Susan Graham

Ilya Poletaev

Orchestra of St. Luke's

David Robertson

JUNE 27 OPENING NIGHT - Susan Graham    
Beethoven's Fifth
Saturday, 8:30pm ~ Venetian Theater
Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Ilya Poletaev, piano; Orchestra of St. Luke’s; David Robertson, conductor

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, glamorous star of the Metropolitan Opera, opens the 64th International Music Festival with a selection of Mozart's most beautiful and emotionally affecting arias. Caramoor's resident Orchestra of St. Luke's, under the baton of internationally renowned Maestro David Robertson, gives a blazing performance of the most famous symphony of all time, Beethoven's Fifth.

ABOUT THE MUSIC
Gioachino Rossini
Overture to La gazza ladra
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy, on February 29, 1792 and died at Passy, near Paris, on  November 13, 1868. He composed La gazza ladra in the spring of 1817 for a production at La Scala, Milan. The overture calls for flute and piccolo, two each of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, bass drum, triangle, two snare drums, and strings. Duration is about 10 minutes.

Audiences today know Rossini primarily as the composer of fresh and vivid stage works in the genre known as opera buffa, or comic opera, of which the finest example is The Barber of Seville. Historians have also shown that his influence on the history of Italian opera was pre eminent in the opera seria, or “serious,” era. Rossini’s serious works created the forms and standard theatrical devices employed by a whole generation of Italian composers. Some of Rossini’s most interesting operas-including La gazza ladra (“The thieving magpie”)-fall in between the schools, defined in his own day as semiseria-“semi-serious.” Semi-serious opera involved a serious subject treated in a melodramatic or sentimental manner, with a happy ending. Comic elements (frequently provided by servants) were part of the whole. The story usually dealt with middle class characters, often in a contemporary setting. There is frequently, as in La gazza ladra, a prisoner unjustly condemned; most often the prisoner is a peasant or girl of the lower classes persecuted by the lord of the manor or some other authority figure-often one who is attempting to seduce the girl, but has her imprisoned when he fails in his attempts.

La gazza ladra has a rather complex plot that hinges on a character accused of stealing silver tableware from her employers (who incautiously leave their lavishly set table unguarded in the town square). At the climactic moment the townspeople learn the truth that the audience is aware of from the beginning-that the real thief is the emplyers' magpie, which flied to the table and carries off the shiny silverware.  All is put right in time for a happy ending.

Rossini produced his Cenerentola in Rome early in 1817; he left that city on February 11 and traveled in a leisurely manner with several stops to Milan, where he arrived early in March. There he found a new libretto, written by Giovanni Gherardini on the basis of a French play, all ready for him. In this instance he had a fairly long time to work on the opera-nearly three months elapsed from the time he received the libretto until the production!-and he made good use of this time. In this opera he made no wholesale borrowings from earlier works, but elaborated the complicated tale with richly varied music. La gazza ladra broadened Rossini’s art, allowing him to put elements of the comic and tragic, though without the exaggerations of opera buffa and the rhetoric of opera seria, in the same piece.

For this remarkable opera, Rossini wrote one of his finest overtures. It has never lost popularity, though the fortunes of Rossini’s operas themselves have waxed and waned. It begins with an unusual effect-antiphonal snare drum rolls, followed by a military march. This has little to do with the opera itself (though soldiers appear in the piece, they are less important as soldiers than this striking opening might suggest), but Rossini knew well that the snare drums would catch the ears of the audience at once. A section of music in the minor key will be used in the opera during the heroine’s prison scene (a rare case of music of the overture from a Rossini opera actually appearing again during the course of the work), and the whole concludes with an unusually effective example of the “Rossini crescendo.” 

