Messiah soloists – soprano Danika Loren

Baritone Matthew Pauls has been praised for his on-stage poise and magnificent singing (Opera Canada). Matthew’s stage credits include, Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, the Speaker and 2nd Armoured Man in Die Zauberflöte, Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, Don Inigo Gomez in L’Heure Espagnole, Benoit in La Bohème, Marullo in Rigoletto, the Mysterious Man in Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Frank Maurant in Street Scene, and Masetto in Don Giovanni, which he performed with UWOpera and La Musica Lirica in Italy. On the concert stage, Matthew has performed numerous works such as Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Verdi’s Requiem, Handel’s Alexander’s Feast and Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, Mozart’s Requiem andVesperae solennes de confessore, Fauré’s Requiem, Grieg’s Four Psalms, J. S. Bach’s cantata Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit(BWV 106), and Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem and Five Mystical Songs.

Matthew has been delighted to perform as a featured soloist with ensembles such as the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay, Windsor Symphony, Canadian Chamber Choir, Pro Coro Canada, Winnipeg Singers, Guelph Chamber Choir, Windsor Classic Chorale, Windsor Symphony Chorus, Saskatoon Opera, and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra.

Matthew holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Vocal Performance at the University of Western Ontario. The focus of his doctoral research is Argentine art song; a body of repertoire that is virtually unknown in the greater performance and scholarly communities.  Presently he teaches at Canadian Mennonite University.

It would be impossible to do a performance of How the Grinch Stole Christmas without an exceptional narrator – the story has been read by parents and children for decades, each word burned in to our Christmastime cultural identity.  The icon score that accompanied the beloved cartoon was narrated by the voice of Boris Karloff…which meant the pressure was on for us to pick the perfect voice to bring this classic to life on stage.

Enter stage right Dr Garry Gable.  Garry has been a star on stages across the globe, and often here at home in Saskatoon – between his performances with Saskatoon Opera, Persephone Theatre, and the SSO, this performance of the Grinch gives us the chance to showcase his voice and acting all in a one-of-a-kind concert experience!

Dr. Garry Gable, bass-baritone, resides in Saskatoon where he teaches vocal studies and directs the Music Theatre Ensemble at the University of Saskatchewan. He is a recipient of the Provost’s Awards for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Saskatchewan, and his students have enjoyed success across Canada and into Europe, the United States, and China.

He has performed across Canada and into the USA in all types of music, musical theater, drama, television, and in-concert productions. He has enjoyed success in recital in China, where Garry is adjunct faculty in Music Conservatories in Wuhan and Tianjin. He has been heard in recital with his spouse/pianist Kathleen Lohrenz Gable on the CBC-Radio both regionally and nationally.

In Saskatoon, there have been many appearances with the Saskatoon Symphony, and with Saskatoon Opera Association. Garry has been seen as Frank in Die Fledermaus, Il Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore, Alcindoro in La Bohème, Dr. Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro, Zuniga in Carmen, and as the Bonz in Madama Butterfly.  In 2017 he will join SOA as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni. He also had a successful turn in Persephone Theater’s It’s a wonderful life as the irascible Mr. Potter, and earlier was seen as the affable father in Beauty and the Beast. Garry has sung many times with the Saskatoon Symphony and joins them again this December to narrate and sing in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He will also sing the role of Pangloss in March of 2017 with the Regina Symphony Orchestra performance of Candide. Garry again joins Saskatoon Opera in June 2017 to perform the Commendatore in Don Giovanni.

The Carnival of the Animals (1886)

Leonard Bernstein, in one of his Young People’s Concerts, explored the question, “What makes music funny?” He goes on to suggest, “The first and simplest way that music can be amusing is by simply imitating nature. It’s one of the oldest ways of making you laugh—by imitating things.” In fact, we have examples of music that contains imitations of nature going back to the medieval era, and if we look at a style of vocal music written in the 16th century called the madrigal, we see that they used a lot of what we would call “word painting,” or representing through music a thing, a character, or an action happening in a story (an example would be the pitches ascending when singing about going up a hill, and the pitches descending when singing about going down it). This extended to mimicking the characteristics and sounds of animals. One of the most famous writers of 16th century madrigals, Jacques Arcadelt, wrote a beautiful work called The White and Gentle Swan (Il bianco e dolce cigno) where the smoothness of the music reflects the swan gliding across the water. Another famous Renaissance composer, Josquin des Prez wrote a very entertaining madrigal called The Cricket (El Grillo) that shows some very quick and jolly skipping and jumping in the notes like the cricket rubbing its legs together and hopping around. One Baroque composer that Camille Saint-Saëns admired, Jean-Philippe Rameau, wrote some wonderful keyboard works illustrating bird songs, including one for the hen—perhaps where Saint-Saëns got the idea for his own hens—and many other examples of animal sounds are found in the music of Vivaldi, Beethoven, Schubert, Grieg, and Respighi to name a very few. How many others can you think of?

