Program Notes: Beethoven Symphony No. 7

PROGRAM MICHAEL IPPOLITO Nocturne EDVARD GRIEG Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16

Allegro molto moderato

Adagio

Allegro moderato molto e marcato

Joyce Yang, piano

INTERMISSION EDO DE WAART

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

Saturday, October 6 | 8PM Sunday, October 7 | 2PM

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 7

Poco sostenuto - Vivace

Allegretto Presto Allegro con brio

A Jacobs Masterworks Concert

conductor Edo de Waart piano Joyce Yang This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Penny and Louis Rosso.

The approximate running time for this concert, including All performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

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intermission, is one hour and fifty minutes.

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PROGRAM NOTES | BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 7 – OCTOBER 6 & 7

ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, EDO DE WAART also holds the positions of Conductor Laureate of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to his existing posts, he was previously Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of De Nederlandse Opera.

The 2018-19 season will see Mr. de Waart conduct his former orchestras, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra and Hong Kong and Rotterdam philharmonic orchestras, and make his annual appearance with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. He will conduct San Diego Symphony Orchestra’s opening two weeks where he will be joined by Lang Lang for a gala performance, and return later in the season with Joélle Harvey. He will also conduct the Houston and Kansas City symphony orchestras as well as return to NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Other guest conducting appearances this season include Finnish Radio and Iceland symphony orchestras and Hangzhou Philharmonic, as part of a season long Mahler cycle.

As an opera conductor, 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 Milwaukee, Antwerp and Hong Kong, in an attempt bring the operatic canon to broader audiences where stage limitations prevent performances, he has often conducted semistaged and operas in concert performances. He continues this mission in 2018-19 with both Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (The Flying Dutchman) and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (Die Walküre).

A renowned orchestral trainer, he has been involved with projects working with talented young players at the Juilliard and Colburn Schools, and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.

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

where he was appointed Assistant Conductor to Bernard Haitink at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1973 he was appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.

Edo de Waart has received a number of awards for his musical achievements, including becoming a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands 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

The San Diego Symphony is pleased to present a

SEASON OPENING RESIDENCY OF PIANIST JOYCE YANG OCTOBER 5 – 14, 2018

RESIDENCY OVERVIEW OCTOBER 5

Piano Masterclass with Joyce Yang with San Diego State University and Point Loma Nazarene University students OCTOBER 6 & 7

Jacobs Masterworks Opening Weekend Edo de Waart, conductor; Joyce Yang, piano GRIEG: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 OCTOBER 9

Schuman and Beethoven A Chamber Music Concert

Concert Sponsor Spotlight

PENNY AND LOUIS ROSSO

We moved to San Diego from Newport Beach six years ago and have been delighted to become involved with the Symphony. We feel fortunate to have access to this fine group of musicians and staff.

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Joyce Yang, piano C. SCHUMANN: Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann BEETHOVEN: Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70 No. 1: Ghost R. SCHUMANN: Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47 OCTOBER 12 & 14

Jacobs Masterworks Second Weekend Edo de Waart, conductor; Joyce Yang, piano RACHMANINOFF: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43

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PROGRAM NOTES | BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 7 – OCTOBER 6 & 7

ABOUT THE ARTIST Pianist JOYCE YANG came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she also took home the awards for Best Performance of Chamber Music and of a New Work. A Steinway artist, in 2010 she received an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

In the last decade, Ms. Yang has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), showcasing her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians through more than 1,000 debuts and re-engagements. She earned her first Grammy® nomination (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance) for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn & Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich. (“One can only sit in misty-eyed amazement at their insightful flair and spontaneity.” – The Strad) She has become a staple of the summer festival circuit with frequent appearances on the programs of the Aspen Summer Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest and the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

Ms. Yang has performed with New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and BBC Philharmonic, among many others, working with such distinguished conductors as James Conlon, Edo de Waart, Manfred Honeck, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin and Jaap van Zweden. She has appeared in recital at New York’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, Washington’s Kennedy Center, Chicago’s Symphony Hall and Zurich’s Tonhalle.

In 2018-19 Ms. Yang has focused on promoting creative ways to introduce classical music to new audiences. She will serve as the Guest Artistic Director for the Laguna Beach Music Festival in California, curating concerts that explore the “art-inspires-art” concept – highlighting the relationship between music and dance while simultaneously curating outreach activities to young students. Ms. Yang continues her unique collaboration with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet with performances of Half/Cut/Split – a “witty, brilliant exploration of Robert Schumann’s Carnaval” (The Santa Fe New Mexican) choreographed by Jorma Elo – a marriage between music and dance to illuminate the ingenuity of Schumann’s musical language. The group will tour in Aspen, Santa Fe, Dallas, Denver, Scottsdale and New York.

Also in 2018-19, Ms. Yang will share her versatile repertoire, performing solo recitals and performing 12 different piano concertos all throughout North America. Yang will reunite with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Edo de Waart for five concerts in New Zealand, following up a successful 2017 collaboration in which Yang displayed “fabulous lyricism” and “assured technique” (Otago Daily Times).

In the 2017-18 season Ms. Yang returned to the Baltimore Symphony doing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She had her first collaboration with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet on a new work for dancers and

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solo piano choreographed by Jorma Elo. Ms. Yang also appeared with many other U.S. orchestras including, among others, those of Santa Rosa, Rochester, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and Vancouver.

She once again collaborated with the Alexander String Quartet, giving performances of works by Schumann and Brahms in California and New York.

Born in Seoul, Korea, in 1986, Joyce Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at age four. In 1997 she moved to the United States to study in the pre-college division of The Juilliard School.

After winning The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just twelve years old. Ms. Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Cliburn Competition. n

ABOUT THE MUSIC Nocturne MICHAEL IPPOLITO Born 1985, Tampa, Florida Michael Ippolito grew up in Florida, where he learned to play the cello as a boy. He also began composing while still a boy, and this led him to the Cincinnati College – Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Joel Hoffman and Michael Friday, and eventually to Juilliard, where he studied with John Corigliano. Ippolito has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles (including four string quartets), wind ensembles, keyboard and voice, and his music has been performed by such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra and the Juilliard Orchestra. Ippolito, who has served as a composer fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, currently teaches composition at Texas State University.

Ippolito’s Nocturne was premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra on February 27, 2012, under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky. On his website, the composer has furnished a program note: My Nocturne was originally inspired by Joan Miro’s 1940 painting of the same name. I was first drawn to the pure visual appeal of Miro’s fantastical figures and swirling lines, but I was also intrigued by the idea of a “nocturne” with so much energy and whimsy. As I thought about the tension between the title and the image, the other approaches to the nocturne came to my mind – from the Whistler paintings and the dreamy world of Chopin and Field that inspired him, to the colorful and diverse Debussy pieces, to the creaking and sliding “night music” of Bartók. In the end, my piece is about the different connotations of the title as much as it is about an imagined nocturnal scene.

Nocturne is in three large sections. The opening evokes a hazy world, with allusions to familiar nocturnal imagery floating in and out of focus. The middle section is a wild scherzo inspired by Miro’s bizarre nocturne. At the end, the music from the opening section returns, with a brief nod to Chopin before the music evaporates to nothing.

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PROGRAM NOTES | BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 7 – OCTOBER 6 & 7 The original version of this piece was scored for flute, violin and piano, written in 2010. The version for orchestra was completed almost a year later.

-Michael Ippolito n

Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 EDVARD GRIEG Born June 15, 1843, Bergen, Norway Died September 4, 1907, Bergen In June 1867, Edvard Grieg – a struggling 24-year-old composer – married his first cousin, Nina Hagerup, a soprano. It would be a long and happy marriage, and the following April the couple had their only child, a daughter they named Alexandra. That summer, the Griegs wished to take a break from the busy musical life of Norway, and they went to Denmark, where they hoped the milder climate would benefit the composer’s often frail health. They rented a two-room garden cottage in the village of Søllerød, a few miles outside Copenhagen, and there – in June 1868 – Grieg began his Piano Concerto in A minor. He completed the score early the following year, and Edmund Neupert gave the first performance in Copenhagen on April 3, 1869. The concerto was a great success from that moment and was soon published, but Grieg continued to revise it across the rest of his life: he made the final revisions in 1907, only a few months before his death.