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Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Scena, “Ch’io mi scordi di te,”  with Rondo, “Non temer, amato bene,”  for soprano and piano obbligato, K.505

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began calling himself Wolfgang Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777, was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. The manuscript of the Scena con Rondo bore the date December 27, 1786; the composer’s own handwritten catalogue of his works bore The comment that it was composed “for Mlle. Storace and myself,” the lady in question being Nancy Storace, the charming twenty-one-year-old prima donna who had been Mozart’s first Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro. The first performance certainly took place at some small, private gathering with a chamber-sized ensemble and the dedicatee and composer as featured soloists (though the date is unknown), but the soprano sang it also as her farewell to the Viennese public before leaving Vienna to return to England in the early spring of 1787. In addition to the voice and the piano, the score calls for clarinets, bassoons, and horns in pairs plus strings (Mozart’s manuscript specified two violins, two violas, and bass—by which he meant both cello and double bass). Duration is about 7 minutes.

It would be difficult not to fall in love with Susanna. Figaro’s bride is a Mozartean creation so completely rounded, so fully achieved—self-sufficient and intelligent, simple yet possessed of a quick wit, maliciously catty when vexed, serious when necessary and playful whenever possible, warm, loving, and loyal-that as she wends her way through the plot twists of that crazy day that comprises The Marriage of Figaro, she leaves behind her the broken hearts of young Cherubino and the rakish Count Almaviva-not to mention scores of males in the audience. So brilliantly does Mozart characterize this truly lovable figure in his music that we must, perforce, love her, no matter who is singing the role, so long as the performance is anything more than just adequate. There are many reports of the abundant charm possessed by Nancy Storace, who first sang the role of Susanna at the opera’s premiere, and Alfred Einstein maintains that Mozart was in love with her-though, since we possess no details whatever of their personal relationship, it remains a moot point whether the composer was in love with the actual woman or his own operatic creation whom she personified. In any case, his warmth of feeling issued forth in one of the most ravishing musical love letters ever composed.

 Ann (Nancy) Storace was a young soprano, born in London of an Irish mother and an Italian father. She studied voice in Italy, where she had made her debut on the stage while still in her teens. In 1783, at eighteen, she joined the Italian Opera in Vienna. Her brother Stephen was a composition student of Mozart’s and later a popular composer of comic operas in England, and both the Storaces became close friends of the composer’s. Nancy was only nineteen when she earned her niche in the history of music as Mozart’s first Susanna.

As a performer she made her greatest mark in comic opera, where her acting and theatrical temperament carried her to considerable popularity. From the purely vocal point of view, her art was not regarded as attaining the highest levels of refinement; according to Burney her voice had “a certain crack and roughness” when she attempted serious roles, in which sheer vocal quality was the prime element. She did not put on great displays of fioritura, but rather sang in a style filled with warmth and tenderness. All agreed with Burney, though, that she was “a lively and intelligent actress, and an excellent performer in comic operas.”

At some point before coming to Vienna, Nancy Storace married an Italian who, according to the reports, treated her so cruelly that the Emperor banned him from the city. The couple separated and the singer used her maiden name for the rest of her life. It is certainly possible that Mozart, as one of the Storaces’ closest friends in Vienna, played some part in consoling her during these troubles. When, by the end of 1786, Stephen and Nancy Storace determined to return to London, they invited Mozart to accompany them, though nothing came of the plan, any more than the 1790 invitation from Salomon (who did persuade Haydn to visit London, but not Mozart). Their departure was set for early in 1787, so when Mozart wrote his finest concert aria, “Ch’io mi scordi di te” for Nancy on 26 or 27 December 1786, it was as a token of farewell. This is especially clear from the obbligato piano part he wrote into the score for himself, which turned this aria into a close-knit duet between Nancy Storace and Mozart.

