Download California Symphony - Kansas City Symphony

Kansas City Symphony
2011-2012 Classical Series
June 15, 16 and 17, 2012
Michael Stern, Conductor
Joshua Bell, Violin
HARTKE
Muse of the Missouri
WORLD PREMIERE
Commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony with
a grant from the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation
of Kansas City
BRAHMS
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Allegro non troppo
Adagio
Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace
— INTERMISSION —
SAINT-SAËNS
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, “Organ”
Adagio — Allegro moderato —
Poco adagio
Allegro moderato — Presto — Allegro moderato —
Maestoso — Allegro
June 15-17, 2012, page 1
Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Stephen Hartke (born in 1952)
The Muse of the Missouri (2012)
WORLD PREMIERE
Piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon,
four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two timpani, percussion, piano, banjo, harp
and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Hartke is Distinguished Professor of Theory and Composition at USC
• From 2008 to 2011, Hartke was the visiting Barr Laureate Composer at the
University of Missouri
• Muse of the Missouri was inspired by one of Kansas City’s best-known
fountains
Stephen Hartke, born on July 6, 1952 in Orange, New Jersey, grew up in New York City,
where he was a professional choirboy performing with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan
Opera and other musical organizations. Hartke did his undergraduate study in composition at
Yale, where he studied with James Drew and Alejandro Planchart. He subsequently earned a
master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, studying primarily with
George Rochberg and George Crumb, and a doctorate from the University of California at Santa
Barbara as a student of Edward Applebaum and Peter Racine Fricker. As the recipient of a
Fulbright fellowship, he taught at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 1984-1985. He has also
served on the faculty of the College of Creative Studies at UC/Santa Barbara and, since 1987,
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he is currently Distinguished
Professor of Theory and Composition. From 1988 to 1992, he was Composer-in-Residence with
the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and from 2008 to 2011, he was the visiting Barr Laureate
Composer at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
Hartke has received awards, grants and commissions from the Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber
Orchestra, American Academy in Rome, ASCAP Foundation, BMI, Chamber Music America,
Fromm Foundation, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Meet
the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts and other prominent arts organizations. In
2004, he was awarded the Charles Ives Living from the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
which allowed him to devote himself to creative work. Four years later Hartke received the first
Charles Ives Opera Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the opera The
Greater Good (commissioned by Glimmerglass Opera and based on the short story Boule de Suif
by de Maupassant) and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Meanwhile, composed for the
acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird.
The composer has written of Muse of the Missouri, commissioned by the Kansas City
Symphony with a grant from the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation of Kansas City:
“Muse of the Missouri was composed as part of the Kansas City Symphony’s series of new
pieces celebrating the many fountains in which the city so justly takes pleasure and pride. This
proved to be a congenial assignment that happened to coincide with the end of a four-year stint
as visiting Barr Laureate Composer at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, so I see the work
as a tribute to a place for which I have great affection and where I now have many friends.
“The fountain from which Muse of the Missouri takes its title is located at 8th and Main, but
the piece is really more about the city and its surroundings. It begins gently with an evocation
of the Missouri River and then unfolds as something of a journey through a landscape of
flowing water and leaping fountains, the views constantly changing as we progress, new scenes
June 15-17, 2012, page 2
appearing around corners and then earlier ones suddenly seen again from a different vantage
point.
“The work is dedicated with gratitude to my dear friend Michael Stern and the Kansas City
Symphony.”
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 (1878)
Woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto for his friend Joseph Joachim, who offered
advice on technical aspects of the piece that was largely ignored
• The Concerto was composed at the idyllic Austrian village of Pörtschach,
where, Brahms said, “the air so bristles with melodies that one has to be
careful not to tread on them”
• The English composer and musicologist Hubert Foss wrote, “Of all Brahms’
major works, the Violin Concerto is the one that shows in the highest degree of
perfection the reconciling of the two opposites of his creative mind — the lyrical
and the constructive: Brahms the song writer and Brahms the symphonist”
“The healthy and ruddy colors of his skin indicated a love of nature and a habit of being in
the open air in all kinds of weather; his thick straight hair of brownish color came nearly down
to his shoulders. His clothes and boots were not of exactly the latest pattern, nor did they fit
particularly well, but his linen was spotless.... [There was a] kindliness in his eyes ... with now
and then a roguish twinkle in them which corresponded to a quality in his nature which would
perhaps be best described as good-natured sarcasm.” So wrote Sir George Henschel, the singer
and conductor who became the first Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of his
friend Johannes Brahms at the time of the composition of his Violin Concerto. Brahms at 45
was coming into the full efflorescence of his talent and fame. The twenty-year gestation of the
First Symphony had finally ended in 1876, and the Second Symphony came easily only a year
later. He was occupied with many songs and important chamber works during the years of the
mid-1870s, and the two greatest of his concertos, the B-flat for piano and the D major for
violin, were both conceived in 1878. Both works were ignited by the delicious experience of his
first trip to Italy in April of that year, though the Piano Concerto was soon laid aside when the
Violin Concerto became his main focus during the following summer. After the Italian trip, he
returned to the idyllic Austrian village of Pörtschach (site of the composition of the Second
Symphony the previous year), where he composed the Violin Concerto for his old friend and
musical ally, Joseph Joachim.
The first movement is constructed on the lines of the Classical concerto form, with an
extended orchestral introduction presenting much of the movement’s main thematic material
before the entry of the soloist. The last theme, a dramatic strain in stern dotted rhythms,
ushers in the soloist, who plays an extended passage as transition to the second exposition of
the themes. This initial solo entry is unsettled and anxious in mood and serves to heighten the
serene majesty of the main theme when it is sung by the violin upon its reappearance. A
melody not heard in the orchestral introduction, limpid and almost a waltz, is given out by the
soloist to serve as the second theme. The vigorous dotted-rhythm figure returns to close the
exposition, with the development continuing the agitated aura of this closing theme. The
recapitulation begins on a heroic wave of sound spread throughout the entire orchestra. After
the return of the themes, the bridge to the coda is made by the soloist’s cadenza. With another
traversal of the main theme and a series of dignified cadential figures, this grand movement
comes to an end.
June 15-17, 2012, page 3
The rapturous second movement is based on a theme that the composer Max Bruch said
was derived from a Bohemian folk song. The melody, intoned by the oboe, is initially presented
in the colorful sonorities of wind choir without strings. After the violin’s entry, the soloist is
seldom confined to the exact notes of the theme, but rather weaves a rich embroidery around
their melodic shape. The central section of the movement is cast in darker hues, and employs
the full range of the violin in its sweet arpeggios. The opening melody returns in the plangent
tones of the oboe accompanied by the widely spaced chords of the violinist.
The Gypsy-flavored finale is cast in rondo form, with a scintillating tune in double stops as
the recurring theme. This movement, the only one in this Concerto given to overtly virtuosic
display, forms a memorable capstone to one of the greatest concerted pieces of the 19th
century.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, “Organ” (1886)
Piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons,
contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, organ,
piano (four hands) and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Saint-Saëns wrote his “Organ” Symphony for the Société Nationale de
Musique, which promoted the performance of instrumental music in France
• Saint-Saëns said, “I have given in this Symphony everything I could give”
• The work is in two parts, each divided into two contrasting movements
The Paris in which Saint-Saëns grew up, studied and lived was enamored of the vacuous
stage works of Meyerbeer, Offenbach and a host of lesser lights in which little attention was
given to artistic merit, only to convention and entertainment. Berlioz tried to break this
stranglehold of mediocrity, and he earned for himself a reputation as an eccentric, albeit a
talented one, whose works were thought unperformable, and probably best left to the pedantic
Germans anyway. Saint-Saëns, with his love of Palestrina, Rameau, Beethoven, Liszt and,
above all, Mozart, also determined not to be enticed into the Opéra Comique but to follow his
calling toward a more noble art. To this end, he established with some like-minded colleagues
the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871 to perform the serious concert works of French
composers. The venture was a success, and it did much to give a renewed sense of artistic
purpose to the best Gallic musicians.
Saint-Saëns produced a great deal of music to promote the ideals of the Société Nationale de
Musique, including ten concertos and various smaller works for solo instruments and
orchestra, four tone poems, two orchestral suites and five symphonies, the second and third of
which were unpublished for decades and discounted in the usual numbering of these works.
The last of the symphonies, No. 3 in C minor, is his masterwork in the genre. Saint-Saëns
pondered the work for a long time, and realized it with great care. “I have given in this
Symphony,” he confessed, “everything I could give.”
Of the work’s construction, Saint-Saëns wrote, “This Symphony is divided into two parts,
though it includes practically the traditional four movements. The first, checked in
development, serves as an introduction to the Adagio. In the same manner, the scherzo is
connected with the finale.” Saint-Saëns clarified the division of the two parts by using the
organ only in the second half of each: dark and rich in Part I, noble and uplifting in Part II. The
entire work is unified by transformations of the main theme, heard in the strings at the
beginning after a brief and mysterious introduction.
©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda