Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor Christopher Bell, Chorus Director Opening Night: Pomp and Circumstance Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 6:30PM Jay Pritzker Pavilion Grant Park Orchestra Carlos Kalmar, Conductor Alban Gerhardt, Cello ELGAR Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D Major, Op. 39, No. 1 ELGAR Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85 Adagio Moderato Lento Allegro molto Adagio Allegro non troppo Poco più lento Allegro molto Alban Gerhardt DVORÁK ˇ Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 Allegro con brio Adagio Allegretto grazioso Allegro ma non troppo 2012 Program Notes, Book 1 A7
carlos kalmar s biography can be found on page 10. Wednesday, June 13, 2012 Cellist Alban Gerhardt, born in Berlin, has performed with the Grant Park Music Festival a number of times in recent years, including Tchaikovsky s Variations on a Rococo Theme in 2010 and Strauss Don Quixote in 2005. He also appeared with Carlos Kalmar and the Oregon Symphony in November 2011 performing Prokofiev s Cello Symphony. After early successes at competitions and his debut as a 21-year-old soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic, Mr. Gerhardt has appeared with leading conductors and more than 180 orchestras worldwide. His repertoire is extensive, encompassing both the standard cello concertos and rarities by d Albert, Dietrich, Dohnányi, Volkmann, Anton Rubinstein and numerous others, as well as recent works by such prominent contemporary composers as Peteris Vasks, Osvaldo Golijov and Matthias Pintscher. Mr. Gerhardt has also appeared extensively at international festivals and prestigious concert halls as a chamber collaborator with Cecile Licad, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Lisa Batiashvili and other noted artists. His recordings have been highly acclaimed and three times won the ECHO Classic Award, most recently in 2009 for his all-reger CD. Highlights of his current schedule include engagements in Denver, Providence, Montreal and Vail, two weeks of chamber music at the Heimbach Festival in Germany, and recordings of Britten s Cello Symphony (Scottish BBC), Elgar s Cello Concerto (Philadelphia Orchestra), Pfitzner s Cello Concerto (Radiosinfonieorchestra Berlin) and Britten s Suites for Solo Cello and Sonata for Cello and Piano (in London, with pianist Steven Osborne). Alban Gerhardt s teachers include Boris Pergamenschikow, Markus Nyikos and Frans Helmerson. WITHOUT CREATIVITY, WE D ALL BE IN THE DARK. The arts nourish the soul of a community. At ComEd, we re proud to lend our support to music, theater and fine arts programs throughout our service territories. ComEd is proud to support the Grant Park Music Festival. Best wishes for a wonderful season! www.comed.com 1-800-EDISON-1 2012 Commonwealth Edison Company A8 2012 Program Notes, Book 1
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major, Op. 39, No. 1 (1901) Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 is scored for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, organ and strings. The performance time is approximately five minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on July 10, 1957, Theodore Bloomfield conducting. Elgar, whose patriotic spirit was nurtured in the palmy days of Victoria, when the British Empire had stretched to its furthest extent, may have been inspired to write the Marches by the Boer War in South Africa. In 1900, a year after the war started, Elgar said that he was appalled at the lack of interesting and spirited march music, and was planning a set of six such pieces which would be in every way adapted for marching purposes, while not sacrificing any of the qualities required for performance in the concert room. On New Year s Day 1901, he sketched out themes for the A minor March (No. 2) and two days later composed the superb melody that occupies the Trio of March No. 1, which he called a once in a lifetime tune. He worked on the two pieces during the spring, and rendered them into finished form in July (No. 1) and August (No. 2). They were premiered in tandem at a concert of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society on October 19th conducted by that organization s founder and music director, Alfred Edward Rodewall. The D major March was dedicated to Rodewall and his forces; No. 2 was inscribed with the name of Elgar s composer-conductor colleague Granville Bantock. The pieces were well received in Liverpool, but the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 created near-pandemonium when Sir Henry Wood performed it at the Promenade concert in Queen s Hall, London a week later. The people simply rose and yelled, he reported. I had to play it again with the same result; in fact, they refused to let me go on with the programme... The Marches achieved an immediate and spectacular success, and contributed immeasurably to Elgar being awarded knighthood in July 1904. The acclaim of the first two Marches prompted Elgar to add further numbers to the Pomp and Circumstance series in 1905, 1907 and 1930; though he made sketches for a sixth March, it was never completed. Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (1918-1919) Sir Edward Elgar Elgar s Cello Concerto is scored for flute, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. The performance time is approximately 27 minutes. The Grant Park Symphony Orchestra first performed this work on July 18, 2004, with Carlos Kalmar conducting; Alban Gerhardt was the soloist. It seemed that Elgar s world was crumbling in 1918. The four years of war had left him, as so many others, weary and numb from the crush of events. Many of his friends of German ancestry were put through a bad time in England during those years; others he knew were killed or maimed in action. The traditional foundations of the British political system were skewed by the rise of socialism directly after the war, and Elgar saw his beloved Edwardian world drawing to a close. (He resembles that titan among fin-de-siècle musicians, Gustav Mahler, in his mourning of a passing age.) His music seemed anachronistic in an era of polychords and dodecaphony, a remnant of stuffy conservatism, and his 70th birthday concert in Queen s Hall attracted only 2012 Program Notes, Book 1 A9
