Download Report

2014–2015 SEASON
FRI APR 17, 8 pm
SAT APR 18, 8 pm
Music Hall
JOHN ADAMS conductor
LEILA JOSEFOWICZ violinist
JOHN ADAMS
Scheherazade.2, Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra
(b. 1947)
Tale of the Wise Young Woman—Pursuit by the True Believers
A Long Desire (Love Scene)
Scheherazade and the Men with Beards
Escape, Flight, Sanctuary
INTERMISSION
LIADOV
The Enchanted Lake, Op. 62
(1855–1914)
RESPIGHI
Pini di Roma (“Pines of Rome”)
(1879–1936)
The Pines of the Villa Borghese
Pines Near a Catacomb
The Pines of the Janiculum
The Pines of the Appian Way
PROGRAM NOTES
© 2014–15 Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
JOHN ADAMS
Scheherazade.2, Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra
TIMING: approx. 45 min.
INSTRUMENTATION: solo violin, 3 flutes (incl. 2 piccolos), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons,
contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuned gongs, xylophone, vibraphone, bass drum, whip, tam-tam, suspended
cymbals, bass drum, 2 harps, celeste, cimbalom, strings
CSO SUBSCRIPTION PERFORMANCES
Premiere: These performances are the work’s CSO premiere
John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 15, 1947 and currently resides outside San Francisco.
Scheherazade.2, his new “dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra,” was co-commissioned by the New York
Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and received its world
premiere by the New York Philharmonic on March 26, 2015.
The composer has offered the following commentary on his new work:
The impetus for the piece was an exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris detailing the history of the
“Arabian Nights” and of Scheherazade and how this story has evolved over the centuries. The casual brutality
toward women that lies at the base of many of these tales prodded me to think about the many images of women
oppressed or abused or violated that we see today in the news on a daily basis. In the old tale Scheherazade is the
lucky one who, through her endless inventiveness, is able to save her life. But there is not much to celebrate here
when one thinks that she is spared simply because of her cleverness and ability to keep on entertaining her
warped, murderous husband.
Thinking about what a Scheherazade in our own time might be brought to mind some famous examples of
women under threat for their lives, for example the “woman in the blue bra” in Tahrir Square, dragged through
the streets, severely beaten, humiliated and physically exposed by enraged, violent men. Or the young Iranian
student, Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot to death while attending a peaceful protest in Tehran. Or women
routinely attacked and even executed by religious fanatics in any number of countries—India, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, wherever. The modern images that come to mind certainly aren’t exclusive to the Middle East—we
see examples, if not quite so graphic nonetheless profoundly disturbing, from everywhere in the world, including
in our own country and even on our own college campuses.
So I was suddenly struck by the idea of a “dramatic symphony” in which the principal character role is taken
by the solo violin—and she would be Scheherazade. While not having an actual story line or plot, the symphony
follows a set of provocative images: a beautiful young woman with grit and personal power; a pursuit by “true
believers”; a love scene (who knows…perhaps her lover is also a woman?); a scene in which she is tried by a court
of religious zealots (“Scheherazade and the Men with Beards”), during which the men argue doctrine among
themselves and rage and shout at her only to have her calmly respond to their accusations); and a final “escape,
flight and sanctuary,” which must be the archetypal dream of any woman importuned by a man or men.
I composed the piece specifically for Leila Josefowicz who has been my friend and champion of my music (and
many other composers) for nearly 15 years. Together we’ve performed my Violin Concerto and my concerto for
amplified violin, The Dharma at Big Sur, many times. This work is a true collaboration and reflects a creative
dialogue that went back and forth for well over a year and that I expect will continue long after the first
performance. I find Leila a perfect embodiment of that kind of empowered strength and energy that a modern
Scheherazade would possess.
—John Adams
ANATOLI LIADOV
The Enchanted Lake, Op. 62
TIMING: approx. 7 min.
INSTRUMENTATION: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, timpani, bass drum, harp, celeste, strings
CSO SUBSCRIPTION PERFORMANCES
Premiere/Most Recent: December 2007, Hans Graf conducting
Anatoli Liadov was born May 11, 1855 in St. Petersburg, Russia and died August 28, 1914 in Polïnovka. He composed The
Enchanted Lake between 1905 and 1909 for the unfinished opera Zorushkya. It was premiered in St. Petersburg on
February 21, 1909.
