LAVALLÉE

O Canada (arr. Gilliland)

 

BELL

Serenity (11’)*

 

MENDELSSOHN

Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op.25 (20’)*

 

INTERMISSION

 

FRANCK

Symphony in D minor (37’)*

 

Allan Gordon Bell (b. Calgary, 1953)

 

First performed: 2004 in Winnipeg

This is the ESO premiere of the piece

 

Of his work Serenity, Allan Gordon Bell has said:

“This piece has a tie to events in my life. In the early months of 2004, when I was beginning the sketches of this piece, as it turns out, I was dying. I had a long disease, and it was in its terminal stages. But through the gift of a family I don’t know - a generosity in an unthinkable kind of time, and the skill of doctors and nurses, I received an organ transplant. And so I had a second life.

 

“While I was in the hospital, and after that, I lived mostly at that time in my consciousness, and I reached those stages of what we call serenity – those times when the mind is very quiet and you pay very close attention to all the things that surround you. It’s the kind of experience that William Blake talks about when he says you can see the universe in a grain of sand. Tonight’s piece, in a sense, begins with a single sound, and out of that comes a whole piece. Very quickly after that first sound, the music begins to emerge from it, and go. It’s not about putting you in a state of serenity, but it’s about what happens when you are in a state of serenity. It’s a very gentle piece, a very quiet piece. It takes you on a little journey.”

 

 

Felix Mendelssohn (b. Hamburg, 1809 / d. Leipzig, 1847)

 

First performed: October 17, 1831 in Munich

Last ESO performance: March 2001

 

There was no aspect of music in which Mendelssohn did not excel. Perhaps even more than Mozart, he showed a remarkably mature capacity as a composer from a very early age. He was one of the first conductors in the modern sense of the word, leading with a baton from a podium. He is credited with reviving interest in music of the past, particularly that of Bach. And he was an extraordinary keyboard player. “I consider Mendelssohn to be the first musician of our time, and take my hat off to him as a master,” wrote Robert Schumann. So it’s not surprising that the piano concertos Mendelssohn wrote as vehicles for his skill are demanding, intricately textured works.

 

Mendelssohn also helped bring about the modern concert convention of not clapping between movements. He hated the distraction, and in most of his concertos, he does not put pauses between movements; instead, he grafts bridges between them. In his First Piano Concerto, composed when he was 21, the piano enters after a scant seven bars of orchestral introduction. The solo instrument immediately establishes the leading role in the movement, which is dominated by two main musical ideas, the second of which is a deceptively simple two-bar theme, with the piano providing sparkling accompaniment the orchestra’s verve.

 

A brass fanfare bridges the first movement to the second, a lovely Andante with a main theme introduced by the cellos. The piano provides a delicate latticework for this theme, which remains in the lower strings until the end of the movement. Yet another fanfare ushers in the Presto finale, begun in a shower of flourishes for both piano and orchestra, and followed by an Allegro e vivace in a loose rondo form.

 

 

César Franck (b. Liège, Belgium / d. Paris, 1890)

 

First performed: February 17, 1889 in Paris

Last ESO performance: February 1998

 

César Franck was 65 years old when he composed his Symphony in D minor, and had only 20 months to live following its premiere. So unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to see his revolutionary work gain widespread acceptance. “…majestic, plastic, and beautiful symphony,” wrote Franck devotee Vincent d’Indy – one of the lone voices of support following the work’s first performances. Franck, widely regarded as a conservative among French composers of his day, crafted a work which adopted several progressive ideas that raised many reactionary eyebrows.

 

Franck wrote his symphony in the unusual three-movement mold. “Lenten” is certainly an apt word for the achingly slow introduction, but it does contain the fundamental motivic unit of the first movement: a three-note dotted figure reminiscent of the opening phrase from Liszt’s Les Préludes, that moves down by semitone and then moves back up again by a minor third. The Allegro non troppo main section of the movement takes off with a strident, loud presentation of that same basic three note idea and its answer. There is also an angry descending figure, and a more searching, melodic idea also feature in the movement, but Franck, almost defying traditional symphonic form, cuts off the Allegro and brings back the introduction, this time in F minor. The Allegro non troppo returns, this time to the end of the movement.

 

The B flat minor Allegretto contains within it both the slow movement and scherzo of a conventional four-movement layout. The main theme is a gentle dance tune given to the English horn (an instrument whose inclusion in a symphonic work was strongly objected to by the Parisian critics of the day), has something of the medieval about it. The harp and pizzicato string accompaniment leads to a more contemporary presentation, chromatic in its colouring. The middle section of the movement is the Scherzo, offering a delightful, contrasting dotted melody in E-flat Major.

 

In contrast to the gentility of the preceding movement, the finale is a tempestuous, exuberant movement, begun by the winds against the strings in octaves. The main theme is presented very quietly at first, a gently rocking theme in cellos and bassoons. Again, Franck subjects this theme to a chromatic series of transitions, and ingeniously brings back main themes from both the first two movements which, while not in strict cyclic form, does unify the work. Listen particularly for how Franck gives a whole new colour to the Allegretto theme which, upon its second iteration in the finale, is given a surprisingly strong and dramatic presentation. The main theme returns to bring the work to its affirmative, happy ending.

 

Program notes © 2011 by D.T. Baker, except as noted

 

The first woman to win the Malko Competition (2005), Ms. Chen has served as Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony, and has recently completed highly successful tenures as Assistant Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony and Baltimore Symphony; these two positions were sponsored by the League of American Orchestras. In 2002, Ms. Chen was unanimously selected as Music Director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic in Oregon, the model for many youth orchestras in the United States. During her five-year tenure with the orchestra, she led its sold-out debut in Carnegie Hall, received an ASCAP award for innovative programming, and developed new and unique musicianship programs for the orchestra’s members. Born in Taiwan, Mei-Ann Chen has lived in the United States since 1989. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the University of Michigan, where she was a student of Kenneth Kiesler. Prior to that, she was the first student in New England Conservatory’s history to receive master’s degrees, simultaneously, in both violin and conducting.

 

Ms. Chen last appeared with the ESO in November 2010.

 

Winner of the 2005 World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, Ilya Yakushev received his first award at age 12 as a prizewinner of the Young Artists Concerto Competition in his native St. Petersburg. In 1997, he received the Mayor of St. Petersburg's Young Talents award, and in both 1997 and 1998, he won First Prize at the Donostia Hiria International Piano Competition in San Sebastian, Spain. In 1998, he received the Award for Excellence in Performance, presented to him by the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Most recently, He is also a recipient of the prestigious Gawon International Music Society’s Award in Seoul, Korea. Mr. Yakushev attended the Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music in his native St. Petersburg, and subsequently came to New York City to attend Mannes College of Music where he studied with Vladimir Feltsman. Mr. Yakushev is presently serving as Executive Director of the International Keyboard Institute and Festival at Mannes, a position he has held since 2002.

 

This is Mr. Yakushev’s debut with the ESO.