TRISTAN MURAIL (b. 1947)
Gondwana (1980) (U.S. Premiere)
With its evocative title, Gondwana may be Tristan Murail’s most well-known work. This seminal composition uses the equally evocatively named technique of “spectral music,” which had its heyday in 1970s and ‘80s Paris. Murail is the co-founder—along with Gérard Grisey—of this school of composition. Multiple allusions that are sure to resonate in the listener inform the music: there’s the title, “Gondwana.” It refers to a mythical, engulfed continent in legends of India; it was later conflated with the primordial supercontinent that formed the earth’s southern hemisphere. Around 41 million years ago that land mass actually drifted apart into what we now call South America and Antarctica, causing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to merge. The composer explains, “I tried to give form to a kind of engulfing where two forces meet—waves and church bells. It’s a resurgence of the ancient legend of the town of Ys and of Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral. …Through the sonorities found in the piece, the title suggested to me bells and waves—bells metamorphosing into vague allusions to storms, the blowing of silent tempests into seismic movements. In Gondwana, the orchestral forms are in constant metamorphosis; clear structures transform into hazy movement; harmonies—well-differentiated timbres—‘degrade’ slowly into noisy structures. We don’t distinguish the … parts, but rather movement, processes of change that carry the listener from one sonorous landscape to another.” The composer creates this shifting and changing from a bell-like sound (generated through the technique of frequency modulation) and a trombone chord whose tone spectrum has been analyzed by computer. Perceived as luxurious, complex, and shimmering, this expansive piece is sure to open marvelous horizons and atmospheric soundscapes. Trained in a broad array of disciplines that includes economics, political science, and the study of classical and North African Arabic, Murail became a student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, and a teacher there of computer music. Later he taught composition and was a consultant on the computer-assisted composition research team at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique). Since 1997 Tristan Murail has been professor of music at Columbia University. Among his many distinctions are the Prix de Rome in 1971, the Grand Prix du Disque in 1990, and the Grand Prix du Président de la République—Académie Charles Cros in 1992. Gondwana has its American premiere at these concerts.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto No. 11 in F Major, K. 413 (1782-83)
By 1781, Mozart had settled in Vienna, finally free of his hated Salzburg employer, the Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. In his late 20s he was now setting about making a name for himself as a composer and keyboard virtuoso in the musical capital of the world. The Piano Concerto No. 11 is the first of three concertos (K. 413, 414, 415) aimed at the Viennese audience and important in establishing Mozart as a performer and creator of music. He described the concertos in a letter to his father in1782: “These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.” As was the custom of the time, it was Mozart’s intention to publish them together “on subscription” to raise money. His advertisement for the manuscript-set read: “These three concertos, which can be performed with full orchestra including wind instruments, or only a Quattro, that is with 2 violins, 1 viola, and violoncello, will be available at the beginning of April to those who have subscribed for them (beautifully copied, and supervised by the composer himself).” When subscribers were hard to come by (despite the fact that he was becoming thoroughly established as a successful opera composer of big hits like The Abduction from the Seraglio), his father, ever a naysayer, blamed it on the too-high-price his son had charged. Mozart realized that in order to increase interest in his concertos he would need to make more public appearances, earning money as both composer and soloist. Since performance venues in Vienna were scarce (lots of competition from other performers), Mozart devised a way to book a great many solo and concerto performances; for example, according to Mozart biographer, Maynard Solomon, he hit upon the idea of playing in unconventional venues, such as a large residential building and a restaurant with an adjoining ballroom. The strategy seemed to work: when the three concertos were finally published in 1785 they were hits.

OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Oiseaux exotiques (Exotic Birds) (1955-56)
When Olivier Messiaen died, his widow Yvonne Loriod commissioned a bird sculpture for his grave stone. His biographer, Claude Samuels called him “the bird prophet.” Messiaen himself loved birds above all of nature’s creatures. He called them “the avatars of angels, the greatest musicians in the world,” who sang to the Glory of God. During his travels he notated and recorded the songs of birds, saying, “[In birdsong] is the home of music. Free music, anonymous, improvised for pleasure, for greeting the rising sun, for luring a mate, for ending all dispute, dissension, rivalry, for using the surplus energy that bubbles up with love and joy.” It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that most of his compositions were inspired by birds, referred to in a symbolic way, or deriving actual musical material from their songs—as is the case in this work. Oiseaux exotiques comes from the 1950s, Messiaen’s “bird period,” in which he composed Le merle noir (The Blackbird) , Reveil des oiseaux (Awakening of the Birds) , and Catalog des oiseaux (Catalog of Birds) , among others. A piano concerto in all but name and which requires virtuoso playing, Oiseaux exotiques is scored for piano and a chamber orchestra of 18 instruments (woodwinds, brass, glockenspiel, xylophone, percussion, but no strings), carefully arranged on stage for maximum effect. Commissioned by his former student Pierre Boulez for the Domaine Musicale concerts in Paris, he dedicated the score to his pianist wife, Yvonne Loriod, who was the soloist at the premiere. The composer derives inspiration from and reimagines the songs of some 40 birds from across the world, all listed in the preface and within the score itself—from the Indian Mynah and the White-Crested Laughing Thrush of the Himalayas to the Baltimore Oriole and the Bobolink. But, rather than try to identify each ornithological inspiration, an audience should enjoy this colorful, enchanting work as a fantasy that explores Messiaen’s unique sound- world and revels in the beauty of nature.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
La mer (The Sea) , Three Symphonic Sketches (1905)
“You may not know that I was destined for a sailor’s life,” Debussy told a friend. “It was only quite by chance that fate led me in another direction. But I have always held a passionate love for the sea.” Nowhere is that love of the sea more insightfully expressed than in La mer. Though contemporary critics hurled epithets at the work—“rubbish,” “symphonic pictures of seasickness,” “cacophonous”—today it is acknowledged as an early 20th century masterpiece, a complex, richly layered seascape of glistening sound. Debussy shows us the peaceful as well as the turbulent sea, from shimmering light dancing on calm waters, to the drama of crashing waves. The evocative titles of the three “movements” chart the course for the listener: in “From Dawn to Midday on the Sea,” gentle mists give way to a bright sunrise and depict the awakening sea. (Composer Erik Satie famously quipped: “There’s a moment between half past ten and quarter to eleven that I particularly liked!”). “Play of the Waves” follows with delicate, fleeting scoring suggesting colors seen though a watery prism. The concluding “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea” depicts more dangerous waters and provides a reminder of the elemental power and mystery of the sea, which Debussy once called “that great blue Sphinx.”

LUDOVIC MORLOT, conductor, born in 1974 in Lyon, France
Beginning with the headline “‘Prince’ Morlot Rocked,” the Chicago Tribune raved about the “upwardly mobile young French conductor,” continuing: “If Ludovic Morlot isn’t careful, he will forever be stuck with the label ‘prince of the substitute conductors.’” The youthful maestro had just stepped in for Riccardo Muti at the Chicago Symphony in a program that included Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Philharmonic audiences made his acquaintance when he replaced Christoph von Dohnányi on short notice. The New York Times raved: “If he was nervous on this milestone night, you would not have known it. He conducted the entire program with fluid yet unostentatious technique, palpable confidence and appealing energy.” That same month he replaced Yuri Temirkanov in Baltimore. It seems that if there’s a go-to conductor these days it must be Ludovic Morlot. Substituting for an ailing maestro “is something you hope for, but I don’t want to make a habit of it.” Highlights of the 2009-10 season in North America included return engagements with the Chicago Symphony and Boston Symphony and debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, National Symphony (Washington D.C.), and the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati and Atlanta. Born in Lyon, he studied violin in his native France and later in Montreal, and took up conducting in 1994. He earned his master’s degree in conducting from the Royal Academy of London, where he studied with Sir Colin Davis. Having won the Seiji Ozawa Fellowship, he made his Tanglewood debut in 2001, and in 2004 James Levine selected him as one of two assistant conductors at the Boston Symphony, a job Morlot describes as an intermediate step “between student days and the big jump into the professional world.” He has also been conductor-in-residence with the Orchestra National de Lyon, France.

“The conductor’s keen ear and rhythmic sense brought much to the pieces.” The Boston Globe

“Under Maestro Morlot’s crisp direction, the NSO gave one of its most viscerally exciting performances ever, right up to the work’s hair-raising final bars.” Washington Post

Find additional upcoming performances with Ludovic Morlot

OLLI MUSTONEN, piano, born in 1967 in Helsinki, Finland
Olli Mustonen has a unique place on today’s music scene. As a pianist, he has challenged and fascinated audiences throughout Europe and America with his brilliant technique and startling originality. In his role as conductor he founded the Helsinki Festival Orchestra. At the heart of both his piano playing and conducting is his life as a composer. As such he forms part of a very special line of musicians whose visions are expressed both in the art of re-creative interpretation and in their own compositions. Mustonen has a deeply held conviction that each performance must have the freshness of a first performance, so that audience and performers alike encounter the composer as a living contemporary. In this respect he recalls Mahler’s famous dictum that tradition can be laziness. Yet he is equally suspicious of the performance that seeks only to be different. This tenacious spirit of discovery leads him to explore many areas of repertoire beyond the established canon. As a soloist, Olli Mustonen has worked with most of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw. His recording catalogue includes his work as both pianist and conductor. His Preludes and Fuges by Shostakovich and Alkan’s Preludes received the Edison and Gramophone awards for the Best Instrumental Recording; and he has also recorded the music of Bach, Sibelius, Hindemith, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and just recently, the Beethoven Piano Concertos as soloist/conductor with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. This season he also performs the Beethoven cycle live as soloist/conductor with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

“He is a living dream of pianism, having broken through an expressive barrier that other players do not know exists.” The Sunday Times (London)

“[Mustonen’s] touch gleams…brilliant, glittering, delicate playing…” Pianist Magazine

Find additional upcoming performances with Olli Mustonen