Program

Saturday, November 2, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts, Hope College

Johannes Müller Stosch, Music Director and Conductor
Andrew Le, Piano

Angels of Fire and Ice 
Ana Lara (b. 1959)

Angel of Darkness
Angel of the Dawn
Angel of Light
Angel of the Sunset

Piano Concerto in G Major
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Allegretto
Andante con moto: Commencer très calmament
Rondeau a La Française: Presto giocoso

Restless Oceans
Anna Clyne (b. 1980)

La Mer (The Sea)
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

From Dawn to Noon on the Sea: très lent – animez peu à peu
Play of the Waves: Allegro (dans un rythme très souple) – animé
Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea: Animé et tumultueux – cédez très légèrement

The concert on Saturday, November 2, 2024, 7:30 p.m. at the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts, Hope College will feature the return to Holland of one of our favorite artists, Andrew Le, pianist.  He will perform Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Johannes Müller Stosch, Music Director and Conductor, conducting. The concert will open with Ana Lara's striking Fire and Ice.  Anne Clyne's Restless Oceans will lead the way to Claude Debussy's epic masterpiece, La Mer.

Tickets are $29 for adults and $10 for students through college.

Learn more about the music…

We will be hosting not only the Classical Chat series at Freedom Village, but also Pre-Concert Talks!  Details below:

Classical Chats at Freedom Village:  These informative and fun talks are led by Johannes Müller-Stosch and take place at 3:00pm on the Thursday before each Classics concert.  (Freedom Village, 6th Floor Auditorium, 145 Columbia Ave.)

Pre-Concert Talks:  These talks, led by Johannes Müller-Stosch and Amanda Dykhouse, are online under the "Pre-Concert Talk" Tab.  

New to the Symphony?  Check out the Frequently Asked Question page…

Parking Map at the Miller Center

Holland Symphony Orchestra will reserve and monitor Lot 40 for handicapped parking.  The faculty parking lots are available for parking after 5pm

Angels of Fire and Ice (Ángeles del llama y hielo)
Ana Lara

Born: November 30, 1959
Written: 1994
Premiered: September 2, 1994, Mexico City, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México
Approximate Duration: 20 minutes
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, alto flute, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam-tam, thunder sheet, tom-toms, triangle, tubular bells, vibraphone, wind machine), 2 harps, celeste, and strings

Ana Lara is one of the most respected composers in Mexico today.  She studied piano and composition in Mexico City, Warsaw, and Baltimore.  She has been composer in residence with the Mexico National Symphony Orchestra.  She composes in a variety of genres, ranging from chamber music to musical theater to choreographed dance works.  Lara says that the composers who influenced her most are Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki.  She likes to explore the use of continuous sound in her work, as well as exploring microtonality and heterophony.  Lara describes her music as “international and abstract, but deeply Mexican in its soul.” 

Lara composed Angels of Fire and Ice in 1994.  It is a spiritual reflection on time, with four angels representing stages in human life: darkness, dawn, light, and sunset.  She uses huge sounds to represent the inexorable, ongoing cycle of life, and she uses quiet sounds to evoke awe, elemental powers, and deep silence.  The piece starts with very quiet low notes, describing a quiet beginning.  Energy begins to gather with swooping string gestures, bird-like woodwinds, booming percussion, and interjections from the brass instruments.  This finally subsides back into silence. She based the piece on poetry by Mexican poet Francisco Serrano.  Lara said, “Francisco Serrano’s poems speak of four angels, four cardinal points, four states of being, four moments of the day, and this gave me the idea to approach the orchestra in four different forms. It was never my intention to compose songs from the poems, but to take from them the basis for an orchestral work in four parts that alludes to the spirit of each poem and, in a way, to the structure of the poems: sonnet form. I tried to stay very true to the texts during the composition process and I had many conversations with the poet in which we discussed our respective interpretations. This work emerged, whose parts have a very close relationship between the literary origins and my musical version.”

