TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY

TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY Thursday, October 7 • 7:30 PMFriday, October 8 • 2:30 PMSaturday, October 9 • 7:30 PM

Land Acknowledgement

The Winspear Centre and Edmonton Symphony

Orchestra would like to acknowledge that we

are on Treaty 6 Territory, a traditional meeting

ground, gathering place, and traveling route

for many Indigenous Peoples. We honour and

recognize the rich artistic, cultural, and musical

traditions of the Cree, Nakota Sioux, Metis,

Dene, Saulteax, and the many more Indigenous

communities that call this land we share, home.

Dianne New Violin

Ewald Cheung Violin

Robert UchidaViolin and Leader

TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9

Cosette Justo ValdésConductor

F E AT U R E D M U S I C I A N S :

1/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker


Begin the Beguine PORTER (from Jubilee)

Jalousie ‘Tango Tzigane’ GADE

Estrellita PONCE

Por una cabeza GARDEL

El médico de pianos LÓPEZ-MARÍN

La Cumparsita RODRIGUEZ

Romanza Andaluza, SARASATE Op.22 No. 1

El Choclo VILLOLDO

Zigeunerweisen SARASATE

Estancia: GINASTERA Suite, Op.8a - Malambo



Begin the Beguine (from Jubilee)

PORTER

Cole Porter (1891-1964) and Moss Hart’s 1935

Broadway show Jubilee was inspired by the

golden jubilee of Great Britain’s King George V,

though a fictionalized European country featured

in the musical. The show may have only run for 169

performances, but during the Great Depression,

that qualified as a major success. That was helped

in no small part because of some great Cole Porter

songs, including Begin the Beguine. The beguine is a

Caribbean dance form, and combines both Latin and

French elements. Porter’s song helped to popularize

the dance outside the Caribbean.



Jalousie ‘Tango Tzigane’

GADE

It is definitely strange that one of the most famous

tangos ever written was written by a man born in

Denmark – rather far removed from the steamy

streets of Buenos Aires. Jacob Gade (1879-1963)

wrote Jalousie (“Jealousy”) in 1926, but it was when

Arthur Fiedler got hold of it and recorded it with his

Boston Pops at their very first recording session in

1935 that the work took off. By 1938, it was a major hit

in the United States, helping usher in the modern age

of both the “pops” orchestra, and of the orchestral

tango. The arrangement to be heard at these

performances is one of several on this program done

by Matt Naughtin, a veteran American composer and



arranger.

Por una cabeza

GARDEL

The song Por una Cabeza (“By the Head of a Horse”)

was written in 1935 by composer Carlos Gardel

(1890-1935) and lyricist Alfredo Le Pera. Its subject

is misfortune – the title refers to the length by which

a gambler has lost a bet on a horse race. A brief list

of movies in which this tune has been used includes:

Planet 51, Scent of a Woman, Delicatessen, True Lies,

All the King’s Men, Bad Santa, and Schindler’s List.

We hear it in another setting by Matt Naughtin.



El médico de pianos

LÓPEZ-MARÍN

Because of the embargo placed upon Cuba in the

mid-20 century, Jorge López Marin (b. 1949) had

to further his training in western art music in the

Soviet Union – he was accepted into the Tchaikovsky

Conservatory in Moscow, from which he graduated

in the mid 1970s. He returned to achieve acclaim in

his homeland as a musician and educator, including

as a teacher to Cosette Justo Valdés. López Marin’s

(b. 1949) danzón, El Médico de Pianos (“The Piano

Doctor”), was written to thank an American piano

tuner and repairman named Benjamin Treuhaft. Many

of the pianos available in Cuba at the time had come

originally from the Soviet Union, and the drastically



different, tropical climate had not been kind to them.

Treuhaft helped make López Marin’s piano playable

once again during a trip to Cuba in the 1990s. Treuhaft

subsequently founded the Send a Piano to Havana

project to donate quality pianos to Cuban students.

La Cumparsita

RODRIGUEZ

One of the reasons for the popularity of La

cumparsita, written in 1917 by Gerardo Rodriguez

(1897-1948), was the hit recording of it, with words

added to it, performed by Tito Schipa in 1930. Its

main theme has become the melody perhaps most

associated with the cliché of the ballroom tango.



Romanza Andaluza, Op.22 No. 1

SARASATE

Zigeunerweisen

SARASATE

We will hear two works at this performance by one

of the most famous and gifted violinist-composers

who ever lived. The Spaniard Pablo Martín Melitón

Sarasate y Navascuéz (1844-1908) was born four

years after Paganini died, and became his successor

in the violin pantheon. The greatest composers of the

day wrote works for him to play, but he also wrote

many for himself. Many of them, both his creations



and those written by others, follow a pattern; they

begin with a slow section designed to illustrate his

supreme mastery of lyricism and expression, followed

by a whirlwind cavalcade of breathtaking and

breakneck virtuoso music in which a full bag of violin

tricks is used.

Such is the case with the famous Zigeunerweisen

(“Gypsy Airs”) composed in 1878, and premiered

in Leipzig. It is rather loosely based on that most

traditional of gypsy dances, the csárdás. It has

become a favourite vehicle for prodigious violinists

since its 1863 premiere.

The lesser-known Romanza Andaluza came about

thanks to the enterprising German music publisher



Fritz Simrock. He had already cashed in on successful

sets of nationalist dances by Brahms (the Hungarian

Dances) and Dvořák (the Slavonic Dances). In 1877,

he commissioned Sarasate for a set of Spanish

Dances, and eventually eight were published in four

sets of two. The Romanza is the first dance of the

second set, and is a lyrical dance in 6/8 time. Written

originally for solo violin and piano, the version for

two violins to be heard tonight was arranged by Joel

Jacklich.



El Choclo

VILLOLDO

“Despite its many meanings ‘tango’ primarily

designates the most popular Argentine urban dance

of the 20th century,” summarizes the New Grove

Dictionary, and many composers of the last century

have created many splendid examples. Angel Villoldo

(1861-1919) was one of the first in the 20th century

to popularize tango in North America and Europe.

Among his most famous works is El choclo, which

became a major international favourite. Argentine

journalist Tito Livio Foppa recalled covering World

War One near the German front when, at a social

occasion, an official tried to pay tribute to the

visiting Argentine by playing what he thought was



the Argentine national anthem. It wasn’t – it was El

choclo, which he mistook for the country’s national

song.

Estancia: Suite, Op.8a - Malambo

GINASTERA

Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)

was asked to create a ballet for an impending South

American tour by Lincoln Kerstein’s Ballet Caravan

in 1941. With Estancia (“The Ranch”), Ginastera tried

to express, as he put it, “the deep and bare beauty

of the land, its richness and natural strength.” While

the ballet would finally be stated in 1952, its intended

first performances fell through, as the dance troupe



dissolved. Still, Ginastera rescued some of the music

for a four-movement suite, published as his Op.8a.

The final movement of the suite is the rhythmically

propulsive, brash and bright Malambo.



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TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY