SERIES ORCHESTRA ARTS ROSSEN MILANOV DIRECTOR. conductor violin piano. Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43

Transcription

1 Monday, June 29, at 8 p.m CONCERT SERIES WITH THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA AT THE MANN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ROSSEN MILANOV ILANOV, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ROSSEN MILANOV BENJAMIN BEILMAN KYU YEON KIM conductor violin piano attrib. J.S. SMITH/ The Star-Spangled Spangled Banner orch. Ormandy BEETHOVEN BEETHOVEN Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 Romance No. 2 in F major, Op. 50, for violin and orchestra BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 I. Allegro moderato II. Andante con moto III. Rondo: Vivace Intermission BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 I. Allegro con brio II. Andante con moto III. Allegro IV. Allegro This program runs approximately 1 hour, 55 minutes. This performance is sponsored by Independence Blue Cross. The Philadelphia Orchestra s appearance is made possible in part by Dr. Richard M. Klein. Premium Sound Reinforcement Package provided by CLEAR SOUND. The Steinway Piano is the official piano of The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Mann Center for the Performing Arts and is provided by Jacobs Music. Photographic and recording equipment may not be used in the Mann Center.

2 OVERTURE TO THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS, OP. 43 COMPOSED FROM LUDWIG VAN V BEETHOVEN BORN IN BONN, PROBABLY DECEMBER 16, 1770 DIED IN VIENNA, MARCH 26, 1827 It seems natural that Beethoven would be attracted to, or perhaps we should say, identify with, Prometheus, the rebellious Greek Titan who incurred the wrath of the gods of Mount Olympus by stealing their sacred fire. Prometheus resisted, took risks, and suffered in order to help humanity. The appeal of such heroic figures is evident throughout Beethoven s life, and had a number of musical manifestations with regard to this particular hero. Beethoven recycled the simple melody of the final number from his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus on a number of occasions, most importantly as the raw material for his Grand Variations and Fugue, Op. 35, and for the final movement of the Eroica Symphony. But that Symphony, which epitomizes Beethoven s socalled heroic stage, came some three years after the ballet, and after momentous upheavals in Beethoven s life as he dealt with the first signs of deafness in his early thirties. The Creatures of Prometheus dates from and was first performed at the Court Theater in Vienna in March At this point in his career, Beethoven was known primarily as a virtuoso pianist and composer of keyboard music. The ballet was his first major dramatic work (nearly 10 years earlier he had composed his Ritterballett [Ballet of Chivalry] for patron Count Waldstein, who passed it off as his own composition at its premiere). The celebrated dancer and choreographer Salvatore Viganò, a favorite of Vienna s Empress, conceived of The Creatures of Prometheus. Relations with the composer appear to have become strained and Beethoven informed a publisher: I have composed a ballet; but the balletmaster has not done his part very successfully. The creatures fashioned by Prometheus are a man and woman made of clay, who he brings to life with the sacred fire stolen from the gods. Although beautiful (Viganò and his stunning wife danced these roles), the creatures lack the ability to reason and feel. After contemplating their destruction, Prometheus opts instead for the humanizing power of art: Apollo oversees their education, which includes music and nature. For the two-act ballet Beethoven composed the overture we hear tonight, a stormy introduction that follows, and 16 separate numbers. Although the ballet enjoyed immediate success and helped to introduce Vienna to other sides of Beethoven s genius, it soon fell into obscurity. The Overture, however, Beethoven s first essay in the genre, remained a great favorite during the composer s lifetime. A delightful and youthful work, it begins, as does the First Symphony written very shortly before, with a slow introduction initially consisting of solid fortissimo chords. A sparkling perpetual motion allegro follows, which starts with staccato string writing before migrating to the woodwinds. The Overture is compact, lasting about five minutes, and lacks a development section. The predominant mood is one of expectation and brilliance. Christopher H. Gibbs

3 ROMANCE NO. 2 IN F MAJOR, OP. 50, FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA COMPOSED IN 1798 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN When Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, he was regarded primarily as a pianist who also composed (as any aspiring professional pianist of the day was expected to do). But during those early years, Beethoven increasingly thought of himself as a composer who also played, and he sought to establish bona fide compositional credentials by taking lessons in counterpoint from Haydn, and producing stylish solo and chamber works that could function as compositional calling cards among the influential music circles in Vienna. It was only after establishing himself as one of the stars of the post-mozart generation that Beethoven turned to orchestral music his First Symphony, for example, wasn t composed until 1800, when he was nearing 30 years of age. Among the first of Beethoven s compositions to involve an orchestra, though, is the Romance No. 2 in F major, Op. 50, for violin and orchestra. The opus number is misleading; although the work was published in 1805 alongside middle-period masterpieces like the Eroica Symphony and the Triple Concerto, the Romance No. 2 was actually composed seven years earlier, in It even predates the First Romance, which had been composed in 1802 and published in Beethoven s first two piano concertos also early works were begun before the F-major Romance, but were not completed until It s fairly safe to say, then, that Beethoven cut his orchestral teeth with this Romance, composed at a time when piano sonatas and chamber works dominated his compositional output. The two violin Romances were published just as Beethoven was thinking about and working on his only Violin Concerto (Op. 61), and it s tempting to regard these earlier works as practice attempts at a violin concerto slow movement. In the French tradition, the designation of Romance was considered especially appropriate for a concerto slow movement, while in Germany a Romance was a song-like instrumental work in a slow duple meter. Beethoven s violin Romances demonstrate features of both traditions. The Romance in F major is the more lyrical of the two. The solo violin part lies higher in the instrument s register, giving it a greater expressivity. The movement is in the form of a rondo, and while the orchestra and solo parts are evenly balanced, the work is clearly led by the soloist, with the restrained orchestral writing functioning more as a response and a commentary. The endearing main melody is clearly vocally conceived. The first episode, which continues in the same character and disposition as the main theme, includes concerto-like figuration for the soloist. After a repeat of the main theme, the second episode is even more passionate, starting in F minor and developing through several more harmonic areas. After the final, abbreviated statement of the theme, a short coda concludes the work intimately. Luke Howard

4 PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4 IN G MAJOR, OP. 58 COMPOSED FROM LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN EN Beethoven s Fourth Piano Concerto holds a special place in the unfolding of his career. It was the last of his five solo keyboard concertos that he wrote for his own use as a performer and even though it dates from the height of his heroic middle period, it is an unusually intimate expression. He had composed his first three piano concertos relatively early in his career, during years of rising fame as a piano virtuoso and promising young composer. In these works he brought to a glorious culmination the Classical tradition of Mozart and Haydn, both of whom he knew personally. The Fourth and Fifth concertos are fully mature works that represent Beethoven s style at the height of his popular success and as he forged new paths toward Romanticism. As he entered his 30s, Beethoven s personal and professional life began to change, and so, too, did his music. In the fall of 1801 he revealed the secret of his looming deafness for the first time. He provided his childhood friend Franz Wegeler with a detailed account of his symptoms and lamented the constraints the condition placed on his social life and profession ( if my enemies, of whom I have a fair number, were to hear about it, what would they say? ). The following fall he penned the remarkable Heiligenstadt Testament in which he described further social, personal, and professional consequences of his affliction: a little more and I would have ended my life. Only my art held me back. It seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt was within me. The personal challenges Beethoven faced at this crucial juncture in his professional career can be sensed in much of the music he wrote over the next decade. While at first Beethoven kept his hearing problems hidden, by 1806 he could write in a sketch of one of his string quartets, Let your deafness no longer be a secret even in art. Yet not every work offered impassioned struggles and affirmative victories. Unlike the bold openings of so many middle period compositions, the Fourth Piano Concerto has a quiet, meditative start. (In fact, the opening plays with the same rhythm three shorts/long best known in the Fifth Symphony.) Beethoven first played the Fourth Concerto privately in March 1807 at the Viennese palace of his patron Prince Lobkowitz. Although he would continue to perform song accompaniments and chamber music on occasion for some years to come, his final appearance as a concerto soloist was playing the Fourth at a mammoth concert on December 22, 1808, which also included the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies and of the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80. The unusual manner in which the Fourth Concerto opens (Allegro moderato) with a reserved, resonant, and noble statement for the piano alone seems particularly appropriate in regard to this final public appearance, but also marks something else. No previous concerto had begun quite this way, although Mozart s in E-flat major, K. 271, is often mentioned as a precedent for giving opening prominence to the piano. The brief second movement (Andante con moto) might be considered a lengthy introduction to the rondo finale. But as commentators remarked in the 19th century, there seems to be something else going on. The alternation between the quiet statements of the soloist and the

5 emphatic responses of the orchestra suggest a dialogue. As the encounter progresses, the piano s eloquence and prominence increase, and the orchestra eventually gives way to the soloist. The Concerto concludes with Beethoven s preferred form, a rondo (Vivace Vivace) that has a somewhat more assertive nature (trumpets and timpani appear for the first time in the Concerto), but that also further explores the work s tender musical persona. Christopher H. Gibbs

