Yale Philharmonia, Peter Oundjian, principal conductor, Sep 28, 2018

yale philharmonia

Peter Oundjian principal conductor

Friday, September 28, 2018 | 7:30 pm Woolsey Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Hector Berlioz 1803–1869

Overture from “Béatrice et Bénédict” H. 138

Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872–1958

Serenade to Music (1938) with Yale Glee Club and Voxtet

intermission

Sergei Prokofiev 1891–1953

Selections from Romeo & Juliet, Op. 64 Scenes from the ballet, in a suite arranged by Peter Oundjian I. Introduction II. Romeo III. The Street Awakens IV. The Quarrel V. The Duke’s Command VI. The Young Juliet VII. Masks VIII. Dance of the Knights IX. Balcony Scene X. Romeo’s Variation XI. Love Dance XII. Dance of the five couples XIII. Romeo at Friar Lawrence’s XIV. Meeting of Tybalt & Mercutio XV. The duel XVI. Romeo decides to avenge Mercutio XVII. Finale XVIII. Juliet’s funeral XIX. Juliet’s death

As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Text Serenade to Music (1938) Vaughan Williams Text by William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice (Act V, scene I) How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and et the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There’s not the smallest orb that thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear, And draw her home with music.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

The reason is, your spirits are attentive – The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Music! hark!

It is your music of the house.

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

Silence bestows that virtue on it How many things by season season’d are To their right praise and true perfection!

Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awak’d. Soft stillness and the night Becomes the touches of sweet harmony.

Artist Profiles Yale Philharmonia

Yale Glee Club

Peter Oundjian, principal conductor

Jeffrey Douma, music director Sean T. Maher, business manager

Toronto-born conductor Peter Oundjian has been an instrumental figure in the rebirth of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since his appointment as Music Director in 2004. In addition to conducting the orchestra in dynamic performances that have achieved significant artistic acclaim, he has been greatly involved in a variety of new initiatives that have strengthened the ensemble’s presence in the community and attracted a young and diverse audience. In addition to his post in Toronto, from which he stepped down in 2018, Oundjian served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2010 and played a major role at the Caramoor International Music Festival in New York between 1997 and 2007. In 2012 he was appointed Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Oundjian was the first violinist of the renowned Tokyo String Quartet, a position he held for fourteen years. Since 1981, he has been on the Yale School of Music faculty. He was awarded the School’s Samuel Simons Sanford Medal for distinguished service to music in 2013 and named Principal Conductor of the Yale Philharmonia in 2015. He is Professor (adjunct) of Music and Orchestral Conducting at the School of Music.

From its earliest days as a group of thirteen men from the Class of 1863 to its current incarnation as an eighty-voice chorus of women and men, the Yale Glee Club, Yale’s principal undergraduate mixed chorus and oldest musical organization, has represented the best in collegiate choral music. In recent seasons, the Glee Club’s performances received rave reviews in the national press, from the New York Times (“One of the best collegiate singing ensembles, and one of the most adventurous… an exciting, beautifully sung concert at Carnegie Hall”) to the Washington Post (“Under the direction of Jeffrey Douma, the sopranos - indeed, all the voices - sang as one voice, with flawless intonation…their treacherous semitones and contrapuntal subtleties became otherworldly, transcendent even.”) The students who sing in the Yale Glee Club are drawn from all academic areas of the university, and the group’s repertoire embraces a broad spectrum of choral music from the 16th century to the present, including Renaissance motets, contemporary choral works, large orchestral works, world folk music, spirituals, and traditional Yale songs. Committed to the creation of new music, the Glee Club presents frequent premieres of newly commissioned works.

One of the most traveled collegiate choruses in the world, the Glee Club traveled on its first international tour in 1928.

Staff Yale Voxtet

Yale Philharmonia

James Taylor, music director

Manager Jeffrey M. Mistri

Members of the Yale Voxtet are current students of Professor James Taylor at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale School of Music, where they are candidates for graduate degrees in voice. The select group of eight singers specializes in oratorio, early music, and art song. In addition to performing a variety of chamber music programs each year, the group sings, tours, and records as part of the Yale Schola Cantorum.

Assistant Manager/Librarian Samuel Bobinski

Emilia Donato, soprano Haitham Haidar, tenor Harrison Hintzsche, baritone Adrienne Lotto, soprano Ashley Mulcahy, mezzo-soprano Corey Shotwell, tenor Edward Vogel, baritone Karolina Wojteczko, mezzo-soprano

philharmonia office assistant Kristy Tucker Music Librarians Antonia Chandler Brandon Garbot Bora Kim Marta Lambert Gregory Lewis Alex McLaughlin Leonardo Ziporyn Stage Crew HĂŠloĂŻse Carlean-Jones Cameron Daly Jisu Jung YoungKyoung Lee Gabriel Mairson Lucas Oliveira Arlo Shultis Andrew Sledge Russel Thompson Daniel Vaitkus Rimbo Wong Aidan Zimmerman

Program Notes Overture from “Béatrice et Bénedict” H. 138 berlioz Patrick Jankowski “Shakespeare, falling thus unexpectedly upon me, dismayed and astounded me.

His lightning, in opening to me the firmament of art with a sublime thunderclap, illuminated the most distant depths. I recognized true grandeur, true beauty, dramatic truth.”

This comment from his memoirs reveals just how deeply affected Berlioz was by Shakespeare’s work; a revelation for such Romantic artists, predisposed for revealing the breadth of human emotion. Their dynamic quality was enhanced by a turbulent mixture of comedy and tragedy, and the subsurface, often ambiguous psychological implications of the characters. Berlioz’s love of Shakespeare directly inspired several works, while this spiritual connection influenced nearly everything that he wrote.

The composer’s final major work, the opera Beatrice and Benedict, was the culmination of some thirty years of gestation following a spark of inspiration to adapt Much Ado About Nothing. The opera distills the complex comedy into a simpler narrative about the love between the two title characters, more specifically about how love reveals itself to them.

The overture reflects (or foreshadows) the capricious and energetic tone of the opera, with sudden leaps between themes and melodies, most of which are derived from the subsequent arias and choruses. An energetic Italianate dance (the opera being

set in Sicily) in step patterns of threes quickly dissolves into a reverent chorale.

When the dance motive returns, it has been transformed into a two-step; jarring and funny, and intentionally so. As in Shakespearean asides, musical phrases are punctuated by momentary interruptions while long melodies sing above the din of reactionary crowds in the orchestra. Like his spiritual daemon, Berlioz sparks our minds with his wit, while moving us to tears with profoundly beautiful melodies.

Serenade to Music (1938) Vaughan Williams Patrick Jankowski A composition without equal, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music premiered in a 1938 jubilee at Royal Albert Hall as a singular event, with star British soloists and musicians from several orchestras.

Perhaps the only comparable work of music is the star-studded single, “We Are the World,” from 1985, which, like the Serenade, features brief “spotlight” passages for the featured singers. That premiere took place just one week shy of eighty years ago.

The text comes directly from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, though Williams adapts the words significantly for this purpose, trading lines among soloists and punctuating certain moments with the full cast. The Serenade’s palette of modal harmonies, pentatonic melodies, and lush timbres creates an atmosphere that seems mythical and ethereal, yet familiar and warm in its folkish affectation.

A prolonged violin solo introduces the vocalists, who inhabit this pastoral, nocturnal landscape while rhapsodically meandering through contrasting sections.

Vaughan Williams allows the music to follow the text, as when a distant fanfare joins the line “Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn,” and receives an emphatic rseponse with a tutti “And draw her home with music.” A bass’s assertion that, for a man without a love of music, “the motions of his spirit are dull as night,” is cleverly scored with muted, transparent, timbres.

The setting ends with a prolonged chord, dissolving into the ether of Shakespeare’s words. Night and music become one and the same, conjoined in poetry and sound.

Selections from Romeo & Juliet, Op. 64 prokofiev Jacob Adams Prokofiev was always seeking opportunities for his music to be heard. One method which proved particularly successful was deriving orchestral suites from music originally composed for film and theater, such as the suites from the films Alexander Nevsky and Lieutenant Kije, the opera Love for Three Oranges, and the Scythian Suite, derived from the ballet Ala and Lolli. Perhaps none have achieved greater success than the orchestral suites from Romeo and Juliet.

