Download Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal

Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus
Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor
Christopher Bell, Chorus Director
Schumann Rhenish Symphony
Friday, July 3, 2015 at 6:30 p.m.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA
Carlos Kalmar, Conductor
Tanja Tetzlaff, Cello
DIAMOND
Rounds for String Orchestra
Allegro, molto vivace
Adagio
Allegro vigoroso
Played without pause
LALO
Cello Concerto in D Minor
Prélude: Lento—Allegro maestoso
Intermezzo: Andantino con moto—
Allegro presto—Tempo I—Tempo II
Andante — Allegro vivace
Tanja Tetzlaff
INTERMISSION
SCHUMANN
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97, “Rhenish”
Lebhaft
Scherzo: Sehr mässig
Nicht schnell
Feierlich
Lebhaft
Tonight’s concert is being broadcast live on 98.7WFMT
and streamed live at wfmt.com.
2015 Program Notes, Book 3 | 41
Friday, July 3, 2015
Since successfully participating in many international
competitions, TANJA TETZLAFF has been playing with such
prestigious orchestras as the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Orchestra
of the Bayerische Rundfunk München, Bamberger Symphoniker,
Cincinnati Symphony, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen,
Camerata Salzburg and West Australian Symphony Orchestra
Perth. She gives regular recitals with some of the world’s foremost
musicians, including Lars Vogt, Alexander Lonquich, Leif Ove
Andsnes, Antje Weithaas, Martin Fröst, Florian Donderer, Gunilla
Süssmann and her brother Christian, with whom she has founded
the Tetzlaff Quartet, together with Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister. With
this Quartet and also with Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt or with Baiba and Lauma
Skride forming a trio, she appears regularly in Europe and the United States. Along
with classical cello concertos, Tanja Tetzlaff often performs music of the 20th and 21st
centuries, including the German premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Cello Concerto and
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Pas de trios. She appears frequently at summer festivals,
including Risør, Beethovenfest Bonn and Schubertiade, and belongs to the core
players at the Heimbach-Festival “Spannungen.” With her duo partner, pianist Gunilla
Süssmann, she regularly tours Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland; their first CD,
with works by Sibelius, Grieg and Rachmaninov, was released in 2007 by CAvi-music.
Tanja Tetzlaff also has recorded Haydn’s Cello Concertos with the Wiener Chamber
Orchestra. A CD was released giving a musical portrayal of her as an artist with solo
pieces by Bach, Kodály, Britten und Esa-Pekka Salonen and Schumann’s Cello Concerto,
accompanied by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie conducted by Heinz Holliger. A
CD with concertos by Rihm and Ernst Toch will be released in the near future. Tanja
Tetzlaff plays a cello by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini made in 1776.
ROUNDS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA (1944)
David Diamond (1915-2005)
Diamond’s Rounds is scored for strings alone. The performance
time is 29 minutes. This is the first performance of the work by the
Grant Park Orchestra.
David Diamond, born in 1915 in Rochester, began
“composing” as a small boy in a notation of his own invention.
Financial difficulties forced the family to live with relatives
in Cleveland in 1927, but there young David’s musical abilities brought him to the
attention of the local violin teacher André de Ribaupierre, who underwrote his study in
the preparatory department of the Cleveland Institute of Music. The family returned to
Rochester in 1929, and David was accepted as a preparatory student at the Eastman
School. He then spent a year as an undergraduate at Eastman, but in 1934 went to
New York, where he supported himself with odd jobs while studying at the New Music
School with Roger Sessions. In 1935, his Sinfonietta won the $2,500 first prize in a
competition sponsored by bandleader Paul Whiteman; George Gershwin was one of
the judges. Diamond was subsequently commissioned to write a ballet entitled Tom
on a scenario by e.e. cummings, for which the patron, Cary Ross, paid his expenses to
travel to Paris to collaborate with the production’s choreographer, Léonide Massine.
Diamond returned to Paris the following year to study with Nadia Boulanger, meeting
and receiving inspiration from Stravinsky, Ravel, Roussel, Charles Munch and André
Gide during his stay. After another year of frugal living in New York’s Greenwich Village
(during which he worked as a violinist on the popular Lucky Strike Hit Parade radio
show), he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to return to Europe to
resume his studies with Boulanger.
2015 Program Notes, Book 3 | 43
Friday, July 3, 2015
With the outbreak of World War II, Diamond returned to the United States, living for
a time at the artists’ colony at Yaddo, near Saratoga Springs, New York. He composed
steadily during the war years, and received important commissions, performances
and awards. He returned to Europe on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1951, and settled in
Florence for the next 14 years. After attending a concert of his music in honor of his
fiftieth birthday at the Aspen Festival in Colorado in 1965, he remained in this country,
teaching at the Manhattan School of Music for two years before moving to Rochester to
devote himself entirely to composition until 1973, when he joined the Juilliard faculty.
He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1966, and appointed
its vice-president in 1974. In 1995, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts at a
ceremony held at the White House. He died in Rochester in 2005.
The composer wrote of his Rounds for String Orchestra, commissioned by conductor
Dimitri Mitropoulos and composed in 1944, “The two outer Allegro movements enclose
a slow movement of lyric intensity. Canonic and fugal devices of imitation control the
three movements, which are played without pause.”
