Monday January 18, 2010

Charley talks with Boulder Philharmonic music director Michael Butterman about Saturday's concert.
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Butterman, conductor; Hiroko Okada Hellyer, Peter Hellyer, Paul Mulliken, percussion
Leonard Bernstein: Fancy Free Ballet 28:20
Russell Peck: The Glory and the Grandeur 15:22 (10/4/08)
Also, Charley anticipates Christopher Taylor's appearance with the Boulder Philharmonic Saturday.
Franz Liszt: Transcendental Etudes No.7 in E flat major ("Eroica") & No.10 in F minor
Christopher Taylor, piano
Liszt Digital 005 7,10 10:03


Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Fancy Free Ballet
I. Enter Three Sailors: Very fast four
II. Scene at the Bar: Poco meno mosso
III. Enter Two Girls: Fast and hot
IV. Pas de deux: Very slowly
V. Competition Scene: Opening tempo
VI. Three Dance Variations
Variation 1 (Galop): Presto
Variation 2 (Waltz): Allegretto grazioso
Variation 3 (Danzon): Strong, moderate
quarters
VII. Finale: Tempo come prima

One night during the fall of 1943, there was a knock on Leonard Bernstein’s door. It was dancer and choreographer Jerome Robbins, who had a story outline for a one-act ballet titled Fancy Free and wanted to hear some of Bernstein’s music.
“Funny you should ask that,” Bernstein said, “because this afternoon in the Russian Tea Room I got this tune in my head and I wrote it down on a napkin.” Bernstein sang the melody, and “Jerry went through the ceiling. He said, ‘That’s it, that’s what I had in mind!’ We went crazy. I began developing the theme right there in his presence….Thus the ballet was born.”
It was Bernstein’s first ballet. He conducted the first performance at the Metropolitan Opera House on April 18, 1944. There were almost twenty curtain calls that night and more than 160 performances to follow. The press was ecstatic. “Just exactly ten degrees north of terrific,” said the New York Times. Time magazine praised the dancing, which it called “acrobatic, a specialty rhumba [danzon], soft shoe adagio, eccentric jitterbugging, knee-drops, slapstick and a violent, half-hidden free-for-all under the bar.”
Bernstein described the story in a program note: “From the moment the action begins, with the sound of a juke box wailing behind the curtain, the ballet is strictly Young America of 1944. The curtain rises on a street corner with a lamp post, a side-street bar, and New York skyscrapers pricked out with a crazy pattern of lights, making a dizzying background. Three sailors explode on the stage; they are on 24-hour shore leave in the city and on the prowl for girls. The tale of how they first meet one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose them, and in the end take off after still a third, is the story of the ballet.”
It was Bernstein’s sister Shirley who recorded the blues song “Big Stuff” heard playing on a jukebox as the curtain rises. Bernstein made a suite from the ballet for a performance by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1945.

Russell Peck (b.1945): The Glory and the Grandeur

``I think it's very possible for people to be excited by what the orchestra has to offer,'' says Russell Peck. ``For me the orchestra offers transportation to heights, depths, mysteries, and revelations that simply are not accessible by other means.'' Since 1983 Peck has been writing works which receive frequent performances beyond their premieres.
Born in Detroit, Peck received three degrees from the University of Michigan. His teachers have included Clark Eastham, Leslie Bassett, Ross Lee Finney, Gunther Schuller and George Rochberg. He has received the Koussevitzky Prize and two Ford Foundation Fellowships, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been guest composer at the Gaudeamus Contemporary Music Festival in the Netherlands, and composer-in-residence with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. A recent Albany Records compact disk features four of his works, including The Glory and the Grandeur, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.
The Glory and the Grandeur is an exciting work both visually and musically, featuring three percussion soloists who perform in front of the orchestra. It has been greeted by standing ovations ever since its first performance by the Greensboro Symphony and The Percussion Group/Cincinnati, conducted by Paul Anthony McRae, on October 18, 1988. After a performance by the Alabama Symphony, the work was called ``the hit of the evening, drawing lots of `yips', a few `yups', and cheers from all corners of the hall.'' The Sacramento Symphony's performance prompted the remark that Peck ``continues to surprise concert hall audiences with the diversity of his talents and a willingness to risk his musical neck.''
The title, from Edgar Allen Poe, ``shouldn't be taken to imply a heavy monumentality,'' Peck says. ``The volume of sound is certainly monumental on occasion, but the intent is more to glorify and celebrate the natural glitter of percussion.''
The Glory and the Grandeur is a true show piece. At times the effect is like a ``perpetual motion,'' with players hopping from one station to another. At others, the lyric qualities of the percussion soloists are exploited, as in the ``tranquillo'' section toward the beginning. The changing location of the sound itself is the idea much of the time, especially in the opening group drum cadenza.
The three percussion soloists are busy throughout the piece. At the beginning, says Peck, ``they play rhythmic antiphony from widely separated drum stations, then gather at the metal instruments of vibraphone, bells, and Chinese cymbals and gongs. At one point in the composition all three perform together on one marimba. The finale section builds a rapid pace of color changes as the players hasten among different instruments, and concludes with the orchestra supporting a return to the spirit of the opening.''
The Glory and the Grandeur was included on WPBY's ``Symphonic Wonder Works,'' a video performance of the West Virginia Symphony's Young People's Concert in 1991. It won the Gold Award in the Music Video Stage/Concert Performance category of the 25th Annual Worldfest-Houston at The Houston International Film and Video Festival.