UCSD Chamber Orchestra - UCSD Department of Music Intranet

Sunday, March 9, 2008, 3 p.m.
Mandeville Auditorium
UCSD Chamber Orchestra
Conductor- Geoffrey Gartner
Clarinet- Robert Zelickman

Program
Gioacchino ROSSINI
(1792-1868)
Introduction, Theme and variations
for clarinet and orchestra
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Two traditional Klezmer songs
for clarinet and orchestra
arranged by Zinovy Goro
Happy Nigun
2 nd Avenue Freilach
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Manuel de FALLA
(1876-1946)
excerpts from El Amor Brujo
Introduction y escena
En la Cueva: La Noche
El Aparecido-Danza del Terror
El Circulo Mágico: Romance del Pescador
Pantomima
Danza ritual del Fuego
I N T E R M I S S I O N

Film Screening:
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1929)
Director: Luis Buñuel
Composers: Wagner, others
(This film will be screened with its original sound.)
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Entr’acte (1925)
Director: Rene Clair
Composer: Erik Satie
(The UCSD Chamber Orchestra will perform Satie’s film score live.)

Gioacchino Rossini-
Introduction, Theme and Variations
PROGRAM NOTES
Little has been established about this engaging work. It is not mentioned in The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which ordinarily provides a comprehensive
listing of repertoire by all significant composers. As Kalman Bloch, former principal
clarinetist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 46 years, observes, "There is great
question as to whether Rossini actually composed this piece. It is thought that he wrote
the tune and a student composed the variations. Nevertheless, it is one of the premier
showpieces of its time: a popular tune followed by variations allowing the clarinetist to
show off tremendous technique and charm. Our repertoire could stand a few more of
these 'original' pieces." A graceful, operatic introduction makes the principal theme, once
it appears, sound particularly light-hearted. Three successive variations are each a little
more animated and a little more challenging for the soloist. A slow variation in the minor
key follows a moment of mock seriousness, interrupting the humorous spirit. Before long,
however, the upbeat character returns, in a final variation and coda that bring the soloist
to the highest reaches of the clarinet register.
Manuel de Falla-
Excerpts from El Amor Brujo [Love, the Magician]
-Introduction y escena [Introduction and Scene]
-En la Cueva: La Noche [In the Cave: Night]
-El Aparecido-Danza del Terror [The Ghost- Dance of Terror]
-El Circulo Mágico: Romance del Pescador [The Magic Circle: the
Fisherman’s Story]
-Pantomima [Pantomime]
-Danza ritual del Fuego [Ritual Fire Dance]
“Gypsy scene from Andalusia” is the subtitle of the one-act ballet, El Amor Brujo
(Love, the Magician), which the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla wrote in 1914/15 in
response to a request from the Spanish dancer Pastora Imperio, who was looking for a
piece in which she could sing as well as dance. When the piece proved an unexpected
failure at its first performance in Madrid in 1915, de Falla withdrew the score and
adapted it as an orchestral suite which, first heard in 1916, marked a change in the
ballet’s fortunes. But the real breakthrough came with a production at the Théâtre du
Trianon Lyrique, choreographed by La Argentina, in 1925. A further production at the
Paris Opéra-Comique in 1928 marked the starting-point of the music’s international
acclaim.
In this drama of love and jealousy, the dead lover of the hot-blooded gypsy,
Candelas, returns as a ghost in order to frustrate her new affair with her true love,

Carmelo. She cunningly contrives to exorcise the ghost and so salvage her relationship
with Carmelo. De Falla portrays the Spanish nation in general as fiery, passionate and
lively, leading lives essentially dominated by love, jealousy and mystical forces. The
climax of the ballet is the Ritual Fire Dance, which is often performed as a solo dance
number or played on its own in the concert hall.
Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Director: Luis Buñuel (1900-1983)
Composer: Wagner, others
Principal cast: Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí
Margarete Zander
Synopsis: The dog in the title conspicuously fails to appear while, following radical eye
surgery, Luis Buñuel directs his cynical gaze at human relations, drops dead donkeys into
grand pianos, subjects Marist brothers to indignities, and manages in the nick of time to
avoid a happy ending.
Un Chien Andalou is the most famous of all Surrealist films. It launched the
career of one of the 20 th century’s most original and provocative directors, Luis Buñuel.
The extraordinary images (some of them still disturbing 75 years later) and the deliberate
sabotage of the narrative conventions of cinema have been enormously influential. (It’s
hard to imagine how the work of David Lynch would have been possible without the
pioneering effects of Buñuel).
In his biography, Buñuel describes the genesis of the film: “A few months later, I
made An Andalusian Dog, which came from an encounter between two dreams. When I
arrived to spend a few days at Dalí’s house in Figueras, I told him about a dream I’d had
in which a long, tapering cloud sliced the moon in half, like a razor blade slicing through
an eye. Dalí immediately told me he’d seen a hand crawling with ants in a dream he’d
had the previous night. “And what if we started right there and made a film?” he
wondered aloud.
“Despite my hesitation, we soon found ourselves hard at work and in less than a
week we had a script. Our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend
itself to rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to keep all doors to
the irrational open and keep only those moving images that surprised us, without trying to
explain why. The amazing thing was that we never had the slightest disagreement; we
spent a week of total identification. The filming took two weeks; there were only five or
six of us involved, and most of the time no one quite knew what he was doing. “Stare out
the window and look as if you’re listening to Wagner,” I remember telling Batcheff. “No,
no – not like that. Sadder. Much sadder…”
“The opening of The Andalusian Dog took place at the Ursulines, and was
attended by le tout-Paris- some aristocrats, a sprinkling of well-established artists (among
them Picasso, Le Corbusier, Cocteau…) and the surrealist group in toto. I was a nervous
wreck. In fact, I hid behind the screen with the record player, alternating Argentinian

