Handel & Vaughan Williams
Perelman Theater
Perelman Theater
Dirk Brossé
Conductor
Elena Urioste
Violin
Proof of COVID-19 vaccination and photo ID will be required to attend this performance.
About This Performance
Gustav Holst St. Paul’s Suite
Dirk Brossé Quite A Different Hallelujah
Ralph Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending
George Frideric Handel Water Music, Suite No. 1
The Chamber Orchestra embarks on a journey up the River Thames with Handel’s Water Music. Written for King George I to be performed on a royal barge in the river, Water Music is actually a collection of orchestral suites that have become some of Handel’s most recognizable and beloved compositions. Vaughan Williams’ sublime pastoral romance The Lark Ascending is certainly one of the composer’s most enduring and popular masterpieces, and there is perhaps no better musical depiction of England’s gentle rolling green hills and wildlife than this clear audience favorite. “But for transfiguring loveliness nothing could beat Vaughan Williams’s meditative, war-haunted pastoral The Lark Ascending, with the guest artist Elena Urioste…soaring most movingly on her violin, lifting our spirits ever higher the further she flew.” (The Times)
Duration
Read more in the program notes below.
Health and Safety
Vaccine and Mask Requirements
All guests 12 years of age or older will be required to show proof of full COVID-19 vaccination (14 days after completing an FDA or WHO authorized single or two dose vaccine) for entry into all public events at Kimmel Cultural Campus venues. Adults 18+ will be required to show photo identification with their vaccination proof. “Fully Vaccinated” means that a guest’s event is at least 14 days after their final COVID-19 vaccine dose.
Valid proof of vaccination include: vaccination card, photo or digital copy of proof of vaccination. Proof of negative COVID test will not be accepted, with the exception of children under the age of 12. Guests under the age of 12 must provide proof of a negative PCR COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of the performance. Adults 18+ will be required to show government or school issued identification. Guests under 18 will not be required to show identification.
Mask Enforcement
All patrons are required to wear masks inside the venue at all times (except when consuming food or beverage). Drinks and food are not permitted in the theater. Prolonged periods of mask removal are not permitted. All face coverings must cover the nose and mouth and comply with the CDC guidelines for acceptable face coverings.
Program Notes
Quite a Different Hallelujah
Dirk Brossé (b. 1960)
The overture Quite a Different Hallelujah is inspired by the song Hallelujah by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. The overture, based on the first three tones of the song, evoke a mixture of moods and emotions: from intense joy to deep melancholy, from profound sadness to supreme happiness. A fascinating journey through the labyrinth of the human soul. The work was premiered by The North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra (NNO) at the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, conducted by the composer.
St Paul’s Suite
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
English composer Gustav Holst was a fourth-generation musician, but growing up in a musical household didn’t always provide the advantages one might think. His father dutifully taught him piano and violin and prescribed trombone lessons. Yet, while Holst showed early aptitude as a composer, his father believed that a career in composition offered little profit and tried to steer his son into becoming an instrumentalist. Nevertheless, in 1892, Holst composed an operetta which premiered to favorable reviews. Thus encouraged, he entered the Royal College of Music in 1893.
Despite graduating in 1898, Holst relied on freelance trombone work to eke out a living. Holst finally achieved financial independence after obtaining several teaching positions. In 1905, he became director of music as St. Paul’s School for Girls, a position which he held until the end of his life. A gifted teacher, he created a superb and rigorous music program. In 1913, St. Paul’s constructed a new music wing—fittingly, Holst wrote the St. Paul’s Suite for the dedication.
Like much of Holst’s music, the four-movement St. Paul’s Suite was inspired by English folk song. Still, most of the thematic material is original. The suite opens with the lively “jig”, propelled forward by a meter which continually switches. The second movement, titled “Ostinato,” opens with a rapid figure for the second violins. Upon this figure, Holst layers a lyrical melody which first appears as a violin solo. The “Intermezzo” features, once again, a melody for solo violin set above pizzicato strings, but the melody finds itself interrupted several times by lively outbursts from the orchestra. The movement ends quietly, the melody presented by a solo quartet—an echo of sorts. Interestingly, “Finale” is the only movement to incorporate actual folk material and features a fiddling tune known as “The Dargason” as its principal theme. Holst passes the tune from section to section in the orchestra, repeats it with slight variations, and finally pairs it with “Greensleeves” as a countermelody. A three-octave scale by the solo violin signals the orchestra to add the missing cadence, ultimately concluding the St. Paul’s Suite
The Lark Ascending
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
’Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
Inspired by the poetry of George Meredith, The Lark Ascending was originally composed in 1914 as a duet for violin and piano and dedicated to violinist Marie Hall. In 1920, Vaughan Williams revised the work, arranging it for violin and orchestra. However, the piece was not officially premiered until 1921 when public attention shifted from understandable preoccupation with the events of World War I. Since then, it has become one of the most performed and beloved pieces of classical music in concert halls across the world.
