Program - Ben Folds: Master Work with the Colorado Symphony

Colorado Symphony 2016/17 Season Presenting Sponsor:

MASTERWORKS • 2016-2017 BEN FOLDS: MASTER WORK WITH THE COLORADO SYMPHONY COLORADO SYMPHONY CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, CONDUCTOR BEN FOLDS, PIANO/COMPOSER This Weekend's Concerts are Gratefully Dedicated to Scientific and Cultural Facilities District Friday’s Concert Is Gratefully Dedicated To Ralph L. and Florence R. Burgess Trust Saturday’s Concert Is Gratefully Dedicated To Northern Trust Company

Friday, November 11, 2016, at 7:30pm Saturday, November 12, 2016, at 7:30pm Boettcher Concert Hall

RAVEL

Pavane for a Dead Princess

STRAVINSKY Suite from The Firebird (1919) Introduction — The Dance of the Firebird Round Dance of the Princesses Infernal Dance of the King Kashchei Berceuse — Finale — INTERMISSION —

MILHAUD

Le boeuf sur le toit, Op.58

BEN FOLDS Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (orch. with J. Horsely) Movement I Movement II Movement III

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MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIES CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor Australian conductor Christopher Dragon is in his second season as the Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony and commences his position as Principal Guest Conductor with the Denver Young Artists Orchestra. For three years, Christopher previously held the position of Assistant Conductor with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, which gave him the opportunity to work closely with Principal Conductor Asher Fisch. Christopher works regularly in Australia and has conducted the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and West Australian Symphony Orchestras.

His 2015 debut performance at the Sydney Opera House with Josh Pyke and the Sydney Symphony has been released on CD by ABC Music. In 2017, Christopher returns to the West Australian Symphony Orchestra for a subscription concert. In 2016, he made his Brazilian conducting debut with the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre. He has also conducted at numerous festivals including the Breckenridge and Bangalow Music Festivals, both resulting with invitations to return. At the beginning of 2016, Christopher conducted Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony as part of the Perth International Arts Festival alongside Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra. In 2014, Christopher was selected from 100 international applicants to conduct the Princess Galyani Vadhana Youth Orchestra in Thailand and earlier that year participated in the Jarvi Winter Academy in Estonia where he was awarded the Orchestra’s Favourite Conductor Prize. Christopher began his conducting studies in 2011 and was a member of the prestigious Symphony Services International Conductor Development Program under the guidance of course director Christopher Seaman. He has also studied with numerous distinguished conductors including Leonid Grin, Paavo and Neeme Jarvi at the Jarvi Summer Festival, Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, and conducting pedagogue Jorma Panula.

BEN FOLDS, piano/composer Ben Folds is widely regarded as one of the major music influencers of our generation. He’s spent over a decade sharing the stage with some of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras—from Sydney, Australia, to the Kennedy Center—performing his pop hits and his critically-acclaimed Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. For five seasons, he was a judge on the popular NBC series The Sing Off, which catapulted the art of a cappella into the national spotlight, and helped launch the careers of numerous a cappella groups. Throughout his career, Folds has created an enormous body of genre-bending, musical art that includes pop albums as the front man for Ben Folds Five, multiple solo rock albums, as well as unique collaborative records with artists from Sara Bareilles and Regina Spektor to Weird Al and William Shatner. His most recent album is a blend of pop and classical original works, in part recorded with the revered classical sextet yMusic that soared to #1 on both the Billboard classical and classical crossover charts.

Beginning this Fall, Folds will be back to pound pianos again with cross-country solo touring reminiscent of his earliest solo tours, where he defied skeptics by delivering a high-energy rock performance using the intimacy of just a piano. In addition to his self-described love of performing and making music “for humans,” Folds is also an avid photographer, and is a member of the distinguished Sony Artisans of Imagery. Folds is also an advocate for music education and music therapy as a member of Artist Committee of the Americans For The Arts, and he serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Nashville Symphony.

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introducing...

BRETT MITCHELL, recently appointed Music Director Designate for the Colorado Symphony!

Get to know the Colorado Symphony’s Music Director Designate Brett Mitchell when he appears on the podium for 5 concerts during the 2016/17 Season!

See all the concerts and subscribe to this package today at the Box Office or buy now at coloradosymphony.org!

Photo: Roger Mastroianni

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937): Pavane for a Dead Princess Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France, and died on December 28, 1937, in Paris. The Pavane for a Dead Princess was composed for piano in 1899 and orchestrated in 1910. The piano version was premiered on April 5, 1902, in Paris by Ricardo Viñes; the orchestral version was first heard on May 17, 1919, in Manchester, England, conducted by Henry Wood. The score calls for two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, harp, and strings.

Duration is about 6 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra was on March 22-24, 2013, with Matthias Pintscher conducting.

The pavan was a dance of slow tempo and refined gesture that originated in Italy during the late Renaissance and spread throughout Europe, becoming especially popular in Spain and England. Thomas Morley, in his guide of 1579 for the dedicated musical amateur of the Elizabethan age, Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musicke, described the pavan as “a kind of staide musicke, ordained for graue [grave] dauncing.” Ravel recreated the dignified, processional character of the pavan in his Pavane pour une infante défunte, but admitted devising the title just because he was pleased by the sound of the words. Despite Ravel’s later criticism of the Pavane as “threadbare in form, incomplete and unventuresome,” it remains a work of grace, beauty, and captivating nostalgia. The composer said he conceived it as a dance for a little 17thcentury princess as painted by Velásquez, rather than as a funeral lament for a small child. He always railed against performing the work too slowly, warning that it was the princess who had died and not the Pavane. The musical personality of Ravel is distinctly evident in this early work in its clear structure, rich harmonies, finely crafted melodies, pellucid instrumental writing, and carefully honed emotion.

 IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971): Suite from The Firebird (1919 Version) Igor Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, and died on April 6, 1971, in New York City. The Firebird was composed from 1909-1910 and premiered by the Ballet Russe at the Paris Opéra on June 25, 1910; Gabriel Pierné conducted. The 1919 suite Stravinsky arranged from the ballet calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.

Duration is about 30 minutes. David Lockington conducted the orchestra when it was last performed on March 27 & 28, 2015.

The story of Stravinsky’s ballet deals with the glittering Firebird and the evil ogre Kashchei, who captures maidens and turns men to stone if they enter his domain. Kashchei is immortal as long as his soul, which is preserved in the form of an egg in a casket, remains intact. The plot shows how Prince Ivan wanders into Kashchei’s garden in pursuit of the Firebird; he captures it and exacts a feather before letting it go. Ivan meets a group of Kashchei’s captive maidens and falls in love with one of them. The princesses return to Kashchei’s palace. Ivan breaks open the gates to follow them inside, but he is captured by the ogre’s guardian monsters. He waves PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES the magic feather, and the Firebird reappears to help him smash Kashchei’s vital egg; the ogre immediately expires. All the captives are freed and Ivan and his Tsarevna are wed.

Stravinsky drew three concert suites from The Firebird. The 1919 suite includes six scenes from the complete score. The first two, Introduction and The Dance of the Firebird, accompany the appearance of the magical creature. The Round Dance of the Princesses uses the rhythm and style of an ancient Russian dance called the Khorovod. The Infernal Dance of King Kashchei, the most modern portion of the score, depicts the madness engendered by the appearance of the Firebird at Kashchei’s court after the revelation to Ivan of the evil ogre’s vulnerability. The haunting Berceuse is heard when the thirteenth princess, the one of whom Ivan is enamored, succumbs to a sleep-charm that saves her from the terrible King while Ivan destroys Kashchei’s malevolent power. The Finale, initiated by the solo horn, confirms the life-force that had been threatened by Kashchei.

 DARIUS MILHAUD (1892-1974): Le boeuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof), Op. 58 Darius Milhaud was born on September 4, 1892, in Aix-en-Provence, and died on June 22, 1974, in Geneva. Le boeuf sur le toit was composed in 1919 and premiered on February 21, 1920, in Paris, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann. The score calls for two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, trombone, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 17 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra was on December 11, 1951, with Saul Caston conducting.

Darius Milhaud, the descendant of a Jewish family whose roots in southern France stretched back over many centuries, took his earliest musical training as a violinist. Milhaud (pronounced mee-OH) first entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of seventeen as a performer, but, inspired by the exciting new music of Debussy, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, and, especially, the iconoclastic Erik Satie, he soon switched his focus to composition. Plagued throughout his life by rheumatoid arthritis, he was unable to join the military during the First World War, so he was assigned as secretary to the poet and dramatist Paul Claudel, and served with him at the French embassy in Brazil during those years. After the war, Milhaud returned home from Brazil by way of America, where he was greatly taken with the jazz clubs of New York’s Harlem—the music of the New World was a lasting influence on his compositions. Milhaud became recognized as one of the leading modern composers during the time between the wars. He returned to the United States during World War II to teach at California’s Mills College, and divided most of his remaining thirty years between his native France and America.

