This month, the Houston Symphony will begin its 2013 series of concerts with an exciting weekend of performances featuring American themed music. “The concert program is really a commentary on Hans Graf’s time here in the United States,” stated Aurelie Desmarais, the Houston Symphony’s senior director of Artistic Planning. “He is an Austrian trained conductor with amazingly wide-ranging musical tastes. While Dvorak, Dutilleux and Copland may seem unrelated at first glance, each has a unique connection to America. Having spent much of his musical life conducting in the United States, Graf naturally provides an ‘American experience’ theme to the concert.”
This concert features a notable trait: the composer of the second piece on the bill, Henri Dutilleux, is still living.
Dutilleux’s Symphony No. 2, which is named Le Double, poses an interesting stage arrangement where the orchestra will be divided into two halves on stage. While Dutilleux is a French composer, almost all of his orchestral works were given their premieres in America. In France, Dutilleux’s music was seen as too romantic and accessible while many French composers were writing more modern and experimental music. However, championed by the Boston Symphony, American audiences were given an opportunity to hear and appreciate Dutilleux’s music.
Dutilleux, who is nearly 97 years old, also happens to be a long-time fried of Maestro Graf’s which makes the upcoming performances of his music even more special.
Photo taken in Bordeaux during the recording of Symphony No. 2.
When asked about why he is so enamored of Dutilleux’s music, Maestro Graf had this to say:
“I am doing more Dulilleux this season than in any other season. I got to know his music in the early 90s, 20 years ago.
Dutilleux is, among all the composers of the second part of the 20th century, the one who has the greatest eleance and intelligence firmly rooted in the tradition of great French music. Dutilleux has continued the style of Ravelle in a new language, 30 years later.”
Between 2001 and 2005, Maestro Graf completed a project with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France (he was serving as music director there at that time), where they recorded the complete orchestral works of Dutilleux. Dutilleux attended each of the recording sessions and shared his thoughts on how the compositions were intended to sound. Graf describes Dutilleux as a perfect gentleman.
“He is a masterful composer who writes a beauty which most other music doesn’t have. So I was incredibly attracted by that and studied it and when I came to Bordeaux, I decided to do with this orchestra an honor to this great French composer and each season play a piece by Dutilleux.
He is a composer who will be remembered because, not only does the audience start to like him very much, but all the great players world wide- the cellists, the violinists- are very very happy to have his cello concerto and his violin concerto. In the last 30 years, those two pieces have entered the normal classic solo concerti proposed by great soloists. There is no other composer in the second half of the 20th century who has reached this. That doesn’t mean that the music is easy- it’s difficult, but it’s satisfying.
He is a slow and meticulous composer but his music is worth the wait.
The Symphony No. 2, Le Double, it is probably his most perfect orchestra work, as it shows his matured style in the middle of his creation span. It is in three movements, and the beginning of the first movement features a fantastic entree into the music, with a clarinet solo which is like a tiny little snake that lifts its head- when you hear it you will know what I mean. It ends on another image, like the stem of a rose, and then at the end of the stem, on the final note, it goes to different sounds, to new sounds- it’s like opening a flower. It’s very beautiful.
A composer from Saltzberg first played Le Double for me 25 years ago, and until this day I remember how this music invaded me, how beautiful it was, and how interesting and how different from what I had heard before. For a great orchestra it’s a great joy to play it, and for a great audience it’s either wonderful to hear it again, or it’s a nice new discovery. That’s why I put this in one of the concerts of my last season.”
The Houston Symphony will perform *Copland’s Quiet City for English horn, trumpet and strings; Dutilleux’s Symphony No. 2, Le Double; and *Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World January 11*, 12, 13, 2013.
*Friday ACCESS concert only includes this work.
Click here for tickets.
Take a listen to Dutilleux’s Symphony No.2, Le Double, movement i. Animato, ma misterioso, performed by the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Barenboim:
