New Bedford Symphony Orchestra

May 2012 “The Music of America” Program Notes

Jennifer Higdon (1962 - ) blue cathedral (1999)

Born in Brooklyn in 1962 but raised in Atlanta and Tennessee, Jennifer Higdon found classical music only in college at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where she majored in flute performance. “Because I came to classical music very differently,” she writes, “…the newer stuff had more appeal for me than the older.” She began composing while at college, where conducting teacher Richard Spano championed her work. Spano eventually recorded her Concerto for Orchestra and City Scape with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2004, earning four Grammy nominations. Higdon also studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she now teaches.

In 1999 the Curtis Institute commissioned her to write a work for its 75^th anniversary. Her brother, Andrew Blue, had recently passed away, and (she writes) “I found myself pondering the question of what makes a life. blue cathedral represents the expression of the individual and the group…our inner travels and the places our souls carry us.” The work opens ethereally, with tinkling chimes and distant bells soon joined by strings. Although the impetus for the piece might be seen as tragic, the work is anything but – instead, the textures grow to a climax of swelling strings and triumphal fanfare. Throughout there is a dialogue between solo flute and solo clarinet, representing Higdon and her brother, who played clarinet. The entire work is a voyage, described by Higdon as follows: “I found myself imagining a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky. … The stained glass windows’ figures would start moving with song, singing a heavenly music. The listener would float down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising towards an immense ceiling which would open to the sky.  … I wanted to create the sensation of contemplation and quiet peace at the beginning, moving towards the feeling of celebration and ecstatic expansion of the soul, all the while singing along with that heavenly music.”

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) Concerto No. 2 for Piano in D Minor

American composer Edward MacDowell was born in 1860 in New York City. Colombian violinist Juan Buitrago, his parents’ boarder, recognized the boy’s talent and gave him piano lessons, then introduced him to Venezuelan concert pianist Teresa Carreño, who encouraged him to go to Europe. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1877 and then moved to Frankfurt in 1878 to study with Joachim Raff at the Hoch Conservatory. He taught at the Hoch Conservatory for several years, meeting his American-born wife, pianist Marian Nevins, along the way. In 1888 they returned to the US and he began his career in Boston, then at Columbia University in New York. His many songs, piano suites, and orchestral works were generally successful, and in his lifetime he was considered one of the greatest American composers. In 1902, however, the new president of Columbia closed the music department and MacDowell resigned. In 1904, he was struck by a cab in New York, and from then his health and mental faculties declined rapidly. He passed away in 1908. Romantic composers fell by the wayside as American modernism rose, and today MacDowell remains largely forgotten, but for the artist’s colony his wife founded in his name and that endures today.

MacDowell composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1884 and 1885, performing it himself with Theodore Thomas and his orchestra in New York City in 1889, and then again with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The opening Larghetto calmato with its longing passage for strings evolves into a passionate statement by the piano solo that is eventually taken up by the full orchestra. The fleet Presto is a rondo that skitters along at top speeds, exploring a wild main motif and two equally dynamic secondary subjects. The final Largo begins as introspectively as the opening movement, with a variation on that movement’s main theme. Winds then introduce a Molto allegro theme over piano accompaniment which the piano picks up to lead all into brilliant territory that is at times sunny, at times stormy. The calm coda from the opening returns for a few thoughtful moments, then the allegro asserts itself and the movement and work end in grand flourishes.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Symphony No. 3

In August, 1944, Aaron Copland began working on a commission from the Boston Symphony to write a piece in memory of conductor Serge Koussevitzky’s late wife, Natalie. Composer David Diamond urged Copland to “make it a really KO [knock-out] symphony,” and encouraged Copland’s idea of using the theme from his 1942 Fanfare for the Common Man, written originally as a war morale-booster. By the time Koussevitsky conducted the premiere, in October 1946, the war had ended and Copland could claim that his Symphony No. 3 reflected “the euphoric spirit of the country at the time.”

Although it does not contain jazz or folk music like many of Copland’s other works, some commentators criticized the symphony for being too obviously populist. Copland himself wrote that it was “fat-grand” rather than “lean-grand,” and later made a few cuts in the finale. The work features the open fifths and fourths so characteristic of his work, and that (thanks to Copland) have become almost synonymous with music representing America in film scores and commercials.

Copland constructed the opening, Molto moderato, in the form of a musical arch. Opening and closing in the key of E, the movement features three themes, stated by strings, then violas and oboes, then trombones and horns. The central portion of the arch is “more animated,” he writes, and grand, with its resounding brass and timpani.

The scherzo, Allegro molto, starts boldly with a brass fanfare. In the trio section, solo woodwinds begin a quiet, lyrical canon taken up by the strings, until a solo piano leads to the restatement of the opening motif. The canon of the trio appears a last time, but this time played fortissimo by the full orchestra.

The third movement, Andantino quasi allegretto, opens with soft, high harmonics in the strings. In fact, the movement features mainly strings, with a few woodwinds and almost no brass (a single horn and trumpet). Copland wrote that “the various sections are intended to emerge one from the other in continuous flow, somewhat in the manner of a closely knit series of variations.” The central Allegretto con moto section is broader and more forceful, but the movement eventually returns to the higher regions of the strings, ending with a solo violin and piccolo accompanied by harps and celesta.

The third movement segues directly into the fourth, Molto deliberato. Copland teases us a little with his Fanfare for the Common Man, beginning at first as quietly as he left the previous movement, with the famous melody played pianissimo by clarinets and flutes. Then the brass and percussion state the fanfare more firmly, until a solo oboe seems to improvise, leading the woodwinds and then full orchestra into the main body of the movement. A tutti chord, with flutter-tongued brass and piccolos, announces the end of the development. Then Copland weaves together the main theme (in high woodwinds) and the fanfare (in bassoons) with the opening theme of the first movement (strings and then trombone). The symphony ends on a grand, exultant restatement of the entire work’s opening phrase, thus bringing us full circle in celebration.

Program notes by Barbara Heninger