Shaham Plays Brahms | Program Notes

SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 1

MASTERWORKS • 2014/15SHAHAM PLAYS BRAHMS

COLORADO SYMPHONYANDREW LITTON, conductor GIL SHAHAM, violin

Friday, October 3, 2014 at 7:30 pmSaturday, October 4, 2014 at 7:30 pmSunday, October 5, 2014 at 1:00 pmBoettcher Concert Hall

CINDY MCTEE Timepiece

BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 Allegro non troppo Adagio Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace

— INTERMISSION—

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 Andante – Allegro con anima Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza Valse: Allegro moderato Finale: Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace

Friday’s concert is grateFully dedicated to us Bank

saturday’s concert is grateFully dedicated to applejack Wine and spirits; Mr. and Mrs. ted connolly

sunday’s concert is grateFully dedicated to noël and toM congdon

PROGRAM 2 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIESANDREW LITTON, conductor

Andrew Litton currently serves as Music Director of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver, Artistic Director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, and Conductor Laureate of Britain’s Bournemouth Symphony. He guest conducts the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies and has a discography of over 120 recordings with awards including America’s Grammy®, France’s Diapason d’Or, and many British and other honors. First appointed Bergen

Philharmonic Music Director in 2003, Litton will have the distinguished honor to celebrate the orchestra’s 250th Anniversary in 2015. It is one of the world’s longest established orchestras. In recognition of Litton’s achievements with the Bergen Philharmonic, Norway’s King Harald knighted Litton with the Royal Order of Merit. Under Litton’s leadership the Bergen Philharmonic has taken numerous tours, including debuts at the London BBC Proms and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, as well as appearances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and New York’s Carnegie Hall - the capstone of its first American tour in 40 years. Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic record for the BIS and Hyperion labels, and have won extraordinary critical acclaim for their Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev series. Andrew Litton, a graduate of the Fieldston School, New York, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard in piano and conducting. The youngest-ever winner of the BBC International Conductors Competition, he served as Assistant Conductor at Teatro alla Scala and Exxon/Arts Endowment Assistant Conductor for the National Symphony under Rostropovich. His many honors in addition to Norway’s Royal Order of Merit include an honorary Doctorate from the University of Bournemouth, Yale University’s Sanford Medal, and the Elgar Society Medal.

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MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIESGIL SHAHAM, violin

Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time: his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. Highlights of his 2014-15 season include a Parisian-themed opening-night gala with the Seattle Symphony this fall, launching a new season that sees him rejoin the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas for Mozart’s “Turkish” concerto, and, on the orchestra’s 20th-anniversary tour, for Prokofiev’s Second at venues including

Carnegie Hall. The Prokofiev is one of the works showcased in his long-term exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s.” Besides giving the world premiere performances of a new concerto by David Bruce with the San Diego Symphony, the violinist’s upcoming orchestral highlights also include performances in Philadelphia, Berlin, London, Dallas, Tokyo, Canada and Luxembourg. In recital, he presents Bach’s complete solo sonatas and partitas at Chicago’s Symphony Center, L.A.’s Disney Hall, and other venues in a special multimedia collaboration with photographer and video artist David Michalek. Shaham already has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, including bestsellers that have ascended the record charts in the U.S. and abroad. These recordings have earned multiple Grammys®, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. His recent recordings are issued on the Canary Classics label, which Shaham founded in 2004. Recent releases include 1930’s Violin Concertos Vol. 1, Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies, Haydn Violin Concertos and Mendelssohn’s Octet with the Sejong Soloists; Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works, and the Elgar’s Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and David Zinman, among others. Upcoming titles include Bach’s complete works for solo violin. Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America, which cited the “special kind of humanism” with which his performances are imbued. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.

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MAHLER’S THE TITANNOV 1-2 SAT 7:30 ■ SUN 1:00COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG | 303.623.7876 BOX OFFICE MON-FRI 10 AM - 6 PM :: SAT 12 PM - 6 PM


MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES

Cindy McTee: TimepieceThe piece is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and E-flat clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, and strings. Duration is eight minutes. Last performed by the orchestra on September 29, 30, and October 2, 2005 with Jeffrey Kahane conducting.

The most authentic art is the true reflection of its times, and the compositional art of Cindy McTee is just that. In a time when almost everything ever created in the visual and performing arts is ridiculously easy to access through personal electronic technology, we live in an eclectic age. McTee’s music, while deeply original and creative, is nonetheless often the equivalent of a new language made of familiar words. She brilliantly pulls together a vivacious and evocative mélange of familiar musical elements into a coherent, altogether new whole—and challenges, teases, and entertains all the while!

Her compositions are performed everywhere, and she has won almost every significant honor in the field of musical composition. Recently retired after almost three decades as professor of music composition at the highly respected School of Music of the University of North Texas, her compositions for orchestra, band and wind ensemble, and chamber music have had a significant impact upon contemporary American musical life. Early on, she was heavily influenced by jazz, her personal association with the great Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, and the music of Ravel and Stravinsky. And, if anything, her compositions often reflect her innate penchant for driving, rhythmic, and jazz-influenced (but not necessarily “jazzy”) verve. Add to that a wry sense of humor, and a predilection for a bit of surprise, and it only scratches the surface of her facile genius.

Timepiece is a pretty good representation of what informs much of her style and its popularity with audiences. Commissioned by Maestro Litton and the Dallas Symphony in 2000 upon the occasion of its 100th anniversary, it garnered an appreciative reception when it was subsequently performed by the Colorado Symphony. A study in stasis versus rhythmic drive, it is a new treatment of a traditional musical idea—earlier exploration of some variants of the idea may be found in George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique (1925), Honegger’s Pacific 231 (1923), and the music of other composers influenced by Italian futurism of the early twentieth century. McTee’s Timepiece begins with floating static sonorities in the strings that firmly establish quite the absence of motion—a serenity intermittently and urgently interrupted by the wind and percussion. The wood block tries to get things going, but fails at first. Eventually, starting in the low strings, a steady beat emerges which determinedly carries us to the conclusion, all the while a cloud of short, repeated motifs roll along. From time to time soloists jump in with divergent ideas, but they’re only commentaries over the general momentum. Approaching the end, the insistent wood block clicks out the time and leads the steady, insistent triumph of time moving over time frozen. Salted throughout the orchestra, McTee’s rotating musical “gears” mechanistically drive to the end.

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Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77The concerto is scored for solo violin, woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is approximately 35 minutes. Last performance by the orchestra was on March 8, 9, and 10, 2013, with Augustin Hadelich as the soloist and Jun Märkl conducting.

Brahms was a fine pianist, and made his way in the world early on as a performer on that

instrument. In 1848, the year of revolution in Europe, many Hungarians made their way to Hamburg for purposes of emigration to America, and Brahms—always engaged with various levels of society—fell under the sway of the Hungarian and gypsy musical style. About that time, he encountered the Hungarian violinist, Ede Reményi, and the characteristic rhythmic and metric traits of the latter’s national style that later became so integral to his own voice. Reményi returned from America some five years later and the two went on a concert tour together. It was during this tour, in Göttingen, that Brahms also met the great violin virtuoso, Joseph Joachim, and began a deep friendship and professional relationship that lasted a lifetime. They went on to concertize together for years. Brahms had already heard Joachim in 1848 in a performance of Beethoven’s violin concerto, and the work made a deep and lasting impression on the young Brahms.

So, taken altogether, this inevitably led to Brahms’ violin concerto of 1878, written for, and dedicated to, Joachim, his best friend and one of the most respected violinists in the world. Certainly, one of the attributes of Joachim that Brahms deeply respected was not only his virtuosity, but also his intelligence, seriousness of purpose, and trustworthy critical acumen. Not only did Joachim provide the first-movement cadenza that has stood the test of time, he was a constant counsel on technical matters in the composition of the solo part. In point of fact, they continued to exchange correspondence well after the première regarding changes to fine points in the work.

Although cast in the familiar three movements of the typical concerto form, Brahms had originally conceived the work in four movements—a hint of his conception of the piece as a major and weighty contribution to the solo violin literature (and there was Beethoven’s monumental concerto looming over his shoulder, we must remember.) That fell through, and Brahms abandoned work on the two middle movements, but their elements may well have surfaced in other of his works. Instead, he substituted a single adagio that he rather deprecated, but a happy substitution it was. There are many parallels between Brahms’ work and the model of Beethoven’s before him, but they need not detain us here.

The first movement is the “meat” of the composition—it goes on for well over twenty minutes--and, let’s be frank, it is a case in point of what is often characterized as Brahms’ “severity” of style. It is said that the first movement “puzzled” the first audience, and it can be challenging for many, even today. It begins in a deceptively low- keyed mood, but implies that these ideas will take a while to work out. The orchestra is given a substantial shot at the material before the entrance of the soloist, and there unfolds an exploration of Brahms’ ideas in a thorough and lengthy process. “Big tunes” don’t really jump out at one, but rather there evolves a dense sifting out of musical possibilities and implications that is Brahms’ intellectuality writ large. The movement is rather complex from a formal standpoint, and after a long development, the famous cadenza appears--and a piece of work it is. Joachim’s contribution is a daunting exploration of Brahms’ ideas, couched in technical challenges that, while virtuosic in nature, never seem empty and


MASTERWORKSMASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES

inappropriately flashy. The first audience was motivated to applaud at its conclusion, but I imagine today no one is tempted to interrupt the soft, but tense and hushed atmosphere leading to the serene conclusion of the movement.

The slow movement is a study in variations on a simple, but pregnant theme that is introduced by the solo oboe, accompanied by the horns and woodwinds. The tune is reminiscent—but far more tranquil—of the famous horn call in the finale of his first symphony, composed only a few years earlier. A contrasting theme is heard in the middle of this perfect example of Brahms’ signature “elegiac” style, and it ends quietly.

One will recall the composer’s early encounter with the fire and rhythmic kick of the Hungarian style—it is one of his stylistic markers. The last movement is a delightful romp in this tradition, and even if you don’t easily remember melodic themes from the other movements, the chief one here, played in double stops by the soloist, may jog your memory. The main tune—and it is a “tune”—alternates with other material, tossed back and forth between the soloist and the orchestra in the best tradition of the concerto. The challenging “severity” of the first movement is all forgotten, and it’s easy to see why this marvelous work stands among the best at the top of great violin literature.

oTchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64The symphony is scored for three flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), oboes, clarinets, and bassoons in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. (Maestro Litton has requested that the 3rd chair woodwinds reinforce the scoring for this weekend’s performance.) Duration is about 46 minutes. Last performed on December 3, 4, and 5, 2010 with Peter Oundjian conducting the orchestra.

Tchaikovsky completed six symphonies during his lifetime, the last three of which have long been concert staples. These three, while exhibiting both the tangible and intangible characteristics of the composer that endear him to music lovers everywhere, are each unique expressions of his musicianship and personality. Symphony No. 4 (with good reason associated with “fate”) came out of an especially troubled time in his life with regard to his ill-starred (and short) marriage—among other factors was his attempted suicide. Symphony No. 6 was, of course, his last one (he died of cholera nine days after its première), and its title bore the French equivalent of “pathos.” Its tragic pianississimo ending truly evokes the finality of his great personal anguish. So, where does that leave us with No. 5?

In some ways, we find ourselves in a similar kettle of fish. The sixth symphony was composed and premièred in 1888, when the composer was 48 years old, and it too--based upon the composer’s own testament--more or less is concerned with “fate.” He was already in contemplation of death: many close friends had recently died, he was in poor mental and physical health, and had made out his will. But the preoccupation on fate in the fifth symphony is perhaps not the hammering fate of the fourth symphony, but rather a more acquiescing acceptance of what Tchaikovsky called “providence.” The first movement starts right out with the so-called fate motive, played by both clarinets, ominously down in their lowest register;



this motive will be easily heard in all four movements, and is a strongly unifying element in the composition. The movement proper begins with a dark march—with a characteristic Tchaikovskian stuttering syncopation--initiated by solo clarinet and bassoon, accompanied by pizzicato strings. The whole movement centers around this theme, but there are others, most notably a winsome waltz-like theme. Although the movement moves through a variety of intense, dramatic (read loud) utterances, it ends in soft darkness—just as it had begun.

The second movement is perhaps the most well known of the four movements, owing to its use in a swinging arrangement by Glenn Miller, shortly before World War II. The melody is primarily a solo for the principal horn, and a glorious, beautifully spun out affair it is. A related idea for solo violin follows shortly. The middle of the movement generates considerable interest from its vivid harmonic surprises, a new theme in the clarinet, and a general sense of unrest and instability. But then, the so-called fate motto from the first movement interrupts, and we’re back at a return to the lovely first theme, although with changed orchestration and a dramatic buildup of emotion before quietly subsiding.

There are those who opine that no one equaled Tchaikovsky in waltzes—even the Strauss’s—and I concur. The third movement is a series of incredibly elegant waltzes that make you wish that we all still danced them. However, before they start, a soft, but ominous series of chords in the strings lures you into thinking that the dark mood of the ending of the first movement will prevail. But a wonderful modulation brings us to the novel and beguiling key of D major. The waltzes commence. The middle of the movement provides some relief from the waltzes in the form of a short scherzo in duple meter, contrasting nicely with all the ONE-two-three of the waltz. It’s a frenetic affair, not so much unlike the suggestion of little rodents scampering around, when they should be gracefully waltzing. The scampering continues for a while when the waltzes return, signaling the end of the movement—but not before the low clarinets menacingly interrupt for a moment with the motto that opens the whole symphony, and which we will hear in spades imminently in the last movement.

A sure-fire spiritual narrative in art during the romantic period—or any period, for that matter—is the journey from darkness to light, from defeat to victory, and perhaps death to transfiguration. Beethoven, Brahms, and other great composers wrote any number of works with this theme, and it is Tchaikovsky’s and ours in this symphony. The long introduction to the last movement is based upon the motto theme of fate, but now opens in E major, the happy key of redemption. Yet, victory cannot be won so easily, so the main movement returns to E minor to begin the battle, and Tchaikovsky works it out with a dramatic review of familiar materials, as we gradually find our way into the world of light. The victory is hammered out in the motto of fate by stentorian unison brasses, and a tumultuous gallop to the end wraps up the triumph.

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OCT 18 ■ SAT 7:30Duain Wolfe, conductor/ directorColorado Symphony ChorusJuliet Petrus, sopranoNathan Berg, baritoneColorado Children’s Chorale, Debbie DeSantis, directorMary Louise Burke, host

The Colorado Symphony Chorus celebrates thirty years of singing the great masters with the Colorado Symphony at a grand celebration concert October 18, conducted by Duain Wolfe. The glorious music of Vaughan Williams, Mendelssohn, Moussorgsky, and Mozart is complemented by excerpts from the Chorus’s signature pieces, Verdi’s monumental Requiem, and Orff’s dynamic Carmina Burana.

30TH ANNIVERSARY CHORUS GALA

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Shaham Plays Brahms | Program Notes