The Santa Fe Symphony

Program

BACH ON STAGE
June 20 @ 4:00 PM—THE LENSIC

Many thanks to 2021 Spring Virtual Concert Season Underwriters:

Neuberger Berman | Faith & David Pedowitz

Special Thanks to Full Concert Underwriter
ANN NEUBERGER ACEVES

With additional support provided by:

Sotheby's International Realty
Gregg Antonsen | Marion Skubi

Special thanks to:

Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center &

Dr. James Marx, Executive Director of Quality and Risk Management

PROGRAM

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048

Allegro

David Felberg, Concertmaster; Nicolle Maniaci, Principal Violin II; Guillermo Figueroa, Violin; Kim Fredenburgh, Principal Viola; Viola da Braccio, Viola; Christine Rancier, Viola; Joel Becktell, Assistant Principal Cello; Melinda Mack, Cello; James Holland, Cello; Terry Pruitt, Principal Bass; Luke Gullickson, Harpsichord

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

Water Music, Suite No. 2 in D Major, arr. for double reeds and harpsichord

Hornpipe

Elaine Heltman, Principal Oboe; Rebecca Ray, Oboe; Stefanie Przbylska, Principal Bassoon; Leslie Shultis, Bassoon; Elizabeth vanArsdel, Contrabassoon; Luke Gullickson, Harpsichord

PHILIP GLASS

Piece in the Shape of a Square
David Felberg, Concertmaster; Jesse Tatum, Principal Flute

GEORGE WALKER

String Quartet No. 1

Lyric for Strings

The Santa Fe Symphony Strings
Guillermo Figueroa, Conductor

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA

Milonga del ángel, arranged for cello quartet

Joel Becktell, Assistant Principal Cello; Melinda Mack, Cello; Lisa Collins, Cello; James Holland, Cello

PAUL ANKA

My Way, arranged for cello quartet

Joel Becktell, Assistant Principal Cello; Melinda Mack, Cello; Lisa Collins, Cello; James Holland, Cello

ERIC WALTERS

Flight

The Santa Fe Symphony Strings
Guillermo Figueroa, Conductor

CARLOS CHÁVEZ

Sonata for Four Horns

Allegro

Jeffrey Rogers, Principal Horn; Katelyn Benedict, Horn; Peter Erb, Horn; Allison Tutton, Horn

PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY

Serenade for String Orchestra, op.48
Pezzo in forma di sonatina

The Santa Fe Symphony Strings
Guillermo Figueroa, Conductor

PROGRAM NOTES

Johann Sebastian Bach

Born 1685, Eisenach, Germany

Died 1750, Liepzig

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major BWV 1048

Allegro

The Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 has presented scholars and performers with a surprising number of problems, and those who feel that it is more of a chamber music piece than an orchestral concerto may have a point. They note that it is scored for three violin parts, three viola parts and three cello parts, plus bass and continuo, and therefore so modest an ensemble belongs in a small room suited to intimate music rather than the concert hall. The competing view notes that the three cellos, which usually play in unison, create an overpowering sound in the lower register that must be compensated for by increasing the number of violins and violas—thus, the work demands a chamber orchestra just to keep the voices balanced.

In any case, the piece takes its character from the outer movements, both marked by bright energy and the warm sound of a string ensemble. Bach left no tempo marking for the first movement, but it is considered some form of Allegro. (The concluding movement is also Allegro.) The sturdy main theme, heard immediately, dominates the movement; it is a long theme, but Bach builds the movement on parts of this theme, with brief figures tossed between different voices, rocking along and meshing beautifully. At certain points, instrumental solos emerge briefly from the orchestral texture, then quickly return to the ensemble.

Bach composed the six concertos--which were actually revisions of works he had composed some years earlier for the court at Köthen--for Christian Ludwig, the brother of Prussia’s King Wilhelm I. The manuscripts were found among Ludwig’s papers after his death. Philip Spitta dubbed them the Brandenburg Concertos in his 1873 biography of Bach--after Ludwig’s official title, the Margrave of Brandenburg--and the name was forever attached to them.

—Program note by Eric Bromberger

George Frideric Handel

Born 1685, Magdeburg

Died 1759, London

Hornpipe from The Water Music,

arranged for Double Reeds

Despite their familiarity, the Water Music suites, particularly the first one, are fraught with musicological mysteries. The myths and legends surrounding these works are as well known as the music itself. Everyone “knows” that Handel’s employer, George, Elector of Hanover and heir to the British throne, was miffed with his Kapellmeister for both overstaying a leave of absence in England and for writing laudatory compositions for England’s Queen Anne, whose childlessness set him up to succeed her. We also “know” that when George became king of England, Handel arranged a suite to be played on a barge on the Thames as part of a royal regatta in order to get back into the good graces of the angry monarch.

Unfortunately, little of the story is substantiated. Handel did write his first Water Music Suite in 1715, a year after George’s accession to the British throne, and there is ample evidence that he wrote the Suite for the Royal River Festival. But there is no hard evidence that the composer had ever been out of favor with George, as evidenced by a Te Deum written for the king in 1714 and a Royal payment to Handel in 1715. Nevertheless, there is no convincing documentation, either pro or con, on the various stories of Handel’s relationship with the King at that point in his career.

The traditional Baroque suite at that time consisted of four to six movements based on a standard menu of court dances. The Water Music Suites, however, incorporate non-dance movements, most of which bear only tempo marking and no title at all. The instrumentation varies from movement to movement, but usually employs oboes, bassoons and horns – typical instruments for outdoor performances – in addition to strings and continuo (which were probably later additions for indoor performances).

Philip Glass

Born 1937, Baltimore

Piece in the Shape of a Square

Philip Glass, probably the most frequently performed living classical composer, composes in two different media. He writes for his Philip Glass Ensemble, made up of electronically amplified instruments, and also for conventional symphony orchestra and opera.

Glass was influenced strongly by the varieties of scales, or modes, of the Indian raga and the North African maqaam. From these he learned the hypnotic effects of repetition and, striving to obtain a maximum effect with a minimum of means, he found his niche in Minimalism. The premiere of his surrealistic opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976 helped catapult Glass to fame. Einstein was followed by more than two dozen other operas and numerous film scores. Glass’ orchestral works, including twelve symphonies, are generally more tonal and traditional.

Glass’s minimalist technique involves taking a single phrase of music, subtly changing one note at a time, thereby affecting the harmony as well as the melody. Glass composed Piece in the Shape of a Square in 1967 as a duet for two flutes. (For this performance, it’s played with flute and violin.) The two performers play in counterpoint, moving in opposite directions along the square. Halfway through the piece, they meet in the middle and then repeat the whole piece in retrograde. This visual element echoes what happens musically. The higher instrument repeats a short ostinato motif in which the highest pitch is also the highest pitch in the piece. As Glass explained in his memoir Words Without Music, “It’s as if you counted to ten, and then counted back from ten to one again.”

George Walker

Born 1922, Washington, DC

Died 2018, Montclair, NJ

String Quartet No. 1

Lyric for Strings

Composer, pianist and educator George Walker achieved an important series of African-American “firsts” in his long career: The first black graduate of Oberlin College Conservatory and the Curtis Institute of Music, the first Doctor of Musical Arts from Eastman School of Music, the first black composer to study with Nadia Boulanger, the first instrumentalist to appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra (playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3) and the first African- American composer to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music (1996). His autobiography, Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, was published in 2009.

Walker was an unashamed neo-romantic, having lived for nearly a century that saw countless developments in musical style from Schoenberg to Cage – and back. He was a prolific composer, whose works are reminiscent of those of Samuel Barber. The Lyric for Strings originated from the second movement of Walker’s String Quartet No. 1, composed in 1945. In a certain sense, it is a doppelgänger of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which was also extracted from a string quartet. Both works are tonal and spin out a single melody in free variation.

Astor Piazzolla

Born 1921, Mar del Plata, Argentina

Died 1992, Buenos Aires

Milonga del Angel

Everyone knows that it takes two to tango, but no one can agree on the origin of the dance: Whether it ultimately derived from African drumming, Spanish Gypsy music or native Indian sources is still in dispute. For 150 years, the characteristic Latin rhythm has been shaped and adapted to nearly every Spanish-speaking national culture.

The arrabal, the squalid immigrant slums of the late 19th century outside Buenos Aires, bred its own version of the tango, a popular song laced with bitter urban protest. By the 1930s it had developed into a pessimistic song expressing a fatalistic outlook on love and life. It was into this world that the parents of Astor Piazzolla arrived from Italy. And it was the music of the arrabal that shaped Piazzolla’s entire career.

After a stint in Paris from 1954 to 1955, studying composition with Nadia Boulanger, Piazzolla returned to Argentina to form his first Tango Octet and later his renowned Tango Quintet. The Quintet featured the bandoneón, violin, piano, electric guitar and bass.

Influenced by his studies in Paris and by classical forms, Piazzolla set his compositions a cut above the traditional tangos. No longer dance music, they became concert music, although for the nightclub rather than the concert hall. And over the decades, his name has been inseparably associated with the tango. Nevertheless, the psychological intensity and sophistication of his music so infuriated the traditionalists that he was repeatedly physically assaulted and even threatened with a gun to his head during a radio broadcast.

Milonga del Angel, composed in 1965, belongs to a group of “Angel” tangos composed between 1957 and 1965 (the others are Muerte del Angel, Tango del Angel, Resurreción del Angel, and Introducción al Angel). Milonga is a dance music style, a more relaxed tango, with humorous music and dance gestures.

Paul Anka

Born 1941, Ottawa, Canada

My Way

Frank Sinatra’s signature song was set to the music of the French song Comme d'habitude, composed and written by French songwriters Claude François and Jacques Revaux I 1967. Paul Anka heard the song while on vacation in France, and he liked it so much that he flew to Paris to negotiate the rights. He acquired adaptation, recording and publishing rights for the staggering sum of one dollar, with the provision that the composers would retain their original share of royalty rights. Anka then rewrote the song specifically for Sinatra, subtly altering the melodic structure and changing the lyrics. He wrote his version in four hours.

“I called Frank up … and said, 'I've got something really special for you,’ ” Anka told Neil McCormick of London’s Daily Telegraph. "When my record company caught wind of it, they were very pissed that I didn't keep it for myself. I said, 'Hey, I can write it, but I'm not the guy to sing it.' It was for Frank, no one else." (Despite this, Anka did end up recording the song very shortly after Sinatra's recording was released.)

In 1968, Sinatra recorded the song in one take, and it was released in early 1969 on the My Way LP and as a single. It reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 2 on the Easy Listening chart in the U.S. In the U.K., the single became the song with the most weeks on the Top 40 (75 weeks). It spent another 49 weeks in the Top 75.

Although Sinatra's daughter Tina said that the singer eventually came to hate the tune―calling it “self-serving and self-indulgent”―its popularity has endured. It has been recorded by performers as diverse as Elvis Presley and Sid Vicious, who did a punk-rock version with different lyrics.

"You could read 'My Way' as a kind of metaphor for the World War II generation that Frank Sinatra represented, looking back at 20th-century history in this kind of cosmic defiance," Jason King, a professor at NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, told NPR in a 2019 interview. “Saying, 'Look, I did it the way I wanted to do it, and I did it right. I'm looking back at all this history, and I'm OK with it.' " My Way also is the pop tune most commonly chosen as a funeral anthem in the United Kingdom, indicating that thousands of people identify with its theme.

Eric Nash Walters

Born 1968, Ithaca, NY

Died 2016, Santa Fe

Flight for String Orchestra

Composer and cellist Eric Nash Walters, who was very involved in music education in middle and high schools, wrote this piece for the Bosque School in Albuquerque—part of a set of four string works written for students. The aim was to capture the young musician’s imagination with abstract works that have a certain feel or character. Walters and composer Fred Frahm finished editing the scores, publishing the digital performances on Soundcloud, just weeks before Walters died in 2016.

Flight, written in 2014, offers a musical description of a plane ride. The four sections are titled "Takeoff," "Cruising Altitude," "Turbulence," and "Touching Down." "Eric looked for ways in this piece to engage players with different performance energies between sections,” says Frahm. "In this way, the ensemble could engage in telling a robust story about flying in a plane, something with which all of us are quite familiar."

Walters was a cellist with the Santa Fe Symphony, and co-founder (with Symphony violinist David Felberg) of the Chatter Ensemble. Flight was dedicated to Symphony violinist Nicolle Maniaci.

Carlos Chávez

Born 1899, Mexico City

Died 1978, Coyoacán, Mexico

Sonata for Four Horns

Allegro

Mexican composer Carlos Chávez was the best-known musical ambassador of his country for more than 50 years. Educated primarily as a pianist, he was largely self-taught in composition and conducting. He composed more than 200 musical works in nearly all genres and conducted many major orchestras in the U.S, Latin America and Europe. He also held important government positions in the arts in Mexico, lectured, and wrote extensively about music and its place in society.

In 1921, with the ballet El Fuego Nuevo, on an Aztec theme, Chávez established himself as the foremost exponent of Mexico’s cultural nationalism in music, a trend epitomized by his Symphony No.2 (“Sinfonia India”) of 1935. But his nationalistic interests did not prevent him from composing concurrently in other styles. His love of Ancient Greek drama inspired his Symphony No.1, the cantata Prometheus Bound, and the ballet La Hija de Cólchide (The Daughter of Colchis) [Medea].

Chávez composed the Sonata for Four Horns in 1929. This was a period during which composers were choosing among a variety of stylistic elements: tonality vs. atonality, free atonality or serialism, Neoclassical form vs. novel ways of presenting themes and structure. Chávez’s music often falls in between the cracks. The Horn Quartet exemplifies this tendency clearly in that the composer retains¬ the classical sonata structure but without the conventional key relationships. The themes are hardly melodic, but Chávez repeats them frequently enough so that they stick in the listener’s head. While the cadences are frequently tonal, the Quartet is freely dissonant and sometimes even bi-tonal. Absent are any folkloric allusions.

Program Notes by Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn

www.wordprosmusic.com