FROM THE
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Photo Credit: Lauren Radack
DEAR FRIENDS, In April we are continuing our work on connecting with our educational institutions and music students. It is the San Diego Symphony’s priority to ensure that we encourage our music educators, our school principals and superintendents, our University faculty and students, and our young musicians to continue their hard work and dedication to making sure music is present in our school curriculums, and is a form of expression afforded to all who wish to pursue music as a vocation or avocation. On April 15th we welcome the performing ensembles of San Diego State University in a first ever performance on the Copley Symphony Hall, Jacobs Music Center stage. The SDSU Wind Ensemble, Orchestra and Chorus will perform, and the ticket sales for this event will go toward scholarships and toward an internship for a student to work with us here at the San Diego Symphony. Last month, on March 13, we welcomed San Diego Unified’s Honor Band and Orchestra to our stage, highlighting the music education curriculum in our schools. And on April 23 we will host eight area bands on our stage for the very first time. They will play three works and will be evaluated and coached by Frank Ticheli, one of our country’s finest music educators and composers. We are focused on expanding our efforts in educational institutions in San Diego, and all of these initiatives are in addition to the 60,000 youth who attend our Young People’s Concerts every year. In the coming year look for new family programming and other community based efforts in our ongoing effort to “Make Music Matter.” We welcome Midori as a soloist with the orchestra in April. She is a shining example of an artist who exemplifies a life dedicated to making music available to all ages. At age 11 Midori began making headlines as a Juilliard Pre-College student when she appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, appearing with our orchestra in 1982 as an 11 year old. She has her own foundation, Midori & Friends, which is dedicated to musically underserved New York City schoolchildren, and she’s a distinguished Professor of Violin at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. She has even been designated a “Messenger of Peace” for her work with the United Nations. Leading Midori’s performances of Tchaikovsky’s beloved Violin Concerto will be our latest guest conductor, Rory Macdonald, a rising young musician from Scotland who has distinguished himself recently with the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Hallé and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras as well as the BBC Symphony and a multitude of North American and European opera houses. We will close out our classical month with the return of Music Director Jahja Ling as he leads the musicians of the Orchestra in what are sure to be stunning performances of Gustav Mahler’s “Tragic” Symphony No. 6. This “fate-filled” Mahler symphony, out of the nearly complete cycle Maestro Ling has graced our audiences with over the years, has a particularly deep meaning for Mr. Ling, as Dr. Goldzband reveals in his program history note. By now you should have received information about our Bayside Summer Nights summer programs. Single tickets go on sale April 10, but to ensure the best seats and the best prices, please consider becoming a subscriber this year if you’re not already. Between the wonderful concerts with our Orchestra and special concerts featuring artists like Seth MacFarlane, Amy Grant, Trace Adkins and Bernadette Peters, along with Chris Botti and Diana Ross, you won’t want to miss out! Sincerely,
Martha Gilmer Chief Executive Officer S AN DI EG O SYMPHO NY O RCHEST RA WINT ER SEA SO N A PRIL 2016
COVER PHOTO CREDIT: David Hartig P E R FOR M AN C E S MAGAZ I NE P1
ABOUT THE MUSIC DIRECTOR
JAHJA LING
CD of Lucas Richman’s Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals with soloists Jon Kimura Parker and Orli Shaham distributed by Naxos in 2013. Under his leadership, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra has been designated a Tier One major orchestra by the League of American Orchestras, based on a new level of unprecedented artistic excellence, its continuing increase in audience attendance as well as its solid financial stability.
