Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony

Friday, February 25, 2011, 7:30 pm

Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony

2010-11 Friday Masters

  • William Eddins, conductor & piano
    Lucas Waldin, conductor
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This evening of orchestral masterworks brings together titans from the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Henry Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary II is one of the most influential scores of its kind, and inspired generations of composers with its bold innovations. Originally dedicated to Napoleon, Beethoven’s great Third Symphony is one of the towering masterpieces of music, breathtaking even today for its breadth and power. Bill Eddins plays the notoriously challenging featured piano part in Leonard Bernstein’s fiery and dramatic Second Symphony “Age of Anxiety”.

Stay after the concert for Afterthoughts, our popular and casual post-concert reception where you can meet the conductors and soloists and gain insight into the performance.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”
Purcell: Funeral Music for Queen Mary II
Bernstein: Symphony No. 2 “Age of Anxiety”

click for detailed seating mapTicket Information

$71 Dress Circle (A)
$61 Terrace (B)
$52 Orchestra (C)
$38 Upper Circle (D)
$28 Gallery (E)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
Tickets subject to applicable service charges.

This program will also be performed on Saturday, February 26, 2011.

The next Friday Masters performance is Duruflé's Requiem on March 25, 2011.

Thank you to our series sponsor: lexus of edmonton

Thank you to our series media sponsor: ckua

enbridgeOur Resident Conductor Lucas Waldin appears in part thanks to the support of Enbridge.
 

Program Information

Stucky: Funeral Music for Queen Mary (after Henry Purcell) (9')*

Bernstein: Symphony No. 2 – The Age of Anxiety(32')*
William Eddins, piano

Intermission

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op 55 “Eroica” (48')*

*Indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

Funeral Music for Queen Mary (after Henry Purcell)
Steven Stucky (b. Hutchinson, Kansas, 1949)
 
First performed: February 6, 1992 in Los Angeles
This is the ESO premiere of the piece
 
The first of two Pulitzer prize-winners on tonight’s program, American composer Seven Stucky has held, among other appointments, the position of Composer in Residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he succeeded John Harbison. He won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Second Concerto for Orchestra. The revisioning of Henry Purcell’s music we will hear tonight was done during his tenure in Los Angeles. Of his Funeral Music for Queen Mary (after Henry Purcell), he has written this:
 
“It was at the suggestion of Esa-Pekka Salonen that I transcribed this music of Purcell for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. I used three of the pieces heard at the funeral of Mary II of England, who died of smallpox on 28 December 1694: a solemn march, the anthem "In the Midst of Life We Are in Death," and a canzona in imitative polyphonic style. In working on the project I did not try to achieve a pure, musicological reconstruction but, on the contrary, to regard Purcell's music, which I love deeply, through the lens of three hundred intervening years. Thus, although most of this version is straightforward orchestration of the Purcell originals, there are moments when Purcell drifts out of focus.”
 
 
Symphony No. 2 – The Age of Anxiety
Leonard Bernstein (b. Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1918 / d. New York, 1990)
 
First performed: April 8, 1949 in Boston
This is the ESO premiere of the piece
 
The Age of Anxiety was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poem by W.H. Auden, published in 1947. Its theme, of the disaffection of modern American society and the search to find meaning, was one which greatly moved the 31-year-old rising star Leonard Bernstein. “I regard Auden’s poem as one of the most shattering examples of pure virtuosity in the history of English poetry,” Bernstein wrote (with youthful hyperbole) in the score of his symphony. “The essential line of the poem (and of the music) is the record of our difficult and problematical search for faith.”
 
So closely did Bernstein identify with the poem that the work he wrote inspired by it incorporates his own instrument – the piano – as a major component of the work, writing himself into the work as it were. He composed it all over the place: in Taos (New Mexico), Philadelphia, Richmond (Massachusetts), Tel-Aviv, and Boston. The orchestration was done while he was on a month-long guest conducting tour with the Pittsburgh Symphony.
 
The narrative of the poem, which is illustrated in the music, tells a tale of three men and one woman in a Third Avenue bar, trying to mask their inner conflicts through drink. After some discourse, they proceed to the woman’s apartment for a nightcap. They determine to have a party, which ends anticlimactically, and in the end, all that is left for each of them, for us, is faith in “something pure.”
 
The symphony itself is in two main sections, each section comprising three parts. The Prologue introduces the four characters and their setting. The first seven variations review the life of man from the viewpoint of the four characters in the poem. The second set of variations depicts the characters embarking on an inner journey, seeking to discover inner security.
 
Part Two begins with The Dirge, the symphony’s slow movement. On the cab ride to the woman’s apartment, the four mourn the loss of a figurehead with all “the answers.” Musically, a twelve-tone row is employed, out of which the main theme emerges, contrasted by a richly romantic counter-subject. The next movement, the symphony’s scherzo, is called The Masque. Using only percussion and the solo piano, the music is a raw jazz – the end of the party is symbolized by the harsh entrance of four bars from the orchestra. The Epilogue was originally scored without piano; Bernstein revised the work later, adding a piano part for soloists who did not want to spend the last four minutes of the work doing nothing. The music searches for its answer, finally reaching a consonant sound with the acceptance of faith – the piano (Bernstein) finally accepting that outcome at the end.
 
