NEC Philharmonia + Hugh Wolff: Berlioz, Montgomery, & Sibelius

NEC: Jordan Hall | Directions

290 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA
United States

This performance is open to in-person audiences, and is also viewable via livestream.

Watch livestream from Jordan Hall:

Ensembles
  • NEC Philharmonia
Conductors
  1. Hector Berlioz | Overture to "Béatrice et Bénédict

     

    Program note

    Hector Berlioz’s interest in Shakespeare began in 1826 when the 23 year-old composer attended performances of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.  Although the performances were in English, a language Berlioz barely understood, he was overwhelmed by the actress Harriet Smithson in the roles of Ophelia and Juliet.  He pursued her and eventually married her.  Though their union was ultimately not a happy one, his love of Shakespeare remained constant.  His final opera, Béatrice et Bénédict, written between 1860 and 1862, is based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.  After his mammoth opera Les Troyens, Berlioz called Béatrice et Bénédict a “relaxation” and “caprice written with the point of a needle.”  Indeed, its charm and brevity are in stark contrast to the grandiosity and huge ambitions of the previous opera.  The Overture effervesces.  Starting as a quicksilver waltz, it abruptly shifts to a gentle Andante.  When the opening waltz music returns, Berlioz has slyly transformed it into duple meter, now more a march than waltz.  The play’s “rom-com” character is never far from the surface of this exuberant curtain raiser.

  2. Jessie Montgomery | Coincident Dances (2019)

    Program note

    Jessie Montgomery wrote Coincident Dances in 2019 for the Chicago Sinfonietta. It was premiered and recorded by that ensemble under Mei-Ann Chen, NEC alumna and guest conductor next month (March 9).  Montgomery writes about it:

    Coincident Dances is inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood. The work is a fusion of several different sound-worlds: English consort, samba, mbira dance music from Ghana, swing, and techno.

    My reason for choosing these styles sometimes stemmed from an actual experience of accidentally hearing a pair simultaneously, which happens most days of the week walking down the streets of New York, or one time when I heard a parked car playing Latin jazz while I had rhythm and blues in my headphones. Some of the pairings are merely experiments. Working in this mode, the orchestra takes on the role of a DJ of a multicultural dance track.

    — Jessie Montgomery

  3. Jean Sibelius | Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, op. 39

    Andante, ma non troppo - Allegro energico
    Andante (ma non troppo lento)
    Scherzo: Allegro
    Finale: Andante - Allegro molto - Andante assai - Allegro molto come prima - Andante (ma non troppo)

     

    Program note

    As an aspiring young violinist and composer, Jean Sibelius spent two years studying in Berlin and Vienna.  He found little success as a violinist (he failed an audition to join the Vienna Philharmonic), and consequently threw himself into composing full time.  The Finland he returned to in 1892 at the age of 27 was restless – eager to assert its independence from Russia, which had ruled Finland since 1809.  Open political dissent was dangerous, cultural dissent safer and more effective.  Sibelius’ two early works based on Finnish folk epics, the cantata/symphony Kullervo and the Karelia Suite, earned him fame and a place at the head of Finnish cultural nationalism.  At its 1899 premiere in Helsinki, his First Symphony was eagerly anticipated and wildly successful.
            In the four movements of a traditional romantic symphony, with a conservative harmonic language and an orchestra not larger than Brahms’ or Bruckner’s, the symphony on one hand looks backward.  But it reveals Sibelius’ profoundly original voice as well: his tightly-controlled use of small musical motifs that generate new melodies as they develop; his penchant for tonal and modal ambiguity – particularly oscillations between major and relative minor; his fondness for abrupt, unsettled endings; and above all, his use of the long, gradual accelerando to transform the character of the music before the listener realizes what is happening.  These accelerandos, which occur in every movement, are so important they become an integral part of the work’s structure.  It is the nature of an accelerando that, as it occurs, we do not know when it will stop.  This uncertainty generates emotional power.  And Sibelius’ unusual way of stopping the accelerandos enhances that power.  In the first movement, the dancing staccato woodwind music with asymmetrical string accents reaches a frenzied pace only to be interrupted by four abrupt, hollow octave Bs.  In the second movement, the peak of the accelerando is superimposed on the return of the opening Andante melody, fusing the recap with the climax.  In the Finale, Sibelius specifies that the lyric second subject sometimes speeds up and sometimes slows down, disengaging tempo from melody – a technique 20th century serialists might have admired.  The outer movements are good examples of Sibelius’ abrupt endings.  In both cases, an intense and grandly romantic arrival at E minor is suddenly dissipated by two plucked chords in the strings.  With this almost nihilistic gesture, Sibelius seems intent on negating romanticism.  The originality is striking, and the emotional impact, devastating.
           Sibelius famously wrote that he was moved more by nature than by human interaction.  Living in isolation in woods outside Helsinki, he had ample opportunity to experience the power, unpredictability, even the cruelty of nature.  Perhaps no other composer so compellingly captured this in music.  His symphonies have an austere, sometimes frightening grandeur.  And his emotional palette, with melancholy never far from the surface, captures the essence of man’s relationship to nature that is powerful, awe-inspiring, and

