 |
|||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||
|
|
||||
|
|||||
| Back to Calendar | |||||
| PINES OF ROME | |||||
|
|
|||||
 |
|||||
| Program Information | |||||
Friday, January 22, 2010 at 8 pm | Richardson Auditorium in Princeton Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 8 pm | NJPAC in Newark Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 3 pm | NJPAC in Newark NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA XIAN ZHANG conductor TERRENCE WILSON piano BERLIOZ Roman Carnival Overture LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major
~INTERMISSION~ RESPIGHI Three Botticelli Pictures
RESPIGHI Pines of Rome
|
|||||
 |
|||||
| Artist Bios | |||||
| XIAN ZHANG conductor | |||||
In 2009, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi announced the appointment of Xian Zhang as its next music director, the first woman to be named music director of an Italian orchestra. She completed her three-year tenure as the New York Philharmonic’s associate conductor (and the first holder of the Arturo Toscanini Chair), a post she held after serving as assistant conductor for one year. Zhang’s appearances with the New York Philharmonic include performances during two of the Orchestra’s residencies at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. In addition to her engagement with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, she conducts the Dallas and Minnesota Symphony Orchestras. Last season, she debuted with the Chicago, National, Toronto, Indianapolis and Houston Symphony Orchestras. An annual guest with the London Symphony Orchestra, other recent engagements include appearances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra Berlin, NDR Hannover and Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. Last summer, she debuted at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo. She became the first female to conduct the Staatskapelle Dresden, to critical acclaim. Zhang incorporates Chinese compositions into her concert planning. She recently toured China with the Orchestra of the Juilliard School, performing Chen Yi's Ge Xu. An enthusiastic opera conductor, Zhang made a sensational debut with La Bohème for English National Opera in 2007. Born in Dandong, China, Zhang made her professional conducting debut at the age of 20 at the Central Opera House in Beijing. She trained at Beijing’s Central Conservatory, earning both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees; she served one year on its conducting faculty before moving to the United States in 1998. |
|||||
| TERRENCE WILSON piano | |||||
Pianist Terrence Wilson has established a reputation as one of today's most gifted instrumentalists. He has appeared with ensembles including the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit and San Francisco and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. This season, he appears with the Indianapolis, Winston-Salem, Grand Rapids and Modesto Symphonies, and he gives recitals in Seattle and Cincinnati. He makes his Scottish National Orchestra debut with performances in Glasgow and Aberdeen. In recent seasons, he performed Michael Daugherty’s new concerto, Deus ex Machina, with the Syracuse, Rochester and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras. He released a recording of that work with the Nashville Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero on the Naxos label. Internationally, Wilson has performed with such ensembles as the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland, Malaysian Philharmonic and Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In 2005, he toured Spain with the Baltimore Symphony. An active recitalist, he has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Verbier Festival in Switzerland and the Louvre in Paris. As a chamber musician, Wilson performs regularly with the Ritz Chamber Players and has appeared at the Mann Music Center and at the Blossom Festival, Tanglewood and Wolf Trap. His awards include the SONY ES Award for Musical Excellence, an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Juilliard Petschek Award. He has been featured on radio and television broadcasts including NPR's "Performance Today," WQXR radio in New York and programs on the BRAVO Network, Arts & Entertainment Network and public television The Bronx native is a graduate of The Juilliard School; he resides in Montclair. |
|||||
 |
|||||
| Program Notes | |||||
BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2010 FIRST NORTH AMERICAN SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 Hector Berlioz Born December 11, 1803 in La-Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France Died March 8, 1869 in Paris Italian topic for a French opera In the 19th century, Paris was music’s mecca, and the Paris Opéra was a proving ground for all composers of every nationality. A success there was the ultimate goal. While Berlioz was better known as a music critic for most of his career than he was as a composer, like most of his contemporaries he sought the recognition and prestige that only a grand opera could give him. With the groundbreaking Symphonie fantastique (1830) and other successes under his belt, he set to work in the mid-1830s on an opera based on the memoirs of the 16th-century Florentine goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. Through political connections and with a considerable amount of lobbying, he secured a production at the Opéra, where Benvenuto Cellini opened in September 1838. The opera bombed. Critics lambasted it, the singers hated it, the conductor was disinclined to put in the extra effort that the complex and difficult music required. After only a handful of feeble