Program Notes: A Hero's Life

PROGRAM JOHN STAFFORD SMITH Arr. H. W. Davis "The Star-Spangled Banner"

RICHARD WAGNER Prelude to Die Meistersinger [Friday only] FRANZ LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major Adagio sostenuto assai - Allegro agitato assai Allegro moderato Allegro deciso - Marziale un poco meno allegro Allegro animato EDO DE WAART

Friday, October 6, 2017 | 8:00PM Saturday, October 7, 2017 | 8:30PM

A HERO'S LIFE

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

INTERMISSION RICHARD STRAUSS Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40

Jacobs Masterwork Series

conductor Edo de Waart piano Jean-Yves Thibaudet This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Joan & Irwin Jacobs and Dorothea Laub.

Performances at The Jacobs Music Center Copley Symphony Hall

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

returned to Holland where he was appointed Assistant

Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra,

Artistic Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.

EDO DE WAART also holds the positions of Conductor Laureate

Edo de Waart has received a number of awards for his musical

of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, having concluded his tenure at the latter as Music Director at the end of the 2016-17 season.

In addition to his existing posts, he was previously Music Director

Conductor to Bernard Haitink at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1973 he was appointed Chief Conductor and

achievements, including becoming a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion and an Honorary Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. n

of the San Francisco Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and he was Chief Conductor of De Nederlandse Opera.

The 2017-18 season sees his annual appearance with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra where he conducts a programme of Bernstein and Brahms, as well as his return to the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra who he joins for a German tour in May 2018. He opens the season for the San Diego Symphony with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and returns to the Orchestra for two more weekends later in the season, and also conducts the Atlanta Symphony. Other regular guest conducting appearances include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. A renowned orchestral trainer, he has a number of projects with talented young players at the Juilliard and Colburn Schools, which follows on from his summer visit to the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.

As an opera conductor, Mr. de Waart has enjoyed success in a large and varied repertoire in many of the world’s greatest opera houses. He has conducted at Bayreuth, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Opéra Bastille, Santa Fe Opera and The Metropolitan Opera. As Music Director in

For more than three decades, JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET has performed world-wide, recorded more than 50 albums and built a reputation as one of today’s finest pianists. He plays a range of solo, chamber and orchestral repertoire – from Beethoven through Liszt, Grieg and Saint-Saëns; to Khachaturian and Gershwin; and to contemporary composers Qigang Chen and James MacMillan. From the very start of his career, he delighted in music beyond the standard repertoire, from jazz to opera, which he transcribed himself to play on the piano. His profound professional friendships crisscross the globe and have led to spontaneous and fruitful collaborations in film, fashion and visual art.

This season takes Mr. Thibaudet to 14 countries, including extensive concerts in Asia with the Singapore, NHK and Guangzhou symphony orchestras and the Malaysian, Hong Kong and China philharmonics. As Artist-in-Residence at the Boston

Milwaukee, Antwerp and Hong Kong in an attempt bring the operatic canon to broader audiences where stage limitations prevent performances, he has often conducted semi-staged and operas in concert performances. He still continues this mission with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in the

Concert Sponsor Spotlight

DOROTHEA LAUB

Concertgebouw Amsterdam matinee series.

Mr. de Waart’s extensive catalogue encompasses releases for Philips, Virgin, EMI, Telarc and RCA. Recent recordings include Henderickx Symphony No.1 and Oboe Concerto, Mahler’s Symphony No.1 and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, both with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.

Beginning his career as an Assistant Conductor to Leonard

DOROTHEA LAUB joined the Symphony Stars in the 1980’s and she has been a lifelong supporter of the symphony orchestras in every town she lived in for over 60 years.

Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic, Mr. de Waart then

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A HERO'S LIFE – OCTOBER 6 & 7 | PROGRAM NOTES Symphony Orchestra, he plays the Bach Triple Concerto with

Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s recording catalogue of more than 50

Thomas Adès and Kirill Gerstein, Ravel, chamber music with

albums has received two Grammy® nominations, the Preis der

symphony musicians and Bernstein's Age of Anxiety symphony

Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Diapason d’Or, the Choc du

both in Boston and at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Thibaudet is considered

Monde de la Musique, the Edison Prize as well as Gramophone

one of the premiere interpreters of the solo part for this

and Echo awards. He was the soloist on the Oscar®-winning

symphony, which he will also perform with the Atlanta and

and critically acclaimed film Atonement, as well as Pride and

National symphony orchestras; the San Francisco and Houston

Prejudice, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Wakefield. His

symphonies; the China Philharmonic and the Philadelphia

concert wardrobe is designed by Vivienne Westwood. In 2010 the

Orchestra at home and on tour in Germany, Austria and Israel,

Hollywood Bowl honored Thibaudet for his musical achievements

throughout Bernstein's centennial season.

by inducting him into its Hall of Fame. Previously a Chevalier of

In 2017-18 the Colburn School extends Thibaudet's Artist-inResidency an additional three years and has announced the

the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Thibaudet was awarded the title Officier by the French Ministry of Culture in 2012. n

Jean-Yves Thibaudet Scholarships to provide aid for Music Academy students, whom Thibaudet will select for the meritbased awards, regardless of their instrument.

ABOUT THE MUSIC Prelude to Die Meistersinger RICHARD WAGNER Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig Died February 13, 1883, Venice Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is Wagner’s only mature comic opera, and – like all great comedy – it is a story full of wisdom as well as humor. The opera tells of the competition held in sixteenth-century Nuremburg by a medieval singing guild – the Meistersingers – to admit new members; the winner of that competition will wed the beautiful Eva, daughter of the local goldsmith. Aided by the revered Hans Sachs, the young knight Walther von Stolzing defeats the scheming Sixtus Beckmesser and wins Eva. But with its complex sub-plots, the theme of renunciation by the aging Sachs, its belief in artistic integrity, and its ingenious opposition of different kinds of

the small village of Biebrich, on the Rhine near Mainz, and began work. Usually a composer writes the opera first, then goes back and fashions the overture from themes that may have developed during its composition. But Wagner wrote the Prelude first, and it is as if the opera sprang to life as he composed its prelude. Wagner was notoriously adept at shaping the details of his own past for maximum dramatic effect, but he later recalled: One evening from the balcony of my house as I watched a fine sunset light up in glory the splendid view of “golden” Mainz and the majestically flowing Rhine, the Prelude to my Meistersinger suddenly sprang up clearly in my mind...and I proceeded to draft the Prelude precisely as it appears today in the score, that is, setting forth very definitely the main motives of the whole drama.

Wagner composed the Prelude between April and June 1862 and conducted its performance on November 1 of that year with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The composition of the entire opera took five more years, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was

music, the opera is much more than a simple love story, and Sachs’

premiered in Munich on June 21, 1868.

final appeal for a “pure German art” made the opera vastly popular

As Wagner noted, the Prelude sprang to life from themes that would

during a period of growing nationalism and Bismarck’s unification of Germany.

Die Meistersinger took shape over a very long time. Wagner had the first ideas for the opera in 1845, shortly after the premiere of Tannhäuser, and he began to sketch a libretto. But the opera was delayed by his composition of Lohengrin, the Ring cycle and Tristan und Isolde as well as by his frequent revision of the libretto. Not until 1862, 17 years after his first ideas for the opera, did Wagner begin work on Die Meistersinger. That spring, he took rooms in

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later appear in the opera. Heard immediately in the full orchestra is the theme of the Meistersingers themselves, a powerful and grand opening in C Major, and this is quickly followed by a flowing flute melody associated with Walther’s wakening love. We then hear the most famous music from the opera, the march of the Meistersingers. Based on an authentic melody of the sixteenthcentury Meistersingers, this is sometimes known as the “banner” theme because it is to this music that the Meistersingers march in beneath their banner in Act III. The subsequent lyric subject, announced by the violins, is associated with the love of Walther for

