Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

ERIC RUDD (MCGILL) “Looking back,” Goodman later reflected, “I suppose that it was at this moment that my [double] musical life started in earnest. Once I had become even slightly familiar with the other world of music, it was quite impossible for me to dismiss it.” The Budapest ensemble invited Goodman to make his official public recital debut on their November 5, 1938, pro- gram at New York’s Town Hall. The pursuit of a classical career deepened when Goodman took lessons with Russian-American clarinet- ist Simeon Bellison of the New York Philhar- monic Orchestra and, later, English clarinet- ist Reginald Kell. The “King of Swing” led a dual musical life through the remainder of his career, main- taining a narrowly focused classical repertory that included works by Bernstein, Brahms, Debussy, Milhaud, Nielsen, Poulenc, Stravin- sky, and Weber. Goodman also made lasting contributions to the clarinet repertoire by commissioning several important scores. The first new work, Béla Bartók’s trio for clarinet, violin, and piano called Contrasts , received its world premiere performance at Carnegie Hall in January 1939. Eight years later, Goodman extended concerto commissions to two major composers working in the United States: Paul Hindemith and Aaron Copland. The final work requested from a classical composer was Morton Gould’s Derivations for clarinet and band (1956). Copland described his Clarinet Concerto as a two-movement structure—a “languid song form” and “a free rondo”—played without pause and connected by a cadenza. He com- posed the first movement during his 1947 tour of Latin America but ran short on ideas for the fast second movement. Hollywood beckoned with a film score project, an adap- tation of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony , and Copland set aside the concerto until the fol- lowing summer at Tanglewood, where it was completed. His opening movement ( Slowly and expressively ) is a weightless lyrical essay in waltz time, which the composer believed “will make everyone weep.” The written-out Aaron Copland cadenza “gives the soloist considerable op- portunity to demonstrate his prowess” while previewing motives from the finale. The Rather fast movement incorporates elements of jazz (including slap-bass effects) with Bra- zilian-style melodies. JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–97) Variations on a Theme by Haydn, op. 56a Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, triangle, and strings Brahms’s final independent opus in theme-and-variations form proved a water- shed work. These Variations on a Theme by Haydn in B-flat major originally existed in a two-piano version that Brahms uncharacter- istically allowed to survive: he nearly always destroyed his preliminary efforts. The final piano score is dated “July 1873.” None of his close friends knew of the work’s existence un- til August 20, the day after a Robert Schumann Festival when he and Clara gave a private reading. Scholar Donald McCorkle speculated that Brahms reserved these variations as a birth- day gift for Clara, an annual ritual begun in 1854 when he composed the Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 9, for her. Brahms later dedicated another variations set—the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24—to Clara. Upon first hearing the Haydn Variations, Clara was overjoyed, though unsure of the theme’s origins: “In the morning, I tried out with Johannes the new variations for two pianos on the ?-theme, which are wholly wonderful.” A zealous Clara mentioned these variations to Brahms’s publisher Simrock somewhat pre- maturely it would seem. Brahms explained to Simrock on September 4: “I did not write about the variations for two reasons. Firstly, I thought of Rieter [the publisher], and sec- ondly, they are actually for orchestra.” The Johannes Brahms two-piano version merely provided a work- shop for his imagined symphonic textures and sonorities. There is no doubt Brahms considered the orchestral version the more important. When both were published, he assigned op. 56a to the orchestral score and op. 56b to the two-piano version. Brahms did not disclose his theme source before submitting “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” for the printed title page. It was brought to his attention by his friend Carl Ferdinand Pohl, who had discovered its man- uscript while working on a biography of Jo- seph Haydn and transcribed six divertimen- tos for wind band. The first work contained as its second movement the Chorale St. Antoni . This divertimento is no longer considered an authentic Haydn composition, but probably the work of his student Ignaz Pleyel. With the Haydn Variations, Brahms demon- strated for the first time a truly successful orchestral conception. Though 40 years old, he was a relative novice orchestrator, having only three symphonic works to his credit: the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor (1957), the Serenade No. 1 in Dmajor (1858), and the Ser- enade No. 2 in A major (1859). These orchestral variations ushered in a new phase in his career, as McCorkle observed, “marking a transition period in Brahms’s development from an impressionable young Romantic to maturity as a classicist-Roman- ticist.” This work bears significance for one other reason. It provided an unprecedented meeting of two previously distinct musical universes: theme and variations, and the symphony. Overall, the Haydn Variations are subdivided into three distinct sections—the theme, eight variations, and a passacaglia. The Chorale St. Antoni provides a more complex melody than Brahms otherwise used for his varia- tions. Its first half repeats, and the second half concludes with a melodic reference to the beginning. Most variations retain the basic phrase length of the theme. Tempo, rhythm, characterization, and melodic intelligibili- ty vary throughout the eight variations. The later variations increase in tempo. Brahms accelerates the frequency of variation in the final section, which contains 17 repetitions of a four-measure bass ostinato, or passacaglia, closely related to the Chorale St. Antoni . Thus Brahms concludes his orchestral masterpiece with a set of variations-within-variations. –Program notes © 2021 Todd E. Sullivan MARIN ALSOP, conductor For Marin Alsop’s biography, see page 62. ANTHONY MCGILL, clarinet A native of Chicago’s South Side, graduate of Chicago’s Merit School of Music and the Curtis Institute, and 2020 Avery Fisher Prize recipient, Anthony McGill has been princi- pal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic since 2014, the ensemble’s first African Amer- ican principal musician. He previously held the same chair in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 10 years and, before that, the associate principal chair in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. McGill regularly ap- pears as a soloist with the New York Philhar- monic, recording Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto with the orchestra shortly after joining, as well as with the Met orchestra and Baltimore, San Diego, and Kansas City Symphonies. With his brother, flutist Demarre McGill, he recorded an album of duo concertos with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, includ- ing the world premiere of Winged Creatures by Michael Abels. A dedicated champion of new music, this season he takes up works by Jessie Montgomery, James Lee III, Daron Hagen, and Richard Danielpour. McGill reg- ularly appears as a chamber musician inter- nationally, performing alongside such string quartets as the Brentano, Daedalus, Dover, Guarneri, JACK, Miró, Pacifica, and Shang- hai. He has also toured with the Musicians from Marlboro, appeared on Lincoln Center and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, and performed at Tanglewood, Marl- boro, Mainly Mozart, Music@Menlo, and the Santa Fe, Seattle, and Skaneateles Chamber Music Festivals. McGill’s collaborators have also included Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuko Uchida, and Lang Lang, and in 2009 he performed at the first inau- guration of President Obama with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and Gabriela Montero. A leading music educator, he is on the Juilliard faculty and is artistic director of its Music Ad- vancement Program, as well as a Curtis Insti- tute and Bard College faculty member. Addi- tionally, McGill serves on the boards of the League of American Orchestras and Cedille Records. Anthony McGill first performed at Ravinia in 2000 and tonight makes both his third appearance at the festival and his Chi- cago Symphony Orchestra debut. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 61