Saint-Saëns built his career by teaching at the Ecole Niedermeyer (Gabriel Fauré was one of his students), occasionally performing on organ, composing, and advocating for the upcoming generations of young French composers through the Société Nationale de Musique, an organization he co-founded in 1871. It was apparently during his days at the Ecole that he first came up with the idea for The Carnival of the Animals. However, it would take him a little over twenty years to get around to writing his “Grand Zoological Fantasy.” That happened in only a few days in 1886 while Saint-Saëns was supposed to be completing work on the Third Symphony (also known as the “Organ Symphony”). Composed for his elderly friend, the cellist Charles Lebouc, who hosted private concerts every Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday at the conclusion of Carnival, The Carnival of the Animals was performed at Lebouc’s the same year it was composed, with Saint-Saëns and Louis-Joseph Diémer (a 19th century pianist and harpsichordist who advocated for restoring interest in early music performance and instruments) performing the piano parts.

Wanting to avoid being known primarily as the composer of The Carnival of the Animals, Saint-Saëns decided to make sure the piece was not published during his lifetime. Performances were limited to a few private events (Franz Liszt, who once called Saint-Saëns the greatest organist in the world was at one of these rare performances). It wasn’t until his friends begged him to make at least some of it public that he allowed one movement to be used as a solo piece: “The Swan” (he also finally agreed the entire work could be published after his death).

Fourteen sections make up The Carnival of the Animals, and many of them are peppered with musical quotes from other pieces by Saint-Saëns, or by other composers. The “Introduction and Royal March of the Lion” kicks everything off with anticipatory tremolos and glissandos before announcing the arrival of the lion with a miniature fanfare of chords. How many times can you hear the lion roar? Next are the “Hens and Roosters” squawking and pecking as they come and go, and the frantic scales running up and down on both pianos depict “Wild Asses: Swift Animals.” In “Tortoises” we come to a clever use of Jacques Offenbach’s famous “can-can” from his operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld. Usually performed at a much quicker tempo, here it is adapted to an appropriate speed for their plodding movements. In “The Elephant” Saint-Saëns continues his jokes with more topsy-turvy quotes of other pieces. The light and shimmering music of Mendelssohn’s Scherzo (which translates to “joke”) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Berlioz’s delicate Dance of the Sylphs (from The Damnation of Faust) is transformed into lumbering double bass solo accompanied by the pianos as a waltz. “Kangaroos” jump and bounce around, skipping from one piano to another, resting occasionally. Rippling waters fill the “Aquarium,” disturbed only by the movement of the fish, swimming gently to and fro. “Personages with Long Ears,” the mules hee-haw back and forth at each other from between the two violin sections, and “The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods” calls to us from the clarinet before an entire “Aviary” flutters from the flute. You may not immediately think of “Pianists” when you think of animals, but here they are taking their places in the parade. Brian Rees, in his biography of Saint-Saëns, suggest the pianists “practicing Czerny-like exercises” remind “the listeners that, for a composer, piano players in the neighboring apartment are troublesome beasts.” “Fossils” are represented both by songs about death, and by old “fossils” of music: Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and the French folk songs Au clair de la lune (a tune we know as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”) and Ah! vous dirai-je, maman. “The Swan” glides elegantly along in what became one of the most famous solo cellos pieces of all time. At the first performance of The Carnival of the Animals, Charles Lebouc (the cellist and host) played the solo, and the beauty of the elderly musician’s performance, as well as the symbolism of the “swan song,” touched many hearts there. Finally comes the “Finale” where we hear the entire menagerie rush forward to take their bows.

Program Note by Kathryn J. Allwine Bacasmot

Ravel’s music is amongst the most wonderful for an orchestra to play – his understanding of each instrument’s strengths allow his music to beautifully capture the colours and subtly of each melody.  Our second Masters Series concert of the year features music based on storytelling and folklore…making the Mother Goose Suite the perfect concert starter!

Ma Mere l’Oye – Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) By Marcia Lotter 2008

French composer Maurice Ravel has always been compared to Claude Debussy, who was taken more seriously during their lifetimes. Ravel was a fastidious and tireless worker and a genius at orchestration. He could always assemble the exact combination of instrumental colors to achieve the effects he sought.

Oddly enough, he considered two of his main inspirations to be Emmanuel Chabrier (for his Spanish style and enthusiasm) and Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote an essay on the meaning of poetry and other forms of art that struck Ravel to the core. The lovely Mother Goose Suite (literally, “My Mother, the Goose”) was originally written to be played by two children on the piano. The first performance was given by children aged 6 and 10. The following year Ravel prepared an orchestral version for a ballet production in Paris in 1912. The five movements depict fairy tales well-known to children of that time.

Movement One, Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, is very short but solemn and thoughtful, like a tableaux of the silent castle. Movement Two is Tom Thumb, one of many deluded characters who scattered bread crumbs, in order to find his way back out of the woods. But birds came behind him and ate them all. Ravel cleverly uses solo oboe above wavering strings to convey the winding paths. You can also hear happy birds chirping over their feast of crumbs from a distance.

Movement Three is Laideronnette (Little Ugly One), Empress of the Pagodas. This is a story called “The Green Serpent.” Laideronnette, formerly a beautiful princess, was magically disfigured by an evil witch. The princess lives in a faraway castle and meets The Green Serpent, who has been similarly cursed, out in the woods. They have various adventures together, including visiting living pagodas made of crystal, diamonds, and emeralds, which nevertheless sing and play for the couple.

Movement Four is The Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, written in waltz time. A solo clarinet conveys Beauty’s part of the conversation, and the bassoon represents The Beast. Beauty’s voice is later found in flute and oboe. After The Beast’s transformation back to a prince, Beauty becomes a solo violin, and The Beast becomes a solo cello. A clash of cymbals announces the end of the wicked witch’s spell.

Movement Five The Fairy Garden is an account of Sleeping Beauty’s awakening by Prince Charming. The celeste has the role of the enchanted princess, as she slowly opens her eyes in the sun-flooded room. A joyous fanfare sounds at the end as the storybook characters gather about her, and the Good Fairy bestows her blessing on the happy pair.

Any father with twenty children is bound to have a problem at sometime or other. Papa Johann Sebastian Bach must certainly have had his share of family crises during his lifetime (more than half of his brood did not survive him), but one bit of puerile misadventure has, unfortunately, resounded on (or, more accurately, silenced) an important part of his musical legacy. At Bach’s death, many of his important manuscripts were divided between his two oldest living sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Carl took loving care of his inheritance, but Wilhelm did not. Though, as a boy, Friedemann had received excellent training from his father, and held some responsible positions as a young man, he was never able to fulfill his early promise. His presence of mind seems to have deserted him after his father’s death, and he gave way in his later years to dissipation and pretty well made a mess of his life. The manuscripts from Sebastian’s estate that came into his possession were lost or destroyed or perhaps sold for a pint of Asbach-Uralt. At any rate, it is known that Wilhelm let at least three of his father’s violin concertos slip through his unsteady fingers into oblivion. The three that remain were the ones passed on by Carl.

It was long thought that Bach composed his three extant violin concertos-two for solo violin and one for two violins-while serving as “Court Kapellmeister and Director of the Princely Chamber Musicians” at Anhalt-Cöthen, north of Leipzig, from 1717 to 1723, a productive period for instrumental music when he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos, orchestral suites, many sonatas and suites for solo instruments and keyboard, suites and sonatas for unaccompanied violin and cello, and such important solo harpsichord pieces as the French Suites and the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. In the Bach tercentenary issue of Early Music published in May 1985, however, Harvard professor and Bach authority Christoph Wolff surmised from stylistic evidence and from the fact that the only extant performance materials for the Concerto in A minor (BWV 1041) and the Concerto in D minor for Two Violins (BWV 1043) were copied around 1730 that at least those two works date from the years (1729-36) that Bach was directing the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, the city’s leading concert-giving organization.

