August 4
at Benaroya Hall
Additional Notes on the Program
"Loud" by Jimmy López Bellido
Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) – “Invierno Porteño” (Winter) by Astor Piazzolla
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was an Argentinian composer of tango music. Piazzolla fused traditional tango expression with elements of classical music and jazz, creating a genre which became known as “Nuevo Tango,” or “New Tango.” Through this unique method, Piazzolla is recognized both as a notable preserver of Latin-American heritage and an influential contributor to the symphonic tradition.
Piazzolla wrote The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires inspired by Antonio Vivaldi’s iconic violin concerti The Four Seasons. But, of course, Piazzolla reimagined the work informed by his eclectic musical upbringing. Like the works which inspired it, the most well-known version of Piazzolla’s Seasons is for violin and string orchestra. However, the works have been arranged for countless settings—piano trio, symphony orchestra, cello choir and double bass, and even saxophone quartets. Each of these versions emphasizes in different ways the character of Piazzolla’s compositional voice, handling the iconic tango energy with its classic rhythmic expression and dance-like energy.
In today’s performance of Invierno Porteño (Winter), you’ll hear familiar melodies from Vivaldi’s masterwork interspersed with modified solos from the violin. The classic, fiery downward scales from the soloist and orchestra are illuminated in new light with sections of tango rhythms. Piazzolla also intentionally matched the seasons to reflect a calendar year in Buenos Aires, with each season carrying a unique character and affect. Winter, thus, though rhythmic and danceable, is quieter, colder, and more desolate than the other movements in the suite.
Seattle Symphony First Assistant Concertmaster and Marrowstone Music Festival Faculty Eduardo Rios, winner of the 2015 Sphinx Competition Grand Prize, solos with members of the Marrowstone Festival Orchestra this evening. Learn more about Eduardo by clicking here.
Romeo & Juliet (Fantasy-Overture) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).
It feels odd to even write about Tchaikovsky’s history, as he remains to date perhaps the most influential composer in the Western symphonic tradition. A Russian composer, he was plagued throughout his life with struggles of love, sexuality, and fierce competition in the Russian Romantic landscape. Nonetheless, Tchaikovsky emerged from the 19th century a composer cemented in fame, wearing countless medals of blockbuster successes with his symphonies, concerti, and other musical works.
Romeo & Juliet (Fantasy-Overture) was presented as a project to Tchaikovsky by the famous composer Balakirev. Balakirev commissioned Tchaikovsky to create a setting for the classic story, going so far as to pen the first four measures and present Tchaikovsky with a summary of how Balakirev would compose for the story.
Tchaikovsky was young, in his late 20s, when he wrote the Fantasy-Overture, and the premiere of the work was rather monotone—it did not quite earn him the reputation and fame he would later be known by. Balakirev continued to criticize Tchaikovsky’s work throughout the process, offering his own suggestions and all but completely re-writing Tchaikovsky’s work himself. It wasn’t until ten years after the premiere that Tchaikovsky landed on the work’s most memorable moments, including its lush, explosive coda.
The music of the Fantasy-Overture requires little description, as it is so quintessentially Tchaikovsky. There’s lots of other Tchaikovsky-isms across the work—soaring scalar patterns, biting textures in the strings, long and colorful melodies over rich, stacked harmonies. Listen for the orchestra’s massive size and swelling when it plays its most iconic theme—a theme which has been reset and retold in countless forms of visual media in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990).
Leonard Bernstein is one of the most celebrated American composers of all time. His quirk-like tendencies, both on the score and on the podium as conductor, cemented him in history as a totally unique and visionary artist. Bernstein graciously juggled the roles of composer, conductor, artistic philosopher, media personality, and all-American celebrity, enjoying massive fame and success in a wide range of art mediums before his death in 1990.
West Side Story is a re-telling of Shakespeare’s classic love story. The musical is based in New York City’s Lower East Side in the 1900s, a geographic space heavily segregated by race. The two groups depicted are full of young, hot-headed New Yorkers: The Jets, portrayed as white, possible descendants of immigrants from Western Europe, and the Sharks, proudly Puerto Rican, vie for control of pockets of the neighborhood, coming together only when they are trying to confuse and mock the police force that threatens them both. What typically ensues upon these two groups meeting is stylized violence—dance and music “battles” which are artistically at total aesthetic odds.
The “dueling houses” of Romeo & Juliet in this re-telling are more dueling turf holders, sworn enemies who cannot meet eye-to-eye while they respectively navigate the struggles of poverty and the iconically brutish New York lifestyle. While they staunchly defend their territories, members of both dichotomous groups share a true north: that the American dream offers an opportunity for anyone to rise above the struggles of poverty. Within this context, two young lovers from these competing sides fall in love, questioning the strength of lines drawn in the sand between these two racial groups, and offering the same catharsis of Shakespeare’s original work, that love conquers all.
Symphonic Dances is an arrangement of the full musical Bernstein created specifically for a concert stage setting. Broadway audiences were downright obsessed with Bernstein’s idiosyncratic pen in West Side Story, leading it to stage successfully more than 770 professional performances in just two years. It’s difficult to tell whether the story or the downright artistic genius of Bernstein’s pen drew in audiences most. In classic Bernstein fashion, melodies and textures from the orchestra move seamlessly between the grandeur of a romantic symphony, right into modernized, industrial sounds like car horns and other odd percussive instruments. Bernstein revisited the score in 1961 for a fundraising gala, hoping to contextualize the work outside the medium of musical theatre. The work became a huge success, to this day being one of his most performed.
Of the form, Jack Gottlieb, Bernstein’s artistic assistant described:
Prologue: The growing rivalry between two teenage gangs, the Jets and Sharks.
“Somewhere”: In a visionary dance sequence, the two gangs are united in friendship.
