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Thank You to our Season Partners
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
As we gather in this space for these concerts, the Madison Symphony Orchestra acknowledges the Ho-Chunk Nation’s ancestral lands and celebrates the rich traditions, heritage, and culture that thrived long before our arrival. We respectfully recognize this Ho-Chunk land and affirm that we are better when we stand together.
John DeMain music director
In his 31st season as music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra (MSO), Grammy and Tony Award-winning conductor John DeMain is noted for his dynamic performances on concert and opera stages throughout the world.
American composer Jake Heggie assessed the conductor’s broad appeal, saying,
“There’s no one like John DeMain. In my opinion, he’s one of the top conductors in the world.”
In January 2023 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association, the NOA’s highest award.
During more than three decades in Madison as the MSO music director, DeMain has consistently raised the quality of the orchestra by introducing blind auditions and continuously expanding the repertoire to encompass ever more challenging and virtuosic works, including the highlyacclaimed performances of the complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler. DeMain also oversaw the move into the world-class Overture Hall and expanded the subscription season to triple performances.
His active conducting schedule has taken him to the stages of the National Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the symphonies of Seattle, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Columbus, Houston, San Antonio, Long Beach, and Jacksonville, along with the Pacific Symphony, Boston Pops, Aspen Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of Seville, the Leipzig MDR Sinfonieorchester, and Mexico’s Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional.
Prior engagements include visiting San Francisco Opera as guest conductor for General Director David Gockley’s farewell gala, Northwestern University to conduct Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, and the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in D.C. to conduct Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars. In 2019, he conducted the world premiere of Tazewell Thompson’s Blue at the Glimmerglass Festival to critical acclaim — he “drew a vibrant performance from an orchestra of nearly 50 players; the cast was superb.” (The New York Times) He was also planning to conduct the premiere of Blue at the Washington National Opera in March 2020.
DeMain also serves as artistic director for Madison Opera and in their 2024-2025 season conducts The Barber of Seville, Maria de Buenos Aires, and Don Giovanni. He has been a regular guest conductor with Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center and has made appearances at the Teatre Liceu in Barcelona, New York City Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera, Virginia Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Aspen Music Festival, Portland Opera, and Mexico’s National Opera.
During his distinguished 17-year tenure with Houston Grand Opera, DeMain led a history-making production of Porgy and Bess, winning a Grammy Award, Tony Award, and France’s Grand Prix du Disque for the RCA recording. In spring 2014, the San Francisco Opera released an HD DVD of their most recent production of Porgy and Bess, conducted by John DeMain.
DeMain began his career as a pianist and conductor in his native Youngstown, Ohio. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Juilliard School and made a highly acclaimed debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. DeMain was the second recipient of the Julius Rudel Award at New York City Opera and one of the first six conductors to receive the Exxon/National Endowment for the Arts Conductor Fellowship for his work with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
DeMain holds honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska and Edgewood College and he is a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He resides in Madison and his daughter, Jennifer, is a UW–Madison graduate.
VIOLIN I
Naha Greenholtz
Concertmaster
William and Joyce Wartmann Chair
Suzanne Beia
Co-Concertmaster
Steinhauer Charitable Trust Chair
Leanne Kelso
Associate Concertmaster
George and Candy Gialamas Chair
Huy Luu
Associate Concertmaster
Olga Pomolova
Assistant Concertmaster
Endowed by an Anonymous Friend
Maynie Bradley
Annetta H. Rosser Chair
Kina Ono
Neil Gopal
Elspeth Stalter-Clouse
Tim Kamps
Jon Vriesacker
Katherine Floriano
Laura Burns
Paran Amirinazari
Alec Tonno
Naomi Schrank
VIOLIN II
Xavier Pleindoux
Principal
Dr. Stanley and Shirley Inhorn Chair
Hillary Hempel
Assistant Principal
Elyn L. Williams Chair
Peter Miliczky
Holly Wagner
Rolf Wulfsberg
Olga Draguieva
Kathryn Taylor
Wendy Buehl
Geri Hamilton
Robin Ryan
Matthew Dahm
Wes Luke
Laura Mericle
VIOLA
Christopher Dozoryst
Principal
James F. Crow Chair
Katrin Talbot
Assistant Principal
Dove Family Chair
Diedre Buckley
Renata Hornik
Elisabeth Deussen
Janse Vincent
Jennifer Paulson
Hanna Pederson
David Beytas
Melissa Snell
Marie Pauls
Molly O’Brien
CELLO
Karl Lavine
Principal
Reuhl Family Chair
Mark Bridges
Assistant Principal
Patricia Kokotailo & R. Lawrence
DeRoo Chair
Karen Cornelius
Knapp Family Chair
Jordan Allen
Margaret Townsend
Lisa Bressler
Derek Handley
Trace Johnson
Alex Chambers-Ozasky
Jean Hatmaker
Members of the Symphony: 2024-25
BASS
David Scholl
Principal
Robert Rickman
Assistant Principal
Carl Davick
Tom Mohs Chair
Zachary Betz
Jeff Takaki
August Jirovec
Gregory Heintz
Mike Hennessy
FLUTE
Stephanie Jutt
Principal
Terry Family Foundation Chair
*Please see online roster
Linda Pereksta
PICCOLO
Linda Pereksta
OBOE
Izumi Amemiya
Principal
Jim and Cathie Burgess Chair
Andrea Gross Hixon
ENGLISH HORN
Lindsay Flowers
CLARINET
JJ Koh
Principal
Barbara and Norman Berven Chair
Nancy Mackenzie
BASS CLARINET
Gregory Smith
BASSOON
Cynthia Cameron
Principal
Amanda Szczys
Carol Rosing
Contrabassoon
Carol Rosing
HORN
Emma Potter
Principal
Steve and Marianne Schlecht Chair
Dafydd Bevil
Michael Szczys
William Muir
Ingrid Mullane, Assistant
TRUMPET
John Aley
Principal
Marilynn G. Thompson Chair
John Wagner
David Cooper
TROMBONE
Joyce Messer
Principal
Fred and Mary Mohs Chair
Benjamin Skroch
BASS TROMBONE
Benjamin Zisook
TUBA
Joshua Biere
Principal
TIMPANI
John Jutsum
Principal
Eugenie Mayer Bolz
Foundation Chair
PERCUSSION
Anthony DiSanza
Principal
JoAnn Six Plesko and E.J. Plesko Chair
Richard Morgan
Nicholas Bonaccio
HARP
Johanna Wienholts
Principal
Endowed by an Anonymous Friend
ORGAN
Greg Zelek
Principal
The Elaine and Nicholas Mischler Curatorship
PIANO/CELESTE
Daniel Lyons
Principal
Stephen D. Morton Chair
Orchestra Committee
Mark Bridges, Chair
Joshua Biere, Vice-Chair
Elspeth Stalter-Clouse, Secretary
David Scholl, Treasurer
Lisa Bressler, Member-at-large
Librarian
Jennifer S. Goldberg
John and Carolyn Peterson Chair
Stage Manager
Benjamin Skroch
Personnel Manager
Alexis Carreon
SCAN HERE
For the most up-to-date musician roster for the season, or scan the QR code on each program page to see the musican roster for each concert.
In memory of
John Straughn
1948-2024
John Straughn was the beloved Properties Manager for the Madison Symphony for over 40 years until his retirement at the end of last season.
The musicians, board and staff of the Madison Symphony Orchestra extend our sincere sympathy to his family.
thank you to our generous sponsors for supporting these performances sponsors
Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation
program
John DeMain | Music Director
99th Season | Overture Hall | Subscription Program No. 1 Fri., Sept 20, 7:30 pm | Sat., Sept 21 7:30 pm | Sun., Sept 22, 2:30 pm
John DeMain, Conductor
Tommy Mesa, Cello Greg Zelek, Organ
VALERIE COLEMAN (B.1970)
Umoja
JOSEPH JONGEN (1873-1953)
Symphonie Concertante for Organ and Orchestra, Op.81
Allegro molto moderato
Divertimento: Molto vivo
Molto lento: Lento mysterioso
Toccata (Moto perpetuo): Allegro moderato
Elaine and Nicholas Mischler
Diane Ballweg
Stephen Caldwell
Jane Hamblen and Robert F. Lemanske
John and Twila Sheskey Charitable Fund, in memory of Jennie Biel Sheskey
Reynold V. Peterson
The Schrank Family
with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts
Endowment support for the music library collection is the gift of John & Carolyn Peterson.
The Overture Concert Organ is the gift of Pleasant T. Rowland.
Greg Zelek is the MSO’s Principal Organist and the Elaine and Nicholas Mischler Curator of the Overture Concert Organ.
MR. ZELEK
INTERMISSION
PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, Op.33
MR. MESA
MANUEL DE FALLA (1876-1946)
Suite No.2 from “The Three-Cornered Hat”
T he Neighbors’ Dance
T he Miller’s Dance
T he Final Dance
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To access the digital program book for this concert!
WELCOME TO THE MSO!
Please silence your electronic devices and cell phones for the duration of the concert. Photography and video are not permitted during the performance. You may take and share photos during applause. Thank you!
Kyle Knox, Conductor
Your Madison Symphony Orchestra’s first MSO at the Movies of the season presents Disney and Pixar’s Coco in Concert featuring a screening of the complete film with Oscar® and Grammy®-winning composer Michael Giacchino’s musical score performed live to the film. In addition to the original score by Giacchino, “Coco” also features the Oscar®-winning song “Remember Me” by Oscar-winning songwriters Kristen AndersonLopez and Robert Lopez, and additional songs co-written by Germaine Franco and co-director and screenwriter Adrian Molina.
Tommy Mesa cello
Cuban-American cellist Dr. Tommy Mesa has established himself as one of the most charismatic, innovative, and engaging performers of his generation. The recipient of the Sphinx Organization’s 2023 Medal of Excellence, its highest honor, Mesa has appeared as soloist at the Supreme Court of the United States on four occasions and with major orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Indianapolis, Madison, New Jersey, San Antonio, and Santa Barbara, among others. Mesa gave the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s cello concerto Divided in 2022 and has been the exclusive soloist since, performing at major halls across the United States and Brazil including Miami’s New World Center, Nashville’s Schermerhorn Center, and Carnegie Hall. His orchestral recording debut of the work was released in July 2023 on Deutsche Grammophon.
In addition to serving as Artist in Residence with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in the 2024-25 season, orchestral highlights this season include debuts with the Delaware, Glacier, and Rogue Valley Symphony Orchestras as well as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, a return to the Madison Symphony, and a performance of the rarely heard Lucid Dreams by Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock with the Windsor Symphony. Last season Mesa celebrated enthusiastic performances with the Calgary and Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestras and the Ann Arbor, Columbus, Greenwich, Knoxville, Quad City, and Reading Symphony
Orchestras, among others.
Mesa has an active season with recital performances on leading stages as well, including the launch of Mesa’s tour with pianist Michelle Cann, Curtis Institute faculty and soloist. Mesa and Cann will perform at series including University of Vermont’s Lane Series, Chamber Music Pittsburgh, Linton Chamber Music in Cincinnati, and The Schubert Club in St. Paul. Mesa also performs recitals with piano and organ this season at the Phillips Collection, Bargemusic, and Key West Impromptu Classical Concerts, among others. Past performance features include recitals at The Academy of Arts and Letters, Bay Chamber Concerts, California Center for the Arts, Columbia University, Flagler Museum, The Heifetz Institute, International Beethoven Project, Kaufman Music Center, Meadowmount School of Music, University of Miami’s Signature Series, Newport Classical, Perlman Music Program Alumni Recital, Strad for Lunch Series, Virginia Arts Festival, and major universities across the United States.
Mesa recently celebrated several releases, including a recording of tango works for cello and bandoneon with performer-composer JP Jofre and an album of worldpremiere recordings by Black and Latinx composers with pianist Michelle Cann which was featured in an exclusive showcase on NYC’s classical station WQXR. Upcoming albums include collaborations with the iconic pianist Olga Kern and the multiple GRAMMY-award winning vocal ensemble, The Crossing Choir.
Mesa’s first solo album, Division of Memory on the PARMA Recordings label, received rave reviews such as in PianoMania, “Do not hold your breath for Yo-Yo Ma to record this repertoire, for the just-as-excellent Mesa has the field entirely to himself.” Mesa was featured on the GRAMMY-nominated album, “Bonhoeffer,” with the multiple GRAMMY winning group, The Crossing Choir. He has appeared with them as soloist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Longwood Gardens, The Winter Garden, and the Theological Seminary in NYC. Mesa and The Crossing Choir also collaborated on the U.S. premiere of “Astralis” for choir and solo cello by renowned composer Wolfgang Rihm and have more collaborations and premieres scheduled for future seasons.
As an ensemble musician, Mesa has been on tours with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and is the principal cellist of Sphinx Virtuosi who play every year on tour at almost every major venue across the United States. He also collaborates with Jupiter Chamber Players and has toured with Itzhak Perlman both nationally and internationally.
Mesa has given masterclasses at institutions such as U.C Berkeley, Boston Conservatory, the Colburn School, DePaul University, Meadowmount School of Music, University of Miami, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Northwestern
University, and Walnut Hill School. Previously, he held faculty positions at SUNY Purchase, Sphinx Performance Academy, The Heifetz Institute’s PEG Program, Music Mountain Festival and School, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Montecito International Music Festival, St. Petersburg International Music Academy, and The Mozart Academy at John Jay College in New York City.
Mesa’s career launched following after becoming the First Prize winner in the 2016 Sphinx Competition and a winner of the 2017 Astral Artists National Auditions. He received his BM from The Juilliard School, MM from Northwestern University, and his DMA from the Manhattan School of Music. His principal teachers were Timothy Eddy, Julia Lichten, Hans Jorgen Jensen, Mark Churchill, Ross Harbaugh, and Wells Cunningham. Mesa performs on a Nicolò Gagliano cello made in 1767 and a bow by Andre Richaume, both generously loaned to him by CANIMEX INC in Drummondville, Canada.
Greg Zelek organ
Praised as “extraordinary in the classical music world” (Jon Hornbacher, PBS Wisconsin Life) and a “musical star” (Bill Wineke, Channel 3000), Greg Zelek is the Principal Organist of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Curator of the Overture Concert Organ. In this role, Greg performs and oversees all of the MSO’s
organ programming. The MSO Organ Series regularly attracts over one thousand ticketed audience members for each of Zelek’s creatively curated and performed concerts. Since September 2017, Greg has proudly held the Elaine and Nicholas Mischler Curatorship.
In addition to his unique position in Madison, Zelek is the Curator of the Organ Series for the Jacksonville Symphony. Zelek also serves as the Northrop Organist at the University of Minnesota.
Zelek also performs frequently as a soloist throughout the United States. Always playing his solo programs from memory, Zelek has played and premiered many of the large works of the organ canon, as well as new works that showcase the versatility of the instrument. Select performances for the 2024-25 season include concerts at Spreckels Organ Pavilion in San Diego, CA and Jacoby Symphony Hall in Jacksonville, FL, and performances and masterclasses at the Oregon Bach Festival.
Alongside various orchestras, Greg has performed the organ concertos of Barber, Poulenc, and Rheinberger. In September 2024, he will perform Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Greg has also been the organist for works such as Mahler’s 8th Symphony, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony, Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, Respighi’s Pines of Rome, Foss’s Phorion, and Gounod’s Faust
Zelek is known for his inventive programming and collaborations. He has performed a classical and gospel concert with counter-tenor Reginald Mobley, arranged and commissioned works for cello and organ with cellist Thomas Mesa, performed in a Latin-American concert with a Cuban band from Miami, FL, and collaborated with electronic trombonist Mark Hetzler, in a concert featuring new music for organ, trombone, and percussion. He has also performed with the Canadian Brass in his role as Visiting Guest Artist at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN. Upcoming MSO Organ programming includes a concert of arias and gospel songs with tenor Limmie Pulliam, and an Empire Brass Celebration concert featuring former Empire Brass players that will include a newly commissioned work for the Overture Concert Organ and the ensemble.
In 2016, Greg was chosen by The Diapason magazine as one of the top “20 Under 30” organists and has won prizes in numerous organ competitions. Zelek released a recording on the Overture Concert Organ in the Fall of 2022. A recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship, he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, as well as an Artist Diploma, from the Juilliard School as a student of Paul Jacobs. Greg, who is Cuban-American and a native Spanish speaker, grew up in Miami, FL.
program notes
Sept 20-21-22, 2024
program notes by J. Michael Allsen
This concert marks the reunion of friends. Our own Greg Zelek returns to the console of the Overture Concert Organ, playing one of the great works for organ and orchestra, Joseph Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante Cellist Tommy Mesa last performed with the MSO in November 2021, playing the Dvořák Cello Concerto However, he has also appeared twice with his old friend, Greg Zelek, on our organ series programs. Here, he plays Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme Tchaikovsky revered Mozart, and this witty work is one in which he adopts a distinctly 18th-century style. Our opener is Umoja by composer Valerie Coleman. Umoja, the Swahili word for “unity” and the first principle of the African diaspora holiday Kwanzaa, began as a simple choral anthem for unity, but its composer has reworked it for several other ensembles, including the orchestral version heard here. The program closes with a suite from Manuel de Falla’s colorful, Spanish-flavored ballet The Three-Cornered Hat.
Valerie Coleman’s Umoja (Swahili for “unity”) refers to the first principle of the African diaspora holiday of
Kwanzaa. This orchestral work had its origins in a simple Kwanzaa song she wrote several years ago.
Valerie Coleman
Born: September 3, 1970, Louisville, Kentucky.
Umoja
Composed: 2019.
Premiere: September 24, 2019, by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Previous MSO Performance: This is our first performance of the work. Duration: 11:00.
Background
Valerie Coleman has an admirable double career: as one of America’s leading flutists, and as an active and successful composer.
Composer and flutist Valerie Coleman first came to national prominence as the founder of the Imami Winds, a wind quintet founded in part with the ideal of providing role models to younger African American performers in classical music (Imami is Swahili for “faith.”). She composed several works for this ensemble. She maintains a successful double career today. As a flutist, she plays as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America and Europe, and recently, in August 2022, gave the premier of Jennifer Higdon’s Flute Concerto: The Light We Can Hear in August 2022. She is widelyperformed as a composer, and widelycommissioned as well, with orchestral works written for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Coleman has a particularly close relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and has composed three works for that ensemble in the last few years, including the piece heard here. Umoja, her best-known work, has gone through many evolutions over the last two decades, and as Coleman explains, it was originally written as a simple Kwanzaa song:
“In its original form, Umoja, the Swahili word for ‘unity’ and the first
principle of the African diaspora holiday Kwanzaa, was composed as a simple song for women’s choir. It embodied a sense of ‘tribal unity’ through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional ‘call and response’ form, and the repetition of a memorable singsong melody.”
In 2001 she arranged Umoja for the Imami Winds “with the intent of providing an anthem celebrating the diverse heritages of the ensemble itself.” This was the first of many reimaginings of Umoja by Coleman for various ensembles, culminating in the orchestral version heard here, which was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Coleman writes:
“This version honors the simple melody that ever was, but is now a full exploration into the meaning of freedom and unity. Now more than ever, Umoja has to ring as a strong and beautiful anthem for the world we live in today.”
What You’ll Hear
This stirring work traces an arc that begins in simplicity, moves through conflict, and ends brightly and hopefully. Coleman provides the following comments on the music:
“Almost two decades after the original, the orchestral version brings an expansion and sophistication to the short and sweet melody, beginning with sustained ethereal passages that float and shift from a bowed vibraphone, supporting the introduction of the melody by solo violin. Here the melody is sweetly sung in its simplest form with an earnest reminiscence of Appalachian style music. From there, the melody dances and weaves throughout the instrument families, interrupted by dissonant viewpoints led by the brass and percussion sections, which represent the clash of injustices, racism, and hate that threatens to gain a foothold in the world today. Spiky textures turn into an aggressive
VALERIE COLEMAN
exchange between upper woodwinds and percussion, before a return to the melody as a gentle reminder of kindness and humanity. Through the brass-led ensemble tutti, the journey ends with a bold call of unity that harkens back to the original anthem.”
Joseph Jongen
Born: December 14, 1873, Liège, Belgium
Died: July 12, 1953, Sart-lez-Spa (near Liège), Belgium
Symphonie Concertante for Organ and Orchestra, Op.81 Composed: 1926-27.
Premiere: Jongen was the soloist in the first performance in Brussels, on February 11, 1928.
Previous MSO Performance: Previous performances of this work have featured organists Thomas Trotter (2004: the formal dedication concert of the Overture Concert Organ) and Nathan Laube (2014). Duration: 35:00.
Background
Written initially for the gigantic Wanamaker organ in Philadelphia, this work was actually premiered in Brussels.
The Belgian composer, organist, and pianist Joseph Jongen was born in Liège and spent most of his career in his homeland. After some early study in Germany, he settled in Brussels, eventually becoming the director of the conservatory there. Jongen was a fine pianist and one of the great
organists in an era of great organists. His compositional style was eclectic, drawing on the influences of his teachers D’Indy and Strauss, but also on the music of Debussy and Stravinsky, on Walloon folk music and Gregorian chant. Though he composed prolifically in all genres but opera, in particular producing a large body of excellent chamber music, Jongen is best remembered as a composer of works for organ.
His most popular work, the Symphonie Concertante, was commissioned by the Philadelphia department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker. The Wanamaker organ is an enormous instrument of some 400 ranks that was installed in the grand court of Wanamaker’s store in 1911. (The instrument—considered by many to be the largest in the world—is still played twice a day in the building’s grand central court.) The organ was being refurbished and the original plan was for Jongen to travel to Philadelphia to play the premiere in early 1928. The Symphonie—Jongen once referred to it as “that unfortunate work”— ran into non-musical obstacles almost immediately after it was finished in August 1927, however. Jongen’s father died that fall, and he threw his travel plans aside; then word arrived that work on the Wanamaker organ was proceeding slower than expected, and that his performance would have to be postponed until late 1928. Jongen received permission to go ahead with a premiere in Brussels, however. In March 1928, Rodman Wanamaker died unexpectedly, and in the end, the planned Philadelphia performance never took place. Despite its beginnings, the Symphonie quickly caught on as Jongen and others performed it across Europe and the United States. It remains one of the finest and most often-played 20thcentury works for organ and orchestra.
What You’ll Hear
This work has the outlines of a classical Symphony, and the organ and o rchestra are equal partners in working out its
themes. It is laid out in four movements:
• A forceful Allegro.
• A scherzo that alternates an offbeat dance with a slower, more fervent chorale.
• A long, impressionistic third movement.
• A bold and forceful closing Toccata
The Symphonie is a work that calls for a large, brawny organ—it was, after all, written with the titanic Wanamaker in mind—that can stand up to a large, thickly-scored orchestra. The great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, after hearing the Brussels premiere, wrote an enthusiastic letter to his friend Jongen, but questioned the way he had billed it, as a “Symphony with organ”:
“...the title ‘Symphony with organ’ lends itself to misconception. Wouldn’t ‘Symphony for orchestra and organ’ seem better and more accurate? The words ‘with organ’ are understood to mean sustaining, reinforcing, changing; that is not the role you assign to the King of Instruments and its abundant resources here; this role is not limited or restricted, it is free; it is clearly a second orchestra that enriches the first, proposing ideas, developing them or commenting upon them; the sound of the organ sometimes predominates, is never subservient, infusing a delicate virtuosity, which unlike the genre-concerto, charms and awakens the interest...”
Jongen settled on “Symphonie Concertante” which implies just this sort of equal partnership. The opening movement (Allegro molto moderato) begins with a restless fugal figure in the orchestra that leads to the organ’s first massive entrance. The movement continues as a conversation between a pair of giants: sometimes alternating themes, sometimes combining them. The ending is surprisingly understated,
JOSEPH JONGEN
closing with a quiet chord and pedal note. The second movement begins as a scherzo (Divertimento: Molto vivo) that opens with a quick, and oddlyaccented (it is in 7/4) dance for organ. This alternates with slower, more expressive Religioso music throughout. In the third and longest movement (Molto lento: Lento mysterioso), Jongen said that he wanted “organ and orchestra to realize the best union possible” and he clearly achieves this close interplay of instrumental colors. It begins with sinuous lines in solo woodwinds, and moves in an impressionistic calm throughout. Even in a great central passage for full orchestra he maintains a kind of transparent watercolor quality that probably led one of the early critics to describe this movement as “seraphic and luminous.” The finale (Toccata (Moto perpetuo): Allegro moderato) is a brilliant showpiece for both orchestras, with unceasing right-hand figuration in the organ carrying the movement through a series of ever broader climaxes. This perpetual motion stops only at the very end, in a forceful coda.
Tchaikovsky channeled his admiration for Mozart into this showpiece for cello and orchestra.
Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, Op.33
Composed: 1876.
Premiere: It was written for the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, who played the premiere in Moscow on November 30, 1877.
Previous MSO Performance:
Our only previous performance of this work was in 1945, featuring MSO cellist Mildred Stanke.
Duration: 35:00.
Background
This work was written for his Moscow conservatory colleague Willhelm Fitzenhagen, who then made several changes that the composer had not authorized before it was published.
Tchaikovsky revered Mozart above all other composers, and adapted Mozart’s style in a few of his works: both his Mozartiana Suite and Rococo Variations are works that are “Mozartean” in conception, though the melodies and texture are clearly Tchaikovsky’s own. He turned to Mozart’s music for solace during dark times. At one point he wrote to a friend: “Do you know that when I play Mozart, I feel brighter and younger—almost a youth?” And he seems to have needed that solace in the mid 1870s. He had been awarded a teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory in 1866, and taught there for a decade. Tchaikovsky’s years in Moscow were often hectic and difficult, and he constantly complained about the lack of time to compose. Despite its drawbacks, the teaching position also allowed him to make contacts with all of Russia’s finest musicians, and he still managed to be tremendously productive during this time.
immediately successful, performed on tour by Fitzenhagen, and praised by Franz Liszt and others. To Tchaikovsky’s chagrin, Fitzenhagen presented a thoroughly re-arranged and heavily edited version to a publisher without his permission. Though he was apparently angry at these unauthorized changes, Tchaikovsky eventually went along with the publication, and this remains the version most often played today— perhaps a bit more romantic in style than Tchaikovsky intended, but still a work that retains the straightforward good humor of the late 18th century.
What You’ll Hear
The “Mozartean” theme is expanded in seven variations, culminating with a showy virtuoso conclusion.
After a brief introduction, the solo cello presents a genial theme that will provide the basis for seven variations. The theme and most of the variations are concluded with a brief woodwind passage. Tchaikovsky’s elaborations of the theme range from straight decorations of the melody (Variations 1-2) to lush and lyrical (Variation 3) to jolly (Variation 5) to mock-tragic (Variation 6). The capstone, Variation 7, is a blazingly fast virtuoso passage for cello.
This colorful work by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla is inspired by the music and culture of his native region, Andalusia.
Born: May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia. Died: November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Rococo Variations were among the last works he wrote during his Moscow years, composed at the request of cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, one of Tchaikovsky’s colleagues at the Conservatory. The work was
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
MANUEL DE FALLA
Manuel de Falla
Born: November 23, 1876
Cádiz, Spain.
Died: November 14, 1946, Alta Gracia, Argentina.
Suite No.2 from “The Three-Cornered Hat” Composed: 1916-17.
Premiere: The first full-scale performance of this ballet took place at London’s Alhambra Theatre on July 22, 1919. The orchestral suites heard here were published in 1921. Previous MSO Performance: We have performed both the Suite No.2 (2008) and the complete ballet score (2017).
Duration: 12:00.
Background
This ballet score was one of several great early 20 th century masterworks commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for his Ballets Russe.
Manuel de Falla’s ballet El sombrero de tres picos, like many of the great ballet scores of Stravinsky, Ravel, and Prokofiev, was the result of a commission by impresario Serge Diaghilev for his famous Ballets Russe company. Diaghilev originally approached Falla in 1915 with a plan for turning the composer’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain into a ballet. Falla refused to allow this—one of the few times Diaghilev was turned down by a composer!—but he did promise a ballet score based upon Pedro de Alarcón’s 1874 novel El corregidor y la molinera (The Corregidor and the Miller’s Wife). Alacón had died in 1891, and Falla was at first thwarted by a troublesome clause in Alarcón’s will, but he was eventually granted permission to use the story, and set to work on the score. With the limitations imposed by the first world war, it was impossible for Diaghilev to mount a full-scale production, but he did produce a preliminary version—as a mime set to music—in Madrid in 1917. This early
version had been scored for a chamber orchestra, but with the end of the war in sight, Diaghilev insisted upon a full orchestral score. The premiere of the full ballet featured choreography by Diaghilev’s protégé Léonide Massine and sets and costumes by Picasso. The immediate success of this performance led Falla to extract two orchestral suites from the ballet score.
What You’ll Hear
Each of the three movements in the Suite No. 2 are based upon an Andalusian dance, in the Neighbors’ Dance, a slow and sexy seguidilla, and in The Miller’s Dance, a swaggering farucca, chock full of toxic masculinity! The Final Dance is an energetic jota.
The ballet is in two scenes, with Alarcón’s farcical story set as a series of traditional Andalucian dances. The two suites draw on the main
musical episodes of these two scenes, and are presented in the order of the original ballet score. The ballet opens with a bold trumpet fanfare, and then more languid music with flashes of humor that sets the scene. In the first scene, the Miller’s wife eludes his embraces and flirts with the old Corregidor, a local magistrate who wears a three-cornered hat as his badge of office. The Corregidor sneaks back later and hides, watching the Miller’s wife dance a fandango In the next sequence Corregidor reveals himself, and attempts to dance a minuet with her—she pretends to be flattered, dancing a more graceful version of the same music. She flirts even more outrageously in the final sequence offering him grapes and then flitting away, until the clumsy Corregidor finally trips and falls on his face. He stomps off furiously, and the Miller, who has seen the whole thing, emerges from hiding and completes the fandango with his wife.
The Suite No. 2 is drawn from the second scene, a feast given by the
Miller and his wife. The Neighbors ’ Dance is a languorous seguidilla , a couples’ contradance that includes some of the sexier moves from the fandango . (The seguidilla was one of the dances condemned by the Church in Spain as too lascivious for proper young women!) The Miller’s Dance is a farucca , a form that was typically danced by a solo man as a display of virility and physical prowess. (Falla added this dance to the original ballet at the last minute, at Diaghilev’s insistence—as a showpiece for Massine.) It begins with a pair of thoroughly macho flourishes from the horn and English horn and continues in a series of dramatically rhythmic phrases, leading to a furious ending. The Corregidor’s bodyguard bursts in and arrests the Miller on a trumpedup charge. The Corregidor returns in the middle of the night to chase the Miller’s wife, but, while in hot pursuit, he falls into the millpond. He hangs his wet clothes on a chair and falls asleep. The Miller, who has escaped,
returns, and seeing the clothes, he believes his wife has been unfaithful. He steals the Corregidor’s clothes, and goes off to seduce the Corregidor’s wife. The Corregidor awakes, and is forced to put on the Miller’s clothes—just in time to be arrested by his own men, who are looking for the escaped Miller. A crowd gathers, and the Miller returns to dance a mocking chufla around the Corregidor, just before the old man is dragged away. The ballet closes with the entire ensemble in the Final Dance , a jota with a lively cross-rhythm throughout. The music is alternately light-hearted and dramatic, but in the end brings this set to a joyful conclusion.
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Now Hear This
Nicholas Hersh guest conductor
American conductor Nicholas Hersh is Music Director of the Modesto Symphony, having been appointed in August 2023 with immediate effect.
In the 2023-24 season, Hersh returned to the National, Houston, Baltimore, Colorado, and New Jersey Symphonies, while making debuts with the Springfield Symphony and Wintergreen Festival. Recent engagements with the Detroit, Grand Rapids, New World, North Carolina, Phoenix, Portland (ME), Richmond, Tucson, Utah, and Winston-Salem symphony orchestras, Louisiana and Rochester Philharmonics, and the Florida and Sarasota Orchestras.
Over a remarkable tenure as Associate Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Hersh created the BSO Pulse series, through which he brought together indie bands and orchestral musicians in unique collaborations; he led the BSO in several subscription weeks, and concerts in and around Baltimore; and he directed the BSO’s educational and family programming, including the celebrated Academy for adult amateur musicians.
Hersh also maintains a close relationship with the National Symphony Orchestra, leading concerts throughout Washington, D.C. He stepped in to replace an indisposed Yan Pascal Tortelier, on subscription, to great acclaim.
Hersh is frequently in demand as an arranger and orchestrator, with commissions from orchestras around the globe for adaptations of everything from classical solo
and chamber music to popular songs. His orchestration of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata Op. 69 was premiered by the Philharmonie Zuidnederland in January 2022, while his symphonic arrangement of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody continues to see worldwide success as a viral YouTube hit. He also serves as arranger and editor for the James P. Johnson Orchestra Edition.
An avid educator, Hersh has embraced the Young Persons Concert format as a crucial method for orchestras to serve their communities. From 2016-2020, he served as Artistic Director of the Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestras, and he continues to be a frequent collaborator and guest faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
Hersh grew up in Evanston, Illinois and started his musical training as a cellist. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from Stanford University and a Master’s Degree in Conducting from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.Hersh is also a two-time recipient of the Solti Foundation Career Assistance Award. Nicholas lives in Philadelphia with his wife Caitlin and their two cats, and in his free time enjoys baking (and eating) sourdough bread.
Kelly Hall-Tompkins violin
Winner of a Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize and featured in the Smithsonian Museum for AfricanAmerican History, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is a
violin soloist entrepreneur who has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive,” for her “tonal mastery” ( BBC Music Magazine ) and as New York Times “New Yorker of the Year.” She has appeared as co-soloist in Carnegie Hall with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin, in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall, at Lincoln Center and with the Symphonies of Baltimore, Dallas, Jacksonville, Oakland, recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, and festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, France, Germany and Italy.
She was “Fiddler”/Violin Soloist of the Grammy/Tonynominated Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof . Inspired by her experience, she commissioned and developed the first ever Fiddler solo disc of all new arrangements, “The Fiddler Expanding Tradition,” which is featured in the upcoming new documentary “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles” on the 55-year history of the musical.
Actively performing virtually throughout the pandemic, numerous projects include premiering 4 pieces written for her, creating and/or been invited to participate in unique collaborations including with Tony-nominated actor Daniel Watts, aerial dancer Alexandra Peter, Frisson Films, Gil Shaham’s Gilharmonic , Routledge press as contributing author for a new book on Music and Human Rights and with WQXR as part of the inaugural Artist Propulsion Lab.
As founder of Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul, Kelly HallTompkins is a pioneer of social justice in classical music, bringing top artists in over 100 concerts in homeless shelters coast to coast from New York to Los Angeles, and in internationally in Paris, France. Music Kitchen commissioned and will present the World Premiere of the Forgotten Voices Song Cycle in Association with Carnegie Hall.
When
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Allegro. Giocoso. Vivace.
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program notes
Oct 18-19-20, 2024
program notes by J.
Michael Allsen
Visions lie at the heart of the works heard on this program, which is led by guest composer conductor Nicholas Hersh. British composer Anna Clyne, whose music is making its first appearance at a MSO program, based her work This Midnight Hour upon poetic visions by Charles Baudelaire and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins played a stunning performance of the Wynton Marsalis Violin Concerto in 2022. She returns here to perform two works, beginning with the gentle The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based upon a poem by George Meredith. She then plays Tzigane, Maurice Ravel’s virtuosic take on Roma fiddling, written for the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arani. And to end the program we play the monumental Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz, a passionate and often disturbing musical vision ending with a trip to hell!
Leading British composer Anna Clyne, who now resides in New York, wrote this exciting work for L’Orchestre national d’Îlede-France in Paris.
Anna Clyne
Born: March 9, 1980, London, United Kingdom.
This Midnight Hour Composed: 2015. Premiere: November 13, 2015, in Paris, by the Orchestre national d’Île de France, Enrique Mazzola. director. Previous MSO Performance: This is our first performance of the work. Duration: 12:00.
Background
Clyne frequently sees her works as collaborations, and many of her orchestral works, including this one, have arisen out of her collaborations with the orchestras for which she has been a composer-in-residence.
Among the leading British composers of her generation, Anna Clyne was born in London and was composing by age 11. She studied at the University of Edinburgh and the Manhattan School of Music. Clyne has served as composer-inresidence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Îlede-France in Paris, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In 2024, she completed residencies with orchestras in Finland, England, and Spain. Clyne’s inventive music spans a wide range of styles, from electroacoustic works to more traditional works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and chorus. This Midnight Hour was composed during her residency in Paris
What You’ll Hear
This evocative score draws upon images from poems by Jimenez (of mad energy) and Baudelaire (of a “melancholic waltz”).
Clyne provides the following description of the piece:
“The opening to This Midnight Hour is inspired by the character and power of the lower strings of L’Orchestre national d’Île de France. From here, it draws inspiration from two poems—one
by Charles Baudelaire and another by Juan Ramón Jiménez. Whilst it is not intended to depict a specific narrative, my intention is that it will evoke a visual journey for the listener. Jiménez’s La musica is very short and concise:
“Music— a naked woman running mad through the pure night (translated by Robert Bly)
“This immediately struck me as a strong image and one that I chose to interpret with outbursts of frenetic energy, for example, dividing the strings into sub-groups that play fortissimo staggered descending cascade figures from left to right in stereo effect. This stems from my early explorations of electroacoustic music. There is also a lot of evocative sensory imagery in Baudelaire’s Harmonie du Soir, the first stanza of which reads as follows:
“The season is at hand when swaying on its stem Every flower exhales perfume like a censer; Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air; Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
(translated by William Aggeler)
“I riffed on the idea of the melancholic waltz about halfway into This Midnight Hour—I split the viola section in two and have one half playing at written pitch and the other half playing 1/4 tone sharp to emulate the sonority of an accordion playing a Parisian-esque waltz.”
The piece starts with hectic “running” music, with a forceful line from the low strings and jagged bursts from the woodwinds. Clarinets and introduce a languid new idea before a static interlude punctuated by the drums. Another frantic episode leads into Clyne’s rather woozy “melancholic waltz.” The piece ends with a calm, folklike idea, overlaid with a sometimes bluesy solo trumpet.
ANNA CLYNE
This tranquil work was written directly after Vaughan Williams returned home from the horrors of World War I.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Born: October 12, 1872, Down Ampney, United Kingdom. Died: August 26, 1958, London, United Kingdom.
The Lark Ascending
Composed: Completed in 1920. Premiere: Marie Hall, to whom the score is dedicated, played The Lark Ascending at its first performance, with piano accompaniment, in December, 1920. Six months later the composer’s friend Adrian Boult conducted her in the premiere of the orchestral version in London.
Previous MSO Performance: We have performed the work once previously, in 1978, with MSO concertmaster Norman Paulu as soloist.
Duration: 13:00.
Background
Marie Hall, dedicatee of the score, was a leading British violinist of the day, and one of the first female violinists to have a truly international career.
Though he was nearly 42 at the outbreak of World War I, Vaughan Williams volunteered for service almost immediately, setting composition aside for the duration of the war. He served first as an ambulance orderly and then as an artillery officer, and at the end of
the war, he was named Music Director of the First Army in France. Returning to England, he took up a position as Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music, and began composing again with great intensity. Among the works he had sketched out before the war was The Lark Ascending, and he revised the score extensively in 1920. Vaughan Williams dedicated it to Marie Hall, one of the most eminent violin soloists of the early 20th century. Hall advised him on the solo part. One of the reviewers said that it “showed serene disregard for the fashions of today or yesterday.” The Lark Ascending is based upon a short poem by the popular Victorian writer George Meredith, which Vaughan Williams includes in the score:
He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills, ‘Tis love of earth that he instills, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings In light, and then the fancy sings.
What You’ll Hear
The solo violin winds out a lovely melodic line above a lightly-scored orchestral accompaniment.
The work is an exercise in serenity. The orchestra begins with a hushed, expectant passage before the solo line enters, ascending to the violin’s upper range in a series of short phrases reminiscent of birdsong. This outwardly simple melody uses just a few pitches: one of my teachers jokingly referred to this piece as “Vaughan Williams’s loving tribute to the pentatonic scale.” But it is thoroughly lovely, played above the simplest accompaniment. There is a change of character, to a lyrical theme played by the orchestra, as the solo part “chirrups” a lively decoration. Vaughan Williams introduces a new idea, a stolid folk dance that leads to an avian
cadenza. The orchestra introduces a third theme, a broad folklike melody. The piece closes with a final reprise of the opening music, and a solo violin passage that fades to nothingness as the lark vanishes in the misty heights.
Hungarian music, particularly that of the Roma people, has been fascinating composers from the time of Mozart onwards. This work by Ravel attempts to capture the excitement of Roma fiddling.
Maurice Ravel
Born: March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died: December 28, 1937, Paris, France.
Tzigane
Composed: 1922-24.
Premiere: A version for violin and piano was premiered in London by Jelly d’Arani, violin, and Henri GilMarchex, piano, on April 26, 1924. Ravel completed the orchestral version a few months later, and this version was premiered in Paris on November 30, 1924, with d’Arani as soloist.
Previous MSO Performance:
Previous MSO performances have featured Vartan Manoogian (1982) and Laura Frautschi (1997).
Duration: 10:00.
Background
Jelly d’Arani, the Hungarian violinist who inspired Ravel to compose this work, had settled in London by 1922, after years
MAURICE RAVEL
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
of successful tours. She was an excellent player, but also did not shy away from using her “exotic” Roma heritage to further her career.
During the early 1920s, Maurice Ravel was in a severe compositional slump. His spirit and Parisian musical society had been devastated by World War I, and he was deeply depressed over the death of his mother. He managed to complete his Violin Sonata in 1922, but the years leading up to this were extremely unproductive. In July of 1922, Ravel was invited to a private concert where the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arani played the recentlycompleted sonata. Ravel was entranced by her playing, and was particularly fascinated by her Hungarian musical heritage. He asked her to play some authentic Roma tunes, and eventually the two stayed together until 5:00 in the morning, discussing Hungarian music. Tzigane (meaning “Gypsy”) was obviously inspired by this experience, and although it was relatively slow in coming, it marked the beginning of a new period of creativity for Ravel.
What You’ll Hear
Though they were closely contemporary pieces, Ravel takes an approach in Tzigane that is entirely different from that of Vaughan-Williams: here the focus is entirely on the violin part, which is filled to the brim with astonishing technical feats.
Ravel’s friend, violinist André Polah, who advised him on technical details of the solo part, wrote that: “Ravel’s idea was to represent a [Roma violinist] serenading a beautiful woman—real or imaginary—with his fiery temperament and with all the resources of good and bad taste at his command. In the solo part, Ravel has not only used every known technical effect, but has invented some new ones!” Ravel was particularly adept at absorbing musical influences, and in Tzigane he creates his own version
of Hungarian music. The work opens with a lengthy and spectacular solo cadenza that manages to capture the essence of Roma fiddling, together with echoes of the 19th-century violin virtuoso Niccoló Paganini. When the orchestra finally enters, it provides a rich, but unobtrusive background to an ever-more-complicated battery of virtuoso techniques: rapid harmonics, quadruple stops, and an amazing passage that calls upon the player to play pizzicatti with the left hand in the midst of bowed arpeggios.
Okay, I’m just going to say it: Hector Berlioz was one strange dude...
Hector Berlioz
Born: December 11, 1803, La Côte-Saint-André, France. Died: March 8, 1869, Paris, France.
Symphonie fantastique
(Fantastic Symphony), Op. 14 Composed: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, which he subtitled “Episode in the Life of an Artist,” was written between 1829 and 1830. Premiere: December 5, 1830 at the Paris Conservatoire, under the direction of François-Antoine Habaneck. Previous MSO Performance: Previous performances by the Madison Symphony Orchestra were in 1973, 1983, 1997, 2006 and 2015. Duration: 55:00.
Background
This grand, programmatic work was inspired by Berlioz’s
obsessive love for English actress Harriet Smithson.
If we were to paint a picture of the archetypical Romantic Composer, we could probably use Hector Berlioz as a model. Six feet tall, with a huge mop of hair and a passionate personality, Berlioz was nearly always in a state of emotional upheaval—upheaval reflected in his copious writings and larger-than-life compositions. All of his compositions illustrated his passions, but none is more directly (and disturbingly) autobiographical than his Symphonie fantastique The story behind this work reads like a Hollywood screenplay...
Scene 1: Paris, 1827. Berlioz (a young Gérard Depardieu? Johnny Depp in a red wig?), a passionate young composer, sees Shakespeare’s Hamlet for the first time. He is in ecstasy over the play, despite the fact that the performance was in English, a language he does not understand. What really makes an impression on him, however, is Harriet Smithson, the English actress in the role of Ophelia (if contemporary descriptions of her are accurate, Lena Dunham would be perfect.) Berlioz is immediately obsessed with Smithson, and writes to her with a marriage proposal—the first of dozens of love letters. Rather than taking out a restraining order, she simply leaves Paris in 1829 without ever acknowledging Berlioz’s existence.
Scene 2: Paris, 1830. Berlioz has just completed the Symphonie fantastique, an enormous five-movement programmatic work, which details his obsession with Harriet, including a drug-induced dream sequence in which he kills her and goes to Hell. The work is controversial, but highly successful. Berlioz is happy for the time being, and has a new love interest, the pianist Camille Moke (Gwyneth Paltrow).
Scene 3: Paris, 1832. Berlioz, dumped by Camille, is despondent and considering suicide. Harriet is in town again, and an English gossip columnist talks her into attending a performance of the Symphonie fantastique (The inspiration for Berlioz’s symphony is an
HECTOR BERLIOZ
open secret, and her presence at the concert is sure to stir things up...) Harriet savors the attention, and begins to pay some serious attention to Berlioz. The two are married a year later.
Epilogue. Like most affairs based upon obsession, the real thing turns out to be not as good as the fantasy. Within a year of their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Berlioz are miserable. They stick together for ten unpleasant years, and are eventually divorced in 1844. Berlioz does not feel truly free of the relationship until 1854, when Harriet dies. He is married to his second wife a few weeks later. [Note: I’m not making any of this up! - J.M.A.]
What You’ll Hear
The Symphonie fantastique is perhaps the prototypical romantic program symphony, the work that set the tone for many symphonies and symphonic poems to come. Not only is it intensely emotional, it is based upon a distinct program: a story Berlioz wants us to follow in the work.
The work that grew out of this strange affair, the Symphonie fantastique, is a landmark in the history of romantic music. Written for a huge orchestra, this work uses orchestral effects and even instruments that had never been used in a symphony. (This is, for example, the first appearance of the tuba—or rather its ancestor, the ophicleide—in a piece of orchestral music.) Even more striking is the programmatic idea behind Berlioz’s score. This is not the first programmatic symphony—Berlioz himself credits Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony as inspiration—but it is the first in which the extra-musical storyline is so explicit. In a story that has echoes of Goethe’s dark Faust, Berlioz musically describes his obsession in great detail, even going to the extent of publishing a written program as an aid to the audience’s imagination. To illustrate his affair, he creates a musical idée fixe (literally “fixed idea” or “obsession”) representing his changing view of his beloved. This
idea appears in each movement, but each time in a different character: as a flowing Romantic melody in the opening movement, as a lilting waltz in the second, as a shepherd’s song in the third, and in the fourth movement, it is the last thing the condemned artist thinks of before the blade of guillotine drops. Its final appearance is as a mocking dance in the “Witches’ Sabbath” movement. The program Berlioz wrote to accompany the Symphonie fantastique is as follows:
“Part I: Reveries—Passions. The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams, and falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears in the mind’s eye of the artist, it is linked with a musical thought whose character, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved. This melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in every moment of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first Allegro. The passage from this state of melancholy reverie, interrupted by a few fits of groundless joy, to one of frenzied passion, with its moments of fury, of jealousy, its return of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations—this is the subject of the first movement.
“Part II: A Ball. The artist finds himself in the most varied situations—in the midst of the tumult of a party, in the peaceful contemplation of nature; but everywhere, in the town, in the country, the beloved image appears before him and disturbs his peace of mind.
“Part III: Scene in the Country. Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz de vaches [shepherd’s song] in dialogue. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found reason to entertain—all come together to afford
his heart an unaccustomed calm, and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that his loneliness will soon be over. But what if she were deceiving him! This mingling of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness disturbed by black presentiments, form the subject of the Adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies. Distant thunder—loneliness—silence.
“Part IV: March to the Scaffold. Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to the scaffold, and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is sometimes somber and fierce, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled sound of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end, the idée fixe returns for a moment, like a final thought of love before the fatal blow.
“Part V: A Witches’ Sabbath. He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, and monsters of every species, all gathered for his funeral; strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is now no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial and grotesque. It is she, coming to join the sabbath … a roar of joy at her arrival. She takes part in the devilish orgy—funeral knell—a burlesque parody of the Dies irae—sabbath round-dance— the sabbath round-dance and the Dies irae combined.”
Complete program notes for the 2024-25 season are available at www.madisonsymphony.org.
sponsors
thank you to our generous sponsors for supporting these performances
Myrna Larson
Irving and Dorothy Levy Family Foundation, Inc.
Stephen D. Morton
Fred Mohs, in memory of Mary Mohs
program
John DeMain | Music Director
99th Season | Overture Hall | Subscription Program No. 3
Fri., Nov 15, 7:30 pm | Sat., Nov 16, 7:30 pm | Sun., Nov 17, 2:30 pm
Michael Stern, Guest Conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, Piano
JONATHAN LESHNOFF (B. 1973)
Rush for Orchestra
EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.16
Allegro molto moderato Adagio
Allegro moderato molto e marcato
MR. OHLSSON
INTERMISSION
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Ronald J. and Janet E. Johnson
Kenneth A. Lattman Foundation, Inc.
with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts
Endowment support for the music library collection is the gift of John & Carolyn Peterson.
The Hamburg Steinway piano is the gift of Peter Livingston and Sharon Stark in memory of Magdalena Friedman.
Symphony No. 5, Op. 47
Moderato Allegretto Largo
Allegro non troppo
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To access the digital program book for this concert!
WELCOME TO THE MSO!
Please silence your electronic devices and cell phones for the duration of the concert. Photography and video are not permitted during the performance. You may take and share photos during applause. Thank you!
Celebrating 20 Years of the MSO’s
Hamburg Steinway Piano
The Gift of Peter Livingston & Sharon Stark in memory of Magdalena Friedman
In anticipation of the opening of Overture Hall in 2004, first-time MSO donors Peter Livingston and Sharon Stark agreed to underwrite the cost of a new nine-foot Steinway grand, selected from the Steinway factory in Hamburg, Germany. Music Director John DeMain, his wife Barbara and the donors traveled to the Steinway factory in Hamburg in March 2004 to select the new piano. During the trip, renowned German pianist Matthias Kirschnereit assisted DeMain in selecting the perfect instrument. The donors gave this special gift to the MSO in memory of Peter’s mother, Magdalena Friedman.
Adapted from J. Michael Allsen’s “A Century of the Madison Symphony Orchestra”
We are ever grateful to Peter (d. 2023) and Sharon for this magnificent instrument that our audiences have heard played so beautifully in Overture Hall for the past 20 years.
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Principal Bassoon, Tuba, Bass
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For questions or to discuss a potential gift: Casey Oelkers, Director of Development, (608) 257-3734
*as of 9/9/24
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Photo credit: Peter Rodgers
Michael Stern guest conductor
Conductor Michael Stern has long been devoted to building and leading highly acclaimed orchestras known not only for their impeccable musicianship and creative programming, but also for collaborative, sustainable cultures that often include a vision of music as service to the community. He also is passionate about working with young musicians not only in music making, but also to incorporate the idea of “service” into their experiences as they become the artists and advocates of the future who will take classical music into the 21st century and beyond.
Stern is Music Director of Orchestra Lumos (formerly the Stamford Symphony) and the National Repertory Orchestra, a summer music festival in Breckenridge, CO which, for over 60 years, has provided an intensive, unique fellowship program for aspiring young musicians, and whose alumni populate every major orchestra across the United States. He is Music Director Emeritus of the Kansas City Symphony where he just concluded his 19-year tenure at the end of the 20232024 season. Following a 22-year tenure as founding Artistic Director of Iris Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee, he now serves the newly reimagined Iris Collective as Artistic Advisor. During Stern’s tenure with the Kansas City Symphony, he and the orchestra have been recognized for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational
development, stability, and extraordinary audience growth. Under Stern’s leadership, the orchestra explored a wide range of repertoire and commissioned a number of new works. Stern and the KC Symphony also partnered with GRAMMY® Award-winning Reference Recordings for a collection of very well-received CDs that includes commissions by American composer Adam Schoenberg and by Jonathan Leshnoff, whose Symphony No. 3, inspired by World War I soldiers’ letters home, was premiered by the KC Symphony at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. The orchestra’s Reference Recordings releases also include Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”; a pairing of music Elgar and Vaughan Williams; “Miraculous Metamorphoses,” with music by Hindemith, Prokofiev and Bartók; and a disc of works by SaintSaëns. In 2021, Stern and the orchestra put out another widely praised recording, bringing together three one-movement symphonies by Sibelius, Barber, and Scriabin.
Stern co-founded Iris Orchestra in 2000 and was Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor until 2021-22, when he had planned to step down from his post. With his departure, staff, community and musicians joined together to reinvent the orchestra as the Iris Collective, devising a new way for a 21st-century organization to offer a spectrum of events, from chamber music and smaller ensemble programs to full orchestral performances, while also prioritizing a variety of community engagement initiatives. This new model of the Iris Collective is built on the strong foundation created during Stern’s 22-year tenure, when the orchestra was widely praised for its musical virtuosity; programming that included acclaimed new commissions by American composers; a flexible, non-hierarchical structure; and the active partnership of its musicians. The Iris Collective will team up with a number of creative partners, including Stern, who will also continue his involvement as Artistic Advisor.
As part of his ongoing activities to engage and mentor young musicians, he was asked by Yo-Yo Ma to be the Music Director of YMCG, Youth Music Culture Guangdong, where he and Ma worked with students and young professionals in partnership with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. He has also been invited to the National Orchestral Institute, Music Academy of the West, and has been a regular guest at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he also worked with students at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen.
Stern’s illustrious American conducting engagements have included the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood; the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia; the Atlanta Symphony; and the Minnesota Orchestra. He debuted with the New York
Philharmonic in 1986 in a program titled, “Leonard Bernstein and Three Young America Conductors.” He conducted the New York Philharmonic again in 2001, at several NY Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks and at PNC Bank Performing Arts Center with Audra McDonald; in 2018, he conducted the film score to The Red Violin at David Geffen Hall with soloist Joshua Bell. Stern has served as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra for performances at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ravinia, the Napa Valley Festival del Sole and at the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition in China.
Internationally, he has led major orchestras in London, Stockholm, Paris, Helsinki, Budapest, Israel, and Moscow, Taiwan, and Tokyo. Stern has been Chief Conductor of Germany’s Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (the first American chief conductor in the orchestra’s history), Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille, France.
Stern received his music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his primary teacher was the noted conductor and scholar Max Rudolf. Stern co-edited the third edition of Rudolf’s famous textbook, The Grammar of Conducting, and a collection of Rudolf’s writing, A Musical Life: Writings and Letters (Dimension & Diversity). Stern is a 1981 graduate of Harvard University, where he earned a degree in American history. In addition to Rudolf, he counts Leonard Bernstein, David Zinman and Charles Bruck among those who have been a major influence on his musical life.
Garrick Ohlsson piano
Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frederic Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire which ranges over the entire piano literature encompassing more than 80 concerti.
With Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Mr. Ohlsson returns to Carnegie Hall in the fall and throughout the 24/25 season can be heard with orchestras in Portland, Madison, Kalamazoo, Palm Beach and Ft. Worth. In recital programs including works from Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin to Barber and Scriabin he will appear in Santa Barbara, Orange County, Aspen, Warsaw and London.
Collaborations with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo and Takacs string quartets have led to decades of touring and recordings. His solo recordings are available on British label Hyperion and in the US on Bridge Records. Both Brahms concerti and Tschaikovsky’s Second piano concerto have been released on live recordings with the Melbourne and Symphony symphonies on their own labels and Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano. A native of White Plains, N.Y.
Garrick Ohlsson began piano studies at the age of 8 at the Westchester Conservatory of Music and at 13 he entered the Juilliard School in NY city. He was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI in 1998. He is the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music and in August 2018 the Polish Deputy Culture Minister awarded him with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit. He is a Steinway Artist and makes his home in San Francisco.
program notes
Nov 15-16-17, 2024
program notes by J. Michael Allsen
Guest conductor Michael Stern opens the program with Johnathan Leshnoff’s intense Rush for Orchestra
This is a driving and exciting work that builds up a tremendous amount of momentum throughout. We then welcome back pianist Garrick Ohlsson: a favorite of the audience and the orchestra—for his sixth performance with the MSO. In previous visits, he has played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (1984 and 2008), Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 (1985) Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (2002) and Tchaikovsky’s seldom-heard Piano Concerto No. 2 (2012); Here he plays a familiar favorite, Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto, a romantic masterpiece infused with the spirit of Grieg’s Norwegian homeland. We end with the powerful fifth symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich. This sometimes bombastic work, which Shostakovich humbly described as “the practical answer of a Soviet artist to justified criticism,” in fact seems to have been a subtle and bitter reaction to the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.
Maestro Stern conducted the premiere of this work in 2009.
Jonathan Leshnoff
Born: September 8, 1973, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Rush for Orchestra
Composed: 2008.
Premiere: January 31, 2009, in Germantown Tennessee, by the IRIS Orchestra, under the direction of Michael Stern.
Previous MSO Performance: This is our first performance of the work. Duration: 8:00.
Background
Jonathan Leshnoff is among the most important and frequentlyprogrammed of American contemporary composers.
GRAMMY-nominated Jonathan Leshnoff has been described by The New York Times as “a leader of contemporary American lyricism.” His music runs the gamut from small orchestral works like Rush through symphonies (four, to date) and over a dozen concertos, to six full-size oratorios, to chamber and wind band music. Lehnoff has written these works for some of the world’s leading soloists—Joyce Yang, Gil Shaham, Roberto Díaz and others—and for America’s leading orchestras: the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He is currently on the faculty of Towson University in Baltimore. Rush is one of several works written by Leshnoff for Maestro Stern and the IRIS Chamber Orchestra.
What You’ll Hear
A short, intense work, Rush alternates between the fierce mood of the opening, and calmer music for solo clarinet and harp.
Rush, scored for a chamber orchestra, is an exercise in the concentrated development of a single motive, heard at the outset. Its furious forward
motion is broken in the middle of the work by a lyrical clarinet solo. The ferocious mood of the opening gradually returns, only to be halted once more near the end of the work by the clarinet and a lovely solo cadenza by the harp. At the very end, the fury returns in a brief coda.
This is Grieg’s only concerto and one of his relatively few large orchestral pieces, but it has become one of the most important romantic concertos for piano.
Edvard Grieg
Born: June 15, 1843, Bergen, Norway. Died: September 4, 1907, Bergen, Norway.
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
Composed: 1868.
Premiere: April 3, 1869, in Copenhagen, with Edmund Neupert as soloist Previous MSO Performance: Previous performances at these concerts have featured Elsa Chandler (1927), Storm Bull (1929), Audun Ravnan (1971), Howard Karp (1984), Santiago Rodriguez (1993), Jasminka Stancul (2005), and André Watts (2011).
Duration: 32:00.
Background
The Piano Concerto, written when he was just 25 years old, was a career-making piece
JONATHAN LESHNOFF
EDVARD GRIEG
for Grieg, among his first pieces to attract notice and performances outside of his native Norway.
In an age of musical nationalism, Norwegian Edvard Grieg firmly identified himself with the music of his homeland. Grieg’s works are often built using German Classical forms, but his melodies, which are at once lyrical and folk-like, are firmly rooted in the Norwegian musical traditions he knew and loved. In describing his approach to composition, Grieg once wrote: “Composers with the stature of a Bach or Beethoven have erected grand churches and temples. I have always wished to build villages: places where people can feel happy and comfortable ...the music of my own country has been my model.”
Grieg’s piano concerto was written during the summer of 1868, when he and his family were on holiday in Sölleröd, near Copenhagen. While it is dedicated to the pianist Edmund Neupert, there are also close connections between Grieg and the preeminent piano virtuoso of the 19th century, Franz Liszt. By 1868, when he first saw some of Grieg’s music, the 57-year-old Liszt had taken minor Catholic orders (although he was never ordained as a priest), and was dividing his time between the court at Weimar and a Roman monastery. Liszt wrote a very complimentary letter to Grieg, inviting him to come for a visit. Grieg brought this letter to the attention of a Norwegian government ministry, which granted him funds to travel to Rome in October of 1869. Understandably, Grieg brought the manuscript of his concerto along. According to Grieg’s account of the meeting, Liszt asked him to play through the concerto, and when Grieg declined (he had not practiced it): “...Liszt took up the manuscript, went to the piano, and said to the assembled guests with a smile, ‘Very well, then, I will show you that I also cannot.’” Grieg goes on to tell how Liszt sight-read the concerto with great verve, ending with words of encouragement: “Keep steadily on your course. I tell you, you
have the stuff in you—don’t let them intimidate you!” When the concerto was published, it was dedicated to the late composer Rikard Nordraak, who wrote the melody to Ja, vi elsker dette landet, which would become the Norwegian national anthem.
What You’ll Hear
A fervent Norwegian musical nationalist, Grieg tried to infuse the style of Norwegian folk music into nearly all of his works. The concerto is in three movements:
• A broad opening movement in sonata form.
• A set of Adagio variations.
• A fast-paced finale based upon a series of folklike themes.
The Piano Concerto has been a regular part of the romantic concerto repertoire since the late 19th century. It is set in three movements, following the strictest German models in matters of form, but Grieg’s Norwegian heritage shows through in every passage, in his regular phrasing and in his lyrical melodies. The stormy introductory flourish in the piano that opens the first movement (Allegro molto moderato) leads into a marchlike theme introduced by the woodwinds and restated by the piano. Cellos and trombones introduce the more passionate second theme. Grieg’s fiery cadenza at the end of the recapitulation serves to further develop the opening march theme. Grieg rounds off the movement with a brief coda—a new theme spun off from the march, and a return to the opening flourish.
The serene Adagio is a series of free variations on a calm, hymnlike theme introduced by muted strings. Orchestra and soloist first develop this theme in the manner of a dialogue, but eventually combine their lines in the final statement. The closing measures of the Adagio lead directly into the third movement (Allegro moderato molto e marcato). This closing movement is
set as a rondo, in which Grieg uses five different themes, all of them having a distinctly folklike character. The movement comes to its climax with a brief but intense cadenza that develops the fifth of these themes.
Shostakovich’s fifth symphony, composed in the deeply repressive atmosphere of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, is a symbol of resistance and humanity in the face of totalitarian oppression.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born: September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Died: August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia.
Symphony No. 5, Op. 47
Composed: 1937.
Premiere: November 21, 1937 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), by the Leningrad Philharmonic, under the direction of Yevgeny Mravinsky. Previous MSO Performance: It has been played three times previously at our concerts, in 1980, 1993, and 2006.
Duration: 44:00.
Background
Shostakovich, who was in deep trouble with the authorities in 1937, meekly described his fifth Symphony as a “practical answer of a Soviet artist to justified criticism.” However,
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
he seems to have put one over on Soviet authorities!
Music and the arts are potent symbols of humanity and freedom, and totalitarian states invariably seek to control them for their own purposes. In Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union, state supervision of the arts was a powerful and controlling reality. A manifesto outlining the principles of “Socialist Realism” appeared in 1933. This doctrine was originally intended to control the content and style of Soviet literature, but it was quickly adapted to the visual arts, film, and music. As explained in an article published by the Union of Soviet Composers:
“The main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality, towards all that is heroic, bright, and beautiful. This distinguishes the spiritual world of Soviet man, and must be embodied in musical images full of beauty and strength. Socialist Realism demands an implacable struggle against those folk-negating modernistic directions typical of contemporary bourgeois art, and against subservience and servility towards modern bourgeoisie culture.”
In practice, Soviet music of this period served the propaganda needs of the state, and was aimed at proletarian consumption. Composers abandoned “formalist” devices— unrestricted dissonance, twelve-tone technique, etc.—in favor of strictly tonal harmonies and folk music (The designation “formalist” was eventually used to describe just about anything an official critic didn’t like.).
Shostakovich struggled heroically within this system. There was a continuing pattern in his works of the 1930s and 1940s of perilously pushing the limits of official tolerance and then rehabilitating himself with a work that seemed to conform more closely to the Party line. In 1934, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was a rousing success, and continued to run
for over 100 performances. In 1936, however, Stalin himself attended a performance, and left the theater in a rage. Within a few days, a review of the opera appeared in Pravda, complaining of an “intentionally dissonant, muddled flow of sounds,” and angrily denouncing its antiSocialist “distortion.” Shostakovich was quickly transformed from one of the young lions of Soviet music to a suspected Formalist, and articles published in Pravda and the bulletin of the Composers’ Union began to reveal “modernistic” and “decadent” elements in many of his works that had previously been blessed by Soviet authorities. The composer immediately canceled the premiere of his fourth symphony, fearing that the dissonant nature of this score would push the authorities too far. He was so certain, in fact, that Stalin’s goons would appear at his door that he kept a small suitcase in his apartment, packed for his trip to the Gulag Archipelago. A hastily-composed ballet glorifying life on a collective farm was not enough to put him back in favor with the Composers’ Union, but with the performance of his Symphony No.5 in November of 1937, Shostakovich regained a certain amount of his position in the hierarchy of Soviet musicians.
The usual story of the symphony’s composition is that it was written very quickly, between April and July 1937. But in a note to his recentlypublished critical edition of the score, Manashir Iakubov shows that in fact it was a much more extensive process lasting from April up through just a few weeks before the November premiere. On its surface, the Symphony No.5 seems to be a meek acquiescence—in fact Shostakovich humbly subtitled the work “The practical answer of a Soviet artist to justified criticism,” and it was composed in honor of the 20th anniversary of the 1917 revolution. In describing the fifth symphony at its premiere, Shostakovich wrote: “The theme of my symphony is the making of a man. I saw humankind, with all of
its experiences at the center of this composition, which is lyrical in mood from start to finish. The Finale is the optimistic solution to the tragedy and tension of the first movement. …I think that Soviet tragedy has every right to exist. However, the contents must be suffused with positive inspiration… ” All safely Socialist sentiments—but hearing the Symphony No.5, I am struck not so much by the triumph and optimism of the Finale, but by the deeply personal anxiety and sense of suffering that underlies the entire work.
The premiere was a phenomenal success and Soviet officials were quick to investigate what all the fuss was about. The Committee on Art Affairs dispatched two of its members to Leningrad to hear a later performance, they explained that tempestuous applause at the end was because the promoters had hand-picked the audience, excluding “ordinary, normal people.” But a subsequent performance for handpicked Party officials and guests was just as successful. Official suspicion persisted— one musical official cited the “unwholesome stir around this symphony”—but in this case, Soviet authorities seem to have decided to put a positive spin on the affair and accept the popularity of this work at face value. Glowing reviews followed in the official press. The review by composer Dmitri Kabalevsky was typical: “After hearing Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, I can boldly assert that the composer, as a truly great Soviet artist, has overcome his mistakes and taken a new path.”
The audiences at these early performances were probably more perceptive, however. Many members of the audience wept at the premiere, and the applause following the performance lasted nearly half an hour—facts that were reported in the official press as an emotional response to the symphony’s uplifting conclusion. As Shostakovich wrote some 25 years later (well after Stalin was safely dead and repudiated):
“Someone who was incapable of understanding could never feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood—they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about.” This work was indeed a “response to criticism,” but it was a much more tragic and anguished response than the authorities chose to believe.
What You’ll Hear The symphony is in four movements:
• A tragic and menacing opening.
• A humorous scherzo.
• A luminous third movement for solo woodwinds and strings.
• A bombastic finale that closes in a triumphant mood.
The tragic character of this symphony is established in the opening bars (Moderato), in an angular, off-beat melody introduced by the low strings. Much of the beginning is devoted to an imitative exposition of this melody in the strings. A rhythm appears in the lower strings, repeating incessantly beneath the second main theme, a lyrical melody in the first violins. This melody is built over the same large leaps as the opening theme, but here the effect is more melancholy than tragic. After flute and clarinet solos comment upon this theme, the horns introduce a more menacing marchlike melody. This march increases in intensity until the climactic return of the opening theme. Near the close of the movement the second theme returns, now on a more hopeful note, in the solo flute.
For the main theme of the scherzo (Allegretto), Shostakovich parodies a melody from his Symphony No.4. The irony is obvious—here was a work that was unknown to the audience, and that, the composer felt, would never
be performed. So the outward humor of this movement—bumptious bass lines, woodwind trills and tonguein-cheek violin solos—overlays a bitterly sarcastic comment on Socialist Realism. A military-sounding waltz alternates with this main theme in the manner of a trio. At the end, he uses one of Beethoven’s favorite jokes: what seems to be yet another repeat of the trio, played hesitantly by a solo oboe, is brusquely tossed aside by the brass, and the movement ends abruptly.
The third movement (Largo) belongs entirely to the strings and solo woodwinds. Shostakovich divides the string section into eight parts throughout this movement, weaving complex counterpoint around a single somber melody. Flutes and harp introduce a second subject which is gradually woven together with the first. In a very beautiful central passage, solo woodwinds expand on the main themes above an effectively simple background of string tremolos. The movement builds gradually towards its climax, a return of the first theme in the full string choir, before fading away at the end. Though it is overshadowed by the broad opening movement and the powerful finale, the Largo may have been the movement that had the deepest impact at the premiere. Much of the weeping in the audience took place during the Largo, leading biographer David Fanning to suggest that the movement was “...a channel for a mass grieving at the height of the Great Terror, impossible otherwise to express openly.”
The finale (Allegro non troppo) is set as a rondo, and brings the symphony to a properly jubilant finish. The main theme is an almost violent march, which alternates with several quieter sections. Shostakovich brings back reminiscences of several moments from preceding movements, building towards a massive coda in D Major. The composer’s own program note (and the official reviewers) described the finale as triumphant and exultant. Once again, Shostakovich’s intent in
this movement may well have been sarcasm, rather than exaltation.
Complete program notes for the 2024-25 season are available at www.madisonsymphony.org.
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Chris & Ronald Sorkness
Dave & Marcie Stark
Eric & Sandra Statz
Jurate Stewart
Ross Swaney
Ei Terasawa Grilley
Anne M. Traynor
Karen & Stuart Updike
Lynn Van Campen
Betsy & Charles Wallman
Jeffrey Williamson
Three Anonymous Friends
$500–$999
Tom & Betty Akagi
Peggy Anderson
Carolyn Aradine
Nancy Baillies & Kevin Gould
Jane & Michael Banks
Ronald Benavides
Beth Binhammer & Ellen Hartenbach
Julia Bolz
Bruce & Nancy Braun
Michael Bridgeman & Jack Holzhueter
Catherine Briggs & Marthea Fox
Joyce A. Bringe
Wendy & Douglas Buehl
Jewel Carlson
Wayne Chaplin & Gail Bergman
David Coe
Theodore & Eileen Collins
Eileen Cripps Stenberg
Debra Dahlke & Robert Gake
R. Christian & Kathy Davis
Royce Dembo
Robert & Diane Dempsey
Glenn & Grace Disrude
Marlene Duffield & Terry Walton-Callaghan
John & Deidre Dunn
Paul Dvorak
Jerome Ebert & Joye Ebert Kuehn
Crystal Enslin
John & Will Erikson
Marc & Marcia Fink
Kathryn Forde
John Gadow
Rosalee Gander
Barbara Gessner
Zachary & Erin Goldberger
Lori Grapentine
Susan Gruber
Hoyt Halverson & Katherine Morkri
Wava Haney
Arthur Hans & Terry Ellen Moen
Paul L. Hauri
Robert & Judith Havens
Sandra Haynes
Helen Horn & Ralph Petersen
Evelyn Howell
Karen & Peter Jansson
Delinda & Jeff Johnson
Dennis Jolley
Jerome & Dee Dee Jones
Rosemary & Lee Jones
Maryanne & Robert Julian
Larry M. Kneeland
Teresa Kohl
Catherine Krier
Shirley Krsinich
Tom Kurtz
Thomas Kwak
Beverly Larson
David Lawver
Ed & Julie Lehr
Vic & Sue Levy
Mike & Kathy Lipp
Joan & Doug Maynard
Patricia McQuiddy
Rick & Jo Morgan
Casey & Eric Oelkers
Patricia Paska
Larry & Jan Phelps
Susan Pierce Jacobsen
Gerald & Christine Popenhagen
Faith & Russ Portier
Lori & Jack Poulson
John & Hua Ramer
John & Rose Rasmus
Nancy Rathke
Thomas Reid
Rob & Mary Savage
Monique & David Scher
Magdolna Sebestyen
Penelope Shackelford
Michael & Jacqueline Shulman
John Sims
Lanny & Margaret Smith
Shelly Sprinkman
Rayla Temin
Mark & Daria Thomas
Mark & Nanette Thompson
Marcia E. Topel
Ellen M. Twing
Jon & Susan Udell
James J. Uppena
Janet M. Van Vleck
Toby Wallach
David L. Weimer & Melanie Manion
Sally Wellman
Leonard & Paula Werner
Derrith Wieman & Todd Clark
Barbara Wolfe
Susan & Rolf Wulfsberg
Todd Wurth
George A. Zagorski
Four Anonymous Friends
$250–$499
Hilde & Julius Adler
Lyle J. Anderson
George Austin & Martha Vukelich-Austin
Dennis & Beverly Ball
Charles & Elizabeth Barnhill
Rose Barroilhet
Christine K. Beatty
Linda & Howard Bellman
James & Sharon Berkner
Patricia Bernhardt
Michael Betlach
Terry Bloom & Prudy Stewart
Claudia & David Brown
Mary & Ken Buroker
Larry & Mary Kay Burton
David & Sarah Canon
Evonna Cheetham
Birgit Christensen & Paul Rabinowitz
Sam Coe
Linda Cohn & Gary Miller
James Conway & Kathy Trace
Ruth N. Dahlke
Daniel & Lavonne Dettmers
Russell & Janis Dixon
Paula K. Doyle
Katrina Dwinell & Jane Oman
John Emanuel
David Falk & JoAnne Robbins
Marshall & Linda Flowers
Bobbi Foutch-Reynolds & Jim Reynolds
Mary Frantz
Paul Fritsch & Jim Hartman
Robert & Janine Gage
Alan & Kathy Garant
Fr. C. Lee & Edith M. Gilbertson
Evan & Emily Gnam
Dianne Greenley
Joel & Jacquie Greiner
Vicki & Alan Hamstra
Margaret Harrigan
John Hayward & Susan Roehlk
John & Sarah Helgeson
James & Cindy Hoyt
Barbara S. Hughes
Margaret & Paul Irwin
Paul Kent
Charlene Kim
Connie Kinsella & Marc Eisen
Robert Klassy
Chris & Marge Kleinhenz
Sharon Klietsch
Richard & Claire Kotenbeutel
James Krikelas
Roger & Sherry Lepage
Peggy Lescrenier
Leon Lindberg
Richard & Jean Lottridge
Richard & Judy Loveless
Joan Lundin
John & Mary Madigan
Garrick & Susan Maine
Bruce Matthews & Eileen Murphy
Keith McDonald
Julie McGivern & Tom Smith
Doris Mergen
Ken Mericle & Mindy Taranto
Kathleen & Richard Miller
Wendy Moeller
Carla Moore
Ann & David Moyer
Bill & De Nelson
David Parminter
Sue Poullette
Gary & Lanette Price
Stephen Pudloski & Elizabeth Ament
Sherry Reames
Josann Reynolds
John K. Rinehart
John Rose & Brian Beaber
Fred & Mary Ross
Madeline Sall
Matthew & Linda Sanders
Don & Barb Sanford
Gary & Barbara Schultz
Ann & Gary Scott
Bassam & June Shakhashiri
Daniel & Gail Shea
Carolin Showers
Dr. Philip Shultz & Marsha VanDomelen
Curt & Jane Smith
Kathy Speck & Gabor Kemeny
Carol Spiegel
Chris & Sara Staszak
James & Christina Steinbach
Andrew & Erika Stevens
Karla Stoebig
David Stone
Kurt Studt
Ulrika Swanson
Martha Taylor & Gary Antoniewicz
Karen & Russell Tomar
Arnold & Ellen Wald
John & Janine Wardale
Scott Weber & Martha Barrett
Cleo & Judy Weibel
Urban Wemmerlöv & Mary Beth Schmalz
Mark Westover
Willis & Heijia Wheeler
William White
Patricia Hable Zastrow
Debra Zillmer & Daniel Leaver
Four Anonymous Friends
$50–$249
Jason & Erin Adamany
Simeon Alder
Stuart & Bonnie Allbaugh
Scott Anderson
Rita Applebaum
Livia Asher
Leigh Barker Cheesebro
Connie & David Beam
Kerry Berns & Joseph Rossmeissl
Jake & Philip Blavat
Dorothy A. Blotz
Bruce & Gwen Bosben
Yvonne Bowen
Steven Braithwait
Waltraud Brinkmann
Lou & Nancy Bruch
Bob & Virginia Bryan
Alexis Buchanan & James Baldwin
Kevin & Tracey Buhr
Walter Burt & Deborah Cardinal
Julie Buss
Heather & Mark Butler
Robert Butz & Susan Alexander
Ann Campbell
Stephen P. Carlton & Virginia L. Carlton
Jeanne & Uriah Carpenter
Susan Christensen
Richard & Virginia Connor
Jane Considine
Barbara Constans
Thomas Corbett
The Corden Family
Sheila Coyle
Kathy Cramer & John Hart
Randall Crow & Patricia Kerr
John Daane
Nanette Dagnon
Beverly Dahl
Gary Davis & James Woods
Suzanne Davis
James & Sally Ann Davis
James & Edith Davison
Gina Degiovanni
Laura & Erik Dent
Jeannine & Edouard Desautels
Danielle & Jeanette
Devereaux-Weber
Ulrike Dieterle
Donalea Dinsmore
Dan & Carole Doeppers
James Donahue & Maria Mascola
Rosemary M. Dorney
Sue Dornfeld
Eve & Peter Drury
Richard & Doris Dubielzig
Katy & Edward Dueppen
Adrienne & Luke Eberhardy
Kenneth Edenhauser
Barbara G. Eggleston
Ann Ellingboe
Phyllis Ermer
Robert Factor
Elizabeth Fadell
Douglas & Carol Fast
Lorna Filippini & Clyde Paton
Peter Fisher & Cyndy Galloway
Emily & Milton Ford
Adam & Sara Forster
Dan & Mary Fose
Evelyn Fox
John & Signe Frank
Raelene & LisaAnn Freitag
Janet & Byron Frenz
Dena Frisch
James Fromm
Greg & Clare Gadient
Kenneth & Molly Gage
Susan Gandley
Russell & Suzanne Gardner
Jill Gaskell
Laurie Gauper
Charles & Janet Gietzel
Pauline Gilbertson & Peter Medley
Joan Gilbertson
Carl & Peggy Glassford
William & Sharon Goehring
Michael G. Goldsberry
Jane & Paul Graham
Barbara Grajewski & Michael Slipski
Sam Gratz
Philip Greenwood
David Griffeath & Catherine Loeb
Courtney Grimm
Dale & Linda Gutman
Bob & Beverly Haimerl
Thomas & Vicki Hall
Jane Hallock & William Wolfort
William Hansen
Mary & Donald Harkness
Paul Haskew & Nancy Kendrick
Bob & Dianna Haugh
H. William & Susan Hausler
Dan Hayes
Gregg Heatley & Julie James
Cheryl Heiliger
Nona Hill & Clark Johnson
Michael Hobbs & Sherry Boozer-Hobbs
Ryan Hoffland & Heidi Bardenhagen
Paul & Debra Hoffman
Kurt Hornig & Alfredo Sotomayor
Robert & Ellen Hull
Mark & Catherine Isenberg
Anna January
Kathleen Jeffords
Greg & Doreen Jensen
Paul & Sarah Johnsen
Aaron & Sarah Johnson
Dan & Janet Johnson
Doug & Kathy Johnson
Jill Johnson
Susan & Conrad Jostad
Jacqueline Judd & Michael Shulman
William & Corliss Karasov
Estelle Katz
Virginia Kaufman
Joseph Kay
Arlan Kay
Delwyn Keane & Michael Livesey
Melissa Keyes & Ingrid Rothe
Noël Marie & Steven Klapper
James Kleeman
Helen & Irwin Klibaner
Robert & Judy Knapp
Doug Knudson & Judith Lyons
Steven Koslov
Kevin & Theresa Kovach
Joanna Kramer Fanney
Mark Kremer
Keith & Mary Krinke
Ann Kruger
Kathleen K. & Richard R. Kuhnen
Merilyn Kupferberg
Pierre & Laurie La Plante
Ann Lacy
John & Marie LaFontaine
Paul Lambert & Anne Griep
William Lane
Mary & Steve Langlie
Jim Larkee
Carl & Jerilyn Laurino
Constance Lavine & Fred Holtzman
Laurie Laz & Jim Hirsch
Richard & Lynn Leazer
Julius Lee
Gary E. Lewis
Steve & Karen Limbach
Carol M. Lorenz
Judith A. Louer
Doug & Mary Loving
Kathy Luker
Ross & Kathy Lyman
Frank & Nancy Maersch
Erica & Kinjal Majumder
Richard Margolis
James & Eileen Marshall
Ruth & Bob Martin
Gordon & Janet McChesney
Jan L. McCormick
Paul & Jane McGann
Tracy Melin & Stephen Klick
Lori J. Merriam
Dale Meyer
Charlotte M. Meyer
Roberta Meyer
Sigurd Midelfort
James & Mary Miedaner
Marilyn & Peter Meiss
Linda Miller
Margaret & Paul Miller
Mark Miller & Terry Sizer
Thomas Miller
Wendy Miller
Rolf & Judith Mjaanes
Terry Morrison
Gary & Carol Moseson
Bruce Muckerheide & Robert Olson
Charles Mueller
Lynn Hallie Najem
Raymond Nashold
Carol & Jack Naughton
Lana Nenide & Jonathan Rosenblum
Jeff Nickols
Ron Nief & Joanna Kutter
Mary Lou Nord
Andrew Nowlan
Richard & Mary Ann Olson
Richard & Marcia Olson
Ron & Jan Opelt
Bonnie Orvick
James & Jennifer Parise
Barbara Park
Mitchell L. Patton
Phillip & Karen Paulson
Edward & Dianne Peters
Ernest J. Peterson
Roger & Linda Pettersen
Tom Pierce
Luke & Linda Plamann
Brian & Jackie Podolski
Ann Pollock & James Coors
Steve & Robin Potter
Ellen & Kenneth Prest
Paula Primm
Robert Przybelski & Jana Jones
Thomas & Janet Pugh
Donald & Roz Rahn
Kathleen Rasmussen
Sheila Read
Richard & Donna Reinardy
Linda Reivitz
Drs. Joy & David Rice
Sarah Roberts & Carolyn Carlson
Howard & Mirriam Rosen
Richard A. Rossmiller
John & Rachel Rothschild
Carol Rounds
Robert & Nancy Rudd
Janet Ruszala-Coughlin & Tim Coughlin
Dean Ryerson
Steven & Lennie Saffian
Bela & Ruth Sandor
Sinikka Santala & Gregory Schmidt
Dennis & Janice Schattschneider
Jeffrey & Gail Schauer
John & Susan Schauf
Thomas & Lynn Schmidt
Phillip Schneider
Steven & Debra Schroeder
Andreas & Susanne Seeger
Vicki Semo Scharfman
Sandy Shepherd
Jackson Short
Lucy Sieber
Daniel & Cheryl Siehr
J.R. & Patricia Smart
Derrick & Carrie Smith
Karen Smith
Robert & Suzanne Smith
Terrell & Mary Smith
Tricia & Everett Smith
Steve Somerson & Helena Tsotsis
Kenneth Spielman
Gary & Jackie Splitter
Robert & Barbara Stanley
Joanne Stark
Pat & John Steffen
Franklin & Jennie Stein
Peter Steinhoff
Michael Stemper
Joe & Phyllis Stertz
Bruce & Carol Stoddard
Eric Strauss
JoAnne & Ken Streit
Mary & Robert Stroud
David & Shirley Susan
Jerry & Georgie Suttin
Cheri Teal
Howard & Elizabeth Teeter
Gerald & Priscilla Thain
Glen Thio
Barbara J. Thomas
Tom & Dianne Totten
Andrew Trampf
Margaret Trepton
Judith Troia
Colleen & Tim Tucker
Doris J. Van Houten
John & Shelly Van Note
John & Bonnie Verberkmoes
Rebekah Verbeten
Ingrid Verhagen
Elena Vetrina & Wallace Sherlock
Ed & Jan Vidruk
Angela Vitcenda & Jerry Norenberg
Liz Vowles
Jeremy & Sarah Watt
Nancy Webster
Mary Webster
Karl & Ellen Westlund
William White
Dorothy Whiting
Wade W. Whitmus
Steven & Ellen Wickland
Rebecca Wiegand
Eve Wilkie
Bambi Wilson
Rick Wirch
Scott & Jane Wismans
Brad Wolbert & Rebecca Karoff
Celeste Woodruff & Bruce Fritz
Marcia Wright
David Wuestenberg
Keith & Natalie Yelinek
John Young & Gail Snowden
Steven & Patty Zach
Camille Zanoni
Gretchen Zelle
Ronald Zerofsky
Joan N. Zingale
36 Anonymous Friends
We also thank 95 donors for their contributions of $1 to $49.
*Total includes gifts supporting: MSO’s 2024-2025 Annual Campaign; MSOL 2024-2025 Events & General Support; 2024-2025 Organ Concerts; Friends of the Overture Concert Organ’s 2024-2025 Annual Campaign. MSOL and FOCO basic membership dues and fundraising event ticket purchases are not included. Giving thresholds listed here do not correspond to giving levels within specific campaigns included.We have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this list. If you believe an error has been made, please contact our development department at (608) 257-3734.
BUSINESS, FOUNDATION AND GOVERNMENT DONORS
Madison Symphony Orchestra
Madison Symphony Orchestra League Friends of the Overture Concert Organ
The Madison Symphony Orchestra and our affiliate organizations rely on generous donor support to fund the fulfillment of our mission each year. We gratefully acknowledge all companies, foundations and government agencies for their grants, sponsorships, general contributions, and gifts-in-kind.
Organizations that have contributed to the Madison Symphony Orchestra, Madison Symphony Orchestra League, and/or Friends of the Overture Concert Organ are listed according to the total amount of their donations supporting the 2024-2025 Season* as of September 16, 2024.
$100,000 or more
Madison Symphony Orchestra Foundation
Madison Symphony Orchestra League
WMTV 15 News
$50,000–$99,999
Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation
$25,000–$49,999
American Printing
Irving and Dorothy Levy Family Foundation, Inc.
The Madison Concourse Hotel & Governor’s Club
Madison Magazine
Madison Media Partners
$15,000–$24,999
Capitol Lakes
The Evjue Foundation, Inc.
Fiore Companies, Inc.
National Endowment for the Arts
Nimick Forbesway Foundation
Wisconsin Arts Board with additional funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts
$10,000–$14,999
BMO
Boardman Clark Law Firm
Lake Ridge Bank
Madison Gas & Electric Foundation, Inc.