Several years after the premiere, the Griegs traveled to Rome, where they visited Franz Liszt in his villa. Liszt sat down at his piano and sight-read this difficult concerto from Grieg’s manuscript. Grieg reported that while Liszt played the first movement too fast, his playing of the cadenza was magnificent, and the older master was so taken with the music at one point that he got up and strolled away from the piano with his arms upraised, “literally roaring out the theme.” Best of all, Liszt recognized how Grieg had amended one of the principal themes of the finale when it comes back for a triumphant reappearance at the end, and he shouted out: “G-natural! G-natural! Not G-sharp! Splendid!” Liszt went back and played that ending one more time, then told Grieg: “Keep on, I tell you. You have what is needed, and don’t let them frighten you.”

Liszt’s judgment was sound: the Grieg Piano Concerto has become one of the most popular ever written. Its combination of good tunes alternating with stormy, dramatic gestures, all of it stitched together with some brilliant writing for piano, has made it almost irresistible to audiences. To some extent, this music has become a victim of its own success: by the middle of the last century it had become almost too popular, and over the last generation or so it has virtually disappeared from the concert hall. Which makes a fresh performance all the more welcome.

Grieg greatly admired the music of Robert Schumann, and the similarity between the beginnings of their respective piano concertos is striking: each opens with a great orchestral chord followed by a brilliant passage for the solo piano that eases gently into the movement’s main theme. Grieg makes his opening even more dramatic by beginning with a long timpani roll: that roll flares up like a peal of thunder, then the piano’s entrance flashes

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downward like a streak of lightning. The movement’s march-like main theme, shared on its first appearance by winds and strings, is only the first of many attractive ideas; one observer has counted seven different themes in this movement, and these range from a melting lyricism to heaven-storming violence. That cadenza that Liszt sight-read so well is particularly effective; though it begins quietly, Grieg soon unleashes great torrents of sound from hammered octaves and brilliant runs. It is altogether typical of this movement that Grieg should introduce a new theme after the cadenza.

The mood changes completely in the Adagio. Grieg mutes the strings here and moves to the key of D-flat Major, which feels soft and warm after the powerful opening movement. A long orchestral introduction leads to the entrance of the piano, which sounds utterly fresh after the dark, muted strings. But this entrance is deceiving, for soon the piano part turns dramatic and drives to its own climax; the music subsides and continues without a break into the finale, marked Allegro marcato. After an opening flourish, the piano introduces the main theme, a dancing 2/4 idea that sounds as if it must have its roots in Norwegian folk music. Once again, this movement is built on a wealth of ideas, and at the coda Grieg moves into A Major and ingeniously recasts his main theme in 3/4. n

Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna Beethoven turned 40 in December 1810. 40 can be a difficult age for anyone, but for Beethoven things were going very well. True, his hearing had deteriorated to the point where he was virtually deaf, but he was still riding that white-hot explosion of creativity that has become known, for better or worse, as his “Heroic Style.” Over the decade-long span of that style (1803-13) Beethoven essentially re-imagined music and its possibilities. The works that crystalized the Heroic Style – the Eroica Symphony and the Fifth Symphony – unleased a level of violence and darkness previously unknown in music (forces that Beethoven’s biographer Maynard Solomon has described as “hostile energy”) and then triumphed over them. In these violent symphonies, music became not a matter of polite discourse but of conflict, struggle and resolution.

In the fall of 1811, Beethoven began a new symphony – it would be his Seventh – and it would differ sharply from those two famous predecessors. Gone is the sense of cataclysmic struggle and hard-won victory that had driven those earlier symphonies. There are no battles fought and won in the Seventh Symphony – instead, this music is infused from its first instant with a mood of pure celebration. Such a spirit has inevitably produced a number of interpretations as to what this symphony is “about”: Berlioz heard a peasants’ dance in it, Wagner called it “the apotheosis of the dance,” and more recently Maynard Solomon has suggested that the Seventh is the musical representation of a festival, a brief moment of pure spiritual liberation.

