CONCERT SPONSOR
ST. MARY’S CATHOLIC CHURCH
THE SOLDIER’S TALE
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2025 / 8:00 PM / ST. MARY’S CATHOLIC CHURCH
YANIV DINUR, conductor
KEVIN NAKATANI, narrator
UTAH SYMPHONY
ESA-PEKKA SALONEN
Catch and Release (22’)
INTERMISSION
STRAVINSKY
L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) (60’)
Yaniv Dinur Conductor
Yaniv Dinur is the winner of the 2019 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Fellow Award and Music Director of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra. He is lauded for his insightful interpretations and unique ability to connect with concertgoers of all ages and backgrounds, from season subscribers to symphony newcomers.
Season 2024-25 marks the beginning of Dinur’s third contract with New Bedford Symphony and his eighth season as music director. Under his leadership, the New Bedford Symphony has been nationally recognized for its bold, engaging programming and artistic quality, leading to the League of American Orchestras selecting the orchestra to perform at the 2021 League Conference.
Dinur recently concluded a successful tenure as resident conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, during which he conducted hundreds of concerts. Recognizing his leadership and impact, the Milwaukee Business Journal selected him as a 40 Under 40 honoree, an award for young professionals making a difference in the community.
Kevin Nakatani Narrator
Praised for his “substantial bass and deft dramatic abilities,” Kevin Nakatani commands the stage in both opera and musical theatre with equal finesse. His dynamic repertoire includes standout roles such as Général Audebert in Silent Night, Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Zuniga in Carmen, and Jud Fry in Oklahoma!. Nakatani has performed with esteemed companies including Utah Opera, Opera San José, Opera Idaho, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, and Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre. Past appearances with Utah Symphony include narrator in Gardens of Stone, The Doctor in Act III of Wozzeck, and featured guest artist in the “75 Years of Broadway” concert. Originally from California, Nakatani has proudly called Utah home for over 15 years, where he continues to inspire audiences with his “clear bass,” “remarkable range,” and “convincing characterizations.”
By Ruth Eldredge
Catch and Release
// clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, double bass and percussion //
The Composer
Esa-Pekka Salonen modestly says that he first took up conducting to ensure that someone would conduct his own compositions. He needn’t have worried—his innate musical curiosity and love for combining old and new styles have made his music sought-after by classical music ensembles and audiences the world over. Conducting was also no accidental career. Salonen conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 until 2009, the longest tenure in the orchestra’s history.
The History
A native of Finland, Salonen’s music often combines music history with new musical innovations. An advocate for Stravinsky’s music, Salonen wrote Catch and Release as a companion piece to The Soldier’s Tale, intending them to be played together.
lasting influence in the American West: Salonen through the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Stravinsky through his permanent residence in Los Angeles beginning in 1940, where he frequently conducted the Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl.
The Soldier’s Tale
// narrator, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, double bass and percussion //
The Composer
Like Stravinsky’s music, Catch and Release also asks a lot of its musicians: it hinges on technical virtuosity, rhythmic precision, and a wide expressive range. Even though Catch and Release doesn’t depict a specific narrative or story, the music projects a scene of the joyful and risky benefits of human love and morality. Humorous, blithe, and hopeful, Salonen’s music evokes the joyful pursuit of love and the contingency of change. It embodies optimism without naivete, is ephemeral yet substantive, and achieves profundity without cynicism. Each of the three movements develop from an interconnected set of rhythmic and melodic themes, conceived both as rhetorical moments and as ostinatos that flow through the entire piece. Listen for a wide dynamic range and changing timbres from each instrument. Prepare to enjoy some silence at the end of the piece—the final ‘release’ from the title. In the last few seconds, the instruments fade quickly from a fortissimo into just the vibrating of strings—smudging the line between sound and silence.
The World/Connection
Salonen and Stravinsky are connected artistically and politically. Finland was a subject of the Russian Empire from 1808 to 1917; its declaration of independence formed part of the Russian Revolution that inspired Stravinsky’s exile in the West and an allegorical interpretation of The Soldier’s Tale. Both composer-conductors also had a long-
Igor Stravinsky was an international celebrity by the time The Soldier’s Tale debuted in September 1918 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Born to a noble from modernday Eastern Poland, Stravinsky identified with Russian nationalism and, initially at least, supported the centuriesold Romanov dynasty of Russian emperors. This changed drastically with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, a crisis that piled pressure on the Empire’s already-rocky foundation. In the previous two decades, Tsar Nicholas II was involved in a hubristic imperial expansion in both Asia and Europe. Soon, he had over-extended his military resources, vastly over-estimated the nation’s supply chains, all while doing irretrievable damage to his popularity with both the aristocracy and working class in St. Petersburg and Russia’s western colonies. By 1917, Nicholas was forced to pull out of the Great War to address the Bolshevik Revolution at home. His effort was futile: Lenin’s troops executed Nicholas and his family, took over the government, and formally organized the USSR in 1922.
Like many Russian nationals, Stravinsky retained a lifelong nostalgia for Russian culture and lands. He imagined an alternative history in which Russia could have avoided both autocratic rule of a selfish Tsar and the deeply-flawed socialist regime that followed. This stance, and an at-best indifference toward Lenin and the socialist regime, led Stravinsky to be antagonized by the socialist government for decades. In his turn, Stravinsky embraced Western European culture in all its forms, encouraged his colleagues in Russia to work against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and returned to the USSR only in 1962, having departed on a temporary vacation in 1914.
The History
Stravinsky’s decision to combine The Soldier’s Tale, a Russian story, with a French libretto and EuropeanAmerican musical themes, reflects his inner turmoil about his national identity and his embrace of Euro-American
HISTORY OF THE MUSIC — THE SOLDIER’S TALE
culture. The Soldier’s Tale tells the fateful story of Joseph, a young and ambitious soldier who shortsightedly sells a violin to the Devil in exchange for wealth and clairvoyance. The soldier gradually realizes that the true price of his deal was not the violin, but his own agency and identity. The Devil’s offer to guide Joseph through his new life begins in a three-year imprisonment, during which Joseph’s family believes he has died at war. When he returns to his village, his friends and family flee from him, thinking he is a ghost. He even finds his fiancée married to another man. Disillusioned and angry, Joseph decides to seek his fortune, leaving behind his old life and loved ones.
At first glance, the soldier appears to be successful. He saves a princess, marries her, and gains money and fame. However, the Devil lurks at every turn of fortune with more demands, caveats, and contests. Every time Joseph beats him back, Joseph is blinded even more by his own obsession with power while the Dwwevil becomes more powerful. Finally, when Joseph realizes that he has lost his soul, he leaves his palace in search of his mother. In one final trick, Joseph learns that seeking his own soul threatens that of his new wife. Only too late does the
soldier realize the source of his true happiness and the disastrous effects of his avarice on his own identity and those he loves.
Whether performed in French or in English (as in tonight’s performance), Stravinsky’s western musical themes come through: the princess dance features jazz, tango, waltz, and ragtime dances, all of which were especially popular in the early 20th century in Stravinsky’s adopted home of Paris. Additional references to Klezmer music and JS Bach— particularly in the final Grand Chorale and the evocation of Martin Luther’s “Ein Feste Burg” (“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”), draw on the fashionable Bach Revival that spread across Europe and North American in the early 1900s, especially in urban areas like Paris.
The World/Connection
The timing of Stravinsky’s premiere of The Soldier’s Tale turns it into an indictment of Russian politics. Like the soldier, Tsar Nicholas II’s own lust for imperial expansion and Russian ethnic dominance exposed his own government’s weakness and ultimately destroyed the Russian empire.
