PROGRAM FRANZ LISZT Les Préludes ADAM SCHOENBERG Orchard in Fog (World Premiere, written and commissioned in honor of Anne Akiko Meyers) I. Frail II. Dancing III. Farewell Song Anne Akiko Meyers, violin
INTERMISSION ANNE AKIKO MEYERS
JEAN SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82 Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato – Presto
Saturday, February 10 | 8PM Sunday, February 11 | 2PM
Andante mosso; quasi allegretto Allegro molto – Misterioso
PRELUDES AND PREMIERE A Jacobs Masterworks Concert
conductor Sameer Patel violin Anne Akiko Meyers composer Adam Schoenberg
Performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall
The appearance of Anne Akiko Meyers in these performances is made possible, in part, by the generosity of Alan Benaroya.
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The approximate running time for this program, including intermission, is one hour and forty minutes. S AN DIEG O SYM P H O N Y O RC H ES T RA 2 0 1 7-1 8 S EA S O N F E B R U A R Y 20 1 8
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS Internationally recognized for his versatile musicianship and passionate communication, SAMEER PATEL is one of America's most exciting young conductors. A recipient of 2016 and 2017 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards, Mr. Patel is currently in his third season as the Associate Conductor of the San Diego Symphony. He is also the Associate Conductor of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, whose distinguished musicians come from many of North America’s finest orchestras. Mr. Patel’s work as a conductor has taken him across North America, South America, and Europe. In the 2017-18 season, Sameer makes his highly anticipated subscription debut conducting two programs with the San Diego Symphony. He also leads operatic works with the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera, conducts modern masterpieces of the 20th and 21st centuries with the La Jolla Symphony and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, shares the podium with legendary film composer John Williams, and closes Symphony New Hampshire's season with Beethoven's Symphony no. 9. Devoted to the music of living composers, in the current season Mr. Patel also conducts works by Ellen Reid, Hannah Lash, Gabriela Lena Frank, Derrick Spiva Jr., Adam Schoenberg, George Walker and Mason Bates. Additional recent guest conducting engagements include appearances with the National Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Fresno Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Reading Symphony Orchestra, Leipziger Sinfonieorchester, Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Sinfonietta. In the summer of 2016, Sameer was selected out of a field of more than 120 conductors to study at the renowned Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy with Daniele Gatti, Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Immediately following his participation in the masterclass, Mr. Patel was selected by Maestro Gatti for further concerts in Europe, and he immediately returned to Italy to lead two acclaimed programs with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo. He was also a Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholar, an honor given to him by former New York Philharmonic Music Director Kurt Masur. As part of this award, Mr. Patel traveled to Europe to study with and assist Maestro Masur with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2013 Mr. Patel was one of only six conductors selected by the League of American Orchestras for the Bruno Walter National Conductor S AN D I EG O SYM PHONY ORCHES TRA 2017-18 SE ASON F E B R U A R Y 20 18
Preview with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, an event that showcases emerging conductors to industry professionals and which led to subsequent, multiple engagements with that orchestra. Prior to joining the San Diego Symphony, Mr. Patel held conducting positions with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Chicago Sinfonietta and the Boston Philharmonic. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Mr. Patel furthered his training with some of the greatest conductors of our time, including Gianandrea Noseda, Daniele Gatti, the late Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink, David Zinman and Neeme and Paavo Järvi. Mr. Patel is an enthusiastic advocate for music education and enjoys teaching and learning from the many students he works with at summer music festivals, school music programs, and youth orchestras across the country. Born and raised in Michigan, Sameer Patel is proud to make his home in San Diego with his wife, Shannon, and their infant son, Devan. n Violin superstar ANNE AKIKO MEYERS is one of the most in demand violinists in the world. Regularly performing as guest soloist with the world’s top orchestras, she presents groundbreaking recitals and is a best-selling recording artist with 35 albums. Ms. Meyers is known for her passionate performances, purity of