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OUR MISSION
Enriching lives through excellence in music and in educational outreach.
OUR VISION
To be the premier choice for people who appreciate and enjoy the power of music.
It is my honor to welcome you to the 93rd season of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. Whether this is your first visit, or your fiftieth, we are glad you have made the decision to celebrate music with the LSO. On behalf of the entire Board of Directors – welcome.
This season promises great music and guest artists under the direction of Maestro Timothy Muffitt and through the talented musicians that make up the LSO. As special as this experience will be, our time together in the concert hall represents only a small part of the community impact delivered by the Lansing Symphony.
The LSO reaches into our classrooms, neighborhoods, and community libraries to deliver exceptional music and educational opportunities across the greater Lansing area. We are all beneficiaries of this outreach and our community is enriched.
Now, and always, you can be part of building this exceptional legacy. I encourage you to become more involved with LSO through volunteer opportunities and financial support. Please visit our website, www.lansingsymphony.org or call our office at 517-487-5001 to learn more.
Whatever you do, and however you contribute, know you are giving the gift of music and strengthening our community now and for years to come.
Enjoy the music,
Welcome to Lansing Symphony Orchestra. I am so glad that you have chosen to spend your time with us. Over the next couple of hours, I hope you are entertained and inspired, maybe even challenged or comforted. I believe music – particularly live music – has a unique ability to meet us where we are to provide us with something special. All we have to do is listen.
strive for our mission and musicians to be a part of your everyday life. You will find us on sidewalks in downtown Lansing, on WKAR Radio, at a local farmer’s market in the summer, on the lawn at MSUFCU for a concert, in your child’s classroom, at The Robin Theatre in REO Town, and many other places in our community.
Thank you for listening,
Darcy Kerr Board President Lansing
Symphony Association, Inc. Senior
Vice President Human Resources,Emergent Holdings, Inc.
Each concert is a unique event, a “one night only” chance for a particular program with these artists and audiences. I hope after you leave the concert hall, your Lansing Symphony experience continues through memories of the music, conversations with friends about the concert, or something new you learned at the PreView Conversation. I also hope you look for the same inspiration from the orchestra in other places in our community.
Lansing Symphony has a long tradition of being a part of our community, and over the past few years, the commitment has only deepened. Your orchestra is more than what is on stage here today. We
Courtney Millbrook Executive Director Lansing Symphony Association, Inc.
DIRECTOR
This season marks Timothy Muffitt’s 16th season as Music Director and Conductor of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his work in Lansing, he continues to appear with other prominent orchestras around the country. Recent seasons have included concerts with the St. Louis, Flint, Tulsa, Atlanta, and Ann Arbor Symphonies. Prior years have included return engagements with the San Francisco, Houston, Long Beach, Phoenix and Virginia Symphonies as well as the Buffalo Philharmonic. Muffitt recently concluded a 21year tenure as Music Director of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra for which he was honored with the title Music Director Laureate.
Other guest appearances have taken Muffitt to the podiums of The Hollywood Bowl, Edmonton and Spokane Symphonies, Columbus Ohio’s Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, the Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra in Chicago, and the Harrisburg (PA) Symphony among others.
Muffitt is also Artistic Director of the School of Music for the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York where he conducts the Music School Festival Orchestra, one of the country’s premiere training ensembles for conservatory and university students aspiring for careers in music.
Along with the continued artistic growth of his orchestras, Muffitt’s work has been noted for its innovative and imaginative programming, broadly diverse repertoire, and fresh, engaging, audience experiences. A strong proponent of community arts education, Muffitt has been very active in musical outreach through the venues of radio, lecture, and social media, presenting arts-enrichment programs through a variety of formats for diverse audiences.
Formerly Associate Conductor with the Austin Symphony, Muffitt was also Artistic Director of the Louisiana Philharmonic’s Casual Classics Series in New Orleans for over a decade. It was for his work in that position, that Muffitt was awarded a Certificate of Meritorious Service from the American Federation of Musicians.
Prominent performers and composers with whom Muffitt has worked include Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma, Renee Fleming, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Andre Watts, Alicia de Larrocha, Pinchas Zukerman, Van Cliburn, Lynn Harrell, Itzhak Perlman, and composers John Cage, Joseph Schwantner, Ellen Taffe Zwilich, John Harbison, Joan Tower and Bernard Rands among many others.
Patrick Harlin’s “aesthetics capture a sense of tradition and innovation…” -The New York Times
Harlin’s music is permeated by classical, jazz, and electronic music traditions, all underpinned with a love and respect for the great outdoors. His works have been performed by the St. Louis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, the Rochester and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestras, Collegium Cincinnati, and Calidore String Quartet, among others. Patrick’s interdisciplinary research in soundscape ecology—a field that aims to better understand ecosystems through sound—has taken him to imperiled regions around the world, including the Amazon rainforest and the Book Cliffs of Utah. His baseline recordings for ecological impact studies are also the fodder for artistic inspiration. These pieces draw parallels between the sounds of the natural world and those of the concert hall, seeking to bring awareness to the importance of
sound in our environment. Patrick’s work in this field has been supported by a Graham Sustainability Institute Doctoral Fellowship, Theodore Presser Award, and a University of Michigan Predoctoral Fellowship, resulting in an ongoing body of works called The Wilderness Anthology. Patrick’s composition teachers include Michael Daugherty, Roger Briggs, Alexei Girsh, and Evan Chambers. He was raised in Seattle and earned his bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University and doctorate from the University Michigan.
Visit www.patrickharlin.com.
THE LANSING SYMPHONY COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM is made possible with a lead gift from the Sam & Mary Austin Fund for New Music at the Lansing Symphony.
VIOLIN
Anna Black
CONCERTMASTER
Tom And Wendy Hofman‡
Michael Bechtel
ASSISTANT CONCERTMASTER
April Clobes And Glen Brough‡
Florina Petrescu
PRINCIPAL VIOLIN II
Charley Ballard & June Youatt‡
Mallory Tabb
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL VIOLIN II
Richard & Lorayne Otto‡
Emelyn Bashour
Allyson Cohen
Susanne Garber
Lauren Hansen
Emily Hauer
Stefan Hubenov
Ji Hyun Kim
Yuanmaio Li
Yung-Hsuan Lo
Ying-Li Pan
Meg Rohrer
Michael Romans
Tigran Shiganyan
Anna Spix
Ivan Suminski
William Thain
Chase Ward
Hsin-Ju Yu
VIOLA
Samuel Koeppe
PRINCIPAL
Cliff & Sue Haka‡
Elinore Morin
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL
Ron & Carol Dooley‡
Christine Beamer
Hannah Breyer
Linda Gregorian
David Schultz
Madeline Warner
Kristina Zeinstra
CELLO
Jinhyun Kim
PRINCIPAL
Jenny Bond‡
Sandro Sidamonidze
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL
Sam & Mary Austin‡
Imjeong Choi
Willis Koa
Stefan Koch
Dooeun Lee
Tom Sullivan
BASS
Edward Fedewa
PRINCIPAL
John & Fran Loose‡
Matthew Boothe
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL
Albert Daschle
Adam Har-zvi
Wen Peng
Aaron Tenney
FLUTE
Richard Sherman
PRINCIPAL
Virginia P. & the Late
Bruce T. Allen‡
Bryan Guarnuccio
Kathryne Salo
THIRD FLUTE / PICCOLO
OBOE
Stephanie Shapiro
PRINCIPAL
David & Partricia Brogan‡
Gretchen Morse
SECOND OBOE/ENGLISH HORN
Hari Kern‡
CLARINET
Guy Yehuda
PRINCIPAL
Don & Jan Hines‡
Alicia Gutierrez
Trevor Young**
BASSOON
Michael Kroth
PRINCIPAL
Eileen Ellis‡
Christian Green
HORN
Corbin Wagner
PRINCIPAL
Joe & Beth Anthony‡
Stephen Foster
Paul Clifton-O’Donnell
Dawson Hartman
Lorenzo Robb**
TRUMPET
Neil Mueller
PRINCIPAL
Bill & Shirley Paxton‡
Carrie Schafer
Joshua Harris
TROMBONE
Ava Ordman
PRINCIPAL
Lyn Donaldson Zynda‡
John Robinson
BASS TROMBONE
Bryan Pokorney
TUBA
Philip Sinder
PRINCIPAL
Susan Davis‡
TIMPANI
Andrew Spencer
PRINCIPAL
Sue Coley & Don LeDuc‡
PERCUSSION
Matthew Beck
PRINCIPAL
Catherine Claypool & the Late Allan Claypool‡
Andrew Fritz
Andrew Cierny
HARP
Brittany DeYoung
PRINCIPAL
Jonathan & Amy Riekse‡
KEYBOARD
Patrick Johnson
PRINCIPAL
Sam & Jean Holland‡
**On Leave
‡ Chair Sponsors: These individuals have made a significant financial commitment to support the musicians of the orchestra.
1933-34 Dr. LeMoyne Snyder
1934-35 Mrs. John Brisbin
1935-37 Mrs. L. G. Bailey
1937-38 Mrs. C. L. Brody
1938-40 Mrs. Malcolm Denise
1940-41 Mrs. Grover O. Truxell
1941-42 Mr. O. W. Mourer
1942-44 Mrs. George Kieppe
1944-46 Mrs. E. A. Mackey
1946-48 Miss Pauline Austin
1948-49 Mrs. William King, Jr.
