Program Notes: Jahja Ling's Finale

MAY 26, 27 & 28 JAHJA LING’S FINALE FRIDAY May 26, 2017 – 8:00pm SATURDAY May 27, 2017 – 8:00pm SUNDAY May 28, 2017 – 2:00pm JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT conductor Jahja Ling piano Yefim Bronfman

Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Carol Lazier and James Merritt and Gayle and Don Slate.

PROGRAM JOHANNES BRAHMS

Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 Allegro non troppo Allegro appassionato Andante Allegretto grazioso Yefim Bronfman, piano

INTERMISSION JEAN SIBELIUS

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 Allegretto Andante; ma rubato Vivacissimo Finale: Allegro moderato The total running time for this concert, including intermission, is two hours.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

I

nternationally recognized as one of today's most acclaimed and admired pianists, YEFIM BRONFMAN stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors and recital series. His commanding technique, power and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike.

Mr. Bronfman will be performing Bartók concerti with the London Symphony Orchestra

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and Valery Gergiev in Edinburgh, London, Vienna, Luxembourg and New York. Recital performances will capture audiences with the cycles of the daunting complete Prokofiev sonatas over three programs in Berlin, New York's Carnegie Hall and Cal Performances, Berkeley.

As a regular guest, Mr. Bronfman will return to the Vienna, New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, Mariinsky, Cleveland and

Philadelphia orchestras, as well as the symphonies of Boston, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco and Seattle.

Following the success of their first US tour last spring, Mr. Bronfman will rejoin Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lynn Harrell in May for a European tour that takes them from Madrid to Berlin, Moscow and Milan. Always keen to explore chamber music repertoire, his partners have also included Martha Argerich, Magdalena

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

JAHJA LING'S FINALE - MAY 26, 27 & 28

YEFIM BRONFMAN, PIANO

Kožená, Emmanuel Pahud, Pinchas Zukerman and many others.

Mr. Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. Summer engagements have regularly taken him to the major festivals of Europe and the U.S.

for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s piano concerto with Salonen conducting, and in 1997 he won a Grammy® Award, again with Salonen, for his recording of the three Bartók Piano Concerti and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His prolific catalog of recordings includes works for two pianos by Rachmaninoff and Brahms with Emanuel Ax, the complete Prokofiev concerti with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, a Schubert/Mozart disc with the Zukerman Chamber Players and the soundtrack to Disney's Fantasia 2000. His most recent CD releases are the 2014 Grammy®-nominated Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2 commissioned for him and performed by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert on the Da Capo label; Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bayerischer Rundfunk; a recital disc, Perspectives, complementing Mr. Bronfman’s designation as a Carnegie Hall “Perspectives” artist for the 2007-08 season; and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concerti as well as the Triple Concerto together with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk and the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label.

Now available on DVD are his performances of Liszt's second piano concerto with Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic from Schoenbrunn, 2010 on Deutsche Grammophon; Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with Andris Nelsons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from the 2011 Lucerne Festival, and Rachmaninoff’s third concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle on the EuroArts label. Scheduled for DVD release later this year are both Brahms Concerti with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra.

Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States, he studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music, under Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher and Rudolf Serkin. He is a 2015 recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.

Yefim Bronfman became an American citizen in July 1989. n

He has also given numerous solo recitals in the leading halls of North America, Europe and the Far East, including acclaimed debuts at Carnegie Hall in 1989 and Avery Fisher Hall in 1993. In 1991 he gave a series of joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia, marking Mr. Bronfman’s first public performances there since his emigration to Israel at age 15. That same year he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In 2010 he was honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University.

Widely praised for his solo, chamber and orchestral recordings, Mr. Bronfman was nominated for a Grammy® Award in 2009

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

JAHJA LING'S FINALE - MAY 26, 27 & 28 Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 JOH A N N E S BR A H M S Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, Vienna In the summer of 1878, Brahms returned from a vacation in Italy – which in every way had been a delight – and took summer lodgings in Pörtschach on the Wörthersee. Music seemed to flow out of him that summer, and he made sketches for a new piano concerto. But he set these aside for several years while composing the Violin Concerto, First Violin Sonata, and Academic Festival and Tragic Overtures. After a second vacation trip to Italy in the spring of 1881 (just as enjoyable as the first), Brahms returned to his plans for the new piano concerto and completed the score on July 7 of that year, two months to the day after his 48th birthday.

Brahms was habitually coy about his new compositions, and to his friend Elizabeth von Herzogenberg he wrote that he had composed “a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny wisp of a scherzo”; he mailed a copy of the score to his friend Theodore Billroth with the comment that “I am sending you some small piano pieces.” Lurking behind these evasions, of course, is one of the longest (it has four movements), mightiest and most formidable piano concertos ever written. Yet the Second Piano Concerto is a strange mix. For all its grandeur and difficulty, there is an unusually gentle quality about much of this concerto, a lightness of texture and a playfulness unusual in Brahms’ music. This concerto may demand a pianist of near-superhuman strength, but it also needs one with a sense of fun and play.

Brahms seems to delight in doing the unexpected in this concerto. It opens not with the normal orchestral exposition, but with the sound of solo horn, calling nobly from the distance, and quickly the horn and piano engage in a dialogue of almost chambermusic intimacy. And then Brahms annihilates this sylvan mood with another surprise: the cadenza – thorny, gnarled and tough – comes at the start of this movement. (Was Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto the model here?) Only when this cadenza is out of the way does the actual exposition begin. Full

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orchestra stamps out the horn’s opening call – now transformed into a tough statement capable of symphonic growth – and the flowing second subject arrives moments later. Brahms builds the first movement from this material. Even if this is music of stature and power, the surprise is how often it turns gentle, with the piano content to think over, to ruminate and to extend the material. This is a big movement (well over a quarter of an hour in length), and it drives to a mighty close.

The “extra” movement is the scherzo, and in many ways it is the odd-man-out in this concerto. It is the only movement in a minor key (D minor), and its outer sections drive implacably forward with a dark intensity missing from the other movements. This movement was originally going to be part of Brahms’ Violin Concerto, and the composer told a friend that he included it here because the first movement seemed to him too “simpel.” While that word translates prosaically into English as simple or plain, it implies that Brahms felt a lack of dramatic tension in his opening movement. He makes up for that here, composing a scherzo in sonata form whose surging opening gives way to a floating second subject, announced by the violins high in their range. The trio section brings a great burst of energy and D Major sunlight, but Brahms soon returns to the opening material.

The reprise is not literal, however, and the music continues to develop as it drives to its unrelenting close.

The Andante opens with a long cello solo, and this noble, flowing melody is soon taken up by the violins. Significantly, the piano is never allowed to have this wonderful theme: it can comment and decorate that line – and in the turbulent center section it heads off in its own direction–but that theme remains the province of the orchestra. One of the magical moments in this concerto comes at the end of the piano’s central episode: things calm down, and in a long passage for piano and two clarinets Brahms slowly leads us back to the return of the cello solo and the quiet close.

Brahms liked that cello theme a great deal.

Five years later he used it as the central theme of his song Immer leiser wird mein schlummer

(“Ever fainter grows my slumber”), where it sets the text sung by a dying girl.

The last movement defeats our expectations once again. Instead of a mighty finale that would make a counterweight to the huge first movement, Brahms concludes with music of whimsy and playfulness. Donald Francis Tovey called this a “childlike finale,” but that need not mean that it is inferior music, only that it aims for something quite different from the first three movements. This one seems to dance all the way through, from the piano’s graceful opening through the languorous second episode full of gypsy fire and on to the piano’s playful extension of both these ideas.

Brahms keeps things light here (trumpets and timpani are significantly silent throughout this movement), and at the end the music comes dancing home in a way that is fully satisfying, even if it is an ending that no listener would have predicted after hearing the first three movements.

Brahms tried out this concerto in private rehearsals with Hans von Bülow and the Meiningen Orchestra in the fall of 1881 before giving the premiere in Budapest on November 9, and then Brahms, von Bülow and the Meiningen Orchestra took the new concerto on tour throughout Switzerland, Germany and Holland. As a young man, Brahms had been one of the finest pianists in Europe, but even the creator of this music found some of it nearly impossible to perform; there are reports that he was swearing under his breath during concerts over his inability to play his own music. This concerto is one of the supreme tests for pianists, full of difficulties at every turn: much of the writing is chordal – or in octaves – and demands huge (and powerful) hands; there are great leaps across the range of the keyboard; the rhythmic complexities are enormous; there are sudden shifts of mood within movements; and simply getting through the concerto demands steely strength and stamina. Brahms may have jokingly called this “a tiny, tiny piano concerto” when he announced it to his friends, but by the end of his tour with the Meiningen Orchestra he had changed his mind. Now he referred to it as “the long terror.” n

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

JAHJA LING'S FINALE - MAY 26, 27 & 28

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 JE A N SIBE L I U S Born December 8, 1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland Died September 20, 1957, Järvenpää, Finland Sibelius’ Second Symphony, composed in Italy in 1901 when the composer was 35, has become one of the most famous in the orchestral repertory. It is easily Sibelius’ most popular symphony, it is a favorite of audiences around the world, and it is a favorite of performers too: over 30 recordings are currently available. This popularity has been explained in various ways. Some sense the sunny atmosphere of Italy warming Sibelius’ austere Scandinavian sensibilities. Others hear a Finlandia-like program that dramatizes Finland’s struggle for national identity in the face of foreign domination. But Sibelius would have had none of this. He wanted his music considered abstractly – as sounddrama and not as a vehicle for extra-musical interpretation – and there is no doubt that the Second Symphony, in all its austere grandeur, is a stunning success as sound-drama.

Sibelius’ music has the sweep of the true symphonist, yet his symphonic methods are unique. Rather than presenting themes and then developing them, a Sibelius symphony will often present its themes at first only as fragmentary shapes. These shapes can come together to assume a more complete form within the course of a movement, but then shatter into fragments once again. And this transformation of material takes place during violent contrasts of mood, long buildups that culminate in a constant series of climaxes, and great splashes of instrumental color that burst out of the leaden skies of Sibelius’ musical landscape. These methods may be unique, but they take us on a true symphonic journey: across the forty-minute span of the Second Symphony, Sibelius moves inexorably from the tentative beginning through the battlefields of the interior movements to the thrilling culmination of the heroic finale. No wonder this is one of the most emotionally satisfying – and most popular – symphonies ever written.

Many have noted that Sibelius seems to reverse the sequence of the first two movements. Rather than opening with a dramatic movement, Sibelius begins with a gentle Allegretto. The pulsing string figures at the opening will recur throughout, and over them woodwinds sing an almost innocent tune. These theme-shapes return in a variety of forms, but the movement resolves nothing and concludes on the same tentative chords with which it began. The drama one expects from a first movement erupts in the second, marked Tempo Andante. Over the deep pizzicato opening, a pair of bassoons chant the main theme, aptly marked lugubre, and soon the music explodes in furious brass and percussion outbursts. Such episodes alternate with melting lyricism in a lengthy movement that is never at peace for long.

The scherzo arrives like a blast of wind across the frozen tundra. Its brief trio section, marked lento e suave, is in the unusual meter of 12/4: solo oboe sings its gentle song, built of a number of repeated notes. A sudden return of the scherzo leads to a further surprise: Sibelius brings back the music of the trio one more time before the symphony proceeds – on gradually more excited waves of sound – directly into the finale.

This concluding Allegro moderato is heroic in every sense of the term: its broad D Major opening strides ahead in thunderous octaves, so powerfully that one may miss the fact that this appears to be a variation of the woodwind tune from the symphony’s very beginning, now played backwards. Trumpet fanfares and throbbing accompaniment push this music steadily forward, and this heroic beginning might prove anticlimactic were it not for Sibelius’ control of his material. More lyric secondary music intervenes, and Sibelius continually delays the return of the home key of D Major until the shining return of the main theme in the triumphant final moments. n PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist The great Brahms Second Piano Concerto was first played in San Diego by Eugene Istomin, under Earl Bernard Murray in the summer of 1961. The tenth and most recent time it was programmed here was during the 2008-09 season, when Jahja Ling conducted Yefim Bronfman as soloist. The powerful Sibelius Second Symphony was first played by the San Diego Symphony when Nicolai Sokoloff conducted it in the summer of 1941, the last of the orchestra's pre-war seasons. Since its post-war re-organization, the San Diego Symphony has programmed it eight times, most recently at these concerts in 2010, when Jahja Ling conducted it.

