University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra (UTSO): Ravel–Daphnis et Chloé, Suite no. 2

University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra (UTSO)

Uri Mayer, conductor

The UTSO concerts are made possible in part by a generous gift from Neville Austin.

PROGRAM

Symphony No.1, Op.38 in Bb Major

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)

I. Andante un poco maestoso - Allegro molto vivace

II. Larghetto

III. Scherzo

IV. Allegro animato e grazioso

Intermission

Háry János; Suite

Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967)

I. The fairy tale begins 

II. Viennese musical clock

III. Song

IV. The battle and defeat of Napoleon

V. Intermezzo

VI. Entrance of the Emperor and his court

Richard Moore, cimbalom

Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No.2

Maurice Ravel (1875–1938)

Lever du jour - Pantomime - Danse générale

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (UTSO)

Uri Mayer, conductor

Violin I
Kai Schulz Rousseau, concertmaster
Viviana Xiao Qi Chan
Katherine Chen
Caleb Chiu
Siri Ducharme-Leblanc*
Simon Hauber
Natasha Hendra
Marija Ivicevic
Aura Kwon
Natalia (Natasha) Morozova
Selen Nsabiyeze
Kwan Heng Vincent Poon
William Sale
Hoi Ching (Audrey) Sung
Mizuki Yaesawa
Amanda Yee

Violin II
Jeanny Jung, principal
Maya Budzinski*
Melie Inageda
Sharon Jin
Lauren Da-Hyun Lee
Xinhui (Helen) Li
Cameron Liao
Kasey Scoboria
Esther Emari Van Rooi
Nga Yu (Pely) Yau

Viola
Meika Sonntag, principal
Dai Hao (Tony) Chen
Ji-A Choi
Ruby Jackson
Yinren (Gavin) Li
Gabriella Caitlyn Liu
Bingluen (Colman) Yang
Tate Zdanowicz

Cello
Xirui (Caitlyn) Liu, principal
Maria (Antonia) Cambre
Maren Helyar
Tzu-Chieh (Jill) Liang
Tuuli Olo
Mario Rodriguez McMillan
Tomas Pena Paz Y Mino
Mariana Pit Torres Siebiger
Yeojin (Chloe) Shin
Daniel Ulloa Garcia
Ryan Wu
Xinyu (Cindy) Zhang

Double Bass
Marcus Chan, principal
Aidan Lai Chak Chong
Benjamin Kemppainen
Jude Littlefield Buschlen
Hsuan-Hao (Sean) Liu
Danylo Tkaczyk

Flute/Piccolo/Alto Flute
Rowan Froh
Anwen Robertson
Rachel Roe-Wu*
Eleanor Song

Oboe/English Horn
Jason Fan
Jasmine Noone
Nicholas Pomares

Clarinet/Eb/Bass Clarinet
Farimah Khorrami
Andrew Neagoe
Andrzej Jozef Osko
Ya-Tsun (Niki) Tang

Alto Saxophone
Min Gu Kang

Bassoon/Contrabassoon
Kelton Hopper
Taran Massey-Singh
Abigail Minor
Kendal Morrison

Horn
Anik Caissie
Julia Fowell*
Finn Parks
Chun Yu (Dia) Tam

Trumpet/Cornet
Kevin Hayward
Jayang Kim
Justin Ko
Grace Locker
Andrew Mendis
Eric (Shaw) Nicholson

Trombone
Samuel Gervais
Duncan MacFarlane*
Benjamin Glauser

Tuba
Umberto Quattrociocchi

Timpani/Percussion
Amiel Ang
Elyssa Arde
Reuben Faigao
Jonathan Huard
Madison Keats
Yi-Hsuan Lo
Yue Yin Zhang
Jeffrey Zhu

Piano
James Wu

Celesta
Yuling Chen

Harp
Emmanuel Luna Wong
Honoka Shoji

*ensemble managers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PERFORMANCE COLLECTION
Karen Wiseman, librarian
Nicole Magirias, student library assistant

CONCERT OFFICE
Eric Chow, supervisor
Cory Bertrand, front of house coordinator

PERFORMANCE OFFICE
Eddy Aitken, performance administrator
Amanda Eyer Haberman, performance assistant
Ilinca Stafie, performance office assistant

FACILITIES AND PERFORMANCE SPACES
Colin Harris, theatre technical coordinator

PROGRAM NOTES

Symphony No.1, Op.38 in Bb Major by Robert Schumann

It is frequently the case that nicknames attached to musical compositions are the fanciful creations of enthusiastic publishers rather than the original intentions of composers, Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata being the most famous example. In the case of Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony, we have an authoritative source. In the composer’s own hand we see on the preserved manuscript’s first page, “Frühlings Symphonie.” Where Mendelssohn stood between the Classical and the Romantic worlds, Schumann has his feet planted firmly in the latter and we shouldn’t underestimate his newness, even while emerging from the imposing shadow that Beethoven was to cast over all 19th-century symphonists. Schumann’s orchestral palette is rich, heavy with brass, and he willingly embarks on freer chromatic adventures than Mendelssohn, along the lines of his immediate predecessor, Schubert.