CELLO CONCERTO IN D MINOR (1876)
Édouard Lalo (1823-1892)
Lalo’s Cello Concerto is scored for pairs of woodwinds, four
horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. The
performance time is 26 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first
performed this work on July 15, 1959, with Leo Kopp conducting
and Leopold Teraspulsky was the soloist.
Edouard Lalo’s early musical training was at the conservatory
in Lille, where he was born in 1823; he later transferred to the Paris Conservatoire to
study composition and violin. He started composing in the 1840s, but, discouraged
by the lack of performances and publications of his music, he abandoned his creative
work for almost a decade to play viola (and later second violin) in the ArmingaudJacquard Quartet. His muse was rekindled in 1865 upon his marriage to Julie Bernier
de Maligny, a gifted contralto who performed many of his songs in recital and who
also inspired his first opera, Fiesque. The Divertissement for orchestra (1872), based on
ballet music from Fiesque, was his first important success as a composer. Encouraged
by the formation of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871 and the support of
such conductors as Pasdeloup, Lamoureux and Colonne, Lalo produced a succession
of instrumental works that brought him to the forefront of French music, including
the Violin Concerto (1874) and Symphonie Espagnole (1875), both premiered by the
celebrated Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate. His eminent position in French music
was confirmed when he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1888.
Lalo’s Cello Concerto (1876) opens with a slow introduction (headed “Prélude” in
the score) that previews the thematic material of the movement. The main body of the
movement is disposed in a strict sonata form: opening theme built on a quick ascent
through the tonic arpeggio; second theme almost dreamy in its Romantic lyricism; an
extended development section based on the main and introduction themes; and a full
recapitulation. The second movement (“Intermezzo”) juxtaposes a sweetly swaying song
(the entire Concerto uses only 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 meters) with contrasting pixie-ish music in
the nature of a scherzo. (Lalo’s melodic facility seems to have inspired by his concerted
works for strings. He produced so much thematic material for the Symphonie Espagnole
that it fills five movements.) The finale opens with a slow introduction before launching
into a vivacious, dance-like rondo which turns to bright D major to close the work.
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Friday, July 3, 2015
SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN E-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 97,
“RHENISH” (1850)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony calls for pairs of woodwinds,
four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.
Performance time is 32 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first
performed this work on July 10, 1964, Louis Lane conducting.
Robert Schumann arrived in Düsseldorf on September 2, 1850 to
assume his new duties as conductor of the local orchestra and choral society. He seemed
pleased with the situation: the musical forces were skilled enough to present an annual
music festival that had been conducted by such luminaries as Mendelssohn; Schumann’s
home life with his beloved wife, Clara, was happy; he had been composing a steady
stream of new music for nearly two decades; and his position offered him the chance to
live in the heart of the Rhineland, on the legendary river itself, a region for which he had
harbored great fondness throughout his life. During the three months following his move
to Düsseldorf, he wrote both the Cello Concerto and the “Rhenish” Symphony.
The inspiration for the Symphony came from the Schumanns’ visit to Cologne in
1850. The city and its great cathedral, still unfinished centuries after its inception,
made such a powerful impression on the composer that he determined to write a
work which, he said, “mirrors here and there something of Rhenish life.” Though he
provided only the fourth of the Symphony’s five movements with a programmatic title,
the second and last movements reflect the spirit and style of peasant dances, while
the first shows the confidence and joy Schumann felt in his new surroundings and the
third the deep contentment he found in living close to the Rhine. The fourth movement
was originally titled, “In the character of an accompaniment to a solemn ceremony.”
This great movement, which stands at the pinnacle of Schumann’s symphonic
achievement, grew from the ritual that the composer observed at the Cologne
Cathedral on November 12, 1850, when Archbishop Johannes von Geissel was
elevated to the rank of Cardinal. So overwhelmed was Schumann with the magnificent
service in that great church that he produced what the noted British musicologist
Sir Donald Tovey later dubbed “one of the finest pieces of ecclesiastical polyphony
since Bach.” Schumann, who revered and studied Bach’s music for all of his life, would
have been immensely pleased with Tovey’s evaluation.
The opening movement of Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony launches
without introduction into its main theme. This striding melody, characterized by its
buoyant syncopations and bright vitality, precedes a vigorous scalar motive and a lyrical
second theme, all of which are combined with considerable craft in one of Schumann’s
most elaborate developmental sections. The second movement, notable for its rich
harmonic palette and its two-trio structure, resembles a slow Ländler, the
peasant dance that was the forerunner of the waltz. The brief third movement, only 54
measures long, is a songful interlude similar in spirit to the many mood paintings
that abound in Schumann’s works for solo piano. The penultimate movement is the
composer’s depiction of the majestic ceremony in Cologne Cathedral. Its mystical
atmosphere is as much the product of its exquisite sonority—horns and bassoons
enhanced by the noble voices of the trombones, heard here for the first time in the
Symphony—as of its strict contrapuntal style. The finale exudes the aura of a folk
festival, as though Schumann had left the misty Gothic interior of the Cathedral to find
a sun-lit square filled with carnival revelers immediately outside. At the climax of the
movement, the Cathedral music again bursts forth from the winds and brass, and the
work closes with an energetic coda alluding to the theme of the first movement.
2015 Program Notes, Book 3 | 45