2011 Program Book 2 - Spanish Guitar - July 8 & 9.pdf

GrantParkMusicFestival 

Seventy-seventh Season 

Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus 

Carlos Kalmar, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor 

Christopher Bell, Chorus Director 

Spanish Guitar and Alondra de la Parra 

Friday, July 8, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. 

Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. 

Jay Pritzker Pavilion 

GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA 

Alondra de la Parra, Guest Conductor 

David Russell, Guitar 

MÁRQUEZ 

RODRIGO 

Leyenda de Miliano 

Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar and Orchestra 

Allegro con spirito 

Adagio 

Allegro gentile 

David Russell 

DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 

Allegro maestoso 

Poco adagio 

Scherzo: Vivace 

Finale: Allegro 

This concert is sponsored by: 

Alondra de la Parra’s appearance is partially underwritten 

by the Consulate General of Mexico 

2011 Program Notes, Book 2 B39

Friday, July 8 and Saturday, July 9, 2011 

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL 

Alondra de la Parra has been featured in Crain’s New York Business 

as one of their “40 under 40 New York’s Rising Stars,” singled out by 

The Daily Beast as one of the “Young Rockstars of the Conducting World,” 

graced the cover of Caras magazine, been the subject of a major feature in 

The New York Times, recognized by Poder magazine one of their “Top 20 

under 40,” and named one of six “Young Artists on the Rise” by Symphony 

magazine. 

A champion of new music as well as an innovative interpreter of standard 

repertoire, Alondra de la Parra has conducted more than twenty world 

premieres by composers including Enrico Chapela, Paul Brantley, Paul Desenne, Eugenio Toussaint 

and Ernesto Villa-Lobos. She was the first Mexican woman to conduct, and she holds the title of 

Cultural Ambassador for Mexican Tourism. In addition, she has been Music Director of the Music 

Festival of the Americas in Stowe, Vermont since 2005. Alondra de la Parra, who makes her home 

in New York City with her husband, holds a B.A. in piano performance and an M.M. in conducting 

from the Manhattan School of Music. 

As Symphony magazine put it, “de la Parra doesn’t seem to put much stock in the ‘glass ceiling.’” 

She holds the distinction of being the first Mexican woman to conduct in New York City, and she 

has been honored for her contributions to the arts with a proclamation from the city of New York. 

For the past two years, she has received the League of American Orchestras Women Conductors’ 

Grant. In May 2008, de la Parra became the youngest member to join the board of trustees of the 

Latin Grammy Awards, and she holds the title of Cultural Ambassador for Mexican Tourism. Respected 

by her musician colleagues in spite of her relative youth, she has been heralded by Plácido 

Domingo as “an extraordinary conductor. 

Guitarist David Russell, born in Scotland but long a resident of 

Spain, has earned the highest praise from audiences and critics around the 

world, including being named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 

London in 1997. Mr. Russell twice received the Julian Bream Guitar Prize 

during his studies at the R.A.M., and he went on to win such prestigious 

international competitions as the Andrés Segovia, José Ramírez and Francisco 

Tárrega. In May 2003 he was honored as an “Adopted Son” of Es 

Migjorn, the town in Minorca where he grew up; later the town named a 

street after him, “Avinguda David Russell.” Nigrán, Spain, where he now 

lives, awarded him the town’s Silver Medal in 2005. In November 2003 he 

was given the Medal of Honor of the Conservatory of the Balearics. In May 2005 he was honored 

by the music conservatory of Vigo, culminating with the opening of the new concert hall named 

“Auditorio David Russell.” In 2009 he was named an honorary member of “Amigos de la Guitarra,” 

the oldest guitar society in Spain. David Russell tours the world as a concert artist, appearing regularly 

at prestigious halls in New York, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Madrid, Toronto, Rome and 

other music centers. Since 1995 he has been an exclusive recording artist with Telarc International, 

with which he has recorded sixteen CDs, including the 2005 Grammy Award-winning Aire Latino. 

In 2009 David was named honorary member of “Amigos de la Guitarra,” the oldest guitar society 

in Spain. The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Russell made his mastery evident without ever deviating 

from an approach that places musical values above mere display. It was apparent to the audience 

throughout the recital that Mr. Russell possesses a talent of extraordinary dimension. 


GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Friday, July 8 and Saturday, July 9, 2011 

Arturo Márquez (born in 1950) 

Leyenda de Miliano (“Legend of Emiliano”) 

(2010) 

Leyenda de Miliano is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, 

bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, 

timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is 13 minutes. This is 

the first performance of this work by the Grant Park Orchestra. 

