Live From Jones Hall Program | Hilary Hahn Returns

Page 1

ABOUT THE MUSIC


THIS PERFORMANCE IS PART OF THE

RAND G ROUP

GRE AT P E RF ORM E RS


THIS PERFORMANCE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Rochelle and Max Levit GRAN D GUARA NTOR


LIVESTREAMING OF HOUSTON SYMPHONY CONCERTS IS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Barbara J. Burger


Concertmaster and Max Levine Chair Yoonshin Song is sponsored in part by Marian and Gary Beauchamp and the Beauchamp Foundation

The Classical Season is endowed by The Wortham Foundation, Inc., in memory of Gus S. and Lyndall F. Wortham


THE HOUSTON SYMPHONY WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR GENEROUS SEASON SPONSORS

The Classical Season is sponsored by

THE ROBERT CIZIK FAMILY Principal Corporate Guarantor Official Airline

Official Health Care Provider

The Houston Symphony is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

Preferred Jewelry Partner


THE HOUSTON SYMPHONY WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR GENEROUS SERIES SPONSORS

Gold Classics

Favorite Masters

RAND G ROUP

Great Performers

POPS Series

Family Series


Donations account for two-thirds of the Houston Symphony’s annual operating budget.

ways to DONATE houstonsymphony.org/donate 713.337.8559 text MUSIC to 41444 and pledge your gift


Program K. OROZCO PerpetuumM HAYDN Symphony No. 60 in C major (Il Distratto) I. Adagio—Allegro di molto II. Andante III. Menuetto and Trio IV. Presto V. Adagio di lamentatione—Allegro VI. Finale: Prestissimo MOZART Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K.219 (Turkish) I. Allegro aperto II. Adagio III. Rondeau: Tempo di menuetto—Allegro—

Tempo di menuetto


ABOUT THE MUSIC

K . O R OZ C O PERPETUUMM

KEYLA OROZCO COMPOSER (b. 1969) • PerpetuumM was commissioned by and written for the Amsterdam-based Nieuw Ensemble in 1997. • Several years after this work was premiered, Orozco founded the PerpetuumM Foundation, which exists to promote Latin American art and culture in The Netherlands. • Born in Cuba, Keyla Orozco is an internationally known composer and multi-disciplinary artistic collaborator. After training in Havana and The Netherlands, Orozco moved to the United States where she is currently based. • Orozco has been commissioned to write for internationally acclaimed chamber ensembles and her music is regularly performed in festivals around the world such as Artes de Cuba Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Holland Festival, ISCM Miami, and Sonido de las Américas. • Orozco frequently incorporates Latin American folk rhythms into her compositions. Her music is influenced by field research that she conducted on traditional Venezuelan and Colombian music known as “Música Llanera.”


ABOUT THE MUSIC

H AY D N S Y M P H O N Y N O . 6 0 ( I L D I S T R AT T O )

JOSEPH HAYDN COMPOSER (1732–1809) • Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 was originally written as an overture and incidental music to the French farce, “Le Distrait” (“The Distracted”). His original title on the score was “Sinfonia for the Comedy Entitled ‘The Absent-Minded Man.’” • Haydn was the kapellmeister, or lead court musician, of the Esterházy court in Austria for thirty years from 1761 to 1791. He wrote Symphony No. 60 in 1774 while employed at this palace, and it premiered on November 22—Saint Cecilia’s Day. In the Catholic tradition, Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians. • The premiere of Symphony No. 60 was so successful that the audience demanded a repeat performance of the finale. • Haydn wrote 106 symphonies and had a profound influence on the music of Beethoven, his pupil, as well as Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.


ABOUT THE MUSIC

M OZ A R T VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 5 (TURKISH)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART COMPOSER (1756–1791) • Mozart wrote five violin concertos between April and December of 1775 when he was only 19 years old. The final concerto in this series, and the final violin concerto that Mozart wrote in his lifetime, is the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major. • Mozart probably wrote this concerto for Antonio Brunetti, a violinist who served with Mozart as co-concertmaster in the orchestra of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. • Listen for the “alla turca” or “Turkish” section in the finale. The marked leaps in this section and instruction for cellos and basses to play coll’ arco al roverscio, meaning to “play with the wood of the bow,” give this section an exotic feel which led to this concerto’s “Turkish” nickname. • Mozart was an accomplished violinist, as was his father, Leopold Mozart. Leopold was also the author of one of the most important treatises of violin fundamentals in history, which he published the year Wolfgang Amadeus was born.