BOLÉRO BY THE BAY SAMEER PATEL, CONDUCTOR

SUN AUG 20 | 7:30pm The ultimate classical pops experience: Associate Conductor Sameer Patel leads an exciting performance of Maurice Ravel’s famously seductive Boléro by the San Diego Symphony under the stars at beautiful Embarcadero Marina Park South! The concert will also feature music

by Alberto Ginastera and Astor Piazzolla.

GINASTERA: Four Dances from Estancia PIAZZOLLA: Selected Tangos RAVEL: Rapsodie espagnole RAVEL: Boléro

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

JAHJA LING'S FINALE - MAY 26, 27 & 28

WHY THIS (FINAL) PROGRAM? AN APPRECIATION Melvin G. Goldzband, M. D., Archivist San Diego Symphony Orchestra

Last year at this time, instead of writing my usual column about the pieces chosen by our conductor, I turned my attention and increasingly limited energies into writing about the man himself.

It was for the final program of his last fully scheduled season as the music director of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Today's program is, indeed, Jahja Ling's valedictory as our music director

choices he made. Strong feelings about the music he loved became apparent as he and I talked and discussed what he planned on having us hear. As he pointed out with great feeling, his musical background emanated from his deep love and, even more, idolization of the series of great central European composers whose work he treasured.

Despite this, he allowed himself to be very open to French, Russian and Italian composers as well – and perhaps even more important, to a large number of American composers. His feelings especially about Leonard Bernstein are really of adoration, based in great part on his experience with Bernstein as a mentor.

after 13 years of building an orchestra that has developed into

Jahja's closeness to a large number of the greatest musicians on

a wonderful collective musical instrument. Not many people

the international scene allowed us to hear some extraordinary

reading this will have had the opportunity to have listened to the

performances by many of them. Lang Lang is a special example.

San Diego Symphony for as many years and through as many ups,

Ling's closeness to that remarkable pianist led to his accompanying

downs and crises as I have, beginning with my listening to its Ford

the orchestra at Carnegie Hall just a few years ago for their sold-out

Bowl rehearsals across Park Boulevard from my windowed office at

debut just before launching their China Friendship Tour. That tour

the old Naval Hospital in the summer of 1959. If they did have the

did amazing things for the orchestra, who never before had dreamed

experience of hearing that orchestra in those years, they, too, would

of such exposure. Jahja dreamed of it for several years, though, and

have strong, exceptional feelings of appreciation for the man who

since then has continued dreaming of taking them to Europe to

built that fledgling organization into the really superb ensemble we

show them off in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Vienna

are privileged to enjoy in the present.

Musikverein Saal. But he need not feel too many regrets about that;

Jahja Ling built the San Diego Symphony into what is today: one of

he gave them what no one had ever given them before!

the finest orchestras in this country, even better than some of the

Lang Lang came back here this special season to play under his

European orchestras we hear during their American tours or on our

dear friend, Jahja Ling, following another close musician-friend,

European visits. Blessed by the kind of economic stability necessary

Gil Shaham. The violinist opened the season with Ling, who, later in

to do that job, Maestro Ling hired close to two-thirds of the superbly

the season, characteristically brought forth a brilliant, new, young,

trained virtuosos from the finest conservatories who currently make

up-and-coming violinist, Benjamin Beilman, especially to play one of

up our Orchestra personnel. Our principals are all equally superb

Ling's favorite concertos, the beautiful Saint-Saëns Third. For this

players, and the string sections sing these days as never before.

final weekend of concerts of this valedictory season, Jahja Ling has

One of the hallmarks of the tireless work done by Jahja Ling over the years became evident, paradoxically during this past season, when a procession of guest maestri, younger and older, more or less experienced, mostly seeking to become the next music director,

another close friend with him, Yefim Bronfman, described by The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross as “the thinking-man's pianistic powerhouse,” who will play one of his and Jahja Ling's powerhouse mutual favorites, the Brahms Second Piano Concerto.