Five years earlier Mozart had written his opera Idomeneo for Munich, where it had been seen three times and then had lain unplayed until a private concert performance was given in Vienna in March 1786. On that occasion, Mozart composed a new aria with obbligato violin (“Non più, tutto ascoltai,” K.490) for insertion into the score. The very same text-with the slight omission of a few words at the beginning of the recitative-served him in December for “Ch’io mi scordi di te?” The author of the words has never been identified, though one often finds the assumption that the poet was Giambattista Varesco, who had written the original libretto to Idomeneo. This is very unlikely. The only librettist actually working with Mozart in late 1786 was Lorenzo Da Ponte, who had written the libretto for The Marriage of Figaro and for Don Giovanni, which Mozart was to finish in 1787. It is possible that he cranked out a few lines of verse for the substitute aria, though there is no evidence whatsoever, so the author’s identity must remain a secret.

In Idomeneo the text was placed at the beginning of Act 2. Ilia reproaches Idamante over his love for Electra. Idamante tries to calm her by proclaiming that such reproaches are unjust and cause him measureless pain, since his love for her remains strong. The choice of this text for a self-sufficient aria composed for Nancy Storace not long before her departure from Vienna can be interpreted as a confession of love, to be sure, but we must be wary of reading too much into a poem that is no more than a flowery and conventional expression of devotion such as numberless poetasters cranked out by the yard for musical settings. More to the point, Mozart’s music, in which the voice and piano alternate and join in intimate duet, expresses great warmth and a depth of emotion rarely found in the hybrid form of the concert aria.

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Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Two arias from La clemenza di Tito, K.621
“Deh, per questo istante solo” (Sesto), from Act II
“Parto, parto, ma tub en mio” (Sesto), from Act I

Mozart composed La clemenza di Tito, an opera seria in two acts, in the summer of 1791 for a performance that September at the National Theater in Prague. The libretto was based on a popular older text by Metastasio, adapted to Mozart’s requirements by Caterino Mazzolà. Sesto’s arias “Parto, parto ma tub en mio” and “Deh, per questo istante solo” are among the climactic moments of the opera. The role was written for a soprano castrato (sung in modern performances by a mezzo soprano). The instrumentation for the Act II aria calls one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings, and for the Act I aria two oboes, clarinet solo, two bassoons, two horns in high B-flat, and strings. Durations are about 7 minutes and 6 minutes, respectively.

Probably no major composition of Mozart’s maturity is less well known today than his final opera, La clemenza di Tito, composed in the late summer of 1791 for a festive production given in Prague-the city that before all others took Mozart to its heart-in conjunction with the coronation ceremony of the new Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia. It is ironic that the opera should be so little known. For one thing, Mozartolatry has reached such heights that almost anything coming from his pen, at any age, is treasured by music lovers. For another, La clemenza di Tito was (after a slow start) among the most popular of all Mozart’s works in the years immediately following his death; it enjoyed numerous revivals and had achieved no fewer than fifteen printed editions by 1810! Yet until about three decades ago, no major work of Mozart’s had fallen lower in public esteem.

It was said that Mozart composed the work only because he needed money and that he did it carelessly and in haste. The style and form in which it was written, we are told, is the outmoded conventional opera seria, which Mozart himself had avoided since composing Idomeneo ten years earlier. The plot-particularly on its central point of Titus’s clemency-was unrealistic and anticlimactic. We read that only eighteen days elapsed between the beginning and end of the act of composition, and that Mozart relegated the entire job of composing the recitatives to his pupil Süssmayer. We are told that the opera’s austere style is a sign of the composer’s haste. Surely such an opera could be nothing but the merest makeshift, unworthy the name of Mozart?

