BEETHOVEN'S PASTORAL

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Friday, February 18, 2022 at 7:30 pm Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 7:30 pm Sunday, February 20, 2022 at 2:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Edo de Waart, conductor

Susan Babini, cello

PROGRAM

FREDERICK DELIUS

In a Summer Garden

EDWARD ELGAR

Concerto in E minor for Cello and Orchestra, Opus 85

I. Adagio – Moderato

II. Lento – Allegro molto

III. Adagio

IV. Allegro – Moderato – Allegro, ma non troppo

Susan Babini, cello

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Symphony No. 6 in F major, Opus 68 “Pastoral”

I. Angenehme, heitere Empfindungen, welche bei der Ankunft auf dem Lande im Menschen erwachen: Allegro ma non troppo

II. Szene am Bach: Andante molto moto

III. Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute: Allegro

IV. Donner. Sturm: Allegro

V. Hirtengesang. Wohltätige, mit Dank an die Gottheit verbundene Gefühle nach dem Sturm: Allegretto

The 2021.22 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND.The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours.

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra can be heard on Telarc, Koss Classics, Pro Arte, AVIE, and Vox/Turnabout recordings. MSO Classics recordings (digital only) available on iTunes and at mso.org. MSO Binaural recordings (digital only) available at mso.org.

Guest Artist Biographies

SUSAN BABINI

SUSAN BABINI

cello

Susan Babini was appointed principal cello of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 2012 by Edo de Waart. She has been recognized for her “gorgeous sound and liquid sense of phrasing” (Philadelphia Enquirer), her “achingly beautiful” playing (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) and “gorgeous, dark sound” (Milwaukee Shepherd Express).

Since joining the MSO, she has been a regularly featured soloist. She has also performed as soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Symphony in C, as well as the New Century Chamber Orchestra, where she held the position of principal cello. In addition, she has appeared as guest principal cello with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

An Astral Artist alumnus, Babini performed the East Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Colored Field for Cello and Orchestra with Symphony in C, and is also featured on Kernis’s album On Distant Shores. She has also been presented in solo recital by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

A dedicated educator, Babini loves working with students of all ages and frequently leads masterclasses at home and abroad. For several years, she taught cello orchestral repertoire at Northwestern University, as well as teaching and coaching for the National Youth Orchestra, Luzerne Music Center, and the Brevard Music Festival. Currently, she is a faculty member for the Advanced Chamber Music Institute at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.

A passionate chamber musician, Babini has participated in the Marlboro Music Festival and subsequently toured with “Musicians from Marlboro.” She has also performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, and Tanglewood and Yellow Barn music festivals. Additionally, she has performed as guest cellist with the Cavani String Quartet on the Detroit Chamber Music Society series and at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In Milwaukee, she has performed with the Philomusica String Quartet, Milwaukee Musaik, and Frankly Music chamber music series.

A native of Detroit, Susan Babini is the daughter of two former Detroit Symphony cellists and began her musical studies at the young age of three. She holds a Graduate Diploma from The Juilliard School, as well as Bachelor and Master of Chamber Music degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

This weekend we welcome Music Director Laureate Edo de Waart. Pastoral music by Beethoven and Delius enclose a performance of Elgar’s poignant Cello Concerto, featuring MSO Principal Cello Susan Babini.

Frederick Delius

FREDERICK

DELIUS

Born 29 January 1862; Bradford, England Died 10 June 1934; Grez-sur-Loing, France

In a Summer Garden

Composed: 1908

First performance: 11 December 1909; London, England

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: 3 flutes; 2 oboes, English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; 3 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; percussion (glockenspiel, triangle); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 13 minutes

Sometimes called an English Impressionist, Frederick Delius led an interesting life. Born in England to German parents, his father set him up as an orange grower in Florida in his early 20s. Following a couple of years there, he returned to Europe to study composition with Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory (1886-88). He then settled in Paris as a man of bohemian habits until 1897, when he moved to Grez-sur-Loing with his lover Jelka Rosen, later his wife. There he remained for the rest of his days, writing operas, orchestral music, choral and vocal music, and chamber music.

The orchestral rhapsody In a Summer Garden was composed in the spring of 1908. The garden was Delius’s own at Grez. The music evokes the magical landscape that had by this time been created by Jelka. The published score of the work includes two quotations that provide insight into its intended emotional content. The first is a couplet by Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang.

The second, unattributed passage reads:

Roses, lilies, and a thousand scented flowers. Bright butterflies, flitting from petal to petal. Beneath the shade of ancient trees, a quiet river with water lilies. In a boat, almost hidden, two people. A thrush singing in the distance.

The composer himself conducted the Philharmonic Society of London in the first performance of this endlessly evocative piece – at the Queen’s Hall, London, in December 1909.

Edward Elgar

(This program note by Roger Ruggeri)

EDWARD

ELGAR

Born 2 June 1857; Broadheath, England. Died 23 February 1934; Worcester, England

Concerto in E minor for Cello and Orchestra, Opus 85

Composed: 1918-19

First performance: 27 October 1919; London, England

Last MSO performance: September 2014; Edo de Waart, conductor; Alisa Weilerstein, cello

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo); 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 30 minutes

Aged and anguished by the First World War, Elgar felt the loss of many friends, both English and German. Plagued by failing health and financial security, he lamented: “I am more alone and the prey of circumstances than ever before… Everything good and nice and clean and fresh and sweet is far away – never to return.” Retreating from the world, Elgar and his wife rented a country cottage in Sussex in 1917. Gradually, his creative strength returned. During the summer of 1919, Elgar penned one of his most significant works and also his last major composition, the Cello Concerto. While in the compositional process, Elgar wrote to the work’s dedicatees, Sir Sidney and Lady Colvin, that it was “a real large work and I think good and alive.”

