Rachmaninoff, Berlioz & Alexei Volodin

Daniel Raiskin, conductor
Alexei Volodin, piano

Larysa Kuzmenko (b. 1956): Fantasy on a Theme by Beethoven

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
Alexei Volodin, piano

Moderato
Adagio sostenuto
Allegro scherzando

– Intermission –

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Symphonie fantastique

Reveries and Passions: Largo – Allegro agitato e appassionato assai
A Ball (Valse): Allegro non troppo
Scene in the Country: Adagio
March to the Scaffold: Allegretto non troppo
Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto – Allegro

Presenting Patrons: Daniel Friedman & Rob Dalgliesh

Media Partner:

Daniel Raiskin, conductor

Known for cultivating a broad repertoire and looking beyond the mainstream for his strikingly conceived programmes, Daniel Raiskin has been the music director for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra since the 2018/19 season.

Daniel grew up in St. Petersburg, the son of a prominent musicologist, where he attended the celebrated conservatory in his native city. He continued his studies in Amsterdam and Freiburg, first focusing on the viola but was later inspired to take up the conductor’s baton.  He studied with maestri such as Mariss Jansons, Neeme Järvi, Milan Horvat, Woldemar Nelson and Jorma Panula.

Along with the WSO, Daniel was appointed Chief Conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra in 2020/21, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016/17.

Some recent and upcoming guest engagements include the Warsaw and Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestras, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, Russian National Orchestra, Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, Residentie Orchestra (Hague Philharmonic, NL), Naples Philharmonic Orchestra, Munich Symphony Orchestra and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.

During the 2021/22 season, Daniel took the Slovak Philharmonic and participated in a successful residency at the InClassica Festival in Dubai, where they shared the stage with Rudolf Buchbinder, Gil Shaham, Daniel Hope and Andreas Ottensamer. The Philharmonic also toured Germany and Austria this past spring (2022) under Daniel’s leadership.

Alexei Volodin, piano

Acclaimed for his highly sensitive touch and technical brilliance, Alexei Volodin possesses an extraordinarily diverse repertoire from Beethoven and Brahms through Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev to Scriabin, Shchedrin and Medtner.

Previous seasons have included performances with Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, The Mariinsky Orchestra, Antwerp, BBC and NHK symphony orchestras and NCPA Orchestra China, as well as tours with SWR Symphonieorchester, Russian National Orchestra and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Volodin regularly appears in recitals and has performed in venues including Wiener Konzerthaus, Barcelona’s Palau de la Música, Mariinsky Theatre, Paris’ Philharmonie, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Tonhalle Zürich and Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música. This season he appears in the International Piano Series at the Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall and the Meesterpianisten Series at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, as well as recitals in Bratislava, Ostrava, Den Haag, Oxford and Winnipeg.

An active chamber musician, he has a long-standing collaboration with the Borodin Quartet. In 19/20, they joined trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov for performances at the Southbank Centre and Istanbul Music Festival. Previous chamber partners include Janine Jansen, Julian Rachlin, Mischa Maisky and Sol Gabetta, as well as the Modigliani Quartet, Cuarteto Casals and Cremona Quartet.

A regular artist at festivals, Volodin has performed at Kaposvár International Chamber Music Festival, Festival Les nuits du Château de la Moutte, Variations Musicales de Tannay, Bad Kissingen Sommer Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, Les Rencontres Musicales d’Évian, Festival La Folle Journée, The White Nights Festival in St Petersburg, St. Magnus International Festival and the Moscow Easter Festival.

Volodin’s latest album with the Mariinsky label was Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 4, conducted by Gergiev. Recording for Challenge Classics, Volodin’s disc of solo Rachmaninoff works was released in 2013. He also recorded a solo album of Schumann, Ravel and Scriabin, and his earlier Chopin disc won a Choc de Classica and was awarded five stars by Diapason.

Born in 1977 in Leningrad, Alexei Volodin studied at Moscow’s Gnessin Academy and later with Eliso Virsaladze at the Moscow Conservatoire. In 2001, he continued his studies at the International Piano Academy Lake Como and gained international recognition following his victory at the International Géza Anda Competition in Zürich in 2003.

Alexei Volodin is an exclusive Steinway artist.

Fantasy on a Theme by Beethoven

Larysa Kuzmenko
b. Toronto / January 23, 1956
Composed: 2019
First performance: February 14, 2020 (Calgary)
First WSO performance

The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned me to write an eight-minute work featuring the oboe, inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. I chose to write a theme and variations loosely based on the main theme of the first movement. (Beethoven’s original theme is C G B C C, while my version is D Ab C D D).

