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NASHVILLE SYMPHONY GIANCARLO GUERRERO, conductorEDGAR MEYER, double bass

CLAUDE DEBUSSY“Ibéria,” No. 2 from Images I. Par les rues et par les chemins [Through Streets and Lanes] II. Les parfums de la nuit [The Fragrances of the Night] III. Le matin d’un jour de fête [Morning of a Feast-Day]

EDGAR MEYERNew Piece for OrchestraWorld premiere | Nashville Symphony commission

INTERMISSION

GIOVANNI BOTTESINIConcerto for Double Bass No. 2 in B Minor Allegro Andante Allegro

MAURICE RAVELBoléro

& Edgar Meyer World Premiere

C L A S S I C A L S E R I E S

T H A N K YO U TO O U R S P O N S O R S

OFFICIAL PARTNER

This concert is presented in honor of Tennessee Arts Commission’s

50th anniversary

MEDIA PARTNER

A E G I S

EST. 2013

FOUNDATIONS C I E N C E S

THURSDAY, MARCH 16, AT 7 PM | FRIDAY, MARCH 17, AT 8 PM | SATURDAY, MARCH 18, AT 2 & 8 PM

A E G I S

EST. 2013

FOUNDATIONS C I E N C E S

This weekend’s performances of Ravel’s Boléro are made possible in part by Mrs. Lillian Bradford, in memory of James C. Bradford, Jr.

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WHAT TO LISTEN FORCLAUDE DEBUSSY

Composed: 1905-08First performance: February 20, 1910, with Gabriel Pierné conducting the Orchestre Colonne at the Châtelet Theater in Paris First Nashville Symphony performance: January 17 & 18, 1977, with Michael Charry Estimated length: 20 minutes

Born on August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; died on March 25, 1918, in Paris

Ibéria from Images

TONIGHT’S CONCERTAT A GLANCE

GIOVANNI BOTTESINI Concerto No. 2 in B minor for Double Bass

MAURICE RAVEL Boléro

• Nineteenth century composer and double bassist Bottesini helped pave the way for Edgar Meyer. As a virtuoso composer-performer, he elevated the status of the double bass, which wasn’t typically known as a solo instrument. He came to be known as “the Paganini of the double bass.”

• Composed in 1845, the Concerto No. 2 is a representative work that highlights both the melodic and rhythmic qualities of the double bass. The piece has been championed by Meyer, who wrote two extended cadenzas for his performance.

EDGAR MEYERNew Piece for Orchestra

• French composer Claude Debussy opened up entirely new possibilities for classical music by rethinking form and harmony. In style and feel, his work is comparable to that of the French Impressionist painters, and his influence can still be heard in contemporary electronic and ambient music.

• Part of Debussy’s Images trilogy, Ibéria was intended as a musical portrait of Spain — even though the composer had only traveled there once, for a day. The piece captures three different times of day in a Spanish village, from the bustle of the afternoon, to the sensuousness of the night, to the morning of a festive town celebration.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY Ibéria, from Images

• The world’s foremost double bass soloist, Edgar Meyer has a long history with the Nashville Symphony. In addition to performing as a member of the ensemble in the early 1980s, he made his first solo appearance with the orchestra in 1986, performing Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No. 2.

• Meyer’s new work is his first-ever orchestral piece without a soloist. His previous works have largely been showcases for his own talents as a soloist, as well as renowned collaborators including Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell.

Spanish idioms inspired some of Claude Debussy’s most animated music, from pieces

for solo piano such as “Night in Granada” (from Estampes) to Ibéria, the middle panel of the composer’s orchestral triptych Images. Originally envisioned as a piece for two pianos, Ibéria was the starting point for Images and was also the first part of the triptych to be heard in its orchestral guise.

However persuasively this composition conveys a sense of place or musical “terroir,” Debussy actually made just one brief visit across the border to Spain’s Basque country — a trip that took in a bullfight and lasted less than a day. What engaged his imagination wasn’t a desire to portray particular Spanish scenes but rather a subjective articulation of Spanish associations. The pictorialism of the Images, Debussy remarked, reflects his attempt “to write ‘something else’ — realities, in a manner of speaking — what imbeciles call ‘impressionism.’ ”

Debussy initially planned to present complementary portraits of France (Rondes de printemps) and England (Gigues) in the other two Images. He also envisioned writing the entire score for just two pianos. But the project, which began in 1905, changed course and stretched out for years. Debussy decided to replace the duo-piano idea with a large-scale orchestra, and the flanking sections grew more abstract, containing only indirect references to the other two countries.

Like Monet’s paintings depicting the façade of Rouen’s Cathedral at different times of the day,

Debussy creates tableaux of a Spanish village at contrasting moments. The first of Ibéria’s three movements, “In the Streets and Lanes” begins with the bustle and heat of an afternoon; energetic rhythms and clacking castanets set the music in motion.

Evoking street musicians, the clarinets entertain with a sinuous tune that has a spirit of improvisation, its ending phrase a striking anticipation of the melody of Ravel’s Boléro. Fanfares from horns and then trumpets announce the passing of some important personage. Debussy pulls us into a lane for a quieter perspective on the scene. As the oboes take up the clarinets’ opening melody, the crowd seems to press even more closely until the music magically fades to a quiet close.

Debussy seems intent on reaching all our senses through this music. The middle movement — “The Night’s Perfumes” — is a nocturne, “slow and dreamy” and sensuously veiled, like his earlier Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. This is a textbook example of Debussy’s extraordinary manipulation of orchestral color: from the delicately wafted oboe’s melody, divided strings, and hallucinatory celesta to the shifting densities of sound that indicate distant recollections of the day. Toward the end, soft bells hint at the return of day, leading without pause into the final movement.

“A Festival Morning” dispels the languorous dream state as the bells now ring out. Debussy transforms the whole string section into a joyful guitar, and their intensely rhythmic theme provides a marching background for the procession of colorful solo episodes. With a final surge, Debussy gives us a parting snapshot of the town’s shared celebration.

Ibéria is scored for 2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, 2 harps, and strings.

• Ravel’s Boléro draws on this French composer’s Spanish roots — his mother was of Basque heritage and spent part of her life in Spain. The work was originally written as the score for a ballet depicting a flamenco dancer performing for an excitable crowd of tavern drinkers.

• Driven by a snare drum rhythm and a hypnotically winding melody, the piece was utterly unlike anything else at the time it was written. Because the piece is so insistent in its repetition, modern-day researchers have speculated that Boléro could have been a product of Ravel’s deteriorating mental condition. He began to experience health problems around the time he was composing this work, and he would die less than a decade later, after exploratory brain surgery.

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EDGAR MEYER

Composed: 2016-17First performance: With these performances the Nashville Symphony gives the world premiere.Estimated length: 18 minutes

New Piece for Orchestra

Born on November 24, 1960, in Tulsa, Oklahoma; currently resides in Nashville

Thirty-three years ago, a super-talented young musician joined the strings of Nashville

Symphony. “I remember doing my audition for Kenneth Schermerhorn,” says Edgar Meyer, who not only got the job (and stayed with Nashville Symphony for three seasons), but went on to become one of the most innovative solo performers on the international music scene.

As a virtuoso on the double bass, Meyer has written a new chapter in the history of his instrument through genre-defying performances and through his contributions as a composer. One of several Nashville Symphony commissions through the years, his Triple Concerto for Double Bass, Banjo and Tabla was performed at the gala opening of Schermerhorn Symphony Center in 2006. This spring he joins longtime friends Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Thile to tour with a program of Bach Trio arrangements.

Collaborative projects remain at the heart of Meyer’s musical life. So it’s not surprising that a prominent part of his catalogue includes works using the concerto principle of a solo instrument (or multiple soloists) paired with a larger ensemble.

