The Philadelphia Orchestra

Simon Rattle ConductorBarbara Hannigan Soprano

Webern Passacaglia, Op. 1

Berg Three Fragments from Wozzeck, Op. 7

Intermission

Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre First Philadelphia Orchestra performances

Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (“Pastoral”) I. Allegro, ma non troppo (Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arriving in the country) II. Andante molto moto (Scene by the brook) III. Allegro—Presto (Merry gathering of peasants)— IV. Allegro (Tempest, storm)— V. Allegretto (Shepherds’ hymn—Happy and thankful feelings after the storm)

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes.

The May 16 concert is sponsored by theHassel Foundation.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 2 PM. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details.

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Season 2012-2013Thursday, May 16, at 8:00Saturday, May 18, at 8:00Sunday, May 19, at 2:00

3 Story Title

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Renowned for its distinctive sound, beloved for its keen ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences, and admired for an unrivaled legacy of “firsts” in music-making, The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has cultivated an extraordinary history of artistic leaders in its 112 seasons, including music directors Fritz Scheel, Carl Pohlig, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Christoph Eschenbach, and Charles Dutoit, who served as chief conductor from 2008 to 2012. With the 2012-13 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin becomes the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Named music director designate in 2010, Nézet-Séguin brings a vision that extends beyond symphonic music into the

vivid world of opera and choral music.

Philadelphia is home and the Orchestra nurtures an important relationship not only with patrons who support the main season at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts but also those who enjoy the Orchestra’s other area performances at the Mann Center, Penn’s Landing, and other venues. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association also continues to own the Academy of Music—a National Historic Landmark—as it has since 1957.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, presentations, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador for Philadelphia and for the United States. Having been the first American orchestra to perform in China, in 1973 at the request of President Nixon, today The Philadelphia

Orchestra boasts a new partnership with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The Orchestra annually performs at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center while also enjoying a three-week residency in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a strong partnership with the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.

The ensemble maintains an important Philadelphia tradition of presenting educational programs for students of all ages. Today the Orchestra executes a myriad of education and community partnership programs serving nearly 50,000 annually, including its Neighborhood Concert Series, Sound All Around and Family Concerts, and eZseatU.

For more information on The Philadelphia Orchestra, please visit www.philorch.org.

Jessica Griffin

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Music DirectorYannick Nézet-Séguin triumphantly opened his inaugural season as the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra in the fall of 2012. From the Orchestra’s home in Verizon Hall to the Carnegie Hall stage, his highly collaborative style, deeply-rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called Yannick “phenomenal,” adding that under his baton, “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.”

Over the past decade, Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most exciting talents of his generation. Since 2008 he has been music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic, and since 2000 artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. He has appeared with such revered ensembles as the Vienna and Berlin philharmonics; the Boston Symphony; the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; the Dresden Staatskapelle; the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; and the major Canadian orchestras. His talents extend beyond symphonic music into opera and choral music, leading acclaimed performances at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, London’s Royal Opera House, and the Salzburg Festival.

In February 2013, following the July 2012 announcement of a major long-term collaboration between Yannick and Deutsch Grammophon, the Orchestra announced a recording project with the label, in which Yannick and the Orchestra will record Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. His discography with the Rotterdam Philharmonic for BIS Records and EMI/Virgin includes an Edison Award-winning album of Ravel’s orchestral works. He has also recorded several award-winning albums with the Orchestre Métropolitain for ATMA Classique.

A native of Montreal, Yannick studied at that city’s Conservatory of Music and continued studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini and with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. In 2012 Yannick was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. His other honors include Canada’s National Arts Centre Award; a Royal Philharmonic Society Award; the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the highest distinction for the arts in Quebec; and an honorary doctorate by the University of Quebec in Montreal.

To read Yannick’s full bio, please visit www.philorch.org/conductor.

Jessica Griffin

ConductorSimon Rattle made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1993 conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 and has been a familiar presence on the podium with the Philadelphians ever since. He has been chief conductor and artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2002. From 1980 to 1998 he was principal conductor and artistic adviser, then music director, of the City of Birmingham Symphony, recording and touring extensively with the ensemble. Recent season highlights have included projects with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Metropolitan Opera, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

An exclusive EMI artist for many years, Mr. Rattle has made over 70 recordings for the label that have received numerous international awards. Recent releases with the Berlin Philharmonic include Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Bizet’s Carmen. Other recordings include Brahms’s Requiem, which won a Grammy Award in 2008 for Best Choral Performance; Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, which won the 2009 Grammy for Best Choral Performance; Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique; Mahler’s Second and Ninth symphonies; and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9. With the Vienna Philharmonic he has recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies and piano concertos with Alfred Brendel.

Born in Liverpool, Mr. Rattle studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He was knighted in 1994 by the Queen of England and has received many other distinctions in recognition of his artistic activities. Since taking up his appointment with the Berlin Philharmonic, he has broken new ground with the educational program Zunkunft@Bphil. He and the Philharmonic were appointed international UNICEF ambassadors, the first time the honor has been conferred on an artistic ensemble. In 2013 Mr. Rattle and the Philharmonic begin a residency at the Baden-Baden Easter Festival, performing Mozart’s The Magic Flute and a series of concerts. Highlights of upcoming seasons include opera performances in Vienna, Berlin, London, and at the Salzburg Festival; extensive touring with the Berlin Philharmonic; and projects with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Vienna Philharmonic, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Sim

on Fowler

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SoloistSoprano Barbara Hannigan makes her Philadelphia Orchestra debut with these performances. A frequent guest of the Berlin Philharmonic, she has also appeared with most of the other leading orchestras worldwide, with such conductors as Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Reinbert de Leeuw, Vladimir Jurowski, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kurt Masur, Alan Gilbert, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Ms. Hannigan made her own conducting debut in 2010 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, leading Stravinsky’s Renard.

Much sought after in contemporary music, Ms. Hannigan has given over 75 world premieres. Her operatic repertory has recently expanded to the roles of Agnes in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, created for the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 2012 and recently performed to much acclaim at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Berg’s Lulu at La Monnaie in Brussels. She has sung the title role in Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol, Gepopo/Venus in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, and Armida in Handel’s Rinaldo, and she will make role debuts as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Melisande in Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande, and Marie in Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten in the coming seasons. Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, a tour de force for soprano and orchestra, has become a signature work, which she has sung—and sometimes also conducted—at Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Théâtre du Châtelet, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Salzburg Festival.

Ms. Hannigan’s talent for programming has also been widely recognized, most recently in London as co-curator of the Southbank Centre’s innovative festival “The Rest is Noise,” based on Alex Ross’s seminal book of the same name. Last season saw her undertake an acclaimed European tour with Boulez’s Pli selon pli conducted by the composer. Born and brought up in Canada, Ms. Hannigan received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University of Toronto, studying with Mary Morrison. She continued her studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague with Meinard Kraak and privately with Neil Semer.

Marco B

orggreve

Framing the ProgramToday’s program is the culmination of our season-long focus on Leopold Stokowski and the 100th anniversary of his appointment as music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The concert offers a wide range of moods spanning darkness to light, from murder and mystery to ultimate “thankful feelings after the storm.”

Anton Webern and Alban Berg, together with their teacher Arnold Schoenberg, formed the so-called Second Viennese School and emerged in the early 20th century as central figures in musical Modernism. Webern’s lush Passacaglia, his Op. 1, generously displays the Romantic origins of these composers. Stokowski and the Philadelphians gave the U.S. premiere of the work in 1927. Berg’s opera Wozzeck, a brilliant transformation of Georg Büchner’s searing play, made the composer’s international fame upon its Berlin premiere in 1925. (Again, Stokowski and the Orchestra presented the U.S. premiere of the opera’s staged version.) We hear three excerpts from the opera that Berg had presented a year earlier—a sort of preview of coming attractions.

The opposite happened in the case of Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s thrilling opera Le Grande Macabre, which premiered in 1978. A decade later arrangements under the title Mysteries of the Macabre were made out of the dazzling music sung by the Chief of the Secret Political Police, a coloratura soprano role performed today by Barbara Hannigan.

The “Pastoral” is Beethoven’s most explicitly programmatic symphony, excerpts of which were used in Disney’s Fantasia, recorded by Stokowski and the Orchestra in 1939. Beethoven detailed his extramusical ideas in sketches and gave each of the five movements a title, tracing a walk through the country, strolling by a stream, hearing birds sing, encountering peasants’ dancing, and being caught in a furious downpour with thunder and lightning before the concluding “Shepherds’ hymn—Happy and thankful feelings after the storm.” Yet his ultimate aim, he said, was “more an expression of feeling than painting.”

Parallel Events1808BeethovenSymphony No. 6

1908WebernPassacaglia

1974LigetiLe Grand Macabre

MusicWeberSilvanaLiteratureGoetheFaust, Pt. IArtIngresLa Grande BaigneuseHistoryFrance invades Spain

MusicElgarSymphony No. 1LiteratureForsterA Room with a ViewArtChagallNu rougeHistoryFord produces Model “T”

MusicCarterBrass QuintetLiteratureBenchleyJawsArtWarholMan RayHistoryNixon resigns

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33

The MusicPassacaglia

Anton WebernBorn in Vienna, December 3, 1883Died in Mittersill, Austria, September 15, 1945

We pay so much attention to the iconoclastic tendencies of Arnold Schoenberg and his school that sometimes we forget how profoundly traditional they were. The very term Second Viennese School—the rubric with which Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern came to be identified—itself implied a debt to history. Schoenberg had nothing but deepest admiration for the music of the past, from Bach to Brahms, and those who studied with him attest that his classes consisted almost wholly of harmony and counterpoint exercises. His system of composing with 12 tones can in fact be viewed as an extension of earlier “mechanical” devices (fugue, canon, variation) that had governed music for centuries.

