---

Geneva Concerts Presents:

---

Friday, 12 April 2002, 8:15 PM

Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

Christopher Seaman, Music Director

Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Series

Günther Herbig, Guest Conductor
Stanislav Ioudenitch, Piano
2001 Van Cliburn Gold Medalist

---

The Program

---

ROSSINI: Overture to Semiramide
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 21, KV467 in C Major
Allegro maestoso
Andante
Allegro vivace assai

Stanislav Ioudenitch, Piano Soloist

Intermission

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2, Op. 73 in D Major
Allegro non troppo
Adagio non troppo
Allegretto grazioso (Quasi andantino)
Allegro con spirito

Günther Herbig

Günther Herbig has established himself as one of the world's preeminent conductors. He served as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's music director from 1989 to 1994, leading the Orchestra on its Far East tour in 1990 and its European Tour in the spring of 1991; previously, he acted as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Herbig recently began his tenure as chief conductor of the Saarbriicken Radio Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Herbig's first opportunity in the West came when he was invited to become principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1979. That same year, he began his career in Western Europe, becoming principal guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and receiving invitations to conduct several other British orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic. Since moving to the United States in 1984, he has appeared with the most prestigious American orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Cleveland Orchestra. He has also conducted most of the major European orchestras and has toured Japan, South America, and Australia on several occasions. During his tenure with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Herbig led several U.S. tours, a European tour with soloist Gidon Kremer, and several critically acclaimed performances in Carnegie Hall. From 1990-1997, he served as visiting professor of conducting at Yale University.

In 1972, he became music director of the Dresden Philharmonic, and from 1977 to 1983 held the same position with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Herbig recently conducted a special program at the Edinburgh Festival featuring a "recreation" of a concert that took place at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 22, 1808, when Beethoven conducted his own Sixth Symphony. The three-hour program also featured the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fifth Symphony, the Choral Fantasy, and excerpts from the C-Major Mass.

Stanislav Ioudenitch

Stanislav Ioudenitch was awarded a gold medal at the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and was also the recipient of a Steven De Groote Memorial Award for the Best Performance of Chamber Music for his semifinal round collaboration with the renowned Takács Quartet. In addition to the medal, Mr. Ioudenitch was awarded two years of international concert engagements and career management and a compact disc recording of his award-winning Cliburn Competition performances for the harmonia mundi label.

A native of Uzbekistan, Mr. Ioudenitch has performed with the Munich Philharmonic; the Philharmonie der Nationen; and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.; among other noted ensembles. His solo recital engagements have taken him to venues throughout the former Soviet Union, as well as to Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United States. His first performances as a Cliburn gold medalist include a recital at the Aspen Music Festival and a European tour, including appearances at several summer festivals in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

He has won top prizes in several international piano competitions, including the 1990 Maria Callas and the 1994 Kapell Competitions, and was the first prize winner at the 1998 Palm Beach Invitational and the 2000 New Orleans International Competitions. A former student of Dmitri Bashkirov, with whom he studied at the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid, he also attended the prestigious International Piano Foundation in Cadenabbia, Italy for two years. He is currently pursuing a doctorate under the direction of Robert Weirich at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, where he resides with his wife and daughter.

Stanislav Ioudenitch in the lobby of the Smith Opera House on April 12, 2002 after playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, KV467 in C Major.

Gioacchini Rossini

Like most of Rossini's works, Semiramide was written very quickly‹his contract allowed him forty days to complete the opera, but he finished the job in thirty-three! His standard operating procedure was to wait until the last minute to write the overture: as in most of his operas, Semiramide's overture is based almost entirely on what he considered to be the best tunes in the opera. Unlike the majority of his operas, however, Semiramide is thoroughly serious stuff‹the opera was considered almost too dramatic and long-winded by a Venetian audience that was used to lighter opere buffe.

The legend of the evil Babylonian queen Semiramis was a fertile source of operatic inspiration: In the libretto used by Rossini (which is at least partly based on an earlier stage play by Voltaire), Semiramide conspires with her lover Assur to murder her husband Nino and place Assur on the throne. In an Oedipus-like turn of the plot, Semiramide falls in love with a dashing young general, Arsace. Unbeknownst to anyone but the high priest, Arsace is, in truth, Semiramide's own son, Prince Ninia. Nino's ghost appears, prophesying that Arsace will become king. When the priest informs him of his true identity, Ninia vows to revenge his father by killing Assur, but dagger thrust intended for the usurper strikes the guilty Semiramide instead. When Ninia's identity is proclaimed Assur is condemned to die.

