JEFF TYZIK Principal Pops Conductor LEONARD SLATKIN, Music Director Laureate Music Directorship endowed by the Kresge Foundation TERENCE BLANCHARD Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Jazz Creative Director Chair NEEME JÄRVI Music Director Emeritus CLASSICAL SERIES EMANUEL AX PLAYS BEETHOVEN Friday, November 9, 2018 at 10:45 a.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 8 p.m. at Orchestra Hall November is Community Support Month. Learn more and make a gift now at dso.org/donate. CRISTIAN MĂCELARU, conductor EMANUEL AX, piano Antonín Dvořák Carnival Overture, Op. 92 (1841-1904) Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 (1770-1827) I. Allegro con brio II. Largo III. Rondo: Allegro Emanuel Ax, piano Intermission Andrew Norman Play (b. 1979) I. Level 1 II. Level 2 III. Level 3 This Classical Series performance is generously sponsored by Friday s performance will be webcast via our exclusive Live From Orchestra Hall series, presented by Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This performance s recognition of American s Veterans and Active Military is supported by 30 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE FALL 2018
Program Notes PROGRAM AT-A-GLANCE This program s three composers on the art of creation and the role of the musician: To have a wonderful idea is nothing special. The idea comes of its own accord and, if it s fine and great, man cannot take the credit for it. But to take a fine idea and make something great of it, that is the hardest thing to do; that is what real art is! ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK It has always been known that the greatest pianoforte players were also the greatest composers; but how did they play? Not like the pianists of today, who prance up and down the keyboard with passages which they have practiced putsch, putsch, putsch what does that mean? Nothing! When a true pianoforte virtuoso played it was always something homogeneous, an entity, if written down it would appear as a well thought-out work. That is pianoforte playing; the other thing is nothing! LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN By thinking of the orchestra as only a sound-making machine, we ve actually eliminated a huge part of what makes a concert experience amazing. What makes an orchestra special, for me, is not actually the sounds that it makes but the fact that there are a hundred human beings doing that, right in front of me. In a way, it s performance art. ANDREW NORMAN Carnival Overture, Op. 92 Antonín Dvořák B. Sept. 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Bohemia D. May 1, 1904, Prague, Czech Republic Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. (Approx. 9 minutes) Life was sweet for Dvořák as his 50th birthday approached in 1891. Whether the composer was feeling philosophical that year, we can only surmise. But more than one commentator has seen his cycle Nature, Life, and Love, composed in 1891, as the product of midlife musing. The Carnival Overture forms the middle panel in this triptych and was composed between July and September 1891. All three parts, including the Overtures In Nature s Realm and Otello, were performed for the first time dso.org at a concert in Prague in April 1892, a farewell for the composer before he departed for the New World. The Carnival Overture plunges directly into the festivities, whirling the listeners along before they have half a chance to demur. Only once is the celebratory mood broken: before taking up the development of his themes, Dvořák pauses for a reflective interlude in slow tempo, mulling over the nature theme based on a series of rocking thirds that recurs in all three overtures in the set. For a moment we can savor woodwind writing as luscious as any Dvořák ever penned, but suddenly, the party begins again, and there will not be a moment s rest until the final chords. The DSO last performed Dvořák s Carnival Overture in April 2016 with Michelle Merrill conducting. It received its DSO debut in February 1920 with Ossip Gabrilowitsch conducting. DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 31
Program Notes Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN B. December 1770, Bonn, Germany D. March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria Scored for solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (Approx. 37 minutes) Though it carries the label No. 1, Beethoven s C major piano concerto marks his third attempt in the genre. The earliest is an unfinished concerto in E-flat major, and the B-flat major Piano Concerto No. 2 while published later was largely composed before the No. 1. But as they say, the third time is the charm! The C major concerto, though written when Beethoven was just 25, is a startlingly mature work that synthesizes the then-popular piano styles of Mozart and Haydn with Beethoven s own brilliant innovations. The extended length of the concerto s first movement, some 478 measures, is an indication of Beethoven moving away from the Classical model of the concerto form, and toward a more involved and perhaps even symphonic conception for the genre. This idea would become more fully fledged in his D major Violin concerto of 1806, and later in the Emperor Piano Concerto of 1809. Besides its length, the first movement is remarkable for the lyricism and rapid-fire arpeggios that Beethoven grants the soloist. Each time the orchestra catches up, the pianist is off again finishing flowery segments the orchestra tries to cut short, or forging tunes the ensemble doesn t even touch. The movement s midsection then uses the opening motto almost exclusively to build up an eerie suspense until the pianist cuts the process short with rapid runs that usher in an explosive restatement. The tender slow movement, in the contrasting key of A-flat major, has a sense of the sublime that was so valued by Beethoven s Viennese contemporaries. Much of the restatement of the opening uses a new triplet accompaniment that transforms its rhythmic feel. And the final movement, Allegro scherzando, is a rondo whose good humor and wit provides contrast with the seriousness of the opening two movements and recalls the lightheartedness of Haydn, Beethoven s teacher in Vienna. The DSO most recently performed Beethoven s Piano Concerto No. 1 in July 2016, at performances in the William Davidson Neighborhood Concert Series. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducted, and Louis Schwizgebel was the featured soloist. The DSO first performed the piece in December 1924, conducted by Ossip Gabrilowitsch and featuring pianist Rudolph Ganz. Play ANDREW NORMAN B. October 31, 1979, Grand Rapids, MI Scored for 2 flutes (both doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets (1 doubling on E-flat clarinet), 3 bassoons (1 doubling on contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion, piano, and strings. (Approx. 45 minutes) Andrew Norman s distinctive style full of energy, eclectic influence, and dizzying imagination has earned him commissions and collaborations with many of the world s leading orchestras 32 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE FALL 2018
and festivals, as well as Musical America s 2017 Composer of the Year Award. Play, composed in 2013 and revised in 2016, was commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which released a recording of the work in 2015. The piece won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2017. The composer writes the following about the piece: It is difficult for me to write about Play. Play is a cycle of pieces, a body of work that I have been writing and rewriting for years. Play explores many different ideas ideas about choice, chance, free will, and control, about how technology has rewired our brains and changed the ways we express ourselves, about the blurring boundaries of reality in the internet age, the murky grounds where video games and drone warfare meet, for instance, or where cyber-bullying and real-world violence converge. Play touches on the corrupting influence of power and the collapse and rebirth of social systems, but it is also explores the physicality and joy of instrumental playing, as well as the many potential meanings of coordinated human activity how the display of massed human synchronicity can represent both the communal best and coercive worst of our race. It is difficult for me to try to cogently offer all this up in a program note. Nevertheless here is one of the stories that coalesced as I wrote Play. It is by no means the only plotline that weaves through the work, but it might provide a useful guide into this dense and sprawling music: We flip the switch on a crazy, topsy-turvy world where the percussionists discover that their instruments have all sorts of powers over the rest of the orchestra. They have the power to turn other players on and off, to make them play forwards or backwards, louder or softer, faster or slower, to trade them out one for another or make them rewind and retry ideas again and again until they are gotten right. The percussionists spend much of Level 1 running around like kids in a candy shop, making and remaking the music around them with gleeful abandon. In Level 2, the pace slows and the mood darkens. The percussionists become more selective with their interventions, but also more manipulative, even sadistic in the increasingly unwieldy paces through which they put the rest of the band. Level 2 ends with an epic battle between the percussionists, as they open and slam shut doors onto different worlds, frantically trying to find a way out of the musical labyrinth of their own creation, and in Level 2 s final seconds they whack themselves into oblivion, leaving the orchestra suspended in a silent, frozen state. Level 3 begins in that frozen silence as the orchestral musicians, for the first time free of the percussionists and their oppressive systems of control, must decide for themselves if and when and what and why and how to play. The musicians come to life slowly, and gradually form the music, the first truly communal expression in the entire piece, that they had been trying to find all along. These performances of Andrew Norman s Play will be DSO premieres. dso.org DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 33
Profiles CRISTIAN MĂCELARU Winner of the 2014 Solti Conducting Award and recently appointed as Music Director and Conductor of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Cristian Măcelaru has established himself as one of the fast-rising stars of the conducting world. MĂCELARU Currently Conductor-in-Residence of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he made his Philadelphia Orchestra subscription debut in April 2013 and continues to conduct them annually on subscription programs and other special concerts. In May 2018 Măcelaru was announced as the next Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, beginning his tenure in the 2019-2020 Season. Măcelaru has worked with many of the world s leading symphonies, including the National Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Bayerischen Rundfunk Symphonieorchester, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, and many others. He has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Hollywood Bowl, Wolf Trap Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and Lincoln Center, among others. Also a keen opera conductor, he made his Cincinnati Opera debut in highly acclaimed performances of Il Trovatore and led the U.S. premiere of Colin Matthews s Turning Point with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra as part of the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival. Măcelaru formerly held the position of Resident Conductor at Rice University s Shepherd School of Music, where he was Music Director of the Campanile Orchestra, Assistant Conductor to Larry Rachleff, and Conductor for the Opera Department. A proponent of music education, he has served as a conductor with the Houston Youth Symphony, where he also conceptualized and created a successful chamber music program. As Founder and Artistic Director of the Crisalis Music Project, Măcelaru spearheaded a program in which young musicians perform in a variety of settings, side-by-side with established artists. He currently resides in Philadelphia with his wife Cheryl and children Beniamin and Maria. n MOST RECENT APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: May 2017, conducting a program with music by Fauré, James Newton Howard, and Rachmaninoff. n FIRST APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: March 2015, conducting a program with music by Ligeti, Mozart, Webern, and Schumann. PARK AT THE MAX! Safe, secure, affordable parking is available at the DSO structure on Parsons Street every day, even non-concert days. On foot or on the QLine, enjoy easy access to Midtown Detroit, Little Caesars Arena, Comerica Park, Ford Field, restaurants, museums, and more! 34 DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE FALL 2018
EMANUEL AX Emanuel Ax captured the music world s attention in 1974, when he won the inaugural Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. A year later he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, and in 1979 he was the recipient of the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In recent years, Ax has turned his attention toward the music of 20th century composers, premiering works by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright AX Sheng, and Melinda Wagner. Ax is also devoted to chamber music, and has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern. A Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987, 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 and for his collaborative recording (with Yo-Yo Ma) of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. Ax also contributed to an International Emmy Award-winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust, which aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Ax was born in Lvov, Poland and moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His 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. Additionally, he attended Columbia University where he majored in French. Ax now resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities. n MOST RECENT APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: December 2016, performing Beethoven s Piano Concerto No. 2 (cond. Leonard Slatkin) n FIRST APPEARANCE WITH THE DSO: March 1977, performing Beethoven s Piano Concerto No. 2 (cond. James Loughran) SUPPORT THE MUSIC YOU LOVE with the IRA Charitable Rollover! Did you know you can support unsurpassed musical experiences in Detroit with your IRA? If you are 70½ years or older, you can avoid taxes on transfers of up to $100,000 from your IRA and support the DSO! For more information, please call 313.576.5114. dso.org DSO PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE 35