Oberlin Chamber Orchestra
Saturday
April 14, 2012, 8:00 pm
Finney Chapel
Concert No. 258
Raphael Jiménez, conductor
Beomjae Kim, flute
Love Scene from Romeo and Juliet, Op.17
Flute Concerto
I.
Allegro moderato
II. Allegretto
Hector Berlioz
(1803–1869)
Carl Nielsen
(1865–1931)
Beomjae Kim, flute
Intermission
Ma mère l’oye, “Mother Goose”
I.
Prelude
II. Dance of the Spinning-Wheel and Scene
III. Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
IV. Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
V. Tom Thumb
VI. Little Homely, Empress of the Pagodas
VII. The Fairy Garden
Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)
Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from the use of video cameras
unless prior arrangements have been made with the conductor.
The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.
Biography
Flutist Beomjae Kim has performed in orchestral and chamber music concerts in the
United States, Europe, and Asia. Solo performances sponsored by UNICEF and Kumho
Cultural Foundation have featured him at concert halls such as the Seoul Art Center
Kumho Art Hall. In summer of 2011, he was invited to give solo recitals at the Alba
Muisc Festival in Italy, and the International Dani Muzike Festival in Montenegro.
Winter of 2011 saw him perform with world-renowned flutist Philippe Bernold and
pianist Boris Kaljevic at Bali Classical Nights in Indonesia. He has also appeared in
recital with percussionists Filippo Lattanzi and Marco Pacassoni. Upcoming engagements
include recitals in Eastern Europe, and performances at Boston University’s College of
Fine Arts.
Kim has also performed in orchestras led by recognized conductors such as MyungWhun Chung, Raphael Jiménez, Joseph Mechavich, Tito Muñoz, Mark Russell Smith,
and Ari Pelto. He has collaborated with artists such as Paul Boufil, Stéphane Réty, and
Michel Debost in chamber music concerts. In 2007, Kim was awarded 4th prize in the
Junior Division of the first Concours International de Flûte Maxence Larrieu. For the
13th Japan Flute Convention, he was invited to perform in Andràs Adorjàn’s master
class. Kim is completing his bachelor’s degree at Oberlin where he studies with Alexa
Still, Michel Debost, and Kathleen Chastain.
Program Notes
Love Scene from Romeo and Juliet: A Dramatic Symphony, Op. 17 (1839)
by Hector Berlioz (La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France, 1803 – Paris, 1869)
The French Romantic generation received a vital impulse from the works of Shakespeare.
Victor Hugo in literature, Delacroix in painting, and Berlioz in music were all inspired by
the Bard, who, although long known in France, was re-discovered in the late 1820s
through a new series of translations and, in particular, through the Paris performances of
William Abbott’s Shakespeare company that opened at the Odéon theatre in September
1827.
The French celebrated in Shakespeare the Romantic poet in whose works passion did
not yield to reason as it often did in French classical drama; they marveled at the complex
plots, at the fusion of comedy and tragedy, at the freedom from formal constraints. In
Berlioz’s case, in any event, one could not entirely separate his enthusiasm for
Shakespeare from his infatuation with the leading lady of Abbott’s company, Harriet
Smithson, who played both Ophelia and Juliet at the Odéon. The actress, who at first
didn’t want to have anything to do with Berlioz, became the composer’s idée fixe,
inspiring his first masterpiece, the Symphonie fantastique. They were formally introduced
only in December 1832, and less than a year later, they were married. The marriage,
however, was not happy one, and the couple separated in October 1844.
Shakespeare was central to Berlioz’s artistic world throughout the composer’s life.
His Shakespearean fever began with a fantasy for chorus and orchestra on The Tempest
(1830) and an overture to King Lear (1831). Thirty years later, Berlioz turned to
Shakespeare again for his last major work, the opera Beatrice and Benedict (1860–62),
writing his own libretto based on Much Ado About Nothing.
Berlioz’s most monumental Shakespearean work is, without a doubt, the dramatic
symphony Roméo et Juliette. After first seeing Harriet Smithson in the role of Juliet,
Berlioz had reportedly exclaimed: “That woman shall be my wife, and on this play I shall
write my grandest symphony.” In his memoirs, Berlioz denied having made this
prophetic statement, yet others swore they had heard it. At any rate, there is evidence that
he started thinking about a work based on Shakespeare’s play no later than 1829. By
1831, he knew he wanted to write a scherzo on Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, and he
talked of his plans to Mendelssohn during their first meeting in Italy. (According to one
report, Berlioz was concerned that Mendelssohn might write a Queen Mab scherzo
himself, before Berlioz himself had a chance to do so. Years later, Mendelssohn did write
a Shakespearean scherzo for his incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the
similarities between the two scherzos indicate that neither composer had forgotten the
conversation they had had in the countryside outside Rome.) In the same year 1831,
Berlioz wrote a scathing review of Bellini’s opera I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, in which he
provided what seemed like a blueprint of his own approach to the subject. (He apparently
didn’t know that Bellini’s opera was not based on Shakespeare but on some of the old
Italian sources Shakespeare himself had used.)
The score of Roméo et Juliette was finally written during seven months in 1839. It
was an unexpected fortunate event that enabled Berlioz to devote himself fully to his
work during this period. Years earlier, Niccolò Paganini had been interested in
commissioning a viola concerto from Berlioz, which eventually became Harold in Italy.
Berlioz’s and Paganini’s ideas about the planned work differed considerably, however, so
that the actual commission came to nothing. Berlioz went ahead and wrote Harold
anyway, but Paganini never performed it. In fact, Paganini did not even hear Harold until
1839, when he was so moved by it that, according to Berlioz’s memoirs, he knelt down in
front of Berlioz and kissed his hand. The famous violinist was seriously ill at this time,
and, having lost his speaking voice owing to a throat ailment, relied on his son as an
interpreter. Two days later, the son brought a letter in which Paganini announced his gift
of 20,000 francs to Berlioz so he could write a new major work.
In the preface of the finished score, Berlioz stated, maybe a bit too optimistically:
There is no misunderstanding the genre of this work. Although it makes
frequent use of voices, it is neither a concert opera nor a cantata, but a
symphony with chorus.
A symphony with chorus – this certainly sounds like Beethoven’s Ninth, which, to
Berlioz, was unquestionably the ultimate musical masterpiece and a major influence in
several of his works. But Berlioz’s symphonic concept went significantly beyond that of
Beethoven’s Ninth. In the Ninth, the chorus and the soloists intervene only in the last
movement, the first three having no literary program at all. In Roméo, on the other hand,
four of the seven movements include singing, and the entire work is based on a literary
work. Yet, Berlioz didn’t set any part of Shakespeare’s play to music (with the exception
of Friar Laurence’s speech). In particular, the lovers Romeo and Juliet do not sing. As
Berlioz explained in his preface:
If, in the famous garden and cemetery scenes, the dialogue between the
lovers, the asides of Juliet and the passionate transports of Juliet are not sung,
if the duets of love and despair are entrusted instead to the orchestra, the
reasons are numerous and easily grasped. Firstly, and this reason alone would
be sufficient justification for the composer, it is because he is writing a
symphony and not an opera. Secondly, duets of this kind have been treated
vocally thousands of time before by the greatest masters, making it wise,
therefore, as well as unusual, to attempt another mode of expression. In
addition, the very sublimity of this love story made its realization so fraught
with pitfalls for the composer that he had to give his imagination greater
freedom than the precise meaning of sung words would have allowed.
Consequently, he turned to the language of instruments, a language far richer,
less restricting, more varied and, by its very vagueness, incomparably more
powerful.
Tonight’s concert will feature the love scene from Roméo, which is the third of the
seven movements. In the complete performance, this movement begins with a brief
chorus where “the young Capulets, leaving the hall, pass by singing fragments of the
dance music.” The movement is structured by the repeated statements of a single melodic
refrain; in between, violas and cellos, then violins, and finally woodwinds play their
various strains of magical beauty, separated by short agitated interludes and an
instrumental recitativo (cellos). It is like a real dialogue between two lovers; in fact,
British musicologist Ian Kemp has shown in a recent study how the music corresponds,
almost line by line, to Shakespeare's balcony scene. The most striking evidence for this
may be found, perhaps, during the last return of the refrain, when the lyrical melody is
angrily interrupted by the violins. Here the Nurse is calling for Juliet: “Madam! Madam!”
