Grieg’s Piano Concerto

Sunday, January 30, 2011, 2:00 pm

Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Grieg’s Piano Concerto

2010-11 Sunday Showcase

  • William Eddins, conductor
    Gilles Vonsattel, piano (Laureate, 2009 Honens International Piano Competition)
    Scott Whetham, tuba
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Details

A winner of several major piano competitions, and laureate of Canada’s Honens Competition, Swiss pianist Gilles Vonsattel makes his ESO debut with Edvard Grieg’s evergreen Piano Concerto. Principal Tuba Scott Whetham plays a lighthearted heavyweight – Vaughan Williams’ surprisingly agile Tuba Concerto. Known more for his film scores, Nino Rota wrote a charming ballet in the baroque style commemorating the 300th anniversary of Molière’s birth. Equally light, Dohnányi’s Symphonic Minutes has touches of French, German, and Hungarian flavours.

*Please note, David Eggert was originally scheduled to perform Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto on January 30. He performed that work on Sunday, November 21, 2010 instead.*

Grieg: Piano Concerto
Vaughan Williams: Tuba Concerto
Rota: Le Molière imaginaire: Suite
Dohnányi: Symphonic Minutes

click for detailed seating mapTicket Information

$65 Dress Circle (A)
$53 Terrace (B)
$39 Orchestra (C)
$25 Upper Circle (D)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
Tickets subject to applicable service charges.

The next Sunday Showcase performance is Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto on May 29, 2011.

Thank you to our series sponsor: rbc foundation

Thank you to our series media sponsor: ckua

Program Information

Rota: Le Molière imaginaire: Suite (20')*

Vaughan Williams: Tuba Concerto in F minor (13')*
Scott Whetham, tuba

Intermission

Dohnányi: Szimfonikus percek / Symphonic Minutes, Opus 36 (15')*

Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16 (28')*
Gilles Vonsattel, piano

*Indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

Le Molière imaginaire: Suite
Nino Rota (b. Milan, 1911 / d. Rome, 1979)
 
First performance of the ballet: The ballet received a double premiere, being presented for the first time on December 3, 1976, at both the Comédie-Française in Paris and the Théâtre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels
First performance of the suite: December 15, 1978 in Naples
This is the ESO premiere of the piece
 
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673) was better known by his stage name – Molière. One of the most influential figures in French drama, the 300th anniversary of his death was an occasion to honour his memory. French choreographer Maurice Béjart conceived of Le Molière imaginaire (“Molière Imagined”) as combining moments from Molière’s plays, as well as from his life – so it has doses of both tragedy and the Baroque master’s wry wit. For the music, Béjart asked a composer whose music he had come to know through the soundtracks of movies by one of Europe’s most important directors. Italian film legend Federico Fellini had often turned to Nino Rota to score his films.
 
Rota was a deft hand at combining styles and genres in his film compositions (the wedding scene from The Godfather springs to mind for North American film-goers), so Béjart’s ballet gave him a chance to put the Baroque style of music that had accompanied Molière’s productions through a 20th century lens. The result is a delightful suite in seven sections, most of which are extroverted and lively, with occasional slightly more reflective moments – the first two movements centre around a “Molière motif,” which resurfaces in the final movement as part of a reprise of many of the themes from the ballet. Only the serene La Nature movement, with lyrical woodwind passages over the harp’s rhythm, slows the comic pace. But each movement is colourful and full of wit, capturing its subject matter perfectly.
 
 
Tuba Concerto in F minor
Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, 1872 / d. London, 1958)
 
First performance: June 13, 1954 in London
Last ESO performance: February 1994
 
That so esteemed – and non-Tuba-playing – a composer as Ralph Vaughan Williams should have written a concerto for the underused instrument is a bonus for tuba players. Composed as part of the golden jubilee year celebrations for the London Symphony, the concerto was written for that orchestra’s Principal Tuba, Philip Catelinet. Its dimensions are not unlike those of Mozart’s horn concertos, and the work was designed to showcase the full range of the instrument, and the mettle of its player.
 
The work begins with the sort of “rum-ti-tum” in the orchestra one stereotypically associates with the tuba. The lowest brass instrument’s entrance shows a deft lyrical side to it. There is very much a convivial nature to the music, with the tuba’s melodic lines exchanging with the syncopations in the orchestra. A cadenza follows an orchestral interlude, one which spans the entire compass of the tuba, and a quiet close to the movement. That leads to the surprisingly pretty Romanza slow movement, in which the soloist is given a chance to play lightly and expressively – words that do not often show up in the same sentence with “tuba.” The strings are given a lovely accompaniment, tender and lilting.
 
The finale is a Rondo marked “alla Tedesca,” meaning in a German rondo style. It begins with unexpected drama, the tuba seeming to dart nimbly around a scampering orchestral main subject. The agility of the instrument is likely a surprise to many, showcased once again in another cadenza near the movement’s end. Vaughan Williams wanted “to give a show” for the instrument, and he certainly accomplished that.
 
 
Szimfonikus percek, Op.36 (“Symphonic Minutes”)
Ernö Dohnányi (b. Poszony, 1877 / d. New York, 1960)
 
Composed in 1933
This is the ESO premiere of the piece
 
Hungarian composer Ernö Dohnányi (who for a long time was known as Ernst von Dohnányi) was born before either of his more famous countrymen, Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodály, and chose a more conservative musical path than either of them. He is known now almost exclusively for his piano and orchestra Variations on a Nursery Rhyme. During his life, he was quite famous, but more as a teacher, and as a performer (pianist and conductor). After establishing himself as performer in Europe, he ended up back in Budapest by 1915, staying there in various teaching and conducting positions until the treatment of the Jews made his place untenable by 1941. Remarkably, he held even the Jewish musicians of his orchestra together until 1944, when the Hungarian government was replaced with a Nazi puppet regime, and Dohnányi left for Austria, emigrating to the United States four years later.
 