Angels of Fire and Ice was premiered on September 2, 1994 by the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico in Mexico City.  Lara dedicated it to their music director, Arturo Diemecke, who later became the Music Director of Long Beach Symphony in California from 2001-2014.  The two orchestras jointly commissioned another piece by Lara in 2004.  

To listen to a recording of Angels of Fire and Ice, click here.

Angels of Flame and Ice 
Francisco Serrano

To Ana Lara 

Angel of Darkness 

Imperious, glacial, like a bare blade of cold steel 
He suddenly appears, dark in the place of shadows, 
On the edge of silence, unrelenting, unvanquished, 
Terrible messenger of an existence that has not been reached. 

He is a wind born of the void to gnaw at the body 
(Body itself) to leave it in an instant, intact. 
Prisoner perhaps of an excessive bliss,
There is no passion in the angel: He is the stranger. 

An acrid air precedes him, a limitless fog, 
A being without limits, coalesced shadow, breath of the breath.    
Being of silence, angel so sad, do you grieve for us? 

Do you take for yourself what you need, or get back what is yours? 
Will this flesh be of use when death  
Finally breathes under your incomprehensible light? 

Angel of Dawn 

Is there no place for the angels to spread their wings? 
In the loose breeze of the first light 
He sparkles, indelible, a face  
Kneaded from water and fire and air and salt.   

He hovers over time, like a flowing sky, 
Wing and skin undulating at the edge of bright water. 
With very gentle hands, a sketch of gold in each finger, 
He reaches towards light that fulfills its promise. 

Angel, sacred vessel of being, incandescent condensation of the cosmos, 
Prescient space, in your grace everything is about to be born.  
Would you accept a prayer addressed to you? 

The world is like rain that does not sustain you.  
The angel has no roots: he moves among us 
Detached from the earthly heart, like a hostage. 

Angel of Light 

Angels, birds of the abyss, are they so different from us? 
A breath of crystals coming from afar, 
A superior command, shining and hidden, 
Pure love unlimited within the boundaries of the spirit? 

Maybe your diaphanous nature is not inaccessible to us. 
In the exact center of the heart, 
Beyond pleasure and grief, 
You exist alongside of anguish, like an act of love.  

And if we shouted, would you hear us? 
If you descended upon us, could we keep silent? 
We can only guess at your strength, at your pitiless mediation. 

The song of the earth is the trace of his passing; 
The white light of noon, his shadow. 
He is stillness. 
He does not last. 

Angel of Dusk 

Like a window opened on an untended garden,  
Like a wasteland beneath the open sky,     
They are beings that see with their eyes closed,  
Shadows of a body in search of its form. 

They wander among us, sleepwalkers, 
Extravagant, like the blind without a face,    
Fire greedy for light, impenetrable fire surrounded by water. 
Where they alight, dancing ceases. 

Angels of dusk, messengers 
Of who knows what vacant and higher kingdom, 
They turn into night with each one of us. 

In the boundaries of time, in the crack between life and death, 
They stalk in the crevices of consciousness, formless, 
While a dove flutters in a frightfully severed sky…

Piano Concerto in G
Maurice Ravel

Born: March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France
Died: December 28, 1937, Paris, France
Written: 1931

Premiered: January 14, 1932, Paris, Lamoureux Orchestra, Ravel conducting, soloist Marguerite Long 
Approximate Duration: 23 minutes
Instrumentation: solo piano, piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion (bass drum, snare drum, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, triangle, whip, woodblock), harp, strings

Maurice Ravel was born on the French side of the border with Spain when his father, an engineer and inventor, was working on railroad construction projects.  Shortly thereafter, his family returned to Paris, but Ravel always felt strongly connected to the Basque area on the Spanish border.  He began his musical studies at age seven and started composing when he was eighteen, publishing his first works at age twenty.

