PROGRAM
Performed on January 21, 2017 at Crouse Hinds Concert Theater
Lawrence Loh, conducting
Polina Nazaykinskaya
Winter Bells
Performed on January 21, 2017 at Crouse Hinds Concert Theater
Awadagin Pratt, piano; Lawrence Loh, conducting
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concert No. 4, op. 58, in G major
Performed on January 21, 2017 at Crouse Hinds Concert Theater
Lawrence Loh, conducting
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2, op. 73, in D major
PROGRAM NOTES
Those of us who live in Central New York are used to dramatic weather shifts. If you attended Symphoria’s last concert, for instance, you had to make your way through the season’s first major snowfall; but it was a balmy seventy degrees the day before. Tonight’s concert offers a similar climatic change in the reverse direction.
We begin with a piece appropriate for late January—the 2009 Winter Bells by young Russian composer Polina Nazaykinskaya (born just 30 years and a day before this concert). It’s a nostalgic work—perhaps doubly so. Musically, it looks ...
Those of us who live in Central New York are used to dramatic weather shifts. If you attended Symphoria’s last concert, for instance, you had to make your way through the season’s first major snowfall; but it was a balmy seventy degrees the day before. Tonight’s concert offers a similar climatic change in the reverse direction.
We begin with a piece appropriate for late January—the 2009 Winter Bells by young Russian composer Polina Nazaykinskaya (born just 30 years and a day before this concert). It’s a nostalgic work—perhaps doubly so. Musically, it looks fondly back to what Polina calls “the extended romantics,” composers like Mahler, Sibelius, and especially Rachmaninoff. Although the music has, in her words, a slight “modern twist,” it is nonetheless “melodic and simple, with rich harmonies”—and it draws on recollections of Russian folk music (especially the lullaby) as well. It’s also nostalgic from a programmatic point of view. Written during a return to Russia just after her homesick-filled first year in the United States as a student at Yale, Winter Bells is inspired by the wilderness near a particular Russian village where Polina used to spend summers as a child—specifically by a formation of “three mountain peaks that, when viewed from above, appeared to form a giant goblet.” Revisiting the spot, she found herself inspired to compose, “reaching for that special place within, where everything surrenders to the whispers of nature and divine harmony.” The resulting music evokes the wanderings of a traveler, lost in a snowstorm: “A vision from the past, joyous and wondrous, materializes and disappears, as a mirage in a middle of a snowy desert”—but the ending is hauntingly ambiguous, with the fate of the traveler unknown. This was Polina’s first orchestral piece. But as a violinist, she had “grown up in an orchestra”—and the work shows a charismatic facility with instrumental sound. No wonder that it has been so widely performed.
Our closing piece could not be more different, the Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)—who is, coincidentally, one of Polina’s favorite composers. Brahms’s First appeared only after years of struggle and self-doubt; the Second, in contrast, was written quickly and confidently during the summer of 1877. And the spirit of summer infuses the work. Easily the most radiant and affable of Brahms’ four symphonies, it even includes, atypically for Brahms, a fair amount of what conductor Larry Loh calls “levity.” The word “pastoral” is often used to describe it—but while that term might apply to the bucolic outer sections of the third movement (the most lightly scored of the four), it shortchanges the music by discounting its range. Larry points in particular to the theme for the cellos at the beginning of the second movement Adagio: “so yearning, so heartfelt, so deep.” Indeed, there’s a fair amount of dark turbulence as the slow movement progresses. Then there are the blazing final pages, aptly described by Larry as “heroic.” True, this unclouded conclusion—as sensational an ending as anything in Brahms’s orchestral music—skirts the sense of adversity we hear in the hard-won triumph at the end of the First and Fourth Symphonies, not to mention the quiet resignation at the end of the Third. But for all its sunshine, you’ll probably agree that it’s far from pastoral. As with Winter Bells, there’s some nostalgia connected to the Brahms Second—although it’s nostalgia around the music, rather than in it. It was the first Brahms symphony that spoke to
Larry—and his desire to perform it was so great that (using pizza as a bribe) he organized a performance by fellow students during a summer at the Aspen Music Festival.
Between these two pieces we have the Piano Concerto No. 4 (1805-06) by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). If the Second is the warmest of the Brahms symphonies, the Fourth is
widely considered the most poetic of Beethoven’s piano concertos—although, paradoxically tonight’s soloist Awadagin Pratt believes it “covers the greatest amount of emotional landscape
of any of the Beethoven piano concertos, from the opening material, to the heart-rending contrast of the middle movement, to the real joy and ebullience of the last movement.” It’s surely not without “drama and conflict.” In certain ways, too, it’s one of Beethoven’s more unconventional works, even though it doesn’t flaunt its radicality in the way that some of the music in the late quartets does.
The Fourth gently throws you off balance at the very beginning. Traditionally, the audience waits for the soloist while the orchestra sets out the main material. Here, in contrast, the pianist speaks first with a rhythmically unexpected five-measure statement to which the orchestra answers, as Awadagin puts it, “in a remote way, not with a direct answer.” Although this disjunction doesn’t lead to the kind of titanic conflict we hear in Beethoven’s more immediately dramatic works, it does set forth a discussion that needs to be resolved. Something similar happens in the second movement: there’s an initial disparity between piano and strings, but they eventually “come together in sentiment.” Another unusual feature of the piece is the first movement’s cadenza (Beethoven actually wrote two for the movement, but Awadagin will be playing the first): although the movement itself is in 4/4 time, the cadenza shifts to 6/8, “transforming a peaceful motive to something really agitated just by manipulation of meter.”
In the end, for all its radicality, and for all the high-spirited joviality in what Awadagin describes as the “non-sedate dance” of the finale (where drums and trumpets enter for the first time), the Fourth Concerto remains one of Beethoven’s less assertive works. It’s hard to understand how it might have made an impression at its first performance (the composer’s last
public performance playing a concerto) where it was squeezed onto a program that also included the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Mass in C, the Choral Fantasy, and more. Fortunately, in tonight’s more favorable setting, its beauties will stand out far more clearly.
Peter J. Rabinowitz
prabinowitz@ExperienceSymphoria.org
FEATURED ARTISTS
Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras.
Born in Pittsburgh, Awadagin Pratt began studying piano at the age of six. Three years later, having moved to Normal, Illinois with ...
Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras.
Born in Pittsburgh, Awadagin Pratt began studying piano at the age of six. Three years later, having moved to Normal, Illinois with his family, he also began studying violin. At the age of 16 he entered the University of Illinois where he studied piano, violin, and conducting. He subsequently enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he became the first student in the school’s history to receive diplomas in three performance areas – piano, violin and conducting. In recognition of this achievement and for his work in the field of classical music, Mr. Pratt received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins as well as an honorary doctorate from Illinois Wesleyan University after delivering the commencement address in 2012.
In 1992 Mr. Pratt won the Naumburg International Piano Competition and two years later was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since then, he has played numerous recitals throughout the US including performances at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall and the NJ Performing Arts Center. His many orchestral performances include appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and the Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, National, Detroit and New Jersey symphonies among many others. Summer festival engagements include appearances at Ravinia, Blossom, Wolftrap, Caramoor and Aspen and the Hollywood Bowl. Internationally, Mr. Pratt has toured Japan four times and performed in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, Columbia and South Africa.
Recent and upcoming appearances include recital engagements in Baltimore, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Ravinia, Lewes, Delaware, Duke University and at Carnegie Hall for the Naumburg Foundation; as well as appearances with the orchestras of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, North Carolina, Utah, Richmond, Grand Rapids, Memphis, Fresno, Winston-Salem, New Mexico, Rockford, IL and Springfield, OH. He also serves on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina where he coaches chamber music, teaches individual pianists and performs chamber music and concertos with the festival orchestra.
Also an experienced conductor, Mr. Pratt has conducted programs with the Toledo, New Mexico, Vancouver WA, Winston-Salem, Santa Fe and Prince George County symphonies, the Northwest Sinfonietta, the Concertante di Chicago and several orchestras in Japan.
