{ Program Notes
performed composition. Using the simplest of musical means, it is a work whose
sincerity and depth of feeling shoot directly
to the heart. Called our “national funeral
music,” it has eloquently expressed Americans’ grief at the ceremonies for Franklin
D. Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy
in 1963. In 1986, it moved a new generation in the Academy Award-winning film
Platoon, mourning the young lives snuffed
out by the Vietnam War.
Instrumentation: String orchestra.
Guitar Concerto
(World Premiere and
BSO Co-Commission)
Jonathan Leshnoff
Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey,
September 8, 1973; now living in Baltimore
Jonathan Leshnoff
20 O v ertur e |
www. bsomusic .org
K at ya Ch i li n gi r i
Named by The Washington Post as one
of the “gifted young composers” of this
generation, Jonathan Leshnoff is a leader
of contemporary American lyricism. In
the past few years, the career of this Baltimore composer has taken off and received
major attention in the U.S. and Europe.
The Philadelphia Orchestra premiered a
concerto from him for its principal flutist
Jeffrey Khaner in 2011. He is currently
working on commissions from major
American orchestras for his Second and
Third symphonies. His song cycle Monica
Songs was co-commissioned by Carnegie
Hall and premiered there by Jennifer
Rivera and Robert Spano in October
2013. And the Naxos label has embarked
on a three-disk project showcasing Leshnoff’s music; the first disk, featuring his
impressive Violin Concerto, was among its
top-40 sellers in 2009.
It’s not difficult to understand why this
professor of music at Towson University
is being embraced by the music world.
Leshnoff writes music that is emotionally
powerful, melodically rich, elegantly orchestrated, harmonically innovative, and
thoroughly accessible. Unlike many composers working today, he is unafraid to
tackle the traditional big genres of classical
music: symphonies, concertos, oratorios,
and string quartets. “My aesthetic is to
breath new, invigorating life into timehonored traditions and forms,” he says.
Though he has composed concertos for a
variety of string and wind instruments (this
Concerto will be his seventh), Leshnoff
never imagined he would write something
for the guitar. However, after the success of
his Starburst at the BSO in 2010, Marin Alsop and the Orchestra commissioned him
to write a concerto for the renowned guitar
virtuoso Manuel Barrueco, who, like Leshnoff, is based in Baltimore. Three other
orchestras signed on as co-commissioners:
Spain’s Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado
de Asturias and its music director Rossen
Milanov; the Nashville Symphony and
Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero; and
the Reno Philharmonic and music director
Laura Jackson.
“Every instrument has its own soul or
essence,” comments Leshnoff. He admits
that the guitar, with its idiosyncratic
fingerings, posed special challenges for
him. His Concerto was the product of “a
close collaboration” with Barrueco, whom
Leshnoff reports, “was remarkably generous and patient working through ideas
with me. It really helped that we lived in
the same city — this Concerto was really
made in Baltimore.”
With its delicate sonority, the guitar is a
notoriously difficult instrument to balance
against a modern symphony orchestra.
Leshnoff opted to have the instrument
slightly amplified, but he also took extreme
care with the orchestration. Rarely does the
full ensemble play together with the guitar.
The Concerto is structured in the
traditional three movements. Angular,
unsettled, and using irregular rhythms,
movement one (Maestoso, Allegro) is fast,
witty, and very virtuosic for the soloist. The
opening motive for the guitar — an upward leap to a sustained note, followed by
a gentle stepwise descent — comes back at
climactic moments in all three movements.
Only strings, harp, and two bowed
vibraphones accompany the soloist in
the Adagio second movement, which
bears the title of the sixth letter of the
Hebrew alphabet, “vav,” associated with
“humility” or, in Hebrew, “Hod.” It is a
movement designed to allow the guitar to
realize its special capacity to be quiet and
expressive, and indeed, the soloist here is
a poignant, lyrical singer against a haze of
slow-moving string chords.
Marked “lively,” the finale provides
a counterbalance to the gravitas of the
second movement. Filled with irregular
rhythms and a sense of fun, it has the
feeling of a Spanish dance, a particularly
idiomatic choice for this solo instrument.
Instrumentation: Three flutes, piccolo, two
oboes, three clarinets, bass clarinet, two
bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three
trombones, percussion, harp and strings.
Symphony No. 9 in E Minor,
“From the New World”
Antonín Dvořák
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia (now Czech
Republic), September 8, 1841; died in Prague,
May 1, 1904
At its premiere in the newly opened
Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893,
Dvořák’s last symphony, “From the
New World,” was perhaps the greatest
triumph of the composer’s career, and it
has continued to rank among the most
popular of all symphonies. Yet from its
first reviews, commentators have asked
the question: “Is