The Philadelphia Orchestra

Stéphane Denève ConductorActors from the Philadelphia Shakespeare TheatreCarmen Khan Founder and Artistic/Executive Director

Shakespeare “If music be the food of love, play on,” from Twelfth Night Orsino: Akeem Davis

Walton/arr. Palmer Prelude, from As You Like It (A Poem for Orchestra after Shakespeare) First Philadelphia Orchestra performance

Shakespeare “All the world’s a stage,” from As You Like It Jaques: Brian Anthony Wilson

Walton/arr. Palmer “The Wedding Procession,” from As You Like It (A Poem for Orchestra after Shakespeare)

Shakespeare “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick,” from Much Ado About Nothing Beatrice: Eleni Delopoulos Benedick: Brian Anthony Wilson

Berlioz Overture to Beatrice and Benedict

Shakespeare “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?” (Balcony Scene), from Romeo and Juliet Romeo: Akeem Davis Juliet: Mary Tuomanen

Tchaikovsky Fantasy-Overture, Romeo and Juliet

Intermission

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Season 2014-2015Saturday, February 14, at 8:00

Mendelssohn Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21

Shakespeare “The course of true love never did run smooth,” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Demetrius: Akeem Davis Helena: Eleni Delopoulos Lysander: Josh Kachnycz Hermia: Mary Tuomanen

Mendelssohn Nocturne, Scherzo, and Intermezzo, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61

Shakespeare “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Theseus: Brian Anthony Wilson Helena: Eleni Delopoulos Demetrius: Akeem Davis Hermia: Mary Tuomanen Lysander: Josh Kachnycz

Mendelssohn Wedding March, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61

This program runs approximately 2 hours, 10 minutes.

designates a work that is part of the 40/40 Project, which features pieces not performed on subscription concerts in at least 40 years.

Philadelphia Orchestra concerts are broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM on Sunday afternoons at 1 PM. Visit www.wrti.org to listen live or for more details.

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The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world, renowned for its distinctive sound, desired for its keen ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences, and admired for a legacy of imagination and innovation on and off the concert stage. The Orchestra is transforming its rich tradition of achievement, sustaining the highest level of artistic quality, but also challenging—and exceeding—that level by creating powerful musical experiences for audiences at home and around the world.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s highly collaborative style, deeply-rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike since his inaugural season in 2012. Under his leadership the Orchestra returned to recording with a celebrated CD of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Leopold Stokowski transcriptions on the Deutsche Grammophon label, continuing its history of recording success. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of listeners on the radio with weekly Sunday afternoon broadcasts on WRTI-FM.

Philadelphia is home, and the Orchestra nurtures an important relationship with patrons who support the main season at the Kimmel Center, and also with those who enjoy the Orchestra’s other area performances at the Mann Center, Penn’s Landing, and other cultural, civic, and learning venues. The Orchestra maintains a strong commitment to collaborations with cultural and community organizations on a regional and national level.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, presentations, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador for Philadelphia and for the United States. Having been the first American orchestra to perform in China, in 1973 at the request of President Nixon, today The Philadelphia Orchestra boasts a new partnership with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The ensemble annually performs at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center while also enjoying summer residencies in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Vail, Colorado.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has a decades-long tradition of presenting learning and community engagement opportunities for listeners of all ages. The Orchestra’s recent initiative, the Fabulous Philadelphians Offstage, Philly Style!, has taken musicians off the traditional concert stage and into the community, including highly-successful Pop-Up concerts, PlayINs, SingINs, and ConductINs. The Orchestra’s musicians, in their own dedicated roles as teachers, coaches, and mentors, serve a key role in growing young musician talent and a love of classical music, nurturing and celebrating the wealth of musicianship in the Philadelphia region. For more information on The Philadelphia Orchestra, please visit www.philorch.org.

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Jessica Griffin

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Music DirectorMusic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin continues his inspired leadership of The Philadelphia Orchestra, which began in the fall of 2012. His highly collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called Nézet-Séguin “phenomenal,” adding that under his baton, “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.” He has taken the Orchestra to new musical heights. Highlights of his third season as music director include an Art of the Pipe Organ festival; the 40/40 Project, in which 40 great compositions that haven’t been heard on subscription concerts in at least 40 years will be performed; and Bernstein’s MASS, the pinnacle of the Orchestra’s five-season requiem cycle.

Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most exciting talents of his generation. He has been music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic since 2008 and artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000. He also continues to enjoy a close relationship with the London Philharmonic, of which he was principal guest conductor. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s most revered ensembles, and he has conducted critically acclaimed performances at many of the leading opera houses.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Deutsche Grammophon (DG) enjoy a long-term collaboration. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with a CD on that label of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Leopold Stokowski transcriptions. He continues a fruitful recording relationship with the Rotterdam Philharmonic on DG, EMI Classics, and BIS Records; the London Philharmonic and Choir for the LPO label; and the Orchestre Métropolitain for ATMA Classique.

A native of Montreal, Yannick Nézet-Séguin studied at that city’s Conservatory of Music and continued lessons with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini and with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors; a Royal Philharmonic Society Award; Canada’s National Arts Centre Award; the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the highest distinction for the arts in Quebec; and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec in Montreal and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

To read Yannick’s full bio, please visit www.philorch.org/conductor.

Chris Lee

Principal Guest ConductorStéphane Denève is principal guest conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his debut with the Philadelphians in 2007 and assumed his current position at the start of the 2014-15 season. He is also chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and in September 2015 becomes chief conductor of the Brussels Philharmonic and director of its Centre for Future Orchestral Repertoire. From 2005 to 2012 he was music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Recent European engagements include appearances with the Royal Concertgebouw and Philharmonia orchestras; the Bavarian Radio, Swedish Radio, Vienna, and London symphonies; the Munich Philharmonic; the Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome; the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; and the Orchestre National de France. In North America Mr. Denève made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2012 with the Boston Symphony, with which he is a frequent guest. He appears regularly with the Chicago and San Francisco symphonies, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He makes his New York Philharmonic debut in 2015. Mr. Denève has conducted productions at the Royal Opera House, the Glyndebourne Festival, La Scala, the Saito Kinen Festival, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Netherlands Opera, La Monnaie, and the Opéra National de Paris. He enjoys close relationships with many of the world’s leading artists, including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Nikolaj Znaider, Gil Shaham, Emanuel Ax, Lars Vogt, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Repin, James Ehnes, and Natalie Dessay.

As a recording artist, Mr. Denève has won critical acclaim for his recordings of the works of Poulenc, Debussy, Roussel, Franck, and Connesson. He is a double winner of the Diapason d’Or, was shortlisted in 2012 for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year award, and won the prize for symphonic music at the 2013 International Classical Music Awards. A graduate of, and prizewinner at, the Paris Conservatory, Mr. Denève worked closely in his early career with Georg Solti, Georges Prêtre, and Seiji Ozawa. He works regularly with young people in the programs of the Tanglewood Music Center and the New World Symphony.

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ArtistsSince 1996 the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre has produced more than 50 critically acclaimed Shakespeare productions through fresh, muscular, and vivid interpretations that have at their center the actor and the playwright. As one of the foremost proponents of text-based theater, the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre strives to produce the most excellent Shakespeare productions and education programming, accessible to all. For 18 years, the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre’s Open Door Project has provided state-of-the-art Shakespeare programming to more than 70,000 high school and middle school students throughout the region, including student matinees, Artist-in-Residence, and professional touring productions. For more information please visit www.phillyshakespeare.org.

Carmen Khan (Director) is the founder and artistic/executive director of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. She holds a Bachelor of Education from the University of London, England, and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. For seven years she was a company member of the esteemed Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth, Texas, where she worked as an actor, dancer, and mime in over 26 productions. Favorites at the Hip Pocket were King Kong, In Watermelon Sugar, On Beast Beach, and Even If You Can Stop the Yellow Claw My Deadly Tidal Wave Will Still Destroy New York! Ms. Khan was the co-founder of the Laughing Stock Theatre, an all-comedy theater, and artistic director of the Red Heel Theatre, which was devoted to the little-known classics of the Jacobean era, both in Philadelphia. She has produced over 50 Shakespeare plays and directed 20. Upcoming projects include directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre this spring.

