PROGRAM LEONARD BERNSTEIN "Times Square: 1944" from On the Town SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 Allegro ma non tanto Intermezzo: Adagio Finale
Behzod Abduraimov, piano
INTERMISSION DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 Moderato JAHJA LING
Allegretto Largo
Friday, April 20 | 8PM Saturday, April 21 | 8PM Sunday, April 22 | 2PM
Allegro non troppo
RACH 3 A Jacobs Masterworks Concert
conductor Jahja Ling piano Behzod Abduraimov
Performances at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall
This concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Dorothea Laub and Karen and Warren Kessler.
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The approximate running time for this program, including intermission, is two hours. S AN DIEG O SYM P H O N Y O RC H ES T RA 2 0 1 7-18 S E A S ON A P R I L 20 1 8
PROGRAM NOTES | RACH 3 – APRIL 20, 21, 22
ABOUT THE ARTISTS JAHJA LING’S distinguished career as an internationally renowned conductor has earned him an exceptional reputation for musical integrity, intensity and expressivity. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia and now a citizen of the United States, he is the first and only conductor of Chinese descent to hold a music director position with a major orchestra in the US and has conducted all of the major symphony orchestras in North America including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. The 2016-17 season marked Mr. Ling's 13th and final season as Music Director of the San Diego Symphony. Mr. Ling is universally praised for his work in building the San Diego Symphony Orchestra from a post-bankruptcy state to one of the top tier major orchestras during his 13-year tenure. He appointed more than 70 new musicians from all over the world to form the remarkable ensemble and together they collaborated with the world's greatest soloists. In October of 2013 Mr. Ling led the orchestra in their first appearance at Carnegie Hall, followed by their first international tour to China where they appeared in five concerts. Together they have recorded works for Telarc Records and Naxos, and eight other CDs on the orchestra's own label. The Orchestra has named him the first Conductor Laureate in its history.
Concert Sponsor Spotlight
DOROTHEA LAUB
DOROTHEA LAUB joined the Symphony Stars in the 1980’s and she has been a lifelong supporter of the symphony orchestras in every town she lived in for over 60 years.
Concert Sponsor Spotlight DR. WARREN AND KAREN KESSLER DR. WARREN and KAREN KESSLER have supported the San Diego Symphony for more than thirty years. Dr. Kessler joined the Symphony’s Board in 1981 and became Board Chair in 1989 and again in 2015. They are proud members of the Beethoven Society.
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Mr. Ling holds one of the longest continuous relationships with one of the world’s greatest orchestras, The Cleveland Orchestra, beginning in 1984 and lasting 33 seasons. Mr. Ling also served as Music Director of The Florida Orchestra (1988-2003), Artistic Director of the Taiwan Philharmonic/NSO (1998-2001) and Assistant and Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. Deeply committed to education, Mr. Ling served as founding Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (1986-1993), the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (1981-84) and Director of Tanglewood/BU Young Artists Orchestra during 1983 and 1984 seasons. Last season he was named to the position of Distinguished Principal Guest Faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Mr. Ling made his European debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1988 and has appeared with the Philharmonic orchestras of China, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Netherlands (Radio), London (Royal) and Stockholm; the Symphony orchestras of Berlin (Radio), Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Jakarta, Leipzig (MDR), Taiwan, Hamburg (NDR), Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney; and the Chamber orchestras of Lausanne and Scotland. Mr. Ling conducted Whitney Houston in the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV and in 1983 he conducted a special concert in San Francisco for a state visit of England’s Queen Elizabeth II. As part of the celebrations marking the return of Hong Kong to China, Mr. Ling led the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Hong Kong in May 1997. In 2009 he conducted the Worldwide Chinese Festival Orchestra in the new National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and Chinese Central Television (CCTV) and Phoenix Television in China telecast an hour-long profile of his musical journey worldwide. In June of 2012 he conducted the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra in Berlin’s O2 World with Lang Lang on the occasion of his 30th birthday, including Herbie Hancock and 50 young pianists from around the world. Mr. Ling is acclaimed not only for his interpretation of the standard repertoire, but also for the breadth of contemporary music included in his programs. Among the world premieres he has conducted are works by William Bolcom, Paul Chihara, Gordon Chin, Daniel Kellogg, George Perle, Bright Sheng, Alvin Singleton, Augusta Read Thomas, Michael Torke, Mark Anthony Turnage and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, with orchestras including The Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, The Florida Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and San Diego Symphony. Mr. Ling’s recordings for Telarc include the Dupré Organ Symphony and the Rheinberger Organ Concerto with soloist Michael Murray and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and two albums of baroque works with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (the first of which was nominated for a Grammy®). In 1998 Azica Records released a disc with Mr. Ling and the Florida Orchestra entitled Symphonic Dances, featuring Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Strauss’s Rosenkavalier Suite and Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloé. Mr. Ling and The Florida Orchestra have also recorded Stephen Montague’s From the White Edge of Phrygia for Continuum. His performance with the New York Philharmonic of the world premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Third Symphony is featured in a recent compact disc collection of Philharmonic performances entitled American Celebrations. Recent releases with The Cleveland Orchestra include a special edition CD featuring Mr. Ling and the orchestra performing Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony for the re-dedication of Severance Hall’s Norton Memorial Organ. P ERFO RM AN C ES MAG A Z I N E
