2018 Program Notes, Book 9 | 31 GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS Carlos Kalmar Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Christopher Bell Chorus Director Friday, August 10, 2018 at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker Pavilion PROKOFIEV AND VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Grant Park Orchestra Carlos Kalmar Conductor Pablo Ferrández Cello Sergei Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante in E Minor, Op. 125 Andante Allegro giusto Andante con moto—Allegro marcato PABLO FERRÁNDEZ INTERMISSION Charles Ives The Unanswered Question Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 4 in F Minor Allegro Andante moderato Scherzo: Allegro molto— Finale con Epilogo Fugato: Allegro molto The appearance of Pablo Ferrández is presented with generous support from NextGen Performance Series Sponsor BMO Harris Bank Tonight’s concert is sponsored by Colleen and Lloyd Fry and the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation The appearance of Pablo Ferrández is sponsored in part by SPAIN: arts & culture
Transcript
2018 Program Notes, Book 9 | 31
GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA AND CHORUSCarlos Kalmar Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Christopher Bell Chorus Director
Friday, August 10, 2018 at 6:30 p.m.Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 7:30 p.m.Jay Pritzker Pavilion
PROKOFIEV AND VAUGHAN WILLIAMSGrant Park OrchestraCarlos Kalmar ConductorPablo Ferrández Cello
Sergei ProkofievSinfonia Concertante in E Minor, Op. 125 Andante Allegro giusto Andante con moto—Allegro marcato
PABLO FERRÁNDEZ
INTERMISSION
Charles IvesThe Unanswered Question
Ralph Vaughan WilliamsSymphony No. 4 in F Minor Allegro Andante moderato Scherzo: Allegro molto— Finale con Epilogo Fugato: Allegro molto
The appearance of Pablo Ferrández is presented with generous support from NextGen Performance Series Sponsor BMO Harris Bank
Tonight’s concert is sponsored by Colleen and Lloyd Fry and the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation
The appearance of Pablo Ferrández is sponsored in part by SPAIN: arts & culture
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PABLO FERRÁNDEZ is the International Classical Music Awards 2016 “Young Artist of the Year” and a prizewinner at the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition and International Paulo Cello Competition. In recent seasons he has performed with the DSO Berlin, London Philharmonia, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI, Spanish National Symphony, Barcelona Symphony, Taipei Symphony and Queensland Symphony; toured
in Europe with Kremerata Baltica; and appeared at the Mariinsky Theater, Verbier Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival and Trans-Siberian Arts Festival. Highlights of Mr. Fernández’s current season include debuts with Bamberg Symphony, Oxford Philharmonic, Konzerthaus Berlin Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Israel Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Louisiana Philharmonic and West Australian Symphony Orchestra; returns to the Munich Symphony and RTVE Symphony Orchestra; and appearances at the Zurich Tonhalle, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Dresden Festival, Rostropovich Festival and Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival. Pablo Ferrández plays the Stradivarius “Lord
Aylesford” (1696), thanks to the Nippon Music Foundation.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
SINFONIA CONCERTANTE IN E MINOR, OP. 125 (1950–1952)Scored for: solo cello, pairs of woodwinds with piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta and stringsPerformance time: 37 minutesGrant Park Music Festival premiere
In 1949, Prokofiev wrote the Cello Sonata, Op. 119 for the brilliant 22-year-old Mstislav Rostropovich. Rostropovich, as exuberant of personality and profligate of talent as any performer of the 20th century, inspired Prokofiev to a further examination of the cello’s potential as a solo instrument. Prokofiev first tried revising a cello concerto that had failed at its premiere in 1938, but he soon abandoned that attempt. Unwilling to allow the opportunity for a major work to slip through his fingers, however, Rostropovich invited himself to the composer’s country home the summer of the following year and insisted that they sit down together to complete the project. Master composer and master performer spent several weeks in an intense collaboration, completely revising the 1938 concerto into the Sinfonia Concertante. Prokofiev continued on his own during the following months, and the revision was finished by the beginning of 1952. Rostropovich introduced the Sinfonia Concertante in February in Moscow with great success.
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AUGUST 10–11, 2018
The Sinfonia’s first movement is a spacious sonata form with the feeling of a slow march. The second movement is in Prokofiev’s motoric, toccata style. As a contrast to the snapping sarcasm of this music, Prokofiev allotted to the soloist an extended section based on a soulful theme. The finale is a set of continuous variations on a folk-like theme.
Charles Ives (1874–1954)
THE UNANSWERED QUESTION (1906)Scored for: two flutes, oboe, clarinet, trumpet and stringsPerformance time: 6 minutesFirst Grant Park Orchestra performance: June 23, 1973; Aaron Copland, conductor
The Unanswered Question, subtitled “A Contemplation of Something Serious,” is one of Ives’ most visionary and frequently heard works. It comprises three distinct
kinds of music, superimposed: a string chorale, an unchanging trumpet phrase and a chattering woodwind response. Ives assigned these unlikely partners the following philosophical roles: “The strings play pianississimo throughout with no change in tempo. They represent the ‘Silence of the Druids—Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.’ The trumpet intones ‘The Perennial Question of Existence,’ and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for ‘The Invisible Answer’ undertaken by the flutes and other human beings, becomes gradually more active, faster and louder.... ‘The Fighting Answerers’ seem to realize a futility, and they disappear. ‘The Question’ is asked for the last time, and ‘The Silences’ are heard beyond in ‘Undisturbed Solitude.’” The Unanswered Question, created more than a century ago, continues to be disturbing, challenging and thought-provoking: “The world today makes us so aware of unanswered questions that the basic idea of the piece is easy to grasp,” wrote musicologist Edward Downes.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN F MINOR (1931–1934)Scored for: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and stringsPerformance time: 30 minutesFirst Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 12, 2002; James Paul, conductor
Ralph Vaughan Williams was 62 when his Fourth Symphony was first heard in 1935, and generally acknowledged as the doyen of English composers following the death of Sir Edward Elgar the preceding year. Vaughan Williams’ reputation, then as now, rested primarily on his many works in pastoral and folkish veins, so it was with amazement that listeners received the premiere of the burly, uncompromising, thoroughly
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modern Fourth Symphony in April 1935. Despite the Symphony’s challenging modernity, however, the audience at the premiere acclaimed the work, awarding it “vociferous applause,” according to one newspaper account, “almost without parallel at Queen’s Hall.” Vaughan Williams received the prestigious Order of Merit that year from King George V.
The principal thematic elements used to unify the Symphony are presented in the opening measures. After the searing dissonance that launches the main theme, two mottos are presented by the trumpets: a cramped, half-step idea (“motive 1”) and a leaping succession of melodic fourths (“motive 2”). The ferocious opening Allegro is a sonata form whose main structural divisions are marked by the grinding semi-tone dissonance of the opening. The exposition is in three sections: the main theme comprises the initial gesture and motives 1 and 2; the second theme is a bold melody of angular contour and wide range given by the violins; the third theme is a tightly constricted semi-tonal phrase spun from motive 1. The short development section begins with the grinding dissonance and uses intertwined permutations of motives 1 and 2. The grinding dissonance announces the recapitulation. The quiet coda is less serene than exhausted and apprehensive.
The following Andante blends elements of sonata and binary forms. It opens with the brasses and then the winds playing a version of motive 2 from the first movement. A complementary theme, derived from motive 2, is intoned by oboe. These thematic elements are discussed before the flute plays a falling phrase Vaughan Williams called a “cadence” to end the first portion of the movement. (The flute’s strain reappears as the principal theme of the finale.) Further development of the contrapuntal material leads to the return of themes from the first section. The flute “cadence,” extended into a lamenting cadenza, closes the movement.
The Scherzo springs from a leaping transformation of motive 2. Trumpets and trombones bark out a snarling version of motive 1, which is extended and combined with the movement’s opening theme. A stuttering figure in syncopated rhythms and a repeated-note fragment serve as foils for the continuing development of these two motives. The central trio is a blustery country dance.
The Finale uses a sonata form with an imposing Epilogo Fugato as its culmination. The movement’s main theme group contains a phrase from the flute “cadence” of the second movement and an “oom-pah” (the composer’s word) accompaniment. A melody with heavy repeated notes serves as the second theme. Stentorian brass chords and a momentary pause launch the varied recapitulation of the earlier materials. Concerning the Epilogo Fugato, Vaughan Williams wrote, “The subject of the fugal epilogue [motive 1] is played first by the trombones, and then heard in both its original form and inverted, combined with the other subjects of the Finale. The work ends with a reference to the opening bars of the first movement.”
