Two Concertos

Sunday, February 27, 2011 • 3:00 p.m.
First Free Methodist Church

Orchestra Seattle
Seattle Chamber Singers
Alastair Willis, conductor
Mark Salman, piano
Judith Lawrence, bassoon

Program

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
Overture to The Flying Dutchman

Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, S. 125

—intermission—

Robert Kechley (*1952)
Concerto for Bassoon, Chorus and Orchestra (world premiere)

Herbert Howells (1892–1983)
Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
Toward the Unknown Region

About the Conductor

Grammy-nominated conductor Alastair Willis served as associate conductor of the Seattle Symphony from 2000 to 2003. He previously held the position of assistant conductor with the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras and music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra.

In the past few seasons, Mr. Willis has guest conducted orchestras around the world, including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Mexico City Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfônica de Rio de Janeiro, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, China National Orchestra (Beijing) and the Silk Road Ensemble (with Yo-Yo Ma) among others. His recording of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges with the Nashville Symphony and Opera for Naxos was Grammy-nominated for Best Classical Album in 2009.

Last season, Mr. Willis was re-engaged to conduct the Coffee Concert series with the Florida Orchestra, returned to Skagit Opera to lead Madama Butterfly and conducted Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “All Balanchine” program as well as several Nutcracker performances.

This season, he returns to the Florida Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfônica de Rio de Janeiro, Tulsa Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (Houston), Rio International Cello and Marrowstone Music Festivals, and makes his debuts with the Toronto Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, Amarillo Symphony, Lake Union Civic Orchestra and Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers.

Born in Acton, Massachusetts, Mr. Willis lived with his family in Moscow for five years before settling in Surrey, England. He received his bachelor’s degree with honors from England’s Bristol University and an Education degree from Kingston University. He won a scholarship in 1996 to study with Larry Rachelff at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice Univeristy, graduating with a Master of Music degree in 1999.

About the Soloists

Pianist Mark Salman has been hailed as a “heroic virtuoso,” with his performances described as “powerful,” “astonishing, exacting and evocative,” “dramatic,” “wildly imaginative” and “touchingly lyrical.” Of his interpretation of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata, one authority stated, “there are probably only five or six pianists in the world who can play [it] as perfectly.” Seattle Weekly named his 2005 performance of Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 one of the three “Performances of the Year.”

Mr. Salman’s performances have taken him to Europe, Asia, Canada and throughout the United States. He has performed in Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, been the subject of profiles in The New York Times, and been featured on numerous broadcasts in the U.S. and China. His account of his meetings with and playing for Vladimir Horowitz appears in David Dubal’s book Evenings with Horowitz. Mr. Salman is a co-founder of the Delmarva Piano Festival in Delaware. Recent performances have included his debut at the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island, an eight-recital series devoted to the works of Liszt in Seattle, three recitals featuring Schubert’s final three sonatas, a complete cycle of Beethoven’s five concertos and Choral Fantasy with Orchestra Seattle, and “A Chopin Celebration,” a series of three recitals in Seattle celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth. Mr. Salman is a Steinway artist.

Besides his wide-ranging repertoire, Mr. Salman is perhaps best known for his expertise on Beethoven, having performed the complete cycle of 32 piano sonatas on both coasts as well as in 18 broadcasts on KING-FM. Currently in production is Beethoven and His 32 Piano Sonatas—A Musical Universe, a 16-part video series featuring Mr. Salman’s performances of the complete sonata cycle, hosted by noted author and commentator David Dubal. The Great Composers label has recently released the first two volumes on DVD.

Mr. Salman’s recordings include Chopin’s Intimate Art: The Mazurkas, a CD of Mozart piano concertos with Northwest Sinfonietta, The Transcendental Piano (works by Alkan, Beethoven and Liszt) and American Interweave (contemporary American works for cello and piano). Soon to be released are two recordings of Beethoven sonatas and one of late Schubert sonatas.

Mr. Salman is a native of Connecticut, where he began his studies at the age of eight and made his recital debut at 11. A graduate of The Juilliard School, he studied with Richard Fabre and Josef Raieff. He previously attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for two years, where he concentrated on chamber music and composition, studying with noted composer John Harbison. Learn more: marksalman.net

Bassoonist Judith Lawrence has served as Orchestra Seattle’s principal bassoonist since 1992. She has previously appeared as a soloist with the Turtle Bluff Chamber Orchestra, Bainbridge Symphony (where she will perform Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante in April 2011) and Everett Symphony, and with Orchestra Seattle in Weber’s Andante and Hungarian Rondo and Richard Strauss’ Duett-Concertino.

Born in Cincinnati, Ms. Lawrence received a bachelor’s degree from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree from Boston University. She also studied in Paris and Brussels and privately with Sherman Walt, Martin James and Arthur Grossman, among others.

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest in 1988, Ms. Lawrence has performed with numerous ensembles, including the Bremerton Symphony, Turtle Bluff Camber Orchestra, Cascade Symphony, Everett Symphony, Rainer Chamber Winds, Agate Pass Baroque Ensemble and Northwest Mahler Orchestra. She currently teaches Kindermusik, a young children’s music and movement program, at her studio in Kingston.

Program Notes

Richard Wagner
Overture to The Flying Dutchman

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, and died February 13, 1883, in Venice. He composed The Flying Dutchman between May 1840 and November 1841, revising it over the next two decades, and conducted the first performance on January 2, 1843, in Dresden. The overture employs pairs of woodwinds (plus piccolo and with one oboe doubling English horn), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings.

Richard Wagner’s fourth opera, Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), was his first to establish a place in the repertoire. It tells of a sailor doomed to traverse the seas for eternity with a ghostly crew. Once every seven years he is allowed to go ashore in search of a woman who will be true to him, releasing him from his curse.

Wagner knew the Dutchman legend from Heinrich Heine’s satirical 1831 novella Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski but also took inspiration from an 1839 sea voyage (undertaken to escape creditors) from Riga to Paris via London. Bad weather extended the trip to nearly four weeks. “Three times,” Wagner wrote, “we suffered the effects of heavy storms. The passage through the Narrows made a wondrous impression on my fancy.”

Horns and bassoons announce the Dutchman’s D-minor motive at the beginning of the overture, surrounded by swirling chromatic string passages depicting a storm at sea. After the tempest subsides, English horn introduces the melody associated with Senta, the woman who will provide his salvation. The storm material returns, followed by joyous dance music from Act III for a group of Norwegian sailors. Wagner then intertwines the Dutchman and Senta motives, leading to an uplifting D-major coda.

—Jeff Eldridge

Franz Liszt
Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, S. 125

Liszt was born October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Hungary, and died July 31, 1886, at Bayreuth, Germany. He began composing this concerto in 1839, and conducted the premiere in Weimar on January 7, 1857, with Hans von Bronsart as soloist. Along with solo piano, the concerto calls for 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals and strings.

Like many of Liszt’s works, this concerto had a long gestation, undergoing many revisions. He first worked on it in 1839, at the height of his long-term affair with the Countess Marie d’Agoult, and just before he began eight years of constant concert touring that earned him his reputation as the greatest pianist in history. It premiered in 1857 (although it saw at least one more revision before its publication in 1863) during Liszt’s 12 years of residency as court Kapellmeister in Weimar, Germany. This was his most prolific period of composition, and he also devoted much energy to making Weimar a musical and cultural center, using his fame, prestige and musical abilities to stage performances of the most difficult and challenging works of his greatest contemporaries, including Berlioz, Schumann and Wagner—works that otherwise were rarely, if ever, heard.

Performed less frequently than Liszt’s first concerto, the second is more lyrical, more varied and more rhapsodic in form, a prime example of Liszt’s “transformation of themes” technique, where each succeeding melody—while wildly contrasting in emotional character—is a variation of the opening idea. The variety of melodic figures and the range of expression Liszt derives from the opening theme, as well as from a later funeral march idea, is remarkable.

In one of the most free-spirited and expressive of all concertos, Liszt pushes the limits of how improvisatory and free a solo part can be within the confines of a work with orchestra. I have always had the feeling that Liszt was putting almost his whole life experience into it. His son, Daniel, after hearing it for the first time, wrote, “The child from Raiding, Mimi’s [the Countess d’Agoult, Daniel’s mother] lover, the one who sang ‘What a pleasure to be Choco the Clown’ and who wanted to be a priest, has portrayed himself perfectly in this piece.” Liszt lived an amazing life—really multiple lives lived concurrently and consecutively—on a heroic scale, with tremendous highs and lows. He was open to everything, good and bad, and was in the middle of all of the major intellectual, social and political happenings of his day—and he put it all into his music.

The range of the music in the concerto is extraordinary—from the sensuous, serene opening to the most dramatic and turbulent octave passages. There are atmospheric, delicate, impressionistic sections, a funeral march, a triumphal march, and some of the most truly romantic music found in any concerto. At the end, the music builds to such a giddy, enthusiastic climax it almost sounds as if a Gypsy band joins in with cymbals, an allusion to Liszt’s close identification with free-spirited Gypsy musicians. A great deal of Italian opera surfaces in both the lyrical and the dramatic sections, something that greatly influenced Liszt during his years growing up in Paris. Yet, underlying it all is a formal and motivic structure that is Beethovenian in its logical development. Liszt admired Beethoven more than any other composer, and was the first pianist to play the Hammerklavier and other late sonatas after Beethoven’s death. In the big dramatic and virtuoso climaxes, Liszt obviously enjoyed himself immensely, and in the excesses of the music there is a great deal of humor—often with a touch of irony.

As much as anything Liszt wrote, this piece is full of “love music” of tenderness, intimacy, passion and frank sexuality. The women in Liszt’s life were very important to him—he had two long-term relationships with women he collaborated with artistically and philosophically, with whom he discussed his new works and intellectual ideas, and who collaborated on his writings. Liszt had a rather modern attitude toward these relationships—he never married, but was absolutely open about them, which seemed scandalous to the mores of the mid-19th century, contributing to his rather exaggerated reputation as a “Don Juan.”

—Mark Salman

Robert Kechley
Bassoon Concerto

Robert Kechley was born in Seattle in 1952. He began work on this concerto, commissioned by soloist Judith Lawrence, in late 2009, completing the orchestration during October 2010. In addition to solo bassoon, the work calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and horns, percussion, strings and chorus. The concerto receives its first performance this afternoon.

The music of Robert Kechley is familiar to audiences of Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers through the numerous works by this composer that have been premiered by both ensembles under the direction of George Shangrow over the past four decades. These vary from arrangements of brief folk songs and hymns, to major symphonic and choral works, including his delightful Symphony No. 2 (“Ferdinand the Bull”), a setting of Psalm 100 for organ, chorus and orchestra (first performed in September 2000 at Benaroya Hall), a flute concerto (premiered by Jeffrey Cohan and Orchestra Seattle in February 2002), a trumpet concerto (debuted by Brian Chin and Orchestra Seattle in May 2004), Running Passages for 23 solo instruments (premiered in May 2006) and an 11-movement Folk Song Suite for chorus and orchestra (most recently presented by OSSCS in June 2009). Other ensembles that have commissioned and performed his music include the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Bach Choir and Northwest Boychoir.

Kechley grew up in Seattle and attended the University of Washington, where he studied harpsichord performance with Sylvia Kind and composition with Kenneth Benshoof, Robert Suderberg, William O. Smith and others. A member of the Seattle Chamber Singers from its earliest days, he not only sang in the chorus but played oboe and recorder. He currently serves as principal harpsichordist for OSSCS.

Orchestra Seattle principal bassoonist Judith Lawrence recalls the genesis of Kechley’s most recent composition: “Bob and I have for years batted around the idea of a bassoon concerto. A year or so ago, Bob told me he was ready to start. He asked for some ideas, and I really wanted the chorus to be involved, to make it a true OSSCS experience. My husband, Alan, came up (half-jokingly) with the idea of the choir singing nonsense syllables, à la the Swingle Singers.” The composer reports that he “jumped at the prospect of employing Swingle Singers–type textures in the context of the orchestra and at times providing the sole accompaniment to the bassoon.”

Kechley describes the opening movement as “a tribute of sorts to [Argentine composer] ástor Piazzolla and the wonderful variety of moods available in the modern Latin tango. The title translates roughly as ‘with passion, hot and sweet.’ The image of the bassoon as a vehicle of great ardor seemed both unusual and very appealing.” After an opening salvo from the solo bassoon, orchestra and chorus establish an insistent Latin groove in alternating meters of 4/4 and 7/8 with violins taking up the theme. There follows an extended cadenza-like section in which interjections from the ensemble occasionally interrupt the solo instrument. This yields to a more lyrical episode before a brief cadenza leads to a fiery tango rhythm stated by full orchestra, which engages in vigorous interplay with the soloist. Another brief cadenza leads to a recapitulation of the tango theme and material from the beginning of the work.

