OPUS | Vol 63 Issue 1

Eduard Zilberkant, Music Director

Board of

Charles W. Lemke

President

Tony Johansen President

Patty Mongold

April Jaillet

Glenda Grant Burbank

Joan Johnson McKenzie

Joe Vargas

Anna Zilberkant

Tom

Phyllis Pendergrast

April

Mailing

Fairbanks Symphony

Fairbanks,

Office

Jenni Warren Managing Director

Ana Maria Hoyos Marketing Director

Kerri Hamos

Front of House Manager

Stephanie Zaborak-Reed

Jessica Shafstall Manager

From the President

Dear Friends of the Fairbanks Symphony,

Welcome to yet another season! We’re thrilled to be able to see the light at the end of this dark, pandemic tunnel and finding our way back to normal performances in the Alaskan Interior.

Our season began on September 10th with the 28th annual Beat Beethoven 5K! Thank you to each and every sponsor and runner who came and participated in a race that had to be delayed due to the pandemic and the weather. We look forward to returning the race back to its normal schedule in April.

This season is full of wonderful sights, sounds, and events. Today, we’re proud to feature Beethoven’s Leonore Overture and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “From The New World.” Coming up next month, our 2nd Annual Halloween Spooktacular is sure to please as the Maestro has procured a masterful collection of music to help cele brate the occasion. Be sure to come dressed in your best costume! Don’t forget to get your tickets to the Design Alaska Holiday Concert happening on December 10th and 11th. There’s no better way to ring in the Holiday Season.

In addition to the wonderful concert lineup, we’re looking forward to the annual C Note Poker Tournament and our annual Rhapsody in Red and White. These events are always an enjoyable evening out and effective fundraisers for our organization. We hope to see you there.

All in all, we’re looking forward to a fantastic concert season, and we are excited to see each and every one of you. Here’s to a fantastic season!

As always, Chuck Lemke President, Fairbanks Symphony

Music Director and Conductor

Eduard Zilberkant

Russian-born Eduard Zilberkant is recognized as one of today’s most gifted artists and has an active career as conductor and pianist. A Yamaha performing artist, he has been received enthusiastically by audiences and press alike throughout Europe, Canada, Asia and the United States.

He has been a guest artist and conductor at some of the most prestigious music festivals which include the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York City; the Ravello Festival in Italy; the Gumi International Music Festival in South Korea; the Corfu Festival Ionian Concert Series in Greece; the Monolis Kalomiris International Music Festival in Greece; the Assisi International Festival and Orazio Frugoni Music Institute in Italy; the Baracasa Festival of Radio France in Montpellier, France; the Alaska International Piano-e-Competition, Fairbanks, Alaska; and the Bellingham Music Festival in Washington. Some of the orchestras he has guest conducted include the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Prague and on tour to Germany; the orchestra of Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano in Italy; the Martinu Chamber Orchestra in the Czech Republic and Germany; the Orchestra of the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily; the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra in New York City; the Teatro di San Carlo Orchestra in Naples, Italy; and the Prague Philharmonic both in Prague and on tour in Italy.

Eduard Zilberkant has been hailed as an inspirational teacher around the world. He has given master classes at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York City, the Rubinstein Academy in Dusseldorf, Germany; the Puccini Conservatory in Italy; the Gumi International Music Festival in South Korea, and the Ionian Conservatory in Greece. His students have won national and international piano competitions and appear as soloists worldwide.

A Fulbright Scholar in Germany, Eduard Zilberkant received a Solisten Diploma from the Freiburg Musik Hochschule. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Temple University in Philadelphia. His teachers have included Je rome Rose, Vitaly Margulis, Theodore Lettvin, Robert Spano, and Robert Shaw. Presently, he is Artist in Residence and Professor of Piano at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. For the past twenty one years he has been Music Director and Conductor of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra.

For more information, visit: eduardzilberkant.com

VIOLIN I

Yue Sun, Concertmaster

Gail Johansen, Assoc. Concert master Leah Nenaber

Dori Olsen

Jonathan Swank

Arielle Stadig

Asa Edwards

Suzie Hallinan

VIOLIN II

Sunnifa Deehr, Principal Julie Parshall

Annalisa Bates Michael Austin Sarah Zieschang Kathryn Baird Meg Baird Ruth Rutherford Rohan Weeden Bree Hoerdeman

VIOLA

Katrina Nore, Principal Laurie Long Jack Cater Dylan Candelaria Emily Vockeroth Terry Chapin

CELLO

Daniel Strawser, Principal Charles Akert

Nikolas McGraw

Joshua Swank

Cirdan Vonnahme Marlys Schneider

Kathy Price

Sean Braendel Casey Lambries

BASS

Bob Olsen, Principal Wayne Koelsch Leo Nordman

Erin Gleason

FLUTE

Dorli McWayne, Principal Therese Schneider Kurt Hunter

Bobbi Janiro

PICCOLO Kurt Hunter

OBOE

Candy Rydlinski, Principal Enigma Swan Adams Joey Hogenson

ENGLISH HORN Joey Hogenson

CLARINET Ruth McDonald, Principal Jia Jia Maas

BASSOON

Jay Million, Principal George Rydlinski

HORN

Rebecca Dunne, Principal Stephanie Zaborac-Reed Matthew Wrobel Meredith McMahon

TRUMPET

Tristan Hovest, Principal Courtney Miklos

TROMBONE

William Cox, Principal Eric Schneider Lucas Clooten

TUBA

Luis Fernando Escobar, Principal TIMPANI Sean Dowgray, Principal

PERCUSSION Lee Hazen

EVENT DIRECTOR Jenni Warren

PRODUCTION MANAGER Jessica Shaffstall

VIDEO/AUDIO UAF College of Liberal Arts

The Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks present

The FSO Season Opener

Eduard Zilberkant, Musical Director

September 25th, 2022 at 4:00 PM Charles W. Davis Concert Hall

Today’s concert will be presented without intermission and will be approximately 60 minutes. van

This concert will be filmed in partnership with the UAF College of Liberal Arts.

Conversations, cell phones, and candy wrappers are distracting to your fellow audience members. Please be considerate. The use of cameras or recording devices during the performance is stricty prohibited without prior approval from the Fairbanks Symphony.

Leonore Overture No. 3, Opus 72a Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)

The decade (1804-1814) that Beethoven devoted to his only opera, Fidelio, was an unprecedented amount of time to spend perfecting such a work during the early 19th century. Given the same ten years, Rossini dispensed 31 (!) operas between 1810 and 1820, and Donizetti cranked out 35 (!!) specimens of the genre from 1827 to 1837. Even Mozart launched seven operas during his decade in Vienna. For Bee thoven, however, Fidelio was more than just a mere theatrical diversion — it was his philosophy set to music. This story of the triumph of justice over tyranny, of love over inhumanity was a docu ment of his faith. To present such grandiose beliefs in a work that would not fully serve them was unthinkable, and so Beethoven hammered and rewrote and changed until he was satisfied. In his book The Interior Beethoven, Irving Kolodin wrote, “As tended to be the life-long case with Beethoven, the overriding consideration remained: achievement of the objective. How long it might take or how much effort might be required was not merely incidental — such consideration was all but non-existent.”

The most visible remnants of Beethoven’s extensive revisions are the four overtures he composed, the only instance in the history of music in which a composer generated so many curtain-raisers for a single op era. The first version of the opera, written between January 1804 and early autumn 1805, was initially titled Leonore after the heroine, who courageously rescues her husband from his wrongful incarceration. For that production, Beethoven wrote the Overture in C major now known as the Leonore No. 1, utilizing themes from the opera. The composer’s friend and early biographer Anton Schindler recorded that Beethoven rejected that first attempt after hearing it privately performed at Prince Lichnowsky’s palace before the premiere. (Another theory, supported by recent detailed examination of the paper on which the sketches for the piece were made, holds that this work was written in 1806-1807 for a projected performance of the opera in Prague which never took place, thus making Leonore No. 1 the third of the Fidelio overtures.) He composed a second Overture in C Major, Leonore No. 2, and that piece was used at the first performance, on November 20, 1805. (The man agement of Vienna’s Theatre an der Wien, site of the premiere, insisted on changing the opera’s name from Leonore to Fidelio to avoid confu sion with Ferdinand Paër’s Leonore.) The opera foundered. Not only was the audience, largely populated by French officers of Napoleon’s army, which had invaded Vienna exactly one week earlier, unsympathetic,

but also there were problems in Fidelio’s dramatic structure. Beetho ven was encouraged by his aristocratic supporters to rework the opera and present it again. That second version, for which the magnificent Leonore Overture No. 3 was written, was presented in Vienna on March 29, 1806, but met with only slightly more acclaim than its predecessor.

In 1814, some members of the Court Theater approached Beethoven, by then Europe’s most famous composer, about reviving Fidelio. The idealistic subject of the opera had never been far from his thoughts, and he agreed to the project. The libretto was revised yet again, and Beethoven rewrote all the numbers in the opera and changed their or der to enhance the work’s dramatic impact. The new Fidelio Overture, the fourth he composed for his opera, was among the revisions. Bee thoven realized that the earlier overtures, especially the Leonore No. 3, simply overwhelmed what followed (“As a curtain raiser, it almost made the raising of the curtain superfluous,” judged Irving Kolodin), and, from a technical viewpoint, were in the wrong tonality to match the revised beginning of the opera. The compact Fidelio Overture, in E major, is now always heard to open the opera. The Leonore No. 3 often appears between the two scenes of Act II, a practice instituted by Otto Nicolai when he produced Fidelio in Vienna in the early 1840s. Both are regular entries on concert programs.

The Leonore No. 3 is one of the most magnificent overtures in the or chestral literature. It distills the essential dramatic progression of the op era into purely musical terms: the triumph of good over evil, the move ment from darkness to light, from subjugation to freedom, is integral to this music. It is a musical/philosophical road Beethoven also traveled in his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, and in this sweeping overture it is compressed into a tonal document of staggering power. The structure of the overture follows the basic sonata-allegro design, but adapted by Beethoven to fit the dramatic requirements of his subject. It begins with a broad, slow introduction, by turns lugubrious and threatening, during which the clarinets and bassoons intone the opening phrases of the aria Florestan sings in his dungeon prison. In a faster tempo, the violins present the arch-shaped main theme, which grows to a riveting climax before the entry of the complementary theme, a lyrical strain introduced quietly by flute and violins. The development section is filled with sudden dynamic changes and expressive harmonic excursions that mirror the perilous struggles of the play. Then, in an unforgettable coup de théâtre, a distant trumpet call signals deliverance for Florestan and his faithful Leonore. The recapitulation of the themes glows in tri umph. A jubilant coda, begun with whirling scales in the strings, brings this superb work to a stirring close.

- Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World” Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

Dvořák might never have come to the new world— or composed a symphony by the same name—had it not been for the tenacity of a dedicated, indefati gable, and fabulously wealthy woman. Jeanette M. Thurber, the wife of a millionaire green-grocer, had single-handedly established the National Conserva tory of Music in New York City. When the conserva tory needed a new director in 1892, Mrs. Thurber set her sights on Dvořák. At first Dvořák wasn’t interested. But Mrs. Thurber persisted, and after a long series of cables culminating in an offer of twenty-five times his current salary, Dvořák finally relented.

Once in America, Dvořák was drawn to American folk music of ev ery kind. He frequently asked a Black composition student, Harry T. Burleigh, to sing and play him Negro spirituals and plantation songs. According to Burleigh, “Dvořák just saturated himself with the spirit of these old tunes.”

Dvořák said: “I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called the Negro melodies. In the Negro melodies of America I have discovered all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. America can have her own music, a fine music growing up from her own soil and having its own special char acter—the natural voice of a free and great nation.” Dvořák set out to capture that spirit in his new symphony. (The composer was correct in his assessment in every particular save one: he could not have known that the “great and noble school of music” he predicted would one day become known as “jazz.”)

