NEC at Symphony Hall: Philharmonia, Symphonic Choir + Hugh Wolff: Brahms, Frank, Lutosławski

Johannes Brahms | Tragic Overture in D Minor, op. 81

Program note

Johannes Brahms did most of his composing during the summer months, in the countryside far from noisy Vienna.  The summer of 1880 was not a happy one.  Brahms chose to stay in Bad Ischl, a resort near Salzburg.  The weather was awful, and Brahms developed an ear infection.  Terrified of losing his hearing (as had his hero Beethoven), he returned to Vienna for medical treatment.  The infection subsided, and Brahms resumed his composing in Bad Ischl, but his output was fairly meager.  Among the works he did complete were two overtures: the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.  The latter is as somber and serious as the former is ebullient and light-hearted.  The Tragic Overture, written between the Second and Third Symphonies, is structured much like a symphonic movement.  A vehement opening gives way to a second subject of typical Brahmsian yearning.  In place of the development, Brahms dials back both tempo and passion for music of quiet introspection.  A luminous transition featuring quiet trombones brings the reprise of the yearning melody.  Passion and vehemence return too, but give way to doubt and regret just before the stormy conclusion.

Gabriela Lena Frank | Conquest Requiem (2017)

Introit: Cuicatl de Malinche (Song of Malinche)
Judex ergo cum sedebit
Dies irae: Cuicatl de Martín (Song of Martín)
Recordare, Jesu pie
Rex Tremendae: El aullido de Malinche (The Howl of Malinche)
Confutatis maledictis
In Paradisum: Benediction de Malinche y Martín

Program note

Born in California of Lithuanian-Jewish and Peruvian-Chinese parents, Gabriela Lena Frank has long explored her multicultural heritage in her music.  The recipient of many awards and performed worldwide, she is a unique voice in the 21st century.   She writes this about her Conquest Requiem:

Much has been written of the violent meeting of the Old and New Worlds that produced the Americas - North, Central, and South - known to the world today.  Over the centuries since, key figures have emerged - conquistadores Cristoforo Colombo, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro; chroniclers Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the native Garcilaso de la Vega, and the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas - as especially emblematic of the cataclysm that was the Conquest.  These men and countless others bore witness and, oftentimes, great responsibility for the death and destruction of entire societies while simultaneously having a hand in the birth of new mestizo (mixed-race) civilizations.

Against such grand historical strokes, the stories of ordinary people are easily swept away but for the efforts of creative imagination, employed here in the Conquest Requiem.  This piece is inspired by the true story of Malinche, a Nahua woman from the Gulf Coast of Mexico who was given to the Spaniards as a young slave.  Malinche's ever-evolving prowess as an interpreter of her native Nahuatl, various Mayan dialects, and Spanish elevated her position such that she would convert to Christianity and become mistress to Cortés  during his war against the Aztecs.  She would later give birth to their son Martín, one of the first mestizos of the New World.

While Malinche has been conflated with Aztec legends, she has been variously viewed as feminist hero who saved countless lives, treacherous villain who facilitated genocide, conflicted victim of forces beyond her control, or as symbolic mother of the new mestizo people.

In the Conquest Requiem, Malinche's story is the linchpin for the juxtaposition of traditional liturgical verses from the Latin Mass for the Dead against Nahua poetry as chronicled from the mouths of fallen indigenous princes.  Newly composed Spanish words from playwright/poet Nilo Cruz round out the text.
- Gabriela Lena Frank

NEC Symphonic Choir

Oluwanimofe Akinyanmi
Aislin Alancheril
* Andrés Almirall
Stellan Connelly Bettany
* Alexis Boucugnani
Brittany Bryant
Isabella Butler
Peter Butler
* Mildred Cady
Coco Chapman
* Ashley Chen
Chen Chen
Jing Chen
Su Cong
Patrick Dempsey
Yuxin Duan
Ivy Evers
Molly Flynn
Jaden Fogel
Abisal Gergiev
Jiawei Gong
* Killian Grider
Siyuan Guan
Changjin Ha
Jialin Han
Cameron Hayden
* David Helder
* Riccardo Lucas Hernandez
Blake Hetherington
Chenzhejun Hu
* Weza Jamison-Neto
Owen Johnson
Song Hyeon Kim
Sunmin Kim
* Molly Knight
* Marnen Laibow-Koser
Jordan Chun Kwan Lau
Che Li
Lucci Zimeng Li
Pengyi Li
Qianqian Li
Shawn Xiangyun Lian
* Corinne Luebke-Brown
* Sally Millar
Hannah Miller
Yechan Min
Sianna Monti
Yuhang Nan
Daniel Oslin
Daniela Pyne
Eric Qu
Quinn Rosenberg
Rafe Schaberg
Samuel Schwartz
Xingrong Shao
Yide Shi
Tamir Shimshoni
Rachel Solyn
Anisha Srinivasan
Claire Stephenson
Margaret Storm
Wanrou Tang
* Jane Tsuang
Jason Vu
Truman Walker
Calvin Wamser
Chenzhou Wang
Qizhen Wang
Tianyou Wang
Yinuo Wang
Yuehan Echo Wang
Tianyou Wang
* Sarah Warner
Shanshan Xie
Ian Yan
Kerui Chris Yang
*Aimee Yermish
Yuki Yoshimi
* Maggie Zheng
Zhaoqian Ellie Zhong

*community member

INTERMISSION

Witold Lutosławski | Concerto for Orchestra

Intrada
Capriccio notturno e arioso
Passacaglia, toccata e corale

Program note

Witold Lutosławski was born in 1913 in Warsaw (then part of the Russian Empire) to a wealthy, land-owning family.  When World War I broke out, the family fled to Moscow.  Three years later, the Russian Revolution brought further suffering to the family: his father and uncle, considered dangerous Polish nationalists, were executed by the Bolsheviks without trial.  The shattered family returned to Poland when the war ended, and young Witold began his musical education.  His flourishing career as a composer was again interrupted by war in 1939.  Serving as a radio technician, he was captured by the Germans but escaped and walked 250 miles back to Warsaw.  There he and fellow composer Andrjez Panufnik formed a duo and performed in cafés to earn a living.  Together they arranged hundreds of songs and composed original material, but almost all of it was lost in the destruction of Warsaw after the Ghetto Uprising.  Resuming his career after 1945 under Communist authorities meant finding a voice that was authentic and personal but would escape criticism of party enforcers.  TheConcerto for Orchestra is a brilliant example.  The three-movement work combines folk melodies and traditional forms with a strikingly original color palette, complex harmonies, and rigorous counterpoint.  The structure is clear and concise, the melodies recognizable – the work’s ambition is wide and its impact deep.  The opening Intrada cycles a short folk melody contrapuntally through the strings – from cellos to first violins.  A dramatic middle section interrupts the counterpoint, leading to a dense climax.  The opening melody returns, now cycled through the woodwinds, the intensity replaced with calm.  The middle movement – Capriccio notturno e Arioso – serves as a scherzo.  The Capriccio is a quiet skittering idea – pianissimo violin sixteenths recall the buzzing insect sounds of a Bartók nocturne.  Again the counterpoint is rigorous and the material is developed thoroughly before the trumpets interrupt with the arioso.  This is more of a declamation than an aria.  As in the first movement, the middle section is passionate and climactic.  The skittering nocturne returns in lower strings and harps, before the percussion and basses get the last word.  The movement dissipates into nothingness.  The third and final movement, Passacagalia Toccata e Corale, more than half the length of the entire piece, is in two big sections.  The first is the passacagalia: a skeletal melody in the basses and harps followed by about seventeen variations, more and more elaborate and intense, sometimes following the bass line and sometimes in conflict with it.  The final variation finds the passacaglia melody pianissimo high up in the first violins.  Then the second half of the movement begins with a toccata of tremendous rhythmic energy.  Like the first movement, it features short melodic ideas developed with imitative counterpoint.  About nine minutes in, a gentle chorale with triadic harmonies emerges in the oboes and clarinets.  After the kinetic energy and dissonant harmonies of the toccata, the simplicity of this moment is striking.  The chorale is repeated in quiet variations – first brass, then strings – before the toccata returns.  An apotheosis of the chorale with fortissimo brass and full orchestra brings the work to a frenzied conclusion. 
        The Concerto for Orchestra secured Lutosławski’s significant place in the 20th century: a central European with folk music roots, who developed into an avant garde composer, never afraid to explore new techniques and fresh sounds.       
– Hugh Wolff