Program Information

Artist Bios

THOMAS WILKINS conductor
SARAH CHANG violin

Program Notes

Friday, January 8, 2010 at 8 pm | NJPAC in Newark

Saturday, January 9, 2010 at 8 pm | State Theatre in New Brunswick

Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 3 pm | Community Theatre in Morristown

NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

THOMAS WILKINS conductor

SARAH CHANG violin

LULLY Ballet Suite for Orchestra (arr. MOTTL)

Introduction

Noctorno

Marche – Les Vents – Marche

VIVALDI The Four Seasons for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 8

I. "Spring"

   Allegro

   Largo

   Allegro

II. "Summer"

   Allegro non molto

   Adagio

   Presto

III. "Autumn"

   Allegro

   Adagio molto

   Allegro

IV. "Winter"

   Allegro non molto

   Largo

   Allegro

SARAH CHANG violin

~INTERMISSION~

RESPIGHI Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 3

Italiana

Aire de corte

Siciliana

Passacaglia

STRAVINSKY Pulcinella Suite

Sinfonia (ouverture)

Serenata

Scherzino – Allegro – Andantino

Tarantella

Toccata

Gavotta (con dua variazioni)

Vivo (duetto)

Minuetto – Finale

Violinist Sarah Chang is one of classical music’s most captivating and gifted performers. A child prodigy, she has matured into a young artist whose musical insight, technical virtuosity and emotional range continue to astonish. She has collaborated major orchestras worldwide, including the New York, London, Berlin and Israel Philharmonics; Royal Concertgebouw, Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras; Boston and Chicago Symphonies and the principal London orchestras.

Recital engagements have included performances at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and London’s Barbican Centre. As a chamber musician, Chang has collaborated with Pinchas Zukerman, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Yefim Bronfman, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yo-Yo Ma, Lars Vogt and Isaac Stern. She has reached a global audience through television appearances, concert broadcasts and best-selling recordings. Chang’s recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for EMI Classics has topped best-selling charts internationally.

Recent highlights include appearances with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, National and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, Orchestre National de France and Santa Cecilia Orchestra. Last season, she presented the world premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’ concerto commissioned for her by the Pittsburgh Symphony, and she toured the Far East with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The Philadelphia native began violin studies at the Juilliard School of Music at age 4. She performed with the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra by age 8. In 2004, she became the youngest person ever to receive the Hollywood Bowl’s Hall of Fame award. She is a past recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Gramophone’s “Young Artist of the Year” award, Germany’s “Echo” Schallplattenpreis, “Newcomer of the Year” honors at the International Classical Music Awards in London, and Korea’s “Nan Pa” award. In 2006, Newsweek named her one of the Twenty Top Women on Leadership. In 2008, Chang was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for her professional achievements, commitment to society and potential in shaping the future of the world.

BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2010
FIRST NORTH AMERICAN SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY

The New Jersey Symphony’s 2010 Winter Festival celebrates the musical culture of Italy. For this first subscription concert of the new year, guest conductor Thomas Wilkins leads a creative program that draws on different aspects of Italian music. The centerpiece is Vivaldi’s timeless The Four Seasons, a seminal work in descriptive tone painting, as well as violin technique.

The other works on the program are modern “takes” on early music. The program opens with a ballet suite on music of Lully, who worked for decades in the court of Louis XIV, but whose birth and early education were Italian. We hear Lully in arrangements by the late 19th-century conductor Felix Mottl. After intermission, the program continues with Respighi’s orchestrations of late Renaissance Italian dances. The NJSO concludes with Stravinsky’s delightful Pulcinella, a neoclassic score based on 18th-century Italian music.

Ballet Suite

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Born November 28, 1632 in Florence, Italy

Died March 22, 1687 in Paris, France

Arranged by Felix Mottl (1856–1911)

The remarkable career of Jean-Baptiste Lully infused a ballet tradition into French opera in the 17th century. The Italian-born Lully came to France at age 14, serving as musician, page and Italian conversationalist in the household of the Duchess of Montpensier, a member of the French royal family. His schooling included lessons in guitar, violin, keyboard and dance. This background, combined with the advantage of his situation, earned him favor at court. Beginning in 1653, he served as master of instrumental music to Louis XIV, composing ballets de cour, overtures, dances and vocal settings of French poetry. Eventually he secured a monopoly on presenting opera.

A natural for opera

Lully was in an excellent position to fuse not only the two genres of opera and ballet, but also French and Italian styles. He understood dance and literature as well as music, which made him a natural for opera. Collaborating with the librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully composed operas rooted in Greek and Roman legend, drawing on the writings of Euripides and Ovid. From Lully descended the French grand opera tradition, through Rameau and Gluck’s Parisian operas to the 19th-century extravaganzas of Spontini, Auber, Rossini, Meyerbeer and Berlioz.

Updating the past in post-romantic style

During the 19th century, composers and scholars began to take an interest in music of earlier eras. (Consider Mendelssohn’s “rediscovery” of Bach in the 1820s.) Among them was the Austrian conductor Felix Mottl, a highly regarded interpreter of Wagner’s operas who led the Bayreuth premieres of Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and The Flying Dutchman. Mottl also composed and, more importantly, arranged 19th-century lieder and opera excerpts and some Baroque music.

His Lully suite draws on four operas. He opens with a pair of marches in ternary form. The second movement Nocturno is a passacaglia; the third a minuet/trio. A dotted-rhythm French overture opens the finale, followed by a ceremonial march. The second movement Nocturno is a passacaglia. A ceremonial march follows, and the “Les vents” (“the winds”) episode in the last movement is a fine example of Baroque text painting. Throughout, Mottl’s orchestrations reflect contemporary taste and performance practice in post-romantic Germany and Austria. Maestro Wilkins observes: “Mottl manages to recast Lully’s music in a way that preserves the original language, yet also introduces a new instrumental fabric. Lully would have used our modern instruments had they been available. I enjoy presenting the old in ‘new’ clothing.”

Mottl’s expanded orchestra comprises woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, triangle and strings. Timing: approximately 16 minutes.

The Four Seasons

Antonio Vivaldi

Born March 4, 1678 in Venice, Italy

Died July 27 or 28, 1741 in Vienna, Austria

Prolific violinist/composer

Vivaldi spent most of his career as musical director and violin teacher at a Venetian conservatory and orphanage for girls, the Seminario Musicale dell’Ospedale della Pietà. During his lifetime, he achieved more renown as a violinist than as a composer. His propensity for violin is clear, given the astonishing number of solo concertos he wrote for the instrument: more than 230 of his 500-odd surviving works.

Baroque contest: technique vs. imagination

The Four Seasons constitutes the first four of a large cycle of 12 concertos that Vivaldi gathered under the fanciful title Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Invenzione (“The Contest Between Harmony and Invention”). The idea was the contrast of rational technique (harmony and the theory of composition) and free imagination (invention). Il Cimento was published in 1725 as Vivaldi’s Op. 8. The Amsterdam publisher Le Cène issued the concertos with a sonnet at the head of each “season,” explaining its program. Excerpts from the poems also appeared in the printed music, pinpointing places where a specific event was being illustrated. Such illustrative text painting was particularly popular in France, where these concertos were performed regularly at the Concert Spirituel. It is a measure of Vivaldi’s fame that by 1725, he was published in the faraway Netherlands and performed throughout Europe.

Poetry and music: a pictorial marriage

The Four Seasons have remained Vivaldi’s best-known compositions. The four Italian sonnets, possibly written by Vivaldi himself, provide a vivid narrative for the music, with recurring images of breezes and gusty winds, bird calls, rain, thunderstorms and rustic songs and dances. All are illustrated in the music.

Each concerto is in the three-movement, fast-slow-fast sequence that Vivaldi standardized as concerto form. The orchestral sections are almost exclusively ritornelli (a recurring musical idea for the full ensemble, restated in various keys). Vivaldi takes his virtuosic flights in the solo passages, evoking the seasonal images of each poem. His imaginative writing in the solo sections is characterized by strong rhythmic vitality and highly idiomatic passagework. Nearly three centuries after they were composed, The Four Seasons remain a formidable challenge to the virtuoso violinist.

Translations of the four sonnets follow.

SPRING

Spring has come and with it gaiety

The birds salute it with joyous song.

And the brooks, caressed by Zephyr’s breath,

Flow meanwhile with sweet murmurings.

The sky is covered with dark clouds,

Announced by lightning and thunder.

But when they are silenced, the little birds

Return to fill the air with their song.

Then does the meadow, in full flower,

Ripple with its leafy plants.

The goat-herd dozes, guarded by his faithful dog.

Rejoicing in the pastoral bagpipes,

Nymphs and Shepherds dance, in love,

Their faces glowing with Springtime’s brilliance.

SUMMER

Under the heavy season of a burning sun,

Man languishes, his herd wilts, the pine is parched

The cuckoo finds its voice, and chiming in with it

The turtle-dove, the goldfinch.

Zephyr breathes gently but, contested,

The North-wind appears nearby and suddenly:

The shepherd sobs because, uncertain,

He fears the wild squall and its effects:

His weary limbs have no repose, goaded by

His fear of lightning and wild thunder;

While gnats and flies in furious swarms surround him.

Alas, his fears prove all too grounded,

Thunder and lightning split the Heavens, and hail-stones

Slice the top of the corn and other grain.

AUTUMN

The country-folk celebrate, with dance and song,

The joy of gathering a bountiful harvest.

With Bacchus’s liquor, quaffed liberally,

Their joy finishes in slumber.

Each one renounces dance and song

The mild air is pleasant

And the season invites every increasingly

To savor a sweet slumber.

The hunters at dawn go to the hunt,

With horns and guns and dogs they sally forth,

The beasts flee, their trail is followed.

Already dismayed and exhausted, from the great noise

Of guns and dogs, threatened with wounds,

They flee, languishing, and die, cowering.

