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Robert Moody, conductorStorm Large, sopranoHudson Shad, vocal quartet

KURT WEiLL Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins)(1900 - 1950) Prologue No.1, Faulheit (Sloth) No.2 Stotz (Pride) No.3 Zorn (Anger) No.4 Völlerei (Gluttony) No.5 Unzucht (Lust) No.6 Habsucht (Covetousness) No.7 Neid (Envy) Epilogue MS. LARGE HUDSON SHAD

intermissionLUDWiG VAN Symphony No.7 in A Major, Op. 92BEETHOVEN I. Poco sostenuto - Vivace(1770 - 1827) II. Allegretto III. Presto IV. Allegro con brio

As a courtesy to the musicians and other audience members, please remember to turn off all pagers, cellular phones, watch signals, and other electronic devices. The use of photographic and recording equipment during the performance is strictly prohibited. This concert will last approximately one hour and forty-five minutes, including intermission.

This program is made possible with generous underwriting support from Sam and Judy Parkhill and corporate support from RBC Wealth Management, as well as individual donors to the Annual Fund. It is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works.

Please join Maestro Moody for our PostConcert Q&A in Merrill Auditorium immediately following tonight’s performance.

This concert can be heard on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network over the radio on Wednesday, May 6, 2015.

Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 2:30 PM Concert Conversation at 1:15 PM

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at 7:30 PM Concert Conversation at 6:15 PM

Merrill Auditorium

90th Season, 2014-15 • www.PortlandSymphony.org

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KURT WEiLLDie sieben Todsünden(The Seven Deadly Sins)

Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany in 1900 and died in New York City in 1950. He composed his ballet Die sieben Todsünden, based on a libretto by Bertolt Brecht, in 1933 on a commission from Boris Kochno and Edward James. It was first staged in Paris in 1933 at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées with choreography by George Ballanchine, under the direction of Maurice Abravanel. The work is scored for solo soprano, 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion, guitar, banjo, harp, piano and strings.

kurt Weill, the son of a Cantor, grew up just down the street from the Herzogliches Hoftheater, one of the most important musical theaters in Germany. It became his haunt: Weill took composition lessons with the the-ater’s conductor, and while still a teen-ager worked there as a rehearsal pia-nist and coach. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Weill would spend most of his career and have his greatest suc-cesses writing music for the theater. His education was a minor detour. At the Berlin Hochschule für Musik he felt stifled by his composition teacher, Engelbert Humperdinck, and it was not until he studied with Ferrucio Busoni that he developed his gifts in

earnest. After composing a number of small-scale works, Weill achieved a huge success with his opera Der Pro-tagonist. Weill followed it with several more, including Mahogonny and The Threepenny Opera. He had found his home in the musical theater. It was the only real home he would have: the rise of National Socialism and Hitler made him flee his coun-try in 1933. He first went to Paris, but found the audiences unreceptive to his music. Eventually he moved to Ameri-ca, became a citizen, and had a string of Broadway hits. The Seven Deadly Sins is a ballet chanté, or a ballet with song. It revolves around Anna I (a singer) and Anna II (a dancer) who are two facets of one personality. Anna is sent by her fam-ily on a journey to work as a cabaret dancer, sending them the money she earns so they can build a little house on the river. The ballet contains a pro-logue and an epilogue which frame the seven sins of Anna’s journey. In the Prologue, Anna explains her split personality and the goal of her travels. In Sloth, Anna I has to rouse the weary Anna II and urge her to return to the blackmail that has provided her earnings. In Pride, Anna has landed a job as a stripper in a grubby little dive. Anna II wants her dancing to be an art, but Anna I will have none of it. When Anna II witnesses animal cruelty and responds with Anger, she is fired from her job. Anna I forces her

About the Music April 19 & 21, 2015

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to apologize and return to work. By now Anna is a star, and has signed a contract forbidding her to gain weight. Anna I and the family remind her that Gluttony will cost her and her family their income. In Lust, Anna II finds a wealthy boyfriend who showers her with gifts, but she prefers a poor man; Anna I makes her abandon the poor man for the rich one. In Covetousness, the family learns that men are committing suicide over Anna; though this increases her earn-ings, but they fear it will make her too unpopular to make money. In Envy Anna is exhausted from overwork, and she envies other women who enjoy life by partaking in the sins she must avoid. But the other women fade away while she becomes a trium-phant heroine. The Epilogue brings the two Annas home to the family and their newly-built house on the river. There are abundant ironies here. Each of the seven deadly sins merely prevents the accumulation of wealth, for one. And in each case Anna can do wrong—in the eyes of her family, at least—only by not committing the sin in question. Finally, even though Anna II is the only character with good im-pulses and a good heart, she is the one who is ultimately degraded. It’s a bitter story, and it might have called for bitter music. But Weill’s pen-chant for popular forms and conven-tions keeps the paradoxes alive. He sets the vocal music of Sloth over an orchestral tarantella, and though the music of Pride is a waltz, its location in a cabaret is never in doubt. Anger is a foxtrot, and in Gluttony Weill de-constructs a barbershop quartet. When

Anna is transformed into a heroine in Envy the music transforms itself into a popular march. You could say that on its surface, the music of The Seven Deadly Sins is a stand-in for conven-tional morality; Weill’s genius was to undermine that surface with an un-dercurrent that makes both his and Brecht’s real message unmistakable.

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LUDWiG VAN BEETHOVENSymphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and died in Vienna in 1827. He composed his Seventh Sym-phony in 1811-1812 and led the first performance in Vienna in 1813. The symphony calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.

Stravinsky got himself into a bit of hot water when he said, “In general, I consider that music is only able to solve musical problems and nothing else; neither the literary nor pictur-esque can be in music of any real inter-est. The play of the musical elements is the thing.” He didn’t mean that mu-sic was incapable of expression, but he was complaining that many listeners find things in music that aren’t really there. To Stravinsky music had its own inner life, its own “entity” that existed in spite of any narrative attached to it or the emotions felt by its listeners. He later attempted to clarify what he was saying: “Today, I would put it the other way ’round: music expresses itself.” Nonetheless, listeners often hear

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things in the music that the composer never imagined, for good music evokes and provokes. Though it seems un-likely, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony has inspired an enormous—and some-times preposterous—range of “mean-ings” heard by its listeners, and pretty sophisticated listeners at that. Wagner called it “the apotheosis of the dance.” Vincent D’Indy disagreed, saying, “The rhythm of the piece has truly nothing of the dance about it. It is nothing oth-er than a pastoral symphony.” Mean-while, various commentators over the years have heard in it a political revolu-tion, a bacchic orgy, a rustic wedding, even a story of Moorish knights! They can’t all be true, but all are correct as far as those listeners are concerned; in the end it is the indi-vidual who gets to decide. But in the Seventh Symphony, as much as in any of Beethoven’s works, “the play of the musical elements is the thing.” And the element at play here is the drive, dynamism and drama of rhythm. The long, slow introduction to the first movement’s sonata is a throwback for Beethoven; after all, he himself had reduced this traditional section to two jolting chords in his Third Sym-phony and eliminated it altogether in the Fifth. Here it is nearly a movement unto itself. It has two themes, its own development, and a heavy air of antici-pation. All this winds down to an in-nocent dotted-rhythm figure that slips almost casually into the sonata proper. As we listen we find this rhythm to be the fundamental building-block of the entire movement—so much so that when Beethoven slyly inserts a silence at the end of the exposition, we tend to “hear” this pervasive rhythm filling the gap.

The Allegretto also has a pervasive rhythm, beginning after the opening chord. While the melody stays within a very narrow range, this rhythm can be heard constantly; it even shows up during the contrasting lyrical sec-tions. Beethoven controls the form of the movement—its rhythm on a large scale—in an unusual way. The music builds to the big central fugue, then recedes in reverse order, like a mirror-image of itself. After the somber second move-ment, the Scherzo is a headlong rush of trilling, whirling figures, all rhyth-mically alive. Listen for the single, sus-tained note that seems to hover over the Trio: what’s that doing there? Enjoy also how the Trio winds down to a few long, slow chords. It’s all a setup: we know the scherzo will come exploding back, but it still comes as a surprise. Now, classical music is deadly serious stuff, of course, but Beethoven de-cides that this would be a good place for a joke: as the movement heads to its close, the Trio—having made its customary two appearances—tries to sneak back in for a third. Beethoven dismisses it with five sharp chords. The Finale is a tornado of rhythm, wheeling from one climax to the next. Even its abrupt pauses seem to imply motion rather than repose. By the end of the electrifying coda the symphony’s anticipations and tensions are settled, all the way back to the first movement’s long introduction. Throughout the Seventh Sympho-ny Beethoven deliberately subjugates the role of melody. While there are a few moments that one could call lyri-cal, there aren’t really any “big tunes.” For the most part the melodies of the symphony are confined to a narrow

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range and sometimes they get stuck on a single note for what seems like forever. As listeners we rarely focus on rhythm exclusively. But by narrow-ing the scope of the melodic interest Beethoven is saying: Music takes place in the temporal realm as well as the melodic and harmonic, and I’d like to have some fun with that. When he does he unleashes all the energy, power and propulsion that rhythm can bring. Is that why the Seventh is so evocative? Perhaps. Listeners will

hear in the music what they will, be it a peasant dance or a horde of Moorish knights. Still others will simply have a toe-tapping good time. In any event, “the play of the musi-cal elements is the thing,” and never has it come so close to perfection.

– Mark Rohr is the bass trombonist for the PSO.Questions or comments?

markrohrprogramnotes@gmail.com

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about the ArtistsSTORM LARGE: musician, actor, play-wright, author, awesome. She shot to na-tional prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminated in the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day. Storm spent the 90s singing in clubs throughout San Francisco. Tired of the club scene, she moved to Portland, Or-egon to pursue a new career as a chef, but a last minute cancellation in 2002 at the Portland club “Dante’s” turned into a standing Wednesday night engage-ment for Storm and her new band, The Balls. It wasn’t long before Storm had a cult-like following in Portland, and a re-newed singing career that was about to be launched onto the international stage. Storm made her debut as guest vo-calist with the band Pink Martini in April 2011, singing four sold-out concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She continues to perform with the band, tour-ing nationally and internationally, and she was featured on their CD, Get Happy. Storm has also sung with Grammy win-ner k.d. lang, pianist kirill Gerstein, punk rocker John Doe, singer/songwriter Ru-fus Wainwright, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer George Clinton. She debuted with the Oregon Symphony in 2010, and has returned for sold out performances each year thereafter. Storm made her Carne-gie Hall debut in May 2013, singing Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with the Detroit Symphony as part of the Spring for Music festival. The New York Times called her “sensational,” and the classical music world instantly had a new star. In 2007, she took a career departure and starred in Portland Center Stage’s

production of Cabaret with Wade McCol-lum. The show was a smash hit, earning Large glowing reviews. Her next endeav-or, the autobiographical musical memoir, Crazy Enough, played to packed houses in 2009 during its unprecedented 21-week sold out run in Portland. Storm went on to perform a cabaret version of the show to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Adelaide Festival in Australia, and Joe’s Pub in New York. Her memoir, Crazy Enough, was released by Simon and Schuster in 2012, named Oprah’s Book of the Week, and awarded the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. In the 2013/14 season Storm and her band, Le Bonheur, performed in many cities around the country, including Las Vegas, Boston, Minneapolis in an evening called “Taken By Storm.” In June 2014, she appeared at the Ojai Festival with the exciting new orchestra, The knights, and the vocal ensemble Hudson Shad. In the Fall of 2014, Storm & Le Bonheur released a record designed to capture their sublime and subversive in-terpretations of the American Songbook. Entitled simply, “Le Bonheur” and re-leased on Pink Martini’s Heinz Records, the recording is a collection of tortured and titillating love songs; beautiful, famil-iar, yet twisted…much like the lady her-

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self. Storm and her band will hit the road in support of this new release. Storm also makes her debut with The New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, The Cincin-nati Symphony, The Houston Symphony and The RTE Concert Orchestra in Dub-lin amongst others. Storm is also busy creating a new musical with The Public Theater in New York City.

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Though the six-man ensemble HUDSON SHAD (five singers and a pianist) debuted officially in 1992, their nucleus formed in 1977 when three of them made their Carnegie Hall debuts as soloists in Pen-derecki’s Magnificat. In 1989, the Arts at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn asked bass Wilbur Pauley to contract a quartet to perform as The Family in kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with Marianne Faithfull. The response was favorable. Over the last quarter century, Hud-son Shad has most likely racked up more performances as The Family in The Seven Deadly Sins than any other group in his-tory. They have performed in almost 40 different locations, from Arezzo to Za-greb, numbering over 100 performances worldwide. They participated in a staging of the work, in a double bill with Weill’s Der Lindbergflug, at the Macerata Festival. They have twice recorded the work, once with kurt Masur and the NY Philhar-monic and once with Ms. Faithfull, Den-nis Russell Davies and the RSO-Wien. In 2008, Hudson Shad was honored to participate in the Carnegie Hall premiere of the work, with Ute Lemper and the To-ronto Symphony. Other orchestra appearances by Hudson Shad have featured more Weill: Der kleine Mahagonny with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at the Salz-burg Festival. The Schubert bicenten-nial found Hudson Shad returning to the

NY Philharmonic for orchestral works with men’s voices, and they performed Schubert songs using the Reger orches-trations with the Bruckner Orchester in Linz. Hudson Shad debuted with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as “Wild Things” in Oliver knussen’s Where the Wild Things Are, conducted by the com-poser. They have developed their own English translation of Stravinsky’s Re-nard and have performed it with Charles Dutoit at the Miyazaki Festival and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In 1999 Hudson Shad was featured on Broadway in a musical tribute to the legendary German singing group The Comedian Harmonists, called Band in Berlin. These performances in Portland mark Hudson Shad’s official debut in the Pine Tree State, and Portland is the fifth location for the Shad family unit with Storm Large since their initial encounter at the Ojai Festival last June. Upcoming performances include more Sins with Ms. Large at the Oregon Bach Festival and the National Symphony Orchestra. In October, Hudson Shad will join the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in the Philip Glass opera, The Fall of the House of Usher. The members of Hudson Shad ap-pearing in Portland are: Mark Bleeke, ten-or; Eric Edlund, baritone; Peter Becker, bass/baritone; and Wilbur Pauley, bass.