Hilary Hahn Plays Dvořák

& Alexander Shelley conducts Beethoven's 5th

2023-01-18 20:00 2023-01-19 22:00 60 Canada/Eastern 🎟 NAC: Hilary Hahn Plays Dvořák

https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/30524

In-person event

The NAC Orchestra is delighted to welcome violinist Hilary Hahn, one of her generation’s finest musicians, back to Southam Hall to perform Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, a work that has charmed performers and audiences around the world since its first performance. Hahn’s virtuosity is almost supernatural as she moves effortlessly between moments of tension and tenderness in this abidingly beautiful concerto.  Carlos Simon, composer-in-residence at...

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Southam Hall,1 Elgin Street,Ottawa,Canada
January 18 - 19, 2023
January 18 - 19, 2023

Last updated: January 16, 2023

Program

CARLOS SIMON: Fate Now Conquers 
DVOŘÁK: Violin Concerto 
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 5 

Repertoire

Carlos Simon

Fate Now Conquers

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Carlos Simon (b. 1986) is garnering significant attention throughout the United States and abroad for his compositions that range from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism. Through his music, Simon seeks to initiate conversations about social justice issues. His work Portrait of a Queen, which was performed in October 2020 by the National Arts Centre Orchestra with Jonelle Sills as narrator, is one such example. Featuring words by Courtney D. Ware, the piece traces the evolution of the experience of Black people in America through the lens of a Black woman. A 2021 winner of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Simon is currently the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center the Performing Arts, writing frequently for the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera.

Fate Now Conquers for large ensemble was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, for its concerts celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020. According to Simon, the piece “was inspired by a journal entry from Beethoven’s notebook written in 1815. The journal entry featured a passage from Homer’s Iliad:

‘Iliad. The Twenty-Second Book

But Fate now conquers; I am hers, and yet not she shall share in my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit[.] And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.’”

As he further describes, using the “beautifully fluid harmonic structure” of the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, “I have composed musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate. Jolting stabs, coupled with an agitated groove with every persona. Frenzied arpeggios in the strings that morph into an ambiguous cloud of free-flowing running passages depicts the uncertainty of life that hovers over us.”

The first half of this short piece is indeed somewhat menacing and ominous. After arriving at a glittering soundscape, the texture thins out and an impassioned cello solo emerges. It sings a melody of anguished acceptance (perhaps with a hint of defiance) of the “unpredictable ways of fate,” which eventually resume, driving to a forceful finish. As Simon explains, “We know that Beethoven strived to overcome many obstacles in his life and documented his aspirations to prevail, despite his ailments. Whatever the specific reason for including this particularly profound passage from the Iliad, in the end, it seems that Beethoven relinquished to fate. Fate now conquers.”

Antonín Dvořák

Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53

I. Allegro ma non troppo –
II. Adagio ma non troppo
III. Finale: Allegro giocoso ma non troppo

In November 1878, Antonín Dvořák shot to fame virtually overnight with the immensely successful publication, by Fritz Simrock, of his first set of Slavonic Dances for piano four hands. Following this triumph, Simrock suggested to Dvořák in early 1879 to compose a violin concerto, advising him to consult, during the process, the eminent German violinist Joseph Joachim. That summer, Dvořák completed a draft of the concerto and sent it to Joachim for feedback. By spring 1880, he had revised the work substantially, based on the violinist’s suggestions. Further progress was stalled (likely due to Joachim’s extensive concertizing schedule) until September 1882, when the composer went to Berlin to read through the concerto with the violinist. Despite Joachim being delighted with it, he did not get around to performing it publicly. Instead, it was the talented Czech violinist František Ondřišek who gave the concerto’s premiere on October 14, 1883, and, during his career, became its primary champion across Europe.

Dvořák’s concerto remains an important work in the violin repertory. Finely wrought, formally complex, and rich in musical content, it’s a distinctive contribution to the genre. We can assume the 1880 revision was substantial (the 1879 version was destroyed), for the composer noted that he had “retained the themes, and composed some new ones too, but the whole concept of the concerto is different.” Here, he is possibly referring to the unconventional structures of the first and second movements, which allow for greater expressive flexibility. Indeed, the opening movement in A minor unfolds like a fantasia between the violinist and the orchestra, with the soloist meditatively developing the musical material into rhapsodic and intricate passages that exhibit a wide range of virtuosic techniques. (As music theorist Peter H. Smith has pointed out, it was probably Joachim who steered Dvořák in this direction, with the model likely being Max Bruch’s G minor Violin Concerto, on which Joachim also advised.) Only after an extensive back-and-forth does the movement proceed more conventionally, with the solo violin presenting the assertive main theme; later, we hear the second theme, serene at first, then becoming dance-like. Extensive development of the various motifs ensues, eventually reaching climatic presentations of the main tune by the orchestra, then solo violin in octaves. However, instead of continuing with the expected recapitulation of themes and a soloist’s cadenza, Dvořák gives us neither; instead, there are further musings on the melody, the final version a wistful song in the lower register of the violin with woodwind countermelodies.

By way of a descending line intoned by the oboe, the second movement proceeds directly, with the violin introducing a hymn-like theme in F major. After the orchestra takes it up briefly, the violin bursts forth suddenly with a forceful melody in octaves, answered by horn, but the tension soon dissipates with a pastoral section featuring warm horns and warbling trills in the violin. These contrasting moods and themes thus alternate throughout the movement, with the violin continuing to rhapsodize, searchingly, to the end.

The pensiveness of the earlier movements gives way to a sparkling rondo finale in A major, its joyful main theme based on a furiant (a lively Slavonic dance characterized by shifting accents). In the first episode, additional tunes are introduced by the orchestra while the violinist is given ample opportunity to shine in peppy staccato figures, tumbling arpeggios, and vigorous octave passages. Following the rondo’s reprise, the second episode features a dumka (a type of folk music of Ukrainian origin) in the minor mode, during which the violin elaborates on the melancholy melody with complex chords. Later, after a climactic silence, listen for the dumka’s reappearance—the melody now brightly transformed in the major mode, embellished by rich violin chords. After more virtuosic display, the furiant theme is given a final ecstatic statement by the orchestra before rushing to a jubilant close.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Symphony No. 5

I. Allegro con brio 
II. Andante con moto 
III. Scherzo: Allegro 
IV. Allegro 

"How irresistibly does this wonderful composition transport the listener through ever growing climaxes into the spiritual realm of the infinite,” commented the writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in 1810. Two years earlier, the work premiered on December 22 at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien to mixed reception; no doubt the context of its performance—the concert’s massive length (spanning over four hours, the program also included the premieres of the composer’s Sixth Symphony, the Choral Fantasy, and the Fourth Piano Concerto with Beethoven as soloist) combined with the bitterly cold temperature of the hall and an under-rehearsed orchestra—contributed to the lukewarm response. However, with Hoffmann’s landmark critical assessment, general opinion about the work shifted; this “immeasurably noble and profound Symphony in C minor” was soon established as a cornerstone of the classical music canon…and there, it has stayed. Today, it remains one of the most frequently performed symphonies, continuing to draw audiences to concert halls all over the world. 

Whether it’s the first or the umpteenth time you’ve heard this symphony, it’s simply impossible not to be grabbed by the explosive opening of the first movement: the famous “short-short-short-long” motif, the so-called “fate knocking on the door.” With this germ, the Allegro con brio propels forward with furious energy, developing as if organically. The motif becomes like an obsession, and appears in the later movements as well, transformed into different guises: as a triumphant second theme, proclaimed by French horns and trumpets, in the second movement; as a militaristic march tune, also intoned by French horns, in the scherzo; and as a vivacious contrasting theme, played by the violins, in the finale.  

Ultimately, the potency of the Fifth Symphony that Hoffmann rapturously describes in his 1810 review arises from how Beethoven conveys the psychological arc of victory over struggle across the work’s four movements. Indeed, the “short-short-short-long” motif is just one of several methods through which the composer connects them into a cohesive narrative design. Another is his specific use of mode: from the pathos and stormy drama of C minor in the first and third movements, which bracket a lyrical slow movement in A-flat major, to the jubilant C major of the fourth movement. Moreover, in each movement, the C major triumph is foreshadowed—in the recapitulation of the second theme in the first, the bright theme in the second, and the energetic trio of the third. A wonderfully mysterious transition that directly connects the third movement to the fourth—beginning with the timpani tapping the main motif on a low C, over a long A-flat in the cellos and basses—further heightens the drama’s progression towards its final fulfillment. Yet, even in the exultation of the concluding Allegro, Beethoven briefly reminds us of the C minor anguish through a recall of the scherzo’s “march” theme, before we are finally released into the light, encumbered no more, towards the symphony’s ecstatic conclusion. 

 

Program notes by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD 

Artists

  • dscf9130-curtis-perry-2-cropped
    Conductor Alexander Shelley
  • Violin Hilary Hahn
  • bio-orchestra
    Featuring NAC Orchestra

NAC Orchestra

Conductor: Alexander Shelley
Soloists: Hilary Hahn, violin

  • First Violins
    Yosuke Kawasaki (concertmaster) 
    Jessica Linnebach (associate concertmaster) 
    Noémi Racine Gaudreault (assistant concertmaster) 
    Emily Kruspe 
    Marjolaine Lambert 
    Emily Westell 
    Jeremy Mastrangelo 
    Manuela Milani 
    *Martine Dubé 
    *Erica Miller 
    *Heather Schnarr 
    *Oleg Chelpanov 
    ∆Patrick Paradine 
  • Second violins 
    Mintje van Lier (principal) 
    Winston Webber (assistant principal) 
    Leah Roseman 
    Carissa Klopoushak 
    Frédéric Moisan 
    Zhengdong Liang 
    Karoly Sziladi 
    Mark Friedman 
    **Edvard Skerjanc 
    *Andréa Armijo Fortin 
    *Renée London 
  • Violas/Altos  
    Jethro Marks (principal) 
    David Goldblatt (assistant principal) 
    David Marks (associate principal) 
    David Thies-Thompson 
    Paul Casey 
    *Alisa Klebanov 
    *Sonya Probst 
    ∆Christoph Chung 
  • Cellos
    Rachel Mercer (principal) 
    **Julia MacLaine (assistant principal) 
    Timothy McCoy 
    Leah Wyber 
    **Marc-André Riberdy 
    *Desiree Abbey 
    *Karen Kang 
    *Daniel Parker 
    *Fanny Marks 
    ∆Jacob MacDonald 
  • Double basses
    *Joel Quarrington (guest principal) 
    Max Cardilli (assistant principal) 
    Vincent Gendron 
    Marjolaine Fournier 
    **Hilda Cowie 
    *Paul Mach 
  • Flutes 
    Joanna G'froerer (principal) 
    Stephanie Morin 
    *Kaili Maimets 
  • Oboes 
    Charles Hamann (principal) 
    Anna Petersen 
  • English Horn
    Anna Petersen 
  • Clarinets
    Kimball Sykes (principal) 
    Sean Rice 
  • Bassoons  
    Darren Hicks (principal) 
    Vincent Parizeau 
    *Carmelle Préfontaine 
  • Horns  
    Lawrence Vine (principal) 
    Julie Fauteux (associate principal) 
    Elizabeth Simpson 
    Lauren Anker 
    Louis-Pierre Bergeron 
  • Trumpets
    Karen Donnelly (principal) 
    Steven van Gulik 
    *Amy Horvey 
  • Trombones  
    *Steve Dyer (guest principal) 
    Colin Traquair 
  • Bass Trombone 
    *Zachary Bond 
  • Timpani  
    *Aaron McDonald (guest principal) 
  • Percussion 
    Jonathan Wade 
  • Principal Librarian
    Nancy Elbeck 
  • Assistant Librarian
    Corey Rempel 
  • Personnel Manager
    Meiko Lydall 
  • Assistant Personnel Manager
    Laurie Shannon 

*Additional musicians
**On Leave
∆ Apprentices of the NAC-uOttawa Institute for Orchestral Studies

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