Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor Christopher Bell, Chorus Director

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1 Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor Christopher Bell, Chorus Director Shostakovich Cello Concerto Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker Pavilion GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA Carlos Kalmar, Conductor Christian Poltéra, Cello HARRIS Third Symphony PISTON Symphony No. 2 Moderato Adagio Allegro SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat, Op. 107 Allegretto Moderato Cadenza Allegro con moto Christian Poltéra Tonight s concert is supported by the Walter E. Heller Foundation, given in memory of Alyce DeCosta Program Notes, Book 9 27

CHRISTIAN POLTÉRA, born in Zurich, was a pupil of Nancy Chumachenco and Boris Pergamenschikov before studying with Heinrich Schiff in Salzburg and Vienna.

Poltéra has established himself as one of the most prominent cellists of his generation.

2 CHRISTIAN POLTÉRA, born in Zurich, was a pupil of Nancy Chumachenco and Boris Pergamenschikov before studying with Heinrich Schiff in Salzburg and Vienna. Since replacing Yo-Yo Ma in performing the Elgar Concerto with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under David Zinman at the age of seventeen, Mr. Poltéra has established himself as one of the most prominent cellists of his generation. As soloist he has worked with eminent orchestras across Europe and made his debut in the United States in 2006 with the American Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. He also performs regularly in chamber music with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, Leonidas Kavakos, Martin Fröst, Kathryn Stott, Lars Vogt and Leif Ove Andsnes, as well as the Auryn, Belcea and Zehetmair quartets. Mr. Poltéra has formed a string trio with violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and violist Antoine Tamestit that performs at prestigious concert venues in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Cologne, Brussels, Milan, Salzburg and Edinburgh. He is a regular guest at such renowned festivals as Salzburg, Lucerne, Berlin and Vienna, and made his BBC Proms debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in In 2004 he received the Borletti-Buitoni Award and was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist. In he was a Rising Star of the European Concert Hall Organization. Christian Poltéra s discography includes the cello concertos by Dvořák, Lutosławski, Dutilleux, Schoeck, Honegger, Martin and Toch, as well as chamber music by Prokofiev, Fauré, Mozart, Saint-Saëns and Schubert on the BIS, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Sony and Chandos labels. These recordings have been honored with the Diapason d or, Gramophone Magazine s Editor s Choice, Strad Magazine s Strad Selection, and BBC Music Magazine s Choice. Now recording for BIS, Mr. Poltéra s upcoming releases include the Cello Concerto of Samuel Barber (Bergen Philharmonic/Andrew Litton), Beethoven trios with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit, and a Dvořák album with pianist Kathryn Stott. Christian Poltéra performs on the 1711 Stradivari Mara cello. 28 gpmf.org THIRD SYMPHONY (1938) Roy Harris ( ) Harris s Symphony No. 3 is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is 18 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on July 31, 1940, with Hans Lange conducting. Roy Harris, the son of land-rush settlers, was born in 1898 in an Oklahoma log cabin and raised on a farm in California s San Gabriel Valley. He joined the Army in 1917, but returned at the end of World War I for university study in Los Angeles and Berkeley, driving a dairy delivery truck to pay his tuition. His earliest public recognition came in 1926 with the Andante for Orchestra, performed by Howard Hanson in Rochester and New York City, after which Harris went to France (at the encouragement of Aaron Copland) to study with the renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Harris settled again in California in In the 1930s, he began his long teaching career at some of the nation s most distinguished schools, with tenures at Mills College, Westminster Choir College, Juilliard, Cornell University, Colorado College, Utah State Agricultural College, Peabody College for Teachers, Pennsylvania College for Women, Southern Illinois University, Indiana University, Universidad Interamerican de Puerto Rico, UCLA, University of the Pacific and California State University at Los Angeles. In addition to his distinguished teaching career, Harris

also helped establish the Composers Forum-Laboratory in 1935, organized numerous contemporary music festivals, founded the International Congress of Strings in 1959, served as chief of music

3 also helped establish the Composers Forum-Laboratory in 1935, organized numerous contemporary music festivals, founded the International Congress of Strings in 1959, served as chief of music programming for the overseas branch of the Office of War Information ( ), and was a member of the delegation of American composers that visited the Soviet Union in 1958 under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. He continued to compose until his death in Santa Monica, California on October 1, Harris Third Symphony of 1938, widely regarded as his masterpiece, was composed to fulfill a commission from Boston Symphony conductor Sergei Koussevitzky. After he conducted the premiere, Koussevitzky declared it the greatest orchestral work yet written in America. It is in a single, strongly unified movement disposed in five sections. For the first performance, Harris gave the following outline of the Symphony s structure: Section I. Tragic low string sonorities [a boldly arched hymnal melody that gathers intensity as it unfolds]. Section II. Lyric strings, horns, woodwinds [a continuation of the mood of Section I, but with fuller orchestration and texture]. Section III. Pastoral woodwinds with a polytonal string background [legato melodic fragments in the solo woodwinds above a rippling string accompaniment]. Section IV. Fugue Dramatic. A. Brass and percussion predominating. B. Canonic development of materials from Section II constituting background for further development of the fugue. C. Brass climax, rhythmic motive developed from Fugue subject. Section V. Dramatic Tragic. A. Restatement of violin theme of Section I; tutti strings in canon with tutti woodwinds against brass and percussion developing rhythmic idea from climax of Section IV. B. Coda Development of materials from Sections I and II over pedal timpani. Despite the composer s rather pedantic use of jargon in describing the closing sections, their import is basically simple. Section IV serves as the Symphony s climax, with some wonderfully heroic brass writing displayed with an invigorating athleticism. The final Section acts as a rounding-out and summing-up of the overall form, recalling earlier motives and providing a grand arch (soft climax soft) to fulfill the work s total structure. SYMPHONY NO. 2 (1943) Walter Piston ( ) Piston s Symphony No. 2 is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is 25 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on June 18, 1994 with Leonard Slatkin conducting. Walter Piston, one of America s most distinguished men of music, taught himself to play violin and piano but trained in draftsmanship and architecture at the Massachusetts Normal School of Art. He worked as a draftsman for the Boston Elevated Railway while still a student, but also played violin in pickup bands and theater orchestras around Boston during those years. After graduating in 1916, he enlisted in the Navy as a bandsman, and was assigned to play saxophone; he learned the instrument by himself in a few days from an instruction manual. Piston determined to follow a musical career after his stint in the Navy, and he enrolled at Harvard upon his discharge in 1919; he graduated summa cum laude in After spend Program Notes, Book 9 29

