2025.11.23 | Pacific Symphony with Shelley Program

Pacific Symphony

plays Mozart & Beethoven with Alexander Shelley cond., & Julian Rhee, violin

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 3PM Soka Performing Arts Center at Soka University of America

Pacific Symphony with Alexander Shelley

PROGRAM

MOZART Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major, K. 211 Allegro moderato Andante Rondo: Allegro

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 Poco sostenuto; Vivace Allegretto Presto; Assai meno presto Allegro con brio

ABOUT THE PROGRAM Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major, K.211 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

Everyone agrees that Mozart’s piano concertos represent one of the summits of his achievement.

Composed across the entire span of his creative life, those 27 concertos redefined the form, making the soloist and orchestra protagonists in a virtually symphonic argument, and along the way they offer some of Mozart’s most expressive and dramatic music. If Mozart was one of Europe’s greatest pianists, he was also one of its finest violinists, and that makes the fact that he wrote only five violin concertos all the more mysterious. Mozart was very young when he composed his violin concertos: he wrote all five while still in his teens (they were composed between his Fifth and Sixth Piano Concertos) and then never returned to the form. His great Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola of 1779 suggests how extraordinary a mature violin concerto from him might have been, but Mozart clearly had no interest in writing another violin concerto. Some have suggested that he so identified the violin with his father that once he rejected his father’s controlling influence and moved to Vienna, he also rejected his father’s instrument.

Mozart wrote his First Violin Concerto in 1773, then composed the remaining four across 1775, when he was 19. The Mozart family was in the employment of

Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg, and so the young composer’s primary duty in these years was to write church music, but he also wrote extensively for friends in Salzburg, composing serenades, symphonies, and other instrumental music. No one knows the occasion for which Mozart wrote his violin concertos. He had been named Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court in 1772, so he may have written them for himself, he may have written them for friends in Salzburg, and he may have written them for the Italian violinist Antonio Brunetti, who would replace him as Konzertmeister in 1776.

Mozart completed his Violin Concerto No. 2 on June 14, 1775. By coincidence, on that exact same day in Philadelphia the Second Continental Congress named George Washington commander of the Continental Army—the world was about to change, though there could be little inkling of that in Salzburg in 1775. Mozart’s final three violin concertos have become part of the repertory and are heard fairly regularly, but the first two remain less familiar. Some have felt that Mozart used the Italian baroque violin concerto as the model for his Second Violin Concerto: the solo and orchestral parts are not so tightly integrated as in the later concertos, the solo part is unusually florid and decorative, and there are six separate opportunities for cadenzas in this concerto—one in the first movement, two in the second, and three in the third.

This agreeable music may be

ABOUT THE PROGRAM described briefly. The Allegro moderato opens with a brief but vigorous orchestral introduction, full of syncopations and dotted rhythms. The soloist enters with the orchestra’s opening gesture, but quickly the solo violin introduces themes and passagework all its own, and that division will characterize the entire movement.

Mozart offers his soloist a cadenza just before the orchestra’s spirited conclusion. The lyric Andante finds soloist and orchestra trading material smoothly; not only are there two cadenzas in this movement, but at other moments Mozart inserts fermatas into the flow of the music, effectively bringing it to brief pauses. The finale is a rondo whose subdued opening quickly gives way to some very energetic writing for the soloist. The three opportunities for cadenzas in this movement mean that the soloist can shape this movement much as he or she wants—Mozart would have assumed a certain compositional skill from his soloist. The concerto concludes with a quick reprise of the rondo theme.

Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna Beethoven turned 40 in December 1810. Forty can be a difficult age for anyone, but for Beethoven things were going very well. True, his hearing had deteriorated to the point where he was virtually deaf, but he was still riding that white-hot explosion of creativity

that has become known, for better or worse, as his “Heroic Style.”

Over the decade-long span of that style (1803-1813) Beethoven essentially re-imagined music and its possibilities. The works that crystalized the Heroic Style—the Eroica and the Fifth Symphony— unleashed a level of violence and darkness previously unknown in music, forces that Beethoven’s biographer Maynard Solomon has described as “hostile energy,” and then triumphed over them. In these violent symphonies, music became not a matter of polite discourse but of conflict, struggle, and resolution.

In the fall of 1811, Beethoven began a new symphony—it would be his Seventh—and it would differ sharply from those two famous predecessors. Gone is the sense of cataclysmic struggle and hard-won victory that had driven those earlier symphonies. There are no battles fought and won in the Seventh Symphony—instead, this music is infused from its first instant with a mood of pure celebration. Such a spirit has inevitably produced a number of interpretations as to what this symphony is “about”: Berlioz heard a peasants’ dance in it, Wagner called it “the apotheosis of the dance,” and more recently Maynard Solomon has suggested that the Seventh is the musical representation of a festival, a brief moment of pure spiritual liberation.

