2012-2013 ASO Program Book

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Music Director’sWelcome

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ow! Can you believe we’ve been sharing music together for 25 years? This season, to celebrate our years together, I have created a special silver anniversary program inspired

by YOU! As a way of giving back to you, and to the City of Alexandria, my wife Kathryn and I have composed a brand new piece honoring Alexandria that will be premiered at the February concert. In our River Poem, the Potomac River is the memory-keeper: a magical and sacred place through which flow all memories Alexandrian.

It is you who have not only inspired our River Poem, but have also inspired the entire theme for the

Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s 2012-2013 Season, Be the Music. I wonder if you truly know how much you contribute to the power of ASO’s music-making. Sitting in your seats during the concert is far from passive! Your involvement with the music creates an energy that is palpable to us, the musicians on the stage. You are co-participants in the creation of the transcendent musical experiences that we treasure at the ASO! Each concert explores different facets of the ways in which we can “be the music.” It will be a seasonlong celebration of how music can be our shared humanity, inspiration, inheritance, empowerment, and experience.

Join the ASO this season and immerse yourself in the powerful, uplifting, profound, and explosive experience of music! You have helped to make the music of the ASO alive and charged with emotion. It truly can give us an adrenaline rush—all we have to do is open ourselves up and... Be the Music!

“You are the music while the music lasts.” T.S. Eliot

Kim Allen Kluge, Music Director

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Table of Content s

Music Director’s Welcome....................................................... 4 Message from the Board President............................................ 6 Annual Fund Campaign......................................................... 10 2012–2013 ASO Season Sponsors........................................ 12 Board of Trustees................................................................... 12 “...be the music.”................................................................... 14 Program 1—September 22.................................................. 15 Symphony Orchestra League of Alexandria........................... .20 Program 2—November 10 & 11......................................... 26 Mary Graham Lasley Scholarship Competition...................... 34 Kim Allen Kluge.................................................................... 35 Children’s Arts Festival.......................................................... 38 Program 3—February 9 & 10............................................. 39 Concerto Foundation............................................................. 47 Planned Giving...................................................................... 48 Subscriber Dinner Date Specials............................................ 51 Program 4—April 20 & 21................................................. 52 Program 5—May 18............................................................ 61 Program Note Author Colleen Fay............................................ 65 Annual Symphony Ball & Auction......................................... 66 Annual Fund Donors............................................................. 70 SOLA Members...................................................................... 77 Index to Advertisers............................................................... 79 Program Design Courtesy of Craig Keith Design Printing by Global Printing, Inc. 5

Message from the Board President Dear ASO Friends & Supporters, Whether this is your first ASO concert or you have been subscribing for years, I welcome you to today’s performance.

Following last year’s resounding success, a season full of performances noted as “jaw-dropping”, “electric”, “spectacularly vibrant” and capped by a prestigious Midori residency, the ASO moves even deeper into the powerful and emotional experiences of music during our 20122013 season, Be the Music.

This year, the ASO celebrates the power of music in five unique and distinctive performances. To begin, we contemplate the music of humanity through the works of Sibelius, Copland and Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, featuring the one-night only return of Yuliya Gorenman. We turn then to the music of inspiration - two performances showcasing Yefim Bronfman and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major (“Emperor”) alongside the music of Newman, Hovhaness, and Mussorgsky and Ravel.

Moving into the new year, we celebrate the music of inheritance with the best of Northern Virginia’s musical organizations, joining with the Alexandria Choral Society, Virginia Bronze Handbell Choir and the Heritage Signature Chorale to present the world premiere of Alexandria Voices, the newest composition by Maestro Kim Allen Kluge and Kathryn Vassar Kluge. In addition, we are excited to feature our very own Claudia Chudacoff, ASO concertmaster, performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, paired with works of Mendelssohn and Handel.

During the spring, the ASO focuses on the music of empowerment, featuring the works of Portman, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathé-

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tique”) and presenting Elizabeth Pitcairn performing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major on her famous “Red Violin.” To close, we celebrate the music of experience through the works of Elfman, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

If you are joining us for the first time, welcome to a hidden gem of Alexandria – your local world-class symphony. I encourage you to attend our next concert and other ASO events during the year.

In addition, we would love to have your help in spreading the word about our organization. If you enjoy today’s concert, please let us know, but more importantly, let your friends and family know. We offer multiple subscription packages to fit any budget and schedule, free parking at all concerts, group ticket discounts and youth tickets starting at just $5.

Interested in more information about the ASO? I encourage you to join our mailing list via the form in your program book or on our website, alexsym.org.

For those of you who are familiar faces, thank you. It is you, through concert and event attendance, concert sponsorships, legacy gifts and regular contributions to our Annual Fund, who continue to ensure the long-term sustainability of the ASO. With your help, we continue to strive to make quality music that is affordable and accessible for Northern Virginia and beyond.

I hope you enjoy today’s performance and invite you join us and be the music.

Ronal Butler, President, ASO Board of Trustees

A McEnearney agent‌ Sue Goodhart 703.362.3221

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CMAA Congratulates The Alexandria Symphony Orchestra and celebrates the important cultural thread it provides to the fabric of our community.

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The Alexandria Symphony Orchest ra Annual Fund Campaign

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oncert ticket income covers a mere 40% of the true cost of bringing memorable performances to our community. Your generous contributions makes the ASO programs for children and adults possible year after year.

Please consider taking part in our Annual Fund during the 2012– 2013 Season. Have a direct impact on bringing music into our children’s lives and securing Alexandria as a premiere cultural institution.

To thank you for your commitment, we offer the following recognition: Conductor Circle: $10,000 + D Patron Circle Benefits PLUS D 2 Season Subscriptions to the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra D Full page sponsors’ ad in the ASO Program Book D 2 tickets to the annual SOLA ball D Listing on Alexandria Symphony Orchestra website Platinum Circle: $5,000 D Patron Circle Benefits PLUS D 2 Season Subscriptions to the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra D Listing on Alexandria Symphony Orchestra website Golden Circle: $2,500 D Patron Circle Benefits PLUS D 2 tickets to an Alexandria Symphony Orchestra concert from

current season Patron Circle: $1,000 D Donor Benefits PLUS D Invitation to one special event held throughout the year with the

ASO leadership and Maestro Kim Allen Kluge Donor $500–$999 D Sustainer Benefits PLUS D Reserved seats for Alexandria’s Birthday celebration concert (July) Sustainer $100–$499 D Donor recognition in the 2012–2013 ASO Program Book D Tickets to a rehearsal for ASO performance D Special email promotions for ASO events D Invitation to the annual SOLA Ball 10

Official Sponsors of t he ASO 2012–2013 Season Alexandria Commission for the Arts Alexandria Gazette Packet Global Printing Craig Keith Design Virginia Commission for the Arts Virginia Florist Concert Sponsor Suzanne S. Brock Guest Artist Sponsors Suzanne S. Brock Linda & Elliot Bunce Concerto Foundation Caswell & Ann Hobbs Marsha & Bernard Murphy Margaret & William O’Grady Jeanne & John Warner

Put a little jingle in their stocking...

Join us for ASO’s 8th Annual Family Holiday Concert December 2012 check www.alexsym.org for updates 11

2012–2013

Alexandria Symphony Orchestra Board of Trustees Ronal Butler, President Linda Bunce, Vice President Stewart Bartley, Vice President for Finance Elizabeth McClary, Vice President for Artistic Development Craig S. Miller, Jr., Secretary Margaret Jones O’Grady, Vice President for Marketing Edward J. Stark, Vice President for Development Donnan C. Wintermute, Vice President for Board Development Ex-Officio Members Teresa Guzman, Treasurer Kim Allen Kluge, Music Director Jessica Wisser, Executive Director Catherine Thompson G. Jack Dover Anne Rector Sharon Walker, SOLA Loti Dunn Liz Seccuro Jeanne Warner Ann Kington Susan Sheppard, SOLA Judy Williams Betty Quirk

Advisory Board Suzanne S. Brock Dr. John A. Bruno Carla Crawford Mollie Danforth

Sydney-Chanele Dawkins Alex Deringer Frank Fannon Bernard Murphy

Alan Paez Tamara Saltonstall Elizabeth Siegel Robert Vincent

Concerto Foundation Board Of Trustees Charles Ballou Miriam Browning

Mary Ann Best Millard Frank J. Quirk Betty Quirk

Thomas Sargeant Forrest Williams

Trustees Emeritus Dr. Joseph V. Braddock W. Ward Lasley CDR Tom R. Downs (USN Retired) Mrs. Richard Reid Mr. Waller T. Dudley Mr. James B. Singerling Mrs. Hanford M. Edsall, deceased

ASO Administration Karyn Garvin Marketing & Operations Manager Ryan Jordan, Patron Services Manager/ Librarian

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Susan Kelly, Personnel Manager

Craig Teer, Stage Manager

Kim Allen Kluge, Music Director

Jessica Wisser, Executive Director

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Alexandria Symphony Orchestra 2012 -2013 Season

“...be the music.”

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hen Maestro Kim Allen Kluge threw down the challenge to all of us to “be the music,” it was a clarion call to the audience member and the instrumentalist alike. It has always struck me that there are two dichotomies that we use commonly when we talk about classical music. The first is that someone plays music by reading from a page of music while another person “plays by ear.” The second dichotomy is between the professional and the amateur musician. As a life-long musician, I want to reveal two secrets. The first is that the printed page of music only tells the player some of the information necessary to play a piece of music. Every musician must sing or play “by ear.” We must listen to all the players around us and strive to bring our playing together precisely by “playing by ear.” And the second secret is that all musicians, whether they are paid for their efforts or not, are amateurs. The root of the word amateur means “the one who loves”; we usually take that to mean that there’s a dividing line between those who are highly technically competent players and the greater majority of us whose only motivation is the love of music.

Well, there may be some misanthropes out there in the musical world who think of it as work, but they are a tiny minority. If we didn’t love music, we would never have pursued a career in it. We all play by ear and we do it because we love it. We really are, in the final analysis amateurs – and proud of it!

That’s why when we listen to great music, either from a chair in the auditorium, or a chair in the middle of the orchestra, we can, and must immerse ourselves totally in the music. Yes, Maestro Kluge, we will strive to live up to your challenge and “be the music!”

—Colleen Fay

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Yuliya Gorenman Ret urns Be the Music...The Music of Humanity Saturday, September 22, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

Kim Allen Kluge, conductor Yuliya Gorenman, piano COPLAND

Fanfare for the Common Man

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15

Yuliya Gorenman, piano

SIBELIUS Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43

“You are the music while the music lasts.” —T.S. Eliot

J

ohannes Brahms (1833-97) in person was a shy man. When he sat down at the piano, however, he was an extrovert. He poured himself into the music with a deep and abiding passion. He loved playing the piano and in his early years

Brahms and his friend the violinist Joseph Joachim were out drinking one evening. Joachim wanted to praise his friend,“Here’s to the health of the greatest composer,” Joachim began, but before he could finish the sentence, Brahms jumped up and said,“That’s right! Here’s to Mozart’s health!” and he walked around clinking glasses with all his friends.

especially, Brahms performed nearly everywhere he could. Even in his early 20s, Brahms was recognized as a huge talent. But while some composers hit the ground running, as it were, Brahms was more deliberate.

His great musical ideas sometimes took years to come to maturity.

When they did, however, they were almost immediately recognized as the products of a new musical genius.

No less an authority than composer, Robert Schumann was already predicting great things for Brahms when he met Brahms at age 20 in 1853.

Students of Brahms and his music recognize the enormous influence that Schumann had on the young protégé. But within a year of their meeting Schumann succumbed to the effects of mental illness that required him to be hospitalized. The young Brahms now became the standin for the absent father with Clara Schumann and their eight children, continued on page 16

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Program 1 ✶ September 22 helping wherever he could. But the composing bug had bitten him and a large work was in progress. Would it become a mighty piano sonata, or a symphony, or a work for two pianos? Between 1855 and 1859, Brahms struggled to mould the work into shape. What emerged was the first Piano Concerto in D minor. But it didn’t appear without Brahms discarding a mountain of material that he deemed unsuitable.

Once the young Antonin Dvorák sent Brahms the manuscript of a new composition; it was somewhat messy and hard to read.

Brahms wrote back to him, “We can’t write music as beautiful as Mozart, but let’s try to write it out as cleanly as he did.”

Brahms was the soloist for the first performance of the Concerto in 1859 and in some of the succeeding performances, the critics – and audiences – were less than favorable. This was a new kind of music that, while remaining faithful to the musical forms of previous generations, charted entirely new musical territory, especially in the thunderous writing for the piano in the first and third movements.

A new, lyrical sound emerged in the second movement, however, that quickly endeared itself to audiences. There was, amongst all the sturm-und-drang, a sweetness supported gently, but confidently by

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an orchestral sound that carried with it Brahms’ indelible stamp. Nobody else was writing music of this scope and variety among the German, Austrian, and Swiss composers of his generation. Brahms proved in this work something that seemed well nigh impossible: the blending of the symphonic structures he had inherited from Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann with a richness of range and ambition that was wholly in keeping with the “modern” styles th of the mid-19 Century.

Brahms’ critics, and he had his share, felt that the “new music” had to be in the mould of Liszt and Wagner. While Brahms may have admired some of their efforts, he didn’t share their esthetic. There was plenty of room in the concert hall for both styles and neither could claim exclusive title to “the music of the future.” Such an attitude infuriated some of Wagner’s more ardent supporters who attempted to draw line in the sand. Their master’s music was new and everything else, including the music of Brahms, was hopelessly out of date.

Audiences didn’t see it that way, however, and gave Brahms’ music a cautious, but always respectful hearing. The Piano Concerto No. 1 had staked out a new musical territory for its composer and he would never retreat from it. Nor did the audiences retreat from it.

Although many listeners considered Brahms to be a worthy inheritor of the mantle of Beethoven, others thought that linked Brahms too firmly to the past. A careful listening continued on page 19

Jeanne Warner

Congratulates Maestro Kim Kluge and the Alexandria Symphony in its 69th spectacular season

703-980-9106 17

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Program 1 ✶ September 22 to the First Piano Concerto, however, will amply demonstrate that Brahms had already stepped well beyond to the bounds of Beethoven’s style and had clearly defined a style that was all his own.

Years ago, French novelist and playwright Françoise Sagan’s novel Aimez-vous Brahms? was turned into a film, Goodbye Again. I always loved that question: do you love Brahms?

My answer then as now would be, “Mais oui!” Absolutely! n 1942 American composer Aaron Copland (1900-90) was one of some eighteen composers asked by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conductor Eugene Goosens to write an orchestral fanfare to open each symphony concert. Of those eighteen, only Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man has stayed in the orchestral repertoire. Inspired perhaps by a speech by Vice President th Henry Wallace who dubbed the 20 Century, “the century of the common man,” Copland composed a work of lasting appeal.

Using only brass and percussion of the orchestra – typical for many fanfares – Copland created a work with a strong melodic element amply supported by the spare, lean harmonies that characterized his compositions of this period in his career. What has always fascinated me about Copland’s Fanfare is that it manages to achieve a sense of great space and easy accessibility although the work contains a significant amount of dissonance. All of this encapsulated into a work that takes less than four minutes to play. It’s familiar to our ears because it has

In 1943 Copland was in Hollywood writing tuneful music for a Sam Goldwyn movie. Copland met Groucho Marx and told him that he, Copland, had a split personality, saying, “Well, that’s o. k., as long as you don’t split it with Mr. Goldwyn.” been arranged and rearranged, used in television commercials and is one of those pieces that makes us say, whenever we hear it, “oh, I may not know the title to that piece, but I’ve heard it before.”

At tonight’s concert I invite you to imagine a time, seventy years ago, when America was plunged into a horrible World War. In that year, 1942, the outcome was far from certain. We needed to have our own sense of our country’s worth reaffirmed. But more than that, we needed to have our faith in ourselves reaffirmed: we could contribute to a demanding war effort that reached into every town and village in the country, we could make a difference, and if we all came together we could defeat the forces of darkness and evil. It was our common hope; it was our common goal and we were all common men and women who together could and would not only survive, but overcome the terrible obstacles that war presented.

Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man was the perfect piece for that time. continued on page 21

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Highlights for the 2012-13 Season Coming this Fall – SOLA Uncorked- a wine, cheese and chocolate tasting; a Holiday Party, general membership meeting with musical performances.

Coming this Winter and Early Spring – SOLA Ball Patrons Party, the Annual Symphony Ball and Silent Auction held at the Westin Hotel.

T

he Symphony Orchestra League of Alexandria (SOLA) is a dedicated group of volunteers who love music. This love of music has made SOLA members integral to the success of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra (ASO) for 32 years.

Centered on their love of music, each year SOLA members host a variety of fundraising activities designed to support the ASO. As a SOLA member you have the unique opportunity to enjoy music, support the ASO and participate in many entertaining community events and enjoyable social activities throughout the year.

As an all-volunteer organization, SOLA members work to strengthen arts education and strive to provide quality, affordable and accessible music to citizens of Alexandria and the surrounding region. Each year SOLA members work with the ASO and local public schools to provide educational concerts for school children. And each spring hosts the Mary Graham Lasley Scholarship Competition for student musicians.

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Coming this Spring – The Mary Graham Lasley Scholarship Competition, and annual spring luncheon held at the Belle Haven Country Club.

If you are already a SOLA Member, we look forward to seeing you at one or more SOLA events. If you are not a SOLA member we’d like to invite you to join us. Music brings us together, but friendship keeps us together so please consider joining us.

The SOLA Board would like to say a special thank you to all current SOLA members for their work in past years and for their continuing enthusiasm and dedication that is so important for a successful 2012-2013 season.

SOLA members are working hard to make this a successful and fun year for our members and the ASO. If you are not a SOLA member, please join us. If you would like more information about SOLA membership, please let either one of us know.

Sharon Walker Co-President Alayne2@mac.com 703-967-2332

Susan Yonts Shepard Co-President seysrls@verizon.net 703-823-4020

Program 1 ✶ September 22 especially in the Jean Sibelius large works for (1865-1957) “Never pay attention to what orchestras, he had was the greatest critics say,” Sibelius warned found his metièr.

Finnish composer a pupil. “Remember,” he From the first of his time. said, “a statue has never to the last, this But that’s not been erected in honor recognition meant enough to really of a critic.” that with each describe him. new composition In fact, Sibelius Sibelius was expanding and was one of a small number of great deepening his abilities as a great symphonic composers at the end of th th orchestrator. the 19 and the first part of the 20 Sibelius used each of his seven Centuries. What sets this amazing symphonies as a musical proving composer apart is that at almost ground to stretch his musical every stage of his career, he defied expectations. At the beginning of his muscles in new and distinct ways.

His great contemporary Gustav career, Sibelius was enamored of the music of Richard Wagner. The young Mahler (1860-1911) would craft his enormous symphonies by combining Finn made a pilgrimage to the great thematic musical material from Festival Opera House at Bayreuth Wagner had created for his operas, or disparate sources eventually weaving them into a cohesive whole. Sibelius, “music dramas,” as he called them.

Very quickly, however, Sibelius’ ardor on the other hand, created musical building blocks of small thematic cooled and he found Wagner’s music ideas in a great additive process that bombastic on the one hand, and would yield a great theme at the end coldly calculating on the other. of a movement that was the sum of What did inspire Sibelius was his all those molecular parts. native country of Finland. At the In his Second Symphony in time of his birth, his country was the D major, completed in 1902 Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. and revised in 1903, Sibelius But even as a young man, Sibelius already shows himself a master felt his allegiance – musical and of orchestration. His mastery otherwise – to Finland. The Grand of the orchestra has been called Duchy lasted until 1917 when the “prodigious” and that is evident Russian Revolution ended the reign everywhere in the second symphony. of the Tsars.

Political changes notwithstanding, It is interesting to me that even through the radical changes in however, Sibelius realized that his musical tastes over the last century; musical career would be that of a composer and not the violin virtuoso the Second Symphony is still a staple of the orchestral repertoire. In fact it that he had hoped to be. Although is often compared to the symphonies a bitter pill to swallow, Sibelius continued on page 22 recognized that in composition,

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Program 1 ✶ September 22 Sibelius rarely invited musicians to his home.

“They talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time,” he said. “They really are interested in music and art.” of Tchaikovsky, and with good reason. If you imagine an orchestra score as a great canvas just waiting for the paintbrush of the artist, then you will get some idea of the range and sweep of this symphony. Even though Sibelius the artist may begin with the smallest of brushes and the lightest of color, his ideas are bold and daring enough to fill the entire canvas.

Soloist

Alyona Vogelmann Photo

YULIYA GORENMAN, Pianist

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ward-winning Russian-born American pianist Yuliya Gorenman has rightfully been called a “pianist without fear.” Now firmly established in her performing career, Gorenman first achieved interna-

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tional acclaim as a prizewinner of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium in 1995. Since then she has been continually invited to perform solo, chamber, and orchestral concerts throughout the United States and in Europe, and, in the process, has earned consistent praise for her artistic fire, for her fluid and unpretentious technique, and for the lyrical honesty and generosity of her playing.

Born in Odessa (Ukraine) and raised in Kazakhstan, Gorenman began studying with her late mother, Svetlana Gorenman, an outstanding musician in her own right. Gorenman continued to shape her performance style while attending the St. Petersburg Conservatory. While still a student, she performed throughout the former Soviet Union. After emigrating to the United States in 1989, she studied first at the San Francisco Conservatory and then at the Peabody Conservatory with mentors such as Nathan Schwartz and Leon Fleischer.

When Gorenman earned her laureate at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, she characteristically did so while on a precipice, as an artist between worlds, an emigre from the Soviet Union still weeks shy of her American citizenship. Schooled in two musical traditions but wholly defined by neither, Gorenman has since freely but carefully drawn on both heritages in performances of the masterworks of the twentieth century, romantic, classical, and baroque repertoire that have stirred audiences worldwide.

Program 1 ✶ September 22 After leaving the former Soviet Union, Gorenman earned a steady procession of awards and honors. She performed in numerous television and radio broadcasts throughout Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Canada, and the United States. As a fellow at the Tanglewood Festival she appeared in a PBS educational video for Sony Classical with Seiji Ozawa and Wynton Marsalis. Also at Tanglewood Gorenman gave a joint concert with Billy Joel, performing his classical concert works, which she also arranged. The concert was broadcast nationally on NPR. Gorenman has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic of Flanders, and

many other orchestras and chamber music ensembles throughout the world. She has appeared at the Kennedy Center, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and many other venues. From 1999-2003 she performed at “L’été musical dans la vallee du Lot,” the music festival of Cahors, France. Gorenman has recorded all the Beethoven Piano Concerti and the Triple Concerto live with the Bavarian Chamber Orchestra and conductor Philip Greenberg in France and Switzerland.

Gorenman concluded the critically acclaimed The Gorenman Beethoven Project in 2011, performing the complete cycle of the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas at American Univercontinued on page 24

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Program 1 ✶ September 22 sity in Washington, DC. Called one of the best performers in Washington, DC, by Washington Life Magazine and featured in the Washingtonian, she frequently appeared at the Phillips Collection and has been presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society in recitals at the Harman Hall and the Smithsonian. Her live performances have been broadcast on NPR and WETA. In 2009 Gorenman joined the Recording Academy (Grammy). The first volume of The Gorenman Beethoven Project, Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos. 1, 2, 3 was released in 2010 on MiClaire Records. Gorenman continues to explore masterpieces of the great composers with The Gorenman Piano Project. Currently, Gorenman is

professor of piano and Musician in Residence at the American University in Washington, DC. Gorenman would like to dedicate her performance with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra on September 22 to her late mother, Svetlana Gorenman. “I am still playing this piece with the score with her markings and fingerings,” she writes. “She deeply loved this piece and coincidentally the day of the concert, September 22, is the one year anniversary of her passing. I hope to do justice to her memory.”

MURPHY & ASSOCIATES CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS CONGRATULATES

THE ALEXANDRIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ON 69 INSPIRING SEASONS 3319 DUKE STREET 703-370-9100

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Bronfman & Beet hoven Be the Music... The Music of Inspiration

Saturday, November 10, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

Sunday, November 11, 2012, 3:00 p.m.

Kim Allen Kluge, conductor Yefim Bronfman, piano NEWMAN

Little Women

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major (“Emperor”), Op. 73 Yefim Bronfman, piano

HOVHANESS Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain” MUSSORGSKY/RAVEL Pictures at an Exhibition

“Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.”

—Ludwig van Beethoven

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he term “monumental” is often thrown about in music to describe one piece of music or another so much so that the term has lost much of its meaning. This program of the Alexandria Symphony begins and ends with works that truly deserve the adjective “monumental”: Beethoven’s Fifth and final Piano Concerto, called the “Emperor” concerto and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

Our soloist for this concert, Yefim Bronfman, has built a career as a piano virtuoso that itself almost could be called monumental. I

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suggest, however, that we reserve that word to describe him because he is still in the midst of his career and I don’t want even to imply that he has reached the heights yet. What’s so interesting about him is that he could be described as someone who is trying to sell you a piano by demonstrating everything that the piano is capable of. His is not a shy, retiring approach

A friend of Beethoven’s writing to the great German poet Goethe, quoted the composer, “Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend.”

Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11 to the keyboard, but rather that of a demanding master who knows what the piano can do and is determined to show it to the audience. Philip Roth in his novel The Human Stain (2000) describes his main character attending a rehearsal to play a concerto, “Yefim Bronfman looks less like the person who is going to play the piano than like the guy who should be moving it.” As in Roth’s novel, audiences have come to love Bronfman and his playing not only for its enormous sound, but also for his delicacy when such delicacy is called for.

The monument that is Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770–1827) Piano Concerto No. 5 really does deserve the title an English music publisher gave it, the “Emperor Concerto.”

To my ears I think it might also be called the Emperor of concertos because in it Beethoven creates a work of extraordinary range and scope. Beethoven being Beethoven, however, he always manages to ensure that we, the audience, are able to be with him on every step of this incredible musical journey. The other image that I have whenever I listen to the Emperor Concerto is that of a swimming pool. From the very first measures of the first movement to the great conclusion of the last, we are definitely in the “deep end.”

It’s a high compliment of trust that Beethoven pays to us listeners. It is as if he’s saying, “you are capable of going wherever I go of following wherever I take you. I won’t ever leave you behind.”

Beethoven is able to do this by means of his unique form of musical

Beethoven had copied out three ancient Egyptian inscriptions. He kept them framed under glass on his work table • I AM THAT WHICH IS. • I AM EVERYTHING THAT IS, THAT WAS, AND THAT WILL BE. NO MORTAL MAN HAS LIFTED MY VEIL.

And finally, • HE IS OF HIMSELF ALONE. AND IT IS TO THIS ALONENESS THAT ALL THINGS OWE THEIR BEING. development. I am not alone among writers about music to observe how Beethoven takes a particular musical theme or thematic idea and uses small elements from it to expand, repeat, alter and reinterpret without ever going so far afield as to lead us into a wilderness of sound. He manages always to ensure that our ears – our minds, really – retain the idea of the original theme so that when he rounds out his exploration of these musical elements with a restatement of the original theme we say to ourselves, “aha, I knew where he was going all along.” The genius of Beethoven is not that we know, but that Beethoven knows. In his musical exploration, Beethoven never seems to take a false step: his point of musical origin and his goal are always clear in his mind. continued on page 28

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Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11

A stranger observing the enormous funeral of Beethoven in Vienna asked whose funeral was it. The woman turned, tears in her eyes, “the general of the musicians has died.”

American composer Thomas Newman (1958 - ) has a musical pedigree that reminds me of the Bach family from which the great Johann Sebastian Bach came. Newman’s father, uncles, sisters, brother and cousin have all put pen to musical score paper. Thomas Newman’s father was the legendary Alfred Newman who was part of a group of composers who defined composing for motion pictures. Although

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somewhat maligned by some classical music critics, composers of movie scores have defined a style of classical music that has given lovers both of the movies and of classical music a great body of wonderful music. It pleases me no end to say that our own Maestro Kluge, himself a film composer, among his other accomplishments, has recognized film music as well worth hearing in the concert hall.

Thomas Newman’s score for the 1994 film of Louisa May Alcott’s much beloved Little Women was one of two film scores Newman wrote in that year that were nominated for Academy Awards. Although neither The Shawshank Redemption nor Little Women won that coveted prize, it doesn’t diminish the beauty of Newman’s music. Yale educated

Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11 Thomas Newman has managed to compose music that while totally supporting the movie in all its different moods so much so that this fine film would be bereft without it.

At the same time his music stands on its own two feet. It is in a fine long tradition that stretches back to Mozart through Georges Bizet’s Carmen Fantasy, and Richard Strauss’ Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier right up to the present day.

Another American composer, Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) could not be more different that his compatriot Thomas Newman. From his earliest years almost to the time of his death, Hovhaness was a veritable composing machine. When we hear the term prolific used, we think that the writer is focusing more on quantity than on quality. While it is true that Hovhaness wrote nearly 70 symphonies and has a musical catalogue listing pieces with more than 400 opus numbers, it would be wrong to forget that Hovhaness was a composer who was relentless in his pursuit of quality. Another important aspect of his musical life was his voracious appetite to hear and to absorb music from many different cultures. While some criticized him for being too focused on his Armenian heritage, Hovhaness was equally absorbed by the Carnatic music of South India and music of Japan and Korea.

His great “Mysterious Mountain” is in fact his second symphony. The work dates from 1954 and was given its premiere by Leopold Stokowski and the Houston Symphony. The

At the 2006 Oscar ceremony,Thomas Newman appeared in the opening segment. The host jokingly stated that Newman had been nominated for and failed to win an Oscar eight times. Newman replied: “No, I’ve failed seven but this will be my eighth”, and indeed, he was right he lost again that year. symphony is based on a series of modal melodies. Modes are like our major and minor scales, but they differ in that they are grounded in long lines of music for a sing voice or instrument or groups singing or playing in unison. When harmonies do occur they vary from the eerily consonant to the most dissonant; unlike our major and minor scales, modes don’t lend themselves so readily to the basic harmonic structure that our ears are so used to after centuries of hearing common harmonic progressions.

In the second of “Mysterious Mountain’s” three movements, Hovhaness weaves together a double fugue. This is made up of two long stretches of modal music (not really melodies, but somewhat like them) that interweave and propel the movement forward. In fact it is these modes that give the entire symphony its basic character. We are used to continued on page 30

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Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11

“The composer, as in old China, joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sound.” Alan Hovhaness. thinking of melody, harmony and rhythm as the basics of western music. Alan Hovhaness used those elements, but in entirely different ways. Going back to ancient folk song traditions that used modes long before major and minor scales, Hovhaness brought forward some of those ancient ways into the modern concert hall giving this symphony and so much of his music a timeless quality.

If someone were to ask you about the great Russian painter Victor Hartmann, would you know who they were talking about? Don’t be surprised, neither would I. Hartmann is remembered not so much for his art – the young painter died of an aneurism at the age of 39 in 1873 – but for an exhibition of his paintings organized as a memorial to him.

And more especially for a suite for piano written by his friend Modest Mussorgsky (1839-81). Pictures at an Exhibition, written late in the composer’s own life, immortalized his friend in a way few other things could. Granite or marble monuments might crumble, but this monument has lasted. In fact it is more famous and has become far more popular than almost any other piece by Mussorgsky.

Modest Mussorgsky was quite young himself when he died. In his relatively short life, however, he managed to set a high mark for

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Russian classical music. It was a distinct sound, unlike the German, French or Italian music of the period. It linked elements of Russian folk music and dance with the classical music in a sound that was unmistakable.

Mussorgsky, also the composer of the operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina was a combination of enormous talent and enormous self-destroying appetites. Sadly, he was ultimately destroyed by what was then called dipsomania and what we call today alcoholism. The idea of a circle of very intelligent young men who would stay up all night talking poetry and philosophy and would stagger the next morning to their offices only to repeat the process again and again was a bohemian ideal that Mussorgsky and his friends tried to emulate. What is amazing today, looking back on it, is that there was so much good that did come out of it, self-destructing impulses notwithstanding.

Pictures at an Exhibition is divided into several sections, each addressed to an individual painting in the exhibit of Hartmann’s works. These sections are linked together by a “Promenade” of the art lover as he or she walks from painting to painting. The work culminates in what is usually called in English, “The Great Gate of Kiev.” Hartmann the artist was also an architect and the picture represents his design for a monumental structure that would become emblematic of Kiev in the same way as the Arc de Triomphe is of Paris.

Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11 I wanted to mention that not only is Pictures at an Exhibition a favorite with audiences, but also with musicians themselves. Various arrangements have been made of the original piano piece by Russian, English, French and American composers and conductors. Maurice Ravel’s 1922 arrangement of the work is probably the most well known, but musicians have continued to see in Mussorgsky’s original piano piece a wealth of ideas that could be realized in various different ways.

No matter which version we hear, however, it is the underlying music that continues to remain a great and enduring monument of music.

Mussorgsky typifies the genius of Russia: a gigantic untrained child, strong and playful and spontaneous, manifesting itself with a magnificently original energy, and yet with the child’s naïve simplicity, sweet and enormous...

—Havelock Ellis, 1914

Soloist

YEFIM BRONFMAN, Pianist

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rammy Award-winning pianist Yefim (“Fima”) Bronfman is among the most talented virtuosos performing today. His commanding technique and exceptional lyrical gifts have won consistent critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences worldwide for his solo recitals, prestigious orchestral engagements and expanding catalogue of recordings.

Mr. Bronfman’s 2012/13 season begins early with concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle in Berlin, Salzburg and the London Proms followed by the Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich with David Zinman and London’s Philharmonia conducted by Tugan Sokhiev. A year-long residency with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra and long time collaborator continued on page 32

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Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11 Mariss Jansons begins in the fall and encompasses orchestral and chamber music in a broad range of repertoire.

A return to Salzburg’s Easter Festival with the Dresden Staatskapelle and Christian Thielemann is planned for the spring followed by appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic and Michael Tilson Thomas in Vienna and London, subscription concerts in Spain and Germany and a spring tour with Ensemble Wien-Berlin.

In North America he works with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in one of their infrequent Carnegie Hall visits conducted by Fabio Luisi and returns to the orchestras in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Montreal where he is a beloved regular. In collaboration with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená he will make a short winter tour including New York’s Carnegie Hall and in solo recital he can be heard in Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta as well as the great halls of Paris, Berlin, and Lisbon. The 2011/12 US season began with the Chicago Symphony’s opening Gala conducted by Ricardo Muti followed by a residency with the Cleveland Orchestra in Miami and Cleveland focusing on the concerti and chamber music of Brahms.

A recital tour in winter culminated with Carnegie Hall followed by the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s concerto commissioned for him by the New York Philharmonic with whom he toured the west coast in the spring. In Europe he completed a two-season project of the three Bartók concerti with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen

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in London, Spain, Brussels and gave recitals in Amsterdam, Vienna, Frankfurt, Milan and Lucerne. In partnership with Emmanuel Pahud he visited Spain, Turkey, Denmark and London where he returned in the spring with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas followed by a tour with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Mr. Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yuri Temirkanov, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. Summer engagements have regularly taken him to the major festivals of Europe and the US. He has also given numerous solo recitals in the leading halls of North America, Europe and the Far East, including acclaimed debuts at Carnegie Hall in 1989 and Avery Fisher Hall in 1993. In 1991 he gave a series of joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia, marking Mr. Bronfman’s first public performances there since his emigration to Israel at age 15. That same year he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In 2010 he was honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University.

Widely praised for his solo, chamber and orchestral recordings,

Program 2 ✶ November 10 & 11 he was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in 2009 for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of EsaPekka Salonen’s piano concerto with Salonen conducting and with whom he won a GRAMMY® Award in 1997 for his recording of the three Bartók Piano Concerti and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Most recently his performance of Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto with Andris Nelsons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from the 2011 Lucerne Festival is now available on DVD, with his performance of Rachmaninoff’s third concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle already available on the EuroArts label. His most recent CD releases are Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bayerischer Rundfunk, a recital disc, ‘Perspectives’, complementing Mr. Bronfman’s designation as a Carnegie Hall ‘Perspectives’ artist for the 2007-08 season, and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concerti as well as the Triple Concerto together with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk, and the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label.

Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union on 10 April 1958, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States, he studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro and the Curtis Institute, and with Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher and Rudolf Serkin.

Yefim Bronfman became an American citizen in July 1989.

Join Kim Kluge for Maestro Musings, whimsical and provocative pre-concert insights in the Gazette Packet newspapers before each concert.

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:

Please patronize businesses that support the ASO.

Mary Graham Lasley Scholarship Competition 2013

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ow in its 37th year, the Mary Graham Lasley Scholarship Competition, co-sponsored by the Symphony Orchestra League of Alexandria and the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, encourages college-level musicians to pursue classical music careers.

Previous winners of this competition have performed with the ASO and international orchestras and also have pursued professional teaching and concert careers.

The 2013 competition will take place in March on the Alexandria campus of the Northern Virginia Community College. Please visit the ASO Web site at www.alexsym.org for additional details.

An awards ceremony and reception will be held following the competition.

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CAROL PRATT PHOTO

Kim Allen Kluge

D

istinguished by his powerful conducting style and its dramatic impact, Maestro Kim Allen Kluge has been likened to the great poetic conductors of our time. The Washington Post hails: “Kluge’s sense of drama was evident...relentless pressure I associate with Arturo Toscanini.”

The Alexandria Journal has lauded Mr. Kluge’s passionate style, commenting: “In its power, Kluge’s performance bore the hallmarks of the work of such mesmerizing conductors as Artur Nikisch and...

Leonard Bernstein.”

Celebrating 25 years as Music Director of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra during the 2012-2013 Season, Maestro Kluge’s accomplishments were further noted by The Washington Post: “Kluge has fashioned an ensemble with tremendous

musical responsiveness, and every instrumental group... bears the mark of his intelligence and drive.”

A popular and successful guest conductor, his extensive accomplishments also include appearances with the Sinfonietta de Paris, Les Solistes Parisiens, the Mannheim Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and the Baltimore Lyric Opera.

Throughout Maestro Kluge’s versatile career, he has worked as concertmaster, orchestral keyboardist, wind player, organist, singer, chamber musician, recitalist, concerto soloist, chorus director, vocal coach, composer and arranger.

He is a Valedictorian of Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he served as concertmaster of the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra and received the coveted Arthur Dann Award for Outstanding Pianist and the Pi Kappa Lamda Scholarship for Musical Excellence. Maestro Kluge pursued doctorates in Piano and Conducting from the University of Maryland and received a Conducting diploma from the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. He participated in the prestigious Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Program where continued on page 36

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he studied with Seiji Ozawa, Roger Norrington and Sir Simon Rattle.

Most recently, he garnered the 2006 Wammie Award for Best Conductor given by the Washington Area Music Awards.

In his work, Maestro Kluge merges music with other performing, visual and literary arts. He has recruited and collaborated with many artists and arts organizations in his zeal for promoting multiarts programming including: The Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution in a program celebrating Islamic culture shortly after 9/11; The Torpedo Factory Art Center and The Art League of Alexandria for a multi-season exploration of music and art; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in a concert exploring synaesthesia (the merging of the senses); as well as many of Washington, DC’s most adventuresome dance companies and theaters such as the The Shakespeare Theatre Company and Signature Theatre. He was also co-founder and Artistic Director of Washington, DC’s Capital City Opera.

A passionate advocate for music and arts education, Maestro Kluge believes education should be integrated into every concert experience regardless of format or audience demographic. In Alexandria Public Schools he has strengthened general music education by creating curriculum-based multi-arts programs as well as full orchestra and chamber ensemble experiences for all students. For young families Maestro Kluge founded the Children’s Arts Festival in 2001 as well as initiating

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Sunday matinee concerts. For music students he has developed mentoring programs and side-by-side concerts—pairing aspiring young musicians with ASO professionals.

This season he will work closely with many of Alexandria’s middle school, high school, and college-aged music students through conducting instruction, master classes, and mentoring students in performance and music composition.

Maestro Kluge is earning glowing acclaim as a composer. He recently co-founded Moon Valley Ranch Music (moonvalleyranchmusic. com) with his wife Kathryn for the composition of film scores and concert music. Kluge’s compositional approach creates a fresh synthesis of Western and Global influences, classical and popular styles and instrumental and vocal colors. His recent commissions include Vocalise, a concerto written for and performed

by Branford Marsalis; Haiku Suite, choreographed and performed by Bowen McCauley Dance at the Kennedy Center; score for silent film, A Christmas Carol, commissioned by the National Gallery of Art; and most recently, Meibuki, a concerto written for the violinist, Midori, during the collaboration of her Orchestra Residencies Program with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra in 2012.

Current composing projects for Kim Allen Kluge and his wife Kathryn include River Poem for orchestra, chorus, and bells, which is a tribute to the dynamic city of Alexandria, VA. Commissioned

by Virginia Bronze, River Poem will have its world premiere in

February, 2013 with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, The Virginia Bronze Handbell Ringers of Northern Virginia, the Alexandria Choral Society, and the Heritage Signature Chorale. The Kluges have also been commissioned by the National Gallery of Art to compose and perform chamber music to the silent films of Alice Guy-Blache in an historic retrospective. The husband and wife team continue to write scores for films in Hollywood and are in the process of composing an opera. Additionally, in keeping with their deep commitment to music education, the Kluges will be composing a multi-arts piece for children.

Maestro Kluge’s creative work derives from his passion and conviction that people of radically different backgrounds can share the essence of their humanity

through artistic expression. The common denominator in Kim Allen Kluge’s work is his desire to reach audiences in a visceral and thoughtprovoking manner, often through the juxtaposition or synthesis of disparate styles or genres.

CAROL PRATT PHOTO

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The Magic of Music

ASO’s Children’s Arts Festival The ASO Children’s Art Festival was created in 2003-2004.

Throughout the school year art and music teachers encourage students to learn art and music concepts based on the music to be presented in concert at the Festival.

In 2011-2012 the students were inspired to create works

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of art while listening to Gustav Holst’s The Planets.

Recent years have featured Romeo & Juliet, Pirates of the Carribean, and even West Side Story.

The next children’s art festival will take place in spring 2013.

Check the Symphony’s website— alexsym.org—for the most updated information.

Our Cit y, Our Symphony Be the Music... The Music of Inheritance

Saturday, February 9, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

Sunday, February 10, 2013, 3:00 p.m.

Kim Allen Kluge, conductor Claudia Chudacoff, violin The Virginia Bronze Handbell Ringers of Northern Virginia Carol Feather Martin, Director Heritage Signature Chorale, Stanley J. Thurston, Music Director Alexandria Choral Society, Brian Gendron, Artistic Director HANDEL

Selections from Water Music

BACH Komm, Jesu, komm, BWV 229

Alexandria Choral Society MOZART

Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major Claudia Chudacoff, violin

MENDELSSOHN

Hebrides Overture in B minor, Op. 26 “Fingal’s Cave”

KLUGE & KLUGE River Poem Dedicated to The City of Alexandria

The Virginia Bronze Handbell Ringers of Northern Virginia Alexandria Choral Society Heritage Signature Chorale WORLD PREMIERE Commissioned by The Virginia Bronze Handbell Ringers of Northern Virginia

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“The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.”

—–Walt Whitman

am sure that you have heard the phrase “we are standing on the shoulders of giants.” This refers to the huge debt of gratitude that we owe to those who have gone before us, have taught us, have been our

mentors; these are the people who have helped to make us the people we are today. All of the composers on today’s concert fulfill two of those roles: they have stood on the shoulders of the giants who have helped to shape them and in turn they have or are acting as mentors and teachers to those who follow them. continued on page 40

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Program 3 ✶ February 9 & 10 The Hebrides Overture is not an overture in the sense that it is a prelude to an opera, for example.

The use of the term also refers to a piece that is a single movement work for orchestra that stands on its own.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) was described by one of his biographers as a “gentle genius.” That’s about as apt a term as I could think of for this amazing composer. We’ve all heard about musical prodigies, but what we don’t usually hear about are those families where more than one child was a prodigy. It was true in the case of Mozart and his sister Maria Anna, nicknamed “Nannerl;” it was also true of Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny and many of us remember violinist Yehudi Menuhin, but not as many remember his tremendously talented sisters Hepzibah and Yaltah, each a prodigy in her own right. We can say much about how sisters were forced by society and circumstance to hide their talents in favor of their brothers: the injustice of it is enormous. What we can’t dispute, however, especially in the case of Mendelssohn was that throughout their all-too-short lives sister and brother supported each other’s talents and served as a source of friendly competition.

Felix and Fanny not only were performing at a very early age, but composing as well. So much so that by the time they were twenty each was already a mature practitioner of the art of composition. And harking back to the idea of “standing on the shoulders of giants,” the

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...the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect towards what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it, and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own [little light] burn more brightly?

—Felix Mendelssohn Mendelssohns’ aunt had been a patron of Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, the most famous of Johann Sebastian’s composing sons. It was through this association and the fact that the aunt, Sarah Levy, had also collected a large group of the music manuscripts of J. S. Bach that the Mendelssohns became acquainted with so much of the music of that master. Felix burst on the musical scene in 1829 when he conducted a performance Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in Berlin. This was the first time the work had been heard since the death of J. S. Bach nearly 70 years before.

But by the time of that concert Felix had also composed the overture to the incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Mid-Summer Nights’ Dream. He was well on his way as a conductor, composer and pianist.

His travels also took him to England where he was introduced to Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. In short order Mendelssohn became great friends with the Royals and his compositions were for the

Program 3 ✶ February 9 & 10 most part well received all over Great Britain. While Mendelssohn never actually visited those Scottish Islands that form two bands protecting the west coast of Scotland from the fury of the Atlantic, The Hebrides, and particularly “Fingal’s Cave,” were widely discussed. The cave was notable not only for the distinctive basalt crystal formations, but also the equally distinctive echoes produced there. It is thought that these perhaps inspired Mendelssohn in his composition of what really amounts to a love letter to Scotland and its people.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) is most closely associated with the keyboard. What is less well known is that he was also and accomplished violinist. This familiarity with the violin made his compositions of both concertos for violin and orchestra and sonatas for violin and piano a combination of virtuosity and sunny playfulness that makes it seem as if the music never wants to land on solid ground.

It is true that Mozart was also the master of sober moods and touches of melancholy here and there, but for me, at any rate, it is this sense of lightness and optimism that gives so much of his music and especially his music for the violin its unique character. Composers from his day to our own have marveled at this aspect of Mozart’s music and some have even tried to emulate it. In the end, however, as Pianist Leon Fleisher said to me once, “Mozart is the music.”

When Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s own concertmaster

People often complain that music is too ambiguous... whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite... with individual words. These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.

—Felix Mendelssohn Claudia Chudacoff steps up to perform the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4, it may be a new experience for some of us, but not for Ms. Chudacoff. Already the holder of prestigious positions as concertmaster or principal violinist with several notable ensembles, Ms. Chudacoff is no stranger to the concert platform. As a seasoned performer, both within the orchestra and as a soloist, she brings a depth of experience to her performance.

But don’t be fooled, if you think that means she’ll be weighed down by all that experience, you are in for a happy surprise. As a performer and master teacher, Ms. Chudacoff is thoroughly familiar with Mozart’s unique, deft touch. continued on page 42

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Program 3 ✶ February 9 & 10 The great theologian Karl Barth said that when the angels are gathered around the throne of the Almighty, of course they play only the music of Bach, but when they get together, en familie, they play Mozart.

Johann Sebastian Bach (16851750) was such a musical giant that if we paused to consider just one of the areas of his enormous body of musical compositions, we would still consider him a great composer.

That he excelled at so many different forms simultaneously still beggars the imagination. One of those is a kind of composition that flowered in the generation before Bach and only for a very few years after his death in 1750; that was the cantata.

The cantata is a musical piece usually about 20 minutes long that consists of perhaps an introductory movement for solo organ or orchestra, vocal solos of two kinds: arias, longer dialogues between soloist and orchestra and recitatives in which the soloist usually relates the text over a very simple accompaniment of harpsichord and finally sections for chorus that are either extended musical meditations on the subject of the cantata or chorales. These last are slightly elaborated verses – usually of a well-known hymn – that the chorus would sing with the congregation or audience.

Bach wrote more than 200 of these works, most but not all religious.

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There may have been as many as even 50 or 100 more, but so much of Bach’s music – perhaps as much as a third of his total output – that we may never know. Naturally in the religious works, Bach is quite serious, as befits the topic. These religious cantatas were intended to take the place of the sermon in the Lutheran services in his time. Over the course of his lifetime, Bach wrote at least one cantata for each Sunday of the liturgical calendar.

Bach’s Christmas and Easter Oratorios are essentially each a series of six cantatas that follow one another.

There was, however, a playful side to Bach too. His Coffee Cantata, for instance, celebrates that beverage at a time when it was becoming all the rage in Germany. There are other secular cantatas that poke gentle fun at some Greek myths from antiquity that may be veiled references to some of the local city officials of his day.

The cantatas, then, were flexible small musical compositions that could be tailored for whatever the occasion needed. We should remember, however, that as quickly as Bach wrote, these little works contain many strokes of Bach’s genius that even today make musicians and audiences realize what a giant Bach was.

It’s rare that a single year produces continued on page 44

A friend sat next to Beethoven and heard him say, “Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived...I would uncover my head and kneel down at his tomb.”

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Program 3 ✶ February 9 & 10 O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life have you left in our souls?

—Franz Schubert three musical giants, but 1685 was just such a year. Johann Sebastian Bach, Domenico Scarlatti and George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) were all born in that year. And today some 328 years later we are still listening to their music! One of the ironies of musical history is that Scarlatti and Handel both met in Rome in 1707 and a competition was held to see who was the greater keyboard player. While Scarlatti was judged to be superior on the harpsichord, Handel was the clear winner on the organ. Afterwards whenever Handel’s name was mentioned in his presence, Scarlatti would cross himself at the memory of Handel’s keyboard skill. Another irony is that although Handel was born on February 23 and Bach on March 21, 1685 less than 60 miles apart, they never met. Doubtless they knew of each other, but their paths never crossed.

By the time that Handel wrote his now famous Water Music in 1717, he had already made London his home.

Handel biographers have speculated that Handel’s premature move to England displeased the Elector (Prince) of Hanover. The Elector became King George I of England

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and these three suites that constitute one of Handel’s most beloved works ensured that Handel was once again in his employer’s good graces. If you remember the Olympic Games from last summer, you may have seen on television the Olympic torch being carried down the River Thames on the Royal Barge. It always makes me laugh when I hear it referred to as such. I grew up in a town on Long Island’s north shore and almost daily we would see tugboats pulling a string of barges toward New York City. Believe me, there was nothing royal about them. So to call a royal river vessel a barge brings back those memories and even with velvet canopies and gold flecked gee-gaws everywhere, the term barge simply does not apply.

But King George and his party were borne along by the tide on the Thames the fateful evening of July 17, 1717 and on another accompanying barge were George Frederick Handel and his musicians playing away for the king’s entertainment. Apparently the King was so pleased with Handel’s music that he insisted that the entire three suites be played over twice more before the exhausted musicians could relax.

...all music...should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamor and ranting.

—J. S. Bach

Program 3 ✶ February 9 & 10 Well, barge or no barge, King or no King, Handel’s Water Music has become a perennial favorite. Most frequently we hear the Water Music played without strings because the string sound doesn’t carry so well in the open air. No matter. Either with strings or without, the suites are buoyant and charming. And they are so like Handel. What that great master did was to clothe all the intricacies of Baroque music with limpid melody.

When our ears tire of the complexities of the music, they are soothed by those melodies that seem to float effortlessly above the texture of the orchestra. Handel is a master of this, with a skill that his contemporaries Bach and Scarlatti could – and did – admire.

Like much of the instrumental music of Handel’s time, these suites are short movements with titles that remind listeners that they were based on different dances of the period.

It was only in the period slightly before Handel, Bach and Scarlatti that instrumental music – apart from accompanying singing or dancing – was being listened to as a separate and legitimate form of music. In less than a century, “concerts” of instrumental music would become accepted and with them the growth of the orchestra.

Regardless of style or period, Handel’s music still exerts such broad appeal through its skillful blend of Baroque intricacy and beautiful melody.

We’ve heard our own Maestro Kim Allen Kluge as a composer on the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra

“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”

—J. S. Bach concert series, but today’s program brings an added treat. He has collaborated with his wife Kathryn Vassar Kluge to create a new work that has its premiere on our program. River Poem brings together the husband and wife composing team with the Virginia Bronze Handbell Ringers of Northern Virginia, the Alexandria Choral Society and the Signature Heritage Chorale and our own beloved ASO. Many of you have known Kathryn Vassar Kluge as a talented pianist and teacher – to say nothing of her stint as Executive Director of the Symphony some years ago – but adding another hat to her collection, that of composer, will allow us to hear how she blends those considerable multiple skills. As I write this on a steamy summer afternoon, I must tell you that I have not yet heard the work. That being said, however, I am intrigued by the idea of Alexandria musicians, instrumentalists as well as singers, embodying the culture and tradition of “Our Fair City,” as they say on NPR’s “Car Talk.” This is a terrific idea because by so doing Kathryn and Kim Kluge are holding up a mirror to us to focus our attention on what and who makes Alexandria the fabulous city it is.

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Program 3 âœś February 9 & 10

Soloist Claudia Chudacoff

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n addition to serving as concertmaster of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, the National Gallery of Art Orchestra, and the United States Marine Band White House Chamber Orchestra, violinist Claudia Chudacoff appears frequently as a soloist and chamber musician in the Washington and Baltimore areas. A member of both the Sunrise Quartet and the National Gallery of Art String Quartet, she has also performed with the Contemporary Music Forum and National Musical Arts as well as in the Embassy Series and at the United

States Holocaust National Museum.

She is featured on a CD of chamber music by Erich Korngold released by Albany Records, and has been heard a number of times on American Public Media’s Performance Today.

THE VIRGINIA BRONZE HANDBELL RINGERS OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA The Virginia Bronze Handbell Ringers of Northern Virginia is a communitybased, auditioned handbell ensemble performing a wide range of handbell music including secular, sacred, popular, original and regional. The mission of Virginia Bronze is to advance the art of English handbell ringing in Northern Virginia. Our primary outreach is through our concert performances. We actively seek concert venues within existing concert series, retirement communities, churches, educational institutions and conferences sponsored by our national organization - the Handbell Musicians of America. Virginia Bronze is partially funded by grants from the Alexandria Commission of the Arts and the Virginia Arts Commission

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The Alexandria Symphony Concerto Foundation

Ensuring the long-term stability of the ASO

T

he Alexandria Symphony Concerto Foundation was established in 2005 to create an endowment fund to provide long-term financial support to the ASO. The Foundation’s goal is to build a significant capital fund, with the income from that fund providing annual income to the Symphony. The Foundation is a “supporting organization” under section 509(a)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and gifts made to the Foundation are tax deductible as charitable donations. As of the end of the first quarter of 2012, the fund had approximately $340,000 in assets.

The following individuals contributed gifts of $5,000 or more to meet the $100,000 Challenge sponsored by Frank and Betty Quirk which was completed in May 2007:

Anonymous C. Maxine Baustian Suzanne S. Brock Miriam and David Browning Penny and Tim Bryan Linda and Elliott Bunce Agnes and Jack Dover Gerhard Dreo Loti and Stewart Dunn Julie and Edward Dyson Anne and Caswell Hobbs

Ruth Kotler Eva and Frank Manning Mary Ann and David Millard Reae and Thomas Sargeant Molly and Jim Singerling Ann and Roy Snyder Symphony Orchestra League of Alexandria (SOLA) Judy and Forrest Williams Stuart and Robert Wineland Susan and Allan Winn

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Help Assure the Long-Term Future of the Alexandria Symphony Through Planned Giving Including the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s Foundation in Your Estate Plan

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bequest to the Alexandria Symphony Concerto Foundation will go toward insuring long-term support of the Alexandria Symphony.

Gifts can be a specific dollar amount, a specific piece of property, a percentage of an estate or all or part of residue of an estate. You can also name the Foundation as a contingent beneficiary if someone named in your will is no longer living. You may make a bequest to ASO by including the following words in your will:

“I give, devise and bequeath to the Alexandria Symphony Concerto Foundation, 2121 Eisenhower Avenue, Suite 608, Alexandria, VA 22314 $______ ( here insert specific dollar amount; percentage of estate; percentage of the residual of your estate; or describe the property).

This language can be added to an existing will easily and at minimal expense. It is recommended that an attorney provide assistance. The Alexandria Symphony Concerto Foundation’s federal tax identification number is 30-0346156.

For more information, please contact Jessica Wisser at 703 548-0885.

If you have named ASO in your will. Please let us know so we can enroll you in the Alexandria Symphony Legacy Society.

The ASO wishes to thank the following individuals who have named the Symphony as a beneficiary of their estates: C. Maxine Baustian, deceased Margaret Hodges Ruth Kupperschlag Stuart & Robert Wineland 48

1604 King Street, AlexandriaVA, 22314

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2012-2013 DISCOUNT DETAILS

ASO subscriber discounts are available during concert months (September, November, February, April, May), except where noted.

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10 East Glebe Road 703-379-2346 50% off any second entrée, Saturday concert night only.

Prefixed menu ($65 per two), Saturday concert nights only.

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The ASO Debut of Elizabeth Pitcairn Be the Music... The Music of Empowerment Saturday, April 20, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

Sunday, April 21, 2013, 3:00 p.m.

Kim Allen Kluge, conductor Elizabeth Pitcairn, violin PORTMAN

PROKOFIEV

The Cider House Rules Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19 Elizabeth Pitcairn, violin

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B minor “Pathétique”, Op. 74

“That you are her— that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”

—Walt Whitman I have commented before in these notes about the importance of music written for film and television. As far as some classical music critics are concerned, however, the entire genre seems to be beneath their dignity: not worthy of serious consideration.

I share with our Maestro Kluge a different view. Almost since sound and picture were united in the late 1920s, a new kind of classical music has arisen: movie music. Yes, it’s true that “incidental” music had been written by some of our most famous composers to accompany plays. Think of Mendelssohn’s music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Edvard Grieg’s

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music for Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.

While it is true that movie music has such illustrious ancestors, it would be incorrect to think that the music written for a specific movie was “incidental.” Film directors are quick to point out that music for their movies is an integral part of the entire film. The script, the actors, the design, the setting, the cinematography and most certainly the music combine to make a cohesive whole.

A second point that bears repeating is that so much of this contemporary classical music stands up very well in the concert hall. That is a measure of how “strong” movie music is. If there were any doubts remaining go to the Internet and look at the number of albums – CDs now of course – of soundtrack music that are available.

All of this is background for me to

Program 4 ✶ April 20 & 21 tell you about the music of Rachel Portman, O.B.E. (1960 - ). Not only is there far too little attention paid to composers who are women, but there is not enough attention paid to the idea that Hollywood films are not just for or by Americans.

Those initials after Portman’s name indicate that she is recognized in her native Britain as an “Officer of the British Empire.” Portman was given this honor in recognition for her service to British film. While not wishing to take anything away from such an accomplishment, I am happy to say that Portman’s movie music accomplishments don’t end there.

She has made what can only be called a prodigious contribution to recent Hollywood movies, and we viewers are the better for it.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a composer always in two worlds, even as both of those worlds continued to change. One of those worlds was Russia; first it was Tzarist Russia and later the Soviet Union. Contrary to Russia was Prokofiev’s growing reputation in Europe and the United States. But bad luck seemed to be a companion to Prokofiev throughout his career.

On his first visit to the United States, he was commissioned by the Chicago Lyric Opera to compose The Love of Three Oranges. The young composer spent so much time on the work that his more lucrative career as a concert soloist dried up and he was forced to return to Europe in hopes of making a living as a soloist.

Artistically, too, Prokofiev straddled two worlds. The lyric romanticism of

“Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be this or that; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gives me great pleasure.”

—Felix Mendelssohn.

Russian composers who dominated his years at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, and the exciting new musical sounds that were springing up everywhere in the early years th of the 20 Century. While never completely reconciling the two different worlds, either geographic or musical, Prokofiev forged his own new musical language that represented a fusion of the old with the new. This new sound began to emerge with works like his Classical Symphony (a sort of graduation thesis at the end of his career at the conservatory) and in the First Violin Concerto. Listeners might not always be able to put a name to it, but it is a style that is all his own.

What Prokofiev does is write a melody seemingly in one major key, but as the melody evolves he abruptly shifts to a new key and a newer one after that. As I write this it seems to me that my explanation makes Prokofiev’s technique sound abrupt continued on page 54

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Program 4 ✶ April 20 & 21

Once the great cellist Gregor Piatigorsky asked Prokofiev to write a cello concerto for him. He showed the composer other famous concertos.

“Take them out of the house; they smell!” said Prokofiev. But Piatagorsky persisted. “I can’t write music away from Russia,” the composer objected.

Prokofiev did write the concerto back in Russia; Piatigorsky premiered the work in Boston and much later the composer revised the work for the young Mstislav Rostropovich. and jarring. It is anything but. As each new Prokofiev theme takes the stage, the harmonies continue to evolve with it. If you listen to Prokofiev’s music written at the beginning of his career and to music written near the end of his life, the same, unique, Prokofiev “signature” can be heard.

The First Violin Concerto got off to a shaky start. The critical reception to the Paris premiere was lukewarm at best. Three days later in Russia, violinist Nathan Milstein gave the premiere with the orchestral part played by pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

What sealed the fame of this work in the West, however, was a concert tour begun in 1922 by violinist Josef

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Szigeti with conductor Fritz Reiner.

Both audiences and critics took the concerto to their hearts and it has remained a staple of the repertoire ever since.

I have to insert here a personal observation. This work has always been one of my favorites because it breaks a concerto “taboo.” It starts and ends with a slow movement and its bright, almost sassy fast movement comes in between. It was a bold move for a young composer, but Prokofiev pulled it off. Every time I hear the concerto it makes me smile not only because the music is so beautiful, but because its composer made such a bold choice and did it so well.

Many years ago when I was a music graduate student, Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93) was one of those composers who made us roll our eyes. It all seemed like such sappy romanticism, ideally suited to be “elevator music” and not much more. The music was hopelessly “pretty.” Nothing could be worse.

And the worst of all was not The Nutcracker ballet, but the Sixth

I have never doubted the importance of melody.

I like it very much and I consider it the most important element in music. I labor over melody sometimes so much that it loses its simplicity. Then I must begin again.

—Sergei Prokofiev

Program 4 ✶ April 20 & 21 Tchaikovsky writing to his brother Modest Tchaikovsky, “I am now wholly occupied with the new work ... and it is hard for me to tear myself away from it. I believe it comes into being as the best of my works.

I must finish it as soon as possible, for I have to wind up a lot of affairs and I must soon go to London. I told you that I had completed a Symphony which suddenly displeased me, and I tore it up. Now I have composed a new symphony which I certainly shall not tear up.”

Symphony. Oh, how smug we were when we were young. Tchaikovsky was so easy to hate: his melodies were so limpid, his harmonies so trite. He represented everything that “new” music stood against. And oh, how wrong we were!

As many of my friends, including Maestro Kluge know, in the last few years, I have set out a project for myself to re-listen to as much of Tchaikovsky’s music as possible. I’ve come to admire two monumental things about his style and one smaller, but significant one. Let me start with the smaller point and work up to the larger. The small point is that Tchaikovsky, thoroughly Russian man though he was, refused to let anybody else decide just “how

Russian” his music was. This was in a time when musical “nationalism” was all the rage and proponents of the music of one country or another were screaming about how much better German music was because it was German. No Frenchman, nor Italian, much less a Russian, could even hold a candle to the average German composer. The French thought the same of their countrymen, as did the Italians, and so on. Into this maelstrom steps Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky who’s writing music that knows no borders. While it’s true that you don’t have to look for for those movements that incorporate Russian folk melodies, his was music that any person from any country could love. And what kind of person espouses this revolutionary idea, but a shy, reserved, Russian with such aristocratic reserve. In his own quiet, but distinct way, Pyotr Illyich broke the mold. It’s no wonder that he set nationalists’ teeth on edge.

But there are two things that make Tchaikovsky’s music so distinctive.

The first are his absolutely gorgeous melodies. They seem to spring effortlessly from his pen. Singable and hummable by everyone, they belie the effort he expended to create them. They shine and soar and transcend the orchestral texture that supports them. You find it in nearly everything that he wrote. The operas, ballets, symphonies, string quartets and songs are all imbued with his unerring melodic sense. But the second thing, to my ears at least, continued on page 56

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Program 4 ✶ April 20 & 21 is how Tchaikovsky develops his thematic material. When a composer is writing a large work, it is not so much a question of “how do you fill up the time,” or “how do I bring out everything that my mind hears that is inherent in the germ of the musical idea?” These are hard questions.

And the more adept a composer becomes, the harder these questions

:

are. “It would be so easy to fall back upon a musical device that I had used before when I can’t figure out where to go next,” an accomplished composer might say to him or herself. It is precisely at this point where the genius of a Tchiakovsky comes into play. If you are a music reader and you were to take up a score of his Sixth Symphony and

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Program 4 ✶ April 20 & 21 “On my word of honor, I have never felt such selfsatisfaction, such pride, such happiness, as in the knowledge that I have created a good thing.”

(Tchaikovsky writing to his publisher, August 1893). follow along with a recording, it would quickly become apparent that Tchaikovsky has a wealth of musical ideas to draw upon. And yet each one of the choices he makes seem so natural, so organic even. As you read along in the score, you might say to yourself, “well, of course, the music had to go in that direction: it’s the most natural thing in the world.”

Now just you try it with a blank piece of music score paper in front of you.

This is why I admire Tchaikovsky so much: no matter if you listen just for the beautiful melodies, or if you listen with just a little more than passing interest, or if you delve deeply into the score, you will be richly rewarded.

The monumental Sixth Symphony was the composer’s final work, dying just a few days after he had conducted its premiere in 1893.

The title “Pathétique” was one that Tchaikovsky wrestled with. By no means does it mean the same as the word pathetic in English. The notion he was striving for in coming up with a name and not just a number for this symphony was that it was both a work of great passion and yet one

that could evoke empathy in others.

The phenomenal success that the work has enjoyed since its premiere is testament to the composer’s idea.

Soloist

ELIZABETH PITCAIRN

C

elebrated American violin virtuoso Elizabeth Pitcairn has earned a stunning reputation as one of America’s most beloved soloists. Ms. Pitcairn made her New York debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 2000 with the New York String

Orchestra and she appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. The signature artist performs in partnership with one of the world’s most legendary instruments, the Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius of 1720, said to have inspired the Academy award-winning film The Red Violin. Ms. Pitcairn appears on the 10th anniversary edition of The Red Violin– Meridian Collection in a special feature documentary interview.

Ms. Pitcairn is passionate about youth and education. She is the President, CEO and Artistic Director of the continued on page 58

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Program 4 ✶ April 20 & 21 Luzerne Music Center and Chamber Music Festival (New York). She is also a member of the distinguished faculty at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, California. On her tours, she makes time for school visits and gives university masterclasses for aspiring music students.

The 2012-2013 season includes her debut with the Alexandria (VA) Symphony, recitals in San Miguel, MX and Wailea, Maui, a performance with the McGill Chamber Orchestra (Canada), and a performance with the Glens Falls (NY) Symphony.

Engagements in 2012 and 2013 will include performances of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, Corigliano Red Violin Suite, Brahms Violin Concerto, Prokofiev Concerto No. 1 in D Major, and Mozart Concerto in D Major. A recent world tour included performances of the Mendelssohn Concerto in Brazil, China, Hong Kong, New York, Canada and recitals in Dublin, Edinburgh and London.

Born in bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1973, Ms. Pitcairn comes from a musical family; her mother is a Juilliard-trained cellist, her father studied opera, her cousins are associate principal viola of the Colorado Symphony, violin in the Calder Quartet, and violin and viola in the band Airborne Toxic Event.

Ms. Pitcairn began playing the violin at age three and made her debut performing the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 3 with orchestra at age 14. Her path led her to Los Angeles to study with preeminent violin professor Robert Lipsett at the University of Southern

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California Thornton School of Music, where she is a former adjunct professor. At the Marlboro Music Festival she performed chamber music with members of The Juilliard and Guarneri String Quartets.

The 2010 release of “Hymns to the Night” Violin Concerto by Sweden’s leading composer Tommie Haglund with the Helsingborg Symphony under the baton of Hannu Koivula earned Ms. Pitcairn a Swedish Grammi nomination for Best Classical recording.

Her discography includes recordings of Tchaikovsky and Mozart - A Major Concerti with the Slovenia Radio Television Orchestra, the Bruch Scottish Fantasy and the Bizet/ Sarasate Carmen Fantasy with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra of Bulgaria and the “Hymns to the Night” Concerto with the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra for the Swedish record label Phono Suecia.

Elizabeth Pitcairn is a Wittner Artist. She performs exclusively on the revolutionary Wittner Finetune-Pegs.

For Ms. Pitcairn’s tour schedule, interviews and history of the Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius, please visit www.redviolin.net.

Please patronize businesses that support the ASO.

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A Fabled Finale Be the Music... The Music of Experience Saturday, May 18, 2013, 8:00 p.m.

Kim Allen Kluge, conductor ELFMAN Beetlejuice

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade, Op. 35

STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”

—Charlie Parker

D

aniel Robert “Danny” Elfman (1953 - ) is a movie music composer who truly grew up with the movies. The generation of movie music composers working today have already absorbed the work of Bernard Hermann, Max Steiner, Nino Rote, Erich Korngold just to name a few. One of the most important ideas that Mr. Elfman took on was the notion that the character of the music and the character of the movie should be one and the same. His long association with director Tim Burton has seen the two working on no fewer than twelve films. That barely scrapes the surface of Elfman’s career though; he’s written scores for nearly two dozen other movies with a host of different directors.

Beetlejuice was [Elfman’s] broader introduction to mainstream

audiences as an orchestral film score composer, establishing an irresistible knack for creativity that would astonish listeners and genuinely excite film music fans.

Like so many of his generation of movie music composers, Elfman’s musical palette spans everything from Tchaikovsky through the more recent twists and turns of contemporary rock music. What this wide variety allows him to do is to free himself from any one style to find the most apt expression for the film at hand. Beetlejuice (1988) is a perfect example. Using everything from full orchestra to the spare sound of an electric guitar, Elfman’s music deftly limns the absurdist send-up of the horror film genre with musical touches ideally suited to the comic antics of stars Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. The continuing interest in the score from this movie attests to the fact that Elfman – following in the footsteps of the illustrious giants

continued on page 62

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Program 5 ✶ May 18 who preceded him – has produced a score that flourishes equally well in the concert hall.

It’s hard to imagine one hundred years later, what a ruckus that first performance of the ballet The Rite of Spring caused in Paris’ then brand new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées the night of May 29, 1913. Yes, there was something of a riot in the theater and the police were called in to quell it, but it’s not clear whether it was the music or the recreation of the pagan Russian ceremonies that sparked it. It did get great publicity and even at the time some people thought that impresario Sergei Diaghilev may have stirred up the pot somewhat. Well, no matter; it makes a great story.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) had already crafted two ballet scores for Diaghilev, Petruchka and The Firebird. The ballets have endured although the choreography has undergone some changes in the intervening decades, but even more than that, the suites that Stravinsky crafted have been staples in concert halls throughout the world ever since. It’s a curious fact because Stravinsky continued to evolve

Beetlejuice was [Elfman’s] broader introduction to mainstream audiences as an orchestral film score composer, establishing an irresistible knack for creativity that would astonish listeners and genuinely excite film music fans.

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as a composer over the course of his career and these early works remain a remarkable musical style that emerged and just as quickly disappeared. The First World War intervened, the Russian Revolution, the economies of European countries were plunged into turmoil. The old order had passed. The Emperors, the Tzars and even a few kings were toppled from their thrones.

The impact on the world of art and music was profound. Stravinsky’s music changed radically. His next ballet score, Pulcinella, bore no resemblance to The Rite of Spring.

Critics and audiences asked how could Stravinsky change and change so radically. Only after many years did they come to understand that Stravinsky was, in a certain sense, a musical chameleon. It wasn’t that his style changed from The Rite of Spring to Pulcinella, but that it continued to change throughout his long career.

The thing that many of his composer colleagues found so frustrating about him was that Stravinsky was so good at it. One style that a composer had spent a lifetime perfecting would be the style that Stravinsky would try next and master it completely, almost effortlessly, and then he would move on.

But The Rite of Spring remained dear to his heart. His style may have evolved, but he never looked back at these compositions with scorn or derision, much less abandoned them.

They were worthy of his continuing consideration. And if they were worth his continuing consideration, they certainly are worth ours. Finally, what makes The Rite of Spring such a monumental work is that evocative as it is of a pre-Christian Russia, it is never necessary for the listener

Program 5 ✶ May 18 to be aware of the story of the ballet in order to enjoy the work in all its splendor. Stravinsky himself gives an important clue to the internal sense of the ballet when he said in his introduction to the 1967 edition of the score that The Rite of Spring is “a musical-choreographic work, [representing] pagan Russia... unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring.” The work has no specific plot or narrative, but should be considered as a succession of choreographed episodes.”

Well, after a century that “mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring,” is alive and well. Even though it was created when the th 20 Century was barely out of its swaddling clothes, this majestic ballet has lost none of its vigor. I don’t think that there would be too many critics who would disagree with me when I say that The Rite of Spring is emblematic of the entire th 20 Century.

There’s another important point that needs to be made about Stravinsky. He was something like th the Mount Everest of 20 Century music. Whatever he did was worth paying close attention to. The mere fact that he couldn’t have cared less about being a trend-setter was infuriating to those who found that his music was on the cusp of nearly every important trend in the music th of the 20 Century. All except one.

Stravinsky’s music may have been filled with some of the most jarring dissonances and like The Rite of Spring, some of the most thundering rhythms that made everyone sit up and take notice, but it was not atonal. But that was not how many contemporary critics viewed

[The Rite of Spring] is the twentieth century’s Ninth Symphony —Sergei Diaghilev

him. One London critic wrote, “Stravinsky is utterly unable to formulate a musical idea of his own.

As a member of a savage orchestra he might perhaps be allowed to play a recurrent rhythm upon a drum – as the only evidence of real form in his work is that kind of primitive repetition which birds and babies also do very well.”

His most severe critics hoped that he would just go away. From The New York Sun in 1937, “It is probable that much, if not most, of Stravinsky’s music will enjoy brief existence... Already the tremendous impact of [The Rite of Spring] has disappeared, and what seemed at first hearing to be the inner glow of inspirational fire is now only a smoldering ember.” Fortunately for us, we remember Stravinsky and not the critics.

To me, it is a real shame that we don’t get to hear more performances of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s (1844-1908) orchestral suite Scheherazade more often than we do. For many decades this work was in the repertoire of almost every orchestra. I’m glad that we will again have the opportunity to hear this amazing work. The work is based on the One Thousand and One Nights. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote this description for the 1888 premiere: continued on page 64

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Program 5 ✶ May 18 The Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night.

But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, told seriatim, for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely.

Very wisely Rimsky-Korsakov did not attempt to tie any of the four interconnected movements of the suite to specific tales except in the most general way, but rather used them all to evoke a sense of exoticism. This exoticism is perfectly in keeping with the nature of the stories that scholars tell us were gathered together over several centuries from sources as diverse as South Asia, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. The collection with its unifying idea first appeared in an English translation in 1706; translations into all the major languages appeared over the following decades. The stories and the haunting tale of Scheherazade herself have fascinated people ever since. Where would we be without Sinbad the sailor or Ali Baba and the forty thieves? It was because of this familiarity with the idea of the work in the minds of many in his audience, that Rimsky-Korsakov could, with confidence, use individual titles for the movements, but with only the loosest connection to the stories to which they refer.

What stands out in every measure

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Stravinsky turned in a work commissioned by the Venice Festival that was only 15 minutes long. The officials complained it was too short; Stravinsky said, “Play it again.” After that American music critic Virgil Thomson dubbed him “the Merchant of Venice.” of this work – a symphony in everything but name – is RimskyKorsakov’s lush orchestration.

Whether the sinuous lilt of the solo violin that opens the work through his use of the entire ensemble, the piece breathes that sense of the distant, the exotic, the unattainable.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Rimsky-Korsakov himself imagined that he was the Sultan Schariar being entertained by the beautiful Scheherazade who illustrated her stories with dance. That brings me to the fact that our old friend Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, with whom Stravinsky had written The Rite of Spring, turned Scheherazade into a ballet in 1910 with choreography by Michel Fokine.

It is my hope that there will be many more performances and recordings of this enchanting work.

A Paris critic said The Rite of Spring was not Sacre du Printemps, but Massacre du Printemps.

Meet Program Note Author

Colleen Fay M

s. Fay was the Head of the former Performing Arts Library at the Kennedy Center, a joint project with the Library of Congress. As Director of the library during its entire existence from 1978 through 1992, Ms. Fay fashioned it into an incomparable resource for information in the performing arts, film and broadcasting. Prior to her tenure at the Kennedy Center, she was a music librarian at the Library of Congress.

Since 1986 she has been the music critic on Public Television’s arts panel program, “Around Town,” WETA-TV’s Emmy award-winning weekly television show devoted to the performing arts, visual arts, and motion pictures. Ms. Fay is also the Arts Editor and Contributing Editor to WAMU FM’s “Metro Connection,” a weekly radio program covering events in the Washington, D.C. area.

Ms. Fay writes regularly for the Washington Opera Magazine, Washington Review and WETA Magazine.

Her program notes are featured in Stagebill magazine. Ms. Fay has written on subjects as diverse as Mozart operas, Gregorian chant and jazz.

She has lectured regularly for the Washington Bach Consort since 1993 and gave a series of lectures for that organization in Germany in July, 2000. She has lectured on the music of Bach, Monteverdi and Mendelssohn, and on the subject

of criticism itself at Mount Vernon College, the Folger Library, George Mason University, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Cathedral and the Kennedy Center.

Ms. Fay is a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Composer Forum. She is also the Past-President of the Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive.

She is a current or former member of the Boards of several arts organizations in the Washington area.

As a singer, Ms. Fay has appeared with the Washington Opera, the Wolf Trap Opera, and Summer Opera Theatre. The Washington Post music critic called her singing, “stylistically impressive and particularly distinguished.” Ms. Fay is also a composer whose works have been performed in churches and synagogues and on national television; her most recent work has been published by Augsburg-Fortress Press of Minneapolis.

A recording of Ms. Fay’s compositions is supported by a grant from the D. C. Commission on Arts and Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Annual Fund Donors

Includes 2011-2012 contributions, donations to SOLA, and early contributions to the 2012-2013 Annual Fund.

Conductor’s Baton Circle (over $20,000) Suzanne S. Brock Virginia Commission for the Arts

Conductor’s Circle ($10,000–$19,999) Alexandria Commission for the Arts Mr. & Mrs. Stewart Dunn Concerto Foundation Connection Newspapers Mr. & Mrs. Jack Dover Global Printing, Inc.

Platinum Circle ($5,000–$9,999) Arlington Commission for the Arts Theodore H. Barth Foundation Susan & Carl Behnke Mr. J. Anthony Braddock Dr. & Mrs. Joseph V. Braddock Mr. & Mrs. Elliott Bunce Ronal Butler and Martha Lloyd The Gerald T. Halpin Foundation Mr. & Mrs. Caswell O. Hobbs Doris Lindsey Estate of Anna McDermott Dr. & Mrs. William P. O’Grady SOLA (Symphony Orchestra League of Alexandria) The Hon. & Mrs. John Warner Wells Fargo Foundation Donnan C. Wintermute

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Golden Circle

($2,500–$4,999) Teresa Guzman and Antonio Cafoncelli Mollie Danforth and Steve Colangelo The Charles Delmar Foundation CDR Tom R. Downs USN (Ret) Diana & Gerry Dreo Mr. Thomas J. Fannon Mr. & Mrs. Leo Horey Dr. & Mrs. J. Bernard Murphy

Anne Rector Mr. & Mrs. Gant Redmon Mr. & Mrs. Steven Reed Tamara and Andrew Saltonstall Mr. & Mrs. James B. Singerling RADM & Mrs. Roy D. Snyder, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Forrest Williams Linda W. Windsor Susan Yonts and Ralph Shepard

Patron’s Circle

($1,000-$2,499) The Robert Alves Family Foundation Mr. & Mrs. Stewart Bartley COL & Mrs. David Browning Dr. & Mrs. John A. Bruno, Jr. Amoret Bunn Amy Chapman Dr. & Mrs. John B. Davies Alex & Caulley Deringer Mr. & Mrs. Fred S. Dunning, Jr. The Hon. Francis H. Fannon Amy and William Furr Bruno Grinwis and Tina Leone Margaret Hodges Mr. & Mrs. Michael Ippolito Mr. & Mrs. Mark J. Kington Kay Logan Rebecca Mahood and Adron Krekeler Mr. & Mrs. James R. McClary

Lisa Brock and Craig S. Miller, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Ken Mountcastle Audrey A. Swanstrom and John Osuna Kazuko Price Mr. & Mrs. Frank Quirk Mr. & Mrs. Carlyle C. Ring, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Thomas J. Sargeant Nancy & Greg Saunders Liz & Mike Seccuro John & Elizabeth Siegel Mr. & Mrs. Edward Stark The Hon. & Mrs. Anthony Trenga Catherine & Tim Thompson Mr. & Mrs. James W. Vaughan, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Robert D. Vincent Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth Walker Washington Gas Dr. & Mrs. Jon W. Williams, Jr. Susan & Allan Winn

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Donors ($500–$999) Mr. D. Jarrett Arp Currie Smith and Bruce Batten Tom Bradley Mrs. Hilda Burcher Mr. & Mrs. Marvin Bush Mr. & Mrs. Hugh Campbell Gincy & Nick Carosi Nicholas F. & Victoria A. Coward Alan & Jeanne Edwards Earl & Jean Glock Lisa & Phil Herget William and Julie Howard James Huck and Jeanne Defliese Capt. & Mrs. Robert C. Hurd USN (Ret) Mr. Phillip John COL & Mrs. Freeman Jones Margaret Kenna George Kostel Mr. & Mrs. Thomas M. Lawler Karen “Kit” Leider Mr. & Mrs. Frank Manning Shawn & Cassie McLaughlin Mr. & Mrs. Dennis Meyer Chuck & Linda O’Connor Mr. & Mrs. Frank Quirk Jennifer & James Rooney Emilio Sanches Leah Fried-Sedwick Mr. & Mrs. Graham Setliff Fay Slotnick Marcia & David Speck The Potter Violin Company Mrs. Volney M. Taylor Craig Veith Eric & Shelia Weiss Katie Wiegmann Bill & Pride Winkenwerder Mrs. Ronald L. Ziegler

Sustainers ($100–$499) Jennifer Adams Alexandria Rotary Foundation Amy & Larry Alberson Patrick & Kim Anderson Billie Anderton Leslie Ariail Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Bankert

Margaret Batko F. William & Joanne Bauers Mr. Melvin L. Bergheim Bruce & Linda Boyd Elizabeth & John Braun Mr. David W. Briggs Barbara Beckwith Raymond & Quincy Butler Steven Butler Susan Carnell Mrs. Evalyn Carter Tracy Castle Samuel H. & Ashley E. Chamberlain Liz Chiaramonte Mrs. Betty Cranwell Karen Coda Mr. & Mrs. Donald Cohen Ann D. Corson & Jon Jaeger Teri & Robert Culbertson Daniel J. & Janice M. Curtin Ms. Carola Czernik Elise & Jay Darden Nancy Davenport Carol Dickerson Elizabeth DiGregorio Anita Donaldson Daniel Dose Richard Downs B. Ellis Duncan Marguerite Eastwood Matthew Edwards Mr. & Mrs. Samuel M. Ellsworth John P. & Courtney S. Elwood Lisa Eskew Robert Evans Deborah & Jerry File Sandy & Nicholas Fleischmann Mr. & Mrs. Oliver Flint Jenny Frank Mrs. Maureen M. Franks Larry and Yolande Frommer Gardner Gillespie Adrianne Goins Lynn Gorton Wiley & Caryl S. Grant Elizabeth Gundlach Mr. Alvin Gustin Sally Guy and Thomas Brown

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Charlie Habliston J. Grace Haines Barbara & Stephen Hayes Caryn & Rea Hederman Timothy & Maris Halloran Patricia Hanna Mrs. Marjorie A. Harris Amy Heiden Mike Henke James Hobson Mr. & Mrs. Michael E. Hobbs Richard and Kathleen Hobson Morrie & Holly Hoven Ross Hunt Charles P. & Katherine Y. Hurley Raymond Husson Leslie Hyde and Alexander Katsnelson Monette Imlay Edward Jarrett Bert & Mary Lee Johnson Elizabeth Jones Lisa Jones Tamara Jovovic Alexander Katsnelson and Leslie Hyde Camp and Stacey Kaufman

F.X Kay Sharon Keefer Juliana Kelliher Walter D. and Jennifer J. Kelley Susan A. Kelly Nancy Jo Kemp John Klousia Mr. & Mrs. Stanley L. Krejci Ruth Kupperschlag Mr. & Mrs. David Lacey Mrs. Diane L. Lacy Mr. & Mrs. Phillip E. Lantz Robert Lasker Donna R. Lefeve Bruce & Linda Levy Michael Lewallen Chris and Maura Lindsay Mr. Charles Lindwall Mr. Roye Lowry Gail Lubeley W. Pless and Mary P. Lunger Winnie Macfarlan Marion MacRae Mr. & Mrs. John M. Maloney Ms. Marion Mangus

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Martha Martin Mark & Beth Mazzanti Mary McAuliffe Harriett McCune Tri & Marianne McDonald Malloy McDaniel Brett & Harriet Melvin Mr. & Mrs. Bowman H. Miller David Molnar Jack and Susan Mouser Katherine Murphy Ted & Liz Murphy Mary Murray

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Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Murray Melanie & James New Susan Merritt Nelson Christina Nielsen Ashley O’Connor Mr. & Mrs. Alberto C. Omeechevarria Mrs. Susan Orttung Marion Ott Mykhaylo Panarin Martha Parkhurst Cynthia Pascale Marybeth Peters Catie Peterson Mr. Paul Phillips John Platt William & Heidi Pope Caty Poulin Mr. & Mrs. Herbert H. Quarmby Angela Raish Amy Reed Susan Montague-Reese Rev. & Mrs. Richard Reid Elizabeth Reynolds Ann Ridenhour John R. Ring Helen Rouhana

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Gail Rothrock and Charles Trozzo Jo-Ann Royer Lillian Samadani Don & Constance Dunlap-Santarelli Elizabeth S. Schepps Dale Schmidt Deborah Schneider Mr. & Mrs. William Schuiling Barbara Seraphin Craig and Kari Shapero Mr. & Mrs. Thomas A. Scully Mr. Roland Shaw Robert & Mary Shea Geoff and Melissa Sigler Mr. & Mrs. Christopher Simmons Carl M. Smith Teggie Smith Glenn M. & Ann D. Spitler Erin Stansbury Paul Sticha Ms. Maureen Sullivan Jack Sulser Elizabeth Sweetland Daniel Tate

Robert Test Jeanne Theismann Lucy Thomson and Arthur E. Peabody The Hon. Patricia S. Ticer Elizabeth & Bradley Todd Julia Toma Mr. & Mrs. Peter Toepffer Ms. Amelia Turcotte Eric & Robin Turner Keith Vaughan Keith Walker Oran Warder John & Bridget Weaver Ms. Marianne Weitz Sandra Welch Mrs. Dorothy Wheeler Steve & Cecily Windchell Mr. Rance Willis Dr. and Mrs. Brett Wohler Ruth Sing Wong Nancy Woodford Linda Wolf Jay Wright George Ziener

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Sumphony Orchestra League of Alexandria (SOLA) Kate Armstrong Marjorie Harris Barbara Bankert Joan Higginbotham Regina Begliutti Ann and Michael Hobbs Melvin Bergheim Margaret Hodges Shirley and Charles Bisselle Joan and Robert Holden Donna Blackburn Pauline and Bob Hurd Bertha and Joe Braddock Monette Imlay Suzanne Brock Mike Ippolito and Elain Macchio Miriam and David Browning Ann Corson and Jon Jaeger Barbara and Ted Jonas Marcia and Jim BuchananShine Kang Hilda Burcher Ann Kavaljian Jan Campbell Marcia Kierscht Jane Hughes Carlson Kathryn and Kim Kluge Carolyn Carmack Jacque and Ed Knight Susan and Dave Cavanaugh Adron Krekeler and Becky Mahood Harlene and Bill Clayton Ruth Kupperschlag Teddye and Bill Clayton Pat and Sean Laane

Donna Cramer Nancy and Ward Lasley Betty Cranwell Vola Lawson Carola Czernik Karen Leider Mollie Danforth Mary Frances Lewis Becky Davies Doris Lindsey Tom Downes Jean Lindsey Anna Dunn Isin Ludlow Elaine Dunning Marie Malone Ree Earl Eva and Frank Manning Patty and Gerard Engh Rebecca Mathis Mary Feeney Elizabeth and Joubert McCrea Muriel Freeman Harriett McCune Yo and Larry Fromer Cassie and Shawn McLaughlin Rosa Fullerton Susan Montague Amy and Bill Furr Diane Murphy Rosann Garber June and Bruce Nagler Ruby Nell Garrett Margaret and Bill O’Grady Pat Gill Kate Patterson Barbara Glover

Annmarie Pittman Sue Goodhart Tanya and Jack Pitzer Anna Graham Fran and Gant Redmon Helen and Richard Reid Jane and Connie Ring Helen Rouhana Audrey Routier Nancy Rowe Jo-Ann and Robert Royer Anna Russi Ilona Savage Sara and Fred Schieck Patricia Schmid Gladys Seisler Phyllis Sintay Ann and Roy Snyder Ann Spitler Emma-Jo and Robert Staton Linda and Paul Steinmetz Susan and Paul Sticha Jennifer van Goethem Fran and Jim Vaughan Joan Vogel Sharon and Ken Walker Lisa Waller Sheila and Eric Weiss Trudie Williams Eleanor Wilson Cecily and Stephen Winchell Stuart Wineland Margaret and Brett Wohler Ruth Wong Margherita Woods Susan Yonts Shepard

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Milestone Productions............ 59

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Morton’s................................. 51

Alexandria Gazette Packet...... 49

Murphy & Associates.............. 24

Alexandria Toyota.................. 23

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B&C Jewelers, Ltd................... 31

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CMAA...................................... 9

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CommonWealth One.............. 13

SOLA Symphony Ball............. 66

Craig Keith Design.................... 8

Speck-Caudron....................... 76

CMAA...................................... 9

StratPaths............................... 67

Dishes of India....................... 51

Tempo.................................... 51

Donna Lewis............................. 2

Thomas J. Fannon & Sons....... 33

Donnan C. Wintermute............ 3

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The Eat Good Food Group....... 69

VA Commission for the Arts... 43

Extra Virgin............................ 51

Virginia Commerce Bank........ 56

Finn & Porter......................... 51

Virginia Florist....................... 50

Frank H. Fannon IV................ 33

Virginia Kitchens.................... 75

GEICO......................................... 78

Global Printing, Inc................ 25 Harry Braswell, Inc................. 74 Jeanne Warner........................ 17 La Strada................................ 51 McEnearney Associates............. 7 McGladrey.............................. 74

Please patronize businesses that support the ASO. 79

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