Sunday, August 10
Aspen Festival Orchestra
Stéphane Denève, conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin

Jennifer Higdon

blue cathedral

Jennifer Higdon was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 31, 1962, and now resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She composed blue cathedral for the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Robert Spano conducted the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere on May 1, 2000. The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), oboe and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta, and strings. In addition, the brass players also play eight crystal glasses.

Jennifer Higdon moved rapidly into the circle of the most frequently commissioned and performed composers of her generation. Her music, for which she has won the Pulitzer Prize, is immediately accessible to concert audiences and yet it never sounds like imitations of something we have heard before. She takes the possibilities of the symphony orchestra, for which she writes brilliantly, and regenerates them for our time.

While other pieces in Higdon’s ouevre may more properly be called her breakthrough, blue cathedral clearly set the stage for this success. Higdon was commissioned to write an orchestral work for the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute, where she taught composition. As she began to write, her thoughts were particularly filled with memories of her younger brother, who had died exactly a year earlier:

. . . I was pondering a lot of things about the journey we make after death. I had a lot of very crystal clear images in my head which contributed to the composition process. I was imagining a traveler on a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky (therefore making it a blue color). The traveler would at first float down the aisle, passing giant pillars, which would reflect the sun at prismatic angles. Along the way they would pass stained glass windows in which the figures would be moving about, speaking and singing. I imagined that there would be some sort of otherworldly music sounding throughout, along with distant bells ringing periodically. The journey up the aisle would carry the viewer/listener closer to the altar, which would be some large, magnificent scene like heaven, open and welcoming. . . . As the journey progresses, the individual would float higher and higher above the floor, soaring towards an expanding ceiling, where the heart would feel full and joyful.

The imagery that the composer offers in this description need not be taken literally by a listener to the work, but certainly a sense of light, of constant expansion into a space ever-more-richly decorated—not unlike the effect of the great Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages—provides enough of a guide for the first-time listener to this wonderfully affirmative score.

Robert Spano conducted the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of blue cathedral on May 1, 2000. Since that time it has become Jennifer Higdon’s most frequently performed piece—and no one who hears it will need ask why. — © Steven Ledbetter

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

Violin Concerto in D major, op. 35

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky was born at Votkinsk, district of Vyatka, on May 7, 1840, and died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893. He began work on the Violin Concerto at Clarens, Switzerland, in March 1878. He completed it on April 11, but soon replaced the original Andante with the present Canzonetta. Leopold Auer, to whom the Concerto was first dedicated, pronounced it “impossible to play,” and the first performance was given by Adolf Brodsky at a Vienna Philharmonic concert conducted by Hans Richter on December 4, 1881. In addition to the solo violin, the Concerto calls for flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons in pairs; four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was composed during what his biographer David Brown calls “The Crisis Years.” The crisis was a real one, and it had complicated elements, both professional and personal. Its centerpiece was the composer’s catastrophic marriage, a step taken in the hope of stopping speculation about his homosexuality. He and his bride had scarcely started off on their honeymoon before the composer recognized the folly of his action. In torment, he ran away to Switzerland, where he composed the Violin Concerto.

The marriage was by no means Tchaikovsky’s only crisis during those years. Nikolai Rubinstein’s declaration that the First Piano Concerto, which Tchaikovsky had written for him, was worthless and unplayable was followed by the abject failure of the ballet Swan Lake in its first production. Still, the great success of his Fourth Symphony and the beginning of his relationship with his patron Nadezhda von Meck—who made the strange, but welcome, requirement that they never meet in person—to some extent counterbalanced the failures.

But he felt the need for escape. After several months in Italy, he moved to less expensive quarters in Clarens, Switzerland, on March 9, 1877, and summoned his student, friend, and possible lover, the violinist Iosif Kotek, who arrived on the fourteenth. The two musicians soon played through Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole (a violin concerto in spite of its title). Tchaikovsky’s interest in this piece (he noted that it had “a lot of freshness, lightness, of piquant rhythms, of beautiful and excellently harmonized melodies”) may well have turned his own mind in the direction of a violin concerto. On March 17 he began the new piece and discovered to his delight that it went easily. In just eleven days he sketched the entire concerto. Kotek and the composer’s brother, Modest, expressed reservations about the slow movement; eventually Tchaikovsky agreed. On April 5 he replaced the original slow movement with a new piece. The enthusiasm of all three men was so great that Tchaikovsky finished the orchestration, too, by April 11.