sound, deeply poetic interpretations, innovative programming and commitment to commissioning significant new works from living composers. Anne Akiko Meyers’ recording of Rautavaara’s Fantasia was the only classical instrumental work to be selected on NPR’s 100 best songs of 2017. Fantasia, Anne’s 35th recording, includes works for violin and orchestra by Rautavaara, Ravel and the Szymanowski Concerto No. 1, recorded with Kristjan Järvi and the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 2018, she will premiere a new violin concerto by Adam Schoenberg which she commissioned, debuting the work with the Phoenix and San Diego Symphony Orchestras. Ms. Meyers will also return to Leipzig, Germany to give the European premiere of Rautavaara’s Fantasia with the MDR Leipzig Orchestra and has been invited by the legendary composer, Arvo Pärt to perform at the opening celebration of the new Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia. Earlier in 2017 Ms. Meyers performed the world premiere of Fantasia by Einojuhani Rautavaara, a work written for her, and considered to be the composer’s final masterpiece, with the Kansas City Symphony, conducted by Michael Stern. She performed recitals in Florida, New York, Virginia, Washington D.C., and returned to the Nashville Symphony to perform the Bernstein Serenade with Giancarlo Guerrero. In May she headlined the Kanazawa Music Festival, performing the Beethoven Concerto with cadenzas by Mason Bates with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, toured New Zealand with the Mason Bates Violin Concerto and New Zealand Symphony, and returned to Krakow and Warsaw, Poland, to perform the Szymanowski Concerto and Jakub Ciupinski’s newly orchestrated Wreck of the Umbria.
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Other recent projects include a nationwide PBS broadcast special (later released as Naxos DVD) featuring the world premiere of Samuel Jones’ Violin Concerto with the All-Star Orchestra led by Gerard Schwarz, the French premiere of Mason Bates’ Violin Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre de Lyon, and two new recordings which were included in a box set released on Naïve Classics to celebrate Arvo Pärt’s 80th birthday. Ms. Meyers’ prior release The Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Album, debuted at #1 on the classical Billboard charts, as did Air: The Bach Album; and the Vivaldi was the recording debut of the Ex-Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri del Gesu violin, dated 1741, which was awarded to Ms. Meyers for her lifetime use. A champion of living composers, Ms. Meyers collaborates closely with many of today’s leading composers. She has expanded the violin repertoire by commissioning and premiering works by composers such as Mason Bates, Jakub Ciupinski, John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Akira Miyoshi, Arvo Pärt, Gene Pritsker, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Somei Satoh, Adam Schoenberg and Joseph Schwantner. Ms. Meyers has collaborated with a diverse array of artists outside of traditional classical, including jazz icons Chris Botti and Wynton Marsalis, avant-garde musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, electronic music pioneer Isao Tomita, pop-era act Il Divo and singer Michael Bolton. She performed the National Anthem in front of 42,000 fans at Safeco Field in Seattle, appeared twice on The Tonight Show and was featured in a segment on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann that became that show’s third most popular story of the year. Ms. Meyers has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS’ The Good Wife, NPR’s Morning Edition with Linda Wertheimer and All Things Considered with Robert Siegel. She recently curated “Living American” on Sirius XM Radio’s Symphony Hall with host, David Srebnik. She was on the popular Nick Jr. show, Take Me to Your Mother with Andrea Rosen, and best-selling novelist J. Courtney Sullivan consulted with Ms. Meyers for The Engagements, and basing one of the main characters loosely on Ms. Meyers’ career. She also collaborated with children’s book author and illustrator Kristine Papillon on Crumpet the Trumpet, where the character Violetta the violinist is played by Ms. Meyers. Anne Akiko Meyers was born in San Diego and grew up in Southern California. She studied with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, Josef Gingold at Indiana University and Felix Galimir, Masao Kawasaki and Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. She received the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Distinguished Alumna Award from the Colburn School of Music and is on the advisory council of the American Youth Symphony Orchestra. n
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Recently named one of the Top 10 most performed living classical composers by orchestras in the United States, ADAM SCHOENBERG’S (b. November 15, 1980) music is “invigorating” (Los Angeles Times) and full of “mystery and sensuality” (The New York Times). His works have received performances and premieres at the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl. Mr. Schoenberg has received commissions from several major American orchestras, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (Up! and La Luna Azul), the Kansas City Symphony (American Symphony and Picture Studies), and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Aspen Music Festival and School (Bounce). Additional commissions include works for Carlos Miguel Prieto and Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Jerry Junkin and the University of Texas Wind Ensemble and Texas Performing Arts, and concertos for Anne Akiko Meyer, PROJECT Trio, and the Dranoff International 2 Piano Foundation. Recent and upcoming collaborations include the Phoenix Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Boise Philharmonic, Iris Orchestra, Charleston Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, Arkansas Symphony, and the Nu Deco Ensemble. Recordings include Schoenberg’s orchestral works featuring the Kansas City Symphony, an arrangement of When You Wish Upon a Star for Anne Akiko Meyers and the London Symphony Orchestra, and a compendium including his keyboard works by pianist Nadia Shpachenko. Future recordings include his chamber music featuring the Blakemore Trio, and his Symphony No. 2 Migration with the University of Texas Wind Ensemble. Adam Schoenberg has been Composer-in-Residence with the Fort Worth Symphony (2015-17), Lexington Philharmonic (201314), Kansas City Symphony (2012-13), Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University (2012) and the Aspen Music Festival & School’s M.O.R.E Music Program (2010-13). He won several awards, including ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his orchestra work Finding Rothko, the Palmer-Dixon Prize from The Juilliard School and the Brian M. Israel Prize from the Society for New Music. Additionally, Adam Schoenberg received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2006 and the MacDowell Fellowship in both 2009 and 2010. An accomplished and versatile film composer, Schoenberg participated in the 2017 Sundance Composers Lab, and has scored two feature-length films and several shorts. Highlights include Graceland, co-written with his father, Steven Schoenberg, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film
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PROGRAM NOTES | PRELUDES AND PREMIERE – FEBRUARY 10 & 11 Festival and received its nationwide theatrical release in the spring of 2013. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Schoenberg earned his Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert Beaser and John Corigliano. He is currently a professor at Occidental College, where he runs the composition and film scoring programs. He makes his home in Los Angeles with his wife, screenwriter Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and their two sons, Luca and Leo. n
ABOUT THE MUSIC Les Préludes FRANZ LISZT Born October 22, 1811, Raiding, Hungary Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth Les Préludes has always been the most popular of Liszt’s 12 symphonic poems. The composer explained its title by printing in the score a lengthy paraphrase of the Méditations poètiques of the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869). Lamartine’s poem is a rather flowery discourse on the tribulations of life, particularly on the difference between war and the pastoral life. The paraphrase in the score captures some of its flavor: “What else is life but a series of preludes to that unknown hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death? Love is the dawn of all existence; but what fate is there whose first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm…” Liszt’s music – which seems to depict these many “preludes to that unknown hymn” – was first performed in Weimar on February 23, 1854, and it remains a favorite with audiences. But the problem with the story of the music’s inspiration is that it isn’t true. Liszt originally wrote this music in 1848 as the overture to a work for male chorus called Les Quatre Élémens (The Four Elements) on a text by Joseph Autran. When he saw that he was not going to finish that piece, Liszt extracted the overture, revised it and grafted Lamartine’s poem onto it – Liszt had composed this music before he thought of the Lamartine poem or the title Les Préludes. That should not detract from our enjoyment of the music, but it should warn listeners not to search for connections between the music and the poem, and it also reminds us that Liszt’s conception of the symphonic poem was rather general. At the end of the nineteenth century, Richard Strauss would aim for exact pictorial representation in his tone poems (Strauss bragged that he could set a glass of beer to music so specifically you could tell it was a pilsner), but Liszt had no such aim, and his music should be enjoyed on its own merits. And those merits are considerable. Les Préludes is one of the finest examples of Liszt’s theory of the “transformation of themes.” Classical sonata form was based on the contrast S AN D I EG O SYM PHONY ORCHES TRA 2017-18 SE ASON F E B R U A R Y 20 18
