Programme Notes | Yuja Wang meets Lahav Shani - 30 September, 1 & 3 October 2021

Programme Notes

YUJA WANG MEETS LAHAV SHANI THU 30 SEPTEMBER 2021 • 20.15 FRI 1 OCTOBER 2021 • 20.15 SUN 3 OCTOBER 2021 • 14.15

PROGRAMMA conductor Lahav Shani piano Yuja Wang Mathilde Wantenaar *1993 Meander [2021, world premiere] Dmitri Shostakovich 1906-1975 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in F major, op. 102 [1956-57] • Allegro • Andante • Allegro Interval Sergei Rachmaninoff 1873-1943 Symphonic Dances, op. 45 [1940] • Non allegro • Andante con moto. Tempo di valse • Lento assai – Allegro vivace Concert ends at around 22.00/16.00

Most recent performances by our orchestra: Wantenaar Meander: first performance Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2: Feb 2014, piano Lars Vogt, conductor Stéphane Denève Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances: Feb 2021, conductor Lahav Shani One hour before the start of the concert, musicologist Emanuel Overbeeke will give an introduction to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Friends. The introduction is in Dutch.

Cover: Meander. Foto Jeremy Bishop.

Portret of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Photo Edward Steichen, New York 1936.

Meanderings, portraits and quotes A portrait of a natural phenomenon, a portrait of a beloved son and a self-portrait: those are the ingredients of this concert programme. And when composers want to portray something, we ought to listen attentively – to the conflicts that arise, for instance.

Last year Mathilde Wantenaar kicked off the season in festive fashion after the first lockdown, when the orchestral parts of her playful Fanfare to Break the Silence found its way onto the orchestral stands. This year the young composer reaffirms her relationship with the Rotterdam Philharmonic with a new orchestral work: Meander.

Flowing It started with water: a wave, a very simple theme, a growing movement with a tendency to meander.

Composer Mathilde Wantenaar felt she needed to write a piece that would flow. She found what she wanted at the river. What fascinated her there was the sizeable, more or less constant, form that shifts, meandering very slowly, while the water in it never stops flowing. ‘I was inspired by the gradually increasing power of the flow, which ultimately erupts at the meander cutoff. That has become the form of this piece.’

‘It begins in a harmonically very static manner,’ says Wantenaar, ‘with the motif that unfolds slowly, small waves setting new waves in motion, becoming ever bigger, higher and longer. Underneath it you have the harp, which also starts to flow at an ever-increasing pace. It’s a succession of swells, ebbing and flowing.’

After the tranquil build-up the first clear change of colour takes place in the harmony, when the pitch range of the motif is increased by a semitone, taking us into a pentatonic world of sound that feels much lighter and warmer than the turbulent beginning.

As if the sun suddenly shines on the water, is how Wantenaar describes the passage. ‘Sometimes it is very light-footed and we imagine ourselves on the glimmering surface of the river, playful and innocent. And sometimes we descend to a darker, more threatening current that lies beneath it. These are both present.’

Birthday present Light-footed with an undercurrent is a description that also applies to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto. He wrote this boisterous, energetic concerto in the period of relative relaxation after Stalin’s death. The piece has no artistic merits, the composer opined after he had completed it. But you probably shouldn’t take him at his word.

It was actually a 19th birthday present for his son Maxim. Father hoped that son would become a professional pianist, but in the end he became a conductor and a strong advocate of his father’s work, even the less familiar pieces. Maxim premiered his birthday present as part of his final exam piano at Moscow’s Central Music School, where he was completing his pre-Conservatoire studies. We do not know what that final exam sounded like, but a recording of the Second Piano Concerto played by the composer himself can be heard on YouTube. And that recording confirms the popular notion that the piece can be seen as a portrait of Maxim.

Bittersweet In a jaunty, mischievous first movement full of playful themes and march-like passages we are suddenly confronted with the sea shanty What shall we do with the drunken sailor?

– most likely inserted deliberately, because the composer was fond of popular songs and had already arranged British and American folksongs.

The slow middle movement is, for Shostakovich, surprisingly lyrical, expressing the father’s emotions for his child. The strings start a choralelike passage, with the piano adding a childishly simple, radiant melody.

Simple, but not straightforward. A bittersweet melancholy pervades the music.

The third movement, dry and ironic as we expect from Shostakovich,

contains some of the Hanon finger exercises that piano students hate so much. A sly joke by the father at the expense of the son, the student who was only too happy to skip his finger exercises. The movement ends with an effervescent dance. And thus the Second Piano Concerto forms a natural bridge to the next composition on this programme: Rachmaninoff ’s Symphonic Dances.

The third movement contains some of the Hanon finger exercises that piano students hate so much. A sly joke by the father at the expense of the son, the student who was only too happy to skip his finger exercises

Mind’s ear Symphonic Dances is the orchestral work with which Sergei Rachmaninoff just failed to cause a sensation at the end of his life. That is because this composition gained recognition only later, when the composer was unable to enjoy it.

Rachmaninoff too had a portrait in mind: a self-portrait. He wrote the Symphonic Dances in 1940, towards the end of his life – a very eventful life, with a father who frittered away the family fortune, a sister who died young, lack of recognition as a composer, expulsion from Russia after the Revolution, and an escape to the United States before the Second World War. He intended to capture his life in three phases, which he planned

to entitle ‘Noon’, ‘Twilight’ and ‘Midnight’. The titles were ultimately not used but the three-movement form was, and the musical quotations from his works in those movements seem to confirm the image of a selfportrait.

Motifs from his highly-charged First Symphony colour the first movement, that has the somewhat ambiguous tempo marking of non allegro. It is the symphony which, after a disastrous first performance by a drunken conductor, was so poorly received that the composer suffered from depression and did not write another note for quite a while.

The second dance, a rather melancholic waltz, contains references to his early Serenade for solo piano.

The Dies Irae motif from the Latin Mass for the Dead stands alongside a surprisingly hopeful quotation from his Vespers in the last movement. Thus his own musical life once again passes his mind’s ear by.

He was not to know that this would be his final composition – Rachmaninoff died two years after the premiere – but he realised that he would never again compose such a major orchestral work. The fire was extinguished. ‘The Dances must have been my last spark,’ he admitted. A spark of whose value he was immediately aware – unlike the initially dismissive press. ‘I thank thee, Lord,’ the not-so-religious Rachmaninoff wrote under the final bars of the score.

Joke Dame

Yuja Wang, Piano Born: Beijing, China Education: Conservatory of Music Beijing; Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Gary Graffman Awards: Musical America’s Artist of the Year 2017 Debut: 2003, with Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted

by David Zinman Breakthrough: 2007, replacing Martha Argerich in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit

Photo Marco Borggreve

Lahav Shani, Conductor Born: Tel Aviv, Israël Current position: chief conductor Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra; music director Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

Soloist: with the leading orchestras of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington and New York, Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Artist in residence: at Carnegie Hall New York, Konzerthaus Vienna, Philharmonic Orchestra Luxembourg; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 2021/22 Chamber Music: with Gautier Capuçon (cello) and Andreas Ottensamer (clarinet) Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2018

Before: principal guest conductor Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2020 Education: piano at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Tel Aviv; conducting and piano at the Academy of Music ‘Hanns Eisler’ Berlin; mentor: Daniel Barenboim Breakthrough: 2013, after winning the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg Subsequently: Staatskapelle Berlin, Berlin State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016 Photo Norbert Kniat

AGENDA

MUSICIANS

Fri 15 October 2021 • 20.15 conductor John Adams piano Katia en Marielle Labèque Reich Three Movements Glass Concerto for Two Pianos Adams Naive and Sentimental Music (Dutch premiere revised version)

Chief Conductor Lahav Shani

Fri 29 October 2021• 20.15 Sun 31 October 2021 • 14.15 conductor Edo de Waart bassoon Pieter Nuytten Dvořák Serenade for Winds Weber Andante e Rondo ongarese Dvořák Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’

First violin Igor Gruppman, concertmaster Marieke Blankestijn, concertmaster Quirine Scheffers Hed Yaron Meyerson Saskia Otto Arno Bons Mireille van der Wart Shelly Greenberg Cor van der Linden Rachel Browne Maria Dingjan Marie-José Schrijner Noëmi Bodden Petra Visser Sophia Torrenga Hadewijch Hofland Annerien Stuker Alexandra van Beveren Koen Stapert

Sat 30 October 2021 • 19.00 Halloween Fright Concert (6+) conductor Adam Hickox actor Michel Sorbach staging/text Bart Oomen film animation Sebastiaan de Ruiter music by Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns and Dukas Thu 4 November 2021 • 20.15 Fri 5 November 2021 • 20.15 Sun 7 November 2021 • 14.15 conductor Lahav Shani cello Nicolas Altstaedt Bloch Schelomo Mahler Symphony No. 1 Fri 12 November 2021 • 20.15 conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste soprano Helena Juntunen baritone Tommi Hakala choir YL Male Voice Choir Sibelius Kullervo Sun 14 November 2021 • 14.15 conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste soprano Helena Juntunen baritone Tommi Hakala Sibelius Orchestral Songs Sibelius The Bard Sibelius Lemminkäinen Suite

Honorary Conductor Valery Gergiev Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Second violin Charlotte Potgieter Cecilia Ziano Frank de Groot Laurens van Vliet Tomoko Hara Elina Staphorsius Jun Yi Dou Bob Bruyn Letizia Sciarone Eefje Habraken Maija Reinikainen Sumire Hara Wim Ruitenbeek Babette van den Berg Melanie Broers

Viola Anne Huser Roman Spitzer Maartje van Rheeden Galahad Samson Kerstin Bonk Lex Prummel Janine Baller Francis Saunders Veronika Lénártová Rosalinde Kluck León van den Berg Cello Emanuele Silvestri Joanna Pachucka Daniel Petrovitsch Mario Rio Gé van Leeuwen Eelco Beinema Carla Schrijner Pepijn Meeuws Yi-Ting Fang Double bass Matthew Midgley Ying Lai Green Jonathan Focquaert Robert Franenberg Harke Wiersma Arjen Leendertz Ricardo Neto Flute Juliette Hurel Joséphine Olech Désirée Woudenberg Oboe Remco de Vries Karel Schoofs Hans Cartigny Anja van der Maten Oboe/cor anglais Ron Tijhuis Klarinet Julien Hervé Bruno Bonansea Jan Jansen

Clarinet/ bass clarinet Romke-Jan Wijmenga Bassoon Pieter Nuytten Marianne Prommel Bassoon/ contra bassoon Hans Wisse Horn David Fernández Alonso Wendy Leliveld Richard Speetjens Laurens Otto Pierre Buizer Trumpet Giuliano Sommerhalder Alex Elia Simon Wierenga Jos Verspagen Trombone Pierre Volders Alexander Verbeek Remko de Jager Bass Trombone/ contrabass trombone Ben van Dijk Tuba Hendrik-Jan Renes Timpani/ percussion Randy Max Danny van de Wal Ronald Ent Martijn Boom Adriaan Feyaerts Harp Charlotte Sprenkels