Noseda and the NSO with Daniil Trifono - Digital Program - CenterBill | The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

National Symphony Orchestra

Noseda and Daniil Trifonov

Concert Hall

Following sold-out performances at the Kennedy Center, Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov returns to once again dazzle audiences with his “cast-iron power, limpid sensitivity, and impeccable control” (The Washington Post). The concert—led by NSO Music Director Gianandrea Noseda—will be recorded and broadcast on Digital Stage+.

May 28, 2021

Genre

Music
Ticket Information

Program

Movements:

No. 1: Allegro moderato
No. 2. Larghetto
No. 3. Andante con moto
No. 4. Allegro molto

Daniil Trifonov, piano
William Gerlach, trumpet

Movements:

Allegro moderato
Lento
Moderato
Allegro brio (Played without pause)

Intermission

Movements:

Allegro moderato
Andante cantabile
Menuet
Finale: Vivace

Artists

Conductor

Learn More about Gianandrea Noseda

Learn More about Gianandrea Noseda
Piano

Learn More about Daniil Trifonov

Learn More about Daniil Trifonov
Trumpet

Learn More about William Gerlach

Learn More about William Gerlach

Notes on the Program

Four Novelletten for Strings, Op. 52 (1902)

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Born August 15, 1875 in London.
Died September 1, 1912 in Croydon.

Though Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was English by birth, training and residence, he was unquestionably a hero to American audiences. Born in London in 1875 to a white English woman and a physician from Sierra Leone, Samuel was brought up in suburban Croydon by his mother after his father returned to Africa to practice medicine. As a boy, Coleridge-Taylor studied violin with a local teacher, sang in a church choir, and showed talent as a composer, and in 1890, he was admitted to the Royal College of Music. By the time he graduated in 1897, he had produced a significant collection of works, including a symphony and several large chamber compositions, a number of which were performed publicly. His music became known to Edward Elgar, who offered the young musician advice and encouragement. Coleridge-Taylor’s greatest success came in 1898 with the premiere of the cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, the first of several works inspired by the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He held a number of conducting and teaching positions thereafter in London, including appointments as professor of composition at the Trinity College of Music and Guildhall School of Music. Coleridge-Taylor composed steadily throughout his life, and became one of the most respected musicians of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic — New York orchestral players described him as the “Black Mahler” on his visit to that city in 1910. His premature death from pneumonia at the age of 37 in 1912 seems to have been partly a result of overwork.

Coleridge-Taylor’s music found great favor in the United States during his lifetime. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast had been performed twice in Boston by 1900, and his music was espoused by the famous African-American baritone Henry Burleigh, whose songs were an important inspiration for Dvo艡ák’s “New World” Symphony. Coleridge-Taylor’s visits to this country in 1904, 1906 and 1910 were sponsored by the Coleridge-Taylor Society, founded in 1901 in Washington, D.C. to study and perform his music and to encourage African-American musicians. President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White House after a performance of Hiawatha in 1904. Coleridge-Taylor was strongly drawn to America and its African-American culture, and he was considering moving here at the time of his death.

The title, scale, and expressive intent of Coleridge-Taylor’s Four Novelletten were influenced by Robert Schumann’s eponymous piano miniatures of 1838, while their lyricism, keen sense of instrumental color, and technical polish are indebted to the music of Dvo艡ák and Elgar. The opening Allegro moderato is a gentle, restrained waltz. The Larghetto frames a flowing central episode reminiscent of a minuet with outer sections in the nature of a gavotte. The wistful Andante, with its plaintive solo violin, is balanced in form and expression by two animated interludes of brighter character. The finale, the most elaborate of the four movements in its instrumental interplay and thematic development, brings the Novelletten to an emphatic close.

Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings in C minor, Op. 35 (1933)

Dmitri Shostakovich

Born September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg.
Died August 9, 1975 in Moscow.

In 1927, Joseph Stalin secured the expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev, his two chief rivals for power in the Soviet Union. A year later, he ended Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” in favor of the first “Five Year Plan,” a scheme intended to industrialize and collectivize the nation under his leadership. Stalin’s dictates had serious consequences for all Russians (most devastatingly for those caught in the ghastly “purges” of the 1930s), not excluding artists and musicians. The period of almost Dadaist artistic experimentation in the 1920s came suddenly to an end when artists were instructed that they had “social tasks” to perform with their creations, and that “formalism” — the ill-defined Soviet term for avant-garde or personally expressive works — was forbidden. A strain of sarcasm carried over from the music of the early 1920s, however, is still evident in some of Shostakovich’s works of that time, and was dominant in the scathing opera of 1930, The Nose, based on a story by Gogol. That satirical quality appears again, balanced by the required “social realism” (described by one literary critic as “fundamentally optimistic” and “conservative”), in the Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, Op. 35 of 1933.

The Concerto is in four continuous movements, with the third movement acting as a slow introduction to the finale rather than as an independent essay. The opening Allegro moderato is in modified sonata form. After a prefatory flourish from piano and trumpet, the soloist presents a serious melody as the main theme; the violins offer a complementary theme of similar nature. A sharp change of mood ushers in the secondary motives: a mock-fanfare from the soloist and a natty tune tossed off by the trumpet. The middle of the movement is given over to a development of the letter and the spirit of the secondary themes. The recapitulation begins with the violins’ complementary theme while the piano’s serious opening melody held in reserve to serve as a coda. The slow movement is based on a wistful waltz in slow tempo given by muted violins. The piano enters with its own melody, which gathers intensity as it proceeds. The theme and mood of the opening return when the trumpet recalls the principal melody. The following movement, an introduction to the finale, comprises two cadenzas for the soloist: the first is unaccompanied; the second is supported by the orchestra. The closing movement is a brilliant, bubbling affair with several contrasting episodes. The cadenza near the end, added because a pianist friend of the composer was disappointed that the Concerto’s original version allowed no provision for a closing solo display, is an ironic treatment of a theme from Beethoven’s rondo titled Rage Over a Lost Penny.

Symphony No. 95 in C minor (1791)

Joseph Haydn

Born March 31, 1732 in Rohrau, Austria.
Died May 31, 1809 in Vienna.

When Haydn first arrived there, in 1791, London was the world’s greatest musical city, and it was not difficult for the impresario Johann Peter Salomon to entice him to visit after the death of the famed composer’s employer, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, in September 1790. Haydn was swept at once into the artistic and social whirl of the capital upon his arrival. On January 8th, he wrote to Maria Anna von Genzinger in Vienna that he was “occupied in looking at this endlessly huge city of London, whose beauties and marvels quite astonished me.... Everyone wants to know me. I had to dine out six times up to now, and if I wanted, I could dine out every day; but first I must consider my health and second my work.” Haydn was soon befriended by a entire battalion of admirers from all social classes, including musicians, scholars, businessmen — even the royal family. He received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in July 1791, had more invitations for dinners, parties, social engagements and weekends at Britain’s best town houses and country manors than he could possibly accept, gave lessons to members of some of the city’s finest families, and made so much money that, as he later told his biographer Griesinger, “My eyes popped out of my head.” The focal point for the English mania surrounding Haydn was Salomon’s series of Friday concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms, which ran from March 11th to May 16th, and featured a new work by Haydn at every performance. The Symphonies Nos. 95 and 96 were composed in London in 1791 and first heard at the concerts that spring. The entire venture proved to be such a success that Haydn was easily convinced to stay for another season the following year, and to return again in 1794-1795.

The Symphony No. 95 opens with a brief, portentous unison proclamation that, after a full measure of silence, gives way to a contrasting lyrical strain. The unison motive returns in contrapuntal elaboration to serve as the transition to the second theme, which proves to be a surprisingly mild melody in a sunny major key. Despite considerable stretches in which the opening theme and its somber mood return, the remainder of the movement is largely breezy and almost gallant in nature. The Andante is based on an elegant theme in two parts, each repeated, of the type that graced innumerable clockworks of the time from Russia to America. The Menuet returns the tempestuous mood promised by the work’s opening; the cello occupies the central trio with an arpeggiated solo. Any pretense at minor-key profundity, however, is dispelled in the finale. The movement is remarkable for its extensive use of fugato, an imitative technique Haydn had employed in many of his symphony and quartet finales during the preceding three decades. The direct inspiration for this music, however, was probably the last movement of Mozart’s Symphony in C major (K. 551) of 1788, the “Jupiter,” the most elaborate symphonic contrapuntal construction of the entire Classical era. It is a sad footnote to the history of Haydn’s Symphony No. 95 that the orchestral parts he posted to Vienna in mid-November for a Christmas performance in his absence arrived there on December 2nd, just three days before Mozart died.

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Staff

Staff for the Concert Hall

Theater Manager
*Allen V. McCallum Jr.

Box Office Treasurer
Deborah Glover

The technicians at the Kennedy Center are represented by Local #22, Local #772, and Local #798 I.A.T.S.E.

AFL-CIO-CLC, the professional union of theatrical technicians.

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iatse 798

The box office at the Kennedy Center is represented by IATSE #868.

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*Represented by ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

Steinway Piano Gallery is the exclusive area representative of Steinway & Sons and Boston pianos, the official pianos of the Kennedy Center.

NSO staff

Executive Director
Gary Ginstling

The Noseda Era Fund

Through the universal language of orchestral music, the National Symphony Orchestra performs exhilarating concerts meant to inspire, delight, and captivate audiences here in D.C. and around the world. With Maestro Gianandrea Noseda’s visionary leadership, dedication to the NSO, and passion for sharing music, we can raise the Orchestra’s artistic profile locally, nationally, and across the globe during his tenure as Music Director.

The Noseda Era Fund will ensure the success of Maestro Noseda’s priorities and will afford future generations of music lovers the opportunity to experience the best in symphonic music. The NSO extends its sincerest appreciation to the following Noseda Era Fund supporters for their extraordinary philanthropic commitments.

Noseda Era Supporters

Joan Bialek and Louis Levitt, MD

Janet Brown and Michael Brewer

Jennifer and David Fischer

Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman

The Galena-Yorktown Foundation

The Honorable Jan Lodal and Mrs. Elizabeth Lodal

Janet and Jerry Kohlenberger

Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather

Doris Matsui and Roger Sant

Cathy and Scot McCulloch

Melanie and Larry Nussdorf