2014 Program Notes, Book 6 47
Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19, 2014
ROUTE 66
(1988)
Michael Daugherty (born in 1954)
Route 66
is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English
horn, E-flat clarinet, clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four
horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
piano, harp and strings. Performance time is 7 minutes. This is the
work’s first performance by the Grant Park Orchestra.
Michael Daugherty, born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has
been Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan since 1991; he taught at
Oberlin during the preceding five years. Daugherty holds a baccalaureate from North
Texas State University, a master’s degree from the Manhattan School, and a doctorate
from Yale. From 1982 to 1984, Daugherty studied with György Ligeti in Hamburg,
Germany, during which time he developed his distinctive compositional language,
which fuses elements of jazz, rock, popular and contemporary music with traditional
classical idioms.
The composer wrote, “
Route 66
is a musical reflection on America. [This country’s]
icons can be people, places or things: Elvis Presley, James Cagney, Jackie O, Liberace,
Barbie dolls, Motown, pink flamingo lawn ornaments, Route 66. Such icons have
personal meanings for me, as well as a wide range of associations within contemporary
American culture. As a composer, I am inspired by these and other icons to ... bring
the excitement and energy of American popular culture to the concert hall.... Through
an unconventional use of American icons, I open a door to listeners, inviting them to
bring their own emotions and associations into the musical experience.”
PIANO CONCERTO FOR IN G MINOR, OP. 33
(1876)
Antonín Dvorˇ ák (1841-1904)
Dvorˇák’s Piano Concerto is scored for pairs of woodwinds, two
horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. The performance
time is 34 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed
this Concerto on July 10, 1985, with Zdeneˇ k Mácal conducting
and Justus Frantz as soloist.
In 1875, Dvorˇák was urged to undertake a concerto for piano by Karel von Slavovsky
(1845-1919), recently the founder of a school of piano playing in Prague and an active
soloist, chamber musician and promoter of native composers throughout Bohemia.
Dvorˇák accepted Slavovsky’s proposal, and chose as inspiration and models for the
new work the concertos of Beethoven and the D minor Concerto of his benefactor,
Johannes Brahms. The piece, his earliest work in the genre, evidently caused Dvorˇák
much trouble during its composition in the late summer months of 1876 — the
manuscript shows many corrections and changes; whole pages were re-written and
pasted into the score; numerous solo passages were re-worked time and again —
but the Concerto was well received at its premiere on March 28, 1878 in Prague by
Slavovsky and conductor Adolf Cˇ ech.
The first movement shares its somber mood with the
Stabat Mater
, written at the
same time as the Concerto to help assuage Dvorˇák’s grief over the recent death of
his eldest child. It is said that he was particularly fond of the theme that opens the
large sonata form of this movement. He worked this sad melody out at some length
before allowing the strings to introduce the second theme, a countrified, major-
