In Focus: Episode 8: Visions & Impressions
Broadcast Premiere: April 8, 2021
In Focus: Episode 8
The Cleveland Orchestra
BROADCAST PRESENTATION
2020-21 Season
S1.E8 In Focus Season 1, Episode 8
_____________________
    

Visions &
Impressions

Broadcast Premiere Date/Time:
Thursday, April 8, 2021, at 7 p.m.
   filmed March 18-20 at Severance Hall

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Joshua Smith, flute
Paul Jacobs, organ


TŌRU TAKEMITSU (1930-1996) 
Air (for solo flute)
  

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) 
Visions fugitives, Opus 22a
(fifteen movements for piano arranged by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra)
  

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) 
Syrinx (for solo flute)

FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963) 
Organ Concerto in G minor, FP.93
(for organ, timpani, and strings)
        AndanteAllegro giocoso
      
Subito andante moderato —
      
Tempo allegro: Molto agitato
       — Très calme: Lent
       Tempo de l'allegro initial
       — Tempo d'introduction: Largo 
  

In addition to the concert performances, each episode of In Focus includes behind-the-scenes interviews and features about the music and musicmaking.

Each In Focus broadcast presentation is available for viewing for three months from its premiere.

_____________________

With thanks to these funding partners:

Presenting Sponsor: 
   The J.M. Smucker Company

Digital & Seasons Sponsors:
   Ohio CAT
   Jones Day Foundation
   Medical Mutual

In Focus Digital Partner: 
   The Dr. M.Lee Pearce Foundation, Inc.

_____________________

This episode of In Focus is dedicated
to the following donors in recognition for their
extraordinary support of The Cleveland Orchestra:
   Mrs. Norma Lerner
   Jenny and Tim Smucker
   Mr. and Mrs. Albert B. Ratner
    
    

T H I S   E P I S O D E   of In Focus looks at contrasts and musical impressions.  Opening with a solitary flute and concluding with the largest and grandest of all pipe instruments, a quartet of musical works speak to the ethereal and momentary nature of music, of giving sound to air. 

       Principal flute Joshua Smith performs two exquisitely enigmatic pieces for solo flute — Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu’s Air and Claude Debussy’s tender Syrinx evoking mythical beauty.  

       Between these, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra strings in Prokofiev’s whimsical and effervescent Visions fugitives, drawn from an early cycle of piano miniatures.     

       The program concludes with a thundering performance of the 20th century’s most intriguing organ concerto, played by Paul Jacobs, “a virtuoso of dazzling technical acumen” (New York Times).   
     

AIR
(for solo flute
by Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)

Composed:  1995

Dedication:  written for the 70th birthday of flutist Aurèle Nicolet 

Premiere:  January 28, 1996, performed by Hiroshi Koizumi

Duration:  about 5 minutes

________________________________


IN THE CLOSING decades of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu was embraced as Japan's leading classical composer.  He wrote for both the concert hall and films, and received many awards after first gaining international attention in 1957 with Requiem for string orchestra.  He died an international iconoclast, with his music demonstrating a continually shifting mix of styles and ideas.  An important international composition prize is named in his honor.

       Takemitsu's style evolved across the decades, with his scores displaying a unique soundworld identifiably his own, deftly distilled from ideas of modern music and older traditions.  His father played a type of Japanese flute, and thoroughly enjoyed American Jazz and Dixieland. 

       Takemitsu's musical interests ranged widely over the years, pulling elements from different sources and tributaries in Western classical music.  These influences include an atmospheric ethos drawn from Debussy and Messiaen (as well as Webern and Schoenberg), certain intensities of John Cage (including non-standard elements of text recitation and instrumental techniques), and, later, a nostalgic starkness — or clarity — from traditional Japanese music.  He was attracted to melody, and never looked to alienate audiences.  Yet some of his works are austere and, to Western ears, can seem without form.  For him, the silence between was as important as the musical notes.  

       "The old and new exist within me with equal weight," he said later in life, referring to both his music and his philosophical ideas about music, life, and culture.  He came late to studying Japanese music history, techniques, and ideals, and shifted his focus as a composer to be not just uniquely himself, but international and Japanese all at the same time.

       Air for solo flute was Takemitsu's last completed composition, written in 1995 before his death the next year.  It was one of several works created for or in collaboration with Swiss flutist Aurèle Nicolet (1926-2016), and was written specifically as a birthday gift for Nicolet's 70th birthday.  Earlier pieces for the flutist include Eucalypts I and II (for flute, oboe, and harp), And Then I Knew 'Twas Wind (for flute, viola, and harp), and Voice (for solo flute).

       Air is direct in its musicmaking.  A solo line, like a bird ranging far and wide across an extensive landscape.  Mournful, contemplative, watchful, and alert.  Soaring, floating, rippling in wind currents.  More complicated flute techniques are, for the most part, kept to a minimum.  Eventually, without specific incident, the piece ends, with the bird, perhaps, flying out of sight against the lighted horizon.

—program note by Eric Sellen © 2021
   

VISIONS FUGITIVES, Opus 22a
(Fifteen movements for piano arranged by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra
by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Composed:  1915-17, for solo piano

Premiered:  St. Petersberg, April 1918

Scored for:  adapted for string orchestra

Duration:  about 20 minutes

________________________________

"In every fugitive vision,
I see entire worlds:
they flash in endless variations,
like the fickle hues of a rainbow." 
       —Konstantin Balmont


S E R G E I    P R O K O F I E V  was a fantabulous pianist, with extraordinary technique and range, if not always disciplined in his craft.  Many of his own compositions for piano are equally compelling for audience and performer.  The composer was a nearly unmatched performer of his own works, overriding perfection of execution (although he was extraordinarily good) for sensitivity and understanding of nuance and pointed storytelling within every musical line.

      Visions fugitives (the title is translated perhaps most naturally into English as “fleeting glances”) is a collection of short piano pieces written across his early to mid-twenties.  Many of them were created for specific friends and only afterward did the composer decide to collect them together as a group for publication.  As a cycle, they follow in the long history of short keyboard suites, of movements of varying and contrasting character created or brought together as a set — from Schumann’s whimsical Carnival of 1834-35 onward to Shostakovich’s sarcastic Preludes & Fugues of 1951.

       The complete set offers a wide variety of moods and styles, presenting eventful changes of contrast and allowing (or, in reality, demanding) much room for making specific choices for interpretation, for discovering and conveying an essence of feeling or situation with each piece.  As piano solos, the set is widely studied by many, but not too often played as an entire cycle.  Prokofiev regularly drew from the set for encores when appearing as a concerto soloist or giving a recital.

       The naming of musical works, like the naming of children, is done in a variety of ways — from methodical and lengthy discussion to spur-of-the moment utterances, frequently involving friends and family.  The title for Visions fugitives  mirrors a poem by Prokofiev’s friend Konstatin Balmont (1867-1942), who heard a private performance by the composer prior to publication and was inspired to respond with some lines of poetry titled “I Do Not Know Wisdom”; these included the Russian word “Mimolyotnosti” (meaning something like “things flashing past”), which another friend rendered into French as Visions fugitives.  At the time, many musical works from Russia were published in their first international editions in France, and so the naming stuck.

       Rudolf Barshai (1924-2010) was a Russian conductor and violist well known across Soviet musical circles, who worked closely with both Shostakovich and Prokofiev.  He created a number of expanded arrangements of several of their works, adapting a number of Shostakovich’s string quartets for chamber orchestra and preparing a string orchestra version of fifteen of the original twenty movements in Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives.

—program note by Eric Sellen © 2021
   

SYRINX
(for solo flute
by Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Composed: 1913

First performance:  December 1, 1913, chez Louis Mors, Paris

Duration:  about 5 minutes

________________________________


D E B U S S Y   W A S  intensely interested in the theater and was throughout his life contemplating, planning, or writing operas or incidental music for plays.  Very few of them were ever completed, and many were not even started.

       One of his collaborators was a versatile literary character named Gabriel Mourey, who had known Debussy since 1889.  Yet they did not discuss actually working together until 1907.  Their first project was Le Roman de Tristan, using a version of the Tristan story different from Wagner's.  This was soon abandoned, and three more ideas went nowhere:  Huon de Bordeaux, Le Marchand de rêves, and Le Chat botté (or “Puss in Boots”).

       Finally, Mouret offered Debussy his three-act play Psyché on the Greek myth, but all Debussy agreed to compose was a piece to be played at the end of the play from the wings on a flute, representing "the last melody that Pan plays before his death."

       Even this Debussy found very hard to complete, but it was played by Louis Fleury at a private performance of the play in the house of Louis Mors in Paris at the beginning of December 1913.  Its title was then La Flûte de Pan; it was renamed Syrinx when it was published in 1927 after Debussy's death.

       The music beautifully exploits the flute's capacity for arabesque and ornament, mostly low in the instrument's range, and is full of exotic intervals suggestive of an imagined Greek culture.  Mourey called it "a real jewel of restrained emotion, of sadness, of plastic beauty, of discreet tenderness and poetry."

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2021

ORGAN CONCERTO
(for organ solo, strings, and timpani
by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

Composed: 1934-1938

First performance:  Paris, December 16, 1938, in the Paris salon of the Princesse de Polignac, with Maurice Duruflé (organ), conducted by Nadia Boulanger     

Scored for:  organ solo, string orchestra, and timpani

Duration:  about 25 minutes

________________________________

A S    A    C O M P O S E R, Poulenc was in the habit of writing dates at the end of his manuscript scores, and on the last page of the score of his Organ Concerto we read:  “Noizay, April 1938 – Anost, August 1938,” suggesting that this work occupied him for only four months in his thirty-eighth year.

