Details
Ever the crowd-pleaser, Mozart infused his Fifth Violin Concerto with an exotic touch from Eastern Europe. One of Canada’s most gifted violinists, Corey Cerovsek, will bring the “Turkish” Concerto to life. Bill Eddins conducts the powerful and intricate Fifth Symphony of Sibelius, as well as a deliciously sensual tone poem by one of Canada’s most popular composers, Winnipeg’s Randolph Peters.
Learn more about the performance at Symphony Prelude: 7:15 pm in the Upper Circle (Third Level) Lobby with D.T. Baker and composer Randolph Peters.
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 "Turkish"
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5
Peters: Butterfly Wings and Tropical Storms
Ticket Information
$71 Dress Circle (A)$61 Terrace (B)
$52 Orchestra (C)
$38 Upper Circle (D)
$28 Gallery (E)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
Tickets subject to applicable service charges.
Subscriptions to the Landmark Classic Masters series are currently available.
The next Landmark Classic Masters performance is Fialkowska plays Chopin on October 16, 2010.
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Program Information
Peters: Butterfly Wings and Tropical Storms (10')*
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 "Turkish" (31')*
Corey Cerovsek, violin
Intermission
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (35')*
*Indicates approximate performance duration
Program Notes
Butterfly Wings and Tropical Storms
Randolph Peters (b. Winnipeg, 1959)
First performance: October 9, 2002 in Québec City
This is the ESO premiere of the piece
Program note by the composer:
The idea that the infinitesimal disturbances caused by the flight of a butterfly could be multiplied over months and years and eventually result in a tropical storm was the basis for a whole new area of science.
Chaos science grew out of this breakthrough discovery first observed by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz. He called it the "Butterfly Effect."
Music, like the weather, has patterns and it also has unpredictability. Both often contain a fine inner ordering that masquerade on the surface as randomness. We should be thankful that not every butterfly causes a natural disaster(!), but the notion that small changes magnified over time could lead to cataclysm is inspiring to artists.
Butterfly Wings and Tropical Storms was written to explore and revel in the dramatic possibilities of such extremes. It was commissioned by Orchestre symphonique de Québec to help celebrate 100 years of music making, with financial assistance by the Manitoba Arts Council.
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K.219 “Turkish”
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (b. Salzburg, 1756 / d. Vienna, 1791)
Completed December 20, 1775 in Salzburg
Last ESO performance: March 2004
Mozart had just turned 19 when he put the finishing touches on the last violin concerto he would ever compose. It capped a remarkable compositional period in which he wrote nearly a dozen works with important violin solos – including the final four violin concertos, all composed between April and December of 1775.
It was as if working on all four gave him a chance to work through all the kinds of experimentation he wanted to with the genre. And with the Fifth Violin Concerto, what Mozart plays up the most is contrast. The violin’s entrance in the opening movement, for example, does not pick up from the lively orchestral material which precedes it. Instead, everything comes to a halt, and the violin’s first notes are slow, measured, in a much different tempo and feel. The orchestra picks up on that, and it is only after that brief, separate introduction, that violin and orchestra begin the lively dialog that will make up the rest of the movement.
The slow movement, in contrast to the preceding violin concertos Mozart had produced, is almost operatic in its layout and its passion. The orchestra presents an introduction to the violin’s emotional aria. Once it begins its song, the violin dominates the movement, though the orchestral accompaniment is rather more lavish and detailed than one might expect.
It is the final movement that gave the work its nickname. It is a rondo, with a main subject in a gentle minuet tempo. It is interrupted with a strikingly contrasting counter subject. The exotic “janissary” sound, thought to be Turkish to the Viennese, was quite the fad in music at the time. The Turkish military music, accompanied by triangle, cymbals, and bass drum, were often a feature added to provide a mysterious eastern flavour to contemporary works. Mozart, who had explored the style a little, and would do so more fully in his singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio, interjects a janissary segment, in A minor, in the centre of the movement. Listen for the greatly exaggerated ups and downs in the lower strings, and the way the staccato strings provide the feel of the bass drum. Once this remarkable passage is over, the gentle minuet returns to conclude the work.
