CLASSICAL SERIES THE FIREBIRD

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1 JEFF TYZIK Principal Pops Conductor LEONARD SLATKIN, Music Director Laureate Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation TERENCE BLANCHARD Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair CLASSICAL SERIES THE FIREBIRD NEEME JÄRVI Music Director Emeritus Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Friday, October 19, 2018 at 10:45 a.m. Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 8 p.m. at Orchestra Hall FABIEN GABEL, conductor HUNTER EBERLY, trumpet Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky The Tempest (Fantasy-Overture), Op. 18 ( ) Henri Tomasi Concerto for Trumpet And Orchestra ( ) Allegro: Cadenza Nocturune: Andantino Finale: Giocoso - Allegro Hunter Eberly, trumpet Intermission Igor Stravinsky Le Chant du rossignol ( ) (The Song of the Nightingale) Suite from The Firebird [1919 version] I. Introduction and Dance of the Firebird II. Dance of the Princesses III. Infernal Dance of King Kastchei IV. Berceuse V. Finale This Classical Series performance is generously sponsored by Friday s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This performance s recognition of American s Veterans and Active Military is supported by 30 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE FALL 2018

2 Program Notes PROGRAM AT-A-GLANCE A Literary Evening... Tchaikovsky s The Tempest (1873) is based on William Shakespeare s play of the same name (c. 1610) O, wonder! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in t! Miranda, in William Shakespeare s The Tempest Stravinsky s Chant du rossingnol (1917) and the 1914 opera that preceded it are based on Hans Christian Anderson s fairy tale The Nightingale (1843) Suddenly there came through the open window the sound of sweet music And as she sung, the shadows grew paler and paler even Death himself listened, and said, Go on, little nightingale, go on. Hans Christian Anderson, The Nightingale Stravinsky s Firebird Suite (1911, rev. 1919) and the 1910 ballet that preceded it are based on Slavic folklore, which gained renewed popularity in the mid-1800s In the middle of this glade St ands a hill, of silver made. Th ere it is that every morn Fire-Birds flock before the dawn Pyotr Yershov, The Little Humpbacked Horse The Tempest (Fantasy- Overture), Op. 18 PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY B. May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia D. November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia Scored for 3 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. (Approx. 18 minutes) Tchaikovsky was an avid reader in both Russian and French, as well as a dedicated theatergoer habits that matched his dramatic (and even melodramatic) personality. Shakespeare, probably the most performed playwright on Russian stages during Tchaikovsky s life, was a clear favorite of the composer s. Some argue that Tchaikovsky s true voice as a composer is first heard in the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture of 1869 and the dso.org Tempest Fantasy-Overture of 1873 so there is an inextricable connection to The Bard early in Tchaikovsky s masterful career. Tchaikovsky wrote The Tempest at the urging of Vladimir Stasov, a prominent Russian critic who tracked down the young composer at a Christmas party hosted by Rimsky-Korsakov. What will your next work be? Stasov asked, and when Tchaikovsky shrugged he offered three literary sources of inspiration: Gogol s Taras Bulba, Sir Walter Scott s Ivanhoe, and The Tempest. Given his interest in Shakespeare and the praise he earned for Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky chose The Tempest, and began work the following summer. The Shakespeare Tchaikovsky admired was, at the time, understood through a Victorian lens: impressionistic and selective, emphasizing atmosphere and emotion ahead of all else. Tchaikovsky s Tempest employs a symmetrical arch form that begins and ends DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 31

3 with musical depictions of the titular storm. The composer wrote the following overview in the score s preface: The Sea. The magician Prospero commands his spirit Ariel to raise a tempest. Ferdinand s ship sinks. The enchanted island. The first shy awakening of love between Miranda and Ferdinand. The spirits Ariel and Caliban. The young couple s love grows to intense passion. Prospero renounces his magic powers and leaves the island. The Sea. The DSO most recently performed Tchaikovsky s The Tempest in November 1994, conducted by Music Director Emeritus Neeme Järvi. The DSO first performed the piece in April 1925, conducted by Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra HENRI TOMASI B. August 17, 1901, Marseille, France D. January 13, 1971, Paris, France Scored for solo trumpet, 3 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste, and strings. (Approx. 16 minutes) Henri Tomasi was encouraged to pursue a career in music by his father, an amateur flutist and arranger of Corsican folksongs. The young Henri excelled, winning first prizes in theory, piano, and harmonization at age 16 from the Conservatoire du Musique de Marseille. For decades afterwards, he was a sought-after conductor and pioneer of radiophonic music, having conducted some of the first radio orchestras. Along with Prokofiev, Milhaud, Honegger, and Poulenc, he founded Triton in the 1930s a contemporary music group based in Paris that pushed the boundaries of composition to include wide-ranging sounds and influences. The Trumpet Concerto, which Tomasi penned in 1948, was originally declared unplayable not for a lack of musical taste, but rather for an abundance of near-impossible demands on the soloist. Up until this time the use of the trumpet was relatively unrefined, Tomasi writes. It was considered as a secondary instrument; [but] the interest here is in discovering all of its expressive resources. For a soloist, discovering all of [the trumpet s] expressive resources is an enormous challenge, though not an insurmountable one. Early players keen to play the unplayable concerto were Jos Joots, Ludovic Vaillant, and Raymond Tournesac, and now the piece is a well-loved gem in the trumpet repertoire. The concerto s warm, playful character makes it a fan favorite as well. The first movement begins, of course, with the trumpet; two themes develop into a cadence that the composer once described as dangerous. The second movement develops a melody through a series of chromatic progressions, and the finale is a lively rondo based on the first movement s second theme. These performances of Tomasi s Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra will be DSO premieres. Le Chant du rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale) IGOR STRAVINSKY B. June 17, 1882, Lomonosov, Russia D. April 6, 1971, New York, NY Scored for 2 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 32 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE FALL 2018

4 oboes, English horn, clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, 2 pianos, and strings. (Approx. 20 minutes) This symphonic poem was written by Stravinsky in 1917, based on his earlier three-act opera The Nightingale (itself inspired by Hans Christian Anderson s tale of the same name). This purely orchestral version uses music mostly from acts two and three of the original opera. The first act of the opera was completed in 1908, but the second and third acts were not finished until The reason for this interruption was the association Stravinsky made in Paris with the celebrated impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, which resulted in the creation of Stravinsky s landmark ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring. When he returned to work on The Nightingale, he was stylistically a very different composer than when he had begun, and the differences between the first act and the latter two are easy to spot. The present piece, then, fits in nicely with the Stravinsky celebrated for The Firebird and other Diaghilev collaborations. The plot of The Nightingale involves an emperor who is incredibly moved by the song of a nightingale, but enjoys even more the sound of a mechanical bird that is brought to him as a gift. Later, when the emperor falls ill and is about to greet Death, the real nightingale returns and makes a deal with Death to save the life of the emperor whose love for the real bird is restored. Stravinsky s work often contrasts the natural with the artificial, and the composer once wrote that he preferred the dso.org sounds of a player piano to those produced by a human on a real piano. The Nightingale is a perfect piece for such an obsession, and the composer cleverly contrasts the free and swooping tones of the real nightingale with the brief, calculated song of the mechanical one. The DSO most recently performed Stravinsky s The Song of the Nightingale in December 1992, conducted by Music Director Emeritus Neeme Järvi. The DSO first performed the piece in February 1952, conducted by Victor de Sabata. Suite from The Firebird [1919 version] IGOR STRAVINSKY B. June 17, 1882, Lomonosov, Russia D. April 6, 1971, New York, NY Scored for 2 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes (1 doubling on English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings. (Approx. 19 minutes) Igor Stravinsky s association with the Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes lasted two decades and proved one of the most fruitful artistic collaborations in history. Through Diaghilev, the composer met some of the leading creative figures of the day, and for the Ballet Russes Stravinsky produced most of the works that secured his fame. The first, and arguably most famous, is the score for the ballet The Firebird, which premiered in Stravinsky extracted two concert suites from the full score one in 1911, and then a revision in The second version is generally regarded as the standard today. The Firebird relates a fantastic tale. Wandering alone in a deep wood, Prince Ivan, son of the Czar, comes upon the mythical Firebird. Quickly he captures her, but when she offers a magic feather DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 33

5 as ransom, he frees her. Continuing on his way, the Prince encounters thirteen princesses, who are under the spell of Kastchei, a demon of terrible power. When the princesses flee, Ivan follows them into Kastchei s castle and soon is captured. But he remembers the feather, and its magic renders Kastchei s spells harmless. The Firebird appears and shows the Prince an egg containing the monster s soul. Ivan smashes it, destroying Kastchei and freeing the princesses. The suite unfolds in five movements. The first three set the scene and introduce the principal characters of the fairytale drama. The initial measures suggest Prince Ivan wandering in the forest; an air of mystery and menace permeates the music of the low strings, the horn figures, and especially the eerie glissando harmonics in the strings. Next comes the dance of the Firebird, which sounds every bit as colorful and fantastic as the creature itself. The second movement gives us music of the princesses, their gentle demeanor Profiles FABIEN GABEL Recognized internationally as one of the stars of the new generation, Fabien Gabel is a regular guest of major orchestras in Europe, North America, and GABEL Asia. He has served as music director of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra since September 2013, and was recently appointed music director of the Orchestre Français des Jeunes (French conveyed in a song-like melody played by the oboe to harp accompaniment. These dulcet sounds give way suddenly, however, to the Infernal Dance of King Kastchei. The demon is suggested in angular rhythms and harsh outbursts, particularly from the brass. This entire sequence is brilliantly orchestrated, and we can scarcely imagine today the impact it must have made on audiences in Of entirely different character is the Berceuse, a haunting lullaby rather oriental in tone. A brief sequence of falling string tremolos leads to the finale. Its melody, announced by the horn and gradually taken up by the full orchestra, is repeated in ever more sonorous instrumentation, building to an imposing climax in the final measures. The DSO most recently performed Stravinsky s The Firebird in January 2015, conducted by Robert Treviño. The DSO first performed the piece in November 1926, conducted by Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Youth Orchestra). Gabel has conducted leading orchestras around the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Staatskappelle Berlin, Seoul Philharmonic, and many others. Gabel first attracted international attention in 2004 after winning the Donatella Flick Competition in London, which subsequently led to his appointment as the London Symphony Orchestra s assistant conductor for the and seasons. Since 34 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE FALL 2018

6 then, the LSO has engaged him regularly as a guest conductor. He made his professional conducting debut in 2003 with the Orchestre National de France. Born to a musical family in Paris, Gabel began studying trumpet at the age of six, honing his skills at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, which awarded him a First Prize in trumpet in 1996, and later at the Musik Hochschule of Karlsruhe. In 2002 he pursued his interest in conducting at the Aspen Summer Music Festival, where he studied with David Zinman, who invited him to appear as a guest conductor at the Festival in n MOST RECENT APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: April 2018, conducting a program with music by Franck, Dutilleux, Debussy, and Ravel n FIRST APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: November 2015, conducting a program with music by Borodin, Khachaturian, Dukas, and Debussy HUNTER EBERLY Principal Trumpet Lee and Floy Barthel Chair A native of Muskegon, Michigan, Hunter Eberly started playing the trumpet at the age of eight under the tutelage of his mother and continued his studies in high school with Charley Lea of the Grand Rapids Symphony. He attended Grand Valley State University, where he studied with Richard Stoelzel and earned EBERLY his Bachelor of Music degree. Eberly continued his education at The Colburn School in Los Angeles, studying with James Wilt and earning a Professional dso.org Studies Certificate. Prior to his appointment in Detroit, Eberly served as Principal Trumpet of the Jacksonville Symphony. He has performed as Guest Principal Trumpet with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra in China. He has also performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Grand Rapids Symphony. Eberly also enjoys playing music outside of the classical genre, and has performed with many of Motown s greats including Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Mary Wilson of The Supremes. Eberly has won several awards, including first prize in the National Trumpet Competition Undergraduate Solo Competition, first prize in the National Trumpet Competition Trumpet Ensemble division, and second prize in the International Trumpet Guild Mock Orchestra Competition. Outside of performing, he maintains a small private teaching studio and regularly coaches college students and young professionals in audition preparation. He has also taught at Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University. n In addition to his service as Principal Trumpet (since 2013), Hunter Eberly has appeared with the DSO as a featured soloist several times. n MOST RECENT APPEARANCE: July 2017 at Ford House, performing Haydn s Concerto for Trumpet (cond. Aram Demirjian) n FIRST RECENT APPEARANCE: July 2013 at the William Davidson Neighborhood Concert Series, performing Arutiunian s Concerto for Trumpet (cond. Chrostopher James Lees) DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 35