BEETHOVEN & BRAHMS WITH CHRISTOPHER DRAGON PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY
CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor
YUMI HWANG-WILLIAMS, concertmaster
SEOYOEN MIN, principal cello
Friday, May 16, 2025 at 7:30pm
Saturday, May 17, 2025 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 18, 2025 at 1:00pm
Boettcher Concert Hall
PRICE Dances in the Canebrakes
I. Nimble Feet
II. Tropical Noon
III. Silk Hat and Walking Cane
BRAHMS Concerto for Violin & Cello, in A minor, Op. 102
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Vivace non troppo
— INTERMISSION —
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
I. Allegro Molto- Allegro con brio
II. Larghetto
III. Scherzo: Allegro
IV. Allegro Molto
CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 37 MINUTES INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION.
Friday’s concert is sponsored in memory oF diane Hill sunday’s concert is sponsored by ucHealtH - ready.set.co
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, conductor
Australian conductor Christopher Dragon is the Music Director of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, newly appointed Music Director of the Greensboro Symphony and is the Resident Conductor of the Colorado Symphony. He joined the Colorado Symphony in the 2015/2016 Season as Associate Conductor – a position he held for four years. For three years prior, Dragon held the inaugural position of Assistant Conductor with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, which gave him the opportunity to work closely with Principal Conductor Asher Fisch.
Dragon has a versatile portfolio ranging from live-to-picture performances including Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, a wide variety of collaborations with artists such as the Wu-Tang Clan, Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Bell, to standard and contemporary orchestral repertoire such as Danny Elfman’s Percussion Concerto; all areas of which he has become highly sought after. Christopher has become known for his charisma, high energy and affinity for a good costume, consistently delivering unforgettable performances that has made him an audience favourite.
Recent highlights include his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, his German debut with the WDR Funkhausorchester, performances of Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton with Danny Elfman reprising the role of Jack Skellington and historic performances with Nathaniel Rateliff at Walt Disney Concert Hall and David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. Upcoming debuts include the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Nasvhille Symphony and the LA Philharmonic.
Christopher is highly sought after as a guest conductor and has worked with the San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Modesto Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. In Australia, he has guest conducted the Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and West Australian Symphony Orchestras. His 2015 debut performance at the Sydney Opera House with John Pyke and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was released on album by ABC Music and won an ARIA the following year.
He has also conducted at numerous festivals including the Breckenridge and Bangalow Music Festivals, with both resulting in immediate re-invitations. At the beginning of 2016, Dragon conducted Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony as part of the Perth International Art Festival alongside Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Christopher began his conducting studies in 2011 and was a member of the prestigious Symphony Services International Conductor Development Program in Australia under the guidance of course director Christopher Seaman. He has also studied with numerous distinguished conductors including Leonid Grin, Paavo and Neeme Jarvi at the Jarvi Summer Festival, Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival and conducting pedagogue Jorma Panula.
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
YUMI HWANG-WILLIAMS, concertmaster, Mary Rossick Kern and Jerome H. Kern Concertmaster Chair
“By far the meatiest and most complex opus was by the highly inventive Englishman Thomas Adès via his 19-minute violin concerto entitled Concentric Paths… full of explosive and dissonant music-making… She (Hwang Williams) had the virtuosity to play through all the musical brambles, emerging unscathed”.
– San Jose Mercury News (Cabrillo Festival, 2007)
Yumi Hwang-Williams, Concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony since 2000, is an American violinist of exceptional musicianship who is recognized both for her stylish performances of the classics and her commitment to the works of present-day composers. Strings magazine calls her “a modern Prometheus” who has “emerged as a fiery champion of contemporary classical music.” Her interpretations of concertos by Thomas Adès, Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Daugherty, and Christopher Rouse have earned critical acclaim as well as enthusiastic approval from the composers. She has collaborated with the Joffrey Ballet (Chicago) in a world premiere of Bold Moves, with ten performances of Adès’ Concentric Paths for violin and orchestra choreographed by Ashley Page. The Colorado Symphony presented the world premiere of Rising Phoenix, violin concerto written for Yumi by Daniel Kellogg in 2016. In 2018, PENTATONE label released 2 disc centennial celebration of Isang Yun’s music with Yumi, Dennis Russel Davies, and The Bruckner Orchestra Linz (Austria) of the Violin Concerto No. 1, solo piece, and work with piano — a culmination of a decade-long project of Korea’s most controversial composer.
Yumi is frequently heard as soloist in her capacity as Concertmaster with the Colorado Symphony and occasionally has stepped in as last minute replacement, with Sibelius Concerto in 2017, and recently with Bach Double Violin Concerto featuring Chris Thile on mandolin. She has appeared with other major orchestras both in the U.S. and abroad, including the London Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Sinfonieorchester Basel (Switzerland), and the Bruckner Orchester Linz (Austria), Brno Philharmonic (Czech Republic) with conductors Marin Alsop, Dennis Russell Davies, Hans Graf, Paavo Järvi, Peter Oundjian, Markus Stenz, among others.
Prior to joining the Colorado Symphony, Yumi served as Principal Second Violin for the Cincinnati Symphony. In addition, she previously served as Concertmaster of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra for 13 summers, has performed as Guest Concertmaster for the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Ottawa, at the invitation of Music Director Pinchas Zukerman and has been Guest Concertmaster withThe Singapore Symphony Orchestra. She continues to play Guest First Violinist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom she has a long standing association.
Yumi began violin studies at the age of 10 in Philadelphia at the Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP), a public music magnet school, one year after emigrating from South Korea. She was a soloist with Philadelphia Orchestra at age 13 and was accepted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music at age 15, where she received her Bachelor of Music degree.
CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES
Currently, she is Adjunct Violin Professor at the University of Denver, Lamont School of Music, and is actively involved in advancing the arts in the community through numerous local concerts, chamber music collaborations, and supporting the symphony. In 2021 during the heart of the COVID lockdown, Yumi and Michelle DeYoung, world class singer, co-founded ENSEMBLE CHARITÉ which donates all proceeds from concerts to the partnering charity organization.
Yumi performs on a violin made by G. B. Guadagnini in Piacenza, Italy circa 1748.
SEOYOEN MIN, principal Fred & Margret Hoeppner Principal Cello Chair
Seoyoen Min has served as Principal Cello of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra since the 2019/20 season. A native of South Korea, she is a versatile and accomplished performer with a rich career in both orchestral and chamber music. As a featured soloist, Seoyoen has performed with the Colorado Symphony, Lakewood Symphony, Wyoming Symphony, and many others. As a founding member of the Edith String Quartet, she has collaborated with renowned musicians such as Lynn Harrell, Kyung Sun Lee in the Virtuosi Seoul Ensemble, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
Seoyoen is an active chamber musician in Colorado, regularly performing as both a soloist and chamber musician at Englewood Arts and other local venues. She has also contributed to South Korea’s contemporary music scene as a member of Ensemble BLANK, an emerging contemporary music group.
In the summer, Seoyoen is a guest artist with the South Eastern Young Artists in Georgia, serves as Principal Cello at the Grand Teton Music Festival, and performs as Assistant Principal Cello with the “Going Home Project” Orchestra.
An enthusiastic educator, Seoyoen teaches privately and as a guest faculty member. She most recently taught a masterclass and participated in the UW Cello Festival at the University of Wyoming.
Seoyoen holds a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, where she studied with Hans Jørgen Jensen, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Seoul National University.
CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES
FLORENCE B. PRICE (1888-1953)
Dances in the Canebrakes
ARRANGED FOR ORCHESTRA BY WILLIAM GRANT STILL (1895-1978)
Florence Price was born on April 9, 1888 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and died on June 3, 1953 in Chicago. She composed Dances in the Canebrakes for piano in 1953. The work was orchestrated by William Grant Still and premiered in that version in June 1998 in Flagstaff, Arizona, conducted by John McLaughlin Williams. The score calls for piccolo, flute, two oboes, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, two bassoons, three horns, three trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 9 minutes. This is the premiere performance of this piece by the orchestra.
Florence B. Price was a musical pioneer — one of the first African-American students to graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music, the first African-American woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major American orchestra, the first winner of the composition contest sponsored by the progressive Wanamaker Foundation.
Florence Beatrice Smith was born in 1888 into the prosperous and cultured family of a dentist in Little Rock, Arkansas, and received her first piano lessons from her mother, a schoolteacher and singer; Florence first played in public when she was four. She later also took up organ and violin, and at age fourteen was admitted to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she studied with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse, two of their generation’s leading composers, wrote her first string trio and a symphony (now lost), and graduated in 1907 with honors for both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate. She returned to Arkansas, where she taught at Arkadelphia Academy and Shorter College before being appointed music department chairman at Clark University in Atlanta in 1910. She returned to Little Rock two years later to marry attorney Thomas J. Price, and left classroom teaching to devote herself to raising two daughters, giving private instruction in violin, organ and piano, and composing.
In 1927, following racial unrest in Arkansas that included a lynching, the Price family moved to Chicago, where Florence studied composition, orchestration, organ, languages and liberal arts at various schools with several of the city’s leading musicians and teachers. Black culture and music flourished in Chicago — jazz, blues, spirituals, popular, theater, even classical — educational opportunities were readily available, recording studios were established, the National Association of Negro Musicians was founded there in 1919, and Price took advantage of everything. She ran a successful piano studio, wrote educational pieces for her students, published gospel and folksong arrangements, composed popular songs (under the pseudonym VeeJay), and performed as a church and theater organist. Among her many friends were the physician Dr. Monroe Alpheus Majors and his wife, organist and music teacher Estelle C. Bonds, and Price became both friend and teacher to their gifted daughter, Margaret. In 1932, Price and Bonds (then just nineteen) won respectively first and second prize in the Rodman Wanamaker Foundation Composition Competition, established to recognize classical compositions by Black composers, Price for her Symphony in E minor and Piano Sonata and Bonds for her song Sea Ghost. The performance of Price’s Symphony on June 15, 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, was the first by a major American orchestra of a symphonic work by an African-American woman. Price continued to compose prolifically — three more symphonies and two more piano concertos, a violin concerto, chamber, piano and
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organ pieces, songs, spiritual arrangements, jingles for radio commercials — and received numerous performances, including her arrangement of the spiritual My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord that Marian Anderson used to close her historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 1939. Florence Price died in Chicago on June 3, 1953. Price composed her three Dances in the Canebrakes for piano in 1953, rooting their style and expression, as was her usual practice, in the rhythms, melodic traits and ethos (but not in borrowed thematic material) of the African-American experience; they were orchestrated by William Grant Still, widely regarded as the “Dean of African-American Composers” until his death in Los Angeles in 1978. The first and last of the Dances in the Canebrakes — a “canebrake” is a dense stand of sugarcane, a staple crop on ante-bellum southern plantations — suggest a theatrical inspiration, Nimble Feet recalling the cakewalk, a popular 19th-century social dance in the South and in minstrel shows, and Silk Hat and Walking Cane, which sounds like a slow, nostalgic rag to accompany a nattily attired dancer. Tropical Noon is a languid and subtly syncopated evocation of a peaceful, mid-summer scene.
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op. 102 Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, and died on April 3, 1897 in Vienna. He composed the Double Concerto during the summer of 1887 at Thun, Switzerland. The premiere was given by violinist Joseph Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann on October 18, 1887 in Cologne; the composer conducted. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. Duration is about 34 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece February 25-26, 2012 with Claus Peter Flor conducting, Yumi Hwang-Williams on violin, and Silver Ainomae on cello.
Johannes Brahms first met the violinist Joseph Joachim in 1853. They became close friends and musical allies — the Violin Concerto was not only written for Joachim in 1878 but also benefited from his careful advice in many matters of string technique. Joachim was a faithful champion of Brahms’ music, playing it at every possible occasion and doing much to help establish the young composer’s reputation across the Continent. In 1880, however, when Joachim was suing his wife for divorce over an alleged infidelity, Brahms took it upon himself to meddle in the family’s domestic affairs. He believed that Frau Joachim was innocent of the charges and sided with her. Joachim was, understandably, enraged, and broke off his personal relationship with Brahms (the alleged affair was with his publisher, Fritz Simrock; the marriage was ultimately dissolved), though he continued to play his music; the two did not speak for years.
On July 19, 1887, when he was 54, Brahms, a curmudgeonly bachelor who found it difficult to make friends, sent Joachim a terse postcard from Thun, Switzerland, where the composer was summering that year: “I should like to send you some news of an artistic nature which I heartily hope might more or less interest you.” Joachim replied immediately: “I hope that you are going to tell me about a new work, for I have read and played your latest works with real delight.” Brahms sent his news: “I have been unable to resist the ideas that have been occurring to me for a concerto for violin and cello, much as I have tried to talk myself out of it. Now, the only thing
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that really interests me about this is the question of what your attitude toward it may be. Would you consider trying the work over somewhere with [Robert] Hausmann [the cellist in Joachim’s Quartet] and me at the piano?”
Joachim agreed to Brahms’ proposals. On July 26th, Brahms sent him the solo parts and asked for his advice. Five days later the violinist replied: “Herewith I am posting you the parts with some proposed minor alterations with which I hope you will agree. It is very playable, generally. What’s to be done now? Hausmann and I are most anxious to go on with it.” As he had with the Violin Concerto, Brahms accepted only a few of Joachim’s suggestions, though he did rework some passages on his own after the violinist had pointed out their difficulties. Brahms had a fair copy of the score and parts made, and arranged to have the formal premiere given by the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne in October. Though it has come to be regarded as a worthy equal to his other masterworks for soloist and orchestra, the “Double Concerto,” Brahms’ last composition for orchestra, was at first given a cool reception. Concerning the personal relationship between the composer and the violinist, however, it was an unqualified success. Brahms’ dear friend Clara Schumann noted with pleasure in her diary that “this Concerto was in a way a work of reconciliation — Joachim and Brahms have spoken to each other again after years of silence.”
The opening movement largely follows Classical concerto-sonata form, though Brahms prefaced it with a bold paragraph introducing the soloists. The main theme, given by the entire orchestra, is a somber but majestic strain that mixes duple and triple rhythms. The second theme is a tender, sighing phrase introduced by the woodwind choir. The soloists then join the orchestra for their elaborated re-presentation of the themes. A development section (begun by the soloists in unison) and a full recapitulation and coda round out the movement. Two quiet summons from horns and woodwinds mark the beginning of the Andante. The principal theme of the movement’s three-part form is a warmly lyrical melody for violin and cello in unison; parallel harmonies in the woodwinds usher in the central section. The finale is a playful rondo heavily influenced by the melodic leadings and vibrant rhythms of Gypsy music.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (177-1827)
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770 in Bonn, and died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna. Though the earliest sketches for the Second Symphony date from 1800, the composition was largely done during summer and early autumn 1802 in the village of Heiligenstadt, near Vienna. The work was first performed on April 5, 1803, at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, under the composer’s direction. The score calls for woodwinds, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani and strings. Duration is about 32 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra May 15-17 2009 with conductor James Gaffigan.
In the summer of 1802, Beethoven’s physician ordered him to leave Vienna and take rooms in Heiligenstadt, today a friendly suburb at the northern terminus of the city’s subway system, but two centuries ago a quiet village with a view of the Danube across the river’s rich flood plain. It was three years earlier, in 1799, that Beethoven had first noticed a disturbing ringing
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and buzzing in his ears, and he sought medical attention for the problem soon after. He tried numerous cures for his malady, as well as for his chronic colic, including oil of almonds, hot and cold baths, soaking in the Danube, pills and herbs. For a short time, he even considered the modish treatment of electric shock. On the advice of his latest doctor, Beethoven left the noisy city for the quiet countryside with the assurance that the lack of stimulation would be beneficial to his hearing and his general health.
In Heiligenstadt, Beethoven virtually lived the life of a hermit, seeing only his doctor and a young student named Ferdinand Ries. In 1802, Beethoven was still a full decade from being totally deaf. The acuity of his hearing varied from day to day (sometimes governed by his interest — or lack thereof — in the surrounding conversation), but he had largely lost his ability to hear soft sounds by that time, and loud noises caused him pain. In addition to the distress over his health, Beethoven was also wounded in 1802 by the wreck of an affair of the heart. He had proposed marriage to Giulietta Guicciardi (the thought of Beethoven as a husband threatens the moorings of one’s presence of mind!), but had been denied permission by the girl’s father for the then perfectly valid reason that the young composer was without rank, position or fortune. Faced with the extinction of a musician’s most precious faculty, fighting a constant digestive distress, and unsuccessful in love, it is little wonder that Beethoven was sorely vexed.
On October 6, 1802, following several months of wrestling with his misfortunes, Beethoven penned the most famous letter ever written by a musician — the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” Intended as a will written to his brothers (it was never sent, though he kept it in his papers to be found after his death), it is a cry of despair over his fate, perhaps a necessary and self-induced soul-cleansing in those pre-Freudian days. “O Providence — grant me at last but one day of pure joy — it is so long since real joy echoed in my heart,” he lamented. But — and this is the miracle — he not only poured his energy into self-pity, he also channeled it into music. The Symphonies Nos. 2-5, a dozen piano sonatas, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Triple Concerto, Fidelio, and many songs, chamber works and keyboard compositions were all completed between 1802 and 1806.
The Symphony No. 2 opens with a long, stately introduction. The first movement’s sonata form begins with the arrival of the fast tempo and the appearance of the main theme, a brisk melody first entrusted to the low strings; the second theme is a martial strain paraded by the winds. The development includes two large sections, one devoted to the main theme and its quick, flashing rhythmic figure, the other exploring the possibilities of the marching theme. The recapitulation compresses the earlier material. The Larghetto, “one of the most luxurious slow movements in the world” according to Sir George Grove, is in a full sonata form, with the first violins giving out the second theme. A rising three-note fragment runs through much of the scherzo proper, while the central trio gives prominence to the oboes and a delightful walkingbass counterpoint in the bassoons. The finale, formally a hybrid of sonata and rondo, possesses a wit and structure indebted to Haydn but a dynamism that is Beethoven’s alone.
