LISZT PIANO CONCERTO 2

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Photograph of Franz Liszt by Franz Hanfstaengl, c. 1860

CONCERT PROGRAM

Peter OundjianMusic Director

Simon ColeDark Forest: Sesquie for Canada’s 150th (Apr 12 only; WORLD PREMIÈRE/TSO CO-COMMISSION)

Marc BélangerWink from Drummondville to Toronto: Sesquie for Canada’s 150th (Apr 13 only; TSO PREMIÈRE/TSO CO-COMMISSION)

Christos HatzisThe Isle Is Full of Noises

Franz LisztPiano Concerto No. 2 in A MajorIn one movement

Intermission

Johannes BrahmsSymphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90I. Allegro con brio

II. Andante

III. Poco allegretto

IV. Allegro

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

8:00pm

Thursday, April 13, 2017

2:00pm

Andrey Boreykoconductor

Lucas Debarguepiano

Conductor Andrey Boreyko is joined by pianist Lucas Debargue for this concert of the familiar and the new. Canadian composer Christos Hatzis’s The Isle Is Full of Noises is a colourful work, blending striking new sounds from the instruments with some very attractive melodies and harmonies. Liszt’s virtuoso piano music is so dazzling that we sometimes forget what an incredibly skilled and imaginative composer he was. In a single movement instead of the traditional three, the Second Concerto was quite revolutionary for its time; it is based entirely on the music heard at the beginning, which returns in endlessly inventive variations. Brahms’s great Third Symphony, on the other hand, is cast in a more traditional way. It is one of the most dramatic of his four symphonies, and the glorious slow movement is surely one of the most beautiful things he ever wrote.

Please note that these performances are being recorded for online release at TSO.CA/CanadaMosaic.

APR 12 PERFORMANCE PRESENTING SPONSOR

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THE DETAILS

The Isle Is Full of Noises was commissioned by

the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal for a

program consisting of compositions inspired by

William Shakespeare. I chose to base mine on The

Tempest, particularly on two memorable excerpts,

one by Prospero—“We are such stuff as dreams are

made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep”

(Act IV, Scene 1)—and the following one by Caliban:

Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that vie delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,

That if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming

The clouds methought would open, and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again. (Act III, Scene 2)

Both Prospero and Caliban view reality as dream-

like in this play. Their island is a magical place.

Its “reality” is shaped and determined by human

will, Prospero’s, rather than natural law. Caliban,

a rebellious and conceited creature, is promoting

this reality to the unsuspecting newcomers

hoping to usurp through them Prospero’s magic

and power. It is not surprising that, in Christian

Europe of Shakespeare’s time, Caliban’s character

became associated with the serpentine deceiver

of the Biblical Eden allegory who, too, sought to

corrupt the first humans by enticing them to the

power of the forbidden fruit of consciousness

and its power thereof, in spite of God’s explicit

instructions to the contrary. It is this Biblical

connection with the “isle, full of noises” which

got me inspired to compose this work.

The work begins with primal breathing and an

elemental soundscape. Musical sounds gradually

emerge from the depths of the orchestral

spectrum in a tonally vague language which

quickly transforms into impressionistic smears.

Timbre gradually morphs into melody and

harmony. Finally, the main theme, representing

the emergence of consciousness in the

metaphorical structure of my work, is introduced

by the string orchestra in an introverted but

eventually more self-conscious manner,

persistently pulled outward by the exuberance of

the triumphant ending—the latter representing

the emergence of the perfected human in this

earthly sphere of consciousness.

Program note by the composer

Christos Hatzis The Isle Is Full of Noises

Born: Volos, Greece, Mar 21, 1953 Composed: 2013

13min

For program notes to Simon Cole’s Dark Forest: Sesquie for

Canada’s 150th and Marc Bélanger’s Wink from Drummondville

to Toronto: Sesquie for Canada’s 150th, please turn to pages 9

and 10, respectively, of the Sesquies Canada Mosaic program.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERA composition professor at the University of Toronto, Christos Hatzis is

one of Canada’s most important composers. His latest projects include

SYN-PHONIA (Migration Patterns), a work about climate change, and the

ballet score Going Home Star: Truth and Reconciliation about the Indian

Residential Schools (the ballet has toured Canada with the Royal Winnipeg

Ballet to rave reviews and public reception). A recent CD release of the latter

has received two 2017 JUNO Award nominations. hatzis.com

Franz LisztPiano Concerto No. 2 in A Major

Born: Raiding, then in Hungary (now in Austria), Oct 22, 1811Died: Bayreuth, Germany, Jul 31, 1886Composed: 1839–1863

Liszt was one of the most gifted and dynamic

musical figures of the nineteenth century.

His claim to the title of supreme pianist of

the day was repeatedly challenged, but

never surrendered. He created hundreds of

works for piano, including original creations,

arrangements, and paraphrases. Their brilliance

and difficulty reflect his own performing style.

He was exceptionally generous to his fellow

musicians, offering encouragement and

advocacy to like-minded progressive composers

and teaching vast numbers of promising piano

students.

On the orchestral front, he virtually created the

musical form known as the symphonic poem. It

was adopted to great effect by Richard Strauss,

Jean Sibelius, and many others. Taking as its

point of departure such concepts as literature,

painting, locales, and philosophical ideas, it

strives to express them in music.

Seeking to bind his symphonic poems together

into coherent wholes, he developed a system of

composition in which he based each piece on

the development and transformation of a few

short, simple themes. This practice exercised

enormous influence, on his son-in-law Richard

Wagner’s operas in particular.

