Program Notes: Shostakovich and Beethoven

MARCH 3, 4 & 5 SHOSTAKOVICH AND BEETHOVEN JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT

FRIDAY March 3, 2017 – 8:00pm SATURDAY March 4, 2017 – 8:00pm SUNDAY March 5, 2017 – 2:00pm conductor Markus Stenz violin Augustin Hadelich

All performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Sam B. Ersan.

PROGRAM (Program note begins on page 10.)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 72a Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99 Nocturne Scherzo Passacaglia Burlesque Augustin Hadelich, violin

INTERMISSION LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

Allegro con brio

Andante con moto Allegro Allegro The approximate running time for this concert, including intermission, is one hour and fifty-five minutes.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

SHOSTAKOVICH AND BEETHOVEN - MARCH 3, 4 & 5 His previous positions have included most recently General Music Director of the City of Cologne and Gürzenich-Kapellmeister and Principal Guest Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra (posts he relinquished in the summer of 2014). He was Artistic Director of the Montepulciano Festival (1989-95), Principal Conductor of the London Sinfonietta (1994-98) – one of the most renowned ensembles for contemporary music and Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (1998-2004). He has broadened his repertoire and established his career as an international conductor.

MARKUS STENZ, CONDUCTOR

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ARKUS STENZ is Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (since 2012) and Principal Guest Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from the 2015-16 onwards.

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Highlights of Maestro Stenz’s 2016-17 season with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra include varied programs of Mussorgsky, Raaff, Diepenbrock, Szymanowski, Zuidam and a John Adams arrangement of Busoni, in addition to Lizst, Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Wagner, Schumann and others. North American engagements include the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in February with pianist Gabriela Montero and in May with pianist David

Fray, and guest conducting includes appearances with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra in March (with Grammy® Award-winning violinist Augustin Hadelich) and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in May. Internationally, Mr. Stenz’s touring schedule takes him across four continents, conducting the São Paulo and Bern symphony orchestras, the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester and Leeds, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra on a tour throughout Japan performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

Mr. Stenz was trained at the School of Music in Cologne under Volker Wangenheim and at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.

He made his debut as an opera conductor at La Fenice in Venice and has since conducted many world premieres and first performances including Henze’s Das Verratene Meer in Berlin, Venus und Adonis at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and L’Upupa at the 2003 Salzburg Festival. Mr. Stenz has appeared at many of the world’s major opera houses

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

SHOSTAKOVICH AND BEETHOVEN - MARCH 3, 4 & 5 and international festivals including La Scala in Milan, La Monnaie in Brussels, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Edinburgh International Festival, the Bregenz Festival (with the world premiere of Solaris by Detlev Glanert in July 2012) and Salzburg Festival.

Mr. Stenz conducts many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Berlin Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Vienna Symphony, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo and the Symphony Orchestras of the Bayerische Rundfunk, the HR, the WDR and the NDR. In the United States these have included the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Markus Stenz has been awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music and the “Silberne Stimmgabel” (Silver Tuning Fork) of the state of North Rhein/Westphalia. n

AUGUSTIN HADELICH, VIOLIN

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rammy® Award-winner AUGUSTIN HADELICH has established himself as one of the great violinists of his generation. He has performed with every major orchestra in the U.S., many on numerous occasions, as well as an ever-growing number of major orchestras in the UK, Europe and the Far East. He is consistently cited for his phenomenal technique, poetic sensitivity and gorgeous tone.

Highlights of Mr. Hadelich’s 2016-17 season include return performances with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Colorado, Dallas, North Carolina, San Diego and St. Louis, as well as a tour of Germany and Spain with the Orquestra de Cadaqués/Catalonia and debuts with the Dresden Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Hamburg Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the WDR Radio Orchestra in Cologne.

appearances are the BBC Philharmonic/Manchester, BBC Symphony/London, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (where he was artist-in-residence in the 2015-16 season), Danish National Symphony, Finnish Radio Orchestra, German Radio Philharmonic/ Saarbrücken, Hong Kong Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Malaysian Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchestra/Salzburg, Netherlands Philharmonic, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, NHK Symphony/Tokyo, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, RTE National Symphony Orchestra/Dublin, São Paulo Symphony, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra and a tour of China with the San Diego Symphony.

