Videos
The Evanston Symphony Orchestra is proud to provide videos to educate you about the pieces we perform and, at times, the soloists who will be performing. The video(s) below are examples only and do not represent performances by the Evanston Symphony Orchestra unless noted.
Britten
Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
Britten’s opera Peter Grimes and its “sea interludes” were inspired by the Suffolk coast of Eastern England. You can see that coast and hear “Dawn,” the first of the “Sea Interludes” here. Note: the music near the end of the clip is from the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which is not part of our concert program.
Wendy Warner Brahms op 38 (I)
Wendy Warner plays the first movement of the Cello Sonata No. 1 by Brahms, accompanied by Marta Aznavoorian at Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston.
Elgar
Concerto for Cello in E Minor
The first movement of the Elgar Cello Concerto with Jacqueline DuPre and Daniel Barenboim.
Vaughan Williams
Symphony No. 5 in D Major, III
Andrew Manze conducts the BBC Scottish Orchestra in the complete Fifth Symphony of Vaughan Williams. This Proms performance was broadcast in August 2012. The four movements begin at the following times (shown on bottom of the screen) : I. 1:45, II. 13:35, III 18:45, IV 30:40,
Applause 41:05.
Our Soloist
Wendy Warner, cello
Wendy Warner has become one of the world’s leading cellists. In May, 2010, The New York Times reported "Warner's expressive playing and glowing tone were everywhere a pleasure." The Chicago Tribune wrote, "If there was a truly prodigious performance during the evening, this was it," while Strings has hailed her "youthful, surging playing, natural stage presence and almost frightening technique." As jury member Frans Helmerson told The New York Times when Warner won first-prize at the Fourth International Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 1990, "she’s unbelievable."
Audiences have watched Warner perform on prestigious stages including New York's Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall in Boston, Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, Paris' Salle Pleyel, and Berlin's Philharmonie. She has collaborated with such leading conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Spivakov, Christoph Eschenbach, Andre Previn, Jesús López-Cobos, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Marin Alsop, Charles Dutoit, Eiji Oue, Neeme Järvi, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Her 2010-2011 season begins with the August 31 release of her first duo recording with pianist Irina Nuzova. Titled Russian Music for Cello & Piano, the Cedille Records collection of romantic works features Sergei Rachmaninov's Sonata in G minor, and the first time the rarely-performed Sonata in A minor by Nikolai Miaskovsky has been recorded by an American on American soil. Also included are works by Sergei Prokofiev, Alfred Schnittke, and Alexander Scriabin.
This season, Warner is the featured soloist for concerto engagements with the Fox Valley, Lake Forest, University of South Carolina, Millikin-Decatur, and Hartford Symphony Orchestras. Warner, Rachel Barton Pine, Soojin Ahn, and Michael Larco will take part in a chamber music concert presented by the Norton Concert Series in Chicago. She will also play with the Boston Artists Ensemble, The Schwob Chamber Music faculty concert, and the Jupiter Players in New York City.
Upcoming WarnerNuzova dates include the performance of the Beethoven Sonatas plus Variations with Irina Nuzova at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. as well as performances at the Music in the Park series in Chicago, the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society in Ontario, Canada and at the University of San Antonio as part of the Musical Bridges series.
Recently Warner made her debut at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall performing unknown works by Beethoven which she recorded for the Beethoven Project trio. Warner's past North American engagements have included performances with the Chicago, Boston, Dallas, North Carolina, Jacksonville, Montreal, New Mexico, Omaha, Nashville, and San Francisco Symphonies, and the Minnesota and Philadelphia Orchestras. Around the world she has performed with the London Symphony (Barbican Center), Berlin Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, French Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Iceland Symphony, L'Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, and L'Orchestre de Paris, with which she performed the Brahms Double Con-certo with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, Semyon Bychkov conducting. Warner has played with the European Soloists of Luxembourg at Frankfurt's Alter Oper, and the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. She has toured Japan as a soloist with NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Japan Philharmonic.
The child of professional musicians and the granddaughter of composer Philip Warner whose symphony premiered with the NBC Symphony, Leopold Stokowski conducting, Warner began studying piano at the age of four and began studying the cello at age six, under the tutelage of Nell Novak. At age 14 she made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcast on WTTW-TV. She continued her studies with Rostropovich at the Curtis Institute from which she graduated. Her career took an auspicious turn in 1990 when she made her Washington D.C. debut with the National Symphony playing Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto. In 1991, she made her Carnegie Hall debut performing the Schumann Concerto conducted by Rostropovich. She was re-engaged to appear with the NSO on a North American tour in 1991. Under Rostropovich's baton, she performed with the Bamberg Symphony for a 1991 European tour, making her debuts in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Köln, Düsseldorf and Berlin. "He made the Prokofiev Symphonia Concertante and Shostakovich No. 1 fit like a glove. He challenged me to new heights and made me feel that I had no limitations," recalls Warner.
Warner's discography includes the 2010 release of The Beethoven Project - featuring unknown Beethoven piano trios with pianist George Lepauw and violinist Sang Mee Lee; Wendy Warner Plays Popper and Piatigorsky; Double Play: Twentieth Century Duos for Violin and Cello with Rachel Barton Pine, (all on the Cedille label); Hindemith's Music for Cello & Piano for Bridge Records and the critically acclaimed Samuel Barber: Orchestral Works, Volume 2 , featuring Barber's Cello Concerto, with Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, released by Naxos.
