Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

JOAN TOWER (b. 1938) Suite from Concerto for Orchestra Scored for three flutes and two piccolos, two oboes and English horn, three B-flat clarinets, E-flat clarinet, and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones and bass trombone, tuba, timpani, Percussion I: glockenspiel, cymbals (high), temple blocks, wood blocks (4), and snare drum, Percussion II: xylophone, vibraphone, large tam-tam, tenor drum, tambourine, triangle, and sleigh bells, Percussion III: cymbals (high, medium, low), large bass drum, castanets, mounted castanets, snare drum, wind chimes, and tambourine, harp, piano, and strings Celebrated composer and pianist Joan Tower ranks among the foremost American musi- cians of her generation. A native of New Ro- chelle, NY, Tower spent her formative years in South America. She received a bachelor’s de- gree from Bennington College in Vermont, then pursued master’s and doctoral courses at Columbia University, studying under Otto Lu- ening, Ralph Shapey, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Charles Wuorinen. Tower was a founding member and pianist of the Da Capo Chamber Players (1969–84), a contemporary-music en- semble that received the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music in 1973. After leaving Da Capo, Tower concentrated on teaching and composition. She has served on the music faculty of Bard College since 1972 and later was named Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts. During the 1970s, Tower’s compo- sitional focus shifted from solo and chamber works to the broader tone-color resources of the orchestra. She was composer-in-residence with the Saint Louis Symphony as part of the Meet-the-Composer Orchestra Residency pro- gram between 1985 and 1988. Silver Ladders —a work composed for the Saint Louis Symphony and its music director, Leonard Slatkin—earned Tower the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Composition in 1990, making her the first American and first woman recipient of the prize. Another symphonic composition from the Saint Joan Tower Louis years initiated the widely performed series of six Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman . For her extraordinary contributions as a com- poser, Tower has received the Delaware Sym- phony Orchestra’s Alfred I. DuPont Award for a Distinguished American Composer, the Lan- caster (PA) Symphony Orchestra’s Annual Com- poser’s Award, and honorary doctorates from Illinois State University, the New England Con- servatory of Music, and Smith College. Tower has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her orches- tral composition Made in America —the first commission under the Ford Made in America program, a joint venture of the American Sym- phony Orchestra League and Meet the Compos- er—was performed in all 50 states between 2005 and 2007. The recording of Made in America by conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony won three Grammy Awards in 2008: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Per- formance. The League of American Orchestras awarded Tower the Golden Baton in 2019. The following year, Musical America named her its 2020 Composer of the Year and Chamber Music America recognized Tower with the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award. More recently, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, the Colo- rado Music Festival Orchestra, and conductor Peter Oundjian premiered A New Day on July 25, 2021. Tower composed this piece while caring for her husband of 50 years, Jeff Litfin. “I realized that our long time together was getting shorter, becoming more and more precious with each new day.” Litfin passed away in 2022 at the age of 95. Tower expressed her love, vulnerability, and grief in the solo-piano composition Love Letter , which she later discussed and performed in the TEDx Talk “Working Through Grief: Friends, Composing, Piano, and a Jigsaw.” One theme from Love Letter inspired the recently premiered saxophone concerto Love Returns , given by solo- ist Steven Banks, the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and Oundjian on July 10, 2025. Peter Oundjian and Joan Tower at the Colorado Music Festival in 2024 Oundjian played a pivotal role in bringing an- other Joan Tower composition into existence: the Suite from Concerto for Orchestra, which the Yale Philharmonia, under Oundjian’s direction, premiered at Carnegie Hall on January 27, 2025. The Suite presents a highly concentrated version of the Concerto—reduced to approximately one- third its original length—while retaining the col- oration, contrast, and virtuosity of the original. “It took a lot of courage for Peter to distill my Concerto for Orchestra into a suite,” Tower wrote admiringly. “I think he actually pulled it off— and I am totally in awe of how he did it.” Tower composed the Concerto for Orchestra in 1991 on a co-commission from the Saint Louis Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. The Saint Louis Sym- phony and conductor Leonard Slatkin gave the world premiere on May 16, 1991. “In every sense, Concerto for Orchestra is my biggest work to date. It’s the first piece purely for orchestra I’ve written since Silver Ladders in 1986, but it follows three solo concertos—for clarinet, flute, and vi- olin—and reflects that experience, enabling me to take more risks between soloists and orches- tra. Whereas Silver Ladders highlighted four solo instruments, here not only solos, but duos, trios, and other combinations of instruments form structural, timbral, and emotive elements of the piece. … Although technically demand- ing, the virtuoso sections are an integral part of the music, resulting from accumulated energy, rather than being designed purely as display elements. I thus resisted the title Concerto for Orchestra (with its connotations of Bartók, Lu- tosławski, and Husa), and named the work only after the composing was completed, and even then reluctantly.” SERGE RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943) Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op. 18 Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, strings, and solo piano The 1897 premiere of Rachmaninoff ’s First Sym- phony was more than disastrous. It devastated the fledgling composer with near career-ending brutality. He immediately realized that this fail- ure would irreversibly alter his life. “When the indescribable torture of the performance had at last come to an end, I was a different man.” Rachmaninoff soon discovered how ruinous that difference would be. For months, his soul seemed utterly stripped away, as a “paralyzing apathy” invaded his very being. Several times, he began new compositions but lost momentum—or interest—before finishing the project. Numerous psychosomatic con- ditions afflicted the saturnine musician, such as migrating body pains and insomnia. Rach- maninoff completely lost his artistic convic- tion, though friends remained confident in his RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 79 BERNARDMINDICH(TOWER);GEREMYKORNREICH(OUNDJIAN&TOWER)