UMS Concert Program, April 25, 1984: Ann Arbor May Festival -- Philadelphia Orchestra

Season: 105th
Concert: 47th
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

1894 ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL 1984
AWL
'HIA
chestraA
1936 RESIDENT FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA 1984
Riccardo Muti, Music Director
Eugene Ormandy, Conductor Laureate
William Smith, Associate Conductor
ALDO CECCATO, Guest Conductor EUGENE ISTOMIN, Pianist
Wednesday Evening, April 25, 1984, at 8:30 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
All-Beethoven Program Overture to Egmont, Op. 84
Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, for Piano and Orchestra, "Emperor' Allegro
Adagio un poco mosso Allegro
Eugene Istomin INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 Allegro con brio Andante con moto Allegro Allegro
Angel, RCA Red Seal, Delos, Telarc, and CBS Mastcrworks Records.
Hail and Farewell!
We salute the members of The Philadelphia Orchestra and their inimitable leader, Eugene Ormandy, who, for so many years have provided so much joy for so many Ann Arbor concertgoers. We celebrate their constancy, their genius, and the many friendships forged during this half century. To the Fabulous Philadelphians, we give highest praise and deepest thanks.
1984 Festival Souvenirs
Take with you two concrete reminders of this milestone year. Our 64-page Souvenir Program Book contains two large sections devoted to Maestro Ormandy and the Orchestra, plus expanded program notes and artist profiles. A full color, 17 x 33 poster is also available, featuring a grouping of past Festival photographs of Mr. Ormandy and May Festival artists. Each is $2, on sale in the lobbies during intermission and before and after each concert.
47th Concert of the University Musical Society's 105th Season 91st Annual May Festival
PROGRAM NOTES by Richard Freed
Compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827
Overture to Egmont, Op. 84
When Goethe wrote his tragedy Egmont in the years 1775-77 he specified music in his stage directions, calling for an instrumental introduction or prologue, numerous interludes and entr'actes, and a grand epilogue. Though other composers tried their hands at writing music for this heroic drama, it wasn't until 1808 that Beethoven, the renowned composer of the Eroica and Fidelio, was given the assignment for a totally new production. When Goethe heard Beethoven's music, four years after the new Egmont appeared in 1810, he expressed enthusiastic approval, especially for the handling of the final scene. "Beethoven," he said, "has followed my intentions with admirable genius."
Goethe's drama is set in Brussels during the Spanish occupation and the time of the Inquisition. The Duke of Alba, representing Philip II, summons both William of Orange and Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Gaure, the suspected leaders of the brewing rebellion, to appear before him; William has the good sense to ignore the summons and take refuge in his own province, but the more trusting Egmont appears as commanded, whereupon he is imprisoned and summarily sentenced to be hanged. The historical Egmont (1522-1568) had a wife and 11 children; Goethe's one liberty, in a treatment otherwise faithful to history, was to make his hero younger and unmarried and to provide him with a devoted sweetheart, Clarchcn, who poisons herself upon learning of his sentence. She then appears to Egmont in a dream, on the eve of his execution, as the spirit of freedom -much as Florestan envisions Leonore as an "angel of freedom" in the opening of Act II of Fidelio.
Awakening from his vision, Egmont faces the gallows with confidence that his death will serve as an exhortation to his compatriots to rise up and crush their oppressors. At the end of the drama is the "Symphony of Victory" called for by Goethe, and it is this music that constitutes the thrilling coda to the Overture, the preceding portions of which make no attempt at encapsulating the story, but grandly and majestically set the mood of high tragedy and heroic resolve. No other single piece sums up the heroic idealism associated with Beethoven more succinctly and impactively than this splendid Overture.
Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, for Piano and Orchestra, "Emperor"
Beethoven himself rarely affixed descriptive titles or nicknames to his works. The "Moonlight" and " Appassionata" piano sonatas were so named by publishers who felt the sobriquets would add to the works' appeal. In the case of the Concerto in E-flat, the time-honored story is that the title "Emperor" was proclaimed by an enthusiastic French officer at an early Viennese performance, but it seems more likely that it was first applied by John Baptist Cramer, the German-born English virtuoso whom Beethoven regarded as the finest pianist of his time. Cramer, a lifelong friend of Beethoven's, founded a publishing firm in London and brought out several of Beethoven's works there after 1815; it has been noted that, despite the popular story of the Frenchman in Vienna, the Concerto is known as the Emperor only in English-speaking countries.
All four of Beethoven's earlier piano concertos had been written for his own use. He had, after all, first made his mark in Vienna as a keyboard virtuoso, but his growing deafness and the deepening intensity of his creative drive combined to put an end to that part of his activity. He gave his last public performance in 1808, a few months before he started to work on the Concerto in E-flat, and on March 1, 1809, three of his patrons -the Archduke Rudolph, to whom this work is dedicated. Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz -confirmed his status as a full-time composer by signing a formal agreement which guaranteed him an income for life.
While the Emperor may well be regarded as the culmination of Beethoven's efforts in the concerto form, its implications are yet broader in a context that goes beyond Beethoven. His Fourth Concerto, composed in 1806, may be seen as both the capstone of the Classical concerto development and a preparation for the more individualized style of the Romantic future. The E-flat Concerto represents the future arrived, resplendent in full panoply, with an orchestral part of symphonic proportions and yet leaving no question as to the ascendant role of the soloist. In reaching this state in his cycle of concertos, Beethoven raised the stature of both soloist and orchestra to a level unknown before and unsurpassed since. Although Beethoven continued composing string quartets, sympho?nies, and piano sonatas until his last years, the Fifth Concerto represents the decisive culmination of the series it ended -in the concerto, as both craftsman and prophet, he had said all he had to say.
In the opening Allegro the energetic entrance of the piano is prefaced only by a single orchestral chord. With minimal punctuation of this sort, the soloist makes a brief survey of his realm, and then the orchestra launches into the assertive theme which is to lend itself to the most varied discourse -from majestic and militant proclamations to the most intimate exchanges between the piano and various wind instruments. The keynote is exuberance, but not impetuosity, and certainly not mere display. For the first time in any of his concertos, Beethoven wrote out his own cadenza for this work, appending the note: "Do not make a cadenza [i.e., do not improvise one of your own), but attack the following immediately."
Fittingly, the long and assertive opening movement is succeeded by a quieter expression of nobility. A hushed mood of serene simplicity prevails throughout the slow movement, which leads
via a connecting bridge (as in the corresponding sections of several other Beethoven works of this period) to the rumbustious final Rondo, whose jubilant spirit may be regarded as not merely Imperial, but Jovian.
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
At the midpoint of Beethoven's cycle of nine symphonies stands the work which has epitomized for many listeners the very concept "Symphony," with all the emotional and dramatic-not to say programmatic -connotations it has had since Beethoven's time. With his First Symphony, com?posed in the penultimate year of the 18th century, Beethoven bade an affectionate farewell to that century. .With the beginning of the new century, Beethoven declared his intention to embark on a "new path" in his music; this began to take shape in his Second Symphony, completed in 1802, became more visible in the Third Piano Concerto, and was stunningly apparent in the Eroica, of 1804, a work utterly without precedent in terms of its depth, proportions, and overall expressiveness. The Fifth followed, in 1808, not as a superior work, but as a more thoroughly dramatic and more conspicuously tight-knit one, as well as a more integrated one by virtue of the "cyclic" reappearance of the opening motif in subsequent movements. This was the work which set the pattern of "victory through struggle," though Beethoven said nothing about philosophical or dramatic meaning in his Fifth Symphony. With or without a composer-sanctioned "program," it stands as one of the several grand fulfillments of the promise Beethoven had made to himself in 1801, when he became aware of his growing deafness: "I will take Fate by the throat; it shall not wholly overcome me."
The "Fate" motif hammers away throughout the terse drama of the first movement, with lyrical passages here and there to throw the drama into higher relief. The second movement may be seen as following, more or less, the "double variation" format Haydn had made familiar in his symphonies; the opening theme itself is a variation on the "Fate" motif, and the second theme may be traced to the horn phrase introduced early in the first movement. J.W.N. Sullivan, in Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, described this Andante con moto as "a mere resting-place, a temporary escape from the questions aroused by the first movement." The basic material and its treatment, however, would suggest something like unhurried contemplation of those questions, rather than escape from them.
With the Scherzo the drama is again intensified. Its opening phrases set a dark and menacing scene, against which backdrop a more clearly recognizable variant of the "Fate" motif rears itself up. The tension is broken momentarily by an amiable rumbustious little dance for the double basses, but it returns, more ominous than before, to dissolve into the mysterious and suspenseful transition to the Finale. Here grotcsquerie vanishes and the passage from darkness into light is achieved with magnificent simplicity. The jubilant course of the Finale is interrupted momentarily by a reprise of the Scherzo, which now seems shorn of its menace; indeed, all allusions to the "Fate" motif now arc transformed into a decisively victorious, even joyous statement.
It appears that Beethoven made his first sketches for it as early as 1800, when he made his decision to strike out on a "new path. " Further sketches, in which the work actually began to take shape, were made in 1804, the year in which the Eroica was completed, but then Beethoven set the work aside to compose the totally different Symphony No. 4 in B-flat; he gave practical (i.e., financial) considerations as the reason, but, as numerous commentators have suggested, it seems more likely that it was on artistic grounds that he decided not to present two such serious and dramatic symphonies as the Eroica and the C-minor in direct succession. In any event, he conducted the first performance on December 22, 1808.
Eugene Istomin was born in New York City of Russian parents, both of whom were professional singers. At age six, his aptitude for piano was recognized by Alexander Siloti, the eminent Russian pianist, whose daughter Kiriena became his first teacher. Later he attended Pro?fessional Children's School in Manhattan and the Mannes School of Music. At age twelve, he was accepted by The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. In 1943 he won both The Philadelphia Orchestra's Youth Contest and the Levcntritt Award, making his debut that same year with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra. This was followed by a performance with the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski. Soon afterward, he had the rare privilege of performing and recording the major piano concerti with such renowned conductors as Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Pablo Casals, Adolf Busch, and Bruno Walter (with whom he recorded the Schumann Concerto, one of only two recordings Walter ever made with a piano soloist).
