Blind from the age of three as a result of diphtheria, Joaquín Rodrigo studied composition in Valencia before moving to Paris in 1927 to study with Paul Dukas. While there, he met both his fellow countryman Manuel de Falla and the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi, who would become Señora Rodrigo. Joaquín and Victoria honeymooned in Spain but eventually returned to Paris, where during the bitterly cold winter of 1938-1939, with war looming, Victoria learned she was pregnant. Seven months into the pregnancy Victoria miscarried and was hospitalized for several days. During this time a family friend who was staying at their apartment observed that Joaquín spent entire nights sitting at the piano, playing a melody so sad that it gave her chills. Evoking the saeta, a song performed by women from their balconies during religious processions through the streets of Seville, this tune would form the basis for the slow movement of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

Returning home to find an empty cradle still sitting in her apartment, Victoria was forced to sell her beloved piano to pay her medical bills. Not long afterward, Rodrigo received a letter from de Falla, offering him a teaching position in Madrid. Victoria and Joaquín quickly packed their entire belongings—including the completed manuscript for the Concierto de Aranjuez—into a pair of suitcases and left immediately. Two days after they crossed the border into Spain, World War II broke out.

Their fortunes improved in Madrid, where by November 1940 they celebrated the arrival of their first child and the successful premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez, which before long would become not only Rodrigo’s best-known work but also the most famous guitar concerto ever written. Surrounding the central Adagio are two genteel courtly dances, the first in a characteristically Spanish meter that blurs the distinction between 6/8 and 3/4. Rodrigo wrote that the work takes its name “the famous royal residence on the banks of the Tajo, not far from Madrid and the Andalusian highway, and in its notes one may fancy seeing the ghost of Goya, held in thrall by melancholy—in its themes there lingers the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds, and the gushing of fountains.”

On March 15th the SSO takes to the ice with the Hockey Sweater – the classic children’s book, a staple of Canadian families, is now a new symphony show by Canadian composer Abigail Richardson.

Abigail was born in Oxford, England, and moved to Canada as a child.  Ironically, she was diagnosed incurably deaf at 5. Upon moving to Calgary, however, her hearing was fully intact within months.  Her music has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras, presenters, music festivals and broadcasters including the Festival Présences of Paris.

Abigail won first at the prestigious UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers and had broadcasts in 35 countries.  She won the Karen Kieser Prize (CBC) and the Dora Mavor Moore Award for “Best New Opera”. Abigail has been Affiliate Composer with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and now programs performances for their New Creations Festival.  She wrote the wildly successful music for the classic Canadian story, “The Hockey Sweater” by Roch Carrier.  It was the country’s first triple co-commission, by the TSO, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.   Within three seasons her piece has been performed by nearly every professional orchestra across the country, and has been experienced by more than sixty thousand audience members, often with Abigail hosting from the stage.

She recently finished a WWI memorial piece, “Song of the Poets”, with choir and orchestra for NACO’s UK tour.  The work was co-commissioned by NACO, The World Remembers, CPO, and TBSO with many partner performances in Canada and Europe.  Current projects include a complete family concert commissioned by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra based around Dennis Lee’s “Alligator Pie”.

Abigail is currently Composer in Residence with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, serves as Artistic Director of the HPO’s What Next Festival, hosts community events, and teaches composition for U. of T.

 

 

Symphony No 2 in D Major, Opus 43 – 45 mins Jean Sibelius

Allegretto Tempo Andante, ma rubato Vivacissimo Finale: Allegro moderato Dedicated to Baron Axel Carpelan In 1900, Baron Axel Carpelan wrote to Sibelius and, citing Italy’s positive effects on Tchaikovsky and Strauss, recommended that Sibelius travel there. Depressed by the death of his youngest daughter, Sibelius was helped immensely by his Italian journey. During his stay in Rapallo from February to May 1901, he was able to sketch what would become the second of his seven symphonies. Originally conceived as a four-movement orchestral fantasy, Symphony #2 was assigned a program by Sibelius’s friend, conductor Robert Kajanus. Sibelius rejected any specific nationalistic or patriotic program assigned to his Symphony #2, although the Finnish character of the work is unquestionable. An ardent Finnish nationalist, Sibelius was a very individual composer. Although he lived well into the twentieth century, his music is not like that of Bartok or Hindemith; Sibelius was a Romanticist who composed in a late nineteenth-century style. However, following a concert of his music in Germany, Sibelius became an international figure and began to respond to currents in contemporary music. The five symphonies after Symphony #2 are marked by thinner orchestration and increased use of dissonance. However, despite his symphonic masterworks, Sibelius did not and could not speak the language of musical modernism. He published no music during the last 30 years of his life and none survives that period. His musical aesthetic favors the sense-impressions of Symbolism and integration of thematic material, rather than tending to modernist abstraction. The Symbolist idea of tone-painting-–representing the physical world in music-–is apparently one that appealed to Sibelius. In Symphony #2, fjords, icy lakes, and cold wind are images that the listener can’t help experiencing. Kalevala, a Finnish folk-epic, had attracted Sibelius from his youth onwards. His translation of the Kalevala into music via tone-painting is, more than overt nationalism, what gives Symphony #2 its sense of local flavor. It accounts for the mystical and organic character of the music. Premiered March 8, 1902, the symphony was an instant success. By 1940, Sibelius’s music was all the rage in America. By the time of his death in 1957, his music had all but disappeared. It was “rediscovered” in the 1970s and has remained in the repertoire until the present day.

 

Credit J Sundram

 

For our closing performance of the 2014-2015 season we have decided to ask our wonderful patrons to select the symphony they would like to hear. We have narrowed the field to four:  Mendelssohn’s Mediterranean-inspired “Italian” Symphony, Mozart’s tragic and emotional Symphony No. 40, the 14 year travail that was Brahms’s First Symphony and Beethoven’s revolutionary Symphony No. 3.

Below you can vote on which great symphonic work you would most like to hear.

PROGRAM NOTES FOR “VARIATIONS ON A SOUTHERN GOSPEL TUNE”

 

by Monte K. Pishny-Floyd

 

What’s in a title? Variations on a Southern Gospel Tune: what is the genesis (pardon the pun) of this title? So what’s a Jewish guy like me doing writing a piece based on an old Christian Gospel tune? Partly it has to do with my culture. I am from Oklahoma originally, although I’ve lived in Canada more than forty years, long enough to have become almost civilized. My home “town,” Oklahoma City (OKC), used to be described as “two skyscrapers surrounded by Baptists.” It has long since outgrown that ancient joke, but it harbours a truth: Oklahoma has a far larger percentage of Evangelicals among its population than any other state. Being Jewish, or even, for example, Catholic, put one in a minority. Being from a transplanted Czech culture (“Pishny”) put one in another minority. However, the minorities from which my own roots emanate were also quite assimilated and intertwined with the more dominant culture, which was in those days as now distinctly “Gospel”-based.

 

Further, I am by no means the only Jewish composer to write a work on a Christian subject: one has only to think of, for example, Bernstein’s enormously great Mass, much of the music of such as Mahler and Mendelssohn, and of course those marvelous holiday songs “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” by Irving Berlin, which I would put right up there with any of Schubert’s songs for artistic quality—beautiful stuff! Such works transcend specific cultures, and belong to everyone’s cultural inheritance—I hope this is true of my own work which you will hear on tonight’s SSO concert. (This will be the first performance of Variations on a Southern Gospel Tune by a professional orchestra.)

 

My Variations on a Southern Gospel Tune (VSGT) has a long history. It was more than a half-century ago that I first heard the beautiful and powerful tune upon which I based my variations sung. I will have more to say about that, below. When, in about 1963, a fellow music student asked me to write a short set of variations for her to perform on a recital, I immediately thought of this tune, because it is so easy to recognize but so rich in potential. I wrote a short set of variations for piano—these were not performed publicly at the time (only for a piano class). However, I later—much later—expanded them into an extended set of variations for the piano, some of them very difficult, and dedicated it to my wife, Annette, a well-known Canadian pianist. She performed it in many venues, including recording it for a CBC broadcast.

 

I had long envisioned orchestrating it, and two factors combined in the early part of this century to bring that about. In 2004, our oldest daughter, Amy, became President of the Fort Bend Symphony Orchestra (as well as a member of the cello section) in the Houston, Texas metro area. Shortly thereafter, the conductor, Dr. John Ricarte, asked me to become Composer-in-Residence. I agreed, and there ensued nearly a decade-long happy relationship between myself and this fine community orchestra. During this time Dr. Ricarte left to focus more on other musical duties, including a school string program that has now long been highly successful. His successor, Dr. Héctor Agüero. not only wished to continue the relationship I had with FBSO, but in the fall of 2008 commissioned me to write a work for the orchestra. I readily agreed, and began planning the project.

 

Unfortunately, in May of 2008, my beloved cousin, Mike Farrow (November 4, 1932-May 30, 2008) had died of Mesothelioma. Then on November 22 of 2008, shortly after Hector asked me to write a work, my next-door neighbour and one of my best friends, Mike Wilson (b. 1940), died, also of cancer. This combination of circumstances led me to conclude that my long-planned orchestral version of VSGT would be the appropriate work to memorialize these two people so dear to me, and several others as well.

 

Initially VSGT was to be for orchestra with harp, and I created a version with harp. However, less than a week before the first performance, the harpist resigned, and so I created a different version (two measures longer, by the way) for orchestra with piano. Annette, my wife, got into the act, learned the piano part literally overnight, played it the next day at the dress rehearsal, and the work was given its world-premiere on June 7, 2009, by the FBSO with Dr. Agüero conducting as scheduled. It was, I am happy to say, a real crowd-pleaser. I will say that I intended it to be one of my more accessible works (because of the more community-oriented orchestra and its constituency) without compromising my own principles and standards. I believe I have achieved that balance with this work. It has since been performed in Saskatoon by the Saskatoon Philharmonic Orchestra, George Charpentier conducting, and given a very special performance by the Brazosport Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in Lake Jackson, Texas, with Dr. John Ricarte conducting on February 23, 2013.

 

There was a standing ovation at all three concerts, which of course pleases any composer or performer, but at the Lake Jackson BSO concert of February 23, 2013 things got even better. This was special, because Annette and I were the featured guests of honour at a BSO weekend in Lake Jackson. The theme was “Young at Heart,” and Annette was the guest pianist. Indeed, Annette has been the pianist in all the performances of my work to now and is looking forward to sitting in the audience and hearing the whole thing for the first time when the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra (SSO) plays it. For me the nicest thing about the BSO concert was that, since it happened to be Annette’s 71^st birthday, as soon as the applause had died away the orchestra launched into “Happy Birthday” with Dr. Ricarte conducting the audience who stood and sang “Happy Birthday” to Annette. At intermission, the BSO served birthday cupcakes—all of this surprised both of us, especially Annette. It also made us happy several of our children and grandchildren were present at the Lake Jackson concert.

 

For VSGT I took a cue from Sir Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and put the initials of beloved family members and friends on each of VSGT’s sections. The entire work is dedicated to the memory of “the two Mikes,” Mike Farrow and Mike Wilson. The Introduction bears the initials “D. M.,” for Daniel M. Rahm, my late father-in-law, a solid, salt-of-the-earth highly-respected refinery foreman and rock of his Southern Baptist Church; the Theme is “for H. & L.,” known to us as “Uncle Hank & Aunt Lela Rahm,” staunch Methodists, successful farmers/investors, and generous benefactors of charities throughout the Garfield County region of northern Oklahoma including the city of Enid. Variation I is “for B.H.,” namely, our own Bob Hinitt, a dear friend of mine, a Sorbonne-educated gardener and theatrical set-builder whose annual Christmas displays on Wiggins thrilled so many Saskatonians for so many years—and always benefited his favourite charity, the SPCA; Variation II is “a musical sketch of Mike Farrow,” and is in the lively “Black Gospel” style; Variation III is “a musical sketch of Mike Wilson,” and is in an “Appalachian-Southern White Gospel” style; Variation IV bears the indication, “J. J., Magister Musicae De Facto,” implying that one of my closest friends in Saskatoon, the late Jack Johnson, more than proved he deserved the master’s degree that fate and departmental politics denied him; Variation V. has the indication, “for G. H. F.,” which is for my Uncle George Hunter Floyd, a “Wounded Warrior” of WWII, and in this short variation which is nothing but marching drums. I envisioned the phantom that had been Uncle George (nicknamed “Tag”) marching across a silent battlefield still smoking from the struggle; Variation VI is marked “for E. S.,” for my first best friend, Eddie Strickland, whom I met in the summer of 1944 when we were both still two years old. We were friends until his death about a quarter-century ago. Eddie was haunted by “demons” from a tragic childhood accident in which his younger brother died—but after Eddie married into a very Catholic family (which caused idle chatter in our old mostly-Protestant neighbourhood) he seemed quite happy until his untimely death in a late-night motorcycle accident. I believe to the end he was “haunted” by those “demons”—the “Dies Irae” setting expresses my own deepest feelings about him and his end; Variation VII is labeled “M. C.,” for Irish-born Dr. Mary Cronin, also Catholic, a brilliant educator, and one of our dearest friends. I could not help but think of her name, “Mary,” and the symbolism of her calming spiritual effect on the wrath of the “Dies Irae,” which calm leads into the “N’awlins” style Gospel Blues funeral march of Variations VIII-X: Variation VIII is “for V. and R.P.,” for my Aunt Vivian and Uncle Roger Pishny, wonderful people, Roger being also a gifted musician who, when I was young, introduced me to many great organists and their playing when they came to OKC; Variation IX is “for C.O.,” which stands for “Cousin Otto.” Otto Norman was a businessman, but also a musician who played his last New Year’s dance in 2004 with his group “The Pacemakers” at age 90 and died in 2008; Variation X is “for E. & A.P.,” which is in memory of my Aunt Ernesteen and Uncle Anton Pishny—Anton, with Ernesteen’s help, for many years did something in OKC similar to what Bob Hinitt did here: an annual Christmas display. Anton played Santa Claus to many people over the years with the help of the lady we knew at Christmas as “Mrs. Claus”—my Aunt Ernesteen, the fantastic Earth-mother cook who tried her best to make me permanently overweight. Without pause, Variation XI, the Coda, concludes the work. It bears the note, “for G. M.,” referring to Annette’s Mother Rosalie Rahm, whom we all knew as “Grandmother” or simply, “G. M,” the wife of “D.M.” She lived to be 91, and was the one to whom we all turned for both wise counsel AND her incredible sense of humour. She was a deeply-committed Southern Baptist (and as she said, “a lonely Democrat in a nest of Republicans”) who was open and welcoming to people of all faiths and ethnicities.

 

All of these good people, and with them many, many stories, are imbedded in this work of mine, part and parcel of its fabric. It occurred to me that this is, in a very real sense my musical equivalent of Thornton Wilder’s deservedly-famous play, “Our Town.”

 

I first heard the tune, “I will arise and go to Jesus” sung by people from rural southern Oklahoma, not in a Black Gospel style but in an Appalachian style as upbeat and fervent as the Black Gospel style. I was captivated then and since with the simple strength and emotional power of that tune, which I refer to in my music’s title as a “Southern Gospel Tune.” “Gospel Music” per se has more to do with the style of performance than the tune actually being sung. Some of the variations in my work are—for me—like musical snapshots of these two (among many) Gospel styles. For example, Variations II and III allude to, respectively, the Black Gospel style with built-in “hand-clappin’” and “foot-stompin’,” and the Appalachian/”Southr’in Okie” Gospel style with various vocal “swoops ‘n’ catches” in the singing (here, left to the strings).

 

My Variations on a Southern Gospel Tune, more than any other work I have ever written, grows out of my Oklahoma cultural roots. Oklahoma is a state where cultures were and are in conflict. For example, part of the state prior to the Civil War had been the Cherokee Nation, the Creek-Seminole Nation, and the Choctaw-Chickasaw Nation. After the war, it was Indian Territory until statehood in 1907. More than 30 Native American tribes live in Oklahoma, nearly twenty percent of the population is of Native American ancestry, and state license plates for decades now have proclaimed Oklahoma to be “Native America.” Not only that, when I was growing up our state was as rigidly segregated (until post-1954) vis-à-vis Black/White as South Africa’s Apartheid. On top of that, another form of almost-equally-stringent de facto segregation was Protestant/Catholic. Many Protestants/Catholics did not mix socially, and quite often parents of one faith would not even allow their children to play with children of the other faith.

 

All of this is interwoven in my mind and in my work. I have subtly slipped in a symbolic musical reference to the Protestant/Catholic conflict beginning with Variation I, in which the main tune, “I will arise and go to Jesus” is combined with the “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”) from the old Latin Catholic Mass. Here “Dies Irae” is quiet; it reaches its full wrathfulness and terror in Variation VI, where its immense inner energy and musical force is unleashed.

 

The following Variation, VII, tempers “the harsh decree” with mercy and love, and the work concludes with an extended excursion into the Gospel Blues idiom, a sort of “N’awlins” type sound, coming to full fruition in Variation X. It is my take on the traditional “N’awlins” Dixieland march to the cemetery, and the work concludes with an ethereal, transcendental Coda which uses another tune associated with the words “I will arise and go to Jesus.” As IF it was actually being sung, the melody leaves the text and tune unfinished: “…no turnin’ back, no turnin’….” as the music fades—over a bass note from the depths of eternity—into silence.

When the SSO embarked on the plans to do an auditioned chorus, we called Duff Warkentin – it was clear that he was the man for the job.  He’s become Saskatchewan’s go-to guy for a Messiah chorus!  Choral rehearsals have been filled not only with Duff’s musicianship, but his wonderful stories of meeting people like Ben Heppner and the legendary Robert Shaw.

Culture builds community! A strong believer in this truism, Duff Warkentin has had a significant and varied career as a choral singer, conductor, clinician, and adjudicator. His first intensive experience as a choral singer came when he was a student at Rosthern Junior College. Here he also had the opportunity to conduct the choir in the absence of their regular conductor. His post-secondary studies include degrees from Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg, University of Waterloo, and the University of Regina. He has served as Music Director at Rosthern Junior College, taught and conducted choirs for several years at the University of Saskatchewan, served as Choral Artist in Residence in the Battlefords and Rosthern, was the conductor of the Saskatoon Chamber Singers, conducted a number of church choirs, and is the founding conductor of the Station Singers of Rosthern. He is grateful for the opportunity to conduct Handel’s magnificent oratorio.