between quite different thematic material, but Liszt aimed for a more organic conception in which an entire piece of music might grow out of a few seminal themes. These themes would then be transformed across the span of the work, taking on a different character at each reappearance. In Les Préludes, the principal theme is the deep three-note figure announced by the strings at the very beginning. These three notes will prove an extremely fertile idea (so fertile, in fact, that Liszt’s younger colleague César Franck would later use the same figure as the basis for his Symphony in D minor). Listeners can follow this fundamental theme-shape through Liszt’s many ingenious transformations – Les Préludes is episodic, and these episodes vary from the lyric to the violently dramatic. Two subsequent ideas appear in the course of the music: a murmuring, relaxed figure for horns and violas, and a more spirited section introduced by solo horn. The latter is quite attractive – there is a glistening, fresh quality to this section (Liszt’s marking is Allegretto pastorale), and it brings relief after some of the earlier drama. As the music proceeds, Liszt proves quite adept at combining his various themes, and at the end Les Préludes builds to a rousing (and very loud) climax. n
Orchard in Fog ADAM SCHOENBERG Born November 15, 1980, Northampton, MA [The composer has supplied a program note.] Orchard in Fog takes its name from a photograph by Adam Laipson of an apple orchard in winter. This particular orchard happens to be in the same place where my wife and I were married in my hometown of New Salem, MA. Adam was generous enough to give us the photograph as a wedding gift, and it hangs in our bedroom. I’ve been waking up to this beautiful, haunting image every day for the past six years, and I am continually drawn to it. When Anne Akiko Meyers asked me to write her a violin concerto, a narrative inspired by this image and place immediately came to mind: Orchard in Fog tells the story of an aging man visiting the orchard where he was once married many years ago. It is the dead of winter, and he is now weak and tired, and nearing the end of his life. The first movement (Frail) is reflective, and represents the present day. It features a series of melodies that are more melancholic than hopeful. The violin uses a scordatura tuning (in this instance, the G string is tuned down to F for the duration of the concerto), and focus is not only given to the low F, but also to the uppermost register of the E string (which is the highest string on the violin). The first movement is 11 minutes. Movement II (Dancing) is a memory. It captures the old man looking back on his life and all of the beautiful, youthful moments he had with his wife. The movement is essentially one long dance that is built on a layering technique, where something new happens nearly every eight measures. It also features the solo violin more as a member of the first violins than as a traditional soloist. This 5-minute movement ends with a coda that has all of the strings playing together in an unpredictable rhythm. P ERFO RM AN C ES M AG A Z I N E
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PROGRAM NOTES | PRELUDES AND PREMIERE – FEBRUARY 10 & 11 Movement III (Farewell Song) gradually brings us back to the present day, and to the orchard where the old man’s journey first began. This is his farewell song to his love, and to the life that he has known. It is now time for him to leave everything behind and move into the unknown. It once again takes advantage of the now G string tuned down to F, as the entire movement is in the key of F. Whereas movement I was more somber in tone, this movement gives us a glimmer of hope and acceptance. n -Adam Schoenberg
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82 JEAN SIBELIUS Born December 8, 1865, Tavastehus, Finland Died September 20, 1957, Järvenpää, Finland World War I threatened the western consciousness in a way that it had never been assaulted before: for the first time it dawned on the human imagination that it might be possible to destroy civilization. That war, which leveled so much of western Europe, left Scandinavia untouched, and the residents of those countries were left watching warily as the horror unfolded to the south. In 1915, the first full year of the war, two Scandinavian composers drafted powerful symphonies. Neither composer connected his symphony directly to the war, but it is hard not to feel that both works register some response to that traumatic time. In Denmark, Carl Nielsen wrote his Fourth Symphony, which he called the Inextinguishable – it is a violent symphony that finally makes a statement of faith that life will prevail. In Finland, Jean Sibelius wrote his Fifth Symphony, which – while not so violent as the Nielsen – also drives to a heroic conclusion. Sibelius wanted his