Program Notes: BEYOND THE SCORE®: DVOŘÁK SYMPHONY NO. 9: WHOSE WORLD?

NOVEMBER 18 BEYOND THE SCORE ®: WHOSE WORLD? FRIDAY November 18, 2016 – 8:00pm conductor Cristian Măcelaru

Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall.

PROGRAM VARIOUS

Beyond the Score: Dvorák's Symphony No. 9: Whose World?

A production of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Gerard McBurney, creative director

INTERMISSION ANTONÍN DVORÁK

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95: From the New World

Adagio - Allegro molto Largo

Molto vivace

Allegro con fuoco

The approximate running time for this program, including intermission, is two hours and five minutes.

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ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR

BEYOND THE SCORE ®: WHOSE WORLD? - NOVEMBER 18

with the Houston Grand Opera in Madama Butterfly and led the U.S. premiere of Colin Matthews’s Turning Point with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra as part of the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival.

In 2019, he returns to the Houston Grand Opera on a Kasper Holten production of Don Giovanni.

CRISTIAN MĂCELARU, CONDUCTOR

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ewly appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, CRIST IAN M ĂC E LARU has established himself as one of the fast-rising stars of the conducting world. With every concert he displays an exciting and highly regarded presence, thoughtful interpretations and energetic conviction on the podium. Mr. Măcelaru came to public attention in February 2012 when he conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a replacement for Pierre Boulez in performances met with critical acclaim.

Conductor-in-Residence of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he made his Philadelphia Orchestra subscription debut in 2013 and continues to conduct them annually on subscription programs and other special concerts. In September 2016 he was announced Music Director of Cabrillo Festival, America’s longest running festival dedicated to new music for orchestra, to succeed Marin Alsop with immediate effect. Mr. Măcelaru leads his inaugural season as Cabrillo Festival Music Director in August 2017.

The 2016-17 season sees Mr. Măcelaru returning to the Philadelphia Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra and the symphony orchestras of St. Louis, San Diego, Milwaukee, Colorado, Detroit and Vancouver.

Internationally he leads the Bayerischen Rundfunk Symphonieorchester, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Weimar Staatskapelle, Halle Orchestra, Royal Flemish

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Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and New Japan Philharmonic with Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist. In Summer 2016 Mr. Măcelaru made debuts at Dresden Staatskapelle, Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony, Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wolf Trap Festival with the National Symphony Orchestra and at the Aspen Music Festival. Additionally, he returned to the Mann Center and Saratoga Performing Arts Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chautauqua Music Festival with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

In the 2015-16 season, Mr. Măcelaru led subscription concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra in D.C., as well as with the Atlanta Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra and New World Symphony. His international guest-conducting appearances brought him to Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Cristian Măcelaru made his Carnegie Hall debut in February 2015 on a program with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Anne-Sophie Mutter. A keen opera conductor, in June 2015 he made his Cincinnati Opera debut in highly acclaimed performances of Il Trovatore. In 2010 he made his operatic debut

Winner of the 2014 Solti Conducting Award, Mr. Măcelaru previously received the Sir Georg Solti Emerging Conductor Award in 2012, a prestigious honor only awarded once before in the Foundation’s history. He has participated in the conducting programs of the Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Music Festival, studying under David Zinman, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Oliver Knussen and Stefan Asbury. His main studies were with Larry Rachleff at Rice University, where he received master’s degrees in conducting and violin performance. He completed undergraduate studies in violin performance at the University of Miami. An accomplished violinist from an early age, Mr. Măcelaru was the youngest concertmaster in the history of the Miami Symphony Orchestra and made his Carnegie Hall debut with that orchestra at the age of nineteen. He also played in the first violin section of the Houston Symphony for two seasons.

Mr. Măcelaru formerly held the position of Resident Conductor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he was Music Director of the Campanile Orchestra, Assistant Conductor to Larry Rachleff and Conductor for the Opera Department. A proponent of music education, he has served as a conductor with the Houston Youth Symphony, where he also conceptualized and created a successful chamber music program. As Founder and Artistic Director of the Crisalis Music Project, Mr. Măcelaru spearheaded a program in which young musicians perform in a variety of settings, side-by-side with established artists. Their groundbreaking inaugural season produced and presented concerts featuring chamber ensembles, a chamber orchestra, a tango operetta and collaborations with dancer Susana Collins, which resulted in a choreographed performance of Vivaldi/ Piazzolla’s Eight Seasons.

Cristian Măcelaru resides in Philadelphia with his wife Cheryl and children Beniamin and Maria. n

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BEYOND THE SCORE® A Production of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Gerard McBurney creative director

or newcomers to classical music and longtime aficionados alike, each Beyond the Score® presentation is a dramatic exploration of a composer’s music. Through live actors, stunning visual projections and virtuosic fragments of live music performed by members of the CSO, the compelling story of the composer’s life and art unfolds, illuminating the world that shaped the music’s creation. Under creative director Gerard McBurney’s leadership, each of the 30 Beyond the Score presentations weave together theater, music and design to draw audiences into the concert hall and into a work’s spirit.

Initially conceived in 2005 by Martha Gilmer, Beyond the Score® has become one of the most successful and original audience development tools in the field of classical music. The program seeks to open the door to the symphonic repertoire for first-time concertgoers as well as to encourage an active, more fulfilling way of listening for seasoned audiences. At its core is the live format of musical extracts, spoken clarification, theatrical narrative, and handpaced projections on large central surfaces, performed in close synchrony. After each program, audiences return from intermission to experience the resulting work performed in a regular concert setting, equipped with a new understanding of its style and genesis.

Beyond the Score® was quickly recognized by orchestras in the United States and abroad; and its expanded licensing program has since brought performances to live audiences throughout the United States and the world. In addition, selected performances are also available for online viewing at www.beyondthescore.org.

Holiday Family Concert

SUN DEC 18—2pm

Sameer Patel, conductor; San Diego Master Chorale; San Diego Children’s Choir A one-hour afternoon version of our annual holiday concert spectacular, complete with all your favorite traditional Christmas music, the San Diego Master Chorale and a visit from Santa Claus!

Tickets and Information SANDIEGOSYMPHONY.ORG • 619.235.0804

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ABOUT THE MUSIC

BEYOND THE SCORE ®: WHOSE WORLD? - NOVEMBER 18 Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95: From the New World A N TON Í N DVO Ř Á K Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia Died May 1, 1904, Prague When Dvořák landed in America in the fall of 1892 to begin his three-year tenure as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, his new employers tried to turn his arrival into a specifically “American” occasion: they timed his arrival to coincide with the 440th anniversary of Columbus’ “discovery” of America, and the composer himself was to mark that occasion by writing a cantata on the poem The American Flag. Shortly after arriving, Dvořák announced his intention to write an opera on Longfellow’s Hiawatha, and soon “American” elements – Indian rhythms, spirituals and a birdsong he heard in Iowa – began to appear in the music he wrote in this country.

These elements touched off a debate that has lasted a century. Nationalistic American observers claimed that here at last was a true American classical music, based on authentic American elements. But others have pointed out that the musical characteristics that make up these “American” elements (pentatonic melodies, flatted sevenths, extra cadential accents) are in fact common to folk music everywhere, and that – far from being American – the works Dvořák composed in this country remain quintessentially Czech.

Dvořák himself left contradictory signals on this matter. At the time of the premiere of the New World Symphony, he said: "The influence of America can be felt by anyone who has ‘a nose.’” Yet after his return to Europe, he wrote to a conductor who was preparing a performance in Berlin: “I am sending you Kretzschmar’s analysis of the symphony, but omit that nonsense about my having made use of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’ themes – that is a lie. I tried to write only in the spirit of those national American melodies.” Perhaps safest is Dvořák’s simple description of the symphony as “Impressions and greetings from the New World.”

Composed in the first months of 1893, Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony had an absolutely triumphant premiere on December 16, 1893, by the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie

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Hall. One New York critic observed tartly of the thunderous ovation that followed each movement: “the staidness and solemn decorum of the Philharmonic audience took wings.” That occasion has been described as the greatest triumph of Dvořák’s life, and the surprised composer wrote to his publisher Simrock: “I had to show my gratitude like a king from the box in which I sat. It made me think of Mascagni in Vienna (don’t laugh!)”

One of the most impressive aspects of this music is Dvořák’s use of a single theme-shape to unify the entire symphony. This shape, a rising dotted figure, first appears in the slow introduction, where it surges up in the horns and lower strings as a foreshadowing of the Allegro molto: there the shape is sounded in its purest form by the horns. This theme (actually in two parts – the horn call and a dotted response from the woodwinds) becomes the basis for the entire movement.

When the perky second subject arrives in the winds, it is revealed as simply a variation of the second part of the main theme. The third theme, a calm flute melody in G Major that has been compared to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” seems at first to establish a separate identity, but in fact it is based – at a much slower tempo – on the rhythm of the main theme. That rhythm saturates the movement: within themes, as subtle accompaniment or thundered out by the full orchestra. Dvořák drives the movement to a mighty climax that, pushed ahead by stinging trumpet calls, combines all these themes.

Solemn brass chords introduce the Largo, where the English horn sings a haunting melody that was later adapted as the music for the spiritual “Goin’ Home.” More animated material appears along the way (and the symphony’s central theme rises up ominously at the climax), but the English horn returns to lead this movement to its close on an imaginative stroke of orchestration: a quiet chord built on a four-part division of the double basses. The Scherzo has sounded like “Indian” music to many listeners, and for good reason: Dvořák himself said that it “was suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indians dance, and is also an essay I made in the direction of imparting the local color of Indian character to music.” The pounding opening section gives way to two brief trios, and in the coda the symphony’s central theme boils up one more time, in the brass.

After a fiery introduction, the sonata-form finale leaps to life with a ringing brass theme that is, for a change, entirely new. But now Dvořák springs a series of surprises. Back come themes from the first three movements.

(There is even a quotation – doubtless unconscious – of “Three Blind Mice” along the way). The movement drives toward its climax on the chords that opened the Largo, and it reaches that soaring climax as Dvořák ingeniously combines the main themes of the first movement and the finale. At the end, the composer has one final surprise: instead of ringing out decisively, the last chord is held and fades into silence. n PROGRAM NOTE BY ERIC BROMBERGER

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist

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he Ninth Symphony of Antonín Dvořák, popularly called From the New World, was first played by the original San Diego Symphony Orchestra in 1920 when it was conducted by its first music director, Buren Schryock. David Atherton conducted it with the contemporary San Diego Symphony in 1983, and including that performance it has been programmed here seven times, including a reading accompanied by metal guitarist Dave Mustaine in 2014. It was also performed by the San Diego Philharmonic, a short-lived group of local players formed during the early 1950's in an equally brief attempt to establish a winter season of classical music in San Diego. Leslie Hodge conducted it then, during their 1951-52 season, and a decade later the resurgent SDSO successfully established an indoor classical concert season in the winter and spring months. n

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