JA HJA L I NG ‘s distinguished career as an internationally renowned conductor has earned him an exceptional reputation for musical integrity, intensity and expressivity. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, and now a citizen of the United States, he is the first and only conductor of Chinese descent who holds a music director position with a major orchestra in the United States and has conducted all of the major symphony orchestras in North America including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. The 2015-16 season marks his 12th season as Music Director of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. In October of 2013 Mr. Ling led the Orchestra for a sold out concert at Carnegie Hall with Lang Lang as soloist, followed by a tour to China where the Orchestra appeared in five concerts in Yantai (sister city of San Diego), Shanghai and Beijing (at the National Centre for the Performing Arts and at Tsinghua University) with soloists Joshua Bell and Augustin Hadelich. This two week tour was the first international tour and the first appearance of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (received with great acclaim) in their 104 year history. The Orchestra’s performances conducted by Mr. Ling have also received the highest praise from public and critics alike, having been broadcast both locally and nationally. Mr. Ling and the Orchestra have recently released eight new live recordings (the Orchestra’s first in a decade). Together they have undertaken commissions as well as premieres of many new works and recorded new works of Bright Sheng for Telarc Records (released in summer of 2009) and a new P 4 PE RFORMA NCES MAGAZ IN E
In recent and upcoming seasons Mr. Ling returns as guest conductor with the Adelaide Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Hangzhou Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Jakarta Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic, Macao Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, Philharmonia Taiwan (National Symphony of Taiwan), Royal Philharmonic of London, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, West Australia Symphony as well as Yale Philharmonia and Curtis Symphony Orchestra. In June of 2012 he conducted the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra in Berlin’s O2 World on the occasion of Lang Lang’s 30th birthday concert with Lang Lang, Herbie Hancock and 50 young pianists from around the world. The concert, attended by more than 10,000 people, was also telecast live by German and Spanish TV. Mr. Ling holds one of the longest continuous relationships with one of the world’s greatest orchestras, The Cleveland Orchestra. In 2014 he celebrated his 30th anniversary with that esteemed ensemble with performances at Severance Hall, the Blossom Music Festival and Palm Beach, Florida. He first served as Associate Conductor in the 1984-85 season, and then as Resident Conductor for 17 years from 1985-2002 and as Blossom Music Festival Director for six seasons (2000-05). During his tenure with the Orchestra, he conducted over 450 concerts and 600 works, including many world premieres. Among his distinguished services as Resident Conductor, Mr. Ling led the Orchestra’s annual concert in downtown Cleveland, heard by more than 1.5 million people. His telecast of A Concert in Tribute and Remembrance with the Orchestra for 9/11/2011 received an Emmy® Award. The United States House of Representatives presented a Congressional Record of his outstanding achievements in the United States Capitol in September 2006. Prior to his Cleveland appointment, Mr. Ling served as Assistant and Associate Conductor
of the San Francisco Symphony. Deeply committed to education, Mr. Ling served as founding Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (1986-93) and the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (1981-84). Mr. Ling made his European debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1988 to great acclaim. His other engagements abroad have taken him to the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne, Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, China Philharmonic in Beijing, Guangzhou Symphony, Malaysian Philharmonic, Macao Symphony, MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, NDR Radio Philharmonie in Hannover, NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, Royal Philharmonic of London, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Shanghai Symphony, Singapore Symphony, Stockholm Philharmonic and Tokyo’s Yomiuri Nippon Symphony. Mr. Ling began to play the piano at age four and studied at the Jakarta School of Music. At age 17 he won the Jakarta Piano Competition and one year later was awarded a Rockefeller grant to attend The Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Mieczysław Munz and conducting with John Nelson. After completing a master’s degree at Juilliard, he studied orchestral conducting at the Yale School of Music under Otto-Werner Mueller and received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1985. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Wooster College in 1993. In the summer of 1980 Mr. Ling was granted the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood, and two years later he was selected by Mr. Bernstein to be a Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. As a pianist Mr. Ling won a bronze medal at the 1977 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel and was awarded a certificate of honor at the following year’s Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. He made his Cleveland Orchestra debut as a pianist in 1987 and has appeared as both soloist and conductor with a number of orchestras in the United States and internationally. Mr. Ling makes his home in San Diego with his wife, Jessie, and their young daughters Priscilla and Stephanie. n
SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A W I N T E R S E AS ON APR I L 2016
SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
JAHJA LING, MUSIC DIRECTOR
MATTHEW GARBUTT
Principal Summer Pops Conductor
SAMEER PATEL Assistant Conductor
VIOLIN Jeff Thayer Concertmaster DEBORAH
PATE AND JOHN FORREST CHAIR
Wesley Precourt Associate Concertmaster Jisun Yang Assistant Concertmaster Alexander Palamidis Principal II TBD Associate Principal II Nick Grant Principal Associate Concertmaster Emeritus Randall Brinton Yumi Cho Hernan Constantino Alicia Engley Pat Francis Kathryn Hatmaker Angela Homnick Ai Nihira* Igor Pandurski Julia Pautz Susan Robboy Shigeko Sasaki Yeh Shen Anna Skálová Edmund Stein John Stubbs Pei-Chun Tsai Jing Yan Joan Zelickman VIOLA Chi-Yuan Chen Principal KAREN AND WARREN KESSLER CHAIR
Nancy Lochner Associate Principal Rebekah Campbell Wanda Law Qing Liang Caterina Longhi Thomas Morgan Ethan Pernela Dorothy Zeavin CELLO Yao Zhao Principal Chia-Ling Chien Associate Principal Marcia Bookstein Glen Campbell Andrew Hayhurst
Richard Levine Ronald Robboy Mary Oda Szanto Xian Zhuo
Douglas Hall
BASS
John MacFerran Wilds Ray Nowak
Jeremy Kurtz-Harris ˆ Principal OPHIE AND ARTHUR BRODY S FOUNDATION CHAIR
Susan Wulff Acting Principal Samuel Hager Acting Associate Principal W. Gregory Berton ˆ P. J. Cinque Jory Herman Margaret Johnston+ Daniel Smith* Michael Wais Sayuri Yamamoto* FLUTE Rose Lombardo Principal Sarah Tuck Erica Peel PICCOLO Erica Peel OBOE Sarah Skuster Principal
TRUMPET Micah Wilkinson Principal
TROMBONE Kyle R. Covington Principal Logan Chopyk Richard Gordon+ Michael Priddy BASS TROMBONE Michael Priddy TUBA Matthew Garbutt Principal HARP Julie Smith Phillips Principal TIMPANI Ryan J. DiLisi Principal Andrew Watkins Assistant Principal PERCUSSION Gregory Cohen Principal
Harrison Linsey Andrea Overturf
Erin Douglas Dowrey Andrew Watkins
ENGLISH HORN Andrea Overturf
PIANO/CELESTE Mary Barranger
DR. WILLIAM AND EVELYN LAMDEN ENGLISH HORN CHAIR
CLARINET Sheryl Renk Principal
ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL MANAGER Magdalena O’Neill ASSISTANT PERSONNEL MANAGER TBA
Theresa Tunnicliff Frank Renk
PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN Courtney Secoy Cohen
BASS CLARINET Frank Renk
LIBRARIAN Rachel Fields
BASSOON Valentin Martchev Principal Ryan Simmons Leyla Zamora
* Long Term Substitute Musician + Staff Opera Musician ˆ On leave
CONTRABASSOON Leyla Zamora
All musicians are members of the American Federation of Musicians Local 325.
HORN Benjamin Jaber Principal Darby Hinshaw Assistant Principal & Utility Danielle Kuhlmann Tricia Skye
S AN DI EG O SYMPHO NY O RCHEST RA WINT ER SEA SO N A PRIL 2016
Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
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APRIL 1, 2 & 3 MIDORI PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY JACOBS MASTERWORKS
FRIDAY April 1, 2016 – 8:00pm SATURDAY April 2, 2016 – 8:00pm SUNDAY April 3, 2016 – 2:00pm conductor Rory Macdonald violin Midori
All performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall
PROGRAM ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
Midday Witch, Op. 108 Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 Allegro moderato Canzonetta: Andante Finale: Allegro vivacissimo Midori, violin
INTERMISSION SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 Non allegro - Lento - Tempo I Andante con moto (Tempo di valse) Lento assai - Allegro vivace
The approximate running time for this concert, including intermission, is one hour and fifty-five minutes.
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SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A W I N T E R S E AS ON APR I L 2016
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
MIDORI PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY - APRIL 1, 2 & 3 organizations, Music Sharing, based in Japan, and Partners in Performance, based in the United States, also bring music closer to the lives of people who may not otherwise have involvement with the arts. Her commitment to community collaboration and outreach is further realized in her Orchestra Residences Program. In 2007 she was named a Messenger of Peace by U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon.