Meyer, violinist Joshua Bell, and bluegrass legends Sam Bush and Mike Marshall have played together as a quartet, and the double bassist garnered the first of his several GRAMMY® Awards in 2000 for Appalachian Journey with Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Mark O’Connor. Meyer is currently at work on a new Violin Concerto for Bell and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and is also planning a new recording project with

jazz bassist Christian McBride. But the new composition being premiered

on this program represents an altogether fresh challenge for Meyer: it’s his first time writing a piece for standard orchestra that does not feature a soloist; instead, he treats the entire orchestra as the protagonist. “As the years have gone on, I found I was having the most fun when there was no soloist, when I wasn’t part of the picture,” he remarks. “It’s been a lot of fun to conceive a piece for the orchestra without having to worry about the soloist.” That’s because having a solo player in the spotlight “limits the scope of the orchestra.”

Meyer’s composition process involved a mix of jotting down ideas on paper and “sometimes messing at the piano or at the computer.” Improvising at his bass played almost no role. “At the heart of it, you have to think of enough ideas to engage 80 people for the duration of the piece. Keeping the ideas compact, interrelated, and organized is easier for me than having enough ideas and variety.”

Meyer singles out Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”) as “my two favorite pieces of orchestral music, outside Bach.” What he especially admires in those works is the feeling of “incredible exuberance. I wanted to conceive something that had a lot of energy.” He also strove to use “atmospheric music — slow music, with lots of pretty sounds — no more than was necessary to balance the piece.”

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

GIOVANNI BOT TESINI

Composed: 1845First performance: Unknown First Nashville Symphony performance: October 2 & 4, 1984, with soloist Edgar Meyer and conductor Amerigo MarinoEstimated length: 18 minutes

Concerto No. 2 in B minor for Double Bass

Born on December 22, 1821, in Crema, Italy; died on July 7, 1889, in Parma, Italy

As its name indicates, the “double bass” was originally relegated to the function of

doubling the bass line in the context of a larger ensemble. This was one of the conventions of the Classical-era orchestra. In the Romantic era in which Giovanni Bottesini flourished, the double bass had begun to grow independent of the cello line and thus to acquire a new, more individual role in orchestral writing.

Interestingly, Bottesini played both timpani and double bass. He would become one of the great “liberators” of the double bass — foreshadowing, in a sense, the pioneering approach to the instrument exemplified today by Edgar Meyer. Bottesini was born into a musical family: his father composed and played clarinet, and he learned music from an early age and also sang as a choirboy. But the family lacked financial resources; to gain entrance to the prestigious Milan Conservatory, young Giovanni, who had

already taken the usual course of studying violin, switched to double bass to gain admission via a special scholarship allocated to that instrument.

Much as his fellow Italian celebrity Paganini had done earlier in the 19th century, Bottesini became a virtuoso composer-performer on his instrument — and was therefore dubbed “the Paganini of the double bass.” He also conducted and became an international musical personality, including a stint as principal double bassist and music director of an opera company in Havana. As a conductor, Bottesini led the world premiere of his good friend Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida in Cairo in 1871.

Bottesini himself composed operas, along with a Requiem, orchestral works, chamber music, and, of course, a good deal of pieces featuring the double bass, including duets and chamber pieces with piano. But the only music by Bottesini that gets performed today is a small portion of his work for double bass, such as this concerto.

The new piece unfolds as a pair of interrelated movements of about the same length, which

are bridged by a shorter interlude of contrasting material. The core musical idea is heard at the outset, against a restless pulsation in the strings: a fidgety motif of alternating minor thirds that gradually climb the scale. Alternating thirds fuel the second part as well, but there the rhythmic identity is recognizably distinct and the harmonic context becomes more diatonic.

Meyer varies these ideas by contrasting timbres or orchestral sections and by the processes that are the woof and warp of Bach’s music: slowing down, speeding up, turning ideas upside down (thirds into sixths, for example), and presenting them in overlapping statements (“canons”) — all the while

“continuing” the musical argument.Meyer elaborates further about the main

material of the two larger sections: “I cannot think of a simpler way to cover all 12 notes than minor thirds rising or falling by whole steps, outside of playing a chromatic scale.”

In the interlude, the strings and the woodwinds play a three-part canon, and there is also a notable trumpet solo. The composer explains that these utilize “a symmetric six-note scale. By limiting the music to six notes instead of 12, as in the framing sections, the interlude has a different sound. One might say a ‘thinner’ sound.”

In the final section, Meyer resorts to diatonic thirds, which he describes as “almost like a compromise between the more harmonically dense opening music and the interlude. When more harmonic richness is needed, the symmetric

chromatic minor thirds continue to be used, but the simpler-sounding diatonic thirds allow for quicker, more purely rhythmic music.”

Following an abrupt pause about four minutes from the end, the clarinets take up a melody that has only been hinted at before, extending it into a full statement.

Extra-musical inspiration does not figure much in the piece, according to the composer, though he adds: “I often envisioned the orchestra playing in concert. And I do not think of a section as happy or sad. The piece is conceived as an emotional journey, but not one that I can put in words.”

Meyer’s new piece is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 3 percussionists, and strings.

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Edgar Meyer has become a champion of this work and prepared the arrangement

we hear in this performance — writing two extended cadenzas of his own. Aside from the unusual emergence of the double bass into the solo spotlight, the B minor Concerto is in the typical three-movement format and features a straightforward, melody-centered language.

The Allegro moderato opens with a dramatic flourish as the string ensemble opens the curtain for the double bass to enter and proclaim the main theme. It’s up to the performer to phrase this material in way that brings out the personality not only of the musical argument, but of the instrument as well. In the Andante the double bass emerges as an eloquent singer, entrusted with an extended aria while the other strings play with mutes. Still another personality emerges in the animated Allegro finale, which is propelled by a rhythmic pattern suggesting a proud polonaise.

In addition to solo double bass, the Concerto is scored for string orchestra.

MAURICE RAVEL

Composed: 1928First performance: November 22, 1928, at the Paris Opera, with Walther Straram conducting First Nashville Symphony performance: April 17 & 18, 1961, with music director Willis PageEstimated length: 16 minutes

Boléro

Born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France; died on December 28, 1937, in Paris

Together with his colleague Debussy, Maurice Ravel shared a long-standing fascination with

Spanish themes. Of Basque origin, his mother had spent many years in Spain and instilled in her

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

The stark simplicity of the narrative finds its musical correspondence in the hypnotic

rhythmic pattern of the traditional bolero: a subconscious reminder not only of Ravel’s Basque mother, but also, perhaps, of the precision-engineered discipline displayed by his father, a Swiss inventor. The Andalusian bolero consists of two measures in triple meter at a moderate tempo. This is repeated by the snare drum throughout the piece — one of the two repetitive elements around which Ravel structures the piece.

The second defining element is, of course, the Boléro melody itself. Laid out in two sections

In demand as both a performer and a

composer, Edgar Meyer has formed a role in the music world unlike any other. Hailed by The New Yorker as

“the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively un-chronicled history of his instrument,” Meyer possesses unparalleled technique and musicianship, combined with a gift for composition. His uniqueness in the field was recognized by a MacArthur Award in 2002.

As a solo classical bassist, Meyer can be heard on a concerto album with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff featuring Bottesini’s Gran Duo with Joshua Bell, Meyer’s own Double Concerto for Bass and Cello with Yo-Yo Ma, Bottesini’s Bass Concerto No. 2, and Meyer’s own Concerto in D for Bass. He has also recorded an album featuring three of Bach’s Unaccompanied Suites for Cello. In 2006, he released a self-titled solo recording on which he wrote and recorded all of the music, incorporating piano, guitar, mandolin, Dobro,

ABOUT THE ARTIST

EDGAR MEYERdouble bass

(each repeated), the melody unwinds like a charmed snake. Ravel assigns the theme to a slowly varying array of instrumental groups from among his unusually large orchestra, starting with a solo flute and passing from solo instruments to larger choirs. Through all its repetitions, Boléro emerges as a radical variation on the idea of variation itself. The melody remains the same, but the colorations, textures, and intensity change.

Boléro's over-familiarity can make it hard to appreciate just how avant-garde were several aspects of Ravel’s conception here. Contemporaries even speculated as to whether this music was evidence of insanity. One radical aspect is the single-minded monomania of the repetition, which looks ahead to Steve Reich’s brand of Minimalism. Another is the complete absence of thematic development. Yet the piece seems to grow. Ravel structures Boléro as a slowly building crescendo. Moreover, the

son an enthusiasm for Spanish culture. In Boléro, a work dating from the end of his career, this love of Spanish themes converges with Ravel’s ongoing preoccupation with the dance. Like several of his best-known works, Boléro began life as a ballet before it went on to become even more familiar in the concert hall — and of course in film scores and elsewhere in popular culture.

Boléro was written for Ida Rubinstein, a celebrity ballerina formerly with the Paris-based Ballets Russes — the dance company that had commissioned Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballets. Rubinstein asked Ravel to orchestrate a pre-existing set of piano pieces on Spanish themes composed by Isaac Albéniz. Copyright issues got in the way, and Ravel decided to craft an entirely new score.

The scenario: a female flamenco dancer in a Spanish tavern is lustfully cheered by a crowd. She leaps onto a table and dances with mounting passion as the men are driven into a state of excitement by her performance. In contrast to Ravel’s classically themed, large-scale ballet Daphnis et Chloé or his episodic dance suite illustrating fairy-tales from Mother Goose, Rubinstein’s idea was to focus attention on a single dancer, evoking an atmosphere reminiscent in some ways of Carmen.

According to the Ravel scholar René Chalupt, the composer actually concocted an alternative scenario set in front of a factory that involved workers who pour forth to dance to its industrial rhythms — this is the source of the relentless mechanical rhythm we hear in the score.

constant shifting of tone colors against the rigid rhythmic pattern generates a sense of tension that, at the climax, is finally released in a chaotic sonic explosion. No wonder that, despite its experimentalism, Boléro quickly became a hit.

Ravel scores Boléro for a large orchestra consisting of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes (2nd doubling oboe d’amore), English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, piccolo trumpet, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 2 saxophones, timpani, snare drums, cymbals, tam-tam, celesta, harp, and strings.

— Thomas May, the Nashville Symphony’s program annotator, is a writer and translator who covers classical and contemporary music. He blogs at memeteria.com.

banjo, gamba, and double bass. In 2011 Meyer joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist Chris Thile, and fiddler Stuart Duncan for the Sony Masterworks recording The Goat Rodeo Sessions, which was awarded the 2012 GRAMMY® Award for Best Folk Album.

One of Meyer’s most recent compositions is the Double Concerto for Double Bass and Violin, which received its world premiere July 2012 with Joshua Bell at the Tanglewood Music Festival with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In the 2011/12 season, Meyer was composer in residence with the Alabama Symphony, where he premiered his third concerto for bass and orchestra.

Other compositions of Meyer’s include a violin/piano work performed by Joshua Bell at New York’s Lincoln Center, a quintet for bass and string quartet premiered with the Emerson String Quartet and recorded on Deutsche Grammophon, and a violin concerto written for Hilary Hahn.

Meyer began studying bass at age 5 under the instruction of his father and continued to study with Stuart Sankey. In 1994 he received the Avery Fisher Career Grant, and in 2000 he became the only bassist to receive the Avery Fisher Prize. Currently, he is Visiting Professor of Double Bass at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.