II
Friedlander, Robert Grossman, Chris Israelson, Eric W. Jackson, Terry L. Kent, Roy A. Millar, Jr., Robert F. Moncrieff, Kenneth Morrison, Greg A. Nuccio, Eugene J. Phillips, John R. Potter, Tom Skillings, Russell R. Skinner, Jack Swanson, Wil W. Taylor, Don
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963): Gloria for Soprano, Chorus and Orchestra
Francis Poulenc was born on January 7, 1899 in Paris and died there on January 30, 1963. He composed Gloria in 1959. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on January 20, 1961 in Boston under the direction of Charles Munch. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings. Duration is about 28 minutes. The piece was last performed on October 29-31, 1999, with Duain Wolfe leading the orchestra and chorus.
Poulenc was raised in a home that valued religion deeply. His father was committed to his Catholicism, but, the composer added, “in a very liberal way, without the slightest meanness.” When Francis left home for military service in 1918 and later jumped into the heady life of artistic Paris, however, his interest in religion declined. “From 1920 to 1935, I was very little concerned with the faith,” he admitted. In 1936, though, he underwent a rejuvenation of his religious belief when his colleague Pierre-Octave Ferroud was killed in an automobile accident. Deeply shaken, he wrote, “The atrocious extinction of this musician so full of vigor left me stupefied. Pondering on the fragility of our human frame, the life of the spirit attracted me anew.” He rejoined the Church and thereafter expressed his faith frequently and unashamedly. “I am religious by deepest instinct and heredity,” he said. “I feel myself incapable of ardent political conviction, but for me it seems quite natural to believe and practice religion. I am a Catholic. It is my greatest freedom.” During the last three decades of his life, a series of wonderful musical works on religious themes, including the Mass, the Stabat Mater, the Gloria and The Dialogues of the Carmelites, sprang from his ardently renewed vision.
Poulenc’s faith, like the music it engendered, was simple, direct, optimistic and joyous. He once told friends, “I have the faith of a country pastor,” and he always preferred quiet meditation or prayer in a rural church to the structured services of the urban cathedral. It was through his music that he shared his devotion. “I want the religious spirit to be expressed clearly, out in the open, with the same realism that we see in Romanesque columns,” he said. “I try to create a feeling of fervor and, especially, of humility, for me the most beautiful quality of prayer.... My conception of religious music is essentially direct, and, I dare say, intimate.” When an interviewer once commented on the high quality of his choral and sacred works, he replied, “I think I’ve put the best and most genuine part of me into them.... If people are still interested in my music fifty years from now it’ll be more in the Stabat Mater than in the Mouvements perpétuels.”
During his last years, Poulenc became increasingly fatalistic and, consequently, turned more to the Church. Throughout his life, he was subject to attacks of acute depression, and the one he suffered while working on The Dialogues of the Carmelites during the mid-1950s resulted in a nervous breakdown. He largely recovered, but he thereafter viewed his existence as fragile. “What shall I write next? Undoubtedly nothing else,” he lamented to his biographer Henri Hell in 1961. A year later, however, he wrote to the singer Pierre Bernac, “I now feel completely, happily free, and I can await Providence.” The Gloria of 1959 naturally reflects some of Poulenc’s deeper thoughts, but it also shows the buoyant, confident feelings inherent in his faith and his music. It is a wholly appropriate piece for a man who was once described as “half monk, half bounder.”
In the Gloria, written on commission from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky, Poulenc said that he “tried to write a joyous hymn to the glory of God.” His text, taken from the second section of the Mass Ordinary,
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
is the set of traditional songs dating from the fifth century sung by the angels on the night of the Nativity in praise of the Christ child. Before beginning composition, Poulenc immersed himself in the ancient words, reciting them over and over to himself, listening, noting breathing places, marking stresses, looking for inner rhythms of the syllables and deeper meanings of the ideas. The Gloria, like all great vocal music, grew from the sense and sounds of its text — the words, after all, were there before the music. Poulenc reinterpreted those venerable words and heightened their message by wrapping them in music that again demonstrated his remarkable lyrical gift, which has often been compared to that of Schubert, a composer he greatly admired. Wrote Roger Nichols, “For Poulenc the most important element of all was melody and he found his way to a vast treasury of undiscovered tunes within an area that had, according to the most up-to-date musical maps, been surveyed, worked and exhausted.”
The Gloria opens with a brilliant fanfare for full orchestra as preparation for the entry of the voices. The sentiment of the movement is one of joy tinged with a soupçon of nostalgia, one of Poulenc’s most characteristic moods. Of the lighthearted Laudamus te, Poulenc recalled, “The second movement caused a scandal; I wonder why? I was simply thinking, in writing it, of the Gozzoli frescoes in which the angels stick out their tongues; I was thinking also of the serious Benedictines whom I saw playing soccer one day.” This robust movement also serves to set in relief the following Domine Deus, music of profound awe and intense emotion. The bright wit and chuckling insouciance of the Laudamus te return in the fourth movement, Domine fili unigenite, which, like the earlier movement, is followed by music of a serious and moving nature — the Domine Deus, Agnus Dei. The final movement, Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, is divided into three sections, each based on the same text. The movement opens with jubilant choral shouts echoed by chords spread across the full orchestra. The celebratory mood continues into the next section, a vibrant rhythmic essay punctuated by the fanfare figure that opened the first movement. Poulenc closes his masterful Gloria with the final treatment of the Qui sedes text, this last one suffused with prayerful devotion and peaceful benediction.
©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
I. Gloria
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.
II. Laudamus te
Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi gloriam tuam Laudamus te. We praise you, we bless you, we worship you, we glorify you. We give you thanks for your great glory. We praise you.
III. Domine Deus
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Pater omnipotens, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater, Pater omnipotens, Deus Pater, Gloria. Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father almighty, Heavenly King, God the Father, God the Father almighty, Gloria.
IV. Domine Fili unigenite
Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe. The only-begotten Son, Lord Jesus Christ.
V. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, Rex caelestis qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis; suscipe deprecationem nostram. Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, heavenly King, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; receive our prayer.
VI. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris: miserere nobis. Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, Amen. Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu, in gloria Dei Patris. Amen. You are seated at the right hand of the Father: have mercy on us. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, Amen. You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
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