BE PRESENT UMS PRESENTS ACADEMY OF ST. MARTIN IN THE FIELDS Jeremy Denk Director and Piano Wednesday Evening, March 25, 2015 at 7:30 Hill Auditorium • Ann Arbor 62nd Performance of the 136th Annual Season 136th Annual Choral Union Series Photo: Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; photographer: Bill Page. 21 UMS PROGRAM Igor Stravinsky Concerto in D Major Vivace Arioso: Andantino Rondo: Allegro Johann Sebastian Bach Concerto for Keyboard No. 1 in d minor, BWV 1052 Allegro Adagio Allegro WINTER 2015 Mr. Denk I N T E R M I SSI O N Bach Concerto for Keyboard No. 5 in f minor, BWV 1056 Allegro Largo Presto A C A D E M Y O F S T. M A R T I N I N T H E F I E L D S Mr. Denk 22 Tonight’s performance is sponsored by MASCO Corporation Foundation. Tonight’s performance is supported by Linda Samuelson and Joel Howell, Gary and Diane Stahle, Ann and Clayton Wilhite, and Marina and Robert Whitman. Media partnership provided by WGTE 91.3 FM and WRCJ 90.9 FM. Special thanks to Linda Gregerson, professor of English Language and Literature at U-M, for speaking at tonight’s Prelude Dinner. BE PRESENT Stravinsky Apollon musagète Premier Tableau: Naissance D’Apollon: Largo Second Tableau: Variation D’Apollon Pas D’Action: Moderato Variation de Calliope: Allegretto Variation de Polymnie: Allegro Variation Terpsichore: Allegretto Variation D’Apollon: Lento Pas de Deux: Adagio Coda: Vivo Apothéose: Largo e tranquillo WINTER 2015 Special thanks to Tom Thompson of Tom Thompson Flowers, Ann Arbor, for his generous contribution of lobby floral art for this evening’s concert. Special thanks to Kipp Cortez for coordinating the pre-concert music on the Charles Baird Carillon. The ASMF gratefully acknowledges the American Friends of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields for their ongoing support. The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Mr. Denk appear by arrangement with Opus 3 Artists, New York, NY. Mr. Denk is a Steinway Piano Artist. 23 UMS N O W T H AT Y O U ’ R E I N Y O U R S E AT… For all his reputation as a musical revolutionary, Igor Stravinsky was drawn to reliving and re-imagining the past his entire life, though he was inspired by different kinds of past at different times. His so-called neo-classical” period, which lasted about 30 years (roughly 1920–50), was longer than either his early Russian” or his late serial” periods, and was devoted to an endless variety of creative games played with various aspects of the musical tradition. One of Stravinsky’s major influences during his neo-classical period was Johann Sebastian Bach, making a Bach-Stravinsky program a very attractive idea. One finds echoes of Bach’s music in many Stravinsky works from the Piano Concerto (1924) to Dumbarton Oaks (1938); there was a time when commentators liked to refer to neo-classicism in general as a movement back to Bach.” While this is an obvious oversimplification, by putting Stravinsky’s music side by side with Bach’s, we will be able to hear the specific connection in some of the rhythmic patterns. In 1956, Stravinsky freely arranged Bach’s variations on the chorale Vom Himmel hoch for chorus and orchestra, crowning a lifetime of engagement with Bach's music. Concerto in D Major (1946,revised1961) A C A D E M Y O F S T. M A R T I N I N T H E F I E L D S WINTER 2015 Igor Stravinsky 24 Born June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), near St. Petersburg, Russia Died April 6, 1971 in New York, New York UMS premiere: Stravinsky’s Concerto in D Major has never been performed on a UMS concert. S N A P S H O T S O F H I S T O R Y… I N 1 9 4 6 : •The first meeting of the United Nations is held at Methodist Central Hall Westminster in London •The Central Intelligence Group is established •Ho Chi Minh is elected President of North Vietnam •UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund) is founded •President Harry S. Truman delivers Proclamation 2714, which officially ends hostilities in World War II Stravinsky first collaborated with the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher (1906–99) in 1930, when he played the solo part of his Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra under Sacher’s direction in Basle. Within a few years, Sacher, who had founded the Basle Chamber Orchestra, emerged as one of the world’s most important champions of new music. His commissions gave the world such masterpieces as Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta and Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, to name but two. Stravinsky wrote two works for Sacher: the present Concerto and A Sermon, a Narrative, and a Prayer (1963). Stravinsky had left Europe in 1939 and settled in the US, living for many years in Southern California. By the end of the war, he was eager to renew his European contacts — and Sacher was responsible for his first European commission in more than a decade. Stravinsky started working on the piece even before mailing his letter of acceptance to Switzerland. The 12-minute Concerto in D Major (also known as the Basle Concerto) employs motoric rhythm inspired by the Baroque era, melodic fragments alluding to Romanticism, and a sophisticated handling of the string instruments that wouldn’t have been possible before the 20th century — all in Stravinsky’s own inimitable manner. All three movements are