tangos with Tristan and Isolde. Before the show I’d put some stones in my pocket to
throw at the audience in case of disaster…”
Entr’acte (1925)
Notes by Stephen Whittington
Director: René Clair (1898-1981)
Composer: Erik Satie (1866-1925)
Principal cast: Francis Picabia, Erik Satie, Man-Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Börlin
Synopsis: Erik Satie and Francis Picabia assassinate the audience with a cannon, Marcel
Duchamp and Man-Ray play chess, and a camel-drawn hearse leads everyone on a frantic
chase.
The film Entr’acte was made to be screened during the interval of the ballet
Relâche, created by Francis Picabia, with music by Erik Satie, which was premiered by
the Swedish Ballet in Paris in 1925. In a typical Dada-Surrealist provocation, the title of
the ballet means ‘No Performance Tonight.’ When the smart set of Paris showed up in
their evening dress for the first performance, they found the theatre locked. Assuming the
whole thing was a joke at their expense, they went home. In fact, by a curious but entirely
unforeseen coincidence, the star of the show, Jean Börlin (who also appears in Entr’acte)
was sick and the performance really had been cancelled. It took a great deal of effort to
persuade the public to return several nights later for the actual first performance.
Entr’acte is a virtuoso piece of film making, playing with the conventions of
silent film (concluding with the obligatory chase sequence) in a highly inventive way.
Before the film proper, there is a short prologue which was originally placed after the
overture to the ballet, featuring Satie (with trademark bowler hat and umbrella), and
Picabia.
The film opens with a series of visual puns involving chimneys, balloons, boxing
gloves and city lights. There is a false ending when Jean Börlin sets fire to his hair with
matches. Man-Ray and Marcel Duchamp appear playing chess; a ballerina is filmed from
an extreme low angle- as the camera pans up she is shown to bear a striking resemblance
to Satie, complete with beard; Picabia appears later with a gun with which he assassinates
Börlin, who is given a mock funeral from which he emerges alive.
The vagaries of accompanying silent film (variability of projection speed, prints
of the film that vary in length by several minutes) are perfectly coped with by Satie’s
score, which consists largely of a collection of modules that can be repeated as many
times as needed to match the film. Satie worked closely with the director, René Clair,
who later declared that the score was ‘the most perfect example of film music.’ There is
in fact some speculation, as yet unsubstantiated, that Satie worked as a cinema pianist in
the early years of the 20 th century. Silent movie accompanists regularly pillaged
(‘sample’, one might say in modern terms) the popular classics for material. Satie
parodies the famous Funeral March by Chopin for the bizarre funeral scene.
Notes by Stephen Whittington

The UCSD Chamber Orchestra
Flute/piccolo Minji Cho
Flute Ryan Hayes, Michelle Saldana
Oboe Laura Paget, Carina Rammelkamp
Clarinet Christopher Chen, Dipika Gopal, Ana Kasirer-Freide, Lisa Tulathimutte
Bassoon Daiki Takekawa
Horn Justin Honsinger, Bassem Shoucri, Amanda Tabor
Trumpet Melody Chang, Wilson Kwan
Trombone Andrew Davis
Percussion Jennica Billins, Brian Nuyen, Ross Karre
Timpani Ross Karre
Piano Brian Nuyen
1st Violin Lisa Nguyen (concertmaster), Joyce Chu, Kate Kim, Michelle Kong,
Angela Ledl, Kimmie Riskas, Matus Telgarsky
2 nd Violin Jennifer Au (principal), Kaitlen Conner, Jason Fong, Minji Kim, Elaine Lee,
Norman Kuo, Susan Mahabady, Leslie Manjarrez, Carolina Margarito,
Emily Witham, Kevin Wu
Viola Matthew Li (principal), Mengchieh Chuang, Hanna Ellingsen,
Christina Hanson, Kimberly Verrell
Cello Jesse Alm (principal), Robert Dufau, Ting Shen,
Stef von Huben, Siobhan Williams
Bass Han-han Cho, Tom Ferguson