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| Back to Calendar | |||||
BEST OF ... FAIRY TALES |
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| Program Information | |||||
| Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 7:30 pm | Community Theatre in Morristown Friday, February 26, 2010 at 7:30 pm | War Memorial in Trenton Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 8 pm | Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 3 pm | bergenPAC in Englewood NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TCHAIKOVSKY The Sleeping Beauty Suite, Op. 66a
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| Artist Bio | |||||
| ELIZABETH SCHULZE conductor | |||||
Praised as “an ideal music director whose infectious energy is as contagious as her exuberant and thoroughly committed musicianship,” Elizabeth Schulze is music director of the Maryland Symphony Orchestra. She is artistic director of the Flagstaff Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Schulze has held the positions of associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra in Iowa, assistant conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic and assistant conductor of the Aspen Music Festival. She was music director of the Kenosha Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin for seven seasons. She has recently been a conducting assistant and cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic. She has appeared with orchestras and opera companies including the Jerusalem, Detroit, San Francisco, Boston, Milwaukee, Colorado, Annapolis, Stamford and Anchorage Symphony Orchestras; Buffalo and Tulsa Philharmonics; Chicago Sinfonietta, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Chicago Civic Orchestra, Tulsa Opera Company and Colorado Opera Troupe. She has been a guest assistant conductor at the Paris Opera. A strong advocate of music education, Schulze has led the American Composer’s Orchestra in educational and family concerts in Carnegie Hall and throughout New York City. In Iowa, her innovative approach to educational programming led to interactive broadcasts of educational concerts to classrooms throughout the state over the fiber-optic network. She has performed as an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University and has been a frequent guest conductor of the orchestras of the Manhattan School of Music, University of Maryland and the Catholic University of America. For the tenth summer, she will teach and conduct at the NSO/Kennedy Center’s Summer Music Institute for gifted youth. She has taught at the National Conducting Institute for six years. The Tanglewood Fellow was the recipient of the first Aspen Music School Conducting Award in 1991. An honors graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and Bryn Mawr College, she holds graduate degrees in Orchestral and Choral Conducting from SUNY at Stony Brook. The first doctoral fellow in Orchestral Conducting at Northwestern University, she has been a Conducting Fellow at Les Écoles d’Art Americaines in France, as well as at prestigious music festivals in America. |
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| Program Notes | |||||
BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2010 FIRST NORTH AMERICAN SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY Every culture has its folk tales. Like costumes and cuisine, music and architecture, stories are an integral component of a society’s identity and character. In America, we favor Grimm’s fairy tales, particularly those popularized by Walt Disney. Over the centuries, composers have drawn on a broad range of tales for inspiration. This program is a multi-cultural sampler, drawing not only on the German Brothers Grimm, France’s Mother Goose, the Arabian Nights, and Central European fairy tales, but also a British poem and a little girl’s make-believe world. We open with a pair of waltzes. The first is from the quintessential romantic ballet: Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. Its lilting Waltz is the sole large formal dance movement in the score. In the staged ballet, it serves no real plot function, but is rather an opportunity for celebration and optimism. The second waltz, “Cinderella goes to the Ball” from Prokofiev’s ballet, is more ambiguous in mood. Cinderella’s fairy godmother has sent her off to the ball with the warning that she must leave before the clock strikes midnight. The music is full of anticipation, with a hint of danger. While his countrymen Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev drew on western tales, Rimsky-Korsakov turned to the Arabian Nights. “The Story of the Kalender Prince” is the second movement from his symphonic suite, Scheherazade. The premise is well known: Sultan Shakriar, convinced that all women are faithless, determines to put each of his wives to death after the first night. Clever Sultana Scheherazade saves herself by captivating her husband, night after night, with her tales. Driven by curiosity, the sultan repeatedly