The soloist recalls, “When Bob gave me the first draft of the opening movement, I made the mistake of saying that it was ‘too easy.’ He came back with a bassoon part that is as technically challenging as any I know of. I’ll never make that mistake again!” The work’s technical challenges are particularly evident in the bravura coda that closes the first movement.

“In the second movement, dedicated to the memory of George Shangrow, I strove to find a lyricism that would both reach out and pull at the listener,” Kechley writes, “but also generate a sense of comfort. With both subtle and lush textures, the solo bassoon is allowed to revel expressively in a sea of sound.” A brief introduction featuring solo bassoon and strings gives way to an extended choral passage in which the vocalists hum their notes. Strings expand upon the chorus melody, with woodwinds joining in as phrases get passed between orchestra and chorus. The bassoon enters with a cantabile solo line accompanied only by chorus and pizzicato low strings. The rest of the orchestra eventually adds to the texture, building to a climax, followed by a quiet coda.

“For the third movement,” the composer continues, “I had in my mind the image of the young bassoonist running away to join the circus. The idea of the bassoon as a circus act of course tickled me. A friend from my youth used to tease her sister who played the bassoon, reminding her that the bassoon was the ‘funny’ instrument of the orchestra, implying that the bassoon had no other purpose. Clearly this is not the case, yet there is some measure of truth here and we would be remiss not to take advantage of the clownish nature of this wonderful instrument. The slapstick gestures in the orchestra serve to provide a center-ring spotlight on the star of the show.” Lawrence recalls that after playing through the movement for the first time, “I thought, ‘demented circus,’ not knowing that Bob imagined the soloist wanting to run away and join the circus as a girl! I now find myself daydreaming I’m on a trapeze while I play.”

Entitled “Circus Ambitions,” the concerto’s closing movement opens with horns announcing the first theme in alternating bars of 6/8 and 9/8. A brief cadenza leads to frolicsome interplay between soloist and orchestra. The chorus then takes up the opening theme, again accompanied by pizzicato low strings, and these melodies—along with a lilting, dance-like theme for strings over which the solo instrument soars lyrically—are intertwined and developed, creating a loose rondo form, all driving toward a spirited conclusion.

“This concerto turned out to be so much more than I had hoped for,” Lawrence says. “I think it is Bob’s best so far! I am so excited to perform this work—it is a wonderful new addition to the bassoon repertoire.”

—Jeff Eldridge

Herbert Norman Howells
Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing

Howells was born October 17, 1892, in Lydney, Gloucestershire, England, and died in London on February 23, 1983. He composed this unaccompanied 8-part motet during the spring of 1964 and dedicated it “to the honoured memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States of America.” The Choir of the Cathedral of St. George from Kingston, Ontario, premiered the work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 1964.

According to his biographer, Paul Spicer, “Herbert Howells was a great musician, a complex man, a devoted and devastated father, a loyal but weak and unfaithful husband, a sensualist though not a hedonist, a teacher, adjudicator, examiner, writer and speaker, and almost last of all, a composer.” Best known for his Anglican church music, including the wistfully lyrical Christmas carol, “A Spotless Rose,” the luminous anthem “Like as the Hart,” and the moving tune “Michael” (composed for the hymn text “All my hope on God is founded”), Howells was the youngest of the many offspring of an amateur organist, and displayed musical talent early. Ralph Vaughan Williams became a friend and mentor, and Howells studied at the Royal School of Church music with some of Vaughan Williams’ teachers. Diagnosed in 1915 with Graves’ disease (hyperthyroidism), the young composer was given only six months to live, but he became the first person in England to receive an experimental radium treatment, which was sufficiently successful to give him nearly 70 additional years of life.

Howells served as assistant organist at Salisbury Cathedral for a short time during 1917, and later helped to edit the extensive body of Latin Tudor sacred music then being explored at Westminster Cathedral. Enthralled by this music, Howells assimilated the English Renaissance style into his own vocal and organ compositions. He continued his editing work until he became, in 1920, a member of the faculty of the Royal College of Music, a position he held almost as long as he lived.