based, in one way or another, on alternating halfsteps. The first movement continually hovers between major and minor, with numerous rhythmic and melodic surprises that break the patterns as soon as they have Concerto for Keyboard No. 1 in d minor, BWV 1052 (1738) Born March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany Died July 28, 1750 in Leipzig UMS premiere: Harpsichordist Kenneth Gilbert with the Chicago Symphony Baroque Orchestra conducted by Jean Maritnon, June 1967 at the UMS Fair Lane Festival in Dearborn. S N A P S H O T S O F H I S T O R Y… I N 1 7 3 8 : •Pierre Louis Maupertuis publishes Sur la figure de la terre, which confirms Newton’s view that the earth is an oblate spheroid slightly flattened at the poles •Black Forest clockmaker Franz Ketterer produces one of the earliest cuckoo clocks •The Great Plague of 1738, an outbreak of bubonic plague, begins to spread from Banat across central Europe •Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, premieres in London •The Imperial Ballet School at Saint Petersburg is founded with Jean-Baptiste Landé as its principal Since the appearance of the solo concerto in the early 1700s, most concertos were written for the violin. The cello and various wind instruments were also occasionally given a chance. The harpsichord, however, WINTER 2015 Johann Sebastian Bach was relegated to the role of Cinderella: always present as a continuo instrument, providing indispensable harmonic support, but rarely noticed as a separate entity. The reason for this may have been that early concerto writers such as Vivaldi and Torelli were string players; keyboard virtuosos such as Domenico Scarlatti had either no interest in writing concertos, or no opportunities to do so. As far as we know, J.S. Bach was the first to write concertos for a keyboard instrument. The virtuoso harpsichord part in the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 (which also includes solos for flute and violin) inaugurated a new genre that was destined for a great future. About a decade after the Brandenburg set, Bach wrote seven solo concertos for the harpsichord when he was the director of the Collegium Musicum that performed at Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig. But for some reason, he doesn’t seem to have thought of the harpsichord/string orchestra combination as an independent medium that could stand on its own feet: instead of composing original works, he merely transcribed some of his earlier concertos for the keyboard. For three of the seven, the originals are well known. The Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 (in G) became a harpsichord concerto in F Major; and the two violin concertos in a minor and E Major were reincarnated as harpsichord concertos in g minor and D Major, respectively. For the other concertos, the originals have not survived. Nevertheless, scholars are sure they existed, and have even attempted reconstructions. In the case of the d-minor concerto, the keyboard part has many features that are conspicuously violinistic, such as the wide leaps in the theme and a particular repeated-note pattern that would have been played to special effect on the violin, using alternating strings. But other details in the solo part, such as the arpeggios, are BE PRESENT been established. Later, the tempo slows down for a middle section with languid harmonies and expressive syncopations, followed by a more energetic transition. After a series of startling chords played by solo violas and cellos, both earlier sections are recapitulated. The harmonics of the first cello and four double basses serve as a bridge to the second-movement Arioso,” which spins a romantic, and ever sweeter, singing line from a simple alternation of two pitches. The final Rondo” unfolds over a constant background of agitated tremolos, where this whirling and buzzing activity plays the role of the rondo theme, contrasting with those moments where that activity briefly stops. 25 UMS WINTER 2015 A C A D E M Y O F S T. M A R T I N I N T H E F I E L D S 26 so idiomatic to the keyboard that a reconstruction of the original violin version is by no means a mechanical task. We don’t know for sure when the original violin concerto was written, though we may assume that it was during the Cöthen years (1717–1723), the period when Bach wrote his known violin concertos. In the 1720s, Bach used the musical material of the d-minor concerto in two of his church cantatas. Cantata 146 opens with the first movement of the concerto as an instrumental introduction or Sinfonia, already featuring a solo keyboard instrument (the organ). The second movement of this cantata is identical to the second movement of the concerto, with the chorus singing the words “Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen” (We must enter God’s kingdom through many tribulations). Another cantata, No. 188, uses the concerto’s last movement as its Sinfonia, again with a concertant organ solo. The Concerto for Keyboard No. 1 in d minor is a remarkably daring work that treats Baroque concerto form with a great deal of freedom: in one moment, the music follows a strict logic based on sequential progressions and consistent melodic development, and in the next, it surprises us with an outburst of rhapsodic passagework. The unusualness starts right at the beginning: the ritornello, or recurrent theme, is played in unison, which enhances the dramatic power of the dissonant intervals (tritone, diminished sevenths, minor ninths) in which the theme abounds. It is one of the most passionate instrumental movements Bach ever wrote. Like the first movement, the second starts with a unison theme featuring wide leaps, including dissonant ones. The melody stays in the bass, its presence uninterrupted as the soloist’s right hand plays an extremely ornate singing melody, expressive of the line about tribulations applied to this music in Cantata 146. The finale doesn’t quite have the chromatic asperities of the first two movements, but it is still not exactly a light movement. Despite some playful elements in the rhythm, the tensions never completely go away. This concerto had a major influence on Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who made his own arrangement of it, and who developed the dramatic side of his father’s writing further in his own music. The highly charged emotional style of C.P.E. Bach in turn influenced the composers of the Classical era, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Concerto for Keyboard No. 5 in f minor, BWV 1056 (1738) Bach UMS premiere: Bach’s Concerto No. 5 in f minor has never been performed on a UMS concert. The genesis of all seven of Bach’s extant solo keyboard concertos is complicated, to say the least. All are arrangements, dating from the mid-to-late 1730s, of earlier works by Bach, some of which are lost. But, as recent research has shown, the case of the f-minor work is even more complex. Bach apparently used a work by another composer, namely Georg Philipp Telemann, as a model for his slow movement; he had used a theme from a Telemann concerto in his Cantata 156 (1729) before returning to it for the second time in the harpsichord concerto. The fast movements were apparently written several years later, though no exact dates of composition can be established. Although both Bach concertos on the present program are in the minor mode, they differ considerably in their mood. The dance rhythms and playful echo effects of Apollon musagète (1928) Stravinsky UMS premiere: Zurich Chamber Orchestra with Edmond de Stoutz conducting, February 1980 in Rackham Auditorium. Stravinsky had a special affinity for ballet throughout his career. Just as The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring were the most outstanding works of his early, Russian period, his neo-Classical period was also marked by his love for dance theater. His second ballet trilogy, created in the 1920s and 1930s, began with Apollo, which was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The European premiere was given by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the legendary company that had catapulted Stravinsky to fame about a decade and a half earlier. The second trilogy was completed by The WINTER 2015 S N A P S H O T S O F H I S T O R Y… I N 1 9 2 8 : •English bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith’s experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA •The Michigan Theater opens in Ann Arbor •The first regular schedule of television programming begins in Schenectady, New York •The animated short Plane Crazy is released by Disney Studios in Los Angeles, featuring the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse •Aviatrix Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make a successful transatlantic flight as a passenger Fairy’s Kiss (1928) and Jeu de cartes (1936). Several of the great Stravinsky works from the 1920s and 1930s were inspired by Greek mythology. Apollo came soon after the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, and a few years before the melodrama Persephone. Yet unlike those works, it eschews all dramatic conflicts; Stravinsky clearly wanted to write a real Apollonian” work, free from all Dionysian” impulses. (The contrast between Apollo, the calm god of beauty and Dionysus, the personification of ecstasy, dominated European artistic thinking since Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy [1872].) Stravinsky envisioned a so-called ballet blanc (white ballet) in which all the ballerinas wore white, and the choreography remained close to the classical tradition. There is no plot to speak of in the conventional sense. After the prologue, which represents Apollo’s birth, the Muses appear. There are only three of them, not nine as in the mythological tradition. Apollo dances with all three one after the other, before the muses come forward perform successive solos. This is followed by a pas de deux between Apollo and Terpsichore, the muse of dance; then all four characters dance together, and the leader of the muses” escorts his companions to Mount Parnassus. The musical equivalent of a white ballet” is, of course, the diatonic scale made up of the white keys of the piano; Apollo is one of the most consonant of all of Stravinsky’s works. Yet the absence of conflict doesn’t mean monotony since there are plenty of changes of tempo and rhythm. Stravinsky was able to achieve an enormous variety of timbres with an ensemble consisting entirely of strings: in the course of the 30-minute ballet, we hear a wide range of sonorities from unaccompanied violin solo to the rich sound of multiple divisi (divided parts). BE PRESENT the f-minor concerto make it a more lighthearted work, at least as far as the opening and closing movements are concerned. The lyrical cantilena of the second movement, where the accompanying ensemble plays pizzicato (plucking the strings), is an emotionally heightened elaboration of the Telemann, followed by a “Presto” where Bach carefully indicates the alternation between forte and piano as a special and rather novel musical effect. Program notes by Peter Laki. 27 UMS ARTISTS 28 in 1969, and the 2007 recording of the same piece with Mr. Bell reached number one on the Billboard Classical Chart. Their soundtrack for the film Amadeus won 13 gold discs alone, while in 1996 The English Patient picked up an Academy Award for “Best Music,” with a soundtrack performed by the Academy. In March 2013 the orchestra and Mr. Bell released their first recording on Sony Classical under his leadership, performing Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7. The Academy’s US tours are supported by the American Friends of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. If you would like to join the American Friends, please send an email to [email protected] for more details. For more information, please visit www.asmf.org. Follow the Academy on Facebook, Google+, and on Twitter at @ASMForchestra. O ne of America’s most thoughtprovoking, multi-faceted, and compelling artists, pianist JEREMY DENK is the winner of a 2013 Photo: Michael Wilson A C A D E M Y O F S T. M A R T I N I N T H E F I E L D S WINTER 2015 T he ACADEMY OF ST. MARTIN IN THE FIELDS is renowned for its polished and refined sound, rooted in outstanding musicianship. Formed by Sir Neville Marriner in 1958 from a group of leading London musicians, the Academy gave its first performance in its namesake church in November 1959. Originally directed by Sir Neville from the leader’s chair, the collegiate spirit and flexibility of the original small, conductor-less ensemble remains an Academy hallmark which continues today with virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell as its music director. Together they explore symphonic repertoire to perform “chamber music on a grand scale.” Highlights of this season include London concerts and international tours with pianist Jeremy Denk, clarinetist Martin Fröst, and violinist Julia Fischer. Principal guest conductor Murray Perahia tours with the orchestra to Europe in August and September and on an exciting tour of Asia in November. Mr. Bell himself will undertake four tours with the Academy this season, traveling as far as South America and the Middle East, as well as two tours of Europe. In addition to concerts, the players of the Academy continue to reach out to young musicians and adult learners through Outward Sound, the Academy’s education program. This year’s projects include workshops for school children, professional development partnerships, and lifelong learning schemes, which create opportunities for the public to connect and create music with the orchestra. With over 500 recordings to date, the Academy is one of the most recorded chamber orchestras in the world. The orchestra received their first gold disc for their recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the 2014 Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s 2014 “Instrumentalist of the Year” award. He has appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. One of his New Yorker contributions, “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” forms the basis of a memoir for future publication by Random House. In 2014 he served as music director of the Ojai Music Festival, for which he performed, curated, and wrote the libretto for a comic opera. The opera will be presented by Carnegie Hall in the 2014–15 season. Mr. Denk’s debut recording for Nonesuch Records juxtaposed Ligeti’s Études with Beethoven’s final sonata, and was included on many “Best of 2012” lists, including those of the New Yorker, Washington Post, and NPR Music. His second recording for the label, Bach: Goldberg Variations, was released in September 2013. It reached number one on Billboard’s “Classical Albums” chart. BE PRESENT San Francisco, and London. He regularly gives recitals in New York, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, and throughout the US. In the 2014–15 season, Mr. Denk launches a four-season tenure as an artistic partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; makes debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic; appears as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony; and performs Bach concertos on tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Mr. Denk is known for his original and insightful writing on music, which Alex Ross praises for its “arresting sensitivity and wit.” His blog, Think Denk, was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress web archives, and he has written pieces for the New Yorker, WINTER 2015 UMS ARCHIVES This evening’s concert marks the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields’ seventh performance under UMS auspices following its UMS debut in November 1980 at Hill Auditorium with violinist Iona Brown. The Academy most recently appeared in Ann Arbor in April 2012 at Hill Auditorium with Joshua Bell where they received the 2012 UMS Distinguished Artist Awards. Tonight marks Jeremy Denk’s fourth concert under UMS auspices following his UMS debut in February 2007 with Joshua Bell at Hill Auditorium. Mr. Denk most recently appeared under UMS auspices in March 2012 as part of the San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks Festival where he performed as piano soloist in Henry Cowell’s Concerto for Piano at Hill Auditorium and in a chamber concert performance of Lukas Foss’ Echoi with members of the Symphony at Rackham Auditorium. 