Schoenberg’s foremost pupils, Berg and Webern, inherited this respect for history—it might be said that it was part of what attracted them to Schoenberg in the first place. Berg was powerfully influenced not only by Bach (one of Bach’s chorale harmonizations forms the very essence of Berg’s Violin Concerto) but also by the Romantics, from Schumann to Bruckner.

A Reverence for Early Music But the member of the Second Viennese School who was perhaps most overly steeped in history was Webern, who began his career as a musicologist, with a doctorate from the University of Vienna. Webern maintained a reverence for early music throughout his life—his dissertation was on the music of the Renaissance composer Heinrich Isaac—and he frequently paid homage to the works of Bach, Mozart, and Schubert in his own compositions.

Like Schoenberg, Webern embarked on his career immersed in a post-Wagnerian tonal language—with liberal influences from the tone poems of Richard Strauss and the early symphonies of Gustav Mahler. The decisive event in his turnaround was of course his encounter with Schoenberg, under whose tutelage he fully embraced the idea of atonality. But before this period of apprenticeship, which began around 1905, Webern composed with a Romantic lushness that hardly gave a hint of the spare, pointillistic style that would characterize his later music. Among his last works still anchored in tonality were the

Five Songs on Poems of Richard Dehmel and the tone poem Im Sommerwind.

But the early composition that expressed most overtly Webern’s devotion to the past was the Passacaglia, Op. 1, the piece that Schoenberg called Webern’s “journeyman’s work.” Completed in Vienna in the spring of 1908, the piece was premiered later that year with Webern conducting. “Nothing appears accidental, nothing forced by a mania for originality,” wrote an unusually sympathetic critic about the performance, in the New Viennese Journal. “The moods are felt, the sounds are heard.”

A Closer Look The passacaglia was a method of composition that flourished during the Baroque era, though its roots lay in techniques of Medieval and Renaissance music. (Another Baroque form, the ricercare, would later inspire Webern as well—in his orchestration of one of J.S. Bach’s works in this form.) A passacaglia is essentially a set of variations on a “ground” (usually the bass line) rather than on a top-voice melody. The subject of Webern’s piece can be heard at the outset, in the eight plucked notes, D, C-sharp, B-flat, A-flat, F, E, A, D, played ppp by dampened strings. There follow 23 variations on this ground (eleven in minor, four in major, then eight more in minor), in which these eight pitches can always be heard—in the bass, at the top of the texture, or sometimes in an inner voice. At times the theme is preserved only within the densest skeleton of the vertical sonorities, and is all but lost to the ear; yet some fragment of it usually survives the turmoil. Feverishly contrapuntal passages alternate with sections of rich melodic power and scintillating orchestral color. The piece ends as quietly and subtly as it had begun.

—Paul J. Horsley

Webern composed the Passacaglia in 1908.

Leopold Stokowski conducted the United States premiere of the Passacaglia with the Philadelphians, in March 1927. Most recently it appeared on subscription programs in February 1999, with Mark Wigglesworth on the podium.

The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle), harp, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 11 minutes.

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The MusicThree Fragments from Wozzeck

Alban BergBorn in Vienna, February 9, 1885Died there, December 24, 1935

Alban Berg long lived in the shadow of Arnold Schoenberg, his charismatic, powerful, and demanding teacher. Born in 1885 into an affluent Viennese family, Berg did not display any unusual musical talent as a youth. At age 19 he began studying with Schoenberg, to whom he became obsessively devoted. He composed slowly and meticulously, produced relatively few works (as did fellow student Anton Webern), and for many years had difficulties getting pieces performed.

Berg’s fortunes began to change in 1923, as he approached age 40, when Webern conducted the premiere in Berlin of the first two of his Three Pieces for Orchestra (1914-15). Later that summer his String Quartet, Op. 3 (1910), was enthusiastically received at the first festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salzburg. The prominent conductor Hermann Scherchen attended the concert and expressed interest in excerpting parts of the opera Wozzeck, as yet unperformed. Berg had conceived of the opera in 1914, after seeing the Viennese premiere of Georg Büchner’s play on which it is based, but delayed composition when he was conscripted into the Austrian War Ministry. He finished Wozzeck in 1922 and arranged a private printing of the vocal score. Alma Mahler, the great composer’s widow, helped raise the necessary funding and Berg dedicated it to her.

Although people were becoming aware of the opera through the score and articles about it, the work itself had yet to be staged. Scherchen offered a new opportunity by presenting a concert suite for soprano and orchestra, a sort of preview of coming attractions. In Frankfurt in June 1924 he conducted the Three Fragments from Wozzeck, which Berg informed Webern was “a great triumph with the public, the musicians, and the press.” The next year Erich Kleiber premiered the complete opera in Berlin and the work was widely hailed as a masterpiece. Productions soon followed in Prague, Leningrad, and all over Germany (until the Nazis came to power). Leopold Stokowski led the American premiere in Philadelphia in March 1931. (He had already conducted the Three Fragments the previous November.) Wozzeck made Berg internationally

34A

famous for the last 10 years of his life; he died on Christmas Eve 1935 at age 50.

From Play to Opera Wozzeck is hardly easy listening, either in the 1920s or today. Yet from the very beginning, as Berg recognized, not only composers, performers, and critics embraced the opera, but so too did a much broader public. Various factors have contributed to its enduring success and potent influence. One is the compelling story and brilliant libretto. Büchner’s unfinished play, which Berg himself adapted, dates from 1837, the year the playwright died at age 23. The plot derives from a real-life crime in the early 1820s in which a poor soldier murdered his common-law wife. It took 76 years, until 1913, for Büchner’s gripping drama to be performed.

From Büchner’s scattered fragments of some 25 scenes Berg crafted a tight opera that unfolds in three acts, each consisting of five scenes. Act I offers a series of character studies that introduce the principal figures in Wozzeck’s environment: the sadistic Captain who torments him; his friend Andres; Marie and the son Wozzeck fathered; the mad Doctor running experiments on him; and the Drum Major with whom Marie has an affair. (The “low” characters are named, the officials called only by their function.) The second act, structured as a five-movement symphony, advances Wozzeck’s humiliation as he learns of Marie’s infidelity and is beaten up by the Drum Major. In the final act Wozzeck murders Marie by slitting her throat and then drowns himself. The opera ends with their child learning of Marie’s death. Uniting all these scenes are evocative orchestral interludes that build to a cathartic final statement using the motif of Wozzeck’s cry “Wir arme Leut!” (We poor people!).

A Closer Look For the excerpts presented in the concert suite Berg chose two scenes centered around Marie and the conclusion of the opera. The first Fragment begins with the interlude between the second and third scenes of Act I and then introduces Marie. She holds her son and observes a military march in which the Drum Major and soldiers pass by her house. She sings a lullaby, a song that has a clear strophic form and memorable melody, but is strangely distorted by the atonal idiom.

The second Fragment is the opening of Act III, a theme and variations ending with a fugue in which the remorseful Marie again addresses her son. Here Berg uses the Sprechstimme technique advanced by Schoenberg, which is half-spoken, half-sung for passages

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Wozzeck was composed from 1914 to 1922.

Catherine Reiner was the soprano soloist in the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Three Fragments from Wozzeck, in November 1930; Leopold Stokowski was on the podium. In March 1931 the Orchestra and Stokowski presented the U.S. staged premiere of the entire opera. The Fragments have only been heard one other time on the Orchestra’s subscription concerts, in October 1947 with soprano Gertrude Ribla and Eugene Ormandy.

The Orchestra recorded the Three Fragments in 1947 for CBS, with Ormandy and Ribla.

The Fragments are scored for four flutes (III and IV doubling piccolo), four oboes (IV doubling English horn), four clarinets (III and IV doubling E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, gong, rute, side drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, xylophone), harp, celesta, strings, and soprano voice.

The work lasts approximately 18 minutes in performance.

when Marie is quoting from the Bible; her own thoughts are sung.

The final Fragment offers the harrowing final two scenes of the opera and the famous interlude between them. By this point Wozzeck has killed Marie and returned to the murder site to retrieve the knife. The excerpt begins as he wades into the water and drowns, which Berg marvelously evokes in his orchestration. It is not entirely clear whether this is an intentional suicide or an accident, but in any case the Captain and Doctor happen to be passing by and hear someone drowning; without lifting a finger to help, they anxiously run off. The most extended of the opera’s orchestral interludes follows Wozzeck’s death and reviews some of the principal leitmotifs, building to “Wir arme Leut!” Although there have been scattered tonal passages earlier in the opera, this is the most potent, hovering around D minor. The devastating final scene is a perpetual motion movement in which the son learns of Marie’s death from playmates singing a nursery rhyme. As they run off to look for the body the child is left alone on stage riding his hobbyhorse and singing “hopp, hopp!”

—Christopher H. Gibbs

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Fragment I

Marie (Singt vor sich hin.)Soldaten, Soldatensind schöne Burschen!

(Unterbricht den Gesang. Ausbrechend.)

Komm, mein Bub! Was die Leute wollen! Bist nur ein arm’ Hurenkind und machst Deiner Mutter doch so viel Freud’ mit Deinem unehrlichen Gesicht!

(Wiegt das Kind.)

Eia popeia …

Mädel, was fangst Du jetzt an?

Hast ein klein Kind und kein Mann!

Ei, was frag’ ich darnach,sing’ ich die ganze

Nacht:Eia popeia, mein süsser

Bu’,gibt mir kein Mensch nix dazu!

Hansel, spann’ Deine sechs Schimmel an,

gib sie zu fressen auf’s neu,kein Haber fresse sie,kein Wasser saufe sie.Lauter kühler Wein muss es

sein!

(Bemerkt, dass Kind ist eingeschlafen.)

Lauter kühler Wein muss es sein.

Marie (singing to herself)The soldiers, the soldiers are splendid fellows …

(Stops singing. Flaring up.)

Come, my child!We shan’t hear their slanders!You are just a bastard childand give to your mother so pure a joy,although no priest blessed your little face.

(She rocks the child.)

Hush-a-bye, baby …

Maiden, what song shall you sing?

You have a child, but no ring.

Why such sorrow pursue?Singing the whole night

through:Hush-a-bye, baby, my darling

son,nobody cares, ne’er a one.

Jackie, go saddle your horses now,

give them to eat and to spare,no oats to eat today,no water to drink today.Purest, coolest wine shall

it be.

(She notices that the child is asleep.)

Purest, coolest wine shall it be!

34D

Please turn the page quietly.

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Fragment II

Marie„Und ist kein Betrug in

seinem Munde erfunden

worden.“Herr-Gott! Herr-Gott! Sieh’ mich nicht an!

(blättert weiter und liest wieder)

„Aber die Pharisäer brachten

ein Weib zu ihm, so im Ehebruch lebte. Jesus aber sprach: ,So verdamme ich dich auch nicht, geh’ hin, und sündige hinfort nicht

mehr.‘“Herr-Gott!

(Schlägt die Hände vors Gesicht. Das Kind drängt sich an Marie.)

Der Bub’ gibt mir einen Stich in’s Herz. Fort!

(stösst das Kind von sich)

Das brüst’ sich in der Sonne!

(plötzlich milder)

Nein, komm, komm her!

(zieht das Kind an sich)

Komm zu mir!„Es war einmal ein armes

Kindund hatt’ keinen Vater und keine Mutter, war Alles

tot, und war Niemand auf der

Welt, und es hat gehungert

und geweint Tag und Nacht.

Marie“And out of His mouth there

came forth neither deceit nor

falsehood.”Lord God! Lord God! Look not on me!

(She turns the pages and reads on.)

“Wherefore the Pharisees had

taken and brought to Himan adulterous woman.Jesus said to her: “Thus do I condemn theeno more. Go forth in peace,and sin no

more.’”Lord God!

(She covers her face with her hands. The child presses up to Marie.)

The boy looks at me and stabs my heart.Be off!

(She pushes the child away.)

That brat there in the sunlight!

(suddenly more gently)

Ah, no! Come here!

(draws him closer)

Come to me!“And once there was a poor

child,and he had no father, nor any mother, for all were

dead,there was no one in the

world,therefore he did hunger

and did weep day and night.

Und weil es Niemand mehr hatt’

auf der Welt …“

Der Franz ist nit kommen, gestern nit, heut’ nit …

(blättert hastig in der Bibel)

Wie steht es geschrieben von der Magdalena? …

(liest)

„Und kniete hin zu seinen Füssen

und weinte und küsste seine Füsse

und netzte sie mit Tränen

und salbte sie mit Salben.“

(schlägt sich auf die Brust)

Heiland! Ich möchte Dir die Füsse salben!Heiland! Du hast Dich ihrer

erbarmt, erbarme Dich auch meiner!

Fragment III

KinderRingel, Ringel, Rosenkranz,

Ringelreih’n!Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz,

Rin …

(unterbrechen Gesang und Spiel, andere Kinder stürmen herein)

Mariens KnabeHopp, hopp!

Since he had nobody left

in the world …”

But Franz has not come yet,yesterday, this day …

(She hastily turns the pages of the Bible.)

What is written here of Mary Magdalene?

(She reads.)

“And falling on her knees before Him and weeping,

she kissed His feet and washed them,

and washed them with her tears,

anointing them with ointment!”

(beats her breast)

Saviour! Could I anoint Thy feet with ointment!Saviour! As Thou hadst

mercy on her, have mercy now on me, Lord!

ChildrenRing-a-ring a-roses, all fall

down!Ring-a-ring a-ros-es,

all …

(They stop singing and playing, other children rush in.)

Marie’s ChildHop, hop!

Libretto adapted by Berg from the drama Woyzeck, by Georg Büchner

English translation by Eric Blackall and Vida Harford

Reproduced by permission of Universal Edition A G Wien

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The MusicMysteries of the Macabre

György Ligeti Born in Dicsöszentmárton, Transylvania, May 28, 1923Died in Vienna, June 12, 2006

The Macabre in question is Le Grand Macabre, the opera Ligeti wrote between 1974 and 1977. Put very briefly, this as an opera about a perpetual drunkard, a pair of young lovers who are permanently on the point of climax, a boy prince, and an astronomer and his wife who are into sado-masochism. All of them are inhabitants of Brueghelland, a fictional country not a million miles from a region that can be glimpsed here and there on the walls of art museums around the world. To this genial and bizarre territory comes a man who claims to be the Grim Reaper (he is the “Great Macabre”), and though there is indeed some kind of catastrophe, life afterward goes on pretty much as before, the only person to have died being Death himself.

Mysteries of the Macabre is a clip from the opera that shows one character: the Chief of the Secret Political Police, a coloratura soprano role, in the three-part aria that arrives to dazzle and amaze in the third of the opera’s four scenes. As a concert piece, the work came about in a way that, if not exactly mysterious, is certainly strange. In 1988 Elgar Howarth, who had conducted the opera’s first performance at the Royal Opera of Stockholm a decade before, made an arrangement of the aria as a showpiece for trumpet and piano. The trumpet was Howarth’s own instrument, though here he was working on behalf of the Swedish performer Håkan Hardenberger. Three years later, again for Hardenberger, and again with the composer’s willing consent, Howarth arranged the accompaniment for a typical new-music ensemble of 14 soloists. Thereupon someone had the idea of reversing the change from voice to trumpet, so that the aria could once again feature the ravings of the Brueghelland Police Chief. In that form, as a wild virtuoso ride for soprano and ensemble, the piece was performed for the first time in Boston in 1993. A few years later, Barbara Hannigan astonished the composer by her performance, for reasons that will be startlingly clear today. Since then Ms. Hannigan and Mr. Rattle have sometimes taken the further step of going back to the composer’s original scoring, as in these performances.

Dazzling, Disturbing, Humorous, and Beautiful In the opera, the Police Chief bursts in soon after the ruling

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H.G

. Kropp

prince of Brueghelland has accepted the resignations of both his rival ministers. Passing through three disguises (as bird of prey, spider, and octopus), she is there to warn the prince that a fearsome visitor, the “Great Macabre,” is coming this way. However, she delivers her message in a crazy jumble of clichés mixed up with code to which nobody else has the key (assuming she does herself), and her musical acrobatics make her all the more unintelligible. What is nonsense as text, however, can become extravagantly, outrageously, and hilariously meaningful as music, as Ligeti had proved earlier in his Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures: miniature operas for three singers whose dreams, posturings, and interconnections are precisely drawn without benefit of words. In rather the same way, we understand the Police Chief—her alarm, her excitement, her struggle to express herself, her conviction that she is making sense, her revelation of other roles she might prefer to play—without any need for her to make verbal sense.

Ligeti being Ligeti, the scene is not only absurd but also tightly formed and full of fascinating, surprising, and often funny detail, from the instrumentalists as well as from the singer-actress, so although the piece puts us into a state of shock and bewilderment and laughter—and keeps us there for the nine minutes it lasts—it offers a lot of incidental pleasures, too. As with the Queen of the Night’s arias in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, we are taken into a world that is dazzling, a little disturbing, and a touch humorous, and at the same time exquisitely beautiful. Way over the top is a good place to be.

A Closer Look The first part of the aria features vocal lightning bolts: bursts of even note values, often four at a time, making jagged outlines. For much of the time, the kaleidoscopic orchestra keeps time with the singer, giving her line a setting in tumbling color, but the players are also capable of responding to her differently, and even challenging her. A percussion ostinato begins the second part, which includes a passage of Ligetian orchestral tremulation and a syncopated dance before ending with a lopsided chorale. The last two minutes of the piece take its previous extremes yet further.

—Paul Griffiths

Ligeti composed Le Grand Macabre from 1974 to 1977. The version of Mysteries of the Macabre heard today, for trumpet or soprano and full orchestra, was first heard in 1994 in Paris.

These are the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the piece.

The score calls for piccolo, flute, three oboes (III doubling English horn), two clarinets (II doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons (II doubling contrabassoon), four horns, two trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, bongos, castanets, conga, crotales, cymbals, glockenspiel, güiro, maracas, military drum, police whistle, rattle, sandpaper, signal pipe, slide whistle, small snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tambourine, temple blocks, tissue paper, tom-tom, triangle, woodblock, xylophone), harp, celesta, harpsichord, piano, mandolin, strings, and soprano (or trumpet) soloist.

Mysteries of the Macabre runs approximately nine minutes in performance.

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Psst! Ps-psst! Psps-psst! Shsht!Co! Coco! Kho! Cocococo! Cococo! Cocoding zero!

O! Aha! Cocoding Zero-zero: highest security grade!

Aha! Zero, zero! Birds on the wing! (Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!)Double-you-see! Snakes in the grass! Rabble, rabble, rabble! Riot, riot! (Too too too too too!)Unlawful assemblies! (Cha cha cha cha cha!)Communal insurrection! Mutinous masses! (Cha che chi choo cha!)

Turbulence! Panic! Panic! Papapapa-panic!Groundless! Groundless! Phobia! Wide of the mark!

Right off the track! Hypopo-Hypopopopopopopata Hypochondria!

Rrsh! What did you say? Rrsh!March! March-t! March target!Direction! rection! Direction! Prince Your palace! March-target royal palace! Palace! Password: Gogogo-golash, Go-golash! Demonstrations, ha! Protestactions, ha! Provocations, ha!

Pst! Pst! Much discretion! Close observation! Take precautions! That’s all! Pst! Pst! Not a squeak! Confidential!