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PROGRAM NOTES | RACH 3 – APRIL 20, 21, 22 Mr. Ling began playing piano at the age of four under the tutelage of Suzy Djoeandy and Rudy Laban. He studied piano and conducting at Juilliard where he earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Mr. Ling continued his conducting study at Yale School of Music where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts. He was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood Music Center and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute under Mr. Bernstein. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Wooster College in 1993. Mr. Ling recently received the Bravo Classical Music Icon Lifetime Achievement Award from San Diego County for his contribution to enriching the cultural life of San Diego. He makes his home in San Diego with his wife, Jessie, and their daughters Priscilla and Stephanie. n
BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV’S captivating performances are rapidly establishing him as one of the forerunners of his generation. Recent seasons have seen Mr. Abduraimov work with leading orchestras worldwide such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, NHK Symphony and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras, and prestigious conductors including Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Manfred Honeck, Vasily Petrenko, James Gaffigan, Jakub Hrůša and Vladimir Jurowski. Following his spectacular debut at the BBC Proms with the Münchner Philharmoniker under Gergiev in July 2016, Mr. Abduraimov immediately returned in July 2017. This was followed by his debut at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and Rheingau Musik Festivals. Upcoming European highlights include the Lucerne Festival, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Münchner Philharmoniker, Frankfort Radio Symphony, Philharmonia, Czech Philharmonic and BBC Symphony orchestras. In recital he is one of the featured artists for the Junge Wilde series at the Konzerthaus Dortmund and will be presented in recital at the main halls of the Barbican, London and Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Mr. Abduraimov will also collaborate in recital with the cellist Truls Mørk, which will see them on tour in Europe and the U.S. In North America Mr. Abduraimov appears at the Hollywood Bowl, Blossom and Ravinia Festivals. He will make his debut with the San Francisco Symphony and returns to both the Dallas and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. Last season, Mr. Abduraimov gave his Stern Auditorium recital following his debut success at Carnegie Hall in 2015. He has appeared in concerts with the Houston Symphony and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the Minnesota Orchestra. Behzod Abduraimov is an alumnus of Park University’s International Center for Music where he studied with Stanislav Ioudenitch, and he now serves as the ICM’s artist-in-residence. n
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ABOUT THE MUSIC “Times Square: 1944” from On the Town LEONARD BERNSTEIN Born August 25, 1918, Lawrence, MA Died October 14, 1990, New York City In the fall of 1943 choreographer Jerome Robbins approached Leonard Bernstein with an idea for a ballet about three sailors on leave in New York City, and this became Fancy Free, first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in April 1944. That summer, Bernstein had an operation on his nose and found himself sharing a hospital room with his old friend, the lyricist Adolph Green, who suggested that the plot of Fancy Free could be transformed into a musical. Green and Betty Comden supplied the lyrics, and Bernstein wrote the music for this show, now titled On the Town. After a try-out in Boston, On the Town opened on Broadway in December 1944 and ran for 463 performances. It was later made into a movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, though the film version dropped much of Bernstein’s music, to his disappointment. It should be noted that On the Town is not a musical comedy version of Fancy Free but is an entirely new project that grew out of the general plot of the ballet – Bernstein pointed out that “not one note” in On the Town had come from Fancy Free. On the Town tells the story of three young sailors – Gabey, Chip and Ozzie – who have a 24-hour pass and who set out to explore New York City. In the course of their day-long adventure, all three fall in love with a different woman: a music student, an anthropologist and a taxi driver. In 1945 Bernstein drew excerpts from Act I and arranged them for orchestra under the title Three Dance Episodes from On the Town. The 27-year-old composer led the premiere with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra on February 15, 1946. This concert opens with the third of the Dance Episodes from On the Town. “Times Square: 1944,” the music that closes out Act I of On the Town, features terrific solos for clarinet, alto saxophone and trumpet. n
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Born April 1, 1873, Oleg Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills When Rachmaninoff made his first concert tour of America during the 1909-10 season, he was frank about his motives: he needed money to support his family and he wanted to buy an automobile. During the summer of 1909 he composed a new piano concerto, his third, specifically for the tour, and he brought a dumb keyboard with him on the ship so that he could practice the new piece without disturbing fellow passengers. (This experience proved so dissatisfying that he never tried it again.) Rachmaninoff gave the premiere of the Third Piano Concerto with the New York Symphony under the direction of Walter Damrosch on November 28, 1909, and then played it extensively during his American visit. He toured with the Boston
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PROGRAM NOTES | RACH 3 – APRIL 20, 21, 22 Symphony, performing the concerto in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Hartford and Buffalo, and he gave a further performance with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustav Mahler in January 1910.