1949-51 Mrs. Harold S. Cole
1951-53 Dr. Peter Treleaven
1953-55 Mrs. Gilbert Burrell
1955-56 Mrs. Leonard Mayhew
1956-57 Mrs. B. Newlon Barber
1957-59 Dr. Sydney R. Govons
1959-61 Mr. C. Vincent Wright
1961-63 Mr. Lee H. Witter
1963-65 Mr. Donavan A. Eastin
1965-67 Dr. William Lazer
1967-69 Mr. Raymond Joseph
1969-71 Mr. Max C. Ploughman
1971-72 Mr. C. Vincent Wright
1972-74 Mr. George G. Clemeson
1974-76 Judge Michael G. Harrison
1976-77 Mr. William Straub
1977-79 Mr. Max C. Ploughman
1979-82 Mrs. David Kahn
1982-84 Mr. H. Perry Driggs
1984-86 Mr. Gerald M. Finch
1986-88 Mrs. Richard Byerrum
1988-89 Mr. R. Kenneth Gruber
1989-91 Mr. Edward B. McRee
1991-92 Mr. Craig Ruff
1992-93 Mr. Ronald Pentecost
1993-94 Mr. James Miller
1994-95 Mr. Thomas Fraser
1995-99 Mr. Craig Ruff
1999-01 Mr. James Savage
2001-06 Mrs. Virginia P. Allen
2006-07 Mr. William MacLeod
2007-08 Mr. Christopher Day
2008-09 Mr. James F. Anderton, IV
2009-11 Mr. Charles R. Hillary
2011-13 Dr. R. Samuel Holland
2013-15 Mr. Brian J. Lefler
2015-17 Mr. Michael Rhodes
2017-19 Mr. Jonathan Riekse
2019-21 Ms. April Clobes
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Darcy Kerr
PRESIDENT
Katie Thornton
PRESIDENT-ELECT
April Clobes
IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT
Jeff Straus
TREASURER
Tom Hofman
SECRETARY
Charley Ballard
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Bill Given
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Bill Jaconette
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Hari Kern
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Randy Rasch
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Kevin Roragen
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
SYMPHONY ADMINISTRATION
Courtney Millbrook
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Karen Dichoza
DIRECTOR OF FINANCE & OPERATIONS
David Solorio
DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING MANAGER
Karlis Austrins
Christine Beamer
Jenny Bond
Chris Buck
Bruce Caltrider
Carol Dooley*
Kris Drake
Jim Engelkes
Nancy Johnson
Jody Knol
Catrice Lane
Paula Latovick Weiner*
John Loose
Betty Moore
Ryan Opel
Jake Przybyla
Steve Robinson
Renee Roth
Marcia Stockmeyer*
Jeff Theuer
Jane Vieth
Richard Wendorf
Richard Witter
*Affiliate Organization Representative
Ashleigh Lore
EDUCATION & ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR
Nicholas Buonanni
MUSIC LIBRARIAN / BOX-OFFICE AND OPERATIONS ASSISTANT
Vincent Muffitt
STAGE MANAGER
Violinist Adé Williams is a two-time Sphinx Competition laureate (1st place, Junior Division, 2012; 2nd place, Senior Division, 2019). She has won numerous other competitions in the US and Europe, beginning at age eight, and has placed in several chamber music competitions.
Adé has enjoyed a thrilling solo career, from her debut with the Chicago Sinfonietta at age six to her concerts with over 50 orchestras including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, the Detroit, Pittsburgh, New World, Indianapolis, and Nashville Symphonies, and Buffalo and KwaZuluNatal Philharmonics (South Africa) by age 18. Most recently, she made her debut with the Chineke! Orchestra at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London (2021). In 2017, Adé premiered Guardian of the Horizon: Concerto Grosso for Violin, Cello, and Strings by Jimmy Lopez, a work commissioned by Carnegie Hall and New World Symphony. The NY Concert Review praised her as “an absolute winning champion of the
work.” Adé made her White House debut in 2015 and Carnegie Hall debut in 2013 where she has since returned five times. She has attended the Pacific Music Festival (Japan), the Astona International Music Festival (Switzerland), Cambridge International String Academy (England), and the Chautauqua Institution (US).
She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she served as concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra and studied with Ida Kavafian. Prior to Curtis, Adé studied with Almita and Roland Vamos, Marko Dreher, and Rachel Barton Pine.
Patrick Harlin is in his fourth year of the Lansing Symphony’s first ever Composer in Residence program. (The residency was supposed to last only three years, but—COVID). Last year the Lansing Symphony performed his River of Doubt at the beginning of the season and ended the season with the world premiere of his Earthrise. Lansing audiences will be proud to know that a piece that was premiered just a half-year ago at the Wharton Center is already being programmed by other orchestras. This season features two premieres written specifically for the Lansing Symphony.
Much of Patrick’s music uses something called a “program”—an extra-musical idea or story that the music is “about.” (A symphony by Brahms is not programmatic music; it’s all just about the music. A tone-poem by Strauss about the mischievous pranks of Till Eulenspiegel is. Some symphonies by Beethoven and Mahler are programmatic, some are not. It’s complicated.) “I generally use a program because I find it helps people into the music if it’s their first time,” Patrick says. “And with a premiere,
it’s always their first time.” Most of Patrick’s music has something to do with the natural world and the environment. But tonight’s piece, Bloom, is not programmatic. “It’s just a look at the way things grow in sound and in the environment.”
Bloom is an outgrowth of a piece that Harlin wrote for the harpist Yolanda Kondonassis called Time Lapse.
I keep thinking about the way we experience time as human beings.
Conceptually, music really allows me to engage with that idea. . . . In my music, I often have an idea that comes back at different time scales. The rhythm remains the same, but the time span in which you experience that idea is different. There is a built-in speeding up and slowing down, without the tempo actually changing.
Sometimes you sit and listen to music and it feels like it’s the longest thing you’ve sat through and it’s only been four minutes! But the opposite can happen when the music is 30 minutes long and you feel like it’s over in a snap. As we get older, we experience time differently than when we were younger. It’s been three years since the pandemic started, and there’s been a weird sense of time being different. We’re not even sure when a certain event happened.
You can listen to Bloom as if you’re looking at a time-lapse video of things blooming. It’s getting at the idea that humans experience time one way and plants and animals experience it quite differently.
music combined a Romantic lyricism with a sure handling of Classical forms, much as Brahms had done several generations earlier. His later works, though more dissonant, still retained a sense of rhythmic and tonal direction.
WRITTEN / 1939-40 MOVEMENTS / Three STYLE / Contemporary American DURATION / Twenty-six minutes
Samuel Barber knew his destiny early on. As a young boy, he wrote a note to his mother. “I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing – Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football – Please.” He entered the first class at the Curtis Institute of Music when he was only fourteen and went on to become one of America’s premier composers. The broad American public got its first real taste of Barber’s music in 1938, during a radio broadcast of two of his works (the First Essay and the Adagio for Strings) conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Unlike his peers, he did not consider himself a modernist. His early
Barber’s Violin Concerto, completed in 1940, is a pivotal work, looking nostalgically to the past, but with an eye toward the future. The first two movements of the piece are conservatively “neo-romantic,” while the finale is more dissonant, aggressive, and irregular.
Samuel Fels, famous for Fels Naptha Soap and a member of the board of trustees of the Curtis Institute of Music, offered Barber $1,000—with $500 paid in advance—to write a violin concerto for his adopted son, Iso Briselli. Barber worked on the concerto while he was in Switzerland and sent the first two movements to Briselli. The young violinist eagerly accepted the movements and then suggested that the third movement be more virtuosic. Still in Europe, Barber continued to work on the concerto but was interrupted when the Nazis invaded Poland and all Americans were advised to leave.
Back in the states, he showed the third movement to the soloist. He was disappointed. It was too lightweight and didn’t seem to fit with the other two. He asked Barber to rewrite it.
Barber didn’t relent. “I could not destroy a movement in which I have complete confidence, out of artistic sincerity to myself,” he wrote. “So we decided to abandon the project, with no hard feelings on either side.” He was “sorry not to have given Iso what he had hoped for.” Briselli’s teacher Albert Meiff wrote a blistering letter to Fels with a point-by-point criticism of the concerto. He didn’t like the first two movements at all, volunteered to help rewrite them, and suggested that Barber write the third movement with his consultation.
The upshot is that without a rewrite, Briselli declined to premier the piece. Instead, Albert Spalding gave the first performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra in February 1941. (Barber and Briselli did remain friends throughout their lives.) Barber got to keep the $500 advance, but apparently Fels didn’t pay him the remaining $500. Without Albert Meiff’s suggestions the concerto quickly gained a place in violinists’ repertoires and has become one of the most frequently performed 20th-century concertos.
The first movement consists of two main themes developed in traditional concerto form. The soloist begins quietly with a long uninterrupted phrase that leads into a perky, jazzy second theme introduced by the clarinet. The second movement is even
more hushed and song-like than the beginning of the first. It begins with a beautiful oboe solo. Eventually the movement rises to a terrific climax, but returns immediately to the melancholy mood of the opening. The finale opens with a brief rhythmic timpani solo, which is taken up in turn by the solo violin and orchestra. A sense of perpetual motion drives the entire movement with the violinist playing almost nonstop. A sudden change of pace leads to a brilliant conclusion.
© 2022 John P. VarineauWRITTEN / 1888 MOVEMENTS / Four STYLE / Romantic DURATION / Forty-four minutes
By the time Tchaikovsky reached what we nowadays call “middle-age” he was a composer of international fame. However, he was in the throes of a mid-life crisis. He confided his worries to his patron Nadezhda von Meck:
I’m terribly anxious to prove not only to others but also to myself that I’m not yet played out. I often have doubts about myself, and ask myself—hasn’t the time come to stop . . . hasn’t the
source dried up? . . . How is one to know whether the time hasn’t already come to lay down one’s arms?
He wrote that letter twelve days before he completed his Fifth Symphony, a work that he started less than one month earlier!
Ten years separated the composition of the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, but both deal with the central idea of “Fate.” When he wrote his Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky explained its meaning to his patron:
This is Fate, the force that prevents our hopes of happiness from being realized, that jealously watches to see that peace and happiness not be complete or unclouded. . . . Life is a continuous, shifting, grim reality.
He wasn’t quite as helpful explaining to anybody about the meaning of his Fifth Symphony. However, in the 1950’s Nicholas Slonimsky discovered an enticing tidbit among Tchaikovsky’s notebooks:
Introduction. Complete resignation before Fate, or, which is the same, before the inscrutable predestination of Providence. Allegro. (I) Murmurs, doubts, plains, reproaches against XXX . . . (II) Shall I throw myself in the embrace of faith? A wonderful program, if only it can be carried out.
The “Fate” theme in the Fifth Symphony makes its appearance in all four movements, each time in a different guise. In the first movement, it is quiet and resigned. In the second, it interrupts impassioned romanticism with loud hostility. It is a faint echo at the end of the third. It sounds in a major key in the fourth movement, an attempt to turn “defeat into triumph.”
After the introduction of the “Fate” theme, the first movement seems to alternate between march and waltz, triumph and tragedy. It ends in a sullen mood. The horn plays one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous melodies in the second movement, accompanied by a lush bed of chords in the strings. The entire movement is one long romance with rising and falling passion. The third movement is a melancholy waltz of the sort that Tchaikovsky would later put into his famous ballets. The fourth begins with the stateliness of a graduation march but soon changes into a highly charged finale where the “Fate” theme plays a central, more optimistic role.
Tchaikovsky was delighted to prove to himself that he wasn’t washed up.
“Heaven be praised, it isn’t inferior to the earlier ones,” he wrote. But those feelings wouldn’t last. Critics weren’t all that positive. By the end of the year, Tchaikovsky had his doubts:
I have become convinced that this symphony is unsuccessful. There is something repellant about it, a certain patchiness, insincerity and artifice. . . . The realization of all this causes me a keen, tormenting feeling of discontent with myself. Have I really already, as they say, written myself out, and am I now only able to repeat and imitate my old former style?
Not quite. The public has made this one of the most popular symphonies in the entire repertoire.
© 2022 John P. VarineauMasterworks Concert Series 02
RESPIGHI, HINDEMITH, DEBUSSY, STRAVINSKY
Timothy Muffitt, conductor
11.05.22
Masterworks Concert Series
PRESENTED BY
Respighi
Ancient Airs and Dances: Suite I
Simone Molinaro (1599): Balletto detto “Il Conte Orlando”
Vincenzo Galilei (1550s): Gagliarda.
Anon (late 16th Century): Villanella
Anon. (late 16th Century): Passo mezzo e Mascherada
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Allan & Cathy Claypool
Don & Jan Hines
Hindemith Symphonie Mathis
Der Maler
Engelskonzert (Angelic Concert)
Die Grablegung (Entombment)
Versuchung des heiligen Antonius (Temptation of St. Anthony)
INTERMISSION
Debussy
Prélude à “L’après-midi
d’un faune” (Afternoon of a Faun)
Stravinsky The Firebird Suite (1919 version)
Introduction
L’Oiseau de feu et sa danse & Variation de l’oiseau de feu
Ronde des princesses
Danse infernale du roi Kastcheï
Berceuse
Finale
MASTERWORKS 02 | PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
John & Fran Loose Michigan Arts and Culture Council National Endowment For The Arts
Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936)
Written / 1917
Movements / Four
Style / Contemporary casting of Renaissance and Baroque styles
Duration / Sixteen minutes
In spite of all the crazy things that were happening in the musical world in the early part of the twentieth century, some composers were actually doing very nicely writing beautiful and “unobjectionable” music. Ottorino Respighi was one of ten composers who signed a manifesto advocating the idea that music is communication. “We are against art which cannot and does not have any human content and desires to be merely a mechanical demonstration and a cerebral puzzle,” they wrote. “A logical chain binds the past and the future—the romanticism of yesterday will again be the romanticism of tomorrow.”
Respighi made his first big splash in 1916 with his orchestral tone-poem, The Fountains of Rome. Over the next twelve years, more blockbuster showpieces followed: The Pines of Rome, Church Windows, and Roman Festivals. In each of these, Respighi demonstrated his absolute mastery of writing for the orchestra, a skill he learned from his most influential teacher, Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov.
fascinated Respighi. He arranged several lute and keyboard pieces from these periods for orchestra. Keeping the melodies and harmonies intact, he dressed them up in modern orchestral clothing. His Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 1 is his first attempt at this sort of thing. Eventually he wrote three sets of Ancient Airs and a couple of other sets with different titles, such as Gli uccelli (The Birds). As you listen to the four dances in this suite, you will agree with the Italian musicologist Guido Gatti: “Here is an elegant way of writing, in the sense of the rhetoric of another day; a beautiful harmonizing, a splendid method of orchestration; and with this is a desire to be agreeable, well mannered, and respectable at all costs.”
© 2022 John P. VarineauPaul Hindemith (1879–1936)
Written / 1933-34
Movements / Three
Style / Contemporary
Duration / Twenty-eight minutes
As the political situation in Europe deteriorated between the two world wars, the American music scene profited. What would Hollywood movies be like without the great film scores by Erich Korngold, Dmitri Tiomkin, and Franz Waxman? All of them immigrated to this country in the 1930’s. The two mega-
stars of contemporary music, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, did the same and moved to California.
Paul Hindemith was one of the leading composers in Germany until he ran afoul of the Nazi party. They condemned his music; Goebbels called him an atonal noise maker (“atonaler Geräuschemacher”). In 1937 Hindemith quit his prestigious post at the Berlin Musikhochschule and went to live in Switzerland. Three years later, he came to this country, became an American citizen, and taught at Yale University. Today, Hindemith is remembered not only for his music, but also for the profound influence he had on many of his students who became composers and teachers and who have, in turn, influenced their own students.
Hindemith was a modernist, but he never abandoned tonality the way Schoenberg did, and he didn’t go off the deep end rhythmically and harmonically they way Stravinsky did. “I . . . believe that the reproaches made against most modern music are only too well deserved,” he wrote.
Tonality is a natural force, like gravity. . . . The key and its body of chords is not the natural basis of tonal activity. What Nature provides is the intervals. The juxtaposition of intervals, as of chords, which are the extensions of intervals, give rise to the key. We are no longer the prisoners of the key.
Hindemith started writing an opera based on the life of the Renaissance painter
Matthias Grünewald (c. 1475–1528) in the mid–1930s (before he came to America). The plot wrestles with the age-old question of the role of the artist in society (and echoes Hindemith’s own response to evil and violence through his music). Hindemith has Grünewald forsaking his art to join the Peasant’s War, and later abandoning the war because of its violence. In a vision, Grünewald imagines himself as St. Anthony, who the Saint Paul the Hermit instructs to “bow humbly before your brother and selflessly offer him the holiest creation of your inmost faculties.” Grünewald returns home and “finishes his life in a draining creative burst.”
Well before Hindemith finished the opera, the conductor William Furtwangler asked him to write a new piece for the Berlin Philharmonic to take on tour. Hindemith extracted material from the opera— specifically those parts that were inspired by the majestic panels of Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (1516)—and shaped it into a three-movement symphony. The first movement, Engelkonzert (Angelic Concert) served as the opera’s overture. It corresponds to Grünewald’s painting of the Nativity of Christ where a band of angels serenade Mary and Jesus. Hindemith incorporates a German folk tune, “Es sungen drei Angel (Three Angels Sang), throughout the movement. The short second movement Grablegung (Entombment) comes from the very end of the opera, during Grünewald’s last creative surge and eventual death. It corresponds to the painting
at the base of the altarpiece showing Christ as he is laid into the tomb.
The expansive third movement is based on two paintings from the altarpiece; one showing St. Anthony meeting Saint Paul the Hermit, and the other showing St. Anthony being tormented by demons. At the beginning of the movement Hindemith wrote Grünewald’s words into the score: “Where were you, good Jesus? Why did you not come and heal my wounds?” Towards the end of the movement, Hindemith quotes the 13th century hymn Lauda Sion Salvatorem (written by Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi): Sion, lift up thy voice and sing/Praise thy Savior and thy King/ Praise with hymns thy shepherd true. The symphony ends with a triumphant Alleluia proclaimed by the brass.
© 2022 John P. VarineauMovements / One
Style / Impressionistic
Duration / Ten minutes
“Was it a dream I loved?” asks the mythological faun in the opening lines of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem The Afternoon of a Faun. Were those sensuous nymphs
he carried off real or just imagined? When the young composer Claude Debussy met Mallarmé, and heard The Afternoon of a Faun, he was intrigued by the idea of turning the poem into a ballet. Debussy worked for the better part of two years on the brief opening scene and soon realized that the symbolism of Mallarme’s poem was not easily suited to the theater. He contented himself by reworking the opening section as an orchestral concert piece and called it a “prelude.”
“The music of this prelude is a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s beautiful poem,” he wrote. “By no means does it claim to be a synthesis of it. Rather, there is a succession of scenes through which pass the desires and dreams of the faun in the heat of the afternoon.”
By the time Debussy wrote the Prélude to “The Afternoon of a Faun,” he was already known as someone who was willing to break the established rules of composition. “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity,” he said. Debussy intentionally left dissonances unresolved, using them solely for their colorful effect. Debussy used scales other than the traditional major and minor ones. He also handled rhythm differently. Instead of having a clearly defined beat grouped into distinct measures, Debussy purposely confused the rhythm. Others considered Debussy’s music dangerous. “Better not listen to it,” Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov once facetiously said. “You risk getting used to it, and then end up by liking it.”
The flute, representing the faun’s panpipe, begins the Prélude, but its theme seems to lack any definable key and sputters out, giving way to the horns. The flute begins again and gives way to the oboe. For the third time the flute starts, and this time extends the theme into a full-blown melody. The clarinet introduces a new theme that grows in intensity and passion as the whole orchestra joins in. Suddenly, the oboe and English horn play a tune that mimics a dream dissipating, and the flute returns with the opening theme. Just like the beginning, it fades away, leaving us to ask, “Was it a dream?”
After hearing Debussy’s Prélude to his L’après-midi d’un faune,” Mallarmé wrote a little poem on a copy of the music: “Sylvan creature of the first breath/if your flute has succeeded/hearken to all light/which Debussy will breathe into it.”
© 2022 John P. VarineauWritten / 1909-10
Movements / Five
Style / Contemporary
Duration / Twenty-three minutes
A quick series of events led to the rapid rise of Igor Stravinsky from unknown composer to the enfant terrible of the musical world. In 1908, Stravinsky wrote a short piece (Fireworks) to celebrate the wedding of the daughter of his beloved teacher, Nicholas RimskyKorsakov. Just a few days after he completed the score, Rimsky-Korsakov passed away and Stravinsky lost an important advocate for his music. Then, a few months later, Stravinsky gained a new champion when the great ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev heard a performance of Fireworks.
Because of that hearing, Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to arrange a few pieces by other composers (Chopin and Grieg) for the opening season of the Ballets Russes in Paris. The success of those pieces didn’t immediately help Stravinsky. Diaghilev and the choreographer Michel Fokine asked another Russian composer, Anatol Liadov, to write the music for a new ballet based on the story of The Firebird. Liadov was something of a procrastinator so, needing music soon, Diaghilev turned to the young Stravinsky. He started work on The Firebird in November 1909, and had the completed
score ready for Diaghilev by April 1910. “Mark him well,” Diaghilev said to the prima ballerina during a rehearsal. “He is a man on the eve of celebrity.” Indeed he was. Between 1910 and 1913, Stravinsky wrote three ballets for the Ballet Russes: The Firebird, Petrouchka, and The Rite of Spring. The success of those ballets put Stravinsky at the head of the avant-garde, and forever changed “classical” music.
Stravinsky based The Firebird on a number of Russian folk tales. Prince Ivan catches a magic bird who, in exchange for her release, grants one of her feathers to him with the promise that she will come to Ivan’s aid if he ever needs it. Later, the Prince stumbles upon the ancient castle of the evil King Kastchei, who holds thirteen princesses captive. The prince falls in love with one of them, and then Kastchei captures him.
Ivan remembers the magic feather and summons the Firebird. She arrives and causes all of the evil inhabitants of the castle to dance themselves to exhaustion. After lulling everyone to sleep, the Firebird leads Ivan to a huge egg that contains Kastchei’s evil soul. He smashes the egg, Kastchei dies, and the prince and princess marry.
Stravinsky produced three separate suites from the full-length ballet. The one from 1911 uses a huge orchestra. The one most frequently performed (and used tonight) comes from 1919. It uses a more
standard-sized orchestra. In 1946, while living in America, Stravinsky extracted a third suite, again using a smaller orchestra, but including more selections from the ballet.
In the first movement of this suite, we hear the Prince as he is wandering around at night. A sudden shimmering announces the Firebird and the second movement: her solo dance. The third movement is the dance of the princesses outside of the castle. The fourth movement abruptly shatters the stillness of the princesses’ dance. It is the frenetic dance of King Kastchei and all of his entourage. The final movement is the Firebird’s song that lulls all of the enemies to sleep. It leads directly to the brilliant and majestic ending of the ballet. When the brilliant Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff heard The Firebird, his only comment was, “Lord, how much more than genius this is—it is real Russia!”
PRESENTED BY
Strauss Serenade for Winds, op. 7, Eb major
Hailstork Symphony No. 1
Allegro Adagio: Lento ma non troppo
Scherzo: Allegretto
Rondo: Vivace
INTERMISSION
Brahms
Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 83, Bb major
Allegro non troppo
Allegro appassionato
Andante
Allegretto grazioso
Written / 1882
Movements / One
Style / Romantic
Duration / Ten minutes
Since winning the Gold Medal at the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Jon Nakamatsu tours yearround working with today’s leading conductors and orchestras, and appears in recital and chamber collaborations at festivals and music centers worldwide.
With renowned clarinetist Jon Manasse, Mr. Nakamatsu regularly tours with the Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo. The Duo also serves as Artistic Directors of the esteemed Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Nakamatsu has been a frequent guest with ensembles such as the Emerson, Tokyo, Prazak, Escher, Jupiter and Ying String Quartets, and has also toured extensively with the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet.
Named Debut Artist of the year by NPR’s Performance Today, Mr. Nakamatsu has been profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, Reader’s Digest, NPR’s Live from Here!, and is featured in the documentary Playing with Fire. He has recorded 13 CDs for harmonia mundi USA. His recording of Gershwin’s
Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue with the Rochester Philharmonic remained atop Billboard’s classical charts for six months. Mr. Nakamatsu’s CD of the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas with clarinetist Jon Manasse was selected by the New York Times as among its top classical recordings for 2008.
In 2018, Mr. Nakamatsu was appointed Artist-in-residence of the Chautauqua Institution Piano Program, and in 2015 joined the San Francisco Conservatory of Music faculty. Mr. Nakamatsu serves on multiple international piano competition juries. He has been invited as a guest speaker at numerous institutions, including the Van Cliburn Foundation, Stanford University, and the Juilliard School.
By the time Richard Strauss turned twenty-four, he was already something of a celebrity in the German-speaking music world. He was a semi-professional violinist by the time he was 13, and by the ripe old age of 16 a composer of a string quartet, a piano sonata, and a symphony. By the time he was 21, his music had been championed by one of the leading conductors of the day, Hans von Bülow. Strauss was von Bülow’s assistant conductor; and when von Bülow unexpectedly resigned his post, Strauss became the chief conductor, still only 21. He was also a concert pianist. But nothing in this meteoric rise could point to the virtuosity he would exhibit as a composer in his masterpieces— known as tone poems—which he started writing when he was 24. He wrote them after an encounter with the “music of the future” by Richard Wagner. Strauss’s ultra-conservative musician father had tried to shield his son from this bad influence, but to no avail. The results were Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, A
Hero’s Life, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Those are the tone poems by Strauss that symphony audiences know and love. (And then there are his operas, but that’s another story.)
Strauss’s Serenade in E-flat Major comes from the time before his encounter with Wagner’s music. He was only 16 when he started it. It follows in the long tradition of works written for harmonie (the term given to bands of wind instruments typically used for outdoor performances).
An oboe solo begins the Serenade’s slow introduction. The main body that follows is at a quicker tempo and features luxuriant, lyrical and, at times, expansive melodies. After a calm conclusion, the oboes announce a short development section and then the horns tenderly start a recapitulation of the main themes.
It is this Serenade that brought Strauss to von Bülow’s attention and launched his career as a conductor. Strauss himself called it “nothing more than the respectable work of a music student.”
© 2022 John P. VarineauAdolphus Cunningham Hailstork
(1941-)
Written / 1988
Movements / Four
Style / 20th Century
Contemporary American
Duration / Twenty-two minutes
In an interview before the premiere of his Symphony No. 2 in Detroit, Adolphus Hailstork said “I really see two strains among black American composers: the experimenters and the pragmatists. The second group has a very clear folk orientation, and that’s where I put myself.” You will understand what he means when you hear his Symphony No. 1. The harmony is firmly rooted in tonality. The melodies and rhythms are instantly accessible and engaging.
Ever since the middle of the nineteenth century, there has been a movement in music called nationalism: Composers try to include specific characteristics of their culture in their music. The Russians were great at this, incorporating folk melodies and rhythm into serious orchestral music. The Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorak was one of the leading nationalist composers: his Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” paved the way for American nationalism. Although it was written by a Czech, there is something about it that sounds “American.”
The same can be said for Hailstork’s Symphony No. 1. You probably won’t hear specific tunes that you’ll recognize in the symphony. On the other hand, from the first sounds of the piece, you’ll recognize that there are things that make this music sound “American” and more specifically “African-American.”
The first movement begins with pounding chords played by the whole orchestra. Over these regular beats there is an energetic syncopated melody. This rhythmic vitality soon gives way to a more gentle rocking background for a singing clarinet solo. The movement alternates between the energy of the opening and the lyricism of the second melody. The second movement starts with a beautiful plaintive folk-like melody played by the strings. Soon they are joined by the woodwinds. The middle section of the movement builds in intensity before a return to the starting theme. The third movement, a scherzo, has a murmuring, buzzing quality to it. The oboes, flutes and horns then get to play a jaunty little tune over short, punchy beats. Aggressive brass and timpani introduce the middle section. Then the oboe and bassoon play a comical, jerky little tune. The brass and timpani bring us back to the opening of the movement. The fourth movement has an intense rush to it caused by rapid pulsations in the string section and a syncopated melody. Themes from the first movement come back before the movement drives to a forceful conclusion.
Dr. Hailstork has written numerous works for chorus, solo voice, piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and opera. Hailstork’s newest works include The World Called (based on Rita Dove’s poem Testimonial and premiered in May 2018) and Still Holding On (February 2019), an orchestral work commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is currently working on his Fourth Symphony, and A Knee on the Neck (tribute to George Floyd) for chorus and orchestra.
Dr. Hailstork resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is Professor of Music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.
© 2022 John P. VarineauJohannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Written / 1878-81
Movements / Four
Style / Romantic
Duration / Fifty minutes
Johannes Brahms is often naively mislabeled a Classical composer in the midst of a Romantic age. This is a misconception, due in part to a feud that went on for decades between “Brahmsians” and “Wagnerians”
over who really had it right! What they argued about most was the difference between “absolute” music (music that is “just” music) and “Gesamtkunstwerk” (music that involves a synthesis of all the arts). Brahms was the torchbearer for absolute music and the German symphonic tradition. His followers considered Wagner a musical rebel (a badge he wore with honor). Indeed, Wagner broke new paths with his music. However, putting Brahms into a separate camp and considering him an “old-fogey” diminishes his tremendous innovations. Brahms’ approach to rhythm prompted Arnold Schoenberg, the great leader of the German avant-garde, to write an article entitled “Brahms the Progressive.”
In a letter to a friend, Brahms playfully describes his Second Piano Concerto as a “tiny little piano concerto with a tiny little wisp of a scherzo.” This little concerto is actually an intense 50-minute symphony for solo piano and orchestra. Brahms’ decision to expand the traditional concerto from three to four movements is the first clue that he was not chained to tradition. The opening tune of the first movement, played by the horns, provides the basis for all the musical material of the first movement. Instead of the traditional antagonism between orchestra and soloist that marks the classical concerto, the piano takes the role of partner. The second movement is Brahms’ “little wisp of a scherzo.”
Masterworks Concert Series
The material for it is probably a scherzo he left out of his Violin Concerto on the advice of his friend Joachim. If you want to take note of the interesting rhythmic complexity of this movement, just try counting along with the pianist! The slow third movement begins with a simple and poignant melody played by the solo cello. Even though the music becomes quite agitated in the middle part of the movement, it returns to repose at the end. A skipping tune played by the piano breaks the stillness to begin the final movement. It comes back in many different guises before vaporizing into a flashy conclusion.
Perhaps the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century was Franz Liszt. He was a “Wagnerian” and not prone to giving in to the other side of the Brahms/Wagner feud. On hearing the Second Piano Concerto, Liszt sent a little note to Brahms: “. . . at first reading, this work seemed a little gray in tone; I have, however, gradually come to understand it. It possesses the pregnant character of a distinguished work of art, in which thought and feeling move in noble harmony.”
Strong praise from the enemy camp!
Series 04
Masterworks Concert
Timothy Muffitt, conductor
Hye-Jin Kim, violin
Beethoven Coriolan Overture, op. 62
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, Eb major
Allegro maestoso Andante Presto
INTERMISSION
Shostakovich Symphony No. 9, op. 70, Eb major
Allegro Moderato Presto
MASTERWORKS 04 | SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO.9
Known for his thrilling performances and musical creativity, violinist/violist Ara Gregorian made his debut as soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra in Symphony Hall in 1997
Since that time, he has established himself as one of the most soughtafter and versatile musicians of his generation with performances in Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center and in cities throughout the world including Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Cleveland, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Ulaanbaatar, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Helsinki.
Gregorian is the founder and artistic director of the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina which is celebrating its 23rd Season and has appeared at festivals worldwide including the SpringLight (Finland), Storioni (Holland), Summer Solstice (Canada), Casals (Puerto Rico), Intimacy of Creativity (Hong Kong), Voice of Music in the Upper Galilee
(Israel), Taos, Bard, Bravo Vail, Santa Fe, Skaneateles, Music in the Vineyards, Chesapeake, Madeline Island, Kingston and Manchester festivals. He has performed extensively as a member of the Cooperstown Quartet, Concertante and the Daedalus Quartet, and has recorded for National Public Radio, New York’s WQXR, and the Bridge and Kleos labels.
Gregorian is the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival Distinguished Professor in Music at East Carolina University where he has been on the faculty since 1998 and is on the faculty at the Taos School of Music and the Manchester Music Festival. He performs on a Francesco Ruggeri violin from 1690 and a Grubaugh and Seifert viola from 2006.
Violinist Hye-Jin Kim is known for her musical sensitivity and deeply engaging performances that transport audiences beyond mere technical virtuosity. Since her First Prize win at the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition at the age of nineteen and a subsequent win at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, she has led a versatile career as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.
Kim has performed as a soloist with major orchestras worldwide, including the Philadelphia, New Jersey Symphony, New Haven Symphony, BBC Concert, Seoul Philharmonic, Pan Asia Symphony, and Hannover Chamber orchestras. She has appeared in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center Verizon Hall, the Kravis Center, Salzburg’s Mirabel Schloss, St. John’s Smith Square, and Wigmore Hall in London. At the invitation of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, she performed at the UN Headquarters in Geneva and New York.
Born in Seoul, Korea, Hye-Jin Kim entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 14 and earned her master’s degree at the New England Conservatory. Kim’s debut CD, From the Homeland, is available on CAG Records. Kim is an Associate Professor of Violin at East Carolina University and a member of the Cooperstown Quartet. Kim is the creator of Lullaby Dreams, a project that brings beauty and humanity to the hospital experience of babies, families, and medical staff in NICUs and children’s hospitals through music.
Written / 1807
Movements / One
Style / Romantic
Duration / Eight minutes
Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus was a legendary Roman hero who lived during the late fifth and early sixth centuries. He received the name Coriolanus after he captured the city of Corioli in the war against the Volscians. A man from the upper class (the patricians), he opposed the efforts of the lower class (the plebeians), who were gaining political power. During a famine in Rome, Coriolanus argued that the plebeians should not get any grain unless they would allow the abolition of the office of the tribune. Naturally, the tribunes disagreed and banished him to exile. Coriolanus took refuge among his former enemies, the Volscians. Together they laid siege to Rome. Bent on revenge and determined to ruin Rome, Coriolanus would not listen to the pleas of her priests and patricians. They called on his mother Volumni and his wife Virgilia to plead on their behalf. Obstinate at first, Coriolanus eventually gave in, a ruined man.
There are several theatrical versions of this story. Shakespeare follows Plutarch’s history and has Coriolanus murdered by the Volscians. Another playwright, Heinrich Joseph von
Collin, has Coriolanus take his own life. Collin’s play was popular in Vienna for several years after it was first performed in 1802. It was this play that inspired Beethoven to write a new overture. It premiered in 1807 at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, along with the premieres of his Fourth Symphony and Fourth Piano Concerto.
The overture focuses on the psychological drama of Coriolanus. The opening describes his obstinate anger and resolution against the Romans; the tender second theme expresses the pleadings of his wife and mother. Maynard Solomon, in his masterful biography of Beethoven, claims that Coriolan “demonstrates that Beethoven did not always insist on joyful conclusions, but was able to locate transcendence in the acceptance of death itself.”
© 2022 John P. VarineauWritten / 1779
Movements / Three
Style / Classical
Duration / Thirty minutes
In 1779, Mozart was back in Salzburg after a sixteen-month sojourn seeking a job befitting a composer of his talents. The trip took him as far as Paris, but he also visited the influential centers of Munich and Mannheim. Despite some artistic triumphs, Mozart didn’t find the job he so desperately needed. Tragically, Mozart’s mother, who was traveling with him, died in Paris. Now he had to return home to Salzburg to accept a paltry appointment from the Archbishop as organist and concertmaster. Having tasted independence, he was back under the suffocating dominance of his father. And he chaffed at all of the rules and regulations of his employer: “It is not Salzburg itself but the Prince and his conceited nobility who become every day more intolerable to me.”
Mozart was not an “autobiographical” composer. Rarely does any composition of his let you know what was actually going on in his life while he was writing it. The music of 1779 gives us no hint of how miserable Mozart really was.
He wrote three symphonies, several masses, two groups of Vespers, a serenade and divertimento for winds and strings, a concerto for two pianos, and this Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. Maynard Solomon, Mozart’s masterful biographer, said that with this music “there is a shift toward quite unexpected conceptions of beauty, which now embody a sense of restlessness and instability, and even of the dangerous or uncanny.” Mozart has given us no clues who he wrote Sinfonia Concertante for, or why he wrote it. He did play the violin—he probably wrote most of his violin concertos for himself—and also the viola, but there is no evidence that he ever played either part of this work himself. It is remarkable that this “symphony that acts like a concerto,” the greatest and most profound of any of his string concertos, was written by an unhappy man.
The three movements all have a distinct character. The first movement has the somewhat unusual tempo marking of majestic, but that is just what it is. The second is like a tragic opera duet with two lovers singing passionately to each other. The ebullient finale gives each player the opportunity to show off.
© 2022 John P. VarineauWritten / 1945
Movements / Five
Style / Contemporary
Duration / Twenty-six minutes
When Shostakovich started writing his Ninth Symphony in 1945—and two weeks before the end of World War II—everybody in official circles was expecting some sort of great song of praise to Stalin—á la Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As he says (in the muchdisputed Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov),
They wanted a fanfare from me, an ode, they wanted me to write a majestic Ninth Symphony. . . . Everyone praised Stalin, and now I was supposed to join in this unholy affair. There was an appropriate excuse. We had ended the war victoriously; no matter the cost, the important thing was that we won, the empire had expanded. And they demanded that Shostakovich use quadruple winds, choir, and soloists to hail the leader. All the more because Stalin found the number auspicious: the Ninth symphony. The experts told him that I knew my work and therefore Stalin assumed that the symphony in his honor would be a quality piece of music. He would be able to say, ‘There
it is, our national Ninth.” I confess that I gave hope to the leader and teacher’s dreams. I announced that I was writing an apotheosis. I was trying to get them off my back but it turned against me. When my Ninth was performed, Stalin was incensed. He was deeply offended, because there was no chorus, no soloists. And no apotheosis. There wasn’t even a paltry dedication. It was just music, which Stalin didn’t understand very well and which was of dubious content. . . . I couldn’t write an apotheosis to Stalin, I simply couldn’t. Indeed, Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony is about as far away from an apotheosis as you can get. It is almost circus music, what the composer Marian Koval called “musical mischief . . . old man Haydn and a regular American sergeant unsuccessfully made up to look like Charlie Chaplin.” It is also one of Shostakovich’s shortest symphonies.
The first movement begins with a sprightly theme played by the violins. Soon the trombone enters with two ostentatious notes and the piccolo responds with a nonchalant little melody. Those two themes get tossed around until the middle of the movement when things become a bit harried. The original tunes return played by different instruments and then, the music suddenly ends.
The clarinet begins the second movement with a melancholy waltz tune. After its full statement, the
strings enter with a more foreboding melody. Those two tunes alternate for the rest of the movement. It ends with a lonely piccolo accompanied by plucked strings.
The third movement features blisteringly fast finger work for just about everybody, but the frenetic pace can’t go on for long, so it quickly transitions in the fourth movement, announced by the ominous brass. The bassoon has an extended solo over a static chord held by the strings. The
brass blare out their theme again and there is another long bassoon solo. This time it transitions into a jaunty but worried new tune. Unannounced, the last movement has begun. The melody sounds like it should be happy, but there is a forced and unsettled quality to it. Suddenly, the tempo takes off and the symphony comes to a frantic close.
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February 17 & 19, 2023
Choose from a variety of classical and jazz performance series featuring top musicians, ensembles, and guest artists.
LECTURE ONLY TICKETS: 517 323-1045
LECTURE/LUNCH TICKETS: 517 543-3041
October. 3, 2022
Physicist, Astronomer
David Helfand, physicist and astronomer, has been on the faculty of Columbia University in New York for over 40 years. He is the author of more than 200 scientific publications.
David Helfand has served as the president of the American Astronomical Society, the professional organization of astronomers and other planetary scientists.
David Helfand will speak on Global Climate Change. He will discuss what we know and what we don’t know about climate change, distinguishing facts from fiction. Mr. Helfand will describe how past climate conditions help with predictions for the future.
November 14, 2022
The Savvy Traveler
Rudy Maxa is one of America’s most outstanding travel experts. His knowledge and expertise has helped thousands of travelers save time and money.
