Arturo Toscanini / Next to Normal
On this day in classical music: Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini died at age 89 in New York in 1957. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory. During a career that began at age 19, Toscanini quickly rose through the ranks from chorus master to conductor. He held posts with La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Toscanini’s greatest fame came from his 17-year position as music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. This hand-picked orchestra, with Toscanini at the helm, became synonymous with classical music in the mid-20th century. Toscanini made numerous recordings with his orchestra and conducted nationally televised broadcasts that helped make him famous throughout the world. His daughter Wanda was married to pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Watch Toscanini conduct Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RpDhX2CHLE
Arturo Toscanini
On this day in the musical theatre: “Next to Normal,” a dark musical that explores the devastating effects of bipolar disorder, closed on Broadway in 2011. A rock musical with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt, “Next to Normal” also tackled such topics as grief, suicide, drug abuse, psychiatric ethics and suburban life. Alice Ripley, who played a wife and mother with bipolar disorder, won a Tony Award for best actress. The musical also earned Tonys for best score and orchestrations. “Next to Normal” won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama, the eighth musical to earn that honor. The award was controversial since it had not been on the list of three candidates submitted to the Pulitzer Prize board by the five-member drama jury. Jury chairman Charles McNulty publicly criticized the board for overlooking the three plays not running on Broadway at the time of the Award in favor of one that was. Listen to the cast of “Next to Normal” perform “You Don’t Know” and “I Am the One” on the 2009 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npBLKoqgd5Q
Next to Normal – Original Broadway Cast
Musical musings: No show on Broadway right now makes as direct a grab for the heart — or wrings it as thoroughly — as “Next to Normal” does. This brave, breathtaking musical, which opened Wednesday night at the Booth Theater, focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and never for a minute does it let you escape the anguish at the core of their lives. “Next to Normal” does not, in other words, qualify as your standard feel-good musical. Instead this portrait of a manic-depressive mother and the people she loves and damages is something much more: a feel-everything musical, which asks you, with operatic force, to discover the liberation in knowing where it hurts. As for the Mom that everyone loves and loathes, Ms. Ripley is giving what promises to be the musical performance of the season. Her achingly exposed-seeming face and sweet, rawness-tinged voice capture every glimmer in Diana’s kaleidoscope of feelings. Anger, yearning, sorrow, guilt and the memory of what must have been love seem to coexist in every note she sings. None of these are particularly comfortable emotions. In combination they’re a dangerous cocktail. But to experience them vicariously through Ms. Ripley is to tingle with the gratitude of being able to feel them all. Diana is right when she sings that “you don’t have to be happy at all to be happy you’re alive.” Nor do musicals have to bubble with cheer to transport an audience as this one does. – Ben Brantley in The New York Times
Samuel Barber / Romance Romance
On this day in classical music: Samuel Barber’s opera “Vanessa” was given its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 with Dimtri Mitropoulos conducting. For the Met premiere, Sena Jurinac was cast in the title role but backed out six weeks before the premiere. Eleanor Steber replaced her and became strongly identified with the role and the opera. Steber was joined by Rosalind Elias, Nicolai Gedda, Regina Resnik and Giorgio Tozzi. Barber won the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes for “Vanessa.” The second, for his piano concerto, came five years later. Gian-Carlo Menotti wrote the libretto for Barber’s opera. Listen to the PSU Symphony Orchestra perform the delightful “Intermezzo” from “Vanessa.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZPyk_lnJoY
Samuel Barber
On this day in the musical theatre: “Romance Romance,” a musical featuring an attractive, eclectic score by Barry Harman and Keith Herrmann, closed on Broadway after 297 performances in 1988. The musical featured two acts linked by the common theme of love. The first act, titled “The Little Comedy,” was based on a short story by Arthur Schnitzler and explored the budding relationship between two 19th century Viennese aristocrats posing as members of the working class. Act II, titled “Summer Share,” was based on Jules Renard’s 1898 play “Le pain de ménage.” Set in the Hamptons in the 1980s, the piece explored the flirtations of two married couples sharing a rented cottage. Playing the leads in both acts were Alison Fraser and Scott Bakula. Watch Bakula and Fraser perform “I’ll Always Remember the Song” and “It’s Not Too Late” on the 1988 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Offpzfq7MQ
Romance Romance – Original Broadway Cast
Musical musings: “Romance Romance,” lately the littlest big musical Off Off Broadway, has made it uptown, in a slightly enhanced production that loses nothing of the charm and intelligence of the original and gains a thoroughly winning performance by Alison Fraser. Down at the Actor’s Outlet Theater last season, Ms. Fraser was a pleasure; at the Helen Hayes, in romantic Broadway tradition, she is a star. Looking at moments a little like a young Angela Lansbury, sounding just a little like Bernadette Peters, she radiates a witty presence all her own, from the moment she delivers her first smashing solo, “Goodbye, Emil.” (“It was never true romance/ Just a question of finance.”) After that, when the spotlight is on her, which is most of the time, the evening sparkles. In “Summer Share,” the evening glides from Vienna wry to Hampton rue, with Mr. Harman, who did the book and lyrics for “Olympus on My Mind,” slipping only occasionally into sentimentality. “The Little Comedy” is the shrewder tale, but both plays deal with the limitations that character or mere habit place on desire, for good or bed. However much Alfred and Josefine dream of wholesome love, they are not about to suffer discomfort to achieve it. However much Sam and Monica long for an affair, they are too entangled in their marriages. In a Broadway season so full of pretentiousness, this show is delightfully small scale, the scale on which most of us live. – Walter Goodman in The New York Times
Heitor Villa-Lobos / Of Thee I Sing
On this day in classical music: Heitor Villa-Lobos’ “Harp Concerto” was given its premiere by Nicanor Zabaleta in 1955. The composer conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra. Villa-Lobos has been described as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music.” He left a large body of music in virtually every medium, from orchestral and chamber to vocal works and a Broadway musical. He is perhaps best known for his set of nine “Bachianas Brasileiras,” works that pay tribute both to Johann Sebastian Bach and Brazilian folk influences. Listen to the final movement of Villa-Lobos’ “Harp Concerto” performed by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. The soloist is not identified. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSlI6BJcUM0
Heitor Villa-Lobox
On this day in the musical theatre: George and Ira Gershwin’s “Of Thee I Sing” closed on Broadway after 441 performances in 1933. The musical satirizes American politics. John P. Wintergreen runs for President of the United States on the “love” platform but when he falls in love with the sensible Mary Turner instead of Diana Devereaux, the beautiful pageant winner selected for him, he lands in political hot water. The candidate’s party is not identified in the musical because authors by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind believed that absurdity was bipartisan in Depression-era politics. “Of Thee I Sing” was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Watch a promotional video for a Paper Mill Playhouse production that features excerpts from “Of Thee I Sing.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FInW3HCY9VU
Of Thee I Sing – Broadway Revival Cast
Musical musings: It is twenty-one years now since “Of Thee I Sing” won a Pulitzer Prize for its ribald invasion of those smoke-filled rooms and that sleepy Senate chamber. It isn’t that times have got much better — just that they’ve changed. “Of Thee I Sing” is satire, but, with the disappearance of so many points of reference, it doesn’t seem very satirical any more. It begins, in fact, to take on the quality of a comic opera set in a never-never land as remote as Oz, and the insertion of last-minute gags about Truman, taxes, Dixiecrats, and minks don’t help very much. If anything, they call special attention to the dim and distant quality of all that was once so devastating. – Walter Kerr writing about the 1952 revival in The New York Herald Tribune
Christian Sinding / The Grand Tour
On this day in classical music: Norwegian composer Christian Sinding was born in Kongsberg in 1856. Sinding studied music in Christiania (now Oslo) and Leipzig. Influenced by Wagner and Liszt, Sinding is best remembered for his collection of short works for piano. Listen to Daniel Sabbah perform Sinding’s “Rustle of Spring.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-StHeHGyakY
Christian Sinding
On this day in the musical theatre: Jerry Herman’s “The Grand Tour” opened on Broadway in 1979. Tony Award winner Joel Grey headed the cast of this musical based on S. N. Behrman’s play “Jacobowsky and the Colonel.” The story concerns an unlikely pair: Jacobowsky, a Polish-Jewish intellectual who has purchased a car he cannot drive, and Stjerbinsky, an aristocratic, anti-Semitic colonel who knows how to drive but has no car. When the two men meet at a Paris hotel, they agree to join forces in order to escape the approaching Nazis. Together with the Colonel’s girlfriend, Marianne, they experience many adventures while on the road, but trouble ensues when Jacobowsky falls in love with the young girl. Of Herman’s three flop musicals (“Dear World,” “Mack and Mabel” and “The Grand Tour”), it had the shortest run on Broadway with just 61 performances. Listen to Grey perform the stirring “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iiZa0dIoak
The Grand Tour – Original Broadway Cast
Musical musings: “The Grand Tour” is a musical that is often amiable and sometimes more than that. But it is a patchwork, and an incomplete one. Its engaging moments run in different directions, pull different ways, and leave large areas looking decidedly thin. The effect is that of first-rate talents working at their occasional second-best, and having occasional third thoughts about it. Grey is, of course, the center of the evening. Sometimes this is to the good. Under stress, his portrait of a kind of shriveled angel works very well. He opens his eyes very wide and the pupils are like the points of two invisible exclamation points. But it is a performance that frequently crosses over into the self-indulgent. This Jacobowsky is too pleased with his own charm; Grey has things his own way just a bit too often. – Richard Eder in The New York Times
