Download FROM PARIS TO LENINGRAD - Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Paris, 1920s
Leningrad, 1920s
FROM PARIS
TO LENINGRAD
THE DECADES
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PROJECT
1920–1929
CONCERT PROGRAM
Darius Milhaud
La création du monde, Op. 81
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
Thursday, November 3, 2016
I. Andante – Allegro
II. Andantino
III. Allegro ma non troppo
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Intermission (Nov 2 & 3 only)
James Gaffigan
conductor
In the North Lobby, join Decades curator Tom Allen in conversation with
Ingrid Mida (Fashion Historian and Curator of Ryerson University’s Fashion
Research Collection) as they discuss the iconic fashions of the 1920s.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10
I. Allegretto – Allegro non troppo
II. Allegro
III. Lento
IV. Allegro molto – Lento
8:00pm
2:00pm
7:30pm
Jon Kimura Parker
piano
MASTERWORKS (ENCORE) SERIES
PRESENTED BY
CASUAL CONCERT SERIES PRESENTED BY
Peter
Oundjian
Music
Director
As we continue to enjoy the music of the 1920s, one thing that becomes obvious
is just how creative the decade was. James Gaffigan leads the Orchestra in three
very different works, beginning with Darius Milhaud’s clever ballet, La création
du monde. During this period, composers discovered jazz, largely through
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Europeans took up the sounds of jazz in their
own way, and Milhaud’s score is a perfect example of the sophistication that
they brought to it. Toronto favourite Jon Kimura Parker joins the Orchestra for
Prokofiev’s wonderful Third Piano Concerto, one of his most popular works.
Prokofiev was a unique figure in the 20th century, in that he retained a strong
connection with the Romantic era, but spoke in a dynamic, rhythmically charged
language that was uniquely his own. His younger countryman, Shostakovich, was
catapulted to stardom with the première of his First Symphony. It completely
abandons any trace of Romanticism, and substitutes spiky, acerbic, rather bleakly
humorous, and singularly contemporary sounds.
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THE DETAILS
Darius Milhaud
La création du monde, Op. 81
16
min
Born: Aix-en-Provence, France, Sep 4, 1892
Died: Geneva, Switzerland, Jun 22, 1974
Composed: 1923
Milhaud created one of the broadest and most
varied catalogues of music of any twentiethcentury composer. Out of his nearly 450 works,
the early pieces, such as this fascinating jazzinflected dance score, are generally regarded as
his freshest and most enjoyable creations.
In 1923, he received a commission from Rolf
de Maré, producer of the innovative company
known as the Swedish Ballet. Author Blaise
Cendrars and choreographer Jean Börlin
developed their contributions to the new project
from African myths about the beginnings of
life. Rituals from the same continent inspired
designer Fernand Léger’s scenery and costumes.
Milhaud quickly realized that a musical style
with African roots—jazz—would suit the material
perfectly. As he wrote, “I adopted the same
orchestra as used in Harlem, seventeen solo
instruments, and I made wholesale use of the
jazz style to convey a purely classical feeling.”
In the original production, the curtain rose on
near darkness, gradually revealing a mass of
intertwined dancers. The giant gods Mzamé,
Mebère, and N’Kwa, African gods of creation,
intervened in this state of chaos by chanting
magic spells. Life began to erupt: trees shot up
and dropped their leaves, which sprouted into
animals. As night turned into day, human limbs
began to appear, until a male and a female
dancer emerged and performed a dance of
desire, then a mating dance. Finally, the couple,
united by love, stood peacefully on stage, as the
first Spring began.
Here is Milhaud’s own description of his
emotionally charged yet tender and dignified
music: “The expansive saxophone melody is
followed by the rhythmic theme, the fugue that
infects the whole orchestra with its agitation.
The music accompanying the appearance of the
plants and animals is very sinuous. Furthermore,
there is the clarinet concertino which heralds
the dance of desire, then the superimposition
of the concertino and the fugue which marks
the climax of the ballet, the mating dance. The
saxophone is heard once again and the coda
brings together and disperses the work’s different
melodic elements within the space of a few bars.”
