Illinois State University
College of Fine Arts
School of Music
________________________________________________________________
Illinois State University Symphony Orchestra
Glenn Block, Music Director and Conductor
“THE RITE OF SPRING”
Concerto Winners:
Colby Spengler, Clarinet
Wen-Chi Chiu, Violin
Kim Pereira, Narrator
_________________________________________________________________
Center for the Performing Arts
April 19, 2015
Sunday Evening
8:00 p.m.
This is the one hundred and eighty-seventh program of the 2014-2015 season.
Program
Please turn off all electronic devices for the duration of the concert. Thank you.
Introduction, Theme, and Variations for Clarinet and Orchestra (1809)
Gioachino Rossini
(1792-1868)
Colby Spengler, clarinet *
Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto (1959)
Chen Gang and He Zhanhao
Wen-Chi Chiu, violin *
(born 1935)
(born 1933)
~ Intermission ~
Endowed Scholarship Presentation
Concert Interpretation – (Le Sacre de Printemps)
Siegfried Sassoon
(1886-1967)
Kim Pereira, narrator
Le Sacre de Printemps (The Rite of Spring - 1913)
Igor Stravinsky
(1882-1971)
First Part: The Adoration of the Earth
Introduction
The Auguries of Spring
Dances of the Young Girls
Ritual of Abduction
Spring Rounds
Ritual of the Rival Tribes
Procession of the Sage
The Sage
Dance of the Earth
Second Part: The Sacrifice
Introduction
Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
Glorification of the Chosen One
Evocation of the Ancestors
Ritual Action of the Ancestors
Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One)
* Winners 2015 ISU Concerto-Aria Competition
THANK YOU
Lyric Opera of Chicago for their generous loan of the Wagner Tuben.
Eastern Illinois University School of Music for their generous loan of the Bass Trumpet.
PROGRAM NOTES
BUTTERFLY LOVERS VIOLIN CONCERTO
The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written in 1958 by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang
while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory and was first performed in May
the following year. Musically the concerto is a synthesis of Eastern and Western
traditions, although the melodies and overall style are adapted from traditional Chinese
Opera. The solo violin is used with a technique that recalls the playing technique of the
Erhu, the Chinese two-string fiddle. It is a one-movement programmatic concerto, with
three sections that correspond to the three phases of the story—Falling in Love,
Refusing to Marry, and Metamorphosis.
The narrative, derived from Chinese folklore, tells the story of the lovers Liang Shanbo
and Zhu Yingtai. The two had been studying together, with Zhu Yingtai disguised as a
boy, her identity unknown to her friend Liang Shanbo. Their period of study together
and friendship is a happy one, which comes to an end when Zhu Yingtai is compelled to
return home, and the couple part at a pavilion, eighteen miles from the city. This forms
the exposition of a tripartite sonata-form movement.
In the central section, the formal development, Zhu Yingtai now defies her father, who
has arranged a marriage for her. Liang Shanbo decides to visit Zhu Yingtai and only now
finds out that she is a girl and about to be married. There is a tender duet between violin
and cello, now Liang Shanbo realizes the nature of his affection for his former
companion. Liang Shanbo dies, the victim of despair, and Zhu Yingtai, on the way to her
wedding, stops at her lover’s tomb and leaps into it. The tomb bursts open and at the
sound of the gong the music reaches a climax.
In the final section of the concerto, the recapitulation, the love theme reappears and
Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai emerge from the tomb as a pair of butterflies, flying
together, and never more to be parted.
Notes by NAXOS.
INTRODUCTION, THEME, AND VARIATIONS
Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro, February 29, 1792 and died in Paris, November
13, 1868. In the heart of Italy sits Bologna, a gritty, orange-hued city, famous for meat
sauce and attracting musical prodigies. Stendhal dubbed it “the headquarters of music in
Italy,” and Charles Dickens wrote that it had a “grave and learned air” and a “pleasant
gloom.” Mozart visited Bologna to study counterpoint with the renowned Padre Martini,
who owned the largest collection of musical manuscripts in Europe. A child prodigy,
Gioachino Rossini moved to Bologna in 1804 when he was 12—the same age when
Mozart had first visited Bologna, a genius by all early accounts. Rossini’s friends at
Bologna’s Liceo Musicale (Conservatory) called him il tedeschino (the little German)
because he embraced the style of Viennese Classicism. Born into a musical family in
Pesaro in 1792, to a horn-playing father and opera-singing mother, Rossini showed
prowess on many instruments. Gioachino tagged along with her in and out of local
theatrical companies. In 1804, he composed a duet to sing with his mother and his most
famous juvenile work, the six Sonate a Quattro for two violins, viola, and bass. In Bologna,
Rossini studied music with Father Stanislao Matteo, a kind and demanding figure, who
instilled the basics of harmony and part-writing. Like Mozart, legend has it that he heard
music once and to everyone’s astonishment wrote it down from memory. He
accompanied opera companies on the keyboard, and his cantata for tenor, chorus, and
orchestra, Il pianto d’Armonia sulla morte d’Orfeo, was performed at his school’s convocation
in 1808. It was customary for the best conservatory students to have their pieces
performed during the school year, and he most likely conducted this work. During the
last year of his studies in 1810, he met Giovanni Morandi, a travelling composer and
impresario with Venetian connections. Soon after, Rossini moved to Venice where he
found great success with his opera La cambiale di matrimonio. Unlike Mozart, Rossini
quickly achieved financial security in Italy and then in Paris, eventually completing nearly
40 operas. He abandoned composing opera after William Tell in 1829 and died in 1868. A
staple for virtuoso clarinetists, Rossini’s Introduction, Theme, and Variations requires operatic
virtuosity. The solo part vaunts a succession of haphazard acrobat notes, sewn together
by the player’s brazen musicality. Clarinet pieces with orchestral accompaniment were
popular in the early Romantic period—Mozart setting the bar with his late Clarinet
Concerto. Other opera composers wrote for clarinet, including Carl Maria von Weber and
Giacomo Meyerbeer. The instrument’s versatile registers, known as chalumeau, clarion,
and altissimo, suggest different vocal timbres. A slow introduction marks the beginning
of the piece, consisting of a loud orchestral call to attention followed by the clarinet’s
sweet response. The clarinet part is challenging from the start, with eager quick notes
spanning the instrument’s range. Except for the opening notes, occasional cadences, and
cheerful rejoinders, the orchestra remains in the background, like a straight man to a talk
show host. Rossini places a brief cadenza, a difficult solo passage, at the end of the
theme, leaving the listeners no doubt about the soloist’s artistry. Five variations follow:
the first with punchy staccatos and Rossini’s characteristic orchestral rejoinders. The
clarinetist bounces from low to high notes. The second is a rollercoaster of fast pitches—
the third flaunts speedy ascending arpeggios and breathless descending scales. Contrast
marks the fourth variation: a slow, pensive minor mode pervades, showing the
clarinetist’s sensitive side. A Mozartian chord progression sets up the last variation, which
is punctured by a second cadenza. The orchestra’s final cadence puts a lid on this riproaring affair.
Written by Eleonora M. Beck (The Philadelphia Orchestra)
THE RITE OF SPRING
Music connected with dance has long held a special place in French culture, at least as far
back as the age of Louis XIV, and there was an explosion of major full-length scores
during the 19th century in Paris. French composers inspired the supreme ballet music of
the century, that written by Tchaikovsky. With his Swan Lake (1875-76), Sleeping Beauty
(1889), and Nutcracker (1892), ballet found its musical master. In the first decade of the
20th century, however, dance returned to Paris when the impresario Sergei Diaghilev
started exporting Russian culture. He began in 1906 with the visual arts, presented
symphonic music the next year, then opera, and, finally, in 1909, added ballet. The
offerings of his legendary Ballets Russes proved to be especially popular despite
complaints that the productions did not seem Russian enough for some Parisians. Music
historian Richard Taruskin has remarked on the paradox: The Russian ballet, originally a
French import and proud of its stylistic heritage, now had to become stylistically
“Russian” so as to justify its exportation back to France. Diaghilev’s solution was to
commission, expressly for presentation in France in 1913, something without precedent
in Russia: a ballet on a Russian folk subject, and with music cast in a conspicuously exotic
“Russian” style. He cast about for a composer willing to come up with bringing this
Russian sound to French ballet. After being refused by several others, Diaghilev engaged
the 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky, who had already achieved great success with The Firebird
in 1910. His second ballet, Petrushka, followed the next season. And then came the real
shocker that made music history: The Rite of Spring.
The Russian artist and archeologist Nikolai Roerich, a specialist in Slavic history and
folklore, devised the scenario for the Rite together with Stravinsky and eventually created
the sets and costumes. Subtitled “Pictures of Pagan Russia,” the ballet offers ritual dances
culminating in the sacrifice of the “Chosen One” in order “to propitiate the God of
Spring.” Stravinsky composed the music between September 1911 and March 1913, after
which the work went into an unusually protracted period of rehearsals. There were a
large number for the orchestra, many more for the dancers, and then a handful with all
the forces together. The final dress rehearsal on May 28, 1913, the day before the
premiere, was presented before a large audience and attended by various critics. All
seemed to go smoothly. An announcement in the newspaper Le Figaro on the day of the
premiere promised the strongly stylized characteristic attitudes of the Slavic race with an
awareness of the beauty of the prehistoric period. The prodigious Russian dancers were
the only ones capable of expressing these stammerings of a semi-savage humanity, of
composing these frenetic human clusters wrenched incessantly by the most astonishing
polyrhythm ever to come to the mind of a musician. Diaghilev undoubtedly devised the
premiere to be a big event. Ticket prices at the newly built Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
were doubled and the cultural elite of Paris showed up. The program opened with a
beloved ballet classic: Les Sylphides, orchestrations of piano works by Chopin. What
exactly happened next, however, is not entirely clear. Conflicting accounts quickly
emerged, sometimes put forth by people who were not even in attendance. From the
very beginning of The Rite of Spring there was laughter and an uproar among the audience,
but whether this was principally in response to the music or to the dancing is still
debated. One critic observed that “…past the Prelude the crowd simply stopped listening
to the music so that they might better amuse themselves with the choreography.” That
choreography was by the 23-year-old dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, who had presented a
provocative staging of Debussy’s Jeux with the company just two weeks earlier. Although
the music was inaudible at times, conductor Pierre Monteux pressed on and saw the 30minute ballet through to the end. The evening was not yet over. After intermission came
two more audience favorites: Weber’s The Specter of the Rose and Borodin’s Polovtsian
Dances. Five more performances of The Rite of Spring were given over the next two weeks
and then the company took the ballet on tour. Within the year the work was
triumphantly presented as a concert piece, again with Monteux conducting, and ever
since the concert hall has been its principal home. Yet it is well worth remembering that
this extraordinary composition, which some commentators’ herald as the advent of
modern music, was originally a theatrical piece, a collaborative effort forging the talents
of Stravinsky, Roerich, Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Monteux, and a large ensemble of musicians
and dancers. Leopold Stokowski conducted the American premiere of both the concert
and staged versions of The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring calls for an enormous orchestra
deployed to spectacular effect. The ballet is in two tableaux—“The Adoration of the
Earth” and “The Sacrifice”—each of which has an introductory section, a series of
dances, and a concluding ritual. The opening minutes of the piece give an idea of
Stravinsky’s innovative style. A solo bassoon, playing at an unusually high register,
intones a melancholy melody. This is the first of at least nine folk melodies that the
composer adapted for the piece. Some order eventually emerges out of chaos as the “The
Auguries of Spring” roar out massive string chords punctuated by eight horns. In the
following dances unexpected and complicated metrical innovations emerge. At various
points in the piece Stravinsky changes the meter every measure. If Arnold Schoenberg
had famously “liberated the dissonance” a few years earlier, Stravinsky now liberates
rhythm from meter. The ballet’s premiere program included the following description:
FIRST PART: “The Adoration of the Earth.” Spring. The Earth is covered with flowers.
