On Saturday, February 15th, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra presents a mid-winter concert, Modernism and the World of Yesterday at the Flynn. Music Director Andrew Crust leads the orchestra in an exciting and varied program that pairs living and past composers. The concert is headlined by pianist and composer Sir Stephen Hough, who will be performing the east coast premiere of his new piano concerto, The World of Yesterday. Helen Lyons caught up with Andrew Crust to bring our listeners some insight on this weekend's program.
TRANSCRIPT
ANDREW CRUST: It's worth pointing out, not every pianist volunteers to do two concerti on one program. So, you know, he can really do it all. It's quite impressive.
HELEN LYONS: That's the music director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Crust, speaking of the VSO's headliner for their February 15th concert at the Flynn, pianist Sir Stephen Hough. Hough will be performing Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1, as well as a brand new work, his own piano concerto, titled The World of Yesterday. The work is inspired by the last book of Stefan Zweig, a memoir of his cultural life in Vienna before the First World War. Saturday's concert will be the East Coast premiere of the concerto in a program titled Modernism and the World of Yesterday...How did you decide on the pairing of Mendelssohn with Hough's new work?
CRUST: Well, I just thought, you know, people don't know his new concerto, and if his name is not enough to draw people in, I thought, let's put something on there by a composer they may well know, and he immediately agreed to basically double his workload, and did recommend the Mendelssohn himself. It's a piece he loves, and I believe he's recorded. We want to make soloists feel really comfortable with what they're presenting, and I kind of gave him carte blanche here and was more than happy to present his concerto.
LYONS: Tell us about how the theme of this concert came together with your lineup of composers.
CRUST: Well, at first glance, this program might look a little eclectic, and, and it is, in fact, and this theme of Modernism in the World of Yesterday tries to kind of capture that. We have two living composers, both of them happen to be British, that's Sir Stephen Hough and Anna Clyne. And then we have Mendelssohn, who comes from a bygone era, and then, of course, Wojciech Kilar, who died in 2013.
The theme actually has to do a lot with this the Stephen Hough Concerto, The World of Yesterday, because he combines a lot of these different styles of many of the famous pianist composers. These are people who, in order to make a living, it was a tradition to not only be a composer but also be a performer, going back all the way to Mozart, who wrote his own concertos, of course, Beethoven and Brahms. And then going further, Liszt and Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. That's something that today doesn't exist much anymore, but Sir Stephen has made sure that he's following in the footsteps of those giants. And so it's a program that looks forward and looks backward at the same time鈥tephen Hough has been described as a polymath many times. We always feature incredible world-class guest artists, but he's a little bit different in that he has so many skills and so many different areas of knowledge, and one of them is history. He's written 4 books, he paints, he does visual art. He has many recordings, but he's very interested in literature, and he's also written fiction and nonfiction. It's not just biography. So I think he's a man of many talents, and that comes through in his music.
LYONS: So this is the East Coast premiere, only the second performance of the work. Since there's no recording yet, can you describe the piece for us?
CRUST: It's got a bit of nostalgia. He tends to go in that direction sometimes with his music, and I mentioned that it's inspired by older composers, older form, but he has his own voice as well. So there's a little bit of sort of heart wrenching, warm feeling, very tonal music, but then he develops a kind of a mad waltz and variations which goes all different places. And I will say it's very fun and very interesting for the orchestra. I think Sir Stephen really understands the colors of the orchestra, percussion, just all sorts of, you know, extended techniques, and it's a piece that will keep you interested for the entire duration.
LYONS: Let's talk about the two remaining composers on the program. Anna Clyne's Sound and Fury has a literary connection with Shakespeare and includes a Haydn reference within the work. Tell us about the piece and what the audience can expect.
CRUST: I would say that the Shakespeare's kind of taken over the core of this piece and this is obviously a Macbeth reference. The 'Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow' soliloquy is the last soliloquy by Macbeth after learning of the death of his wife. And it's such a powerful moment. And actually, we added another literary twist into this concert - because I think that ended up being the theme somehow - literary connections. Vermont-based author M.T. Anderson is going to be joining us on stage to deliver that soliloquy from Macbeth, which is actually intended in the score that the soliloquy is supposed to be recited over the top of the music. So it's going to be kind of a literary party this week.
LYONS: And we're working a little bit backward here, but opening the program, you have Wojciech Kilar鈥檚 Orawa, a tribute to his homeland of Poland. This piece is a favorite of yours to conduct. How would you describe it?
CRUST: Orawa is a region in southern Poland, also northern Slovakia, which is full of mountains and rivers, and many of the techniques in the piece sound like rustic mountain folk fiddlers, and he loved this piece. He said it's the only piece in which I wouldn't change a single note. To me, it sounds like a little bit of mist or water at the top of the mountain, slowly gathering other bits of water and, and becoming a raging river. By the end of it, it's just so rhythmically driving and so intense. The colors are always changing. It's quite minimalistic in its color, but then it really grows, and by the end, the audience just goes wild every time I've done this piece. It's got so much intensity. So I'm excited to bring this to the state, probably for the first time, certainly to the VSO for the first time.
LYONS: And lastly, you have a treat for ticket holders the night before the concert. You'll be pulling back the curtain a bit and allowing folks in to watch your dress rehearsal.
CRUST: So it's the Friday before the concert at 7 p.m., and you have to have tickets, but it's just an opportunity to see a working rehearsal that we've been doing for all of our Flynn concerts. Stephen will be there, and we set up a microphone so people can hear kind of what I'm saying in an ambient way, and they can really follow what's going on. I think people really find that interesting. And they can, of course, move around the hall鈥t's been really successful so far.
LYONS: This sounds like it's going to be an exciting evening. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to 开云体育 Classical's listeners about it.
You can join Andrew Crust, pianist Sir Stephen Hough, and the VSO for their action-packed concert, Modernism and the World of Yesterday, Saturday, February 15th at 7:30 at the Flynn with a pre-concert talk at 6:30. For more information and tickets, head to .
