UMD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
James Ross, music director Evelyn Elsing, cello Friday, October 11, 2013 . 8PM Dekelboum Concert Hall . $25/$20 subscriber
e UMD Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert of the season features faculty artist Evelyn Elsing performing Schumann’s Cello Concerto. is piece has been a long and enthusiastically awaited collaboration for Elsing and James Ross, who are both colleagues and dear friends. Ross says, “I can imagine no richer way to celebrate Evy’s decades of fabulous teaching and musicianship at Maryland than with this introspective masterpiece.” e beloved Ms. Elsing will be retiring from the UMD School of Music faculty in 2014. e program is rounded out with Berlioz’s Corsair Overture, op. 21, Wagner’s “Prelude and Love Death” from Tristan and Isolde and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s orchestral tour-de-force Foreign Bodies. Evelyn Elsing has been a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland since 1974 and is the first recipient of the Barbara K. Steppel Memorial Faculty Fellowship in Cello in the UMD School of Music.
THE MATCHMAKER
UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
BY THORNTON WILDER Alan Paul, director October 11 – 19, 2013 . Visit our website for more information Kay Theatre . $25/$20 subscriber
ornton Wilder’s 1955 comedy reveals the exploits of matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who brokers marriages and other transactions in Yonkers, New York at the turn of the 20th century. Hired by local merchant Horace Vandergelder to find a wife, Dolly sets her sights on the eligible widower herself. Slapstick ensues — mistaken identities, secret rendezvous, separated lovers and even a trip to night court — but in the end everyone finds themselves paired with a perfect match. When e Matchmaker premiered, ornton Wilder was considered to be one of America’s most important authors, with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit. Critics had to adjust their expectations for the play, which seemed to adhere to melodramatic conventions that contrasted starkly with Wilder’s other work. Wilder himself suggested that the play was a way to shake off “the nonsense of the nineteenth-century staging” by making fun of it. But whether taken at face value or viewed as a commentary on theatrical conventions, e Matchmaker has proven to have staying power onstage. THE MATCHMAKER (Thornton Wilder) is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.
WHAT IS ART? UMD School of Music
UMD WIND ORCHESTRA
Michael Votta, music director Sunday, October 13, 2013 . 4PM Dekelboum Concert Hall . $25/$20 subscriber
e UMD Wind Orchestra opens its season with a program that includes Stanislaw Skrowaczyewski’s Music for Winds, as well as works by Webern, Lampe, Wilder and Ruggles that exemplify the high-art ideals and modernist style embodied in Skrowaczyewski’s work. Music for Winds is a symphony without strings. e composer says, “e listener may find the character or tone of the piece to be sad, mysterious or even tragic. is could be my own reaction to the state of our world, in which great art is slowly disappearing and being replaced by superficial ‘semi-culture.’” e program will also include Webern’s Concerto, op. 24, Lampe’s Serenade, Alec Wilder’s Kindergarten Flower Pageant and Ruggles’ Angels.
claricesmithcenter.umd.edu . 15
OCTOBER 2013
SCHUMANN’S CELLO CONCERTO UMD School of Music