2011 Program Notes, Book 1 A7

GrantParkMusicFestivalSeventy-seventh Season

Grant Park Orchestra and ChorusCarlos Kalmar, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor

Christopher Bell, Chorus Director

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. Opening night: Symphonie fantastiqueJay Pritzker PavilionGRANT PARK ORCHESTRACarlos Kalmar, ConductorJean-Philippe Collard, Piano

RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Allegramente Adagio assai Presto

Jean-Philippe Collard

BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14a Reveries and Passions: Largo — Allegro agitato e appassionato assai A Ball. Valse: Allegro non troppo Scene in the Country: Adagio March to the Scaff old: Allegretto non troppo Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto — Allegro

Th is concert is co-sponsored by:

Th e appearance of Jean-Philippe Collard is partially underwritten by a generous gift from Ray Frick, Grant Park Orchestral Association

Board of Directors

Smart Family Foundation inc.and Joan & robert Feitler

A8 2011 Program Notes, Book 1 2011 Program Notes, Book 1 A9

PiAnO COnCErTO in G (1929-1931)Maurice ravel (1875-1937)The Concerto in G is scored for piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, E-flat clari-net, B-flat clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, per-cussion, harp and strings. The performance time is approximately 22 minutes. Ravel’s Concerto was first performed by the Grant Park Orchestra on July 10, 1957. Theodore Bloomfield conducted, and Istvan Nadas was soloist.

Ravel’s tour of the United States in 1928 was such a success that he began to plan for a second one as soon as he returned to France. With a view toward having a vehicle for himself as a pianist on his return visit, he started work on a concerto in 1929, perhaps encouraged by the good fortune that Stravinsky had enjoyed concertizing with his Concerto for Piano and Winds and Piano Capriccio earlier in the decade. Both to polish his keyboard technique and to extend his repertory — he seems to have harbored a desire to be a virtuoso pianist into his last years — Ravel spent much time and effort in those months practicing the works of Liszt and Chopin. Many other projects pressed upon him, however, not the least of which was a commission from the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the First World War, to compose a piano concerto for left hand alone. Ravel set aside the tour concerto for some nine months to work on Wittgenstein’s commission.

Ravel commented to a friend, the musicologist M.D. Calvocoressi, about having both scores on his desk at the same time: “Planning the two concertos simultaneously was an interesting experi-ence. The one in which I shall appear as interpreter is a concerto in the truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or dramatic effects.... I had intended to entitle this concerto ‘Divertissement.’ Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so, because the very title ‘Concerto’ should be sufficiently clear. The concerto for left hand alone is very different....” As it happened, Ravel was unable to find time to prepare the solo part when the new two-hand Concerto was finished in autumn 1931, so he ap-proached his long-time interpreter Marguerite Long with the request that she undertake the pre-miere. Having prodded Ravel for some time to write just such a work, she readily accepted. Ravel was so excited by the fine reception given to the Concerto at its first performance in January 1932 that he told Calvocoressi he wanted to take it on an around-the-world tour. He and Madame Long did not get quite that far, but they did have a four month tour that spring that went to several cities in central Europe and England. Despite Ravel’s initial enthusiasm for traveling with the Concerto, however, the rigors of the trip seem to have taken a heavy toll on his always-delicate health, and later that summer he started suffering from a number of medical setbacks that culminated the following year in the discovery of a brain tumor. His health never returned, and the Concerto in G was the last major score that he completed.

Ravel told John Burk, program annotator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, that “he felt that in this composition he had expressed himself most completely, and that he had poured his thoughts into the exact mold that he had dreamed.” In addition to the spirit of grace and pure entertain-ment that he hoped to achieve with this work, Ravel also drew on another important influence — that American export then sweeping Europe, Le Jazz Hot. The jazz-inspired effects of rhythm and instrumentation in the Concerto’s outer movements pay homage both to the music of George Gershwin, whom Ravel had met several years before, and to Ravel’s past and projected tours of America. Robert Kotlowitz commented, however, that these qualities may also reflect a wider social phenomenon: “Gershwin’s Concerto in F had been composed five years before Ravel’s and there is little doubt that Ravel was familiar with it. But the G major is not Gershwin slavishly followed. It is not even Gershwin used as a model. It is the period itself — a little giddy, daring in a playful way, impertinent, sentimental, restless — that fills Ravel’s Concerto as it fills Gershwin’s.”

The sparkling first movement of the Concerto in G opens with a bright melody in the piccolo that may derive from an old folk dance of the Basque region of southern France, where Ravel was

Pianist JEAn-PHiLiPPE COLLArD, born into a musical family in Mareuil-sur-Ay, Champagne, was admitted to the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris at an exceptionally young age. At sixteen he was unanimously awarded the Conservatory’s Premier Prix, and has subse-quently won many other awards, including the Grand Prix du Concours National des Artistes Soloistes, Prix Albert Roussel, Prix Gabriel Fauré, Prix du Concours International Marguerite Long/Jacques Thibaud, and Grand Prix du Concours International Cziffra. Mr. Collard was named Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur in January 2003. In addition to recitals throughout Europe, North and South America, Russia and the Far East,

Mr. Collard has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, including those of Zurich, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Paris, Lyon, London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vi-enna, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Atlanta and Tokyo. He has also performed at the London Proms Concerts and the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Bad Kissingen, Salzburg, Bath, Caramoor, Newport and Saratoga festivals.

His upcoming engagements include the Boston Symphony with André Previn, Pittsburgh Sym-phony with Yan Pascal Tortelier, Detroit Symphony with Charles Dutoit and Berlin Symphoniker with Jean-Claude Casadesus, as well as recitals in Houston, São Paulo, London, Paris and other inter-national music centers. A prolific recording artist with more than thirty titles to his credit, Mr. Col-lard’s discography includes: Rachmaninoff Études-Tableaux and Brahms Hungarian Dances (with pianist Michel Beroff ), both named by Stereo Review as “Records of the Year”; the Ravel concertos with Lorin Maazel and the Orchestre National de France, cited by Gramophone Magazine as “Best Concerto Recording”; and Chausson Concert, Op. 21 (with violinist Augustin Dumay and the Muir String Quartet), which won the Grand Prix du Disque. Jean-Philippe Collard lives in Paris with his wife and five children.

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Wednesday, June 15, 2011

CArLOS KALMAr’s biography can be found on page 10.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

Photo by © Elliot Holceker Photography

Joan and robert FeitlerSmart Family FoundationJoan and Robert Feitler and the Smart Family Foundation are proud to spon-sor the Opening Night performance at the 77th season of the Grant Park Music Festival. Native Chicagoans, the Feitlers have long celebrated and supported the arts in this city. Returning to Chicago in 1996 after living for many years in Milwaukee, Joan and Bob Feitler have been deeply involved in educational and arts funding through the Smart Fam-ily Foundation and through their own work with many Chicago and national organizations. The Smart Family Foun-dation funds and supports programs that develop students who are not only academically prepared, but also self-reli-ant and resilient. The Grant Park Music Festival is extremely grateful for their generosity.

A10 2011 Program Notes, Book 1 2011 Program Notes, Book 1 A11

What’s your hometown? Burbank, CA

Where did you study? Northwestern University – BM and MM degrees in clarinet performance, including private study with Robert Marcellus and Larry Combs.  

Was music part of your family?I’ve heard music often skips generations.  My great-grandfather studied piano in Germany and moved to Chicago to start a successful mu-sic conservatory there.  He was very influential in directing and planning all of the musical events for the 1893 World Columbian Exhibi-tion in Chicago.  His son (my grandfather) dis-liked music so much he ran away from home to California to avoid studying music with his father.  

What are some of your non-musical hobbies?My strongest interests are anything related to food; I love finding and cooking with the best ingredients. A friend and I just bought and split half a hog from a hog farmer down in Beasley, TX. My wife, Cynthia, and two daughters, Anna and Sarah come home frequently to see me doing something interesting like rendering lard or brining a ham.  

