Program Notes: Charles Dutoit Conducts

MAY 19, 20 & 21 CHARLES DUTOIT CONDUCTS JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT

FRIDAY May 19, 2017 – 8:00pm SATURDAY May 20, 2017 – 8:00pm SUNDAY May 21, 2017 – 2:00pm conductor Charles Dutoit violin Simone Porter

Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Linda and Shearn Platt.

PROGRAM LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216: Strassburg Allegro Adagio Rondo: Allegro Simone Porter, violin

INTERMISSION

IGOR STRAVINSKY

MAURICE RAVEL

Petrushka (Original version, 1911) The Shrove-Tide Fair Petrushka’s Cell The Moor's Cell The Shrove-Tide Fair (Towards Evening) La valse, poème chorégraphique The approximate running time for this program, including intermission, is one hour and forty-five minutes.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

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aptivating audiences throughout the world, C HARLES DUTOI T is one of today’s most sought-after conductors, having performed with all of the major orchestras on most stages of the five continents.

CHARLES DUTOIT, CONDUCTOR

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Presently Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he recently celebrated his 30-year artistic collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra, who in turn bestowed upon him the title of Conductor Laureate. He collaborates every season with the orchestras of Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, New York

and Los Angeles, and is also a regular guest on the stages in London, Berlin, Paris, Munich, Moscow, Sydney, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai, amongst others.

Maestro Dutoit’s more than 200 recordings for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips and Erato have garnered multiple awards and distinctions, including two Grammys®.

For 25 years, he was Artistic Director of the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, a dynamic musical team recognised the world over. From 1991 to 2001 he was Music Director of the

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

CHARLES DUTOIT CONDUCTS - MAY 19, 20 & 21 Orchestre National de France and in 1996, was appointed Principal Conductor – and soon thereafter Music Director – of the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), where he is now Music Director Emeritus. He was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s season at the Mann Music Center for ten years and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for 21 years.

Mr. Dutoit’s interest in the younger generation has always held an important place in his career and he has successively been Music Director of the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival and Miyazaki International Music Festival in Japan, as well as the Canton International Summer Music Academy in Guangzhou. In 2009 he became Music Director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra.

When still in his early twenties, Charles Dutoit was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct the Vienna State Opera. He has since conducted at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera in New York, Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Rome Opera and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

In 1991 he was made Honorary Citizen of the

City of Philadelphia; in 1995, Grand Officier de l’Ordre national du Québec; in 1996, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France; and in 1998 he was invested as Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal of the city of Lausanne, his birthplace, and in 2014 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ICMA (International Classical Music Awards).

He holds Honorary Doctorates from the universities of McGill, Montréal, Laval and the Curtis School of Music.

A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art and architecture, Charles Dutoit has travelled in all 196 nations of the world. n

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iolinist SI MONE P ORT ER has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, musical integrity and vibrant sound. After performing last season with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the LA Times

SIMONE PORTER, VIOLIN

declared Ms. Porter "on the cusp of a major career." Elsewhere, her performances have been described as "bold" (Seattle Times) and "virtuosic" (London Times). At 19 years of age, Ms. Porter has already appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Houston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with renowned conductors including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicolas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot and Donald Runnicles. Ms. Porter made her professional solo debut at age ten with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at age 13.

In June 2016 Simone Porter was featured at the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams in a solo performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony; this featured program was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network. Summer 2016 also brought her debut at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival performing Mozart with Louis Langree, and return engagements to both the Aspen Festival with Nicolas McGegan and Grand Teton Festival with Donald Runnicles.

The 2016-17 season includes Ms. Porter’s debuts with the San Diego Symphony and Charles Dutoit, the Pittsburgh Symphony and Leonard Slatkin, and the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. She also enjoys engagements with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Vancouver, Indianapolis, Nashville, Utah and Edmonton Symphonies.

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

CHARLES DUTOIT CONDUCTS - MAY 19, 20 & 21 Simone Porter was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant in March 2015.

This prestigious honor came in a year that included return engagements with the Seattle Symphony and the Aspen Music Festival, her solo debut with Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, a Ravinia Festival recital debut and travels to Bogota, Columbia to perform with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. The 2015-16 season marked her return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, this time on the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage with Maestro Dudamel; debuts with the Detroit, Berkeley and Des Moines Symphonies; Baltimore and Hartford Symphony Orchestras; Rochester Philharmonic and Florida Orchestra. NPR’s Performance Today also named her as youngartist-in-residence for fall 2015.

Internationally, Ms. Porter has performed with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, the Northern Sinfonia and the Milton Keynes City Orchestra in the United Kingdom. She

has also appeared in Singapore at the 2010 Great Eastern International Kids Performing Festival.