Unfortunately, the next few years held many difficulties for both the composer and his new work. The concerto was scheduled to be premiered by the English cellist, Felix Salmond (1888-1952), on 27 October 1919, with Elgar conducting the London Symphony. Albert Coates, the other conductor on this shared program, used more than his allotted rehearsal time to prepare Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy; Elgar was therefore not able to prepare the performance to his liking. He would have withdrawn the work from this concert, had it not been such an important occasion for Salmond. Clouded by an insecure premiere, this concerto – the simplest, most direct, and least rhetorical of Elgar’s major works – was long misunderstood by musicians and audiences.

Heartbroken by the death of his wife shortly thereafter, Elgar resolved never to compose again. He kept his vow for nine years; then, in 1929, composed a hymn of prayer for the recovery of King George V from a serious illness. Elgar later began a Third Symphony that was still unfinished at the time of his death in 1934.

Virtuosic, but not superficial, the Cello Concerto provides a unique glimpse of the inner Elgar, a man who concealed a sensitive and complex nature behind the façade of a country squire. When asked to “explain” this work, he replied enigmatically, “A man’s attitude to life.”

Scholar Diana McVeagh provided these insights:

It was into a virtuoso form that he confided his most private thoughts. So much is made of the poignancy of the Cello Concerto that its daring can be overlooked. But there is a consummate technical confidence in opening a concerto with a solo recitative with such panache, allowing it to die to nothing, and then presenting so gentle and unobtrusive a main theme for violas alone. In the tension between the risks taken by the craftsman and the shyness of the aging man, Elgar turned his disillusion to positive account. The concerto is simply lyrical and rondo forms. The scherzo is a shadowy, fantastic moto perpetuo, the Adagio a passionate lament. The Falstaffian last movement runs a humorous course before the stricken cadenza, in which soloist and orchestra sing the pain and poetry of Elgar’s most searching visions, reaching stillness in a phrase from the Adagio. Elgar cut resolutely into this with the formal recitative of the opening; and the end is abrupt.

Ludwig van Beethoven

LUDWIG

VAN BEETHOVEN

Baptized 17 December 1770; Bonn, Germany Died 26 March 1827; Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 6 in F major, Opus 68 “Pastoral”

Composed: 1808

First performance: 22 December 1808; Vienna, Austria

Last MSO performance: January 2015; Edo de Waart, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; piccolo; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; 2 trombones; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 39 minutes

In Beethoven as I Knew Him: A Biography, Anton Schinder (1795-1864) tells us that one of the composer’s favorite books was Christoph Christian Sturm’s Reflections on the Works of God in the Realm of Nature and Providence, first published in 1785. Beethoven’s copy was published in 1811 and apparently was copiously annotated. All manner of biographical evidence makes it plain that he enjoyed the countryside, often venturing into the woods and fields.

On the title page of his “Sinfonia Pastorale,” Beethoven included the subtitle “more an expression of feelings than tone painting.” He embraced Mother Nature with pantheistic ardor, imbuing the work with the sense of awe and unspoken gratitude we often feel in the great outdoors. Though he provided descriptive titles for each of the five movements, he warned that “Each act of tonepainting, as soon as it is pushed too far in instrumental music, loses its force.”

“Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arriving in the country” opens the work with bagpipe-like sonorities in the lower strings and a flowing, repeated motive above; the movement is notable in its harmonic stasis, confined almost exclusively to major-mode harmonies. The “Scene by the brook” is well-known for the bird imitations in its coda: nightingale (flute), quail (oboe), cuckoo (two clarinets). “Merry gathering of country folk” calls to mind the colorful paintings of Breughel; the movement acts as a sort of scherzo, at one point vividly depicting a high-spirited village band.

In “Thunderstorm,” displaying the first extended use of the minor mode in the whole work, the festivities are interrupted – first mildly, then turbulently. The ensemble displays mighty power as lightning flashes across the dark sky, and the timpanist provides dramatic thunder claps. At its height, “it is no longer just a wind and rain storm; it is a frightful cataclysm, a universal deluge, the end of the world” – according to a typically effusive Hector Berlioz. The clouds disperse as gradually as they accumulated, leading to “Shepherd’s song – Happy and thankful feelings after the storm.” The music builds to a through-the-roof crescendo, then returns Opus 86 to the idyllic calm with which it began.

The Sixth Symphony was first heard on a four-hour all-Beethoven marathon concert that also included the premieres of the Symphony No. 5, the Choral Fantasy, Opus 80, the soprano concert aria Ah, perfido!, portions of the Mass in C, Opus 86, piano improvisations by the composer, and the first public performances in Vienna of the Piano Concerto No. 4. At the Theater an der Wien, seated in the aristocrat’s box next to Beethoven’s patron Prince Lobkowitz, listening to the under-rehearsed concert, the composer Johann Friedrich Reichard later reported: “There we held out in the bitterest cold from half-past six until half-past ten, and experienced the fact that one can easily have too much of a good – and even more of a strong – thing.”