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ArtistsAkeem Davis is originally from Miami and has acted with Flashpoint Theatre Company, InterAct Theatre, People’s Light & Theatre Company, Simpatico Theatre Project, Delaware Theatre Company, and Applied Mechanics, among others. He was last seen playing the king in Henry V at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.

Brian Anthony Wilson began his film career in 1997 with a supporting lead role in The Postman opposite Academy Award-winner Kevin Costner. Since then he has appeared in over 85 film/television projects, including Franny with Richard Gere, Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard with Billy Zane, Limitless with Bradley Cooper, Another Happy Day with Ellen Barkin and Academy Award-winner Ellen Burnstyn, 6 Souls with Julianne Moore, Law Abiding Citizen with Gerald Butler and Jamie Foxx, Keeping the Faith with Ben Stiller, and Rounders with Edward Norton. His television credits include Broad City, Do No Harm, Unforgettable, Law & Order: SVU, The Sopranos, Hack, and all five seasons of The Wire, portraying Homicide Detective Vernon Holley. His recent theater credits include Jim Bono in Fences at People’s Light & Theatre Company, the title role in Henry IV: Your Prince & Mine, Man of La Mancha, and Water by the Spoonful. He is currently appearing as George Godwin in Beauty & the Beast at the Arden Theatre, and this spring plays Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.

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ArtistsEleni Delopoulos recently appeared at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Emilia in Othello, and at Westport Playhouse and Centerstage in Into the Woods. She performed Off-Broadway in A Stoop on Orchard Street (as well as on the original cast recording), and has appeared in several national tours and in the Italian tour of Hair. She also performed as Rona in Spelling Bee (Alabama Shakespeare Theater), Hannigan in Annie (Fulton Theater), Speed in Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare & Company), Claire in Proof (Skyline Theater), Izzy in Crossing Delancey (Theater Barn), Pam in Baby and Mrs. Meers in Thoroughly Modern Millie (Mt. Washington Theater), and Soupy Sue in Urinetown (Carousel Theater). Ms. Delopoulos teaches voice and theater at Mainstage in N.J. and is the executive director of an educational non-profit. Her musical version of Lysistrata, Acropolis Now!, has been seen in several theaters in N.Y. Upcoming appearances include Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.

Educated at the Lecoq School of Movement Theatre in Paris, Mary Tuomanen is a company member of Applied Mechanics, a Philadelphia company that experiments with immersive theater and radical community generosity. Recently she performed with the Arden Theatre, People’s Light & Theatre Company, and the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, where she became the first woman to play Hamlet in Philadelphia since Charlotte Cushman 150 years before her. She also creates original work with Aaron Cromie (Saint Joan Betrayed, The Body Lautrec.)

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ArtistsA recent Temple University graduate in musical theater, Joshua Kachnycz is proud to have recently made his debut in the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. His past credits include Jud Fry in Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! and James Drexel in After Carpathia: The Conceptual Sequel to James Cameron’s Titanic. A Chestnut Hill resident, Mr. Kachnycz is an avid fan of Marvel and DC comics, and was recently seen as the Green Lantern at the 2014 Philadelphia Comic Convention. This spring he appears in the upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre.

Janelle Caso (Stage Manager) is a graduate of the University of Scranton with a BA in Theater. Her most recent project was a production of Hamlet with the Scranton Cultural Center and REV Theatre Company. She did a staged reading of The Me Nobody Knows with Taye Diggs and Bespoken Theatricals in N.Y. She was the resident production stage manager for three years at New City Stage Company, where she managed 10 productions in Philadelphia. She was the production manager for the Scranton Shakespeare Festival’s/REV’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy of Errors. Other stage manager projects include Evil Dead: the Musical tour with Starvox Entertainment, The Comedy of Errors for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, and Losing the Shore for BCKSEET Productions. She was the stage manager for the Performing Arts Institute’s productions of Fiddler on the Roof, Gypsy, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Ms. Caso will be the production stage manager for A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre this spring.

