PROGRAM STEVE REICH Excerpt from It's Gonna Rain THOMAS ADÈS These Premises are Alarmed FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN "Introduction" from The Creation
MATTHEW AUCOIN
Thursday, January 24 | 6:30PM
RUSH HOUR PLAYLIST A Jacobs Masterworks Rush Hour 2.0 Concert conductor Matthew Aucoin baritone Rod Gilfry cello Coleman Itzkoff
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 I. Adagio molto - Allegro con brio MATTHEW AUCOIN "Prologue" from Crossing Suite Rod Gilfry, baritone KAIJA SAARIAHO Spins and Spells Coleman Itzkoff, cello JEAN PHILIPPE RAMEAU "Entrée de Polymnie" from Les Boréades GUSTAV MAHLER "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" from Rückert Lieder Rod Gilfry, baritone IGOR STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1947 version) Part 4: The Shrove-Tide Fair MATTHEW AUCOIN "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" from Crossing Suite Rod Gilfry, baritone
PART OF:
Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall
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The approximate running time for this concert is one hour.
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PROGRAM STEVE REICH Excerpt from It's Gonna Rain THOMAS ADÈS These Premises are Alarmed FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN "Introduction" from The Creation LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 I. Adagio molto - Allegro con brio MATTHEW AUCOIN
MATTHEW AUCOIN "Prologue" from Crossing Suite Rod Gilfry, baritone
Friday, January 25 | 8PM Sunday, January 27 | 2PM
JEAN SIBELIUS Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63 IV. Allegro
MATT’S PLAYLIST: ECHOES OF THE FUTURE
INTERMISSION
A Jacobs Masterworks Concert conductor Matthew Aucoin baritone Rod Gilfry cello Coleman Itzkoff
KAIJA SAARIAHO Spins and Spells Coleman Itzkoff, cello JEAN PHILIPPE RAMEAU "Entrée de Polymnie" from Les Boréades GUSTAV MAHLER "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" from Rückert Lieder Rod Gilfry, baritone ANDREW NORMAN Play: Level 1 IGOR STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1947 version) Part 4: The Shrove-Tide Fair
PART OF:
MATTHEW AUCOIN "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" from Crossing Suite Rod Gilfry, baritone
The approximate running time for this concert, including All performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall
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intermission, is one hour and fifty-five minutes.
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PROGRAM NOTES | MATT'S PLAYLIST: ECHOES OF THE FUTURE – JANUARY 25 & 27
ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR MATTHEW AUCOIN is a composer, conductor, writer and pianist who has been recognized as one of the most promising young talents in the operatic and musical world. He is Artist-inResidence at Los Angeles Opera, and has already worked as a composer and conductor with the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Salzburg Landestheater and Music Academy of the West, among others. He is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow and Genius Award recipient as well as the Festival Curator for the San Diego Symphony's "Hearing the Future" Festival in January 2019. Aucoin is currently Artist-In-Residence at Los Angeles Opera, a specially created position which fuses his work as composer and conductor and culminates in the world premiere of a newlycommissioned opera. Aucoin’s opera Crossing premiered at the American Repertory Theater in May 2015, directed by Diane Paulus. His Second Nature, an opera for young people, was commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Chicago and premiered in August 2015. Aucoin wrote the libretti and conducted the premieres of both operas and is currently at work on a new opera for the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater’s New Works program. Recent works include the orchestral work Evidence, commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Soft Power for the Brentano Quartet premiered in April 2018 and a song cycle Merrill Songs (set to texts by James Merrill) premiered by tenor Paul Appleby at Carnegie Hall – with Aucoin as pianist – which was co-commissioned by the Wigmore Hall. Violinist Jennifer Koh commissioned and debuted Aucoin’s new solo violin work, resolve, for the New York Philharmonic Biennale and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. In early 2017, Aucoin’s dramatic cantata The Orphic Moment received its European premiere at the Salzburg Landestheater, with the composer conducting. Aucoin is a 2012 graduate of Harvard College, where he studied with the poet Jorie Graham before studying composition at The Juilliard School. Shortly before he graduated from Harvard, Aucoin was hired as the youngest Assistant Conductor in the history of the Metropolitan Opera, where he worked with Thomas Adès, James Levine and Valery Gergiev. From 2013 to 2015, Aucoin was the Solti Conducting Apprentice at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he studied with Riccardo Muti and, in 2014, made his CSO debut substituting for an indisposed Pierre Boulez. Aucoin went on to make orchestral conducting debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; the Rome Opera Orchestra; the Civic Orchestra of Chicago; opera productions have included Music Academy of the West (The Bartered Bride, as well as his own chamber opera, Second Nature); Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy (Le nozze di Figaro) and Juilliard Opera (Eugene Onegin). Future conducting engagements include
