52 2017-2018 SEASON

SEAN CHENHailed as a charismatic rising star with an exceptional ability to connect with an audience combined with an easy virtuosity by the Huffington Post, 26-year-old American pianist Sean Chen won third prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano

Competition in 2013, and was also awarded the Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship of the American Pianists Association the same year. He continues to earn accolades for

alluring, colorfully shaded renditions (New York Times), and was recently named a 2015 fellow by the prestigious Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing Arts.

Lauded for his natural charisma and approachable personality, Mr. Chen is particularly in demand for residencies that combine performances with master classes, school concerts, and

artist conversations. He has previously worked with many prominent orchestras, including the Fort Worth, Hartford, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, San Diego, Santa Fe, Tucson, and New West

Symphonies, collaborating with such esteemed conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Marcelo Lehninger, and others.

A multifaceted musician, Mr. Chen also transcribes, composes, and improvises. His transcription of Ravel’s La Valse has been received with glowing acclaim, and his encore improvisations are lauded as genuinely brilliant by the Dallas Morning News.

Born in Florida, Mr. Chen grew up in the Los Angeles area of Oak Park, California. His impressive achievements before college include the NFAA ARTS week, Los Angeles Music Center’s Spotlight, and 2006 Presidential Scholars awards. These honors combined with diligent schoolwork facilitated offers of acceptance by MIT, Harvard, and The Juilliard School. Mr. Chen earned his Bachelor and Master of Music from Juilliard, meanwhile garnering several awards, most notably the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He received his Artist Diploma in 2014 at the Yale School of Music as a George W. Miles Fellow.

Mr. Chen is currently living in Kansas City, Missouri with his wife, Betty, who plays violin in the Kansas City Symphony. When not at the piano, Mr. Chen enjoys tinkering with computers.

46 2016-2017 Season

Baritone Timothy Noble has enjoyed an international vocal career spanning over fi fty years and is widely considered one of the great singing actors of his generation. He has

performed over fi fty leading roles in major opera houses around the world including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, La Fenice, Netherlands Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival.

In addition to singing the National Anthem for IU Basketball home games, Noble has performed as baritone soloist with London Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and the Cincinnati Symphony, to name a few, and appeared at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl and the Ravinia Festival. Noble also completed a twenty year project of writing the music and lyrics for his fi rst musical, “Alamo,” which premiered at a public workshop performance at Indiana University in the spring of 2012.

In the fall of 2016, Professor Noble began his eighteenth year at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he was elevated in rank from full professor to Distinguished Professor of Music in 2004. He also presently serves as a vocal trainer for the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Program, and guest teacher for both Glenn Gould Conservatory and University of Toronto.

Noble’s students have won the Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions at the district, regional, semi-fi nal and grand fi nals levels, the Palm Beach Competition, the George London Competition, the Liederkranz Competition, the Bel Canto Competition, the Orpheus Competition, Matinee Musicale, and Richard Tucker Foundation. Professor Noble’s students hold or have held positions with virtually every young artist program in North America, and many of his students have also gone on to appear in major roles with the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Central City Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, and others.

tiMothyNoble

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“There aren’t enough superlatives for this young man. Moments of bold intensity gave way to those of a gentle tenderness that was breathtaking at times... Chen placed every note just so. The piano produces sound when hammers strike strings, but you wouldn’t know it with Chen. He played the piano like a wind instrument, as if breathing into it to create sounds. It was uncanny.” —Chantal Incandela, nuvo.net

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2017-2018 SEASON LISTENSEAN CHEN PLAYS BRAHMS 2

Columbus Indiana PhilharmonicDavid Bowden, Music Director

Saturday, April 28, 2018 • 7:30 PMErne Auditorium • Columbus North High School

David Bowden, Conductor

Sean Chen, Piano

Hobgoblin from Symphonic Sketches George Whitefield Chadwick

Letter from Home Aaron Copland

Appalachian Spring Suite Aaron Copland

INTERMISSION

Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, op. 83 Johannes Brahms Allegro non troppo Allegro appassionato Andante Allegretto grazioso

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Owen Hungerford

In memory of Annette Hungerford

“Columbus is a better place to live and work because of the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic. Its high-quality performances and educational programs enrich our community. I’m grateful

for this valuable cultural asset.” — Cindy Frey, President

Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce

54 2017-2018 SEASON

George Whitefield Chadwick — “Hobgoblin” from Symphonic SketchesGeorge Whitefield Chadwick came of age in New England, at a time in the late 19th century when no American composer had yet achieved international acclaim. The handful of fine American orchestras that existed were generally conducted by European-bred musicians who viewed that continent’s tradition, rightly for the most part, as the primary source of great music in the classical tradition. Only one American composer, John Knowles Paine, had established himself widely in the concert hall; it’s a telling fact, however, that Paine’s popular Second Symphony bore a German subtitle, “Im Früling.”

Chadwick’s early education initially gave no indication that he would change the situation. Though musical from an early age, Chadwick never graduated from high school. He attended the New England Conservatory, but was not granted a formal academic degree.

Nevertheless, it is Chadwick (born in 1854, and died in 1931) who now counts as America’s first widely established composer of music that is undeniably symphonic in tradition but American in flavor. His three symphonies and three quasi-symphonic works, composed generally in traditional forms but with colorful orchestration, hints of American folk traditions, and occasional whiffs of humor, were widely heard and well-received in their day.

The set of four works collectively titled Symphonic Sketches dates from 1895–1904, in the period after Chadwick completed his Third Symphony. The music marks a subtle but sure shift in Chadwick’s compositional focus, away from serious,

grandiose forms and toward a more overtly entertaining approach that clearly echoed the influences of Afro-Caribbean, Scotch-Irish, and other American folk music traditions. Each movement of the Symphonic Sketches bore its own title, as well as an introductory poem penned into the score by the composer.

The third movement, titled “Hobgoblin,” carried the following inscription:

That shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow.

The reference is to Shakespeare, and specifically to the character Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Chadwick’s music evokes that crafty character through the use of a playful and sunny melody that leaps from instrument to instrument, never alighting in one place for long. The music rises to a series of climaxes before dashing to a bright conclusion.

Aaron Copland — Letter from Home and Appalachian Spring Aaron Copland is widely regarded, both in America and abroad, as this country’s greatest orchestral composer, past or present. Born in the first year of the new century, Copland led a new wave of composers who transcended the European roots of orchestral music and created a vital voice for America in concert halls around the world.

Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900, the son of Russian-Jewish parents. As a young composer, he was anxious to write in a style “that would immediately be recognized as American in character.”

However, as he developed his artistic voice, Copland became aware of a more fundamental challenge facing composers of the day.

“I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composers. The old ‘special’ public of the modern music concerts had fallen away, and the conventional concert public continued apathetic or indifferent to anything but the established classics. It seemed to me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum.”

Copland therefore endeavored to write music which would appeal to a broad audience, and to reach listeners through new means: he wrote an operetta for schoolchildren, composed music for radio, and became one of Hollywood’s most celebrated film music writers.

Copland’s emphasis on clarity and functionality served to frame music which is incredibly rich in melody, harmony and character. Perhaps nowhere in his considerable output is this richness more evident than in Copland’s most well-known work, Appalachian Spring.

Composed in 1944 for the great choreographer Martha Graham, Appalachian Spring was the last of a trio of major ballet scores produced by Copland during the years 1938-1944 (the other two works, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, are also widely recognized and performed around the world).

Based on a traditional Shaker melody titled “Simple Gifts,” Appalachian Spring captures the essence of the bounty of spring—the blooming flowers, the rich

SEAN CHEN PLAYS BRAHMS 2 PROGRAM NOTES

552017-2018 SEASON

scents and the spirit of growth. Building to a powerful climax, the work ends on a tranquil note, as the season gives in to the laziness of summer.

That same year, Copland was living in Mexico and feeling homesick; his mother had recently and unexpectedly died and his father’s dementia was increasing. He was also keenly aware of the struggles around him caused by World War II, and he sought ways in his music to support the war effort. So he took Whitehead’s request and channeled his own longing into a beautiful short piece for orchestra, aimed at expressing the feelings of a soldier reading a letter from home. Copland himself explained, “It’s very sentimental, but not meant to be taken too literally – I meant only to convey the emotion that might naturally be awakened in the recipient by reading a letter from home.”

Johannes Brahms — Piano Concerto No. 2If Beethoven stood at the dawning of the Romantic era, Johannes Brahms surely must represent that glorious hour when the sun begins to sink, the light gains a painterly cast, and the toil of the day rewards the soul with the joys of accomplishment.

Born in Hamburg, Germany, in May of 1833, Johannes Brahms was recognized early as a prodigy. By age ten, he had already developed his talent at the piano such that an American agent tried to persuade the young boy to tour the United States. While Johannes and his family declined the opportunity, he was soon recognized widely in Germany as one of the rising musical lights of his generation.

Yet success as a composer did not always come easily for him. His first large-scale orchestral work, the Piano Concerto in D Minor, was received poorly — in large part due to its traditional style. In the words of the Grove Dictionary, “At a time when the status of a progressive composer could be measured by the way he constructed, or linked, the movements of a programmatic symphony, Brahms was still working with clear divisions and lucid articulation.”

The public failure of the First Piano Concerto led Brahms to focus on smaller-scale chamber and solo works for more than a decade. He ultimately waited more than two decades before attempting to write a second concerto for piano. By then the composer was hailed across Europe; his First and Second symphonies had proven great successes, as had his remarkable Violin Concerto. Nevertheless, Brahms was gripped by fears that his Second Piano Concerto would suffer the same reception as the one that greeted his First. As a result, he fretted over the work for three years before presenting its premiere in 1881.

By that time Brahms had developed a habit of describing his large works in diminishing terms. As he worked on this Second Piano Concerto, he wrote a letter to a friend in which he described his work on “some little piano pieces.” He elaborated (with even greater exaggeration) to a different friend: “It is a tiny, tiny little concerto with a tiny, tiny little scherzo.”

Those words couldn’t be farther from truth. In both length and complexity, the Second Piano Concerto proved to be the most massive concerto for any instrument by any major composer at the time. And from the day of its premiere, with the composer at the piano, it was an immediate and resounding success.

Structured in four movements rather than the traditional three, the Second Piano Concerto begins in a deceptively languid mood, with a French horn trading sunny calls with the piano. But the piano quickly amps up the energy via a powerful cadenza. The orchestra responds by restating the introductory theme, this time with exuberant energy. From there, soloist and orchestra trade and elaborate themes over the course of the long yet constantly eventful movement (as an indication of scale, the first movement often takes longer to perform than some entire concertos by Mozart).

The “tiny, tiny little scherzo” follows — and immediately destroys the composer’s description of the music. This is vigorous, red-blooded music, challenging to perform and thrilling to hear.

The third movement offers a respite from the storm for both performers and listeners, in the form of a serene Andante. A solo cello takes the lead initially, passing its melody to the upper strings and then the oboe before the piano eventually enters to complete the phrase. Here we experience Brahms at his most radiant and lovely.

That sets the stage for the finale, a spirited Rondo that begins (without pause) with a lightly dashing tune on the piano. The music will ultimately build to two towering climaxes; but in between and in the end, the spirit is fundamentally bright and lighthearted. At times it is easy to forget that this is fiendishly challenging music for pianist and instrumentalists alike; but the end is sure to leave you breathless