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Tuesday, March 22, 2022, at 6:30 Kehrein Center for the Arts
All-Access Chamber Music Series CIVITAS ENSEMBLE Yuan-Qing Yu Violin Danny Lai Viola Kenneth Olsen Cello Robert Kassinger Bass William Welter Oboe John Bruce Yeh Clarinet Dennis Michel Bassoon David Griffin Horn Winston Choi Piano coleridge-taylor Selections from Five Negro Melodies for Violin, Cello, and Piano, Op. 59 Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child They Will Not Lend Me a Child My Lord Delivered Daniel yuan-qing yu kenneth olsen winston choi
(continued)
coleridge-taylor
Nonet in F Minor, Op. 2
Allegro energico Andante con moto Scherzo: Allegro Allegro vivace
yuan-qing yu danny l ai kenneth olsen robert k assinger william welter john bruce yeh dennis michel david griffin winston choi intermission
dvořák
Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano in F Minor, Op. 65
Allegro ma non troppo Allegretto grazioso Poco adagio Finale: Allegro con brio yuan-qing yu kenneth olsen winston choi
The All-Access Chamber Music series is generously underwritten by an anonymous donor, who attended similar concerts forty-five years ago.
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comments by richard e. rodda samuel coleridge-taylor
Born August 15, 1875; London, England Died September 1, 1912; Croydon, Surrey, England
Selections from Five Negro Melodies for Violin, Cello, and Piano, Op. 59 composed 1904 for piano 1906 arranged for piano trio
Though Samuel ColeridgeTaylor was English by birth, training, and residence, he was unquestionably a hero to American audiences. Born in London in 1875 to a white English woman and a physician from Sierra Leone, Samuel was brought up in suburban Croydon by his mother after his father returned to Africa to practice medicine. As a boy, Coleridge-Taylor studied violin with a local teacher, sang in a church choir, and showed talent as a composer. In 1890, he was admitted to the Royal College of Music, and by the time he graduated in 1897, he had produced a significant collection of works, including a symphony and several large chamber compositions, a number of which were performed publicly. His music became known to Edward Elgar, who offered the young musician advice and encouragement. Coleridge-Taylor’s greatest success came in 1898 with the premiere of the cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, the first of several works inspired by the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He held a number of conducting and teaching positions thereafter in London, including appointments as professor of composition at the Trinity College of Music and Guildhall School of Music. Coleridge-Taylor composed steadily throughout his life, and became one of the most respected musicians
of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic— New York orchestral players described him as the “Black Mahler” on his visit to that city in 1910. His premature death from pneumonia at the age of thirty-seven in 1912 seems to have been partly a result of overwork. After his lauded visit to the United States in 1904 (which included an invitation from President Theodore Roosevelt to visit him at the White House), Coleridge-Taylor gathered a large group of traditional Afro-American songs from various sources and arranged them for piano as Twenty-Four Negro Melodies and published them the following year. “What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk-music, Dvořák for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian,” he wrote in a preface to the score, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies. The plan adopted has been almost without exception that of the Tema con variazioni. The actual melody has in every case been inserted at the head of each piece as a motto. The music that follows is nothing more nor less than a series of variations built on said motto. Therefore my share in the matter can be clearly traced, and must not be confounded with any idea of “improving” the original material, any more than Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Haydn “improved” that. In 1906, Coleridge-Taylor arranged five of the Negro Melodies for piano trio.
abov e : Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
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samuel coleridge-taylor
Nonet for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass, and Piano in F Minor, Op. 2 composed 1893
Charles Villiers Stanford, Coleridge-Taylor’s composition teacher at London’s Royal College of Music, was a firm believer in the pedagogical efficacy of writing chamber music. He arranged performances at RCM of chamber compositions by such masters as Antonín Dvořák and his longtime friend Johannes Brahms, and challenged his pupils to create their own original works using similar forms and instrumentation. Taking up his mentor’s gauntlet, Coleridge-Taylor composed his Piano Quintet in G minor (op. 1), Nonet in F minor (op. 2), Fantasiestück for String Quartet (op. 5), and Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp minor (op. 10) between 1893 and 1895, the earliest works he deemed worthy of opus numbers. The nonet was introduced at a student concert on July 5, 1894, and the Clarinet Quintet a year later—“You’ve done it, me boy!” remarked Stanford. Stanford helped arrange publication of the Clarinet Quintet by the respected Leipzig firm of Breitkopf and Härtel, but the nonet remained in manuscript in the RCM library until
abov e : Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, ca. 1893
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it was published in 2001, though the work had been recorded at a special Coleridge-Taylor concert at the New England Conservatory in Boston three years earlier.
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he first of the nonet’s four movements follows a conventional sonata form, well-executed by the eighteen-year-old Coleridge-Taylor, with a broad, somewhat melancholy main theme led by the clarinet and a more vigorous subsidiary subject introduced by the piano. Both themes figure in the development section and are then recapitulated in fuller settings that show the almost orchestral potential of this large chamber ensemble. The Andante, with its lyricism, delicate scoring, and calm demeanor, could well be entitled romanza. In The Hiawatha Man, his study of the life and works of Coleridge-Taylor, English conductor, composer, and musicologist Geoffrey Self described the scherzo as “goblinesque,” a quality for which the movement’s flowing central trio provides a pleasing balance. The sonata-form finale, with its animated main theme entrusted to the winds and a spacious complementary melody in the unison strings, provides the nonet with a buoyant close.
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antonín dvořák
Born September 8, 1841; Mühlhausen, Bohemia (now Nelahozeves, Czech Republic) Died May 1, 1904; Prague, Bohemia
Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano in F Minor, Op. 65 composed 1883
Success for Antonín Dvořák was a two-edged sword. In 1874, when he was struggling to make a living as organist at St. Adalbert’s Church in Prague, he submitted some of his compositions to a committee in Vienna granting awards to promising musicians in the Habsburg provinces. These pieces came to the attention of Johannes Brahms, who encouraged Dvořák in his work and urged the panel to grant the young Bohemian composer the highest possible stipend. Three years later, after Brahms had seen that Dvořák’s award was renewed, he instructed his publisher, Fritz Simrock in Berlin, that he was to accept Dvořák as a new client. Dvořák was thrilled with the opportunities that his Viennese connections opened for him, and he paid Brahms great homage in word and tone for the rest of his life. Brahms, however, was indissolubly linked with the spirit and letter of German music, and Dvořák soon came to be torn between the desire on one hand to emulate his Viennese patron and on the other to support the political and social aspirations of his fellow Czechs. This dichotomy resulted in a crisis of philosophy for Dvořák by 1882, when Brahms was urging him to settle in Vienna and opera houses in that city and Dresden were offering lucrative contracts for any work that he would write to a German-language libretto, a certain avenue to the international performance of his stage music. Dvořák was still painfully undecided between Vienna and Prague, between his adopted
German symphonism and his native Czech heritage, when his mother died on December 14, 1882. The grief he suffered over her loss and the emotional distress brought about by uncertainty over his future artistic path threw him into a difficult period of dark moods and troubled thoughts. Even the birth of a son (Antonín) on March 7, 1883, and news that his Stabat mater had been enthusiastically received at its English premiere in London a few days later did little to relieve his anxiety or ease his decision. After a brief hiatus in his creative work, he poured his feelings into some of his most powerful and deeply felt works during the following months. The first of those compositions was the superb Piano Trio in F minor, begun on February 4, 1883, only six weeks after Anna Dvořák’s death, and completed on March 31.
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hough the opening movement of the F minor trio is contained within traditional sonata form, its wrought-up, willful mood threatens, observed Paul Stefan, “to burst the bounds and transcend the content of chamber music, passionately striving to merge into the symphonic.” The dotted-rhythm main theme begins quietly in the strings, though this is a quiet not of calm but of suppression. The entry of the piano unleashes the inherent dynamism of the principal theme, but emotional control is again restored with the transition, which leads to the cello’s presentation of the second theme, a lovely melody whose nominal major mode is continually troubled by plaintive chromatic alterations. The development section, which ranges in mood from sullen to defiant, is impelled by an almost Beethovenian sense of drama. The recapitulation serves not only to recall the
abov e : Antonín Dvořák, ca. 1882
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exposition’s themes but also to thrust their emotional intensity to a higher plane by means of richer figurations, tighter interplay among the instrumental lines, and expansion through motivic development. The second movement is a scherzo in the form of a Bohemian folk dance. The strings begin the dance with a bouncing motive, suggestive of a bagpipe-drone, on which the piano presents the short-breathed, rather melancholy tune whose varied permutations occupy the first section of the movement. A full stop marks the gateway to the central trio, whose initial bright mood is clouded by the music’s unsettled rhythms and apprehensive flattened scale degrees. The
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opening section is repeated exactly to round out the movement’s structure. The Adagio is one of Dvořák’s most deeply felt creations, beautiful of line, rich of sonority, and sincere in expression. The finale is modeled on the furiant, a traditional Czech dance whose fiery character is indicated by its name. The movement is built as a large sonata-rondo form anchored around the recurrences of its principal theme.
Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.
profiles Yuan-Qing Yu Violin An international awardwinning violinist, Yuan-Qing Yu is praised for her virtuosic performances, her collaborative interdisciplinary projects, and her pursuit of bringing music to people with limited resources. A soloist, chamber musician, and teacher, Yu leads an active life in the United States and abroad. Locally, she can be seen and heard regularly on WFMT-FM’s Live programs, the CSO Chamber Music series, and the MusicNOW series at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. She is a professor at Northwestern and Roosevelt universities, and frequently presents lectures and symposiums with professors from other fields. In 2011, she founded Civitas Ensemble (a 501c3 organization), and currently serves on its board and leads as its president. With her Civitas colleagues, she continues to perform outreach concerts at hospitals, schools, and senior-living facilities. Civitas’s collaborative projects with international artists are supported by generous donors and institutions, including the MacArthur Foundation. Civitas Ensemble’s Grammy Award–nominated albums Alla Zingarese and Jin Yin, on the Cedille label, were in the top-10 of Billboard’s Classical Chart. An avid chamber musician, Yuan-Qing Yu has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman, Menahem Pressler, Lang Lang, and Yo-Yo Ma, among others. She has given numerous critically acclaimed performances with major orchestras in the United States, Asia, and Europe, including the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She spends part of the summer teaching at the Brevard Music Center Summer Festival in North Carolina. A contemporary-music enthusiast, Yu gave the Chicago premiere of Pierre Boulez’s Anthèmes 2 for solo violin and was invited by Boulez and Barenboim to perform the work in Berlin for Boulez’s eightieth-birthday celebration concert P H OTOS BY TO DD RO S E NB E RG
in 2005. She is an advocate for living composers, having commissioned and premiered more than ten compositions. A native of Shanghai, China, Yuan-Qing Yu earned an artist’s certificate in violin and a master’s degree in music from Southern Methodist University. She was appointed assistant concertmaster of the CSO by Daniel Barenboim in 1995. In her spare time, she loves reading, learning, and traveling.
Danny Lai Viola Violist Danny Lai was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2014 by Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti. He began his musical studies on the piano at the age of six and picked up the viola in public school when he was ten. At sixteen, after performing the first movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, he decided to make music his life. He studied at Northwestern University with Roland Vamos while taking orchestral repertoire classes with then CSO Principal Viola Charles Pikler. After graduating with degrees in both economics and music, Lai joined the viola section of the Colorado Symphony. In Chicago, Lai is a frequent chamber music collaborator, playing with groups such as Civitas, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Chicago Pro Musica, and with his colleagues in the CSO. He has made recital appearances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He is an alumnus of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and has performed around the world with such orchestras as the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in Japan, the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland, and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra in Sydney, Australia. He also is the winner of several competitions, including the Jefferson Symphony International Young Artists Competition, the Thaviu String CSO.ORG
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Competition, and the Luminarts Union League Strings Competition. He plays on a contemporary viola made by Franz Kinberg. He also enjoys jazz, kickboxing, sim racing, and the Chicago Cubs.
