Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

David Robertson, conductor

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello

Sarah Kirkland Snider: Something for the Dark

Camille Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, op. 33 Allegro non troppo—Allegretto con moto—Molto allegro Sheku Kanneh-Mason

Emmanuel Chabrier: España, Rhapsody for Orchestra

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol, op. 34 Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso Variations: Andante con moto Alborada: Vivo e strepitoso Scene and Gypsy Song: Allegro Fandango of the Asturias

– There is no intermission in this program. –

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Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

Sarah Kirkland Snider (b. 1973)

Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, three B-flat clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, tom-toms, glockenspiel, triangle, tam-tam, bass drum, vibraphone, marimba, suspended cymbal, crash cymbal, sleigh bells, celeste, snare drum, chimes, crotales, harp, piano, celesta, and strings

A native of Princeton, NJ, Sarah Kirkland Snider studied piano and voice in her youth before attending Wesleyan University as a psychology and sociology major. Composition was an early pursuit—Snider produced her first original music in high school. She returned to composition in graduate school with studies at New York University under Justin Dello Joio and at the Yale School of Music with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and David Lang. Snider has emerged as a fresh compositional voice over the past 15 years. The Washington Post included her among the “top 35 female composers in classical music” in 2017.

Her orchestral song cycle Penelope for mezzo-soprano, string sextet, and live electronics retraces the story of the faithful wife of Odysseus, who craftily dodges a string of suitors while awaiting her husband’s return from the Trojan War. Snider and playwright Ellen McLaughlin originally reimagined this classic tale from Homer’s epic poem for a modern music-theater “monodrama” presented at the J. Paul Getty Center in 2008. The song-cycle adaptation for mezzo-soprano, a percussion-and-strings sextet, and live electronics was composed in 2009 for Shara Worden, the lead singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist of the indie rock band My Brightest Diamond. Time Out New York named the recording of Penelope its Top Classical Album of 2010, and National Public Radio included it among the Five Best Genre-Defying Albums of 2010.

Recent compositional highlights include the Mass for the Endangered (2018), a work commissioned by Trinity Wall Street that combines the time-honored structure of the Latin polyphonic Mass with urgent prayers for all endangered animal life and the fragile environment they/we inhabit. Snider’s newest opera, Hildegard—based on the life of the 12th-century abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen—is scheduled to be premiered in the fall of 2025. An active leader in sharing new music, Snider has co-curated the Look & Listen Festival in modern art galleries (2001–7) and serves as Co-Artistic Director of New Amsterdam Records (2007–present).

Her grants and awards include support from the Jerome Composers Commissioning Fund, Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Opera America, and the Sorel Medallion from the Elizabeth & Michel Sorel Charitable Organization Inc., among others. In 2014, she received the prestigious Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award for Female Composers, which included a commission from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra “in the spirit of recognizing and supporting the creation of new orchestral works by women.”

Snider’s thoughts immediately gravitated to the unwavering grit, fierce determination, and indomitable spirit of the city and its residents. “When I received the commission to write this piece, I thought I would try to write something about hope—it being an essential element of Detroit’s narrative of endurance, or indeed any narrative. Early into my sketches for the piece, I stumbled upon the idea that sounded to [me] like hope incarnate: a bold, noble, full-hearted little melody surrounded by sunlight and dignity and shiny things. I thought that maybe I would open the piece with it and then have the music journey through some adversity to find its way back to an even bigger, bolder statement of optimism. Growth! Triumph! A happy ending! But that wasn’t what happened. The piece opens with the shiny statement of hope and sets out on an uncertain journey to find it again—but can’t. Instead, it encounters strange new echoes of the motif in different, unfamiliar settings. It follows digressions trying to resolve related but new musical arguments. Eventually, it finds its way to solid ground, though this piece is quite a bit darker than where we began. But to my mind this arrival feels more trustworthy, more complete, more worthy of celebration because it feels more real.”

