Program - Schubert Unfinished Symphony

CLASSICS

2018/19

2018/19 SEASON PRESENTING SPONSORS:

SCHUBERT UNFINISHED SYMPHONY COLORADO SYMPHONY CARLOS KALMAR, conductor MICHAEL THORNTON, horn Friday, October 19, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, October 20, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, October 21, 2018, at 1:00 p.m.

Boettcher Concert Hall

GOULD Spirituals Proclamation Sermon A Little Bit of Sin Protest Jubilee GLIÈRE Horn Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 91 Allegro Andante Moderato — Allegro vivace — INTERMISSION —

SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, “Unfinished” Allegro moderato Andante con moto Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

WAGNER

This Weekend's Performances are Gratefully Dedicated to University of Colorado Friday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to University of Colorado Saturday's Concert is Gratefully Dedicated to Ted and Donna Connolly

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

SOUNDINGS

2018/19

PROGRAM 1

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PHOTO: LEAH NASH

CARLOS KALMAR, conductor Carlos Kalmar is in his sixteenth season as Music Director of the Oregon Symphony. He is also the artistic director and principal conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago. He made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall with the Oregon Symphony as part of the inaugural Spring for Music festival. Both his imaginative program, Music for a Time of War, and the performance itself were hailed by critics in The New York Times, New Yorker magazine and Musical America, and the concert was recorded and released on the PentaTone label, subsequently earning two Grammy nominations (Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered). A regular guest conductor with major orchestras in America, Europe, and Asia, Kalmar recently made his subscription series debuts with three of America’s most prestigious orchestras: Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. Past engagements have seen him conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony, as well as the orchestras of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Nashville, Seattle, and St. Louis. In 2018-2019 Kalmar will guest-conduct the Atlanta Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Tampere Orchestra in Finland, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Queensland Symphony, and will tour with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Carlos Kalmar, born in Uruguay to Austrian parents, showed an early interest in music and began violin studies at the age of six. By the time he was fifteen his musical promise was such that his family moved back to Austria in order for him to study conducting with Karl Osterreicher at the Vienna Academy of Music. He has previously served as the Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Spanish Radio/Television Orchestra and Choir in Madrid as well as the Music Director for the Hamburg Symphony, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, Vienna’s Tonnkunsterorchester, and the Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau, Germany. He lives in Portland with his wife, Raffaela, and their two young sons. Michael Thornton enjoys a distinguished and varied career as an orchestral performer, chamber musician, soloist, and pedagogue. Mr. Thornton has performed on five continents, and has presented numerous master classes at many prestigious musical institutions in the United States and abroad. Michael Thornton joined the Colorado Symphony as Principal Horn during the 1997 season, and in this capacity has worked with the most highly renowned classical and popular artists. Before joining the Colorado Symphony, he left his studies at The Juilliard School to become the Principal Horn of the Honolulu Symphony. Mr. Thornton has also performed as a guest Principal Horn with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony, and as guest Associate Principal Horn with the Philadelphia Orchestra. An avid chamber musician and soloist of international recognition, Michael Thornton has been a featured performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival (NM), Mainly Mozart (CA), Spoleto (SC), Moab Music Festival (UT), Campos do Jordao International Winter Festival (Brazil), Medellin Festicamara (Colombia), among many others. He performs annually as the Solo Horn of the Washington Island Music Festival in Door County, Wisconsin, and will serve this season as hornist with the Camerata Pacifica Chamber Ensemble in Southern California. As a soloist, Mr. Thornton has appeared with the National Arts Center Orchestra (Canada), Melbourne Musician’s Chamber Orchestra (Australia), and numerous orchestras in the US, including regular solo performances with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed as a featured artist at several horn symposia, including the 2008 International Horn Symposium (Denver), the Western US Horn Symposium (Las Vegas), and Hornswoggle (Jemez Springs, NM).

PROGRAM 2

C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PHOTO: LOCK+LAND

MICHAEL THORNTON, horn Appointed to the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999, Michael Thornton is currently Associate Professor of Horn. He also serves as a Faculty Artist at the Colorado College Music Festival each June. Mr. Thornton holds certification in Mental Toughness Training from the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida, and implements this training in his teaching. His students hold positions in orchestras throughout the United States and abroad, and have won numerous awards and competitions. Professor Thornton has twice received the Marinus Smith Award, which is bestowed upon teachers at CU Boulder who have made significant contributions to their students’ development.

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SOUNDINGS

2018/19

PROGRAM 3

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES MORTON GOULD (1913-1996): Spirituals for Orchestra Morton Gould was born December 10, 1913 in New York City, and died February 21, 1996 in Orlando.

Spirituals for Orchestra was composed in 1941 and premiered on February 19, 1941 in New York City, conducted by the composer. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. Duration is about 18 minutes. Spirituals was last performed on January 6 and 9, 1994, with Morton Gould conducting.

Morton Gould, composer, conductor, pianist, arranger and administrator, was born on December 10, 1913 in New York City. By the age of four, he was playing piano and composing; at six, he had one of his first compositions published (a waltz called, appropriately, Just Six); by the time he was eight, he had played piano on broadcasts of WOR Radio in New York. In 1932, when he was nineteen, he became staff pianist at Radio City Music Hall. After a brief stint with NBC, Gould was engaged as composer, arranger and conductor by WOR, where he did a weekly broadcast; from 1942 to 1945, he performed the same duties for the Cresta Blanca Carnival and Chrysler Hour programs on CBS. In addition to his light compositions for radio, Gould wrote for film (Windjammer), television (the World War I series, Holocaust and Celebration), ballet (Fall River Legend), Broadway (Billion Dollar Baby and Arms and the Girl), orchestra, symphonic band, chamber ensembles and chorus. He was also a Grammy-winning conductor. In 1994, Gould was one of five recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, the highest award given by the United States to its artists; the following year he received the Pulitzer Prize for his Stringmusic.

In addition to his careers as composer, performer, arranger and conductor, Morton Gould was also president of ASCAP from 1986 to 1994. He died on February 21, 1996, while in Orlando to conduct seminars at the Disney Institute.

Gould’s Spirituals for Orchestra, the work that established his reputation as a concert composer, was introduced under the composer’s direction at the WNYC Festival of American Music in New York on February 9, 1941. Soon after Spirituals was premiered, Gould said of it, “White and Negro spirituals make a tremendous body of folk material. What I tried to do was to synthesize some of their features. The songs range from strictly spiritual ones that are escapist in feeling, or light and gay, to those having tremendous depth and tragic impact. Although most of the work is original as far as thematic material goes, I have used fragments of folk tunes here and there. The first movement (Proclamation) has a dramatic-religious intensity. The second movement (Sermon) is a simple narrative — a sort of lyrical folk tale. The third movement (A Little Bit of Sin) is humorous and good-natured. The fourth movement (Protest) is bitter, grim and crying-out. The last movement (Jubilee) is a festive and dance-like piece.”

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PROGRAM 4

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CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES REINHOLD GLIÈRE (1875-1956): Horn Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 91 Reinhold Glière was born January 11, 1875 in Kiev, and died June 23, 1956 in Moscow. The Horn Concerto was composed in 1950 and premiered on January 26, 1952 in Moscow, conducted by the composer with Valery Polekh as soloist. The score calls for three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Duration is about 22 minutes. This is the first performance by the orchestra.

Reinhold Glière was among the preeminent Russian musicians of the generation between Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Born in Kiev in 1875, Glière was the son of a Belgian-born wind instrument maker, though as a child Reinhold studied violin. In 1891, he enrolled at the Kiev Conservatory and three years later transferred to the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Arensky, Ippolitov-Ivanov and Taneyev. He graduated with a gold medal in 1900, and immediately joined the faculty of the Gnessin School in Moscow. In 1905, he became involved briefly in the nation’s turbulent political affairs, but then spent the next two years traveling and studying in Germany. After returning to Moscow in 1907, Glière continued to compose and teach, and also started appearing as a conductor and pianist. He taught at the Kiev Conservatory from 1913 to 1920, serving as that school’s director after 1914. In 1920, he moved to the Moscow Conservatory as professor of composition, a position he held for the rest of his life. Glière also carried on significant research in native Ukrainian, Uzbek and other music, served as national director of music education during the 1920s, and was named a member and then chairman of the USSR Composers’ Union. He was given the title People’s Artist of the USSR in 1938, and went on to receive many national awards, including an honorary doctorate, the Order of the Red Banner and, four times, the Stalin Prize. He died in Moscow in 1956.

Glière turned in his later years to the genre of the concerto, producing examples for harp, coloratura soprano (!), cello, horn and violin between 1938 and 1956. The Horn Concerto was composed in 1950 for the noted Russian virtuoso Valery Polekh, who gave the work’s premiere in Moscow under the composer’s direction on January 26, 1952. An introductory paragraph for the orchestra presents the opening movement’s main theme, which the soloist takes up and elaborates. The orchestra provides an interlude to serve as transition to the second subject, a relaxed melody given by the horn. A scalar marching motive in the orchestra bridges to the development section, which is capped by a horn cadenza whose creation Glière entrusted to Polekh. The recapitulation returns the earlier themes in shortened versions before the movement concludes with a coda based on the marching motive. The Andante is a tender movement, almost in the nature of a Romanza. Its center section becomes more agitated, but the tranquil mood of the beginning reappears in the closing pages. Though the finale opens with a plaintive unison phrase and a rather somber brass chorale, it soon proves to be buoyant and festive, taking a dancing folkish subject as its main theme; the formal second theme, a more sedate lyrical strain in the horn, provides contrast.