What else do you enjoy doing?Since 1987, I have owned and operated a small recording engineering company, Schubert Re-cording Services, specializing in the quality digital recording of classical music.  My most recent major CD releases have been the Cantata Project with the Houston Bach Society   and a release of spoken word tracks and jazz combo tracks titled ‘The Gift’ by Chicago writer Jack Zimmerman and saxophonist/composer An-drew Zimmerman.

What’s your hometown?   Coral Springs, FL

Where did you study?  Indiana University in Bloomington.  I also played in the Civic Or-chestra of Chicago and the New World Sym-phony after finishing my

Bachelor’s degree which was a continuation of my orchestra studies. 

How did you choose the bass?  I remember wanting to start playing the violin when I was about 10 years old.  A group of old-er students came to our school and played Walk Like An Egyptian on their violins.  I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.   It was my middle school orchestra teacher, Mrs. Black that suggested I try the bass instead.  I was the tallest member of the class and she needed a bass player.  It was a perfect fit and the rest is history. 

Where do you spend the rest of your year when not in Chicago?  I have been a member of the Gothenburg Sym-phony in Sweden since 2005.  It’s a fantastic or-chestra that does a lot of touring and recording.  Gustavo Dudamel has been our music director since 2007. 

What is  your favorite thing about your in-strument?   I love the function of the bass in the orchestra.  While we don’t often have the melody, we pro-vide  the foundation for both  the rhythm and the harmony.  Carrying the bass around is of course the downside!

What are some of you non-musical hobbies?  I really enjoy baking.  My mom got my daugh-ter and I matching mixing bowls and measuring cups for Christmas so we could do our baking together. 

born. There is even some evidence that this movement and the finale trace back to an aborted piano concerto on Basque themes on which Ravel had worked right after the First World War. There are several themes in this exposition: the lively opening group is balanced by another set that is more nostalgic and bluesy in character. The development section is an elaboration of the lively opening themes, ending with a brief cadenza in octaves as a link to the recapitulation. The lively themes are passed over quickly, but the nostalgic melodies are treated at some length. One melody is given as an atmospheric cadenza for harp; another as a trill-filled solo for the pianist. The jaunty vivacity of the beginning returns for a dazzling coda filled with flashing figuration shared by the upper winds and the solo trumpet.

When Ravel first showed the manuscript of the Adagio to Madame Long, she commented on the music’s effortless, flowing grace. The composer sighed, and told her that he had struggled to write the movement “bar by bar,” that it had cost him more anxiety than any of his other scores. It is impossible to hear Ravel’s toil in this lovely, ethereal music, whose haunting simplicity is reminis-cent, according to Arbie Orenstein, of the “archaic lyricism” of Eric Satie’s works. The movement begins with a long-breathed melody for solo piano over a rocking accompaniment. The piano weaves delicate strands of filigree around the lovely theme as it passes into the orchestra. The central section of the movement does not differ from the opening as much in melody as it does in texture — a gradual thickening occurs as the music proceeds. The texture then becomes again translucent, and the opening melody is heard on its return in the plaintive tones of the English horn. Tender string harmonies bring this magical movement to a quiet close.

The finale is a whirling showpiece for soloist and orchestra that again recalls the energetic world of jazz. Trombone slides, muted trumpet interjections, shrieking exclamations from the woodwinds abound. The episodes of the form tumble continuously one after another without time for even a breath on their way to the work’s abrupt end.

Symphonie fantaStique, Op. 14a (1830)Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)The Symphonie fantastique is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tenor and bass tubas, timpani, percussion, two harps and strings. The performance time is approximately 50 minutes. The Symphonie fantastique was first performed by the Grant Park Orchestra on July 25, 1937, Glenn Cliffe Bainum conducting.

By 1830, when he turned 27, Hector Berlioz had won the Prix de Rome and gained a certain no-toriety among the fickle Parisian public for his perplexingly original compositions. Hector Berlioz was also madly in love. The object of his amorous passion was an English actress of middling ability, one Harriet Smithson, whom the composer first saw when a touring English theatrical company performed Shakespeare in Paris in 1827. During the ensuing three years, this romance was entirely one-sided, since the young composer never met Harriet, but only knew her across the footlights as Juliet and Ophelia. He sent her such frantic love letters that she never responded to any of them, fearful of encouraging a madman. Berlioz, distraught and unable to work or sleep or eat, wandered the countryside around Paris until he dropped from exhaustion and had to be retrieved by friends.

