Béla, Edgar and Friends

Carlos Kalmar, conductor
Béla Fleck, Banjo
Zakir Hussain, Tabla
Edgar Meyer, Double Bass
Chris Thile, Mandolin

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Carnival Overture, Op. 92

Vital Stats

Composer born
Sept. 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, near Kralupy in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic)

Died
May 1, 1904, Prague

Work composed
1891

World premiere
Dvořák conducted the world premiere on Apr. 28, 1892, at the National Theater in Prague.

Oregon Symphony premiere
Oct. 27, 1912, with Harold Bayley conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performance
Sept. 16, 2001, with James DePreist conducting

Instrumentation
Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, harp and strings

Estimated duration
9 minutes

Dvořák wrote this overture as the second in a trilogy of concert overtures, originally titled Nature, Life and Love. Later he changed the names to In Nature’s Realm, Carnival and Othello and gave each its own opus number. Dvořák used the same theme in all three overtures and intended them to be performed together, which is how he conducted them at the premiere. Today, however, only the Carnival Overture remains part of the standard orchestral repertoire.

In Dvořák’s own program notes for the Carnival Overture, he wrote: “A wanderer reaches the city at nightfall, where a carnival of pleasure reigns supreme. On every side is heard the clangor of instruments, mingled with shouts of joy and the unrestrained hilarity of people giving vent to their feelings in the songs and dance tunes.”

From the opening bars, the Overture explodes with sound, featuring the clanging of the triangle and the rattling tambourine, which captures the frenzied energy of the carnival. This is offset by a slower section, signaled by a blaring French horn, which then subsides into a quiet duet for flute and oboe. Without warning, the mad dash of the opening music returns to conclude the overture with a jubilant shout.

CHRIS THILE
Concerto for Mandolin and Orchestra

Vital Stats

Composer born
Feb. 20, 1981, in Oceanside, CA

Work composed
2008-9; co-commissioned by Interlochen and the Colorado Symphony, together with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Winston-Salem Symphony, Delaware Symphony Orchestra and Portland Symphony Orchestra

World premiere
Jeffrey Kahane led the Colorado Symphony on Sept. 17, 2009, at Boettcher Symphony Hall, Denver, with the composer performing the solo part.

Oregon Symphony premiere
At this concert (West Coast premiere)

Instrumentation
Solo mandolin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, timpani, cymbals, triangle, piano and strings

Estimated duration
23 minutes

Chris Thile (pronounced THEE-lee) is a mandolin-playing phenomenon. Not yet 30 years old, he recorded his first solo album at age 13. Since then, he has wowed audiences around the world as the mandolin player and vocalist for the Grammy award-winning progressive bluegrass group Nickel Creek, and, more recently, with the band Punch Brothers, which fuses bluegrass and classical styles. A Washington Post critic described Thile as “the most virtuosic American ever to play the mandolin.” Now Thile the composer is venturing into uncharted territory: a concerto for solo mandolin, accompanied by full orchestra.

“I like music that challenges me, and I’d like this piece to challenge listeners,” said Thile in a recent interview. “I want to be the kind of musician who writes engaging music, music that inspires thought, if not instantaneous admiration.” Thile’s mandolin concerto, which received its world premiere in Colorado just over a week before tonight’s West Coast premiere with the Oregon Symphony, has plenty of ideas and sounds for the listener to ponder long after the last note is played.

There are a few other concertos for mandolin in the orchestral repertoire (Vivaldi wrote one), but none that sound like this. One might reasonably expect a mandolin concerto by an American composer to draw upon the instrument’s bluegrass roots, but Thile’s concerto takes the sound of the mandolin in a new direction. “It’s not watermelon seed-spitting music,” Thile explained; he describes the tonality of the concerto as “mercurial.” In terms of the harmonic underpinnings, he said: “The rug is always getting pulled out from under you. The tonality keeps sliding away from you.”

Although Thile didn’t begin composing with an underlying concept in mind, other than wanting to explore the collaborative and timbric possibilities of the orchestra, he ended up creating a portrait of his tangled relationship with music. “Music is my greatest love and also the source of my greatest anxiety and fears and (I think most notably) my greatest insecurity,” Thile confesses. “It’s a very complicated, satisfying, vexing relationship, as any great relationship is. This concerto is a coming to terms with that intensely anxious side of my life. The first movement presents, the second movement bemoans and the third movement celebrates that anxiety.”

Thile characterizes the first movement as “a stumbling, labored march – as if the general isn’t totally sure where he’s going.” The second movement explores what is commonly seen as a limitation of the mandolin: its inability to sustain notes (like a harpsichord, notes played on a mandolin decay instantly). Mandolin players usually compensate for this by employing tremolo – the rapid strumming back and forth of a single note – to extend sound. Thile wanted explore the mandolin’s potential to sustain without the use of tremolo. He noted, “The mandolin does have a very fragile and elusive sustain if it’s played right.”

The primary musical theme of the second movement is the haunting four-note rising melody sounded by the F train, which Thile hears every time he travels from his home in Brooklyn, NY, into Manhattan. “It’s frightening because it’s really lonesome,” Thile explained. This poignant quality relates directly to traditional bluegrass music, he adds, which is full of songs about death and loss.

