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Why should I buy the New Creations Festival Pack?
Let us give you 34 reasons: 1 week. 3 concerts. 3 Pulitzer Prize-Winning composers. 10 cutting edge works. 2 world premieres. 5 Canadian premieres. 8 world-famous soloists. 1 electric violin. And Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Need more? Read on, or buy your New Creations Festival tickets now!
Thurs. Mar. 30 at 8:00 pm
Peter Oundjian, conductor/host
Emanuel Ax, piano
Leila Josefowicz, electric violin
The Festival opens with the world premiere of a TSO commission by Canadian Composer Jacques Hetu. An eclectic composer, Mr. Hetu is known for his richly toned, lyrical music. Here’s what he has to say about Variations Concertantes:
This composition might be described as a combination of concerto for orchestra and variation form. With mood changes ranging from peaceful to dramatic to exuberant, each variation exhibits a specific orchestral colour and develops one or another of the motifs presented in the theme. The overall form of the work may be seen as a kaleidoscopic succession of crescendos and decrescendos.
This concert also features the works of not one, but two (count ‘em) Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, Melinda Wagner and John Adams. Melinda Wagner’s Extremity of Sky, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and premiered in 2004 by the CSO with pianist Emanuel Ax, who is also performing it with the TSO; he has called it the best concerto written in the last two decades. The premiere met with rave reviews:
It is an absorbing, exhilarating piece, packed with difficulties yet wondrously clear to the ear and mind… angular melodies and motor-rhythms that fold seamlessly into luminously transparent textures… punchy feints of figuration… a hauntingly beautiful slow movement… The finale recollects earlier materials, now wittily transformed… The concerto all but explodes with bold, confident gestures and richly expressive piano writing ranging from rhapsodic to percussive. Wagner makes canny use of the seismic energy and vast coloristic palette of the 21st Century orchestra… This concert is worth catching for "Extremity of Sky" all by itself.
John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune
Did you know that John Adams is the most frequently performed living American composer of orchestral music? It’s true, and for good reason. Adams is unapologetic about his blending of populism with intellectual rigor, and as a result, his music manages to harness the rhythmic energy of Minimalism to the harmonies and orchestral colours of late-Romanticism. His featured work on this concert, The Dharma at Big Sur, was composed for the dedication of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2003. Written for electric violin and orchestra, the piece was inspired by literary impressions of the California landscape by such writers as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Henry Miller. The New York Times praised “the rich intricacies in the orchestra, with haunting stretches of music that seem laconic in some laid-back Los Angeles way, yet tremble underneath with fidgety figures, wayward counterpoint and fractured rhythms... The solo part…deftly evokes Appalachian fiddle music, an Indian sitar and wistful jazz riffs with wailing hints of Jimi Hendrix... The piece built to an ecstatic final section... a rapturous din so buzzing with piled-on activity and tension that you could not tell whether the music was about to explode or to implode.”
Jacques Hetu and Melinda Wagner will both be attending this concert, so be sure to tell them what you thought at the post-concert party!
Notes by Margot Rejskind
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Sat. Apr. 1 at 8:00 pm
Hugh Wolff, conductor
Peter Oundjian, host
Leon Fleisher, piano
Evelyn Glennie, percussion
Joel Quarrington, double bass
The East to which the title of this concert refers is embodied in the Percussion Concerto of Chen Yi. Composed for Evelyn Glennie (who will perform it with the TSO) and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Percussion Concerto is deeply inspired by the arts of the Beijing Opera and incorporates many traditional Chinese instruments and colours into the orchestral sound. The inspiration for the first movement comes from the traditional Beijing Opera tune “The Night Deepens” from the opera Farewell to my Concubine, and features the Chinese dagu (big drum). The second movement is a realization of a poem “Prelude to Water Tune” by Su Shi (1036-1101), on the exaggerated reciting voice in Chinese operatic style, while the percussion instruments play the mysterious textures to support the human voice. The third movement is a fixed rhythmic pattern in Beijing Opera percussion performance used in martial scenes; the movement culminates in a solo cadenza that brings in sets of tom-toms and Beijing Opera gongs, creating a fiery ending for the work.
The orchestra is used subtly, the references to Chinese opera are well integrated into a score tailored for Western musicians and instruments, and the work builds to a powerful yet complex climax. It is poetic music in which sounds exotic to Western ears are deployed without their exoticism being advertised.
Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, October 8, 2001
John Harbison is one of America's most distinguished artistic figures. A Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, his music is distinguished by its exceptional resourcefulness and expressive range, and he is considered to be "original, varied, and absorbing - relatively easy for audiences to grasp and yet formal and complex enough to hold our interest through repeated hearings - his style boasts both lucidity and logic" (Fanfare 1993). He has written for every conceivable type of concert performance, ranging from the grandest to the most intimate, pieces that embrace jazz along with the pre-classical forms.
But the truly amazing thing about his Concerto for Bass Viol and Orchestra is actually the genesis of the piece: it was commissioned by the International Society of Bassists in memory of David Capoccioni and Michael Hammond, and has been funded by the family and friends of David Capoccioni, as well as 15 different orchestras. The piece will have a sort of rolling premiere, beginning here with the TSO on April 1st, and going on for almost two years, with performances throughout North America. This kind of cooperative commission is unprecented in the classical music world – and a testament to the strong sense of community felt by bassists.
The piece is in three movements -Lamento, Cavatina, and Rondo. The use of the term "bass viol" was very deliberate, says Harbison:
The introduction [to the Lamento] is kind of a pre-history, in which I tried to set a scene of the bass in its old consort. The physical shape of the instrument, having not shifted the way the other violin family instruments did, obviously still shapes the sound.
Paul Hindemith’s Klaviermusik mit orchester (Klavier: linke Hand) is equally remarkable, though for slightly different reasons. This piece was commissioned in 1923, when Hindemith was still experimenting with number of compositional styles, from neo-Baroque to ruthlessly modern. It was ordered by the Viennese pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the opening days of the First World War, and was looking for repertoire written for left-hand-only piano.
Unfortunately, Wittgenstein was a fan of the late 19th Century Romantic sound, and he so disliked to resulting score that he never performed it. However, because he had commissioned the piece, he held the exclusive performance rights, which he tenaciously refused to relinquish. The piece could not be performed until Wittgenstein’s death in 1961, by which time Hindemith, having criss-crossed the Atlantic in his quest to escape the Nazi regime in Germany, had long-since misplaced the manuscript. It was assumed that the piece was lost forever.
It resurfaced in 2002, when it was sold by Wittgenstein Estate to the Hindemith Foundation. It received its world premiere by Leon Fleisher, an unparalleled master of the left-handed repertoire, who had this to say about it:
This is very, very energetic music that must be interpreted with enormous commitment…Hindemith had a superbe knack for musical wit and humour. This piece is not easy to play! There are a lot of octaves – you have to be in good physical condition. The last movement has enormous difficulties…here again, you notice Hindemith’s humour. This piece gives me great joy to play. The piece is one of his best.
John Harbison and Chen Yi will both be attending this performance. Incidentally, Chen is her family name, and Yi is her personal name, so you can correctly call her Dr. Chen, Ms Chen, or Chen Yi. So now you know what to call her when you chat her up at the post-concert party!
Notes by Margot Rejskind
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Wed. Apr. 5 at 8:00 pm
Peter Oundjian, conductor/host
Peter Serkin, piano
Jacques Israelievitch, violin
Michael Israelievitch, marimba
Bartok’s famed Concerto for Orchestra may not be, strictly speaking, a new creation, given that it was composed in 1943. But its depth and complexity have made it a continual challenge, both for listeners and for performers, and the work, indisputably one of the greatest masterworks of the Twentieth century, continues to fascinate.
Commissioned by the Koussevitsky Music Foundation for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Bartok wrote the piece during his final struggle with leukemia, and it was one of his last. The concept of the work was essentially unprecented: the orchestra is its own soloist, and each instrumental section is given its own virtuosic solo passage within the piece. It is a work of strong personality, and stark contrasts, juxtaposing washes of dark, nocturnal sound with faster passages of joyful merriment.
Balancing tradition and experiment, tonality and atonality, art music and folk music, order and chaos, this pluralistic music summarizes Bartók’s whole creative development. It is shot through with the sounds and practices of the folk music (not just Hungarian, or even European) that Bartók had spent forty years studying, incorporating a Hungarian hora, brass-calls from Romanian shepherd tunes, a portion of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (movement I), and even the popular tune “I’m off to chez Maxim” from the opera The Merry Widow.
This concert also features Peter Lieberson’s Piano Concerto, composed in 1982 for pianist Peter Serkin, who will perform it in this concert, and the Canadian premiere of Alexander Levkovich’s Isle of a Beautiful Illusion, written for TSO Concertmaster Jacques Israelievitch and his son, percussionist Michael Israelievitch. Both composers will be present for this performance.
Notes by Margot Rejskind
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