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On Today’s Program MONTEVERDI/C. HARMON Toccata from Orfeo HANDEL Overture to Music for the Royal Fireworks MOZART Overture to Don Giovanni, K.527 MENDELSSOHN Die Hebriden (The Hebrides), Opus 26 BEETHOVEN Overture to Egmont, Opus 84 JOPLIN/T. J. ANDERSON Overture to Treemonisha
Yue Bao, conductor
ABOUT THE MUSIC
MONTEVERDI/C. HARMON T O C C ATA F R O M O R F E O
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI COMPOSER (1567–1643) • Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, choirmaster, and priest who composed both secular and sacred music between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history. • Written in 1607, Monteverdi’s Baroque-era opera, Orfeo, is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, a musician and poet, who journeys to the underworld to bring back his love Eurydice to the living world. • Although not the first opera, it is considered the first significant work in the genre of opera and is the earliest of this genre that is still regularly performed. • The toccata from Orfeo is a fanfare of trumpets and drums that announces the beginning of the opera.
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HANDEL O V E R T U R E T O M U S I C F O R T H E R O YA L FIREWORKS
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL COMPOSER (1685–1759) • George Frideric Handel was a German-born Baroque composer well known for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. • After Handel’s arrival to London in 1710, he was the most popular composer of his day and had a major following, which included King George II. • Commissioned by King George II, Handel composed Music for the Royal Fireworks to accompany a lavish London fireworks display in celebration of the temporary end to the War of Austrian Succession. It premiered on April 14, 1749 in Green Park. • Music for the Royal Fireworks quickly became one of his most popular works despite the disaster that overshadowed the premiere performance (the fireworks display set fire to a grand pavilion that had been created especially for the festivities).
ABOUT THE MUSIC
MOZART O V E R T U R E T O D O N G I O VA N N I
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART COMPOSER (1756–1791) • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer widely recognized as one of the greatest and most influential composers in music history. The profound musician and composer created more than 600 works throughout his lifetime starting at the young age of five. • Following the success of The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart and poet Lorenzo da Ponte once again collaborated on another opera, this one being Don Giovanni. It is said that never in history of music has there been a more perfect partnership of poet and composer. They worked on three operas together. • Don Giovanni, premiered on October 29, 1787 at the Teatro di Praga, is a two-act opera that tells the story of a notorious lover who blazes a path to his own destruction. For this performance, the Houston Symphony will perform the overture from Don Giovanni. • It is said that Mozart completed the overture the day before the premiere or even on the very same day. At the time of the premiere, audiences were surprised when the opera started as a requiem mass, which foreshadows the tragic end of Don Giovanni.
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MENDELSSOHN DIE HEBRIDEN (THE HEBRIDES)
FELIX MENDELSSOHN COMPOSER (1809–1847) • Felix Mendelssohn was a German Romantic era composer, pianist, organist, and conductor who wrote symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music, and chamber music. • Composed in 1830, The Hebrides Overture is a tone poem inspired by one of Mendelssohn’s trips to the British Isles, specifically a trip he took in 1829 to the Scottish Island of Staffa. • Typically, overtures proceed a play or opera, but The Hebrides is instead a standalone composition.
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BEETHOVEN OVERTURE TO EGMONT
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN COMPOSER (1770–1827) • Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and remains one of the most admired composers in history. His works span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era. This performance is part of the Symphony’s celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. • In 1809, Beethoven was commissioned to compose incidental music for the premiere of the play Egmont by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The play is a historical drama of the titular Count Egmont’s sixteenth-century struggle against the Duke of Alba for the freedom of the Netherlands from Spain. • Beethoven’s Egmont Overture is one of his many concert overtures depicting different kinds of heroic individuals. It is not surprising that heroism was a reoccurring theme for Beethoven given that it was a major concern of his times.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
JOPLIN/T. J. ANDERSON OVERTURE TO TREEMONISHA
YUE BAO, CONDUCTOR
SCOTT JOPLIN COMPOSER (1868–1917)
• Scott Joplin was one of America’s first great composers. Dubbed the “King of Ragtime,” Joplin wrote numerous ragtime pieces (including the universally recognized “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer”), a ragtime ballet suite, and two operas in his brief career. • Published in 1911, Joplin’s opera Treemonisha was not fully staged until more than 50 years after the composer’s death. The Atlanta Symphony and Morehouse College Glee Club presented a concert performance in 1972, and its true premiere for the opera-going public was given by Houston Grand Opera in 1975. • Treemonisha fuses many musical styles, including European opera tradition, folk songs, and ragtime. Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for Treemonisha in 1976. • The opera tells the story of Treemonisha, a young woman living in a forest between Texarkana, TX (Joplin’s hometown) and the Red River of Arkansas. Treemonisha is kidnapped by conjurers, but is ultimately rescued and returned home, where she becomes a leader in her community.