symphony understood only as music: for the London premiere in 1921, he specified that “The composer desires the work to be regarded as absolute music, having no direct poetic basis.” But while neither symphony may consciously be about the war, both make statements of strength and hope from out of that turbulent time. The Sibelius Fifth Symphony had a difficult birth – it went through three different versions spread out over five years. Sibelius had made a successful tour of America in 1914, and he returned home to find Europe at war. A notebook entry from September 1914 brings his first mention of the new symphony, as well as an indication of how depressed he was: “In a deep valley again. But I already begin to see dimly the mountain that I shall certainly ascend…God opens his door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.” He drafted the symphony across 1915 and led the premiere on December 8 of that year, his fiftieth birthday. But Sibelius was dissatisfied, and across 1916 he revised the symphony, combining its first two movements and so reducing the number of movements from four to three. But when this version was performed in December 1916, he was still unhappy, and he came back to the symphony three years later and revised it a third time. This final version was premiered in Helsinki on November 24, 1919, a year after the end of the war. As completed, the Fifth Symphony has an unusual structure,
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and it blurs traditional notions of sonata form, which depends on the contrast and resolution of different material. Instead, the Fifth Symphony evolves through the organic growth of a few fundamental ideas. The most important of these is the horn call heard at the opening of the first movement. That shape sweeps up over an octave and falls back (commentators are unable to resist comparing this opening to the dawn), and this shape will recur in many forms over the course of the symphony. The movement rises to a great climax at which that horn-shape blazes out in the brass, then speeds seamlessly into the Allegro moderato. This is the symphony’s scherzo, and in the earliest version of the Fifth Symphony it was a separate movement. (This movement also incorporates the fanfare-figure from the opening, and perhaps that unifying feature was what led Sibelius to fuse the two movements). The movement gathers strength on its relentless 3/4 pulse and drives to a tremendous conclusion. The central movement – Andante mosso, quasi allegretto – is variation form, but even this old form evolves under Sibelius’ hands. Instead of a clear theme followed by variations, Sibelius instead offers a series of variations on a rhythm: a sequence of five-note patterns first stamped out by low pizzicato strings. Such a plan runs the danger of growing repetitious, but Sibelius colors each repetition in a new way and at one point plunges into a rather unsettled interlude in E-flat Major before returning to the home key of G Major and a quiet close. In the movement’s final minutes come hints once again of the horn-theme from the symphony’s very beginning. The concluding Allegro molto bursts to life in a great rush of energy from rustling strings, and soon this busy sound is penetrated by the sound of horns, which punch out a series of ringing attacks. In a memorable phrase, the English writer Donald Francis Tovey has described this moment as Thor swinging his hammer through the whistling wind, but it is a mark of the subtle unity of this symphony that this same figure had served as an accompaniment figure to the rhythmic variations of the middle movement. Over the cascading peal of those bright horn attacks, woodwinds sing a radiant melody, one so broad and grand that its effect has been compared to the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. This melody evolves through various forms and finally builds to a great climax and drives toward the powerful close. Nielsen had concluded his Inextinguishable Symphony with a ferocious duel between two timpanists stationed at each side of the stage. By contrast, the end of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony feels classic in its simplicity. Sibelius builds to a climax, cuts the music off in silence, and then finishes with six huge chords. The first four – widely and unevenly spaced – feel lonely and uncertain, and then every player on the stage joins together for the final two chords, bringing the Fifth Symphony to its smashing close. Scandinavian composers were all too aware during World War I of the chaos sweeping across Europe, and both Nielsen and Sibelius responded with wartime symphonies that held out hope in the face of that destruction. If Sibelius refused to connect his Fifth Symphony directly to that war, he nevertheless made its moral message clear in his own description of its ending: “The whole, if I may say so, a vital climax to the end. Triumphal.” n -Program notes by Eric Bromberger S AN DIEG O SYM P H O N Y O RC H ES T RA 2 0 1 7-1 8 S EA S O N F E B R U A R Y 20 1 8