Thursday, June 10, 2021

Alabama Symphony Orchestra Appalachian Spring

Our thanks to the Auburn Chamber Music Society for their decades of commitment to chamber music and their collaborative support.

the jay and susie gogue performing arts center at auburn university

Alabama Symphony Orchestra Appalachian Spring

presents

Thursday, June 10, 20217:30 p.m.

Walter Stanley and Virginia Katharyne Evans Woltosz Theatre

Presented as part of our Orchestra & Chamber Music Series

Appalachian Spring (1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aaron Copland (1900–90)

PROGRAM

Symphony No. 44 in E minor (“Trauer”) (1772) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Franz Joseph Haydn I. Allegro con brio (1732–1809) II. Menuetto: Allegretto, canon in diapasonIII. Adagio IV. Presto

PROGRAM NOTES

Symphony No. 44 in E minor (“Trauer”) Franz Joseph Haydn

Haydn wrote most of his 104 symphonies for the musicians at the court of the Esterhàzy princes in what is now Hungary. Haydn had been their court composer since 1761, writing music for family occasions and private functions. The Esterhàzy family was incredibly rich. In addition to rooms for a private orchestra, the Esterhàzy palace had a theatre for operas and one for puppets. The puppets may not have cared about opera. Although his position was handsomely paid, Haydn was still a servant. He composed and performed on command; he was also not permitted to travel without permission. Consequently, Haydn developed as a composer almost in isolation from other composers but with an orchestra consisting of some of the finest musicians that money could literally buy. In his many symphonies, Haydn featured different members of his orchestra, writing specifically for their talents to showcase in performance before their princely master. In doing so, Haydn explored the

symphony as a genre of expression rather than merely a pleasing work played between acts of an opera. The aesthetic standard for musical composition in the eighteenth-century was that music should be pleasing. Haydn’s Symphony No. 44 challenges this notion. Musicologists identify this symphony as coming from Haydn’s Sturm und Drang (“storm and drive”) period. These pieces were characterized by intense emotion and frenetic energy as opposed to the ordinarily restrained manner of eighteenth-century music. The 44th symphony begins with a four-note motif that prefigures the energy of Beethoven. The second and third movements switch their normal order with the slow movement coming third and the minuet coming second. The final movement repeats the intensity of the first. This symphony, one of many with nicknames, is known as the “Trauer” (mourning) because it was said that Haydn wanted the slow movement to be played at his funeral. Whether this belief is true or not, the slow movement was played at a memorial concert in Berlin after his death in 1809.

Appalachian Spring Aaron Copland

Copland wrote the ballet, Appalachian Spring, on a commission from the eminent dance choreographer Martha Graham in 1942 for a ballet on an “American theme.” Two years later, Graham danced the lead role in the ballet’s premiere in Washington, D. C. The original scoring was for a 13-member chamber orchestra. When Copland was approached in 1945 for the music to be rearranged into a suite for full symphony orchestra, the composer produced the form of the work that most people know today as Appalachian Spring. The irony is that Copland did not give this name to the piece. In fact, for much of the time he was composing it, he referred to the music only as “a ballet for Martha.” Graham suggested the title, which she took from a poem by Hart Crane called “The Dance.” In the poem, though, Crane’s reference to the Appalachian spring was to water rather than the season. Graham and Copland capture instead the season of spring in the ballet, which focuses on a newly married couple starting their lives together on the Pennsylvania frontier. The suite is in eight movements, usually played without a break. These movements describe: 1. An introduction to each of the four characters in the ballet (Bride, Groom, Pioneer Woman, Revivalist Preacher) at dawn; 2. Beginning of the action; 3. Dance of the Bride and Groom; 4. Dance of the Revivalist Preacher and his flock; 5. Bride’s solo dance; 6. Transition; 7. Theme and five variations on “Simple Gifts”; 8. Coda. The penultimate movement, the theme and variations on “Simple Gifts” or on the “Shaker Melody,” is the most familiar music of the ballet. In this movement, Copland takes a simple melody (based on a hymn which opens, “It’s a gift to be simple”) first expressed by a solo clarinet and provides different lyrical moods for the melody culminating in a full orchestral summation of this melody. The music and the dancers come together in a harmonic expression that, while the couple may be starting their lives together, they are still an inseparable part of a community. For them and us, at the end of the piece, hope and joy rise—one may even say they “spring.”

The formation of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra (ASO) began with the first performance by a group of volunteer musicians in 1921. That group would evolve from a volunteer ensemble to the state’s only full-time professional orchestra. Today, the ASO is continuing to make music and provide vital services to the residents of the state, serving nearly 100,000 individuals per year through concert series, youth programs and educational and community engagement efforts to fulfill our mission to change lives through music.

