José García-León, Dean
Yale Philharmonia
Rune Bergmann, guest conductor
Nicole Martin, clarinet
Friday, October 25, 2024 | 7:30 p.m.
Woolsey Hall
Program
Jean Sibelius 1865–1957
Magnus Lindberg b. 1958
Sibelius
Finlandia, Op. 26
Clarinet Concerto
Nicole Martin, clarinet
intermission
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82
I. Tempo molto moderato. Allegro moderato – Presto II. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto III. Allegro molto. Misterioso
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Artist Profiles
Rune Bergmann, guest conductor
Norwegian conductor Rune Bergmann is currently Music Director of Canada’s Calgary Philharmonic, Chief Conductor of Switzerland’s Argovia Philharmonic, and Music Director of the Peninsula Music Festival in Wisconsin, positions he has held since the 2017–2018, 2016–2017, and 2022–2023 seasons, respectively. From the 2016–2017 to 2023–2024 seasons he served as Artistic Director & Chief Conductor of Poland’s Szczecin Philharmonic guest engagements in the 2024–2025 season bring Bergmann once again to the podiums of the Pacific Symphony and Sarasota Orchestra, and for debuts to the Yale Philharmonia and Nashville Symphony.
Bergmann’s recent guest engagements include concert weeks with the Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, Edmonton, Houston, New Jersey, Pacific and Utah Symphony Orchestras in North America, and the Beethovenorchester Bonn, Bergen Philharmonic, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Orquesta Sinfonica Portuguesa, Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, Orquesta de Valencia, Malaga Philharmonic, Spain’s ADDA Simfonica Staatskapelle Halle, Wrocław Philharmonic, and the Risør Festival in Europe, to name a few. Bergmann has also led performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia and La traviata at the Norwegian National Opera, and he made his US operatic debut in Yale Opera’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as staged by Claudia Solti, while previous guest engagements have led him to such auspices as the Oslo Philharmonic,
New Mexico Philharmonic, Münchner Symphoniker, Mainfranken Theater Würzburg, Philharmonie Südwestfalen, as well as the symphony orchestras of Malmö, Helsingborg, Kristiansand, Stavanger, Trondheim, Karlskrona, and Odense. 2018 saw the release of Bergmann’s first recording with the Szczecin Philharmonic, which featured the “Resurrection” Symphony in E minor by Mieczyław Karłowicz, a piece which has since become a major focus of Bergmann’s repertoire. He has also released recordings with the Argovia Philharmonic, including Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto and Mozart’s B-flat major Bassoon concerto.
Nicole Martin, clarinet
A native of Westbrook, Maine, clarinetist Nicole Martin is currently pursuing her Master’s degree under the instruction of David Shifrin at the Yale School of Music.
Nicole has participated in multiple music festivals, including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, Music in the Circle Festival, Piano Days Festival, and has performed as a Rising Star Soloist in ChamberFest Cleveland. Nicole performs with a multitude of orchestras, most notably as a substitute clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, principal clarinet of the Firelands Symphony, and substitute clarinetist with the Youngstown Symphony and Mansfield Symphony. Nicole studied Neuroscience in addition to music performance during her undergraduate years and has a passion for studying the impact music has on the brain.
Program Notes
Written by Patrick Campbell Jankowski
Finlandia, Op. 26
sibelius
Sibelius’s grand orchestral tone poem
Finlandia has become so beloved in his native Finland that its closing hymn became something of an unofficial national anthem (many in fact assume that it is the official one). It has even found another life outside of Finland as the melody for a range of everything from pop songs to Christian hymn settings to international anthems of peace. Like Antonín Dvoˇrák “New World” Symphony, which likewise lived on as a melodic source of numerous songs and hymns, Finlandia’s origins are nationalistic and meant to convey the spirit of a place and the pride of its people. Of it, he said “we fought six centuries for our freedom and I am part of the generation which achieved it. Freedom! My Finlandia is the story of this fight. It is the song of our battle, our hymn of victory.” The struggle is apparent at the outset, with the ominous, oppressive brass standing in for the Russian presence. A militaristic episode between trumpet fanfares and robust horn calls atop a repeating bass line eventually gives way to the famed hymn song of victory that remains Sibelius’s most enduring musical statement.
Clarinet Concerto lindberg
In his Clarinet Concerto, the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg balances chromaticism and modernism with tonality, moving between more austere, pointillistic textures and outright Hollywood-like lushness. The expanse of its single contin-
uous movement blooms from the solo clarinet’s solitary opening tones, and Lindberg integrates the soloist and orchestra so organically that they seem almost to activate one another at times, growing from and within. The virtuosic clarinet part features just about everything you could do on the instrument, from its vibrant high range to its guttural lower register, while exploring the extremes of its dynamic range. Shrieks and whispers, silky slides and percussive articulations, chattering trills and luxurious, songful melodies… the solo part alone is a showpiece with substance. Add to that Lindberg’s colorful orchestration including episodes of strident brass and percussion, and you have a concerto of a scale and scope rarely seen for wind instruments. Though in one movement, it is broken up into multiple sections, including an athletic cadenza. The Finnish clarinetist Kari Kriikku, who premiered the piece in Helsinki in 2002, set a standard for the acrobatic feats that this instrument is capable of achieving, and it has become a modern classic in the years since.
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 sibelius
The few years leading up to the first world war, and the subsequent decade, were a time of artistic as well as socio political upheaval. A clash of modernity and Romanticism, of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, of complexity and simplicity… divided audiences and artists alike. No one was quite sure where music was headed in its forward march. Mahler’s final complete symphony premiered in 1912 after the composer’s death to mixed reviews,
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Prokofiev’s second piano concerto in 1913 to celebration and scandal. Schoenberg had already begun writing in an explicitly atonal language, and Debussy was expanding the color palette of tonality to suit his needs. While unquestionably the most prominent Finnish musician, Jean Sibelius was trying to find his place among the artists of his time. His fourth symphony, premiered in 1911, was written from a place of worry and protest. The shadow of war loomed, as well as personal illness, while he questioned the state of contemporary music. This was as close to “modernism” as his symphonic music would get, and it was met with a lukewarm reception.
With his fifth, Sibelius seems to have found his voice. Its formal design, development of musical motives, and tonal plan are undeniably inventive, yet he maintains simplicity of expression throughout. It shares affinities with minimalist music that would become popular decades later. Despite his anxieties over being taken seriously as a “modern” musician, Sibelius was in some ways looking past the music of his peers.
The material of the entire first movement (originally two separate movements linked together in his first revision) can almost entirely be traced back to its very opening. A horn call that grows organically from a simple chord seems to cast sunlight across the orchestra, slowly awakening different instrument groups into a pastoral musical landscape that will culminate in a lively triple meter dance (originally the scherzo of the symphony, now a kind of transformed recapitulation). A contrasting
motive introduced early on in the upper winds and punctuated by stormy timpani, is later slowed down to an extended, mournful bassoon solo atop strings that grow increasingly kinetic, as though releasing nervous energy. In the end, the movement is resolved in an exuberant finish, fanfares and horn calls reclaiming the sunlight. The pastoral – now decidedly more placid – quality continues into the central movement, a set of variations on a simple theme that juxtaposes a pointillistic melody against a prolonged drone. The plucked strings and chirping winds recall birds, insects, and a meadow of flowers. Its simplicity betrays its brilliance, as over time Sibelius introduces the musical seeds that will blossom later on in the finale. The often mentioned organicism of Sibelius’ musical language can be often among the buried connections – the shared roots and mycelia – between the central variations and finale.
While working on the symphony, he wrote in his diary “Today…I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences. Lord God, that beauty!” The sight of the swans in flight that morning inspired the captivating hymn that emerges a few moments into the final movement in the horns, which swing between harmonies as though lifted by air. An excited and restless theme in the low strings opens the movement and returns later, but it is the swan melody – subsiding and growing again into an exultant final statement – that you’ll go home singing. Just when Sibelius builds the harmonic tension to its greatest extreme near the movement’s conclusion, it erupts in a most unexpected way. Hint: the end isn’t what you think it is…
Yale Philharmonia Roster
Peter Oundjian, principal conductor
violin i
Dabin Yang
Steven Song
Nick Hammel
Gayoung Kim
Maya Ito Johnson
Megan Lin
Jiyeon Park
Chaofan Wang
Sofia Matthews
Jimin Lee
Caroline Durham
Inhae Cho
violin ii
Albert Gang
Miray Ito
Naeun Kim
Josh Liu
Haram Kim
Mercedes Cheung
Dorson Chang
Lingxiao Feng
Miyu Kubo
Xingzhou Rong
viola
Nicolas Perkins
Soyoung Cho
Miranda Werner
Julian Seney
Wanxinyi Huang
Matthew McDowell
Mathew Lee
Abby Smith
cello
Charles Zandieh
Emily Mantone
Jakyoung Huh
Balder Mikkelsen
Dylan Kinneavy
Abigail Leidy
Hyunji Kim
Hayoung Moon
bass
Yuki Nagase
Joshua Rhodes
Chelsea Strayer
Nicholas Boettcher
Arden Ingersoll
Josue Alfaro Mora
piccolo
Ben Smith
flute
Jillian Coscio 1, 2
Ben Smith 3
oboe
Maren Tonini 1
Tina Shigeyama
Annie Winkelman 2
Gabriela Fry
Jacob Duff 3
english horn
Gabriela Fry
clarinet
Katelyn Poetker 1
Juan Pedro Espinosa
Monteros
Alex Swers 2
Nikki Pet 3
bass clarinet
Nikki Pet
bassoon
Kennedy Plains 1, 2
Emma Fuller 3
Darius Farhoumand
contrabassoon
Darius Farhoumand
horn
Cristina Vieytez 1
Gretchen Berendt
Dylan Kingdom
Braydon Ross
Sam Hart 2
Oved Rico 3
trumpet
Jacob Rose 1
Jonathan Hunda
Will Rich 2
Karlee Wood 3
trombone
William Roberts 1, 3
Jude Morris
Griffin Rupp 2
Naomi Wharry
bass trombone
Jeremy Mojado
Alex Felker
tuba
Alex Friedman
timpani
Chad Beebe 1
Han Xia 2, 3
percussion
Matt Boyle 1
Jessie Chiang 2
harp
Sebastian Gobbels
keyboard
Leanne Jin
1 Principal on Finlandia
2 Principal on Lindberg
3 Principal on Sibelius 5
Staff
general manager
Jeffrey Mistri
production coordinator & librarian
Marika Basagoitia
assistant conductors
Stefano Boccacci
Ezra Calvino
office assistant
Abby Smith
stage crew
Chad Bebee
Alex Felker
Nicolas Garrigues
Nikolas Hamblin
Josh Liu
Juan Pedro Espinosa Monteros
Jude Morris
Joshua Rhodes
Will Rich
Oved Rico
Griffin Rupp
Han Xia
library
Darius Farhoumand
Emma Fuller
Josh Liu
Abby Smith
Ben Smith
Maren Tonini
Thank you for your support!
charles ives circle
$750 & above
Pamela & David Thompson
paul hindemith circle
$500–$749
Julia Reidhead
horatio parker circle
$250–$499
Paul & Cynthia Cummiskey
Richard H. Dumas
Frencesco Iachello
Paul H. Serenbetz
Mary-Jo Worthey Warren
samuel simons sanford circle
$125–$249
Leo Cristofar & Bernadette DiGiulian
Carolyn Gould
Lawrence Handler
Elizabeth N. Lowery
Ann Marlowe
Arthur Rosenfield and Wilma Ezekowitz
Willi Stahura
Anonymous
gustave j. stoeckel circle
$50–$124
Elizabeth M. Dock
Alan Katz
Tracy MacMath
Joel Marks
Dr. Henry Park & Dr. Patricia Peter
Prof. Jeffrey R. Powell &
Dr. Adalgisa Caccone
David & Lisa Totman
List as of October 25, 2024
Upcoming Events at YSM
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