Eventually, the music fades into silence as the lovers part; the refrain becomes
fragmented and completely disintegrates at the end.
Flute Concerto (1926)
by Carl Nielsen (Sortelung, Denmark, 1865 – Copenhagen, 1931)
It has taken the international music world a long time to acknowledge Carl Nielsen as one
of the major composers of his time. A towering figure in his native Denmark, he has not
won a constant place on American concert programs until relatively recently.
Nielsen belonged to the “pre-modern” generation of Debussy, Mahler, Strauss, and
Sibelius, all born, like him, in the 1860s, one or two decades before the members of the
more radical Schoenberg-Stravinsky-Bartók generation. By the 1920s, Nielsen’s
contemporaries were either dead (Debussy and Mahler) or had stopped composing
(Sibelius); Strauss had turned his back on his earlier experiments and was writing mainly
operas in a post-Romantic idiom. Nielsen was almost alone in his generation to move
forward in the years after World War I, developing a style based on a personal blend of
traditional and modern elements.
Nielsen wrote his Flute Concerto (1926) after completing the last of his six
symphonies. He had written a Wind Quintet four years earlier, and he decided to write a
concerto for each of the players who had been involved in the first performance. In these
concertos, he intended not only to give each instrumentalist a solo work in which to
shine, but also to portray their individual personalities. This may explain the great
difference in tone between this work and the only other wind concerto Nielsen
completed, the one for clarinet (1928). That work’s dedicatee, Aage Oxenvad, must have
been a rather irascible person, while the flutist Gilbert-Jespersen was said to possess a
“fastidiously refined” character, and to be a great lover of French music – traits quite
evident from Nielsen’s music. Gilbert-Jespersen’s “intense lyrical strain” and especially
his “robust sense of humor” are also amply reflected in the concerto.
The Flute Concerto is in two movements and follows classical musical forms (sonata
and rondo). The themes are often of classical simplicity, yet his use of harmony and
sound color is entirely novel. Neither tonal in a traditional sense nor “atonal” as
Schoenberg, Nielsen’s music moves freely from key to key, as if searching for the right
one, and mixes conventional sonorities in an utterly non-conventional way. The Flute
Concerto uses a relatively small orchestra but Nielsen combines his reduced forces with
great ingenuity. His fondness for the timpani is evident in many places; the trombone
glissandos in the second movement are greatly humoristic. (As Jack Lawson writes in his
book on Nielsen (Phaidon Press, 1997): “In the Flute Concerto a trombone plays the role
of a buffoon...and it acts as a foil to the genteel flute, a dig at Jespersen. It has been
suggested that the humorous trombone, an instrument Nielsen had played in the military
band, may represent the composer...”) The clarinet, in anticipation of the clarinet
concerto Nielsen was to write, frequently challenges the flute soloist and engages in
dialogues or duet-cadenzas with him (or her). All in all, the concerto manages to infuse a
traditional framework with a rather innovative musical technique, and – most importantly
in a concerto – with a highly virtuosic treatment of the solo instrument. It is undoubtedly
one of the most important twentieth-century flute concertos.
Ma mère l’oye (“Mother Goose”, 1908-1911)
by Maurice Ravel (Ciboure, France, 1875 – Paris, 1937)
Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose has nothing to do with “Humpty-Dumpty” or “Peter,
Peter, Pumpkin Eater.” His Mother Goose (or Ma mère l’oye) is a French storyteller,
famous since 1697, the year Charles Perrault (1628–1703) published his collection of old
and new tales in a book that became known popularly as “Mother Goose.” The collection
contained, among others, the stories of Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood.
Ravel was inspired by Perrault’s collection as well as some other fairy-tale classics
when, in 1908, he decided to write a short suite for piano duet, intended as a gift for
Mimi and Jean Godebski, the children of his friends Cipa and Ida Godebski. He
orchestrated the suite in 1911, and the same year, he expanded it into a ballet score by
adding two new movements and a few interludes. The two new movements, “Prelude”
and “Spinning-Wheel Dance and Scene,” precede the five taken from the piano suite.
Ravel’s original idea in Ma mère l’oye had been to write a children’s piece that could
be performed by children. He initially intended the work to be played by Jean and Mimi.