The Alabama Symphony Orchestra has entertained and enriched audiences for almost 100 years, playing a variety of classical and popular music and hosting performances by some of the finest guest artists in the world. The 53 talented musicians of the ASO bring to life some of the world’s most treasured musical masterpieces and introduce listeners to exciting new works and composers, performing 100 concerts annually.

ABOUT THE ALABAMA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Appearing in this evening’s performance:

*Extra musician

For a full listing of Alabama Symphony Orchestra musicians, please visit alsymphony.org/orchestra.

CONDUCTOR Carlos Izcaray Music Director and Elton B. Stephens Chair

FIRST VIOLIN Mayumi Masri Acting Associate Concertmaster Sarah Nordlund Dennis Viktor Dulguerov Ai-Yi Bao

SECOND VIOLIN Tara Mueller Assistant Principal Sodam Lim Serghei Tanas Hilarie Rivas*

VIOLA Rene Reder Meredith Treaster Lucina Horner

CELLO Warren Samples Principal Xi Yang Peter Garrett

BASS Alexander Horton Principal Richard Cassarino Assistant Principal

FLUTE Lisa Wienhold Principal

OBOE Machiko Ogawa Schlaffer Assistant Principal Erica Howard*

CLARINET Kathleen Costello Principal and Symphony Volunteer Council Chair

BASSOON Tariq Masri Principal

HORN Adam Pandolfi* Kevin Kozak

PIANO Smith Williams*

Carlos IzcarayASO Music Director

Carlos Izcaray is music director of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and the American Youth Symphony. Praised by the international press as inspiring, spirited and conducting with nuanced sensitivity, he has appeared with numerous ensembles across five continents and is now firmly established as one of the leading conductors of his generation. Throughout his career, Izcaray has shown special interest and prowess in tackling some of the most complex scores in the symphonic repertoire, while also championing a historically informed approach.

On the symphonic platform, he leads ensembles such as the Pacific, St. Louis, North Carolina, Grand Rapids and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphonies, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Orchester der Komischen Oper Berlin, Malmö Symfoniorkester, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, Orchestra Regionale dell’Emilia-Romagna, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Macedonian Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfônica da Bahia, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, Venezuela Symphony Orchestra, and Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Caracas, among others. Izcaray’s latest recording, Through the Lens of Time, featuring Max Richter’s Recomposed: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and violinist Francisco Fullana, was released in March 2018 on the Orchid Classics label and has garnered widespread attention and praise.

Izcaray is equally at home with opera repertoire, receiving rave reviews for his performances at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Utah Opera, Opera Omaha, International Opera Festival Alejandro Granda in Peru, and in particular at the Wexford Festival Opera, where he has led many productions since the opening of Ireland’s National Opera House. His 2010 performances of Virginia by Mercadante won the Best Opera prize at the Irish Theatre Awards.

A strong believer of supporting the younger generations, Izcaray has worked extensively with the world’s top talents and leading music institutions, including

his country’s own El Sistema. In 2014 he led a tour of the Filarmónica Joven de Colombia, and he has additionally worked with the Fundación Batuta, Neojiba in Brazil, London Schools Symphony Orchestra, and Cambridge University Music Society, where he has also taught conducting workshops. Following a project at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Summer 2015, he returned for a performance with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2017. Building on his passion for music education, he became the music director of the American Youth Symphony in Fall 2016.

Himself a distinguished instrumentalist, Izcaray has featured as concert soloist and chamber musician worldwide and served as principal cello and artistic president of the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra prior to dedicating his career fully to the podium. Increasingly active as a composer, Izcaray’s orchestral work Cota Mil was premiered by the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Caracas. April 2018 saw the premiere of his Strike Fugaz by the American Youth Symphony, commissioned in association with the Human Rights Watch to commemorate, and celebrate, the campaign for worldwide social justice, equality and freedom—a cause for which Izcaray is a proud and committed advocate. Izcaray’s Cello Concerto receives its world premiere in January 2020 and is performed by Santiago Cañón Valencia and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer.

Izcaray was born into a family of several artistic generations in Caracas. At age 3, he was enrolled in Venezuela’s public system of youth orchestras, continuing at the Emil Friedman Conservatory, where he was a boy chorister as well as an instrumentalist. He studied conducting with his father since he was a teenager, and went on to become a distinguished fellow at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. Izcaray is an alumnus of the Interlochen Arts Academy, New World School of the Arts, and Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, and won top prizes at the 2007 Aspen Music Festival and later at the 2008 Toscanini International Conducting Competition. He is a dual citizen of Spain and Venezuela and divides his time between Birmingham and Los Angeles.

To learn more about Izcaray’s activities, please visit carlosizcaray.com or his social media profiles on Facebook and Instagram.

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