Bravo I: An Evening of Romance and Intrigue

Sponsors

This evening's concert is generously sponsored by:

Complimentary wine at intermission provided by:

E. & J. Gallo Winery

Accommodations provided by:

Program

Richard Wagner—Overture to The Flying Dutchman

Gustav Mahler (arr. By Philip West)—from Four Songs on Poems by Ruchert

Richard Strauss Don Juan, op. 20

Intermission

Antonin Dvorak—Cello Concerto in B Minor, op. 104

1. Allegro
2. Adagio, ma non troppo
3. Finale: Allegro moderato-Andante-Allegro vivo

Eric Kim, cello

 

Eric Kim: Cello

Eric Kim, cellist, has a diverse career performing throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and Middle and Far East as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestra. Having made his solo debut at age fifteen with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Kim was the featured soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra on its critically acclaimed tour of the Far East, and has appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Denver, and San Diego.  He  has collaborated with such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Paavo Jarvi, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Sergiu Comissiona, and Lawrence Foster, and has appeared in recital in the cities of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  Mr. Kim served as Principal Cello of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1989-2009, and has held Principal Cello positions with the San Diego and Denver symphonies. 

Active as a chamber musician, Mr. Kim has performed with such artists as Emmanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Susan Graham, Lynn Harrell, Stephen Hough, Jaime Laredo and Menachem Pressler.  At the invitation of violinist Pinchas Zukerman, he performed with Mr. Zukerman at the festivals of Athens (Greece), Mostly Mozart (NY), Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), and Verbier(Switzerland). He has also participated in several tours with Mr. Zukerman to South America and Israel as a member of the "Pinchas Zukerman and Friends" chamber ensemble. Highlights include chamber music debuts at Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts performing both Brahms Sextets with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Michael Tree, among others. Mr. Kim can also be heard at the festivals of Angel Fire (New Mexico), Aspen, Bravo! Colorado (Vail), LaJolla, and Santa Fe, and Savannah. Mr. Kim has also made several recordings for the RCA, EMI, Telarc, and Koch labels.

Mr. Kim is newly appointed Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.  As a teacher, he has students in major orchestras throughout the world, and is a Valade Program teacher at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, conducted each summer.  He also is a regular coach and performer at the Music Masters Course in Kasuza, Japan. Mr. Kim regularly appears at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach coaching the next generation of symphonic cellists.

Born of Korean parents in New York City, Mr. Kim grew up in Illinois where he began piano studies with his mother at age five. At age ten, he began cello studies with Tanya L. Carey. Mr. Kim received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School where he studied with Leonard Rose, Lynn Harrell, and Channing Robbins. Upon graduation, Mr. Kim received the first William Schuman Prize, awarded for outstanding leadership and achievement in music.

Notes by Lynn Raley

Richard Wagner: Overture to "The Flying Dutchman"

In 1839 Wagner, wife and large dog in tow, found himself fleeing from creditors, heading for Paris via London after running up huge bills in Riga, Latvia. On the North Sea a storm struck, so violent that his wife begged him to tie himself to her, so they could drown together. According to Wagner's autobiography, this terrifying experience inspired him to compose the opera The Flying Dutchman. He wrote, "The voyage through the Norwegian reefs made a wonderful impression on my imagination; the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which the sailors verified, took on a distinctive, strange coloring that only my sea adventures could have given it." 

The opera is based on the legend of a seafaring Dutch captain who, after trying to round the Cape of Good Hope in a violent storm, swears to God and the Devil that he will make it if it takes all of eternity. Hearing the captain's oath, the Devil takes him at his word and condemns him to sail the seas forever. Given a chance for redemption, he is allowed to go ashore every seven years. Should he find a woman willing to love him until death, he will be released from the curse. He eventually finds her, in Senta. But soon the untrusting captain suspects her of an affair with a sailor, and he returns to the sea, enraged. A storm drives the ship off course toward a fjord, where he hears Senta's voice. Willing to die for him, she sings that she alone can save him from his fate, and leaps off a cliff toward the ship, to her death.

