EUGENE SYMPHONY

Program Notesby Tom Strini ©2019

”We start off with a celebratory orchestral ‘jam session’ by Portland composer Kenji Bunch. An ode to Quincy Jones, its pulsing dance rhythms fly madly around the orchestra. It’s okay to tap your toes

KENJI BUNCH (b. 1973)Groovebox Fantasy for Orchestra (2016)

Portland-based Kenji Bunch is a superb violist, orchestra player and chamber musician, in addition to being prolific and highly skilled composer.

Originally written for piano trio, the orchestra version was premiered by the Seattle Symphony in 2016. This infectious, raucous mash-up of boogie, swing, and heavy metal is a brilliant tribute to one of the musical legends of 20th century popular music, Quincy Jones. For Music Director & Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong, Groovebox Fantasy is just an introduction to a season full of new music that will surprise you with its exuberance, humor, and delightful fusion of diverse musical styles.

Groovebox Fantasy is a blast. Do not be self-conscious about movin’ and groovin’ in your seat during this piece. That’s the whole point. For nine minutes, the concert hall will be transformed into a wild rave at a nightclub.

SCORED: For two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.

HISTORY: First performed by the Eugene Symphony at SymFest in June 2019 under the direction of Francesco Lecce-Chong.

DURATION: Approximately nine minutes.

MAX BRUCH (1838–1920)Scottish Fantasy, for Violin and Orchestra (1880)

Max Bruch came close, but never set foot in Scotland.Bruch composed the Scottish Fantasy in Liverpool, a mere

150 miles from the Scottish border, where he was unhappily ensconced as music director of the Liverpool Symphony Orchestra. Edinburgh music patrons knew he wanted out, and they approached him about heading a start-up conservatory and conducting the local orchestra. Bruch was eager, but the Scots’ plans fell through.

No matter. Bruch, like many German Romantics, imagined Scotland as a raw, misty, Romantic place free of the existential

Tchaikovsky’s Fifthangst and social etiquette of the capitals of Europe. He didn’t need the real Scotland to write this piece. Bruch had the novels of Sir Walter Scott to fire his imagination and he had a copy of The Scots Musical Museum, published in six volumes between 1787 and 1803, as source material.

James Johnson, an Edinburgh printer and music seller, loved old Scottish songs and launched the anthology as a labor of love to collect and preserve them. The project took off after Robert Burns, already famous as a Scottish nationalist poet, took an interest as an editor and contributor.

Various Scot poets sometimes wrote new lyrics to old songs, and some songwriters contributed new material to the anthology over the years. (Burns wrote about 200 of the 600 songs in the Museum.) Despite the modern amendments and additions, German Romantics regarded the songs as primal and authentic. Haydn loved them and arranged hundreds. Beethoven, among others, arranged some. Bruch arranged 12 as art songs, published in 1864. So he knew these songs well long before he started work on the violin fantasy.

Each movement of the free wheeling Scottish Fantasy focuses on a particular song: The opener features the tear-jerking “Thro’ the Wood, Laddie,” first heard in the solo violin in double stops after nearly five minutes of atmospheric introduction. “The Dusty Miller,” a rustic fiddle dance, occupies the antic second. A reprise of “Thro’ the Wood” connects the second movement to the third, built around the lament “I’m a Doun for Lack o’ Johnnie.” The solo violin, heretofore busy with virtuoso flights around the folk tunes, plays it straight, at least in the first statement of the tune. The variations grow more elaborate.

The finale’s tender moments rise from recurrences of “Thro’ the Wood.” But they’re the exceptions. Mendelssohn suggested

along with the music! Our program continues with the beautiful folk melodies of Scotland presented in the form of the breathtakingly virtuosic violin concerto, Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. We finish our

LOOK for violin soloist Bella Hristova playing a series of increasingly fiendish double-stops (two notes at once) toward the end of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.

SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER 2019

the tempo marking Allegro guerriero—fast and warlike, and Bruch took him up on that. The main source tune is “Scots Wha He,” which Robert the Bruce allegedly sang to rally Scot troops to victory over the invading English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

SCORED: In addition to the solo violin, this work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.

HISTORY: First performed by the Eugene Symphony in December 2012 under the direction of Robert Moody and with Jennifer Koh as soloist.