Liszt applied this technique when composing

his piano concertos. He conceived Nos. 1

and 2 over lengthy periods, reflecting his busy

performing career and the continuing evolution

of his composing style. The piece that would

eventually become Concerto No. 2 appeared

first, about 1839, as a “concerto without

orchestra” for piano solo. He never completed

this piece. In 1849, he revised it as Concerto

No. 2 for piano and orchestra. He reworked

it several times more before its publication in

1863. The first performance (in a still-developing

version) had taken place four years before that, in

Weimar, Germany. Liszt conducted, and his pupil

Hans von Bronsart played the solo part.

Liszt cast it in one, continuous movement

consisting of six subsections in contrasting

moods and tempos (Adagio sostenuto assai—

Allegro agitato assai—Allegro moderato—Allegro

deciso—Marziale un poco meno allegro—Allegro

animato). It is the most mature and poetic of

his works for piano and orchestra. It contains its

full share of virtuoso writing for every player. It

also displays a welcome variety of texture in the

orchestration, much of which has the intimate

transparency of chamber music.

Program note by Don Anderson

22min

THEMATIC METAMORPHOSISBoth of Liszt’s Piano Concertos were quite

revolutionary for their time, compressing

the traditional three-movement form

of the concerto into works that flowed

more like tone poems. The success of this

continuous form was in part due to Liszt’s

mastery of thematic metamorphosis, which

is evident in this concerto: as one obvious

example, the lyrical opening melody

becomes a grand march in the finale.

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Johannes BrahmsSymphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90

Born: Hamburg, now in Germany, May 7, 1833Died: Vienna, Austria, Apr 3, 1897Composed: 1883

Brahms needed an unusually long time to

develop an individual style. Much of the difficulty

sprang from his awe of Beethoven, even though

many of his supporters and colleagues saw him

as the earlier composer’s true symphonic heir. “I

shall never write a symphony,” he told conductor

Hermann Levi. “You have no idea how the likes

of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like

him (Beethoven) behind us.”

Time and experience eventually convinced

him to renounce that vow. Some twenty

years passed after he began work on his first

symphony before he felt it was ready to be

played in public. The première in 1876 won

great success, confirming in his mind that he

really did possess the necessary skills to follow

in Beethoven’s footsteps as a great composer of

symphonic music.

The Third is a more individual and characteristic

symphony than its two predecessors. In its

striking mixture of passion and pessimism,

of restlessness and serenity, Brahms offers a

compelling, highly revealing musical self-portrait.

“What harmonious mood pervades the whole!”

his close friend, Clara Schumann, wrote to him

after playing through the symphony at the piano.

“All the movements seem to be of one piece,

one beat of the heart, each one a jewel.”

One of its most striking features is that all four

movements end quietly. Such an unusually

reserved practice reveals the degree of

confidence that Brahms had attained by this

point in his career, and also perhaps a growing

pessimism.

The opening movement is rich with incident and

feeling. Surges of emotion, positive and doubting

alike, roll across its richly textured surface.

The following two movements are peaceful

interludes. Only at the climax of the second

section does its overall atmosphere of almost

rustic gentleness give way to a more heated style

of utterance. The third movement is a dance:

slow, melancholy, hauntingly beautiful. The

symphony’s emotional conflicts are resumed in

the finale, only to dissipate, as the music winds

down to a resigned, almost exhausted coda.

Program note by Don Anderson

33min

VARIATIONS ON FORMBrahms is usually regarded as a

“conservative” composer of symphonies,

but his Third Symphony contains a few

interesting innovations to traditional

symphonic form (see the Visual Listening

Guide in the following pages): 1) The Motto

Theme that opens the 1st movement

introduces a tension between the keys

F major and F minor that is not resolved

until the very end of the 4th movement;

2) in the 2nd movement, Theme 2

returns as the Chorale Theme in the 4th

movement; 3) in the finale, Theme 1 and

the Chorale Theme, as well as the Motto

Theme and Theme 1 of the 1st movement

return in the Coda.

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THE DETAILS

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THE ARTISTSAndrey BoreykoconductorAndrey Boreyko made his TSO début in October 2003.

Andrey Boreyko has been Music Director of Orchestre

National de Belgique since 2012, and in 2014, he began

his tenure as Music Director of the Naples Philharmonic

in Florida. Additionally, he holds the position of Principal

Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi.

Current European highlights include appearances with the Konzerthausorchester

Berlin, Gothenburg Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Rundfunk-

Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale

Fiorentino, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. In North America,

2016/17 sees appearances at both the Aspen and Ravinia Festivals with the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Notable amongst Boreyko’s discography with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart

des SWR are Pärt’s Lamentate and Silvestrov’s Symphony No.6, as well as the

première recording of his original version of the Suite from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

for Hänssler Classics. Boreyko also continues his extensive recording project of the

complete Shostakovich symphonies and he conducted the much-anticipated world

première of Górecki’s Symphony No. 4 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and

the US première with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Lucas DebarguepianoThese performances mark Lucas Debargue’s TSO début.

Born in 1990, Lucas Debargue began piano at age 11 at

Compiegne Conservatory with Christine Muenier. He

was quickly fascinated by the virtuoso repertoire, but it

was not until 10 years later, after he had graduated from

Paris Diderot University with a Bachelor’s of Art degree,

that he decided to return to studying piano at the professional level. His studies with

professor Rena Shereshevskaya at the Paris Cortot Music School led him to First

Prize at the Ninth Gaillard International Piano Competition (France, 2014) and to

Fourth Prize at the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow, 2015) where

Debargue became the only musician across all disciplines who was awarded the

coveted Moscow Music Critics’ Prize. After the competition, he was invited to play

solo and with leading orchestras in the most prestigious concert halls in Canada,

China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, the US, and

the UK, and he has released two CDs on Sony Classical Records. In April 2016, he

obtained his diploma and a special Prize Cortot at the Cortot Music School where he

continues to do postgraduate work with Rena Shereshevskaya.