Berlioz was still nursing his unrequited love for Harriet in 1830 when, full-blown Romantic that he was, his emotional state served as the germ for a composition based on a musical “Episode from the Life of an Artist,” as he subtitled the Symphonie fantastique. In this work, the artist visualizes his beloved through an opium-induced trance, first in his dreams, then at a ball, in the country, at his execution and, finally, as a participant in a witches’ sabbath. She is represented by a musical theme that appears in each of the five movements, an idée fixe (a term Berlioz borrowed from the just-emerging field of psychology to denote an unhealthy obsession) that is transformed to suit its imaginary musical surroundings. The idée fixe is treated kindly through the first three movements,

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

Meet the Festival’s new musicians(additional new musicians from our orchestra and chorus will be featured in upcoming program books)

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Christian Schubert, Clarinet

Jennifer Downing Olsson, Bass

2011 Program Notes, Book 1 A13

but after the artist has lost his head for love (literally — the string pizzicati followed by drum rolls and brass fanfares at the very end of the March to the Scaffold graphically represent the fall of the guillotine blade and the ceremony of the formal execution), the idée fixe is transmogrified into a jeering, strident parody of itself in the finale in music that is still original and disturbing almost two centuries after its creation. The sweet-to-sour changes in the idée fixe (heard first in the opening movement on unison violins and flute at the beginning of the fast tempo after a slow introduction) reflect Berlioz’s future relationship with his beloved, though, of course, he had no way to know it in 1830. Berlioz did in fact marry his Harriet–Ophelia–Juliet in 1833, but their happiness faded quickly, and he was virtually estranged from her within a decade.

The composer gave the following program as a guide to the Symphonie fantastique: “A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair. The narcotic dose, too weak to result in death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, sentiments and recollections are translated in his sick brain into musical thoughts and images. The beloved woman herself has become for him a melody, like a fixed idea which he finds and hears everywhere.

“PART I: Reveries and Passions. He first recalls that uneasiness of soul, that vague des passions, those moments of causeless melancholy and joy, which he experienced before seeing her whom he loves; then the volcanic love with which she suddenly inspired him, his moments of delirious an-guish, of jealous fury, his returns to loving tenderness, and his religious consolations.

“PART II: A Ball. He sees his beloved at a ball, in the midst of the tumult of a brilliant fête.

“PART III: Scene in the Country. One summer evening in the country he hears two shepherds playing a ranz-des-vaches in alternate dialogue; this pastoral duet, the scene around him, the light rustling of the trees gently swayed by the breeze, some hopes he has recently conceived, all combine to restore an unwonted calm to his heart and impart a more cheerful coloring to his thoughts; but she appears once more, his heart stops beating, he is agitated with painful presentiments; if she were to betray him! ... One of the shepherds resumes his artless melody, the other no longer answers him. The sun sets ... the sound of distant thunder ... solitude ... silence ...

“PART IV: March to the Scaffold. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death, and led to execution. The procession advances to the tones of a march which is now som-ber and wild, now brilliant and solemn, in which the dull sound of the tread of heavy feet follows without transition upon the most resounding outburst. At the end, the idée fixe reappears for an instant, like a last love-thought interrupted by the fatal stroke.

“PART V: Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. He sees himself at the Witches’ Sabbath, in the midst of a frightful group of ghosts, magicians and monsters of all sorts, who have come together for his obsequies. He hears strange noises, groans, ringing laughter, shrieks to which other shrieks seem to reply. The beloved melody again reappears, but it has lost its noble and timid character; it has become an ignoble, trivial and grotesque dance-tune; it is she who comes to the Witches’ Sabbath.... Howl-ings of joy at her arrival ... she takes part in the diabolic orgy ... Funeral knells, burlesque parody on the Dies Irae [the ancient ‘Day of Wrath’ chant from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass for the Dead]. Witches’ Dance. The Witches’ Dance and the Dies Irae together.”

©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

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