JULY 27- AUGUST 13, 2022
To our friends, our family, our community and our heroes—thank you for your continued support!
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New York City Ballet (NYCB) principaldancerSterlingHyltin ispreparingforherbittersweet final Saratoga performance— she’s sad to be saying goodbyebutthrilledthatshe’llbedancing in George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as her last SPAC show beforeretiringnextyear.“It’ssuchalovely waytosaygoodbye,”shesays.“Theballet is approachable for
lightningbugsdancingonstage.” WhenHyltinstartedcomingtoSaratoga
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JamesE.Hacker
JohnF.Harwick
PatrickL.Seely,Jr.
MeghanR.Keenholts
ThomasJ.Higgs
DavidI.Iversen RandolphF.Treece
JulieA.Nociolo RosemaryW.McKenna
DavidR.Murphy BenjaminF.Neidl
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Music fills the air again and we’re all so happy we could burst into song.
As long-time supporters of the performing arts in the Capital Region, we’re thrilled that live music and world-class ballet are bringing us back together. Bravo!
Dear Friends,
It is thrilling to welcome you back for our 2022 season! This summer marks the full return of SPAC—Renewed and Rejuvenated. Much like our Karner Blue Butterflies, we are re-emerging glorious and beautiful after being cocooned for so long.
For those of you joining us for the first time since 2019, we are proud to showcase our major campus transformation represented by The Pines that includes the Nancy DiCresce Room, a state-of-the-art indoor facility for education and community events; The Pines Terrace, with its breathtaking views from the Route 50 Gate all the way to the Victoria Pool, and the Julie Bonacio Family Pavilion in the heart of our campus.
This year, we also welcome New York City Ballet back to the stage with a brand-new dance floor and a brand-new house curtain, both replacing ones that were several decades old. And we have brand-new chairs and stands, which we've dreamed of owning for decades, for our fabulous Philadelphia Orchestra. We’ve also improved the auditory experience by installing new sound equipment and an assisted listening system in the amphitheater. These are just a few ways in which we are continuing to modernize the venue for the future and enhance the experience at SPAC for you and our artists.
On our stage, we will bring the strongest classical line-up ever presented with a mix of tradition and innovation, emerging and super-star artists, an unprecedented number of SPAC premieres and co-commissions, as well as a truly game-changing season celebrating diversity. This is all in addition to our newly introduced initiatives in the culinary, literary, visual, and healing arts, and the recent launch of SPAC’s School of the Arts.
Thank you for joining us for a spectacular summer at SPAC.
Elizabeth Sobol President and CEO
Dear SPAC supporters,
Welcome and thank you for making the 2022 season a time of celebration. After a challenging two years navigating the pandemic, we would like you to know that it is your loyal support that keeps SPAC strong and thriving.
Under Elizabeth Sobol’s extraordinary leadership as President and CEO, SPAC has completed major facility renovations and upgrades, expanded year-round programming, increased collaborations with numerous arts groups and renewed emphasis on community outreach. In short, we have become a cultural destination which will have economic benefits for the community at large.
One of the most exciting areas of growth and a personal passion of mine is education. In previous years, we have talked about the extraordinary expansion of SPAC’s education program, which has grown from serving 5,000 students to more than 50,000 individuals throughout the Capital Region. That investment and growth took another momentous leap last fall when we launched the brand-new SPAC School of the Arts at the Lewis A. Swyer Studios. The new School of the Arts, which just completed its first school year, is part of SPAC’s longstanding mission to ensure that students of all ages have the opportunity to experience the transformative power of the arts in a welcoming and joyful environment.
Please come early and enjoy the total SPAC experience; your attendance and support is key to our success.
With appreciation,
Susan Law Dake Chair SPAC Board of Directors
Nothing brings together a community like food… particularly in gorgeous gathering places that foster deep connections: to one another, to the arts, to nature, and the planet.
CulinaryArts@SPAC is a food-and-drink-forward series that offers culinary experiences with an emphasis on sustainability.
Featuring the talents of both local and visiting chefs who partner with farmers, butchers, distillers and purveyors, CulinaryArts@SPAC supports the notion of socially conscious cultivation & consumption, local procurement, and fair wages.
Partnering with SPAC to program and produce the events is Kim Klopstock, owner and operator of Lily and the Rose Catering and food writer Pam Abrams.
ANGELO G. CALBONE President & CEO, Saratoga Hospital
Host intimate and large-scale gatherings, including business meetings, company outings, life events, milestone celebrations, and more!
DiCresce Room
The Julie Bonacio Family Pavilion
Take your event to the heart of the campus under the open-air pavilion, a versatile space offering a wide variety of options from a simple covered reception area to an elegant event space.
SPAC’s newly renovated campus boasts two unique rental spaces including The Pines@SPAC which features both the Nancy DiCresce Room and The Pines Terrace, in addition to the Julie Bonacio Family Pavilion.
The Pines@SPAC
Welcome your guests to the Nancy DiCresce Room, a state-of-the-art indoor multi-purpose room, and The Pines Terrace, an impressive second floor balcony overlooking SPAC’s iconic amphitheater.
or contact
As a 501c3 non-profit, your SPAC membership gift is vital to the success of our classical residencies and educational programs.
Join or renew today to lock in 2022 rates and help make SPAC’s work on stage and in our community possible!
You’ll receive exclusive access and attractive benefits to make every visit to SPAC memorable.
Membership benefit highlights include:
• Invitations to special member-only events
• Early ticket access and discounts
• VIP Parking
• Live Nation concert ticket access
• Behind-the-scenes rehearsal access for New York City Ballet and The Philadelphia Orchestra
• Patrons’ Club Dining and Patrons’ Patio access for pre-performance refreshments
• The Pines Terrace access for SPAC shows with its breathtaking views of our entire campus and amphitheater for President’s Circle donors
Membership benefits vary based on level of giving
Interested in becoming an ambassador for SPAC?
Join The SPAC Action Council or Friends of SPAC today
The SPAC Action Council was established in 1977 by SPAC founders Philly Dake and Jane Wait. The Action Council serves as a community of ambassadors to SPAC, supporting its cultural mission, membership, events and programming by broadening awareness and promoting development.
The Friends of SPAC Committee (formerly SPAC Junior Committee) is comprised of arts-loving volunteers. As ambassadors, the committee promotes SPAC membership at all levels. The committee connects young people with world-class arts events and education, ensuring the vitality of SPAC and the arts. Activities include community outreach and fundraising that support SPAC’s mission.
Visit “Join & Support” at spac.org for more information today!
The SPAC Action Council presents: SPAC in Conversation: Sylvie Bigar
Saratoga Dermatology specializes in Dermatologic Surgery including Mohs surgery, cosmetic enhancements such as Botox, fillers, lasers and peels, and the diagnosis and treatment of skin diseases: skin cancers, acne, warts, rosacea, psoriasis, rashes.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, SPAC depends on the generous support of members, corporate and institutional partners, and philanthropic gifts.
Your annual membership gifts help support our beloved residencies, year-round programming, newly introduced initiatives in the culinary, literary, visual, and healing arts, and the recent launch of SPAC School of the Arts.
Thank you for the essential role you play in serving our community.
Our list of 2022 donors can be found by scanning the QR Code below.
The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the world’s preeminent orchestras. It strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust educational initiatives, and an ongoing commitment to the communities that it serves, the ensemble is on a path to create an expansive future for classical music, and to further the place of the arts in an open and democratic society.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now in his 10th season as the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the community.
Your Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, from Verizon Hall to community centers, the Mann Center to Penn’s Landing, classrooms to hospitals, and over the airwaves and online.
In March 2020, in response to the cancellation of concerts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orchestra launched the Virtual Philadelphia Orchestra, a portal hosting video and audio of performances for free on its website and social media platforms. In September 2020 the Orchestra announced Our World NOW, its reimagined season of concerts filmed without audiences and presented on its Digital Stage. The Orchestra also inaugurated free offerings: HearTOGETHER, a series on racial and social justice; educational activities; and Our City, Your Orchestra, small ensemble performances from locations throughout the Philadelphia region.
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s award-winning educational and community initiatives engage over 50,000 students, families, and community members of all ages through programs such as PlayINs, side-by-sides, PopUP concerts, Free Neighborhood Concerts, School Concerts, the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program, and All City Orchestra Fellowships.
Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador. It performs annually at Carnegie Hall, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The Orchestra also has a rich touring history, having first performed outside Philadelphia in its earliest days. In 1973 it was the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China, launching a five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.
The Orchestra also makes live recordings available on popular digital music services. Under Yannick’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording, with 10 celebrated releases on the Deutsche Grammophon label, including the GRAMMY Award–winning Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For more information, please visit www.philorch.org.
FIRST VIOLINS
David Kim, Concertmaster
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Music Director
Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair
Nathalie Stutzmann
Principal Guest Conductor
Ralph and Beth Johnston Muller Chair
Gabriela Lena Frank Composer-in-Residence
Erina Yashima
Assistant Conductor
Lina Gonzalez-Granados
Conducting Fellow
Charlotte Blake Alston Storyteller, Narrator, and Host
Frederick R. Haas
Artistic Advisor
Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience
Juliette Kang, First Associate Concertmaster
Joseph and Marie Field Chair
Christine Lim, Associate Concertmaster
Marc Rovetti, Assistant Concertmaster
Barbara Govatos
Robert E. Mortensen Chair
Jonathan Beiler
Hirono Oka
Richard Amoroso
Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair
Yayoi Numazawa
Jason DePue
Larry A. Grika Chair
Jennifer Haas
Miyo Curnow
Elina Kalendarova
Daniel Han
Julia Li
William Polk
Mei Ching Huang
SECOND VIOLINS
Kimberly Fisher, Principal
Peter A. Benoliel Chair
Paul Roby, Associate Principal
Sandra and David Marshall Chair
Dara Morales, Assistant Principal
Anne M. Buxton Chair
Philip Kates
Davyd Booth
Paul Arnold
Joseph Brodo Chair, given by Peter A. Benoliel
Boris Balter
Amy Oshiro-Morales
Yu-Ting Chen
Jeoung-Yin Kim
VIOLAS
Choong-Jin Chang, Principal
Ruth and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Chair
Kirsten Johnson, Associate Principal
Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal
Judy Geist
Renard Edwards
Anna Marie Ahn Petersen
Piasecki Family Chair
David Nicastro
Burchard Tang
Che-Hung Chen
Rachel Ku
Marvin Moon
Meng Wang
CELLOS
Hai-Ye Ni, Principal
Priscilla Lee, Associate Principal
Yumi Kendall, Assistant Principal
Elaine Woo Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Chair
Richard Harlow
Gloria dePasquale
Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair
Kathryn Picht Read
Robert Cafaro
Volunteer Committees Chair
Ohad Bar-David
John Koen
Derek Barnes
Alex Veltman
BASSES
Harold Robinson, Principal
Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair
Joseph Conyers, Acting Associate Principal
Tobey and Mark Dichter Chair
Nathaniel West, Acting Assistant Principal
David Fay
Duane Rosengard
Some members of the string sections voluntarily rotate seating on a periodic basis.
FLUTES
Jeffrey Khaner, Principal
Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair
Patrick Williams, Associate Principal
Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair
Olivia Staton
Erica Peel, Piccolo
OBOES
Philippe Tondre, Principal
Samuel S. Fels Chair
Peter Smith, Associate Principal
Jonathan Blumenfeld
Edwin Tuttle Chair
Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, English Horn
Joanne T. Greenspun Chair
CLARINETS
Ricardo Morales, Principal
Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair
Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal
Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair
Socrates Villegas
Paul R. Demers, Bass Clarinet
Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Joseph Chair
BASSOONS
Daniel Matsukawa, Principal
Richard M. Klein Chair
Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal
Angela Anderson Smith
Holly Blake, Contrabassoon
HORNS
Jennifer Montone, Principal
Gray Charitable Trust Chair
Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal
Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Chair
Christopher Dwyer
Ernesto Tovar Torres
Shelley Showers
TRUMPETS
David Bilger, Principal
Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair
Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal
Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair
Anthony Prisk
TROMBONES
Nitzan Haroz, Principal
Neubauer Family Foundation Chair
Matthew Vaughn, Co-Principal
Blair Bollinger, Bass Trombone
Drs. Bong and Mi Wha Lee Chair
TUBA
Carol Jantsch, Principal
Lyn and George M. Ross Chair
TIMPANI
Don S. Liuzzi, Principal
Dwight V. Dowley Chair
Angela Zator Nelson, Associate Principal
PERCUSSION
Christopher Deviney, Principal
Angela Zator Nelson
PIANO AND CELESTA
Kiyoko Takeuti
KEYBOARDS
Davyd Booth
HARP
Elizabeth Hainen, Principal
LIBRARIANS
Nicole Jordan, Principal
Steven K. Glanzmann, Associate Principal
STAGE PERSONNEL
James J. Sweeney, Jr., Manager
Dennis Moore, Jr.
Francis “Chip” O’Shea
ERINA YASHIMA
Conductor
BALLETX
CHRISTINE COX
Artistic & Executive Director
SHOSTAKOVICH
Festive Overture, Op. 96
COLEMAN
Umoja, Anthem for Unity, for orchestra
The Tiler Peck co-commission with BalletX is sponsored by Neal Krouse.
Umoja
Choreography by Tiler Peck
Music by Valerie Coleman
Costume Design by Martha Chamberlain
Lighting Design by Michael Korsch
Featuring: Shawn Cusseaux, Jonah Delgado, Francesca Forcella, Savannah Green, Zachary Kapeluck, Jared Kelly, Skyler Lubin, Ben Schwarz, Ashley Simpson, Andrea Yorita
INTERMISSION
TCHAIKOVSKY
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
I. Andante sostenuto—Moderato con anima
II. Andantino in modo di canzona—Più mosso—Tempo I
III. Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato (Allegro—Meno mosso—Tempo I)
IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco—Andante—Tempo I
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
Composed in 1954
Born in St. Petersburg, September 25, 1906
Died in Moscow, August 9, 1975
Even the greatest and most conscientious of composers are often forced to allow their creative inspiration to be guided by occasion, commission, or political circumstance. We know Shostakovich best for his big, momentous symphonies, which are often said to be a profo und and veiled history of 20th-century Russia. But he had a lighter side, too. When asked to compose a piece to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution, he responded
with a bright, splashy, and quintessentially “Russian” piece he called Overture Festivo. A worthy successor to the bustling works in this genre by Glinka, Prokofiev, or Kabalevsky, the Festive Overture received its premiere in November 1954 with Alexander Melik-Pashayev and the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra. It begins with a fanfare (allegretto), which gives way to a main presto section that is direct and thrilling, with enough color and splendor to justify its festive origins.
—Paul J. Horsley
Composed for women’s choir in 1997, arranged for wind quintet in 1999 and for full orchestra in 2019
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1970
Now living in New York City
Originally a simple song arranged for women’s choir, Valerie Coleman’s Umoja is joyful. Umoja means “unity” in Swahili. It is the first principle of the African Diaspora holiday Kwanzaa and represents family, community, and harmonious living captured in the African proverb “I AM because WE ARE.” Coleman reflects, “The work embodies a sense of ‘tribal unity’ through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional ‘call and response’ form, and the repetition of a memorable sing-song melody.” In 1999 she rearranged the piece for woodwind quintet for her chamber music group Imani Winds, “with the intent of providing an anthem that celebrated the diverse heritages of the ensemble itself.”
Umoja is a word that applies to Coleman’s vision of classical music: “We have the opportunity to let people know that classical music is an all-inclusive thing.”
Coleman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1970. Her mother introduced her to classical music while she was still in the womb. Coleman recounts, “She would play Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony … to me all the time. And so that’s how it all began.” A precocious child, Coleman started notating music in elementary school. She began formal musical studies at the age of 11 and by the age of 14 had composed three complete symphonies. In high school she earned the opportunity to study flute and composition at Tanglewood, later receiving a double degree in composition/theory and flute performance at Boston University. She moved to New York City, where she received a
master’s in flute performance from the Mannes College of Music and founded Imani Winds. In 2002 Chamber Music America selected Umoja as one of its “Top 101 Great American Works.”
In her orchestral version of Umoja, which was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and received its world premiere in 2019, Coleman expands on the short and sweet melody.
She writes:
It begins with sustained ethereal passages that float and shift from a bowed vibraphone, supporting the introduction of the melody by solo violin. Here the melody is a sweetly singing in its simplest form, with an earnest reminiscent of Appalachian style music. From there, the melody dances and weaves throughout the instrument families, interrupted by dissonant viewpoints led by the brass and percussion sections, which represent the clash of injustices, racism, and hate that threatens to gain a foothold in the world today. Spiky textures turn into an aggressive exchange between upper woodwinds and percussion, before a return to the melody as a gentle reminder of kindness and humanity. Through the brass-led ensemble tutti, the journey ends with a bold call of unity that harkens back to the original anthem.
Umoja has many versions, which Coleman characterizes as “like siblings to one another,” each with a unique voice that is informed by her ever-evolving perspective. For the composer “this version honors the simple melody that ever was but is now a full exploration into the meaning of freedom and unity. Now more than ever, Umoja has to ring as a strong and beautiful anthem for the world we live in today.”
—Aaron Beck
Choreographer Tiler Peck has provided the following:
I am beyond thrilled that SPAC, a second home to me as a dancer with the New York City Ballet, will be presenting a choreographic work of mine for the first time. I have so enjoyed expressing myself as a dancer with the Saratoga audiences and cannot wait to extend that expression into choreography. The collaboration between Valerie Coleman’s Umoja and the amazing company BalletX was very meaningful for me to work on. Umoja is the Swahili word for “unity” and that is exactly what I want the dancers and audience to feel as they dance and watch it. After a long period of isolation, nothing seems more appropriate than presenting the umoja that is so essential to our human existence.
Composed in 1877
Born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840
Died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893
The year 1877 proved a fateful one for Tchaikovsky. He was at the peak of his powers as a composer: In this single year, he completed virtually all of his opera Eugene Onegin and wrote most of his masterful Fourth Symphony. The success of that work is all the more remarkable if viewed against the chaos of the composer’s private life. Partly to please his father and partly to quiet gossip about his homosexuality, Tchaikovsky made the disastrous decision to marry Antonina Ivanova Milyukova. Predictably, the marriage was a fiasco.
Earlier that year, however, Tchaikovsky had begun a platonic epistolary relationship with the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck, who became his patron. She supported Tchaikovsky morally and financially in his decision to spend a lengthy period recuperating in Italy and Switzerland following the total collapse of his marriage. In return he dedicated the Symphony to “My Best Friend,” Madame von Meck. On March 1, 1878, Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck in response to her question about whether or not there was an explicit narrative imbedded in the Fourth Symphony: “In our symphony there is a program (that is, the possibility of explaining in words what it seeks to express), and to you and you alone I can and wish to indicate the meaning of both the work as a whole, and of its individual parts.”
Tchaikovsky identified the imperious opening fanfare as “the kernel of the whole symphony,” declaring, “This is Fate.” This Fate motif is used throughout the work With this programmatic description, Tchaikovsky neatly lays out the basic elements of the exposition of a taut adaptation of sonata form: a descending main theme, a contrasting waltz-like melody as the second subject, and a codetta. The development section begins with a restatement of the Fate motif, and the recapitulation is announced by the same dark fanfare.
The second movement has a three-part form: The opening folk-like melody is played by the oboe and returns after a contrasting central section. The Scherzo is a brilliant tour-de-force in which the strings play pizzicato throughout. About the fourth movement Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck, “If you can find no impulse
for joy within yourself, look to others. Go among the people. See how well they know how to be happy.” In the finale, Tchaikovsky introduces two contrasting melodies that are varied through changes in orchestration and harmony, and that always recur in the order of their first appearance. The first theme features rushing strings and exuberant rhythms, while the more subdued second melody is the Russian folksong “In the Field Stood a Birch Tree.” At the climax, the Fate motif returns ominously, but the darkness is banished by the spirited coda in which the two main themes hurtle toward an exhilarating close.
—Byron Adams
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Aaron Beck.
Erina Yashima began her tenure as assistant conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra in September 2019 and in fall 2022 becomes first Kapellmeister at the Komische Oper Berlin. She has performed all over the world with acclaimed ensembles and orchestras. Highlights of her 2021–22 season included her
debuts with the Seoul Philharmonic, the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the Orchestra della Toscana, the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal, and the Albany and Eugene symphonies. She conducted a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte in her debut with Washington National Opera and a production of Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach.
Ms. Yashima has been studying with Riccardo Muti since 2015. As winner of the Chicago Symphony’s Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship, she has assisted Mr. Muti and worked closely with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. As one of three finalists in the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, she performed with the Camerata Salzburg at the Salzburg Festival in 2018. In November of the same year she was assistant conductor to Zubin Mehta and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. Ms. Yashima began her musical studies at the Institute for the Early Advancement of the Musically Highly Gifted in her hometown of Hannover, where she received her first conducting lessons at the age of 14. After studying in Freiburg and Vienna, she completed her studies at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.
BalletX, Philadelphia’s premier contemporary ballet company, commissions choreographers from around the world to create original choreography that expands the vocabulary of classical dance for all audiences. Founded in
2005 by Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan, BalletX has premiered more than 100 ballets by 60 choreographers. The company reaches a broad audience nationwide through performance seasons at the Wilma Theater, free Pop-ups across Philadelphia, and extensive touring to the Vail Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, New York City Center, Laguna Dance Festival, Bermuda Festival, Belgrade Festival, and others. BalletX has reached more than 2,000 Philadelphia public school students through its in-school dance education program, Dance eXchange. Tonight’s performance marks the company’s Philadelphia Orchestra debut.
BalletX’s distinctive contribution to the American dance community has been recognized and supported in recent years by generous grants from the William Penn Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, the Shubert Foundation, the Jerome Robbins New Essential Works (NEW) Program, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and PECO, among many others. Learn more at BalletX.org
Artistic & Executive Director: Christine Cox
Associate Artistic Director: Tara Keating
Production & Stage Manager: Jason Pizzi
Production Coordinator: Kereni Sanchez
Associate Director of Operations: Megan O’Donnell
Development Manager: James Ihde
Communications Manager: Shannon Hennessey
Administrative Coordinator: Emily Bernard
ERINA YASHIMA Conductor
TIME FOR THREE
Nicolas Kendall
Violin and Vocals
Charles Yang
Violin and Vocals
Ranaan Meyer
Bass and Vocals
MAZZOLI
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
PUTS
Contact, Concerto for Two Violins, Bass, and Orchestra
I. The Call
II. Codes (Scherzo)
III. Contact
IV. Convivium
Saratoga Performing Arts Center co-commission—First Philadelphia Orchestra performance
INTERMISSION
DVOŘÁK
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 (“From the New World”)
I. Adagio—Allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Scherzo: Molto vivace
IV. Allegro con fuoco—Meno mosso e maestoso—Un poco meno mosso—Allegro con fuoco
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
Composed in 2013 for chamber orchestra; expanded for full orchestra in 2016
MISSY MAZZOLI
Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, October 27, 1980
Now living in Brooklyn, New York
When one first hears about an unfamiliar composer a natural response is to ask, in a kind of shorthand, what his or her music sounds like. Answers often begin with the names of other composers, past and present. This proves rather more difficult to do concerning Missy Mazzoli, whose music escapes easy classification. At least in this regard, her music may be allied with that of many composers who seek to merge various traditions, styles, and genres to create their own musical language.
Despite the eclecticism of Mazzoli’s compositions, activities, and collaborations, her training is firmly in the Western classical tradition of notated music. She studied at Boston University, Yale School of Music, and Royal Conservatory of the Hague. Her catalog of works includes a wide range of chamber, orchestral, and theatrical compositions. She has received particular attention for her operas, leading to a current project of being one of the first two women commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for a new work, which will be based on the novel Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.
Mazzoli composed the original chamber orchestra version of Sinfonia on a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which premiered it with John Adams conducting in 2014. The expanded version for full orchestra that we hear tonight was unveiled two years later by the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra.
In her note on the piece Mazzoli explains that it is "music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit. The word ‘sinfonia’ refers to Baroque works for chamber orchestra but also to the old Italian term for a hurdy-gurdy, a medieval stringed instrument with constant, wheezing drones that are cranked out under melodies played on an attached keyboard. It’s a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed, in the process transforming the ensemble into a makeshift hurdy-gurdy, flung recklessly into space.”
—Christopher H. Gibbs
Composed from 2020 to 2021
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, January 3, 1972 Now living in Yonkers, New York
Already with his debut opera Silent Night, performed at Minnesota Opera in 2011, Kevin Puts was hailed as one of America’s most significant composers. Subsequent scores, including orchestral works, chamber music, and numerous concertos for various solo instruments, have continued to impress with sophisticated lyricism, masterful orchestration, intricate detail, and heightened emotional impact. His most recent opera, inspired by Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours and the subsequent film, and set to a libretto by Greg Pierce, was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, and had its premiere in concert version by the Philadelphians this past March.
Puts was born in St. Louis but was raised mostly in tiny Alma, Michigan, where his father was a mathematics professor and his mother an English teacher. He received both his bachelor’s degree and his Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music, and his master’s from Yale University. He has received a Barlow Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was composer in residence for Young Concert Artists and the Fort Worth Symphony, and he has served on the faculties of the University of Texas at Austin and the Peabody Institute. Currently he is director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer’s Institute.
The composer has written the following about Contact:
In April 2017 I heard the prodigiously gifted Time for Three perform at Joe’s Pub in New York City, having recently been contacted about possibly writing a concerto for them. After hearing them play, sing, improvise, and perform their own arrangements and compositions, I felt elated by the infectious energy and unbridled joy they exude as a trio. However, it also seemed our musical tastes were so similar that I couldn’t imagine conceiving any music that they couldn’t improvise themselves!
Contact, a concerto in four movements, begins with Time for Three singing a wordless refrain. The piece’s four movements—“The Call,” “Codes,” “Contact,” and “Convivium”— tell a story that I hope transcends abstract musical expression. Could the refrain at the opening of the concerto be a message from Earth, sent into space? Could the Morse code-like rhythms of the scherzo suggest radio transmissions, wave signals, etc.? The word “contact” has gained new resonance during these years of isolation, and it is my hope that our concerto will be heard as an expression of yearning for this fundamental human need. I am deeply grateful to Time for Three for their belief in my work and for their tireless collaborative spirit, which allowed us to develop this showcase for their immense talents.
SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN E MINOR, OP. 95
(“FROM THE NEW WORLD”)
Composed in 1893
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841
Died in Prague, May 1, 1904
Antonín Dvořák spent two and a half years in America beginning in September 1892. He came at the invitation of Jeannette Thurber, who made such a lucrative offer to become director of the National Conservatory of Music of America that he felt he could not turn it down. He spent the academic year in New York City and during the summer of 1893 traveled to Spillville, Iowa, which boasted a large Czech community.
The Symphony in E minor was the first in a series of important works Dvořák wrote in America. Composing such substantial music was one of the reasons Thurber sought out Dvořák in the first place. She was interested not only in finding someone to lead the National Conservatory, but also in a figure who could make a lasting contribution to the enhancement of American musical life.
Anton Seidl led the premiere with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on December 15 and 16, 1893. Dvořák recounted that “the newspapers are saying that no composer has ever had such a triumph.” One prominent critic declared it “the greatest symphony ever composed in this country.” Some of the reviewers raised the issue of writing a distinctively American symphony, commented
on the mood of the work, and noted its use of indigenous sources.
Dvořák had indeed been influenced by his surroundings and his exposure to a new culture and its music. He also called upon American musical resources. He read an article that included musical examples of spirituals and heard some sung by a Black student at the National Conservatory. He also discussed the influence of music by Native Americans.
The four-movement Symphony begins with a mournful introduction that builds to an Allegro molto initiated by a prominent horn theme. The recycling of themes between and among movements is one of the features of the Symphony, leading to a parade of them in the fourth movement finale. The second theme is given by the flute and bears some resemblance to the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The well-known English horn solo that opens the second movement is not an actual spiritual, although through Dvořák’s invention it has in some ways become one—a student of his, William Arms Fisher, provided words for it in the 1920s as “Goin’ Home.” The scherzo opens with a passage that harkens back to the scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The finale provides a grand conclusion in its propulsive energy and review of themes from the previous movements.
—Christopher H. Gibbs
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Kevin Puts.
See Erina Yashima’s biography on page 31.
Time for Three stands at the intersection of classical music, Americana, and singer-songwriter. Bonded by an uncommon blend of their instruments fused together with their voices, Nicolas “Nick” Kendall (violin, vocals), Charles Yang (violin, vocals), and Ranaan Meyer (double bass, vocals) are renowned for their charismatic and energetic performances, thrilling audiences at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Royal Albert Hall, Joe’s Pub in New York, and Yoshi’s in San Francisco. They have been soloists with such ensembles as The Philadelphia and BBC Concert orchestras; the National, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Sydney symphonies; and the Czech and Hong Kong philharmonics.
Time for Three
7:30PM
The group won an Emmy for “Time for Three in Concert,” produced by PBS. They recently partnered with cellist/composer Ben Sollee on the soundtrack to the new film Land, starring and directed by Robin Wright, and have teamed up with songwriter Liz Rose and producer Femke Weidema for recordings released through Warner Music. Time for Three has premiered works commissioned for them including concertos by Pulitzer Prize–winners William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, and Kevin Puts, as well as Chris Brubeck. Contact by Mr. Puts and Concerto 4-3 by Ms. Higdon are featured on Time for Three’s Letters for the Future, recently released on the Deutsche Grammophon label with The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Xian Zhang.
MICHAEL STERN
Conductor
LARISA MARTINEZ
Soprano
JOSHUA BELL
Violin
BERLIOZ
Overture to Beatrice and Benedict
MENDELSSOHN/arr. Stephenson
“Ah, ritorna, età dellʼoro” (cavatina and cabaletta), from Infelice, Op. 94
DVOŘÁK/arr. Kreisler and Stephenson “Songs My Mother Taught Me”
DELIBES
“Les Filles de Cadix”
MASCAGNI
Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana
SARASATE/arr. Stephenson “Habanera,” from Carmen Fantasy
INTERMISSION
VERDI
Overture to Nabucco
HÉROLD
“Jours de mon enfance,” from Le Pré aux clercs
CHOPIN/arr. Bell and Wallace Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, for solo violin and chamber orchestra
SMETANA
Dances from The Bartered Bride
I. Polka
II. Furiant
III. Dance of the Comedians
BERNSTEIN/arr. Brohn and Czarnecki
Suite from West Side Story, for violin, soprano, and orchestra
FOR LYRICS AND TRANSLATIONS, PLEASE SCAN THE QR CODE BELOW
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
Our concept for the “Voice and the Violin” program began during the pandemic, while we were quarantined and finding new ways to collaborate and enjoy music together. Although finding repertoire written specifically for violin and voice can be a challenge, we discovered and fell in love with these gems featured in tonight’s performance. An example of this comes from one of Mendelssohn’s lesser known works, “Ah, ritorna, età dell’oro” from Infelice. It was wonderful to explore a work by one of our favorite composers that was originally written for this unique instrumentation.
