Cantus Arcticus (Concerto for Birds and Orchestra), Opus 61
I. The Bog
II. Melancholy
III. Swans Migrating
EDVARD GRIEG
Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16
I. Allegro molto moderato
II. Adagio
III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato Paul Lewis, piano
INTERMISSION
CARL NIELSEN
Symphony No. 4, Opus 29, FS 76, CNW 28, “The Inextinguishable”
I. Allegro
II. Poco allegretto
III. Poco adagio quasi andante
IV. Allegro
The MSO Steinway was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ. 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
RUNE BERGMANN
Norwegian conductor Rune Bergmann is currently the music director of the Peninsula Music Festival in Wisconsin and has served as the artistic director of Norway’s innovative Fjord Cadenza festival since its inception in 2010. He was the music director of Canada’s Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra from the 2017-18 season through 2024-25, Switzerland’s Argovia Philharmonic from 2016-17 through 2024-25, and Poland’s Szczecin Philharmonic from 2016-17 through 2023-24.
A regular guest with the Baltimore, Colorado, Utah, Houston, Pacific, and Buffalo symphony orchestras in North America, he has collaborated with the Oslo Philharmonic, Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, ADDA Simfònica Alicante, Orquesta de Valencia, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Staatskapelle Halle, and Wrocław Philharmonic, as well as the symphony orchestras of Malmö, Helsingborg, Kristiansand, Stavanger, Trondheim, Karlskrona, and Odense. Bergmann has also led performances of Il barbiere di Siviglia and La traviata at the Norwegian National Opera and made his U.S. operatic debut in Yale Opera’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as staged by Claudia Solti.
He has collaborated with some of today’s most acclaimed and legendary soloists, including Truls Mørk, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yefim Bronfman, Yo-Yo Ma, Mischa Maisky, Renée Fleming, Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, James Ehnes, Branford Marsalis, Ole Edvard Antonsen, Albrecht Mayer, and Anna Fedorova, to name a few.
Bergmann’s first recording with the Szczecin Philharmonic, released in 2018, featured Mieczysław Karłowicz’s “Resurrection” symphony, a piece that has since become a major focus of Bergmann’s repertoire. He has also released recordings with the Argovia Philharmonic, including Ravel’s piano concerto in G and Mozart’s bassoon concerto.
Earlier in his career, Bergmann served as first kapellmeister and deputy music director of the Theater Augsburg, where he led performances of numerous operas, including La traviata, Der fliegende Holländer, and Die Fledermaus, and was principal guest conductor of the Kaunas City Symphony.
Bergmann studied choral and orchestral conducting under Anders Eby, Jin Wang, and Jorma Panula at Sweden’s Royal College of Music. He graduated with high honors from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, where he studied conducting under chief conductor emeritus of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and former principal conductor of the Vienna Radio, Finnish Radio, and Danish National symphony orchestras, Leif Segerstam.
Guest Artist Biographies
PAUL LEWIS
Paul Lewis is one of the foremost interpreters of the Central European piano repertoire, with his performances and recordings of Beethoven and Schubert receiving universal critical acclaim. He was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to music, and the sincerity and depth of his musical approach have won him fans around the world.
This global popularity is reflected in the world-class orchestras with whom he works, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, London Symphony, Philharmonia, Bavarian Radio Symphony, NHK Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras. His close relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led to his selection as the 2020 Koussevitzky Artist at Tanglewood.
Lewis often focuses on specific composers in projects that allow him to take audiences deep inside their works. In 2026 and 2027, he will tour his “Mozart+” series around the world, juxtaposing Mozart’s lesser-known piano repertoire with works by composers such as Poulenc, Chopin, and Weber, illuminating Mozart’s influence upon subsequent generations, as well as shining a light on works that are often overshadowed by his concerti. Previously, between 2022 and 2025, Lewis embarked on a Schubert piano sonata series, presenting four programs of the completed sonatas at over 40 venues around the world.
With a natural affinity for Beethoven, Lewis has performed the composer’s complete piano concerto cycle all over the world and was the first pianist to present it in a single BBC Proms season in 2010. He subsequently performed it at Tanglewood in 2022, Boston in 2023 with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 2025 with Eivind Aadland and the Oslo Philharmonic.
Beyond his many award-winning Beethoven and Schubert recordings, his discography with the Harmonia Mundi label also demonstrates his characteristic depth of approach in Romantic repertoire such as the music of Schumann, Mussorgsky, Brahms, and Liszt. In March 2025, he gave the world premiere of Thomas Larcher’s piano sonata in Oviedo, Italy, and he continues to perform it around the world.
