Download Concerts of Thursday, February 23 and Saturday, February 25, 2012

Concerts of Thursday, February 23 and Saturday, February 25, 2012, at 8:00pm.
James Gaffigan, Conductor
Leila Josefowicz, Violin
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Sinfonia from L’isola disabitata (The Desert Island), Hob. XXVIII:9 (1779)
Thomas Adès (b. 1971)
Violin Concerto, Opus 23 “Concentric Paths” Opus 23 (2005)
I. Rings
II. Paths
III. Rounds
Leila Josefowicz, Violin
Intermission
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin (1850)
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
La mer (The Sea), Three Symphonic Sketches (1905)
I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn until Noon on the Sea)
II. Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves)
III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea)
Notes on the Program by Ken Meltzer
Sinfonia from L’isola disabitata (The Desert Island), Hob. XXVIII:9 (1779)
Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, on March 31, 1732, and died in
Vienna, Austria, on May 31, 1809. The first performance of L’isola disabitata took
place at Esterháza, Hungary, on December 6, 1779. The Sinfonia from L’isola
disabitata is scored for flute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, timpani
and strings. Approximate performance time is eight minutes.
These are the First ASO Classical Subscription Performances.
In 1761, Franz Joseph Haydn began his years of service to the court of the Hungarian
Esterházy family. At the time, the Kappellmeister of the Esterházy court was the
Austrian composer, Gregor Joseph Werner. Haydn was Vice-Kappellmeister of the
Esterházy court until Werner’s death in 1766. From then until 1790, Haydn served as
Kappellmeister to the ruling Prince Nikolaus Esterházy.
Haydn’s contemporary biographer, G. A. Griesinger, described Prince Nikolaus as:
an educated connoisseur and a passionate lover of music, and also
a good violin player. He had his own opera, spoken theatre,
marionette theatre, church music, and chamber music. Haydn had
his hands full: he composed, he had to conduct all the music, help
with the rehearsals, give lessons and even tune his own keyboard
instrument in the orchestra. He often wondered how it had been
possible for him to compose as much music as he did when he was
forced to lose so many hours in purely mechanical tasks.
Haydn’s opera L’isola disabitata (The Desert Island) premiered at the palace in Esterháza
on December 6, 1779, in celebration of Prince Nikolaus’s birthday. Less than a month
earlier, a fire caused severe damage to the palace, including the court theater. And so, the
opera’s premiere took place in the palace’s marionette theater. The intimate nature of
Haydn’s new opera—including just four singers and a single set—facilitated staging
under such challenging circumstances. L’isola disabitata, Haydn’s setting of a libretto by
Pietro Metastasio, concerns the tale of Costanza and her husband, Gernando, who are
separated and reunited on a desert island.
The late 1760s and 1770s were among the most prolific and creative of Haydn’s
Esterházy tenure. These years coincide with the Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”)
literary movement that was sweeping throughout Germany. During that period, Haydn
composed several works in the spirit of Sturm und Drang, featuring minor keys,
pervasive and restless energy, startling dynamic contrasts and frequent, dramatic pauses.
The orchestral Sinfonia that precedes the action of The Desert Island is a fine example of
Haydn’s Sturm und Drang approach. The Sinfonia opens with a slow introduction
(Largo) in G minor. At start of the agitated principal Allegro vivace, also in G minor, the
meter shifts from ¾ to 4/4. Toward the close of the Sinfonia, a lovely extended G-Major
episode in the spirit of a minuet (Allegretto) provides striking contrast. That temporary
repose is swept away by a brief reprise of the G-minor quick-tempo section (Vivace).
Violin Concerto, Opus 23 “Concentric Paths” (2005)
Thomas Adès was born in London, England, on March 1, 1971. The first
performance of the Violin Concerto took place at the Kammermusiksaal, Berlin,
Germany, on September 4, 2005, with Anthony Marwood as soloist, and the
composer conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In addition to the solo
violin, the Concerto is scored for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets,
two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, bass drum, clash
cymbal, cowbell, low drums, metal block, metal can, metal guero, small bongo
drums, snare drum, tam-tam, wood block, wood drum, wood guero and strings.
Approximate performance time is twenty minutes.
These are the first ASO Classical Subscription Performances.
Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music &
Drama. He graduated from King’s College, Cambridge in 1992. The following year in
London, Thomas Adès gave his first public piano recital, a triumphant event that
immediately catapulted the young artist to a position of considerable prominence in the
British musical world.
Thomas Adès soon demonstrated his talents as a composer of striking creativity and
originality in a wide range of musical genres. From 1993-95, Mr. Adès served as
Composer in Association with the Hallé Orchestra. His chamber opera, Powder Her
Face (1995), has been performed throughout the world. Likewise, his second opera, The
Tempest (2004), commissioned and premiered by London’s Royal Opera House, has been
performed in such cities as Copenhagen, Strasbourg and Santa Fe. Thomas Adès has also
composed numerous highly-acclaimed orchestral, chamber and choral works. He was the
youngest ever recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award (2000).
The compositions of Thomas Adès have provided the focus for numerous international
festivals, including Helsinki’s Musica Nova (1999), the Salzburg Easter Festival (2004),
Radio France’s Prèsences (2007 the Barbican’s “Traced Overhead”) and the
Tonsattarfestival in Stockholm (2009). New York’s Carnegie Hall appointed Mr. Adès to
the R and B Debs Composer Chair. During the course of the 2007-8 season, Carnegie
Hall featured Mr. Adès as composer, conductor and pianist.
From 1999-2008, Mr. Adès was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival. He also
served as Artistic Director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
Thomas Adès’s Violin Concerto was commissioned by the Berliner Festpiele, and by the
Los Angeles Philharmonic and its then Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, underwritten
by Lenore and Bernard Greenberg. The world premiere took place on September 4,
2005, at the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin, Germany, as part of the Berliner Festpiele.
Anthony Marwood was the soloist, and the composer conducted the English Chamber
Orchestra. Mr. Marwood and Mr. Adès appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in
the Concerto’s US premiere, which took place at Walt Disney Concert Hall on February
10, 2006.
The composer provided the following commentary on his Violin Concerto, “Concentric
Paths”:
This concerto has three movements, like most, but it is really more of a
triptych, as the middle one is the largest. It is the “slow” movement, built
from two large, and very many small, independent cycles, which overlap
and clash, sometimes violently, in their motion towards resolution.
The outer movements too are circular in design, the first fast, with sheets
of unstable harmony in different orbits, the third playful, at ease, with
stable cycles moving in harmony at different rates.
I. Rings
II. Paths
III. Rounds
Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin (1850)
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22, 1813 and died in
Venice, Italy, on February 13, 1883. The first performance of the opera Lohengrin
took place at the Hoftheater in Weimar, Germany, on August 28, 1850, conducted
by Franz Liszt. The Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin is scored for three flutes, two
oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals and strings. Approximate
performance time is nine minutes.
These are the first ASO Classical Subscription Performances.
Richard Wagner first became acquainted with the story of Lohengrin, Knight of the Holy
Grail, in 1845. As the composer recalled:
I learned to know the myth of Lohengrin in its simpler traits, and alike its
deeper meaning, as the genuine poem of the folk, and such as it has been
laid bare to us by the discoveries of the newer searchers into saga lore.
After I had thus seen it as a noble poem of man’s yearning and his
longing…this figure became ever more endeared to me, and ever stronger
grew the urgence to adopt it and thus give utterance to my own internal
longing; so that, at the time of completing my (opera) Tannhäuser, it
positively became a dominating need, which thrust back each alien effort
to withdraw myself from its despotic mastery.
Wagner drew upon a number of sources for the text of Lohengrin, including Wolfram
von Eschenbach’s Parsifal and several other 13th-century accounts.
The story of Wagner’s Lohengrin takes place in Antwerp, in the early 10th century. The
maiden Elsa is falsely accused of murdering her brother, the rightful heir to the throne. A
knight arrives in a swan-drawn boat and agrees to defend Elsa’s honor. The knight
demands that Elsa never try to determine his origin or name. Elsa consents, and
Lohengrin defeats her accuser. Elsa and the knight wed, but soon, she becomes
suspicious. Finally, she asks the knight the forbidden question. The knight reveals his
identity. He is Lohengrin, a Knight of the Holy Grail. Because Elsa has violated her
trust, the heartbroken Lohengrin must leave her forever. Before he departs, Lohengrin
prays, and the swan is transformed back into the person of Elsa’s brother.
In this tale, Wagner recognized:
the necessity of love; and the essence of this love, in its truest utterance, is
the longing for utmost physical reality, for fruition in an object that can be
grasped by all the senses, held fast with all of the force of actual being. In
this finite physically sure embrace, must not the god dissolve and
disappear? Is not the mortal, who had yearned for God, undone, annulled?
Yet is not love, in its truest, highest essence, herein revealed?
Wagner also viewed the story of Lohengrin as a metaphor for the artist’s attempt to gain
understanding within society.
Wagner began work on the text of Lohengrin in 1845, finally completing the score on
April 28, 1848. The opera received its premiere in Weimar, under the direction of Franz
Liszt, on August 28, 1850. In time, Lohengrin emerged as one of Wagner’s most beloved
works.
The Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin (Langsam) is one of Wagner’s most sublime
compositions. According to the composer, it is a depiction of the “miraculous descent of
the Holy Grail, accompanied by an angelic host, and its consignment to the custody of
exalted men.”
Wagner continues: “The infinitely delicate outline of a miraculous band of angels takes
shape, floating imperceptibly down from Heaven and bearing a sacred vessel.” The
orchestra majestically proclaims the appearance of the Grail, “the precious vessel out of
which our Savior drank at the Last Supper with His disciples; in which his blood was
caught when, for love of His brethren, He suffered upon the cross.” After entrusting the
Grail to the knights, “the seraphic hosts disappear into the bright light of the celestial blue
from which they first emerged.”
La mer (The Sea), Three Symphonic Sketches (1905)
Claude Debussy was born in St. Germaine-en-Laye, France, on August 22, 1862,
and died in Paris, France, on March 25, 1918. The first performance of La mer took
place in Paris on October 15, 1905, at the Concerts Lamoureux, with Camille
Chevillard conducting. La mer is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English
horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two
cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, orchestra bells, tamtam, triangle, two harps and strings. Approximate performance time is twentythree minutes.
First ASO Classical Subscription Performance: December 1, 1961, Henry Sopkin,
Conductor.
Most Recent ASO Classical Subscription Performances: May 7, 8 and 9, 2009,
Robert Spano, Conductor.
“I still have a great passion for the sea”
The first mention of Claude Debussy’s La mer occurs in a September 12, 1903 letter.
There, Debussy informed composer André Messager: “I am working on three symphonic
sketches under the title La mer: Mer belle aux îles Sanguinaires; Jeux de vagues; and Le
Vent fait danser la mer.” (Debussy later changed the titles of the outer movements.)
In that same letter, Debussy confided: “You perhaps do not know that I was destined for
the fine life of a sailor and that it was only by chance that I was led away from it. But I
still have a great passion for the sea.” This “passion” may be traced as far back as
Debussy’s childhood visits to Cannes. And, the composer’s fascination with the sea
continued throughout his life.
In 1889, the young Debussy responded in a questionnaire that if he were not a composer,
he would like to be “a sailor.” That same year, Debussy traveled with his friends—the
brothers René and Michel Peter—to St. Lunaire, located on the north coast of Brittany.
During the visit, Debussy and the Peters made a twenty-mile voyage in a fishing boat
from St. Lunaire to Cancale. The trip occurred during a raging storm. René and Michel
Peter feared for their lives—and for good reason.
Debussy, on the other hand, relished the experience: “Now here’s a type of passionate
feeling I have not before experienced—Danger! It is not unpleasant. One is alive!”
After the travelers safely returned to St. Lunaire, the Peters did not see Debussy for
several days. He left a note that read: “I have been smitten not with sea-sickness, but
with sea-seeing-sickness.”
It is perhaps ironic that the majority of the composition of La mer took place when
Debussy was at inland locations. However, Debussy did not view this as a handicap. As
he told Messager:
(Y)ou’ll reply that the Atlantic doesn’t wash the foothills of Burgundy...!
And that the result could be one of those hack landscapes done in the
studio! But I have innumerable memories, and those, in my view, are
worth more than a reality which, charming as it may be, tends to weigh too
heavily on the imagination.
In fact, Debussy once admitted to a friend that he found it difficult to compose while in
close proximity to the sea he loved so much.
The premiere of La mer took place in Paris on October 15, 1905, at the Concerts
Lamoureux, with Camille Chevillard conducting. While critical reaction varied, most
recognized the importance of La mer in the development of French musical expression.
Debussy himself penned revisions to the score in 1909, although some conductors and
orchestras continue to perform the 1905 version. Regardless, Debussy’s La mer is a
brilliant musical product of the composer’s lifelong fascination with the sea and its
infinite mysteries. Debussy’s La mer, like its subject, continues to elude description, all
the while exerting a powerful attraction.
Musical Analysis
I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn until Noon on the Sea)—A slow, mysterious
introduction depicts the grandeur of the sea at dawn. Soon, the sea awakens and activity
increases as Debussy introduces several masterfully orchestrated rhythmic motifs. A
grand concluding section, containing a chorale theme that will appear again in the finale,
radiates the magnificence of the sea glistening in the noonday sun.
II. Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves)—If the first movement of La mer serves as the
equivalent of a symphony’s vibrant opening movement (with slow introduction), Jeux de
vagues is the scherzo. The play of the waves is reflected in the orchestra’s quicksilver
introduction and exchange of rhythmic and melodic fragments. The peaceful conclusion
of the movement is in sharp contrast to the almost frenetic activity that precedes it.
III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea)—The finale begins
ominously, with a roll of the timpani and terse interjections by the lower strings,
answered by the woodwinds. The music gathers strength, momentum, and at times,
violence. A contrasting lyric section soon gains energy of its own. The chorale, first
heard in the opening movement, heralds the climax of the finale.