Praised in the Wall Street Journal as

Transcription

1 Di Wu Praised in the Wall Street Journal as a most mature and sensitive pianist, Di Wu continues to build her reputation as an elegant and powerful musician. Her concerts have taken her across the globe, charming audiences with her charisma, steely technique, and keen musical intelligence (Philadelphia Inquirer) and her fire and authority (Washington Post). Born in China and currently living in New York, Di Wu made her professional debut at the age of 14 with the Beijing Philharmonic, and has since appeared with orchestras such as Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Hamburg Philharmoniker, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and Singapore Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with some of the world s most eminent conductors: Charles Dutoit, Christoph schenbach, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Yu Long, Ludovic Morlot, Carols Miguel Prieto, and others. In addition to orchestra engagements, Ms. Wu is also sought after as a recitalist. In New York, she has played at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and has appeared in music centers in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Di Wu is also a frequent performer in urope as well as in major venues throughout Asia. She performed for more than 11,000 people in her most recent appearance in Tokyo at an arena concert that was recorded and released by pic Records. Ms. Wu s recording of Brahms variations on a Theme of Paganini, Books I and II received praise from Musical America, whose critic wrote: Her account of the Brahms is amazing. She takes all the difficult options (her glissandos are unbelievable!), and she conjures from the piano absolutely gossamer, violinistic textures, joyous humor, and brilliant airborne tempos. Di Wu dispatched these inventive pieces with a winning combination of immense technical control and jazzy freedom. Chicago Tribune Winner of multiple awards including a coveted prize at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition; The Juilliard School s Petschek Award; The Virtuosi Prize at Lisbon s prestigious Vendome Competition; and the winner of Astral Artists 2007 National Auditions, Ms. Wu came to the United States in 1999 to study at the Manhattan School of Music with Zenon Fishbein. From 2000 to 2005 she studied at The Curtis Institute with ary raffman, subsequently earning a Master of Music degree at Juilliard under Yoheved Kaplinsky, and an Artist Diploma under the guidance of Joseph Kalichstein and Robert McDonald. Di Wu was initially discovered by Dr. Bowden after she won first prize in the Hilton Head International Piano Competition in Since her first performance with the Philharmonic in 2006, she has become an audience favorite. She returns this season to perform with the Phil for her fifth time. The petite pianist describes herself as a huge foodie and enjoys cooking and sampling New York City s wide array of restaurants. your instrument Locally owned and operated. License #PC Hitting the since our instrument lohmeyerplumbing.com service lohmeyerpl lohmeyerplumbing.com service@lohmeyerplumbing.com 4555 Progress Drive Columbus, Indiana

2 CONCRT CO-SPONSORS Jazzy Blue with Di Wu Columbus Indiana Philharmonic David Bowden, Music Director CONCRT PARTNR Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 7:30 PM rne Auditorium, Columbus North High School David Bowden, Conductor Di Wu, Piano INSURANC SRVICS SASON MDIA SPONSOR an american in Paris Piano concerto in Major Allegramente Adagio assai Presto eorge ershwin Maurice Ravel INTRMISSION Drawing upon heartwarming support from across the community, our orchestra continues to create truly powerful musical performances. A quality ensemble based right here in Columbus offers a treasure to be cherished. As a violin teacher, I wholeheartedly believe that quality music enriches and unites people. What a privilege it has been creating and presenting music with so many exceptional musicians for the past 30 years! Laura Andrews First Violin second suite from Daphnis and chloé Maurice Ravel Dawn Daphnis and Chloé reunite following her kidnapping by pirates Daphnis and Chloé mimic the adventure of Pan and Syrinx Chloé falls into Daphnis arms Daphnis pledges his faith and love eneral dance of joy: Bacchanale rhapsody in Blue SASON TITL SPONSOR eorge ershwin 41