MIDORI, VIOLIN
M
I DO R I is s one of the most legendary violinists of this generation. In addition to performing at the highest levels internationally, she has also been recognized by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum for her exceptional commitment to education and community engagement throughout the USA, Europe, Asia and the developing world. More recently, Midori has been making a sustained commitment to the violin repertoire of the future, commissioning several new concerto and recital works. In the last few seasons, Midori has added several new recordings to her extensive catalogue of discs: a recording of Bach’s complete Solo Sonatas and Partitas and a forthcoming release of the violin concerto DoReMi written for her by Peter Eötvös and recorded with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. In 2014 a recording featuring Midori’s performance of Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with NDR Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eschenbach won a Grammy® Award for Best Classical Compendium. Midori is recognized as an extraordinary performer, a devoted and gifted educator and an innovative community engagement activist. In 1992 she founded Midori & Friends, a non-profit organisation in New York which brings music education programs to underserved New York City schoolchildren in every borough each year. Two other
Midori was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971 and began studying the violin with her mother, Setsu Goto, at an early age. Zubin Mehta first heard Midori play in 1982 and it was he who invited her to make her now legendary debut – at the age of 11 – at the New York Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s Eve concert, on which occasion she received a standing ovation and the impetus to begin a major career. Today Midori lives in Los Angeles where, in addition to her many commitments, she continues her position as Distinguished Professor of Violin and Jascha Heifetz Chair at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.
Philharmonic, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Adelaide Symphony, Queensland Symphony, West Australian Symphony, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, BBC Scottish Symphony and BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Future orchestral debuts include the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, Essen Philharmonic and Japan Century Symphony Orchestras. In summer 2015 Mr. Macdonald toured China with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland with performances at the Shanghai Grand Theatre and Beijing Concert Hall, amongst others. In December 2013 Mr. Macdonald stood in for Mariss Jansons for two concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing and at the Sydney Opera House, marking the end of the orchestra's Asia and Australia section of its world tour celebrating its 125th anniversary. He returned to give two family concerts with the orchestra in autumn 2015.
Midori’s violin is the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù “ex-Huberman.” She uses three bows – two by Dominique Peccatte and one by Paul Siefried. For more information visit www.GoToMidori.com. n
O
ne of the brightest stars of the younger generation of conductors, R O RY MACDONALD ’S career was launched following assisting roles with Iván Fischer, Mark Elder and Antonio Pappano. Equally at home on the concert platform and in the opera house, he draws out distinctive interpretations of classical and romantic repertoire, and brings passion and intellectual insight to contemporary scores. Recent guest conducting engagements have included the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra, Royal Scottish National, Bergen Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, Wiener KammerOrchester, Nagoya
S AN DI EG O SYMPHO NY O RCHEST RA WINT ER SEA SO N A PRIL 2016
RORY MACDONALD, CONDUCTOR
Mr. Macdonald has also built up an extensive operatic repertoire and is in demand in some of the world’s leading opera houses. Following his highly successful North American debut with the Canadian Opera Company, Mr. Macdonald made his United States debut that autumn at Lyric Opera of Chicago, conducting a new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream; he returns to the
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
MIDORI PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY - APRIL 1, 2 & 3 house in 2016-17. Subsequent United States debuts have included new productions of The Rape of Lucretia at Houston Grand Opera (where he returned for Carmen in 2014) and Die Zauberflöte at San Francisco Opera. In 2014 he made his debut at Santa Fé Opera conducting Carmen (where he will return in 2016-17). In Europe, Mr. Macdonald has conducted Il barbiere di Siviglia and Hänsel und Gretel at the Royal Opera House and Covent Garden (where he has also conducted Fidelio, Das Rheingold, Owen Wingrave, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Philip Glass’ Orphée).
