Download Program Notes PDF - The Grant Park Music Festival

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
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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
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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
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