One more thing:Bear in mind: Silence is gold(en)!

“What is it now?”

Secret cypher! Code-Name: Loch-Ness-Monster!

Comet in sight! Red glow! Burns bright! (Chu chu chi chi …)Pst! Sit tight! No fright!

Yes! No! No! Yes! No! No! Yes! Yes! No!

Beyond all doubt! Satellite! Asteroid! Planetoid! Polaroid!Coming fast! Hostile! Perfidious! Menacing! Momentous! Fatal!

Please turn the page quietly.

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Stern measures! Stern measures! Stern measures? Stern measures!

Kukuriku! (Ten!) Kikeriki! He’s coming!Coming! Coming! Coming! Coming!

Kekerikeke! Kokorikoko! Kukurikuku! Kakarikakaka!Makarikaka! (Nine!) Makabrikaka! (Eight!) Makabrika! (Seven!) Kabrikama! (Six!)Brikamaka! (Five!) Kamakabri! (Four!) Makabri! (Three!) Makrabi! (Two!)Makrabey! (One!) Makrabey! Makrabey! (Zero!)Makrabey! Makrabey!Makrabey! Makrabey! Makrabey! Makrabey!

Coming! Coming! Look there! There! There! There! He’s getting in! He’s getting in! He’s getting in! He’s in! Where’s the guard? Where’s the guard? The guard! The guard! The guard!Call the guard! Call the guard! …Call the gua’! Call the gua’!Call the gua’! Call the gua’! Call the gua’! Call the gua’!Call ’e gua’! Call ’e gua’!

Call guarda! Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! Ada! Ada! Ada! ...Da!! Da!! ... Da!Da Da Da Da Pssst Da.

c. 1974-77, rev.1996, by Schott Music GmbH & Co., Mainz.Reprinted courtesy of Schott Music Corporation & European

American Music Dist. Co., New York.

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The MusicSymphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”)

Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

Most of the familiar titles attached to Beethoven’s works were put there by someone other than the composer. Critics, friends, and publishers invented the labels “Moonlight,” “Tempest,” and “Appassionata” for popular piano sonatas. Prominent patrons’ names—Archduke Rudolph, Count Razumovsky, Count Waldstein—became wedded to compositions they either commissioned or that were dedicated to them, thereby winning a sort of immortality for those who supported the composer.

Beethoven himself crossed out the heading “Bonaparte” from the title page of the Third Symphony, but later wrote in “Sinfonia eroica” (Heroic Symphony), and it is his only symphony besides the Sixth to bear an authentic title. To be sure, stories about “fate knocking at the door” in the Fifth and the choral finale of the Ninth have encouraged programmatic associations for those works, beginning in Beethoven’s own time. But, in the end, it is the Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral,” that stands most apart from his others, and indeed from nearly all of Beethoven’s instrumental and keyboard music, in its intentional, publicly declared, and often quite audible extramusical content. Beethoven’s full title is: “Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life.”

“More an Expression of Feeling than Painting” And yet the Sixth Symphony does not aspire to the level of musical realism found in a work like Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique or in Richard Strauss’s tone poems. Beethoven famously noted that the “Pastoral” contained “more an expression of feeling than painting.” He had earlier objected to some of the musical illustration in Haydn’s oratorios The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), with their imitations of storms, frogs, and other phenomena. He probably would not have cared much for what the “New German School” of Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner would later advocate and create.

Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony belongs to a tradition, going back to the previous century, of “characteristic” symphonies. Indeed, the titles for the movements that Beethoven provided closely resemble those of Le Portrait musical de la nature, written nearly 25 years earlier by the Rheinish composer Justin Heinrich Knecht. (It is doubtful

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Beethoven knew the music of the piece, but he may have known the titles.) Scattered comments that Beethoven made in his sketches for the Symphony are revealing: “The hearers should be allowed to discover the situations / Sinfonia caracteristica—or recollection of country life / All painting in instrumental music is lost if it is pushed too far / Sinfonia pastorella. Anyone who has an idea of country life can make out for himself the intentions of the composer without many titles / Also without titles the whole will be recognized as a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds.”

Regardless of the musical and aesthetic implications that the “Pastoral” Symphony raises with respect to the program music—a key issue for debate over the rest of the century—the piece unquestionably offers eloquent testimony to the importance and power of nature in Beethoven’s life. The composer reveled in walking in the environs of Vienna and spent nearly every summer in the country. When Napoleon’s second occupation of the city in 1809 made his departure impossible, he wrote to his publisher: “I still cannot enjoy life in the country, which is so indispensable to me.” Indeed, Beethoven’s letters are filled with declarations of the importance of nature in his life, such as one from 1810: “How delighted I will be to ramble for awhile through the bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.”

Companion Symphonies Beethoven wrote the “Pastoral” primarily during the spring and fall of 1808, although some sketches date back years earlier. Its composition overlapped in part with that of the Fifth Symphony, which might be considered its non-identical twin. Not only did both have the same period of genesis and the same dedicatees (Count Razumovsky and Prince Lobkowitz), but they were also published within weeks of one another in the spring of 1809 and premiered together (in reverse order and with their numbers switched).