       In fact, this concerto’s gestation was long and difficult, and the composer openly admitted that it was one of the hardest pieces he ever had to write.  Part of the challenge came because he had never written for the organ before, and although there were a few works for organ and strings widely played (Handel’s concertos for example), the addition of timpani to the mix creates a completely new ambience for which there was no precedent whatever.

       In addition, Poulenc had decided to avoid the traditional three-movement or three-part concerto form and to instead develop a looser structure related to the 18th-century Fantaisie, a form without standard guidelines of any sort.

       Two remarkable women, both of whom contributed immensely to French music between the World wars, were at the heart of the Organ Concerto’s origin.  The first was the Princess Edmond de Polignac, born Winnaretta Singer, heiress to the sewing-machine fortune.  Born in America and brought up in England, she made Paris her home, and by marrying a penniless composer who happened to be the Prince de Polignac (and also happened, as she knew, to be homosexual), she supplied her husband with a fortune and herself with a title.

       After her husband’s death in 1901, the Princess replaced their fashionable residence in the XVIe Arrondissement with an enormous Greek-revival mansion containing a sizeable concert room in which she had an organ installed by the celebrated builders Cavaillé-Coll. She established a pattern of commissioning works by young composers for performances at her home.  The long list of composers who benefited from her largesse includes Satie, Stravinsky, Milhaud, de Falla, Tailleferre, Sauguet, Françaix, Poulenc, and Weill. At its height, between the wars, the Princess’s salon was where the most important new French music of any kind was to be heard.

       The other godmother to the Poulenc Organ Concerto was Nadia Boulanger, who pioneered the revival of what is often called early music (works from the Renaissance and earlier), taught several generations of young composers, and worked hard to push for the acceptance of women as conductors upon a resistant world. She became a close friend of the Princess and in 1933 she started conducting concerts in the salon.  The following year, the Princess suggested to Nadia that the very young Jean Françaix might write an organ concerto simple enough for her, Winnaretta, to play.

       Françaix, who had a film score to write, suggested that Poulenc be asked instead (or as well), but Poulenc, although he accepted the commission, found it exceedingly difficult to do. He had already composed a concerto (for two pianos) for the Princess in 1932, which he had played with Jacques Février at the Venice Biennale, where she took obvious pride in her patronage.

       In the case of the new concerto, three years passed in which Nadia was trying to bring it to the center of Poulenc’s attention, but early in 1938 it was still not ready. His Litanies à la vierge noire, a film score, the Mass in G, and a series of fine songs all somehow got in the way.

WRITING A CONCERTO
       By the time that Poulenc completed the Organ Concerto, making a special effort in the summer of 1938, it was no longer intended for the Princess as its solo performer. When it was finally heard in the Hôtel Singer-Polignac in December 1938, it was the celebrated organist Maurice Duruflé who played the solo part, with Nadia Boulanger conducting, and it was again Duruflé who gave the first public performance in Paris six months later, this time under the baton of Roger Désormière (who in Poulenc’s opinion lacked Nadia’s warmth and lyricism).  The score acknowledges Duruflé’s help with the registration of the solo part (getting it voiced in the appropriate octaves and timbres to be heard as distinct from the ensemble) and is dedicated to the Princess.

            The long gestation of the Organ Concerto may be in part attributed to the shift in Poulenc’s worldview, which occurred during this time.  His earlier music earned him prodigious success in the period just following World War I, and of all the composers of a group known as Les Six, or “The Six,” he was the one who most clearly personified the spirit of clowning and frivolity for which they became quickly notorious.

       Poulenc’s music did not exactly lack seriousness, but its wit, its tunefulness, and its sprightly rhythms seemed to cast him as the ideal composer for Le Jazz-Age.

       Later on, through his ongoing exploration of modern poetry and his reattachment to the Catholic church, a new strain of religious devotion and of poetic depth also blossomed in his music.  He was aware that the Organ Concerto would probably be performed in churches, and its devotional tone most likely belongs to that understanding.  It was, thus, in keeping with his quest for a deeper spiritual language that he created for himself the obstacles of instrumentation and form that called for a special creative effort to overcome.  The clown’s grin is nowhere to be seen.

MUSICAL STYLING
           Bach’s organ fantasias provide the closest model on which Poulenc might have drawn; Bach-like phrases are heard at intervals throughout.  Stravinsky’s spiky style is also to be heard —  Bach and Stravinsky were Nadia Boulanger’s twin gods.  

            Poulenc’s harmonic pallette ranges from forthright common chords (major and minor, offered without shame or embarrassment) to dense coagulations of notes that sound harsh on the organ yet sweetened by the strings.  The organ, of course, can tinkle or roar; it can hold a melody over string accompaniment or itself provide a chordal background for the other instruments.  In the context of 20th-century French organ music, especially that of Messiaen, Poulenc’s solo writing does not approach the virtuosity which the instrument can accommodate, but remains more narrowly within the Bach orbit.

