BERNSTEIN AND SHOSTAKOVICH
Zhong and Pinchas Zukerman. Parker has performed for Queen Elizabeth II, the U. S. Supreme Court and the prime ministers of Canada and Japan. He is an Officer of The Order of Canada, his country’ s highest civilian honor.
He performs as duo partner regularly with James Ehnes, Aloysia Friedmann, Lynn Harrell, Jamie Parker, Orli Shaham, and Cho-Liang Lin, with whom he has given world premieres of sonatas by Paul Schoenfield, John Harbison and Steven Stucky. He performs regularly with the Miró Quartet, and is a founding member of the Montrose Trio with violinist Martin Beaver and cellist Clive Greensmith. The Washington Post’ s review proclaimed the Trio“ poised to become one of the top piano trios in the world.”
As a member of the outreach project Piano Plus, Parker toured remote areas, including the Canadian Arctic, performing classical music and rock‘ n’ roll on everything from upright pianos to electronic keyboards. He was a featured speaker alongside humanitarians Elie Wiesel and Paul Rusesabagina at the 50 th Anniversary of the relief organization AmeriCares.
An unusually versatile artist, Parker has jammed with Audra McDonald, Bobby McFerrin and Doc Severinsen. Parker also debuted his new project Off The Score in a quintet with legendary Police drummer Stewart Copeland, featuring both original compositions and fresh takes on music of Ravel, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
Parker hosted the television series Whole Notes on Bravo! and CBC Radio’ s Up and Coming. His YouTube channel showcases the Concerto Chat video series, with illuminating discussions of the piano concerto repertoire.
A committed educator, Parker is professor of piano at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. His students have won international piano competitions, performed with major orchestras across the U. S., and given recitals in Amsterdam, Beijing, New York and Moscow. He has lectured at The Juilliard School, The Colburn School, The Steans Institute, New York University and Yale University. Parker is also artistic advisor of the Orcas
Island Chamber Music Festival, where he has given world premieres of new works by Peter Schickele and Jake Heggie.
Parker has recorded the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Chopin and P. D. Q. Bach for Telarc; Mozart for CBC; and Stravinsky, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Di Liberto and Hirtz under his own label. His new CD Fantasy features the fantasies of Schubert and Schumann, as well as the sensational Wizard of Oz Fantasy by William Hirtz, receiving praise from Classical Candor:“ The reading is riveting. Parker scores with another favorite recording of the year.”
Parker studied with Edward Parker and Keiko Parker privately, Lee Kum- Sing at the Vancouver Academy of Music and the University of British Columbia, Robin Wood at the Victoria Conservatory, Marek Jablonski at the Banff Centre and Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School. He won the Gold Medal at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition. He lives in Houston with his wife, violinist Aloysia Friedmann and their daughter Sophie.
Jon Kimura Parker last appeared with the Baltimore Symphony in March 2000, performing Rachmaninoff ' s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Sergiu Comissiona, conductor.
About the Concert
SLAVA! A POLITICAL OVERTURE
Leonard Bernstein
Born in Lawrence, MA, August 25, 1918; died in New York City, NY, October 14, 1990
The great Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich( 1927 – 2007) was a close friend and inspiration to both of the composers on this program, Leonard Bernstein and Dmitri Shostakovich. Bighearted in both his personality and his playing, he was known to all his friends as“ Slava,” which, appropriately enough, means“ glory” in Russian.
When Rostropovich assumed the music directorship of the National Symphony Orchestra in 1977, he asked Bernstein to write some music for him to perform with his new orchestra. In addition to two more serious pieces, Songfest and Three Meditations from MASS, Bernstein responded with the sassy, boisterously American Slava! A Political Overture, a kind of tongue-in-cheek welcome to the political world of Washington, D. C. Its themes were taken from his recent, unfortunately unsuccessful musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, mixed with a pre-recorded tape of cliché electioneering slogans. In its last moments, the trombones mix this with a quotation from the grand“ Slava” Chorus from Mussorgsky’ s Boris Godunov, a direct salute to Rostropovich and his Russian heritage.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, soprano saxophone, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano and strings.
SYMPHONY NO. 2,“ THE AGE OF ANXIETY”
Leonard Bernstein
None of the three works Leonard Bernstein labeled as symphonies in any way resembles a conventional orchestral symphony. Symphony No. 1,“ Jeremiah,” includes a singer and chorus and is built around Old Testament texts. Symphony No. 3,“ Kaddish,” combines choruses, a vocal soloist and a spoken text to express what is essentially Bernstein’ s very personal argument with God. And inspired by W. H. Auden’ s long poem of the same name, Symphony No. 2,“ The Age of Anxiety,” is a highly dramatic work that resembles both a tone poem and a piano concerto. As the composer himself candidly admitted:“ If the charge of‘ theatricality’ in a symphonic work is a valid one, I am willing to plead guilty. I have a deep suspicion that every work I write, for whatever medium, is really theatre music in some way.”
Though not a word is spoken or sung in the Second Symphony, it is as much tied to a literary text as are“ Jeremiah” and“ Kaddish.” Bernstein was an insatiable
30 OVERTURE / BSOmusic. org