SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT

Steven Schick, conductor

January 26 and 28, 2018

MAURICE RAVEL Suite (5 pièces enfantines) from Ma Mère l'Oye

(Mother Goose)
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
Tom Thumb
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
The Enchanted Garden

TORU TAKEMITSU From me flows what you call Time

Introduction
Entrance of the Soloists
A Breath of Air
Premonition
Plateau
Curved Horizon
The Wind Blows
Premonition
Mirage
Waving Wind Horse
The Promised Land
Life’s Joys and Sorrows
A Prayer
Aiyun Huang, percussion
Gregory Cohen, percussion
Andrew Watkins, percussion
Erin Douglas Dowrey, percussion
Ryan J. DiLisi, percussion

INTERMISSION

MISSY MAZZOLI River Rouge Transfiguration

BÉLA BARTÓK Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19

Suite (5 pièces enfantines) from Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose)
MAURICE RAVEL
Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrennes
Died December 28, 1937, Paris

Ravel was a very strange mixture as a person. A man of enormous sophistication and
intelligence, he nevertheless felt throughout his life a stinging longing for the world of the child:
he collected toys and was fascinated by the illustrations in children’s books. Not surprisingly, he
made friends easily with children and sometimes abandoned the adults at parties to go off and
play games with their children.
Ravel’s fascination with the world of the child found expression in his art: he wrote
music for children to hear (such as his opera L’Enfant et les Sortileges) and music for them to
play. His Ma Mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”) for piano-four hands dates from 1908. Ravel wrote it
for Jean and Mimi Godebski, aged eight and ten, the son and daughter of some of his friends,
though it was two other children – aged seven and ten – who played the premiere in Paris in
1910. Each of the five movements was inspired by a scene from an old French fairy tale; the
suite, however, should be understood as a collection of five separate scenes rather than as a
connected whole. In an oft-quoted remark, Ravel described his aim and his technique in this
music: “My intention of awaking the poetry of childhood in these pieces naturally led me to
simplify my style and thin out my writing.” This may be music for children to hear – and for
very talented children to play – but it is also music for adults: it evokes the freshness and magic
of something long in the past. In 1911 Ravel orchestrated Ma Mère l’Oye, slightly expanding the
music in the process.
The very gentle Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty depicts the graceful dance of the
attendants around the sleeping Princess Florine. Tom Thumb tells of one of the most famous
figures in children’s tales – the little boy who leaves a trail of breadcrumbs behind in the woods,
only to become lost when birds eat the crumbs. The music itself seems to wander forlornly as the
lost boy searches for the path; high above him, the birds who ate his crumbs cry out tauntingly.
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas tells the story of the empress who is made ugly by a
spell, only to be transformed to beauty at the end. When she steps into her bath in the garden,
bells burst out in happy peals. Ravel’s use of the pentatonic scale – the music is played mostly
on the black keys – evokes an exotic atmosphere. Conversations of Beauty and the Beast brings
another classic tale. Ravel depicts Beauty with a gentle waltz, Beast with a lumpish, growling
theme in the contrabassoon’s low register. A delicate glissando depicts his transformation, and
Ravel skillfully combines the music of both characters. The Enchanted Garden brings the suite
to a happily-ever-after ending. The opening – for strings alone – is simple, almost chaste, but
gradually the music assumes a broad, heroic character and – decorated with brilliant runs –
drives to a noble close in shining C Major.

From me flows what you call Time

TORU TAKEMITSU
Born October 8, 1930, Tokyo
Died February 20, 1996, Tokyo

From me flows what you call Time, a concerto for five percussionists and orchestra, was
commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the percussion
ensemble NEXUS to mark the hundredth anniversary of the opening of that hall. The Boston
Symphony and NEXUS gave the premiere in Carnegie Hall on October 19, 1990. In his program
note at the time of the premiere, Takemitsu said that he “suddenly imagined 100 years of time
flowing through this man-made space, so full of special meaning, called Carnegie Hall. It was as
if I could hear the Hall murmuring from the numberless cracks between the layers of those years,
‘From me flows what you call Time.’ Thus, the ‘me’ in the title is meant to be ‘Carnegie Hall,’
not the composer.”
But if the notion of 100 years was important to the creation of this music, a different
number gave it shape. The number five dominates this music: it was written for five soloists, the
principal theme has five notes, that theme spans a perfect fifth and so on. Takemitsu noted an
even more important influence of the number five, and it is worth quoting him at length:
As soon as I had chosen the number five as the principal motif of the work, I
immediately recalled the Tibetan “Wind Horse” (rlungria). The “Wind Horse” is a
custom observed by the highland nomads of Tibet when they migrate in search of new
land. Used like divination during a ceremony, it consists of five cloth streamers, each a
different color, strung up on a rope, and allowed to wave in the wind. Blown by the
seasonal winds, the myriad wind-horses then point out the way the nomads must take to
find the location of their new life.
 The five colors of the cloth streamers – white, blue, red, yellow, green – have
separate meanings and are the same as the colors emitted by the five Buddhas who sit at
the center of a mandala. Blue is the color of water, red of fire, yellow of the earth, green
of the wind, and white, as the color created by the other four, signifies the sky, the air, the
heavens, and finally “nothingness.”
Though this is a concerto, audiences should not look for the brilliance and extroversion
that are normally part of concerto form. The orchestra is divided in unusual ways, with the
woodwinds set at a distance behind the violins, the brass set at a distance behind the lower
strings; the five soloists are themselves separated and stationed at various points within the
orchestra. Takemitsu has called this “an orchestral work in which the orchestra, like nature,
surrounds us limitlessly, and out of that limitlessness the soloists materialize in limited forms
such as earth, wind, water and fire, then once again dissolve into limitless nature.”
That last note is important because it points to the fact that while this music plays out
over a 30-minute span, it really exists outside time. Western audiences have almost taken for
granted that music should be teleological, or end-oriented – we conceive of music as based on
conflict and resolution. Takemitsu, however, did not, and in an oft-quoted remark he has
compared his music to the experience of walking through a Japanese garden: there is no direct
path and no end, and instead one is free to wander, to pause, and to experience without the need
to be getting someplace.
Takemitsu has said that “the ruling emotion” of From me flows what you call Time is
“prayer,” and he has divided the work into 13 brief sections, which are listed on the program
page. Listeners should use these titles only as a general guide. This is not descriptive music, nor
is there a dramatic progression across the span of these movements. This is music to be enjoyed
at the moment it is happening – and for its connection to something outside time.