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ArtistsShane Martin (Technical Director) is a senior at the University of the Arts with a BFA in Theater Design and Technology. His most recent project was Side Show at the University as the technical director. He is the resident technical director for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. His other theatrical projects include technical director for 11th Hour Theater Company’s Altar Boyz, and Commonwealth Classical Theater Company’s Twelfth Night and The Glass Menagerie, and technical director and production stage manager for the Metropolitan Ballet Company and Dance Theater of Tennessee.

Vickie Esposito (Costume Design) has designed The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, As You Like It, King Lear, Macbeth (school tour), Pericles, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. Her other Philadelphia work includes Inspecting Carol for Philadelphia Drama Guild; Indiscretions, Tin Pan Ally Rag and Ruling Class for the Wilma Theater; and numerous productions for the Philadelphia Festival Theater, the Philadelphia Theater Company, and the Arden Theatre. Her New York and regional credits include Belmont Avenue Social Club at Capitol Rep, Charley’s Aunt at the Olney, and Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Member of the Communist Party at the Century and Promenade Theaters. She is associate head of design, head of costumes, and head of the BFA Theater Program for the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

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ArtistsMichael Cosenza is a fight director in and around Philadelphia. His work can be seen in the upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, where he has worked since 2007. His work has been seen onstage at the Wilma Theater, Theatre Exile, Philadelphia Artists Collective, InterAct Theater Company, Luna Theater Company, Simpatico Theatre Company, Arcadia University, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and LaSalle University. Last year he was nominated for a Barrymore Award, recognizing excellence in choreography, for his work in the world premiere of Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq at the Wilma Theater.

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The PlaysEach of Shakespeare’s plays is a meditation on one principal theme. Hamlet, for example, is about responsibility; Macbeth is about the consequences of error. The five scenes you will see tonight are all about Shakespeare’s favorite theme: It is the “sea nourished with lovers’ tears”; “the lightning in the collied night”; the “fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes”; the “smoke raised with the fume of sighs”; the endlessly varied, elusive, magical, maddening, joyful something called Love.

Twelfth Night is Shakespeare’s meditation on romantic delusion. We have a woman disguised as a man. We have a lady who is desperately in love with “him” but believes herself to be in deep mourning; a duke who believes he is madly in love with the lady across town, while (unknown to himself) he truly loves the person at his side, whom he doesn’t realize is female; a terrified goose of a man challenging another man to a duel; and a steward who believes his employer is in love with him and is going to make him a count any moment. And much, much more. Put all these people together and you have an irresistible, poignant symphony of miscommunication, misconception, and non-comprehension, all fueled by romantic desire.

As You Like It is a play about the healing power of love. The Duke’s younger brother has usurped and exiled his brother to the woods, and the dukedom is broken. In another household, the newly anointed heir tries to murder his own better-endowed younger brother. But Rosalind and Celia, the daughters of the two dukes, fall in love with the young brothers, restore the rightful to their places, heal themselves, their fathers, and their lovers, and the dukedom itself.

Much Ado About Nothing is Shakespeare’s meditation on the foolishness of lovers. Benedick and Beatrice are in love with each other, but firmly believe they hate each other. Claudio loves Hero, but is easily fooled into disavowing her and destroying (temporarily) her reputation. With a helping hand from their friend, the perceptive and compassionate prince, all is made right in the end.

Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s most popular love play. It’s about the absolute raw power of first fascination: the power to sweep aside anything in its way; the power to create, to heal, to be self-determined, or to destroy.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s meditation on the capriciousness of erotic fascination. From the lowest to the mightiest, we are all equally helpless victims of the sense of humor of this most whimsical of gods. Love comes as suddenly as death, and we are all but consumed with sexual passion. And yet Shakespeare helps us to relax and trust that even in spite of all our vain efforts to control our own destiny, we will be treated gently and somehow all will be well in the end.

—Jack Armstrong

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The MusicPrelude and Wedding Procession from As You Like It (arr. Palmer)

William WaltonBorn in Oldham, Lancashire, March 29, 1902Died in Forio, on the island of Ischia, Italy, March 8, 1983

“Looking back,” recalled Sir William Walton as he approached his 60th birthday, “I can trace a distinct element of luck that has been a major asset in my career—that, and some very staunch friends, not to mention a certain amount of musical talent and a great deal of persistent hard work.” In fact, Walton’s life was a series of escapes upward and onward to ever better circumstances. It was Walton’s innate musical ability as a boy soprano that enabled him to escape the dreary Lancastrian mining town of Oldham where he was born for Oxford University. At Oxford he was a chorister at Christ Church and later an undergraduate. (A consummate professional, Walton tended to play down the excellent musical education that he received at Oxford.)