 
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op.55 “Eroica”
Ludwig van Beethoven (b. Bonn, 1770 / d. Vienna, 1827)
 
First performed: April 7, 1805 in Vienna
Last ESO performance: October 2004
 
The “Eroica” Symphony and Napoleon; history has them inextricably linked and, more importantly, subsequently severed. It is for the best that Beethoven would savagely remove his former idol’s name from the dedication of his E-flat Major Symphony – as simply “The Heroic,” it makes this towering and unprecedented work suit its epithet in its design and execution as well as its artistic association.
 
Music scholar Irving Kolodin posits that “Beethoven did not write the ‘Eroica’ because of Napoleon, but rather he found such a tribute compatible with the kind of music he had written.” Keep in mind, he further admonishes, that when Napoleon curried Beethoven’s wrath by declaring himself Emperor, the composer destroyed only the dedication, not the symphony. At twice the length of typical symphonies before it, Beethoven’s Third stands even today as a titanic work – how much more must its impact have been in the composer’s lifetime. It consumed much of Beethoven’s attention for most of 1803, and the beginning of 1804. At its 1805 premiere, a critic calling himself a Beethoven “admirer” wrote that he was, “obliged to confess that (I) find this work garish and bizarre.” In Prague, the city which had embraced Mozart’s class-bashing The Marriage of Figaro only 18 years before, the symphony was regarded as a danger to public morals, and would not be heard there for 40 years.
 
The symphony opens with two solidly played E-flat chords, following which the principal first theme is briefly presented in the lower strings. A dialog between violins and woodwinds creates dramatic intensity, alleviated by a gentler, more lyrical second subject. The second movement is the famous funeral march, emerging from the lower voices in the orchestra. It is a sombre as any cortège at first, but a nobler, more ceremonial feel grows out from it. The central section, in fact, is considerably more uplifting and bright, though the mood darkens once again as the music from the opening returns.
 
The symphony’s third movement is true to the literal meaning of the word “Scherzo” (though Beethoven does not actually term the movement in that way). It is playful, full of humour – everywhere a strident contrast to the preceding movement. The finale is a towering example of form unto itself. A free variation form, with many transitions and fugal elements, it is driven on by a dance-like melody. Its influence was profound; when Brahms’ friend and biographer suggested to Brahms his use of variations in the final movement of his Fourth Symphony was not satisfactory, Brahms icily pointed out that it was certainly good enough for Beethoven, so it was absolutely permissible for him. The “Eroica’s” finale is certainly an aptly heroic conclusion, a hymn to heroism – if not to a specific hero at all.
 
Program Notes © 2010 D.T. Baker; program note by Steven Stucky used with permission

Artist Information

William Eddins, conductor & piano

william eddins

William Eddins is in his sixth season as Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure, he has made it a priority that he conduct performances in nearly every subscription series the orchestra has presented, as well as a wide variety of special concerts and galas.

Bill Eddins began playing the piano at age five, but was bitten by the conducting bug while in his sophomore year at the Eastman School of Music. In 1989, he decided to begin conducting studies with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California. Assistant Conductorships with both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony (the latter under the leadership of Daniel Barenboim) honed his skills even further.

Mr. Eddins has many interests outside music. He is fond of biking, tennis, reading, pinball, and cooking. He recently completed building his own recording studio at his home in Minneapolis, where he lives with his wife Jen (a clarinetist), and their sons Raef and Riley. While conducting has been his principal pursuit, he continues to perform on piano in Edmonton and elsewhere. He accepts a limited number of guest appearances each year. In 2008, he conducted a rare full staging of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for Opéra de Lyon, which won him great acclaim, leading to a repeat engagement in Lyon in July and September 2010, as well as Edinburgh in August 2010, and in London in September 2010. During August 2009, Bill toured South Africa, conducting three gala concerts with soprano Renée Fleming and the kwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lucas Waldin, conductor

Lucas Waldin

The 2010/11 season marks the second for Lucas Waldin as Resident Conductor for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. This mentorship position is made possible through the Canada Council for the Arts and Enbridge. Mr. Waldin graduated in 2006 from the Cleveland Institute of Music with a Masters in Conducting. He has performed with L'Orchestre du Festival Beaulieu-Sur-Mer (Monaco), Staatstheater Cottbus (Brandenburg), and Bachakademie Stuttgart. Lucas was assistant conductor of the contemporary orchestra RED (Cleveland), director of the Cleveland Bach Consort, and a Discovery Series Conductor at the Oregon Bach Festival. In 2007, he was invited to conduct the Miami-based New World Symphony Orchestra in masterclasses given by Michael Tilson Thomas. In Lucerne in 2009, he also participated in a masterclass led by Bernard Haitink, with the Lucerne Festival Strings.

A native of Toronto, Lucas Waldin has spent summers studying in Europe, including studies at the International Music Academy in Leipzig, the Bayreuth Youth Orchestra, and the Acanthes New Music Festival in France. On this continent, he has studied under the renowned Bach conductor Helmut Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival, and has attended conducting masterclasses with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto. Mr. Waldin received a Bachelor of Music degree in flute performance from the Cleveland Institute, studying with Joshua Smith.

The ESO would like to thank Enbridge Pipelines for their commitment to the arts and this program by matching the funding provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.

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