Elgin Symphony Orchestra The Planets Program

The Planets Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 7:30 PM Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 2:30 PM Hemmens Cultural Center, Elgin, IL Chad Goodman, conductor Sopranos and altos of the Elgin Master Chorale This concert is dedicated to the memory of Roxelyn “Roxy” Pepper, a great friend of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra. The Pepper Family has been a longtime supporter of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra. She is greatly missed.

LIGETI

Lontano

MOZART

Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K.297, “Paris” Allegro assai Andantino Allegro ~ Intermission ~

HOLST

The Planets Mars, the Bringer of War Venus, the Bringer of Peace Mercury, the Winged Messenger Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age Uranus, the Magician Neptune, the Mystic Sopranos and altos of the Elgin Master Chorale

This program is supported, in part, by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency Este programa es apoyado, en parte, por un subsidio de la Agencia del Consejo de Artes de Illinois

ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL/PERSONAL DE LA ORQUESTA Violin I Isabella Lippi Concertmaster Eleanor Bartsch** Associate Concertmaster Gerald Loughney Kate Carter Eric Pidluski Joseph Malmquist Susan Carlson Carol Dylan Helen Kim Lee Wendy Evans Carmen Abelson Jennifer Leckie Violin II Daniela Folker Principal Robbie Herbst Assistant Principal Caroline Slack Maria Arrua Susan Thorne Steve Winkler Cristina Buciu Elizabeth Huffman Kelvin Lin Meg Lanfear Kathryn Siegel

Viola Rebecca Swan Principal Loretta Gillespie Assistant Principal Josef Fischer++ Jason Butler Erin Rafferty Sava Velkoff Susan Posner Cello Matthew Agnew Principal Nazar Dzhuryn Assistant Principal Kerena Fox Mark Kuntz Robert Weber Elizabeth Start Sara Sitzer Double Bass Timothy Shaffer** Principal Jeremy Attanaseo Assistant Principal Susan Sullivan Greg Heintz Jason Niehoff Adam Attard++

**On Leave 2024-2025 ++Season Substitute

Flute Jean Bishop Principal Scott Metlicka Piccolo Scott Metlicka Oboe James Kim Guest Principal Joseph Claude English Horn Joseph Claude

Clarinet Gene Collerd Principal Trevor O’Riordan Bassoon Vincent Disantis Principal Collin Anderson French Horn Greg Flint Principal Steven Replogle Sharon Jones Mary BuscanicsJones

Trumpet Ross Beacraft Principal Michael Brozick David Gauger Assistant Principal Trombone Reed Capshaw Principal Adam Moen Bass Trombone Mark Fry Tuba Charles Schuchat Principal Timpani Robert Everson Principal Percussion Brian Oriente Principal Michael Folker Harp Lillian Lau Principal Keyboard Patrica Lee Principal

Stage Managers David Goldman and Eric Block

ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRACIÓN Chief Executive Officer, Marc Thayer Vice President of Artistic Planning & Operations, Eric Gaston-Falk Director of Marketing, Chuck Kocal Director of Development, Leslie Antoniel Orchestra Librarian & Digital Marketing Manager, Macauley Manzano Community Partnerships & Orchestra Personnel Manager, Greg Heintz Patron Services & Office Manager, Luiza Moraes Public Relations Manager, Donna Lake Corporate Development Manager, Betty Briceño Development Coordinator, Jonathan Horn In Harmony Program Coordinator, LaTrisha Williams Box Office Assistant, Nicholas Urich Translator, Elsa Jimenez

Extra Musicians Violin I & II Sam Battista, Julia Evans, Betty Lewis, Erik Liljenberg, Pamela Lutter, Jinty McTavish, Joanna Nerius, Andrea Tolzmann, Sherri Zhang Viola Becky Coffman, Mark Djordjevic, Roz Green, Kelly Larson, Nick Munagian, Jacqueline Scavetta Cello Richard Yeo Bass Doug Johnson, Lauren Pierce Flute Eliza Bangert, Eliza Chu Oboe Will Stevens, Hannah Fusco Clarinet Barbara Drapcho, Michael Tran Bassoon Josh Fleming, Karl Rzasa French Horn Dan O’Connell, Peter Jirousek, Emma Sepmeier, Renée Vogen Trumpet Christian Anderson, Matt Lee Trombone David Becker Timpani Joseph LaPalomento Percussion Tina Laughlin, Richard Janicki Harp Julie Spring Organ Jeff Neufeld

MUSIC DIRECTOR / DIRECTOR MUSICAL Chad Goodman has received widespread praise for thrilling conducting that combines “precision, agility and fervor” (N. Stanić Kovačevic, South Florida Classical Review) and for displaying the “pitch perfect combination of abandon and subtlety” (L. Budman, South Florida Classical Review) The 2024/25 season marks Goodman’s 2nd season as Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra—only the fifth leader in the orchestra’s prestigious seven-decade history.

Concerts with the ESO include Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.6; Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Stella Chen; Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, coupled with Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, performed by Samuel Vargas; and Holst’s masterpiece, The Planets.

Goodman holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Music degree from San Francisco State University. His mentors include Michael Tilson Thomas and Alasdair Neale.

The Elgin Master Chorale (EMC) is a cultural cornerstone of Elgin and the Fox Valley. Under the direction of Music Director Andrew Lewis, EMC is comprised of approximately 90 adult singers - admitted by audition only - who share a passion for choral masterworks and other fine choral repertoire. EMC was formed in 1947, under the name Elgin Choral Union, when singers from fifteen local choirs joined together to perform Brahms’ German Requiem.

EMC creates collaborations with local performing arts organizations such as the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, the Maud Powell String Quartet, Chamber Music on the Fox, Ballet Folklorico Huehuecoyotl, Second Baptist Church Choir, and many others that elevate and energize the community.

EMC produces an annual educational outreach concert, free of charge, for fourth through sixth grade area students, created specifically for their engagement, education, and artistic enjoyment. In this way, area students learn to value the arts as an integral part of their growth and a path to achieving their full potential.

EMC performs many free concerts each year at Gail Borden Public Library, at Elgin’s Memorial Day observance, and at Elgin City Council’s New Citizens Recognition Ceremony. Civic celebrations, such as these, inspire and unite the community and are especially meaningful to members. EMC, in its 78th season, is proud of its rich history, dedicated singers, and drive to excel. EMC has grown from its valued roots as a "union" of choirs and is dedicated to the mission of being the premiere vocal ensemble in the Fox Valley.

PROGRAM NOTES Written by - Daniel Maki Lontano György Ligeti (1923-2006) The twentieth century was by all odds the most revolutionary period in music history, presenting composers with a vast and sometimes bewildering array of styles and techniques from which to choose. A sense of this diversity can be had simply by a list of some of the “-isms” of the period, such as impressionism, expressionism, neoclassicism, serialism, and minimalism. While composers may have tried to escape from the orthodoxies of the past, the avant-garde presented its own rigid orthodoxies. It would be difficult to name anyone who more clearly illustrates the dilemma that composers faced than the Hungarian composer György Ligeti. Ligeti himself neatly summarized the problem: “We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.” Ligeti did indeed escape and by finding his own unique voice became one of the most important and most original musical minds of the last half of the twentieth century.

He was born in Transylvania, which at that time was part of Romania but would soon be regained by Hungary. His family were highly educated Hungarian Jews, including a grandfather who was a painter, and a cousin, Agnes Heller, who was a respected philosopher. He was also distantly related to the eminent violinist and pedagogue Leopold Auer. World War ll would have a devastating effect on his life. His musical education, which had begun at his local conservatory, as well as with private lessons in Budapest, was brutally interrupted when in 1944 he was conscripted into a forced-labor brigade. When the Nazis took control, deportations to concentration camps began, but somehow Ligeti was able to escape them.

Unfortunately, his family was not so lucky. His father, brother, uncle, and aunt all died in camps. Miraculously, his mother survived.

After the war, Ligeti enrolled in the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and after graduating was appointed to the faculty as teacher of music theory. At the same time, he was doing musicological research into Hungarian folk music and composing mostly choral music. In his own music he was understandably

influenced by Hungary’s great modernist composer, Béla Bartók. The new communist regime placed severe restrictions on what kind of music could be written, and two months after the communist suppression of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 he fled to Vienna, eventually becoming an Austrian citizen. After having been cut off from the west, he was now free to explore the newest musical techniques. Inevitably he would make his way to Germany where, led by composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, the cities of Darmstadt and Cologne had become the centers of musical high modernism. There he would learn about the newest techniques of atonal and electronic music but would also develop a healthy skepticism about the notion of systematic methods for composition. “I don’t like gurus,” he once said.

He would finally develop an eclectic style which would borrow from styles as different as nineteenth century Romanticism and Renaissance period church music. Non-European music also influenced him, including that from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, not to mention American jazz. His unique style filled with the pure delight in sound, and the exploration of new textures and sound patterns brought him international renown. His music found its way into the popular culture through film. Stanley Kubrick was a fan and used his music in his films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut.

Lontano was written in 1967 and has become one of Ligeti’s most often performed works. It employs the technique which he called “micropolyphony”, a layering of many different lines moving in different rhythms to create a thick texture of sound. Critic Alex Ross has said that the work has the character of an occult object, or of a dream landscape “in which sound becomes a tangible surface.”

Lontano is the Italian word for “distant” and the work certainly does create an atmosphere of eerie remoteness. Portions of Lontano were used in Kubrick’s film, The Shining, as well as Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. * * *

Symphony No. 31 in D major, K. 297, “Paris” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) Mozart had been to Paris before, first as a seven-year-old prodigy on a trip that his parents had planned in order to show off the remarkable precocity of Wolfgang and his older sister, Maria Anna. That trip had been a great success, as the young people were cosseted and adored in various European capitals by kings, queens, and aristocrats of all sorts. This trip in 1778 would be different. The twenty-two-year-old composer was traveling with his mother, who was in poor health, and he was looking for something which he, alas, would never find: a secure, steady position worthy of his enormous ability. Although his attempts at finding patronage in aristocratic houses failed, the trip was not to be a total loss.

Joseph Legros, director of the famous Concert Spirituel, one of the oldest concert series in Europe, invited him to write a symphony that was scheduled to be performed on Corpus Christi Day, June 18, 1778.

Despite having developed a serious disdain for French musical life, he immediately got to work and produced a symphony which pleased him. But would the audience like it? As he wrote in a letter to his father, “to tell the truth, I don’t much care…The few intelligent Frenchmen who are there will like it…As for the stupid ones, I can’t see that there is any great misfortune not to please them.”

In fact, he would go to considerable lengths to adapt himself to French tastes and, despite a ragged dress rehearsal of which he said, “I have never heard anything worse in all my life,” the concert was a success.

The French were accustomed to beginning a work with the so-called premier coup d’archet (literally, “first bow stroke”), meaning several chords played forcefully in unison by the entire band. Mozart made fun of this tradition: “What a fuss these boors make of this! It’s a joke.” Nevertheless, he dutifully provided what might be called almost a parody of the practice, four thunderous chords which certainly grab the attention, especially when played by the largest orchestra he had ever used. (The large wind section includes trumpets, horns, and, for the first time ever, clarinets, an instrument that would become very important in his work.)

As if those chords were not exciting enough for French taste, Mozart throws in a trick invented by his favorite orchestra, the Mannheim Orchestra. This is a brilliant, fast, ascending scale called

a “Mannheim rocket,” certainly an explosive way to begin a movement. (Incidentally, the Mannheim group also became known for various other musical gestures including the “Mannheim crescendo,” a spectacular crescendo for the full orchestra.) These exciting effects recur a number of times and set a tone of brilliance and swagger throughout the first movement, although there is also a delicate second theme filled with rococo-ish filigree.

