Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season March - April 2018 | Page 38

TCHAIKOVSKY WITH BALANCHINE
INEZ AND VINDOODH include Balanchine ’ s A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream , Coppelia , Orpheus , Symphony in C , Jewels , Who Cares ?, Stars and Stripes , The Nutcracker , The Four Temperaments and Mozartiana ; Jerome Robbins ’ The Concert and Antique Epigraphs ; and Peter Martins ’ The Sleeping Beauty . A principal and soloist with numerous nationally acclaimed companies , her film and television credits include George Balanchine ’ s The Nutcracker ® ( Time- Warner ), PBS ’ Great Performances : Dinner With Balanchine , Balanchine : Dance in America ( Serenade and Western Symphony ), Peter Martins ’ Concerto for Two Solo Pianos and Live from Lincoln Center : A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream .
Wingert is one of a small group of artists selected by The George Balanchine Trust to set his choreography . In this capacity she has traveled throughout the U . S ., setting and staging the Balanchine repertoire for Butler University , Indiana University , Baltimore School for the Arts , Joffrey Ballet Chicago and Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet , to name a few .
Wingert is head faculty at Manhattan Youth Ballet and is on faulty at the Ailey School , Professional Division . She has been a guest instructor for Princeton University and Harvard University , UCSB , Interlochen , Jessica Lang Dance , Kyle Abraham : AIM , Sarasota Ballet , BalletMet and New York City Public Library .
Heather Watts
Heather Watts joined New York City Ballet ( NYCB ) in 1970 and was one of the last of the famed Balanchine ballerinas . Watts worked closely with George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins at NYCB , retiring from the stage in 1995 . She has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair since 1995 , has created academic courses on Balanchine ’ s life and work at Harvard University , was a visiting lecturer in dance at Princeton University and has led residencies at University of California , Santa Barbara . Watts was a fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU in 2014 and is currently an affiliate fellow there . She has received numerous awards , including a Doctorate honoris causa from Hunter College .
About the Concert
ROMEO AND JULIET FANTASY- OVERTURE
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born in Votkinsk , Russia , May 7 , 1840 ; died in St . Petersburg , Russia , November 6 , 1893
Though it is now more than 400 years old , Shakespeare ’ s Romeo and Juliet still reigns as the most compelling of all love stories . And it holds as much allure for composers as for movie directors . In 1869 , the 28-year-old Tchaikovsky was just recovering from breaking off his only romance with a woman — the fascinating Belgian opera singer Desirée Artôt — when he was urged to use this subject to transform his pain into art by fellow Russian composer , Mily Balakirev .
A member of the five Russian nationalist composers known as the “ Mighty Handful ,” Balakirev became more famous for the compositions he inspired in others than for his own works , and the young Tchaikovsky was one of his protégés . On a long walk together , he suggested Romeo and Juliet as the perfect program for a symphonic poem and followed that up with a letter detailing how the work should be laid out . Tchaikovsky latched onto the idea immediately , but used his own artistic discretion about Balakirev ’ s suggestions . The first version of his “ Fantasy-Overture ” was written in just six weeks at the end of 1869 . But when he heard it performed in Moscow in March 1870 , Tchaikovsky decided it needed considerably more work . In revisions made soon after , he added the brooding opening that so perfectly establishes a mood of tender pathos , and before publishing it in 1880 , he devised the startling conclusion , confirming the tragic denouement with eight searing B-major chords .
The musical events of Tchaikovsky ’ s first masterpiece are so well known they need little explanation ; they convey virtually all the dramatic elements of Shakespeare ’ s play except the scenes of comic relief . Some commentators have linked the dark , chant-like theme that opens the work with the character of Friar Laurence who marries the young lovers . This theme plays an important role in the middle development section — striving in the horns against the jagged principal theme representing the battles between the Capulets and Montagues , just as in the play Laurence tries in vain to bring the families together . Notice how craftily Tchaikovsky introduces his famous love theme , one of the most inspired this great melodist ever wrote . He first presents it with very subdued scoring — an English horn solo over violas — saving its full passion for later when it returns soaring aloft in the violins .
Instrumentation : Two flutes , piccolo , two oboes , English horn , two clarinets , two bassoons , four horns , two trumpets , three trombones , tuba , timpani , percussion harp and strings .
SUITE FROM SWAN LAKE
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
If only Tchaikovsky had lived another year and a half , he would have seen his first ballet , Swan Lake , in a production worthy of the masterpiece it is and witnessed the beginning of its enduring popularity as perhaps the greatest of all story ballets . For on January 27 , 1895 — just over a year after the composer ’ s death — St . Petersburg ’ s Maryinsky Theatre premiered a triumphant production , with choreography by the greatest ballet master of the age , Marius Petipa .
The situation was hardly so auspicious when Swan Lake received its world premiere at Moscow ’ s Bolshoi Theatre on March 4 , 1877 . The set design was poor , the choreography uninspired and the orchestral playing so sloppy that few of the critics present even noticed how good Tchaikovsky ’ s music was . And , moreover , with this score and the tragic storyline it expressed , Tchaikovsky was attempting something revolutionary for Russian ballet in that period . 19 th -century Russian audiences liked their ballets to be decorative and entertaining , with light and diverting music and just enough plot to link the
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