mahler's the titan | program notes
DESCRIPTION
This is the way the greats were intended to be played. Beginning with the iconic, minimalist style of modern master John Adams and the accessible classicism of Mozart, juxtaposed with Mahler’s gorgeous, complex, and Beethovian first Symphony. Marin Alsop and Taki Fellow Karina Canellakis skillfully and beautifully lead this phenomenal program.TRANSCRIPT
MASTERWORKS • 2014/15
MAHLER’S THE TITANCOLORADO SYMPHONY MARIN ALSOP, conductor
KARINA CANELLAKIS, guest conductor
Saturday, November 1, 2014 at 7:30 pm
Sunday, November 2, 2014 at 1:00 pm
Boettcher Concert Hall
JOHN ADAMS Short Ride in a Fast Machine
MOZART Symphony No. 39 in E-!at major, K. 543
Adagio – Allegro
Andante con moto
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro
— INTERMISSION—
MAHLER Symphony No. 1 in D major
Langsam schleppend
Kräftig bewegt
Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen
Stürmisch bewegt
SATURDAY’S CONCERT IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO BOB AND CYNTHIA BENSON,
RAYMOND AND SUZANNE SATTER
SUNDAY’S CONCERT IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO DALE AND MYCKI BUSSMAN
PROGRAM 4 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
MASTERWORKS BIOGRAPHIESMARIN ALSOP, conductor
Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene, a
Music Director of vision and distinction who passionately believes that “music has
the power to change lives”. She is recognized across the world for her innovative
approach to programming and for her deep commitment to education and to
the development of audiences of all ages. Her outstanding success as Music
Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 2007 has been recognised
by two extensions in her tenure, now con�rmed until 2021. Alsop took up
the post of Music Director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in July 2013,
steering the orchestra in its artistic and creative programming, recording ventures and its
education and outreach activities. She has led the orchestra on two European tours, both in 2012
and 2013, with acclaimed performances at the BBC Proms in London and at the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam. Building an orchestra is one of Alsop’s great gifts, and she retains strong links with all
of her previous orchestras — Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Principal Conductor 2002-2008;
now Conductor Emeritus) and Colorado Symphony (Music Director 1993-2005; now Music Director
Laureate). Born in New York City, Marin Alsop attended Yale University and received her Master’s
Degree from The Juilliard School. Her conducting career was launched when, in 1989, she was a
prize-winner at the Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition and in the same
year was the �rst woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from the Tanglewood
Music Centre, where she was a pupil of Leonard Bernstein.
KARINA CANELLAKIS, guest conductorCurrently in her �rst season as Assistant Conductor of the Dallas Symphony,
Karina Canellakis is rapidly gaining recognition as one of the most promising
and exciting young American conductors. She recently made headlines �lling
in last minute for Jaap Van Zweden in two subscription concerts with the
Dallas Symphony, conducting Shostakovich 8th Symphony and Mozart K.449
with soloist Emanuel Ax, receiving rave reviews. She made her Carnegie Hall
conducting debut in Zankel Hall, and frequently appears as guest conductor
of New York’s groundbreaking International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
This coming season, she makes her debut with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Colorado
and Toledo Symphonies, and the Orchestra of St. Lukes. This past summer Canellakis was a
Conducting Fellow at the Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood Music Center, where she has been
featured in a BSO documentary web series entitled “New Tanglewood Tales.” Canellakis was the
winner of the 2013 Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship, founded by Marin Alsop. She has also
led performances with the Juilliard Orchestra at Lincoln Center. She was a selected conductor in
the Lucerne Festival Masterclass with Bernard Haitink, and conducted the Paci�c Music Festival
Orchestra in Japan, as well as the Tonhalle Orchestra in Switzerland as part of international
masterclasses. As a violinist, Canellakis appears as soloist with orchestras across the United
States. For several years she played on a regular basis with both the Berlin Philharmonic and the
Chicago Symphony. She has also been on several occasions guest concertmaster of the Bergen
Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway. An avid chamber musician, she spent many summers at the
Marlboro Music Festival. Karina Canellakis holds a Bachelor’s degree in violin from the Curtis
Institute of Music and a Master’s degree in orchestral conducting from The Juilliard School,
where she won numerous awards. Among her most prominent mentors are Alan Gilbert, Fabio
Luisi, and Sir Simon Rattle.
SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 5
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES
JOHN ADAMS (b. 1947)
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
John Adams was born February 15, 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts and now lives in
Berkeley, California. He composed this brief work in 1986 in celebration of the opening of the
Great Woods Performing Arts Center in Mans�eld, Massachusetts. Michael Tilson Thomas
conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony there in the work’s premiere on June 13, 1986.
The score calls for two piccolos, two �utes, two oboes, English horn, four clarinets, three bassoons,
contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.
Last performed by the orchestra on September 11&12, 2009 with Je�rey Kahane on the podium.
John Adams is one of today’s most acclaimed composers. Audiences have responded
enthusiastically to his music, and he enjoys a success not seen by an American composer
since the zenith of Aaron Copland’s career: a recent survey of major orchestras conducted by
the League of American Orchestras found John Adams to be the most frequently performed
living American composer; he received the University of Louisville’s distinguished Grawemeyer
Award in 1995 for his Violin Concerto; in 1997, he was the focus of the New York Philharmonic’s
Composer Week, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and named “Composer
of the Year” by Musical America Magazine; he has been made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et
des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture; in 1999, Nonesuch released The John Adams Earbox,
a critically acclaimed ten-CD collection of his work; in 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for On
the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of the !rst
anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and was also recognized by New York’s Lincoln
Center with a two-month retrospective of his work titled “John Adams: An American Master,” the
most extensive festival devoted to a living composer ever mounted at Lincoln Center; from 2003
to 2007, Adams held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall; in 2004, he
was awarded the Centennial Medal of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
“for contributions to society” and became the !rst-ever recipient of the Nemmers Prize in Music
Composition, which included residencies and teaching at Northwestern University; he was a 2009
recipient of the NEA Opera Award; he has been granted honorary doctorates from the Juilliard
School and Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and Northwestern universities, honorary membership in Phi
Beta Kappa, and the California Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.
For the recording of Short Ride in a Fast Machine by the San Francisco Symphony on Nonesuch
Records, Michael Steinberg wrote, “This work is a joyfully exuberant piece, brilliantly scored for a
large orchestra. The steady marking of a beat is typical of Adams’ music. Short Ride begins with a
marking of quarters (woodblock, soon joined by the four trumpets) and eighths (clarinets), but the
woodblock is fortissimo and the other instruments play forte. Adams describes the woodblock’s
persistence as ‘almost sadistic’ and thinks of the rest of the orchestra as running the gauntlet
through that rhythmic tunnel. About the title: ‘You know how it is when someone asks you to
ride in a terri!c sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?’ It is, in any event, a wonderful opening
music for a new American outdoor festival.”
o
PROGRAM 6 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Symphony No. 39 in E-$at major, K. 543
Mozart was born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg and died December 5, 1791 in Vienna. He
registered the E-�at Symphony in the catalog of his works on June 26, 1788. There is no
irrefutable record of a performance during his lifetime, but it seems likely to have been played
on at least one of the following concerts in which he participated: April 14, 1789 (Dresden);
May 12, 1789 (Leipzig); October 15, 1790 (Frankfurt); or April 16, 1791 (Vienna).
The score calls for �ute, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Je�rey Kahane conducted the last performance of the work on October 17-19, 2008.
The city of Prague fell in love with Mozart in January 1787. The Marriage of Figaro met with
a resounding success when he conducted it there on January 17th, and so great was the acclaim
awarded to his Symphony in D major (K. 504) when it was heard only two days later that it has
since borne the name of the Bohemian capital. He returned to Vienna in early February with
a signed contract to provide Prague with a new opera for its next season. The opera was Don
Giovanni, and Mozart returned to Prague on October 1st to oversee its production. Again, he
triumphed and was invited to take up residence in the city. He was tempted to abandon Vienna,
where his career seemed stymied and the bill-collectors harassed him incessantly, but, after six
weeks away, he returned home for pressing reasons both personal and professional. Personally,
his wife, Constanze, was due to deliver their fourth child in December, and she wished to be
close to her family for the birth. (A girl, Theresa, was born on December 27th.) Professionally,
the venerable Christoph Willibald Gluck was reported near death, and Mozart, who had been
lobbying to obtain a position at the Habsburg court such as Gluck held, wanted to be at hand
when the job, as seemed imminent, came open.
Mozart arrived back in Vienna on November 15th, one day after Gluck died. Three weeks
later he was named Court Chamber Music Composer by Emperor Joseph II, though he was
disappointed with both the salary and the duties. He was to receive only 800 !orins a year, less
than half the 2,000 !orins that Gluck had been paid, and rather than requiring him to compose
operas, a form in which he had proven his eminence and to which he longed to fully devote
himself, the contract speci"ed he would write only dances for the imperial balls. Still, the income
from the court position, the generous amount he had been paid for Don Giovanni, and his fees
for various free-lance jobs should have been enough to adequately support his family. However,
his desire to put up a good front with elegant clothes, expensive entertaining, and even loans to
needy (or conniving) musicians drained his resources.
Despite the disappointments in!icted upon him, his precarious pecuniary position, and an
alarming decline in his health and that of his wife, Mozart was still working miracles in his music.