The writings of Philip Levine (1928–2015), a poet born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Detroit, further inspired Something for the Dark. Levine began working the night shift at the Chevrolet Gear & Axle Plant in Hamtramck at age 14, an experience that drove him to “find a voice for the voiceless”—his fellow factory workers. He entered Wayne State University in Detroit at age 22, completing his bachelor’s degree during the school year while attending the fabled Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in the summer. Levine earned an MFA from the University of Iowa and received the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in 1957. The following year, he joined the English faculty at California State University–Fresno, a position he held until 1992. Levine’s numerous honors include the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (The Simple Truth), two National Book Awards (Ashes: Poems New and Old, 1980, and What Work Is, 1991), and an appointment as the 2011/12 United States Poet Laureate. Levine never returned to live in Detroit, but the working-class values, dreams, and aspirations of his hometown always remained within.

“While writing the piece, I was reading some Detroit poets on their take on the city, and grew better acquainted with the work of Philip Levine. The last two lines of [the poem] For Fran struck me as an apt motto for the kind of clear-eyed reflection on endurance that runs through his poems about Detroit. In preparing the flower beds for winter, Levine’s wife becomes a symbol of the promise of renewal in general: ‘Out of whatever we have been / We will make something for the dark.’ Levine has said that much of his poetry about Detroit was born of

the hope that [Detroit] might be reborn inside itself, out of its own ruins, phoenix-like, rising out of its own ashes. Except I don’t see it in heroic terms. The triumphs are small, personal, daily. Nothing grandly heroic is taking place; just animals and men and flowers asserting their right to be, even in this most devastated of American cities.

“Something for the Dark is a meditation on the promise of renewal, and the hard-won wisdom that attends the small, personal, daily triumphs of asserting one’s right to be.”

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero gave the world premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark on April 14, 2016.

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)

Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo cello

As a young boy, Camille Saint-Saëns exhibited Mozartean precocity, composing his first piece at age 3. Organ and composition studies began at 7. His official piano recital debut came at age 10; as an encore, Saint-Saëns offered to play any of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory. He entered the Paris Conservatory at 13. Like Mendelssohn before him, Saint-Saëns held deep interests in “old” music by Bach, Handel, and Mozart and frequently performed their works on his recitals. In 1861, Saint-Saëns joined the faculty of the École Niedermeyer in Paris, where his students included André Messager and Gabriel Fauré. Louis Niedermeyer had founded the school with the sole purpose of training church musicians, and the curriculum accordingly centered on conservative fare of organ-playing and Gregorian chant. Saint-Saëns, by contrast, brought a more complete knowledge of contemporary trends in musical compositions to his classroom.

The founding of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871 under Saint-Saëns and Romaine Bussine proved a decisive event for French composers. The society’s motto—“Ars Gallica”—proclaimed the noble goal of promoting French art. Throughout much of the 19th century, works by German composers (especially instrumental pieces) had dominated French concert programs. French artists found few opportunities for performances of their own compositions. Saint-Saëns wrote, “Not so very long ago, a French composer who was daring enough to venture onto the terrain of instrumental music had no other means of getting the work performed than to give a concert himself and invite his friends and critics. As for the public, it was hopeless even to think about them. The name of a composer who was French and still alive had only to appear on a poster to frighten everyone away. The chamber music societies, flourishing and numerous at the time, restricted their programs to the resplendent names of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn—and sometimes Schumann as proof of their audacity.”

One year after founding the Société Nationale de Musique, Saint-Saëns composed his Cello Concerto No. 1, a work dedicated to Auguste Tolbecque, who gave the premiere on January 19, 1873, at the Paris Conservatory. Italians, such as Corelli and Vivaldi, had dominated concerto composition during the late Baroque, and Germanic musicians governed developments within this genre during the Classical and Romantic periods. Strong French interests in writing concertos emerged only during Saint-Saëns’s lifetime, and his works were among the first of this new tradition.

In keeping with the Gallic spirit of the time, Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 avoids the traditional Germanic three-movement form established by Mozart and Beethoven. Instead, this single-movement work is divided into three linked sections. As with concertos by other French composers, virtuosity is not an end in itself, a tendency among Germans and Italians. This work possesses a more evenly balanced dialogue between soloist and orchestra. Stylistically Saint-Saëns’s music bears a typically French air of elegance and discrete flair.