The subject on which Liadov proposed to write his endlessly gestating opera, Zorushkya, grew from the legendary
tale Kikimora by the folklorist Ivan Sakharoff. The composer noted:
The phantom of Kikimora is brought up by a sorceress in the mountains. In his youth, he is beguiled, from
early morn to late at night, by the tales of foreign lands told by the sorceress’ Magic Cat. From night to dawn,
Kikimora is rocked in a crystal cradle. In just seven years, the phantom grows to maturity. Shiny and black, its
head is as small as a thimble, and its body as thin as a straw. Kikimora makes all manner of noises from
morning to night, and whistles and hisses from early evening to midnight. Then the phantom spins till
daylight; spins and stores up evil in its mind against all mankind.
Liadov, who admitted finding the everyday world “tedious, disappointing, trying, purposeless and terrible,”
was powerfully drawn by this fantastic vision: “My ideal is to find the unearthly in art. Art is the realm of the
non-existing. Give me a fairy tale, a dragon, a water-sprite, a wood-demon, give me something unreal, and I am
happy.” He wrote a miniature tone poem inspired by Kikimora that he intended to use in the opera, and he also
spent time dabbling with a libretto in which the dark land of the phantom would meet the realms of three other
figures — the House Spirit, the Wood Spirit and the Water Spirit — at a crossroads near an enchanted lake. The
scenario for Zorushkya never got any further than these vague ideas, but Liadov did complete a luminous musical
depiction of The Enchanted Lake that evokes the light shimmering on the water’s surface and the rippling motions
of ebullient nymphs playing in its depths.
—Richard E. Rodda
OTTORINO RESPIGHI
Pini di Roma (“Pines of Rome”)
TIMING: approx. 23 min.
INSTRUMENTATION: 3 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4
trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 buccine (Roman trumpets), timpani, orchestra bells, cymbals a2, triangle, nightengale tape, bass
drum, ratchet, small cymbals, tam-tam, harp, organ, celeste, piano, strings
CSO SUBSCRIPTION PERFORMANCES
Premiere: February 1926, composer Ottorino Respighi conducting
Most Recent: September 2012, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducting
Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna on July 9, 1879 and died in Rome on April 18, 1936. He composed Pines of Rome in
1924. Bernardino Molinari conducted the first performance in Rome on December 14 of that year.
Because of his growing fame, based in part on the continued success of Fountains of Rome, Respighi was in 1924
appointed director of Rome’s prestigious Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia. Administrative duties did not appeal to
the composer, however. Fundamentally a simple man, he had neither the talent nor the inclination for a
responsible administrative position. Furthermore, as he was frequently invited to guest conduct in other
countries, his professional and administrative careers were in conflict.
Respighi was eager to resign from both the directorship and his professorship. But the Cultural Minister of
Rome understood the value of having such a distinguished personage at the helm of the Conservatory. To
prevent (or, as it turned out, to forestall) the composer’s resignation, the Minister arranged for Respighi’s teaching
duties to consist of only one advanced composition lecture course, for which he was required to give 40 lectures a
year at whatever times suited him. Nonetheless, Respighi resigned two years later in order to devote himself to
composition.
Despite his administrative responsibilities, the composer was able to complete what was destined to become his
most popular orchestral work—Pines of Rome—during his first year as director of the Conservatory. The premiere
took place in December. The Augusteo was packed. Respighi had predicted that the audience would balk at the
first movement. “You’ll see that the first part won’t have a smooth passage and they’ll boo!” he had told his wife.
There was, in fact, considerable booing and hissing at the close of the first section, caused no doubt by the
stridently discordant trumpets that blare forth repeatedly on a note foreign to the prevailing tonality (B-flat in the
key of A major). The effect is like children’s taunting “nyah!” (Respighi’s program note mentions children
shrieking). A friend of the composer had suggested a different ending, but Respighi replied, “Let them boo; what
do I care?”
After this dissonant close of the first movement, the orchestra quiets down for a contemplative second
movement. At the premiere the audience did likewise. As the piece progressed, the public became more and more
intrigued. Even before the triumphant ending, wild applause swept the hall.
This pattern was repeated at the second performance, two weeks later. At the end of the first movement,
someone shouted, “This must not go on!” But by the end there was again an extraordinary ovation. Pines was
subsequently performed widely, always to enthusiastic response.
Once Respighi had resigned from the Conservatory, he was free to travel. He and his wife embarked on an
American tour at the end of 1925. Shortly before their ship landed in New York, several reporters and
photographers came aboard, demanding interviews and information. Elsa Respighi recalled:
We had prepared nothing, no photographs, no typewritten notes, nor could we think of any “important” or
“amusing” incidents in our lives that our journalist friends so demandingly expected of us. From the
gentlemen’s astonished expressions we realized that we had failed in some vital duty—the payment of tribute
to “Her Majesty Publicity,” a goddess of first importance in the United States.