But now he was in for a repetition of his experience with the First Piano Concerto. He sent the published violin concerto to his intended dedicatee, Leopold Auer, naturally hoping that he would agree to play the first performance. Auer is supposed to have declared the work to be “unplayable,” though he later defended himself by explaining that he meant only that, as written, some of the virtuoso passages would not sound as they should. Tchaikovsky was deeply wounded. Adolf Brodsky finally played it in Vienna two years later, where it received a notorious review from Vienna’s conservative music critic Eduard Hanslick. Tchaikovsky never got over it; to the end of his life, he could quote it by heart.

Hanslick described the Russian composer as an “inflated” talent, “obsessed with posturing as a genius, lacking discrimination and taste.” And as for the Concerto, it starts “soberly,” but “soon vulgarity gains the upper hand and dominates until the end of the first movement.” As for the last movement, Hanslick could find no saving grace: “Friedrich Vischer once maintained that there were pictures which one could see stink. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concert for the first time confronts us with the hideous idea that there may be compositions whose stink one can hear.”

The Viennese Hanslick found everything Slavic, as represented in Tchaikovsky’s music, to be uncivilized. We have trouble today locating the “stink” in this music. For a century, it has simply been one of the four or five most popular violin concertos in the literature.

The first movement starts with a simple, graceful melody in the violins—a melody that will not return. (This is a trick that he famously employed in the First Piano Concerto as well.) We might anticipate a quasi-Classical piece like the Rococo Variations. But the orchestral part soon grows more portentous, preparing for the soloist’s entrance. The melodic flow of the exposition is not only a joy to contemplate for sheer invention, but also a marvel of continuing development, as tiny figures from one melody crop up, subtly varied, in the next. The Andante is an extended song (its heading, Canzonetta, is significant). During the months away from Russia, Tchaikovsky had written endlessly in his letters of his nostalgia, of his longing to be home again. He poured all of that yearning into the melancholy of this ardent movement. The finale is vigorous, even pictorial, with hints of peasant bagpipes and dances, vivid in its color and rhythm—but not in its smell! Even at its most virtuosic, the solo part is designed to color and highlight the melodic unfolding of the movement, with an open-hearted singing quality that has won many an audience’s heart. — © Steven Ledbetter

Richard Strauss

Eine Alpensinfonie, op. 64

Richard Georg Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864, and died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, on September 8, 1949. He made his earliest sketches for Eine Alpensinfonie in 1911, began the orchestration on November 1, 1914, and completed the score on February 8, 1915. Strauss himself led the premiere performance with the orchestra of the Dresden Hofkapelle on October 18, 1915. The score calls for two flutes and two piccolos (doubling third and fourth flute); two oboes, English horn (doubling third oboe), and heckelphone (today usually bass oboe); E-flat clarinet, two clarinets in B-flat, one in C, and a bass clarinet in B-flat; three bassoons and contrabassoon (doubling fourth bassoon); four horns, four tenor tubas (who double on a further four horns), four trumpets, four trombones, and two bass tubas; two harps (“doubled if possible”); timpani, percussion, organ, celesta, and strings. Strauss additionally calls for offstage forces consisting of twelve horns, two trumpets, and two trombones, which may be taken from the main orchestra “if necessary.”

In the fall of 1911 Strauss had quite a clear image of the kind of work that Eine Alpensinfonie was going to be. During his summer vacation he showed the sketches to Max Fiedler, then conductor of the Boston Symphony, and described his plan. Fiedler told an interviewer that the “Alps Symphony” would trace a day’s climb up a mountain, past farms and pastures, huntsmen, and peasants singing in the field, to the snow-capped peak. “Then, like the true Strauss he is, he uses the same music to descend, but with everything diminished to make the descent faster than the ascent.”

In the end, other compositions forced a postponement of the work’s completion for some three years. By the time the Alpine Symphony was premiered in the fall of 1915, Strauss had achieved such signal operatic success (especially with Der Rosenkavalier) that he abandoned the symphonic poem genre for the remainder of his long life to devote himself all but exclusively to opera.

The premiere took place more than a year into World War I, which prevented the work from being much noticed outside the world of German culture. For a long time it had been regarded as a sign of the falling away of Strauss’s abilities, or as a work that suffers from the sheer gigantism of its orchestra. (Certainly it is a bigger work than the popular tone poems of the early years of Strauss’s career, including Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and Also sprach Zarathustra.) But in Strauss’s virtuosic management of the orchestral forces for the greatest possible variety of sound and color, it can scarcely be matched anywhere in the literature.

