VIOLIN CONCERTO. tchaikovsky s. NASHVILLE SYMPHONY GIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductor GIL SHAHAM, violin CLASSICAL SERIES THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

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1 tchaikovsky s VIOLIN CONCERTO WITH GIL SHAHAM & THE NASHVILLE SYMPHONY A E G I S S C I E N C E S FOUNDATION EST CLASSICAL SERIES THURSDAY, MAY 5, AT 7 PM FRIDAY, MAY 6, AT 8 PM SATURDAY, MAY 7, AT 8 PM NASHVILLE SYMPHONY GIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductor GIL SHAHAM, violin JOHANNES BRAHMS Tragic Overture in D minor, Op. 81 PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op. 35 Allegro moderato Canzonetta: Andante Finale: Allegro vivacissimo Gil Shaham, violin INTERMISSION ANTONÍN DVORÁK Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 [Old No. 2] Allegro maestoso Poco adagio Scherzo: Vivace Finale: Allegro THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS WEEKEND CONCERT SPONSOR ASSOCIATE WEEKEND CONCERT SPONSOR Direct Travel with Silversea Cruises OFFICIAL PARTNER MEDIA PARTNER Gil Shaham s performance is made possible in part by the generosity of Dr. and Mrs. Howard S. Kirshner. 17

2 TONIGHT S CONCERT AT A GLANCE JOHANNES BRAHMS Tragic Overture in D minor BAD ISCHL Brahms often composed works in pairs, as was the case with his Tragic Overture. This piece was written during the same summer in 1880 that he composed his Academic Festival Overture, and he described the difference between them in a letter: One laughs while the other cries. Brahms wrote his Tragic Overture while staying in Bad Ischl, a popular summer retreat in the Austrian Alps. The spa town was a favorite getaway of the emperor, Franz Joseph I, and it hosted a number of other important composers, including Franz Lehár, Johann Strauss, and Anton Bruckner. Gustav Mahler traveled to Bad Ischl several times to meet with Brahms. PIORTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major LEOPOLD AUER ELIZABETH TAYLOR With its beautiful themes and emotional sweep, Tchaikovsky s Violin Concerto is one of the most beloved and frequently performed works in the repertoire. Surprisingly, it was not an immediate hit following its premiere in The solo violin part is notoriously difficult, and the premiere was delayed when the concerto s original dedicatee, Leopold Auer, refused to perform it unless Tchaikovsky made significant edits. The eventual premiere was given two years later by Adolph Brodsky. Tchaikovsky s Violin Concerto has appeared often in films. The 1955 Elizabeth Taylor vehicle Rhapsody made prominent use of it, and the first scene of the popular Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle uses an excerpt from the 3rd movement. Soloist Gil Shaham has performed with most of the world s great orchestras since his solo debut with the Jerusalem Philharmonic at age 10. He moved to New York City the next year to study at The Juilliard School and learned to juggle a rigorous concert schedule with homework and science projects. Being a famous musician and a student came with its own set of challenges like the morning when Shaham was called to the principal s office and was asked if he could fly to London to fill in for an ill Itzhak Perlman with the London Philharmonic the next night. ANTONÍN DVORÁK Symphony No. 7 in D minor ANTONÍN DVORÁK Composer Johannes Brahms was an inspiration and mentor to Antonin Dvorák throughout his career, and Dvorák s admiration of Brahms pathos-infused style is especially evident in his Seventh Symphony. Dvorák composed the work after hearing a performance of Brahms Third, and it has a distinctly darker character than his celebrated Ninth Symphony ( From the New World ). Even though the Seventh Symphony has a more somber sound than many of Dvorák s works, there are still lively, dance-inspired moments that are distinctly his. The first movement, for instance, introduces a lilting waltz section with a horn and oboe duet, which is sandwiched between sounds of anguish. The finale is rousing and makes its emotional impact by juxtaposing moments of levity and gravity. 18 MAY 2016

