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SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY
A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT
December 12, 13 and 14, 2014
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / “Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ,” BWV 639
ARR. LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI
(I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott,” BWV 680: Giant Fugue
ARR. LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI
(We all believe in one true God)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”
ARR. EUGENE ORMANDY
(Wake up, the voice is calling us)
DAVID BRUCE
Violin Concerto “Fragile Light” (World Premiere)
Delicate, shimmering
Misterioso, giocoso, a dance of light
“nward, reverential
Gil Shaham, violin
INTERMISSION
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
Largo – Allegro moderato
Allegro molto
Adagio
Allegro vivace
PROGRAM NOTES
Three Chorale Preludes:
“Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” (arr. Stokowski), BMV 639
“Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott” (arr. Stokowski), BMV 680: Giant Fugue
“Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (arr. Ormandy), BMV 645
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig
Approximate performance time for these three selections is 12 minutes.
As a devout Lutheran, Bach took very seriously Martin Luther’s call for music (and a language)
that would be available to all members of the congregation. In the effort to reach the common man and
make religion more immediate and meaningful, the music of the Lutheran service was built not on the
Latin of the Roman Catholic Church – chanted by the priest – but on the simple and sturdy hymn-tunes of
Germany (some of them by Martin Luther himself), which could be sung by all the members of a
congregation. Bach was drawn to these old German chorale melodies throughout his career. He wrote
cantatas based on chorale tunes, he included chorales in his passions, he composed about 30 new chorale
tunes of his own, and he also made about 400 reharmonizations of existing chorale tunes, usually for solo
organ. Today’s program offers three of these chorale preludes in orchestral transcriptions by former music
directors of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
“Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” was originally from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein, a collection of short
works for organ that he composed in Weimar between 1713 and 1716. This brief prelude is hauntingly
beautiful and Leopold Stokowski – himself a distinguished organist – made his transcription for
woodwinds and strings. Some listeners will recognize this music from its use in the 1972 Russian
science-fiction film Solaris.
Bach composed “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott” about 1739, and it was published as part of the
third volume of his Clavierübung, a collection of organ pieces. The chorale melody is from Martin
Luther’s hymn of belief (We all believe in one true God), and Bach sets it as a four-part fugue; this chorale
prelude is sometimes nicknamed Giant Fugue. Concisely constructed, it rises to a powerful climax that
Stokowski’s arrangement captures magnificently. This was one of Stokowski’s own favorites among his
arrangements: he made it in 1924 and recorded it with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1929 and again in
1960.
The best-known of these chorale preludes is certainly “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.” The
original melody appears to have been composed by Jakob Praetorius about 1604, and Bach used it twice;
once as an organ prelude and again as the fourth movement of his Cantata No. 140, which was composed
in November 1731 (and which takes the title of the chorale for the entire cantata). Eugene Ormandy made
his transcription from the cantata version, which has the noble, flowing melody on top, the tenor line in the
center (telling of the approach of the bridegroom – Christ – and the excitement of the maidens who await
him) and the continuo beneath them. Ormandy keeps Bach’s seamless melodic line in the violins, but he
assigns the tenor part to the horns. Ormandy’s transcription drives to a resplendent conclusion that – while
far from Bach – is quite effective in its own dramatic way.
Violin Concerto “Fragile Light” (world premiere) [25 min.]
DAVID BRUCE
Born 1970, Stamford
Approximate performance time, 25 minutes.
A program note from composer David Bruce:
There are three aspects to the subtitle “Fragile Light.” My writing of this concerto coincided with
my attempt to improve my understanding of the universe by grappling with a book on quantum physics by
the Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Frank Wilczek, called The Lightness of Being. (The title is a winking
reference to Milan Kundera’s famous novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.) In the book, the author
describes how his love for physics emerged from a desire to understand the “hidden life” behind things. It
struck me that many of us in different walks of life are attempting to get in touch with this hidden world,
which is a kind of spiritual quest, even if it isn’t necessarily a religious one. For me, composing falls very
much into this category, a spiritual quest to understand the world better – and if I’m honest, a life without
composing would, for me, feel like it had only “touched the surface.” The ways in which music achieves
what it does and reflects those deeper concerns of our humanity are mysterious; the best we can say is it
shines a kind of fragile light on them.
