Overture to ‘La Forza del Destino’
Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi was born on Oct. 9 or 10, 1813 (he was baptized on Oct. 11), in La Roncole, near Busseto, Italy, and died in Milan on Jan. 27, 1901. He was, without rival, the greatest composer of Italian opera of the late 19th century. Outside of his operatic repertoire, Verdi also contributed several important works to the choral repertoire, none more important than his setting of the liturgy of the Requiem Mass, dedicated to the memory of Alessandro Manzoni. The premiere of Verdi’s opera La Forza del Destino took place under the composer’s direction in St. Petersburg, but not with its popular overture, which was written for the revised version of the opera in 1869 and was first performed on Feb. 27, 1869, at La Scala in Milan. It is scored for piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, two harps and strings.

La Forza del Destino, whose title is usually translated literally as The Force of Destiny, but could also be called The Power of Fate, was composed in 1863 to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and is Verdi’s 22nd opera. After its St. Petersburg premiere, Verdi had it performed elsewhere under the title Don Alvaro, one of the main characters from the Spanish play Don Alvaro, ó La Fuerza del Sino (1835) by Angel Pedro de Saavedra Ramírez de Banquedano, the Duke of Rivas. Part of the opera makes use of a scene from Friedrich Schiller’s drama Wallenstein’s Camp.

As is the case with so many of Verdi’s operas, La Forza del Destino, is filled with passionate love, assumed identities, revenge and familial strife. The opera has engendered the superstition that it is somehow cursed. For example, the noted baritone Leonard Warren collapsed and died during a 1960 performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Luciano Pavarotti never performed it and Franco Corelli was known to follow small rituals during performances to avoid bad luck. All superstition aside, the overture comprises a potpourri of themes and motives from the opera itself, beginning with three chords representing fate or destiny as heard toward the end of the first of its four acts. Additional quotations refer to Alvaro’s aria from Act Four (“Le minnaccie, i fieri accenti”), the prayer (“Pace, pace, mio dio”) sung by the female lead, Leonora, in Act Two, and part of her duet with Padre Guardiano (“Or siam soli”). Among the many legendary interpreters of the role of Leonora was the great American soprano Leontyne Price.

‘Bohemian Queen’ (Concerto for Trumpet and Strings)
Clarice Assad

Brazilian-American composer, arranger, pianist and vocalist, Clarice Assad was born in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, on Feb. 9, 1978, into a musical family. Her father Sergio and uncle Odair are well-known and respected classical guitarists, while her aunt Badi is a singer and songwriter. Assad holds degrees from Roosevelt University and the University of Michigan, where she studied with Michael Daugherty. She has won a Grammy and has been nominated for another. Her music is represented on a host of solo albums, as well as recordings of her music performed by others. After years of travel, study and performance in Europe and the United States, she moved to Chicago. Her style is influenced by the music of her native Brazil, as well as jazz and other modern idioms. Her “Bohemian Queen” (Concerto for Trumpet) is the result of a commission from several orchestras, including the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, and was given its premiere on Nov. 20, 2022, with Mary Elizabeth Bowden performing with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Allen Tinkham. The work is scored for solo trumpet and strings.

Clarice Assad’s new trumpet concerto, “Bohemian Queen,” comprises three movements. Assad wrote the following words about the piece:

“A Surrealist Painter Ahead of Her Time:  Bohemian Queen is a concerto for trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden, trumpet and string orchestra, and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. The subject of the piece is the surrealist art of Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977), an American painter based in Chicago who was called ‘the queen of the bohemian artists,’ She was profoundly in the jazz scene and friends with no less than musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan and used to throw some amazing parties for them.”

The piece is in three movements. Inspired by two of her paintings (I. “Girl Searching,” 1945), (II. “The Stroll,” 1943) and an imaginary depiction of her memorable parties (III. “Hyde Park Jam”) where she used to sit in as a pianist herself and play with jazz’s greatest masters.

Abercrombie’s paintings are characterized by their use of dreamlike symbolism and careful attention to detail. Her work often featured animals and plants in surreal, otherworldly settings. In addition to her role as a painter, Abercrombie was also a musician and poet. She was an active member of the Chicago jazz scene — a bold move for a white woman when racial tensions were high in the United States.

The work shows many aspects of Assad’s eclectic style, especially jazz (note the inclusion of finger-snapping), all couched in an easily accessible, audience-friendly package.

‘Polovtsian Dances’
Alexander Borodin

Alexander Borodin was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on Nov. 12, 1833, and died there on Feb. 27, 1887. Although best known as a composer, his profession was that of a medical doctor and professor of chemistry and he distinguished himself in each of his careers. The “Polovtsian Dances” are derived from his most famous opera, Prince Igor (1890). The work is scored for chorus and large orchestra. 

Alexander Borodin, one of the most important Russian composers of the second half of the 19th century, certainly led an unusual life. He was an internationally recognized scientist whose chaotic personal living habits resembled the stereotype of the mad scientist and absent-minded professor. Countless numbers of extended family (including pets) and friends populated the Borodin household constantly. A rather handsome fellow, he attracted several young women admirers, even after his marriage. One is left to wonder how Borodin ever found time for music.

Indeed, his enduring fame rests on a very small repertory of music — most notably his Symphony No. 2, his Second String Quartet and excerpts from his opera, Prince Igor. Our recognition of his career as a chemist should not be passed over lightly. He studied and worked in Russia, Italy and Germany, and his publications were widely published and read. His scientific credentials also included botany, zoology, anatomy and crystallography. Music always formed an important part of his life, even though his profession lay elsewhere. Understandably, however, composition had to take a back seat to his “real” career. He was not the only Russian composer of his generation about whom this could be said. Modest Musorgsky, arguably the most important of the “Mighty Handful” — to which Borodin belonged, along with Musorgsky, Mili Balakirev, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and César Cui — worked as a civil servant. Part-time composer that he was, Borodin never abandoned his interest in musical composition. His talents, which were abundantly evident even at an early age — his earliest composition, a polka for piano, was written when he was 9 years old — gradually attracted attention. His first admirers were Balakirev and Cui, later to extend to Franz Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov. Liszt’s advocacy in particular helped spread Borodin’s fame to Western Europe.

Audiences cherish Borodin’s music for its exotic, oriental lyricism and brilliant orchestrations. All of this is on ample display in his “Polovtsian Dances” from Act II of Prince Igor. The opera itself is episodic in nature and offers the listener a vast panorama of picturesque scenes. The “Polovtsian Dances,” especially No. 17, have taken on a particular popularity in the concert hall, a notoriety that was only enhanced by their adaptation in the Broadway musical, Kismet (1953), in which one of its most lyrical tunes became known as “Stranger in Paradise.” Jazz musicians Paul Whiteman and Artie Shaw also made adaptations of Borodin’s music in the 1930s.

The choral part of Polovtsian Dance No. 17 translates as follows: “Fly away on wings of wind / To native lands, our native song, / To there, where we sang you freely, / Where we were so carefree with you. / There, under the hot sky, / With bliss the air is full, / There, to the murmur of the sea, mountains doze in the clouds. / There, the sun shines so brightly, / Bathing [our] native mountains in light. / In the meadows, roses bloom luxuriously, / And nightingales sing in the green forests; / And sweet grape grows. / There is more carefree for you, song… / And so fly away there!”