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A HERO'S LIFE – OCTOBER 6 & 7 | PROGRAM NOTES Eva, and it will reach its triumphant re-statement as part of the Prize

early critic, William Apthorp of the Boston Evening Transcript, was so

Song sung by the triumphant Walther. There are several subordinate

struck by Liszt’s method and sense of form in this concerto that he

ideas in the Prelude, and Wagner weaves his themes together with

described it glibly (but accurately) as “The life and adventures of

extraordinary contrapuntal skill. Particularly striking is a passage

a melody.”

near the end where the Meistersingers theme, the march theme, and Walther’s love-theme are sounded simultaneously; rather than feeling pedantic and forced, the passage unfolds with masterful ease.

To serve as the basis for such an extended musical adventure, a melody must be remarkable, and the impressive thing about Liszt’s basic theme is that it at first seems so unremarkable. This subdued little tune is sung at the very beginning by a handful of

In the opera, the Prelude flows directly into Act I, where – in the

woodwinds, and Liszt specifies that it should be dolce, soave. (The

church of St. Katharine – the smitten Walther is watching Eva from

Italian soave does not translate as our “suave” but “gentle, sweet.”)

a distance as a chorus sings. For performances in the concert hall,

The piano does not make a grand entrance but slips in almost

Wagner gave the Prelude a rousing conclusion in C Major. n

unnoticed, touching on that opening melody only as part of a series of arpeggios. But from this unassuming opening, Liszt builds

a remarkable and varied structure, and one of the pleasures of this music lies in following the ingenious ways this simple opening

Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major FRANZ LISZT Born October 22, 1811, Raiding, Hungary Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth Both of Liszt’s piano concertos took a very long time to complete.

He first sketched the music that would become his Piano Concerto No. 2 in September 1839, just as he turned 28. But he then shelved these sketches as he resumed the life of a traveling virtuoso and did not return to them until 1849, when he was music director in Weimar. Even then, when he was devoting much of his time to composition, this concerto took shape slowly. He revised it several times over the next twelve years, finally completing it in 1861, 22 years after he had made his first sketches. The concerto was first performed on January 7, 1857, on a pension fund concert to benefit

is transformed across the concerto’s 20-minute span. It can be stamped out by full orchestra one moment, but seconds later it has become a lyric cello solo, and presently it becomes something else. Liszt does employ some secondary material, and this also goes through similar transformation, all woven into the evolution of the opening idea.

The concerto drives to a stirring climax when Liszt transforms his theme into a powerful military march that blazes tautly to life.

But this is not the final destination. Instead, the theme continues to evolve, and Liszt spins a magical, lyric transformation he marks appassionato before this imaginative, exciting music rushes to its resounding close. n

Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40

taken by one of his students, Hans von Bronsart, and Liszt, seriously

RICHARD STRAUSS Born June 11, 1864, Munich Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

ill at that time with a leg infection, almost had to drag himself into

In the summer of 1898, 34-year-old Richard Strauss set to work on

the members of the Weimar Orchestra. Curiously, Liszt – the greatest pianist on the planet – was not the soloist. That part was

the hall to conduct the performance.

The most striking feature of this concerto is that it is in only one movement. Gone completely is the three-movement sonata-form structure of the concerto as it had been refined by Mozart and Beethoven. Liszt respected those concertos and performed them, but he also believed that a composer should not repeat the past (as he felt Brahms was trying to do). Instead, Liszt evolved a new form – though one that had its roots in the music of Schubert – in

what would be his longest tone poem to date, Ein Heldenleben, or A Hero’s Life – the musical depiction of the life and struggles of an unnamed hero. In a letter to a friend that summer, Strauss offered a rather disingenuous explanation of why he had chosen this topic: “Beethoven’s Eroica is so little beloved of our conductors, and is on this account now only rarely performed that to fulfill a pressing need I am composing a largeish tone poem entitled Heldenleben, admittedly without a funeral march, but yet in E-flat, with lots of

which one fundamental theme becomes the basis for an entire

horns, which are always a yardstick of heroism.”

work. That theme is transformed across the span of the work,

But the work that was completed that December and premiered

reappearing in completely different guises and for different expressive purposes. Some have suggested that this music is not really a piano concerto at all but instead a symphonic poem in which the piano has a prominent part; Liszt himself referred to it as a Concerto symphonique at the 1857 premiere, only settling on the more traditional title when the music was published in 1863. One

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the following March was far indeed from the spirit of the Eroica, and Strauss was probably right to note that the only thing the two pieces have in common is the same key, E-flat Major. Even if it was originally intended as a tribute to Napoleon, the Eroica remains a rather abstract representation of heroism, But Strauss sets out to tell the story of his hero in microscopic detail. Strauss is reported

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A HERO'S LIFE – OCTOBER 6 & 7 | PROGRAM NOTES to have claimed that he could set a glass of beer to music, and in Ein Heldenleben he paints detailed portraits of his hero, the hero’s snarling adversaries, a coquettish lover, a terrific battle in which his enemies are chased off the field and the hero’s reward of a contemplative if not entirely serene retirement. Scored for massive orchestra and shaped by Strauss’ ingenious transformation of themes across its 40-minute span, Ein Heldenleben remains – a century after its composition – a showpiece for virtuoso orchestra.

entrance on the hero’s theme, now back in the original E-flat Major.

There follows the most controversial section of Ein Heldenleben.

A recounting of the hero’s “works of peace,” it takes the form of quotations from Strauss’ own music, and critics have been quick (perhaps too quick) to interpret Ein Heldenleben as a vehicle for Strauss’ ego. Listeners will recognize quotations from Don Juan, Don Quixote, Macbeth, Guntram, Till Eulenspiegel, the song “Traum durch die Dämmerung” and others. Often missed in the

Ein Heldenleben has one of the greatest openings in all of music.

rush to scold Strauss for what appears to be naked egotism is the

From the depths of the orchestra, Strauss introduces his hero with

skill with which he weaves these themes together in some most

a long, sweeping theme whose powerful stride leaps up across three

graceful counterpoint; he may be calling attention to his own

octaves, changing from the dark colors of lower strings and horns

accomplishments, but he does it so deftly as to (almost)

to the silvery sound of massed violins as it climbs. Here is a man

disarm criticism.

of force and idealism, and the arc of his music is always upward.

Strauss’ hero constantly strives toward something higher, and the hero’s music is riding a shaft of incandescent energy when it suddenly vanishes in mid-air.

If the battle music runs on a little too long and too noisily and if the hero’s works of peace can seem self-indulgent, Strauss rewards our patience in the final section, a portrait of the hero in old age. He clearly suffers from bad dreams (memories of his enemies pop up

Out of that silence comes something completely different. Here

from time to time to disturb his reveries), but the final moments

are the hero’s enemies, and if the hero’s music is always arcing

of Ein Heldenleben bring serenity, beauty and repose. The enemies

higher, the music of his foes is twisted and gnarled, depicted by

have been banished, and now the themes of the hero and his love

ugly, carping solo woodwinds, each of whom seems to have a

return, at this stage in their lives transformed far from their initial

particularly nasty character: Strauss marks individual entrances

hard-edged appearance. Borne along by some wonderful writing for

“very sharp and spiky” and “jarring.” At early performances of Ein

solo violin and solo horn, the hero at last finds peace. At the close,

Heldenleben, outraged music critics felt that Strauss was depicting

a noble chord for winds (in pure E-flat Major) swells to a mighty

them in his portrait of the hero’s enemies…and they may well have

climax, then falls away to silence as the hero completes

been right. The hero’s theme grows somber as he muses on these

his journey. n

adversaries, but before he can face them he is interrupted by the other important figure in this music-drama, his lover. The hero in this

-Program notes by Eric Bromberger

music may be a powerful figure, but his companion is a formidable woman in her own right. Strauss confessed that she was modeled on his own wife: “She is very complex, very feminine, a little perverse, a little coquettish, never like herself, at every minute different from how she had been the moment before.” Here she is portrayed by the solo violin, and as he paints her mercurial portrait, Strauss gives the concertmaster some of the most difficult music ever written for that instrument. Individual passages are marked “happy,” “flippant,” “tender,” “insolent,” “lovable” and “scolding” (among others) before the union is consummated in soaring G-flat Major love music that intertwines the themes of the hero and his love.

Their happiness is brief. Distant trumpets pierce the warm calm of the love scene, calling the hero to battle, where finally he must face his adversaries. Over rattling drums, his enemies attack, their jagged trumpet call a wonderful transformation of the first theme from the adversaries’ section. The battle rages at great length above the clash of spears and glint of swords, and through the smoke of the battlefield Strauss deftly weaves together the hero’s theme, the adversaries’ theme and the love music. Finally the hero triumphs and chases his enemies away (their retreat is a flurry of descending sixteenth-notes from the woodwinds), and he makes a magnificent

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A HERO'S LIFE – OCTOBER 6 & 7 | PROGRAM NOTES Performance History

short-lived, lasting only three trial winter seasons. The tenth, most recent performance here of the great Wagner overture

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist Appropriately, the season opens with three favorites that have

was under the baton of Peter Oundjian in the 2008-09 season.

not been heard here in recent years. The Prelude to Wagner's

Claudio Arrau was the soloist when the orchestra first

Die Meistersinger, a melodic and contrapuntal gem, was first

programmed the Liszt Second Piano Concerto, in the summer

played by the San Diego Symphony in the final Balboa Park

of 1961, and Earl Bernard Murray conducted. Its most recent,

concert of summer, 1941, after which the park was closed to

eighth outing here was in the 2011-12 season, when Stephen

civilian activities by the wartime Navy Department. Nicolai

Hough was the soloist and Jahja Ling conducted. Earl Murray

Sokoloff led that performance. Fabien Sevitzky conducted the

also conducted the San Diego Symphony's initial performance

renewed, post-war orchestra's next performance of the piece

of the great tone poem by Richard Strauss, Ein Heldenleben, in

in 1950, and Leslie Hodge conducted it with the San Diego

the 1962-63 season. All told, it has been performed at these

Philharmonic the following year. That orchestra, composed

concerts four times, most recently when it was led by Jahja

mainly of San Diego Symphony players with a few ringers, was

Ling in the 2010-11 season. n

Artur Rodzinski

Desire Defauw

Leopold Stokowski

THE MUSIC DIRECTOR SEARCH – PART I

Pads continue trying their best to build and field a competent team,

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist San Diego Symphony Orchestra

a decade and a half before, has already built and developed a

but rebuilding is definitely not an issue afflicting the San Diego Symphony. A conductor search is not indicative, in our case (thank goodness!), of difficult times.

Instead, our now-retired music director, who had been selected superb “team” at the Jacobs Music Center, consisting of the finest musicians from the finest conservatories and some of the finest

Is anyone in town not aware of the search the Symphony is making

other orchestras, all of whom came aboard after prevailing in hard,

for a new music director? Even at lovely Petco Park early this past

very competitive auditions. They have filled our ranks with the

summer, when my friend and I were comfortably seated for a ball

highest levels of professionalism and virtuosity, and some have

game, he turned to me and asked how the search is progressing, as

even become section leaders comparable to many in the finest of

if I knew. He made a remark to the effect that we at the Symphony

American orchestras. That music director, Jahja Ling, came to us with

must be in the same rebuilding bin as the Padres this season. I was

a reputation not only as a fine conductor in Cleveland and in Florida,

compelled to point out to him that there was no comparison: the

but also as a welcomed guest conductor on numerous podiums. Even

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