EUGENE SYMPHONY12

Grieg &SchubertJanuary 25, 2018Program Notesby Tom Strini ©2018

”I first met Stuart Malina when I was a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, and he’s been a wonderful mentor, colleague, and friend ever since. Indeed, he helped me prepare for my interviews in Eugene and he’s been an invaluable resource during my first season here. Stuart’s joyful, collaborative music-making is perfect for Schubert’s final completed symphony known as “The Great.” A towering pillar of the repertoire, its lyricism and exuberance hide the fiendishly difficult playing required of the orchestra.

Acclaimed soloist Jon Kimura Parker will delight you with Grieg’s Piano Concerto—a beloved work which has one of the most distinctive openings of any piano concerto. A perfect companion to Schubert, Grieg lavishes us with stunningly beautiful melodies and memorable rhythmic motifs throughout the concerto. I have had the pleasure of hearing “Jackie” on several occasions, and trust me—you are in for a real treat.‘’

— Francesco Lecce-Chong

EDVARD GRIEG (1843–1907)Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16 (1868)

In addition to the solo piano, this work is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. First performed by the Eugene Symphony in September 1983 under the direction of Willam McLaughlin with Misha Dichter as soloist, and last performed in March 2009 under the direction of Danail Rachev with Benedetto Lupo as soloist. Performance time is approximately 30 minutes.

Conductor Stuart Malina, in comparing the composers on this program, suggested that both were essentially short-form lyrical artists with long-form ambitions. Schubert diverged radically from his usual path in the Ninth Symphony; Grieg treads his customary, gorgeously melodious trail, but through the larger landscape of his 30-minute Piano Concerto in A Minor.

“Grieg never loses that miniaturist approach,” Malina said. “It’s beautiful melody after beautiful melody.”

The concerto, though endowed with fair measures of grandeur and virtuosity, is indeed tune after tune. But it has a less tangible element: Norwegian soul. Grieg is to Norwegians what Verdi is to Italians, Dvořák to Czechs, and Sibelius to Finlanders: The national identity composer.

Grieg often drew on Norwegian folk materials. In the concerto, for example, the pounding rhythm of the opening finale theme is a halling, a competitive solo folk dance originally for young men. The music, in speedy 6/8 or 2/4, propels them through show-off tricks. The best-known is the hallingkast: A girl holds a hat aloft on a stick; the boy tries to fly through the air and kick the hat off, in a sort of Norwegian kung-fu move. You can imagine the action as the third movement zips by.

Jon Kimura Parker, tonight’s soloist, has a special affinity for this piece. It was the first concerto he played with a professional orchestra, with his hometown Vancouver Symphony in Canada, at age 20. He’s also played it in Norway at the Bergen Festival with the Oslo Philharmonic, a

Grieg’s Piano Concerto is the first piece Jon Kimura Parker played with a professional orchestra.

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gig that confers Honorary Norwegian status.“The concerto has a quality that many would

say evokes Norway,” Parker said, in an interview via email. “But how, exactly, can one truly picture a country in musical terms? There are a few specific moments—the halling, for one. But for me, the essence of what makes this music Norwegian…”

The pianist interrupted his explanation to apologize for being a music theory geek: “Remember, here, that I am a Professor of Piano at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. I happen to love chord analysis.”

He went on to point out Grieg’s fondness for minor-major 11th chords. That would be a stack of notes comprising, for example, A-C-E-G-B.

“These chords, which can be heard as interlocking fifths, just say ‘fjords’ to me,” Parker wrote. “Honestly, I have absolutely no reason why I would say that!”

Well, one might suggest that the uncanny, haunting resonance of this chord conjures vast spaces and long vistas, deep, cold waters and high cliffs that amplify the calls of birds and the lapping of waves. And one might point out that the intervals in this very chord match the open strings of the Blinde-Rasmus-stillet tuning of the overtone-rich Hardanger fiddle, Norway’s resonant national instrument.

Grieg knew it well. He had a cabin, where he composed, in the town of Hardanger. On his walks, he often stopped to listen to the local fiddlers. Their haunting, unusual harmonies fell upon an alert composer’s ear. Way to feel those good vibrations, Jon Kimura Parker.

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944, “The Great” (1825–1826)

Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. First performed by the Eugene Symphony in March 2004 under the direction of Daniel Hege, and performance time is approximately 55 minutes.