He also opened English National Opera’s 2011-12 season with The Elixir of Love. In spring 2014 he conducted Britten’s The Turn of the Screw for the Vienna Konzerthaus with a cast including Mark Padmore, and in spring 2015 he made his debut with the Royal Danish Opera in Die Zauberflöte. Future operatic highlights include Così fan tutte with Oper Frankfurt, Die Zauberflöte with Opera Australia and Ariadne auf Naxos with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Rory Macdonald studied music at Cambridge University, and plays violin and piano. While at university he studied under David Zinman
and Jorma Panula at the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen. After graduation from Cambridge he was appointed assistant conductor to Iván Fischer at the Budapest Festival Orchestra (2001-03) and to Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra (2006-08). He was also a member of the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House (2004-06) where he worked closely with Antonio Pappano on major projects (such as the complete Ring cycle) and conducted performances of several operas. n
ABOUT THE MUSIC Midday Witch, Op. 108 A N TO NI N DVO Ř Á K Born September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Bohemia Died May 1, 1904, Prague After three years in New York, Dvořák returned to Prague in the summer of 1895, delighted to be home. He spent his first months relaxing at the family’s summer home at Vysoká, and then he resumed teaching at the Prague Conservatory in November. He also resumed composing, completing a string quartet he had begun in America and writing another. But Dvořák was ready for new directions as a composer, and those came early in 1896. Despite his nationalist leanings, Dvořák had always been a “classicist” as a composer, content to work in such abstract forms as symphony, concerto, overture, quartet, and so on. But new winds were blowing through music, and Dvořák found himself attracted to the symphonic poem, a form more or less invented by Liszt and now enthusiastically embraced by the young firebrand Richard Strauss. For his subject matter Dvořák turned to A Bouquet of Flowers, a collection of Czech folk-legends by Karel Jaromír Erben. He quickly sketched three of these legends as what he called “orchestral ballads”: The Water Goblin, Midday Witch and The Golden
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Spinning Wheel. Dvořák worked on all three at the same time, first sketching them in piano score and then orchestrating them in February 1896. The orchestra of the Prague Conservatory gave the three pieces a private reading in May (which offered Dvořák a chance to revise them), and the first public performances followed in the fall of 1896. One of the unusual features of these symphonic poems is that Dvořák took key lines from the original poems and used these “speech-rhythms” as the basis for his themes. Unlike young Strauss, who aimed for exact musical pictorialism (and who once bragged that his highest aim was to write fork music that could never be mistaken for a spoon), Dvořák aimed for realism by using the rhythms of the Czech language to help shape his themes. Midday Witch tells a particularly grim tale. In a forest cottage, a young mother is fixing lunch for her absent husband, and their small child begins to act up. She cannot get the boy under control, and finally she threatens that if he doesn’t behave, she’ll call the Midday Witch to come get him. This witch, who is apparently out and about only between 11 and 12 in the morning (hence the name), promptly shows up. She is described in the legend as “small, brown, wild of feature, with a sheet drawn over her head,” and now she tries to wrest the child away from his mother,
who desperately grips the child as she fends off the witch. The tolling of the bell for noon drives the witch away, and the father returns to find his wife and son unconscious on the floor of the cottage. He revives his wife, but the boy had been smothered in his mother’s protective embrace. Dvořák may not have aimed for exact pictorialism, but these events may be easily followed across the fourteen-minute span of Midday Witch. The music begins innocently with a portrait of the cottage in the forest. The peeping oboe is the voice of the child, and eventually the orchestra’s huge outburst takes the rhythm of the mother’s lines “If only you’d be quiet, you rascal!” The witch arrives on a sudden change to a slow tempo. Over eerie muted strings, bass clarinet and two bassoons intone her grim “Give me the child!” There follows an Allegro that depicts the witch dancing wildly around the mother and child. This section was Dvořák’s own contribution: it does not appear in the ballad, but the composer felt that – musically – the piece needed this contrast here. At the end of her dance, the orchestral bells ring 12 times (the stroke of noon), and the witch vanishes. In the concluding Andante, the father returns, cheerfully at first, and then discovers the grim scene in the cottage. The music grows to a tragic climax and concludes with one final shriek of laughter from the witch. n
SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A W I N T E R S E AS ON APR I L 2016
ABOUT THE MUSIC
MIDORI PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY - APRIL 1, 2 & 3 Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 P ET E R I LYI CH TC H AIKOVSKY Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg Tchaikovsky wrote his Violin Concerto in Switzerland during the spring of 1878, sketching it in 11 days and then completing the scoring in two weeks. Without asking permission, he dedicated it to the famous Russian violinist Leopold Auer, who was concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra and who would later teach Heifetz, Elman, Zimbalist and Milstein. Tchaikovsky promptly ran into a bad surprise: Auer refused to perform the concerto, expressing doubts about some aspects of the music and reportedly calling it “unplayable.” The concerto had to wait three years before Adolph Brodsky gave the premiere in Vienna on December 4, 1881. That premiere was the occasion of one of the most infamous reviews in the history of classical music. Eduard Hanslick savaged the concerto, saying that it “brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks to the ear.” He went on: “The violin is no longer played. It is yanked about. It is torn asunder. It is beaten black and blue…The Adagio, with its tender national melody, almost conciliates, almost wins us. But it breaks off abruptly to make way for a Finale that puts us in the midst of the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian kermess. We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy.” Hanslick’s review has become one of the best examples of critical Wretched Excess: the insensitive destruction of a work that would go on to become one of the bestloved concertos in the repertory. But for all his blindness, Hanslick did recognize one important feature of this music: its essential “Russian-ness.” Tchaikovsky freely – and proudly – admitted his inspiration in this concerto: “My melodies and harmonies of folk-song character come from the fact that I grew up in the country, and in my earliest childhood was impressed by the indescribable beauty of the characteristic features of Russian folk music; also from this, that I love passionately the Russian character in all its expression; in short, I am a Russian in the fullest meaning of the word.”
