The MSO is a proud participant in the Violins of Hope – Wisconsin residency.
* Commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center with the generous support of the Paul Jacobs Memorial Fund.
The 2025.26 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION.
The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Guest Artist Biographies
KATHRYN HENRY
This season, Kathryn Henry makes her European debut as Desdemona (Otello) at Theater Bonn and appears as Micaëla (Carmen) with Dayton Opera. She joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s “Ah, perfido!” under Fabio Luisi, sings Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Milwaukee and Sheboygan symphony orchestras, and competes in the Paris Opera Competition finals.
In the 2024-25 season, Henry debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in Die Frau ohne Schatten and with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, singing Gutrune and Third Norn (Götterdämmerung) and Helmwige (Die Walküre). She also appeared as the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro) with North Carolina Opera, reprised Micaëla with the Florentine Opera, and performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.
In the 2023-24 season, Henry stepped in as the title role in Janáček’s Jenůfa at the Lyric Opera of Chicago under the baton of conductor Jakub Hrůša. An emerging voice with a remarkable affinity for the music of Richard Strauss, Henry also debuted with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra that season, performing Strauss’s Four Last Songs
She earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Opera Recording for her portrayal of Lucy Harker in the studio recording of The Lord of Cries by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo following her acclaimed debut in the opera at Santa Fe Opera.
CLARA OSOWSKI
In the 2025-26 season, mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski appears with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra under Ken-David Masur in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra for Holidays at the Hotel. She joins the Bach Society of Minnesota for Vivaldi’s cantatas and arias, the Bach Society of St. Louis for Mozart’s Requiem, and returns to the Schubert Club for both a Courtroom Concert and a U.K. recital tour. Additional engagements include Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Seattle Bach Festival and songs by Lili Boulanger with the University of Washington Orchestra.
Recent highlights include collaborations with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for songs by Charles Ives and Handel’s Messiah, the Rochester Philharmonic for Mozart’s Requiem, the South Dakota Symphony for Mozart’s Mass in C minor, Requiem, and Arvo Pärt’s Stabat Mater, the Kansas City Symphony for Handel’s Messiah, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for Mozart’s Requiem and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. She made her London debut at Wigmore Hall, appeared with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque in Handel’s Jephtha (also released on recording) and Bach’s St. John Passion, and performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Delaware Symphony. A frequent collaborator with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Osowski has sung Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and Dominick Argento’s Casa Guidi and A Few Words About Chekhov.
Guest Artist Biographies
RUSSELL THOMAS
Tenor Russell Thomas’s 2025-26 season includes his return to the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Canio in Pagliacci (which he sang there during the COVID-19 pandemic for a filmed production), to the Opéra national de Paris for Don José in Carmen, and to the Canadian Opera Company for his debut in the title role of Werther. In concert, he will be heard as the tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Future projects include returns to the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Royal Ballet and Opera, the Washington National Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Recent highlights include Thomas’s returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Florestan in Fidelio, the Metropolitan Opera for his first Kaiser in Die Frau ohne Schatten, and the Houston Grand Opera for his first sensational Tannhäuser. In concert, he sang Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Opera and his first Énée in Les Troyens at the Seattle Opera, and he appeared as Don José in Carmen for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and as Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana for the Canadian Opera Company.
STEPHANO PARK
South Korean bass Stephano Park was named the winner of Operalia 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa. Highlights of the 2025-26 season include a house and role debut as Uncle Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at Calgary Opera, his Chicago Symphony debut in performances of Mozart’s Requiem conducted by Manfred Honeck, and his debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 led by Ken-David Masur.
Last season saw Park make numerous house and role debuts, including as the title role in a new production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Korean National Opera, as Mandarino in Puccini’s Turandot at the Baltic Opera Festival under the baton of Keri-Lynn Wilson, and as Gran Sacerdote in concert performances of Verdi’s Nabucco for Opéra de Toulon. On the concert platform, Park made his debut with the Korean National Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem conducted by Roberto Abbado and made his festival debut at the Daejeon Grand Festival alongside Hera Hyesang Park in recital.
Park recently completed his second season as part of the Wiener Staatsoper’s opera studio, where roles have included Walter Furst in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Lodovico in Verdi’s Otello, Sid in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Fouquier-Tinville in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, Jailer in Puccini’s Tosca, Hans Schwarz in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and the second soldier in Strauss’s Salome.
Park trained at Seoul National University and continues his studies at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, studying with Attila Jun, Jennifer Larmore, and Karlheinz Hanser.
Program notes by David Jensen
PAVEL HAAS
Born 21 June 1899; Brno, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic) Died 17 October 1944; Auschwitz-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland
String Quartet No. 3, Opus 15
Composed: October 1937 – 1938
First performance: Unknown
Last MSO performance: MSO Premiere
Instrumentation: 2 violins; viola; cello
Approximate duration: 6 minutes
The Theresienstadt ghetto, established in the Czech Republic by the Nazis in November 1941, played a peculiar role during the Holocaust. Designed as a layover for prisoners being transported to the extermination camps, the ghetto at Terezín was home to an unusually vibrant cultural life — composers, artists, and intellectuals gave concerts, rendered their conditions in paintings and drawings, and attended lectures on theology, fine art, and the sciences, producing a vivid record of the horrors of their internment.
It is an articulation of one of the cruelest aspects of human nature that the artistic activities at Theresienstadt were cultivated by the Nazis with the express purpose of being leveraged as propaganda to undermine the reports of genocide then circling the globe. Visitors were treated to performances of classical music and provided with fabricated statistics about quality of life in the encampment. The music composed under duress was exploited in “documentary” films meant to convince the world of an utterly distorted portrait of the prisoners’ lives, suggesting that the Jewish citizens and ethnic minorities dying there were in fact enjoying a higher standard of living than the average German citizen. In one of the films, Pavel Haas can be seen taking a bow following a performance of his music. After three years at Theresienstadt, he would be transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1944 and murdered in the gas chambers.
Born the son of a shoemaker father and a Jewish mother, he took piano lessons as a child before entering the Brno Conservatory in 1919, where he attended Leoš Janáček’s master class. Haas quickly proved himself as Janáček’s best pupil, not only perfecting the master’s approach to composition, which imitated the rhythms of the Czech language and gave greater structural emphasis to short rhythmic cells, but expanded upon his teacher’s musical language by integrating elements of Moravian folk song, Jewish chant, and even jazz. Despite a relatively slight catalogue of a few dozen extant works, Haas composed in a wide variety of styles, scoring films and writing for theatrical productions in addition to composing chamber, orchestral, and vocal music.
With the advent of Nazi Germany and the wave of anti-Jewish legislation that followed, performances of his music were banned, and he and his wife Soňa were forbidden to seek employment. Efforts to secure safe passage to America came too late, and Haas divorced his wife to ensure that his family would survive the fate he himself could not avoid. It was in this climate of terror that Haas composed his third string quartet; the slow inner movement presented here begins with a forlorn, pained expression by the viola. Occasionally interrupted by the strains of something resembling a folk tune played by the violin, the language is dissonant and abrupt, alternating between simpler modal harmonies and an anguished chromaticism. The last of his quartets, the music serves as a document of one man’s suffering under fascism.
J.E. HERNÁNDEZ
Born 17 December 1993; Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico
Parallax (or 33,000 Stolen Sunsets)
Composed: 2024 – 2025
First performance: 3 October 2025; Ken-David Masur, conductor; Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
The following essay was prepared by the composer and appears here with his permission.
In 2013, I stood incarcerated for 60 days inside an ICE prison in Houston, Texas. My time there was multifaceted, both in the depth of its misery and the profundity of its meaning. Back then, it was mandated that every single day there had to be 33,000 people detained inside of U.S. migrant detention centers. Of the myriad experiences that colored my time there, one that I have kept thinking about is how, without see-through windows in the prison, we never saw the sun set and rise. Of my entire life, and of the lives of those 33,000 people who were there with me, we missed sunrises and sunsets that we will never get back. It struck me how I couldn’t think of a more primordial thing to be denied than the right of us as living beings to see the sun. The sun, which has provided us with warmth, energy, and has been an inexorable ingredient in life since time immemorial, was stolen from us.
I had been thinking of this piece for a long time, and over the course of that time, I made a connection to the visual phenomena of parallax. This is the name for the sensation where the background seems to be moving slower than the foreground, something we observe as we walk, run, drive, or fly. Stellar parallax is used to measure the distance of celestial bodies against a background of stars. I settled on this property of parallax — distance — and its parallels in our lives. I thought about the distances that permeate us: physical, temporal, cultural, and social distance, always from one point to another, distorting our views of ourselves and the other. I thought about how when we have a falling out with someone, even if they are physically close to us, there is a distance created that is immediate, biting, like a vast and cold ocean. And I also thought about a distance that we can feel to a culture; a closeness, a warmth, something that is infinitesimally close and near. Misery and joy are so close together, always on the verge of pouring into one another. When I learned I would be leaving the ICE center, I leapt for joy and screamed at the top of my lungs. It’s a powerful idea that things can overlap like that — joy and misery — and how that’s a fact of life. In some ways, that’s what this piece is about.
Musically, the structure of this piece follows those principles. I set out to create an architectural structure for the orchestration and the combinations of musical matter and instruments which follows a proverbial observer navigating the orchestra from one point to another, observing this musical parallax — of ideas, music, form, and shapes — unfold. In this way, the piece yields some uncommon combinations of instruments and ideas. I incorporated elements from previous versions of the piece, ultimately leading the work towards something psychedelic in nature, a bit unusual, yet familiar, exploring this ground of difference and distance. This work is not an articulation of a societal sickness (which I certainly think the system of ICE detention is); instead, I offer an intimate look at the gamut of feelings and thoughts that have been persistent within me as time marches on after that period of my life. It is an invitation into an array of states of being — a meditation, a prayer, immense frustration, countless tears, endless oppression, and immense happiness.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born 17 December 1770; Bonn, Germany
Died 26 March 1827; Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125, “Choral”
Composed: 1817 – February 1824
First performance: 7 May 1824; Ludwig van Beethoven and Michael Umlauf, conductors; Henriette Sontag, soprano; Caroline Unger, contralto; Anton Haizinger, tenor; Joseph Seipelt; bassbaritone; Theater am Kärntnertor
Last MSO performance: 19 June 2022; Ken-David Masur, conductor; Felicia Moore, soprano; Deborah Nansteel, mezzo-soprano; Andrew Haji, tenor; Nathan Berg, bass-baritone
It is difficult to write about the ninth in anything other than superlatives. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that no single work has exerted as profound an influence on the development of socalled art music in the West as the last of Beethoven’s symphonies, nor can it be evaluated on any other terms than as one of the sovereign artistic triumphs in human history. After more than 200 years of enjoying a celebrated status as one of the most frequently performed symphonic works in the world, its contents remain some of the most shocking, radical expressions of the transcendental ideal to be found in any music of any age.
By the late 1810s, the bitter hardship of battling for custody of his late brother’s son, Karl, his failed attempts at romance, and the tragedy of his worsening deafness had driven the composer to largely withdraw from society. He no longer understood the prevailing musical climate of his beloved Vienna, and now keenly aware of the fact that his time was running out, his music began taking on a more experimental (and at times overwhelmingly intimate) character as Beethoven began searching for an ever more direct means of articulating his interior experience. In 1817, Beethoven received a commission for two new symphonies from the Philharmonic Society of London, but his years of privation and rapidly declining health delayed the ninth’s completion by seven years.
As early as 1793, he had expressed interest in setting the text of Friedrich Schiller’s An die Freude, and his “Choral Fantasy” of 1808 had already foreshadowed his integration of the human voice into the symphonic structure; by 1823, the year in which most of the writing of the ninth took place, these inspirations had crystallized into a boldly speculative vision of the genre’s future. When the ninth premiered in the spring of 1824, a decade had passed since Beethoven’s last appearance on the stage, and the musical intelligentsia of Vienna crowded into the Theater am Kärntnertor in eager expectation. Despite Beethoven’s total deafness, he conducted the musical forces he could not hear (the actual responsibility of keeping time fell to Michael Umlauf, who shared the stage with the composer) in a performance that would assume mythological proportions in the annals of music history. The audience gave Beethoven no fewer than five standing ovations, tossing their hats and handkerchiefs into the air for the man who had seized his fate “by the throat” and emerged victorious.
Listeners unfamiliar with this radiant gesture toward the sublime are better served by the experience itself rather than any words which might attempt to describe it. The foreboding cataclysm of the first movement, the incisive, biting aggression and unrestrained revelry of the scherzo, the languorous lines of the adagio, and the miracle of the finale, with its opulently varied declarations of our shared humanity and of joy, at its purest and unfettered by our petty imperfections: these meditations on the divine, given expression by a man who lived deeply every detail of his life, speak for themselves.
