Noseda and the NSO - Digital Program - CenterBill | The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Program

Lin Ma, clarinet

Sue Heineman, bassoon

Movements:

Allegro moderato
Andante
Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo (Played without pause)

Intermission

Movements:

Un poco adagio — Allegro con spirito
Andante con moto
Dance: Allegro giocoso

Robert Oppelt, bass

Movements:

Prelude (after Pasquini): Allegro moderato — Allegro — Vivo — Allegretto — Tempo I
The Dove (after De Gallot): Andante espressivo
The Hen (after Rameau): Allegro vivace
The Nightingale (anon. English): Andante mosso
The Cuckoo (after Pasquini): Allegro

Artists

Conductor

Learn More about Gianandrea Noseda

Learn More about Gianandrea Noseda
Clarinet

Learn More about Lin Ma

Learn More about Lin Ma
Bassoon

Learn More about Sue Heineman

Learn More about Sue Heineman
Bass

Learn More about Robert Oppelt

Learn More about Robert Oppelt

Notes on the Program

Serenade for Orchestra (1957)

William Grant Still

Born May 11, 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi.
Died December 3, 1978 in Los Angeles.

William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, where his father was town bandmaster. At sixteen, Still matriculated as a medical student at Wilberforce University in Ohio, but soon switched to music and graduated in 1915; two years he later entered Oberlin College. In 1921, he moved to New York as oboist with the orchestra of the Noble Sissle–Eubie Blake revue Shuffle Along. There he studied with Varèse, ran Black Swan Records, and in 1928 received the Harmon Award for that year’s most significant contribution to Black culture in America. While continuing to compose large-scale classical pieces, Still also wrote and arranged for radio, Broadway shows and Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw and other popular bandleaders. After moving to Los Angeles in 1934, he arranged for films (Lost Horizon) and television (Gunsmoke, Perry Mason). Still continued to hold an important place in American music until his death in 1978.

Duet-Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon with String Orchestra and Harp (1947)

Richard Strauss

Born June 11, 1864 in Munich.
Died September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Strauss largely withdrew from public life after 1935 to his villa at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps. He lived there throughout World War II, spared the physical ravages of the conflict, but deeply wounded by the loss of many friends and the bombing of Dresden, Munich and Vienna. In October 1945, under the threat of being called before the Denazification Board, he moved to Switzerland, where he lived for the next four years. Strauss and his wife, Pauline, stayed in various hotels in Lugano and Pontresina (her tantrums and complaints led to frequent management requests for them to seek lodgings elsewhere) before settling into the Palace Hotel in Montreux. Strauss was cleared by the Board in June 1948, but chose to stay in Switzerland for medical treatment that winter, returning to Garmisch in May 1949, just four months before his death. Though increasingly feeble during his Swiss sojourn, his mind was clear and he continued to compose. The Duet-Concertino was written late in 1947 for the chamber orchestra of Radio Lugano.

Behind the Duet-Concertino may lie a charming image. Strauss told the bassoonist Hugo Burghauser that he had in mind a dancing princess, represented by the clarinet, alarmed by the grotesque cavortings of a bear (bassoon). When the princess dances with the bear, the beast turns into a handsome prince. How carefully this little tale inspired (or can be heard in) the music is conjecture, but it might help to explain the structural progression of the work’s three continuous movements: the domination of the first movement by the clarinet and antithetical nature of the thematic material of the two soloists; the prominence of the bassoon in the Andante; and the equality finally achieved by the soloists in the sprightly rondo-finale. Strauss couched the soloists’ conversations in the modest accompanimental sonority of strings and harp, with a quintet of solo strings drawn from the larger ensemble to create chamber-music textures with the clarinet and bassoon throughout.

Lyric for Strings (1946)

George Walker

Born June 27, 1922 in Washington, D.C.
Died August 23, 2018 in Montclair, New Jersey.