The Enfant Terrible of British Music Thanks to the patronage of the wealthy Sitwells, a family of coruscating Modernist writers, he was able to leave Oxford for London. His music for Edith Sitwell’s brilliant experimental poetry, Façade (1921 but much revised until 1951), brought him early fame as the enfant terrible of British music. Walton consolidated his reputation with his Viola Concerto (1929) and his iconoclastic oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast (1931). These pieces evince a wide range of influences that included Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel, Sibelius, Delius, Hindemith, and Gershwin; astoundingly, Walton was able to forge from these various musical infatuations a style that was at once sensuous, virile, extroverted, and inimitable.

Just as his relationship with the Sitwells began to cool in the mid-1930s, Walton found that he could support himself through the composition of film music, including providing the scores to the cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1936), Henry V (1943-44), Hamlet (1947), and Richard III (1955). British filmmakers of the period sought out the finest and most progressive composers to write music for the cinema. As Stephen Lloyd has noted, “By the time of Walton’s involvement [in films], Clarence Roybould, Arthur Benjamin, Eugene Goossens and John Greenwood all had substantial scores to their credit.” Unlike American commentators, who decried those “serious” composers who decamped

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to Hollywood, British critics were encouraging. As the influential critic Ernest Newman commented, “It is said that [Walton] is now going to occupy himself for a time with music for the films. He could do nothing wiser, from the point of view of his future development.”

An exacting perfectionist, Walton initially found the experience to be excruciating. He later remembered that composing the music for his first film, Escape Me Never (1934), “nearly drove me to a lunatic asylum.” As his film career progressed, however, he discovered that “much to my surprise I soon found myself writing five to ten minutes’ music a day without too much difficulty.” Escape Me Never was such a hit—and the music was so effective—that its director, the Hungarian-born Paul Czinner, was persuaded to hire Walton two years later for his cinematic adaption of Shakespeare’s dark comedy As You Like It. Czinner conceived As You Like It as a “high concept” production with lavish décor by Lazare Meerson and choreography by Ninette de Valois. With a screenplay by James M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, the cast included the popular actress Elisabeth Bergner, who was Czinner’s wife, as the heroine Rosalind as well as Laurence Olivier in his first leading cinematic role as the lovesick Orlando.

A Disappointing Film but a Successful Score Weighed down by such pretensions, As You Like It proved, predictably, to be a disappointment. The film opened at the Carlton Theatre, Haymarket, on September 3, 1936, and elicited a generally unfavorable response from critics and indifference from the audience. Most critics blamed its failure on the fatal combination of Barrie’s rose-colored bowdlerization of Shakespeare’s play with Bergner’s mannered and self-consciously “charming” acting. One commentator remarked caustically on Bergner’s “inability to stop wriggling,” while the novelist and critic Graham Greene tartly observed, “Horns and cuckolds have been heavily censored, the streak of poison which runs through the comedy has been squeezed carefully out between hygienic fingertips, and what is left, apart from Arden and absurd delightful artificial love, is Shakespeare at his falsest.”

Despite the film’s lack of acclaim, Walton’s score represents a distinct advance on that of Escape Me Never, as it is more substantial and symphonic. The opening title credits have a bracing sweep and grandeur, while the wedding procession for Orlando and Rosalind looks forward to the noble Crown Imperial march that Walton would compose for the coronation of George VI the following year.

—Byron Adams

Walton composed the score to As You Like It in 1936.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has performed on the Wedding Procession from the film score prior to this evening’s concert, in 2005 with David Hayes on the podium. This is the first Orchestra performance of the Prelude.

The score calls for three flutes (III doubling piccolo), two oboes (II doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, trombone, bass trombone, timpani, percussion (cymbals, deep bell in A, glockenspiel, jingles, snare drum, suspended cymbal, tabors, tambourine, triangle, tubular bells), two harps, harpsichord (doubling celesta), and strings.