2025.26 SEASON
KEN-DAVID MASUR
Music Director
Polly and Bill Van Dyke Music Director Chair
EDO DE WAART
Music Director Laureate
BYRON STRIPLING
Principal Pops Conductor
Stein Family Foundation Principal Pops Conductor Chair
RYAN TANI
Associate Conductor
CHERYL FRAZES HILL
Chorus Director
Margaret Hawkins Chorus Director Chair
TIMOTHY J. BENSON
Assistant Chorus Director
FIRST VIOLINS
Jinwoo Lee, Concertmaster, Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair
Ilana Setapen, First Associate Concertmaster, Thora M. Vervoren First Associate Concertmaster Chair
Jeanyi Kim, Associate Concertmaster
Alexander Ayers
Autumn Chodorowski
Yuka Kadota
Elliot Lee
Dylana Leung
Kyung Ah Oh
Lijia Phang
Vinícius Sant’Ana**
Yuanhui Fiona Zheng
SECOND VIOLINS
Jennifer Startt, Principal, Andrea and Woodrow Leung Principal Second Violin Chair
Ji-Yeon Lee, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Hyewon Kim, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Heejeon Ahn
Lisa Johnson Fuller
Clay Hancock
Paul Hauer
Sheena Lan**
Janis Sakai**
Yiran Yao
VIOLAS
Victor de Almeida, Principal, Richard O. and Judith A. Wagner Family Principal Viola Chair
Samantha Rodriguez, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair), Friends of Janet F. Ruggeri Assistant Principal Viola Chair
Alejandro Duque, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Elizabeth Breslin
Georgi Dimitrov
Nathan Hackett
Michael Lieberman**
Erin H. Pipal
CELLOS
Susan Babini, Principal, Dorothea C. Mayer Principal Cello Chair
Shinae Ra, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Scott Tisdel, Associate Principal Emeritus
Madeleine Kabat
Peter Szczepanek
Peter J. Thomas
Adrien Zitoun
BASSES
Principal, Donald B. Abert Principal Bass Chair
Andrew Raciti, Acting Principal
Nash Tomey, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Brittany Conrad Broner McCoy
Paris Myers
HARP
Julia Coronelli, Principal, Walter Schroeder Principal Harp Chair
FLUTES
Sonora Slocum, Principal, Margaret and Roy Butter Principal Flute Chair
Heather Zinninger, Assistant Principal
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
PICCOLO
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
OBOES
Katherine Young Steele, Principal, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League Principal Oboe Chair
Kevin Pearl, Assistant Principal
Margaret Butler
ENGLISH HORN
Margaret Butler, Philip and Beatrice Blank English Horn Chair in memoriam to John Martin
CLARINETS
Todd Levy, Principal, Franklyn Esenberg Principal Clarinet Chair
Jay Shankar, Assistant Principal, Donald and Ruth P. Taylor Assistant Principal Clarinet Chair
Besnik Abrashi
E-FLAT CLARINET
Jay Shankar
BASS CLARINET
Besnik Abrashi
BASSOONS
Catherine Van Handel, Principal, Muriel C. and John D. Silbar Family Principal Bassoon Chair
Rudi Heinrich, Assistant Principal
Matthew Melillo
CONTRABASSOON
Matthew Melillo
HORNS
Matthew Annin, Principal, Krause Family Principal
French Horn Chair
Krystof Pipal, Associate Principal
Dietrich Hemann, Andy Nunemaker French Horn Chair
Darcy Hamlin
Dawson Hartman
TRUMPETS
Matthew Ernst, Principal, Walter L. Robb Family Principal Trumpet Chair
David Cohen, Associate Principal, Martin J. Krebs Associate Principal Trumpet Chair
Tim McCarthy, Fred Fuller Trumpet Chair
TROMBONES
Megumi Kanda, Principal, Marjorie Tiefenthaler Principal Trombone Chair
Kirk Ferguson, Assistant Principal
BASS TROMBONE
John Thevenet, Richard M. Kimball Bass Trombone Chair
TUBA
Robyn Black, Principal, John and Judith Simonitsch Tuba Chair
TIMPANI
Dean Borghesani, Principal
Chris Riggs, Assistant Principal
PERCUSSION
Robert Klieger, Principal
Chris Riggs
PIANO
Melitta S. Pick Endowed Piano Chair
PERSONNEL
Antonio Padilla Denis, Director of Orchestra Personnel
Paris Myers, Hiring Coordinator
LIBRARIANS
Paul Beck, Principal Librarian, James E. Van Ess Principal Librarian Chair
Matthew Geise, Assistant Librarian & Media Archivist
PRODUCTION
Tristan Wallace, Production Manager/Live Audio
Lisa Sottile, Production Stage Manager
* Leave of Absence 2025.26 Season
** Acting member of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra 2025.26 Season
