Hachioji Series

This concert is over. Date: Sun. 15. January 2023 14:00 (13:00)

Venue: J:COM Hall Hachioji Venue Info

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Artists

Kentaro KAWASE, Conductor
Tomoya NAKASE, Piano

Profile

KAWASE Kentaro (Conductor)

Born in Tokyo in 1984 and graduated with a degree in conducting from the Tokyo College of Music in 2007, having studied under Junichi Hirokami, Yasuhiko Shiozawa and others. Was awarded 2nd place (which was the highest level with no 1st place) at the Tokyo International Music Competition for Conducting in 2006, and since then Kawase has received numerous invitations from orchestras near and far. In recent years, he has conducted the likes of Toshio Hosokawa’s “Vision of Lear”, Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”, “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” and “Die Zauberflöte”, and Verdi’s “Aida”. Kawase has distinguished himself in garnering attention not only for orchestral but also for operatic performances.

Kawase is presently the permanent conductor of the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, the conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, and the music director of the Hachioji Youth Orchestra. He is also a goodwill ambassador for Inabe City in Mie Prefecture, and in 2015 received a music award from the WATANABE Akeo Music Foundation. He also received the ‘Future Award’ at the 64th Kanagawa Cultural Awards, and was further awarded in 2016 at the 14th Hideo Saito Memorial Fund Award, the 26th ‘Idemitsu Music Award’, and additionally received an award for encouragement at the Yokohama Cultural Awards. Kawase is a special lecturer in conducting at the Tokyo College of Music, and has been appointed as a permanent guest conductor with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa beginning from September 2018.

Tomoya NAKASE (Piano)

Program

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, op.18

Program Notes
Dvořák: Symphony No.9 in E minor, op.95, "From the New World"

Program Notes

Rachmaninoff:Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, op.18

Ⅰ Moderato
Ⅱ Adagio sostenuto
Ⅲ Allegro scherzando

　Sergei Rachmaninoff: Born at Oneg (an estate near Novgorod), April 1, 1873; died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943

　Rachmaninoffʼs Second Piano Concerto, one of the most beloved in the entire repertory, had a strange genesis. The harrowing experience of the utter failure of the composerʼs First Symphony (1897) had plunged him into deep melancholy, and he shunned both the social and musical worlds. He finally consented to see a Dr. Nicolai Dahl, who had acquired a reputation for successfully treating nervous disorders through hypnosis and auto-suggestion. By inducing Rachmaninoff to repeat over and over phrases such as “You will begin to write your concerto … You will work with great facility … The concerto will be of excellent quality …” while in a hypnotic daze, the young composerʼs creative impulses were recharged.
　The second and third movements were ready for performance on December 15, 1900, and the first complete performance took place on November 9 of the following year. On both occasions, Rachmaninoff was the soloist, and the conductor was his cousin and former teacher Alexander Siloti. The score bears a dedication to the man who had made it all possible, Dr. Dahl. Popular success was immediate, Rachmaninoffʼs spirits soared, and in his renewed mood of self-confidence, he married in 1902. In 1904, the concerto won him the first of two Glinka prizes (the other came in 1906 for his Second Symphony). Through its sweeping melodies, extravagant grandeur, melancholy, and passion, Rachmaninoffʼs Second Piano Concerto makes an unabashed appeal to the emotions, and justifiably qualifies as the most popular piano concerto of the twentieth century.
　The opening chords for the soloist have been described as a summation of all that is most noble in the piano, a sort of monument to the concert grand. The violins give forth the broadly flowing first theme with the piano as accompaniment. The piano presents the warmly lyrical second theme in E-flat major. Although the piano writing is overtly virtuosic, there are also numerous passages where the soloist assumes the role of accompanist.
　The second movement is in E major, a remote key from the concertoʼs basic tonality of C minor. However, the movement begins in the latter key, only later moving to E major. Following a few chords in the muted strings, the solo clarinet, accompanied by the piano, intones the movementʼs principal melodic idea, which surely ranks as one of the most ineffably beautiful ever written. The mood is one of midnight poetry and quiet reflection. During the thematic working out the pace quickens. After a brief cadenza, we hear once more that memorable theme in the violins. For a coda, the piano plays a new thematic idea in block chords, accompanied by left-hand arpeggios and triplets in the woodwinds. The movement closes in serene peace.
　The third movement, dramatic and colorful like the first, also has two themes, the first militaristic and noble, announced by the soloist; the second broadly lyrical, heard first in the violas and oboe. The movement incorporates a fugato based on the movementʼs main theme. First violins alone state the theme lightly and softly; the piano answers almost immediately and continues while other instruments take turns at the theme. Both themes are worked out in various additional ways and the concerto ends in a blaze of virtuosity.

　Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

Dvořák: Symphony No.9 in E minor, op.95, “From the New World

Ⅰ Adagio - Allegro molto
Ⅱ Largo
Ⅲ Scherzo: Molto vivace
Ⅳ Allegro con fuoco

Antonín Dvořák: Born in Mühlhausen, Bohemia (today Nelahozeves, Czech Republic), September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904

　Dvořákʼs Symphony No. 9, the “New World Symphony” to most listeners, received its world premiere in New Yorkʼs Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893 with Anton Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic. (There had been a “public rehearsal” the day before.) One critic (Henry Finck) called it “the greatest symphonic work ever composed in this country.”
　Although the “New World” Symphony was written in the New World, it is not specifically about the New World. True, there are themes that could be construed as being “authentic” songs of the American Indians or African-Americans, but in fact, as in Dvořákʼs Slavonic works, he did not actually quote directly from folksong but rather composed his own based on study of the source material.
　One “New World” aspect of this symphony is the role played by Longfellowʼs epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, which Dvořák had read in Czech translation some thirty years earlier. He re-read the poem in America and claimed that the scene of Minnehahaʼs funeral in the forest inspired the Largo movement of his symphony, while the Indiansʼ Dance was responsible for the Scherzo. Dvořák actually visited Hiawathaʼs land (Iowa and southern Minnesota), but the symphony was essentially complete by this time, so whatever influence Hiawatha had on him was purely literary, not geographical. It is worth noting that America was celebrating in 1892 (the year Dvořák arrived in America) the four hundredth anniversary of Columbusʼ discovery of the New World.
　From the New World alone of Dvořákʼs nine symphonies opens with a slow introduction. The main Allegro section is launched by horns in an arpeggiated fanfare motif in E minor, a motif that will reappear in all remaining movements as well. Several additional themes follow.
　The Largo contains one of the most famous themes in all classical music. Many listeners know it as the song “Goinʼ home,” but Dvořák did not borrow the theme from a spiritual; it is his own, and the words were superimposed by one of his students, William Arms Fisher, after the symphony was written. Although Dvořák himself claimed the movement was inspired by a passage from Longfellowʼs poem, Otakar Šourek (himself a Czech), believes the listener is equally entitled to imagine instead Dvořák longing for his homeland: “the melancholy, wide expanses of the South Bohemian countryside, of his garden at Vysoka, of the deep solemn sighing of the pine forests, and the broad, fragrant fields.”
The Scherzo is one of the most energetic and exhilarating movements Dvořák ever wrote, and borders on the virtuosic as well for the dazzling orchestral display it entails. The contrasting Trio section is a charming rustic dance introduced by the woodwind choir and set to the lilting long-short-long rhythm of which Schubert was so fond.
The finale too contains its share of melodic fecundity and inventiveness. The development section develops not only material from this movement but from the three previous ones as well, especially the main theme of the Largo, which is fragmented and tossed about with almost reckless abandon. The grand climax of the long coda (which begins after the horn solo that covers amazingly three full octaves - a greater range even than the famous call in Straussʼs Till Eulenspiegel!) brings back the chordal sequence that opened the Largo, but now painted in broad, majestic strokes in the full brass and woodwind sections. The fury subsides, the orchestra dies away to a whisper, horns softly intone the finaleʼs main theme like an echo from a far-away world. The symphony seems destined to end in E minor, the key in which it began. But with a sudden, massive wrenching of the harmonic gears, Dvořák brings the symphony to a close in joyous E major. The final chord lingers gently on the ears of audiences around the world.

　Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

【Soloist Encore】（1/15up）
Rachmaninoff：Polka de V.R.
（Tomoya NAKASE, Piano）

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