ASHEVILLESYMPHONY
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY PROGRAM BOOK
Spring 2022
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Contents KEEP IN TOUCH Asheville Symphony Office 27 College Place Suite 100 Asheville, NC 28801 Harrah’s Cherokee Center Asheville Box Office 87 Haywood St Asheville, NC 28801
Letter from Executive Director
7
Staff
9
Board of Directors
9
About the Cover
9
Past Presidents & Directors Emeritus
10
Letter from Board President
11
Music Director
13
Orchestra Personnel
14
ALT ASO @ Highland Brewing · January 25, 2022
21
Piano Recital with Michelle Cann · February 28, 2022
22
Masterworks 3: Folklore Fantasy · March 19, 2022
26
Masterworks 4: Enigma · April 9, 2022
30
ALT ASO @ The Orange Peel · April 26, 2022
35
Masterworks 5: Looking Glass · May 13 & 14, 2022
37
Masterworks 6: Ode to Joy · June 6, 2022
42
Chorus Music Director & Conductor
48
ALT ASO @ Asheville Art Museum · June 21, 2022
51
Season Sponsors
52
Donors
53
Phone 828.254.7046
Asheville Symphony Chorus
54
Asheville Symphonettes
56
Online AshevilleSymphony.org
Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra
58
Asheville Symphony Guild
60
Food & Beverage Partners
62
Music Sponsors
63
Legacy Society
67
Advertisers Index
70
828.254.7046
info@ashevillesymphony.org
DONATE Mail or Visit 27 College Place Suite 100 Asheville, NC 28801
STAY SAFE, ENJOY THE MUSIC Please scan this QR code to learn more about our COVID-19 safety policies including masking and vaccination requirements.
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We proudly support the Asheville Symphony Orchestra 7 PATTON AVENUE | ASHEVILLE, NC 28801 | 825.255.0303 | HOTELARRAS.COM
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Executive Director
DANIEL M. CRUPI
Dear friends and family of the Asheville Symphony, It is my honor to greet you as the new Executive Director of the Asheville Symphony! My wife, Caroline, and I have experienced such a warm and gracious welcome from this entire community, and we are delighted to call North Carolina home once more. The ASO has a national reputation for excellence and creativity, and it is widely regarded as one of the most innovative orchestras in the country. Between the immense success of the Asheville Amadeus Festival, its unique recording projects featuring Boyz II Men, Steep Canyon Rangers, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, and countless local artists, and the enormous growth experienced over the last five years, the Symphony has much of which to be proud. I bring to Asheville a passion for partnership and collaboration, a steadfast belief in the importance of diversity at every level of decision making, and a desire to make the Asheville Symphony truly representative of its entire community. And I am thrilled to work in partnership with Darko and the incredible staff, musicians, chorus, Board, and Symphony Guild to make a bold new vision possible for the ASO – one that embeds the orchestra in the community, diversifies our audience and artist base, invests in our music education infrastructure, works in partnership with the local arts scene, and tackles systemic issues in our community and world. Our September return to the concert stage was remarkable on every level. Thousands of community members flocked to downtown’s Pack Square Park for a glorious evening of symphonic music representing every genre. The excitement in the air was palpable, both on the stage and off. Now, we are thrilled to bring you an inspiring 2021-2022 season, offering masterworks from W.A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Igor Stravinsky, Johannes Brahms, and more, as well as an eclectic array of contemporary, female, and Black composers including Errollyn Wallen, William Grant Still, Will Marion Cook, and Joan Tower. December marks the return of ASO’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, featuring vocal superstars Morgan James and Erica Gabriel for Queens of Soul, showcasing the best of Motown, R&B, and Soul. And we are hard at work finalizing several exciting NEW series to continue ASO’s mission of engaging every corner of Asheville and Buncombe County with outstanding music. Thank you for your support for the Asheville Symphony – there is no place that I would rather be than building this extraordinary organization alongside each of you. Welcome back. Warm regards,
Daniel M. Crupi Executive Director
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 7
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Board of Directors & Staff OFFICERS
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY STAFF
Michael Andry • President Dr. Bolling Farmer • Past President John Ellis • Secretary Ed Towson • Treasurer
DIRECTORS Jack Anderson Michael Andry Mr. Thomas C. Bolton Mrs. Sallie Broach Timothy Butts Dr. Nancy J. Cable John Condren Dr. John Cuellar George Dambach John Donahoe Harry Durity Nancy Edgerton John Ellis Dr. Bolling Farmer Adarrell Gadsden Bill Gettys Fred Groce Stan Ingber
Mary Ellen Dendy
Daniel Crupi
Executive Director
Marketing Strategy Consultant
Jessica May
Claire M. Allen
Director of Development
Amanda Durst
Development Manager
Mary Kirby Gerald Kitch Doris Phillips Loomis Barbra Love Pam Lowe-Hoyte Sue Luther Kathleen Mainardi Elizabeth McCorvey Carol McCollum Jeffrey Owen Irene Stoll Candace Taylor James S. Thompson Sandra Tompkins Ed Towson Sarah Van Gunten Olivia Zahler
Marketing Manager & Graphic Designer
Michael Di Trolio
Sally J. Keeney
Principal Librarian
Sherry Blakely
Stage Manager
Paul Stroebel
Orchestra Manager Controller
Hannah Williams
Patron Services & Office Manager
YOUTH ORCHESTRA STAFF Leigh Dixon
Jason Posnock
Manager
Advisor
Hunter Kopcznski
Symphony Conductor
Joseph Falconer
Chamber Conductor
Brian Tinkel
Percussion Director
Dilshad Posnock
Woodwind Coach
Ashlee Booth
Prelude Conductor
CONTACT
828.254.7046 info@ashevillesymphony.org 27 Colllege Place Suite 100 Asheville, NC 28801
ABOUT THE COVER “OPPOSITES ATTRACT” Painting, Mixed media on canvas, 60 x 48 in. Scott Upton has been represented by Blue Spiral 1 for 30 years. His abstract paintings are filled with color and texture and his distinctive compositions reflect strong geometric shapes, often with a subtle suggestion of a landscape. The canvases glow with multilayers of paint and concealed reflective textures using silver and gold leaf, all sealed under a varnish of his own devising. “My work has always been about color and light; its effect on our emotions, how it inspires passion, offers peace, feeds the soul and calms the mind. When I begin a painting I have an idea of what I am going for and I work fast and strong. As it evolves, I pull back and let the direction of the painting determine the outcome. Subtle washes are pushed back with opaque layers of paint that closes away everything else on the canvas. Scatter spots of color come through to remind you that more is going on than just on the surface, creating a calm moment to reflect on what has been hidden from view.” — Scott Upton SELECTED IN COLLABORATION WITH
Upton received his BFA degree from the University of North Carolina and attended the Art Institute of Atlanta (GA). He has exhibited at the Asheville Art Museum (NC) and the Art Institute of Atlanta (GA). His work is in the collections of the Knoxville Art Museum (TN), Four Seasons Hotel (GA), Bank of America (GA), Chase Manhattan Collection (NY) and Chase Collection (IL). For more information visit bluespiral1.com.
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atos piano trio
2021-2022 Season
Calefax Reed Quintet March, 11th,2022
Virtual Concert November 5-7th,2021
American brass Quintet verona quartet
January, 23rd,2022
April, 5th,2022
ashevillechambermusic.org
david finckel & wu han May, 6th,2022
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PAST PRESIDENTS 1962-1964: Gaylord Davis 1964-1966: Rudolf Gumpert 1966-1968: John W. Rutland 1968-1970: Robert K. Weiler 1970-1971: Robert Saenger 1971-1972: William C. Spencer, Jr. 1972-1975: John K. Knight 1975-1977: Lawrence D. Ford 1977-1979: Mortimer Ryon 1979-1982: James E. Dooley 1982-1984: J.K. MacKendree Day 1984-1985: George Saenger 1985-1987: Spencer Atwater, MD. 1987-1989: George Goosmann, III 1989-1992: John J. Sherman, Jr.
1992-1994: G. Edward Towson, II 1994-1995: Stephen L. Barden, III 1995-1997: Joyce R. Dorr, Ph.D. 1997-1999: C. David Pheil 1999-2001: George M. Bilbrey, MD. 2001-2003: W. Herbert Smith, Jr. 2003-2004: James P. Topp 2004-2006: Thomas C. Bolton 2006-2008: Carol McCollum 2008-2010: Jack Anderson 2010-2012: Carolyn L. Hubbard 2012-2014: William L. Gettys 2014-2017: Irene Stoll 2017-2019: Doris Phillips Loomis 2019-2021: Bolling Farmer
DIRECTORS EMERITUS George M. Bilbrey, Jr. M.D.* J.K. MacKendree Day Joyce R. Dorr, Ph.D. George F. Goosmann, III
Karl S. Quisenberry, Ph.D.* John J. Sherman, Jr. W. Herbert Smith, Jr. *Deceased
Board President
MICHAEL ANDRY Dear Asheville Symphony friends and family, In January of 2020, we were wonderfully oblivious to all that we would face over the following months. Who knew that we would be forced to cancel nearly two years of live performances, including an entire Amadeus Festival? Who knew that our then Executive Director would take an exciting new career opportunity, necessitating a national search for his successor? And who knew that the Asheville Symphony would rise to the occasion and deliver a fantastically diverse series of events, staying connected with its patrons and re-emerging stronger than ever before? Many of you likely participated in the ASO’s Splendor on Your Grass program, offering intimate chamber music concerts on the front lawns, driveways, and backyards of our patrons for months. And many of you likely also enjoyed Aaron Diehl’s virtual piano recital, broadcast from Steinway Hall in New York City, or the world-class virtual performances that we created in the Diana Wortham Theatre, featuring Darko, ASO musicians, and a variety of soloists. Some of you may even have experienced the multi-cultural, virtual educational experiences developed for our Music in the Schools program, in collaboration with Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, aka Cactus. In July, we welcomed a new Executive Director, Daniel M. Crupi, who joined us from The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. With his new energy, connections and vision, there are great things ahead for the ASO in the next few years. Pay attention—this should be very fun. This past September, as COVID restrictions allowed, we presented a fantastic, free performance to an absolutely packed Pack Square Park. We estimate that about 7,000 Ashevillians enjoyed the energy, weather, and community of that extraordinary evening. We hope that you are delighted to return to live performances. We know that our musicians, Darko, and the ASO staff and Board are excited to be back and thrill audiences once again, while simultaneously abiding by government mandates to ensure that we are providing as safe an environment as possible. As this season evolves, and best practices on COVID evolve, please work with us as we continue to focus on your safety. The Board is proud of the manner in which we made it through the last two years. It wasn’t easy—but we have emerged stronger and wiser, with excellent new leadership, and look forward to engaging and delighting you this season and into the future.
Michael Andry Board President
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Music Director
DARKO BUTORAC
the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Neuss and the Georgische Kammerorchester Ingolstadt (Germany), the Rubinstein Philharmonic of Lodz (Poland), the Xiamen Symphony (China), the Tallinn Sinfonietta (Estonia), and the Slovenian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared at such prestigious venues as the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Gran Teatro Nacional of Lima, Belgrade’s Kolarac Hall, the Teatro Magnani in Italy, and the Tartu, Aspen and St. Olav summer music festivals. From 2009 to 2013 he served as the principal conductor of the Fidenza Opera Festival.
Praised by the Westdeutsche Zeitung for his “exceptional combination of passion, elegance and well-timed pacing”, Darko Butorac has established himself as a conductor in demand with orchestras both in Europe and the Americas. He currently serves as the Music Director of the Asheville Symphony and the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. Following his debut with the Belgrade Philharmonic in January 2011, Butorac was reengaged to conduct both the season finale and the opening concert of the 2012 season. Other notable guest conducting engagements include performances with
Distinguished collaborations include soprano Renee Fleming, pianists Garrick Ohlsson and Jon Kimura Parker, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, cellist Colin Carr, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and Oscarwinning actor J.K.Simmons among others. Highlights of the 2021-22 season include performances with pianists Aaron Diehl and Stewart Goodyear, violinists William Hagen and Blake Pouliot, cellist Jamal Aliyev, and a New Year’s Eve gala with vocalists Morgan James and Erica Gabriel. Butorac helped his orchestras emerge from the pandemic by creating programs featuring over 75 short works for chamber orchestra formations, with a focus on presenting works by underperformed composers and minorities. The Tallahassee Symphony was one of the first orchestras in the United
States to move to a fully virtual format, by committing to webcasting live performances in April of 2020. As the Grand Prix Laureate and Gold Medalist of the Fourth International Vakhtang Jordania Conducting Competition Butorac was invited to conduct orchestras across four continents. He was also selected to participate at the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview hosted by the League of American Orchestras and the Jacksonville Symphony. Butorac served as the Music Director of the Missoula Symphony from 2007-2019, marking a period of tremendous artistic growth of the orchestra. He challenged the ensemble with a broader repertoire leading to greater engagement with the community and frequently sold-out performances. Butorac is also in demand as a public speaker on leadership. His TEDx Montana talk on the “Language of Conducting” has over a 150K views on YouTube. He has appeared as a speaker on behalf of Brighthouse, a division of BCG, and was the headline speaker at the Birla Carbon International Leadership Summit in Bangkok in 2018. He is an avid traveler, having visited almost seventy countries, and is passionate about discovering the world and bringing people together through the beauty of music.
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Orchestra Personnel VIOLIN
Jason Posnock • Concertmaster Martha Gardner • Associate Concertmaster Heather Lambert • Assistant Concertmaster Kathryn B. Gardner • Principal Second Violin Debra L. Anthony Associate Principal Second Violin Janet Barringer (loa) Marianna Brickle Teresa M. Curran Elizabeth Fee-Elliott Lori G. Hammel Rachael Kistler-Igo Dorothy L. Knowles Virginia Kowal LuAda Malcom John R. Malloy Oleg Igorevich Melnikov Ruben Orengo Mariya S. Potapova Inez Hullinger Redman Essena Setaro *Paul E. Stroebel
VIOLA
Kara F. Poorbaugh • Principal Emily Schaad • Associate Principal Leigh Dixon Martha L. Geissler Gina Mashburn Heath Jennifer Kozoroz Karen Pommerich Edward J. Smith
CELLO
Daniel Mumm • Principal J. Franklin Keel • Associate Principal Open Chair • Assistant Principal Cherylonda F. Fitzgerald Paul S. GhostHorse Katie Hamilton Patricia Koelling Johnston
BASS
*M. Lee Metcalfe • Co-Principal Vance M. Reese • Co-Principal Michael Di Trolio Matthew P. Waid
FLUTE
TIMPANI
Lissie J. Shanahan • Principal
Todd D. Mueller • Principal
Kellie Henry
PERCUSSION
PICCOLO Dilshad B. Posnock
OBOE Alicia Chapman • Principal *Cara Mia Jenkins
ENGLISH HORN
Caleb Breidenbaugh • Principal Matthew Richmond • Interim Principal *Brian Tinkel Michael Morel
HARP Open Chair • Vetust Study Club Chair
Amanda J. LaBrecque
KEYBOARD
CLARINET
Open Chair • Susanne Marcus Collins Chair
Harry H. “Chip” Hill • Principal Karen Farah Hill
BASS CLARINET Shannon Thompson
BASSOON Michael J. Burns • Principal Amber Ferenz Spuller
CONTRABASSOON William L. Peebles
HORN Jeffery B. Whaley • Principal *Michael L. Brubaker Anneka A. Zuehlke Travis A. Bennett
TRUMPET T. Mark Clodfelter • Principal P. Bradley Ulrich Christopher Underwood
TROMBONE
Endow Your Favorite Instrument Your support of the Asheville Symphony Society’s endowment is the ticket to a secure, stable financial future for your Symphony. Consider endowing your favorite instrument in perpetuity! When you make an endowment gift, the principal of your gift is invested and grows over time. Annual distributions from the endowment fund ensure our mission – to perform and promote symphonic music for the benefit, enjoyment and education of the people of Western North Carolina. Your donation builds a legacy that provides a stable, constant resource that we can count on every year. To learn more, contact Director of Development Jessica May at 828.318.8181 or jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org.
James Sparrow • Principal L. Rienette Davis
BASS TROMBONE Jeremy Marks
TUBA Bethany Wiese • Principal
14 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Winter Spring 2022 2021Program ProgramBook Book
Michael Di Trolio • Principal Librarian Paul Stroebel • Stage Manager * Orchestra Committee Member Section string players are listed alphabetically.
sta rti ng fa l l 2 0 2 1
join us for an immersive experience at burial beer co.'s forestry camp production facility. Details & Booking Schedule at
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Vibrant Assisted Living in a College Town Belonging, support, and reassurance… Means you are living at your best! Take advantage of all Mars Hill Retirement Community has to offer— beautiful views of the Blue Ridge Mountains along with easy access to lectures, sporting events, and a host of cultural opportunities at Mars Hill University—and a way of life that is focused on your needs and desires… all right here in Mars Hill. Considering a move to Senior Living or Assisted Living? Looking for a short-term stay such as our Respite Program? Or, do you have questions about different senior living and care options? Let’s talk about it. Call Brooke for info or to schedule your personal visit! (828) 689-7970
www.MarsHillRetire.com
漀渀攀ⴀ漀昀ⴀ愀ⴀ欀椀渀搀 漀爀椀最椀渀愀氀 搀攀猀椀最渀猀 昀氀愀眀氀攀猀猀 渀愀琀甀爀愀氀 最攀洀猀琀漀渀攀猀 攀琀栀椀挀愀氀氀礀 猀漀甀爀挀攀搀
Asheville and Arden
戀氀甀攀
戀椀氀琀洀漀爀攀 瘀椀氀氀愀最攀 眀眀眀⸀戀氀甀攀最漀氀搀猀洀椀琀栀猀⸀挀漀洀 㠀㈀㠀⸀㈀㜀㜀⸀㈀㔀㠀㌀
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5pm Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 17
The song of the open road is calling Music takes your ears on a journey across time and space. Let Kathryn Theodore Travel Advisors take the rest of you. Whether it’s cruising along the beautiful Blue Danube, visiting the theaters of New York City or diving deep into the folklore of the world’s cultures, we deliver behind-the-scenes access and VIP experiences. Just as the Asheville Symphony captures the spirit of a piece, we capture the essence of a place, immersing you in your destination for an unforgettable adventure.
Contact Kathryn Schutz: (800) 322-9481 | kathryn@largaytravel.com
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621 Brevard Road Asheville, NC 28806 828.232.4000 AudiAsheville.com
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ALT ASO @ Highland Brewing
SERIES SPONSORED BY
Highland Brewing Event Center Tuesday, January 25, 2022, 7:00 p.m. The inaugural ALT ASO performance at Highland Brewing will feature a chamber orchestra under the baton of ASO Music Director Darko Butorac, with vocalist Hannah Zazzaro. This femme-fatale-inspired program will include the music of Verdi, Bizet, Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Queen and other eclectic surprises to be announced from the stage. The evening will also include a specialty beer release from Highland Brewing, food trucks, branded swag, and more. Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 21
Central United Methodist Church Monday, February 28, 2022, 7:00 p.m. Michelle Cann, Piano
20th-century piano masters Florence Price and Margaret Bonds (two Black women bonded as mentor and protégé who defied limitations and prejudice) headline this turbulent piano program, joined by Romantic legends Brahms and Chopin. A celebrated Price specialist, pianist Michelle Cann explores four masters of their craft, each reflecting American, German, and Polish cultural trademarks with unmatched compositions for piano.
22 ∙ Piano Recital with Michelle Cann
Frédéric Chopin Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47
PROGRAM NOTES
Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) After the collapse of the Polish revolution against Russia in 1830, Frédéric Chopin went into exile to France, never to return. He settled in Paris where his innovative piano compositions significantly expanded the technical, formal, harmonic and emotive vocabulary of the instrument. He quickly achieved brilliant success as a composer teacher and pianist, becoming a favorite at the salons of the aristocracy; but he disliked and later avoided performing in public, having neither the emotional nor physical stamina for it. Among Chopin’s innovations were two sub-genres for the solo piano repertory: the mazurka (which he had “invented” while still a teenager) and the ballade. His four Ballades are among the most important of his works. Composed mostly in Paris between 1831 and 1843, they were not written as a set, nor do they follow any common formal structure. There is some disagreement about exactly what Chopin’s term “Ballade” relates to. Generally described as “narrative” in character, the ballades may be based on the German literary Ballade, or folk ballad; some scholars believe that they may have been inspired by the ballad poetry of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. Certainly, there is no overt literary reference in any of the four. Chopin composed the A-flat major Ballade during 1840-41 while he was in the midst of his long-term romance with the novelist George Sand (pseudonym for Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin). One of the few pieces that the composer ever played in public, it consists of three distinct sections each one building in emotional intensity. The first section with its own themes and tightly structured ABA form is separated from the rest of the piece and its motives are never repeated. The remainder of the work is designed around two
themes, the first characterized by an almost limping rhythm, the second by florid arpeggios sweeping over the keyboard. In the middle section, these two themes are introduced and, in the final one, elaborately developed to an intense climax that concludes the work.
Piano Sonata in E minor
Florence Price Sonata in E minor Johannes Brahms Ballade in D major, Op. 10, No. 2 INTERMISSION
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Florence Price joined the already small field of African-American classical composers to become the first AfricanAmerican woman composer to have a work played by a major orchestra. Born into a middle-class family in Little Rock, Arkansas, she received support from her dentist father in addition to early training in piano from her mother. Given the impossibility of getting a proper musical education in Little Rock, she traveled to Boston, where she earned degrees in organ performance and piano pedagogy. Rather than remain in a more comfortable northern environment, Price returned to Little Rock and established a teaching career between 1907 and 1927 in two African-American colleges. She eventually became head of the music department at Clark College in Atlanta. After her marriage, she moved with her husband to Chicago, where she continued her education in composition. In 1932, she achieved national recognition when she won first prize in the Wanamaker competition for her Symphony No. 1, which was premiered the following year by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Like so many Black composers of this period, Price supplemented her income by playing organ gigs for silent movies and writing choral or vocal arrangements for churches. And like so many women composers, she produced a significant body of art songs. Contralto Marian Anderson featured her arrangement of the spiritual “My soul’s been anchored in de Lord” and Price’s own Songs to
Johannes Brahms Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2 Florence Price Fantasie Nègre No. 1 in E minor Margaret Bonds Troubled Water
CONCERT SPONSORS
David & Pamela Lane SEASON MEDIA SPONSOR
Michelle Cann appears by arrangement with the Curtis Institute of Music.
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the Dark Virgin with a text by Langston Hughes. Most of her manuscripts were thought to have been lost, but in 2009 a trove of them were discovered in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois. It turned out that the house had been the Price’s summer home. Unfortunately, much of her music remains unpublished; her scores and papers reside at the University of Arkansas. Price composed the three-movement Sonata in 1932; it won her first prize in the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Contest (“Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race”), the same year she also won the contest for her Symphony No. 1. As in many of her works, she – successfully – merged the Black musical tradition of spirituals and plantation dances with the Eurocentric Romantic forms.
Ballade No. 2, Op. 10/2
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) One of the hallmarks of the music of the Romantic era was the adaptation of literary “programs” or associations with purely instrumental music. Although hardly a new idea, the Romantics took the theory and practice in new directions. On the one hand, composers such as Hector Berlioz could hardly conceive of music without an associated story; on the other, Frédéric Chopin adopted the poetic title “ballade” for four of his greatest piano works without specifying any other literary association that we know of. Like Chopin, Johannes Brahms took the name but changed the content. His four Ballades Op. 10, composed in 1854, evoke the mood – but not the strophic structure – of the folk ballad. Only No. 1, in D minor, has a reference to a text, the Scottish ballad “Edward”. The second, in D major, is reminiscent of a Schubert Lied. It opens with a serene Andante, like a lullaby, followed by a percussive middle section with some odd harmonic writing and finally a return to a varied version of the opening.
24 ∙ Piano Recital with Michelle Cann
From Six Klavierstücke, Op. 118, No. 2 in A major, Intermezzo Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Late in life Brahms composed a number of short piano pieces, 20 of which he published. But friends and colleagues attest that he destroyed others in his characteristic perfectionist manner. He gave the works, such vague titles as “Intermezzo,” “Fantasie,” “Ballade,” “Romance” or “Rhapsody,” which did not demand adherence to any particular formal design – often not deciding on the title until the last minute before publication. He compiled and published them in four sets, Op. 116 through 119. The six Klavierstücke, Op. 118 were published in 1893, together with the four of Op. 119. Brahms’s friend and biographer, Max Kalbeck suspected that some of their material had originated years earlier. But Brahms, of course, had destroyed any notes and documents that would have helped us trace the development of his musical ideas. Only the final autograph survived his fireplace. The first public performance of the two sets was given in London in January 1894 by the beautiful and talented Ilona Eibenschütz, a student of Clara Schumann, who may have been the inspiration for some of the works. The dominant character of the pieces in Op. 118 is reflective and introspective, with little of the bravura or assertiveness of Brahms’s earlier piano music. No. 2 is a dreamy lullaby, with subtle shifts in mood and expression achieved via tempo rubato and the underlying harmonies of the basic motive. Its middle section contains new thematic material but retains the original mood and continues to develop fragments of the main theme.
Fantasie Nègre No. 1 in E minor
Florence Price (1887-1953) Price composed the Fantasie nègre in 1929, dedicating it to her student and compatriot Margaret Bonds. It is based on the old Spiritual “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass.”
Troubled Water
Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) In 2013, upon the 100th anniversary of Margaret Bonds’s birth, UNC-Chapel Hill professor Louise Toppin organized a two-day symposium honoring this African-American composer, arranger and pianist. The occasion elicited an NPR interview with Toppin, during which she reintroduced to the general public the first African-American musician to play as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony, a friend and collaborator of poet Langston Hughes, and arranger and composer of songs for Leontyne Price. Yet most of Bonds’s compositions have remained unpublished. Born in Chicago to a middle-class family, Bonds devoted her life to performing and teaching. She graduated from Northwestern University with bachelors and masters degrees. She was a student and friend of Florence Price, and even lived with her for a while. She passed the early part of her career during the Depression and World War II, when there were few opportunities for black classical composers, much less black women composers. Her works consist primarily of art songs, choral and piano compositions. Stylistically, she belongs to a group of composers who incorporated elements of spirituals, jazz, blues and European classical idioms. A set of free variations on the spiritual “Wade in the River” over a jazzy ostinato in the left hand, “Troubled Waters” exemplifies the mélange, including complex tonal harmony and cross rhythms. “Wade in the River” was one of the songs associated with the Underground Railroad. Program Notes by Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn www.wordprosmusic.com
GUEST ARTIST
Michelle Cann, Piano A compelling, sparkling virtuoso” (Boston Music Intelligencer), pianist Michelle Cann made her orchestral debut at age fourteen and has since performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. A champion of the music of Florence Price, Ms. Cann performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in July 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra in February 2021, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called “exquisite.” Highlights of her 2021–22 season include debut performances with the Atlanta, Detroit, and St. Louis symphony orchestras, as well as her Canadian concert debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. She also receives the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, and the 2022 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. Embracing a dual role as both performer and pedagogue, her season includes teaching residencies at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association. Ms. Cann regularly appears in solo and chamber recitals throughout the U.S., China, and South Korea. Notable venues include the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.), Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), and the Barbican (London). She has also appeared as cohost and collaborative pianist with NPR’s From The Top. An award winner at top international competitions, in 2019 she served as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s MAC Music Innovator in recognition of her role as an African-American classical musician who embodies artistry, innovation, and a commitment to education and community engagement. Ms. Cann studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, where she holds the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies.
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Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 25
MASTERWORKS 3 Thomas Wolfe Auditorium Saturday, March 19, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Darko Butorac, Conductor William Hagen, Violin
Dig into Scandinavian and Slavic roots with a program that brings folklore to life, featuring mythical birds, epic poetry that inspired a nation, and Tchaikovsky’s self-made legend: his rugged Violin Concerto that leaves the violin “black and blue.”