In the final movement – “a rabble-rouser,” Thile says – the anxiety at the heart of the concerto takes center stage. “I’m basically celebrating the things that are messed up about my life,” Thile explains. “It’s set against the most straightforward, solid, unassuming music in the whole concerto.” The melodies flit in and out of ever-shifting meter and tempo changes, in keeping with a mood of “impish delight.”

BÉLA FLECK/ZAKIR HUSSAIN/EDGAR MEYER
Triple Concerto for Banjo, Tabla and Double Bass with Orchestra

Vital Stats

Composers born
Béla Fleck was born on July 10, 1958, in New York City. Zakir Hussain was born on Mar. 9, 1951, in Mumbai, India. Edgar Meyer was born on Nov. 24, 1960, in Tulsa, Okla.

Work composed
2006

World premiere
A co-commission of the Nashville Symphony and Akustiks, LLC. Leonard Slatkin led the Nashville Symphony in the premiere on Sept. 6, 2006, to celebrate the opening of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

Oregon Symphony premiere
At this concert

Instrumentation
Solo banjo, solo bass, solo tabla, 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, lion cymbals, glockenspiel, wind gong, snare drums, triangle, xylophone and strings

Estimated duration
25 minutes

The Triple Concerto for Banjo, Tabla and Double Bass is undeniably unique in the classical music repertoire. Not only is it the only triple concerto for these particular instruments; it’s also one of only a handful of concertos written for three solo instruments of any kind. “Written,” however, isn’t quite the right word to describe the process by which the three composers, banjoist Béla Fleck, tabla player Zakir Hussain and bassist Edgar Meyer, created this singular work.

The music has a loose, improvisatory feel consistent with its conception at Hussain’s home in San Francisco, where the three musicians met to bring the concerto to life. Fleck and Meyer have collaborated on previous projects, including Fleck’s 2001 CD Perpetual Motion, which features classical works performed on non-traditional instruments. Hussain was initially unprepared for how Fleck and Meyer approached music making. “I thought, OK, Western classical music, so it’s going to be on a piece of paper,” said Hussain in an interview for Nashville Public Radio. “But it wasn’t like that. It was playing with them and seeing their personalities emerge in the music … that’s exactly what it is in Indian music, because it’s … improvised. … And when you perform … you express [the music] at that moment the way it’s coming to you. So that connection was there.”

In places the concerto sounds like bluegrass, or “newgrass,” similar to some of Fleck’s and Meyer’s previous work. In other moments, like the opening of the second movement, there is a pensive, introspective quality. The concerto also captures the spiraling, improvised nature of Indian music. In the same interview, Fleck observed: “It is the character of the three of us put into one piece, and the things that we pulled out of each other that wouldn’t normally happen. Edgar and I notice a lot of times when we write together, we write things that we wouldn’t have written separately … and with three people … a lot of interesting things happen.”

Each man suggested ideas to create the concerto’s overall structure. Over time, a slower center movement flanked by faster sections took shape. In the outer movements, the soloists carry on almost constant melodic conversations, and each is also featured in a solo cadenza. Fleck and Meyer composed theirs, while Hussain improvises his for every performance.

At first, the music took shape without an underlying non-musical program. However, in the process of putting the concerto together, an idea emerged about three brothers who, as Nashville Public Radio reporter Craig Havighurst described it, “once spoke a universal musical language, but who separated … to different parts of the world.” Hussain saw the music as a reunion of the descendants of those three brothers. “We started talking to each other and find that there are certain similarities that we have,” he explained. “To me, the piece represents that kind of … reappearance and rediscovery of our roots.”

FRANZ VON SUPPÉ
Overture to Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant), Op. 92

Vital Stats

Composer born
April 18, 1819, Spalato, Dalmatia (now Split, Croatia)

Died
May 21, 1895, Vienna

Work composed
1846

World premiere
Suppé conducted the Overture to Dichter und Bauer on Aug. 24, 1846, in Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wien, as a musical prelude to his operetta, described as “a comedy with songs.”

Oregon Symphony premiere
Apr. 15, 1984, with Norman Leyden conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performance
Nov. 19, 2006, with Gregory Vajda conducting

Instrumentation
2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, ophicleide, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, harp and strings

Estimated duration
9 minutes

The music of Viennese operetta composer Franz von Suppé is much more recognizable than his name, particularly the overture to Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant). This piece has been quoted in some rather un-operatic settings, most notably in a couple of classic Popeye cartoons, The Spinach Overture (1935) and Tots of Fun (1952). Suppé wrote numerous operettas and three full operas, as well as symphonies and a requiem, but Dichter und Bauer, along with just a handful of his other overtures, is the only music of his still regularly performed in this country (a few of Suppé’s operettas do continue to be staged in Europe).

The Dichter und Bauer overture, as Cecelia H. Porter noted, “is a dazzling hodgepodge of sentimental tunefulness (as in the solo cello), boisterous masses of orchestral forces, and ebullient rhythms.” It begins slowly, with a brass chorale that includes the ophicleide, a relative of the modern tuba, which is followed by the aforementioned cello solo. An abrupt string tremolo signals the entrance of the “boisterous masses,” and the music builds both momentum and anticipation as it moves towards its vigorous conclusion.

© Elizabeth Schwartz 2009

Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz

Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and musician based in the Portland area. She is the program annotator for the Oregon Symphony, the Cascade Festival of Music, and has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today, (now heard on American Public Media). Ms. Schwartz holds a B.A. in music from the University of California and an M.M. from Boston University. She can be contacted at schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.