Prokofiev was a prodigious composer of ballet scores – most of them written in Paris, including several collaborations with impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes – but Romeo and Juliet, both in conception and creation, stands apart from those written before it.

Prokofiev began work on Romeo and Juliet in 1934, by which time he had returned to the Soviet Union. Given the artistic temperament of Stalinist Russia, the lightweight sensationalism of Parisian ballet seemed far removed. In this climate, most Soviet artists avoided any experimentation that could be perceived as controversial. Thus, Prokofiev arrived at the idea of adapting Romeo and Juliet: a safe, seemingly conventional choice of subject.

Even upon choosing Shakespeare’s great love story as subject matter, Prokofiev could not avoid controversy in the pre-war Soviet climate. A series of frustrating disputes occurred: among other things, the subject was deemed sacrilegious for ballet. There was even a debate about whether the story’s ending should be changed to a happy one, in which Romeo arrives a minute earlier to find Juliet alive.

Mercifully, this was not the final decision; indeed, one of the reasons for Romeo and Juliet’s strong sense of musical structure lies in its faithfulness to the original text.

To premiere the ballet, Prokofiev had to leave Russia, and in 1938, Romeo and Juliet was presented in Brno, Czechoslovakia to minimal fanfare. Perhaps the difficulties in getting the ballet produced led Prokofiev to fear that his great score would never be heard, for he arranged the music into two orchestral suites, premiered in 1936 and 1937, before the complete ballet had been assembled. The suites have since become staples of orchestral repertoire, bringing one of Prokofiev’s most successful and dramatic scores to a wider populace than the ballet alone could have reached.

Yale Philharmonia Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Violin I Kate Arndt Ariel Horowitz Marianne DiTomaso Julia Mirzoev Cameron Daly Gregory Lewis Kyungah Oh Anna Leunis Maura Scanlin Xiaoxuan Shi Jessie Chen Xiaofan Liu Jung Eun Kang Albert Yamamoto Violin II Emily Switzer Brandon Garbot Yun Jae Choi Beatrice Hsieh Nuri Lim Dong Soo Cha James Poe Lauren Bennett Cheuk Ching Tse Jisun Lee Max Yiming Mao Viola Marlea Simpson Bethany Hargreaves Rimbo Wong Alex McLaughlin Abigail Elder Arjun Ganguly Rayna Chou Minji Kim Marta Lambert Rubina Lee

Valentina Crnjak Sophie Yu Bo Bae Lee Sein Lee Yun Han Harry Doernberg Bass Russell Thompson Ying-Yin Chia Kelvin Ng Amy Nickler Eric Timperman Jordan Calixto Flute Amir Farsi 1 Hannah Criswell Lucas Olivieria 2 Jungah Yoon 3 Oboe Leonardo Ziporyn 1 Amelia Merriman 2 Noah Kay Lauren White 3 Elliot Lichtenberg Shawn Hutchison Clarinet Amy Hur 1 Juan Martinez 2 Michael Moy 3 Richard Adger Giovanni Bertoni Bassoon Ethan Lippert 1, 2 Philip McNaughton 3 Eleni Katz

Nivanthi Karunaratne Gabriel Mairson Trumpet Oscar Mason 1 Melissa Munoz Eric Rizzo 3 Kenny Chauby 2 Brian Garcia Chloe Swindler trombone Danny Alford 1 Lyman McBride 2 Ingram Lee 3 bass trombone Jordan Crimminger 1, 2 Daniel Vaitkus 3 tenor saxophone Nick DeWalt Timpani Arlo Shuktis Percussion Russel Fisher 2, 3 Charles Comiter Shiqi Zhong Kevin Zetina Harp HĂŠloĂŻse Carlean Jones 2 Anna Ellsworth 3 Piano/Celeste/Organ Sophiko Simsive 1 2