Kenneth Olsen Cello Kenneth Olsen joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as assistant principal cello in 2005. He is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and a winner of the school’s prestigious concerto competition. His other awards include first prize in the Nakamichi Cello Competition at the Aspen Music Festival and second prize in the 2002 Holland-America Music Society Competition. His teachers have included Richard Aaron at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Joel Krosnick at the Juilliard School of Music, and Luis Garcia-Renart at Bard College. He also has been a participant at the Steans Institute for Young Artists (the Ravinia Festival’s professional studies program for young musicians) and at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute. A native of New York, Kenneth Olsen is a founding member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless string orchestra comprised of young musicians from orchestras and ensembles all over the country. He also is a member of the Chicago-based Civitas Ensemble. Founded in 2011, Civitas is a chamber-music ensemble with a threefold mission: to present engaging live performances of new and traditional works, to inspire a young generation of classical musicians, and to bring the healing power of music to those with limited access to live performances. The members of the group are artists-in-residence at Valparaiso University. Olsen first performed as a soloist with the CSO in October 2008 in Golijov’s Mariel for Cello and Orchestra conducted by Miguel-Harth
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Bedoya. His most recent solo performance was Brahms’s Double Concerto with CSO Associate Concertmaster Stephanie Jeong and Riccardo Muti conducting in November 2019.
Robert Kassinger Bass Robert Kassinger joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1993, and served previously as assistant principal bass for the Colorado Symphony and section bass for the New Orleans Symphony. An active chamber musician, Kassinger has performed with Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, the Fine Arts Quartet, and Music of the Baroque. Also renowned as a jazz artist, Kassinger has appeared with Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Charlie Rouse, and the Woody Herman Orchestra. Kassinger is adjunct professor of double bass at DePaul University. He also serves as master clinician and coach for the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Canton International Summer Music Academy, and International Society of Bassists. Kassinger is grateful to have studied with wonderful teachers: Frank Carroll, Homer Mensch, Stuart Sankey, and Bruce Bransby.
William Welter Oboe William Welter was appointed principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Music Director Riccardo Muti in June 2018. Prior to his appointment to the CSO, Welter performed as a guest musician with the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, and as guest principal oboe of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. PHOTOS BY TODD ROS EN BERG
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Welter was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and participated in several esteemed music festivals, including Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail Festival, and Music Academy of the West. He also participated in Music from Angelfire by invitation of acclaimed violinist Ida Kavafian. A native of Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Crescent, Iowa, William Welter is a 2016 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Richard Woodhams, the longtime principal oboe of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Welter completed an artist diploma at the Oberlin Conservatory under the instruction of Robert Walters. His other teachers include Eugene Izotov, former principal oboe of the CSO and current principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony, and Christopher Philpotts, principal english horn of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Welter is an alumnus of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he studied with Daniel Stolper.
John Bruce Yeh Clarinet John Bruce Yeh joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1977 as bass clarinet at the invitation of Sir Georg Solti at the age of nineteen, the first Asian musician ever appointed to the CSO. Two years later, he was named assistant principal and E-flat clarinet. The longest-serving clarinetist in CSO history, he also served as acting principal clarinet from 2008 to 2011. He has performed as guest principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic in Korea, and the Guangzhou Symphony in China. He was a prizewinner at both the 1982 Munich International Music Competition and the 1985 Naumburg Clarinet Competition in New York. Yeh has performed as a soloist with the CSO several times, including in Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto with Neeme Järvi and in the P H OTOS BY TO DD RO S E NB E RG
U.S. premiere of Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Concerto with Pierre Boulez. He continues to solo with orchestras around the globe. An enthusiastic champion of new music, Yeh is the dedicatee of new works for clarinet by numerous composers, ranging from Ralph Shapey to John Williams. He appears at festivals and on chamber music series worldwide, including the Marlboro Music Festival, Taipei Music Academy Festival, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Yeh has performed with the Guarneri, Ying, Colorado, Calder, and Pacifica string quartets, among others. His more than a dozen solo and chamber music recordings have earned worldwide critical acclaim, including the 2007 release for Naxos, entitled Synergy, of single and double concertos with clarinet featuring Yeh, his wife Teresa Reilly, and his daughter Molly Yeh. John Bruce Yeh is director and cofounder of Chicago Pro Musica, which received the 1985 Grammy Award for Best New Classical Artist. With clarinetist Teresa Reilly, erhu virtuoso Wang Guowei, and pipa virtuoso Yang Wei, Yeh formed Birds and Phoenix, an innovative quartet dedicated to musical exploration by bridging Eastern and Western musical cultures. Yeh is on the artist-faculties of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College for the Performing Arts and Midwest Young Artists in Fort Sheridan, Illinois.
Dennis Michel Bassoon Dennis Michel is second bassoon of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians. He serves as artist teacher of bassoon and head of woodwind chamber music at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Since 1988, he has spent his summers teaching and performing at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. He previously held the CSO.ORG
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position of principal bassoon of the San Diego Symphony and San Diego Opera, and he was a founding member of the Arioso Wind Quintet. He holds degrees from Eastern Washington University and Yale University. His principal teachers include Wendal Jones and Arthur Weisberg. In 1996, Michel was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for advanced study at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, where he studied with Milan Turkovic. During that time, he also performed with the Vienna State Opera. As a teacher, he has held positions at Wichita State University, San Diego State University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Southern California, and Northwestern University. An active chamber musician, he has performed with the Da Camera Society of Houston, on the chamber series at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and at numerous summer festivals, including Tanglewood, the Bard Festival in New York, Flagstaff Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, and Summerfest La Jolla, where he was a featured artist for ten seasons. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his wife Peggy, an active freelance oboist and teacher, and together they enjoy cooking, traveling, and spending as much time as possible with family and friends.
David Griffin Horn David Griffin is the fourth horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Upon graduating from Northwestern University in 1987, Griffin began his career with the Rochester Philharmonic and followed with positions in the orchestras of Montreal and Houston before joining the Chicago Symphony in 1995. Griffin has served as guest principal horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony,
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Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Shanghai Radio Orchestra. In September 2017, Griffin traveled to Japan for a solo tour, performing recitals in Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Osaka. With the wind quintet Prairie Winds, he has performed in more than twenty-five states and has released two CDs. With the CSO Brass Quintet, Griffin has toured Japan, China, Taiwan, and Mexico. In June 2012, Griffin soloed with the National Orchestra of Brazil. He debuted as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony in Schumann’s Konzertstück at the Ravinia Festival in 2010. He has released the solo album For You, featuring the world-premiere recording of the Sonata for Horn by Bruce Broughton. Griffin is a faculty member at Roosevelt University and previously taught at McGill University and Northwestern University. He has given master classes at the Colburn School in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Conservatory. Summer festival engagements have included Sun Valley, Grand Teton, Tanglewood, Manchester (Vermont), and Madeline Island. Griffin has also been a featured artist and clinician at the annual symposium of the International Horn Society. Griffin, his wife Susan Warner, and their children, Henry and Pearl, live in Oak Park, Illinois.
Winston Choi Piano Canadian pianist Winston Choi is associate professor of piano and director of the piano program at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. His professional career was launched when he was named laureate of the 2003 Honens Piano Competition and winner of France’s Concours International de Piano 20e siècle d’Orléans in 2002. Choi maintains an active international performing schedule. In demand as a concerto soloist, he has appeared with ensembles including PHOTO BY TODD ROS EN BERG
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the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, CBC Radio Orchestra, Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, East Texas Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia, Orchestre Symphony d’Orléans, Orchestre National de Lille, Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. Known for his colorful approach to programming and insightful commentary from the stage, Choi has recently appeared in recital at the National Arts Centre of Canada, New York’s Carnegie-Weill and Merkin recital halls, the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in
Washington (D.C.), the Kravis Center in Florida, and the Cicle Grans Solistes in Spain. Choi performs extensively in France, having played venues such as the Salle Cortot, Lille’s Festival Rencontre Robert Casadesus, the Messiaen Festival, and the Strasbourg Festival. He also tours regularly with the Civitas Ensemble, and as a part of Duo Diorama (with his wife, violinist MingHuan Xu). Winston Choi is a prolific recording artist. His debut CD, piano works of Elliott Carter (Empreinte Digitale in France), was given five stars by BBC Music Magazine. His recording of the piano works of Thomas Adès was recently released on the Buisonne label. Other labels he can be heard on include Aeolian Classics, Albany, Arktos, BIS, Cedille, Crystal Records, Naxos, New World Records, and QuadroFrame.
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MUTI C O N D U CT S Beethoven Overture to Egmont Symphony No. 4
Still & Price Mother and Child
Symphony No. 3
MAY 5–7
Riccardo Muti
conductor
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These concerts are generously sponsored by the Zell Family Foundation.
This program is supported in part by awards from:
Artists, prices and programs subject to change.