In 1953, Milhaud published (in English) a fascinating and witty autobiography under the title Notes without Music. Concerning Le boeuf sur le toit, he wrote: “Still haunted by my memories of Brazil [in 1919, after returning to Paris], I assembled a few popular melodies, tangos, maxixes, sambas, and even a Portuguese fado, and transcribed them with a rondo-like theme recurring between each two of them. I called this fantasia Le boeuf sur le toit, the title of a Brazilian popular song. I thought that the character of this music might make it suitable for an accompaniment to one of Charlie Chaplin’s films.... [Jean] Cocteau disapproved of my idea, and proposed that we SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES should use it for a show, which he would undertake to put on. Cocteau produced a pantomime scenario that could be adapted to my music. He imagined a scene in a bar [called ‘Le boeuf sur la toit’] in America during Prohibition. The various characters were highly typical [!]: a Boxer, a Negro Dwarf, a Lady of Fashion, a Redheaded Woman dressed as a man, a Bookmaker, a Gentleman in evening clothes. The Barman, with a face like that of Antinoüs [a beautiful youth who was a favorite of the Roman Emperor Hadrian], offers everyone cocktails. After a few incidents and various dances, a Policeman enters, whereupon the scene is immediately transformed into a milkbar. The clients play a rustic scene and dance a pastoral as they sip glasses of milk. The Barman switches on a big fan, which decapitates the Policeman. The Redheaded Woman executes a dance with the Policeman’s head, ending by standing on her hands like the Salome in Rouen Cathedral. One by one, the customers drift away, and the Barman presents an enormous bill to the resuscitated Policeman.”

 BEN FOLDS (B. 1966): Piano Concerto Ben Folds was born on September 12, 1966, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Piano Concerto was composed from 2013-2014, and premiered on March 14, 2014, by the Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero, with the composer as soloist. Joachim Horsely collaborated on the work’s orchestration. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, alto flute, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, flugelhorn, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, and strings. Duration is about 25 minutes. This is the first performance of the Concerto by the orchestra.

The following comments are excerpted from the program note by Thomas May based on an interview he did with Ben Folds before the premiere of the Piano Concerto with the Nashville Symphony.

“The dare and the deadline came first,” Folds recalled, explaining that the Piano Concerto was created with both concert performance and a choreographic version by Paul Vasterling for Nashville Ballet in mind. “It can seem like it doesn’t really make any sense for me: to move from a four-minute pop song to a 25-minute concerto. But I’ve always been fascinated with the long form. I once had the idea of making one of my albums a single 45-minute piece.”

Folds immersed himself in the rich repertory of classical, romantic, and early modern piano concertos for a solid year. “I wanted to see where these composers’ heads were at when they wrote their concertos, compared with when they wrote a symphony or a string quartet or another kind of piece. I’ve never felt so close to dead people before. What I didn’t want to be was a tourist, but a humble, self-invited guest into their world. And that meant a lot of listening and reflecting on what went into these things.”

Folds was also able to use the knowledge he’s acquired from years of playing with orchestras, but he acknowledges that he had some valuable assistance: “I turned to Joachim Horsely of the film-scoring world to help with the orchestration. It’s always been very important to me to be PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2016-2017 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG

MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES the arranger of what I write—it’s part of the composition. But orchestration is a craft beyond arrangement of the notes.” [Joachim Horsely has composed, arranged, orchestrated, and conducted for movies, television and commercials, including more than 25 shorts and feature films. In 2007, he was Grand Prize Winner in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for his song I Want Your Love.]

On the big scale, Folds followed the ever-reliable concerto format of fast movement/slow, lyrical movement/butt-kicking finale. And he knows how essential it is to make a big impact with the first movement, which he kicks off with a brief orchestral introduction before the solo part jumps in with a deep rumble in the bass. “We’re in the age of post-Lady Gaga and sampling.

The movement is all about that. It’s overtly and proudly derivative, but never for more than ten seconds at a time. It’s essentially built on the excitement of being immersed in the great classical piano concertos. There’s a fantasy aspect to the first movement, where I imagined what it would be like if I did these flourishes that I’ve never thought about doing at the piano.”

Against a backdrop of tuned percussion and sustained, shimmering harmonies in the strings, the second movement occupies the emotional space equivalent to the “big song” on an album—i.e., the song whose melody is lovingly allowed to unspool and develop. Folds referred to the inspiring examples of the waltz-like, slow movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and Beethoven’s “Holy Song of Thanksgiving” from the String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, which, he said, “has been my church for the last year.” Deceptively simple, this movement proved especially hard for him to write, since there’s no “show-off” factor to lean on. Folds grinningly referred to it as the “Concerto for One Finger” movement.

After the slow movement dies out, the Concerto hurtles forward into the final movement, which is introduced by a section Folds likened to Van Halen. The overall feel, he suggested, is similar to a scherzo movement, but it’s not just playfulness he conjures: “The third movement goes nuts—it’s insanity!” Folds also drew comparison to the famously terse poem Muhammad Ali once improvised: “Me/We!” There’s still another aspect to playing “in concert” with a symphony orchestra that Folds believes listeners today can treasure: “We see so much emphasis on what’s divisive, how things are unable to work together. What a difference it makes when you see people working in concert with this incredible musical tool that has hundreds of years of wisdom behind it.”

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