{ program notes made her debut at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in the title role of Handel’ s Alcina and returned to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Violetta in La Traviata, to the Atlanta Opera as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette and to the Michigan Opera Theatre as Mimi in La bohème. Previously, she has appeared in semi-staged concerts of Don Giovanni with the Milwaukee Symphony, Mimi in La bohème with the Opéra National de Paris and Adina in L’ Elisir d’ Amore with the Minnesota Opera and has been heard with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lille, the San Diego Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra and many others. Ms. Cabell appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall for Marilyn Horne’ s 75 th birthday gala concert, and as part of Jessye Norman’ s Honor Festival. Her solo debut album,“ Soprano” was named“ Editor’ s Choice” by Gramophone and has received an incredible amount of critical acclaim and several prestigious awards: the 2007 Georg Solti Orphée d’ Or from the French Académie du Disque Lyrique and an Echo Klassik Award in Germany.
Nicole Cabell last appeared with the BSO in December, 2005, performing Handel’ s Messiah, Edward Polochick conducting.
About the concert:
The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra
John Adams
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, February 15, 1947; now living in Berkeley, California
More than any other composer living today, John Adams seems to have the gift of turning contemporary news events into timeless music. In 2003, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2002 choral-orchestral work for the New York Philharmonic, On the Transmigration of Souls, which took words by victims and survivors of the World Trade Center cataclysm of September 11, 2001 and wove them into a haunting memorial. In 1991, his opera The Death of Klinghoffer sprang from the 1985 Palestinian hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer. And in 1987 Adams rocked the operatic world with Nixon in China, a fantasy opera based on Richard Nixon’ s historic 1972 meeting with Mao Tse Tung in Beijing, which he created with director Peter Sellars and poet Alice Goodman.
The Chairman Dances, an out-take from Nixon in China, was first performed by the Milwaukee Symphony on January 31, 1986, nearly two years before the opera debuted in Houston. Adams originally intended it for the opera’ s third act, but soon realized“ it wouldn’ t work at all for the opera— it was a parody of what I imagined Chinese movie music of the 30s sounded like.” Thus the composer turned it into a 12-minute concert piece he subtitled“ A Foxtrot for Orchestra.”
The prominent piano part might stand as Nixon’ s contribution, for he was an enthusiastic amateur pianist.
Adams first found his voice as a composer through the mid-20 th-century musical style of hypnotic pulsing rhythms and slowly shifting tonal chords known as“ minimalism.” An exceptionally eclectic composer who freely draws on many different musical idioms, he now uses minimalism as just another element in his language. Throughout Chairman, we hear minimalist rhythmic pulsing, but we’ ll also hear sensual melodies played by lush Hollywood strings and even touches of big band brass. The prominent piano part might stand as Nixon’ s contribution, for he was an enthusiastic amateur pianist.
Adams provides the work’ s scenario, which takes place in Beijing’ s Great Hall of the People at a banquet hosted by the Americans;“ Madam Mao [ a former actress ] … has gate crashed the presidential banquet. She is seen standing first where she is most in the way of the waiters. After a few minutes, she brings out a box of paper lanterns and hangs them around the hall, then strips down to a cheongsam, skin-tight from neck to ankle, and slit to the hip. She signals the orchestra to play and begins to dance by herself. Mao is becoming excited. He steps down from his poster on the wall and they begin to foxtrot together. They are back in Yenan, on the Long March, dancing to the gramophone.”
Instrumentation: Two flutes including piccolos, two oboes, two clarinets including bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano and strings.
Shéhérazade: Trois poèmes de Tristan Klingsor
Maurice Ravel
Born in Ciboure, France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris, December 28, 1937
Around 1900, Maurice Ravel was one of the founding members of the Apaches, a group of forward-looking young French artists, including writers, painters and composers, who claimed to share a passion“ for Chinese art … Cézanne and Van Gogh, Rameau and Chopin, … the Russians and Debussy.” Another member was the poet / painter / composer Arthur Justin Léon Leclère( 1874 – 1966), who adopted the exotic nom de plume Tristan Klingsor after two leading characters in Richard Wagner’ s operas; the Apaches’ meetings were often held at his home. In 1902, Klingsor completed a collection of 100 poems inspired by the tale of Scheherazade in the Thousand and One Nights as expressed musically by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in his famous orchestral tone poem. The theme of Klingsor’ s poems was the allure of the lands and cultures of Asia to European observers.
One year later, in 1903, Ravel chose three of these poems for his second work on this theme; the first had been a Shéhérazade Overture, written in 1898. He had Klingsor declaim his selected poems over and over for him, so Ravel
September – November 2016 | Overture 41