Program Notes: Bruckner Symphony No. 8

MARCH 25 & 26 BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO. 8 SATURDAY March 25, 2017 – 8:00pm SUNDAY March 26, 2017 – 2:00pm JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT

conductor Jahja Ling (See page 4 for biography)

cello Yao Zhao

Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

PROGRAM

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN

Cello Concerto in C Major, Hob.VIIb:1 Moderato Adagio

Allegro molto

Yao Zhao, cello

INTERMISSION

ANTON BRUCKNER

Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, Cahis 16)

Allegro moderato

Scherzo: Allegro moderato

Adagio: Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend

Finale: Feierlich nicht schnell

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

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO. 8 - MARCH 25 & 26 Yao Zhao’s chamber music career is equally distinguished as he makes regular performance appearances with internationally renowned artists. In 2009, as a member of the Great Wall String Quartet which concluded their debut season to great acclaim, they proudly represented the Great Wall of China in a documentary film as one of the six historical sites in Beijing for the United Nations. The quartet released their debut album “Great Wall” in September of 2012, and will release their second album at the beginning of 2013.

YAO ZHAO, PRINCIPAL CELLO

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ailed in the New York Concert Review as “a superb cellist with intense and sensuous sound,” and described by the Los Angeles Times as “being able to handle the most intricate musical works with unblinking ease and expressive zeal,” cellist YAO ZHAO performs with a rare and captivating dynamism that has already secured him a successful career as an artist.

The Cello Principal of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Zhao was the Associate Principal Cello of the Symphony from 2005 to 2007.

Away from Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego, Mr. Zhao has performed in more than 40 cities around the world. Some of his festival appearances include the Grand Teton Festival, the Ojai Music Festival, the La Jolla Chamber Music Festival, the Mainly Mozart Music Festival, the Idyllwild Arts Summer Festival, the Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra in Korea and

Japan and the Chinese Festival Orchestra which gathers top Chinese artists worldwide among others. He has been in broadcast interviews by CNN, CBS, KTLA, GreekTV, Phoenix TV, CNR and CCTV; and as both a solo and ensemble artist on multiple recordings, his performances could often be heard on radio K-MOZART, K-PBS, XLNC-1, CNR.CN and K-USC. Mr. Zhao made his first concert appearance at the age of five, and he made his solo debut in the Beijing Concert Hall at age nine. He rose to attention in 1987 when he was a top prize winner at the First Chinese National Cello Competition.

Mr. Zhao subsequently kept a winning streak of more than 13 competitions, awards and honors.

He has performed as soloist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and other orchestras of the southland.

A successful solo debut at the Weil Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in New York City has been marked as one of his career highlights.

Beyond a busy performance schedule, Mr. Zhao continues to dedicate himself to the education of the next generation in the arts by teaching master-classes in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiyuan, Wuhan, Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei, Jakarta and Singapore. To this end, he also serves on faculty at Idyllwild Arts Academy, San Diego State University, the Idyllwild Arts Summer Festival, Shanxi International Strings Seminar and the Great Wall International Music Academy. He has been named Honorary Advisor of the Macau Youth Symphony Orchestra, and his achievements and generous contributions to music performance and education have been recognized and highly commended by the City of Los Angeles and well as the Governments of Macau and Hong Kong.

Born in Beijing in 1976, Mr. Zhao began his studies on the cello and piano at the age of four under the instruction of his father, a distinguished cellist. He was educated at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and later in the United States at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California where he studied with renowned pedagogue Professor Eleonore Schoenfeld.

Yao Zhao is an artist of the Asia Pacific Arts Management Ltd. n

ABOUT THE MUSIC

BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO. 8 - MARCH 25 & 26 Cello Concerto in C Major, Hob:VIIb:1 F RA N Z J O S E P H H AY DN Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau Died May 31, 1809, Vienna Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major is one of those rare things in music: a genuine masterpiece that vanished, only to be discovered years later. In this case, it was many years later, for this music was lost for almost exactly two centuries before it was discovered in 1961 in the Radeňin Castle collection, which

had been deposited in the Czech National Library in Prague. Though the manuscript was not in Haydn’s hand, the main theme of the first movement had been listed by the composer in his Entwurf-Katalog, the roster he prepared of his works, and there is no question about this music’s authenticity.

