Symphony No. 96 in D major, The Miracle I. Adagio - Allegro II. Andante III. Menuet: Allegretto IV. Vivace

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1 A E G I S S C I E N C E S FOUNDATION EST Classical Series Friday & Saturday, April 3 & 4, at 8 pm MOZART S PIANO MASTERPIECE WITH EMANUEL AX Nashville Symphony Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor Emanuel Ax, piano EMANUEL AX MOZART S PIANO MASTERPIECE with the Nashville Symphony FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN RICHARD STRAUSS Symphony No. 96 in D major, The Miracle I. Adagio - Allegro II. Andante III. Menuet: Allegretto IV. Vivace Burleske in D minor for Piano and Orchestra Emanuel Ax, piano INTERMISSION WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART CLAUDE DEBUSSY Concerto No. 14 in E-flat major for Piano and Orchestra, K. 449 I. Allegro vivace II. Andantino III. Allegro ma non troppo Emanuel Ax, piano La Mer De l aube à midi sur la mer [From Dawn to Noon on the Sea] Jeux des vagues [Play of the Waves] Dialogue du vent et de la mer [Dialogue of Wind and Sea] Concert Sponsor Media Partner Official Partner InConcert 15

2 tonight s concert at a glance JOSEPH HAYDN Symphony No. 96 in D major Miracle The composer of 104 symphonies, Haydn is celebrated as the father of the symphony, though he was every bit as influential as the composer of 68 string quartets. Symphony No. 96 is one of the composer s 12 London Symphonies, written during the first of two extended residencies in England. It was the first work he wrote and performed during his stay and helped catapult him to even greater popularity. This work is known as the Miracle Symphony because of an incident in which a chandelier fell from the ceiling during one of Haydn s concerts, and miraculously no one in the audience was hurt. The incident actually happened during the an entirely different work: Symphony No The composer opens the symphony in the key of D major, then shifts into the minor the opposite of what a listener at the time would have expected in a major-key symphony. Listen for the oboe, which makes a couple of striking solo appearances in the first and third movements. RICHARD STRAUSS - Burleske in D minor for Piano and Orchestra Strauss is known for his vivid tone poems orchestral works that tell a story but Burleske has no narrative. Written when he was 21, it s one of his earliest compositions and shows the influence of Brahms, whom Strauss had just met prior to writing the piece. Burleske was intended as a showcase for the legendary conductor and piano virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who was an early champion of Strauss. Unfortunately, von Bülow didn t like the work at all because it was too technically demanding. The solo piano part is playful and varied, with plenty of virtuosic passages. Listen for the timpani, which plays a prominent role both at the opening and at the very end, where it spars with the piano. WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART - Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-flat major, K. 449 Mozart s influence looms large over two other composers featured in this concert: He was a personal friend and admirer of Joseph Haydn s, and he was idolized by Richard Strauss. Mozart s piano concertos helped to cement his celebrity, and No. 14 was the first of 12 he wrote between 1784 and He originally wrote this one for a student, Barbara Ployer, but all indications suggest that the composer was the soloist at the work s public premiere. Mozart described No. 14 as a concerto in an entirely different style and written more for a small than a large orchestra. Aside from strings and piano, the only other instruments are oboes and horns. The music is full of drama and energy, and the piano is given ample room to explore a variety of moods. CLAUDE DEBUSSY - La Mer Debussy was strongly influenced by visual art not just fellow French Impressionist Claude Monet, but also British artist J.M.W. Turner, whose evocative paintings of the sea were a direct source of inspiration on La Mer. Equally influential was Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, whose The Great Wave Off Kanagawa emblazoned the work s score. Debussy s approach to composition doesn t follow formal conventions, but instead uses vibrantly colorful, kaleidoscopic orchestration to paint a musical portrait. La Mer is divided into three sections, each of which captures a different quality of the sea, from the way that light plays on the water to the shifting currents of the waves. Close your eyes, and you just might feel that you re sitting by the shore. 16 APRIL 2015

