Evening Concert Series 2024 – 2025 Season
Helen M. Hosmer Concert Hall Thursday, February 20th at 7:30pm
The Crane Symphony Orchestra
Michael J. Colburn, Conductor
Callirhoë, Suite d’orchestre, Op. 37 (1888)
I. Prelude
II. Pas des Écharpes
III. Scherzettino
IV. Pas des Cymbales
Symphony No. 9, Op. 70 (1945)
I. Allegro
II. Moderato
III. Presto
IV. Largo
V. Allegretto - Allegro
Cécile Chaminade (1857 – 1944)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Tonight’s performance is presented without intermission
FLUTE
Simone McPartling*
Luke Raymond
Julia Taylor*
Maxwell Todack
OBOE
Amara Leitner*
Mariana Morales
Molly Murphy*
CLARIN E T
Michael Ducorsky*
Paige Krebs*
Brandon McLaughlin
BASSOON
Maddie Garcia
Liam Hill*
HORN
Mark Cannistraci
Moriah Clendenin
Natalie Hartmann
David Nesbitt*
TRUMPET
Nicholas Bedell
Virginia Bednarski*
Molly Collins
Casey Asaro
TROMBONE
Tobey Dwyer
Samir Ghalayini
Victor Mainetti*
TUBA
Liam Yusko*
PERCUSSION
Jack Carola
Jared Emerson*
Angel Ren Bailey Yerdon
HARP
Harper Foley
VIOLIN I
Madison Ballou
Stephen Borgia
Laura Chase
Julia Cohen
Vanessa Cruz*
John DiSpaltro
Holland Goddard
Paolina Iori*
Emma Kuegel
Maia Regan
Aidan Sperduti
Michael Wong
VIOLIN II
RJ Ahern-Stetson
Kaitlyn Caragiulo
Hannah Carlson
Gwendolyn Caro
Shannon Darby
Jessica Jaworski
Elsa Lumia
Carlos Martinez*
Emma Oliveri
Olivia Minarich
Amanda Quintanilla
Alyssa Spina
Morgan Stolz
VIOLA
Jacqueline Alonso
Ehren Auer
Sam DiGennaro
Lola Gehman*
Nathan Redlein
Dylan Slade
Kiersten Wazny
VIOLONCELLO
Olivia Charleston
Maggie Christie
Gabriel Cook
Joaquin Fraga
Amy Frankovich*
Ollie Hernandez
Serenity Laird
Jayden Miranda
Lauren Pacholec
Miranda Paulino
Noah Pinto
Mirabel Sasiela
Ryan Seevers
Hannah Tufano
BASS
Caedmon Brown
Charlie Centeno*
Holden Chamberlain
Molly Martellotta
LIBRARIANS
Vanessa Cruz
Lola Gehman
Maggie Christie
Michael J. Colburn, Conductor
Michael J. Colburn is a freelance conductor and clinician who regularly leads professional and student ensembles in festivals, residencies, and a variety of other settings throughout the country. In June 2024 he was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Orchestra of Northern New York, a professional ensemble based in Potsdam, NY. He is also the Music Director and Conductor of the Me2/ Orchestra in Burlington, VT, a classical music organization devoted to erasing the stigma of mental illness through supportive rehearsals and inspiring performances, and is an Affiliate Artist at the University of Vermont, where he teaches euphonium. In 2024 he became a member of the Educational Consultant team at the Conn Selmer Division of Education. From 2014 to 2022, Colburn was Director of Bands at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN, where he conducted the Butler University Wind Ensemble and offered instruction in conducting, euphonium, and the history and literature of the wind band. Before his tenure at Butler, Colburn served for 27 years in “The President’s Own” U. S. Marine Band, holding a variety of positions including Principal Euphonium (1991-1996), Assistant Director (1996-2004), and Director (2004-2014). As Director, Colburn was music advisor to the White House and regularly conducted the Marine Band and Chamber Orchestra at the Executive Mansion and at the Presidential Inaugurations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He was promoted to Colonel by President Bush in a private Oval Office ceremony in 2007. In 2014 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by Gen. James Amos and the Medal of Honor by the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic Board of Directors. He has served as chair of the Sousa-ABA-Ostwald Award and as an adjudicator for the Sudler Award, Barlow Endowment, Music for All, and the Col. George S. Howard Award for Excellence in Military Bands. Colburn is a Past President of the American Bandmasters Association, has been a board member of the National Band Association, and currently serves as Vice President for Project Enhancement for the John Philip Sousa Foundation.
PROGRAM NOTES
Callirhoë, Suite d’orchestre, Op. 37 (1888)
To most modern musicians, the name “Chaminade” conjures up images of young flute players studiously practicing for an audition that includes the composer’s ubiquitous Flute Concertino, a work written for the Paris Conservatoire’s legendary Concours Competition. But many of these musicians have little idea just how prolific and successful a composer Chaminade was, including the fact that she was the first female composer awarded the Légion d’Honneur. Chaminade had the good fortune to be born into a wealthy and musical family. She showed talent at an early age, but her family’s status worked against her when she was recommended for study at the Paris Conservatoire, as her father felt it would be improper for a young woman of her class. He did allow her to study privately with many of the same teachers she would have studied with at the Conservatoire, and she progressed quickly as both a pianist and composer. By her twenties she was presenting salon performances of her piano works throughout France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland. In 1892 she visited England for the first time, and Queen Victoria was such a fan that she awarded Chaminade the Jubilee medal in 1897. She toured the United States in 1908, performing to rave reviews in the twelve cities she visited. Although her rate of composing diminished in her later years, her music remained popular up to her death in 1944.
Although most of her works were “miniatures,” e.g. short piano works or songs, for a time in her early thirties Chaminade gained considerable attention as an orchestral composer, especially due to the success of several works that premiered in 1888. These include her only work for the ballet, Callirhoë. Produced at the Grand Théâtre de Marseille on March 16th, 1888, the ballet received over 200 performances, and Chaminade quickly prepared the Suite d’Orchestre to capitalize on its popularity. While a performance of the suite does not require a full synopsis of the plot, it is helpful to know that the “Prelude” accompanies the opening of the ballet. This is when we first see Callirhoë, a beautiful princess who has been captured by Alcmaeon with the intention to make her his wife. Callirhoë is sitting amongst Alcmaeon’s slaves and next to a statue of Venus, whose presence foreshadows romantic intervention yet to come. In the “Pas des Écharpes” (Dance of the Scarves), Alcmaeon’s slaves dance provocatively around Callirhoë, and offer her scarves to choose from for her own dance. She drapes herself in the darkest scarf and offers a dance of melancholy
and homesickness. The “Scherzettino” and “Pas des Cymbalés” are musical sequences from the elaborate ceremonial offering to Venus, to whom Alcmaeon offers an appeal for assistance in his quest to woo Callirhoë. The ceremony is replete with priests, vestal virgins, and child soldiers, all vividly depicted in Chaminade’s evocative score.
Symphony No. 9, Op. 70 (1945)
In his insightful assessment of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9, Leonard Bernstein points out the weight of expectation for any composer writing their ninth symphony. The reason for this anxiety is of course Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony, a work as grand and glorious as a symphony could be. The shadow cast by Beethoven has spooked composers facing the prospect of composing a ninth symphony ever since, and was clearly on the mind of Shostakovich when it was time for him to pen his ninth. At first, Shostakovich claimed he would embrace Beethoven’s model and declared that his symphony would be scored for large orchestra, soloists, and chorus. The timing of the work coincided with the conclusion of World War II, and considering that the composer’s two preceding symphonies were monumental programmatic works relating to the war, there was every reason to expect a grand work celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. In January 1945 Shostakovich told his students that he had begun just such a work, and only a week later reported that he was already halfway through the exposition. But then, suddenly, he stopped. He did not start working on the symphony again until late July, and when he did, he started completely from scratch, and with a very different game plan. Instead of a large-scale work for combined forces, Shostakovich’s revised symphony is on the smallest of scales, in terms of both instrumentation and length. So why the change of heart? Shostakovich didn’t reveal his hand until he offered this account in his memoirs: “They wanted a fanfare from me, an ode. They wanted me to write a majestic Ninth Symphony. Everyone praised Stalin and now I was supposed to join in this unholy affair. And they demanded that Shostakovich use quadruple winds, choir, and soloists to hail the leader. All the more because Stalin found the number auspicious: The Ninth. He would be able to say, there it is, our national Ninth.” This was hardly the first time Shostakovich found himself bristling at the prospect of being a tool for Stalin, and in spite of some hard-learned lessons, he just couldn’t bring himself to compose a work that would be used to glorify a regime he despised. Shostakovich could not have been surprised (in fact, was probably pleased) when Stalin and the Soviet critics denounced the piece. The work was censured
in 1946 for its “ideological weakness” and banned by the central censorship board in 1948. The work was not initially well received in the West, either, but eventually gained a following as musicians and audiences developed a better understanding of the context of the work.
The first movement bears the strongest influences of the classical model, including a repeated exposition, and it’s impossible not to hear the influences of classical masters like Haydn and Mozart. The humor ranges from the innocence of the opening melodies in the strings and woodwinds to the broad, vaudevillian entrances of the solo trombone, whose repeated efforts to join the party are impossible to miss. The second movement features a couple of ghostly waltzes, the first of which is offered by the clarinet and is continually interrupted by an occasional extra beat that gives the dance a hesitant, halting quality. The second waltz is led by the muted strings, lending the music an especially spectral quality. The third, fourth, and fifth movements are played without interruption, started off by a breath-taking scherzo with sweeping figures in the woodwinds and strings, raucous responses from the brass, and a swaggering solo from the trumpet. As joyful and exuberant as the movement is, the energy proves to be unsustainable, and the merrymaking gradually fades into a much darker and serious fourth movement. The movement is brief, alternating between solemn fanfares in the low brass and extended cadenzas for solo bassoon that contain brief references to the ninth symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler. The melancholy of the bassoon’s soliloquies gives way to what Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky called “the unjustified merriment of the finale.” Merry indeed, but always with the typical Shostakovich sarcasm and wit. The opening, clownish melody offered by the bassoon is passed around the orchestra with increasing energy and intensity, eventually leading to breakneck coda fit for the Moulin Rouge. Considering how surprising this symphony is in every way, it’s a conclusion that seems entirely appropriate.
Program notes by Michael Colburn