The theme goes through different permutations but remains recognizable, largely because of its shape and rhythm. The work opens with the theme being presented in a fugal texture by the strings alone. There are variations that feature the solo oboe, and others that feature horns, trumpets, and even timpani, which, appropriately, was the first featured as a solo orchestral instrument by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony.

The biggest challenge when writing this piece was being restricted to Beethoven’s instrumentation – the orchestra in the classical era was much smaller than the contemporary orchestra. My other orchestral scores generally include trombones, bass clarinet, tuba and a variety of percussion instruments.

– Larysa Kuzmenko

Piano Concerto No. 2

Sergei Rachmaninoff
b. Oneg, Russia / April 1, 1873
d. Los Angeles, CA USA / March 28, 1943
Composed: 1900-1901
First performance: October 14, 1901 (Moscow) conducted by Alexander Siloti with the composer as soloist.
Last WSO performance: 2011, Horacio Gutierrez, piano; Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor

Perhaps Rachmaninoff needed the total failure of his Symphony No. 1 at its premiere in 1897 to validate the total success of his Piano Concerto No. 2 not long after. The 24-year-old composer loathed his first symphonic effort, forbidding any further performances of it during his lifetime. The performance was a disaster, conducted by a reportedly drunk Alexander Glazunov and a badly under-rehearsed orchestra. Rachmaninoff was thrown into such a fit of depression he suffered a nervous breakdown. For more than a year, he lived with “paralyzing apathy,” as he wrote in his memoirs. “All my self-confidence broke down. Half my days were spent on a couch sighing over my ruined life.”

Fortunately, Rachmaninoff had a concerned family and a formerly high-strung aunt that had been successfully treated by a certain Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a local physician who had studied hypnotherapy in Vienna and France. A meeting was arranged, and in January 1900, the composer found himself making daily visits to Dr. Dahl, hearing over and over the words, “you will compose a piano concerto…with the greatest of ease…of excellent quality!”

Rachmaninoff was surprised at how the treatments helped him, and by the summer, he was relaxed and at work on the second and third movements of the Piano Concerto No. 2, the work that would propel him into the world’s concert halls. The first movement was completed the following spring. The premiere of the finished work took place in Moscow. He dedicated it to Dr. Dahl.

Eight chords begin the C minor Concerto, followed by the surging main theme, which occupies much of the development section. The Adagio is strikingly beautiful, with much variety and pianistic resource. The Finale is a perfectly gauged match of martial energy and sweeping Romantic fervour, its main theme one of Rachmaninov’s best-loved melodies that became the popular hit song Full Moon and Empty Arms. Rachmaninov’s career never looked back.

Symphonie fantastique

Hector Berlioz
b. La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France / December 11, 1803
d. Paris / March 8, 1869
Composed: 1830
First performance: December 5, 1830 (Paris), conducted by François Habeneck
Last WSO performance: 2016; Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor

Arch Romantic that he was, Berlioz was so taken with English actress Harriet Smithson when he saw her as Juliet and Ophelia in 1827 he wrote her frantic letters of love over the next three years despite never meeting her. The romance was entirely one-sided – she, fearing a potential ‘stalker’ in Berlioz, and he, wandering the countryside in despair of such unrequited love.

With Romantic nerve endings on fire, in 1830, Berlioz planned a new symphony with the subtitle “Episode from the Life of an Artist.” In it, the artist views his love through an opium-enhanced state, first in his dreams, then at a ball, in the countryside, at his execution, and finally, joining a witches’ Sabbath. Running through it all would be an idée fixe – a singular musical theme signifying Harriet that would morph from the innocent to the grotesque in parody at the end.

Berlioz did marry Harriet in 1833, but their happiness quickly dissolved, and they were estranged within a decade.

Symphonie fantastique is a tour de force in its vivid program content, bend-without-break melodies, dazzling orchestration and overall trailblazing from materials essentially derived from classical models. Its popularity among the most beloved symphonies in literature remains undiminished.

Berlioz supplied the following program as a guide to Symphonie fantastique:

Reveries-Passions: I take as my subject an artist blessed with sensibility and a lively imagination… who meets a woman who awakens in him for the first time his heart’s desire. He falls desperately in love with her. Curiously, the image of his beloved is linked inseparably with a musical idea representing her graceful and noble character. This idée fixe haunts him throughout the symphony.

A Ball: The artist attends a ball, but the gaiety and festive tumult fails to distract him. The idée fixe returns to torture him further.

