Scheherazade
Saturday, April 6, 2024 at 7:30pm
Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center
Donato Cabrera, conductor Joshua Roman, cello
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
Mason Bates (b. 1977)
Dances of Galánta
I. Lento
II. Allegretto moderato
III. Allegro con moto, grazioso
IV. Allegro
V. Allegro vivace
Cello Concerto
Joshua Roman, cello
Season underwriting for Artist-in-Residence, Joshua Roman, is generously provided by Gladys & Fred Katen Programs and artists are subject to change. The use of recording devices in the concert hall is strictly prohibited. ~
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Scheherazade, Op.35
I. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship
II. The Tale of Prince Kalendar
III. The Young Prince and the Princess
IV. The Festival at Bagdad; The Sea; The Ship Goes to Pieces on a Rock
DONATO CABRERA, MUSIC DIRECTOR
Donato Cabrera is the Music Director of the Las Vegas Philharmonic and the California Symphony and served as the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and the Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra from 2009-2016.
Cabrera has evolved the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s concert experience since assuming the role in 2014 by expanding the scope and breadth of its orchestral concerts, hosting engaging and lively pre-concert conversations with guest artists and composers, and by creating the Spotlight Concert Series that features the musicians of the Las Vegas Philharmonic in intimate chamber music performances. Since Cabrera’s appointment as Music Director in 2013 of the California Symphony, the organization has redefined what it means to be an orchestra in the 21st Century. Under Cabrera’s baton, the California Symphony has reached new artistic heights by implementing innovative programming that emphasizes welcoming newcomers and loyalists alike, building on its reputation for championing music by living composers, and committing to programming music by women and people of color.
Deeply committed to diversity and education through the arts, Cabrera has furthered the scope, breadth, and content of the Las Vegas Philharmonic and California Symphony’s music education programs. In past years, annually reaching over 20,000 Title I fourth graders of the Clark County School District, Cabrera completely reshaped Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Youth Concert Series to be a curriculum-based concert experience, while also integrating a hands-on, complimentary experience with the DISCOVERY Children’s Museum. California Symphony’s Sound Minds program has achieved national attention for its El Sistema-inspired approach
and has a proven track record in impacting the lives and improving the test scores of hundreds of K-6 children in San Pablo’s Downer Elementary School.
In recent seasons, Cabrera has made impressive debuts with the National Symphony’s KC Jukebox at the Kennedy Center, Louisville Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Staatstheater Cottbus, Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, Orquesta Sinfónica Concepción, Nevada Ballet Theatre, New West Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, and the Reno Philharmonic. In 2016, he led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in performances with Grammy Award-winning singer Lila Downs. Cabrera made his Carnegie Hall debut leading the world premiere of Mark Grey’s Atash Sorushan with soprano, Jessica Rivera.
As Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrera worked closely with its Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and frequently conducted the orchestra in a variety of concerts, including all of the education and family concerts, reaching over 70,000 children throughout the Bay Area every year. During his seven seasons as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Cabrera took the group on two European tours, winning an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of American Music on Foreign Tours, and receiving critical acclaim for a live recording from the Berlin Philharmonie of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.
Cabrera is equally at home in the world of opera. He was the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Opera from 2005-2008 and has also been an assistant conductor for productions at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Ravinia Festival, Festival di Spoleto, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. Since 2008, Cabrera has frequently conducted productions in Concepción, Chile.
Awards and fellowships include a Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship at the Salzburg Festival and conducting the Nashville Symphony in the League of American Orchestra’s prestigious Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. Donato Cabrera was recognized by the Consulate-General of Mexico in San Francisco as a Luminary of the Friends of Mexico Honorary Committee, for his contributions to promoting and developing the presence of the Mexican community in the Bay Area.
JOSHUA ROMAN, cello
Joshua Roman is a cellist, accomplished composer and curator whose performances embrace musical styles from Bach to Radiohead. Before setting off on his unique path as a soloist, Roman was the Seattle Symphony’s principal cellist - a job he began at just 22 years of age and left only two years later. He has since become renowned for his genre-bending repertoire and wideranging collaborations. Roman was named a TED Senior Fellow in 2015. His live performance of the complete Six Suites for Solo Cello by J.S. Bach on TED's Facebook Page garnered nearly one million live viewers, with millions more for his Main Stage TED Talks/Performances, including an improvisational performance with Tony-winner/MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Bill T. Jones and East African vocalist Somi.