River Rouge Transfiguration

MISSY MAZZOLI
Born October 27, 1980, Lansdale, Pennsylvania

Described by The New York Times as “one of the most consistently inventive, surprising
composers now working in New York,” Missy Mazzoli is certainly one of today’s most
successful young composers from any part of this country. Trained at the Yale School of Music,
the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University, Mazzoli has had works performed
by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Kronos Quartet,
Emanuel Ax, Jennifer Koh and many other performers. She has had particular success with her
three operas, which have been produced by such companies as the New York City Opera, Los
Angeles Opera and Opera Philadelphia. Those operas are Song from the Uproar (2012) ,
Breaking the Waves (2016) and Proving Up, the latter of which will be premiered this month by
the Washington National Opera. A pianist, Mazzoli leads and tours with the new music ensemble
Victoire and currently teaches at the Mannes College of Music in New York City.
Mazzoli’s River Rouge Transfiguration was premiered by the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra on May 13, 2013, under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. The composer has prepared
a program note, which is reprinted with the kind permission of G. Schirmer, Inc.:

“…all around me and above me as far as the sky, the heavy, composite, muffled roar of
torrents of machines, hard wheels obstinately turning, grinding, groaning, always on the point of
breaking down but never breaking down."
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline, from Journey to the End of the Night
I first fell in love with Detroit while on tour with my band, Victoire, in 2010. When I
returned home to New York I dove into early Detroit techno from the late eighties, Céline’s
novel Journey to the End of the Night and early 20th century photographs by Charles Sheeler,
who documented Detroit’s River Rouge Plant in 1927 through a beautiful, angular photo series.
In my research I was struck by how often the landscape of Detroit inspired a kind of religious
awe, with writers from every decade of the last century comparing the city’s factories to
cathedrals and altars, and Vanity Fair even dubbing Detroit “America’s Mecca” in 1928. In
Mark Binelli’s recent book Detroit City Is the Place to Be, he even describes a particular Sheeler
photograph, Criss-Crossed Conveyors, as evoking “neither grit nor noise but instead an almost
tabernacular grace. The smokestacks in the background look like the pipes of a massive church
organ, the titular conveyor belts forming the shape of what is unmistakably a giant cross.” This
image, of the River Rouge Plant as a massive pipe organ, was the initial inspiration for River
Rouge Transfiguration. This is music about the transformation of grit and noise (here represented
by the percussion, piano, harp and pizzicato strings) into something massive, resonant and
unexpected. The “grit” is again and again folded into string and brass chorales that collide with
each other, collapse and rise over and over again.
River Rouge Transfiguration was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony in honor of
Elaine Lebenbom. Thank you to the Detroit Symphony, Leonard Slatkin, Erik Ronmark,
Rebecca Zook, Farnoosh Fathi, Katy Tucker and Mark Binelli. (— Missy Mazzoli)

Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19

BÉLA BARTÓK
Born March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklos, Hungary
Died September 26, 1945, New York City