ARTIST BIOS MARIN ALSOP CONDUCTOR

A conductor of vision and distinction, Marin Alsop represents a powerful and inspiring voice. Convinced that music has the power to change lives, she is internationally recognized for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, deep commitment to education, and advocacy for music’s importance in the world. The 2019–20 season marked Alsop’s first as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and on recordings, broadcasts, and tours. As Chief Conductor and Curator of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, she also curates and conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming summer residencies, formalizing her long relationship with Ravinia, where she made her debut with the orchestra in 2002. Appointed in 2020 as the first Music Director of the National Orchestral Institute + Festival (NOI+F), a program of the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, she will lead a newly formed conductor academy and conduct multiple concerts each June with the NOI+F Philharmonic. In collaboration with YouTube and Google Arts & Culture, Alsop is spearheading the “Global Ode to Joy” (GOTJ), a crowd-sourced video project to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary. Together with Germany’s official Beethoven anniversary campaign and the leading arts organizations of six continents, Alsop invites the global community to share the call for tolerance, unity, and joy of the composer’s Ninth Symphony in videos tagged #GlobalOdeToJoy. The project culminates in December 2020, the month of Beethoven’s birth, with a grand video finale: a GOTJ highlight reel, set to a performance of the “Ode to Joy” anchored by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, the international Stay-at-Home Choir, and Alsop herself. In 2021, Alsop becomes Music Director Laureate and OrchKids Founder at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This concludes her outstanding 14year tenure as Music Director, which has seen her lead the orchestra on its first European tour in 13 years, on multiple award-winning recordings, and in more than two dozen world premieres, besides founding OrchKids, its successful music education program for the city’s most disadvantaged youth. In 2019, after seven years as Music Director, Alsop became Conductor of Honour of Brazil’s São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), where she continues conducting major projects each season.


ARTIST BIOS Alsop has longstanding relationships with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras, and regularly guest conducts such major international ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Budapest Festival and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras. In 2019– 20 she returned to the Philadelphia Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, and Orchestre de Paris, whose season she opened in September 2020. Recognized with multiple Gramophone Awards, Alsop’s extensive discography includes recordings for Decca, Harmonia Mundi and Sony Classical, and acclaimed Naxos cycles of Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvorák ˇ with the Baltimore Symphony, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony. Committed to new music, she was Music Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music for 25 years. The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop has also been honored with the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award, and made history as the first female conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. Amongst many other awards and academic positions, she serves as 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, is Director of Graduate Conducting at the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute and holds Honorary Doctorates from Yale University and the Juilliard School. To promote and nurture the careers of her fellow female conductors, in 2002 she founded the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship, which was re-named in her honor as the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2020.


ARTIST BIOS HILARY HAHN VIOLIN

Three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn is renowned for her virtuosity, expansive interpretations, and creative programming. Her dynamic approach to music-making and her commitment to sharing her musical experiences with a broad global community have made her a fan favorite. Hahn’s sixteen feature recordings have received every critical prize in the international press and have met with equal popular success. Her seventeenth album was a retrospective collection that also contains new live material and art from her fans, in keeping with a decades-long tradition of collecting fan art at concerts. Hahn’s distinct stylistic choices honor the traditional violin literature while delving into the unexpected. In recent seasons, in recital tours across the United States, Europe, and Japan, she premiered six new partitas for solo violin by composer Antón García Abril. The works were Hahn’s first commissioning project for solo violin and her first commission of a set of works from a single composer. García Abril was also one of the composers for “In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores,” Hahn’s multi-year commissioning project to revitalize the duo encore genre. As part of residencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seattle Symphony, the National Orchestra of Lyon, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Hahn piloted free—and sometimes surprise—concerts for parents with their babies, as well as a knitting circle, a community dance workshop, a yoga class, and art students. She will continue to create these community-oriented concerts, encouraging music lovers to combine live performance with their interests outside the concert hall and providing opportunities for parents to enjoy live music with their infants. Hahn is an avid writer, having posted journal entries for two decades on her website, hilaryhahn.com, and published articles in mainstream media. On her YouTube channel, youtube.com/hilaryhahnvideos, she interviews colleagues about their experiences in music. Her violin case comments on life as a traveling companion, on Twitter and Instagram at @violincase.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.