A Gramophone review of his 2017 recording of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Cello Concerto (written for Roman) proclaimed that "Roman’s extraordinary performance combines the expressive control of Casals with the creative individuality and virtuoso flair of Hendrix himself.” Recent highlights include performing standard and new concertos with the Colorado, Detroit, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, and San Francisco Symphonies. In addition to his other orchestral appearances Roman has collaborated with the JACK, St. Lawrence, and Verona Quartets and brings the same fresh approach to chamber music projects to his own series, Town Music at Town Hall Seattle.
Joshua Roman’s adventurous spirit has led to collaborations with artists outside the music community, including creating “On Grace” with Tony-nominated actor Anna Deavere Smith. His compositions are inspired by sources such as the poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith, and the musicians he writes for, such as the JACK Quartet, violinist Vadim Gluzman, and conductor David Danzmayr. Roman’s endeavors outside the concert hall have taken him to Uganda with his violin-playing siblings, where they played chamber music in schools, HIV/AIDS centers and displacement camps. joshuaroman.com
ABOUT THE LAS VEGAS PHILHARMONIC
The Las Vegas Philharmonic, led by Music Director, Donato Cabrera, established its presence in Southern Nevada in 1998. The mission of the Las Vegas Philharmonic is to inspire a lifelong appreciation of music through performances and educational experiences for our community that enhance the lives of our residents and the culture of our city.
Music education and engagement are the cornerstones of the Philharmonic’s service to the community. Our free Youth Concerts bring thousands of children annually into the concert hall for a vital music education program, and our Cox Communications education sponsorship recognizes and encourages emerging talent among Nevada youth in music performance through professional coaching, competition, and exhibition experiences.
Our season of concerts showcases local talents alongside stellar nationally and internationally known guest artists on the magnificent Reynolds Hall stage. At the orchestra’s core are 76 contracted professional musicians, many of whom are esteemed educators who also perform in other professional productions in Las Vegas, bringing depth and variety to the organization.
As a 501(c)(3) organization, the Philharmonic’s community, education, and artistic programs are made possible by the generous donations and support of individuals and corporations. To join us or learn more, visit lvphil.org or call 702.258.5438. Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/lasvegasphilharmonicTwitter: @lvphil / Instagram: @lvphil
PROGRAM NOTES
Zoltan Kodály (1882–1967) — Dances of Galánta (1933)
Biographies of the eminent Hungarian composer Béla Bartók invariably describe his many trips, Edison cylinder recorder in tow, to the rural areas of Eastern Europe in search of authentic folk music. What is sometimes overlooked is that he wasn’t alone on those expeditions: typically he was joined by his compatriot and friend Zoltan Kodály, whose musical evolution paralleled Bartók’s in their shared early years but who wound up taking a notably different path. Whereas Bartók left pure nationalism behind and became a composer of universalist stature, eventually leaving Hungary amidst the growing horrors of WWII, Kodály stayed the course. He remained dedicated to the cause of a nationalist Hungarian music and remained at home, even through the terrible years following the war.
Kodály pursued a tripartite career as composer, teacher, and ethnomusicologist, with notable successes in all three areas. His achievements in teaching music to young children remain bedrock technologies to this day, for example. As a composer he is less well known outside a bouquet of exquisite orchestral works, among which the Dances of Galánta have achieved solid repertory status. Kodály himself provided an excellent, if slightly stilted, commentary on the dances:
“Galánta is a small Hungarian market town known to travelers between Vienna and Budapest. The composer passed seven years of his childhood there. At that time there existed a famous gypsy band that has since disappeared. This was the first ‘orchestral’ sonority that came to the ears of the child. The forebears of these gypsies were already known more than a hundred years ago. About 1800 some books of Hungarian dances were published in Vienna, one of which contained music ‘after several Gypsies from Galánta.’ They have preserved the old traditions. In order to keep it alive, the composer has taken his principal themes from these old publications.”
