Danielpour. Saint-Saëns. Musorgsky

PERFORMERS:
Soloist: Alexander Malofeyev (piano)
The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Valery Gergiev

PROGRAMME:
World premiere
Richard Danielpour
Symphony for Strings For Love is Strong As Death

Camille Saint-Saëns
Piano Concerto in G Minor, Op. 22

Modest Musorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition

Richard Danielpour
Symphony for Strings For Love is Strong As Death (World premiere)

One of the bittersweet inevitabilities of a great love between two people is the awareness that eventually one of them will eventually pass on before the other.
The idea for my symphony for strings came from that reality, as well as from the choice that is made for love even in the face of the possible or inevitable loss of the Beloved. The secondary title For Love is Strong as Death comes from the Song of Solomon in the Jewish Scriptures:

... Set me as a seal upon your heart
Set me as a seal upon your arm
For love is strong as death...

The circumstances behind the commission of this work were both wonderful and unusual. Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, who has, in recent years become a dear friend, asked me to write a work and wanted to commission it and have it dedicated to a couple who she holds very dear to her heart, Fred and Madeline Mossanen.
I was quite touched to hear of the deep love that this couple who have been married for many years have for one another, but I said politely to my friend Bonnie that if I'm going to complete this work I would need to meet the extraordinary pair that she spoke about with so much affection.
My wife Kathleen and I met the Mossanens in December 2013 in Los Angeles, and immediately I realised why my friend Bonnie felt so close to them. Meeting and befriending this extraordinary couple confirmed my intuition about the piece that I was writing and it made the completion of it all the more natural...
The symphony is in three movements, with the first movement conveying a sense of the dilemma (choice) which I alluded to in the beginning of my note. The inner struggle between holding fast and letting go gives way to a lighter, almost childlike second movement in which the strings play pizzicato in the outer sections...
This is equivalent to a "flashback" in novels or films... The middle section of the second movement asks a series of questions in recitative – like fashion. This middle section almost takes the form of an emphatic, one-sided conversation with God.
The last movement, which brings back many of the ideas from the first movement, includes a twin set of arias in which some of the principal string players in the orchestra sing to one another at times mournfully and at other times hopefully.
The coda of the final movement is a hymn with variations; the hymn is taken from all of the material that has preceded in the symphony. With each succeeding variation, a section of the string orchestra stops playing until only the cellos are left – playing their solo variation in an unaccompanied melody. This ultimate "letting go ", in some ways reminiscent of the Haydn Farewell symphony but altogether more serious, is the true culmination and destination of the work.
Finally, at the end, offstage strings answer the cellos to conclude both the movement and the work.
Much of the symphony was composed in New York during the summer of 2013 and finalised in early winter 2014. It is just under half an hour in duration.
Richard Danielpour, June 2014

Among the most honoured composers of his generation, Richard Danielpour has written a wide range of orchestral, chamber, instrumental, ballet and vocal works. He has been commissioned by a “Who's Who” of international musical institutions, festivals and artists, and his music has been championed by Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, the Guarneri, Emerson, and American String Quartets and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, David Zinman, Zdenek Macal and Leonard Slatkin. His first opera, Margaret Garner, with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, was hailed as a triumph during its recent sold-out runs at the Michigan Opera Theater and Cincinnati Opera, commissioners with the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
Danielpour has received a Grammy award, a Lifetime Achievement Award and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Guggenheim Award, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University and grants and residencies from the Barlow Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House and the American Academy in Rome. He was one of the first composers invited for a coveted residency at the American Academy in Berlin. He was only the third composer – after Stravinsky and Copland – to be signed to an exclusive recording contract by Sony Classical, and his music can also be heard extensively on Delos, Koch, Harmonia Mundi, New World, and Reference Recordings.
Danielpour is an active educator and believes deeply in the nurturing of young musicians. Beyond serving on the faculties of both the Curtis Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, he also spends a great deal of time giving master-classes throughout the country and coaching and mentoring young musicians.