Ravinia 2019, Issue 6, Week 12

8:00 PM MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 2019 PAVILION LUCERNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JAMES GAFFIGAN, conductor ANNE AKIKO MEYERS, violin ALL- AMERICAN PROGRAM BARBER The School for Scandal Overture IVES Symphony No. 3 ( The Camp Meeting ) * Old Folks Gatherin’: Andante maestoso Children’s Day: Allegro Communion: Largo –Intermission– BARBER Violin Concerto Allegro Andante Presto in modo perpetuo Anne Akiko Meyers BERNSTEIN Symphonic Dances fromWest Side Story Prologue—“Somewhere”—Scherzo—Mambo— Cha-Cha—Meeting Scene—“Cool” Fugue—Rumble * First performance at Ravinia SAMUEL BARBER (1910–81) The School for Scandal Overture, op. 5 Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, bells, celesta, harp, and strings Fellow composition students at the Curtis In- stitute, Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti spent the summer of 1931 in Cadegliano, Menotti’s hometown in northern Italy. The main purpose for this visit was accessibility to their composition teacher from Curtis, Rosario Scalero, who lived 200 miles away in Montestrutto. It soon became apparent in Barber’s letters home that creative la- bor had slipped far down on the list of priorities. He confessed unashamedly on July 3 that “We surely have been lazy—nothing but swimming and tennis all day long. … I am getting so fond of it that I don’t want to work at all.” His parents naturally were displeased with this indolence. Barber quieted their concerns by returning home with the completed score of the School for Scandal Overture. Despite constant distrac- tions in Italy, he managed to produce his first orchestral composition under Scalero’s biweekly guidance, and Barber was awarded the Joseph H. Bearns Prize for the work in April 1933. The world premiere was given by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Alexander Smallens at the Robin Hood Dell on August 30, 1933. The literary inspiration for this overture came from a comedy by the Irish-English dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816). Written in 1777, The School for Scandal possessed all the elements for comic success—gossip, disguises, hidden lovers, duplicitous characters, and the obligatory happy ending when all confusions re- solve. Barber never intended his overture as an actual introduction to the play. Sheridan’s com- edy offered personalities that the composer par- alleled in his music. He considered the overture “a musical reflection of the play’s spirit .” A youthful exuberance complements Barber’s sure-handed technique and instinctive melodic style. Excitement begins with the fanfare open- ing. Barber almost immediately thins out the orchestra for a violin dance theme in D minor, supported only by clarinet and the violas. This lilting material continues through numerous and sometimes drastic changes in dynamics. A small portion of the fanfare introduces an exquisite folk-like oboe melody. Development emphasizes the dance theme. Harp glissandos and undulating string figures build to a return of previously heard themes. Fanfare music, scored for full orchestra, provides a brilliant ending. CHARLES IVES (1874–1954) Symphony No. 3 ( The Camp Meeting ) Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, trombone, timpani, bells, and strings Having spent his entire early life in Connecti- cut—the son of a Civil War bandmaster and a precocious musical experimenter in his youth in Danbury—Charles Ives moved away from familiar surroundings for the first time to New York City, joining Mutual Life Insurance Co. as an actuary at a meager hourly wage. Ives also ac- cepted an organist/choirmaster position at Old First Presbyterian Church in Bloomfield, NJ, from May 1, 1898, until May 1, 1900. The Dan- bury Evening News reported on April 10, 1900, that Ives, a hometown favorite, had been ap- pointed organist at Central Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. The next two years were some of the most ex- perimental of Ives’s musical career, as he im- provised and composed countless hymn-based works for choir and organ. As later recorded in his Memos : “I seemed to have worked with more natural freedom when I knew that the music was not going to be played before the public, or rather before people who couldn’t get out from under, as is the case in a church congregation” These avant-garde creations would provide Samuel Barber RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 19 – AUGUST 25, 2019 90