The Earth is covered with grass. A great joy reigns on the Earth. Mankind delivers itself
up to the dance and seeks to know the future by following the rites. The eldest of the
Sages himself takes part in the Glorification of Spring. He is led forward to unite himself
with the abundant and superb Earth. Everyone stamps the Earth ecstatically.
SECOND PART: “The Sacrifice.” After the day: At midnight. On the hills are the
consecrated stones. The adolescents play the mystic games and see the Great Way. They
glorify, they proclaim Her who has been designated to be sacrificed to the God. The
ancestors are invoked, venerated witnesses. And the wise Ancestors of Mankind
contemplate the sacrifice.
Written by Christopher H. Gibbs (The Philadelphia Orchestra).
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Colby Spengler is a sophomore music education student at Illinois State University. He
is a current member of the Wind Symphony, Symphony Orchestra, and has given two
recitals. In the summer he is a member of the Peoria Municipal Band under the direction
of Dr. David Vroman. In addition to these ensembles, Mr. Spengler has been a featured
soloist with the Prairie Wind Ensemble. He previously studied clarinet with Sherill
Diepenbrock. He has taught several students in the Normal and Peoria areas, and is a
member of NAFME and NBA at ISU. Colby Spengler is a member of the clarinet studio
of Dr. David Gresham.
Wen-Chi Chiu is from Taiwan. She is currently the violin assistant at Illinois State
University studying under Dr. Sarah Gentry while completing her Masters in Music
Therapy. In 2008, she attended a national music audition in Taiwan and was one of the
top 20 out of 400 violinists. In that same year, she also became the concertmistress of the
Taipei Teenager Symphony Orchestra. In 2010, she was invited to play with an orchestra
in Thailand, and in 2011 she became the concertmistress of the string orchestra in Taipei
University. In 2012, she was invited to play with an orchestra in Japan. In 2013, she got
accepted into the performance master program at Illinois State University, where she also
received a Graduate Assistantship. She has played with the Peoria Symphony. Wen-Chi
Chiu is a member of the violin studio of Dr. Sarah Gentry.
Kim Pereira teaches Acting and World Drama at in The School of Theatre & Dance at
Illinois State University. He has a Ph.D. in Theatre from Florida State University and an
MA in English and American Literature from the University of Bombay, India. He came
to the U.S. via Bahrain in the Middle East, after a career in International Advertising, and
has traveled to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as well as to New Zealand and
Australia. As an actor and director, he has performed in several plays here in the U.S. as
well as in his native India, with major roles in classical and contemporary plays.
Dr. Pereira is the author of August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey, the first fulllength study of August Wilson’s plays and has published essays on Wilson’s plays in
national and international journals, including The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson. He
has written essays on Shakespeare in Stagebill and Asides for The Public Theatre in New
York and The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C., as well as for The Illinois
Shakespeare Festival. He has presented papers at national and regional conferences on
African-American Theatre, Indian Theatre, Shakespeare, and Shaw. He is the author of
several plays. Hostage, a play about an American journalist and an Arab- American, was a
semi-finalist at the O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference in 2013.
In 2001, Dr. Pereira wrote, filmed, narrated, and produced a two-hour documentary on
contemporary Indian theatre, which is available on DVD and VHS. His commitment to
diversity led to his being awarded the Strand Diversity Award in 2003. Dr. Pereira is also
the creator of a popular course at ISU on Civil Disobedience.
Glenn Block has served as the Director of
Orchestras and Opera and Professor of
Conducting at Illinois State University since
1990, this year celebrating his 25th year at ISU.
He has also served as Music Director of the
Youth Symphony of Kansas City from 1983 2007. Prior to his appointment at Illinois State
in the fall of 1990, Dr. Block served for 15 years
as Director of Orchestras and Professor of
Conducting at the Conservatory of Music of the University of Missouri - Kansas City and
Music Director of the Kansas City Civic Orchestra. Born in Brooklyn, Dr. Block was
educated at the Eastman School of Music. He received his Ph.D. from the University of
California at San Diego. A frequent guest conductor, he has appeared in over 42 states
with all-state and professional orchestras. Foreign guest-conducting have included
concerts and master classes at the Fountainebleau Conservertoire in France, and concerts
in Spain, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Russia, Italy, Hungary, Austria and the Czech
Republic and throughout South America. He has served on the Boards of Directors for
both the Conductors Guild and the Youth Orchestra Division of the American
Symphony Orchestra League. The Youth Symphony of Kansas City and Dr. Block made
their Carnegie Hall debut in June, 1997.
