San Antonio Philharmonic 2023-24 Classics 3 Program Guide

Classics 3

Program Guide

Mulligan conducts Dvořák November 3 & 4, 2023

Adelante Juntos!Forward Together Dear esteemed members of the San Antonio community, As the holiday season approaches, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to our valued patrons. This is a moment for us to pause and celebrate the sense of community that surrounds us. It is with this profound sentiment that the San Antonio Philharmonic places utmost importance on fulfilling its mission to cater to our distinctive community through educational and cultural endeavors, such as tonight's concert. We place great emphasis on fostering a deep sense of wonder, recognizing its significance in our endeavors.

Please be assured that we are diligently working to enhance our service to San Antonio as its leading performing arts organization. Our goal is to uplift and enrich the entire community by fostering a profound appreciation for arts and culture. Our unwavering dedication lies in creating an atmosphere of tranquility and compassion that uplifts all individuals through the power of music.

We cordially invite you to enjoy tonight's concert alongside your fellow members of the arts community, as we come together to commemorate our shared values and interests. Let us revel in the bonds that unite us and celebrate the commonalities we cherish.

With deepest gratitude,

s waw wp. s ahp hi i ll . o. rog r g

Roberto Treviño, Executive Director

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Program November 3 & 4, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

Stephen Mulligan, conductor

Overture to The Magic Flute, K. 620

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Pulcinella Suite Sinfonia Serenata Scherzino Tarantella Toccata Gavotta con due variazioni Vivo Menuetto Finale

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Intermission

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World” Adagio – Allegro molto Largo Molto vivace Allegro con fuoco

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

Orchestra Violin I Sandy Yamamoto, Concertmaster Rainel Joubert, Assistant Concertmaster Bassam Nashawati Philip Johnson Elizabeth Girko Andrew Small Craig Sorgi Beth Johnson Eric Siu Angela Caporale

Flute Douglas DeVries, Principal Julie Luker, Assistant Principal

Violin II Mary Ellen Goree, Principal Karen Stiles, Assistant Principal Amy Venticinque Judy Levine-Holley Aimee Lopez Julie Post Eva Weber Jackson Mankewitz

Bassoon Brian Petkovich, Principal Ryan Wilkins, Assistant Principal

Viola Allyson Dawkins, Principal Marisa Bushman, Assistant Principal Beverly Bias Amy Pickler Bethany Turriff Chris Gokelman

Trumpet John Carroll, Principal Lauren Eberhart, Assistant Principal

Cello Kenneth Freudigman, Principal Barbara George, Assistant Principal Qizhen Liu Ignacio Gallego Megan Swisher Kelsey Sexton Bass David Milburn, Principal Zlatan Redzic, Assistant Principal Steven Zeserman James Chudnow

Oboe Ian Davidson, Principal Deana Johnson, Assistant Principal Clarinet Nicholas Councilor, Principal Kathleen Jones, Assistant Principal

Horn Peter Rubins, Principal Catherine Dowd Russell Rybicki, Assistant Principal Erin Amendola

Trombone Steve Peterson, Principal Erik Anderson, Assistant Principal Simon Lohmann Tuba Lee Hipp, Principal Timpani Peter Flamm, Principal Percussion Riely Francis, Principal Librarian Allison Bates, Principal

Stephen Mulligan

STEPHEN MULLIGAN, Conductor

Berlin-based American conductor Stephen Mulligan recently concluded his tenure as Associate Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. Mulligan served as a Dudamel Conducting Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 2018-19 season, leading the orchestra on the Toyota Symphonies for Youth series and assisting Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen, and guest conductors Lionel Bringuier, Mirga GražinytėTyla, Zubin Mehta, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Mulligan’s 2022-23 includes return engagements with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Arkansas, and Amarillo; and debut projects with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

An advocate for the music of today, Mulligan debuted on the New York Philharmonic’s sound ON series in the 2021-22 season.

Additional debuts that season included the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon, Portugal), Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra; with returns to the Rochester Philharmonic, Sarasota Orchestra and Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra. In addition, Mulligan led a Washington Park concert with Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra musicians. He has also conducted the National Symphony Orchestra and orchestra throuohut the country with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Florida Orchestra, Reading Symphony Orchestra, London Symphonia, and Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra.

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Stephen Mulligan began his music studies with his father Gregory, former concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony and current violinist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He studied conducting at Yale University with Toshiyuki Shimada, at the Peabody Institute with Gustav Meier, Markand Thakar, and Marin Alsop; and at the Aspen Music Festival and School with Robert Spano.

Program Notes

Overture to The Magic Flute (1791)

by Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (Salzburg, 1756 – Vienna, 1791) With The Magic Flute, Mozart and his collaborator Emanuel Schikaneder wanted to create a piece of popular entertainment (an 18th-century “musical,” as it were). Performed outside the city of Vienna at the Theater auf der Wieden, it was essentially an exotic fairy tale, although it had a serious philosophical undertone.

The protagonist, Prince Tamino, sets out on a quest to rescue Princess Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, from the clutches of the evil sorcerer Sarastro, only to find out that he has been brainwashed by the Queen: it is she who is evil and Sarastro is in reality the High Priest of the Temple of Wisdom. After passing the rigorous tests of silence, fire, and water with the help of his magic flute, Tamino enters Sarastro’s enlightened realm and wins Pamina’s hand as well.

Sarastro's world is represented by numerous Masonic symbols (both Mozart and Schikaneder were Freemasons), some borrowed from ancient Egyptian mythology. Yet there is still another layer of meaning to the opera: happiness is not the exclusive realm of those who pass the tests. There is a simpler but equally satisfying form of happiness in store for the bird-catcher Papageno and his bride Papagena. The Magic Flute, then, covers an enormous ground, yet it does so with a grace and a lightness of touch, so that the fairy-tale feel is preserved despite the seriousness of the issues involved.

The overture to the opera begins with some solemn chords (which return later in the opera as symbols of Sarastro’s Temple of Wisdom).

Then the tempo speeds up and a section of imitative counterpoint begins. The rhythmically active main theme appears now in a high, now in a low register, until the imitation stops and the full orchestra states the theme. In the middle of the overture, the opening chords return as a reminder of the opera’s serious side, but the music soon resumes its earlier, playful agility and keeps it all the way to the end.

Program Notes Suite from Pulcinella (1920)

by Igor Stravinsky (Oranienbaum, west of St. Petersburg, 1882 - New York, 1971)

The ultimate trick at a music history exam would be to play the opening of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella to a group of unsuspecting students.

Anyone with no prior knowledge of the work would be hard pressed not only to ‟name that tune” but even to identify the century in which it was written. The melody sounds so ‟classical,” yet something is clearly ‟not right”; there seems to be ‟wrong notes” here and there and the orchestration definitely sounds nothing like classical music.

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Yet the most astute members of the class would probably guess from these very features that the author can be no one but Igor Stravinsky.

Creative responses to the history of music are central to Stravinsky’s so-called ‟neo-classical” period, which covers about three decades of his career, roughly from 1920 to 1950. Although we may find occasional nods to the musical past in some of Stravinsky’s works written before 1919, it is in Pulcinella that we first see Stravinsky’s neoclassicism in full swing. This ostensible return to the old tradition came as something of a shock from a composer who, with his Rite of Spring, had earned a reputation as the most radical of all musical revolutionaries only a few years earlier. As the world was soon to learn, however, the essence of Stravinsky’s personality lay not so much in the musical idiom he used as in his uncanny ability to always do the unexpected (and to make it work). And certainly, to go back 200 years in time and rewrite the works of a late Baroque composer was almost as unexpected as unleashing the fierce dissonances and wild rhythms of the Rite.

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Program Notes Suite from Pulcinella (1920) by Igor Stravinsky continued

On the title page of the score, Pulcinella is called a ‟ballet with songs after Giambattista Pergolesi.” Yet the origins of the material are much more complicated than this title would lead one to believe. It is now known that a great deal of music that attributed to Pergolesi is not actually by him. Pergolesi (1710-1736), who has the sad distinction of being one of the shortest-lived composers in the history of Western music, was professionally active for five years, during which time he managed to establish himself in Naples as a prominent composer of operas, sacred and secular vocal music, as well as instrumental works.

Stravinsky discovered this body of music through the director of the Russian Ballet, Sergei Diaghilev. The famous impresario, who had commissioned Stravinsky’s three great Russian ballets (The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring) in the years before World War I, was anxious to renew his collaboration with the composer after war’s end.

He had recently produced a ballet based on music by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). Pergolesi’s music seemed to hold little interest for Stravinsky, but he, too, was eager to work with Diaghilev again, and happily accepted the proposal.

Diaghilev supplied his friend with a number of ‟Pergolesi” works and they agreed on the plot of the ballet, apparently culled from an old manuscript containing humorous anecdotes about Pulcinella, a traditional character from the Renaissance improvised theater, the commedia dell’arte. All the girls in the village are in love with Pulcinella, and their fiancés conspire to kill him. It is a comedy of errors that ends without any bloodshed (a few fisticuffs, at most); in the end, every boy, including Pulcinella, finds a girl after his own heart to marry.

In general, Stravinsky preserved the melody and the bass line of his originals. He used a small, classical orchestra with no clarinets and a solo string quartet in the style of the Baroque concerto grosso. He often changed the harmonies and added modern playing techniques such as harmonics (both on strings and flutes) and trombone glissandos. These changes were sufficient to turn the music of Pergolesi (and the various pseudo-Pergolesis) into pure Stravinsky.

Program Notes

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 (‟From the New World,” 1893)

by Antonín Dvořák (Nelahozeves, Bohemia, 1841 – Prague, 1904) The credit for bringing Dvořák to the United States belongs to Jeanette M. Thurber (1850-1946), wife of a wealthy New York businessman. Mrs. Thurber was a dedicated philanthropist to whom the musical life of this country has always owed so much. In 1885-86, she founded both the National Conservatory of Music and the American Opera Company. One of her greatest achievements was a scholarship program for minority students, which enabled many Blacks and Native Americans to become professional musicians.

Another was to persuade Antonín Dvořák to come to the United States from his native Bohemia and become the director of the Conservatory.

Dvořák arrived in the United States in 1892, for what would be a stay of three years. He was accompanied by his wife, two of his six children, and a secretary. He had to teach composition three mornings a week at the Conservatory and conduct the student orchestra on two afternoons. This schedule left him enough time for conducting at public concerts as well as composing.

Dvořák then embarked on a new symphony and when the score was finished the next spring, he made the following inscription on the last page of the manuscript: ‟Praise God! Completed 24th May 1893 at 9 o'clock in the morning. The children have arrived at Southampton (a cable came at 1:33 p.m.).” The four children Dvořák had left behind joined their parents in New York a few days later.

Many years later, music critic H. C. Colles, interviewing Burleigh, asked him to sing the songs he had sung to Dvořák, and noted that ‟the sound of the English horn resembled quite closely the quality of Henry Thacker Burleigh’s voice.” Both melodies share the same rhythmic patterns and the same pentatonic scale. Dvořák’s melody was subsequently adopted as a spiritual in its own right under the title ‟Goin’ Home,” with words by one of Dvorák’s New York students, William Arms Fisher. Several other melodies in the symphony have similar songlike shapes, suggesting folk inspiration. One instance where a possible model has been identified is the first movement's second theme, which is very reminiscent of the spiritual ‟Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

Program Notes

Another link between the ‟New World” Symphony and the New World has to do with an aborted opera project based on The Song of Hiawatha. It was another one of Mrs. Thurber's suggestions that Dvořák write an opera on Longfellow's poem, with which he had long been familiar, having read it in Czech translation 30 years before. The opera never quite got off the ground, but it has been shown that the slow movement was conceived with Minnehaha’s Forest Funeral from Hiawatha in mind. Additionally, the Scherzo was inspired by the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis.

Discussions of the ethnic background of Dvořák’s themes should not, however, divert the attention from other aspects of this symphony that are at least equally compelling. For beautiful melodies alone, whatever their provenance may be, do not a symphony make. In his Ninth, Dvořák proved not only his supreme melodic gifts, but also his mastery in organizing his melodies into coherent and well-balanced musical structures.

The opening horn theme of the first-movement Allegro molto, already hinted at the preceding slow introduction, serves as a unifying gesture that returns in each of the symphony's movements. In the second-movement Largo, it appears at the climactic point in the faster middle section, shortly before the return of the English horn solo. In the Scherzo, it is heard between the Scherzo proper and the Trio; this time, the energetic brass theme is transformed into a lyrical melody played by the cellos and the violas. Between the trio and the recapitulation of the Scherzo, the theme resumes its original character. The same melody can also be found in the finale shortly before the end, in a coda that incorporates quotations from the second and third movements as well. The ending of the symphony, then, combines the main themes from all four movements in a magnificent synthesis.

Author: Peter Laki

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Upcoming

Classics 4

Photo Credit Simon Pauly

Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky December 1 and 2 Sarah Ioannides, conductor Gabriela Martinez, piano Jessie Montgomery Caught by the Wind Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez, who has been described as “versatile, daring and insightful”, performs one of the most powerful concertos of all time, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

Celebrated composer Jessie Montgomery’s Caught by the Wind explores cycles of life in nature. Australian-British conductor Sarah Ioannides and the SA Phil explore the struggle with fate in Tchaikovsky’s glorious Symphony No. 5.

San Antonio Philharmonic Season 2023-24 Chee-Yun and The Firebird Jeffrey Kahane, conductor Chee-Yun, violin September 22 & 23

Helseth plays Arutiunian Vinay Parameswaran, conductor Tine Thing Helseth, trumpet October 13 & 14

Mulligan conducts Dvořák

Carrasco conducts Mussorgsky Ludwig Carrasco, conductor Crystal Jarrell Johnson, mezzo-soprano San Antonio Mastersingers February 23 & 24

Mozart & Schumann Anthony Parnther, conductor David Kaplan, piano March 22 & 23

Stephen Mulligan, conductor November 3 & 4

Gluzman plays Beethoven

Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky Sarah Ioannides, conductor Gabriela Martinez, piano December 1 & 2

Villa-Lobos and Mahler Marcelo Lehninger, conductor Laura Strickling, soprano January 19 & 20

Vadim Gluzman, director and violin April 19 & 20

Brahms & Dvořák Jean-Marie Zeitouni, conductor Sterling Elliot, cello San Antonio Mastersingers May 10 & 11

Goosby Returns & Beethoven 5 Lina González-Granados, conductor Randall Goosby, violin May 31 & June 1

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Lina González-Granados, conductor Upcoming Classics 10

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