After the initial orchestral flourishes, the overture opens with an extended slow introduction, a feature found in most Rossini overtures. In this section the horns and woodwinds play a lyrical hymn-like melody‹a chorus of praise for the queen heard in the first act. The opening flourishes return, announcing the beginning of the main Allegro portion of the overture, which is set in D major. The first Allegro theme is taken from the orchestral introduction to the opera's tragic final scene at the tomb of King Nino‹a tragedy that is belied by the happy, bouncy nature of this theme! The second theme, in A major, first played by clarinet and bassoon and then by the piccolo, is similarly jovial, yet somewhat more martial than the first theme. A long crescendo passage and a string interlude lead back to a repeat of the opening Allegro material.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

If one wished to learn everything there is to know about Mozart, but could only study a single type of composition, the best choice would be the piano concerto. In this one area, Mozart produced twenty-seven pieces, more piano concerti than any other important composer. Additionally, the concerti span his entire career. The first was written when he was only eleven; the last appeared less than a year before his death.

Mozart's fascination with the piano concerto parallels Europe's interest in the piano itself. In the composer's early years, pianos were still regarded as new inventions. Harpsichords, which had been the stars of the Baroque era, were as yet highly regarded. Gradually, though, the greater power and versatility of the piano gave it precedence over its predecessor. A growing demand arose for compositions suited to this new keyboard instrument, and a fine pianist (Mozart was acclaimed as one of the best) could earn a good living playing concerti for appreciative audiences, especially if one could do so in Vienna, where appetites for new piano concerti seemed insatiable. For this reason, Mozart abandoned his native Salzburg. He settled in the imperial capital in the summer of 1781. In the decade that remained of his life, he would produce seventeen piano concerti.

It was in March of 1785 that Mozart composed his Concerto No. 21, completing it merely one month after his previous concerto. He would write four more in the next twenty months. Each of those concerti was written for Mozart himself to perform in concert in Vienna. Since he intended to act as soloist, he did not bother to write out the solo cadenzas, deciding instead to improvise them on the spot. Such a practice brought great verve and spontaneity to a performance, but unfortunately it has left us without the composer's own cadenzas. Since Mozart's time, pianists have had to compose their own cadenzas, or use those created by others. For any modern pianist to match the master's seemingly effortless style is always challenging, but it is particularly so in this case, for this concerto is among the most technically demanding of all Mozart's concerti. The composer's own father, Leopold Mozart, described the Concerto no. 21 as "astonishingly difficult." Today, it is less frequently remembered for its difficulty than for its lyrical second movement, which was prominently featured in the 1967 Swedish film, "Elvira Madigan."

Johannes Brahms

For a man usually viewed as one of the greatest of symphonists, Johannes Brahms was surprisingly leery of the genre. His early works are mostly for piano, and he completed no symphonies until the age of 43. His reluctance to enter the field was due to a not-unreasonable fear of having his efforts compared to the symphonies of Beethoven. Despite this late start, the symphonic tendency clearly had lain within his works for many years. When Brahms was twenty, he played a selection of his piano pieces for Robert Schumann. The older composer described the music as "disguised symphonies," and predicted, "When his magic is enhanced by the massed forces of chorus and orchestra, still more wonderful glimpses into the spiritual world will be granted to us." Two more decades passed before Brahms moved into the orchestral realm, but eventually Schumann was proven right.

The second of Brahms' four symphonies was composed in 1877 in the town of Pörtschach on the Wörthersee in the Austrian Alps. Pörtschach is a sunny summer retreat, so it must have seemed curious when Brahms wrote to his publisher about the gloomy new piece he was composing. "The new symphony is so melancholy," he wrote, "that you won't be able to stand it. I have never before written anything so sad and mournful. The score will have to be published with a black border." Is it possible to spend a summer vacation writing sorrowful music? Perhaps Shostakovich could do so, but Brahms, as it turns out, was strictly joking. The Second Symphony is not an embodiment of storm and stress. It is, rather, a bright and buoyant piece, full of sunshine and good cheer. As the composer once remarked to Clara Schumann, it "might have been written expressly for a pair of newly-weds." He voiced a similar opinion to the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, to whom he wrote, "In the course of the winter I will let you hear a symphony which sounds so cheerful and delightful that you will think I wrote it especially for you, or rather your young wife." Hanslick apparently agreed. Upon hearing the work, he called it "a great, unqualified success," a piece that "extends its warm sunshine to connoisseurs and laymen alike." The symphony premiered in Vienna on December 30, 1877 with Hans Richter conducting.

The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

Today, Music Director Christopher Seaman continues the traditions of such notable Music Directors as Eugene Goossens, Jose Iturbi, Erich Leinsdorf, and David Zinman. The RPO has also performed under the batons of such renowned guest conductors as Fritz Reiner, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Thomas Beecham, Igor Stravinsky, and Leopold Stokowski.

Principal Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik has earned a national reputation for excellence in pops programming during his tenure with the RPO. The Orchestra also is at the vanguard of music education, naming Michael Butterman as Principal Conductor for Education and Outreach, the only position of its kind in the country today.

The RPO presents more than 140 concerts per year, reaching nearly 350,000 people per season through ticketed events, education and outreach concerts, an annual residency at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado, regional runouts and concert broadcasts on WXXI-FM 91.5.

Geneva Concerts
Copyright © 1995–2024
Contact: webmaster@genevaconcerts.org