Class ic sHEUSER CONDUCTSSCHEHERAZADESaturday & Sunday, October 31 & November 1, 2015Avalon Theatre

THOMAS HEUSER, GUEST CONDUCTORANDREW COOPERSTOCK, PIANO

DVORAK Carnival Overture Op. 92 RAVEL Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

GERSHWIN Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for Piano and Orchestra

Andrew Cooperstock, piano

INTERMISSION

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV ScheherazadeI. Largo e maestoso-Lento- Allegro non troppoII. LentoIII. Andantino quasi allegrettoIV. Allegro molto-Vivo- Allegro non troppo e maestoso

GRAND JUNCTION SYMPHONY 29

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Ruth Gormley & Family

GUEST CONDUCTORSPONSORED BY:

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY:

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KKCO

DID YOU KNOW?

• In 1892, Dvorák moved to the United States and became the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. While in the United States, Dvorák wrote his two most successful orchestral works. The New World Symphony and his Cello Concerto in B minor, one of the most highly regarded of all cello concerti.

• Ravel spent World War I as a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front. The war caused him such deep distress that a number of important projects never came to fruition. He did manage however to complete Le Tombeau de Couperin, with each movement dedicated to a friend who died in the war.

ANTONIN DVORÁK (1841-1904) CARNIVAL OVERTURE OP. 92 (1892) 10 MINUTES

Flutes, piccolo, oboes, English horn, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, tambourine, harp and strings.

There was hardly a composer in the late 19th century who escaped the influence of Richard Wagner. Apparently around 1890, Antonin Dvorák made a study of Wagner and subsequently composed a volley of orchestral program music: the five tone poems of 1896-1897 (The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel, The Wild Dove and Heroic Song), Silent Woods for Cello and Orchestra, Poetic Tone Pictures for Solo Piano, and the 1892 cycle of three overtures conceived as Nature, Love and Life. The programmatic triptych from 1892 included In Nature’s Realm (Nature), Carnival (Life), and Othello (Love). While composing Carnival Overture, Dvorák received a life-changing invitation to take up the directorship of the newly created National Conservatory of Music in New York. The three overtures thus took on a special significance in Dvorák’s lifetime, since their 1892 premieres in Prague were part of a farewell concert that was followed almost immediately by his New York conducting debut in Carnegie Hall.

Dvorák wrote his own description of the Carnival Overture: “a lonely, contemplative wanderer reaching at twilight a city where a festival is in full swing. On every side is heard the clangor of instruments, mingled with shouts of joy and the unrestrained hilarity of the people giving vent to their feelings in songs and dances.” The scene couldn’t be more lively and exciting, and Dvorák’s large orchestra delivers a festive and energetic music. The English horn and flute are the featured soloists in the sweet middle section, portraying, in Dvorák’s words, “a pair of straying lovers.” After the interlude, the work concludes with a complex development and bombastic Coda section, clearly conveying the “unrestrained hilarity” and ebullience of Dvorák’s conception.

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) PIANO CONCERTO FOR THE LEFT HAND (1930) 19 MINUTES

Solo piano, piccolo, flutes, oboes, English horn, piccolo clarinet, clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, wood block, tam-tam, harp, strings.

The Austrian concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein (the older brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) made his public debut in 1913 but was then called up for military service at the outset of the First World War. He was shot and captured by the Russians and had to have his right arm amputated. During his recovery at a camp in Siberia, he began developing new playing techniques and eventually started a new career as a one-armed pianist. He solicited new works from many of the most well-known composers of the day, from Benjamin Britten to Prokofiev and Richard Strauss, while insisting on exclusive lifetime performing rights for all the pieces he commissioned.

Despite a rocky collaboration with Maurice Ravel, the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand has become the most successful of Wittgenstein’s commissions. The work was written between 1929 and 1930 alongside Ravel’s enduringly popular Piano Concerto in G. Ravel had to fight to keep his Left Hand concerto from being arranged for two hands despite his efforts to achieve pianistic results for the left hand alone, but today the original version enjoys a comfortable place in the standard repertoire. The work calls for large orchestra and demonstrates Ravel’s skillful and wildly colorful orchestration techniques.

Structurally, the work is almost as unique as its single-handed protagonist. Jazzy cross rhythms overlap with one another, and ambiguous harmonies abound, particularly in the opening arpeggios of the double basses and solo contrabassoon. The concerto has only one movement and is divided into contrasting fast and slow sections. The soloist begins with an extended cadenza before taking up the work’s primary thematic material. The left hand travels across all registers of the keyboard, tackling widely spaced chords and elaborate flourishes. Audiences cannot help but enjoy the thrilling spectacle of one hand playing what most certainly seems to require ten fingers—if not more.

GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937) VARIATIONS ON “I GOT RHYTHM” FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA (1888) 32 MINUTES

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PROGRAM NOTES By Thomas Heuser

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Piccolo, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, timpani and strings.

First performed by the GJSO on September 24, 2002 under the direction of Kirk Gustafson with pianist Ivana Cojbasic.

In the 1930 Broadway musical Girl Crazy, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, the character Danny starts an Arizona dude ranch complete with sexy showgirls. First sung by Ethyl Merman in her Broadway debut, “I Got Rhythm” launched her 50-year career, and “Embraceable You” made Ginger Rogers an overnight sensation (Judy Garland then combined both roles in the classic 1943 film with Mickey Rooney.)

Gershwin’s final concert piece for piano, Variations on “I Got Rhythm,” was composed in Palm Springs in 1934. George dedicated the work to his brother Ira, and he played the premiere in New York with the Leo Reisman Orchestra. Brothers but also brilliant colleagues, the Gershwins penned a chapter in the Great American Song Book that simply cannot be overshadowed, the unbelievable product of two geniuses that churned out the hits while fine-tuning the Broadway musical as an American art form.

“I Got Rhythm” easily lends itself to variation. In fact, the song’s chord progression and 32-measure structure are one of the cornerstones of bebop and jazz. Every jazz improvisation overlays a harmonic pattern called a “rhythm change,” and one of the most ubiquitous since the 1930’s is the progression Gershwin introduced in “I Got Rhythm.” Indeed, the classical music version of an improvisation is a set of variations on a theme, and these Variations showcase Gershwin’s great originality. A solo clarinet states the iconic melody’s four-note pentatonic scale, and from that simple statement, the Variations go in all sorts of jazzy directions, combining comic waltzes with pointillistic minimalism, inverting and stretching the theme, and finally ending with a grand restatement of the original tune in all its glory.

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908) SCHEHERAZADE (1888) 32 MINUTES

Piccolo, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, tam-tam, harp and strings.

First performed by the GJSO on November 1, 1983 under the direction of Alan Burdick.

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote his own program note for Scheherazade that provides the basic premise of One Thousand and One Nights:

The Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, told seriatim, for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely. Many marvels did Scheherazade relate to him, citing the verses of poets and the words of songs, weaving tale into tale and story into story.

During those countless recitations, Scheherazade has three of the Sultan’s children, and in the original text she presents them on the final morning as proof that she must be set free. Clearly a study of the Arabian Nights offers rich detail, but Rimsky-Korsakov boils down the countless narratives into four movements with thematic headings. The work conveys generalized visions of various fairy tales, from Sinbad’s Ship and the Legend of Prince Kalendar to the sweet romance of a Young Prince and Princess.

Using familiar characters from the Arabian Nights helps Rimsky-Korsakov set a sultry mood while giving Scheherazade an overarching programmatic unity. Musical motives return between movements, “weaving tale into tale” and using repetition as development, with filigree to boot. The picturesque music speaks directly to listeners both trained and amateur, and as long as we are armed with the information of the program, Hollywood would be proud of the results. Indeed, Rimsky-Korsakov’s fascination with exotic and oriental themes—typical of his cohorts in “The Mighty Five” group of Russian nationalist composers—resulted in a string of programmatic masterpieces, from Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnole to The Steppes of Central Asia and Islamy.