In 1950, Pablo Casals invited Eugene Istomin to perform in the Prades Festival in France. The youngest artist on the program, he shared honors with Dame Myra Hess, Clara Haskil, Serkin, Joseph Szigeti, and many others. Casals proclaimed him "among the world's greatest pianists" and thus began a life-long friendship with the great cellist-conductor. In 1956 Mr. Istomin made the first of his annual world tours, which cover as many as 100,000 miles a year and include all the major cities, orchestras, and festivals of the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Of the 24 recordings he has made for Columbia Records, the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra became a national best-seller. In 1961, he formed a legendary piano trio with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose.
Eugene Istomin's talents have been evident in Ann Arbor over the years. He appeared in recital in 1946 and 1964; performed with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra in the 1961 May Festival; joined members of the Budapest Quartet for three concerts in the 1963 Chamber Music Festival; and in 1967 was soloist with the French National Orchestra.
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Riccardo Muti, Music Director, 1980
Eugene Oumandy, Conductor Laureate, Fall 1936
William Smith, Associate Conductor, 1952
The date following each member's name is the year he or she joined The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Violins
Norman Carol '66 Concertmaster William dc Pasquale '63 Associate Concertmaster David Arbcn '59 Associate Concertmaster Morris Shulik '41 Owen Lusak '44 David Grunschlag '59 Frank E. Saam '58 Barbara Sorlicn '63 Herbert Light '60 Larry Grika '64 Cathleen Dalschaert '61 Herold Klein 71 Julia de Pasqualc '64 Vladimir Shapiro '19 Jonathan Beiler '16 Arnold Grossi '69 Frank Costanzot '41
Irvin Rosen '45 Robert de Pasquale '64 Joseph Lanza '58 Philip Kates '81 Irving Ludwig '49 Jerome Wiglcr '5 Virginia Halfmann '12 George Dreyfus '53 Louis Lanza '64 Stephane Dalschaert '61 Booker Rowe '10 Davyd Booth '13 Barbara Goratos '82 Paul Arnold '83 Isadore Schwartz '45 Nancy Bean '83
Violas
Joseph de Pasquale '64 James Fawcett '62 Sidney Curtiss '60 Charles Griffin '68 Gactano Molicri '11 Irving Segall '63 Leonard Bogdanofif '55 Albert Filosa '12 Wolfgang Granat '56 Donald R. Clauscr '66 Renard Edwards '10 Judy Geist '83
j Substitute
Cellos
William Stokking '13 George Harpham '69 Harry Gorodetzer '36 Lloyd Smith '61 Joseph Druian '44 Bert Phillips '59 Richard Harlow '16 Gloria Johns '77 William Saputclli '52 Patricia Weimcr '19 Marcel Farago '55 Kathryn Picht '19
Basses
Roger M. Scott '41 Michael Shahan '64 Neil Courtney '62 Ferdinand Maresh '48 Emilio Gravagno '61 Henry G. Scott '14 Peter Lloyd '18 John Hood '82 Brian Liddltf
Some tnntthcrs of the string sections voluntarily rotate seating ott a periodic basts.
Flutes
Murray W. Panitz '61 David Cramer '81 Loren N. Lind '14 Kazuo Tokito '81
Piccolo
Oboes
Richard Woodhams '77 Stevens Hewitt '65 Charles M. Morris '54 Louis Rosenblatt '59 English Honi
Clarinets
Anthony M. Gigliotti '49 Donald Montanaro '51 Raoul Querzc '62 Ronald Reuben '61 Bass Clarinet
Bassoons
Bernard Garfield '51 Mark Gigliotti '82 Richard Ranti '83 Robert J. Pfeuffer '62
Contra Bassoon
Horns
Nolan Miller '65 David Wctherill '78
Associate
Randy Gardner 75 Daniel Williams 75 Howard Wall 75 Martha Glaze '74
Trumpets
Frank Kaderabck 75 Donald E. McComas '64 Seymour Rosenfeld '46 Roger Blackburn 74
Trombones
Glenn Dodson '68 Tyrone Breuningcr '67 Joseph Alessi '81 Charles Vernon '81 Bass Trombone
Tuba
Paul Krzywicki '72
Timpani
Gerald Carlyss '67 Michael Bookspan '53
Battery
Michael Bookspan '53 Alan Abel '59 Anthony Orlando '72
Celesta, Piano and Organ
William Smith '52 Davyd Booth 13
Harps
Marilyn Costello '45 Margarita Csonka '63
Librarians
Clinton F. Niewcg 75 Robert M. Grossman '79
Personnel Manager
Mason Jones '38
Stage Personnel
Edward Barnes, Manager '56 Theodore Hauptle '55 James Sweeney '58
Stephen Sell, Executive Director '82 Joseph H. Santarlasci, Manager '45 John H. Orr, Assistant Manager '19
The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, 1420 Locust Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Burton Memorial Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1270 Phones: (313) 665-3717, 764-2538