S E A S ON SPON SOR
Edwin’s Guide to Stravinsky
April 24 & 25 I 8 pm
Centre In The Square, Kitchener
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Grand Philharmonic Choir*
Discussion and Excerpts
Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
Symphonies of Wind Instruments [1947 revision]
12’
Discussion and Excerpts
Carlo Gesualdo (1561 - 1613)
Madrigal: Asciugate i begli occhi
4’
Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum: *
Three madrigals recomposed for instruments
7’
Discussion and Excerpts
Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
Chorale-Variations on Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her
BWV 769 by J.S. Bach *
18’
INTERMISSION
Discussion and Excerpts
Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
Symphony of Psalms (Symphonie de psaumes) *
I. Psalm 38: 13-14 [King James Ps.39: 12-13]
II. Psalm 39: 2-4 [King James Ps.40:1-3]
III. Psalm 150 [King James Ps.150]
21’
Psalm text found on page 8.
SI GNATURE SERI ES SPONSO R
PODIUM SPONSOR
PROGRAM M I N G SPON SOR
P H O T O : L A R RY W I L L I A M S O N
Edwin Outwater
music director
Edwin Outwater is Music Director of
Ontario’s
Kitchener-Waterloo
Symphony
(KWS), Director of Summer Concerts at the
San Francisco Symphony (SFS), and a regular
guest conductor of the Chicago, San Francisco
and New World Symphonies. Equally adept
at interpreting canonical masterworks,
premiering new commissions, and creating
outside-the-box audience-building initiatives
the American conductor is, as San Francisco
Classical Voice recently observed, “headed for
a top-tier future.”
In the 2014-15 season, his eighth as
Music Director of the KWS, Outwater leads
the orchestra in a characteristically diverse
array of programs. These include “The Mozart
Phenomenon”; a collaboration with Time for
Three; a program focusing on Stravinsky and
another of works inspired by Shakespeare;
music and comedy from composers including
Rossini and PDQ Bach; and works by
contemporary Canadian composers. He also
continues the orchestra’s groundbreaking
“Intersections” series of cross-cultural
and interdisciplinary collaborations. In
2011, Outwater directed the KWS in its first
commercial CD release in over a decade, From
Here On Out on Analekta, with music by Nico
Muhly, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, and
Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, the last
piece a KWS commission. This summer, in
his inaugural season as Director of Summer
Concerts at the SFS, Outwater directed jazzinflected works by Bernstein, Gershwin,
and Ravel; an all-Beethoven program; and
collaborations with pianist Makoto Ozone
and Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson, among
4 I 2014/15 Season
others. His work with the SFS continues later
this season when Outwater conducts the
orchestra’s New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball
and family concerts, as well as collaborating
with Nathaniel Stookey at the SFS’s new
alternative performance space, SoundBox. He
also conducts the Milwaukee Symphony, and
returns to lead the Chicago Symphony and the
BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
A native of Santa Monica, California,
Edwin Outwater attended Harvard University,
graduating with a degree in English; he
received his master’s degree in conducting
from UC Santa Barbara. Outwater was Resident
Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony
from 2001-2006 where he worked closely
with Michael Tilson Thomas, toured with the
orchestra, and conducted numerous concerts.
In 2004, his education programs at the San
Francisco Symphony were given the Leonard
Bernstein Award for Excellence in Educational
Programming and his Chinese New Year
Program was given the MET LIFE award for
community outreach. In the United States,
Outwater has also conducted the New York
and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras,
as well as the symphony orchestras of
Baltimore, Houston, Detroit, and Seattle, and
the San Francisco and Cincinnati Operas. In
Canada, he has conducted the National Arts
Centre Orchestra, as well as the symphonies
of Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and
Victoria. International appearances include
the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, the BBC
National Orchestra of Wales, the New Zealand
Symphony, the Adelaide Symphony, the
Malmö Symphony, the Nordwestdeutsche
Philharmonie, the Mexico City Philharmonic,
the Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa, and the
Hong Kong Sinfonietta.
www.edwinoutwater.com
www.facebook.com/pages/Edwin-Outwater
twitter.com/eoutwater
Grand Philharmonic Choir
The Grand Philharmonic Choir, based in
Kitchener, Ontario, includes four choirs in one
organization: an adult choir, a chamber adult
choir, a youth choir and a children’s choir. We
biographies & program notes
perform in large concert halls with audiences
of more than 1,500 people, at free public
gatherings and in small, intimate settings.
Under the direction of Mark Vuorinen, it
is our mandate to present choral repertoire
of the highest standard, to share our love of
music with the public through varied outreach
programs and to provide music education
to our members and enlightenment to our
audiences. We are one of a few large choirs in
Canada, outside the major metropolitan areas,
with the resources and community support to
deliver a full choral season with professional
musicians.
PROGRAM NOTES
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)
Symphonies of Wind Instruments
(1920, rev. 1947)
Stravinsky’s ten-minute, single movement
Symphonies of Wind Instruments returns
to the root meaning of the word ‘symphony’
as music ‘sounding together.’ It’s not a
symphony in the traditional sense of the
word. At its heart lies a chorale composed as
a tribute to the memory of his friend Claude
Debussy, who died two years before the 38
year-old Stravinsky began composition in
the summer of 1920. “It is an austere ritual
which is unfolded in terms of short litanies
between different groups of homogeneous
instruments,” Stravinsky explains. . . “This
music is not meant to ‘please’ an audience,
nor to arouse its passions.” However, the
sonic resonance of the score holds its own
attraction – almost a century after the
restless composer broke new ground writing
it. Gone is the traditional harmonic thinking
that provides a backbone for the great
Germanic symphonic tradition. Gone, too, is
the traditional structural framework which
binds together symphonies as disparate as
those by Haydn and Mahler. In its place is a
composition that is composed towards its
final chorale, in which symphonic fragments,
subtly related by rhythm, texture and tempo,
are structured to build to a climax and then die
away to the serenity of the final chorale.
CARLO GESUALDO (c 1561 – 1613)
Madrigal: Asciugate i begli occhi
(c1600?, publ. 1613)
Carlo Gesualdo wrote some of the most
expressive, provocative and baffling music
ever written. Most of it is for unaccompanied
voice, usually combined in five or six parts,
never for solo voice. At one level, it is music
that remains frozen in time – unlike many
musicians of the late renaissance, Gesualdo
took no interest in the basso continuo which
would dominate the music of the coming
baroque. At another, it pushes the conventions
of the day towards an emotional intensity
that can be startling to modern ears. It even
repelled the 18th century music historian
Charles Burney who found Gesualdo’s music
“shocking and disgusting because it moves
from one chord to another in which there is
no relation, real or imaginary.” All said, though,
no matter how bizarre Gesualdo’s harmonies
and chromaticism may strike us when we
listen ‘vertically’, chord by chord as the music
progresses, each individual vocal line falls
within the conventions of contrapuntal writing
of the day. Mannerist visual artists from
late 16th century Italy exaggerated colour,
proportion, and gesture in their search for
innovation and artistic expression. Similarly,
in a five-part madrigal like Asciugate i begli
occhi (Dry those fair eyes) from his Fifth
Book of Madrigals, Gesualdo dwells on every
verbal image within each word, moving from
word to word with startling juxtapositions,
and contrasts, while heightening the
representational powers of the madrigal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)
Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD
annum: Three madrigals recomposed for
instruments (1960)
These three ‘recompositions’ belong to
a number of significant, idiosyncratic
arrangements of other composer’s music that
Stravinsky created late in life. Written to mark
the 400th anniversary of Gesualdo’s birth, the
three secular madrigals titled Monumentum
pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum (Tribute
See our entire season at kwsymphony.ca I 5
on the 400th anniversary of Gesualdo of
Venosa) complement the Three Sacred Songs
of the same year. The first madrigal, Asciugate
i begli occhi (Dry those fair eyes), is the most
‘recomposed.’ In it, Stravinsky highlights the
harmonic astringencies by assigning different
sonorities from one chord to the next, in the
process breaking the vocal line. Ma tu, cagion
di quella (But you, the cause of that agony)
and Beltà, poi che t’assenti (Beauty, since
you are leaving) are more straight ahead
transcriptions, with no horns and strings in
the former and the full ensemble in the latter.
BACH/STRAVINSKY
Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch da
komm ich her, BWV 769 (1746/1955)
Finding Gesualdo still persona non grata to
the authorities of St. Mark’s, Venice in 1956,
Stravinsky instead turned to the music of
Bach for a work to pair with the première
of his own Canticum Sacrum. His Chorale
Variations for mixed chorus and orchestra
THE 17th ANNUAL
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DESIGNED IN PERFECT HARMONY
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preface variations for two-manual organ and
pedals that Bach wrote in 1746/7 with the
chorale on which they are based. Bach sticks
to the key of C major; Stravinsky roams wider,
adding counterpoint here and there, including
new canons in the second the third variations,
and giving the whole piece the texture of a
cantata.
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)
Symphony of Psalms (1930/48)
In the Symphony of Psalms, Stravinsky again
uses the title Symphony in the sense of music
sounding together. Now it’s as a choral
symphony to psalm texts, with a “choral and
instrumental ensemble in which,” he says, “the
two elements should be on an equal footing,
neither of them outweighing the other.” To
achieve this, Stravinsky uses a large symphony
in which he does away with violins, violas and
clarinets, reversing the traditional balance of
winds to strings. Winds and brass are both
augmented, harp is included and two pianos
added to enable Stravinsky’s preferred clarity
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program notes
of sound – with no trace of a romantic glow
from the strings. There’s a certain defiance in
this, of course, and in the composer’s choice
of Psalm 150 to express his “eagerness to
counter the many composers who had abused
these magisterial verses as pegs for their own
lyrico–sentimental ‘feelings.’” As for anyone
who objects to his idiosyncratic word-setting
(LaudATe DOMinum, LAUdate DOMINum,
LaudaTE DomINum in the last movement,
for example), Stravinsky says: “One hopes to
worship God with a little art if one has any, and
if one hasn’t, and cannot recognize it in others,
then one can at least burn a little incense.“
Symphony of Psalms is Stravinsky’s first work
to be dedicated ‘to the glory of God’ (not to
mention the Boston Symphony for whose 50th
anniversary it was written). His faith, though
clearly sincere throughout the symphony,
(he had become a regular communicant at
Orthodox services from 1926) comes at a
distance. “Through the imagined faith of
an anonymous congregation,” is how his
biographer and critic Eric Walter White puts
it. Stravinsky saw the Psalms as “poems of
exaltation, but also of anger and judgement,
and even of curses.” His compositional
starting point was the quicker sections
of the finale from which he then drew the
musical idea of a pair of interlocking thirds.