The occasion was Beethoven’s famous marathon concert of December 22, 1808, at the Theater an der Wien, and was the only time he premiered two symphonies together. Moreover, the program also included the first public performance of the Fourth Piano Concerto, two movements from the Mass in C, the concert aria Ah! perfido, and the “Choral” Fantasy. Reports indicate that all did not go well, as musicians playing after limited rehearsal struggled their way through this demanding new

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music, and things fell apart during the “Choral” Fantasy. Although the Fifth and Sixth symphonies are extremely different from one another in overall mood, there are notable points of convergence, such as the innovations in instrumentation (the delayed and dramatic introduction of piccolo and trombones in the fourth movements) and the splicing together of the final movements.

A Closer Look Beethoven’s descriptive movement titles for the “Pastoral” were made public to the audience before the premiere. The first movement, “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arriving in the country,” engages with a long musical tradition of pastoral music. From the opening drone of an open fifth in the lower strings to the jovial coda, the leisurely and often repetitive pace of the movement is far from the intensity of the Fifth Symphony. The second movement, “Scene by the brook,” includes the famous birdcalls: flute for the nightingale, oboe for the quail, and two clarinets for the cuckoo (Berlioz copied the effect for two of the birds in the pastoral third movement of his Symphonie fantastique).

This is Beethoven’s only symphony with five movements and the last three lead one into the next. The third is entitled “Merry gathering of peasants” and suggests a town band of limited ability playing dance music. The gaiety is interrupted by a “Tempest, storm” that approaches from afar as ominous rumblings give way to the full fury of thunder and lightning. The storm is far more intense than other well-known storms—such as by Vivaldi and Haydn—and presages later ones by Berlioz and Wagner. Just as the storm had approached gradually, so it passes, leaving some scattered moments of disruption before the “Shepherds’ hymn—Happy and thankful feelings after the storm” brings the work to its close. Regardless of Beethoven’s declared intentions, this music seems to function on both descriptive and expressive levels, therein fueling arguments about the issue ever since his time.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2013. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Paul Griffiths.

The “Pastoral” Symphony was composed from 1803 to 1808.

Fritz Scheel conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the Sixth, in December 1901. Most recently on subscription, Alan Gilbert led the work here in January 2011. Some of the conductors who have led the Symphony with the Orchestra include Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, George Szell, Otto Klemperer, Georg Solti, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Christoph Eschenbach.

The Orchestra has recorded Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony five times: in 1939 in an abridged version with Stokowski for RCA; in 1946 with Walter for CBS; in 1966 with Ormandy for CBS; and in 1978 and 1987 with Muti for EMI.

The “Pastoral” is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 40 minutes.

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Musical TermsGENERAL TERMSAtonality: A term used to describe music that is not tonal, especially organized without reference to key or tonal centerCanon: A device whereby an extended melody, stated in one part, is imitated strictly and in its entirety in one or more other partsChorale: A hymn tune of the German Protestant Church, or one similar in styleCoda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finalityContrapuntal: See counterpointCounterpoint: A term that describes the combination of simultaneously sounding musical linesFugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different placesGround bass: A continually repeated bass phrase of four or eight measuresLeitmotif: Literally “leading motif.” Any striking musical motif (theme, phrase) characterizing or accompanying one of the actors, or some particular

idea, emotion, or situation, in a drama.Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s outputOstinato: A steady bass accompaniment, repeated over and overPassacaglia: In 19th- and 20th-century music, a set of ground-bass or ostinato variations, usually of a serious characterPerpetual motion: A musical device in which rapid figuration is persistently maintainedRicercare: Instrumental composition of the 16th and 17th centuries generally characterized by imitative treatment of the theme or themesScherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts.Serialism: Music constructed according to the principle pioneered by Schoenberg in the early 1920s, whereby the 12 notes of the scale are

arranged in a particular order, forming a series of pitches that serves as the basis of the composition and a source from which the musical material is derivedSonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications.Syncopation: A shift of rhythmic emphasis off the beat12-tone: See serialism

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo)Allegretto: A tempo between walking speed and fastAllegro: Bright, fastAndante: Walking speedMoto: Motion, speed, movementPresto: Very fast

TEMPO MODIFIERSMa non troppo: But not too muchMolto: Very

DYNAMIC MARKSPianississimo (ppp): Very, very soft

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Gil Shaham Plays BrahmsMay 23 & 25 8 PM May 24 2 PMYannick Nézet-Séguin Conductor Gil Shaham Violin

Schumann Third movement from Symphony No. 2 Janácek Sinfonietta Brahms Violin Concerto Dvorák Slavonic Dance Nos. 1, 10, and 8

Special thanks to the Julius and Ray Charlestein Foundation for their support in memory of Morton and Malvina Charlestein.

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