George Walker was the son of a Jamaican immigrant father who worked his way through Temple University Medical School to become a physician and a musical mother who introduced her son to the piano at age five. George gave his first public recital at Howard University when he was fourteen, and attended Oberlin College on a full scholarship; he graduated at age eighteen with highest honors in his class. Advanced study at the renowned Curtis Institute in Philadelphia followed and in 1945 he became the school’s first Black graduate to receive Artist Diplomas in both piano and composition. Further piano study in France in 1947 helped prepare him for several years as a touring virtuoso in Europe and America. Walker taught at Dillard University in New Orleans in 1954-1955 before completing his doctoral degree after just one year at the Eastman School in Rochester, and was thereafter on the faculties of several noted colleges, conservatories and universities. He was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, induction into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, and seven honorary doctorates.

Walker wrote of his Lyric for Strings, which he dedicated to the memory of his grandmother, “After a brief introduction, the principal theme that permeates the entire work is introduced by the first violins. A static interlude is followed by successive imitations of the theme that lead to an intense climax. The final section presents a somewhat more animated statement of the same thematic material. The coda recalls the quiet interlude that appeared earlier.”

Elegy No. 1 in D major for Bass and Strings (1870)

Giovanni Bottesini

Born December 24, 1821 in Crema, Italy.
Died July 7, 1889 in Parma.

Giovanni Bottesini, composer, conductor and the preeminent double bass virtuoso of the mid-19th century, was born in 1821 in northern Italy. His father, Pietro, a clarinetist and composer, early taught his son the rudiments of music, and before he was eleven, young Giovanni had sung in several choirs, played timpani in the local theater orchestra, and studied violin. Bottesini’s father took his precocious son to Milan in 1835 with hope of enrolling him in the Conservatory, but they learned upon their arrival that scholarships remained only for players of bassoon and double bass. Giovanni applied himself with such vigor to the latter instrument that he was accepted into the school only a few weeks later. He left the Conservatory after four years of study with a graduation prize for his solo playing. With his winnings, Bottesini purchased a fine instrument made by the old Milanese master Giuseppe Testore that, legend has it, the young musician found beneath a pile of rubbish in a puppet theater.

During the decade after 1839, Bottesini lived as a free-lance musician, a period that included a residence in Havana in 1846 as principal bassist of the orchestra of the Teatro Tacon, the production there of his first opera (based, appropriately, on the subject of Cristoforo Colombo), and a sensational tour of the United States. When Bottesini returned to Europe, he was soon in demand as a soloist across the Continent and in England; he became universally known as the “Paganini of the Double Bass.” In addition to his performing engagements, Bottesini also held several important conducting assignments — the high point of his podium career came when he led the premiere of Verdi’s Aida on Christmas Eve 1871 in Cairo to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. The last months before his death, on July 7, 1889, were spent as director of the Parma Conservatory.

The Elegy No. 1 for Bass dates from 1870, when Bottesini began devoting himself principally to composition. When heard alone, the Elegy is lyrical and poignant, but Bottesini also used it in his performances as the slow introduction to a flamboyantly virtuosic Tarantella.

Serenade for Strings, Op. 1 (1928 for string quartet, arranged for string orchestra in 1943)

Samuel Barber

Born March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Died January 23, 1981 in New York City.

In 1924, at the age of fourteen, Samuel Barber entered the inaugural class of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. He first studied piano (with Isabelle Vengerova), and in successive years added lessons in composition (Rosario Scalero), voice (Emilio de Gogorza) and conducting (Fritz Reiner), eliciting the highest praise from his instructors for his musical gifts and his keen intelligence. In 1928, when he was just eighteen and after only two years of study with Scalero, Barber composed a Serenade for String Quartet, which he deemed significant enough to christen as his Op. 1. Soon after completing the Serenade, Barber began his regular travel to Europe for music study and general cultural education, and in the bustle of his departure in May 1929 he lost track of the score. It was not found until the following spring, when the work received its premiere on a concert of pieces by Scalero’s students at Curtis on May 5, 1930. The Serenade was arranged for string orchestra in 1943, while Barber was serving in the United States Army.