Program note by Don Anderson
Fernand Léger’s set and costume designs for the original
production of La création du monde.
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Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
28
min
Born: Sontzovka, Russia, Apr 27, 1891
Died: Moscow, Russia, Mar 5, 1953
Composed: 1921
For most of the spring and summer of 1921,
energized by recent success overseas, Prokofiev
retreated to the village of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins,
on the coast of Brittany, where his big project
was the Third Piano Concerto. Following a strict
regimen of composition and exercise, he worked
contentedly and productively, even after a fall
from a bicycle turned his face “into a cutlet.”
On December 16, he performed the concerto
for the first time, with the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra. It was decently received, but later met
with outright hostility in New York; it had better
success in Europe and Russia—indeed, it was
for a time Prokofiev’s “meal ticket.” He made a
scintillating, unsurpassed recording of it in 1932.
A TASTE OF AMERICA
Prokofiev left post-Revolutionary Russia
for New York in the spring of 1918. As a
“Bolshevik composer” he was, at first, not
warmly welcomed in America, but his
reputation as a pianist and composer had
preceded him, and he had enough success
in his first concerts in New York to be
dubbed “the musical news of the season.”
Still, when he visited Europe in April, 1920, it
soon became obvious that audiences there
were more sympathetic to the avant-garde
style of his music. Indeed, after the hostile
reception of his Third Piano Concerto in
New York, Prokofiev gave up on America
and returned to Europe in 1922.
In this brilliant and thrillingly virtuosic concerto,
Classical in its forms and proportions, Prokofiev
neatly balances and integrates the piano
and orchestra parts. The musical idiom is
unapologetically modern, yet presents no
insurmountable challenges to lay listeners (not for
nothing is this Prokofiev’s most popular concerto).
It is not a “neurotic” piece, Prokofiev insisted; there
are no Stravinskian “dirty tricks”. Various sides of
his musical persona come together here: the
music can be unabashedly Romantic as well as
sarcastic, soaring, and lush as well as bustling and
angular, playful as well as violent.
The first movement—notwithstanding the
poignant melody with which it opens—is
propulsive and passionate, sometimes ironic
(note the castanets!), with a busy, toccatalike piano part. The theme of the second
movement is a lovely, courtly, tongue-in-cheek
march recalling the faux eighteenth-century
confections of the Classical Symphony; five
variations follow, all highly individual and
extravagantly imaginative, and at the height of
it all, the theme returns in its original form.
The opening theme of the finale is a sort of
grotesque tiptoeing, evidently humorous—at
first, anyway: the movement turns out to be
substantial, with a fiery piano part. Prokofiev
apes the rondo form of many Classical concerto
finales, and in so doing forges a balance of
moods that recalls the first movement. At the
heart of the finale is a beautiful slow waltz, though
the movement ultimately drives to a rousing close.
Program note by Kevin Bazzana
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THE DETAILS
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10
28
min
Born: St. Petersburg, Russia, Sep 25, 1906
Died: Moscow, Russia, Aug 9, 1975
Composed: 1924–1925
Early in Shostakovich’s career, he truly seemed
the brightest musical beacon of the time and
place. When he completed Symphony No. 1 at
age nineteen, the conflicts between him and
the repressive Soviet cultural bureaucracy that
would repeatedly bedevil him lay years ahead.
The following year, this remarkably assured
work served as his graduation exercise from the
Leningrad Conservatory. The highly successful
public première (the scherzo was repeated by
audience demand), took place in Leningrad on
May 12, 1926. The symphony rapidly made its
way around the world, entering the repertoires
of such eminent conductors as Arturo Toscanini
and Bruno Walter, maestros who did not
conduct a great deal of contemporary music.
