Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Conducted by Pinchas Steinberg

P E R F O R M A N C E

William Blank—EXODES
The composer has dedicated Exodes "to Kofi Annan in tribute to his untiring efforts to promote peace, and Maestro Pinchas Steinberg in gratitude."

World Premiere (2003)

Modest Mussorgsky—PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION (1874)

(orchestration by Maurice Ravel, 1922)

Promenade
Gnome
Promenade
The Old Castle
Promenade
Tuileries
Bydlo (The Ox Cart)
Promenade
Ballet of Chicks inTtheir Shells
Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
Limoges —The Market
Catacombae: Sepulcrum romanum
Cum mortuis in lingua mortua
Baba Yaga (The Hut on Fowl's Legs)
The Great Gate at Kiev

United Nations Day Concert—2003
NOTES ON THE PROGRAMME:

THE PERFORMERS
OSR—ORCHESTRE DE LA SUISSE ROMANDE

Founded in 1918 by Ernest Ansermet, who remained the titular head until 1967, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) numbers 112 permanent musicians. Its activities include its subscription concerts in Geneva and Lausanne , the symphonic concerts of the City of Geneva , the annual concert for the United Nations in Geneva , and the opera and ballet performances at the Grand Théâtre of Geneva. Its Artistic and Music Director since 1 September 2002 has been the Israeli conductor Pinchas Steinberg.

An orchestra of worldwide reputation, the OSR, under the aegis of its founding conductor and his successors (Paul Kletzki 1967-1970, Wolfgang Sawallisch 1970-1980, Horst Stein 1980-1985, Armin Jordan 1985-1997, Fabio Luisi 1997-2002), has contributed actively to the history of music with the discovery or the support of celebrated contemporary composers such as Benjamin Britten, Claude Debussy, Heinz Holliger, Arthur Honegger, Frank Martin, Darius Milhaud and Igor Stravinsky. Some of their works received their first performances in Geneva . For the 2000/01 and 2001/02 seasons, the OSR gave ten world premieres, in collaboration with the Radio Suisse Romande (the Swiss French-language broadcasting service). It has just commissioned a symphonic piece for the 2004/05 and 2005/06 seasons from the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös, and also supports Swiss composers, most recently with a commission to the Geneva composer William Blank.

Working closely with the Swiss French-language broadcasting service, the OSR was broadcast very early by radio and has been heard by millions of people throughout the world over the broadcasting networks. Its partnership with the Decca Music Group resulted in a number of legendary recordings. Two Verdi operas ( Alzira and Jérusalem— conducted by Fabio Luisi) and a Poulenc disc (Felicity Lott—conducted by Armin Jordan ) appeared in 2001, distributed by Philips Music Group and Harmonia Mundi, and both received prestigious awards.

The OSR's international tours have taken it to the great concert halls of Asia ( Tokyo , Seoul ), Europe ( Berlin , Brussels , Budapest , Istanbul , London , Paris , Salzburg , Vienna etc.) and the United States ( Boston , New York , San Francisco , Washington etc .). The OSR is the guest of the Orange Festival in France in 2003 and 2004. It will make a European tour in May 2004, under the direction of Maestro Pinchas Steinberg.

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande receives its principal subsidies from the City and the Canton of Geneva. It is supported by the French-speaking Swiss broadcasting service, associations of friends of the orchestra and numerous sponsors and patrons.

PINCHAS STEINBERG

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Artistic and Music Director

Pinchas Steinberg was born in Israel. He studied violin in the United States of America and composition in Berlin . In 1974 he made his conducting debut with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra in Berlin . This was the first of a long series of prestigious orchestras which he has conducted, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, the Orchestre National de France, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, to mention but a few. Pinchas Steinberg has conducted at the Salzburg , Berlin , Prague , Orange , Vienna and Flanders Festivals.

From 1988 to 1993, Pinchas Steinberg was Permanent Guest Conductor with the Vienna State Opera. He has conducted productions in many of the major opera houses of the world: London (Covent Garden), Paris , Munich , San Francisco , Berlin , Rome , Vienna and Geneva .

From 1989 to 1996, Pinchas Steinberg was Chief Conductor of the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Vienna .

His highly acclaimed recordings include Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer , Catalani's La Wally , for BMG, and Richard Strauss's Die schweigsame Frau . His RCA recording of Massenet's Chérubin was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque, the Diapason d'Or, the German Critics Prize and the Cæcilia Prize.

In December 2001, Pinchas Steinberg made his United States concert debut with the Cleveland Orchestra and was invited back in March 2003.

Since 1 September 2002, Pinchas Steinberg has been the Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva .

THE MUSIC

William Blank— Exodes, for symphony orchestra (2003) (World Premiere).

Cette grande chose sourde par le monde et qui s'accroît soudain comme une ébriété — Saint-John Perse, Exil

Displaced persons, masses, whole populations, are forced to flee their homes, leaving everything behind them. Families are decimated, the sick abandoned to their fate, and the dead left unburied. Faces of despair can look forward only to an unwanted future as refugees in a camp, awaiting an improbable improvement and an even less likely return. People are dependent on humanitarian assistance, subjected to every indignity, and made to feel that they are a burden, just another statistic in the never-ending list of catastrophes.

What should one say, how else can one react other than by sharing a little of that gnawing pain and by protesting, each in one's own way and as best as one can, against this intolerable iniquity?

