FROM THE
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Photo Credit: Lauren Radack
DEAR FRIENDS, I can hardly believe that our 2015 – 2016 Season is coming to a close this month! It seems like only yesterday that we were making plans for our January piano festival, Upright & Grand, and we were looking forward to the season beginning with the incredible Yuja Wang as soloist. As I look back on the year now ending, there are so many highlights. I am particularly proud of the many initiatives that were started this year, and the hoped for results – more people understanding what a dynamic, engaging and energizing orchestra we have in our San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Each of the nine guest conductors that worked with the orchestra commented on its high quality and how eager our musicians are to make music at the highest level. Not only did we have impact on our San Diego audiences, but our reputation has spread nationally and internationally! We also launched our first January Festival – four weeks of varied and unique programming which welcomed many individuals who were coming to hear the orchestra for the first time. Also included in the festival was our “Pianos in Public Spaces” project, which provided opportunities for us to develop partnerships with several San Diego organizations such as PATH Connections Housing, Combat Arts and A Reason To Survive for the first time. Many of the locations where we placed the public pianos were also new partners for the Symphony – The Quartyard, Museum of Contemporary Art Downtown, the Coronado Ferry Landing, The Headquarters and NTC. Our free Community Day in January was a first for us as well. In April we held three events dedicated to inspiring and supporting young musicians. On April 15, we welcomed the performing groups from San Diego State University to the Copley Symphony Hall stage to a cheering audience made up of members of the community, the students’ parents, SDSU alumni and board members common to both the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and San Diego State. On April 17th young musicians from four area youth orchestras performed side-by-side with members of the San Diego Symphony, and the coaching of these young musicians took place during two preparatory rehearsals culminating in a family concert. Finally on April 23rd we welcomed eight area high school bands to our stage for a day-long festival headed by clinician and composer Frank Ticheli. All of this expresses our belief that our young musicians need our nurturing to become performers, professional musicians and audience members of the future. Recently we announced our 2016 - 2017 winter season, during which we will celebrate the legacy of Jahja Ling who has served as our music director for over 12 seasons. During his tenure, Jahja Ling has hired over 60 musicians and has overseen a remarkable transformation and the artistic growth of the Orchestra. In his last season with us, his Legacy Season, Jahja has selected particular pieces of music that have special meaning to him and, we hope, to you. Next season continues our festival programming with American Variations: A Festival of Music Made in America. This month-long series of concert presentations takes a deep look at the many ways the landscape, history and culture of America has influenced composers and their musical styles. We are also paying tribute to the 70th birthday of John Adams, arguably one of America’s most successful and influential composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. None of this would be possible without your support and enthusiasm. At a time when some institutions face declining audiences, we are happy to report that our audience numbers are growing. We are committed to bringing to you musical performances that remind us of the power of music in our lives. Thank you, and I hope to see you this summer at Bayside Summer Nights.
Sincerely,
Martha A. Gilmer Chief Executive Officer
SAN DI EGO SYMPH ONY O R C HES T R A W INT ER S EA S O N MAY 2 0 1 6
COVER PHOTO CREDIT: David Hartig PE R F O R MA N C E S MAGA Z INE P 1
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 P4 PERFORMAN CES MAG A ZINE
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
SA N D I E G O SYM PH O NY O R C H E ST R A W I N T E R S E A S O N MAY 2016
SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
JAHJA LING, MUSIC DIRECTOR
MATTHEW GARBUTT
Principal Summer Pops Conductor
SAMEER PATEL
Assistant Conductor
VIOLIN Jeff Thayer Concertmaster
D EBORAH 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 Rachyl Duffy 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
Tricia Skye Douglas Hall
BASS
John MacFerran Wilds Ray Nowak
Jeremy Kurtz-Harris ˆ Principal S OPHIE AND ARTHUR BRODY 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 CONTRABASSOON Leyla Zamora HORN Benjamin Jaber Principal Darby Hinshaw Assistant Principal & Utility
* Long Term Substitute Musician + Staff Opera Musician ˆ On leave All musicians are members of the American Federation of Musicians Local 325.
Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
Danielle Kuhlmann
SAN DI EGO SYMPH ONY O R C HES T R A W INT ER S EA S O N MAY 2 0 1 6
PE R F O R MA N C E S MAGA Z INE P 5
ABOUT THE ARTIST
APPALACHIAN SPRING: AN AMERICAN FINALE - MAY 27, 28 & 29 Saint-Saëns, Piano Concerti Nos. 2&5, released in 2007, Mr. Thibaudet is joined by long-standing collaborator Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Mr. Thibaudet’s Aria—Opera Without Words, which was released the same year, features aria transcriptions, some of which are Mr. Thibaudet’s own. His other recordings include Satie: The Complete Solo Piano Music and the jazz albums Reflections on Duke: Jean-Yves Thibaudet Plays the Music of Duke Ellington and Conversations with Bill Evans.
JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET, PIANO
J
EAN-YVES THIBAUDET, considered one of the best pianists in the world, has the rare ability to combine poetic musical sensibilities with dazzling technical prowess. His talent for coaxing subtle and surprising colors and textures from even old favorites led The New York Times to exclaim “…every note he fashions is a pearl…the joy, brilliance and musicality of his performance could not be missed.” Mr. Thibaudet, who has performed around the world for more than 30 years and recorded more than 50 albums, has a depth and natural charisma that have made him one of today’s most sought-after soloists. After a summer residency at the Menuhin Festival Gstaad and appearances at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center and the Hollywood Bowl, Mr. Thibaudet tackles three artist-in-residencies in 2015-16: at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony and the Colburn School of Music. He enters the second of three years of his Colburn residency, the first of its kind, with passion for education and fostering the next generation of musicians, teaching master classes and performing with students. He plays with the Seattle Symphony throughout the season, including Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, and Gershwin’s
Piano Concerto in F Major; chairs the jury for the Seattle Symphony Piano Competition 2015; performs Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 with symphony musicians; and tours Asia with the orchestra. He opens his residency at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with James MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No. 3, which he commissioned and premiered in 2011, before touring Europe, playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the RCO. The residency additionally involves chamber music, a performance at RCO Club Night and a master class. He also takes Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor on tour in the spring with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. This season Mr. Thibaudet also makes a recital tour across the United States, Europe and Asia; collaborates with the Emerson and Alma quartets; and performs with Gautier Capuçon in a duo recital of music for piano and cello at Vienna’s Musikverein. Mr. Thibaudet has been nominated for two Grammy® Awards and won the Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or, the Choc du Monde de la Musique, a Gramophone Award, two Echo awards and the Edison Prize. In 2010 he released Gershwin, featuring big jazz band orchestrations of Rhapsody in Blue, variations on “I Got Rhythm” and the Piano Concerto in F live with the Baltimore Symphony and music director Marin Alsop. On his Grammy®-nominated recording
SAN DI EGO SYMPH ONY O R C HES T R A W INT ER S EA S O N MAY 2 0 1 6
Mr. Thibaudet has also had an impact on the world of fashion, film and philanthropy. His concert wardrobe is by celebrated London designer Vivienne Westwood. In 2004 he served as president of the prestigious Hospices de Beaune, an annual charity auction in Burgundy, France. He had a cameo in Bruce Beresford’s film on Alma Mahler, Bride of the Wind, and his playing is showcased throughout. Thibaudet was the soloist on Dario Marianelli’s award-winning scores for the films Atonement and Pride and Prejudice and recorded the soundtrack of the 2012 film Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, composed by Alexandre Desplat. He was also featured in the 2000 PBS/Smithsonian special Piano Grand!, a piano performance program hosted by Billy Joel to pay tribute to the 300th anniversary of the instrument. Jean-Yves Thibaudet was born in Lyon, France, where he began his piano studies at age five and made his first public appearance at age seven. At 12, he entered the Paris Conservatory to study with Aldo Ciccolini and Lucette Descaves, a friend and collaborator of Ravel. At age 15, he won the Premier Prix du Conservatoire and, three years later, the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York City. Among his numerous honors are the Premio Pegasus from the Spoleto Festival in Italy and the Victoire d’Honneur, a lifetime career achievement award and the highest honor given by France’s Victoires de la Musique. The Hollywood Bowl inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2010. Previously a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Mr. Thibaudet was promoted to the title of Officier by the French Minister of Culture in 2012. n
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ABOUT THE MUSIC
APPALACHIAN SPRING: AN AMERICAN FINALE - MAY 27, 28 & 29 Overture to The School for Scandal SA M U EL BA R BER Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, PA Died January 23, 1981, New York City
toward the close on a lively (and very difficult) fugato for strings, then rounds the overture off with the same sizzling, saucy chords with which it began.
Samuel Barber spent the summer of 1931 in Italy at the family home of his friend Gian-Carlo Menotti. There, in the sunny village of Cadegliano on the shore of Lake Lugano, Barber did the sorts of things all 21-year-olds like to do: he swam, he played tennis, he hiked, he bicycled. And he also did something that summer that no other 21-year-old had ever done: he wrote a concert overture that has become one of the most popular orchestral works ever composed by an American.
The Overture to The School for Scandal is the work a 21-year-old wrote during a happy summer vacation. Barber’s incredible melodic gift, his sense of form and his assured handling of the orchestra were all evident, even at so young an age. No wonder that, over eighty years later, this “student” composition continues to delight audiences. n
Barber titled that work Overture to The School for Scandal, but this music is in no sense meant to be a curtain-raiser for Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s witty 1777 comedy of manners, full of gossip, intrigue and disguises. Rather, Barber said that in this music he was aiming for “a musical reflection of the play’s spirit.” And so listeners should not search for musical depictions of the events of Sheridan’s play but should instead take this overture simply as the exciting, beautiful and fun piece that it is. Barber, who was then still a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, tried to get that school’s conductor, Fritz Reiner, to conduct the premiere, but the often-icy Reiner refused. That premiere had to wait two years, until August 30, 1933, when Alexander Smallens led this music with the Philadelphia Orchestra. (To his credit, Reiner recognized his error and later conducted Barber’s overture on a tour throughout Mexico with the Pittsburgh Symphony.) The Overture to The School for Scandal bursts to life on a spicy polytonal clash, and violins quickly sound the dancing opening theme, which skitters gracefully along its 9/8 meter. This plays up to a raucous climax before solo oboe sings the lovely second idea, one of those haunting melodies that flickers expressively between major and minor keys as it proceeds. A third theme, a murmuring figure for solo clarinet, quickly follows. The development – brief but brisk – treats all these ideas in imaginative ways: the opening violin theme builds up to a powerful restatement, and the gentle oboe theme comes back very effectively in the English horn. Barber propels matters
P2 0 PER FORMANCES MAGA ZINE
Piano Concerto in F GEORGE G E R S H WI N Born September 28, 1898, Brooklyn Died July 11, 1937, Beverly Hills The success of Rhapsody in Blue in February 1924 propelled Gershwin overnight from a talented Broadway composer to someone taken seriously in the world of concert music, and he was anxious to explore a path that had suddenly opened up for him. When conductor Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Society asked Gershwin to compose a piano concerto the following year, the young composer accepted eagerly: the commission – signed in April 1925 – paid him $500 for the new concerto, to be performed the following December. There is no truth to the story, told many times, that Gershwin left this meeting and went straight to a bookstore to buy a book on musical form so that he would know what a piano concerto was, but this story does point to a larger truth: Gershwin was entering a musical world with which he was unfamiliar. Ferde Grofé had orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue for Gershwin, but now the composer was anxious to do all the work by himself; he wanted to be taken seriously as someone who could compose classical music (and in fact he did consult treatises on orchestration as he worked on this concerto). Gershwin jotted down some ideas for the concerto while in London in May 1925, but it was not until he returned to New York that he began the actual composition, which took place between July and November of that year. He had at first planned to call the piece New York Concerto, but his desire for respectability won out, and he settled
on Piano Concerto in F. (It may be a mark of the breezy spirit of this music that it is always called that, rather than the more formal “Piano Concerto in F Major.”) As was his habit, Gershwin played this music to many friends as he worked so that he could try it out. In fact, he even hired an orchestra and played a private run-through a few weeks before beginning rehearsals with Damrosch for the official premiere, which took place (with Gershwin as soloist) in Carnegie Hall on December 3, 1925. F. Scott Fitzgerald nicknamed the twenties “The Jazz Age” (The Great Gatsby was published in the same year Gershwin wrote this concerto), and jazz was very much in the air in 1925. Gershwin had made his reputation with Rhapsody in Blue – billed as an experimental effort to fuse jazz and classical music – but he took pains to insist that he did not consider the Concerto in F a jazz piece. Though the concerto employs Charleston rhythms and a blues trumpet, Gershwin wanted it taken as a piece of serious music. He said that its brilliant energy was not so much the effort to write jazz as it was intended to represent “the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life.” Certainly the Concerto in F takes the form of the classical concerto: a sonata-form first movement, a lyric second movement, and a fast rondo-finale. The Allegro opens with a great flourish of timpani followed by the characteristic Charleston rhythm. Solo bassoon introduces the first theme, gradually taken up by the full orchestra, and the piano makes its entrance with the wonderful second subject, sliding up from the depths on a long glissando into the lazily-syncopated tune. Gershwin was willing to bend classical form for his own purposes, and he described this first movement: “It’s in sonata-form – but.” The development tends to be episodic (but who cares?), and this lengthy movement concludes with a Grandioso restatement by full orchestra of the piano’s opening tune and an exciting coda based on the Charleston theme. Of the slow movement, Gershwin said that it “has a poetic nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues…” He contrasts the trumpet’s bluesy entrance (played with a felt mute) against the piano’s snappy entrance on a variant of
SA N D I E G O SYM PH O NY O R C H E ST R A W I N T E R S E A S O N MAY 2016
ABOUT THE MUSIC
APPALACHIAN SPRING: AN AMERICAN FINALE - MAY 27, 28 & 29 the same tune and then alternates these ideas across the span of the movement. He may have thought of this movement as a nocturne, but this particular night seems full of energy, for the music rises to a tremendous climax before falling away to the quiet close. Out of the quiet, the Allegro agitato finale explodes to life. Gershwin described it as “an orgy of rhythm,” and the opening plunges the pianist and orchestra into a perpetualmotion-like frenzy. The movement is in rondo form, and the episodes quickly begin to recall themes from the first two movements. At the end, Gershwin brings back the Grandioso string tune from the climax of the first movement, and the Concerto in F rushes to a knock-out close based on the timpani flourish from the very beginning of the first movement. n
Suite from Appalachian Spring (full orchestra version) A A RO N CO PL A ND Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn Died December 2, 1990, North Tarrytown, NY Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring has become such a classic that it is surprising to learn that this ballet took shape rather haphazardly. Copland and Martha Graham had long wanted to work together before that opportunity came in 1942 when music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned three new dance works from Graham and gave the choreographer her choice of composers. One of those Graham chose was Copland, and they set to work. But their plans were unclear. It was wartime and Graham wanted a specifically American subject, but her initial thought of something that would include spoken text, an Indian girl, and the Civil War did not appeal to Copland. And so the composer went ahead with only a general sense of Graham’s evolving scenarios. Copland began composition in June 1943 in Hollywood, where he was working on a film score, and he completed the ballet the following summer in Cambridge, while teaching at Harvard; the orchestration was completed in Mexico. Graham was delighted with Copland’s music and adapted her choreography to fit his score. (She in
fact chose the title Appalachian Spring just weeks before the first performance, taking it from Hart Crane’s poem The Bridge.) For his part, Copland conceived this music specifically for Martha Graham rather than for her constantly-evolving plot-lines: “When I wrote Appalachian Spring, I was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic style, which I knew well. Nobody else seems quite like Martha: she’s so proud, so very much herself. And she’s unquestionably very American: there something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American.” Copland’s working title for this music was simply “Ballet for Martha” (and it still says that on the score’s title page). The premiere, at the Library of Congress in Washington on October 30, 1944, was a great success, and Copland’s score was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critics Circle Award the following year. Because the pit at the premiere was so small, Copland originally scored Appalachian Spring for an ensemble of only thirteen instruments: three woodwinds (flute, clarinet, bassoon), double string quartet, contrabass and piano. In the spring of 1945, he arranged a suite from the ballet for full symphony orchestra, deleting about eight minutes from the original ballet, and this is the version heard at the present concert. A note in the score outlines the subject of Appalachian Spring as Graham and Copland finally evolved it: the ballet tells of “a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The brideto-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.” This scenario is rather simple, but the story is timeless, and Copland’s wonderful music – glowing, fresh, strong – catches its mood perfectly. The action is easily followed. The opening section, which introduces the characters one by one, outlines the main