In chamber music, Lewis works closely with tenor Mark Padmore in lied recitals around the world — they have recorded three of Schubert’s song cycles together — and he is co-artistic director of Midsummer Music, an annual chamber music festival held in Buckinghamshire, U.K. In May 2025, he was the first non-American pianist to chair the jury of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Program notes by David Jensen
EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA
Born 9 October 1928; Helsinki, Finland
Died 27 July 2016; Helsinki, Finland
Cantus Arcticus (Concerto for Birds and Orchestra), Opus 61
Composed: 1971 – 13 March 1972
First performance: 18 October 1972; Stephen Portman, conductor; Oulu Symphony Orchestra
One of the most chameleonic voices of his generation, Einojuhani Rautavaara rose to international prominence after winning the Thor Johnson Contest in 1954, catching the attention of Jean Sibelius, who began promoting Rautavaara’s music and granted him a scholarship to travel to America. He studied composition with Vincent Persichetti at The Juilliard School and Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, and by the 1970s, his works could already be divided into several distinct periods: his earliest efforts, written in the neoclassical style popularized by Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky, gave way to experiments with twelve-tone serialism in the 1960s. After less than a decade of working in that particularly modern mode of expression, he entered what musicologists classify as his “neoromantic” period, embracing an expansive view of tonal harmony and integrating elements from an eclectic mélange of styles.
As his music took on a softer, more impressionistic quality, Rautavaara began receiving commissions from choral ensembles drawn to these newly gentled features. When the library at Oulu University sent him literature for the cantata he had been hired to compose for the institution’s commencement ceremony in 1972, he found inspiration in none of the texts he had been provided, and because the chorus slated to premiere the work was reportedly fatigued by overuse, he decided to aim for something radically different. He sourced samples of birdsong from the audio library of the Finnish Broadcasting Company and even traveled to the Liminka Bay wetlands in northern Finland to record his own, fashioning the tapes into what would become the focal point of a rather unorthodox concerto.
Cantus Arcticus renders a meditative, richly layered image of the wild world, finessing the sounds of nature to spectacular effect and interpolating aleatoric components which leave several aspects of the work’s realization up to the discretion of the performers. “Think of autumn and of Tchaikovsky” — this is the instruction given to the flautists whose winding chromatic lines introduce “The Bog.” These evocative descriptions are interspersed throughout the score, including a directive to the muted trombone to “imitate the staccato sound of the crane” heard later in the movement. From a whirl of trilling woodwinds, a plaintive theme rises from the bassoons and cellos; after reaching its peak, the phrase dissolves as the clarinet reprises the opening material. Rautavaara allows the conductor to decide where the clarinet, the strings, and the tape stop playing — and even which chord ends the movement.
“The orchestra pauses, giving the audience time enough to notice that the birds on channels 1 and 2 are imitating each other.” The song of the shore lark, lowered by two octaves, introduces
“Melancholy.” Woven of gossamer textures in the manner of Debussy and Ravel, the chorus of strings conjuring the movement’s introspective atmosphere is joined only briefly by woodwinds and brass at its shimmering climax. “Swans Migrating” begins with the call of the whooper swan and divides the orchestra into four groups, which play independently of each other as musical fragments overlap and intertwine in a cavalcade of bird-like motifs. The finale’s main theme emerges in the horns, calling to mind the swan songs of Sibelius’s fifth symphony and driving the music to its ethereal conclusion.
EDVARD GRIEG
Born 15 June 1843; Bergen, Norway
Died 4 September 1907; Bergen, Norway
Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16
Composed: Summer 1868; revised periodically until 21 July 1907
First performance: 3 April 1869; Holger Simon Paulli, conductor; Edmund Neupert, piano; Royal Danish Orchestra
Last MSO performance: 7 November 2021; Andreas Delfs, conductor; Olga Kern, piano
Few other composers of the 19th century demonstrated the charm and originality one encounters in the music of Edvard Grieg. Born to a musical family, he received his first piano lessons from his mother, though it was the suggestion by Norwegian violin virtuoso Ole Bull, whom young Edvard met in the summer of 1858, that convinced his family of his potential as a professional musician. At the tender age of 15, the boy was shipped off to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, an institution whose sterile pedantry Grieg quickly judged to be an impediment to his musical development. The one redeeming factor of Grieg’s formal education was his exposure to the music of Robert Schumann, inculcating in the child a lifelong admiration and tapping the first wellspring of artistic influence.
But the true inflection point in Grieg’s musical maturation arrived in 1864, when he befriended the composer Rikard Nordraak. Now remembered for having authored Norway’s national anthem, Nordraak’s steadfast devotion to the musical nationalism permeating the second half of the century clarified Grieg’s aesthetic vision, instilling in the fledgling composer a determination to establish a definitively Norwegian vein of classical music. By the end of the 1860s, Grieg was one of his nation’s most prominent musical figures, collaborating on the founding of Copenhagen’s musical society, dubbed “Euterpe” (after the Greek muse), established expressly to champion Scandinavian music. The first of his Lyric Pieces for piano appeared in 1867, now marked by the rhythms and harmonies native to the folk music of his homeland — qualities which would eventually earn him the moniker “the Chopin of the North.”
Written at just 25 years old, Grieg’s only concerto is the wildly energetic product of a selfassured young artist. Rooted in the Nordic folk idiom, the work owes an obvious debt to (indeed, is explicitly modeled upon) Schumann’s piano concerto in the same key, which Grieg had heard Clara Schumann herself perform during his student days. Like Schumann’s, Grieg’s soloist begins with a theatrical flourish, introducing a motif derived from Norwegian folksong composed of a descending minor second and major third. No fewer than seven distinct themes are introduced in the first movement, interlaced in a lyrical pastiche that plays effortlessly upon the dialogue between pianist and orchestra. The concerto’s tenderhearted center is made up of enchantingly intimate music, while the vigor and fire of the finale take their cue from the halling, a folk dance
characterized by its acrobatic feats of physical prowess, culminating in a resplendent flare of orchestral color as the movement’s second theme returns, transfigured by the heightened drama of the andante maestoso.
For its profusion of folkish character, conspicuously beautiful melodies, and high-octane displays of technical flair, the concerto remains a perennial favorite of audiences and pianists everywhere. During his travels to Italy in 1870, Grieg visited Franz Liszt in Rome, who sight-read the concerto in a single sitting and gave the budding composer a glowing appraisal. In a letter to his parents, Grieg immortalized the master’s heartfelt words of encouragement: “Keep steadily on; I tell you, you have the capability, and do not let them intimidate you!”
CARL NIELSEN
Born 9 June 1865; Sortelung, Denmark
Died 3 October 1931; Copenhagen, Denmark
Symphony No. 4, Opus 29, FS 76, CNW 28, “The Inextinguishable”
Composed: Summer 1914 – 27 January 1916
First performance: 1 February 1916; Carl Nielsen, conductor; Musikforeningen Orchestra
Last MSO performance: 16 January 2010; Paul Daniel, conductor
Born to a poor family in a small agrarian village, Carl Nielsen consistently underscored the centrality of his rural upbringing to his artistic identity. His father Niels, a folk musician and amateur violinist, provided his musically precocious son with an elementary education; by the age of nine, Nielsen was playing the works of Haydn and Mozart in his local orchestra, impressing upon his creative psyche the primacy of melody and rhythm as foundational elements of music. After a few academically unremarkable years at the Copenhagen Conservatory, he won a position as a violinist in Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Orchestra in 1889 and began to turn more deliberately toward composition.
By the time Nielsen began drafting his fourth symphony, he had found recognition as one of the leading symphonists of his native Denmark. Initially immersed in the language of the symphonic classicists, it was his exposure as an orchestral musician to Richard Wagner’s harmonically radical operas that infused Nielsen’s work with the chromaticism and textural subtleties which were by then defining early “modern” music. He arrived in isolation at a totally novel conception of thematic treatment, form, and extended harmony, reformulating the musical concision and stylistic clarity of the previous century into a vividly dynamic technique that prioritized an economy of line, rhythm as a propelling factor, and structural design informed by motivic development rather than the winding melodies that pervaded the high Romantic style.
The cataclysm of the “Great War” left an indelible mark on Nielsen’s musical style and psychological outlook. An ardent naturalist with a profound respect for the miracle of life, Nielsen’s letters from 1914 articulate his growing interest in giving musical expression to what he called “the elemental will to live” — writing to the Danish singer Emil Holm that summer, he spoke of “a kind of symphony in one movement, meant to evoke all that one feels and thinks about the concept of what we call life … all the way from the most elementary form of expression to the highest spiritual rapture.” Composed amid the political chaos and military violence that haunted
Europe in the late 1910s, “The Inextinguishable” — a word Nielsen himself chose — remains one of his most frequently performed works.
In four movements played without pause, a constant flow of ideas binds the whole of the traditional symphonic structure into a single iridescent musical statement. From the outset, the composer thrusts his audience into sonic tumult, juxtaposing a tonal center of D in the woodwinds against its flat seventh (a favored interval in Nielsen’s work) of C in the strings. The second theme, sounded by clarinets in thirds, furnishes the movement with the substance of its development and subsequent consummation. In lieu of the typically slow, inwardly oriented second movement, Nielsen inserts a wonderfully refined allegretto in the manner of Johannes Brahms. Scored almost exclusively for the woodwinds, its clear, contrapuntal textures epitomize the Classical ideals of balance and restraint — though not without flashes of Nielsen’s idiosyncratic approach to harmony.
The expected adagio is delayed until the third movement, which begins with a dramatic declaration from the violins accompanied only by pizzicati and punctuations from the timpani. Nielsen develops the musical line in a subtle, relatively sparse manner before allowing the full splendor of the orchestra to impel the material to its pinnacle, ending with the forlorn sound of the oboe suspended above a sea of trills in the strings. The finale, with its succession of fantastical effects and tonally adventurous episodes — including a bone-rattling “duel” between the two sets of timpani onstage — concludes with a radiant coda in E major, crowning Nielsen’s musical testament to the unconquerable will to life.
SACRA NOVA CHORALE presents:
Featuring works by Thompson, Schubert, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Beethoven; with the premiere of two new compositions
Friday, October 24 at 7:00 PM at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church & Sunday, October 26 at 4:00 PM at the Cathedral of St. John the For tickets and information on the 2025 concert season, please visit sacranovachorale.com
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, Assistant Manager of Orchestra Personnel
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