Haydn composed this concerto sometime between 1761 and 1765, during his earliest years with the Esterhazy family and at the time he was composing his first symphonies. (Another

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cello concerto from these years appears to have been lost – or perhaps is simply awaiting a similar rediscovery.) The Concerto in C Major was probably written for Joseph Weigl, first cellist of the Esterhazy orchestra between 1761 and 1769. It is a measure of the quality of the Esterhazy orchestra that it had such musicians as Weigl in it. Not only was he one of the foremost cellists of the day and a composer in his own right, his son (also named Joseph Weigl) would later write operas admired by Beethoven and many others. The Esterhazy family was P E R FOR M AN C E S M AGAZ I NE P29

ABOUT THE MUSIC

BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO. 8 - MARCH 25 & 26 still living in its palace in Eisenstadt in these years, and this concerto was doubtless first performed in the palace’s music hall, with its handsome painted ceiling, rough plank flooring and wonderfully clear acoustics.

The Cello Concerto in C Major is not a classical concerto as that form would be refined two decades later by Mozart, when it depended on the contrast of thematic material and the collision and resolution of different tonalities.

Instead, Haydn’s concertos are still rooted in baroque concerto form, with orchestral ritornellos and (more or less) monothematic movements. The Cello Concerto in C Major is one of the most successful of Haydn’s concertos, perhaps because it breaks through the limits of the baroque concerto, enriching the ritornello with themes that are so full of subordinate ideas that they allow a greater variety of material than was customary in the early eighteenth-century concerto.

This concerto opens not with a fast movement of the classical concerto but with a Moderato.

The orchestra presents the spirited, almost florid, ritornello theme at length before the cello makes its entrance with this same idea, and soloist and orchestra take turns elaborating this, often seizing on subordinate phrases as they proceed. Haydn asks for some virtuoso playing from his soloist here and offers the opportunity for a cadenza before the final ritornello. The Adagio moves to F Major, and here Haydn has his wind players (pairs of oboes and horns) sit out, for the soloist is accompanied only by the strings. They lay out the movement’s elegant main idea, with the soloist almost sneaking in on a quiet sustained C as the strings begin their second statement of the theme; together, soloist and orchestra extend this theme through varied re-statements. Violins launch the dashing Allegro molto with a brief but snappy idea that will recur in many forms. Again the cello slips in almost unnoticed, but this low profile does not last long, for this is the most brilliant and demanding of the movements, full of bravura writing and brilliant runs throughout the range of the instrument. Haydn provides some nice minor-key episodes along the way and also offers the soloist another cadenza. n

Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, Cahis 16) A N TON BRUC K N E R Born September 4, 1824, Ansfelden Died October 11, 1896, Vienna Anton Bruckner – simple, obsessive, naive, insecure, manic-depressive, devoutly religious and a genius as a composer – endured some of the most savage assaults any composer has ever known on his way to success. Jeering

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audiences and vicious (sometimes personal) critical attacks repeatedly drove the vulnerable Bruckner to nervous breakdowns, and it was not until the premiere of his Seventh Symphony in December 1884 – when he was 60 – that Bruckner finally enjoyed success. He was called to the stage in Leipzig to accept the waves of applause on that occasion, and a critic left an impression: “One could see from the trembling of his lips and the sparkling moisture in his eyes how difficult it was for the old gentleman to suppress the deep emotion that he felt. His homely, honest countenance beamed with a warm inner happiness such as can appear only on the face of one who is too good-hearted to give way to bitterness even under the weight of most crushing circumstances.” Buoyed by this success, Bruckner was already at work on his Eighth, and that mighty symphony took three years to complete: he finished the manuscript in March 1887 in a state of near-exultation.

“Hallelujah!” he wrote to the conductor Hermann Levi, who had championed Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, “the Eighth is finished at last, and my artistic father must be the first to be told about it.” He sent Levi the score with a devout wish: “May it find grace!” But then came disaster: the Eighth did not find grace – Levi could make nothing of the new symphony. He confessed to Bruckner’s student Josef Schalk: “I can think of no alternative. I must implore your advice and help. In a word, I cannot reconcile myself to the Eighth Symphony and haven’t the heart to perform it.”

Levi’s rejection devastated Bruckner, who fell into a paralyzing depression. Gradually, though, the wounded composer took hold of himself, recognized the justice of Levi’s criticism and – with Schalk – set to work on a complete revision of the Eighth Symphony. This process also took three years, and it was not until March 1890 that Bruckner had the symphony in its new form. Hans Richter led the premiere with the Vienna Philharmonic on December 16, 1892, and that performance brought Bruckner a success beyond anything he had known in his life. The young Hugo Wolf wrote to a friend: “This Symphony is the creation of a Titan, and in spiritual vastness, fertility of ideas and grandeur even surpasses his other symphonies. Notwithstanding the usual Cassandra prophecies of woe, even from those in the know, its success was almost without precedent. It was the absolute victory of light over darkness, and the storm of applause at the end of each movement was like some elemental manifestation of Nature. In short, even a Roman Emperor could not have wished for a more superb triumph.”

The Eighth Symphony is on a huge scale, even

by Bruckner’s standards. Over 80 minutes long, this truly is “the creation of a Titan.” It is also

music of spiritual grandeur: beginning in dark menace, it reaches its triumphant close only after a long and sometimes violent journey.

That journey is in every way extraordinary.

The form of this symphony is unexpected: two relatively short movements are followed by two very long movements. And Bruckner builds the symphony on an utterly original harmonic structure; the Eighth Symphony may nominally be in C minor, but Bruckner avoids that key throughout much of it, deliberately unsettling his listeners with this harmonic uncertainty and shrewdly preparing for the destination of this long journey.

One unnamed force makes itself felt throughout this music. Bruckner may have called Hermann Levi his “artistic father,” but the real artistic influence on the Eighth Symphony is Beethoven. The Eighth is built on the same dramatic conception and grand scale that drives Beethoven’s symphonies. It develops through the same transformation of small thematic motifs into a large symphonic structure. And it makes the same motion from C minor darkness to C Major triumph that Beethoven made in his Fifth Symphony (but on a far vaster scale – Bruckner’s Eighth is more than twice as long as Beethoven’s Fifth).

We feel the originality of the Eighth Symphony from its first instant. The title page may say C minor, but the symphony begins in the remote key of B-flat minor. The cellos’ dark, surging opening idea will furnish much of the material for the entire symphony (only belatedly does the ear recognize that the rhythm of this theme is the same as the rhythm of the opening theme of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony), and this sinuous, chromatic idea unfolds over the long span of 22 measures. Two more themes follow.

The first of these – announced by violins – is in Bruckner’s trademark 2+3 rhythm, while the ominous second is presented by horns and woodwinds over pizzicato accompaniment. To speak of these three ideas as themes, however, is to underestimate Bruckner’s method in this movement, which does not divide into the clearly-defined sections of a sonataform movement. Instead, these three ideas undergo a process of continuous alternation, combination and evolution that – coupled with Bruckner’s unexpected harmonic freedom – create a wholly original structure and musicdrama. Eventually this movement drives to a great climax, in C minor at last, and this is sealed off with ringing brass fanfares derived from the cellos’ opening theme. These blazing fanfares give way to muttering timpani rolls, and we come to the movement’s extraordinary conclusion. Bruckner himself called this final page the “Death Watch,” and out of those soft timpani rolls the opening theme rises up and tries to take hold, but instead it collapses.

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

BRUCKNER SYMPHONY NO. 8 - MARCH 25 & 26 After its many moods, after the grandeur of its drama, after the ear-splitting splendor of its climaxes, this movement fades almost inaudibly into darkness.

The mood changes completely at the Scherzo, marked (like the first movement) Allegro moderato. But where the pace of that movement felt measured, this one rushes forward on short patterns that repeat endlessly. The trio section seems consciously Austrian in character: it is a slow ländler, and the sound of a harp adds to its peaceful atmosphere. (The Eighth is the only Bruckner symphony to employ a harp, an instrument the composer claimed to dislike but which he uses skillfully here.) The repeat of the opening section is literal, as it is in all Bruckner symphonies.

After two powerful but focused movements, we come to the final two movements, both massive and both overpowering in their impact.

Bruckner specifies that the Adagio should be Feierlich langsam: “solemnly slow.” Over softlythrobbing string accompaniment, violins sing the long-spanned main idea in D-flat Major, and this is extended at some length before the second theme – also subdued and expressive – is announced by the cellos; Bruckner was especially proud of this second theme. The ideas alternate – the general structure is ABABA – but again that simple reduction does no justice to this music, which rises to several impassioned climaxes before falling away to its heartfelt ending, marked triple piano.

