NEC Philharmonia + Hugh Wolff: Berlioz, Montgomery, & Sibelius
This performance is open to in-person audiences, and is also viewable via livestream.
Watch livestream from Jordan Hall:
- NEC Philharmonia
Hector Berlioz | Overture to "Béatrice et Bénédict
Program note
Hector Berlioz’s interest in Shakespeare began in 1826 when the 23 year-old composer attended performances of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Although the performances were in English, a language Berlioz barely understood, he was overwhelmed by the actress Harriet Smithson in the roles of Ophelia and Juliet. He pursued her and eventually married her. Though their union was ultimately not a happy one, his love of Shakespeare remained constant. His final opera, Béatrice et Bénédict, written between 1860 and 1862, is based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. After his mammoth opera Les Troyens, Berlioz called Béatrice et Bénédict a “relaxation” and “caprice written with the point of a needle.” Indeed, its charm and brevity are in stark contrast to the grandiosity and huge ambitions of the previous opera. The Overture effervesces. Starting as a quicksilver waltz, it abruptly shifts to a gentle Andante. When the opening waltz music returns, Berlioz has slyly transformed it into duple meter, now more a march than waltz. The play’s “rom-com” character is never far from the surface of this exuberant curtain raiser.
Jessie Montgomery | Coincident Dances (2019)
Program note
Jessie Montgomery wrote Coincident Dances in 2019 for the Chicago Sinfonietta. It was premiered and recorded by that ensemble under Mei-Ann Chen, NEC alumna and guest conductor next month (March 9). Montgomery writes about it:
Coincident Dances is inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood. The work is a fusion of several different sound-worlds: English consort, samba, mbira dance music from Ghana, swing, and techno.
My reason for choosing these styles sometimes stemmed from an actual experience of accidentally hearing a pair simultaneously, which happens most days of the week walking down the streets of New York, or one time when I heard a parked car playing Latin jazz while I had rhythm and blues in my headphones. Some of the pairings are merely experiments. Working in this mode, the orchestra takes on the role of a DJ of a multicultural dance track.
— Jessie Montgomery
Jean Sibelius | Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, op. 39
Andante, ma non troppo - Allegro energico
Andante (ma non troppo lento)
Scherzo: Allegro
Finale: Andante - Allegro molto - Andante assai - Allegro molto come prima - Andante (ma non troppo)Program note
As an aspiring young violinist and composer, Jean Sibelius spent two years studying in Berlin and Vienna. He found little success as a violinist (he failed an audition to join the Vienna Philharmonic), and consequently threw himself into composing full time. The Finland he returned to in 1892 at the age of 27 was restless – eager to assert its independence from Russia, which had ruled Finland since 1809. Open political dissent was dangerous, cultural dissent safer and more effective. Sibelius’ two early works based on Finnish folk epics, the cantata/symphony Kullervo and the Karelia Suite, earned him fame and a place at the head of Finnish cultural nationalism. At its 1899 premiere in Helsinki, his First Symphony was eagerly anticipated and wildly successful.
In the four movements of a traditional romantic symphony, with a conservative harmonic language and an orchestra not larger than Brahms’ or Bruckner’s, the symphony on one hand looks backward. But it reveals Sibelius’ profoundly original voice as well: his tightly-controlled use of small musical motifs that generate new melodies as they develop; his penchant for tonal and modal ambiguity – particularly oscillations between major and relative minor; his fondness for abrupt, unsettled endings; and above all, his use of the long, gradual accelerando to transform the character of the music before the listener realizes what is happening. These accelerandos, which occur in every movement, are so important they become an integral part of the work’s structure. It is the nature of an accelerando that, as it occurs, we do not know when it will stop. This uncertainty generates emotional power. And Sibelius’ unusual way of stopping the accelerandos enhances that power. In the first movement, the dancing staccato woodwind music with asymmetrical string accents reaches a frenzied pace only to be interrupted by four abrupt, hollow octave Bs. In the second movement, the peak of the accelerando is superimposed on the return of the opening Andante melody, fusing the recap with the climax. In the Finale, Sibelius specifies that the lyric second subject sometimes speeds up and sometimes slows down, disengaging tempo from melody – a technique 20th century serialists might have admired. The outer movements are good examples of Sibelius’ abrupt endings. In both cases, an intense and grandly romantic arrival at E minor is suddenly dissipated by two plucked chords in the strings. With this almost nihilistic gesture, Sibelius seems intent on negating romanticism. The originality is striking, and the emotional impact, devastating.
Sibelius famously wrote that he was moved more by nature than by human interaction. Living in isolation in woods outside Helsinki, he had ample opportunity to experience the power, unpredictability, even the cruelty of nature. Perhaps no other composer so compellingly captured this in music. His symphonies have an austere, sometimes frightening grandeur. And his emotional palette, with melancholy never far from the surface, captures the essence of man’s relationship to nature that is powerful, awe-inspiring, and
– Hugh WolffPersonnel
First Violin
Hyun Ji Lee
Evan Hjort
Eric Jiang
Aidan Ip
Isabella Gorman
Haekyung Ju
Qiyan Xing
Yeonsoo Kim
Liyuán Xiè
Emma Carleton
Yulia Price
Chae Lim Yoon
Chloe Hong
Second Violin
Jia-Ying Wei
Hannah Chaewon Kim
Jeffrey Pearson
Haerim Oh
Julian Rhee
Kate Knudsvig
Anthony Chan
Jason Qiu
Hyeonah Hong
Louis Liao
Yilei Yin
Viola
John Harry Clark
Samuel M. Zacharia
Pierre Trache
Anna Mann
Junghyun Ahn
Lydia Plaut
Daeun Hong
Bram Fisher
Aidan Garrison
Cello
Aixin Vicky Cheng
Hechen Sun
Youjin Ko
Jonathan Salman
Jeffrey Ho
Nathan Le
Uijin Gwak
Yuri Ahn
Bass
Misha Bjerken
Minyi Wang
Jesse Dale
Daniel Slatch
Alyssa Peterson
Flute
Javier Castro‡
Anne Chao
Jeong Won Choe
Clara Lee*
Aimee Toner^
Piccolo
Anne Chao
Jeong Won Choe‡
Joon Park*
Aimee Toner^
Oboe
So Jeong Kim*
Nathalie Graciela Vela^
Kip Zimmerman‡
Clarinet
Tyler J. Bourque*
Tristan Broadfoot
Hyunwoo Chun^
Benjamin Cruz
Hugo Kwon
Soyeon Park‡
Bass Clarinet
Benjamin Cruz
Bassoon
Andrew Flurer^
John Fulton
Evan Judson
Daniel McCarty*
Julien Rollins
Richard Vculek‡
French horn
Xiang Li^
Yeonjo Oh‡
Sophie Steger
Jenna Stokes*
Helen Wargelin
Trumpet
Jake Baldwin
Michael Harms
Sarah Heimberg
Charlie Jones
Qiyu Liu
Dimitri Raimonde
Jon-Michael Taylor
Cornet
David O’Neill
Trombone
Elias Canales‡
Lukas Helsel
Jaehan Kim*
Quinn McGillis^
Bass Trombone
Changwon Park
Tuba
Jim Gifford‡
David Stein^
Timpani
Taylor Lents‡
Pei Hsien Lu^
Parker Olson*
Percussion
Taylor Lents
Pei Hsien Lu‡
Parker Olson
Leigh Wilson^
Harp
Hannah Cope Johnson
Principal players
*Berlioz
‡Montgomery
^Sibelius