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2018/19

PROGRAM 5

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828): Symphony in B minor, D. 759, “Unfinished” Franz Schubert was born January 31, 1797 in Vienna, and died November 19, 1828 in Vienna. The B minor Symphony was composed in 1822 but not premiered until December 17, 1865 in Vienna, conducted by Johann Herbeck. The score calls for pairs of woodwinds, horns and trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 24 minutes. The last performance took place on March 11 & 12, 2011, with Gilbert Varga leading the orchestra.

The mystery surrounding the composition of the “Unfinished” Symphony is one of the most intriguing puzzles in the entire realm of music. It is known that Schubert composed the first two movements of this “Grand Symphony,” as he referred to it, in autumn 1822, and then abruptly stopped work. He sent the manuscript to his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was supposed to pass it on to the Styrian Music Society of Graz in appreciation of an honorary membership that organization had conferred upon Schubert the previous spring. Anselm, described by Schubert’s biographer Hans Gal as a “peevish recluse,” never sent the score. Instead, he squirreled it away in his desk, where it gathered dust for forty years. It was not until 1865 that he presented it for performance to Johann Herbeck, director of Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.

Lacking conclusive evidence, writers on Schubert have advanced a fascinating variety of explanations as to why the young composer never completed the last two planned movements of this Symphony. Among others: he was too ill with syphilis; he could not be bothered with the labor of writing down the last two movements; his friends believed he was basically a song composer rather than an instrumental composer, and their arguments caused him to lose faith in this large work; the last two movements were lost; he despaired of ever having a work of this scale performed; a new commission intervened; Hüttenbrenner’s servant used the manuscript to start a fire. All of these have been proven false. The truth is that, despite exhaustive research, there is no conclusive evidence to support any single theory. The explanation currently given the greatest credence is that Schubert thought he could not match the wonderful inspiration of the first two movements in what was to follow, so he abandoned this Symphony for work on another project and simply never returned to complete it.

The first movement is a sonata form that begins without introduction. The first theme is made up of three components: a brooding, eight-measure phrase heard immediately in unison cellos and basses; a restless figure for violins; and a broad melody played by oboe and clarinet. The second theme is given in a brighter key by the cellos over a gently syncopated accompaniment. The development, based entirely on the movement’s opening phrase, begins softly in unison cellos and basses. This lengthy central section rises to great peaks of emotional tension before the recapitulation begins with the restless violin figure of the first theme. The oboe-clarinet theme is heard again, as is the second theme, before the movement ends with restatements of the cello-bass phrase that began the exposition and the development. The second movement is in the form of a large sonatina (sonata form without a development section) and flows like a calm river, filled with rich sonorities and lovely melodies.

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C O L O R A D O SY M P H O N Y.O R G

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES RICHARD WAGNER (1813-1883): Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Richard Wagner was born May 22, 1813 in Leipzig, and died February 13, 1883 in Venice. The Prelude to Die Meistersinger was composed in 1862 and premiered on November 1, 1862 in Leipzig, conducted by the composer. The full opera was completed in 1867 and premiered in Munich on June 21, 1868. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs plus piccolo, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 10 minutes. Thomas Dausgaard conducted the last performance of the symphony on May 12 & 13, 2012.

The plot of Die Meistersinger centers around a song contest held in 16th-century Nuremberg on St. John’s Day (June 24th). The winner is to marry Eva, daughter of the goldsmith Veit Pogner. Walther von Stolzing, a young knight from Franconia who has fallen in love with Eva, vows to win the contest and her hand, even though he is not a member of the guild of Mastersingers. He is granted permission to compete despite the attempts of Sixtus Beckmesser, the town clerk and also a contestant, to discredit him for not knowing the ancient guild rules governing the composition of a song. Eva and Walther communicate their love to the wise cobbler Hans Sachs, who remains their friend and adviser despite his own love for the girl. Sachs helps Walther shape his musical and poetic ideas, which bring a new freshness and expression to the staid ways of the guild. (Walther and his new art, of course, represent Wagner.) Beckmesser, having stolen Walther’s poem, gives it a ludicrous musical setting, and makes a fool of himself at the contest. Sachs invites Walther to show how the verses should be sung, and the young knight is acclaimed the winner.

The Prelude opens with the majestic processional of the Mastersingers. A tender theme portraying the love of Eva and Walther leads to a second Mastersinger melody, this one said to have been based on The Crowned Tone by the 17th-century guild member Heinrich Mögling.

The Prelude’s first section closes with the development of another love motive and phrases later heard in Walther’s Prize Song. The central portion is largely devoted to a cackling, fugato parody of the first Mastersinger theme that anticipates Beckmesser’s buffooneries. The Prelude is brought to a magnificent close with a masterful weaving together of all of its themes. ©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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2018/19

PROGRAM 7

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