The Symphony, sketched in a four-day burst and completed within a month, originally bore movement titles: “The Beginning of Spring,” “Evening,” “Merry Playmates,” and “Spring in Full Bloom.” The titles were deleted before publication but are still perfect epigrammatic invitations to this music. A brass fanfare announces, “The Beginning of Spring,” but the brief musical crisis which follows reminds us that Schumann composed this symphony in January and February, the dead of winter. We have to anticipate spring before it fully arrives. The tenderness of the second movement, “Evening,” leads directly into the seemingly angry Scherzo of “Merry Playmates,” but the mood changes quickly. In a letter to a friend, Schumann wrote that while the last movement was “Spring in Full Bloom” it was also a farewell to spring, as much marking a departure as a celebration of the present. The “Spring” Symphony was premiered in Leipzig on March 31, 1841. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra was conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.

–Program notes by Grant Hiroshima

Háry János; Suite by Zoltán Kodály

The opera has seen only a few performances in the West. The Suite became immediately popular and remains among Kodály’s best known and best loved works. It comprises six movements, which are not in the same order they occur in the opera.

1. The Prelude: The Fairy Tale Begins. – After the opening sneeze, the prelude sets the stage for Háry to tell his outrageous but obviously true tales.
2. Viennese Musical Clock. Háry describes the famous clock in the emperor’s palace as chimes and a martial tune portray a procession of wooden soldiers.
3. Háry and Örzse sing of their homesickness. The cimbalom, a Hungarian folk instrument comparable to a hammered dulcimer, underlines their nostalgia for their village.
4. The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon. Trumpets and trombones announce the beginning of the French invasion. Háry single-handedly defeats Napoleon, however, and a saxophone transforms the opening victory march to a dirge for Napoleon’s funeral. As a trombonist, I especially appreciate this movement. In most orchestral music that includes trombones at all, including half of the suite, the trombones merely sit and listen to the strings and the rest of the orchestra. But here, the strings sit and listen to the trombones!
5. This lively csárdás has nothing to do with the plot. In the opera, it is heard between the first and second stories.
6. Entrance of the Emperor and his Court. Háry, has, in fact, never been to Vienna and has never seen the emperor. So the scene describes what the peasant imagination thinks being presented at court ought to be like. Oh. excuse me. We found out in the first two measures of the suite that everything is true.

-Program notes by David Guion

Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No.2 by Maurice Ravel

Ravel the perfectionist, the classical Impressionist, served only one master: musical idealism. Imagine, then, the problems inherent in a situation in which the aristocratic composer came into a cauldron seething with the outrageous temperaments of impresario Diaghilev, choreographer Fokine, scenic designer Léon Bakst, and danseur Vaslav Nijinsky. When the score for the ballet Daphnis and Chloé was completed, Diaghilev, not fully satisfied, wanted to call off the project, and only after much persuasion by Ravel’s publisher did he consent to mount the production. Rehearsals were sparring matches between Fokine and Nijinsky, the latter understandably edgy as he was at the same time involved as star and choreographer. Diaghilev was also distracted, for Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun was scheduled to premiere a mere ten days before Daphnis. Further and very importantly, concepts of the ballet’s character differed greatly among them. The story, a Greek pastoral romance attributed to the Sophist Longus, was thought to have been written in the third or fourth century A.D. Ravel saw it through Watteau-like eyes. “My intention in writing the ballet,” he said, “was to compose a vast musical fresco, less scrupulous as to archaism than faithful to the Greece of my dreams, which inclined readily enough to what French artists of the late 18th-century have imagined.” Diaghilev envisioned it as classical Hellenic art. And, in 1912, the dancers predictably had major difficulties with Ravel’s irregular rhythms.

Not surprisingly, Daphnis was not a great success at its premiere in Paris on June 8, 1912, nor is it even now a real standard in the repertory. But the score remains a flawless gem of Impressionistic art and is certainly one of Ravel’s supreme achievements. Even the austere Stravinsky called Daphnis “not only Ravel’s best work, but also one of the most beautiful products of all French music.” The ballet’s simple action revolves around the pastoral lovers, Daphnis and Chloé. The shepherdess Chloé is abducted by pirates, and Daphnis, distraught, falls into a sleep during which he dreams that the god Pan will come to his aid. When he awakens he finds his dream a reality – Chloé has been returned to him.

Daybreak, the first part of the Second Suite (derived from a full score that includes a wordless chorus), is a marvel of orchestral warmth and light, and the wonder of nature’s awakening. Woodwinds and harp rush quietly in endless cascades of ascending and descending notes, like the bubbling waters of a downstream forest brook; birds begin to chirp; a warm melody in the lower string stretches itself luxuriously; an effulgent orchestral burst signals the embrace of the lovers.The Pantomime section glows with the paganism of the languorous flute solo that dominates it. At this point in the ballet, Daphnis and Chloé mime the story of Pan and Syrinx. The flute solo is Pan’s entreaty to the reluctant Syrinx. (How could she resist such eloquent pleading?) The General Dance, even with its strong echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov, vibrates with true Ravelian splendor: deliriously exciting music for the celebration of the reuniting of Daphnis and Chloé.

-Program notes by Orrin Howard

BIOGRAPHIES