In the end, the suite proved too difficult for the young Godebskis, and Ravel recruited
two extremely gifted young pianists, Jeanne Leleu and Geneviève Durony (six and seven
years old, respectively), for the premiere. His intention to write music that children would
appreciate is reflected by the simplicity of the melodic writing, apparent even in the lush
colors of the orchestral writing.
In order to transform his suite of self-contained scenes into a coherent ballet, Ravel
chose the tale of Sleeping Beauty as his central storyline, with the other stories appearing
as dreams seen by the princess during her hundred-year slumber. The fairytale
atmosphere is established in the Prelude with haunting horn calls, mystical string
tremolos and some woodwind figures imitating the birds of the forest. Some of the
melodies of the subsequent movements are also anticipated, such as the theme of the
Sleeping Beauty’s Pavane and the sigh of the Beast (solo contrabass).
Dance of the Spinning Wheel and Scene (Danse du rouet et scène) follows without a
break. The young princess, playing with the spinning wheel, is wounded by the distaff
and loses consciousness. The lively 6/8 rhythms and rolling sixteenth-note figures that
have been associated with the spinning wheel, at least since Schubert’s song “Gretchen
am Spinnrade,” are suddenly interrupted by a menacing woodwind motif. As the Princess
falls asleep, the opening figure of the prelude returns to set the stage for the “five
children’s pieces” (cinq pièces enfantines) that are about to begin. (Ravel slightly
changed their order from the original, moving up the scene of Beauty and the Beast to
follow directly after the Pavane.)
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty (Pavane de la belle au bois dormant). The pavane is a
slow dance of Spanish origin to which Ravel had first turned in his early Pavane for a
Dead Princess. In the original version, this new Pavane was rather brief, consisting of a
single motif, soft and delicate, repeated by various instruments of the orchestra. Ravel
expanded it in the ballet considerably, introducing a Good Fairy who gives a signal with
her whistle (piccolo), whereupon two blackamoors appear on the stage. According to the
scenario printed in the score:
The Fairy entrusts them with the task of guarding the Princess’s sleep and
disappears. The blackamoors come forward, toward the Princess and take
ceremonial bows. They unfold a banner on which is written the name of the
first tale to be told: “The Conversations of Beauty and the Beast.”
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast (Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête)
This story is very well known, but few actually remember the name of its author, Marie
Leprince de Beaumont (1757). The conversation that inspired the music was reprinted in
the score:
“When I think of your good heart, you don’t seem so ugly.”
“Oh, I should say so! I have a good heart, but I am a monster.”
“There are many men who are more monstrous than you.”
“If I were witty I would pay you a great compliment to thank you, but I am
only a beast.”
...
“Beauty, would you like to be my wife?”
“No, Beast!”
...
“I die happy because I have the pleasure of seeing you once again.”
“No, my dear Beast, you shall not die. You shall live to become my husband.”
... The Beast had disappeared, and she beheld at her feet a prince more
handsome than Amor, who was thanking her for having lifted his spell.
The movement is in the tempo of a slow waltz. The Beauty is represented by the clarinet,
the Beast by the contrabassoon. The two instruments take turns at first, and then join in a
duet that becomes more and more impassioned. After a fortissimo climax and a measure
of silence, an expressive violin solo (with harmonics) brings the movement back to its
original tempo as the Beast is transformed into a handsome prince. For the ballet version,
Ravel added a short interlude in which the blackamoors greet the Princess and unroll a
new banner with the name of the next story:
Tom Thumb (Petit Poucet)
The score is preceded by a short excerpt from Perrault’s story:
He thought he would be able to find the path easily by means of the bread he
had strewn wherever he had walked. But he was quite surprised when he
couldn’t find a single crumb; the birds had come and eaten them all.
Tom Thumb’s wanderings are depicted here by a steady motion in eighth
notes in the strings, over which the woodwinds play a quiet “walking”
melody. The birds referred to in the story are indicated by a solo violin
playing harmonic glissandos against a twittering flute and piccolo.
The interlude following this scene, in which the blackamoors bring out yet another
banner, contains a virtuoso cadenza for harp and celesta.
