October 14 & 16 program notes

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN

Helix

(2005)

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Born June 30, 1958 in Helsinki, Finland.

PREMIERE OF WORK

August 29, 2005; London, England; Valery Gergiev, conductor

PSO FIRST PERFORMANCE

These concerts mark the first Pittsburgh Symphony performance of Helix

INSTRUMENTATION

Piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two oboes, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and harp

DURATION Nine minutes

Esa-Pekka Salonen, born in Helsinki in 1958, majored in horn at the Sibelius Conservatory and studied composition privately with Einojuhani Rautavaara and conducting with Jorma Panula. In 1979, Salonen made his professional conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony, and he was soon engaged as a guest conductor across Scandinavia and as music director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic and London Philharmonia. He made his American debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1984, and served as that orchestra’s music director from 1992 until 2009. He became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 2020. He also continues to guest conduct concerts and opera throughout the world and serve as artistic director of the Baltic Sea Festival, which he co-founded in 2003. As a composer, Salonen was the first-ever Creative Chair of the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich (20142015), after which he was appointed as the Kravis Composer-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic for a four-year term. Salonen is the recipient of several major composition awards, including the Grawemeyer Award (for the 2009 Violin Concerto, written for Leila Josefowicz), Nemmers Prize, Siena Prize, Royal Philharmonic Society’s Opera Award and Conductor Award, and Helsinki Medal. Musical America chose him as its “2006 Musician of the Year.”

Of his Helix, Salonen wrote, “I decided to compose a celebratory and direct overture-like piece that would nevertheless be very rigidly structured and based on essentially one continuous process, basically that of a nine-minute accelerando.”

JEAN SIBELIUS

Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 47

(1903)

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Born December 8, 1865 in Hämeenlinna, Finland; died September 20, 1957 in Järvenpää, Finland.

PSO LAST PERFORMANCE

February 16, 2020; Heinz Hall; Vasily Petrenko, conductor; Ray Chen, soloist

PREMIERE OF WORK

February 8, 1904; Helsinki, Finland; Jean Sibelius, conductor; Viktor Nováček, soloist

PSO FIRST PERFORMANCE

February 2, 1945; Syria Mosque; Fritz Reiner, conductor; Jascha Heifetz, soloist

INSTRUMENTATION

Pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, and timpani

DURATION 33 minutes

In March 1902, just after the premiere of the Second Symphony, Sibelius developed a painful ear infection. Thoughts of the deafness of Beethoven and Smetana plagued him, and he feared he might be losing his hearing. (He was 37 at the time.) In June, he began having trouble with his throat and he feared that his health was about to give way, but he nevertheless forged ahead with his Violin Concerto. The ailments continued to plague him until 1908, when a benign tumor was discovered. It took a dozen operations until it was successfully removed, but anxiety about its return stayed with him for years. (Sibelius enjoyed sterling health for the rest of his days and lived to the ripe age of 91.) The Violin Concerto’s opening movement employs sonata form, modified in that a succinct cadenza for the soloist replaces the usual development section. The second movement is among the most avowedly Romantic music in any of Sibelius’ works for orchestra. The sonatina-form finale launches into a robust dance whose theme the esteemed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey thought could be “a polonaise for polar bears.”

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Opus 10

(1925-1926)

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Born September 25, 1906 in Saint Petersburg, Russia; died August 9, 1975 in Moscow.

PSO LAST PERFORMANCE

February 21, 2016; Heinz Hall; Marcelo Lehninger, conductor

PREMIERE OF WORK

May 12, 1865; Leningrad, Russia; Nicolai Malko, conductor

PSO FIRST PERFORMANCE

February 17, 1939; Syria Mosque; Michel Gusikoff, conductor

INSTRUMENTATION

Two piccolos, three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and piano

DURATION 35 minutes

By early 1925, Shostakovich had completed his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, and he was seeking to gain a reputation beyond the walls of the school. He chose to write a symphony — a grand, public piece rather than a small-scale chamber work — as his graduation exercise: “the product of my culminating studies at the Conservatory,” as he called it. The new work, his first for orchestra, was grounded in the Russian traditions of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Scriabin that his composition teacher Maximilian Steinberg had passed on to him, but also allowed for such modern influences as the music of Hindemith, Prokofiev, Mahler and Stravinsky. Of the Symphony’s progressive traits, musicologist and conductor Nicolas Slonimsky noted that they show “some definite departures from traditionalism…. The harmony of the Symphony is far more acrid than any academic training would justify and the linear writing is hardly counterpoint conscious. There are such strange interludes as a kettledrum solo. The melodic structure is angular, dramatic at times, and then again broad, suggesting folksong rather than a subject for a symphony.”

The Symphony was completed early in 1926, and scheduled for its premiere in May, though his family’s economic hardship was so severe at the time that Shostakovich could not afford to have the parts copied and the score published. The Conservatory, as a gesture of faith in the young composer’s talent, underwrote the expenses, and the Symphony was first displayed to the world on May 12th. It was an immediate success. Shostakovich was proclaimed the leader of the first generation of post-Revolution Soviet composers (Prokofiev had left for the West in 1918), and the twenty-year-old musician became a celebrity at home and abroad in a matter of months.

The Symphony’s first movement follows a form derived from traditional sonata-allegro. The exposition consists of four theme groups, presented almost like large tiles in a mosaic: a melody with long notes presented by the solo trumpet, with a cheeky retort from the bassoon; a scalar theme punctuated by spiky intervals given by the violins alone; a mock-march strutted out by the clarinet; and a cockeyed waltz from the flute. All four themes are whipped together in the development, which reaches a noisy climax before the themes are recapitulated — backwards. First the waltz is heard (flute again), then the mock-march (low strings), followed by the long-note melody (clarinet), and a compressed version of the scalar tune (briefly, in the lower strings). The second movement is a sardonic scherzo; the contrasting central trio is icy and detached in its quiet intensity. The third movement is full of pathos. A swell on the snare drum leads directly to the slow introduction of the closing movement. The finale’s snappy, chromatic melody from the clarinet is followed at some distance by the movement’s broad second theme. These two themes, along with another gesture (in mirror image — i.e., rising rather than falling) dominate the remainder of the movement.

PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA