MAy/June 2012
Summer
at Strathmore Maysa, Jonathan Butler and Warren Hill heat up the campus
inside: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Salerno-Sonnenberg and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto
National Philharmonic Celebrating the masterful Claude Debussy
Washington Performing Arts Society Be starstruck during the 2012-13 season
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prelude
Applause at Strathmore / MAy/june 2012
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program notes May 3 24 / Strathmore: Abraham, Inc. May 4 26 / BSO: Off the Cuff—Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony
May 19 48 / National Philharmonic: Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian May 26 52 / BSO: Beethoven’s Ninth
May 5 29 / National Philharmonic: All Debussy
May 31 57 / BSO: Mozart and Beethoven
May 10 34 / Strathmore: Pizzarelli and Elling
June 2 61 / Strathmore: Tommy Tune—Steps in Time, A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance
May 11 35 / WPAS: The Philadelphia Orchestra May 12 40 / BSO: André Watts Plays Rachmaninoff May 17 44 / BSO SuperPops: The Beat Goes On! Music of the Baby Boomers
June 9 63 / BSO: SalernoSonnenberg Plays Tchaikovsky June 22 67 / Strathmore: Ahmad Jamal—The Blue Moon Tour
May 18 46 / Strathmore: The Dallas Brass
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features 11 Sizzling Soul Jonathan Butler, Maysa and Warren Hill will burn up the Music Center
12 The Tap-Dance Kid The ever-youthful Tommy Tune graces Strathmore’s stage
14 Lights, Camera, BSO! Film music is the centerpiece of a lively 2012-2013 season
16 Divine. Dynamic. Debussy. Say bon anniversaire to the great French composer
18 Athletic Artistry Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg stays strong for Tchaikovsky
20 Sonic Youth National Philharmonic’s concertmaster is incredibly talented, and only 20
21 Family Beat BSO percussionist Chris Williams loves performing with family
22 Star Power Masterful performers are on tap for WPAS’ 2012-2013 Celebrity Series
departments 6 Musings of Strathmore CEO Eliot Pfanstiehl 6 A Note from BSO Music Director Marin Alsop 8 Calendar: Summer performances 80 Encore: Director of Catering of Restaurant Associates at
Strathmore Augustine Bove III
musician rosters
28 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 31 National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorale
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Strathmore
partners ● Strathmore
Under the leadership of CEO Eliot Pfanstiehl and President Monica Jeffries Hazangeles, Strathmore welcomes thousands of artists and guests to the Music Center, Mansion and 11-acre campus. As well as presenting performing artists and fine art, Strathmore commissions and creates new works of art and music, including productions Free to Sing and Take Joy. Education plays a key role in Strathmore’s programming, with classes and workshops in music and visual arts for all ages throughout the year. From presenting world-class performances by major artists, to supporting local artists, Strathmore nurtures arts, artists and community through creative and diverse programming of the highest quality. Visit www.strathmore.org.
● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
● National Philharmonic
Led by Music Director and Conductor Piotr Gajewski, the National Philharmonic is known for performances that are “powerful” and “thrilling.” The organization showcases world-renowned guest artists in symphonic masterpieces conducted by Maestro Gajewski, and monumental choral masterworks under Chorale Artistic Director Stan Engebretson, who “uncovers depth...structural coherence and visionary scope” (The Washington Post). The Philharmonic’s long-standing tradition of reasonably priced tickets and free admission to all young people age 7-17 assures its place as an accessible and enriching part of life in Montgomery County and the greater Washington area. The National Philharmonic also offers exceptional education programs for people of all ages. For more information, visit www.nationalphilharmonic.org.
● Washington Performing Arts Society
For more than four decades, the Washington Performing Arts Society has created profound opportunities for connecting the community to artists through both education and performance. Through live events in venues across the D.C. metropolitan area, the careers of emerging artists are guided, and established artists who have close relationships with local audiences are invited to return. WPAS is one of the leading presenters in the nation. Set in the nation’s capital and reflecting a population that hails from around the globe, the company presents the highest caliber artists in classical music, jazz, gospel, contemporary dance and world music. For more information, visit www.WPAS.org.
● CityDance Ensemble
CityDance Ensemble, Inc. is home to CityDance Ensemble, a professional contemporary dance company that performs locally and around the world; CityDance Center at Strathmore, a dance school for youth and adults with a pre-professional training program for teens; CityDance Early Arts, an outreach program that provides free dance classes and performances to children in underserved neighborhoods; and CityDance FilmWORKS, a creator of original dance-on-camera productions. Learn more at www.citydance.net.
● Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras
Great music, artistry, plus the passion and exuberance of youth come together in one exceptional program—MCYO, the resident youth orchestra at the Music Center. Established in 1946, MCYO is the region’s premier orchestral training program, seating over 400 students in grades 4-12 in one of five quality orchestras. Concerts, chamber music, master classes and more. Discover MCYO. Hear the difference. Visit www.mcyo.org.
● Levine School of Music
Levine School of Music, the Washington D.C. region’s preeminent community music school, provides a welcoming environment where children and adults find lifelong inspiration and joy through learning, performing and experiencing music. Our distinguished faculty serve more than 3,500 students of all stages and abilities at four campuses in Northwest and Southeast D.C., Strathmore Music Center and in Arlington, Va. Learn more at www.levineschool.org.
● interPLAY
interPLAY company provides adults with cognitive differences with year-round rehearsals and concert experiences performing with traditional musicians. This activity results in a new personal language for those who have no musical education, and enlightened perspectives in the community about who can play serious music. interPLAY is always open for new players, musicians and mentors. Please contact Artistic Director Paula Moore at 301-229-0829.
4 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
Applause at Strathmore Publisher CEO Eliot Pfanstiehl Music Center at Strathmore Founding Partners Strathmore Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Resident Artistic Partners National Philharmonic Washington Performing Arts Society Levine School of Music Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras CityDance Ensemble interPLAY Published by
Editor and Publisher Steve Hull Associate Publisher Susan Hull Senior Editor Cindy Murphy-Tofig Design Director Maire McArdle Art Director Karen Sulmonetti Advertising Director Sherri Greeves Advertising Account Executives Paula Duggan, Penny Skarupa, LuAnne Spurrell 7768 Woodmont Ave. Suite 204 Bethesda, MD 20814 301-718-7787 Fax: 301-718-1875 Volume 8, Number 5 Applause is published five times a year by the Music Center at Strathmore and Kohanza Media Ventures, LLC, publisher of Bethesda Magazine. Copyright 2010 Kohanza Media Ventures. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited.
strathmore photo by jim morris
The Grammy Award-winning Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is internationally recognized as having achieved a preeminent place among the world’s most important orchestras. Under the inspired leadership of Music Director Marin Alsop, some of the world’s most renowned musicians have performed with the BSO. Continuing the orchestra’s 95-year history of high-quality education programs for music-lovers of all ages, the BSO presents mid-week education concerts, free lecture series and master classes. Since 2006, the BSO has offered Montgomery County grade schools BSO on the Go, an outreach initiative that brings small groups of BSO musicians into local schools for interactive music education workshops. For more information, visit BSOmusic.org.
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musings from Strathmore Welcome to the new world of three seasons—fall, spring and summer. According to the weather experts, we have just witnessed the warmest winter on record. Is this the vaunted “global warming” effect finally kicking in? Seasons are also a state of mind. In fall, we warm ourselves by the creative fires of a vast array of performances, classes and workshops, and arts exhibits. Then in the spring, we throw open the doors for Discover Strathmore, Spring Break Camp and our annual Spring Gala. And in summer, all 11 acres of Strathmore’s campus beckon audiences to the lawn for our Free Summer Outdoor Concerts, Backyard Theater for Children and dinner on the Bou or Trawick terraces. A real sense of community becomes evident as we recapture the childlike wonder of simply experiencing arts, rather than analyzing them. Strathmore will host more than 40 concerts and events to fill your hot summer days and cool summer nights, including nine indoor Music Center concerts—two of them free performances! Acts include Abraham Inc., Ahmad Jamal, the Soul of Summer jazz stars Maysa, Jonathan Butler and Warren Hill, the legendary John Pizzarelli with Kurt Elling, the Dallas Brass and Broadway star Tommy Tune. Or bring a picnic blanket and savor our Free Summer Outdoor Concerts at the Gudelsky Concert Gazebo. And on Thursday mornings at 9:30 and 11:30, bring your cabin-fevered kids to Strathmore’s Backyard Theater for Children under a tent on the Mansion lawn. Acts include Snowday, Recess Monkey, Moona Luna and Farafina Kan. If you are a creature of air conditioning, come into the Mansion for six concerts at Art After Hours. There, you can experience both music and art, including Strathmore Unleashed!, a canine-tastic exhibition of dog-inspired art. Spend your summer at Strathmore before winter doesn’t come again.
CEO | Strathmore
from the BSO
Dear Friends, As I hope you’ve heard by now, the BSO has announced its repertoire for the 2012-2013 season, and it might be my favorite BSO season yet! Come September, we embark on a season-long exploration of the unforgettable impact of film, movie scores and musicals across the decades. Featured inspired programs with live orchestra will include Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, a screening of Leonard Bernstein’s beloved West Side Story and the 1938 drama Alexander Nevsky with a riveting score by Sergei Prokofiev. As an extension of this theme, SuperPops conductor Jack Everly will collaborate with Baltimore-born filmmaker John Waters to mark the 25th anniversary of the original film release of Hairspray with an exclusive concert production. Be sure to read the feature story on page 14 to learn more about our thrilling 2012-2013 season! All the while, the BSO’s spring season at Strathmore is in full swing, with the best yet to come! May kicks off what we’ve dubbed “pianist month”—an unofficial celebration of pianists and the music that makes their instrument sing. Strathmore will be abuzz with the talents of Andre Watts and Jonathan Biss, who will collaborate with the musicians of the BSO on Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (May 12) and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (May 31). Come June, guest artist favorite and violin extraordinaire Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg returns to captivate audiences with her rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (June 9). While these concerts will mark the conclusion of our season, I am already excitedly looking forward to our next season together. I am incredibly proud of all of the BSO’s accomplishments—from our BSO on the Go program in Montgomery County to our third season of Rusty Musicians at the Music Center. I look forward to embarking on this exciting, challenging and rewarding season with you all!
Marin Alsop
Music Director | Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 6 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
ELiot Pfanstiehl photo by michael ventura; Marin alsop photo by grant leighton
a note
Eliot Pfanstiehl
Make Every Meal Memorable
Dive In!
Rockabilly, soul, classical and ukuleles blend together for a sizzling season of outdoor and indoor performances Pages 9-11
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calendar MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE SUN., JULY 1, 4 P.M. 2012 Serenade! Washington, D.C. Choral Festival co-presented with Classical Movements Hear songs of hope and peace during this free choral festival. Performers include South Africa’s Imilonji KaNtu Choral Society; the internationally acclaimed Minnetonka Chamber Choir; Canada’s upbeat Countermeasure A Capella; the amazing harmonies of Voices of Namibia; the beautifully blended sound of Australia’s Young Adelaide Voices; and extraordinary children’s choirs from Colombia, the Czech Republic and North America.
Afro Blue Vocal Band
FRI., JULY 20, 8 P.M. Soul of Summer featuring Jonathan Butler, Warren Hill and Maysa co-presented with Blues Alley Baltimore-born soul singer extraordinaire, Maysa has built a reputation for her “lithe, lovely and expressive…” (The Washington Post) contralto. South African guitarist and singer Jonathan Butler has grooved new ground in R&B, jazz and soul. And Canadian saxophonist Warren Hill has topped the Smooth Jazz, Adult Contemporary and Top 40 charts with his soulful sound. THURS., AUG. 9, 7 P.M. National Youth Orchestra of Canada This internationally acclaimed youth orchestra sets the standard for youth ensembles. Discover classical music’s stars of tomorrow in this free performance of Dvořák, Shostakovich and more.
SAT., JULY 14, 8 P.M. Cluster and Afro Blue Vocal Band co-presented with CASA After wowing a national audience on NBC’s The Sing-Off, the Afro Blue Vocal Band returns to its hometown. The evening also swings across the globe with Cluster, winner of X Factor Italy.
THURS., AUG. 16, 8 P.M. Tribute to Eva Cassidy An enthusiastic and moving tribute to Washington, D.C.’s chameleon vocalist Eva Cassidy. Vocalists Amikaeyla Gaston, Trelawny Rose, Mary Alouette will be joined by local musicians to pay homage Eva Cassidy to Cassidy with renditions of “Over The Rainbow,” “Nightbird,” “I Know You By Heart,” “Danny Boy,” “Tall Trees In Georgia” and more.
[Summer]
STRATHMORE FREE OUTDOOR CONCERTS Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at the Gudelsky Concert Gazebo JUNE 20 Cake for Dinner, Featuring Members of Scythian Learning music basics is just as fun and indulgent as Cake for Dinner. The family troupe introduces listeners to melody, harmony and rhythm through folk music from around the world, varied musical styles, interactive campfire songs and rounds.
Stephane Wrembel JUNE 27 Stephane Wrembel With his fifth album, Origins, French-born guitarist/composer Stephane Wrembel is expanding his impeccable compositional skills, touching upon influences from blues to flamenco to rock in a panoply of textures and colors, moods and emotions. JULY 11 Incwell D.C. born and raised Incwell blends the influences and showmanship of Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Jimi Hendrix in crafting his R&B and rap songs with lyrics informed by his urban upbringing. JULY 18 Elijah Balbed Quintet Modern saxophonist Elijah Balbed, who pairs traditional sax technique with his drive to expand the saxophone genre, pays tribute to legendary jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. The 22-year-old has shared the stage with such notables as George Duke, Mya, Chuck Brown and Bennie Maupin. applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 9
calendar
JULY 25 Lyndsey Highlander With spunk, vitality and youthful exuberance as a solo artist and bandleader of The Band Perry, Lyndsey Highlander has proven time and again that she’s hardly another “dusty rose” in country music.
STRATHMORE BACKYARD THEATER FOR CHILDREN Thursdays at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. on the Backyard Theater Stage
Moona Luna
JULY 12 Snowday Snowday, founded in 2008 with the mission of bringing contemporary vocal music into mainstream education, will provide a history of a cappella music from chant to modern pop.
AUG. 1 The Bachata Legends: Joan Soriano Originated in the Dominican Republic, the signature sound of bachata music and its companion dance has become an addictive export of the island nation. Joan Soriano and his band will get the crowd moving on the lawn this summer. JULY 19 Recess Monkey Three Seattle-based elementary school teachers make kids’ music that grows out of their days in their classrooms. They infuse singable tunes about sea monsters, Tonka trucks and loose teeth with a rock-pop Beatles vibe.
AUG. 15 UkeFest 2012 Aloha! Strathmore’s fourth annual UkeFest, hosted by Grammy winners Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, will have a luau theme and feature performers straight from Hawaii in a rare East Coast appearance. Join the strummers at uke camp for beginners and novices before the big show.
Farafina Kan
JULY 26 Moona Luna Moona Luna is the passionate project of New York mommy-rocker Sandra Velasquez. Tots will bounce and jam to Moona Luna’s bilingual beats— created so that the band’s messages of joy, discovery and perseverance would reach more young ears. 10 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
AUG. 2 Farafina Kan Translated literally to mean “the sound of Africa,” Farafina Kan is a West African percussion orchestra dedicated to maintaining the history and integrity of traditional African music. The troupe blends traditional arts of the Mandingue people of West Africa with contemporary music such as reggae, blues, jazz and hip-hop.
recess monkey photo by kevin fry, moona luna photo by m. Sharkey
AUG. 8 Marti Brom Mashing up the influences of Patsy Cline with the rough edge of Blondie and Chrissie Hynde, Marti Brom has fashioned her homage to American rockabilly. Brom absolutely inhabits the genre, from her vocal style to her rebellious attitude and her 1950s look.
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sizzling
Soul
Strathmore and Blues Alley present Soul of Summer Friday, July 20, 8 P.M.
Jonathan Butler, Maysa and Warren Hill unite for an evening of sultry jazz
t
By Roger Catlin he way fans connect with vocalist Maysa has changed. Satellite radio has brought her jazzy, smooth R&B vocals to many more listeners than
terrestrial radio. The name of her style has also evolved from smooth jazz/R&B to Heart & Soul. “But, to me, my records are all just the same: to me, it’s just R&B music with a jazz influence,” says Maysa. “That’s what I’ve known my whole life and it’s all I’ve known what to do.” That fluid combination of R&B, jazz, funk and smooth jazz is undeniably soul, which Maysa, guitarist-singer Jonathan Butler and saxophonist Warren Hill will bring to Strathmore during the Soul of Summer Tour. The concert, co-presented with Blues Alley, will take place Friday, July 20. Soul of Summer headliner Butler— who last came to Strathmore in December 2011 as part of the Dave Koz and Friends Christmas tour— has recently been considered a gospel artist as well, especially after his song “Falling in Love with Jesus” was picked up for the 2006 album Gospel Goes Classical. “That’s the song that was the key to unlock what I call my ministry,” Butler says. “But it’s been many years in the making.” Since then, he’s been recording gospel albums as well as jazz, the latest being Grace and Mercy.
Jonathan Butler
One component that serves him well in both fields, though, is a sense of uplift. “Music has been sort of my salvation growing up and through music I’ve always been able to have this optimism, have this childMaysa like joy of playing music, joy of experiencing music, and traveling and just being on stage,” Butler says. “It’s just an all-around blessing to do what I’m doing with my life.” Butler’s music—particularly producing his 2010 album Stay Strong— has helped him during incredibly trying times. “I made that record in a very difficult time. My mom died, my good friend
Warren Hill
Wayman Tisdale died, my wife was diagnosed with cancer,” Butler says. “Somehow I was able to write this record and express some of the joys and pains and pressing through—just pressing on and pressing through. So that’s what happens. I think each album is another chapter of a book we keep writing.”
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strathmore
The
Tap-Dance Even after 50 years, Tommy Tune still finds dancing “as fun as it looks”
Kid
By Kathleen Wheaton
Strathmore presents Tommy Tune: Steps in Time Saturday, June 2, 2 P.M. and 8 P.M.
12 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
“t
he French call rehearsal répétition, and that’s exactly right,” says Tommy Tune, who returns to the Music Center at Strathmore with his song-and-dance memoir, Steps in Time, on June 2. “Repetition is gold, for a performer.” The ever-lithe and lively Tune sings and dances key numbers from his 50year Broadway and film career during the 90-minute show, which made its world-tour debut at Strathmore in January 2009. Since then, Tune has refined and perfected the show. “Songs come, songs go and the essence is uncovered,” he says. Steps in Time illustrates in a highly personal way how a life in art is built step by step and note by note. For Tune, the first notes reached his ears in utero in Wichita Falls, Texas: his mother claimed that her unborn son danced to her Irving Berlin records. “There was a lot of music in the Tune household—Tune was our real name, by the way,” he says. “The music that touches you most deeply is usually your parents’ music. That’s what’s in your system.” Tune’s mother had been a flapper and his father an oilman turned restaurateur, and they both loved to dance, though they rarely did so. He recalls watching them foxtrot at a wedding, “moving across the floor as if they were on roller skates.” At first, the young boy was embarrassed that his tall, graceful parents stood out among the other guests, but as the crowd parted to watch, and then burst into applause, “I got it,” Tune says. “They were different from everybody else, but they were better.”
At 6-foot-7, with long, skinny limbs, a shock of black hair and a double-wide grin, Tune was, from the beginning, something a little different as a leading man. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in fine arts, he moved to New York with the dream of dancing in the chorus line of a Broadway show. On his first day in the city, he was hired to do just that. Since then, “luck has rained down on me,” he says. Well, luck and a lot of hard work: Tune performed his Broadway smash, My One and Only, 1,500 times. Repetition, he says, does not dull the performance; on the contrary, “once you know the song, know the dance, you reduce it to pure feeling and that’s
personal, poignant and dear,” Brown says. “In Tommy Tune you see the embodiment of the joy of performing.” The intimate nature of the stories he tells through song and dance is what makes it “everybody’s story,” Tune says. “I was worried at first that if I went too much into the details of theater life, I’d lose people,” he says. Instead, “the more truthful and more specific I got, the more universal the appeal.” Tune says that it’s nearly impossible to feel sad while tap dancing. “It’s as fun as it looks,” he says, adding that tap dancers are also musicians— “percussionists, playing the floor with our feet.” The Strathmore stage, with its sprung dance floor and excellent
“Once you know the song, know the dance, you reduce it to pure feeling and that’s how you reach the audience.” Tommy Tune how you reach the audience.” Fifty years on, Tune’s energy has distilled to a smoother, more urbane charm, though he still exudes boyish Texan friendliness. “He’s one of the most gracious people you’ll ever meet,” says Strathmore Artistic Director Shelley Brown, who first met Tune in the 1980s when she was a press agent intern in New York. Brown says she is thrilled to have Tune back for a reprise of Steps in Time. “He’s absolutely in top form, and he holds himself to a very high standard in this show,” she says. The show is far more than a streamlined medley of greatest hits. “It’s very
acoustics, he says, is perfect for creating the round, ringing sound essential to tap. Aside from Strathmore, one of Tune’s warmest memories of the D.C. area is winning the Helen Hayes Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 at the historic Warner Theatre. Tune also was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2003 in a private Oval Office ceremony. “It’s very hushed and quiet, and you really feel that you’ve had that parental pat on the head,” Tune says. “Then you go out, like a kid with a gold star, and put all that positive energy back into the work.”
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Baltimore Symphony ORchestra
Lights,
Camera,
BSO!
Cinema music, classical standards and avant-garde works combine for a memorable 2012-2013 season By M.J. McAteer
s
tart melting the butter for popcorn because the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is going Hollywood for its 2012-2013 season at the Music Center at Strathmore. “I love film music,” says BSO Music Director Marin Alsop. “It has often been treated as less than music written for the concert hall, but that’s changing. This [season] is all about how film inspires music, and how music inspires film.” Coming attractions include Leonard Bernstein’s symphonic suite based on his score for On the Waterfront (Sept. 22), followed by three live screenings, in which any orchestral music in a soundtrack is stripped away and performed live while dialogue and singing are left intact. The BSO first unreels Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky 14 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
(Jan. 12), followed by Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (May 11) and Bernstein’s West Side Story (June 13). Alsop has conducted many live screenings with full orchestras, and she says that the marriage of sound and image generates a synergy that is “incredible” for audiences. The BSO will also find inspiration when it showcases works by Russian masters. The orchestra will serve up generous portions of Tchaikovsky (Oct. 20, Feb. 7), Mussorgsky (Feb. 2), Rachmaninoff (Jan. 18, March 23) and Shostakovich (March 23), as well as a second helping of Prokofiev (May 2). The orchestra also plans to dedicate two evenings to the genius of Richard Wagner. In honor of the 200th anniversary of the German Romantic composer’s birth and the 150th of his death, the BSO will perform music from Die
Meistersinger and Tristan and Isolde, as well as Act I from Die Walküre (Feb. 16). The second concert (April 19) will feature a Wagner symphonic play. Once again employing the writing/directing talents of Didi Balle, this semi-staged play tells the story of the complicated relationship between Wagner and his benefactor, King Ludwig II, accompanied by orchestral excerpts from The Ring. “We are trying to do a few things outside the box,” Alsop says in describing the season’s mix of standards of the classical repertoire with avant-garde works. Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, for example, will share the program with what Alsop calls the “new-agey minimalism” of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa (Feb. 28), while Beethoven’s legendary Symphony No. 5 will share the program with Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 3 (Nov. 9).
West Side Story photo courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios , Modern Times © Roy Export S.A.S.
At left: Music from Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times will be featured during the BSO’s 2012-2013 season. Bottom: Baltimore’s native son John Waters will narrate the Jan. 24 performance of Hairspray.
Rouse, a Baltimore native, was the BSO’s first composer-in-residence in 1986 and estimates that over the years, the orchestra has performed 19 of his works. His Symphony No. 3, completed in 2011, is in keeping with the BSO’s focus on Russian composers because it was inspired by Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 2. “I took Prokofiev’s architecture and built it with different notes,” says Rouse, “but 99.9 percent of the music is mine.” Rouse uses adjectives such as “glittering,” “lyrical” and “savage” to describe his new work, which will be making its East Coast premiere with the BSO. Other Rouse works featured at Strathmore this season will be Ku-Kallimoku, which was inspired by a Hawaiian war dance, and Ogoun Badagris, a riff on Haitian voodoo drumming. They will join Revueltas’ Sensemaya, a con-
temporary South American piece, and Orff’s Carmina Burana for an energetic evening of ritual music (June 6). Also devoting some attention to the silver screen and the TV screen are the season’s BSO SuperPops offerings. For its first concert, the Pops will time travel to “The Golden Age of Black and White” (Oct. 11). BSO Principal Pops Conductor Jack Everly calls the program “a nostalgic romp through the ’50s,” that will feature everything from the theme to I Love Lucy to tunes made famous by songbirds Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney. The Great White Way and Motown will be two other top stops on the Pops season. “The Best of Broadway with Ashley Brown” (Feb. 21) will draw heavily on Brown’s starring roles in Broadway productions of Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast. Brown doesn’t
stop at Disney, though. She is “a marvelous soprano who can wrap her voice around many different styles,” Everly says, and her recital will include love songs and hits from The Music Man and Most Happy Fella. The Motown show (May 30) will showcase Motor City favorites Radiance, an all-female group that channels Martha and the Vandellas, and Spectrum, an allmale quartet that specializes in R&B. In addition, the Pops will present its annual holiday concert (Dec. 13) and “Bond and Beyond: 50 Years of 007” (April 11). But “the event of the Pops season,” says Everly, will be a concert version of Hairspray (Jan. 24). “I couldn’t be more excited,” he says. The musical’s score will be sung by guest vocalists and accompanied by a narration from and written by Charm City’s favorite bad boy, John Waters.
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National Philharmonic
Divine. Dynamic. Debussy. National Philharmonic festival celebrates 150th anniversary of French composer’s birth By Pamela Toutant
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DEBUSSY 150 ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL TH
Brian Ganz
Richard Stoltzman
the May 5 program for the Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra. “The Fantaisie perfectly reflects the beauty and mystery of his music,” says Ganz. “He was a brilliant colorist.” The program finishes with the orchestral masterpiece, La Mer. On May 10, pianist Katie Mahan will play several of the great composer’s multi-layered compositions for piano in the Mansion at Strathmore. Also at the Mansion on May 17, the National Philharmonic and Friends will perform chamber works including the Piano Trio in G Major, Cello Sonata in D minor, Violin Sonata in G minor and the String Quartet in G minor. The concerts, curated by Strathmore, are also part of the Music in the Mansion series. The festival finale takes place on May 19 when Chorale Artistic Director Stan Engebretson conducts the National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorale in the Washington-area premiere of The Martyrdom of St Sebastian. “The music has a cinematic feel with its rhapsodic flashes of text,” Engrbretson says. “Listeners can envision the drama of the battlefield and at the end, feel transported to paradise.”
SATURDAY, MAY 5, 8 P.M. All Debussy The Music Center at Strathmore The program includes Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra and La Mer. A free pre-concert lecture will be at 6:45 p.m. THURSDAY, MAY 10, 7:30 P.M. Debussy Piano Recital The Mansion at Strathmore Pianist Katie Mahan interprets Debussy. A free pre-concert lecture with WETA’s David Ginder will be at 6:30 p.m. This concert is part of Strathmore’s Music in the Mansion series. THURSDAY, MAY 17, 7:30 P.M. Debussy Chamber Music Featuring Members of National Philharmonic and Friends The Mansion at Strathmore Enjoy an intimate performance of Debussy’s works. A free pre-concert lecture with WETA’s David Ginder will be at 6:30 p.m. This concert is part of Strathmore’s Music in the Mansion series. SATURDAY, MAY 19, 8 P.M. Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian The Music Center at Strathmore The story of St. Sebastian, whom the Romans killed for converting people to Christianity. A free pre-concert lecture will be at 6:45 p.m.
ganz photo by michael ventura, stoltzman photo by john pearson
pring, with its intoxicating breezes and riot of color, is the ideal season to celebrate French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. A creator of sensual sound pictures and moods, Debussy draws listeners into the delights and beauty of the natural world. “We wanted to complete our season this spring with several concerts celebrating the birth of this great composer,” says National Philharmonic Music Director and Conductor Piotr Gajewski. “Debussy’s innovative music really defines the transition between lateRomantic and 20th century modernist composition.” The Strathmore-National Philharmonic collaboration begins May 5 in the Music Center at Strathmore with an all Debussy concert, which opens with the luminous Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Two-time Grammy-winning clarinetist Richard Stoltzman joins the program for Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra. “Debussy explores the whole personality of the clarinet, from the melancholic and moody to jocular ‘winks’ in the middle of the piece,” says Stoltzman. “Debussy was looking for music that went beyond the usual dichotomies of loud and soft, fast and slow,” adds Stoltzman. “He was a poet and painter of musical composition.” Guest pianist Brian Ganz also joins
Photo credit: Scott Frances/OTTO
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schedule a visit at www.glenstone.org
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Baltimore Symphony ORchestra
artistry
ath l e tic
Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg needs to stay strong to tackle her duties as a music director, record producer and soloist By Laurie Legum
Q: You’ve said that you would not have chosen the violin had you a choice of instrument as a child. What instrument would you have preferred? A:. I wouldn’t have chosen any instrument. At the time I wanted to be an opera singer. As a child, my grandfather exposed me to opera, which was the biggest influence on me. My mother made the decision for me by handing a vio18 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
lin to me when I was 5, but in the end it turned out to be a good choice. Q: What excites you most about playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the BSO? A: Playing Tchaikovsky with Marin Alsop and the BSO is like coming home for me, in many ways. I won the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition playing Tchaikovsky. I made my debut at Carnegie Hall playing Tchaikovsky. And the second album debuting on my record label, NSS Music, was the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and Clarice Assad’s Violin Concerto, with Marin Alsop conducting the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Plus, I’ve played with the BSO more than just
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and The Rite of Spring Saturday, June 9, 8 P.M.
about any orchestra. Q: When Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto originally debuted with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1881, it was met with scathing reviews. Why was it so poorly received and how did it evolve to become one of the most beloved violin concertos? A: Physically, the piece was far more athletic than any piece that had been previously written in that period. Today, the level of playing has risen and pieces once considered unplayable when written are regularly performed. However, the Concerto is still incredibly challenging because it’s so physical. I take my vitamins and eat Cheerios before I play it. Q: What new projects are you working on now? A: I’m in my fourth season as music director of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra and this job has become my passion and my cause. It’s a pretty exciting time. I continue to work on my recording label, as well as my work as a soloist. It’s fantastic to play brand new works commissioned and written for me and to play with great orchestras such as the BSO.
Christian Steiner
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talian Nadja SalernoSonnenberg began playing the violin at age 5. At the suggestion of her violin teacher, her family immigrated to the United States so that Salerno-Sonnenberg could attend the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At 10, she made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She continued her studies at The Julliard School, and in 1981 won the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition. Salerno-Sonnenberg performs regularly with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She comes to the Music Center at Strathmore June 9 to perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35.
The Remarkable
Members
Of Ingleside
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Mary Lou Shields,
Member, Ingleside at King Farm
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National Philharmonic
Sonic
Youth
Meet the National Philharmonic’s New Concertmaster
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hen it comes to music, Justine Lamb-Budge has always been precocious. A s a 6 - y e a r- o l d pupil at Bryn Mawr’s Baldwin School, Lamb-Budge spied a fellow student with a violin case and demanded to know what was inside. “I really wanted to play,” she recalls. “My mom was like, ‘Sure: this week you want this; next week you’ll want a horse!’ ” But as it turns out the violin was more than just a first-grader’s fancy. Lamb-Budge launched a new facet of her musical career in October 2011 when she became the National Philharmonic’s concertmaster—leader of the first violin section and the entire orchestra. At the time she was 19 years old. “It’s highly unusual for that kind of position,” says National Philharmonic Music Director and Conductor Piotr Gajewski. “But things are working out extremely well. She is humble and appreciative, solves problems in a collaborative way, and is still at an age where she can learn incredibly quickly. The challenge for our organization is going to be holding on to her!” Yet Lamb-Budge, now 20 and soon to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, loves her new role. “I’ve watched the Philadelphia Orchestra all these years and imagined
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what it would be like just to play,” she says. “It’s amazing to be in the concertmaster’s role now, to have that responsibility.” The members of the National Philharmonic, she adds, have been welcoming and supportive. “They respond to what I say so well,” she says. “I’ve been in orchestras for 12 years now, but this is different: it’s on a professional level, and I love it. It feels right, it feels great. This is one of the best experiences I’ve had so far in music.” And she’s had some pretty stellar experiences. Lamb-Budge was 11 when she began studying with Kimberly Fisher, principal second of the Philadelphia Orchestra. At 14 she performed at Carnegie Hall and also won the silver medal at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition as part of the Newman String Quartet from Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School. She also was concertmaster and soloist with the Youth Chamber Orchestra of the Temple University Music Preparatory Division. She went across the nation, around the world and into “blind” classical music auditions that allowed LambBudge to edge out other hopefuls on the strength of her playing alone. “There are many qualifications a concertmaster needs to have,” says Gajewski. “We focus on the playing first, and then we look for someone who’s a team player and a leader after we’ve
chosen the best players.” Gajewski is certain Lamb-Budge will resonate with the National Philharmonic audience—particularly with parents and their youngsters, who will see the new concertmaster as a role model to emulate. “She’s just such an incredible talent, the best of the best,” he says. “I have a million things to learn from her. We all do.”
Pete Checchia
By Chris Slattery
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Baltimore Symphony ORchestra
Family B • E • A • T Principal percussionist Chris Williams’ most memorable performances are when he’s shared the stage with his family By Linell Smith
j thomas photography
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s master of xylophone, snare drum and cymbals, Chris Williams has brightened the sound of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since becoming principal percussionist and assistant timpanist in 1978. Over the years he’s worked with four acclaimed music directors, toured Europe and Japan, recorded Grammy Awardwinning performances and inspired generations of Maryland schoolchildren in outreach programs. When you ask Williams about his career highlights, however, the tall slender musician mentions a handful of BSO concerts that featured members of his own family, a musical tribe whose talent spans five generations. While twin sons Kyle and Keith have performed with him in recent years—Kyle played trombone at the BSO’s 2008 Gala Celebration and Keith played percussion in a concert in 2010—perhaps the most memorable family event occurred on Father’s Day in 1984. On that day, the audience at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall was treated to a performance of Leopold Mozart’s “Toy” Symphony that included Williams, his 67-year-old father and 8-year-old daughter Jodi “playing” the cuckoo bird whistle, and his 95-year-old grandfather and 5-year-old son Jason on nightingale bird whistle. In 1989, Williams again shared the
Performing with family members is a cherished experience for BSO percussionist Chris Williams (top row, second from left). Surrounding him are (top row) son Keith Williams, granddaughter Isabella Schatz and son Kyle Williams, and (bottom row) son Jason Williams and daughter Jodi Schatz.
stage with Jason and Jodi in a performance of John Corigliano’s Pied Piper Fantasy. Last spring, Williams’ granddaughter Isabella Schatz aced the same lead drum part that her own mother had handled 22 years earlier. “As you can imagine, the concert was very emotional,” Williams recalls with a smile. “I love doing Mahler and Shostakovich and all the great pieces, but when my kids come and play with me, and now my grandkids—what more can I say?”
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Washington Performing Arts Society
András Schiff
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Joshua Bell
Star Power
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg 22 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
Simone Dinnerstein
Lisa Batiashvili
schiff photo by birgitta kowsky, bell photo by marc holm, salerno-sonnenberg photo by christian steiner, batiashvili photo by anja frers
The 2012-2013 WPAS Celebrity Series will bring masterful artists to “the Stradivarius of halls” By Chris Slattery
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guess you could say we’ve snagged some big ones,” says Neale Perl. And if Perl—a lifelong musician and the president of the Washington Performing Arts Society—is starstruck, imagine how delighted the audience will be with WPAS’ 2012-13 Celebrity Series at the Music Center at Strathmore. “We’ve focused on excellence and variety,” he explains. “And when you add in the acoustics at Strathmore, well, that’s the icing on the cake. You have a great artist performing a masterpiece of a program, and you can hear them in the Stradivarius of halls, which is what Strathmore is.” Indeed, Strathmore sets the scene for some of the classical world’s most luminous talents between late October 2012 and mid-April 2013, with a WPAS-presented all-star-lineup that includes András Schiff, Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Simone Dinnerstein, Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Dresden Staatskapelle. “As a kid growing up in New York, I was inspired by seeing the greats,” says Perl. “Going to a concert, meeting the artist, getting your CD signed—that’s very exciting. Today, parents bring kids to soccer practice, but not to live music as often as I’d like.” Of next season’s all-stars: András Schiff (Oct. 30): “He’s very well-known for his Bach concertos, and this all-Bach program is particularly special—everything Schiff does is special,” says Perl. “He’s one of the gods of the piano. “True artistry leaves nothing to chance,” he adds. “Schiff even brings his own piano: He leaves absolutely nothing to chance.” Joshua Bell (Nov. 1): “We love him. Last year we presented Josh at the Ken-
“
nedy Center and now he’s coming back to Strathmore,” says Perl, adding that Bell will bring with him the “spectacular pianist” Sam Haywood. “He just wants to be known for his great artistry: Yo-Yo [Ma] does that for the cello, Josh for the violin,” he says. “We need people like that: young superstars.” New Century Orchestra with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (Jan. 30): “This is the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s D.C.-area debut, but Nadja’s got a wonderful following and a great sound.” The program, Perl says, is delightful in its variety, with violinist Salerno-Sonnenberg performing Mendelssohn’s ingenious Symphony No. 10 and selections by Bach, followed by the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss. “Nadja will do some outreach, too,”
lin and Piano. Perl is especially looking forward to Mutter’s performance of the Previn sonata. “Previn knows her playing insideout,” he says. “He’s a master composer with a multi-faceted career, and because they were once married his works are tailored not just to her technique— she can play anything—but to her temperament.” Dresden Staatskapelle (April 16): “A great orchestra; a great conductor, Christian Thielemann; an amazing soloist, violinist Lisa Batiashvili,” Perl begins. “And then you have the Brahms Violin Concerto, which is the Mount Everest of violin concertos!” If it sounds like Perl loves them all, he does. With good reason. “We’re only doing the best of the best,” says Perl. “But we do challenge people to go outside of their comfort
“We want to make the arts accessible for as many people as possible.” Neale Perl
he adds. “We want to do more to integrate the artist into the community whenever we can.” Simone Dinnerstein (Feb. 24): Dinnerstein, Perl says, “plays a lot of composers really well, but Bach is her favorite—and we always let great artists play what they want to; in this case, that’s Bach’s Goldberg Variations—the work from her self-funded debut album that really launched her career.” Anne-Sophie Mutter (March 12): “The great violinist and her ‘musical soulmate,’ pianist Lambert Orkis,” says Perl. The program includes Schubert’s Fantaisie in C Major, Saint-Saëns’ Sonata in D minor, and the D.C. premiere of André Previn’s Sonata No. 2 for Vio-
zone, out of the box. We have six great artists, so we encourage subscribers to take the whole classical series and then think of something they’d never usually do: a jazz concert at the Kennedy Center, or a dance performance at Harman Hall.” He also encourages subscribers to take their WPAS support one step further and become members, because donations are the lifeblood of the organization. “We want to make the arts accessible for as many people as possible,” he explains. “And we’re really excited about how this series came out. If WPAS doesn’t present the world’s greatest artists, nobody else will.”
applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 23
Thursday, May 3, 2012, 8 p.m.
● Strathmore Presents
Abraham, Inc. David Krakauer, clarinet Fred Wesley, trombone Socalled, sampler and keyboard with Sheryl Bailey, guitar C-Rayz Walz, rap and vocals Jerome Harris, bass Freddie Hendrix, trumpet Michael Sarin, drums Allen Watsky, guitar Brandon Wright, saxophone Presented in association with the Washington DCJCC The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
David Krakauer, clarinet
David Krakauer occupies the unique position of being both one of the world’s leading exponents of Eastern European Jewish klezmer music, plus a major voice in classical music and avant-garde improvisation. Krakauer has performed with distinguished orchestras including the Dresdener Philharmonie, the Pacific Symphony, the Weimar Staatskapelle, Detroit Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, Quebec Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, New World Symphony, Brooklyn 24 applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012
Philharmonic, Komische Oper orchestra and the Orchestre Lamoureux. In 2006, Krakauer co-founded the multi-genre super group Abraham, Inc. with legendary funk trombonist and arranger Fred Wesley and Jewish hip-hop renegade and beat architect Socalled. Recent and upcoming highlights include performances at The Apollo Theater and Symphony Space in New York, The Krannert Center in Illinois, Hancher Auditorium in Iowa, The Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston, Cal Performances, The Heineken Open’r Festival in Poland, The Cracow Jewish Culture Festival, the Transmusicales de Rennes and Jazz a la Villette in Paris. A passionate educator, Krakauer is on the clarinet and chamber music faculties of the Mannes College of Music of the New School University, NYU, the Manhattan School of Music and the Bard Conservatory of Music.
Fred Wesley, trombone
Born in Columbus, Ga., and raised in Mobile, Ala., Fred Wesley began his
career as a teenage trombonist with Ike and Tina Turner. He later was music director, arranger, trombonist and a primary composer for James Brown from 1968 to 1975, then arranged for and played with Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band. In teaming with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, he played a key role in taking funk to the next level. Wesley is featured in the documentary film Soul Power, as well as the Oscarwinning When We Were Kings and countless other documentaries about James Brown and funk music. Wesley, a veteran of the Count Basie Orchestra, also has worked with Ray Charles, Pancho Sanchez, Van Morrison, Usher, the SOS Band and Cameo, as well as with his close friends and cohorts Maceo Parker and Pee Wee Ellis.
Socalled, sampler and keyboard
Socalled is a pianist, producer, composer, arranger, rapper, singer, journalist, photographer, filmmaker, magician, cartoonist and puppet maker based in Montreal, Quebec. The subject of The Socalled Movie, a feature documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada, he has been making records and touring the world for more than a decade. He has lectured and led master classes in music festivals around the world and has performed on every continent. As a producer, Socalled has created “Bubbemeises” for David Krakauer’s “Klezmer Madness,” Tweet Tweet for klezmerfunk supergroup Abraham, Inc. featuring Fred Wesley, and Enrico Macias’ latest album La Voyage d’une Melodie. He has played with, recorded and arranged for Chilly Gonzales, Fred Wesley, Boban Markovic, the Mighty Sparrow, Roxanne Shante, Irving Fields, Killah Priest, Matisyahu, Theodore Bikel, Katie Moore and Derrick Carter.
Abraham, Inc.
Abraham, Inc. brings internationally renowned clarinetist David Krakauer and hip-hop renegade Socalled together with legendary trombonist Fred
john wasserman
Thursday, MAY 3, 2012, 8 P.M.
Wesley (James Brown, Funkadelic, Bootsy Collins) for a jubilant klezmerfunk dance party. “Ever since I formed Klezmer Madness! in the mid 1990s I’ve been exploring the possibilities of adding funk, jazz, and lately hip-hop influences to klezmer,” says Krakauer. These explorations logically led me to my collaboration with Socalled, a kindred spirit in the search for that magic place where these styles can find a commonality of ecstatic trance.” “In late 2005, Socalled and I were on tour somewhere in Europe when Klezmer Madness! drummer Michael Sarin mentioned to Socalled that a friend of his was playing with Fred Wesley. A light bulb went off in our heads… I got in touch with Fred and we met up in New York and decided to try playing together. … We booked a rehearsal studio, not quite sure what was going to happen. Fred and I improvised together on a beat by Socalled, and at the end of it we all said to each other, ‘Wow, this totally works!’” Backed by musicians who collaborate frequently with Krakauer and Socalled, and with the addition of Bronx rapper C-Rayz Walz (Aesop Rock, Immortal Technique), Abraham, Inc. took to the road, starting with a sold-out concert at Zankel Hall in December 2006. In May 2008, Abraham, Inc. brought down the house at the historic Apollo Theater. Wrote Bill Milkowski in JazzTimes, “This endlessly surprising yet highly successful hybrid of klezmer, funk and hip-hop had the enthusiastic crowd—young and old, Jews and gentiles, whites and blacks—dancing ecstatically in the aisles like it was a Jewish wedding. After more than two years of touring, Abraham, Inc. was primed to record Tweet Tweet. “I think we came up with a killer product,” says Wesley. “It is a pleasure doing something different with such dynamic musicians as Josh and David. Our talents were stretched to areas that we couldn’t have imagined reaching alone. We all inspired one another.”
D O N I Z E T T I ’S
r o o m r e m m a L i d a i Luc Jessica Stecklein, soprano Yingxi Zhang, tenor Daesan No, baritone Edward Roberts, conductor Muriel Von Villas, stage director
A semi-staged production with orchestra, chorus, and surtitles
Sunday, August 12, 2012 4:00 pm Music Center at Strathmore Tickets $50, $40, $30, $20
TickeTs on sale now! BY PHONE Strathmore Ticket Office (301) 581-5100 or Opera International (301) 365-3479 ONLINE
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IN PERSON Strathmore Ticket Office 5301 Tuckerman Lane North Bethesda, MD 20852 A Program of the Organization of Chinese American Women applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012 25
Friday, May 4, 2012, 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012, 8 P.M.
● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director
presents
Off the Cuff: Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony Marin Alsop, conductor
Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad” Dmitri Shostakovich Allegretto (1906-1975) Moderato -- Poco allegretto
Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad”
Adagio
Dmitri Shostakovich
Allegro non troppo
Born Sept. 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia; died Aug. 9, 1975 in Moscow
Visual Presentation by Lee Mills For further information on the archival resources used in the production of this presentation, please visit BSOmusic.org/ShostakovichOTC The concert will end at approximately 9:30 P.M. The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
Marin Alsop, conductor Hailed as one of the world’s leading conductors for her artistic vision and commitment to accessibility in classical music, Marin Alsop made history with her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With her inaugural concerts in September 2007, she became the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She also holds the title of conductor emeritus at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the U.K., where she served as the principal conductor from 2002 to 2008, and is music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California. In 2005, Alsop was named a 26 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
Program Notes
MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2007, she was honored with a European Women of Achievement Award. In 2008, she was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2009 Musical America named her Conductor of the Year. In November 2010, she was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. In February 2011, Alsop was named the music director of the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, or the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, effective for the 2012-13 Season. And in March 2011, Alsop was named to The Guardian’s Top 100 Women list. She was also named an Artist-In-Residence at the Southbank Centre in London in 2011. A regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, the city of Leningrad—the once and future St. Petersburg—was at its most beautiful. It was the height of the famous “White Nights”: the summer-solstice period when the sun hardly sets on this city of the far north and a luminous twilight bathes its historic buildings at midnight. Dmitri Shostakovich was planning to attend a soccer game with friends. He adored the game, and pictures of him cheering and grinning broadly from the stands make a delightful contrast with the usual images of a solemn, suffering creator. On the way to the stadium, he heard on the radio the stunning news that Hitler—despite his pact with Stalin—had invaded the U.S.S.R. The Germans swiftly overran an unprepared Russia and by July were approaching Leningrad. Bombardment began Sept. 4, and the siege of Leningrad had officially begun. Hitler’s plan was to wipe the city off the face of the earth. No one will ever know how many Leningraders died, the majority from starvation, during that ordeal, but one million is the figure most often given. But the city refused to capitulate, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” became the symbol of its resistance.
dean alexander
Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, Alsop appears frequently as a guest conductor with the most distinguished orchestras around the world. In addition to her performance activities, she is also an active recording artist with awardwinning cycles of Brahms, Barber and Dvořák. Alsop attended Yale University and received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her conducting career was launched when she won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood, where she studied with Leonard Bernstein.
Friday, May 4, 2012, 8 p.m.
Anxious to defend his beloved hometown, the composer volunteered for the army, but was turned down and finally put in the defensive Home Guard. He dug anti-tank trenches and mounted the roof of the St. Petersburg Conservatory as a fireman to put out incendiary strikes. But the Soviet authorities were not about to allow their most gifted young composer to die fighting a rooftop blaze; despite his willingness, they found every excuse to keep him away from hazardous duty. Shostakovich had a much more important role to play for the U.S.S.R. In July 1941, he began composing his Seventh Symphony, which he would dedicate “to the city of Leningrad” on its title page. As the situation deteriorated in Leningrad and major artistic and academic figures were evacuated for their safety, Shostakovich refused to leave. By the end of September, he had composed three movements of his massive work. At this point, the government stepped in and ordered him to slightly safer Moscow; from there, he and his family were evacuated to Kuibyshev near the Urals. This dislocation temporarily stalled work on the symphony. Living with his family in one cramped room, Shostakovich found it nearly impossible to work while his two small children played noisily nearby. Only in December, when he was able to move into two rooms and buoyed by news of Soviet military successes, was he able to compose the finale, which he completed in a burst of energy on Dec. 27. Immediately, the Seventh Symphony became as much a political event as an artistic one. Seeing that they might have a major morale-boosting and international propaganda tool here, the Soviet authorities quickly arranged for its premiere by the evacuated Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra under conductor Samuil Samosud in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942, a concert broadcast throughout the U.S.S.R. as well as abroad. A Moscow premiere followed on March 29. Russia’s wartime allies, the Americans and the English, also clamored for
performances. Delivery of the score from Kuibyshev to New York City became a top-priority military effort: transferred to microfilm, it traveled by plane to Tehran, by automobile across Iraq, Jordan and Palestine to Cairo, by air again to Recife, Brazil, and then on a U.S. naval aircraft to New York. America’s top conductors squabbled fiercely for the right to lead the premiere; the winner was Arturo Toscanini, who introduced it on a radio broadcast by the NBC Symphony heard by millions on July 19, 1942. Sixty-two performances by many American orchestras (including the Baltimore Symphony) followed during the 1942– 43 season. The most remarkable of the Seventh’s early performances came on Aug. 9, 1942 in besieged Leningrad herself. By this time, the Leningrad Philharmonic was in exile, and the Leningrad Radio Symphony had been reduced by casualties to less than 20 able-bodied members. With its enlarged brass and percussion sections, the Seventh requires an orchestra of more than 100 players. Players were even tracked down and brought back from the front to fill the ranks; all musicians were given more than their usual starvation rations to give them strength to play the 75-minute-long work. Since Leningrad was under constant heavy bombardment at the time, the Soviet military, in a special operation code-named “Squall,” brought in thousands of artillery weapons to hammer the German siege forces into silence on the day of the concert. Inside the Great Hall of the Philharmonic, a packed audience listened— many with automatic weapons at their sides, more with tears in their eyes—to Shostakovich’s stirring epic of suffering and courageous resolve. Listening to the Music Shostakovich initially gave each of the four movements titles, which he later suppressed; he called the Allegretto first movement “War.” The music opens with a forceful, vehement theme in C major delivered in a firm unison by the strings, suggesting the strength and
courage of the Leningraders; brass and percussion add a military character. This is the principal theme of this 28-minute-long movement. The second theme is quite different: a gentle, spacious melody introduced by violins and memorably sung by solo oboe and later piccolo; it seems to describe a world of peace and serenity soon to be shattered. Then begins the symphony’s most famous section: a protracted crescendo lasting more than 10 minutes. Far in the distance, we hear the military rattle of a snare drum, then a mechanical, almost inane melody. Repeated over and over in different instrumental combinations, this “invasion theme” builds relentlessly to a climax of deafening power and brutality. Many commentators have seen this music as a maligned reincarnation of Ravel’s Boléro, and Shostakovich himself was well aware of the resemblance. “Let them accuse me,” he said, “but that’s how I hear war.” However, the quiet music that succeeds this cataclysm, the composer explained, is really more important than this musical tour de force: “The reprise is a funeral march or, rather, a requiem for the victims of the war.” The peaceful second theme returns, but now becomes music of mourning, intoned by a solo bassoon over a grunt of plucked low strings sketching the invasion theme. Wearily, the violins and flutes sing the once forceful opening theme. In the background, the military march mutters away, and the movement closes with its grim reality. Shostakovich originally called his second movement “Memories,” and he described it as “a very lyrical scherzo.” It provides some emotional relaxation after the emotional onslaught of the preceding movement. The second violins open softly with a wistful, nostalgic dance. It is filled with a wailing two-note motive that is like a fingerprint in Shostakovich’s music; some commentators have interpreted this motive as a musical code signifying Stalin’s oppression. Suddenly, this pensive music is interrupted by a shrill Eflat clarinet shoving the music into a new meter and mood. A fierce, sardonic dance ensues, full of harshly bright timbres including applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 27
Friday, May 4, 2012, 8 p.m.
xylophone and brass. When the wistful dance returns, it features a new dark companion, the bass clarinet. Clearly, Shostakovich’s pre-war memories are burdened with ambivalence. The composer wrote that the third movement is “a passionate Adagio, the dramatic center of the work.” Although it originally bore the title “Our Country’s Wide Spaces,” Shostakovich revealed that it was actually inspired by his nocturnal wanderings in Leningrad when the White Nights reveal the city’s monuments and houses in their most haunting aspect. We first hear widely spaced wind chords, then a very grand and rangy melody for the violins. One of the composer’s great flute solos follows, a melody of sweet innocence and clarity. This lyrical music is succeeded by a louder, weightier middle section, its driving energy and determination struggling against the heavy drag of a syncopated accompaniment. The widely spaced chords and the flute melody, now sung warmly by the violas, return. This is Shostakovich’s song of love and grief for his city. The “Victory” finale issues from the slow movement without pause. At first, the music is quiet and tentative, but a soft martial summons from oboe and muted cornet soon energize it. Massed strings initiate a brooding chorale filled with ponderous repeated notes. The eight horns and then the other brass lead the orchestra to a climax of military might and resolve prophesying victory to come. But it will be difficult to achieve, Shostakovich tells us, as his C-major triumph struggles to the end to wrest itself from the grip of C-minor death and destruction. The BSO most recently performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 June 7-9, 2001 with Yuri Temirkanov conducting. Instrumentation: Three flutes, alto flute, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, piccolo clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, six trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, piano and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2012 28 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director, Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Chair Jack Everly, Principal Pops Conductor Yuri Temirkanov, Music Director Emeritus Lee Mills, BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellow First Violins Jonathan Carney Concertmaster, Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Chair Madeline Adkins Associate Concertmaster, Wilhelmina Hahn Waidner Chair Igor Yuzefovich* Assistant Concertmaster James Boehm Kenneth Goldstein Wonju Kim Gregory Kuperstein Mari Matsumoto John Merrill Gregory Mulligan Rebecca Nichols Ellen Orner E. Craig Richmond Ellen Pendleton Troyer Andrew Wasyluszko Second Violins Qing Li Principal, E. Kirkbride and Ann H. Miller Chair Ivan Stefanovic Assistant Principal Leonid Berkovich Leonid Briskin Julie Parcells Christina Scroggins Wayne C. Taylor James Umber Charles Underwood Melissa Zaraya Rui Du** Violas Richard Field Principal, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone Chair Noah Chaves Associate Principal Karin Brown Acting Assistant Principal Peter Minkler Sharon Pineo Myer
Delmar Stewart Jeffrey Stewart Mary Woehr Cellos Dariusz Skoraczewski Principal Chang Woo Lee Associate Principal Bo Li Acting Assistant Principal Seth Low Susan Evans Esther Mellon Kristin Ostling* Paula SkolnickChildress Pei Lu** Basses Robert Barney Principal, Willard and Lillian Hackerman Chair Hampton Childress Associate Principal Owen Cummings Arnold Gregorian Mark Huang Jonathan Jensen David Sheets* Eric Stahl Flutes Emily Skala Principal, Dr. Clyde Alvin Clapp Chair Marcia Kämper Piccolo Laurie Sokoloff Oboes Katherine Needleman Principal, Robert H. and Ryda H. Levi Chair Michael Lisicky English Horn Jane Marvine Kenneth S. Battye and Legg Mason Chair
Clarinets Steven Barta Principal, Anne Adalman Goodwin Chair Christopher Wolfe Assistant Principal William Jenken Edward Palanker Bass Clarinet Edward Palanker E-flat Clarinet Christopher Wolfe Bassoons Julie Green Gregorian Acting Principal Fei Xie David P. Coombs Contrabassoon David P. Coombs Horns Philip Munds Principal, USF&G Foundation Chair Gabrielle Finck Associate Principal Beth Graham* Assistant Principal Mary C. Bisson Bruce Moore Trumpets Andrew Balio Principal, Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Chair Rene Hernandez Assistant Principal Ryan Darke** Trombones Christopher Dudley Principal, Alex. Brown & Sons Chair James Olin Co-Principal John Vance Bass Trombone Randall S. Campora Tuba David T. Fedderly Principal
Timpani Dennis Kain Principal Christopher Williams Assistant Principal Percussion Christopher Williams Principal, Lucille Schwilck Chair John Locke Brian Prechtl Piano Sidney M. and Miriam Friedberg Chair Jonathan Jensen Mary Woehr Director of Orchestra Personnel Marilyn Rife Assistant Personnel Manager Christopher Monte Librarians Mary Carroll Plaine Principal, Constance A. and Ramon F. Getzov Chair Raymond Kreuger Associate Stage Personnel Ennis Seibert Stage Manager Todd Price Assistant Stage Manager Frank Serruto Technical Director Larry Smith Sound *on leave ** Guest musician
Saturday, May 5, 2012, 8 p.m.
SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012, 8 P.M.
● National Philharmonic Piotr Gajewski, Music Director and Conductor
presents
All Debussy Piotr Gajewski, conductor Brian Ganz, piano Richard Stoltzman, clarinet Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra Andante ma non troppo – Allegro giusto
Brian Ganz, piano
Lento e molto espressivo – Allegro molto INTERMISSION
Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra
La Mer De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea)
Jeux des Vagues (The Play of the Waves)
Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea) All Kids, All Free, All the Time is sponsored by The Gazette The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
gajewski photo by michael ventura
Piotr Gajewski, conductor
Piotr Gajewski is widely credited with building the National Philharmonic to its present status as one of the most respected ensembles of its kind in the region. The Washington Post recognizes him as an “immensely talented and insightful conductor” whose “standards, taste and
and the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, where he earned a B.M. and M.M. in Orchestral Conducting. Upon completing his formal education, he continued refining his conducting skills at the 1983 Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, where he was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship. His teachers there included Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Gunther Schuller, Gustav Meier and Maurice Abravanel. Gajewski is also a winner of many prizes and awards, among them a prize at New York’s prestigious Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition and, in 2006, Montgomery County’s Comcast Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Achievement Award.
sensitivity are impeccable.” In addition to his appearances with the National Philharmonic, Gajewski is in demand as a guest conductor. In recent years, he has appeared with most of the major orchestras in his native Poland, as well as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in England, the Karlovy Vary Symphony in the Czech Republic, the Okanagan Symphony in Canada and numerous orchestras in the United States. Gajewski attended Carleton College
Brian Ganz is widely regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation. The Washington Post has written: “One comes away from a recital by pianist Brian Ganz not only exhilarated by the power of the performance but also moved by his search for artistic truth.” A laureate of the Marguerite Long Jacques Thibaud and the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Piano Competitions, Ganz has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Louis Symphony, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the National Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony and the City of London Sinfonia, and has performed with such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Piotr Gajewski, Marin Alsop and Mstislav Rostropovich. Ganz is in the midst of a multi-year project with the National Philharmonic in which he will perform the complete works of Chopin. The inaugural recital featured solo works of the Romantic composer. Future recitals will include all the chamber works and songs as well as the complete solo works.
applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 29
Ganz also has performed Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the National Philharmonic and Gajewski, and Beethoven with the National Symphony of Costa Rica under the baton of Mykola Diadiura. He has toured northern California with the Palomarin Chamber Music Foundation and played in Italy with the Alba Music Festival. In January 2012 he made his first appearances in South America, taking part in the Cartagena Music Festival in Colombia. Ganz is Artist-in-Residence at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and is on the piano faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He lives in Annapolis.
Richard Stoltzman, clarinet
Richard Stoltzman’s virtuosity, musicianship and sheer personal magnetism have made him one of today’s most sought-after concert artists. As a soloist with more than 100 orchestras, a chamber music performer and a jazz artist, the two-time Grammy Award winner has defied categorization. Stoltzman gave the first clarinet recitals in the histories of both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall. In 1986, he became the first wind player to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Sanford Medal by the Yale School of Music. As a jazz he has performed or recorded with Gary Burton, the Canadian Brass, Chick Corea, Judy Collins, Eddie Gomez, Keith Jarrett, the King’s Singers, George Shearing, Wayne Shorter, Mel Tormé and Spyro Gyra founder Jeremy Wall. Stoltzman has more than 50 releases on BMG/RCA, SONY Classical, MMC, BIS, Albany and other labels, including a Grammy-winning recording of Brahms sonatas with Richard Goode and Trios of Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma. 30 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
Stoltzman resides in Massachusetts and is a passionate Boston Red Sox fan. He is also a Cordon Bleu-trained pastry chef.
Program Notes Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Claude Debussy Born Aug. 22, 1862 in St. Germain en Laye, France; died March 25, 1918 in Paris
Debussy could be called an Impressionist in music if such were the designation of composers in Paris in the years of the Impressionist painters, but he was not part of a group, and the music that he created was entirely different from that of the Wagnerian style currently in fashion then in Paris. As a result, he felt much more comfortable with painters and poets than with most of the established composers of his time. Among his colleagues were the painters Monet and Renoir and the Symbolist poets Mallarmé and Verlaine. The young composer joined the circle of poets and artists who met at Mallarmé’s house every Tuesday night for discussions and companionship, as his work, like that of the Impressionist painters, emphasized the importance of light and color. As a result of this cross-fertilization of ideas, Debussy’s music also displays the influence of the Symbolist poets’ hallucinatory images. In 1892, Debussy started to work on a composition inspired by L’Après midi d’un faune (“The Afternoon of a Faun”), a pastoral poem published 16 years earlier by the great Symbolist poet, Stéphane Mallarmé (18421898). Mallarmé thought of his work as a kind of atmospheric drama to be read aloud, and he called it an eclogue. It had been a most elegantly produced little book accompanied by a drawing by the French painter Manet. The novelist Huysmans mentioned the poem in his É Rebours (“Against the Grain”); curiosity about Mallarmé and his L’Après-midi d’un faune suddenly bloomed, and the poem was
published again. It was only then that Debussy first saw the poem he was to make famous and which was to be important in creating his own renown. Debussy’s original idea for composing this work, it is thought, may have been to write incidental music to accompany a reading of the work. In mid 1894, performances of a new Debussy work, Prelude, Interludes and Final Para-phrase for “The Afternoon of a Faun,” were announced in Paris and Brussels, but Debussy surprised everyone by withdrawing the score for revision. In December, the composer finally allowed the piece to be performed with the title it now bears. He invited the poet to the premiere, which was held at the Société Nationale de Musique on Dec. 22, 1894, with Gustave Doret conducting. When asked about the music’s connection to the poetry, Debussy said that the faun’s flute had dictated the music to him, and at another time, he described his work as intended as “a very free illustration” of the poem. It certainly would have been “a very free illustration,” as no work of literature up to that time was so vaguely atmospheric as well as so impenetrably labyrinthine. The English poet and critic Sir Edmond Gosse called L’Après midi d’un faune “a miracle of unintelligibility,” but told what he read in it: A faun—a simple, sensuous, passionate being—wakens in the forest at daybreak and tries to recapture his experiences of the previous afternoon. Was he the fortunate recipient of an actual visit from nymphs, white and golden goddesses, divinely tender, and indulgent? Or is the memory he seems to retain nothing but the shadow of a vision, no more substantial than the ‘arid rain’ of notes from his own flute? He cannot tell. Ah! The effort is too great for his poor brain, the delicious hour grows vaguer; experience or dream, he will never know which it was. The sun is warm, the grasses yielding, and he curls himself up again, after worshipping the efficacious star of wine, that he may pursue the dubious ecstasy into the more
john pearson
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Saturday, May 5, 2012, 8 p.m.
hopeful boskages of sleep. Years later, Debussy wrote to a friend who wanted to know Mallarmé’s opinion of the music, that the poet had come to his humble quarters, “like a prophet dressed in Scotch plaid. After listening, he remained silent for a while and then said, ‘I did not expect anything like that. The music stretches my poem’s emotion and sets the scene more vividly than paint could.’ ” The music can be described as sensual and incorporeal as well as very luminous. The composer of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Paul Dukas, explained Debussy’s music, so difficult to translate into words, this way: “Now M. Debussy’s music does not seize upon the evocative meaning of these poems in the manner of ordinary music. His effort seems to be to note the most distant harmonics of the verse and to take possession of all the suggestions of the text in order to transport them to the realm of musical expression. Most of his compositions are thus symbols of symbols, but expressed in a language itself so rich, so persuasive, that it sometimes reaches the eloquence of a new word, carrying its own law within it, and often much more intelligible than that of the poems on which it comments. Such is the case, for example, with L’Après-midi d’un faune.” The conductor’s full orchestral score of the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was published in 1895, and at just about the same time, the publisher also issued the piano duet version of the piece, arranged by the composer himself. Such “piano reductions” of orchestral scores served various purposes: the arrangements facilitated the study of the score, and in the days before recordings, they also made it possible for the general populace to hear music in their homes. The reduction was usually prepared by a friend or pupil of the composer or by someone hired by the publisher. In this case, Debussy made it himself in order to assure the musical results were those he wanted. On his copy of the published music, Mallarmé wrote four little lines of verse that may be freely translated as, “When the flute
National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorale First Violins Justine Lamb-Budge, Concertmaster Jody Gatwood, Concertmaster emeritus Brenda Anna Michael Barbour Eva Cappelletti-Chao Maureen ConlonDorosh Claudia Chudacoff Lisa Cridge Doug Dubé Lysiane Gravel-Lacombe Jennifer Kim Regino Madrid Kim Miller Laura Miller Jennifer Rickard Leslie Silverfine Chaerim Smith Olga Yanovich Second Violins Mayumi Pawel, Principal Katherine Budner Justin Gopal June Huang Nancy Jin Karin Kelleher Alexandra Mikhlin Joanna Owen Jean Provine Rachel Schenker Jennifer Shannon Ning Ma Shi Hilde Singer Cathy Stewart Rachael Stockton Kregg Stovner Violas Julius Wirth, Principal Judy Silverman, Associate Principal Phyllis Freeman Leonora Karasina Stephanie Knutsen Mark Pfannschmidt Margaret Prechtl Jennifer Rende Sarah Scanlon Chris Shieh Adrienne Sommerville Cellos Lori Barnet, Principal April Chisholm Danielle Cho Ken Ding Andrew Hesse Hung-Lin Lin Ryan Murphy Todd Thiel Kerry Van Laanen Siri Warkentien Basses Robert Kurz, Principal Kelly Ali Jeremy Barth Barbara Fitzgerald David George William Hones Ed Malaga Mark Stephenson Flutes David Whiteside, Principal Nicolette Oppelt David LaVorgna Piccolo David LaVorgna
Oboes Mark Hill, Principal Kathy Ceasar-Spall Fatma Daglar English Horn Ron Erler Clarinets Cheryl Hill, Principal Carolyn Alvarez-Agria Suzanne Gekker Bass Clarinet Carolyn Alvarez-Agria Bassoons Erich Hecksher, Principal Benjamin Greanya Thomas Schneider Sandra Sisk Contrabassoon Nicholas Cohen French Horns Michael Hall, Principal Mark Wakefield Justin Drew Mark Hughes Ken Bell Trumpets Chris Gekker, Principal Robert Birch Carl Rowe John Abbraciamento Trombones David Sciannella, Principal Jim Armstrong Jeffrey Cortazzo Tuba William Clark Timpani & Percussion Tom Maloy, Principal Aubrey Adams Curt Duer Robert Jenkins Gerald Novak Bill Richards Harp Rebecca Smith Elizabeth Blakeslee Keyboard William Neil Jeffery Watson Theodore Guerrant Sopranos Irene Arveson Nancy Dryden Baker Marietta R. Balaan Kelli Bankard Mary Bentley* Rosalind Breslow Rebecca Carlson Dara Canzano Dana Caraman Linda Cendes Carol Chesley Anne P. Claysmith Nancy A. Coleman** Victoria Corona Tracy Davidson Eileen S. DeMarco Alejandra Durán-Böhme Lisa Edgley Amy Ellsworth Chelsea J. Fields Sarah B. Forman Charlotte M.L. Freeman Caitlin A. Garry Debbie Henderson Melodie Henderson Julie Hudson Jessica Holden Kloda
Robyn Kleiner Kaelyn Lowmaster Sharon Majchrzak Marianna J. Martindale Kathryn McKinley Caitlin McLaughlin Sara W. Moses Katherine NelsonTracey* Gloria Nutzhorn Juliana S. O’Neill Nancy Orvis Emily Perlman** Lynette Posorske Stephanie Price Maggie Rheinstein Carlotta Richard Lisa Romano Theresa Roys Aida L. Sánchez Jessica Schmidt Katherine Schnorrenberg Kara Schoo Shelly A. Schubert Carolyn J. Sullivan Melissa Valentine Ellen van Valkenburgh Susanne Villemarette Louise M. Wager Amy Wenner Lynne Woods Altos Helen R. Altman Sybil Amitay Lynne Stein Benzion Elizabeth Bishop Carol Bruno Erlinda C. Dancer Sandra L. Daughton Jenelle M. Dennis Mary Fellman Shannon Finnegan Elissa Frankle Francesca Frey-Kim Maria A. Friedman Julia C. Friend Jeanette Ghatan Sarah Gilchrist Lois J. Goodstein Jacque Grenning Stacey A. Henning Jean Hochron Debbi Iwig Sara M. Josey* Marilyn Katz Casey Keeler Irene M. Kirkpatrick Martha J. Krieger** Melissa J. Lieberman* Nansy Mathews Caitlin McLaughlin Jeanne Morin Susan E. Murray Daryl Newhouse Martha Newman Patricia Pillsbury Elizabeth Riggs Beryl M. Rothman Lisa Rovin Mary Jane Ruhl Jan Schiavone Deborah F. Silberman Elizabeth Solem Lori J. Sommerfield Connie Soves Carol A. Stern Pattie Sullivan Bonnie S. Temple Renée Tietjen Virginia Van Brunt Christine Vocke Sarah Jane Wagoner Allison Young
Tenors Philip Bregstone Puck Bregstone J.I. Canizares Colin Church Spencer Clark Gregory Daniel Paul J. DeMarco Ruth W. Faison* Greg Gross Carlos A. Herrán Michael Hirata Dominick Izzo Don Jansky Curt Jordan Michael Lacher Tyler A. Loertscher Ryan Long Richard Lorr Jane Lyle David Malloy Michael McClellan Chantal McHale Duncan McHale Eleanor McIntire Brian Minnick Wayne Meyer* Tom Nessinger Steve Nguyen Anita O’Leary Joe Richter Drew Riggs Jason Saffell Robert T. Saffell José Luis Sánchez Dennis Vander Tuig
Basses Russell Bowers Albert Bradford Ronald Cappelletti Bruce Carhart Pete Chang Dale S. Collinson Stephen Cook Clark V. Cooper Bopper Deyton J. William Gadzuk Robert Gerard Mike Hilton Chun-Hsien Huang William W. Josey** Allan Kirkpatrick Jack Legler Larry Maloney Ian Matthews Alan E. Mayers Dugald McConnell David J. McGoff Richard McMillan Kent Mikkelsen* John Milberg** Oliver Moles Alan Munter Leif Neve Tom Pappas Anthony Radich Harry Ransom, Jr. Edward Rejuney* Frank Roys Kevin Schellhase Hyung Il Seo Carey W. Smith Charles Sturrock Alun Thomas Donald A. Trayer Richard Wanerman Al Wigmore Theodore Guerrant, Accompanist, Theodore M. Guerrant Chair * section leader ** asst. section leader
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music is well played, you hear all the light that Debussy’s first breath blows through the forest!” The first-person narrator is a faun, a mythological half-man, half-goat creature. The faun lives in the woods, daydreaming about nymphs. He, who plays a flute, fleetingly remembers past dreams. The flute’s theme, a reflection of the faun’s meditations, descends, mostly in half-steps before rising again, while the orchestral accompaniment intensifies. Later, in a more agitated quicker tempo, another theme, contrasting with the chromatic flute theme, appears. Made up of large intervals, it is articulated in unison by all the winds, including horn. Finally, the first theme returns as the music becomes peaceful and serene. The score calls for three flutes, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two harps, antique cymbals and strings. Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra
Claude Debussy The young Debussy spent two years in Rome from 1885 to 1887 as a recipient of the Prix de Rome. When he returned to Paris he went through a period of extreme self-criticism. He began his attractive Fantaisie for piano and orchestra in late 1889, and completed the work in 1890, after which it was published with his approval. It was scheduled for performance at one of the concerts of the 1890 season at the Société Nationale de Musique, an organization dedicated to the advancement of French composers and French music, and it was to be conducted by the composer, Vincent d’Indy, Debussy’s friend. All of a sudden, even after rehearsals had begun, Debussy withdrew the work and unwaveringly refused to allow it to be performed in public. He thereafter never agreed for it to be performed for the rest of his life, yet when it was performed after his death, it was positively received. One possible cause for his sudden rejection of the piece is that once he heard it performed in 32 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
rehearsal, he realized he had not been successful in developing a set of variations on the main subject. Robert Godet, a friend of Debussy, said that that the composer also felt that the orchestration he had given the work was too heavy, and that it did not define his own particular personal style. The vibrant Fantaisie was successful when it was performed in 1918, after Debussy’s death, but it has had few performances since then. Rather uncharacteristic Debussy, it is an interesting work that deserves to be more frequently heard. It has a traditional form and structure, and three movements, the last two performed without a break. The piano soloist’s material is wide-ranging, and the work owes its mood to the Variations symphoniques of Cesar Franck as well as to the influence of Fauré. Many critics and musicologists have stated that the work is not truly representative of Debussy’s personal style, but they feel it should not have been accorded the harsh negativity that the composer gave it, especially as it is one of his youthful works. The piano soloist does not have a virtuoso part in the way he would have were this work truly a concerto, but is paired with the orchestra more as a peer. The first movement, Andante— Allegro, begins with the flute and the oboes articulating the main theme before the piano takes it up. This initial theme is woven together with a second subject before the spirited coda brings the movement to an end. The second movement, Lento e molto espressivo, is lyrical and peaceful, and the pianist and the orchestra carry on a dialogue that continues into the lively final movement, Allegro molto, in which the oboes again first announce the theme. Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Orchestra
Claude Debussy In 1909, Debussy became the Conseil supérior of the Paris Conservatory, a post he gained partially through the efforts of his fellow composer, Gabriel Fauré. Debussy, who had seemed in opposition to the conservatory’s
traditional policies, was surprised by his appointment to the post as, in addition, he and Fauré were not close friends, and Debussy had criticized the conservatory’s system of public competitions as “absurd” and “unfair.” After taking up his post, however, Debussy consented to compose two pieces for the clarinet competition in 1910. The resulting composition, a morceau de concours that Debussy entitled the Première Rhapsodie, (there was never to be a second) was dedicated to Prosper Mimart, a conservatory professor. The work was premiered in concert on Jan. 16, 1911 in Paris for the Société musicale indépendente in Gaveau Hall with Mimart, clarinet and Maria-Georges Kriéger, piano. In November 1911, Debussy completed an orchestration of the work with a full orchestra; the work is now more frequently heard in the orchestral version. (Debussy died before the orchestral version was premiered in 1919.) During Debussy’s time, the term Rhapsodie indicated a short piece that aimed to create a mood or feeling. The orchestral version, with its scrupulous and methodical craftsmanship, pays much attention to dynamics and the colors of the instruments and the interplay between the clarinet the other instruments. Debussy gives the timpani and triangle a particularly magical setting. Debussy purposefully included all the technical possibilities of the clarinet in this difficult work, from the lyrical to the virtuosic, making special demands on fingering and tone but the work is far from functional even though it was brought about to create an expression of the clarinet’s specific personality. It expresses the evocative, poetic and lighthearted, while maintaining the composer’s characteristic dreamlike character paired with the exquisite colors. It has a meditative opening and mysterious slow sections that alternate with more agitated, spirited passages and phrases with a lively dance rhythm. Overall, its reflective inwardness dictates its form. The Rhapsodie calls for three flutes, two oboes and English horn, two additional clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, triangle, cymbal, two harps and strings.
Saturday, May 5, 2012, 8 p.m.
La Mer (“The Sea”), Three Symphonic Sketches
Claude Debussy Debussy loved the sea, but he never traveled farther on it than across the English Channel. In 1899, he pictured it in Sirènes, a nocturne for women’s voices and orchestra. Then, in 1903, he wrote from Burgundy to a friend, “I am working on three symphonic sketches with the general title of La Mer. You may not know that I was destined for a sailor’s life, and that only chance led me in another direction. Nevertheless, I have always kept a sincere passion for it. You will say that the ocean does not exactly bathe the hills of Burgundy, and my seascapes may be studio landscapes, but I have an endless store of memories, and in my mind they are worth more than reality, whose beauty often deadens thought.” La Mer was first performed at a concert of the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris on Oct. 15, 1905 and it was not
very well received, perhaps because the conductor understood nothing of its delicate subtlety. On Jan. 19, 1908, Debussy himself conducted a revised version of the score with the Orchestra of the Colonne Concerts. He was an inexperienced conductor, nervous and stiff, but he stressed the music’s atmospheric qualities, and the applause of his friends in the audience drowned out some hissing. When Debussy conducted La Mer in London two weeks later, it was a success at last. Posterity has proven right the critic who wrote, “Never was music so full of fresh, spontaneous, unexpected, novel rhythms. Never were harmonies richer or more original; never has an orchestra possessed more voices and sounds with which to interpret a work overflowing with such a wealth of fantasy. This music absorbs and enthralls our sensibility, caressing and wounding it by turns. It thinks that no one can listen to this music without its awakening a thousand memories, dim impressions thought
forgotten: the reflection of a sunbeam or the caressing murmur of a wave as it breaks into foam on the sands. It is a succession of subtle impressions, exquisite details, dazzling surprises.” Debussy gave atmospheric titles to the work’s three movements, De l’aube à midi sur la mer (“From Dawn to Noon on the Sea”) Jeux de vagues (“The Play of the Waves”), and Dialogue du vent et de la mer (“Dialogue of the Wind and Sea”), which the music follows with vividly suggestive strokes. It is an emotional tone-picture, a picture without any programmatic content except that of giving the impression of the emotions one might have when standing on shore contemplating the ocean. La Mer is scored for piccolo and two flutes, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, glockenspiel or celesta, two harps and strings. Copyright Susan Halpern, 2012
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applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 33
Thursday, May 10, 2012, 8 p.m.
● Strathmore Presents
John Pizzarelli and Kurt Elling John Pizzarelli, vocals Kurt Elling, vocals Laurence Hobgood, piano John McLean, guitar Clark Sommers, bass Quincy Davis, drums
The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
John Pizzarelli
Using Nat “King” Cole and Frank Sinatra and composers Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, John Lennon and Paul McCartney as touchstones, jazz guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli has established himself as one of the prime interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Pizzarelli started playing guitar at age 6, following in the tradition of his father, guitar legend Bucky Pizzarelli. After playing in pickup groups and garage bands through high school, he 34 applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012
began exploring jazz with his father as a teenager and was able to perform with Benny Goodman, Les Paul, Zoot Sims, Clark Terry and Slam Stewart. For Pizzarelli, though, his foundation was Nat “King” Cole; Pizzarelli devoted his albums Dear Mr. Cole and P.S. Mr. Cole to music made famous by the beloved song stylist. Pizzarelli’s albums also include a cycle of torch ballads (After Hours), a collection of classic swing and original songs (Our Love is Here to Stay), and the holiday disc Let’s Share Christmas. In his album John Pizzarelli Meets the Beatles, he brought classic Beatles songs into the worlds of swing and smoky balladry. On his 2002 album, The Rare Delight of You, Pizzarelli teamed up with veteran pianist George Shearing to perform standards as well as original music Gershwin and Van Heusen standards, in addition to original Pizzarelli compositions. In addition to being a bandleader and solo performer, Pizzarelli has been a special guest on recordings for James Taylor, Natalie Cole, Kristin Chenoweth, Tom Wopat, Rickie Lee Jones and Dave Von Ronk, as well as leading jazz artists Rosemary Clooney, Ruby Braff, Johnny Frigo, Buddy DeFranco and Harry Al-
len. He was featured opposite Donna Summer, Jon Secada and Roberta Flack on the Grammy-winning CD, Songs From The Neighborhood: The Music of Mr. Rogers in 2005.
Kurt Elling
Kurt Elling’s rich baritone spans four octaves and features both astonishing technical mastery and emotional depth. His repertoire includes original compositions and modern interpretations of standards, all of which are springboards for improvisation, scatting, spoken word and poetry. Elling has recorded and/or performed with an array of artists, including Terence Blanchard, Dave Brubeck, Jon Hendricks, Charlie Hunter, Al Jarreau, Christian McBride and Kurt Rosenwinkel. He has served as Artistin-Residence for the Singapore Music and Monterey Jazz Festivals. He also has written multidisciplinary works for The Steppenwolf Theatre and the City of Chicago. The natural heir to jazz pioneers Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure and Jon Hendricks, Elling has set his own lyrics to the improvised solos of Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny. He often incorporates images and references from writers such as Rilke, Rumi, Neruda and Proust into his work. In 2010 Elling completed an extensive tour with the Monterey Jazz Festival All-Stars and staged Passion World, a commissioned event for Jazz at Lincoln Center with French accordion virtuoso Richard Galliano, singing songs of love and loss in five languages. The Gate, Elling’s new recording, was released in 2011. Elling’s latest offering features inspired interpretations of songs by The Beatles, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder.
PizzarelLi photo by Jimmy Katz
THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2012, 8 P.M.
Friday, May 11, 2012, 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2012, 8 P.M.
Andante
James Ehnes has performed in more than 30 countries on five continents and has appeared regularly with many of the world’s most wellknown orchestras and conductors. Ehnes’ recent recordings include a disc of Bartók’s two violin concertos and the Viola Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic on the Chandos label, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Sydney Symphony on the Onyx label, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Octet, also for Onyx. Ehnes plays the 1715 “Marsick” Stradivarius violin. He lives in Bradenton, Fla., with his wife, Kate.
The Philadelphia Orchestra
● Washington Performing Arts Society presents
The Philadelphia Orchestra Charles Dutoit, chief conductor James Ehnes, violin
Dutoit photo by priska ketterer, ehnes photo by benjamin ealovega, philadelphia orchestra phtoo by jessica griffin
James Ehnes, violin
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 Felix Mendelssohn Allegro molto appassionato—Presto (1809-1847) Allegretto non troppo— Allegro molto vivace INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 Dmitri Shostakovich Moderato—Allegro non troppo (1906-1975)
Allegretto Largo
Allegro non troppo The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
Charles Dutoit, conductor In the 2010-11 season, The Philadelphia Orchestra celebrated its 30year artistic collaboration with Charles Dutoit, who has held the title of chief conductor since 2008. With the 2012-13 season, the orchestra will honor Dutoit by bestowing upon him the title of conductor laureate. From 1977 to 2002, Dutoit was
artistic director of the Montreal Symphony. Between 1990 and 2010 he was artistic director and principal conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and from 1991 to 2001 he was music director of the Orchestre National de France. In 1995 Dutoit was named Grand Officier de l’Ordre National du Québec, and in 1996 Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. In 2011 Dutoit was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music.
Renowned for its distinctive sound, desired for its keen ability to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences and admired for an unrivaled legacy of “firsts” in music-making, The Philadelphia Orchestra remains one of the pre-eminent orchestras in the world. The Philadelphia Orchestra has cultivated an extraordinary history of artistic leaders in its 112 seasons, including music directors Fritz Scheel, Carl Pohlig, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Christoph Eschenbach, as well as the Orchestra’s current chief conductor, Charles Dutoit. In the 2012-13 season, Yannick Nézet-Séguin becomes the eighth music director of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra nurtures an important relationship with patrons who support the main season at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The orchestra applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 35
Friday, May 11, 2012, 8 p.m.
also performs for Philadelphia audiences at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Penn’s Landing and other regional venues. The ensemble maintains an important tradition of presenting educational programs for local audiences as well. Today the orchestra executes myriad education and community partnership programs, notably its Neighborhood Concert Series, Sound All Around and Family Concerts, eZseatU, and more.
Program Notes Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Claude Debussy Born Aug. 22, 1862 in Saint-Germainen-Laye, France; died March 25, 1918 in Paris
The Symbolists were artists and poets of the late 19th century who tried to convey meanings through suggestion— symbols, fragments, evocations—rather than specific narrative expression. Debussy’s revolutionary Prélude à l’aprèsmidi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), composed between 1892 and 1894, was based on an important Symbolist poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. “The music of this prelude,” Debussy wrote, “is a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s beautiful poem. By no means does it claim to be a synthesis of it. Rather there is a succession of scenes through which pass the desires and dreams of the faun in the heat of the afternoon. Then, tired of pursuing the timorous flight of nymphs and naiads, he succumbs to intoxicating sleep, in which he can finally realize his dreams of possession in universal Nature.” Faun was choreographed in 1912 for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with Vaslav Nijinsky as the oversexed faun, and it has remained a favorite of dancers and choreographers ever since. The concerns of the Symbolists were ideal for the musical style that Debussy was developing around 1890. He conceived the Prelude as the initial part of a larger work on Mallarmé’s poem (“Prelude, Interludes and Final Summary”), 36 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
but he realized upon completing Prelude that it must stand alone. Indeed it is a self-contained miniature masterpiece; in a single stroke the composer set the scene for all manner of 20th-century musical exploration. At the work’s first performance in Paris in December 1894, with conductor Gustave Doret and the Societé Nationale Orchestre, even the press realized that something startlingly new had come to pass. Mallarmé, who was present in the first Paris audience, was delighted with Debussy’s gloss on his poem. “I was not expecting anything like this!” he said. “The music creates no dissonance with my text, except that it even extends the emotion of the poem, exploring more deeply the nostalgia and the atmosphere of light and color.” The piece begins with the extraordinary flute solo, builds to a descending melody in the winds (with a descending bass line built from the outer “tritone” interval of the flute solo), and concludes with a return of the flute. —Paul J. Horsley The score calls for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, antique cymbals, two harps and strings. Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Felix Mendelssohn Born Feb. 3, 1809 in Hamburg, Germany; died Nov. 4, 1847 in Leipzig, Germany
As early as 1838 Felix Mendelssohn envisioned a violin concerto for his friend Ferdinand David, Leipzig’s leading violinist, whom the composer had named concertmaster upon being appointed music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. “I have a concerto in E minor in my head,” he wrote to David that July. “The opening gives me no rest.” Alas, Mendelssohn’s furiously paced activities as conductor, pianist and educator prevented him from finding the time to sketch out the concerto until six years later, in September 1844. He completed most of the piece in a few weeks that year while on a tranquil holiday with his
family in Bad Soden, near Frankfurt. Mendelssohn completed the concerto that fall, and David performed it in Leipzig in March 1845, with Niels Gade conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra in place of the ailing composer. It was an instant success. The 36-year-old Mendelssohn, at the peak of his creative powers, could never have suspected that the work would be his last orchestral piece; two years after its first performance he suffered a series of debilitating strokes that would claim his life. The E-minor Concerto serves as a confident summation of Mendelssohn’s musical achievement. It infuses the Classical style in which his music was rooted with the full-blooded Romanticism of the operas of Weber and the lyrical charm of the chamber music of Schubert. Its moods span a wide range, from the passionate dramatics of the opening movement, through the unadorned lyricism of the slow movement, to the dashing sparkle of the finale. Mendelssohn’s autographed manuscript for the concerto was among the cache of musical treasures that had vanished from the Berlin Royal Library during World War II, and were “rediscovered” in the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow during the late 1970s. Earlier, during the early 1950s, another violin concerto was discovered as well, a work in D minor that Mendelssohn composed at age 14; the early piece has now come to be called No. 1, and thus the E-minor work is sometimes referred to as the Second Concerto. The concerto begins with the perennial theme (Allegro molto appassionato) that was doubtless the melody that gave Mendelssohn no rest; it is at the same time mournful and defiant, plaintive and aggressive. There is no “orchestral exposition” here, as in the Classical concerto. Instead the solo violin begins with the orchestra, and its continued presence throughout the movement looks back to the Baroque concerto grosso, and at the same time forward to the 20th-century violin concerto. As in several of Mendelssohn’s concertos, the movements in the E-minor Concerto are linked into a single flow, with no pauses between. The
Friday, May 11, 2012, 8 p.m.
second section is ushered in by a wayward bassoon, which holds its pitch from the first movement’s final chord by way of transition into the key of C major for the Andante (reminiscent, perhaps, of a similar situation in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto for piano, where the bassoon effects the transition from slow movement to rondo). Again the soloist leads the proceedings through this tuneful interlude, and the finale (Allegro molto vivace), full of wit and irresistible charm, follows without pause. —Paul J. Horsley Violin Concerto in E minor is scored for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings and solo violin. Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47
Dmitri Shostakovich Born Sept. 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia; died Aug. 9, 1975 in Moscow
The life and career of Dmitri Shostakovich were in a perilous state when he began composing his Fifth Symphony in April 1937. The 30-year-old composer had recently experienced a precipitous fall from the acclaim he had enjoyed throughout his 20s, ever since he burst on the musical scene at age 19 with his brash and brilliant First Symphony. Shostakovich had also received considerable attention for his contributions to the screen and stage, including film scores, ballets, incidental music and two full-scale operas: The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The latter enjoyed particular popular and critical success in the Soviet Union and abroad after its premiere in January 1934, so much so that a new production was presented at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow two years later. And that is when the serious troubles began that changed the course of Shostakovich’s life. Stalin attended Lady Macbeth on Jan. 26, 1936 and left before the end of the performance. A few days later an article entitled “Muddle Instead of Music” appeared in Pravda, the
official newspaper of the Communist Party. The anonymous critic wrote that the opera “is a leftist bedlam instead of human music. The inspiring quality of good music is sacrificed in favor of petty-bourgeois formalist celebration, with pretense at originality by cheap clowning. This game may end badly.” The article was soon followed by another in Pravda attacking his ballet The Limpid Stream, and then by yet another. The musical establishment, with a few brave exceptions, lined up in opposition to Shostakovich. He was working at the time on a massive Fourth Symphony, which went into rehearsals in December 1936. At the last moment, just before the premiere, the work was withdrawn, most likely at the insistence of the authorities. The impressive symphony would have to wait 25 years for unveiling in 1961. (The Philadelphians gave the American premiere in 1963.) Shostakovich faced terrifying challenges in how to proceed after the sustained attacks on his music and the banishment of his most recent symphony. He composed the first three movements of the Fifth Symphony with incredible speed—he later recounted that he wrote the Largo in just three days— although the finale slowed him down. The completion of his new symphony is usually dated July 29, 1937, but the most recent investigation for a new critical edition indicates that composition continued well into the fall. The notable premiere took place on Nov. 21 with the Leningrad Philharmonic under Evgeny Mravinsky, at
that time a relatively unknown young conductor. In the words of Shostakovich biographer Laurel Fay: “The significance of the occasion was apparent to everyone. Shostakovich’s fate was at stake. The Fifth Symphony, a nonprogrammatic, four-movement work in a traditional, accessible symphonic style, its essence extrapolated in the brief program note as ‘a lengthy spiritual battle, crowned by victory,’ scored an absolute, unforgettable triumph with the listeners.” The funereal third movement, the Largo, moved many listeners to tears. According to one account, members of the audience, one by one, began to stand during the extravagant finale. Yet the enormous enthusiasm from musicians and non-musicians alike could well have been viewed as a statement against the Soviet authorities’ rebukes of the composer; artistic triumphs could spell political doom. Two officials were sent to monitor subsequent performances and concluded that the audience had been selected to support the composer—a false charge made even less tenable by the fact that every performance elicited tremendous ovations. It may be difficult for contemporary American audiences to appreciate how seriously art was taken in the Soviet Union. The attention and passions, the criticism and debates it evoked— dozens of articles, hours of official panels at congresses, and abundant commentary—raised the stakes for art and for artists. For his part Shostakovich remained silent at the time about the
STX GOLD by private appointment only
applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 37
Friday, May 11, 2012, 8 p.m.
Fifth Symphony. He eventually stated that the quasi-autobiographical work was about the “suffering of man, and all-conquering optimism. I wanted to convey in the Symphony how, through a series of tragic conflicts of great inner spiritual turmoil, optimism asserts itself as a world view.” The first movement opens with the lower strings intoning a striking, jagged theme, somewhat reminiscent of the one Beethoven used in his “Great Fugue,” Op. 133. It is immediately imitated by the violins and gradually winds down to become an accompaniment to an eerie theme that floats high above in the upper reaches of the violins. The tempo eventually speeds up, presenting a theme that will appear in different guises elsewhere in the symphony, most notably transformed in the triumphant conclusion. The brief scherzo-like Allegretto shows Shostakovich’s increasing interest at the time in the music of Mahler, in this case the Fourth Symphony, which also includes a grotesque violin solo. The Largo, the movement that so moved audiences at the first performances, projects a tragic mood of enormous intensity. The brass instruments do not play at all in the movement, but return in full force to dominate the Allegro non troppo. The “over the top” exuberance of this last movement has long been debated, beginning just after the first performances. Especially following the effect of the preceding lament, some have found the optimistic triumphalism of the ending forced and ultimately false. Perhaps it is the ambiguity still surrounding the work that partly accounts for its continued appeal and prominence. Christopher H. Gibbs Shostakovich scored the work for an orchestra of piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, orchestra bells, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, xylophone), harp, piano (doubling celesta) and strings. Copyright The Philadelphia Orchestra Association 38 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
The Philadelphia Orchestra 2011-12 Season Charles Dutoit, Chief Conductor Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director Designate Wolfgang Sawallisch, Conductor Laureate Cristian Macelaru, Assistant Conductor First Violins David Kim, Concertmaster Dr. Benjamin Rush Chair Juliette Kang, First Associate Concertmaster Joseph and Marie Field Chair Marc Rovetti, Acting Associate Concertmaster Noah Geller, Acting Assistant Concertmaster Herbert Light Larry A. Grika Chair Barbara Govatos Wilson H. and Barbara B. Taylor Chair Jonathan Beiler Hirono Oka Richard Amoroso Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair Yayoi Numazawa Jason De Pue Lisa-Beth Lambert Jennifer Haas Miyo Curnow Elina Kalendareva Daniel Han 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 Mitchell and Hilarie Morgan Family Foundation Chair Booker Rowe Davyd Booth Paul Arnold Lorraine and David Popowich Chair Yumi Ninomiya Scott Dmitri Levin Boris Balter William Polk Amy Oshiro-Morales Violas Choong-Jin Chang, Principal Ruth and A. Morris
Williams 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 Jonathan Chu Cellos Hai-Ye Ni, Principal Albert and Mildred Switky Chair Efe Baltacıgil, Associate Principal* Yumi Kendall, Acting Associate Principal John Koen, Acting Assistant Principal Wendy and Derek Pew Foundation Chair Richard Harlow Gloria de Pasquale Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair Kathryn Picht Read Winifred and Samuel Mayes Chair Robert Cafaro Volunteer Committees Chair Ohad Bar-David Catherine R. and Anthony A. Clifton Chair Derek Barnes Mollie and Frank Slattery Chair Alex Veltman Basses Harold Robinson, Principal Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair Michael Shahan, Associate Principal Joseph Conyers, Assistant Principal John Hood Henry G. Scott David Fay Duane Rosengard Robert Kesselman Some members of the string sections voluntarily rotate seating on a periodic basis.
Flutes Jeffrey Khaner, Principal Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair David Cramer, Associate Principal Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair Loren N. Lind
Trumpets David Bilger, Principal Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair Robert W. Earley
Piccolo Kazuo Tokito
Trombones Nitzan Haroz, Principal Neubauer Family Foundation Chair Matthew Vaughn, Associate Principal Eric Carlson
Oboes Richard Woodhams, Principal Samuel S. Fels Chair Peter Smith, Associate Principal Jonathan Blumenfeld Edwin Tuttle Chair English Horn Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, Joanne T. Greenspun Chair Clarinets Ricardo Morales, Principal Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair Raoul Querze Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Joseph Chair Bass Clarinet Paul R. Demers Bassoons Daniel Matsukawa, Principal Richard M. Klein Chair Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal Angela Anderson Contrabassoon Holly Blake Horns Jennifer Montone, Principal Gray Charitable Trust Chair Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal Jeffry Kirschen Daniel Williams Denise Tryon Shelley Showers
Bass Trombone Blair Bollinger, 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 Patrick and Evelyn Gage Chair Percussion Christopher Deviney, Principal Mrs. Francis W. De Serio Chair Anthony Orlando, Associate Principal Ann R. and Harold A. Sorgenti Chair Angela Zator Nelson Piano and Celesta Kiyoko Takeuti Harps Elizabeth Hainen, Principal Patricia and John Imbesi Chair Margarita Csonka Montanaro, Co-Principal Librarians Robert M. Grossman, Principal Steven K. Glanzmann Stage Personnel Edward Barnes, Manager James J. Sweeney, Jr. James P. Barnes *On leave
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GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
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YOUNG ROBIN HOOD
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Swashbuckling adventure
SHERLOCK HOLMES
I DO! I DO!
Joyous musical about marriage
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AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUICIDE CLUB
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MYSTERY, LUST, INTRIGUE AND MURDER!
May 30 – June 24 East Coast Premiere
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Bethesda
Saturday, May 12, 2012, 8 p.m.
SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2012, 8 P.M.
● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director
presents
André Watts Plays Rachmaninoff Marin Alsop, conductor André Watts, piano
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Sergei Rachmaninoff Op. 18 (1873-1943) Moderato
Adagio sostenuto
Allegro scherzando
André Watts INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 1 in A-Flat Major, Op. 55 Andante, nobilmente e semplice — Allegro
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Allegro molto
André Watts, piano
Adagio Lento — Allegro André Watts’ Hamburg Steinway Piano provided by Mary Schwendeman Concert Service. Recordings available on the SONY Classical, Philips, Angel/EMI and Telarc labels. André Watts appears by arrangement with C/M Artists. Presenting Sponsors: DLA Piper and M&T Bank The concert will end at approximately 9:50 P.M. The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
Marin Alsop, conductor Hailed as one of the world’s leading conductors for her artistic vision and commitment to accessibility in classical music, Marin Alsop made history with 40 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With her inaugural concerts in September 2007, she became the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She also holds the title of conductor emeritus at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the U.K., where she served as the principal conductor from 2002 to 2008, and is music
André Watts burst upon the music world at age 16 when Leonard Bernstein chose him to make his debut with the New York Philharmonic in its Young People‘s Concerts. Two weeks later, Bernstein asked him to substitute for the ailing Glenn Gould in performances of Liszt’s E-flat Concerto with the New York Philharmonic, thus launching his career in storybook fashion. More than 45 years later, Watts remains one of today’s most celebrated and beloved superstars. Watts’ recent and upcoming engagements include appearances with the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras; New York and Los Angeles philharmonics; and the St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit,
ALSOP photo by dean alexander, watts photo by steve J. Sherman
director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California. In 2005, Alsop was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2007, she was honored with a European Women of Achievement Award. In 2008, she was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2009 Musical America named her Conductor of the Year. In November 2010, she was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. In February 2011, Alsop was named the music director of the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, or the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, effective for the 2012-13 Season. And in March 2011, Alsop was named to The Guardian’s Top 100 Women list. She was also named an Artist-In-Residence at the Southbank Centre in London in 2011. Alsop attended Yale University and received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her conducting career was launched when she won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood, where she studied with Leonard Bernstein.
Saturday, May 12, 2012, 8 p.m.
Cincinnati, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Seattle and National symphonies, among others. During the 2010-2011 season, Watts played all-Liszt recitals throughout the U.S., while recent international engagements have included concerto and recital appearances in Japan, Germany and Spain. Watts’ extensive discography includes recordings of works by Gershwin, Chopin, Liszt and Tchaikovsky for CBS Masterworks; recital CDs of works by Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Chopin for Angel/EMI; and recordings featuring the concertos of Liszt, MacDowell, Tchaikovsky and Saint-Säens on the Telarc label. Watts’ honors include an honorary doctorate from Yale University, and recognition from the University of Pennsylvania, The Juilliard School and his alma mater, the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. He was appointed to the Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music at Indiana University in 2004. André Watts last performed with the BSO on June 3-4 and 10, 2010, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with Music Director Marin Alsop.
Program Notes Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
Sergei Rachmaninoff Born April 1, 1873 in Oneg, Russia; died March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Composers have dedicated their works to many different sorts of people: royal patrons, family members, soloists, conductors. But, to the best of this writer’s knowledge, only one work has been dedicated to the composer’s psychiatrist: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 to Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who, by freeing Rachmaninoff’s creative block, had made this work possible. In 1897, Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1—a work in which he had great faith—was given a dreadfully inept premiere in St. Petersburg. Unable to separate a promising new work from a
bad performance, the critics gave the sensitive 23-year-old composer reviews that would devastate even a more seasoned artist. César Cui wrote: “If there were a conservatory in Hell, if one of its talented students were instructed to write a program symphony on the ‘Seven Plagues of Egypt,’ and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell.” Rachmaninoff withdrew the symphony and would never let it be performed again. He sank into a deep depression. Despite a standing commission from the London Philharmonic to write another piano concerto, for several years he created almost nothing. Dr. Nikolai Dahl was an internist who dabbled in the infant practice of psychiatry, including hypnosis. He was also a gifted amateur viola and cello player. In March 1900, Rachmaninoff’s relatives brought the composer to Dr. Dahl, who put him into a light trance, during which he repeated over and over: “You will begin your concerto—You will work with great facility—The concerto will be excellent.” Over several sessions this mantra, combined with sympathetic talk with a wise and cultivated man, produced a cure. By summer, Rachmaninoff’s creative juices were pouring into the new concerto, which was completed the following spring. Premiered by Rachmaninoff with the Moscow Philharmonic on Oct. 24, 1901, its immediate success has never faded. The first movement’s opening is one of the most justly famous in the repertoire: a series of nine chords in the piano, underpinned by the tolling of a deep F, that crescendos from pianissimo to fortissimo, and leads directly into the first theme, played low in the strings and clarinets. Surely this is an evocation of the great bells of Russian churches that fascinated Rachmaninoff from his childhood and inspired many stunning moments in his music. Also influenced by Russian Orthodoxy is the melancholy principal theme, which moves stepwise within a narrow range. The piano introduces the even lovelier
second theme; it is pure Rachmaninoff, full of romantic yearning. After a brief development section (announced by a brass fanfare) featuring both themes, the chant theme returns in the strings, but now with the piano providing an incisive march tread beneath. A quiet prelude by muted strings opens the slow movement and moves the tonality from C minor to a very distant E major. The movement’s main theme is oddly introduced. Over a piano arpeggio a solo flute presents a little phrase that turns out to be the theme’s ending. Then the solo clarinet offers the theme proper: It is a subdued, repetitive tune that will only find passionate release when the piano takes it on late in the movement. Rachmaninoff saves his loveliest music for the close: The woodwinds in birdcall triplets mesh magically with the piano, while the violins complete the melody. Another bridge prelude opens the finale. Here in the midst of much bold, aggressive music comes a surprise: the marvelous soaring melody, first heard in the plangent tones of solo oboe and viola, for which this concerto is so beloved. This tune almost lost its dignity forever when Tin Pan Alley hijacked it in the 1940s for the sentimental love song “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” The work ends with one last sweeping statement by full orchestra and soloist of the big tune, then hustles to an exciting finish. The BSO most recently performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 Feb. 10-13, 2011 with Juanjo Mena conducting and pianist Yuja Wang. Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major
Sir Edward Elgar Born June 2, 1857 in Broadheath, England; died Feb. 23, 1934 in Worcester, England
The twin premieres of his Symphony No. 1—on Dec. 3, 1908 in Manchester, England, and four days later in applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 41
Saturday, May 12, 2012, 8 p.m.
London—were the greatest successes of Sir Edward Elgar’s career. Though British audiences by that time had been thoroughly trained to refrain from clapping between movements, the eloquence and sheer beauty of the Adagio third movement completely overwhelmed etiquette in Manchester as vociferous applause stopped the performance. The response was wilder still in London, where it halted playing after both the first and third movements. Elgar’s great friend, the music publisher August Jaeger (musically portrayed in the Enigma Variations’ great “Nimrod” movement), described what happened at the end: “After that superb Coda (Finale), the audience seemed to rise at E. when he appeared. I never heard such frantic applause ... nor such shouting. Five times he had to appear before they were pacified. People stood up and even on their seats to get a view.” Within the following year, Symphony No. 1 had amassed nearly 100 performances, not just in England, but around the world. One would have expected its creator to have been floating on air. But by Christmas 1908, Elgar was again wrapped in one of his depressive moods, for he was a far more complicated man than his elegant Edwardian-gentleman portraits would suggest. Those photographs show a handsome, dignified man with an equally handsome brush of a mustache, usually impeccably dressed and with the upright, reserved bearing of a member of the English aristocracy. On first meeting him, the younger British composer Arnold Bax described him as: “Hatless, dressed in rough tweeds and riding boots, his appearance was rather that of a retired army officer-turned-gentleman farmer than an eminent and almost morbidly highly strung artist. One almost expected him to sling a gun from his back and drop a brace of peasants to the ground.” This is what some commentators have called the “Public” Elgar: a carefully constructed facade that hid the vulnerable private Elgar from the eyes of all but his closest friends and family. The private Elgar was quite a different man. 42 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
Born to a family of modest means—his father owned a music shop in Worcester and was a piano tuner as well— Elgar also had the bad luck to be born a Roman Catholic in a country still rabidly anti-Catholic. In his early 30s, he married Caroline Alice Roberts, nine years his senior and a well-to-do member of the local gentry. Although the marriage was a deeply devoted one, Alice Elgar’s class-conscious relations snubbed Edward and never lost an opportunity to remind them that she had married beneath her station. Even when Elgar had become a national hero, a baronet and the holder of numerous honorary degrees, he never recovered from these early psychic wounds. As sensitive an artist as ever lived, he was subject to dark periods of depression and selfdoubt, and he was always a bit of an outsider, observing his culture with a skeptical eye and sometimes a harsh tongue. Because he believed the symphony to be the highest musical form, Elgar waited until he was 50 to tackle it. Symphony No. 1 was followed two and a half years later by the equally great, but far less popular Symphony No. 2. Though both works are so richly and dramatically characterized that they seem to be programmatic, Elgar insisted they were essentially abstract in nature. Of No. 1 he wrote: “There is no programme beyond a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) & a massive hope in the future.” But he also said that absolute music should embody “a reflex, or picture, or elucidation of [the composer’s own] life. ... As to the phases of pride, despair, anger, peace & and a thousand & one things that occur between the first page and the last... I prefer the listener to draw what he can from the sounds he hears.” Like a stage play, No. 1 has a protagonist: a noble (marked “Nobilmente” in Elgar’s invented expressive marking), slightly melancholy (Elgar referred to this characteristic mood as “my stately sorrow”) march theme, which dominates the first three minutes of the first movement. In fact, it will haunt all four movements, even when it is only implied rather than actually heard; in
Elgar’s words, it “emerges in the end as the conquering (subduing) idea.” Rooted in the Symphony’s home key of Aflat major, it is first heard in a misty blend of violas and woodwinds before swelling to full-orchestra splendor. Though this march may sound straightforward, it is actually rhythmically elusive with its regular 4/4 tread clouded by notes tied over the barline. As this protagonist theme fades away, the main Allegro section begins, and the mood shifts violently to nervous, agitated music in the very distant key of D minor. This key will act throughout as an antagonist to the A-flat home key. Soon comes another emotional shift: from aggression to lovely swaying music (Elgar called it “sad and delicate”) in violins and oboes that represents the composer’s characteristic retreating into a private, peaceful world. This mood is intensified by the violins leaping into the stratosphere for the true “secondsubject” theme: a sweetly nostalgic melody with a rippling accompaniment. But in this mercurial music, the agitated theme returns and brings a raucous brass climax on, astonishingly, the “sad and delicate” melody, now transformed into something huge and anguished. A return of the melancholy march in the wistful tones of muted horns opens the development. This extended section unfolds as a series of contrasting scenes or episodes—some very lovely, others anguished and stormy. As this section draws to a close, we hear a brief echo of the march in clarinets and cellos. The recapitulation reprises the earlier agitated music and reaches a more extreme state with low brass shouting out their anxiety. However, all is tranformed as the noble march theme slowly emerges and swells to rout these demons and their key of D minor, returning us home to A-flat major. But Elgar is far from ready to let his protagonist claim full victory. The second-movement scherzo is a very different world. Over the spooky rumbling of low strings, the violins begin a rapid, scurrying theme with a descending accessory idea like stalking goblins. This is followed by a grotesque
Saturday, May 12, 2012, 8 p.m.
Mahler-like march led by strings. The music builds to a considerable ruckus before shifting dramatically to one of Elgar’s private worlds. Elgar asks that this gently undulating music, led by flutes, violins and the two harps, be played “like something you hear down by the river.” (In childhood, the composer loved to sit on the banks of the Severn River and try to notate “what the reeds were saying.”) The scherzo music inundates this peaceful interlude, and the scurrying theme and the grotesque march are now combined in vigorous counterpoint. As the river music returns, we sense that it bears a close kinship to the first movement’s melancholy march, which almost, but not quite, emerges from it. As violins and violas hover, Elgar makes one of his loveliest transitions into the Adagio third movement. There is a secret connection between these two movements: the Adagio’s poignantly beautiful melody is, astonishingly, a slowed-down, note-for-note version of
the scherzo’s scurrying theme. And this long, flowing melody is also related to the melancholy-march protagonist by its rhythmic ambiguity, with most of its notes moving off the beat or on weak beats. Its second strand is an ardent, quintessentially Elgarian melody that keeps leaping upward in aspiration, only to fall back again. As the main melody reprises, listen for the melancholy march trying once again to emerge in horns and timpani. Marvelous scoring utilizing very subtle individual and blended instrumental colors enhances one of the most glorious slow movements in the symphonic literature. D minor surges back to open the finale. Like movement one, this begins slowly and in the darkest instrumental tones. Ghostly fragments drift by, including the melancholy march in a tonally uncertain minor mode and a grim new march. The music accelerates into the main Allegro section and rich-toned yet agitated string music with a Brahmsian flavor. The grim march reasserts
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itself and reaches a boisterous climax. In the development section, this march competes with the agitated Brahmsian theme in aggressive counterpoint. The battle is calmed by the quiet summons of the melancholy march played from the back stands of strings. And now comes a wonderful surprise: The grim march is suddenly transformed into a Romantic melody. As the music grows progressively more excited, it climaxes in a grandly triumphant version of the march. The sonic and melodic splendor of the symphony’s closing moments explains why its first audiences were standing on their seats. The BSO most recently performed Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 Jan. 22-23 and 25, 2004 with James Judd conducting. Instrumentation: Three flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2012
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Thursday, May 17, 2012, 8 p.m.
● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director Jack Everly, Principal Pops Conductor
presents
BSO SuperPops The Beat Goes On! Music of the Baby Boomers Jack Everly, conductor Matt Branic Joe Cassidy Roy Chicas Farah Alvin N’Kenge Kristine Reese
Baby Boomer Prelude Arr. Everly “The Beat Goes On”
Sonny Bono (1935-1998), arr. Barker
Stop! In the Name of Music Arr. Barker, Orch. Barton The Wonderful World of Television
Back to Bacharach
Theme from Love Story
Valli and the Dolls
Arr. Everly Burt Bacharach (1928-), arr. Barker Francis Lai (1932-), arr. Everly Arr. Barker, Orch. Barton
INTERMISSION
Symphonic Sounds of the Sixties
Arr. Barton
Hits of the Tie-Dyed Decade
Arr. Barker
“Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago
The Beatles Medley
Maurice Jarre (1924-2009), arr. Holcombe John Lennon (1940-1980) and Paul McCartney (1942-), arr: Barker
The concert will end at approximately 10:05 P.M.
The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
44 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
Jack Everly, conductor
Jack Everly is the principal pops conductor of the Baltimore and Indianapolis Symphony orchestras, Naples Philharmonic Orchestra and National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), and the music director of the National Memorial Day Concert and A Capitol Fourth on PBS. Everly is the music director of Yuletide Celebration, now a 26-year tradition. These theatrical symphonic holiday concerts are presented annually in December in Indianapolis and are seen by more than 40,000 concertgoers. Originally appointed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Everly was conductor of the American Ballet Theatre for 14 years, where he served as music director. Everly has teamed with Marvin Hamlisch in Broadway shows including The Goodbye Girl, They’re Playing Our Song and A Chorus Line. In 1998, Everly created the Symphonic Pops Consortium, serving as music director. The consortium, based in Indianapolis, produces a new theatrical pops program each season. In the past 12 years, more than 225 performances of SPC programs have taken place across the U.S. and Canada. Everly holds an honorary doctorate of arts from Franklin College in his home state of Indiana.
Matt Branic
Matt Branic is an Indianapolis native who recently appeared in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s 2011 Yuletide Celebration featuring Ann Hampton Callaway and Liz Callaway, and Hello Dolly! in Concert starring Sandi Patty and Gary Beach, in which he played the role of Ambrose Kemper. Additional favorite credits include RENT in Concert (Roger), Joseph
everly photo by Michael Tammaro
THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2012, 8 P.M.
Thursday, May 17, 2012, 8 p.m.
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Joseph), Jesus Christ Superstar (Jesus), Company (Robert) and A Little Night Music (Henrik).
Joe Cassidy Known for a soaring tenor, Joe Cassidy has gained a wide audience in the past few years as an in-demand vocalist with dozens of the top symphony orchestras throughout the U.S. and Canada. He has recorded and performed as a soloist in several Pops series under the batons of Jack Everly, Lorin Maazel, Steve Reineke and Robert Moody. Cassidy’s Broadway appearances include roles in Catch Me If You Can, Next To Normal, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 1776, Show Boat, Les Misérables and A Christmas Carol. Other theater credits include Black Snow, Next to Normal and Listen To My Heart.
N’Kenge
Roy Chicas has appeared as a soloist with the Indianapolis, Baltimore, Detroit, Nashville, Phoenix and Fort Worth symphony orchestras. He played Doody in the national and European tours of Grease and starred as Judas in the European tour of Jesus Christ Superstar. Chicas’ Off-Broadway credits include Hello Again, Bring in the Morning and Forever Plaid. His recording work includes The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, A Broadway Christmas and Michael Feinstein’s Only One Life.
N’Kenge made her Broadway debut in Sondheim on Sondheim performing alongside Vanessa Williams and Barbara Cook. She has performed alongside jazz greats such as Wynton Marsalis and Ornette Coleman at Lincoln Center, and was a principal artist at New York City Opera. Equally at home on the opera stage, N’Kenge has been seen as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, Musetta in La bohème and Therese in Les Mamelles de Tiresias. N’Kenge also has given recitals at the White House and the Kennedy Center. The 2012-2013 season will include the release of a new record, performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and a return to Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra.
Farah Alvin
Kristine Reese
Roy Chicas
cassidy photo by laura marie duncan
Commission for Presidential Scholars and sang for President Bill Clinton at the Kennedy Center. Alvin has appeared on Broadway in Grease!, Saturday Night Fever, The Look of Love: The Music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David and the Tony Award-wining revival of Nine. Off-Broadway credits include the recent cult hit, I Love You Because (and original cast recording), Cam Jansen, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Other Story Books, and Kuni-Leml (and original cast recording). She has performed with Jack Everly and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, as well as the symphonies of Detroit, Seattle, Nashville, Fort Worth and Phoenix.
Farah Alvin has received the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Award for Pop/Musical Theater Vocals and the first NFAA YoungARTS Level One Award for Pop Vocals. She also was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts by the White House
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Burnsville, Minn., Kristine Reese’s career as an actress and singer has brought her to venues all across
North America. Reese is best known for her portrayal
of Nessarose during the national tours of Wicked. Reese starred in more than 1,000 performances of the hit musical and originated the role when the second national tour opened in 2009. Reese made her Broadway debut in the revival of Les Misérables and spent a year on the road with the North American national tour of Mamma Mia! (Sophie u/s). Other theater credits include Brigadoon (Fiona), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Rosa Bud), Grease! (Frenchy), Annie (Star to Be) and the national tour of Hello, Dolly! starring Michele Lee. Reese has performed as a vocal soloist in concerts with symphonic pops and symphony orchestras internationally, including the Baltimore, Toronto, Detroit, Fort Worth, Modesto, Phoenix and Indianapolis symphonies, the Cincinnati Pops and the National Symphony Orchestra of Canada. Reese earned her musical theater degree from the Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music and received the Laurie Beechman Award for excellence in vocal performance in 2005.
The Beat Goes On! Music of the Baby Boomers is co-produced along with Symphonic Pops Consortium
The Symphonic Pops Consortium mission is to conceive, create and produce high quality, innovative, symphonic Pops concerts by uniting a group of symphony orchestras and combining their resources. The Symphonic Pops Consortium is comprised of the Indianapolis (managing partner), Detroit, Milwaukee, National and Seattle symphony orchestras. Music Director: Jack Everly Producer: Ty A. Johnson Stage Direction / Special Material: David Levy Arr. / Orchestration: Jack Everly, Wayne Barker Additional Orchestration: Fred Barton Production Management: Brandy Rodgers applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 45
Friday, May 18, 2012, 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012, 8 P.M.
● Strathmore Presents
The Dallas Brass Michael Levine, director and trombone D.J. Barraclough, trumpet Lorenzo Trujillo, trumpet Juan Berrios, horn, alto horn and flugelhorn Paul Carlson, tuba Ben Handel, drums/percussion Band members from Rockville, Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Walt Whitman high schools The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
The Dallas Brass
Founded in Dallas in 1983 by Michael Levine, the Dallas Brass has become one of America’s foremost musical ensembles. The group has blended traditional brass instruments with a full complement of drums and percussion to create a performing entity of extraordinary range and musical challenges. The Dallas Brass repertoire includes classical masterpieces, Dixieland, swing, Broadway, Hollywood and patriotic music. In addition to solo engagements, the Dallas Brass appears with symphony orchestras nationwide. Symphonic credits include the Cincinnati Pops conducted by Erich Kunzel, New York Pops conducted by Skitch Henderson and the Philly Pops conducted by Peter 46 applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012
Nero. The Dallas Brass has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center and has toured overseas to Europe and Asia. The ensemble has shared the stage with the late Bob Hope, performed for presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and appeared on the CBS Early Show. The ensemble’s music has been used numerous times on the television show The Young & The Restless. The Dallas Brass has strong dedication to working with young musicians. The ensemble recently published two books of original small ensemble music for middle school and high students, or more advanced players, called Brass Groove. The ensemble’s members frequently go into schools to present clinics for band students, and inviting students to join them in concert has become a Dallas Brass trademark.
Michael Levine, director and trombone
Michael Levine is originally from St. Louis Park, Minn. He first attended the University of Minnesota and then The Juilliard School, where he received his bachelor’s degree in music. He held the position of assistant principal trombone in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra for three years. Levine founded the Dallas Brass
in 1983 and serves as the ensemble’s trombonist, master of ceremonies and artistic director. As an arranger, he has made significant contributions to the Dallas Brass library. Levine also has invented a device called the WindMaster to help wind players develop their breathing technique. Levine’s favorite non-musical activity is snow skiing. He resides in Dallas.
D.J. Barraclough, trumpet
D.J. Barraclough began his musical studies on the trombone and continued playing it through high school. He didn’t actually begin the trumpet until his third year in college. Originally from southern Utah, Barraclough attended Dixie State College in St. George. He has performed with such organizations as the Utah Symphony, the Lex De Azevedo Orchestra and the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. When not performing, Barraclough works as a brass clinician and helps young students learn to make practice more effective and fun. Barraclough is also an accomplished instrument repair technician. His other interests include hiking, camping and various forms of meditation. Barraclough lives in southern Utah with his wife, Kristine, and their six children.
Lorenzo Trujillo, trumpet
Born in San Francisco, Lorenzo Trujillo grew up playing a wide variety of instruments, from violin to saxophone, before deciding that trumpet was his calling. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Louisville, master of fine arts degree from California Institute of the Arts and a doctorate from UCLA. He has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil and tours regularly as lead trumpet with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Among the artists with whom Trujillo has appeared include Travis Tritt, Michael MacDonald, Kid Rock, Slash (from Guns ‘n’ Roses), Linda Ronstadt, Harry Connick Jr., Gregory Hines and Aretha Franklin. In 2009, Lorenzo released a recording of new music for big
Friday, May 18, 2012, 8 p.m.
band and solo trumpet. Trujillo resides in St. Louis.
Juan Berrios, horn, alto horn and flugelhorn
Juan Berrios is originally from Bayamon, Puerto Rico. He has a degree in horn performance from the University of Central Florida, where he has been the recipient of several awards including the Presser Foundation Scholarship and the Performance Excellence Award. For three years, Berrios was a member of the Brass Band of Central Florida, one of the top-ranked brass bands in the United States. Berrios has performed as principal horn with the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra and in the Orlando Philharmonic. He was awarded a full scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2009 and more recently attended the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Calif. Berrios resides in Orlando.
Paul Carlson, tuba
Paul Carlson, from Macomb, Ill., has an extensive educational résumé. He has degrees from the University of Illinois and the University of New Mexico and is working on his doctorate in tuba performance at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. Performance experience includes the New Mexico Brass Quintet, Santa Fe Symphony Brass Quintet, The King’s Brass, the Walt Disney Collegiate AllStar Band in Orlando and symphony orchestras including New Mexico, Albuquerque and Louisville. Carlson is also an accomplished jazz bass player—both upright and electric—and does various jazz gigs in and around Indianapolis.
Ben Handel, drums and percussion Ben Handel, from Warsaw, Ind., had his first professional gig at age 10 as lead singer of a cover band, The Toxic Twinkies. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, Handel
has toured all over the United States and Japan, including a six-month run on Broadway with the Tony Awardwinning show, Blast! He has been a member of a wide variety of groups ranging from percussion ensembles to rock bands and has played in the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. Handel was a member of the 1999 World Champion Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps. In addition to performing, Handel is active as a clinician, educator, composer, record producer and engineer. He lives in Bloomington, Ind. Program Notes The mission of Dallas Brass is to motivate and inspire band students, their families and communities to embrace the musical arts with the belief that good music enriches lives and in turn, makes our world a better place. Dallas Brass proudly wears attire provided by Wrangler.
JULY 13-15 Washington DC Metro Areas Only Comprehensive Quality Audio Event Come to the 3rd Annual Capital Audiofest at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 3 Research Court, Rockville on July 13-15 where you will see and hear quality audio, video, and home integration products ranging from the affordable to the exotic. www.capitalaudiofest.com applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012 47
Saturday, May 19, 2012, 8 p.m.
● National Philharmonic Piotr Gajewski, Music Director and Conductor
presents
Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian Stan Engebretson, conductor Audrey Luna, soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano Linda Maguire, mezzo-soprano Eliot Pfanstiehl, narrator National Philharmonic Chorale
The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian Claude Debussy La Cour des lys (“The Court of Lilies”) (1862-1918)
La Chambre magique (“The Magic Chamber”)
Le Concile des faux dieux (“The Council of the False Gods”)
Le Laurier blessé (“The Wounded Laurel”)
Le Paradis (“Paradise”) All Kids, All Free, All the Time is sponsored by The Gazette The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
Stan Engebretson, conductor
In demand throughout the United States and Europe, Stan Engebretson has led choirs in Venice’s Cathedral of St. Mark and taught in Cologne, Trier, St. Moritz and Barcelona. He has studied with the great masters of choral music, including Robert Shaw, Gregg Smith, Richard Westenburg, Roger Wagner and Eric Ericson. After attending the University of North Dakota and earning his doctorate from Stanford University, Engebretson 48 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
taught at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and the University of Minnesota. He also was the artistic director of the Midland-Odessa Symphony Chorale and the associate conductor of the Minnesota Chorale. In Washington since 1990, Engebretson is professor of music and director of choral studies at George Mason University and is the director of music at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. From 1993 to 2003, he was the artistic director of the predecessor to the National Philharmonic Chorale, the Masterworks Chorus and the semi-professional National Chamber Singers. Engebretson remains active in other
areas, performing as a professional chorister and lecturer, and leading the Smithsonian Institution’s Study Journeys at the Spoleto-USA Festival of the Arts.
Audrey Luna, soprano
Audrey Luna, whom Opera News says “has power and a blazing coloratura facility that most lyric sopranos can only dream of,” is fast emerging as one of the country’s brightest young artists. Luna’s 2012-13 season will include her return to the Metropolitan Opera as Ariel in The Tempest by Thomas Adès, Madame Mao in Nixon in China with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Ariel in The Tempest with Orchestra Dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, soloist in George Crumb’s Star Child with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos with Fort Worth Opera. In the 2011-12 season she made her debut with Lyric Opera of Chicago as Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte, with Santa Fe Opera, Spoleto Festival USA, and with Cincinnati Opera. She also was a soloist in Amy Beach’s Grand Mass in E-flat Major and Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian with the National Philharmonic. With the National Philharmonic she has sung as soloist in Brahms’ Requiem, Makris’ Symphony for Soprano and Strings and Vivaldi’s Gloria. Recent successes include Gilda in Rigoletto with San Antonio Opera; Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel with Syracuse Opera; and soloist in Messiah with East Texas Symphony Orchestra. Luna is the 2009 winner of the Loren L. Zachary Vocal Competition and received the top prize awarded in the 2009 Renata Tebaldi International Voice Competition. She has also been awarded first place in the Terzo Concorso Lirico Internazionale “Alfredo Giacomotti,” the Caruso International Voice Competition and Eleanor Lieber Awards.
engebretson photo by Jerry Fernandez
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2012, 8 P.M.
Saturday, May 19, 2012, 8 p.m.
Lamoreaux photo by david rogers, pfanstiehl photo by kirsten beckerman
Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano
Rosa Lamoreaux, acclaimed for her “scrupulous musicianship ... gorgeous sound and stylistic acuity” [The Washington Post], is engaged in an international career that encompasses solo recitals, chamber music, opera and orchestral performances at major concert venues. Her concert tours abroad have included performances in Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Peru and Japan. Highly-praised as a Bach soloist, Lamoreaux is featured regularly at the Bethlehem and Carmel Bach Festivals, and she appears frequently with such foremost choral groups as the Washington Bach Consort, the Cathedral Choral Society, the National Philharmonic Chorale and Choral Arts of Washington. Her orchestral credits include the Atlanta, Dallas and Cincinnati symphony orchestras. Lamoreaux is artistic director of the National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble. Her art museum performance venues also include the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters, the Smithsonian Institution, the Corcoran Gallery and the Phillips Collection. She recently received her seventh Washington Area Music Association award as best classical vocalist.
Linda Maguire, mezzo-soprano
Linda Maguire is an internationally renowned vocal artist with an extensive résumé in concert, recital and opera, as well as live broadcasts and recordings. She has sung regularly with many of the major orchestras of North America, including Calgary, Dallas and Vancouver. Appearances abroad include Les Musiciens du Louvre, I Virtuosi di Praja and Les Violons du Roi. Maguire attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio before
launching her 23- year international career as a vocal artist. During this time, she has sung more than 30 “zwischen” (essentially soprano) leading roles in the opera houses of Glyndebourne, Montreal, Dallas and Toronto, among others. In 2004, Maguire relocated from Toronto to Washington, D.C., where she has pursued an active schedule of vocal engagements. She has sung in numerous performances at the Kennedy Center, including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Amy Beach’s Canticle of the Sun. Last season, Maguire sang twice with City Choir of Washington, in performances of Durufle’s Requiem and Mozart’s Requiem. She also appeared as guest soloist with the U.S. Army Chorus and select members of U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” in a concert featuring music by Schubert and Gershwin.
Eliot Pfanstiehl, narrator
Eliot Pfanstiehl is the CEO of Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc., which operates and presents programming at Strathmore, a multi-disciplinary arts center that includes the Music Center and the Mansion at Strathmore. Pfanstiehl has held this position since the foundation’s inception in 1983. Born in the District of Columbia and a graduate of George Washington University, Pfanstiehl’s career is a mixture of arts management, education, leadership training and organizational development. Pfanstiehl has been a founder, president or chair of Montgomery County Arts Council, the Round House Theatre, the League of Washington Theatres and Strathmore. His past board service includes the Friends of the Kennedy Center, Round House Theatre, Black Rock Arts Center, Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations and chair of both
the Maryland State Arts Council and Maryland Citizens for the Arts. He was the founding president of Maryland Leadership Workshops and is the program facilitator for Leadership Maryland, Leadership Montgomery, Leadership Allegany and Leadership Southern Maryland, and is a graduate of the inaugural class of Leadership Washington. Pfanstiehl has led more than 300 board and strategic planning retreats for a range of non-profit civic, arts and social service organizations, government agencies and businesses. Pfanstiehl was named a Washingtonian of the Year in 2000 by Washingtonian magazine and the Washington Business Journal named him one of the “People to Watch” in 2005. Pfanstiehl and his wife, Cynthia, an anthropology professor at Montgomery College, are the proud parents of four children. They live in Silver Spring.
Program Notes Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian)
Claude Debussy Born Aug, 22, 1862 in Saint-Germainen-Laye, France; died March 25, 1918 in Paris
The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian originates as Debussy’s longest theater score after his opera Pelléas; it is his only completed score of incidental music. The original work cannot easily be categorized as belonging to a particular genre as it contained elements of oratorio, ballet and theater. Michael Tilson Thomas has described it as “variously influenced by folk song, medieval ballad, Renaissance polyphony and Asiatic music, all under the looming shadow of Wagner.” Debussy used whole-tone scales and drew on medieval balladry and the Indonesian gamelan, also achieving distinctive effects with harps and double basses. The catalyst for the project was the applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 49
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Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein, who, after her successes with Serge Diaghilev’s company in 1909-10, wanted another showpiece to display her skills. She influenced the poet/novelist Gabriele d’Annunzio to re-conceive the medieval Christian mystery play, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. D’Annunzio, a year younger than Debussy, was a native of Pescara, Italy, where he was already famous in his teens for his poetry. Although elected to the Italian parliament, by 1910, D’Annunzio was in debt and moved to Paris to escape creditors. In France, he began to write in French as well as Italian. D’Annunzio recruited Debussy for a complex theater project centered on St. Sebastian, for which he wanted incidental music. The composer and the poet had met only a few months earlier, when D’Annunzio wrote to Debussy of his admiration for the latter’s songs. Debussy, actually D’Annunzio’s third choice of composer, was originally equivocal about the task. To D’Annunzio Debussy wrote: “How could I not love your poetry? The mere thought of working with you sets a feverish excitement in motion,” while to his wife, he confided, “This business doesn’t mean a thing to me”; nevertheless, his wife convinced him to accept the project, mainly for the money. Debussy seems to have been slightly intimidated by the vastness of the project and after accepting it, wrote to D’Annunzio: “All music seems to me useless compared to the constantly renewed splendors of your imagination .... It is thus not without some terror that I look forward to the moment at which I shall have to make up my mind to begin. Will I be able to?” To make the project even more daunting, he had only a bit more than two months to complete it before its scheduled performance date. Panicked, he enlisted André Caplet, to whom he delegated much of the orchestration; he is said to have allowed Caplet to compose the final chorus, too. Of his own remaining work, Debussy said: “I am working 50 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012
like someone in a factory. I don’t look back.” Caplet worked under Debussy’s supervision and from Debussy’s drafts; he later assembled a set of four “symphonic fragments” from the completed The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Debussy was not a practicing Christian; he did not “worship according to the established rites,” having “made a religion from the mysteries of Nature,” yet he said, “the subject of Le martyre seduced me above all by its blend of intense life and Christian faith.” The work combines the arts, including Christian and pagan images, mysticism and magic, tenderness and violence, ecstasy and self-torture. D’Annunzio emphasized the cruelty as well as the sensuality of Sebastian. The proportions of the complete work are gargantuan; the premiere of the play, with his music, was given at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, on May 22, 1911; it lasted more than four hours, although only 55 minutes of it contained Debussy’s music. (All of that music is heard in the version of the work performed in this concert.) Before the premiere, the Archbishop of Paris declared the work “offensive to Christian consciences” and suggested that attending the production would cause any Catholic to be excommunicated. Debussy responded, “From the artistic point of view, such decrees cannot be considered. I assure you that I wrote my music as though I had been asked to do it for a church. The result is decorative music, if you like, a noble text, interpreted in sounds and rhythms; and in the last act, when the saint ascends to Heaven, I believe I have expressed all the feelings aroused in me by the thought of the Ascension. Have I succeeded? That no longer concerns me. We have not the simple faith of other days. Is the faith expressed in my music orthodox or not? I cannot say. It is my faith, my own, singing in all sincerity.” Together, Debussy and D’Annunzio rejected the Archbishop’s ban, proudly proclaiming: “This deeply religious work is a lyrical glorification not only
of this splendid Christian athlete, but also of all Christian heroism.” About a year after completing this project Debussy wrote to a friend, “I needn’t tell you that the worship of Adonis is mingled in this work with the worship of Christ . . . it is assuredly very beautiful.” The elements of the work that would have disturbed the Archbishop were that a woman dancer, Ida Rubinstein, a star at the Ballets Russes and Jewish, portrayed Sebastian; in addition, she was said to have been D’Annunzio’s mistress. (Just her having bare legs for the performance provoked comments.) Overall, she and her performance invited predictable anti-Semitic comments. As the stripped and martyred Saint Sebastian, writhing in sexual ecstasy when she was pierced by arrows, Rubinstein was inflammatory even though the saint had been depicted in painting for 400 years in a kind of mystical ecstasy and as young, beautiful, muscular, virginal, and clothed only in a loin cloth. Also, the church contended that the emperor’s attraction to the beautiful Sebastian was not healthy, and Sebastian’s miming of the Passion of Christ was objectionable because it was set as a parallel to the death and rebirth of Adonis. Nevertheless, the premiere was actually well attended. Reviews were mixed: some saw it as sacrilege, a mask for sensual opportunism, while others compared it to Wagner’s Parsifal. It featured the work of the choreographer Michel Fokine and the designer Léon Bakst. It was dropped after its 10th performance; in 1912, a concert version was created. Germaine, the wife of the conductor Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (18801965), the chorus master at the premiere, later selected passages from the play for a narrator to recite, thus linking together separate musical numbers. Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht assembled the work with the composer RolandManuel. This shortened version describes and summarizes each of the five acts (in the medieval terminology
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Debussy preferred, five mansions) and thus preserves the continuity of the plot. In the version on the program tonight, narration links together five tableaux (Debussy divided the work into scenes, tableaux, based on different views of St. Sebastian in various churches.) The tableaux basically outline Sebastian’s life, from early on until his death and his afterlife. The original lengthy version of the work has been performed on several occasions, most with abridged narration, some without any. From time to time, and with more frequency in recent years, the “symphonic fragments,” which Caplet assembled, have been performed in concert. These orchestral suites are extractions based upon the oratorio. The complete work was staged and conducted by Toscanini in 1926, by Charles Munch a generation ago and recently by Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony. Sebastian, a martyr of unknown date, was venerated as early as the fourth century. A young, handsome man, he became an officer in the Roman Imperial Guard under Diocletian whose reign, from 284 to 305 A.D., was noted for its persecution of Christians. There were attempts to kill Sebastian because he was Christian. Once, his attackers left him for dead, but he survived, only later to be killed by order of the Emperor Diocletian, who commanded him to be bound to a tree, flayed and then slain by the arrows of his own soldiers. Beyond the bare facts underpinning the various episodes in The Martyr, D’Annunzio, who was fascinated by the primitive and masochistic elements of early Christianity, took little from his sources. He explained, “I chose a line from a verse of Veronica Gambara, the great Italian poetess of the Renaissance: ‘He that loves me most, wounds me.’ My mystery play is a development of this theme.” The mystery play contrasted early
Christian mysticism with the ecstasy of mystery cults then extant. In the first section, The Court of Lilies, Sebastian, motivated by his strong Christian faith, miraculously saves twin brothers, Mark and Marcellian, who were to be tortured and put to death for their faith in Christ. The music begins with a serious prelude; the scene is set in a sad lyrical style. By praying and then shooting an arrow into the sky that miraculously does not return to earth, Sebastian saves the two and then bares his own body and dances an ecstatic dance on live coals. Debussy’s music makes the embers spit and crack effectively. A blind woman also receives her sight, and seven seraphim appear. The music for this tableau has much variety and color as well as some of the most delicate and personal music in the work. The second section, The Magic Chamber, begins with a prelude, in which a contrabassoon solo is memorably set against shimmering strings. In this scene, aided by his disciples, Sebastian destroys false gods, and while in the midst of this endeavor, encounters the Magic Chamber, a supreme sanctuary of hermetic silence, where seven chained sorceresses are tending crucibles of the fire of the planets, and the Sun and the Moon; in the magic chamber, powerful secrets of magicians, astrologers and necromancers are sealed behind huge bronze doors. The prophetesses yield, recognizing Sebastian’s divinity, as he attacks the pagan fortress and breaks the strong seal, which emits a blinding flood of light that represented the new faith. In The Council of the False Gods, Sebastian must stand before the emperor, who loves him for his beauty and to whom Sebastian is presented as the favorite archer of Diocletian. The emperor wants to have Sebastian for company and tempts him, offering power and riches. Showing disrespect for the divinity of the emperor and the old gods, Sebastian enacts the drama of Jesus, where he is first laid
low, then arises and is transfigured. This action amazes the emperor who can imagine making him a god, but Sebastian violently crashes two gold victory trophies down at the emperor’s feet. The emperor, reining in his fury, commands Sebastian to be suffocated, covered with flowers, crowns and necklaces. The Wounded Laurel, the fourth section, begins with a poignant English horn theme set against an accompaniment of shuddering strings. In this tableau, Sebastian is bound to a laurel tree in Apollo’s Grove, where the archers, who are sympathetic to him, must cover him with arrows, completing his destiny. “He who most deeply wounds me, most deeply loves me,” Sebastian tells his men, “Each dart that shatters me with pain brings me heavenly bliss!” This statement is accompanied by the beautiful atmospheric music of four solo cellos. Sebastian bleeds; women run to untie him after his head sinks on his shoulder and his body collapses. A miracle occurs: his wounds are freed from the arrows, which remain embedded in the tree trunk. During the funeral procession, the sky opens with light. The final section is Paradise, in which there are no spoken words. The forest glows with a celestial radiance. The gates of Paradise open as the spirit of Sebastian is welcomed into heaven, where the angels in choruses sing a welcome to the soul of the saint. The work ends with a paraphrase of the 150th Psalm. The concert score enlists soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra and lasts about an hour and a quarter, including one speaker, two sopranos and one mezzo-soprano or contralto and an orchestra of two flutes and two piccolos (the latter doubling on flutes), two oboes and English horn, three clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, three harps, harmonium (offstage), timpani, celesta, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam and strings. Copyright Susan Halpern, 2012 applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 51
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● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director
presents
Beethoven’s Ninth Peter Oundjian, conductor Joyce El-Khoury, soprano Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano Brandon Jovanovich, tenor Morris Robinson, bass Baltimore Choral Arts Society Tom Hall, Music Director
Te Deum Anton Bruckner Te Deum laudamus: Allegro moderato (1824-1896)
Te ergo quaesumus: Moderato
Aeterna fac cum Sanctis tuis: Allegro moderato — Feierlich, mit kraft
Salvum fac populum, tuum, Domine: Moderato
In te, Domine speravi: Mässig bewegt INTERMISSION Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op. 125, Ludwig van Beethoven “Choral” (1770-1827)
Allegro ma non troppo; un poco maestoso
Molto vivace
Adagio molto e cantabile
Presto — Allegro assai — Allegro assai vivace Presenting Sponsor: M&T Bank Media Sponsor: WETA 90.9 FM The concert will end at approximately 10:00 P.M. The Music Center at Strathmore • Marriott Concert Stage
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Peter Oundjian, conductor Toronto-born conductor Peter Oundjian, noted for his probing musicality, collaborative spirit and engaging personality, has been an instrumental figure in the rebirth of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since his appointment as music director in 2004. In his tenure with the TSO, Oundjian has also released four recordings on the orchestra’s record label, tsoLIVE. The award-winning documentary Five Days in September: The Rebirth of an Orchestra, is available on DVD and chronicles Oundjian’s first week as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. During the 2011-2012 season, Oundjian conducted the Colorado Symphony, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Oundjian was the first violinist of the renowned Tokyo String Quartet, a position he held for 14 years. Peter Oundjian last performed with the BSO on Feb. 26-28, 2009, performing Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with Daniel Mueller-Schott and Elgar’s Enigma Variations.
Joyce El-Khoury, soprano
Joyce El-Khoury is a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. A graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, El-Khoury performed the roles of Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, the title role in Massenet’s Manon, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, the title role in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (Act II) and Violetta in La Traviata. During the 2010-2011 season, ElKhoury returned to the Metropolitan
Oundjian photo by hasnain
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Opera as Frasquita in Carmen. She also sang the role of Esmeralda in The Bartered Bride with James Levine and performed her role debut as Mimi in La bohème with Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival. Joyce El-Khoury makes her BSO debut with this performance.
Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano
Jovanovich photo by peter dressel, robinson photo by ron cadiz
Mary Phillips has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera (Waltraute, Preziosilla), Canadian Opera (Fricka, Eboli), San Francisco Opera, Dallas Opera, Seattle Opera, Barcelona’s Teatre de Gran Liceu and the Edinburgh Festival. This year, Phillips sings Azucena/Il Trovatore for Seattle, Miss Jessel/The Turn of the Screw for Portland Opera and Fricka/ Die Walküre for Hawaii Opera Theatre. Recent and upcoming performances include Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, Mulier Samaritana with the New York Philharmonic, Das Lied von der Erde at the Brevard Festival, Mozart’s Requiem with the Memphis Symphony, Mahler Symphony No. 2 with the Portland Symphony, and Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony. Mary Phillips last performed with the BSO on Dec. 3, 2010, performing Handel’s Messiah with conductor Edward Polochick.
Brandon Jovanovich, tenor
Winner of the 2007 Richard Tucker Award, Brandon Jovanovich is renowned for his passionate stage portrayals in French, Italian, German and Slavic operas. In the 2011-2012 season, Jovanovich appeared as Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos with Lyric Opera of Chicago, as Cavaradossi in Tosca with Oper Köln, and as the title role in Don Carlos with Houston Grand Opera. Jovanovich has performed in
standard and contemporary repertoire, including Norma (Pollione), Macbeth (Macduff), La Traviata (Alfredo), The Turn of the Screw (Peter Quint), the American premiere of Lowell Lieberman’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lord Geoffrey), the world premiere of Craig Bohmler’s The Tale of the Nutcracker, Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen (Don José) and the American premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Flight (Bill). Brandon Jovanovich makes his BSO debut with this performance.
Morris Robinson, bass
Morris Robinson is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most interesting and sought after basses performing today. A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Robinson made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in its production of Fidelio. He has since appeared there as Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte (both in the original production and in a new children’s English version); the King in Aida; and in roles in Nabucco, Tannhäuser, and the new productions of Les Troyens and Salome. His many roles include Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Ramfis in Aida, Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos, Timur in Turandot, the Bonze in Madama Butterfly, Padre Guardiano in La Forza del Destino, Ferrando in Il Trovatore and Fasolt in Das Rheingold. Morris Robinson last performed with the BSO on Nov. 17-18, 2011, performing Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bücher, with Music Director Marin Alsop.
Baltimore Choral Arts Society The Baltimore Choral Arts Society, now in its 45th season, is one of Maryland’s premier cultural institutions. For the past 15 years, WMAR Television, the ABC network affiliate in Maryland, has featured Choral Arts in an hour-long special, Christmas with
Choral Arts, which won an Emmy Award in 2006. Hall and the chorus were also featured in a PBS documentary called Jews and Christians: A Journey of Faith, broadcast nationwide, and on National Public Radio in 2001. Baltimore Choral Arts’ latest CD is Christmas at America’s First Cathedral, released on Gothic Records in September 2010. Director Tom Hall is one of the most highly regarded performers in choral music today. Appointed music director in 1982, Hall has added more than 100 new works to the Choral Arts repertoire. In addition to his position with Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Hall is active as a guest conductor in the U.S. and in Europe, including appearances with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston; the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia; the Berkshire Choral Festival; Musica Sacra in New York; and Britten Sinfonia in Canterbury, England. Hall lives in Baltimore with his wife, Linell Smith. Their daughter, Miranda Hall, is a student at Georgetown University. The Baltimore Choral Arts Society last performed with the BSO March 2 and 4, 2012, performing Einhorn’s Voices of Light with Music Director Marin Alsop.
Program Notes Te Deum
Anton Bruckner Born Sept. 4, 1824, in Ansfelden, Austria; died Oct. 11, 1896, in Vienna
Of all the great composers, Anton Bruckner was the most fervently devout. Born into a modest family of peasant applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 53
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origins in rural Upper Austria, he spent much of his student years and the first years of his career at the beautiful Baroque abbey of St. Florian, outside the provincial capital of Linz. For 10 years (1845–55), he served as St. Florian’s organist, before assuming the same position at the cathedral in Linz. St. Florian remained his spiritual home, and, today, following his instructions, his body is buried beneath its organ. Renowned far beyond St. Florian for his inspired improvisations, Bruckner became one of the greatest organists in Europe. And before he began writing his monumental symphonies—which were, in fact, great instrumental hymns to God—he was writing sacred choral music for use in the services at St. Florian and Linz Cathedral. When Bruckner moved on to Vienna, his composition of choral music largely stopped as he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the creation and revision of his final eight symphonies. Only the Te Deum , the choral-orchestral setting of Psalm 150, and some extraordinary unaccompanied motets come from the Viennese years of full artistic maturity. The Te Deum was composed between 1881 and 1884 at the same time Bruckner was also writing one of the greatest of his symphonies, the Wagnerinspired No. 7. In fact, there was crossfertilization between the two works: The great ascending theme to which Bruckner set the words “Non confundar in aeternam” in the Te Deum also plays a prominent role in No. 7’s magnificent slow movement. Dedicating the work “All for the greater glory of God,” Bruckner called the Te Deum the “pride of my life” and “my best work.” Unlike so many of his symphonies, it scored a huge popular and critical success at its premiere with two-piano accompaniments on May 2, 1885 (led by the composer) and its subsequent premiere with full orchestra on Jan. 10, 1886, both in Vienna. Having been savaged so often by the Viennese critics, Bruckner wrote joyfully to his friend, the conductor Hermann Levi: “The Te Deum was received with indescribable jubilation... the Te Deum... 54 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
Te Deum Text and Translation Te deum laudamus; te dominum confitemur. Te aeternum patrem omnis terra venerator Tibi omnes angel, tibi caeli et universae potestates. Tibi cherubim et seraphim incessabili voce proclamant: Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus dominus deus sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra maiestatis gloriae tuae. Te gloriosus apostolorum chorus. Te prophetarum laudabilis numerous. Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus. Te per orbem terrarium sancta confitetur ecclesia. Patrem immensae maiestatis: Venerandum tuum verum et unicum filium; Sanctum quoque paraclitum spiritum. Tu rex gloriae, christe. Tu patris sempiternus es filius. Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem, non horruisti Virginis uterum. Tu devicto mortis aculeo, aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum. Tu ad dexteram dei sedes, in gloria patris. Judex crederis esse venturus. Te ergo quaesumus, tuis famulis subveni quos pretioso sanguine redemisti. Aeterna fac cum sanctis tuis in gloria numerari. Salvum fac populum tuum dominae, et benedic herditati tuae. Et rege eos, et extolle illos usque in aeternum. Per singulos dies, benedicimus te. Et laudamus nomen tuum in saeculum, et in saeculum saeculi. Dignare domine die isto sine peccato nos custodire. Miserere nostril domine, miserere nostri. Fiat misericordia tua domine super nos, quemadmodum speravimus in te. In te, domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum.
dedicated to God in gratitude for having overcome so many sorrows in Vienna.” When, in 1896, the dying Bruckner knew he would be unable to complete his Symphony No. 9, he suggested the Te Deum could be used, Beethoven’s No. 9-style, as its final movement. Listening to the Music
We praise thee, o god; we acknowledge thee to be the lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the father everlasting. To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens, and all the powers therein. To thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry: Holy, holy, holy Lord God of sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. The glorious company of the apostles praises thee. The goodly fellowship of the prophets praises thee. The noble army of martyrs praises thee. The holy church throughout the world doth acknowledge thee. The father of infinite majesty; Thine honorable, true and only son; And the holy ghost, the comforter. Thou art the king of glory, o christ! Thou art the everlasting son of the father. Thou, having taken it upon thyself to deliver man, didst not disdain the virgin’s womb. Thou overcame the sting of death and hast opened to believers the kingdom of heaven. Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of the father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge. We beseech thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. Make them to be numbered with thy saints, in glory everlasting. Save thy people, o lord, and bless thine inheritance! Govern them, and lift them up forever. Day by day we thank thee. And we worship thy name ever, world without end. O Lord, deign to keep us from sin this day. Have mercy on us, o lord, have mercy on us. Let thy mercy, o lord, be upon us, for we have hoped in thee. O Lord, in thee have i trusted, let me never be confounded.
The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise, probably dating from the fourth century. Bruckner chose to set it in five sections, selecting a few phrases for expanded treatment, notably the last three lines of the hymn. In addition to the chorus and four vocal soloists, the score calls for a very large orchestra bolstered by organ. If you are
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familiar with Bruckner’s symphonies, you will recognize some of his signature techniques used here, as well: big themes stated in grand unisons, climaxes achieved in layers of building upward, then falling back to build again to greater highs. The opening section, Te Deum, sets the largest portion of the text: a great paean of praise to God. Over excitedly rushing arpeggios—a type of accompaniment Bruckner also used frequently in his symphonies—the chorus proclaims the opening words, “You, God, we praise,” in a mighty C-major unison. In gentle contrast, the soprano and tenor soloists, later joined by the alto, sing in lyrical, flowing phrases of the songs of the angels. The rushing arpeggios continue to unite most of this section’s music. Bruckner lingers on the words “aperuisti credentibus regna coelorum” (“you opened to believers the kingdom of Heaven”) with F-minor music of wonder and awe—even a touch of fear before the unknown realm. A return to the triple-forte unison theme closes the section. The next three lines, Te ergo quaesumus (“You, therefore, we pray to come to the aid of your servants”), are a personal prayer, and Bruckner here brings the music down to the level of the individual, with the tenor soloist singing a lovely arioso in F minor. The other soloists join in the cadences, and a solo violin pleads tenderly above him. The brief third section, Aeterna fac cum Sanctis tuis, returns us to a corporate statement as the chorus hurtles back with mostly unison calls that they be numbered with the saints in glory, and the orchestra adopts a new accompaniment emphasizing great descending and ascending scales, soon taken up by the chorus, as well. The opening of Salvum fac populum, tuum (“Make safe Your people”) reprises the music of Te ergo quaesumus—the tenor’s F-minor aria, the violin solo—but now with added interjections from the chorus. This sequence closes with hushed choral phrases, illuminated by lovely solos from flute and oboe. Yet another reprise follows:
the heaven-storming C-major music of the opening Te Deum, now set to new words. The final section, In te, Domini, speravi (“In You, Lord, have we hoped”), is the magnificent culmination of Bruckner’s choral masterpiece. It opens with the solo quartet, then expands to the full chorus. Throughout his life, Bruckner was a compulsive student of counterpoint, and his mastery is unfurled next in a superb fugue. But there is yet more to top this. Supported by deep, noble brass, the basses open the “Non confundar in aeternam” (“May I not be confounded for eternity”): the music that Bruckner also chose to use in his Symphony No. 7. Building in waves, he creates one of the most glorious climaxes in all choral music. Some composers setting these words, Verdi and Berlioz among them, seemed to betray their fear that their hopes would be confounded. But Bruckner, the true believer, shows he has no doubts at all, as trumpets fanfares peal forth his triumphant statement of faith. Bruckner’s Te Deum – BSO premiere Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, organ and strings. Symphony No. 9 in D minor
Ludwig van Beethoven Born Dec. 16, 1770 in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria
In the 184 years since its composition, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 has become far more than just another symphony. It is now “The Ninth”: an artistic creation, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which every age and nearly every culture finds a mirror of its identity, its struggles and its aspirations. To the European revolutionaries of 1848, it expressed their democratic aspirations to break free of entrenched autocratic regimes. And yet to the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, it became identified with Communist ideology: Beethoven’s “joy through struggle” seen as identical to Communism’s slogan “victory through struggle.” And
who can forget Leonard Bernstein’s supercharged performance of No. 9 with musicians from the former East and West Germanys at the crumbling Berlin Wall in 1989? Beethoven always believed that music had a higher purpose beyond the making of beautiful sounds, that it could express and inspire human aspirations toward a more exalted life, in closer harmony with neighbors and strangers alike, and ultimately with God. In No. 9, he drove home this message by crowning his instrumental symphony with an unprecedented choral finale: a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” in which joy is defined as a state in which “All men are made brothers.” Symphony No. 9 comes from the visionary last years of Beethoven’s life, during which he also created the Missa solemnis and his celebrated late string quartets. He had not written a symphony since No. 8 in 1812. The years that followed had been a period of emotional struggle and artistic stasis. Only when Beethoven resolved the battle for custody of his nephew, Karl, in 1820 did his creative powers flow freely again. By 1822 when he began sketching No. 9, he was described by a Viennese contemporary, Johann Sporschil, as “one of the most active men who ever lived… deepest midnight found him still working.” Since at least the early 1790s, Beethoven had loved Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” (written in 1785 as a drinking song!) and considered setting it to music. But as late as the summer of 1823, he was still considering a purely instrumental finale for No. 9. When he made the bold decision to risk a vocal movement, he edited the poem to make it express a higher joy for mankind than could be found in any tavern. Premiered at Vienna’s Kärtnertor Theater on May 7, 1824, the first performance reportedly moved its audience to tears, as well as cheers. Beethoven was on the podium, but the real conductor was Michael Umlauf; the musicians had been instructed to follow only his beat and ignore the deaf Beethoven’s. At the end of symphony, the alto soloist, Caroline Unger, had to turn Beethoven applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 55
Saturday, May 26, 2012, 8 p.m.
around to see the audience’s tumult; unable to hear them, he had remained hunched over his score. And what of the wonders of this score? Later composers wrote longer first movements, but No. 9’s opening movement, at just 15 minutes, seems the vastest of them all. From the opening trickle of notes, seemingly born from the primordial ooze, emerges the mightiest descending theme. After moods of struggle, reverie and provisional triumph, Beethoven appends a huge coda—one quarter of the movement—that even touches on a ghostly funeral march before the orchestra shouts the principal theme one last time in a powerful unison. The scherzo second movement— Beethoven’s greatest example of the fierce dance form he refashioned from the 3/4-time minuet—is built out of another descending motive, consisting of just two pitches and a dotted rhythm. From that dotted rhythm and the potential it offers to the timpani to become a major player instead of an accompanist, Beethoven creates a witty, infectious movement of relentless intensity. And if the Scherzo is the apotheosis of a rhythm, the succeeding slow movement is the apotheosis of melody. Here, Beethoven builds a double variations movement out of two melodies, one slow and noble, the other like a flowing stream: a musical representation of a heavenly utopia. The key of D major finally triumphs over D minor in the exhilarating choral finale, famed for making the cellos and basses speak like human voices as they review the events of the previous movements and then dismiss them in favor of the sublimely simple “Joy” theme. The remainder of the finale then becomes a series of extraordinary variations on this heart-stirring melody, sung by chorus, the solo quartet and orchestra. A particularly striking one comes early on: a jaunty military march featuring the tenor soloist. The other major theme of this huge finale is sung in unison by the tenors and basses at the words “Seid umschlungen, Millionen”—“Be embraced, ye millions.” It opens an extended, awe-struck episode in which the chorus hails the 56 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
Ode to Joy Text and Translation O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freudenvollere!
O friends, not these tones! Let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of joy!
Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum. Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng geteilt, Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Joy, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium, Fire-inspired we tread, Thy sanctuary. Thy power reunites All that custom has divided, All men become brothers, Under the sway of thy gentle wings.
Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen Eines Freundes Freund zu sein, Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, Mische seinen Jubel ein, Ja wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund; Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle Weinend sich aus diesem Bund.
Whoever has created An abiding friendship, Or has won a true loving wife, All who can call, at least one soul theirs Join in our song of praise; But any who cannot, must creep tearfully away from our circle.
Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brüsten der Natur. Alle Guten, Alle Bösen Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
All creatures drink of joy At nature’s breast. Just and unjust Alike taste of her gift.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben, Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod. Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, Und der Cherub steht vor Gott! Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan, Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn, Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.
She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine, a friend to the end. Even the worm can feel contentment, And the cherub stands before God! Gladly, like the heavenly bodies Which He sent on their courses, Through the splendor of firmament, Brothers, you should run your race, As a hero going to conquest.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt! Brüder, über’m Sternenzelt Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen. Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen? Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt? Such’ ihn über’m Sternenzelt! Über Sternen muss er wohnen.
You millions, I embrace you! This kiss is for all the world! Brothers, above the starry canopy There must dwell a loving Father. Do you fall in worship, you millions? World, do you know your Creator? Seek Him in the heavens! Above the stars must He dwell.
loving Father, creator of the universe, and concludes in a magnificent double fugue in combination with the “Ode to Joy” theme. At the end, Beethoven drives his voices almost beyond their capacities to express his glorious vision of a new world just beyond human reach. The BSO most recently performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 July 23 and 24, 2009, with Günther Herbig
conducting, and soprano Heidi Stober, mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, tenor Gordon Gietz, bass Stephen Powell and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012, 8 p.m.
Thursday, May 31, 2012, 8 p.m.
● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director
presents
Mozart and Beethoven Günther Herbig, conductor Jonathan Biss, piano Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Molto allegro (1756-1791) Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro assai
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 Ludwig van Beethoven Allegro con brio (1770-1827) Largo Rondo: Allegro
Jonathan Biss INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 6 in C Major, D. 589 Franz Schubert Adagio — Allegro (1797-1828)
Andante
Jonathan Biss, piano
Scherzo
Allegro moderato Presenting Sponsor: DLA Piper The concert will end at approximately 9:50 p.m. The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
biss photo by jimmy katz
Günther Herbig, conductor Günther Herbig left behind the challenging political environment of East Germany and moved to the United States in 1984, where he has
conductor of both the Dallas Symphony and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and general music director of both the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He is conductor laureate of the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan and principal guest conductor of Las Palmas in the Grand Canaries, Spain. Herbig has toured America several times with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and received high praise for the many performances they gave in New York’s Carnegie Hall. In 1990, he toured the Far East with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and in the spring of 1991, he toured Europe with them in his 37th international orchestra tour. He has also conducted most of the major European orchestras and has also toured Japan, South America, and Australia many times. He has recorded more than 100 works, some of which were with the East German orchestras with whom he was associated prior to moving to the United States. Since then he has made recordings with several of the London orchestras, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Saarbrücken RSO. Günther Herbig last performed with the BSO on Nov. 19-21, 2010, performing Ravel’s Mother Goose, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with Tianwa Yang and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.
since conducted all of the top-tier orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Chicago, Boston and San Francisco symphony orchestras. Posts Herbig has held include music director of the Detroit Symphony and the Toronto Symphony, principal guest
American pianist Jonathan Biss performs a diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven, through the Romantics to Jánaček and Schoenberg, as well as works by contemporary composers. Recent recital appearances include his debut at the Edinburgh Festival, his opening the Master Piano series at the Concertgebouw, and his much-anticipated Carnegie Hall main hall debut. Biss’ newest recording is an album of Schubert Sonatas in A Major, D. 959 and C Major, D. 840 and two short Kurtág pieces from Játékok. It was released
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Thursday, May 31, 2012, 8 p.m.
in October 2009 on the Wigmore Hall Live label. It follows four acclaimed recordings he made for EMI Classics, including an all-Schumann recital album and a recital album of Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Opp. 13, 28, 90 and 109. Biss represents the third generation in a family of professional musicians that includes his grandmother Raya Garbousova—one of the first wellknown female cellists—and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/ violinist Paul Biss. Biss began his piano studies at age 6, and studied at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Leon Fleisher. Jonathan Biss last performed with the BSO on June 27, 2003, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with Music Director Marin Alsop.
Program Notes Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Born Jan. 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria; died Dec. 5, 1791 in Vienna
During the summer of 1788, in an amazing burst of inspiration spanning just six weeks, Mozart composed his last three symphonies: No. 39 in E-flat, No. 40 in G minor, and No. 41 (“Jupiter”) in C Major. Ironically, this creative surge occurred during a low ebb in the composer’s fortunes. His popularity with the Viennese public as a pianist and a composer had waned; pupils were scarce; a major court appointment was still beyond his grasp; and he had begun to borrow large sums of money from his Masonic brother, Michael Puchberg, to support his wife and children—and a rather extravagant lifestyle. To add to Mozart’s frustrations, it seems that plans for the concerts to premiere these magnificent new works— the crown of his symphonic achievement—eventually fell through; today it is not clear when, if ever, in his lifetime the last three symphonies were performed. However, Mozart/Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon believes there 58 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
is evidence that the G minor Symphony may have been performed at concerts in April 1791, if not at an earlier date as well. Of the last three symphonies, only the G minor seems to reflect the turmoil Mozart was actually experiencing in his life as he wrote it. Its minor key—unusual for Mozart outside of his operas— harmonic daring, and pervading spirit of anger, pain and unrest set this symphony apart from its fellows. Mary Ann Feldman, former annotator for The Minnesota Orchestra, believes that in this symphony the composer was also reacting to larger cultural and political issues beyond his own personal situation. “The Symphony No. 40 was composed on the eve of the French Revolution. Another year, and the Bastille would fall. Something of the defiance and unrest of that epoch, if not Mozart’s darkest inner thoughts, resonates at least as an undercurrent of this symphony. He may have been apolitical, but he was nevertheless an artist of the times. Moreover, he had not gone untouched by the Sturm und Drang movement that pervaded German art in the late 1770s and ’80s. The descriptive label “Storm and Stress,” borrowed from a drama of that period, evokes the impassioned subjectivity and brooding atmosphere of this aesthetic, the harbinger of Romanticism.” In the opening bars of the Molto Allegro first movement, an agitated rocking figure for the violins, on the chromatic half step of E-flat to D, launches us immediately into a world of “storm and stress.” Chromaticism will be the watchword for the entire symphony, used both in melodic patterns for the various instruments and in harmonic movement. For instance, at the opening of the development section of this sonata-form movement, listen for Mozart’s sudden careening off to F-sharp minor— tonally about as far away from the home key of G minor as one can wander—followed by a passage of sinking chromatic modulations that sounds as though the whole orchestral machine were being rapidly unwound. Even the recapitulation abounds with surprises, including a
sly moment of tonal uncertainty just before the final cadence. Pathos mingles with beauty in the Andante second movement in E-flat major, also a sonata form. The graceful flourishes that conclude the principal theme at first sound charmingly ornamental, but by the time Mozart has finished working them over in the development section, they have been transformed into audible tears of pain. Lovely passages for the woodwinds also adorn this movement. The G-minor third movement is no courtly minuet; instead it is a dance of defiance. Mozart seems very much the rebellious courtier here; the violins and bassoons are determinedly out of step with the rest of the ensemble, producing some violently accented dissonances that seem to say, “If I have to play your game, I’ll play it my way.” By contrast, the gentle trio, with its exquisite woodwind writing, is the only wholly untroubled section of the entire symphony. In keeping with the spirit of the rest of the work, the Allegro assai finale is not a playful rondo, but another aggressive sonata form. The pert, upward-shooting principal theme, played softly by the violins, is immediately answered by stormy scolding from the full ensemble. The development section is introduced by a nose-thumbing gesture in the toughminded spirit of Beethoven, as the whole ensemble, in unison and octaves, marches angrily away from the key of B-flat. More astonishments follow in the contrapuntally enriched development before the recapitulation wraps up the work in a mood that is more black comedy than high spirits. The BSO most recently performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 March 29-April 1, 2007 with James Judd conducting. Instrumentation: One flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings. Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor
Ludwig van Beethoven Born Dec. 16, 1770, in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna, Austria
With his Concerto No. 3, and his only one in the minor mode, Beethoven decisively declared his independence as a
Thursday, May 31, 2012, 8 p.m.
composer. In Donald Francis Tovey’s words, “It is one of the works in which we most clearly see the style of his first period preparing to develop into that of his second”: the “heroic” period that would soon produce its namesake, the “Eroica” Symphony. Musicologists are not certain when this concerto was actually composed. The year 1800 is the date often cited, but the work was not premiered until April 1803, in a concert at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien that also included Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. So he may have spent those intervening years refining this work in the painstaking fashion characteristic of much of his composing. And the revisions must have continued right up to the premiere. After a marathon all-day rehearsal (lasting until 6 p.m.) of this ambitious program, the composer’s friend Ignaz von Seyfried remembered the concerto’s first performance as a helter-skelter affair. “He asked me to turn the pages for him; but—heaven help me!—that was easier said then done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all of the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to put it all on paper.” First Movement: The bold C-minor principal theme is stated immediately by the strings. It is a quintessential Beethoven theme: clear and simple in outline, strongly rhythmic, ideal for later development, and so instantly memorable that we will be able to follow its transformations easily as this sonata-form movement unfolds. Beethoven also isolates and uses its short-long rhythmic tail later in his development and as a binding accompaniment figure throughout this lengthy movement. In fact, the opening orchestral exposition is so long, it appears for a time that Beethoven has forgotten all about the soloist. As though he were launching the first movement
of a symphony, he modulates to Eflat major for a warm, graceful second theme in violins and flutes, and even shows signs of wanting to get down to the business of developing his material. But, suddenly, he remembers the waiting pianist and returns to C minor. After this protracted introduction, the soloist must establish himself very strongly, and this he does, with three dramatic scales followed by a heroic declamation of the principal theme in double-fisted octaves. Later, those three bold scales will also signal the beginning of the movement’s development section. In the closing coda, Beethoven breaks with Classical tradition by including the soloist in a mysterious duet with the timpanist, tapping out the short-long rhythm of the principal theme. The elegiac slow movement provides maximum contrast in both mood and tonality. Beethoven was interested in the sense of adventure and tension created by juxtaposing very distant keys, both within and between movements. Here the slow movement is in E major, a key far from the opening C minor. And the tempo is slow indeed for Beethoven: a true Largo. On this languid pulse, the soloist spins a long, gracefully embellished melody that is rhapsodic in character and presages the Romantic language of composers far in the future: Schumann and even Chopin. A middle section features a hushed, melancholy dialogue between solo flute and bassoon. The rondo finale returns to C minor, but there is no minor-mode pathos in this playful, witty movement. The pianist launches the puckish rondo theme, which on a later return will be given a brief, energetic fugal treatment by the strings. The central episode interjects a little tenderness with a charming theme for clarinet, partnered by bassoon. In the Presto coda, now in brightest C major, all of the heroism of the first movement and the reflective melancholy of the second are swept away in a comic-opera finish.
The BSO most recently performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 Jan. 22-24, 2010 with Günther Herbig conducting. Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. Symphony No. 6 in C Major
Franz Schubert Born, Jan. 31, 1797, in Vienna, Austria; died Nov. 19, 1828, in Vienna, Austria
Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 is often referred to now as the “Little C Major” to distinguish it from his imposing last symphony, No. 9, the “Great C Major.” But certainly the composer didn’t think of it as “little” in any way when he completed it in February 1818. In fact, he wrote “Grand Symphony” at the top of the score and intended it to be a symphony on a more ambitious and expansive scale than his first five. But this charming, witty work has unfortunately remained a stepchild, one of the most seldom played of his eight symphonies. Then 21, Schubert was in an awkward transitional stage between adolescence and adulthood. After several months living at the home of his wellto-do friend Franz von Schober and tasting the heady freedom of being a fulltime composer, he was now back in his father’s house, teaching the 3 Rs to the young children enrolled in the Schubert family grammar school. His composing had to be confined to after-school hours on evenings and Sundays. Yet despite these pressures, he aspired to move beyond the classically oriented first five symphonies written in his teens. No. 6 would not entirely fulfill these ambitions; he would have to mature still more before creating his symphonic masterpieces: the “Unfinished” of 1822 and the “Great C Major” of 1825–28. Both Beethoven and Rossini are godfathers to No. 6—a very strange pairing because Beethoven detested Rossini’s wildly popular operas as falling below the high moral purpose he believed music should serve. applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 59
Thursday, May 31, 2012, 8 p.m.
Schubert, however, adored Rossini, who at this time was the darling of Vienna, his operas dominating Viennese theater stages. Simultaneously with No. 6, he paid homage to the Italian with two brilliant overtures “In the Italian Style,” D. 590 and D. 591. In this symphony, Rossini can be heard in the lighthearted comic-opera themes, especially in the second and fourth movements, while Beethoven’s bold spirit inspired the third-movement scherzo. The first movement seems like a musical battle between Rossini’s lightfingered insouciance and Beethoven’s magisterial thunder. This duel begins immediately in the slow introduction in which the full orchestra’s majestic opening measures are answered by languishing, soft woodwinds. Throughout this work, Schubert sharply delineates his woodwind band of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons from the rest of the orchestra and honors them with much important
thematic material, including both the first movement’s principal themes. The Allegro section’s winsome toysoldier first theme for flutes and oboes is a kissing cousin to the opening theme of Haydn’s famous “Military” Symphony and quickly dispels any notion suggested by the introduction that this is to be a solemn symphony. In the exciting, sped-up closing coda, Schubert charmingly brings it back in a mocking dialogue with the violins. The second movement, in a not very slow Andante tempo, alternates a little violin aria fit for a Rossinian heroine with mock-martial music driven by constant triplet rhythms. When the aria returns, it has acquired those triplets as well. This is a marvelously orchestrated atmosphere piece, rather than a moment to shed tears. Beethoven nudges Rossini off the stage for the rhythmically aggressive third movement, Schubert’s first foray into the scherzo model created by the Bonn master.
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The alternation between soft and loud dynamics, staccato (clipped) and smooth phrasing, as well as the stabbing loud accents (sometimes stressing the weak third beat against the strong first) are all Beethoven hallmarks. More Schubertian is the rustic, slowertempo trio section with its heavy drone accompaniment, accented every other measure. The last movement is the lightest of all: a series of sprightly themes strung loosely together in the style of a comicopera finale. Commentators have criticized its rambling length, but better to simply enjoy Schubert’s ability to create one blithe tune after another. The BSO most recently performed Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 Jan. 17-19, 2003 with Günther Herbig conducting. Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012
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®
Saturday, June 2, 2012, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2012, 2 P.M. AND 8 P.M.
● Strathmore Presents
Tommy Tune: Steps in Time, A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance featuring the Manhattan Rhythm Kings Brian Nalepka Hal Shane Soctt Leiendecker Michael Biagi, musical director, piano Robert Hirshhorn, keyboards John Meyers, drums Patrick Rinn, production design and lighting design Natasha Katz, lighting consultant Gary Stocker, sound design
The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
harmony singing, virtuosic instrumental work and spectacular tap dancing. The Rhythm Kings started performing together on the sidewalks of New York. From there, these song-and-dance men graduated to playing some of the Big Apple’s top nightspots before going on to headline in concert halls in all 50 states. The Manhattan Rhythm Kings have also become symphony pops favorites, performing with over 100 orchestras, including the New York Pops, the National Symphony and the orchestras of Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Seattle, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, among others. In 1992 the Manhattan Rhythm Kings originated the roles Moose, Sam and Mingo, a trio of crooning bumpkins in the new Gershwin musical Crazy for You, winner of three Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Choreography. Steps in Time marks the groups 27th year of working with their friend and mentor, Tommy Tune.
Michael Biagi, musical director and piano
Tommy Tune
Known as one of the most prolific director/choreographers of the 20th century, Tommy Tune has enchanted audiences over the past 50 years with his charisma, vision and innovation. Tune has been honored with nine Tony Awards celebrating him as a performer, choreographer and director. In addition, Tune has been awarded eight Drama Desk Awards, three Astaire Awards and the Society of Directors and Choreographers’ George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement. Film credits include Hello Dolly!, The Boy Friend and Mimi Bluette… fiore del mio giardino. In 2009, Tune was designated as a Living Landmark by the
New York Landmarks Conservancy, and this year Tune marks his 50th year in show business with his latest work, Steps In Time, A Broadway Biography in Song and Dance. Tune is the recipient of the National Medal Of Arts, the highest honor for artistic achievement given by the president of the United States, and he has been honored with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In his spare time, Tune enjoys painting in his Manhattan Tower studio.
The Manhattan Rhythm Kings
Known for their polished performances of American popular music from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, the Manhattan Rhythm Kings have gained a large and enthusiastic following across the country. While frequently compared with such musical greats as the Mills Brothers and Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys, the trio has established a unique character of its own with a combination of close
Michael Biagi is thrilled to be united once again with longtime collaborator Tommy Tune. Steps In Time marks the latest project in their 33-year collaboration. Biagi was music director for the world premiere of Turn Of The Century, starring Jeff Daniels and Rachel York at Chicago’s Goodman Theater. In the past three decades, Biagi has served as music director for many of Tune’s projects, including Dr. Dolittle, White Tie and Tails, Tommy Tune Tonight! and numerous concerts with Tune and the Manhattan Rhythm Kings. Biagi provided music direction for the U.S. premiere of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? at Houston’s Theater Under The Stars. Other national/international credits includeThe Will Rogers Follies, Damn Yankees, Grease!, Grand Hotel, The King and I, West Side Story, South Pacific and Fiddler on the Roof. Biagi has been privileged to “keep time” for such luminaries as George Burns, Carol Channing, Rudolf Nureyev and Charles Pierce. applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012 61
Saturday, June 2, 2012, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Robert Hirschhorn, keyboards
Robert Hirschhorn has recently returned from two years on the road as assistant conductor and keyboard player for the national touring company of The Lion King. Other credits include conducting or playing keyboards on Broadway for La Cage Aux Folles, Tommy Tune Tonite!, Cats, Mamma Mia, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cabaret, Saturday Night Fever, James Joyce’s The Dead and Damn Yankees. He’s toured with Fiddler on the Roof, South Pacific, Big River, The Sound of Music, Me and My Girl, Cats, Bye Bye Birdie, The Full Monty, Saturday Night Fever, Cabaret and Damn Yankees with Jerry Lewis. He is thrilled to be a part of Steps In Time.
John Meyers, drums
John Meyers has worked as a freelance drummer/percussionist in the New York City area for 25 years. He has played in the orchestras for more than 20 Broadway shows and has also performed with
a wide variety of groups ranging from New Jersey Symphony Orchestra to Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks.
Patrick Rinn, production design and lighting design
Patrick Rinn celebrates his 20th year working with Tommy Tune in some capacity or another. Productions include Steps In Time, Doctor Dolittle, White Tie & Tails, Tommy Tune Tonite!, The Will Rogers Follies, Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, Bye Bye Birdie and Grand Hotel. In addition to his work with Tune, he has worked as a production supervisor for concerts by Prince, Diana Ross, Dave Mathews, Patti LaBelle, Dionne Warwick, Chic, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, the B-52’s and Angelique Kidjo. He has also worked as lighting designer for Steps In Time, Night of 1000 Gowns, Big Apple Round-Up and several Off-Broadway productions
Natasha Katz, lighting consultant Natasha Katz designs extensively for
DC’s Only Independent Nonprofit Film Center Visit us at
www.TheAvalon.org 5612 Connecticut Avenue Northwest Washington
theater, opera and dance. Her Broadway credits include The Addams Family, Collected Stories, The Coast of Utopia/Salvage (Tony Award), The Little Mermaid, A Chorus Line revival, Spelling Bee, Tarzan, Aida (Tony Award), Sweet Smell of Success, Twelfth Night, Beauty and the Beast, The Capeman and Gypsy. Other designs include Sister Act (London), Buried Child (National Theatre, London), Cyrano (Metropolitan Opera), ballets for The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and The Edinburgh Festival; and concert acts for Tommy Tune, Shirley MacLaine and Ann-Margret. Katz has designed extensively OffBroadway and for American regional theaters. Permanent installations include the lighting for the audio-visual shows at Niketown London and Niketown New York, The Masquerade Village at the Rio Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and the Big Bang in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.
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62 applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012, 8 p.m.
SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 2012, 8 P.M.
● Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop, Music Director
presents
Salerno-Sonnenberg Plays Tchaikovsky Marin Alsop, conductor Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin Symphony No. 4, “From Mission Kevin Puts San Juan Bautista” (1972-) Prelude: Mission San Juan Bautista, ca.1800
Arriquetpon (the diary of Francisco Arroyo de la Cuesta, 1818)
Interlude
Healing Song Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Allegro moderato (1840-1893)
Canzonetta: Andante
Finale: Allegro vivacissimo
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
Program Notes
INTERMISSION The Rite of Spring Igor Stravinsky Part I: The Adoration of the Earth (1882-1971) Part II: The Great Sacrifice The concert will end at approximately 10:05 P.M. The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
Marin Alsop, conductor For Marin Alsop’s biography see page 26.
CHRISTIAN STEINER
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin
Internationally acclaimed soloist and chamber musician Nadja SalernoSonnenberg is best known for her exciting performances, passionate
This season, Salerno-Sonnenberg’s orchestral appearances include the Minnesota, Philadelphia, National, Seattle, Vancouver, Oregon and Baltimore symphony orchestras in North America, and NHK Symphony Orchestra in Japan. She gives the world premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s violin concerto this spring with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, written specifically with her distinctive artistry in mind. A powerful and creative presence on the recording scene, Salerno-Sonnenberg has several acclaimed CDs on NSS MUSIC, the record label she started in 2005, as well as more than 20 releases on the EMI and Nonesuch labels. Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg last performed with the BSO on Sept. 11, 2010, performing Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, with Music Director Marin Alsop.
interpretations and charismatic personality. Her fearlessness, dedication and enthusiasm have resulted in her becoming one of today’s leading violinists, renowned for her work on the concert stage, in the recording studio and for her role as music director of the San Francisco-based New Century Chamber Orchestra.
Symphony No. 4, “From Mission San Juan Bautista”
Kevin Puts Born Jan. 3, 1972 in St. Louis, Mo.
Not just Marin Alsop, but the BSO’s two previous music directors, Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman, have also embraced Kevin Puts’ vibrant, enormously appealing music. Maestro Temirkanov chose Puts’ Network for performances here in 2002, followed with River’s Rush in 2006. One of the composer’s most important pieces, Vision, for cellist Yo-Yo Ma and orchestra was commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival in honor of Maestro Zinman’s 70th birthday. It’s hardly surprising that three such different musicians would share an appreciation of Kevin Puts—who, since 2006, has been a member of the applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 63
Saturday, June 9, 2012, 8 p.m.
composition faculty at the Peabody Institute—for Puts is unafraid of such traditional virtues as compelling melodies, clear tonally based harmonies and unfettered emotional expression. All these elements are proudly on display in his beautiful Symphony No. 4, “From Mission San Juan,” which received its world premiere under Maestra Alsop’s baton at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in August 2007. It was inspired by one of California’s oldest surviving mission churches, San Juan Batista, which played an unforgettable role in Alfred Hitchcock’s film masterpiece Vertigo. The composer has provided the following note detailing the Native American musical influences that animate this work: “Every year in August, an entire orchestra of dedicated musicians gathers in Santa Cruz, Calif., to play nothing but contemporary orchestral music for two weeks. On the last day of this period, they travel south about 30 miles to the town of San Juan Bautista to play their final concerts at the old Spanish mission there. “For more than 25 years, Howard Hansen has not only avidly attended the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, he has been one of its most generous patrons. For Hansen, the high point each year is the concert at San Juan Bautista, and he decided to commission a work as a gift to his wife, Carrie. He sent me some histories of the Mission and its town and asked me to write something inspired by this place [that] had become so special to him over the years. “That San Juan Bautista has been called ‘the Mission of Music’ owes itself to the musical predispositions of some its founding friars who baptized thousands of Mutsun Indians and took it upon themselves to teach them to sing church music. They were disturbed by the Mutsuns failure to abandon their own music in favor of that which the friars presumably considered to be more civilized. Once I read this, I became immediately interested in tracking down any remnants of this Mutsun musical 64 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
ancestry. Victoria Levine, a specialist in Native American music who teaches at the University of Colorado Fort Collins, pointed me toward the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley, where a manuscript of Francisco Arroyo de la Cuesta, which she believed contained transcriptions of around 200 Mutsun songs, had been held since it had been sent there by the Smithsonian Institute several years ago. This manuscript, dating from around 1818, is falling apart, so I had it sent to me on microfilm, only to discover to my disappointment many pages of Spanish and Latin text and only a few songs at the very end of the manuscript. “Quirina Luna Costillas is one of the few surviving descendants of the Mutsuns and a highly regarded leader among this small community. She told me that I had found Francisco Arroyo’s arriquetpon, a dictionary he made himself [that] contains several hundred Mutsun words and a few song transcriptions as well. She also told me that the songs of her people should not be misused—healing songs are for healing, wedding songs are for weddings, etc.—and that if the few songs I had found in Arroyo’s journal were to find their way into my piece, it could cause a sickness for her people. With this in mind, I would try to imitate the flavor and nuance of it, but avoid direct quotation. “Symphony No. 4 begins with music designed for performance within the reverberant walls of Mission San Juan Bautista, in other words, music inspired by an acoustic environment with which I became acquainted when Marin Alsop performed my Symphony No. 2 with the Festival Orchestra at the Mission in 2003. [In movement one] rather “archaic”-sounding melodic lines recall the simplicity of early chant and feature an echo effect that is written into the orchestration. The second movement (arriquetpon) is an imaginary compendium of Mutsun tunes loosely based on the shapes and motives I found in Arroyo’s diary. From this festive and varied river of melodies, a prosaic, unchanging hymn tune repeatedly emerges and recedes. A return to the opening music follows this movement in the form of an
interlude and reaches a climactic upheaval of some magnitude. It leads to a ‘healing song,’ which—in the midst of the current world climate— seems to me as appropriate as ever.” Puts’ Symphony No. 4 – BSO Premiere Instrumentation: Three flutes, two piccolos, two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia; died Nov. 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto belongs to that illustrious group of masterpieces that were savaged by uncomprehending critics at their premieres. Nearly all the critics at its first performance—in Vienna on Dec. 4, 1881, with Russian violinist Adolf Brodsky as soloist, backed by the Vienna Philharmonic—gave the work negative reviews, but the one penned by the notoriously conservative Eduard Hanslick was so vicious it stung Tchaikovsky for years after. “Tchaikovsky is surely no ordinary talent, but, rather, an inflated one… lacking discrimination and taste. … The same can be said for his new, long and ambitious Violin Concerto. … The violin is no longer played; it is tugged about, torn, beaten black and blue.” Because of its flamboyant language and mind-boggling wrong-headedness, this is the review that has come down to us from a city that was generally unsympathetic to Tchaikovsky’s Russian intensity. A much fairer judgment of the concerto’s worth came from an anonymous critic for the “Wiener Abendpost”: “The first movement with its splendid, healthy themes, the mysterious, quiet middle movement (who could fail to be reminded by this of Turgenev’s female characters!) and the wild peasant dance make up a whole for which we would claim an outstanding place among contemporary compositions.” Today, this work holds an outstanding place among all violin concertos.
Saturday, June 9, 2012, 8 p.m.
One of the more demanding works for the violin virtuoso, it is more remarkable still for its unwavering melodic inspiration and passionate expression of human feeling. The concerto came in the aftermath of the composer’s ill-conceived marriage to Antonina Milyukova in 1877. Eight months later in March 1878, his wanderings to escape his wife brought him to Clarens, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva. Here, he and his brother, Modest, were visited by the gifted 22-year-old violinist Yosif Kotek, a composition pupil of Tchaikovsky’s in Moscow. Kotek provided both artistic inspiration and practical technical advice for Tchaikovsky’s recently begun Violin Concerto. In less than a month, the work was nearly finished, and, on April 3, Kotek and Tchaikovsky gave it a full reading at the piano. After the run-through, both agreed the slow movement was too slight for such a large work, and in one day flat, the composer replaced it with the tenderly melancholic Andante second movement it bears today. So prodigal is Tchaikovsky’s melodic inspiration that he can afford to begin the sonata-form opening movement with a lovely little theme for orchestral violins and, then—just as he did at the beginning of his Piano Concerto No. 1—never play it again. The orchestra next hints at the big theme to come and provides anticipatory excitement for the soloist. After a brief warm-up stretch, she launches one of Tchaikovsky’s most inspired themes, and one with multiple personalities. At first, it is gentle, even wistful, but when the orchestra takes it up a few minutes later, it becomes very grand: music for an Imperial Russian ball. Later, still, in the development section, the soloist transforms it again with an intricately ornamented, doublestopped variation. The violin’s second theme, begun in its warm lower register, retains its wistful nature. Much later in the poignant recapitulation section, the principal theme is beautifully adopted by the solo flute. The exquisite second-movement Canzonetta (meaning little song) in G
minor—Tchaikovsky’s one-day miracle—blends the melancholy colors of woodwinds with the violin. Tchaikovsky scholar David Brown suggests that it reflects the composer’s homesickness during his self-imposed exile from Russia. Rather than ending, it rises on a twonote sighing motive and then explodes into the Allegro vivacissimo finale. In this hearty rondo inspired by Russian folk dance, Tchaikovsky finally lets the soloist fly. He alternates two contrasting themes: the first, a high-spirited scamper; the second, a slower, downward-drooping melody that shows off the violin’s earthy low register and also features a nostalgic dialogue with woodwind solos. At the close, the dance keeps accelerating to a breathless finish. The BSO most recently performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major July 10, 2011 with Christian Colberg conducting and violinist Sirena Huang. Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. The Rite of Spring
Igor Stravinsky Born June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, Russia; died April 6, 1971 in New York City
The premiere of The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913 has come down to us as perhaps the wildest evening in the history of classical music. This was the third of the spectacular Russian ballet scores Stravinsky had created for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes ensemble, which had become the sensation of pre-World War I Paris. The two previous ballets, The Firebird and Petrouchka, had been rapturously received. But the music for The Rite of Spring was much more advanced: a revolutionary statement that the 19th century was gone for good. In its savage rhythms, harmonic dissonances and orchestral effects, it brutally embodied the “fleeting vision” of pagan Russia that Stravinsky said had inspired him. “I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her
to propitiate the god of spring.” Stravinsky remembered that infamous performance on May 29, 1913, at the Théâtre Champs-Elysées, conducted by Pierre Monteux and with choreography by the notorious Russian dancer Nijinsky. Audience disturbances began shortly into the introduction, and when with the fierce chugging of strings the curtain rose on a group of “knockkneed, long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down,” the catcalls escalated to pandemonium. Furious, Stravinsky rushed backstage where Nijinsky was standing on a chair shouting out the beats to the dancers and Diaghilev alternately turning the house lights on and off in a vain attempt to calm the fracas. The story of this catastrophe is well known. But it had an important, lesstold sequel that turned the fortunes of The Rite of Spring completely around. On April 5, 1914, again in Paris, Monteux led its concert premiere—without any dancers and controversial choreography—and this time the performance was an overwhelming success. The audience erupted in a cheering ovation, and enthusiastic fans bore Stravinsky out of the hall on their shoulders. But The Rite of Spring was, and even remains today, a shocking work: one fit to provoke a riot. Stravinsky had a very different image of the coming of spring than we do in America. In Russia when winter’s legacy of snow and ice begins to melt and swell the streams, the effect is much more extreme than our soft breezes and flowering fruit trees. To express this raw elemental force and the passionate response it must have evoked in pagan Russia, he created music of unprecedented violence. In his score Stravinsky wrote: “Music exists if there is rhythm, as life exists if there is a pulse.” And it is indeed rhythm—in powerful repetitive ostinatos, constantly changing meters and brutal pileups—that dominates this score and reaches a climax of violent energy in Part II’s “Glorification of the Chosen One” and the final “Sacrificial Dance.” Europeans essentially looked down on intricate rhythm as belonging to more “primitive” musical cultures, applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012 65
Saturday, June 9, 2012, 8 p.m.
STRATHMORE education STRATHMORE FINE ART CAMPS Strathmore’s Camps blend child-centered fun with expert instruction from professional artists in the beautiful setting of Strathmore.
Plein Air Camp Jim Saah
THURSDAY–SATURDAY, JULY 12–14 9:30AM–12:30PM AGES 11–14
From the delights of the sculpture garden to the unique architectural detail of its buildings, the Strathmore campus offers much to inspire young painters. Instructor Lee Boynton is a master of Impressionism in both oil and watercolor and is known for his techniques in reproducing the natural spectrum of light. Tuition $135 (Stars Price $121.50)
Art Camp 2012 SESSION I: JULY 30–AUGUST 3 9:30AM–12:30PM (HALF DAY) SESSION II: AUGUST 6–AUGUST 10 9:00AM–3:00PM (FULL DAY)
Margot I. Schulman
SESSION III: AUGUST 13–AUGUST 17 9:30AM–12:30PM (HALF DAY) AGES 5–11
QUESTIONS ABOUT CAMP? Please contact Holly Haliniewski at (301) 581-5125 or exhibits@strathmore.org for further information.
Children engage in a variety of hands-on art activities, learning technique, expanding their artistic vocabulary, and developing their creative process. Leading the camps is painter and collage artist Rosanna Azar and her team of professional arts educators. This year the camps go green! Projects will include earthfriendly, sustainable art, often made from recycled materials. Students will learn about green architectural design and building materials in “The Crib at Strathmore.” Tuition $225 (Stars Price $202.50) Half Day $375 (Stars Price $337.50) Full Day
REGISTER!
ONLINE www.strathmore.org • Look Under “Education” PHONE (301) 581-5100
66 applause at Strathmore • may/June 2012
such as Africa and Asia. Stravinsky showed them what they were missing. Along with pounding percussion—and in this score even the string instruments join the percussion section—Stravinsky created his pagan world through strikingly original writing for the wind instruments: whether the primeval sound of a high bassoon opening the work, the cool high woodwinds setting an ominously eerie nocturnal atmosphere at the beginning of Part II, the “elderly” sounding English horn leading the penultimate “Ritual of the Old Men” or the savagely snarling brass throughout. Stravinsky provided his own terse scenario for The Rite of Spring: “First Part: ‘The Adoration of the Earth.’ [Daytime] The spring celebration… the pipers pipe and the young men tell fortunes. … Young girls with painted faces come in from the river in single file. They dance the spring dance. Games start. The Spring Khorovod [round dances]. The people divide into two groups opposing each other. The holy procession of wise old men… interrupts the spring games. … The people pause trembling. … The old man blesses the earth. … The people dance passionately on the earth, sanctifying it and becoming one with it. “Second Part: ‘The Great Sacrifice.’ At night, the virgins hold mysterious games walking in circles. One of the virgins is consecrated and is twice pointed to by fate, being caught twice in the perpetual circle. The virgins honor her, the chosen one, with a marital dance. … They invoke the ancestors and entrust the chosen one to the old wise men. She sacrifices herself in the presence of the old men in the great holy dance.” The BSO most recently performed Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) on Jan. 11-14, 2007 with Marin Alsop conducting. Instrumentation: Three flutes, alto flute, two piccolos, four oboes, two English horns, three clarinets, two bass clarinets, piccolo clarinet, four bassoons, two contrabassoons, eight horns, two Wagner tuben, four trumpets, piccolo trumpet, bass trumpet, three trombones, two tubas, two timpanists, percussion and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012, 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2012, 8 P.M.
● Strathmore and Blues Alley present
Ahmad Jamal The Blue Moon Tour Herlin Riley, drums Manolo Badrena, percussions James Cammack, bass The Music Center at Strathmore Marriott Concert Stage
Frank Capri
Ahmad Jamal
Celebrated pianist-composer Ahmad Jamal continues his performance schedule around the world, as he has for well over the past four decades. Jamal is noted for his outstanding technical command and identifiable sound as a piano stylist. Considering his ensemble “an orchestra,” Jamal not only achieves a unified sound, but subtly inserts independent roles for the bass and drums. Jamal also incorporates a unique sense of space in
his music, expressing musical concepts that are exciting without being loud in volume. Augmented by a selection of unusual standards and his own compositions, Jamal would notably impress and influence, among others, trumpeter Miles Davis. In 1994, Jamal received the American Jazz Masters fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts. That same year, he was named a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, where he performed commissioned works with the Assai String Quartet. In 2007 the French government inducted Jamal into the prestigious Order of the Arts and Letters. Jamal’s A Quiet Time (Dreyfus Records), released in January 2010, was the No. 1 CD on jazz radio for that year. Also, the French Jazz Academy has voted The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-1962, released by Mosaïc, as Best Reissue of the Year with Outstanding Research Work. His music remains youthful, fresh, imaginative and always influential. In December 2011 Jamal was inducted into DownBeat’s Reader’s Poll Hall of Fame. Jamal’s latest album, Blue Moon, debuted in February to a sold-out performance at Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris. Jamal is an exclusive Steinway artist.
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Come discover the first Konplott store in the USA.
KONPLOTT
Westfield/Montgomery Mall Upper Level 7101 Democracy Boulevard Bethesda, MD 20817 240-888-7478 www.konplott.com
applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012 67
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Cheryl Callahan, DDS & Joyce Thomas, DMD Question: What's the difference between over-the-counter whitening products vs. what a dentist offers?
L-R: Dr. Thomas and Dr. Callahan
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applause at Strathmore • MAY/June 2012 69
Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc. Board of Directors EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Nancy E. Hardwick Chair William G. “Bill” Robertson * Vice Chair Jerome W. Breslow, Esq. Secretary and Parliamentarian Dale S. Rosenthal * Treasurer Solomon Graham At-Large Dickie S. Carter At-Large
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Joseph F. Beach, ex officio Robert G. Brewer, Jr., Esq. Hope B. Eastman, Esq. Starr G. Ezra Hon. Nancy Floreen, ex officio
Thomas H. Graham Paul L. Hatchett Dianne Kay Delia K. “Dede” Lang Carolyn P. Leonard Hon. Laurence Levitan James F. Mannarino J. Alberto Martinez, MD Caroline Huang McLaughlin Thomas A. Natelli Kenneth O’Brien DeRionne P. Pollard Donna Rattley Washington Gabriel Romero, AIA Wendy J. Susswein, ex officio Carol A. Trawick Regina Brady “Ginny” Vasan James S. Whang *Committee Chairs
Donors Strathmore thanks the individuals and organizations who have made contributions between January 1 and December 31, 2011. Their support of at least $500 enables us to continue to offer the affordable, accessible, quality programming that has become our hallmark.
$250,000+ Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County Maryland State Arts Council Post-Newsweek Media, Inc. (includes in-kind) Carol Trawick $100,000+ Carolyn and Jeffrey Leonard $50,000+ Booz Allen Hamilton Elizabeth Culp Delia and Marvin Lang The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation $25,000+ Alban Inspections, Inc. Asbury Methodist Village Jordan Kitt’s Music Delia and Marvin Lang National Endowment for the Arts Symphony Park LLC $15,000+ Jonita and Richard S. Carter Giant Food Yanqiu He and Ken O’Brien Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation Kiplinger Foundation MARPAT Foundation Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation
$10,000+ Adventist Health Care Bank of America Capital One Clark Construction Group, LLC Clark-Winchcole Foundation Comcast EagleBank Elizabeth and Peter Forster Glenstone Foundation Dorothy and Sol Graham Nancy and Raymond Hardwick The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. Montgomery County Department of Economic Development Janine and Phillip O’Brien Paul M. Angell Family Foundation PEPCO S & R Technology Holdings LLC Deborah and Leon Snead Annie and Sami Totah Meredith Weiser and Michael Rosenbaum Hailin and James Whang Paul and Peggy Young, NOVA Research Company $5,000+ Mary and Greg Bruch Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts Debbie Driesman and Frank Islam
70 Applause at Strathmore • MAy/June 2012
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and his wife, author Janet Langhart, met Brian Stokes Mitchell after the concert Brian Stokes Mitchell Sings Ellington American Songbook. The performance was part of Strathmore’s Discover Ellington festival.
Starr and Fred Ezra Julie and John Hamre Liz and Joel Helke Bridget and Joseph Judge Dianne Kay Lerch, Early & Brewer, Chartered Sharon and David Lockwood Constance Lohse and Robert Brewer Caroline and John Patrick McLaughlin Della and William Robertson Lorraine and Barry Rogstad Carol Salzman and Michael Mann George Schu John Sherman, in memory of Deane Sherman Ann and Jim Simpson Jane and Richard Stoker UBS Financial Services, Inc. Ronald West Ellen and Bernard Young $2,500+ Anonymous Louise Appell Susan and Bryan Bayly Barbara Benson Vicki Britt and Robert Selzer Frances and Leonard Burka Alison Cole and Jan Peterson Carin and Bruce Cooper Margaret and James Conley Carolyn Degroot Hope Eastman Michelle Feagin Ellen and Michael Gold Carolyn Goldman and Sydney Polakoff Lana Halpern Monica Jeffries Hazangeles and John Hazangeles Laura Henderson Cheryl and Richard Hoffman Eileen Horan Carlos Horcasitas Igersheim Family Foundation Alexine and Aaron Jackson Johnson’s Landscaping Service, Inc. (in-kind) Peter S. Kimmel, in memory of Martin S. Kimmel Teri Hanna Knowles and John M. Knowles Grace and David Lee Judie and Harry Linowes Jill and Jim Lipton Janet L. Mahaney Delores Maloney Marsh USA Inc. J. Alberto Martinez Patricia and Roscoe Moore Jim Moss
Susan Nordeen Katherine and William Parsons Susan and Brian Penfield Charlotte and Charles Perret Mindy and Charles Postal Restaurant Associates at Strathmore Tasneem Robin-Bhatti Elaine and Stuart Rothenberg Janet and Michael Rowan Phyllis and Ken Schwartz Tanya and Stephen Spano Wendy and Don Susswein Peter Vance Treibley Susan Wellman Anne Witkowsky and John Barker $1,000+ Anonymous Swati Agrawal Carole Berk Sheila and Kenneth Berman Julia and Stuart Bloch Harriet and Jerome Breslow Carol and Scott Brewer Beverly Burke Halinah Rizzo-Busack and James Busack Eileen Cahill Eleanor and Oscar Caroglanian Allen Clark Elana and David Cohen Nancy Davies Federal Realty Investment Trust Fidelity Investments Senator Jennie Forehand and William E. Forehand, Jr. Noreen and Michael Friedman Suzanne and Mark Friis Nancy Frohman and James LaTorre Pamela Gates and Robert Schultz Loreen and Thomas Gehl Greene-Milstein Family Foundation Judy and Sheldon Grosberg Marla Grossman and Eric Steinmiller Linda and John Hanson Sara and James Harris, Jr. Wilma and Arthur Holmes, Jr. Linda and I. Robert Horowitz Linda and Van Hubbard Vicki Hawkins-Jones and Michael Jones Renee Korda and Mark Olson Ineke and Peter Kreeger Carole and Robert Kurman Susan and Gary Labovich Marvin Lawrence Leadership Montgomery Lerner Enterprises Lucie Ling Campbell and Guy Campbell Nancy and Dan Longo
Left: Strathmore Circles Members Dr. Michael and Ellen Gold and Bruce and Carin Cooper at Strathmore’s Annual Season Preview Event Center: Strathmore Board of Directors Chair Nancy E. Hardwick with President Monica Jeffries Hazangeles at the Annual Season Preview Event. Right: Strathmore Board of Directors Chair Nancy E. Hardwick with President Monica Jeffries Hazangeles at the Annual Season Preview Event
Susan and Eric Luse M&T Bank Effie and John Macklin Jacqueline and J. Thomas Manger Janice McCall Virginia and Robert McCloskey Ann G. Miller (in memory of Jesse I. Miller) Lissa Muscatine and Bradley Graham New England Foundation for the Arts Karen O’Connell and Tim Martins Gloria Paul and Robert Atlas Cynthia and Eliot Pfanstiehl Randy Hostetler Living Room Fund Reznick Group Jane and Paul Rice Rodgers Consulting Dale Rosenthal Karen Rosenthal and M. Alexander Stiffman Estelle Schwalb Mary Kay Shartle-Galotto and Jack Galotto Roberta and Lawrence Shulman Ann and Sanford Stass Merle and Steven Steiner Mary Talarico and Michael Sundermeyer Myra Turoff and Kenneth Weiner Rebecca Underhill Heather VanKeuren Judith Welch Judy Whalley and Henry Otto Karen and Roger Winston Jean and Ken Wirsching $500+ Anonymous Mary Kay and Dave Almy Judy and Joseph Antonucci Jeff Aslen Eric Bailey Laura Baptiste and Brian Kildee Kathryn Barclay (deceased) Ben & Jerry’s Katherine Bent Bethesda Travel Center Michelle and Lester Borodinsky Bill Bronrott Trish and Timothy Carrico Kathy and C. Bennett Chamberlin Irene Cooperman Karen and William Dahut Donald Dakin David Dise Embassy of Austria Susan and Howard Feibus Winifred and Anthony Fitzpatrick Dorothy Fitzgerald Gail Fleder
Marlies and Karl Flicker John Fluke Joanne Fort Michael Frankhuizen Victor Frattali Juan Gaddis Nancy and Peter Gallo Joshua Grove Joan and Norman Gurevich Gerri Hall and David Nickels Hilary and Robert Hoopes Carol and Larry Horn Barbara and David Humpton Beth Jessup Cheryl Jukes Zorina and John Keiser Henrietta and Christopher Keller Deloise and Lewis Kellert David Kessler Marisabel Kubiak Catherine and Isiah Leggett Barbara and Laurence Levitan Phyllis and Ira Lieberman Ada Linowes Dorothy Linowes Susan and Eric Luse Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras Lynne Mayo Nancy McGinness and Thomas Tarabrella Lisa McKillop John and James Meiburger Steven Meyer Manny Miller Denise and Tom Murphy Victoria and Roy Muth Margie Pearson and Richard Lampl Paley, Rothman, Goldstein, Rosenberg, Eig & Cooper Chtd Rose Porras Marylouise and Harold Roach Christine Schreve and Thomas Bowersox Alison Serino and Brian Baczkowski Diane and Jay Silhanek Donald Simonds Cora and Murray Simpson Tina Small Harry Storm Valerye and Adam Strochak Reginald Taylor Marilyn and Mark Tenenbaum Marion and Dennis Torchia Anne and James Tyson Kevin Vigilante Linda and Irving Weinberg J. Lynn Westergaard Irene and Steven White Irene and Alan Wurtzel Susan and Jack Yanovski
Con Brio Society Securing the future of Strathmore through a planned gift. Louise Appell John Cahill Jonita and Richard S. Carter Irene Cooperman Trudie Cushing and Neil Beskin John and Julie Hamre Yanqiu He and Kenneth O’Brien Vivian and Peter Hsueh Tina and Art Lazerow Diana Locke and Robert Toense Janet L. Mahaney
STRATHMORE STAFF Eliot Pfanstiehl Chief Executive Officer Monica Jeffries Hazangeles President Carol Maryman Executive Assistant to the President & CEO Mary Kay Almy Executive Board Assistant
DEVELOPMENT Bianca Beckham Director of Institutional Giving Bill Carey Director of Donor and Community Relations Lauren Campbell Development & Education Manager Julie Hamre Development Associate
PROGRAMMING Shelley Brown VP/Artistic Director Georgina Javor Director of Programming Holly J. M. Haliniewski Fine Art Program & Education Manager Sarah Jenny Hospitality Coordinator
EDUCATION Betty Scott Education Coordinator
OPERATIONS Mark J. Grabowski Executive VP of Operations Miriam Teitel Director of Operations Allen V. McCallum, Jr. Director of Patron Services Jasper Cox Director of Finance Ira Daniel Staff Accountant Mac Campbell Operations Manager Phoebe Anderson Dana Operations Assitant
Carol and Alan Mowbray Barbara and David Ronis Henry Schalizki Phyllis and Ken Schwartz Annie Simonian Totah and Sami Totah Maryellen Trautman and Darrell Lemke Carol Trawick Peter Vance Treibley Myra Turoff and Kenneth Weiner Julie Zignego
Allen C. Clark Manager of Information Services Kristin Lobiondo Rentals Manager Christopher S. Inman Manager of Security Chadwick Sands Ticket Office Manager Hilary White Assistant Ticket Office Manager Wil Johnson Ticket Services Coordinator Christopher A. Dunn IT Technician Johnathon Fuentes Operations Specialist Brandon Gowan Operations Specialist Jon Foster Production Stage Manager William Kassman Lead Stage Technician Lyle Jaeger Lead Lighting Technician Caldwell Gray Lead Audio Technician
THE SHOPS AT STRATHMORE Charlene McClelland Director of Retail Merchandising Lorie Wickert Director of Retail Operations and Online Sales
MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Jennifer A. Buzzell VP, Marketing and Communications Jerry Hasard Director of Marketing Jenn German Marketing Manager Julia Allal Group Sales and Outreach Manager Michael Fila Manager of Media Relations
STRATHMORE TEA ROOM Mary Mendoza Godbout Tea Room Manager
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Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Mr. and Mrs. William Rogers Mike & Janet Rowan The John Ben Snow Memorial Trust Ms. Deborah Wise/ Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation, Inc.
GOVERNING MEMBERS SILVER
Barry D. Berman, Esq. Richard Hug M. Sigmund Shapiro
($2,500-$4,999) Anonymous (3) Mr. and Mrs. David S. Cohen Jane C. Corrigan Dr. and Mrs. George Curlin Kari Peterson and Benito R. and Ben De Leon Mr. Joseph Fainberg Sherry and Bruce Feldman Mr. and Ms. Denis C. Gagnon Drs. Ronald and Barbara Gots Madeleine and Joseph Jacobs Dr. Robert Lee Justice and Marie Fujimura-Justice Marc E. Lackritz & Mary B. DeOreo Burt & Karen Leete Mr. & Mrs. Howard Lehrer Mrs. June Linowitz & Dr. Howard Eisner Dr. James & Jill Lipton Dr. Diana Locke & Mr. Robert E. Toense Marie McCormack Paul Meecham and Laura Leach Mr. & Mrs. Humayun Mirza David Nickels & Gerri Hall Jan S. Peterson & Alison E. Cole Ms. Nancy Rice Mr. and Mrs. John Rounsaville Daniel and Sybil Silver Patricia Smith and Dr. Frances Lussier Diane L. Sondheimer and Peter E. Novick Mr. Alan Strasser & Ms. Patricia Hartge John & Susan Warshawsky Dr. Edward Whitman Paul A. & Peggy L. Young, NOVA Research Company
CHAIRMAN LAUREATE
SYMPHONY SOCIETY
Board of directors OFFICERS
Kenneth W. DeFontes, Jr.*, Chairman Kathleen A. Chagnon, Esq.*, Secretary Lainy LeBow-Sachs*, Vice Chair Paul Meecham*, President & CEO The Honorable Steven R. Schuh*, Treasurer
BOARD MEMBERS Jimmy Berg A.G.W. Biddle, III Robert L. Bogomolny Barbara M. Bozzuto * Constance R. Caplan Robert B. Coutts Susan Dorsey, Ph.D.^ Governing Members Chair George A. Drastal* Alan S. Edelman* Susan G. Esserman* Michael G. Hansen Beth J. Kaplan Murray M. Kappelman, M.D. Sandra Levi Gerstung Ava Lias-Booker, Esq. Susan M. Liss, Esq.* Howard Majev, Esq. Liddy Manson David Oros Marge Penhallegon^, President, Baltimore Symphony Associates Michael P. Pinto Margery Pozefsky Scott Rifkin, M.D. Ann L. Rosenberg Bruce E. Rosenblum*
Stephen D. Shawe, Esq. The Honorable James T. Smith, Jr. Solomon H. Snyder, M.D. * Andrew A. Stern William R. Wagner
LIFE DIRECTORS Peter G. Angelos, Esq. Willard Hackerman H. Thomas Howell, Esq. Yo-Yo Ma Harvey M. Meyerhoff Decatur H. Miller, Esq. Linda Hambleton Panitz
DIRECTORS EMERITI
Michael G. Bronfein Calman J. Zamoiski, Jr.
BOARD OF TRUSTEES BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ENDOWMENT TRUST
Benjamin H. Griswold, IV, Chairman Terry Meyerhoff Rubenstein, Secretary Michael G. Bronfein Kenneth W. DeFontes, Jr. Mark R. Fetting Paul Meecham The Honorable Steven R. Schuh Calman J. Zamoiski, Jr. *Board Executive Committee ^ ex-officio
SUPPORTERS OF THE BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is deeply grateful to the individual, corporate, foundation and government donors whose annual giving plays a vital role in sustaining the Orchestra’s tradition of musical excellence. The following donors have given between January 1, 2011 and March 23, 2012.
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE
Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Maryland State Arts Council National Endowment for the Arts
CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE PARTNERS ($25,000 and above) DLA Piper Lori Laitman and Bruce Rosenblum M&T Bank PNC Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rudman Vocus
CORPORATE PARTNERS
($10,000-$24,999) Hughes Network Systems, LLC Mid-Atlantic Federal Credit Union RBC Wealth Management Total Wine & More ($2,500-$9,999) Georgetown Paper Stock of Rockville, Inc.
Homewood at Crumland Farms JoS. A. Bank Clothiers S. Kann Sons Company Foundation, Inc.
MAESTRA’S CIRCLE
($10,000 and above) Betty Huse MD Charitable Foundation Mr. and Mrs. A.G.W. Biddle, III The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation George and Katherine Drastal Ms. Susan Esserman and Mr. Andrew Marks Michael G. Hansen and Nancy E. Randa Ms. Mary R. Lambert Hilary B. Miller & Dr. Katherine N. Bent Susan Liss and Family Liddy Manson “In memory of James Gavin Manson”
Governing Members Gold ($5,000-$9,999) The Charles Delmar Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Stephen M. Lans Dr. David Leckrone & Marlene Berlin
72 Applause at Strathmore • MAy/June 2012
($1,000-$2,499) Anonymous (4) Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Abell Mrs. Rachel Abraham Dr. and Mrs. Marshall Ackerman Mr. William J. Baer and Ms. Nancy H. Hendry Ms. Elaine Belman David and Sherry Berz Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Block/Venable Foundation, Inc. Mr. Lawrence Blank Hon. & Mrs. Anthony Borwick Dr. Nancy Bridges Gordon F. Brown Bradley Christmas and Tara Flynn Dr. Mark Cinnamon & Ms. Doreen Kelly Mr. Herbert Cohen Jane E. Cohen Mr. and Mrs. Arthur C. Cox John Day and Peter Brehm Delaplaine Foundation Jackson and Jean H. Diehl Marcia Diehl and Julie Kurland Dimick Foundation Sharon and Jerry Farber Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fax Kenneth and Diane Feinberg Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Fitzpatrick Catoctin Breeze Vineyard Mr. and Mrs. Roberto B. Friedman Carol & William Fuentevilla Mary and Bill Gibb Peter Gil Joan de Pontet Dr. and Mrs. Sanford Glazer Mr. Harvey Gold Dr. Joseph Gootenberg & Dr. Susan Leibenhaut Barry E. & Barbara Gordon Dr. and Mrs. Sheldon Gottlieb Mark & Lynne Groban Mr. & Mrs. Norman M. Gurevich Ms. Lana Halpern Ms. Gloria Shaw Hamilton Mr. & Mrs. John Hanson Sara and James A. Harris, Jr. Mr. Fred Hart and Ms. Elizabeth Knight Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Herman Ellen & Herb Herscowitz David A. & Barbara L. Heywood Mr. Aaron Hoag Fran and Bill Holmes Betty W. Jensen The Paul L. Joyner Family
Dr. Henry Kahwaty Ms. Carolyn Kaplan Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kelber Virginia and Dale Kiesewetter Dr. and Mrs. Peter C. Luchsinger Michael & Judy Mael Linda & Howard Martin Mr. Winton Matthews Bebe McMeekin Dr. & Mrs. Stanley R. Milstein Dr. & Mrs. Donald Mullikin Douglas and Barbara Norland Ms. Patricia Normile Jerry and Marie Perlet Ms. Margaret K. Quigg Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Rogell Dr. Steven R. Rosenthal Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Sagoskin Peggy and David Salazar Estelle D. Schwalb Anne Weiss & Joseph E. Schwartz Bernard and Rita Segerman Ms. Phyllis Seidelson Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Shykind Mr. Donald M. Simonds Marshall and Deborah Sluyter Mr. & Mrs. Edgar Smith Don Spero & Nancy Chasen Mr. and Mrs. Richard D. Spero Jennifer Kosh Stern and William H. Turner Ms. Mary K. Sturtevant Margot & Phil Sunshine Mr. and Mrs. Richard Swerdlow Mr. & Mrs. Richard Tullos David Wellman & Marjorie Coombs Wellman Ms. Susan Wellman Joan M. Wilkins Ms. Ann Willis Sylvia and Peter Winik Robert and Jean Wirth Mr. and Mrs. David K. Wise Marc and Amy Wish Eileen and Lee Woods H. Alan Young & Sharon Bob Young, Ph.D. Robert & Antonette Zeiss
BRITTEN LEVEL MEMBERS
($500-$999) Anonymous Donald Baker Leonard and Gabriela Bebchick Mr. Donald Berlin Ms. Cynthia L. Bowman-Gholston Ms. Judith A. Braham Mr. Richard H. Broun & Ms. Karen E. Daly Barbara and John Clary Mr. Steven Coe Mr. Harvey A. Cohen and Mr. Michael R. Tardif Mr. Andrew Colquitt Mr. & Mrs. Jim Cooper Dr. Edward Finn Mr. & Mrs. Arthur P. Floor Ms. Alisa Goldstein Dr. Richard D. Guerin and Dr. Linda Kohn Ms. Haesoon Hahn Mr. E. Marshall Hansen Keith and Linda Hartman Dr. Liana Harvath Mr. Jeff D. Harvell & Mr. Ken Montgomery Carol and Terry Ireland Ms. Susan Irwin Mr. William Isaacson and Ms. Sophia McCrocklin Mr. R. Tenney Johnson Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Joseph Ms. Cheryl Jukes Ms. Daryl Kaufman Dr. Richard D. Guerin and Dr. Linda Kohn Dr. Birgit Kovacs Ms. Delia Lang Ms. Pat Larrabee and Ms. Lauren Markley Philip A. Levine & Frederica S. Douglas LTC David Lindauer, U.S. Army (Ret’d) Drs. David and Sharon Lockwood Mr. Jon M. Louthian W. David Mann David and Kay McGoff Edwin H. Moot Mr. William Morgan Delmon Curtis Morrison Eugene and Dorothy Mulligan Ms. Mary Padgett Mr. and Mrs. Peter Philipps Herb and Rita Posner Mr. and Ms. Donald Regnell Mr. Richard D. Reichard Mr. Thomas Reichmann
Governing Members Howard and Linda Martin with BSO Associate Concertmaster Madeline Adkins
Mr. James Risser Harold Rosen Ms. Ellen Rye Dr. & Mrs. Jerome Sandler Mr. Allen Shaw Ms. Terry Shuch and Mr. Neal Meiselman Gregory C. Simon and Margo L. Reid Mr. and Mrs. Charles Steinecke III Timothy Stranges and Rosanna Coffey Mr. Peter Thomson Ms. Ann Tognetti John A. and Julia W. Tossell Dr. and Mrs. Jack Weil Linda and Irving Weinberg
BRAHMS LEVEL MEMBERS
($250-$499) Anonymous (5) Ms. Kathryn Abell Rhoda and Herman Alderman Sharon Allender and John Trezise Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Alston Ms. Marie Anderson Dr. Joel C. Ang Mr. Bill Apter Pearl and Maurice Axelrad Thomas and Mary Aylward Ms. Katie Bagley and Mr. John K. Glenn III Drs. Richard and Patricia Baker Mr. Robert Barash Phebe W. Bauer Mr. & Mrs. John W. Beckwith Melvin Bell Alan H. Bergstein and Carol A. Joffe Mr. Neal Bien Nancy and Don Bliss Mr. & Mrs. John Blodgett Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Brotman Mr. Ashby Bryson Mr. & Mrs. Leonard Burka Ms. Lynn Butler Mr. & Mrs. Bernard Calure Mr. and Mrs. Serefino Cambareri Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Carrera Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Carty Ms. Patsy Clark Mr. James Cole Ms. Marion Connell Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Cooper Mr. Leonard Covello Ms. Louise Crane Dr. and Mrs. Brian Crowley Dr. & Mrs. James R. David Rev. George Dellinger Ms. Suzanne Delsack & Mr. Alan White Mr. Richard Dixon Mr. John C. Driscoll Mr. Ahmed El-Hoshy Lionel and Sandra Epstein Mr. and Mrs. Robert Fauver Ms. Claudia Feldman Mr. Michael Finkelstein Dr. & Mrs. David Firestone Ms. Dottie Fitzgerald Robert and Carole Fontenrose Estelle Diane Franklin Ms. Cathy Friedman Mr. & Mrs. Michael Scott Friedman Dr. Joel and Rhoda Ganz
Dan and Theresa Shykind enjoy cocktails at the March Allegretto Dinner
Roberta Geier Irwin Gerduk Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Giddings Mr. Harry Glass and Ms. Judy Canahuati Ms. Maran Gluckstein Frank & Susan Grefsheim Ms. Melanie Grishman & Mr. Herman Flay, M.D. Rev. Therisia Hall Brian and Mary Ann Harris Mr. Lloyd Haugh Mrs. Jean N. Hayes Ms. Marilyn Henderson and Mr. Paul Henderson Joel and Linda Hertz Mr. & Mrs. William L. Hickman Mr. Myron L. Hoffmann Mr. John Howes Mr. & Mrs. Paul Hyman Mr. & Mrs. Howard Iams David Ihrie & Catherine Houston Mr. Peter Kaplan Dr. & Mrs. Robert W. Karp Dr. Evelyn Karson & Mr. Donald Kaplan Lawrence & Jean Katz Mr. & Mrs. Christopher Keller Mr. & Mrs. James Kempf Mr. & Mrs. Anthony Kern Dr. & Mrs. Robert Koehl Mr. William and Ms. Ellen D. Kominers Ms. Nancy Kopp Dr. Arlin J. Krueger Michael Lazar & Sharon Fischman Mr. Darrell H. Lemke & Ms. Maryellen Trautman Mr. Harry LeVine Alan and Judith Lewis Lois and Walter Liggett Harry and Carolyn Lincoln Judie and Harry Linowes Dr. Richard E. and Susan Papp Lippman Mr. Gene Lodge Lucinda Low and Daniel Magraw Mr. Craig Ludwig and Ms. Minna Davidson Thomas and Elizabeth Maestri Mr. James Magno Mr. David Marcos Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Matterson Mr. Mark Mattucci Mr. & Mrs. Ian McDonald Ms. Susan McGee Ms. Anna McGowan Patrick and Roberta McKeever Dr. Richard Melanson and Ms. Mary Matthews Mr. Steve Metalitz Mrs. Rita Meyers Ms. Ellen Miles Mr. & Mrs. Walter Miller Dr. & Mrs. Mortimer & Barbara Mishkin Ms. Marlene C. Mitchell Mr. & Mrs. William Mooney Mr. William Neches Ms. Caren Novick Dr. & Mrs. John R. Nuckols Amanda & Robert Ogren Mrs. Judy Oliver Mrs. Patricia Olson
BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP WITH THE BSO Make a donation today and become a Member of the BSO! There is a gift level that is right for everyone, and with that comes an insider’s perspective of your world-class orchestra. For a complete list of benefits, please call our Membership Office at 301.581.5215 or contact via e-mail at membership@BSOmusic.org. You may also visit our Web site at BSOmusic.org/benefits.
Elaine Amir, Barbara and Ron Gots and Marie Fujimura-Justice gather at the March Allegretto Dinner
Mr. Jerome Ostrov Mrs. Jane Papish Mr. Kevin Parker Ms. Frances L. Pflieger Dr. Jeffrey Phillips Thomas Plotz and Catherine Klion Marie Pogozelski and Richard Belle Ms. Carol Poland Andrew and Melissa Polott Mr. and Mrs. Edward Portner Ms. Marjorie Pray Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Rabin Dr. and Mrs. Bernard Reich Dr. Sean Michael Roark Ms. Leeann Rock and Mr. Brian Anderson Ms. Trini Rodriquez and Mr. Eric Toumayan Mr. & Mrs. Barry Rogstad Mr. Elliot Rosen Mr. Pat Sandall Mr. and Mrs. William Schaefer David and Louise Schmeltzer Mr. J. Kenneth Schwartz
Mr. and Mrs. David Scott Mr. Paul Seidman Anatole Senkevitch, Jr. Neil and Bonnie Sherman Donna and Steven Shriver Mr. & Mrs. Larry Shulman Mr. and Mrs. Micheal D. Slack Ms. Deborah Smith Richard Sniffin Gloria and David Solomon Mr. and Mrs. Duane Straub Mr. Alan Thomas Mr. John Townsley Ms. Marie Van Wyk Mr. Mallory Walker Ms. Shirley Waxman and Mr. Joel Bressler Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wein Mr. David M. Wilson Ms. Carol Wolfe Dr. & Mrs. Richard N. Wright Mr. Daniel Zaharevitz Ms. MaryAnn Zamula Mr. Warren Zwicky
Baltimore symphony Orchestra STAFF Paul Meecham, President and CEO Leilani Uttenreither, Executive Assistant Beth M. Buck, Vice President and CFO Carol Bogash, Vice President of Education Deborah Broder Vice President of BSO at Strathmore Dale Hedding Vice President of Development Eileen Andrews Vice President of Marketing and Communications Matthew Spivey Vice President of Artistic Operations ARTISTIC OPERATIONS Erik FInley Artistic Planning Manager & Assistant to the Music Director Anna Harris, Operations Coordinator Alicia Lin, Director of Operations and Facilities Chris Monte, Assistant Personnel Manager Marilyn Rife Director of Orchestra Personnel and Human Resources Meg Sippey, Artistic Coordinator DEVELOPMENT Jennifer Barton Individual Giving Manager Margaret Blake Development Office Manager Allison Burr-Livingstone Director of Institutional Giving Kate Caldwell Director of Philanthropic Services Stephanie Johnson Donor Relations Manager, BSO at Strathmore Rebecca Potter Institutional Giving Specialist Joanne M. Rosenthal Director of Major Gifts, Planned Giving and Government Relations Rebecca Sach, Director of Annual Fund Richard Spero Community Liaison, BSO at Strathmore
EDUCATION Annemarie Guzy, Director of Education Hana Morford, Education Associate Nick Skinner, OrchKids Manager Larry Townsend, Education Assistant Dan Trahey, OrchKids Artistic Director FINANCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Tom Allan, Controller Sophia Jacobs, Senior Accountant Janice Johnson, Senior Accountant Sybil Johnson Payroll and Benefits Administrator Evinz Leigh Administration Associate Chris Vallette Database and Web Administrator MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS Brendan Cooke, Group Sales Manager Rika Dixon, Director of Marketing and Sales Laura Farmer, Public Relations Manager Derek A. Johnson Manager of Single Ticket Sales Theresa Kopasek, Marketing and PR Associate Samantha Manganaro Direct Marketing Coordinator Alyssa Porambo Public Relations and Publications Coordinator Michael Smith Digital Marketing and E-Commerce Coordinator Elisa Watson, Graphic Designer TICKET SERVICES Amy Bruce Manager of Special Events and VIP Ticketing Adrian Hilliard Senior Ticket Services Agent, Strathmore Kathy Marciano, Director of Ticket Services
Applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 73
Contributor Bank of America The Italian Cultural Society, Inc. INDIVIDUALS Maestro Circle Robert & Margaret Hazen Dr. & Mrs. Val G. Hemming Mrs. Margaret Makris Dr. Kenneth P. Moritsugu, Emily Moritsugu & Ms. Lisa R. Kory includes match by Johnson & Johnson Paul A. & Peggy L. Young NOVA Research Company
National Philharmonic Board of directors Board of Directors
Board Officers
Ruth Berman Rabbi Leonard Cahan *Nancy Coleman Paul Dudek Ann M. Eskelsen Ruth Faison Dr. Bill Gadzuk Ken Hurwitz Greg Lawson Joan Levenson Kent Mikkelsen Dr. Wayne Meyer Dr. Roscoe M. Moore, Jr. Dr. Kenneth Moritsugu *Robin C. Perito JaLynn Prince *Mark C. Williams
*Todd R. Eskelsen, Chair *Albert Lampert, First Vice Chair *Dieneke Johnson, Second Vice Chair *Peter Ryan, Treasurer *Carol Evans, Secretary * Joel Alper, Chair Emeritus
Board of Advisors William D. English Joseph A. Hunt Albert Lampert Chuck Lyons Roger Titus Jerry D. Weast As of April 2012 *Executive Committee
As of April 1, 2012
SUPPORTERS OF THE NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC The National Philharmonic takes this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge the following businesses, foundations and individuals which have made the Philharmonic’s ambitious plans possible through their generous contributions. Maestro Circle Concertmaster Circle Principal Circle Philharmonic Circle Benefactor Circle Sustainer Circle Patron Contributor Member
$10,000+ $7,500 to $9,999 $5,000 to $7,499 $3,500 to $4,999 $2,500 to $3,499 $1,000 to $2,499 $500 to $999 $250 to $499 $125 to $249
ORGANIZATIONS
Maestro Circle Ameriprise Financial Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Clark-Winchcole Foundation The Gazette Ingleside at King Farm Maryland State Arts Council Montgomery County, MD Montgomery County Public Schools NOVA Research Company Schiff Hardin, LLP The State of Maryland Concertmaster Circle Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation, Inc. Principal Circle Harris Family Foundation Johnson & Johnson Philharmonic Circle National Philharmonic/ MCYO Educational Partnership
The Washington Post Company Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation Benefactor Circle Corina Higginson Trust Dimick Foundation Henry B. & Jessie W. Keiser Foundation, Inc. Rockville Christian Church, for donation of rehearsal space TD Charitable Foundation Sustainer Circle American Federation of Musicians, DC Local 161-170 Bettina Baruch Foundation Cardinal Bank Embassy of Poland Executive Ball for the Arts KPMG Foundation The Rebecca Pollard Guggenheim Logan Foundation Lucas-Spindletop Foundation Patron American String Teachers’ Association DC/MD Chapter Boeing Gailes Violin Shop, Inc. GE Foundation IBM Lashof Violins The Potter Violin Company The Stempler Family Foundation Violin House of Weaver Washington Music Center
74 Applause at Strathmore • MAy/June 2012
Concertmaster Circle Mr. & Mrs. Joel Alper Mr. & Mrs. Paul Dudek Dr. Ryszard Gajewski Mr. & Mrs. Albert Lampert Principal Circle Mr. & Mrs. Todd R. Eskelsen Ms. Dieneke Johnson includes match by Washington Post Paul & Robin Perito Dr. Gregory A. & JaLynn R. Prince Philharmonic Circle Mr. & Mrs. William F. Baker, Jr. * Mr. Steven C. Decker & Ms. Deborah W. Davis Dr. & Mrs. John V. Evans J. William & Anita Gadzuk * Dr. Robert Gerard & Ms. Carol Goldberg * Mr. Ken Hurwitz Dr. Roscoe M. Moore & Mrs. Patricia Haywood Moore Mr. & Mrs. Peter Ryan Mr. & Mrs. Mark Williams includes match by Ameriprise Financial Benefactor Circle Mrs. Ruth Berman Mr. Edward Brinker & Ms. Jane Liu Mr. Dale Collinson * Mr. & Mrs. John L. Donaldson Dr. Joseph Gootenberg & Dr. Susan Leibenhaut Mr. & Mrs. Joseph A. Hunt Mr. William A. Lascelle & Ms. Blanche Johnson Mr. Larry Maloney * Nancy and J. Parker Michael & Janet Rowan Ms. Aida Sanchez * Mr. & Mrs. David Shapiro Sustainer Circle Anonymous (3) Mrs. Rachel Abraham Mrs. Helen Altman * Ms. Sybil Amitay * Elizabeth Bishop & Darren Gemoets * Mr. & Mrs. Gilbert Bloom Mr. & Mrs. Leonard Cahan Dr. Ronald Cappelletti * Ms. Nancy Coleman * Dr. Mark Cinnamon & Ms. Doreen Kelly Drs. Eileen & Paul DeMarco* Dr. Lawrence Deyton & Dr. Jeffrey Levi * Mr. William E. Fogle & Ms. Marilyn Wun-Fogle Dr. Maria A. Friedman * Mr. & Mrs. Piotr Gajewski Ms. Rebecca Gatwood Ms. Sarah Gilchrist * Mr. Barry Goldberg Mr. Michael Hansen Mr. and Mrs. David Henderson * Dr. Stacey Henning * Ms. Annie Hou Ms. Kathryn Johnson,
in honor of Dieneke Johnson Mr. Robert Justice & Mrs. Marie Fujimura-Justice Mr. Greg Lawson Mrs. Joan M. Levenson Mr. & Mrs. Leslie Levine Mr. & Mrs. Charles A. Lyons Mr. Winton Matthews Mrs. Eleanor D. McIntire * Mr. & Mrs. Richard McMillan, Jr. Dr. Wayne Meyer * Mr. & Mrs. Kent Mikkelsen * Mr. Robert Misbin Susan & Jim Murray * Mr. & Mrs. Charles Naftalin Mr. Thomas Nessinger * Ms. Martha Newman * Dr. & Mrs. Goetz Oertel Mr. & Mrs. Jerome Pinson, includes match by GE Foundation Mrs. Jan Schiavone * Ms. Carol A. Stern * Sternbach Family Fund Dr. & Mrs. Robert Temple * Drs. Charles and Cecile Toner Mr. & Mrs. Scott Ullery Ms. Ellen van Valkenburgh * Mr. & Mrs. Robert Vocke * Mr. & Mrs. William W. Walls, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Royce Watson Mr. & Mrs. Bernard J. Young Patron Ms. Lori Barnet Mary Bentley & David Kleiner * Mr. & Mrs. James R. Carlin Ms. Linda Edwards Ms. Kimberly Elliott Dr. Stan Engebretson * Ms. Ruth Faison * Mr. Steven Gerber Mr. David Hofstad William W. & Sara M. Josey * Ms. Carol Lemire Ms. Jane Lyle * Ms. Alison Matuskey Mr. David McGoff * Mr. & Mrs. Raymond Mountain Dr. & Mrs. Joe Parr, III Mr. Larz Pearson & Mr. Rick Trevino Drs. Dena & Jerome Puskin Mr. & Mrs. Willis Ritter Mr. & Mrs. Steven Seelig Dr. John Sherman Ms. Lori J. Sommerfield * Mr. John I. Stewart & Ms. Sharon S. Stoliaroff Mr. Robert Stewart Mr. & Mrs. John F. Wing Mr. & Mrs. Jack Yanovski Contributor Anonymous (2) Mr. Ronald Abeles Ms. Ann Albertson Mr. Robert B. Anderson Mike & Cecilia Ballentine Ms. Michelle Benecke Ms. Patricia Bulhack Ms. Irene Cooperman Mr. Dean Culler Mr.& Mrs. J. Steed Edwards Mr. John Eklund Mr. & Mrs. William English Mr. & Mrs. Elliott Fein includes match by IBM Mr. & Mrs. Joe Ferfolia Dr. & Mrs. John H. Ferguson David & Berdie Firestone Mr. & Mrs. Mayo Friedlis Mr. Dean Gatwood Mr. Carolyn Guthrie Mr. & Mrs. William Gibb
Music Director and Conductor Piotr Gajewski with guest violinist Chee-Yun and the Honorable Madeleine Albright
Dr. Karl Habermeier Dr. William Hatcher Frances Hanckel Mrs. Rue Helsel Dr. Roger Herdman Mr. & Mrs. William Hickman Mr. & Mrs. James Hochron * Ms. Katharine C. Jones Dr. Elke Jordan Ms. Anne Kanter Dr. & Mrs. Charles Kelber Ms. Martha Jacoby Krieger * Mr. & Mrs. John R. Larue Mr. & Mrs. Paul Legendre Mr. & Mrs. Herbert J. Lerner Ms. May Lesar Mr. & Mrs. Eliot Lieberman * Mr. Frederick Lorimer Mr. David E. Malloy & Mr. John P. Crockett * Jim & Marge McMann Dr. & Mrs. Oliver Moles Jr. * Mr. Stamatios Mylonakis Ms. Katherine Nelson-Tracey * Mrs. Jeanne Noel David Nickels & Gerri Hall Ms. Anita O’Leary * Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth A. Oldham, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Alan Peterkofsky Ms. Cindy Pikul Dr. & Mrs. Manuel Porres Mrs. Dorothy Prats Mr. & Mrs. Clark Rheinstein * Ms. Lisa Rovin * Ms. Joyce Sauvager Ms. Sandi Saville Mr. Charles Serpan Mr. & Ms. Kevin Shannon Dr. & Mrs. Richard Wright Mr. & Mrs. Philip Yaffee Member Anonymous Mr. & Mrs. Donald Abbott Mrs. Fran Abrams Mr. & Mrs. Nabil Azzam Ms. Marietta Balaan * Mr. Mikhail Balachov Mr. Robert Barash Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Bechert Mr. & Mrs. Richard Bender Mr. & Mrs. Jerome Breslow Dr. Rosalind Breslow * Mr. Allan Bozorth Mr. & Mrs. Frederick Brown Mrs. Dolores J. Bryan Mr. & Mrs. Stan Bryla Dr. & Mrs. Chuck Chatlynne Mr. John Choi
Dr. F. Lawrence Clare Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Clark Mrs. Patsy Clark Dr. & Mrs. Gordon M. Cragg Ms. Louise Crane Ms. Margaret Cusack Dr. & Mrs. James B. D’Albora Mr. and Mrs. David Dancer * Mr. & Mrs. Edward Della Torre Mr. Jian Ding Mr. Paul Dragoumis Ms. Sandra Doren Mr. Charles Eisenhauer Mr. Robert Fehrenbach Mr. Harold Freeman Ms. Frances Gipson Mr. Joseph Hamer Ms. Nina Helmsen Dr. & Mrs. Donald Henson Mr. & Mrs. Donald Jansky * Ms. Elizabeth Janthey Ms. Katharine Jones Ms. Carol S. Jordan Ms. Elizabeth King Mrs. Rosalie King Mr. Mark A. Knepper Ms. Marge Koblinsky Ms. Cherie Krug Ms. S. Victoria Krusiewski Mr. William R. Lee Dr. David Lockwood Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth MacPherson Ms. Sharon F. Majchrzak* Mr. & Mrs. Forbes Maner Mr. and Mrs. James Mason Mr. Michael McClellan Mr. & Mrs. Robert McGuire Mr. & Mrs. David Miller Mr. & Mrs. T. Lindsay Moore Ms. Stephanie Murphy National Philharmonic Chorale, in honor of Kenneth Oldham, Jr. Mrs. Gillian Nave Mr. Leif Neve *, includes match by Aquilent Dr. Ruth S. Newhouse Mr. Thomas Pappas Dr. & Mrs. David Pawel Dolly Perkins & Larry Novak Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth Oldham Evelyn & Peter Philipps Mr. Charles A. O’Connor & Ms. Susan F. Plaeger Dr. Morris Pulliam Ms. Phyllis Rattey Mr. & Mrs. Robert Rizzi Mr. Sydney Schneider Ms. Katherine Schnorrenberg *
Chorale member Robert Gerard with National Philharmonic President Ken Oldham.
Dr. & Mrs. Paul Silverman Dr. Alan Sheff Ms. Rita Sloan Mr. Carey Smith * Mr. Charles Sturrock * Dr. & Mrs. Szymon Suckewer Ms. Sarah Thomas Ms. Renee Tietjen * Ms. Virginia W. Van Brunt * Mr. Sid Verner
Chorale Sustainers Circle Mr. & Mrs. Fred Altman Ms. Sybil Amitay Mrs. William F. Baker, Jr. Elizabeth Bishop & Darrin Gemoets Dr. Ronald Cappelletti Ms. Anne Claysmith Ms. Nancy Coleman Mr. Dale Collinson Drs. Eileen and Paul DeMarco Dr. Lawrence Deyton & Dr. Jeffrey Levi Dr. Maria A. Friedman Dr. & Mrs. Bill Gadzuk Dr. Robert Gerard & Ms. Carol Goldberg Ms. Sarah Gilchrist
Mr. Gerald Vogel Ms. Anastasia Walsh Mr. David B. Ward Mr. Raymond Watts Mr. Robert E. Williams Ms. Joan Wikstrom Ms. Lynne Woods * Dr. Nicholas Zill * Chorale members
Mr. & Mrs. David Hendersen Dr. Stacey Henning Mr. Larry Maloney Mr. & Mrs. Carl McIntire Dr. Wayne Meyer Mr. & Mrs. Kent Mikkelsen Mr. & Mrs. James E. Murray Mr. Thomas Nessinger Ms. Martha Newman Ms. Aida Sanchez Mrs. Jan Schiavone Ms. Carol A. Stern Dr. & Mrs. Robert Temple Ms. Ellen van Valkenburgh Mr. & Mrs. Robert Vocke
Heritage Society The Heritage Society at the National Philharmonic gratefully recognizes those dedicated individuals who strive to perpetuate the National Philharmonic through the provision of a bequest in their wills or through other estate gifts. For more information about the National Philharmonic’s Heritage Society, please call Ken Oldham at 301-493-9283, ext. 112. Mr. David Abraham* Mrs. Margaret Makris Mrs. Rachel Abraham Mr. Robert Misbin Mr. Joel Alper Mr. Kenneth A. Oldham, Jr. Ms. Ruth Berman Mr. W. Larz Pearson Ms. Anne Claysmith Ms. Carol A. Stern Mr. Todd Eskelsen Mr. Mark Williams Ms. Dieneke Johnson *Deceased Mr. & Mrs. Albert Lampert
National Philharmonic Staff Piotr Gajewski, Music Director & Conductor Stan Engebretson, Artistic Director, National Philharmonic Chorale Victoria Gau, Associate Conductor Kenneth A. Oldham, Jr., President Filbert Hong, Director of Artistic Operations Deborah Birnbaum, Director of Marketing & PR
Leanne Ferfolia, Director of Development Dan Abbott, Manager of Development Operations Auxiliary Staff Amy Salsbury, Graphic Designer Lauren Aycock, Graphic Designer
Applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 75
Board of directors Reginald Van Lee, Chairman* (c) James J. Sandman, Vice Chair* (c) Christina Co Mather, Secretary* Steven Kaplan, Esq. Treasurer* (c) Burton J. Fishman, Esq., General Counsel* + Neale Perl, President and CEO* Douglas H. Wheeler, President Emeritus Patrick Hayes, Founder † Gina F. Adams* Alison Arnold-Simmons Arturo E. Brillembourg* Hans Bruland (c) Beverly Burke Rima Calderon Karen I. Campbell* Josephine S. Cooper Debbie Dingell Robert Feinberg* Norma Lee Funger Bruce Gates* Olivier Goudet Jay M. Hammer* Brian Hardie Grace Hobelman (c) Jake Jones Elizabeth Baker Keffer David Kamenetzky* Jerome B. Libin, Esq. (c) Charlotte Cameron Marshall* (c) Jeffrey Norris Rachel Tinsley Pearson* Joseph M. Rigby Yvonne Sabine Charlotte Schlosberg Samuel A. Schreiber John Sedmak
Irene F. Simpkins Ruth Sorenson* Wendy Thompson-Marquez Mary Jo Veverka* Gladys Watkins* Carol W. Wilner
Honorary Directors Nancy G. Barnum Roselyn Payne Epps, M.D. Michelle Cross Fenty Sophie P. Fleming Eric R. Fox Peter Ladd Gilsey † Barbara W. Gordon France K. Graage James M. Harkless, Esq. ViCurtis G. Hinton † Sherman E. Katz Marvin C. Korengold, M.D. Peter L. Kreeger Robert G. Liberatore Dennis G. Lyons Gilbert D. Mead † Gerson Nordlinger † John F. Olson, Esq. (c) Susan Porter Frank H. Rich Albert H. Small Shirley Small The Honorable James W. Symington Stefan F. Tucker, Esq. (c) Paul Martin Wolff
PAST CHAIRS
Todd Duncan †, Past Chairman Laureate William N. Cafritz Aldus H. Chapin † Kenneth M. Crosby † Jean Head Sisco † Kent T. Cushenberry † Harry M. Linowes Edward A. Fox Hugh H. Smith
Alexine Clement Jackson Lydia Micheaux Marshall Stephen W. Porter, Esq. Elliott S. Hall Lena Ingegerd Scott (c) James F. Lafond Bruce E. Rosenblum Daniel L. Korengold Susan B. Hepner Jay M. Hammer
WOMEN’S COMMITTEE OFFICERS
Gladys Manigault Watkins, President Annette A. Morchower, First Vice President Lorraine P. Adams, Second Vice President Cynthea M. Warman, Recording Secretary Ruth R. Hodges, Assistant Recording Secretary Ernestine Arnold, Corresponding Secretary Anna Faith Jones, Treasurer Glendonia McKinney, Assistant Treasurer Charlotte Cameron Marshall, Immediate Past President Barbara Mackenzie Gordon, Founder
LAWYERS’ COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS
Jerome B. Libin, Esq. James J. Sandman, Esq.
* Executive Committee + Ex Officio † Deceased (c) Committee Chair As of April 16, 2012
WPAS gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following individuals, corporations, foundations and government sources whose generosity supports our artistic and education programming throughout the National Capital area. Friends who contribute $500 or more annually are listed below with our thanks. (As of April 16, 2012) Altria Group, Inc. Booz Allen Hamilton Ms. Christina Co Mather and Dr. Gary Mather Betsy and Robert Feinberg Mars, Incorporated Ms. Jacqueline Badger Mars Estate of Miriam Rose The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation National Arts and Cultural Affairs Program/The Commission of Fine Arts Mr. Reginald Van Lee
$50,000-$99,999
Daimler Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts DyalCompass
FedEx Corporation Mr. and Mrs. Joseph F. Horning The Horning Family Fund Susan and Jim Miller MVM, Inc. Park Foundation, Inc. Mr. Bruce Rosenblum and Ms. Lori Laitman Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Slavin Dr. Paul G. Stern Wells Fargo Bank
$35,000-$49,999
DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Carl D. † and Grace P. Hobelman NoraLee and Jon Sedmak
$25,000-$34,999
Anonymous Abramson Family Foundation
76 Applause at Strathmore • MAy/June 2012
$10,000-$14,999
Avid Partners, LLC BET Networks Chevron DCI Group The Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco Ernst and Young George Wasserman Family Foundation, Inc. Ms. Carolyn Guthrie HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Robert P. and Arlene R. Kogod Family Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Kreeger Mr. and Mrs. Steve Lans June and Jerry Libin (L) Macy’s Marriott International The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. The Honorable Bonnie McElveenHunter Carol and Douglas Melamed Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Milstein Ms. Janice J. Kim and Mr. Anthony L. Otten Prince Charitable Trusts Quinexia North America, Inc. Southern Company Sid Stolz and David Hatfield Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Young
$7,500-$9,999
WPAS Annual Fund
$100,000+
Mr. and Mrs. Jay M. Hammer The Hay-Adams Hotel David and Anna-Lena Kamenetzky Mr. and Mrs. Steven Kaplan Mrs. Elizabeth Keffer Kiplinger Foundation Inc. KPMG LLP Judith A. Lee, Esq. (L) LightSquared Mr. and Mrs. John Marshall, Dan Cameron Family Foundation, Inc. Nancy Peery Marriott Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Neale Perl Mr. James J. Sandman and Ms. Elizabeth D. Mullin (L) Roger and Vicki Sant Mr. and Mrs. Hubert M. Schlosberg (L) (W) Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Simpkins Verizon Washington, D.C. Ms. Mary Jo Veverka Washington Gas Light Company Wells Fargo Bank
BB&T Private Financial Services Billy Rose Foundation Mark and Terry McLeod PEPCO PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP The Rocksprings Foundation Ruth and Anne Sorenson Mr. and Mrs. Stefan F. Tucker (L)
$15,000-$24,999
Anonymous Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Adams Diane and Norman Bernstein Mr. and Mrs. Arturo E. Brillembourg Mrs. Ryna Cohen Mr. and Mrs. Art Collins Dimick Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Jose Figueroa Mr. and Mrs. Morton Funger Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Gates
AT&T Foundation Capitol Tax Partners Dr. and Mrs. Louis Levitt The Meredith Foundation The Hon. Mary V. Mochary and Dr. Philip E. Wine John F. Olson, Esq. (L) Ourisman Automotive of VA Ms. Aileen Richards and Mr. Russell Jones Dr. Irene Roth Mr. Claude Schoch Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
$5,000-$7,499
Dr. and Mrs. Clement C. Alpert Mrs. Dolly Chapin Ms. Pamela Farr Bob and Jennifer Feinstein Geico Mr. Olivier Goudet and Mrs. Valerie Liquard Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Graham Mr. and Mrs. Brian J. Hardie Ms. Annette Kerlin Mr. and Mrs. David O. Maxwell Dr. Robert Misbin Mr. and Mrs. Glenn A. Mitchell Ms. Rachel Tinsley Pearson Target The George Preston Marshall Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. John V. Thomas Venable Foundation The Washington Post Company Mr. Marvin F. Weissberg and Ms. Judith Morris
$2,500-$4,999
Anonymous (3) Mr. and Mrs. Robert Alvord Ambassador and Mrs. Tom Anderson Jane C. Bergner, Esq. (L) Mr. Joseph Brandt Mr. and Mrs. Boris Brevnov Ms. Beverly J. Burke Mr. and Mrs. William N. Cafritz The Charles Delmar Foundation Dr. and Mrs. Purnell W. Choppin Ms. Nadine Cohodas Mr. and Mrs. John Kent Cooke Mr. and Mrs. J. Bradley Davis Mr. and Mrs. James Davis Dr. Morgan Delaney and Mr. Osborne P. Mackie Mr. and Mrs. Guy O. Dove III Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Eagle (L) Linda R. Fannin, Esq. (L) Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Fischer Mr. and Mrs. Burton J. Fishman Mr. Gregory I. Flowers Mr. and Mrs. David Frederick Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Gibbens Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Giles Dr. and Mrs. Michael S. Gold James R. Golden Mr. and Mrs. Rolf Graage Alexine and Aaron † Jackson (W) Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Jacobs Mr. and Mrs. Merritt Jones Mr. and Mrs. David T. Kenney Mr. and Mrs. Edward Kessler (W) Kinexum Services LLC Mr. Daniel L. Korengold and Ms. Martha Dippell Mrs. Stephen K. Kwass Ms. Sandy Lerner Mr. and Mrs. Harry M. Linowes The Honorable and Mrs. Jan Lodal Mr. and Mrs. Christoph E. Mahle (W) Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Manaker Marshall B. Coyne Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Michael Marshall Mrs. Joan McAvoy Mr. Robert Meyerhoff and Ms. Rheda Becker Mr. and Mrs. Robert Monk Dr. William Mullins and Dr. Patricia Petrick Mrs. Muriel Miller Pear Jerry and Carol Perone Ms. Nicky Perry and Mr. Andrew Stifler Mr. Trevor Potter and Mr. Dana Westring Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ramsay Dr. and Mrs. Douglas Rathbun Mr. and Mrs. Peter Rich Ms. Christine C. Ryan and Mr. Tom Graham Lena Ingegerd Scott and Lennart Lundh Peter and Jennifer Seka Mr. and Mrs. Albert H. Small Mr. Eric Steiner Ms. Mary Sturtevant Mr. and Mrs. George R. Thompson Jr. Mr. and Mrs. R. Moses Thompson Mr. and Mrs. Brian Tommer Mr. and Mrs. Mark Weinberger Dr. and Mrs. Herbert D. Weintraub Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Weiss Dr. Sidney Werkman and Ms. Nancy Folger Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wilkins Mr. and Mrs. James J. Wilson Dr. and Mrs. William B. Wolf Mr. Bruce Wolff and Ms. Linda Miller Mr. and Mrs. Paul A. Young, NOVA Research Company
$1,500-$2,499
Anonymous (3) Ms. Lisa Abeel Mrs. Rachel Abraham AllianceBernstein Dr. and Mrs. James Baugh Arlene and Robert Bein Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Bennett Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Brodecki Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Bunting Mr. Peter Buscemi and Ms. Judith Miller Dr. C. Wayne Callaway and Ms. Jackie Chalkley Ms. Karen I. Campbell Dr. and Mrs. Abe Cherrick Drs. Judith and Thomas Chused Dr. Mark Cinnamon and Ms. Doreen Kelly Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Cook Mr. Paul D. Cronin Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Dickstein Mrs. Gay S. Estin Marietta Ethier, Esq. (L) Dr. Irene Farkas-Conn Mrs. Sophie P. Fleming Friday Morning Music Club, Inc. Ms. Wendy Frieman and Dr. David E. Johnson Mr. Gary Gasper Mrs. Paula Seigle Goldman (W) Mrs. Barbara Goldmuntz Mrs. Barbara W. Gordon (W) James McConnell Harkless, Esq. Ms. Gail Harmon Dr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Harris (W) Ms. Leslie Hazel Ms. Gertraud Hechl Mr. and Mrs. Carl F. Hicks, Jr. Mrs. Enid T. Johnson (W) Dr. and Mrs. Elliott Kagan Mr. E. Scott Kasprowicz Mr. and Mrs. Sherman E. Katz (L) Stephen and Mary Kitchen (L) Mr. and Mrs. James Kleeblatt Mr. and Mrs. Steven Lamb Mr. Francois Lang Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Larkin Dr. and Mrs. Lee V. Leak (W) James M. Loots, Esq. and Barbara Dougherty, Esq. (L) Rear Adm. and Mrs. Daniel P. March Howard T. and Linda R. Martin Mr. Scott Martin Mrs. Gail Matheson Ms. Katherine G. McLeod Mr. Larry L. Mitchell Mr. and Mrs. Scott Mitchell Ms. Kristine Morris Lt. Gen. and Mrs. Michael A. Nelson Ms. Michelle Newberry The Nora Roberts Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Norris Dr. Michael Olding Mr. and Mrs. Jack H. Olender Mr. and Mrs. Gerald W. Padwe Ms. Jean Perin Mr. J. A. Pierce and Ms. Lola Reinsch Mr. Sydney M. Polakoff The Honorable and Mrs. Stephen Porter Adam Clayton Powell III Ms. Lucy Rhame Mr. and Mrs. Martin Ritter Mr. and Mrs. David Roux Mr. and Mrs. Dory Saad Mrs. Norman W. Scherpf Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Schreiber Ms. Mary B. Schwab Dr. Deborah J. Sherrill Ms. Bernice Simmons Virginia Sloss (W) Mrs. Nadia Stanfield Cita and Irwin Stelzer Mr. Richard Strother Ms. Loki van Roijen Ms. Viviane Warren Christopher Wolf, Esq. (L) CDR and Mrs. Otto A. Zipf
$1,000-$1,499
AAnonymous Ruth and Henry Aaron Mr. John B. Adams Mr. and Mrs. James B. Adler Dr. and Mrs. Syed S. Ahmed Ms. Carolyn S. Alper Jeff Antoniuk and The Jazz Update Mr. and Mrs. Barry Barbash Ms. Carol A. Bogash Mr. A Scott Bolden Ms. Ossie Borosh Bonnie and Jere Broh-Kahn S. Kann Sons Company Fdn. Inc. Amelie and Bernei Burgunder, Directors Ms. Peggy Cooper Cafritz Mr. and Mrs. Jordan Casteel Mr. Jules Cohen Mr. Tom Colella and Ms. Blair Bennett Ms. Benita Coleman Ms. Josephine S. Cooper Dr. Ronald M. Costell and Ms. Marsha E. Swiss Mr. David D’Alessio Dr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Danks Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Davis Edison W. Dick, Esq. (L) Mr. Anthony E. DiResta (L) Ms. Nancy Ruyle Dodge Dynamic Concepts, Inc. Mr. Stanley Ebner and Ms. Toni Sidley Ms. Lisa Egbuonu-Davis Mrs. John G. Esswein Mr. Donald and Mrs. Irene Gavin The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ms. Marianna Gray Dr. Samuel Guillory Dr. Maria J. Hankerson, Systems Assessment & Research, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. James Harris, Jr. Mr. Charles E. Hoyt and Ms. Deborah Weinberger (L) Drs. Frederick Jacobsen and Lillian Comas-Diaz Mr. and Mrs. Broderick Johnson Ms. Anna F. Jones (W) Ms. Margaret M. Jones Mr. and Mrs. Terry Jones Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Kamerick Mr. and Mrs. John E. Kilcarr Ms. Elizabeth L. Klee Dr. Rebecca Klemm, Ph.D. Dr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Korengold Mr. Simeon M. Kriesberg and Ms. Martha L. Kahn Sandra and James Lafond Mr. and Mrs. Eugene I. Lambert (L) Mr. and Mrs. Gene Lange (L) Mr. Robert G. Liberatore Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Loughlin Gary and Susan Lytle Mr. Lance Mangum Miss Shirley Marcus Allen Ms. Patricia Marvil Master Print, Inc. John C. McCoy, Esq. (L) Dr. Jeanne-Marie A. Miller Ms. Dee Dodson Morris Mr. Richard Moxley Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Mulcahy Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Muscarella Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence C. Nussdorf Mr. and Mrs. John Oberdorfer Dr. Gerald Perman W. Stephen and Diane E. Piper Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Polinger Mr. and Mrs. Greg Prince Mr. and Mrs. David Reznick Mr. and Mrs. Michael Rosenfeld Mr. Lincoln Ross and Changamire (W) Mr. and Mrs. Michael Rowan Mr. and Mrs. Horacio Rozanski Dr. and Mrs. Hans Schneider Steven and Gretchen Seiler Mr. and Mrs. Armen Simone Mr. and Mrs. Albert H. Small, Jr.
Dr. and Mrs. Ronald Spooner Ms. Carolyn Stennett Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Strong The Manny & Ruthy Cohen Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Tomares Mr. and Mrs. Sami Totah Mr. and Mrs. Jim Trawick G. Duane Vieth, Esq. (L) Drs. Anthony and Gladys Watkins (W) A. Duncan Whitaker, Esq. (L) Drs. Irene and John White Ms. Sensimone Williams Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Winter Mr. and Mrs. Dennis R. Wraase
$500-$999
Anonymous (2) Mr. Andrew Adair Ms. and Mrs. Edward Adams (W) Mr. Donald R. Allen Mr. Jerome Andersen Argy, Wiltse & Robinson, P.C. Hon. and Mrs. John W. Barnum Miss Lucile E. Beaver Dr. and Mrs. Devaughn Belton (W) Ms. Mary Ann Best Ms. Patricia N. Bonds (W) Mr. and Mrs. Charles Both Mr. and Mrs. Russell Brown Mrs. Elsie Bryant (W) Mrs. Gloria Butland (W) Ms. Claire Cherry Dr. Warren Coats, Jr. Compass Point Research and Trading, LLC Mr. and Mrs. F. Robert Cook Mr. John W. Cook Mr. John Dassoulas Dr. and Mrs. Chester W. De Long Mr. and Mrs. James B. Deerin (W) Mrs. Rita Donaldson Mrs. Yoko Eguchi Mr. Chip Ellis Mr. and Mrs. Harold Finger Ms. Maura Fox Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Freeman Dr. and Mrs. Robert Gagosian Dr. Melvin Gaskins Mr. and Mrs. William L. Goldman (W) Jack E. Hairston Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Harry Handelsman (W) Jack and Janis Hanson Mrs. Flora Harper Ms. Barbara Harris Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hartwell Mr. Lloyd Haugh Mr. and Mrs. Louis Hering Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Hodges Mr. and Mrs. Laszlo Hogye Mr. and Mrs. James K. Holman Dr. and Mrs. John Howell Mr. and Mrs. Larry Huggins Ralph N. Johanson, Jr., Esq. (L) Mr. and Mrs. Charles Jones Mrs. Carol Kaplan Ms. Janet Kaufman (W) Mr. and Mrs. John Koskinen Mr. and Mrs. Nick Kotz LA Executive Services Mrs. Albertina Lane (W) Mr. William Lascelle and Blanche Johnson Dr. J. Martin Lebowitz Ms. May Lesar Jack L. Lipson, Esq. (L) Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey A. Lipson Mr. and Mrs. Theodore C. Lutz Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Lynch Ms. Marcie MacArthur Mr. Bill Maddox and Ms. Pamela Hazen Mr. and Mrs. David Maginnes (W) Ms. Hope McGowan Mr. and Mrs. Keith McIntosh Mr. Kevin Joseph McIntyre Mr. and Mrs. Rufus W. McKinney (W) Ms. Cheryl C. McQueen (W) Dr. and Mrs. Larry Medsker Mr. Jeffrey M. Menick Mrs. G. William Miller
Ms. Robin Miller and Ms. Lila Blinder Mr. and Mrs. Adrian L. Morchower (W) Mr. Charles Naftalin Mr. and Mrs. David Neal Mr. and Mrs. David Nicholson Mr. and Mrs. Henry Obering Ms. Elsie O’Grady (W) Mr. Jonn Osborne Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Papoian Ms. Beverly Perry Ms. Robin Phillips and Mr. Andrew Finn (W) Ms. Susan Rao and Mr. Firoze Rao (W) Ms. Nicola Renison Mrs. Lynn Rhomberg Ms. Carolyn Roberts Ms. Elaine Rose Mr. Burton Rothleder Dr. and Mrs. Jerome Sandler Mr. and Mrs. Michael Schultz, in memory of Mr. H. Marc Moyens Mrs. Zelda Segal (W) Dr. Deborah Sewell (W) Mr. and Mrs. Daniel B. Silver Mr. and Mrs. Charles Sonneborn (W) Dana B. Stebbins Dr. and Mrs. Moises N. Steren Mr. David Stern Sternbach Family Fund Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Strickland Dr. and Mrs. Dana Twible Ms. Julie Vass (W) Mr. and Mrs. John Veilleux (W) Mr. John Warren McGarry (L) Mr. and Mrs. Douglas H. Wheeler Mr. and Mrs. John Wilner Mr. and Mrs. James D. Wilson (W) Ms. Linda Winslow
Ms. Christina Witsberger Ms. Bette Davis Wooden Mr. Alexander Yaffe Dr. Saul Yanovich Mr. James Yap Paul Yarowsky and Kathryn Grumbach
IN-KIND DONORS
Arnold & Porter LLP The Beacon Hotel Booz Allen Hamilton Ms. Ossie Borosh Mr. and Mrs. Charles Both The Capital Grille Chevy Chase Embassy of Spain JamalFelder Music Productions LLC The Hay-Adams Hotel Mr. Daniel L. Korengold and Ms. Martha Dippell Dr. and Mrs. Marc E. Leland Ms. Sandy Lerner The Honorable and Mrs. Jan Lodal Lord & Taylor Mars, Incorporated Ms. Jacqueline Badger Mars Mr. Neale Perl Ms. Carol Ridker Mr. Claude Schoch St. Gregory Luxury Hotels & Suites Vermont Avenue Baptist Church Mr. Anthony Williams Kathi and Ed Williamson Mr. John C. Wohlstetter Elizabeth and Bill Wolf Key: (W) Women’s Committee (L) Lawyers’ Committee # Deceased
Washington Performing Arts Society Staff Neale Perl President & CEO Debra Harrison Chief Operating Officer Douglas H. Wheeler President Emeritus Development Carolyn Burke Director of Strategic Philanthropy Daren Thomas Director of Leadership and Institutional Gifts Meiyu Tsung Director of Major Gifts Roger Whyte, II Director of Special Events Michael Syphax Foundation Relations Manager Rebecca Talisman Donor Records Coordinator Helen Aberger Membership Gifts Associate Education Katheryn R. Brewington Assistant Director of Education/ Director of Gospel Programs Megan Merchant Education Program Coordinator Koto Maesaka Education Associate Njambi Embassy Adoption Consultant Michelle Ebert Friere CIS Consultant Kristol Bond, Education Intern Christina Crawford, Education Intern Finance and Administration Allen Lassinger Director of Finance Lorna Mulvaney Accounting Associate
Robert Ferguson Database Administrator Kendra Scott, Operations Assistant Marketing and Communications Jonathan Kerr Director of Marketing and Communications Hannah Grove-DeJarnett Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications Scott Thureen Audience Development Manager Keith A. Kuzmovich Website and Media Manager Celia Anderson Graphic Designer Brenda Kean Tabor Publicist Mike Rowan Marketing and Group Sales Coordinator Corinne Baker Advertising and Marketing Coordinator Programming Samantha Pollack Director of Programming Torrey Butler Production Manager Wynsor Taylor Programming and Production Coordinator Stanley J. Thurston Artistic Director, WPAS Gospel Choirs Ticket Services Office Folashade Oyegbola Ticket Services Manager Christian Simmelink Ticket Services Coordinator Michelle Shelby Ticket Services Assistant Karen McCullough Ticket Services Assistant
Applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 77
Audra McDonald with WPAS board member Beverly Burke and guests
WPAS Legacy Society Legacy Society members appreciate the vital role the performing arts play in the community, as well as in their own lives. By remembering WPAS in their will or estate plans, members enhance our endowment fund and help make it possible for the next generations to enjoy the same quality and diversity of presentations both on stages and in our schools. Mrs. Shirley and Mr. Albert H. Small, Honorary Chairs Mr. Stefan F. Tucker, Chair Anonymous (6) Mr. David G.† and Mrs. Rachel Abraham Dr. and Mrs. Clement C. Alpert Mr. and Mrs. George A. Avery Mr. James H. Berkson † Ms. Lorna Bridenstine † Ms. Christina Co Mather Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Cook Mr. and Mrs. F. Robert Cook Ms. Josephine Cooper Mr. and Mrs. James Deerin Mrs. Luna E. Diamond † Mr. Edison W. Dick and Mrs. Sally N. Dick Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Dickstein Ms. Carol M. Dreher
Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Eagle Ms. Eve Epstein † Mr. and Mrs. Burton Fishman Mrs. Charlotte G. Frank † Mr. Ezra Glaser † Dr. and Mrs. Michael L. Gold Ms. Paula Goldman Mrs. Barbara Gordon Mr. James Harkless Ms. Susan B. Hepner Mr. Carl Hobelman † and Mrs. Grace Hobelman Mr. Craig M. Hosmer and Ms. Daryl Reinke Charles E. Hoyt Josephine Huang, Ph.D. Dr. † and Mrs. Aaron Jackson Mrs. Enid Tucker Johnson Mr. and Mrs. Charles Jones Mr. Sherman E. Katz Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Kimble
Mr. Daniel L. Korengold Dr. Marvin C. Korengold Mr. and Mrs. James Lafond Ms. Evelyn Lear and Mr. Thomas Stewart† Mrs. Marion Lewis † Mr. Herbert Lindow † Mr. and Mrs. Harry Linowes Mr. and Mrs. David Maginnes Ms. Doris McClory † Mrs. Carol Melamed Robert I. Misbin Mr. Glenn A. Mitchell Ms. Viola Musher Mr. Jeffrey T. Neal The Alessandro Niccoli Scholarship Award The Pola Nirenska Memorial Award Mr. Gerson Nordlinger † Mrs. Linda Parisi and Mr. J.J. Finkelstein Mr. and Mrs. Neale Perl Dr. W. Stephen and Mrs. Diane Piper Mrs. Mildred Poretsky † The Hon. and Mrs. Stephen Porter Mrs. Betryce Prosterman † Miriam Rose †
Mr. James J. Sandman and Ms. Elizabeth D. Mullin Mrs. Ann Schein Mr. and Mrs. Hubert (Hank) Schlosberg Ms. Lena Ingegerd Scott Mrs. Zelda Segal Mr. Sidney Seidenman Ms. Jean Head Sisco † Mr. and Mrs. Sanford L. Slavin Mr. and Mrs. Albert H. Small Mr. Robert Smith and Mrs. Natalie Moffett Smith Mrs. Isaac Stern Mr. Leonard Topper Mr. Hector Torres Mr. and Mrs. Stefan Tucker Mr. Ulric † and Mrs. Frederica Weil Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Wheeler Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Winter Ms. Margaret S. Wu In memory of Y. H. and T. F. Wu For more information, please contact Douglas H. Wheeler at (202) 533-1874, or e-mail dwheeler@wpas.org.
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Music Center at
Strathmore
important information
please contact the Ticket Office for replacements.
patrons. Both main entrances have power- assisted doors.
CHILDREN
GIFT CERTIFICATES Gift certificates may be purchased at the Ticket Office.
GROUP SALES, FUNDRAISERS
For ticketed events, all patrons are required to have a ticket regardless of age. Patrons are urged to use their best judgment when bringing children to a concert that is intended for adults. There are some performances that are more appropriate for children than others. Some presenters do not allow children under the age of six years to non-family concerts. As always, if any person makes a disruption during a concert, it is appropriate that they step outside to accommodate the comfort and convenience of other concert attendees. Contact the Ticket Office at (301) 581-5100 for additional information.
For information, call (301) 581-5199 or email groups@strathmore.org.
PARKING FACILITIES
5301 Tuckerman Lane North Bethesda, MD 20852-3385 www.strathmore.org Email: tickets@strathmore.org Ticket Office Phone: (301) 581-5100 Ticket Office Fax: (301) 581-5101 Via Maryland Relay Services for MD residents at 711 or out of state at 1(800) 735-2258
TICKET OFFICE HOURS Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Wednesday 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. Saturday 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Sixty minutes prior to each performance in the Music Center through intermission.
All tickets are prepaid and non-refundable.
Concert parking is located in the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro garage off Tuckerman Lane. At the end of each ticketed event in the Music Center at Strathmore, the exit gates to the garage will be open for 30 minutes to exit the garage. If you leave before, or up to 90 minutes after this 30-minute period, you must show your ticket stub to the Metro attendant to exit at no cost. For all non-ticketed events, Monday – Friday, parking in the garage is $4.75 and may be paid using a Metro SmarTrip card or major credit card. Limited short-term parking also is available at specially marked meters along Tuckerman Lane. To access the Music Center from the GrosvenorStrathmore Metro garage, walk across the glass-enclosed sky bridge located on the 4th level.
WILL CALL
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
Patrons must present the credit card used to purchase tickets or a valid ID to obtain will call tickets.
Strathmore is located immediately adjacent to the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station on the Red Line and is served by several Metro and Ride-On bus routes. See www.strathmore. org, or the Guide to the Music Center at Strathmore for detailed directions.
TICKET POLICIES Unlike many venues, Strathmore allows tickets to be exchanged. Tickets may only be exchanged for shows presented by Strathmore or its resident partner organizations at the Music Center. Exchanges must be for the same presenter within the same season. Ticket exchanges are NOT available for independently produced shows. Please contact the Ticket Office at (301) 581-5100 for details on how to exchange tickets. If a performance is cancelled or postponed a full refund of the ticket price will be available through the Ticket Office for 30 days after the original scheduled performance date.
TICKET DONATION If you are unable to use your tickets, they may be returned for a tax-deductible donation prior to the performance. Donations can be made by mail, fax or in person by 5 p.m. the day of the performance.
MISPLACED TICKETS If you have misplaced your tickets to any performance at Strathmore,
DROP-OFF There is a patron drop-off circle off Tuckerman Lane that brings patrons to the Discovery Channel Grand Foyer via elevator. No parking is allowed in the circle, cars must be moved to the Metro garage after dropping off
COAT CHECK Located in the Promenade across from the Ticket Office. As weather requires, the coat check will be available as a complimentary service to our patrons. If you would like to keep your coat or other belongings with you, please place them under your seat. Coats may not be placed over seats or railings.
THE PRELUDE CAFÉ The Prelude Café in the Promenade of the Music Center at Strathmore, operated by Restaurant Associates, features a wide variety of snacks, sandwiches, entrees, beverages and desserts. It is open for lunch and dinner and seats up to 134 patrons.
CONCESSIONS The Interlude intermission bars offer beverages and snacks on all levels before the show and during intermission. There are permanent bars on the Orchestra, Promenade and Grand Tier levels.
LOST AND FOUND During a show, please see an usher. All other times, please call (301) 581-5100.
LOUNGES AND RESTROOMS Located on all seating levels, except in the Upper Tier.
PUBLIC TELEPHONES Courtesy telephones for local calls are located around the corner from the Ticket Office, in the Plaza Level Lobby, and at the Promenade Right Boxes.
ACCESSIBLE SEATING Accessible seating is available on all levels. Elevators, ramps, specially designed and designated seating, designated parking and many other features make the Music Center at Strathmore accessible to patrons with disabilities. For further information or for special seating requests in the Concert Hall, please call the Ticket Office at (301) 581-5100.
ASSISTIVE LISTENING
The Music Center at Strathmore is equipped with a Radio Frequency Assistive Listening System for patrons who are hard of hearing. Patrons can pick up assistive listening devices at no charge on a first-come, firstserved basis prior to the performance at the coatroom when open, or at the ticket taking location as you enter the Concert Hall with a driver’s license or other acceptable photo ID. For other accessibility requests, please call (301) 581-5100.
ELEVATOR SERVICE There is elevator service for all levels of the Music Center at Strathmore.
EMERGENCY CALLS If there is an urgent need to contact a patron attending a Music Center concert, please call (301) 581-5112 and give the patron’s name and exact seating location, and telephone number for a return call. The patron will be contacted by the ushering staff and the message relayed left with Head Usher.
LATECOMER POLICY Latecomers will be seated at the first appropriate break in the performance as not to disturb the performers or audience members. The decision as to when patrons will be seated is set by the presenting organization for that night.
FIRE NOTICE The exit sign nearest to your seat is the shortest route to the street. In the event of fire or other emergency, please WALK to that exit. Do not run. In the case of fire, use the stairs, not the elevators.
WARNINGS The use of any recording device, either audio or video, and the taking of photographs, either with or without flash, is strictly prohibited by law. Violators are subject to removal from the Music Center without a refund, and must surrender the recording media. Smoking is prohibited in the building. Please set to silent, or turn off your cell phones, pagers, PDAs, and beeping watches prior to the beginning of the performance.
Applause at Strathmore • MAy/june 2012 79
encore by Sandy Fleishman Q. What exactly do you do as director of catering? I meet with clients to find out what kind of event they’re hosting and to get a sense of what they want; then I explain just how we could create their vision. We have the ability to customize everything from menus to décor, drinks, lighting and style of service. I prepare a contract to reflect their preferences. Then, I make sure each and every event is executed properly. Q. What does it take to host a successful event? Looking at every detail of the event but always going over the basics: good food, good drink, good atmosphere and good music. Making guests feel comfortable in the space is an art form in itself, and you have to look ahead and visualize the guest’s experience … to think of every detail before it happens.
Director of Catering Restaurant Associates at Strathmore
Augustine “Augie” Bove III
A
fter 13 years in the insurance industry, Augie Bove decided to “follow my passion for throwing a good party.” The New York native started at Ridgewells Caterers in Bethesda in 1999 and has no regrets. Growing up in a large Italian family, food and special occasions “were a pivotal part of my culture,” he says. In 2002, the Kennedy Center recruited him for its caterer, Restaurant Associates; that firm brought him to Strathmore just before it opened in 2005. “I find my job intrinsically rewarding because I’m helping people with a once-in-alifetime occasion,” Bove says. “So I want everything to go well for them.” 80 applause at Strathmore • may/june 2012
Q. What’s the most interesting party you’ve done? One of the most memorable was the anniversary party for the marketing firm that came up with the GEICO Gecko. They had me create an entire tropical atmosphere with palm trees, orchids, white leather sofas and specialty lighting. Another was the Microsoft holiday party, with a club atmosphere throughout the building. It was fun to bring together lighting designers, décor experts, entertainment companies and even an outdoor fire pit vendor to transform an empty space that [normally] serves as our main lobby for concerts.
MICHAEL VENTURA
Q. How big was the biggest group you’ve handled? We’ve hosted fundraisers as big as 1,400 people, but we also do business meetings for as few as four. The Mansion can accommodate 225 for a standing reception or 150 for a seated dinner. The Music Center has many spaces, of varying sizes; we can hold a seated dinner of 500, or a party for 1,400, depending upon how we utilize the space.
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