performances, the opera was withdrawn. Benvenuto Cellini languished in ignominy until the late 20th century, when the renaissance of interest in Berlioz’s music drew attention to its fiery and imaginative music. Salvage operation: rescuing an overture Berlioz, of course, knew that he had excellent musical material within the score. Both a businessman and an energetic self-promoter, he decided in 1843 to draw some music from Benvenuto Cellini and compile it into a concert overture to stand on its own. At the same time, the new compilation would provide an orchestral introduction to the opera’s second act, should a revival outside France take place. The result was the Roman Carnival Overture, which did little for the failed stage work but has become one of the most popular of all Berlioz’s orchestral works. Superb showpiece Like most of Berlioz’s overtures, it opens with a brilliant orchestral flourish that shows off the virtuoso capabilities of the large ensemble and seizes audience attention immediately. It then cedes to a more lyrical section—an English horn proclaims the melody from the first-act love duet between the hero Cellini and his love interest, Teresa. The balance of the overture derives mostly from a lively saltarello (the same dance with which Mendelssohn concludes his “Italian” Symphony) that forms the core of Benvenuto Cellini’s great carnival scenes. While the overture follows the original quite closely, it finds a natural habitat in Berlioz’s colorful orchestration. An increasing emphasis on brass as the piece gathers momentum adds to the effectiveness. The overture is a superb showpiece that makes it easy to understand why it strengthened Berlioz’s reputation as a brilliant orchestrator. Berlioz’s score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, timpani, cymbals, tambourines, triangle and strings. Timing: approximately 9 minutes.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major Franz Liszt Born October 22, 1811 in Raiding, Hungary Died July 31, 1886 in Bayreuth, Germany Celebrity and the scent of scandal In a world before movies, television and other electronic media, the big stars were performing musicians and stage actors. Beginning in the 19th century, when concert- and theater-going became an accepted middle-class public pastime, such artists were famous and drew large and enthusiastic crowds when they performed. Franz Liszt was the greatest pianist of the 19th century. He was also extremely handsome in his youth, and women adored him. Not surprisingly, scandal swirled about him wherever he went, particularly during his 20s and 30s, when he was most active as a touring concert pianist. Keeping the best for himself Like most musicians of the day, Liszt composed many works for his own use. Today, when we attend a concert of classical music, we expect to hear works by composers who are dead, or famous, or both. In Liszt’s day, performers frequently wrote and played their own music, much as rock musicians do today. That way, they were assured of individuality and exclusivity, making certain that others did not have access to their original compositions. Both of Liszt’s piano concerti were composed for these reasons, before he turned 40. He did not publish the Second Concerto until 1863, when he had largely ceased public performance. It is tempting to dismiss Liszt’s two piano concerti as virtuoso showpieces of little musical substance. In fact, Liszt’s greatest contribution as a composer for piano lies in his solo music, rather than these two works. Both concerti are beautiful, however, and show a profound understanding of the integration between soloist and orchestra. Poetry in arpeggios The A major concerto, which we hear this evening, is the more lyrical of the two. If Liszt was the quintessential romantic composer, then this piece is the standard-bearer of romantic concerti. The opening theme, rich with delicious harmonies, is nothing short of poetic. No dramatic statement here—before the soloist so much as declares a passage in octaves, he has the opportunity to shape elegant arpeggiated phrases and to elicit a beautiful sound from the piano. Liszt the innovator The Second Concerto breaks from tradition in several other ways. Rather than composing separate movements, Liszt wrote one long movement that subdivides into a number of contrasting sections. The work begins and ends in A major, but travels through several other tonalities along the way; both D minor and D flat major figure prominently. No one piano cadenza leaves us breathless. Instead, Liszt sprinkles brief cadenzas in several places, usually effecting his transition to a new section with a tempo change in the process. Unlike the Chopin concerti, in which the orchestra plays a largely subordinate role, the Liszt concerti give the orchestra plenty of chances to shine. Rarely does he call for the full force of the ensemble, preferring to focus on the individual timbres of instruments. Flute, oboe, horn and especially cello all have wonderful solos in the A major concerto. One of Liszt’s major contributions to music was the technique of thematic transformation. The method is related to thematic development in sonata form. A melodic idea is reworked, perhaps altered rhythmically or presented in a different tempo. The music is thereby transformed while maintaining unity of material. The opening theme of the A major concerto recurs several times later in the work in different guises. If one listens carefully, there are two other musical ideas that Liszt treats similarly, binding his concerto together with thematic logic. The Second Concerto is scored for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbal, strings and solo piano. Timing: approximately 22 minutes.
Three Botticelli Pictures Ottorino Respighi Born July 9, 1879 in Bologna, Italy Died April 18, 1936 in Rome Renaissance master in the Uffizi Have you ever heard the term “Venus on the Half Shell” as an affectionate nickname for “The Birth of Venus?” That glorious canvas, which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is the work of Sandro Botticelli (c.1444–1510), the most beloved painter of the quattrocento (15th-century Italy). He spent his entire career in Florence except for two years assisting with decoration of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Tribute to a wealthy American patron “The Birth of Venus” is one of three Botticelli masterpieces that inspired the 20th-century Italian composer Ottorino Respighi in his Trittico Botticelliano (“Botticelli Triptych”). The other two—“La Primavera” (“Spring”) and “L’adorazione dei Magi” (“Adoration of the Magi”)—are also part of the Uffizi collection. In an unlikely twist, this musical tribute to the Renaissance paintings was conceived in America. Respighi was on tour in the USA in February 1927 and attended a chamber concert at the Library of Congress with his wife. The American arts patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge had donated the performance space. Elsa Respighi reported that her husband announced: “I shall compose a work for small orchestra, inspired by three Botticelli paintings. I’ll call it Trittico botticelliano and dedicate it to Mrs. Coolidge.” He set to work in March immediately after returning to Rome. The premiere took place that October in Vienna, at a concert of new music organized by Mrs. Coolidge. Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet was also on the program. The three pieces have the charm of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances and the instrumental color of his larger tone poems, without an ounce of pretense. “Spring” shimmers with trilling strings and chirping brass and woodwinds proclaiming the seasonal rebirth. The spirit of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons hovers in the wings. Christmas in January “Adoration of the Magi” appears frequently on Christmas programs because of its appealing setting of the ancient hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and the Italian “O bambino.” The central section, with piano, celesta and harp, suggests the appearance of the three kings. Three Botticelli Pictures concludes with “The Birth of Venus,” complete with a sinuous flute line suggesting the undulating waters. In Respighi’s capable hands, the pastoral and marine elements fuse in neo-impressionist beauty. The orchestra is reduced but colorful: single woodwinds, horn, trumpet, glockenspiel, triangle, harp, celesta, piano and strings. Timing: approximately 18 minutes. Pines of Rome Ottorino Respighi Mention the name Respighi to music-lovers and the immediate, almost Pavlovian, response is likely to be Fountains of Rome or Pines of Rome. To be sure, these two magnificent tone poems, composed in 1916 and 1924 respectively, are by far Respighi’s most frequently performed works. They identify him rightfully as a programmatic composer whose finest music drew inspiration from other works of art and nature. Respighi and the Italian operatic tradition But Respighi is also part of a great Italian tradition in music. Though his operas Belfagor (1923), La fiamma (1934) and Lucrezia (1937) have never known the success of the tone poems, they link Respighi more directly to the operatic heritage of Verdi, Leoncavallo, Giordano, Mascagni and, particularly, Puccini. His rich orchestral palette, the ease and plenitude of the melodies and the forthright text-painting all relate Pines of Rome to the great theatrical masterpieces of the Italian operatic stage. The opening section, “The Pines of the Villa Borghese,” shares the insouciance of Puccini’s Act II in La Bohème. And who will not be reminded, at least momentarily, of the great Te Deum scene at the close of Tosca’s first act when hearing the magnificent, spine-tingling crescendo of “The Pines of the Appian Way”? Elsa Respighi, the composer’s widow, wrote that Pines of Rome was one of the compositions in which her husband was most emotionally involved. His success in immersing us in the beauty of his beloved city is compelling testimony to that involvement. The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, timpani, triangle, percussion, harp, glockenspiel, celeste, gramophone, piano, organ, six buccine (Roman trumpets) and strings. Timing: approximately 23 minutes. The score to Pines of Rome includes Respighi’s descriptive program for the four sections of his tone poem. The Pine Trees of the Villa Borghese Pine Trees Near a Catacomb We see the shades of the pine trees fringing the entrance to a catacomb. From the depth rises the sound of mournful psalm-singing, floating through the air like a solemn hymn, gradually and mysteriously dispersing. The Pine Trees of the Janiculum A quiver runs through the air: the pine trees of the Janiculum stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of a full moon. A nightingale is singing. The Pine Trees of the Appian Way Misty dawn on the Appian Way; solitary pine trees guarding the magic landscape; the muffled, ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps. The poet has a fantastic vision of bygone glories. Trumpets sound and, in the brilliance of the newly risen sun, a consular army bursts forth toward the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph to the Capitol. |
|||||
|
|||||
