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The Skokie Valley Symphony Orchestra's 48th Season

A Season of Sweet Sunday Treats

Story Time

Sunday, December 6, 2009

3:00 p.m.

Join us at 1:45 pm for an informative preconcert lecture, presented by Michael Vaughn.

Soloists
Program Notes
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Meredith Crawford

Meredith Crawford, 22, is a celebrated, accomplished violist in both orchestral and chamber music settings. She has been principal viola in both the Oberlin Orchestra and the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, led by Bridget-Michaele Reischl, for the past three years. She has also been handpicked to participate in several special ensemble projects, including a recording with Oberlin 21 for the forthcoming Telarc release Air, featuring music by Debussy and Takemitsu and a 2006 performance at Carnegie Hall with the Oberlin Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Robert Spano. Meredith also won first place in the Ohio Viola Society’s annual competition in 2007. Last year, her string quartet at Oberlin performed the first movement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A major in the Dannenberg Honors Recital.

Meredith has attended several summer programs, including Yellow Barn Young Artist Program (2004), Oberlin in Italy (2006), Sarasota Music Festival (2008), and Kneisel Hall (2007, 2008), where she gained experience in both coaching and performing high-level chamber music. She has also toured Venezuela and Brazil with New England Conservatory’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra (2005) and performed throughout southern Maine with the Cicada Chamber Players (2007), founded by New York Philharmonic bassist Bill Blossom. In the fall of 2008, Meredith was selected to represent Oberlin at the Kennedy Center’s 5th anniversary of their Conservatory Project, in which one student from each of thirteen major conservatories across the country were selected to participate.

Meredith began her studies in viola with Michael Zaretsky of the Boston Symphony while attending the Walnut Hill School for Fine and Performing Arts and has studied for the past four years at Oberlin with Professor of Viola Peter Slowik. She is currently finishing her last semester at Oberlin, working toward a B.M. in Viola Performance and a B.A. in English. Next year, she will head west to Costa Mesa, California, where she will be joining the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in her first professional venture.

Benjamin Lash

Benjamin Lash has studied the cello since he was six years old and has competed in numerous competitions. His first-place awards include the Society of American Musicians, Music Teachers National Association state and regional divisions, North Suburban Symphony, Oak Park Symphony, Kishwaukee Symphony, Sejong Cultural Society, Walgreens Early Music Concerto Competition, and Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition. He has received honors in the Stulberg International, Chicago Symphony, Women’s Association of the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, and Fischoff National Chamber Music competitions. Recent concerto performances include Bloch’s Schelomo with the Chicago Youth Symphony and Haydn’s D Major Cello Concerto with the Evanston Township High School Symphony. During his senior year at Evanston Township High School, he appeared on the NPR radio show From the Top, WFMT’s Introductions, Chicago’s Music in the Loft series, and was an American String Teachers Association national solo competition finalist. Last spring Benjamin performed the Mendelssohn Octet at the Music Institute of Chicago Nichols Hall with renowned violinist and violist Ani and Ida Kavafian. Additionally, Benjamin was a National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts finalist, participated in Young Arts Week in Miami, and was a Presidential Scholar in the Arts semi-finalist. Last summer, he attended the Sarasota Chamber Music Festival. His previous teachers include Dean Bachus and Tanya Carey. Benjamin is a freshman at the Colburn School in Los Angeles where he studies with Ronald Leonard.

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Program Notes

Overture to Nabucco

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)

During the 19th century, Europe was swept by a phenomenon known as nationalism, which may be broadly defined as a sense of national consciousness and the exultation of one’s own nation above all others. Similar to patriotism, it attempted to glorify the nation, or motherland, by placing primary emphasis on the promotion of its culture and interests. In Italy, nationalism manifested itself in a movement known as the Risorgimento, the ultimate goal of which was to unite Italy under one flag and government. For many Italians, however, the Risorgimento meant more than political unity; it represented an opportunity for the renewal of Italian society and culture. Such renewal, it was felt, could only take place when Italy was free of foreign control and influence. Thus, even when most of the aims of the political Risorgimento had been achieved, idealistic Italians still sought the true Risorgimento, or rebirth of the Italian people.