The second aspect is somewhat related. For astronauts, the view of earth from space is a deeply
spiritual experience, not to mention an environmental one. It becomes clear to them how connected we all
are to one another, and how reliant we are on this beautiful planet within the vast emptiness of space. I was
similarly struck recently by a photograph known as “Pale Blue Dot,” taken from the Voyager I spacecraft
as it hurtled beyond the edges of our solar system, in which the earth appears as a barely visible speck of
light; the entire planet, all of human lives and history contained within a tiny, insignificant fleck in space. I
realized that here was another kind of fragile light, and that many of the spiritual reflections in my music
circle around my concerns for and connections to planet earth, and the delicate but beautiful life we all
find ourselves sharing on it.
Finally, there is a more literal sense of fragility and lightness that can be found throughout the
concerto, both structurally – trying to create a structure that lets light in and doesn’t get bogged down –
and at the level of fine detail, which is often quiet, higher in the register and with textures that are delicate
and/or floating. I have also tried to bring a feeling of lightness to bear on my harmonic language, allowing
it to similarly float freely. Each of the three movements contain related harmonic movements that gyrate
round in patterns of circles within circles, or spirals within spirals, never “grounding” themselves in one
tonic. In the final movement the metaphor of the receding fleck of light in space can be most clearly heard,
as the music climbs higher and higher throughout, before finally disappearing from sight.
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Born April 1, 1873, Oneg
Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills
Approximate performance time, 60 minutes.
In the fall of 1906 the 33-year-old Rachmaninoff moved from Moscow to Dresden, taking his wife
and young daughter with him. There were many reasons for this move. Professional commitments in
Russia, where he was a conductor at the Bolshoi, had begun to dominate his time, and so had the social
demands that accompanied such a position. The increasingly tense political situation in Russia – the
previous year had seen the massacre in St. Petersburg of 500 demonstrators by the czar’s troops –
doubtless drove the composer to look for more peaceful surroundings. In Dresden he found a quiet
apartment and over the next few years composed what would be his finest orchestral works: the Second
Symphony, the tone poem The Isle of the Dead and the Third Piano Concerto. Rachmaninoff began work
on the new symphony in October 1906, had a rough sketch complete by the following January, but then
worked slowly and laboriously on the orchestration through the following year. He led the successful
premiere in Moscow in February 1908.
The Second Symphony is Rachmaninoff's longest orchestral work, and it shows all his virtues:
soaring melodies darkly tinged with Slavic intensity, sumptuous writing for full orchestra and careful
attention to orchestral color (such as important parts for solo oboe and English horn, solo strings and
glockenspiel). This is a very long symphony, and in the “bad old days” it was customary to perform it with
numerous cuts; these had been officially sanctioned by a reluctant composer in the name of making the
music more “compact” (and also to help get the symphony recorded in the era of 78-rpm records). Today it
is almost always played in its uncut version, which stretches out to about an hour. (At exactly the time
Rachmaninoff was writing this symphony, his friend and colleague Gustav Mahler was composing his
Eighth Symphony, a.k.a. “Symphony of a Thousand”; grand symphonic structures were in the air in the
first decade of the twentieth century!)
The stereotype of Rachmaninoff as the gloomy composer of wonderful melodies has led us to
overlook the discipline that underlies his finest music. Much of the Second Symphony is derived directly
from the seven-note motif announced at the very beginning by the lower strings. This shape will reappear
both as theme and rhythm in many ways throughout the symphony. It opens the Largo introduction and is
soon transformed into a flowing melody for violins. This in turn evolves into the true first theme, a pulsing
violin melody at the Allegro moderato; attentive listeners may take particular pleasure in following the
evolution of this seemingly simple figure across the span of the symphony. The lengthy first movement
(nearly 20 minutes) contrasts this flowing main idea with a gentle clarinet tune, and Rachmaninoff builds
the movement to a massive climax.
