Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor Christopher Bell, Chorus Director Water Music Friday, June 20, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, June 21, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker Pavilion GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA Carlos Kalmar, Conductor HANDEL arr. Harty Suite from Water Music Allegro Air: Andante un poco allegretto Bourrée - Hornpipe Andante espressivo Allegro deciso INTERMISSION WEBER Jubel-Ouvertüre ELGAR Symphony No. 1 in A-flat Andante. Nobilmente e semplice — Allegro Allegro molto — Adagio Lento — Allegro This concert is sponsored by the Smart Family Foundation and Joan and Robert Feitler Friday’s concert is being broadcast live on 98.7WFMT 2014 Program Notes, Book 2 43 Week 2 052314.indd 43 5/23/14 4:33 PM MEET OUR NEW MUSICIANS HANNAH CHOI studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, New England Conservatory, and the Manhattan School of Music, and is a substitute member of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She joins the Grant Park Orchestra as a section first violin after performing with orchestras and festivals around the world, and winning first place at the Korean Music Association Competition and the concerto competition of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Where is your hometown? Born in Lubbock Texas, raised in Daejeon, South Korea What are some of the highlights of your career so far? Playing the Barber Violin Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under maestro Christoph Eschenbach was thrilling, and playing under Sir Simon Rattle was an illuminating and inspiring experience. Who are some of your musical heroes? I’ve always admired the artistry of Leonidas Kavakos and Gil Shaham. What would you be if you were not a musician? Honestly, I don’t think I could be anything but a musician, but I also love makeup, so being a makeup artist would be awesome. What are you most looking forward to this summer in Chicago? I have heard so many great things about the high quality of the orchestra and the summer experience in Chicago and I’m just thrilled to be a part of it. The first time I visited Chicago was when I auditioned and I didn’t really have much time to wander and enjoy the city, so I look forward to experiencing all that I can this summer. YOUMING CHEN joins both the Grant Park Orchestra as a section violist and the Kansas City Symphony as Associate Principal Viola in 2014. He attended the University of Michigan and the Julliard School, and is earning his Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Missouri-Kansas City. He lives in Kansas City with his wife Alice Huang and their twin daughters. Where is your hometown? Linkou, Tapei, Taiwan. What are some of your career highlights? Playing with Sir Colin Davis at Proms in Royal Albert Hall. What’s the most exciting part of playing at the Grant Park Music Festival? Playing wonderful music with wonderful musicians in a beautiful outdoor space in Chicago. What would you be if you were not a musician? A chef or a coffee roaster. I love coffee-ing, from roasting, grinding, to brewing. Every step is important. What are you looking forward to about summer in Chicago? Enjoying the outdoors in a metro area, taking the family to the beaches, aquarium and zoo. 44 2014 Program Notes, Book 2 Week 2 052314.indd 44 5/23/14 4:33 PM Friday, June 20 and Saturday, June 21, 2014 CARLOS KALMAR’s biography can be found on Page 16. SUITE FROM WATER MUSIC (1717) George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) Handel’s Water Music, as arranged by Hamilton Harty, is scored for pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. The performance time is 16 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this arrangement on August 31, 1942, with Kurt Herbert Adler conducting. On July 19, 1717, two days after the event, the London Daily Courant carried the following report: “On Wednesday Evening, the King took Water at Whitehall ... and went up the River towards Chelsea. Many other Barges with Persons of Quality attended, and so great a Number of Boats, that the whole River in a manner was cover’d; a City Company’s Barge was employ’d for the Musick, wherein were 50 Instruments of all sorts, who play’d all the Way from Lambeth ... the finest Symphonies, compos’d express for the Occasion, by Mr. Hendel [sic]; which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaid over three times going and returning.” Handel modeled his Water Music on the festive, outdoor compositions written by such French masters as Lalande and Mouret to accompany the al fresco suppers, parties and barge excursions at Versailles. (The theme for television’s original Masterpiece Theater derived from just such a work by Mouret.) The Water Music, like those French works, is simple in texture, dance-like in rhythm and majestic in spirit, and gives prominence to the bracing sonorities of the wind instruments that made outside performance viable. Many of the movements recall the dance forms that are the basis of all Baroque suites; the other quick movements, though untitled, are also related to various dance types. The slow sections derive either from the limpid, flowing operatic aria of which Handel was his day’s undisputed master or from such dances as the sarabande. (The manuscript of the Water Music is lost, so there is no way to know exactly the order or even the precise instrumentation in which the various movements were intended to be played. The compilation of the music into suites was the job of later editors, so the music heard may differ from one concert to another.) In the 1920s, the Irish-born conductor and composer Sir Hamilton Harty made an arrangement for modern orchestra of several movements from Handel’s Water Music. Harty’s suite opens with a bracing, fanfare-like Allegro that features the horns, traditionally associated with outdoors and the hunt. The graceful Air that follows is poignant in mood and dignified in demeanor. Next come a Bourrée, a spirited, duple-meter dance of French origin, and an English Hornpipe, whose nautical associations are particularly appropriate for the Water Music. The Andante suggests a wordless operatic lament. The suite closes with a festive Allegro that contrasts the bright sonorities of strings and woodwinds with the heraldic proclamations of the brass. Of this wonderful music, Martin Bookspan wrote, “Let it merely be said that for sheer entertainment and joy, the music that Handel composed for the King’s pleasure on that summer’s evening has few rivals in the whole literature.” 2014 Program Notes, Book 2 45 Week 2 052314.indd 45 5/23/14 4:33 PM Friday, June 20 and Saturday, June 21, 2014 JUBEL-OUVERTÜRE (“JUBILEE OVERTURE”), OP. 59 (1818) Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) Weber’s Jubel Overture is scored for pairs of woodwinds plus two piccolos, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is 8 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on July 16, 1941, with Leo Kopp conducting. On Christmas Day 1816, Weber learned that he had been appointed director of German and French opera at Dresden. He moved there immediately, and before the end of January had established his reputation with a meticulous production of Méhul’s Joseph, a novelty in a house that had previously presented almost exclusively Italian opera but one applauded by King Friedrich August I of Saxony himself. Francesco Morlacchi, Dresden’s incumbent director of Italian opera, saw a threat to his dominance of the city’s musical life in Weber’s success, and he made things difficult for the newcomer at every opportunity. Weber persevered at Dresden, however, and he was associated with the opera house there for the remaining decade of his brief life. In 1818, the Dresden court made elaborate plans to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Friedrich August’s accession to the throne of Saxony, and Weber was charged with composing a Jubel-Cantate (“Jubilee Cantata”) for the ceremonies on September 20th. It was the largest of the thirteen occasional works he wrote on royal command, but Morlacchi successfully intrigued to stop its performance, so Weber instead composed a Jubel-Ouvertüre (“Jubilee Overture”) for the event that shares nothing more with the cantata than part of its title. Joan and Robert Feitler Smart Family Foundation Joan and Robert Feitler and the Smart Family Foundation are proud to sponsor this concert series at the Grant Park Music Festival. Native Chicagoans, the Feitlers have long celebrated and supported the arts in this city. Returning to Chicago in 1996 after living for many years in Milwaukee, Joan and Bob Feitler have been deeply involved in educational and arts funding through the Smart Family Foundation and through their own work with many Chicago and national organizations. 46 2014 Program Notes, Book 2 Week 2 052314.indd 46 5/23/14 4:33 PM Friday, June 20 and Saturday, June 21, 2014 The Jubilee Overture opens with some appropriately noble strains as introduction to the sonata-form heart of the work, which comprises a vigorous main theme in Weber’s characteristic theatrical style, a graceful second subject, a development section that deals briefly with both, and a full recapitulation of the exposition’s materials. Weber closed his monarchial tribute with a full-throated scoring of the melody Americans know as My Country, ’Tis of Thee, which we appropriated from Britain’s God, Save the Queen, as did the Germans in the 1790s as an unofficial national anthem with a text beginning Heil Dir im Siegerkranz (“Hail to Thee with the Victor’s Crown”). Weber had originally arranged the tune in 1815 for his cantata Kampf und Sieg (“Struggle and Victory”) celebrating the Duke of Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, and deemed it an appropriate epilogue for his Jubilee Overture three years later. SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN A-FLAT, OP. 55 (1907-1908) Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps and strings. The performance time is 50 minutes. This is the first performance of this work by the Grant Park Orchestra. In 1920, George Bernard Shaw, reflecting on the musical situation during his early days as a London critic in turn-of-the-20th-century Britain, wrote, “The phenomenon of greatness in music had vanished from England. For my part, I expected nothing of any English composer.... But when I heard the Enigma Variations, I sat up and said ‘Whew!’ I knew we had got it at last.” The inspiration for his enthusiasm was the work of a 43-year-old musician whose military bearing concealed a sensitive, withdrawn, insecure personality who was the most talented English composer in generations — Edward Elgar. The overwhelming success of the Enigma Variations, premiered in 1899, and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius the following year brought Elgar’s music to the attention of audiences around the world and gave England its first musical figure of international significance since Handel. In 1899, just at the time of Enigma and Gerontius, there appeared in the Musical Times a brief announcement that Elgar was planning a “Gordon Symphony,” inspired by the military and administrative career in China, Egypt and the Sudan of General Charles George Gordon, a hero particularly revered by the composer’s mother. “As to ‘Gordon,’ the thing possesses me, but I can’t write it down yet,” Elgar told his publisher and friend, A.J. Jaeger. Later in 1899, Elgar wrote of “making a shot at it,” but in 1901 he was still able to tell Hans Richter, champion of his music and conductor of the Enigma premiere, only about “the Symphony I am trying to write.” Early in 1907, during a series of lectures on the orchestral scores of the great composers that he gave at Birmingham University, Elgar said, “Some writers are inclined to be positive that the symphony is dead ... but when the looked-for genius comes, it may be absolutely revived.” Elgar forthwith proceeded to take up his own challenge. Acting on his decade-old interest in writing a symphony and cajoled by his friends (Gustav Holst once said that he never composed anything “unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance”), Elgar displayed a “great beautiful tune” to his family on June 29, 1907 — the grand hymnal melody that opens and recurs throughout the First Symphony. He continued to sketch the new score until 2014 Program Notes, Book 2 47 Week 2 052314.indd 47 5/23/14 4:33 PM Friday, June 20 and Saturday, June 21, 2014 the fall, when he left on November 5th to winter in Rome. Unable to secure a quiet studio in that city, he accomplished little on the composition during the next six months, and it was not until the following June, after he had returned home, that entries about the Symphony again appear in his diary. Except for conducting obligations at the Three Choirs Festival and at Ostend in Belgium that summer, his attention for the next three months focused almost entirely on the Symphony. Only the occasional diversions of bicycle riding, bird-watching and tending his daughter Carice’s rabbits kept him from completely exhausting himself in the labor. The Symphony No. 1 in A-flat, first mooted nine years earlier, was finally completed on September 25, 1908. Elgar was fifty-one, eight years older than Brahms when he finished his First Symphony. The Symphony opens with an expansive introductory melody marked “nobilmente,” which Elgar said was intended to be “simple &, in intention, noble & elevating ... something above everyday & sordid things.” This motive is the motto theme whose recurrences play such an important part in the emotional progress of the work. The rest of the first movement is filled with a vast sonata form whose restless mood is in stark contrast to that of the majestic introduction. The movement closes inconclusively, mysteriously. Next comes a portentous essay headed Allegro molto. (Elgar eschewed for this movement the designation of scherzo, with its implications of humor and jesting.) The theme of the second movement is transformed in the Adagio, which follows without pause, in music that Michael Kennedy said exudes “a benedictory tranquillity which is marvelously sustained and intensified.... Elgar seems, for once, to have been at peace with himself.” The restlessness of the first two movements resumes with the finale, but is banished at the work’s end by the transcendent apotheosis of the great hymn theme that opened the Symphony. ©2014 Dr. Richard E. Rodda Week 2 052314.indd 48 5/23/14 4:33 PM