SAN DI EGO SYMPH ONY O R C HES T R A W INT ER S EA S O N MAY 2 0 1 6
theme of the ballet – a simple rising-andfalling shape – within a quiet haze of sound. Out of this bursts the general gathering: Copland portrays this with a jubilant A Major explosion that suggests country fiddling. A hopping little episode for woodwinds is the dance of the Bride and her Intended, who look forward to their life together (though there is a dark interlude here – not all of life will be happy). Suddenly the revivalist and his flock appear and help celebrate the wedding with a barn dance. The Solo Dance of the Bride, marked Presto, is her attempt to convey her complex feelings on this day, and this leads to one of the most striking moments in Appalachian Spring: Copland has a solo clarinet sing the Shaker melody “Tis the Gift To Be Simple,” and there follow five variations, each a vision of the married couple’s life together. The last is stamped out triumphantly, and then, over prayerlike music from the strings, the Bride goes to take her place among her neighbors. The young couple is left together, “quiet and strong” as the ballet fades into silence on the music from the very beginning. n
Chichester Psalms LE O NA R D BE R N STE I N Born August 25, 1918, Lawrence, MA Died October 14, 1990, New York City During the 1964-65 season, Leonard Bernstein took a much-needed sabbatical from his duties as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. It was a time to rest and recuperate, and he devoted much of that year to composition. Bernstein had received a commission from the Dean of the Cathedral of Chichester, the Very Reverend Walter Hussey, for a piece to be performed at a music festival during the summer of 1965 that would feature the combined choruses of the Chichester, Winchester and Salisbury Cathedrals. The work was to be for chorus and orchestra, and the commission specified the exact instrumentation: three trumpets, three trombones, two harps, percussion and strings. The combination of brass, percussion and strings suggests music that is festive, dramatic and lyric, and Chichester Psalms fits that description perfectly. Bernstein chose to set three complete psalms and parts of others, and the score is full of the trademarks of his
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ABOUT THE MUSIC
APPALACHIAN SPRING: AN AMERICAN FINALE - MAY 27, 28 & 29 music: unabashedly romantic melodies, jazzy and bouncy rhythms, the sound of varied percussion and brilliant writing for brass. Bernstein completed the Psalms on May 7, 1965, and led the premiere with the New York Philharmonic (in a version for full orchestra) on July 15; the first performance in Chichester followed on July 31. Half a century after its premiere, Chichester Psalms remains one of Bernstein’s finest – and most frequently performed – scores. Chichester Psalms is also one of Bernstein’s most tightly-focused scores. Despite the wide range of expression composed into this music – from the dramatic beginning to the peaceful close – the entire score is built on a simple five-note motif that recurs in various guises throughout the work. The motif is heard in the first instant as the chorus sings it to the five syllables: “Urah, hanevel.” This figure is audible throughout the Psalms: in the surging rhythms of the first movement, in the smashing conclusion to that movement, in the introduction to the third movement and at many other points. The music explodes to life on a biting dissonance as the chorus sounds the “Awake” from Psalm 108, and this movement embodies the spirit of the opening line of Psalm 100: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord of all ye lands.” Built on a tricky 7/4 meter, the music bounces along energetically, full of the affirmation of that psalm. The second movement features a boy alto, who sings the complete Psalm 23. The atmosphere of acceptance that marks this text and music is ripped apart by an eruption from the chorus – “Why do the nations rage?” – but the voice of the boy completes the 23rd Psalm on a note of faith. The final movement opens with an intense introduction for strings, which are then joined by the chorus in a peaceful setting of Psalm 131. This leads to the closing section on verses from Psalm 133, sung by the a capella choir. Chichester Psalms concludes on a note of utter affirmation and peace, a vision of the unity of all humankind; as choir and strings hold the long final Amen, high above them the solo trumpet sings the five-note motif one final time. n -Program notes by Eric Bromberger
P2 2 PER FORMANCES MAGA ZINE
WHY THIS PROGRAM? WHY THESE PIECES? by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, SDSO Archivist
For a decade now, give or take a little, I have been privileged as well as delighted to spend time discussing with our music director the programs he was developing for our orchestra to play. Thus, I was able to answer the questions embodied in the title of this column and, I hope, provide the readers with a little understanding of how programs are constructed. Jahja Ling is a terrific interview subject. He really enjoys talking about the many reasons that lay behind the development of the programs he conducts here. A few guest conductors as well, who were reachable and talkative, also cooperated well with this series, and I remain grateful to them, too. However, Ling has been enthusiastic about these discussions, remaining good-humored even if I hesitantly volunteered suggestions about some of my favorites that I hoped might be included – although, for the most part, they did not fit in. What I learned via the series of talks with him, though, even more than program-planning, were aspects of Jahja Ling himself as a remarkable person. It is because of that that I decided I would take over this column edition on my own, without the maestro, for this final weekend of concerts in the 2015-16 Jacobs Masterworks season. I felt the importance of having the audience learn more about this man, who has been so remarkably significant in creating the first-rate orchestra we hear today, as well as about the pieces on this program. As will be seen, these works also have a lot to do with him as a person. During this season just concluding, the last but one during which Jahja Ling will serve as our music director, it seemed as if he was even more introspective than usual during our talks. Over the years, he had frequently tended to speak about the music we were to hear from a point of departure close to his heart rather than from any technical set of details regarding, for example, key compatibility or musical structure, etc. By and large, he would speak about the pieces from the point of view of the feelings he had about them, about the performance histories of his conducting them, of his relationships with the composers or, most especially, with his teachers who treasured them, who transferred to him the longstanding, sometimes near-sacred traditions revolving around the appropriate music-making of those pieces. Jahja Ling is a man of deep, strong and meaningful feelings about many aspects of life and art that he sees as particularly important. He is a man of strong and deep faith. It may not be well known that he is an officer in a world-wide evangelistic program, and often travels far distances to participate as its unpaid musical director. That his faith is transmitted to music has been demonstrated by a number of religious or religion-oriented works that he incorporated into his programs over the years, many of which are standard, frequently-played masterpieces of the concert repertory. This season's Te Deum, by Berlioz, is but one example. On a personal note, I was especially grateful to become acquainted with the beautiful Schubert Mass No. 6, previously unknown to me, that he conducted a few of seasons back. Ling's devout faith is a very significant factor in his bringing these works onto his concert stages. Again, he is a man of feeling, and that feeling and sense of obligation is central to his approach to his profession. Jahja Ling always referred to the traditions of music-making he learned from his teachers, whether in the conservatory or when he served as a training or assistant
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APPALACHIAN SPRING: AN AMERICAN FINALE - MAY 27, 28 & 29
