Last updated: March 22, 2022
Note from the composer
I started to compose Symphony No. 13 in the summer of 2020 in New York City. My life as a “symphonist” began 30 years ago in 1992 when, at the suggestion of conductor Dennis Russell Davies, I was commissioned to write my First Symphony. While I always thought of myself as a theater composer – which has the virtue of being true – it was Dennis that “didn’t want me to be one of those opera composers who never wrote a symphony.”
So while I have spent the majority of my creative life in theater in one form or another, through friendly coercion and also with great joy I have written a number of symphonies which were purely instrumental, as well as another group which included vocal materials or were based on outside material: poetry, wisdom traditions, and even popular music.
I first heard the National Arts Centre Orchestra live in 2016 at the Glenn Gould Prize concert when they performed my Symphony No. 8. I have had a home in Nova Scotia for over 50 years and come here every year. And a number of my pieces have premiered in Canada over the years. When invited by the NAC Orchestra to compose a new work, I began to think of a new full-scale instrumental symphony to be part of their program “Truth in Our Time.” The piece is part of the kind of music which I view to be a new body of work that started with Symphony No. 11 from five years ago. The journey continues to explore my own ideas about the language of music as it has evolved for me in the form of these symphonies.
What can a piece of music express about the idea of truth? When we consider a figure like Peter Jennings, a Canadian by birth, an immigrant, a journalist, an American by choice, rather than making a proclamation about “what is truth,” for the composer we are on much better ground when we talk about “This is the music that I listen to, this is the music that I like, and this is the music that I write.”
—Philip Glass, January 2022, New York City
Repertoire
Zeiss After Dark
Canadian Nicole Lizée (b. 1973) is an award-winning composer and video artist who creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences, including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Alexander McQueen, thrash metal, early video game culture, 1960s psychedelia, and 1960s modernism. Hailed by the CBC as a “brilliant musical scientist”, she is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them, and integrates them into live performance. Lizée’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, vintage board games, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre, she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision. Her commission list to date is comprised of over 50 works for numerous distinguished artists and ensembles.
Zeiss After Dark was a co-commission of the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as one of 40 co-commissioned “Sesquies”—two-minute concert openers—to celebrate Canada’s Sesquicentennial in 2017. Premiered by the NAC Orchestra in Ottawa on February 23, 2017, it has since been performed by other ensembles. Lizée provides this description of her “Sesquie”:
Stanley Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott filmed the unprecedented “candlelight scene” in Barry Lyndon using three-wick candles as the only light source. The resulting scene was unlike any other in cinema history for its look—gauzy and akin to a moving oil painting. The creativity and technical ingenuity required to capture this decidedly organic effect was considerable. Cameras with custom-mounted Zeiss lenses designed for NASA were Kubrick’s solution to an almost insurmountable problem of light. In writing this piece, I imagined a sonic equivalent: a musical work that brings sound into focus through techniques that emulate the conditions involved in ultra lowlight—glow, flicker, bokeh—reimagined for orchestra.
Scored for woodwind, brass, timpani, and percussion, Lizée draws on their distinctive timbres (as well as requiring the musicians to hand clap) to musically capture this cinematic low light technique.
Program notes by Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley
Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70
I. Allegro
II. Moderato
III. Presto –
IV. Largo –
V. Allegretto
After Dmitry Shostakovich’s (1906–1975) Ninth Symphony premiered on November 3, 1945, by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, it was clear by critical reaction that what was heard was not what had been expected. To be sure, the composer initially projected a kind of “heroic victory symphony”, one that could effectively memorialize the contributions of the Soviet people in the war effort against Nazism. In the end, the Ninth seemed to fall short; its comparatively lighthearted character was deemed to be an inappropriate response to—and reflection of—the post-war mood. The Soviet cultural authorities appeared to have felt this, and in 1948, they barred the Ninth Symphony (and other works by Shostakovich) from further performance. Only after Stalin’s death in 1953 was the ban lifted; the work was featured in concerts again beginning in 1955.
It’s possible that it was thought the Ninth Symphony would display, for example, a clearly defined emotional arc of victory over suffering. However, even such tropes are never just what they are at face value in Shostakovich’s music. There is frequently embedded a subtext of dark irony, which the composer honed from years of writing music under the deep scrutiny of Stalin and his Party. It’s worth considering that Shostakovich was aware that writing a “heroic victory symphony” would mean celebrating Stalin and his Party, who had previously murdered thousands, and whose oppressive regime, under which the composer had already suffered a very public denunciation in 1936, would resume after the war. Thus, it seemed impossible to create such a work while providing an authentic emotional outlet for what the Soviet people had been through. Perhaps, then, the bitter irony of this situation can only be expressed by the darkly humorous music of the Ninth.
The opening Allegro is a comic affair with two main themes: a jaunty motif introduced by the first violins, and later, a cheeky tune piped by the piccolo, announced boisterously by the trombone with timpani and snare drum. (One can’t help but hear circus music in the latter.) Tension builds as the themes develop, becoming caricatures of themselves as they reach a frenzied climax. The key melodies are reprised but given new instrumentation and context, the movement’s darker edge becomes more evident.
Solo clarinet begins the second movement with a kind of melancholy, off-kilter waltz melody, which is then taken up by the flute, along with the bassoon. The strings lumber in with an anxious ascending passage, over which oboe and clarinet rise in lament. Solo flute brings back the main theme, after which the strings’ lumbering passage also returns, but at a higher register; they break through to an ethereal peak. The piccolo closes the movement with a plaintive final rendition of the opening melody.
The last three movements are played through without pause. The Presto is a highly theatrical Scherzo of mercurial brilliance. Solo clarinet takes the lead again, this time with a sparkling theme, which is then played by woodwinds, and later, strings. In the trio, the trumpet blasts a lampoon of a song tune. After the Scherzo’s return, the pace slows and the mood takes a solemn turn, leading into the fourth movement, which begins with a stentorian passage of menacing dotted rhythms played by trombones and tuba. This ominous “announcement” alternates with a meditative bassoon solo of elegiac quality. Is this music looking back at the war or forward, as a portent of things to come? Whatever it is, it doesn’t dwell here for long. As if shaking off bad memories or future concerns, the bassoon starts the finale with a charming tune, which is reprised throughout in various guises. The strings later present a robust theme. Gradually, the orchestra advances with the main melody; the pace suddenly quickens, eventually reaching a climax—the light-stepping tune now a military march. (Whether this is an authentic or forced celebration is open to interpretation). The tempo picks up again, and the orchestra scampers to the symphony’s end.
Program notes by Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley
Concerto in D Major, Opus 35, for Violin and Orchestra (Blake Pouliot, soloist)
I. Moderato nobile
II. Romance
III. Finale
Erich Korngold (1897–1957) composed his Violin Concerto during the summer of 1945. At the time, he was living in Hollywood with his family, in exile from his native Vienna since 1938, away from the Second World War being fought in Europe. He dedicated the work to Alma Mahler-Werfel, a friend, and also a recent émigré to Los Angeles with her husband, the writer Franz Werfel. The Concerto was premiered on February 15, 1947 by soloist Jascha Heifetz with the St. Louis Symphony directed by Vladimir Golschmann.
After a childhood as a celebrated musical prodigy and a burgeoning career as a leading composer of opera and concert music in Europe, since 1935, Korngold had been writing almost exclusively film scores for Hollywood. While this was a career move that ultimately helped save him (he was Jewish), his family, and his music from Nazi persecution, he intended to return to what he was doing before, back in Vienna, once the war was over. The Violin Concerto was intended to facilitate his “comeback”. He finally returned in 1949 (following a major heart attack in 1947) but soon found himself an outsider: the younger generation seemed to not know of him, and he was dismissed for being “merely” a film composer. Furthermore, his post-war concert works, including his Violin Concerto, were criticized for being “old fashioned”—their sumptuous harmonies and passionate melodies characteristic of late Romantic, fin-de-siècle style were felt to be out of touch with more modern idioms and the traumas of the Second World War. He died thinking he’d be largely forgotten, but in the 1970s, interest his film scores sparked renewed attention to his concert works. Today, his Violin Concerto is now an established work in the concert hall and on recordings, beloved by violinists and enjoyed by audiences everywhere.
In his own introductory note to the Violin Concerto, Korngold wrote, in 1947, “I have always remained true to my own beliefs; that music should be melodic, and as an old Viennese master used to preach and teach to me—‘wohllautend’ (well sounding).” It suggests that Korngold strongly felt that even after the horrors of war, there is still a place for music that is beautiful and hopeful, full of adventure and fantasy, like his symphonic film scores. In fact, the Concerto itself draws on music he composed for four movies in the late 1930s. The first movement’s noble opening theme, introduced by the solo violin, is from Another Dawn (1936). It becomes a refrain throughout, structurally delineating key sections: a quicksilver transition, followed by a tenderly passionate second theme, this one from the score to Juarez (1939); then another fast section, including the solo violinist’s cadenza, after which the main themes are reprised, inventively rescored. The movement closes with a flourish.
The Romance is a dreamy, rhapsodic song for violin on a melody from Korngold’s score to Anthony Adverse (1936), which had earned him an Oscar. It bookends an atmospheric contrasting section evocative of night. A vigorous dance of a finale follows. Based on music from another film score, The Prince and the Pauper (1937), this is a virtuosic tour-de-force for the soloist, giving this Concerto a dazzling finish.
Program notes by Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley
Symphony No. 13*
Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, American composer Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times. He is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film, and in popular music—simultaneously. Over the last 25 years, he has completed over 25 operas, 12 symphonies, 13 concertos, film soundtracks, nine string quartets, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ.
Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 13 was commissioned for Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra by the Jennings family as a tribute to the late Toronto-born Canadian journalist Peter Jennings. A highly respected news anchor for ABC News, Jennings was also a trustee of Carnegie Hall during his years in New York City, the founding director of the American chapter of the Friends of the NAC Orchestra, and served as a lifelong champion of Canadian artists generally. The world premiere of the work was given by the NAC Orchestra in Toronto on March 30, 2022; tonight’s performance is the Symphony’s U.S. premiere.
Program notes by Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley
Artists
Since its debut in 1969, the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra has been praised for the passion and clarity of its performances, its visionary educational programs, and its prominent role in nurturing Canadian creativity. Under the leadership of Music Director Alexander Shelley, the NAC Orchestra reflects the fabric and values of Canada, reaching and representing the diverse communities we live in with daring programming, powerful storytelling, inspiring artistry, and innovative partnerships.
Alexander Shelley began his tenure as Music Director in 2015, following Pinchas Zukerman’s 16 seasons at the helm. Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and former Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra (2009–2017), he has been in demand around the world, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic, DSO Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Stockholm Philharmonic, among others, and maintains a regular relationship with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and the German National Youth Orchestra.
Each season, the NAC Orchestra features world-class artists such as the newly appointed Artist-in-Residence James Ehnes, Angela Hewitt, Joshua Bell, Xian Zhang, Gabriela Montero, Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, and Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds. As one of the most accessible, inclusive, and collaborative orchestras in the world, the NAC Orchestra uses music as a universal language to communicate the deepest of human emotions and connect people through shared experiences.
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Alexander Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s NAC Orchestra in September 2015. The ensemble has since been praised as being “transformed... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen) and Shelley’s programming credited for turning the orchestra into “one of the more audacious in North America” (Maclean’s).
Shelley is a champion of Canadian creation; recent hallmarks include the multimedia projects Life Reflected and UNDISRUPTED,and three major new ballets in partnership with NAC Dance for Encount3rs. He is passionate about arts education and nurturing the next generation of musicians. He is an Ambassador for Ottawa’s OrKidstra, a charitable social development program that teaches children life skills through making music together.
Alexander Shelley is also the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and, starting with the 2024–2025 season, Artistic and Music Director of Artis-Naples and the Naples Philharmonic in Florida, USA. In the spring of 2019, he led the NAC Orchestra on its critically acclaimed 50th Anniversary European tour, and in 2017, he led the Orchestra in a tour across Canada, celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary. Most recently, he led the Orchestra in its first performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 30 years.
He has made eight recordings with the NAC Orchestra, including the JUNO-nominated New Worlds, Life Reflected, ENCOUNT3RS, The Bounds of Our Dreams, and the acclaimed Clara, Robert, Johannes four-album series, all with Canadian label Analekta.
The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LL.D. (hc)
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Described as “immaculate, at once refined and impassioned” (Arts Atlanta), violinist Blake Pouliot (pool-YACHT) has anchored himself among the ranks of classical phenoms. A tenacious young artist with a passion that enraptures his audience in every performance, Pouliot has established himself as “one of those special talents that comes along once in a lifetime” (Toronto Star).
Blake Pouliot’s 2023–2024 symphonic highlights include appearances with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Artis-Naples, the NAC Orchestra, and Orchestre symphonique de Québec, among others. In Europe this season, Pouliot makes his Spanish debut with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Spain at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violon Concerto with Rossen Milanov as well as playing and directing Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons in a separate chamber program. As a chamber musician, Pouliot returns to the NAC, Aspen Music Festival, and La Jolla Summerfest where he performed the festival-opening concert last year with conductor Alan Gilbert. He also returns to the National Youth Orchestra of Canada for his third consecutive year as Artist-in-Residence.
During his time as Soloist-in-Residence of Orchestre Métropolitain in 2020–2021, Pouliot and Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons which led to Pouliot’s 2022 debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra, performing John Corigliano’s The Red Violin (Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra) with Nézet-Séguin. Pouliot won the Grand Prize at the 2016 Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Manulife Competition and was named First Laureate of both the 2018 and 2015 Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.
Pouliot released his debut album of 20th-century French music on Analekta Records in 2019 to critical acclaim, including a five-star rating from BBC MusicMagazine and a 2019 JUNO nomination for Best Classical Album.
Pouliot performs on the 1729 Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from an anonymous donor.
Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation”, Montreal based composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, 1960s psychedelia and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance.
Nicole’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.
In 2001 Nicole received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. After a decade and a half of composition, her commission list of over 40 works is varied and distinguished (the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, CBC, Radio-Canada, the San Francisco Symphony, NYC’s Kaufman Center, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, So Percussion, Eve Egoyan, Gryphon Trio, MATA Festival, TorQ Percussion, Fondation Arte Musica/Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, ECM+, Continuum, Soundstreams, SMCQ, Arraymusic, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony). Her music has been performed worldwide in renowned venues including Carnegie Hall (NYC), Royal Albert Hall (London), Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam) and Cité de la Musique (Paris) – and in festivals including the BBC Proms (UK), Huddersfield (UK), Bang On a Can (USA), All Tomorrow’s Parties (UK), X Avant (Canada), Luminato (Canada), C3 (Berlin), Ecstatic (NYC), Switchboard (San Francisco), Casalmaggiore (Italy), and Dark Music Days (Iceland).
Nicole was awarded the prestigious 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. She is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (New York City/Italy). In 2015 she was selected by acclaimed composer and conductor Howard Shore to be his protégée as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Mentorship Program.
This Will Not Be Televised, her seminal piece for chamber ensemble and turntables, placed in the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works. Her work for piano and notated glitch, Hitchcock Études, was chosen by the International Society for Contemporary Music and featured at the 2014 World Music Days in Wroclaw, Poland. Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus (2013), two Prix collégien de musique contemporaine, (2012, 2013) and the 2002 Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition.
NAC Orchestra
FIRST VIOLINS
Yosuke Kawasaki (concertmaster)
Jessica Linnebach (associate concertmaster)
Noémi Racine Gaudreault (assistant concertmaster)
Elaine Klimasko**
Marjolaine Lambert
Jeremy Mastrangelo
Manuela Milani
Leah Roseman**
Marc Djokic*
Martine Dubé*
Amy Hillis*
Soo Gyeong Lee*
Erica Miller*
Heather Schnarr*
SECOND VIOLINS
Mintje van Lier (principal)
Winston Webber (assistant principal)
Mark Friedman
Carissa Klopoushak
Frédéric Moisan
Edvard Skerjanc**
Karoly Sziladi
Emily Westell
Andréa Armijo-Fortin*
Renée London*
Sara Mastrangelo*
VIOLAS
Jethro Marks (principal)
David Marks (associate principal)
David Goldblatt (assistant principal)
Paul Casey
Ren Martin-Doike
David Thies-Thompson
Mary-Kathryn Stevens*
CELLOS
Rachel Mercer (principal)
Julia MacLaine (assistant principal)
Timothy McCoy
Marc-André Riberdy
Leah Wyber
Karen Kang*
Thaddeus Morden*
DOUBLE BASSES
Max Cardilli (guest principal)*
Hilda Cowie (acting assistant principal)
Marjolaine Fournier
Vincent Gendron
Paul Mach*
FLUTES
Joanna G’froerer (principal)
Stephanie Morin
Dakota Martin*
OBOES
Charles Hamann (principal)
Anna Petersen
ENGLISH HORN
Anna Petersen
CLARINETS
Kimball Sykes (principal)
Sean Rice
Shauna Barker*
BASSOONS
Christopher Millard (principal)
Vincent Parizeau
HORNS
Lawrence Vine (principal)
Julie Fauteux (associate principal)
Elizabeth Simpson
Lauren Anker
Louis-Pierre Bergeron
TRUMPETS
Karen Donnelly (principal)
Steven van Gulik
Michael Fedyshyn*
TROMBONES
Donald Renshaw (principal)
Colin Traquair
BASS TROMBONE
Douglas Burden
TUBA
Chris Lee (principal)
TIMPANI
Feza Zweifel (principal)
PERCUSSION
Jonathan Wade
Julia Chien*
HARP
Angela Schwarzkopf*
CELESTE
Olga Gross*
PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN
Nancy Elbeck
ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN
Corey Rempel
PERSONNEL MANAGER
Meiko Lydall
ASSISTANT PERSONNEL MANAGER
Laurie Shannon
*Additional musicians
**On leave
Non-titled members of the Orchestra are listed alphabetically
SUPPORT FOR THE NAC ORCHESTRA
The Philip Glass Commission is made possible thanks to The Jennings Family. The National Arts Centre Foundation wishes to acknowledge and thank the donors who have made the 2022 NACO Tour possible: Adrian Burns, LL.D. & Gregory Kane, Q.C., Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., O.N.L., LLD (hc), Susan Glass, C.M. & Arni Thorsteinson, O.M., Ambassador Bruce Heyman and Vicki Heyman, John Roger McCaig, Michael F. B. Nesbitt, Gail O'Brien, LL.D. & David O'Brien, O.C., Janice O’Born, C.M., O.Ont and Earle O’Born, Dasha Shenkman, OBE, Hon RCM, R.N.C. Tennant, and The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation.