ing two years in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas, he accepted a teaching position at Harvard, where he nurtured such notable musicians as Carter, Bernstein, Berger, Fine, Pinkham

4 ing two years in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas, he accepted a teaching position at Harvard, where he nurtured such notable musicians as Carter, Bernstein, Berger, Fine, Pinkham and Kubik during a tenure that lasted until Piston s many distinctions included two Pulitzer Prizes, a Naumburg Award, memberships in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and decoration by France as an Officier dans l ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The heroic, inspirational strains of Piston s Symphony No. 2, composed in 1943 at the height of World War II and winner of the Music Critics Circle Award for 1945, spoke with special meaning to a nation at war. The sonata-form opening movement (Moderato) is based on two sharply contrasted themes: a broad, lyrical melody of somber cast that unwinds in the strings; and a jazzy tune in nimble syncopations, a remnant of Piston s early experience playing music in popular styles in theater orchestras. The first theme provides the principal material for the development section. A quiet canonic treatment of the main theme presented by the brass serves as the movement s coda. The Adagio, one of Piston s most beautiful and deeply moving creations, grows seamlessly from the long clarinet theme presented after a brief intonation by the bassoon. The music rises to a richly expressive climax before subsiding to a hushed close. Piston explained that the finale is composed of three themes: the first vigorous and rhythmic, played by cellos and horns; the second march-like, by clarinets and bassoons; and the third, of more songful character, first heard in English horn and clarinet. Recurrence of the first theme gives an impression of rondo form to the movement. BREAKFAST LUNCH DINNER CATERING 15 DOWNTOWN CHICAGO CAFES INCLUDING 5 ON OR NEAR MICHIGAN AVENUE $ 2 OFF YOUR NEXT CORNER COMBINATION Valid for $2 off your next Corner Combination. Pay in cafe at time of pickup to redeem this offer for orders placed online. Valid at any Chicagoland cafe. One offer per person, per order and not redeemable with any other offers. One-time use only and duplicates not accepted. No cash value. Corner Bakery Cafe, Offer expires 9/15/16. Offer code gpmf.org

5 CELLO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN E-FLAT, OP. 107 (1959) Dmitri Shostakovich ( ) Shostakovich s First Cello Concerto is scored for pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo and contrabassoon, horn, timpani, celesta and strings. The performance time is 30 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August 13, 1980, with Otto-Werner Mueller conducting. Yuli Turovsky was the soloist. By the mid-1950s, Dmitri Shostakovich had developed a musical language of enormous subtlety, sophistication and range, able to encompass such pieces of Socialist Realism as the Second Piano Concerto, the Festive Overture, and the Symphonies No. 11 ( The Year 1905 ) and No. 12 ( Lenin ), as well as the profound outpourings of the First Violin Concerto, the Tenth Symphony and the late string quartets. The First Cello Concerto, written for Mstislav Rostropovich during the summer of 1959, straddles both of Shostakovich s expressive worlds, a quality exemplified by two anecdotes told by the great cellist himself: Shostakovich gave me the manuscript of the First Cello Concerto on August 2, On August 6th I played it for him from memory, three times. After the first time he was so excited, and of course we drank a little bit of vodka. The second time I played it not so perfect, and afterwards we drank even more vodka. The third time I think I played the Saint-Saëns Concerto, but he still accompanied his Concerto. We were enormously happy... Shostakovich suffered for his whole country, for his persecuted colleagues, for the thousands of people who were hungry. After I played the Cello Concerto for him at his dacha in Leningrad, he accompanied me to the railway station to catch the overnight train to Moscow. In the big waiting room we found many people sleeping on the floor. I saw his face, and the great suffering in it brought tears to my eyes. I cried, not from seeing the poor people but from what I saw in the face of Shostakovich... The ability of Shostakovich s music, like the man himself, to display the widest possible range of moods in succession or even simultaneously is one of his most masterful achievements. (The same may be said of Mahler, whose music was an enormous influence on Shostakovich.) The opening movement of the First Cello Concerto may be heard as almost Classical in the clarity of its form and the conservatism of its harmony and themes, yet there is a sinister undercurrent coursing through this music, a bleakness of spirit not entirely masked by the ceaseless activity. The following Moderato grows from sad melodies of folkish character, piquantly harmonized, which are gathered into a huge welling up of emotion before subsiding to close the movement. The extended solo cadenza that follows without pause is an entire movement in itself. (Shostakovich had used a similar formal technique in the Violin Concerto No. 1 of 1948.) Thematically, it springs from the preceding slow movement, and reaches an almost Bachian depth of feeling. The cadenza leads directly to the finale, one of Shostakovich s most witty and sardonic musical essays. With disarming ease, the main theme of the first movement is recalled in the closing section of the finale to round out the Concerto s form. It is difficult to think of any modern concerto, wrote Alan Frank, which pursues its objectives in so purposeful a manner with little or no exploration of by-ways Dr. Richard E. Rodda 2016 Program Notes, Book 9 31

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