OKC PHIL program magazine 2016-2017 edition 3

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DEBBIE FLEMING, President Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. Welcome. We’re glad you’re here! The Philharmonic’s mission is to provide joy and inspiration through orchestral music… so whether you’re attending a Classics performance, a Pops concert, a Discovery Family Series Concert or The Christmas Show, we hope you are entertained and inspired by beautiful music. We’re exceptionally proud of our orchestra and musicians as they are recognized as one of the most successful orchestras in the country.

This is our 28th season and we find ourselves in a time of transition. Joel Levine, our much-loved founding music director since 1988, has announced his intention to retire and we’re searching for a new Music Director. Guest candidates will conduct six of our Classics concerts this season and you will have the opportunity to help us in our evaluation following each concert. We have also transitioned to new offices located on the first floor of the new Arts District Garage.

The Phil’s Board of Directors is grateful to you, our audience, as well as to all who help make our music happen - The Philharmonic musicians; our staff headed by executive director, Eddie Walker; our individual and corporate donors; endowment and foundation supporters.

We are also very grateful to our volunteers including the Orchestra League and Associate Board. Your support and generosity make it possible for us to contribute to the vibrancy of Oklahoma City’s culture and lifestyle and to educate and expose young children to live orchestral music, often for the first time. Sit back, Listen and Enjoy! We hope this OKC Philharmonic performance is fun and inspiring and you will join us again soon for another Philharmonic experience.

JULIA HUNT, President Oklahoma City Orchestra League, Inc. On behalf of the Oklahoma City Orchestra League, let me welcome you to the 28th season of the OKC Philharmonic and express our gratitude to Maestro Joel Levine and our talented musicians for their gift of music!

Orchestra League members are volunteers who share an appreciation for music and its gift to the human soul. We enjoy a unique relationship with the OKC Phil and together we work to provide programs that educate children and stimulate interest in orchestral music. The League also provides instrumental competitions, promoting our musicians of the future. We believe through education and awareness we can ensure the legacy of orchestral music.

Providing support to the Phil and to our educational programs, the League members work throughout the year to bring fun and exciting events to the community. The popular Symphony Show House has been a spring tradition for over forty years! Our lavish fall event, the Maestro’s Ball, will be October 22nd.

Join us by visiting www.okcorchestraleague.org. Thank you and enjoy the concert season!

CHRISTOPHER LLOYD, President Associate Board As the 28th season begins we once again have the opportunity to welcome something new.

We have the chance to experience new sounds, new selections, new talent and for some develop a new love of orchestral music.

As President of the Philharmonic’s Associate Board, it is my honor to welcome each of you and also celebrate the many talented musicians and hard-working staff and volunteers that are integral in the success of the Philharmonic.

The function of the Associate Board is to engage young professionals into the mission and efforts of the Phil. The Phil is so much more than just concerts and we want the next generation to know. Additionally, through the Overture group, we hope to enhance relationships and community interaction through volunteer opportunities, networking events, concert attendance and hosting of the after-parties for selected performances.

Thank you to each of you, not just for purchasing a ticket, but also for choosing to spend an evening with the incredible OKC Philharmonic!

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MUSIC DIRECTOR

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JOEL LEVINE Beginning his twenty-eighth season leading the Philharmonic, Joel Levine is the longest serving music director in our City’s history. Including his tenure with the Oklahoma Symphony, Maestro Levine is enjoying his thirty-eighth year on the podium at Civic Center Music Hall. Under his leadership, the orchestra has appeared on international, national and local television broadcasts and released several recordings.

Maestro Levine’s reputation for exceptional musical collaboration has enabled the Philharmonic to present one of the country’s most distinguished series of world-renowned guest artists. He has collaborated with many of the greatest performing artists of our time and has been called a “remarkable musician and visionary” by Yo-Yo Ma. For three decades, Maestro Levine has conducted many of the city’s historic programs including “Porgy and Bess” with the legendary Cab Calloway, the Paris Opera Ballet starring Rudolf Nureyev, “Rodeo” for Ballet Oklahoma under the direction of Agnes DeMille, the Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary production of “La Boheme,” the State of Oklahoma’s official Centennial Celebration, and the National Memorial Service following the Oklahoma City bombing. He has also conducted Young People’s programs around the State for thousands of children, twenty-five OKC productions of “The Nutcracker” since 1980, and led programs featuring Oklahoma’s celebrated native stars including Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, Jimmy Webb, Patti Page, Blake Shelton, Toby Keith, Kristin Chenoweth, Kelli O’Hara, Megan Mullally, Sandi Patty, and Leona Mitchell.

He has received international recognition for performances reflecting many different styles in the classical repertoire.

His program of Schubert and Schumann symphonies with Germany’s Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra led the reviewer to write: “Joel Levine proved that he is an absolute master of his profession; the audience honored this impressive performance with much applause.” Engagements in the great European capitols include concerts with the Czech National Symphony in Prague’s Dvorák Hall, and the Symphony Orchestra of Portugal in Lisbon. Other international invitations have included orchestras in Spain, Israel, Belgrade, Bucharest, and an appearance with the Mexico City Philharmonic.

Maestro Levine has conducted many of America’s major ensembles including three seasons with The National Symphony

Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the orchestras of St. Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Seattle, Denver, Nashville and New Orleans. The national press has praised his performances: “the orchestra played with clarity and energy” (Los Angeles Times), “fine musicianship” (Washington Post), “Levine brings the needed sheen and rhythmic verve to the music” (Minneapolis Star), “Levine drew a crisp, bold and tonally lustrous account of the varied score from the orchestra and full-throated chorus” (Houston Post). His Detroit Symphony performances received “four stars” - the highest rating from the Detroit News.

Known for his work with major artists in the world of classical dance, he has conducted for three of the greatest male dancers: Rudolf Nureyev, Edward Villella, and Peter Martins.

For the Kansas City Ballet, he collaborated with famed choreographer, Alvin Ailey, and conducted the first contemporary performance of a “lost” Balanchine ballet, “Divertimento.”

Maestro Levine’s résumé includes collaborations with many of the immortal names of jazz, musical theater, film and television. Several of his recordings with Mexico’s Xalapa Symphony Orchestra are in international release and have been broadcast on the BBC. Maestro Levine has taken an active role in the cultural life of Oklahoma City since he arrived in 1976 as music director for Lyric Theatre. He worked actively for the passage of MAPS 1 and played a key role in the renovation of our hall.

For his work as a founder of the Orchestra, he received The Governor’s Arts Award (1989), was named Oklahoma Musician Of The Year (1991), is a 2008 “Treasures of Tomorrow” honoree of the Oklahoma Health Center Foundation, received the 2014 Stanley Draper Award for his contributions to downtown Oklahoma City, and has received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Oklahoma City University.

“Levine brings the needed sheen and rhythmic verve to the music.”

— Minneapolis Star

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www.okcphil.org

E. L. & THELMA GAYLORD FOUNDATION PRESENTS

HAUNT THE PHIL SUNDAY, OCT 30, 2016 Come join us for a thrilling concert of Halloween music that will include such spooky selections as the Danse Macabre, A Night on Bald Mountain, and Ghostbusters! An afternoon filled with exciting tricks and treats for kids of all ages! Don’t forget to wear your favorite costume!

SUNDAY, JAN 29, 2017 Grammy Award winning Sugar Free Allstars will rock the house with your favorite, kid tunes with the positive messages we love! Don’t miss the fun as we rock with songs like Banana Pudding, Gotta Get Up, Ready to Give up Teddy, The Train Beat Song, He’s okay (The Spider Song), Monster Truck and More.

SUNDAY, MAR 26, 2017 The OKC Phil will present an energetic, fast-paced concert that highlights music and machines. From the driving rhythms of Beethoven, to musical depictions of trains, planes, automobiles, and MORE! This concert will take you on a wild ride and capture your inventive spirit as we explore how music and machines come together!

OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC.

P R O V I D I N G

I N S P I R A T I O N

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J O Y

T H R O U G H

O R C H E S T R A L

M U S I C .

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers

Lifetime Directors

Debbie Fleming President

Jane B. Harlow Patrick Alexander

Louise Churchill President Elect

Directors

Teresa Cooper Vice President Jeff Starling Treasurer Brent Hart Secretary Renate Wiggin Immediate Past President

Steve Agee Edward Barth Elliot Chambers Robert Clements Lawrence H. Davis Lori Dickinson Joseph Fleckinger Ryan Free Kirk Hammons Patricia Horn Julia Hunt Jane Jayroe Gamble Michael E. Joseph

Kathy Kerr Wesley Knight Brad Krieger Christopher Lloyd Carol McCoy David McLaughlin Don Rowlett Melissa Scaramucci John Shelton Glenna Tanenbaum Mark Taylor Donita Thomas Tony Welch Cheryl Brashear White

Honorary Directors Josephine Freede Mary Nichols Dick Sias

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF Simone Alexander Customer Service

Stephen Howard Database/Records Manager

Judy Smedley Administrative Assistant

Katie Barrick Education Coordinator

Kris Markes General Manager

Chris Stinchcomb Concert Operations and P.R. Coordinator

Tara Burnett Development Coordinator

Jennifer Owens Development Director

Eddie Walker Executive Director

Daniel Hardt Finance Director

Ulises Serrano Customer Service

Susan Webb Marketing & P.R. Director

Oklahoma City Police Association Production Essentials, Inc. Reynolds Ford Ryan Audio Services, LLC.

Stubble Creative, Inc. The Skirvin Hotel Tuxedo Junction

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Classical KUCO 90.1 Garman Productions Heritage Press

THE OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC. 424 Colcord Drive, Ste. B • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73102 Tickets: 405-842-5387 • Administration: 405-232-7575 • Fax: 405-232-4353 • www.okcphil.org

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OKLAHOMA CITY ORCHESTRA LEAGUE, INC.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Julia Hunt Polly Worthington President Programs VP

Lisa Reed OCOL Executive Director, Ex-Officio

Carol McCoy Casey Hasenbeck President-Elect Membership VP

Eddie Walker Executive Director, Oklahoma City Philharmonic (Ex-Officio, Advisory)

Cinda Lafferty Judy Austin Governance VP & Secretary Ways & Means VP Sarah Sagran Deanna Pendleton Financial VP & Treasurer Past President, Ex-Officio

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Martha Pendleton Competitions Chair Linda Rowland-Woody Education Chair

Margaret Biggs Randy Buttram Rita Dearmon Jean Hartsuck Cheryl Hudak Dixie Jensen

Drake Keith Debbie Minter Judy Moore Pat Sholar Glenna Tanenbaum

Iva Fleck Priscilla Braun Susan Robinson Minna Hall Yvette Fleckinger June Parry Jean Hartsuck Grace Ryan Judy Austin LaDonna Meinders Dixie Jensen Lois Salmeron

Glenna Tanenbaum Debbie McKinney Anna McMillin Sue Francis Peggy Lunde Cathy Wallace Sharon Shelton Rhonda White Cindy Raby Debbie Minter Deanna Pendleton

PAST PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL Mary Ruth Ferguson Katherine Kirk Janelle Everest Lael Treat Josephine Freede Jane Harlow Jane Rodgers Joyce Bishop Ann Taylor Lil Ross Sandra Meyers Mona Preuss

ORCHESTRA LEAGUE OFFICE 3815 N. Santa Fe Ave., Ste. 105 • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73118 Phone: 405-601-4245 • Fax: 405-601-4278 Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. • E-mail: orchleag@coxinet.net Website: www.okcorchestraleague.org

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JOEL LEVINE, Music Director and Conductor EDDIE WALKER, Executive Director

FIRST VIOLIN

Gregory Lee, Concertmaster Gertrude Kennedy Chair Marat Gabdullin, Associate Concertmaster Densi Rushing, Assistant Concertmaster Sam Formicola Hong Zhu Beth Sievers James Thomson Megan McClendon Deborah McDonald Janet Gorton Ai-Wei Chang Lu Deng

SECOND VIOLIN

Katrin Stamatis, Principal McCasland Foundation Chair Catherine Reaves Sophia Ro Brenda Wagner Sarah Brown Mary Joan Johnston Angelica Pereira Cindy Zhang Laura Young Sarah McKiddy June McCoy Hannah Murray

VIOLA

Royce McLarry, Principal Mark Neumann Joseph Guevara Kelli Ingels Steve Waddell TBD Donna Cain Brian Frew Shaohong Yuan TBD

CELLO

Jonathan Ruck, Principal Orchestra League Chair Tomasz Zieba, Associate Principal

Meredith Blecha-Wells Valorie Tatge Emily Stoops Jim Shelley Angelika Machnik-Jones Jean Statham Dorothy Hays Rob Bradshaw

BASS

George Speed, Principal Anthony Stoops, Co-Principal Larry Moore Parvin Smith Mark Osborn Jesus Villarreal Christine Craddock Kara Koehn

FLUTE

CONTRABASSOON Barre Griffith

HORN

Kate Pritchett, Principal G. Rainey Williams Chair Nancy Halliday Mirella Gauldin Frank Goforth

TRUMPET

Karl Sievers, Principal Jay Wilkinson Michael Anderson

TROMBONE

John Allen, Principal Philip Martinson Noel Seals, Bass Trombone

Valerie Watts, Principal Parthena Owens Nancy Stizza-Ortega

TUBA

PICCOLO

PERCUSSION

Nancy Stizza-Ortega

OBOE

Ted Cox, Principal David Steffens, Principal Patrick Womack Roger Owens

Lisa Harvey-Reed, Principal Dan Schwartz Katherine McLemore

TIMPANI

ENGLISH HORN

HARP

Dan Schwartz

Gaye LeBlanc Germain, Principal

CLARINET

PIANO

Bradford Behn, Principal Tara Heitz James Meiller

BASS/E-FLAT CLARINET James Meiller

Lance Drege, Principal

Peggy Payne, Principal

PERSONNEL MANAGER/LIBRARIAN Michael Helt

PRODUCTION MANAGER Leroy Newman

BASSOON

Rod Ackmann, Principal James Brewer Barre Griffith Larry Reed

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PLANNED GIVING

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NCORE SOCIETY

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The Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. is honored to recognize its Encore Society members — visionary thinkers who have provided for the future of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic through their estate plans.

Anonymous (3)

John and Caroline Linehan

Steven C. Agee, Ph.D.

Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. Alexander

Mrs. Jackie Marron

Gary and Jan Allison

Mr. and Mrs. John McCaleb

Dr. Jay Jacquelyn Bass

Jean and David McLaughlin

Louise C. Churchill

R.M. (Mickey) McVay

Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements

Robert B. Milsten

Thomas and Rita Dearmon

W. Cheryl Moore

Dr. and Mrs. James D. Dixson

Carl Andrew Rath

Paul Fleming

Michael and Catherine Reaves

Hugh Gibson

Mr. and Mrs. William J. Ross

Pam and Gary Glyckherr

Drs. Lois and John Salmeron

Carey and Gayle Goad

Mr. and Mrs. William F. Shdeed

Mr. and Mrs. J.A. Gowman

Richard L. Sias

Carol M. Hall

Doug and Susie Stussi

Ms. Olivia Hanson

Larry and Leah Westmoreland

Jane B. Harlow

Mrs. Martha V. Williams

Dr. and Mrs. James Hartsuck

Mr. John S. Williams

Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. Joseph

Mr. and Mrs. Don T. Zachritz

Joel Levine

THANK YOU The Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. is grateful for the support of caring patrons who want to pass on a legacy of extraordinary music to future generations. You can join this special group of music enthusiasts by including a gift for the OKC Philharmonic’s future in your own will or estate plan. For more information on how to become an Encore Society member, contact Jennifer Owens at (405) 231-0148 or jennifer@okcphil.org or Eddie Walker at ewalker@okcphil.org.

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NICHOLS HILLS PLAZA 63RD & N. WESTERN RMEYERSOKC.COM

405.842.1478

GIFTS TO THE PHILHARMONIC The Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the commitment and generosity of individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies that support our mission. To help us provide inspiration and joy to the community through performances and education programs, please contact the Philharmonic’s Development Office at (405) 232-7575.

This Annual Fund recognition reflects contributions made in the 2016-2017 season. Contributions of $100 and above are listed through January 12, 2017.

If your name has been misspelled or omitted, please accept our apologies and inform us of the error by calling the phone number listed above. Thank you for your generous support!

CORPORATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & GOVERNMENT Express their generous commitment to the community.

UNDERWRITER $40,000 & Above

GOLD SPONSORS $5,000 - $9,999

GOLD PARTNERS $1,250 - $1,749

Allied Arts Foundation The Chickasaw Nation Inasmuch Foundation Kirkpatrick Foundation Inc. Oklahoma Arts Council Oklahoma City Orchestra League, Inc. The Oklahoman The Skirvin Hilton Hotel

The Crawley Family Foundation Garman Productions Mekusukey Oil Company, LLC The Metro Restaurant

Flips Restaurant, Inc. The Fred Jones Family Foundation Morningstar Properties

PLATINUM SPONSORS $10,000 - $39,999 405 Magazine Ad Astra Foundation American Fidelity Foundation Anschutz Family Foundation/ The Oklahoman Media Company BancFirst Bank of Oklahoma Devon Energy Corporation E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Foundation Express Employment Professionals HSPG and Associates, PC Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Mathis Brothers Furniture Co., Inc. MidFirst Bank OGE Energy Corp.

Tyler Media Co./Magic 104.1FM and KOMA W&W Steel, LLC Wilshire Charitable Foundation

SILVER SPONSORS $3,000 - $4,999 Clements Foods Foundation Gordon P. and Ann G. Getty Foundation Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company OK Gazette The Friday

BRONZE SPONSORS $1,750 - $2,999 Anthony Flooring Systems Inc. The Black Chronicle Globe Life and Accident Insurance Company Norick Investment Company Oklahoma Allergy & Asthma Clinic Testers, Inc.

MATCHING GIFT COMPANIES AND FOUNDATIONS Double the impact of an individual’s gift.

American Fidelity Corporation Bank of America Matching Gifts Program

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ExxonMobil Foundation Inasmuch Foundation

SILVER PARTNERS $750 - $1,249 Charles M. Zeeck, CPM

BRONZE PARTNERS $300 - $749 Kent S. Johnson Law Firm

BUSINESS MEMBERS $100 - $299 BancFirst Trust Department

Special Thanks for assistance with our office relocation: Kirkpatrick Family Fund E.L. & Thelma Gaylord Foundation Presbyterian Health Foundation Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation

GIFTS TO THE PHILHARMONIC MAESTRO SOCIETY Providing leadership support.

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MAESTRO SOCIETY

Guarantor $10,000 and above Mr. and Mrs. Andrew J. Evans, II The Freede Family Jean and David McLaughlin Mary D. Nichols Nancy and George Records Mr. Richard L. Sias Mr. and Mrs. Richard Tanenbaum Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Wiggin

Benefactor $5,000 - $9,999 Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. Alexander Sue Ann Arnall Marilyn and Bill Boettger Molly and Jim Crawley Mr. and Mrs. Douglas R. Cummings Mr. and Mrs. John A. Frost Mrs. Jane B. Harlow John and Claudia Holliman Mr. Albert Lang Ms. Veronica Pastel-Egelston Mr. H.E. Rainbolt Mr. and Mrs. John Richels Mr. and Mrs. Douglas J. Stussi

INDIVIDUALS Providing essential support for the Annual Fund.

Patron $3,000 - $4,999 Steven C. Agee, Ph.D. Mrs. Betty D. Bellis-Mankin Louise Churchill Lawrence H. & Ronna C. Davis Mrs. Carlene Edwards Paul and Debbie Fleming Mrs. Bonnie B. Hefner Mr. Robert B. Milsten Mrs. Ruby C. Petty Scott and Janet Seefeldt Ms. Kathleen J Weidley Mrs. Martha V. Williams Caroline Payne Young

Sustainer $1,750 - $2,999 Dr. and Mrs. Dewayne Andrews Dr. and Mrs. John C. Andrus Dr. John E. Beavers J. M. Belanger and Sarah Sagran Mr. Larry Blackledge Mr. and Mrs. Mike Borelli Dr. and Mrs. L. Joe Bradley Priscilla and Jordan Braun Mr. and Mrs. Russal Brawley

Dr. and Mrs. Robert C. Brown Mr. and Mrs. David G. Bryant Phil and Cathy Busey Mrs. Teresa Cooper Mrs. Patty Empie Mr. and Mrs. George Faulk Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Fleckinger Mr. Jerry A. Gilbert Mr. and Mrs. Carey Don Goad Dr. and Mrs. James Hartsuck Mrs. Janice Singer Jankowsky and Mr. Joseph S. Jankowsky Tom and Cindy Janssen Kim and Michael Joseph Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Joseph Terry and Kathy Kerr Ms. Rita Lapham Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Levy, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Patrick McKee Mr. and Mrs. Herman Meinders Mr. and Mrs. Harry Merson Ms. Annie Moreau Mrs. Robert Z. Naifeh Mr. and Mrs. J. Larry Nichols Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Norick Dr. Joseph H. Phillips Mr. and Mrs. Jerry W. Plant Drs. Gary and Mary Porter Mr. Joshua Powell

Kathryn and Robert Prescott Mr. and Mrs. Steven Raybourn Mrs. Don F. Rhinehart Mr. and Mrs. William J. Ross Mr. Donald Rowlett Lance and Cindy Ruffel Mr. Patrick J. Ryan Drs. Lois and John Salmeron Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Sanchez Mrs. Sally B. Saunders Ms. Jeanne Hoffman Smith Mr. and Mrs. John E. Stonecipher Mr. and Mrs. Frederick K. Thompson Mrs. Billie Thrash Mrs. June Tucker William P. Tunell, M.D. Mrs. Janet Walker Ron and Janie Walker John and Lou Waller Mr. Tom L. Ward Mrs. Anne Workman Mrs. Carol Wright

Associate $1,250 - $1,749 Mrs. Richard E. Adams, Jr. Mr. Barry Anderson Mr. J. Edward Barth

CONTINUED ON PAGE 57

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CONCERT PREVIEW SCHEDULE

CLASSICS 6 March 4, 2017 8:00 P.M.

CLASSICS

MARCH 4, 2017:: Daniel Hege Guest Conductor

HAOCHEN ZHANG, PIANO DANIEL HEGE, GUEST CONDUCTOR

MARCH 25, 2017:: Vladimir Kulenovic Guest Conductor APRIL 15, 2017:: Joel Levine Music Director, OKC Philharmonic

BARBER .......................... Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5

RAVEL ............................ Piano Concerto in G major

Allegramente Adagio assai Presto

Haochen Zhang, piano

INTERMISSION

BRAHMS ........................ Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98

Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato—Più allegro

Give us your feedback. Go to our web site okcphil.org to fill out our Guest Conductor Survey.

THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

MOLLY AND JIM CRAWLEY Text CLASSICS to 95577 to stay up to date on the latest Philharmonic info.

Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, April 5 at 8 pm and Saturday, April 8 at 8 am on “Performance Oklahoma”. Simultaneous internet streaming is also available during the broadcast.

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HAOCHEN ZHANG Since his gold medal win at the thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, 26-year-old Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang has captivated audiences in the United States, Europe, and Asia with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity.

He has already appeared with many of the world’s leading festivals and concert series and following his performance of Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 at the BBC Proms with Yu Long and the China Philharmonic received rave reviews: “He made the Allegretto dance with Mendelssohnian lightness and Lisztian diablerie, and played the melody of the Quasi Adagio with melting softness.” Ivan Hewitt, The Telegraph.

A popular guest soloist for many orchestras in his native China, Haochen made his debut in Munich with the Munich Philharmonic and the late maestro Lorin Maazel in April 2013, preceding their sold-out tour. Haochen has also toured in China with the Sydney Symphony and David Robertson, in Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai with the NDR Hamburg and Thomas Hengelbrock, and following a performance in December 2014 with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in Beijing, Mo. Gergiev immediately invited him to his Easter Festival in Moscow, Russia.

Highlights of the 16/17 season include a new recital CD, to be released by BIS in February, which includes works of Schumann, Brahms, Janacek and Liszt; extensive recital and concerto tours in Asia with performances in China, Hong Kong and Japan; return engagements with Philadelphia Orchestra, Osaka Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. Haochen will also give recitals in San Francisco, Palma de Malloca, Imola, Helsingborg, among others. He makes his debuts with the RTV Slovenia

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and Asturias Symphony Orchestras, and will tour Europe with the Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra having been their resident artist in the previous season.

In past seasons, Haochen Zhang has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, London Symphony, Japan Philharmonic Singapore Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestras.

In recital he has performed at Spivey Hall, La Jolla Music Society, Celebrity Series of Boston, CU Artist Series, Cliburn Concerts, Krannert Center, Wolf Trap Discovery Series, Lied Center of Kansas and UVM Lane Series, among others. International tours have taken him to cities including Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Dresden, Rome, Tivoli, Verbier, Montpellier, Helsingborg, Bogota and Belgrade. Haochen is also an avid chamber musician, collaborating with colleagues such as the Shanghai String Quartet, Benjamin Beilman and is frequently invited by chamber music festivals in the US. Haochen’s performances at the Cliburn Competition were released to critical acclaim by Harmonia Mundi in 2009. He is also featured in Peter Rosen’s award-winning documentary chronicling the 2009 Cliburn Competition, A Surprise in Texas. His complete competition performances are available on www.cliburn.tv.

Haochen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied under Gary Graffman. He was previously trained at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Shenzhen Arts School, where he was admitted in 2001 at the age of 11 to study with Professor Dan Zhaoyi.

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DANIEL HEGE Daniel Hege is widely recognized as one of America’s finest conductors, earning critical acclaim for his fresh interpretations of the standard repertoire and for his commitment to creative programming. He served for eleven seasons as the Music Director of the Syracuse Symphony and in June 2009, was appointed Music Director of the Wichita Symphony. In addition, during the 15/16 season, he was the Principal Guest Conductor of the Tulsa Symphony, and during the 16/17 season will serve as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Binghamton (NY) Philharmonic.

Recent and upcoming guest conducting engagements include appearances with the Rochester, Buffalo, Rhode Island and Naples philharmonics; the Louisville, Sarasota and Florida orchestras; and the Houston, Edmonton, Pacific, Puerto Rico, Hartford, Omaha, Madison, Tucson, Charleston and Virginia symphonies. Daniel Hege is also known for his work with highly talented young musicians and appears with many of America’s orchestral training programs such as the Texas Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, Music Academy of the West, and the National Orchestral Institute.

Following a nationwide search, Mr. Hege was named Music Director of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra in April, 1999. In June 2001, he completed a five year tenure with the Baltimore Symphony where he held the titles of Assistant, Associate and Resident Conductor and led the orchestra in subscription, family and run-out concerts. Mr. Hege also served as Associate Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, Assistant Conductor of the Pacific Symphony, Music Director of the Encore Chamber Orchestra in Chicago and Music Director of the Chicago Youth Symphony, where he was twice honored by the League of American Orchestras for innovative programming.

Mr. Hege has made numerous recordings, including a disc with the Baltimore Symphony and the Morgan State University Choir featuring works by Adolphus Hailstork and three CD’s with the Syracuse Symphony.

Daniel Hege has guest conducted the Houston, Detroit, Seattle, Indianapolis, Oregon, Colorado, San Diego, Columbus, and Phoenix symphonies; the Calgary Philharmonic; and led the orchestras at the Grand Teton and Aspen Music Festivals.

International engagements include performances with the Singapore Symphony and the St. Petersburg Symphony at the Winter Nights Festival. In addition, Mr. Hege has worked with the Syracuse Opera with which he led productions of Madame Butterfly, La Traviata, Tosca and Don Pasquale.

Daniel Hege received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1987 from Bethel College, Kansas where he majored in music and history. He continued his studies at the University of Utah, where he received a Master of Music degree in orchestra conducting and also founded the University Chamber Orchestra and served as Assistant Conductor of the University Orchestra and Music Director of the Utah Singers. He subsequently studied with Paul Vermel at the Aspen Music Festival and in Los Angeles with noted conductor and pedagogue Daniel Lewis.

In May 2004, Mr. Hege was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Le Moyne College in Syracuse for his contributions to the cultural life in central New York State. Born in Colorado, Mr. Hege currently resides in Syracuse with his wife and their three daughters.

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PROGRAM NOTES C L A S S I C S S E

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Overture to The School for Scandal, Op. 5 Samuel Barber First performance: 12/8/1953 Conductor: Guy Fraser Harrison Last Performance: 9/19/1992 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: March 9, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania Died: January 23, 1981, in New York City Work composed: During the summer of 1931 Work premiered: August 30, 1933, at Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia, with Alexander Smallens conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, bells, celesta, harp, and strings

with nothing but crosses and vexations.

Rowley: What can have happened since yesterday?

Sir Peter: A good question to a married man!

Rowley: Nay, I’m sure, Sir Peter, your lady can’t be the cause of your uneasiness.

Sir Peter: Why, has any body told you she was dead?

Rowley: Come, come, Sir Peter, you love her, notwithstanding your tempers don’t exactly agree.

Sir Peter: But the fault is entirely hers, Master Rowley. I am, myself, the sweetest-tempered man alive, and hate a teasing temper; and so I tell her a hundred times a day.

Rowley: Indeed!

Sir Peter: Ay; and what is very extraordinary, in all our disputes she is always in the wrong!

Barber commenced work on his overture during the summer of 1931, which he was spending in Cadegliano, Italy, with his fellow Curtis student and romantic partner Gian Carlo Menotti.

Every other week the two traveled to a nearby town for composition lessons with Scalero, under whose watchful eye this piece was essentially completed by the time Barber returned to classes at Curtis that fall. The conservatory’s orchestra director, Fritz Reiner, couldn’t summon up any interest in it, so Barber’s overture went unperformed until August 1933, when it was premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra in an outdoor summer concert. Four months earlier the piece had won Barber a $1200 composition prize that enabled him to return for another summer in Italy; an unfortunate by-product was that he therefore missed the work’s premiere. By the

Avuncular Counsel At the Curtis Institute of Music, Barber studied principally piano (with Isabelle Vengerova), composition (with Rosario Scalero), and voice (with the baritone Emilio de Gorgorza, who was a colleague of Barber’s aunt’s at the Met). He was 21 years old and still a student when he began his Overture to The School for Scandal. Although musical training was clearly at the center of the Curtis curriculum, students also were expected to take courses in other fields. Barber concentrated on languages and literature for his electives. His love for literature would continue through his life, and he would attach literary allusions to many of his symphonic pieces, even those that were not in any sense programmatic. This habit began with his very first orchestral composition, the Overture to The School for Scandal. Barber insisted that, though his piece was not intended as incidental music for a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play, it was nonetheless conceived “as a musical reflection of the play’s spirit.”

Anyone familiar with Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of manners will readily concur that it has a distinctive spirit, and a most agreeable one. Let us dip at random into its irresistible pages:

Rowley: Oh! Sir Peter, your servant: how is it with you, sir?

Sir Peter Teazle: Very bad, Master Rowley, very bad. I meet

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Barber was distressed by Fritz Reiner’s lack of interest in conducting the Overture to The School for Scandal at the Curtis Institute, which might have provided a step-up for Barber’s music in forums abroad. His uncle, Sidney Homer, offered sage and encouraging advice in a letter: You will have to give up speculating as to why men like R----- act as they do. You will never know why, so you may as well ignore it and forget it.

Things have a way of righting themselves if (a big if!) we do the work. A good composition wins many battles, as you have found. You say you can’t go abroad, and the Overture says you can! The next work may say you can be heard in Paris or Vienna, and so on ad infinitum. … What is a man without his works? Great, perhaps, but puerile. …

Beethoven and Brahms planned their works years ahead. They heard few performances and this affected them just not at all.

— JMK

PROGRAM NOTES 1950s the piece became a staple of the orchestral repertoire, though not before undergoing a fair amount of criticism for not sounding sufficiently American.

Doubtless its language adheres more tightly to the European mainstream of its time than, say, to the wide-open-spaces sounds of Aaron Copland or Roy Harris. Still, it is odd, as Barber’s biographer Barbara B. Heyman points out, that “the musical climate was such at this time that if a young American composer had achieved as much recognition as Barber— he had by then won two Pulitzer traveling fellowships and a Prix de Rome—but was not part of the mainstream’s quest for a national identity, he was considered an anomaly and thus not representative of ‘American’ music.” Today we may hear this overture as more “American” than its first audiences did. But, in the end, it earns its keep thanks to its universality, its skillful reflection of the spirit of intrigue and quicksilver banter that has kept Sheridan’s play afloat for 240 years.

notable interpreter of Fauré’s and Debussy’s music, as well as Ravel’s) recalled a gathering sometime in the 1920s: One day at a dinner in the house of Mme de SaintMarceaux, whose salon, according to Colette, was “a citadel of artistic intimacy,” Ravel said to me point-blank: “I am composing a concerto for you. Do you mind if it ends pianissimo and with trills?” “Of course not,” I replied, only too happy to realize the dream of all virtuosi.

One heard nothing more until 1927, the date of Ravel’s journey to North America.

Piano Concerto in G major Maurice Ravel First performance: 2/12/1950 Piano: Jean Casadesus Last Performance: 3/31/2007 Piano: Philippe Entremont Born: March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrenées, France Died: December 28, 1937, in Paris, France Work composed: From 1929 to November 14, 1931, although for the first and last movements the composer reportedly drew on material he had composed in 1914 Work premiered: January 14, 1932, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, with the composer conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra and pianist Marguerite Long (the work’s dedicatee) Instrumentation: Flute and piccolo, oboe and English horn, B-flat and E-flat clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, wood block, whip, harp, and strings, in addition to the solo piano

Maurice Ravel composed both of his piano concertos more or less simultaneously from 1929 to 1931: the Concerto in D major for Piano Left-Hand and Orchestra (1929-30) and the Concerto in G major (for Piano “Both-Hands” and Orchestra, 1929-31). Years earlier he had sketched a piano concerto on Basque themes, which he provisionally titled Zazpiak-Bat. As early as 1906 he reported that he was planning this work, and in 1913 he informed his friend Igor Stravinsky that he was re-focusing his attention on it. But in late 1914 we find Ravel, installed in the south of France due to the disruptions of World War I, writing to his student and colleague RolandManuel that he has had to give up work on the piece since he left his sketches behind in Paris. And that was the end of it, except that some material from that project was reworked when Ravel came to write his G-major Piano Concerto.

Ravel occasionally took colleagues by surprise by revealing that pieces they didn’t know about were well along in their gestation. So it was that the pianist Marguerite Long (a

But after his return a year elapsed before the Concerto was put in hand—doubtless after [Paul] Wittgenstein had commissioned the Concerto for the Left Hand. Negotiations took place for a first performance of the Concerto in G in Holland, and the Concertgebouw even announced it with the composer as soloist for March 9, 1931.

In fact, Ravel had rather retracted his gift to Marguerite Long and, spurred by the success of his American tour, fixed on the idea of premiering the new concerto himself. But it was not to be. His health was none too good, and—Long continued: The long hours spent on the Etudes of Chopin and Liszt greatly fatigued him. … Even when this was evident he still wished to be the first to play his work, and it was only when pressed by his friends … that he realized the difficulties confronting him in this formidable undertaking.

It can be understood how I was seized with agitation when on November 11, 1931, Ravel telephoned from Monfort l’Amaury announcing his immediate arrival with the manuscript. I had hardly composed myself when he entered holding out the precious pages. Hastily I turned to the last page to look for the pianissimo and the trills: they had become fortissimo and percussive ninths!

CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

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When he described this concerto to his friend the critic M.D. Calvocoressi, Ravel called it “a concerto in the truest sense of the world: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.” He continued: “The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects.

It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not ‘for’ but ‘against’ the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto ‘Divertissement.’ Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title ‘Concerto’ should be sufficiently clear.” One quotes Ravel here from a sense of duty. In fact, his comment confuses more than it elucidates. We may choose to disagree with what he seems to imply about the presumed frothiness of piano concertos of Mozart—perhaps even about those of Saint-Saëns—and, indeed, of his own capacity for profundity, certainly in his Concerto for Piano Left-Hand but also in the Adagio assai of the G-major Concerto.

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony is infused with a feeling of the valedictory. In this last of his symphonies we may imagine Brahms the way St. Jerome was pictured in his study by Ghirlandaio, van Eyck, Dürer, and so many other artists—immersed in learning, surrounded by some objects suggesting life and others suggesting death, serving as a conduit through which the most disparate elements of human experience might be unified into a mystical whole. Brahms’ closest friend, Clara Schumann, recognized this play of duality already in the symphony’s first movement, observing, “It is as though one lay in springtime among the blossoming flowers, and joy and sorrow filled one’s soul in turn.”

The Composer Speaks Ravel was among those composers who found that their Muse was in the details. “The G-major Concerto took two years of work, you know,” Ravel told an interlocutor, Robert de Fragny. “The opening theme came to me on a train between Oxford and London.

But the initial idea is nothing. The work of chiseling then began. We’ve gone past the days when the composer was thought of as being struck by inspiration, feverishly scribbling down his thoughts on a scrap of paper. Writing music is seventy-five percent an intellectual activity. This effort is often more pleasant for me than having a rest.”

— JMK

Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 Johannes Brahms First performance: 1/29/1939 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 2/7/2009 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria Work composed: The summers of 1884 and 1885 Work premiered: October 25, 1885, in Meiningen, Germany, with the composer conducting the Meiningen Ducal Chapel Orchestra—this a couple of weeks after he participated in a two-piano reading of it for a private audience Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, and strings

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Brahms composed it during two summer vacations at the Mürzzuschlag in the Styrian Alps—the first two movements in the summer of 1884, the second two in the summer of 1885. He wrote to the conductor Hans von Bülow that his symphony-in-progress “tastes of the climate here; the cherries are hardly sweet here—you wouldn’t eat them!”

Brahms was given to disparaging his works—in fact, he once described this symphony as “another set of polkas and waltzes”—but in this case he perfectly evoked the bittersweet quality that pervades many of the Fourth Symphony’s pages. Some music lovers would characterize it as Brahms’ most severe symphony, a sort of unyielding Everest which, if it is not inherently more beautiful than the peaks that surround it, demands to be singled out for its fearsome power and its epic scope.

Although it is cast in the same classical four-movement plan as his earlier symphonies, Brahms’ Fourth seems more tightly unified throughout (partly through the pervasive insistence on the interval of the third—especially the minor third), and its movements proceed with a

PROGRAM NOTES terrific sense of cumulative power. The opening movement (Allegro non troppo) is soaring and intense, and moments of lyricism, such as those that arrive with the gentle second theme, are quickly dispelled in favor of the inexorable thrust of emotional concentration. The second movement (Andante moderato) is by turns agitated and serene, perhaps reminding the listener of the strain of Schubertian Romanticism that Brahms always held dear—a tradition into which Brahms’ solo horn writing fits comfortably.

The Allegro giocoso represents the first time Brahms included a real scherzo in a symphony, quite a contrast to the lighter, even wistful allegretto intermezzos that had served as the third movements of his first three symphonies. And for his finale, Brahms unleashes a gigantic passacaglia, a neo-Baroque structure in which an eight-measure progression (here derived from the last movement of Bach’s Cantata No. 150) is subjected to 32 variations of widely varying character. Bach’s theme proved a bit too foursquare for the extended purpose Brahms had in mind, and he therefore intensified the melody with a touch of chromaticism. Just as the sound of the third movement had been enriched by triangle and piccolo (in their only appearances in this symphony), the finale, too, has a timbre of its own—the golden but somber hue of trombones, which have been held in abeyance until this point.

As soon as he completed the work, Brahms sent copies to several of his trusted friends and was miffed when they all responded with concern over this or that. His confidante Elisabet von Herzogenberg insisted that she respected the piece, but allowed of the first movement that “at worst it seems to me as if a great master had made an almost extravagant display of his skill!” His friend Max Kalbeck suggested he throw away the third movement entirely, use the finale as a free-standing piece, and compose two new movements to replace them. Brahms did not acquiesce, but he anticipated the symphony’s premiere with mounting apprehension. His music had long been criticized as “too intellectual,” and Brahms knew that his Fourth Symphony was at least as rigorous as anything he had previously composed. To his amazement, the symphony proved a success at its premiere and audience enthusiasm only increased in subsequent performances.

Travelogue Brahms’ creative juices flowed freely during his summer vacations, which he spent in a succession of villages in the Austrian, German, Swiss, or Italian countryside. He spent the summers of 1884 and 1885—the summers of the Fourth Symphony—at Mürzzuschlag, a charmed Styrian village at the southern end of the Semmering Pass, about a two-hour train trip southwest from Vienna, roughly midway between Vienna and Graz. He rented rooms that met his basic requirements: a decent view (in this case toward the town square rather than the surrounding mountains), large enough to hold a good piano, near a worthy restaurant. He instantly became a local celebrity, and he was amused one day to witness two passers-by stopped in front of the house, one whispering ecstatically to the other: “Do you hear? Brahms is playing.” He was able to witness this because the sounds actually emanated from another musician who was lodging in the same house.

A visitor today could not pass through Mürzzuschlag without being reminded of the village’s Brahmsian past. The community conservatory is the Johannes Brahms Musikschule, the ring of hiking trails the composer once followed is now the Brahmsweg, and the town square is graced with a large statue of the composer setting off on one of those very hikes.

It practically goes without saying that there is a Brahms Museum “in the genuine summer residence of Johannes Brahms,” which sponsors innumerable mostly-Brahms concerts and contains all manner of memorabilia relevant to Brahms’ vacations, including the piano he rented while he was in town—the one the passers-by were not listening to.

— JMK

JAMES M. KELLER James M. Keller is Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. From 1990-2000 he wrote about music on staff at The New Yorker, and in 1999 he received the prestigious ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award for his feature writing in Chamber Music magazine, which he serves as Contributing Editor.

These essays previously appeared, in earlier forms, in the programs of the New York Philharmonic and are used with permission. ©New York Philharmonic

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BROADWAY’S BEST WITH JOEL LEVINE MARCH 17-18, 2017 8:00 P.M.

POPS JOEL LEVINE, CONDUCTOR

WITH JOEL LEVINE Starring

Rachel York and Ryan Silverman With The Philharmonic Pops Chorale

This concert is generously sponsored by:

Text Pops1 to 95577 to stay up to date on the latest Philharmonic info.

A Special Thank You to Bo Taylor Catering for providing Musicians’ catering services.

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BLANK, ARR. BROADWAY FANTASY OVERTURE The Philharmonic KANDER & EBB ALL THAT JAZZ (Chicago) Rachel York and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale BERNSTEIN & SONDHEIM SOMETHING’S COMING (West Side Story) Ryan Silverman BERLIN ANYTHING YOU CAN DO (Annie Get Your Gun) Rachel York and Ryan Silverman STYNE DON’T RAIN ON MY PARADE (Funny Girl) Rachel York RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN SOME ENCHANTED EVENING (South Pacific) Ryan Silverman JOHN, ELTON THE CIRCLE OF LIFE (The Lion King) The Philharmonic Pops Chorale SCHÖNBERG & BOUBLIL I DREAMED A DREAM (Les Misérables) Rachel York LEIGH THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM (Man of La Mancha) Ryan Silverman WILLSON TROUBLE (The Music Man) Ryan Silverman and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale HERMAN BEFORE THE PARADE PASSES BY (Hello, Dolly!)

Rachel York and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale

INTERMISSION

WEBBER PRELUDE & OVERTURE (Phantom Of The Opera) The Philharmonic WEBBER MUSIC OF THE NIGHT (Phantom Of The Opera) Ryan Silverman LERNER & LOEWE THE LUSTY MONTH OF MAY (Camelot) The Philharmonic, Rachel York and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale MENKEN & ASHMAN SUDDENLY SEYMOUR (Little Shop of Horrors) Rachel York and Ryan Silverman KANDER & EBB ALL I CARE ABOUT IS LOVE (Chicago) Ryan Silverman and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale STYNE SOME PEOPLE (Gypsy) Rachel York SONDHEIM BEING ALIVE (Company) Ryan Silverman SCHWARTZ DEFYING GRAVITY (Wicked) Rachel York ULVAEUS/ANDERSON & RICE ANTHEM (Chess) Ryan Silverman and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale SCHÖNBERG & BOUBLIL ONE DAY MORE (Les Misérables) Rachel York, Ryan Silverman and The Philharmonic Pops Chorale

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RACHEL YORK Rachel York is a dynamic and versatile actress, singer, dancer and comedienne. She is best known for her critically acclaimed Broadway performances in City of Angels, Les Misérables, Victor/Victoria (Drama Desk Award) with Dame Julie Andrews, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sly Fox with Richard Dreyfuss, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels co-starring Jonathan Pryce. Additionally, Ms. York has starred in the national tour of Camelot opposite Michael York, Putting It Together (Drama Desk Nomination) also with Julie Andrews, the national and London tours of the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate (Helen Hayes Nomination), Dessa Rose at the Lincoln Center Theater (Drama Desk Nomination), Anything Goes (Ovation Nomination) and My One And Only for Reprise!, Ragtime, Evita, Summer of ’42, Summer and Smoke, Crucifer of Blood with Billy Crudup and The Odd Couple with Jason Alexander and Martin Short.

An active concert artist, Ms. York’s recent appearances include Broadway Showstoppers with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops, The Sound of Music at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of John Mauceri, the National Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony under the direction of conductor Marvin Hamlisch, Jacksonville Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, among many others. Upcoming performances include The Philly Pops, Houston Symphony, Ft. Worth Symphony, Har-

risburg Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, Cleveland Pops, Greenville Symphony and the Gulf Coast Symphony. She has recently performed her celebrated cabaret, “For the Love of It”, at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in New York City and Sterling’s Upstairs at Vitello’s in Los Angeles. Ms. York has also been a featured guest soloist in numerous tribute programs performing the works of Sondheim, Porter, Coleman, Gershwin, Wildhorn, Kander and Ebb, Ahrens and Flaherty, Boublil and Schönberg, and many others.

Her film credits include One Fine Day, Billy Bathgate, Killer Instinct, Second Honeymoon, Au Pair II, and her courageous portrayal of Lucille Ball in the CBS made for television movie, Lucy. Her performances in Kiss Me, Kate (filmed for PBS’s Great Performances series) and Victor/Victoria are available on video/DVD. Ms. York has also appeared on several popular TV series including Hannah Montana, Frasier, Reba, NUMB3RS, Close to Home, Arli$$, Spin City, The Naked Truth and Diagnosis Murder. In addition, she is the voice of Bitty in Higglytown Heroes and Circe on The Justice League.

Ms. York’s debut solo album, Let’s Fall in Love, has been an enormous success since its release in January 2005. She can also be heard on the soundtrack of Billy Bathgate and the original cast recordings of City of Angels, Putting It Together, Victor/Victoria, The Scarlet Pimpernel Encore, Dessa Rose, and Summer of ’42.

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RYAN SILVERMAN Ryan Silverman recently starred in Side Show on Broadway for which he received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Actor. Other Broadway credits include star turns as Billy Flynn in Chicago and Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera. Silverman received Drama Desk and Drama League nominations for his performance as Giorgio in CSC’s production of Passion. He has appeared at the Kennedy Center as Sir Lancelot alongside Brian Stokes Mitchell in Camelot and as Terry Connor in Side Show. Ryan recently starred in the Theatre du Chatelet’s acclaimed production of Passion opposite Natalie Dessay.

Silverman has also been featured in Music in the Air (Karl) at Encores!; Cry-Baby on Broadway and The Most Happy Fella (Al) at New York City Opera. His portrayal of Tony in the Olivier nominated 2008 West End production of West Side Story received universal raves. He starred as Sky in the 1st National tour of Mamma Mia!, and Jose in the world premiere of the new musical Carmen at La Jolla Playhouse. Ryan played the

role of Rapunzel’s Prince in Into The Woods at the MUNY and was in the Chicago production of Wicked (Fiyero u/s). Regional credits include Thoroughly Modern Millie (Jimmy), Cinderella (Prince), Grease! (Danny), Hello, Dolly! (Cornelius), Assassins (John Wilkes Booth), Sweeney Todd (Anthony), Forever Plaid (Smudge), and Blood Brothers (Eddie Lyons). Features in TV and film include, Gossip Girl, The 5 Minarets Of New York, Sex and the City 2, and True Blood. Ryan has performed his club act the Café Carlyle (month long residency) and Feinstein’s at the Regency. Concert performances include, The New York Pops (Carnegie Hall), Seattle Symphony with Marvin Hamlisch, Philadelphia Orchestra, Philly Pops, Vancouver Symphony, The Cincinnati Pops, Utah Symphony, Houston Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, among others.

THE PHILHARMONIC POPS CHORALE Chad Anderson Beth Adele Renee Anderson Brooke Gebb Heather Geery Tommy Glen

Mat Govich Mandy Jiran Vince Leseney Harold Mortimer Dalycia Phipps Jenny Rottmayer

Brian Stockton Marita Stryker Seth Turnipseed Greg White Directed by: Vince Leseney

VINCE LESENEY In addition to directing the POPS Chorale, Vince Leseney is also professor of voice in the Weitzenhoffer School of Musical Theatre at the University of Oklahoma.

Vince has performed in over thirty productions with Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma and played Franz Liebkind opposite Roger Bart and Brad Oscar in The Producers at Kansas City Starlight in 2010. In 2003 he performed at the opening of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas before three former Presidents and several Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Vince has been a guest artist with the Kansas City Symphony and the American Music Festival Orchestra. He also proudly serves as Minister of Music at Memorial Presbyterian Church in Norman.

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OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC. ASSOCIATE BOARD Christopher Lloyd, President Jenni Fosbenner, Past President Kevin Learned, VP of Fundraising Ashley Wilemon, VP of Events Kate Cunningham, Secretary Robyn Berko J. Cruise Berry John Cannon Laura Cunningham Aaron Diehl Allison Goodman Robyn Matthews Danny O’Donnell Patrick Randall Marti Ribeiro Jessica Robbins Cyndi Tran Dwayne Webb Cheryl White

CLASSICS 7

March 25, 2017 8:00 P.M.

CLASSICS CHLOË HANSLIP, VIOLIN VLADIMIR KULENOVIC, GUEST CONDUCTOR

BEETHOVEN . ...................... Coriolan Overture, Op. 62

MENDELSSOHN....................Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64

Allegro molto appassionato Andante Allegretto ma non troppo–Allegro molto vivace

(The movements are played without pauses between them.)

Chloë Hanslip, violin

INTERMISSION

RACHMANINOFF..................Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

Non allegro Andante con moto (Tempo di valse) Lento assai—Allegro vivace—Lento assai.

Come prima Allegro vivace

nichols hills plaza

Give us your feedback. Go to our web site okcphil.org to fill out our Guest Conductor Survey.

THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

shoes . handbags . clothing . accessories www.ckandcompany.com 405.843.7636

Text CLASSICS to 95577 to stay up to date on the latest Philharmonic info.

Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, April 26 at 8 pm and Saturday, April 29 at 8 am on “Performance Oklahoma”. Simultaneous internet streaming is also available during the broadcast.

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CHLOË HANSLIP British violinist Chloë Hanslip has securely established herself on the international stage. Since her BBC Proms debut in 2002, she has performed regularly in major venues throughout the UK, Europe, the United States, and the Far East. With a special affinity for contemporary repertoire, she plays the concertos of John Adams, Benjamin Britten, John Corigliano, Peter Maxwell Davies, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Brett Dean’s The Lost Art of Letter Writing.

This performance is Ms. Hanslip’s debut with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and, in next season, with the New Jersey Symphony. Other North American engagements have included the philharmonics of Buffalo and Reno, the Sarasota Orchestra, and the symphonies of Alabama, Cincinnati, Detroit, Edmonton, Eugene, Houston, Jacksonville, Phoenix, and Virginia.

Worldwide she has appeared with the Auckland Philharmonia, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra at the Proms, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra, Beethoven Orchester/Bonn, Violins of the Berlin Philharmonic, Bern Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, Bremen Philharmonic, City of London Sinfonia, Czech Philharmonic, Duisburg Philharmonic, Hamburg Symphony, the London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Malaysian Philharmonic, Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra/Brazil, Moscow Symphony, Norwegian Radio Symphony, Nottingham Philharmonic, Philharmonia/London, Orchestra Sinfonica di Lugano, Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla y Leon, Prague Symphony, RAI/Torino, Real Filharmonia/ Galicia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Singapore Symphony, Tampere Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Tonkünstlerorchester/Vienna, and the Umeå Symphony in Sweden. Ms. Hanslip is an active recitalist both in the United States and the UK. Among the conductors with whom Ms. Hanslip has collaborated are Petr Altrichter, Stefan Blunier, Martyn Brabbins, Paul Daniel, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Thierry Fischer, Claus Peter Flor, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Richard Hickox, Mariss Jansons, Paavo Järvi, Michail Jurowski, Pavel Kogan, Christoph König, Hannu Lintu, Susanna Mälkki, Sir Neville

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Marriner, Gianandrea Noseda, Gerard Schwarz, Leif Segerstam, Leonard Slatkin, Stefan Solyom, Vassily Sinaisky, Jeffrey Tate, Jac van Steen, Alexander Vedernikov, Christopher WarrenGreen, and Barry Wordsworth.

An active recording artist, Chloë Hanslip has received outstanding reviews for her two Naxos CDs: the John Adams Violin Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin (2006) and the Violin Concertos of Benjamin Godard with the Slovak State Philharmonic under Kirk Trevor (2008). Two earlier CDs with the London Symphony Orchestra for Warner Classics won her, respectively, the German ECHO Classic Award for Best Newcomer (2002), and Young British Classical Performer at the Classical BRITS (2003).

Her recording catalogue continues to grow with a highly acclaimed recital disc of works by Bazzini (2007), as well as the Hubay Violin Concertos with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (2008). Ms. Hanslip’s first release on the Hyperion label featured the Vieuxtemps violin concertos with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic under Martyn Brabbins (2012). Three other recordings: Glazunov and Schoeck concertos with the Lugano Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Vedernikov (2013); Medtner sonatas with pianist Igor Tchetuev (2013); and York Bowen sonatas with Danny Driver (2013) have also been released with the latter sonatas recording receiving recommendations from Gramophone (Choice) and The Strad.

Also an enthusiastic chamber musician, Ms. Hanslip is a regular participant in Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove, working with Steven Isserlis and Gerhard Schulz, and at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland, where she returned for the 40th Anniversary celebrations in 2009. She recently returned to Wigmore Hall for a recital with Charles Owen and performs regularly with Danny Driver, Angela Hewitt and Ashley Wass. She was curator of the International Chamber Music series in Leeds in 2012/13 where she devised a series of programs around American music.

Chloë Hanslip studied for ten years with the great Russian pedagogue Zakhar Bron. She has also worked with Christian Tetzlaff, Robert Masters, Ida Haendel, Salvatore Accardo, and Gerhard Schulz. She plays a Guarneri del Gesu 1737.

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VLADIMIR KULENOVIC Designated “Chicagoan of the Year (2015) in Classical Music” by the distinguished Chicago Tribune critic John von Rhein, Vladimir Kulenovic began 2016 on a high note. Named the 2015 Solti Conducting Fellow, one of the most prestigious conducting honors in the United States, he has recently signed a four-year renewal contract with the Lake Forest Symphony on Chicago’s North Shore. Having concluded four seasons as Associate Conductor of the Utah Symphony/ Utah Opera, where he conducted an average of one hundred performances annually, Mr. Kulenovic was the assistant to Sir Andrew Davis for the premiere of Jimmy López’s opera Bel Canto with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He has also served as Resident Conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic in Serbia, and Principal Conductor of the Kyoto International Music Festival in Japan.

Mr. Kulenovic’s U.S. guest conducting engagements include the symphonies of Alabama, Chicago, Columbus, Grand Rapids, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Knoxville, San Francisco, and Utah. Highlights of the season include debuts with the Illinois Symphony, Louisville Orchestra and the South Bend Symphony.

Worldwide, Vladimir Kulenovic has appeared with the Beethoven-Orchester/Bonn, Bilkent Symphony/Turkey; Deutsche Kammerakademie/Neuss am Rhein, Leipziger Symphonie Orchester, Malaysia Philharmonic, National Arts Centre Orchestra/Ottawa, Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco/Mexico, Slovenia Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony, Zagreb Philharmonic, Macedonian Philharmonic, and the Macedonian National Opera. This season, he will make his debut with the Minas Gerais Philharmonic/Brazil, and conduct three tour programs in Spain with Orquesta Sinfónica de España.

Festival appearances include Aspen, Cabrillo, Finland’s Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Round Top/Texas, Salzburg Mozarteum, and Verbier. He has also collaborated with such celebrated soloists as Leon Fleisher, Augustin Hadelich, Mischa Maisky, Joaquín Achúcarro, Stefan Milenkovich, Philippe Quint, Joseph Silverstein, Akiko Suwanai, William Burden, and Sasha Cooke.

In 2012, Mr. Kulenovic was awarded the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship and the position of conducting assistant with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which enabled him to work closely with the late Kurt Masur. He has also assisted Bernard Haitink with the Boston Symphony, prepared orchestras for Zubin Mehta, and served as cover conductor with the Baltimore Symphony, Baltimore Opera, and Florentine Opera/Milwaukee.

Vladimir Kulenovic holds graduate diplomas in conducting from both The Juilliard School and the Peabody Institute, where his principal teachers were James DePreist and Gustav Meier. He earned a bachelor’s degree in piano performance and a master’s degree in conducting from the Boston Conservatory, where he graduated summa cum laude. Among his numerous honors are the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards and the Charles Schiff Conducting Prize for Excellence. He was one of six top young conductors chosen by the League of American Orchestras for the 2013 Bruno Walter National Conducting Preview.

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Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 Ludwig van Beethoven First performance: 1/14/1941 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 4/12/1970 Conductor: Guy Fraser Harrison Born: Probably December 16, 1770 (he was baptized on the 17th), in Bonn, then an independent electorate of Germany Died: March 26, 1827, in Vienna, Austria Work composed: In the opening months of 1807 Work premiered: The first week of March 1807 at the Vienna home of “Prince L,” according to a contemporary newspaper report; this probably refers to Beethoven’s patron Prince Lobkowitz, but might possibly mean Prince Lichnowsky, another of his supporters.

Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings

Applause at the Outset On October 19, 1808, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig reported on several new works that had graced the concert stage, including “Beethoven’s most recent grand overture to Collin’s Coriolan (in C minor), full of inner, powerful life, original harmonic twists and turns, and with a truly tragic effect (but difficult to perform well).” Four years later the same publication printed an essay by the author and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann. He devoted eight pages to an insightful analytical consideration of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, whose terrifying character he felt somewhat overwhelmed the “predominantly reflective poetry” of Collin’s play. “Nevertheless,” he wrote, “apart from those expectations that will be aroused only in a few connoisseurs who truly comprehend Beethoven’s music, the composition is completely suited to awaken the specific idea that a great, tragic event will be the content of the play that follows. …

No common tragedy can be performed after this overture, but specifically an elevated one, in which heroes rise up and are defeated.”

— JMK

with the result that these scores contain some of Beethoven’s least known pages.

Beethoven’s career was littered with fervent expressions of desire, and even a few fragmentary attempts, to compose an opera worthy of his genius, but in the end he managed to complete only one, Fidelio; and, as if to underscore his unease with the genre, he actually “completed” Fidelio three times before it reached the state in which it is usually performed today. But there was more to the stage than opera, and in other theatrical genres Beethoven seemed less given to selfcensure. He wrote music for ballets (the Ritterballet and The Creatures of Prometheus) and incidental music, ranging from a single number to complete multi-movement collections, for a half-dozen stage plays: Egmont, Coriolan, King Stephen, The Ruins of Athens, Tarpeja, and Leonore Prohaska. Except for Goethe’s Egmont, all of these plays would be profoundly forgotten but for Beethoven’s contributions to their productions.

Even that has not been enough to keep most of them alive,

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Coriolan came early in this succession of works. The Coriolan in question is not Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, but rather a tragedy by the Court Secretary Heinrich Joseph von Collin that was premiered in Vienna on November 24, 1802. Beethoven attended that performance, where he heard the accompanying score that had been arranged from bits and pieces of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo. It’s easy to see why Beethoven liked the play, which considered the dilemma of a heroic political leader torn among the conflicting forces of patriotic impulse, family devotion, and personal pride. In this case, Coriolan, a Roman general banished from Rome despite long and valiant service to his people, seeks vengeance by leading an opposing army against his native city. When the Romans send his mother and wife to persuade him to withdraw, he consents to place his fate in the hands of the Roman mob, effectively choosing suicide as the only acceptable solution to his situation. Richard Wagner, in an essay about this overture, characterized the Coriolan to which Beethoven was drawn as “the man of force untamable, unfitted for a hypocrite’s humility.”

Beethoven completed his overture in early 1807 and it received its first performance in March that year. On that oc-

PROGRAM NOTES casion, however, it did not introduce the play that inspired it; instead, it formed part of the mammoth program of a subscription concert that also included the first four of his symphonies, his Fourth Piano Concerto, and excerpts from his opera Leonore (an early version of what would evolve into Fidelio). It seems likely that Beethoven’s overture was played at a one-night revival of Collin’s play on April 24, 1807; in fact, that theatrical performance may have been arranged expressly to present Beethoven’s work together with the play that had inspired it. Four decades later, when Beethoven’s posthumous fame had already escalated into near-idolatry, the Coriolan Overture would also have the distinction of opening the official concert that followed the unveiling of the Beethoven memorial monument in Bonn on August 12, 1845.

It works well as a concert piece, seeming a sort of early tone poem describing the serious, tortured state of the title character. Beethoven here chooses the key of C minor, to which he seems usually to have attached the sentiment of heroism wedded to tragedy. Three powerful unisons are uttered by the strings, and each is answered by a furious chord from the full orchestra. These launch an Allegro con brio movement that unrolls according to the general plan of a sonata form, with two principal themes of contrasting character: the first is a quiet but frantic theme laced with appoggiaturas; the second, in the relative major key of E-flat, achieves a spaciousness that may suggest the inner peace to which the hero is led by his decision. At the end, the overture dies away, leaving the listener somewhat up in the air. We should remember, however, that Beethoven intended this movement not to serve as an ending at all, but rather as an introduction to the action that would come.

Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64 Felix Mendelssohn First performance: 2/9/1047 Violin: Zino Francescatti Last Performance: 3/5/2011 Violin: Midori Born: February 3, 1809, in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany Died: November 4, 1847, in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany Work composed: From July through September 16, 1844, with alterations continuing for several months thereafter Work premiered: March 13, 1845, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Ferdinand David (its dedicatee) as soloist and Niels Gade conducting Cadenza: Mendelssohn’s Original Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, in addition to the solo violin

As a youngster Mendelssohn benefited from an exemplary education and myriad other advantages reserved for the privileged. He mastered Classical and modern languages, wrote poetry, and polished his considerable skills as a

landscape painter and an artist in pen-and-ink. His musical education included private lessons in piano and violin, as well as composition lessons from Carl Friedrich Zelter, whose other students included Otto Nicolai, Carl Loewe, and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Zelter spoke highly of Mendelssohn’s ability with the fiddle. In an 1823 letter to Goethe (whom Zelter served as musical adviser), he reported: “My Felix has entered upon his fifteenth year. He grows under my very eyes. His wonderful pianoforte playing I may consider as quite exceptional. He might also become a great violin player.”

Many of the composer’s early works were unveiled at Sunday musicales at his family’s mansion at 3 Leipziger Strasse in Berlin: among them were a number of his 12 string symphonies, some light operas, and a quantity of piano pieces and chamber music. Concertos were played, too, including the five (!) that Mendelssohn produced between 1822 and 1824: one for piano, one for violin (in D minor, written for his violin teacher, Eduard Rietz), two for two pianos, and one for violin and piano. These works exhibit abundant inspiration, limitless enthusiasm, and genuinely remarkable technique; what they do not yet display is the stringent self-criticism and penchant for editing to which Mendelssohn would later subject his work.

Mendelssohn first met the violinist Ferdinand David, who would premiere the concerto heard here, in 1825, and the two would become fast friends. David (1810-73), just a year younger than Mendelssohn, was the son of a wealthy businessman, was a musical prodigy, and had a precocious piano-playing sister—all these circumstances being parallel to Mendelssohns’ own. He and Mendelssohn were frequent partners in chamber music and, in 1835, when Mendelssohn settled in Leipzig to become conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, he promptly appointed David concertmaster of that ensemble—a position David retained for the rest of his CONTINUED ON PAGE 44

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life. When Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory, in 1843, David was one of the first musicians appointed to the faculty. He was greatly respected as a teacher, counting among his pupils such eminent violinists as Joseph Joachim and August Wilhelmj.

bearer at the funeral. He lived another 26 years, and his final public appearance (in March 1873) was in a chamber music program that included the Andante and Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s posthumously published Op. 81 collection of standalone quartet movements.

In March 1845, David played the premiere of Mendelssohn’s enduringly popular E-minor Violin Concerto, which the composer had contemplated writing as early as 1838. “I’d like to do a violin concerto for you for next winter,” he wrote to David on July 30 of that year. “One in E minor is running through my head, and the opening of it will not leave me in peace.” Curiously, ensuing sketches reveal that it was a piano concerto, rather than a violin concerto, that started taking form, one that matched the eventual violin concerto in both key and structure. By the time Mendelssohn focused definitively on the composition in 1844 it had evolved with certainty into a violin concerto, and as he composed it he consulted closely with his soloist, mostly about technical issues but in some cases concerning more general matters of structure and balance—and he took David’s suggestions to heart. They remained close friends until Mendelssohn’s passing in 1847, when David was among the small group attending Mendelssohn’s deathbed and served as a pall-

In the course of his career Mendelssohn had grown fond of dovetailing the separate movements of his large-scale pieces, a device he had used to great effect in the two piano concertos of his maturity. He maintains that preference in this last of his orchestral works, such that the Violin Concerto’s three movements connect into a single overarching span. Subtle mirroring of tonal architecture and fleeting reminiscences of earlier themes at key moments of transition help invest a sense of the organic and inevitable in this most Classical of the great Romantic violin concertos.

The Cadenza Most concertos include cadenzas, unaccompanied sections in which the soloist demonstrates her technical prowess through the challenging manipulation of themes from the body of the piece. In the 18th and very-early-19th centuries these sections were usually improvised (at least ostensibly) by the soloist, but in the course of the 19th century it became normal for composers to write out their suggestions for cadenzas, allowing soloists to decide whether to follow those ideas or invent their own. As it’s hard to resist a composer’s suggestions, this typically resulted in a diminishing of the “surprise factor” in repeated hearings of a piece. Though Mendelssohn wrote out the firstmovement cadenza in his E-minor Violin Concerto, he maintained an element of surprise by inserting it considerably earlier in the movement than one would expect—most first-movement cadenzas fall just before the end—and by dovetailing its beginning and end with the ongoing flow of the movement. When Mendelssohn’s score was published, it included not Mendelssohn’s original cadenza (which some might consider too “brainy” in its contrapuntal complexity), but rather a slightly streamlined version adjusted by David—and it is David’s adaptation that remains standard today.

— JMK

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Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 Sergei Rachmaninoff First performance: 11/17/1990 Conductor: Joel Levine Last Performance: 1/15/2011 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: March 20 (old style)/April 1 (new style), 1873, in either Oneg or Semyonovo, in the Novgorod region of Russia Died: March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California Work composed: Summer 1940 Work dedicated: To Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra Work premiered: The afternoon of January 3, 1941, at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, with Eugene Ormandy conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, alto saxophone, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, glockenspiel, xylophone, tam-tam, chimes, cymbals, bass drum, harp, piano, and strings

Sergei Rachmaninoff was not at first a standout at the Moscow Conservatory, but by the time he graduated, in 1892, he was deemed worthy of receiving the “Great Gold Medal,” an honor that had been bestowed on only two students previously. For several years his career continued auspiciously, but in 1897 he was dealt a major setback with the failure of his First Symphony, which a prominent and dismissive review by the composer and critic César Cui likened to “a program symphony on the ‘Seven Plagues of Egypt’” that “would bring delight to the inhabitants of Hell.”

The distress threatened to undo Sergei Rachmaninoff, and for the next three years he didn’t write a note. In the psychological aftermath of his embarrassing fiasco, he turned to a different musical pursuit and focused on conducting. Before long he sought the help of a physician who was investigating psychological therapy through hypnosis, and by 1901 he was back on track as a composer. A few years later he would add the obligations of a touring concert pianist to his schedule, and his numerous recordings reveal that his outstanding reputation as a performer was fully merited.

PROGRAM NOTES borrowed it from his First Symphony, which had come to grief so many years before. In reviving the theme the composer seems to vindicate that early effort, though it was a strictly private reference nobody could have been expected to catch, since the First Symphony had remained unpublished and unperformed since its premiere.

A waltz follows, though more a melancholy, even oppressive Slavic waltz than a lilting Viennese one. To conclude, Rachmaninoff offers a finale that includes quotations from Russian Orthodox liturgical chants and from the Dies irae from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead. Both would seem odd selections for what are, after all, identified as dances. But Rachmaninoff subsumes his borrowed material brilliantly into the general spirit of the Symphonic Dances, and on the final page of the manuscript—the last he would ever complete—he inscribed, in Latin script, the word “Alliluya.”

Success followed success for the next three-and-a-half decades, but with the completion of his Third Symphony, in 1936, it appeared that Rachmaninoff had reached the end of his composing career. He had by then finished building a villa on the shore of Lake Lucerne, which he enjoyed traversing in his speedboat, and he was trying to rein in performing commitments so he could ease into retirement.

The outbreak of World War II disrupted such plans, however, and he decided to return with his family to live in the United States—familiar territory, since he had been largely residing in America since 1918. So it was that Rachmaninoff spent the summer of 1940 at an estate near Huntington, Long Island; and it was there that his final work, the Symphonic Dances, came into being.

His initial plan was to name the piece Fantastic Dances, which would have underscored their vibrant personality. Alternatively he pondered titling the three movements “Noon,” “Twilight,” and “Midnight”—or, as his biographer Victor Seroff recounted the story, “Morning,” “Noon,” and “Evening,” meant as a metaphor for the three stages of human life.

Rachmaninoff scrapped those ideas and settled instead on the more objective name of Symphonic Dances. The spirit of the dance does indeed inhabit this work, if in a sometimes mysterious or mournful way. As Rachmaninoff was completing the piece he played it privately for his old friend Michel Fokine, the one-time choreographer of the Ballets Russes, who immediately signaled his interest in using it for a ballet; regrettably, Fokine died in 1942 before he could make good on his intention.

Three dances make up this orchestral suite. The opening march-like movement is powerful and assertive, though with expressive contrast arriving in the middle section, with its very Russian-sounding wind writing. In the movement’s coda the strings play a gorgeous new theme against the tintinnabulation of flute and piccolo, harp, piano, and glockenspiel. The theme has not been previously heard in this piece, but that doesn’t mean it was actually new; Rachmaninoff

Listen for: The Saxophone Though not a standard member of the symphony orchestra, the saxophone had occasionally been pressed into service during the 19th and early-20th centuries as an “extra” instrument to intone passages of special color, with memorable examples being provided by Bizet (in his L’Arlésienne music) and Ravel (in his orchestration of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition). But writing for saxophone was a new experience for Rachmaninoff when he composed his Symphonic Dances. The instrument appears only in the first movement, for only one fleeting but sensuous passage of three spacious phrases. Rachmaninoff was worried about writing idiomatically for the instrument, so he turned to an expert, the composer-arranger Robert Russell Bennett, remembered today as the orchestrator for such Broadway hits as Showboat, Oklahoma!, and My Fair Lady. Bennett recounted: When he was doing his Symphonic Dances, he wanted to use a saxophone tone in the first movement and got in touch with me to advise him as to which of the saxophone family to use and just how to include it in is score—his experience with saxophones being extremely limited. … Some days later we had luncheon together at his place in Huntington. When he met my wife and me at the railroad station he was driving the car and after about one hundred yards, he stopped the car, turned to me, and said “I start on A sharp?” I said “That’s right,” and he said “Right” and drove on out to his place.

— JMK

Notes by James M. Keller. These essays previously appeared, in earlier forms, in the programs of the New York Philharmonic and are used with permission. ©New York Philharmonic

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UNDER THE STREETLAMP APRIL 7-8, 2017 8:00 P.M.

POPS DOUGLAS DROSTE, CONDUCTOR

Starring

Michael Ingersoll, Christopher Kale Jones, Brandon Wardell and Shonn Wiley

This concert is generously sponsored by:

Text Pops1 to 95577 to stay up to date on the latest Philharmonic info.

A special Thank You to Viceroy Grill/Ambassador Hotel for providing musicians’ catering services.

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DOUGLAS DROSTE Conductor Douglas Droste is recognized as possessing “obvious joy” for making music and a “sure sense of timing” when on the podium. Those under his baton routinely acknowledge his in-depth interpretations, keen sense of communication, and personable ability to empower musicians. Droste is the Artistic Director of the Muncie Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and Director of Orchestras at Ball State University.

Droste has led dynamic performances with the MSO and has been praised for his innovative programming. He has conducted performances of Scott Routenberg’s Concerto for Jazz Violin and Orchestra featuring Christian Howes; Michael Shapiro and Victor Cheng’s Identity: Zhongshang Zhuang, Concerto for Guzheng and Orchestra featuring Su Chang; and recently commissioned Joe Deninzon’s Dream Diary: Concerto for Seven-String Electric Violin and Orchestra. Droste has also led passionate performances of traditional repertoire such as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Debussy’s La Mer, and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Believing that community engagement is critical for orchestras, Droste has helped establish new concerts such as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Concert, a Sensory Friendly concert for children with special needs, a Toddler Pops concert, and co-created/produced the popular Young People’s Concert, “Music is Science!” Droste continues to program accessible pops concerts with artists such as Time for Three, the Ball State University “Pride of Mid-America” Marching Band, and local blues/gospel singer-songwriter, Jennie DeVoe. At Ball State, Droste conducts the Ball State Symphony Orchestra (BSSO) and oversees the orchestral conducting program. The BSSO performs a diverse mix of traditional repertoire and new music. Always seeking unique collaborations, the orchestra has performed a dual performance of the Nutcracker Suites by Tchaikovsky and Duke Ellington; the first live performance of Oliver Nelson’s The Kennedy Dream since the original recording release in 1967 (both with the Ball State Jazz Ensemble); and the Langston Hughes Project: Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz with jazz pedagogue, Ron McCurdy.

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The BSSO will perform at the 2016 Indiana Music Education Association Conference.

In 2014, Droste and jazz violinist Christian Howes were invited by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine to perform and teach as part of an ongoing cultural exchange and engagement. Droste guest conducted the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra in a goodwill concert entitled “Music from the New World” and gave a conducting masterclass to young Ukrainian conductors. Other recent guest conducting includes the orchestras of Columbus, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Midland-Odessa, and the Amarillo Virtuosi, performing as violin/leader on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1. Demonstrating his versatility, Droste has conducted pops concerts with artists such as Ben Folds, The Flaming Lips, Pink Martini, Michael Cavanaugh, John Pizzarelli, and Emily Brennan.

A dedicated advocate of music education, Droste regularly conducts youth orchestras and presents in-service conference sessions throughout the country. He is active as a clinician and adjudicator for school orchestras and festivals, and is affiliated with organizations such as Yamaha, Music For All, American String Teachers Association, and Festival Disney.

A talented violinist, Droste has performed with the orchestras of Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Nashville, Memphis, Lubbock, and the Lancaster Festival (OH). He is a former student of John Gilbert and the late Michael Davis. Droste is also skilled on viola and trumpet, and has sung with a variety of choral ensembles.

Droste has held positions at Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Oklahoma Youth Symphony, Austin Peay State University, and Liberty Union-Thurston School District (OH). Droste studied conducting at the Pierre Monteux School, the Oregon Bach Festival with Helmuth Rilling, as well as at other prominent conducting seminars. His primary conducting mentors include Gary Lewis, Larry Rachleff, and Michael Jinbo. Droste holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Texas Tech University.

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MICHAEL INGERSOLL Michael Ingersoll is a Dayton, Ohio-born artist whose grounded musical style exudes the sincerity, warmth and generosity of the Rockabilly/Rhythm and Blues greats. Before rocking the American Radio Songbook classics, Michael worked as an actor on stage and screen. The multitalented musician and actor has a diverse array of critically acclaimed and award-nominated Chicago and regional theater credits, from Frost/Nixon to A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline;

from Beauty & The Beast to Cincinnati Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He made his film debut in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line and enjoyed a three year run as Nick Massi of the Four Seasons in Jersey Boys, originating the role for the first national tour. Michael is passionate about community service and is a dedicated artist advocate. He holds a BFA in Acting from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; as well as a Second Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do.

CHRISTOPHER KALE JONES Christopher Kale Jones has been singing since he was a kid in church. Before his voice changed, he sang soprano in the prestigious Iolani boys choir in his home island of Hawaii. In high school he sang in select choirs including the selective All-State Honor Choir.

In college, at Northwestern University, Chris began acting professionally, including work with Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Steppenwolf Theatre. Chris’s big break came in 2006, when he was cast in Jersey Boys as Frankie Valli for the first national tour. Other career highlights include

Mercury in Olympus On My Mind (Bristol Riverside Theatre), for which he received a Barrymore Award Nomination and Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors (Ford’s Theatre, D.C.), opposite his wife Jenna Coker-Jones. In 2013, Chris and Jenna were blessed to add their little girl, Presley Rose Jones, to their family. When not performing with Under The Streetlamp, he spends as much time as he can with them and their awesome dogs, Fender and Rocket. He is thankful to God for all the blessings in his life

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BRANDON WARDELL Brandon Wardell is the newest member of Under The Streetlamp. A native of North Carolina, Brandon is equally at home on stage, in front of a camera, in the recording studio or in the concert hall. He made his Broadway debut in James Joyce’s The Dead alongside Christopher Walken and also appeared in Thoroughly Modern Millie opposite Sutton Foster. He also performed on Broadway in the casts of Assassins with Neil Patrick Harris, Good Vibrations and Catch Me If You Can, and was featured in Rent at the Hollywood Bowl, directed by Neil Patrick Harris.

Wardell sang before a live audience of more than 1 million at the 2005 Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration and also performed on the stage of Radio City Music Hall and at the Merle Watson Festival, sharing the bill with Allison Krauss and Emmylou Harris. He is a proud member of the Broadway Inspirational Voice Choir and The Recording Academy. Also an avid producer, his work for the stage and in the recording studio has been honored with a Tony Award (he has been nominated for an additional four) and four Grammy Award nominations.

SHONN WILEY Shonn Wiley is the consummate song and dance man and a gifted choreographer. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning revival of 42nd Street. He was then asked to star in a groundbreaking production of 42nd Street in Moscow, making Shonn the first American actor to perform in an English speaking musical in Russia. Shonn later returned to the Broadway stage in Dracula, the Musical, during which time he also made his television debut on Guiding Light. He received a Lucille Lortel Award as well as a Drama Desk Award Nomination

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for Outstanding Choreography for My Vaudeville Man and was featured in the Chicago cast of Jersey Boys as Bob Gaudio.

Additional highlights include his debut as the title character in Candide at New York City Opera, costarring opposite Kristin Chenoweth in Stairway to Paradise for City Center “Encores”! and performing Sweeney Todd for Steven Sondheim. He holds a BFA in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University.

OKLAHOMA CITY PHILHARMONIC FOUNDATION PROVIDING LEADERSHIP AND ANNUAL SUPPORT The Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation was established to provide leadership and endowment expertise to help ensure a stable financial base for orchestral music and musical excellence in Oklahoma City for generations to come.

Distributions from the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation provide a meaningful and secure source of annual income for the Philharmonic’s operations, continually confirming the importance of endowment in an organization’s long-range planning and overall success.

CLASSICS 8

April 15, 2017 8:00 P.M.

CLASSICS JOEL LEVINE, CONDUCTOR

BERLIOZ..............................Roman Carnival Overture

Current officers and directors of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation are: OFFICERS

LISZT...................................Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 in F minor, S.359/1

Michael E. Joseph President Jean Ann Hartsuck Vice President

INTERMISSION

Douglas J. Stussi Treasurer Penny M. McCaleb Secretary DIRECTORS Steven C. Agee Patrick B. Alexander J. Edward Barth L. Joe Bradley Teresa Cooper Douglas R. Cummings T.A. Dearmon Paul Dudman Thomas J. Enis Misha Gorkuscha Jane B. Harlow Harrison Levy, Jr. Duke R. Ligon Michael J. Milligan Patrick J. Ryan Richard L. Sias Richard Tannenbaum

TCHAIKOVSKY......................Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

Andante—Allegro con anima Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza Valse: Allegro moderato Finale: Andante maestoso—Allegro vivace— Moderato assai e molto maestoso

THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

Text CLASSICS to 95577 to stay up to date on the latest Philharmonic info.

Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, May 17 at 8 pm and Saturday, May 20 at 8 am on “Performance Oklahoma”. Simultaneous internet streaming is also available during the broadcast.

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Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9 Hector Berlioz First performance: 11/28/1944 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 2/27/2010 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: December 11, 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France Died: March 8, 1869, in Paris, France Work composed: June 1843 through January 1844 Work premiered: February 3, 1844, with Berlioz conducting in a concert he produced himself at the Salle Herz in Paris Instrumentation: Two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, timpani, cymbals, two tambourines, triangle, and strings

The Composer Speaks The Roman Carnival Overture quickly staked a place as one of Berlioz’s most often played works, though not all performances met with the composer’s approval. Berlioz recounted in his Memoirs (as translated by David Cairns): In Austria the Roman Carnival Overture was for long the most popular of my compositions. It was played everywhere. I remember several incidents connected with it during my stay in Vienna. One evening Haslinger, the music publisher, gave a soirée at which the pieces to be performed included this overture, arranged for two pianos (eight hands) and physharmonica [a kind of harmonium]. When its turn came, I was near the door which opened onto the room where the five performers were seated. They began the first allegro much too slowly. The andante was passable; but the moment the allegro was resumed, at an even more dragging pace than before, I turned scarlet, the blood rushed to my head and, unable to contain my impatience, I shouted out, “This is the carnival, not Lent. You make it sound like Good Friday in Rome.”

The hilarity of the audience at this outburst may be imagined. It was impossible to restore silence, and the rest of the overture was performed in a buzz of laughter and conversation, amid which my five interpreters pursued their placid course imperturbably to the end.

— JMK

Hector Berlioz’ father was a physician in a town not far from Grenoble, within view of the Alps; and since the father assumed to a certainty that his son would follow in the same profession, the son’s musical inclinations were largely ignored. As a result, Berlioz never learned to play more than a few chords on the piano, and his practical abilities as a performer were limited to lessons on flute and guitar, both of which he played with some accomplishment but short of true virtuosity. His unorthodox musical background surely contributed to his nonconformist musical language.

He was sent to Paris to attend medical school, hated the experience, and enrolled instead in private musical studies and, beginning in 1826, the composition curriculum at the Paris Conservatoire. The seal of approval for all Conservatoire composition students was the Prix de Rome, and in 1830 (after

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several failed attempts) he was finally honored with that prize. Apart from providing a measure of recognition for his skills and a welcome source of income, the award included a residency in Italy, a nation whose ancient cultural lineage was considered at that time to wield an indispensable influence over the formation of the creative intellect.

The 15 months he spent in Italy proved as inspiring to Berlioz as the Prix de Rome foundation could have hoped, though the grantors were disappointed that Berlioz produced rather little serious work while he was there. Both the remnants of antiquity and the vivacity of modern Italian life left an indelible imprint on his taste, and depictions of Italian history, art, and landscape would surface often in his music during ensuing decades, as witness such famous works as the symphony Harold in Italy, the “dramatic symphony” Romeo and Juliet, and the opera Benvenuto Cellini.

To qualify as truly successful, French composers of Berlioz’ day needed to meet a second requirement apart from win-

PROGRAM NOTES ning the Prix de Rome: a hit in the opera house. Berlioz never quite managed to achieve that, although he completed three operas. Benvenuto Cellini (a two-act “opéra semi-seria,” Berlioz called it) was the first. For the plot, Berlioz and his librettists (Léon de Wally and Auguste Barbier, assisted by the poet Alfred de Vigny) went directly to the source: the autobiography of the 16th-century Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and musician. Cellini was an iconoclastic, egotistical artist, and Berlioz viewed him as a kindred Romantic soul, swept up in a rarefied world of art and ardor, a genius forever trying the limits of politics and social propriety. What’s more, they both played the flute. Benvenuto Cellini was not very successful at its 1838 premiere. It received only four performances at its initial run, though it did get a second life some years later after Berlioz effected severe revisions. In its revised form it was unveiled in Weimar on March 20, 1852, and then, with further alterations that turned it into a three-act opera, on November 17, 1852, both times with Franz Liszt at the helm.

Berlioz wrote the Roman Carnival Overture in 1843-44 as a standalone piece to be performed in a concert of his own works he was producing. He fashioned it out of music from Benvenuto Cellini, and it later served as a prelude to the second act for productions of that work. The opera’s second act is, in fact, set in a carnival in Rome. The Overture’s introductory flourish is a quotation of the saltarello—a wild dance—that would soon be enacted onstage. Then we hear music from the love duet “O Teresa, vous qui j’aime,” which had been sung in Act I by Cellini and Teresa, the girl he is courting; here it is transformed into an extended, warmhearted solo for English horn. After a passage of surging scales Berlioz quotes some choral material from the opera, and then the saltarello returns to mingle with the love aria as the overture progresses. The spirit of the dance wins out in the end, and the Overture concludes in a flurry of energy.

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 in F minor, S.359/1 Franz Liszt First performance: 3/9/1952 Conductor: Guy Fraser Harrison Last Performance: 11/10/1959 Conductor: Guy Fraser Harrison Born: October 22, 1811, in Doborján, Hungary (now Raiding, Austria) Died: July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth, Germany Work composed: In its initial form, as the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 14 for solo piano, in 1846-53; Liszt prepared the orchestral version of this work— identified as his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1—during the years 1857-60, and polished it further in October 1870 in Budapest. The composer Franz Doppler was also involved in the orchestration.

Work premiered: Not known for either version Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, ophicleide (here played by tuba CK), timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, one harp, and strings

Franz Liszt was born at the western edge of Hungary, in the village of Doborján, which would be ceded to Austria more than a century later during the partitioning of Europe after World War I. At that point the village made its German name official, and it is therefore to the town of Raiding, about four miles in from the border of Hungary in the Austrian state of Burgenland, that you will need to travel if you want to visit the little Liszt Museum founded in 1911 in the house where he was born. It is the principal attraction in a wine-producing village that even now boasts a population of fewer than a thousand souls, and it is appropriately located on Lisztstrasse, one of the town’s main thoroughfares even though it extends a mere two blocks before merging with Richard-Wagner-Strasse, linking those two figures in geography much as they were in life.

Thanks to his musical aptitude, Franz Liszt would not enter his father’s profession, which was described in official documents as ovium rationista (sheep accountant). Even after he became renowned as the world’s greatest pianist and was adopted as a mainstay of Parisian society, he made a point of playing occasional benefit concerts to highlight the plight of Hungarian revolutionaries seeking independence from Austrian domination, sometimes dusting off his traditional garb, which invariably made a hit with sympathetic audiences.

He composed a substantial body of work based on what was widely recognized then and now as le style hongrois (the Hungarian style). The music on which these were based was a step removed from “pure” folk music. By the late 18th century, ensembles organized for commercial or political purposes CONTINUED ON PAGE 54

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were regularly appearing in urban centers to give polished performances of music sprung from rustic origins. Prominent in their repertoire were pieces identified as verbunkos (originally military recruiting dances in which a slow lassú section precedes a fast friss)—and czárdás, a later entry derived from verbunkos and stylized into a pervasive presence in social dance and salon music. These quintessential “Hungarian Gypsy” sounds have a distinct modality (mostly minor-key, but with some augmented intervals thrown in for spice), swaggering rhythms, and characteristic ornamental figures. Liszt was fascinated by the whole matter, and in 1859 he penned an important book, The Gypsy in Music, that served as a basic explication of le style hongrois, even if it was informed by Romanticism more than scientific ethnomusicology.

He collected and published anthologies of “Hungarian National Melodies,” and some he developed into more extensive Hungarian Rhapsodies. Fifteen of his Hungarian Rhapsodies for solo piano reached provisional final forms in 1846-53.

The fourteenth of those is the first “final version” of the piece played in this concert. In 1857-60, Liszt made orchestral transcriptions of six of his Hungarian Rhapsodies, and when he published the group, in 1874-75, he placed the original Fourteenth at the top of the set, making it in its new context the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1.

The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 adheres to the two-part layout of the verbunkos and czárdás, opening with a brooding slow section—the lassú—marked Lento, quasi marcia funebra (Very slow, like a funeral march) and then breaking into a

A Hungarian Outpouring Wading through the seemingly endless catalogue of Liszt’s compositions one encounters title after title of explicitly Magyar compositions: Hungarian Coronation March, Hungarian Quick March, Hungarian Storm March, Hungarian Coronation Mass, Historical Hungarian Portraits, God of Hungary, the symphonic poem Hungaria, Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Melodies, Hungarian Rhapsodies, and so on. Nineteenth-century music lovers were fascinated by le style hongrois, and Magyar- or Romany-inflected compositions rolled from the pens of not only Liszt but also Beethoven (his Alla ingharese, better known by its spurious nickname Rage over a Lost Penny), Weber (his Hungarian Rondo and his Variations on a Gypsy Theme), Schubert (his Divertissement à l’hongroise), Brahms (his Hungarian Dances and his Variations on a Hungarian Song), Joseph Joachim (his Hungarian Concerto), and many other composers both famous and obscure.

— JMK

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swashbuckling friss (Allegro eroico—a heroic allegro) with a “Scotch-snap” syncopation. After an episode of volatile character, there follows a section marked Allegretto moderato alla Zingarese (Reasonably fast in the Gypsy Style). In The Gypsy in Music (which Liszt had considered publishing as the introduction to the score of his Hungarian Rhapsodies) we read: “The true Bohemian [i.e. Gypsy] masters are those who, having syncopated their theme so as to give it a slight swinging effect, restore it to the normal measure as if preparing to lead a dance; after which it appears, as it were, casting sparks in every direction by clusters of small shakes.” That perfectly describes how Liszt presents the material in his Allegretto moderato alla Zingarese, making it both embodiment and justification of what he defined through his writings and his compositions as characteristically Hungarian.

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky First performance: 1/29/1938 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 9/13/2008 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: April 25 (old style)/May 7 (new style), 1840, in Votkinsk in the district of Viatka, Russia Died: October 25/November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg, Russia Work composed: May to August 14/26, 1888, though conceptual sketches preceded his actual composition work by about a month Work premiered: November 5/17, 1888, in St. Petersburg, with the composer conducting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society; the work had already been played in a two-piano arrangement by Sergei Taneyev and Alexander Ziloti at the Nobles’ Club in Moscow, on October 25/November 6 of that year.

Instrumentation: Three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings

It should come as no surprise that Tchaikovsky approached his Fifth Symphony from a position of extreme self-doubt, since that was nearly always his posture vis-à-vis his incipient creations. In May 1888 he confessed in a letter to his brother Modest that he feared his imagination had dried up, that he had nothing more to express in music. Still, there was a glimmer of optimism: “I am hoping to collect, little by little, material for a symphony.”

Tchaikovsky spent the summer of 1888 at a vacation home he had built on a forested hillside at Frolovskoe, not far from his home base in Moscow. The idyllic locale apparently played a major role in his managing to complete this symphony in the short span of four months. Tchaikovsky made a habit of keeping his principal patron, Nadezhda von Meck, informed about his compositions through detailed letters, and thanks to this ongoing correspondence we have a good deal of information about how the Fifth Symphony progressed during that summer. Tchaikovsky had met her a dozen years earlier—well, not “met” exactly, since an eccentric stipulation of her philanthropy was that they should

PROGRAM NOTES tially late-Classical orchestra of modest proportions. The composer was quite on target about “the management of form” being his weak suit; and, indeed, the Fifth Symphony (like his very popular First Piano Concerto) may be viewed as something of a patchwork—the more so when compared to the relatively tight Fourth Symphony that had preceded it eleven years earlier. And if Tchaikovsky was embarrassed by the degree of overt sentiment he reached in the Fifth Symphony, it still fell short of the emotional frontiers he would cross in his Sixth.

“If Beethoven’s Fifth is Fate knocking at the door,” wrote a commentator when the piece was new, “Tchaikovsky’s Fifth is Fate trying to get out.” It nearly does so in a journey that threatens to culminate in a series of climactic B-major chords. But notwithstanding the frequent interruption of audience applause at that point, the adventure continues to a conclusion that is to some extent ambiguous: four closing E-major chords that we may hear as victorious but may just as easily sound ominous.

avoid any personal contact whatsoever. Tchaikovsky’s work on the symphony was already well along when he broached the subject with her in a letter on June 22: “I shall work my hardest. I am exceedingly anxious to prove to myself, as to others, that I am not played out as a composer. Have I told you that I intend to write a symphony?

The beginning was difficult, but now inspiration seems to have come. We shall see ….” His correspondence throughout that period brims with allusions to the emotional background to this piece, which involved resignation to fate, the designs of providence, murmurs of doubt, and similarly dark thoughts.

Critics blasted the symphony at its premiere, due in part to the composer’s limited skill on the podium; and yet the audience was enthusiastic. Predictably, Tchaikovsky decided the critics must be right. In December, he wrote to von Meck: “Having played my Symphony twice in Petersburg and once in Prague, I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication which the public instinctively recognizes. It was clear to me that the applause and ovations referred not to this but to other works of mine, and that the Symphony itself will never please the public.” Elsewhere he wrote of his Fifth Symphony, “The organic sequence fails, and a skillful join has to be made… . I cannot complain of lack of inventive power, but I have always suffered from want of skill in the management of form.”

These comments reveal considerable self-awareness; one might say that Tchaikovsky was wrong, but for all the right reasons. The work’s orchestral palette is indeed colorful, despite the fact that the composer employs an essen-

Listen For The Sound of Fate The four movements of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony are unified through common reference to a “motto theme,” which is announced by somber clarinets at the piece’s outset. This would seem to represent the idea of Fate to which Tchaikovsky referred in his early writings about the composition. It reappears often in this symphony, sometimes reworked considerably. It causes a brutal interruption in the middle of the slow movement (a languid elegy spotlighting the solo horn); it appears in a subdued statement by clarinets and bassoons near the end of the graceful third movement; and in the finale this “Fate” motif is transposed from the minor mode into the major in a gesture that sounds at least temporarily triumphant.

— JMK

JAMES M. KELLER James M. Keller is Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. From 1990-2000 he wrote about music on staff at The New Yorker, and in 1999 he received the prestigious ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award for his feature writing in Chamber Music magazine, which he serves as Contributing Editor.

Portions of these essays appeared in earlier forms in the programs of the New York Philharmonic (Berlioz, Tchaikovsky) and San Francisco Symphony (Liszt) and are used with permission.

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INDIVIDUALS Providing essential support for the Annual Fund.

Dr. and Mrs. William L. Beasley Mr. and Mrs. William Beck Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Benham Howard K. Berry, Jr. and Denise Berry Mr. and Mrs. John Biggs Dr. and Mrs. Philip C. Bird Mrs. Lori Dickinson Black Ms. Pamela Bloustine MAJ. GEN. William P. Bowden, Rt. Mr. and Mrs. Del Boyles Ms. Betty Bridwell Bruce and Deann Campbell J. Christopher and Ruth Carey Dr. John M. Carey Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Chambers Mrs. Anita Clark-Ashley and Mr. Charles Ashley Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements Mr. Rodney Coate and Mr. Juan Camarena Nancy Coats and Charlie Ashley Mr. and Mrs. Jack H. Coleman Dr. Thomas Coniglione Ms. Barbara Cooper Mr. John Crain Ms. Betty Crow Mr. Jim Daniel Mr. and Mrs. Mike Darrah Mr. and Mrs. Charles T. Davis Mr. and Mrs. William E. Davis Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Dearmon Mr. and Mrs. David C. DeLana Mr. and Mrs. Sidney G. Dunagan Mr. and Mrs. Joe Edwards Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Ellis Dr. and Mrs. Royice B. Everett Ms. Carolyn Frans Mr. and Mrs. Gerald L. Gamble Mrs. Linda Gardner Mr. and Mrs. Jason Garner Mr. and Mrs. Kelly George Mr. Jack Golsen Mr. and Mrs. Don Greiner Drs. Stephen and Pamela Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Royce M. Hammons Mr. William Hartwig Walt and Jean Hendrickson Mr. and Mrs. John D. Higginbotham Mr. and Mrs. Joe R. Homsey, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. J. Clifford Hudson Mr. and Mrs. Carlos Johnson Mrs. Ruth Ann Kalbfleisch Mr. Dan Kennedy and Dr. Diana Kennedy Mrs. Lou Kerr Bishop and Mrs. Ed Konieczny Dr. and Mrs. H. T. Kurkjian Mr. Scott Davis and Mr. David Leader Dr. and Mrs. Jay E. Leemaster Drs. Jason and Julie Lees

Mr. and Mrs. Duke R. Ligon Press and Susan Mahaffey Mr. and Mrs. William Matthey Mr. and Mrs. John A. McCaleb Cindy and Johnny McCharen Mr. and Mrs. Tom J. McDaniel Mr. Jeffrey McDougall Debra McKinney Bruce and Claire McLinn Mr. and Mrs. John P. McMillin Mr. and Mrs. K. T. Meade, Jr. Mrs. Deann Merritt Parham Mr. and Mrs. Stewart E. Meyers, Jr. Tom and Katherine Milam Mrs. Donna W. Miller Chip and Michelle Mullens Dr. and Mrs. Gene L. Muse Bill and Tracy Nester Mrs. Elissa Norwood Mr. J. Edward Oliver Mr. Chip Oppenheim Mr. William G. Paul Mrs. Barbara Pirrong Mr. Virgil Lee Powell Mr. and Mrs. Lynn Pringle Dr. Steven V. Richards Mrs. Carol Ricks Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Salyer Todd and Melissa Scaramucci Mr. Fred Schmitt Janet and Frank Seay Mr. and Mrs. John M. Seward Mr. and Mrs. William F. Shdeed Sharon and John Shelton Robert and Susan Shoemaker Mr. Jerrod Shouse Drs. Paul and Amalia Silverstein Dr. Richard V. and Jan Smith Rick and Amanda Smith Ms. Jane Smythe Dr. and Mrs. Brian E. Snell Mr. and Mrs. John S. Spaid Sr. Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Starling John Stuemky and James Brand Ms. Betsy Timken Drs. Richard and Betty Van Horn Robert Varnum and Sharon Varnum, LCSW Mr. Robert Weiss Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth K. Wert Mr. John S. Williams Mr. Larry Willis Robert and Lorraine Wilson Dr. James B. Wise M. Blake and Nancy Yaffe Michael and Laura Young Mr. and Mrs. Ron Youtsey

Friend $750 - $1,249 Anonymous Hugh G. and Sharon Adams Gary and Jan Allison Ms. Zonia Armstrong Ms. Patrice Aston Tom and Fran Ayres Mr. and Mrs. Van A. Barber Mrs. Gail Beals Dr. and Mrs. William G. Bernhardt Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Blumstein Don and Grace Boulton Mr. and Mrs. Gary W. Bowker Carole and Deal Bowman Dennis and Chris Box Mr. and Mrs. Bob G. Bunce Ms. Annette Clifton Joseph and Valerie Couch Dr. and Mrs. Anthony W. Czerwinski Dr. Nancy Dawson Tony and Pam Dela Vega Mr. Joel Dixon Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dugger Ms. Anna Eischen Bruce and Joanne Ewing Dr. Thurma J. Fiegel John and Sue Francis Dr. and Mrs. Ralph G. Ganick Mr. and Mrs. Nick S. Gutierrez, Jr. ,M.D. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence K. Hellman Frank and Bette Jo Hill Colonel and Mrs. Dean C. Jackson Mr. David R. Johnson Kent and Brenda Johnson Mr. and Mrs. Drake Keith Ms. Claren Kidd Mr. and Mrs. Brad Krieger Mr. and Mrs. Owen Lafferty Ms. Mary Jane Lawson Mr. Joel Levine Mr. and Mrs. Paul Lindsey Brad and Janet Marion Dr. Gary L. Massad J. Thomas and Anita R. May Ms. Vickie McIlvoy Mr. and Mrs. Stuart P. Milsten Dr. and Mrs. William L. Parry Donita and Curtis Phillips Mrs. Linda Kennedy Rosser and Mr. Ronald McDaniel Carl and Deborah Rubenstein Dr. and Mrs. Olaseinde Sawyerr Ms. Madeline E. Schooley Mrs. Mary Sherman Mr. Frank J. Sonleitner CONTINUED ON PAGE 58

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INDIVIDUALS Providing essential support for the Annual Fund.

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Partner $300 - $749 Dr. Gillian Air John and Nancy Alsup Ms. Sherry K. Barton Ms. Karen J. Beckman Mrs. Mary C. Blanton Mr. and Mrs. Morris Blumenthal Alan Booth and Debbie Kelly Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Buxton Mrs. Jo Carol Cameron Ms. Katherine Cates Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Cheek Mr. and Mrs. Ed Cunningham Dr. Shirley E. Dearborn Ms. Melinda Finley Mrs. Betty Foster Mr. and Mrs. Keith G. Golden Mr. Herbert M. Graves Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Greenberg LTC and Mrs. Walter A. Greenwood George M. and Jo Hall Carol and George Hoebing Mr. Jerome A. Holmes Lois and Roger Hornbrook Mrs. Lily R. Hummel Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Johnson Greg and Mary Joan Johnston Mr. Wes Knight Mr. Dan Little Mr. Joe A. McKenzie Ronald L. and D. Yvonne Mercer Dorman and Sheryl Morsman Larry and Deanna Pendleton Mike and Cathy Perri Mr. and Mrs. Ray H. Potts Mrs. Donald G. Preuss Dr. and Mrs. Laurance Reid Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon M. Reznik Shirley and Ben Shanker Mr. Lee Allan Smith Mr. and Mrs. Paul A. Specht Reta and Richard Strubhar

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Mrs. Evelyn Margaret Tidholm Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Towell Mr. Curtis VanWyngarden Mr. and Mrs. Albert Weise Mr. and Mrs. John White Jim and Polly Worthington

Member $100 - $299 Mrs. Joan Allmaras Ms. Beth M. Alonso Mr. and Mrs. Earl Austin Mrs. Pamela S. Bale Judy Barnett Ms. Marcia M. Bennett Ms. MarEllen Benson Mrs. Lillian Boland Harry S. and Elaine Boyd Rev. Thomas Boyer Mrs. Betty L Brady Sharlene S. Branham Ms. Kathryn Carey Mr. and Mrs. Jack Carpenter Mr. and Mrs. M. E. Carpenter Dr. and Mrs. Don R. Carter Dr. and Mrs. Douglas C. Chancellor Ms. Henrie Close Mrs. Emogene Collins Mrs. Frances Daffer Marilyn and Weldon K. Davis Ms. Carol A. Davito Mr. James DeWarns Mr. W. Samuel Dykeman Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ehlers Ms. Elizabeth K. Eickman Dr. and Mrs. Robert B. Epstein Mrs. Barbara Eskridge Irving and Sandy Faught Mike and Deb Felice Mr. and Mrs. Mead Ferguson Mr. and Mrs. John Fischer Mr. and Mrs. John E. Frank Judge and Mrs. Stephen P. Friot Mr. Hugh Gibson Mr. and Mrs. M. Charles Gilbert Pam and Gary Glyckherr Mr. Steven Graham and Ms. Vicky Leloie Kelly Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth G. Greer Mr. and Mrs. John T. Greiner, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Barre Griffith Mr. and Mrs. John Gunter Ms. Zoe Haskins Major and Mrs. John M. Heitz David and Marilyn Henderson Ms. Mary Lu Jarvis

Mr. and Mrs. L.J. Johnson Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Karchmer Mr. Bill Kemp Ms. Young Y. Kim Edith and Michael Laird Mr. Robert Leveridge David and Lynne Levy Bob and Kay Lewis Rosemary and Paul Lewis Roy and Sharon Love Mr. and Mrs. Paul J. Lutes Mr. and Mrs. Ronald M. Manning Mrs. Patricia Matthews Mrs. M. Geraldine Mayes Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth R. McAlister Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. McKown Ms. Ann McVey Lt. Col. Terry L. Mock Mr. L. E. Montgomery Mr. Cole Morgan Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Morrison David Miller and Barbara Neas Rudi Nollert and Mary Brodnax Ms. Sylvia Ochs Mr. James P. O’Gorman Mr. Robert G. Oltmanns Mrs. Mildred B. Parsons Robert and Karen Petry Dr. and Mrs. Marvin D. Peyton Mr. William Powell Roger and Joy Quinn Gary and Tommie Rankin Tom and Fran Roach Ms. Joanne M. Roan-Wismer Mr. William Robinson III Mr. Arthur J. Rus Ms. Carol Sander Hank and Anne Schank Ms. Gayle Scheirman Ms. Geraldine Schoelen Ms. Edith Nan Scott Mr. and Mrs. A. Lee Segell Fred and Carolyn Selensky Mr. Robert R. Shaw Dr. and Mrs. Richard Shifrin Mr. and Mrs. Richard Shough Mr. Robert E. Simmons Judy Smedley Mr. and Mrs. R. Emery Smiser Mr. Jay Smith Ms. Amy Sommer Tom and Venita Springfield Mrs. Joyce Statton Mr. Keith Stelting Jonathan and Andrea Stone Ms. Xiao-Hong Sun and Mr. Xiaocong Peng

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SPECIAL GIFTS Honor loved ones, celebrate occasions, recognize achievements and support the Philharmonic’s mission.

In Memory of Charles R. Bale Mrs. Pamela S. Bale In Memory of Jackson Cash Pam and Gary Glyckherr Oklahoma City Philharmonic Staff In Memory of Bill Churchill Ms. Margaret Kidd Defenderfer Paul and Debbie Fleming Pam and Gary Glyckherr Mr. and Mrs. William F. Shdeed Mrs. Jane B. Harlow Mr. and Mrs. Duke R. Ligon Mrs. Donna K. Vogel Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Wiggin In Memory of William B. & Helen P. Cleary Louise Churchill Ms. Mary Ella Kidd In Memory of James O. Edwards, Jr. Mrs. Carlene Edwards In Memory of John and Suzanne Hebert Greg and Mary Joan Johnston Im Memory of Betty Johnson Ms. Katherine Cates In Memory of Aubrey K. McClendon Pam and Gary Glyckherr Kim and Michael Joseph

In Memory of Mrs. Barbara B. Paul MAJ. GEN. William P. Bowden, Rt. Mr. and Mrs. William Frankfurt Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth G. Greer Mr. and Mrs. Royce M. Hammons Mrs. Jane B. Harlow Ms. Elinor Lottinville, Ph.D. Robert and Donna McCampbell James P. O’Gorman Mr. William Robinson III Mr. and Mrs. Leo M. Rodgers, Jr. Mr. Richard L. Sias Lee Allan Smith Ms. Amy Sommer Phyllis Stough and Family Duke and Jill Thomas Kent and Sally Trentman Mrs. Donna K. Vogel Mrs. Anne Workman Carolyn and Don Zachritz BancFirst Trust Department In Memory of John Vincent and Josephine Perri Mike and Cath Perri In Memory of Grace Ryan Sharlene S. Branham Colonel and Mrs. Dean C. Jackson Sue F. Pike Mrs. Donna K. Vogel In Memory of Earl Statton Mrs. Joyce Statton In Memory of Eileen Stephenson Mrs. Barbara Hahn

ORCHESTRA LEAGUE UPDATE 2017 SYMPHONY SHOW HOUSE

Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my! Dinosaurs, firefighters and military artifacts, too! The Oklahoma City Orchestra League is proud to announce the 2017 Symphony Show House will open its doors from May 6-21, 2017.

Located in the heart of the OKC Adventure District, this incredible house is a short walk from the OKC Zoo, Remington Park Racing and Casino, Lincoln Park golf and five nearby museums. Originally built in 2007, the nearly 10,000 square foot home has been remodeled and expanded to include seven bedrooms, seven and a half bathrooms and two kitchens. With a generous media room, two fire pits and a stunning indoor pool and cabana, one need not leave the property to experience their own adventures! The Show House is located on more than two wooded acres adjacent to the beautiful Lightning Creek—and is a hop, skip and jump from anywhere in the metro. It is located at 4808 Rose Rock Drive, off of Grand Boulevard between NE 36th and NE 50th Street. Local designers will soon transform this home into a magical place to visit and inspire ideas for your own home.

Opening the doors to architectural gems and prestigious addresses for 43 years, the Oklahoma City Orchestra League’s Symphony Show House is widely considered Oklahoma’s premier annual show house event. Whether starting with the blank canvas of a new home or the character of a historic manor, the region’s top designers transform homes into the unexpected. But, more than just a home tour, Symphony Show House is a vital source of charitable fundraising. Since its founding in 1949, the Orchestra League has contributed almost $5 million to the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and brought the joy of music to around 2 million children and adults through its education programs.

Businesses, organizations and individuals can reach both marketing and philanthropic goals through a variety of Symphony Show House support opportunities. To advertise, sponsor, get tickets, or for more information, contact the Oklahoma City Orchestra League at (405) 601-4245 or execdir@okcorchestraleague.org or visit okcorchestraleague.org.

Show House Chair - Mary Blankenship Pointer OKC Orchestra League President - Julia Hunt OKC Orchestra League Public Relations - Joan Bryant

For membership application visit www.okcorchestraleague.org Check out our twitter and facebook locations : www.twitter.com/orchestraleague I www.facebook.com/orchestraleague Contact us at: 405.601.4245 or admin@okcorchestraleague.org

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HOUSE NOTES

RESTROOMS are conveniently located on all levels of the theater. Please ask your usher for guidance.

LATECOMERS and those who exit the theater during the performance will be seated at intermission or during the first convenient pause as determined by the management.

ELECTRONIC DEVICES must be turned off and put away before entering the theater (no calling, texting, photo or video use please). Cameras, recording devices and food are not permitted inside the theater.

FOOD AND BEVERAGES: Bottled water is permitted in the theater at the Classics Series concerts. Beverages are permitted in the theater at the Pops Series concerts; however, bringing coffee into the theater is discouraged due to the aroma.

Snacks, drinks and desserts are available at the Civic Center CafĂŠ and snack bar on the main floor.

SMOKING in the Civic Center Music Hall is prohibited. The Oklahoma City Philharmonic promotes a fragrance-free environment for the convenience of our patrons.

FIRE EXITS are located on all levels and marked accordingly. Please note the nearest exit for use in case of an emergency.

ELEVATORS are located at the south end of the atrium of the Civic Center Music Hall.

CHILDREN of all ages are welcome at the Philharmonic Discovery Family Series and Holiday Pops performances; however, in consideration of the patrons, musicians and artists, those under five years of age will not be admitted to evening Classics and Pops concerts unless otherwise noted.

BOOSTER SEATS for children are available in the Civic Center event office. Please inquire at the ticket office.

COLLEGE STUDENT RUSH TICKETS are $6 each and available with a college or university I.D. and email address at the box office 45 minutes prior to the start of each Philharmonic performance. Tickets are offered based on availability only and seats are located throughout the theater.

VIDEO MONITORS are located in the lobby for your convenience.

WHEELCHAIR AVAILABLE SEATING: Persons using wheelchairs or with walking and climbing difficulties will be accommodated when possible. Those wishing to use the designated wheelchair sections may purchase the wheelchair space and a companion seat. Please inform the Philharmonic Ticket Office staff of your need when ordering tickets so that you may be served promptly and appropriately.

Please request the assistance of hall ushers to access wheelchair seating.

LOST & FOUND is located in the Civic Center Office (405-297-2584) weekdays 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

PHILHARMONIC TICKET OFFICE may be contacted by calling 405-TIC-KETS (405-842-5387) or you can visit the Philharmonic Ticket Office located on the first floor of the Arts District Garage at 424 Colcord Drive in Suite B. The Philharmonic Ticket Office is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and concert Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

CIVIC CENTER TICKET OFFICE hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and two hours prior to each performance. (405-297-2264) Programs and Artists are subject to change without notification.