Then, in 1974, a new production of Tito at Covent Garden under the direction of Colin Davis became a turning point in the work’s reception. In a matter of a few years the opera was hailed as truly Mozartean, as a newly discovered link between the opera seria of the Baroque and the great romantic serious operas of Rossini, Bellini, Spontini, and even Verdi. We can now see Mozart at the peak of his powers composing virtually at the same time two very different operas-a sustained, autumnal classical tragedy (using these two words in the sense of Racine) in La clemenza di Tito, and a lively, popularist folk comedy with universal humanistic overtones in The Magic Flute. The opera is set in ancient Rome about the year 80, in the reign of one the very few “good” Caesars, Titus (Tito), the son of Vespasian. His friend Sextus (Sesto) is the rival of Titus in love and he is eventually goaded into setting a fire in the forum and assassinating Titus. He succeeds in the first, but not in the second. Following a powerfully dramatic scene with Tito in which Sesto is placed in the position either of lying to his friend or betraying the woman he loves, Sesto finally confesses his treason and asks for death. As he is being led away under guard, Sesto asks to kiss Caesar’s hand for the last time. This leads into the aria that is the culmination of the scene, Deh per questo istante solo. Coming on the heels of about four minutes of tumultuous recitative with constantly changing harmonies and more rapid exchanges of bitter words, the aria opens as an eloquent moment of calm and classical reserve, though Sesto soon loses control enough to break out in a dark prediction of his coming death in a comparatively dark key and express his increasing anguish in the closing fast section. (Of course, as the title of the opera hints to us already, he will not, in the end, have to face the executioner.)

In Act I, Vitellia believes that the Emperor Tito will marry her. But when he announces his intent to wed Servilia, the spurned bride uses her charms on Sesto, who is also in love with her, to draw him into a treasonous plot against Tito. Though at first unwilling to act against his friend, Sesto finally agrees, in the hope that she will return his love if he acts on her behalf. The aria  begins in a pleading Adagio (with an elaborate clarinet obbligato) as he pleads with her to return to him; then, in a virtuosic Allegro, he vows to avenge the insult against her, but not without exclaiming at the overwhelming power that the gods give to beauty, which is leading him to this fatal act of betrayal against his friend.

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Ludwig Van Beethoven
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn, Germany, on December 17, 1770 (he was probably born the day before), and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. He began to sketch the Fifth Symphony in 1804, did most of the work in 1807, completed the score in the spring of 1808, and led the first performance on December 22, 1808. The symphony is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 31 minutes.

 In the years just after 1800, Beethoven was repeatedly invited to take part as performer and composer in concerts intended to raise money for charitable purposes. After performing three times in such concerts, he was given the free use of the Theater-an-der-Wien for a concert of his own on December 22, 1808. The program that night consisted entirely of Beethoven’s own works in their first performances. The evening began at 6:30 p.m. with the Sixth Symphony, followed by the concert aria Ah, perfido,  two movements from the Mass in C, and the Fourth Piano Concerto (with the composer himself as soloist) on the first half. After intermission the audience heard for the first time the Fifth Symphony, a piano fantasy improvised by the composer, and the Choral Fantasy. The last piece did not end until 10:30!

Such a concert is a challenge to the attention span of the most dedicated music lover, even in a day when concerts normally ran longer than they do today. It is not surprising that most of the critical reviews and reminiscences dwelt on the one real catastrophe of the evening, when the orchestra fell apart in the middle of the Choral Fantasy and the whole piece had to be started over.

Thus, the most important and influential reaction to the Fifth Symphony did not come until a year and a half later, when a review of another performance was printed in the prestigious Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, a journal that had never been wholly pro-Beethoven. But in this case the reviewer was the famous writer E.T.A. Hoffmann (whose wide-ranging talents included competence as a composer). His enthusiastic appraisal of the Fifth Symphony as a landmark in the history of music was largely responsible for a new critical perception of Beethoven. To Hoffmann, Music invites the listener “to surrender himself to the inexpressible.”

Haydn and Mozart already towered as the “creators of modern instrumental music,” and Beethoven was a colossal new figure. Hoffmann’s waxed ecstatic in his description of the new symphony:

Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing-a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live and are captivated beholders of the spirits.

