Program Notes C�

GrantParkMusicFestivalSeventy-fifth Season

Grant Park Orchestra and ChorusCarlos Kalmar, Principal ConductorChristopher Bell, Chorus Director

Thirteenth Program: Dances and FairytalesWednesday, July 15, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. Jay Pritzker PavilionGRANT PARK ORChESTRAGilbert Varga, Conductor

OFFENBACh Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld

FRANCK Le Chasseur Maudit, Symphonic Poem

RAVEL Suite from Mother Goose

Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty hop o’ My Thumb Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas Conversations of Beauty and the Beast The Fairy Garden

ROUSSEL Bacchus et Ariane, Suite No. 2, Op. 43

Program Notes C9

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Wednesday, July 15 and Saturday, July 18, 2009 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

Renowned for his exemplary baton technique, GiLBERT VARGA has held positions with and guest conducted many of the major orchestras throughout the world. In the earlier part of his conducting career, Varga concentrated on work with chamber orchestras, particularly the Tibor Varga Chamber Orchestra, before rapidly developing a reputation as a symphonic conductor. he was Chief Conductor of the hofer Symphoniker between 1980 and 1985, and from 1985 to 1990 Chief Conductor of the Philharmonia hungarica in Marl. In 1991 until 1995 Varga took up the position of Permanent Guest Conductor

of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and from 1997 to 2000 was Principal Guest of the Malmö Symphony. In 1997 Varga was appointed Music Director of the Basque National Symphony Orchestra, leading them through ten seasons, during which time he conducted them on tours across Europe and South America. Varga has conducted many of Europe’s major orchestras; in recent and forthcoming seasons these include the Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Berlin Radio Symphony, Gürzenich, Frankfurt Museumgesellschaft, MDR Leipzig, hungarian National Philharmonic, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Basel Symphony and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. In North America he conducts the Minnesota Orchestra every season, and elsewhere in the U.S. has conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas, Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Indianapolis Symphonies. his appearance with the Grant Park Orchestra marks his debut here and he looks forward to debuts with the Seattle and Utah Symphonies in the coming season. Varga’s discography includes recordings with ASV, Discover Records, Tring, Koch International and Claves Recordings.

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C�0 Program Notes

Overture tO Orpheus in the underwOrld (1858)Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)The Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld is scored for pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. The performance time is ten minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August ��, �9��, George Dasch conducting.

In 1855, Jacques Offenbach opened a little theater in the Champs-Ely-sées for the presentation of one-act musical farces using a small orchestra and a handful of singers. He managed to keep the venture afloat, but by 1858 he had amassed enough debts to put the future of the operation in doubt. To raise the money needed to pay his bills, he created a riotous musical satire based on the exploits of the ancient gods, notably those told in the legend of Orpheus and Euridice — Orpheus in the Underworld. The work, the first in which his famous Can-Can melody appears, did not have much success until the review of critic Jules Janin appeared. When Janin described Orpheus as “a profanation of holy and glorious antiquity in a spirit of irreverence that bordered on blasphemy,” the Parisians rushed to see for themselves what outrages Offenbach had committed. The highly profitable run ended after 227 consecutive performances only when the cast pleaded exhaustion.

Since Offenbach’s instrumental resources at the Champs Elysées theater were so limited, the original overtures for his productions there were little more than short preludes. For later produc-tions with full orchestra, new overtures were devised by other hands utilizing Offenbach’s melodies. (This practice continues on Broadway, where the overture is usually the work of the arranger/or-chestrator rather than that of the show’s composer.) The present Orpheus in the Underworld Overture was written by Carl Binder for the Viennese premiere.

le Chasseur maudit (“the aCCursed huntsman”) (1882)César Franck (1822-1890)Le Chasseur Maudit is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percus-sion and strings. The performance time is fourteen minutes. This is the first performance of the work by the Grant Park Orchestra.

An entire coven of 19th-century composers had a preternatural in-terest in the supernatural — Berlioz conjured up a hellish brigade in his epochal Symphonie Fantastique; Paganini was said to have possessed fiddling powers not of this earth (the Church did not allow his coffin to be buried in consecrated ground for over two years after his death — in the neighborhoods where the suspect box was kept, the inhabitants claimed that they heard ghostly violin sounds emanating from therein in the still of the night); Liszt made his piano dance with death and the devil; the single most famous strain Chopin wrote is a funeral march. Even the pacific César Franck, master organist of Ste. Clothilde in Paris, mentor of countless fanatically devoted students, paragon of professional and personal virtue, made a musical visit to the nether regions.

In 1882, soon after completing the oratorio Les Béatitudes and a “Biblical Scene” for soloists, chorus and orchestra based on the story of Rebecca, Franck turned for the subject of his next work to a cautionary tale rendered in the form of a ballad poem by the German writer Gottfried August Bürger (1747-1794), one of the principal advocates of the proto-Romantic Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) literary movement. Bürger’s poem Der Wilde Jäger was reworked in English by Sir Walter Scott in 1796 as The Wild Huntsman, and served to inspire César Franck to the composition of a symphonic poem. Donald N. Ferguson offered the following précis of the saga: “The tale is one of the countless versions of the story of the huntsman who would not refrain from his favorite sport even on the Lord’s day. hackenberg, a Count in the Drömling, was so passionately fond of hunting that he even forced his peasants to join in his sport. One Sunday, when the chase was at its most exciting pitch, two strange horsemen joined the party. The undaunted hackenberg welcomed

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Wednesday, July 15 and Saturday, July 18, 2009

Program Notes C��

Wednesday, July 15 and Saturday, July 18, 2009 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

the newcomers, riding with them and chasing the stag across moor and field right into the chapel of a holy hermit. At this mischance, the Count blasphemed God, and suddenly there was a ghastly silence. he tried to blow his horn. It gave forth no sound. Even the hounds ceased baying. At last there came a voice from a cloud: ‘The measure of thy cup is full; be chased forever through the wood!’ and from the bowels of the earth arose misbegotten hounds of hell.”

Franck altered the title of Bürger’s tale slightly for his symphonic poem — Le Chasseur maudit (“The Accursed Huntsman”) — but followed the progress of the story closely in his music. The com-poser provided a preface explaining each of the work’s four sections. “It was Sunday morning; from afar sounded the joyous ringing of bells and the glad songs of the people.” horn calls tumble one after another as introduction to a hymnal cello melody representing dawn. Church bells peal, but cannot subdue the huntsman’s calls. “The chase dashes through cornfields, brakes and meadows. Stop, Count, I pray! Hear the pious songs! No! And the horsemen rush onward like the whirlwind.” The hunt is away with galloping rhythms which grow more frantic and untamed as the chase is joined. “Suddenly the Count is alone; his horse will go no farther; he blows his horn, but his horn no longer sounds.... A lugubrious, implacable voice curses him. ‘Sacrilege!’ it says. ‘Thou shalt be forever hunted through Hell.’ Tremulous string figures and uncertain harmonies in the winds served as background to the stentorian pronouncements of the trombones. “The flames dart from everywhere. The Count, maddened by terror, flees, faster and faster, pursued by a pack of devils.” The impious Count’s eternal, infernal damnation is depicted in one of the most violent and cataclysmic episodes in French orchestral music.

Suite FrOm mOther GOOse (1908)maurice ravel (1875-1937)Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite is scored for pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo, English horn and contrabassoon, two horns, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta and strings. The performance time is sixteen minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed the Suite on July ��, �96�, Irwin Hoffman conducting.

