Program Notes: Mariinsky Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony

PROGRAM MIKHAIL GLINKA Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla Mariinsky Orchestra ALEXANDER BORODIN In the Steppes of Central Asia San Diego Symphony Orchestra

INTERMISSION

VALERY GERGIEV

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60: Leningrad Allegretto

Moderato - Poco allegretto

Wednesday, October 24 | 8PM

Adagio

MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA AND SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY

Mariinsky Orchestra San Diego Symphony Orchestra

Allegro non troppo

A Jacobs Masterworks Classical Special Concert

Mariinsky Orchestra San Diego Symphony Orchestra conductor Valery Gergiev The appearance of maestro Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, in concert with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is generously underwritten by a major gift from Jean and Gary Shekhter.

Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

The approximate running time for this program, including intermission, is two hours.

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PROGRAM NOTES | MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA AND SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY – OCTOBER 24

ABOUT THE ARTISTS VALERY GERGIEV is a vivid representative of the St. Petersburg conducting school. His debut at the Mariinsky (then Kirov) Theatre came in 1978 with Prokofiev's War and Peace. In 1988 Valery Gergiev was appointed Music Director of the Mariinsky Theatre, and in 1996 he became its artistic and general director.

With his arrival, it became a tradition to hold major festivals, marking various anniversaries of composers. Through Gergiev's efforts, the Mariinsky Theatre has revived Wagner's operas. The Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev has scaled new heights, assimilating not just opera and ballet scores, but also an expansive symphony music repertoire.

Under Gergiev's direction the Mariinsky Theatre has become a major theatre and concert complex. In 2006 the Concert Hall was opened, followed in 2013 by the theatre's second stage – the Mariinsky II. Since January 2016 the Mariinsky Theatre has had a branch in Vladivostok – the Primorsky Stage.

The Mariinsky label has released more than 30 acclaimed albums since 2009.

Valery Gergiev's international activities are no less intensive. He successfully collaborates with the world's great opera houses and has led world-renowned orchestras, such as World Orchestra for Peace (which he has directed since 1997), the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Paris, Vienna, New York and Los Angeles, the Symphony Orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and San Francisco, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam) and many other ensembles. From 1995 to 2008 Valery Gergiev was Principal Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (of which he remains an honorary conductor to this day), and from 2007 to 2015 of the London Symphony Orchestra. Since 2015 the maestro has headed the Munich Philharmonic.

Valery Gergiev is the founder and director of prestigious international festivals including the Stars of the White Nights (since 1993) and the Moscow Easter Festival (since 2002), among many others. Since 2011 he has directed the organizational committee of the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

Valery Gergiev's musical and public activities have brought him acclaimed awards such as the Hero of Labour (2013), the Order of Alexander Nevsky (2016), the Russian Federation Ministry of Defence Arts and Culture Award (2017) and prestigious State awards of Armenia, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, France and Japan. n

The MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA enjoys a long and distinguished history as one of the oldest musical institutions in Russia. Its history dates back to the first orchestra of the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera Orchestra, more than 200 years ago. Housed in St. Petersburg's famed Mariinsky Theatre (built in 1860), the orchestra now also performs in its superb 21st century Concert Hall (built in 2006) and its second opera house, Mariinsky II (built in 2013).

Following the orchestra’s "golden age" in the second half of the 19th century under the musical direction of Eduard Napravnik, many internationally famed musicians have conducted the orchestra, among them: Hans von Bülow, Felix Mottl, Felix Weingartner, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Otto Nikisch, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Willem Mengelberg, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter and Erich Kleiber.

Renamed the "Kirov" during the Soviet Era, the orchestra continued to maintain its high artistic standards under the leadership of Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov. The leadership of Valery Gergiev and the success of the orchestra's frequent tours have led to the reputation as what one journalist referred to as "the world's first global orchestra." This has enabled the orchestra to forge important relationships and appear in the world's greatest opera houses and theatres, among them The Metropolitan Opera, the Kennedy Center, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the San Francisco Opera, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Salzburg Festival and La Scala in Milan.

Since its U.S. debut in 1992, the orchestra has made 18 tours of North America, including a 2006 celebration of the complete Shostakovich symphonies, a cycle of stage works of Prokofiev in 2008 and marathon of all piano concertos with Daniil Trifonov, George Li, Alexander Toradze, Sergei Redkin and Sergei Babayan in February 2016. Other tour highlights have included major works of Hector Berlioz and a Centennial Mahler Cycle in Carnegie Hall in 2010. In October 2011 the Mariinsky Orchestra opened Carnegie Hall's 120th season with a cycle of Tchaikovsky symphonies which was also performed throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Concert Sponsor Spotlight

JEAN AND GARY SHEKHTER

The appearance of Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra is generously underwritten

by Jean and Gary Shekhter, who are long-time supporters of classical music and the arts in San Diego. The San Diego Symphony would like to extend its gratitude to the Shekhters for helping make this very special concert possible.

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Maestro Gergiev established the Mariinsky Label in 2009 which has since released more than 30 recordings to date, receiving critical acclaim in Europe, Asia and the U.S. n

ABOUT THE MUSIC Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla MIKHAIL GLINKA Born June 1, 1804, Novospasskoye Died February 15, 1857, Berlin This dazzling overture is all that lives on from Glinka’s opera Russlan and Ludmilla, first produced in St. Petersburg in 1842, when the composer was 38. Russlan and Ludmilla was inspired by the fairytale poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin.

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PROGRAM NOTES | MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA AND SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY – OCTOBER 24 Intrigued by Glinka’s plan to write an opera based on his poem, Pushkin had planned to supply the libretto but was killed in a duel before he could, and Glinka had to turn to others for help. The scenario was supplied by Glinka’s friend Konstantin Bakhturin “in a quarter of an hour while drunk,” and many others – the composer among them – had a hand in shaping the libretto. The result was not a unified and focused story but a loosely-connected sequence of fantastic episodes in which the heroic Russlan must continually rescue the beautiful Ludmilla, who is constantly being abducted and put under spells. All finally ends well for Russlan and Ludmilla, but the opera has never enjoyed much success.

with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness.” In this he was as good as his word: over the next four years 20 million Russians would be killed. Shostakovich heard the news that Saturday afternoon while on his way to a soccer double-header, and his life was transformed along with his nation’s. When his attempt to enlist in the army was rejected, he contributed to the war effort by writing patriotic songs and marches and joining the firefighting brigade at the Leningrad Conservatory. They did not have long to wait – the Germans began shelling Leningrad on September 1, and that siege, one of the most horrifying in history, would last almost three years and kill nearly a million residents of the city.

Its overture, however, has always been a favorite in concert halls. The exciting opening – with its virtuoso writing for violins – is drawn from the opera’s festive finale, while the lyrical second subject, first heard in the lower strings, is based on Russlan’s aria in the second act in which he dreams of Ludmilla.

The compact (five-minute) overture is in sonata form, and in its closing pages Glinka briefly introduces – in the trombones – music associated with the evil dwarf Chernomor before the overture ends triumphantly. n

Even before Nazi shells began to fall on the city, Shostakovich had set out on a vast musical project – on July 19 he began a symphony written in response to the invasion. It would be the longest of his 15 symphonies, the most famous…and the most notorious. He completed the huge first movement on August 29 as the German army approached, had the second done on September 17, and completed the third 12 days later, on the 29th.

By this time, Leningrad had been completely cut off, and Shostakovich and his wife and children were flown over enemy lines to Moscow on October 1. Along with many other Soviet artists, they were then evacuated to Kyubishev, 600 miles east of Moscow, and it was there that he completed his Seventh Symphony on December 27. A few weeks after the premiere, which took place in Kyubishev on March 5, 1942, Shostakovich called the war the struggle “between culture and barbarity, between light and darkness” and dedicated the Seventh Symphony “to our struggle with fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, and to my native city, Leningrad.”

In the Steppes of Central Asia ALEXANDER BORODIN Born November 12, 1833, St. Petersburg Died February 27, 1887, St. Petersburg In 1880 Czar Alexander II celebrated his Silver Jubilee, and 12 Russian composers were commissioned to write pieces for tableaux vivants depicting important events in his reign. Always interested in Russian subjects, Borodin composed what he called “an orchestral sketch” depicting a caravan of Asian merchants and Russian soldiers crossing the remote wilderness of central Russia. In the Steppes of Central Asia was a phenomenal success at its premiere on April 20, 1880, a performance conducted by Nikolai RimskyKorsakov. Over a century later it remains one of Borodin’s most popular works and one of the finest examples of musical scene-painting ever written.

In the Steppes of Central Asia opens very quietly – the violins’ harmonic E’s suggest the vast and lonely spaces of the steppes – and soon a quiet pizzicato ostinato depicts the steady plod of the hooves of the caravan in the distance. Borodin builds this piece on two themes: a Russian folk tune first heard in clarinet and horn and what Borodin called an “Oriental melody” first announced by english horn. Musically, In the Steppes takes the form of a long crescendo as the caravan approaches and passes and then a long decrescendo as it moves into the distance. The two themes are announced quietly, but as the caravan approaches, they grow louder and grander, and soon the caravan thunders past, merchants leading camels laden with goods and soldiers of the military escort riding on horseback. In an ingenious stroke – and in some very graceful counterpoint – Borodin now combines his two themes and presents them simultaneously. Gradually the caravan disappears over the horizon, and as the silvery sound of flute offers the Asian melody one final time, we are left alone in the vast spaces of Central Asia.

The year after he wrote In the Steppes of Central Asia, Borodin visited Weimar and showed the score of this music to the aging Franz Liszt, who liked the piece so much that he persuaded Borodin to make a piano arrangement of it.

In gratitude for that enthusiasm, Borodin dedicated In the Steppes of Central Asia to Liszt. n

Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60: Leningrad DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow On June 21, 1941, Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of Russia – and specified to his generals that it would “have to be conducted

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The Leningrad Symphony, as the Seventh inevitably became known, spans nearly 80 minutes. The massive opening movement is what we automatically think of at the mention of the Leningrad Symphony – it gives the symphony its distinctive character, as well as its notoriety. Shostakovich described the opening of the movement as a depiction “of the happy, peaceful life of people sure of themselves and their future. This is the simple, peaceful life lived before the war…” The powerful opening in C Major establishes a heroic character, while the violins’ lyric second subject and the exposition’s closing theme – imaginatively assigned to a solitary piccolo – offer fleeting glimpses of a peaceful life now gone forever. It is into this almost pastoral world that war suddenly intrudes, and here Shostakovich makes a striking – and controversial – choice. In place of the expected development of his opening material, invaders arrive, not as cataclysmic horror but as a bare presence on the most distant horizon. Over a faint snare drum tattoo (marked triple piano), strings pluck out a jaunty little tune, almost banal in its simplicity. The sting comes in its tail: its closing phrase is from Danilo’s “Da geh’ ich zu Maxim’s,” from Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, one of Hitler’s favorites. (Shostakovich could not have known of that association and doubtless incorporated the tag-end of the melody simply to give his invader theme a German flavor.) Over the incessant snare drum rhythm, this little tune repeats and repeats, growing louder as the enemy approaches and developing a swagger along the way. After 12 repetitions, this theme – now of steamroller-like proportions – is assaulted by a mighty “Russian”-sounding theme, and a noisy musical battle erupts.

The charge has always been that Shostakovich lifted the idea for this episode from Ravel’s Bolero, and while in a structural sense that may be accurate, the true musical father of this movement is Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, where music associated with another invader from Western Europe – Napoleon’s France, almost 120 years prior – is confronted in a musical battle by Russian music…and defeated. At the climax of the first movement Shostakovich reintroduces his heroic opening theme, and there follows what might be described as a “battered” recapitulation. Solo bassoon sings a long threnody on the violins’ second subject; what had sounded so peaceful half an hour before is now spare and grim. The movement concludes in near-silence as fragments of the invader theme lie shattered in the ditch.

Like the opening movements of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth and Tenth Symphonies, the first movement of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony is so complete a drama, so complete an emotional journey in itself, that it is difficult to know how to proceed in its aftermath. There is evidence that S AN DIEG O SYM P H O N Y O RC H ES T RA 2 0 1 8-1 9 S E A S ON O C TO B E R 20 1 8

PROGRAM NOTES | MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA AND SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY – OCTOBER 24 Shostakovich considered making this a one-movement symphony, but he settled for the traditional four-movement plan. The composer called the second movement “a lyrical respite” after the violence of the first and said that it recalls “pleasant events and past joys,” while the third “depicts the Joy of Life and the Worship of Nature.” The Moderato (poco Allegretto) is a scherzo in ternary form. Second violins announce a tart little dance, full of ironic turns, and the strident central episode, which moves into 3/8 time and C-sharp minor, rides along the piercing sound of solo woodwinds.

Shostakovich accompanies the return of his opening dance with some wonderful sounds, generated by two flutes and alto flute, which pulse quietly behind the dance.

The spare wind chorale that opens the Adagio alternates with a cadenza-like recitative for violins, and this in turn is followed by a lyric idea for flute. This last offers some of the most appealing music in the symphony, but it is rudely shouldered aside as the music accelerates into a raucous, troubled central section. Shostakovich recalls his opening material briefly before proceeding directly into the finale.

Shostakovich had originally planned to call the last movement “Victory,” and while he withdrew that title, he did establish the connection in a radio broadcast, calling the finale “the victory of light over darkness, wisdom over frenzy, lofty humanism over monstrous tyranny.” But while the first movement may have won a battle, final victory was by no means certain at this point in history. In fact, when Shostakovich began composing this finale – three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – the siege of Leningrad would continue for two more years, with untold misery still to come. The music begins in harmonic uncertainty and takes a firm direction only when the strings stride out purposefully with the movement’s main theme. This is another long movement – and a tense one. Shostakovich calls for ten extra brass players with parts of their own, and – despite a quiet central episode – the music often feels more tortured than triumphant. Even the heroic return of the symphony’s opening theme in the closing minutes does not dispel this tension, and Shostakovich wrenches the music into unequivocal C Major only for the final chord.

Written from the depths of war, this is a finale that celebrates the expectation of victory rather than its finality.

No other symphony in history has had the immediate impact that the Leningrad Symphony had. Its premiere was broadcast throughout Russia, and the Leningrad premiere – on August 9, 1942, in the midst of the siege – was so important to the beleaguered city that its only surviving orchestra (a radio orchestra of barely 50 players) was augmented by players pulled from military units, with some players even called back from the trenches at the front to participate. The score was microfilmed, driven to Teheran, then flown to Cairo and on to the West. Sir Henry Wood led the British premiere on June 29, and Arturo Toscanini led the NBC Symphony in the American premiere on July 19, which was broadcast nationally. That same week, Shostakovich appeared on the cover of Time magazine, improbably wearing the hat of the Leningrad Conservatory’s fire brigade. The symphony was performed over 60 times in its first season, unheard of for any symphony, before or since; this music had become the cultural symbol of the struggle against Hitler and the Nazis.

Inevitably, a reaction set in. English critic Ernest Newman contributed a memorable barb, saying that if one “wished to locate this symphony on the musical map, he should look along the seventieth degree of longitude and the last degree of platitude,” and Béla Bartók – perhaps unwisely – sneered at the invader theme in his Concerto for Orchestra. After its excessive popularity, the Leningrad Symphony virtually dropped out of sight in the years after the war.

What sense are we to make of the Shostakovich Seventh Symphony now, over 70 years after its premiere? The conditions that gave rise to its creation have long since faded into history, and this symphony – perhaps too loud, too long and too obvious – might have been expected to vanish along with them. Yet the Leningrad Symphony has re-established itself to some degree over the last 20 years (there are, remarkably, 15 performances available on

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compact disc), and it continues to engage audiences. Perhaps some of this is simple nostalgia, with its power – like a faded snapshot or a uniform found in a closet – to evoke another era. But some of its endurance in the concert hall comes directly from the passion and heroism of the music itself. Carl Sandburg said that this symphony was “written in the heart’s blood,” and while the Leningrad Symphony’s rawness and immediacy may be the source of some of its problems, they are also the source of its strength. Sentiments that sound tinny and jingoistic during moments of ease can take on renewed meaning during times of national emergency. In its stark power, broad strokes and un-conflicted emotions, Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony speaks of a less complicated time, and it truly is music written “in the heart’s blood.” n - Program notes by Eric Bromberger

ON THE LENINGRAD SYMPHONY… DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH scored one of the greatest public triumphs of his life with his wartime Seventh (aka Leningrad) Symphony. The first three movements were written in Leningrad in the late summer of 1941 as the Nazi armies encircled the city. After the composer and his family were evacuated by air to Kuibyshev, he completed the finale. The first performance in Kuibyshev in early 1942 was a patriotic triumph. Within weeks a microfilm of the work was flown out through Teheran to the other allies and there swiftly followed performances in the UK and the USA, which achieved far more than the usual notice allotted to a piece of orchestral music. This symphony had become a cause celèbre, part of the Allies’ propaganda effort directed towards encouraging a sense of shared suffering and the messianic necessity of removing, defeating and destroying the evil of the Axis powers. Thanks to all this publicity, Shostakovich became a household name in many countries even among those who had never been to an orchestral concert in their lives.

Probably the most famous performance of this symphony took place on 9th August 1942 within the besieged city to which the piece was dedicated. The conductor Karl Eliasburg conducted what remained of the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic in a concert staged as an idealistic act of defiance against German aggression and barbarism.

Having been so praised to the skies, this work, which is vast and bold in its neo-Mahlerian aspirations (it lasts approximately 80 minutes in performance), was fiercely, and perhaps inevitably, attacked once the war was over. Many commentators accused it of being banal, vulgar, over-inflated, crudely patriotic and no better than cheap film-music. It was predicted that it would soon disappear from concert halls. That prediction has not been fulfilled. While certainly not to everyone’s taste, this music has turned out to be far more powerful even than its initial popular success would have suggested. Partly this is because of Shostakovich’s magnificently energetic sense of drama – like that of a great film director – and partly it is because of the music’s disturbing ambiguity. Throughout this symphony there is a genuinely powerful and profound sense of the unknown which drives the music forwards, making it quite impossible to dismiss as simply a vivid piece of one-dimensional, occasional patriotism. Far from it. Audiences all over the world still find this work disturbing and moving. n - Gerard McBurney, San Diego Symphony Creative Consultant

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