The orchestra’s introduction makes for a gracious – and very brief – opening to the concerto, for the solo violin quickly enters with a flourish and then settles into the lyric opening theme, which had been prefigured in the orchestra’s introduction. A second theme is equally melodic – Tchaikovsky marks it con molt’espressione – but the development of these themes places extraordinary demands on the soloist, who must solve complicated problems with string-crossing, multiple-stops and harmonics. Auer was wrong: this concerto is not unplayable, but it is extremely difficult. (And to be fair, Auer later admitted his error and performed the concerto himself.) The brilliant cadenza is Tchaikovsky’s own, which makes a gentle return to the movement’s opening theme; a full recapitulation leads to the dramatic close. Tchaikovsky marks the second movement Canzonetta (“Little Song”) and mutes solo violin and orchestral strings throughout this movement, which feels like an interlude from one of his ballets. It leads without pause to the explosive opening of the finale, marked Allegro vivacissimo, a rondo built on two themes of distinctly Russian heritage. These are the themes that reminded Hanslick of a drunken Russian brawl, but to more sympathetic ears they evoke a fiery, exciting Russian spirit. Once again, the solo violin is given music of extraordinary difficulty. The very ending, with the violin soaring brilliantly above the hurtling orchestra, is one of the most exciting moments in this – or in any – violin concerto. n
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 SERGE RACH M A N I NO FF Born April 1, 1873, Oneg Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills Rachmaninoff spent the summer of 1940 at Orchard Point, a 17-acre estate on Long Island that had groves, orchards and a secluded studio where he could work in peace. There, very near the East and West Egg of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Rachmaninoff set to work on what would be his final complete work, a set of dances for orchestra. By August he had the score complete in a version for two pianos,
S AN DI EG O SYMPHO NY O RCHEST RA WINT ER SEA SO N A PRIL 2016
and – because he regarded this as a dance score – he consulted with choreographer Mikhail Fokine, a neighbor that summer. Rachmaninoff tentatively titled the piece Fantastic Dances and gave its three movements names – Noon, Twilight and Midnight – that might suggest a possible scenario. Fokine liked the music when Rachmaninoff played it for him, and they began to look ahead to a ballet production, but Fokine’s death shortly thereafter ended any thought of that. Even by the end of the summer, though, Rachmaninoff appears to have rethought the character of this music. By the time he completed the orchestration on October 29, he had changed its name to Symphonic Dances and dropped the descriptive movement titles; when Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the premiere on January 3, 1941, it was as a purely orchestral composition. Rachmaninoff himself seemed surprised by what he had created, and when friends congratulated him on the energy of this music, he said, “I don’t know how it happened – it must have been my last spark.” Two years later he was dead. This score is remarkable for the opulence of its color, and Rachmaninoff seems intent here on finding and exploiting new orchestral sonorities. Some of these are completely new sounds for him (such as his use of an alto saxophone), but more comes from his refined use of standard instruments, such as the contrasting sound of stopped, open and muted brass in the second movement or the striking cascades of open-string figures in the last. For all their sumptuous sound, though, the Symphonic Dances are more remarkable for Rachmaninoff’s subtle compositional method. Rather than relying on the Big Tune, he evolves this music from the most economical of materials – rhythmic fragments, bits of theme, simple patterns – which are then built up into powerful movements that almost overflow with rhythmic energy. Rachmaninoff may have been 67 and in declining strength in 1940, but that summer he wrote with the hand of a master. The music opens with some of these fragments, just bits of sound from the first violins, and over them the English horn P E R FOR M AN C E S M AGAZ I NE P11
ABOUT THE MUSIC
MIDORI PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY - APRIL 1, 2 & 3 sounds the three-note pattern that will permeate the Symphonic Dances, reappearing in endless forms across the span of this score. Rachmaninoff plays it up here into a great climax, which subsides as the opening fragments lead to the central episode, sung at first entirely by woodwinds. This slow interlude – somehow the reedy sound of the alto sax is exactly right for this wistful music – makes its way back to the big gestures of the beginning section, now energized by explosive timpani salvos. In the closing moments, Rachmaninoff rounds matter off with a grand chorale for strings (here finally is the Big Tune), beautifully accompanied by the glistening sound of bells, piano, harp, piccolo and flutes. The movement winks into silence on the fragments with which it began. The opening of the second movement takes us into a completely different sound-world, for Rachmaninoff begins with the icy sound of trumpets and horns, played forte but stopped. This movement is marked Tempo di
valse, the only explicit dance indication in the score. Fokine himself warned Rachmaninoff not to feel bound to “dance” music (and specifically to waltz music) when writing music for dancing; if the music had vitality and character, Fokine would find a way to make it work as a ballet. Rachmaninoff may call for a waltz tempo here, but he avoids the traditional meter of 3/4, setting the music instead in 6/8 and 9/8, and having the waltz introduced by the unlikely sound of solo English horn. This waltz evolves through several episodes – some soaring, some powerful – before the movement subsides to a sudden, almost breathless close. The slow introduction to the final movement is enlivened by the strings’ interjections of the three-note pattern. Gradually these anneal into the Allegro vivace, and off the movement goes, full of rhythmic energy and the sound of ringing bells. A central episode in the tempo of the introduction sings darkly (Rachmaninoff marks it lamentoso). There are some wonderful sounds here (including
PERFORMANCE HISTORY by Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist
The Violin Concerto by Tchaikovsky may be the most popular and most performed of all violin concerti these days, a testimonial to the hold that Tchaikovsky's music has on worldwide audiences. It is, of course, beautiful, but also written for only terrific virtuosos, and they also need to demonstrate that aspect of their talent with it to audiences. Naoum Blinder was the first soloist to play it here, when Nicolai Sokoloff conducted the orchestra in the summer of 1941, the last San Diego Symphony season until after the war. Since then, 17 violinists have performed it here, the last time late in the 2010-11 season, when Sergey Khachatryan played it and Jahja Ling conducted. Even after that, however, Joshua Bell played it with the orchestra during its China Friendship Tour, in 2013. In the
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great eerie string glissandos), and finally the Allegro vivace returns to rush the Symphonic Dances to a close. Out of this rush, some unexpected features emerge: a quotation from Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony (composed nearly fifty years earlier), the liturgical chant “Blessed Be the Lord,” and – finally – that old Rachmaninoff obsession, the Dies Irae. At first this is only hinted at, but gradually it takes shape amid the blazing rush and finally is shouted out in all its glory; this music dances furiously to a close guaranteed to rip the top off a concert hall. As he finished each of his symphonies, Joseph Haydn would write Laus Deo – “Praise God” – at the end of the manuscript. At the end of the manuscript of Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoff – perhaps aware that this would be his last work – wrote (in Russian) the simple phrase: “I thank Thee, Lord.” n PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER
summer season a couple of years before that, when a scheduled piano soloist fell ill and cancelled her Embarcadero appearance at the last moment, the San Diego Symphony's concertmaster, Jeff Thayer, stepped in with barely a couple of hours’ notice (and, of course, no rehearsal) and performed (from memory) the first movement of the violin concerto for the Pops audience, who went wild. David Atherton introduced the brilliant Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninoff to San Diego Symphony audiences in the 1983-84 season, and ten years later Thomas Wilkins led the orchestra for its second outing of the piece. Jahja Ling has conducted it twice here during his tenure, in the 2007-08 and 2010-11 seasons. Dvořák's tone poem, Midday Witch, however, has never before been played by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. n
SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A W I N T E R S E AS ON APR I L 2016