26 ∙ Masterworks 3: Folklore Fantasy
Jean Sibelius Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22
PROGRAM NOTES
From Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22 (Four Legends from Kalevala), I. Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Jean Sibelius composed the four tone poems for a concert of his music in 1896, initially naming them “Symphonic Poems on Motifs from the Lemminkäinen Myth.” Lemminkäinen is a composite of several heroic figures from Kalevala, an eighteenth-century compendium of Finnish oral epic poems, and the four tone poems were not intended as a cohesive narrative. Rather, they allude to Lemminkäinen’s various adventures. The music corresponds to Sibelius customary style of presenting musical ideas as short motives, avoiding true themes and often leaving them harmonically unresolved. Enthusiastically received at the first performance, at a repeat a year later Helsinki’s leading critic wrote: “This sort of music seems purely pathological.” In Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island, the youthful Lemminkäinen, “fair of cheek, comely beneath his brow” combines the prototypical heroic qualities of warlord and lover. The music does not follow the narrative, nor are the specific themes identifying the characters or incidents. In typical Sibelius fashion, the composer presents a collection of brief motivic elements, suggesting the overall mood. After a long melancholy introduction, the music accordingly toggles among a light-footed dance, romantic yearning and ominous foreshadowing. Fed up with Lemminkäinen’s lascivious behavior, the men of the island chase him away.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) “Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto raises for the first time the ghastly idea that there are pieces of music that one can hear stinking... [the finale] transports us
I. Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari
into the brutish grim jollity of a Russian church festival. In our mind’s eye we see nothing but common, ravaged faces, hear rough oaths and smell cheap liquor.” This politically incorrect assessment comes from the pen of the dean of nineteenth century music critics, Eduard Hanslick, reviewing the Concerto’s Vienna premiere. Why did the first performance take place in Vienna and not St. Petersburg? It is difficult to believe that this Concerto, probably the most popular in the literature, was declared to contain passages that were “almost impossible to play” by its first dedicatee, the famed violinist and violin teacher Leopold Auer, concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra in St. Petersburg. Completed in 1878, it had to wait for three years for its premiere in Vienna where Hanslick was not alone in his opinion. What Hanslick and the other critics disliked most is what makes the Concerto so appealing today: its athletic energy, unabashed romanticism and rousing Slavic finale. Without diminishing our own enjoyment of the Concerto, attempting to hear it with the ears of its first audience is a fascinating exercise in cultural relativity. First of all, consider the sheer difficulty of the piece. What defeated Russia’s leading violin virtuoso is the stuff teenage prodigies cut their teeth on at Juilliard and Curtis, practicing the killer bits ad nauseam until they get it right or find some other career. Then there’s the fact that there was no love lost between the two great nineteenth-century imperial behemoths, Russia and AustriaHungary, who continued to slug it out until the end of World War I. That Tchaikovsky disliked Johannes Brahms, Hanslick’s favorite composer, probably also added fuel to the fire. At the time of the Concerto’s inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black cloud of a disastrous marriage to an emotionally unstable woman who had threatened
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 William Hagen, Violin I. Allegro moderato II. Canzonetta: Andante III. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo
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Jean Sibelius Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22 II. The Swan of Tuonela
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Igor Stravinsky Suite from The Firebird (1919) 1. Introduction 2. L’Oiseau de feu et sa danse & Variation de l’oiseau de feu 3. Ronde des princesses 4. Danse infernale du roi Kastcheï 5. Berceuse 6. Final
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This performance will be recorded for broadcast on Blue Ridge Public Radio on April 5, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. and April 7, 2022 at 9:00 a.m.
(continued on next page) Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 27
suicide if he refused to marry. The marriage was also undertaken to quash rumors about his homosexuality; it ended two weeks later with his attempted suicide, although they were never legally divorced. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired by the visit of Josif Kotek, a young violinist, pupil and protégé who managed to raise the composer’s spirits. He helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters. The Concerto opens with a brief, gentle introduction, paving the way for the lyrical first theme. After some virtuosic fireworks, the emerging second theme is surprisingly similar in mood to the first. The development, full of technical acrobatics, leads into the very difficult cadenza that the composer wrote himself. The current slow movement was Tchaikovsky’s second try; he discarded his first attempt, eventually publishing it separately as a violin and piano piece, Méditation, Op. 42, No. 3. The second version opens with a gentle melancholy song on the woodwinds that pervades the movement, serving as sharp contrast to the raucous Finale that follows without pause. Hanslick’s appraisal: “The adagio with its gentle Slav melancholy [note the stereotyping] is well on its way to reconciling us and winning us over.” The unabashed use of Russian peasant dance rhythms in the third movement that so upset Vienna’s critics was, even at the time, becoming a signature of much Russian orchestral music and a symbol of Russian nationalism. Another peculiar divergence from tradition that must have raised a few Viennese eyebrows is the spectacular cadenza at the beginning of the movement that follows immediately on the fiery orchestral introduction and leads right into the main theme. Now, if these had been German or Hungarian dances, Vienna’s attitude might have been different.
From Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22 (Four Legends from Kalevala), II. The Swan of Tuonela Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
The Swan of Tuonela was composed originally as the prelude to Sibelius’ first attempt at opera, The Building of the Boat, but he aborted his own operatic 28 ∙ Masterworks 3: Folklore Fantasy
career after experiencing Wagner’s music dramas at Bayreuth. He recast the prelude as the second of four tone poems, the Lemminkäinen Suite, with the score bearing the explanatory note: “Tuonela, land of death, surrounded by a broad river on whose black and rapidly flowing waters the Swan floats majestically, singing.” The swan’s song featuring that most melancholy of all instruments, the English horn, is a non-metrical “vocalise” that floats on a lake of muted strings, together admirably portraying the desolation of the lake. The English horn shares its song with the solo cello and viola, whose range and timbre complement it. The orchestral accompaniment is stunningly original; Sibelius calls for constant subdividing of the strings, and he darkens the orchestral sound by omitting flutes, trumpets and clarinets. Near the end, as the soaring strings introduce a fleeting ray of hope, the lone cello in its highest register closes on the dead residents of Tuonela.
Suite from L’Oiseau de feu, “The Firebird” (1919) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
“He is a man on the eve of fame,” said Sergey Diaghilev, impresario of the famed Ballets Russes in Paris, during the rehearsals for Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird. In 1909 Stravinsky, viewed as a budding composer just emerging from the tutelage of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, got what can be called his big break, thanks to the laziness of the composer Anatoly Lyadov. Early in the year Diaghilev had written Lyadov: “I am sending you a proposal. I need a ballet and a Russian one, since there is no such thing. There is Russian opera, Russian dance, Russian rhythm – but no Russian ballet. And that is precisely what I need to perform in May of the coming year in the Paris Grand Opera and in the huge Royal Drury Lane Theater in London… The libretto is ready…It was dreamed up by us all collectively. It is The Firebird – a ballet in one act and perhaps two scenes.” When Diaghilev heard that after three months Lyadov had only progressed so far as buying music manuscript paper, he withdrew the
commission and offered it to Aleksander Glazunov and Nikolay Tcherepnin, who both turned him down. In desperation he turned to the unknown Stravinsky. Stravinsky finished the score in May 1910, in time for the premiere on June 25. It was an instant success and has remained Stravinsky’s most frequently performed work. Its romantic tone, lush orchestral colors, imaginative use of instruments and exciting rhythms outdid even Stravinsky’s teacher, the Russian master of orchestration. It required an immense orchestra and the first suite Stravinsky extracted from the ballet in 1911 strained symphony orchestras’ resources. He made two subsequent revisions, with modified orchestration, the final one in 1945. The ballet, taking its plot from bits of numerous Russian folk tales, tells the story of the heroic Tsarevich Ivan who, while wandering in an enchanted forest, encounters the magic firebird as it picks golden fruit from a silver tree. He traps the bird but, as a token of goodwill, frees it. As a reward, the bird gives Ivan a flaming magic feather. At dawn the Tsarevich finds himself in a park near the castle of the evil magician Kashchey. Thirteen beautiful maidens, captives of Kashchey, come out of the castle to play in the garden but one of them in particular, the beautiful Tsarevna, captures Ivan’s heart. As the sun rises, the maidens have to return to their prison and the Tsarevna warns Ivan not to come near the castle lest he fall under the magician’s spell as well. In spite of the warning, the Tsarevich follows and opens the gate of the castle. With a huge crash Kashchey and his retinue of monsters erupts from the castle in a wild dance, whose drive and clashing harmonies foreshadow The Rite of Spring. With the help of the magic feather the Tsarevich calls the Firebird who overcomes Kashchey and tames the monsters by lulling them to sleep. In the end the captives are freed from the spell and Tsarevich Ivan and the Tsarevna are married in a grand ceremony culminating in an apotheosis of the Firebird.
Program notes by: Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn www.wordprosmusic.com
GUEST ARTIST
William Hagen, Violin
As soloist, William has appeared with the Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and regularly appears as soloist at the Aspen Music Festival. In Europe, he has soloed with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (HR Sinfonieorchester), the Vienna Radio Symphony (ORF Radio Sinfonieorchester Wien), and the major orchestras of Belgium, including the Brussels Philharmonic, National Orchestra of Belgium, and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. William has also soloed in Japan with the Yokohama Sinfonietta and the Sendai Philharmonic. As recitalist and chamber musician, William has performed at venues such as Wigmore Hall and the Louvre, and collaborated with artists such as Steven Isserlis, Gidon Kremer, Edgar Meyer, and Tabea Zimmerman, among others. He maintains an active
schedule on both sides of the Atlantic, making frequent trips to Europe and cities around the US to play a wide range of repertoire. In 2019, William released his debut album, “Danse Russe,” with his good friend and frequent collaborator, pianist Albert Cano Smit. The album is available on all streaming platforms. A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, William began playing the violin at the age of 4, studying with Natalie Reed and then Deborah Moench. He studied with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho at the Juilliard School, Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, and was a longtime student of Robert Lipsett, studying with Mr. Lipsett for 11 years both at the Colburn Community School of Performing Arts and at the Colburn Conservatory of Music. In 2015, William won 3rd prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. William performs on the 1732 “Arkwright Lady Rebecca Sylvan” Antonio Stradivari, on generous loan from the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.
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William Hagen has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 2021, William makes his debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Rheingau Music Festival, and appears at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
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MASTERWORKS 4 Thomas Wolfe Auditorium Saturday, April 9, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Darko Butorac, Conductor Lisa Smirnova, Piano Dramatic works encircle one of Mozart’s most beloved works for piano: Brahms’s darkest overture composed in response to one of his liveliest and the mysterious Enigma Variations, said to be inspired by Elgar’s friends, family, and an unknown lost love. Embrace the drama, delve into the mystery, delight in the darkness.
30 ∙ Masterworks 4: Enigma
Johannes Brahms Tragic Overture, Op. 81
PROGRAM NOTES
Tragic Overture, Op. 81 Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
When in 1879, the University of Breslau awarded Brahms the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy, he took a few swipes at academic pomposity with the rollicking Academic Festival Overture. Soon thereafter he felt the need to complete the comic/tragic duo with The Tragic Overture. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: “I could not refuse my melancholy nature the satisfaction of composing an overture to a tragedy.” He had no particular play or book in mind for the work; however, the second subject is a reworking of a sketch from ten years earlier, found on the back of sketches for the Alto Rhapsody, the setting of Goethe’s dramatic and somber poem. The Overture is intensely atmospheric rather than narrative, even though the two terse chords that open the work sound like hammer blows of fate. Brahms enhances the mood by immediately developing the threatening first theme and holding off the warmer second theme – the one scribbled on the back of the Alto Rhapsody. The respite, however, doesn’t last long; by the time Brahms returns to it in the development section, it has also become dark. About halfway through he inserts a completely new idea in a slower tempo: a funeral march in everything but name that brings to mind the end of Hamlet. And, indeed, Shakespeare was much beloved in Germany during the nineteenth century. Thanks to a magnificent translation of the complete works by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the Germans used to refer to The Bard as “unser Shakespeare” (our Shakespeare). One might expect the march to end the Overture, but Brahms returns to the Allegro as if to emphasize that the Overture is about tragedy in the abstract.
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Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Mozart composed a total of 28 solo keyboard concertos, most of them for his own use in subscription concerts in Vienna. Consequently, the timing of their composition was influenced by the artistic fashion and the economic wellbeing of the city. For five years after Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, he was a hot commodity, both as composer and virtuoso performer. There was a veritable deluge of commissions, which enabled him to live quite high off the hog. Thus, in the short period between 1782 and 1786, with a booming economy creating a heyday for musical life in Vienna, Mozart composed 17 of these concertos, including this one in D minor. During those years, aristocratic families vied with one another to underwrite and sponsor concerts of the latest in musical fashion. “Concertos,” Mozart wrote his father, “are a happy medium between what is too hard and too easy...pleasing to the ear...without being vapid.” But occasionally darker moods prevailed. This Concerto is one of only two he wrote in a minor key. It is full of stormy outbursts and is probably the most emotionally charged of all of Mozart’s concerti. Not surprisingly, the young Beethoven was particularly taken with this work, wrote two cadenzas for it, and performed it as the intermission feature during a performance of Mozart’s opera La clemenza di Tito at a concert organized by Mozart’s widow, Constanza, on March 31, 1795. The composition and part copying of the concerto were not completed until the afternoon of the premiere on February 11, 1785, and thus performed without a complete rehearsal and at sight! According to a letter of Leopold Mozart, the composer’s father, the orchestra nevertheless played splendidly.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 Lisa Smirnova, Piano I. Allegro II. Romanze III. Rondo, Allegro assai
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INTERMISSION
Edward Elgar Enigma Variations, Op. 36 Theme (Enigma: Andante) Variation I (L’istesso tempo) “C.A.E.”) Variation II (Allegro) “H.D.S-P.” Variation III (Allegretto) “R.B.T.” Variation IV (Allegro di molto) “W.M.B.” Variation V (Moderato) “R.P.A.” Variation VI (Andantino) “Ysobel” Variation VII (Presto) “Troyte” Variation VIII (Allegretto) “W.N.” Variation IX (Adagio) “Nimrod” Variation X (Intermezzo: Allegretto) “Dorabella” Variation XI (Allegro di molto) “G.R.S.” Variation XII (Andante) “B.G.N.” Variation XIII (Romanza: Moderato) “ *** ” Variation XIV (Finale: Allegro) “E.D.U.”
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This performance will be recorded for broadcast on Blue Ridge Public Radio on May 10, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. and May 12, 2022 at 9:00 a.m.
(continued on next page) Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 31
Right from the growling syncopated opening measures we know we’re in for a wild ride. After the orchestra’s exposition, Mozart has the piano enter on a completely new theme instead of having the soloist slavishly repeat the exposition. Rapid variations in orchestral dynamics suggest a Haydn symphony, and the movement has many of the erratic and stormy characteristics that Mozart was later to use in the Overture to Don Giovanni. To intensify the mood, Mozart makes an uncharacteristically abundant use of the timpani (another characteristic more likely to be found in Haydn). In the second movement, titled “Romance,” the emotional temperature suddenly falls far below the level Mozart normally invests in the slow movements of his concerti. Only the middle section, now back in G minor, his chosen key for pathos and tragedy, recalls the mood of the opening movement. Of course, the ABA song form so common in slow movements requires the return to the mood of the opening. The rondo finale, with its almost shrieking theme from the piano, takes up where the first movement left off. Mozart plays here with numerous swings between minor and major. In the end, he both obeys and thumbs his nose at the convention against ending large works in the minor mode. Although he ends the coda in D major, he inserts an ominous timpani roll into the final bars.
Enigma Variations, Op. 36, “Variations on An Original Theme” Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
If you look at photographs of Edward Elgar, read about his tastes or listen to his music, he projects the stereotype of Imperial Britain’s aristocracy or, as composer Constant Lambert described Elgar, “[the image of]... an almost intolerable air of smugness, self-assurance and autocratic benevolence...” His military bearing, walrus moustache, country gentleman’s dress – all very proper and Edwardian – matched his conservative, violently anti-Liberal ideas. His style appeared to have been fostered and fully sanctioned by the equally conservative Royal College of Music.
