Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 37
I. Allegro con brio
II. Largo
III. Rondo: Allegro
Alessio Bax, piano
INTERMISSION
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Symphony No. 80 in D minor, Hob. I:80
I. Allegro spiritoso
II. Adagio
III. Menuetto
IV. Presto
PAUL HINDEMITH
Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
I. Allegro
II. Turandot: Scherzo
III. Andantino
IV. March
The 2024.25 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION. Additional support for Reinhardt Conducts Beethoven provided by the SCHOENLEBER FOUNDATION. The MSO Steinway Piano was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ
The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours. All programs are subject to change.
Guest Artist Biographies
RUTH REINHARDT
Ruth Reinhardt is the newly appointed music director of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, commencing with the 2025-26 season, the fifth in the orchestra’s 80-year history, and serves as music director designate in the 2024-25 season.
In 2024-25, Reinhardt will conduct orchestras on four continents, including Europe and North America, and will make her debuts in Asia with both the Seoul Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic, as well as in South America with the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra. She begins the season at the Lucerne Festival, debuts with the symphony orchestras of Bamberg and Nuremberg, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and the Residentie Orchester in the Hague, and returns to the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and Malmö SymfoniOrkester. In the U.S., Reinhardt will conduct the Rhode Island Philharmonic and make debut appearances with the St. Louis and Charlotte symphony orchestras, along with return engagements with the Milwaukee and San Diego symphony orchestras.
Reinhardt’s interests have led her toward an in-depth exploration of contemporary repertoire, leading the symphonic and orchestral world into the 21st century. Strongly centered around European composers with emphasis on women composers of the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century, she brings new names and fresh faces to many orchestras for the first time. Among those whose works appear often in her programs are Grażyna Bacewicz, Kaija Saariaho, Lotta Wennäkoski, Daníel Bjarnason, Dai Fujikura, and Thomas Adès. Parallel programming can be complementary or contrasting, from the classic moderns such as Lutosławski, Bartók, Stravinsky, and Hindemith, or core composers of the symphonic canon, including Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Dvořák.
In recent seasons, Reinhardt has made an important series of symphonic debuts in North America with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, and symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Detroit, Houston, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Seattle. In Europe, her appearances have been no less impressive — the Orchestre National de France, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, to name a few.
Born in Saarbrücken, Germany, into a medical family — both parents and her sister are physicians — Reinhardt knew early that music would be her calling and studied violin and composition, writing an opera while still in high school. Her studies took her first to the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, where she studied violin with Rudolf Koelman and conducting with Constantin Trinks and Johannes Schlaefli, and continued at The Juilliard School of Music in the conducting class of Alan Gilbert and James Ross. Upon graduating, she joined the Dallas Symphony for two seasons as assistant conductor to Jaap van Zweden and was simultaneously a Dudamel Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, spending her summers as assistant conductor to the Lucerne Festival Academy to artistic co-directors Wolfgang Rihm and Matthias Pintscher. Previous fellowships include the Seattle Symphony (2015-2016), Tanglewood Music Center (2015), and Taki Concordia associate conducting fellow (2015-2017). Ruth Reinhardt currently resides in Switzerland.
Guest Artist Biographies
ALESSIO BAX
Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the 2000 Leeds International Piano Competition and the 1997 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition and is now a familiar face on five continents as a recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist. He has appeared with over 150 orchestras, including the New York, London, Royal, and St. Petersburg philharmonic orchestras, the Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Sydney, and City of Birmingham symphony orchestras, and the Tokyo and NHK symphonies in Japan, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Hannu Lintu, Fabio Luisi, Sir Simon Rattle, Ruth Reinhardt, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden.
As a renowned chamber musician, he recently collaborated with Lisa Batiashvili, Joshua Bell, Ian Bostridge, Lucille Chung, James Ehnes, Vilde Frang, Steven Isserlis, Daishin Kashimoto, François Leleux, Sergei Nakariakov, Emmanuel Pahud, Lawrence Power, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Paul Watkins, and Tabea Zimmermann, among many others.
Since 2017, he has been the artistic director of the Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, a Summer Music Festival in the Val d’Orcia region of Tuscany. He appears regularly in festivals such as Seattle, Bravo! Vail, Salon-de-Provence, Le Pont in Japan, Great Lakes, Verbier, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Aspen, and Tanglewood.
In 2009, he was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and four years later he received both the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award and the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. Bax’s most recent album releases are Forgotten Dances and Debussy & Ravel for Two with Lucille Chung. His celebrated Signum Classics discography also includes Italian Inspirations; Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and “Moonlight” sonatas (a Gramophone Editor’s Choice); Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto; Bax & Chung, a duo disc with Lucille Chung; Alessio Bax plays Mozart, recorded with London’s Southbank Sinfonia; Alessio Bax: Scriabin & Mussorgsky (named “Recording of the Month ... and quite possibly ... of the year” by MusicWeb International); Alessio Bax plays Brahms (a Gramophone Critics’ Choice); Bach Transcribed; and Rachmaninov: Preludes & Melodies (an American Record Guide Critics’ Choice). Recorded for Warner Classics, his Baroque Reflections album was also a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. He performed Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata for Daniel Barenboim in the PBS-TV documentary Barenboim on Beethoven: Masterclass, available on DVD from EMI.
At the age of 14, Bax graduated with top honors from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, and after further studies in Europe, he moved to the United States in 1994. He has been on the piano faculty of Boston’s New England Conservatory since the fall of 2019 and serves as coartistic director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation for emerging pianists.
Bax lives in New York City with pianist Lucille Chung and their daughter, Mila.
2024.25 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
Assistant 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
Shin Lan**
Elliot Lee**
Dylana Leung
Kyung Ah Oh
Lijia Phang
Yuanhui Fiona Zheng
SECOND VIOLINS
Jennifer Startt, Principal, Andrea and Woodrow Leung Second Violin Chair
Ji-Yeon Lee, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
John Bian, Assistant Principal (3rd chair)*
Hyewon Kim, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Glenn Asch
Lisa Johnson Fuller
Clay Hancock
Paul Hauer
Gabriela Lara
Janis Sakai**
Mary Terranova
VIOLAS
Robert Levine, Principal, Richard O. and Judith A. Wagner Family Principal Viola Chair
Georgi Dimitrov, Assistant Principal (2nd chair), Friends of Janet F. Ruggeri Viola Chair
Samantha Rodriguez, Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Elizabeth Breslin
Alejandro Duque
Nathan Hackett
Erin H. Pipal
CELLOS
Susan Babini, Principal, Dorothea C. Mayer Cello Chair
Shinae Ra, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Scott Tisdel, Associate Principal Emeritus
Madeleine Kabat
Peter Szczepanek
Peter J. Thomas
Adrien Zitoun
BASSES
Jon McCullough-Benner, Principal, Donald B. Abert Bass Chair*
Andrew Raciti, Acting Principal
Nash Tomey, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Brittany Conrad
Omar Haffar**
Paris Myers
HARP
Julia Coronelli, Principal, Walter Schroeder Harp Chair
FLUTES
Sonora Slocum, Principal, Margaret and Roy Butter Flute Chair
Heather Zinninger, Assistant Principal
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
PICCOLO
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
OBOES
Katherine Young Steele, Principal, Milwaukee Symphony League Oboe Chair
Kevin Pearl, Assistant Principal
Margaret Butler
ENGLISH HORN
Margaret Butler, Philip and Beatrice Blank English Horn Chair in memoriam to John Martin
The story of Carl Maria von Weber’s tenth opera, Oberon, is also the story of the end of his life. The German composer, who straddled the Classical and Romantic eras, had already been diagnosed with tuberculosis — a death sentence in his day — by the time he received a very generous commission from Covent Garden in London. He was to compose the opera Oberon, a story based on a 1780, French, epic poem that had its roots in the medieval French story.
Weber knew he would not live to enjoy the proceeds of the commission, but he also knew his family would need that money after his death. He began by studying English in Germany to help him understand the project’s English-language libretto. Ironically, the opera would be translated into German shortly after the premiere and would be performed in English only rarely after that. Weber completed the opera and traveled to England to conduct a wildly successful premiere of the opera on 12 April 1826. He conducted a total of 12 performances of Oberon before his health began to fail. He passed away in London just over seven weeks after the opera’s premiere, too weak to make the trip back to Germany to see his wife and children again.
Fully titled Oberon, or The Elf-King’s Oath, the opera is a thrill-ride of a story, combining characters from Shakespeare, Greek romances, and tales from “the Orient.” It features star-crossed lovers, villains, murder, abduction, pirates, and then — out of the blue — a happy ending. Despite its initial success, and the fact that Weber was a highly respected composer who is remembered as the father of German Romantic opera, and was quite influential on such later composers as Debussy, Stravinsky, Mahler, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Hindemith (whose Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber appears on this program), the opera has never become part of the standard repertoire.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born 17 December 1770; Bonn, Germany
Died 26 March 1827; Vienna, Austria
Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 37
Composed: 1800
First performance: 5 April 1803; Ludwig van Beethoven, conductor and piano; Theater an der Wien
Last MSO performance: 22 January 2011; Edo de Waart, conductor; Ronald Brautigam, piano
Yes, German composer, pianist, and conductor Ludwig van Beethoven lost his hearing. But it is important to remember that his hearing loss was a torturously long affair, beginning when he was just 28 years old. He began struggling with the progressive hearing loss shortly before he began writing his Symphony No. 1 and his Piano Concerto No. 3.
The young Beethoven studied with several of Vienna’s musical luminaries, including Antonio Salieri and Franz Joseph Haydn, whose Symphony No. 80 appears on this MSO program. In fact, when Haydn met the young Beethoven and accepted him as a student, he wrote, rather prophetically, “Beethoven will one day be considered one of Europe’s greatest composers, and I should be proud to be called his teacher.”
The premiere of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 took place on one of several benefit concerts Beethoven presented — to benefit himself. He didn’t get the piano part fully written out before the concert, which we know from the student he drafted to turn pages for the piece. “I saw empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics, unintelligible to me, scribbled to serve as clues for him,” his student wrote. “He played mostly from memory, since, obviously, he had put so little on paper. So, whenever he reached the end of some invisible passage, he gave me a surreptitious nod and I turned the page. My anxiety not to miss such a nod amused him greatly and the recollection of it at our convivial dinner after the concert sent him into gales of laughter.”
In this concerto, one hears elements of Mozart’s piano concertos, along with some of Beethoven’s signature fire and drama. The energy and agitation of the piece’s two outer movements are balanced by a calm, flowing, middle movement, much of which is built on chamber music sensibilities.
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Born 31 March 1732; Rohrau, Austria
Died 31 May 1809; Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 80 in D minor, Hob. I:80
Composed: 1784
First performance: Unknown; First publication in 1785
Nearly everything about the life and career of Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn was remarkable, from the enormous volume of music he wrote to his having been plucked from his family’s small-town home to begin his musical studies at age six — never to live there again. By age nine, he was a chorister and student at Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the Austrian capital’s most important church. Haydn wrote more than 100 symphonies, 68 string quartets,
60 piano sonatas, 50 concertos, 20 operas, and much more. He is hailed today as the “father” of the symphony and the string quartet and was integral to the development of Classical style itself.
His life was not a walk in the park, however. He was expelled from the Saint Stephen’s chorus and school when he was 17, the moment his voice changed. Left penniless and homeless, he stayed with a friend, freelancing as he could, while educating himself in music theory and the works of C.P.E. Bach. He was eventually hired by the powerful, aristocratic Esterhazy family. He eventually developed an international reputation, became one of the best-known musicians of his era, and became close friends with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Haydn’s Symphony No. 80 is a delightful piece of music, but remains one of his lesser-known symphonies, partly because it bears no catchy nickname, such as “The Surprise” (No. 94), and partly because it is a bit mercurial in mood. It moves from a minor key and a bit of Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) early in the first movement to lighter, sunnier writing. A simply gorgeous second movement gives way to a third movement built on a bit of Gregorian chant that Haydn had used 64 symphonies earlier, followed by a somewhat humorous final movement.
PAUL HINDEMITH
Born 16 November 1895; Hanau, Germany
Died 28 December 1963; Frankfurt, West Germany
Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Composed: March 1940 – 29 August 1943
First performance: 20 January 1944; Artur Rodziński, conductor; New York Philharmonic
Last MSO performance: 4 June 2011; Edo de Waart, conductor
German composer, violist, conductor, and teacher Paul Hindemith arrived in the U.S. in 1940, after fleeing Nazi Germany. It remains a matter of academic debate today whether it was his music, including a racy, early opera, to which the Nazis objected, or his rather freely expressed disdain for the Nazi Party. He was in and out of favor with the Nazis for some time, eventually seeing his music labeled Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”), a designation that meant nothing but trouble. Whichever the case, he and his wife, who was partly Jewish, left Germany in 1938. They settled for a time in Switzerland, eventually making their way to America, where Hindemith had some contacts from tours he had made to the States as a violist. He began teaching at several schools, including Yale, where one of his students was conductor and composer Lukas Foss, who would serve as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 1981 to 1986.
Hindemith began working on his Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber in 1940, after arriving in the U.S. He based the work on some obscure themes by Weber, who had been influential for many German composers Hindemith admired, taking the themes from a book of the composer’s piano duets. He began the piece as a ballet, changing it to its current form after artistic differences with the project’s choreographer. The ballet material formed the basis for the piece’s first and third movements, with music from Weber’s Turandot forming the core of the second movement. Themes from the piano duet return in the fourth movement. The piece is colorful, brilliantly orchestrated, and quite engaging for listeners. It was an immediate success following its premiere, and remains Hindemith’s most popular piece today.