Marriott Daughters Foundation
PBS Wisconsin
University Research Park
U.S. Bank Foundation
$5,000–$9,999
Dane County Arts, with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation
DeWitt LLP
Exact Sciences
Fields Auto Group
Hooper Corporation
Kenneth A. Lattman Foundation, Inc.
Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.
Richman & Richman LLC
Sub-Zero Group, Inc.
SupraNet Communications, Inc.
von Briesen & Roper, s.c.
Wisconsin Public Radio
Woodman’s Food Markets
$2,500–$4,999
Godfrey & Kahn, S.C.
Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin
J.H. Findorff & Son Inc.
Madison Arts Commission
Stafford Rosenbaum LLP
UW Health & Unity
Health Insurance
West Bend Insurance Company
$1,000–$2,499
Alliant Energy Foundation Matching Gifts Program
BRAVA Magazine
Capitol Bank
Farley’s House of Pianos
Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation
Robert W. Baird & Co.
Sold with Faith Real Estate, Restaino & Associates
The Suby Group
Up to $999
Badger Bus
Bank of America
The Capital Times Kids Fund
Catalent Pharma Solutions LLC
Choles Floral
Costco Wholesale Corporation
Fuhrman & Dodge, S.C.
Hartmeyer Ice Arena
Heid Music and Heid Music
Family Charitable Fund
Promega Corporation
*Total includes donations that support 2024-2025 Madison Symphony Orchestra Concerts, 2024-2025 Organ Concerts, 2024-2025 Education and Community Engagement Programs; Madison Symphony Orchestra League’s 2024-2025 Events and Activities including Symphony at Sunset 2024; and Friends of the Overture Concert Organ’s 2024-2025 Annual Campaign. Fundraising event ticket purchases are not included. We have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this list. If you believe an error has been made, please contact our development department at (608) 257-3734.
PLANNED GIVING: THE STRADIVARIUS SOCIETY
The individuals listed below have informed the MSO that they have included gifts for the Symphony in their estate plans. If you have remembered the Symphony in your will, living trust, or have made other arrangements for a future gift, we would love to know so we can thank you! We honor all requests for anonymity. Contact Casey Oelkers at (608) 260-8680 x228 for more information.
Fernando & Carla Alvarado
Emy Andrew
Dennis Appleton & Jennifer Buxton
Judy Ashford
Diane Ballweg
Margaret B. Barker
Chuck Bauer & Chuck Beckwith
Dr. Annette Beyer-Mears
Rosemarie & Fred Blancke
Shaila & Tom Bolger
Michael K. Bridgeman
Alexis Buchanan & James Baldwin
Scott & Janet Cabot
Clarence Cameron & Robert Lockhart
Martha & Charles Casey
Elizabeth A. Conklin
Barbara & John DeMain
Robert Dinndorf
Audrey & Philip Dybdahl
Jim & Marilyn Ebben
George Gay
Tyrone & Janet Greive
Terry Haller
Robert Horowitz & Susan B. King
Dr. Stanley & Shirley Inhorn
Richard & Meg LaBrie
Steven Landfried
Ann Lindsey & Charles Snowdon
Claudia Berry Miran
Elaine & Nicholas Mischler
Stephen D. Morton
Margaret Murphy
Reynold V. Peterson
David & Kato Perlman
Judith Pierotti
Michael Pritzkow
Gordon & Janet Renschler
Joy & David Rice
Joan & Kenneth Riggs
Harry & Karen Roth
Edwin & Ruth Sheldon
Dr. Beverly S. Simone
JoAnn Six
Mary Lang Sollinger
Sharon Stark & Peter D. Livingston
Gareth L. Steen
Jurate Stewart
John & Mary Storer
Richard Tatman & Ellen Seuferer
Marilynn Thompson
Ann Wallace
Richard & Barbara Weaver
Carolyn & Ron White
John Wiley & Andrea Teresa Arenas
Mary Alice Wimmer
Helen L. Wineke
Ten Anonymous Friends
ESTATE GIFTS RECEIVED
Elizabeth S. Anderes
Donald W. Anderson
Helen Barnick
Norman Bassett
Nancy Becknell
DeEtte Beilfuss-Eager
Theo F. Bird
Marian & Jack Bolz
Kenneth Bussan
Margaret Christy
Frances Z. Cumbee
Teddy Derse
Dr. Leroy Ecklund
Mary J. Ferguson
Linda I. Garrity
Maxine A. Goold
Beatrice B. Hagen
Martin R. Hamlin
Sybil A. Hanks
Elizabeth Harris
Julian E. Harris
Jane Hilsenhoff
Carl M. Hudig
Martha Jenny
Lois M. Jones
Shirley Jane Kaub
Helen B. Kayser
Patricia Koenecke
Teddy H. Kubly
Arno & Hazel Kurth
James V. Lathers
Renata Laxova
Stella I. Leverson
Lila Lightfoot
Jan Markwart
Geraldine F. Mayer
Mr. & Mrs. Frederick W. Miller
Janet Nelson
Sandra L. Osborn
Elmer B. Ott
Ethel Max Parker
Josephine Ratner
Mrs. J. Barkley Rosser
Harry D. Sage
Joel Skornicka
Chalma Smith
Marie Spec
Charlotte I. Spohn
Evelyn C. Steenbock
Harry Steenbock
Virginia Swingen
Gamber F. Tegtmeyer, Jr. & Audrey Tegtmeyer
Katherine Voight
William & Joyce Wartmann
Sally & Ben Washburn
Sybil Weinstein
Mr. & Mrs. J. Wesley Thompson
Glenn & Edna Wiechers
Elyn L. Williams
Margaret C. Winston
Jay Joseph Young
Two Anonymous Friends
A Legacy of Music
The Madison Symphony Orchestra is a grateful recipient and faithful steward of planned gifts from individuals who have remembered the Symphony in their estate plans. Through a planned gift, you can help preserve MSO’s legacy of great music for generations to come. All planned gifts qualify for Stradivarius Society recognition, and requests for anonymity will be honored.
Learn more madisonsymphony.org/stradivarius
“We have included the MSO in our wills because we want future generations to enjoy and benefit from it as we have.”
– Martha and Charles Casey, Stradivarius Society Members
Tributes
The Madison Symphony Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the following donors for their contributions honoring family & friends.
In honor of Emy Andrew
Janet Renschler
In honor of Chuck and Elizabeth Barnhill
Lois H. McDonald
In honor of Olin Martis James
Charles James
In honor of Elspeth Stalter-Clouse
Randall and Pamela Clouse
In memory of Tom Anderson
Anonymous
In memory of John Barker
Bela and Ruth Sandor
In memory of Marian and John Bolz
Martha and Charles Casey
In memory of Clarence Porter Cameron
Alfred Andreychuk and Allan Deptula
In memory of Deri Cattelino
Janet Renschler
In memory of Camryn Dahlke
Anonymous
In memory of Barbara DeMain
Laura Gallagher
In memory of Alexandra Dove
Martha and Charles Casey
In memory of Jean K. Druckenmiller
Sandra Levin
In memory of Jean and Stan Druckenmiller
Grace Homb
In memory of Janet Faulhaber
Lois M. Smith
In memory of Kyle Friedow
Elaine and Nicholas Mischler
In memory of Esther Hedfield
Wayne Blodgett
Shirley Hanson
Thomas & Cynthia Lerdahl
Carol Ruhly
In memory of Paul J. Heiser
Alfred Andreychuk and Allan Deptula
In memory of Tony Holt
Tyrone and Janet Greive
Ann Manser
Claudia Berry Miran
Jacklyn O’Brien
Phillip and Karen Paulson
Robert A. Reed
John N. Santeiu Jr.
In memory of Sarah “Sally” Jamieson
Bruce and Alice Green
Ronald and Janet Wanek
In memory of Aileen Jensen
Eileen Cripps Stenberg
In memory of Howard Kidd
Martha and Charles Casey
Roger and Berta Lerch
In memory of John Kjentvet
Barbara S. Hughes
In memory of Peter Livingston
Martha and Charles Casey
In memory of Robert “Bob” Lockhart
Alfred Andreychuk and Allan Deptula
Valerie and Andreas Kazamias
Melissa Keyes and Ingrid Rothe
Laurel Kinosian
Andrew and Jolyon Maier
Robert A. Reed
Don and Barb Sanford
In memory of Janet Nelson
Elaine and Nicholas Mischler
In memory of Tim Reilley
Elaine and Nicholas Mischler
In memory of Harley Richard
Catherine Richard
In memory of Robert J. Rodini
Gino and Terri Casagrande
In memory of Robert and Eleanor Rodini
Barbara S. Hughes
In memory of Charles “Chuck” Snowdon
Martha and Charles Casey
In memory of Anne Stanke
Daniel and Lavonne Dettmers
In memory of Patricia Davey Struck
Larry Bechler
In memory of Sherri Talbert
Jessica Talbert
In memory of Marjorie Tobias
Karen Gray
Marjorie K. Gray
Endowment Donors
The Madison Symphony Orchestra is deeply grateful to these generous donors who have contributed $1,000 or more to the Symphony’s endowment. These gifts are invested in perpetuity to ensure the MSO’s continuing fiscal stability and its legacy of great music for generations to come. Learn more at madisonsymphony.org/endowment.
Alliant Energy Foundation
Altria Group, Inc.
Carla & Fernando Alvarado
American Family Insurance
Dreams Foundation, Inc.
American Girl, Inc.
Anchor Bank
Mel Anderes
Brian & Rozan Anderson
Ron & Sharon Anderson
Estate of Donald W. Anderson
Emy Andrew
George Austin & Martha Vukelich-Austin
Jim & Sue Bakke
Helen Baldwin
Diane Endres Ballweg
Estate of Betty J. Bamforth
Estate of Helen Barnick
Jeffrey & Angela Bartell
Nancy Becknell
Chuck Bauer & Chuck Beckwith
DeEtte Beilfuss-Eager & Leonard Prentice Eager, Jr.
Barbara & Norman Berven
Ed & Lisa Binkley
Robert & Caryn Birkhauser
Tom & Shaila Bolger
Marian & Jack Bolz
Anne & Robert Bolz
Ernest & Louise Borden
Daniel & Stacey Bormann
Carl & Judy Bowser
Patricia Brady & Robert Smith
Nathan Brand
Jim & Cathie Burgess
Frank & Pat Burgess
Mary P. Burke
Capital Newspapers
Capitol Lakes
Thomas & Martha Carter
Tony & Deri Cattelino
Lau & Bea Christensen
Estate of Margaret Christy
Marc & Sheila Cohen
Mildred & Marv Conney
Pat & Dan Cornwell
James F. Crow
Culver’s VIP Foundation, Inc.
Frances Z. Cumbee Trust
CUNA Mutual Group
Corkey & Betty Custer
Teddy Derse
Dorothy Dittmer
Ruth & Frederick Dobbratz Estate
William & Alexandra Dove
Philip & Audrey Dybdahl
Dr. Leroy Ecklund
Jim & Marilyn Ebben
Richard & Frances Erney
Eugenie Mayer Bolz
Family Foundation
Ray & Mary Evert
The Evjue Foundation, Inc.
The Charitable Arm of
The Capital Times
David Falk & Joanne Robbins
Thomas A. Farrell
Janet Faulhaber
First Business Bank of Madison
First Weber Group
Flad & Associates
John & Colleen Flad
Rockne Flowers
Foley & Lardner
Jean & Werner Frank
W. Jerome Frautschi
Walter A. & Dorothy Jones Frautschi
Friends of the Overture
Concert Organ
Clayton & Belle Frink
Paul Fritsch & Jim Hartman
William & Jane Hilsenhoff
Linda I. Garrity
John & Christine Gauder
Candy & George Gialamas
The Gialamas Company, Inc.
Albert Goldstein, in memory of Sherry Goldstein
Dr. Robert & Linda Graebner
Anthony & Linda Granato
Fritz & Janice Grutzner
Terry Haller
Dorothy E. Halverson
Jane Hamblen & Robert Lemanske
Estate of Martin Hamlin
Julian & Elizabeth Harris
Curtis & Dawn Hastings
Ann & Roger Hauck
Peggy Hedberg
Roe-Merrill S. & Susan Heffner
Jerry M. Hiegel
Tom & Joyce Hirsch
Hooper Corp./General Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc.
Carl M. Hudig
J. Quincy & Carolyn Hunsicker
Dr. Stanley & Shirley Inhorn
J.H. Findorff & Son Inc.
Ralph & Marie Jackson
Allen Jacobson
Kris S. Jarantoski
Peter & Ellen Johnson
Marie & Hap Johnson
Stan & Nancy Johnson
Rosemary B. Johnson
Johnson Bank
Estate of Lois M. Jones
JPMorgan Chase
Darko & Judy Kalan
Carolyn Kau & Chris Hinrichs
Shirley Jane Kaub
Valerie & Andreas Kazamias
Terry & Mary Kelly
Kenneth R. Kimport
Charles & Patricia Kincaid
Joan Klaski & Stephen Malpezzi
James & Andrea Klauck
Robert & Judy Knapp
Patricia G. Koenecke
Patricia Kokotailo & R. Lawrence DeRoo
William Kraus & Toni Sikes
Estate of Theodora H. Kubly
Estate of Arno & Hazel Kurth
Michael G. Laskis
Estate of James Victor Lathers
Renata Laxova
Lee Foundation
Estate of Stella I. Leverson
Ronald L. & Jean L. Lewis
Gary E. Lewis
Robert Lightfoot
Laura Love Linden
Madison Gas & Electric
Foundation, Inc.
Madison Investment Advisors, Inc.
Madison Symphony Orchestra League
Madison Symphony Orchestra
New Year’s Eve Ball 2003
Douglas & Norma Madsen
Margaret Christy Revocable Trust
Estate of Jan Markwart
Marshall & Ilsley Foundation, Inc.