Another happy discovery was Hérold’s “Jours de mon enfance” from Le Pré aux clercs This piece features exciting dialog moments between the voice and the violin, making it especially fun for us to perform this piece together. Closing tonight’s performance is a medley based on Bernstein's beloved West Side Story Suite, arranged by our friend Charles Czarnecki. Based on an earlier violin and orchestra arrangement of the suite, this piece now sparkles in a new light. We are so happy to see this project come to fruition and are thrilled to be performing it with our friend Michael Stern and the amazing Philadelphia Orchestra this evening.
—Larisa Martinez and Joshua Bell
Conductor Michael Stern is music director of the Kansas City Symphony and the Stamford Symphony, founding artistic director and principal conductor of the IRIS Orchestra, and music director of the National Repertory Orchestra. Recent guest engagements have included the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia, the Atlanta Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1994. Mr. Stern and the Kansas City Symphony have partnered with the Reference Recordings label to produce five albums; they have also recorded for Naxos.
Annually Mr. Stern conducts the Guangzhou Symphony as part of the Youth Music Culture Guangdong with Yo-Yo Ma and regularly appears at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He has led the major orchestras in London, Stockholm, Paris, Helsinki, Budapest, Israel, Moscow, Taiwan, and Tokyo, among others. Formerly he was chief conductor of Germany’s Saarbrücken Radio Symphony, permanent guest conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon, and principal guest con-
ductor of the Orchestre National de Lille. Mr. Stern received a music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and a degree in American history from Harvard University.
Internationally-acclaimed soprano Larisa Martinez, who is making her Philadelphia Orchestra debut, has been highly praised for her warm lyric coloratura voice and captivating stage presence. Her recent engagements include Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata with Wichita Grand Opera, Sophie in Massenet’s Werther at Culturarte de Puerto Rico, and Maria in Bernstein’s West Side Story at the Festival Napa Valley. In 2019 she made her Kennedy Center recital debut and her Carnegie Hall debut in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Athens Philharmonic. In 2016 she created the role of Isaura in Mercadante’s Francesca da Rimini in Italy. That same year she was invited to Cuba as part of President Obama’s artistic delegation, to expand cultural collaboration and friendship between the two countries, culminating in the Emmy Award–nominated PBS special Live from Lincoln Center: Seasons of Cuba. For the last three years, Ms. Martinez has toured worldwide with tenor Andrea Bocelli.
Ms. Martinez studied voice at the Music Conservatory in San Juan and simultaneously
received a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences with high honors from the University of Puerto Rico. She went on to receive a master’s degree from the Mannes School of Music in New York. She is a board member of the Silk Road Ensemble and an artistic resident of Turnaround Arts, an organization that strives to transform schools in need through the arts.
With a career spanning almost four decades, GRAMMY® Award–winning violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated artists of his era. Having performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world, he continues to maintain engagements as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor, and music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut at age 14 and has since made more than 30 appearances with the ensemble. Highlights of his 2021–22 season included leading the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at the 2021 BBC Proms, throughout Europe, and on a United States tour; returns to the
Verbier Festival, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic; and tours with the Israel Philharmonic and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra as soloist.
Mr. Bell has performed for three American presidents and participated in former President Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’s first cultural mission to Cuba, joining Cuban and American musicians on a 2017 Live from Lincoln Center PBS special. Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Mr. Bell began the violin at age four and made his Carnegie Hall debut at 17 with the St. Louis Symphony. At age 18 he signed with his first label, London Decca, and received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. His many awards and recognitions include Musical America’s 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year, six GRAMMY nominations, and the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize. Joshua Bell appears by arrangement with Park Avenue Artists (www. parkavenueartists.com) and Primo Artists (www. primoartists.com). Mr. Bell records exclusively for Sony Classical - a MASTERWORKS label.
Artistic Director SATURDAY, JULY 30, 7:30PM
JUSTIN FREER
Conductor
ALBANY PRO MUSICA CHORUS
JOSÉ DANIEL FLORES-CARABALLO
Directed by
ALFONSO CUARON
Produced by
DAVID HEYMAN, CHRIS COLUMBUS, AND MARK RADCLIFFE
Written by
STEVE KLOVES
Based on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. ROWLING
Starring:
DANIEL RADCLIFFE
RUPERT GRINT
EMMA WATSON
ROBBIE COLTRANE
MICHAEL GAMBON
RICHARD GRIFFITHS
GARY OLDMAN
ALAN RICKMAN FIONA SHAW
MAGGIE SMITH
TIMOTHY SPALL
DAVID THEWLIS
EMMA THOMPSON
JULIE WALTERS
Music by JOHN WILLIAMS
Cinematography by MICHAEL SERESIN
Edited by STEVEN WEISBERG
Produced by
HEYDAY FILMS, 1492 PICTURES
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban™ in Concert, Produced by CineConcerts
Justin Freer President/Founder/Producer
Brady Beaubien Co-Founder/Producer
Jeffery Sells Managing Director
Andrew P. Alderete Head of Publicity and Communications
Andrew McIntyre Director of Operations
Brittany Fonseca Senior Marketing Manager
Si Peng Senior Social Media Manager
Worldwide Representation: WME Entertainment
Music Preparation: JoAnn Kane Music Service
Sound Remixing: Justin Moshkevich, Igloo Music Studios
Warner Bros. Consumer Products, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, is one of the leading licensing and retail merchandising organizations in the world.
WIZARDING WORLD and all related trademarks, characters, names, and indicia are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Publishing Rights © JKR. (s22)
John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. He has composed the music and served as music director for more than 100 films, including all nine Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, and Home Alone. His nearly 50-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in such acclaimed films as Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones films, and Saving Private Ryan. His contributions to television music include scores for more than 200 films as well as themes for NBC’s Nightly News, and Meet the Press and Great Performances. He also composed themes for numerous Summer Olympic Games and the 2002 Winter Games.
Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and 52 nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. He has received seven British Academy Awards, 25 GRAMMYS, four Golden Globes, five Emmys, and numerous gold and platinum records. In 2003 he received the Olympic Order and in 2004 the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2009 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and received the National Medal of Arts. In 2016 he received the 44th Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute—the first time this honor was bestowed upon a composer.
American composer/conductor Justin Freer was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California. He began his formal studies on trumpet, but quickly turned to piano and composition, writing his first work at age 11. He made his professional conducting debut at age 16. He has composed music for world-renowned trumpeters Doc Severinsen and Jens Lindemann and is in demand as a composer and conductor for orchestral works to chamber music. Mr. Freer has served as composer for several independent films and has written motion picture advertising music for some of 20th Century Fox Studios’ biggest campaigns, including Avatar, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Aliens in the Attic. As a conductor he has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the London, Los Angeles, and New York Philharmonics. His Philadelphia Orchestra debut was in 2014.
Mr. Freer has been recognized with grants and awards from organizations including ASCAP, BMI, the Society of Composers and Lyricists, and the Henry Mancini Estate. He is the founder and president of CineConcerts, a company dedicated to the preservation and concert presentation of film, curating and conducting full-length music score performances live with film for such wide-ranging titles as Gladiator, The Godfather, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, It’s a Wonderful Life, and the entire Harry Potter film franchise. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from UCLA.
Albany Pro Musica (APM), is the preeminent choral ensemble in New York’s vibrant Capital Region and is renowned for its exceptional technical competency, exquisite artistry, and purposeful programming that is relevant and meaningful in today’s society. Critically acclaimed for its performances of intimate a cappella pieces and large-scale choral works alike, APM offers four series concerts each season plus numerous special performances with distinguished local, national, and international partners, with a deliberately curated repertoire that includes classical masterpieces from the choral canon, new compositions from modern and contemporary composers, and popular selections from the worlds of Broadway, traditional, folk music, and more.
APM is dedicated to inspiring new generations of singers through numerous educational programs, including an annual High School Choral Festival for regional choruses, highly selective youth apprenticeships, instrumental master classes, engagement opportunities through a composer-in-residence program, and—new in 2023—the Pro Musica International Choral Festival, which will allow students from across the United States and Canada to study and perform with distinguished faculty and world-class musicians through a week-long festival.
APM is led by Opalka Family Artistic Director Dr. José Daniel Flores-Caraballo. Maestro Flores-Caraballo is a widely acclaimed conductor and musical director recognized for his artistry and integrity in stylistic performance of choral literature, his methodical and uncompromising approach to music learning, and his gifts as a patient and inspiring teacher. He joined Albany Pro Musica in 2014 with the goal of building upon the group’s impressive and cherished legacy and elevating APM to be among the best choirs in the nation. Through Dr. Flores-Caraballo’s leadership, APM is pushing the boundaries of choral performance in the area, embracing challenging musical programming, innovative national and international partnerships, and a renewed commitment to civic and educational initiatives.
To learn more, visit albanypromusica.org.
A Stanford graduate and All-American athlete, Brady Beaubien studied cognitive neuroscience before founding Interlace Media, an award-winning motion graphics company. As a premiere CG animation studio and creative agency for feature films, Interlace has defined the global campaigns of more than 100 major Hollywood movies, including the Avatar, X-Men, Rio, Ice Age, and Die Hard franchises. In 2013 Mr. Beaubien co-founded CineConcerts, a company dedicated to reinventing the experience of theatrical presentation and orchestral music. He currently produces CineConcerts’ titles full repertoire of film concert experiences. Mr. Beaubien has helped lead the company’s vision of new genres and its creative presentations of cherished film and television content, including writing Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, a live-concert experience that celebrates 50 years of iconic material. Through creative strategy and collaboration, he works to ensure that CineConcerts inspires a return to communal entertainment and continues to offer modern audiences and the world’s youth a chance to reconnect with concert halls and local orchestras.
Mr. Beaubien is also accomplished in the world of design, with projects including Matsuhisa Paris at the Le Royal Monceau-Raffles and the Citrus on Hollywood’s Melrose Avenue, an architectural addition to the local cityscape that represents a commitment to the metropolitan and interconnected providence of Los Angeles.
CineConcerts is one of the leading producers of live music experiences performed with visual media and is continuously redefining live entertainment. Founded by producer/ conductor Justin Freer and producer/writer Brady Beaubien, CineConcerts has engaged more than 1.3 million people worldwide in concert presentations in more than 900 performances in 48 countries working with some of the best orchestras and venues in the world including the Chicago Symphony; the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Philharmonia orchestras; the London, Los Angeles, and New York philharmonics; and many more. Recent and current live concert experiences include Rudy in Concert, The Harry Potter Film Concert Series, Gladiator Live, The Godfather Live, It’s a Wonderful Life in Concert, DreamWorks Animation in Concert, Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage 50th Anniversary Concert Tour, Breakfast at Tiffany’s in Concert, and A Christmas Dream Live
SOPRANO
Martha J. Bond
Diane Deacon
Aleecea Denton
Valerie Donovan
Kathryn Farris
Rebecca Flinker
Claudia Golub
Tonya Burandt Hansen
SooYeon Justesen
Heather Lessard
Katie McNally
Jaimee Meyer
Sandra Schujman
Elaine Wall
ALTO
Emily Ball
Marie Bosman
Carol Christiana
Abigail Cowan
Clara Eizayaga
Tamiko Everson
Shay Gauthier
Kate Kilmer
Susan Moyle Lynch
Debbie Reep MacLeod
Sarah Ploof
Devon Rooney
Emily Sturman
Kim Tateo
Irina Tikhonenko
Julie Weston
Lisa Wloch
TENOR
Eamon Daley
Dan Foster
Jonathan Hansen
Brendan Hoffman
Thomas Johnston
Matthew Kreta
Xavier Ortiz-Reyes
David Wagner
Lincoln Walton
BASS
Bill Bott
Ross Brennan
Matthew Clemens
Evan DeFilippo
Colin Helie
Jared Hunt
Tom Johnson
Andy Kettler
Franklin R. Leavitt
David Loy
Steve Murray
Noah Palmer
David Roberts
John Rodier
Rex Smith
Michael Wolff
WILLIAM
EDDINS Conductor
LEDISI Vocalist
Program will be announced from the stage. WEDNESDAY,
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 7:30PM
With tonight’s concert, Ledisi, William Eddins, and The Philadelphia Orchestra pay tribute to the legendary Nina Simone, the “High Priestess of Soul,” with a performance of the album Ledisi Sings Nina.
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21, 1933, Simone started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother was a Methodist minister and her father was a handyman and entertainer. She played piano in her mother’s church and soon began to study classical music. Upon high-school graduation, where she was valedictorian, the community collected money for a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York City. By this time, her family had moved to Philadelphia, and she applied for admission to the Curtis Institute of Music. Unfortunately, she was denied; she would always claim the reason was racism.
Eunice began teaching music to local students and took a job as a pianist/singer at the Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City. She delved into the songbooks of Gershwin, Porter, and Rodgers but imbued them with a mixture of blues, jazz, and classical. She soon began to attract attention with her deep vocal tones and her command of the piano. She changed her name to Nina, a nickname she had been given, and Simone after the actress Simone Signoret, in order to remain undetected from her mother, knowing she would not approve of her playing “the Devil’s music.”
At the age of 24, Simone was signed by Bethlehem Records. On her first album, she recorded “I Loves You Porgy,” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess—it became her first hit. In 1959 she signed with Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Following her debut on that label, she had an engagement at Town Hall, her first major venue in New York City. Her reputation continued to grow and it wasn’t long before she was engaged to appear at the world-famous Newport Jazz Festival.
Simone moved on to Philips, a division of Mercury Records, and her career took off internationally. Her first album for the label, 1964’s Nina Simone in Concert, announced her as a pioneer in the civil rights movement and her willingness to use music for social commentary and change, with “Mississippi Goddam” and later songs such as “Four Women” and “Strange Fruit.”
Simone went on to record for numerous other labels, including RCA Records, showing an
incredible range with songs from “I Put a Spell on You,” “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” “To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,” and “A Single Woman” to selections from the Broadway musical Hair and George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun.”
In 1993 she settled in the south of France and continued to tour throughout the ’90s, giving her final performance in 2002. She died in her sleep on April 21, 2003, leaving behind a career that spanned over four decades. A musical storyteller, she became a true icon of American music.
William Eddins is music director emeritus of the Edmonton Symphony and former principal guest conductor of Ireland’s RTÉ National Symphony. He is a frequent guest conductor of major orchestras throughout the world. Engagements have included the symphony orchestras of New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Houston, Los Angeles, and Buffalo; the Berlin Staatskapelle; the Berlin Radio, Royal Scottish National, and Lisbon Metropolitan orchestras; Welsh National Opera; Lyon
Opera; the Bergen and Natal philharmonics; the Adelaide, Barcelona, and RAI National symphonies; and at the Edinburgh, Ravinia, Aspen Music, and Chautauqua festivals and the Hollywood Bowl. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2002.
Mr. Eddins is an accomplished pianist and chamber musician. He regularly conducts from the piano in works by Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin, and Ravel. He has released a recording on his own label that includes Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata and William Albright’s The Nightmare Fantasy Rag. A native of Buffalo, New York, Mr. Eddins attended the Eastman School of Music, graduating at age 18. He also studied conducting with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California and was a founding member of the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida.
2021 GRAMMY-winner Ledisi, who made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut last month, is a 14-time GRAMMY-nominated powerhouse vocalist with a career spanning almost two decades. She’s garnered three Soul Train Music awards, an NAACP Theatre Award, and
13 NAACP Image Award nominations. Most recently, she received two LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award nominations, one for best featured actress in a musical. Born in New Orleans and raised in Oakland, California, she is a favorite of the Obamas as well as a long list of icons including Prince, Patti LaBelle, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Chaka Khan.
No stranger to the film and television world, Ledisi landed a role in her first feature, singing in the George Clooney–directed film Leatherheads, in 2008. In 2015 she portrayed the great Mahalia Jackson in the Oscar-nominated movie Selma and had a notable performance in Gabourey Sidibe’s Shatterbox Anthology film The Tale of Four. Ledisi secured her first television role playing the legendary Patti LaBelle on the hit BET series American Soul. She also starred in the BET Plus drama Twice Bitten. This year she landed the starring role in the film Remember Me: The Story of Mahalia Jackson. To cap off an amazing year, she will also portray the incomparable Gladys Knight in the long-awaited film based on Neil Bogart’s career, Spinning Gold, the story of Casablanca Records.
WILLIAM EDDINS
Conductor
LARA DOWNES
Piano
STRAYHORN/arr. Walden
A Lovesome Thing: Billy Strayhorn Suite, for piano and orchestra
Saratoga Performing Arts Center co-commission—First Philadelphia Orchestra performance
PRICE
Piano Concerto in One Movement
INTERMISSION
BRAHMS
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Adagio non troppo—L’istesso tempo, ma grazioso
III. Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino)—Presto ma non assai—Tempo I—Presto, ma non assai—Tempo I IV. Allegro con spirito
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
Arranged by Chris Walden in 2022
BILLY STRAYHORN
Born in Dayton, Ohio, November 29, 1915
Died in New York City, May 31, 1967
Billy Strayhorn has always been a figure of fascination and reverence for me—a brilliant musician who was compelled by his time and circumstance to give up his dream of being a classical pianist, only to step into a career as one of the most influential and prolific composers of the 20th century. In his legendary partnership with Duke Ellington, Strayhorn wrote some of our great American classics, including “Take the A Train,” “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing,” “Something to Live For,” and “Lush Life.” Strayhorn’s classical roots run throughout his jazz compositions, in their sophisticated harmonies and lush, post-Romantic expression. So for me, to bring Strayhorn’s music onto the symphonic stage, to put the full forces of the orchestra behind his songs, is to fulfill his own vision of an artistic expression that transcends genre to celebrate, quite simply, the beauty of American music.
I’m thrilled to perform this new Strayhorn Suite along with Florence Price’s glorious Piano Concerto. These two composers lived very different musical lives, but they both captured the expansive, complex, and unique sound of the American 20th century in compositions that celebrate what is best about our history and our humanity.
Lara Downes
“Strange Feeling”
By Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington
Copyright © 1945 Billy Strayhorn Songs Inc (ASCAP), Reservoir Media Music (ASCAP), Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP) and Tempo Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
All rights for Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc. administered by Reservoir Media Management, Inc.
All rights for Tempo Music, Inc. administered by Music Sales Corporation
All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
“A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing”
By
Billy Strayhorn
Copyright © 1941 Billy Strayhorn Songs Inc (ASCAP) / Reservoir Media Music (ASCAP). All rights for Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc. administered by Reservoir Media Management, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
“Something to Live For”
By Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington
© 1963 Billy Strayhorn Songs Inc (ASCAP), Reservoir Media Music (ASCAP), and Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC (ASCAP). All rights for Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc. administered by Reservoir Media Management, Inc.
All rights on behalf of Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC administered by Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219.
All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission
A Lovesome Thing: Billy Strayhorn Suite is a project represented by CADENZA ARTISTS INTERNATIONAL LLC, 299 S, Main Street, Suite 1300 #99733, Salt Lake City, UT 84111. www.CadenzaArtists.com
PIANO CONCERTO IN ONE MOVEMENT Composed in 1934
FLORENCE PRICE
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, April 9, 1887 Died in Chicago, June 3, 1953
In early-20th-century America, orchestral music was largely regarded as the province of dead white men, a field in which a living Black woman had no apparent hope of gaining any foothold. This makes Florence Price’s career all the more unlikely, and therefore more remarkable. She was born into an upper-middle-class mixed-race family in Arkansas. Her mother, a music teacher, provided her first musical training. Graduating at the top of her high school class, Price was accepted into the New England Conservatory of Music to study piano and organ, but won admittance only by “passing” as Mexican, in order to avoid the heightened racial bias against Blacks. After graduating in 1906, she taught at colleges in Arkansas and Georgia before moving to Chicago in 1927 to escape racially motivated violence and segregation.
In 1932 Price’s Symphony No. 1 won a Wanamaker Foundation Award and was performed the following year by the Chicago Symphony—the first time a major orchestra had played a work by a Black American woman. The conductor on that occasion was Frederick Stock, who then encouraged her to write a piano concerto, which was premiered in Chicago in 1934, with the composer as soloist and Stock conducting.
After her death in 1953, Price and almost all her 300 compositions faded into obscurity. Several decades later, scholars started researching her career and music, and her compositions also gradually began to appear on concert programs again. A collection of Price’s scores and papers were miraculously discovered in a derelict house outside St. Anne, Illinois, in 2009—it had been Price’s summer home near the end of her life.
As its name suggests, the Piano Concerto in One Movement is played without a break, but with three sections corresponding to the three traditional movements of a Classical piano concerto. A sparse introduction leads quickly into an extended piano cadenza. Then the theme—an original melody in which Price draws on the flavor of the spiritual—develops into a propulsive, energetic quasi-sonata form. The slower central section is a lyrical Adagio whose melody suggests the nostalgic, yearning quality of African-American “sorrow songs.”
Price believed the “juba”—a lively, syncopated plantation dance that predates the Civil War— was as essential to African-American music as the spiritual. She included a “juba” (although not always named as such in the score) in every one of her larger works.
—Luke Howard
SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN D MAJOR,
Born in Hamburg, May 7, 1833
Died in Vienna, April 3, 1897
“All you need to do is sit down, place your little feet alternately on both pedals, and strike an F-minor chord for a good while, alternately low and high … then you will gradually gain the most accurate picture of the ‘latest.’”
With typical heavy-handed facetiousness, Johannes Brahms announced the existence of his Second Symphony to his friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg. In a letter sent to her a few days later, he continued by writing that the musicians were wearing black armbands to perform the Symphony because “it sounds so very mournful; it will also be printed with a black border.” He similarly told his publisher that the score “is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it.”
Although Brahms was joking in his ponderous way, his statements about his Second Symphony reveal how starkly the work
differs from his First Symphony premiered the previous year. Musicologists point to a number of reasons why the Second is more cheerful than the First. The success of the Symphony No. 1 had undeniably lifted a great weight from Brahms’s shoulders by helping to establish him as a worthy successor to the Beethovenian symphonic tradition. Commentators have also noted that Brahms wrote the Symphony No. 2 during a summer holiday in the Carinthian Alps. While the natural beauty of this locale certainly contributed to the Symphony’s warmth and lyricism, an equally important reason for Brahms’s good mood was largely the result of gaining complete financial independence. The year ended on a triumphant note with the first performance of the Second Symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Hans Richter on December 30.
The opening measures of Brahms’s Second Symphony are unforgettable: Four quiet notes are played by the cellos and basses and then the French horns intone a theme that is reminiscent of alphorns heard from the distance. Cast in a meter of three beats to a measure, this movement recalls both the waltz and its predecessor, the Austrian folk dance known as the Ländler. As is characteristic of Brahms, however, this music is not an expression of undiluted happiness: Troubled passages redolent of darkness and even pain pass over the surface of the music like clouds across a verdant landscape.
The slow movement that follows is introverted and somber. The eloquent opening theme is one of the composer’s finest achievements. This deeply introspective movement is an example of what Arnold Schoenberg called “developing variation”—thematic materials that are constantly developed—while also using an ingenious adaptation of sonata form.
The charming scherzo with its two trios banishes the brooding seriousness of the preceding movement with a burst of musical sunshine. Even here in this lighthearted movement, however, Brahms deploys his ingenuity, subjecting each section to constant variation. He finishes off the Symphony with a rambunctious final movement, some of the most joyous music of his career.
—Byron Adams
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, Lara Downes, and/or Luke Howard.
See William Eddins’s biography on page 48.
Pianist Lara Downes’s work as a sought-after performer, Billboard Chart–topping recording artist, producer, curator, activist, and arts advocate positions her as a cultural visionary. Her musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory, excavating the broad landscape of American music to create a series of acclaimed performances and recordings that serve as gathering spaces for her listeners to find common ground and shared experience. She is equally at home on major stages including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Boston's Symphony Hall, the Ravinia Festival, and Tanglewood, and in clubs and intimate venues including Joe’s Pub, National Sawdust, and Le Poisson Rouge. Tonight’s performance marks her Philadelphia Orchestra debut.
Ms. Downes’s acclaimed recordings include
Florence Price: Piano Discoveries, a collection of world-premiere recordings of recently discovered piano works; Some of these Days comprising freedom songs and spirituals that reflect on social justice, progress, and equality; and Holes in the Sky, a celebration of the contributions of phenomenal women to American music. She is the creator and curator of Rising Sun Music, a recording series that sheds light on the music and stories of Black composers. She is host of the video series Amplify with Lara Downes for NPR Music and an evening host and resident artist at KDFC. She serves as the inaugural artist citizen in residence for the Manhattan School of Music, as well as a fellow of the Loghaven Artist Residency. Lara Downes is an artist represented by CADENZA ARTISTS INTERNATIONAL LLC, 299 S. Main St, Suite 1300 #99733, Salt Lake City, UT 84111. www.CadenzaArtists.com
Lara Downes is a Yamaha Artist.
WILLIAM EDDINS
Conductor
YO-YO MA
Cello
VILLA-LOBOS
“Ária (Cantilena),” from Bachianas brasileiras No. 5
SAINT-SAËNS
Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33
Allegro non troppo—Allegretto con moto—Tempo I—Molto allegro
INTERMISSION
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Sheherazade, Op. 35
I. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship (Largo e maestoso—Allegro non troppo)
II. The Tale of the Kalander Prince (Lento—Allegro molto)
III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess (Andantino quasi allegretto)
IV. Festival at Baghdad—The Sea—The Ship Is Wrecked—Conclusion (Allegro molto) David Kim, solo violin
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
BRASILEIRAS NO. 5
Composed in 1938
Born in Rio de Janeiro, March 5, 1887
Died there, November 17, 1959
In 1917 Heitor Villa-Lobos, an ambitious young Brazilian composer who was making his precarious living playing cello in theater orchestras, had the good fortune to meet Darius Milhaud, soon to become a member of the noted French collective of composers known as Les Six. Milhaud was acting as secretary for the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel, who had been appointed ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro the previous year. Up until this time, Villa-Lobos had attempted to combine his youthful musical adventures in the Amazonian jungles with the 19th-century European symphonic tradition. Milhaud introduced his avid Brazilian friend to the music of Debussy, Satie, and Stravinsky. Villa-Lobos found the aesthetics and techniques of these composers extraordinarily liberating: He soon developed his own characteristic style, a compound of Modernism and Brazilian traditional music.
In turn Villa-Lobos initiated Milhaud into the delights of the sensuous music found in the cafés and nightclubs of Rio. Milhaud also showed Villa-Lobos some of his own music, the harmonic richness of which had a lasting influence on the Brazilian composer. Villa-Lobos’s ongoing fascination with France drew him to Paris in 1923. Returning to Brazil in 1930, he conceived the radical idea of turning the tables on European musicians such as Milhaud, who had assimilated Brazilian music for the purposes of adding piquant “local color” to their scores, by expropriating stylistic and technical elements from a beloved composer of the European tradition, Johann Sebastian Bach. Villa-Lobos’s ingenious aesthetic strategy reversed the direction of musical colonialism from Europe to South America by expropriating European techniques for his own ends: Within the context of Brazilian music, it was Bach who represented the “exotic.” From 1930 to 1945, Villa-Lobos composed nine Bachianas brasileiras for different instrumental combinations that show him at the absolute height of his powers. Of these nine, the most celebrated is No. 5, scored for soprano and an ensemble of cellos. (In tonight’s performance the solo vocal line will be performed by solo cello.)
As with most of the nine Bachianas brasileiras, each movement of the fifth has two titles, one “Bachian” and the other “Brazilian.” The first movement of Bachianas brasileiras No. 5, which was composed in 1938, is titled both “Ária” and “Cantilena.” The form of this voluptuous movement is a Baroque aria da capo: The outer sections are wordless vocalises, while the middle section is a setting of a poem about twilight fancies by Ruth Valadares Corrêa.
—Byron Adams
Composed in 1872
Born in Paris, October 9, 1835
Died in Algiers, December 16, 1921
Camille Saint-Saëns’s infallible knack for combining a virtuoso soloist with orchestra served him well throughout his long life. In addition to five concertos for piano, three for violin, and two for cello, he also wrote a colorful variety of pieces such as the Carnival of the Animals for two pianos and small ensemble, the Morceau de concert for harp, and the unusual Africa for piano and orchestra. The same melodic facility and ease that lend his operas and chamber works their nonchalant flow is also found in ample measure in these works for soloist and orchestra. He was a composer of prodigious wit and sharp intellect; though he dashed off some of his most enduring works in a matter of days, his best music is as serious as Beethoven, as perfectly polished as Chopin, and as full of peerless melody as Mozart (well, almost).
In his First Cello Concerto, composed in 1872 and premiered in January of the following year, Saint-Saëns makes crystal clear the overarching three-movement structure, but he blurs the lines between the “movements” by bringing back the triplet-formed principal subject at various logical points during the work, allowing this descending theme (the one played by the soloist at the outset) to serve as a sort of glue that holds together the three large sections. The theme returns at the end of the piece to introduce the coda, with a last-minute leap into the key of A major.
The work is extremely grateful for the soloist, with a virtuosic part that exploits the essential technical equipment available to the cello
without straining the point. The stormy initial movement begins with a passionate soliloquy for cello, with thematic material that is immediately taken up by the orchestra; the slow, reflective second theme in F major is also introduced by the soloist. A brief tutti passage announces what is essentially a development section of these initial themes. But instead of moving to a recapitulation, this “development” leads directly into the second movement, a playful and stylized minuet-and-trio where one hears echoes of the composer’s artistic roots in the music of the French Baroque. A brief return to the initial Allegro non troppo ushers in the last “movement,” featuring an imploring cello theme and a central virtuosic section of great sweep. The work concludes with a final reference to the initial material and a sudden turn to the major key that seems like a wry and somewhat bemused “happy ending.”
—Paul J. Horsley
SHEHERAZADE, OP. 35
Composed in 1888
NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Born in Tikhvin, Russia, March 18, 1844
Died in Lyubensk (near St. Petersburg), June 21, 1908
Of the five Russian composers who constituted the “Mighty Handful”—Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, Modest Musorgsky, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov—all but one were amateur musicians. Only Balakirev worked as a professional. The rest were largely self-taught and proud of it, firmly skeptical of academic musical training. It was somewhat surprising then when Rimsky-Korsakov, a sea-faring officer in the Imperial Navy, accepted an appointment as professor of composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1871.
Before his appointment, Rimsky-Korsakov had written some large-scale works including a symphony and several orchestral tone poems, although composing was at this point in his career a largely intuitive process. He had read Berlioz’s treatise on orchestration, but had never studied counterpoint, did not know the names of musical intervals or chords, and couldn’t harmonize a chorale. But he had a natural gift for orchestration, and an affinity for the raw, untutored brand of music based on Russian folksong and folk tales that was a defining feature of the “Mighty Handful.”
With this blend of nationalist vigor and a
recently acquired grounding in Western composition, Rimsky-Korsakov became a resolute advocate of Russian music. But that fierce nationalism didn’t prevent him from exploring exotic and foreign themes of the kind that also excited so many other composers in the late-Romantic era. And there was nothing more exotic in 19th-century Europe than One Thousand and One Nights, a popular collection of ancient folk tales from the Middle East.
This celebrated series of Arabian tales is framed by the story of the Sultan Shahriar who, enraged by his wife’s infidelity, executes her and declares all women to be unfaithful. He then marries a series of virgins only to execute them in turn the morning after each wedding. Sheherazade, the beautiful daughter of one of the Sultan’s chief advisors, agrees to marry the Sultan to try and disabuse him of this brutal misogyny, even if it almost certainly will result in her own death. But she has a plan. On their wedding night Sheherazade tells the Sultan only half of a story. The Sultan, eager to hear the end, gives her a reprieve until the following night, when she finishes the first story and begins a second, again leaving it unfinished. This prolongs her life for 1,001 nights until the Sultan finally relents and agrees to pardon her.
In the summer of 1888, Rimsky-Korsakov worked on an orchestral suite based on some of these famous tales. Although he was thinking of specific stories when he wrote each movement, the evocative music does not illustrate them in a strictly programmatic manner. Instead, the composer noted that he was creating a “kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images” that were meant to fire the exotic fantasies of the listener in a more general fashion. But he did admit that the solo violin, heard throughout the suite, represents Sheherazade herself.
—Luke Howard
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Byron Adams.
See William Eddins’s biography on page 48.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s life and career are testament to his enduring belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works from the cello repertoire, collaborating with communities and institutions to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical
forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.
Mr. Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began studying the cello with his father at age four. When he was seven, he moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard.
Mr. Ma has recorded more than 100 albums, is the winner of 19 Grammy Awards, and has
performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. He has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He has been a UN Messenger of Peace since 2006, and was recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Mr. Ma's latest album is Beethoven for Three: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5, recorded with pianist Emanual Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
CONSTANTINE KITSOPOULOS
Conductor
ACT III COMMUNICATIONS Presents
A REINER/SCHEINMAN Production
WILLIAM GOLDMAN’S
CARY ELWES
MANDY PATINKIN
CHRIS SARANDON
CHRISTOPHER GUEST
WALLACE SHAWN
ANDRE THE GIANT
Introducing ROBIN WRIGHT
Special Appearances by PETER FALK and BILLY CRYSTAL
Edited by ROBERT LEIGHTON
Production Designed by NORMAN GARWOOD
Director of Photographer ADRIAN BIDDLE
Music by MARK KNOPFLER
Executive Producer NORMAN LEAR
Screenplay by WILLIAM GOLDMAN
Produced by ANDREW SCHEINMAN and ROB REINER
Directed by ROB REINER
Tonight’s program is a presentation of the complete film The Princess Bride with a live performance of the movie’s entire score, including music played by the orchestra during the end credits. Out of respect for the musicians and your fellow audience members, please remain seated until the conclusion of the performance.
© Princess Bride, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Original musical score composed by Mark Knopfler © 1987 Straitjacket Songs Ltd. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.
“Storybook Love” written by Willy DeVille © 1987 Jockamo Music. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
The Princess Bride in Concert is produced by Film Concerts Live!, a joint venture of IMG Artists, LLC, and the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency, Inc.
Producers: Steven A. Linder and Jamie Richardson
Director of Operations: Rob Stogsdill
Production Manager: Sophie Greaves
Worldwide Representation: IMG Artists, LLC
Technical Director: Mike Runice
Music Composed by Mark Knopfler
“Storybook Love” written by Willy DeVille
Musical Score Adapted and Orchestrated for Live Performance by Mark Graham
Music Preparation: JoAnn Kane Music Service
Film Preparation for Concert Performance: Epilogue Media
Technical Consultant: Laura Gibson
Sound Remixing for Concert Performance: Chace Audio by Deluxe
The score for The Princess Bride has been specially adapted for live concert performance.
With special thanks to: Norman Lear, Mark Knopfler, Julie Dyer, David Nochimson, Paul Crockford, Sherry Elbe, James Harman, Peter Raleigh, Trevor Motycka, Bethany Brinton, Matt Voogt, Adam Michalak, Alex Levy, and Adam Witt.
Mark Knopfler is an acclaimed British singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer who has composed several film scores, including The Princess Bride. He is best known as the lead singer, lead guitarist, and songwriter of the internationally celebrated rock band Dire Straits.
“To have been a part of The Princess Bride gives me enormous pride and joy. To me, the picture has never lost an ounce of its freshness and charm. I couldn’t be more delighted to see it finding more devotees around the world with every passing year.
“Now, to hear the score in the hands of a brilliant orchestral arranger, conductor, and players is an added privilege. I hope you have a wonderful evening in their company, along with the many memories the film has created.”
—Mark Knopfler
Constantine Kitsopoulos has established himself as a dynamic conductor known for his ability to work in many different genres and settings. He is equally at home with opera, symphonic repertoire, film with live orchestra, music theater, and composition. His work has taken him all over the world where he has conducted the major orchestras of North America, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Tokyo Philharmonic. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2011. In addition to his guest conducting engagements, he is music director of the Festival of the Arts Boca, general director of Chatham Opera, and general director of the New York Grand Opera. During the 2021–22 season he returned to the San Francisco, New Jersey, Houston, and Dallas symphonies, and Indiana University.
Mr. Kitsopoulos has developed semi-staged productions of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, for which he has written a new translation; Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and Puccini’s La bohème
He has conducted numerous productions at Indiana University Opera Theatre and was assistant chorus master at New York City Opera from 1984 to 1989. On Broadway he has been music director of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (cast album on PS Classics), A Catered Affair (cast album on PS Classics), Coram Boy, Baz Luhrmann’s production of Puccini’s La bohème (cast album on DreamWorks Records), Swan Lake, and Les Misérables.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN Conductor
DVOŘÁK
Carnival, concert overture, Op. 92
RACHMANINOFF
The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29
INTERMISSION
HABIBI
Jeder Baum spricht
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
I. Allegro con brio
II. Andante con moto
III. Allegro—
IV. Allegro
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
CARNIVAL, CONCERT OVERTURE, OP. 92
Composed in 1891
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841
Died in Prague, May 1, 1904
Antonín Dvořák’s scores from the 1890s to the end of his life reflect a wide span of often surprising influences, including not only the music of Brahms but that of Wagner and eventually even Debussy. The complex stylistic language of the great Bohemian’s later music indicates how profoundly he assimilated the trends prevalent in Europe at the end of the 19th century, while remaining true to his own Czech identity.
He wrote his “Triple Overture,” a cycle of three concert overtures, in 1891 and conducted the premiere of all three in Prague at a special farewell performance—before embarking for the United States, where he was to spend the next three years of his life. The following October (1892) he conducted the three overtures again, this time in Carnegie Hall, at a concert welcoming him to New York. This set of three striking tone poems has been described as a depiction of the creative forces of the universe: Nature (In Nature’s Realm, Op. 91), Life (Carnival, Op. 92), and Love (Othello, Op. 93). The composer remarked that these three “Nature” works could be performed as a group or separately.
The Carnival Overture, which follows the dreamy In Nature’s Realm, is a lively, almost raucous dance of youth and joy. The dreamer has awakened from the trance of “nature’s realm” and has joined the long night’s merriment. Slavic rhythms and dances provide the background for this earthy carnival, which concludes with a brief, intoxicating coda.
—Paul J. Horsley
Composed in 1909
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Born in Semyonovo, Russia, April 1, 1873
Died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943
Exactly how does a painting affect its mood and meaning upon us? How can a two-dimensional combination of surface and line and pigment reach into our memory and our unconscious, opening up new awarenesses and
unfamiliar emotions? Numerous composers have tried to represent in music the moment of surprise that an image can bring. Musorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, which presents musical replications of a whole gallery full of paintings, drawings, and architectural sketches, is only the best-known example. But there are many others, including Granados’s Goyescas for piano, Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler symphony, Respighi’s Botticelli Triptych, and more recently, Gunther Schuller’s Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee.
Rachmaninoff’s inspiration for his symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead came to him in a Paris gallery in May 1907. It was there that he saw a black-and-white reproduction of Die Insel der Toten by the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), based on one of six paintings Böcklin made on the same theme. Without having seen one of the actual paintings, he began mapping out the tone poem immediately. “The massive architecture and the mystic message of the painting made a marked impression on me, and the tone poem was the outcome,” Rachmaninoff said later. “If I had seen the original first, I might not have composed the work.” When he finally did see an original in a German museum, in fact, its effect was not nearly so great as that initial impression.
Using a striking play of light and shadow, Böcklin’s painting shows a small boat rowing to an enshrouded, sinister-looking island. In the boat are a coffin, a figure all in white, and a Charon-like wraith who is rowing the boat toward the island. Rachmaninoff’s piece begins in 5/8 meter, with an ostinato figure in the low strings and harp that represents an irregular lapping of the waves. An expansive “life” theme is presented, which in Rachmaninoff’s words “exists outside the picture … is in reality a ‘supplement’ to the picture.” After a symphonic development, death takes over again, in the form of the Dies irae theme (“Day of Wrath,” from the Mass for the Dead), which begins in the clarinet and second violin parts, then permeates the motivic material. The “wave” figure returns, finally, as Charon turns back from the island—his morbid mission fulfilled.
—Paul J. Horsley
JEDER BAUM SPRICHT
Composed in 2019
IMAN HABIBI
Born in Tehran, September 10, 1985
Now living in Toronto
Iman Habibi is an Iranian-Canadian composer and pianist, born in Tehran in 1985, in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. His father was a chemist and his mother was an English teacher and translator, and in the years after the war they noticed their son’s fascination with a small electric keyboard they owned. After some debate, his parents “went against all cultural norms and wise counsel to hire me a private piano teacher.” Then, as now, music education and public performances were discouraged and restricted, although not forbidden, by the Iranian government. At age 11, Habibi attended a strict Islamic middle school by day, but found a separate world in secretive piano studies on the side. For him, the classical piano repertoire offered “a fresh alternative to the Persian pop and traditional music with which I was constantly bombarded. More importantly, it was my music … I loved living with music that I felt belonged exclusively to me, and discovering it one composer at a time.”
At age 17, Habibi and his family immigrated to Canada by way of Turkey. After piano studies at the University of British Columbia, he was drawn increasingly to composition, earning a doctorate in 2017 from the University of Michigan. Now based in Toronto, he has been commissioned by numerous ensembles including the Boston and Toronto symphonies and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
The Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned Jeder Baum spricht (Every Tree Speaks) in celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. It received its premiere on March 12, 2020, when the Orchestra performed its last concert before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. The title comes from a note Beethoven jotted in a sketchbook that alludes to his famous walks through the parks and countryside around Vienna: “Almighty in the forest! I am blessed, happy in the forest! Every tree speaks through you!” (Jeder Baum spricht durch dich!).
Although Beethoven’s own perspective was that of Romanticism, in modern terms he might be described as an environmentalist. With this in mind, Habibi wondered how Beethoven would respond to 21st-century climate change. He describes Jeder Baum
spricht as “an unsettling rhapsodic reflection on the climate catastrophe, written in dialog with Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies.” Both pieces have ties to nature—most explicit, of course, in the “Pastoral” Symphony, but the Fifth Symphony’s opening theme was once associated with birdsong in addition to its now-famous association with fate. “I am hoping that Jeder Baum spricht can allow us to listen to these monumental works with a renewed perspective,” Habibi writes, “that is, in light of the climate crisis we live in, and the havoc we continue to wreak on the nature that inspired these classic masterpieces.”
—Benjamin Pesetsky
SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN C MINOR, OP. 67
Composed from 1804 to 1808
Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770 Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827
Every listener may feel free to interpret this immortal work in his or her own fashion. The idea that it represents the composer’s mighty but victorious struggle with destiny was put into circulation by Beethoven himself, or at least by his fantasy-spinning secretary, Anton Schindler, who reported the composer’s explanation of the opening motif as “So pocht das Schicksal an die Pforte” (Thus Fate knocks at the door). Perhaps Beethoven did say that, and it offers a vivid image for an extraordinarily unconventional opening for a Classical symphony. But there are so many other forces at work besides that of fate that we need to open our ears and minds to every signal it sends out. Most listeners agree that they may be different at every hearing.
Fate struck Beethoven most cruelly in about 1802 when, still in his early 30s he acknowledged the fact of his deafness and began the long process of coming to terms with a handicap that was less of a musical disability (it did not interfere with his ability to compose) than a social one. Up to that point his career as a musician was going swimmingly, with Vienna’s aristocrats lining up to engage him, refined ladies swooning whenever he played, and music of limpid beauty pouring from his pen. His standing as a virtuoso pianist with excellent connections at court was seriously threatened, and his relations with friends, especially with women, were now forever circumscribed.
We might think that as a composer his reactions were more violent than the situation
warranted. The “Eroica” Symphony, the immediate product of that profound crisis, transformed the world of classical music for ever. He did not stop there. The superhuman creative energy that produced the great heroic works of that decade had never been heard before in music. One colossal path-breaking composition followed another, combining unearthly beauty of invention, technical virtuosity, vastness of conception, and a radical freedom of expression and form.
The famous four-note motif that opens the Fifth Symphony is heard constantly in the first movement and intermittently elsewhere, but it is far from being the all-pervading idea that many people suppose. The second movement
deftly and curiously blends gorgeous cantilena with military trumpets, all wrapped in variation form. The third movement is full of mystery; not defiant, not triumphant, more humorous or spectral, and out of it grows the huge shout of triumph of the Allegro finale, as the trombones proclaim a new order of the universe, supported by piccolo, contrabassoon, and the full weight of C major, the key which Haydn had assigned to the completion of The Creation itself. Beethoven was so proud of the exciting passage at the end of the scherzo, where the approach of the finale is felt in the very bones of the music, that he felt impelled to repeat it. So the heavens open not once, but twice.
—Hugh Macdonald
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Benjamin Pesetsky.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is currently in his 10th season as music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra and holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair. Additionally, he became the third music director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2018. He has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, and in 2017 he became an honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was also music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now honorary conductor). Yannick signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2018. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with 10 releases on that label, including Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3, which recently won a GRAMMY Award.
A native of Montreal, Nézet-Séguin studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Nézet-Séguin’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada; Companion to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec; Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year; and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec, the Curtis Institute of Music, McGill University, the University of Montreal, the University of Pennsylvania, and Laval University.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN Conductor
RANDALL GOOSBY Violin
ROSSINI
Overture to The Thieving Magpie
BRUCH
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
I. Vorspiel: Allegro moderato—
II. Adagio
III. Allegro energico
INTERMISSION
HUNT Climb
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”)
I. Allegro con brio
II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
III. Scherzo (Allegro vivace) and Trio
IV. Finale: Allegro molto—Andante—Presto
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
Born in Pesaro, Italy, February 29, 1792
Died in Passy, near Paris, November 13, 1868
Gioachino Rossini's some three dozen operas defy easy categorization: They are Classical in musical design yet Romantic in dramatic outlook. Some evaluations of this composer, such as George Bernard Shaw’s characterization of him as the “greatest master of claptrap that ever lived,” have averted attention from the density and subtlety of his art. His contribution to the history and development of grand opera was critical. But more to the point, his unique comic idiom and fluid melodic style are irresistible to the ear.
Rossini’s first period of maturity began around 1813, with serious operas such as Tancredi and comic ones such as The Italian Girl in Algiers; this period culminated with The Barber of Seville of 1816 and La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) of 1817. Barely in his 20s, the composer had by this time already mastered the art of the mellifluous aria, the wittily propulsive vocal ensemble, and the sparkling finale. And with Rossini the opera overture took on a new independence as well—to such an extent that his overtures are far more familiar today than are the operas to which they are attached.
One of the most remarkable is the Overture to The Thieving Magpie, whose infectious opening march, breathless second subject in minor key, and whimsically long crescendos make it into almost a parody of the opera overture. The work’s slow accumulation of tension through almost maddening repetition borders on the absurd, creating a mood of comic expectancy.
Interestingly, the opera itself is not a comedy per se; it belongs to a sub-genre called opera semiseria, works poised halfway between comic and serious. The book on which it was based, La Pie voleuse, was allegedly inspired by a true incident of a peasant girl wrongfully hanged for thefts that are finally discovered to be the work of a magpie. The libretto provides a deus ex machina—in the form of a last-minute discovery of the bird’s nest, full of silver spoons and so forth—but not before we have witnessed a harrowing, melodramatic scene in which the poor soprano, Ninetta, is paraded to the scaffold.
—Paul J. Horsley
Composed from 1864 to 1866
Born in Cologne, January 6, 1838
Died in Friedenau (near Berlin), October 20, 1920
While little general attention has been paid to Max Bruch the composer, a lot of attention has been paid to his Violin Concerto in G minor. It is one of the most frequently played pieces in the concerto repertory. Bruch was by profession a pedagogue, conductor, and champion of choral repertory. A contemporary of Louis Spohr, he was a steady teacher and composer, and as the great music commentator Donald Francis Tovey quipped, “Like Spohr, he achieved this mastery in all art-forms; and, unlike Spohr, he developed no irritating mannerisms.” Bruch composed flawless music, taking no chances by venturing into the sea of chromatic harmonies of his contemporaries.
Bruch composed more than 200 pieces, some three-quarters for the voice, in the form of ones for the stage, sacred and secular choral works, and songs; he also wrote three symphonies. He spent the bulk of his long life conducting in Berlin, Liverpool, and Breslau, and in his last years he taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.
Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor became the centerpiece of his life soon after its conception. He acknowledged that composing a concerto for violin “is a damned difficult thing to do; between 1864 and 1868 I rewrote my concerto at least half a dozen times, and conferred with x [sic] violinists before it took the final form in which it is universally famous and played everywhere.”
The Concerto is an extraordinary mixture of bravura and pathos. The G-minor key sets a despairing and ominous tone, while the muscular opening violin lines require the soloist to bravely traverse open octaves and fly through quick-hitting scales. Unlike traditional preludes, this is not a warm-up piece, but requires the violinist to have done plenty of calisthenics before walking out on stage. The movement is in ABA form, with the opening ascending melody returning at the end with just a few alterations, flowing directly into the Adagio.
In the traditionally heavenly key of E-flat major and perfect triple time, the Adagio movement
arouses sublime emotions. Notes melt into one another as the orchestra provides a subdued canvas upon which the violin soars. The orchestra finally deigns itself to break through in the middle of the movement, playing the primary theme. The pace soon increases and climaxes into triumphant fortissimo. Peace returns at the end as the primary theme rises again reassuringly and fades to pianissimo.
The brightly optimistic key of G major appears in the last movement, and the violinist stabs the instrument in double and triple stops. We are firmly in the land of quick-fingered virtuosity and grandly gestured tutti melodies. Bruch’s Concerto is noteworthy for its ability to capture primary human emotions, from longing and despair to triumph and courage, in a traditionally tonal 19th-century idiom sure to move audiences for all time.
—Aaron Beck
CLIMB
Composed in 2019
JESSICA HUNT
Born in Deep Springs Valley, California, December 16, 1987
Now living in Baltimore
Born on a small cattle ranch in the desert mountains of eastern California during a blizzard, Jessica Hunt earned a Bachelor of Music in composition and piano performance from Columbia College Chicago, a Master of Music in composition from DePaul University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. She has composed for large orchestras and chamber ensembles, the operatic stage, theater and film, electronic media, chorus, and instrumental and vocal solos and duos. An instructor in music theory at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Hunt’s current projects include Thurso’s Landing, a new opera incorporating a libretto adapted from poetry of the early-20th-century American poet Robinson Jeffers.
Climb was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra, honoring Beethoven’s 250th birthday by performing his symphonies in dialog with music by composers of today. The work was to have received its world premiere in March 2020, on a program with Beethoven’s Second and Third symphonies, but those concerts were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the belated premiere, on a Digital Stage concert in October 2020.
For her “dialog” with Beethoven, Hunt looked not just to the composer’s Second and Third symphonies, but also to the space between the works—one of great suffering for Beethoven. In the fall of 1802, Beethoven wrote his “Heiligenstadt Testament”—his account of despondency over ever-increasing hearing loss and frustration at overcoming physical and emotional infirmities. As Hunt writes: “The first time I read that document, Beethoven’s isolation, fear, and diminishing hope leapt off the page and pierced my heart. I recognized those fears—that anguish—they resonate deeply within my own chronically ill body.”
Currently living with the chronic autonomic nervous disorder dysautonomia, Hunt found a deep and personal connection with the despair and anxiety with which Beethoven lived. Just as deafness permeated every aspect of his life, Hunt notes that “every single one of my body’s autonomic functions” are affected by her condition. Climbing stairs has become a particular challenge; she describes the experience as “terrifyingly dangerous. My heart races, my vision darkens, my ears ring, it feels like gravity is pulling me backwards. It is in these moments that I must make an active choice to keep fighting, to claw my way up, until I can triumphantly rest at the top.” Connecting with Beethoven’s mourning his loss of hearing and accepting a “new normal,” Hunt claims that in reaching the top of the stairs, her “new reality is confirmed, but is also changed by the previous triumph and joy. The title is chosen to represent the challenge of living with any invisible illness or obstacle: Some of us cannot simply walk up a flight of stairs, instead, we must climb.”
Climb is partly autobiographical, exploring aural representations of the physical sensations that are part of Hunt’s daily life with dysautonomia. As she describes: “The piece opens with a frantic burst of adrenaline that soon surrenders to the sensation of stomach-dropping nausea and tinnitus.” The opening orchestral gesture establishes the musical metaphors of adrenaline rush, dizziness, panic, tinnitus, and nausea with a heartbeat motif leading to a “tachycardia/racing heart” section. The piece reaches for the key of E flat (the same as the ”Eroica” Symphony), but the gravity of the key of D pulls the music back. Optimism surfaces but is then overwhelmed by the glissandos of dizziness and transitions into violent palpitations leading to exhaustion. Punctuated by brassy flashes of pain, the orchestra-body steels itself with determination, even optimism, before a violent attack of
palpitations shatters its progress, melting into mourning for a wholeness that will never come again. After the last pitch, the string section inhales together and performs an up-bow gesture without touching the string, seemingly an upbeat to a final resolution that never comes, hinting at one last measure that Hunt asks the audience to imagine—a balance of hope, hopelessness, and uncertainty.
Composed from 1802 to 1803
Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770
Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827
“In his own opinion it is the greatest work that he has yet written. Beethoven played it for me recently, and I believe that heaven and earth will tremble when it is performed.” Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries wrote this prescient statement in a letter to the publisher Nikolaus Simrock dated October 22, 1803. Ries also mentioned that his teacher was planning to name the new symphony “Bonaparte” in homage to Napoleon. As scholar Lewis Lockwood has noted, “The story of Beethoven’s original plan to dedicate the symphony to Napoleon, or name it for him, and his angry decision to tear up this tribute on hearing of Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor, is not a myth.” When Ries brought the news of Bonaparte’s coronation to Beethoven, his teacher cried out in fury, “Is he then, too, nothing more than an ordinary man! Now he will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others and become a tyrant!” Disillusioned, Beethoven changed the title of his work from “Bonaparte” to Sinfonia Eroica composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand Uuomo (Heroic Symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man).
The story of the Symphony’s creation also provides insight into the composer’s tenacious and economical creative process. During the winter of 1801, he composed a contredanse for use in Viennese ballrooms. Obviously pleased by this little piece, he reused it in his ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, which premiered in March 1801. In late 1802 Beethoven came back to the contredanse melody, making it the basis of his Fifteen Variations and Fugue for piano, Op. 35, now known as the “Eroica”
Variations. Finally, he used the theme and part of the piano variations in the variations that comprise the finale of the “Eroica” Symphony. This unpretentious dance tune thus provided the point of departure for one of the grandest symphonies ever written.
The “Eroica” Symphony begins with two explosive and defiant chords. These two root-position triads in the main key of E-flat major contain within their structure the basis for the entire Symphony’s thematic material. The forward trajectory set in motion by these powerful opening salvos is sustained throughout the rest of this movement. All of the subsidiary themes are either obviously or subtly related to the first theme.
The Symphony’s second movement, the Marcia funebre, caused the French composer Hector Berlioz to observe, “I know of no other example in music of a style wherein grief is so able to sustain itself consistently in forms of such purity and nobility of expression.” Beethoven cast this funeral march in a broad three-part formal design in which the opening theme returns as a refrain. The final passage of the second movement is harrowing in its pathos, as Berlioz stated, “When these shreds of lugubrious melody are bare, alone, broken, and have passed one by one to the tonic, the wind instruments cry out as if it was the last farewell of the warriors to their companions in arms.”
While the third movement Scherzo begins quietly, the music builds volume inexorably as it hurtles forward. The accompanying Trio, by contrast, with its prominently featured three horns, is stately and heroic. The last movement features the theme and variations mentioned above. The finale begins with a precipitous onrush of energy. Immediately afterward, pizzicato strings quietly play the bass line of the main theme—itself obviously related to first movement’s opening theme. From this point onward, a series of variations appear in succession until an exuberant coda brings the “Eroica” to an exultant close.
—Byron Adams
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Nancy Plum.
See Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s biography on page 64.
Signed exclusively to Decca Classics in 2020 at the age of 24, American violinist Randall Goosby is acclaimed for the sensitivity and intensity of his musicianship alongside his determination to make music more inclusive and accessible, as well as bringing the music of under-represented composers to light. Highlights of his 2021–22 season included debuts with the Los Angeles and London philharmonics, the Baltimore and Detroit symphonies, and the Philharmonia Orchestra and recital appearances in London, New York, San Francisco, and Boston. Roots, a celebration of African-American music and his debut album for Decca, was released in June. Mr. Goosby has performed with numerous orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Nashville and New World symphonies. Tonight’s concert marks his
Philadelphia Orchestra debut.
Mr. Goosby is deeply passionate about inspiring and serving others through education, social engagement, and outreach activities. He has worked with non-profit organizations such as the Opportunity Music Project and Concerts in Motion in New York City and participated in community engagement programs for schools, hospitals, and assisted living facilities. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he continues his studies there, pursuing an Artist Diploma under Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho. Mr. Goosby plays a 1735 Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from the Stradivari Society. Mr. Goosby records exclusively for Decca. More information on Randall Goosby can be found at www.randallgoosby.com.
Management for Randall Goosby: Primo Artists, New York, NY www.primoartists.com
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN
Conductor
ANGEL BLUE
Soprano
BARBER
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24, for voice and orchestra
COLEMAN
Two Songs
1. “This Is Not a Small Voice” Philadelphia Orchestra commission
2. “Eternal Flame”
World premiere—Philadelphia Orchestra commission
INTERMISSION
DVOŘÁK
Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Poco adagio
III. Scherzo: Vivace
IV. Finale: Allegro
FOR LYRICS AND TRANSLATIONS, PLEASE SCAN THE QR CODE BELOW
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
SUMMER OF 1915
Composed in 1947
SAMUEL BARBER
Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 9, 1910
Died in New York City, January 23, 1981
Once shunned by some for his full-bodied Romanticism, Samuel Barber became recognized as one of our nation’s leading composers. His “rehabilitation” is a relatively recent phenomenon and was partly an outgrowth of the rise of what was called the “new Romanticism” during the 1980s. Since then, Americans have embraced the music of this native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, with unprecedented vigor.
Based on a passage from James Agee’s prose poem of the same title, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a piece of pure nostalgia. It embodies the rough-edged American sentimentalism of the 1940s, which also found expression in the late novels of Thomas Wolfe, for instance, or the films of Frank Capra, or the photography of Robert Frank. When Barber first encountered Agee’s poem in 1945, it sounded immediately familiar to him. “The text moved me very much,” he wrote to his uncle. “This was actually prose, but I put it into lines to make the rhythmic pattern clear. It reminded me so much of summer evenings in West Chester, now very far away, and all of you are in it!” Barber was staying with his family at Mount Kisco, New York, at the time, where both his father and his Aunt Louise were gravely ill. Doubtless his proximity to his family at the time made Agee’s text all the more poignant. “The summer evening he describes ... reminded me so much of similar evenings when I was a child at home. I found out, after setting this, that Mr. Agee and I are the same age, and the year he described was 1915 when we were both five. You see, it expresses a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.”
Barber says he composed the piece in a few days, completely caught up in the similarities between his childhood and Agee’s. The work was finished in April 1947 and received its premiere on April 9 of the following year, with soprano Eleanor Steber and Serge Koussevitzky leading the Boston Symphony. Barber, committed to other concerts in Italy, was unable to attend the performance, which was at best an equivocal success. Later Barber
revised the work slightly, trimming some lines of text and reducing the orchestral forces.
The work is in three large sections, though the large central part divides itself further into three; these five main sections are reflections of the varying moods of the text. Agee’s text is written as continuous prose, but Barber divided it into line divisions, partly to facilitate his musical setting—but also, perhaps, to underscore the work’s essential identity as blank verse.
—Paul J. Horsley
Composed from 2021 to 2022
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1970
Now living in New York City
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Valerie Coleman has always felt interconnected with boxer Muhammed Ali, who hailed from the same West End inner city neighborhood. She found her career in music at an early age, pretending backyard sticks were flutes and composing three full-length symphonies by age 14. In high school, she studied flute and composition at Tanglewood, subsequently earning a double Bachelor of Arts degree in composition/theory and flute performance from Boston University and a master’s degree in flute performance from the Mannes School of Music. She is currently a member of the composition and flute faculty at Mannes. This season Coleman is leading a year-long residency at the Juilliard School in its Music Advancement Program through the American Composers Forum, and she has been named to the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works dual commissioning program.
As a solo flutist, Coleman has performed with major symphonies and in concert halls nationwide. In 1996 she founded the quintet Imani Winds, championing composers “under-represented from the non-European side of contemporary music” and providing a performance forum for Black musicians approaching classical music from similar backgrounds. In 2009 she established the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, an intensive summer program for instrumentalists and composers. More recently she co-founded and performs as flutist with the performer-composer trio Umama Womama.
—Nancy Plum
The composer has provided the following about “This Is Not a Small Voice”:
“This Is Not a Small Voice” is a memory piece featuring the poem of the same name by acclaimed poet and icon Sonia Sanchez. When I first read the poem, its declaration and anointing of love and belonging as given from one generation to another struck me. It sat and stood so profoundly heavy within my own role as a parent with its charge and message, and from there it took less than a month to create a work that articulated in sound the seen and unseen layers of meaning within the poem that changed my life.
The result is a song written for Angel Blue, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and The Philadelphia Orchestra that connects the ideals of community and humanity through the nostalgic threads of childhood. The song itself is meant to be a mental time capsule of my life growing up in the 1970s South: of black and white television, The Honeymooners, old Cary Grant films, Roots … my father driving a Volkswagen van while we played in the alleys and streets, unknowingly witnessing the advent of urban decay. How can an orchestral work reflect the parental act of providing a child a measure of safety and comfort even through times of trauma?
One only needs to read the poem to be guided through its nostalgic musical tone poem counterpart, whose moments are captured through instrumental combinations and shifting and tonalities of occasional periodical irony. It opens with scenes of long ago: the moments of wonder as children are at play, with the feel of a simple melody, the vision of children pouring into schools from the streets as running water through harp and clarinet lead to hints of Yemanjá, the orisha of oceans, motherhood, and healing.
Sonia [Sanchez, the author of the poem "This Is Not a Small Voice"] instilled within my heart an epiphany around the ceremonial intent behind the giving of names within African indigenous cultures brought to modern day; a subconscious nostalgic desire to embrace and connect with ancestry through multi-syllabic prefixes and phonetic spellings. A drum-circle-like texture of low strings and rhythms give way to that sacred anointing. A soliloquy follows in dedication to youth whose lives were, and are, taken by the streets or by lynching, as a timeless epitaph centered in the sounds of a single voice.
Sounds of resilience sourced in the traditions of African-American spirituals and a call and response lead into a refrain that sings “mends the children.” The feel and tempo of “Wade in the Water” dances between soprano and tutti violins, taking the current into a brief wash of dissonant waves of spikes within brass and woodwind parts to convey the words “where they toast more than the flesh.” The tone poem eventually reaches a singular moment in which the words ”Black Genius” float with power in an a-cappella form. Within a return to innocence found at the start, the song shares a benediction for the youth and a proclamation to society: to cherish and protect a children’s right to grow and flourish from the divine biological blueprint within them.
Composed from 1884 to1885
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841
Died in Prague, May 1, 1904
In a 1941 article entitled “Dvořák the Craftsman,” the British composer and conductor Victor Hely-Hutchinson wrote, “To begin with, Dvořák was not a miniaturist, nor an epigrammatist, but a composer in the true sense of the word: he had from the outset that sense of musical construction and development on a big scale which distinguished the great masters.” He continued, “Among the symphonies the ‘New World’ is obviously the most popular, while the tragic and impassioned [Seventh] Symphony in D minor has, at any rate, until recent years been comparatively seldom performed.” Hely-Hutchinson was joined in his admiration of the Seventh Symphony by the composer, conductor, and music analyst Donald Francis Tovey, who was quite impressed by this majestic score: “I have no hesitation in setting Dvořák’s [Seventh] Symphony along with the C-major Symphony of Schubert and the four symphonies of Brahms, as among the greatest and purest examples of this art-form since Beethoven.”
It is unsurprising that two British musicians should laud Dvořák in such terms considering the exalted reputation the Czech composer enjoyed in Britain during his lifetime and thereafter. Indeed, British musicians were greatly responsible for widening Dvořák’s international reputation. In 1883 Joseph Barnaby presented the composer’s Stabat Mater to
sensational acclaim in London. In the wake of this performance, Dvořák was commissioned to write large choral scores for festivals in Birmingham and Leeds. In 1884 a young Edward Elgar played in the first violin section when Dvořák conducted his Stabat Mater at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. The Czech composer’s esteem in Britain was confirmed in 1891 when he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.
In response to the ecstatic reception accorded to Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony at its British premiere in 1884, the Royal Philharmonic Society made him an honorary fellow. It also commissioned him to write a symphony to be presented in the following season. During that same year, the composer had heard a performance of his friend Johannes Brahms’s new Third Symphony and was determined to meet its high symphonic standard. Dvořák began to sketch his Seventh Symphony on December 13, 1884. As he later wrote to a friend, “a new symphony (for London) occupies me, and wherever I go I think of nothing but my work, which must be capable of stirring the world, and God grant me that it will!” The Seventh Symphony was completed on March 17, 1885, and Dvořák conducted the premiere in London on April 22. It was a resounding success.
Cast in the somber key of D minor, the Seventh Symphony is one of Dvořák’s towering achievements. The first movement is cast as a taut sonata form, the material of which is derived solely from the brooding opening theme. The second movement begins serenely with a chorale in the woodwinds, but this otherworldly music is soon interrupted by eruptions of sweeping heroic tragedy and deep emotion. The Scherzo is a furiant, a wild Czech dance that is characterized by constant syncopation; it is paired with a lyrical and pastoral trio in order to offer a respite from the whirling fervor of the dance. The music of the Finale is barely contained within a modified sonata form, dark, impassioned music hurtling forward to a coda of overwhelming tragic grandeur.
—Byron Adams
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, Nancy Plum, and/or Valerie Coleman.
See Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s biography on page 64.
Soprano Angel Blue opened the Metropolitan
Opera’s 2019–20 season as Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. She reprised the role at the Met in fall 2021, immediately following her role debut as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta in the Met’s 2021–22 season opener of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first production at the Met by a Black composer. Ms. Blue was the 2020 recipient of the Met’s Beverly Sills Award and the first Black person to receive the honor. She has appeared with such major opera companies as the Metropolitan Opera, the Teatro alla Scala, the Vienna State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, and Oper Frankfurt. This season she sang Mimì in Puccini’s La bohème at the Bavarian State Opera, Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata at Covent Garden and the Arena di Verona, and Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust at Paris Opera. She also appeared with the Dallas Symphony; in recital in Gstaad, at Washington University in St. Louis, and at Cal Performances in Berkeley; and will join The Philadelphia Orchestra on its upcoming European tour.
Ms. Blue was born and raised in California and completed her musical studies at UCLA. She was a member of the Young Artists Program at the Los Angeles Opera, after which she moved to Europe to begin her international career. She made her United States operatic debut as Musetta in La bohème at Los Angeles Opera and subsequently debuted at La Scala in the same role.
AUGUST 13, 7:30PM
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN
Conductor
ANGEL BLUE
Soprano
JENNIFER JOHNSON CANO
Mezzo-soprano
RUSSELL THOMAS Tenor
RYAN MCKINNY
Bass-baritone
ALBANY PRO MUSICA CHORUS
JOSÉ DANIEL FLORES-CARABALLO
Artistic Director
FRANK
Pachamama Meets an Ode
BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (“Choral”)
I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso
II. Molto vivace—Presto
III. Adagio molto e cantabile—Andante moderato—Tempo I
IV. Presto—Allegro assai—Presto (Recitativo)—Allegro assai—Allegro assai vivace: alla marcia— Andante maestoso—Allegro energico—Allegro ma non tanto—Poco adagio—Poco allegro, strigendo il tempo—Prestissimo
FOR LYRICS AND TRANSLATIONS, PLEASE SCAN THE QR CODE BELOW
Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.
GABRIELA LENA FRANK
Born in Berkeley, California, September 26, 1972
Now living in Boonville, California
American composer Gabriela Lena Frank comes from a richly cosmopolitan background: Her father was born in the United States from Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian, of Chinese and indigenous indio descent. Consequently, many of her musical works explore multicultural intersections in new, unexpected, and vivid ways.
Frank studied composition at Rice University and earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She has received numerous commissions from leading ensembles, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet, and she has participated with Yo-Yo Ma in his Silk Road Project. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, the same year she won a Latin GRAMMY Award. She is currently composer-in-residence with The Philadelphia Orchestra, having previously served in that capacity with the Detroit and Houston symphonies. Next season sees the premiere of her first opera, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, with San Diego Opera.
In this commission for The Philadelphia Orchestra, Frank was asked to compose a work in dialog with Beethoven’s First and Ninth symphonies, part of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The piece was to have received its world premiere in April 2020 but those concerts were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It received its belated premiere at Carnegie Hall in February 2022.
For Frank, one of the most compelling issues that constitutes her present lens is the undeniable, catastrophic impact of climate change. Years of apocalyptic fires in her home state of California prompted her to ask, despairingly, “How on earth did we get here?” She combined her “climate citizenship” with her multicultural heritage, and in this musical response to a tragic global threat draws again on her mother’s Peruvian culture.
Many climate researchers point to the Industrial Revolution as the origin of humankind’s devastating impact on climate and the environment. As Frank points out, it was precisely the “churning engines of commerce and technol-
ogy” in Europe that formed the backdrop to Beethoven’s career. There is a compelling irony in Beethoven writing his iconic “Ode to Joy” as the finale of the Ninth Symphony—a glorious hymn to global unity—while the very seeds of global environmental destruction were being sown through Europe’s burgeoning exploitation of natural resources, especially in the New World, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent.
In a quiet act of revolt against European colonialism, the Cusco School of religious painters in Peru—most of them indigenous—included images of native birds, animals, flowers, and trees in their depictions of biblical stories, keeping alive a reverent attentiveness to the natural gifts of Mother Earth or Pachamama (in the Inca-Quechua language). The Cusco School painters reached the height of their expressive powers just as Beethoven was achieving the same peak in his career. Beethoven’s hopeful optimism, juxtaposed against the plundering of a land and culture by European colonists, prompted Frank to look again at Beethoven’s era with a new, searching vision. “Pachamama asks: What of odes? What of joy?”
In Pachamama Meets an Ode, Frank conjectures a meeting between Beethoven and an artist of the Cusco School who is painting his scenes in a Spanish-style church, built on the ruins of an Inca temple. Frank’s own lyrics, partly adapted from an earlier work, tell of the Cusco painter hiding “spirits from bygone native cultures amidst European figurines, equipping them with protective natural talismans and friendly fauna.” These spirits, the composer notes, are being readied for their journeys into lands and times “violently transformed by colonization.” The painter asks pointed, probing questions of the “Great Man,” inviting the iconic purveyor of global “joy” to witness and consider the devastation and cultural erasure, the extinction of animal species, and the widespread annihilation of the natural environment.
The chorus offers this narrative through a series of varied strophe-like passages, sometimes humming in a loose allusion to indigenous vocal styles from South America. The opening musical ideas return dramatically, more impassioned and urgent, at the end. Meanwhile, the relatively reduced proportions and timbres of the late-Classical orchestra underscore the historicity of the hypothetical encounter between the two artists.
—Luke Howard
SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR, OP. 125 (“CHORAL”)
Composed from 1822 to 1824
Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770
Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827
Throughout his career, Beethoven was a fervent believer in Enlightenment values and sought ways to express his beliefs in many of his compositions. One of the reasons for the broad and sustained appeal of his Ninth Symphony is that people enjoying or seeking freedom see this work as exquisitely expressing a message they wish loudly to proclaim. The message is simple, one we learn as children: People should live together in joyous brotherhood.
For his final symphony Beethoven turned to a lengthy poem by Friedrich Schiller that he had long wanted to set to music: the “Ode to Joy” (1785). Schiller’s famous words state that in a new age the old ways will no longer divide people; “all men shall become brothers.” Since the premiere of the Ninth Symphony in Vienna in May 1824, performances of the work have become almost sacramental occasions, as musicians and audiences alike are exhorted to universal fraternity.
On a purely musical level, few pieces of music have exerted such an impact on later composers. How, many wondered, should one write a symphony after the Ninth? Schubert, Berlioz, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler—the list goes on and on—all dealt with this question in fascinating ways that fundamentally shaped 19th-century music. Schubert, who most likely attended the 1824 premiere, briefly quoted the “joy” theme in his own final symphony, written the following year. Most Bruckner symphonies begin in the manner of the Ninth. Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Shostakovich followed the model of using a chorus. Wagner was perhaps the composer most influenced by the work, arguing that in it Beethoven pointed the way to the “Music of the Future,” a universal drama uniting music and words that, in short, was realized in Wagner’s own operas.
Composers are not the only people who have become deeply engaged with the Ninth, and struggled with its import and meaning. For nearly two centuries the work has surfaced at crucial times and places, appropriated for widely diverse purposes. As the ultimate “feel-good” piece, the Ninth has been used to
open the Olympic Games and bring nations together in song. Yet during the Nazi era it was often performed to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. Its melody is the official anthem of the European Union—but it was also the anthem of Ian Smith’s racist regime in Rhodesia during the 1970s. Within more recent memory, we have heard protestors playing recordings of the Ninth in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and jubilant students also chose it as their theme as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. There were commemorative performances in the wake of 9/11, when the Ninth was once again enlisted for its hopeful message.
The opening of the first movement grows out of a void. Against the murmurings of the low strings emerge falling fifths in the violins that build to a loud and imposing first theme. It has been likened to the creation of the world; certainly no symphony before had sounded anything like it. Beethoven switched the expected order of movements by following the allegro with the scherzo. A favorite with audiences from the beginning, it projects both humor and power. The lyrical slow movement seems to explore more personal, even spiritual realms.
The finale opens with what Wagner called the “terror fanfare,” a dissonant and frantic passage that leads to a “recitative” (so marked in the score) for the cellos and basses. Fragments from the previous three movements pass in review but are in turn rejected by the strings. After this strange, extended instrumental recitative comes an aria-like melody: the famous “Ode to Joy” tune to which later will be added words. After some seven minutes the movement starts over again: The “terror fanfare” returns, this time followed by a true vocal recitative, with the bass soloist singing “O friends, not these tones! But rather, let us strike up more pleasant and more joyful ones.” The chorus and four vocal soloists take up the “joy” theme, which undergoes a series of variations. The music reaches a climax with a new theme: “Be embraced, ye millions, … above the starry canopy there must dwell a loving Father,” which is later combined in counterpoint with the joy theme and eventually builds to a frenzied coda.
—Christopher H. Gibbs
Program notes © 2022. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Luke Howard.
See Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s biography on page 64.
See Angel Blue’s biography on page 73.
Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano, who made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in March, has been acclaimed for performances of both new and standard repertoire. In 2019 she was Offred in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale at Boston Lyric Opera. With more than 100 performances at the Metropolitan Opera, her most recent roles have included Nicklausse in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, Emilia in Verdi’s Otello, and Meg Page in Verdi’s Falstaff Highlights this season included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Chicago and San Francisco symphonies; the NY premiere of Marc Neikrug’s A Song by Mahler at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites with Houston Grand Opera; the world premiere of Gregory Spears’s Castor and Patience with Cincinnati Opera; Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle
with Roanoke Opera; and workshops of Gregg Kallor’s Frankenstein with Arizona Opera.
A native of St. Louis, Ms. Cano earned degrees from Webster University and Rice University. Her recordings include a recital with pianist Christopher Cano, Unaffected: Live from the Savannah Voice Festival; a live performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Pittsburgh Symphony; Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 with the Baltimore Symphony; and a live recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble. She joined the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program after winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition.
Jennifer Johnson Cano’s recordings are available through iTunes and Amazon.com. Exclusive Representation: Kirshbaum Associates Inc.
307 Seventh Avenue Suite 506
New York, NY 10001 www.kirshbaumassociates.com”
American tenor Russell Thomas has established his reputation in key lyric roles such as the title role in Verdi’s Don Carlo, Manrico in Verdi’s Il trovatore, and Pollione in Bellini’s Norma. As an alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Program, he most recently returned there as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème and Ismaele in Verdi’s Nabucco, the latter of which was broadcast worldwide via the Met’s Live in HD series. Highlights of the 2021-22 season included a return to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as the title role in Verdi’s Otello, the title role in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex in concert in Helsinki, Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio at San Francisco Opera, and Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Also this season he became the first artist in residence at LA Opera.
Mr. Thomas has enjoyed a long collaboration with renowned director Peter Sellars, notably creating the role of Lazarus in John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, now released on the Deutsche Grammophon label. This partnership continued at the Salzburg Festspiele where he made his debut in the title role in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, returning in the 2018-19 season in a new staging of Mozart’s Idomeneo. Mr. Thomas’s concert appearances have included the New York Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2009.
Ryan McKinny
This season American bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, who is making his Philadelphia Orchestra debut, appeared as the title role in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and for his Seattle Opera debut; joined pianist Kathleen Kelly for a recital at the Lied Center of Kansas; and performed with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood as the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He also collaborated on a documentary with Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe. Through his work with Helio Arts, he commissions artists to write, direct, and film original stories, to help elevate new voices and visions in the classical performing arts world. During the pandemic, he partnered with such artists as J’Nai Bridges, Russell Thomas, John Holiday, and Julia Bullock to create innovative
performances for streaming audiences at Dallas Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, On Site Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival. He has also appeared at the Semperoper Dresden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bayreuth Festival, and Los Angeles Opera, among others.
The first recipient of Operalia’s Birgit Nilsson Prize for singing Wagner, Mr. McKinny has also received the George London-Kirsten Flagstad Award. He represented the United States in the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, where he was a finalist in the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize, and he was a Grand Finalist in the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, captured in the film The Audition
See Albany Pro Musica’s biography on page 44.
Albany Pro Musica Chorus
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What better way to honor your fond SPAC memories than with a planned gift to SPAC?
A planned gift is one of the most meaningful commitments you can make and helps ensure the future of SPAC.
There are many ways to join SPAC’s Evergreen Society:
• Create a bequest
• Donate from your IRA
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• Give appreciated stock
These are just some of the easy ways to make a planned gift to SPAC. Talk with your financial advisor about what’s best for you financially.
When you make a planned gift, you become a member of SPAC’s Evergreen Society and are acknowledged in all SPAC program materials and receive invitations to exclusive events.
Other commemorative gifts include seat plaques and the dedication of trees and benches to celebrate a special occasion or honor the memory of a loved one.
For more information, please contact Christine Dixon at 518-485-9330 ext. 112 or cdixon@spac.org.
Exhibition On View June 11 - September 18, 2022
Art Inspired Dance Performance by Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company August 6 at 2 pm
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SPAC School of the Arts is changing the face of arts education in the Capital Region!
SPAC School of the Arts is changing the face of arts education in the Capital Region!
Classes are taught by qualified teaching artists who challenge students explore diverse topics and cultures, connect with others, learn new perspectives, and discover passion, confidence, and a deeper sense of self.
Classes are taught by qualified teaching artists who challenge students to explore diverse topics and cultures, connect with others, learn new perspectives, and discover passion, confidence, and a deeper sense of self.
Supported by
Supported by
Additional support from the Charles R. Wood Foundation, NYS Parks Connect Kids to Parks program, Michael and Stacie Arpey, and the Business for Good Foundation
Additional support from the Charles R. Wood Foundation, NYS Parks Connect Kids to Parks program, Michael and Stacie Arpey, and the Business for Good Foundation
The retiring principal dancer kicks off her final year with NYCB with a goodbye performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at SPAC.
NBY ABBY TEGNELIA | PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL KOLNIK
ew York City Ballet (NYCB) principal dancer Sterling Hyltin is preparing for her bittersweet final Saratoga performance—she’s sad to be saying goodbye but thrilled that she’ll be dancing in George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as her last SPAC show before retiring next year. “It’s such a lovely way to say goodbye,” she says. “The ballet is approachable for all ages. Plus, dancing outside adds to the magic. There can be lightning bugs on the lawn while watching lightning bugs dancing on stage.”
When Hyltin started coming to Saratoga with NYCB 20 years ago, the company’s residency was still three weeks long, and she cherishes her memories of her extended Spa City stays. “You were in a house with your friends,” she says. “It felt like we were a family there, so much more so than in the city. It felt like home.”
Hyltin’s love for Saratoga is so strong that she and her family visited during lockdown. And it’s sitting on the SPAC lawn—as a spectator—where the new mom hopes to show her daughter, Ingrid, who was born near the beginning of lockdown, her beloved NYCB for the first time. “SPAC is so kid-friendly, with the lawn,” she says. “So I would like to show my daughter ballet there.”
From the amphitheater stage, Hyltin has certainly felt SPAC’s magic as well, most dramatically as Juliet in Peter Martins’ Romeo + Juliet, a role she originated. “One year as we were dancing, right as it got into the story, the sky got ominous,” she says. “You really get immersed in the story that way—for some ballets, being outside really enhanc es the story. Or sometimes you look out, and there’s a full moon in the sky. As people are watching us, we’re watching nature!”
Hyltin considers herself so blessed to have been able to do what she loves that she’s retiring in order to help her daughter find that special something for herself. “I love dancing so much,” Hyltin says. “It’s been a gift to be surrounded by passionate people. That gives you confidence. I want to inspire that in my daughter, let her teach me where she should be. And for that I need to be present for her, not off dancing all the time.”
NYCB performs at SPAC July 12 to July 16, bringing the whole company of more than 90 dancers to Saratoga for the first time since 2019. In addition to the comical and fanciful Midsummer, they will also dance a roster of contemporary works, including Merce Cunningham’s masterful Summerspace, plus a special “NYCB On and Off Stage” presentation. At press time, Hyltin was expected to dance the famous “Divertissement” pas de deux in the second act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a romantic piece that shows off her most ethereal qualities. She will then start her final season back in NYC, which will culminate in her grand final performance December 4 at Lincoln Center, where she will dance the coveted role of the Sugarplum Fairy in The Nutcracker.
“Going in for my final season, I know I have to enjoy dancing everything for one last time,” Hyltin says. “I have to stop myself from thinking that I have to make every step the most perfect ever. This year, I get to just enjoy it.”
For this great cellist, performing outside in the Spa State Park brings out the very essence of music.
BY ABBY TEGNELIA | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON BELL
In a comeback classical season that’s about as buzzed-about and fanfare-filled as it could possibly get, there’s no denying that Yo-Yo Ma’s return to SPAC is the boldest headline. Not only is the world-renowned cellist the most famous name on the marquee, but he also made the news during COVID for his comforting impromptu performance at a vaccination clinic in nearby Massachusetts. And now the famously positive and smiley musician will bring his healing powers of music to SPAC’s outdoor amphitheater August 5, in what is sure to be an especially meaningful experience for the virtuoso.
“There’s nothing like creating music in nature,” Ma says of SPAC’s location in the Spa State Park. “The natural world, like the best music, engages all of our senses, demanding that we use our head, our heart, and our hands. In my experience, it’s when we use all three that we form the most enduring memories, that we can understand who we are and how we fit into the world. That’s the purpose of music.”
Ma’s performance will be a highlight of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s residency, which features the full orchestra for the first time since 2019. The residency runs from July 27 to August 13 and also features the return of Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin (in four programs including a finale featuring Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) and violinist Joshua Bell (alongside star soprano Larisa Martinez on July 29). Ma will perform Camille Saint-Saëns's Cello Concerto No. 1, an emotional and dramatic solo that’s written in one continuous movement with a final section that is especially demanding.
“Saint-Saëns's First Cello Concerto is so full of joy and sparkle,” Ma says. “It is beloved for good reason, and I hear it always as a celebration of nature and human nature. It is fitting music for such a beautiful place and such extraordinary musical company.”
Ma’s passion for the arts began at an extremely young age; as a 7-year-old prodigy he performed for President John F. Kennedy after a rousing introduction by the great composer Leonard Bernstein. Since then, the 19-time GRAMMY Award winner has become a household name by appealing to about as diverse a crowd as possible, having performed for children on Sesame Street, with friend James Taylor on a range of projects and even with Miley Cyrus on a (charity) Metallica tribute album. But while his dedication to a diverse repertoire of music has certainly helped make him the most famous cellist in the world, it’s his mind-blowing mark on the classical music realm that has garnered him esteemed awards, appointments and accomplishments the world over.
“There is no artist better than Yo-Yo Ma to embody the essence of this summer—joy, community and celebration of the human spirit,” says SPAC president and CEO Elizabeth Sobol. “Summer 2022 will be a season like no other as we welcome our audiences and resident companies home to SPAC and the park after several long years of yearning.”
Ma has a long history of performing with The Philadelphia Orchestra and says he is excited to reunite with them on the SPAC stage (he was on-hand for the Orchestra’s first post-COVID performance n front of a live audience at their home theater, Verizon Hall, where he also performed Saint-Saëns's Cello Concerto No. 1). “The Philadelphia Orchestra always plays with the very fullest commitment,” he says. “Its musicians sound extraordinary every time I hear them—and as an institution, the Orchestra has a remarkable, almost magical ability to pass on its love of music and performance from generation to generation.”
Widely regarded as one of the greatest singers in the world, GRAMMY-winning vocalist Ledisi will perform with The Philadelphia Orchestra on August 3.
BY NATALIE MOORE
When it comes to the sheer talent possessed by Ledisi, the genre-fluid powerhouse singer-songwriter who scheduled not one, but two SPAC performances this summer, don’t take our word for it. Instead, take it from, oh, 12-time GRAMMY winner John Legend. “As a contemporary vocalist, there’s almost no one I can think of in the world that sings as skillfully as she does,” the “All of Me” singer and household name once said in an interview. “In terms of her range, dexterity, clarity, versatility, she can do anything she wants. She’s one of the great singers in the world, period.”
And yet Ledisi isn’t quite a household name herself—at least not yet. That could be because she’s not particularly concerned with sticking to any one type of music long enough to be classified as a pop, jazz or R&B artist. “I’m genre-less,” the New Orleans native told me the week after performing Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” in French at the 2022 GRAMMYS. “Last week I was at the GRAMMYS. Now I’m with Eric Church in New Orleans. And then before the GRAMMYS I was doing musical theater with Billy Porter directing at New York City Center. It’s just blowing my mind.” Oh, right: In addition to singing in a plethora of genres, ranges and languages and with music’s biggest names including Dave Matthews, Kelly Clarkson and jazz great Herbie Hancock, Ledisi is also a stage and screen actor, appearing in everything from Selma to The Legend of Little Girl Blue, the one-woman show she co-wrote and co-produced in 2019.
This summer, Ledisi is flexing her multi-disciplinary muscles right here in the Spa City. First, she graced the SPAC amphitheater stage at the Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival. And she’ll return August 3 to headline her very own show with The Philadelphia Orchestra, in which she’ll perform songs from Ledisi Sings Nina, her 2021 album of songs by music icon and civil rights activist Nina Simone, an artist who literally saved Ledisi’s life when she was contemplating suicide while living in Oakland. “When I was depressed and ready to quit and really leave this earth, 'Trouble in Mind' came on the radio,” Ledisi says. “I really got Nina then and I promised to finish this tribute.”
While Ledisi Sings Nina is something to behold on its own—the album was nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at this year’s GRAMMYS—its songs become something even greater when paired with a full orchestra. “It just brings them sonically to another level,” Ledisi says. “The Philadelphia Orchestra has a little something that I like: A little wiggle.” Performing live also gives the artist a chance to sing songs by Simone that didn’t make it onto the album, such as African American folk song “See-Line Woman.” “It goes into this rhythm that I’m sure Nina would’ve loved, because it has this African beat on it,” Ledisi says of her arrangement of the song. “People get so euphoric; they’re so excited until I start to speak in words that are uncomfortable for them, and everybody gasps. At the end of it, they’re understanding: This is Nina. Ledisi is tributing her.”
If you’re not quite sold on Ledisi’s August 3 performance yet, SPAC president and CEO Elizabeth Sobol will surely change your mind: “This is an incredible opportunity for our community to experience this inspiring musician who is arguably one of the greatest singers in the world,” she says. “Ledisi’s new project with the Orchestra takes the diversity and depth of Simone’s artistry with the breathtaking range of Ledisi’s powerhouse vocals. It’s our can’t-miss performances of the season.”
Following a show at Skidmore in April, the 2022 Classical Woman of the Year will perform with The Philadelphia Orchestra on August 4.
BY NATALIE MOORE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAX BARRETT
When you ask an artist as impressive as pianist Lara Downes if there has been a moment in her career when she felt she had officially “made it,” you expect an impressive answer. Maybe “when my recording topped the Billboard chart” or “when I was named 2022 Classical Woman of the Year.”
But while both of those things have indeed happened to Downes, who performed at Skidmore’s Arthur Zankel Music Center this past April 14 and will return to Saratoga with The Philadelphia Orchestra August 4, neither were her answer. Instead, when asked if she had an “I made it” moment, she said, “No! And I don’t think there ever is. You do your work and you’re really happy when wonderful things happen, but I’ve noticed that the more success I have, the things that give me real gratification are not the applause, approval, recognition—of course it’s so wonderful to have those things—but when I feel that what I’m doing is actually impacting or helping someone else.”
Luckily for Downes, there have been plenty such moments throughout her career. She specializes in revisiting the works of Black composers who in many cases helped shape classical music as we know it today, but aren’t necessarily recognized for having done so. Take Scott Joplin, the turn-of-the-20th-century composer who serves as the inspiration for Downes’ recent album, Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered. “It’s an interesting story because he wasn’t under-appreciated in his time,” Downes said of the musician. “He was very, very famous in his time as the ‘King of Ragtime.’ But at the same time he was also a classical composer and wanted to write operas.” Joplin did write Treemonisha, one of the first operas by a Black American composer, but did not live to see a full production of it. “Of course,” Downes continues, “the doors that were closed to him in his time were closed because of race.”
That Joplin album is just one of a series of albums released under Downes’ Rising Sun Music label that explores the work of Black composers—including Eubie Blake, William Grant Still and Florence Price—and their contributions to the American classical canon, which has historically been dominated by white males. And the iconoclast doesn’t stop there. In addition to highlighting the works of influential composers from the last 200 years, Downes also explores the contributions of contemporary BIPOC artists in her born-from-COVID NPR series, AMPLIFY, which features performances by and conversations which features such musicians.
Speaking of Price, the pioneering composer—who in the 1930s became the first female composer of color to have her work performed by a major symphony orchestra—will be the focus of Downes’ performance when she returns to Saratoga with The Philadelphia Orchestra. (This year’s Orchestra residency at SPAC will feature a record number of works by female and BIPOC composers.) At the August 4 show, Downes will also perform A Lovesome Thing: Billy Strayhorn Suite, a brand-new piece of music created just for her from three songs by Billy Strayhorn, a jazz pianist and songwriter known for being a close collaborator of Duke Ellington’s.
And while Downes’ work does indeed focus heavily on BIPOC artists, she hopes that her music brings people of all backgrounds together. “This is a time when people feel really divided,” she says. “Music is a place where we can see where we have crossed paths, where we have given and taken from each other, and where even the difficult and painful parts of our history have produced beautiful things.”
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Top 30 AR/VR college (Animation Career Review) First integrated electronic arts program to be offered within a research university
220,000-square-foot stateof-the-art Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center
Top 10 undergraduate game design program (U.S. News & World Report)