half a house. The health of his wife, his chief helpmate, inspiration, and critic, began to fail, and with her passing in 1920, Elgar virtually stopped composing. The Cello Concerto, written just before his wife s death, is Elgar s last major work, and seems both to summarize his disillusion over the calamities of World War I and to presage the unhappiness of his last years. The first movement is linked directly to the second (Allegro molto). It takes several tries before the music of the second movement is able to maintain its forward motion, but when it does, it proves to be a skittering, moto perpetuo display piece for the soloist. It is music, however, that, for all its hectic activity, seems strangely earthbound, a sort of wild merriment not quite capable of banishing the dolorous thoughts of the opening movement. The almost-motionless stillness of the following Adagio returns to the introspection of the opening movement. It, in the words of Herbert Byard, seems to express the grief that is too deep for tears. The finale, like the opening, is prefaced by a recitative for the soloist. The movement s form following this introductory section is based on the Classical rondo, and makes a valiant attempt at the hail-and-well-met vigor of Elgar s earlier march music. Like the scherzando second movement, however, it seems more a nostalgic recollection of past abilities than a display of remaining powers. Toward the end, the stillness of the third movement creeps over the music, and the soloist indulges in an extended soliloquy. Brief bits of earlier movements are remembered before a final recall of the fast rondo music closes this thoughtful concerto. Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 (1889) Antonín Dvorák ˇ (1841-1904) Dvorak s ˇ Symphony No. 8 is scored for piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. The performance time is approximately 34 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August 9, 1950, Erich Leinsdorf conducting. You would probably have liked Dvorák. ˇ He was born a simple (in the best sense) man of the soil who retained a love of country, nature and peasant ways all his life. In his later years he wrote, In spite of the fact that I have moved about in the great world of music, I shall remain what I have always been a simple Czech musician. Few passions ruffled his life music, of course; the rustic pleasures of country life; the company of old friends; caring for his pigeons; and a child-like fascination with railroads. Milton Cross sketched him thus: To the end of his days he remained shy, uncomfortable in the presence of those he regarded as his social superiors, and frequently remiss in his social behavior. He was happiest when he was close to the soil, raising pigeons, taking long, solitary walks in the hills and forests of the Bohemia he loved so deeply. Yet he was by no means a recluse. In the company of his intimate friends, particularly after a few beers, he was voluble, gregarious, expansive and good-humored. His music reflected his salubrious nature, and Harold Schonberg concluded, He remained throughout his entire creative span the happiest and least neurotic of the late Romantics... With Handel and Haydn, he is the healthiest of all composers. The G major Symphony, in its warm emotionalism and pastoral contentment, mirrors its creator. Dvorák ˇ was absolutely profligate with themes in the opening movement. In the exposition, which comprises the first 126 measures of the work, there are no fewer than eight separate melodies which are tossed out with an ease and speed reminiscent of Mozart s fecundity. The first theme is presented without preamble in A10 2012 Program Notes, Book 1
the rich hues of trombones, low strings and low woodwinds in the dark coloring of G minor. This tonality soon yields to the chirruping G major of the flute melody, but much of the movement shifts effortlessly between major and minor keys, lending a certain air of nostalgia to the work. The opening melody is recalled to initiate both the development and the recapitulation. In the former, it reappears in its original guise and even, surprisingly, in its original key. The recapitulation begins as this theme is hurled forth by the trumpets. The coda is invested with the rhythm and high good spirits of an energetic country dance to bring the movement to its rousing ending. The Adagio contains two kinds of music, one hesitant and somewhat lachrymose, the other stately and flowing. The first is indefinite in tonality, rhythm and cadence; its theme is a collection of fragments; its texture is sparse. The following section is greatly contrasted: its key is unambiguous; its rhythm and cadence points are clear; its melody is a long, continuous span. These antitheses alternate, and the form of the movement is created as much by texture and sonority as by melody and tonality. The third movement is a lilting essay in the style of the Austrian folk dance, the Ländler. Like the beginning of the Symphony, the movement opens in G minor with a mood of sweet melancholy, but gives way to a languid melody in G major for the central trio. Following the repeat of the scherzo, a vivacious coda in faster tempo paves the way to the finale. The trumpets herald the start of the finale, a theme and variations with a central section resembling a development in character. The bustling second variation returns as a sort of formal mile-marker it introduces the development and begins the coda. The Symphony ends amid a burst of high spirits and warm-hearted good feelings. 2012 Dr. Richard E. Rodda Did the music move you? If you enjoyed tonight s concert and want to help keep the music playing all summer long, you can donate $ 10 to the Festival using your mobile phone. Text GRANTPARK to 20222* and give the gift of music today! * $ 10.00 will be charged to your mobile phone bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. Msg & Data rates may apply. Terms: www.hmgf.org/t. Reply STOP to end or HELP for help. 2012 Program Notes, Book 1 A11