No other work looms quite as large in Bartók’s career as The Miraculous Mandarin, and
none of his other works caused him so much trouble. From the time he encountered Melchior
Lengyel’s story in January 1917, Bartók worked on this music for almost ten years – the most
time he spent on a single work – before it was produced on the stage. Yet that premiere in
Cologne in November 1926 was a catastrophe. The audience jeered, the press was savage, the
Catholic Church protested and the mayor of Cologne – Konrad Adenauer (decades later the first
Chancellor of West Germany) – called the conductor into his office, ripped into him for
programing “such a dirty piece,” and blocked any further performances. Efforts to produce The
Miraculous Mandarin in Budapest in 1931 – to commemorate Bartók’s fiftieth birthday – ran
into such opposition that the whole idea had to be canceled.
The reasons for such furious opposition are obvious. The Miraculous Mandarin tells a
story that would annihilate audiences even today, when almost anything is acceptable on stage.
The composer himself left a concise summary: “Three apaches force a beautiful girl to lure men
into their den so that they can rob them. The first is a poor youth, the second is not better off, but
the third, however, is a wealthy Chinese. He is a good catch, and the girl entertains him by
dancing. The Mandarin’s desire is aroused, he is inflamed with passion, but the girl shrinks from
him in horror. The apaches attack him, rob him, smother him in a quilt, stab him with a sword –
but their violence is of no avail. They cannot cope with the Mandarin who continues to look at
the girl with love and longing in his eyes. Finally feminine instinct helps, and the girl satisfies
the Mandarin’s desire; only then does he collapse and die.”
This tale could not be more squalid or explicit, and so Bartók’s reactions to it catch us by
surprise. He called it “marvelously beautiful,” and on another occasion exclaimed “how beautiful
the story is.” Bartók saw it as a moral tale: beneath the lurid surface, it is an allegory of the
collision of good and evil and of the ultimate triumph of good. The evil is clear: the three thugs –
always portrayed by noisy, abrasive music – represent modern urban society. They are
money-mad, violent and destructive; they have corrupted the girl (innocence) to do their bidding.
Into this setting comes something otherworldly, powerful and incomprehensible: the mandarin (it
was not so crucial that he be Chinese as that he be different – in one of Lengyel’s early versions
this figure was a deformed dwarf). The mandarin represents an unstoppable life force beyond the
comprehension of the thugs. Only the girl comes to understand his true essence, and she redeems
the mandarin and herself through passion.
The Miraculous Mandarin is usually classified as a ballet, but Bartók insisted that it was
not. In a letter to his publisher, Bartók complained: “I see that [Universal Edition] is advertising
Mandarin as a ballet. I have to observe that this work is less a ballet than a pantomime, since
only two dances actually occur in it.” And later he wrote: “the piece must not be turned into a
ballet-show; it is intended as a pantomime, after all.” For Bartók, the emphasis was on action
rather than on dance, and his music depicts that action with raw power. Some have heard the
influence of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring here, others the music of Schoenberg (which Bartók had
discovered after World War I), but The Miraculous Mandarin actually sounds like Bartók in
every measure: brilliant, hard-edged, rhythmic, powerful. It has been observed that a stage
performance needs no choreographer, since every action – every gesture – is clear from the
music.
Onstage, The Miraculous Mandarin lasts half an hour, but the Suite consists of about the
first two-thirds of the complete score. (Bartók made two brief cuts and provided an ending for
concert performances.) From its first instant, this music is unsettling. Second violins swirl up and
down over a “wrong” interval (octave plus a half-step), and the din of the industrialized urban
setting arrives in a blast of auto-horns. Bartók was very proud of this beginning and described it
in a letter to his wife: “an awful clamor, clatter, stampeding and blowing of horns: I lead the
highly respectable listener from the crowded streets of a metropolis into an apaches’ den.” Each
of the girl’s seductive lures in the window, depicted by clarinets, nets a prospective client. First,
a shabby rake (Bartók’s original scenario quoted above reverses the sequence of the first two
johns) enters to the sound of trombone glissandos and then is graphically thrown down the stairs
by the thugs. The second lure brings a reticent young man (solo oboe), and the girl dances shyly
for him before he too is found to be penniless and cast down the stairs.
But the third lure brings the mandarin, who makes a magnificent entrance: the orchestra
“shivers” in terror as the lower brass stamp out an “oriental-sounding” theme and the acid chords
that mark his arrival in the room. A moment of stunned silence follows. Terrified, the girl begins
to dance for him, and her waltz gradually becomes more animated. When the mandarin tries to
embrace her, she flees in terror, and he chases her around the room. This music, the most violent
in The Miraculous Mandarin, is a furious fugue, and at the climax of the chase – just before the
thugs leap out to seize the mandarin – Bartók rips the Suite to a sudden close on three brutal
chords.
The Miraculous Mandarin has never found much success on the stage – its lurid events
simply overwhelm its redemptive subtext. But the Suite Bartók drew from it – full of
exhilarating energy, color and sheer sonic punch – has become one of his most popular works in
the concert hall.
-Program notes by Eric Bromberger

PERFORMANCE HISTORY by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist

Robert Shaw led the San Diego Symphony's initial performance of Ravel's exquisite
Mother Goose Suite in the summer season of 1953. Since then, it has been programmed by the
orchestra eight times, most recently when Yoav Talmi directed it in the 1990-91 season. Peter
Erős introduced Bartók's Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin to San Diego Symphony
audiences in the 1976-77 season. It has also been conducted here by Yoav Talmi during the
1990-91 season. The only other performance of this work by the orchestra was the most recent
one, in the 2004-05 season, under the direction of Jahja Ling. The two other pieces on this
program, by Toru Takemitsu (From me flows what you call Time) and Missy Mazzolli (Rouge
River Transfiguration), are being heard at these concerts for the first time.