    – Hugh Wolff

        

     

  4. Personnel

    First Violin
    Hyun Ji Lee
    Evan Hjort
    Eric Jiang

    Aidan Ip
    Isabella Gorman
    Haekyung Ju
    Qiyan Xing
    Yeonsoo Kim
    Liyuán Xiè
    Emma Carleton
    Yulia Price
    Chae Lim Yoon
    Chloe Hong


    Second Violin
    Jia-Ying Wei
    Hannah Chaewon Kim
    Jeffrey Pearson
    Haerim Oh
    Julian Rhee
    Kate Knudsvig
    Anthony Chan

    Jason Qiu
    Hyeonah Hong
    Louis Liao
    Yilei Yin


    Viola
    John Harry Clark
    Samuel M. Zacharia
    Pierre Trache
    Anna Mann
    Junghyun Ahn
    Lydia Plaut
    Daeun Hong

    Bram Fisher
    Aidan Garrison


    Cello
    Aixin Vicky Cheng
    Hechen Sun
    Youjin Ko
    Jonathan Salman
    Jeffrey Ho
    Nathan Le
    Uijin Gwak
    Yuri Ahn


    Bass
    Misha Bjerken
    Minyi Wang
    Jesse Dale
    Daniel Slatch
    Alyssa Peterson


    Flute
    Javier Castro‡
    Anne Chao
    Jeong Won Choe
    Clara Lee*
    Aimee Toner^

    Piccolo
    Anne Chao
    Jeong Won Choe‡
    Joon Park*
    Aimee Toner^

    Oboe
    So Jeong Kim*
    Nathalie Graciela Vela^
    Kip Zimmerman‡

    Clarinet
    Tyler J. Bourque*
    Tristan Broadfoot
    Hyunwoo Chun^
    Benjamin Cruz
    Hugo Kwon
    Soyeon Park‡

    Bass Clarinet
    Benjamin Cruz


    Bassoon
    Andrew Flurer^
    John Fulton
    Evan Judson
    Daniel McCarty*
    Julien Rollins
    Richard Vculek‡

    French horn
    Xiang Li^
    Yeonjo Oh‡
    Sophie Steger
    Jenna Stokes*
    Helen Wargelin


    Trumpet
    Jake Baldwin
    Michael Harms
    Sarah Heimberg
    Charlie Jones
    Qiyu Liu
    Dimitri Raimonde
    Jon-Michael Taylor

    Cornet
    David O’Neill

    Trombone
    Elias Canales‡
    Lukas Helsel
    Jaehan Kim*
    Quinn McGillis^

    Bass Trombone
    Changwon Park

    Tuba
    Jim Gifford‡
    David Stein^


    Timpani
    Taylor Lents‡
    Pei Hsien Lu^
    Parker Olson*

    Percussion
    Taylor Lents
    Pei Hsien Lu‡
    Parker Olson
    Leigh Wilson^


    Harp
    Hannah Cope Johnson
     

    Principal players
    *Berlioz
    ‡Montgomery
    ^Sibelius