Supermaximum
Kenji Bunch (b. 1973)

Kenji Bunch writes music that looks for commonalities between musical styles, for understandings that transcend cultural or generational barriers, and for empathic connections with his listeners. Drawing on vernacular musical traditions, an interest in highlighting historical injustices and inaccuracies, and techniques from his classical training, Bunch creates music with a unique personal vocabulary that appeals to performers, audiences, and critics alike. With his work frequently performed worldwide and recorded numerous times, Bunch considers his current mission the search for and celebration of shared emotional truths about the human experience from the profound to the absurd, to help facilitate connection and healing through entertainment, vulnerability, humor, and joy.

Mr. Bunch is widely recognized for performing his own groundbreaking works for viola. He currently serves as Artistic Director of the new music group Fear No Music and is deeply committed to music education in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Supermaximum is inspired by the rich tradition of chain gang songs from the prison camps of the Jim Crow South. Stemming from a long and painful past with roots originating in West African work song, through generations of enduring slavery and post-Reconstruction racial terrorism, this body of work serves as a singular example of a group of oppressed people resorting to, of all things, art for spiritual and, at times, physical survival under the most needlessly cruel of circumstances. The word “Supermaximum” refers to the highest possible level of security for incarceration in America. Bunch imagined this work as a presence of compassion offered in direct proportion to counter this cruelty- specifically the defiant rediscovery and celebration of one’s own humanity in the face of the entity that seeks to remove and deny that humanity.

The work begins with the unpitched rhythm of chain gang work; the highly coordinated swinging of axes and clanging of hammers. Using this reference as a point of departure, the music is then transformed over the course of the work to suggest a transcendence above the conditions of this harsh reality to an elevated, spiritual state of grace. The work ends full circle with a reiteration of the chain gang elements, but perhaps now with a galvanized, hopeful resolve.

The original string orchestra version of Supermaximum was commissioned by the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music for the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and was premiered May 1st, 2011 at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, NY. The full orchestra version was written for the Portland Youth Philharmonic

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, op. 102
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Like several other 20th century Russian composers – Prokofiev, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff among them – Dmitri Shostakovich doubled as a concert pianist. The young composer completed the piano course at Petrograd University and worked as an accompanist for silent films throughout the 1920s. However, he never pursued a career as a virtuoso performer, preferring to focus on composition and primarily performing his own works. Still, Shostakovich played and recorded well into his 60s, and his deep understanding of the piano is evident in his compositions for the instrument. Of all his keyboard pieces, the two piano concertos are considered his masterworks. Written 24 years apart and vastly different in character, both remain staples of the concerto repertoire.

Shostakovich composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1957 for his son Maxim’s 19th birthday. Maxim, then a student at the Moscow Conservatory, premiered the work in May of that year during his graduation concert with the USSR Symphony Orchestra. Unlike many of the composer’s more demanding works, Shostakovich intentionally crafted the concerto to be accessible to a young, developing pianist, with moderate technical requirements and a clear orchestral texture.

The concerto’s tone is strikingly lighthearted, standing in sharp contrast to the dark, tragic intensity of several works Shostakovich produced around the same time, particularly the Tenth and Eleventh Symphonies. Shortly after completing the concerto, Shostakovich dismissed it in a letter to fellow composer Edison Denisov as having “no redeeming artistic merits.” Given his prior experiences with official Soviet censure, however, this self-criticism is typically interpreted as either an effort to preempt ideological attack or as a parody of official Soviet idioms. Despite this dismissive remark, Shostakovich clearly found some value in the work: he performed it several times and later recorded it alongside his First Piano Concerto.

The Second Concerto has a performance time of about twenty minutes and spans three compact movements. The opening Allegro begins with a march-like main theme introduced by the woodwinds and taken up by the piano, followed by a more lyrical second theme and a contrapuntal solo cadenza. The slow central Andante is the emotional heart of the work, with muted strings framing a gently meditative piano melody that shifts between major and minor modes. The finale bursts in without pause with a bright piano fanfare before proceeding with dancelike themes, playful metrical shifts, and even a flurry of ascending scalar passages reminiscent of Hanon exercises as a humorous nod to Maxim’s piano studies.

Symphony No. 3 in F Major, op. 90
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

“I shall never write a symphony! You can have no idea what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you.”

Thus spoke Johannes Brahms in 1872, referring, of course, to the master of symphonic form, Ludwig van Beethoven. Virtually every major composer to come after Beethoven felt the pressure of his legacy, though perhaps none so keenly as Brahms. With the benefit of more than 150 intervening years, we now know Brahms did in fact pen four dazzling symphonies – but we also know it took the composer over 20 years to complete his first one. Once he jumped the mental hurdle, however, the following symphonies seemed to flow from him almost effortlessly: the Second was completed in under a year while the Third took just four months during the summer of 1883. Symphony No. 3’s quick completion resulted in a level of uniformity and coherence of thematic material unusual even for Brahms.

Brahms’s Third Symphony premiered in December 1883 and was well received. Spanning four movements and clocking in at around 33 minutes – the shortest of his four symphonies – the work is exquisitely lyrical and introspective but also features several substantial sections bursting with boldness. The opening Allegro begins with three towering chords followed by a F–A-flat–F motive in the cascading opening melody. This three-note figure forms the basis of much of the thematic material throughout the symphony, the middle note often shifting between A-flat and A-natural to create tension between major and minor modes.

The second movement, which Brahms’s friend and fellow composer Clara Schumann called “a pure idyll,” maintains a reserved, quiet character and features several lovely clarinet lines. A spacious cello theme opens the third movement, which is not the fast-moving scherzo typical for third symphonic movements but instead moderately paced and intensely lyrical. In contrast, the finale is both weighty and passionate, but always tempered with an overarching melodicism. Themes from prior movements return and rich melodies abound before the symphony draws to a quiet close.

Get connected by joining LSO’s eNewsletter list and by following us on Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. On our website, read program notes and listen to our Spotify playlist for upcoming concerts. For a more in-depth conversation about each classical concert, watch LSO’s Pre-Concert Chats with Maestro Polochick and special guests, hosted by Nebraska Public Media. The chat for each classical concert is available to view online on our YouTube beginning the Monday prior to the concert and is also screened in the Steinhart Room 45 minutes before the concert begins.

For Lied Center concerts we offer valet parking, and parking is also available at several downtown garages, including Que Place (11th & Q), Larson Garage (13th & Q), Market Place (10th & Q), and Haymarket Garage (9th & Q). Pre-pay for your event parking at parkandgo.org. Street parking is available for our family concerts, located at O’Donnell Auditorium at 50th & Huntington on the Nebraska Wesleyan University campus.

Our family concerts are a perfect way to introduce children to classical music during an hour-long presentation that includes actors or puppets. We also welcome children at all Lied Center concerts, and we provide special children’s program magazines which include educational activities, a coloring page, and a coupon for a free treat at intermission. If your child is becoming noisy during Lied Center events, ask any usher to be directed to the glassed-in room at the back of the main floor, where you can see and hear the performance without disturbing your neighbors.