Join us on Sunday, March 30 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, March 31 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you Copland, Bernstein, and Betsy Jolas. Guest conductor David Robertson is on the podium, and British pianist Nicholas Hodges is featured.
The concert features two iconic works of the mid-20th century by Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. Bernstein’s music for the revolutionary 1957 musical West Side Story is so well known that it needs little introduction. Placing the Romeo and Juliet story in a 1950s New York tenement neighborhood was a scenario that inspired some of Bernstein’s most electrifying music. Much of it consists of dance sequences, set to inspired choreography from Jerome Robbins. The suite we’ll hear was assembled in 1961 by Bernstein himself — not in order of the action, and not including every well-known musical number, but specifically to make an effective suite for the concert hall.
Copland’s Appalachian Spring took shape during the Second World War, when choreographer Martha Graham invited the composer to collaborate on a new ballet. Graham didn’t provide a specific outline at first, but noted the scenario would concern a newlywed couple in a small settlement in 19th-century Pennsylvania. As he began to compose, Copland simply thought of this as his “ballet for Martha.” The title Appalachian Spring was adopted late in the process.
Copland’s original score was for 13 instruments, all that would fit along with the dancers in the original venue for the ballet’s premiere. Later he extracted scenes from the ballet as a concert suite, rescoring them for large orchestra. This is how most audiences have come to know the score, and how we’ll hear it in this broadcast.
This week’s concert opens with two works by Betsy Jolas, a composer of French and American parentage, now living in Paris and a vital force in her late 90s. She spent her earliest years in France, then attended college in the United States, where she first sang the music of the great Renaissance composer Orlandus Lassus (also known by Orlando di Lasso, among other names).
She has divided her time between both countries during a lengthy career. Jolas studied in France with Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen, and then taught in various American universities. In 1970 she looked back on her early affection for Lassus in Lassus ricercare, a unique work that in her words, “re-composes” 15 extracts from his music. “There is not a note here that is not taken from Lassus,” she asserts, and listeners who know his vocal works will recognize snatches of familiar melody in a distinctly modern orchestration of brass, percussion, harp, two pianos, and celesta.
British pianist Nicholas Hodges is the dedicatee and soloist for bTunes, a work written some five decades after Lassus ricercare. This piano concerto is made up of fragments of the composer’s previous piano works. Commenting on her nearly 100 years on this earth, Jolas writes, “Old age has fortunately not diminished my curiosity, and it still helps me evaluate the situation today. I have thus noticed, in recent years, that most people’s attention to music has shrunk drastically, to barely 10 seconds.”
Jolas adds that the title of this work derives from iTunes, the vehicle for so much contemporary listening, and that the “B” of the title stands for her own first name. The resulting work, she concludes, “might be considered as a kind of modern suite, evoking the way most people listen to music today — through playlists.”
The broadcast includes fascinating interviews with David Robertson and Nicholas Hodges, also available online.
PROGRAM:
Jolas: Lassus ricercare
Jolas: bTunes
Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Copland: Appalachian Spring
The Philadelphia Orchestra
David Robertson, conductor
Nicholas Hodges, piano
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer
Joseph Patti: Broadcast Engineer
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts every Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, streaming at WRTI.org, on the WRTI mobile app, and on your smart speaker. Listen again on Mondays at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2. Listen for up to two weeks after broadcast on WRTI Replay, accessible from the WRTI homepage (look for Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert On Demand).
