Thursday October 8, 2009

Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Larry Rachleff, conductor
Jennifer Higdon: Loco
Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (5/8-10/09)
Also, Charley talks Ars Nova Singers artistic director Thomas Edward Morgan, cellist Jurgen de Lemos and soprano Tana Cochran, who are featured on the Ars Nova Singers's opening concert.
John Tavener: "Death" from Akhmatova Songs
Jurgen de Lemos, cello; Tana Cochran, soprano
KVOD Performance Studio 9/18/09 MS

Born in Brooklyn, Jennifer Higdon grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and Seymour, Tennessee, and now lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Bowling Green State University. Her teachers have included George Crumb, Ned Rorem, and Marilyn Shrude in composition, Judith Bentley and Jan Vinci in flute, and Robert Spano in conducting. She has served as composer-in-residence with the Music From Angel Fire Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Walden School, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, the Prism Saxophone Quartet and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Loco was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago in 2004. In her notes for the premiere, Higdon says "The work was the last of a series of "Train Commissions,' whic h featured the orchestra playing works that reflect the trains (and their noise) that run through the Ravinia train yard (and backyard of the orchestra' summer home, quit a noisy venue). I though about the idea of a locomotive, which led me to think about a fast moving piece, which made me think about the word 'loco,' which means crazy in Spanish. So I got the idea to write a piece about 'a crazy train.' The general sound of the piece is of a fast-moving train, or rather, what I imagined it to sound like."

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
I. Prologue: Allegro moderato
II. Somewhere: Adagio
III. Scherzo: Vivace leggiero
IV. Mambo: Presto
V. Cha-Cha: Andantino con grazia
VI. Meeting Scene: Meno mosso
VII. Cool-Fugue: Allegretto
VIII. Rumble: Molto allergro
Finale: Adagio

Jerome Robbins' idea for a kind of urban Romeo and Juliet was once called Gang Way!, and then East Side Story. With book by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story was the title used for the first performance, on August 19, 1957 in Washington, D.C. Starring Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert, Mickey Calin, Ken Le Roy and Chita Rivera, the show opened at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on September 26, 1957 and ran for 973 performances. The film version, with Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno, appeared in 1961. It was voted Best Picture of the Year and earned ten Oscars.
Meantime, with the aid of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, Bernstein had assembled the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The first performance took place at a Pension Fund Benefit concert of the New York Philharmonic on February 13, 1961. The all-Bernstein evening was billed as ``A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein,'' complete with heart-shaped program book. Bernstein himself was in the audience at Carnegie Hall, as Aaron Copland, Vladimir Golschmann and Lukas Foss directed the Philharmonic. It was Foss who conducted the Symphonic Dances.
There are nine dances, played without pause. The Prologue depicts the rivalry of the two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. Somewhere and Scherzo suggest a dream world beyond the city's confines. Mambo finds the two gangs in a competitive dance. The lovers Tony and Maria dance together in Cha-Cha and finally speak in the Meeting Scene. The Jets are getting hostile in Cool-Fugue and leaders of both gangs are killed during the Rumble. In the Finale, Tony dies in Maria's arms and the Somewhere theme is recalled during the funeral procession.
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings.