Subscription Concert B Series

Subscription Concert No.1012 B Series

This concert is over. Date: Wed. 4. December 2024 19:00 (18:00)

Venue: Suntory Hall Venue Info Seat

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Artists

Robert TREVIÑO, Conductor
Yu ITO, Violoncello

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Robert TREVIÑO (Conductor)

Music Director Basque National Orchestra
Principal Guest Conductor Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI

"Treviño forms one symphonic organism that, with its delicate lines, its piercing nine-note chord blocks, venomous scherzos and waltzing dances of death, turns the whole span into the turning of a musical wheel of fortune… Very enthusiastic applause."
(Leipziger Volkszeitung, on Robert Treviño with the CBSO at the Mahler Festival Leipzig, 2023)

Robert Treviño has rapidly emerged as one of the most exciting American conductors of the younger generation performing today. He is Music Director of the Basque National Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI.

The 2024/25 season will see Robert Treviño make debuts, among others, with the Minnesota Orchestra and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Tokyo, while there will be welcome returns to regular collaborators including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orchestra della Svizzeria Italiana, Osaka Philharmonic and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Other orchestras Robert Treviño has conducted include the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Münchner Philharmoniker, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Bamberger Symphoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, Filarmonica della Scala and Helsinki Philharmonic. He has also conducted major North American orchestras, including in Cleveland, Cincinnati and San Francisco – as well as the São Paulo Symphony, NHK Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic and St Petersburg Philharmonic. He has conducted at many leading festivals, among them Mahler Festival Leipzig, Milan Mahler Festival, Enescu Festival, Interlochen Festival and Puccini Festival. Treviño’s opera work has included productions at Opernhaus Zurich, La Fenice and Washington National Opera.

His recording contract with Ondine has resulted in a widely-praised complete Beethoven symphonies cycle, two much-acclaimed Ravel albums, a Rautavaara album, Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, and “Americascapes” – a survey of little-known American masterpieces, that won ‘Best Recording of 2021’ from Presto Music and was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award. “Americascapes 2 – American Opus” is to be released in Fall 2024. A cycle of Bruch symphonies with the Bamberger Symphoniker was released by CPO, to universally positive reviews.
Photo ©Christiaan Dirksen

Yu ITO (Violoncello)

Program

Haydn: Cello Concerto No.1 in C major, Hob.VIIb:1

Program Notes
Shostakovich: Symphony No.8 in C minor, op.65

Program Notes

Haydn: Cello Concerto No.1 in C major, Hob.Ⅶb: 1

Ⅰ Moderato
Ⅱ Adagio
Ⅲ Finale: Allegro molto

Franz Joseph Haydn: Born in Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809

　The thrill of discovering a long-lost work by a famous composer resides in the heart of every musical scholar. Imagine then the exultant joy of one Oldřich Pulkert, a young Czech scholar and archivist at the Czech National Library in Prague, when he unearthed in 1961 a cello concerto by Haydn, a work whose existence was never in doubt, but which had completely disappeared for two hundred years.
　Pulkertʼs great discovery came about as follows: In the years immediately following World War II, the Czech National Library acquired many of the great private collections in the country. It took years to examine and catalogue these collections. In one of them, formerly in the possession of Counts Kolovrat-Krakovsky, lay the music for a cello concerto in C major by Haydn. Although it was a copy of the parts (not an original manuscript score), there was no question of authenticity. Haydn himself had entered the principal themes of each movement into his own catalogue of compositions, so scholars were well aware that the concerto had been written. The question was, did it still exist, and if so, where? It took Pulkert only a momentary glance to ascertain that he had made a tremendously important discovery, for the themes matched those in Haydnʼs catalogue. The concerto was given its first modern performance in Prague on May 19, 1962, with Milos Sádlo as soloist and Charles Mackerras conducting the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.
　This then, is Haydnʼs “other” cello concerto, a worthy companion to his well-known Concerto in D major written years later and long one of the most popular in the repertory. Stylistic characteristics of the C-major concerto date it to the early 1760s, when Haydn was just beginning his long residency with the Eszterházy family as court composer, conductor and general musical servant. It was undoubtedly written for, and first played by, the courtʼs resident cellist, Joseph Franz Weigl, who also became a close friend of Haydn. The first movement gives a backwards nod to the Baroque period, which had only recently faded away, in its regular alternation of distinctly orchestral and soloistic passages. The central slow movement exploits the rapt lyricism of which the cello is capable. The finale is unabashedly virtuosic, and brings the concerto to a thrilling close. The music is idiomatically written throughout for the solo cello, and is fully representative of the assertive, healthy, self-confidence we associate with this composer.

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

Shostakovich: Symphony No.8 in C minor, op.65

Ⅰ Adagio - Allegro non troppo
Ⅱ Allegretto
Ⅲ Allegro non troppo
Ⅳ Largo
Ⅴ Allegretto

Dmitri Shostakovich: Born in St. Petersburg, September 25, 1906; died in Moscow, August 9, 1975

　In June of 1941, Hitlerʼs army penetrated the Russian border and headed for Leningrad, determined to bring the city to its knees. It arrived on August 29 and began bombing. In response to this trauma, which lasted for months, Shostakovich wrote his Seventh Symphony, subtitled “Leningrad.” It spoke to Russians and Allies everywhere in their struggle against the German menace, and it quickly became an instantaneous symbol of courage, defiance, heroism and projected victory, both in Russia and in the United States.
　Two years later, the end of the war was nowhere in sight. Misery, destruction and devastation existed on a scale hitherto unknown. Now Shostakovich was moved to write another symphonic commentary on the war, this one entirely different from the Leningrad Symphony. The Eighth Symphony speaks throughout of tragedy, of the horrors of war, of the bitter suffering that comes in its wake, of pain, pessimism and resignation. It yearns not for an exultant victory but for a quiet peace. At about sixty minutes in length, this symphony is still not quite as long as the Seventh, but in its profundity, expressive intensity, emotional depth and epic breadth, it far surpasses its predecessor. The first public orchestral performance was given in Moscow on November 4 by the State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the score is dedicated.
　The first movement, a vast Adagio, is nearly equal in length to the remaining four combined. Three main musical subjects hold the huge structure together. The first of these is a “call to attention,” the peremptory, agitated gesture announced in the opening bars by cellos and basses, and answered by violins and violas. Both the rhythmic and melodic aspects of this theme will have far-reaching ramifications, not just on the span of the 25-minute movement, but on the entire symphony as well. The second main idea is one of those long, austere themes the composer was famous for, a theme of uncompromising loneliness, forbidding greyness, seemingly frozen in time. Firmly anchored in the key of C minor, violins softly spin out their line sul tasto (bowing over the fingerboard of the instrument so as to produce a pale, wan sound). Though the music is uniformly quiet and subdued, there is a terrible sense of fear in the air. Also of a greyish cast and played by the violins is the third theme (in E minor), a soft lament sung over a gently throbbing accompaniment from the remainder of the string body.
　The climax of the movement arrives with spellbinding effect. Monstrous, blaring chords for the full orchestra playing fortississimo against the roar and rumble of the entire percussion section. Suddenly the terror passes, leaving in its wake a desolate landscape of pain and anguish. The English horn begins an infinitely long, compassionate song of lamentation and bereavement. The movement moves steadily towards a quiet close, brooding Hamlet-like, interrupted only briefly by one last flare-up from the brass as a reminder that peace has yet to be won.
　The second movement is a brutal musical representation of the crushing, annihilating effect of war. Shrill sounds, vulgar effects, and crassly heavy orchestration all contribute to the effect of a warlike march.
　If the second movement evoked the specter of war, the third brings it directly into our presence, in some of the most hellish music ever conceived. Violas set up an ostinato pattern of four equal notes per measure, a pattern that will continue relentlessly for over five hundred measures until the movement ends, six terrifying minutes later. There are no themes here − just the merciless rhythms of the war machine at work.
　The emotional linchpin of the entire symphony arrives without pause at the beginning of the fourth movement, where the war machine is suddenly halted in its tracks, confronted by a force even greater than itself. The life is crushed out of it in what can only be described as the musical equivalent of seismic upheavals. The noise and frenzy quickly subside, and the music settles into a grave passacaglia. Eleven times in succession, cellos and basses play a mournful, nine-bar theme. Over the passacaglia theme various commentaries are played out above it.
　The final movement arrives, again without pause, in a moment of pure magic − a softly intoned, sustained C major triad in the clarinets, a gesture of harmonic stability we have not yet encountered in this symphony, and giving “the sense of being lifted into clear air” (Hugh Ottaway). Tentatively at first, then with more resolution, the solo bassoon takes up the musical thread and sets off on a meandering theme that will become the basis for a set of variations, each for a different instrument or instrumental group: first to the violins, then flute, then cellos, etc. Additional themes are introduced as well, and towards the end intrudes a final reminder of the nightmare that now passes, hopefully, for the last time.

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

【Soloist Encore】（12/4up）
Pablo Casals：Song of the Birds
　（Yu ITO＆TMSO Cello section）

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