BMO Harris Bank. Featuring: William Hagen performing Mozart s Violin Concerto No. 4 June 15. Emily Bear performing Gershwin s Rhapsody in Blue July 4

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1 BMO Harris Bank Presenting Sponsor of the NextGen Performance series Featuring: William Hagen performing Mozart s Violin Concerto No. 4 June 15 Emily Bear performing Gershwin s Rhapsody in Blue July 4 George Li performing Chopin s Piano Concerto No. 1 August 8 Pablo Ferrández performing Prokofiev s Sinfonia Concertante August 10 and 11

2 GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS Carlos Kalmar Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Christopher Bell Chorus Director Wednesday, August 8, 2018 at 6:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker Pavilion CHOPIN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 Grant Park Orchestra Carlos Kalmar Conductor George Li Piano John Vincent Symphony in D Frédéric Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11 Allegro maestoso Romanze: Larghetto Rondo: Vivace GEORGE LI Frédéric Chopin/arr. Igor Stravinsky Nocturne in A-Flat Major, Op. 32, No. 1 Frédéric Chopin/arr. Igor Stravinsky Grande Valse Brillante, Op. 18 The appearance of George Li is presented with generous support from NextGen Performance Series Sponsor BMO Harris Bank Piano provided by Steinway Piano Galleries of Chicago Tonight s concert is being broadcast live on 98.7WFMT and streamed live at wfmt.com 2018 Program Notes, Book 9 27

3 GEORGE LI gave his first public performance at Boston s Steinway Hall at the age of 10 and performed for President Obama at the White House when he was 16. Among his honors are First Prize in the 2010 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and a 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award. Mr. Li is currently enrolled in the Harvard University New England Conservatory joint program. His recent and upcoming concerto highlights include appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hamburg Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Seattle Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and international tours with the Mariinsky and London Symphony orchestras. He has been heard in recital at Carnegie Hall, Davies Hall in San Francisco, the Louvre, Seoul Arts Center, Tokyo s Asahi Hall, NCPA Beijing, Ravinia Festival, Edinburgh Festival and Montreux Festival. As a chamber musician, he has performed with James Ehnes, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Benjamin Beilman, Pablo Ferrández and Daniel Lozakovich. George Li is an exclusive Warner Classics recording artist. His debut album, recorded live with the Mariinsky Orchestra, was released in October John Vincent ( ) SYMPHONY IN D (1954) Scored for: piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings Performance time: 20 minutes Grant Park Music Festival premiere Composer, conductor and educator John Vincent, born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1902, studied flute with Georges Laurent (principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) and composition with Frederick Converse and George Chadwick (then two of America s leading composers) at the New England Conservatory in Boston; he did graduate study in composition at George Peabody College in Nashville and at Harvard, where his principal teacher was Walter Piston. He won Harvard s John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship for two years of study in Paris at the École Normale de Musique and privately with Nadia Boulanger, and then completed his doctorate at Cornell. Vincent was head of the music department at Western Kentucky State University from 1937 until 1945, when he was named to succeed Arnold Schoenberg as professor of composition at UCLA. He also conducted orchestras throughout the United States and South America; was a director of the Huntington Hartford Foundation; authored three books on music theory; and, early in his career, made field recordings in the South for ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who was helping preserve America s folk music heritage for the Library of Congress. John Vincent retired from UCLA in 1969 and died in Santa Monica in gpmf.org

4 AUGUST 8, 2018 Of the Symphony in D (subtitled A Festival Piece in One Movement ) that he composed for the Louisville Orchestra in 1954, Vincent wrote, Although it is in no sense programmatic, my Symphony has a special significance to me. It was written during a very happy time and in it I sang a song of deep personal joy. From the contemplative opening measures, I tried to express the course of growth of the consciousness of joy, which toward the end of the first section, arrives at an ecstatic level (cello and horn melody). After a short lyric commentary, one is picked up and whirled towards a tutti allegro, exuberant in character. From here on, the mood of the piece is prevailingly that of a celebration. Successively tempestuous and broadly lyrical, the music is primarily melodic with a rhythmic urgency. The ending is tumultuous and triumphant. Frédéric Chopin ( ) PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN E MINOR, OP. 11 (1830) Scored for: solo piano, pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani and strings Performance time: 43 minutes First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 5, 1949; Antal Dorati, conductor; Jacob Lateiner, soloist Frédéric Chopin was 20 and in love when he wrote his First Piano Concerto in The object of his affection was a comely young singer, one Constantia Gladowska, whom Casimir Wierzynski in his biography of the composer described: She had been studying voice at the Warsaw Conservatory and was considered one of the school s best pupils. She was also said to be one of the prettiest. The young lady, conscious of her charms, was also distinguished by ambition and diligence in her studies. She dreamed of becoming an opera singer... Constantia was pleasant to Chopin and they became friends, but he was never convinced that she fully returned his affection. She took part in his farewell concert in Warsaw on October 11, 1830, at which he premiered his First Piano Concerto, and they kept up a correspondence for a while after leaving the school. Her marriage to a Warsaw merchant in 1832 caused him intense but impermanent grief, which soon evaporated in the glittering social whirl of Paris, his new home. The Concerto opens with an orchestral introduction that presents the melodramatic main theme and a grand second subject. The piano enters for the reprise of the themes to complete the exposition. The development is largely occupied with the main theme. The recapitulation commences with the orchestra alone while the pianist returns only with the second theme. Of the Romanze, Chopin wrote, [It is] of a calm and partly melancholy character. It is intended to convey the impression one receives when a beloved landscape calls up in one s soul beautiful memories, for instance, of a fine moonlit spring night. The rondo-finale has the jubilant character of a native Polish dance, the Krakowiak, with the returning theme separated by several tuneful episodes Program Notes, Book 9 29

5 Frédéric Chopin Arranged by Igor Stravinsky (1909) NOCTURNE IN A-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 32, NO. 1 GRANDE VALSE BRILLANTE, OP. 18 (1837, 1831) Scored for: solo piano, piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta and strings Performance time: 16 minutes Grant Park Music Festival premiere Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the newly formed Ballets Russes, attended the premiere of Stravinsky s Fireworks on February 6, 1909, in St. Petersburg and sensed a genuine talent in the 27-year-old composer. Diaghilev told Stravinsky that he was planning a season of Russian dance and opera in Paris that summer, and convinced him to orchestrate two Chopin piano pieces for the ballet Les Sylphides. Diaghilev was so impressed with Stravinsky s work that he asked him to undertake another project for the following season, a full-length Russian folk ballet filled with legend and magic and fantasy. The composer jumped at the chance, and that ballet The Firebird made Igor Stravinsky famous around the world. 30 gpmf.org