Augustin Hadelich is the winner of a 2016 Grammy® Award – “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” – for his recording of Dutilleux’s Violin Concerto, L’arbre des songes, with the Seattle Symphony under Ludovic Morlot (Seattle Symphony MEDIA). Future releases include a disc of live recordings of the violin concertos

by Tchaikovsky and Lalo (Symphonie espagnole) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO Live, spring 2017) as well as an album of duo works for violin and piano in collaboration with Joyce Yang (AVIE Records, fall 2016). His previous recordings on the AVIE label includ e: the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Bartók’s Concerto No. 2 with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Miguel HarthBedoya (2015); the violin concertos of Jean Sibelius and Thomas Adès (Concentric Paths) with Hannu Lintu conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (2014), nominated for a Gramophone Award and listed by NPR on their Top 10 Classical CDs of 2014; Histoire du Tango, a program of violinguitar works in collaboration with Pablo Villegas (2013); and Echoes of Paris, featuring French and Russian repertoire influenced by Parisian culture in the early 20th century (2010).

Gold Medalist of the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Mr. Hadelich was named winner of the inaugural Warner Music Prize in 2015. Other distinctions include Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award (2012), a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in the UK (2011) and an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009).

Born in Italy, the son of German parents, Augustin Hadelich is now an American citizen. He holds an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Smirnoff. He plays the 1723 “Ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivari violin, on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. n

Festival appearances during this past summer included debuts at the BBC Proms, the Bowdoin Music Festival and Sun Valley Summer Symphony, in addition to return engagements at Aspen, Bravo! Vail and Tanglewood. Mr. Hadelich has also performed at the Blossom, Britt, Chautauqua (where he made his U.S. orchestral debut in 2001), Eastern, Grand Teton and Marlboro music festivals as well as at the Hollywood Bowl.

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PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist

This represents the third presentation of the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto at these concerts. During the 2008-09 season, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg introduced the work with our orchestra, and three seasons later Karen Gomyo also played it here. Jahja Ling led both performances.

Two major Beethoven works surround the Shostakovich concerto at these performances.

The second of Beethoven's frustrating attempts to write an appropriate overture for his opera (now called Fidelio but then known as Leonore), the piece now known as the Leonore Overture No. 2 has never been played at these concerts before.

In contrast, the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, the most universally well-known of the composer's symphonic output, was first heard in San Diego when the original San Diego Symphony Orchestra played it in its own inaugural concert, in 1910, in the ballroom of the then-new U. S. Grant Hotel. The conductor of the less than 40 orchestra members was Richard Schliewen. In 1936, Nino Marcelli led a performance of the work by the San Diego Symphony during the 1936 Exhibition season, broadcast across the country by the then-new Columbia Boadcasting System.

In more contemporary times, the post-war reorganized SDSO gave its first performance of the Beethoven Fifth in 1950, somewhat surprisingly under the direction of Ferde Grofé, now famous for his own Grand Canyon Suite as well as for his original orchestration of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Many other conductors have led the rest of the 17 San Diego Symphony performances of this work, most recently during the 2013-14 season when Christoph von Dohnanyi conducted it. For the sake of completeness, San Diegans also heard the work played by the short-lived San Diego Philharmonic Orchestra, assembled in 1950

by SDSO musicians in the hope of creating a winter season as well as its summer season.

Leslie Hodge was its conductor, and he led Beethoven's Fifth during its 1951-52 season.

The orchestra lasted for only one more year.

San Diego Symphony winter seasons began in 1959.

Concert Sponsor Spotlight

SAM B. ERSAN

SAM B. ERSAN has been a classical music lover since 1956.

He has been supporting the San Diego Symphony and chamber music in San Diego for the past 12 years.

Sam took a special interest in Augustin Hadelich in 2011 and underwrote his participation in the Symphony’s China Friendship Tour in 2013. Sam has also sponsored several of Augustin’s recordings.

international

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

SHOSTAKOVICH AND BEETHOVEN - MARCH 3, 4 & 5 Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 72 LUDW I G VA N BE ET HOVEN Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, originally titled Leonore, is doubtless the only opera in history to have four separate overtures. This tale of marital fidelity, political idealism and resistance to tyranny comes to its climax in a dark dungeon when the heroine Leonore prepares to sacrifice her life to protect her imprisoned husband Florestan from the evil Pizarro; the couple is rescued at the last minute by the arrival of the good minister Don Fernando.

The opera took Beethoven 11 difficult years to complete, it went through three different versions and even then Beethoven was not completely satisfied. The story of the creation of its four overtures tells us much about his painful progress toward a final version of the opera.