3 Tragic Overture, Op. 81 JOHANNES BRAHMS Born on May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany; died on April 3, 1897, in Vienna Composed: 1880 First performance: December 26, 1880, in Vienna First Nashville Symphony performance: March 29, 1949, with Music Director William Strickland Estimated length: 14 minutes Johannes Brahms produced only two examples of the self-standing concert overture, which Mendelssohn had pioneered decades earlier: the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture, both dating from the summer of With his commitment to composing absolute music, Brahms had no interest in following this sort of concert music into the more overtly programmatic symphonic poem associated with Liszt and the followers of Wagner. The experience of writing his boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs, as Brahms jokingly referred to the Academic Festival Overture, triggered the idea of trying out a sober complementary piece. One weeps while the other laughs, Brahms remarked, invoking the ancient twin masks of comedy and tragedy. Did Brahms, a keen lover of literature, have a specific but undisclosed tragedy in mind? The Tragic Overture anticipates something of the severe cast of the later Fourth Symphony, which in turn has been linked to his admiration of Sophocles. Some other tragic models that have been suggested include Shakespeare s plays or even Goethe s Faust, as the composer had indicated some interest in writing incidental music for a production of the latter at Vienna s Burgtheater. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR The fascination of the Tragic Overture lies in its subtle transformation of sonata form into a vehicle that seems to embody the essence of tragedy itself. Brahms calls for a large orchestra, including piccolo and tuba, but there is only occasional relief from the grim coloration of his scoring. Two forceful chords open the piece with a gesture reminiscent of Beethoven (whose Coriolan Overture is another musical ghost lurking in the background). The main subject, made of several smaller elements, suggests a roaming, restless character. An unusually lengthy transition passage at last settles on a lovely second theme in the violins, throbbing with syncopation but soon overshadowed by the return of the first thematic group. Especially notable is the sectional feeling of the development, in which Brahms slows the tempo and recasts part of the first theme as a funeral march. The compressed recapitulation is artfully prepared, jump-cutting into the second lyrical theme. But the dotted rhythms and powerful chords of the opening material gain the upper hand and punctuate the extensive, incident-rich coda. Ending in the bleak D minor with which he began, Brahms uses musical logic to underscore the fateful archetype of tragedy itself. The Tragic Overture is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. CLASSICAL 19

4 CLASSICAL PYOTR ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY Born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia; died on November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg, Russia Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 Composed: 1878 First performance: December 4, 1881, in Vienna, with Adolph Brodsky as the soloist and Hans Richter conducting First Nashville Symphony performance: December 6, 1955, with Music Director Guy Taylor and soloist Ivry Gitlis Estimated length: 38 minutes Tchaikovsky wrote his only violin concerto within less than a month in the spring of 1878, while abroad in Switzerland. Though the violinist for whom it was intended originally rejected it, the Concerto s irresistible blend of lyricism, epic breadth, and festive energy has made it one of the composer s most beloved scores and a cornerstone of the violin repertory. In his early years, the composer had an ambivalent relationship with the so-called Mighty Five a group of composers, including Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, intent on creating an authentically Russian musical style. Tchaikovsky ended up following his own path by blending Russian elements with techniques and forms he learned from Western tradition. While the Mighty Five prized a do-it-yourself ethic and scorned professional training, Tchaikovsky attended the conservatory and began to prepare his career methodically. But all his careful planning could not have prepared the composer for the events of One of the handsome bachelor s most ill-fated decisions had been his attempt to offset gossip about his sexuality through a smokescreen marriage that summer to a lovesick former student, Antonina Miliukova. Soon after the wedding, Tchaikovsky abandoned his bride and fled to a temporary exile in Western Europe. There he at last experienced a period of relative emotional calm while sojourning in the Swiss town of Clarens on the north side of Lake Geneva. Tchaikovsky composed the Violin Concerto during the following spring in a whirlwind of inspiration that seemed to underscore his recovery from what the composer described to his brother as his brief insanity. Another catalyst for the concerto, according to biographer David Brown, was purely musical: Tchaikovsky s recent discovery of Édouard Lalo s violin-centric Symphonie espagnole influenced his writing much as his enthusiasm for Carmen left its mark on the Fourth Symphony. What Tchaikovsky admired in the Lalo piece, he wrote, was the focus on musical beauty instead of the routines of established traditions. As it happened, a recent student of Tchaikovsky s named Iosif Kotek provided a further impetus. Possibly a former lover, Kotek not only brought Lalo s score to his attention, he also served as a very practical muse by advising the composer on technical matters about the solo part for the Violin Concerto. To give maximal advantage to its prospects, however, Tchaikovsky dedicated the Concerto to celebrity violinist Leopold Auer. Though he later became the Concerto s eloquent advocate, Auer initially rejected the score as unviolinistic and declined to perform the premiere. Despite Auer s reservations, the Violin Concerto is carefully attuned to the solo violin s expressive flexibility, ranging from elevated lyricism to rhythmic vivacity. In a sense, Tchaikovsky may have found relief in wearing the mask of the violin in the framework of a genre that could showcase his obvious gift for sustained melody. The music clearly steps back from the emotional turbulence and soul-searching attitude of the contemporaneous Fourth Symphony, though it exhibits an extroverted theatricality of its own. THE VIOLIN CONCERTO IS CAREFULLY ATTUNED TO THE SOLO VIOLIN S EXPRESSIVE FLEXIBILITY, RANGING FROM ELEVATED LYRICISM TO RHYTHMIC VIVACITY. 20 MAY 2016

5 WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Tchaikovsky integrates a considerable arsenal of technical challenges for the soloist with a juicy, unhurried lyricism that somehow also manages to touch on the epic. Although darker undercurrents occasionally intrude, the stereotype of the hyper-emotive, crisis-ridden Tchaikovsky takes a holiday; in its stead we encounter an almost Mediterranean gracefulness. Beneath all the solo pyrotechnics, meanwhile, Tchaikovsky inventively reimagines his material. The first theme, for example, cleverly emerges from what seems to be a free-flight improvisation, while all three themes in the exposition play up various aspects of the solo instrument s personality. Like Mendelssohn in his earlier Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky positions his cadenza earlier than usual, at the end of the development. Its music represents an intriguing synthesis of thematic splicing and showy technical hurdles. As a contrast to the opening Mediterranean character, the other two movements, remarks David Brown, seem suddenly to inject the composer s Russian voice. The Canzonetta was actually a replacement (composed in a single day!) for an earlier slow movement Tchaikovsky intuited didn t feel right for the piece. In this simple, light song, the soloist indeed seems to vocalize a gently muted, melancholy aria of pristine emotion. Because it s directly linked, the finale comes as even more of a surprise, rapidly disrupting the Canzonetta s soulful spell. Here the ethereal soloist becomes an earthy fiddler, playing with blood-rushing abandon. In his notoriously vicious review of the world premiere (given in Vienna, in the composer s absence), critic Eduard Hanslick had written disparagingly of the scene of vulgar and savage faces, crude curses, and the smell of cheap booze that the finale conjured for him. Most audiences, however, have been more than happy to be guests at this village party. In addition to solo violin, Tchaikovsky s Violin Concerto calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. ANTONÍN DVORÁK Born on September 8, 1841, in the village of Nelahozeves, just north of Prague; died on May 1, 1904, in Prague Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 Composed: First performance: April 22, 1885, with the composer conducting the Philharmonic Society of London First Nashville Symphony performance: January 31-February 2, 1980, with guest conductor Jorge Mester Estimated length: 40 minutes Ever since its legendary premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1893, Antonín Dvořák s final symphony, subtitled by the composer From the New World, has tended to eclipse just about everything else by this prolific composer (with the exception of his beloved Cello Concerto). But it is not his sole symphonic masterpiece. The Seventh Symphony, in fact, is regarded by a number of Dvořák experts and fans as not just a serious rival, but a contender for his greatest symphony. The New World Symphony achieves a fascinating fusion of flavors from the Czech composer s homeland with the fresh influences of the American cultural landscape. As a minority within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Dvořák was particularly sensitive to the spirit of what he considered indigenous American folk music, finding inspiration in the musics of African- and Native-Americans. In this, Dvořák was actually continuing along a path he had long been following namely, a profound engagement with issues of national identity. Years before, he had built a reputation for his lively use of musical idioms from his native Bohemia, as in the first set of Slavonic Dances from Determined not to be marginalized, however, Dvořák set out to stake a claim within the mainstream symphonic tradition being carried forward above all by Brahms, who was an CLASSICAL 21

6 CLASSICAL important advocate for the emerging composer. In Romantic Music s Most Versatile Genius, a survey of Dvořák s legacy, David Hurwitz shreds the frequently encountered myth of the composer as a naïve country bumpkin with a knack for writing good tunes who obediently learned about Serious Art from the German master. In fact, Hurwitz points out, Dvořák and Brahms (who was only eight years older) enjoyed a mutually inspiring companionship that might be compared with the Haydn-Mozart friendship a century before them. Dvořák had, after all, written five symphonies even before Brahms published his first. Brahms Third Symphony greatly impressed Dvořák, who responded to it as an inspiring challenge to continue his own work as a symphonist. He even wrote to his publisher that he intended to write something respectable since I don t want to let Brahms down. The opportunity arrived with a new commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society. The British anticipating a similar reaction from the Americans had fallen for the Czech composer when his Stabat Mater (a moving tribute to the sudden loss of three of his children) was performed in London in This led to the first of numerous visits to England at the Royal Philharmonic s invitation. Dvořák composed the Seventh within just a few months and conducted the successful premiere in London in April Choosing the home key of D minor (interestingly, the same tonality as Beethoven s Ninth, which the Royal Philharmonic had initially commissioned), Dvořák created a compact, densely argued score. But its relatively brief span belies an emotional depth; the demeanor of the Seventh is even more tragic than that of the epic New World. station in Prague.) Trumpets proclaim the theme as the orchestra swells to a climax, after which flutes and clarinets introduce a pastorally shaded idea. The movement reaches a point of tragic grandeur in the recapitulation, only to sputter out on a fateful, unsettling chord whose implications will return in the final movement. Along with thoughts about his place in the symphonic tradition, Dvořák comes to terms with private grief in this work notably, the recent death of his mother. The slow movement has been likened to a requiem in which he lays her to rest. This music exemplifies Dvořák s superlative ear for color, which also gives the Scherzo much of its richness. The rhythmic energy of the Scherzo proper spills over into the contrasting trio section, with its engaging lyricism budding like springtime shoots, signals of hope. Dvořák returns to the tragic mode in the tightly structured finale. Its darkly anxious main theme is occasionally relieved by outbursts of a sunnier character, yet these cannot prevent the violent climax that inevitably arrives. The quiet ending of the first movement had left matters unresolved: here, that suppressed darkness gathers, sweeping over everything in the final pages. Not even Dvořák s sudden rhetorical shift from minor to major at the conclusion can dispel the shattering effect. The Seventh Symphony is scored for 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo in the 3rd movement), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 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. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR The somber nature of this music is especially apparent in the outer movements. Out of a deep abyss, from the bottom of the orchestra, the first theme emerges, suggesting the commencement of a wide-ranging, dramatic journey. (Fittingly, the theme occurred to Dvořák while he was watching a train pull into the main BRAHMS THIRD SYMPHONY GREATLY IMPRESSED DVORÁK, WHO RESPONDED TO IT AS AN INSPIRING CHALLENGE TO CONTINUE HIS OWN WORK AS A SYMPHONIST. HE INTENDED TO WRITE SOMETHING RESPECTABLE SINCE I DON T WANT TO LET BRAHMS DOWN. 22 MAY 2016

7 ABOUT THE SOLOIST GIL SHAHAM, violin Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique, combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit, has solidified his renown as an American master. The GRAMMY Awardwinner is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals. Long recognized as a champion of Korngold s Violin Concerto, Shaham launched the 2015/16 season performing this work with the Berlin Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Besides reprising John Williams concerto with Stéphane Denève and the Boston Symphony, where he previously recorded the concerto under the composer s direction, this season he has also performed Bach with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel; Brahms with the Orchestre de Paris; Tchaikovsky with the Orchestra del Teatro di San Carlo; and Mendelssohn during a Montreal Symphony residency and on a European tour with the Singapore Symphony. The violinist has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, including bestsellers that have ascended the charts in the U.S. and abroad. These recordings have earned multiple GRAMMY Awards, a Grand Prix du Disque, a Diapason d Or, and a Gramophone Editor s Choice. His recent recordings are issued on the Canary Classics label, which he founded in They include 1930s Violin Concertos, Vols. 1 & 2, recorded live with ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, BBC Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, and Sejong; Haydn Violin Concertos and Mendelssohn s Octet with the Sejong Soloists; Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works with his wife Adele Anthony, Akira Eguchi, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León; Elgar s Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and David Zinman; and Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies, recorded with his sister, pianist Orli Shaham, featuring the world premiere recording of a sonata written for him by Avner Dorman. Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at age 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America- Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, while studying with Haim Taub in Jerusalem, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic. That same year he began his studies with Dorothy DeLay and Jens Ellermann at Aspen. In 1982, after taking first prize in Israel s Claremont Competition, he became a scholarship student at Juilliard, where he worked with DeLay and Hyo Kang. He also studied at Columbia University. Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America, which cited the special kind of humanism with which his performances are imbued. He plays the 1699 Countess Polignac Stradivarius, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children. CLASSICAL 23