Program Notes: Ports of Call, January 22, 2009 at 8 pm

Program Notes: Ports of Call, January 22, 2009 at 8 pm

Ports of Call
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 8 pm

Jack Everly, conductor
Kristin Plumley, soprano

YOUNG
Around The World in 80 Days (Arr Everly) (3’)*

COATES
Knightsbridge March (4’)*

MACPHERSON / PATERSON
Waltzing Matilda (Arr Everly) (3’)*

BORODIN
In The Steppes of Central Asia (9’)*

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Sir John in Love: Fantasia on Greensleeves (Arr Greaves / Everly) (5’)*

PORTER
“You Don't Know Paree” / “I Love Paris” (from Can-Can) (Arr Everly)  (5’)*

ALBÉNIZ
Córdoba (Arr Everly) (4’)*

WINTERHALTER / HEYWOOD
Canadian Sunset (Arr Everly) (4’)*

J STRAUSS II
“I'm In Love With Vienna” (from Waltzes of Vienna) (Arr Korngold) (4’)*

INTERMISSION

RODGERS
March of the Siamese Children (from The King and I) (Arr Bennett / Powell) (2’)*
(Arr Bennett / Powell)

WILLIAMS
Flight to Neverland (from Hook) (4’)*

DVOŘÁK
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Opus 95 “From the New World”: II- Largo (4’)*

WARD
“America the Beautiful” (Arr Carmen Dragon) (4’)*

MacDONALD / HANLEY
“Back Home Again in Indiana” (Arr Everly) (4’)*

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Song of India (from Sadko) (Arr Dorsey / Everly) (4’)*

HAYMAN
Pops Hoedown (7’)*

RESPIGHI
The Pine Trees of the Appian Way (from The Pines of Rome) (Arr Everly) (6’)*

*Indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

We pledge that our concert tonight will go around the world in a couple of hours, not in eighty days. The 1956 film based on Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, while widely regarded as perhaps the worst movie to ever receive a Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards, does feature a charming and memorable score by Victor Young (1899-1956). And its familiar and lilting title song sets up our musical global journey quite nicely.

Our journey first stops in London, a city which was a profound influence for composer Eric Coates (1886-1957). Though born in Nottinghamshire, London became Coates’ home, and after establishing himself as the violist in Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra, the new medium of radio proved a perfect vehicle for his light, listener-friendly compositional style. The London Suite (London Everyday) was composed in 1933, each of its three movements depicting a different, famous city landmark. The final movement is a brisk and breezy march, filled with the sounds of busy streets and crowds, named for Knightsbridge, a tony part of the city now known as one of the high-end shopping districts, home of the famous Harrods department store. The Knightsbridge March immediately developed a life of its own apart from the rest of the suite, and is now, along with the Dambusters March, one of Coates’ best-known works.

Waltzing Matilda is Australia's most widely known folksong, and is often referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia." The simple story told in the song is that of an itinerant worker making a drink of tea at a bush camp and stealing a sheep to eat. When the sheep's owner arrives with three police officers to arrest the worker, he drowns himself in a small watering hole and goes on to haunt the site. The original lyrics were written in 1895 by the poet and nationalist Banjo Paterson (1864-1941). The music was based on another folksong, of Scottish origin it is believed, and was written to suit Waltzing Matilda by Christina Macpherson (1864-1936). It was first published as sheet music in 1903. Such is the mythology around the song and its genesis that the song even has its own museum, the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton, Queensland.

Because music was only ever a part-time pursuit for Alexander Borodin (1813-1887), his musical output is fairly small. A career scientist, Borodin wrote In the Steppes of Central Asia for an 1880 event marking the 25th year of Tsar Alexander’s reign. Borodin himself wrote this about the work: “Through the silence of the steppes of Central Asia is heard the strain of a peaceful Russian song. Sounds of horses and camels come from the distance, approaching ever nearer, and with them the strains of a haunting eastern melody. A caravan is crossing the desert escorted by Russian soldiers. It progresses on its long journey confident in the protection afforded it by the soldiers. The caravan disappears into the distant horizon. The song of the Russians blends with that of the Orientals in a common harmony, until both fade away across the plains.”