Cello Guilherme Monegatto Samuel Walter Megan Yip Anita Balazs

Horn Griffin Botts 1 Scott Leger 3 Esteban Garcia Stephen Newberry 2

3

Principal on Berlioz Principal on Vaughan Williams Principal on Prokofiev

Yale Glee Club Jeffrey Douma, director staff T. Sean Maher, manager Andrew Hon, assistant director Jared Michaud, president Evaline Xie, manager SOPRANO Magda Andrews-Hoke Kristine Sungyeon Chung Daniella Cohen Aria Falcone Lena Goldstein Angela Gong Sarah Lauren Grube Sofia Laguarda Sophie Latham Mary Clare McMahon Brooke Milosh Isabella Pazaryna Margaret (Migs) Grabar Sage Lara Schull Stephanie Smelyansky Madeleine Stern Alexa Vaghenas Charlotte Winkler Angela Zhao Isabella Zou ALTO Sharon Ahn Kayla Bartsch Madeline Bogert Ece Bozkurt

Maryanne Cosgrove Mehana Daftary Lucy Ellis Isabel Guarco Amelia Haynes Ella Henry Ryan Howzell Eleanor Iskander SungMi Johnson Mahima Kumara Julianna Lai Annli Nakayama Lauryn Phinney Helen Rouner Raquel Sequeira Sara Speller Divine Uchegbu Evaline Xie TENOR Rajshekhar Basak Luke Ciancarelli John Cooper Nolan Crawford Josh Czaczkes Eric Duong Andrés Gómez-Colunga Christopher Irsfeld Jr. Zev Kazati-Morgan Joe Landman Jackson Leipzig Ethan Reid Lester Jack McAuliffe

Shaun Radgowski Calvin Schwartzberg Jack Bain Softcheck Alex Whittington Tavi Wolfwood Yiming Zhang BASS Mark Barnett Andrew Ballard Joshua Collier Brooks Patrick Aidan Brooks Brendan Campbell Anthony Hejduk Andrew Hon Jonathan Jalbert Nick Jones Corin Katzke Emery Kerekes Johanan Knight Elliot Lewis Jules Manresa John Fitzpatrick McKissack Jared Andrew Michaud Rajiv Nelakanti Devin O’Banion Louis Sokolow William Suzuki Henry Townley Xavier Washington

Yale Philharmonia 2018–2019 Season

About the Yale Philharmonia

sep 28

Peter Oundjian principal conductor Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Berlioz’s Overture from Béatrice et Bénédict, and Vaughan Williams

The Yale Philharmonia is one of America’s foremost music-school ensembles. The largest performing group at the Yale School of Music, the Philharmonia offers superb training in orchestral playing and repertoire.

oct 26

Jean-Marie Zeitouni guest conductor Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and Saint-Saëns’ “Bacchanale” from Samson et Dalila

nov 15

Peter Oundjian principal conductor Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, and Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra

jan 18

Peter Oundjian principal conductor Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor, “The Year 1905”

Samplers for the 2018–2019 Season

feb 22

Philharmonia in Sprague A chamber orchestra concert in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Save up to 15% off single-ticket prices when you purchase a Pick 3 or Pick 5 package. Samplers are available now.

apr 5

Carolyn Kuan guest conductor Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, Copland’s suite from Appalachian Spring, and more

apr 26

Peter Oundjian principal conductor Reinecke’s Flute Concerto in D major, and Brahms’ Symphony

Performances include an annual series of concerts in Woolsey Hall, as well as Yale Opera productions in the Shubert Theatre. The Yale Philharmonia has also performed on numerous occasions in Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York City and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

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Upcoming Events oct 3 Hung-Kuan Chen, piano Horowitz Piano Series

A recital by faculty pianist Hung-Kuan Chen, whom The Boston Globe has called “a deeply probing, imaginative player.”

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7 oct 9 Brentano String Quartet Oneppo Chamber Music Series YSM’s exceptional quartet-inresidence, the Brentano String Quartet, performs music by Dvorák, Janácek, and Smetana.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13 oct 24 Boris Berman, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Boris Berman performs Haydn’s “London” Sonatas and late sonatas by Prokofiev.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7

Oct 26 Jean-Marie Zeitouni, guest conductor Yale Philharmonia

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and works by Saint-Saëns and Debussy.

7:30 pm | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5 nov 7 Wei-Yi Yang, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang performs an all-Schumann program that includes the exquisite Kinderszenen.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7 nov 13 Escher String Quartet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series The Escher String Quartet performs music by Mozart, Korngold, and Beethoven.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13

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