Mr. Maxa is a contributing editor to National Geographic Traveler and Delta Air Lines Sky Magazine His work has won numerous awards, including several Emmy Awards.
Lansing Town Hall patrons will enjoy Mr. Maxa's program: Confessions of a Travel Junkie. His presentation will be a highly anecdotal and personal account of a travel journalist. He will share what it is like shooting television shows in dozens of countries.
April 24, 2023
Lyricist, Composer, Playwright
Music is in the air as we welcome Sean Hartley, a leading authority on the history of Broadway Musicals.
Mr. Hartley is the director of Theater@Kaufman, the theater division of the Kaufman Music Center.
As a lyricist, composer, and playwright, his productions have won awards including Snow, which won the ASCAP Harold Arlen Award for Best New Musical.
Sean Hartley will present an overview of musicals that have changed Broadway, with a focus on four musicals: Show Boat, Oklahoma, Company, and Hamilton. He will share why these four musicals evolved from light entertainment to thoroughly integrated works of art.
May 8, 2023
Author, Writer, Scholar, Lecturer
Once again, Lansing Town Hall welcomes Elliot Engel for an entertaining and enlightening presentation. Mr. Engel has taught at the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke University, and UCLA. He is the author of 10 books and has written four plays. He has been inducted into the Royal Society of Arts in England.
Elliot Engel will present an enjoyable program on Winston Churchill. Mr. Engel will explore Churchill as the child, adolescent, as well as the triumphant and witty statesman. Patrons will be captivated as they learn about this 20th century great.
Lansing Town Hall Series, Inc. is a non-profit organization. Proceeds support the Lansing Symphony Orchestra.
As a long-time supporter of the arts, Honigman’s Lansing Office celebrates the work of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra.
Kevin M. Blair
Lauren Babbage
Kevin M. Blair
Kenneth T. Brooks
Kenneth T. Brooks
Li Gao
Joseph A. Garcia
Mark A. Burton
June Summers Haas
Li Gao, Ph.D
Andrea Hansen
Andrea Hansen
Mark A. Hilpert
Mark A. Hilpert
Brian A. Kandler
Brian A. Kandler
Douglas E. Mains
Douglas E. Mains
Dennis Muchmore
Melissa Malerman
Ryan B. Opel
Dennis Muchmore
Peter B. Ruddell
Ryan B. Opel
Peter B. Ruddell
Angela Epolito Sprecher
Daniel L. Stanley
Daniel L. Stanley
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Masterworks Concert Series 05
06.02.23
(517) 339-7255 • MortonsFineCatering.com
Weddings • Corporate Events • Private Functions
Timothy Muffitt, conductor
Clayton Stephenson, piano
Masterworks Concert Series
PRESENTED BY
Grieg Lyric Suite, op. 54
Shepherd’s Boy (Gjetergutt)
Gangar
Notturno
March of the Dwarfs (Trolltog)
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT
PROVIDED BY
Harlin
The Fourth Pedal (World Premiere) INTERMISSION
Sibelius Symphony No. 2, op. 43, D major
Allegretto
Andante; ma rubato
Vivacissimo
Finale: Allegro moderato
Michigan Arts and Culture Council National Endowment For The Arts
Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
Written / 1891
Movements / Four
Style / Romantic
Duration / Fifteen minutes
Clayton Stephenson is increasingly recognized for his captivating and original play. He is a finalist of the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition, 2022 Gilmore Young Artist, 2017 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation.
Clayton has appeared at many prominent concert venues, such as Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium, the Kennedy Center, Chicago’s Millennium Park Pritzker Pavilion, Chicago’s Symphony Center, Charleson Gaillard Center, Bass Performance Hall, Bad Kissingen Rossini-Saal, The Auditorium of the Louis Vuitton Foundation and United Nations General Assembly Hall.
Clayton has played at many music festivals including Kissinger Sommer Festival, BeethovenFest in Bonn, Ravinia Festival, Stars and Rising Stars in Munich, Swiss Alps Classics Colour
of Music Festival, and he has been featured on NPR, WUOL, and WQXR.
Clayton has performed with many orchestras including the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, Lansing Symphony Orchestra, Louisville Symphony, Augusta Symphony, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestras, Newport Symphony Orchestra, and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
Clayton’s artistry was clear from an early age when he was admitted into the Juilliard Pre-College at age ten. Currently, he studies at Harvard’s dual degree program with NEC, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics at Harvard and a master’s degree in piano performance at the New England Conservatory with Professor Wha Kyung Byun.
As a child, Edvard Grieg took piano lessons from his mother. When he was fifteen, the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull heard him play and insisted that he immediately be sent to the Leipzig conservatory in Germany. Grieg hated the dry piano exercises and repertoire— Czerny and Clementi—that he studied there. (What teenager doesn’t?) A change of teachers seemed to help, but apparently the best part of the conservatory for Grieg was being able to hear so many concerts. He was back in Norway by the time he turned nineteen. In spite of his success as a pianist back home, he was unable to make a living at it, so he moved to Denmark. It was there, about five years later, that Edmund Neupert performed Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor. He wrote to Grieg about its reception: “The triumph . . . was tremendous,” Neupert reported.
While he was in Denmark, Grieg met another young Norwegian composer, Rikard Nordraak. The two formed the Euterpe Society with the purpose of promoting Scandinavian music. For the rest of his life, Grieg dedicated himself to being a “Romantic nationalist” and to writing in a distinctly Norwegian style.
Grieg’s musical output was not like the other well-known composers of the nineteenth century. He wrote only one symphony, which he later suppressed. He wrote no operas but two sets of incidental music for stage plays (Peer Gynt being the most famous). There is a smattering of chamber music. He wrote only one concerto, the blockbuster for piano. But he wrote many songs for solo voices as well as chorus. And he wrote lots of short piano pieces. The pieces he wrote for orchestra were often arrangements of those pieces for piano.
Some of Grieg’s most characteristically “Norwegian” pieces are 66 short works for piano—collectively known as Lyric Pieces—that he wrote between 1867 and 1901. He wrote his fifth set of Lyric Pieces (Shepherd Boy, Gangar, Nocturne, March of the Trolls, Scherzo and Ringing Bells) in 1891 and arranged the first of the set for strings. About ten years later, Grieg learned that Anton Seidl, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, had previously arranged four of the pieces (Gangar, March of the Trolls, Nocturne, and Ringing Bells) for orchestra. Grieg felt Seidl’s orchestration was a bit too “Wagnerian,” so he diplomatically wrote to Seidl’s widow (who was Wagner’s stepdaughter!):
This orchestration is excellent in itself; nevertheless, in accordance with my own intentions, I have made many revisions in some of the pieces, while others I have left out altogether or orchestrated afresh.
Plauded for his “extraordinary narrative and poetic gifts, sense of proportion and genius for scaling dynamics and… intelligent virtuosity” (Gramophone),
Grieg deleted Ringing Bells from the suite and substituted Shepherd Boy. It is the only one of the suite that uses just the strings in the orchestra. It begins gently, becomes more impassioned, and then fades away. The second movement, Gangar (sometimes translated “Norwegian March”) is a sort of walking tune. It sways along, sometimes strutting. The tender Nocturne comes complete with bird-song. The March of the Dwarfs is one of Grieg’s most famous works. It begins quietly and develops quickly into a fury. There is a brief tender interlude that leads back to the beginning of the march, a final frenzy, and a deceptive ending.
© 2022 John P. VarineauMovements
/Four
Style / Romantic
Duration / Forty-three minutes
Jean Sibelius wrote his symphonies at a time when writing “pure” music was unfashionable. Audiences wanted music that told a story. Throughout his life, Sibelius obliged by writing tone poems—music that depicted scenes, stories, or even political ideas. His most famous tone poem is, of
course, Finlandia. It quickly became the signature piece for the Finnish nationalist movement soon after he wrote it in 1899. However, Sibelius held the line with his symphonies:
My symphonies are music conceived and worked out solely in terms of music, with no literary basis. I am not a literary musician . . . for me, music begins where words cease. A scene can be expressed in painting, and drama in words, but a symphony should be music first and last. Of course, it has happened that, quite unbidden, some mental image has established itself in my head in connection with a movement I have been writing, but the germ and fertilization have been solely musical.
Although Sibelius was insistent that his symphonies started as pure music, the temper of the times gave them additional meaning. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Finland was trying to throw off the yoke of nearly one hundred years of Russian rule. Sibelius started writing his Second Symphony only a year after he finished Finlandia. It gained its political meaning soon after its first performance in Helsinki in 1902. As late as 1946, the Finnish musicologist Ilmari Kronn declared that in his Second Symphony
Sibelius wished to depict “Finland’s struggle for political liberty.” You can listen to the Second Symphony that way, or you can listen to it as “music first and last.”
In his Second Symphony, Sibelius turns
the standard form for a first movement on its head. Instead of presenting a few main themes in an exposition, he begins with what sounds like bits and pieces of themes. He breaks them into even smaller bits in the development. It is only at the climax of this generally pastoral movement that we get a fullblown theme.
Cellos and basses begin the second movement with a gentle, walking pizzicato (plucking of strings). The bassoons play the first theme over this. It contains a curious blues-like inflection. The oboes join in, then the strings, and finally the brass, as a climax develops which suddenly breaks off. After a silence, the strings begin a second, hymn-like melody. This too develops to a climax and breaks off. The development concerns itself primarily with the first theme. The hymn comes back again but in a dark minor with threatening brass. The walking pizzicato returns. This time the whole orchestra plays above it. A final brass climax closes the movement.
The third movement is a blistering
scherzo for the strings. The trio section features a beautiful melody played by the oboe and accompanied by clarinets and horns. With a blast from the trumpets, the scherzo bursts back in. A second statement of the trio leads to a transition into the last and glorious movement. It seems the whole symphony has been building towards the opening theme of the finale. The flutes and oboes play a quiet second theme over gentle, but incessantly murmuring strings. The development section works primarily with motives from the first theme. It inexorably builds to a climax and a full restatement of both the principal themes. This time, as the second theme builds, its minor quality changes to major, leading to a glorious close.
