CLASSICAL SERIES TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO. 4

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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 TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO. 4 NEEME JÄRVI Music Director Emeritus Friday, November 16, 2018 at 10:45 a.m. Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 8 p.m. Sunday, November 18, 2018 at 3 p.m. at Orchestra Hall November is Community Support Month. Learn more and make a gift now at dso.org/donate. JOHN STORGÅRDS, conductor PEKKA KUUSISTO, violin George Antheil ( ) Over The Plains Daníel Bjarnason (b. 1979) Violin Concerto Pekka Kuusisto, violin Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, Music & Artistic Director; and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Intermission Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 ( ) I. Andante sostenuto II. Andantino in modo di canzona III. Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco This Classical Series performance is generously sponsored by Saturday 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 dso.org DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 21

2 Program Notes PROGRAM AT-A-GLANCE Tchaikovsky s : Personally Harrowing, Professionally Rewarding The late 1870s are sometimes referred to as Tchaikovsky s Wandering Years he left Russia and traveled abroad during this time, distraught by his failed marriage and suffering from writer s block. But it was during this time that his music reached mass popularity, thanks to a speech by author/essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky encouraging Russians to embrace Western culture something Tchaikovsky s music was previously derided for doing. Antheil s 1940s: From Radical to Regular In his youth, George Antheil was a musical bad boy, fervently unafraid of radical sounds and styles. But after returning to the U.S. from Europe in the 1930s, his music became much more conventional. By the 1940s, his attitude was even patriotic in 1948, he wrote that he wished to disassociate himself from the passé modern schools of the last half-century. Bjarnason s 2020s: What s Next? Daníel Bjarnason has earned great praise for his willingness to experiment and cross over conventional understandings of genre. That also keeps his fans guessing what will he do next? In a recent interview with the Reykjavik Grapevine, he gave a hint: Right now there is a project I am planning which is just an album of songs, short songs with singers. A song cycle not a genre in itself, but it s different from what I ve done. Over the Plains GEORGE ANTHEIL B. July 8, 1900, Trenton, NJ D. February 12, 1959, New York, NY Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. (Approx. 10 minutes) George Antheil was an avant-garde composer and pianist who became famous for the unusual sounds and instrumentation featured in his works which included orchestral and operatic pieces as well as scores for film and TV. He was a fearless modernist, eager to find alternatives to the traditional tonal system, and his friends and acquaintances included other world-changers like Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. He moved to Europe as a young man, stating his intention to earn fame as an ultra-modern pianist composer, and in Paris he rented an apartment above Sylvia Beach s famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company. His compositions gained immediate notoriety for the audience reactions they elicited sometimes stunned silence, other times near-violent agitation and anger. His greatest achievement in this regard was the Ballet Mecanique, scored originally for 2 grand pianos, 16 player pianos (!), electronic bells, xylophones, sirens, and three airplane propellers. Classical music s greatest riot followed its premiere in 1926, with shocked concertgoers fighting and arguing in the streets about the cacophonous piece s merit. While Antheil s early years as a composer earned him a reputation as a bad boy and pot-stirrer, the middle and late stages of his career are much more conventional. By the 1940s, he was composing works in the vein of Mahler, 22 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE WINTER

