Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season January-February 2016 | Page 37

program notes {
Marin Alsop

For Marin Alsop’s bio., please see pg. 7.

Colin Currie

From his earliest
years, Colin Currie
forged a pioneering
path in creating new
music for percussion. Born in Scotland,
Mr. Currie studied percussion at the
Junior Department of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama from
1990 to 1994. He went on to graduate
from the Royal Academy of Music in
1998, and played principal timpani
and percussion with both The National
Youth Orchestra of Scotland and The
European Union Youth Orchestra.
Mr. Currie was awarded the Royal
Philharmonic Society Young Artist
Award in 2000 for his inspirational role
in contemporary music-making and
received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award
in 2005. He has premiered works by such
composers as Elliott Carter, Einojuhani
Rautavaara, Jennifer Higdon, Kalevi
Aho, Kurt Schwertsik, Simon Holt,
Alexander Goehr, Dave Maric, Julia
Wolfe and Nico Muhly. He recently had
the privilege of premiering a new work
from Elliott Carter, a double concerto
performed with Pierre-Laurent Aimard
and commissioned by the New York
Philharmonic, Aldeburgh Festival and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
Upcoming commissions include new
works by Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen,
Andrew Norman and Anna Clyne.
Mr. Currie has recorded many concerto,
recital and chamber works including,
most recently, Alexander Goehr’s Since
Brass, nor Stone released on NMC in
September 2013. His recording of Rautavaara’s Incantations with the Helsinki
Philharmonic/Storgårds (Ondine) was
released to critical acclaim and won a
2012 Gramophone Award. Previous
releases by Currie include James MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel with the
Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic on Challenge Classics and Jennifer
Higdon’s Percussion Concerto with the
London Philharmonic, conducted

by Marin Alsop, which won a 2010
Grammy Award.
Colin Currie last appeared with the BSO
in April 2013, performing Christopher
Rouse’s Der Gerettete Alberich, with
Marin Alsop conducting.

About the concert:
Music for the Royal Fireworks

George Frideric Handel

Born in Halle, Saxony (now Germany),
February 23, 1685; died in London,
April 4, 1759

By 1749, when he wrote his Music for the
Royal Fireworks, George Frideric Handel
was 64 and the acknowledged monarch
of British music. He had long outlasted
King George I and was now entertaining his son, George II.
This score of unparalleled instrumental
splendor was created for a spectacular
fireworks display in London to celebrate
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ending
nearly a decade of war — known as the
War of the Austrian Succession
— between Great Britain and Austria on
one side and France, Spain, and various
German principalities on the other. For
months, an elaborate Palladian edifice
was constructed in the city’s Green Park
as a backdrop for the fireworks. George
II insisted that Handel’s music (which
was to be performed before not during
the fireworks) be written only for
“warlike instruments,” that is trumpets,
horns, and drums. Handel, however,
was stubborn enough to override his
majesty’s wishes and include strings
as well. For this first performance on
April 27, 1749, the orchestra consisted
of 24 oboes, 12 bassoons, nine horns,
nine trumpets, three sets of timpani,
and strings! When Handel performed
the music at an indoor concert the next
month, he significantly reduced the
number of wind players.
Even without the extra instruments,
this is the grandest instrumental work
Handel ever wrote and sums up the
splendor of Baroque music just as it

was about to yield to the cooler Classical
style. Its most glorious movement is
its Overture in the ceremonial French
ouverture style: an opening slow section
with stately double-dotted rhythms,
followed by a faster section. Usually, the
fast section would be highly contrapuntal, even fugal in character. However,
knowing that the interplay of so many
separate voices would produce a muddle
in an outdoor situation, Handel instead
stressed splendid antiphonal effects
between the different instrumental
groups. Then follows a series of short
dances: a bourrée and two minuets
drawn from the Baroque dance suite as
well as two character pieces: La Paix,
in which peace is illustrated in a gently
rocking pastorale, and the brilliant
La Réjouissance (“Rejoicing”). Handel
emphasized the contrasting colors of his
large ensemble by specifying different
scoring for the repeated passages.
Percussion Concerto No. 2

James MacMillan

Born in Kilwinning, Scotland, July 16, 1959;
now living in Glasgow, Scotland

From Handel, we move forward more
than 250 years to a work composed just
over a year ago. Featured in 2008 as
one of the BSO’s “Living Beethovens,”
James MacMillan creates visionary,
unforgettable music of immense visceral
power that is a ref X