Guest conductor Morihiko Nakahara leads this Spokane Symphony program, which opens with music by one of our own: Gregory Yasiniksky’s bright Celebration Overture. Gabriela Lena Frank draws on her Peruvian heritage and the music of Benjamin Britten in her colorful Concertino Cusqueño. Pianist Sara Davis Buechner joins us for George Gershwin’s jazz-inspired Rhapsody in Blue. John Adams’s The Chairman Dances might be described as a kind of “prequel” to his 1986 opera Nixon in China. In The Chairman Dances, Adams portrays the characters of Chairman Mao and his former wife with an eclectic blend of minimalism and other styles. We close with Leonard Bernstein’s ballet score Fancy Free, an enjoyable musical portrait of three rowdy sailors on shore leave.

Gregory Yasiniksky

Born: October 3, 1953, San Francisco, California.

Celebration Overture

• Composed: 2022.
• Premiere: July 12, 2022, by the McCall (Idaho) SummerFest Orchestra, directed by Eric Garcia.
• Duration: 10:00.

Celebration Overture lives up to its name: it is an upbeat, optimistic, and—well—“celebratory” piece. Its composer is a longtime member of the Spokane Symphony.

Background

Composer, arranger, and saxophonist Gregory Yasiniksky is widely published in the fields of jazz and classical music. As a saxophonist, he has played with a huge range of leading artists and leads his own big band, the Yazz Band, and a jazz quintet, Crosscurrent, groups performing primarily his own compositions and arrangements. He has served as principal saxophone for the Spokane Symphony since 1991. Yasiniksky was trained at San Francisco State University and the Eastman School of Music, and he recently retired (2022) after 40 years teaching at Washington State University. Celebration Overture was commissioned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of SummerFest (now MusicFest) in McCall, Idaho—according to the composer:

Celebration Overture was written especially for our wonderful SummerFest orchestra, the members of which are drawn from some of the finest musicians from across the country.” During a phone conversation, he described it as “a kind of concertino for orchestra, in which all sections are featured and solo lines are distributed throughout the orchestra.

What You’ll Hear

Yasiniksky provides the following description of the piece:

Celebration Overture is a one-movement piece in three sections, showcasing all of the instruments of the orchestra: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The first section begins with the brass and leads to a spirited theme, first heard in the strings, which rises as the music progresses. More and more instruments are added, leading to a presentation by the full orchestra. This is followed by a slow, lyrical, reflective section with a melody introduced by the flute and English horn, along with harp and strings. The orchestration becomes richer as themes are traded among instruments, leading to a dramatic statement by the full ensemble. The percussionists initiate the third section, which makes reference to the introductory music at the beginning of the piece, and leads to a heroic theme presented in the low brass. The music continues with energy and optimism, which culminates in the climax of the work, scored for the entire ensemble.

Gabriela Lena Frank

Born: September 26, 1972, Berkeley, California.

Concertino Cusqueño

• Composed: 2012.
• Premiere: October 25, 2012 by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
• Duration: 11:00.

This lively and colorful work combines sly references to the music of Benjamin Britten, Peruvian traditional styles, and good humor— all in good measure!

Background

Composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank was born in Berkeley California, to a Peruvian/Chinese mother and a Lithuanian/Jewish father. She was born with a significant hearing loss but has clearly overcome this in her career. Frank is widely known as a performer and received a Latin Grammy Award for one of her recordings. As a composer, she has written commissioned works for Yo-Yo Ma, The King’s Singers, and several major orchestras. Frank has served as a Composer-in-Residence to the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Frank often draws upon her multicultural background, most frequently her mother’s Peruvian heritage, but also a wide variety of other cultures in her work: she has traveled widely throughout Latin America in search of musical influences. As she puts it, she decided early in her career that: “I wanted to, in a very general way, be as mestiza [a woman of mixed race] in my music as I was in my person: I’m multiracial, I’m multicultural, and I think that’s something deeply American.” A believer in community outreach, she founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music at her home in Boonville, in northern California, to foster young composers. Frank also volunteers to bring music into prisons and hospitals and has also worked extensively to enhance public school music programs in Boonville, an under-resourced rural school system with a large Latino population.