The debut of the Ninth sparked a debate over just how American it really was. No one can miss the resemblance of the first movement’s flute solo to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The second movement’s English horn melody is so like a Negro spiritual that someone later turned it into one, writing words to go with Dvořák’s music. And we have it from Dvořák that Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha inspired the symphony’s middle movements—the second movement by Min nehaha’s funeral scene, the third by the ritual Indian dance. But the music was Dvořák’s: “I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of Negro and Indian music and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestral color.”

Yet when European audiences heard the Ninth, they found it to be as Bohemian as anything Dvořák ever wrote—and they were cor rect. Despite his enthusiasm, Dvořák’s knowledge of American music was superficial; when he wasn’t actively trying to sound American he sounded just like Dvořák. And those who hear the landscapes of America in the Ninth might be surprised to know that Dvořák com posed it before he had set one foot outside New York City. Perhaps it is, as Kurt Masur has observed, a great tragic symphony written on the theme of homesickness.

All such questions are insignificant beside the achievement of the symphony itself. It brims over with melody and drama. Its emotional span runs from quiet tenderness to sheer ferocity. It is full of magical moments—one thinks of the other-worldliness of the second move ment’s opening chords, and how they are reincarnated with fearsome power in the Finale. If Dvořák took little that was truly American, he gave back what is arguably the greatest symphony composed on these shores: a magnificent gift from a generous man. Our gratitude is due him—and, of course, to Mrs. Thurber.

-Jon Kochavi

FSO MEMBERS 2022/23

MAESTRO’S CIRCLE

Design Alaska

Charles W. Lemke &

Dr. Phyllis Pendergrast, DMD

Jack & Carol Wilbur

Anonymous

RHAPSODY

Anna & Eduard Zilberkant

SONATA

Gerardo Miranda Reina Anonymous

The Johansen Music Studio

In Memory of Glenn Hackney Ronald Teel Kirk Hogensen

Mark & Stella Wisner

Janet & Philip Marshall

In Honor of Patty Mongold

PRELUDE

Margaret Billington Nora Foster

In Memory of Jim Kowalski Jo Kuchle

Anonymous

In memory of Dr. David J Mangusso

Phillip Marshall David McDowell

Nanne Myers

Barbara Nore

Paul & Sue Schnieder

Kathi Stevens

Cynthia Stragier

Natalie Thomas

Judy Tolbert

Monte Jordan

In Memory of Walt Henried Michelle Bartlett

Glenda Grant Burbank & Winston Burbank

Bob & Linda Bursiel

Ray & Jill Cameron Tom & Sandy Clark Rodney Combellick Charles & Tone Deehr

Richard & Gail Hattan Helen Howard

Glenn Juday

Andrew & Judith Kleinfeld

Ken Kokjer

Dorli McWayne & Kesler Woodward

In memory of Norman & Joyce Comfort

Karen Parr Andree Porchet

Katherine Shira

Chad & Ariel Stadig Elizabeth Stockmar

Joe & Shannon Vargas Wendy Ward

Bruce & Charlotte White Chris & Jane Zimmerman

The Alaska Community Foundation

Upcoming FSO Events/Concerts

All events take place in the Charles W. Davis Concert Hall, unless otherwise noted.

10/30/22 @ 4:00PM

The Halloween SPOOKTACULAR! Come dressed to impress!

11/10/22 @ 7:30PM

Fairbanks Flair - A Locals Only Recital Tickets on Sale Now!

12/10/22 & 12/11/22 @ 4:00PM

The Design Alaska Holiday Concert Tickets on Sale Now!

Upcoming UAF Dept. Of Music Events

All events take place in the Charles W. Davis Concert Hall.

October 14th @ 6:30 PM Jazz Combo and Wind Ensemble

November 5th 7:30pm Junior Recital: Ariana Lopez

November 6th 4:00 PM Junior Recital: Ellie Martinson

Fairbanks Symphony performances are made possible by grants from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fairbanks Arts Association/City of Fairbanks Bed Tax Regrant, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.