3 JOSEPH HAYDN Born on March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Lower Austria; died on May 31, 1809, in Vienna Symphony No. 96 in D major, The Miracle Composed: 1791 First performance: likely March 11, 1791, in London First Nashville Symphony performance: March 23 & 24, 1970, with Music Director Thor Johnson Estimated length: 25 minutes Much as Mozart would do with his piano concertos, Joseph Haydn took evident pleasure in the special bond he forged with his audience via the symphony. The audience in this case refers to Haydn s enthusiastic London fans toward the end of his long career. For decades Haydn had patiently written for the house orchestra of a very wealthy, music-loving aristocrat whose remote estate was lonely but peaceful. In his state of isolation from the big city, there was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original, as Haydn later put it. That originality paid off, and eventually this man from humble peasant origins won the attention of music lovers across Europe and acquired his own independent wealth. Haydn also developed a friendship with Mozart (his junior by a generation), which had a lasting impact on the music of each composer. In 1791, Haydn set out on the first of two major residencies in London that enhanced his fame and gave a healthy boost to his bank account. The main artistic outcome of the London journeys was a dozen new symphonies composed for audiences in the cosmopolitan capital where the German-born Handel had spent the bulk of his career earlier in the century. The official numbering of Haydn s so-called London symphonies (encompassing Nos. 93 to 104, Haydn s last symphony) is chronologically incorrect: No. 96 in D major was in fact the first he wrote in London and was very likely introduced during his first concert there in March It would have been performed in a hall known as the Hanover Square Rooms (no longer extant), the city s main concert venue at the time, which could accommodate some 800 patrons. It would certainly have been a miracle if no one had been injured after one of the impressive chandeliers came crashing down just after the performance. That s the story behind the nickname of The Miracle, which has become attached to this work. Indeed something like this did happen: a chandelier fell, but the audience was out of harm s way, as they had rushed to the front of the room to pay respects to the musicians. But that event occurred in another venue, and during the composer s second trip to London at a performance of his Symphony No 102. Somewhere along the line, the lore got mixed up and No. 96 became eternally branded with this moniker. But each of Haydn s grand London symphonies is a creative miracle in its own way, replete with fresh solutions to the challenges of constructing a large-scale, abstract piece of music. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR You might even compare Haydn s symphonic achievements to a series of masterpiece paintings all on the same subject say, an array of Renaissance treatments of the Annunciation. These mature works share many of the same features, and the London audiences would have anticipated the same patterns and architectural landmarks as each one unfolded. Much of the pleasure comes from hearing how Haydn creates variety, endowing each with a character of its own. For instance, almost all the London symphonies begin with a slow introduction before starting off the main business of the fast first movement. A typical strategy would be to InConcert 17

4 begin in the minor for a major-key symphony, setting up a dramatic tension that finds release with the arrival of the first theme. Here, though, Haydn launches with a bold statement in D major his most frequently used key across his catalogue of symphonies but veers into the minor for the rest of the introduction, which includes a poignant oboe solo that bridges into the Allegro. (Beethoven may have borrowed this idea for the first movement of his Fifth Symphony, where an oboe solo serves as a pivotal transitional passage.) The theme itself is signature Haydn, comprising rhythmic markers and easily detachable components sufficient to fuel the entire movement. (Again, Beethoven s Fifth comes to mind.) In the Andante, Haydn pays homage to an earlier musical style that some old-timers in his audience may have recalled from their youth: a chamber style featuring delectable solo contributions from the woodwinds and even a cadenza near the end for a pair of solo violins. The solo spotlight continues in quite another context in the third movement for the oboe, playing pastoral music of lyrical innocence as a foil to the extroverted city dance of the surrounding Minuet. Another example of Haydn s irrepressible invention: the insouciant main theme of the finale starts off with the same descending pattern we had heard at the very start in the introduction (where it had much more gravitas). But in this new, cheerful incarnation, it s the engine for a cheerful rounding-off of Haydn s first new London adventure. The Symphony No. 96 is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, timpani and strings. RICHARD STRAUSS Born on June 11, 1864, in Munich, Germany; died on September 8, 1949, in Garmisch- Partenkirchen, Germany Burleske in D minor for Piano and Orchestra Richard Strauss initially became famous for the astonishing, evocative power of his tone poems for his ability to tell stories in sound. Yet his early, concerto-like Burlesque is a self-contained instrumental piece with no story attached. Like Mozart, whom he idolized, Strauss grew up under the influence of a powerful father figure, Franz Strauss. A highly sought-after musician and the principal horn player of Munich s Court Orchestra for nearly half a century, Franz encouraged the efforts of his son, who had been composing since childhood. The famous but temperamental conductor Hans von Bülow initially expressed skepticism, but little Richard s Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments (a product of his teenage years) won Bülow over. Composed: ; revised in 1889 First performance: June 21, 1890, with the composer conducting and Eugen d Albert as the piano soloist First Nashville Symphony performance: These are the orchestra s first performances. Estimated length: 20 minutes The conductor proclaimed Strauss a worthy heir to Brahms and helped to launch the young composer s career when he invited Strauss to serve as his assistant conductor with the Meiningen Orchestra in central Germany. Bülow had shaped the orchestra into one of the most enviable ensembles in Europe. (Indeed, shortly after Strauss arrived to take up his assignment, Brahms showed up to rehearse the orchestra for the world premiere of his new Symphony No. 4.) Despite being a greenhorn at the podium, Strauss would develop into one of the finest conductors of the era. Bülow was also a virtuoso pianist he gave the world premiere of Tchaikovsky s First Piano Concerto in Boston in Burleske began as a way for the disciple to offer some token of 18 APRIL 2015

5 gratitude, in the form of a scherzo for solo piano and orchestra. But Bülow became irritated by the exorbitant technical demands of the piece, which included chordal spans that were unflattering to his small hands. He denounced it as too bombastic and Lisztian, refusing to invest time in learning it. Burleske required a virtuosity beyond Strauss own capacity as a pianist, so the score languished in his desk. Meanwhile, the pianist Eugen d Albert, a former pupil of Liszt, learned about the neglected piece and offered to perform it. Strauss revised his score and retitled it Burleske German for a parody or farce (earlier, the title had simply been Scherzo in D minor ). He programmed the premiere on the same concert that introduced his tone poem Death and Transfiguration. Strauss internalized some of Bülow s skepticism about the piece and waited several years to publish it; even so, he liked Burleske enough to include it on the last concert he conducted (57 years later). significant role to the timpani. But the mood soon established is teasingly capricious rather than cosmic. The rhythmic pattern of the opening bars turns out to contain the central motto of Burleske, which Strauss goes on to develop in ingenious ways. The piano scampers in impishly chromatic cascades but then turns reflective as it caresses a three-note motif. Strauss orchestration is rich and colorful, but he also gives the piano plenty of time to deliver a monologue, making Burleske in essence a singlemovement concerto. The soloist has a changeable personality, morphing from merry prankster to rhapsodic lover. Strauss wrote Burleske while still under the spell of Brahms, so the echoes of that master s piano concertos most evident in the high rhetoric at the climax of the piece are a kind of affectionate parody. Burleske s final gestures a duel to the death between the piano and timpani meanwhile offer a dose of deliciously engaging wit. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR The notion of a large-scale Scherzo in D minor undoubtedly conjured thoughts of Beethoven s Ninth, and, indeed, Strauss assigns a WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART The tension between art as pleasure and art as a challenge is timeless. Wolfgang Amadé Mozart certainly felt the pressure to write entertaining music that obliged the tastes and expectations of his audience. At the same time, his provocative innovations earned him a reputation among contemporaries as a difficult composer and the piano concerto took center stage as In addition to solo piano, Burlesque is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria; died on December 5, 1791, in Vienna Concerto No. 14 in E-flat major for Piano and Orchestra, K. 449 Composed: early 1784 First performance: Mozart likely performed this work at a benefit concert on March 17, 1784, in Vienna, though it may have been introduced in a semi-private setting by his pupil Barbara Ployer, for whom it was composed. First Nashville Symphony performance: These are the orchestra s first performances. Estimated length: 22 minutes a genre in which Mozart appeared at his most innovative. He can be credited with elevating the solo concerto to its lofty status, and his legacy of piano concertos represents an achievement on a par with what Haydn accomplished for the symphony. Mozart s concertos also served as a chief source of the composer s livelihood while he InConcert 19

6 was living the life of a freelance artist in Vienna during the last 10 years of his foreshortened career. Unlike Haydn, he made himself into one of the go-to keyboard performers in the land of the clavier, as he once termed Vienna. His piano concertos became central events in the concerts he put on to raise money, and they showed off his skills as performer and composer. The Concerto K. 449, though, represents an exception to this rule in that it was one of two concertos Mozart wrote for his gifted pupil Barbara ( Babette ) Ployer. The composer described this score as a concerto in an entirely different style and written more for a small than a large orchestra. There are no flutes or clarinets, let alone trumpets or timpani. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR This music abounds with a dramatic energy that belies its actual dimensions of orchestration and length. Within the first minutes Mozart introduces a parade of at least five different themes. These mercurial changes of temperament set the tone for what is to follow as the soloist enters and engages with the ensemble at times completing its phrases as tenderly as a lover, at others stealing the limelight. Mozart isolates the seemingly casual trilling gesture of the very opening theme as an item ripe for the development section a perfect example of his fertile imagination. The Andantino, an oasis of serene song, lays a bed of gentle but subtle harmonies. There s a prefigurement, too, of that tinge of melancholy Mozart would develop two years later in The Marriage of Figaro. The scholar Arthur Hutchings compares this movement to the calm after tears have been shed. For his finale, Mozart turns to the brisk liveliness of the rondo an easy-to-follow, dance-like form in which the main tune continually returns, contrasted by intervening episodes of a different character. But he also incorporates his newfound fascination for the more complex layering of counterpoint, which he had recently come to know through his study of the Baroque masters. The striding, staccato theme of the rondo starts with a kind of musical push. Following its delightful variants, Mozart gives us yet another invention in the final cadenza and coda, as the soloist reconfigures the theme into a lilting 6/8 meter and persuades the orchestra to take up this novel perspective. In addition to solo piano, Piano Concerto No. 14 is scored for pairs of oboes and horns as well as strings. CLAUDE DEBUSSY Born on August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germainen-Laye, France; died on March 25, 1918, in Paris La Mer Japanese art is one part of the network of inspirations behind Claude Debussy s orchestral canvas La Mer. The composer decorated his studio Composed: First performance: October 15, 1905, with Camille Chevillard conducting the Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris First Nashville Symphony performance: January 29 & 30, 1962, with Music Director Willis Page Estimated length: 24 minutes walls with Japanese prints, including Katsushika Hokusai s 19th-century woodblock print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, which had already become 20 APRIL 2015

7 iconic among his fellow Parisians. Debussy chose a section from this print to illustrate the first edition of the score of La Mer. Hokusai s stylized depiction of the sea s immensity, together with his animated use of detail, provides a key to Debussy s richly suggestive method of painting with the tones and timbres of his large orchestra. In fact, Debussy repeatedly encountered significant artistic stimuli through sources that were indirect or at some remove from the ostensible inspiration for his music in this case, the sea. It wasn t so much a particular seascape as the memories unlocked and awakened by thoughts of the sea that guided Debussy s imagination during the lengthy gestation of La Mer between 1903 and Despite the composer s statement that he was destined for a sailor s life and turned to a life of music only by chance, Debussy grew impatient with colleagues who took a literalist approach to this music, their interest limited to deciphering its picturesque qualities. Far more on target, as far as Debussy was concerned, was the judgment of his biographer Louis Laloy, who lauded La Mer as a work of full-blown maturity revealing an impressionism of the emotions, translated into harmonies unique to the world. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Debussy s complex understanding of the relationship among nature, memory and the creative imagination led him to reject conventional musical forms and procedures. Formally, La Mer occupies a unique position in Debussy s oeuvre. Like several of his most significant works, it is organized as a triptych, but these three parts cohere, conceptually and through thematic cross-referencing, in a way that makes each interdependent on the others. (By contrast, it s not unusual to encounter just one panel from Debussy s three orchestral Images on a concert program.) At the same time, these three symphonic sketches don t conform to an overarching symphonic design, and they are not reducible to programmatic episodes. La Mer exists in a mysterious zone between musical abstraction and mimesis. The score exerts much of its effect through the power of suggestion. In his book Debussy: The Quiet Revolutionary, Victor Lederer writes that Debussy s astounding ventures into the musical expression of perception anticipate techniques that would later emerge in cinema montage, close-up and the like. It s fitting, then, that La Mer has also left a deep impression on film composers. The first sketch, From Dawn to Noon on the Sea, shows how Debussy uses register, timbre and dynamics (quiet, ambiguous sounds from the depths) to hint at the primordial spectacle of the day emerging over the sea s vastness. The majesty of this music is bound up with the sense of continual flux conveyed by his kaleidoscopic sonorities, leading inexorably to the climactic burst of high noon. The exquisite orchestral arabesques of the middle sketch, Play of the Waves, flicker and dance to a subtly pervasive waltz-like meter, lightening the mood before the portrayal of the sea s elemental, numinous power in the final sketch, Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea. Here the music swells and surges with ferocity. A seductive melody floats in and out of focus, like a hallucination, before succumbing to the rush of exhilarating fury unleashed at the end by the full ensemble. La Mer is scored for 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, glockenspiel, 2 harps and strings. Thomas May, the Nashville Symphony s program annotator, is a writer and translator who covers classical and contemporary music. He blogs at memeteria.com. ABOUT THE SOLOIST EMANUEL AX, piano Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His InConcert 21

8 studies at The Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Ax captured public attention in 1974, when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. Ax has two major projects planned for the second half of the 2014/15 season, the first being his two-week Celebrate the Piano festival with the Toronto Symphony, which will present multiple pianists, including Ax himself, exploring the many facets of the piano. The second will be a European tour with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin beginning with a joint appearance in Carnegie Hall. Throughout the season, he will return to the orchestras of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Washington, Atlanta, St. Louis, Montreal and Ottawa. Recitals will take him to Vancouver, San Francisco and the Midwest. In Europe he will return to the Berlin Philharmonic followed by a tour to Vienna, Salzburg, Graz and London. Other European orchestras this season include the London Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich and the National Orchestras of Toulouse and Lyon. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987; his recent releases include Mendelssohn Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss s Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. Ax has received GRAMMY Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY -winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children together, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities. SUPPORT THE ARTS WITH A SPECIALTY LICENSE PLATE If you love the arts, show your support with Tennessee s new specialty license plate! Designed by Nashville graphic artist Leslie Haines, these arts specialty license plates look great, and 90 percent of sales goes directly to supporting the Tennessee Arts Commission. Interested in a different specialty license plate design? You can feel good knowing that sales from all specialty license plates are a direct source of funding for the Tennessee Arts Commission. Nashville Symphony is just one of more than 800 organizations that benefit from the Tennessee Arts Commission s grant programs, which help to improve the quality of life in cities and rural communities across this great state. Last year alone, the Tennessee Arts Commission distributed $6.3 million to 377 schools, 246 nonprofit organizations and 69 individual artists across the state and $4.5 million of that was generated by Tennessee s Specialty License Plate Program. Pick up the new arts plate at your local county clerk's office today! 22 APRIL 2015