3 Bruckner, and the late Romantic composers of the 19th century; all artists whom he lambasted in his 20s for being too old-fashioned. After his death in 1959, Antheil was remembered more for his youthful antics than his musical oeuvre, but luckily that has changed in recent years, in large part due to the intervention of Finnish conductor John Storgårds, who has established himself as an Antheil specialist. Over the Plains was composed in the 1940s, during a patriotic moment in Antheil s career. Inspired by a visit to the Texas countryside, the piece was premiered in 1946 by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Antal Dorati (later music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra). Antheil wanted to express the optimistic spirit of the pioneers crossing the plains on a hazardous journey, and described the idea of the work as that of a young man, walking alongside a covered wagon with his little family inside; moreover, the young man would be audacious, as a young man making his home in the new West a century ago probably would be. The earthy and colorful score could easily have come from the sound track of a Western film, featuring rollicking cowboy music alongside dreamy and atmospheric passages, and even a kind of folksy march. These performances of Antheil s Over the Plains will be DSO premieres. Violin Concerto DANÍEL BJARNASON B. February 26, 1979, Reykjavik, Iceland Scored for solo violin, 2 flutes (1 doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (1 doubling on bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (1 doubling on contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, bass dso.org trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, and strings. (Approx. 20 minutes) Although it is not a large country, Iceland has gained a reputation in the 21st century for producing innovative popular music, and for producing a striking new generation of classical composers, from which Daníel Bjarnason has emerged as an important figure. After initial studies in piano, composition, and conducting in Reykjavik, he went to the University of Music in Freiburg, Germany for advanced studies in conducting. Although he now has an international career, he remains closely involved in the Icelandic musical scene. His compositions range widely in character, sometimes using tonally-based music, sometimes using a very free approach to tonality, and sometimes using electronic elements in the mix. Bjarnason s debut violin concerto was composed on a co-commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and was given its world premiere in August 2017 by the LA Phil with Gustavo Dudamel conducting and Pekka Kuusisto as featured soloist. The work was inspired by Kuusisto, a longtime friend of the composer, and by what Bjarnason calls Kuusisto s curiosity and playfulness. When first announced, it was simply called Violin Concerto, but it also carried the informal subtitle Scordatura, a term referring to the unusual tuning of the violin s lowest string in this instance, the string is tuned down four notes, from the normal G to a D. The dropped tuning allows Bjarnason to create some unusual drone passages, which are trademarks of contemporary Icelandic music. Kuusisto comments: It always takes a little while for the string to get used to it, so you get this rather raunchy sound which you don t normally DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 23

4 get on a violin it changes the whole resonance of the instrument and it s lovely! As he was writing the concerto, Bjarnason commented on how the unusual tuning simply took over the concerto, saying I wasn t planning on using it for the whole piece, but then I got completely fascinated by it. The concerto is in three sections performed without a break, set off by two cadenzas which are entirely improvised, meaning no two performances will ever be the same. These performances of Daníel Bjarnason s Violin Concerto will be DSO premieres. Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 PIOTR ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY B. May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia D. November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. (Approx. 44 minutes) The Symphony No. 4 is a signature piece among Tchaikovsky s seven works in the symphonic form, and is typically understood as the work that established his maturity in the genre. Its salient characteristics are a superheated emotional character and a lean, intense orchestral texture. Together, these traits remind the listener of several other masterworks in Tchaikovsky s oeuvre: the B-flat minor Piano Concerto (1875), the ballet Swan Lake (1876), and the opera Eugene Onegin (1878), which was composed simultaneously to the Symphony No. 4. Placed in the context of these other works, this passionate symphony is usually viewed as a white-hot product of Tchaikovksy s stresses and frustrations in the mid-1870s, which stemmed from his personal recognition of his homosexuality and subsequent failed marriage. The symphony is dedicated to Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy Russian businesswoman who supported Tchaikovsky financially for 13 years, under the stipulation that the two may never meet. The work s opening trumpet fanfare the so-called fate motive Tchaikovsky referred to in letters he wrote to Madame von Meck about the symphony recurs as a kind of structural pillar marking off major sections of the first movement. Startling statements of the motive separate the exposition setting forth its themes, the development section in which they are fragmented, the restatement of the themes in the recapitulation, and the coda at the end of the movement. The fate motive also makes a dramatic reappearance in the coda of the fourth movement. Following the symphony s slow introduction, the two main themes in the opening movement are waltzes, which Tchaikovsky had a habit of strewing about his symphonies. First comes a nervous, moody, minor-mode waltz with a twisting thematic profile, and then a lilting waltz for strings and woodwinds emerges from it. Turning to march rhythms, oboe, cello, violin, and bassoon alternately move in a solemn procession through the slow movement. The measured tread of this music harks back to the slow movement of Mendelssohn s Italian Symphony No. 4, whose clear formal design and crystalline orchestral colors served as a model for the young Tchaikovsky when he began his struggle to master symphonic form. 24 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE WINTER

