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Roderick Cox Conducts Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky
Minnesota Orchestra
Roderick Cox, conductor
Joyce Yang, piano
Thursday, January 19, 2017, 11 am
Friday, January 20, 2017, 8 pm
Saturday, January 21, 2017, 8 pm
Orchestra Hall
Orchestra Hall
Orchestra Hall
With these concerts we gratefully recognize
Anne W. Miller and Eldon C. Miller
for their generous Investing in Inspiration support.
Claude Debussy
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
ca. 10’
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 18
Moderato
Adagio sostenuto
Allegro scherzando
Joyce Yang, piano
ca. 32’
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Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
OH+
(Orchestra Hall Plus)
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Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Opus 36
Andante sostenuto – Moderato con anima
Andantino in modo di canzona
Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato
Finale: Allegro con fuoco
Concert Preview with Paul Gunther, Roderick Cox and Joyce Yang
Thursday, January 19, 2017, 10:15 am, Auditorium
Friday, January 20, 2017, 7:15 pm, Target Atrium
Saturday, January 21, 2017, 7:15 pm, Target Atrium
Minnesota Orchestra concerts are broadcast live on Friday evenings on stations of Classical Minnesota Public Radio,
including KSJN 99.5 FM in the Twin Cities.
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MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA
SHOWCASE
ca. 20’
ca. 44’
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Artists
was selected by the League of American
Orchestras as one of five conductors
presented at the 2016 Bruno Walter
National Conducting Preview. During
the 2016-17 season, he debuts with the
Cleveland Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony
Orchestra and Colour of Music Festival.
In September he led concerts in
Washington, D.C., for the opening of the
Smithsonian National Museum of
African American History and Culture.
More: minnesotaorchestra.org,
roderickcox.com.
Roderick Cox, conductor
Roderick Cox, who was named the
Minnesota Orchestra’s associate
conductor in September 2016 after one
year as assistant conductor, makes his
subscription concert debut in these
performances. He regularly conducts
Young People’s Concerts, family programs,
special events and outdoor community
concerts, while serving as cover conductor
for many of the Orchestra’s concerts. In
December he led the Orchestra in a
“Spirit of the Season” concert presented
in collaboration with Shiloh Temple
International Ministries in north
Minneapolis. A native of Macon, Georgia,
he previously served as assistant conductor
of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and
music director of the Alabama Symphony
Youth Orchestra. Among his honors, he
orchestras and chamber musicians.
She came to international attention in
2005 when, at age 19, she won the
silver medal at the Van Cliburn
International Piano Competition as its
youngest contestant. She is a recipient
of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and
has performed with many of America’s
most prestigious orchestras including
the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia
Orchestra and Chicago Symphony. She
has appeared in recital at New York’s
Lincoln Center and Metropolitan
Museum, Washington’s Kennedy Center,
Chicago’s Symphony Hall and Zurich’s
Tonhalle. Highlights of her current
season include a debut with the San
Diego Symphony and recitals in
Cincinnati, Denver, Nashville, Seattle,
Anchorage, Beverly Hills and Spivey
Hall in Georgia. More: artsmg.com,
pianistjoyceyang.com.
Joyce Yang, piano
Joyce Yang, who debuts with the
Minnesota Orchestra in these concerts,
showcases her colorful musical
personality in solo recitals and
collaborations with the world’s top
one-minute notes
Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
A sleeping faun, represented by a languid, sensual flute solo, dreams of a romantic tryst with forest nymphs. Like the poem it is based on,
this music is impressionistic—offering a series of sensations without formal structure.
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2
The solo piano is heard almost continuously in this very challenging concerto. Deep chords in a haunting opening theme give way to a
meditative second movement (flute, clarinet and strings carry the theme in turn), followed by a vigorous, aggressive march.
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, like Beethoven’s Fifth, presents a Fate motif at the outset. This is an adventurous work carrying us through lyrical
episodes as well as high drama on the way to the exuberant conclusion.
