The Last Night of the Proms

Thursday, May 17, 2012, 8:00 pm

Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

The Last Night of the Proms

2011-2012 Robbins Lighter Classics

  • Robert Bernhardt, conductor
    Mela Dailey, soprano
    Richard Eaton Singers
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About this Concert
Some traditions just get better with age, and the Last Night of the Proms is one of them. The yearly end of the London summer festival comes with a feast of mainstays: classical hits, exciting new music, singing traditional songs, and a special guest with remarkable talent. In the ESO’s tribute to this legendary annual event, young American soprano Mela Dailey sings Puccini, Lehár, and more. One of the ESO’s most popular guest conductors, Bob Bernhardt, is back, to turn the Winspear Centre into the Royal Albert Hall just for one night.

Featured Repertoire
HANDEL: Music for the Royal Fireworks
WOOD: Fantasia on British Sea Songs
VERDI: Anvil Chorus
ELGAR: Pomp and Circumstance		 This is the final Lighter Classics performance of the 2011-12 Season. Click here to learn more about the 2012-13 Robbins Lighter Classics.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Bill & Mary Jo Robbins
Series Supporters

espace musique
Media Sponsor
click for detailed seating map

Ticket Information

$75 Dress Circle (A)
$65 Terrace (B)
$52 Orchestra (C)
$38 Upper Circle (D)
$28 Gallery (E)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
Tickets subject to applicable service charges.
This performance is part of the Robbins Lighter Classics series.

Program Info

Program

HANDEL (arr. Harty)
Music for the Royal Fireworks: Overture (5’)*
 
TYSON (arr. Lapalme)
Four Strong Winds (4’)*
 
CUMMINGS (arr. Ruhland)
I Will Play a Rhapsody (3’)*
 
VIGNEAULT (arr. Lapalme)
Fantasie on Mon pays (4’)*
 
LIGHTFOOT (arr. Lapalme)
A Gordon Lightfoot Medley (6’)*
 
KORNGOLD
“Glück das mir verblieb” (Marietta’s Song from Die tote Stadt) (6’)*
 
INTERMISSION
 
WAGNER
“Treulich gefuhrt” (Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin) (5’)*
 
VERDI
“Vedi, le fosche” (Anvil Chorus from Il trovatore) (3’)*
 
LEHÁR
“Vilja” (from The Merry Widow) (6’)*
 
ELGAR
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, Op.39 (4’)*
 
ELGAR (arr. Rosenhaus)
Variations on an Original Theme, Op.36 “Enigma”: Nimrod (4’)*
 
WOOD
Fantasia on British Sea Songs (8’)*
 
ARNE (arr. Britten)
God Save the Queen (3’)*
 
Program subject to change
*indicates approximate performance duration
 

Program Notes

The annual Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC (to give them their complete title) is an eight-week summer festival which has been presented annually since 1895. Over that hundred-plus year history, a number of traditions have firmly entrenched themselves, but none so much as the festival’s final performance – The Last Night of the Proms.
 
These final concerts are generally more “relaxed,” and the repertoire much more of a mixed bag, and the various Proms music directors over the years have added their touches along the way. Tonight’s Edmonton spin on the Last Night features, like the Royal Albert Hall version, some nationalist music (though in our case, we have Canadian works to open the show, and traditional British fare for the end), with an emphasis on lighter, familiar melodies.
 
We begin with music for a very English occasion, written by a German composer. George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was the favoured composer of the British royal court. He was charged with writing the Music for the Royal Fireworks for a celebration marking the 1748 signing of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The actual event – particularly the success of the fireworks themselves – fell short of the hoped-for spectacle, but Handel’s music was a rollicking triumph. The overture which begins the suite is in rich formal dress: a ceremonial, slow beginning, followed by an energetic and appropriately rousing second half. Tonight’s arrangement for a modern symphony orchestra is by Hamilton Harty.
 
Canada’s contribution to what is called “pop music” is at least as long, as varied, and as noteworthy as any country’s. For Alberta’s centennial year in 2005, the Edmonton Symphony presented a gift to our province when it commissioned the talented young Music Director of the Red Deer Symphony, Claude Lapalme, to arrange one of Canada’s best pop songs for orchestra. And what better – or more obvious – choice than the unofficial anthem of Alberta, Ian Tyson’s iconic Four Strong Winds (which we will hear tonight)? Since then, the great storehouse of Canadian popular songs has proven too tempting not for us not to plumb its depths further.
 
When The Guess Who split up in 1975, Burton Cummings went solo, and for several years after, a steady stream of Cummings songs were major hits. I Will Play a Rhapsody, one of many ballads by the pianist/singer, dates from his 1978 album Dream of a Child, which went triple platinum in Canada, and became his most successful album in the U.S. Paul Ruhland did the orchestral arrangement we will hear tonight.
 
Gilles Vigneault, an unapologetic Québec nationalist, is on record as saying that his now-legendary song Mon Pays (“My country”) is not political in nature. Yet since its first appearance – in the soundtrack of a 1966 National Film Board movie La neige a fondu sur la Manicouagan – has been adopted by sovereigntists as an anthem. In 2008, the ESO commissioned Claude Lapalme to arrange Mon Pays for a concert honouring the Francophone history in Alberta. His arrangement is a lush orchestral setting of the familiar tune, concluding with the song in a waltz tempo. Listen also for another Vigneault tune – the even more nationalist Le gens de mon pays (“The people of my country”) – rising above the original theme.
 