Schubert poured all of his intensity and ambition into the Symphony No. 9, his response to Beethoven’s Ninth, which he’d heard at its premiere in 1824. He even quotes the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s work, although he slyly slips it in, apropos of nothing, in a quiet moment of the boisterous finale. Schubert, like Beethoven,

wrote at epic length; his Ninth weighs in at about 55 minutes, 10 shy of Beethoven’s. Both open with complex, lengthy, structurally important introductions.

Schubert exceeded his own comfort zone—and the comfort zone of his time—in this piece. He draws on his great gift for melody, which made him the greatest writer of songs in the Western Classical tradition, only occasionally in this symphony. He packed this score to maximum density; almost everyone plays almost all the time. He stretched the capabilities of contemporary orchestras in every way, especially in his relentless woodwind parts.

Even in the 1840s, when Felix Mendelssohn was traveling around Europe with score in hand attempting to perform the Ninth, orchestras in London and Paris flatly refused to play it. All of which explains why the symphony went unpublished and unperformed during the composer’s lifetime. Schubert heard only a messy read-through by a student orchestra behind closed doors.

Stuart Malina, the guest conductor for the Eugene Symphony performance, said that “The Great” remains a challenge.

The Hardanger fiddle, Norway’s national instrument, has eight or nine strings tuned in one of 20 traditional ways. Four are played in the usual way, and the rest are tuned to vibrate sympathetically. Photo: Michelle Bailey Music website

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Grieg & SchubertProgram Notes(Continued from page 13)

“It’s like a toddler, whose feet are already moving before they hit the floor,” Malina said, in a recent phone interview. “You put him down, and he’s just off. It goes on without an obvious arc or shape, and with lyrical phrases that are not all that lyrical.”

“The Great” places two challenges before conductors, according to Malina: conducting and cheerleading.

“It’s exhausting to play,” he said. “It never lets up, especially in the finale. The orchestra must remain focused, hold that edge of concentration, and keep that propelling motor running strong. Without it, the piece dies.”

Malina has decided not to take the optional repeat of the finale. That would be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The density of the scoring is another issue. Malina said that considerable rehearsal time would go to identifying and bringing out the most critical lines in the mix.

“Schubert creates a wall of sound that you must somehow make translucent,” he said.

Schubert’s obsession with Beethoven, 27 years his senior, is evident throughout, quite apart from the “Ode to Joy” quotation. Abrupt shifts among tonally distant keys, violent swings in mood and dynamics, and the tendency

to sit on repeated notes and chords for long stretches all follow Beethoven’s lead.

“But Schubert went a step or two beyond Beethoven,” Malina said. “He’ll pare down to a single note and milk it for all it’s worth. If he wants to change keys, he’ll just jump there, with no regard for proper Classical chord progression. This is Classicism going into bold Romanticism.”

The Ninth represents the late period of Schubert’s short life, a period that began around 1822. In that year, Schubert suffered a debilitating syphilis attack, and his health never really recovered. He continued to write songs, including the epic, landmark Winterreise cycle. But he turned in large part to larger forms, more adventurous styles, more complex architectures, and deeper levels of profundity.

Schubert worked furiously right up until his death, at age 31, in 1828. In this late period, he composed the Ninth and the “Unfinished” Symphony, the Piano Sonata in B-flat, four operas and three string quartets, among other works. Many of them went unpublished and unperformed, but Schubert remained undeterred.

He just kept composing, a focused artist intent on planting his flag in music history before his last grain of sand slipped through the waist of life’s hourglass.

This work, especially, demonstrates his driven awareness of music history and hunger for a place within it. Here Schubert says: “You’ve heard Beethoven’s Ninth. Now hear mine.

Historical sources:

“In the footsteps of Edvard Grieg,” from the blog of the Hotel Ullensvag, Hardanger, Norway; the website of the Edvard Grieg Museum; Wikipedia entry on the Piano Concerto in A Minor; the Gramophone Masterclass page on the concerto, with commentary by Stephen Kovacevich, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Richard Whitehouse; and Karin Løberg Code’s Guide to Tunings page at the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America website.

Tom Service’s “Symphony Guide: Schubert’s Ninth,” Manchester Guardian; Wikipedia articles on Schubert and on the Symphony No. 9.

Schubert’s “Great” Symphony places two challenges before conductors: conducting and cheerleading.