Wagner's normal practice was to write the overture after he had written an entire opera, using its "leading motives" (leitmotifs) as thematic material. Indeed, if you have heard the overture, you have heard much of the music of the opera. As the overture begins, the Dutchman's theme is heard in the horns and low brass, over evocative 'storm' music in the swirling strings. A gorgeous melody soon appears in the woodwinds, (Senta's theme, representing the redemptive power of Love itself). After a jaunty sailors' dance, the storm returns, and at the end, Senta's theme is heard again. As the Dutchman is finally redeemed, the music reflects their ascension together into Heaven.

           

Gustav Mahler: Um Mitternacht ("At Midnight")

On Sunday, February 24, 1900, Mahler conducted a subscription concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in the afternoon, followed by a gala performance of Mozart's Magic Fluteat the Vienna State Opera that evening. As the evening went on, Mahler felt increasing discomfort, and finally real pain. That night he hemorrhaged a great deal of blood.

The year 1901 was one of great stress for Mahler. As he turned forty he became preoccupied with the passage of time, unable to forget his brush with death the previous year, and unable to avoid thinking about Mozart and Schubert, who died before their fortieth birthday.

Biographer Stuart Federer writes: "Above all, Um Mitternacht is powerfully reminiscent of Mahler's recent scrape with death. The poem is astonishing in its inadvertent biographical accuracy: The time is midnight and a sense of urgency prevails as the persona 'sings' of the awareness of 'the beating of my heart' and 'one pulse of pain'." Rückert's poem, suggests a half-awake trance that  pulses with anxiety. Mahler's orchestration, especially his use of woodwinds, is powerfully evocative. His music reflects perfectly the poem's transformation from the intensely personal first stanza, to the ecstatic conclusion, when the specter of death is swept away by upward sweeping arpeggios in the harp-Mahler's signature symbol for light-and timpani and brass envelope and overpower the soloist. The text is by Friederich Rückert. 

 

Um Mitternacht                                             
     At Midnight

 Um Mitternacht
     At midnight
Hab' ich gewacht
     I was roused
Und aufgeblickt zum Himmel;
     and looked up to the heavens;
Kein Stern vom Sterngewimmel
     Not one of the whole host of stars
Hat mir gelach
     smiled on me
Um Mitternacht.
     at midnight.

 Um Mitternacht
     At midnight
Hab' ich gedachtI
     sent my thoughts 
Hinaus in dunkle Schranken;
     out beyond the boundaries of dark space;
Es hat kein Lichtgedanken
     No vision of light
Mir Trost gebracht
     brought me solace
Um Mitternacht.
     At midnight.

Um Mitternacht
    At midnight
Nahm ich in Ach
     I was rapt to the
Die Schläge meines Herzens;
     beatings of my heart;
Ein einz'ger Puls des Schmerzes
     a single pulse of pain
War angefacht 
     welled up
Um Mitternacht.
     at midnight.

 Um Mitternacht
     At midnight
Kämpft' ich die Schlacht
     I fought the battle,
O Menschheit, deiner Leiden; 
     O humankind, of your sufferings;
Nicht konnt' ich sie entscheiden
     I could not gain the victory
Mit meiner Macht
     by my own strength
Um Mitternacht.
     at midnight.

 Um Mitternacht
     At midnight
Hab' ich die Macht
     I commended my strength
In deine Hand gegeben!
     into Your hands!
Herr über Tod und Leben
     Lord over death and life,
Du hältst die Wacht
     You keep watch
Um Mitternacht.
     at midnight.

Richard Strauss: Don Juan, Op. 20 Premiered November 11, 1889 in Weimar, the composer conducting.

Program music has a rich history, from Vivaldi's Four Seasons to Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. In the nineteenth century a heated debate arose over the merits of "program" music (which evokes specific images or events) vs. "absolute" music. Between 1848 and 1858 Franz Liszt composed twelve "symphonic poems," a genre of his own creation. Each work's unique form is dictated by its programmatic idea. Liszt and his followers called this "The Music of the Future." 

Forty years later Richard Strauss was writing symphonic poems on Liszt's model, preferring to call them "tone poems." Don Juan was his first genuine masterpiece in the genre (which included Thus Spake Zarathustra, Death and Transfiguration, and Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.)