But it may be safest to leave the issue of “meaning” aside and instead listen to the Seventh simply as music. There had never been music like this before, nor has there

ABOUT THE PROGRAM been since—Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony contains more energy than any other piece of music ever written. Much has been made (correctly) of Beethoven’s ability to transform small bits of theme into massive symphonic structures, but in the Seventh he begins not so much with theme as with rhythm: he builds the entire symphony from what are almost scraps of rhythm, tiny figures that seem unpromising, even uninteresting, in themselves.

Gradually he unleashes the energy locked up in these small figures and from them builds one of the mightiest symphonies ever written.

The first movement opens with a slow introduction so long that it almost becomes a separate movement of its own. Tremendous chords punctuate the slow beginning, which gives way to a poised duet for oboes. The real effect of this long Poco sostenuto, however, is to coil the energy that will be unleashed in the true first movement, and Beethoven conveys this rhythmically: the meter of the introduction is a rocksolid (even square) 4/4, but the main body of the movement, marked Vivace, transforms this into a lightfooted 6/8. This Vivace begins in what seems a most unpromising manner, however, as woodwinds toot out a simple dotted 6/8 rhythm and the solo flute announces the first theme, a graceful melody on this same rhythm. Beethoven builds the entire first movement from this simple dotted rhythm, which saturates virtually every measure.

As theme, as accompaniment, as motor rhythm, it is always present,

hammering into our consciousness.

At the climax, horns sail majestically to the close as the orchestra thunders out that rhythm one final time.

The second movement, in A minor, is one of Beethoven’s most famous slow movements, but the debate continues as to whether it really is a slow movement. Beethoven could not decide whether to mark it Andante (a walking tempo) or Allegretto (a moderately fast pace). He finally decided on Allegretto, though the actual pulse is somewhere between those two.

This movement too is built on a short rhythmic pattern, in this case the first five notes: long-short-shortlong-long—and this pattern repeats here almost as obsessively as the pattern of the first movement.

The opening sounds like a series of static chords—the theme itself occurs quietly inside those chords—and Beethoven simply repeats this theme, varying it as it proceeds. The central episode in A major moves gracefully along smoothly-flowing triplets before a little fugato on the opening rhythms builds to a great climax. Beethoven winds the movement down on the woodwinds’ almost skeletal reprise of the fundamental rhythm.

The Scherzo explodes to life on a theme full of grace notes, powerful accents, flying staccatos, and timpani explosions. This alternates with a trio section for winds reportedly based on an old pilgrims’ hymn, though no one, it seems, has been able to identify that exact hymn. Beethoven offers a second

ABOUT THE PROGRAM repeat of the trio, then seems about to offer a third before five powerful chords cut the movement off abruptly.

These chords set the stage for the Allegro con brio, again built on the near-obsessive treatment of a short rhythmic pattern, in this case the movement’s opening four-note fanfare. This four-note pattern punctuates the entire movement: it shapes the beginning of the main theme, and its stinging accents thrust the music forward continuously as this movement almost boils over with energy.

The ending is remarkable: above growling cellos and basses (which rock along on a two-note ostinato for 28 measures), the opening theme drives to a climax that Beethoven marks fff, a dynamic marking he almost never used. This conclusion is virtually Bacchanalian in its wild power—no matter how many times one has heard it, the ending of the Seventh Symphony remains one of the most exciting moments in all of music.

The first performance of the Seventh Symphony took place in the Great Hall of the University in Vienna on December 8, 1813.

Though nearly deaf at this point, Beethoven led the performance, and the orchestra was able to compensate for his failings, so that the premiere was a huge success.

On that occasion—and at three subsequent performances over the next few months—the audience demanded that the second movement be repeated.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger © 2025.

ABOUT THE ARTIST ALEXANDER SHELLEY ARTISTIC AND MUSIC DIRECTOR DESIGNATE One of the foremost conductors of his generation, Alexander Shelley is “a natural communicator, both on and off the podium” (The Daily Telegraph). A passionate and articulate advocate for new music and the role of music in society, Shelley has spearheaded multiple award-winning and groundbreaking projects, unlocking creativity in the next generation and bringing symphonic music to new audiences.

With a conducting technique described as “immaculate, everything crystal clear” (Yorkshire Post) and with a “precision, distinction and beauty of gesture not seen since Lorin Maazel” (Le Devoir), Shelley is known for the integrity of his interpretations and for his creative programming, having led more than 40 major world premieres, highly praised cycles of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms symphonies, operas, ballets and innovative multimedia productions.

In 2024, Shelley was appointed to become Pacific Symphony’s third artistic leader, taking the title of Artistic and Music Director, beginning in the 2026-27 season.

He is serving as Artistic and Music Director Designate during the 202526 season, which marks Pacific Symphony’s 47th season.

The 2025-26 season will be Shelley’s 11th and final as Music

Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO). In 2023, Shelley was named Artistic and Music Director at Artis—Naples, in Florida, where he provides artistic leadership to the Naples Philharmonic and oversees the entire multidisciplinary organization. He also continues as the Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he has held since 2015. He was the youngestever Chief Conductor of Germany’s Nürnberger Symphoniker, a position he held for eight seasons, from 2009 to 2017.

Shelley performs regularly across six continents with the world’s finest orchestras and soloists. He collaborates with leading artists, including Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Renée Fleming, Hilary Hahn, Thomas Hampson, Daniel Hope, Lang Lang, and Itzhak Perlman.

He is a regular guest with some of the finest orchestras of Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australasia, including Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Helsinki, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Malaysian, Oslo, Rotterdam and Stockholm philharmonic orchestras and the Sao Paulo, Houston, Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, Munich, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand symphony orchestras.

Shelley is equally at home leading symphonic, opera, and ballet repertoire as well as multi-genre

ABOUT THE ARTIST projects. His operatic credentials include leading productions at the Royal Danish Opera, Opera Lyra/National Arts Centre, Canadian Opera Company/ National Arts Centre, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Opéra National de Montpellier and Opera North (Leeds).

During his tenure at NACO, Shelley’s programming has been credited for turning NAC Orchestra “almost overnight ... into one of the more audacious orchestras in North America” (Maclean’s). Together they have undertaken major tours of North America, Europe, and Asia, recorded award-winning albums, and commissioned groundbreaking projects that include Life Reflected, a multimedia work celebrating Canadian female pioneers, and Encount3rs, which commissioned new ballets from top composers and choreographers.

Shelley’s experience has been highlighted by a strong commitment to education and community engagement. With NACO, he has led innovative festivals, such as SPHERE and Ideas of North, and tours that celebrated Indigenous stories and music, including a histo ric performance on Eskasoni First Nation Reserve. He conceived and spearheads the NAC Mentorship Program, designed to nurture the next generation of musicians, ensuring that the impact of orchestral music extends beyond the concert hall.

Shelley was also the founding artistic director of the Deutsche

Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s “Future Lab,” an award-winning program that uses music and art to unlock potential in some of the most disadvantaged youth in Germany.

For his engagement in bringing music and the arts to young people in Germany and for his commitment to the power of music as a force for good, Shelley was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Born in London to celebrated concert pianists Howard Shelley and Hilary Macnamara, Shelley began playing the piano as a toddler and later learned to play the cello. He gained widespread attention when he was unanimously awarded first prize at the 2005 Leeds Conductors Competition, where he was praised as “the most exciting and gifted young conductor to have taken this highly prestigious award.”

JULIAN RHEE VIOLIN Winner of the prestigious 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, KoreanAmerican violinist Julian Rhee has enthralled listeners internationally, praised for his refinement and beauty of sound, and “the kind of poise and showmanship that thrills audiences.” (The Strad) His passion for all forms of collaboration has taken him around the world, producing a thoroughly sensitive and informed artist.

Rhee came to international prominence following his prize winning performances at the 2024 Queen Elisabeth International

ABOUT THE ARTIST Violin Competition and Silver Medal finish at The 11th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Also the first prize winner of the 2020 Elmar Oliveira International Competition and Astral Artists’ National Auditions, Rhee is the recipient of numerous awards such as the Aspen Festival’s Dorothy DeLay Fellowship, Arkady Fomin Scholarship Fund, Theodore Presser Scholar Award, The Foote Award, and the Manfred Grommek Prize from the Kronberg Academy.

He is a Young Strings of America Ambassador sponsored by SHAR Music.