What we know today as the Leonore Overture No. 1 was drafted in 1807 for a proposed production of the opera in Prague. That performance never took place, and Beethoven discarded this overture, which was not performed until after his death. (At that point, it was published with the absurdly high opus number of 138, which is Beethoven’s last opus number.)

At the premiere of Leonore in Vienna on November 20, 1805, the opera was preceded by the piece we know today as the Leonore Overture No. 2 (the music played on the present concert). It is a daringly original piece of music. Rather than writing the expected opera overture in sonata form, Beethoven wrote what is in effect a dramatic tone poem: composed of themes from Leonore, this overture offers a sequence of the opera’s most dramatic events. Unexpected in form and difficult for its performers, this overture excited a firestorm of criticism.

And so for the revision of the opera performed four months later, Beethoven re-cast that overture: he rounded off some of its rough edges and provided the recapitulation of themes that No. 2 was missing. Now known as the Leonore Overture No. 3 (and now in sonata form), this was the overture that introduced the revised opera on March 29, 1806.

But there remained a fatal problem with Beethoven’s Leonore overtures. The beginning of this most serious opera is surprisingly light in tone: the first scene shows the frothy infatuation of the young Marzellina with the new jailer’s assistant. Prefacing such a scene with either No. 2 or No. 3 is deadly.

When the Leonore Overture No. 3 is used as the overture to the opera, that overture – in Donald Francis Tovey’s wonderful phrase – “annihilates the first act” of the opera. Long before Tovey made that observation, Richard Wagner had seen the same thing. He said that this music “is no longer an overture, it is the most grandiose drama in itself…Far from giving merely a musical introduction to the drama,

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this overture tells the story more completely and more stirringly than the ensuing, broken theatrical action.”

Beethoven came to the same realization. For his third and final (1814) version of the opera, now renamed Fidelio, he gave up on writing an overture that in any way foreshadows the events of the opera and instead wrote an entirely new piece. His brief Fidelio Overture – a conventional curtain-raiser full of thrust and noble sentiment – makes a perfect lead-in to the first scene of the opera.

Beethoven’s decision to write the Fidelio Overture has banished the three Leonore Overtures to the concert hall, where they have led varied careers. No. 1 is seldom performed, but No. 3 has become almost too popular: its dramatic music and formal balance have made it a concert favorite. That leaves – somewhat in limbo – the Leonore Overture No. 2, and it should be noted that many people prefer this version to the more familiar No. 3. It is rawer (some would say “bloodier”) than No. 3, and it is also closer to the violent events of the opera.

Despite rough edges and formal imbalance, No. 2 offers music of stark power, and – perhaps more effectively than in the popular No. 3 – it brings certain moments of the opera to vivid life.

After the powerful opening chords, descending string lines mirror the descent into the dungeon where the hero Florestan is held

by Pizarro, and soon woodwinds sing a bit of Florestan’s great aria at the beginning of Act II, “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen,” a sad account of how far he has fallen from his happy early life. A long transition leads to the Allegro, with its rising-and-falling main theme, first announced here only by cellos. This develops at some length, then is interrupted by the sound of an offstage trumpet. In the opera, this signals the arrival of Don Fernando, who rescues Florestan and has Pizarro jailed, and its appearance in the overture was one of the things that bothered early critics. Another thing that bothered those critics was the lack of a recapitulation: in the Leonore Overture No. 2 Beethoven simply ignores classical form and concludes with the heroic music that – in the opera – signals the triumph of good over evil. n

Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99 DM ITR I SHOSTAKOV I C H Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow During the summer of 1947, in the icy political atmosphere that followed military victory in World War II, Dmitri Shostakovich began what seemed an entirely “safe” composition. For years he had been an admirer of violinist David Oistrakh, and that summer – in the village of Kellomäki on the Gulf of Finland – he began a violin concerto for his friend. He sketched the first movement that July and completed it in November after returning to his teaching position in Moscow. The second movement, a

scherzo, came quickly and was done by the first week in December, while the third movement, a passacaglia, was completed in January 1948.

But as Shostakovich continued to work on the concerto, the political and artistic climate around him turned deadly. This was the period of the crackdown on Soviet artists led by Stalin’s ideological pointman, Andrei Zhdanov. At the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers in February 1948, Shostakovich – along with Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky and others – were attacked for their “formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies” and for writing “confused, neuropathological combinations which transform music into cacophony,” music that “dwells too much on the dark and fearful aspects of reality.” Forced to read a humiliating apology and to promise to mend his ways, Shostakovich quickly learned that the government’s demand for conformity took more menacing forms: he was dismissed from his teaching positions, his music was effectively banned and there is evidence that the Shostakovich family subsisted during this period on the savings of their housekeeper.

Stunned but alert to the dangers before him, the composer responded in two ways.

The public Shostakovich wrote the music demanded by Stalin’s government – film scores and patriotic cantatas like Song of the Forests and The Sun Shines over Our Motherland.

The private Shostakovich wrote the music he wanted to, but these scores went into his desk, waiting for a safer day. Among the latter was the manuscript for the violin concerto for Oistrakh. Years later, Shostakovich took pleasure in showing friends where he was in the composition of the finale of this concerto when he heard of the Congress’ denunciation of him – it was in the middle of run of sixteenth-notes – and he pointed out that the music before and after that news was exactly the same.

The death of Stalin in 1953 seemed to promise a more liberal artistic atmosphere in Russia, but Shostakovich held the concerto back for two more years. It was finally premiered, by Oistrakh and the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeni Mravinsky, on October 29, 1955, eight years after its composition. The concerto had a popular success, though Soviet critics – still fearful of saying the wrong thing in that uncertain atmosphere – were non-committal.

Oistrakh, however, loved the concerto and played it with American orchestras on his first tour of this country later that fall.

From the perspective of a half-century later, it seems extraordinary that this music could have been considered dangerous, either to its audience or its composer. In many respects, the most remarkable feature of this concerto is how old-fashioned it is. It is a big virtuoso piece, conceived with the talents of a specific performer in mind and offering that soloist a cadenza so spectacular that it almost becomes a separate movement in itself. The Concerto in A minor has become so much a feature of our musical lives that the fact that Shostakovich had to keep it hidden for so many years speaks volumes about the political and artistic climate

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

SHOSTAKOVICH AND BEETHOVEN - MARCH 3, 4 & 5 in Russia during Stalin’s paranoid final decline.

We need not know any of its history, however, to feel the greatness of this music. The concerto has some unusual features. It has two dark slow movements, both of them almost night-music movements (one of them in fact is called Nocturne), and these alternate with two bright fast movements, both of which have titles that imply a degree of play: Scherzo and Burlesque. The scoring is also unusual: Shostakovich does without trumpets and trombones, but his use of xylophone, harp and celesta gives this concerto a distinct, sometimes eerie, sound.

The opening Nocturne truly is night-music.

The lower strings’ rocking opening supplies the shape of the movement’s main theme, and the solo violin ruminates on this shape as it rises above their somber sound. The music builds to a climax marked appassionato, and then Shostakovich mutes the violin and the music turns subdued and dark. Much of the writing for the solo violin is very high here, and eventually the violin comes swirling down out of the dark moonlight. Some aggressive doublestopping leads to the wonderful close, where the muted violin climbs to the top of its range, its high E shimmering above the icy suspension of the orchestra’s final chord.

By contrast, the Scherzo is all hard edges, dancing and skittering along its 3/8 meter.

While there are episodes on other themes, it is the strident energy of the opening that drives this movement to its unrelenting close.

With horn fanfares ringing above them, lower strings stamp out the ground bass of the Passacaglia theme, which stretches out over 17 measures, then begins to repeat quietly.

A woodwind choir sings a somber variation before the solo violin enters, soaring above the ominous tread of the passacaglia subject far below. Its plaintive opening melody gives way to more impassioned material, and at the climax the violin stamps out the passacaglia ground in fortissimo doublestops. Gradually this falls away, the orchestra drops out, and – as a bridge between the third and fourth movements – Shostakovich offers his soloist a tremendous cadenza. This begins simply (the marking is “quiet but majestic”) as the violin explores bits of the passacaglia ground, but gradually it gathers speed and accelerates straight into the concluding Burlesque.

Shostakovich had originally composed a beginning in which the soloist himself announced the movement’s opening theme, but Oistrakh – coming off that treacherous cadenza – begged for some relief at this point: “Dmitri Dmitryevich, please consider letting the orchestra take over the first eight bars in the Finale so as to give me a break, then at least I can wipe the sweat off my brow.”

Realizing that he had a point, the composer quickly re-wrote the beginning to give the soloist 20 seconds to wipe his brow.