Vaughan Williams, like his English countryman Holst, was one of the many composers of this period who actively participated in the compositional movement to revive folksongs. In a desperate search for the pastorale during a time of emotional upheaval, Vaughan Williams was drawn to the poetic description of the lark that so eloquently captured the peaceful joy of a calm day in the English countryside. The solo violin’s opening flows outside of a metered time, leaning heavily into a pentatonic scale for a combined effect of weightlessness and flight. The orchestra contrasts with grounded folk melodies, effectively utilizing the sweetest ranges of the woodwinds to heighten the nostalgic sentiment Vaughan Williams is so known for mastering.
Water Music, Suite No. 1 in F Major
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
In 1712 Handel paid his second visit to England, taking leave of absence from his post as Kapellmeister to Elector Georg of Hanover. Long outstaying his leave, he was taken by surprise in 1714 by the accession of his employer to the English throne as King George I. According to Handel’s biographer John Mainwaring, the good-natured Hanoverian Baron von Kielmannsegge seized the opportunity of a royal water-party between Whitehall and Limehouse on 22 August 1715 to effect a reconciliation. Kielmannsegge commissioned Handel to write music for the occasion and installed him with his musicians on a barge next to the royal barge. The King was delighted with the music and, on being told who had composed it, immediately forgave Handel for deserting his Hanover post, settling on him an annual sum of 1,000 thalers in addition to the 1,000 he had been awarded by the late Queen Anne.
The trouble with this charming story as an account of the “Water Music’s origin is that it is probably incomplete and possibly untrue. A document of the period shows that King George attended a performance of Handel’s opera Rinaldo in the year of his accession, and he would hardly have done so if he had still been angry with the deserter. There is also solid evidence of a royal water-party in 1717 for which Handel definitely wrote the music. The Daily Courant for Friday 19 July of that year carried the following account:
But even if in 1760, writing his picturesque tale of Handel’s water-borne reconciliation, Mainwaring mixed up some events of more than 40 years earlier, we need not throw the entire story overboard. Though it is very likely that at least some of the “Water Music” was composed for the 1717 party, it is equally likely that Handel, an inveterate re-user of his own and other people’s music, would have supplemented the new pieces with others originally written for the earlier occasion. This probability is borne out by the nature of the 22 movements (a few of them grouped together, making 18 numbers in all) of the collection: they form, not one suite, but three distinct suites in different keys.
The first, scored for horns, oboes, bassoon, and strings, has ten movements (in eight groups) and is centered in F major; the second, which adds trumpets to the instrumentation, has five movements and is in D major; and the third, closer to chamber music in style with only flute, recorder, and oboes in addition to the bassoon and strings, has seven movements (in five groups) and is centered in G major. A reasonable assumption might be that the F-major Suite that opens today’s program consists of pieces originally written for the water party of 1715, and that the D major and G-major Suites were later additions.
Whatever the truth is, at least two-thirds of the entire collection is genuine water music composed for outdoor performance, and a part of its celebrity is indirectly due to this. Variety is one of the most notable characteristics of the music. Like the later Concerti grossi of Opus 6, the “Water Music” is a glorious amalgam of styles, combining elements of the Corellian manner with Purcellian touches and the vivid contrasts and dance-rhythms of the French suite.
Bernard Jacobson
Musicians in this performance
Violin I
Meichen Liao Barnes
Alexandra Cutler-Fetkewicz
Igor Szwec
Joe Kauffman
Seula Lee
Carlos Rubio
Violin II
Natasha Colkett
Liz Kaderabek
Donna Grantham
Kei Fukuda
Aisha Dossumova
Viola
Mary Yong
Yoshi Nakano
Jay Yiu
Yumi Oshima
Cello
Branson Yeast
Elizabeth Thompson
Jesus Morales
Bass
Anne Peterson
Dan McDougall
Flute
Ed Schultz
Clarinet
Doris Hall-Gulati
Oboe
Geoff Deemer
Nicholas Masterson
Horn
Karen Schubert
Lyndsie Wilson
Bassoon
Zach Feingold
Percussion
Harvey Price
Venue
Perelman Theater
The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
300 S Broad St
Philadelphia, PA 19102