       If Poulenc was thinking of a normal orchestra, just omitting wind instruments on the grounds that the organ is itself a battery of wind instruments, then the timpani would be a normal remnant.  But, instead, the timpani adds such a striking layering of sound to this work’s ensemble that a normal orchestra really never even comes to a listener’s mind.  Poulenc writes for the timpani as a fully chromatic instrument, with a range of half an octave, leaving the re-tunings and the choice of drums to the player.  But, like the organ part, its purpose is not virtuoso display.

       The piece is perhaps best understood as an introduction and five principal sections, respectively fast-slow-fast-slow-fast, with many suggestions of themes and figures borrowed from one section to another.  The introduction offers an imperious statement in a solid G minor from the organ with a mild-mannered response.  The strings suggest a lamentation, and the music remains tentative until a decisive Allegro sets up a bright forward motion, the first main section. This reaches a brilliant G major ending and gives way to another Andante, perhaps to be seen as a slow movement in which the music flows modestly along, mostly subdued.  This too rises to a brilliant ending, with huge A minor and A major chords on the organ.  

       The third episode is speedy and agitated, and the fourth is calm.  The fifth is a re-working of the first Allegro, followed by the return of the opening bars.  The remainder is a sublimely peaceful coda in which a solo viola and then a solo cello join the organ’s chords against a gently rocking figure in the rest of the strings and a long-held G from the organ pedalboard.

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2021

Joshua Smith

Principal Flute
The Cleveland Orchestra
Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Endowed Chair
  

Firmly established as one of America’s outstanding flutists, Joshua Smith is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator.  He was appointed as The Cleveland Orchestra’s principal flute at age twenty, joining the ensemble in 1990.   He appears regularly as soloist with the Orchestra, in repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Penderecki and Widmann.  In September 2014, he was featured with the Orchestra on tour in Europe, playing Jörg Widmann’s flute concerto at the BBC London Proms, Lucerne Festival, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and Amsterdam Concertgebouw.  Most recently, he played Debussy's Syrinx in Miami with the Orchestra in 2019 and, prior to that, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp with the Orchestra and guest soloist Yolanda Kondonassis in 2016.  In 2018, he was among featured performers for the Orchestra’s Blossom 50th Anniversary benefit concert to celebrate the first half-century for ensemble's summer home.

       Mr. Smith received a Grammy nomination for his Telarc recording, Air, and has recorded two discs with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour dedicated to the Sonatas of J.S. Bach.  He appeared on a Live from the Marlboro Music Festival recording and can be heard on more than 100 Cleveland Orchestra recordings. 

       Intrigued with exploring new ways of connecting with audiences, Joshua Smith leads the chamber group Ensemble HD, which features Cleveland Orch­estra members and guests.  The artists perform in concert halls as well as non-traditional venues.  Ensemble HD released its first double vinyl album in May 2013, Live at The Happy Dog.  It was recorded at The Happy Dog, a local bar-restaurant in Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District.  Joshua Smith was invited to speak to the National Endowment for the Arts Council about community engagement efforts spearheaded by Ensemble HD.

       Mr. Smith appears as a chamber musician throughout the United States, including recent and ongoing appearances with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, at the Marlboro and Santa Fe Music Festivals, and with the Israeli Chamber Project. He has performed in collaborative concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pensacola Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

       Joshua Smith is a Powell Artist and performs most often on a new grenadilla Powell or on an old Rudall-Carte.  A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, he worked closely with renowned pedagogue Frank Bowen before attending Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner.

       For additional information, please visit www.soloflute.com.  
     

Paul Jacobs

American organist Paul Jacobs is celebrated internationally, gaining praise from audiences and critics alike for his technical skills and stage presence, and for the nuance and depth of his musical artistry.  He has performed to acclaim on five continents and in each of the 50 United States, and is the only organist ever to have won a Grammy Award.

       Recent seasons have seen Mr. Jacobs performing throughout the United States and in Europe, as well as serving as jury president of the first Shanghai International Organ Competition. He regularly performs with major orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic and has performed solo recitals on major instruments in the United Kingdom, in Europe, and across North America.

       At the age of 15, Paul Jacobs was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 in his hometown of Washington, Pennsylvania.  He later studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, double-majoring in organ with John Weaver and on the harpsichord with Lionel Party, and studied at Yale University with Thomas Murray.  He made musical history at the age of 23 when he played J.S. Bach’s complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon performance on the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. He has also performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen.

       A fierce advocate of new music, Mr. Jacobs has premiered works by Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Stephen Paulus, and Christopher Theofanidis, among others. As a teacher, he has also been a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music.

       Paul Jacobs chairs the organ department at the Juilliard School, and also serves as director of the organ institute at the Oregon Bach Festival.  He was awarded Juilliard’s William Schuman Scholar’s Chair in 2007, which included the privilege of giving two special lecture-recitals. 

In Focus: Episode 8: Visions & Impressions
Broadcast Premiere: April 8, 2021
In Focus: Episode 8
The Cleveland Orchestra
BROADCAST PRESENTATION
2020-21 Season
S1.E8 In Focus Season 1, Episode 8
_____________________
    

Visions &
Impressions

Broadcast Premiere Date/Time:
Thursday, April 8, 2021, at 7 p.m.
   filmed March 18-20 at Severance Hall

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Joshua Smith, flute
Paul Jacobs, organ


TŌRU TAKEMITSU (1930-1996) 
Air (for solo flute)
  

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) 
Visions fugitives, Opus 22a
(fifteen movements for piano arranged by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra)
  

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) 
Syrinx (for solo flute)

FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963) 
Organ Concerto in G minor, FP.93
(for organ, timpani, and strings)
        AndanteAllegro giocoso
      
Subito andante moderato —
      
Tempo allegro: Molto agitato
       — Très calme: Lent
       Tempo de l'allegro initial
       — Tempo d'introduction: Largo 
  

In addition to the concert performances, each episode of In Focus includes behind-the-scenes interviews and features about the music and musicmaking.

Each In Focus broadcast presentation is available for viewing for three months from its premiere.

_____________________

With thanks to these funding partners:

Presenting Sponsor: 
   The J.M. Smucker Company

Digital & Seasons Sponsors:
   Ohio CAT
   Jones Day Foundation
   Medical Mutual

In Focus Digital Partner: 
   The Dr. M.Lee Pearce Foundation, Inc.

_____________________

This episode of In Focus is dedicated
to the following donors in recognition for their
extraordinary support of The Cleveland Orchestra:
   Mrs. Norma Lerner
   Jenny and Tim Smucker
   Mr. and Mrs. Albert B. Ratner
    
    

T H I S   E P I S O D E   of In Focus looks at contrasts and musical impressions.  Opening with a solitary flute and concluding with the largest and grandest of all pipe instruments, a quartet of musical works speak to the ethereal and momentary nature of music, of giving sound to air. 

       Principal flute Joshua Smith performs two exquisitely enigmatic pieces for solo flute — Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu’s Air and Claude Debussy’s tender Syrinx evoking mythical beauty.  

       Between these, Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra strings in Prokofiev’s whimsical and effervescent Visions fugitives, drawn from an early cycle of piano miniatures.     

       The program concludes with a thundering performance of the 20th century’s most intriguing organ concerto, played by Paul Jacobs, “a virtuoso of dazzling technical acumen” (New York Times).   
     

AIR
(for solo flute
by Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)

Composed:  1995

Dedication:  written for the 70th birthday of flutist Aurèle Nicolet 

Premiere:  January 28, 1996, performed by Hiroshi Koizumi

Duration:  about 5 minutes

________________________________


IN THE CLOSING decades of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu was embraced as Japan's leading classical composer.  He wrote for both the concert hall and films, and received many awards after first gaining international attention in 1957 with Requiem for string orchestra.  He died an international iconoclast, with his music demonstrating a continually shifting mix of styles and ideas.  An important international composition prize is named in his honor.

       Takemitsu's style evolved across the decades, with his scores displaying a unique soundworld identifiably his own, deftly distilled from ideas of modern music and older traditions.  His father played a type of Japanese flute, and thoroughly enjoyed American Jazz and Dixieland. 

       Takemitsu's musical interests ranged widely over the years, pulling elements from different sources and tributaries in Western classical music.  These influences include an atmospheric ethos drawn from Debussy and Messiaen (as well as Webern and Schoenberg), certain intensities of John Cage (including non-standard elements of text recitation and instrumental techniques), and, later, a nostalgic starkness — or clarity — from traditional Japanese music.  He was attracted to melody, and never looked to alienate audiences.  Yet some of his works are austere and, to Western ears, can seem without form.  For him, the silence between was as important as the musical notes.  

       "The old and new exist within me with equal weight," he said later in life, referring to both his music and his philosophical ideas about music, life, and culture.  He came late to studying Japanese music history, techniques, and ideals, and shifted his focus as a composer to be not just uniquely himself, but international and Japanese all at the same time.

       Air for solo flute was Takemitsu's last completed composition, written in 1995 before his death the next year.  It was one of several works created for or in collaboration with Swiss flutist Aurèle Nicolet (1926-2016), and was written specifically as a birthday gift for Nicolet's 70th birthday.  Earlier pieces for the flutist include Eucalypts I and II (for flute, oboe, and harp), And Then I Knew 'Twas Wind (for flute, viola, and harp), and Voice (for solo flute).

       Air is direct in its musicmaking.  A solo line, like a bird ranging far and wide across an extensive landscape.  Mournful, contemplative, watchful, and alert.  Soaring, floating, rippling in wind currents.  More complicated flute techniques are, for the most part, kept to a minimum.  Eventually, without specific incident, the piece ends, with the bird, perhaps, flying out of sight against the lighted horizon.

