overture Hooked for Life Ask a group of BSO musicians about their musical roots and you’ll hear stories as varied as the instruments in the orchestra.
>>
A MAGAZINE FOR THE PATRONS OF THE BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP, MUSIC DIRECTOR APRIL 30, 2010 - JUNE 13, 2010
SYMPHONIC VOYAGES Debut Sail ing
Immerse yourself in classical music aboard a luxury Caribbean cruise. Join the Symphonic Voyages community We’re creating a community of performers and listeners brought together by a shared love of travel and classical music that honors the individuality of each of its members. Our featured artists – Cho-Liang Lin, Susan Lorette Dunn, Alex Shapiro, Larry Rachleff, and the professional musicians in our resident orchestra – will be your fellow passengers. And they can’t wait to meet you!
Make new friends on a musical winter getaway You’ll enjoy daily orchestra concerts and chamber music recitals, plus lectures and discussions, film screenings, and opportunities for informal music-making, all while sailing with Celebrity Cruises from Baltimore to the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. Kitts, Antigua, and St. Maarten.
January 3-15, 2011 Prices start at $1800, and your cabin fare will be reduced by $100 for every friend you refer. In addition, each passenger may choose a performing arts organization to receive a $100 contribution
©2010 Symphonic Voyages. All Rights Reserved
from Symphonic Voyages. Don’t miss your chance to join us – reserve your space today.
Symphonic Voyages is the preferred cruise of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra www.bsomusic.org/symphonicvoyages
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND RESERVATIONS, CALL OR VISIT:
1-800-970-SAIL | WWW.SYMPHONICVOYAGES.COM
contents
14
10
HOOKED FOR LIFE
Ask a group of BSO musicians about their musical roots and you’ll hear stories as varied as the instruments in the orchestra. BY MARIA BLACKBURN
14
ONE ON ONE
BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellow Ilyich Rivas’ passion for conducting dates back to near babyhood.
43 PROGRAM NOTES 17 APRIL 30
Russian Perfection
19 MAY 1
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2
20 MAY 7-9
Beethoven Triple Concerto
24 MAY 13-14
Three Romantics
27 MAY 21-23
A Tribute to Irving Berlin
29 MAY 29
Underground Railroad: An Evening with Kathleen Battle
30 JUNE 3, 4 & 6
Barber, Bartók & Beethoven
33 JUNE 11-13
Brahms’ German Requiem
INTERVIEW BY MARIA BLACKBURN
5
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT AND CEO
6
IN TEMPO
8
BSO LIVE
News of note. Upcoming events you won’t want to miss!
16
ORCHESTRA ROSTER
37
DONORS
43
For BSO clarinetist Edward Palanker, gardening is a labor of love. IMPROMPTU
from the
president
overture BSOmusic.org 410.783.8000
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 2009-2010 Season
Dear Friends,
Marin Alsop Music Director
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra recently announced a new labor agreement with its musicians that will position the institution for financial stability and continued artistic innovation in the years to come.This pivotal two-part contract will maintain the BSO as one of only 17 American orchestras that operates 52 weeks a year. Modifications to the 2010-2011 contract include a freeze in salaries from the current season and two furlough weeks. For the following two seasons, annual salaries will be reduced by 16 percent from 2008-2009 contracted amounts and medical insurance costs will be reduced by 16.5 percent through employee contributions to premiums and deductible payments. I want to personally thank the musicians for their willingness to accept these painful salary concessions and do what is necessary to create a sustainable operating budget in these unprecedented times. As many of us have experienced these past two years, the failing economy has been particularly hard on arts organizations nationwide.The BSO musicians have always stepped up to keep the spirit of the symphony alive in Maryland, starting with their $1 million in concessions as part of the public fundraising campaign, Music Matters. I urge you to rise up to their challenge and donate now at BSOmusic.org/musicmatters. Your support is essential to preserve artistic quality and ensure that the BSO continues as a key contributor to the culture and quality of life in Maryland— not just for today’s audiences, but for future generations.Thank you for your continued support.
Michael G. Bronfein Chairman Paul Meecham President and CEO Eileen Andrews Jackson Vice President of Marketing and Communications Sarah Haller PR & Publications Coordinator Janet E. Bedell Program Annotator
Alter Custom Media Sue De Pasquale Editor Cortney Geare Art Director Jennifer Hale Editorial Assistant Jessica Krznaric Sales Supervisor Maggie Moseley-Farley Senior Sales Consultant Karen R. Bark Marcie Jeffers Sales Consultants Heidi Traband Advertising Designer Kristen Cooper Director of Advertising Cover Photo Taken By Kirsten Beckerman
Paul Meecham President and CEO, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Be Green: Recycle Your Program! Please return your gently used program books to the Overture racks in the lobby. Want to keep reading at home? Please do! Just remember to recycle it when you’re through.
Design and Advertising Sales Alter Custom Media 1040 Park Ave., Suite 200 Baltimore, MD 21201 443.451.0736
www.altercustommedia.com
SOMETIMES CUTTING BACK JUST ISN’T AN OPTION. Your BSO musicians have proactively offered $1 million to help the BSO successfully navigate the setbacks presented by the challenging economic climate. In turn, the musicians ask all who care about the Orchestra to match this commitment with a gift. With your support, the BSO will continue to offer innovative, world-class performances and maintain our commitment to educational programs.
410.783.8124 | BSOmusic.org/musicmatters April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
5
in
Tempo
ROSA FRANK
Cornelius Meister
J. HENRY FAIR
Emanuel Ax
Karen Gomyo
New Season Celebrates Mahler and Rising Stars The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 2010-2011 season celebrates the legendary composer Gustav Mahler, recognizing the 150th anniversary of his birth and the centennial since his death. Mahler’s works are closely associated with themes of youth and the innocence of childhood, prompting the BSO to create a season that also highlights today’s rising young stars and the early works of legendary composers. The Mahler celebration begins with a season-opening concert pairing Mahler’s grand Seventh Symphony with his arrangement of music from Bach’s orchestral suites. In November, the BSO performs the unfinished Tenth symphonies of Mahler and Beethoven. In May, the BSO performs one of Mahler’s most passionate works, Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth). Inspired by the success of the BSO’s first forensic-themed program, CSI: Beethoven, Marin Alsop and the BSO have created an Off the Cuff program dubbed, Analyze This: Mahler and Freud. On November 6, the BSO,“Dr. Freud” and a team of experts reenact a little-known meeting in 1910 between Mahler and the famous psychologist, psychoanalyzing Mahler’s marriage, his music and crippling fear of death. The new season also presents a bevy of artists whose already successful careers belie their youth, including pianist Lukáš Vondrácˇek; violinists Augustin Hadelich and Karen Gomyo; and conductors Cornelius Meister and BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellow Ilyich Rivas. Many of this season’s programs feature the earlier works of legendary composers, such as Rachmaninoff ’s First Piano Concerto and Schubert’s Fifth Symphony—both written when the composers were just 19! The season also includes works celebrating youth, such as Benjamin Britten’s infectious AYoung Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and a co-commission by Baltimore native Philip Glass, Icarus at the Edge of Time, detailing a young boy’s journey to a black hole. Other highlights of the 2010-2011 season include performances by famed pianist Emanuel Ax, a Gala concert with violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and a multimedia event featuring Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush.
RIS CH TIA
To view the entire 2010-2011 lineup, including Classical, BSO SuperPops, Family Concerts and Off the Cuff, please visit BSOmusic.org.
ER TEIN NS
6
Overture
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
MARK SWISHER
Decorators’ Show House to Benefit BSO’s Education Programs If you need interior design inspiration for your home and appreciate innovative décor, then the Baltimore Symphony Associates (BSA) 34th Annual Decorators’ Show House is the event for you! Hosted this year at Woodholme in Pikesville, Maryland, each room of the show house displays brilliant interior designs from award-winning Maryland designers. Featured designers this year include Laura C. Kimball, Maryland Chapter President of the American Society of Interior Designers, Russell Slouck from Gatehouse Interiors and Donna Melvin from Twin Diamond Studios, among others.
Over the course of 10 weeks, 18 designers decorated and furnished the estate’s 24 rooms—including a mural by Pat O’Brien of Cockeysville. Constructed in 1925 during Prohibition, this Tudor-style home features two hidden liquor storage areas: a sliding cabinet behind a bookcase and a wine cellar built into the dining room wall. The four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath home also features a library, a sun porch and an alchemist’s chamber. The completed rooms, as well as the rest of the Woodholme estate, are available for public tours through May 30, with accessories and furnishings used in the rooms available for purchase. There will also be an onsite boutique. Proceeds from the Decorators’ Show House benefit the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s education programs. Show House hours are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance and are available through the BSO Box office, 410-783-8000 or BSOmusic.org. Tickets are $25 at the door. For directions and parking details, please visit BSOmusic.org.
OrchKids Program Expands, Launches Website
BILL DENISON
OrchKids, the BSO’s music education program in West Baltimore, continues to grow to new heights. About to conclude its second year, the program has expanded from 30 first grade students to 155 pre-kindergarten through second grade students at Lockerman Bundy Elementary School. After-school sessions have expanded from three sessions to four sessions a week, and school-day music classes are now part of the OrchKids curriculum. This summer, OrchKids will participate in a four-week summer program at Lockerman Bundy that will include study in musicianship, group lessons, emotional management, reading, math, physical education and off-site enrichment activities. OrchKids will grow again in the 2010-2011 academic year to include third graders at Lockerman Bundy as well as incoming pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students. The success of OrchKids, modeled after Venezuela’s El Sistema, has caught the attention of national media, including “60 Minutes” and National Public Radio. For more information on the program or to donate, please visit its newly launched Web site, BSOmusic.org/OrchKids.
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
7
bsolive
Kathleen Battle
OFF THE CUFF
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 Sat, May 1, 7 p.m. Marin Alsop, conductor
Rachmaninoff ’s ultra-romantic Second Symphony has long been an audience favorite—filled with mesmerizing melodies, passionate musical outbursts and lovingly quiet interludes.Was there a formula to his success at writing a “good tune?” How did he combine it all together into a formally structured symphony? Explore these questions and more as the BSO performs Symphony No. 2 in its entirety, prefaced by enlightening and entertaining insights with Maestra Alsop, all in a 70-minute program with no intermission.
loving portrait of musical charm, and Beethoven Triple Concerto, written for one of the composer’s best piano students, masterfully combines chamber music intimacy with orchestral power.
by famed Canadian pianist Louis Lortie to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Brahms’ Third Symphony is a grandly formed work, glowing with romantic heat.
CASUAL CONCERT
BSO SUPERPOPS
Beethoven Triple Concerto
A Tribute to Irving Berlin
Sat, May 8, 11 a.m.
Fri, May 21, 8 p.m. Sat, May 22, 8 p.m. Sun, May 23, 3 p.m.
Jonathan Carney, leader and violin Amit Peled, cello Jeffrey Sharkey, piano
Jack Everly, conductor Ashley Brown, vocalist Tony DeSare, vocalist and piano Hugh Panaro, vocalist Natasha Yvette Williams, vocalist
This concert features Schubert’s pulsing and lyrical “Unfinished” Symphony and Beethoven Triple Concerto.
Beethoven Triple Concerto
Jonathan Carney, leader and violin Steven Barta, clarinet Phillip Kolker, bassoon Amit Peled, cello Jeffrey Sharkey, piano
This concert features treasures from across two centuries, artfully performed by three soloists drawn from the BSO’s principal musicians, a Peabody professor and the director of the Peabody Institute. Schubert’s pulsing and lyrical “Unfinished” Symphony sets the stage with currents of heartfelt longing. Richard Strauss’ Duett-Concertino is a
8
Overture
Louis Lortie
ELIAS
Fri, May 7, 8 p.m. Sun, May 9, 3 p.m.
Three Romantics Thu, May 13, 8 p.m. Fri, May 14, 8 p.m. Juanjo Mena, conductor Louis Lortie, piano
Romantic flames illuminate three great works from the passionate 19th century. Strauss’ first tone poem, Don Juan, leaps off the page with strength and daring. Schumann’s Piano Concerto blazes with symphonic fortitude and fire—played here
Join the BSO SuperPops and Jack Everly for a program of music by all-American songwriter Irving Berlin, featuring internationally renowned singer and pianist Tony DeSare alongside Broadway star Ashley Brown. Hits include: “Cheek to Cheek,” “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,” “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” “Blue Skies” and “God Bless America.”
Underground Railroad: An Evening with Kathleen Battle Sat, May 29, 8 p.m. Damon Gupton, conductor Kathleen Battle, soprano Morgan State University Choir Eric Conway, director
Superstar Kathleen Battle sings in a new program celebrating the roots of African-American music and freedom via the Underground Railroad.
Roland Park Place is a unique boutique-style continuing care retirement community in the heart of northern Baltimore City.
Featuring favorite spirituals and hymns this evening of enchanting music filled with history, faith and emotion lets Battle’s sumptuous voice take flight.
Barber, Bartók & Beethoven Thu, June 3, 8 p.m. Fri, June 4, 8 p.m. Sun, June 6, 3 p.m. Marin Alsop, conductor André Watts, piano
Renowned pianist André Watts returns to Baltimore with one of his grandest signature works, Beethoven’s last and greatest piano concerto, No. 5, “Emperor.” Music Director Marin Alsop leads performances of Barber’s achingly beautiful Adagio for Strings and offers contrast with Bartók’s unique Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, composed of folk rhythms and tingling sonorities.
410-243-5700 410-243-570 00 TDD: 1-800-735-225 1-800-735-2258 58
AN Not-for-Profit ot-for-Prof it Life Life Care C a re Community C o m m unit y
André Watts
STEVE J. SHERMAN
830 W West est 40th Str Street reet Baltimore, MD 2121 21211 1211 www.rolandparkplace.org www .rolandpa landparkpla ace.org
Brahms’ German Requiem Fri, June 11, 8 p.m. Sat, June 12, 8 p.m. Sun, June 13, 3 p.m. Marin Alsop, conductor Janice Chandler-Etemé, soprano Stephen Powell, baritone The Washington Chorus Julian Wachner, music director
Marin Alsop closes the season with a concert of innocence and remembrance. In Knoxville, Summer of 1915, the words of poet-author James Agee recall an idyllic summer evening, delicately set to Barber’s folk-like music. Brahms’ choral masterpiece, A German Requiem, was begun as a loving farewell to his mother, concluding as a grandly moving musical commentary on the fleeting beauty of human life. Hear engaging musical insights from the experts when you join us for Classical Conversations, a pre-concert lecture free to Friday ticket holders. The program begins at 7 p.m.
IT’S HERE! Dvorˇák Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8 During the 2007–2008 season, Marin Alsop and the BSO began a recording cycle of Czech composer Antonín Dvorˇák’s most renowned symphonies, the Sixth through the Ninth. The first CD in this cycle, featuring the “New World” Symphony and Symphonic Variations, was released during the 2008–2009 season. Once again, we would like to offer you an exclusive opportunity to add our brand new Naxos recording of Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8 to your collection! Only BSO audiences can purchase our limited edition CD at the special price of $15.
Order yours today! Exclusively available at the Symphony Store, located in the Meyerhoff lobby, or online at BSOmusic.org/Recordings
BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA MARIN ALSOP
DVORà ÁK
Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8
SPEC IAL EDIT ION
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
9
Hooked for Life
Ask a group of BSO musicians about their musical roots and you’ll hear stories as varied as the By Maria Blackburn instruments in the orchestra.
10
Overture
“Music is the kind of career
>>
that chooses you; you don’t choose it. It gets a hold of
John Locke
you and you can’t deny it— almost like it’s predestined.”
the kind of career that chooses you; you don’t choose it,” says Locke, who officially joined the BSO as a percussionist in 1988.“It gets a hold of you and you can’t deny it—almost like it’s predestined.” Professional orchestral musicians share a passion for music, a dedication to their craft and the determination to excel in a field that requires not only natural talent, but thousands of hours of instruction and practice. However, if you ask a group of BSO musicians about their musical roots, you’ll hear stories as varied as the instruments in the orchestra.Whether they started playing music as toddlers or as teenagers, were immersed in classical music since birth or weaned on show tunes and rock ‘n’ roll, their wide array of musical experiences and influences, as well as their parents, teachers and mentors, have all played a part in shaping them into the musicians they are today. Igor Yuzefovich, the BSO’s assistant concertmaster, credits his father, a violist and music critic, with starting him on the violin at age 5. His father’s role extended far beyond the act of placing his first violin in his hands, says Yuzefovich.“I was surrounded by music when I was growing up,” he says. “Not only did my father take me to lessons, remind me to practice and support me as
>>
In Fall 1966, a third grader in Somerville, New Jersey, named John Locke auditioned for the percussion section of the Lafayette Elementary School band. It didn’t go well. Locke had to use his drumsticks on a table to mimic a rhythm the teacher played. But someone knocked over a chair in the band room and in the confusion, Locke muddled the rhythm. He didn’t get the part and was devastated. But the 8-year-old refused to give up.“I’m not the kind of person to take no for an answer,” Locke explains today.“If it’s something I really believe in, I am relentless.” When the two students who had been selected to play percussion in the band dropped out, Locke begged his music teacher to let him play.The teacher refused, saying the annual auditions were over. So Locke, who had been taking piano lessons since he was 7, pestered his parents for drum lessons.They were skeptical, but he eventually won them over.“Percussion just seemed really exciting and enthralling to me,” he says.“It got my blood going. I couldn’t dream of playing anything else.” And for the last 40 years, he hasn’t had to.Those drum lessons Locke fought so hard for set him on the path to becoming a professional orchestral musician. By the time he was a senior at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Locke, (who started playing with the BSO as an extra substitute in 1978), had toured Mexico and recorded Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony with the Orchestra.“Music is
CHRISTIAN COLBERG
—John Locke, BSO percussionist
Percussionist John Locke (top) performs here in a 1973 gig with his band Sunrise, which stayed together for six years. More than 30 years later, the band members still get together from time to time to record and hang out.
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
11
French horn player Mary Bisson (below) credits her seventh grade music teacher for giving her the encouragement that launched her orchestral career. She is pictured here with her dog Charlie in a 1969 issue of Kentucky’s Owensboro Messenger & Inquirer.
CHRISTIAN COLBERG
>> Mary Bisson
12
Overture
I was learning how to play, he also took me to concerts with him and would have musicians over to the house.” Yuzefovich, who was born in Moscow and moved to Arlington,Va., with his family in 1991, remembers his father taking him and a few classmates from the Gnessin Music School to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory Great Hall to hear the final round of the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition.The 7-year-old violinists sat in the front row, their feet dangling far above the floor.“It was defining,” he says.“We knew what it took to play and we realized how advanced these players were.” However, just because a child shares a parent’s love for music doesn’t mean they will see eye to eye on all things musical. BSO piccoloist Laurie Sokoloff ’s parents were both on the piano faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music. Her mother Eleanor, who is 95 and still teaches, started Laurie on piano when she was 4.“It was not a happy road,” Sokoloff recalls.“My mother had the best students in the world at Curtis and it was not exactly easy for her to hear me struggling along on the piano.” She studied a few years with her mother before switching to another teacher. When that teacher moved, Sokoloff ’s mother gave her permission to change instruments.They couldn’t agree. Sokoloff wanted to play the harp. Her mother wanted her to play the clarinet.“I had seen clarinet players and it couldn’t have been more the antithesis of what I wanted,” says Sokoloff.“I wanted graceful and extremely feminine and the clarinet was not that.To me it was almost in the same league as the trombone.” They compromised on the flute. Sokoloff began taking lessons and her mother hired flute students from Curtis to
come to their home and practice with her daughter.“It was an incredible gift,” Sokoloff says.“I learned the best and most efficient way to practice and I don’t think I would have learned discipline any other way.” And after three years of lessons, the 15-year-old Sokoloff had become so proficient that she was accepted to Curtis and began studying with William Kincaid, former principal flute with The Philadelphia Orchestra. She began supporting herself as a musician at 16, and in 1969, she joined the BSO at the age of 21.“I never thought of doing anything else,” she says.“Music has been the one constant in my life.” While parents may play a big role in the early development of musicians, teachers are critical when it comes to mentoring and career development. Growing up in the small town of Owensboro, Ky., BSO French hornist Mary Bisson went to orchestra concerts with her mother and listened to jazz and Broadway musicals at home. She credits her seventh grade music teacher with helping her realize her goal of becoming an orchestral musician.“She noticed me and paid me a lot of attention,” says Bisson. Recognizing the 12-year-old’s talent, the teacher gave her piano lessons and music theory lessons. She even told the class that Bisson was playing with the Owensboro Orchestra.“I was embarrassed to tell her that I wasn’t,” says Bisson.“So I tried out and joined. I also found a private horn teacher and some chamber music to play around town. From that point on, I became pretty single-minded about playing the horn.” For BSO cellist Bo Li, his cultural roots and his musical roots are intertwined. Li grew up in China where both of his parents taught at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. He started cello at age 8 with his mother before going on to study in the middle and high school divisions at his parents’ conservatory.“Growing up in a musical family, I heard a lot of classical music,” he says. He practiced it, listened to it on the stereo and heard it live from the voice and cello students his parents sometimes taught at home.
Ellen Pendleton Troyer
competitions in the eighth grade and realized how good she could be if she devoted herself to the violin.Troyer was hooked on what she calls “the music drug.” “I feel most alive when I am playing my violin well,” says Troyer, who joined the first violin section of the BSO in 1991.“I feel completely connected to what’s going on inside me.That feeling is why people go into music—it’s addictive. If you get a teenager hooked on that feeling, you’ve got them for life.” Once you’re a musician, you’re always a musician.“It is part of your life all the time,” says percussionist Locke.“Music is not just what you do, it’s who you are.” Even today, after 32 years playing with the BSO, his heart still quickens at the sound of musicians tuning up, just as it did on his very first night with the Orchestra.“Once the tuning up starts, it becomes all about the music.” He wouldn’t want it any other way.
>>
But Li was also surrounded by traditional Chinese music. Recordings played everywhere he went. He heard people singing music from the Peking Opera in the streets. And while some of Li’s high school classmates at the conservatory played Western instruments like he did, others played traditional Chinese instruments. At the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, his classmates also played both types of instruments.“We were all mixed together,” says Li. That experience stayed with Li through his move to the United States in 1991, the completion of his undergraduate and graduate degrees and the start of his professional career. And when he joined the BSO in 2001, Li realized the value of his multicultural education.“I came to the BSO and I felt very comfortable,” he says. “BSO musicians are from everywhere— from Russia and Eastern Europe, from Asia. I was used to having different cultures around me because those had been my roots from the beginning.” Even musicians who take to their instruments almost instantly, like BSO violinist Ellen Pendleton Troyer did, don’t always face a smooth road. And often, it’s a return to one’s roots, a reconnection to why one started playing in the first place, which can provide guidance. Troyer started playing the violin at the age of 6. By fifth grade, the music became more challenging and her mother sometimes had to bribe her to practice. “I wanted to quit but my mother wouldn’t let me,” she says.Troyer started winning
CHRISTIAN COLBERG
>>
At age 6 (left), even before her first lesson, an excited Ellen Pendleton Troyer shows off her first violin. By the eighth grade, she’d become hooked on what she calls “the music drug.”
“I feel most alive when I am playing my violin well. That feeling is why people go into music—it’s addictive.” —Ellen Pendleton Troyer, BSO first violinist
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
13
one on one
Q. Why did you become a conductor? A. My father, Alejandro Rivas, is a conductor and he’s my main influence. When I was really little, I would go and see him conduct, and after rehearsal I would sit and talk with the musicians. I spent my whole childhood conducting and thinking this was normal, something everyone did. I didn’t consider it a profession. It was something I was passionate about. I guess the reason I didn’t rebel against my parents and become something else was probably because they didn’t impose it on me. Conducting just came naturally and they have always supported me.
KULTUROP
Q. Why did you want to be the BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellow?
For Ilyich Rivas,17 is Sweet Interview by Maria Blackburn
Ilyich Rivas’ passion for conducting dates back to near babyhood. As a toddler, he would stand on a chair in his family’s living room and wave his arms to the classical music playing on the stereo. At 6, he began his formal studies with his conductor father, and by the age of 9, Rivas could conduct all of the Beethoven symphonies from memory. As word of his talent and skill spread, he was invited to train with noted conductors and perform around the world. Last summer, he made his U.S. conducting debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It’s an impressive set of accomplishments for a person of any age. But when you consider that Rivas is 17 years old, it’s extraordinary. Rivas knows he still has more to learn. “To be a conductor, it can’t be that fast,” he says. “It can’t be that at 12 or 13 I’m already conducting with abilities that I’ll have in 20 years. You must dedicate your life to it and each decade you become more mature and more full of the knowledge that the art requires.” Since being awarded the BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellowship and moving to Baltimore in August with his parents and twin sisters, the Venezuelan-born and U.S.-raised teenager has spent much of the last year shuttling between graduate-level classes at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and rehearsals at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The unique two-year program, which was launched in 2007, is designed to support the musical and leadership development of young conductors and is the first partnership of its kind between a symphony orchestra and a conservatory. Rivas, who is the second recipient of the fellowship, will make his BSO conducting debut in October.
14
Overture
A. In this early stage of my professional conducting career, it is important for me to live the life of a student just a little bit longer and to learn as much as I can about everything.The BSO-Peabody Fellowship allows me to experience fine conservatory studies and to work closely with a great orchestra and Marin Alsop. Q. You graduated early from your performing arts high school in Denver to come study in Baltimore. Do you miss anything about your old life? A. There are things that I now miss that I never knew I would miss. Even though I’ve always been accustomed to being around older people and I enjoy it, I do miss being with people my own age. Also, there’s a sense of security when you’re in high school and that’s not the truth anymore. I have to tighten my belt and get to work.There are no excuses.
Q. You spend weeks studying and preparing a single piece. What does that encompass? A. It’s very important to learn the score, to know everything about it and, of course, to work on the physical part of conducting. But most importantly, I think it’s crucial that you get to know the person who
You’ll Love Our New Apartments! composed it—who they were, their personality, what they read, how they thought.This all contributes to the knowledge and depth you can reach with the musicians.That’s really my main concern and what my father and I focus on.
Q. Do you ever feel like your age is an issue to the musicians you lead? A. Sometimes I do, before I get on the podium for the first rehearsal. But once I start talking to the musicians and they see that I am prepared, they gain comfort with me and I completely forget. My goal is to get everyone to forget.
Q. You’ve had the opportunity to conduct the BSO in rehearsal twice this year. What was that like? A. It was wonderful.The first time I conducted the BSO was my audition in February 2009.They played Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 and I did the third and some of the fourth movement. I had so much pressure on myself because this was my first time with a major orchestra and they reacted so incredibly well and so immediately to small things that other orchestras had never reacted to before. Gestures that I did and had to go back and explain later to other orchestras, they picked up right away. It was like driving a Ferrari.
-inclusive healthcare, maintenance-free apartments, and interesting friends are a way of life at Broadmead. Now we also have new apartments with larger floor plans and beautiful views. To schedule your personal visit, please call Karolyn at 443-578-8006. Come catch the Broadmead spirit! Broadmead is an inclusive, accredited, not-for-profit Continuing Care Retirement Community founded and operated in the caring Quaker tradition.
www.broadmead.org TTY/Voice~Maryland Relay Service 1-800-201-7165
410 323 1700 •
•
H\N 50th Anniversary
Q. Do you drive? A. No, not yet. But I love cars and I can only imagine what it would be like to drive a Ferrari.
The Nursing Care Specialists
THYPU HSZVW»Z Z\TTLY VHZPZ
R.N.s • L.P.N.s Certified Nurses Aides Companions Home Nursing Care Private Duty Hourly • Live-in
OPNKVU
NSHZZ
ZHU[H JY\a JH
Most Insurances & Credit Cards Accepted Licensed & Bonded • 24-Hour Service
[\YUHNL
LPNO[O ISHJRIPYK
RECOMMENDED BY LEADING HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS
ElizabethCooneyAgency.com
J\YYPL
Z\[[LY
JHIYPSSV MLZ[P]HS VM JVU[LTWVYHY` T\ZPJ
¸\YNLU[ PUKPZWLUZHISL HUK ZL_`¹
³-PUHUJPHS ;PTLZ
JHIYPSSVT\ZPJ VYN April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
15
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 2009-2010 Season
Marin Alsop, GRANT LEIGHTON
Music Director
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 in the United Kingdom, 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, Ms. 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 and Sciences and in 2009 Musical America named her “Conductor of the Year.” A regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ms. Alsop also appears frequently as a guest conductor with some of the most distinguished orchestras around the world. In addition to her performance activities, she is also an active recording artist with award-winning cycles of Brahms and Barber orchestral works. Ms. 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.
Marin Alsop Music Director, Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Chair Jack Everly Principal Pops Conductor Yuri Temirkanov Music Director Emeritus Mei-Ann Chen Assistant Conductor and League of American Orchestras Conducting Fellow Ilyich Rivas 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 Yasuoki Tanaka 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 George Orner Julie Parcells Christina Scroggins Wayne C. Taylor James Umber Charles Underwood Melissa Zaraya
Violas Richard Field Principal, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone Chair Noah Chaves Associate Principal Christian Colberg Assistant Principal Peter Minkler
Karin Brown Sharon Pineo Myer Genia Slutsky Delmar Stewart Jeffrey Stewart Mary Woehr
Cellos Ilya Finkelshteyn* Principal, Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Chair Chang Woo Lee Associate Principal Dariusz Skoraczewski Assistant Principal Bo Li Susan Evans Seth Low Esther Mellon Kristin Ostling Paula SkolnickChildress
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 Shea Scruggs Assistant Principal 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
James Olin Co-Principal John Vance
Bass Trombone Randall S. Campora
Tuba David T. Fedderly Principal
Timpani Dennis Kain Principal Christopher Williams Assistant Principal
Edward Palanker
Percussion
E-flat Clarinet
Christopher Williams Principal, Lucille Schwilck Chair John Locke Brian Prechtl
Christopher Wolfe
Bassoons Phillip A. M. Kolker Principal Julie Green Assistant Principal Fei Xie
Contrabassoon David P. Coombs
Horns Philip Munds Principal, USF&G Foundation Chair Gabrielle Finck Associate Principal Beth Graham Assistant Principal David Bakkegard Mary C. Bisson Bruce Moore
Trumpets Andrew Balio Principal, Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Chair Rene Hernandez Assistant Principal Jonathan Kretschmer
Trombones Christopher Dudley Principal, Alex. Brown & Sons Chair
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 Frank Serruto Stagehand Todd Price Electrician Larry Smith Sound *on leave
The musicians who perform for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra do so under the terms of an agreement between the BSO and Local 40-543, AFM.
16
Overture
program notes
Friday, April 30, 2010 8 p.m. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Russian Perfection Presenting Sponsor:
Marin Alsop Gil Shaham Jonathan Leshnoff Igor Stravinsky
Conductor Violin Starburst Violin Concerto in D Major Toccata Aria I Aria II Capriccio GIL SHAHAM
INTERMISSION
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27 Largo - Allegro moderato Allegro molto Adagio Allegro vivace
The concert will end at approximately 9:45 p.m. Jonathan Leshnoff’s Starburst is dedicated to Dr. Solomon Snyder.
well, including his wife, violinist Adele Anthony; his sister, pianist Orli Shaham; and his brother-in-law, conductor David Robertson. Many of his recordings are bestsellers that have earned prestigious awards, including multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’or and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. His most recent recordings have been produced for his own label Canary Classics: The Fauré Album with Akira Eguchi, The Prokofiev Album with Orli Shaham and Mozart in Paris. Gil Shaham was born in ChampaignUrbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved to Israel with his parents at the age of 7 where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music, and was granted annual scholarships by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, while studying with Haim Taub in Jerusalem, he made his debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic.That same year, he began his studies with Dorothy DeLay and Jens Ellerman at Aspen. In 1982, he took first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition and became a scholarship student at Juilliard, where he worked with DeLay and Hyo Kang. He has also studied at Columbia University. He was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990. NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Starburst
Jonathan Leshnoff Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, September 8, 1973; now living in Baltimore
Support for this program is generously provided by and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. Media Sponsor: WYPR 88.1 Support for the appearance of Gil Shaham is provided by the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Guest Artist Fund.
Marin Alsop For Marin Alsop’s bio, please see p. 16.
CHRISTIAN STEINER
Gil Shaham Internationally recognized by audiences and critics alike as one of today’s most virtuosic and engaging
classical artists, Gil Shaham is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with celebrated orchestras and conductors, as well as for recital and ensemble appearances on the great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals. In addition to his many orchestral engagements, he regularly tours in recital with pianist Akira Eguchi. He enjoys musical collaborations with his family as
For a number of years, Baltimore composer Jonathan Leshnoff wrote finely crafted works that were only known to a small circle, especially at the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra where he is composer-inresidence. But more recently, the career of this graduate of Johns Hopkins, the Peabody Institute and the University of Maryland has taken off and received major attention in the U.S. and Europe. The Philadephia Orchestra commissioned a concerto from him for its principal flute Jeffrey Khaner, which will be premiered there in 2011 under the baton of Charles Dutoit.The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia asked for a 50-minute oratorio April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
17
program notes for the Kimmel Center’s inaugural International Arts Festival, also in 2011. The Naxos label embarked on a three-disc project showcasing Leshnoff ’s music, and already the first disc, featuring his impressive Violin Concerto, is among its top-40 sellers.The second Naxos CD, with his beautiful Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, will be released in November. An associate professor of music at Towson University, Leshnoff writes music that is emotionally powerful, melodically rich and elegantly orchestrated and that, moreover, is rooted in tonality (though he says he has invented his own harmonic system) and thoroughly accessible. Many critics have called him a neo-romantic, although he doesn’t particularly like the term. And he doesn’t think that his new Starburst is particularly neo-romantic in style. Receiving its world premiere at this concert, Starburst was commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. Leshnoff credits Dr. Solomon Snyder—longtime member of the BSO Board of Directors and a generous donor for new works—for the commission and has dedicated Starburst to him.Two other orchestras joined in as co-commissioners: the Kansas City Symphony and its music director Michael Stern, and the Fundación Orquesta de Extremadura in Spain and its music director Jesús Amigo. Leshnoff chose the name Starburst because “the word has a lot of energy to it and I like the image of light.” He adds that the piece has “lots of orchestral shimmer” with its emphasis on fast patterns in the upper woodwinds and strings. Starburst is structured in two parts.Two important motives are introduced at the beginning: a running or “fleeting” motive in the woodwinds and a rhythmically crisper, more detached idea in the strings.The music climbs to a big outburst, and then a clarinet cadenza in a much slower tempo leads to the second phase.The fleeting motive returns in a march-like, repetitive guise.“From then on, the piece gets bigger and bigger until it explodes at the end— just like its name.” Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. 18
Overture
Violin Concerto in D Major
Igor Stravinsky Born in Oranienbaum, Russia, June 17, 1882; died in New York City, April 6, 1971
In the 1930s, an era dominated by such violin virtuosos as Jascha Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler, the young Polish-American violinist Samuel Dushkin knew better than to challenge these superstars on the core Beethoven-Brahms-Bruch repertoire. Fortunately, Dushkin had a genuine passion for contemporary music and a desire to expand violinists’ options. In the spirit of nothing ventured, nothing gained, he approached Willy Strecker of the German publishing house of B. Schott to see if Strecker would act as intermediary in commissioning a concerto from Igor Stravinsky. Impressed with the idea, Strecker made the match early in 1931. The composer was initially less enthusiastic.“I hesitated at first, because I am not a violinist and I was afraid that my slight knowledge of that instrument would not be sufficient to enable me to solve the many problems … of a major work specially composed for it.” Stravinsky also had little patience with the vanities of star virtuosos. But he was pleasantly surprised by Dushkin:“Besides his remarkable gifts as a born violinist, he possessed musical culture … and—in the exercise of his profession—an abnegation that is very rare.” The two collaborated closely on the concerto, which they premiered together in Berlin on October 23, 1931. For several years thereafter, they gave recitals together, for which Stravinsky created his Duo concertant for violin and piano. The Violin Concerto in D is a shining example of the spirit and manner of Stravinsky’s neo-classical period. In full revolt from late Romanticism and his early folk-Russian style, the composer since the early 1920s had espoused a rigorously abstract aesthetic inspired by the forms and musical language of the 18th-century Baroque masters. In creating his Violin Concerto, he dismissed the standard concertos as models and harkened back to Bach.“The subtitles of my Concerto— ‘Toccata,’‘Aria,’‘Capriccio’—may suggest Bach, and so, in a superficial way, might the musical substance. I am very fond of the Bach Concerto for Two Violins as the duet of the soloist with a violin from the
orchestra in the last movement … may show. But my Concerto employs other duet combinations too, and the texture is almost always more characteristic of chamber music than of orchestral music.” This chamber music-like relationship between soloist and orchestra sets this work apart from the typical solo showcase vehicle; as the composer wrote:“I did not care about exploiting violin virtuosity … because the violin in combination was my real interest.” But when he claimed,“the technical demands of the piece are relatively tame,” he misleads us. Stravinsky larded the solo part with difficult multiple-stopped chords, beginning with the very first sound we hear: the violinist playing the three open strings of D, A and E, but with the A lofted two octaves into the stratosphere. He called it the “passport” to the entire work, and its shocking, astringent sound launches all four movements. The opening toccata has the ironic detachment characteristic of many of Stravinsky’s neo-classical works. After the “passport” chord grabs our attention, trumpets, then oboes introduce a twisting Baroque “turn” ornament from which the soloist builds a wry theme.The music becomes more emotionally engaged in the two slow middle movements in the form of the Baroque aria da capo. Most striking of these is “Aria II” in which the “passport” is a cry of anguish introducing a richly ornamented song for the soloist, plumbing depths of feeling.The final capriccio is a light-hearted dance of changing partners, in which the soloist duets in turn with bassoon, horn, an orchestral violin and flute. Incisive Stravinskian rhythms close the work with authority. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum and strings. Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27
Sergei Rachmaninoff For notes on this program, please see p. 19.
program notes
Saturday, May 1, 2010 7 p.m. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Off The Cuff
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 Presenting Sponsor:
Marin Alsop Sergei Rachmaninoff
Conductor Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27 Largo - Allegro moderato Allegro molto Adagio Allegro vivace
The concert will end at approximately 8:10 p.m.
Marin Alsop For Marin Alsop’s bio, please see p. 16. NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27
Sergei Rachmaninoff Born in Oneg, Russia, April 1, 1873; died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943
One of the most lavishly gifted of musicians, Sergei Rachmaninoff, was not only a composer, but one of the 20th century’s greatest pianists and during his Russian years, a celebrated operatic and symphonic conductor as well. But he often found his multiple talents more of a curse than a blessing. As he explained, “When I am concertizing, I cannot compose. When I feel like writing music, I have to concentrate on that—I cannot touch the piano.When I am conducting, I can neither compose nor play concerts. … I have to concentrate on any one thing I am doing to such a degree that it does
not seem to allow me to take up anything else.” In 1906, the urge to compose predominated. But first Rachmaninoff had to extricate himself from his post as conductor at Moscow’s Imperial Grand Theater and the hectic social life that came with it.To secure the serenity he needed for creation, he moved his family to Dresden, where he lived virtually incognito for the next three years.The fruits of this self-imposed exile included his First Piano Sonata, the brooding tone poem The Isle of the Dead and his Second Symphony. Composing this work required laying some demons to rest. In 1897, Rachmaninoff ’s First Symphony had had a disastrous premiere in St. Petersburg; the brutal reviews it received almost scuttled his composing career for good.Thus, he was very secretive with friends and the press about what he was up to in Dresden, even flatly denying he was working on a
symphony. “I give my solemn word—no more symphonies. Curse them! I don’t know how to write them, but mainly I don’t want to.” But in fact the Second Symphony was drafted at high speed in the final months of 1906, then painstakingly revised and orchestrated throughout 1907. Rachmaninoff returned to Russia to conduct its premiere in St. Petersburg on January 26, 1908; its unqualified success finally vindicated his powers as a symphonist. Soviet music critic Konstantin Kuznetsov has called this work the “Russian Lyric Symphony”—“so direct and sincere are its themes, and so naturally and spontaneously do they develop.” Indeed, the Second draws its power and popularity from Rachmaninoff ’s talent for creating ardent, emotionally compelling melodies. “Music must first and foremost be loved,” he once said. “It must come from the heart and it must be directed to the heart. Otherwise it cannot hope to be lasting, indestructible art.” The first movement grows from its opening phrase, played quietly by cellos and basses.This motto idea—an upward sigh of a half step, sinking back into a curling four-note tail—spawns all this movement’s themes and underpins the entire symphony.The violins immediately spin it into a swirling melody.The music of this slow introduction reaches a peak of emotional ardor before the English horn leads smoothly into the main Allegro section. Above rocking clarinets, the violins introduce the principal theme, itself more lyrical and expansive than most symphonic first themes. A dramatic transitional passage provides necessary contrast before Rachmaninoff presents his even more lyrical second theme, with melancholy woodwind sighs and a soaring violin melody. Solo violin launches the development section, which explores the dramatic potential of the motto.We only realize we are safely home from this turbulence when the woodwind-violin second theme reprises its tender melancholy. The second-movement scherzo is as vigorous as the first movement was languorous.Throughout his career, Rachmaninoff used the stark, (continued on p. 36) April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
19
program notes Jonathan Carney
Sunday, May 9, 2010 3 p.m.
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
GRANT LEIGHTON
Friday, May 7, 2010 8 p.m.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Beethoven Triple Concerto Jonathan Carney Steven Barta Phillip Kolker Amit Peled Jeffrey Sharkey
Leader and Violin Clarinet Bassoon Cello Piano
Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759, “Unfinished” Allegro moderato Andante con moto
Richard Strauss
Duett-Concertino Allegro moderato Andante Rondo PHILLIP KOLKER STEVEN BARTA
INTERMISSION
Concerto for Piano,Violin, Cello and Orchestra in C Major, op. 56, “Triple Concerto” Allegro Largo Rondo alla polacca JONATHAN CARNEY AMIT PELED JEFFREY SHARKEY
The concert will end at approximately 9:35 p.m. on Friday and 4:35 p.m. on Sunday.
Support for the appearance of Jonathan Carney is provided by the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Guest Artist Fund.
20
Overture
Steven Barta
CHRISITAN COLBERG
Ludwig van Beethoven
BSO Concertmaster Jonathan Carney is currently in his eighth season with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra after serving 12 seasons in the same position with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also appointed concertmaster of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 1994 and the Basque National Orchestra in 1996. Born in New Jersey, Mr. Carney hails from a musical family with all six members having graduated from The Juilliard School. After completing his studies with Ivan Galamian and Christine Dethier, he was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to continue his studies in London at the Royal College of Music. Recent solo performances have included concertos by Bruch, Korngold, Khatchaturian, Sibelius, Nielsen, Brahms’ Double Concerto and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, which was featured as a live BBC broadcast from London’s Barbican Hall. He has made a number of recordings, including concertos by Mozart, Vivaldi and Nielsen, sonatas by Brahms, Beethoven and Franck, and a disc of virtuoso works of Sarasate and Kreisler with his mother Gloria Carney as pianist. New releases include Beethoven’s “Archduke” and “Ghost” trios, the cello quintet of Schubert and a Dvorˇák disc with the Terzetto and four Romantic pieces for violin. He currently serves as artistic advisor for the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras. He is also an artist-in-residence at the Baltimore School for the Arts and serves on its board of directors.
Steven Barta has been principal clarinet of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 1976. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Robert Marcellus. He also studied with Harold Wright at the Marlboro Music Festival, with additional
program notes (New York), Salle Gaveau (Paris),Wigmore Hall (London), Konzerthaus (Berlin) and Mann Auditorium (Tel Aviv). He frequently performs and gives master classes at prestigious summer music festivals such as the Marlboro Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute, Schleswig Holstein Festival, Euro Arts Festival in Germany, Gotland Festival in Sweden, Prussia Cove Festival in England, the Violoncello Congress in Spain and the Kfar Blum Music Festival in Israel. Mr. Peled is a professor at the Peabody Institute. In 2009-2010, he will make his debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Columbus Symphony; return to Taiwan for Brahms’ Double Concerto with the National Symphony; and perform with the Jerusalem Symphony and Maestro Botstein in Israel.
studies at Boston University,Tanglewood and the Blossom Festival School. Equally versatile in chamber music, he has performed with the Festival Chamber Players, Music from Gretna, in the “Music by Candlelight” series and at the Peabody Institute. He has also been a member of the Baltimore Wind Quintet, composed of principals from the BSO. On the faculty of the Peabody Institute since 1984, Mr. Barta has also taught at the Catholic University in Washington D.C. He has given master classes at Yale University, Northwestern University, Colorado College, the University of Delaware and the University of Memphis. In 1998, he was appointed to the faculty of the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong.
Phillip Kolker, principal bassoon of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 1972, has appeared as soloist with the Orchestra, as well as with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and with orchestras in Spain and Taiwan. He is a member of the artist faculty of the Peabody Institute where he serves as chair of the Department of Orchestral Instruments and Organ. He has also been a visiting professor at the Eastman School of Music, and has presented master classes at the Curtis Institute, Eastman, the National Orchestral Institute, the Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp, the Interlochen National Music Camp and in Korea and Taiwan. He has been a featured recitalist at several International Double Reed Conventions (IDRS) and has served on the executive committee of the IDRS. Mr. Kolker made his first appearance as a professional bassoon player with the Albany Symphony Orchestra when he was 14 years old.
Amit Peled Amit Peled has performed as soloist with orchestra and in the world’s major concert halls including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall
Jeffrey Sharkey JENNIFER BISHOP
CHRISITAN COLBERG
Phillip Kolker
Jeffrey Sharkey is director of the Peabody Institute and serves on its chamber music faculty. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music, earned a master’s degree in composition from Yale University and a master’s degree in philosophy from Cambridge University. He studied piano with John Browning, Constance Keene, Boris Berman, Leon Bates and Peter Frankl and composition with Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Jacob Druckman and Michael Friedman. His compositions have been performed by the St. Louis Symphony, at the Purcell Room and on WQXR Radio in New York. He has been a faculty member at the Aberystwyth and Dartington music festivals in the U.K. and the Heifetz Institute and Adirondack Music festivals in the U.S. His chamber music students have formed professional touring ensembles and given performances at major venues in the U.K. and U.S. He was formerly dean of the Cleveland Institute of Music, director of music at The Purcell School and head of composition and academic music at Wells Cathedral School.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, “Unfinished”
Franz Schubert Born in Vienna, January 31, 1797; died in Vienna, November 19, 1828
Since Schubert died at the tragically young age of 31, many listeners may assume that death cut off his magnificent B Minor Symphony known as the “Unfinished.” But the two movements and a partial sketch of a third movement were actually written in October– November 1822, when the composer was 25. After his first six symphonies, written between ages 16 and 21, Schubert seems to have had trouble achieving the next stage of his symphonic expression.The B Minor was the third symphony he tossed away without completing, most likely because he did not know where to take his revolutionary new conception. Because this work is so well loved today, it is difficult for us to appreciate how radical it was for 1822. Its tone and emotional content were altogether new, and both movements share a bittersweet pathos juxtaposed against violent outbursts. Big in conception, if completed it would have been longer than Beethoven’s “Eroica.” And Schubert’s sound world here is utterly distinctive: predominantly dark and colored by the plaintive sounds of the woodwinds, particularly clarinet and oboe, which are given much important thematic material. First movement: Nothing could be more distinctive than the symphony’s opening. Deep and almost inaudibly in the cellos and basses, we hear a brooding theme that Schubert will make much use of later. Then a mysterious rushing figure in the violins leads to the principal theme, intoned by solo oboe and clarinet. Soon the cellos announce the famous second theme, this symphony’s trademark. But before that lovely melody can complete itself, the orchestra interrupts with a fortissimo explosion; this battle between gentle lyricism and fierce outbursts will characterize the entire movement.The development section is built entirely around that deep introductory theme; now Schubert explores its potential with a passion and power worthy of Beethoven.At movement’s end, we hear this theme again, now broken and dying away. April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
21
program notes The interplay between the lyrical and the dramatic continues in the Andante con moto second movement in E major. A stealthy pizzicato descending figure in the bass leads immediately into another yearning Schubertian melody in the strings. A new section is introduced by an arching theme for violin, followed by haunting solos for clarinet and oboe.These lyrical interludes are again smashed by a fortissimo passage of grandeur and harmonic searching. After reprises of both sections comes an ethereal coda with a twist of pain; it is built from the violins’ arching theme and fragments of the main theme wandering in strange harmonic territory. So beautiful, so complete is this ending that we feel this work is well and truly “finished.” Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings. Duett-Concertino
Richard Strauss Born in Munich, Bavaria, June 11, 1864; died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, September 8, 1949
As World War II came to a close, Richard Strauss was forced to leave his broken and defeated land. In the chaos of a destroyed Germany, he could no longer access the royalties from his compositions; furthermore, he faced a de-nazification tribunal before he could take up any work as a conductor again. For a few years, he sought refuge in Switzerland while questions about his ill-advised brief tenure as president of the Reichsmusikkammer were being cleared up.Though Strauss could happily compose music under virtually any conditions, he constantly was forced to move from hotel to hotel after his outrageously demanding wife, Pauline, had made herself persona non grata with each management. Nevertheless, a few exquisite last works flowed from his pen. His last purely instrumental work, the Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon written swiftly in 1947, epitomized his late style: reduced orchestra and highly refined writing paying tribute to his life-long passion for the 18th century and especially for Mozart.This is music that shares almost nothing in common with the spectacular, 22
Overture
large-orchestra tone poems of his youth, like Don Juan (to be played by the BSO next week). Duett-Concertino, nevertheless, was inspired by a little story line, although Strauss didn’t choose to follow it slavishly as he did in his earlier tone poems. The unusual choice of wind soloists was inspired by Strauss’ admiration for Hugo Burghauser, once principal bassoon for the Vienna Philharmonic and an old friend, who had recently moved to New York City to play in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.The composer wrote to Burghauser telling him about his intentions: “I am even busy with an idea for a double concerto for clarinet and bassoon thinking especially of your beautiful tone.” He further added that he was thinking about a “Beauty and the Beast” scenario for the work: a beautiful princess (the clarinet) is frightened by the grotesque cavorting of a bear (the bassoon) in imitation of her. Finally, the bear wins her over, and she dances with him, upon which it turns into a prince. “So in the end, you too will turn into a prince, and all live happily ever after,” Strauss told Burghauser. Burghauser, however, did not play the premiere of Duett-Concertino, which was given by the Italian-Swiss Radio Orchestra and its soloists in Lugano, Switzerland on April 4, 1948.The work is scored for a chamber orchestra of strings and harp, with a quintet of string soloists juxtaposed against the full ensemble. Its three movements—the last as long as the first two combined—flow together without pause. All the movements share much of the same thematic material. The first movement begins like chamber music with only the string quintet playing elegantly lyrical music that recalls the prelude to Strauss’ last opera, Capriccio (1941).The little twirling figure that launches the music is the motive from which the work is built. From this, the clarinet emerges, singing a beautiful, expansive melody that undulates gracefully over a large range. Stumbling up the scale, the clumsy bassoon tries to join in, but the clarinet shrieks and takes flight. The bassoon persists with his own song, and eventually, the two soloists join in a rhythmically conflicting duet.
The music flows seamlessly into an Andante slow movement. Under shimmering strings, the bassoon takes on a more princely character and sings a noble romantic aria; the clarinet responds rapturously, and an ardent love duet ensues. A brief, cadenza-like dialogue between the two forms the link to the finale. In this effervescent Rondo, the twirling motive heard at the beginning of the work generates a limpid, dancing rondo theme. Finally reconciled to each other, clarinet and bassoon are compatible and equal partners. Even the bassoon’s stumbling upward scale is now smooth and assured and happily adopted by the clarinet.The work closes in a joyous fantasia on the twirling motive. Instrumentation: Solo clarinet, solo bassoon, harp and strings. Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello in C Major, op. 56, “Triple Concerto”
Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, Germany, December 16, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827
Throughout the first half of his career, Beethoven was fascinated by the chamber ensemble known as the piano trio: piano, violin and cello. In fact, his first official opus number, dating from 1795, consisted of three piano trios.The most famous of his works in this genre is the beloved “Archduke” Trio of 1810–1811, and it was this same Archduke, Rudolf of Austria, youngest son of Emperor Leopold II and brother to Emperor Franz, who probably instigated the creation of the unusual work we hear at these concerts. Rudolf was a gifted pianist and musician who became Beethoven’s most devoted patron, only composition student and—within the limits of their different stations—close friend. He performed Beethoven’s piano trios, including his namesake, and purportedly dreamed of playing in a trio set within the grander context of the orchestra. In 1803–1804, when work on his opera Fidelio was being delayed by problems at the Theater an der Wien, Beethoven took up Rudolf ’s challenge. The challenge was indeed formidable: how to showcase not one but three soloists within the confines of the concerto format
program notes
Saturday, May 8, 2010 11 a.m. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Casual Concert
Beethoven Triple Concerto Jonathan Carney Amit Peled Jeffrey Sharkey
Leader and Violin Cello Piano
Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, “Unfinished” Allegro moderato Andante con moto
Ludwig van Beethoven
Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C Major, op. 56, “Triple Concerto” Allegro Largo Rondo alla polacca JONATHAN CARNEY AMIT PELED JEFFREY SHARKEY
The concert will end at approximately 12:10 p.m. on Saturday. Bios and Program Notes for this program appear on pages 20-23.
Beethoven had already established in his first three piano concertos. Obviously, something had to give. In his last three piano concertos, Beethoven had created a symphonic model in which the orchestra challenged the soloist for supremacy. But in order to give equal time to all of his soloists, Beethoven here had to prune the orchestral part considerably. A subsidiary problem was how to balance the solo parts so that the dark-toned cello would not be covered by the brilliant violin and percussive piano.This Beethoven solved by writing the cello part mostly in its highest register and making it the leader of the
trio, introducing all the principal themes. Because Archduke Rudolf ’s piano technique was not on the virtuoso level of Beethoven’s, the piano part is not as difficult as the violin and cello parts, but Beethoven cleverly concealed this. (Incidentally, Rudolf—for reasons we do not know—did not ultimately play the piano part at the work’s premiere in 1808.) The Allegro first movement, in the home key of C major, is big in gesture and length, extroverted in spirit and often martial in tone.Yet it begins very quietly with cellos and basses mysteriously previewing the principal theme.Then
Beethoven dramatically builds this theme through a lengthy crescendo to a heroic fortissimo.The violins promptly introduce the second theme: an expressive rising melody launched by crisp dotted rhythms. An imperial orchestral summons the soloists on stage, with the cello leader singing the principal theme.The orchestra proposes yet another bold melody, which the soloists leap upon, exploring its lyrical, songful qualities, before the cello takes up the true second theme from the orchestral exposition.The soloists dominate the development section, which takes on the tone of a strenuous quarrel among the three. The very slow middle movement is brief but unforgettable. It is essentially a beautiful and moving aria for the cello, eventually blossoming into a duet with the violin over a florid piano accompaniment. After it moves into a more dramatic phase and we are expecting to hear a reprise of the aria, the cello instead swings directly into the spirited polonaise refrain of the finale. Robert Simpson calls this Rondo alla polacca—“the grandest and most comprehensive of all polonaises.” Made famous by Chopin, the polonaise is an aristocratic Polish dance dating back to the Renaissance; it is in a moderate triple meter with a strongly accented characteristic rhythm. Beethoven’s polonaise refrain is a sweeping, unforgettable tune, given subtle coloration by the cello’s unexpected modulation to E major before the violin’s entrance. Later in the movement, listen for the dramatic return of this refrain over a showy long piano trill. Near the close, Beethoven surprises us by switching from 3/4 to 2/4 for a virtuoso high-speed version of the refrain led by the violin. But the stately triple meter soon returns for a finish of imperial grandeur. Instrumentation: Solo violin, solo cello, solo piano, 1 Flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2010
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
23
program notes Among his most recent and upcoming debuts are the Atlanta Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Houston Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Oregon Symphony and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Worldwide, he has appeared with the BBC Philharmonic, Bern Symphony, Bucharest Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orquesta Filarmónica de Santiago, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, Oslo Philharmonic, RAI Symphony Orchestra, RSO/Berlin and the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra. Juanjo Mena has recorded extensively for the Basque Radio, Basque Television (EITB), European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Spanish National Radio (RNE) and the Spanish National Television (RTVE). He has also recorded a complete symphony collection of Basque music with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra for Naxos International. Mr. Mena has also served as music director of the Bilbao Symphony, artistic director of the Jesús Guridi Chamber Orchestra and associate conductor of the Euskadi Symphony Orchestra in Spain.
Thursday, May 13, 2010 8 p.m. Friday, May 14, 2010 8 p.m.
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Three Romantics Juanjo Mena Louis Lortie Richard Strauss Robert Schumann
Conductor Piano Don Juan, op. 20 Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 54 Allegro affettuoso Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso Allegro vivace LOUIS LORTIE
INTERMISSION
Louis Lortie Symphony No. 3 in F Major, op. 90 Allegro con brio Andante Poco allegretto Allegro ELIAS
Johannes Brahms
The concert will end at approximately 9:55 p.m.
Media Sponsors: Urbanite Magazine and WYPR 88.1 Support for the appearance of Louis Lortie is provided by the Alvin and Fanny Blaustein Thalheimer Guest Artist Fund.
Juanjo Mena Principal guest conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Norway) and chief guest conductor at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Juanjo Mena is one of the most 24
Overture
distinguished and dynamic conductors of his generation. Born in Spain, he has appeared with most of the principal symphony and chamber orchestras of his native country. Since Mr. Mena’s highly successful North American debut in 2004 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, his presence in the U.S. has steadily increased.
Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has been praised for the fresh perspective and individuality he brings to a broad spectrum of the keyboard canon. He has performed with such conductors as Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Charles Dutoit, Riccardo Chailly, Kurt Sanderling, Sir Andrew Davis,Wolfgang Sawallisch and Osmo Vanska. He has also appeared in chamber music projects with musicians such as Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Jan Vogler, Augustin Dumay and the Takács Quartet. Recent concerts include a U.S. tour with Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; appearances with the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic, the St. Louis, Cincinnati,Toronto and Atlanta symphonies; a European tour with the BBC Wales; and recitals at the Kennedy Center,
program notes Weimar, London, Milan and the Cliburn Foundation.To celebrate the 200th birthday of Liszt in 2011, Mr. Lortie will perform the complete Années de Pèlerinage in major recital venues all over the world. He has made more than 30 recordings on the Chandos label. Born in Montréal, Louis Lortie studied with Yvonne Hubert, Dieter Weber and Leon Fleisher. He made his debut with the Montréal Symphony at age 13 and the Toronto Symphony three years later, including a historic tour of the People’s Republic of China and Japan. He won first prize at the 1984 Busoni Competition and was a prize winner at the Leeds Competition. He was named Officer of the Order of Canada in 1992, and received the Order of Quebec. NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Don Juan, op. 20
Richard Strauss Born in Munich, Bavaria, June 11, 1864; died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, September 8, 1949
On November 11, 1888, Richard Strauss, age 24, premiered his tone poem Don Juan with the Weimar Court Orchestra.With its opening upward vault by the strings, Strauss catapulted himself into world fame. And as the Don finally gasped his last breath over shuddering violas, the astonished audience realized it had never heard an orchestra sound like this before or been so swept up in a musical drama without benefit of costumes or sets.The Straussian tone poem—in which a large virtuoso orchestra could tell a gripping story down to the last gritty detail—had been born. Young as he was, Strauss was no novice. He had already written two other tone poems, Aus Italien and Macbeth, which were less than brilliant successes.The legend of the prodigious, insatiable lover had inspired many other significant works, including Mozart’s immortal Don Giovanni. As an attractive young man about town, Strauss had cut his own Juanian capers, but, just before writing Don Juan, he had fallen hard for the soprano Pauline de Ahna, eventually to become his wife.With love coursing through his veins, he turned to Nikolaus von Lehnau’s unfinished verse drama (published posthumously in 1851), which
explored the psychological roots of the erotic life force that drove the Don. Strauss prefaced his score with three quotations from Lenau’s poem, of which the first and last follow. Describing his passion for living each moment to the fullest, the Don says (in somewhat antiquated prose translation):“Fain would I run the circle, immeasurably wide, of beautiful women’s manifold charms, in full tempest of enjoyment, to die of a kiss at the mouth of the last one. O my friend, would that I could fly through every place where beauty blossoms, fall on my knees before each one, and, were it but for a moment, conquer.” Late in the poem, when his appetite for life has changed into disgust and a longing for death: “Beautiful was the storm that urged me on; it has spent its rage, and silence now remains. … Perhaps a thunderbolt from the heights … struck fatally at my power of love, and suddenly my world became a desert and darkened. And perhaps not—the fuel is all consumed and the hearth is cold and dark.” The trajectory outlined by these two quotations is the substance of Strauss’ tone poem. Don Juan’s impetuous spirit is immediately introduced by the bold upward explosion that opens the work and the virile leaping theme for the violins that follows. After this subsides, the solo violin ushers in the first of two love episodes. This boasts an ardent, luxuriant theme for the strings: music of a sensuous passion inspired by Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. After another burst of his opening theme, the Don takes off to seek new loves. Cellos and violas introduce the second love episode, in which the solo oboe sings a haunting love song of genuine tenderness. But even this cannot detain the Don for long.The horns call out a heroic new theme, as he rushes off to a masked ball, glittering with glockenspiel. At the height of the festivities, the orchestra suddenly plunges into a dark abyss. Don Juan’s zest for life has vanished.With a huge effort, he summons his energies again in a recapitulation of his violin and horn themes. But as he fights a duel, the will to live expires in a great musical pause. Over shuddering strings, his opponent runs him through. Only “silence now remains.” Instrumentation: 3 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 54
Robert Schumann Born in Zwickau, Germany, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, near Bonn, Germany, July 29, 1856
It seems astonishing that one of Robert Schumann’s greatest works and one of the finest concertos in the Romantic repertoire—the Piano Concerto in A Minor—was actually written in two installments four years apart.The first movement came into being as a Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra in May 1841, created in Leipzig by a happy and emotionally stable composer, newly married to Clara Wieck and awaiting their first child. Four years later, the couple had moved to Dresden and Schumann was just recovering from a serious depression during which he had been able to compose virtually nothing. He turned to writing counterpoint exercises— one of his favorite ways to combat his inner demons—and suddenly creativity flowed again. Between May and July 1845, he returned to the Fantasy, revised the first movement and added an intermezzo and a vivacious rondo to transform it into a full-fledged concerto. Despite all the time elapsed, remarkably the concerto emerged with a cohesion and unity of inspiration that carries through from beginning to end. It was premiered by Clara Schumann— she, not Robert, was the virtuoso of the family—on January 1, 1846 with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Overture and has been a favorite of pianists ever since. Before their marriage, Robert wrote to Clara:“I cannot write a concerto for a virtuoso. I must think of something else.” By a “concerto for a virtuoso” he was thinking of his contemporaries Paganini, Liszt,Thalberg and Hummel, who wrote works that served mostly to display their extraordinary technical abilities while the orchestra played discreetly in the background. In an article in his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Schumann praised a concerto by Moscheles because the piano “makes an imaginative interplay with the orchestra, each instrument having its own role, its own say and its own significance.”And this is what he achieved in his own concerto: April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
25
program notes a dialogue of soloist and orchestra, with the woodwinds—especially the solo clarinet and oboe—having particularly prominent parts. The first movement opens with an explosive series of descending chords from the soloist.Then the woodwinds sing, somewhat plaintively, the eloquent principal theme, followed by the soloist’s more forthright statement. As rich in melody as this concerto is, nearly everything flows from this one motto theme, which will evolve continually through Schumann’s technique of thematic transformation. For example, instead of a new second theme, the solo clarinet offers a more lyrical version of this motto over rippling piano accompaniment. After a robust orchestral statement wraps up the exposition, the development begins quietly in distant A-flat major with a dreamy piano rhapsody on the motto, embellished by woodwinds. A later, faster lyrical section reshuffles the motto theme again to lead the way to the recapitulation. The brief Intermezzo second movement in F major begins with pert, fournote upward patterns tossed between soloist and orchestra, which are based on the second part of our old friend, the motto. A lovely, soaring song for the cellos, later passed to solo clarinet and bassoon, forms the middle section of this movement, which segues via an ingenious bridge section directly into the finale. The A-major finale is a rondo with a refrain of marvelous verve and buoyancy. Its first episode, repeated later in the movement, begins with a mincing rhythm in the strings that cleverly gives the illusion of slowing the tempo; it eventually broadens into a spacious dialogue. Joy, a wealth of melodic invention and irresistible forward momentum propel this brilliant rondo to its conclusion.There is no trace whatsoever that its composer was only recently a very sick man. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. Symphony No. 3 in F Major, op. 90
Johannes Brahms Born in Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, April 3, 1897
Most of the major works of Brahms’ maturity were composed in summertime in beautiful rural settings overlooking tranquil 26
Overture
lakes and alpine peaks. But during the summer of 1833, his Third Symphony was written in a more urban location: a lofty studio overlooking the German Rhineland city of Wiesbaden.The urge to create this work had come on the composer while visiting Wiesbaden and, rather than lose inspiration traveling to a vacation retreat, he stayed on. And there was another compelling reason to stay: a rich-voiced contralto named Hermine Spies. Brahms had just met her and was captivated by her marvelous voice and vivacious personality. Another of this confirmed bachelor’s romantic friendships ensued, even though Spies was young enough to be the 50-yearold Brahms’ daughter. He wrote many songs for her, and she became his favorite interpreter of the Alto Rhapsody. And so even without mountain views, the summer of 1883 was a particularly happy one, and the Third Symphony, his shortest, was born with ease. Although it enjoyed a tremendous success at its premiere in Vienna that December, today it is the least often heard of Brahms’ four, though by no means inferior. Instead, the Third is Brahms’ most refined and densely constructed symphony, one in which he distills the maximum possibilities from every motive and theme, even bringing them back in startling new guises in later movements.This sturdy intellectual foundation is overlaid with some of his loveliest melodies, clothed in exquisite orchestral colors. But it is easier for conductors and orchestras to dazzle audiences with the other symphonies than with this subtle creation, all four of whose movements end quietly. The first movement opens with three rising chords that spell out F-A (flat)-F, a personal motto for Brahms that pervades much of the symphony. Years earlier, Brahms and his close friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, had experimented with musical mottos symbolizing their bachelor status. Joachim’s was F-A-E for “Frei aber einsam” (“Free but lonely”), and he soon married. Brahms countered with F-A-F,“Frei aber froh” (“Free but glad”). But now in his Third Symphony, the A has become A-flat, shifting the F-major home tonality to minor. Is there perhaps a hint of ambiguity about his motto as Brahms pays court to Hermine Spies?
The F-A-F motto spawns a ruggedly masculine principal theme, striding across a big range. But soon the music becomes more subdued and proposes a romantic waltz, led by clarinet and bassoon, as the second theme.This melody is later taken up in the development section, which also features a dark, brooding treatment of the first theme led by the first horn.The movement’s concluding coda begins big, but surprisingly, the masculine theme turns tender and lyrical for a hushed close. Brahms scholar Malcolm MacDonald calls the second movement “one of Brahms’ most inspired sublimations of folksong style.” Clarinets and bassoons introduce the principal melody “of simple gravity and hymn-like seriousness.” But pay special heed to the second theme: a melancholy duet for clarinet and bassoon emphasizing triplet rhythms and accompanied by a persistent short-long rhythm; this music will appear again in the finale.The movement’s closing coda is exceedingly beautiful, exploiting the orchestra’s most diaphanous colors. Another intermezzo-style movement, the third-movement Poco allegretto, features one of Brahms’ loveliest tunes, sung first by the cellos; it is a bittersweet mix of Romantic yearning and regret so characteristic of this composer. Brahms gives it many variants, with radiant new orchestrations. The struggle between minor and major becomes fierce in the sonata-form finale, which mediates and resolves all that has gone before. It opens in F minor with a mysterious, scurrying theme.This is followed by a solemn new version of the clarinet-bassoon duet theme from movement two.The development section tackles the first theme in moods both meditative and heroic, but most of the drama is saved for the duet theme, its short-long rhythm grown monumental. In the closing coda, this theme is transformed yet again, played very slowly in the woodwinds over shimmering strings. From this miraculously floats the F-A-F motto and the work’s bold opening theme; serenely, it ripples down through the orchestra like a benediction. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2010
program notes
Friday, May 21, 2010 8 p.m. Saturday, May 22, 2010 8 p.m. Sunday, May 23, 2010 3 p.m. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR JACK EVERLY PRINCIPAL POPS CONDUCTOR
BSO SuperPops
A Tribute to Irving Berlin Presenting Sponsor:
Conducted by Jack Everly Starring Ashley Brown Tony DeSare James T. Lane Hugh Panaro NaTasha Yvette Williams Arr. Jack Everly
Irving Berlin Overture
Arr. Jack Everly
There’s No Business Like Show Business
Arr. Tony DeSare and Ted Firth Arr. Fred Barton Arr. Fred Barton and Greg Anthony
I Love A Piano What’ll I Do? Steppin’ Out Medley
Arr. Jerry Shepard
Let’s Face the Music and Dance
Arr. Wayne Barker
Heat Wave
Arr. Fred Barton
Strolling Up the Avenue
(continued on p. 28)
Jack Everly A North American leader in symphonic pops, Jack Everly is principal pops conductor of the Baltimore and Indianapolis symphony orchestras. He is widely known
for his innovative approach to programs that have brought new audiences to this time-tested and beloved genre. Maestro Everly is also principal pops conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra of
Ottawa, Canada, and began his tenure with the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra in the 2009-2010 season. This season, he made his Cleveland Orchestra debut at the Blossom Music Center and appeared as a guest conductor in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee,Toronto and Detroit. Originally appointed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mr. Everly was conductor of the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) for 14 years, where he served as music director. In addition to his ABT tenure, he has teamed with Marvin Hamlisch in Broadway shows that Mr. Hamlisch scored, including The Goodbye Girl, They’re Playing Our Song and A Chorus Line. He also conducted Carol Channing in two separate Broadway productions of Hello, Dolly! In television and film, Mr. Everly has appeared on “In Performance at the White House” and conducted the songs for Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He has been music director on numerous Broadway cast recordings and conducted the critically praised Everything’s Coming Up Roses:The Complete Overtures of Broadway’s Jule Styne. In 1998, Mr. Everly created the Symphonic Pops Consortium (SPC) serving as music director.The Consortium, based in Indianapolis and made up of five orchestras, produces a new theatrical pops program each season providing a superiorquality artistic program. In the past seven years, more than 206 performances of SPC programs have taken place in 22 cities across the United States and Canada.
Ashley Brown Ashley Brown originated the title role in Mary Poppins on Broadway and just finished reprising her starring role in the first national company of Mary Poppins in Chicago. Other Broadway credits include Belle in The Beauty and the Beast and the national tour of Disney’s On the Record. Regional credits include Leading Men of Broadway April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
27
program notes Orchestra in the premiere of his own concert evening with symphony orchestra.
BSO SuperPops
A Tribute to Irving Berlin (continued from p. 27) INTERMISSION
Arr. Jack Everly
Holiday Medley
Arr. Jack Everly
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
Arr. Michael Runyan Arr. Tony DeSare, Jack Everly, Wayne Barker and Fred Barton Arr. Wayne Barker and Fred Barton Arr. Jack Everly
Always
Play a Simple Melody Sisters Medley Remember
Arr. Fred Barton
How Deep Is the Ocean
Arr. Fred Barton
Blue Skies
Arr. Tim Berens, Jack Everly and Michael Runyan
Irving Berlin’s America
The concert will end at approximately 10 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Media Sponsors: Baltimore Magazine and WLIF 101.9 Support for the appearance of the guest artists is provided by the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Guest Artist Fund.
with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Broadway by the Year: 1956 at Town Hall in New York City and many shows at the Muny. She has performed with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, the Cincinnati Pops and the Pensacola Symphony. She returns to star in a New York Pops concert in November at Carnegie Hall.
Tony DeSare Singer, pianist and songwriter Tony DeSare has won critical and popular acclaim for his concert performances throughout 28
Overture
the United States, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong. His 2007 recording, Last First Kiss debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard chart, No. 3 on Amazon.com and No. 2 on the iTunes jazz chart. In 1999, he starred in the longrunning off-Broadway musical smash Our Sinatra. In the fall of 2002, he performed at the legendary Apollo Theater and was featured in New York TV personality Bill Boggs’s off-Broadway show, Talk Show Confidential. Mr. DeSare has performed at major jazz rooms such as Birdland and the Blue Note with his quartet, as well as at the Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s at the Regency. In February 2010, he collaborated with Maestro Jack Everly and the Indianapolis Symphony
James T. Lane James T. Lane appeared in the European tour of Fame, where he would eventually take over the leading role, Tyrone Jackson, before the end of the contract. He later joined the national touring company of Fame in major cities across the U.S and Canada. He also worked with Eartha Kitt in the national tour of Cinderella as part of the ensemble. In his home town of Philadelphia, he has worked at the Walnut Street Theatre (Finnian’s Rainbow), The Prince Music Theatre (Dreamgirls) and in multiple productions at The Media Theatre for the Performing Arts. He starred as Richie Walters in the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. He appeared on many television programs including “Dancing with the Stars,” “Good Morning America,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The View.” Mr. Lane also starred as Aaron (and understudied Amos Hart) in Chicago.
Hugh Panaro Hugh Panaro most recently performed with the legendary Barbra Streisand in her very first European tour. Prior to the tour, he starred in the title role of Lestat, Elton John’s Broadway musical based on Anne Rice’s infamous The Vampire Chronicles, and received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination. He created numerous other Broadway leading roles, including Buddy in Sideshow, Julian Craster in Jule Styne’s last musical The Red Shoes and the title role in the American premiere of Cameron MacIntosh’s Martin Guerre. He made his Broadway debut as Marius in Les Misérables and performed the role of Gaylord Ravenal in Harold Prince’s Showboat, both on Broadway and in (continued on p. 36)
program notes
Saturday, May 29, 2010 8 p.m. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Underground Railroad: An Evening with Kathleen Battle Damon Gupton Conductor Kathleen Battle Soprano Morgan State University Choir Eric Conway Director Program will be anounced from stage. The concert will end at approximately 10 p.m.
Support for this program is generously provided by
Damon Gupton A native of Detroit, Michigan, Damon Gupton held the post of assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony from 2006-2008. He received his bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Michigan, then went on to earn a diploma from the Drama Division of Juilliard. He studied conducting with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin at the Aspen Music Festival and with Leonard Slatkin at the National Conducting Institute in Washington, D.C. He served as American conducting fellow of the Houston Symphony for the 2004-2005 season, and has made conducting appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Monte Carlo Philharmonic and the Vermont Music Festival Orchestra.
This season, he led the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra on a 10-city tour, culminating in a performance at Carnegie Hall. He is a winner of the Third International Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition held in Mexico City. Part of Mr. Gupton’s prize includes several conducting engagements in Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Chile and Venezuela in the upcoming seasons. As an actor, he has performed on stage in Christina Anderson’s Inked Baby (Playwrights Horizons),Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter (Arena Stage), True History and Real Adventures (The Vineyard Theatre) and Treason (Perry Street Theatre). His television credits include Law and Order, Conviction, The Unusuals, Third Watch, Hack and Drift. On film, he appeared in Unfaithful, The Loretta Claiborne Story, Helen at Risk and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead.
Kathleen Battle Five-time Grammy Award-winner Kathleen Battle’s luminous voice has been called “without qualification, one of the very few most beautiful in the world.” Throughout a remarkable career that has brought her to the stages of the world’s leading opera houses and major concert halls, critics have never tired of rhapsodizing over her limpid, unmistakable sound. Kathleen Battle has collaborated with the world’s most talented musicians. She has been a favorite soloist with the world’s leading orchestras and esteemed conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti, Riccardo Muti, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Mazell, Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Slatkin and Sir Neville Marriner. Her partnerships with soprano Jessye Norman, tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo, violinist Itzhak Perlman, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, guitarist Christopher Parkening, flautists Jean-Pierre Rampal and Hubert Laws and the late saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., are documented on numerous recordings. Kathleen Battle won accolades for the world premiere of Honey and Rue, a Carnegie Hall commission for its 100th Anniversary, which was written for her by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and composer André Previn. Kathleen Battle’s gifts as a singer extend beyond the realm of classical music. Her work as a great interpreter of spirituals is well documented.Always seeking to expand her artistic horizons, Ms. Battle was joined by stellar jazz musicians for her first crossover album, So Many Stars. Ms. Battle has been inducted into the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame and was the first recipient of the Ray Charles Award, bestowed upon her in 2005 by Wilberforce University in Ohio. In addition to seven honorary doctorates, five Grammy Awards and an Emmy Award, Ms. Battle was the first American to receive the Laurence Olivier Award, the British equivalent of a Tony Award. (continued on p. 36) April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
29
program notes Marin Alsop For Marin Alsop’s bio, please see p. 16.
Thursday, June 3, 2010 8 p.m.
André Watts
Friday, June 4, 2010 8 p.m.
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Barber, Bartók & Beethoven Presenting Sponsor:
Marin Alsop André Watts Samuel Barber Béla Bartók
Conductor Piano Adagio for Strings Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta Andante tranquillo Allegro Adagio Allegro molto
INTERMISSION
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 73, “Emperor” Allegro Adagio un poco mosso Rondo: Allegro ANDRÉ WATTS
The concert will end at approximately 9:50 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and 4:50 p.m. on Sunday.
Media Sponsors: Urbanite Magazine and baltimoresun.com Support for the appearance of André Watts is provided by the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Guest Artist Fund.
30
Overture
STEVE J. SHREMAN
Sunday, June 6, 2010 3 p.m.
André Watts burst upon the music world at the age of 16 when Leonard Bernstein chose him to make his debut with the New York Philharmonic in their Young People’s Concerts, broadcast nationwide on CBSTV. Only two weeks later, Bernstein asked him to substitute at the last minute for the ailing Glenn Gould in performances of Liszt’s E-flat Concerto with the New York Philharmonic, thus launching Watts’ career in storybook fashion. More than 45 years later, André Watts remains one of today’s most celebrated and beloved superstars. A perennial favorite with orchestras throughout the U.S., Mr.Watts is also a regular guest at the major summer music festivals including Ravinia, the Hollywood Bowl, Saratoga,Tanglewood and the Mann Music Center. Recent and upcoming orchestral engagements include appearances with the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras, New York and Los Angeles philharmonics and the St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Dallas, Seattle and National symphony orchestras. During the 2009-2010 season, he traveled to Japan in July to appear as a featured artist at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo and returned in the fall for an extensive tour of recital and orchestral appearances. A much-honored artist who has played before royalty in Europe and heads of government in nations all over the world, André Watts was selected to receive the Avery Fisher Prize in 1988. At age 26, he was the youngest person ever to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University, and he has since received numerous honors from highly respected schools including his alma mater, the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. In June 2006, he was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl of Fame to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his debut (with The Philadelphia Orchestra).
program notes NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Adagio for Strings
Samuel Barber Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 9, 1910; died in New York City, January 23, 1981
Like most American music lovers in the 1930s, Samuel Barber was mesmerized by Arturo Toscanini and his fiery interpretations of the great symphonic and operatic literature. In 1933, the 23-yearold composer used his status as nephew of the celebrated operatic contralto Louise Homer, one of Toscanini’s favorite singers, to pay a visit to the maestro at his summer retreat on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy.To his delight, they struck up an immediate friendship, and the old conductor expressed interest in performing a work by Barber despite the fact that he generally avoided contemporary music like the plague. But Barber was by no means a typical contemporary composer. Although only recently graduated from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, he was a precocious artist who had already found his own creative voice—lyrical, deeply expressive and rooted in the harmonic language of the late 19th century—a voice even the conservative Toscanini could love. It took Barber several years to produce two works he thought worthy of Toscanini’s attention. His uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, gave him excellent advice: “The thing now is to write something for Toscanini that expresses the depth and sincerity of your nature. … You know as well as I do that the maestro loves sincere straight-forward stuff, with genuine feeling in it and no artificial pretense and padding.” Finally, early in 1938, Barber sent the maestro his newly completed First Essay for Orchestra and the Adagio for Strings he had fashioned from the slow movement of his String Quartet of 1936. Toscanini’s selection of the Essay and the Adagio for his evening radio broadcast with the NBC Symphony on November 5, 1938 was the ultimate promotional coup for Barber’s career. As older audience members may recall, the Toscanini radio concerts had a passionate nationwide following that PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center” broadcasts cannot begin to match today. By the next morning, Samuel
Barber was a household name for American music lovers. Barber had truly embodied his uncle’s advice, especially in the Adagio, which remains his most beloved and frequently performed composition. Using the simplest of musical means, it is a work whose sincerity and depth of feeling shoot directly to the heart. Called our “national funeral music,” it has eloquently expressed Americans’ grief at the ceremonies for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. In 1986, it moved a new generation in the Academy Awardwinning film Platoon, mourning the young lives snuffed out by the Vietnam War. Instrumentation: Strings. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Béla Bartók Born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary, March 25, 1881; died in New York City, September 26, 1945
Béla Bartók has a reputation as one of the most formidably cerebral composers of the 20th century, yet paradoxically he was also one of the most passionately expressive. His music often seems to exude a pitiless severity; for example, his Miraculous Mandarin is a cruelly lacerating score while several of his string quartets demonstrate a fearless modernity ruled by chilling logic.Yet tempering this severe rationality was his passion for Eastern European folk music (which inspired years of research in the Hungarian and Romanian countryside) and a love of sound colors that produced extraordinary, often eerily beautiful new instrumental techniques and combinations. These disparate characteristics came together in 1936 to produce the magical Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta of 1936, ranked by many as his greatest orchestral score. Bartók scholar Halsey Stevens describes it as “one of the most intensively organized of all his compositions; the subject of its opening fugue generates the entire work, and yet it is at the same time so spontaneous and so communicative that only the rare listener is likely to be aware of its complexities.” The founder of the Basle Chamber Orchestra, Paul Sacher had approached Bartók in June 1936 for a new work to celebrate the Orchestra’s tenth anniversary.
Because the Orchestra had a modest budget, he asked the composer to write for a reduced ensemble, with the wind players being replaced by “a piano or cembalo … or some kind of percussion instrument.” Bartók embraced this restriction with enthusiasm, for it would give him another opportunity to explore new sonic combinations. He decided on an ensemble with two different string groups in five parts, ranged on either side of a percussion ensemble featuring celeste, piano (sometimes played four-hands), harp, xylophone and a variety of drums.The placement of the instruments was specified in the score, with the two string ensembles often treated in antiphonal fashion. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta was composed rapidly in just over two months that summer and premiered by Sacher and the Basle Chamber Orchestra the following January before an enthusiastic audience, which demanded an encore of its rollicking final movement. As Stevens explains, nearly all the material in this 30-minute work springs from the subject theme of the mysterious fugue that constitutes its first movement: a culmination of Bartók’s deep interest in counterpoint. It is a strange, very compressed theme moving by twisting chromatic half-steps within a very narrow range. Presented in four little fragments, it is also rhythmically eccentric: Bartók has to keep changing the meter to notate its odd quirks and stresses. This fugue emerges very quietly from muted violas, then spreads through the strings farther and farther away from the home tonality of A.We know when it reaches its most distant point—the key of E-flat—because a whomp on the bass drum marks the arrival and the movement’s climax.Then, the journey is retraced back to A, with the fugue subject now upside-down.The beautiful shimmer of celeste guides the final steps home. All of this sounds very cerebral and abstract, but in fact, this musical journey is totally absorbing. And astonishingly, Bartók manages in the three following movements to derive an extraordinary range of musical transformations and moods from the cramped little fugal theme. Movement two is a brilliant dance driven by kinetic rhythms; its vivacious April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
31
program notes opening theme is an expansion of the fugue subject.The percussion section now comes to the fore, while the two string sections play antiphonal games with each other.The middle development section contains the most electrifying music, with pizzicato strings essentially joining the percussion section of piano, celeste, harp and xylophone. The high, chilly clicks of the xylophone announce the Adagio third movement: perhaps the most extraordinary of Bartók’s famous “night music” scenes. In the words of his son Béla Jr.: “My father captured the frogs’ concert and other evocative sounds in the quiet of the [Hungarian] plain.” Here, the composer creates an extraordinary sound world, unfolding an atmosphere of wonder, mystery and a touch of fear. The rhapsodic combination of celeste, harp and piano glissandos over tremolo strings is uncannily beautiful. In between each section of this arch-form movement, which rises to a climax in the middle, Bartók inserts fragments of his fugue subject. Timpani and strumming strings launch the Allegro molto finale: an exuberant parade of folk-dance themes, starting with a dashing melody in syncopated Bulgarian rhythm. At midpoint, the dancing subsides, and the tempo slows for a grand statement by the strings of a more expansive and confident version of the fugue subject. But the Bulgarian-style dance soon returns, and the work closes in uninhibited joy. No wonder the first audience wanted an encore! Instrumentation: Timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings. Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 73, “Emperor”
Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, Germany, December 16, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827
There is a certain irony in the subtitle of “Emperor” that was later given to Beethoven’s Fifth (and final) Piano Concerto, but never used by the composer himself. By the spring of 1809 when Beethoven was creating his “Emperor” Concerto, the last person he would have wanted to honor was the emperor of the day, Napoleon Bonaparte.Years earlier, he 32
Overture
had angrily obliterated a dedication to the French leader he’d once admired from the title page of his Third Symphony, the “Eroica,” after he learned that Napoleon had just crowned himself Emperor. “Now he will become a tyrant like all the others,” the composer raged. Now in May 1809, Napoleon’s armies were actually besieging the city of Vienna. Beethoven’s home was in the line of fire of the French cannons, and he was forced to flee to his brother’s house, where he holed up in the cellar with a pillow pressed to his still sensitive ears. But his work on his new Concerto did not cease. And yet in many ways “Emperor,” taken in a more generic sense, is an appropriate title for this concerto. It is a work of imperial size and scope—particularly in its huge first movement—and it reflects its war-writhen era in its virile, martial tone. Its key—E-flat major—was one of Beethoven’s favorites and one he associated with heroic thoughts; it is also the key of the “Eroica.” Sadly, Beethoven was never able to display his own powers as a pianist with this work. Although he had introduced all his other keyboard concertos to the public, his deafness was too far advanced for him to risk playing the 1810 premiere in Leipzig. The length and complexity of the sonata-form first movement demonstrate Beethoven’s new symphonic conception of the concerto.The opening is boldly innovative. First we hear the pianist sweeping over the keyboard in grand, toccata-like arpeggios and scales, punctuated by loud chords from the orchestra.Then the soloist allows the orchestra to present its long exposition of themes.The first theme, with its distinctive turn ornament, is introduced immediately. The second, a quirky little march, appears first in halting minor-mode form in the strings, then is immediately smoothed out and shifted to the major by the horns. Over the course of the movement, Beethoven will transform both these themes in a wondrous kaleidoscope of keys, moods and figurations. After its long absence, the piano begins its version of the exposition with a rising chromatic scale ending with a long, high trill.Throughout, Beethoven uses this scale as an elegant call-to-attention: whenever
we hear it, we are being given notice that a new section of the movement is beginning. It will mark the opening of the development section and later the closing coda after the recapitulation. Just before that coda comes the usual moment for the soloist’s big cadenza. But here Beethoven has quashed the soloist’s customary right to improvise his or her own exhibition of virtuosity. Fearing the jarring improvisations other soloists might make, the composer wrote in Italian in the score: “Non si fa una Cadenza, ma s’attaca subito il seguente” (“Don’t play a cadenza, but attack the following immediately”). He then carefully wrote out a brief series of variants on both his principal themes, the piano soon joined by the horns to blend the cadenza smoothly into the movement’s flow. A complete contrast to the extroverted first movement, movement two is a sublime, very inward elegy in B major, a remote key from the home tonality of E-flat.Two themes receive a quasi-variations treatment.The first and most important is the strings’ grave, almost religious theme heard at the opening.The second theme is the downward cascading music with which the piano enters. At the close of the movement, the pianist experiments hesitantly with a new rhythmic idea. Suddenly, the spark is struck, and the theme explodes into the exuberant rondo finale. Beethoven stresses the weak beats of the dancing 6/8-meter, giving his theme an eccentric, hobbling gait. An important element is the crisp dotted rhythm first heard in the horns; this martial, drum-like motive returns us to the wartime world of the Concerto’s birth. Near the end, Beethoven gives this to the timpani, in eerie duet with the soloist, before the concerto’s triumphant finish. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2010
program notes Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem and Zemlinsky’s Frühlingsbegrabnis with the Phoenix Symphony, Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 with the Delaware Symphony and a concert performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess with the Jacksonville Symphony. She joins the Buffalo Philharmonic for Brahm’s Requiem, and ends the season on the opera stage as Bess in Porgy and Bess with Opéra de Lyon for performances in Lyon, Edinburgh and London. During the 2008-2009, season she performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, Colorado Symphony,Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony,Alabama Symphony and Detroit Symphony.
Friday, June 11, 2010 8 p.m. Saturday, June 12, 2010 8 p.m. Sunday, June 13, 2010 3 p.m.
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra MARIN ALSOP MUSIC DIRECTOR HARVEY M. AND LYN P. MEYERHOFF CHAIR
Brahms’ German Requiem Presenting Sponsor:
Marin Alsop Conductor Janice Chandler-Eteme Soprano Stephen Powell Baritone The Washington Chorus Julian Wachner Music Director Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24 JANICE CHANDLER-ETEME
INTERMISSION
Johannes Brahms
A German Requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem), op. 45 JANICE CHANDLER-ETEME STEPHEN POWELL THE WASHINGTON CHORUS
The concert will end at approximately 9:50 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 4:50 p.m. on Sunday.
Support for this program is generously provided by and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. Media Sponsor: WYPR 88.1 Support for the appearance of the vocalists is provided by the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Guest Artist Fund.
Marin Alsop For Marin Alsop’s bio, please see p. 16.
Janice Chandler-Eteme Janice Chandler-Eteme has long been among America’s foremost lyric sopranos, singing an astonishing range of music with the world’s top orchestras and conductors.
She began the 2009–2010 season singing Brahm’s Requiem with the Virginia Symphony; Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Keith Lockhart, the Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; and a Gala concert with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society of Baltimore. She sang Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Modesto
CHRISTIAN POLLARD
Samuel Barber
Stephen Powell In 2009-2010, Stephen Powell sings Ford in Falstaff with the Pittsburgh Opera; Uncle John in The Grapes of Wrath with the Collegiate Chorale; Brahms’ Requiem with the Dutch Radio Orchestra; Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Messiah with England’s Huddersfield Choral Society; and Carmina burana with Cincinnati Symphony. In 2008-2009, he sang Germont in La Traviata and Sharpless in Madama Butterfly with the Los Angeles Opera and Germont with the San Francisco Opera and New Orleans Opera. In concert he sang Carmina burana with the Phoenix Symphony and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra; Messiah and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Brahms’ Requiem and Dvorˇák’s Te Deum with the Cathedral Choral Society; Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Tonhalle-Orchestre Zürich; Mahler’s Das klagende Lied with The Philadelphia Orchestra; Haydn’s The Creation with the Rochester Philharmonic; and Verdi’s Requiem with the Mendelssohn Club in Philadelphia. April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
33
program notes The Washington Chorus Julian Wachner, music director
The Grammy Award-winning,Washington Chorus is currently in its 49th season and presents an annual subscription series at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Music Center at Strathmore and other major venues throughout the Washington area.The Chorus frequently appears with the National Symphony Orchestra, singing under the direction of many of the world’s greatest conductors including Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Neville Marriner, Charles Dutoit and Kent Nagano. The Chorus has recorded, been nationally broadcast and internationally televised, performed as part of a motion picture soundtrack and has performed for presidential inaugurations and to honor world leaders. In February 2000, the Chorus, under the direction of former Music Director Robert Shafer, won a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance of the Year for its live-performance recording of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Other recordings include Grammy-nominated Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and John Corigliano’s Grammy Award-winning Of Rage and Remembrance with the National Symphony Orchestra. The Chorus has toured internationally, traveling to such musically important destinations as Paris,Vienna, Prague, Barcelona and Rome. NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Knoxville: Summer of 1915, op. 24
Samuel Barber Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 9, 1910; died in New York City, January 23, 1981
The nephew of contralto Louise Homer, one of the operatic superstars of the early 20th century, Samuel Barber possessed such a fine baritone that he too considered a professional singing career. His sensitivity to the beauty of the human voice produced two major operas Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, a quantity of gorgeous songs, the choral Prayers of Kierkegaard and Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for lyric soprano and orchestra. Barber was also a passionate reader and was always looking for possible texts to 34
Overture
set to music; in 1947, he came across “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” an evocative ode to childhood by the American writer James Agee in an anthology of articles from The Partisan Review. Agee and Barber were both born in 1910, and although the writer had grown up in Tennessee and the composer in Pennsylvania, their memories tallied uncannily. “We both had back yards where our families used to lie in the long summer evenings,” Barber wrote,“we each had an aunt who was a musician. I remember well my parents sitting on the porch, talking quietly as they rocked.And there was a trolley car with straw seats and a clanging bell called ‘The Dinky,’ that traveled up and down the main street. … Agee’s poem was vivid and moved me deeply. … I think I must have composed Knoxville within a few days.” Agee’s and Barber’s Knoxville seemed to strike a common chord in many other people who had grown up in that earlier, more tranquil America. Soprano Eleanor Steber of Wheeling,West Virginia, who sang its first performance on April 9, 1948, with the Boston Symphony under conductor Serge Koussevitzky declared:“That was exactly my childhood!”And Leontyne Price, who grew up in Mississippi and later also became a noted interpreter of this piece, said:“As a southerner, it expresses everything I know about my roots and about my mama and father … You can smell the South in it.” Agee’s text is actually in prose, but the language is poetic in its imagery and in its evocation of more than literal facts. Because this text was all-important, Barber skillfully molded his vocal part to the natural rhythms of American-English speech.The orchestral part is also lightly scored so that it never obscures the words. The work is structured in five sections. After a brief prelude, the singer’s first section is sung to a lilting, childlike melody that returns like a refrain in the middle and at the end. In the first episode, the orchestra bursts in to portray a passing trolley breaking the nocturnal quiet, with woodwinds and violins imitating its clanging bell.After the refrain melody’s return, a second episode introduces us to the other members of the child-narrator’s family. Beginning with the words “By some chance, here they are all on
this earth,” the music suddenly becomes louder, more passionate.When he was writing Knoxville, Barber knew that both his father and his aunt were gravely ill; in fact, they died within a few months of the score’s completion. It is his adult sense of mortality threatening these beloved figures that fuels this passage and the heartfelt benediction that follows:“May God bless my people.” And one final sting of emotion disturbs the concluding return of the refrain melody, as the child voices her adult perception that her loving family can never fully understand her (“But will not ever tell me who I am”). Instrumentation: flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, triangle, harp and strings. A German Requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem), op. 45
Johannes Brahms Born in Hamburg, Germany, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, Austria, April 3, 1897
In early February 1865, Johannes Brahms received a telegram from his brother, Fritz, in Hamburg:“If you want to see our mother again, come at once.” The composer traveled as fast as he could from Vienna, but arrived too late: Christiane Brahms had already died of a stroke at age 76.Though he maintained a stoical face before his family, Brahms was devastated by the loss of the mother who had stood lovingly by him through all his trials and triumphs. After he returned to Vienna, a friend Josef Gänsbacher dropped in at his apartment and found him playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations with tears streaming down his face. Brahms briefly told Gänsbacher of his loss, but never stopped playing. Music was his ideal solace from grief. That grief would generate the composer’s longest and most profound work: A German Requiem (in German, Ein DeutschesRequiem), mostly composed over a one-year period from 1865 to 1866. But actually the music for this choral-orchestral masterpiece had been gestating for at least a decade, and it was originally intended as a memorial to Robert Schumann, Brahms’ discoverer and mentor. In February 1854, only a few months after Schumann had adopted the then-20-year-old Brahms as his protégé, the older composer, tormented by mental illness, had tried to commit suicide and then spent the remaining two years of his life in
program notes an asylum.Throughout this terrible period, Brahms assisted Schumann’s wife, Clara, and visited Schumann regularly. Shortly after the suicide attempt, he composed the sad march music that would become the Requiem’s second movement, intending it to be a slow movement for a projected two-piano sonata. Thus A German Requiem is actually a memorial to two important people in Brahms’ life: his biological mother and his artistic father.And it was an intensely personal and original work. Unlike most musical requiems, it is not based on the liturgical Catholic rite for the dead: a service emphasizing prayers for the souls of the departed. Rather, it is an idiosyncratic Protestant setting, with its text drawn by Brahms himself from the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha of Martin Luther’s German Bible. A word about Brahms’ own religious stance:The composer was raised in the Protestant tradition and remained a faithful reader of the Bible throughout his life. But in adulthood, he became a religious skeptic bordering on agnosticism and was never a churchgoer.The text he assembled for his Requiem expresses more or less his own convictions: a universal, nondenominational message, but not a specifically Christian one. Immediately after its premiere in Leipzig on February 18, 1869, A German Requiem received some 20 performances in the German-speaking countries before rapidly moving on to the rest of Europe and America. It proclaimed Brahms’ full maturity to the world; from now on, he would be considered a king among composers, even though he still had not tackled a symphony (that would be rectified in 1876). Listening to the Music
The Requiem is shaped as a mighty arch. The quieter, more restrained first and last movements mirror each other, as do the more dramatic and forceful second and sixth movements, and the more personal third and fifth movements dominated by solo voices.The well-loved fourth movement, “How lovely are thy tabernacles,” stands alone as an untroubled central interlude. Even though it is in the major mode— F major, the Requiem’s home key—movement one,“Blessed are they who mourn,” is weighed down with grief. Brahms chose a very dark-toned ensemble: violas, cellos,
double basses and the more somber wind colors, and omitted the brighter sounds of clarinets, trumpets and even violins.The first melody we hear, in the cellos, is a variation of J.S. Bach’s chorale tune “Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten;” this rising-andfalling theme will reappear many times in this movement. Equally important is a three-note rising motive in the soprano part topping the chorus’s first entrance; this is the seed motive from which the entire work grows. Despite the heavy sorrow, there is a mood of calm underlying this music, and the lighter middle section,“They that sow with tears shall reap in joy,” explains why. The second movement,“For all flesh is as grass,” is a strange yet powerful mixture of a funeral march and slow sarabande dance.The violins finally appear, but, since they are played with mutes, they sound veiled and husky.The chorus’s grim unison melody follows the shape of the Bach chorale. Eventually, the music accelerates a bit and actually begins to dance for the interlude “So be patient, beloved brethren:” a promise of deliverance.After a reprise of the funeral dirge comes a magical moment as the music brightens into the major and the chorus proclaims that, unlike mortal man,“the Word of the Lord endures forever.” In the first of the Requiem’s big, extroverted passages, chorus and orchestra rejoice in exuberant counterpoint. Movement three,“Lord, teach me to know my end,” personalizes the previous movement’s message as the baritone soloist pleads for help in accepting his mortality. “How shall I find consolation?” he cries and the chorus repeats the question with growing frenzy. Moving from D minor to D major, the answer comes in a radiant choral cadenza:“My hope is in the Lord.” Then begins one of the Requiem’s most extraordinary passages: a double fugue for chorus and orchestra with each pursuing its own separate fugue subject.And all this contrapuntal activity is anchored in a mighty sustained pedal on the pitch D, representing the secure grip of the hand of God. The Requiem’s peaceful, lyrical oasis, “How lovely are thy tabernacles,” is a vision of untroubled faith.The key is a warm E-flat major, the meter a gently swaying 3/4 and the orchestra a chamber ensemble of great beauty and delicacy.At midpoint, Brahms adds contrasting energy
in the form of a brief double fugue. “You now have sorrow,” is a radiant expression of a mother’s love enduring beyond the grave. It was the last movement Brahms composed, added only in 1868 at the suggestion of the composer’s old teacher Eduard Marxsen. But perhaps this was the soonest after his mother’s death that he could bear to write music expressing his own loss so openly. Muted strings and woodwinds, with occasional soft interjections from the chorus, accompany the soprano soloist’s beautiful, arching lines: an idealized representation of the voice of Christiane Brahms. In the sixth movement,“For we have here no continuing city,” the chorus wanders like homeless refugees through a forest of harmonically unstable lines; this bewildered search is intensified by the entrance of the baritone soloist intoning the famous words from First Corinthians. Here we have the Requiem’s only reference to the trumpets sounding the Day of Judgment, but the chorus and orchestra greet this prospect with confidence and jubilation:“Death is swallowed up in victory!” In the work’s greatest climax, C major is won with a triumphant cry.This culminates in a magnificent, quasi-fugal treatment of the words from Revelation:“Lord,Thou art worthy to receive glory and honor.” Movement seven,“Blessed are the dead:” Having found hope for the living, the Requiem now turns its attention for the first time to the dead.This music—which begins with the sopranos singing a reversal of the Bach chorale tune—relates back to movement one, but is now bigger and more confident. And how much the mood has changed is brought home clearly when the altos lead a reprise of the Requiem’s opening music. Instead of murky low strings, they are now accompanied by shining high woodwinds and violins.At the work’s end, a harp—an instrument Brahms rarely used— wafts sweetly upward. In his Requiem, Brahms won a provisional musical victory over the sorrows and doubts that darkened his entire life, but that at the same time deepened his musical genius. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings. Note by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2010 April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
35
program notes Off The Cuff
BSO SuperPops
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2
A Tribute to Irving Berlin
Underground Railroad: An Evening with Kathleen Battle
(continued from p. 19)
(continued from p. 28)
(continued from p. 29)
down-and-up “Dies irae” chant theme from the Catholic rite for the dead as a leitmotif; here, it is hidden in the horns’ boisterous opening theme.Yet in the midst of this movement’s manic energy, there is time for another luxuriant Rachmaninoff tune for the violins.The middle trio section features a ferocious string fugue, so testing that it is included on orchestral auditions for aspiring violinists and violists. The remarkable ending has a demonic edge, as the brass intone a sinister chorale, derived from the “Dies irae” and the symphony’s opening motto idea. The Adagio third movement is luscious, heartfelt melody from beginning to end.The most famous is the violins’ upward sighing phrase at the beginning. But this is only introduction to the solo clarinet’s long-spun-out melody. A plaintive dialogue among solo oboe, English horn and strings fills the middle section; this music recalls nostalgically the themes of the symphony’s slow introduction. Rachmaninoff opens the finale with a wild tarantella dance. A wry march for woodwinds provides a second thematic strand. And the third is the last big lyrical melody for violins, the most sweeping of them all.The exposition closes with a reminiscence of the Adagio’s upwardsighing music. In the development section, listen for one of the work’s most extraordinary passages: a long crescendo of downward scales in different speeds for the various instruments.This is a dazzling recreation of the pealing of Russian church bells: a sound Rachmaninoff loved as a child and recalled in many of his works.The coda offers a grand reprise of the violins’ big tune and finishes in a blaze of Czarist splendor. Instrumentation: 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings.
London’s prestigious West End. He is most notably recognized for his critically acclaimed performance as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera.
The Morgan State University Choir
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2010
36
Overture
NaTasha Yvette Williams On Broadway, NaTasha Yvette Williams played Sofia in The Color Purple, appeared in Dessa Rose at Lincoln Center and played as Mammy in Trevor Nunn’s West End production of Gone with the Wind in London. Her national tours include The Drowsy Chaperone (Trix the Aviatrix), All Shook Up (Sylvia), Seussical the Musical (Sour Kangaroo), Cinderella (Grace), Parade (featured), The Goodbye Girl (Mrs. Crosby) and Mahalia (Mahalia). Her regional credits include Mahalia in Mahalia at the Cleveland Playhouse, Crowns at Arkansas Rep, Abyssinia at the Goodspeed and North Shore Music Theater and Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Papermill Playhouse. In 2008, she released a gospel CD entitled Songs That Get Me Through.
Co-Produced along with Symphonic Pops Consortium The Symphonic Pops Consortium mission is to conceive, create and produce high quality, innovative, symphonic Pops concerts. Music Director:
Jack Everly
Producer:
Ty A. Johnson
Stage Direction:
David Levy
Arrangements/ Orchestrations:
Production Management:
Fred Barton Wayne Barker Jack Everly Tim Berens Ted Firth Mike Runyan Jerry Sheppard Brandy Rodgers
Eric Conway, Director The Morgan State University (MSU) Choir is one of the nation’s most prestigious university choral ensembles. While classical, gospel and contemporary popular music comprise the choir’s repertoire, the choir is noted for its emphasis on preserving the heritage of the spiritual, especially in the historic practices of performance. The MSU Choir has performed for audiences throughout the United States and all over the world including the Virgin Islands, Canary Islands, Canada, Africa, Asia and Europe. It has appeared at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall on numerous occasions and has performed with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Buffalo, Baltimore, Knoxville and National symphony orchestras. The Choir has experienced many historic moments.The Choir performed with Jessye Norman under the baton of Robert Shaw conducting the Orchestra of St. Lukes in Carnegie Hall’s 100th Birthday Tribute to Marian Anderson. At the personal invitation of Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, the choir performed for the State Department for its annual African American History Month Celebration. In October 2005, the MSU Choir sang for the service honoring Rosa Parks, who became the first woman to lie in honor at our nation’s Capitol Rotunda. In August 2007, the Choir completed a tour of Ghana and performed at the invitation of the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana to celebrate its 50th year of independence. In May 2004, Reader’s Digest named the MSU Choir the “Best College Choir in the U.S.” in its list of “America’s 100 Best.”
SYMPHONY FUND HONOR ROLL T
H
E
B
A
L
T
I
M
O
R
E
S
Y
M
P
H
O
N
Y
O
R
C
H
E
S
T
R
A
January 13, 2009 – March 13, 2010 We are proud to recognize the BSO’s Symphony Fund Members whose generous gifts to the Annual Fund between January 13, 2009 – March 13, 2010 helped the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra further its mission: “To make music of the highest quality, to enhance Baltimore and Maryland as a cultural center of interest, vitality and importance and to become a model of institutional strength.”
Marin Alsop and Jean-Yves Thibaudet with party hosts Andy Stern and Joanne Gold
The Century Club The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is deeply grateful to the individual, corporate, foundation and governmental donors whose cumulative annual giving of $100,000 or more plays a vital role in sustaining the Orchestra’s magnificent tradition of musical excellence.
Marin Alsop The Baltimore Orioles Georgia and Peter Angelos The Baltimore Symphony Associates Winnie Flattery, President
Mayor and City Council of Baltimore City Baltimore County Executive & County Council Joseph and Jean Carando* Adalman-Goodwin Foundation Hilda Perl and Douglas* Goodwin, Trustees Hecht-Levi Foundation Ryda H. Levi* and Sandra Levi Gerstung Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development Maryland State Arts Council
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Joseph & Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Mr. and Mrs. Arthur B. Modell Montgomery County Arts and Humanities Council PNC Foundation Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation and Ruth Marder The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company Mr. and Mrs. Willard Hackerman
$25,000 or more Kenneth S. Battye The Legg & Co. Foundation Herbert Bearman Foundation, Inc. Dr. Sheldon and Arlene Bearman Caswell J. Caplan Charitable Income Trusts Constance R. Caplan Mr. and Mrs. H. Chace Davis, Jr. Chapin Davis Investments Dr. Perry A. Eagle, Ryan M. Eagle, and Bradley S. Eagle Deborah and Philip English
Mr. and Mrs. Kingdon Gould Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin H. Griswold, IV Mr. and Mrs. H. Thomas Howell The Huether-McClelland Foundation Mr. and Mrs. David Modell Margaret Powell Payne* Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Pozefsky Bruce and Lori Laitman Rosenblum Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rudman The Honorable Steven R. Schuh Jane and David Smith Ellen W.P. Wasserman
Judi and Steven B. Fader Family Foundation Mr. Mark Fetting Venable Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Jan K. Guben Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Hug Beth J. Kaplan and Bruce P. Sholk Sarellen and Marshall Levine Jon and Susan Levinson Susan and Jeffrey* Liss Ruth R. Marder Mr. and Mrs. Michael P. Pinto Gar and Migsie Richlin Mr. and Mrs. George A. Roche Mr. and Mrs. Stephen D. Shawe
Shepard Family Foundation Donald J. and Rose Shepard Joanne Gold and Andrew A. Stern
Individuals Founder’s Circle $50,000 or more The Charles T. Bauer Foundation Jessica and Michael Bronfein Mr. and Mrs. George L. Bunting, Jr. Frances Goelet Charitable Trust Dr. and Mrs. Philip Goelet Rifkin, Livingston, Levitan and Silver, LLC Mr. and Mrs. Alan M. Rifkin Esther and Ben Rosenbloom Foundation Michelle G. and Howard Rosenbloom Dorothy McIlvain Scott Dr. and Mrs. Solomon H. Snyder
Maestra’s Circle $15,000 or more Donna and Paul Amico Ellyn Brown and Carl J. Schramm Richard Burns Judith and Mark Coplin The Cordish Family Fund Suzi and David Cordish Mr. and Mrs. Robert Coutts The Dopkin-Singer-Dannenberg Foundation, Inc. Margery and Martin Dannenberg Mr. Kenneth W. DeFontes, Jr. George and Kathleen Drastal Carol and Alan Edelman Ms. Susan Esserman and Mr. Andrew Marks Anne B. and Robert M. Evans
$10,000 or more Anonymous (1) Eric and Jill Becker Mr. and Mrs. Ed Bernard Mr. and Mrs. A.G.W. Biddle, III Mr. Robert L. Bogomolny Ms. Holly Buffinton and Mr. Victor P. Bove Ms. Kathleen A. Chagnon and Mr. Larry Nathans Chesapeake Partners Rosalee C. and Richard Davison Foundation
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
37
Special Thanks
to
for its generous support! VP of Development Dale Hedding with Governing Members Barry and Sandra Glass
Governing Members enjoy a pre-concert Allegretto Dinner.
Individuals Maestra’s Circle (continued) $10,000 or more Mr. L. Patrick Deering, Mr. and Mrs. Albert R. Counselman, The RCM&D Foundation and RCM&D, Inc. Mr. Steve Dollase and Ms. Shari Wakiyama Sara and Nelson Fishman The Sandra and Fred Hittman Philanthropic Fund John P. Hollerbach Riva and Marc Kahn Dr. and Mrs. Murray M. Kappelman Mrs. Barbara Kines Therese* and Richard Lansburgh
Individuals (continued) Governing Members Platinum $7,500 or more Mr. and Mrs. Edward J. Adkins Deborah and Howard M. Berman Mr. Andrew Buerger Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Glatfelter Mr. Kevin Lee Dr. and Mrs. Yuan C. Lee Mr. and Mrs. Bill Nerenberg Dr. and Mrs. Anthony Perlman Alison and Arnold Richman Mr. and Mrs. W. Danforth Walker Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Young Governing Members Gold $5,000 or more Anonymous (1) Renee and Stanton Ades Jean and John Bartlett Barry D. and Linda F. Berman John and Bonnie Boland Mr. Robert H. Boublitz The Bozzuto Family Charitable Fund Mr. and Mrs. Robert Butler Nathan and Suzanne Cohen Foundation Mr. and Mrs. William H. Cowie, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. William F. Dausch Faith and Marvin Dean Ronald E. Dencker Dr. Susan G. Dorsey and Dr. Cynthia L. Renn in honor of Doris A. and Paul J. Renn, III Mr. and Mrs. James L. Dunbar Drs. Sonia and Myrna Estruch Ms. Margaret Ann Fallon Andrea and Samuel Fine John Gidwitz Sandra and Barry Glass Betty E. and Leonard H. Golombek Mrs. Anne Hahn Ms. Catherine S. Hecht* Miss Frances A. Kleeman* Ms. Jonell Lindholm Eileen A. and Joseph H. Mason Mr. and Mrs. Gerald V. McDonald Paul Meecham and Laura Leach Margot and Cleaveland Miller Mr. and Mrs. John O. Mitchell, III Drs. Virginia and Mark Myerson Dr. and Mrs. David Paige Linda and Stanley Panitz
38
Overture
John A. MacColl Mr. and Mrs. Samuel G. Macfarlane Louise D. and Morton J. Macks Family Foundation, Inc. / Genine Macks Fidler and Josh Fidler Sally S. and Decatur H. Miller Mr. and Mrs. Charles O. Monk, II Number Ten Foundation Mrs. Violet G. Raum Dr. Scott and Frances Rifkin Rona and Arthur Rosenbaum Terry M. and James Rubenstein Lainy LeBow-Sachs and Leonard R. Sachs Dr. and Mrs. John H. Sadler
Mrs. Margaret Penhallegon Helene and Bill Pittler Reverend and Mrs. Johnny Ramsey Mr. and Mrs. B. Preston Rich Jane S. Baum Rodbell and James R. Shapiro Mr. and Mrs. William Rogers Mike and Janet Rowan Mr. and Mrs. J. Mark Schapiro Mr. Greg Scudder Ronald and Cathi Shapiro Francesca Siciliano and Mark Green Mr. and Mrs. Harris J. Silverstone Ms. Patricia Stephens Dr. and Mrs. Carvel Tiekert David and Chris Wallace Mr. and Mrs. Loren Western Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy A. Wilbur, Jr. Laurie S. Zabin
Governing Members Silver $2,500 or more Anonymous (3) Diane and Martin* Abeloff Dr. Marilyn Albert Julianne and George Alderman Dr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Allen Terry Armacost Mr.* and Mrs. Alexander Armstrong Jackie and Eugene Azzam Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H.G. Bailliere, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Wilmot C. Ball, Jr. Ms. Penny Bank Donald L. Bartling Mr. Hank Bauer Dr. and Mrs. Theodore M. Bayless Dr. Neil W. Beach and Mr. Michael Spillane Mr. and Mrs. John W. Beckley John C. and Rosemary F. Beers Lynda and Kenneth Behnke Dr. and Mrs. Emile A. Bendit Arlene S. Berkis Max Berndorff and Annette Merz Alan and Bunny Bernstein Randy and Rochelle Blaustein Mr. Gilbert Bloom Dr. and Mrs. Paul Z. Bodnar Carolyn and John Boitnott Mr. and Mrs. John M. Bond, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Booth Dr. and Mrs. Stuart H. Brager Dr. Rudiger and Robin Breitenecker Mr. and Mrs. Leland Brendsel
Dr. Robert P. Burchard Loretta Cain Mr. and Mrs. S. Winfield Cain James N. Campbell M.D. and Regina Anderson M.D. Michael and Kathy Carducci Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Chomas Ms. Susan Chouinard Corckran Family Charitable Foundation Mr. and Mrs. John C. Corckran, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. David S. Cohen Mr. Harvey L. Cohen and Ms. Martha Krach Mrs. Miriam M. Cohen Joan Piven-Cohen and Samuel T. Cohen Dr. and Mrs. Stephen P. Cohen Mr. and Mrs. Elbert Cole Mr. and Mrs. Kerby Confer Mr. and Mrs. John W. Conrad, Jr. Jane C. Corrigan Mrs. Rebecca M. Cowen-Hirsch Alan and Pamela Cressman Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Dahlka, Jr. Richard A. Davis and Edith Wolpoff-Davis James H. DeGraffenreidt and Mychelle Y. Farmer Mr. Benito DeLeon and Ms. Kari Peterson Arthur F. and Isadora Dellheim Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Mathias J. DeVito Mr. and Mrs. A. Eric Dott Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Drachman Mr. and Mrs. Larry D. Droppa Bill and Louise Duncan Dr. and Mrs. Donald O. Fedder Dr. and Mrs. Arnold S. Feldman Dr. and Mrs. Bruce Feldman Mr. and Mrs. Maurice R. Feldman Mr. Stephen W. Fisher Winnie and Bill Flattery Dr. and Mrs. Giraud Foster Mr. and Mrs. John C. Frederick Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Freed Jo Ann and Jack Fruchtman, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gallagher John Galleazzi and Elizabeth Hennessey Ms. Ethel W. Galvin Dr. Joel and Rhoda Ganz Mr. Ralph A. Gaston Mr. and Mrs. Ramon* F. Getzov Mrs. Ellen Bruce Gibbs
M. Sigmund and Barbara K. Shapiro Philanthropic Fund Dr. and Mrs. Charles I. Shubin Mr. and Mrs. Gideon N. Stieff, Jr. The Louis B. Thalheimer and Juliet A. Eurich Philanthropic Fund Mark and Mary Vail Walsh Ms. Nell Weidenhammer Mr. and Mrs. William Yeakel The Zamoiski-Barber-Segal Family Foundation * Deceased
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph S. Gillespie, Jr. Mr. Robert Gillison and Ms. Laura L. Gamble Evee and Bertram Goldstein Mr. Mark Goldstein, Paley Rothman Brian and Gina Gracie Mr. and Mrs. Leonard L. Greif, Jr. Mrs. LaVerne Grove Ms. Mary Therese Gyi Ms. Louise A. Hager Ms. Margaret Halstead Carole B. Hamlin Ms. Denise Hargrove Thomas Hasler and Patricia Robinson Melanie and Donald Heacock Dale C. Hedding Mr. and Mrs. Edward Heine Mr. and Mrs. John Heller Sandra and Thomas Hess Mr. Thomas Hicks Mr. and Mrs. Bruce M. Hilton Betty Jean and Martin S. Himeles, Sr. Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Himmelrich Ms. Marilyn J. Hoffman Betsy and Len Homer Mr. and Mrs. Jack Hook Mr. and Mrs. J. Woodford Howard, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Hubbard, Jr. Elayne and Benno Hurwitz Susan and David Hutton Marian Hwang Susan and Stephen Immelt Benjamin Ingram and Kendra Whitlock Ingram Eileen Andrews Jackson Dr. Richard Johns Nelson and Brigitte Kandel S. Kann Sons Company Foundation, Inc. Mary Ellen and Leon Kaplan Barbara and Jay Katz Susan B. Katzenberg Mr. James Kayler Louise and Richard Kemper Mr. and Mrs. E. Robert Kent, Jr. Harriet* and Philip Klein Dr. and Mrs. Richard A. Kline Kohn Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Steven S. Koren Barbara and David Kornblatt Ms. Patricia Krenzke and Mr. Michael Hall
Mr. William La Cholter Marc E. Lackritz and Mary B. DeOreo Ms. Delia Lang Dr. and Mrs. Donald Lagenberg Dr. David Leckrone and Marlene Berlin Mr. and Mrs. Howard Lehrer Claus Leitherer and Irina Fedorova Ruth and Jay Lenrow Dr. and Mrs. Harry Letaw, Jr. C. Tilghman Levering Bernice and Donald S.* Levinson Mr. and Mrs. Vernon L. Lidtke Darielle and Earl Linehan Mrs. June Linowitz and Dr. Howard Eisner Dr. James and Jill Lipton Dr. Diana Locke and Mr. Robert E. Toense Dr. Frank C. Marino Foundation Diane and Jerome Markman Mr. and Mrs. Abbott Martin Donald and Lenore Martin Mr. and Mrs. Jordan Max Mr. Thomas Mayer Dr. Marilyn Maze and Dr. Holland Ford Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Mazur Norfolk Southern Foundation Mrs. Kenneth A. McCord Mrs. Marie McCormack Ellen and Tom Mendelsohn Mr. and Mrs. Neil Meyerhoff Sandra L. Michocki Mrs. Anne Miller Mrs. Mildred S. Miller Mr. Louis Mills Judy and Martin Mintz Northern Pharmacy and Medical Equipment Mr. and Mrs. Sidney W. Mintz Humayun and Marilia Mirza Ms. Patricia J. Mitchell Drs. Dalia and Alan Mitnick Dr. and Mrs. C.L. Moravec Dr. Henrietta Moritz and Dr. Mildred Zindler Mr. and Mrs. Peter Muncie Mrs. Joy Munster Mr. John and Dr. Lyn Murphy Louise* and Alvin Myerberg Mr. and Mrs. H. Hudson Myers, Jr. Drs. Roy A. and Gillian Myers Howard Needleman
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Membership Benefits 2009-2010 Season To learn more about becoming a member, please call: 410.783.8124. A contribution to the Baltimore Symphony entitles you to special events and privileges throughout the season.
BACH LEVEL MEMBERS ($75-$149) Assistant Concertmaster Igor Yuzefovich meets Governing Members before an Allegretto Dinner. Phyllis Neuman, Ricka Neuman and Ted Niederman Mr. and Mrs. Kevin O’Connor Dr. A. Harry Oleynick Mrs. Bodil Ottesen Olive L. Page Charitable Trust Dr. and Mrs. Lawrence C. Pakula Mr. and Mrs. Steven Pattin Beverly and Sam Penn Jan S. Peterson and Alison E. Cole Peter E. Quint Nancy E. Randa and Michael G. Hansen Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Rheinhardt Mr. and Mrs. Richard Roca Stephen L. Root and Nancy A. Greene Mr. and Mrs. Charles Rowins T. Edgie Russell Mr. and Mrs. Neil J. Ruther Ed Ryan and Dr. Kazuko K. Price Dr. John Rybock and Ms. Lee Kappelman Dr. and Mrs. Marvin M. Sager Dr. Henry Sanborn Ms. Doris Sanders Ms. Tara Santmire and Mr. Ben Turner Dr. Jeannine L. Saunders Lois Schenck and Tod Myers Marilyn and Herb Scher* Mrs. Roy O. Scholz Alena and David M. Schwaber Mr. Jack Schwebel Carol and James Scott Cynthia Scott Ida and Joseph Shapiro Foundation and Diane and Albert* Shapiro Mrs. Suzanne R. Sherwood Francine and Richard Shure The Sidney Silber Family Foundation Drs. Ruth and John Singer Mr. David Punshon-Smith Ms. Leslie J. Smith Ms. Nancy E. Smith Ms. Patricia Smith Mr. Turner B. Smith Mr. and Mrs. Lee M. Snyder Dr. and Mrs. Charles S. Specht Joan and Thomas Spence Melissa and Philip Spevak Anita and Mickey Steinberg Mr. Edward Steinhouse Mr. and Mrs. Dale Strait Mr. Alan Strasser and Ms. Patricia Hartge Susan and Brian Sullam Mrs. Janis Swan Tracy Tajbl and Neil Kent Jones Mr. and Mrs. Robert Taubman Dr. Bruce T. Taylor and Dr. Ellen Taylor Dr. Ronald J. Taylor Mr. and Mrs. Terence Taylor Ms. Loretta Taymans* Sonia Tendler Ms. Susan B. Thomas Paul and Karen Tolzman Dr. and Mrs. Timothy Townsend Dr. Robert E. Trattner Donna Triptow and Michael Salsbury In Memory of Jeffrey F. Liss, Dr. and Mrs. Henry Tyrangiel Mr. and Mrs. Peter Van Dyke Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Wagandt, II Mr. and Mrs. Semmes G. Walsh John and Susan Warshawsky Martha and Stanley Weiman Peter Weinberg Mr. and Mrs. Christopher West Mr. Edward Wiese
Pianist Robert Levin and conductor Nicholas McGegan speak at a Governing Members’ Allegretto Dinner.
Dr. and Mrs. Donald E. Wilson Mrs. Phyllis Brill Wingrat and Dr. Seymour Wingrat* Mr. and Mrs. T. Winstead, Jr. Judy M. Witt Laura and Thomas Witt Wolman Family Foundation Charles and Shirley Wunder Drs. Yaster and Zeitlin Charles and Carol Yoder Mr. and Mrs. Michael Young Paul A. and Peggy L. Young NOVA Research Company Dr. and Mrs. Robert E. Zadek
Symphony Society Gold $1,500 or more Anonymous (1) Mr. and Mrs. Robert R. Bair The Becker Family Fund Dr. and Mrs. Donald D. Brown Mrs. Elizabeth A. Bryan Ms. Mary Catherine Bunting Mr. Charles Cahn, II Donna and Joseph Camp Mr. Robert M. Cheston Mr. and Mrs. Howard Cohen Dr. and Mrs. David Cooper Mr. and Mrs. Charles Counselman, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. George Curlin Dr. and Mrs. Cornelius Darcy Dr. and Mrs. Thomas DeKornfeld Donna Z. Eden and Henry Goldberg Dr. and Mrs. Jerome L. Fleg Mr. and Mrs. Stanford Gann, Sr. Ms. Jean Goldsmith Mrs. Ellen Halle Ms. Gloria Hamilton Dr. Mary Harbeitner Mr.* and Mrs. E. Phillips Hathaway Mr. and Mrs. George B. Hess, Jr. Donald W. and Yvonne M. Hughes Richard and Brenda Johnson Mr. Henry Kahwaty Mr. Harry Kaplan Gloria B. and Herbert M. Katzenberg Fund Miss Dorothy B. Krug Mr. Charles Kuning Andrew Lapayowker and Sarah McCafferty Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Legum Sara and Elliot* Levi Ms. Susan Levine Dr. Frances and Mr. Edward Lieberman Dr. and Mrs. Michael O. Magan Mr. and Mrs. Luke Marbury Howard and Linda Martin Carol and George McGowan Drs. William and Deborah McGuire Bebe McMeekin Alvin Meltzer Daniel and Anne Messina Mr. Hilary B. Miller Mr. and Mrs. Rex E. Myers Mrs. J. Stevenson Peck The Pennyghael Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. James Piper Mr. and Mrs. John Brentnall Powell Mr. Larry Prall Mr. Joseph L. Press Mr. and Mrs. Michael Renbaum Ms. Michelle Robertson Margaret and Lee Rome Martha and Saul Roseman Mr. and Mrs. William Saxon, Jr. The Honorable William Donald Schaefer Mr. Thom Shipley and Mr. Christopher Taylor Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Sieber
Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Smith Mr. and Mrs. Richard D. Spero Mrs. Ann Stein Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sun Dr. Martin Taubenfeld Ms. Joan Wah and Ms. Katherine Wah Ms. Jean Wyman
Symphony Society Silver $1,000 or more “In memory of Reverend Howard G. Norton” Mrs. Frank A. Bosworth, Jr. “In honor of Marin Alsop” Mr. Kevin F. Reed “In honor of Steven R. Schuh” Anonymous (10) Mrs. Rachael Abraham Dr. and Mrs. Robert J. Adams Virginia K. Adams and Neal M. Friedlander, M.D. Charles T. and Louise B. Albert George and Frances Alderson Mr. Owen Applequist Mr. Paul Araujo Dr. Juan I. Arvelo Leonard and Phyllis Attman Mrs. Jean Baker Mr. George Ball Mr. and Mrs. L. John Barnes Dr. and Mrs. Bruce Barnett Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barta Monsignor Arthur W. Bastress Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Ber David and Sherry Berz Mr. and Mrs. Edwin and Catherine Blacka Dr. and Mrs. Mordecai P. Blaustein Nancy Patz Blaustein Mr. James D. Blum Nina and Tony Borwick Drs. Joanna and Harry Brandt Dr. Helene Breazeale Dr. and Mrs. Mark J. Brenner The Broadus Family Ivy E. Broder and John F. Morrall, III Barbara and Ed Brody Dr. Galen Brooks Mr. Gordon Brown Ms. Jean B. Brown Ms. Elizabeth J. Bruen Ms. Jeanne Brush Ms. Ronnie Buerger Mr. and Mrs. Bulawka Mrs. Edward D. Burger Mrs. Mary Jo Campbell Russ and Beverly Carlson Jonathan and Ruthie Carney Mr. and Mrs. Claiborn Carr Mr. Richard Cerpa Mr. Mark Chambers Dr. Mark Cinnamon and Ms. Doreen Kelly Jane E. Cohen Mr. and Mrs. Jonas M.L. Cohen Ms. Patricia Collins Ms. Kathleen Costlow Mr. Michael R. Crider Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Crooks John and Kate D’Amore Joan de Pontet Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Deering Ms. Priscilla Diacont Mr. Duane Calvin DeVance Mr. Jackson Diehl Nicholas F. Diliello Mrs. Marcia K. Dorst Mr. and Mrs. Robert Duchesne Ms. Lynne Durbin Mr. Laurence Dusold Mr. Terence Ellen and Ms. Amy Boscov
Benefits include… • Two complimentary tickets to the Annual Donor Appreciation Concert (R) • Opportunity to purchase tickets prior to public sale* • 10% discount on music, books and gifts at the Symphony Store and An Die Musik • NEW! Invitation to one Open Rehearsal (R)
BEETHOVEN LEVEL MEMBERS ($150-$249) All benefits listed above, plus… • Invitation to an additional Open Rehearsal (R) • Two complimentary drink vouchers
BRAHMS LEVEL MEMBERS ($250-$499) All benefits listed above, plus… • 10% discount on tickets to BSO performances* • Two additional complimentary tickets to the Annual Donor Appreciation Concert (R)
BRITTEN LEVEL MEMBERS ($500-$999) All benefits listed above, plus… • Invitation to the Premium “Evening” Open Rehearsal (R) • Donor recognition in one issue of Overture magazine • Two additional complimentary drink vouchers • Four complimentary dessert vouchers • NEW! Invitation to one Cast Party (R)
SYMPHONY SOCIETY ($1,000-$2,499) All benefits listed above, plus… • Invitation to additional Cast Parties, featuring BSO musicians and guest artists (R) • Yearlong donor recognition in Overture magazine • Two complimentary passes to the Symphony Decorators’ Show House • Two one-time passes to the Georgia and Peter G. Angelos Governing Members Lounge • Four complimentary parking passes for BSO concerts at the Meyerhoff • Invitation to Season Opening Gala (R/$) • NEW! Opportunity to attend exclusive Meet-the-Musicians events
GOVERNING MEMBERS ($2,500+) All benefits listed above, plus… • Invitation to On-Stage Rehearsals (R) • Governing Member Allegretto Dinners (R/$) • Complimentary parking upon request through the Ticket Office • Season-long access to the Georgia and Peter G. Angelos Governing Members Lounge • VIP Ticket Concierge service including complimentary ticket exchange • Opportunity to participate in exclusive Governing Member trips, such as the upcoming Carnegie Hall trip and future international tours. (R/$) • Invitation to the BSO’s Annual Board Meeting • NEW! Invitation to exclusive Season Sneak Preview on-stage with the Maestra! • NEW! Candlelight Conversations, intimate pre-concert dinner with stars from the BSO family. (R/$)
GOVERNING MEMBERS GOLD ($5,000+) All benefits listed above, plus… • Complimentary copy of upcoming BSO recording signed by the Music Director (one per season) • Exclusive events including Meet & Greet opportunities with BSO musicians and guest artists
MAESTRA’S CIRCLE ($10,000+) All benefits listed above, plus… • Exclusive and intimate events catered to this special group including post-concert receptions with some of the top artists in the world who are performing with the BSO • NEW! Formal Salon Dinner—Be our guests at the first annual Springtime Soiree: Chamber Music & Dinner with Maestra Alsop & the BSO. Enjoy an Exclusive Maestra Circle event at a very special location. • NEW! One complimentary use of the GM Lounge facilities for hosting personal or business hospitality events ($) ($) Admission fee (R) Reservation required and limited to a first-come basis. *Some seating and concerts excluded.
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
39
Corporations $100,000 or more
Concertmaster Jonathan Carney with Sandy Hittman at a Music Matters fundraiser
Individuals (continued)
$50,000 or more
$25,000 or more
40
Overture
Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Elsberg and the Elsberg Family Foundation Dr. and Ms. Jerry Farber Dr. and Mrs. Marvin J. Feldman Mr. and Mrs. Edward Feltham, Jr. Mrs. Sandra Ferriter Joe and Laura Fitzgibbon Dr. Charles W. Flexner and Dr. Carol Trapnell Ms. Lois Flowers Dr. and Mrs. Nicholas J. Fortuin Dr. and Mrs. William Fox Dr. Neal M. Friedlander Mr. and Mrs. R. Friedlander Mr. and Mrs. Roberto B. Friedman William and Carol Fuentevilla Mr. Ron Gerstley and Ms. Amy Blank Mr. Peter Gil Dr. and Mrs. Sanford Glazer Mr. Jonathan Goldblith William R. and Alice Goodman Barry E. and Barbara Gordon Dr. and Mrs. Sheldon Gottlieb Larry D. Grant and Mary S. Grant Erwin and Stephanie Greenberg Dr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Greif Mr. Charles H. Griesacker Mr. Ronald Griffin and Mr. Shaun Carrick Ms. Lynne Groban Mary and Joel Grossman Mr. and Mrs. Donald Gundlach Mr. and Mrs. Norman M. Gurevich Mr. and Mrs. J.M. Dryden Hall, Jr. Ms. Lana Halpern Ms. Carol Finn Halverstadt Mr. Joseph P. Hamper, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. John Hanson Mr. and Mrs. Robert Helm Ms. Doris T. Hendricks Mrs. Ellen Herscowitz David A. and Barbara L. Heywood Nancy H. Hirsche Mrs. Joan M. Hoblitzell Edward Hoffman Mr. and Mrs. John Hornady, III Mr. Herbert H. Hubbard Mrs. Madeleine Jacobs Carol Jantsch and David Murray Mrs. Janet Jeffein Ms. Betty W. Jensen Mrs. Kathy Johnson Mr. R. Tenney Johnson Dr. Richard T. Johnson Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Jones Mr. J. Lee Jones Mrs. Helen Jordahl Mr. Max Jordan Dr. Robert Lee Justice and Marie Fujimura-Justice Ann and Sam Kahan Gail and Lenny Kaplan Mrs. Harry E. Carr Mr. and Mrs. William E. Kavanaugh Dr. and Mrs. Haiq Kazazian, Jr. Mr. Frank Keegan Mr. John P. Keyser George and Catherine Klein Richard and Eileen Kwolek Sandy and Mark Laken Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lamb Susan and Stephen Langley John and Diane Laughlin Melvyn and Fluryanne Leach Colonel William R. Lee Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Legters Mr. Ronald P. Lesser Mr. Richard Ley Mrs. E.J. Libertini Mr. Dennis Linnell George and Julie Littrell Dr. and Mrs. Peter C. Luchsinger
Ms. Louise E. Lynch Michael and Judy Mael Ms. Joan Martin Jane Marvine Mr. Joseph S. Massey Dr. and Mrs. Robert D. Mathieson Dr. and Mrs. Donald E. McBrien Mrs. Linda M. McCabe Mr. Thomas B. McGee Mr. Richard C. McShane Mr. Timothy Meredith Dr. and Mrs. John O. Meyerhoff Drs. Alan and Marilyn Miller Mr. Charles Miller Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Miller Mr. and Mrs. Gary Miller Mr. and Mrs. J. Jefferson Miller, II Mr. and Mrs. James D. Miller Mr. Lee Miller Dr. and Mrs. Stanley R. Milstein Ms. Adrianne Mitchell Lloyd E. Mitchell Foundation Mr. Nathan Mook Mr. Edwyn Moot Dr. and Mrs. Hugo W. Moser Mr. and Mrs. M. Peter Moser Teresa and Don Mullikin Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Murray Ms. Marita Murray Mr. Harish Neelakandan and Ms. Sunita Govind Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Neiman Mr. Irving Neuman David Nickels and Gerri Hall Mr. and Mrs. Roger F. Nordquist Mrs. Patricia Normile Carol C. O’Connell Anne M. O’Hare Drs. Erol and Julianne Oktay Mr. Garrick Ohlsson Mrs. S. Kaufman Ottenheimer Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Parr Mr. and Mrs. Richard Parsons Mr. and Mrs. William Pence Jerry and Marie Perlet Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Petrucci Dr. and Mrs. Karl Pick Ms. Mary Carroll Plaine Mr. and Mrs. Morton B. Plant Robert E. and Anne L. Prince Captain and Mrs. Carl Quanstrom Dr. and Mrs. Richard Radmer Ted and Stephanie Ranft Dr. Tedine Ranich and Dr. Christine Pavlovich Dr. and Mrs. Jonas R. Rappeport Mr. and Mrs. William E. Ray Mr. Charles B. Reeves, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Rice David and Mary Jane Roberts Drs. Helena and David Rodbard Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Rogell Margaret and Lee Rome Joellen and Mark Roseman Ann and Frank Rosenberg Joanne and Abraham Rosenthal Mr.* and Mrs. Nathan G. Rubin Robert and Lelia Russell Mr. and Mrs. John Sacci Beryl and Philip Sachs Ms. Andi Sacks Mr. Norm St. Landau Ms. Vera Sanacore Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Sandler Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Sandler Mr. and Mrs. Ace J. Sarich Mr. Thomas Scalea Mr. and Mrs. David Scheffenacker Mrs. Barbara K. Scherlis Dr. and Mrs. Horst K.A. Schirmer Mr. and Mrs. Eugene H. Schreiber Ms. Estelle Schwalb Ken and Nancy Schwartz
Guests enjoy a special Board-hosted party.
Mr. Sanford Shapiro Mr. and Mrs. Brian T. Sheffer Dr. and Mrs. Ronald F. Sher Reverend Richard Wise Shreffler Mr. Richard Silbert Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Silver Mr. Donald M. Simonds Mr. Richard Sipes Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smelkinson Richard and Gayle Smith Mr. and Mrs. Scott Smith Mr. and Mrs. William J. Sneeringer, Jr. Laurie M. Sokoloff Ms. Dianne Sondheimer Ms. Jennifer Stern Dr. and Mrs. F. Dylan Stewart Mr. James Storey Harriet Stulman Ms. Jean M. Suda and Mr. Kim Z. Golden Ms. Dianne Summers Ms. Sandra Sundeen Mr. and Mrs. Richard Swerdlow Mr. Harry Telegadas Mr. Marc J. Teller Patricia Thompson and Edward Sledge Dr. Jean Townsend and Mr. Larry Townsend Mr. and Mrs. David Traub Mr. and Mrs. Israel S. Ungar Ms. Elyse Vinitsky Ms. Mary Frances Wagley Mr. and Mrs. Guy T. Warfield Ms. Janna P. Wehrle Mr. and Mrs. Jay Weinstein Dr. and Mrs. Matthew Weir Drs. Susan and James Weiss Ms. Lisa Welchman Ms. Beverly Wendland and Mr. Michael McCaffery Mr. and Mrs. Sean Wharry Ms. Camille B. Wheeler and Mr. William B. Marshall Dr. Barbara White Dr. Edward Whitman Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Wilcoxson Mr. Barry Williams Mrs. Gerald H. Williams Mr. and Mrs. Peter Winik Mr. Orin Wise Marc and Amy Wish Mr. John W. Wood Dr. Richard Worsham and Ms. Deborah Geisenkotter Ms. Anne Worthington Mr. Alexander Yaffe H. Alan Young and Sharon Bob Young, Ph.D Andrew Zaruba
Corporations $10,000 or more American Trading & Production Corporation Beltway Fine Wines The Black & Decker Corporation Greenberg Traurig Hotel Brexton / Inn & Spa at the Colonnade / Alizee Bistro IWIF Parature Pro Video Group SunTrust Bank, Greater Washington/Maryland Travelers Foundation Venable, LLP Wachovia Foundation WJHU Radio $5,000 or more Corporate Office Properties Trust D. F. Dent & Company P. Flanigan & Sons, Inc.
BSO Board of Directors 2009-2010 Season OFFICERS Michael G. Bronfein* Chairman Kathleen A. Chagnon, Esq.* Secretary
Event hosts Bob Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker with special guest Itzhak Perlman Georgetown Paper Stock of Rockville, Inc. Kramon & Graham Macy’s Foundation Nordstrom P&G Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation RBC Wealth Management Saul Ewing LLP Valley Motors Zuckerman Spaeder LLP
$2,500 or more Cavanaugh Financial Group Charitable Foundation Eagle Coffee Company Inc. Federal Parking, Inc. $1,000 or more Downtown Piano Works Ellin & Tucker, Chartered Eyre Bus and Travel The Harford Mutual Insurance Company Independent Can Company J.G. Martin Company, Inc. Nina McLemore, Inc. Parking Management, Inc. Rosenberg Martin Goldberg, LLP Sandy Spring Bank Semmes, Bowen & Semmes Starbucks / Passage Events Von Paris Moving & Storage
Foundations $50,000 or more William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund The Hearst Foundation, Inc. Hecht-Levi Foundation Ryda H. Levi* and Sandra Levi Gerstung The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Joseph & Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation and Ruth Marder The Sheridan Foundation $25,000 or more Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation The Goldsmith Family Foundation, Inc. Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Jr. Memorial Foundation Zanvyl & Isabelle Krieger Fund $10,000 or more Anonymous (1) The Buck Family Foundation Bunting Family Foundation The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Degenstein Foundation Peggy & Yale Gordon Trust Harley W. Howell Charitable Foundation The Abraham and Ruth Krieger Family Foundation League of American Orchestras John J. Leidy Foundation, Inc. The Letaw Family Foundation Macht Philanthropic Fund of the AJC The Rouse Company Foundation The Salmon Foundation Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation, Inc. Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation Cecilia Young Willard Helping Fund
Stage of the Meyerhoff set for BSO's Music Matters fundraiser with special guest Itzhak Perlman
$5,000 or more Anonymous (1) The Arts Federation Stewart Bainum, Jr. and The Foundation for Maryland’s Future Commonweal Foundation Fund of The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region The Charles Delmar Foundation Hoffberger Foundation Betty Huse MD Charitable Trust Foundation Edith and Herbert Lehman Foundation, Inc. Wright Family Foundation $2,500 or more The Campbell Foundation, Inc. The Harry L. Gladding Foundation Israel and Mollie Myers Foundation Judith & Herschel Langenthal Jonathan & Beverly Myers The Jim and Patty Rouse Charitable Foundation, Inc. Sigma Alpha Iota $1,000 or more ALH Foundation, Inc. Balder Foundation Margaret O. Cromwell Family Fund Ethel M. Looram Foundation, Inc. Rathmann Family Foundation
Government Grants Anne Arundel County Mayor and City Council of Baltimore and the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts Baltimore County Executive, County Council, and the Commission for the Arts and Sciences Carroll County Government & the Carroll County Arts Council The Family League of Baltimore City, Inc. Harford County Government Howard County Government & the Howard County Arts Council Maryland Historical Trust Maryland State Arts Council Maryland State Department of Education Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County National Endowment for the Arts
Endowment The BSO gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the following donors who have given Endowment Gifts to the Sustaining Greatness and / or the Heart of the Community campaigns. * Deceased
Anonymous (6) Diane and Martin* Abeloff AEGON USA Alex. Brown & Sons Charitable Foundation Dr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Allen Eva and Andy Anderson Anne Arundel County Recreation and Parks Department William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund Mr. H. Furlong Baldwin Baltimore Community Foundation
Baltimore County Executive, County Council, & the Commission on Arts & Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts The Baltimore Orioles/ Georgia and Peter Angelos The Baltimore Symphony Associates, Winnie Flattery, President Patricia and Michael J. Batza, Jr. Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation The Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Bruce I. Blum Dr. and Mrs. John E. Bordley* Jessica and Michael Bronfein Mr. and Mrs. George L. Bunting, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Oscar B. Camp Carefirst BlueCross BlueShield CitiFinancial Constellation Energy Mr. and Mrs. William H. Cowie, Jr. Richard A. Davis and Edith Wolpoff-Davis Rosalee C. and Richard Davison Foundation Mr. L. Patrick Deering, Mr. and Mrs. Albert R. Counselman, The RCM&D Foundation and RCM&D, Inc. DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP Carol and Alan Edelman Dr. and Mrs. Robert Elkins Deborah and Philip English Esther and Ben Rosenbloom Foundation France-Merrick Foundation Sandra Levi Gerstung Ramon F.* and Constance A. Getzov John Gidwitz The Goldsmith Family Foundation, Inc. Joanne Gold and Andrew A. Stern Jody and Martin Grass Louise and Bert Grunwald H&S Bakery / Mr. John Paterakis Harford County Hecht-Levi Foundation Ryda H. Levi* and Sandra Levi Gerstung Betty Jean and Martin S. Himeles, Sr. Hoffberger Foundation Howard County Arts Council Harley W. Howell Charitable Foundation The Huether-McClelland Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Hug Independent Can Company Laura Burrows-Jackson Beth J. Kaplan and Bruce P. Sholk Dr. and Mrs. Murray M. Kappelman Susan B. Katzenberg Marion I. and Henry J. Knott Scholarship Fund The Zanvyl and Isabelle Krieger Fund Anne and Paul Lambdin Therese* and Richard Lansburgh Sara and Elliot* Levi Levi-Gerstung Family Bernice and Donald S. Levinson Darielle and Earl Linehan Susan and Jeffrey* Liss Lockheed Martin E. J. Logan Foundation M&T Bank Macht Philanthropic Fund of the AJC Mrs. Clyde T. Marshall Maryland Department of Business & Economic Development The Maryland State Arts Council MD State Department of Education McCarthy Family Foundation McCormick & Company, Inc. Mr. Wilbur McGill, Jr.
Scott Rifkin, M.D. Ann L. Rosenberg Bruce E. Rosenblum* The Honorable Steven R. Schuh
Lainy LeBow-Sachs* Vice Chair
Stephen D. Shawe, Esq.
Paul Meecham* President & CEO
Mark Walsh
Solomon H. Snyder, M.D.*
Richard E. Rudman* Vice Chair Andrew A. Stern* Vice Chair & Treasurer
LIFE DIRECTORS Peter G. Angelos, Esq. Willard Hackerman H. Thomas Howell, Esq.
BOARD MEMBERS A.G.W. Biddle III
Yo-Yo Ma
Robert L. Bogomolny
Harvey M. Meyerhoff
Ralph A. Brunn
Decatur H. Miller, Esq.
Andrew A. Buerger
Patricia B. Modell
Richard T. Burns
Linda Hambleton Panitz
Constance R. Caplan
The Honorable William Donald Schaefer
Robert B. Coutts
Dorothy Mc Ilvain Scott
Kenneth W. DeFontes, Jr. George A. Drastal
DIRECTORS EMERITI Margaret D. Armstrong
Alan S. Edelman
Barry D. Berman, Esq.
Ambassador Susan G. Esserman*
L. Patrick Deering
Steve Dollase
Winnie Flattery ^ President, Baltimore Symphony Associates
M. Sigmund Shapiro CHAIRMAN LAUREATE Calman J. Zamoiski, Jr.
Jan K. Guben John P. Hollerbach Richard E. Hug* Beth J. Kaplan* Murray M. Kappelman, M.D.
BOARD OF TRUSTEES BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ENDOWMENT TRUST Benjamin H. Griswold IV Chairman
Jon H. Levinson
Terry Meyerhoff Rubenstein Secretary
Susan M. Liss, Esq.*
Michael G. Bronfein
John A. MacColl
Mark R. Fetting
Catherine H. McClelland Governing Members Chair
Paul Meecham
David O. Modell Michael P. Pinto Margery Pozefsky
W. Gar Richlin Andrew A. Stern Calman J. Zamoiski, Jr. *Board Executive Committee ^ex-officio
Upcoming Member-Only Events! > Open Rehearsal Listen in as conductor Juanjo Mena leads the Orchestra in Strauss’ Don Juan, Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 and Schumann’s Piano Concerto featuring pianist Louis Lortie. Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 9:15 a.m. Members $150+
> Candlelight Conversations Enjoy an evening of conversation and dinner hosted by violinist Ivan Stefanovic. Cost is $30 per person. Space is limited. Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 6 p.m. Members $2,500+
> Cast Party Join Maestra Marin Alsop, guest artist André Watts and members of the Orchestra for a special post-concert wine and dessert reception. Friday, June 4, 2010. Members $1,000+
> Open Rehearsal Listen in as Maestra Marin Alsop rehearses the Orchestra and The Washington Chorus in Brahms’ A German Requiem. Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 6:45 p.m. Members $500+
> Allegretto Dinner Enjoy exclusive pre-concert cocktails and dinner held here in the Meyerhoff before the BSO’s performance of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Brahms’ A German Requiem. Cost is $68 per person. Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 6 p.m. Members $2,500+
To enjoy these events or for more information, please call our Membership Office at 410.783.8124 or email Membership@BSOmusic.org.
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
41
Baltimore Symphony Staff
Paul Meecham President and CEO Barbara Kirk Executive Assistant Terry A. Armacost Vice President and CFO Dale Hedding Vice President of Development Eileen Andrews Jackson Vice President of Marketing and Communications ARTISTIC OPERATIONS Toby Blumenthal Manager of Facility Sales Tiffany Bryan Manager of Front of House Alicia Lin Director of Operations Chris Monte Assistant Personnel Manager
FACILITIES OPERATIONS (CONTINUED)
Curtis Jones Building Services Manager Ivory Miller Maintenance Facilities FINANCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Jim Herberson Manager of Information Systems Janice Johnson Senior Accountant Evinz Leigh Administration Associate Sandy Michocki Controller and Senior Director of Business Analytics Carol Rhodes Payroll and Benefits Administrator John Wright Senior Accountant
Steven Parker Food and Beverage Operations Manager
MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS Rika Dixon Marketing Manager
Marilyn Rife Director of Orchestra Personnel
Emily Eaves Art Director
Erik Thogerson Artistic Coordinator
Laura Farmer Public Relations Manager
EDUCATION Hillary Hahn OrchKids Administrative Director Lisa A. Sheppley Associate Director of Education Larry Townsend Education Assistant Dan Trahey OrchKids Director of Artistic Program Development DEVELOPMENT Margaret Blake Development Office Manager Allison Burr-Livingstone Grant Writer Sarah Chrzanowski Annual Fund Coordinator Alana Morrall Director of Individual Giving Rebecca Potter Corporate Relations Coordinator Joanne M. Rosenthal Director of Major Gifts, Planned Giving and Government Relations
Deborah Goetz Senior Director of Marketing Sarah Haller PR and Publications Coordinator Derek A. Johnson Marketing Coordinator, Advertising and Media Theresa Kopasek Marketing and PR Associate Kristen Pohl Group Sales Manager Jamie Schneider Marketing Manager, E-Commerce and Digital TICKET SERVICES Amy Bruce Manager of Special Events and VIP Ticketing Gabriel Garcia Ticket Services Agent Adrian Hilliard Senior Ticket Services Agent, Strathmore Timothy Lidard Assistant Ticket Services Manager
Elspeth Shaw Individual Giving Coordinator
Kathy Marciano Director of Ticket Services
Richard Spero Community Liaison for BSO at Strathmore
Peter Murphy Ticket Services Manager
Emily Wise Donor Relations Manager, BSO at Strathmore FACILITIES OPERATIONS Shirley Caudle Housekeeper Bertha Jones Senior Housekeeper
Michael Suit Ticket Services Agent Zoë Whiting Ticket Services Agent BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ASSOCIATES Larry Albrecht Symphony Store Volunteer Manager Louise Reiner Office Manager
42
Overture
BSO musicians Jane Marvine and Laurie Sokoloff with BSO donors. MIE Properties, Inc. / Mr. Edward St. John Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Joseph & Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds Sally and Decatur Miller Ms. Michelle Moga Louise* and Alvin Myerberg / Wendy and Howard Jachman National Endowment for the Arts Mr. and Mrs. Bill Nerenberg Mrs. Daniel M. O’Connell Mr. and Mrs. James P. O’Conor Stanley and Linda Hambleton Panitz Cecile Pickford and John MacColl Dr. Thomas and Mrs. Margery Pozefsky Mr. and Mrs. T. Michael Preston Alison and Arnold Richman The James G. Robinson Family Mr. and Mrs. Theo C. Rodgers Mr. and Mrs. Randolph* S. Rothschild The Rouse Company Foundation Nathan G.* and Edna J. Rubin The Rymland Foundation S. Kann Sons Company Foundation, Inc. / B. Bernei Burgunder, Jr. Dr. Henry Sanborn
BSO musicians give an intimate performance at a Music Matters fundraiser.
Saul Ewing LLP Mrs. Alexander J. Schaffer Mr. and Mrs. J. Mark Schapiro Eugene Scheffres and Richard E. Hartt* Mrs. Muriel Schiller Dorothy McIlvain Scott Mrs. Clair Zamoiski Segal and Mr. Thomas Segal Ida & Joseph Shapiro Foundation and Diane and Albert Shapiro Mr. and Mrs. Earle K. Shawe The Sheridan Foundation Richard H. Shindell and Family Dr. and Mrs. Solomon H. Snyder The St. Paul Companies Barbara and Julian Stanley T. Rowe Price Associates Foundation, Inc. The Alvin and Fanny Blaustein Thalheimer Guest Artist Fund Alvin and Fanny B. Thalheimer Foundation, Inc. TravelersGroup The Aber and Louise Unger Fund Venable LLP Wachovia Robert A. Waidner Foundation The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company / Mr. and Mrs. Willard Hackerman
Mr. and Mrs. Jay M. Wilson / Mr. and Mrs. Bruce P. Wilson The Zamoiski-Barber-Segal Family Foundation
Baltimore Symphony Associates Executive Committee Winnie Flattery, President Linda Kacur, Recording Secretary Vivian Kastendike, Corresponding Secretary Charles Booth, Treasurer Kitty Allen, Vice President, Communications Marge Penhallegon, Vice President, Education Larry Townsend, Vice President, Meetings and Programs Sandy Feldman, Vice President, Recruitment & Membership Deborah Stetson, Vice President, Special Services & Events Larry Albrecht, Vice President, Symphony Store LaVerne M. Grove, Parliamentarian Barbara C. Booth, Past President
The Legato Circle In 1986, the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra established The Legato Circle in recognition of those individuals who have notified the BSO of a planned gift, including gifts through estate plans or life-income arrangements. Bequests and planned gifts are the greatest source of security for the BSO’s future! The Symphony depends on lasting gifts such as these to help fund our diverse musical programs and activities. Members of The Legato Circle play a vital and permanent role in the Symphony’s future. If you have named the BSO in your estate plans, please contact Joanne Rosenthal at 410-783-8010 or jrosenthal@bsomusic.org to join the Legato Circle. We gratefully acknowledge the following Donors who have included the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in their Estate Plans.
Anonymous (5) Donna B. and Paul J. Amico Hellmut D.W. “Hank” Bauer Deborah R. Berman Mrs. Alma T. Martien Bond* Mrs. Phyllis B. Brotman (F) W. George Bowles* Dr. Robert P. Burchard Mrs. Frances H. Burman Joseph and Jean Carando* Mrs. Selma Carton Clarence B. Coleman* Mr. and Mrs. William H. Cowie, Jr. James Davis Roberta L.* and Richard A. Davis L. Patrick Deering (F) Ronald E. Dencker Freda (Gordon) Dunn Dr. Perry A. Eagle (F) H. Lawrence Eiring, CRM Carol and Alan Edelman
Anne “Shiny” and Robert M. Evans Mr. and Mrs. Maurice R. Feldman Winnie and Bill Flattery Haswell M. and Madeline S. Franklin Mr. Kenneth J. Freed Douglas Goodwin* Samuel G.* and Margaret A. Gorn (F) Robert E. Greenfield Sue and Jan K. Guben Carole B. Hamlin Miss M. Eulalia Harbaugh Ms. Denise Hargrove Gwynne and Leonard Horwits Mr. and Mrs. H. Thomas Howell Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Hug Judith C. Johnson* Dr. and Mrs. Murray M. Kappelman Miss Dorothy B. Krug
Ruth and Jay Lenrow Joyce and Dr. Harry Letaw, Jr. Robert and Ryda H. Levi* Bernice S. Levinson Estate of Ruby Loflin-Flaccoe* Mrs. Jean M. Malkmus Ruth R. Marder Mrs. George R. McClelland Mr. Roy E.* and Mrs. M. Moon Robert and Marion Neiman Mrs. Daniel M. O’Connell Stanley and Linda Hambleton Panitz Margaret Powell Payne* Beverly and Sam Penn (F) Mrs. Margery Pozefsky G. Edward Reahl, Jr. M.D. Mr. William G. Robertson, Jr.* Randolph S.* and Amalie R.* Rothschild Dr. Henry Sanborn Eugene Scheffres* and Richard E. Hartt* Mrs. Muriel Schiller (F) Dr. Albert Shapiro Dr. and Mrs. Harry S. Stevens Roy and Carol Thomas Fund for the Arts Dr. and Mrs. Carvel Tiekert Leonard Topper Ingeborg B. Weinberger W. Owen and Nancy J. Williams Charles and Shirley Wunder Mr. and Mrs. Calman J. Zamoiski, Jr. (F) Founding Member (N) New Member * Deceased
KIRSTEN BECKERMAN
impromptu
EDWARD PALANKER has been playing the clarinet for 58 years. He’s been gardening even longer. Palanker, who has played bass clarinet and clarinet with the BSO since 1963, traces his love for gardening to his childhood in the Bronx, where he grew green beans in a window box outside his family’s apartment. The box was small, but the boy gardener had major plans. “I figured I couldn’t grow a lot of green beans, but maybe I could grow some really big ones,” he says. Since then his love for gardening has flourished like an untended zucchini. Stroll through the 1.5 acres surrounding Palanker’s Phoenix, Maryland, home and you’ll see three sizeable flower gardens containing perky Black-Eyed Susans, clusters of pink and red roses and vibrant hibiscus blooms, a veritable forest of trees and shrubs he’s planted over the last 20 years, and a big vegetable garden that bursts with tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, eggplant, peppers and green beans. From April through November, the 70-year-old spends most of his free time in his yard digging, planting, trimming, weeding and warding off deer and other uninvited wildlife. “It’s a labor of love,” he says. Playing music and tending a garden both take organization, patience and commitment, Palanker notes. “You have to love music and gardening to do them well,” he says. But the fruits of his labors in the flower garden stick around longer than a piece of music he performs in concert. And that sense of permanence is what he likes best about gardening. He could spend hours on his patio gazing at the colorful, vibrant landscape he’s created. And sometimes that's just what he does. “When I garden, it’s there to look at year in and year out, month after month, day after day,” he says. “It’s sort of like having a work of art.” —Maria Blackburn Admire Edward Palanker’s garden via photos on his website: http://eddiesclarinet.com
April 30, 2010 – June 13, 2010
43
OYSTER PERPETUAL SUBMARINER DATE IN 18 KT WHITE GOLD
Since 1910
J.BROWN .
JEWELERS 1802 Reisterstown Road
.
Pikesville
410-484-3388 OFFICIAL ROLEX JEWELER ROLEX
OYSTER PERPETUAL AND SUBMARINER ARE TRADEMARKS.