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Program Notes
Claude Debussy
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Prelude to the Afternoon of
a Faun
Concerto No. 2 in C minor
for Piano and Orchestra,
Opus 18
Born: April 1, 1873,
Oneg Novgorod, Russia
Died: March 28, 1943,
Beverly Hills, California
Born: August 22, 1862,
Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
France
Died: March 25, 1918, Paris
Premiered: December 22, 1894
his shimmering, endlessly beautiful music is so familiar to
us—and so loved—that it is difficult to comprehend how
problematic it was for audiences in the years after its premiere in
December 1894. Saint-Saëns was outraged: “[It] is pretty sound,
but it contains not the slightest musical idea in the real sense of
the word. It’s as much a piece of music as the palette a painter
has worked from is a painting.”
t
We smile, but Saint-Saëns had a point. Though it lacks the savagery
of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the Prelude to the Afternoon of a
Faun may be an even more revolutionary piece of music, for it
does away with musical form altogether. This is not music to be
grasped intellectually, but simply to be heard and felt.
Debussy based this work on the poem “L’après-midi d’un faune”
by his close friend, the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The
poem itself is dreamlike, a series of impressions and sensations
rather than a narrative. It tells of the languorous memories of a
faun on a sleepy afternoon as he recalls an amorous encounter
the previous day with two passing forest nymphs. This encounter
may or may not have taken place, and the faun’s memories—
subject to drowsiness, warm sunlight, forgetfulness and drink—
grow vague and finally blur into sleep.
a soft and sensual world
Like the faun’s dream, Debussy’s music lacks specific direction.
The famous opening flute solo (the faun’s pipe?) draws us into
this soft, sensual world. The middle section, introduced by woodwinds, may be a subtle variation of the opening flute melody—it
is a measure of this dreamy music that we cannot be sure. The
opening theme returns to lead the music to its glowing close.
Audiences have come to love this music precisely for its sunlit
mists and glowing sound, but it is easy to understand why it
troubled early listeners. Beneath its shimmering and gentle
beauties lies an entirely new conception of what music might be.
Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, 4 horns, antique cymbals, 2 harps and strings
Program note by Eric Bromberger.
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MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA
SHOWCASE
achmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto may be the best-loved
piano concerto on the planet, but it almost didn’t get written,
and the tale of its creation is one of the most remarkable in all of
music. Rachmaninoff graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in
1892 with its highest award, the gold medal, and quickly embarked
on a career as a touring pianist. But he wanted to compose. He had
written a piano concerto while still a conservatory student, and early
in 1895 the 21-year-old composer took on the most challenging of
orchestral compositions, a symphony. Its premiere, on March 27,
1897, was a catastrophe. Conductor Alexander Glazunov was
unprepared, the orchestra played badly, and audience and critics
alike hated the music, César Cui describing it as a “program
symphony on the Seven Plagues of Egypt...[music that would give]
acute delight to the inhabitants of Hell.” What should have been a moment of triumph for the young composer instead brought humiliation.
r
Rachmaninoff may have been a powerful performer, but he was a
vulnerable personality, and the disaster of the premiere plunged
him into a deep depression. His first act was to destroy the score
to the symphony. It was never performed again during his lifetime,
but after his death it was reassembled from the orchestral parts,
and the painful irony is that this work is now admired as one of
the finest works of his youth. However, in the aftermath of the
fiasco of its premiere, Rachmaninoff lost confidence in himself
and wrote no music at all for the next three years.
the doctor steps in
Alarmed, the composer’s family and friends arranged for him to
see Dr. Nicholas Dahl, an internal medicine specialist who
sometimes treated patients through hypnosis. Dahl was also
extremely cultured—he was an amateur cellist—and Rachmaninoff’s
friends were hopeful that contact with such a man would improve
the composer’s spirits. During a lengthy series of visits, the
composer heard a steady message of encouragement from the
doctor: “You will begin to write your concerto….You will work
with great facility….The concerto will be of excellent quality.” To
the composer’s astonishment, Dahl’s treatment worked. He later
said: “Although it may sound incredible, this cure really helped
me. By the beginning of summer I again began to compose. The
material grew in bulk, and new musical ideas began to stir within
me—more than enough for my concerto.”
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Program Notes
With the dam broken, new music rushed out of the rejuvenated
composer. Across the summer and fall of 1900, Rachmaninoff
composed what would become the second and third movements
of his Second Piano Concerto. These were performed successfully
that December, and Rachmaninoff composed the opening movement
the following spring. The first performance of the complete
concerto, in Moscow on November 9, 1901, was a triumph. Not
surprisingly, Rachmaninoff dedicated the concerto to Dr. Dahl.
jan 19, 20, 21
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born: May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia
Died: November 6, 1893,
St. Petersburg, Russia
Symphony No. 4 in F minor,
Opus 36
Premiered: February 22, 1878
the music
moderato. The very beginning of the concerto seems so “right” that it
is hard to believe that this movement was written last. Throughout
his life Rachmaninoff loved the sound of Russian church bells. The
concerto begins with the sound of those bells, as the solo piano
alone echoes their tolling. Into that swirling sound, the orchestra
stamps out the impassioned main theme, one of those powerful
Slavic melodies that instantly haunt the mind; the solo piano has the
yearning second subject. Rachmaninoff writes with imagination
throughout this movement: the orchestra reprises the main theme
beneath the soloist’s dancing chordal accompaniment, while the solo
horn recalls the second subject in a haunting passage marked dolce.
The music demands a pianist of extraordinary ability.
adagio sostenuto. A soft chorale for muted strings introduces the
second movement, but in a wonderful touch the solo flute sings
the main theme as the pianist accompanies. The theme is
repeated, first by the clarinet and then the strings, growing more
elaborate as it proceeds, and only then is the piano allowed to
take the lead. A brief but spectacular cadenza leads to a recall of
the tolling bells from the very beginning and a quiet close.
allegro scherzando. The final movement begins quietly as well, but in a
march-like manner full of suppressed rhythmic energy. Rachmaninoff
makes effective contrast between the orchestra’s opening—powerful
but controlled with an almost military precision—and the piano’s entrance, which explodes with an extraordinary wildness. The second
theme, broadly sung by the violas, has become one of those Big Tunes
for which Rachmaninoff was famous. This wonderful melody would
become an inspiration for countless Hollywood composers and, many
years later, would be used to set the words “Full moon and empty
arms.” If one can escape such associations and listen with fresh ears,
this lovely music is an excellent reminder of Rachmaninoff’s considerable melodic gift. The concerto rushes to its conclusion on a no-holdsbarred coda (another Rachmaninoff specialty) that resounds in every
measure with the young composer’s recently restored health.
Instrumentation: solo piano with orchestra comprising 2 flutes,
2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets,
3 trombones, tuba, bass drum, cymbals, timpani and strings
Program note by Eric Bromberger.
ur symphony progresses,” Tchaikovsky wrote in late
summer 1877. The other half of “our” was Nadezhda
Filaretovna von Meck, who had come into Tchaikovsky’s life some
eight months before, in December 1876. She was a wealthy
woman, recently widowed, tough, given to organizing things and
people. She loved Tchaikovsky’s music to the point of obsession
and made contact with her idol. Almost at once they found
themselves embarked on a voluminous, exhaustive, intimate
correspondence. And 500 rubles were moved every month from
the vast Meck account into Tchaikovsky’s fragile one, bringing
him years of blessed financial security.
“o
an unusual friendship
Clearly, her feelings for Tchaikovsky and his music were on some level
erotic, but she seems to have been unwilling to have that feeling
transmuted into sexual reality. She insisted that they must never meet,
and with that liberating condition in effect, their mutually nourishing
friendship, so strange and so understandable, lasted nearly 14 years.
Being rich as well as neurotic, Mme. von Meck was doubly entitled to
caprice, and in a maggoty moment she broke contact, seemingly
without warning—at least with no warning Tchaikovsky understood.
By 1890, when that happened, Tchaikovsky no longer needed her
money, but he never got over the hurt of the sudden abandonment.
It was during the first year of his friendship with Mme. Von Meck
that he took the most foolish step of his life: he got married,
succumbing to the advances of a former pupil of his. He tried to
be as candid with her about his homosexuality as the manners
and the permissible language of 1877 allowed, but she seems to
have had no idea what he was talking about. They married, he
fled, and with the massive support of relatives and friends he got
his life back on track.
Tchaikovsky began the Fourth Symphony soon after Nadezhda
Filaretovna’s arrival on the scene; he completed it in the aftermath
of the catastrophic marriage. He realized at once the significance
of Mme. von Meck’s entrance into his life and knew that he wanted
to dedicate his new symphony to her. He wrote to her on
February 24, 1878, just two days after the premiere was conducted
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Program Notes
in Moscow by Nikolai Rubinstein: “In my heart of hearts I feel
sure it is the best thing I have done so far.”
“things which arise in the heart”
At one point, Mme. von Meck asked Tchaikovsky what their
symphony “was about.” Tchaikovsky shilly-shallied, explaining
that the answer was to be found in the music itself and not in
words about the music. Nonetheless, he did oblige at length with
a “program” in which the opening fanfare is identified with “Fate,
the decisive force which prevents our hopes of happiness from
being realized, which watches jealously to see that our bliss and
peace are not complete and unclouded, and which, like the sword
of Damocles, is suspended over our heads and perpetually
poisons our souls.”
Tchaikovsky had a rather more illuminating exchange about the
Fourth Symphony with his friend the composer Sergei Taneyev.
“Of course my symphony is program music, but it would be
impossible to give the program in words. It would only appear
ludicrous and raise a smile. But ought this not always to be the
case with a symphony, the most lyrical of musical forms? Ought it
not to express all those things for which words cannot be found
but which nevertheless arise in the heart and cry out for
expression?” He continued: “Please don’t imagine that I want to
swagger before you with profound emotions and lofty ideas....In
reality my work is a reflection of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I
have not of course copied Beethoven’s musical content, only
borrowed the central idea.”
the music: a great adventure
The Fourth Symphony is also among the great adventures and the
great successes. It all has to do with harmonic design, with
gravitational pull. In short, Tchaikovsky goes to surprising keys
at surprising times.
andante sostenuto—moderato con anima. In the first movement,
having emphatically set up F minor as a center of gravity in the
introduction and the keening start of the Moderato, he declines to
return to that key until this long movement is almost nine-tenths
over. That moment is marked by the fourth appearance of the
“fate” fanfare, and it is more powerful for the extreme delay.
Tchaikovsky sets up a network of harmonic reference across the entire
symphony. To cite a grand example: “recapitulation” usually means a
return to the original key as well as a return to all the themes.
Tchaikovsky recapitulates the themes, all right, but he holds off
bringing back the tonic key, F minor, until the coda; instead he sets the
recapitulation in D minor, a key hitherto untouched. But the finale of
the symphony is in F major, closely related to F minor by virtue of
sharing the keynote F, but equally close to that surprising D minor.
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MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA
SHOWCASE
andantino in modo di canzona. The burden of Tchaikovsky’s musical
and extramusical arguments is in the large, brooding first
movement with its latent—and not so latent—waltz content.
What follows is picturesque support. The Andantino is a
melancholy song introduced by the oboe, that most melancholic
of wind instruments. Its impassioned climax is a reminder of the
grieving phrases that dominate the first movement.
scherzo: pizzicato ostinato. In the Scherzo, Tchaikovsky was especially
proud of his novel instrumental scheme: the perpetual pizzicato and
the assignment of distinctive material to each group in the
orchestra. Once the symphony was in circulation, he was annoyed
because it was always the “cute” scherzo that made the biggest hit.
finale: allegro con fuoco. The principal tune of the Finale, also
introduced with an odd harmonic obliqueness, is a folk song, There
Stood a Little Birch. The “fate” fanfare intrudes once more, making a
musical as well as a programmatic point, after which the symphony
is free to rush to its emphatic conclusion. This irresistible Finale
beats all records for the number of cymbal clashes per minute.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones,
tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle and strings
Program note excerpted from the late Michael Steinberg’s The
Symphony: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 1995),
used with permission.
c da
The Minnesota Orchestra first performed Debussy’s Prelude to
the Afternoon of a Faun on December 19, 1913, in the
Minneapolis Auditorium, with the Orchestra’s founding Music
Director Emil Oberhoffer conducting. Earlier that year the Orchestra
had visited New York for the second time in two years, prompting
The New York Times to opine that the young orchestra “seem[ed] to
have a ‘wanderlust’ or mania for traveling far from home.”
The Orchestra gave its initial performance of Rachmaninoff’s
Second Piano Concerto on January 4, 1914, in the Minneapolis
Auditorium, again with Emil Oberhoffer conducting, and Wilma
Anderson Gilman as soloist. Gilman was a Minnesota-based piano
and music instructor who taught for both the Minneapolis public
school system and the MacPhail School of Music.
The Orchestra introduced Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony to its
repertoire on November 1, 1907, again in the Minneapolis
Auditorium with Oberhoffer conducting. The Orchestra’s first-ever
recording sessions in 1924 included this symphony’s Scherzo
movement.