Yale Philharmonia
Peter Oundjian, Principal Conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 7:30 p.m.
Woolsey Hall
Program
1833–1897
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Adagio
III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace
Augustin Hadelich, violin
intermission
Anton Bruckner
1824–1896
ed. Paul Hawkshaw
Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107 World premiere of new critical edition
I. Allegro moderato
II. Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam
III. Scherzo. Sehr schnell
IV. Finale. Bewegt, doch nicht schnell
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.
Johannes Brahms The Wagner Tuben used in this performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 were furnished through the courtesy of the New York Philharmonic.Artist Profiles
Peter Oundjian, principal conductor
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.
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Augustin Hadelich has established himself as one of the major violinists of our time. After winning the Gold Medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, concerto and recital appearances on many of the world’s top stages quickly followed. He has been honored with such awards as the Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009), Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in the UK (2011), and the inaugural Warner Music Prize (2015). His accomplishments were further recognized in 2018 when Musical America named him its Instrumentalist of the Year.
“The essence of Hadelich’s playing,” The Washington Post has opined, “is beauty: reveling in the myriad ways of making a phrase come alive on the violin, delivering the musical message with no technical impediments whatsoever, and thereby revealing something from a plane beyond ours.” The New York Times described Hadelich as a “riveting storyteller” after his world-premiere performance of YSM faculty composer David Lang’s mystery sonatas.
Hadelich’s appearances as a soloist include guest engagements with the most celebrated ensembles in the world, including the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Finnish Radio Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), Oslo Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San
Artist Profiles, cont.
Francisco Symphony, and São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, as well as the radio orchestras of Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Stuttgart, among others. Hadelich’s discography includes solo, chamber, and concerto recordings with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. His recording with the Seattle Symphony of Dutilleux’s violin concerto L’arbre des songes won a 2016 Grammy Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo Category.
Hadelich teaches a limited number of violinists at the Yale School of Music and gives master classes for all YSM string players. He has held residencies at the Colburn School, Curtis Institute of Music, and Kronberg Academy and given master classes at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich.
Born in Italy to German parents, Hadelich earned a diploma in violin from the Istituto Mascagni in Livorno, Italy, and a graduate diploma and an artist diploma from The Juilliard School.
Staff manager
Jeffrey M. Mistri
assistant manager
Samuel Bobinski
assistant conductor
Samuel Hollister
office assistant
Marty Tung
stage crew
Shania Cordoba
Ryan Goodwin
Riana Heath
Makana Medeiros
Jackson Murphy
Xinyun Tu
Amber Wang
Declan Wilcox
Kean Xiong
Lucas Zeiter library
Darius Farhoumand
Stephanie Fritz
Nicholas Hernandez
Guan-Ru Lin
Freya Liu
Jaimee Reynolds
Program Notes
Violin Concerto in D major brahms
Patrick Campbell Jankowski
When it comes to writing concertos, it helps when a composer either plays the instrument themself, or has a particular collaborator in mind. Mozart’s violin and keyboard concertos are so organic and idiomatic because he played both, and was almost always the best performer of his own music. Beethoven’s piano concertos are naturally brilliant, as the composer himself was a great pianist. But then there’s his violin concerto, which while recognized today as a masterpiece, was written off at first as haphazardly composed, with a thrown-together and rather messy first performance. Only years after his death was it revived by the gifted Joseph Joachim, who played it at the age of 12 with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. Joachim would go on to become among the most important artistic collaborators and friends with Beethoven’s “heir” to German symphonic music: Johannes Brahms. When Brahms decided to write his own concerto for the instrument, he turned to his friend for guidance. The fruits of their collaboration are in the concerto’s balance of symphonic construction and cleverness (from Brahms), with the lyricism of its solo part (surely at least inspired by Joachim). It is a work which appeals to the mind as well as the heart. In the opening movement in particular, the symphony-concerto duality is readily apparent: at over twenty minutes in length and with a substantive and complex development, it is ultimately rounded out by a brilliant cadenza written by Joachim. Following this “thinking person’s” opening, Brahms succumbs a bit more to unapologetic appeals
to emotion: in the songful Adagio, with its famous oboe melody to which the violin beautifully replies, and in the buoyant finale, in which we find Brahms at his most lighthearted and humorous.
Symphony No. 7 in E major bruckner
Paul Hawkshaw
“Since Beethoven, nothing even close has been written!” The great 19th-century conductor Arthur Nikisch made this remark to Anton Bruckner’s friend Joseph Schalk, before he conducted the first performance of the composer’s Seventh Symphony in Leipzig on December 30, 1884. The next year, Bruckner wrote to Nikisch that fellow conductor Hermann Levi had described the piece as “the most significant symphonic work since Beethoven’s death.” Levi had conducted a performance in Munich on March 10, 1885. The Nikisch and Levi performances of the Seventh brought Bruckner international recognition as a composer for the first time.
Given the work’s popularity to the present day, it is astonishing what little we know about readings of the work we are used to hearing. Bruckner’s autograph score was subject to numerous changes in tempo, performance markings and orchestration between its initial completion in September 1883 and the spring of 1885 when it served as the engraver’s copy for the first edition. Many of these alterations are in the hand of Joseph Schalk’s brother, Franz, who helped the composer prepare the score for printing. Some were endorsed by Bruckner; others were added without authorization
Program Notes, cont.
after the composer handed the score over to the publisher. Robert Haas and Leopold Nowak, who prepared the editions of the symphony most often performed and recorded since the second world war, each treated the interpolations differently. Seeking to eliminate what he regarded as corrupt foreign influence (i.e. that of Franz Schalk), Haas incorrectly omitted changes the composer authorized – the oft-discussed percussion entrance at the climax of the Adagio, for example. Leopold Nowak printed many of the later additions to the autograph in brackets as editorial interpolations.
The score performed this evening transmits, to the best of the editor’s knowledge, the final reading of the work that can be directly attributed to Bruckner. Audience members familiar with the Haas and Nowak editions will notice obvious differences. Bruckner added specific tempo instructions in the first movement to the effect that the second and third thematic groups in both the exposition and recapitulation should be at the same tempo and slower than the first. The development should begin in this slower tempo and, in the middle, return to the faster tempo of opening. The finale follows the same pattern, though here the three thematic groups are recapitulated in reverse order and there are many more localized tempo changes. All the editorial changes in tonight’s score will be explained in the critical report when it is published early next year in The New Anton Bruckner Collected Works in Vienna.
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violin i
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² Principal on Bruckner
* YSM Faculty
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