Mason Bates (b. 1977) — Cello Concerto (2014)
It was once an article of faith that cello concertos weren’t viable; the instrument’s richly mahogany tonal palette just couldn’t sustain over the massed orchestral sound. Starting in the late 19th century a group of composers—Victor Herbert, Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar—put that tired old bromide firmly to rest. As it turns out, cello concertos aren’t just viable: they’re eminently worthy.
Thus it was that Mason Bates, a musician who brings his experience as a popular DJ (named “Masonic”) into his wide-ranging compositions, teamed up with the brilliant young cellist Joshua Roman to create a cello concerto for the 21st century. “Josh and I got thrown together in a kind of shotgun wedding with the YouTube Symphony,” Bates remembers. “We were both on the program in New York and were scheduled to play later that evening at Le Poisson Rouge. We had never played together before, but that night we did an electro-acoustic improvisation. The second stop in our musical relationship was a piece for his series at Town Hall in Seattle.”
After that came the Cello Concerto, which honors the traditional three-movement layout (although with movement names in three languages) while exploring the cello’s many facets and personalities, partnered by an orchestra that honors the soundscape of electronica while refraining from incorporating any actual electronic instruments.
Nota bene: at one point in the concerto, Bates has the cellist play using a guitar pick. Well and why not?
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) — Scheherazade, Op. 35 (1888)
Scheherazade might be Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral magnum opus, but not all that long ago it was typically treated as a lowbrow entertainment best employed for showing off the megawattage of the living-room stereo. As late as the 1970s the average Scheherazade LP was festooned with girly-show jacket art that would not have been out of place on a pin-up calendar.
But in fact Scheherazade is a bonafide symphony that threads recurring melodies (idées fixes) throughout the work as unifying and narrative devices. The first and most immediately vivid of those idées fixes signifies the sociopathic Sultan Shahryar. Determined at any cost to avoid being cuckolded, the Sultan has acquired the exceedingly unpleasant habit of beheading each of his wives after the wedding night. Rimsky-Korsakov presents the Sultan right at the very beginning via a stern and forbidding theme that positively reeks of malice. But it is followed immediately by a quote from Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, establishing by association that this is indeed a fantasy, a dream. Then
new wife Scheherzade enters: she is always played by the solo violin, in an elegant and intricately ornamented theme that provides the gentle voice of the spellbinding storyteller who, by weaving her magic for 1001 nights, avoids the grisly fate of her predecessors.
That magic kicks off with the intrepid Sinbad as he sails the wide seas in search of adventure and romance. We may safely assume that Shahryar sees himself as Sinbad, given the transformation of his formerly snarling theme into a swashbuckling melody that billows and surges through some of the most aquatically evocative music ever written. Whether Shahryar also puts himself into the shoes of the unjustly persecuted wandering (kalendar) Prince, or becomes the ardent young prince with his princess, isn’t clear in either Rimsky-Korsakov’s settings or in the descriptions he supplied for the first edition. But no matter; the stories themselves come alive in a luscious orchestral landscape that bears powerful witness to the sheer technical skill wielded by a composer who rates amongst the most successful autodidacts in all Western music.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s mastery of orchestration was never more on display than in Scheherazade, one of the towering landmarks in the history of that fussy and difficult art. Despite the work’s reputation as an orchestral tour de force, its overriding characteristic is restraint, not excess. Scheherazade is all about the individual players. Filled with solos and near-cadenzas, the work offers up a post-graduate course in writing idiomatically for each instrument, weaving it effectively into the orchestral fabric, and most of all, making best use of its inherent character to help the story along.
Everything has to come to an end, so after the festival in Baghdad and the spectacular shipwreck at the work’s climax, we hear a tamed and domesticated Shahryar, his once-fearsome theme now purring quietly in loving satisfaction, as Scheherazade wraps up her thousand-plus nights of storytelling. In the last moments that quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream returns to assure us that—what else?—they lived happily ever after.