Respighi was scheduled to conduct Pines of Rome with The Philadelphia Orchestra in January. He interrupted
his rehearsals to go to New York, because conductor Arturo Toscanini had chosen to give the American premiere
of that same work on his triumphant return concert after an extended absence from the United States. Elsa
Respighi’s reminiscences are particularly vivid:
It was an unforgettable evening. The hall [Carnegie], bedecked with Italian flags and banked with masses of
flowers, held a large and distinguished audience, including leading personalities of the musical world and the
most beautiful women in America wearing their richest jewels. The atmosphere was one of throbbing
expectancy. Respighi and I had come from Philadelphia to attend the concert. Toscanini was given a great
ovation for each item in the program, but after Pines of Rome the applause was almost delirious. He had
acknowledged the audience’s tribute five or six times, and I was about to leave the box when a tremendous
roar made me turn around in alarm. The whole audience was standing, the orchestra sounding the “salute of
honor,” and Ottorino, next to Toscanini, was bowing his thanks.
The Respighis returned to Philadelphia the next day. Elsa relates:
At first [the composer] found working with Stokowski’s orchestra, then at the height of its fame, a little
difficult. The attitude of some of the players was one of ill-concealed mistrust, which worried the Italians in
the orchestra but did not last long. With Olympian calm Respighi spoke to each player in his own language
(there were Russians, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, etc.), and soon they were all won over by his personality.
The Philadelphia Orchestra had gone en masse to New York to hear Pines conducted by Toscanini, and all the
musicians came back eager and determined to give, if possible, an even better performance. Respighi’s first
concert took place on 19 January. The orchestra gave the same program in Washington, Cleveland, and
Baltimore.
The composer subsequently embarked on his own tour, which included conducting the Chicago and Cincinnati
orchestras. In Cincinnati he led the CSO in an all-Respighi program, which included Pines of Rome and the brandnew Concerto in the Mixolydian Mode for piano and orchestra, in which he himself was soloist. Here the
reception and reviews were as positive as they had been everywhere else. Lillian Tyler Plogstedt, writing in The
Post, called Pines “one of the most interesting pieces of modern music heard here in years. A rare tribute to the
composer was the reception accorded at the close of the concert, usually a moment of hurried exits. But everyone
remained seated until the final triumphant measures had been played, when he was recalled again and again.”
Respighi subsequently returned to Cincinnati twice more to lead the CSO in performances of his own works, in
1927 (this concert also included Pines) and 1929.
KEYNOTE. The following program note appears as a preface to the published score of Pines:
The Pine Trees of the Villa Borghese. Children are at play in the pine groves of the Villa Borghese, dancing
the Italian equivalent of “Ring around a Rosy.” They play at soldiers, marching and fighting. They twitter and
shriek like swallows at evening. They come and go in swarms. Suddenly the scene changes.
The Pine Trees Near a Catacomb. We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a
catacomb. From the depths rises a chant, which echoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously
silenced.
The Pine Trees of the Janiculum. There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of
Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightingale sings.
The Pine Trees of the Appian Way. Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by
solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of unending steps. The poet has a fantastic vision of past
glories. Trumpets blare, and, in the grandeur of a newly risen sun, the army of the Consul bursts forth toward
the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.
Respighi transformed this program into a vivid orchestral tapestry. The colors of Pines are sometimes
spectacular, sometimes intimate. The brilliant outer movements demonstrate how much Respighi learned from
his composition teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. The inner movements, by contrast, show why Respighi is often called
a “neo-impressionist”: the influence of Debussy is frequently in evidence.
Surely the best known of the many wonderful timbres in Pines are the bird sounds at the end of the third
movement. After the return of the opening piano cadenza and clarinet solo, we hear not an orchestral imitation of
birds (such as those at the end of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony or in the introduction of
Mahler’s First Symphony) but actual birds recorded. Respighi indicates that a particular phonograph record
should be played. While his idea may have been controversial in 1924, with purists decrying the intrusion of
recorded sounds into the orchestra, what he did has turned out to be prophetic. As recording technology has
become more sophisticated and more common, composers have often combined prerecorded sounds (or even
sonorities produced electronically on the spot) with orchestral sounds.
Other special effects in Pines of Rome include the distant trumpet in the second movement and the addition of a
second brass section at the conclusion of the final movement. Here Respighi calls for buccine, which are old brass
instruments that apparently date back to Roman days. The composer suggests that they can be played on modern
descendants, called flicorni—flügelhorns, euphoniums and tenor tubas. Respighi took full advantage of the sonic
resources of the modern orchestra, and even added special sounds to it, in order to produce one of the most
colorful scores of the 20th century.
—Jonathan D. Kramer