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TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY Thursday, October 7 • 7:30 PMFriday, October 8 • 2:30 PMSaturday, October 9 • 7:30 PM
Land Acknowledgement
The Winspear Centre and Edmonton Symphony
Orchestra would like to acknowledge that we
are on Treaty 6 Territory, a traditional meeting
ground, gathering place, and traveling route
for many Indigenous Peoples. We honour and
recognize the rich artistic, cultural, and musical
traditions of the Cree, Nakota Sioux, Metis,
Dene, Saulteax, and the many more Indigenous
communities that call this land we share, home.
Dianne New Violin
Ewald Cheung Violin
Robert UchidaViolin and Leader
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
Cosette Justo ValdésConductor
F E AT U R E D M U S I C I A N S :
1/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
Begin the Beguine PORTER (from Jubilee)
Jalousie ‘Tango Tzigane’ GADE
Estrellita PONCE
Por una cabeza GARDEL
El médico de pianos LÓPEZ-MARÍN
La Cumparsita RODRIGUEZ
Romanza Andaluza, SARASATE Op.22 No. 1
El Choclo VILLOLDO
Zigeunerweisen SARASATE
Estancia: GINASTERA Suite, Op.8a - Malambo
2/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
Begin the Beguine (from Jubilee)
PORTER
Cole Porter (1891-1964) and Moss Hart’s 1935
Broadway show Jubilee was inspired by the
golden jubilee of Great Britain’s King George V,
though a fictionalized European country featured
in the musical. The show may have only run for 169
performances, but during the Great Depression,
that qualified as a major success. That was helped
in no small part because of some great Cole Porter
songs, including Begin the Beguine. The beguine is a
Caribbean dance form, and combines both Latin and
French elements. Porter’s song helped to popularize
the dance outside the Caribbean.
3/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
Jalousie ‘Tango Tzigane’
GADE
It is definitely strange that one of the most famous
tangos ever written was written by a man born in
Denmark – rather far removed from the steamy
streets of Buenos Aires. Jacob Gade (1879-1963)
wrote Jalousie (“Jealousy”) in 1926, but it was when
Arthur Fiedler got hold of it and recorded it with his
Boston Pops at their very first recording session in
1935 that the work took off. By 1938, it was a major hit
in the United States, helping usher in the modern age
of both the “pops” orchestra, and of the orchestral
tango. The arrangement to be heard at these
performances is one of several on this program done
by Matt Naughtin, a veteran American composer and
4/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
arranger.
Por una cabeza
GARDEL
The song Por una Cabeza (“By the Head of a Horse”)
was written in 1935 by composer Carlos Gardel
(1890-1935) and lyricist Alfredo Le Pera. Its subject
is misfortune – the title refers to the length by which
a gambler has lost a bet on a horse race. A brief list
of movies in which this tune has been used includes:
Planet 51, Scent of a Woman, Delicatessen, True Lies,
All the King’s Men, Bad Santa, and Schindler’s List.
We hear it in another setting by Matt Naughtin.
5/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
El médico de pianos
LÓPEZ-MARÍN
Because of the embargo placed upon Cuba in the
mid-20 century, Jorge López Marin (b. 1949) had
to further his training in western art music in the
Soviet Union – he was accepted into the Tchaikovsky
Conservatory in Moscow, from which he graduated
in the mid 1970s. He returned to achieve acclaim in
his homeland as a musician and educator, including
as a teacher to Cosette Justo Valdés. López Marin’s
(b. 1949) danzón, El Médico de Pianos (“The Piano
Doctor”), was written to thank an American piano
tuner and repairman named Benjamin Treuhaft. Many
of the pianos available in Cuba at the time had come
originally from the Soviet Union, and the drastically
6/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
different, tropical climate had not been kind to them.
Treuhaft helped make López Marin’s piano playable
once again during a trip to Cuba in the 1990s. Treuhaft
subsequently founded the Send a Piano to Havana
project to donate quality pianos to Cuban students.
La Cumparsita
RODRIGUEZ
One of the reasons for the popularity of La
cumparsita, written in 1917 by Gerardo Rodriguez
(1897-1948), was the hit recording of it, with words
added to it, performed by Tito Schipa in 1930. Its
main theme has become the melody perhaps most
associated with the cliché of the ballroom tango.
7/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
Romanza Andaluza, Op.22 No. 1
SARASATE
Zigeunerweisen
SARASATE
We will hear two works at this performance by one
of the most famous and gifted violinist-composers
who ever lived. The Spaniard Pablo Martín Melitón
Sarasate y Navascuéz (1844-1908) was born four
years after Paganini died, and became his successor
in the violin pantheon. The greatest composers of the
day wrote works for him to play, but he also wrote
many for himself. Many of them, both his creations
8/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
and those written by others, follow a pattern; they
begin with a slow section designed to illustrate his
supreme mastery of lyricism and expression, followed
by a whirlwind cavalcade of breathtaking and
breakneck virtuoso music in which a full bag of violin
tricks is used.
Such is the case with the famous Zigeunerweisen
(“Gypsy Airs”) composed in 1878, and premiered
in Leipzig. It is rather loosely based on that most
traditional of gypsy dances, the csárdás. It has
become a favourite vehicle for prodigious violinists
since its 1863 premiere.
The lesser-known Romanza Andaluza came about
thanks to the enterprising German music publisher
9/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
Fritz Simrock. He had already cashed in on successful
sets of nationalist dances by Brahms (the Hungarian
Dances) and Dvořák (the Slavonic Dances). In 1877,
he commissioned Sarasate for a set of Spanish
Dances, and eventually eight were published in four
sets of two. The Romanza is the first dance of the
second set, and is a lyrical dance in 6/8 time. Written
originally for solo violin and piano, the version for
two violins to be heard tonight was arranged by Joel
Jacklich.
10/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
El Choclo
VILLOLDO
“Despite its many meanings ‘tango’ primarily
designates the most popular Argentine urban dance
of the 20th century,” summarizes the New Grove
Dictionary, and many composers of the last century
have created many splendid examples. Angel Villoldo
(1861-1919) was one of the first in the 20th century
to popularize tango in North America and Europe.
Among his most famous works is El choclo, which
became a major international favourite. Argentine
journalist Tito Livio Foppa recalled covering World
War One near the German front when, at a social
occasion, an official tried to pay tribute to the
visiting Argentine by playing what he thought was
11/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
the Argentine national anthem. It wasn’t – it was El
choclo, which he mistook for the country’s national
song.
Estancia: Suite, Op.8a - Malambo
GINASTERA
Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
was asked to create a ballet for an impending South
American tour by Lincoln Kerstein’s Ballet Caravan
in 1941. With Estancia (“The Ranch”), Ginastera tried
to express, as he put it, “the deep and bare beauty
of the land, its richness and natural strength.” While
the ballet would finally be stated in 1952, its intended
first performances fell through, as the dance troupe
12/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
dissolved. Still, Ginastera rescued some of the music
for a four-movement suite, published as his Op.8a.
The final movement of the suite is the rhythmically
propulsive, brash and bright Malambo.
13/13Program subject to change. Program Notes © 2021 by D.T. Baker
TANGOS, ROMANCE, AND JEALOUSY October 7 – 9
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