Symphony Orchestra Concert Program: Spring 2023

PORTRAIT OF PORTUGAL

We ask that you refrain from using cameras or recording devices during the program. Please turn off any electronic beeping devices (watches, pagers, cellphones).

WHITWORTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Philip Baldwin, conductor

Portrait of Portugal

Sunday, April 30, 2023

3 p.m.

Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox

PROGRAM

Overture to Taras Bulba Mykola Lysenko

1842-1912

Edition by David Kempers

Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, Op. 8 Reinhold Glière

1. Andante-Allegro moderato

4. Finale

Senior Awards Scholarship Donor Recognition

— INTERMISSION —

1875-1956

Symphony No. 3, Op. 15 Joly Braga Santos

1. Lento-allegro moderato 1924-1988

2. Lento

3. Tempo di scherzo

4. Adagio-molto tranquilloallegro doppio movimento

Thank you to AvA Musical Editions for the Santos Symphony No. 3 materials and performance rights.

The Whitworth Music Department gratefully acknowledges support from Spokesman-Review editor Rob Curley and The Spokesman-Review’s Northwest Passages community forum series and Peter Rivera of Rare Earth. In September 2022, the Whitworth Symphony Orchestra and Rivera collaborated on a concert of the band’s greatest hits and Rivera’s newest works at the Fox Theater. We celebrate their philanthropy and recognition of the importance of collaborative artist experiences within our music community.

THE WHITWORTH ORCHESTRA

The Whitworth Symphony Orchestra performs the standard orchestral repertoire as well as modern and commissioned works, including a recent premiere of Gwyneth Walker’s Let America Be America Again. The orchestra also performs with guest soloists and winners of its annual concerto competition, and has enjoyed side-by-side concerts with the Coeur d’Alene Symphony. The orchestra has previously performed at the WMEA regional and All-Northwest conferences, and was the featured collegiate orchestra in 2022. As part of its outreach, recruiting and cultural exchange goals, the orchestra tours biannually, most recently in Italy in 2019. Previous tours have included Hawaii, New York City, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. The orchestra is open to all qualified string musicians, regardless of major. The top wind and brass musicians of the Whitworth Wind Symphony are selected for membership in the Whitworth Orchestra. Our students benefit from outstanding opportunities including performance classes, chamber music, master classes (from such notable teachers and violinists as James Buswell and Charles Castleman), and clinics with principal players of the Spokane Symphony. The string quartet and the string chamber orchestra provide additional opportunities for the most ambitious players.

Whitworth Symphony Orchestra Personnel

FLUTE

Chloe Wulffert ’24

Sophia Novochekhova ’23

Anja Robbert ’23

OBOE

Elsa Michelsen ’23

Hope Noranbrock ’25

CLARINET

Robert Weener ’24

Allie Vu ’23

BASSOON

Tristan Koop ’26

Jacob Campbell, guest artist

HORN

Isaac Crawford-Heim ’26

Jennifer Brummett, guest artist

Andrew Angelos, guest artist

Nathan Miles, guest artist

TRUMPET

Joshua Weigelt ’24

Izzy Collier ’25

Logan Pintor, guest artist

TROMBONE

Connor Waller ’25

Claire Jordan, guest artist

Tom Okura, guest artist

TUBA

Bruce Redden, guest artist

PERCUSSION

Watts

VIOLIN 1

Madelyn Larson

Miriam Hamstra ’25

Mu Mu Dun

Lily Iverson ’24

Madison Butler ’24

Briella Duckett ’23

Alexis Andrus, guest artist

Liz Lund, guest artist

VIOLIN 2

Elizabeth Stubblefield ’26

Samarra Salcido ’26

Gabrielle Ukrainetz ’25

Jin Yue Trousil ’26 Applied Mathematics

Joshua Rivera ’25 Computer Science

Jacob Luciano ’26 Political Science

Garrett Daviscourt ’25

Tiffany Wang, guest artist VIOLA

Bailie Jansons ’25

Jacob Ojennus ’25

Shellbe Nelson ’26

Angela Mitchell, guest artist

Natalie Cominiello, guest artist

CELLO Lance Verst ’23

Ava Kerst ’24

Owen Foster ’24

Roberta Bottelli, guest artist

Charles Johnson, guest artist

Thomas Longhurst, guest artist

BASS

Cole Hunt ’24

Isaac Massey ’25

Nate Moody ’26

HARP

Abigail Wooster ’25

Hunter Koss ’26

PROGRAM NOTES

by Philip Baldwin, DMA

Mykola Lysenko, Overture to Taras Bulba

Lysenko is justly recognized as the father of Ukrainian art music and inspired several generations of Ukrainian composers including Mykola Leontovych, who is known as the Ukrainian Bach. Like Grieg and Dvorak and many other Nationalist composers of the era, Lysenko sought to elevate native folk songs through his symphonic and choral music. Because he refused to translate his native language into German or Russian, many of his vocal works (including the opera, Taras Bulba) received limited performances outside his native land.

The overture is a strongly conceived work and introduces many themes from the opera. The opera’s libretto is based on Nikolai Gogol’s novella of the same title. The story tells of a Cossack father, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Ostap and Andriy, who lead their army against the Polish invaders. As is typical in literature, the plot is complicated by the fact that Andriy falls in love with the daughter of the Polish governor of Dubno, who approves of the marriage and appoints Andriy as a colonel in the Polish Army. Taras condemns his son as a traitor and executes him, but the Poles are eventually vanquished. Not surprisingly, the overture contains many march themes and military brass references but also a tender love theme expressed early in the overture.

Reinhold Glière, Symphony No. 1 in E-flat

While Glière may not be a household name compared with his Russian contemporaries, he was a famous teacher, violinist, conductor and composer. He trained at the Kiev school of music in 1891 and was a violin student of the famed Otakar Ševčik. He studied counterpoint with Taneyev and harmony with IppolitovIvanov, Anton Arensky and Georgi Conus. He began his teaching career at the Gnesin School of Music in Moscow where one of his pupils was Sergei Prokofiev. Glière later taught intermittently at the Moscow Conservatory until 1941. His most famous compositions are the ballet The Red Poppy (from which the “Russian Sailor’s Dance” is extracted) and his programmatic Third Symphony, Ilya Muromets

Symphony No. 1 is a student work composed at the conservatory and daringly published shortly thereafter. Understandably, it is a textbook perfect work, firmly rooted in the style of Tchaikovsky and the previous generation of Russian composers. That said, the work is full of beautiful melodies, lush harmonies and interesting textures. The first movement begins with a slow, forlorn melody in the clarinets and accompanied by delicate string pizzicati. As the theme develops and the texture grows thicker, Glière increases the speed to arrive at an Allegro whose theme is based on the original clarinet tune. A contrasting theme, also stated by the clarinet, sounds borrowed from the Nocturne of Borodin’s Second String Quartet Glière’s formal construction follows the usual sonata form and contrasts and develops these two tunes. The closing is a recap of the introductory material in the original key and brought to a charming end by the horn and pizzicato strings.

The fourth movement is a typically Russian sounding march, reminiscent of the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 (minus the slow introduction). Along the way, we encounter a lovely contrasting theme before the movement concludes in a flurry of fast scales and triumphant block chords.

Joly Braga Santos, Symphony No. 3

Born in 1924, Santos studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory in Lisbon, Portugal. He developed a very close relationship with his teacher Luis de Freitas Branco, who was the leading Portuguese symphonist of the previous generation – a mantle which Santos later was to claim in his own right. In his own words, Santos describes his music as having “a modalism with historic roots in Portuguese polyphony of the Renaissance.” Santos also absorbed the folk songs of his native land, which he considered “of a mesmerizing originality and grandeur,” and was later encouraged by Ralph Vaughan Williams to make use of them in his writing. His music also bears the influence of Respighi’s imaginative orchestrations, and this symphony in particular shares much in common with Vaughan William’s style. In fact, it seems that Santos (knowingly or not) borrowed the third movement theme of Vaughan William’s Symphony No. 3 (Pastoral Symphony, 1922) for use in the scherzo of this work.

The cinematic quality of Santos’ writing is extremely evocative and exciting. The first movement opens with a slow Gregorian chant-like melody in the strings followed by distant and lonely statements by the horn and trumpet and punctuated by the timpani statement. The remainder of this slow introduction includes trilling strings and bird calls from the woodwinds. The solo timpani’s accelerando ushers in the main theme of the movement in an Allegro tempo. While the movement features two contrasting themes in a typical sonata form, Santos uses texture and orchestration to great advantage, exposing a sound world of shimmering beauty.

The second movement follows a similar path, with a slow chant-like opening leading to a faster main section. The overall aesthetic draws inspiration from the anguished expressions of the third movement of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

The third movement’s ebullient character is achieved by contrasting an ostinato pattern in one voice against a rollicking melody in 3/4 time. Harp accompaniment and two solo strings provide an interlude but later lead to a furious agitato, which returns us to the original material. Just before the recap, however, Santos introduces a new melody passed from trumpet to trombone to horn thereby previewing one of the prominent themes of the fourth movement.

The fourth movement opening directly quotes the opening of the first movement, though this time stated by the brass. The strings pick up the thread and present the melody in tight counterpoint until the winds join and the texture changes to simple melody and accompaniment. The development section tempo is twice the speed of the introduction, and Santos toys with the themes at double and half tempo before a recap with the original chorale and a triumphant last chord.

MUSIC AT WHITWORTH UNIVERSITY

The Whitworth University Music Department, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music, provides superb training in music as well as a thorough introduction to this essential element of the liberal arts. Whitworth music majors have gone on to prestigious graduate schools, fulfilling performance careers and successful teaching positions. Also, many non-music majors participate in the university’s renowned touring ensembles and enroll in private lessons through the music department. Whitworth University offers bachelor of arts degrees in music ministry, composition, instrumental performance, jazz performance, piano performance, piano pedagogy, vocal performance and music education. Music scholarships are available to both music majors and non-majors.

For more information about the music program or scholarship auditions, please contact us:

Music Department

Whitworth University

Spokane, WA 99251

509.777.3280

whitworth.edu/music

facebook.com/whitworthmusic

instagram.com/whitworthmusic

youtube.com/whitworthuniversitymusicdepartment

Scan to learn about Whitworth’s music program.

SPECIAL THANKS

Professor Ben Brody, Music Department Chair President Scott McQuilkin Whitworth Music Faculty

Melissa Halverson, Whitworth Music Department Program Coordinator

Tamara Burkhead, Graphic Designer Guest Artists

Fox Theater Staff and Stage Crew

WHITWORTH UNIVERSITY

Since 1890, Whitworth has held fast to its founding mission to provide “an education of mind and heart” through rigorous intellectual inquiry guided by dedicated Christian scholars. Recognized as one of the top regional colleges and universities in the West, Whitworth University has an enrollment of about 2,500 students and offers more than 100 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. In recent years, Whitworth has enjoyed record levels of student enrollment and retention, the strongest financial position in the university’s history, and increased external visibility.

Whitworth University’s 200-acre campus of red-brick buildings and tall pines offers a beautiful, inviting and secure learning environment. More than $140 million in campus improvements have been made in recent years, including an expanded dining hall, a rec center, a science hall, a center for the visual arts, three residence halls and an intramural sports field. In all of its endeavors, Whitworth seeks to advance its founder’s mission of equipping students to “honor God, follow Christ and serve humanity.”

For application information:

Office of Admissions

Whitworth University

300 W. Hawthorne Road Spokane, WA 99251

509.777.3212 | admissions@whitworth.edu

whitworth.edu/admissions

CELEBRATING THE CLASS OF 2023

Briella Duckett, violin

Elsa Mickelsen, oboe

Allie Vu, clarinet

Alivia Hart, bassoon

Jay Weidemann, Trombone

Sofia Novochekhova, flute

Lance Verst, cello

Madelyn Larson, violin