A Salute to Shakespeare
Franz Liszt- Hamlet David Diamond- Romeo & Juliet Ludwig van Beethoven- Symphony No. 5 in c minor Artistic Partner- Idaho Shakespeare Festival Guest Artists: Katie Mueller Michael Mueller Richard Klautsch Katie Mueller Katie is thrilled to be working with the Boise Philharmonic for the first time! She is in her 9th season with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival; first starting out as both a student and teacher with The Drama School, Katie then joined the Apprentice program, and then moved in with the acting company in 2004. That same year, she toured with the Shakespearience production of Romeo and Juliet where she met her real Romeo, and now husband, Michael. In the fall of 2006, she directed an all-student-produced production of Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal at Boise State University, where she received her BA in theatre arts with an emphasis in performing. She would like to thank her fabulous family for their love and support, to her son Roman for keeping her inner child in motion, and to Michael for always being by her side. I love you all. Michael Mueller Michael is very excited to be collaborating with the Boise Philharmonic for the first time. Michael is in his 5th season with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, as well as having been part of three Shakespearience touring productions, mostly recently having played Laertes in Hamlet. Other credits include Long Beach Playhouse’s Beyond Therapy (Bruce); the Cleveland Playhouse’s Pecos Bill (Pecos) and The Red Badge of Courage (Henry); Factor Theatre’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Rosencrantz); Ensemble Theatre’s The Shape of Things (Adam); Actor’s Repertory Theatre’s Long Days Journey Into Night (Edmund), Twelfth Night (Feste) and Private Lives (Victor); Powerhouse Pub’s Flanagan’s Wake (Mickey, Brian, Mayor, Mother); and the S. Dayton Dance Theatre’s The Nutcracker (Arabian/Cavalier). He would like to thank his family, friends, wife Katie and son Roman for all their love and support. Richard Klautsch Richard has been a professional actor in Boise since 1992. He has worked for eight seasons at Boise Contemporary Theater and for sixteen seasons at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. At BCT, Richard has appeared in True West, The Cherry Orchard, The Underpants, The Memory of Water, and most recently in The Pillowman. He also directed BCT’s Lobby Hero and A Number. At ISF, he has appeared in such roles as LaFew in All’s Well That Ends Well, The Duke in Measure for Measure (also performed at Great Lakes Theatre Festival in Cleveland), Don Armado in Love’s Labor’s Lost, Kent in King Lear, Brutus in Julius Caesar (also at GLTF), Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Duke Senior in As You Like It, Henry in The Fantasticks, Salieri in Amadeus, Athos in The Three Musketeers, Orsino in Twelfth Night, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Macduff in Macbeth, Elyot in Private Lives, and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Last spring he performed in a production of Art at the Boise Art Museum, directed by Lynn Allison. Two years ago he was a guest artist at UC Santa Barbara, where he appeared in a production of Timon of Athens as part of the Lit Moon World Shakespeare Festival. Richard has performed at Primary Stages in New York City, the Attic and Detroit Repertory Theaters in Detroit, the Shakespeare Society Theatre in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and in Jeff Daniel’s original play Shoe Man at the film actor’s Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Michigan. Richard is the chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at Boise State University. He received his MFA and PhD degrees from Wayne State University in DetroitLiszt: Hamlet Hungarian-born virtuoso pianist, conductor, and composer Franz Liszt was a superstar of his time who traveled ceaselessly and enjoyed the benefits of glamour and fame. He did not appear in public as a pianist after age 35, focusing instead on composition and teaching. Afterward he became increasingly devotional, joining a Franciscan Order but stopping short of full priesthood in order to maintain the rigorous travel requirements. A hybrid work suited to deeply romantic sensibilities, neither overture nor symphony, unbroken in its flow of ideas and sound, and unburdened by any formulas of structure, the symphonic poem was a form Liszt invented and championed. He wrote 13 of them; Hamlet is the next to last. After a performance of Hamlet which he particularly admired, Liszt wrote in a letter that the lead actor “did not make him into an indecisive dreamer who collapses under the power of his mission...but rather a gifted, enterprising prince with important political views who is waiting for the right moment to fulfill his work of revenge and achieve the aim of his ambition; that is, to be crowned king instead of his uncle.” The characters of the play (mainly the protagonist) are the subject of Liszt’s 15-minute work. A long and gloomy introduction sets the tone of tragedy, before the allegro violently intervenes with menacing trombones and surging figures in the strings. A warlike climax is reached, followed by an interlude initiated by the solo flute evoking Ophelia. These two musical ideas (violent Hamlet, unhappy Ophelia) are combined before a climax with repeated loud chords. The melancholy strains of the opening are heard again, ushering in the final section