The Prelude runs approximately three minutes and the Wedding Procession approximately one-and-a-half minutes in performance.

The MusicOverture to Beatrice and Benedict

Hector BerliozBorn in La Côte-St.-André, Isère, December 11, 1803Died in Paris, March 8, 1869

Berlioz’s literary passions sprang early and ran deep. While many of his greatest musical predecessors were also inspired by literature, their principal aesthetic influences tended to come from other composers. Berlioz, on the other hand, awakened to the world of art through reading and eventually became a distinguished writer himself—a great music critic and a mesmerizing memoirist. The study of Latin, particularly of Virgil’s Aeneid, profoundly touched the young boy: “It was Virgil who first found the way to my heart and fired my nascent imagination.” Shakespeare emerged as an even more powerful force, and Goethe as yet another. By age 24 Berlioz would proclaim: “Shakespeare and Goethe, the silent confidants of my torments, they hold the key to my life.”

The Revelation of Shakespeare Berlioz fully discovered the genius of Shakespeare when he attended performances at the Paris Odeon Theater of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello presented by a touring English company. These presentations had an enormous impact on French Romanticism. The writer Alexandre Dumas compared the revelation of Shakespeare to Adam awakening in the Garden of Eden after the creation. Artists of all kinds were struck by Shakespeare’s mixture of high and low and by his freedom of expression. His works seemed to provide permission to move away from old academic laws and embrace new liberties.

Over the course of more than three decades Berlioz composed various pieces on Shakespearean subjects, including a concert overture, King Lear (1831); a “dramatic symphony,” Romeo and Juliet (1839); and The Death of Ophelia (1848). His final foray was a comic opera, Beatrice and Benedict (1862), based on Much Ado About Nothing, for which he wrote his own libretto.

Berlioz had struggled with writing operas before. While he brilliantly met the genre’s musical challenges, he was not particularly successful in professional terms. The grand spectacles offered by composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer and Fromental Halévy were embraced by audiences that found Berlioz’s music more challenging. He destroyed most of his unperformed first opera, Les

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Francs-juges (The Judges of the Secret Court), although he recycled parts of it in later compositions (including the Symphonie fantastique). There were other false starts, and in the end he completed three operas. Benvenuto Cellini, which romanticizes the adventurous life of the 16th-century Italian painter and sculptor, premiered at the Paris Opéra in September 1838. Even more ambitious was Les Troyens (The Trojans), based on the tragic love story of Dido and Aeneas from the Aeneid.

After completing that mammoth undertaking Berlioz began composing his sparkling Beatrice and Benedict, which proved to be his last major composition. “This little work is much harder to perform than Les Troyens because it has humor,” Berlioz would remark. His wit and marvelous sense of humor come across abundantly in his prose, as well as in some earlier compositions. He decided to end his career, as Verdi would later do in his miraculous Falstaff, with a comic Shakespeare opera. Part of the attraction for both composers was the chance to adapt the author they most loved as well as the chance to make musical jokes, to give a musical commentary not only on Shakespeare but also on the genre of opera itself. Berlioz said of the work: “It is a caprice written with the point of a needle and requires the utmost delicacy of execution.”

Much Ado About Nothing was a play Berlioz had wanted to set for nearly 30 years, but only after an attractive commission from the theater in Baden-Baden did he tackle the project in 1860. He originally conceived it as a short one-act opera, although it expanded to two, interspersed with dialogue. He eliminated much of the plot so as to focus on the battle of wits between the title characters. As Berlioz informed his son in a letter, the composing went so quickly that he could “hardly keep pace”:

I have taken only one theme from the play; the rest is my own invention. It’s a matter quite simply of persuading Beatrice and Benedict (who detest each other) that they are in love with each other and of inspiring true love between them. It is an excellent comedy, you will see. In addition there are some jokes of my own invention and some musical parody.