The overwhelming energy and expressive richness of the C-minor symphony left early audiences stupefied or exhilarated. Even among people who have never attended an orchestral concert, the opening phrase can conjure up the very idea of “Symphony,” much as the question “To be or not to be?” conjures up not only the indecisive Prince of Denmark but all of Shakespeare. Inevitably, with so popular a work, the question is asked: What does it mean? Beethoven’s own answer, to one of the many curious persons who asked him what his music was about, was “Thus Fate knocks at the door.”

Here, as in other, similar cases, Beethoven was no doubt seizing a ready bon mot to satisfy a casual acquaintance. And yet, as such things go, this one is certainly appropriate. The notion of Fate, and the self-evident struggle that takes place in the four movements of this powerful score have resulted in a century’s overlay of other notions, too-most widespread during World War II, when the coincidence of the opening four notes of the symphony corresponding rhythmically to the Morse code for “V” and the ubiquitous “V for Victory” gesture of Winston Churchill turned Beethoven’s Fifth almost overnight into the “Victory Symphony.”

But the “victory” thus superimposed on this score is inherent in the music itself, predicated on ideas worked out in purely abstract musical ways-this is perhaps what so excited Hoffmann. This is why the score grips us today no matter how many times we have heard it. Beethoven’s sense of the struggle, and his vision of the final victory, grew over a period of years as he kept returning to his sketchbooks to develop his ideas nearer and nearer to fruition. After noting the first sketches about 1804, Beethoven first wrote the Piano Concerto No. 4. When he returned to the C-minor symphony, he worked out its details at the same time that he was working out the Sixth as well. These two symphonies, composed together, inhabit totally different musical universes-the Fifth, with its demonic energy, tense harmonies, and powerful dramatic climaxes on the one hand, and the Sixth, with its smiling and sunny air of relaxation and joy on the other. In one respect only do the two symphonies reveal their simultaneous composition: Beethoven was experimenting with links between movements here, and in both of these symphonies-as never before and never again-he composed a carefully plotted transition linking the last two movements. The decision to write a transition at all came at a fairly late stage in the composition and marks a shift from the traditional center of gravity for a symphony from the weighty first-movement sonata form to a still more potent finale (rather than the sort of witty-epigrammatic rondo-sonatas that Haydn had preferred in his finales).

Is it possible, at this late date, to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth not as if it were the most familiar of symphonies, but rather as if it were brand new? Listen to the first four notes, followed by their immediate, and slightly varied echo-and try to guess how to continue. That four-note figure clearly assumes great importance from the outset, but the more we hear of it the more we marvel: this little musical atom is not a theme in itself; it is the rhythmic foreground to an extraordinarily long-limbed melody-a polymer, to continue the chemical analogy-made up of a surprising chain of four-note atoms. Our ears hear a long phrase, but no one in the orchestra actually plays it: following the first two full-orchestra statements, the second violins contribute four notes before being overlapped by the violas, which in turn are superseded by the first violins, and so on. The growing, tensely climbing phrase is an aural illusion. The rapid interplay of orchestral sections, a constantly boiling cauldron in which each has its own brief say before yielding to the next, lends a dramatic quality to the sound of the orchestra from the very opening, a sense of the theatrical that is instantly self-evident.