Ms. Porter is an avid chamber musician, having most recently collaborated with violinist James Ehnes at a benefit concert in Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. Additionally, she appeared multiple occasion on the Colburn Chamber Music Society Series at Zipper Hall with violinists Arnold Steinhardt and Scott St. John, on the South Bay Chamber Music Society with violist Paul Coletti, and at the Miami International Piano Festival.

Ms. Porter has been heard on the renowned syndicated NPR radio program From the Top, hosted by acclaimed pianist Christopher O’Riley and featuring America’s best young classical musicians. Her performance in July 2012 marked her third appearance on the program; her first was in 2007 at the age of 11. She has also been featured on the popular national APM radio program Performance Today, recorded live at Aspen’s Harris Hall

in 2011. Ms. Porter made her Carnegie Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall.

Other TV appearances include the BBC documentary The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies, which aired in the United Kingdom in June 2009, and a feature on Seattle’s Kiro 7 TV’s Quarterly Magazine, In Color.

Raised in Seattle, Washington, Ms. Porter studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom she presently studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.

Summer studies have included the Aspen Music Festival for seven years, Indiana University's Summer String Academy and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.

Simone Porter plays on a 1745 J.B. Guadagnini violin on generous loan from The Mandell Collection of Southern California. n

ABOUT THE MUSIC Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 LUDW IG VA N BE ET HOVEN Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna Beethoven had many reasons to accept, in 1800, a commission for a ballet score based on the Prometheus myth: he had long wanted to write a work for the stage, the ballet would be created by the distinguished ballet-master Salvatore Vigano, and frequent performances would mean increased income for the composer. Doubtless the Prometheus story itself, with its tale of a hero bringing enlightenment to mankind, appealed to the young composer. He began work on the score during the second half of 1800, shortly after the premiere of the First Symphony and at the same time he was writing the Spring Sonata.

The Creatures of Prometheus had its first performance at the Burgtheater on March 28, 1801, and – despite some critical carping about the suitability of Beethoven’s music for dancing – the ballet had a reasonable success:

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it was performed over 20 times during the next two seasons. Beethoven published the overture in 1804, and it quickly became one of his most frequently performed works, but the score to the rest of the ballet, which consists of 16 separate numbers, was not published until long after his death.

The Prometheus Overture is extremely concise (it lasts barely five minutes) and powerful; it is easy to understand why this music was performed so frequently. Massive chords open the slow introduction, which leads without pause into the Allegro molto con brio. As that marking suggests, this goes at a blistering pace, introduced quietly by a moto perpetuo theme in the first violins. Woodwinds in pairs announce the bubbling second subject, by turns staccato and syncopated. Part of the reason for the conciseness of this overture is the fact that it has no development section: Beethoven simply introduces his ideas, recapitulates them, and then the Prometheus Overture hurtles to its close. n

Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K.216: Strassburg WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZ ART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Mozart’s 27 piano concertos span his career, but he wrote only five violin concertos, and all of these come from the year 1775, when he was 19. The absence of more concertos for violin is surprising, given the fact that Mozart was admired nearly as much for his violin playing as his piano playing. He completed the Third Violin Concerto on September 12, 1775, a few months after the premiere of his music-drama Il re pastore. One of the most striking features of this very agreeable concerto is its wealth of themes: Mozart seems to be continually slipping in new ideas, and this music offers an almost luxurious abundance of singable tunes.

The emphasis on lyricism is apparent from the first instant, for the Allegro opens with a theme taken directly from the shepherd-king Aminta’s aria “Aer tranquillo” from the first act of Il re pastore. The opening words of this

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

CHARLES DUTOIT CONDUCTS - MAY 19, 20 & 21 aria might characterize the spirit of the entire concerto: Tranquil air and serene days Fresh springs and green fields The orchestra presents the expected second theme as part of its exposition, but when the violin enters, it does so with entirely new material and then proceeds to introduce two further theme-groups. The movement features athletic writing for the solo violin, rapid exchanges between soloist and orchestra and some of Mozart’s sunniest writing.

The Adagio stands in complete contrast to the first movement. Where before everything had been energy and extroverted lyricism, now Mozart mutes the strings (both solo violin and orchestral strings) and spins long melodic lines of an almost baroque elegance. Beneath the solo violin, orchestral strings offer a nearly non-stop murmur of quiet triplets. The finale returns to the manner of the first movement: a rondo, it too brings a wealth of themes. The movement starts normally enough – violin and orchestra lay out the beginning of what appears to be a standard rondo – but along the way Mozart breaks in with two completely foreign interludes. The first, marked Andante, gives the violin a tightly-trilled and dotted melody over pizzicato accompaniment. This leads directly to the second episode, marked Allegretto; here the solo violin accompanies its own melody with the drone of its open D-string. Both these episodes are over quickly, and the rondo resumes as if nothing had happened. The very ending brings a masterstroke: the solo violin rejoins the orchestral tutti, and the movement seems to vanish in mid-air on a fragment of the opening rondo theme. n

Petrushka (Original version, 1911) I GOR ST R AVI N S KY Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum Died April 6, 1971, New York City Petrushka, Stravinsky’s ballet about three puppets at a Russian Shrovetide carnival, actually began life as a sort of piano concerto.

In the summer of 1910, shortly after the successful premiere of The Firebird, Stravinsky

started work on a ballet about a pagan ritual sacrifice in ancient Russia. But he set the manuscript to The Rite of Spring aside when he was consumed by a new idea: “I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet-blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.”

When impresario Serge Diaghilev visited Stravinsky that summer in Switzerland to see how the pagan-sacrifice ballet was progressing, he was at first horrified to learn that Stravinsky was doing nothing with it.

But when Stravinsky played some of his new music, Diaghilev was charmed and saw possibilities for a ballet. With Alexander Benois, they created a story-line around the Russian puppet theater, specifically the tale of Petrushka, “the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries.” Stravinsky composed the score to what was now a ballet between August 1910 and May 1911, and Petrushka was first performed in Paris on June 13, 1911, with Nijinsky in the title role.

From the moment of that premiere, Petrushka has remained one of Stravinsky’s most popular scores, and the source of its success is no mystery: Petrushka combines an appealing tale of three puppets, authentic Russian folktunes and street songs, and brilliant writing for orchestra. The music is remarkable for Stravinsky’s sudden development beyond the Rimsky-inspired Firebird, particularly in matters of rhythm and orchestral sound. One of those most impressed by Petrushka was Claude Debussy, who spoke with wonder of this music’s “sonorous magic.”

A brief summary of the music and action, which divides into four tableaux separated by drum rolls: First Tableau: The Shrove-Tide Fair To swirling music, the curtain comes up to reveal a carnival scene in 1830 St. Petersburg. The crowd mills about, full of organ grinders, dancers and drunkards. An aged Magician appears and – like a snake charmer – spins a spell with a flute solo. He brings up the curtain in his small booth to reveal three puppets:

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Petrushka, the Moor, and the Ballerina. At a delicate touch of his wand, all three spring to life and dance before the astonished crowd to the powerful Russian Dance. A drum roll leads to the Second Tableau: Petrushka’s Cell This opens with the Petrushka being kicked into his room and locked up. The pathetic puppet tries desperately to escape and despairs when he cannot. Stravinsky depicts his anguish with two clarinets, one in C Major and the other in F-sharp Major: their bi-tonal clash has become famous as the “Petrushka sound.” The trapped puppet rails furiously but is distracted by the appearance of the Ballerina, who enters to a tinkly little tune. Petrushka is drawn to her, but she scorns him and leaves.

Third Tableau: The Moor’s Cell Brutal chords take us into the Moor’s opulent room. The Ballerina enters and dances for the Moor to the accompaniment of cornet and snare drum.

He is charmed, and the two waltz together.

Suddenly Petrushka enters (his coming is heralded by variations on his pathetic clarinet tune), and he and the Moor fight over the Ballerina. At the end, the Moor chases him out.

Fourth Tableau: The Shrove-Tide Fair (Towards Evening) At the scene of the opening tableau, a festive crowd swirls past. There are a number of ballet set-pieces here: the Dance of the Nurse-Maids, The Peasant and the Bear (depicted respectively by squealing clarinet and stumbling tuba), Dance of the Gypsy Women, Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms (who stamp powerfully) and Masqueraders.

At the very end, poor Petrushka rushes into the square, pursued by the Moor, who kills him with a slash of his scimitar. As a horrified crowd gathers, the Magician appears and reassures all that it is make-believe by holding up Petrushka’s body to show it dripping sawdust. As he drags the slashed body away, the ghost of Petrushka appears above the rooftops, railing defiantly at the terrified Magician, who flees. Petrushka’s defiance is depicted musically by the triplet figure associated with him throughout. The strings’ quiet pizzicato strokes, taken from both the C Major and F-sharp Major scale, bring the ballet to an end that is – dramatically and harmonically – ambiguous.