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Verdi’s Rigoletto and his own Crossing with LA Opera, Doctor Atomic at Santa Fe Opera and a special program with the San Diego Symphony. Performers of Aucoin’s works also include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, Chanticleer, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Boston’s A Far Cry, Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra, violinists Jennifer Koh and Keir GoGwilt, members of the Chicago Symphony, the Spoleto Festival (Italy) and the Peabody Essex Museum where he was the museum’s Composer–in–Residence from 2013-17. His orchestral work Evidence received its New York premiere in June 2018 with the Orchestra of St Luke's conducted by Ludovic Morlot at the Caramoor Festival. Aucoin remains an active pianist: with his regular collaborator, violinist Keir GoGwilt, he has recently given recitals in New York, Boston, Edinburgh, Spoleto (Italy) and Toronto. Aucoin regularly performs with many notable opera singers, including Renée Fleming, Paulo Szot, Rod Gilfry and Anthony Roth Costanzo. Aucoin has also performed as a pianist in several Chicago Symphony Orchestra chamber concerts. An accomplished writer, Aucoin’s essays and poetry have appeared in the Yale Review, the Colorado Review, the Boston Globe and the Harvard Advocate. He has served as guest lecturer for the New York Shakespeare Society and a guest host for New York’s WQXR. He has been the subject of major profiles in the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune. His music has been featured on radio programs including This American Life, From the Top and Studio 360. In 2017 Aucoin founded AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), whose performers include instrumentalists, singers, dancers, choreographers and composers with Aucoin as co-Artistic Director alongside stage director Zack Winokur. Projects take the form of collaborations between its core members, ranging from operatic stage works to smaller-scale chamber works. In its inaugural 2017-18 season, AMOC launched a new Run AMOC! Festival at the American Repertory Theater, held its first major teaching and performance residency at Harvard University, and was Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Park Avenue Armory. n
ABOUT THE ARTIST ROD GILFRY was born and raised in Southern California. He earned degrees from California State University Fullerton, and the University of Southern California. From 1987 to 1989 he was a member of the Frankfurt Opera ensemble, and from 1989 to 1994 he was a member of the Zurich Opera ensemble. The S AN DIEG O SYM P H O N Y O RC H ES T RA 2 0 1 8-1 9 S EA S O N J A N U A R Y 20 1 9
PROGRAM NOTES | MATT'S PLAYLIST: ECHOES OF THE FUTURE – JANUARY 25 & 27 two-time Grammy® nominee, singer and actor has performed in all the world's music capitals. He is acclaimed world-wide in opera, musicals, recitals and cabaret. Gilfry has created 12 leading roles in opera world premieres, most recently in the Brooklyn Academy of Music solo opera by David Lang, the loser; and at the Houston Grand Opera in Jake Heggie's It's a Wonderful Life. Other recent appearances include: Adelaide Festival (Brett Dean's Hamlet), Glyndebourne Festival (Hamlet world premiere), Metropolitan Opera (Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel), Brooklyn Academy of Music (Matthew Aucoin's Crossing), Los Angeles Master Chorale (Beethoven’s Missa solemnis), Edinburgh Festival (Così fan tutte), American Repertory Theater Boston (Aucoin's Crossing world premiere), Zurich Opera (Rote Laterne world premiere), NYC Mostly Mozart Festival (Così fan tutte), San Francisco Symphony (The Tempest), Alabama Symphony (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony), Vienna Volksoper (Kismet), New York City Opera (Anna Nicole), Aix-en-Provence Festival (Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte), Quebec City Festival (The Tempest), Los Angeles Philharmonic (Così fan tutte), London Royal Opera Covent Garden (Anna Nicole), Metropolitan Opera (The Merry Widow) and Milwaukee Symphony (Così fan tutte). Recent recordings include Mozart's Così fan tutte, Heggie's It's a Wonderful Life, Great Voices Sing John Denver, Matson's Cooperstown and Stucky's August 4th, 1964. Gilfry’s upcoming appearances include a San Bernardino Symphony solo concert, Phoenix Symphony (Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem), CSU Fullerton Elijah, Los Angeles Opera (Crossing, the loser), Santa Fe Opera (Ariadne auf Naxos, Così fan tutte), Seoul (Così fan tutte), San Francisco Opera (It's a Wonderful Life) and Metropolitan Opera Dead Man Walking. Gilfry is an Associate Professor of Vocal Arts at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. n
Hailed by Alex Ross and The New Yorker for his “flawless technique and keen musicality,” cellist COLEMAN ITZKOFF enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, chamber musician and educator. Mr. Itzkoff made his professional debut at the age of 15 with the Dayton Philharmonic and has since appeared as soloist with orchestras across the country, most recently the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra and American Youth Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall. He has worked alongside conductors including David Allan Miller, Carlos Izcaray, Eckart Preu and Tomáś Netopil. Gold Medalist in the 2017 International Berliner Music Competition, Mr. Itzkoff was a multiple prize winner at the 2016 Irving Klein Competition and in the 2016 Boulder International Chamber Music Competition. He has also taken prizes at the Fischoff, S AN D I EG O SYM PHONY ORCHES TRA 2018-19 SE ASON J A N U A R Y 2019
Johansen, Blount Slawson and Young Texas Artist Competitions. In January 2013 Mr. Itzkoff was a featured guest artist for a weeklong residency on NPR’s Performance Today, recording interviews with host Fred Child and a full recital program. Chamber Music is at the heart of Mr. Itzkoff’s musical life, beginning early on with weekly quartet readings with his parents, both professional violinists themselves. At the age of ten Mr. Itzkoff began attending the Greenwood Music Camp where he began playing with other musicians of his generation and where his love of chamber music deepened. Since that time he has attended a great many summer music festivals including Aspen Music Festival and School, the International Heifetz Institute, La Jolla SummerFest, YellowBarn, and Music@Menlo. Mr. Itzkoff has also had the great honor of collaborating with distinguished artists of older generations, including Pamela Frank, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Cho-Liang Lin, Glenn Dicterow, Lucy Shelton, David Finckel, Johannes Moser, Roger Tapping, Gil Kalish and Peter Frankl. Mr. Itzkoff is a passionate proponent of new music and collaboration across disciplines. To this end, he is a core member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), a young ensemble composed of 17 singers, dancers and instrumentalists of the rising generation. In AMOC’s inaugural season, the company launched a new festival, the Run AMOC! Festival, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA in December; held its first major teaching and performance residency at Harvard University in February; and was Artist-in-Residence at Park Avenue Armory in April. Future engagements with AMOC include performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Clark Art Institute and a second, expanded Run AMOC! Festival at the American Repertory Theater. Aside from his performing career, Mr. Itzkoff is a devoted and dynamic educator, and has taught and given masterclasses across the U.S. at such institutions as the International Heifetz Institute, the Lev Aronson Cello Festival, Virginia Tech, NYU and Harvard University. Mr. Itzkoff has also performed outreach concerts in schools, community centers and hospitals around the county. He has received several grants and awards for these purposes, including the Sviatoslav Richter Grant for Music Outreach from Rice University, the Roman Goronok Fellowship from the 2016 Irving Klein Competition and, in 2015, the Cleveland Clinic Arts and Medicine Award for his engaging talks and accessible performances for clinic patients. Upcoming projects include an artist residency at the Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club in Hunters Point, San Francisco. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Coleman Itzkoff was born in 1992 into a musical family and began playing cello at the age of four. He holds a BM from Rice University and his Master’s Degree at the Thornton School of Music at USC under the tutelage of Ralph Kirshbaum. Mr. Itzkoff performs on a Paul Siefried bow on loan to him from the Maestro Foundation and on a 1730 Gennaro Gagliano cello, generously loaned to him by the Amatius Foundation of Austin, TX. n P ERFO RM AN C ES M AG A Z I N E
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PROGRAM NOTES | MATT'S PLAYLIST: ECHOES OF THE FUTURE – JANUARY 25 & 27
ABOUT THE MUSIC Excerpt from It’s Gonna Rain STEVE REICH Born 1938 In 1964 Steve Reich – then only 25 – was experimenting with loops of magnetic tape. On those loops was a recorded excerpt of a street preacher, Brother Walter, giving a sermon on Noah and the Flood in Union Square, San Francisco. As part of that sermon, Brother Walter offered the ominous warning: “It’s gonna rain.” Reich played different loops of that recording simultaneously on different playback machines, but the machines went at slightly different speeds, and gradually the words “It’s gonna rain” went out of phase. Intrigued by the way these tape samples overlapped and began to create rhythms of their own, Reich proceeded to compose a piece for magnetic tape based on the idea of repetitive, out-of-phase sounds, specifically the refrain from Brother Walter’s sermon. (He also included the sound of flapping pigeon wings recorded in Union Square) The result, titled It’s Gonna Rain, premiered in January 1965; it has become a classic of its kind, one of the works that opened the door to both minimalism and ambient music (compositions that make use of the sounds a composer hears around him). n
These Premises are Alarmed THOMAS ADÈS Born 1971 The Hallé Orchestra of Manchester, England, moved into its new venue in Bridgewater Hall in 1996. For its opening concerts, the English composer Thomas Adès contributed a brief piece that might be described as a curtain-raiser, but the composer put a more specific edge on his intentions in his own introduction to the piece: “The thrill of writing for a new, as yet unknown, acoustic was at the forefront of my mind in composing These Premises are Alarmed, and the central section of the piece is disguised to give as strong a sense as possible of the size and shape of the space it is played in… As for the title, I felt that any important new building must need adequate security, and what better way could there be of proofing a new concert hall than with brand new music?” These Premises are Alarmed is a brilliant piece, distinctive for its range of sounds – at one moment the music sparkles and glitters, and instantly it can turning powerful, unleashing the sonic punch of a huge symphony orchestra. The tempo is very fast (quarter note=120), though Adès reins things back slightly for the middle section before the music then accelerates to the emphatic final chord. n
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“Introduction” from The Creation FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN Born 1732 Died 1809 Haydn’s two visits to London during the 1790s brought the discovery of Handel’s music, and Haydn was almost struck dumb with admiration. To a friend he confided that he felt “as if I had been put back to the beginning of my studies and had known nothing up to that point,” and so Haydn returned to Vienna intent on writing music of similar grandeur. He found a suitably grand topic in the description of the creation of the Earth in the Book of Genesis, and between 1796 and 1798 he composed The Creation. That oratorio begins with an Introduction, also known as The Representation of Chaos, a musical depiction of the unformed void before God gave it shape. Haydn suggests this void with some – for him – almost shocking music. It is formless, wandering disconsolately and bleakly one moment, erupting with explosive energy and unexpected harmonies the next. After all this uncertainty, the music drifts into silence. Light and order will arrive shortly, but Haydn’s music does in fact leave us in darkest “chaos.” n
Movement I from Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born 1770 Died 1827 Beethoven’s genial First Symphony, composed in 1799-1800, is a very straightforward late-eighteenth-century symphony, the product of a talented young man quite aware of the examples of Haydn and Mozart and anxious to master the most challenging musical form he had faced so far. One of the most impressive things about Beethoven’s First Symphony is just how conservative it is. It uses the standard Haydn-Mozart orchestra of pairs of winds plus timpani and strings, its form is right out of Haydn, and its spirit is consistently carefree. There are no battles fought and won here, no grappling with darkness and struggling toward the light – the distinction of the First Symphony lies simply in its crisp energy and exuberant music-making. The key signature of this symphony may suggest that it is in C Major, but the first movement’s slow introduction opens with a stinging discord that glances off into the unexpected key of F Major. Only gradually does Beethoven “correct” the tonality when the orchestra alights gracefully on C Major at the Allegro con brio. Many have noticed the resemblance between Beethoven’s sturdy main theme here and the opening of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, composed 12 years earlier. This is not a case of plagiarism or of slavish imitation – only a young man’s awareness of the thunder behind him. n