Since his Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra debut at age 8, Rhee has gone on to perform with orchestras all across the world, such as the Belgian National Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Antwerp Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Aspen Philharmonic, East Coast Chamber, Orchestra Royal de Chamber de Wallonie, Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn, and San Diego Symphony, and with acclaimed conductors such as Francesco Lecce-Chong, Nicolas McGegan, David Danzmayr, Rune Bergmann, Valentina Peleggi, Antony Hermus, and Leonard Slatkin, among others. He has performed in an array of venues including Staatsoper Hamburg, Kronberg Academy’s Casals Forum, Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall, Center for Fine Arts BOZAR in Brussels, Heinz Hall, the Overture Center for the Arts, Teatro El Círculo in Rosario, Argentina, The Musikverein in Vienna, Bartok Hall

in Hungary, New World Center, and the John F Kennedy Center as a US Presidential Scholar, receiving his medal at the White House. Recent and upcoming engagements include appearances with the Stuttgarter KammerOrchester, Arkansas Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, European Orchestra Academy, and returns to the Santa Rosa Symphony, Eugene Symphony, and Madison Symphony Orchestras.

Equally invested in chamber music, Rhee is the newest member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center CMS’s Bowers Program.

Rhee has also performed at and attended festivals including the Ravinia Steans Institute, Marlboro Festival, Rockport Music, and North Shore Chamber Music Festivals, performing alongside esteemed musicians such as Vadim Gluzman, Jonathan Biss, Mitsuko Uchida, Kim Kashkashian, and Peter Wiley. He has appeared alongside Time For Three on NPR’s From the Top, Jupiter Chamber Players, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase, Milwaukee Public Television, and Wisconsin Public Radio and Television.

Rhee studied with Hye-Sun Lee and Almita Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago Academy and received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree as teaching assistant of Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory. He currently studies with Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST outstanding 1699 “Lady Tennant” Antonio Stradivari violin and Jean Pierre Marie Persoit bow on extended loan through the generosity of the Mary B. Galvin Foundation and the efforts of the Stradivari Society, a division of Bein & Fushi, Inc. The Mary B. Galvin Foundation, Inc. and the Stradivari Society support the very highest level of string playing by loaning precious antique Italian instruments to artists of exceptional talent and ability.outstanding 1699 “Lady Tennant” Antonio Stradivari violin and Jean Pierre Marie Persoit bow on extended loan through the generosity of the Mary B. Galvin Foundation and the efforts of the Stradivari Society, a division of Bein & Fushi, Inc. The Mary B. Galvin Foundation, Inc. and the Stradivari Society support the very highest level of string playing by loaning precious antique Italian instruments to artists of exceptional talent and ability.

PACIFIC SYMPHONY Pacific Symphony is the largest orchestra formed in the United States in the past 50 years and has earned national recognition for its adventurous programming, community engagement, and artistic growth. Founded in 1978, the Symphony has been led for 35 years

by Music Director Carl St.Clair, one of the longest-serving music directors of a major American orchestra.

In 2024, Alexander Shelley was named Artistic and Music Director Designate for the 2025–26 season and will begin his full-time tenure in the 2026–27 season, marking a bold

new chapter in the Symphony’s artistic evolution.

With a purpose to lift the human spirit through the power of music, the Symphony is a pillar of the cultural landscape of Southern California, enriching lives and bringing communities together through creative and diverse programming. As the resident orchestra of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, the Symphony presents more than 100 concerts and events each year and a rich array of education and community engagement programs, reaching more than 300,000 residents of all ages.

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soka.edu/pac tickets@soka.edu 949-480-4278

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CONCESSIONS

Concessions A wide variety of wine, beer, soft drinks and freshly prepared snacks will be available before the concert and during intermission.

Artist Drink Pick

Margarita We asked the artists for their favorite drink pick to feature at concessions!

Margarita was selected and will be available for purchase before the performance and during intermission.

Click here for menu and to order Pre-order your concessions and skip the line during intermission!

Concessions provided

by FPG Events

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SUA BOARD OF TRUSTEES Stephen S. Dunham, JD | CHAIR Vice President and General Counsel Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University | Baltimore, Maryland Tariq Hasan, PhD | VICE CHAIR Chief Executive Officer, SGI-USA | New York, New York Andrea Bartoli, PhD President, Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue | New York, New York Matilda Buck Benefactor | Los Angeles, California Lawrence E. Carter, Sr, PhD, DD, DH, DRS Dean, Professor of Religion, College Archivist and Curator, Morehouse College | Atlanta, Georgia Andy Firoved CEO, HOTB Software | Irvine, California Jason Goulah, PhD Professor of Bilingual-Bicultural Education and Director, Institute for Daisaku Ikeda Studies in Education, Director of Programs in Bilingual-Bicultural Education, World Language Education, and Value-Creating Education for Global Citizenship, College of Education, DePaul University | Chicago, Illinois Clothilde V. Hewlett, JD Commissioner of Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, State of California | San Francisco, California

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