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GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA AND CHORUSCarlos Kalmar Artistic Director and Principal ConductorChristopher Bell Chorus Director

Wednesday, July 12, 2017 at 6:30 p.m.Jay Pritzker Pavilion

HAYDN LONDON SYMPHONYGrant Park OrchestraFawzi Haimor Guest Conductor

RoustomRamal

HaydnSymphony No. 104 in D Major, “London”

Adagio — Allegro Andante Menuet: Allegro Finale: Spiritoso

HindemithSymphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber

Allegro “Turandot,” Scherzo: Moderato — Lebhaft Andantino March

Tonight’s concert is being broadcast live on 98.7WFMT and streamed live at wfmt.com.

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FAWZI HAIMOR assumes the role of Music Director Designate of Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen in September 2017. In addition to a growing diary of international guest engagements, Mr. Haimor recently completed his tenure as Resident Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted classical, pops and outreach concerts, and covered for such esteemed conductors as Manfred Honeck, Leonard Slatkin, Gianandrea Noseda, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Mr. Haimor recently

made debuts with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica do Porto, Oulu Sinfonia, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Qatar Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Kyoto Symphony, Florida Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. His additional appearances this season include the Louisiana Philharmonic, New West Symphony, New Mexico Philharmonic, WDR Funkhausorchester Köln and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg. Fawzi Haimor, born in Chicago, was educated in the Middle East and in San Francisco and completed his violin training at Indiana University. He earned bachelor’s degrees in both music and neurobiology, a master’s degree in conducting from the University of California-Davis and a second master’s, in instrumental conducting, at Indiana University. He was previously Assistant Conductor at Alabama Symphony Orchestra, where he was also the first Music Director of the Alabama Symphony Youth Orchestra.

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JULY 12, 2017

Kareem Roustom (b. 1971)RAMAL (2014)Scored for: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta and stringsPerformance time: 12 minutesFirst Grant Park Orchestra performance

Kareem Roustom, who calls himself a “musically bilingual composer,” was born in Damascus, Syria in 1971 and came to the United States when he was twelve. Roustom’s musical experience began with playing guitar and as a teenager he explored a wide variety of styles, from Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Pink Floyd to traditional Middle Eastern music and modern classical works. He took his undergraduate training at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and earned a master’s degree in ethnomusicology from nearby Tufts University; he now lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Roustom has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, theater and in traditional Arabic styles, and he has received particular recognition for his music for film and television. His scores for theatrical releases include May in the Summer, Amreeka and Shadow Glories; among the documentaries on which he has collaborated are The Iran Job, Encounter Point, Budrus, The Mosque in Morgantown and 1913: Seeds of Conflict, this last premiered on PBS in June 2015. Roustom has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Children’s Chorus, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and Damascus Festival Chamber Ensemble, and arranged for such pop stars as Shakira and Beyoncé, whose duet Beautiful Liar in his arrangement became the fastest rising single in Billboard’s history. Roustom’s distinctions include the Pete Carpenter Fellowship from BMI, CAP Award from the American Music Center, Sundance Film Composers Lab Fellowship and an Emmy nomination for The Mosque in Morgantown.

Roustom headed his note for Ramal with a quote from the 10th-century Arabic philosopher and scientist Al-Farabi: “Poetry and music originate from the same root: the balance between movement and stillness.” Roustom continued, “Ramal is the name of one of sixteen poetic meters used in classical pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. Each of these poetic meters comprises multiple variations of the verb fa’al, which means ‘to do’. These variants of fa’al are constructed by combining a series of unaccented (o) and accented (/) syllables. The variation of the ramal poetic meter used in this work follows this pattern: /o//o/o – /o//o – /o//o/o – /o//o/oo; as musical meter: 7/8, 5/8, 7/8, 8/8.