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PROGRAM NOTES | MATT'S PLAYLIST: ECHOES OF THE FUTURE – JANUARY 25 & 27 Movement IV from Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63 JEAN SIBELIUS Born 1865 Died 1957 Sibelius completed his Fourth Symphony in February 1911, intentionally paring back textures to bone-chilling extremes: “Instead of a cocktail, I gave them cold, clear water,” Sibelius said. “It has nothing, absolutely nothing of the circus about it.” The finale, marked simply Allegro, flashes to life with the violins ripping upward and then plunging back into a seething rush of energy – at moments this movement feels like a perpetual-motion. A feeling of barely-controlled energy runs through the finale: blocks of chords slam against each other, and strings scurry madly up and down the scale. Through this texture the bright sound of tuned bells rings like flashes of light. The music drives to what the ear senses will be a climax, but Sibelius will have none of it. The tempo slows, strings offer a series of dark A minor chords, and the Fourth Symphony vanishes in the same mystery that has driven every moment of this elusive music. n
Spins and Spells KAIJA SAARIAHO Born 1952 In 1997 the Sixth Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris asked Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho to contribute the test-piece for that year’s contestants, and she responded with Spins and Spells. Spins and Spells is a competition piece, so it is brief yet designed to be technically challenging and also to allow performers to demonstrate their skill. This music’s difficulties are compounded by Saariaho’s decision to require that the cello be re-tuned: instead of being tuned to the customary fifths, her radical re-tuning (scordatura) sets the strings in major sixths and minor thirds. In a note in the published score, Saariaho describes the significance of her title: “The title evokes the two gestures which are at the origin of the work: on the one hand the pattern which I call ‘spinning tops’ turning around on the one spot or undergoing changes, and on the other, timeless moments, centred on the sound colour and texture.” The emphasis in this music is not just on technique but on the creation of a particular kind of sonority, and Saariaho notes that the music evokes the “instrumental colours of another age…seen and transformed again through my own universe.” n
“Entrée de Polymnie” from Les Boréades JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU Born 1683 Died 1764 One of Rameau’s final operas, Les Boréades was rehearsed in Paris in 1763, but apparently not performed, and it had to wait until long
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after its composer’s death for a production. The opera tells of the abduction of Queen Alphise by the violent boréades, descendants of the North Wind. The “Entrance of Polymnie” comes from Act IV, when Polymnia – goddess of poetry, dance and eloquence – descends to encourage the despairing hero Abaris to set out to rescue Alphise. The music that accompanies her appearance is elegant and graceful, well-suited to the dignity and powers of this goddess. n
CROSSING
A note from composer Matthew Aucoin What is it, then, between us?” With this resonant question at the climax of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman asks many things at once: what is his relationship to his contemporaries, his fellow men and women? What is his relationship to you, the reader, whoever you may be, whenever and wherever you may be reading his poem? And what is the relationship between the contradictory elements of his own self? The phrase “between us” itself has a double meaning: what is the relationship between us, and what stands between us, keeping us apart? In the moment that Whitman asks this question, he is in a state of unknowing: he wants to know, and needs to know. Crossing emerges out of my sense that Whitman wrote his poetry out of need – that his poetry is not, or is not exclusively, a vigorous assertion of what he is, but rather the expression of a yearning to be what he is not, or to reconcile opposing aspects of his identity. The person/persona/personality “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs” is the living product of this need. So, in Crossing, the Walt Whitman who walks the stage is not that familiar poetic persona. Rather, this is Whitman as I imagine he might have been to himself, starting from a midlife crisis which prompts his radical, heroic decision to drop everything and volunteer in war hospitals. Naturally, this Whitman is a fictional creation. Crossing is a musical fantasia which imagines and realizes the many forces – generosity, insecurity, longing, selflessness, bravery, unfulfilled sexual desire, a need to escape his own life, a boundless kindness – that caused a man named Walter Whitman, Jr. to forge an indelible embodiment of the American spirit in his poetry. n