6 SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN C MINOR, OP. 67 COMPOSED FROM LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Beethoven s Fifth did not immediately become the world s (or even the composer s) most famous symphony. During his lifetime the Third, the Eroica, was performed more often and the second movement of the Seventh (movements were often heard separately) deemed the crown of instrumental music. But over the course of the 19th century the Fifth gradually came to epitomize both Beethoven s life and musical style. It often appeared on the inaugural concerts of new orchestras, such as when The Philadelphia Orchestra first sounded in November The Fifth Symphony picked up further associations in the 20th century, be they of Allied victory during the Second World War or through its appearance in commercials and popular culture. It is easy to account for both the popularity and the representative status of the Fifth. With the rise of instrumental music in the 18th century, audiences sought ways to understand individual works, to figure out their meaning. One strategy was to make connections between a piece of music and the composer s life. In this no life and work has proved more accommodating than Beethoven s, whose genius, independence, eccentricities, and struggles with deafness were well known already in his own time. In the fall of 1801, at age 30, Beethoven revealed for the first time the secret of his increasing hearing loss and stated in a letter that he would seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crush me completely. It has not been difficult to relate such statements directly to his music. The struggle with Fate when it knocks at the door, as he allegedly told his assistant Anton Schindler happens at the beginning of the Fifth, helped endorse the favored label for the entire middle period of his career: Heroic. The Fifth Symphony, perhaps more than any of his other symphonies, more than those with explicit extra-musical indications like the Eroica, Pastoral, or Ninth, seems to present a large-scale narrative. According to this view, a heroic life struggle is represented in the progression of emotions, from the famous opening in C minor to the triumphant C-major coda of the last movement. For Hector Berlioz, the Fifth, more than the previous four symphonies, emanates directly and solely from the genius of Beethoven. It is his own intimate thought that is developed; and his secret sorrows, his pent-up rage, his dreams so full of melancholy oppression, his nocturnal visions and his bursts of enthusiasm furnish its entire subject, while the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and orchestral forms are there delineated with essential novelty and individuality, endowing them also with considerable power and nobility. Beethoven wrote the Symphony over the space of some four years, beginning in the spring of 1804, during the most productive period of his career. Among the contemporaneous works were the Fourth and Sixth symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Mass in C, three Razumovsky string quartets, the first two versions of his lone opera Fidelio, and many other works. Large-scale pieces like the opera, or commissions like the Mass, interrupted his progress on the Fifth, most of which was written in 1807 and early The Symphony was premiered later that year together with the Sixth (their numbers in fact reversed) at Beethoven s famous marathon concert at Vienna s Theater an der Wien on December 22, which also included the first public performance of the Fourth Piano Concerto (the composer was soloist), two movements from the Mass, the concert aria Ah! Perfido, and the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80.

7 Another reason for the great fame and popularity of this Symphony is that it distills so much of Beethoven s musical style. One feature is its organicism, the fact that all four movements seem to grow from seeds sown in the opening measures. While Beethoven used the distinctive rhythmic figure of three shorts and a long in other works from this time, it clearly helps to unify the entire Symphony. After the most familiar of openings (Allegro con brio), the piece modulates to the relative major key and the horns announce the second theme with a fanfare using the fate rhythm. The softer, lyrical second theme, first presented by the violins, is inconspicuously accompanied in the lower strings by the rhythm. The movement features Beethoven s characteristic building of intensity, suspense, a thrilling coda, and also mysteries. Why, for example, does the oboe have a brief unaccompanied solo cadenza near the beginning of the recapitulation? Beethoven s innovation is not simply that this brief passage may mean something, but that listeners are prompted in the first place to ask themselves what it means. The second movement (Andante con moto) is a rather unusual variation form in which two themes alternate, the first sweet and lyrical, the second more forceful. Beethoven combines the third and fourth movements, which are played without pause. In earlier symphonies he had already replaced the polite minuet and trio with a more vigorous scherzo and trio. In the Fifth the Allegro scherzo begins with a soft ascending arpeggiated string theme that contrasts with a loud assertive horn motif (again using the fate rhythm). The trio section features extraordinarily difficult string writing, in fugal style, that defeated musicians in early performances. Instead of an exact return of the opening scherzo section, Beethoven recasts the thematic material in a completely new orchestration and pianississimo dynamic. The tension builds with a long pedal point the insistent repetition of the same note C in the timpani that swells in an enormous crescendo directly into the fourth movement Allegro, where three trombones, contrabassoon, and a piccolo join in of the first time in the piece. This finale, like the first movement, is in sonata form and uses the fate rhythm in the second theme. The coda to the Symphony may strike listeners today as almost too triumphantly affirmative as the music gets faster, louder, and ever more insistent. Indeed, it is difficult to divest this best known of symphonies from all the baggage it has accumulated through nearly two centuries and to listen with fresh ears to the shocking power of the work and to the marvels that Beethoven introduced into the world of orchestral music. Christopher H. Gibbs Program notes All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Luke Howard.