Best known to millions of TV viewers as a top four finalist during the 2007 season of “American Idol,” LaKisha Jones is ready to reclaim center stage in music, theatre and television.
Her last album, “So Glad I’m Me” was full of Jones’ expressive, full-bodied and arresting vocals, the same voice that electrified “American Idol” viewers with the Dreamgirls showstopper “And I Am Telling You” and later the Broadway stage in the Oprah Winfrey produced, Tony Award-winning musical, The Color Purple. Her drive and motivation dates back to her childhood in Flint, Michigan. Raised by her mother and grandmother, Jones was exposed to music by legendary singers such as Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle. She auditioned
for “American Idol” once before in 2003 but didn’t make the cut. Jones drove to New York to audition again for “Idol” and made it to the 2007 season where she became the fourth finalist. She segued from “Idol” to the Broadway stage for “The Color Purple” where she played two roles: that of a “church lady” and of the pivotal character “Sophia.” A frequent soloist with symphonies around the world, Ms. Jones has performed as a guest soloist with numerous orchestras.
Feel the joy of the season with your favorite holiday tunes and traditional carols. The afternoon features LaKisha Jones, Flint, Michigan native and American Idol finalist joining the Lansing Symphony for an encore performance. Bring your friends and family to be a part of this community tradition.
Now in their 24th year performing their rich, diverse catalogue with symphonies across North America, Peter Brennan’s Jeans ‘n Classics is a star performer in the arts and entertainment scene. Most definitely not a tribute act, the band and
singers of world class act Jeans ‘n Classics faithfully interpret the music of legendary rock and pop albums and artists, with their own special and signature flair.
02 02.11.23 Pops Series Pops Series PRESENTED BY
Where The Streets Have No Name
Take On Me
Never Gonna Give You Up
Walk Like An Egyptian
Sweet Dreams
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Whip It
In Your Eyes
Under Pressure
INTERMISSION
Head Over Heels
Let’s Groove
Kiss
One Way Or Another
Time After Time
Modern Love
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Careless Whisper
Love Shack
Visit jeansnclassics.com
TONIGHT’S CONCERT
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY
Güd Marketing
Michigan Radio
Traction
GUEST ARTIST ACCOMMODATIONS PROVIDED BY
Candlewood Suites
Celebrating our Sweet 16 2022-2023 Season
PRESENTED BY
Experience the music of the Wondrous World of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts as performed by a live orchestra. Hear selections from the iconic scores of John Williams, Patrick Doyle, James Newton Howard, Nicholas Hooper, and Alexander Desplat.
TONIGHT’S CONCERT GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY
Theatre
122 S Putnam Street ~ Williamston MI 48895 517-655-SHOW (7469) www.williamstontheatre.org
For
A series designed to showcase the artistry of the Lansing Symphony musicians in an intimate setting and to introduce audiences to talented artists and innovative programming. All Chamber Series concerts are performed at Molly Grove Chapel at First Presbyterian Church of Lansing.
CHAMBER SERIES
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY VIRGINIA P. AND THE LATE BRUCE T. ALLEN
CHAMBER 01
Sunday, November 13, 3:00pm
Works by: Stöhr and Schumann
Florina Georgia Petrescu, violin
David Schultz, viola
Stefan Koch, cello
Mary Siciliano, piano
CHAMBER 02
Sunday, January 29, 3:00pm
Works by: Haydn and Beethoven
Chase Ward, violin
Michael Bechtel, violin
Sam Koeppe, viola
JinHyun Kim, cell
CHAMBER 03
Sunday, March 19, 3:00pm
Works by: Mendelssohn, Grieg, Hailstork, & Piazzolla
Ji Hyun Kim, violin
Jinhyun Kim, cello
Patrick Johnson, piano
CHAMBER 04
Sunday, May 21, 3:00pm
Works by: Coleman, D’Rivera, Klughart, Ligeti, & Piazzolla
Richard Sherman, flute
Stephanie Shapiro, oboe
Guy Yehuda, clarinet
Michael Kroth, bassoon
Corbin Wagner, horn
LANSING TOWN HALL
Carol Dooley, PRESIDENT
Ruth Ann Brunet, VICE PRESIDENT
Patty Greene, SECRETARY
Mara Lud, TREASURER
Through its Celebrity Lecture Series, Lansing Town Hall has supported the Symphony’s annual operations since 1953. Patrons meet at the Eagle Eye Golf and Banquet Center in Bath, Michigan, for a one-hour lecture, an optional luncheon, and an opportunity to ask the guest speaker questions. Subscriptions are $230 for the Lecture and Luncheon Series (including Q & A with the speaker) and $125 for lectures only. Individual tickets can be purchased at the door, subject to availability.
The 2022-2023 69th season features Physicist and Astronomer David Helfand on October 3, The Savvy Traveler Rudy Maxa on November 14, Lyricist, Composer, and Playwright Sean Hartley on April 24, and Author, Writer, Scholar, and lecturer Elliot Engel on May 8.
Additional information about the series is available at www.lansingsymphony. org or by contacting Ticket Chair Margaret Hedlund at (517) 323-1045, Lansing Town Hall President Carol Dooley at (517) 256-8542, or the Lansing Symphony office at (517) 487-5001.
Paula Latovik Weiner and Marcia Stockmeyer, CO-PRESIDENTS
Mandi Meyen, SECRETARY
Jacqie Babcock, TREASURER
Shirley Paxton and Jacqie Babcock, PAST CO-PRESIDENTS
The Pro Symphony organization was founded in 1947. Over the years, our members have been loyal supporters of the Lansing Symphony, raising and contributing substantial monies from fundraising projects and serving in various capacities. We generally hold three business meetings per year to plan our activities. We provide refreshments for orchestra members at dress rehearsals and Chamber Concert attendees. For fundraising, we have an annual Geranium Sale in May and a Poinsettia Sale in December. We invite new members to join this group of committed women who enjoy working together for a common cause. Pro Symphony is an excellent opportunity to invest in the Orchestra in satisfying ways.
The annual dues are $20. Please email Mimi LaLonde at bufnmuf@att.net for additional information regarding membership or our activities.
Lansing Symphony Orchestra is honored to have been part of the community’s rich cultural fabric for more than 90 years. We are pleased to offer music that extends beyond the concert hall and comes to our neighborhoods.
The LSO is committed to taking an active role in the development of music education programming for Greater Lansing area youth. By bringing music into the lives and classrooms of young audiences, we hope students will acquire an interest in and appreciation for orchestral music and their community’s symphony.
Bring your lawn chairs or blankets to enjoy a wonderful casual concert of chamber music outside. Picnic baskets are encouraged! Concerts take place at MSUFCU Headquarters in East Lansing.
Summer 2023 Dates: TBA
Join musicians of the LSO for unique concerts of contemporary chamber music. All composers and works selected for this series have distinct compositional voices that will connect with audience members in new and unexpected ways. Performances take place in the intimate Robin Theatre in Lansing’s REO Town.
Dates: January 19, February 16, March 16, April 20
Join soloists Colleen Chester, Dalan Guthrie, Katy Green, and Ryan Fellman, along with LSO musicians, for an afternoon of Sacred and Secular Music. Featuring the music of J.S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn.
Sunday, February 5 at 3:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
LSO partners with community organizations to present an interactive series that connects families and their children with music, art, and literature. Performances are held on Sunday afternoons throughout the Lansing area.
Dates: October 30, January 22, March 12
This program provides an opportunity for student instrumentalists to perform alongside LSO musicians. Students participate in an audition process similar to that of a professional orchestra, and those chosen join the LSO in a rehearsal and the Holiday Pops concert. Students gain the invaluable experience of being part of a professional orchestra. The Side by Side Auditions are held in November.
The StudentAccess Program offers $14.50 tickets to MasterWorks and 50% off tickets to Pops and chamber concerts. Students must possess a valid student ID.
Conductor Timothy Muffitt and the Lansing Symphony Orchestra present a complete, interactive orchestra concert on the Wharton Center stage. Link Up is a partnership with Carnegie Hall and has become a model for implementing high-quality arts education in schools nationwide.
Schools are provided with student workbooks, teacher guides, and a professional development course for in-class lessons on the Link Up materials for a small per-student fee. For an additional fee, teachers receive recorders that students can
play during the concert. Students perform what they have learned from their teachers in the classroom in an exciting performance with the LSO.
The LSO collaborates with guest artists and composers to offer middle school, high school, and college students masterclasses. Masterclasses cover a wide range of topics such as the basics of orchestral playing, audition preparation, and general performance guidance.
The Family Fun Card offers $10 MasterWorks and Chamber tickets and 50%-off Pops tickets, excluding Holiday Pops, for the entire family with a $25 yearly membership fee. Limited availability.
“The Greater Lansing area is a dynamic business and cultural hub for mid-Michigan, and AF Group is proud to partner with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra to help make our community an exceptional place to live, work and play. By promoting the arts, we are strengthening our community for generations to come.”
JAMIE
WHISNANT, CEO
“Auto-Owners is proud to support local arts and culture through our continued commitment to the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. As a Lansingbased company, we are fortunate to have a top notch musical organization so close to home.”
DEBBIE
HORAK, PARTNER“When I listen to the LSO perform, I am reminded of the power of individual contribution. The orchestra is like a community – each person adds their own character and skill to the performance – strengthening and inspiring everyone around them.”
“Jackson believes cities with vibrant arts and culture bring residents closer together while instilling pride and a strong sense of community. We are pleased to support the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, especially their outreach and education programs, increasing access to the arts in Lansing.”
DOUGLAS
G. CHALGIAN, PARTNER
“Chalgian & Tripp Law Offices is pleased to support the Symphony.”
JEFFREY
S. THEUER, SHAREHOLDER“Congratulations to the LSO and Maestro Muffitt on an exciting upcoming season! We are fortunate to have such an outstanding orchestra and musicians in our community, and we look forward to many more successful seasons in the future.”
STEVE
SCHRAM, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & GENERAL MANAGER
“Michigan Radio proudly supports the Lansing Symphony. It’s part of our ongoing commitment to serve the Lansing area through our partnership with Lansing Community College and expanded local coverage on 89.7 FM-WLNZ.”
