Issue 1: September – October - Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

PROGRAM NOTES
by James Manishen
Wa Wa Tey Wak
(Northern Lights)
Andrew Balfour
b. Fisher Branch Reserve, MB /
1967
Composed: 2006
First performance: March 11, 2006
by Camerata Nova
First WSO performance
Wa Wa Tey Wak is based on a
modern legend about a young
girl that lived 300 years ago in
what we now call Canada. She is
transported to modern times by
a sorcerer and wanders the
streets of Winnipeg. No one
can see her except the street
people, the “lost tribe.”
Of Cree descent, composer
Andrew Balfour describes the work
as “about transformation - a
journey…sad things...social
issues…all redeemed by the
Northern Lights. It’s one of the
worst tragedies of our country: so
much wealth, so much prosperity
and so much poverty at the same
time. That’s why I wrote this piece,
because I felt I had something to
say since I have also lived in
poverty but redeemed by music, I
guess you could say.”
Concerto for Pipa with
String Orchestra
Lou Harrison
b. Portland, OR / May 14, 1917
d. Lafayette, IN / February 2, 2003
Composed: 1997
First performance: April 26, 1997,
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra,
Dennis Russell Davies conducting
with Wu Man as soloist
First WSO performance
By his own admission,
the music of West
Coast-born Lou
Harrison is “a song
and a dance,” an
influence from
14 OVERTURE I September – October 2011
Harrison’s mentor, American
pioneer composer Henry Cowell,
who taught Harrison that music
around the world is mainly melody
with a rhythmic accompaniment.
Long interested in music from
cultures bordering the Pacific,
Cowell inspired Harrison to dig
into world music in general, yet
within an individual compositional
style of no less importance. “Don’t
put hybrids down,” Harrison once
told a BBC interviewer. “There
isn’t anything else.”
Harrison built instruments out of
everyday items, began working
with John Cage and eventually
studied briefly with Arnold
Schoenberg in Los Angeles. In
1961, Harrison went to Tokyo
where, for two years, he immersed
himself in the study of Korean and
Chinese classical music. In the
early 1970s, his fusion of Eastern
and Western style began to
crystallize. The pipa concerto is
Harrison’s last large-scale work.
The motoric theme of the first
movement suggests a classical
concerto coming, though with
Chinese tang as the pipa is joined
by solo violin. The second
movement is a suite that treats the
pipa in various guises: a pseudo
balalaika in the Troika, a
percussion instrument in Three
Sharing, and a mandolin in
Neapolitan. The elegiac third
movement’s long lines pave the
way for the finale entitled
Estampie, a dancelike form from
14th century France and Italy.
We are honoured to be joined
tonight by Wu Man, the dedicatee
of Lou Harrison’s Pipa Concerto.
La Noche de los Mayas
Silvestre Revueltas
b. Santiago, Papasquiaro, Durango /
December 31, 1899
d. Mexico City / October 5, 1940
Composed: 1939
Last WSO performance: 2008,
Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor
“I prefer the music of
the people of the
ranchos and villages of
my country,” Silvestre
Revueltas once said
when asked about his
tastes in music. Central to his
music are the tang of Mexico, the
spirit of its people and his own
experiences during the volatile
period following his appointment
as assistant to Carlos Chávez and
the newly formed Orquesta
Sinfónica de México in 1929
following a three-year period in
the United States where he
worked as a theatre violinist and
conductor. During this time,
Revueltas also became active in the
cause of artists' and workers'
rights.
In 1937, Revueltas was sent to
Spain to direct concerts in support
of Mexican Loyalist causes but
returned poor and in broken
health. He died of alcoholism,
heartbroken over the death of his
two daughters.
La Noche de los Mayas (“The Night
of the Mayas”) was composed as a
score to the film of the same name
directed by Chano Urueta with
script by Antonio Médiz Bolio. A
four-movement suite was created
in 1960 by Mexican conductor
José Limantour. The opening
movement’s huge cry from the
orchestra suggests Revueltas’s
political angst, tempered by the
central section, which is warm and
reflective. Noche de Jaranas is a
fiery dance movement punctuated
with cross rhythms. The solo flute
and drum in Noche de Yucatan
quote a traditional native folk
melody (“Come on boys, the sun is
about to set”). The closing
movement is a riot of percussion,
culminating with the orchestral
outburst that opened the work.
Vous adresser au service des abonnés ou consulter le site www.wso.ca pour la traduction en français.