that pushes the concerto to its overpowering climax and the knock-out close. n
This is one of the greatest of all piano concertos – and one of the most difficult. Its unusual length, complex textures, powerful chordal writing and brilliance make it a supremely demanding piece for pianists; the work was so daunting that Rachmaninoff himself authorized four cuts and recorded the concerto in this abbreviated form. (Modern performances offer the concerto in its uncut version.) The Third Concerto has all the Rachmaninoff virtues – gorgeous melodies, lush sonorities and exciting climaxes – and it is easy to overlook how original this music is: almost the entire concerto grows out of the first movement’s opening theme, one of the most haunting melodies Rachmaninoff ever wrote.
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47
Over rustling, muted strings, the solo piano in octaves lays out this lengthy opening statement, a melody of unmistakably Russian character. So “Russian” does this theme sound, in fact, that many have searched for its source. Years later, Rachmaninoff dismissed these efforts with some amusement: “The first theme of my 3rd concerto is borrowed neither from folk song forms nor from church sources. It simply ‘wrote itself!’...If I had any plan in composing this theme I was thinking only of sound. I wanted to ‘sing’ the melody on the piano as a singer would sing it – and to find a suitable orchestral accompaniment, or rather one that would not muffle this singing. That is all!” This “singing” theme will reappear in countless transformations throughout the concerto. The second subject, a precise little march, is laid out first by strings and then woodwinds. Soon the piano takes this up and magically transforms it into a soaring episode – such elaboration and extension of basic theme-shapes is one of the pleasures of this concerto. Rachmaninoff wrote a cadenza for the first movement, then went back and wrote a much more difficult one. This second cadenza is so long that it becomes almost a separate world within the movement, and Rachmaninoff accompanies the piano with brief wind solos in the course of it. The massive first movement winds down with an unexpectedly brief recapitulation: the two principal themes make quick reappearances, and the movement vanishes on barely-audible strokes of sound. The second movement, marked Intermezzo, is in ternary form. It opens with the orchestra’s wistful introduction (Rachmaninoff marks the falling main theme ben cantabile) before the piano slips in almost unnoticed and then develops the orchestra’s opening ideas at length. Gradually the first movement’s germinal theme appears in the background, and Rachmaninoff builds the central episode – on a quick waltz rhythm – from a subtle transformation of this theme for solo clarinet over rippling piano accompaniment. Once again, there is only a hint of a reprise, and the piano drives the music without pause into the finale, marked simply Alla breve. Powerful orchestral chords unleash a torrent here, with the piano announcing the propulsive ideas: a pounding march-like main theme and a syncopated chordal second subject. Along the way Rachmaninoff offers reminiscences, transformed once again, of material from the first movement. At the close, the syncopated chordal theme of this movement rises up to become a Big Tune
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DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow Shostakovich’s Fifth is at once the most popular symphony since Mahler and the most enigmatic. It was composed in the aftermath of the savage January 1936 attack by the Soviet newspaper Pravda on Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District, an attack that Shostakovich believed (probably correctly) had been ordered by Stalin himself. (The article’s headline was “Muddle Instead of Music.”) Before that, Shostakovich had been the bright young star of Soviet music, hailed as a product of that system and acclaimed around the world for his witty, sardonic music. Now, virtually overnight, he found himself in disgrace, his career in ruins and he himself perhaps ticketed for a labor camp. After a great deal of soul-searching, Shostakovich composed his Fifth Symphony very quickly (from April 18 to July 20, 1937), and its triumphant premiere in Leningrad on November 21 of that year signaled his artistic and political rehabilitation. Shostakovich is often quoted as having called this symphony “a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism”; in fact he did not say that, though he did endorse that description. One of the most striking features of this music is Shostakovich’s return, after his experimental works of the 1920s and early 1930s, to classical form, a move that, to some Western critics, has signaled capitulation. But it may well be that Shostakovich felt that there was justice in the Pravda description of his music as “fidgety, screaming, neurotic” and that his music did need greater balance and restraint and stability. Simply because a work is conservative does not mean that it is inferior, and there is a great deal of superb music in the Fifth Symphony. This is an intensely dramatic score, so powerful that it is easy to overlook the control and unity of Shostakovich’s writing. The Moderato opens with ominous canonic exchanges between string sections, and these give way to the violins’ quietly-twisting main theme. Almost incidentally, Shostakovich introduces the simple rhythmic motif (long-short-short) that will saturate and unify the entire symphony. There follows a beautiful episode: over string accompaniment that pulses along on the rhythmic motif, first violins