The drama in the Fifth Symphony is a musical one: How to achieve a coherent and fully satisfying conclusion in the major mode to a symphony that begins in the minor? In most minor-key symphonies before this one, the major-key ending was expected, conventional, achieved without struggles or doubts. But throughout the four movements of this symphony, C major keeps appearing without ever quite exorcizing the haunting sense of C minor--never, that is, until the end of the last movement. In the opening Allegro, the C major appears right on schedule where it is conventionally expected-at the recapitulation of the secondary theme. But instead of continuing in that vein, the lengthy coda goes on-in C minor-to assert that we have, as yet, no triumph, only continued struggle. In the Andante, Beethoven keeps moving with a surprising modulation from the home key of A flat to a bright C major, reinforced by trumpets and timpani. But that C major idea is never once allowed to come to a full conclusion; rather, it fades away, shrouded in harmonic mists and sustained tension. The very unjoking scherzo (in C minor) turns to C major for a Trio involving some contrapuntal buffoonery, but the fun comes to an end with a hushed return to the minor-key material of the opening. It is here that we begin to approach the light, moving through the darkness of the linking passage between the movements to a glorious sunburst of C major opening the finale-but we have not yet reached the major mode permanently. The scherzo and the tense linking passage are recalled just before the recapitulation (to provide another shift from gloom to bright day); only then are we at last fully confirmed in C major. And as if to celebrate this achievement, Beethoven even enlarges his orchestra with the addition of a piccolo on the top and three trombones on the bottom-the first time either instrument appeared in the symphonic repertory-so that his success can sound even more resonantly. An extended coda-an extraordinary peroration in C major-needs to be as long as it is because it is not just the conclusion of the last movement, but rather of the entire symphony, culminating a demonstration of unification on the very grandest scale to which virtually every composer since has aspired, though few have succeeded. 

© Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Susan Graham, Mezzo-soprano
Susan Graham is one of the world’s foremost opera and recital stars, a compelling and versatile singing actress.  Celebrated as an expert in French music, Ms. Graham has been honored by the French government as a “Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres”.  This season, she performs a variety of repertoire in many different countries, beginning with Berlioz in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.  She performs Mozart and Berlioz at the Metropolitan Opera, Bernstein and Rorem at Carnegie Hall, and Massenet in Munich and Paris.  Ms. Graham hosts the fourth annual Opera News Awards in New York, performs at the famed Prague Spring Festival, and closes her season with recitals in Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Vienna, and Brussels.  She sings her first Metropolitan Opera performances as Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and is Marguérite in the Met’s debut staging of Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust.  At Carnegie Hall, she sings “Arias and Barcarolles” in the citywide Leonard Bernstein Festival and later participates in the gala honoring Marilyn Horne’s 75th birthday.  Berg’s Seven Early Songs are on her St. Louis program; Mozart arias are scheduled for Salzburg, and she sings newly-orchestrated songs by Ned Rorem with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Ms. Graham, a leading participant in the international Christoph Willibald Gluck opera revival, has sung the title role of Iphigénie en Tauride in a new production staged for her by the Metropolitan Opera, and at Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.  The Chicago Tribune wrote: “Graham put her own stamp on the part, bringing both nobility and vibrant vocal beauty to her affecting performance.”

 At home and abroad, Susan Graham has sung leading roles from the 17th to 20th centuries in the great opera houses of the world, including Milan’s La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Dresden’s Semperoper, and the Salzburg Festival, and she has appeared with most of the world’s leading conductors and orchestras.  Dubbed “America’s favorite mezzo” by Gramophone magazine, the Grammy Award-winning mezzo captivates audiences with her expressive voice, tall and graceful stature, and engaging acting ability in both comedy and tragedy.

Last season at the Metropolitan Opera, Susan Graham performed not only Iphigénie but also Mozart’s Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, and sang recitals in London, Madrid, Amsterdam, and Paris with her frequent collaborator, pianist Malcolm Martineau.  Her season finale, with San Francisco Opera as Handel’s Ariodante, prompted unanimous praise, including a San Francisco Chronicle tribute: “Susan Graham added one more entry to her long list of triumphs with the company, turning in a performance marked by nobility and technical bravura.”

Ms. Graham created the part of Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking for San Francisco Opera, and created leading roles in two Metropolitan Opera world premieres – An American Tragedy by Tobias Picker, and John Harbison’s Great Gatsby.