An interesting insight into audience behavior of the period is provided by Mozart’s descriptions. Not only did the audience clap between movements (sometimes demanding an encore), but also during the music itself. In a letter to his father he says: “In the middle of the opening Allegro there was a passage that I knew people would like; the whole audience was carried away by it, and there was tremendous applause. But I knew when I wrote it what sort of effect it would make, and so I introduced it again at the end, with the result that it was encored.” Scholars have long conjectured about exactly what that passage might be—there are several striking possibilities. Our Elgin audience is invited to make its own guess, but no clapping please.

The second movement is a graceful Andantino with woodwinds supplementing string melodies. This is the only movement that didn’t quite meet with the approval of Monsieur Legros, and he asked Mozart to write a new version for the second performance, a request that Mozart accepted. Scholars argue about which version was first.

Unlike so many symphonies of the Classical period, this one does not have a minuet as a third movement but proceeds directly to the finale. The audience expected that the finale would begin with bombastic chords similar to the first movement, but Mozart plays a clever trick, which he describes as follows: “I began with just violins, piano, for the first eight bars – immediately followed by a forte; the audience (as I expected) said “Shh” at the piano—then came the forte. The moment they heard the forte, they started to clap.”

To mention one other feature of this wonderful movement, in the middle Mozart employs some complex, almost Bachian counterpoint, which he probably thought might be appreciated by the supposedly few intelligent listeners. The exuberant movement went so well that, as he put it, “I was so happy that as soon as the symphony was over I went off to the Palais Royal and had a large ice, said the rosary as I’d vowed to do, and then went home.”

Unfortunately, it must be added that Mozart’s mother died soon after that performance, far away from her beloved home in Salzburg. * * * The Planets Gustav Holst (1874-1934) In these times when images of outer space fill our movie screens and the phrase “what’s your sign?” is part of our vernacular, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, first performed in London in 1918, seems not only prophetic but still remarkably up to date. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, The Planets has been much flattered, serving as grist for the mill of many a Hollywood composer in search of “far out” celestial effects. Despite his Germanic sounding name (his father’s family was Swedish), Holst was very much an Englishman and was strongly influenced by English folkmusic. He had a visionary turn of mind and had many non-musical interests including such arcane subjects as Sanskrit literature and astrology, which occasionally found expression in his music.

The Planets is in effect a series of tone poems, each representing a planet with its astrological significance. Each movement has its own character and there is no thematic connection between them. Although the music is obviously in some way descriptive, Holst denied that he was writing program music.

Brilliantly scored for a very large orchestra of Richard Straussian proportions, The Planets has become something of a “crossover” phenomenon, causing many a rock fan to exchange guitars for the spectacular sonics of a full symphony orchestra.

The music encompasses a great range of moods, and in that connection it is interesting to note how deeply the emotional significance of the planets is embedded in our way of thinking and even in our language. Named after Classical gods, a number of the planets have their own adjective, e.g., Mars—martial; Jupiter or Jove, as it is also known—jovial; Mercury—mercurial; Saturn— saturnine; and, unfortunate though the connotation usually is, Venus has her “venereal.” Whether or not he is writing program music, Holst brilliantly captures these emotional states.

Beginning with the obviously sinister sounds of the war god Mars, the music moves through the gentle Venus, goddess of love, and the elfin Mercury, delivering his messages with supernatural

speed. Jupiter was for Holst a Falstaffian figure, or as he was once quoted, “one of those jolly fat people who enjoy life.” Saturn seems to show both the gravity and the beauty of old age, while Uranus demonstrates not only magic, but a touch of comedy as well.

Finally, as we hear the mysterious sound of a wordless women’s choir, the celestial journey ends with the eerie quiet of Neptune.

The music trails off into the distance, leaving only the silence of the universe.

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