Scene in the Country: Alone in the country on a summer evening, the artist hears two distant herdsmen calling each other in a `franz des vaches’ (an alphorn melody of the Swiss Alps). Their pastoral duet, the rustle of wind in the trees, and the hope that his beloved might be his all lull him into a reverie, but the idée fixe returns in his dreams. His heart palpitates, and he experiences dread premonitions. The sunsets, there is thunder in the distance, then solitude and silence.

March to the Scaffold: In despair, the artist attempts to commit suicide by overdosing on opium, but the drug, too weak to prove fatal, instead induces fearsome dreams. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, is condemned to death, and is being taken for execution. The idée fixe floats into his mind, only to be terminated by the fall of the blade.

Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath:  The artist at a Witches’ Sabbath hears the idée fixe again, but now transformed into a brazen and trivial dance. She has come to witness his burial! Later comes a monstrous parody of the Dies Irae (‘Day of Wrath,’ from the Latin Mass for the Dead). The dance of the witches is combined with the Dies Irae.

MUSIC

• Finlandia, Jean Sibelius
• Symphony No. 4, Gustav Mahler

LITERATURE

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
• Powers of Darkness, Bram Stoker & Valdimar Ásmundsson

HISTORY

• Death of Queen Victoria and ascension of King Edward VII
• 1st Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Wilhelm Röntgen for discovering the X-rays

ART

The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton, Thomas Eakins

MUSIC

• Piano Concerto No. 1, Frédéric Chopin
• Symphony No. 5, “Reformation”, Felix Mendelssohn

LITERATURE

• The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith
• The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, Mary Shelley

HISTORY

• Belgium declares independence from Netherlands
• July Revolution in France overthrows King Charles X

ART

Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix

MUSICIANS

FIRST VIOLINS

Gwen Hoebig, Concertmaster
The Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté Memorial Chair, endowed by the Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation
Karl Stobbe, Associate Concertmaster
Jeff Dydra
Mona Coarda
Tara Fensom
Hong Tian Jia
Mary Lawton
Sonia Lazar
Julie Savard
Jun Shao
Rebeca Weger**
Jeremy Buzash (guest)

SECOND VIOLINS

Chris Anstey, Principal
Elation Pauls, Assistant Principal
Karen Bauch
Kristina Bauch,
Elizabeth Dyer
Bokyung Hwang*
Rodica Jeffrey
Momoko Matsumura **
Susan McCallum
Takayo Noguchi
Jane Radomski
Trevor Kirczenow (guest)
Erica Sloos (guest)

VIOLAS

Elise Lavallée, Acting Principal
Dmytro Kreshchenskyi, Acting Assistant Principal**
Marie-Elyse Badeau
Laszlo Baroczi
Richard Bauch
Greg Hay
Michael Scholz
John Sellick (guest)

CELLOS

Yuri Hooker, Principal
Emma Quackenbush, Acting Assistant Principal
Grace An **
Arlene Dahl
Samuel Nadurak **
Alyssa Ramsay
Sean Taubner
Gabriella Oliveira (guest)

BASSES

Meredith Johnson, Principal
James McMillan
Daniel Perry
Eric Timperman
Emily Krajewski**
Tara Pivniak (guest)

FLUTES

Jan Kocman, Principal
Supported by Gordon & Audrey Fogg
Alex Conway

OBOES

Beverly Wang, Principal
Robin MacMillan
Aleh Remeau (guest)
Renz Adame (guest)

CLARINETS

Micah Heilbrunn, Principal
Graham Lord (guest)

BASSOONS

Kathryn Brooks, Principal *
Mark Kreshchenskyi, Acting Principal **
Elizabeth Mee **
Daniel Preun (guest)
Allen Harrington (guest)

HORNS

Patricia Evans, Principal
Ken MacDonald, Associate Principal
The Hilda Schelberger Memorial Chair
Aiden Kleer
Caroline Oberheu
Michiko Singh

TRUMPETS

Chris Fensom, Principal
Paul Jeffrey, Associate Principal
Isaac Pulford
The Patty Kirk Memorial Chair
James Langridge (guest)

TROMBONES

Steven Dyer, Principal
Keith Dyrda
Isabelle Lavoie**

TIMPANI

Andrew Nazer**
Brendan Thompson (guest)

TUBA

Justin Gruber, Principal
Justin Hickmott (guest)

PERCUSSION

Andrew Johnson, Principal
Ben Reimer (guest)
Victoria Sparks (guest)

HARP

Richard Turner, Principal
Endowed by W.H. & S.E. Loewen
Alanna Ellison (guest)

PERSONNEL MANAGER

Isaac Pulford

MUSIC LIBRARIAN

Michaela Kleer

ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN

Aiden Kleer

* On Leave
** 1 year appointment