Susan Graham releases two new recordings this season: Un frisson français, with Malcolm Martineau, which surveys a century of French song; and her famous interpretation of La mort de Cléopatre by Hector Berlioz, recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, which is released by EMI Classics.  Earlier solo CDs include “Poèmes de l’amour”, with Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer.  Among her numerous solo recitals and complete opera recordings, her disc of Charles Ives songs with Pierre-Laurent Aimard won a Grammy, and she received both a Grammy nomination and France’s Maria Callas award for her Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.  The New York Times review stated: “Ms. Graham … paints Dido as passionate from the start.  ‘When I am laid in earth’ is as wrenching an account as you’ll find on disc.”

Ms. Graham’s complete opera recordings range from Handel’s Alcina and Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride to Barber’s Vanessa and Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.  After a performance of Berlioz’s Les Troyans conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner at the Paris Châtelet, and recorded live for DVD, the Gramophone found Ms. Graham’s Dido “moving and intense [;] … strongly acted and magnificently sung.”

Born in New Mexico and raised in Texas, Susan Graham studied at Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School of Music, which also awarded her an honorary Doctor of Music degree in 2008.  She won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the Schwabacher Award from San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, as well as a Career Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation.  Ms. Graham was Musical America’s 2004 Vocalist of the Year and, in 2006, her home town of Midland, Texas, declared September 5th “Susan Graham Day”.

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Ilya Poletaev, piano

A winner of the 2009 National Astral Artists Auditions, Ilya Poletaev leads a multifaceted career as both a classically trained pianist as well as a performer on early keyboards. As a solo pianist, Mr. Poletaev has appeared with the Toronto and Hartford symphony orchestras as well as with Orchestra Filarmonica “Mihail Jora” di Bacau. He was the First Prize winner of the XX Concorso Sala Gallo piano competition in Monza, Italy, where he also received the Audience Prize, the Bach Prize, and the Orchestra Prize. He also captured First Prize at the 2009 Grieg International Competition, and was a laureate of the 2008 National Stepping Stone Competition in Canada.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Poletaev has performed alongside such distinguished artists as Robert Mann, Donald Weilerstein, Gary Hoffmann, Boris Berman, Paul Hersh, and Susan Narucki. He has also appeared at the Moab, Caramoor, Sarasota, Norfolk, Yellow Barn, Banff, the Orford Arts Center, and Stratford Summer Music festivals. He is a member of the Lórien Trio, which has been a prizewinner at the 2009 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. As a harpsichordist, Mr. Poletaev was the top prizewinner of the 2007 Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society harpsichord competition, and has been heard in such venues as Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall, the New York City’s Pierpont Morgan Library, the Aston Magna Early Music Festival, the Amherst Early Music Festival, and Yale’s Collection of Musical Instruments. As a continuo player, he has performed under such conductors as Andrew Lawrence-King, Steven Stubbs, Nicholas McGegan, Simon Carrington, Graham O’Reilly, and Helmuth Rilling.

Upcoming engagements include a performance at the Caramoor Festival with renowned mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and the orchestra of St. Luke’s, and solo recitals at Italy’s Festival Lago Maggiore, the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, and the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw, Poland.

Mr. Poletaev began studying in Moscow at the age of six, and continued his studies in Israel until he moved to Canada at the age of 14. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Marietta Orlov (piano) and Colin Tilney (harpsichord), and Master’s degrees from Yale, where he studied with Boris Berman. Between 2005 and 2007, he served on the faculty of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He is currently on the faculty of the Yale Department of Music as a lecturer in early music and is a candidate for the Yale D.M.A.

Mr. Poletaev was a Carmela S. Haklisch Rising Star at Caramoor in 2004. He last appeared at Caramoor in November 2008, performing in the Indoors series “The Eternal Bach.”

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David Robertson, Conductor
American conductor David Robertson is highly acclaimed worldwide for his impeccable musicianship, exhilarating presence and innovative programming, which continue to inspire and enthrall audiences and fellow musicians alike.  Equally at home in both orchestral and operatic realms, Robertson’s combination of passion and intellect have established him as a leading interpreter of both the standard classical repertoire as well as less traditional works of our time.  Fall 2008 finds Mr. Robertson embarking on his fourth season as Music Director of the 128-year-old Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, while continuing as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a post to which he was appointed in 2005. 