What You’ll Hear

Frank provides the following description:

Concertino Cusqueño, written to celebrate the fine players of the Philadelphia Orchestra on the eve of Yannick Nézet-Ségun’s inaugural season as Music Director, finds inspiration in two unlikely bedfellows: Peruvian culture and British composer Benjamin Britten. As a daughter of a Peruvian immigrant, I’ve long been fascinated by my multicultural heritage and have been blessed to find Western classical music to be a hospitable playpen for my wayward explorations. In doing so, I’ve looked to composers such as Alberto Ginastera from Argentina, Béla Bartók from Hungary, Chou Wen Chung from China, and my own teacher William Bolcom from the US as heroes: To me, these gentlemen are the very definition of “cultural witnesses,” as they illuminate new connections between seemingly disparate idioms of every hue imaginable.

To this list, I add Britten, who I admire inordinately. I wish I could have met him, worked up the nerve to show him my own music, invited him to travel to beautiful Perú with me… I would have shared chicha morada (purple corn drink) with him, taken him to a zampoña panpipe instrument-making shop, set him loose in a mercado (market) streaming with immigrant chinos and the native indio descendants of the Incas. I would have loved showing him the port towns exporting anchoveta (anchovies), the serranos (highlands) exporting potatoes, and the selvas (jungles) exporting sugar. And I know Britten would have been fascinated by the rich mythology enervating the literature and music of this small Andean nation, so deeply similar to the plots of his many operas, among other works.

Concertino Cusqueño melds together two brief musical ideas: The first few notes of a religious tune, Ccollanan María, from Cusco (the original capital of the Inca empire Tawantinsuyu, and a major tourist draw today) with the simple timpani motif from the opening bars of the first movement of Britten’s elegant Violin Concerto. I am able to spin an entire one-movement work from these two ideas, designating a prominent role to the four string principal players (with a bow to the piccolo/bass clarinet duo and, yes, the timpanist). In this way, while imagining Britten in Cusco, I can also indulge in my own enjoyment of personalizing the symphonic sound by allowing individuals from the ensemble to shine.

George Gershwin

Born: September 26, 1898, New York City, New York
Died: July 11, 1937, Los Angeles, California. 

Rhapsody in Blue

• Composed: January and February 1924.
• Premiere: Gershwin was the piano soloist with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in the premiere in New York City on February 12, 1924.
• Duration: 16:00.

Gershwin’s 1924 Rhapsody in Blue was his first great success in fusing Jazz style and Classical form and scoring.

Background

By 1924, Gershwin was a huge success on Broadway and well-regarded as a pianist. It was at this time that Paul Whiteman conceived one of the most ambitious concerts of the Roaring ‘20s. Whiteman, the “King of Jazz,” announced an “Experiment in Modern Music” for February 12, 1924, a concert that would supposedly answer the question “What is American Music?” Whiteman planned to bring together jazz of all styles with classical music and newly composed works by composers such as Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert. Whiteman and Gershwin had casually chatted about a large-scale jazz-style orchestral work for the Whiteman Orchestra. But this casual commitment became a fait accompli when Gershwin read the New York Herald’s January 3 announcement that he was “already at work” composing a “jazz concerto” for Whiteman’s grand concert! Composing a concerto in just over a month was daunting for a composer who had never written a work of this scale and already had several heavy Broadway commitments. Rather than attempting a traditionally conceived concerto, Gershwin settled on a “rhapsody”—a much less rigorous form that would allow him to develop musical ideas freely. According to a letter by Gershwin, the final inspiration for the score came during a train trip to Boston for the opening of his show Sweet Little Devil:

It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattlety-bang that is often stimulating to a composer—I frequently hear music in the heart of noise—I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston, I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.

Given Gershwin’s relative inexperience in writing for orchestra and the short lead time available, much of the orchestration was done by Whiteman’s staff arranger, Ferde Grofé. In the end, Whiteman’s pretentious and over-long “Experiment” was a qualified success. However, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—the 24th work on a program of 25 pieces—stole the show.

What You’ll Hear

The Rhapsody opens with a famous clarinet glissando, the trademark lick of Ross Gorman, Whiteman’s lead clarinetist, which Gershwin adopted as the perfect lead-in to the first theme. The piece develops freely, with one theme flowing naturally into the next and with increasing intensity until the piano takes an extended solo and slows the tempo. The central section is based on a romantic melody that sounds like a nod to Tchaikovsky, with a bit of jazz punctuation. There is a recapitulation, and the piece ends aggressively, with the solo piano playing its loudest

John Adams

Born: February 15, 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts.

The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra)

• Composed: The Chairman Dances, composed in 1985, is an orchestral work related to Adams’s opera Nixon in China.
• Premiere: This piece was performed before the opera as a whole was complete: it was premiered by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on January 31, 1986.
• Duration: 13:00.

Nixon in China was an opera based on President Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. The Chairman Dances accompanied a scene cut from the final version of Act III., a banquet on the final night of the visit. The work begins with persistently pulsing music, which gradually evolves, giving way to a more lush style and eventually to a foxtrot. The original rhythmic energy returns—now with a lyrical overlay—before the piece winds quietly to close.

“The myths of our time are not Cupid and Psyche, or Orpheus, or Ulysses, but characters like Mao and Nixon.” – John Adams.

Background

Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China was the greatest diplomatic coup of his presidency. The staunchly anti-Communist Nixon surprised the world by visiting a then-closed and isolated China and meeting both with Premiere Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao. Though the actual results of the visit were limited, it was a powerfully symbolic opening in what had been a hostile relationship. Some 15 years later, John Adams wrote Nixon in China—his first full-length opera—on the events of the three-day presidential visit to Peking.

Adams is one of several composers whose music is frequently characterized—sometimes misleadingly—as “minimalist.” This style, pioneered in the 1960s and 1970s by composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, and Adams, featured constant repetition and simple musical changes that are carried out very gradually over a long period of time. In the last 40 years, Reich, Glass, and Adams have all moved far beyond the original minimalist style, and by the mid-1980s, when he wrote Nixon in China, Adams was already working with an eclectic range of styles and techniques. Nixon in China, which Adams described as a “docu-opera,” was a three-year collaboration with director Peter Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman. It is notable for its intense character development and innovative use of operatic conventions. The Chairman Dances was premiered while the rest of the opera was still in progress.

What You’ll Hear

Adams describes its composition as follows:

The Chairman Dances was an ‘out-take’ of Act III of Nixon in China. Neither an ‘excerpt’ nor a ‘fantasy on themes from,’ it was, in fact, a kind of warmup before embarking on the creation of the full opera. At the time, 1985, I was obliged to fulfill a long-delayed commission for the Milwaukee Symphony, but having already seen the scenario to Act III of Nixon in China, I couldn’t wait to begin work on that piece. So The Chairman Dances began as a ‘foxtrot’ for Chairman Mao and his bride, Chiang Ch’ing, the fabled ‘Madame Mao,’ firebrand, revolutionary executioner, architect of China’s calamitous Cultural Revolution, and (a fact not universally realized) a former Shanghai movie actress.

This music was initially intended for the opera’s final scene, a formal banquet for the Nixons, hosted by Mao, who looks down from an enormous portrait. Though this scene did not appear in the final version, Adams describes the action:

Chiang Ch’ing, a.k.a. Madame Mao, has gatecrashed the Presidential Banquet. She is first seen standing where she is most in the way of the waiters. After a few minutes, she brings out a box of paper lanterns and hangs them around the hall, then strips down to a cheongsam, skin-tight from neck to ankle and slit up the hip. She signals the orchestra to play and begins dancing by herself. Mao is becoming excited. He steps down from his portrait on the wall, and they begin to foxtrot together. They are back in Yenan, dancing to the gramophone…

According to Adams, the final act is about love and aging. In its final state, Mao, Chiang Ch’ing, and the Nixons reminisce about the simpler days gone by: the Nixons about the early days of their marriage and his tour of duty in World War II, and the Maos about the months before the Revolution, when they spent quiet times together in the caves at Yenan. These reminiscences are treated with humor in The Chairman Dances—as in the chugging opening music associated with Mao or Chiang Ch’ing’s more seductive dance. But the end result is sweet and melancholy.

Leonard Bernstein

Born: August 25, 1918, Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Died: October 14, 1990, New York City.

 Fancy Free

• Composed: 1943-44.
• Premiere: April 18, 1944, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
• Duration: 25:00.

The ballet Fancy Free is a boisterous picture of three World War II sailors on shore leave in New York City.

Background

The prodigiously talented Leonard Bernstein could have had any one of several successful careers: piano soloist, classical composer, conductor, writer, lecturer, or Broadway songwriter. In fact, Bernstein chose to do all of these things and did all of them very well! At age 25, he was named assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and his legendary “big break” came on November 14, 1943, when, with just a few hours’ notice, he substituted for Bruno Walter in a nationally broadcast concert from Carnegie Hall. Shortly before this, Bernstein had been approached by a dancer named Jerome Robbins. Unlike Bernstein, who was already a star, Robbins was still up-and-coming but was every bit as ambitious. He wanted Bernstein to write a score for his Fancy Free—his first ballet, to be performed by the Ballet Theater of New York. The two hit it off immediately, and Bernstein immediately began work on the ballet’s score.

The original inspiration for the story was a pair of paintings by the New York artist Paul Cadmus, The Fleet’s In! and Shore Leave. These were energetic and popular images of sailors on leave, though the frank sexuality of Cadmus’s works was sometimes controversial. The scenario for the ballet involved three sailors on shore leave in New York on a hot summer night. They meet a pair of girls in a bar and begin to fight over which of them will be the odd man out. They stage a kind of competition, each dancing a solo designed to impress the girls, but in the end, both girls lose interest and walk off. Though Robbins created the choreography using the vocabulary of Classical Ballet, there are also hints of the dances that were current in ballrooms and bars across America, the Shag, the Lindy Hop, and the Jitterbug. Bernstein’s score is every bit as much a blend of ballet and popular music. The ballet was a phenomenal success, making Robbins a celebrity and increasing Bernstein’s fame as a composer. Later, in 1944, the pair collaborated again on a full-scale Broadway show, On the Town. This show, which expands on the story of Fancy Free (though with entirely new music), would be a huge hit, and, in 1949, an Oscar-winning film.

What You’ll Hear

The score is laid out in seven sections, played without pauses. Enter Three Sailors begins with a raspy muted trumpet and the sound of a song being played on a phonograph: Billie Holiday singing Bernstein’s song Big Stuff. The swaggering music in the orchestra alternates with piano and drumset. The second section, Scene at the Bar, is a quiet Blues for woodwinds, strings, and piano. In Enter Two Girls, the girls enter the joint, swaggering every bit as much as the sailors, obviously confident and on the prowl. The humorous Pas de deux, with slinky music for muted brass, has one sailor after another trying his luck with the girls, eventually building to a rather grandiose climax. It soon becomes apparent that, in this case, three sailors are a crowd, and in the Competition Scene, a fight breaks out—an early and completely lighthearted version of the kind of aggressive music Bernstein would later write for violent scenes in On the Waterfront and West Side Story. The following sections are labeled “Three Dance Variations”—one for each sailor. The Galop is frantic and macho, while the Waltz, with its oddly dropped beats, is danced by a sailor who has obviously had a bit too much to drink. The final variation, Danzon, is a Latin-flavored number with hints of the Mambo, a dance that was just starting to become popular in New York City ballrooms. The Finale is a kind of free-for-all that brings together many of the earlier themes. The two girls leave abruptly (you’ll hear the brass standing in for sailors cussing in dismay). The sailors make up and swear off women, but at the very end, another girl walks in, and the whole thing starts again.

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Program notes ©2024 by J. Michael Allsen