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PROGRAM NOTES | MATT'S PLAYLIST: ECHOES OF THE FUTURE – JANUARY 25 & 27 “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” from Rückert Lieder GUSTAV MAHLER Born 1860 Died 1911 In the summer of 1901 Gustav Mahler began his Fifth Symphony, but he was also drawn to song that summer, and he had been reading the work of the German poet Friedrich Rückert (17881866). He set a number of Rückert poems, and five of these have been collected under the general title Rückert-Lieder. “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (O garish world, long since thou hast lost me) has become one of Mahler’s best-known songs. Perhaps the most telling thing about this song is that Mahler would choose to set this text – with its longing for escape from the world – at precisely the moment he occupied one of the most important (and tumultuous) positions in the musical world, the directorship of the Vienna Opera. This is haunting music – it almost seems to exist outside time, and its lean textures, aspiring melodic lines and utter calm in the face of the frenzy of the world strike a chord in every listener. One of Mahler’s friends visited him during the summer of 1901 and quoted him on “Ich bin der Welt”: “He himself said of the uncommonly full and restrained character of this song that it was feeling from the heart right up into the lips but it never passed them! He also said this was himself!” n
Play: Level 1 ANDREW NORMAN Born 1979 Andrew Norman studied composition and piano at USC and Yale and now teaches at the USC Thornton School of Music. Play was composed for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which gave the premiere of the original version on May 17, 2013. Play is a big work: it is in three sections (called “Levels” rather than movements), which span about 45 minutes. Norman has noted that the first and third Levels can be performed separately, and this concert presents Level 1. The composer has prepared a program note: I am fascinated by how instruments are played, and how the physical act of playing an instrument becomes potent theatrical material when we foreground it on stage at an orchestra concert. I’m also fascinated by how the orchestra, as a meta-instrument, is played, how its many moving parts and people can play with or against or apart from one another. While the word “play” certainly connotes fun and whimsy and a child-like exuberance, it can also hint at a darker side of interpersonal relationships, at manipulation, control, deceit, and the many forms of master-to-puppet dynamics one could possibly extrapolate from the composer-conductor-orchestraaudience chain of communication. Much of this piece is concerned with who is playing whom. The percussionists, for instance, spend a lot of their time and energy “playing” the rest of the orchestra (just as they themselves are “played” by
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the conductor, who in turn is “played” by the score). Specific percussion instruments act as triggers, turning on and off various players, making them (sometimes in the spirit of jest, sometimes not) play louder or softer, forwards or backwards, faster or slower. They cause the music to rewind and retry things, to jump back and forth in its own narrative structure, and to change channels entirely, all with an eye and ear toward finding a way out of the labyrinth and on to some higher level. n -Andrew Norman Andrew Norman's Play: Level 1 is the winner of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.
“The Shrove-Tide Fair” from Petrushka (1947 version) IGOR STRAVINSKY Born 1882 Died 1971 Stravinsky was at work on The Rite of Spring 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.” This became a ballet about Petrushka, “the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries.” The ballet comes to its grim climax in the Part 4: The Shrovetide Fair. A festive crowd swirls past, and Stravinsky offers a series of ballet set-pieces here: the Dance of the Nurse-Maids, The Peasant and the Bear (depicted 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. n
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” from Crossing Suite MATTHEW AUCOIN Born 1990 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is not a setting of Whitman’s lengthy poem. Instead, it uses key lines from that poem as a structuring device: amidst the splendor of crossing a river on a beautiful day, the poet muses on the dark side of human nature and notes that those “dark patches” can fall not only on himself but on every one of us. The soloist in the two excerpts from Matthew Aucoin’s opera is baritone Rod Gilfry, who sang the part of Walt Whitman at the opera’s premiere. n -Program notes by Eric Bromberger n S AN DIEG O SYM P H O N Y O RC H ES T RA 2 0 1 8-1 9 S EA S O N J A N U A R Y 20 1 9