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On Today’s Program K. DAY Lightspeed (Fanfare for Orchestra) G. L. FRANK Elegía Andina BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 61 I. Allegro ma non troppo II. Larghetto— III. Rondo: Allegro
ABOUT THE MUSIC
K . DAY L I G H T S P E E D ( FA N FA R E F O R O R C H E S T R A )
KEVIN DAY
COMPOSER (b. 1996) • Kevin Day is a composer, conductor, producer, and multiinstrumentalist whose music fuses jazz, minimalism, Latin, and contemporary classical idioms. • Day is a native of Arlington, Texas and is currently the Composer-inResidence for the Mesquite Symphony. • Lightspeed is subtitled “Fanfare for Orchestra.” In music, a fanfare is a short, ceremonial piece that often features brass instruments. Listen for the trumpets’ characteristically heroic fanfare melody at the end of this short piece. • Written in 2019, Lightspeed was commissioned by Washington & Lee’s University Orchestra.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
G. L. FRANK ELEGÍA ANDINA
GABRIELA LENA FRANK COMPOSER (b. 1972)
• Gabriela Lena Frank is a Latin Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated composer who has received commissions and performances from leading American orchestras, including the Houston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Philadelphia Orchestra. • Frank wrote Elegía Andina for her older brother Marcos Gabriel Frank as an homage to their multicultural ancestry. Their father is LithuanianJewish and their mother is of Chinese, Peruvian, and Spanish descent. • Elegía Andina explores what it means to be of several ethnic persuasions, as noted by Frank. She incorporates stylistic elements of Peruvian arca/ ´ panpipes (double-rainbow panpipes) as one can hear, ira zampona especially in the flute part, throughout this piece. • Frank was born with moderate hearing loss, but that hasn’t hindered her success as a composer. She once stated, “I firmly believe that only in the United States could a Peruvian-Chinese-Jewish-Lithuanian girl born with significant hearing loss in a hippie town successfully create a life writing string quartets and symphonies.” • Frank has strong ties to Houston—she attended Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music for her bachelor’s degree in composition and was the Houston Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence from 2014 to 2017.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
B E E T H OV E N VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, OPUS 61
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
COMPOSER (1770–1827)
• Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major premiered at the Theater an der Wien on December 23, 1806, with Beethoven conducting. This is his only concerto for violin and many consider this piece to be his most lyrical work. • The concerto was written for Franz Clement, music director and concertmaster of the Theater an der Wien. Clement was one of the most famous violinists in Europe at that time. • Beethoven completed the work just two days before the premiere, so the soloist had to sight-read part of the concerto for the opening performance. The performance went so poorly that the concerto was abandoned for over 30 years. It was revived when 13-year-old Joseph Joachim played the concerto in London in 1844, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. • This concerto broke several conventional ideas of what a concerto should have been during Beethoven’s time and instead featured the solo violin’s graceful and lyrical side more than its virtuosity. • The concerto begins with five repeated solo timpani notes—an opening that had never been done before in orchestral music. These five notes are a motif, or a short musical idea that is repeated throughout the piece to unify the work.
ARTIST BIOS MIGUEL HARTH-BEDOYA CONDUCTOR
Celebrating more than 30 years of professional conducting, Miguel HarthBedoya has recently concluded tenures as Chief Conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra (7 seasons) and as Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (20 seasons), where he now holds the title of Music Director Laureate. With a deep commitment to passing his experience on to the next generation of conductors, he is the Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, working to establish a groundbreaking Bachelor of Music program in orchestral conducting. He has also established The Conducting Institute to teach the fundamentals of conducting to students ages high school and up, of all levels, through an intensive summer program, workshops, courses, and seminars. Harth-Bedoya conducts orchestras worldwide such as the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, BBC Orchestra, Birmingham Orchestra, National Orchestra of Spain, New Zealand Symphony, Sydney Symphony, NHK Symphony, and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, among others. Equally at home in opera, Harth-Bedoya has led traditional productions with The English National Opera, Canadian Opera, Minnesota Opera, and Bremen Opera, among others. He has also conducted the world premiere performances of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain at the Santa Fe Opera, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar with the Cincinnati Opera and at the New Zealand Festival. Harth-Bedoya has an impressive discography of more than 25 recordings, including critically-acclaimed albums on Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, FWSOLive, LAWO, Naxos, and MSR Classics. He is the Artistic and Managing Director of Caminos del Inka, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the rich musical legacy of the Americas. Born and raised in Peru, Harth-Bedoya received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, both under the guidance of Otto-Werner Mueller.
ARTIST BIOS
MIDORI VIOLIN
Midori is a visionary artist, activist and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience and breaks with traditional boundaries which makes her one of the most outstanding violinists of our time. As a leading concert violinist for over 35 years, Midori regularly transfixes audiences around the world, bringing together graceful precision and intimate expression. She has performed with, among others, the London, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. She has collaborated with such outstanding musicians as Claudio Abbado, Emanuel Ax, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Biss, Constantinos Carydis, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Mariss Jansons, Yo-Yo Ma, Susanna Mälkki, Joana Mallwitz, Antonello Manacorda, Zubin Mehta, Donald Runnicles, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Omer Meir Wellber. Midori’s latest recording with the Festival Strings Lucerne of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and two Romances was released in October 2020 by Warner Classics. Her diverse discography by Sony Cassical, Ondine and Onyx includes recordings of Bloch, Janácek ˇ and Shostakovich and a Grammy Award-winning recording of Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting the NDR Symphony Orchestra as well as Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin filmed at Köthen Castle, which was recorded also for DVD (Accentus). Midori is deeply committed to furthering humanitarian and educational goals. She has founded and manages several non-profit organizations, including Midori & Friends, which provides music programs for New York City youth and communities, and MUSIC SHARING, a Japan-based foundation that brings both western classical and Japanese music traditions into young lives by presenting programs in schools, institutions, and hospitals. In recognition of such commitments, she serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Midori was born in Osaka in 1971 and began her violin studies with her mother, Setsu Goto at an early age. In 1982, conductor Zubin Mehta invited the then 11-year-old Midori to perform with the New York Philharmonic in the orchestra’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, where the foundation was laid for her following career. Midori plays the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù ‘ex-Huberman’. She uses four bows – two by Dominique Peccatte, one by François Peccatte and one by Paul Siefried.