But it may be safest to leave the issue of “meaning” aside and instead listen to the Seventh simply as music. There had never

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PROGRAM NOTES | BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 7 – OCTOBER 6 & 7 been music like this before, nor has there been since – Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony contains more energy than any other piece of music ever written. Much has been made (correctly) of Beethoven’s ability to transform small bits of theme into massive symphonic structures, but in the Seventh he begins not so much with theme as with rhythm: he builds the entire symphony from what are almost scraps of rhythm – tiny figures that seem unpromising, even uninteresting, in themselves. Gradually he unleashes the energy locked up in these small figures and from them builds one of the mightiest symphonies ever written.

pattern punctuates the entire movement: it shapes the beginning of the main theme, and its stinging accents thrust the music forward continuously as this movement almost boils over with energy. The ending is remarkable: above growling cellos and basses (which rock along on a two-note ostinato for 28 measures), the opening theme drives to a climax that Beethoven marks fff, a dynamic marking he almost never used. This conclusion is virtually Bacchanalian in its wild power – no matter how many times one has heard it, the ending of the Seventh Symphony remains one of the most exciting moments in all of music.

The first movement opens with a slow introduction so long that it almost becomes a separate movement of its own. Tremendous chords punctuate the slow beginning, which gives way to a poised duet for oboes. The real effect of this long Poco sostenuto, however, is to coil the energy that will be unleashed in the true first movement, and Beethoven conveys this rhythmically: the meter of the introduction is a rock-solid (even square) 4/4, but the main body of the movement, marked Vivace, transforms this into a light-footed 6/8. This Vivace begins in what seems a most unpromising manner, however, as woodwinds toot out a simple dotted 6/8 rhythm and the solo flute announces the first theme, a graceful melody on this same rhythm. Beethoven builds the entire first movement from this simple dotted rhythm, which saturates virtually every measure. As theme, as accompaniment, as motor rhythm, it is always present, hammering into our consciousness. At the climax, horns sail majestically to the close as the orchestra thunders out that rhythm one final time.

The first performance of the Seventh Symphony took place in the Great Hall of the University in Vienna on December 8, 1813. Though nearly deaf at this point, Beethoven led the performance, and the orchestra was able to compensate for any of his conducting failings, so that the premiere was a huge success. On that occasion – and at three subsequent performances over the next few months – the audience demanded that the second movement be repeated. n

The second movement, in A minor, is one of Beethoven’s most famous slow movements, but the debate continues as to whether it really is a slow movement. Beethoven could not decide whether to mark it Andante (a walking tempo) or Allegretto (a moderately fast pace). He finally decided on Allegretto, though the actual pulse is somewhere between those two. This movement too is built on a short rhythmic pattern, in this case the first five notes: long-shortshort-long-long–and this pattern repeats here almost as obsessively as the pattern of the first movement. The opening sounds like a series of static chords – the theme itself occurs quietly inside those chords – and Beethoven simply repeats this theme, varying it as it proceeds. The central episode in A Major moves gracefully along smoothly-flowing triplets before a little fugato on the opening rhythms builds to a great climax. Beethoven winds the movement down on the woodwinds’ almost skeletal reprise of the fundamental rhythm.

The Scherzo explodes to life on a theme full of grace notes, powerful accents, flying staccatos and timpani explosions. This alternates with a trio section for winds reportedly based on an old pilgrims’ hymn, though no one, it seems, has been able to identify that exact hymn.

Beethoven offers a second repeat of the trio, then seems about to offer a third before five powerful chords cut the movement off abruptly.

- Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Performance History

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist At these concerts, the Noctourne by Michael Ippolito is being given its initial San Diego hearing. In contrast, the ever-popular A minor Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg is being played for its twelfth presentation by the San Diego Symphony. Fabien Sevitzky introduced the work to San Diego audiences in the summer of 1951 when he conducted the orchestra and Amparo Iturbi was the soloist. Its most recent presentation here was during the 2010-11 season when David Robertson led the orchestra and Orli Shaham was the soloist.

Sevitzky also conducted the San Diego Symphony's first performance of the Beethoven Seventh Symphony in the summer of 1952. The present performance by the orchestra of this brilliant audience favorite marks its nineteenth outing at San Diego Symphony concerts. David Danzmayr conducted the most recent San Diego performance during the 2016-17 season. n

These chords set the stage for the Allegro con brio, again built on the near-obsessive treatment of a short rhythmic pattern, in this case the movement’s opening four-note fanfare. This four-note

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