A Closer Look The brilliantly orchestrated Overture draws upon a variety of melodies from the opera, focusing on two of them. It opens with a buoyant theme that is derived from the concluding love duet between Beatrice and Benedict once they are finally united. This immediately contracts with a more somber theme that

is based on Beatrice’s moving Act II aria “Dieu! Que viens je d’entendre?” (God, what have I just heard?), when she first appreciates that Benedict is in love with her. The mixture of the joyful and reflective mirrors the kind of juxtapositions that the Romantics so admired in Shakespeare’s plays.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Berlioz composed Beatrice and Benedict from 1860 to 1862.

The first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of the Overture was in Washington, D.C., on December 19, 1935, with Alexander Smallens on the podium. The last subscription performances were in 2011, with Charles Dutoit.

The score calls for piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, cornet, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

The work runs approximately eight minutes in performance.

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The MusicRomeo and Juliet

Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyBorn in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840Died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has probably served and inspired more composers than any other single literary work—with the possible exception of Goethe’s Faust. It was an ideal choice of subject for the young Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—who in his early years had struggled with the problem of reconciling Classical forms with new types of Romantic expression that were by their very nature impulsive and anti-formalist. Thus while the large-scale structures of his First Symphony (composed in 1866) bedeviled him, the rhapsodic nature of the Fantasy-Overture, Romeo and Juliet—the first version of which was composed in late 1869—permitted him just the sort of intensity of expression that was to become the most palpable aspect of his style.

A Timely Suggestion Tchaikovsky had initially studied law, not music. He had even begun a job as clerk in the Ministry of Justice in St. Petersburg before deciding to take up the study of composition, his first love. He completed his conservatory studies relatively late, and not until the late 1860s, after he began teaching harmony and musical analysis at what eventually became the Moscow Conservatory, did his musical thinking take on a more rigorously systematic bent. This rigor is heard in the First Symphony, a work of rich, beautiful melodies that longs to burst out of the straight-jacket of conventional form. Having worked some of this structuralism out of his system, the composer was ripe for Mily Balakirev’s suggestion in 1868 that he compose a piece based on Romeo and Juliet.

The meddlesome Balakirev dictated to Tchaikovsky the specific structure, keys, and thematic shape that he had in mind, and unfortunately the young composer accepted the suggestions of his elder colleague with patience bordering on docility. When the first version was performed in Moscow in March 1870, Balakirev criticized it anyway—so much that Tchaikovsky prepared a new version that summer. The revision was more successful; but 10 years later Tchaikovsky revised the score yet again. It is this last version, formally taut and texturally polished, that is performed today.

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A Closer Look Tchaikovsky’s overture begins with a hymn-like depiction of Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence, with clarinets and bassoons (andante). An ensuing allegro presents the clash of the lovers’ warring families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo and Juliet are represented by English horn and muted strings—but their amorous rhapsodizing is interrupted by more family feuding. Finally all three themes are heard in succession: the love theme (perhaps the most famous Tchaikovsky melody of all), the music of the warring families, and Friar Laurence’s music. The piece ends with an ominous flourish.

—Paul J. Horsley

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Tchaikovsky composed Romeo and Juliet in 1869 and revised it in 1870 and 1880.

Fritz Scheel conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of the piece, in March 1901, during the Orchestra’s first season. The Philadelphians’ most recent performances of the work on subscription concerts were in January 2008, with Christoph Eschenbach conducting.

The Orchestra has recorded Romeo and Juliet five times: with Leopold Stokowski in 1928 for BMG; with Eugene Ormandy in 1953 and 1964 for Sony, and in 1973 for BMG; and with Riccardo Muti in 1988 for EMI. A live broadcast recording from 1962, led by Stokowski, is available on The Philadelphia Orchestra: The Centennial Collection (Historic Broadcasts and Recordings from 1917-1998).

The Overture is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals), harp, and strings.

Performance time is approximately 21 minutes.

The MusicSelections from Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Felix MendelssohnBorn in Hamburg, February 3, 1809Died in Leipzig, November 4, 1847

Berlin in the early 19th century must have been a heady place for a 16-year-old prodigy bursting with musical ambition and intellectual curiosity. The young Mendelssohn, who moved to the city from Hamburg with his family in 1825, immediately fell into the intimate circles of Germany’s most prominent intellectual and artistic figures, including Alexander von Humboldt, Georg Friedrich Hegel, and August Schlegel. With a voracious appetite not only for music but for philosophy, art, and literature, the composer was profoundly moved by the new German translations of Shakespeare by Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, which together with the works of Goethe formed some of the most lasting literary influences of his life.

A Teenage Masterpiece Mendelssohn took a fervent interest in Shakespeare that would have delighted many a high-school English teacher. In 1826, all of 17, he composed what would become perhaps his most popular piece: the Overture to the bard’s quirky A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I can still see him,” wrote fellow composer A.B. Marx of his friend, many years later, “entering my room with a heated expression, pacing up and down a few times, and saying: ‘I have a terrific idea! What do you think of it? I want to write an overture to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ I expressed warm support for the idea.”

After an abortive first attempt, Mendelssohn produced, in a matter of days, the bubbling but slightly serious Overture that we know today; Carl Loewe conducted its premiere in Stettin the following spring, and it was an immediate success. The sputtering, elfin string passage at the opening instantly evokes the extraordinary fairy-world of this towering comedy. Still, this was not to be the end of it.

Soundtrack for a Play For the magic of Shakespeare’s masterpiece was to follow Mendelssohn for the rest of his days. Many years after he had written this Overture, when he was serving as composer for the Prussian court theater, he was asked to provide incidental (or “background”) music for the Potsdam production of the entire Midsummer Night’s Dream. To the Overture, Op. 21,

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Program notes © 2015. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Byron Adams.

of 1826 he added some dozen additional numbers, Op. 61, including the Scherzo, which grows naturally from the elfin quality of the Overture, the evocative Nocturne, and the rousing Wedding March. Mendelssohn’s additions to the play extend much further though, as he also set the words of Shakespeare’s songs for two sopranos and women’s chorus. When all of his music is performed with the complete play there are interjections as brief as a single chord, all of which merge to create a marvelous soundtrack.

Commissioned by the king as part of his birthday celebration, the entire score was first performed with the play on October 14, 1843, at the Neue Palais; though the Potsdam courtiers found the play baffling, the music was a grand success. The rather obtuse king (Friedrich Wilhelm IV) is reported to have said, during a post-concert supper with Mendelssohn: “What a pity your wonderful music had to be wasted on such a silly play!” The production was repeated in Berlin on October 18, and quickly became acknowledged as perhaps the finest incidental music ever composed.

A Closer Look The Overture opens with four magical chords floating in the high register of the woodwinds that lead to a rapid staccato flight in the divided upper strings. These contrasting ideas alternate throughout the piece, perfectly capturing the elfin world of Shakespeare’s imagining. Also inspired by the play are hunting horns, evocative of Oberon’s realm, the braying of Bottom transformed into a donkey, and a love theme.

The meditative Nocturne, which offers one of the great horn themes in the orchestral literature, reveals the magic of the depths of the forest and of the young lovers’ sleep. Mendelssohn’s scherzos offer the most delightful moments in many of his symphonies and chamber compositions, and the Scherzo here, meant to open the second act of the play and introduce the character of Puck, exemplifies the brilliant sparkle and buoyancy of this composer at his individual best.

The two-part Intermezzo links the second and third acts, as Hermia seeks her beloved Lysander and gets lost in the forest. The famous Wedding March celebrates the multiple marriages in the last act of the play.

—Paul J. Horsley/Christopher H. Gibbs

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Mendelssohn composed the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1826. The remainder of the Incidental Music was composed from 1842 to 1843.

Fritz Scheel was on the podium in March 1902 for The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first performances of excerpts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since then, barely a year has gone by when some part of the Midsummer music has not been played by the Orchestra, whether on subscription, student, Mann, Saratoga, tour, or other concerts. The most recent subscription appearances of the excerpts heard tonight were in February 2010, with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos on the podium.

The Orchestra has recorded excerpts from the work seven times: four with Eugene Ormandy, two with Leopold Stokowski, and one with Arturo Toscanini, and the entire incidental music was recorded once with Ormandy in 1976.

These excerpts are scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, three trumpets, three trombones, ophicleide, timpani, percussion (cymbals and triangle), and strings.

Tonight’s selections run approximately 30 minutes total in performance.

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