The A minor Concerto follows the traditional Italian structure of three movements, arranged fast-slow-fast. In the heroically tragic opening movement, the violin is carefully integrated into the texture and melodic working-out of the material. The basic plan of the movement is ritornello (i.e., anchored around the frequent returns of the opening music in the orchestra), though Bach’s realization of the form is considerably richer in texture and sentiment than are its Italian models. The episodic sections between the recurrences of the ritornello, the places in which the soloist is dominant, are rather like windows separating the tutti columns supporting the architectonic structure. In the second movement, which derives its lyrical style from the world of opera, the basses present a theme at the outset that is repeated in various keys throughout the movement. Above this ostinato foundation rises the touching melody of the soloist as counterpoint and commentary on the orchestral background. The finale, inspired by the vivacious strains of the gigue, resumes the quick motion and rich pathos of the first movement.

Bach’s Wachet Auf has long been one of the most beloved pieces of music ever written – a favourite of choirs, orchestras, music lovers, and jazz musicians alike, the work features melodies that have become iconic.  This performance marks the very first orchestral performance of the work in our region, and we couldn’t be more excited to feature the SSO Chorus with conductor Duff Warkentin and our soloists Chelsea Mahan, Spencer McKnight, and Joel Allison. 

Bach’s iconic themes have been the basis for great organ and piano transcriptions (Jan Lisiecki performance above), and even great jazz takes on the melody.

Some of the most joyful music is created in the midst of difficult circumstances. Displaced while his home underwent reconstruction, Bach wrote this most famous of his cantatas, BWV 140; Philipp Nicolai, composer of the chorale tune, found comfort in the midst of the death of a pupil by contemplating eternal life.

In the historic town of Tubingen, the pupil, a fifteen-year-old nobleman, succumbed to the scourge of the bubonic plague. His teacher and pastor, Nicolai, who had watched upwards of thirty burials a day, penned the chorale “Wachet auf” in memory of his young student. The chorale text, based on the parable of the wise virgins in Matthew 25, is a sacred recrafting of the old Minnesinger tradition. Instead of the watchman on the tower who warns the lovers to part as dawn approaches, this watchman’s midnight cry announces the heavenly Bridegroom’s arrival.

During Bach’s time, “Wachet” was the principal hymn for the twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity, a rare occurrence in the church calendar. This service, for which Bach wrote cantata 140, fell on November 25, 1731. The gospel reading for this last Sunday before Advent is Matthew 25. In shaping the overall form of the cantata, Bach used each verse of Nicolai’s hymn as a structural pillar in the work: verse 1 in movement 1, verse 2 in movement 4, and verse 3 in the closing chorale. The structure of the entire cantata is chiastic , with movement 4 as the centerpiece.

In movement 1, festive royal processional music imitates the midnight tolling as the wise virgins heed the watchman’s call to action: “awake!, prepare!, arise!, go forth!” Bach sets the chorale tune in the sopranos, doubled by the watchman’s instrument, the horn. The three lower voices represent the scurrying to action, literally falling upon each other in joyful tumult, with ascending melodic leaps and brilliant voicing of rising chords on texts depicting “high up.” All the time, the orchestral wedding procession continues relentlessly on its course to meet the Bride-Church-Sion.

The third and sixth movements, duets for soprano and bass, are dialogues between the Soul and Jesu. Each duet is prefaced by a recitative. The first duet, in question-answer format, is orchestrated as a quartet: the two solo voices, an obbligato violino piccolo, and the continuo.

Movement 4, one of Bach’s more beloved choruses, depicts Sion’s joy in greeting the descending Groom. The musical construction is stunning in its simplicity: the continuo supports a unison string melody of three basic motives over which the tenors, also in unison, float the second verse of Nicolai’s chorale. This wedding song of the Bride Zion (church) and the Returning Bridegroom (Christ) leads all to the feast, the Lamb’s eternal Supper.

The second duet, movement 6, musically exemplifies the union of the soul and Christ: the oboe presents material that is then shared by the voices. The textual references from Song of Solomon in the previous recitative are fulfilled with joyous ebullience in the duet. The phrase “love never separated” literally takes musical life in the melding of a four part texture (two voices, oboe, continuo) into a trio (a united voice, oboe, continuo).

And so, in the final chorale, the host of heaven—humans and angels—gather in the Eternal City at the twelve gates of pearl, raising voices, harps, and cymbals to proclaim the great “gloria” (Revelation 21). All of the instruments join with the choir, but this “joy no ear has heard” takes on an added brightness by Bach’s use of the violino piccolo playing the melody an octave above everyone. Surprising harmonic colorations on the final phrase’s quotation of the ancient “in dulci jubilo” melody depicts the brilliant and eternal rejoicing in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Copyright © 1998, Marian Dolan