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program notes
Erica Abbey Photography began studying the cello at the age of 8 and was the top prize winner at the 2002 Tchaikovsky Competition, in addition to being awarded the Special Prize for his interpretation of the Rococo Variations.
Johannes Moser last appeared with the BSO in October 2013, performing Tchaikovsky’ s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Jun Märkl, conductor.
About the concert:
Dancin’ Blue Crabs!
Jonathan Leshnoff
Leshnoff born in New Brunswick, NJ., 1973.
Composer’ s statement: Composing music can be a long process but always begins with one source of inspiration. Creating Dancin’ Blue Crabs! for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’ s Centennial composition project was a challenging, unique task that began with a list of audience suggestions. Looking through 190 suggestions was … interesting … to say the least. I was one step away before giving up, until I got suggestion # 154. Three short words that read:“ Dancin’ blue crabs!” This suggestion was accompanied by a brief explanation:“ a dance that sounds the way we might see crabs moving.” Being the nice Jewish boy I am, my experience with crabs is quite limited. Did blue crabs dance?
Jonathan Leshnoff
Shortly after I read this audience suggestion, someone showed me a video of a blue crab dancing. The video was so funny that it instantly became the inspiration for the composition. My experience watching the blue crabs dancing is portrayed in this fun, short piece that increases the solo contrabassoon repertoire by 100 percent! Its dedication reads,“ Happy 100, hon.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English horn, three clarinets, including E-flat and bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings.
Symphony No. 1
Samuel Barber
Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 9, 1910; died in New York City, January 23, 1981
Only 25 when he wrote his First Symphony, Samuel Barber was a recent graduate of Philadelphia’ s Curtis Institute of Music where, even as a student, he had attracted the attention of major musical leaders. In 1935, he won the Prix de Rome, which sent him to the Italian capital as, in the jury’ s words,“ the most talented and deserving student of music in America.” Before crossing the Atlantic, he began his First Symphony while vacationing on the Maine coast that summer; he completed it in Rome and France early in 1936.
The Symphony was the most ambitious work he’ d yet tackled, but it showed that Barber was already a master of formal symphonic construction and of the various orchestral instruments, individually and collectively. It also displayed the gift for writing memorable, highly expressive themes that would fill his music from the Adagio for Strings to his Pulitzer Prizewinning opera Vanessa.
With all these qualities, the Symphony did not have to wait long for recognition. Premiered in Rome in December 1936, it hit the international circuit when the respected conductor Artur Rodzinski led its American premiere with The Cleveland Orchestra on January 21, 1937, then took it to Carnegie Hall in March, and the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic in July. There Arturo Toscanini was so impressed he asked Barber for a new work to be introduced on his national radio broadcasts with the NBC Symphony in 1938. Those performances of the Adagio for Strings and the First Essay for Orchestra made Barber a household name in America, a remarkable odyssey for a composer not yet 30 years of age.
Cast in one movement like Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony( somewhat of a formal model for Barber), the Symphony nevertheless encapsulates the feeling of four movements. It is built from three themes, all presented within the first two minutes of its“ first movement” opening section. Heralded by brass, the work opens dramatically with a bold, upward-leaping melody( the principal theme) proclaimed by all the strings. Totally different in character is the quieter, more introspective second theme, a meandering melody introduced in the cloudy, melancholy colors of English horn and violas. After a passage of scurrying string music, drama returns for the third theme, a twisting idea forcefully stated by strings and woodwinds. These themes are developed in music of intriguing delicacy and subtlety that gradually builds to a fierce climax and closes in a brash downward slide.
Now the tempo accelerates, and Barber transforms his dramatic principal theme into a scampering fugue subject for a scherzo section. Full of zesty rhythmic play, this music wittily challenges all the orchestra’ s instruments. As it flickers out in the bassoon, the solo oboe— one of Barber’ s favorite instruments— launches a haunting“ slow movement” over a haze of strings; its poignant melody is derived from the introspective second theme. The strings, assisted by brass, carry this music to a passionate climax.
From the silence that follows, the cellos and basses begin a repeating passacaglia pattern; grave and stately, it is a stretchedout fragment of the principal theme. As this finale music crests, we hear again the twisting third theme soaring in the strings and striving powerfully against the principal theme in the brass. In just
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