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op.82
Jean Sibelius (b. Tavestehus, Finland, 1865 / d. Järvenpää, 1957)
First version premiered in Helsinki on December 8, 1915. First revision premiered on December 8, 1916, in Turku, Finland. Final version premiered on November 24, 1919 in Helsinki
Last ESO performance: January 2003
Composers often wrestle with their works, but the Fifth Symphony confounded Sibelius for years. Time and again, in his diary, he referred to the long slow process of the work’s gestation as a “struggle with God.”
Already a national hero, Jean Sibelius was to be feted at a fiftieth birthday concert in December 1915. Part of the celebratory event was the premiere of the first version of his Fifth Symphony. The party was a success; the symphony, less so – to Sibelius. Dissatisfied with a work in which he knew contained a greatness he hadn’t quite wrested from it, Sibelius revised it extensively in time for a concert marking his 51st birthday. But it still wasn’t what he wanted.
These were the years of the First World War, and the Bolshevik Revolution, which threatened to spill over, even if only politically, into neighbouring Finland. It is therefore not surprising that when the symphony finally achieved the form Sibelius wanted, near the end of 1919 and following the war, the spirit of the work has a sense of moving from darkness to light.
Gone is the symphony’s original four-movement design. Instead the long first movement, a melding of the original design’s first two movements, begins with a lone horn above a sense of expectancy. The music broadens out almost immediately; woodwind calls, rustling timpani – but this is no mere introduction. Elements contained in this opening passage will return throughout the work. A sense almost of foreboding rises to a trumpet-tinged climax, which quietens almost immediately, then begins to build again. Contrasts of light and shadow, of wind figures against undulating strings press the music on to another radiant brass passage, which propels the music, now in triple time, into the second part of the movement (what would have been the original score’s second movement). It is an ingenious bridge, so organically achieved it appears seamless. The brisk, buoyant Presto section seems like a dance in broad sunlight after clouds have broken – and the sudden ending is very unexpected.
The second movement is a set of variations on a theme presented in the woodwinds. It is calm and bucolic, with a gentle lilt. A brisker, more playful central section emerges gradually, but ebbs away as the main tempo is reestablished.
The famous finale, with its “swinging” theme for horns in thirds, was inspired, Sibelius wrote, by something he saw while on a walk. “Just before ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of the greatest experiences in my life. Oh God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the hazy sun like a glittering, silver ribbon. Their cries were of the same woodwind timbre as those of cranes, but without any tremolo…Nature’s mystery and life’s melancholy! The Fifth Symphony’s finale theme.” The movement begins with bristling, nervous energy in the strings, over which the winds begin to stir. Rising and falling, the horns’ call is somehow tinged with both triumph and pathos. Listen also for the horn theme in tremolo strings, beneath the woodwinds – then how the roles are reversed. As we near the conclusion, the theme becomes clothed in more dramatic colours, then bursts out heroically once again. The bigger-than-life coda, capped off by six grand, emphatically stated chords, has tricked many a concert-goer’s applause before the work is actually done.
Program notes © 2010 by D.T. Baker, except as noted
Artist Information
Corey Cerovsek, violin
Corey Cerovsek has performed to constant acclaim with conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson Thomas, Neeme Järvi, Andrew Litton, Yoel Levi, and Jesús Lopez-Cobos. His North American performances have included those with the orchestras of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto, among many others; and internationally with such groups as the Israel Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony, Prague Symphony, National Symphony (Ireland), Hong Kong Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest of the Hague, Berlin Symphony, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Symphonies (Australia), Bournemouth Symphony, Sjaellands Symfoniorkester (Denmark), Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Poitou-Charentes and Montpellier Festival Orchestra (France). He has toured in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Japan, China, Austria, the Netherlands, Brazil and Spain. In recital, Mr. Cerovsek has performed throughout the world, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), the Kennedy Center (Washington), Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theatre and the Frick Collection (New York), the Place des Arts (Montréal), Davies Symphony Hall (San Francisco), Wigmore Hall (London), Cemal Resit Rey Concert Hall (Istanbul), the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), and l’Espace Gianadda (Martigny). He is also an avid chamber musician, regularly appearing at the festivals of Verbier (Switzerland), Kuhmo (Finland) and Tanglewood (USA).
In 2008, Claves released his recording of the Wienawski 2nd Violin Concerto the Vieuxtemp 5th Concerto with Lausanne Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu to great acclaim. This recording followed the 2006 release on this label of his recording of the Sonatas for Violin and Piano of Beethoven with pianist Paavali Jumppanen. This recording received numerous awards, including Gramophone Recommends, 5 Diapasons, 4 stars from Le Monde de la Musique, Supersonic Pizzicato, and Fono Forum Stern des Monats and the Miderm Award for best chamber music recording for 2008. His Corigliano Violin Sonata, with Andrew Russo on the Black Box label, was nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award. Corey Cerovsek Plays Wieniawski, made with pianist Katja Cerovsek for the Delos label, also received much critical acclaim. Other recordings have been released on the Delos, Black Box, Aguavá New Music Studio, and Cala Records labels.
In the summer of 2009, Mr. Cerovsek returned to the Festival International de Lanaudiere performing the Korngold Concerto with the Montreal Symphony under the direction of Julian Kuerti. In North American in 9/10 he returns to the Indianapolis Symphony to perform the Stravinsky Concerto with Hannu Lintu conducting.
He has been featured twice on NBC’s Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, on the David Frost Show in England, on the PBS special Musical Encounters and on CBS’s Sunday Morning.
Born in 1972 in Vancouver, Canada, and now residing in Paris, Cerovsek began playing the violin at the age of five. After early studies with Charmian Gadd and Richard Goldner he graduated at age 12 from the University of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music with a gold medal for the highest marks in strings. That same year, he was accepted by Josef Gingold as a student and enrolled at Indiana University, where he received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and music at age 15, masters in both at 16, and completed his doctoral course work in mathematics and music at age 18. Concurrently he studied piano with Enrica Cavallo, until 1997 frequently appearing in concert performing on both instruments.
Corey Cerovsek performs on the “Milanollo” Stradivarius of 1728, an instrument played, among others, by Christian Ferras, Giovanni Battista Viotti, and Nicolò Paganini.
William Eddins, conductor
William Eddins is in his sixth season as Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure, he has made it a priority that he conduct performances in nearly every subscription series the orchestra has presented, as well as a wide variety of special concerts and galas.
Bill Eddins began playing the piano at age five, but was bitten by the conducting bug while in his sophomore year at the Eastman School of Music. In 1989, he decided to begin conducting studies with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California. Assistant Conductorships with both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony (the latter under the leadership of Daniel Barenboim) honed his skills even further.
Mr. Eddins has many interests outside music. He is fond of biking, tennis, reading, pinball, and cooking. He recently completed building his own recording studio at his home in Minneapolis, where he lives with his wife Jen (a clarinetist), and their sons Raef and Riley. While conducting has been his principal pursuit, he continues to perform on piano in Edmonton and elsewhere. He accepts a limited number of guest appearances each year. In 2008, he conducted a rare full staging of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for Opéra de Lyon, which won him great acclaim, leading to a repeat engagement in Lyon in July and September 2010, as well as Edinburgh in August 2010, and in London in September 2010. During August 2009, Bill toured South Africa, conducting three gala concerts with soprano Renée Fleming and the kwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Watch & Listen
Final movement of Mozart's Turkish Concerto:
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