The Serenade begins with a somber introduction whose opening motive is transformed into the quick-tempo main theme of the truncated sonata form that follows. A more expansive subsidiary subject and a tiny development section lead to a condensed reprise of the main theme to round out the movement. The pensive Andante is in two brief formal strophes, each containing a lyrical melody in gently rocking meter and an arching motive whose notes are grouped in pairs. The final movement is a Dance whose outer sections are based on a playful strain that is contrasted by the more sedate episode at the movement’s center.

The Birds, Suite for Small Orchestra (1927)

Ottorino Respighi

Born July 9, 1879 in Bologna.
Died April 18, 1936 in Rome.

Ottorino Respighi had an abiding interest in the music of earlier times, and edited many compositions by such venerable composers as Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Tartini and Vitali for publication. His belief in the old values and forms was reflected in his works, several of which employ ancient tunes and techniques. Among the most charming of his works based on old models are the three sets of Ancient Airs and Dances (1917, 1924, 1932) and The Birds (1927), arrangements of Italian, French and English lute and keyboard pieces of the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. In his arrangements, which kept the original melodies and harmonies intact while enriching their textures and providing them with a tasteful orchestral garb, Respighi not only preserved the mood of these old courtly songs and dances — by turns wistful and robust — but also made them thoroughly modern in instrumental brilliance and musical continuity.

The initial avian essay of The Birds (Prelude) draws on the music of Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710), a well-known Italian Baroque organist, teacher and composer of oratorios and keyboard works, for the themes of its opening and closing sections. Fragments from later movements are previewed in its central portion. The Dove, filled with gentle ornamentations depicting the rustle of wings, is based on a piece by Jacques de Gallot, a little-known 17th-century lutenist and composer. The third movement (The Hen) derives from a famous harpsichord work by Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764). The sweetly flowing Nightingale originated in a composition, according to the score, by “an anonymous 17th-century Englishman.” The bright, chirruping finale (The Cuckoo) returns to the music of Pasquini, and ends with a reminiscence of the melody that opened the suite.

Staff

Staff for the Concert Hall

Theater Manager
*Allen V. McCallum Jr.

Box Office Treasurer
Deborah Glover

The technicians at the Kennedy Center are represented by Local #22, Local #772, and Local #798 I.A.T.S.E.

AFL-CIO-CLC, the professional union of theatrical technicians.

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The box office at the Kennedy Center is represented by IATSE #868.

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*Represented by ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

Steinway Piano Gallery is the exclusive area representative of Steinway & Sons and Boston pianos, the official pianos of the Kennedy Center.

NSO staff

Executive Director
Gary Ginstling

The Noseda Era Fund

Through the universal language of orchestral music, the National Symphony Orchestra performs exhilarating concerts meant to inspire, delight, and captivate audiences here in D.C. and around the world. With Maestro Gianandrea Noseda’s visionary leadership, dedication to the NSO, and passion for sharing music, we can raise the Orchestra’s artistic profile locally, nationally, and across the globe during his tenure as Music Director.

The Noseda Era Fund will ensure the success of Maestro Noseda’s priorities and will afford future generations of music lovers the opportunity to experience the best in symphonic music. The NSO extends its sincerest appreciation to the following Noseda Era Fund supporters for their extraordinary philanthropic commitments.

Noseda Era Supporters

Joan Bialek and Louis Levitt, MD

Janet Brown and Michael Brewer

Jennifer and David Fischer

Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman

The Galena-Yorktown Foundation

The Honorable Jan Lodal and Mrs. Elizabeth Lodal

Janet and Jerry Kohlenberger

Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather

Doris Matsui and Roger Sant

Cathy and Scot McCulloch

Melanie and Larry Nussdorf