APRIL CLOBES, PRESIDENT/CEO
“For 85 years, MSUFCU has believed that access to the arts is the cornerstone of a vibrant community. We are pleased to support the MasterWorks Series this season, and look forward to another inspiring year of LSO performances.”
JOHN
ADENT, PRESIDENT/CEO“Neogen is proud to call Lansing our home, and to support our talented friends and neighbors at the Lansing Symphony Orchestra.”
KATIE THORNTON & CHRISTINA FERLAND, PARTNERS
“Plante Moran and Plante Moran Financial Advisors are proud to be a sponsor of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. Together, we’re creating a legacy that’s unstoppable!”
DAVE REGAN, PRESIDENT
“Plas-Labs believes that the arts play a critical role in enriching a community, bringing music education and culture to residents. We are proud to support the LSO as they carry out their mission.”
CAMRON GNASS, FOUNDER/PRINCIPAL
“LSO is one of the most important and impactful players in Lansing’s cultural landscape. Traction is proud to help them deliver their transformative experiences to our community.”
“As WKAR celebrates a century of service to our community, we are mindful of all the organizations that have made Lansing the dynamic and culturally vibrant place it is today. WKAR has enjoyed a long partnership with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, and we are proud to support their new season.”
Our legacy. Your future. Unstoppable.
Plante Moran and Plante Moran Financial Advisors are proud to sponsor Lansing’s influential musical contribution to the community.
Together, we’re creating a legacy that’s unstoppable. For the 2022-23 concert series, we look forward to “The Magical Music of Harry Potter” in April!
Katie Thornton, partner katie.thornton@plantemoran.com
Christina Ferland, partner christina.ferland@plantemoran.com
Jody Knol blends insightful information about the featured composers, music, and guest artists. PreView Conversations are held at 6:45pm prior to each MasterWorks performance and give you a chance to hear selected passages of music, learn some of the histories of the music, and listen to the artists performing. PreViews are an excellent opportunity to feel more connected to the evening’s program and the musicians performing it.
PREVIEW CONVERSATION
plantemoran.com
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY WKAR
Jody Knol began announcing classical music on 90.5 WKAR while a student at MSU in 1982. After receiving his degree in Interdisciplinary Humanitiesmusic, theater, and political scienceJody worked as chief announcer for WMUK in Kalamazoo for two years before returning to WKAR in 1986. He currently hosts the morning classical program from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm on weekdays. Jody’s association with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra began in 1986 when he hosted LSO broadcasts on 90.5 Classical. Lansing Symphony recordings are now part of Great Lakes Concerts which Jody produces and hosts. Great Lakes Concerts air Saturdays at 12:00 pm on 90.5 FM and WKAR.org, Sundays at 10:00 am on WRCJ, Detroit, and Mondays at 6 pm on Classical IPR, Interlochen. This is Jody’s fifteenth year hosting Lansing Symphony PreView Conversations.
GOLDEN BATON CIRCLE
$25,000+
Sam & Mary Austin
Auto-Owners Insurance
Allan & Cathy Claypool
Michigan Arts and Culture Cultural
MSU Federal Credit Union
CONCERTMASTER CIRCLE
$10,000 TO $24,999
Anonymous
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Joseph & Beth Anthony
David H. & Patricia Brogan
April Clobes & Glen Brough
City of Lansing
Susan Coley & Don LeDuc
Don & Jan Hines
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Ingham County
Jackson
Hari Kern
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Lansing Town Hall Series, Inc.
Loomis, Ewert, Parsley, Davis & Gotting
John & Fran Loose
National Endowment for the Arts
Pro Symphony Traction
Worthington Family Foundation
PRINCIPAL PLAYER CIRCLE
$5,000 TO $9,999
Charles Ballard & June Youatt
Mary Ann Beekhuis
Jenny Bond
Susan Davis and the Late Jack C. Davis
Ronald & Carol Dooley
Eileen Ellis
James Engelkes
Enterprise Holdings Foundation
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PNC Foundation
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$3,500 TO $4,999
AF Group
Buckingham Strategic Wealth
Chalgian & Tripp Law Offices PLLC
Financial Technology, Inc.
R. Samuel & Jean Holland
Ingham County
Michael & Betty Moore
Timothy & Elise Muffitt
Neogen
David & Marilyn Nussdorfer
Plas-Labs, Inc.
Randolph Rasch
Katie Thornton
Richard Witter
$2,500 TO $3,499
Arts Council of Greater Lansing
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Kahl, Kahl, Caltrider - Wells Fargo
David & Mandi Meyen
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$1,000 TO $2,499
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$600 TO $999
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$300 TO $599
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$100 TO $299
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Sharon Hobbs, PhD.
Ronit Hoffman
Thomas & Lynne Hoffmeyer
Joel Hofman
Chris Holman
Chris & Deb Horak
Beth Hubbell
James & Krista Hunsanger
Jeffrey Johnson
Donna Kachmarchik - Kregelka
Doug & Alison Kahl
Don & Liz Kaufman
Kaleb Kimerer
Matthew Kimerer
Larry & Katherine King
Keri Kittmann
Stefan Koch
Ronald & Suzanne Kregel
Jeff Kressler
Meredith & Adrian Krygowski
John Kuchar
Mary Ellen Lane
Stephen & Nancy Lange
Lansing Art Gallery
Beth & Jack Lawrence
Steven & Maria Leiby
Robert & Renee Leonard
Irving Lesher
Ann Lipkowitz
Ralph & Sueann Long
Willie Longshore & Margaret Fankhauser
Chris & Krista Loose
Sherry Lothschutz
Hope Lovell
Mary Low
Gary & Carol Lundquist
John & Diane MacDonald
Peggy Malovrh
Diane Manetz
Wally & Linda Markham
Lisa M. Martino-Cook
Joan & Jerry Mattson
Duane & Maureen Mayhew
Christopher & Mindy McComb
Jim & Sally McCoy
Anne McCulloch
Timothy & Nancy McKay
John Meara, Jr.
Paul & Bettie Menchik
Doug & Barbara Mercer
Benjamin & Rebekah Merritt
Bob & Nancy Metzger
Suzanne Beekman Mills
Catherine Mitchell
Douglas Moffat & Cara Boeff
Harry & Susie Moore
Kenneth Morrison
Francis & Irma Moss
William & Sharon Myers
Melissa Nay
Nancy Nay
Richard & Sandi Nelson
Ron Newman & Sunny Wilkinson
Kevin & Barbara Nilsen
Jerry & Valerie Nilson
Shirley Noetzold
Elaine Noffze
Marion R. Norwood
Maureen O’Higgins
Georgia Old
Bruce K. & Lois Omundson
Jeff & Mary O’Neill
Katherine O’Neill
George Orban & Rae Ramsdell
Keith & Helen Ostien
Jamie Paisley
Emily Pantera
Michael Paski
Robert Paski
John & Carrie Pence
Steven and Janet Peters
Maria Pettyes
Tony Phillips
Julie Pingston
Jason Pisarik
Howard Pizzo
Ellen Pollak & Nigel Paneth
Chloe Polzin
Bill Potter
Joyce Preston
Brad & Jane Pryce
Ira & Ann Purchis
Elaine Putvin
David Rayl
Earl & Jane Reisdorff
Thomas & Martie Repaskey
Michelle Reynaert
Margaret Riggs
Douglas B. Roberts
John Roberts
Roberta Roden
Frank & Susan Roggenbuck
Ruth Sablich
William Saul
Kevin Schumacher
Rachel Schumann
Kenneth & Dianne Schwartz
Ben Schwendener
Amy Scoby
Stephen & Colleen Serkaian
Mary Shankland
Mary Sharp
Richard Sherman
James Sinadinos
David & Sharon Sinclair
Philip & Carolyn Sinder
Ed & Donna Skinner
John Dale Smith
Linda L. Smith
Noah & Jennifer Smith
Judith Soble
Tom & Kay Sparks
Bob Stander
Deborah Starnes
Emily Stevens
Michael Stratton
Emily Sutton-Smith & John Lepard
Chris Swope
Emily Tabuteau
Judy Tant
Jayme Taylor
Jeffrey Theuer & Sally Sproat
Elizabeth Thomas
Tara Thyen
Charles & Mary Ellen Toy
Amy & Dave Tratt
Stacey Trzeciak
Zeynep Ustunol
George & Georgia Valaoras
Charlene Vanacker
John Varineau
Walter & Elsa Verdehr
William & Virginia Vincent
Tim & Ann Vogelsang
Anne-Marie & Thomas Voice
Susan Ward
Darryl Warncke
Jane Waun
Frank & Carol Webster
Jane Wei
William & Joelene Wellman
Denise Wheaton
Carolyn White
David & Beverly Wiener
Eric Wildfang
Bill & Carol Ann Wilkinson
Jeff Williams & Joy Whitten
Troy Wilson
Amy Winans
Gary & Frances Wolfe
Kevin & Jennifer Zielke
Ellen Zienert
The donor listing includes gifts received between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022
The Lansing Symphony Orchestra received gifts in memory and in honor of the following individuals.
JANE ANDERSON
Jeffrey Anderson & Jason Joostberns
JACK DAVIS
Michael & Paula Koppisch
Richard & Sue Mermelstein
ED DICHOZA
Travis & Courtney Millbrook
MARCIA ENGELKES
Karen Dichoza
Travis & Courtney Millbrook
BILL FULLMER
Edwin & Karen Dichoza
Travis & Courtney Millbrook
Nancy Parmenter
Judith Soble
Daniel & Kathryn Thelen
GUSTAV MEIER
Richard Sherman
ANDREW MICHELAKIS
Josephine Michelakis
MAURICE REIZEN
Hari Kern
JEAN STRANDNESS
Jane Vieth
SUZANNE TUCK
93RD SEASON
SYMPHONY SUPPORTERS
Lansing Town Hall Series, Inc.
BARB WHITE
Lansing Town Hall Series, Inc.
JOAN WITTER
Karen Dichoza
Travis & Courtney Millbrook
JON YOUNGDAHL
James Youngdahl
DAVID O’LEARY
Joan Bauer