“This poetic meter is used as a structural framework throughout the work. The opening section expands the metric cycle by gradually adding rests to each measure, while the closing section contracts by gradually removing

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the added rests. The middle, and largest, section of the piece develops the rhythmic and melodic motifs with contrasting moods that range from intimate and reflective to declamatory and strident. Although the work is not programmatic in its design, its emotional drive and changing meters reflect the unsettled state of the world, specifically the devastating current situation in Syria. Despite all this, there is a tone of defiance in Ramal. Dedicated to the memory of [the esteemed Palestinian-American cultural critic and professor of literature at Columbia] Edward Said [1935-2003], Ramal is inspired by his steadfast determination to speak truth to power.”

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)Symphony No. 104 in D Major, “London” (1796)Scored for: pairs of woodwinds, horns, and trumpets, timpani and stringsPerformance time: 29 minutesFirst Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 12, 1949; Antal Dorati, conductor

For three decades Haydn toiled for the Esterházy family in Eisenstadt and at their new palace, Esterháza, just across the Hungarian border from Austria. He managed the extensive musical establishment of the house, composed music continuously, and oversaw the famed resident opera company. (After her visit in 1773, Empress Maria Theresa let it be known that whenever she wanted to see a good opera, she invited herself to the Esterházy palace.) With his many responsibilities, Haydn was grossly overworked for most of his life. It is understandable, therefore, that, though his dedication and love of his job never wavered, it was with some relief that he viewed the death of the music-loving Prince Nicolaus in 1790. Nicolaus’ son, Anton, did not inherit his father’s love of music, and he dispersed the entire musical establishment except for a brass band for ceremonial functions, thereby releasing Haydn from all but titular duties. A comfortable pension was settled upon Haydn as reward for his many years of service, and he moved to Vienna so quickly that he left most of his personal belongings behind.

Johann Peter Salomon, a German violinist and impresario, had initiated a series of concerts in London in 1786, and he was always searching for new attractions to present. He was in Bonn when word came of Prince Nicolaus’ death, and he set off for Vienna immediately to entice Haydn to Britain. He was successful, and Haydn made his first visit to London from January 1791 to June 1792, composing there six symphonies for Salomon’s concerts and leading their premieres. The venture was a triumph. Haydn went home to Vienna, but it was not difficult for Salomon to convince him to return to London. His second visit began in February 1794 and again lasted for a year-and-a-half. The success of the first was repeated, and Haydn received an acclaim from the British public such as he had never known in the close confines of his service to the Esterházy family.

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Haydn wrote three symphonies (Nos. 99-101) for Salomon’s concerts of spring 1794. He then spent the summer touring through the British countryside, and returned to London in the early autumn to make preparations for the following season. Salomon, however, was having difficulties arranging for the performers necessary to ensure the high quality of his concerts because the Reign of Terror then sweeping France made travel and financial dealings risky, and he was forced to cancel his spring performances. However, a rival operation, the so-called “Opera Concerts,” was not about to let pass the opportunity of displaying England’s most distinguished musical visitor, so their director, Italian violinist and composer Giovan Battista Viotti, arranged for Haydn to compose three more symphonies and direct their premieres on his programs.

The “London” Symphony, the last of the important works Haydn composed in London, opens with perhaps the most solemn introduction to be found anywhere in his instrumental works, with stern, unison, minor-mode proclamations of open intervals alternating with hushed passages of deeply expressive harmonies. The movement’s sonata form proper, which begins with the arrival of the quick tempo, is largely built from two motives presented in the major-key main theme: the opening long–short–short figure in the violins, and the four repeated notes in the third measure. These tiny thematic fragments are treated with seemingly boundless imagination, driving the music forward with a constant sense of freedom and invention while at the same time unifying it through

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Students in the Young Artist Showcase perform in Millennium Park as part of Festival Connect.

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continual reference back to the germinal motives, a superb example of the process of thematic development that he had perfected over the course of forty years of writing symphonies.