Joan Tower / The Little Mermaid
On this day in classical music: Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1” was given its premiere by Hans Vonk and the Houston Symphony in 1987. Completed in 1986 while Tower was composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony, the brief work was inspired by Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and employs the same instrumentation while adding the glockenspiel, marimba, chimes, and drums. Listen to the Texas Tech Symphonic Wind Ensemble perform Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.” Sarah McKoin conducts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41DKalJ-yKE
Joan Tower
On this day in the musical theatre: “The Little Mermaid” opened on Broadway in 2008. Based on Disney’s 1989 animated film, “The Little Mermaid” was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story. Featuring music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater, this musical focuses on Ariel, a mermaid who longs to be human. “The Little Mermaid” received less than enthusiastic reviews but ran for 685 performances. Watch Sierra Boggess (Ariel) perform “Part of Your World” on the 2008 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cdqX0N1PiU
The Little Mermaid – Original Broadway Cast
Musical musings: Loved the shoes. Loathed the show. O.K., I exaggerate. I didn’t like the shoes all that much. But the wheel-heeled footwear known as merblades, which allow stage-bound dancers to simulate gliding underwater, provides the only remotely graceful elements in the musical blunderbuss called “Disney’s The Little Mermaid,” which opened on Thursday at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. A variation on Heelys, a skate hybrid popular among schoolchildren and teenagers who are probably way too old for this production, merblades endow their wearers with the ability to skim hard surfaces with a near-balletic lightness. Unfortunately, a state of lightness is difficult to sustain when you’re being attacked on all sides by an aggressive ocean that appears to be made of hard plastic. The get-out-of-my-way water, which periodically slides in like so many push-button car windows, is only one of the obstructions to be wrestled with by the cast members playing fish, seabirds and merfolk in Disney’s charm-free $15 million adaptation of its charming 1989 animated movie of the same title. “The Little Mermaid” arrives on Broadway stripped of the movie’s generation-crossing appeal. Coherence of plot, endearing quirks of character, even the melodious wit of the original score (supplemented by new, substandard songs by Mr. Menken and the lyricist Glenn Slater) have been swallowed by an unfocused spectacle, more parade than narrative, that achieves the dubious miracle of translating an animated cartoon into something that feels like less than two dimensions. Sadly, following the demise of the joyless green blob that was “Tarzan,” “The Little Mermaid” suggests that on Broadway, the Disney magic touch has gone numb. But what this “Little Mermaid” feels like, above all, is a cynical reversal of a once-traditional pattern of art and commerce. It used to be that the show came first, followed by merchandising tie-ins. Thoroughly plastic and trinketlike, this show seems less like an interpretation of a movie musical than of the figurines and toys it inspired. – Ben Brantley in The New York Times
Maurice Ravel / A Little Night Music
On this day in classical music: Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes premiered Maurice Ravel’ “Gaspard de la Nuit” in Paris in 1909. Each of the three movements in this suite for solo piano is based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand. The piece is famous for its difficulty, partly because Ravel intended the final movement, titled “Scarbo,” to be more difficult than Balakirev’s “Islamey.” Because of its technical challenges and profound musical structure, “Scarbo” is considered one of the most difficult solo piano pieces ever written. Listen to Alicia de Larrocha perform “Scarbo” from Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwShsUpZyyE
Maurice Ravel
On this day in the musical theatre: The 2009 Broadway revival of “A Little Night Music” closed in 2011. The star-studded cast featured Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree Armfeldt and Angela Lansbury as Desiree’s mother Mme. Armfeldt. Directed by Trevor Nunn, the production originated at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory. In her Broadway debut, Zeta-Jones won a Tony Award for best actress in a musical. When Zeta-Jones and Lansbury left the production, their roles were taken by Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. This marked the celebrated musical’s first Broadway revival. It ran for 425 performances and recouped its initial investment. Watch Zeta-Jones perform “Send in the Clowns” on the 2010 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUGkjNTRoNo
A Little Night Music – Broadway Revival Cast