Strauss believed almost anything could be portrayed in music. He once said, "I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or Kulmbacher!" For this work, he claimed, "In Don Juan I have illustrated one of the seducer's victims with such accuracy that everyone must be able to see that she has red hair!"

Only twenty four when he composed Don Juan, Strauss had just embarked on his first passionate love affair, with a married woman four years his senior. (Concidentally, she was the wife of the cellist for whom the Dvoràk cello concerto on tonight's program was written!) In Don Juan, Strauss seems to be expressing in music something of his own newfound experiences. He included the following excerpt Lenau's poem in the first published edition of the score:

That magic circle, immeasurably wide, of beautiful femininity with their multiple attractions, I want to traverse in a storm of pleasure, and die of a kiss upon the lips of the last woman. My friend, I want to fly through all places where a beautiful woman blooms, kneel before each one of them and conquer, if only for a few moments...The breath of a woman, which is the fragrance of spring to me today, tomorrow may oppress me like the air of a dungeon.... Yes! Passion must be new each time; it cannot be transferred from one woman to the next; it can only die in one place and arise once more in another...Out, then, and away after ever-new victories as long as the fiery ardors of youth still soar!

The opening theme is Don Juan, in all his charm and machismo. The moment he spies a beautiful woman, the music subsides, into in a rich and sensual violin solo. The music stops abruptly when Don Juan sees his next conquest. At first resistant, she finally gives in, and a second love scene takes place (solo oboe). A new theme is introduced for Don Juan, four horns floating over the whole orchestra. After a short carnival scene, the dynamics drop from loud to very soft in the space of five measures. Reality suddenly hits Don Juan, and he begins to question his life of hedonism. Ghosts of former mistresses float into his consciousness. Wandering in a daze through a graveyard, he sees the statue of a nobleman he has killed, and invites him to dinner. The nobleman's son shows up, and challenges Don Juan to a duel. Don Juan soon sees that his easy victory is hollow, and he lets the man kill him. The music stops. A soft minor chord is followed by two quietly dissonant trumpet tones - the knife going into Don Juan. Shuddering trills in the strings represent Don Juan's life ebbing away.

Antonin Dvoràk: Concerto for Cello in B Minor, Op. 104

This is by far the most popular-and most often played-of all cello concertos in the repertoire. It may seem strange that we have no cello concertos from Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, or Liszt (and only one by Schumann), until one considers the problem of making a solo cello, with its deep tenor register, be heard above a full symphony orchestra. Contemporary composers-Ligeti, Shostakovitch, Penderecki, and Barber, among others-have thrived on the genre's challenges and possibilities. Listen for Dvoràk's own solutions to this problem: stating the first big cello theme over quiet accompaniment, using triple stops in the cello to help it carry over the orchestra, and putting the cello in its highest register to cut through the orchestra, especially in virtuosic passages. You may also notice that at the moments the full orchestra is loudest, the cello is silent. (Why compete?)

In 1892 the Czech composer moved to New York to direct the National Conservatory (at a salary twenty-five times higher than his salary at the Prague Conservatory!). In America he experienced deep homesickness. He decided to spend his summers in Spillville, Iowa, where there was a large Czech community, but this only intensified his homesickness. The first works he wrote in America, such as the "New World" Symphony, reflect American folk traditions. The B minor concerto was the last work Dvoràk composed in America, and it reveals his longing for his native Bohemia. It also contains a personal expression of love, hidden deep within it.

While in his twenties, Dvoràk fell in love with one of his students, 16-year old Josefina Cermák. He composed songs for her, hoping to win her love, but she did not return his affections, and it was her sister that he eventually married. Thirty years later, while Dvoràk was in America composing the slow movement of this concerto, he got word that Josefina, his first love, was gravely ill. The slow movement is based on material drawn from one of the early songs he had composed for her. Upon returning home from America, he learned that Josefina had died. He decided to rewrite the ending of the Finale, to include a poignant return to Josefina's song at the every end of the work. After the last utterance of the cello, the orchestra swells to a final emphatic ending.

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