sing a melody full of wide leaps. But the wonder is that this peaceful theme, which sounds completely new, is actually a subtle transformation of the powerful canonic introduction to the symphony. This sort of ingenious transformation of material marks the entire Fifth Symphony. The entrance of the piano (with the rhythmic cell) signals the beginning of the development. It has been said that in this symphony Shostakovich does not so much develop his material as brutalize it, and now themes that had been peaceful at their introduction are made shrill, almost hysterical in their intensity. The movement reaches a climax on a furious tam-tam stroke as brass stamp out the rhythmic cell. After all this fury, Shostakovich resolves the tensions beautifully – the themes now return peacefully and, with its energy spent, the movement ends quietly. P ERFO RM AN C ES MAG A Z I N E
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PROGRAM NOTES | RACH 3 – APRIL 20, 21, 22 The Allegretto is a very brief scherzo-and-trio, and many have felt the influence of Mahler in this bittersweet movement that waltzes past in quick-step time. Much of the fun here lies in the instrumental color – the sardonic solo clarinet, the solo violin’s slides in the trio and the rattling sound of the xylophone – before Shostakovich rounds things off with a bit of the trio tune. After the classical clarity of the first two movements, the Largo is more complex. Its scoring is unique: Shostakovich eliminates the brass, divides the strings into eight parts, and gives a prominent role to the harps, piano and celesta. Shostakovich wrote this movement in one great arc (it reportedly took him only three days to compose), and the Largo features lean textures, an icy sound and some of the most beautiful melodies Shostakovich ever wrote. It rises to a great climax, then falls away to end quietly on the spooky sound of harp harmonics. Out of this quiet, the finale rips to life with pounding timpani, ringing brass and boundless energy; an angular second subject arrives in the solo trumpet over whirring strings. The militaristic bombast of this movement has bothered some listeners, but Shostakovich rescues the movement by his stunning transformation of this bluff beginning. Gradually these themes are made to slow down and sing, and material that had been strident on its first appearance yields unsuspected melodic riches in the subdued center section. Shostakovich gathers his forces and drives the symphony to a triumphant (if somewhat raucous) close in D Major. Music this dramatic cries out for interpretation, and ideological critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain have been happy to supply violently divergent explanations of its “meaning.” Prompted by authorities to provide a politically correct program for this music, Shostakovich obliged: “The theme of my symphony is the stabilization of a personality. In the center of this Composition – conceived lyrically from beginning to end – I saw a man with all his experiences. The finale resolves the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements into optimism and the joy of living.” So existential an explanation even led to this symphony’s being labeled the Hamlet Symphony in some Soviet circles. More recently, the Fifth Symphony has become the locus classicus of what might be called “The Great Shostakovich Debate” between those who regard this symphony as sincere (and consciously heroic), and those Western critics who wish to rescue Shostakovich from his past and who are unwilling to accept the proposition that great music might have been composed under the Soviet system. These critics have been able to accept this symphony only by declaring the entire piece ironic: its triumph, they say, is hollow, a conscious nose-thumbing at a political regime that insisted on happy endings from its artists.
War lives on in the minds of those engaged in this debate. Perhaps, in a new century, it may be possible to approach Shostakovich’s symphony as it should be understood: as music. Heard for itself, it remains – 80 years after its composition – an exciting work, satisfying both emotionally and artistically. Far from being a capitulation, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony marks a refinement of his musical language and an engagement with those classical principles that would energize his music for the next 40 years. n
-Program notes by Eric Bromberger
Performance History
by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist Much of Leonard Bernstein's dance music for his shows has been played here over the years in Masterworks and “pops” concerts, but this is the first time that his “Times Square Ballet” from On the Town will be performed individually at these concerts. The incredible Third Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff was first played on San Diego Symphony concerts when Fabien Sevitzky conducted it in the summer of 1992. The equally incredible, young William Kapell was the soloist. The concerto's ninth and most recent outing at these concerts was in the season of 2013-14, when Kirill Gerstein was the soloist under Jahja Ling's direction. Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony was introduced to these audiences in the season 1966-67 when guest conductor Izler Solomon directed it. Since then, it has been repeated at these concerts 11 times, most recently when Jahja Ling led it in the 2010-11 Centennial Season. n
To such extremes have ideological critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain been driven by their politics – and it is clear that the Cold
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