—program note by Eric Sellen © 2021
   

VISIONS FUGITIVES, Opus 22a
(Fifteen movements for piano arranged by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra
by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Composed:  1915-17, for solo piano

Premiered:  St. Petersberg, April 1918

Scored for:  adapted for string orchestra

Duration:  about 20 minutes

________________________________

"In every fugitive vision,
I see entire worlds:
they flash in endless variations,
like the fickle hues of a rainbow." 
       —Konstantin Balmont


S E R G E I    P R O K O F I E V  was a fantabulous pianist, with extraordinary technique and range, if not always disciplined in his craft.  Many of his own compositions for piano are equally compelling for audience and performer.  The composer was a nearly unmatched performer of his own works, overriding perfection of execution (although he was extraordinarily good) for sensitivity and understanding of nuance and pointed storytelling within every musical line.

      Visions fugitives (the title is translated perhaps most naturally into English as “fleeting glances”) is a collection of short piano pieces written across his early to mid-twenties.  Many of them were created for specific friends and only afterward did the composer decide to collect them together as a group for publication.  As a cycle, they follow in the long history of short keyboard suites, of movements of varying and contrasting character created or brought together as a set — from Schumann’s whimsical Carnival of 1834-35 onward to Shostakovich’s sarcastic Preludes & Fugues of 1951.

       The complete set offers a wide variety of moods and styles, presenting eventful changes of contrast and allowing (or, in reality, demanding) much room for making specific choices for interpretation, for discovering and conveying an essence of feeling or situation with each piece.  As piano solos, the set is widely studied by many, but not too often played as an entire cycle.  Prokofiev regularly drew from the set for encores when appearing as a concerto soloist or giving a recital.

       The naming of musical works, like the naming of children, is done in a variety of ways — from methodical and lengthy discussion to spur-of-the moment utterances, frequently involving friends and family.  The title for Visions fugitives  mirrors a poem by Prokofiev’s friend Konstatin Balmont (1867-1942), who heard a private performance by the composer prior to publication and was inspired to respond with some lines of poetry titled “I Do Not Know Wisdom”; these included the Russian word “Mimolyotnosti” (meaning something like “things flashing past”), which another friend rendered into French as Visions fugitives.  At the time, many musical works from Russia were published in their first international editions in France, and so the naming stuck.

       Rudolf Barshai (1924-2010) was a Russian conductor and violist well known across Soviet musical circles, who worked closely with both Shostakovich and Prokofiev.  He created a number of expanded arrangements of several of their works, adapting a number of Shostakovich’s string quartets for chamber orchestra and preparing a string orchestra version of fifteen of the original twenty movements in Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives.

—program note by Eric Sellen © 2021
   

SYRINX
(for solo flute
by Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Composed: 1913

First performance:  December 1, 1913, chez Louis Mors, Paris

Duration:  about 5 minutes

________________________________


D E B U S S Y   W A S  intensely interested in the theater and was throughout his life contemplating, planning, or writing operas or incidental music for plays.  Very few of them were ever completed, and many were not even started.

       One of his collaborators was a versatile literary character named Gabriel Mourey, who had known Debussy since 1889.  Yet they did not discuss actually working together until 1907.  Their first project was Le Roman de Tristan, using a version of the Tristan story different from Wagner's.  This was soon abandoned, and three more ideas went nowhere:  Huon de Bordeaux, Le Marchand de rêves, and Le Chat botté (or “Puss in Boots”).

       Finally, Mouret offered Debussy his three-act play Psyché on the Greek myth, but all Debussy agreed to compose was a piece to be played at the end of the play from the wings on a flute, representing "the last melody that Pan plays before his death."

       Even this Debussy found very hard to complete, but it was played by Louis Fleury at a private performance of the play in the house of Louis Mors in Paris at the beginning of December 1913.  Its title was then La Flûte de Pan; it was renamed Syrinx when it was published in 1927 after Debussy's death.

       The music beautifully exploits the flute's capacity for arabesque and ornament, mostly low in the instrument's range, and is full of exotic intervals suggestive of an imagined Greek culture.  Mourey called it "a real jewel of restrained emotion, of sadness, of plastic beauty, of discreet tenderness and poetry."

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2021

ORGAN CONCERTO
(for organ solo, strings, and timpani
by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

Composed: 1934-1938

First performance:  Paris, December 16, 1938, in the Paris salon of the Princesse de Polignac, with Maurice Duruflé (organ), conducted by Nadia Boulanger     

Scored for:  organ solo, string orchestra, and timpani

Duration:  about 25 minutes

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A S    A    C O M P O S E R, Poulenc was in the habit of writing dates at the end of his manuscript scores, and on the last page of the score of his Organ Concerto we read:  “Noizay, April 1938 – Anost, August 1938,” suggesting that this work occupied him for only four months in his thirty-eighth year.