Little Homely, Empress of the Pagodas (Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes)
The story on which this movement was based was written by the Countess d’Aulnoy, a
contemporary of Perrault. The heroine is a beautiful princess who was made ugly by a
wicked witch. She travels to a distant country inhabited by tiny, munchkin-like people
called “pagodes.” (Eventually, as one might expect, she is restored to her original beauty
and finds her Prince Charming.)
As in the previous movements, Ravel concentrated on a single image from the story,
and he wrote it down at the head of the score:
She undressed and got into the bath. Immediately the pagodes and
pagodesses began to sing and to play instruments. Some had theorbos [large
lutes] made from walnut shells; some had viols made from almond shells; for
the instruments had to be of a size appropriate to their own.
The music is a study in turn-of-the-century Orientalism, with a lively pentatonic
melody (playable on the black keys of the piano), colorfully orchestrated. In a more
serious middle section, Little Homely dances with the Green Serpent (who will turn out
to be Prince Charming, also disguised by an evil spell). The dance of the “pagodes” then
returns, followed by an interlude that begins with a horn fanfare evoking a hunt.
“Everyone withdraws in haste; the blackamoors hurry to lift up the canvas in the back,”
revealing the fairyworld of the prelude, whose musical material briefly returns as a
transition to:
The Fairy Garden (Le jardin féerique)
This movement does not seem to be based on any particular fairy tale. It is a celebration
of the splendor of this miraculous garden, where the sun never goes down and everyone
lives a blessed and happy life. The music is a single crescendo from a soft and low string
sonority to a veritable feast of sound, resplendent with harp, celesta, and glockenspiel. In
the ballet, this is obviously the moment where Prince Charming arrives and awakens the
Princess, the two of them living happily ever after.
~Notes by Peter Laki
The Oberlin Chamber Orchestra
VIOLIN I
Paul Hauer,
concertmaster
Ran Cheng,
assistant principal
Augusta McKay Lodge
Josie Davis
Yada Lee
Julia Connor
Elizabeth Cooke
McKenzie Bauer
Amy Hess
Summer Lusk
Henry Allison
Hattie Ahn
Alex Youssefian
VIOLIN II
Rachel Iba,
principal
Katherine Floriano
assistant principal
William Overcash
Alex Watanabe
Dorisiya Yosifova
Will Watkins
Tatiana Sutherland
Emmy Tisdel
Zhao, Jieying
Yetto, Caterina
Elizabeth CastroAbrams
VIOLA
Ryan Fox,
principal
Sarah Toy,
assistant principal
Kyle Aungst
Becky Johnson
Sarah Hill
Cassie Tomás
Brea Warner
CELLO
Youn Kyung Kim,
principal
Rose-Marie Bart,
assistant principal
Julia Henderson
Joshua Morris
Jennifer Carpenter
Jaime Feldman
Nathan Klein
Sylvia Woodmansee
BASS
Shota Horikawa,
principal
Tyler Vallet,
assistant principal
Aaron Kanter
Marco Retana
FLUTE
Amelia Dicks B
Annie Gordon R
Katherine Ma
Elena Covarrubias
OBOE
Gigi Brady N
Virginia McDowellB,
R
Leonardo Ziporyn
HORN
Kevin Grasel
Katy Hatch N
Ellen Hurley
Melissa Kravets
Hannah Parkins
Valerie Sly B, R
TROMBONE
Matthew Marchand
TIMPANI
Kevin Scollo
PERCUSSION
Justin Gunter
Holden Lai
Michael Mazzullo
HARP
Bethany Wheeler
CELESTA
Marika Yasuda
STUDENT MANAGERS
Eric Anderson
Aaron Plourde
LIBRARIAN & MANAGER
Michael Roest
ENGLISH HORN
Timothy Daniels B
Gigi Brady R
CLARINET
Owen McTigue B
Cesar Palacio
Dustin Chung N
Jarrett Hoffman R
BASSOON
Hunter Gordon B
Molly Murphy
Ben Roidl-Ward N, R
Eric Yao
CONTRA BASSOON
Carl Gardner
Winds and Brass are
listed alphabetically.
Superscripts indicate
principal players:
B
= Berlioz
= Nielsen
R = Ravel
N