5 The brilliant set of marches that make up the third movement stand out as some of the most striking music Tchaikovsky ever composed. Plucked strings, bright woodwinds, and shining brass enter the parade one after another, their tone colors standing in razor-sharp contrast to each other. Finally, Tchaikovsky combines the march tunes and the separate colors in an Profiles JOHN STORGÅRDS John Storgårds has a dual career as a conductor and violin virtuoso and is widely recognized for his creative programming. He currently serves as Chief Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of Canada s National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, Artistic Partner of the Münchener Kammerorchester, and Artistic Director of the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland. Storgårds s vast conducting repertoire includes all symphonies by Sibelius, Nielsen, Bruckner, Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann. He gave a historical cycle of all 54 symphonies by Mozart (including the unnumbered works), conducted Finnish premieres of Schumann s only opera (Genoveva) and early Zwickau symphony, and led world premieres of Sibelius s Suite Op. 117 for violin and strings and his Late Fragments. Storgårds regularly performs world premieres of contemporary works as well, including music by Kaija Saariaho, dso.org STORGÅRDS exhilarating coda. The fourth movement is no less joyous, consisting of a thrilling set of Russian dances that alternate with each other throughout the movement. The DSO most recently performed Tchaikovsky s Symphony No. 4 during the July 2017 Asia Tour, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. The DSO first performed the piece in February 1917, conducted by Weston Gales. Brett Dean, Per Nørgård, and Pēteris Vasks. Storgårds has appeared with many of the world s major symphony orchestras and several celebrated opera companies, especially in his native Scandinavia. During the season he gave debut appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His discography includes works by Schumann, Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn, as well as rarities by Holmboe and Vasks. Storgårds has released several recordings with the BBC Philharmonic on Chandos, including cycles of symphonies by Sibelius and Nielsen. His latest BBC Philharmonic recording includes works by George Antheil, including Over the Plains. A recording of Rautavaara received a Grammy Award nomination and a Gramophone award in 2012, and a Chamber Orchestra of Lapland recording of concertos for theremin and horn by Kalevi Aho received the ECHO Klassik award in Born in Finland, Storgårds studied violin with Chaim Taub and subsequently became concertmaster of the Swedish DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 25

6 Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa- Pekka Salonen, before studying conducting with Jorma Panula and Eri Klas. He received the Finnish State Prize for Music in 2002 and the Pro Finlandia Prize in MOST RECENT APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: May 2018, conducting a program with music by Nielsen, Beethoven, Rautavaara, and Sibelius. FIRST APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: May 2013, conducting a program with music by Ligeti, Chopin, and Holst. PEKKA KUUSISTO Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto is Artistic Partner with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director of ACO Collective a string ensemble that connects the musicians of the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Australia s young professional musicians to deliver innovative KUUSISTO projects across the country. After a longstanding creative collaboration with the ensemble, in 2017 he became Artistic Best Friend of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and in 2018 he became Guest Artistic Leader of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Kuusisto is a champion of contemporary music, and frequently performs Daníel Bjarnason s Violin Concerto, which was written for him. Recent premieres include Sauli Zinovjev s violin concerto Der Leiermann, Andrea Tarrodi s Acanthes double concerto for two violins, and Anders Hillborg s Bach Materia. As a composer, together with Samuli Kosminen, Kuusisto is composing, performing, and recording the music for a new animated television series of Tove Jansson s Moomin stories. Kuusisto is also eager to engage with collaborators across genres and performance styles; during the season he took up a residency at Pierre Boulez Saal with REDDRESS, a collaborative project with South-Korean artist Aamu Song that blurs the boundaries between performance and visual art. Outside the world of classical music, his partnerships have included Dutch neurologist Erik Scherder, electronic music pioneer Brian Crabtree, jazz trumpeter Arve Henriksen, juggler Jay Gilligan, and accordionist Dermot Dunne. Recent releases in Kuusisto s discography include Erkki-Sven Tüür s Noesis violin concerto (on Ondine) and Sebastian Fagerlund s Darkness in Light violin concerto (on BIS), both recorded with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu; as well as Hillborg s Bach Materia and Bach s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard (also onbis). Kuusisto plays a fine 18th century Italian instrument generously loaned to him by the Beares International Violin Society. MOST RECENT APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: Pekka Kuusisto has previously appeared with the DSO once, at a 2001 Meadow Brook concert, performing Sibelius s Violin Concerto (cond. Thomas Wilkins) 26 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE WINTER