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894)

Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, bass drum, cymbals, two harps, and strings

Lawyers and jurists dominated the chronicles of the Chabrier family from the Auvergne region of France. Despite his advanced musical training, Emmanuel Chabrier followed this family tradition, entered law school, and after three years of study took a position in the Ministry of the Interior, where he remained employed for almost two decades. Chabrier developed friendships among the Parisian literary and artistic elite, notably the poets Paul Verlaine and Catulle Mendès and the painter Édouard Manet. His earliest compositions—solo piano works, mélodies for voice and piano, and productions for the stage—reflect his renowned keyboard virtuosity (once compared favorably to Franz Liszt) and literary interests. Chabrier’s election to the Société Nationale de Musique in 1876 placed an unimpeachable stamp upon his compositional talents. Four years later, he resigned from the Ministry of the Interior and devoted the remaining years of his life to composition.

Chabrier’s six-month visit to Spain in 1882 was a life- and career-changing experience. Traveling with his wife, Alice, he traversed the entire country in a giant loop, beginning in the Basque Country (north) and continuing through the provinces of Castilla la Vieja (west/west-central), Castilla la Nueva (central), Andalusia (southwest/south), Valencia (east), and Aragon and Catalonia (northeast). What began as an extended vacation quickly evolved into an exhilarating cultural and ethnomusicological experience—all of which Chabrier documented through vivid and often humorous correspondence with his friends.

His stay in San Sebastián inevitably involved attending a bullfight: “It’s unlikely, though, that I shall take an active and direct part.” Moving on to Sevilla, Chabrier encountered flamenco for the first time, taking note of sensual details in the dancing (“that admirable Sevillian behind moving in every direction while the rest of the body remains motionless”) and transcribing the music of malagueñas and tangos. By October 25, Chabrier had decided to compose “una fantasia extraordinaria, muy Española” after returning to Paris, as he conveyed to Charles Lamoureaux, a violinist and conductor at the Paris Conservatory, Opéra-Comique, and Opéra. The overall mood and character of this fantasy became clear in his mind: “My rhythms, my tunes will arouse the whole audience to a feverish pitch of excitement; everyone will embrace his neighbor madly … so voluptuous will be my melodies.”

Chabrier originally composed his “fantasia extraordinaria” for piano in 1883. Lamoureaux, who convinced his friend to orchestrate the score, conducted the premiere at his Concerts Lamoureaux on November 4, 1883. Originally called Jota before its present title, España, this “rhapsody for orchestra” earned Chabrier instant popular and critical acclaim for its brilliant orchestration and idiomatic evocations of Spanish dance and song. While not including any authentic folk songs, Chabrier builds España on two contrasting dance themes in the style of the vibrant jota originating in Aragon and the passionate malagueña from Andalusia.

Thirty years after España’s premiere—in 1913—the eccentric French composer Erik Satie satirized Chabrier’s music in the final movement (Españaña) of his three-movement suite for solo piano Croquis et agaceries d’un gros bonhomme en bois (Sketches and Annoyances of a Big Wooden Dummy). Gustav Mahler held a much more respectful, perhaps even reverential, opinion of this score, which he often programmed to end his concerts. In an interview with William Malloch for the 1964 broadcast “I Remember Mahler,” former New York Philharmonic bassoonist Benjamin Kohon recalled a moment during the rehearsal of España when Mahler declared, “This composition is the foundation of modern music!”

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)

Scored for three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings

Rimsky-Korsakov envisioned an Iberian companion piece to his Fantasia on Two Russian Themes (1886) for solo violin and orchestra. He ultimately abandoned his original idea to write another concertante violin piece, but salvaged isolated themes for a sumptuous celebration of virtuosic orchestration—the Capriccio espagnol. Decades earlier, Rimsky-Korsakov had distinguished himself with visionary orchestral effects. Under the guidance of Balakirev, the 18-year-old composer completely revised and reorchestrated his First Symphony. The results impressed his mentor, who suggested numerous orchestration projects over the next few years. In addition to his own compositions, Rimsky-Korsakov reorchestrated Dargomizhsky’s The Stone Guest, Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, Night on Bald Mountain, and Boris Godunov, among other works. Rimsky-Korsakov’s definitive Principles of Orchestration appeared in print for the first time in 1913.

The Capriccio espagnol became a conscious demonstration of Rimsky-Korsakov’s incomparable skills with orchestral timbre. In My Musical Life (1909), the composer reflected on this work’s significance: “The opinion formed by both critics and the public, that the Capriccio is a magnificently orchestrated piece, is wrong. The Capriccio is a brilliant composition for the orchestra. The change of timbres, the felicitous choice of melodic designs and figuration patterns, exactly suiting each kind of instrument, brief virtuoso cadenzas for solo instruments, the rhythm of the percussion instruments, etc., constitute here the very essence of the composition and not its garb or orchestration. The Spanish themes, of the dance character, furnished me with rich material for putting in use multiform orchestral effects. All in all, the Capriccio is undoubtedly a purely external piece, but vividly brilliant for all that.”

Capriccio espagnol was first performed in Saint Petersburg on October 31, 1887, under Rimsky-Korsakov’s direction. The score contains five movements connected by a thematic thread—the festive, march-like Alborada that appears in the first and third movements and coda of the fifth. Authentic Spanish melodies underpin his Capriccio, and the Alborada may have originated among the multitude of rustic two-beat morning dances. Rimsky-Korsakov interjects clarinet and violin (evidence of his original design) solos between full-bodied orchestral phrases. The second movement begins with a horn-choir theme, followed by four variations highlighting various ensembles within the orchestra. A varied Alborada reverses the order of solos: violin, joined by clarinet. A sustained drum roll and Spanish-flavored brass fanfare begin the Scene and Gypsy Song, followed by rhapsodic cadenzas for violin, flute, clarinet, and harp. Brass introduce a piquant gypsy dance, periodically interrupted by solo violin passages. Rimsky-Korsakov concludes with another vivacious dance, the Fandango from the northwestern region of Spain, Asturias. The Alborada, extended by an unexpected key change, reappears in the final section.

–Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan

David Robertson occupies the most prominent podiums in orchestral and new music, as well as opera. A champion of contemporary composers, he is renowned as an adventurous programmer. Robertson has served in numerous artistic leadership positions, such as chief conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a transformative 13-year tenure as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, and additionally with the Orchestre National de Lyon, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and, as protégé of Pierre Boulez, Ensemble InterContemporain. He frequently appears with the world’s great orchestras, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Czech and Vienna Philharmonics, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, and Seoul Philharmonic, as well as with many major ensembles and festivals on five continents. Since his 1996 Metropolitan Opera debut, Robertson has conducted a vast range of repertoire, including the 2019/20 season-opening production of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, which won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 2021. In 2022, he conducted the Met’s reprise of the production and made his Rome Opera debut conducting Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová. This season’s highlights have included Robertson celebrating the Boulez Centennial with the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, and Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, plus guest-conducting engagements in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Seoul, and Leipzig. He also led European tours by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Australian Youth Orchestra. Robertson is the Director of Conducting Studies at The Juilliard School and serves on the Tianjin Juilliard Advisory Council, and he is in the midst of a three-year appointment as Creative Partner of the Utah Symphony and Opera, where his guitar ensemble, Another Night on Earth, made its US debut. David Robertson first appeared at Ravinia in 2004, leading the New York Philharmonic in a special performance in honor of the centennial of Ravinia, where, in 1905, the orchestra became the first classical ensemble featured in the park.

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that’s performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues. Over the past year, he has held residencies at the 2024 Lucerne Festival as Artiste Étoile and at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, appeared with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague and on tours with Jakub Hrůša and Semyon Bychkov, and performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, Cologne’s WDR Symphony, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Stuttgart’s SWR Symphony, and the New World Symphony, as well as the Camerata Salzburg and Sinfonia of London on tours. With his pianist sister, Isata, he made his duo recital debut in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium featuring a newly commissioned piece by Natalie Klouda. They also toured to stages in Bordeaux, Rome, Cincinnati, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dublin, Munich, Berlin, and Antwerp, as well as at the Rheingau Festival and London’s Wigmore Hall. Sheku also gives concerts with duo partners guitarist Plínio Fernandes and jazz pianist Harry Baker. Since his BBC Proms debut in 2017, Kanneh-Mason has performed on the festival every summer, including as soloist at the 2023 Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. A Decca artist, Kanneh-Mason recorded Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with violinist Nicola Benedetti, pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, and the Philharmonia Orchestra in 2024, and the 2022 album Song showcases the cellist in a wide range of arrangements and collaborations. is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Hannah Roberts and in 2022 was named the Academy’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. He was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2020. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Kanneh-Mason further propelled his career with a performance at the 2018 wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle, which was watched by two billion people worldwide. Sheku Kanneh-Mason is making his Ravinia debut.