In the opening movement, these underline
the orchestral introduction and the ostinato
accompaniment to the grandeur of the choral
declamation. The second movement is a fugal
structure of some complexity, beginning with
a four-part fugue from the flutes and oboes on
a subject derived from the sequence of thirds
already heard. This overlaps with a four-part
choral fugue as the movement unfolds in what
Stravinsky likens to an ‘upside-down pyramid
of fugues.’ Its foundation is then carefully
constructed by combining both fugues.
Stravinsky originally titled the three
movements Prelude, Double Fugue and
Allegro symphonique, dropping the titles after
the première. The first two movements are
introductory to the finale which opens with
a hushed Alleluia from the choir. This is an
answer to the second movement’s prayer for
help and affirmation that a new song has
been put into the singer’s mouth. A broad
choral Laudate Dominum gives voice to this
song. The brilliant orchestral interlude that
follows was suggested, Stravinsky says, by
a vision of Elijah’s chariot in its fiery ascent
to the heavens. A brief but carefully placed
recall of the Alleluia punctuates the orchestral
music. Agitation is then followed by the calm
of praise, as Stravinsky refers to the serene
apotheosis of the symphony, dominated by
the interval of a falling third and capped by
a highly symbolic third appearance of the
Alleluia. Time now stands still in solemn,
austere contemplation as the tonality shifts
towards a radiant C major.
– Program notes © Keith Horner, 2015.
Comments welcome: khnotes@sympatico.ca
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program notes
CARLO GESUALDO (c 1561 – 1613) Madrigal: Asciugate i begli occhi
che partendo da voi, m’uccide il duolo.
Asciugate i begli occhi
Dry those fair eyes
Dry those fair eyes,
ah, my love, weep not
if you see me turn far away from you.
Alas, I must weep wretched and alone,
for my grief in leaving you will cause my
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) Symphony of Psalms
Asciugate i begli occhi,
deh, cor mio, non piangete
se lontano da voi gir mi vedete.
Ahi, che pianger debb’io misero e solo,
1. Psalm 38, verses 13 and 14
Exaudi orationem meam, Domine, et
deprecationem meam.
Auribus percipe lacrimas meas. Ne sileas,
ne sileas.
Quoniam advena ego sum apud te et
peregrinus, sicut omnes
patres mei.
Remitte mihi, prius quam abeam et
amplius non ero.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with Thine
ears consider my calling:
hold not Thy peace at my tears.
For I am a stranger with Thee: and a
sojourner, as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little that I may recover my
strength: before I go hence and be no more
seen.
2. Psalm 39, verses 2, 3 and 4
Expectans expectavi Dominum, et intendit
mihi.
Et exaudivit preces meas; et exudit me da
lacu miseriae, et de
lato faecis.
Et statuit super petram pedes meos: et
direxis gressus meos.
Et immisit in os meum canticum novrum,
carmen Deo nostro.
Videbunt multi, videbunt et timabunt: et
aperabunt in Domino.
I waited patiently for the Lord: and He
inclined unto me, and heard my calling.
He brought me also out of the horrible pit,
out of the mire and clay:
and set my feet upon the rock, and ordered
my goings.
And He hath put a new song in my mouth:
even a thanksgiving
unto our God.
Many shall see it and fear: and shall put
their trust in the Lord.
3. Psalm 150
Alleluia.
Laudate Dominum in sanctis Ejus.
Laudate Erum firmamentis virtutis Ejus.
Laudate Dominum.
Laudate Eum in virtutibus Ejus .
Laudate Eum secundum multitudinem
magnitudinis Ejus.
Laudate Eum in sono tubae.
Laudate Eum. Alleluia. Laudate Dominum.
Laudate Eum.
Laudate Eum in timpano et choro,
Laudate Eum in cordis et organo;
Laudate Eum in cymbalis bene
jubilantionibus.
Laudate Eum, omnis spiritus laudate
Dominum.
Alleluia.
O praise God in His holiness:
praise Him in the firmament of His power.
Praise the Lord.
Praise Him in His noble acts:
praise Him according to His excellent
greatness.
Praise Him in the sound of the trumpet:
Praise Him. Alleluia, Praise the Lord, Praise
Him.
Praise Him upon the lute and harp.
Praise Him upon the strings and pipe.
Praise Him upon the well-tuned cymbals.
Let everything that hath breath praise the
Lord.
Alleluia.