University Orchestra

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Program notes by Mark Bilyeu

Sergei Rachmaninoff
The Rock, Fantasy, Op. 7
Born April 1, 1873
Died March 28, 1943
Composed 1893
Duration 13 minutes

It’s the stuff of composer folk-lore:  a young composer’s music immediately changes the bad mood of one of their heroes into a good mood. Yet, that is just what happened when a young Sergei Rachmaninoff played a piano version of his newest symphonic work for his hero Tchaikovsky while at the house of their mutual friend Sergei Taneyev. The composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov recounted the event: “At the close of the evening [Rachmaninoff] acquainted us with the newly completed symphonic poem, The Rock....The poem pleased all very much, especially Pyotr Ilyich [Tchaikovsky], who was enthusiastic over its colorfulness. The performance of The Rock and our discussion of it must have diverted Pyotr Ilyich, for his former good-hearted mood came back to him.” Composed when Rachmaninoff was just 20,  he drew inspiration from a story by Anton Chekhov titled “Along the Way”, in which a young girl meets an older man during a stormy, overnight stop at a roadside inn on Christmas Eve. The man shares with her the story of his life, beliefs, and past failures, as a blizzard rages on through the night. Rachmaninoff used the same poetic couplet used by Chekhov as his opening inscription: “The golden cloud slept through the night / Upon the breast of the giant-rock.” He dedicated what would be his first published symphonic work to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a composer who was solely responsible for crafting the Russian orchestral sounds Rachmaninoff was striving for, and which had so impressed Tchaikovsky, who would pass away just months later. 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Suite from Swan Lake, Opus 20a
Born May 7, 1840 Votkinsk, Russia
Died November 6, 1893 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Composed 1875-1876
Premiered March 4, 1877, Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, Russia
Duration 30 minutes

Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake wasn’t always the cornerstone of ballet repertoire that it is today.  Written between 1875 and 1876, Swan Lake was Tchaikovsky’s first foray into composing ballet scores. Until 1875, most ballet scores were written by specialists who Tchaikovsky famously underestimated. It wasn’t until undertaking the commission from the Bolshoi that he began to study ballet music, writing to his brother  "I listened to the [Léo] Delibes ballet Sylvia...what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony. I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, I would not have written Swan Lake."  The ballet’s 1877 premiere was not a wild success. Critics found the staging flawed and the dancers unprepared, calling the choreography "unimaginative and altogether unmemorable.” The German origins of the story were "treated with suspicion while the tale itself was regarded as 'stupid' with unpronounceable surnames for its characters." Compared to the music of those like Delibes, the critics declared the score to be  "too noisy, too 'Wagnerian' and too symphonic." The ballet tells the story of Prince Siegfried, who falls in love with Odette, a princess cursed to live as a swan by day and regain her human form only at night. This tragic romance between human and creature of the wild enchanted audiences in an entirely new way when it was revived 1895, two years after Tchaikovsky’s death. The production was a revelation, bringing the music to life with new choreography that emphasized Tchaikovsky’s symphonic, “Wagnerian” score In 1880, Tchaikovsky’s benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, wrote that she had commissioned a young Frenchman to make piano arrangements of three dances from the ball scene; it became Debussy’s first published work.  In 1882, Tchaikovsky decided to create a suite from the ballet, but unfortunately he never did. The Suite Op. 20a, was arranged posthumously to bring some of the ballet’s most poignant moments to the concert hall, without the need of dancers or an enchanted forest. 

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About the Artists

Chris Tran

Chris Tran is Co-Director of the University of Texas University Orchestra, Graduate Teaching Assistant for the University of Texas Orchestras, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting with Farkhad Khudyev at the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Tran has been an invited conductor at several masterclasses and workshops in Boulder, Los Angeles, Eugene, St. Andrews (Scotland), as well as the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music with Cristian Măcelaru, Thomas Sleeper, and Leonard Slatkin, and the International Conducting Workshop and Festival with the late Larry Rachleff and Donald Schleicher. He has also worked with conductors Neil Thomson, Jeff Grogan, and Sian Edwards. Mr. Tran earned a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Colorado Boulder with Gary Lewis, and a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Southern Methodist University. His conducting mentors include Nicholas Carthy and Paul Phillips. He studied violin with Charles Wetherbee, former concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, and Diane Kitzman, former Principal Violin of the Dallas Symphony. 

Matthew Pavon

Matthew Pavon is a conductor and violist studying for a master's in music for Orchestral Conducting under Farkhad Khudyev at the Butler School of Music. In his role as Teaching Assistant for University Orchestras, Matthew assists in conducting and administrating the University Symphony Orchestra and Co-Directs the University Orchestra. Matthew has served as the Graduate Conductor of the Missouri State University Orchestra. Upon receiving his M.M. in viola performance, he continued as the Assistant Conductor for Missouri State University from 2022 to 2023. His guest conducting appearances have included concerts with ensembles like the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, the Missouri Philharmonic, and the Drury University Orchestra. A strong believer in supporting the arts in his communities, Matthew is the founder and former artistic director of the Galloway Chamber Orchestra in Springfield, MO. He is also currently the workshop conductor for the Youth Symphony of Kansas City. Matthew lives in Austin, TX with his wife, Leianna, and their mini-Australian Shepherds, Koda and Ellie.

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University Orchestra

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