Clarice Assad (b. 1978)
Baião N’ Blues (2023)
Scored for: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings
Performance time: 9 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Clarice Assad is one of the most widely performed Brazilian concert music composers of her generation. No stranger to Chicago, she earned her bachelor’s from Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She has since received numerous awards and honors, and her works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by prominent artists and ensembles worldwide.

Assad was commissioned to write Baião N’ Blues by radio station KMFA, Classical 89.5 in Austin, Texas, for its 2023 Draylen Mason Composer-in-Residence initiative. The work celebrates the fusion of her Brazilian and American musical worlds, juxtaposing lively Brazilian rhythms with the soulfulness of American blues. Baião is a genre of music that originates from Northeastern Brazil. It is characterized by a syncopated duple-meter rhythm played by a bass drum called a zabumba, which is played with both a mallet and a stick to achieve low and high notes, respectively. It is often accompanied by keyboard accordion and triangle. Assad writes in her program note for the piece, “Throughout the orchestral journey, a sense of lightness and humor permeates the musical landscape, inviting the audience to engage in a spirited dialogue.” She continues, “Baião N’ Blues showcases the power of music to transcend cultural boundaries and connect people through the art of listening.”

Pacho Flores (b. 1981)
Morocota (2019)
Scored for: strings and solo trumpet
Performance time: 5 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Trumpet virtuoso and composer Pacho Flores originally wrote Morocota for trumpet and guitar. The piece first appeared on his 2017 album Entropía, recorded with guitarist and cuatrista Jesús “Pingüino” González. Tonight’s performance features Pacho’s orchestral arrangement, which was later included on his 2022 album, Estirpe. In an interview with KPBS San Diego, Flores described the piece as follows: “Morocota is a waltz, and I dedicate it to my mother. The style for this piece is from my town, San Cristobal in los Andes in Venezuela.” The short, charming work reflects Flores’s passion for blending the folk and popular music traditions of his native Venezuela with classical forms. He cites his father as a guiding force in this approach: “My father told me when I was a child this sentence: ‘Pacho, the music doesn’t have borders.’ For him, the music is music. You can play Piazzola or Tchaikovsky, and you have to play with the most beautiful sound and dignity—every style.”

Arturo Márquez (b. 1950)
Concierto de Otoño (2018)
Scored for: two flutes including piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings, and solo trumpet
Performance time: 20 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

“The trumpet is the queen in the heart of Mexico,” said Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. “We find it in practically every form of popular musical expression; it is the Mexican cry of joy and of sorrow. It is also foundational in Latin American concert music, and my Concierto de Otoño is a compilation of all those feelings, colors, and consolations.”

Márquez, best known for Danzón No. 2, made popular worldwide by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, wrote Concierto de Otoño for another Venezuelan musician and graduate of El Sistema, trumpeter Pacho Flores, heard here on this program. In an effort to expand the solo trumpet repertoire, Flores has spearheaded a series of commissions from leading composers. Written in 2018, Concierto de Otoño (Autumn Concerto) mixes Latin styles within the traditional structure of the classical concerto. In addition to the work’s technical demands, requiring mastery of both classical and popular styles, the soloist must play four different instruments across the concerto: a trumpet in C, flugelhorn, soprano cornet in F, and trumpet in D.

The first movement, “Son de luz,” presents a dramatic dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra in the form of an Afro-Cuban dance (the “son” here being a Cuban genre of music and dance). The second movement, “Balada de floripondios,” is a love song in tribute to “el amor brujo,” or “love, the magician.” The floripondio is both a flower that resembles the bell of a trumpet as well as a euphemism for an extravagant person or gesture, while “el amor brujo” could refer to a ballet by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla of that name. Drawing inspiration from the baroque Chaconne, the movement proceeds as a set of continuous variations on a theme. The brilliantly virtuosic finale, “Conga de flores,” offers up another Cuban dance and space for an improvised cadenza within classical rondo form.

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Symphony No. 1 in D major, Titan (1884)
Scored for: four flutes including piccolo, four oboes including English Horn, four clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, seven French horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings
Performance time: 61 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 15, 1966; Irwin Hoffman, conductor

While on a walk with Sigmund Freud in 1910, Gustav Mahler shared an anecdote that reveals a lot about how his distinctive compositional style came to be. Mahler’s childhood was turbulent—his father abused his mother, and eight of his thirteen siblings died in infancy. One day, as his father was beating his mother, the six-year-old Mahler ran from the house, crashing headlong into an organ grinder playing a popular folksong. This stark juxtaposition of the tragic and the frivolous stuck with Mahler and came to characterize much of his music. Nowhere is that more apparent than in his Symphony No. 1.

The history of Mahler’s first symphony is long and complicated. Although he wrote most of the symphony in early 1888, it incorporates earlier musical material, most notably his 1884 song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). For the symphony’s premiere in Budapest in 1889, Mahler titled the work “Symphonic Poem in Two Parts.” Given this label, the audience expected the work to be programmatic, that is, conveying some kind of story or image. However, Mahler did not provide them with a program or detailed descriptions of the movements. This decision contributed to the symphony’s overwhelmingly poor reception, as the audience struggled to follow Mahler’s idiosyncratic style and thought the work an offensive parody.

Mahler continued to revise the piece over the following decade. For the next performance in Hamburg in 1893, Mahler changed the title to “Titan: A Tone Poem in Symphonic Form” and, at his friends’ insistence, provided the audience with an extensive literary program. By 1900, he had backpedaled on this decision and rejected any program or title besides “Symphony in D,” saying that programs often misled audiences and were “anti-musical.” He had also cut an entire movement (“Blumine,” restored in this performance) and made other edits in orchestration as he gained more conducting experience.

Despite his later renunciation of programmatic readings, there are undeniable literary and artistic influences behind Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. For instance, the inscription “Titan” came not from Greek mythology but from a novel by one of Mahler’s favorite authors, Jean Paul. Other references include Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (the finale was once titled “Dall’inferno al paradiso”) and artist Moritz von Schwind’s The Hunter’s Funeral Procession. Depicting forest animals carrying a hunter’s coffin, this woodblock inspired the ironic funeral procession of the fourth movement.

The biggest clues to any underlying program come in the work’s extensive quotations from Songs of a Wayfarer. The main theme of the first movement derives from the second song of the cycle, “Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld” (“I Went this Morning over the Field”). In the song, the wayfarer marvels at the beauty of nature as it awakens from its winter slumber. But amid this splendor, he despairs: “Will my happiness really begin now? No! The kind I mean can never blossom in me!” This quotation sums up the symphony’s emotional trajectory: the spring of the first three movements gives way to the death of the protagonist’s illusions and finally his acceptance and spiritual triumph.

The first movement opens with a unison A across seven octaves in the strings. From this eerie stillness emerge distant fanfares, cuckoo calls and other nature sounds, and eventually the melody from Songs of a Wayfarer. The second movement, “Blumine,” which Mahler excised in 1896, has been reinstated for tonight’s performance. While some early critics denounced it as trivial, it provides a delicate palate-cleanser after the exuberant end of the first movement. Next, the scherzo alternates a rustic waltz with a more genteel Austrian Ländler in the trio section. This relatively straightforward scherzo was the only movement that found consistent favor among initial audiences.

The same cannot be said of the fourth movement, which casts the children’s round “Frère Jacques” as a grotesque funeral procession in minor, accompanied by Bohemian street musicians. In the middle of the movement comes another quote from Songs of a Wayfarer, specifically the final verse of the fourth song, “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz” (“The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved”). Here, the wayfarer finds solace from his lovesickness under a linden tree, concluding, “Everything was good again. Everything: love and grief, and world and dream!” Again, the poignancy of this music is set in stark contrast to what surrounds it. After a cymbal crash, the finale emerges like a lightning bolt from a dark cloud. The movement transforms musical material from the first movement in a turbulent journey toward D major.

—Katherine Buzard