This score did exhibit an uncharacteristically spiritual dimension as a response to the death of Strauss’s friend Gustav Mahler on May 18, 1911. Mahler famously used nature-painting as a central feature of much of his music. Strauss wrote in a notebook that, to him, the Alpine Symphony represented “the ritual of purification through one’s own strength, emancipation through work, and the adoration of eternal, glorious nature.”

At the same time, the score could easily be imagined as the soundtrack to a spectacular nature film that reveals the full grandiose breadth of a scene in which a climber spends an adventurous day in the Alps, projected through an immense one-movement score lasting about fifty minutes.

Strauss loved being specific in his musical images, and nowhere is he more concrete than in his “plot” for the great ascent. The score opens before dawn, with Night, deep and mysterious. The low brass enter with the noble theme of the mountain, which leads to the brilliant and exuberant Sunrise. With a very lively and energetic theme in the strings, The Ascent begins. The upward progress continues through the major early episodes. The music softens and grows darkly mysterious as the climber is Entering the Forest, but this soon gives way to a violin theme expressing a sense of wonderment at the climber’s surroundings. As the climber takes A Hike Beside the Stream and arrives At the Waterfall, the music builds into a grand array of descending melodies, and soon he sees an Apparition of the Fairy of the Alps in the spray of the waterfall.

Two pastoral scenes follow: On Blooming Meadows and On the Alpine Pasture, the first marked by bouncing staccatos, the second by a gentle 6/8 meter, a horn solo ringing out over the plains, and yodel-like register jumps in the winds. But the climb continues, with the climber Going Astray in Thicket and Underbrush, then a passage On the Glacier (represented by a monumental and dissonant chord), replete with Dangerous Moments. Finally, success: At the Summit combines many of the earlier themes in a musical development that continues on to the Vision from the top, moving between moments of stillness and majesty as the brass enters and signals an ascent toward the very top of the violin’s range.

But the weather is turning bad. The Fog Arises and The Sun Gradually Darkens. The climber’s thoughts grow pensive (Elegy) and an ominous Calm Before the Storm suggests trouble ahead with rumblings in the bass underneath fragmented melodies exchanged between the upper winds. The storm breaks violently as the climber heads down the mountainside (Thunder and Storm, Descent), presenting many of the ideas already heard in reverse order. When the storm subsides, the splendid mountain view returns with a restatement of the mountain theme before an elaborate treatment of Sunset. The hushed Vanishing Sound parallels the earlier Vision, and suddenly the activity yields again to Night, shrouding the great mountain in a velvety darkness with lush, deep chords in the brass and organ and a final mysterious violin melody. — © Steven Ledbetter

Stéphane Denève is music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the New World Symphony, and principal guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. He also served in recent years as principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and chief conductor of the Brussels Philharmonic. Recognized internationally for the exceptional quality of his performances and programming, Stéphane Denève regularly appears at major concert venues with the world’s greatest orchestras and soloists. He has a special affinity for the music of his native France and is a passionate advocate for music of the twenty-first century. His recent and upcoming engagements include appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, NHK Symphony, Sydney Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Toronto Symphony. A prolific recording artist, Stéphane Denève is a three-time Diapason d’Or winner and Gramophone Artist of the Year nominee. A gifted communicator and educator, he has been committed to inspiring the next generation of musicians through programs such as those of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Colburn School, the New World Symphony, and the Music Academy of the West.

Augustin Hadelich is one of the great violinists of our time. Known for his phenomenal technique, insightful and persuasive interpretations, and ravishing tone, he appears extensively on the world’s foremost concert stages. Highlights of the 2024–25 season have included returns to the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Vienna Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Cleveland Orchestra. As artist-in-residence, he performs with the Dresden Philharmonic throughout the season. He performed solo violin recitals in London, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Tallinn, and Abu Dhabi. In the summer of 2025, he will perform extensively in Asia. Hadelich’s most recent album American Road Trip, a journey through the landscape of American music with pianist Orion Weiss, was released in August 2024. Augustin Hadelich, a dual American-German citizen born in Italy to German parents, rose to fame when he won the gold medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Further distinctions followed, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009), the U.K.’s Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship (2011), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter (2017). In 2018 he was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America. Hadelich holds an artist diploma from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Joel Smirnoff, and in 2021 he was appointed to the violin faculty at Yale School of Music. He plays a 1744 violin by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, known as ‘Leduc, ex Szeryng,’ on loan from the Tarisio Trust.