Masterworks 2: Echoes of the Isles

MESSAGE FROM THE MAYOR On behalf of the City of St. John’s, I am pleased to extend warm greetings to the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra as you launch your 2025/2026 season, Obsessed, Onstage, Onfire.

This year’s theme reflects the passion, dedication, and energy the NSO brings to our community year after year.

Through inspiring performances, meaningful education prog rammes, and steadfast community engagement, the NSO cont inues to ignite a love of music that enriches the cultural fabric of our city.

My sincere thanks go to the musicians, staff, volun teers, patrons, and sponsors who make each season possible. Your commitment ensures that the symphony not only thrives, but also continues to inspire audiences of all ages.

On behalf of Council, I congratulate the NSO on another exciting season and wish you every success as you share your extraordin ary talent with our community.

Warm regards,

Danny Breen Mayor of St. John’s

Message fro

m the Lieute

nant Govern or

As Honorary Patron of the Newfo undland Symphony Orchestra, it is my great pleasure to extend greetings and very best wishes for the 2025-2026 season.

The NSO is a wonderful orc hestra, which has served to cultivate and profile many of the exceptional artists we have in our province. The gift of the NS O’s rich orchestral music has become an integral part of the cul tural fabric of Newfoundland and Labrador. Again this year, a variety of performances are planned, sure to delight audiences and inspire us all.

This season is the first under the artistic leadership of Music Director Simon Rivard. Congratu lations on your new role, and welcome!

I hope you will enjoy the perfor mances the NSO has in store this year.

To everyone involved: the musici ans, staff, crew, and all who hav e a hand in producing this season, I thank you and wish you the best.

Joan Marie J. Aylward, O.N.L

dor

Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labra

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We acknowledge the province of Newfoundland and Labrador as the traditional territory of diverse Indigenous groups, and we acknowledge with respect the diverse histories and cultures of the Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Innu, and Inuit of this province. We strive for respectful relationships with all the peoples of this province as we search for collective healing and true reconciliation and honour this beautiful land together.

MASTERWORKS 2

ECHOES FROM THE ISLES Friday, November 14, 2025 • St. John’s Arts & Culture Centre Presented by Red Door Hearing - Part of HearingLife

Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, conductor Canadian Music Competition Winner Ethan Wang, piano

PROGRAMME Felix Mendelssohn

The Hebrides, Op. 26

10 min.

Edvard Grieg

Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16

32 min.

I. Allegro molto moderato II. Adagio

III. Allegro moderato molto e marcato – Quasi presto – Andante maestoso

INTERMISSION

Anna Clyne

Masquerade

5 min.

Amy Beach

Symphony in E minor, “Gaelic”

41 min.

I. Allegro con fuoco

II. Alla siciliana - allegro vivace

III. Lento con molto espressione

IV. Allegro di molto

Guest artist appearance is supported in part by a generous gift from the estate of the late Dr. Angus J. Neary.

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CONDUCTOR

DANIEL BARTHOLO M E W POYS ER A passionate communicator, Daniel brings clarity and meaning to the concert hall, fostering deep connections between audiences and performers.

Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser currently serves as Principal Education Conductor and Community Ambassador of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Artist in Residence and Community Ambassador with Symphony Nova Scotia, and Resident Conductor of Engagement and Education at the San Francisco Symphony.

Beginning in the 2026/27 season, he will also take on the role of Music Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

Daniel has conducted the New York Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, the Carnegie Hall Link-Up Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, The Calgary Philharmonic, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, The Vancouver Symphony, the Regina Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company, The National Symphony Orchestra and is the Music Director of the Kennedy Center Summer Music Institute. He served as Assistant Conductor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and Associate Conductor of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra and was Cover Conductor with the Washington National Opera.

Daniel is the host of Canadian Broadcasting Company’s nationally broadcast weekly radio show “Centrestage”. He was also the subject of an award winning, full length Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary called “Disruptor Conductor”, focussing on his concerts for Neurodiverse, Prison, African Diaspora and LGBTQ2S+ populations.

Daniel earned his Bachelors in Music Performance and Education from the University of Calgary, and his Master of Philosophy in Performance from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England.

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E T H A N W A N G , p iano T S E U G ARTIST Canadian Music Competition Winner

Ethan Wang, 10, a fifth grader at Westmount Charter School, studies piano with Professor Marilyn Engle in Calgary. He has received national and international recognition, including the Grand Prize at the 2025 Canadian Music Competition, 1st Prize in Kronberg (Germany), and 2nd Prize in both the Chopin Competition for Children and Youth (Poland) and the Canadian Chopin Competition, where he was the youngest finalist. Ethan made his orchestral debut in 2024 and has performed at major festivals across Canada. Outside of music, he enjoys reading, coding, math, and badminton.

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VIOLIN 1 Heather Kao (concertmaster) Dominic Greene (asst. concertmaster) Andy Kao Anastasia Kiseleva Whit Fitzgerald CELLO Natalie Finn Nathan Cook (principal) Claire Boudreau Nulibeth Ortiz (asst. principal) Amanda Yee (OCP) Amy Collyer-Holmes Rachael Hammond (OCP) Sandra Pope Nancy Bannister VIOLIN 2 Katherine Shipley HORN Nancy Case-Oates (principal) Emily Dunsmore (principal) Carole Bestvater BASS Doug Vaughan Elena Vigna Frank Fusari (principal) Michelle Stevenson Ilyas Duissen Denise Lear David Natsheh Jacquelyn Redmond Nick Howlett Sofiia Terzioglu (OCP) Matthew Hardy TRUMPET Stewart Gillies Katie Sullivan (principal) Karen Hawkin FLUTE Jill Dawe Michelle Cheramy (principal) Christian Berglander VIOLA Sarah Comerford Kate Read (principal) Shayan Haseli TROMBONE Ema Shiroma-Chao Darren McDonald (principal) Chantelle Jubenville OBOE/ Erin Sullivan Rosaura Aguilar ENGLISH HORN Jonathan Stevenson Annie Corrigan (principal)

MUSICIANS

Kathy Conway Valerie Holden Maestro’s Mixer Presented by:

CLARINET Glenn Rice (principal) Brenda Gatherall Harry Zheng

BASSOON Grant Etchegary (principal) Nicole Hand Chris Williams (contra)

BASS TROMBONE

Andrew Cooper (principal)

TUBA Catherine Tansley (principal)

PERCUSSION Rob Power (principal) Etienne Gendron Jenna Grant (OCP) Amy Parsons (OCP)

HARP Sarah Veber (principal)

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PROGRAM NOTES MASTERWORKS 2: Echoes from the Isles Program Notes provided by: Dr. Annalise Smith

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens just outside London served as the ideal venue for a wide variety of entertainments, from musical concerts to battle reenactments to circus acts. In Masquerade (2013), Anna Clyne (b. 1980) evokes the often chaotic experience of musical entertainments of Vauxhall, specifically the socially transgressive opportunities afforded by masked costume balls. The ribald nature of these entertainments is suggested by Clyne’s use of the Irish drinking song “The Juice of the Barley.”

German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) paid a visit to the British Isles in 1829, where he was particularly struck by his excursion to the island of Staffa in the Hebrides archipelago off the coast of Scotland. Staffa’s most prominent feature is Fingal’s Cave, a sea cave formed of hexagonal basalt columns. The cave takes its name from the epic poem written by Scottish Poet James Macpherson, in which the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (i.e.

Fingal) built the Giant’s Causeway between Ireland and Scotland to fight a duel. Though the causeway was destroyed after Fionn comically avoided the fight, these basalt columns—in actuality created by a volcanic eruption—can be found in both Scotland and Ireland as a remnant of this mythic battle. Reportedly inspired by the cave’s strange echoes, Mendelssohn sketched the melody for The Hebrides (1832) shortly after his visit. Fingal’s Cave became a popular tourist destination in no small part due to the popularity of Mendelssohn’s ouverture.

Amy Beach’s (1867–1944) Symphony in E minor (1896) was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. Like many American composers at the time, Beach was highly influenced by Antonin Dvořák, head of the National Conservatory of Music, whose recent New World Symphony had demonstrated the possibility of utilising Native American and African American music as the inspiration for a genuinely American musical sound.

While Beach would become more accepting of these ideas later in life, at the time she wrote this work she believed that composers should draw from their ancestral cultural traditions.

Beach thus turned to the music of the British Isles as inspiration for her symphony, leading it to be known more commonly as the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony. Irish and Scottish folk songs are

S

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PROGRAM NOTES (cont ’d) used as melodic material in multiple movements, and Beach stated that she wanted the work to represent the hopes, dreams and passions of the Celtic people. As was a somewhat common practice at the time, Beach also used her own music as symphonic inspiration, with much of the melodic material from the fist movement being borrowed from her sea song “Dark is the Night.”

While Norway is not an island nation, it is a country characterized by its close relationship with the sea—to this day, many rely on ocean ferries to travel to remote locations along the country’s ragged coastline. The difficult terrain and diffuse population of the country perhaps explains why, for several centuries, the country existed in political union with other Scandinavian countries. However, by the late 19th century, the desire for Norwegian independence was on the rise. Composer Edward Grieg (1843–1907) grew up in this political climate, and we see in his work an attempt to cultivate a uniquely Norwegian musical style. Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor (1868) is infused with Norwegian musical idioms, notably the rhythmic motifs of the Halling dance, melodic gestures borrowed from folk music, and imitations of the Hardanger fiddle, a unique Norwegian folk instrument with resonating strings. Today, Grieg’s work, written when he was just twenty-six, is one of the most popular concertos in the standard repertoire.

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UPCOMING CONCERTS

DEC. 5-6

NOV. 23

FEB. 6

A STANDING

OVATION

FOR OUR SUPPORTERS

NSO Staff Simon Rivard, Music Director Martin MacDonald, Principal Pops Conductor Hugh Donnan, CEO Lynn Ann Pye, Patron Relations Jennifer Brennan, Education & Outreach Coordinator Maria Penney, Marketing & Development Manager Dominic Greene, Personnel Manager Steve Power, Production Manager/Video Production/Editing Jenny Griffioen, Librarian Kyle McDavid, Graphic Designer

NSO Board Jessica Chapman (Chair) Michelle Davis (Vice-Chair) Tom Hickey (Past Chair) Douglas Wright (Treasurer) Robert Thompson (Corporate Secretary) Philip Harrington Eleanor Swanson Heather McKinnon Andrea Rose Duncan Fitzpatrick Glenn Colton

Alana Walsh-Giovannini Aimee Letto Robert Decker Jennifer Massey Jing Xia Karen Bulmer Chris Williams Amanda Mann Charlie Byrne Andrii Shyshkin Beth Porter

P.O. Box 23125 St. John’s, NL A1B 4J9 709-722-4441 nso@nsomusic.ca

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