Connie Maxwell
Oscar G. & Geraldine Mayer
Hal & Christy Mayer
Clare & Michael McArdle
Richard & Mary McGary
Elizabeth McKenna
Michael & Cynthia McKenna
Richard & Jean McKenzie
Howard & Nancy Mead
Gary & Lynn Mecklenburg
Gale Meyer
Michael Best & Friedrich LLP
Susanne Michler
Claudia Berry & David E. Miran
Nicholas & Elaine Mischler
Dan & Ellyn Mohs
Fred & Mary Mohs
Tom & Nancy Mohs
Alfred P. Moore & Ann M. Moore
Katharine Morrison
Mortenson Family Foundation
Stephen D. Morton
Walter Morton Foundation
Jeanne Myers
Stephen & Barbara Napier
National Guardian Life Insurance Company
Janet Nelson
Vicki & Marv Nonn
Norman Bassett Trust
Daniel & Judith Nystrom
Casey & Eric Oelkers
Sandra L. Osborn
John & Carol Palmer
Park Bank
Estate of Ethel Max Parker & Cedric Parker
Catherine Peercy
John L. Peterson
Reynold V. Peterson
Larry & Jan Phelps
E. J. Plesko
Thomas & Janet Plumb
Potter Lawson Architects
Martin & Lynn Preizler
Marie B. Pulvermacher
Quarles & Brady LLP
Estate of Josephine Ratner
David Reinecke
Douglas & Katherine Reuhl
George & Jean Reuhl
Dr. Joy K. Rice
Thomas & Martha Romberg
Mrs. J. Barkley Rosser
Dan Rottier & Frankie Kirk Rottier
Patrick M. Ryan
Harry Sage
Douglas Schewe
Stephen & Marianne Schlecht
Richard and Barbara Schnell
Donald K. Schott
Margaret & Collin Schroeder
William & Pamela Schultz
Marti Sebree
Joe & Mary Ellyn Sensenbrenner
Millie & Irv Shain
Twila Sheskey
Terry & Sandra Shockley
Paul & Ellen Simenstad
JoAnn Six
Lise Skofronick
Joel Skornicka
Eileen Smith
Estate of Chalma Smith
Hans & Mary Lang Sollinger
Glenn & Cleo Sonnedecker
Marie Spec
Spohn Charitable Trust
Mike & Sandy Stamn
Karen & Jacob Stampen
Harriet Statz
Estate of Evelyn Carol Steenbock
Estate of Harry & Evelyn Steenbock
Steinhauer Charitable Trust
Joseph & Jamie Steuer
Peg Gunderson Stiles
John & Janet Streiff
Virginia Swingen
W. Stuart & Elizabeth Sykes
John & Leslie Taylor
Gamber & Audrey Tegtmeyer, Jr.
Terrance & Judith Paul Advised Fund
Tom Terry
Marilynn Thompson
Estate of Mr. & Mrs. J.
Wesley Thompson
Jeff & Barbara Ticknor
Todd & Elizabeth Tiefenthaler
Harry & Marjorie Tobias
Nick & Judy Topitzes
John & Carol Toussaint
U.S. Bank Foundation
Jon & Susan Udell
Virchow, Krause & Co.
Katherine & Thomas Voight
W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation
Thomas & Rita Walker
Ann Wallace
Walter A. & Dorothy Jones
Frautschi Charitable Trust
William & Joyce Wartmann
Sally & Ben Washburn
Estate of Sybil Weinstein
Jeff & Cindy Welch
Edwenna Rosser Werner
Bob & Lu Westervelt
John & Joyce Weston
Jerry & Enid Weygandt
Carolyn & Ron White
Wiechers Survivor’s Trust
Thomas & Joyce Wildes
John Wiley & Andrea Teresa Arenas
Elyn L. Williams
Bill Williamson
Margaret C. Winston
Wisconsin Energy Corporation
Foundation
Kathleen Woit
Anders Yocom & Ann Yocom Engelman
Jay J. Young
Five Anonymous Friends
Endowment Giving: The Century Society
We gratefully acknowledge our Century Society donors, who have made commitments of $100,000 or more to the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s endowment through outright or planned gifts, as of September 6, 2024. Their gifts create a solid financial foundation upon which the MSO can realize its vision to be a leader in classical music performance, education, community engagement, and artistic innovation for generations to come.
As the Madison Symphony Orchestra approaches its centennial in 2025-2026, we hope to welcome new Century Society donors who make endowment commitments of $100,000 or more through outright or planned gifts. Visit madisonsymphony.org/ endowment to learn more about endowment giving.
Carla and Fernando Alvarado
Dennis Appleton and Jennifer Buxton
Diane Ballweg
Chuck Bauer and Chuck Beckwith
Barbara and Norman Berven
Rosemarie and Fred Blancke
Eugenie Mayer Bolz Family Foundation
Jim and Cathie Burgess
Martha and Charles Casey
Margaret Christy
Pat and Dan Cornwell
James F. Crow
William and Alexandra Dove
The Evjue Foundation, Inc.
Linda I. Garrity
George Gay
George and Candy Gialamas
Tyrone and Janet Greive
Terry Haller
Carl M. Hudig
Dr. Stanley and Shirley Inhorn
Patricia Kokotailo and R. Lawrence DeRoo
Arno and Hazel Kurth
Myrna Larson
James Victor Lathers
Peter Livingston and Sharon Stark
Madison Symphony Orchestra League
Claudia Berry and David E. Miran
Nicholas and Elaine Mischler
David and Kato Perlman
A Gift of Music Thank you for attending this Madison Symphony Orchestra concert!
John L. Peterson
Sheila Read
The Reuhl Family
Pleasant T. Rowland
Harry D. Sage
JoAnn Six
Gareth L. Steen
Harry and Evelyn C. Steenbock
Steinhauer Charitable Trust
Thomas E. Terry
Marilynn Thompson
Katherine and Thomas Voight
William and Joyce Wartmann
Elyn L. Williams
Margaret C. Winston
Six Anonymous Friends
Did you know that ticket sales cover less than half the costs of presenting our concert season?
Contributions from dedicated MSO patrons help bridge this gap, allowing people from all walks of life to experience thrilling live orchestral performances in Overture Hall. Make a gift to the MSO Annual Fund today and take pride in knowing you have helped share these magnificent concerts with others in your community.
giving levels and donate at madisonsymphony.org/individual
Overture Hall Information
RESTROOMS
Women’s and men’s restrooms are located on each level of Overture. Family assist/gender inclusive restrooms, available to persons of any gender identity and expression, are available in the following areas:
• Lower-Level Rotunda: to the right of the stairway.
• First floor lobby / Overture Hall: near coat check.
• Second floor: Gallery 2—second door to the left off the elevators.
Amenities at gender-inclusive restrooms include:
• Lockable door to provide privacy for individual users
• Ample room for an assistant/family member, if needed
• Accessible sink, stool and urinal (floor level)
• Changing stations
• Power-assist doors (Level 1 restrooms only)
ACCESSIBILITY
Overture Center is fully accessible to persons with mobility, hearing, and visual impairments. Ushers are available at each concert to assist you. Wheelchair or transfer seating is available; please notify the Overture Center Box Office when purchasing your ticket. If you require an assistive-listening device, please alert an usher at the concert. Braille programs are also available upon request. Please contact Amanda at adill@madisonsymphony.org at least three weeks prior to the concert you wish to attend.
GUEST CONSIDERATIONS
The musicians and your fellow audience members thank you!
• Please arrive early to ensure plenty of time to get through security and to be seated. If you arrive late, you will be seated during an appropriate break in the music at the discretion of the house staff. If you need to leave during the concert, please exit quietly and wait to be reseated by an usher at an appropriate break.
• Please feel free to take photos before and after the concert, and during intermission! Once the lights dim, please turn off all cell phones and electronic devices.
• Please do not wear perfumes, colognes or scented lotions as many people are allergic to these products.
• Smoking is not permitted anywhere in Overture Center for the Arts.
• The coat-check room is open when the weather dictates and closes 20 minutes after the performance ends.
• Food and beverages are available at bars and concession stands in the Overture Lobby. Beverages are allowed in Overture Hall, but please enjoy food in the lobby. Please unwrap cough drops and candies before the concert begins.
Please take note: We will adhere to all public health guidelines and cooperate with Overture Center for the Arts to ensure your safety. We invite you to visit madisonsymphony. org/health for more information on health and safety. Overture Center safety information can be found at overture.org/health
Boards & Administration
MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC. BOARD OF DIRECTORS, 2024-2025
OFFICERS
Ellsworth Brown, Chair
Michael Richman, Chair
Janet Cabot, Secretary
Doug Reuhl, Treasurer
Ellsworth Brown,
Immediate Past Chair
José Madera, Member-at-large
Kay Schwichtenberg, Member-at-large
Derrick Smith, Member-at-large
Lynn Stathas, Member-at-large
DIRECTORS
Lynn Allen-Hoffmann
Brian Anderson
Ruben Anthony
Rosemarie Blancke
Ellsworth Brown
Janet Cabot
Martha Casey
Bryan Chan
Elton Crim
James Dahlberg
Bob Dinndorf
Audrey Dybdahl
Marc Fink
David Harding
Paul Hoffmann
Mark Huth
Mooyoung Kim
David Lauth
Rob Lemanske
Ann Lindsey
José Madera
Oscar Mireles
Rick Morgan
Jon Parker
Cyrena Pondrom
Margaret Pyle
Michael Richman
Carole Schaeffer
Monique Scher
Kay Schwichtenberg
John Sims
Derrick Smith
Tamera Stanley
Lynn Stathas
Todd Stuart
Anna Trull
Jasper Vaccaro
Eric Wilcots
Michael Zorich
ADVISORS
Elliott Abramson
Michael Allsen
Carla Alvarado
Jeffrey Bauer
Ted Bilich
Camille Carter
Laura Gallagher
Tyrone Greive
Jane Hamblen
Michael Hobbs
Stephanie Lee
Joseph Meara
Gary Mecklenburg
Larry Midtbo
Paul Norman
Kevin O’Connor
Abigail Ochberg
Greg Piefer
Jacqueline Rodman
Mary Lang Sollinger
Judith Topitzes
Ellis Waller
Carolyn White
Anders Yocom
Stephen Zanoni
LIFE DIRECTORS
Terry Haller
Stanley Inhorn
Valerie Kazamias
Elaine Mischler
Nicholas Mischler
Douglas Reuhl
HONORARY DIRECTORS
TBA, President Madison College
Kathy Evers, First Lady of the State of Wisconsin
TBA, Dane County Executive
DIRECTORS EMERITUS
Helen Bakke
Wallace Douma
Perry A. Henderson
Fred Mohs
Stephen Morton
Beverly Simone
John Wiley
EX OFFICIO DIRECTORS
Barbara Berven
Mark Bridges
Rose Heckenkamp-Busch
William Steffenhagen
EX OFFICIO ADVISORS
Josh Biere
Dan Cavanagh
Daniel Davidson
MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FOUNDATION INC. BOARD, 2024–2025
OFFICERS
Douglas Reuhl
President
Nicholas Mischler
Vice President
Robert A. Reed
Secretary-Treasurer
DIRECTORS
Ellsworth Brown
Joanna Burish
Beth Dettman
Jill Friedow
Juan Gomez
Jane Hamblen
Jon Parker
Michael Richman
MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA LEAGUE BOARD OF DIRECTORS, 2024–2025
Claire Ann and Michael Richman, Symphony at Sunset
Don Sanford, Parties of Note
Beth Rahko, MSOL Connect & Musicology Moments
Jan Cibula, VP Social Activities
Jessica Morrison & Mary Lou Tyne, Fall Luncheon
Pat Bernhardt, Holiday Party
Valerie Kazamias, Midwinter Luncheon
Rosemarie Blancke, Spring Luncheon & Annual Meeting
Marilyn Ebben, Ladies Bridge
Jim Patch, Men’s Bridge
ADVISORS
Pat Bernhardt
Rosemarie Blancke
Janet Cabot
Marilyn Ebben
Valerie Kazamias
Fern Lawrence
Ann Lindsey
Linda Lovejoy
Elaine Mischler
Beth Rahko
Judy Topitzes
Carolyn White
FRIENDS OF THE OVERTURE CONCERT ORGAN BOARD OF DIRECTORS, 2023-2024
OFFICERS
Robert Lemanske President
David Willow Secretary-Treasurer
William Steffenhagen President-Elect
DIRECTORS
Beth Bauer
Barbara Berven
Janet Cabot
Quinn Christensen
Audrey Dybdahl
Mary Ann Harr Grinde
Mark Huth
Ellen Larson Latimer
Charles McLimans
Doug McNeel
David Parminter
Rhonda Rushing
Jennifer Younger
ADVISORS
Fernando Alvarado
Diane Ballweg
James Baxter
Ellsworth Brown
John Gauder
Terry Haller
Gary Lewis
Elaine Mischler
Vicki Nonn
Reynold Peterson
Teri Venker
Anders Yocom
EX OFFICIO
Greg Zelek, Elaine & Nicholas Mischler Curator, Overture Concert Organ
MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC.
ADMINISTRATION
Robert Reed, Executive Director
David Gordon, Executive Assistant & Board Liaison
Ann Bowen, General Manager
Alexis Carreon, Office & Personnel Manager
Jennifer Goldberg, Orchestra Librarian, John & Carolyn Petersen Chair
Lisa Kjentvet, Director of Education & Community Engagement
Katelyn Hanvey, Education & Community Engagement Manager
Casey Oelkers, Director of Development
Meranda Dooley, Manager of Individual Giving
Rachel Cherian, Manager of Grants & Sponsorships
Peter Rodgers, Director of Marketing
Amanda Dill, Marketing/ Communications Manager
Lindsey Meekhof, Audience Experience Manager
Chris Fiol, Digital Marketing and Engagement Specialist
Sarah Bergmann, Bolz Marketing Associate
Greg Zelek, Elaine & Nicholas Mischler Curator, Overture Concert Organ
Subscribe to 5–7 concerts and save 10-20% off single ticket prices (starting at $70-$470 for 5 concerts). Subscriptions are available until November 1, 2024. Single tickets on sale now for all concerts. Anticipate, subscribe, and purchase single tickets at madisonsymphony.org/99
Save 20% off single ticket prices when you subscribe to all 4 organ performances by Friday, September 20, 2024 ($80-$128). Single tickets on sale now for all performances. Be enchanted, subscribe, and buy single tickets at madisonsymphony.org/organ20
SUBSCRIBE ONLINE: madisonsymphony.org BY PHONE: (608) 257-3734
MAIL OR IN-PERSON: 222 W. Washington Ave., Suite 460 Madison, WI 53703
SINGLE TICKETS
IN-PERSON: Overture Center Box Office, 201 State Street BY PHONE: (608) 258-4141 ONLINE: madisonsymphony.org or overture.org
24-25 Season Calendar
Symphony and Organ Concerts
sep 20–22 jan 17–19
John DeMain, Conductor
Tommy Mesa, Cello
Greg Zelek, Organ
Paul Jacobs, Organ
Nicholas Hersh, Guest Conductor
Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Violin
Michael Stern, Guest Conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, Piano
Lyyra Ensemble, Organ
Greg Zelek, Organ
nov 23
Kyle Knox, Conductor
Disney and Pixar’s Coco in Concert
dec 6-8
John DeMain, Conductor
Gil Shaham, Violin
Orli Shaham, Piano
Sterling Elliott, Cello
oct 18–20 oct 3 nov 21 feb 25 apr 3 nov 15–17 mar 14–16 apr 11–13
John DeMain, Conductor
Vanessa Becerra, Soprano
Craig Irvin, Baritone
Madison Symphony Chorus, Beverly Taylor, Director
Mount Zion Gospel Choir, Tamera and Leotha Stanley, Directors