Out of that silence, the finale leaps to life like some huge beast in full stride. This is a magnificent beginning: the strings’ sharplypulsing quarters provide the thrust for

thunderous washes of brass sound. And that sound is rich, produced by eight horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba. Bruckner alternates this powerful opening with more gentle secondary material, and much of this movement has a rapt quality quite at odds with that tawny, snarling beginning. Eventually, however, it is the fierce opening theme that drives the symphony to its climax, and here Bruckner recalls the symphony’s seminal opening theme. Now, in one of the most impressive endings of any symphony, Bruckner stacks up the principal themes of all four movements and presents them simultaneously.

His model was doubtless the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, but Bruckner here creates a sound-world that Mozart could never have dreamed of. On this mighty sound and dazzling contrapuntal mastery Bruckner brings his Eighth Symphony to its overwhelming conclusion, now in clear C Major and derived from that seminal cello theme first heard so softly eighty minutes earlier.

THE INEVITABLE ISSUE OF EDITION: Like all Bruckner symphonies, the Eighth exists (and is performed) in several different versions. The first was Bruckner’s original conception, the one composed in 1884-87 and rejected by Levi.

The second version is the revision by Bruckner and Josef Schalk, completed in 1890 and triumphantly premiered in 1892. It is almost always performed in the edition prepared by Leopold Nowak for the International Bruckner Society in 1955.

Even those who lament the many revisions of Bruckner’s symphonies forced on him by well-meaning admirers concede that the 1890

WHY THIS PROGRAM?

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist Jahja Ling was enthusiastic as he discussed this program. It was apparent that his choice of these two works by Haydn and Bruckner represents his characteristic emotional bases in his own strong religious faith as well as his central devotion to the classic and romantic era European music, that strong heart of the musical tradition he strives to instill in his orchestras and his audiences.

“I have been longing to conduct the Bruckner Eighth Symphony since I first came here. I have done the Fourth and the Seventh in these concerts, but, to me, the Eighth is the culmination of Bruckner's wisdom, his maturity and his devotion to music. Bruckner was a man of very strong faith, a longstanding church organist who expressed his deep feelings of faith in most of his music – certainly not only in his specifically religious works. His orchestral sound is almost instantly recognizable as Bruckner. It always has the sense of an organ collage, as if he is playing the work on his massive church organ, with the orchestra playing along with him.

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revision brought a huge improvement in the symphony. But those revisions involved a number of cuts in the Adagio and Finale, cuts the composer made reluctantly. Bruckner’s conflicted feelings led to the appearance of a third edition. In 1939, over forty years after the composer’s death, the Austrian musicologist Robert Haas prepared a new version of the Eighth, based on Bruckner’s 1890 revision but restoring a number of passages in the final two movements that Bruckner had cut and at some points adopting the orchestration of the original. The result is a version that Bruckner never heard and never authorized but one that may well be closer to his wishes than the 1890 version. It is the Haas edition that Maestro Ling leads at these concerts. n PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist

Like so many works by Haydn, his C-Major Cello Concerto has been programmed here only once before, during the 1984-85 season, when David Atherton conducted, and Mack Harrell was the soloist. The only previous performance at these concerts of the Bruckner Eighth Symphony was conducted by Gunther Herbig during the 1982-83 season.

“But even in this characteristic music, even as a man of such deep faith, he seems to be asking questions, perhaps trying to deepen his faith even further. Bruckner's symphonies are noted for their slow movements, but to me the third movement of this work is the most beautiful slow movement ever written. Its sound is unique – including a harp – seeming to seek a description of eternity. That slow movement gives me a sense of considerable comfort, assurance and the feeling, like Bruckner's, of being at peace with himself, his fellow humans and with God, after a very difficult life.”

Turning to the opening work on this program, our conductor exclaimed, “Who better than Haydn to introduce the Bruckner? It's the first really great cello concerto in the repertoire, charming and “Haydn-esque” as it is, and I'm so happy to have our Principal Cello Yao Zhao playing it. I hired him, and he always validated my faith in him.

He and the dozens of other musicians I hired during my 12-plus year tenure here have come together to create a genuinely fine, cohesive sound. I take great pride in the legacy I am leaving here...”

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