Giuseppe Verdi, like many of his artistic contemporaries, found himself caught up in the burgeoning nationalistic fervor. A liberal and strong patriot, Verdi became an ardent supporter of the Risorgimento as evidenced by the numerous nationalistic references found in many of his works. These references are particularly obvious in the operas of the 1840s, many of which deal with the suppression of a group of people by a cruel foreign power. The first such work was Nabucco.

Premiered in 1842 at La Scalla, Nabucco tells the biblical story of the enslavement and eventual exile of the Jews under the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Despite the dark subject matter, the opera is filled with memorable melodies, none more so than the Act III chorus, “Va pensiero,” in which the Hebrew slaves sing longingly of their lost homeland. Over the course of the 19th century the tune came to be a popular anthem of the Risorgimento and helped to make Verdi an unlikely symbolic leader of the movement. In fact, to show their affection and gratitude towards the composer, his countrymen elected Verdi to Italy’s first parliament.

The Overture to Nabucco is, in typical Verdi fashion, a veritable potpourri of themes, most of which appear in the opera itself. After a majestic opening statement and a rather sinister theme to suggest the dark circumstances of the plot, Verdi introduces “Va pensiero” for the first time. He then quickly brings forth a number of themes associated with the Hebrew slaves and their Babylonian captors, thus setting up the central conflict of the opera. A rousing conclusion serves as an appropriate curtain-raiser for this, Verdi’s first successful operatic work.

Variations on a Rococo Theme

Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1849–1893)

Much of Tchaikovsky’s personal life was marked by the tragedy and sadness that is often evident in the passionate outcries of emotion so central to his musical language. Yet, the tortured composer, like Mozart, was, on occasion, able to divorce himself from his turbulent surroundings to produce music of a much brighter, sunnier nature. Such is the case with the Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, written in 1876.

The months preceding the completion of the Variations were fraught with stress and disappointment for the composer. His opera Vakula had met with a poor reception and only discouraging reports had come back from Vienna and Paris about his overture-fantasy Romeo and Juliet. An anticipated concert of his music in the French capital had to be cancelled due to lack of funds, and Tchaikovsky had but recently entered into a doomed relationship with a young student that was to result in a disastrous, short-lived marriage. Nevertheless, in short order he created the Variations on a Rococo Theme, a work characterized by carefree charm and grace in the spirit of his idol, Mozart. The work may be viewed, then, as something of a tribute to the great Classical master and his indomitable spirit.

Variations on a Rococo Theme was constructed as a set of theme and variations, a form well-loved and expertly exploited by Mozart and his contemporaries. Though rarely used by Tchaikovsky before, it was now particularly attractive to the composer as a means of evoking the past. Not only did he settle upon a distinctively classical form for his new composition, he deftly crafted an original theme in a charmingly antique—or Rococo—style. English scholar John Warrack has noted that Tchaikovsky’s “sympathy with the rococo and Mozart is shown in his ability to construct for his theme a melody that is impeccably classical yet unmistakably marked with his own personality.” This theme is first heard in the cello, following a brief opening statement from the orchestra. After several repetitions, a connective theme, or ritornello, is introduced by Tchaikovsky’s beloved woodwinds. Seven variations then follow, each one linked to the next by the new ritornello theme, which now serves as a unifying device. Though the orchestra is an important collaborative participant, it is the cello that leads the way in developing each new variant of the main theme. In keeping with 18th century practice, each new variation retains the basic melodic and harmonic outlines of the main theme, the changes being affected primarily through ornamentation, tempo, and key area. The final variation is the most difficult of the set, while the attached coda requires even greater virtuosity from the soloist and orchestra.

The version of the Rococo Variations that has been in circulation since the work’s premiere is not the one Tchaikovsky originally set down, but an edition prepared by the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, Tchaikovsky’s colleague at the Moscow Conservatory for whom the work was written. In Tchaikovsky’s absence (he was abroad recuperating from his failed marriage) Fitzenhagen took it upon himself to make several changes to the cello part as well as to eliminate one of the original eight variations and change the order of the remaining seven. Though purists have denounced this edition as a corruption of the composer’s wishes, many listeners and musicians feel that the changes do, in fact, represent an improvement. In recent years, scholars have uncovered the original manuscripts and restored the work to its intended format.