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

CHARLES DUTOIT CONDUCTS - MAY 19, 20 & 21 A NOTE ON THE TEXT: Stravinsky published his original version the year after the premiere, but in 1947 he returned to the score and revised it. These revisions had several purposes: to reduce the size of the orchestra, to simplify some of the metric complexities and to give greater importance to the piano, which had been the music’s original inspiration but had faded from view in the ballet version. Each version has its proponents, some preferring the greater clarity of the revision, others the opulence of the original. At these concerts, Maestro Dutoit will perform Stravinsky’s original 1911 score. n

La valse, poème chorégraphique MAU RI C E R AVE L Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, BassesPyrennes Died December 28, 1937, Paris Though Ravel, like many French composers, was profoundly wary of German music, there was one German form for which he felt undiluted affection: the waltz. As a young piano student in Paris, Ravel fell under the spell of Schubert’s waltzes for piano, and this led him in 1911 to compose his own Valses nobles et sentimentales, a set of charming waltzes modeled on the Schubert dances he loved so much. Somewhat earlier – in 1906 – Ravel had planned a great waltz for orchestra. His working title for this orchestral waltz was Wien (Vienna), but the piece was

delayed and Ravel did not return to it until the fall of 1919. This was the year after the conclusion of World War I (Ravel had served as an ambulance driver in the French army during the war), and the French vision of the Germanic world was quite different now than it had been when Ravel originally conceived the piece. Nevertheless, he still felt the appeal of the project, and by December he was madly at work. To a friend he wrote: “I’m working again on Wien. It’s going great guns. I was able to take off at last, and in high gear.” The orchestration was completed the following March, and the first performance took place in Paris on December 12, 1920. By this time, perhaps wary of wartime associations, Ravel had renamed the piece La valse.

If La valse is one of Ravel’s most opulent and exciting scores, it is also one of his most troubling. Certainly the original conception was clear enough, and the composer left an exact description of what he was getting at: “Whirling clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds scatter little by little. One sees an immense hall peopled with a twirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of chandeliers bursts forth fortissimo. An Imperial Court, about 1855.” The music gives us this scene exactly: out of the murky, misty beginning we hear bits of waltz rhythms; gradually these come together and plunge into an animated waltz in D Major. La valse offers dazzling writing for orchestra. Some of this is the result of the music’s rhythmic energy, some the result of Ravel’s keen ear for instrumental color; the

waltzes can glide amidst the most delicate writing for solo strings, then suddenly rocket ahead on important solo parts for such unlikely instruments as trumpet and tuba. If La valse concluded with all this elegant vitality, our sense of the music might be clear, but instead it drives to an ending full of frenzied violence; we come away not so much exhilarated as shaken. Ravel made a telling comment about this conclusion: “I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal sort of dervish’s dance.”

Is this music a celebration of the waltz…or is it an exploration of the darker spirit behind the culture that created it? Many have opted for the latter explanation, hearing in La valse not a Rosenkavalier-like evocation of a more graceful era, but the snarling menace behind that elegance. Ravel himself was evasive about the ending. He was aware of the implications of the violent close, but in a letter to a friend he framed them quite differently: “Some people have seen in this piece the expression of a tragic affair; some have said that it represented the end of the Second Empire, others that it was postwar Vienna. They are wrong. Certainly, La valse is tragic, but in the Greek sense: it is a fatal spinning around, the expression of vertigo and the voluptuousness of the dance to the point of paroxysm.” n PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist The spritely (an adjective not often applied to Beethoven's works) curtain-raiser to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus was introduced to San Diego Symphony audiences in the 1960-61 season under the baton of Arthur Bennett Lipkin. It was repeated through several seasons until the performance under David Atherton in the 1985-86 season, but was not heard again until its most recent performance under Jahja Ling in the 2006-07 season.

Stravinsky's original 1911 score to the ballet Petroushka was first played by the SDSO under Zoltán Rozsnyai in the 1968-69 season.

The 1947 orchestral revision of the score by Stravinsky was first heard here in the 1963-64 season when Earl Bernard Murray conducted, and given again four times through the 2008-09 season when Jahja Ling conducted. The current performances are the first return here of the original 1911 score since Rozsnyai’s concerts.

Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto was first played in San Diego by Erick Friedman, under Peter Erös, during the 1979-80 season.

Other performances followed by Andres Cardenes, Jaime Laredo, Pinchas Zukerman and, last, in the 2002-03 season by Rachel Barton, under Yoav Talmi.

Always an audience favorite, Ravel's La valse has been featured on eight San Diego Symphony programs since Earl Bernard Murray introduced it to these audiences during the 1962-63 season. Most recently, it has been heard under Jahja Ling's direction in the 2015-16 season.

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