Howells initially composed mostly orchestral and chamber music, but the failure of his second piano concerto in 1925 silenced his musical voice for nearly a decade. But when his nine-year-old son, Michael, died very suddenly in 1935, the tragedy released the music of his soul and powerfully influenced his subsequent work, most notably his masterpiece, Hymnus Paradisi (1938) for orchestra and chorus. Howells received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, and in 1972 was made a Companion of Honour. His ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey near those of Vaughan Williams during a Service of Thanksgiving for Howells’ life at Westminster Abbey in June of 1983, at which Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing was performed.

Very soon after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Howells was commissioned to compose a motet for a memorial service to be held later, and he opted to use a text he had found in Medieval Latin Lyrics by the Irish poet, playwright and translator Helen Jane Waddell (1889–1965). Howells had previously set portions of a lengthy poem for the burial of the dead, Hymnus circa Exsequias Defuncti, from the Liber Cathemerinon, a book of 12 hymns for various times of the day and for church festivals, by Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348–ca. 413), a Roman Christian poet from northern Spain. Now Howells returned to Waddell’s incomparable translation (the spirit of which pervades his Hymnus Paradisi) for Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing, considered one of the finest choral compositions of the 20th century. It is characteristic of Howells’ “English pastoralist” choral style, with its radiant (often modal) harmonies, its sensuality combined with spirituality, and its illumination of both individual words and of the larger architectures of the text. The anthem can be viewed as a set—in “arch form”—of variations on its opening theme. It begins with a somber prayer by unison voices that soon expands into broader, grief-stained harmonies and disquieted rhythms torn by anguished outcries. At the plea “Take, O take him, mighty Leader,” sunlight suffuses the texture, but sorrowful clouds soon shadow the musical sea as its tides ebb and flow until pain-tinged dissonances dissolve into a final restatement of the work’s opening words in the midst of a shimmering, peaceful pool of quiet consonance and comfort.

Both this composition and the Vaughan Williams piece that concludes this afternoon’s concert concern death, but Vaughan Williams’ music is the work of a young man who had not yet experienced, as an adult, a grievous personal loss of the sort that overwhelmed Howells when his young son died. Howells’ motet is a work that explores both private and public grief in a much more profound, soul-shaking expression of both sorrow and hope, and its tragic beauty allows us both to mourn and to glimpse through our tears the light of new life as we cherish, as does Prudentius’ earth, our beloved dead.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Toward the Unknown Region

Vaughan Williams was born at Down Ampney, Gloustershire, England, on October 12, 1872, and died on August 26, 1958, in London. He began composing Toward the Unknown Region in late 1904 and conducted the first performance at the Leeds Triennial Festival on October 10, 1907. The score calls for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 2 harps, timpani, organ and strings, plus double chorus.

Toward the Unknown Region, “a song for chorus and orchestra,” was the first of Vaughan Williams’ works to capture the attention of both audiences and critics, and its lush harmonies and vibrant scoring became hallmarks of the composer’s characteristic “sound.” Indeed, it contains thematic elements that appear in the composer’s Sea Symphony and elsewhere in his oeuvre.

Bertrand Russell had introduced Vaughan Williams to the writings of the American poet and “father of free verse” Walt Whitman (1819–1892), and around 1903 the composer began to carry a copy of Leaves of Grass with him constantly. British composers became attracted to Whitman’s poetry long before their American counterparts, and Vaughan Williams’ teacher Charles Villiers Stanford had been the first important composer to set Whitman’s words to music. In 1903 Vaughan Williams began sketches for his own ambitious Whitman project, a work that would become his Sea Symphony; he devoted much of 1904–1906 to editing The English Hymnal for the Church of England. At one point he reached a roadblock with the Whitman project and discovered that his friend Gustav Holst was mired in a similar predicament. According to Vaughan Williams: “Gustav and I were both stuck—so I suggested we should both set the same words in competition—suggesting ‘Darest thou.’ The prize was awarded by us to me.” (Holst suppressed his composition.)

Vaughan Williams dedicated his setting of “Darest thou” to Florence Maitland, the recently widowed sister of his first wife, Adeline. Vaughan Williams’ music is excellently suited to the expression of Whitman’s exalted, humanistic sentiments, so inspiring when the 20th century was young, but so brutally shredded by the atrocities of two world wars and the ensuing cataclysms. Reappearing variants of the work’s opening phrase and of a rising arpeggiated figure at the words “nor face” and “nor touch” unify a composition whose intensity, as we ride the crests and troughs of the music’s increasingly powerful waves, crescendos to a crashing climax at its conclusion.

—Lorelette Knowles