Ravel thought about writing a piano concerto for a long time, but didn’t start until he was in his fifties.  He toured the United States in 1928, receiving a lot of acclaim for Boléro.  When he got home he started writing his concerto and planned on performing it on a grand tour that would include not only the United States but also South America, East Asia, and Europe.  Right after he started this piece he received a commission from Paul Wittgenstein, an Austrian pianist who had lost his right arm in World War I, asking Ravel to compose a concerto for the left hand.  After he completed his commission Ravel returned to his G Major concerto.  He shut himself off from the rest of the world, working long hours each day to finish it.  It ended up being his last orchestral composition.  Later in 1932 he developed a neurological disease that no longer allowed him to play piano, speak, compose, or conduct.

Ravel had strong feelings about concertos.  He wrote in the summer of 1931, as he was finishing this concerto, that his piece was a “concerto in the strict sense, written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns,” and that “the music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not ‘for’ but ‘against’ the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto ‘Divertissement.’ Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title ‘Concerto’ should be sufficiently clear.”  With this statement he was criticizing weighty pieces like Brahms’ second concerto.  He was much more in favor of writing in the style of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, who wrote to showcase the virtuosity of the soloist.  Ravel definitely wrote a piece that embraces flash and spectacle, and was in fact so difficult that he did not feel he would do it justice as its soloist.  Marguerite Long premiered the piece on January 14, 1932, and Ravel conducted.  

The concerto opens with the crack of a whip followed by the opening theme in the piccolo and trumpet.  Soon the English horn changes the mood to a slower, Spanish-sounding theme, accompanied by a strumming piano figure that imitates Spanish guitars.  Then the clarinet introduces a jazz and blues melody, inspired by American jazz as reflected by George Gershwin.  Ravel and Gershwin greatly admired each other.  This concerto by Ravel borrows so much from Gershwin that some have called it the sequel to Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and Gershwin’s Concerto in F (1925).  

Ravel claimed that the slow movement of this concerto was one of the most difficult things he ever wrote, and he was only able to compose one or two measures at a time.  He lamented, “that flowing phrase! How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!”  The result was one of his most expressive and beautifully crafted melodies, inspired by Mozart’s clarinet quintet.  The piano begins alone, playing a stately sarabande in the right hand and a leisurely waltz in the left hand.  The orchestra enters in a mournful dialogue with the piano.  

The final movement is a short whirlwind.  It begins with a drum roll and a fanfare, and then proceeds like a circus race, lasting only about four minutes.  Like the first movement, it has many elements of jazz, including clarinet riffs, trombone slides, and brass fanfares.  A sharp percussion crack recalls the opening, leading the music to an exciting and abrupt end.  

To watch a video of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, click here.

Restless Oceans
Anna Clyne

Born: March 9, 1980, London
Written: 2018
Premiered: January 22, 2019, World Economic Forum, Davos Switzerland
Approximate Duration: 4 minutes
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion (bass drum and snare drum), strings

British composer Anna Clyne is one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers today.  She is known for collaborating with artists from a variety of disciplines–visual art, dance, film, and poetry–to compose a variety of creative musical works.  She studied at University of Edinburgh and Manhattan School of Music.  She was nominated for a GRAMMY award in 2015.  She has been a composer-in-residence for the Chicago, Baltimore, Berkeley, BBC, and Helsinki symphonies.  For a long time she has been interested in using symphony instruments to portray sounds from nature.  She even recorded a piece written for cellist Yo-Yo Ma in a forest.  She noted in a 2021 interview, “I think orchestration is like painting—you combine different instruments to create your own orchestral colours.”

She composed Restless Oceans In 2018, drawing on a variety of traditions of “pastoral” music.  The piece includes a gentle flute melody over bubbling woodwing parts.  Borrowing from a very different tradition of nature-inspired music, exemplified in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, she also includes heavily accented notes and unpredictable rhythms.  She asks performers to sing as well as play their instruments, adding stomps and sharper syllables for punctuation of dramatic moments.  

She writes about the piece: “I composed Restless Oceans for Marin Alsop and the Taki Concordia Orchestra for performance at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. The piece received its world premiere at the opening ceremony in 2019 where Marin Alsop was presented with the Forum’s prestigious Crystal Award in recognition of her championship of diversity in music. This work draws inspiration and its title from A Woman Speaks - a poem by Audre Lorde and was composed with this particular all-women orchestra in mind. In addition to playing their instruments, the musicians are also called to use their voices in song and strong vocalizations, and their feet to stomp and to bring them to stand united at the end. My intention was to write a defiant piece that embraces the power of women. Restless Oceans is dedicated with thanks to Marin Alsop.”

Clyne takes her title for this piece from a line in the poem and includes the full poem in the printed conductor’s score for this piece.  She doesn’t intend for her piece to portray the poem in any precise way, but hopes her audiences will read the poem to give hearers another way to connect to the auditory experience of the piece.  

To watch a performance  of Restless Oceans by Johannes’s university orchestra, click here.

A Woman Speaks
Audre Lorde

Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.

La Mer (The Sea)
Claude Debussy

Born: August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye, Départment of Seine-et-Oise, France
Died: March 25, 1918, Paris
Written: 1903-05
Premiered: October 15, 1905, Paris, Lamoureux Orchestra, conductor Camille Chevillard
Approximate Duration: 24 minutes
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam-tam, and triangle), 2 harps, and strings

Claude Debussy loved the sea.  He grew up listening to his father, a sailor, tell dramatic stories of his life on the water.  He spent some of his holidays at the seaside, in Cannes and Arcachon and at the Villa Medici near Rome.  He had one frightening voyage in a small boat near Brittany.  He visited London a few times, crossing via the English Channel.  On these trips he spent a lot of time with paintings by J. M. W. Turner, whose work he admired and studied.  These and other paintings, especially by French Impressionist artists, added to his romantic fascination with the sea.  Debussy wrote to his publisher, “I have loved the ocean and listened to it passionately….  The sea is always endless and beautiful. It is really the thing in nature which best puts you in your place….  The sea has been very good to me.  She has shown me all her moods.  You do not know perhaps that I was intended for the fine career of a sailor and only the chances of life led me away from it.…  I have an endless store of memories….  Music is a free art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, and the sea.”

Debussy began working on La Mer in 1903.  He subtitled it, “Symphonic Sketches.”  This musical triptych gives listeners three “portraits” of the sea.  His first movement, “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” depicts the movement of the sun from below the horizon to directly overhead the listeners.  The cellos usher in the dawn with a quiet, rising two note motive.  Muted brass instruments add a small theme that also appears in the last movement.  The ocean is quiet in this movement, but the power is present beneath the calm surface, as motion emerges as dawn emerges.  Eventually flutes and clarinets suggest splashing waves, momentum builds, and then cellos sing a lyrical tune that rises and falls with the waves.  As the morning progresses the water becomes livelier, with quickly appearing melodic phrases.  A brass chorale ushers in the bright light of noon.  

The second movement, “The Play of the Waves,” also begins quietly, but soon this music gets faster and more energetic.  This music functions as a scherzo or intermezzo, with lighter textures than the weight and density found in the outer movements.  The waves and the rhythms are irregular and full of quick melodies.  Woodwinds are featured.  The sea’s force is tangible under light woodwind textures.  The sea becomes silent at the end.  

In the third section, “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” the low strings open with an ominous and foreboding mood, as if promising that a storm will appear soon.  An exquisite melody arises out of the musical forces, possibly suggesting a mermaid’s song.  Various woodwind instruments continue the dialogue until the horns usher in a climax of surging water and waves, recalling the first movement in the form of a stormy dialogue.  

To watch a video of La Mer, click here.

To watch the pre-concert video, click here.