His Szimfonikus percek (“Symphonic minutes”) dates from happier times in Budapest, composed in 1933 for the Budapest Philharmonic Society. Unapologetically amiable and cosmopolitan, the work bears the stamp of a number of “schools,” and is aptly named, as the entire five-movement suite clocks in at less than a quarter-hour. The Capriccio has a light glitter reminiscent of Saint-Saëns, ending on a whisper. The Rapsodia features some lovely woodwind writing in a gentle dreamscape, which builds to an impressive climax before ebbing away. The Scherzo has a comically pompous swagger, set to mixed up metres and tempos. A slow, bucolic English horn tune is subjected to several variations in the fourth movement. The Rondo conclusion is a “moto perpetuo” (“perpetual motion”), a scurrying affair full of energy and life.
 
 
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16
Edvard Grieg (b. Bergen, Norway, 1843 / d. Bergen, 1907)
 
First performance: April 3, 1869 in Copenhagen
Last ESO performance: October 2003
 
Edvard Grieg is to music what Henrik Ibsen is to literature – the most visible Norwegian genius of the form. A humble, quiet man, Grieg was a reluctant national hero. “Orders and medals are most useful to me in the top layer of my trunk,” said the much-decorated composer, “the customs officials are always so kind to me at the sight of them.”
 
Grieg’s only piano concerto had its premiere in 1869, and it has maintained its foothold in the popular orchestral repertoire ever since. Shortly before he died, Grieg revised the score rather extensively, and it is in this new format that the work is almost always presented. From the now-famous timpani roll which ushers in the piano’s first thrilling arpeggios, melody holds sway in the work. “This is truly a romantic concerto,” noted scholar Everett Helm, “a concerto without contrapuntal passages, a work which emphatically stresses the melodic line.”
 
After the opening flourish, the first movement is a melodic exchange between soloist and orchestra. The middle movement opens on muted strings, followed by a serene piano melody. The final movement alternates between two principal melodic ideas. The first is a rhythmic, staccato figure; the second is a gently rhapsodic song, begun on solo flute at each appearance, until the orchestra joins in an impassioned restatement of the flute theme at the climax.
 
Program notes © 2010 by D.T. Baker

Artist Info

William Eddins, conductor

william eddins

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.

Gilles Vonsattel, piano

gilles vonsattelWinner of a 2008 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of uncommon breadth. He began touring after capturing the top prize at the prestigious 2002 Naumburg International Piano Competition. He made his Alice Tully Hall debut that same year and has since performed with the Warsaw Philharmonic; at Zürich’s Tonhalle, Warsaw’s Chopin Festival, and Tokyo’s Opera City Hall; and in the U.S. with the Utah, Santa Fe, Nashville, and Grand Rapids symphonies, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. In July 2010 he made his Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood debuts. Mr. Vonsattel has performed in Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco, Manchester, and Geneva. The top prize winner at the 2006 Geneva International Music Competition, Mr. Vonsattel was a laureate of the 2009 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary and is also a laureate of the Cleveland and Dublin piano competitions. His recording of Bartók’s Contrasts on Deutsche Grammophon with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is available for download on iTunes.  In 2010 he records a disc of Beethoven, Brahms, and Ravel with a newly formed piano trio comprising violinist Frank Huang and cellist Nicolas Altstaedt.
 
Featured in the spring 2008 issue of Esquire magazine as one of several ground-breaking classical musicians, Gilles Vonsattel has shown a significant interest in expanding the conventional classical concert experience. He regularly participates in New York’s Wordless Music Series – a series devoted to the deconstruction of genre boundaries. After studying with pianist David Deveau in Boston, Mr. Vonsattel received his B.A. in political science and economics from Columbia University and his M.M. from The Juilliard School, where he worked with Jerome Lowenthal. Beginning in September 2010, he assumes the position of Assistant Professor of Piano at University of Massachusetts/Amherst.
 
This is Mr. Vonsattel’s debut with the ESO.

Scott Whetham, tuba

scott whetham

Scott Whetham joined the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra as Principal Tuba in 1984, and with them has performed the concertos of John Williams and Vaughan Williams. He is on fifteen of the orchestra's recordings. A highlight for him was the ESO 1994 "Northern Lights Tour". Other orchestras and ensembles with which he has performed include the Calgary Philharmonic, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Opera and Ballet Orchestras, Broadway's touring production of Annie, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Peru. He has taught at the the University of Regina, The Banff International Festival of Youth Orchestras and currently teaches tuba at the University of Alberta and MusiCamp Alberta (formerly MusiCamrose).

Mr. Whetham began playing tuba in the North Vancouver Youth Band, under the direction of Arthur Smith. He studied with Dennis Miller (Vancouver Symphony), with further training at the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and the Eastman School of Music. Attending classes of Arnold Jacobs, Roger Bobo, Richard Erb and Christopher Leuba (horn) were additionally inspiring. He has been featured in broadcasts on the CBC as both performer and composer. His Nonet for Brass - After Emily Carr was recently premiered at the International Women's Brass Conference in Toronto. In Edmonton, he plays with the Tarragon Tea Orchestra (a European style salon orchestra), a tuba quartet and a basement rock band. Scott collects extremely boring postcards and is learning how to winter cycle after making the decision to go carless.

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