Program Notes }
him after robbing him of all the riches he
has acquired. She and her companions
perform the “Arabian Dance” to lure
him. Its prominent use of shrill piccolos
and flutes, drums and tambourine makes
use of an exotic style known as “Turkish
music,” which Mozart and Beethoven also
used in several of their scores. Anitra also
performs a solo dance (“Anitra’s Dance”);
pizzicato strings add to the delicacy of this
alluringly feminine music.
At the beginning of Act V, Peer, now a
penniless old man, is returning at last to
his homeland. But the North Sea throws
one of its not uncommon tempests at him,
and he barely escapes with his life. The
brief tone poem “Peer Gynt’s Homecoming: Stormy Night at Sea” vividly
describes the raging winds and waters.
In Peer’s home village, the devoted
Solveig loves Peer despite his many
faults and has waited patiently over the
decades for his return; at the play’s conclusion, they are reunited as old people
near death. “Solveig’s Song,” originally
A
scored for soprano and so characteristic
of Grieg in its gentle melancholy, is a
superb example of the composer’s gifts
as a songwriter.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two piccolos, two
oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns,
two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, harp, piano and strings.
Water of Life
Karen Tanaka
Born in Tokyo, Japan, April 7, 1961; now living
in Los Angeles, California
The beautiful, delicately colored music of
Japanese composer Karen Tanaka makes
its Baltimore Symphony debut at these concerts. Now living in Los Angeles and teaching composition at the California Institute
of the Arts, Tanaka is a pianist as well as
a composer, and many of her works have
been created for the piano, among them her
recent Our Planet Earth, a series of exquisite
S e A S o n
short pieces meditating on aspects of nature
and designed expressly for young pianists.
Indeed, Tanaka’s love of nature and concern for the environment have influenced
many of her works, including Water of Life,
which was commissioned by the Rochester
Philharmonic and premiered in Rochester
just this past May.
Born in Tokyo, where she began formal
piano and composition lessons as a child,
Tanaka studied composition at Tokyo’s
Gakuen School of Music. In 1986, she
moved to Paris to study with Tristan
Murail and work in electronic music at
IRCAM. The next year, she won the
Gaudeamus Prize at the International
Music Week in Amsterdam. Her works
have been commissioned an \