29 UMS A C A D E M Y O F S T. M A R T I N I N T H E F I E L D S FIRST VIOLIN Tomo Keller Harvey de Souza Robert Salter Martin Gwilym-Jones Raja Halder Clare Hayes Clare Hoffman A C A D E M Y O F S T. M A R T I N I N T H E F I E L D S WINTER 2015 SECOND VIOLIN Helen Paterson Fiona Brett Amanda Smith Mark Butler Anna Blackmur 30 A D M I N I S T R AT I O N Sir Neville Marriner CBE, Life President Joshua Bell, Music Director Murray Perahia KBE, Principal Guest Conductor S TA F F Gabriel van Aalst, Chief Executive Andrew McGowan, Head of Development Sally Sparrow, Orchestra Personnel Manager Ina Wieczorek, Concerts and Recordings Manager Cecilia Sala, Development Manager Katherine Adams, Orchestra Manager and Librarian Kim Perkins, Education & Outreach Manager Creative Producer Peter Fisher, Marketing Manager Patrick McEntee, Concerts and Administration Assistant Danielle Scott, Development Assistant Clare Thompson, Orchestral Administration Trainee Rebecca Driver, Media Relations, PR Consultant BOARD OF DIRECTORS Paul Aylieff, Chairman Heather Benjamin Elizabeth Bennett Sir Peter Coulson Mark David VIOLA Robert Smissen Stephen Upshaw Alex Koustas Martin Humbey CELLO Stephen Orton Judith Herbert Morwenna del Mar DOUBLE BASS Lynda Houghton Cathy Elliott Catherine Morgan Trevor Moross Simon Morris Charlotte Richardson Richard Skinner Harvey de Souza Peter Stott DEVELOPMENT BOARD Paul Aylieff Cyrille Camilleri Gareth Davies Jill Hoffbrand Christine Jasper Alan Kerr Trevor Moross, Chairman Mark Oshida Peter Stott OPUS 3 ARTISTS David V. Foster, President & CEO Leonard Stein, Senior Vice President, Director, Touring Division Robert Berretta, Vice President, Senior Director, Artists & Attractions Booking, Manager, Artists & Attractions Irene Lönnblad, Associate, Touring Division Samantha Cortez, Associate, Attractions Kay McCavic, Tour Manager Eugene M. Grant: Victor for the Arts Hill Auditorium ceiling emblem UMS thanks U-M alumnus Eugene M. Grant (LSA, ‘38) for making the New York Philharmonic residency possible. Eugene’s $1,000,000 gift supports the first phase of this partnership that will bring the New York Philharmonic to campus three times over the next five years. 2015 HOMECOMING WEEKEND: New York Philharmonic in Hill Auditorium Three Amazing Concerts in one Extraordinary Weekend October 9-11, 2015 The U-M campus is brimming with experiences to come home to — a crisp walk through the Diag, an epic football game, and an evening spent with one of the world’s best orchestras. As part of an extended UMS artistic residency, the New York Philharmonic will perform three concerts in Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium during the U-M Homecoming Weekend. Performing a different program each night, the orchestra’s residency includes a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s live score to the 1954 classic, On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando. Full details and programs available at ums.org/nyphil. "I believe the arts are a critical piece of a wellrounded education and should be a part of the Michigan experience for all students, through affordable tickets, in-class experiential learning, and exposure to worldclass performers on and off the stage. As a New Yorker and as a Michigan man, I am thrilled to help bring together my 'hometown' orchestra and my alma mater." TICKETS New York Philharmonic Weekend Packages go on sale starting Monday, March 16 2015. Tickets to individual performances go on sale on August 3. 734.764.2538 / UMS.ORG Eugene M. Grant 20 15 - 1 6 S E ASO N A NNOU NCEMEN T! The 2015–16 UMS season is positively brimming with must-see performances. In fact, there are so many incredible options that we’re announcing the Choral Union and Chamber Arts series early this season, with subscriptions to these packages on sale now. Take a peek, mark your calendars, and plan something special. 1 3 7 T H ANNUAL C H OR AL UNION SERIES 53 R D A NN UA L CHA MBE R A RTS SE RI E S 10/9-11 9/27 10/29 11/6 New York Philharmonic Alan Gilbert, music director Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti, music director and conductor 11/20 Leif Ove Andsnes, piano 1/11 Sphinx Virtuosi with the Catalyst Quartet and Gabriela Lena Frank Danish String Quartet 12/2 Takács Quartet 1/22 Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Pinchas Zukerman, principal guest conductor and violin 2/16 & 2/18 2/6 4/8 Igor Levit, piano 2/20 Sir András Schiff, piano The Last Sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert 3/19 Montreal Symphony Kent Nagano, music director Daniil Trifonov, piano 3/26 Bach Six Solos Gil Shaham, violin With video installation by David Michalek 4/16 Bavarian Radio Orchestra Mariss Jansons, music director Sir András Schiff, piano Jerusalem String Quartet The remainder of the 2015-16 season will be announced in late April.
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