postpones her execution, eventually abandoning his bloodthirsty plan. The Arabian Nights include at least three separate tales of the Kalender Prince. This one is an itinerant dervish who entertains at bazaars—but actually he is a prince in disguise. Scheherazade signals a new story with violin and harp at the start. Solos for oboe and bassoon and a brass fanfare contrast the lyric and dramatic aspects of the Kalender’s adventure. Claude Debussy had one child: a daughter known by her pet name, Chouchou. The composer adored her and spent an unusual amount of time with her, particularly for a first time father aged 43. Children’s Corner, a suite of six pieces that he completed in summer 1908 when Chouchou was not quite three, explores her universe. The suite is a loving reflection of Debussy at his most human and humorous. The opening “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum” mocks the mechanical exercises and study pieces—particularly those by Clementi—assigned to aspiring young pianists. “Golliwog’s Cake Walk” remains popular despite its political incorrectness in today’s world. Golliwog was a black doll who made his début in 1895, just as American minstrel groups were starting to tour in Europe. The doll was hugely successful in the early 20th century (like Barbie in the 1950s and ’60s). Debussy’s bouncy music presumably evokes the French perception of early American jazz. A clever send-up of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde is embedded in the central section. Central European folk tales are decidedly darker than those of Western Europe. They do not always have a happy ending, and served as warnings and moral lessons to the younger generation. Antonín Dvorák’s The Noon Witch, based on a tale by Karel Jaromír Erben, takes its title from a frightening figure in Bohemian folklore whose prey was small children. Dvorák’s melodic lines emulate the inflections of Czech speech. He opens with a child at play. Annoyed by his clatter, his mother scolds him, prompting the boy’s tears. She silences him by threatening to send for the Noon Witch. He behaves for a moment but the scene soon repeats itself. The Noon Witch appears (on bass clarinet) and demands the child. Horrified, the mother snatches the boy and tries to flee. A diabolical dance follows—a sort of chase scene—and as the clock strikes noon, the mother collapses. The Noon Witch closes with the return of the father, who finds his wife unconscious and his son suffocated beneath her. The malevolent Noon Witch has claimed her victim. In comparison, French fairy tales are benign. Maurice Ravel based his Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose) on 17th- and 18th-century French fairy tales, focusing on the imaginary world of children. The suite originated as music for one piano, four hands. In 1911 he orchestrated its five movements. Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas is a child’s fantasy in the bath. The air fills with the tinkle of oriental bells, Renaissance lutes and theorbos. The empress is Chinese, hence we hear plenty of pentatonic scales. The Enchanted Garden is a celebration of an idealized fairy kingdom: calm and melodious at the start and building to a grand fanfare celebrating all that is good. The program concludes with two fanciful birds: one a chimera in a poem, the other a creature of Russian fable. First we have The White Peacock by the American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Had he not died at 35, Griffes might have had a career as big as Aaron Copland’s. Griffes studied in Germany, and his early works are reminiscent of Brahms and Strauss. UItimately, however, he favored French culture and loved the art of French impressionist painters. His style shifted to one more impressionist in flavor, with descriptive titles, oriental sonorities, and free, often rhapsodic form. The White Peacock originated as a movement in his Roman Sketches for piano (1915). Griffes orchestrated the set in 1919. The peacock of the title is a vision that appears at the end of a poem by Fiona McLeod (a pseudonym for the Scottish author William Sharp). Griffes’s letters mention seeing a pure white peacock he saw at a Zoological Garden in Berlin; the image fascinated him. Stravinsky’s L'oiseau de feu ( The Firebird) is adapted from a Russian fairy tale in which a handsome prince is drawn into an enchanted garden and palace by the exotic bird of the title, who is a sort of good fairy. He falls in love with a beautiful captive princess, but must break the spell of the evil ogre Kashchei (who presides over the palace) before he may claim his bride. Kashchei sets his guardian monsters on the prince, but the Firebird intercedes before they can harm him. Her spell sends the villain and his creatures into a deep slumber. This is the music of the Berceuse. Stravinsky’s Finale allows for a grand tableau and celebration after Kashchei’s death. In The Firebird, everybody does live happily ever after. |
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