8 Rossen Milanov currently holds the positions of associate conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra and artistic director of The Philadelphia Orchestra at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, he serves as music director of both New Jersey s Symphony in C (formerly the Haddonfield Symphony) and the New Symphony Orchestra in his native city of Sofia, Bulgaria. During the season Mr. Milanov debuted with the Swedish Royal Opera, the New Jersey Symphony, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Singapore Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke s, the San Antonio Symphony, and the Charlotte Symphony. He also made return engagements with the Seattle Symphony, the Seoul Philharmonic, and the National Orchestra of Mexico. Mr. Milanov s recent highlights include guest conducting appearances with Tokyo s NHK Symphony, the BBC Symphony, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Also an active opera conductorhe has conducted numerous productions. Mr. Milanov has led concerts and tours with the Rotterdam and Seoul philharmonics; the Baltimore, Colorado, Honolulu, and Lucerne symphonies; the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Civic Orchestra of Chicago; the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague in the Netherlands; and the Teatro Colón Buenos Aires. He was music director of the Chicago Youth Symphony from 1997 to 2001 and chief conductor of the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony from 2003 to He has also participated in numerous summer festivals, including Aspen, Grand Teton, and Tanglewood. Mr. Milanov retains a close association with his hometown of Sofia. As music director of the New Symphony Orchestra, Eastern Europe s first privately funded orchestra, his work has included commissions and premieres of new works and the introduction of American music to Bulgarian audiences. He has received the Award for Extraordinary Contribution to Bulgarian Culture, awarded by the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture. In 2005 he was chosen as Bulgaria s Musician of the Year. Mr. Milanov studied conducting at the Juilliard School (recipient of the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship), the Curtis Institute of Music, Duquesne University, and the Bulgarian National Academy of Music.

9 Violinist Benjamin Beilman, a native of Ann Arbor, MI, began violin studies at age five. He entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2007, where he holds the William H. Roberts Annual Fellowship and studies with Ida Kavafian. He served as principal second violin of the Curtis Symphony for the season. Mr. Beilman, 19, made his debut with the Detroit Symphony as the grand prize winner of the American String Teachers Association s National Competition. He has also performed with the Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Fort Collins, Toledo, Dearborn, Birmingham-Bloomfield, and RAI National symphonies; the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra; and the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle. Mr. Beilman won the gold medal at the Stulberg International String Competition and was awarded first prize in competitions sponsored by the Music Teachers National Association, the Society of American Musicians, and Midwest Young Artists, among others. He has also received top prizes at the Johansen International String Competition, the National Society of Arts and Letters Violin Competition, and the Blount-Slawson Competition. A 2007 Presidential Scholar in the Arts and the recipient of a youngarts Gold Award in music from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts, in 2009 he was awarded the Milka/Astral Violin Prize in the Astral Artists National Auditions. Mr. Beilman has also been a featured artist at Marlboro Music and the Verbier Academy and Festival. This performance marks his Philadelphia Orchestra debut. Seoul native Kyu Yeon Kim, 23, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2006, where she studies with pianist Gary Graffman. She holds the Yvonne K. Druian Fellowship at Curtis. Ms. Kim began studying piano at age five and was admitted to the Korean National University of Arts at the age of 15. Since her orchestral debut at age 10 she has collaborated with the Seoul Philharmonic, the Korean Symphony, the Sungnam Philharmonic, the Moscow Conservatory Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra, and the RTÉ National Symphony in Dublin. She has also given many solo recitals in Korea, most recently at the 2008 Busan International Music Festival. A top prize-winner of many national and international piano competitions, Ms. Kim won the grand prize at the 26th Korean Piano Competition in 1999 and the first prize at the 19th Bartók- Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition in Virginia. In 2000 she won second prize at the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition. She was the first-prize winner at the 2001 Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition in Salt Lake City and in 2002 she was awarded a special prize at the Geneva International Music Competition as the youngest participant and finalist. At the 2006 AXA Dublin International Piano Competition she received second prize, the RTÉ NSO Prize, and the Bridget Doolan Mozart Prize. She is making her Philadelphia Orchestra debut with this performance.