All of the new arrangements of tonight’s Canadian songs by Claude Lapalme are ESO commissions through the generous support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. All are familiar hit songs – well, or medleys. In the case of Gordon Lightfoot, we couldn’t pass up the chance to work in a few of his great melodies. A Gordon Lightfoot Medley features Sundown, If You Could Read My Mind, and Early Mornin’ Rain.
 
Part two of our take on the Proms festivities is dominated by popular excerpts from the operatic stage. While better known for his Hollywood film scores, Moravian-born Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) began his music career in Europe, before he fled the Nazi encroachment and headed to America in 1934. His expressionist opera Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”) premiered in Hamburg in 1920. “Glück das mir verblieb” is sung in a hallucinatory sequence in the second act by a vision of the protagonist’s dead wife.
 
The Bridal Chorus from Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) opera Lohengrin is the famous tune popularly known in this part of the world as “Here Comes the Bride,” and as such, has accompanied many walks down the nuptial aisle. So it’s rather ironic that the wedding scene in which it is used in Wagner’s drama, which premiered in 1850, is anything but an occasion to celebrate, as the character of Elsa has grave doubts about her impending wedding. That doesn’t stop the chorus, “Treulich gefuhrt,” from being a beautiful and affecting song.
 
At the same time that Wagner was leading opera in Germany, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was doing the same in Italy. The famous chorus that begins with the words “Vedi! Le fosche” from Verdi’s Il trovatore (which premiered in 1853) is known to us as The Anvil Chorus, so named because of the percussive strikes on the anvil so prominent in the piece. In the opera, this extract is sung by gypsies as they set about their morning work.
 
Franz Lehár (1870-1948) carried on the Viennese operetta form made popular in the late 19th century, and carried it on through the first half of the 20th. While he wrote many fine examples, by far his greatest success was with Die lustige Witwe (“The Merry Widow”) of 1905. In Act II of the piece, the widow of the title, Hanna, serenades her party guests with a song about a young maid, named Vilja.
 
The Proms is a uniquely British concert series, so it is only fitting we conclude with some undeniably, patriotically, tea-and-crumpets British music. Our journey stops next at a mild-mannered Englishman named Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and a work which took on a life of its own, almost from its first performance in 1901. Right from the outset, the patriotic feel and passionate melody of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 had many, including the King of England himself, venture the opinion that words should be added to the trio part. That was done, and in its vocal form, became known as Land of Hope and Glory. It made Elgar famous, “but musically did him more harm than good,” wrote legendary New York Times critic Harold C. Schoenberg. Elgar was a pacifist, and “The march tarred him with a kind of Kiplingesque jingoism,” Schoenberg continued, “Musicians would not accept (Pomp and Circumstance) for what it was – a rattling good march.” Graduation ceremonies, too, have never been the same since the work’s first appearance.
 
After a tiring day spent teaching, a 42-year-old Elgar returned home, and daydreamingly sat at the piano, making up a tune. That’s nice, his wife Alice said, play it again. So, he did, only making up variations on the tune as he did so, in little musical portraits of their friends. This was the genesis of the “Enigma” Variations, the work which would eventually establish Elgar as a major new composer, following its premiere in 1899. The most famous variation, often excerpted as a stand-alone moment, is the serene “Nimrod” ninth variation, named in tribute to Elgar’s friend A.E. Jaeger.
 
When Henry Wood (1869-1944) first conceived of his Fantasia on British Sea Songs, it was to mark the 1905 centennial of the famous naval Battle of Trafalgar. The concept of the piece was the life of a sailor from his point of view, as the songs range from the first call to arms, to battle, to the death of a shipmate – all concluding with Thomas Arne’s triumphant and famous Rule, Britannia! as a reminder that England will forever “rule the waves.” Its patriotic nature made it a regular feature of The Last Night of the Proms, until the increasingly international exposure of the concert (which is now simulcast in various places throughout Great Britain, including Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) made it seem too nationalist. For the Rule, Britannia! finale, the audience is invited to sing the chorus.
 
Thomas Arne (1710-1778), who created the music for Rule, Britannia!, was also the composer of God Save the King, the de facto national anthem of England and a number of countries of the British Commonwealth; even today, it is the royal anthem (not the national anthem) of Canada. Arne’s tune, which seems to have a basis in several older British melodies, was first published in 1744, and while its official title remains God Save the King, it is modified during times, such as our own, when the reigning monarch is female. It has several verses, but only the first one is commonly presented.
 
Program notes © 2012 by D.T. Baker

Artist Info

Robert Bernhardt, conductor

robert bernhardtRobert Bernhardt served as Music Director and Conductor of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera for 19 seasons. He was the second Music Director in the combined company’s history, and is now the first with the title Emeritus. A lover of all genres of music, he is equally at home in symphonic, operatic, pops, and educational performances.  He also nears another milestone in his career with the Louisville Orchestra, with this year representing his 30th consecutive season with the LO, and his 15th as Principal Pops Conductor. This season, he will make his conducting debuts with the Dallas and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras, return to the Cincinnati Pops and Detroit Symphony, and will conduct six Boston Pops concerts. His vast symphonic repertoire covers most of the standard canon and his commitment to the music of our time is significant. He has been a frequent guest conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Boston Pops. He has also been a guest with the Houston, Seattle, Phoenix, Nashville, Colorado, Iceland, and Pacific Symphony Orchestras, among others. He has recorded for Vanguard, First Edition, Carlton Classics, and RPO record labels. He has also conducted the Louisville Ballet, the North Carolina Ballet, the Jacksonville Ballet, and the Lonestar Ballet.
 
Born in Rochester, NY, Robert Bernhardt holds a Master's Degree with Honours from the University of Southern California School of Music where he studied with Daniel Lewis. He was a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Union (NY) College, where he was an Academic All-American baseball player. His son, Alex, lives and works in Seattle with his wife and new daughter, and his daughter, Charlotte, is a resident of New York City. He and his wife, Nora, live on Signal Mountain.
 
Robert Bernhardt holds a special place in the hearts of Edmonton Symphony Orchestra musicians and audiences. This year’s Symphony Under the Sky marked his sixth consecutive as the festival’s conductor, and he frequently leads the ESO in subscription series performances at the Winspear Centre. He last conducted the ESO in December 2011.

Mela Dailey, soprano

mela daileyAs the winner of competitions sponsored by the National Federation of Music Clubs, Metropolitan Opera, New York University, Gerda Lissner Foundation, Downbeat magazine, and Connecticut Opera Guild, and finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Mid-South Region, American Traditions Competition, International Opera Singer Competition, and Career Bridges Grant Awards with the Schuyler Foundation for Career Bridges, Inc., Mela Dailey has command of both her instrument and the stage. Ms. Dailey has received recognition in a wide variety of musical genres including opera, oratorio, art song, musical theatre, vocal jazz, gospel, country, and popular music. Ms. Dailey made her professional debut at Carnegie Hall in 2003 with the Grammy nominated Conspirare Company of Voices directed by Craig Hella Johnson. She has been a recipient of the New York University Talent Scholarship for achievement in musical theatre, a winner of the Second Annual University of Texas Opera Gala Aria Competition, and was selected as a New Young Artist with the Victoria Bach Festival.
 
In the fall of 2011, Ms. Dailey performed and recorded a Samuel Barber choral program with Conspirare for Harmonia Mundi. 2012 begins with a Conspirare Mid-Western Tour, solo debut with the Spokane Symphony, a Florida chamber music tour, and solos in Debussy's La damoiselle élue and Poulenc's Gloria in a return to the Georgetown Festival. Previous operatic performances include the roles of Ines in Il Trovatore, Countess Ceprano (and covering Gilda) in Rigoletto, and Ida (also covering Adele) in Die Fledermaus with Austin Lyric Opera, Adina in L'Élisir d'amore and Musetta in La Bohème with the Opera Company of Brooklyn, the title role of Semele at the Staunton Music Festival (VA), and Frasquita in Carmen with the Amarillo Opera. With the Austin Symphony, she sang the role of Sophie in the Act III Trio and Finale from Der Rosenkavalier. She has also appeared in concert with the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra of Klagenfurt, Austria and was Artist-in-Residence with the Amarillo Opera.
 
This is Ms. Dailey’s debut with the ESO.

Richard Eaton Singers (Leonard Ratzlaff, conductor)

richard eaton singersFounded in 1951 by the late Richard S. Eaton, Edmonton’s symphonic choir, Richard Eaton Singers (RES), has played a leading role in the cultural community of the city for six decades. RES performances have included many Edmonton and Western Canadian premieres of choral masterpieces such as Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony.
 
RES has also commissioned and produced world premiere performances by Canadian composers, including Mark Sirett’s In Praise of Music, Christos Hatzis’ The Sepulcher of Life and The Houses Stand Not Far Apart by John Estacio. In March 2010 the choir premiered A Song of the Seasons by Canadian composer Ruth Watson Henderson with text by E. D. Blodgett to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Leonard Ratzlaff’s artistic leadership of RES.
 
The choir has traveled extensively across Canada, to the Netherlands and Britain and has exchanged with other choirs including the Vancouver Bach Choir. A highlight for RES was its participation at Festival 500 in Newfoundland in 2003.
 
RES is honoured to have been associated with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra for 60 years. This partnership has created many memorable choral events in our city, including in September 1997 the performance of Mahler’s 8th Symphony (“Symphony of a Thousand”) with the ESO to commemorate the opening of the Winspear Centre.
 
To celebrate its 60th anniversary, RES and conductor Leonard Ratzlaff performs Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis on November 4, 2011. Other highlights of this special season are the presentation of the renowned Stuttgart Chamber Choir under the direction of their artistic director Frieder Bernius on March 14, 2012 and the performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt in April 2012 with the Alberta Baroque Ensemble and soloists on April 22.

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