The second movement, a scherzo marked Allegro molto, is dazzling. Over pounding
accompaniment (the ring of the violins’ open E-strings is an important part of this sound), the entire horn
section punches out the exciting main theme; Rachmaninoff sets this in high relief with a gorgeous second
subject, a violin tune derived from the symphony’s opening motif. The fugal trio section, a tour de force of
contrapuntal writing for the strings, demands virtuoso playing from all sections, and as a countertheme
Rachmaninoff creates an ominous little march built on a series of distant brass fanfares. Instead of
thundering to its close, this movement vanishes in a wisp of smoke.
The Adagio soars on two melodies that seem to sing endlessly: the violins’ melting first theme
(derived once again from the opening motto) and the solo clarinet’s wistful tune, marked Espressivo e
cantabile. Once again, Rachmaninoff spins these simple tunes into a climax of impressive power before
the movement falls away to end quietly. Out of this calm, the boisterous finale leaps to life, propelled by
the wild triplet rhythms of its opening. Again, Rachmaninoff uses secondary material that may sound
familiar – an ominous little march for winds and yet one more soaring melody for violins – and gradually
he begins to re-introduce material from earlier movements. The motto appears in several forms, the main
theme of the Adagio returns in all its glory, and finally the symphony whips to a brilliant close on the
dancing rhythms that opened the finale.
-Program notes by Eric Bromberger
WHY THIS PROGRAM?
Jahja Ling was very enthusiastic in speaking about this program: “I can't wait to hear Gil play
David's concerto – our concerto, commissioned here and to be premiered here.” Regarding the remainder
of the program, he noted that he had learned four of Bach's chorale preludes under the tutelage of his piano
teacher whose own teacher, Busoni, had arranged the pieces for piano. They remain standard piano
repertory pieces today. “Bach wrote these pieces for organ, an instrument with remarkable color capacity
that the piano lacks, although the music's beauty can easily be appreciated in Busoni's transcriptions. The
orchestra, of course, has even greater capacity for color, and each instrument within the orchestra has this
capacity as well. Stokowski was right to arrange Bach's pieces for orchestra. He was an organist, and he
made them sound organ-like when played by the orchestra, especially under his direction. Eugene
Ormandy, in contrast, was a violinist, and his arrangements were attuned to the fabulous string sound of
his 1950s Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as to his remarkable woodwind soloists.”
Continuing, Jahja Ling pointed out that “the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony is probably the most
romantic piece in the orchestral literature. It is a massive work [he said that he was not cutting it, as many
conductors do], very rewarding at its end, but not because of any feelings of relief. The absolutely brilliant
and colorful finale is even more Russian than Tchaikovsky and leaves the audience (and the orchestra)
even more breathless than Tchaikovsky's finales. Everyone adores the big, ultra-romantic principle theme
of the slow movement. Rachmaninoff's innate sense of melody has rarely been approached by others.”
PERFORMANCE HISTORY
The three brief but exquisitely beautiful chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach, in editions
orchestrated by varied conductors for their own uses at concerts, have never before been played at these
concerts, and have been chosen as a group by Jahja Ling. We are also presenting at these concerts the
world premiere of the new Violin Concerto “Fragile Light” by David Bruce, current associate composer of
the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, who had also written the piece commissioned by the Orchestra, Night
Parade, for the Carnegie Hall and China tour last fall. The Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2, the most
famous and popular of his three, was first played by this orchestra when Igor Buketoff guest-conducted
here during the 1967-68 season. This is the work's eighth hearing at these concerts. Its most recent
performance was led by Jahja Ling during the 2008-09 season.
-Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist