Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Garrick Ohlsson Program

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Garrick Ohlsson Sunday, Sept. 29 at 5 PM

Critically acclaimed pianist, Garrick Ohlsson, joins Orpheus as a trusted Mozart partner hailed for his “muscular technique and the sensitivity and restraint with which he deploys it”.

Photo by Dario Acosta

—The New York Times

The Morris Museum thanks Will and Mary Leland, and F. Gary Knapp for their leadership support of this season’s presentations of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Program Billy Childs

Each Moment Is a New Discovery (Commissioned by Orpheus and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra)

Mozart

Piano Concerto No.9 in E-flat Major, K. 271 Allegro Andantino Rondo: Presto Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Intermission

Brahms

Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24 Orchestrated by Michael Stephen Brown (Commissioned by Orpheus)

Thank you for your support!

The Morris Museum thanks Will and Mary Leland and, F. Gary Knapp for their leadership support of this season’s presentations of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

The Morris Museum gratefull acknowledes the generous operating support from the following funders:

Program Notes

By Aaron Grad

BILLY CHILDS Each Moment is a New Discovery Composer and pianist Billy Childs got his professional start as a sideman for jazz giants including Freddie Hubbard and J.J. Johnson, while simultaneously earning a B.M. in composition from USC under the tutelage of Robert Linn and Morton Lauridsen.

For this co-commission from Orpheus and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Childs responded to events that were weighing heavily on him—including illnesses and deaths among his friends, and the overall state of the country— with a work that he saw as a way of his “psyche rebelling against all of this stuff,” he explained in an interview.

I wanted to give the sense that there are things still unfolding in your life that could be positive.”

In Each Moment is a New Discovery, Childs leans into some of the formal structures of European classical music, and his transparent orchestration for the small ensemble of soloists recalls Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and their more recent offspring from neoclassical composers like Stravinsky and Hindemith. Harmonically, Childs ruminates on so-called perfect intervals (i.e. seconds, fourths and fifths in musical terms) that create a “sound of possibilities” in the ways they avoid committing to either major or minor sonorities.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271 The audiences all over Europe who had been dazzled by young Mozart, a child prodigy the likes of which the world had never seen, would have been shocked to see where he landed in his early twenties: living at home in Salzburg, working a dead-end church job alongside his impossibleto-please father, and grasping at any chance to get out.

The Piano Concerto in E-flat Major that Mozart wrote around the time of his 21st birthday represented one of his (failed) efforts to launch. He composed it for the amateur pianist Victoire Jenamy, who had passed through Salzburg that winter on her way to Paris to see her father—who happened to be the ballet master of the Paris Opera. Mozart went to Paris the next year on a job-hunting expedition, and he probably delivered the concerto himself when he paid a call to the wellconnected family. Not only did Mozart come home without a job to show for it, but he tragically returned without his mother, who had accompanied him and succumbed to an illness during their travels.

In the first movement, the piano’s surprising entrance after just one measure of lead-in from the orchestra creates an intimate, conversational quality. The Andantino, Mozart’s first concerto movement in a minor key, throbs with dark, muted textures and beautifully forlorn melodies, gilded with decoration befitting an operatic soprano. The Presto finale, with its detour to a minuet (the quintessential French dance), is unusually substantial and affecting for a movement that by tradition was little more than an energetic closing flourish.

JOHANNES BRAHMS Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24 It begins with a direct transcription of an aria from a keyboard suite by Handel, whose music was mostly brushed off at that time as hopelessly old-fashioned, when it was even remembered at all. As themes go, the one Brahms chose is simple bordering on banal, ranging up and down one octave of the B-flat major scale in two repeated, four-measure phrases. Whereas most composers of variations sets were content to decorate around the margins of the melody, Brahms took his cue from Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations and Beethoven’s “Eroica” and “Diabelli” Variations in crafting a massive structure that extracts every drop of potential from the limited thematic material.

Handel’s melody is the least important element in Brahms’ treatment, which instead focuses on the underlying harmonic structure. After 25 diverse variations in major and minor keys and all manner of textures and moods, the work closes with a tour de force of a fugue. This new orchestration by the composer and pianist Michael Stephen Brown, commissioned by Orpheus as part of its ongoing initiative to expand the Romantic repertoire for chamber orchestra, uses a small ensemble of soloists to illuminate and magnify all the subtleties of Brahms’ forward-thinking tribute to the past.

Orpheus Insight Michael Stephen Brown, orchestrator Orchestrating Brahms’ Handel Variations for Orpheus has been like diving into a joyful, complex puzzle.

Which instruments should play which lines? Together or separately? In what register? How can I translate the piano’s pedal resonance into orchestral sound?

And how would Brahms approach this? Fortunately, we have Brahms’ own models to guide us. I delved into the Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, along with his symphonies and serenades, immersing myself in his style to understand his quintessential orchestral richness.

It’s been a delightful game of making choices, exploring possibilities, and committing to decisions.

As a pianist-composer with a lifelong love for Brahms, this process feels like a lively conversation with an old friend, full of surprises and insights. My approach has been a blend of discipline and fun—like playing chess with Brahms, where every move presents both a challenge and a joy.

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To commemorate the 50th birthday of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, longtime program annotator Aaron Grad combed through the archives, spoke with musicians and leaders from the past and present, and reflected on his own 20 years with the ensemble to understand how this radical experiment in musical democracy has continued to thrive and grow through a half-century of ceaseless change. The results were the hardcover publication: Orpheus Never Looks Back, now on sale in the Morris Museum shop along with other products from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Artists

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Photo credit Neda Navaee

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a radical experiment in musical democracy, proving for over fifty years what happens when exceptional artists gather with total trust in each other and faith in the creative process. Orpheus began in 1972 when cellist Julian Fifer assembled a group of New York freelancers in their early twenties to play orchestral repertoire as if it were chamber music. In that age of co-ops and communes, the idealistic Orpheans snubbed the “corporate” path of symphony orchestras and learned how to play, plan and promote concerts as a true collective, with leadership roles rotating from the very first performance.

It’s one thing for the four players of a string quartet to lean into the group sound and react spontaneously, but with 20 or 30 musicians together, the complexities and payoffs get magnified exponentially. Within its first decade, Orpheus made Carnegie Hall its home and became a global sensation through its tours of Europe and Asia.

Its catalog of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch and other labels grew to include more than 70 albums that still stand as benchmarks of the chamber orchestra repertoire, including Haydn symphonies, Mozart concertos, and twentieth-century gems by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel, and Bartók.

The sound of Orpheus is defined by its relationships, and guest artists have always been crucial partners in the process. Orpheus brings the best out of its collaborators, and those bonds deepen over time, as heard in the long arc of music-making with soloists such as Richard Goode and Branford Marsalis, and in the commitment to welcoming next-generation artists including Nobuyuki Tsujii and Tine Thing Helseth. Having proven the power of direct communication and open-mindedness within the ensemble, the only relationship Orpheus has never had any use for is one with a conductor.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Violin Ronnie Bauch Isabelle Durrenberger Abi Fayette Laura Frautschi Emma Frucht Emilie-Anne Gendron Liang-Ping How Renée Jolles Miho Saegusa Viola Chih-Ta Chen Christof Huebner Caeli Smith Cello Eric Bartlett Madeline Fayette James Wilson Double Bass Jordan Frazier Flute Elizabeth Mann Oboe Noah Kay James Austin Smith

Clarinet Alan Kay Bassoon Gina Cuffari Horn Eric Reed Stewart Rose Trumpet Melissa Munoz Timpani Javier Diaz Honorary Members Richard Goode Lizabeth Newman Richard Prins Connie Steensma Nobuyuki Tsujii

Garrick Olhsson, 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 Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, the most recent being “Oceans Apart” by Justin Dello Joio commissioned for him by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and now available on Bridge Recordings. Also just released on Reference Recordings is the complete Beethoven concerti with Sir Donald Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

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.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo and Takacs string quartets. His recording with latter of the Amy Beach and Elgar quintets released by Hyperion in June 2020 received great press attention. Passionate about singing

and singers, Mr. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś.

A native of White Plains, N.Y., Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School, in New York City. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal (and remains the single American to have done so), that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Since then he has made nearly a dozen tours of Poland, where he retains immense personal popularity. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI. 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.

Billy Childs, Composer Billy Childs has emerged as one of the foremost American composers of his era, perhaps the most distinctly American composer since Aaron Copland – for like Copland, he has successfully married the musical products of his heritage with the Western neoclassical traditions of the twentieth century in a powerful symbiosis of style, range, and dynamism.

March 15 – September 1, 2024 Childs has received orchestral and chamber commissions from, among others: Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the National Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Orpheus Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, the Dorian Wind Quintet, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Isidore Quartet, the American Brass Quintet, the Ying Quartet, the Lyris Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, Rachel Barton Pine, and Inna Faliks. His works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and Disney Concert Hall.

He has also garnered seventeen GRAMMY nominations and six awards: two for Best Instrumental Composition (Into the Light from Lyric and The Path Among The Trees from Autumn: In Moving Pictures), two for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist (including New York Tendaberry from Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro, featuring Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma), and two for Best Instrumental Jazz Album: Rebirth (2018) and The Winds of Change (2024). In 2006, Childs was awarded a Chamber Music America Composer’s Grant, and in 2009 was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the Doris Duke

Performing Artist Award. He has also been awarded a Composers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2015). In 2018, Childs was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Thornton School of Music (sharing that honor with, among others: Morton Lauridsen, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Marilyn Horne). Childs has also served as president of Chamber Music America (2016-2022).

His jazz career began in 1977, when he joined the band of trombonist J.J. Johnson. Soon thereafter (in 1978) trumpet legend Freddie Hubbard recognized the 21-yearold’s prodigious talents, and invited Childs to join his star-studded ensemble. Over a six-year internship that followed, Hubbard became Childs’ mentor in mastering the art of small ensemble improvisation. Childs launched his recording career as a jazz solo artist in 1988, when he released four critically acclaimed albums on the Windham Hill Jazz label. He has also recorded two volumes of “jazz/ chamber music” (an amalgam of jazz and classical music) – Lyric, Vol. 1 (2006) and Autumn: In Moving Pictures, Vol. 2 (2010); both recordings have collectively been nominated for five GRAMMY awards (winning twice). In 2014, Childs recorded a collection of re-imagined Laura Nyro compositions for Sony Masterworks. Map to the Treaure: Reimagining Laura Nyro was produced by Larry Klein, and features guest artists Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Wayne Shorter, Alison Kraus, Dianne Reeves, Chris Botti, Esperanza Spalding, and Lisa Fischer. In 2017, Childs released the first of his Mack Avenue recordings, Rebirth, which won the 2018 GRAMMY award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album. The second, Acceptance, was released in 2020, and the third, The Winds of Change, was released in March, 2023, winning the 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Album.

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