SUPPORT YOUR SYMPHONY

Associate Conductor Lee Mills conducts Amy Beach's Gaelic Symphony and a double harp concerto by Hannah Lash, streaming live from Benaroya Hall on November 18 at 7:30pm on Seattle Symphony Live.

HANNAH LASH

The Peril of Dreams (Seattle Symphony Commission & World Premiere)
Born: November 22, 1981, in Alfred, New York
Work Composed: 2019-2020
World Premiere: November 18, 2021, at Benaroya Hall

What To Listen For:

• Enjoy the rare opportunity to hear a double harp concerto in its world premiere performances.
• The interplay of the soloists as they exchange musical themes, and the unique sound quality created by two harps playing together.

Hannah Lash grew up with librarian parents who encouraged her creativity and curiosity. By age 4, she had picked up the violin and devised her own method of notation since she could not yet read music. Today, Lash is a rare combination of composer and harpist, often performing her own works alongside esteemed colleagues such as the JACK Quartet and pianist Jeremy Denk. A recipient of numerous awards and honors, her music is widely performed across the U.S. and abroad, both by major symphony orchestras and smaller chamber ensembles.

The New York Times wrote that Lash’s music is “striking and resourceful … handsomely brooding,” and combines “avant-garde techniques with a post-Romantic expressiveness.” The composer Martin Bresnick said of Lash’s music, “it’s almost Puritan — it’s a single and direct expression of one’s soul. It’s a very American type, and she burns with it. She really does control a very powerful inner engine of imagination.”

Lash’s inherent understanding of the harp in all of its intricacies comes across effortlessly in her writing. Her works for solo harp have an organic, almost improvisatory quality of spinning out directly from the performer’s own self. The very nature of the harp — the direct and immediate contact of the hands on the strings to produce sound, with no mechanisms acting as intermediaries — finds an ideal composer in Hannah Lash. She eschews many of the special effects that are often heard in contemporary harp music and instead, creates sound worlds that utilize the instrument’s capacity for resonance to the utmost degree.

The Peril of Dreams begins softly, with the harps rising from the low registers in alternating rolled chords, covering the full range of the instruments, almost as if they are being awakened. There is much interplay between the two soloists throughout the work as they trade themes back and forth, equally leading and reacting to each other. The movement titles are evocative and lead the listener to ponder the realm of dreams and the possible risks that can accompany them.

AMY BEACH

Symphony in E minor, Op. 32, “Gaelic”
Born: September 5, 1867, in Henniker, New Hampshire
Died: December 27, 1944, in New York, New York
Work Composed: 1894
World Premiere: October 30, 1896, in Boston, Massachusetts

What to Listen For:

• The creative use of Irish tunes and jigs within a traditional Romantic symphonic structure.
• An homage to the composer’s ancestral heritage, this was the first symphony by an American woman to be published and performed by a major symphony orchestra.

Amy Beach is a groundbreaking figure in the world of classical music. She was the first woman to have a symphony staged by a major orchestra, and her music was widely performed and acclaimed both in the U.S. and in Europe — a rarity for American composers of the 19th century.

Beach was prodigiously gifted as a child. Before the age of 2, she could sing and harmonize numerous songs, and by age 4 she was playing the piano and composing. She studied piano with her mother and gave her debut recital in 1883 at the age of 16; within that same year, her first compositions were published. The groundwork was laid for Beach to grow into a highly successful concert pianist, but the restrictions of society and the expectations that a woman’s place is in the home held too much sway, and her parents would not support a professional career path for their daughter. Instead, Beach was married at the age of 18 to Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a prominent Boston surgeon who was 25 years her senior. As was the norm during this time, Henry became an authority figure to Amy and limited her public performances to an annual recital for charity. He did, however, approve of her compositions and allowed them to be published under her new name, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach.

For a woman who had no formal education in orchestration and composition (her husband did not approve of her having a tutor), Beach’s success and prolific range is remarkable. Her Mass in E-flat was premiered by the Handel and Haydn Society, and she performed her own piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which was enthusiastically received. Her popularity within the local music scene garnered her entrance into a group of composers known as the Boston Six, which included George Chadwick, Arthur Foote and Edward MacDowell. This group was greatly influenced by the traditions of German Romantic music, and their work reflected the development of an American classical style that paid tribute to Europe while still standing on its own as distinctly “new world.”

It wasn’t until she was widowed at age 43 that Beach revived her performing career, embarking on concert tours within the U.S. and traveling to Europe to present her compositions. She spent the remainder of her life based in New York City and Cape Cod, often spending summers composing at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Upon her death in 1944, over 300 of Beach’s compositions had been published.

The "Gaelic" Symphony established Beach as a preeminent American composer and proved the legitimacy of her talents in a male-dominated profession. The work is unique in that it is the first symphony by an American composer to use folk songs as thematic material. Beach was heavily influenced by Dvořák, who was teaching in America at the time. He advocated for a style of nationalistic music that used songs from Native American traditions as sources. Beach adapted this idea to her belief that composers should look to their own heritage for inspiration. Thus, she chose tunes from the British Isles, the home of her ancestors, to include in her symphony.

Beach’s original song about a turbulent sea voyage, titled “Dark is the Night,” is used for much of the first movement’s material. The opening bars clearly depict the swirl of the ocean, with the strings and winds building in excitement from the depths of the orchestra and bursting forth like a crashing wave in the brass section. Later, an Irish jig is passed through the woodwinds in a moment of quiet before the drama builds again. The music is richly orchestrated throughout this movement and establishes the traditional romantic nature found in the following movements.

The second movement introduces several Gaelic themes, the first of which is an Irish tune played by the solo oboe, accompanied by a woodwind chorale rich in harmonies. The strings enter seamlessly before taking off in a more boisterous spirit. Woodwinds and horns puncture the rollicking texture in staggered solos before the horn signals a return to the opening tempo and woodwind dance-like melodies. The brisk and brief return of the Allegro theme in the strings, with a final flute flourish, finishes the movement with humor and grace.

Beach wrote that the third movement conveys “the laments … romance and … dreams” of the Irish people. Though she was not Irish herself, this sentiment was a bold statement at the time. The large Irish immigrant community in Boston faced considerable discrimination and hostility, especially among the city’s elite class, of which Beach had married into, and empathizing with these refugees was frowned upon in her social circle. This movement is made up of two sections, each with its own Irish theme. The lyrical violin solo soars in a short, impassioned cadenza, followed by a heartfelt cello solo. A sense of melancholy and nostalgia infuse the melodies throughout this movement.

The final Allegro di molto is triumphant and dramatic, harking back to the energy and melody of the symphony’s opening bars. The pulsing syncopation in the strings builds tension while the winds and brass enter in a jaunty manner before the orchestra joins in a dramatic flourish. The second theme is slower and full of pathos, marked by expressive melodic leaps reminiscent of Irish tunes. Beach wrote that this movement was about the Celtic people, “their sturdy daily life, their passions and battles.” This sentiment is evident in every note of the exuberant, joyous and dramatic finale.

© Catherine Case