Yale Philharmonia, Yongyan Hu, guest conductor, November 18, 2016

the philharmonia orchestra of yale peter oundjian

Principal Conductor

Concert tribute to the memory of Otto-Werner Mueller

November 18, 2016 • Friday at 7:30 pm Woolsey Hall

yongyan hu guest conductor johannes br ahms Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 johannes br ahms Tragic Overture, Op. 81 intermission anton bruckner Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104, "Romantic"(revised 1888) I. Bewegt, nicht zu schnell II. Andante quasi Allegretto III. Scherzo. Bewegt – Trio. Nicht zu schnell, keinesfalls schleppend IV. Finale. Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell

As a courtesy to others, please silence all cell phones and devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Robert Blocker, Dean

prog ram ra m N nootes tes Pro

Johannes Brahms » 1833–1897 Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 Tragic Overture, Op. 81 Johannes Brahms composed his two overtures in the summer of 1880, while he was vacationing in the town of Ischl in Upper Austria. The Academic Festival Overture provides a rare example of the composer writing music for a specific occasion. Brahms wrote it for the University of Breslau in gratitude for an honorary doctoral degree conferred on him in 1879. The degree cites Brahms as “Artis musicae severioris in Germania nunc princeps” (“the most famous living German composer of serious music”). Ironically, the overture takes a sociable and even at times humorous tone, and seems to have been written especially for the students’ enjoyment.

Its straightforward form incorporates three student melodies with the composer’s own material: “Wir hatten gebauet,” “Hört ich sing,” and “Was kommt dort.” The coda introduces a fourth student melody, “Gaudemus,” and provides a rousing conclusion. The work was first performed in Breslau in 1881.

Brahms wrote to his publisher, Simrock, in 1880: “On this occasion I could not deny my melancholy turn of mind and have also composed an Overture to a tragedy.” The Tragic Overture hence provides an example of the composer’s tendency to write two similar but complementary pieces in quick succession. While the composer stated that he had no particular tragedy in mind, some of his material may have been taken from an aborted project originally intended to accompany Goethe’s Faust. The overture takes a grave tone that contrasts sharply with its companion.

Several formal features lend the work a sense of drama and struggle. In the exposition, the end of the second theme-group shifts several times between the major and minor mode before providing a temporary respite by concluding in the relative major. The recapitulation restates the thematic material in reverse order, so that the first theme returns at the end of the work like the inexorable hand of fate.

—David Heetderks

Anton Bruckner » 1824–1896 Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104, “Romantic” (1874, rev. 1888) Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the “Romantic,” perfectly models the composer’s strengths as a symphonist writing in a time dominated by program music, incorporating short thematic tags — or leitmotivs — into a tightly unified structure. While some performances of Bruckner’s music have too often been given to indulgent expansiveness, unfairly lending a sort of bloated mysticism to the composer’s symphonies, the organist from Linz was a master of development, concision, orchestration, and lyricism.

As with many of his symphonies, Bruckner subjected the Fourth to several cycles of revisions: originally written in 1874, it received a new Scherzo and a new Finale in 1878, further changes to the Finale in 1881, and minor changes later in the 1880s. The most commonly performed version is that from 1878.

The opening of this symphony clearly reaches back to two very important works in the same E-flat tonality: the effect of pulsating calm evokes Wagner’s Das Rheingold; and the horn call and the bass-line’s descent to a destabilizing D-flat recall Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica. Many elements in this symphony also betray Bruckner’s admiration for Schubert; during Bruckner’s long employ at the St. Florien monastery, he had access to a large number of Schubert manuscripts brought there by the Viennese composer’s friend Johann Michael Vogl. One easily recognizes Schubert in Bruckner’s smooth but sudden modulations by a third, and in the playful tunefulness of the second theme, or Gesangsperiode.

The horn is certainly the protagonist of the whole work. Bruckner firmly characterizes the instrument in the first movement’s lonely opening horn call, with its expressive dotted rhythm inherently contrasting the more authoritative and halting triplet bearing down in the main theme. The protagonist triumphs at the movement’s end, assuming the powerful dynamic of the main theme, and insisting on its dotted rhythm to the end.

The opening theme of the Andante outlines the horn call of the first movement but imbues it with more pathos and emotional complexity.

art ist p ro f i le s

It is passed between the celli and the winds over an accompaniment of pizzicati and — not to be forgotten — dotted figures in the horn. The heart-wrenching, chromatically tinged melody in the violas presages the tonal contortions of Bruckner’s student, Gustav Mahler.

The Scherzo movement has, according to Bruckner himself, an explicit hunting program; he conceived of the Trio as the “musical entertainment of the hunters in the wood,” and a depiction of “how a barrel-organ plays during the midday meal in the forest.” In this movement, one hears Bruckner’s frequent use of orchestration by choirs, a technique he may have inherited from his training as an organist, in which entire sections of the orchestra alternate to create opposing walls of sound.

Where the first movement’s horn call seems an augury, the Finale’s opening horn call seems an omen, hanging dramatically from the obscure flatted six of a dark harmonic world, apparently in the wrong key. The triumphant horn call of the first movement firmly establishes the correct key as coda material before Bruckner begins a transition to the swinging Gesangsperiode using the somber pizzicato material from the Andante.

In its inventive integration of leitmotivs and familiar textures from all the preceding movements, the Finale seamlessly weaves programmatic elements into symphonic form.

—David Kaplan

a rtt i st st Profi p rofiles Ar les

HU Yongyan, guest conductor HU Yongyan is the principal guest conductor of the Northern German Philharmonie, music director of Baotou Symphony (InnerMongolia), founder, creator, and former Dean and artistic director of China's Orchestra Academy, and an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Music (Presidential Visiting Professor as part of Yale’s Initiative for Faculty Excellence and Diversity).

Born in Shanghai, Mr. Hu is the third generation of his family to pursue an artistic career. His grandfather taught him to play the violin and his parents both played in the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. He began his formal studies at China's prestigious Central Conservatory of Music, after which he studied at the Yale School of Music and earned a master’s degree from The Juilliard School. In 2008, he conducted a combined orchestra from the Yale School of Music and Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music as a part of the Musicathlon, an event in Beijing preceding the 2008 Olympic Games.

HU Yongyan served as music director and conductor of the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra (Nebraska) from 1993 to 1998 and the Duluth Symphony Orchestra (Minnesota) from 1995 to 2000. After returning to China, he served as music director and principal conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. He led the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra on an acclaimed European tour and, as principal conductor of the China National Symphony Orchestra, led the ensemble on its first visit to South Korea and Taiwan. As a guest conductor, Maestro Hu has appeared with major orchestras in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including the Orchestra National de France, London's Royal Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Lübeck Opera, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, and orchestras in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Mr. Hu's television work includes CCTV's Cheers for China. He has also served as music director of the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Mr. Hu has collaborated with such internationally respected artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Barbara Hendricks, Pinchas Zukerman, Lang Lang, Charlotte Church, Nana Mouskouri, Doc Severinsen, Mark O'Connor, and Muraji Kaori.

Ab o u t Ya l e Philharmonia

The Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale is one of America’s foremost music-school ensembles. The largest performing group at the Yale School of Music, the Philharmonia offers superb training in orchestral playing and repertoire.

Performances include an annual series of concerts in Woolsey Hall, as well as Yale Opera productions in the Schubert Theater.

The Yale Philharmonia has also performed on numerous occasions in Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York City and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The orchestra undertook its first tour of Asia in 2008, with acclaimed performances in the Seoul Arts Center, the Forbidden City Concert Hall and National Center for the Performing Arts (Beijing), and the Shanghai Grand Theatre.

peter oundjian Principal Conductor philharmonia staff

jeffrey m. mistri Manager david yi Assistant Conductor

the philharmonia orchestra of yale violin i Diomedes B. Saraza, Jr. Yu-Ting Chen Sissi Yuqing Zhang Alyssa Blackstone Kyung Min Lee Elliot Chung Lee Hyunjae Bae Jiale Peng Manaka Matsumoto Cheuk Yin Clement Luu Jiwon Sun Michael Tropepe violin ii Dae Hee Ahn Rachel Ostler Sirena Huang Sarah Arnold Moon Joo Kim Gaga Won Renyu Martin Peh Kevin Zheng Je Young Kim Dhyani Dharmawati Heath viola Julia Clancy Josip Kvetek Joshua Newburger Joyce Huang Alexandra Simpson Yang Li Emily Brandenburg Florrie Marshall cello Mingyao Zhao James Rosamilia Jenny Kwak Eric Adamshick Pall Quinn Kalmansson

Yiqiu Chen Nayeon Kim Bitnalee Pong bass Lee Starovich Jordan Calixto Erez Meyuhass Luke Stence Joshua DePoint Kohei Yamaguchi flute Felice Doynov 2 Evan Fojtik 1 Benjamin Morency 3 oboe Lydia Consilvio 2 Noah Kay 1 Winona V.R. Van Alstyne 3 clarinet Eric Braley 1,2 Graeme Steele Johnson 3 bassoon Patrick Broder 1,2 Mathew Gregoire Hanul Park Yang Mingyuan 3

Valerie Sly Joshua Thompson 2

administrative assistant Valerie Sly

trumpet Ashley Hale 2 Jonathan Shadle 3 Andrew Stadler Theo Van Dyck 1

music librarians Mariya-Andoniya Andonova Emily Brandenburg Sophie Cash-Goldwasser Antonia Chandler Allan Hon Bora Kim Laura Park Lauren Williams

trombone Eliud Garcia Zachary Haas Hillary Simms 1 Alexander Walden 2 William Wortley 3 tuba Jacob Fewx timpani Matthew Keown YoungKyoung Lee Dmitri Nilov percussion Matthew Keown Kramer Milan Dmitri Nilov Sam Um 1 2

contrabassoon Hanul Park horn Luke Baker Antonia Chandler Reese Farnell Matthew Gray 1 Cody Halquist Scott Leger 3

3

Principal on Brahms, Op.80 Principal on Brahms, Op. 81 Principal on Bruckner

stage crew Lydia Consilvio Margaret Davis Thomas Duboski Reese Farnell Christopher Garwood Ashley Hale Nozomi Imamura Pall Quinn Kalmansson Matthew Keown YoungKyoung Lee Cheuk Yin Clement Luu Hillary Simms Andrew Stadler Sam Um Georgi Videnov

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Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm free admission LUNCHTIME CHAMBER MUSIC Wendy Sharp, director Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 12:30 pm free admission VISTA: CHAMBER MUSIC Yale School of Music Ensembles Student ensembles, under the direction of faculty violinist Wendy Sharp, perform and provide insight into the repertoire.

Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission

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