conductor under a prominent, very learned maestro. Many teachers in the conservatories in which he was a student, or older conductors with whom he worked, were European refugees who, themselves, were recipients of the musical traditions handed down from their own teachers many years before. Some, in fact, may have actually played under the great composers and learned their own approaches to their scores, or played in the great pre-war European orchestras under renowned conductors who had worked with the composers. Interpretations of the great works of music were thereby passed down through generations. In turn, Jahja Ling felt deeply, personally obliged to transmit most of these traditions to the musicians in the orchestras he led and trained, from student days on. Obliged is the right word here. For him, doing so was an obligation as well as a personal joy. It also allowed him to imprint even more the personalities of his teachers into his own persona, thereby enriching it as well as the musical experiences of the players. Of course, in his long career, he learned more and more about those pieces, and sometimes he brought some new and different dimensions of his own to them, maybe even a little different from those of his teachers whom he still revered. But his greatest satisfaction is knowing that, in a good performance, he also honored those traditions and the teachers who taught him. Our music director would usually demur, if I would press him on occasion to include, for example, more French music or Spanish music in the programs for a little more variety. Mainly, in response, he would bring up his feelings about the essential repertory that he had learned – and learned to love – from most of his teachers, and even from his childhood days listening to the radio or to records of music from the classical through the post-romantic eras written mainly by the dominant central European composers, e. g., Mozart to Mahler. He continues to feel very obligated, almost religiously, to continue transmitting that line of tradition that brought this great music to those listeners who grew to love it, as he does so fervently. “I'm just more comfortable inside with that core of music than with others, although, of course, I do play them.” And as we have heard, when he would venture into Debussy's impressionism, or de Falla's ultra-Spanish scores, they would turn out to be beautiful readings and fine performances because he is such a fine musician, even if he would often demur when initially asked to lead them. I was stimulated to write about this because this final program of this current Masterworks season is an all-American program, and one might conceivably wonder where the pieces chosen for today fit into the great European traditions he has treasured so much. We might wonder about the American
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composers he has chosen for his series finale. They certainly are not the great nineteenth century Meisters he has always revered. On the other hand, are these Americans really so distant from them? Like our conductor, they had teachers, sometimes revered, who also transmitted traditions to them, although in varying degrees. For example, Samuel Barber, like the rest on this program, studied hard. He and the rest had to, say, learn the late Beethoven quartets and sonatas in order to understand more deeply the orchestral and choral music he wrote. More examples of this type of studying can be applied to the other American composers represented in this concert. A distinguished, successful American composer from an equally distinguished musical family, Barber attended the eminent Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia where plenty of professors transmitted the great European musical traditions to him. I like to think that he must have been especially influenced by the traditions emanating from the music of Franz Schubert because, like Schubert, Barber was a wonderful melodist. His concertos, symphonies and especially his songs reflected that, and thus can it be any wonder that our music director would be attracted to his music? Modern in many ways, it is really a direct continuation of the traditions revered by our conductor. In contrast, Gershwin had no opportunity to attend a conservatory like Curtis, but he did have some good private teaching from two eminent composers, Rubin Goldmark and Henry Cowell, which set him on a good musical path. His need to earn money through Tin Pan Alley, where jazz and bluesinfluenced popular songs were marketed, had to influence his own compositions. Every composer has ears. Even the younger, hearing Beethoven was surrounded by the music of the day. Mahler's symphonies are filled with klezmer music undoubtedly heard on the streets. Gershwin's Tin Pan Alley background served him well. It is apparent in the masterful concerto to be played at these concerts, composed along the same traditional lines as earlier European masterpieces, which Gershwin had studied closely, but with acknowledgements of the music all around him that had settled in his own ears. It is also apparent in the tone poems he wrote, such as An American in Paris and in what may be his masterpiece, the opera Porgy and Bess. All of these had the necessary hallmarks of classical traditions in form and construction. He worked hard at the composer’s craft to win approval from the two great French musicians he hoped could teach him even more. But Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger saw no need for that. They felt that it was enough that he had genius.
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APPALACHIAN SPRING: AN AMERICAN FINALE - MAY 27, 28 & 29
It is an interesting sidelight that the last popular song that Gershwin wrote, “Our Love is Here to Stay,” (for Kenny Baker to sing in the 1937 movie, The Goldwyn Follies) was always referred to by Gershwin as “My Hugo Wolf song.” He had modelled it, with similar difficult intervals and unusual key changes in the same manner as the great German Lieder composer of a half-century before. Gershwin knew his music and its traditions, and carried them forward, but jazz was in his heart. He added that aspect to his classical compositions but without diminishing or otherwise ignoring the basic traditions he had learned well. Like Gershwin, Aaron Copland came from a poor New York Jewish family and had no opportunity to attend Curtis or any other conservatory. But he was a good pianist and always wanted to write music. Again like Gershwin, he studied with Rubin Goldmark, but then he went to France and persuaded Nadia Boulanger to take him on so that he could study music under her. He stayed with her for three years, and her influence is apparent in the clarity and structure of much of his music, even his much later compositions in which he experimented with atonality and other modernist post-war trends. But his compositions of the 1920s, 1930's and 1940's remain his most famous and significant works. In them, he applied the music that surrounded him (jazz, folk music and even cowboy songs), but always inserted them into classical structures that were distinct descendants of the great masters. His wartime Third Symphony remains the great “American” Symphony, which he could never have written without the benefit of having learned the great traditions of the prior symphonists. Copland's ballet suite, Appalachian Spring, played today, was previously performed here under the direction of Jahja Ling's Yale Music School teacher, Otto Werner-Mueller, who had rehearsed this piece at Yale with the composer at his shoulder and Jahja Ling in the orchestra. Here is a great example of tradition handed down! I can attest to Aaron Copland being a fine teacher. I had the pleasure of hearing him when he served as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois in the later 1940s. Leonard Bernstein is a special case insofar as Jahja Ling is concerned. He was, in fact, one of his teachers, a mentor to the young conductor who certainly transmitted his tradition to our music director. Bernstein did have the benefit of a fine education, including a music education at Curtis. There is no doubt that his toughest conducting teacher at Curtis, Fritz Reiner, instilled the greatest European musical traditions into Bernstein (often quite forcefully, as was his wont, according to his complaining pupil), whom he considered to be his prize student regardless of some of his wayward conducting mannerisms. Ling's feelings about Bernstein approach something like worship, and in these concerts he is conducting a work that reflects Bernstein's religious feelings that complement Ling's own. In a sense, these
P2 4 PER FORMANCES MAGA ZINE
Hebraic Psalms of David, praising God, are like a Te Deum, although in a different language as well as in a different musical modality. Like Verdi's crashing chords in the Dies Irae of his Requiem following the soft, gentle opening, Bernstein uses more contemporary crashing chords to interrupt the sweet singing of the 23rd Psalm. So what if Verdi did not use rim shots to accent those chords! Bernstein's symphonies are framed by the strictures and structures of the old masters, and are shot through with echoes of Mahler. Ling is right. It really is necessary to study the old masters, incorporate their best ideas and concepts into one's own persona, and then go to work using these traditions and teaching them to the newcomers. How fortunate we all have been to have benefitted from Ling's abilities to extend his feelings, faith, appreciations and, frankly, love into so much of the music he has conducted here – for the developing orchestra and for us, the developing audience. ********** Samuel Barber's brilliant overture to Sheridan's play, A School for Scandal, has become one of his most popular works. It matches the playwright’s 1777 attempt to create a masterful comedy of manners, laced with a bit of ribaldry and racy dialogue. Its popularity has continued in this country since it was produced here soon after its first London publication. Interestingly, George and Martha Washington loved it. Ardent theatre-goers, much to the disapproval of some of the populace, they saw it several times, including one New York production during his presidency in May, 1791. Barber's overture was first given here under Robert Shaw during the 1953 season, and most recently, for its fourth hearing, under Jung-Ho Pak in 1999. Leonard Pennario was the soloist when this orchestra first played Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, one of his truly great masterworks, under John Barnett's baton, in 1959. John-Kimura Parker was the work's most recent soloist, in 2012, when Jahja Ling conducted its ninth presentation here. The beautiful, even moving, Pulitzer Prize-winning music Copland wrote for Martha Graham's ballet, Appalachian Spring, has become a true American classic, and as such it has been played by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra on 11 previous occasions. Murry Sidlin led its first performance here during the 1989-90 season, and the most recent performance was under the guest leadership of Otto-Werner Mueller in 2007. Bernstein's sometimes penitent, sometimes jazzy Chichester Psalms has become an audience favorite in San Diego since Robert Shaw led its initial outing here during the 1990-91 season. Jahja Ling led it here in the 2006-07 season in its most recent presentation. n
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