Late Night Romantics

Friday, January 13, 2012, 9:30 pm

Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Late Night Romantics

2011-12 Late Night with Bill Eddins

  • William Eddins, conductor
    Kemal Gekić, piano
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Details

About this Concert
Late Night opens on a provocative note, in welcoming one of today's most formidable pianists to centre stage. Croatian-American pianist Kemal Gekić is celebrated for his daring approach to the music of Franz Liszt. Bill Eddins and the orchestra explore music by three other composers whose music can only be described as "ultra-Romantic": Hector Berlioz, Richard Strauss, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Including Excerpts from:
R STRAUSS: Don Juan
LISZT: Fantasia on The Ruins of Athens
RACHMANINOFF: Adagio from Second Symphony
ROSSINI: William Tell Overture (Arr. Liszt)		 Additional Activities
Stick around the main lobby following the concert and enjoy a drink and live entertainment!

Next Late Night Concert
March 2, 2012
Late Night Hollywood

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Series Presenting Sponsor
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Ticket Information

$40 Dress Circle (A)
$30 Terrace (B)
$25 Orchestra (C)
$20 Upper Circle (D)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
Tickets subject to applicable service charges.

Program Info

Program

BERLIOZ
Les Troyens (“The Trojans”): Marche Troyenne (“Trojan March”)  (5’)*
 
BERLIOZ
Symphonie fantastique, Op.14: 5th mvmt. - Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat (“Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath”) (arr. Liszt) (10’)*
 
LISZT
Fantasia on Beethoven’s The Ruins of Athens (11’)*
 
RACHMANINOFF
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op.27: 3rd mvmt – Adagio (13’)*
 
R. STRAUSS
Don Juan, Op.20 (17’)*
 
Program subject to change
*indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

The early Romantics Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) and Franz Liszt (1811-1886) were very conscious of their revolutionary tendencies. While some composers implemented changes in the course of music history without necessarily knowing that they were doing so, Liszt and Berlioz were determined to change how music was composed and presented.
 
In an age where an orchestra of 50 was considered reasonably large, Berlioz dreamed of composing works for an orchestra numbering in the hundreds, with a choir to match. Liszt, one of the most sensational pianists who ever lived, was one of the first to understand and market himself much as a touring pop star would today.
 
Berlioz’ opera Les Troyens (“The Trojans”) was a mammoth, two-part, five-act saga composed between 1856 and 1858, so ambitious and far-reaching that it was never actually produced in anything close to its entirety until the 1960s. The Marche Troyenne is the music which thrillingly accompanies the entry of the Trojan Horse into the city, and has a profound dramatic part in performances of the opera when it suddenly stops. In the action of the opera, a noise is heard within the horse (one of the Greek soldiers has dropped his weapon), and everything is brought to a halt as the Trojans wonder if something is amiss. But then, the march resumes again, even more brilliantly, as the Trojans’ fate is sealed and the horse is brought within the walls of Troy.
 
Franz Liszt’s solo piano recitals elicited the kind of response from audiences of which the modern incarnation would have the word “mania” appended to the end. Credited with creating the modern concept of a solo piano recital, Franz Liszt was a showman without peer. He not only composed original works of elaborate and penetrating virtuosity, but he also took other composers’ works and wrote fiendishly difficult piano transcriptions of them. Such was the case with Berlioz’ celebrated and revolutionary orchestral work, Symphonie fantastique. Subtitled “Episodes in the Life of an Artist,” the Berlioz work imagines the story of an artist obsessed by a woman, to the point where he consumes opium and hallucinates that he has killed her, and is hanged at a witches’ Sabbath. The fifth and final movement of that symphony is, in fact, titled “Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath,” and incorporates the Dies irae (“Day of Wrath”) from the medieval Catholic mass for the dead. Perfect, macabre fare for Liszt to turn into a memorable piano recital experience.
 
Another work to receive Liszt’s dazzling gifts for transcription was Beethoven’s ballet The Ruins of Athens. Before setting the work in the way we will hear it tonight, Liszt had already created a Capriccio alla turca, based on the famous and popular Turkish March from the ballet. And when he decided to expand the idea to a full-fledged fantasia, Liszt did so in three versions published simultaneously: one for solo piano, one for piano duet, and one for piano and orchestra. All were dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein. Liszt presented the work at a charity concert at which over two thousand people were present.
 
Liszt gives the orchestra first say in the latter version – in fact, for the entire introduction. When the piano enters, however, it does so spectacularly, and with music from the Dervishes’ Chorus from Beethoven’s ballet featured. The final section is built around the Turkish March, which begins quietly, but becomes increasingly quicker and more ornate. For the grand finish, Liszt brings back other themes from the fantasia, along with the march.
 
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) wrote his First Symphony at the age of 22. Its first performance, apathetically conducted by Alexander Glazunov, failed miserably. Combined with a number of other disappointing premieres and performances, that flop sent the emotionally hyper-charged composer into a tailspin. He continued to perform (he was a conductor as well as one of the most sensational pianists who ever lived), but could not bring himself to write a note of music for three years. A noted physician who specialized in a kind of hypnotherapy (Nikolai Dahl) helped Rachmaninoff find his creative confidence again, and the next few works he wrote included some of his finest – including the Second Piano Concerto, and the Second Symphony. Tonight’s concert features the beautiful, slow third movement of the Second Symphony, which contains trademark Rachmaninoff melody and melancholy. Violins are given a passage answered by the clarinet, a third is then given out by violins and oboe. If you recognize one of the main tunes, it may because Eric Carmen “borrowed” it for his hit pop song, Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.
 
Don Juan, Op.20
Richard Strauss
(b. Munich, 1864 / d. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1949)
 
First performance: November 11, 1889 in Weimar
Last ESO performance: February 2000
 
From 1889 until around 1911, Richard Strauss was likely the most visible and most discussed composer in the western world. And one of the first major works which launched the discussion was his first symphonic poem (well, actually his second, but the first to be published), Don Juan. Its premiere was conducted by Hans von Bülow, who had taken on the young Strauss rather like a protégé.
 
The story of Don Juan was created in 1630 with the play by Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina. The character has been adapted in both literary and musical forms many times since, perhaps none so famously as Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. The main source of inspiration for Strauss’ take on the legend was the poem by Austrian poet-philosopher Nikolaus Lenau, published in the early 19th century. While we have come to see Don Juan as an unrepentant rake, Lenau described his vision by saying, “My Don Juan is no hot-blooded man eternally pursuing women. It is the longing in him to find a woman who is to him incarnate womanhood, and to enjoy in the one all the women on earth whom he cannot possess as individuals. Because he does not find her, although he reels from one to another, at last disgust seizes him, and this disgust is the Devil that fetches him.”
 
The work begins with a musical depiction of Don Juan’s youthful brio and virility – a searching idea which alternates with various romantic liaisons (one on solo violin, another on solo oboe). These are followed by a heroic theme, heard on the four horns. The searching theme is next, followed by what must politely be described as an orgy, rising to a tumultuous din, subsiding then to reviews of previous romantic exploits. Another, even more dramatic climax marks the start of the coda – followed by a shattering silence: the bitterness of his futile search overwhelms him. A dissonant chord, with the strings and woodwinds in A minor combined with F Major trumpets suggest Don Juan’s shudder of disgust. One commentator described the work’s conclusion as, “laconic, tight-lipped; there is no wild complaint, only abandonment of life.”
 
Program Notes © 2011 by D.T. Baker

Artist Info

William Eddins, conductor

william eddins

William Eddins is in his seventh 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.

Kemal Gekić, piano

kemal gekicFlamboyant, daring, provocative, exciting, seductive, and sensitive are some of the words used to describe one of today’s most formidable pianists, Kemal Gekić, whose playing has been acclaimed worldwide by public and critics alike. His daring approach to tone and form marked him as a maverick in the musical world, a distinction he welcomes: the very strength of his artistry challenges, provokes, intrigues. Performing worldwide from a vast repertoire, Kemal Gekić presents fascinating, uncompromising, and ever-changing interpretations As a recording artist, Mr. Gekić has won accolades in Europe, America, and Japan for insightful and original views of the music. His outstanding Rossini-Liszt transcriptions (Naxos) was given a “Rosette” of The Penguin Guide to Music, while his recording of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes (JVC) is generally considered to be the best recording of the set in history.
 
Born in Split, Croatia, Kemal Gekić got his early training from Lorenza Baturina. He graduated the class of Jokuthon Mihailovic at the Art Academy of Novi Sad and was immediately given a faculty appointment by the piano department which he eventually directed until 1999. Since 1999 he has been Artist in Residence at the Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He is a visiting professor  at the Musashino Academy of Music in Tokyo and a guest lecturer at numerous universities and academies throughout the world. He has served as a juror on numerous piano competitions. Programs on his life and his performances were broadcast by RAI Italy, TV Portugal, TV Yugoslavia, NHK Japan, POLTEL Poland, RTV Lower Saxony West Germany, RTV USSR, Intervision, CBC and PBS.
 
Mr. Gekić last appeared with the ESO at Sobeys Symphony Under the Sky in 2008.

Multimedia

Kemal Gekić performing La Danza Tarantella Napoletana:

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