Symphony Orchestra
Fabio Mastrangelo,
guest conductor
Robert Gutter, musical director
Monday, February 20, 2006
7:30 pm
Aycock Auditorium
Program
Fountains of Rome Ottorino Respighi
The fountain of Valle Giulia at dawn (1879-1936)
The Tritone fountain at morn
The fountain of Trevi at midday
The Villa Medici fontain at sunset
Romeo and Juliet Overture Fantasy Pyotr Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)
Intermission
excerpts from “Romeo and Juliet” Suites 1 and 2 Sergei Prokofiev
Montecchi and Capuleti (2nd Suite) (1891-1953)
Giulietta fanchiulla (as a young girl) (2nd Suite)
Scene (1st Suite)
Dance (2nd Suite)
Romeo and Giulietta before parting (2nd Suite)
Masks (1st Suite)
Dance of the Antilles girl (2nd Suite)
Romeo at Giuletta’s grave (2nd Suite)
Death of Tybalt (1st Suite)
Program Notes
Ottorino Respighi was born on July 9, 1879, in Bologna and died on April 18, 1936, in Rome.
Fontane di Roma was composed in 1915-16 and was premiered on February 8, 1918, in Rome,
with Arturo Toscanini conducting. Toscanini also introduced the work in America when he
conducted it with the New York Philharmonic on February 13, 1919. Fontane di Roma is scored
for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two
bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, chimes, cymbals,
glockenspiel, suspended cymbal, triangle, two harps, celesta, piano, organ (ad. lib.), and strings.
Though he was schooled in his native Bologna, Ottorino Respighi started his career in earnest as
an orchestral viola player in Russia, where he had the opportunity to study with Nicolai Rimsky-
Korsakov, renowned as a master of orchestral color. Further work ensued in Berlin, with Max
Bruch, before Respighi returned to Italy, where he would make his mark. Though he was not a
radical at heart, he became briefly associated in 1910 with the anti-establishmentarian Lega dei
Cinque, an Italian “League of Five” (with Pizzetti, Malipiero, Giannotto Bastianelli, and Renzo
Bossi) to balance the famous “Russian Five” of the preceding century. The League advocated, in
Bastiandelli’s words, “the risorgimento of Italian music . . . which from the end of the golden
eighteenth century until today has been, with very few exceptions, depressed and circumscribed
by commercialism and philistinism.” (That rustling you just heard was Giuseppe Verdi turning over
in his grave.)
Within a few years Respighi was appointed composition professor at the Accademia di Santa
Cecilia in Rome, and when Alfredo Casella came on board as his colleague in 1915, bringing with
him some of the radical ideas he had picked up during a recent residence in France, Respighi
was again swept up in a burst of modernist enthusiasm; but, again, he soon retreated to his
essentially conservative stance. By 1932 we find him joining nine other conservative composers
to sign a manifesto condemning the deleterious effect of music by such figures as Schoenberg
and Stravinsky and encouraging a return to established Italian tradition. (Curiously, Mussolini
came down in favor of the modernists, although he was personally a fan of Respighi’s music.)
Respighi was by then very famous and very rich. Success had come his way through his hugely
popular tone poem Fountains of Rome. He followed up with two further, vaguely related, tone
poems that are not infrequently presented as a three-movement “Roman Triptych”: Pines of
Rome (1923-24) and Roman Festivals (1928).
Respighi himself left extensive prose descriptions of his “Roman Triptych” tone poems. About
Fountains of Rome he wrote:
In this symphonic poem the composer has endeavored to give expression to the sentiments and
visions suggested to him by four of Rome’s fountains, contemplated at the hour when their
characters are most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or at which their beauty is most
impressive to the observer.
The first part of the poem, inspired by the fountain of Valle Giulia, depicts a pastoral landscape:
droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh, damp mists of the Roman dawn.
A sudden loud and insistent blast of horns above the trills of the whole orchestra introduces the
second part, “The Triton Fountain.” It is like a joyous call, summoning troops of naiads and tritons,
who come running up, pursuing each other and mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of
water.
Next there appears a solemn theme borne on the undulations of the orchestra. It is the fountain of
Trevi at mid-day. The solemn theme, passing from the woodwind to the brass instruments,
assumes a triumphal character. Trumpets peal: Across the radiant surface of the water there
passes Neptune’s chariot drawn by seahorses and followed by a train of sirens and tritons. The
procession vanishes while faint trumpet blasts resound in the distance.
The fourth part, the Fountain at the Villa Medici, is announced by a sad theme which rises above
the subdued warbling. It is the nostalgic hour of sunset. The air is full of the sound of tolling bells,
the twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves. Then all dies peacefully into the silence of the night.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born at Kamsko-Votkinsk, Province of Viatka, Russia, on May 7,
1840, and died in Saint Petersburg on November 6, 1893. He composed Romeo and Juliet
between October 7 and November 27, 1869, and Nicolai Rubinstein conducted the first
performance in Moscow on March 16, 1870. Tchaikovsky twice revised the work, and the third
version, of 1880, has become standard. This final edition was first presented in the United States
on February 7, 1890, by the Boston Symphony under Arthur Nikisch. The score calls for two flutes
and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets,
three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, harp, and strings.
In the winter of 1868-69, Tchaikovsky was, for the only time in his life, sexually inflamed by a
woman, Désirée Artôt, a Belgian soprano. Tchaikovsky's intentions were serious, but Artôt
suddenly brought their relationship to an end by marrying a baritone colleague of hers. When
Tchaikovsky next saw her on the stage he wept all evening.
Tchaikovsky was ready to have the composer Mily Alexeievich Balakirev tell him to write a work
based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which is indeed what Balakirev did, going so far as to
tell Tchaikovsky how to do it, proposing a key scheme and even writing out four measures of
music to show how he would begin such a piece. Balakirev was not always pleased with the way
Tchaikovsky worked out "his" ideas. At first, only the broad love theme aroused his enthusiasm. It
is "simply delightful," he wrote. "There's just one thing I'll say against this theme, and that is that
there's little in it of inner, spiritual love, only a passionate physical languor (with even a slightly
Italian hue), whereas Romeo and Juliet are decidedly not Persian lovers but European." Balakirev
continued to comment, suggest, blame, and praise, and Tchaikovsky continued to compose--
buoyed by the praise, stimulated by the blame, and becoming more confident in his themes and
more imaginative in his reading of the play.
He listened carefully at the premiere, which was an indifferent success. That summer he
subjected his overture to drastic revisions, finding the present evocative beginning, devising a
stronger close, articulating more vividly what came between. Among other things, he got rid of the
fugal music that had probably found its way into the score in emulation of the introduction to
Berlioz's great symphony on the same subject. Ten years later he returned to Romeo and Juliet,
and it was then that he found the superb coda. Again, he put strong ideas in place of weak, he
integrated, he refined. And he produced a masterpiece.
Sergei Sergeievich Prokofiev was born in Sontzovka, near Ekaterinoslav in Ukraine, on April
27, 1891, and died in Moscow on March 5, 1953, the same day Stalin died. Prokofiev composed
Romeo and Juliet in 1935 and 1936. The first performance took place in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in
1938; the Kirov performed the work for the first time on January 11, 1940. In the meantime
Prokofiev had already compiled two orchestral suites in 1936 (he added a third in 1946), and
these had made much of the music familiar even before the triumph at the Kirov. Prokofiev
himself gave the first United States performances of music from Romeo and Juliet when he
conducted the Second Suite with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 1938. The score calls
for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, tenor
saxophone, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, cornet, two trumpets, three trombones,
tuba, timpani, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tambourine, xylophone, bells, harp,
piano, and strings.
Romeo and Juliet is probably Prokofiev’s most loved score today, but its early history was not
easy. He wrote the music in a critical period of his life. After nine years of voluntary exile from
Russia, mainly in the United States and Paris, he was approaching the end of a decade of uneasy
shuttling back and forth between the two worlds. It was a difficult and sometimes bewildering
retransition. Russian audiences did not accept such works as The Buffoon and the Scythian
Suite, which had been successful in Paris, but they loved the Violin Concerto No. 1, which Paris
had rejected as too Mendelssohnian. Through all this, Prokofiev was coming closer to the step he
finally committed to in 1936, renting an apartment in Moscow for himself, his wife, and their two
children. Later, as he was subjected to government harassment, he must sometimes have
questioned the wisdom of his judgment.
Toward the end of 1934, there was talk that the Kirov Theater in Leningrad (as it then was) might
stage a ballet by Prokofiev. In his 1946 biographical sketch, Prokofiev wrote with characteristic
dry detachment: "I was interested in a lyrical subject. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was
suggested, but the Kirov backed out and I signed a contract with the Moscow Bolshoi Theater
instead. In the spring of 1935, Radlov [Sergei Radlov, a theater director renowned for his
Shakespeare productions] and I worked out a scenario, consulting with the choreographer
[Leonid Lavrovsky] on questions of ballet technique. The music was written during the summer,
but the Bolshoi declared it impossible to dance to, and the contract was broken.
". . . The ballet itself was rather unlucky. In 1937 the Leningrad Ballet School signed an
agreement undertaking to produce it on the occasion of its 200th anniversary, and in 1938 the
Brno [Czechoslovakia] Opera agreed to stage it, too. The Ballet School violated its agreement,
and so the premiere took place in Brno in December 1938. The Kirov produced the ballet in
January 1940 with all the mastery for which its dancers are famed. . . ."
Michael Tilson Thomas has called the ballet “a great lyrical symphonic epic, one in which
Prokofiev used his unique gift for beautiful melody to give life to all the characters. Definite motifs
are identified with those characters and also with specific emotions—emotions such as
innocence, love, anger, jealousy, despair.” The excerpts we hear show how a great composer
shaped character, communicated emotion, and captured the dramatic sweep of one of the world’s
great love stories.
—Michael Steinberg
The Conductor
Fabio Mastrangelo was born in Bari and began his piano studies
there under his father at the age of 5. He went on to study at the
Conservatorio Piccinni in Bari under Pierluigi Camicia, at the
Conservatory of Geneva under Maria Tipo, and at the Royal
Academy of Music in London. He attended masterclasses with
Aldo Ciccolini, Seymour Lipkin, and Paul Badura-Skoda and won
1st prize in the piano competitions of Osimo (1980) and Rome
(1986). He accepted an invitation from the Teatro Petruzzelli in
Bari as a repetiteur working with conductors including Donato
Renzetti and Evelino Pidò and singers such as Katia Ricciarelli
and Piero Cappuccilli. Consequently he studied conducting with
Gilberto Serembe in Pescara and at the University of Toronto. He
studied further with Leonard Bernstein and Karl Österreicher in
Vienna, and Gustav Meier at Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attended
the masterclasses of Neeme Järvi and Jorma Panula.
In 1996 Fabio Mastrangelo founded the chamber orchestra Virtuosi di Toronto with several
members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, of which he is currently Music Director. In addition
he spent nine years as Music Director of the University of Toronto Hart House Chamber Strings.
As a guest conductor he has led the National Academy Orchestra (Hamilton), the Windsor
Symphony, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Kitchener-Waterloo
Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the
Brantford Symphony, as well as the Szeged Symphony (Hungary), the Pärnu Symphony
(Estonia), The Tampere Philharmonic (Finland), the Wiener Festival Strings (Heiligenkreuzer
Herbst Festival), and the National Symphony of Ukraine (Kiev). In Italy, he has conducted the
symphony orchestras of Bari, (Principal Guest Conductor since 2005), Taranto, Palermo, and
Pescara, the Filarmonica di Roma, the Filarmonica del Teatro Petruzzelli (Bari), and “solisti di
Napoli”. In Russia, since 1999 he has conducted the St Petersburg Orchestra “Klassika”, the St
Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra, the St Petersburg Camerata, the Karelia
Philharmonic, the Kislovodsk Symphony, and the Arkhangelsk State Chamber Orchestra. He has
led the Symphony Orchestra of the St Petersburg Philharmonic regularly since his debut with
them in 2001. He moved to St Petersburg in 2002 and the same year marked his debut with the
St Petersburg Philharmonic. Since August 2001, he has been Artistic Director of the festival
Etoiles du Chateau de Chailly (Chailly-sur- Armançon, France) where he performs chamber
music.
