Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

PAVILION 8:00 PM FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2021 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, conductor MIDORI, violin JESSIE MONTGOMERY Banner for string quartet and chamber orchestra ** PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 1 Andantino Scherzo: Vivacissimo Moderato Midori MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”) Allegro vivace Andante con moto Con moto moderato Saltarello: Presto There will be no intermission in this program. † Ravinia debut ** First performance by the CSO and at Ravinia Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of The Midori Consortium , which comprises Sarah and Larry Barden; Henry Berghoef and Leslie Lauer Berghoef; Judy and Merrill Blau; Helen S. Rubinstein, in memory of Michael J. Rubinstein; and Chuck and Mary Westphal. JESSIE MONTGOMERY (b. 1981) Banner Scored for two flutes and piccolo, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, timpani, low tom, kick drum, snare drum, strings, and solo string quartet Growing up on the Lower East Side of Man- hattan, Jessie Montgomery absorbed the ex- perimentation, community engagement, di- versity, and activism of artists residing in the surrounding neighborhood. She began taking violin lessons at age 4 through theThird Street Music School Settlement, the longest continu- ously running community music school in the country, and now serves on its board of direc- tors. Montgomery went on to study violin at The Juilliard School and composition at New York University and Princeton University. As a violinist, Montgomery has been a mem- ber of the Providence String Quartet, PUBLI- Quartet, and Catalyst Quartet, and has per- formed with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi. She has sustained a relation- ship with the Sphinx Organization since 1999 as a two-time laureate of the Sphinx Compe- tition, composer-in-residence with the Sphinx Virtuosi, and recipient of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and a career grant. Her innovative work as a composer has garnered increasing attention in recent years. Mont- gomery has received the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and grants from Chamber Music America, Amer- ican Composers Orchestra, the Joyce Foun- dation, and the Sorel Organization. On July 1, Montgomery began her tenure as Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Joyce Foundation and the Sphinx Or- ganization commissioned Banner for the bicentennial of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The history of this poetic text has entered our national folklore. During the War of 1812, lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key boarded a British ship moored in Chesapeake Bay on September 13, 1814, to negotiate the release of a prisoner. The crew detained the two Amer- icans while the enemy fleet began its attack on Fort McHenry. Key anxiously watched the battle throughout the night and, in the morn- ing light, spotted the American flag, tattered and punctured by cannon fire, flying aloft above the fort. On the boat ride back to Bal- timore, Key jotted down his poem originally entitled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which appeared days later on a broadside cued to a tune known as “Anacreon in Heaven, or The Anacreontic Song.” John Stafford Smith is now credited with writing this sturdy, vocally demanding melody in 1779 or 1780 to accom- pany drinking parties of London’s Anacreon- tic Society. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was formally adopted as the national anthem of the United States on March 3, 1931. The Sphinx Virtuosi gave the world premiere of Banner on September 30, 2014, at the New World Center in Miami, FL. Today, and in its own time, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has stirred a complex mixture of emotions that Montgomery confronts in her music. “[It] is an ideal subject for exploration of contra- dictions,” she observes in the preface to the score. “For most Americans the song rep- resents a paradigm of liberty and solidarity against fierce odds, and for others it implies a contradiction between the ideals of freedom and the realities of injustice and oppression.” The instrumentation for string quartet and orchestra not only reflects Montgomery’s own background as a musician but also offers Jessie Montgomery a metaphor for dynamics within our society: “The quartet is the ‘individual’ working with, but also challenging, the larger forces.” Banner opens with a Mendelssohnian string-ensemble sonority soon joined by the solo string quartet performing rhythmically distorted, tonally nebulous phrases from “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As the music quiets and slows, faint evocation of “the dawn’s early light” emerge. Brisk Latin rhythms introduce further musical evolutions of the theme, inter- rupted by the isolated phrase “o’er the land of the free.” The pulsating rhythms resume brief- ly before the musicians begin making bent, non-pitched sounds on their instruments. String quartet members declaim the “Pledge of Allegiance” while playing muted unison lines “slightly out of synch with others, as if reciting, but come together at cadences,” ac- cording to the score. Following a double bass solo, the string players stomp their feet or drum the bodies of their instruments, thereby transforming into a “marching band.” Mont- gomery credits the excitement of a marching band competition she attended in Bristol, RI, with inspiring the overall form of Banner : like the standard march, the score is divided into several distinct strains or sections. An extended finale begins with rhythmically animated string chords, building to a cacoph- onous layering of borrowed tunes: the Mex- ican National Anthem (“Mexicanos, al grito de guerra”), “Cumberland Gap” (an Appala- chian folk song popularized in the 1940s and 1950s by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Earl Scruggs), “This Land Is Your Land” (an anti- war song with lyrics by Woody Guthrie to a Carter Family gospel tune), the Puerto Rican National Anthem “La Borinqueña” (“La tierra de Borinquén”), Carlos Puebla’s “Lo Eterno” (a 1968 Cuban song dedicated to Ernesto “Che” Guevara), and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As Montgomery stated in a recent interview: “If we are going to resurrect the concept of liberty again, then this is an opportunity to include voices that have been excluded.” SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, op. 19 Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, tuba, timpani, tambourine, snare drum, harp, strings, and solo violin A general revolutionary uprising swept through the streets of Petrograd (Saint Pe- tersburg) in February 1917. Unable to quell the rebellion, Tsar Nikolai II abdicated the throne. The Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin eventually succeeded in overthrowing the provisional government, gaining control of the Winter Palace and declaring a socialist state on October 25. Prokofiev deliberately isolated himself from these troubles after the RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 1 – JULY 23, 2021 52