Rhapsody Concerto for Viola and Orchestra

Bohuslav Martinu (1890–1959)

A prolific composer, at one time highly regarded for his craftsmanship and unique style, Bohuslav Martinu is today, unfortunately, largely unknown. Born in a small Bohemian village, Martinu’s musical talent was recognized early. By the age of 16 he was accepted as a violin student at the Prague Conservatory but was dismissed after only a short time for “incorrigible negligence.” Though he worked diligently on his own, he did not resume formal studies until 1923 when he studied with Albert Roussel in Paris. The creative energy of the French capital in the early 20th century no doubt inspired the young composer who responded by completing a remarkable number of works, almost all of which reflect the eclectic Parisian musical scene. The unmistakable influence of Debussy, Stravinsky, and Strauss can be detected along with a fascination with jazz and ragtime idioms. A certain youthful freedom, particularly regarding formal constructs, also permeates Martinu’s music from this period.

With the advent of World War II, Martinu fled to Lisbon, then the United States in 1941. Settling in New York, he initially found life in America difficult. Over time he acclimatized himself, composed a great deal, and taught at the Mannes College of Music and Princeton University. Respected as a teacher, his notable students included Alan Hovhaness and Burt Bacharach. In 1946 he was invited to teach composition at the Prague Conservatory but the political situation made his return impossible. In 1953 he lived briefly in Nice, France but returned to the U.S. to teach at the Curtis Institute. The following year he left to become a professor at the American Academy in Rome. The final two years of his life were spent in Switzerland where he died in 1959.

Martinu’s large, diverse, and uneven output defies easy classification. His music displays a wide variety of influences including jazz, Baroque forms and styles, Czech folk music, Debussy’s Impressionism, and the modernism of Stravinsky. The majority of his works from the 1930s to the early 1950s were in a neo-Classical vein but, with his last compositions he expanded his style somewhat to include large rhapsodic gestures and a more broadly conceived sense of form.

Such is the case with the Rhapsody Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, composed in America 1952 and first performed by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. The work can definitely be seen as the start of Martinu’s late neo-Romantic style in which he pursued greater emotional and compositional freedom: “I am trying to escape the traditional form of the concerto which is geometrical, rather static and much too definite, leaving little opportunity for free development.” He went on to describe the Rhapsody Concerto as a turn from geometry to fantasy, which is obvious in the building up of long lyrical passages and the overall lyrical nature of the work. Though Martinu allows the soloist opportunites for virtuoso display, the main character of both movements is melodic and calm.

Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)

The prominent English composer Benjamin Britten, best known for his operas such as Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, had a long association with the British motion picture industry, having provided music for a number of films. In 1946 he was commissioned to score an educational documentary called The Instruments of the Orchestra, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcom Sargent. Though the film is rarely seen, Britten’s music lives on as The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which, along with Saint-Saens’s The Carnival of the Animals and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, is one of the best-known scores in children’s music education. The music, in accordance with the plan of the original film, was designed to showcase the various tone colors and capacities of the four main sections of the orchestra.

Subtitled “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell,” Young Person’s Guide is, in fact, based upon a tune from Henry Purcell’s opera Abdelazar. Britten introduces the majestic Purcell theme in the full orchestra before allowing it to be heard in each section or family of instruments—string, wind, brass, and percussion—in turn. The theme, having been thoroughly exposed, is then passed through each of the major instruments of the orchestra, in the same family order as heard previously, and generally moving through each family from high to low. So, for example, the tune is given first to the piccolo and flute, then to the oboe, clarinet, and finally the bassoon. The same pattern is continued with the string, brass and percussion sections. Each time a new instrument takes over, the tune is altered slightly so as to create a variation. The result is a set of fifteen short variations on Purcell’s original theme.

After each instrument in the orchestra has been given center stage, the piccolo begins a new theme. This theme becomes the subject of a fugue and is imitated, in turn, by all the woodwind, string, brass, and percussion instruments. Once all have entered, the brass re-introduce Purcell’s original melody while the remainder of the orchestra continues the fugue theme until the piece comes to a rousing close with a grand climax.

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