Conductor
David Lockington

featuring
Carol Wincenc, flute

BERNSTEIN: Halil
ROBERTO SIERRA: Carnaval for Orchestra (Magnum Opus work)
COPLAND: Symphony No. 3

Discovery, January 24, 2009 - 2pm

January 24, 2009 - 8pm

January 25, 2009 - 3pm

January 26, 2009 - 8pm
Wells Fargo Center
$27 - $50

Two giants of the 20th Century are together again—if only in spirit. Copland’s 3rd Symphony melds pastoral lyricism, lively boldness and a touch of Latin American vigor. Bernstein’s Halil, an elegiac nocturne for solo flute, makes a perfect vehicle for the formidable talents of Carol Wincenc.

ROBERTO SIERRA
Carnaval for Orchestra

Roberto Sierra is one of the leading American composers of his generation. Born in Puerto Rico, he pursued early studies at the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico. After graduation, Sierra went to Europe to further his musical knowledge, studying first at the Royal College of Music and the University of London, and later at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. Between 1979 and 1982 he did advanced work in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg under the renowned György Ligeti. In 1982 Sierra returned to Puerto Rico to occupy administrative posts in arts administration and higher education, first as Director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico, and later as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Throughout this period, he was vigorously engaged as a composer on the international scene.

Sierra’s work came to prominence when his first major orchestral composition, Júbilo, was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since then he has been performed widely by orchestras in the United States and abroad.

The title Carnaval evokes one of the most characteristic works of early romantic piano music, Robert Schumann’s 1834 Carnaval, which the composer conceived as a set of variations on four notes, creating images of a fantastic ball attended by characters from the commedia dell’arte. It is made up of a series of short, but strongly contrasted, miniatures. Sierra’s new orchestral work pays homage to Schumann in his title, in musical references to passages from Carnaval and Papillons, and in the conception of the work as a series of varied “creatures of imagination.”

The composer has provided the following comments about his piece:

Carnaval presents five creatures of imagination. The inspiration for Gargoyles came from the fascinating stone statues placed on top of many of the medieval churches I have visited in Europe. The main motive in Sphinxes comes from notes printed in Schumann’s Carnaval “Sphinxes” (the notes are not intended for performance, they are only a clue: these notes generate the music that follows). The motive first appears in the form of a passacaglia, while my own orchestration of Schumann’s Papillons appears embedded in the passacaglia. Unicorns was inspired by the beauty of those imaginary creatures and, in particular, by the imagery of the famous medieval tapestry “The Lady and the Unicorn”. Dragons have inspired many cultures for their mystery and awesome powers, these same aspects inspired my Dragons. The work ends with the ancient symbol of eternal rebirth The Phoenix. My phoenix emerges not with the sounds of ancient Egypt, but rather with the rhythms of the Caribbean. The paragraph below is a description of some of the images that went through my mind when writing Carnaval.
Gargoyles sit atop ancient buildings, watching with menacing eyes generations of people that walk below and seldom dare to look up. Maybe, only at night they take off in imaginary flights of fancy. The eternal gaze of the Sphinx tells us that it is dangerous to face it and try to answer the enigma; dancing letters give us a clue: Papillons is the answer. A Princess stands before a Unicorn, a banner proclaims “À Mon Seul Desir” (“To my only Desire”). Who is this Lady? What is the Unicorn doing there? Furious Dragons breathe fire and ultimately only ashes remain, from the ashes the Phoenix emerges in joyous triumph.
--Roberto Sierra

LEONARD BERNSTEIN
Halil, Nocturne for Flute and Small Orchestra

Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1918, and died in New York on October 14, 1990. He composed Halil in 1981, dedicating it “To the Spirit of Yadin and to his Fallen Brothers,” and conducted the premiere in Tel Aviv on May 27, 1981, with the Israel Philharmonic and soloist Jean-Pierre Rampal. In addition to the solo flute, the score calls for piccolo and alto flute (seated within the percussion section), a large complement of percussion (timpani, four snare drums, four tom toms, bass drum, a pair of cymbals, two suspended cymbals, two gongs, tam tam, two triangles, four wood blocks, whip, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, and chimes), harp, and strings. Duration is about 16 minutes.

Ninety years after his birth, Leonard Bernstein remains, of all American musicians, the one with the most widespread reputation, not only in his home country, but worldwide. He steadfastly avoided pigeonholing, composing a symphony while working on a Broadway show, while conducting superbly or appearing as a brilliant pianist. He became a television personality not only from musical performances but from the best educational programs for young people that we have yet had. His work is flamboyant (as was the man himself), but also deeply expressive.

Halil (the title is the Hebrew word for “flute”) is a concerto in a single movement. The inspiration was a young Israeli flutist, Yadin Tanenbaum, who died at age 19 fighting in the 1973 Six-Day War in the Sinai.

In the composer’s own description:

Halil...is formally unlike any other work I have written, but is like much of my music in its struggle between tonal and non-tonal forces. In this case, I sense that struggle as involving wars and the threat of wars, the overwhelming desire to live, and the consolations of art, love, and the hope for peace. It is a kind of night-music, which, from its opening 12-tone row to its ambiguously diatonic final cadence, is an ongoing conflict of nocturnal images, wish-dreams, nightmares, repose, sleeplessness, night-terrors and sleep itself, Death’s twin brother.
I never knew Yadin Tanenbaum, but I know his spirit.
--Leonard Bernstein

One of the “theatrical” elements of this score is the hidden presence in the orchestra of two siblings of the solo instrument—an alto flute and a piccolo. Immediately after the first splash of orchestral sound and the solo flute’s setting forth of the tone row, the alto flute subtly joins the soloist in a quiet dialogue, like a concealed echo of the solo player’s thoughts, or a hint of the conscious and the subconscious together. The two instruments intertwine in a series of gradually descending introductory phrases, arriving at Andante tranquillo. Here, over a quiet harp figure and sustained strings, the flute sings a gentle lullaby whose principal melodic shape is a variant of the opening figure in the tone row, but now in the key of D-flat. This becomes gradually more passionate, with the orchestra taking fuller part, and turns into a more rhythmic passage in 5/8 time (Bernstein always loved the dancing irregularities of quintuple meter).