3 Jazzy Blue with Di Wu Program Notes eorge ershwin American in Paris In 1898, eorge ershwin, arguably America s first great composer, was born in Brooklyn. Despite his untimely death at the age of 38, ershwin bequeathed this nation with an array of music that has become intertwined with our cultural identity. Surely no American has escaped familiarity with ershwin s songs, which range from catchy anthems ( I ot Plenty O Nuttin, It Ain t Necessarily So ) to jazzy melodies ( Fascinating Rhythm, S Wonderful ) to lilting love songs ( Bess, You Is My Woman Now ). Perhaps due to his love for musical theater and songwriting, ershwin sustained a nagging reputation during his lifetime as little more than a Tin Pan Alley song-spinner. Yet ershwin s tastes in art could hardly be seen as provincial. As a boy, he talked his way into concerts of music by such thenmoderns as Stravinsky, Scriabin, and Ornstein. Later in life, he financed private recordings of Schoenberg s string quartets. He collected sculpture and art by Picasso and Chagall. And he boasted that the high point of a trip to urope in 1928 was meeting the radical and controversial composer Alban Berg. During his first visit to Paris in 1923, ershwin reportedly exclaimed to his two tour-guides, Why, this is a city you can write about! ershwin kept his word some five years and two visits later, with An American in Paris. Originally conceived in two versions one for solo piano and a second for two pianos the work took shape primarily during ershwin s aforementioned 1928 visit to urope, during which he visited most of urope s most prominent composers. Time has been kind to An American in Paris, and today it is well known and loved on both sides of the Atlantic. It is surely ershwin s most carefree, light-hearted work for the concert hall. The walking rhythm with which the work begins bursts with energy, as if the protagonist is about to break into a carefree skip. The music is riddled with playful asides, such as the incorporation of taxi horns and impressionistic bursts of instrumental squawking, plinking, and laughing. The use of polytonal chord sequences and other modernisms almost go unnoticed, so naturally do they fit into the overall texture of the 19-minute piece. Maurice Ravel Piano Concerto in Major Born in France in 1875, Maurice Ravel showed plenty of early promise as a pianist and composer, and was accepted into the Paris Conservatory for training. However, after failing to win a competitive medal at the school for three years straight, he was expelled in Undaunted, Ravel returned to the school s composition program. In 1900, he was expelled from that program, too. Ironic, then, that one of Ravel s most enduringly popular compositions would be a piano concerto. Yet in a way, the academic challenges that Ravel faced in his early years make perfect sense when we listen to this music. Arguably none of the great composers of the early 20th century experimented more freely than Ravel with the blending and straddling of forms, moods, instrumentation and international musical influences. Such radical defiance of musical traditions didn t sit well with the establishment of the day; but today, Ravel s unique talent is revered by musicologists and cited as inspiration by composers who followed him. In 1929, fresh from a visit to the United States, Ravel decided to write a piano concerto, one that would mirror the spirit of traditional concertos by Mozart and Saint-Saëns. The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects, the composer explained. The composer s core intent is certainly achieved in the completed work. But make no mistake: This is no Mozart concerto, as is evident from the outset. The first movement begins with a snap and a colorful swirl of sound. After a lively rhythmic section, the piano appears, languid and jazzy sudden echoes of Ravel s time in America. The contrasts could hardly come faster in that first minute, providing a quick encapsulation of the range of mood, tempo and dynamics not to mention the daring yet perfectly juxtaposed 42