Shakespeare featured into music by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) throughout his career. He wrote incidental music to productions of Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The latter play was also the basis for his opera Sir John in Love, first performed in 1928. Vaughan Williams himself penned the libretto and Sir John, of course, is the lovable, bumbling and blustering John Falstaff. In 1934, Ralph Greaves arranged Vaughan Williams’ treatment of Greensleeves (heard in the opera while Alice Ford awaits the arrival of Falstaff), and this fantasia has become likely the most often-played piece Vaughan Williams ever wrote. The darker-toned folksong one hears in the middle of the Fantasia is another old English tune, Lovely Joan. Conductor Jack Everly has further arranged this work to feature a prominent part for solo violin, played tonight by our Concertmaster, Martin Riseley.

While not as well-known as shows such as Kiss Me, Kate or Anything Goes, Can-Can was still a knockout hit for Cole Porter (1893-1964). The show opened in 1953, and ran for 892 performances. The story takes place in turn-of-the-century Paris. La Mome Pistache, proud owner of the infamous Bal du Paradis, spars with Aristide Forestier, a self-righteous judge determined to close all Parisian dance halls.  Eventually, the pair fall in love, and Aristide concedes that, after all, "obscenity is in the eye of the beholder." I Love Paris is the show’s most famous number, and is combined tonight with You Don’t Know Paree in an arrangement by Jack Everly.

From faux France, we travel to very authentic Spain. Cantos de España (“Songs of Spain”) is a cycle of short pieces written originally for piano by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909). The fourth piece in the set is named for the Andalusian city of Córdoba, famous for its Great Mosque – a symbol of the Moorish heritage of Spain. The colourful music, combining Spanish and Arabian influences, is well suited to a richer orchestral setting, and the one we hear tonight was arranged by conductor Jack Everly.

Given the geographical area covered by this country, calling a song Canadian Sunset might seem a poor way of conjuring up a specific image. But that didn’t stop Eddie Heywood (1915-1989), a popular jazz pianist from America’s deep south (and nowhere near Canada), from writing the song. With lyrics by Norman Gimbel (b. 1927), the song has become a standard, with everyone from Sam Cooke, to Paul Anka (a Canadian, at least), to doo-wop groups like The Arrogants covering it. But it was the 1956 instrumental version done by Heywood, along with Hugo Winterhalter and his orchestra, which marked the first time the song made the charts, reaching number two in the music trade publication Billboard.

The Great Waltz was a potboiler musical / operetta based with barely tenuous threads of reality to incidents in the life of Johann Strauss II (1825-1899). The original production opened on Broadway in 1934, and ran for 298 performances, and featured many of Strauss’ memorable waltz melodies. It is notable because it had the financial backing of John D. Rockefeller, and was a massive, over-the-top spectacle – a rare thing on Broadway in the midst of the Great Depression. Six different arrangers were listed on the credits, and chief among them was Erich Wolfgang Korngold – soon to make his name as one of Hollywood’s most celebrated film scorers. I’m in Love With Vienna was a hit song from the show, set to a tune from Strauss’ Op.440 waltz Gross-Wien (“Great Vienna”), with lyrics by Desmond Carter.

Another sensational Broadway hit was The King and I. Also loosely based on real events, the story of the English school teacher brought to Siam to educate the king’s many children was given a rapturously exotic setting by Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960). The original production ran for nearly three years and over 1200 performances. The teacher, Anna, is introduced to her new students in a lavish instrumental set piece known as The March of the Siamese Children.