       In fact, this concerto’s gestation was long and difficult, and the composer openly admitted that it was one of the hardest pieces he ever had to write.  Part of the challenge came because he had never written for the organ before, and although there were a few works for organ and strings widely played (Handel’s concertos for example), the addition of timpani to the mix creates a completely new ambience for which there was no precedent whatever.

       In addition, Poulenc had decided to avoid the traditional three-movement or three-part concerto form and to instead develop a looser structure related to the 18th-century Fantaisie, a form without standard guidelines of any sort.

       Two remarkable women, both of whom contributed immensely to French music between the World wars, were at the heart of the Organ Concerto’s origin.  The first was the Princess Edmond de Polignac, born Winnaretta Singer, heiress to the sewing-machine fortune.  Born in America and brought up in England, she made Paris her home, and by marrying a penniless composer who happened to be the Prince de Polignac (and also happened, as she knew, to be homosexual), she supplied her husband with a fortune and herself with a title.

       After her husband’s death in 1901, the Princess replaced their fashionable residence in the XVIe Arrondissement with an enormous Greek-revival mansion containing a sizeable concert room in which she had an organ installed by the celebrated builders Cavaillé-Coll. She established a pattern of commissioning works by young composers for performances at her home.  The long list of composers who benefited from her largesse includes Satie, Stravinsky, Milhaud, de Falla, Tailleferre, Sauguet, Françaix, Poulenc, and Weill. At its height, between the wars, the Princess’s salon was where the most important new French music of any kind was to be heard.

       The other godmother to the Poulenc Organ Concerto was Nadia Boulanger, who pioneered the revival of what is often called early music (works from the Renaissance and earlier), taught several generations of young composers, and worked hard to push for the acceptance of women as conductors upon a resistant world. She became a close friend of the Princess and in 1933 she started conducting concerts in the salon.  The following year, the Princess suggested to Nadia that the very young Jean Françaix might write an organ concerto simple enough for her, Winnaretta, to play.

       Françaix, who had a film score to write, suggested that Poulenc be asked instead (or as well), but Poulenc, although he accepted the commission, found it exceedingly difficult to do. He had already composed a concerto (for two pianos) for the Princess in 1932, which he had played with Jacques Février at the Venice Biennale, where she took obvious pride in her patronage.

       In the case of the new concerto, three years passed in which Nadia was trying to bring it to the center of Poulenc’s attention, but early in 1938 it was still not ready. His Litanies à la vierge noire, a film score, the Mass in G, and a series of fine songs all somehow got in the way.

WRITING A CONCERTO
       By the time that Poulenc completed the Organ Concerto, making a special effort in the summer of 1938, it was no longer intended for the Princess as its solo performer. When it was finally heard in the Hôtel Singer-Polignac in December 1938, it was the celebrated organist Maurice Duruflé who played the solo part, with Nadia Boulanger conducting, and it was again Duruflé who gave the first public performance in Paris six months later, this time under the baton of Roger Désormière (who in Poulenc’s opinion lacked Nadia’s warmth and lyricism).  The score acknowledges Duruflé’s help with the registration of the solo part (getting it voiced in the appropriate octaves and timbres to be heard as distinct from the ensemble) and is dedicated to the Princess.

            The long gestation of the Organ Concerto may be in part attributed to the shift in Poulenc’s worldview, which occurred during this time.  His earlier music earned him prodigious success in the period just following World War I, and of all the composers of a group known as Les Six, or “The Six,” he was the one who most clearly personified the spirit of clowning and frivolity for which they became quickly notorious.

       Poulenc’s music did not exactly lack seriousness, but its wit, its tunefulness, and its sprightly rhythms seemed to cast him as the ideal composer for Le Jazz-Age.

       Later on, through his ongoing exploration of modern poetry and his reattachment to the Catholic church, a new strain of religious devotion and of poetic depth also blossomed in his music.  He was aware that the Organ Concerto would probably be performed in churches, and its devotional tone most likely belongs to that understanding.  It was, thus, in keeping with his quest for a deeper spiritual language that he created for himself the obstacles of instrumentation and form that called for a special creative effort to overcome.  The clown’s grin is nowhere to be seen.

MUSICAL STYLING
           Bach’s organ fantasias provide the closest model on which Poulenc might have drawn; Bach-like phrases are heard at intervals throughout.  Stravinsky’s spiky style is also to be heard —  Bach and Stravinsky were Nadia Boulanger’s twin gods.  

            Poulenc’s harmonic pallette ranges from forthright common chords (major and minor, offered without shame or embarrassment) to dense coagulations of notes that sound harsh on the organ yet sweetened by the strings.  The organ, of course, can tinkle or roar; it can hold a melody over string accompaniment or itself provide a chordal background for the other instruments.  In the context of 20th-century French organ music, especially that of Messiaen, Poulenc’s solo writing does not approach the virtuosity which the instrument can accommodate, but remains more narrowly within the Bach orbit.