A livelier Grazioso in 3/4 time, with a rhythmically active orchestra over flowing three-bar phrases in the flute closes into another section of 5/8 dance, but now the flute is shadowed by its other sibling, the piccolo, also hidden in the orchestra. This grows almost fierce before the soloist cuts off the orchestra on a sustained high note and begins an extended cadenza accompanied by mysterious colors on the percussion instruments, as in a Bartókian “night music.”

The flute is by turns fierce and “childlike”; finally the strings, which have remained silent during this passage, burst back in at full volume of passionate expression. The soloist is silent, but as the strings moderate their outburst and return to a nocturnal hush, the hidden alto flute takes up its song, joined then by the hidden piccolo, returning to the mood of the opening and a restatement by the orchestra of the warm melody--and still the solo flute remains silent. As the alto flute and piccolo reach their climactic moments, and die away, the solo flute returns, floating over the delicate sounds fading away in the orchestra, with its final long-sustained note seeming to last forever.

AARON COPLAND
Symphony No. 3

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900, and died in New York on December 2, 1990. He composed his Third Symphony on a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, between the summer of 1944 and September 1946. Serge Koussevitzky led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere on October 18 and 19, 1946. The score calls for three flutes and piccolo; three oboes and English horn; two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, and bass clarinet; two bassoons and contrabassoon; four horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani, percussion (bass drum, tam-tam, cymbals, xylophone, glockenspiel, tenor drum woodblock, snare drum, triangle, slapstick, ratchet, anvil, claves, tubular bells), two harps, celesta, piano, and strings. Duration is about 43 minutes.

Copland’s Third Symphony was his first abstract orchestral score in over a decade, since the completion of the Short Symphony of 1932 33. He had written a great deal of music in that busy decade, but it had either been intended for the ballet or films. Thus, the Third Symphony was his first essay in years in what is generally regarded as the most significant and demanding of orchestral genres. He was determined to do justice to the work, both for his own satisfaction and because of his close relationship at Tanglewood with Serge Koussevitzky, through whom the commission was offered. The composition took him two full years.

Copland’s Third is his largest purely instrumental score. He was naturally aware that his new symphony would be appearing in a musical milieu very different from that of his earlier symphonic works. The preceding decade had seen a proliferation of serious large-scale composition by American composers (Harris, Barber, Schuman). Copland certainly knew that something substantial would be expected of him.

More important for the mood of the new symphony was the time of its composition: the closing days of the largest war known to human history. The elation generated by the successful end of the war affected everyone. It was time for music of affirmation, of positive and forward-looking moods.

It is not clear when he made the decision, but at some point he decided to end his symphony using a work that he had written in 1942, a short fanfare superbly titled Fanfare for the Common Man. He inserted the fanfare into the last movement and built much of the finale explicitly on that piece in a way that makes it the inevitable culmination of the work.

This is not to suggest that the symphony has a hidden program. It expresses its own solidly built structure in absolute musical terms. But the creative artist lives in a time and place that inevitably has some effect on the rhetoric of his work. The grand heroic gesture of 1942 can be reconsidered in a time of approaching victory (when Copland began the work, D-Day had already occurred) or of newly won peace (the final two movements were composed after the war had ended).

The symphony opens with a movement in a large arch form, starting slowly and “with simple expression,” growing more agitated and building to a climax before returning to the mood of the opening. Whether consciously or not, Copland chose themes (from sketches for unfinished works) made up of motifs that also form an essential part of the concluding fanfare, suggesting that he was already thinking of his ending. A hushed reminiscence of the opening phrase brings the first movement to its end.

The gentle mood is abruptly broken as the horns introduce the principal motto of the second movement (Allegro molto), a brilliant, sardonic scherzo in which the opening motive is rarely absent. A contrasting middle section offers a lyrical oboe tune that has suggested to some listeners the kind of cowboy song that Copland had already employed in Billy the Kid and Rodeo.

The third movement begins gently and quietly with a new version of a trombone theme from the first movement, now heard pianissimo in the violins, the beginning of a slowly developed conversation leading to a lovely flute melody that undergoes extensive development. A slightly faster section, light on its feet and filled with the spirit of the dance, eventually dies away, on a sustained chord of A-flat.

The woodwinds gently sing out phrases from the fanfare, in a chorale-like harmonization. A sudden shift to C major brings in the brass, harps, and timpani with the beginning of the actual Fanfare for the Common Man, now played in its entirety. As it dies away, the oboe begins in an improvisatory mood that turns into a long, imaginative phrase of bustling sixteenth notes. The woodwinds develop this until the strings join in and take over the counterpoint. It becomes a joyous dance that seems to come from an entirely different world, light and sparkling throughout. Only when the trombones and trumpets return with a new statement of the fanfare theme do we realize that the entire dance is a counterpoint to it. The mood of joy dominates as the dance continues, though wrenched into silence at one point by a violent dissonance in the full orchestra. Piccolo and flute, followed by the other woodwinds, re-establish the

dance. Elements of the fanfare gradually reappear until a final ringing affirmation brings the symphony to a close. No doubt the time and circumstances of its composition had a lot to do with its mood and character, but the imagination and craft that Copland brought to this, his largest orchestral score, place it firmly among the ranks of the finest symphonies yet produced by an American.

© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)