Friday August 15th

Aspen Chamber Symphony
Vasily Petrenko, conductor
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello
Chai Lee, harp competition winner

Sergei Prokofiev

Symphony No. 1 in D major, op. 25, “Classical”

Sergei Sergeyevitch Prokofiev was born in Sontzovka, near Donetsk, Ukraine, on April 23, 1891, and died in Moscow on March 5, 1953. The Classical Symphony, Opus 25, was written in 1916–17. The composer conducted the premiere in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) on April 21, 1918. The score calls for a “Classical” orchestra—two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, plus timpani and strings.

This Symphony is officially Prokofiev’s First Symphony in D major, but the nickname Classical has taken hold so thoroughly that it’s hardly known by its more formal title. Prokofiev had, in fact, already written a symphony during the summer of 1908 in friendly competition with a fellow conservatory student, but when he approached his teacher Glazunov with the idea of arranging an orchestral reading, the older and more conservative musician labeled the music “harsh.” Yet somehow a reading was arranged, and it demonstrated to Prokofiev himself “how much more naïve it was than Skryabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. . . . I returned home dissatisfied and not at all beaming with joy. I would have to write a new symphony.”

It took him eight years to do that, and when he did, his acknowledged model was not a modern composer like Skryabin, but the distinctly older figure of Haydn. The kernel of the Symphony developed when Prokofiev attended the conducting classes of Nikolai Tcherepnin, who pointed out to him endless felicities in the works of Haydn and Mozart that were being played by the student orchestra. He decided to compose the new work completely away from the piano and to write a symphony that might reflect the music Haydn would be writing if he were alive in 1916.

The opening gesture and the arpeggiation of the D-major triad take us back immediately to the world of the Viennese classics, but Prokofiev’s sudden shift to C major only eleven measures into the piece tells us that this Symphony is not simply imitation but a reworking of traditional gestures with witty modern twists. The opening Allegro is in a straightforward sonata form with a wonderful developmental climax in which the violins play the secondary theme shifted by one beat from its accustomed place. The Larghetto unfolds a simple rondo form. The Gavotte is quintessential Prokofiev in its blend of innocent dance with delightful, unexpected shifts of harmony. The brilliant rushing Finale maintains its high spirits from beginning to end. No symphonic work of Prokofiev’s is performed more frequently or received with greater delight for its directness and wit, its fusion of Haydnesque clarity with Prokofiev’s youthful grotesqueries. — © Steven Ledbetter

Camille Saint-Saëns

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, op. 33

harles Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835, and died in Algiers on December 16, 1921. He composed his First Cello Concerto in 1872; it was premiered on January 29, 1873, with the Paris Conservatory Orchestra. The orchestra’s principal cellist, August Tolbecque, was the soloist and received the dedication of the work. In addition to the solo part, the score calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, as well as timpani and strings.

As a young man, Saint-Saëns was dazzling in his quickness, whether in music or almost any other field of study. By the time he was three he had composed his first little piece, and by the age of ten he had made his formal debut as a pianist at the Salle Pleyel in Paris with a program of Mozart and Beethoven concertos (then seldom heard and not respected in France). As an encore he offered to play any one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas from memory! Hector Berlioz said of him, “He knows everything but lacks inexperience.”

In the early years Saint-Saëns was a devotee of the new music of Wagner and Liszt, defending Tannhäuser and Lohengrin against the attacks of French critics. He played Schumann in his recitals, then almost unheard-of in France. Liszt inspired his own significant ventures into the medium of the symphonic poem. He worked on behalf of older composers as well: Bach, Handel, Rameau, Gluck, and Mozart. In short, he was a representative of many of the newest trends in music. Even his historical interests made him “modern,” since it was just at this time that the discipline of musicology and its active pursuit of older music was developing.

Following the shock of French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Saint-Saëns was one of the leaders of a movement to re-establish French art, particularly with the aim of promoting abstract musical forms (symphonies, concertos) that German composers had dominated for decades. Saint-Saëns founded the Société Nationale de Musique, with the motto “ars gallica,” to promote new French music, especially in the abstract genres.

Among the first premieres given by the Société was the founder’s own First Cello Concerto. During the 1850s and ’60s, Saint-Saëns had already composed three piano concertos and two violin concertos, but in general these early works were relatively light in character to suit the prevailing mood of the frivolous Second Empire (so well characterized by the flippant operettas of Jacques Offenbach). The Cello Concerto is altogether more serious.

The opening movement is unusually passionate for such an even-tempered composer. As befits an admirer of Liszt, Saint-Saëns makes imaginative use of thematic transformations, building much of his work from motives heard in the opening bars. The soloist begins with a triplet-filled theme that sweeps downward to end in a half-step rise and fall, E–F–E, echoed at once an octave lower. Both the triplet sweep and the half-step motive dominate the musical discourse of the first movement.

A broadly conceived solo passage links the first movement directly to the second, which opens with a delicate minuet in B-flat. As the cello solo sweetly intones its song over the triple-meter dance figure, the character broadens almost to a waltz. After a solo cadenza Saint-Saëns links the middle movement to the finale with a transition based again on the principal motives of the opening movement. The main theme of the finale subtly combines elements from each of the first two movements. Its virtuosic display grows to a brilliant finish in A major.

— © Steven Ledbetter

Claude Debussy

Danse sacrée et danse profane

Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, and died on March 25, 1918, in Paris. He composed Danse sacrée et danse profane in 1904, and it was premiered on November 6 of that year at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris with Lucile Wurmser-Delcourt as soloist. The work is scored for solo harp and strings.

Until the development of the pedal system found today on modern harps, it was extremely difficult for composers to write chromatic music for the instrument. While the earlier instrument’s strings were tuned diatonically (that is, to the pitches of the major scale), the development of pedals on the modern instrument allowed the player to instantly alter all the strings of a given pitch-class—all the Cs, for example—by a half-step, thus allowing for easy modulations to new keys, and for the performance of music of greater harmonic complexity. Early in the century, there was a rival design to this kind of harp, a “cross-strung” instrument with a separate string for every one of the chromatic pitches, that enjoyed a brief vogue. In 1903 the Pleyel company (which had introduced this instrument in 1897) commissioned from Debussy a work to be used as a test piece at the Brussels Conservatory. By the following year, Debussy had composed his Deux danses.

The two dances are both subtly inspired by Iberian music. The Danse sacrée, slow and ritualistic, may have been inspired in part by a short piano piece by a Portuguese composer, Francisco de Lacerda (1869–1934), who shared a friendship with Debussy and Satie, but it also seems to breathe the same air as Satie’s Gymnopédies, which Debussy loved. The second dance is a lively and lilting waltz mostly in the key of D, but with chromatic alterations and a great deal of modulation to show off the chromatic possibilities of the instrument. There is nothing in either of the two Dances that cannot be played on the standard pedal harp, which is almost invariably used for modern performances.

— © Steven Ledbetter

Igor Stravinsky

Symphony in C

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia, near St. Petersburg, on June 17, 1882, and died in New York on April 6, 1971. Stravinsky began composing the Symphony in C in the autumn of 1938 in Paris and completed the final movement in Beverly Hills, California, on August 19, 1940. The title page bears the following dedication: “This symphony, composed to the Glory of God, is dedicated to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of its existence.” Stravinsky conducted the Chicago Symphony in the first performance, on November 7, 1940. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets in B-flat and A, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, and strings.

fter writing a traditional symphony early in his career, when he was still studying with Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky pursued a very different path from that of the concert hall. The phenomenal success of his three early ballets (The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring) led him to the theater for the bulk of his early works. He continued to emphasize works for the theater, but had by now begun his neo-Classical period, inspired by music of the eighteenth century. During this time, Stravinsky came to terms with traditional operatic gestures (in Oedipus Rex and even more in The Rake’s Progress) and with the notion of the symphony, a genre he recreated on his own terms with the Symphony in C.

Though its composition straddles two years and two continents, the Symphony in C is a remarkably cohesive work that casts the trenchant and jocular Stravinskyan eye on the traditional gestures of the Classical

symphony form. Certain patterns remain: the arrangement into four movements; the character of each of the movements; the size of the orchestra and its general treatment; and the basic tonal relationships of the four movements, centered respectively on C, F, G, and C. But Stravinsky’s use of harmony is entirely his own. He rarely puts the root of the chord in the bass, where it would give the most solid effect, and often leaves the root out entirely, which also allows Stravinsky the opportunity to play some tricks on us, cleverly frustrating our expectations and leading us in different directions. Like the artifice of a magician who convinces us that we have seen something that is not there, Stravinsky’s flourishes are just enough to imply the key of C while building his own, entirely new edifice.

Stravinsky’s score offers sly homage to the great tradition. Few listeners will fail to think of Beethoven’s Fifth in the basic rhythmic figure of the first movement, and characteristic scales and dotted rhythms are part and parcel of the old symphonic language, here reasserted with witty energy. The symphony opens with a measure of eighth notes reiterating the note B, which usher in the tiny motto that lies at the heart of the work, a three-note motive that appears again and again throughout the first movement and the finale.

The first movement is based on sonata-allegro form, though without the harmonic tensions that play such a vital a role in Classical symphonies. Stravinsky’s form grows in phrases balanced against one another. The coda at the end of the movement counterbalances the introduction at the beginning, the recapitulation counterbalances the exposition, and right at the center of the arch is a “false reprise,” a typical Haydn trick.

The second and third movements are played attacca (without pause), setting them off from the outer sections. The slow movement begins with a sonority characteristic of much Baroque music—solo oboe with strings. But the oboe and the first violin have an unusual dialogue, each of them playing what is at heart the same melody, but with different decorations or sudden shifts of octave to highlight one instrument or the other. The ear can never quite decide which is the leading instrument and which the accompaniment; their relationship changes constantly. A faster middle section is followed by an abbreviated restatement of the opening, dying away in a brief duet of oboe and bassoon.

The last oboe figure of the second movement is immediately repeated, nearly three octaves lower, in the cellos and basses, to begin the third movement. While the first two remained in the same meter virtually throughout, the third movement, a Stravinskyan scherzo, is filled with constantly changing meters, evoking the early ballets. A particularly delicious moment comes in a passage for solo bassoon accompanied by staccato trombones. The jaunty, leaping bassoon part came to Stravinsky, he reported, “with the neon glitter of the Californian boulevards from a speeding automobile.”

The last movement opens with a dark orchestral color of low bassoons, horns, and trombones. This offers an oblique suggestion of the opening that becomes more explicit once the main portion of the movement gets underway. Before the onrushing development has run its course the motto returns, full and clear. The very close of the symphony is another of those impressive, hieratic apotheoses like the one that ended the Symphony of Psalms—a ritual march sustaining the complex of tonic and dominant chords to bring the two halves of the work together.

— © Steven Ledbetter

Vasily Petrenko is music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a role he began in 2021, and conductor laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra after a celebrated fifteen-year tenure as chief conductor (2006–21). He is associate conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and has served as chief conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra (2015–24) and Oslo Philharmonic (2013–20), and as principal conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (2009–13). He stood down as artistic director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ in 2022 having been their principal guest conductor from 2016 and artistic director from 2020. Petrenko has worked with many of the world’s leading orchestras and is equally at home in the opera house, with over thirty operas in his repertoire. Highlights of the 2025–26 season include tours with the Royal Philharmonic in Spain and the U.S. He makes his debut with the Warsaw Philharmonic, and returns to conduct the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Dresden Philharmonic, and the Houston Symphony, among others. His discography is widely acclaimed, and Petrenko has been named Gramophone Artist of the Year (2017) and Classic BRIT Male Artist of the Year (2010). He holds honorary degrees from Liverpool’s three universities. In 2024 he co-founded a young conductors’ academy in Armenia.

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that’s performing in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues. Highlights of the 2024–25 season have included the Konzerthaus Berlin as artist-in-residence, Lucerne Festival 2024 as star artist, Czech Philharmonic in Prague, and on tour with Jakub Hrůša and Semyon Bychkov. With his pianist sister, Isata, he made his duo recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium in 2024. Since his debut in 2017 Sheku has performed every summer at the BBC Proms, including as soloist at the 2023 Last Night of the Proms. Sheku also returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra. A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku released Shostakovich & Britten in May 2025, featuring Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London. Sheku is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Hannah Roberts and in 2022 was appointed as the Academy’s first Menuhin visiting professor of performance mentoring. Sheku became a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Sheku’s performance at the royal wedding at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by two billion people worldwide. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700, which is on indefinite loan to him

Harpist Chai Lee, winner of the 2025 Aspen Harp Concerto Competition, will join the Kansas City Symphony as principal harp in the 2025–26 season, appointed by Matthias Pintscher. He has also appeared with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Sarasota Orchestra, and as guest principal with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. As a soloist he has won top prizes at the Soka Nippon International Harp Competition and the Juilliard Concerto Competition, which resulted in a performance at Lincoln Center. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Nancy Allen, and Yale University, where he studied with June Han. Chai Lee attends Aspen with the support of a Linda and Dennis Vaughn Scholarship.