The title Burlesque implies a mocking or joking character, and this movement is at times almost sneering. The stinging sound of the xylophone colors its jaunty main idea, and this

finale, in the general shape of a rondo, does not relax its pace for an instant. At the close, the violin rushes from the bottom of its range to the very top as the music hurtles to its brusque final chords.

It is no surprise that Shostakovich kept this music hidden during Stalin’s repressive final years. There is nothing tragic about this concerto, nor is there anything ideologically dangerous about it beyond the fact that it is simply a very serious piece of music. That may have been enough to make it dangerous in those uncertain years. Beautifully written for one of the great violinists, the concerto makes a brilliant impact in live performance, especially in its glittering final movement. But long after the brilliance of the finale has ended, it is the haunting power of the slow movements – the somber Nocturne and the heartfelt Passacaglia – that stays to haunt the memory. n

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 LUDWIG VAN B EET HOV EN Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna None of us can remember the first time we heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – this music is so much a part of us that we seem to be born knowing it. The Fifth surrounds us: as background music for chocolate and motor oil commercials, as the symbol for Victory in World War II, as the stuff of jokes. Even children who know nothing about classical music sing its opening four notes on playgrounds. Those four notes are the most famous in classical music, and Beethoven’s Fifth is certainly the most famous symphony ever written.

Music so white-hot in intensity, so universal in appeal, cries out for interpretation, and over the last two centuries many have been ready to tell us what this symphony “means.” To some, it is Fate knocking at the door. To one nineteenthcentury critic, it told the story of a failed love affair. Others see it as the triumph of reason over chaos and evil. Still others have advanced quite different explanations. But engaging as such interpretations are, they tell us more about the people who make them than about the music itself. The sad truth is that this music is so overfamiliar that we have almost stopped listening to it: the opening rings out, and our minds go on automatic pilot for the next thirty minutes.

We have lost the capacity to listen to the Fifth purely as music, to comprehend it as the astonishing and original musical achievement that it is.

Beethoven made the first sketches for his Fifth Symphony in 1804, soon after completing the Eroica (Third) Symphony, but did not begin work in earnest until after finishing the Fourth in 1806. Most of the composition took place in the summer of 1807, and the score was completed that fall. The first performance took place on December 22, 1808, six days after Beethoven’s 38th birthday.

both very simple and charged with volcanic fury, provides the musical content for the entire movement. That (seemingly) simple figure saturates the first movement, giving it extraordinary unity. Those four notes shape the main theme, generate the rhythms and pulse insistently in the background; they even become the horn fanfare that announces the second theme. One of the most impressive features of this movement is how short it is: of Beethoven’s symphonies, only the Haydnesque First has a shorter first movement. The power unleashed at the beginning is unrelenting, and this movement hammers to a close with the issues it raises still unresolved.

The Andante con moto contrasts two themes.

Violas and cellos sing the broad opening melody in A-flat Major; Beethoven reportedly made 11 different versions of this theme before he got the one he wanted. The second subject, in heroic C Major, blazes out in the brass, and Beethoven simply alternates these two themes, varying each as the movement proceeds. The third movement returns to the C minor urgency of the beginning. It seems at first to be in scherzo-and-trio form, with lower strings introducing the sinuous opening idea. But horns quickly sound the symphony’s opening motto, and the movement never quite regains its equilibrium; the trio, with lumbering fugal entries in the strings, subtly incorporates the opening rhythm as well. At just the point where one anticipates a return to the scherzo comes one of the most famous – and original – moments in music.

Instead of going back, Beethoven pushes ahead.

Bits of the scherzo flit quietly over an ominous pedal, and suddenly the final movement – a triumphant march in C Major – bursts to life; this dramatic moment has invariably been compared to sunlight breaking through dark clouds. Beethoven’s scoring here reminds us of something easy to overlook: his concern with instrumental color. The march theme is announced by a full orchestra that includes three trombones (their first use in a symphony), and Beethoven employs a piccolo and contrabassoon to good effect here as well. Near the middle of this movement, Beethoven brings back some of the scherzo, which briefly – and darkly – slows progress before the triumphant march bursts out again to drive the symphony to its close. The coda itself is extremely long, and the final cadence – extended almost beyond reason – is overpowering.

No matter how familiar this symphony is, no matter how overlain it has become with extra-musical associations, the music remains extraordinary. Heard for itself, free of the cultural baggage it has acquired over the years, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is as original and powerful and furious today as it was when it burst upon an unsuspecting audience on a cold winter night in Vienna two centuries ago. n PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER

The stark opening of the Allegro con brio,

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