Dr. Block has served on the faculty of the National Music Camp at Interlochen as
Resident Conductor of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra, and at the Interlochen
Arts Academy as Visiting Conductor. In addition, he has also served as Music Director
of the Summer Festival Orchestra at the Rocky Ridge Music Center in Estes Park,
Colorado. During the summer of 2013, Dr. Block spent a month conducting and
teaching in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. In the summer of 2014, Dr. Block again
returned to South America to conduct in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay during the
months of May and June, and traveled to Italy in August to conduct at various festivals in
Pescara and in the eastern mountains of Abruzzo.
During the 2015 season, Glenn Block will again return for extended residencies in May
and June in South America with orchestras in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
He will be conducting opera in Chieti and Pescara in Italy at the end of July, and in
September of 2015, he will be making his debut conducting at the Teatro Colon in
Buenos Aires.
ISU Symphony Orchestra
OBOE
David Merz, principal
Linnea Couture
Samantha Dosek
Terri Rogers, English horn
VIOLIN I
Lourenco Budo, concertmaster
Wen-Chi Chiu
Lisa Ourada
Rachael Miller
Gabrielle VanDril
Maggie Watts
Asa Church
Chelsea Rillaroza
CLARINET
Nuvee Thammikasakul, principal
Colby Spengler
Marissa Poel
Brian Do, E-flat clarinet
Cassandra Wieland, bass clarinet
VIOLIN II
Praneeth Madoori, principal
Charlea Schueler
Jillian Forbes
Andrada Pteanc
Julia Heeren
Samantha Huang
Justin Wagner
Johannes Krohn
VIOLA
Abigail Dreher, principal
Eileen Wronkiewicz
Rachel Tatar
Kathryn Brown
Alexander Foote
ReginaVendetti
Sarah Williams
Joshua Tolley
Alexander Daniell
Matthew White
BASSOON
Matthew Jewell, principal
Arturo Montano Jr.
William Heinze
Veronica Dapper, contrabassoon
Aston Karner, contrabassoon
HORN
Laura Makara, principal
Emily Lenart
Amanda Muscato
Calle Fitzgerald
Emma Danch
Kevin Krivosik
Jack Gordon
Joshua Hernday, doubling Wagner Tuben
Nelson Ruiz, doubling Wagner Tuben
TRUMPET
Sean Hack, principal
Andy Mrozinsky
Eli Denecke
Michael Pranger
Nicole Gillotti
William Riley Leitch, bass trumpet
CELLO
Pei-Chi Huang, principal
Angelina McLaughlin-Heil
Monica Sliva
Ryan Koranda
Douglas Cook
Alexander Brinkman
DOUBLE BASS
Wiebe Ophorst, principal
Claudia Amaral
Jake Busse
Ana Miller
Tabitha Staples
Gregory Clough
Matthew Stewart
Patrick Casner
Trevor Mason
FLUTE
Pamela Schuett, principal
Miranda DeBretto
Casey Sukel
Daniel Gallagher, piccolo
Kalie Grable, alto flute
TROMBONE
Aaron Gradberg, principal
Jordan Harvey
James Mohalwald, bass trombone
TUBA
Alexander Hill, principal
Jason Lindsey
STAFF
Noam Aviel, Assistant Conductor,
Manager/Librarian
Johannes Eitel, Assistant Conductor,
Manager/Librarian
ORCHESTRA COMMITTEE
Pamela Schuett, chair
Abigail Dreher
Brian Do
Sean Hack
William Heinze
TIMPANI/PERCUSSION
Mallory Konstans, principal
Maria Di Vietro
Kevin Greene
James McHenry
HARP
Julia Jamieson, principal