SEASON SPONSORS
LEADERSHIP
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Jeri Crawford, Chair
Rachelle Crupi, Vice Chair
Delinda Crampton, Secretary
Tim Robinson, Governance Chair & Treasurer
Patricia Pieper Fink, Development Chair
Ellen Richards, Co-Development Chair
Jennifer Crawford, Co-Development Chair
Michael Bolognini
David Crawford
Dorothy Flagler
Marty Gold
George Johnson
Scott Kerestesi
Jerry Kohlenberger
Ellis Landau
Lia Roberts
EX-OFFICIO
William Freyd in memoriam
PHILHARMONIC STAFF
Alice Sauro, Executive Director
Frederick Hubbs, Director of Development
Robert Chambers, Director of Operations and Orchestra Personnel
Kayla-Jo Rosoff, Director of Patron Services & Ticketing
Angela Guadagno, Annual Fund & Database Manager
Samantha Alterman, Head Librarian, Research & Licensing Coordinator
Taylor Crawford, Assistant Orchestra Personnel Manager
MUSICIAN ROSTER
DONATO CABRERA, CONDUCTOR
VIOLIN I
De Ann Letourneau
Concertmaster
Martha Gronemeier
Associate Concertmaster
Alexandr Dzyubinsky
Jennifer Eriksson
Ivo Gradev
James Harvey
Mira Khomik
Elliot Lee*
Eric McAllister
Rebecca Sabine-Ramsey*
Naoko Taniguchi
VIOLIN II
Shakeh Ghoukasian
Principal
Kevork Mikaelian
Assistant Principal
Marty Connally
Lauren Cordell
Hui Lim
Lisa Ratigan
Kay Sanderson
Melanie Schiemer
Lee Schreiber
Yurika Sinoto
Alissa Vercillo
VIOLA
Jason Bonham Principal
Tiantian Lan
Assistant Principal
Hope Bowden
Ian Long*
Omar Shelly
Sharon Street-Caldwell
Hanna Suk
CELLO
Andrew Smith
Principal
Kevin Mills
Assistant Principal
Ted Hartwell
Elena Kapustina
Emily Leavitt
Mert Sermet
Moonlight Tran
BASS
Paul Firak
Principal
Chris Davis Assistant Principal
Ryan Dudder
Geoff Neuman
Ed Richards
Jake Platt
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Christina Castellanos
Principal
OBOE
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Principal
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Mika Brunson
English Horn
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Bill Bernatis
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Tom Wright Principal
Joe Durk
Larry Ransom
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Zachary Jackson Principal
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Patrick Bowen
Principal
Robert Bonora, Jr.
HARP
Kim Glennie
Principal
Tyler Gordon, Assistant Librarian
Lauren Zwonik, Community Internship
Graduate Assistant, UNLV Partnership
Carolina De La Rosa, UNLV Internship
Alec Schantz, UNLV Internship
PRINCIPAL EMERITUS
Audrey Bush, Bass
Felix Viscuglia, Clarinet
FOUNDING MUSIC
DIRECTOR & CONDUCTOR
LAUREATE
Harold Weller
*One year leave of absence
The musicians of the Las Vegas Philharmonic are represented by the American Federation of Musicians.
Local 369
Musicians subject to change.
A special thank you to The Smith Center’s production stage personnel for executing the technical staging, lighting, and audio for Philharmonic performances.
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Season underwriting for Artist-in-Residence, Joshua Roman, is generously provided by Gladys & Fred Katen
GIFTS IN TRIBUTE
The Las Vegas Philharmonic thanks those supporters who have honored their friends or loved ones, or members of the Las Vegas Community, with a gift to the Philharmonic.
Chris Boyce in memory of Richard L. Boyce • Maureen Barrett in memory of Daniel Hussey
Chuck Berg & Debra Mills in memory of Daniel Hussey • Russel Cook in memory of Daniel Hussey • Chad Warren in memory of Daniel Hussey
Christina Bork in memory of Jeffrey L. Miller • Peggy Sewell in memory of Robert R. Sewell
This recognition list reflects philanthropic gifts made to the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Annual Fund during our previous and current fiscal years. For questions or corrections please contact Angela Guadagno at angela@lvphil.com or 702.462.2004