ARTIST BIOS DAVID ROBERTSON CONDUCTOR David Robertson–conductor, artist, thinker, and American musical visionary– occupies some of the most prominent platforms on the international music scene. A highly sought-after podium figure in the worlds of opera, orchestral music, and new music, Robertson is celebrated worldwide as a champion of contemporary composers, an ingenious and adventurous programmer, and a masterful communicator whose passionate advocacy for the art form is widely recognized. A consummate and deeply collaborative musician, Robertson is hailed for his intensely committed music making. Robertson has served in numerous artistic leadership positions, such as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and a transformative 13-year tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. With St. Louis, he solidified its status as among the nation’s most innovative ensembles, establishing fruitful relationships with a spectrum of artists, and garnering a 2014 Grammy Award for the Nonesuch release of John Adams’s City Noir, in addition to numerous other recordings releases, such as Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, on Blue Engine Records, and Mozart Piano Concertos No. 17 in G Major K.453 and No. 24 in C Minor K.491 with Orli Shaham on Canary Classics. Earlier artistic leadership positions include at the Orchestre National de Lyon, as a protégé of Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble InterContemporain, and as Principal Guest Conductor at the BBC Symphony Orchestra. David Robertson holds a rich and enduring collaboration with the New York Philharmonic, and in the Americas conducts many noted ensembles, including the Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, National, Houston, Dallas, Montréal, and Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestras. Robertson has served as a Perspectives Artist at Carnegie Hall where he has also conducted, among others, The Met Orchestra, the Lucerne
ARTIST BIOS
Festival Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He appears regularly with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Bayerischen Rundfunk, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, and other major European and international orchestras and festivals, ranging from the BBC Proms, to Musica Viva in Munich, to the New Japan Philharmonic, and Beijing’s NCPA Orchestra. With the Metropolitan Opera, Robertson continues to build upon his deep conducting relationship, which included James Robinson’s 2019–20 season opening premier production of Porgy and Bess, and the premier of Phelim McDermott’s celebrated 2018 production of Così fan tutte, set in Coney Island. Since his 1996 Met Opera debut, The Makropulos Case, he has conducted a breathtaking range of projects, including the Met premier of John Adams’s The Death of ˇ ˚ Klinghoffer (2014); the 2016 revival of Janácek’s Jenufa, then its first Met performances in nearly a decade; the premiere production of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys (2013); and many favorites, from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro to Britten’s Billy Budd. Robertson conducts at the world’s most prestigious opera houses, including La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Théâtre du Châtelet, and the San Francisco and Santa Fe Operas. Since 2018, David Robertson has served as Director of Conducting Studies, Distinguished Visiting Faculty of The Juilliard School. In Fall 2019, he joined the newly formed Tianjin Juilliard Advisory Council, an international body created to guide the emerging Chinese campus of the Juilliard School. He conducts the Juilliard Orchestra annually at Carnegie Hall. Robertson is the recipient of numerous awards and in 2010 was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France. He is devoted to supporting young musicians and has worked with students at the festivals of Aspen, Tanglewood, Lucerne, at the Paris Conservatoire, Music Academy of the West, and the National Orchestra Institute. In 2014, he led the Coast to Coast tour of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA. Born in Santa Monica, California, David Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. He is married to pianist Orli Shaham and lives in New York.
ARTIST BIOS YUE BAO CONDUCTOR (JOPLIN/T. J. ANDERSON, OVERTURE TO TREEMONISHA) Conductor Yue Bao serves as conducting fellow of the Houston Symphony. In May 2019, she completed a two-year tenure as the Rita E. Hauser Conducting Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, closely working with Maestro NézetSéguin during her studies in Philadelphia. At Curtis, she was active as both a conductor and assistant, working with Michael Tilson Thomas, Osmo Vänskä, Gilbert Varga, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Miguel HarthBedoya. Yue was the Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation Conducting Fellow at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 2019. In 2018, she served as the David Effron Conducting Fellow at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where her concerts with the Festival Orchestra received major accolades from audiences and musicians. Prior to her time at Curtis, in 2015, she served as a conducting fellow at the Eastern Music Festival under Gerard Schwarz. She has worked extensively in the United States and abroad. She served as an assistant for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta and David Lockington (2015-17), making her conducting debut with Buffalo in 2016. Yue has also assisted Vänskä at the Minnesota Orchestra and Varga at the St. Louis Symphony. Recent appearances include the Shanghai Opera Symphony Orchestra, the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, and the New Symphony Orchestra. Equally at home with both symphonic and operatic repertoire, her credits include Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Bizet’s Carmen, Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny: Ein Songspiel, and Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium. She is also active as a pianist, recently playing for a production of Les contes d’Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach at the National Centre for the Performing Arts. Along with her Artist Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, she holds Bachelor of Music degrees in orchestral conducting and collaborative piano from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and a Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting from the Mannes School of Music.