Programme Notes | Brahms 4 with Yannick Nézet-Séguin

PROGRAMME

conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin

violin Randall Goosby

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)

Overture Carnival (1891)

Florence Price (1887–1953)

Violin Concerto No. 2 (1952)

Florence Price

Adoration (1951)

Arranged for strings and soloist by Peter Simcich

Intermission

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98 (1884)

• Allegro non troppo

• Andante moderato

• Allegro giocoso

• Allegro energico e passionato

Concert ends at around 22.10/16.10

Most recent performances by our orchestra:

Dvořák Overture Carnival : Nov 2017, conductor Lahav Shani

Price Violin Concerto No. 2: first performance

Price Adoration: first performance

Brahms: Symphony No. 4: Oct 2018, conductor Lahav Shani (on tour)

One hour before the start of the concert, Michel Khalifa will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.

Cover: Photo Takashi Miyazaki (unsplash)

Florence Price around 1945. Photo University of Arkansas Special Collections.

A web of inspiration

All composers build on what their predecessors achieved and spin their own thread in the web of music history. With the help of Brahms, Dvořák’s fame spread across the Atlantic. Thanks in part to Dvořák, Price was able to weave Afro-American inspiration into her own music.

On 27 September 1892, following a stormy ten-day ocean crossing, Antonín Dvořák set foot for the first time in New York. After much insistence, Jeannette Thurber, a prominent patron of music, had persuaded him to become the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America, which she herself had founded. Three weeks after his arrival, Dvořák made his New York debut; he conducted his own new overture Carnival, a work he had also performed at his final concert in Prague. A reviewer from the New York Times found the music ‘cheerfully virile’ and full of ‘spirited masculinity’, with a central section of ‘serene loveliness’ and ‘rare tenderness’. In the view of this critic, Dvořák was not a good conductor, but that could be forgiven as long as he continued composing such wonderful music.

American tradition

Thurber’s goal was for her Conservatory to develop a genuine American music tradition. Dvořák took on that task with verve and soon made known his belief that Afro-American music held the key to a truly national sound. Moreover, Thurber gave access to

the Conservatory to all those with talent, regardless of race or gender. Consequently, Harry Burleigh – a singer who grew up in the gospel tradition – became one of the 150 Afro-American students at the conservatory. He also became Dvořák’s pupil and assistant and introduced him to various spirituals that the composer would later use in his Symphony ‘From the New World’. Far from New York, in Little Rock, Arkansas, 4-year-old Florence Smith had just given her first piano performance in 1892. Ten years later she enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston as a ‘Mexican’ so as to avoid being turned away as the child of a Black father. Back in Little Rock she married Thomas Price, but increasing racial violence forced the couple to move to Chicago, the birthplace of gospel music. It was there that the musical talent of Florence Price came to full maturity. She eagerly took music lessons of all kinds, was a welcome guest in artistic salons, gave lectures to the Chicago Music Association, played the organ in church, conducted a choir and focused increasingly on composing. Following in Dvořák’s footsteps, she used Afro-American music as a source of inspiration. In 1932, with two of her compositions she won threequarters of the prize money at a national competition, the rest of the money going to her pupil Margaret Bonds. Not long afterwards, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played her winning Symphony in E minor (the same key as Brahms’s Fourth and Dvořák’s Symphony ‘From the New World’), the first time that a symphony by a Black woman had been heard in a concert hall.

he train from Vienna to Mürzzuschlag, where Brahms wrote his Symphony No.

4. Advertisement for the summer service, 1910.

Following

in Dvořák’s footsteps, Florence

Price used Afro-American music as a source of inspiration

Lost

In 1951 – by which time her reputation was internationally established – Price wrote Adoration for organ, later transcribed for solo violin and string orchestra by Peter Simcich.

A year later she composed her second violin concerto, a single-movement work with a virtuoso violin part. Price combined inspiration from the Black musical tradition with the classical tradition in which she was trained. She was, however, not destined to hear its premiere: in 1953 she died, on the eve of a trip to Europe to receive a prestigious prize.

Only eleven years after her death did the second violin concerto enjoy its first and – for many years - only performance. The score was never published and was later classified as ‘lost’. Only in 2009 did the manuscript turn up – together with a host of other scores – in an abandoned house in the suburbs of St. Anne, Illinois that had once been Price’s summer residence. The work has since been recorded several times and is captivating concert audiences worldwide.

Unripe cherries

In the summers of 1884 and 1885, Brahms composed a symphony in the relatively uncommon and not particularly cheerful key of E minor. He described the piece as his ‘new mourning symphony’, a reference to Haydn’s Trauersinfonie in the same key. But there is another reason why the symphony came to be known as his ‘tragic’. With his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, Beethoven

had created a pattern of expectation: both symphonies start in a minor key and end in a major key, a journey through darkness into light. So the audience that attended the premiere of Brahms Fourth Symphony on 25 October 1885 will have been looking forward to a triumphant finale. The listeners would not have been disappointed by the brass and the timpani, but there was no shift to a major key. In a letter to his confidante Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, he described his symphony as ‘cherries that don’t ripen in such cold climates, so they have no sweetness’. Brahms definitely realised that audiences would compare the symphony with the music they already knew. He himself was obsessed with studying his predecessors and colleagues, and he had many unique manuscripts in his collection. Consequently, for music analysts the symphony is a rewarding subject for speculation about possible sources of inspiration and hidden meanings. Ranging from quotations from Beethoven to Baroque idioms, references to death and a hidden musical portrait of Clara Schumann, some speculations are convincing, some less so. When Clara wondered whether she should publish a cadenza in her own name because Brahms had been such a great inspiration, the composer replied that she herself had been the inspiration for his best melodies. False modesty or a key to unravelling a secret?

Carine Alders

Randall Goosby • violin

Born: San Diego (CA), USA

Education: Juilliard School of Music with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho Awards: Winner Young Concert Artists International Auditions 2018, Sphinx Isaac Stern Award

Breakthrough: debut New York Philharmonic at age 13

Subsequently: solo appearances with Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra with conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Andris Nelsons; Artist in Residence 2023–24 at the Southbank Centre, London

Instrument: Stradivarius ‘Ex-Strauss’ (1708), in loan from the Samsung Foundation of Culture of Korea

Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2024

Honorary Conductor

Born: Montreal, Canada

Current position: music director Metropolitan Opera New York, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal; honorary conductor Rotterdam Philharmonic (music director 2008–2018), honorary member Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Education: Conservatoire de musique du Québec in Montréal; orchestra conducting with Carlo Maria Giulini

Awards: Royal Philharmonic Society Award (2008); Canada’s National Arts Centre Award (2010); Prix Denise-Pelletier (2011); Companion of the Order of Canada (2012); Officer of the Order of Québec (2015); Cultuurpenning Rotterdam (2018)

Breakthrough: 2004, debut Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse

Guest conductor: Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Salzburg Festival Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2005

Photo: George Etheredge

Photo: Kaupo Kikkas

Agenda

Commemoration Concert

Tue 14 May 2024 • 20.15

Rotterdam, Laurenskerk

conductor Giuseppe Mengoli

soprano Ilse Eerens

choir Laurens Collegium

Lutosławski Musique funèbre

Bruckner Ave Maria

Bruckner Aequale Nos. 1 and 2

Bruckner Christus factus est

Schönberg Friede auf Erden

Vivaldi Gloria

Sun 26 May 2024 • 14.15

conductor Bertie Baigent

soprano Chen Reiss

Mozart Overture Idomeneo

Korngold Einfache Lieder

Berg Sieben frühe Lieder

Bach/Webern Ricercare

Mozart Symphony No. 40

Star Wars: A New Hope in Concert

Fri 31 May 2024 • 20.00

Sat 1 June 2024 • 20.00

Rotterdam, Ahoy – RTM Stage

Williams Star Wars: A New Hope

Thu 6 June 2024 • 20.15

Fri 7 June 2024 • 20.15

Sun 9 June 2024 • 14.15

conductor Lahav Shani

cello Emanuele Silvestri

viola Roman Spitzer

Boulanger D’un soir triste

Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3

Strauss Don Quixote

Musicians

Chief Conductor

Lahav Shani

Honorary Conductor

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Principal Guest Conductor

Tarmo Peltokoski

First Violin

Marieke Blankestijn, concertmeester

Quirine Scheffers

Hed Yaron Meyerson

Saskia Otto

Arno Bons

Mireille van der Wart

Rachel Browne

Maria Dingjan

Marie-José Schrijner

Noëmi Bodden

Petra Visser

Sophia Torrenga

Hadewijch Hofland

Annerien Stuker

Alexandra van Beveren

Second Violin

Charlotte Potgieter

Cecilia Ziano

Frank de Groot

Laurens van Vliet

Tomoko Hara

Elina Staphorsius

Jun Yi Dou

Bob Bruyn

Eefje Habraken

Maija Reinikainen

Wim Ruitenbeek

Babette van den Berg

Melanie Broers

Lana Trimmer

Viola

Anne Huser

Roman Spitzer

Galahad Samson

José Moura Nunes

Kerstin Bonk

Lex Prummel

Janine Baller

Francis Saunders

Veronika Lénártová

Rosalinde Kluck

León van den Berg

Olfje van der Klein

Cello

Emanuele Silvestri

Eugene Lifschitz

Joanna Pachucka

Daniel Petrovitsch

Mario Rio

Gé van Leeuwen

Eelco Beinema

Carla Schrijner

Pepijn Meeuws

Yi-Ting Fang

Double Bass

Matthew Midgley

Ying Lai Green

Jonathan Focquaert

Robert Franenberg

Harke Wiersma

Arjen Leendertz

Ricardo Neto

Flute

Juliette Hurel

Joséphine Olech

Flute/piccolo

Beatriz Da Baião

Oboe

Remco de Vries

Karel Schoofs

Anja van der Maten

Oboe/Cor Anglais

Ron Tijhuis

Clarinet

Julien Hervé

Bruno Bonansea

Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet

Romke-Jan Wijmenga

Bassoon

Pieter Nuytten

Lola Descours

Marianne Prommel

Bassoon/ Contrabassoon

Hans Wisse

Horn

David Fernández Alonso

Felipe Santos Freitas Silva

Wendy Leliveld

Richard Speetjens

Laurens Otto

Pierre Buizer

Trumpet

Alex Elia

Simon Wierenga

Jos Verspagen

Trombone

Pierre Volders

Alexander Verbeek

Remko de Jager

Bass trombone

Rommert Groenhof

Tuba

Hendrik-Jan Renes

Percussion

Danny van de Wal

Ronald Ent

Martijn Boom

Adriaan Feyaerts

Harp

Charlotte Sprenkels