“I would settle down on his lap, and tirelessly he would begin, ‘Once upon a time ...’ It was Beauty and the Beast and The Ugly Empress of the Pagodas, and, above all, the adventures of a little mouse he invented for me.” So Mimi Godebski reminisced in later years about the visits of Maurice Ravel to her family’s home during her childhood. Ravel, a contented bachelor, enjoyed those visits to the Godebski’s, and took special delight in playing with the young children — cutting out paper dolls, telling stories, romping around on all fours. Young Mimi and her brother Jean were in the first stages of piano tutelage in 1908, and Ravel decided to encourage their studies by composing some little pieces for them portraying Sleeping Beauty, Hop o’ My Thumb, Empress of the Pagodas and Beauty and the Beast. To these he added an evocation of The Fairy Garden as a postlude. In 1911, he made an orchestral transcription of the original five pieces, added to them a prelude, an opening scene and connecting interludes, and produced a ballet with a scenario based on Sleeping Beauty for the Théâtre des Arts in Paris.

The Mother Goose Suite comprises the five orchestrated movements of Ravel’s original piano version. The tiny Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, only twenty measures long, depicts the Good Fairy, who watches over the Princess during her somnolence. Hop o’ My Thumb treats the old legend taken from Perrault’s anthology of 1697. “A boy believed,” Ravel noted of the tale, “that he could easily find his path by means of the bread crumbs which he had scattered wherever he passed; but he was very much surprised when he could not find a single crumb: the birds had come and eaten everything up.” Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas portrays a young girl cursed with ugliness by a wicked fairy. The tale, however, has a happy ending in which the Empress’ beauty is restored. In the Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, the high woodwinds sing the delicate words of the Beauty, while the Beast is portrayed by the lumbering contrabassoon. At first the two converse, politely taking turns in the dialogue, but after their betrothal both melodies are entwined, and finally the Beast’s theme is transfigured into a floating wisp in the most ethereal reaches of the solo violin’s range. The rapt, introspective splendor of the closing Fairy Garden is Ravel’s masterful summation of the beauty, mystery and wonder that pervade Mother Goose.

Program Notes C��

BaCChus et ariane Suite NO. 2, Op. 43 (1930)Albert roussel (1869-1937)Roussel’s Bacchus et Ariane Suite No. 2 is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoon, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, celesta and strings. The performance time is twenty minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this Suite on July �0, �9��, Milton Katims conducting.

Albert Roussel, a leading figure in French music during the years be-tween the two world wars, was orphaned at an early age and raised first by his grandfather, the mayor of his native town of Tourcoing, at the Belgian border thirty miles from the North Sea, and later by a maternal aunt. Though he showed musical promise as a boy, Roussel decided upon a naval career, and he was admitted to the École Navale as a cadet in 1887. The duty and travels of military life did nothing to diminish his interest in music, however, and in 1894 he resigned his naval commission to devote himself to the study of composition. After several years of private tuition and some tentative creative undertakings, he enrolled in 1898 in Vincent d’Indy’s Schola Cantorum, recently formed as a rival to the venerable Paris Conservatoire, to begin an imposing ten-year cur-riculum, which he saw to completion. Roussel was appointed to teach the counterpoint class at the Schola beginning in 1902, and he remained in that post for the next dozen years; Eric Satie and Edgar Varèse were among his pupils. By the time he finally completed his studies at the Schola, in 1908, Roussel had already written several large works, including his First Symphony.

In 1909, Roussel went on an extended tour of India and Southeast Asia. his music was deeply affected by that exotic experience, and two of the works that first brought him wide attention (the orchestral suite Evocations and the opéra-ballet Padmâvatî) were based on hindu legends and em-ployed Indian musical motifs. With the outbreak of World War I, Roussel sought re-admission to the armed forces, and, after a period as an ambulance driver, he was taken into the artillery corps. Following the war, he lived on the coast in Brittany and later in Normandy, where, despite persistent health problems, he produced a succession of major scores. his eminent position in French cultural life was recognized by a week-long festival of his music in Paris in 1929 to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. he visited the United States the following year for the premiere of his Third Symphony, commissioned for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Roussel’s life-long interest in music education was reflected in the composition that he left unfinished at his death, in 1937: a large theatrical piece involving workers’ choral groups.

Roussel’s earliest compositions reflect the academic style and cyclical forms advocated by the Schola Cantorum and its director, Vincent d’Indy. his later works, from the years immediately before World War I, such as the ballet The Spider’s Feast, show the influence of the Impressionists, especially Ravel, in matters of scoring, harmony and melodic construction. The hindu-inspired pieces and those that followed the pre-war compositions are marked by visceral energy, a more dissonant harmonic palette and an angular rhythmic structure. By 1926, Roussel had created a unique idiom that shared several techniques with the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and others, but which was distinctly his own. French musicologist harry halbreich summarized the most impor-tant characteristics of Roussel’s mature style: “Long and winding melodic curves, harsh but refined and often polytonal harmony, a rhythmic drive of enormous energy, and finally a richly colored and brilliant orchestral writing, with those purple and golden brasses that are quite unmatched by any other composer.”

Roussel’s colorful score for the ballet Bacchus et Ariane is among the most important works of his last decade. For his subject matter, he turned to the ancient Greek legend of Ariadne, Theseus and Bacchus that had inspired composers from Monteverdi to Strauss. In the tale, Theseus is returning from Crete with Ariadne, whom he has rescued from the Minotaur. After landing on the deserted island of Naxos, Theseus and his warriors are driven off by the god Bacchus in disguise, leaving Ariadne behind in a trance-like sleep. She dreams she is dancing with Bacchus. Roussel’s biographer Basil Deane recounted the rest of the story: “At the beginning of Act II [and of the Second Suite], Ariadne awakens and, finding herself alone, climbs to the summit of the rocks. Looking seaward,

Wednesday, July 15 and Saturday, July 18, 2009 GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL

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C�� Program Notes

she discerns the receding sail of Theseus’ galley. Terrified, she attempts to throw herself into the sea, but falls instead into the embrace of Bacchus. Together they resume the dream dance. Their lips unite in a kiss which releases a Dionysiac enchantment, whereupon the island comes to life, and vine-wreathed fauns and maenads spring from among the rocks, crowding the scene. Two of them offer a golden goblet filled with grape juice to Ariadne. She drinks and, intoxicated, dances with mounting frenzy, first alone, then with Bacchus. The entire troop of followers joins in a Bac-chanalia, while the god conducts Ariadne to the highest pinnacle and crowns her with a diadem of stars ravished from the heavenly constellations.”

The Second Suite (Act II) is divided into eight continuous scenes. The first scene depicts Ari-adne’s slumber, with somnolent rhythms and a sedate melody of small intervals. In scene 2, she wakens, looks around in amazement to find she has been abandoned, runs about fitfully, and climbs a rock looking for Theseus, all to the accompaniment of tense music in changing meters. Bacchus reappears, and she slips from the rock into his arms and (scene 3) they briefly resume the dream dance from the first act to a long-limbed melody of wide intervals played by the strings. Then (scene 4) the god dances alone to his own slightly inebriated, scherzando musical strain in jaunty 6/8 meter. After a brief pause, the sensuous music of Scene 5 accompanies The Kiss of the God, by which Ariadne becomes immortal. The rustling, atmospheric music of the Dionysiac Enchantment is inter-rupted by savage rhythms as the Bacchantes march past. Ariadne expresses her new-found happi-ness over her love of Bacchus in a solo dance (scene 6) to an expressive, lyrical movement, begun by the solo violin, that gradually grows to include the entire orchestra. As Bacchus and Ariadne dance together to vigorous music of elemental power (scene 7), the whole company is drawn into the revels. The vibrant closing Bacchanale is filled with furious rhythmic energy and blazing orches-tral sonorities, one of the most intoxicating paeans to the God of Wine ever written.

©2009 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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