4 contrasts that will follow. At the climax of the first movement a soaring melody erupts, surely one of the most beautiful Ravel ever wrote. Yet just as it climaxes, the music dashes off in another direction, rhythmic and light, driving quickly to the rather abrupt end of the movement. From the pen of almost any other composer, such sudden shifts would surely seem schizophrenic; yet here, the ease and intuitive logic of each twist bespeaks Ravel s brilliance. Of the second movement, many words could be said, but none will amply explain its magic. There is arguably no more lovely, gentle movement in any classical concerto. Its loveliness is born this time out of simplicity: A dreamy piano solo introduces the initial melody, then passes it to the orchestra. The piano returns to ornament the melody, building to a restrained climax before fading to a magical trill. The finale is another showcase of color and contrasts. Ravel s mastery of off-kilter rhythms is explored here to its fullest; sometimes it seems that the underlying pulse has completely disappeared, yet nothing ever seems out of place. The ending seems to come too soon but isn t that true of all great works? Maurice Ravel Daphnis & Chloé Suite No. 2 Ravel s was a singular talent, combining a penchant for revelatory harmonic and textural innovations with a gift for immediately memorable melodies. It is easy to like Ravel s music on first listen a fact that isn t always true for other equally great composers of his time, whose innovations still challenge our modern ears. Yet this is also music that rewards deeper exploration. Arguably nowhere are these generalizations more richly or pervasively proven than in Ravel s ballet from 1912, Daphnis and Chloé. Penned for the revolutionary Ballets Russes at the behest of the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, Daphnis and Chloé was inspired by the ancient reek romance of the same name by Longus. However, nothing about Ravel s treatment was traditional. My intention in writing [Daphnis and Chloé], Ravel later said, was to compose a vast musical fresco in which I was less concerned with archaism than with reproducing faithfully the reece of my dreams, which is very similar to that imagined by French artists at the end of the eighteenth century. In form too, Ravel approached the project less as a traditional ballet and more as what he called a choreographic symphony in three parts. In fact, Daphnis and Chloé would ultimately stand as Ravel s longest work for orchestra, clocking at just near an hour in length. Like a symphony, the music s arc is much more connected and less episodic than most ballets. Alas, these characteristics didn t sit well with Ravel s collaborator on the project, the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine. The two bickered about the overall style, with Fokine preferring a more traditional, Classical and formal depiction of ancient reece. Fokine also battled with his lead dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, over the choreography so much that Diaghilev threatened to cancel the whole production, and was forced to postpone the premiere twice. In the end it was worth the struggle. From beginning to end, this is Ravel s most lush, approachable, richly colored score. While the premiere of the ballet was not widely heralded a performance by Nijinksy of Afternoon of a Faun just days earlier had caused a scandal, and the new ballet got lost in the hullabaloo audiences soon warmed to Ravel s new score, particularly after he produced two suites of music from the ballet for performance in the concert hall. In this concert we will hear the second of those suites, comprised of music from the ballet s third section. The opening music, depicting the rising sun, is a miracle of shape and color. The vividness and beauty only continues from there. Plot-wise, the music depicts the reunion of the lovers after Chloé is liberated by Pan from a band of pirates. As they reminisce, an echo of Pan is heard in a sensuous flute solo. The lovers fall into each other s arms; and the music erupts in a celebration of love that is as exciting as anything in the orchestral repertoire. Continued on pg Washington Street, Columbus, IN Mon - Thur: Fri - Sat: Sun:

5 Jazzy Blue with Di Wu Program Notes Continued from pg. 43 US PH This is the quintessential American concert showpiece. TS 34 ye-witness accounts indicate that the audience was eorge ershwin Rhapsody in Blue enthralled. Critics, however, were not so It would be hard to live in America today and r r s not have at least a passing familiarity with hw impressed. o in eorge ershwin s masterpiece - 1 How trite, feeble and of the jazz age. It has been the 9 conventional the tunes soundtrack to commercials are; how sentimental for United Airlines and and vapid the IBM. It has been on h a r m o n i c lee and on the Wii. treatment, Organizers of the 1984 under its Summer Olympics in disguise of Los Angeles chose fussy and futile to open the games counterpoint! with a performance sniffed one of Rhapsody in Blue critic in the played by no fewer than New York 84 pianists. Tribune. No doubt, T TR O Rhapsody in Blue O In 1924, ershwin was asked CR IN failed to follow most W D SH established traditions of by the bandleader Paul Whiteman IT: T R H IRA A to write a concerto-like piece for piano classical music. The music is ND LONOR and jazz band. ershwin responded in just five episodic, the overall tone is lighthearted weeks with Rhapsody in Blue. At the premiere, the and even irreverent, and many populist styles are composer himself played the piano solo, parts of explored in the music. At the same time, one can t which weren t even written out on paper yet. really call it jazz in the literal sense for its time: It is carefully mapped out, often departs from a regular tempo, and relies heavily on classical techniques such as counterpoint. It was, and still is, its own animal a piece meant to please audiences more than critics. In that respect, Rhapsody in Blue was an unmitigated success. During the ten years after its premiere, ershwin earned more than a quarter of a million dollars in royalties from the music. Today, it stands not only as a monument to ershwin s talents, but also as a watershed that helped transform the reputation of jazz from decadent bar-music to America s greatest native art form. It was, and is, its own animal a piece meant to please audiences more C L B R AT T H SOUNDS OF 44 YOUR LIF than critics.