There are not a lot of turkeys in the output of Steven Spielberg. But 1991’s Hook numbers among them. The thoroughly haphazard revisit to J.M. Barrie’s world of Peter Pan probably had good intentions, and certainly boasted an impressive cast, but it failed to create the magic it wanted so desperately to do. As with most of Spielberg’s big-budget films, John Williams (b. 1932) was recruited to write the score, which earned an Oscar nomination for the song When You’re Alone. His bracing music for the Flight to Neverland is one of the movie’s highlights.

Celebrated Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) was paid a lot of money to come to the United States, and head up the National Conservatory in New York for a few years. While in America, Dvořák encouraged the music community there to look to its own indigenous music – namely that of the First Nation and African-American cultures – as a way of creating truly “American” music. One of the last works he wrote during his American stay was his ninth, and final, symphony. Its beautiful second movement features a memorable and tender melody to which words were added later, becoming a song called Going Home. The symphony has become familiarly known as the “New World” Symphony.

Carmen Dragon, legendary former conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, is responsible for the arrangement of America the Beautiful, one of the most famous patriotic songs in the United States. Its words and music came from two different sources, both inspired by trips taken by their respective writers. In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929), a former English professor at Wellesley College, took a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem. Several tunes were used to set the text, but it was one composed by Samuel A. Ward (1847-1903) in 1895 that seemed to suit it best, and is the tune we know the song by today.

Chances are, Canadians who are familiar with the tune Back Home Again in Indiana are likely race car fans. The song, first published in 1917, is performed every year before the start of the Indianapolis 500. Penned by Ballard MacDonald (1882-1935) and James Hanley (a native of Indiana, 1892-1942), the song quickly established itself as a standard, particularly in that new American genre of jazz. Louis Armstrong’s band used the song as a show opener for years. It may not be the official song of the Midwestern American state (that distinction belongs to On the Banks of the Wabash), but it comes mighty close. Mr. Everly, a proud Hoosier (born in Richmond, Indiana, and now Principal Pops Conductor in Indianapolis), arranged the song for symphony orchestra.

Big Band standard or opera excerpt? Depending on how you were exposed to music, Song of India might sound familiar for different reasons. As the Song of the Indian Guest, the melody was written by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1878-1940) for his 1898 opera Sadko. In 1937, prominent American big band leader and trombone virtuoso Tommy Dorsey adapted the tune for himself and his band, and it became a big hit. Tonight’s version, arranged by Jack Everly, features the ESO’s own trombone virtuoso, John McPherson.

Richard Hayman, a member of the legendary Harmonica Rascals, became one of America’s most prominent pops conductors and arrangers. He was a busy man in Hollywood in the 60s and 70s, while maintaining an active symphonic pops career. Pops Hoedown is his pastiche of several American folkdance tunes. Thrown into the merry mix are The Devil’s Dream, Chicken Reel, Thunder Hornpipe, Paddywhack, Pop Goes the Weasel, Miss McCloud’s Reel, Turkey in the Straw, Soldier of Joy Hornpipe, Stop Buck, Rakes and Mallow, Lamplighter’s Hornpipe, and The Devil’s Dream. Some or all of these might be heard in tonight’s version.

Though born in Bologna, Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) made his home in Italy’s capital city, and wrote three important tone poems about aspects of his adopted city. The Pines of Rome was first performed in 1924, and is in four sections. The Pine Trees of the Appian Way is the work’s dramatic climax. “Misty dawn on the Appian Way: solitary pine trees guarding the magic landscape; the muffled, ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps,” Respighi described the work. “The poet has a fantastic vision of bygone glories: trumpets sound and, in the brilliance of the newly-risen sun, a consular army bursts forth towards the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph to the Capitol.”

Program Notes © 2008 D.T. Baker

Program notes © 2008 by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and its respective annotators. All Rights Reserved. Program notes may not be printed in their entirety without the written consent of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; excerpts may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. For reprint permission, contact D.T. Baker, Music Resource, by email, dave.baker@winspearcentre.com.
 
These notes appear in galley files prepared for Signature magazine, official publication of the ESO, and may contain typographical or other errors, or may differ from the final print version. Programs and artists subject to change without notice.