Even in so early a work lay the seeds of much
that would follow. Throughout, it runs, for
A SYMPHONIE-GROTESQUE
After completing the
first two movements,
Shostakovich admitted
to a friend that he was
in a significantly darker
frame of mind as he
composed the latter half of the work. “I am
in a terrible mood,” he wrote. “Sometimes
I just want to shout. To cry out in terror.
Doubts and problems. All this darkness
suffocates me. From sheer misery, I’ve
started to compose the finale of the
symphony. It’s turning out pretty gloomy.”
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example, a deep if not yet fully mined vein of
melancholy and questioning. This reflected
not only his own, introspective personality but
also his love of similarly minded composers
such as Mahler, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky.
His bold, sometimes raucous sense of humour
is also already on clear display, a quality
heightened by recent experience playing piano
accompaniments to silent film comedies at the
Bright Reel cinema.
The four movements of Symphony No. 1 divide
into two pairs. The dominant quality in the first
half is a brittle sense of humour. The impudence
that is the primary element of the first movement
increases sharply in the second. In October
1924, Shostakovich wrote in regards to these
two movements, “In general I am satisfied
with the symphony. Not bad. A symphony like
any other, although it really ought to be called
a symphonie-grotesque.” Forecasting more
serious moods to come, Shostakovich provided
a counterweight for the second movement’s
primary mood through a mysterious, chant-like
second theme.
The second half opens with a funeral march.
The darkest edges of its overall sobriety are
regularly cushioned by what would become
another Shostakovich trademark: prominent,
highly expressive passages for solo instruments.
The finale, which follows on without a break, is
marked by sharp contrasts. Outbursts of feverish
activity alternate with passages of deep meditation,
wrapped up by an assertive conclusion.
Program note by Don Anderson
THE ARTISTS
James Gaffigan
conductor
James Gaffigan made his TSO début in April, 2008.
Hailed for the natural ease of his conducting and the
compelling insight of his musicianship, James Gaffigan
continues to attract international attention and is considered
by many to be the most outstanding young American
conductor working today. In January 2010, he was
appointed Chief Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest
Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; recently, he concluded
his tenure as Principal Guest Conductor of the Gurzenich Orchestra in Cologne.
In addition to these titled positions, Mr. Gaffigan is in high demand to work with the
leading orchestras and opera houses throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
Mr. Gaffigan’s first recording with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra for Harmonia
Mundi, an all-Wolfgang Rihm disc, received critical acclaim on both sides of the
Atlantic, as did his second recording with Lucerne of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 and
the American Suite, also for Harmonia Mundi. He is in the process of recording the
complete Prokofiev symphonies with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and his
most recent recording is of the first Tchaikovsky and second Prokofiev piano concertos,
with Kirill Gerstein and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin for the Myrios label.
Jon Kimura Parker
piano
Jon Kimura Parker made his TSO début in April, 1985.
Known for his passionate artistry and engaging stage
presence, pianist Jon Kimura Parker’s brilliant and versatile
career has taken him from Carnegie Hall and Berlin’s
Philharmonie to the Beijing Concert Hall and the Sydney
Opera House. This season, Mr. Parker performs as concerto
soloist with the Ann Arbor, Colorado, Pittsburgh, National, Toronto, and Vancouver
symphony orchestras, as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and National
Arts Centre Orchestra. A committed educator, Jon Kimura Parker is Professor of Piano
at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He is also Artistic Advisor of the
Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Parker has recorded for Telarc and CBC, and
on his own label. His new CD, Fantasy, features Fantasies of Schubert and Schumann,
as well as the sensational Wizard of Oz Fantasy by William Hirtz.
“Jackie” Parker studied with Edward Parker, Keiko Parker, Lee Kum-Sing, Robin Wood, Marek
Jablonski, and Adele Marcus. He won the Gold Medal at the 1984 Leeds International
Piano Competition. He lives in Houston with his wife, violinist Aloysia Friedmann, and
their daughter Sophie. For further information, please visit jonkimuraparker.com.
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