DURATION: Approximately 30 minutes.

PIOTR TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–1893)Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Opus 64

Years ago, the composer David Lang, contemplating what various composers broadly had to say to the world through their music, said this about Tchaikovsky: “I love to cry, and I want you to cry, too.”

Tchaikovsky was not a happy man. Self-doubt about his talent and accomplishment, about his place in music and in Russian society, about his sexuality, and a morbid fascination with mortality all tortured him. He lived in a sustained state of existential crisis.

Perhaps that is why he so loved composing for ballet, where the dance prescribed the music and he could get out of his own head. When left to his own devices in “pure” music, thoughts of fate and mortality permeate his scores, especially in his Symphonies Nos. 4, 5, and 6. In these three works, he wrestles himself and his demons to exhaustion.

The Fifth Symphony is an astonishing, deeply moving document that builds on the emotional, moral, and musical complexity of his Fourth Symphony.

Like the Fourth and Sixth symphonies, the Fifth turns on a recurring “motto” theme widely understood to stand for Fate.

Quincy Jones (at top), for whom Portland-based composer Kenji Bunch wrote his Groovebox Fantasy as a tribute; a depiction of Robert the Bruce rallying Scottish troops at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 (at middle); a rare photograph of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, c.1890 (at bottom).

PROGRAM NOTES — SEPT 26

program with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony—a deeply moving journey into the composer’s own struggles and triumphs.”

— Francesco Lecce-Chong

EUGENE SYMPHONY

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth

It growls low in the clarinet and strings at the outset and, like a villain waiting in the wings for his cues, re-emerges at critical junctures throughout the four movements to counter the abundant joy, serenity, nobility, and beauty in this symphony.

A principal theme, in two parts, arises after the motto drifts away like a dark cloud. The first part, march-like though in 6/8 time, advances with a determined tread toward a more lyrical second phrase. Next comes a dreamy, gliding second theme that could serve as a ballet waltz. The waltz transitions into a bounding dance that bursts with youthful energy. In the development, Tchaikovsky dwells on the first part of the first theme, but weaves in all his ideas. The recapitulation peaks in a brilliant climax, but exhaustion follows, and the music slides inevitably to the depths from whence it came. The body of the motto does not return here, but its spirit welcomes us back into the gloom.

The gloom persists, in the form of low, B-minor chords to open the second movement. But dawn breaks in the form of one of the most beautiful horn solos in all of music, a high-minded love song in D Major. A hotter, more carnal love song blossoms from it. A still more sensual tune, in a snake-charmer scale, builds the passion in the middle section. At the crowning moment, the motto barges in with brassy, brutal authority to disrupt the reverie.

In the third movement, the motto slithers in among a series of three waltzes, as a chilling presence in an otherwise delightful and rhythmically playful ballroom scene.

The motto theme opens the finale in kingly grandeur, as if transformed, smiling nobly and waving to the crowd. Has fate turned? Is it on our side, suddenly?

No. At least, not yet.After that promising start, Tchaikovsky hits us with a

savage, slashing, brutal dance—perhaps Tchaikovsky’s most violent stretch of music. The woodwinds open an urgent chase. The timpani pound the breakneck pace to—where? Oblivion? Salvation? Life is up for grabs as Tchaikovsky traverses a bewildering number of battling themes and keys.

After an avalanche of a climax and clarion calls from the brasses, the composer hands down judgment: Courage has prevailed, and fate has, indeed, turned. The motto theme has broken our hearts so often that Tchaikovsky must devote the last three-and-a-half minutes to driving home its shining nobility in no uncertain terms.

How desperately did Tchaikovsky want to believe in triumph at the end of the battle? How desperately do we? Please judge for yourself.

SCORED: For three flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.

HISTORY: First performed by the Eugene Symphony in February 1972 under the direction of Lawrence Maves, and last performed in September 2007 under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero. Additionally, the Baltimore Symphony performed the work at Silva Concert Hall while on tour in April 2012 under the direction of Marin Alsop.

DURATION: Approximately 45 minutes.

PROGRAM NOTES — SEPT 26

LISTEN for two stunningly blunt, almost brutal interruptions by the ‘Fate’ theme in the otherwise rhapsodic second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.