THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents the
University Philharmonia
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Guilherme Leal Rodrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor
Celebrating 25 Years
Thursday, October 2, 2025 7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, D. 485
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Franz Schubert
Allegro (1797–1828)
Andante con moto
Menuetto. Allegro molto
Allegro vivace
Capriccio Italien, Op. 45
Guilherme Leal Rodrigues, graduate associate conductor
— Brief Pause —
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
The Florida State University Philharmonia: A Brief History
On October 5, 2000, the FSU Philharmonia gave its inaugural concert under my baton, my first year on the faculty. I know, this is technically their 26th year, but I am a conductor and we can only count to four. Seriously, we are celebrating 25 completed years of existence this year. My predecessor, Professor Philip Spurgeon, worked with the string area faculty in the late 1990s to establish a second orchestra because the size of the USO had become too large and unwieldy. In the “old” Ruby Diamond Auditorium (as it was called in those days), the proscenium (the opening on the stage) was considerably narrower than it is today, making it impossible to place the entire USO on the visible portions of the stage. This became such a problem that associate dean George Riordan began placing seats backstage so parents could actually see their students playing in the orchestra!
Professor Spurgeon and his colleagues had the vision to create an ensemble in which freshman and sophomore string players would be required to play before becoming eligible for the USO. In hindsight, this was brilliant. It offered our youngest players an opportunity to develop more fully and for them to also have leadership positions, something that would have been impossible in an orchestra with graduate students. It also served the role of strengthening the USO in terms of quality. This model has worked very, very well over the years.
Since its first concert, the UPO (as we tend to call it) has developed a large and loyal following. Their “home” hall is Opperman Music Hall, a facility well suited to the UPO. Over the years UPO concerts have been in many instances standing room only events. In one such concert, we had to delay because OMH simply did not have enough seats. We finally consented to leaving the doors to Opperman open so people unable to get seats could stand in the lobby and watch the concert!
The UPO has performed in quite a few special performances. In 2001, Emmy Award-winning composer, Jeff Beal, wrote a score specifically for the Philharmonia to accompany Buster Keaton’s acclaimed silent film, The General. The performance was part of Seven Days of Opening Nights (when it was really only seven days…) in Ruby Diamond Auditorium, which was sold out. In the post-concert reception for Jeff and the orchestra, he exclaimed to the elegant crowd “I can’t believe it! This orchestra played the s- - - out of my music!” In 2002, the UPO went on its first tour to West Palm Beach, Naples, and Sarasota. Since then, the UPO has performed for the Southern MENC (now the National Association for Music Education) Convention in Charleston and in 2023 they were invited without application to be the featured orchestra of the national conference of the College Orchestra Directors Association in Jacksonville. They have performed numerous works with our choral ensembles, including Handel’s Saul, Poulenc’s Gloria, and Bruckner’s Te Deum and have accompanied faculty and student soloists. The UPO performed the world premieres of Harold Schiffman’s choral work Alma, Steven Lebetkin’s choral-symphony Fallen Angels, and Roger Zare’s Deep Underground. They have also provided opportunities for student composers to test drive their work and provided student conductors many opportunities to gain invaluable experience on the podium. Multiple guest conductors have stepped up to the podium to work with them.
As I sit here writing, I realize that the Philharmonia has accomplished too much to list them all here. It has been such an honor to work with this group of excellent young musicians from its very first concert. They form a significant and cherished part of my life. So many musicians from the Philharmonia have gone on to successful careers in performance, music education, arts administration, and fields outside of music. Seeing them at various events throughout the country always brings back such wonderful memories of our work together. I am eternally grateful to each and every one of them.
In the inaugural concert, I performed the Brahms, the Tchaikovsky, and finished with the Schubert. Following the concert, a friend and doctoral student at the time, Jennifer Dalmas, congratulated me and also asked “Why didn’t you end with the Tchaikovsky?” Well, Jen, I fixed it. Long live the Florida State University Philharmonia!
— Alexander Jiménez
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By Deborah Olander
(From the first Philharmonia concert program of October 5, 2000)
Johannes Brahms
b. Hamburg, 7 May 1833
d. Vienna, 3 April 1897
Johannes Brahms composed his “Academic Festival” Overture, opus 80, during the summer of 1880, while vacationing at bis favorite resort, Bad Ischl, onAustria’s Traunsee. (He also composed the ‘Tragic Overture” there.) The University of Breslau had conferred upon Brahms an honorary doctoral degree in March 1879, naming him “artis musicae severioris in Germania nunc princeps” (the most serious artist of music in all Germany, now foremost). The “Academic Festival” Overture was composed in acknowledgement of tbis honor. Brahms conducted the first performance of both overtures in Breslau on 4 January 1881. Present at the premiere were the University’s Rector magnificus, Senate, and the Faculty of Philosophy.
The work is not terribly austere and imposing, however. In fact, it draws upon the melodies of four college drinking songs and reflects Brahms’s delight in the vivacity and enthusiasm of students. He described his composition as “a jolly potpourri of student songs a la [Franz] ô€€¯uppe,” whose light-hearted operatic works he admired. Although Brahms had never been a university student himself, he frequently visited his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, at Gottingen and absorbed the infectious atmosphere of college life. Then, as now, student life revolved around drinking and fraternizing.
The sonata-form Overture begins quietly in the key of C minor. This Allegro introduction voices the Overture’s main theme as well as the first drinking song, “Wir hatten gebauet ein staJtliches Haus” (“We Had Built a Stately House”) in the horns and trumpets. The “Stately House” melody dates from the Wars of liberation (1819) in which student associations (Burschenschaften) were disbanded and expresses nostalgia for the glory days of fraternal life. The hymn-like tune was later banned for its insurgency. The main theme, marked Un poco maestoso, transforms the “Stately House” melody into quick, rhythmic fragments. Two more drinking-song melodies follow: “Hochfeierlicher Landesvaler” (“Most Solemn Song to the Father of the Country”) for second violins, and the celebrated “Fuchsenritt,” a fox-chase tune that was sung around the common dining table at the university refectory. The Fuchsenritt was associated with freshman initiation rites and begins ‘’What Comes There From On High?” The tune is heard in a bassoon duet and repeated by the full orchestr_a. Also of interest with regard to the fox-chase melody is the fact that Suppe himself had composed a set of variations on it.
The Overture’s development is rather short by Brahms’s standards. Rather than concentrate on permutation of thematic material, Brahms chose instead to recapitulate all the material efficiently and concentrate on an extended coda based on the triumphant and majestic tune of the student song “Gaudeamus igitur”:
Let us now enjoy ourselves, While we are still young; For when golden youth has fled, And in age our joys are dead, Then the dust doth claim us.
It is interesting to note that the “Academic Festival” Overture boasts the largest complement of percussion instruments Brahms ever used in any symphonic work (kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle). In fact, Brahms proposed at one point that the Overture be reorchestrated for military band. The “jolly potpourri” ends grandly in the key of C major, with sweeping scales in the violins.
Franz Peter Schubert
b. Vienna, 31 January 1797
d. Vienna, 19 November 1828
In contrast to the Brahms and Tchaikovsky pieces previously heard (with their augmented percussion forces and prominent brass participation), Schubert’s Symphony no. 5 in B-flat Major (D. 485) is known as “the Symphony without trumpets and drums.” Moreover, the orchestration calls for only one flute rather than the usual two. Even more remarkable is the absence of clarinet. The Fifth Symphony also has the distinction of being the shortest of all Schubert’s symphonies. Because of its proportions and performing forces it sounds very light in character, almost like a divertimento or classic serenade. There is an intimacy to the work that makes it most suitable for performance in the home; in fact, its first performance took place at the home of Otto Hatwig, composer and violinist of the Vienna Burgtheater, in October 1816. The first public performance came many years later on 17 October 1841 in the J osefstadter Theater in Vienna, with Michael Leitermayer conducting. The manuscript was then lost until Sir George Grove and Sir Arthur Sullivan redisco.vered it in Vienna. The parts having been relocated, the work was performed in London’s Crystal Palace on 1 February 1873, August Manns conducting.
Schubert composed this symphony when he was only nineteen years old. He wrote it in the wake of his ‘’Tragic” symphony (no. 4 in C minor) as well as in the aftermath of the creative crisis he had endured in attempting to follow Beethoven’s legacy. In June 1816 Schubert wrote in his journal that Beethoven’s music exemplified “that eccentricity which joins and confuses the tragic with the comic, the agreeable with the repulsive, heroism with how lings and the holiest with harlequinades, without distinction, so as to goad people to madness instead of dissolving them in love, to incite them to laughter instead of lifting them to God.” Schubert’s ambivalence toward Beethoven’s masterworks no doubt led him to compose a symphony of Classical style and proportions, a graceful and charming work that is almost a chamber piece.
I. Allegro. A four-measure introduction ushers in the main theme heard in the string section. This triadic melody leads directly to an equally graceful secondary theme, again heard in the strings and repeated by the woodwinds. A dialogue between the two choirs continues through the development (which is based primarily on the opening theme) and into the recapitulation. A short coda based on upward-rushing scales concludes the movement.
II. Andante con moto. This Andante in E-flat major comes as a slow and lyrical dance. It is a pastoral song that is based on a formula commonly found in Mozart’s compositions, particularly “March of the Priests” from The Magic Flute. It consists of two rounded binary sections, which are repeated, and followed by a short recapitulation of the first theme group. The second subject is a duet between strings and woodwinds, and is more soloistic with long thematic lines for the oboe. Here Schubert modulates to the key of C-flat minor. As in the opening Allegro, a short coda brings the movement to a close. Because of its lyrical quality and form, the Andante seems almost to be a strophic song with refrain.
III. Menuetto: Allegro motto. This minuet and trio is also Mozartean in its form and panache. In the key of G minor, the minuet proceeds at such a pace that it is practically a scherzo; the contrasting trio section in G major is somewhat calmer and more lyrical. The first theme, heard in the strings, is vigorous and triadic. The more subdued trio provides a contrast in instrumentation, as the theme is played by woodwinds. In all, this movement contains more dynamic contrast than is found in all the other movements put together, but it is not playful enough to be called a true scherzo, even though the tempo is faster than that of a conventional dance-type minuet.
IV. Allegro vivace. In this sonata-form movement Schubert returns to the B-flat major of the opening Allegro, as well as to its buffa quality. The main theme heard in the strings dominates the exposition and seems to recur far more often than do most principal subjects. Further, the theme differs in each repetition, almost as if a small development occurs in the exposition, when the theme takes a turn toward the minor mode or is fragmented in the various instrumental parts The second subject takes a turn to the key of F major. This theme, again heard in the strings, has led one scholar to say, “No more attractive melody can be found in his early symphonic music than this theme, graceful in contour and with a sustained lyricism in which Schubert is incomparable.” The finale of the Symphony no. 5 is considered a masterpiece for its technical brilliance and subtlety, particularly in its development section. The recapitulation brings the symphony to a dazzling yet lighthearted conclusion.
Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
b. Kamsko-Votkinsk, 7 May 1840
d. St. Petersburg, 6 November 1893
Tchaikovsky wrote in his diary on 9 October 1886, “I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius .. .. Brahms is chaotic and absolutely empty dried-up stuff.” His Capriccio ltalien, opus 45, nevertheless displays the same exuberance and frivolity as Brahms‘s “Academic Festival” Overture, composed in the same year (1880) while Tchaikovsky was vacationing in Rome. Carnival season was in full swing; the composer complained in a letter to his “beloved friend” Nadejda von Meck that he was unable to sleep in his hotel room at the Hotel Costanzi because of the festivities, yet he could not resist the “wild folly” of the celebrations. He wrote, “During the last few days I have sketched the rough draft of an Italian Capriccio based on popular melodies. I think it has a bright future; it will be effective because of the wonderful melodies I happened to pick up, partly from published collections and partly out in the streets with my own ears.”
Tchaikovsky also wrote, “There is nothing more attractive than the natural and unaffected merriment of Rossini’s music. It is more delightful and fetching, more elegant and forthright, than any other music in the lighter genre.” He particularly admired Rossini’s Barber of Seville, and this work clearly inspired Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio ltalien, with its military fanfare in the introduction as well as its dizzying tarantella in the conclusion. The Capriccio was drafted in a matter of days and had its premiere in Moscow on 6 December 1880, with Nikolai Rubinstein directing. The work was immediately popular internationally.
A slow introduction opens the piece; the brass fanfare consists of a bugle call Tchaikovsky heard from his hotel room adjacent to the barracks of the Royal Italian Cuirasseurs (i.e., the Armory). A string choir answers the fanfare in a subdued refrain punctuated by triplet figures from the brass section. As the melange of folk melodies and opera buffa tunes unfolds, the tempo picks up. The piece culminates in a manic tarantella that reveals Tchaikovsky’s divided mental state: While he could not resist the sounds and celebrations he heard around him, his nerves were also frayed by the sleep-depriving “incomprehensible and complicated mechanism [of] the human organism.”
As was the case with Brahms ‘s “Academic Festival” Overture, Tchaikovsky’s work calls for an expanded percussion section, consisting of kettledrums, glockenspiel, triangle, tambourine, bass drum, cymbals, and harp. His brass orchestration is also expanded; it calls for four horns, two comets in A, two trumpets in E, two tenor trombones, a bass trombone, and a tuba.
Deborah Olander earned the Master of Music degree in historical musicology at The Florida State University in 1982; in 1999 she began working toward her Ph.D. She is also pursuing the Master of Arts degree in creative writing with an emphasis in creative nonfiction, and is teaching First-Year Writing in the Computer Writing Center of FSU’s Department of English.