Exodes is intended as a modest plea to fight against indifference and neglect, a call not to forget or accept a reality which no utopia has unfortunately ever managed to transform. My work is dedicated to Maestro Pinchas Steinberg in gratitude, and to Kofi Annan in tribute to his untiring efforts to promote peace.— William Blank

William Blank was born in Montreux , Switzerland , in 1957. He began the piano as a child before becoming interested in percussion and studying music at the Geneva Conservatory. It was during this period that he discovered the Second Vienna School through the writings of Adorno and Leibowitz, which sparked an interest in composition. He undertook an analysis of the major works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, followed by those of Dallapiccola, who became the model for his own output. Blank's actual composing debut came with a 1977 commission for Hesse Lieder , for soprano and chamber ensemble, which premiered in conjunction with the implementation of stereo sound on Radio Suisse Romande .

After receiving his diploma in 1979, Blank earned an advanced degree and first prize in percussion in 1982 at the Geneva Conservatory, which immediately appointed him to teach this discipline. A fellowship from the City of Geneva in 1986 enabled him to complete his first work for symphony orchestra, Omaggi , commissioned and first performed by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Armin Jordan. His work for contralto and chamber group, Conti d'Ungaretti , for an ISCM concert, was selected by UNESCO's International Forum of Young Composers. A CD devoted to his music was released in 1989.

Principal percussionist of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from 1984 to 2002 and a frequent guest of other ensembles, William Blank divides his time between performance, teaching and composing, with some 20 works already published and recorded. He is currently professor of composition and orchestration at the Lausanne Conservatory.

Still savouring the triumphal premiere of his opera Boris Godunov in February 1874, Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) began work on Pictures at an Exhibition after visiting an exhibition of designs and drawings by his recently deceased friend, the architect Viktor Hartmann. An accomplished pianist, Mussorgsky completed the cycle for his instrument in barely three weeks.

Hartmann had been closely connected with the Group of Five, whose members starting in 1862 were the critic César Cui and the composers Mily Balakirev, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Mussorgsky. The Five all agreed on the need for the establishment of a truly “Russian” school of music free of Western influences, but were far from unanimous on how to achieve that objective. By the time Mussorgsky wrote Boris , he, Borodin and Rimsky were all chafing under the increasingly heavy yoke not only of Balakirev, but also of the chauvinist journalist and archaeologist Vladimir Stassov.

Mussorgsky attended the above-mentioned exhibition organized in June 1874 by Stassov in St. Petersburg in memory of Hartmann. Of the roughly 400 works displayed, around 100 have survived, of which only six have a direct bearing on Pictures at an Exhibition , but in the final analysis, this is of little consequence. Rather than a series of Charakterstücke or a theme with variations, Mussorgsky offers a strikingly original visit to an art exhibition, geared as much for the ears as for the mind's eye. Not only do the Promenades serve as musical bridges between each picture, but they also reflect the impression, state of mind or sheer imagination of the composer/observer as he strolls from work to work. Like the visitor's own attitude or perspective, the Promenades evolve, depending on what he is looking at or has just seen. Mussorgsky's aim is not so much to describe the paintings to us through his music as it is to convey the feelings that they inspire in him.

To appreciate Pictures at an Exhibition , we thus have no need to know that the Gnome drawn by Hartmann is in fact a somewhat grotesque nutcracker, with the gnome's jaws serving to crack open the nut, or that Baba Yaga (The Hut on Fowl's Legs) is a fanciful clock of extremely bad taste which only a nouveau riche could love. Mussorgsky transforms them into miniature portraits straight out of fairy tales (the Hut being originally the home of the Russian equivalent of the witch in Hansel and Gretel ). The end result reminds us of the composer's own Night on Bare Mountain — surely a sly wink at the alert music lover. Similarly, The Great Gate at Kiev calls to mind more one of the sweeping crowd scenes in Boris or Khovanshchina than the artist's design for a monumental triumphal arch (never built) for a visit from Czar Alexander II. The sombre mood of the aptly entitled Catacombae can reasonably be interpreted as a moving tribute to Hartmann, especially since the Cum mortuis in lingua mortua which follows does not refer to any of the artist's drawings, suggesting that the “promenade” here is one in which the observer literally goes inside the burial caves of the previous work.

For Pictures, Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) had only Rimsky-Korsakov's posthumous edition, published in 1886, on which to base his work, which accounts for the minor differences with the piano cycle. By and large, though, Ravel not only faithfully respects Mussorgsky's original, but enhances it through his lush orchestral palette and savvy choice of instruments, like the trumpet at the beginning, the alto saxophone in The Old Castle and the tuba in Bydlo . — Richard Cole

United Nations Day Concerts are organized each year by the Department of Public Information.

The 2003 United Nations Day Concert has been made possible by the generosity of:

• City and Canton of Geneva
• Pro Helvetia—Arts Council of Switzerland
• Culture and UNESCO Section, Swiss Foreign Ministry
• Swiss WorldCargo, Swiss International Airlines, Ltd.
• Les concerts de la Journée des Nations Unies sont organisés
  chaque année par le Département de l'information
  de l'Organisation des Nations Unies
• Le concert de la Journée des Nations Unies de 2003
  a pu être organisé grâce à la générosité de :
• Ville et canton de Genève
• Pro Helvetia — Fondation suisse pour la culture
• Section Culture et UNESCO, Département fédéral
  des affaires étrangères, Suisse
• Swiss WorldCargo, Swiss International Airlines, Ltd.