SUNDAY, JULY 25

SUNDAY, JULY 25, 11:30 AM | ALPHA OMEGA

SEASON FINALE

at alpha omega

Tessa Lark, Violin Sam Reider, Piano and Accordion

Jazz and bluegrass originals and standards to be announced from the stage

SUNDAY, JULY 25, 5:30 PM | CIA AT COPIA

SUNDAY at the symphony

Chad Goodman, Conductor Festival Orchestra Napa

PIETRO MASCAGNI (1863-1945)

Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana (1880) JOHN ADAMS (B. 1947) The Chairman Dances (1985) GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937) An American in Paris (1928) IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) Firebird Suite (1919)

Concert is dedicated to the memory of Joel Revzen.

Chad Goodman appears as the recipient of the 2021 Festival Napa Valley Joel Revzen Fellowship.

Concert is part of Frost at Festival Napa Valley.

INTERMEZZO FROM CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA

Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)

The drama and lyricism of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana accounts for much of its fame. The some four-minute Intermezzo that occurs before the last scene is an affirmation of that, with its moving opening and lyrical strings that sing throughout. This Intermezzo is considered worldwide to be one of the most popular moments in music.

Mascagni’s one-act Cavalleria Rusticana was premiered in 1890 in Vienna. Adapted from a short story and play written by Giovanni Verga, it takes place on Easter morning in 19th century Sicily. This setting accounts for its importance as a work of “verismo opera,” meaning a form of opera that expressed the reality of ordinary life.

THE CHAIRMAN DANCES

John Adams (b. 1947)

John Adams was commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony to compose The Chairman Dances which he subtitled Foxtrot for Orchestra. Adams himself described the work as an “outtake” from Act III of his opera Nixon in China which he was working on at the time. In the opera, the music depicts Madame Mao crashing into a presidential banquet and performing a seductive dance. Chairman Mao descends from his portrait and joins her in a foxtrot, a dance from earlier times. The piece ends with the sound of a gramophone winding down.

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

With its many jazz and blues effects, George Gershwin’s American in Paris has become an iconic piece of American music. Despite its Americana association, however, the piece is also a wonderful portrayal of Paris in the 1920s when it hosted expatriate artists such as Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso. Those rich years are somehow painted in Gershwin’s music with its street noises that speak so clearly of Paris. We can also hear the work as “pure” music admired by none other than Maurice Ravel with whom Gershwin studied in 1926. Those studies produced the first version of An American in Paris which Gershwin would complete in 1928 when he returned to Paris in hope of studying with Nadia Boulanger who, after hearing him play, refused to teach him. She advised him to follow his own path with her famous comment: “Why try to be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin.” He took her advice, and An American in Paris was premiered on December 13, 1928 in Carnegie Hall with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Philharmonic.

In the original program notes Gershwin commented, “My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere.” Gershwin also mentioned in his notes that the American visitor succumbs to a “spasm of homesickness” portrayed by the blues effects he incorporates into the music, but that “the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant.”

FIREBIRD SUITE

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

The ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev changed the course of music history when he sought the then relatively unknown Igor Stravinsky to compose a ballet score for his Ballets Russes. Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite would be the first production by an emerging ballet company to feature an entirely new score. So it was that Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to write the ballet music for a story based on a Russian folklore tale. The story tells of the downfall of a powerful ogre-like figure of evil, Kastchei the Deathless, who was seizing young princesses and turning the knights who came to rescue them into stone. Kastchei’s downfall was brought about when Crown Prince Ivan enlists the help of a beautiful rare bird, Firebird, to destroy Kastchei and free his victims. Stravinsky’s musical treatment of the story was rich and innovative and remains so today as you will hear in this performance.