Wires and Pines Program | Alpharetta Symphony Orchestra

AND PINES

WIRES AND PINES

Friday, November 4,

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Alpharetta Methodist Church 69 N. Main Street, Alpharetta

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Newsreel, in 5 Shots William Schuman (1910-1992) Cello Concerto No. 1 Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Philip Jeong, cello Intermission

Valse Triste Jean Sibelius (from the incidental music to Kuolema, Op. 44) (1835-1921) Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome) Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

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PHILIP

Cellist, Philip Jeong, was born in New York, USA in June 2009 and began his career at the age of nine. He has studied with Dr. Jesús Castro-Balbi. Mr. Jeong made his first solo appearance at the age of 12 at Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall. In 2022 he played J. Haydn CELLO CONCERTO No.1 in C Major 1st Movement Moderato with Gwinnett County Youth Symphony as a winner of Gwinnett County Youth Symphony Concerto Competition. In addition, he has been invited to play the entire concerto of Saint-Saëns CELLO CONCERTO No. 1 in A minor, Opus 33 as a winner of AlphaSo Concerto Competition.

Mr. Jeong won numerous concerto competitions and international music competitions in the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. As a competition winner, he was selected to perform at the Beethoven House in Bonn (Germany), at the Carnegie Hall in New York (USA), and at Teatro Studio, Parco Della Musica in Rome (Italy).

As a chamber musician, Mr. Jeong attended Emory Youth Chamber Program in 2021-2022 and was instructed by Vega String Quartet members. He performed Mendelssohn Piano Trio in D Minor No. 1 Op.49 and the 1st movement of the Beethoven Piano Trio Op.11 with violinist Claire Cho and pianist Nathan Liu. His chamber team, Enchant Trio, won the 2nd prize in the 2022 Franklin Pond Chamber Music Competition High School Division. His chamber team was invited and performed at the Chamber Music Concert at the Nacoochee Culture Center in North Georgia as well. In addition, in 2022 Mr. Jeong has been invited to join a concert called “CelloMania” at the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival 41th Season in NC. He performed a Bach Suite C-Major, the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations, the Swan, and the Rachmaninoff Vocalise with cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio, cellist Jesús Castro-Balbi, cellist Guang Wang, cellist Charae Krueger, cellist Martin Gueorguiev, and cellist Khari Joyner.

Philip Jeong has performed as a principal cellist at various Orchestras including Gwinnett County Youth Symphony.

Other than his journey of Cello, Philip Jeong has shown extraordinary visual art performance. Mr. Jeong earned “Best of Show” of Georgia State at the 2021-2022 Federal Junior Duck Stamp Conservation Art Contest. He won the 1st place State Winners at Visual Art and Music Composition at National PTA and Georgia PTA Reflections competition. In addition, he has won the 1st place at numerous art competitions.

PROGRAM

Newsreel, In Five Shots

William Shuman (1910-1992)

Born into a Jewish family in the Bronx, William Schuman dropped out of business school in order to pursue composition after seeing the New York Philharmonic for the first time in 1930. He later said, “I was astounded at seeing the sea of stringed instruments and everybody bowing together. The visual alone was astonishing. But the sound! I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a com poser.” He went on to become president of the prestigious Julliard School, as well as the first director of the Lincoln Center in New York. Additionally, he won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize in music in 1943 for his Cantata No. 2, A Free Song which was adapted from poems by Walt Whitman.

Newsreel, in Five Shots was Schuman’s first piece for wind band, written in 1942 and later adapted to the orchestra. The composer originally intend ed the piece to be played by youth bands, but soon realized that it was too difficult for most young musicians. The fact that it was intended to engage young musicians is evident in the whimsical subjects for each movement, or “shot”, of the imagined newsreel. (In early cinema, a newsreel was a compilation of highlights of the current news stories that would be shown before the feature film.) The fantasy news story highlights would certainly have excited the imaginations of his intended young musicians (who were probably all weary of WWII story highlights) as the music vividly depicts the driving hoof beats in a Horse Race, the suave elegance of a Fashion Show, the sharp rhythms of a Tribal Dance, playful Monkeys at the Zoo, and finally the awe of a big Parade complete with fancy floats and giant balloons.

Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 33 in a minor Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

A French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist, Saint-Saëns is well known for works such as The Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre, the opera Samson and Delilah, Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony), Op. 78 in c minor (which the Alpharetta Symphony will be performing later this sea son), and the Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 33 in a minor.

Saint-Saëns was considered a musical prodigy, making his debut at the age of 10. He studied at the prestigious Paris Conservatory before becom ing the church organist for Église de la Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire; he held this illustrious post for 20 years. He then con tinued in his career as a highly sought-after freelance pianist and com poser throughout Europe and the Americas. Unusual for a musician of his standing, Saint-Saëns only held one teaching post throughout the course of his entire career. He taught less than five years at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse where Gabriel Fauré was one of his students. Both Fauré, and his own pupil Maurice Ravel, were heavily influenced by SaintSaëns and openly considered him to be a genius.

The Cello Concerto No. 1 was written for the distinguished Belgian cellist, Au guste Tolbecque who was closely associated with France’s leading concert society at the time. Saint-Saëns used a non-traditional through-composed method for this concerto instead of breaking it into separate movements.

Although the concerto does not have separate movements, it does have three distinct sections, the third of which is especially demanding for the so loist. With the premier of this masterful concerto at the Paris Conservatory in 1873, Saint-Saëns secured his acceptance into the French musical estab lishment. Sir Donald Francis Tovey, a renowned musicologist, wrote, “Here, for once, is a violincello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestra.” Other composers, such as Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff have considered this concerto to be the greatest cello concerto of all time.

Valse Triste (Sad Waltz) Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Considered Finland’s greatest composer, Jean Sibelius has even been credited with helping Finland to establish their national identity during their struggle for independence from Russia.

The Valse Triste was originally written in 1903 as incidental music to accom pany his brother-in-law’s play Kuolema (Death). Sibelius wrote six pieces for the play, but Valtz Triste gained such popularity that the composer revised it the following year as a separate orchestral piece. To this day, it remains one of his signature compositions. The program notes for the original production of Kuolema set the scene for the waltz:

“It is night. The son, who has been watching beside the bedside of his sick mother, has fallen asleep from sheer weariness. Gradually a ruddy light is diffused through the room: there is a sound of distant music: the glow and the music steal nearer until the strains of a valse melody float distantly to our ears. The sleeping mother awakens, rises from her bed and, in her long white garment, which takes the semblance of a ball dress, begins to move silently and slowly to and fro. She waves her hands and beckons in time to the music, as though she were summoning a crowd of invisible guests. And now they appear, these strange visionary couples, turning and gliding to an unearthly valse rhythm. The dying woman mingles with the dancers; she strives to make them look into her eyes, but the shadowy guests one and all avoid her glance. Then she seems to sink exhausted on her bed and the music breaks off. Presently she gathers all her strength and invokes the dance once more, with more energetic gestures than before. Back come the shadowy dancers, gyrating in a wild, mad rhythm. The weird gaiety reaches a climax; there is a knock at the door, which flies wide open; the mother utters a despairing cry; the spectral guests vanish; the music dies away. Death stands on the threshold.”

Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

Ottorino Respighi, although a prolific and popular Italian composer, per former, teacher, and musicologist of his day, is best known now for his “Roman Triptych”, of which Pines of Rome is the second installment. He relocated to Rome from Bologna in 1913, fell in love with his adopted new home, and essentially wrote a musical ode to the “Eternal City” through a series of three tone poems: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1929). Fountains of Rome brought him international fame, but Pines of Rome brought him so much financial gain that he used the earnings to buy a villa aptly named, “The Pines”. All three tone poems

consist of four movements and are performed without interruption as one scene fades into the next.

For his second tone poem, Respighi drew inspiration from the “umbrella-like pines that appear in every part of the horizon”. Speaking in third person, he wrote “in Pines of Rome [the composer] uses Nature as a point of departure, in order to recall memories and vision. The centuries-old trees which so characteristically dominate the Roman landscape become witnesses to the principal events in Roman life.” The four movements/scenes move coun terclockwise around the city’s perimeter and progress from day to night and finally culminate at dawn as a new day literally and figuratively dawns on the magnificent city. Respighi described each of the four movements as follows:

I Pini di villa Borgese (The Pines of the Villa Borghese) (Allegretto vivace)— Children are at play in the pine groves of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of “Ring around a Rosy.” They mimic marching soldiers and battles. They twitter and shriek like swallows at evening, coming and going in swarms. Suddenly the scene changes.

Pini presso una Catacomba (The Pines Near a Catacomb) (Lento)—We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant, which echoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced.

I Pini del Ginicolo (The Pines of the Janiculum) (Lento)—There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightin gale sings.

I Pini della Via Appia (The Pines of the Appian Way) (Tempo di Marcia)— Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of unending steps. The poet has a fantastic vision of past glories. Trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul bursts forth in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.

It is additionally notable that Pines of Rome is one of the earliest compositions to use electronics. For I Pini del Ginicolo, Respighi had a recording made and set in wax of a local nightingale singing to be used at the end of the third movement. The medium has changed throughout the years, but the exact same recording continues to be included in every copy of the orchestral score.

Program Notes by Missy Mahon

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