As a pianist Fabio Mastrangelo has performed an extended cycle of Mozart Piano Concertos with
the Hart House Chamber Strings, conducting from the keyboard. He gives regular concerts with
the Russian cellist Sergei Slovachevsky, with whom he has released 2 CDs for the Japanese
label Ongaku-no-Tomo. As a conductor he has recorded the complete orchestral works of
Elisabetta Brusa with the National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine for Naxos.
Fabio Mastrangelo made his operatic debut at the Mussorgsky State Theatre, St. Petersburg, with
“La Traviata”, which led to an invitation to conduct a staged production of Verdi’s Requiem during
the same season and regular engagements for the following seasons. His most recent production
was a reprise of Mariss Jansons’ “La Boehme” at the St Petersburg Conservatory Bolshoi
Theatre. He has been invited back to conduct “Tosca”.
In March 2004, he has been appointed Principal Conductor of the St. Petersburg Festival
Chamber Orchestra, comprising members of the two orchestras affiliated with the State
Philharmonic. A tour of Japan is planned with this orchestra in the 2006/7 season. He has also
recently been appointed Music Director of the re-named Orchestra della Società dei Concerti di
Bari (formerly the Teatro Petruzzelli’s Philharmonic). Highlights of the current season include
return appearances as a guest conductor with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (also on tour in
Italy), the Symphony Orchestra of Bari, the “Società dei Concerti” Orchestra (Bari), the State
Hermitage Orchestra (St. Petersburg), the Heiligenkreuzer Festival (Vienna), and the Symphony
Orchestras of Nizhni-Novgorod, Kislovodsk, and Novosibirsk.
The Orchestra
Violin I
LaTannia Ellerbe, concertmaster
Seung Hee Kwon, assn’t concertmaster
Gretchen Heller
Michael Cummings
William Selle
Jared Matthews
Annalisa Chang
Elisabeth Cansler
Kimberly Jennings
Violin II
Laura Doyle, principal
Andrew Liggit, assn’t principal
Daniel Pappas
Elizabeth Larson
Holley Ross
Amy Johnson
Shelley Blalock
Brittany Ellis
Kristen Walton
Viola
Lindsey Parsons, principal
John Ward, assn’t principal
Susannah Plaster
Joseph Driggars
Laura Anderson
Morgan Caffey
Caitlin Leming
Amber Autry
Anna Wittmann
Christina Fuchs
Alex Beard
Cello
Brian Hodges, principal
Brian Carter, assn’t principal
Gina Pezzoli
Jesse McAdoo
Michael Way
Kevin Lowery
Kendall Ramseur
Rebecca Wade
Jonathan Benson
Krista Britt
Double Bass
Paul Quast, principal
Patrick Byrd, assn’t principal
Michael Ditrilio
Di Wang
Christopher Polen
Ryan Mack
Stella Heine
Stephen Jackson
Stuart McLemore
Jason Peppers
* principal + co-principal
Flute and *Piccolo
Tika Douthit +
Allison Flores*
Laura Pritchett +
Oboe and *English horn
Cheshire Moon
Shelly Hypes*
Katherine Woolsey, principal
Clarinet and *Bass Clarinet
Robyn Brown*
Sarah Lloyd +
Kelly Smith +
Bassoon and *Contrabassoon
Cheyne Burwell*
Rebecca Hammontree, principal
Justin Thompson
Horn
Kendal Alley, assn’t principal
Mary Boudreault, principal
Tara Cates
Phillip Kassel
Julie Price
Shannon Witt
Trumpet and *Cornet
James Dickens
Mark Hibshman*, principal
Jeff Kindschuh
Trombone and *Bass Trombone
Frank Beaty
Andy Judd*
Paul Pietrowski, principal
Tuba
Brent Harvey
Percussion
Dave Fox
Tim Heath
Thad Lowder
Braxton Sherouse, principal
Matt Watlington
Harp
Clarke Carriker
Celeste and Piano
Stephanie Elkins
Librarian
Lindsey Parsons
Personnel Manager
Daniel Pappas