Scheherazade is a tour de force for any orchestra. The musicians alternate as featured soloists, providing endless audition excerpts for students and professionals alike. The Concertmaster represents Scheherazade the storyteller, and every swirling statement of her idée fixe seems more alluring than before. Clarinet and bassoon cadenzas intersect with complex piccolo passagework, and the trumpets and percussion dominate the Festival at Baghdad. Sinbad’s triumphant theme returns at the peak of the finale, and amidst the tumult of the roaring waves, “the Ship goes to pieces on a rock” with violent results. The Sultan wakes lazily from Scheherazade’s dreams, and the work ends peacefully, colored by unusually eerie harmonics in two solo violins. What a fitting work for a concert on Halloween night! Many heartfelt thanks to the GJSO for such a wonderful performance opportunity.

DID YOU KNOW?

• At age 15, Gershwin dropped out of school and took a job as a song plugger for Tin Pan Alley in New York City. Song pluggers were basically pianists who helped in selling new sheet music by playing the latest tunes inside a music store.

• Summertime from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music, with more than 33,000 covers by various bands, ensembles and individual musicians.

• From the 1870s on, Rimsky-Korsakov taught a whole line of Russian composers. The most famous are Alexander Glazunov, one of the first, and Igor Stravinsky, one of the last. The year after Rimsky-Korsakov’s death, Stravinsky debuted in Paris with The Firebird, which shows his mastery of his teacher’s style.

• The most famous Rimsky-Korsakov piece that you won’t see on a standard list of his works is the fast-buzzing encore favorite, The Flight of the Bumblebee. Due to the fact that it is actually an interlude from his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan.

ABOUT ANDREW COOPERSTOCKPianist Andrew Cooperstock performs widely as soloist and chamber musician and has appeared throughout six continents and in most of the fifty states, including performances at New York’s Alice Tully, Merkin, and Carnegie halls, Broadway’s 54 Below, Greenwich Village’s (le) Poisson Rouge, Brooklyn’s BargeMusic, and at the United Nations. He has been featured in recitals and concerto appearances at the Chautauqua, Brevard, and Round Top international music festivals, the

Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Hong Kong’s Hell Hot! New Music Festival, and in London, Beijing, Accra, Kiev, Sapporo, Canberra, Lima, and Geneva, on National Public Radio, Radio France, and the BBC.

An advocate for new music, Andrew Cooperstock has premiered works by American composers Lowell Liebermann, John Fitz Rogers, Rob Paterson, and Aaron Copland and participated in commissioning works by Eric Stern, Robert Starer, Dan Welcher, and Meira Warshauer.

A sought-after chamber musician, Cooperstock has performed with the Takács Quartet, the Ying Quartet, the Dorian Quintet, violinist James Buswell, violist Roberto Diaz, cellists Andres Diaz and András Fejér, hornist Eli Epstein, and pianist Paul Schoenfield. He is a member of the Colorado Chamber Players, a regular soloist with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, and a founder of Trio Contraste, which specializes in commissioning and performing contemporary music for piano, violin, and clarinet.

With violinist William Terwilliger, as Opus Two (www.opustwo.org), Cooperstock has recorded the complete works for piano and violin by Aaron Copland. The award-winning duo has been internationally recognized for its “divine phrases, impelling rhythm, elastic ensemble and stunning sounds,” as well as its commitment to expanding the violin–piano duo repertoire. The duo has appeared throughout North and South America, Europe, and Australia, and it made its Asian debut in 2006 with performances across China, Korea, Japan, and the Russian Far East. In 2011 they were in residence with the National Symphony of Ghana, Africa, and at the University of Ghana Legon, and they were featured performers at Hong Kong’s premier chamber music festival, Hell Hot! Their appearance at Woodstock, New York’s prestigious Maverick Concerts was called “one of the most significant and worthwhile concerts of the 2010 season.” In 2013, Opus Two were guests of the United

States Embassy on tour throughout Peru. With cellist Andres Diaz, Opus Two has recorded chamber music by Lowell Liebermann (Albany Records) and Paul Schoenfield (Azica Records). Opus Two’s recording of Leonard Bernstein (Naxos) features new arrangements by legendary Broadway music director Eric Stern and collaborations with Broadway actress-singer Marin Mazzie, and their following CD, a 75th-anniversary tribute to American composer George Gershwin, features a newly commissioned Eric Stern arrangement of beloved songs from Girl Crazy and collaborations with Broadway singer Ashley Brown. Cooperstock’s next solo recording, for Bridge Records, will pay tribute to Leonard Bernstein’s centenary in 2018.

Andrew Cooperstock’s media credits include performances on National Public Radio, WFMT Chicago, WQXR New York, KVOD Denver, KUT Austin, and on Minnesota Public Radio, Radio France, and the Australian and British Broadcasting Corporations.

Prize-winner in the National Federation of Music Clubs Artist Competition, the New Orleans International Piano Competition, and the United States Information Agency’s Artistic Ambassador Auditions, he has served as juror for the New Orleans International Piano Competition, the Iowa International Piano Competition, the Liszt-Garrison International Competition, China’s Giant Cup Art Talent Competition, the Music Teachers National Association national competitions, and the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artists Competition, among others, and he has presented master classes widely, from Beijing to Nice to Vladivostok.

A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Cincinnati and Peabody Conservatories, Andrew Cooperstock studied with Abbey Simon, David Bar-Illan, and Walter Hautzig, as well as with collaborative pianist Samuel Sanders. Dr. Cooperstock is currently Chair of the keyboard departments at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Rocky Ridge Music Center, artist-teacher at the Vianden International Music Festival in Luxembourg, and an honorary faculty member at Guangxi Arts Institute in southern China. Previous appointments include posts at the University of Oklahoma and Brevard Music Center. Cooperstock has recorded for the Naxos, Azica, Bridge, and Albany labels, among others. He is a Steinway artist.

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MEET THE GUEST CONDUCTOR:THOMAS HEUSER

GRAND JUNCTION SYMPHONY 33

American conductor Dr. Thomas Heuser was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for orchestral conducting in Germany while serving as the 2010 Conducting Fellow with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. During his doctoral residency in Munich, Thomas mentored with Bruno Weil at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, performed with Ensemble Oktopus in the iconic Pinakothek der Moderne, commissioned a unique multimedia work for the Fulbright Conference in Berlin, and gave his European operatic debut with Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland.

Since 2011, Thomas has served as Music Director of the Idaho Falls Symphony. The diverse programming of his subscription seasons has attracted new audiences, generated solid revenues, and increased community support at every level. He has worked with soloists from around the world, commissioned new works, and bolstered the IF Symphony’s music education efforts with Family Concerts, Side-By-Side concerts, a Young Artists Competition, and more. During the 2015-16 season, Thomas will appear as a finalist and music director candidate with the Grand Junction and San Juan Symphony Orchestras in Colorado, and the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra in California.

Thomas has served as the principal guest conductor of the San Francisco Academy Orchestra since 2013. Other guest conducting appearances include the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Utah Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Stephen Foster Youth Orchestra in Kentucky, the Northern Arizona University Orchestra, the Portsmouth (NH) Symphony Orchestra, and the Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca, Italy. A diverse musician and composer with many interests, Thomas also trained with countertenor Drew Minter and served as a core member of the acclaimed Pro Arte Singers at Indiana University under John Poole.

The son of two molecular biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, Thomas began violin lessons at an early age and studied piano at the St. Louis Symphony Music School. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College and went on to earn his masters degree in conducting from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. In 2013 he received his Doctorate (DMA) in orchestral conducting from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. Thomas is a student of Bruno Weil, David Effron, and Mark Gibson, and he has mentored with such notable conductors as Paavo Järvi, Larry Rachleff, Gustav Meier, Marin Alsop, and David Robertson. Currently he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, enjoying the beautiful Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland with his wife, violinist Lauren Avery, and their son Theodore.