Repertoire
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes…
Piano Concerto in G major
Born in Ciboure, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, March 7, 1875
Died in Paris, December 28, 1937
Ravel toyed with writing a piano concerto as early as 1906, according to one source, and again in 1914, but the actual composition of what became the Piano Concerto in G was undertaken between 1929 and 1931, interspersed with work on the Concerto for Left Hand. The first performance was given in Paris by the Lamoureux Orchestra on January 14, 1932. Ravel had originally intended to play the piano part himself, but because of declining health, he granted the solo role to the concerto’s dedicatee, Marguerite Long, while he conducted. Ravel and Long then set out on a 20-city tour of Europe with the concerto; Long recorded it as well, with the Portuguese conductor Pedro de Freitas Branco.
A number of elements combined to influence the style and form of the Concerto. Music of the Basques is immediately evident in the opening bars, for instance, where the exuberant piccolo theme bears strong relation to the folksong style of the Basques. The second theme, played first by the piano, suggests the influence of neighbouring Spain. Ravel had spent much time in the Basque country during the summer and autumn of 1929, when he began to write the Concerto. Ravel’s Basque hometown of Ciboure (a tiny seacoast town on the Bay of Biscay where France and Spain meet) honoured him the following year, strengthening the composer’s ties to his homeland.
The jazz influence is even more pronounced, stemming from Ravel’s tour throughout the United States in 1928. He visited the jazz clubs of New Orleans and Harlem and no doubt heard, among others, Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. He struck up a mutually admiring friendship with George Gershwin. The influence of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F can be felt in Ravel’s Concerto, especially in the first movement with its “blue” notes, jazz harmonies and rhythms.
Ravel professed that “the music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be light-hearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects.” In this respect, his Concerto in G succeeds splendidly, and Ravel liked to refer to it as a divertissement de luxe.
— Program notes by Robert Markow
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”
I. Adagio – Allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Scherzo: Molto vivace
IV. Allegro con fuoco
After the second movement, storms of applause resounded from all sides. Everyone present turned to look in the direction in which the conductor, Anton Seidl, was looking. At last, a sturdily-built man of medium height, straight as a fir tree from the forest whose music he so splendidly interprets, was discovered by the audience. From all over the hall there are cries of “Dvořák! Dvořák!” And while the composer is bowing, we have the opportunity to observe this poet of tone who is able to move the heart of so great an audience. […] Dr. Dvořák, hands trembling with emotion, indicates his thanks with Mr. Seidl, the orchestra and the audience, whereupon he disappears into the background while the Symphony continues.
So described the New York Herald’s critic of what occurred at the premiere of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, performed by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, on December 15, 1893. Based on this report, the piece appeared to be an unequivocal success, but this was not remotely the full picture. Even the work’s popularity today—it’s been regularly performed by orchestras around the world since the early 20th century—conceals a history and legacy that’s more complicated and uncomfortable, as musicologist Douglas Shadle incisively revealed in his recent historical study of the piece. As Jim Crow laws took hold in the late 19th century, the composition, performance, and initial reception of this symphony brought to a head many divisive issues regarding musical nationalism, aesthetics, and racial politics, the effects of which still resonate throughout American classical music culture today.
The “New World” Symphony was the first of several works Dvořák completed after he came to New York in 1892 to be artistic director and professor of composition at the National Conservatory of Music. The institution’s president, Jeannette Thurber, had invited him, believing that the Czech composer, then at the peak of his fame, could help guide the creation of an American “national” style of art music. As he considered what this could be, Dvořák learned about African American spirituals from one of the Conservatory’s Black students, Henry Thacker Burleigh, and was also given transcriptions of Indigenous melodies from the critic Henry Krehbiel. Eventually, he arrived at what he thought was the way forward. In a New York Herald interview published in May 1893, the composer declared that the music of the African diaspora “must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.”
Dvořák’s statement, appearing months before the symphony’s premiere, proved to be explosive, as many white critics and composers offered a wide gamut of responses, much of it revealing deeply racist attitudes. While a few agreed with him, some felt that diasporic African melodies were too trivial a music to warrant “elevation” to (European) art music; several declared that such music was not even genuinely American to begin with, while others said that “the best” of these melodies were written by white men like Stephen Foster. It did not occur to them that Black musicians and composers at the time might have their own perspectives to contribute to the conversation.
When Dvořák arrived in the States, Thurber gave him a copy of Henry Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, hoping he would first write an opera. But he wrote a four-movement symphony instead, which was perhaps more significant, given that late-19th century critics regarded it as the most prestigious type of orchestral composition, and despite its Germanic origins, upheld it as a mode of universal expression. Structurally, the “New World” Symphony unfolds conventionally, with fast outer movements (the first opens with a slow introduction) framing a slow movement and a scherzo and trio, both of which Dvořák noted were influenced by Longfellow’s poem (the latter depicting Hiawatha’s wedding feast). For the symphony’s thematic material, just as he drew on the shape, colour, and “spirit” of Czech folk music to create original tunes for his earlier works, the composer similarly saw diasporic African music as raw material for his inspiration and manipulation. (Dvořák did not regard his appropriation as problematic, being ignorant, as Shadle has said, of “th[is] music’s historical and emotional ties to Black bodies.”) In line with the venerated principle of thematic unity, musical motifs from the Allegro molto return in later movements, such as its first and closing themes appearing simultaneously at the second movement’s climax, with the Largo’s own haunting main melody; the scherzo also features reminiscences of the same themes; and in the finale, melodies from the first and second movements reappear in the coda, with the symphony closing on a blazing statement of the Allegro molto’s first theme.
A question lingers: Does the “New World” Symphony sound American? Some critics in Dvořák’s day were unconvinced, asserting that what the composer wrote sounded more Slavic or even Irish, comparisons not entirely devoid of racist sentiment in 19th-century America. Thus, as we today might continue to feel drawn to this work’s power, we must also grapple with the historical complexities of its creation and the legacy of its performance.
Program notes by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD
Artists
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“A natural communicator, both on and off the podium” (The Telegraph), Alexander Shelley performs across six continents with the world’s finest orchestras and soloists.
With a conducting technique described as “immaculate” (Yorkshire Post) and a “precision, distinction and beauty of gesture not seen since Lorin Maazel” (Le Devoir), Shelley is known for the clarity and integrity of his interpretations and the creativity and vision of his programming. To date, he has spearheaded over 40 major world premieres, highly praised cycles of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms symphonies, operas, ballets, and innovative multi-media productions.
Since 2015, he has served as Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In April 2023, he was appointed Artistic and Music Director of Artis–Naples in Florida, providing artistic leadership for the Naples Philharmonic and the entire multidisciplinary arts organization. The 2024-2025 season is Shelley’s inaugural season in this position.
Additional 2024-2025 season highlights include performances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the National Symphony of Ireland. Shelley is a regular guest with some of the finest orchestras of Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australasia, including Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Helsinki, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Malaysian, Oslo, Rotterdam and Stockholm philharmonic orchestras and the Sao Paulo, Houston, Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, Munich, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand symphony orchestras.
In September 2015, Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the youngest in its history. The ensemble has since been praised as “an orchestra transformed ... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen), and his programming is credited for turning the orchestra “almost overnight ... into one of the more audacious orchestras in North America” (Maclean’s). Together, they have undertaken major tours of Canada, Europe, and Carnegie Hall, where they premiered Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 13.
They have commissioned ground-breaking projects such as Life Reflected and Encount3rs, released multiple JUNO-nominated albums and, most recently, responded to the pandemic and social justice issues of the era with the NACO Live and Undisrupted video series.
In August 2017, Shelley concluded his eight-year tenure as Chief Conductor of the Nurnberger Symphoniker, a period hailed by press and audiences alike as a golden era for the orchestra.
Shelley’s operatic engagements have included The Merry Widow and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet (Royal Danish Opera), La bohème (Opera Lyra/National Arts Centre), Louis Riel (Canadian Opera Company/National Arts Centre), lolanta (Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen), Così fan tutte (Opera National de Montpellier), The Marriage of Figaro (Opera North), Tosca (Innsbruck), and both Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni in semi-staged productions at the NAC.
Winner of the ECHO Music Prize and the Deutsche Grunderpreis, Shelley was conferred with the Cross of the Federal Order of Merit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in April 2023 in recognition of his services to music and culture.
Through his work as Founder and Artistic Director of the Schumann Camerata and their pioneering “440Hz” series in Dusseldorf, as founding Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s “Zukunftslabor” and through his regular tours leading Germany’s National Youth Orchestra, inspiring future generations of classical musicians and listeners has always been central to Shelley’s work.
He regularly gives informed and passionate pre- and post-concert talks on his programs, as well as numerous interviews and podcasts on the role of classical music in society. In Nuremberg alone, over nine years, he hosted over half a million people at the annual Klassik Open Air concert, Europe’s largest classical music event.
Born in London in October 1979 to celebrated concert pianists, Shelley studied cello and conducting in Germany and first gained widespread attention when he was unanimously awarded first prize at the 2005 Leeds Conductors’ Competition, with the press describing him as “the most exciting and gifted young conductor to have taken this highly prestigious award.”
The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., ONL, LL.D. (hc).
“Pristine, lyrical and intelligent” – The New York Times
“A musician of unusual refinement and imagination” – Boston Globe
Jan Lisiecki’s interpretations and technique speak to a maturity beyond his age. At 28, the Canadian performs over 100 yearly concerts worldwide, and has worked closely and has developed close relationships with the greatest conductors and orchestras of our time.
Following a return to the BBC Proms in London in July this year, he begins a busy 2023–24 season including his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as a recital in the 2,800-seat Main Auditorium of Carnegie Hall. Recently, he celebrated returns to leading orchestras worldwide, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as Orchestre de Paris and Staatskapelle Dresden. In addition to his 2023–24 residency at Elbphilharmonie, he was simultaneously named Artist in Residence at Cologne Philharmonie.
At 15, Lisiecki signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The label launched its celebrations of the Beethoven Year 2020 with the release of a live recording of all five Beethoven concertos from the Konzerthaus Berlin, with Lisiecki at the piano leading the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. His recordings have garnered JUNO, ECHO Klassik, and Diapason d’Or awards. Lisiecki’s eighth recording for the prestigious label, a double album of Chopin’s complete Nocturnes, which he is presenting in his current recital program in more than 30 cities around the globe, was released in August 2021 and on vinyl in February 2022, and immediately topped the classical charts in North America and Europe.
At 18, Lisiecki became both the youngest ever recipient of Gramophone’s Young Artist Award and received the Leonard Bernstein Award. He was named UNICEF Ambassador to Canada in 2012.
Canadian-Korean countertenor David DQ Lee is fast establishing an enviable reputation among countertenors of his generation. He has won prizes at many international music competitions including the Francisco Viñas Competition in Spain, George London Competition in New York City, Musica Sacra International Competition in Italy, Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium and Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
With repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary and jazz to New Age, David DQ Lee has performed at La Scala in Milan, Komische Oper Berlin, Theater an der Wien, Teatro Real in Madrid, Liceu Opera in Barcelona, Chicago Opera, Semperoper in Dresden, Zurich Opera House and more. He has appeared at the Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, as well as the Beaune Baroque Opera Festival in France, to name just a few.
Having made his NAC debut in 2015 with the world premiere of Ana Sokolović’s Golden slumbers kiss your eyes…, David DQ Lee continues to sing this work with the NAC Orchestra. He can be heard performing it with the Orchestra on their New Worlds recording released by Analekta in 2018.
- choir London Voices