came to audition on what was Ling’s podium. Regardless of the

One of two major concerts of this season conducted by Jahja Ling

quirks of each of the applicants (and all conductors have their own,

featured the immense Symphony No. 8 by Bruckner, about whom

often highly individual quirks), the professionalism of our orchestra

Ling said to me that he pictured the composer swaying over his

became increasingly apparent as the musicians gave the guests

great organ in Austria and being elevated into even deeper religious

whatever they wanted, and all of the guests pronounced their

feeling and expression than he had felt before, and which always

deep satisfaction with their experiences here. Some will be back

infused his music. This is centrally important to Jahja Ling, a sincerely,

next season for more mutual exposure with the orchestra and the

deeply religious person who spends much time and energy touring

audience as well. Replacing Jahja Ling is not an easy process, nor is

the world, arranging the musical events that are significant parts of

it a quick one.

the meetings of his co-religionists in their worldwide evangelistic

Jahja stuck to his guns during his tenure here, although some people, in or out of the orchestra family, criticized some of the repertoire

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society. Other than his family to whom he is deeply devoted, and his music, his deep faith is perhaps equally central in his life – possibly even more so.

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

JAHJA LING'S FINALE - MAY 26, 27 & 28

and trained in Leipzig, but his own feelings about his homeland permeated his works. Ling has conducted the Second once before here, and has also led performances of a couple of the Finnish composer's other symphonies. The Second, though, is special to the maestro, with a wide variety of musical impulses bringing to mind the often cold and windy Finnish weather as well as the contrasting, gorgeous evergreen forests in the midst of which Sibelius lived.

No other man in our series of music directors since 1959, when the San Diego Symphony Orchestra began its consecutive winter series of concerts, has ever been honored in the manner we in San Diego are honoring Jahja Ling. He is the first – and so far the only one of our music directors – to be given the title of Conductor Laureate.

How appropriate that is – maintaining a good degree of contact with the orchestra he has trained, coached and otherwise mentored to its current excellent capacity.

The Lings will be maintaining their home here in San Diego. Their two young girls, who have won over all of our hearts, are in school and involved in a huge number of activities, musical and otherwise.

Of course, Jessie Chang, their devoted mother and Jahja's beloved wife (and excellent pianist in her own right), will continue teaching I know that Jahja wanted to program our principal cellist, Yao Zhao, as a featured soloist over the past several years, but one thing or another seemed to interfere. Ling was finally able to have our brilliant cellist opening up that March program featuring the Bruckner Symphony with the delightful C Major concerto by Haydn, a composer that Ling and I wish could have been heard a little more

and playing here. Jahja will joyfully continue with his worldwide evangelical services and will also be in Cleveland frequently, where he will be teaching at the city's famous Institute of Music. He will also continue appearing as guest conductor with the superb Cleveland Orchestra, with which he has had, and continues to have, a close relationship.

frequently during our seasons. But with on average only 14 programs

He and I talked about the possibility of other guest conducting

in the annual Masterworks series during his tenure, everything

engagements. He agreed that those may be likely, but the guest

wished could not always be accommodated.

conducting he really looks forward to will be at some of the great

Jahja Ling's deep feelings about Gustav Mahler's incredible symphonies have often been expressed by the conductor over his years here. He has conducted Mahler to considerable audience

music schools of America, where he can teach and train aspiring musicians and inculcate them with his thoughts about – and his absolute devotion to – music.

and critical acclaim here and elsewhere and is pleased that he has

By and large, and in conclusion, I believe that Jahja Ling and we –

presented seven out of the composer's eight symphonies during his

the city and the orchestra – did well with each other. This is not

tenure here, some more than once. The Third, which opened this

only attested to by what we hear these days when we listen to our

final month of Jacobs Masterworks classical concert programs, is a

Orchestra, but also by his being a man who exudes a great deal of

special favorite that he had wanted to repeat over the past several

love from within himself, not only about music, but on a personal

seasons.

level as well. He made many friends here who will miss seeing him

Returning to this final concert program of this season, Ling has chosen to conclude it – and the season, and his tenure as music director – with the mighty Sibelius Second Symphony. The great Finnish composer is a true representative of the great central

as regularly as before, but who will rejoice, as I will, when he returns either to conduct – and I look forward to that – or simply to continue to be an honored and beloved member of our community who left us the splendid orchestra we hear today as his continuing legacy. n

European tradition revered by our conductor. Sibelius was a violinist

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