In addition to his commitments with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Robertson continues to guest conduct nationally and internationally throughout the 2008-09 season.  Highlights of the season include several world premieres of works by composers such as Miroslav Srnka with the Ensemble Intercontemporain; Sam Hayden with the BBC Symphony; and Ivan Fedele with the Filarmonica della Scala, as well as U.S. premieres of works by HK Gruber, Steven Mackey, Kaija Saariaho and Mark-Anthony Turnage, all with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in St. Louis.  In April 2009, David Robertson brings his orchestra to New York’s Carnegie Hall for two consecutive concerts including works by Mozart, Satie, HK Gruber, Stravinsky, Wagner and Sibelius, as well as the New York premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s award-winning Mirage, featuring soloists Karita Mattila, soprano, and Anssi Karttunen, cellist.  Prior to his Carnegie Hall concerts with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Robertson conducted The Juilliard Orchestra in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite as part of the inaugural concert of the much-anticipated Alice Tully Hall Opening Nights Festival on February 22, followed by a second concert on February 26 featuring Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles.  Additional guest appearances in the U.S. include performances with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as the San Francisco Symphony and Seattle Symphony.  Internationally, Mr. Robertson appears with the Sydney Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival.

David Robertson also returns to Milan’s legendary Teatro alla Scala in April 2009 for performances of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, produced and directed by Robert Lepage, and subscription concerts with the Filarmonica della Scala. 

A recognized expert in 20th and 21st-century music with extensive international conducting credits, Mr. Robertson has held several posts abroad.  Prior to his Saint Louis Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestra appointments, Mr. Robertson was the first artist ever to simultaneously hold the posts of Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon and Artistic Director of that city’s Auditorium, posts he held from 2000–2004.   From  1992–2000, he was Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, of which Pierre Boulez is Honorary President, and from 1985-1987, he was Resident Conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Additional international conducting relationships include the Edinburgh Festival, La Scala, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Philharmonic, and Bayerischer Rundfunk Symphonieorchester, among others.  A popular guest conductor in North America as well, Mr. Robertson regularly guest conducts the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony.  Equally successful on the operatic scene with over 45 operas in his repertoire, Mr. Robertson’s opera house credits include the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Opéra de Lyon, Bayerische Staatsoper, Théâtre du Châtelet, Hamburg State Opera and San Francisco Opera.

David Robertson has made numerous recordings for the Sony Classical, Naive, EMI/Virgin Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Atlantic/Erato, Nuema, Adès, Valois and Naxos labels.  His recordings include works by such composers as Adams, Bartók, Boulez, Carter, Dusapin, Dvorák, Ginastera, Lalo, Milhaud, Reich, Saint-Saëns, and Silvestrov.

Hailed “a natural teacher” by The New York Times, David Robertson has devoted time throughout his career to working with students and young artists.  He is credited with creating and leading many outreach programs with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Orchestre National de Lyon, and has worked with students at the Paris Conservatory, The Juilliard School, Tanglewood, the National Orchestral Institute in Maryland, the Aspen Music Festival and as part of Carnegie Hall’s Perspectives series.

Born in Santa Monica, California, Mr. Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied French horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting.  David Robertson is the recipient of Columbia University’s 2006 Ditson Conductor’s Award, and he and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra received the ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming for the 2005-06 season from the American Symphony Orchestra League.  Musical America named him Conductor of the Year for 2000.  In 1997, Mr. Robertson received the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, the premier prize of its kind, given to exceptionally gifted American conductors.  In May 2007, he was granted an honorary doctorate from Maryville University. David Robertson and his wife, pianist Orli Shaham, are parents of twin boys. Mr. Robertson also has two teenage sons. 

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