Arturo Márquez, born in Alamos Sonora, Mexico in 1950, began his 

musical training in La Puente, California in 1966, and subsequently studied piano and music theory 

at the Conservatory of Music of Mexico and composition at the Taller de Composicíon of the 

Institute of Fine Arts of Mexico with Joaquín Gutiérrez Heras, Hector Quintanar and Federico 

Ibarra. Márquez also studied privately in Paris with Jacques Castérède, and at the California Institute 

of the Arts with Morton Subotnick, Stephen Mosko, Mel Powell and James Newton. Márquez, 

today one of Mexico’s most respected musicians, has received commissions from the Organization 

of American States, Universidad Metropolitana de México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de 

México, Festival del Caribe, Festival de la Ciudad de México, 1992 Seville World’s Fair and Rockefeller 

Foundation, and grants and fellowships from the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las 

Artes of Mexico, French Government, Fulbright Foundation and other prestigious organizations. 

His numerous honors include the Medalla Mozart (awarded by the Austrian Embassy in Mexico), 

California Institute of Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award and La Medalla de Oro de Bellas Artes 

de Mexico, the first musician to receive this last award; in December 2009 he was presented with 

the Premio Nacional de Artes y Sciences by President Felipe Calderon. Márquez’s professional appointments 

have included leader of the Navojoa Municipal Band, teacher of composition at the 

National School of Music of Mexico, and a residency at the National Center of Research, Documentation 

and Information of Mexican Music at the National University of Mexico. 

Márquez composed Leyenda de Miliano (“Legend of Emiliano”) in 2010 in observance of the bicentennial 

of Mexico’s independence from Spain and the centenary of the outbreak of the Mexican 

Revolution against the dictatorial government of Porfirio Díaz, a conflict in which Emiliano Zapata 

(1879-1919), of humble Mestizos origins, became a military and political hero and a champion 

of the country’s suppressed peoples. “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” was 

Zapata’s rallying cry. Márquez’s Leyenda de Miliano was premiered on September 4, 2010 by the 

Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas under the direction of Alondra de la Parra in the ancient 

city of Cuernavaca, one of the centers of the Mexican Revolution. Leyenda de Miliano, with its 

brazen opening music, its sultry interludes and its abrupt, shocking close — perhaps a reflection of 

Zapata’s assassination at age 39 by government sympathizers — tries to capture the bravado, vision 

and resolve of one of Mexico’s greatest national figures. 

Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) 

Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar and Orchestra 

(1939) 

Concierto de Aranjuez is scored for pairs of woodwinds, horns and trumpets 

and strings. The performance time is 21 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra 

first performed the Concierto on July 19, 1971. Theo Alcantara conducted and 

Christopher Parkening was the soloist. 

Though Joaquín Rodrigo, born on November 22, 1901 at Sagunto, 

Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast, lost his sight when he was three from diphtheria, he early showed 

a pronounced aptitude for music. His parents enrolled him in a school for blind children in the 

nearby city of Valencia, and at age eight, he began formal lessons in harmony, piano and violin; his 

teachers in composition included Francisco Antich, Enrique Gomá and Eduardo López Chavarri. 

During the 1920s, Rodrigo established himself as a pianist with performances of challenging recent 

works by Ravel, Stravinsky and other contemporary composers, and he began composing seriously 

B42 2011 Program Notes, Book 2 



in 1923 with the Suite para Piano and the Dos Esbozos (“Two Sketches”) for Violin and Piano. His 

first work for orchestra, Juglares (written, like all of his scores, on a Braille music typewriter and 

then dictated to a copyist), was played in both Valencia and Madrid in 1924; his Cinco Piezas Infantiles, 

also for orchestra, won a National Prize the following year. In 1927, he followed the path 

of his compatriots Albéniz, Granados, Falla and Turina, and moved to Paris, where he enrolled at 

the Schola Cantorum as a pupil of Paul Dukas. Rodrigo immersed himself in the musical life of 

the city, befriending Honegger, Milhaud, Ravel and other Parisian luminaries, receiving encouragement 

from Falla, and enjoying success with a performance of his orchestral Prelude for a Poem to the 

Alhambra, whose subject matter and distinctly Spanish idiom established the style that consistently 

characterized his creations. 

In 1933, he married the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi. A Conde de Cartegena Grant the 

following year enabled him to remain in Paris to continue his studies at the Conservatoire and the 

Sorbonne. The outbreak of civil war in Spain in 1936 prevented Rodrigo from returning home, 

and he spent the next three years traveling in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and living in the 

French capital. He returned to Madrid after the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, and established 

his position among the country’s leading musicians with the premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez 

for Guitar and Orchestra the following year. His prominence in Spanish musical life was recognized 

with many awards, honorary degrees and memberships, and, in 1947, the creation for him of the 

Manuel de Falla Chair at the University of Madrid. In addition to teaching at the University, Rodrigo 

also served as Head of Music Broadcasts for Spanish Radio, music critic for several newspapers, 

and Director of the Artistic Section of the Spanish National Organization for the Blind. Though 

best known for his series of concertos for one, two and four guitars (Concierto de Aranjuez, Fantasía 

para un Gentilhombre, Concierto para una Fiesta, Concierto Madrigal, Concierto Andaluz), flute (Concierto 

Pastoral), cello (Concierto como un Divertimento) and harp (Concierto Serenata), Rodrigo also 

composed a ballet, a zarzuela, an opera, numerous orchestral works, music for the cinema, many 

songs, and solo numbers for piano and guitar. He died in Madrid on July 6, 1999. 

The small town of Aranjuez, thirty miles south of Madrid on the River Tagus, is a green oasis in 

the barren plateau of central Spain. In the mid-18th century, a palace, set amid verdant forests and 

parks, was built at Aranjuez as a summer retreat for the Spanish court. Generations of Spanish kings 

thereafter settled into Aranjuez every spring, when the countless nightingales would serenade them 

from the cedars and laurels, the court ladies would promenade in the cooling shade, and the men 

would hone their equestrian skills with the famous cream-colored Andalusian horses bred nearby. 

When Rodrigo sought inspiration for a new concerto in the difficult, war-torn year of 1939, it was 

to the elegant symbol of by-gone Spain represented by Aranjuez that he turned. “Having conceived 

the idea of a guitar concerto,” he recalled, “it was necessary for me to place it in a certain epoch and, 

still more, in a definite location — an epoch at the end of which fandangos transform themselves 

into fandanguillos, and when the cante and the bulerias vibrate in the Spanish air.” He further stated 

that he had in mind the early decades of the 19th century when composing this Concierto de Aranjuez. 

Of the work’s mood and the character of its solo instrument, the composer wrote, “Throughout 

the veins of Spanish music, a profound rhythmic beat seems to be diffused by a strange phantasmagoric, 

colossal and multiform instrument — an instrument idealized in the fiery imagination 

of Albéniz, Granados, Falla and Turina. It is an imaginary instrument that might be said to possess 

the wings of the harp, the heart of the grand piano and the soul of the guitar.... It would be unjust to 

expect strong sonorities from this Concierto; they would falsify its essence and distort an instrument 

made for subtle ambiguities. Its strength is to be found in its very lightness and in the intensity of 

its contrasts. The Aranjuez Concierto is meant to sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the tree tops 

in the parks, and it should be only as strong as a butterfly, and as dainty as a veronica.” 

The Concierto de Aranjuez has enjoyed a great popularity since it was introduced in 1940, having 

been recorded many times, made into a ballet, and set in an array of popular, jazz and even 

commercial arrangements. With few precedents to guide him, Rodrigo created a work that not only 

embodies the essential qualities of his musical style and the spiritual ethos of Spain, but also solves 

the difficult technical problems inherent in combining a solo guitar with a full orchestra. Rodrigo 




adapted the three traditional movements of the concerto form to reflect different aspects of the soul 

of Spanish music — the outer movements are fast in tempo and dance-like, while the middle one 

is imbued with the bittersweet intensity of classic flamenco cante hondo (“deep song”). The soloist 

opens the Concierto with an evocative, typically Spanish rhythmic pattern of ambiguous meter that 

courses throughout the movement. The orchestra, in colorful fiesta garb, soon enters while the 

guitar’s brilliant, virtuoso display continues. The haunting Adagio, among the most beautiful and 

beloved pieces ever written for guitar, is based on a theme of Middle Eastern ancestry, given in the 

plangent tones of the English horn, around which the soloist weaves delicate arabesques of sound as 

the music unfolds. The finale’s lilting simplicity (one commentator noted its similarity to a Spanish 

children’s song) serves as a foil to the imposing technical demands placed on the soloist, who is 

required to negotiate almost the entire range of the instrument’s possibilities. 

Like all of Rodrigo’s best music, the Concierto de Aranjuez bears the unmistakable stamp of his 

craftsmanship and stylistic personality, of which the noted Spanish composer Tomás Marco wrote, 

“His aim has been to create a Spanish ambiance, full of color and agreeable tunes, where folklore 

is a picturesque element and references to art music of the past consist of distilled 17th and 18thcentury 

mannerisms.” This masterful Concierto is glowing evidence of Rodrigo’s ability of capture 

the spirit of his native land in music that is both immediate in appeal and lasting in value. 

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) 

SyMPHONy NO. 7 IN D MINOR, OP. 70 (1884-1885) 

Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 is scored for pairs of woodwinds plus piccolo, four 

horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. The performance 

time is 35 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed the Symphony 

on August 15, 1943, with Hans Lange conducting. 

When Dvořák attended the premiere of the Third Symphony of his 

friend and colleague Johannes Brahms on December 2, 1883, he was already 

familiar with the work from a preview Brahms had given him at the piano shortly before. The 

effect on Dvořák of Brahms’ magnificent creation, with its inexorable formal logic and its powerful 

shifting moods, was profound. Dvořák considered it, quite simply, the greatest symphony of the 

time, and it served as one of the two emotional seeds from which his D minor Symphony grew. The 

other, which followed less than two weeks after the first presentation of the Third Symphony, was 

the death of his mother. 

Brahms not only encouraged Dvořák in his work, but also convinced his publisher, Simrock, 

to take on the music of the once little-known Czech composer. Dvořák always respected and was 

grateful to his benefactor, and when Brahms’ Third Symphony appeared he looked upon it as a 

challenge presented to him to put forth a surpassing effort in his next work in the form. With 

Brahms’ Symphony as the inspiration, and his grief at his mother’s passing as the soul, the idea of 

a new symphony grew within him. He poured some of his sadness into the Piano Trio in F minor, 

Op. 65, composed early in 1884, but the spark that ignited the actual composition of the Seventh 

Symphony was not struck until the following summer. Dvořák had been garnering an international 

success with his music during the preceding years, and his popularity was especially strong in England. 

As one of the stops on his busy conducting tours through northern Europe, he visited Britain 

for the first time in the spring of 1884, and on June 13th he was elected an honorary member of the 

Philharmonic Society and simultaneously requested to provide a new symphony for that organization. 

It gave him the reason to put the gestating Symphony to paper. Following another English 

foray in the fall that was even more successful than the earlier one, he set to work on the Symphony 

in December. 

With thoughts of his mother still fresh in his mind, and with the example of Brahms always 

before him (“It must be something respectable for I don’t want to let Brahms down,” he wrote to 

Simrock), Dvořák determined to compose a work that would solidify his international reputation 





and be worthy of those who inspired it. In his study of the composer’s work, Otakar Sourek wrote, 

“Dvořák worked at the D minor Symphony with passionate concentration and in the conscious 

endeavor to create a work of noble proportions and content, which should surpass not only what he 

had so far produced in the field of symphonic composition, but which was also designed to occupy 

an important place in world music.” On December 22nd, Dvořák wrote to his friend Antonín Rus, 

“I am now busy with the new Symphony (for London) and wherever I go I have no thought for anything 

but my work, which must be such as to move the world — well, God grant that it may be so!” 

He was so pleased with progress on the piece, even during the busy holiday season, that on New 

Year’s Eve he told another friend, Alois Göbl, “I am again as happy and contented in my work as I 

have always been up to now and, God grant, I always shall be.” The orchestration was undertaken 

during the winter, and the score finished in March, only a month before its premiere in London. 

Dvořák reported to Simrock that the Symphony’s introduction was “an exceptionally brilliant 

success.” Its triumph caused the eminent conductor-pianist Hans von Bülow, who led the Symphony 

in its Berlin premiere in 1889, to say of Dvořák, “Next to Brahms, [he is] the most God-gifted 

composer of the present day.” (Bülow also called him, with all due respect, “a genius who looks 

like a tinker.”) After Dvořák made some revisions in the score — including the excision of forty 

measures from the slow movement — he presented it to Simrock for publication with the expectation 

of a good payment. Simrock, however, argued that Dvořák’s large works did not sell well (he 

conveniently ignored the fact that the Slavonic Dances were making huge profits) and offered only 

half of the requested amount. Dvořák replied that not only was the D minor Symphony the best 

such work he had ever written and certain to be in demand, but that he was also a father needing 

to support a family. As a final argument, the composer, whose first job had been as a butcher’s apprentice 

in a peasant village, and who throughout his life followed the country practice of keeping 

pigeons, added, “I have a lot of expense with my garden and it doesn’t exactly look as if there’ll be 

a good potato crop this year.” Dvořák got his full payment. It was the second of his symphonies to 

be published, and was usually known as “No. 2” until the 1960s, when the first five symphonies 

finally became widely available. 