Scherzo: In the same dream, they break through the city walls, and suddenly find themselves in a world of space, air and sun.
Mambo: Reality again; competitive dance between the gangs.
Cha-Cha: The star-crossed lovers see each other for the first time and dance together.
Meeting Scene: Music accompanies their first spoken words.
“Cool” Fugue: An elaborate dance sequence in which the Jets practice controlling their hostility.
Rumble: Climactic gang battle during which the two gang leaders are killed.
Finale: Love music developing into a processional, which recalls, in tragic reality, the vision of “Somewhere.”
Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a Russian composer who profoundly influenced the artistic landscape of the 20th century. His works turn the orchestra into a vehicle of expression, blending modernist practices of disjointed and mechanical melody, rhythm, and harmony with the Russian symphonic tradition.
Romeo & Juliet was written during a period of profound struggle in Prokofiev’s life. The music was penned while Prokofiev was exiled from Russia during political unrest, and Prokofiev was splitting time between the United States and France. As a composer, he was receiving wide-spread recognition; the quirky, modernist style which Prokofiev would expand upon and ultimately be defined by, were massive hits with Parisian audiences who were accustomed to bold artistic aesthetics. Russia, however, was not drawn to Prokofiev’s boundary-breaking practices, and preferred music which was more conservative and lyrical in nature.
Russian ballet in the early 20th century was hugely influential on an international scale, and the country was nearly competing with France over which state truly dominated the athletic art form. Thus, it’s pretty fair that Prokofiev was drawn to ballet, as it was likely to earn him the most recognition with Russian audiences who had become proud of their country’s burgeoning tradition of dance.
It is unfortunate, then, that the start of Romeo & Juliet was an exceptionally rocky path. Botched premieres and violated contract agreements turned the premiere in the work into more an administrative scandal than a celebration of Prokofiev’s setting of Shakespeare. Nonetheless, the music was so bold, expressive, and melodically tame enough that Russian audiences were celebratory of Prokofiev’s work.
Today, the work is typically performed on the concert hall stage in the form of orchestral suites, though productions of the ballet with Prokofiev’s music are still commonly produced. Dance of the Knights – Montagues & Capulets is an explosive work with an absolutely neck-chilling introduction. Long, held notes in the brass build relentlessly into a full orchestra sound, which then fall out and expose textured strings. This introduction is a clear foreshadowing of the chaos and drama in the rest of the story. When the proud, declamatory statement in the upper strings enter, they carry a pomp and arrogance about them indicative of the story’s two haughty families. These statements from the family are split but pensive solos from the flute, contrasting the individual against the community in fashion thematic of Shakespeare’s tale.
Founded in 1942, Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra is the largest youth orchestra training program in the United States.
Jimmy López Bellido is a decorated composer of works for orchestra, chamber settings, oratorios, and more, and has been performed at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Concertgebouw, Konzerthaus Berlin, Nordic Music Days, the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games, the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, and the Aspen, Tanglewood, and Grant Park Music Festivals.
“Loud” is the cornerstone of tonight’s program, an unabashed claiming of space and declamation of love, peace, and acceptance of all. The work first premiered earlier this summer June 26 as part of San Francisco’s—López Bellido’s home for almost two decades—Pride Week celebration. SYSO is proud to bring the new work to the upper Pacific Northwest, joining a cadre of institutions dedicated to preserving and expanding the art form of symphonic music for our region.
Learn more about “Loud” in the composer’s own words:
“Loud” is a journey from a place of doubt, isolation, and hatred, toward acceptance, community, and love. A journey not unlike that of many LGBTQ+ youth across the world, who have fled their birthplaces and biological families in search of a haven where they can flourish and be their true selves. A journey toward hard-fought rights and freedoms that have been conquered slowly but steadily in the past few decades but that once again seem to be under threat. This is their homage, their voice, and their song. May we rise again to the challenge and drown the screams of oppression with anthems of love.
Loud are our protests, like the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in NYC or the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco, but loud are also our drag queens, parades, outfits, and demeanor. For so long our community had been silenced that, in response, we collectively raised our voices and revealed our unabashedly true selves to the world. Our contributions have been lasting and profound, particularly in the arts, where countless queer artists have played pivotal roles in the fields of music, fashion, and literature, to name a few. This is something to be celebrated, and I couldn’t be more honored to have been endowed with this task.
Co-commissioned by the International Pride Orchestra (IPO), the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) and the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra (SYSO), this work holds a very special place in my heart. As a gay man who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost 16 years, writing a piece to commemorate Pride is genuinely meaningful to me. Even though a small group of close friends and family knew, it was not until I reached the West Coast back in 2007 that I finally accepted who I was and came out to the world at large. It is here where I felt safe and free to be myself; where I was no longer an exception, nor did I need to hide who I was at all. I could be myself at home, at the store, the train, and the park, and no one would look at me neither approvingly nor disapprovingly—I had finally come to a place where I was not being treated differently.
Pride is also the time of the year when I met my now husband, Franciel, and June is the month during which we got married just a year ago, on June 21 st , 2022. Franciel’s own path to acceptance was also fraught with difficulties. Born in a small village in Northeastern Brazil, he was always restless, moving first to São Luis and then São Paulo, but it was only here, in San Francisco, that he gathered the strength to finally come out publicly. For all these reasons, and because Pride has played such a central role in our lives, I have dedicated this work to him, and present it as a gift to mark our first-year anniversary.
I want to sincerely thank Michael Roest, founder and director of the IPO, for his leadership and vision; renowned Conductor and SFCM Music Director, Edwin Outwater, for his invaluable involvement in this commission since its inception; and SYSO Music Director, Juan Felipe Molano for bringing his fabulous ensemble on board and for so firmly believing in this beautiful project.
Let us all be loud and proud. Together.