On June 26th, he "nished the E-!at Symphony (K. 543), the "rst of the incomparable trilogy that
he produced within two months during that unsettling summer of 1788. The reason he wrote the
E-!at, G minor and C major (“Jupiter”) Symphonies has never come to light. It has been speculated
that they might have been composed for a series of concerts he planned originally for June, but
which was several times postponed for lack of subscribers and eventually cancelled completely.
A second possibility is that the symphonies were written on speculation to be published as a
set. A third consideration might have been a trip that Mozart was trying to arrange to London.
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES
SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG PROGRAM 7
Should the tour materialize, he reasoned, these symphonies would make a !ne introduction to
the British public. None of those situations came about, however, and the genesis of Mozart’s last
three symphonies will probably always remain a mystery.
The E-"at Symphony opens with a large introduction of surprising emotional weight. The
remainder of the movement, however, uses its sonata form as the basis of a lovely extended song
rather than as an intense drama. The halcyon mood carries into the Andante, a sonatina in form
(sonata without development section) and a sunbeam in spirit. The Minuet, with its sweet trio, is
a vivacious dance of grace, elegance and prescient Romantic vigor. The !nale combines wit and
verve with suavity of style and harmonic felicity.
o
GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 1 in D major
Mahler was born July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia and died May 18, 1911 in Vienna. He began
composing his First Symphony in 1883 or 1884, using sketches that date from as early as
1876. He completed the �rst version the work in March 1888 and revised the orchestration
in 1892 and 1893. Mahler, one of the greatest conductors of his time, led both the world
premiere (Orchestra of the Royal Opera, Budapest, November 20, 1889) and the American
premiere (New York Philharmonic, December 16, 1909).
The work is scored for four !utes (3rd and 4th doubling piccolo), four oboes (3rd doubling English
horn), E-!at clarinet, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon),
seven horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two sets of timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.
Last performance by the orchestra was on September 19-21, 2008, with Je"rey Kahane conducting.
Though he did not marry until 1902, Mahler had a healthy interest in the opposite sex, and
at least three love a#airs touch upon the First Symphony. In 1880, he conceived a short-lived but
ferocious passion for Josephine Poisl, the daughter of the postmaster in his boyhood home of
Iglau, and she inspired from him three songs and a cantata after Grimm, Das klagende Lied (“Song
of Lamentation”), which contributed thematic fragments to the gestation of the Symphony. The
second a#air, which came early in 1884, was the spark that ignited the composition of the work.
Johanne Richter possessed a numbing musical mediocrity alleviated by a pretty face, and it was
because of an infatuation with this singer at the Cassel Opera, where Mahler was then conducting,
that not only the First Symphony but also the Songs of the Wayfarer sprang to life. The third liaison,
in 1887, came as the Symphony was nearing completion. Mahler revived and reworked an opera
by Carl Maria von Weber called Die drei Pintos (“The Three Pintos,” two being impostors of the title
character) and was aided in the venture by the grandson of that composer, also named Carl.
During the almost daily contact with the Weber family necessitated by the preparation of the
work, Mahler fell in love with Carl’s wife, Marion. Mahler was serious enough to propose that he
and Marion run away together, but at the last minute she had a sudden change of heart and
left Mahler standing, quite literally, at the train station. The emotional turbulence of all these
encounters found its way into the First Symphony, especially the !nale, but, looking back in 1896,
Mahler put these experiences into a better perspective. “The Symphony,” he wrote, “begins where
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES
PROGRAM 8 SOUNDINGS 2014/15 | COLORADOSYMPHONY.ORG
the love a�air [with Johanne Richter] ends; it is based on the a�air that preceded the Symphony
in the emotional life of the composer. But the extrinsic experience became the occasion, not the
message of the work.”
The Symphony begins with an evocation of verdant springtime. The movement’s main
theme, which enters softly in the cellos, is based on the second of the Songs of a Wayfarer, Ging
heut’ Morgen übers Feld (“I Crossed the Meadow this Morn”). The !rst movement is largely given over
to this theme combined with the spring sounds of the introduction.
The second movement is a dressed-up version of the Austrian peasant dance known as the
Ländler balanced by a gentle central trio. The third movement begins and ends with a lugubrious
transformation of the European folk song known most widely by its French title, Frére Jacques.
The middle of the movement contains a melody marked “Mit Parodie” (played “col legno” by the
strings, i.e., tapping with the wood rather than the hair of the bow), and a simple, tender theme
based on another melody from the Wayfarer songs, Die zwei blauen Augen (“The Two Blue Eyes”).
The !nale, according to Bruno Walter, conducting protégé and friend of the composer, is
!lled with “raging vehemence.” The stormy character of the beginning is maintained for much of
the movement. Throughout, themes from earlier movements are heard again, with the hunting
calls of the opening introduction given special prominence. The tempest is !nally blown away by
a great blast from the horns to usher in the triumphant ending of the work.
— ©2014 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
MASTERWORKS PROGRAM NOTES
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