University Philharmonia Personnel (October 5, 2000)
Alexander Jiménez, Conductor and Music Director
Violin I
Phyllis Roback, Concertmaster
Jenny Lee Cochran
Alexander Stevens
Bernard Vaughn
Sean Moore
Hope Sellers
Matthew Malamud
Marvette Henderson
Vivian Jauma
Tianna Byrtus
Ricardo Monroy-Rios
Violin II
Michael Sparks*
Elliott Niebch
Landon Morrison
Bonnie Gartley
Alexis Ebbets
Caitlin Weber
Sarah Burgin
Mai Li Pittard
Emily Suydam
Erin Stroh
Viola
Julia Hirko*
Victor Fernandez
Alejandra Ferrer
Amy Menard
Wilner Baptiste
Joseph Ham
Lilith Kirschner
Brandon Delacruz
Cello
Christin Roman*
Mary del Gobbo
David Pope
Glenn Crytzer
Alisha Rufty
Courtenay Gallon
Jolien Roodenburg
Jenny Proctor
Bass
Martin Houghtaling*
Cassie Campbell
Sean Gorman
Keiran O’Hara
Flute
Rebecca Wolstencroft*
Alexis Capko
Natalie Blake
Piccolo
Alexis Capko
Oboe
Scott Bartucca*
Dawn Kilmer
English Horn
Kitty Steetle
Clarinet
Evelyn Curenton*
Omari Rush
Bassoon
Kathryn Korty*
Erin Geyer
Stephanie Huffman
Contrabassoon
Stephanie Huffman
Horn
Gavin Reed*
Nicholas Nadal*
Johanna Salzer
Lewis Johnson
Bobby Bresemann
Ahmad Mayes
Trumpet
Alyson Rozier*
Natalie Hughes
Jonathan Ford
Scott Taylor
Trombone
Anthony McFarlane*
David Gravesen
Bass Trombone
Jacob Floyd
Tuba
Paul Avery
Harp
Lisa Beckley
Timpani
Carlos Alvarez
Percussion
Daniel Lyons*
Michael Dobson
Aurora Zenfell
Christina Smith
Orchestra Manager
Tony Daniels
Equipment Manager
Luis Audi
Librarian
Brent Williams
String Section Coaches
Meredith Maddox
Melanie Punter** *indicates principal ** indicates faculty
Violin 1
Christina Leach‡
Leah Tryzmel
Ajay Balkaran
Lucia Garro
Sasha Richeson
Mulunesh Creaghan
Olivia Leichter
Chloe Gullo
Violin 2
Peter Fennema*
Irsia Ruíz Guzmán
Violet Lorish
Elina Nyquist
Connor Brown
Shane Sharkey
Sarita Thosteson
Viola
Mary Boulo*
Brenden Brewer
Keannamarie Goliat
Madison Jansons
Jacqueline Wang
Emma Patterson
Joseilys Quinones
Corinne Williams-Hough
Angeleena Jackson
University Philharmonia Personnel
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director
Guilherme Leal Redrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor
Cello
Addison Miller*
Tyler Benko
Jason Tejada-Chancay
María Ruíz Guzmán
Brandon Bonamarte
Chloe Kolenc
Enzo Savage
Miroslav Beck
Daniel Jimenez-Ganoa
Matthew Pooler
Ashley Gessner
Bass
Daniel Martinez*
Christopher T. McDuffie
Jean-Phillipe Montas
Charlotte Wooldridge
Gavin Smith
Emma Waidner
Garrett Gilley
Flute
Alexandra Kotsonis*
Hazel Reid
Ian Guerrero
Piccolo
Ian Guerrero
Oboe
Haley O’Neill**
Lorin Zamer**
Alejandro Lopez
Emma Drugan
English Horn
Lorin Zamer
Clarinet
Nicholas Mackley**
Reymon Contrera**
Bassoon
Susanna Campbell**
Ben Kiely**
Amelia Khanji
Contrabassoon
Ben Kiely
Horn
Vincent Aldoretta**
Andrew Keller
Davis Craddock
Isaac Roman**
Trumpet
Grason Peterson**
Angelo Del Oro
Tyler Bennet**
Nathan Reid
Cornet
Nathan Reid
Grason Peterson
Trombone
Landon Ellenberg*
Justus Smith
Bass Trombone
Kevin Li
Percussion
Ethan Turner
Gabby Overholt
Cole Martin
Aidan Lenski
Caitlin Magennis
Harp
Sierra Stacy
Orchestra Manager
Steven Stamer
Stage Manager
Connor Oneacre
Orchestra Librarians
Guilherme Rodrigues
Tom Roggio
Library Bowing Assistant
Victoria Joyce ‡ Concertmaster
* Principal ** Co-Principal