       If Poulenc was thinking of a normal orchestra, just omitting wind instruments on the grounds that the organ is itself a battery of wind instruments, then the timpani would be a normal remnant.  But, instead, the timpani adds such a striking layering of sound to this work’s ensemble that a normal orchestra really never even comes to a listener’s mind.  Poulenc writes for the timpani as a fully chromatic instrument, with a range of half an octave, leaving the re-tunings and the choice of drums to the player.  But, like the organ part, its purpose is not virtuoso display.

       The piece is perhaps best understood as an introduction and five principal sections, respectively fast-slow-fast-slow-fast, with many suggestions of themes and figures borrowed from one section to another.  The introduction offers an imperious statement in a solid G minor from the organ with a mild-mannered response.  The strings suggest a lamentation, and the music remains tentative until a decisive Allegro sets up a bright forward motion, the first main section. This reaches a brilliant G major ending and gives way to another Andante, perhaps to be seen as a slow movement in which the music flows modestly along, mostly subdued.  This too rises to a brilliant ending, with huge A minor and A major chords on the organ.  

       The third episode is speedy and agitated, and the fourth is calm.  The fifth is a re-working of the first Allegro, followed by the return of the opening bars.  The remainder is a sublimely peaceful coda in which a solo viola and then a solo cello join the organ’s chords against a gently rocking figure in the rest of the strings and a long-held G from the organ pedalboard.

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2021

Joshua Smith

Principal Flute
The Cleveland Orchestra
Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Endowed Chair
  

Firmly established as one of America’s outstanding flutists, Joshua Smith is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator.  He was appointed as The Cleveland Orchestra’s principal flute at age twenty, joining the ensemble in 1990.   He appears regularly as soloist with the Orchestra, in repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Penderecki and Widmann.  In September 2014, he was featured with the Orchestra on tour in Europe, playing Jörg Widmann’s flute concerto at the BBC London Proms, Lucerne Festival, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and Amsterdam Concertgebouw.  Most recently, he played Debussy's Syrinx in Miami with the Orchestra in 2019 and, prior to that, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp with the Orchestra and guest soloist Yolanda Kondonassis in 2016.  In 2018, he was among featured performers for the Orchestra’s Blossom 50th Anniversary benefit concert to celebrate the first half-century for ensemble's summer home.

       Mr. Smith received a Grammy nomination for his Telarc recording, Air, and has recorded two discs with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour dedicated to the Sonatas of J.S. Bach.  He appeared on a Live from the Marlboro Music Festival recording and can be heard on more than 100 Cleveland Orchestra recordings. 

       Intrigued with exploring new ways of connecting with audiences, Joshua Smith leads the chamber group Ensemble HD, which features Cleveland Orch­estra members and guests.  The artists perform in concert halls as well as non-traditional venues.  Ensemble HD released its first double vinyl album in May 2013, Live at The Happy Dog.  It was recorded at The Happy Dog, a local bar-restaurant in Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District.  Joshua Smith was invited to speak to the National Endowment for the Arts Council about community engagement efforts spearheaded by Ensemble HD.

       Mr. Smith appears as a chamber musician throughout the United States, including recent and ongoing appearances with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, at the Marlboro and Santa Fe Music Festivals, and with the Israeli Chamber Project. He has performed in collaborative concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pensacola Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

       Joshua Smith is a Powell Artist and performs most often on a new grenadilla Powell or on an old Rudall-Carte.  A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, he worked closely with renowned pedagogue Frank Bowen before attending Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner.

       For additional information, please visit www.soloflute.com.  
     

Paul Jacobs

American organist Paul Jacobs is celebrated internationally, gaining praise from audiences and critics alike for his technical skills and stage presence, and for the nuance and depth of his musical artistry.  He has performed to acclaim on five continents and in each of the 50 United States, and is the only organist ever to have won a Grammy Award.

       Recent seasons have seen Mr. Jacobs performing throughout the United States and in Europe, as well as serving as jury president of the first Shanghai International Organ Competition. He regularly performs with major orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic and has performed solo recitals on major instruments in the United Kingdom, in Europe, and across North America.

       At the age of 15, Paul Jacobs was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 in his hometown of Washington, Pennsylvania.  He later studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, double-majoring in organ with John Weaver and on the harpsichord with Lionel Party, and studied at Yale University with Thomas Murray.  He made musical history at the age of 23 when he played J.S. Bach’s complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon performance on the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. He has also performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen.

       A fierce advocate of new music, Mr. Jacobs has premiered works by Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Stephen Paulus, and Christopher Theofanidis, among others. As a teacher, he has also been a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music.

       Paul Jacobs chairs the organ department at the Juilliard School, and also serves as director of the organ institute at the Oregon Bach Festival.  He was awarded Juilliard’s William Schuman Scholar’s Chair in 2007, which included the privilege of giving two special lecture-recitals.