A great favorite on college and university performing arts series and a strong advocate of music education, Awadagin Pratt participates in numerous residency and outreach activities wherever he appears; these activities may include master classes, children’s recitals, play/talk demonstrations and question/answer sessions for students of all ages. He is also frequently invited to participate on international competition juries, such as the Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel, the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Minnesota e-Competition, the Unisa International Piano Competition in International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in the Ukraine.
In November 2009, Mr. Pratt was one of four artists selected to perform at a classical music event at the White House that included student workshops hosted by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, and performing in concert for guests including President Obama. He has performed two other times at the White House, both at the invitation of President and Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Pratt’s recordings for Angel/EMI include A Long Way From Normal, an all Beethoven Sonata CD, Live From South Africa, Transformations and an all Bach disc with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. His most recent recordings are the Brahms Sonatas for Cello and Piano with Zuill Bailey for Telarc and a recording of the music of Judith Lang Zaimont with the Harlem Quartet for Navona Records.
Mr. Pratt is currently a Professor of Piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He also served as the Artistic Director of the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati and is currently the Artistic Director of the Art of the Piano Festival at CCM.
Described as bringing an “artisan storyteller’s sensitivity… shaping passages with clarity and power via beautifully sculpted dynamics… revealing orchestral character not seen or heard before” (Arts Knoxville) Lawrence Loh enjoys a dynamic career as a conductor of orchestras all over the world.
After an extensive two ...
Described as bringing an “artisan storyteller’s sensitivity… shaping passages with clarity and power via beautifully sculpted dynamics… revealing orchestral character not seen or heard before” (Arts Knoxville) Lawrence Loh enjoys a dynamic career as a conductor of orchestras all over the world.
After an extensive two year search, Lawrence Loh was recently named Music Director of the Waco Symphony Orchestra beginning in the Spring of 2024. Since 2015, he has served as Music Director of The Syracuse Orchestra (formerly called Symphoria), the successor to the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. “The connection between the organization and its audience is one of the qualities that’s come to define Syracuse’s symphony as it wraps up its 10th season, a milestone that might have seemed impossible at the beginning,” (Syracuse.com) The Syracuse Orchestra and Lawrence Loh show that it is possible to create a “new, more sustainable artistic institution from the ground up.”
Appointed Assistant Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2005, Mr Loh was quickly promoted to Associate and Resident Conductor within the first three years of working with the PSO. Always a favorite among Pittsburgh audiences, Loh returns frequently to his adopted city to conduct the PSO in a variety of concerts. Mr. Loh previously served as Music Director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Syracuse Opera, Music Director of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Denver Young Artists Orchestra.
Mr. Loh’s recent guest conducting engagements include the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Florida Orchestra, Pensacola Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Symphony (D.C.), Utah Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Symphony and the Cathedral Choral Society at the Washington National Cathedral. His summer appearances include the festivals of Grant Park, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Tanglewood with the Boston Pops, Chautauqua, Sun Valley, Shippensburg, Bravo Vail Valley, the Kinhaven Music School and the Performing Arts Institute (PA).
As a self-described “Star Wars geek” and film music enthusiast, Loh has conducted numerous sold-out John Williams and film music tribute concerts. Part of his appeal is his ability to serve as both host and conductor. “It is his enthusiasm for Williams’ music and the films for which it was written that is Loh’s great strength in this program. A fan’s enthusiasm drives his performances in broad strokes and details and fills his speaking to the audience with irresistible appeal. He used no cue cards. One felt he could speak at filibuster length on Williams’ music.” (Pittsburgh Tribune)
Mr Loh has assisted John Williams on multiple occasions and has worked with a wide range of pops artists from Chris Botti and Ann Hampton Callaway to Jason Alexander and Idina Menzel. As one of the most requested conductors for conducting Films in Concert, Loh has led Black Panther, Star Wars (Episodes 4-6), Jaws, Nightmare Before Christmas, Jurassic Park, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain, among other film productions.
Lawrence Loh received his Artist Diploma in Orchestral Conducting from Yale, his Masters in Choral Conducting from Indiana University and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Rochester. Lawrence Loh was born in southern California of Korean parentage and raised in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennifer have a son, Charlie, and a daughter, Hilary. Follow him on instagram @conductorlarryloh or Facebook at @lawrencelohconductor or visit his website, www.lawrenceloh.com