WINTER

Frozen and trembling amid the chilly snow

Our breathing hampered by horrid winds

As we run, we stamp our feet continuously,

Our teeth chatter with the frightful cold.

We move to the fire and contented peace

While the rain outside pours in sheets.

Now we walk on the ice, with slow steps

Attentive how we walk, for fear of falling.

If we move quickly, we slip and fall to earth,

Again walking heavily on the ice,

Until the ice breaks and dissolves;

We hear from the closed doors

Boreas and all the winds at war,

This is winter, but such as brings joy.

Each concerto is scored for solo violin, strings and continuo. Timing: approximately 39 minutes.

Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 3

Ottorino Respighi

Born July 9, 1879 in Bologna, Italy

Died April 18, 1936 in Rome

Champion of instrumental music

Respighi holds a special place among Italian composers because of his rich orchestral legacy. Most of the great names in Italian music during the past two centuries are associated with opera: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini are the brightest stars in a vast constellation. Respighi stands virtually alone as Italy’s representative in instrumental and orchestral scores. A student of both Rimsky-Korsakov and Bruch, Respighi developed a superior sense of orchestration under their tutelage. Intensive study of the works of Richard Strauss, whom he greatly admired, also influenced his development as an orchestral composer.

Passion for the past

Supplementing Respighi’s active career in composition and teaching was a strong interest in antiquarian studies. He edited publications of works by early Italian composers such as Monteverdi and Vitali, and he was fascinated by the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1917, he arranged some movements from lute tablature into the first of what was to be three sets of pieces entitled “Ancient Airs and Dances.” After the success of the first suite, Respighi arranged two further groups in 1924 and 1932. A fourth suite, Gli Uccelli (1927), is also based on lute music.

Each set of Ancient Airs and Dances consists of four late Renaissance dances. In Suite No. 3, the opening Italiana could refer to any popular Italian song form of the 16th century. This one is in relaxed triple time. The second part, Arie di Corte, was originally a ballet by the Burgundian lutenist and composer Jean-Baptiste Besard. The original songs from which the dances are derived all have themes of courtly love: “It is sad to be in love with you,” “Farewell forever, shepherdess,” “Lovely eyes that see clearly,” “The Skiff of Love,” “What divinity touches my soul” and “If it is for my innocence that you love me.”

Respighi’s Siciliana is anonymous, with the familiar lilting 6/8 tempo that characterizes this 17th- and 18th-century dance of Sicilian origin. The third set of Ancient Airs concludes with a passacaglia by Lodovico Roncalli, an Italian guitarist and composer active at the end of the 17th century. The passacaglia, a slow dance in triple time, consists of a series of continuous variations built on a recurring ground bass. Throughout, Respighi’s settings are respectful of the originals, yet perhaps revealing just the slightest wink of his eye.

Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 3, is scored for strings. Timing: approximately 19 minutes.

Pulcinella Suite

Igor Stravinsky

Born June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, Russia

Died April 6, 1971 in New York City, New York

From skeptic to advocate

When Sergei Diaghilev, the legendary impresario of the Ballets Russes, suggested in 1919 that Stravinsky turn his attention to music by little-known 18th-century masters with the idea of orchestrating some movements as a ballet score, the composer reacted with skepticism. Diaghilev proposed music of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–36). Stravinsky knew little of Pergolesi’s work beyond the Stabat Mater and the opera La serva padrona, neither of which interested him.

Then he riffled through the obscure manuscripts Diaghilev had obtained from Italian libraries. Captivated by the music’s simplicity and melodious charm, Stravinsky reconsidered Diaghilev’s proposal. Ultimately the entire project proved too seductive to resist. Diaghilev offered him a kind of package deal: Pablo Picasso would do the sets, and Leonid Massine the choreography. Stravinsky later wrote that his “discovery of the past was the epiphany through which the whole of [his] late work became possible.”

Neoclassicism: a new phase rooted in tradition

One often hears the term “neoclassical” applied to Stravinsky. Pulcinella, the ballet score he composed in response to Diaghilev’s commission, earned that moniker for him. It was the first work in which he consciously turned to the rhythms, melodies and textures of an earlier era. Musically, the greatest difficulty in explaining Pulcinella is not in the metamorphosis of rococo music into a 20th-century score, but the fact that music attributed to Pergolesi turned out not to be by Pergolesi at all! Musical scholars have ascribed nearly all the fragments to Pergolesi’s contemporaries, proving their attribution to Pergolesi to be spurious. Nevertheless, his name remains closely associated with Stravinsky’s score.

Making old music sound fresh: the Stravinsky touch

Stravinsky left the melodic lines of the 18th-century pieces intact. By the addition of his own music in bridge passages, he succeeded in breaking up the predictability of the original. His personal imprint is both harmonic and rhythmic: the gentle dissonance created by pedal points, and clever adaptations of the dance meters with unexpected repetitions and startling sonorities. Despite the reduced orchestra, the scoring is brilliant and varied.

Two years after the premiere of the ballet in Paris in May 1920, Stravinsky created a concert version of the suite in eight movements.