Dvořák’s D minor Symphony has been regularly heard in the world’s concert halls ever since 

it was new, and it is regarded by many as his finest achievement in the genre. Sir Donald Tovey’s 

comment is representative: “I have no hesitation in setting Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony along with 

the C major Symphony of Schubert and the four symphonies of Brahms as among the greatest and 

purest examples of this art-form since Beethoven.” It has a gravity and austerity that are seldom 

encountered in the works of this composer, about whose music the great Viennese critic Eduard 

Hanslick once said, “In it, the sun always shines.” Its texture and orchestration are often reminiscent 

of Brahms, but Dvořák’s own distinctive personality is never suppressed, a difficult balance for 

him to attain during these years since he wanted to write music that would embody both the great 

German symphonic tradition and the unique characteristics of the Bohemian folk music that he 

held so dear. Though they are very different works, he succeeded remarkably well in each of his last 

three symphonies. 

The Symphony begins with an ominous rumble deep in the basses reminiscent of both the introductory 

measures of Bruckner’s symphonies and the beginning of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, 

another work in D minor and coincidentally also commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society. 

The haunting main theme is introduced by the violas and cellos, then echoed by the clarinets. 

Almost immediately, the possibilities for development built into the theme are explored, and the 

music rapidly grows in intensity until a climax is achieved when the main theme bursts forth in dark 

splendor from the full orchestra. The tension subsides to allow the flute and clarinet to present the 

lyrical second theme. The development, woven from the thematic components of the exposition, 

is compact and concentrated. The recapitulation is swept in on an enormous wave of sound that 

is capped by the re-entry of the timpani. The main theme is abandoned quickly, and the repeat of 

the flowing second theme is entrusted to two clarinets in a rich setting. The main theme returns, at 

times with considerable vehemence, to form the coda to this magnificent movement. 

The second movement opens with a chorale of an almost otherworldly serenity that had been 


GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Friday, July 8 and Saturday, July 9, 2011 

little portrayed in music since the late works of Beethoven. A complementary thematic idea with 

wide leaps of pathetic beauty is heard from the strings. The unusual form of the movement, part 

variations, part sonata, is perhaps best heard as the struggle between the beatific grace of the opening 

and the various states of musical and emotional tension that militate against it. It is likely that 

Dvořák intended this affecting music as the heart of the Symphony, as a cathartic portrayal of the 

feelings that had troubled him since the death of his mother. 

The Scherzo is the greatest dance movement among Dvořák’s symphonies. It is at once graceful 

and compelling, airy and forceful. Its bounding syncopations give it an irresistible vivacity set in a 

glowing, burnished orchestral sonority. Though the trio is more lyrical, it has an incessant rhythmic 

background in the strings that lends it an unsettled quality. 

The finale continues the brooding mood of the preceding movements. Unlike many minormode 

symphonies of the 19th century, this one does not end in a blazing apotheosis of optimism, 

but, wrote Sourek, “rises to a glorious climax of manly, honorable and triumphant resolve.” The 

finale is large in scale and assured in expression, and carries an emotional weight equal to that of the 

earlier movements. It is a moving climax to one of Dvořák’s greatest works. 

Of Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony, Otakar Sourek wrote, “The spirit of the great symphonistarchitect 

emanates in full glory from the work as a whole, and from each movement, from each section 

and, indeed, from each bar, building up before us a composition of monumental proportions, 

unified in all its parts, bold in design, of material without flaw or fracture, a composition which is 

one of the greatest and most significant symphonic compositions since Beethoven.” 

©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda 

EDISON ALSO INVENTED 

THE PHONOGRAPH. 

The arts nourish the soul of a community. 

At ComEd, we’re proud to lend our support 

to music, theater and fine arts programs 

throughout our service territories. 

www.ComEd.com | 1-800-EDISON-1 

© 2011 Commonwealth Edison Company

2011 Program Book 2 - Spanish Guitar - July 8 & 9.pdf

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