Pines of Rome: January 28 & February 5, 2012

Pines of Rome

January 28, 2012 I 6:00 PM I Merritt Island High School Auditorium, Merritt Island
February 5, 2012 I 3:00 PM I Trinity Episcopal Church

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Symphony for Everyone

Suliman Tekalli, violin

Sergei Prokofiev I Suite from 'The Love of Three Oranges'
Sergei Prokofiev I Violin Concerto No. 1
Ottorino Respighi I Fountains of Rome
Ottorino Respighi I Pines of Rome

Join the Space Coast Symphony in this epic program featuring works by Prokofiev and Respighi. The concert opens with Prokofiev’s witty and endearing music from his opera, The Love of Three Oranges. Violinist Suliman Tekalli, who has entertained audiences throughout the United States and South America, will mesmerize audiences with his technical mastery and soaring lyricism in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1. In a rare treat, Central Florida audiences will hear two sonic masterpieces back to back, Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome. Respighi wanted to create a soundtrack to life in Rome that would encapsulate everything from the sounds of nature to the boisterous sounds of the festivals. Featuring an enlarged orchestra, these two larger-than-life works are rarely performed during the same concert.

SULIMAN TEKALLI

Young American violinist, SULIMAN TEKALLI was born in Daytona Beach, Florida and moved to the city of Orlando, where he began studying the violin at the age of three. His teachers include Lev Gurevich, Ayako Yonetani, as well as Hyo Kang of Juilliard and Sergiu Schwartz. At sixteen, he appeared in his formal debut with the Orlando Philharmonic, performing the Sibelius Concerto and had since then appeared with numerous orchestras around the United States. He has also received numerous prizes and awards such as being featured on National Public Radio's show "From the Top", as well as first prize in the Blount National String Competition, which led to his invitation to the Boston University Tanglewood Institute where he served as concertmaster as well as performed in a special concert in Ozawa Hall. He was also a prizewinner in the Szeryng International Violin Competition in Mexico, leading to concerts throughout Mexico with the Orquesta Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico. Among the conductors whom he has collaborated with: Berislav Skenderovic, Hal France, Aaron Collins, Andrew Lane, Laszlo Marosi, Albert E. Moehring, and Mario Rodriquez Taboada. He performs in recitals and chamber concerts regularly across the United States, collaborating often with his sister, pianist Jamila Tekalli. Currently, he is obtaining his Masters Degree, working with Joel Smrnoff, President of the Cleveland Institute of Music and former member of the Juilliard String Quartet.

PROGRAM NOTES

Sergei Prokofiev
Born April 27, 1891 Sontsovka, Russia
Died March 5, 1953 Moscow, Russia

Suite from “The Love of Three Oranges”

After the Russian Revolution broke out Prokofiev applied for permission to leave the country. He was granted permission to leave and got one of the first passports issued by the Soviet Union. His intent was to go to America but he took the long way around hoping to avoid the perils of war in Western Europe. His journey began on May 7, 1918 and he finally arrived in New York in September. Enroute, he worked on an opera, The Love of Three Oranges, which had been suggested to him in Russia by a stage director. The Chicago Opera Company contracted with him to perform the opera and he finished the score in October, 1919. Unfortunately the Chicago Opera Company delayed its performance of his opera and Prokofiev filed a lawsuit. Over the next few years there was much legal wrangling over the dispute and The Love of Three Oranges was finally premiered in Chicago on December 30, 1921. It was very successful with both the audience and critics. However, a couple of months later it fell flat in New York. After that it had very few performances until the New York City Opera Company revived it in 1949 and it became an immediate and major success. Prokofiev himself created the Suite that you will be heard.

Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 19

Prokofiev began writing this work in 1915 but temporarily abandoned it to work on other compositions. This work was premiered in Paris on October 18, 1923 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Paris Opera Orchestra. Marcel Damieux was the violinist. Koussevitzky also conducted the U.S. premiere with the Boston Symphony on April 24, 1925. The Soviet Union premier was 3 days after the Paris premier with Vladimir Horowitz playing the orchestral part on the piano and Nathan Milstein the violinist.

Sergei Sergeievich Prokofiev was a child prodigy and one of the most precocious musicians since Mozart. He received his first piano lessons from his mother. At age 5 he was improvising and at age 6 composing short pieces for the piano. At 9, he wrote a simple opera. At age 13, he enrolled in the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied with such greats as Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Reinhold Glière and Anatol Liadov. In 1918 he left his homeland to escape the Bolshevik dictatorship. He lived in America for 4 years and then moved to Paris. He returned to Russia in 1934 and lived the rest of his life in Moscow. He was one of Russia’s outstanding twentieth century composers and achieved both popularity with the public and acclaim and admiration from professional musicians. Politically, however, he was sometimes on shaky ground. For example, in 1948 he was officially denounced for “excessive formalism” and “cacophonous harmony”. Among his works are symphonies, operas, ballets, works for band, concertos, piano sonatas, choral works, songs and chamber music.

Ottorino Respighi
Born July 9, 1879 Bologna, Italy
Died April 18, 1936 Rome

The Fountains of Rome

Respighi wrote the tone poem The Fountains of Rome in 1916. It is part of a trilogy which also includes The Pines of Rome and Festivals of Rome. Some consider Fountains to be Respighi’s best work. Each section of Fountains depicts one of Rome’s fountains at a specific time of day. It was premiered in Rome on March 11, 1917. The premiere was not well received but its performance in Milan in 1918 was very successful. It premiered in the U. S. on February 13, 1919.

The Pines of Rome

Respighi wrote The Pines of Rome in 1923 and 1924. This work is a tone poem in which four unseparated movements vividly depict four landscapes near Rome: The Pines of the Villa Borghese, The Pines Near a Catacomb, The Pines of the Janiculum, and The Pines of the Appian Way. The first and last movements are animated, while the interior movements are slow and contemplative. In the noc¬turnal third movement, Respighi provided unprecedented realism by including the recorded sound of a real nightingale. The work's finale, The Pines of the Appian Way, as described by Respighi's notes on the score, depicts the dawning of a day which illuminates a fantastic vision of an ancient Roman con¬sular army, whose relentless tread brings the work to a mas¬sively grandiloquent final climax.

Ottorino Respighi was a professional violinist. In 1900, he moved from Bologna to St. Petersburg where he was the first violinist in the opera orchestra. There he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1908, he became professor of composition at Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. In 1926, he resigned to devote his time to composition.

Respighi wrote a large number of works in many genres. It is perhaps unfortunate that his "Roman" tone poems- The Foun¬tains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals- are so supremely imaginative and picturesque because the atten¬tion they have received has caused his other works to be largely forgotten.

Respighi’s wife, Elsa Olivieri Sangiacomo Respighi, was a student of her husband and composed a number of works including an opera, a tone poem and many songs. She was also an accomplished vocalist and published a biography of her husband.