of the work, a funeral march with occasional dramatic outbursts. Diamond: Romeo & Juliet When he was 12, Diamond’s family sent him to Cleveland where he was enrolled at the preparatory division of the Cleveland Institute of Music. This began his formal studies in music, which continued at the Eastman School in Rochester and the New Music School in New York. Eventually he was invited to study with pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in Paris, affording him the opportunity to mingle with many of the important young European artists, writers, and composers. The outbreak of war brought Diamond back to Greenwich Village and initiated a decade of meager living. He played violin for a time on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade to make ends meet, but composed steadily, bringing out his first four symphonies and much of his most enduringly popular works during this period, including Romeo and Juliet. Diamond resisted labels but his compositions may be described as tonally based, rooted firmly in classical and romantic traditions yet, reliant on standard instrumental arrangements to audiences. Romeo and Juliet is a suite composed for an orchestra to play in concert rather than for incidental music for a play. It was occasioned by the inaugural concert of the Little Orchestral Society in October 1947. Of the five movement suite, Diamond wrote that he sought “to convey as fully as possible the innate beauty and pathos of Shakespeare´s great drama without resorting to a large orchestral canvas and a definite musical form." A theatre production involving Olivia De Havilland was mounted in 1951, and the composer was asked whether the score might be altered to fit it; instead, Diamond composed a completely new score, rarely heard today. The five movements of the concert suite capture key points in the bard’s drama, and plumb the essences of the main protagonists: Overture, Balcony Scene, Romeo and Friar Laurence, Juliet and Her Nurse, and The Death of Romeo and Juliet. Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 Fiery, temperamental, paranoid, and sometimes callous to his friends, Beethoven nonetheless harbored a deep longing to give and receive love from fellow humans. His struggles with social relationships were partly due to an arrogant and imperious temperament caused by his unmatched talents as pianist and composer. But the Viennese public, even the highest circles of music-loving aristocracy which supported Beethoven in every effort, could be fickle. Another cause of his social isolation was his increasing deafness, actually a painful roaring sensation gradually impairing his ability to hear other sounds from the age of 26 until his complete deafness by 1814. Conversing with others was uncomfortable for the composer, he eventually came to rely on conversation books. He found solace in long sojourns in the woods and Vienna’s open countryside. Direct inspiration, in some cases, from the sounds of nature and the feelings of cosmic connectedness he experienced there. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was written in his middle period, a time when his works show a concern with ideas of seemingly hopeless adversity overcome by heroic struggle and the human spirit. Beethoven portrayed these themes through a blend of new techniques in orchestration, an emphasis on the dynamic and tonal ranges, and the radical sublimation of classical forms. The Fifth Symphony opens with the most familiar motto in the standard orchestral repertoire, the cell-like structure that built much of the entire symphony. Its rhythmic profile (three short notes on a weak part of the beat succeeded by a single note falling heavily on the downbeat) is as recognizable and as structurally useful as its melodic profile. Beethoven replicates profusely in the opening sequence, building from the seething iterations, a structure builds to an alarming climax. “Fate knocking at the door” was how contemporary listeners described this motive, and fate does not appear to be bringing good news. As the movement proceeds, a timid, graceful melody appears. Just before the final drubbing occurs at the end of the movement, a victim is given a moment to twist in the wind; the image is portrayed by a cadenza for solo oboe. The second movement is a series of variations—the first gentle and sweet; the second, in strong C Major with trumpets, valiant. Beethoven’s staggeringly musical imagination is on display in his free manipulation of these complementary subjects. After a mysterious introduction, the fearsome character of the fate theme reappears in altered form at the beginning of the Scherzo. Double basses and bassoons take a moment to show off some fleet footwork . One of the innovations of this symphony is how Beethoven connects the third movement to the fourth; a passage of weird ambiguity descends. The timpani taps out a few hesitant strokes, and, gathering steam, the orchestra seems to rise from the void to reveal the golden, blazing hero, the subject of the fourth movement. Once again the key is C Major, and the trumpets signal this is the key of triumph. Here for the first time in any of his symphonies, Beethoven invites trombones, the contrabassoon, and a piccolo to participate. When harrowing shadows of the previous movement rear up, their dismissal serves only to heighten the sense of total emotional release. Beethoven wreaks from the tonally and rhythmically–brilliant finish! |
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