Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season March-April 2016 | Page 35

program notes {
should turn to Kevin Puts to create a
new work saluting the Orchestra’s 100th
anniversary. Not only has he been on
the faculty of the Peabody Institute since
2006, but he has become one of the nation’s most sought-after composers, for
music in a wide variety of genres including operas, symphonies, concertos, and
orchestral tone poems.
Puts’ opera Silent Night, premiered at
the Minnesota Opera in 2011, won the
2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music and has
subsequently been produced at major
houses in the United States, Canada, and
Europe. In 2015, he followed this success
with another opera for Minnesota, The
Manchurian Candidate based on Richard
Condon’s famous novel, which also was
an extraordinary success. Next November,
in New York City, the superb American
soprano Renée Fleming will premiere a
new Puts work for soprano and orchestra
written expressly for her.

The City is a tone poem that
was co-commissioned to
honor two major American
musical anniversaries:
the BSO’s 100th and
Carnegie Hall’s 125th
Not only Marin Alsop but also the
BSO’s two previous music directors,
Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman,
have embraced Puts’ vibrantly appealing, emotionally expressive music. One
of the composer’s most important pieces,
Vision for cellist Yo-Yo Ma and orchestra,
was commissioned by the Aspen Music
Festival in honor of Maestro Zinman’s
70th birthday. Maestro Temirkanov chose
Puts’ Network for performances here in
2002, and River’s Rush followed in 2006.
Maestra Alsop introduced his Fourth
Symphony, “From Mission San Juan” in
2012 and his Flute Concerto in 2015; she
has also presented many of his works at
her Cabrillo Festival.
The City is a tone poem that was cocommissioned to honor two major American musical anniversaries: the BSO’s 100th

and Carnegie Hall’s 125th and thus will be
performed in both cities. Puts describes its
inspiration and trajectory as follows:
“Though inspired by the city of
Baltimore, The City was intended as an
exploration of many aspects of urban
centers in America. My work on the piece
intensified following the unrest of April
2015, whereupon I realized the potential
for the work to transcend mere illustration
and aspire to the territory of healing.
“Accompanied at its premiere by a film
created by James Bartolomeo, the work
begins kaleidoscopically with panoramic
views of the city, its spires, monuments,
buildings, and infrastructure. Anchored
by a simple two-note motive, this opening
evolved into a depiction of people — all
sorts of people — involved in a variety
of situations. Drums and strings create a
groove together, while woodwinds and
brass introduce primal-sounding melodies.
An anthem arises in the string section,
followed by a deconstruction and rebuilding of this theme, though on less-stable
harmonic ground. A moment of suspense
follows as a single note is sustained
and passed through the sections of the
orchestra. From here, the work gradually
builds to cataclysmic dimensions until
the opening motive — and then the
anthem — are rediscovered. The City
ends in a haze of uncertainty. I imagined
a helicopter making a final pass over the
city until it recedes into the distance.
“We are a species suffering the pains
of its adolescence. Let us have the resolve,
the compassion, and the foresight to force
our own evolution to a place of reason
and harmony.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes (including
piccolos), three oboes (including English
horn), three clarinets (including E-flat clarinet
and bass clarinet), three bassoons (including
contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets,
three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
piano, and strings.

Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp Minor

Gustav Mahler

Born in Kalischt, Bohemia, July 7, 1860;
died in Vienna, May 18, 1911

On February 24, 1901, Gustav Mahler
had his first close brush with death. It
had been a typically frenetic day; he had
conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in
the afternoon, then moved on to the opera
house in the evening to lead a production
of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Later that
night, he suffered a violent hemorrhage,
and his sister Justine found him lying in a
pool of blood. He recalled, “While I was
hovering on the border between life and
death, I wondered whether it would not be
better to have done with it at once, since
everyone must come to that in the end.”
But Mahler’s constitution was still robust
and after surgery he recovered rapidly.
After this crisis, the summer of 1901
turned out to be the most productive and
serene of Mahler’s career. Because of his
nonstop conducting career from September through May, only the summer
months were available for composing. In
1901, a new summer home awaited him,
a splendid villa he had had built in the
village of Maiernigg on the shores of the
peaceful Wörtersee in southern Austria.
The composer was delighted with this
retreat. “It’s too beautiful, one shouldn’t
allow oneself such a thing,” his puritan
conscience complained. Up a steep path
in the woods was his little composing
cottage or Häuschen, meagerly furnished
with a piano, a worktable, and a chair or
two. Here that summer, he created th