32 ∙ Masterworks 4: Enigma
The reality was very different: Elgar was born to a lower middle class family and never served in the army. Worst of all, his father was a music store owner, or as the British used to say, “in trade.” And he was a Catholic. He was nervous, insecure, and prone to depression and hypochondria; he always carried a chip on his shoulder for not being “fully accepted.” Musically, he was completely self-taught. But to the chagrin of Britain’s music establishment, Elgar – an “outsider” – was the first English composer since Henry Purcell (16591695) to achieve world fame. It was the Enigma Variations, composed in 1899 when he was 42 that propelled him out of his parochial obscurity to worldwide recognition. Elgar had begun the Variations as a private amusement for his wife, Alice, whom he adored. He created musical portraits of their friends, later turning them into a proper orchestral composition at her suggestion. The expressive and stately theme was his own, but Elgar claimed that he had employed a second, hidden theme along with the main obvious one. This second theme has remained a mystery to this day, although in later years Elgar said that it was derived from a melody “...so well-known that it is strange no one has discovered it.” The Elgar friends and their peculiarities are portrayed in the 14 variations, each of which is headed by a nickname or initials, making some of the identities a puzzle as well – although by now scholars have figured out the lot: 1.
2.
3. 4.
CAE: Elgar’s wife Caroline Alice, whose inspiration contributed to a romantic and delicate touch to the theme. HDSP: H.D. Steuart-Powell, amateur pianist and chamber music partner of Elgar. The detached, rapid staccato note replicates the sound of the piano. RBT: R.B. Townshend, author, eccentric and actor with a “funny voice.” WMB: William M. Baker, a country squire and neighbor. The variation suggests that the man fancied the hunt.
5.
6. 7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12. 13.
14.
RPA: Richard Arnold, son of poet Matthew Arnold, music lover, conversationalist and party wit. The contrast in the two parts of the variation suggests Arnold was eloquent on both serious and frivolous topics. Ysobel: Isabel Fitton, an amateur violist with hopeless fingering difficulties. Troyte: Arthur Troyte Griffin, well-known architect and terrible amateur pianist. The pounding of the timpani says it all. WN: Miss Winifred Norbury, owner of an eighteenth-century house with a nervous laugh, both of which Elgar loved. It leads without pause to: Nimrod (the Bible’s great hunter): A.J. Jaeger (“hunter” in German), an editor at Novello, Elgar’s publisher. Jaeger’s encouragement and support were crucial for Elgar in his major debut. His love for Beethoven is hinted at in a quote from the Pathétique sonata. This, the second longest of the variations, is traditionally performed as a separate piece to memorialize the death of an orchestra musician. Dorabella: Dora Penny, a frequent visitor with hesitant speech, whose nickname derived from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. GRS: George R. Sinclair, organist; actually the variation is a musical description of Dan, Sinclair’s bulldog, falling into the river, paddling out and barking. BGN: Basil G. Nevinson, amateur cellist and close friend. ***: Lady Mary Lygon and a second, earlier, younger flame who had left Elgar heartbroken; one went to Australia, the other to New Zealand, hence the steamer engine thump and the quote from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The second part of the variation, a clarinet solo, suggests a wrenching farewell. EDU: Edoo, the nickname for Elgar himself, known only to his closest friends; his self-portrait sounds quite heroic. Program Notes by Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn (www.wordprosmusic.com)
GUEST ARTIST
Lisa Smirnova, Piano “…a great Mozart pianist as one has to look hard for in the younger generation“ (RNZ, October 2016) Pianist Lisa Smirnova is one of the most remarkable artistic personalities performing today. Deeply rooted in the music of the baroque and classical period, she is recognised as a renowned Mozart specialist, and as an outstanding interpreter of J. S. Bach, Händel and Scarlatti. Lisa Smirnova made her debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 20, followed by performances at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Konzerthaus in Vienna and the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 1996. Since then, she has regularly appeared in the US, Europe and Asia and has performed with renowned conductors such as Manfred Honeck, Ivor Bolton, Carlos Kalmar, Andrey Boreyko and Andres Mustonen.
repertoire on a modern grand piano, and within a formation of other musicians, Lisa Smirnova founded the New Classic Ensemble Wien in 2007, with whom she now realizes many of her artistic projects. Born in Moscow, Lisa Smirnova left the former Soviet Union in 1991 for an opportunity to study with the renowned piano pedagogue Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and later with Maria Curcio and Robert Levin in London.
A passionate champion of contemporary music, she regularly collaborates with renowned composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Rodion Schedrin, Giya Kancheli and Valentin Silvestrov.
A new, essential component of Lisa Smirnova’s artistic activities is concert design: she creates new performance formats for classical music with the goal of setting them in contemporary contexts with other artistic disciplines, thus creating access for a new and courageous audience with an interest in culture. The premiere of the work by Lisa Smirnova and Alexander Borowski, “Visual Interpretation without Performer”, based on Fantasy in C Minor, KV 396/385f by W. A. Mozart took place on 22 October 2020 at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf.
From a growing desire to be able to design a comprehensive, historically informed sound of the Baroque and Classical
Lisa Smirnova lives in Vienna and Düsseldorf where she is Professor at the Robert Schumann University of Music.
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34 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
ALT ASO @ The Orange Peel
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The Orange Peel in Downtown Asheville Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ALT ASO heads to downtown Asheville’s iconic Orange Peel with a concert featuring a chamber orchestra with guest conductor Christopher Lees — resident conductor of the Charlotte Symphony — and vocalist Melinda Rodriguez of “The Voice” television competition fame. The program includes music from the American Songbook and Jazz repertory, showcasing a golden era of American music in one of Asheville’s most beloved live music venues. Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 35
MASTERWORKS 5 Central United Methodist Church Friday, May 13, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Saturday, May 14, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Darko Butorac, Conductor Christine Lamprea, Cello
18th-century Mozart looks ahead to the Romantic style of the future with his final symphony. 20th-century Prokofiev looks back at the Classical in his first symphony. 19th-century Saint-Saëns breaks with Classical tradition with his first cello concerto. Each composer reflects on and reinvents the most defining era of Western music.
36 ∙ Masterworks 5: Looking Glass
Sergei Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, “Classical”
PROGRAM NOTES
Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, “Classical” Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Prokofiev was a composer caught between two cultures. Born into an affluent musical family, he left the Soviet Union in the summer of 1918, shortly after the 1917 Revolution. For the next 17 years he lived in Paris and toured the United States, returning to his native country in the mid-1930s never to leave again. The year 1917 was a traumatic one for Russia. The February Revolution had deposed the Tsar, and the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power. Meanwhile, on the international front, Russia was losing disastrously in its war against Germany and Austria. In the spring and summer of that year Prokofiev retired to a village not far from Petrograd (now and formerly St. Petersburg) and, as if oblivious to the earth-shattering turmoil around him, composed at a furious pace. Among the creations of that period was his sunny Symphony No. 1, which he subtitled “The Classical.” The Symphony was an experiment. An accomplished pianist, Prokofiev routinely composed at the piano, although he noticed: “…thematic material composed without the piano was often better in quality…I was intrigued with the idea of writing an entire symphonic piece without the piano…So this was how the project of writing a symphony in the style of Haydn came about…it seemed it would be easier to dive into the deep waters of writing without the piano if I worked in a familiar setting.” This delicate, nostalgic Symphony premiered in Petrograd in April 1918 with the composer on the podium, amidst civil war and social upheaval. The overall Classical style of the Symphony makes it easy to forget that it is a twentieth-century creation. The opening Allegro conforms to the standard first movement sonata allegro form, with occasional twentieth-century harmonies. The second theme is a caricature of the
eighteenth-century Rococo style, played on the tips of the violin bows “con eleganza” like a mincing dancing master – but with a less than elegant surprise sforzando at the cadence. The graceful Larghetto theme in the second movement, introduced first by the violins then joined by a flute, shows what a little musical creativity can do with a simple descending scale. The short Gavotte replaces a traditional minuet/trio movement. Prokofiev’s is a clumsy dance, whose melody contains awkward octave leaps and strange grace notes in the bassoon. The Trio is accompanied by a bagpipe-like drone. Prokofiev loved this movement, recycling and expanding it some 20 years later in the Capulets’ Ball for his ballet Romeo and Juliet.
I. Allegro II. Larghetto III. Gavotte: Non troppo allegro IV. Finale: Molto vivace
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Camille Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 1 in A minor for Cello & Orchestra, Op. 33 Christine Lamprea, Cello I. Allegro troppo II. Allegretto moto III. Allegro troppo
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The Molto vivace finale is a sonata form, rather than the usual rondo, but has the persistent dynamic drive of a Haydn finale. In composing it, Prokofiev played a game with himself, in which he attempted to eliminate all minor chords.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, “Jupiter”
Concerto No. 1 in A minor for Cello & Orchestra, Op. 33
I. Allegro vivace II. Andante cantabile III. Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio IV. Molto allegro Music Sponsors
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Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy, who wrote his first piano compositions at age three. At ten he made his formal debut at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, playing Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos, and offered to play any one of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory as an encore. In his youth he was considered an innovator, but by the time he reached maturity he had become a conservative pillar of the establishment, trying to maintain the classical musical tradition in France and expressing open disdain for the new trends in music, including the “malaise” of Wagnerism. His visceral dislike of Debussy made frequent headlines in the tabloid press. As an accomplished organist and pianist, he premiered his five piano concertos
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This performance will be recorded for broadcast on Blue Ridge Public Radio on May 31, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. and June 2, 2022 at 9:00 a.m.
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The defeat of France at the hands of Prussia in 1871 shocked the country’s pride and spurred a revival of French arts and letters. One of the results was the founding by Saint-Saëns and his colleagues of the Société Nationale de Musique, whose motto and purpose was “Ars Gallica.” (French art). One of its offshoots was the establishment of three newly energized competing symphony orchestras in Paris by three great conductors – Édouard Colonne, Jules-Étienne Pasdeloup and Charles Lamoureux – who urgently looked for new works by French composers.
manner of the Cello Concerto by Robert Schumann. Unlike the standard classic concerto, Saint-Saëns’s Concerto opens with only a single orchestral chord, after which the soloist introduces the principal themes. The first one is an assertive and virtuosic melody that will be revisited throughout the Concerto as a unifying device. The cello also introduces the standard contrasting second theme. There is virtually no development section in this movement, merely a varied restatement of the themes in order. The second theme gradually softens the mood and the music glides into the second movement, an understated minuet in the orchestra. When the cello enters, it plays a countermelody over the minuet and then a little waltz on its own. Once again, the end of the Minuet blends without pause into the Finale.
Saint-Saëns Concerto in demand. It movements
While many nineteenth century works bring back the opening theme at the end as a way of providing closure and an arch-like structure, Saint-Saëns
himself with elegant, effortless grace. But neither his compositions nor his pianism were ever pinnacles of passion or emotion. Berlioz noted that SaintSaëns “...knows everything but lacks inexperience.”
composed the Cello 1872 in response to this is in three continuous without pause, in the
expands greatly on this architectural concept. The Finale, the longest of the movements, continues the development of the opening theme of the Concerto but also includes a new more expansive second theme, as well as a burst of new thematic material, and, of course, rapid scales, arpeggios and high harmonics that permit the soloist to indulge in virtuosic brilliance. The Concerto concludes with a coda, accelerating the tempo for a dramatic finish.
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, “Jupiter” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Mozart composed his three last symphonies – or at least finished them – in the short span of six weeks in JuneAugust 1788. In spite of the ceaseless flow of his musical output, he had composed no symphonies during the preceding two years, nor was he to write any in the following three, the last years of his life.
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Christine Lamprea, Cello Christine Lamprea, cellist and 2018 Sphinx Medal of Excellence Winner, is an artist known for her emotionally committed and intense performances. Upon her Carnegie Hall debut as soloist in 2013, she has since returned to Carnegie, as well as performed with orchestras such Costa Rica National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, National Symphony of Michoacan, New Jersey Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and toured with the Sphinx Virtuosi across the U.S. As a recitalist, Ms. Lamprea has appeared on prestigious series at Illinois’ Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Florida’s Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, Pepperdine University, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Washington Performing Arts Society. In demand as a chamber musician, she performs regularly with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and has performed with such musicians as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Sarah Chang, Itzhak Perlman, Roger Tapping, and Carol Wincenc. Ms. Lamprea strives to expand her musical boundaries by exploring many genres of music and non-traditional venues for performance and teaching. Her Songs of Colombia Suite includes arrangements of traditional South American tunes for cello and piano or guitar, and have been performed at the Colombian Embassy and Supreme Court of the United States
38 ∙ Masterworks 5: Looking Glass
for Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She has worked with members of Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants, and studied sonatas with fortepiano with Audrey Axinn. She has premiered several works by composers of today. In recent years, she commissioned cadenzas for the Haydn D Major Concerto by Jessie Montgomery, and premiered Jeffrey Mumford’s cello concerto “of fields unfolding...echoing depths of resonant light” with the San Antonio Symphony. Ms. Lamprea is on the cello faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, serves as substitute faculty at the Juilliard School, and served as Lecturer of Cello at the Texas Christian University School of Music for the 2018-19 academic year. Ms. Lamprea has given masterclasses for the Vivac-e Festival, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Wintergreen Summer Music Festival, among others. She has worked with Ecuadorian youth in the cities of Quito and Guayaquil, as part of a residency between The Juilliard School and “Sinfonia Por La Vida,” a social inclusion program modeled after Venezuela’s El Sistema program. Christine Lamprea is the recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which supported her studies at the New England Conservatory, and a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant, which supported her study with acclaimed cellist Matt Haimovitz. She studied with Bonnie Hampton at The Juilliard School and holds a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Natasha Brofsky. Additional influences were Lynn Harrell, Frans Helmerson, and Philippe Muller. Previous teachers include Ken Freudigman and Ken Ishii.
These three symphonies were not composed on commission but were probably written for a series of subscription concerts that Mozart planned for 1788-89 in Vienna but which apparently never materialized for lack of support. At this point, in Vienna at least, his star was already in decline despite the success of his two great operas in collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte, Don Giovanni (premiered in Prague) and The Marriage of Figaro. He was desperately in need of money – in large part because he was constitutionally unable to curb his extravagant spending habit. However, the notion that Mozart never heard these symphonies performed is the creation of nineteenth-century romanticism; in fact, Mozart probably scheduled the C major symphony for a concert in Frankfurt in October 1790. The three symphonies reflect very different moods, the darkest being No. 40. It is almost as if the tragedy of this symphony saw its resolution only the in triumph of No. 41. The nickname
“Jupiter” is a late addition in an unknown hand, inspired probably by the majestic-sounding first movement. Olympian it may sound to us, but according to Eric Blom, Mozart borrowed the little auxiliary G major theme in the first movement from his comic bass arietta “Un bacio di mano” (K.541); the text that accompanies this theme runs, “Voi siete un po’ tondo, Mio caro Pompeo,” (You are a little chubby, my dear Pompeo). Unlike No. 40, this symphony breaks no new ground either in form or content; its greatness lies not with its novelty but with its classic elegance. Despite the fact that Mozart composed 41 symphonies, this was not the vehicle he chose as an outlet for his greatest creative inspirations; many of the symphonies were among his earliest compositions. Haydn, on the other hand, was constantly tweaking the form throughout his long life to make each symphony different or innovative – often even quirky.
Of particular interest in Symphony No. 41 is Mozart’s use of the four-note opening motive of the final movement, which he then develops into a complex fugue. Mozart was partial to this motive and had previously used it in two masses and his B-flat Symphony K. 319 (No. 33). Other composers, mostly notably Felix Mendelssohn, used the motive as well, either in imitation of or tribute to the composer who was valued more after his death than during his lifetime. Program Notes by Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn (www.wordprosmusic.com)
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MASTERWORKS 6 Thomas Wolfe Auditorium Saturday, June 4, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Darko Butorac, Conductor Christina Pier, Soprano Mikki Sodergren, Alto Rod Dixon, Tenor Corey McKern, Baritone with the Asheville Symphony Chorus Beethoven’s most magnificent work closes our Masterworks season — a much-needed celebration following a year marked by turmoil, creativity, and resilience. Coupled with Copland’s rousing Fanfare for the Common Man and Tower’s feminist answer, we close the season together, unified by our love for live music.
42 ∙ Masterworks 6: Ode to Joy
Aaron Copland Fanfare for the Common Man
PROGRAM NOTES
Fanfare for the Common Man
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) During World War II, many conductors and music presenters commissioned composers to write inspiring works reflecting the spirit of the times. In 1942 Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Orchestra, commissioned several American composers to write fanfares to commemorate various aspects of the nation at war. Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man was scored for brass and percussion; the composer wrote: “[It] honors the man who did no deeds of heroism on the battlefield, but shared the labors, sorrows and hopes of those who strove for victory.” The work premiered in March 1943 and is the only one of the commissioned fanfares that has remained in the repertoire. The music has seen duty for everything from national conventions to TV commercials, although without the funereal opening bass drum and timpani solos. Not wanting a good tune go to waste, Copland reused the Fanfare theme to great effect as the introduction to the finale of his Symphony No. 3.
Tower was born in New Rochelle, NY and grew up in South America where her father was a mining engineer. She went off at 18 to attend Bennington College, moving on to Columbia University where she received a doctorate in composition. In 1969 Tower founded the Da Capo Chamber Players, with whom she served as pianist for 15 years and for whom she composed most of her early works. Her experiences as a performer clearly influenced the course she pursued as a composer. Her early works were influenced by the rhythmically complex serial music she played in the 1960s and were scored exclusively for solo instruments or chamber ensembles. Yet these early pieces manifest the seminal features of her later works, complex rhythms and development of small motivic elements. Among Tower’s most popular works are her six tongue-in-cheek Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman. She composed the first Fanfare in 1986 on commission from the Houston Symphony. Originally intended as a tribute to Aaron Copland, it turned instead into a feminist answer to Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man – a tribute to the uncommon woman, one who takes risks and is adventurous.
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 1 Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Joan Tower (b. 1938) Op. 125 Joan Tower has become one of today’s most popular composers – really popular, not just a token contemporary on a concert of old masters. She has composed music for nearly every genre of instrumental music, including orchestra, chamber ensembles of all types, concerti for a flock of different instruments and ballet. Her music is complex but accessible, with exciting rhythmic drive and motivic ideas that are discernible and understandable within the context of her compositional design – you can hear where the music is going.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
As slovenly as Beethoven was in his personal life, he stored and maintained his musical ideas in sketchbooks, continually jotting down ideas that might come in handy later on. Perusing these sketchbooks today, we gain insight into both his creative process and method of working. While Beethoven did not have the quick and ready inspiration of a Schubert or a Mendelssohn, two characteristics contributed to his greatness: he had the tenacity to work and rework his material many times, often over many years; and he knew when he got it right.
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Joan Tower Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 1
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Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso II. Molto vivace III. Adagio molto e cantabile IV. Finale Christina Pier, Soprano Mikki Sodergren, Alto Rod Dixon, Tenor Corey McKern, Baritone with the Asheville Symphony Chorus
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This performance will be recorded for broadcast on Blue Ridge Public Radio in November 2022.
(continued on next page) Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 43
Ideas for the Ninth Symphony first appeared in Beethoven’s sketchbook in 1817-18, initially as material for a pair of symphonies, one of which was to have a choral finale with a text from Greek mythology. He did not begin sustained work on the symphony until 1822, finally finishing it in February 1824. During this period, Beethoven was embroiled in turmoil in his personal life. When his brother Johann, who had married a woman against the composer’s advice, became ill, his wife Therese shamelessly carried on with her lover. Beethoven’s on-again-off-again friendship with Anton Schindler, who eventually became his private secretary and first biographer, was currently off. It should be noted, however, that for all Beethoven’s irascibility and mood swings, he was often a shrewd judge of character and he did not trust Schindler, who in the end made off with the composer’s sketchbooks and conversation books, selling some and forging others. Professionally, Beethoven was both clearly over his head in commitments and also beset by debts. He was putting
the finishing touches for publication of the Missa Solemnis while trying to manipulate a secret bidding war for it among three publishers, each of whom were expecting the work. He used a bait-and-switch maneuver involving a Mass in D (that was never written), as an excuse to each publisher for not delivering the Missa Solemnis. He had also undertaken several other commissions, some of which remained incomplete or never started. One unfulfilled commission spurred the completion of the Ninth Symphony. Always an admirer of the British, Beethoven had sent inquiries to the Philharmonic Society of London and had received a positive reply with the promise of £50 for a new symphony. He would have liked to visit London, perhaps to experience the accolades showered on his former mentor, Franz Joseph Haydn, but the visit never materialized and the commission never fulfilled. It was, nevertheless, an incentive to finish the Symphony. The score was completed in February 1824, and Beethoven, disgusted with the musical taste of the Viennese, was planning to premiere the work in Berlin.
But it had been ten years since he had given a public concert of his work in Vienna, and his friends and admirers signed a petition begging him not to disappoint his public any longer. Although he eventually gave in, it took three months of haggling with the Imperial “Pooh-Bahs” and reluctant singers to finally schedule the concert for May 7 at the Kärntnertortheater. Artistically the Symphony was a wild success but – because of the huge forces required and the large copying costs – a financial near-disaster. Starting from the mysterious descending open intervals of the first movement, the symphony must have amazed its first hearers. Out of them gradually emerges the powerful first theme into classical sonata form. The contrasting second theme, like many of the composer’s melodies, is made up of several distinct motives that he later develops separately. The movement ends in a long dramatic coda with an ominous ostinato in the cellos and basses. The second movement is a massive scherzo that opens Molto vivace with hammer-blow descending octaves, an oblique reference to the descending
TEXT (adapted from Schiller) O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern Laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen, Und freudenvollere
O friends, not these sounds! Rather let us strike up more pleasant And more joyful ones.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Joy, thou glorious spark of the gods, Daughter of Elysium, We approach fire-drunk, Heavenly One, your shrine.
Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng geteilt; Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Your magic reunites That which custom strictly parts; All men become brothers, Where your gentle wing alights.
Wem der große Wurf gelungen, Eines Freundes Freund zu sein; Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Whoever succeeds in the great attempt To be a friend of a friend, Whoever has won a loving woman, Let him add his jubilation!
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!
Yes, whoever calls even one soul His own on the earth’s globe! And who never has, let him steal, Weeping, away from this group.
Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brüsten der Natur; Alle Guten, alle Bösen Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
All creatures drink joy At nature’s breast; All the good, all the evil Follow in her roses’ trail.
44 ∙ Masterworks 6: Ode to Joy
intervals Ideas forinthe theNinth first movement. Symphony This first appeared motive is in immediately Beethoven’s picked sketchbook up by the in 1817-18,as violins initially the first as material bar of afor fugue a pair – an of symphonies, unusual but not oneunheard of which of structure was to have for a choral scherzo.finale A driving with aostinato text from rhythmic Greek mythology. motif underlies He the did scherzo not begin section, sustained with worktimpani the on the periodically symphony until banging 1822,out finally the finishing itoctaves signature in February and motivic 1824. rhythm. A playful trio brings respite, but the insistent During this period, Beethoven wasa scherzo returns with a short coda and embroiled in turmoil in his personal final hint at the trio. life. When his brother Johann, who had slow The married thirda movement woman against is a free the composer’s form variation advice,comprised became ill, his of wife the Therese shamelessly simultaneous transformation carried on with of two her lover. Beethoven’s themes; its gentle intensity on-again-off-again is in marked friendshipto with contrast the powerful, Anton Schindler, driving music who eventually that preceded became and will hisfollow private it. secretary If anyone and first ever doubted biographer, that Beethoven was currently was a off. It should Romantic, thisbemovement noted, however, will dispel that for doubt, the all Beethoven’s especially with irascibility the heartfelt and second theme. he was often a shrewd mood swings, judge of character and he did not trust For a longwho timeinBeethoven Schindler, the end had madebeen off unsure about what to do for the Finale. with the composer’s sketchbooks and Material for abooks, purely selling instrumental one conversation some and ended in 1825 as part of the string forgingup others. quartet Op. 132. Once he fixed on a choral finale, he had Beethoven difficulties settling on Professionally, was both clearly its two over mainhis components: head in commitments the melody
and also the beset text. by The debts. sketchbooks He was putting reveal that the finishing he had a surprisingly touches fordifficult publication time developing of the Missa what Solemnis ultimately while became trying such to amanipulate simple straightforward a secret bidding tune. war In for its it first among manifestation three publishers, it appeared each in of awhom song, “Gegenliebe” were expecting (WoO the118) work. from He1794 usedand, a baitin a closer and-switch version maneuver to the melody involving he ultimately a Mass in settled D (thaton, wasasnever a main written), theme of as the an excuse Choral Fantasia, to each publisher Op. 80, offor 1808. not delivering the Missa Solemnis. He had also undertaken It was notother until November 1823, only three several commissions, some of months before he finished the symphony, which remained incomplete or never that Beethoven decided to use Friedrich started. Schiller’s “An die Freude” (Ode to Joy). He had One been unfulfilled toying with commission the idea ofspurred setting the Ode completion since 1793, of the when Ninth he considered Symphony. it for Always a song.anAgain, admirer in 1812,ofhe the incorporated British, part Beethoven of it had into sent a choral inquiries overture, to thea project Philharmonic he abandoned. Society Now, of London he took and the opportunity had receivedtoacombine positivehisreply desire with and the set the promise poemofinto £50the fornew a new choral symphony. symphony. He would have liked to visit London, perhaps The long introduction to the Finale to experience the accolades showered begins with a surprise, a recitative for the on his former mentor, Franz Joseph cellos and basses that, between recitative Haydn, but the visit never materialized passages, recaps in order the first themes and the commission never fulfilled. It from the three preceding movements and was, nevertheless, an incentive to finish anticipates a snatch of the was chorale theme. the Symphony. The score completed But recurrences deliberate in these February 1824, serve and asBeethoven, “false starts.” disgusted with the musical taste of the
Viennese, planning by to premiere After the was introduction the full the work in Berlin. But hadown been ten orchestra, Beethoven usesithis words years he of hadthe given a public concert for thesince repeat recitative, now sung of his in Vienna, and hisSchiller’s friends by the work baritone, to introduce and admirers signed athe petition poem. In structure, body begging of the him not hisone public any Finale is atosetdisappoint of variations, for each longer. of Although he eventually gave in, stanza the poem plus a substantial it tookAsthree months coda. poems go it’sof ahaggling bit overwith the the Imperial “Pooh-Bahs” top, and Schiller himself and did reluctant not care singers to finally schedule the concert for it. Beethoven’s music, coupled with for May 7rearrangement at the Kärntnertortheater. judicious and strategic ArtisticallyinthetheSymphony was a wild deletions text, transformed it success but – because theclimax huge forces into a cultural icon. Atofthe of the required and Beethoven the large copying costs the –a movement, abandons financial near-disaster. variations for a lengthy dramatic coda in which the soloists and chorus restate the Starting from the mysterious descending text of the poem and freely develop the open intervals of the first movement, the musical material. However constrained symphony have amazed its been, first in form themust variations may have hearers. Out of them gradually emerges Beethoven handles the coda as an operatic the powerful firstthetheme classical finale, recalling headyinto celebration sonata form. The contrasting that concluded his opera second Fidelio. theme, like many of the composer’s melodies, is made up of several distinct motives that he later develops separately. Program Notes by The movement ends in&a Elizabeth long dramatic Joseph Kahn coda with an ominous ostinato in the (www.wordprosmusic.com) cellos and basses. The second movement is a massive
(adapted from Schiller) TEXT Küsse gab sie uns und Reben, Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod; Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
Kisses gave she us, and wine, A friend, faithful unto death; Even the worm was granted pleasure, And the cherub stands before God.
Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan, Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn, Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.
Glad, as his suns fly Through the Heavens’ glorious plan, Run, brothers, your course, Joyous, like a hero to victory.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Joy, thou glorious spark of the gods, Daughter of Elysium, We approach fire-drunk, Heavenly One, your shrine.
Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng geteilt; Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Your magic reunites That which custom strictly parts; All men become brothers, Where your gentle wing alights.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Küß der ganzen Welt! Brüder - über’m Sternenzelt Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen
Be embraced, you millions! This kiss for the whole world! Brothers, beyond the star-canopy Must a loving Father dwell.
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 45
Christina Pier, Soprano American soprano Christina Pier has been hailed by Opera News for her “big, gleaming soprano and impressive coloratura,” and has received great critical and audience acclaim for her work on opera and concert stages. 2019 season highlights include performances of Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen with Opera Carolina and Toledo Opera; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Tallahassee Symphony; Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, and Hailstork’s The World Called with the Oratorio Society of Virginia; and Handel’s Messiah with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. A Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Ms. Pier has taken the operatic stage as Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer with Virginia Opera; the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos with Virginia Opera; Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with the Santa Fe, Sarasota, Nashville, and Eugene Operas; Contessa Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro with Minnesota Opera; Micaëla in Carmen with Florida Grand Opera, Opera Carolina, Princeton Festival, and Toledo Opera; Marguerite in Faust with Eugene Opera; and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte with Florida Grand Opera. She also understudied the title role in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, and Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte with Lyric Opera Chicago. As a sought-after concert soloist, Ms. Pier has performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under the direction of
Roberto Abbado; Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem with the Indianapolis and Missoula Symphonies; Handel’s Messiah with the Baltimore, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Virginia, and Winston-Salem Symphonies; Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) and Richard Strauss’ Trio from Der Rosenkavalier in a return to the Winston-Salem Symphony; Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the North Carolina Symphony and Rochester Philharmonic; Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang and selections from Beethoven’s Leonore with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Mozart’s Requiem with the Charlotte and Eugene Symphonies; Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor with the Alabama Symphony, The Oratorio Society of Virginia, and Orquesta Sinfónico Nacional de Costa Rica; and many more. Ms. Pier has been recognized by numerous prestigious awards. She was named Gilbert Artist at Florida Grand Opera, and was a finalist for two years for the Richard Tucker Career Grant. She is the recipient of a George London Award, Sullivan Award, two Charles A. Lynam awards, and two Palm Beach Opera Competition Awards. Originally from Flagstaff, AZ, Ms. Pier received her BM and MM in voice at Indiana University, and began her career under the tutelage of legendary soprano Virginia Zeani. She resides with her family in Charlotte, NC, and is on the voice faculty at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Mikki Sodergren, Alto Singing “beautifully and intelligently” (Jay Nordlinger, The New Criterion), Mikki Sodergren’s stylistic flexibility has afforded her an enriching and musically diverse career. Ms. Sodergren has developed new musicals for NYU Tisch, the BMI Lehmen-Engel Songwriting program, Disney Theatricals and the National Theatre of Great Britain, and has toured internationally with several ensembles, including the award-winning English Concert, the Grammy®nominated Clarion Choir, and early music ensemble Meridionalis. Ms. Sodergren often performs with symphonic orchestras on both classical engagements and pops programs. Ensembles include the Asheville, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Charleston, Hilton Head, and Johnstown Symphonies, the Savannah Philharmonic, the Washington Bach Consort, and others. Performing as the Mezzo-soprano soloist for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Harmoniemesse and many pops programs, Mikki thrives on stylistic integrity and varied musical programming. Recording extensively, Ms. Sodergren’s work has received three Grammy® nominations, including a 2021 Grammy® award for performing on the recording of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison. Sodergren will be featured as the Alto Soloist on the forthcoming recording by the Clarion Choir of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. 46 ∙ Masterworks 6: Ode to Joy
Recent performances include performing with the award-winning Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of Met Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin for performances of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, and Verdi’s Requiem, aired live on PBS and the World Trade Center Memorial, in memory of the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, and in celebration of the historic return of the Met after 18 months of closure. She has also been seen in the highlylauded world premiere of Kamala Sankaram’s Looking At You, and can be heard on the original cast album, a Billboard chart topper for Classical charts in 2021. Sodergren made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 as the mezzo-soprano soloist in Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living, and has performed Aldonza/Dulcinea (Man of La Mancha), opposite TONY and EMMY-nominated actor Ron Raines, as well as Eponine (Les Miserables) opposite Broadway legend, Craig Schulman. Ms. Sodergren currently serves as Executive and Artistic Director of the only international, professional voice organization to dedicate themselves to the preservation, celebration and performance of all styles of classic American song: the American Traditions Vocal Collection. When all styles of American song are celebrated equally, all vocalists have the opportunity to shine. Mikki resides in Savannah with her beloved cat, Djibouti.
Rod Dixon, Tenor Rodrick Dixon possesses a tenor voice of extraordinary range and versatility that has earned him the respect and attention of leading conductors, orchestras, and opera companies. Notable operatic engagements include Los Angeles Opera in the title role of Zemlinky’s Der Zwerg conducted by James Conlon and as Walther von der Vogelweide in Tannhauser. At Michigan Opera Theater and Todi Music Festival, Dixon appeared as Tonio in La Fille Du Regiment. He also appeared as Lenski in Todi’s production of Eugene Onegin . At Portland Opera, he performed the title role of Les Contes d’Hoffmann; Prince in Opera Columbus premiere of Vanqui ; Sportin’ Life in Virginia Opera’s Porgy & Bess; the Duke in Rigoletto for Cincinnati Opera; and Opera Southwest in the title role of Rossini’s Otello. On the concert stage, Rodrick Dixon is a regular guest of the Cincinnati May Festival, where he has performed Orff’s Carmina Burana, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass, Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses in Cincinnati and in New York’s Carnegie Hall. Other notable appearances include Los Angeles Philharmonic in the title role of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and directed by Peter Sellars. He reprised the role in the same production for the Sydney Arts Festival in
Australia, directed by Mr. Sellars. His Ravinia Festival credits include The Bells and Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied. For Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center, Dixon appeared as Sportin’ Life in Robert Russell Bennett’s suite of music from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, conducted by Robert Porco. Other debuts include the Atlanta Symphony honoring Martin Luther King Jr. conducted by Robert Spano; the Vail Music Festival as tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Marin Alsop and The Longfellow Chorus documentary based on the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Mr. Dixon made his Choral Arts Society of Music debut as the Celebrant in Bernstein’s Mass performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He returned to Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra as tenor soloist in Delius’ A Mass of Life and to the Cincinnati May Festival as featured soloist in a new work by Alvin Singleton. Rodrick Dixon’s musical theater and other theatrical concert credits include the original cast of Ragtime on Broadway/Chicago/Toronto, Show Boat at the Auditorium Theatre, Pops Concerts at Grant Park Music Festival, Chicagoland Pops Orchestra at the Rosemont Theater with Michael Feinstein, The Cincinnati Pops with Erich Kunzel and annual Christmas concerts of Too Hot To Handel at the Detroit Opera House and the Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.
Corey McKern, Baritone Award-winning baritone Corey McKern continuously earns critical acclaim and accolades in every appearance he makes. Previous engagements include a role début as Dandini in La Cenerentola with Nashville Opera; Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor with Opera Saratoga; Anthony in Sweeney Todd with Pensacola Opera; King Henry II in Becket with Long Island Masterworks; his Asian début as Marcello in La bohème with Opera Hong Kong, a role he has also performed with Nashville Opera and Opera Grand Rapids; the Count in Le nozze di Figaro with Nashville Opera, Opera Cleveland, Opera Columbus, Michigan Opera Theatre, and Syracuse Opera; Sharpless in Madama Butterfly with Pensacola Opera and Syracuse Opera; Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia and Pilot in The Little Prince at Tulsa Opera; Papageno in Die Zauberflöte with Opera Omaha, Arizona Opera, and Tulsa Opera; Valentin in Faust with Opera Carolina; and more. An active concert performer, Mr. McKern recently made his début with the St. Louis Symphony performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Wozzeck; and made his Carnegie Hall début in the Fauré Requiem. Other recent concert engagements include Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder with the Missoula Symphony, and performances with the New Choral Society in Händel’s Messiah, Brahms’s Requiem and Orff’s Carmina Burana.
With the Santa Fe Opera he has performed Marcello in La bohème (to which the Santa Fe New Mexican said, “Corey McKern’s resolute, robust-voiced and rambunctious Marcello, a perfect picture of a wannabe Parisian painter, was one of the best I’ve ever heard.”), Masetto in Don Giovanni, Pallante in Agrippina, The Shoes for the Santo Nino, the 1st Shepherd in Daphne and has covered the title role of Wozzeck, Valentin in Faust, and Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore. As house favorite at Opera Birmingham he has performed there Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Escamillo in Carmen, Ping in Turandot, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Count in Le nozze di Figaro, and with Opera Omaha, John Brooke in Little Women, Ping in Turandot, and Slook in The Marriage Contract. Mr. McKern is a former grant recipient from the Sullivan Foundation, as well as the first place winner of Opera Birmingham, Shreveport Opera, and Mobile Opera competitions. He holds a Master of Music degree from Indiana University, and Bachelor of Music Education from Mississippi State University. He is also a graduate of the Seattle Opera Young Artist Program.
Asheville Asheville Symphony Symphony ∙∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙∙ 47 47
Chorus Music Director & Conductor
DR. MICHAEL LANCASTER Michael Lancaster was appointed Music Director of the Asheville Symphony Chorus in the fall of 2012. In this capacity he prepares the ASC for performances with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra as well as independent concerts. He formerly was the Director of Choral Activities in the School of Music at Western Carolina University, where he conducted the Concert Choir, University Chorus and Early Music Ensemble and taught conducting, choral methods and voice. Dr. Lancaster serves as Director of Worship and Music at First Presbyterian Church, Highlands, NC. In April, 2018 Dr Lancaster was appointed as the Conductor and Artistic Director of the Carolina Concert Choir, Hendersonville, NC. In the summers of 1980 and 1981 Lancaster studied conducting at the Oregon Bach Festival under renowned conductor and Bach scholar Helmuth Rilling. Since then, he has sung in the Festival Chorus of the Oregon Bach Festival many times, singing incidental solos on a few occasions. In the summer of 1988 he was selected from applicants across the country as one of sixty singers to sing under the direction of Robert Shaw in Souillac, France in the “Robert Shaw Festival Singers.” He was asked to return in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1996
as well. He also participated as a member of the paid professional core in the “Robert Shaw Choral Workshop” in November 1990, which culminated in a performance of Ein Deutsches Requiem by Brahms in Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and soloists Sylvia McNair and Samuel Ramey. He was invited to participate in the same capacity in the “Robert Shaw Choral Workshop” and the “Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop” many times in subsequent years. Lancaster has participated as a chorister on several recordings, including the Grammy Award winning Credo by Penderecki with the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Helmuth Rilling; Amazing Grace and Brahms: Liebeslieder Waltzes with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers conducted by Robert Shaw; and Britten: War Requiem with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Robert Shaw. As a professional soloist or chorister, Lancaster has sung with many organizations, including the Carmel (CA) Bach Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the San Luis Obispo (CA) Mozart Festival, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Los Angeles Master Chorale (under the direction of Roger Wagner), the Hollywood Bowl Festival Chorus (under the direction of Christopher Hogwood), the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (under the
48 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
direction of Gerard Schwartz), the William Hall Chorale, the Long Beach Bach Festival (under the direction of Sir David Willcocks) and the Disneyland Dickens Carolers. He holds the BME from Chapman College (Orange, CA), MM from California State University Fullerton and DMA from the University of Southern California. His wife, Dr. Linda Lancaster, is a free-lance flutist who is a member of the Brevard Philharmonic Orchestra. They have two children, Kevin and Katherine.
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We are grateful to the Asheville Symphony for the invaluable role they play in our community. We are honored to play our small part in supporting our arts community through our sponsorship.
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 49
CRESCENDO.
Proud supporter of the Asheville Symphony Society and its continuous commitment to the people of Western North Carolina. mwblawyers.com 828.254.8800
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ALT ASO @
SERIES SPONSORED BY
Asheville Art Museum in Downtown Asheville Tuesday, June 21, 2022 6:00 p.m. Private Viewing / 7:00 p.m. Chamber Orchestra Rounding out the Spring 2022 ALT ASO series is an evening at the Asheville Art Museum. This immersive experience features musical repertoire specifically curated to the museum’s American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection exhibition premiering just a few days prior. The evening will include a private viewing of the exhibition with Museum Curators, plus a chamber orchestra under the baton of ASO Music Director Darko Butorac. Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 51
$25,000+
Season Sponsors
$10,000+
OFFICIAL HOTEL OF THE ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY
Thank you so much to the individuals, foundations, and businesses who support the Asheville Symphony and recognize the importance of arts organizations in our community.
Rich & Diane Byers in Memory of Katherine Armitage & Jack Jones
Explore
Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority
David & Pamela Lane
$5,000+
Kathryn & Harry Durity Dr. & Mrs. Marcus Grimes Henry A. LaBrun
Olivia & Gary Zahler Phyllis Penley Patton
$3,000+
Maurice & Bonnie Stone
in Celebration of the Return of Our Symphony
MEDIA
SEASON MEDIA SPONSOR
52 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org Asheville Symphony Supporters ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
Season Sponsors are critical to the Asheville Symphony’s success each year. Sponsors support a variety of key Symphony offerings including events, ALT ASO performances, special projects, guest artists, multi-day festivals, concert series, donor events, and even an entire season.
Katie & Phil Osborn
MEDIA PARTNER
With options ranging from $1,000 to more than $25,000, sponsorship is a great way to partner with your Asheville Symphony. Each sponsorship package includes benefits custom tailored to your needs or the needs of your business. If you would like to see your name or business on this list of philanthropic individuals and businesses, contact Director of Development Jessica May at (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ ashevillesymphony.org.
Asheville Symphony Supporters The Asheville Symphony Board of Directors, staff and musicians want to extend our deepest appreciation to our patrons. 20202021 was certainly a year unlike any other. We are delighted to present this exciting and innovative 2021-2022 season, with more 2022-2023 plans to come — all thanks to your support. Your gifts cultivate the next generation of music lovers by supporting our Music in the Schools program, the Young People’s concert and our spectacular Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra! Your gifts sustain our vibrant music community by allowing us to be one of the largest employers of performing artists in WNC; we are proud we are able to employ and retain the area’s most highly trained and talented musicians! Your gifts strengthen the local economy by creating jobs and attracting home owners. The Asheville Symphony is a source of great community pride and your support ensures we continue our positive development trajectory! To learn more about supporting the Asheville Symphony please contact Jessica May, Director of Development at (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ashevilleysmphony.org.
January 1, 2021 - January 24, 2022*
ASO Supporters
* This list includes new donations and previously unrecorded donations from January 1, 2021 to January 20, 2022. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this list, however, if you note an omission or an error please contact Jessica May at (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org. Thank you!
SEASON UNDERWRITERS ($25,000+) Asheville Symphony Guild Kimpton Hotel Arras North Carolina Arts Council
COMPOSER CIRCLE ($10,000-$24,999) Anonymous Anonymous Asheville Citizen Times Audrey Love Charitable Foundation Blue Spiral 1 Gallery Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. Bolton Burial Beer Co. Diane and Rich Byers The Chaddick Foundation Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation Explore Asheville Dr. Bolling Farmer
Flow Volkswagen Porsche Audi of Asheville Bill and Nancy Gettys Dorothy L. Johnston Foundation Gerald and Nancy Kitch David and Pamela Lane Jill and Joe Lawrence Barbra and Keith Love William McKenna and Suzanne Landis Olivia and Gary Zahler
CONDUCTOR CIRCLE ($7,500 - $9,999) Diana Bilbrey Gene and Lee Casey Kathryn and Harry Durity Lynne and John Eramo Jim and Mary Kirby Henry A. LaBrun Amy Loether
ORCHESTRA CIRCLE (5,000-$7,499) Awaken Skin & Body Gan Shan West Mary and Jack Anderson Michael and Catty Andry Asheville Area Arts Council Clover CBD Dispensary George and Kathy Dambach Dr. and Mrs. Marcus Grimes Highland Brewing Company Hi-Wire Brewing Joscelyn W. Hill Dr. and Mrs. Ralph C. Loomis Carol and Hugh McCollum McGuire, Wood & Bissette Phil and Katie Osborn Phyllis Penley Patton Parsec Financial Bob and Martha Pierce Kathryn Theodore Travel Ed and Cindy Towson Sarah Van Gunten
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 53
IMPRESARIO ($1,000-$2,499)
Anonymous Brad and Diane Arnold Meredith Balgley and Erik Bendix Charles and Beverly Briedis Linda and Tom Bushar John and Jeanne Condren Crawley, Lee & Company, P.A. Dr. John and Wendy Cuellar Jerry and Diane Cunningham Nancy and Ron Edgerton Margaret Butler Hatchworks Coworking Richard and Yolanda Hall in memory of Rikki Hall Bill and Kitty Hunt Jon and Ann Kemske Margarete W. Moon Endowment of the CFWNC Ann and Jerry McLellan Russell and Ladene Newton Susie and John Ruhl Morgan Stanley Jim Reeves Bill Schulz and Odile Perrenoud Maurice and Bonnie Stone Norretta L. Taylor Van Winkle Law Firm Hank Young
Blue Ridge Public Radio Timothy Butts and Susan Harrington Butts Don and Nancy Ackermann Cole Craig Allen and Julie Cowden Lucy and Kirk Borland Ed and Donna Broadwell Bill and Clarita Burton Dr. Nancy J. Cable Randy and Martha Carson Teresa Caton Cantrell Karen L. Cianciulli Charles and Patricia Clogston Debra Crabtree Caroline and Daniel M. Crupi John and Suzie Donahoe Marvin and Patricia Eargle Richard and Bridget Eckerd John and Marsha Ellis Dr. Alan and Suzanne Escovitz The Families of Ann Worthington Rennard’s loving siblings John and Suellyn Felker Betty Fox Adarrell Gadsden & Marcie Ownbey Judy Galloway Neil and Cindy Garroway Michael J. Grillot Fred and Cindy Groce Dr. and Mrs. Heinz K. Grohs Sam and Robin Harben
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE
ASO SUPPORTERS
BENEFACTOR ($2,500 - $4,999)
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Jill and Dwight Healy Robert and Linda Hollis Jennine Hough Stan Ingber and Laura Robbins Anne Jarema and Cliff Albertson Susan Jensen and Lew Gelfond Randall and Mary Johnson Keith Keener Mr. and Mrs. Paul Lerwick Sue and George Luther Dr. and Mrs. Carlo Mainardi Larry and Billie Marzullo Lois S. Carlson and Jerome Mrowca Osada Construction LLC Inez Hullinger Redman Robert and Ann Rennard Sabrina and Isaac Rockoff Carole R. Roskind Martha G. Rowlett Jeremy Samsky Gary and BA Schenk David and Bettie Sousa Irene and Michael Stoll Margaret K. Storey Gary and Jeanne Ann Stroebel Ray and Patricia Strong Thomas G. Tchaikovsky & Lynn G. Baird Shirley Tenney and Paul Merriken The Blackbird Restaurant James S. and Diane T. Thompson Town and Mountain Realty Jay and Carol Verneuil Dr. and Mrs. Larry R. Versteegh Linda Walker
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY CHORUS Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle April 2, 2022, 7:30 pm • Location TBA Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the Asheville Symphony June 4, 2022, 8:00 pm • Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY CHAMBER CHORUS “Wolcum Yole!” a Twelfth Day Concert January 7, 2022 • The Basilica of St Lawrence Spring Concert May 13, 2022 • Location TBA May, 15, 2022 • First Presbyterian Church (Highlands, NC)
Bloomin’ Art Mr. and Mrs. Claude Broach J. Howard and Honey Solomon McMaster-Carr Supply Company Kathleen Quinlan and Marc Parham Beth Stickle Schoenheit
PATRON ($500-$749) Anonymous Anonymous Susan Arnold David and Sydney Atkinson Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Bayer Carol and Morty Blumberg Marion Boone Kimberly Bottoms Mr. and Mrs. William Brown Gary and Patty Coleman Douglas and Lousia Combs Mrs. Nancy Crosby Sharron Davis Jurgen and Leslie Dierks Lori Doerr Bruce and Day Ann Emory William and Carol Falender Robin and Gordon Gaiser Peter and Jasmin Gentling Marian and Mike Goodman George and Elaine Goosmann
Anna Hayward Fred and Heather Hudson Bill Jacobs and Susan Posey Vinod and Manju Jindal Pat and Doug Johnston Gail Jolley Elizabeth Justice Al and Margareta Koch Charles Laiken Bebe Landis Tom and Dian Leeper Virginia and Drew Litzenberger Chuck Lockwood and Patrick Ryan Diane and John Martin Amy McGuire and Brian Wallace Lee and Merri McLean Eve Miller Dwight and Shirley Oltman William and Joyce Ossmann Sam Kohn and Leslie Pollitt Kitti Reynolds Richard Schaffer Jr MD and Anastasia Bartlett Thomas Southwick James Storey and Janice Collins Donna and Rancy Weast Ann and Steve Weinstein Paul B. Williamson Pamela H. Winkler Marla Woeckener Charles Zellerbach
Support your Symphony’s Annual Fund
ASO SUPPORTERS
SUSTAINER ($750-$999)
Asheville’s passion for music helps shape the quality of our community. It also inspires our musicians and the guest artists who work with us. This passion culminates in the incredible live experience we offer people of all ages and backgrounds through our programs, in and outside of the concert hall. We are only able to achieve our mission because of the generous support of people like you who are passionate about music, education and their community. Ticket revenue covers less than half of the symphony’s operating cost.
Help us set the stage for the present and future of classical music by making a contribution to the Annual Fund. Visit AshevilleSymphony.org or contact Director of Development Jessica May at 828.318.8181 to make a donation to this season’s Annual Fund.
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 55
Anonymous Mike and Lorna Anderberg Charles and Stephanie Baer Jocelyn Baumgarten Tom and Kay Beardsley Dr. Stephen D. and Mrs. Linda B. Brown Tony McLean Brown Georgia Case The Crawford Family Darilyn Dealy and Lee Pagel Jan Duwelius Drs. Louis Dwarshuis and Marilyn Kolton Don and Joy Erbes Mary Farmer Lindley Garner and Mary Goodkind Dr. Earl Stephen Hunt and Mrs. Edeltraut Gilgan-Hunt Lois Hannold Marc Harkness Sandi and Peter Heckman Sandra Houts Jan Hundhausen Marian and Thomas Jerdee Amy and John Kelso Judy and Bill LaMée Van and Lorraine Lane Susan and David Leader Barbara Loeb Ferris L. Lyle Gail and Ron Manheimer
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE
ASO SUPPORTERS
CONTRIBUTOR ($250-$499)
David and Jessica May James H. McMillan and Carol H. Kaufman Dana Newman Ellen and David Nutter Betty J. Paine William and Judy Rex Joel and Marcis Rudell Samsel Architects Wade and Mary Margaret Saunders Nancy Schuman Ilona and Michael Sena Ron Goudreau and Martin Snyder Barbara and Marty Stickle Robert Stone Jim and Peggy Tobin Walter and Joan Tolley Donald and Susan Watson John D. West and Edward Sheppard Edmund B. Ura Barbara S. Wilson H.W.Winstead Household
MEMBER ($100-$249) Catherine Alter David Askew Nancy Baker Viva Banzon & Robert Evans Dr. and Mrs. Luther Barnhardt Greg and Bobbie Bicket Adlai and Karen Boyd Virginia Boyle
Symphonettes The Asheville Symphonettes is a high school girls’ service club that has been serving the Asheville Symphony since 2011. Exposing high-schoolers to live symphony concerts creates a lifelong love and appreciation of classical music, and Symphonettes experience this while forging lifelong friendships and bettering their community.
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Rita Nilsen and Carl Brickman Allan and Jean Brown David G. and Lin Brown Clinton Bugg and Jeff Nucey Lana Burns Thomas and Rebecca Burre Jan Butler Jim Cahill Ingrid Campbell Peter Candler Shannon Candler Jane Caris Carol Carson Scott Coates Barbara Colon Joel and Carole Hampton Cotter Virginia Craig Bishop Charles and Karen Crutchfield Kathryn Daughton Mary Ann Davis Philip C. Davis Kimberley DeSimone Rod and Cyndy Douglas Erin and Tom Doyle Karen Dugas Amanda Durst Kristen Dusenbery Martin and Ivy Dyckman Kim Eiring Edward and Amy Euler David and Ellen Feingold Polly S. Feitzinger Ellenor Frelick Gertrude Galynker
This season, Symphonettes participated in a Lock-In fundraiser on Monday, November 15th at the Biltmore Park Clubhouse, while Senior and Junior Symphonettes will walk the runway at Celine and Company on Broadway on Friday, April 22nd, with all proceeds from both events going to benefit the Asheville Symphony. The Asheville Symphonettes serve the Buncombe County music community in a multitude of ways and look forward to the Symphony season to come. For Symphonette membership or funding inquiries, please contact Emily West at emilyhwest@yahoo.com.
Linda and Gary Ticknor Alice Magee Timothy Mainardi Henry and Elizabeth Mainwaring Carol Marin Household William D. and Linda Mashburn Jerry McAninch The Rev. Nancy McCarthy Dr. and Mrs. Ben McCarty Elizabeth and Max McCorvey John and Jansen McCreary Anne McKenzie Elwood and Margaret Miles William Mitchell Ruth and Jimmy Morris C. Allan Morse Leslie and Betsie Meyer Mark Noble Household Francis Nullet John K. Orr Jeffrey and Lisa Owen Lori Oxford and Alberto Centeno-Pulido John Paar Harry Pierson Bob and Lorraine Poe Donald and Brenta Poole Dr. and Mrs. H. Leonard Porter Susan and Mike Portland Kim Presley Don Roberts Donna Robertson Betsy and Jim Robson
Robin T. Rutledge and Karen Keeler Rogers Sherree Roller and David Janson Evan and Susan Rosenberg Patrick Ryan Frank Rutland Marcy and Michael Salemi Stephen Sedgwick Katherine and Robert Silvers Ann H. Skoglund Joe Sloan Jane and Edward Smith Gail and Nelson Sobel Cynthia Sprau Barbara and Barry Stagg Barbara Stalzer Jan and Wayne Stanko Rick and Maggi Swanson John and Mary Tadey Janet Thatcher Linda and Gary Ticknor Christopher Underwood Jan Van Ess William Waff Reverend and Mrs. Mark Ward Mariana G. Warner Judy Watson Sue and Robert White George Wilds and Steve Connell Larry and Janie Wilson Wilfred Wood Marlene and John Yokim Bobby and Elizabeth Yount
ASO SUPPORTERS
Sue Humphries Gibson Household Darren and Marissa Green Paula J. Grillot Al and Betsy Gumpert Amanda Hall and Robert Zeid Barry and Ellen Halperin William Hampton Peter Wortham Hawes Virginia W. Hayes Jerry and Charlene Hawthorne Patrick and Nanette Hill Kathleen Holmes Joel Horwick Nancy Houha Steve and Nancy Hurst Tom and Libby Irwin Thorunn Ivey John and Karla Jalocha David & Eleanor Johnson Daisy Karasek Bob and Donna Kaye Margaret Kelso Jess and Phyllis Key Ann Batchelder and Henri Kieffer Arthur Kirby Gerald and Frances Labaza Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lattimore Walter Leginski Linda Lewis Elfriede LaPlante Eric and Mala Lapp Debbie Lee Laura W. Lever Dr. Ken and Mrs. Marjorie Loken
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 57
Anonymous Anonymous Erin Abernethy Linda Afredson Dr. Leanne Apfelbeck and Ms. Bonnie Snyder Douglas Atchley and Lee Davis Julian and Martha Biller Elinor Bowman Elizabeth and Kemper Brown Nan Buschmann Jacalyn Carden and Jane Dupont John Carpenter Mr. and Mrs. Bill Harlan Louise L.Cate The Connor Family in memory of Ann Rennard Mary Celia Coulombe Alexa and Rich Dann Alan Davis Lisette de Groot Harley and Linda Dininger Michael Di Trolio Jacalyn Carden and Jane Dupont Edward Eisenberg Omer Erdmann David and Susan Feuer Stephen and Jackie Finstad Cathy Fischer
Beverly Fitzpatrick James Focareto Bee Frame Bruce Frank and Ayla Ficken Linda Freshwater Randee Goodstadt Scott and Sally Gregg Eleanor and Stuart Grinnell Phil and Connie Haire John and Elizabeth Hamrick Mr. and Mrs. Bill Harlan Reni N. Hamner Richard Henning Patricia Hobbs Michael and Laura Hoskins Ralph and Sheryl Husby John and Karla Jalocha Ginger and Dan Jones Katherine and Jon Karraker Jess and Phyllis Key Ned and Jane Lesesne John and Janet Long Lynn Lederer and Leslie Long Philip and Kathleen Leftwich Jeremy and Susan Lerner Ned and Jane Lesesne John and Janet Long Grace Ludkte Lise Lotte Gammeltoft Dr. William M. Madison, Jr. Suzanne and Jay Mahler Barbara Mayer
James and Alice McDowell Martha McPhail Mary Raine Moore Uta Myers The Donna Pacheo Household Norma Pereira and Tom Dunn Silvia Rabin Clive Rickett Barbara Robinson Dr. and Mrs. John Russell Cindy Ruzack Patrick Ryan Dean Schmelter The Schultheiss Family Brenda Scott and William Hunt Frederick W. Selph Robert J. and Elizabeth M. Shaw Marie Sherill Brian and Caron Smith Bill and Frances Smyth Sandra Sonner Deborah Sutton Ruth G. Stewart Cathy Stryker Richard and Frances Swing Sydnor and Kelly Thompson Norman and Janet Weeks Robert and Joyce Weinberg Barbara Witt Suzanne Wodek Diane Zolnaski and Rob Feldleit
Every effort has been made to ensure this list is accurate. If you note an omission or error please contact Jessica May at (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org. All names received after January 24, 2022 will be noted in the Fall 2022 program.
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE
ASO SUPPORTERS
FRIEND ($1-$99)
The Youth Orchestra’s 2021-2022 season features 100 student musicians across Western NC, led by an artistic staff of educators and musicians in the area! Ashlee Booth, Joseph Falconer, Hunter Kopczynski, and Brian Tinkel are directing these talented young musicians and look
58 ∙ Asheville Symphony Supporters
forward to presenting you with an evening of music making at our second concert of the season, March 22nd at 7:00pm! For more information about ASYO, including a season calendar and information on how to join, please visit www.ashevillesymphony.org/asyo/ or scan the QR code to the right.
Many companies offer a matching gift program for employee charitable donations – this can double or triple your gift! Check with your company’s human resources or payroll department to see whether it offers a matching gift program. And take note: many companies extend this opportunity to their retired employees. The Asheville Symphony extends appreciation to the following companies who have matched donor gifts this year: AIG Eaton Corporation IBM Corporation McMaster - Carr Supply Company Prudential Financial Inc. State Farm Companies Foundation Steelcase Foundation Shell Oil Company Foundation
To learn more please contact Jessica May, Director of Development at (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org
Friends of the ASYO The Friends of the Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra, established in 2017, is a fundraising and support group committed to ensuring the Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra (ASYO) has the resources to offer the best musical training and experiences for these young musicians. The goal of the Friends is for every young musician who joins the ASYO to have access to excellent music education and in turn enrich the community regardless of their economic circumstance. These donors are all essential to the success of the ASYO and we offer all of you our thanks! Mary and Jack Anderson Diana Bilbrey Mr. Thomas C. Bolton Charles and Beverly Briedis Tony McLean Brown Linda and Tom Bushar Gene and Lee Casey Dr. John and Wendy Cuellar Jerry and Diane Cunningham Lindley Garner and Mary Goodkind Bill and Nancy Gettys Bill and Kitty Hunt Keith Keener Jon and Ann Kemske Jim and Mary Kirby Carol and Hugh McCollum Nicole Norian Phyllis Penley Patton Donna Robertson Richard and Frances Swing
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 59
ASO SUPPORTERS
Matching Gifts
In memory of Jack Jones and Katherine Armitage
In Celebration of Kathleen Mainardi
In memory of Ann Worthington Rennard
Diane and Rich Byers
Timothy Mainardi
Anonymous Charles and Beverly Briedis Ellen Brown Mr. & Mrs. William Brown Carl and Cheryll Christianson Gary and Patty Coleman The Connor Family KeyBanc Capital Markets Kimberley DeSimone The Families of her loving siblings (Carl A. Worthington, Sr., Janice Allen Shaw, Sarah Rah, William Worthington, John Worthington, Cathy Wingo, James Cooley, Kurt Worthington, Carl A. Worthington, Jr.) Sue Humphries Gibson Household Jeanie Graham Eleanor and Stuart Grinnell Fred and Cindy Groce Patricia Hobbs Thorunn Ivey David and Eleanor Johnson Jess and Phyllis Key Gerald and Nancy Kitch Gerald and Frances Labaza Mr. and Mrs. Paul Lerwick Barbra and Keith Love Hugh and Carol McCollum
In memory of Louie Baker
In honor of Carol McCollum
Peggy Baker and Margaret Small
Mr. and Mrs. Claude Broach Reid, Alyson, Ellis and Tess McCollum
In memory of Betsy Bolton Mack Day
In memory of Don Galloway Judy Galloway
In memory of our son Rikki Hall Richard and Yolanda Hall
In honor of Mary & Jim Kirby Arthur Kirby
In memory of Howard LaPlante Bryan and Colleen LaPlante Elfriede LaPlante Marian Peterson and Beth Kirby Bob and Lorraine Poe
In honor of Doris Loomis Lise Lotte Gammeltoft
In memory of Boo Boo Lovelace Pamela H. Winkler
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE
ASO SUPPORTERS
Tribute Gifts
60 ∙ Asheville Symphony Supporters
In memory of Roberta McGuire The McGuire Family
In honor of Megan Mennell Richard and Alyssa Weber
In honor of Amelia Novak Bill and Sue Novak
In honor of Phil and Katie Osborn Barbara Schrader
In honor of Phyllis Patton Tony McLean Brown
In honor of Lloyd Penley Phyllis Penley Patton
In memory of Jack Redman Inez Hullinger Redman
The Asheville Symphony Guild proudly supports the Asheville Symphony and the part it plays in our community through volunteer support and fundraising. In the more than 50 years since it was founded, the Guild has raised over $1 million to support the Asheville Symphony Orchestra. If you love music and want to form a deeper connection to other music-lovers and to the Asheville Symphony, we invite you to join the Guild today! For more information or to join the Guild, visit ashevillesymphonyguild.org or scan the QR code to the right.
In honor of Mary Grace Rennerd and McKenna Harvey Philip and Cindy Walker
In Celebration of the Return of Our Symphony Maurice and Bonnie Stone
On behalf of Lily and Nick Swing Richard and Frances Swing
In honor of Reede and Mackenzie Thies George and Beverly Metcalf
ASO SUPPORTERS
The Donna Pacheo Household Susan and Mike Portland Kim Presley Mary Grace Rennard Dr. and Mrs. John Russell Marcy and Michael Salemi Marie Sherill Janet and Jay Stingel Irene and Michael Stoll Donald and Susan Watson Robert and Jean Williams
Celebrate a loved one with a gift to your Asheville Symphony Are you considering how best to honor a lost loved one? Stuck on ideas for a birthday gift for that person in your life who already has everything? Tribute gifts are a unique and thoughtful way to celebrate something or someone special while supporting a non-profit organization with a tax-deductible donation. These types of donations can be made to celebrate or commemorate any kind of occasion. Common attributions include anniversaries, birthdays, or significant life milestones. Additionally, tribute gifts can be made in memory of a loved one or on their behalf. When you make a tribute gift, you will receive an acknowledgment letter indicating the tax-deductible amount of your gift. In addition to your own letter, the honoree or their family members will also receive a notification of your gift if you choose. If you would like to make a tribute gift or if you would like more information on supporting your Asheville Symphony, please contact Director of Development Jessica May at 828.318.8181 or jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org.
In memory of my wife Nancy V. Young Hank Young
GUILD-SUPPORTED MUSIC EDUCATION PROGRAMS
GUILD GATHERINGS: SHARE THE LOVE!
From garden parties to barbecues to elegant evenings — join the Guild and experience these fun Musical Feasts while supporting our Symphony!
The Guild introduces more than 7,000 elementary school children to classical music each year through the Music in the Schools program. The Guild also helps support our wonderful Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra.
From our Fall Potluck to the annual May Gathering, Guild members enjoy getting together to share their love of music and our wonderful Symphony.
ASHEVILLE SYMPHONY SOCIETY AFFILIATE
MUSICAL FEASTS: YOUR SOCIAL AGENDA AWAITS!
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 61
Food & Beverage Partners
We believe music matters. We believe it changes lives.
Many of Asheville’s greatest local businesses are those that serve the best food and drinks! Your Asheville Symphony is proud to partner with some of Asheville’s best restaurants, breweries, bars, and more. They serve Symphony patrons all year long; now they are doing more by supporting the Symphony as advertisers and sponsors.
Here’s how we make music with your dollars:
Visit our Food & Beverage Partners to support your Symphony, and send these partners our love when you visit their establishments! Do you work at or own a local restaurant or bar? Want to be on this list? Contact Director of Development Jessica May at jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org
$20,000 Covers the cost of presenting one Young People’s Concert for school children
$7,500 Pays the fees and travel for one guest soloist
$5,000 Allows for one workshop for the Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra
$2,500 Covers the cost of moving a concert grand Steinway into our venue for Piano Recitals
$1,300 Covers the purchase of music for a single Beethoven symphony
$1,000 Provides tuition scholarships for ten Youth Orchestra students
$750 Allows us to offer one Masterclass for emerging young musicians with an esteemed guest soloist
$375 Pays for one Music in the Schools program (one quintet, one school, one hour)
$170 Covers the cost of one Symphony Talk at UNCA’s Reuter Center
Support Your Symphony Donations to the Symphony’s Annual Fund support all of these programs and more. To learn more please contact Jessica May, Director of Development (828) 318-8181 jcmay@ashevillesymphony.org 62 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
Music Sponsors Becoming a Music Sponsor at any level is a unique opportunity to directly support your favorite pieces, composers, and instruments. Sponsorships can also be made in honor of a loved one or to celebrate a special occasion. This is list of our current 2021-2022 Music Sponsors as of October 20, 2021, but many pieces on our programs are still in need of sponsorship. If you are interested in sponsoring a piece of music, reach out to Director of Development Jessica May at (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ ashevillesymphony.org
Mary and Jack Anderson Michael and Catty Andry Brad and Diane Arnold Mr. and Mrs. Claude Broach Timothy Butts and Susan Harrington Butts Dr. Nancy J. Cable Gene and Lee Casey Charles and Patricia Clogston John and Jeanne Condren Dr. John and Wendy Cuellar George and Kathy Dambach John and Suzie Donahoe Amanda Durst and Elizabeth McCorvey Dr. Bolling Farmer Drs. Louis Dwarshuis and Marilyn Kolton Lynne and John Eramo Dr. Alan and Suzanne Escovitz Adarrell Gadsden and Marcie Ownbey Robin and Gordon Gaiser Fred and Cindy Groce Richard and Yolanda Hall in memory of our son Rikki Hall Sam and Robin Harben Bill and Kitty Hunt Anne Jarema and Cliff Albertson Susan Jensen and Lew Gelfond Gail Jolley Jim and Mary Kirby Barbra and Keith Love Sue and George Luther Larry and Billie Marzullo David and Jessica May Carol and Hugh McCollum The McGuire family in honor of Roberta McGuire Ann and Jerry McLellan Osada Construction LLC Samsel Architects Gary and BA Schenk J. Howard and Honey Solomon Irene and Michael Stoll Maurice and Bonnie Stone Norretta L. Taylor James S. and Diane T. Thompson Sarah Van Gunten Marla Woeckener Hank Young in memory of my wife, Nancy V. Young Olivia and Gary Zahler
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 63
Elevate Your Perspective
Blue Ridge Public Radio is everything you love about public radio. BPR News offers NPR and local news coverage. BPR Classic provides classical music, NPR news and entertainment.
BPR.org
64 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
Shine on.
Put the retirement of your dreams center stage. At Tryon Estates, we take care of the worries so the things you love always get top billing.
(888) 529-2962 AboutActs.com/Symphony
Living life and looking ahead
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• ARDEN, NC 28704 • (828) 252-7667 Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 65
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If you’re considering dental implants, call or visit our website today.
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66 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
Legacy Society Members Dorel Abbott* Don and Nancy Ackermann Cole Jack Jones* and Katherine Armitage* Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Barden III* Dr. and Mrs. Luther Barnhardt Mary* and Leland* Bartholomew Kathy Bellizio George* and Diana Bilbrey Marion Bleyler* Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. Bolton Joyce Bost Hogan* Mrs. Charles Butler* Ken and Alma Chatfield* Barbra* and Beirne Chisolm Mr. and Mrs. Gary Coleman Nancy Crosby Dr. and Mrs. John Cuellar Robert DiDiego Lori Doerr Mr. and Mrs. David Dolan Drs. Joyce and Lawrence Dorr Mrs. C.H. Elmslie Robert and Jeanne Etter Dr. Linda Sokalski Farrell Dr. Bolling Farmer Francis Fee Doris Kistler and Fred Wightman William and Nancy Gettys Lindley Garner and Mary Goodkind Mr. and Mrs. George Goosman Paula J. Grillot Mr. and Mrs. Steven Hageman Dr. and Mrs. Matthew Hahner
Eleanor Hall* Dick and Yolanda Hall Virginia and Emmet* Hayes Anna and Anthony* Hayward Bill and Kitty Hunt Bill Jacobs and Susan Posey Pat and Doug Johnston Mountaine Jonas James Laird* Christine Longoria Dr. and Mrs. Carlo Mainardi Mabel Marlsbury* Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Mattson* Carol and Hugh McCollum Ann and Gerald McLellan Ingeborg and Kenneth* Meeke Fred Meyer Arch and Zeffie Nichols* Mr. and Mrs. David Pheil Mary L. Powell Education Fund in memory of Beatrice Wells Monte Richardson* Ernest Rosenau* Dr. and Mrs. Joel Rosenberg William* and Carole Roskind August Schmidt * John Schuler* Robert Sorton Bonnie Stone Norretta L. Taylor Edna Thompson* Mr. and Mrs. Ed Towson Albert and Lucia Ward* Eleanor Weil Schulmon*
Tomorrow is listening. Will Isabella’s Asheville Symphony be the same vital part of the community as it is now? Plan a gift today, so when tomorrow listens... she’ll hear you.
*Deceased
The Asheville Symphony Legacy Society recognizes people who have planned a gift to the Symphony in their will or estate plans. Speak to your financial advisor and contact Jessica May, Director of Development, to learn more about the Legacy Society: (828) 318-8181 or jcmay@ ashevillesymphony.org.
Trusted Comfort. Trusted Care. Care Navigation Home Care Palliative Care Hospice Care Grief Services Research & Innovation Foundation (828) 692.6178
FourSeasonsCFL.org
Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 67
68 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
Improving Lives Music gives us the power to connect, enriching ourselves and our culture. Givens Communities values the arts as part of our mission to improve the lives of older adults with life-enhancing services and a plan for quality healthcare. These assurances promote individual fulfillment and personal growth.
Learn more by scanning the QR code or by visiting brochure.givenscommunities.org
Judy H. Givens resident since 2017 Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 69
Advertiser Index Advantage Direct
65
ALFIE
BC
Blue Spiral 1 Gallery
40
Hometrust
2
Burial Beer Co.
15
Kathryn Theodore Travel Advisors
17
Kimpton Hotel Arras
18
Ardenwoods
71
Chestnut
Asheville Area Arts Council
49
Citizen Times
4
Mars Hill Retirement Community
16
Asheville Chamber Music Series
10
Clover CBD Dispensary
8
McGuire Wood & Bissette Law Firm
50
Asheville Dental
3
6
Corner Kitchen
17
Mercy Urgent Care
25
Asheville Eye Associates
29
Crawley, Lee, & Company, P.A.
39
Mission Health
68
Asheville Symphony 21-22 Season
70
Deerfield
29
Modesto
41
Asheville Symphony Chorus
54
Explore Asheville
8
Morgan Stanley
34
Asheville Symphony Guild
60
Flow Automotive – Audi Asheville
20
Parsec Financial
49
Asheville Symphony Symphonettes
56
Four Seasons
67
Red Maple Dental
66
Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra
58
Frugal Framer
25
Tryon Estates
65
Awaken Skin & Body
18
Gillespie Dental Associates
19
Van Winkle Law Firm
39
Biltmore
12
Givens Communities
69
Blackbird Frame & Art
16
Gould Killian CPA Group, P.A.
10
blue
16
Groce Funeral Home
16
Blue Ridge Public Radio
64
Hatchworks Coworking
33
Uncaged 11.20.21
New Year’s Eve 12.31.21
Roaring Rhapsody 02.12.22
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Enigma 04.09.22
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Looking Glass 05.13+14.22
Ode to Joy 06.04.22
Visit AshevilleSymphony.org for more information 70 ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ Spring 2022 Program Book
Change Your View Not Your Lifestyle Ardenwoods Retirement Community offers an incredible variety of on-site amenities and activities including:
• Chef-prepared dining • Fitness center • Indoor pool • Library • Salon and spa • Gardening • Nature trails • Art studio and more!
Independent and Assisted Living. Your Choices, Our Priorities. www.ArdenwoodsRetire.com | (828) 705-3820 Asheville Symphony ∙ www.AshevilleSymphony.org ∙ 71
Asheville-based, Real Estate focused Private Debt Fund serving the Carolinas
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19 Arlington Street Asheville, NC 28801
828-776-8632