Warner performs on a Joseph Gagliano cello and a Carl Becker cello. Her bow is by Francoix Xavier Tourte of Paris, c. 1815, the "De Lamare," on extended loan through the generous efforts of a patron from the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Warner is on the faculty at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University in Georgia. Passionate about cooking and Paris, Warner is the guardian of two cats, Antoine and Carina.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
2:30 pm
Pick-Staiger Concert Hall
50 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston
Elgar’s love of the Malvern Hills found expression in his final masterpiece, which will spotlight the return of local favorite Wendy Warner. We celebrate Britten’s 100th birthday with his portraits of the Suffolk seacoast. The Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams epitomizes the spiritual qualities of the English pastoral tradition.
Program
Britten
- Four Sea Interludes from
Peter Grimes
Elgar
- Concerto for Cello in E Minor
- Wendy Warner, Cello
Vaughan Williams
- Symphony No. 5 in D Major
Sponsored by
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INDIVIDUAL CONCERT TICKETS:
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Children 12 and younger are admitted absolutely FREE.
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Friday, May 3, 2013 at 1:30 PM
North Shore Retirement Hotel
1611 Chicago Ave., Evanston
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Program Notes
by David Ellis
FOUR SEA INTERLUDES FROM PETER GRIMES
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
Benjamin Britten spent most of his life in Suffolk, on the east coast of England. However, he spent the early part of World War II in the US, and he was living in Escondido, CA (northeast of San Diego) when he conceived and began work on his opera Peter Grimes. The impetus for the composition was Britten’s discovery of a talk by E. M. Forster about Suffolk poet George Crabbe, whose 1810 poem titled The Borough included a brutal fisherman named Peter Grimes. Crabbe’s poems are set in Aldeburgh, which was Britten’s home after 1947 and the site for the renowned music festival which he established in 1948. Britten returned to England in 1942 and worked on his operatic setting of Crabbe until its triumphant premiere in June 1945.
Britten selected these four orchestral passages from interludes between scenes of the three act opera. “Dawn” uses high strings, woodwinds and suspended cymbal to depict a seaside dawn, while the deep brass and bass drum hint at the hidden power of the sea. “Sunday Morning” begins the second act with bright bell sounds, while “Moonlight” serves as a much darker counterpart as the prelude to the third act. The “Storm” interlude brings together several orchestral passages near the end of the first act into a shattering conclusion.
CONCERTO FOR CELLO AND ORCHESTRA IN E MINOR
Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Elgar first achieved fame in 1899 with his Enigma Variations, followed shortly by the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, the Coronation Ode, two symphonies and his violin concerto. All of these works feature large orchestral forces and reflect musically the zenith of the British Empire. World War I deeply affected Elgar, however, and shortly after its conclusion he turned to chamber music with his Violin Sonata, String Quartet, and Piano Quintet. His final masterpiece is the Cello Concerto, premiered late in 1919 in London. Although the score calls for a full orchestra, the concerto maintains the chamber music like intimacy of Elgar’s late compositions.
Adagio-Moderato. The soloist opens the concerto with a dramatic recitative, which will recur at the end of the final movement. The violas then introduce the main theme, whose undulations suggest to some the landscape of Elgar’s beloved Malvern Hills. The woodwinds are featured in the secondary theme. This concise first movement proceeds without a pause in the second movement.
Lento-Allegro molto. After introductory pizzicato (plucked) notes, the solo cello plays almost continuously in this perpetual motion scherzo.
Adagio. This heartfelt song for the cello requires only four pages of the 104 page score, but is the emotional core of the concerto. It leads without a pause into the finale.
Allegro-Moderato-Allegro, ma non troppo-Poco piu lento-Adagio. By far the longest movement of the concerto, the finale begins with a vigorous theme in the style of one of Elgar’s earlier marches. However, the mood becomes calmer, leading to a recall of the third movement Adagio and then the return of the opening recitative before the final condensed version of the march theme.
SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN D MAJOR
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
Ralph Vaughan Williams was a pioneer in researching English folk song and of
either using actual folk tunes in his works or of composing in this same style.
He also edited a complete revision of the English Hymnal, adding several new hymns of his own.
Ironically, he was a self-described “cheerful agnostic,” born into privileged status on both sides of his family. His father was a vicar
and the son and grandson of highly successful lawyers and judges. His mother
was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood III of pottery fame and was the niece of
Charles Darwin. When the young Ralph asked her about why
On the Origin of Species caused such controversy, she replied that while most people believed God created
the world in six days, “Great Uncle Charles just thinks it took a little longer!”
The nine symphonies by Vaughan Williams are a cornerstone of English music, and the Fifth Symphony, premiered in London in 1943 during the depths of World War II, ranks among the greatest. Its mood is one of serenity and transcendence, and several of the musical themes are taken from his opera, The Pilgrim’s Progress, started around 1920 but not premiered until 1951.
Preludio. The work opens with a horn call, reminiscent of the opening of the Fifth Symphony by Jean Sibelius, to whom the symphony is dedicated. The second theme, of surpassing beauty and played by the strings, is taken from The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Scherzo. This is the only movement with fast music, and the only movement without themes taken from the opera.
Romanza. Soft string chords preface an English horn solo of great beauty; this theme is sung by the Pilgrim in the opera to the words “He hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death.” The orchestration is then reversed with woodwind chords prefacing the theme on the strings. A central section is more agitated before a return to the opening material.
Passacaglia. This movement heading refers to the theme in the lower strings, taken from the opera, which repeats in the bass throughout much of the movement. A second theme in the higher strings and winds becomes more important over the course of the movement. The horn call which opened the first movement returns close to the end, succeeded by the second theme in the strings which climb upwards toward heaven.