The Andante, a fascinating formal hybrid of rondo and variations, begins with a genteel theme, but veers into turbulent emotional territory in its episodes. This movement’s strong expression has led some commentators to suggest that it was Haydn’s musical elegy to his departed friend and colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had died in 1791. The Minuet, in Haydn’s most robust country manner, encloses a sweetly contrasting trio utilizing the plangent sonorities of double reeds. The finale, Haydn’s last realization of the symphonic sonata form that was the very heart of Classical instrumental music, is based on a sprightly tune that no less an ethnomusicological authority than Béla Bartók identified as a peasant song from Croatia. Haydn certainly heard the melody, known as Oh, Jellena, sung in the environs of Esterháza, and may well have had it recalled to him by the surprisingly similar 18th-century vendors’ cries for “Hot Cross Buns” and “Live Cod” that echoed through the streets of London every morning. This finale is a splendid and festive valedictory to the genre by the man who earned from some of his followers the (not-quite-true) accolade, “Father of the Symphony.”

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)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: 21 minutesFirst Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 15, 1960; Theodore Bloomfield, conductor

Hindemith first explored the idea of using Weber’s themes in 1940, when he was planning a ballet in collaboration with the legendary choreographer Leonide Massine. Hindemith sketched out some ideas based on Weber’s music, but Massine found them “too personal,” and the composer himself had misgivings about the project when he found out that Salvador Dali would be designing the production. Dali, it seems, had been responsible for a staging for Massine of the Bacchanale from Wagner’s Tannhäuser filled with “a series of weird hallucinatory images” that Hindemith felt were “quite simply stupid.” By mutual consent, composer and choreographer abandoned the plan. Practical musician that he was, however, Hindemith did not let the work done on the ballet come to nothing. Perhaps prodded by his publisher, B. Schott, who was looking for a composition that would appeal to the prevailing American taste for colorful orchestral showpieces, he again took up the sketches in 1943 and

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gave them final form as the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.

The work’s four movements are organized loosely around the traditional symphonic model. Each is based on a separate theme of Weber: three on miniatures for piano duet and one on an Oriental tune from incidental music for a play. Hindemith largely kept intact the melodies and structures of the originals, but expanded them considerably in harmony, rhythm and tone color. In assessing the composer’s attitude toward his models, Ian Kemp wrote, “Weber is treated neither with reverence nor with condescension.”

The first movement is based on the fourth of Weber’s Huit pièces for Piano Duet, Op. 60. Vigorous and straightforward, the music preserves the Gypsy spirit of the original, marked “All’ Ongarese.” The second Metamorphosis is a scherzo using a melody from the overture Weber contributed to the incidental music for Schiller’s play Turandot. Just as Schiller’s drama was an adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s 18th-century play (which was also the source for operas by Puccini and Busoni), so Weber borrowed his theme from an earlier source, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1767 Dictionnaire de musique. Rousseau in turn got it from a noted Sinologist, Father Jean Baptiste Duhalde, who brought it back as a souvenir of his travels in China. In Hindemith’s Metamorphosis, the melody is first given

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simply in moderate tempo by the woodwinds. There follows a series of variations that gradually build in intensity until the entire orchestra is summoned to provide a brilliant climax. The movement’s central section is an orchestral greeting card in which all the instrumental choirs are introduced with consummate contrapuntal mastery. First the brasses come to call, and then the woodwinds. The shimmering percussion instruments arrive, and soon all of the orchestra takes up the Turandot theme again for the closing variations. Last to be heard are the tinkles and taps of the percussion, which spread an atmospheric Oriental tonal mist over the closing pages of the movement.

The haunting theme of the third movement, an arrangement of a gentle siciliano from Weber’s Six Pièces for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 10, No. 2, is first sung by clarinet. The central section is marked by a simple, lyrical strain from cellos and clarinets played against an undulating accompaniment. The opening theme returns, decorated with elaborate arabesques in the flute. The vibrant closing movement, derived from No. 7 of Weber’s Huit pièces, Op. 60, is one of the most stirring marches in the orchestral repertoire.

©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda