Peer Gynt: Suite No. 1, Opus 46 (16’)*

1. Morning Mood

2. The Death of Aase

3. Anitra’s Dance

4. In the Hall of the Mountain King

 

Accordion Concerto (19’)*

I. Festa

II. Cantilena

III. Danza

Joseph Macerollo, accordion 

 

INTERMISSION

 

Symphony No. 3 in D major, Opus 29 “Polish” (45’)*

I. Introduzione e allegro: Moderato assai (Tempo di Marcia funebre)

II. Alla tedesca: Allegro moderato e semplice

III. Andante elegiaco

IV. Scherzo: Allegro vivo

Edvard Grieg (b. Bergen, 1843 / d. Bergen, 1907)

 

First performance of the play with Grieg’s incidental music: February 24, 1876 in Oslo

Last ESO performance of Suite No. 1: May 2002

 

When Norway’s two greatest artistic figures first met, Edvard Grieg was only 22, while Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was already an established playwright. Ten years later, when Ibsen approached Grieg to ask the composer to write incidental music for his new play Peer Gynt, both were now mutually acclaimed. Still, Grieg was nervous about the commission at first. “He went about in a nervous, restless state, in great doubt and anxiety as to the heavy task,” Grieg’s wife remembered. But his tension eased as the process went along, and in the end, Grieg composed 22 moments of music for the play – which was a smash at its opening, with both the drama and the music receiving high praise.

 

Grieg himself regarded some of the music he wrote for Peer Gynt to be among his finest work, and he excerpted eight sections to fashion two different suites. The outer movements of Suite No. 1 are two of the most famous works by Grieg – the tender Morning Mood and the jaunty, ultimately rousing In the Hall of the Mountain King. The death of the title character’s mother Aase is the plaintive second movement, while the swirling, seductive dance of Anitra forms the third movement.

 

 

R. Murray Schafer (b. Sarnia, Ontario, 1933)

 

First performance: March 31, 1993 in Toronto

This is the ESO premiere of the piece

 

Program note by Joseph Macerollo:

R. Murray Schafer’s Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra, completed in late 1992, is dedicated to the artist Joseph Macerollo. It was commissioned by The Toronto Symphony with financial assistance from The Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council and given its world premiere by Macerollo and The Toronto Symphony under Gunther Herbig. Subsequent performances with the artist occurred in 1997 with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bramwell Tovey, and the Windsor Symphony under John Morris Russell in 2005.

 

Macerollo began his association with Schafer in 1970 and was responsible for the inclusion of the accordion in several works of The Patria Cycle, which Macerollo also produced. Among them are The Princess of the Stars, The Enchanted Forest, and The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix.

 

The concerto is in the traditional three-movement form, with cadenzas showcasing the instrument in each movement. Schafer spent considerable time with the artist discovering the myriad of colours and technical resources available to him. A kaleidoscope of passages soaring within the orchestra reminisce natural environmental evocative bird calls, while rhythmic fluctuations impact and punctuate the call of the wild. It is beautifully orchestrated, especially in the lyrical second movement, where many lesser showcased instruments like the cor anglais (English horn), bass clarinet, bass trombone and marimba share melodic evocations. (This concerto could be renamed Concerto for Neglected Instruments.)  All families of the orchestra are explored to interact with the accordion in imaginative ways.  The vibrant percussive third movement reminisces near the end with a leitmotif from Patria 3: The Greatest Show. This concerto stands out in the accordion repertoire as a magnificent artistic testament which showcases the accordion’s richness and potential.

 

 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (b. Kamsko-Votinsk, 1840 / d. St. Petersburg, 1893)

 

First performance: November 1875 in Moscow

Last ESO performance: April 1985

 

Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony is the only symphony by the composer to deviate from the standard four-movement form. It is also the only one in a major key. What it is not, in any way, is Polish. British conductor August Manns, upon noting the final movement’s marking as “Tempo di Polacca,” gave the work its inappropriate sobriquet. Particularly in light of the fact that dance rhythms of various kinds are key elements of each movement of the symphony, it’s detrimental to the work as a whole to draw attention to merely one. In fact, minus the first movement, this symphony was set intact by choreographer George Balanchine as “Diamonds,” the final gem in his ballet triptych Jewels.

 

Tchaikovsky sketched the symphony during the summer of 1875, while vacationing at the homes of various friends in Ukraine. It begins with a metrically measured first theme in horns and woodwinds, over a steady pulse. Then, as if this were only an overture, the character of the work brightens considerably as a rich and broad landscape is unveiled with a sense of pageant and triumph. Motives from the opening are transformed in this new section. It will surprise no one who hears the oboe solo about midway through to learn that Tchaikovsky was beginning work on Swan Lake at about this time. While this movement lacks the cohesion that Tchaikovsky would bring to his symphonic output, even the highly self-critical composer wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov that he thought this a step forward in his compositional technique. The ending is grand and drawn out – one of those that almost begs for applause, even with four more movements to follow.

 

If the measured procession and driving roll of the opening movement have rhythmic colours to it, each movement from here on is virtually its own dance. The G minor second movement is marked “Alla tedesca” (“in the style of a German dance”), the dance in this case being a waltz-like one. Tchaikovsky would write several magnificent waltzes, and we see in this movement that he is already partial to using duple-metere counter-subjects against the three-quarter lilt of the main dance. The dance begins quietly, bubbling up from the woodwinds and moving to the strings. The music ebbs throughout, but rarely rises above a mezzo-forte – and a solo bassoon (William Harrison) has the last word. The third movement begins as quietly as the preceding movement, but its lyrical song (again, begun in the woodwinds) has a little of a folksong flavour to it. The movement is in an A-B-A-B form, the contrasting B subject, a D minor Andante, is a warmly passionate one for strings. A delicate coda brings the movement to another hushed close.

 

The fourth movement is the work’s Scherzo, a swirling, darting confection. Near the beginning and end of the movement, a horn plays a folk-like melody of only a few bars, and the central subject has the nature of a hunting party trying to join in the merry goings-on. This brief movement sets the stage for the Tempo di Polacca finale, which begins grandly – and only gets more so over the course of the movement. After the restraint of the previous three movements, this finale is almost epic – there is even a fugue-like use of the main subject in the middle section. Tchaikovsky lets the music burst out as if from out of darkness into brilliant sunshine – the contrasting subject to the main Rondo theme has a hymn-like quality to it, yielding to the inevitable resounding finish.

 

 

Jean-François Rivest firmly believes that the next generation of musicians must rely on performers that are also active as teachers. He has worked for several institutions and has been teaching orchestral conducting as well as a variety of advanced performance classes at Université de Montréal since 1992. He is the founder, artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre de l'Université de Montréal (OUM). Mr. Rivest trained at the Conservatoire de Montréal and at the Juilliard School in New York, establishing himself as one of the foremost Québec violinists of his generation. His main teachers were Sonia Jelinkova, Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay. Being the father of four children, family is at the centre of Mr. Rivest’s life. He is passionate about nature and outdoor activities, such as scuba diving, kayaking, climbing, and photography.

 

 

As a performer, Joseph Macerollo has appeared with orchestras such as the Toronto Symphony, McGill Chamber Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony, Windsor Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, and Canadian Opera Company Orchestra. He has concertized extensively throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He has worked with Teresa Stratas, Luciano Pavarotti, The Three Tenors and Henry Mancini. He has commissioned over 200 works by Canadian composers. His textbook, The Accordion Resource Manual, stands as an achievement of methodology and scholarship, and is widely used by composers and researchers for insights into the instrument. In October 2011, he performs concerts and workshops in Rome, Italy and in December, he does likewise in Graz, Austria.

 

This is Mr. Macerollo’s debut with the ESO.

Finale of Tchaikovsky's Third Symphony: