Program Notes

…the light that breathes…
Yaniv Segal

Inspired by concepts in Daniel Mason’s incredible novel, North Woods, this piece explores the nature of absorption, relay, and eventual bloom. A cotyledon is an embryonic leaf in some plants that fuels its initial growth and then disappears into the plant. It gets energy from sunlight and turns that energy into a breathing organism, which also allows all other life on Earth to breathe, before being absorbed into the plant. My music starts with textures and hidden melodies –as if searching for the path forward– then grows as information and energy is encoded and transferred from one generation (or cell) to the next. As the work continues, we hear the peeling back of layers as each new growth subsumes the previous iteration. The light that breathes ends in a glorious celebration of energy and life.

Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra, Op. 129

Friedrich Gulda

Iconoclastic, unique, irreverent: these are just a few of the words that describe the distinctive personality, music, and career of Austrian composer/pianist Friedrich Gulda. As a young man, Gulda pursued the conventional path of a virtuoso pianist: winning prestigious competitions and concertizing around the world. In 1950, while in New York for his Carnegie Hall debut, Gulda visited the newly-opened Birdland Jazz club, where he heard performances by Sarah Vaughan and Duke Ellington, among others. The distinctive sounds and improvisatory nature of jazz captivated Gulda, and jazz became the most significant defining element in his career from that point onward. “Jazz,” Gulda declared, “is the only modern, progressive music … its rhythmic drive and risk … [are] an absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught.”

Gulda took up jazz piano and also began playing baritone saxophone. “There can be no guarantee that I will become a great jazz musician, but at least I shall know that I am doing the right thing,’” he said. “I don’t want to fall into the routine of the modern concert pianist’s life, nor do I want to ride the cheap triumphs of the Baroque bandwagon.’”

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Gulda immersed himself in jazz. He eventually played at Birdland himself, and in 1956, he performed at the Newport Jazz Festival. In the 1960s, Gulda created the Eurojazz Orchestra, and began collaborating with noted jazz musicians including Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, among others.

The Concerto for Cello and Wind Instruments reflects Gulda’s affinity for both jazz and classical idioms. Its five movements are a colorful and sometimes humorous musical pastiche of contrasting genres, timbres, and moods. The Overture juxtaposes the hard-driving groove of funky blues-rock with a dainty Austrian ländler. In the blues-rock sections, the cellist executes eyepopping riffs, while the sweetness of the ländler calls for the refined, warm expressiveness typical of Romantic cello repertoire. The Idyll begins with a gentle brass chorale, followed by the soloist reiterating the serene melody. Without transition, playful winds dance a lively waltz, which the soloist counters with a melancholy waltz theme of its own. The central Cadenza spotlights the cellist, who displays equal virtuosity in both classical and jazz idioms, including two sections of free improvisation. In one of the improvs, the cellist executes a series of eerie harmonics, almost as if the cello is whispering to itself. The Menuett begins in a quasi-Renaissance style, with the cellist, accompanied by guitar, presenting a modest self-effacing minor-key tune. Once again without transition, Gulda shifts to a pleasant contrasting melody for flute before the original Menuett briefly returns. The closing Finale alla marcia features both soloist and ensemble in a raucous polka that vies for prominence with a calmer second theme for cello and winds. The cello and drum kit trade riffs before the polka returns, growing louder, faster, and more insistent. The cello’s riffs lead into the final headlong rush to a triumphantly cheeky conclusion.

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“I desperately want to prove, not only to others, but also to myself, that I am not yet played out as a composer,” wrote Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to his patron Nadezhda von Meck in the spring of 1888. With the benefit of hindsight, the idea that Tchaikovsky could think himself “played out” is puzzling; after he completed the Fifth Symphony he went on to write Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and the “Pathétique” Symphony. All artists go through periods of self-doubt, however; and Tchaikovsky was plagued by creative insecurity more than most.

If you ask a Tchaikovsky fan to name their favorite symphony, they’ll most likely choose either the Fourth, with its dramatic “Fate” motif blaring in the brasses, or the Sixth (“Pathétique”). Sandwiched in between is the Fifth Symphony, often overlooked or undervalued when compared to its more popular neighbors. But the Fifth is a monument in its own right, showcasing Tchaikovsky’s undisputed mastery of melody; indeed, the Fifth rolls out one unforgettable tune after another. Over time, the Fifth Symphony has earned its place in the canon of orchestral repertoire itself, but Tchaikovsky, along with several 19th century music critics, wavered in his opinion of its worth. At the end of the summer in 1888, Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck, “It seems to me that I have not blundered, that it has turned out well,” and to his nephew Vladimir Davidov after a concert in Hamburg, “The Fifth Symphony was magnificently played and I like it far better now, after having held a bad opinion of it for some time.” After a performance in Prague, however, Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck, “I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication which the public instinctively recognizes.”

Critics dismissed the new symphony as beneath Tchaikovsky’s abilities, and one American critic damned the composer with faint praise when he opined, “[Tchaikovsky] has been criticized for the occasionally excessive harshness of his harmony, for now and then descending to the trivial and tawdry in his ornamental figuration, and also for a tendency to develop comparatively insignificant material to inordinate length. But, in spite of the prevailing wild savagery of his music, its originality and the genuineness of its fire and sentiment are not to be denied.”

The Fifth Symphony features a theme that recurs in all four movements. We hear it first in the lowest chalumeau register of the clarinet, which conveys an air of foreboding. Critic Michael Steinberg described the theme’s effects: “It will recur as a catastrophic interruption of the second movement’s love song, as an enervated ghost that approaches the languid dancers of the waltz, and … in majestic and blazing E major triumph.”

In 1939, Tchaikovsky’s poignant, wistful horn solo from the Andante cantabile reached new audiences when Mack David, Mack Davis, and Andre Kostelanetz transformed it into the popular song “Moon Love,” which became a hit for Frank Sinatra, and also for Glenn Miller.

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