Musical musings: The night itself is said to smile at the escapades of the addled lovers in “A Little Night Music,” Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s erotic waltz of a show from 1973. But the expression that hovers over Trevor Nunn’s revival, which opened Sunday night at the Walter Kerr Theater, feels dangerously close to a smirk. It is a smirk shrouded in shadows. An elegiac darkness infuses this production, which stars Catherine Zeta-Jones, in a lively Broadway debut, and the indomitable (and invaluable) Angela Lansbury. But the behavior of the characters who wander through a twilight labyrinth of passion in early-20th-century Sweden has the exaggerated gusto of second-tier boulevard farce, of people trying a little too hard for worldliness. “Where’s discretion of the heart, where’s passion in the art, where’s craft?” Madame Armfeldt sings in lamentation. Looking at the production she appears in, I’d say she has a point. On the other hand, looking at Ms. Lansbury just then, I would say that those virtues still have their avatar in an actress who survived six decades in show business without losing either the craft or passion in her art. – Ben Brantley in The New York Times
Christopher Rouse / 42nd Street
On this day in classical music: Christopher Rouse’s orchestral work “Phaethon” was given its premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1987. Riccardo Muti conducted. A student of Richard Hoffmann, Karel Husa and George Crumb, Rouse taught at the University of Michigan from 1978 to 1981, and at the Eastman School of Music from 1981 to 2002. Since 1997, he has been a member of the composition faculty at the Juilliard School. Rouse’s “Trombone Concerto” was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has served as composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Helsinki Biennale, the Pacific Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival. Listen to Christoph Eschenbach and the Houston Symphony Orchestra perform Rouse’s “Phaethon.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loBE5_PrHAo
Christopher Rouse
On this day in the musical theatre: The musical “42nd Street” closed on Broadway in 1989 after an eight-year run. Based on the novel by Bradford Ropes and the 1933 film adaptation, it focuses on Broadway director Julian Marsh and the challenges he faces in mounting a stage extravaganza during the Great Depression. Directed and choreographed by Gower Champion, this David Merrick-produced spectacular won the 1981 Tony Award as best musical. Not surprisingly, it also took an award for best choreography. In a curtain speech following the musical’s premiere, Merrick announced to the cast and audience that Champion had died just hours earlier. “42nd Street” also proved to be Merrick’s last blockbuster musical. Listen to the musical’s lively overture and the audition sequence that follows. The excerpt is from the original Broadway cast recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJT_z0csy-E
42nd Street – Original Broadway Cast
Musical musings: Completed in Indianapolis, Indiana on February 22, 1986, “Phaethon” is one of several of my scores — including “Gorgon,” “Alloeidea,” “Morpheus,” and the “Aphrodite Cantos” — which takes its inspiration from ancient Greek mythology. The legend tells of Phaethon, son of the sun god, Helios. The boy, after doubts had been aroused concerning his parentage, secured from his mighty father a promise that he would be allowed to demonstrate irrevocably his divine origins. Helios swore to permit such a demonstration, but he was horrified when Phaethon demanded to be allowed to guide the chariot of the sun across the sky for one day; as Helios had made his oath in the name of the river Styx, Olympian law required that he guarantee his promise. Once off, Phaethon realized quickly that he lacked the ability to control his father’s horses, which dashed madly across the sky. They hurtled too close to the earth, set its land aflame, and dried up its rivers. They raced through the universe and finally threatened even Olympus itself, forcing Zeus to destroy Phaethon by hurling at him a thunderbolt which knocked him from the chariot to his death. Perhaps the best known musical precursor to “Phaethon” is the tone poem of the same name by Charles Camille Saint-Saëns. Saint-Saëns’ work attempts to relate the entire story, while mine concerns itself with Phaethon’s ride only. There is also a darker, more threatening hue to my score as well as a more frenzied ride. “Phaethon” was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra in celebration of the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution. In a disturbingly ironic twist, I found myself on the morning of January 28, 1986 at bar 443 of the work, the measure in which Zeus’ thunderbolt knocks Phaethon from the sky, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff. “Phaethon” is dedicated to the memory of Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Michael Smith, Francis Scobee, and Christa McAuliffe — the seven astronauts who lost their lives that morning when they, too, were knocked from the sky. From a program note by Christopher Rouse
Francis Poulenc / Show Boat
On this day in classical music: French composer and pianist Francis Poulenc was born in Paris in 1899. Poulenc joined Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric and Louis Durey as a member of the popular group known as “Les Six.” During his early professional career, Poulenc took an irreverent approach to composition, often incorporating Parisian music hall tunes in his works. From the mid 1930s until his death in 1963, Poulenc was strong influenced by his Catholic faith with much of his music having religious overtones. He left a large body of works, including music for piano, voice, chorus and orchestra. His “Dialogues of the Carmelites” has become a popular staple in the opera house. Listen to Pascal Roge perform the finale (Rondo a la Francaise) of Poulenc’s “Piano Concerto” with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Charles Dutoit conducts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ94mpkSqnw
Francis Poulenc
On this day in the musical theatre: The 1994 revival of Jerome Kern’s “Show Boat” closed on Broadway in 1997 after a 949-performance run. Based on Edna Ferber’s bestselling novel of the same name, the musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands, and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat from 1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love. The musical contributed such classic songs as “Ol’ Man River,” “Make Believe” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” Directed by Harold Prince, the 1994 revival placed a strong emphasis on the musical’s racial elements. A staple of the musical theater since its premiere in 1927, “Show Boat” has been subjected to countless interpretations over the years. Not surprisingly, no two productions of “Show Boat” feature the same play list. For the 1994 revival, Prince transformed “Why Do I Love You?” from a duet between Magnolia and Ravenal to a lullaby sung by Parthy Ann to Magnolia’s baby girl. The change was partly to accommodate the performance of Parthy Ann by stage actress Elaine Stritch. The revival earned five Tony Awards, including one as best revival. Listen to Tammy Amerson and Stritch perform “Why Do I Love You” and “Kim’s Charleston” from “Show Boat” on the 1995 Tony Award broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fezEtQ_yHY
Show Boat – Broadway Revival Cast
Musical musings: In the popular consciousness, “Show Boat” is the great American musical about the tumultuousness of love, played out against the majestic Mississippi River and the big-shouldered city of Chicago. With the exception of “Ol’ Man River,” the most enduring songs in the score by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein 2nd are those that explore love’s first stirrings (“Make Believe”), love’s tyranny (“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”), love’s exquisite bliss (“You Are Love”) and, of course, love gone wrong “Bill”). So it may come as a jolt that Harold Prince’s gloriously bold re-examination of the indestructible classic, which opened last night at the Gershwin Theater, is about something else: time and its inexorable ravages. No sooner has the Cotton Blossom docked at Natchez and a curious crowd gathered on the levee than Cap’n Andy (John McMartin) is introducing the members of his floating troupe as “one big happy family.” Twenty scenes and three hours later, the full cast is back on that same levee, dancing a frenetic Charleston that seems to embody all the explosive forces that by then have torn the happy family asunder. “ShowBoat” paved the way for the serious Broadway musical, but it still pays allegiance to the old-fashioned high jinks of vaudeville and early musical comedy. In what amounts to a major reappraisal of the work, the fabled glamour of the show boat is merely a trick of makeup and footlights. Life on and off the wicked stage is hard. And time and the river keep rolling along. – David Richard in The New York Times
Richard Danielpour / Hairspray
On this day in classical music: Richard Danielpour’s orchestral work “Toward the Splendid City” was given its premiere by Leonard Slatkin and the New York Philharmonic in 1996. The work was commissioned by the Philharmonic for its 150th anniversary. The composer began working on the work in the spring of 1992 and completed it that August. The work’s title comes from the heading of Pablo Neruda’s Nobel Prize address in 1974. Listen to Lance Friedel and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra perform an excerpt from Danielpour’s “Toward the Splendid City.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc–_sZUsV0
Richard Danielpour
On this day in the musical theatre: The musical “Hairspray” closed in 2009 after a six-year run on Broadway. Based on the 1988 John Waters film, “Hairspray” featured a lively score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. The musical tells the story of Tracy Turnblad, an overweight Baltimore teen who dreams of dancing on a local television show not unlike “American Bandstand.” As her journey unfolds, she makes that dream a reality and in the process, also manages to integrate the cast. Best of all, Tracy proves that popular girls with perfect figures don’t always get the big man on campus. Listen to Marisa Jaret Winokur and the original Broadway cast perform “You Cant Stop the Beat” on the 2003 Tony Award broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9smuMQMDJc
Hairspray – Original Broadway Cast
Musical musings: While “Toward the Splendid City” was composed as a portrait of New York, the city in which I live, it was written almost entirely away from home. Work on the piece began in Seattle in the spring of 1992 and was completed in mid-August of that year in Taos, New Mexico. At the time I was nearing the end of a year-long residency with the Seattle Symphony, and had serious second thoughts about returning to New York. Life was always complicated in the city and easier, it seemed, everywhere else. I was, however, not without a certain pang of nostalgia for my home town, and as a result “Toward the Splendid City” was driven by my love-hate relationship with New York. It was, needless to say, a relationship badly in need of resolution. Eventually, upon returning to Manhattan, I began to understand that the humanity and the difficulty of New York were inseparable — and that if in the difficulties of urban life humanity is to be embraced, then the inconveniences must also be accepted. — From a program note by Richard Danielpour
