Download DVOŘÁK CELLO CONCERTO - Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Statue of Antonín Dvořák by Ivan Meštrović in Stuyvesant Square, New York City
DVOŘÁK CELLO
CONCERTO
8
CONCERT PROGRAM
Qigang Chen
Instants d’un opéra de Pékin (Nov 26 only)
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Antonín Dvořák
Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104
Sunday, November 27, 2016
I. Allegro
II. Adagio ma non troppo
III. Finale: Allegro moderato
Intermission
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
8:00pm
3:00pm
George Weston Recital Hall
Long Yu
conductor
Jian Wang
cello
I. Moderato
II. Allegretto
III. Largo
IV. Allegro non troppo
The Three at the Weston Series
performances are
generously supported by
Margaret and Jim Fleck.
Peter
Oundjian
Music
Director
Long Yu joins us with a dynamic program featuring soloist Jian Wang in
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. This concerto is arguably the cornerstone of the cello
repertoire—a sweeping, symphonic work of substance and style. Dvořák was
deeply influenced by both Wagner and Brahms, but his style is truly personal.
He was one of the first great composers to turn to his national heritage to find
a musical language, and the powerful impact of the German giants is beautifully
tempered with a soulful Slavic quality, combined with a gift for melody that
was second to none. Shostakovich’s striking Fifth Symphony also speaks with a
Slavic tone, especially in the dark, moving, contemplative slow movement. This
is truly a masterwork, a genuine symphony in every way. The music carries us
on a rich and complicated journey, by turns anxious, turbulent, peaceful, and
exuberant. It is one of Shostakovich’s most satisfying works. On Saturday night,
the concert opens with a beautiful work by Qigang Chen—the impressionistic and
atmospheric Instants d’un opéra de Pekin.
9
THE DETAILS
Qigang Chen
Instants d’un opéra de Pékin (Nov 26 only)
17
min
Born: Shanghai, China, Aug 28, 1951
Composed: 2015
Qigang Chen’s Instants d’un opéra de Pékin is
a fusion of traditional Chinese music and basic
principles of Western music. The work was
originally written for piano for the Concours
d’interprétation Olivier Messiaen, in 2000. Chen
created a new version for orchestra for the
inaugural concert of the Shanghai Symphony Hall
in 2014. The world première was performed by
the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, conducted by
Long Yu.
The work is built around xipi and erhuang—two
themes that stem from the principal melodies
of Beijing Opera. The xipi melody conveys
happiness and movement; the erhuang has a
more subdued, meditative quality. Established
after a brief introduction, the two themes are then
presented as variations. The harmonic material
utilizes the pentatonic scale (five-tone scale),
the whole-tone scale, chords moving in parallel
motion, and polytonality.
Qigang Chen’s musical concept is the unifying
factor that binds together the two themes and
overall aesthetic of Instants d’un opéra de Pékin.
The composer achieves a perfect amalgamation
of European and Chinese musical styles.
Program note by Florence Leyssieux; English
translation of the original French text by
Francine Labelle
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Qigang Chen was
studying music as a
teenager at the Central
Conservatory of Music
at the outbreak of the
Cultural Revolution in
1966. He was confined
for three years and underwent “ideological
re-education”, yet went on learning
composition despite social and political
anti-cultural pressures. The state reopened
entry into the Conservatory in 1977 and he
studied there for five years with Luo
Zhongrong. In 1983, Chen won a
postgraduate contest to travel abroad, and
for four years was Olivier Messiaen’s only
student after the master’s retirement from
the Paris Conservatoire. He described how
Chen’s compositions “show real
inventiveness, very great talent, and a total
assimilation of Chinese thinking with European
musical concepts.” Chen has received
commissions from Radio France, Deutsche
Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Stuttgart
RSO, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal,
and the Koussevitzky Foundation. He was
Composer-in-Residence at the Orchestre
Philharmonique de Strasbourg from 2004
to 2006. A new CD of Chen’s works is
scheduled for release by Naxos in 2016.
Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.
10
Antonín Dvořák
Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104
40
min
Born: Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, Bohemia, Sep 8, 1841
Died: Prague, Bohemia, May 1, 1904
Composed: 1894–1895
“As a solo instrument [the cello] isn’t much
good. Its middle register is fine—that’s true—but
the upper voice squeaks and the lower growls.
The finest solo instrument, after all, is—and will
remain—the violin. I have also written a cello
concerto, but am sorry to this day I did so, and I
never intend to write another.”
So said Dvořák late in life—surprising sentiments,
for his cello concerto ranks among his greatest
and most popular works. He began writing it late
in 1894—worn down, he said, by the pestering
of his cellist friend Hanuš Wihan and recently
inspired by Victor Herbert’s cello concerto. He
completed the work in February 1895, in New
York, but in June, back in Bohemia, he made
LEO STERN
Dvořák had hoped
Czech virtuoso cellist
Hanuš Wihan, for
whom he wrote the
Cello Concerto, would
give the première.
Wihan was unavailable, however, so the
Philharmonic Society in London selected
English cellist Leo Stern (1862–1904) to
be the soloist. To placate Dvořák, Stern
went to Prague to study the work with the
composer. The result must have been more
than satisfactory—he gave subsequent
performances of the work in Prague,
Leipzig, and Berlin at Dvořák’s request.
revisions, including a deeply poetic new ending
that he likened to “a sigh”. (It was motivated by the
recent death of his beloved sister-in-law, to whom
he also paid tribute in the impassioned middle
section of the Adagio.) Dvořák conducted the
première, in London, on March 19, 1896.
Although the soloist is backed by a large
orchestra, Dvořák sidesteps problems of balance
with great imagination; he explores an impressive
range of textures and tone colours, yet the
scoring often has the subtlety and transparency
of chamber music. The work has the drama and
rhetoric and interplay of forces of a true concerto,
even if, by contemporary standards, there is
little dazzle (and no cadenza) in the solo part:
Dvořák treats the cello more as a singer than as
a virtuoso, only most obviously in the gorgeous
outpouring of song in the Adagio.
Picturesque and emotionally direct, the concerto
alludes throughout to folk music, whether the
mood is pastoral or driven. All are typical of
Dvořák’s “American style”, though the boundary
between American and Bohemian in his music
is, admittedly, often blurry. Still, this is a work of
symphonic ambition, in which Dvořák handles
Classical forms with confidence, ingenuity, and
flexibility. Each movement is rich in themes yet
evolves organically, as Dvořák indulges his gift for
thematic variation and development: like Brahms,
his hero and champion, he was scarcely capable
of repeating an idea without showing it in some
surprising and profound new light.
Program note by Kevin Bazzana
11
THE DETAILS
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
46
min
Born: St. Petersburg, Russia, Sep 25, 1906
Died: Moscow, Russia, Aug 9, 1975
Composed: 1937
In January 1936, Shostakovich’s opera The Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk District was denounced in
Pravda; in an instant, a popular, celebrated young
composer became an “enemy of the people”.
With the Soviet Union in the throes of the Terror
and the show trials, he now feared for his life,
and fear bred compromise: his monumental
Fifth Symphony, begun the following year,
was conventional in form and accessible in
style. It was first performed, in Leningrad, on
November 21, 1937, to an ecstatic reception,
and in the press it was hailed as a triumph of
“socialist realism”. And thus was Shostakovich
“rehabilitated”.
The Fifth became a hit in the West too and
remains Shostakovich’s most popular work, yet
his real intent in this music is still hotly debated:
The [Fifth Symphony] describes the
formation of a personality (within a social
environment)....In the first movement the
composer-hero’s psychological torments
reach their crisis and give way to ardour....
[The second] is a light-hearted respite from
what had come before....[In the Largo] the
personality submerges itself in the great
epoch that surrounds it, and begins to
resonate with the epoch. With the finale
comes an enormous optimistic lift.
—From a review by Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy,
writer and deputy to the USSR Supreme
Soviet in Izvestiya, December 28, 1937
12
it has been both reviled as propaganda for the
Soviet regime and acclaimed as covert, coded
resistance to Stalin. Today, for instance, many
people interpret the celebratory conclusion not
as heroic but as mock-heroic—as a parody of an
apotheosis, representing the forced rejoicing of
a people under threat, and thus as an indictment
of Soviet propaganda and repression. With the
sources on Shostakovich’s life and work so
confused and corrupted, and his own comments
about his music so often ambiguous, we will
probably never know for sure.
Still, the Fifth makes an impact quite apart from
such questions. It is a self-consciously “Classical”
symphony in many ways, with a conventional
four-movement plan. The mournful, anguished
Largo is the emotional centrepiece of the work.
It is saturated with imagery of death and grieving
and leave-taking, including allusions to orthodox
funeral music; it reaches a searing climax then
dies away desolately, yet the last bars seem to
offer some tentative, fragile consolation.
Surely, in the end, this is music of neither an
accommodating stooge nor a dissident martyr,
but of a very real and highly conflicted man. In
the middle of the finale, before the triumphant
(or “triumphant”) conclusion, Shostakovich
quotes from his own setting of the Pushkin
poem, “Rebirth”, that evokes a yearning for a
better past; in doing so, he affirms that this
music, even as it conforms outwardly to Soviet
standards, still expresses longing and suffering
that are profoundly personal.
Program note by Kevin Bazzana
THE ARTISTS
Long Yu
conductor
Long Yu made his TSO début in November, 2009.
Chinese conductor Long Yu is currently Artistic Director
of the Beijing Music Festival and the China Philharmonic
Orchestra, Music Director of the Shanghai and
Guangzhou symphony orchestras, Co-director of the
MISA Shanghai Summer Festival, and Principal Guest
Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. He frequently conducts the
world’s leading orchestras and opera companies. In 2008, for the first time in history,
the China Philharmonic Orchestra performed under his baton at the Vatican in the
Paul VI Auditorium. The concert was attended by Pope Benedict XIV.
Born in 1964 into a musical family in Shanghai, Long Yu received his early musical
education from his grandfather Ding Shande, a composer of great renown, and went
on to study at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Hochschule der Kunst in
Berlin. He is the recipient of numerous international awards and titles, including the
Arts Patronage Award of the Montblanc Cultural Foundation (2002), Chevalier dans
L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003), the Atlantic Council’s Global Citizen Award,
and was a 2016 inductee to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jian Wang
cello
Jian Wang made his TSO début in February, 2014.
Jian Wang began to study the cello with his father when
he was four. While a student at the Shanghai Conservatory
of Music, he was featured in the celebrated documentary
film From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China. Mr. Stern’s
encouragement and support paved the way for him to go to
the US and in 1985, he entered the Yale School of Music under a special program where
he studied with the renowned cellist Aldo Parisot.
Jian Wang has performed with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras.
Recent and future highlights include concerts with the Munich Philharmonic, Los
Angeles Philharmonic, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He has a regular
relationship with the Hallé Orchestra with whom he has performed in the UK and
China. He also performs with the Singapore Symphony and Hong Kong, Seoul,
and Osaka Philharmonic orchestras. Jian Wang has an extensive discography with
Deutsche Grammophon—Reverie (arrangements for cello and guitar) and the Bach
Cello Suites being his most recent releases. His instrument is graciously loaned to
him by the family of the late Mr. Sau-Wing Lam.
13