saskatoonsymphony.org

SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011Third Avenue United Church

Saskatoon, SK

SASKATOON SYMPHONY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA SERIES

Paris 1920Maestro Victor Sawa,

conductor

April 30, 2011

Saskatoon Symphony Chamber OrchestraMaestro Victor Sawa conductor

7:30 p.m. Third Avenue United Church, Saskatoon

PARIS 1920

concert programHarry Somers

Picasso Suite#1 Paris, 1900 - A Snapshot

#8 Arcadia - Faun with Flute#9 Codetta

Erik Satie Gymnopédie No. 1

Ottorino Respighi Gli UcelliPrelude

La columba (The Dove)L’usignuolo (The Nightingale)

Il cucù (The Cuckoo)

meet the chamber orchestraViolin 1

Michael Swan (Concertmaster) Martha Kashap (Asst. Concertmaster)

Mary Lou Day Lillian Jen-Payzant

Violin 2Oxana Ossiptchouk

(Principal) Karen Bindle Karen Ogle Sarah Tsoi

ViolaJim Legge (Principal)

Saache Heinrich

CelloScott McKnight

John Payzant

BassDavid Humphrey

FluteRandi Nelson (Principal)

Brenda Moats

OboeErin Brophey

(Principal, temporary)Kevin Junk

ClarinetMargaret Wilson (Principal)

Bradley Powell

BassoonPeter Gravlin (Principal)

Marie Sellar

HornCarol-Marie Cottin

(Principal) Arlene Shiplett Roxanne InchErin McVittie

TrumpetTerry Heckman (Principal)

Daniel Funk

TromboneDon Schmidt (Principal)

PercussionMark Altman

CelestaGillian Lyons

Arthur Honegger Pastorale d’Été

Erik Satie Gymnopédie No. 3

Igor Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite

Sinfonia (Overture)Serenata

Scherzino; Allegretto, AndantinoTarantella

ToccataGavotta

VivoMinuetto; Finale

— intermission—

program notesHarry Somers (1925-1999): Three Movements from Picasso Suite

A foremost English-Canadian composer, Harry Somers was born in Toronto. He became interested in music in his early teenage years. His wife, a doctor, introduced him to classical music. He began to compose with very little formal theory or compositional training. For a period of time he studied in Paris where Somers was influenced by the music of Boulez and Messiaen and a much more conservative Darius Milhaud.

This Suite was originally written for a 1964 CBC television documentary on the artist Pablo Picasso. The music evokes Picasso’s life and times, and takes a sense of delight in his multi-faceted art. The music suggests the places and times of the artist’s long and eventful life, and translates a sense of fun from many of Picasso’s drawings.

The opening, a brief hint of ragtime music, also ends the suite. The seven inner movements represent periods or trends in Picasso’s art, and include a kind of atonal blues for the artist’s “blue period,” circusy music for his series of paintings of clowns and other circus people, and so on. Picasso Suite became one of Somer’s best-known pieces.

Following Somers’ death, composer and host of CBC’s Two New Hours Larry Lake wrote that “he left Canada, and the world of music, an inestimable legacy of some of the most original and dramatically powerful scores of the century. His work has embodied Canadian music for the last half century and is truly a major part of Canada’s artistic heritage.”

Erik Satie(1866-1925): Gymnopaedie No. 1 Gymnopaedie No. 3

Erik Satie was an unconventional French composer who influenced the Parisian composers of the early 20th century, including Debussy and Stravinsky. His ballet Parade was performed by Diaghilev and displayed a jazz influence. He is known for his comic and bizarre titles, such as ‘Three Pear-shaped pieces’.

The Gymnopedies are three piano compositions written in 3/4 time published in Paris in 1888. They were atmospheric pieces which really defied the classical tradition. The melodies use deliberate, but mild dissonances against harmony, producing a somewhat melancholy effect.

Ottorino Repighi (1879-1936):Gli UccelliThe Birds (Gli uccelli) is a suite for small orchestra by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. Dating from 1927, the work is based on music from 18th-century and represents an attempt to transcribe birdsong into musical notation.

The work is in five movements:“Prelude” (based on music of Bernardo Pasquini) “La colomba” (“The dove”; based on music of Jacques de Gallot) “La gallina” (“The hen”; based on music of Jean-Philippe Rameau) “L’usignuolo” (“The nightingale”; based on the folksong ‘Engels Nachtegaeltje’ transcribed by Jacob van Eyck) “Il cucù” (“The cuckoo”; based on music of Pasquini)

program notesArthur Honegger (1892-1955):Pastorale d’Été

Pastorale d’été is a perfect example of illustrative music. The title tells us that we are in the country on a summer’s day, and the epigraph from Rimbaud—“J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été” (“I have embraced the summer dawn”)—adds the detail that it is first light. It is somewhat reminiscent of Beethoven’s pastoral images. A climax is reached, with the music returning to the calm of the opening and to the dreamy atmosphere which started the composition. Perfect balance and the scented fragrance of summer combine to form a piece representing an elusive quality.

Composers gathering at Milhaud’s apartment around 1920 created a buzz in Paris and brought new names to the attention of the public. One of these composers, Honegger, was writing music at a furious pace. In the summer of that same year, he took a holiday in Switzerland, and it was there that he wrote the Pastorale d’été. Although he spent most of his life in France, his parents were Swiss, he had served in the Swiss army, and he returned to Switzerland regularly throughout his life. The work was first performed in Paris by Vladimir Golschmann, a young French conductor who had formed his own orchestra and who presented many new works in his Paris concerts.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1970):Pulcinella Suite from the ballet Pulcinella, after themes by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736)

In the spring of 1919 Serge Diaghilev was the impresario who had collaborated with Stravinsky on such successes as The Rite of Spring, The Firebird, and Petrushka, and he suggested to the composer that he write a ballet based on some of Pergolesi’s music. At first Stravinsky resisted, not being particularly fond of the Pergolesi he knew, but Diaghilev showed him some little-known manuscripts which caught his favoured, and so he agreed to the idea.

Pulcinella was an important turning point in Stravinsky’s career. It led him into the “neo-classical” style which dominated his output for the next several decades. Unlike his earlier ballets, Pulcinella is relatively simple, scored for 33 chamber players and 3 vocal soloists, and sticking mostly to time signatures that had been used two centuries earlier. But even though Stravinsky used Pergolesi’s melodies and bass lines with little change, he managed to put his own style on the ballet through his use of modern harmonies and occasional rhythmic modifications.

In the ballet, Pulcinella, a traditional hero of Neapolitan commedia dell’arte, has captured the hearts of all the local girls. Enraged, their fiancés plot to kill him, but he outwits them and substitutes a double, who feigns death and is then “revived” by a disguised Pulcinella. When the young men return, Pulcinella arranges marriages for everyone, and himself weds Pimpinella to produce the expected happy ending.

Igor Stravinsky, 1929 by F. Man (Germany)