Pre-Concerts Discussions - February 10, 2012
A Joyous Overture
by Roberto Sierra
Born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, October 9, 1953
About The Composer … Sierra’s musical education led him from his native Puerto Rico to the Royal College of Music in London and eventually to working with György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany. In 1987, he achieved national recognition with the premiere of his Jublio by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He was shortly engaged as the composer-in-residence in Milwaukee and later held the same post with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 2010 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is currently professor of composition at Cornell University.
Sierra‘s style synthesizes the complexity of modern European technique with the traditional elements of Puerto Rican and other Latin music. Sierra offers a marvelous term for this combination, calling it “tropicalization.
About This Piece… A Joyous Overture was commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 1991. It is a brilliant, colorful work, and according to Sierra, follows the shape of another famous overture, Russlan and Ludmilla by Glinka. The concert at which this overture was first performed also featured Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Sierra very cleverly uses elements from that work, and directly quotes the first four notes of the famous melody in the Beethoven choral finale.
Concerto No. 3 for Guitar “Elegiaco”
by Leo Brouwer
Born in Havana, Cuba, March 1, 1939
About The Composer … Leo Brouwer is among the most significant living Cuban composers and an influential guitarist and teacher. He began his guitar studies at the age of 13 and two years later made his public debut. Brower studied with some of the greatest Cuban guitar teachers of the time, which influenced his early style as both a performer and composer in the Afro-Cuban tradition. In the late 1950s he attended school (Juilliard) in the U.S.
Bouwer’s early, traditional style evolved later in his career. In the 1960s and 1970s, Bouwer explored more experimental techniques including some atonal and 12-tone works. In the 1980s, he began to work in a third style he calls “new simplicity.” It is a fascinating combination and culmination of Afro-Cuban and modern music styles.
Bouwer is also a composer of film music (60 films) and a major figure in modern music in Cuba.
About This Piece… Bouwer’s Concerto for Guitar No. 3 was composed in 1986 and was dedicated to the legendary guitarist Julian Bream, who also performed the premiere and later recorded the piece with the composer conducting. The concerto opens with the solo guitar and presents a lovely, contemplative statement, later varied and repeated in the first section (or movement). The strings follow and offer a new theme, which is then combined with the initial guitar statement. A brief second movement offers a beautiful solo by the guitar supported by low strings. The final section is rich in rhythmic complexity and wonderfully dramatic.
Two Tone Poems: Cascade and Bow
by Diego Vega
About The Composer … Diego Vega is one of the most active and well known South American composers. Born in Columbia, Vega has a significant catalogue of classical compositions, in addition to composing music for television. His works have been performed by leading ensembles in South America, Europe and the United States. His Symphony in One Movement, two clarinet concertos and the Symphonic Poems (Cascade and Bow) have all been premiered by the Symphony Orchestra of Columbia, and his other large works have been premiered by significant American ensembles.
About This Piece… Diego composed Cascade and Bow in 2009 during a residency at the Banff Music Centre in Canada. Of these two tone poems, Diego wrote: “Cascade and Bow are the names of a mountain and a river, respectively. Both are part of the imposing geography of the Rocky Mountains which characterize this region of North America. Cascade is a long and steady ascent, inspired also by the aural illusion of the Shepherd Tones. During this ascent there are moments of rest and contemplation. At the end of Cascade, when the ascent has reached its peak, gravity engages and a fast and vertiginous fall occurs, as if at the end there was an even deeper abyss than the point of departure. Bow, the second symphonic poem, begins without interruption from the deepest point of the previous fall. Bow travels the valley from the river. The music does not describe anymore an ascent, but a trip in between the Rocky Mountains in a fast and sometimes mighty river.”
The Three Cornered Hat (Suite No. 2)
by Manuel de Falla
Born in Cádiz, Spain, November 23, 1876; died in Alta Gracia, Argentina, November 14, 1946
About The Composer … Manuel de Falla struggled early in his career to find a commercially successful style. Attempts at Zarzuela, a type of Spanish folk opera, proved unsuccessful and although his opera La Vida Breve won a major competition, it was never fully performed. Disappointed with his career in Spain, de Falla went to Paris, where he eventually met everyone who mattered: Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Diaghilev, Albéniz and Dukas. La Vida Breve was performed at the Paris Opéra-Comique to strong reviews. World War I drove de Falla back to Spain, this time further influenced by the new French style. De Falla’s creative efforts to combine a type of French Impressionism with Spanish folk music was positively received both at home and abroad.
About This Piece… In 1916, de Falla composed a score for a stage pantomime based on Pedro de Alarcón’s novel “The Three-Corned Hat” (El sombrero de tres picos). This was seen by Stravinsky and the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned de Falla to turn the small work into a full ballet for a large orchestra. The sets and costumes were designed by Picasso and the choreography was created by the famous Leonide Massine. The full ballet, a box office success, premiered in London in 1919.
The ballet story is of a miller, his wife and a local magistrate, whose three-cornered hat represents his haughty, overbearing behavior. Set in the countryside, the magistrate attempts to seduce the wife of the miller. His failed attempts result in an amusing case of mistaken identity, which is resolved with the miller’s neighbors tossing the magistrate into the air with a blanket.
This suite uses music from the second act of the ballet. The evocative Neighbor’s Dance employs a slice of an actual folk song de Falla heard while traveling with Massine in Andalusia. The Miller’s Dance is a marvelous flamenco performed by the miller one evening for his neighbors. The lively Final Dance depicts the confusion created by mistaken identity and, atthe very end, the blanket tossing of the magistrate.