ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SECOND SEASON
Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 6:30
CSO Chamber Music Series
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BRASS QUINTET
Esteban Batallán Trumpet
John Hagstrom Trumpet
David Griffin Horn
Michael Mulcahy Trombone
Gene Pokorny Tuba
dilorenzo Go
telemann Trio Sonata in G Minor (arr. Carlier)
Largo
Allegro
Cantabile
Allegro
irvine Morning Song
shostakovich Allegro non troppo from String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 (arr. Sipe)
intermission
verdi Overture to Nabucco (arr. Pierobon)
likhuta Apex Predators
crespo Suite americana No. 1
Ragtime
Bossa nova
Vals peruano
Zamba gaucha Son de México
anthony dilorenzo
Born August 8, 1967; Stoughton, Massachusetts
Go
composed 2009
Emmy Award–winning composer, trumpet soloist, and Grammy–nominated recording artist Anthony DiLorenzo was born in 1967 in the Boston suburb of Stoughton. He studied with Boston Symphony Orchestra trumpeters Peter Chapman and Roger Voison and went on to attend the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; he also studied at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was nominated for an Avery Fisher Career Grant by Leonard Bernstein. DiLorenzo has appeared as soloist with the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, and New York Philharmonic, among others, and has held positions with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New World
Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, and Utah Symphony. He is a founding member of the Center City Brass Quintet and Proteus 7 Ensemble. In addition to works for the concert stage, DiLorenzo wrote the original scores to the films Benji: Off the Leash, The Chosen One, Meltdown, and Bathtubs Over Broadway, along with over a hundred theatrical trailers for releases such as Toy Story, Forrest Gump, 101 Dalmatians, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Red Dragon, The Lost World, Final Fantasy, Fool’s Gold, Bee Story, Flubber, Kung Fu Panda, the Harry Potter series, and Iron Giant. He has created countless cues for shows and campaigns for ESPN, HBO, NBC, and ABC.
DiLorenzo wrote that Go “is music of high energy, fast pace, and brilliant excitement whose intensely driving, machine-like compound rhythms are unyielding.”
above: Anthony DiLorenzo | opp osite page : Engraving of Georg Philipp Telemann, ca. 1745
georg philipp telemann
Born March 14, 1681; Magdeburg, Germany
Died June 25, 1767; Hamburg, Germany
Trio Sonata in G Minor (Arrangement by Gunter Carlier of the Trio Sonata for Flute, Oboe, and Continuo in A Minor, TWV 42:a6)
With the condescending pronouncement, “Since the best man could not be obtained, mediocre ones would have to be accepted,” city councilor Platz announced the appointment of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1723 as kantor for Leipzig’s churches. Platz’s “best man” was Georg Philipp Telemann, then the most highly regarded composer in all of Germany. Telemann’s association with Leipzig went back to 1701 when he left his hometown of Magdeburg to enroll at the city’s university; he was soon receiving regular commissions from the Leipzig city council for new service music. In 1702 he became director of the local opera house and began churning out specimens of that genre to fill his own stage. Two years later, he started a Collegium Musicum with some of his talented university friends in a local coffee house to give concerts of instrumental music and was also appointed organist and kapellmeister of Leipzig’s Neukirche. A year later, Count Erdmann von Promnitz lured Telemann to his estate at Sorau, a hundred miles southeast of Berlin, to become his music master. In 1708 or 1709, Telemann
was appointed court composer at Eisenach, Sebastian Bach’s birthplace, and in 1712, he moved to the post of city music director in Frankfurt am Main. Nine years later, he was named director of music for Hamburg’s five main churches. During his tenure, he also headed the municipal opera house and oversaw the city’s flourishing concert series. He composed with staggering prolificacy for the rest of his days, being slowed only in his last years, like Bach and Handel, by problems with his eyesight. He died of (probably) pneumonia in 1767 and was succeeded in his Hamburg post by his godson, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
During the nine years (1712–21)
Telemann served as music director for the city of Frankfurt, he had regular contact with the court of Darmstadt, twenty miles south, where the music-loving Landgrave (and composer-manqué) Ernst Ludwig maintained a top-notch orchestra, a large library of performance materials, and a prodigious schedule of programs; city and court frequently traded musicians for occasions when the local forces proved insufficient. Telemann remained in touch with Darmstadt for the rest of his life, and the court’s library is one of the most important repositories
COMMENTS
of his scores. The Trio Sonata in A minor (TWV 42:a6), preserved in the Darmstadt archives, comprises a
scott irvine
Born December 30, 1953; Toronto, Canada
Morning Song
composed 1989
Scott Irvine was born in Toronto in 1953 and has developed successful careers there as tubist, composer, and arranger. He studied tuba at the University of Toronto with Charles Daellenbach, the founding tubist of the Canadian Brass, and composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto with Samuel Dolin. In 1984 he joined the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and in 1997 co-founded True North Brass. Irvine’s performance credits include the Esprit Orchestra (a Toronto group dedicated to new music), Hannaford Street Silver Band, New Music Concerts Ensemble of Toronto, Ottawa Chamberfest, and appearances on the children’s television program The Elephant Show. Irvine, an
solemn opening Largo and two virtuosic allegro movements surrounding a lilting siciliano in the style of a pastorale.
above:
associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, has been commissioned to compose works, mostly for brass and concert band, by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Laidlaw Foundation, and Ontario Arts Council. Irvine wrote,
In 1989, I composed Aubade for trumpet and organ. With the formation of True North Brass in 1997, I decided to adapt Aubade into a brass quintet titled Morning Song, spreading the melody around the group and making it less of a trumpet solo. Over the years, it has been described as having a “delicately transparent” quality and a mood of “wistful nostalgia,” and some have even suggested it is a musical depiction of a sunrise on an Ontario lake.
dmitri shostakovich
Born September 25, 1906; St. Petersburg, Russia
Died August 9, 1975; Moscow, Russia
Allegro non troppo from String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 (Arranged by Donald Sipe)
composed 1946
When World War II finally ended in 1945, a euphoric thrill of victory swept the Soviet Union, but so did the realization that the political machinations Stalin had exercised so ruthlessly in previous years would continue. In his 1990 study of Shostakovich, Ian MacDonald wrote,
Until the drift of events was clear, few composers were prepared to risk doing anything as explicit as setting a text in case their choice should later turn out to be counter-revolutionary. Instrumental works were the rule, and these could, with a fair degree of safety, act as repositories for the darker feelings then common among Russian intellectuals.
Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 3 of 1946, at once cautionary and caustic, profound and naive, unsettled and unsettling, distills the fears and uncertainty of those parlous days.
For the quartet’s premiere, given in Moscow by the Beethoven Quartet on December 16, 1946, Shostakovich, probably hoping to deflect the heated controversy that had greeted the first performance of his cheeky Ninth Symphony only five weeks earlier, fitted each movement with a title related to the recently concluded war: “Calm unawareness of the future cataclysm,” “Rumblings of unrest and anticipation,” “The forces of war unleashed,” “Homage to the dead,” “The eternal question: Why and for what?” The tactic failed. Two years later, Shostakovich, along with many of his fellow composers, was publicly condemned by the Soviet government for musical “formalism,” and ordered to write, in effect, only banal, jingoist works that would further the party’s agenda. Quartet no. 3 and other of his most powerful compositions disappeared from performance, and he did not issue any important new scores until Stalin died in 1953.
The quartet’s third movement, Allegro non troppo, is a scherzo that is fast, mechanistic in its alternating duple and triple measures, and brutal in effect.
giuseppe verdi
Born October 10, 1813; Le Roncole, Italy
Died January 27, 1901; Milan, Italy
Overture to Nabucco (Arranged by Marco Pierobon)
Nabucco was Verdi’s first great success and the foundation of his international reputation. Though he once wrote that “with this opera, my artistic career may be said to have begun,” Nabucco was actually a rebirth rather than an absolute beginning, a triumph over the most painful experiences he ever knew. Verdi’s first opera, Oberto of 1839, enjoyed enough success that the director of La Scala, Bartolomeo Merelli, contracted with him for three more works to be completed at intervals of eight months. However, Un giorno de regno, the first piece produced under the agreement, was a dismal failure, the bitterest one that Verdi was ever to know on the stage. His disappointment only exacerbated the residual grief over the deaths of his two children and his wife during the two years preceding Un giorno. He almost gave up composing all together, but Merelli convinced him to fulfill their contract and then provided the anxious composer with a libretto by Temistocle Solera based on the Biblical
account of Nebuchadnezzar. Verdi liked the dramatic sweep of the plot’s action and its Biblical paraphrases, and it was from Solera’s text that he found a renewed will to live and work. Nabucco is Verdi’s earliest masterpiece.
The plot of Nabucco concerns the faithfulness of the Hebrews to God during their Babylonian captivity. The great chorus of the Hebrews, “Va, pensiero” (Fly, thoughts), in which they express longing for their lost freedom and their distant homeland, struck a sympathetic chord in its Italian listeners and became the opera’s instant hit and one of Verdi’s most enduring contributions to his country’s culture. At the time of the premiere (March 9, 1842, at La Scala), much of northern Italy was still ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs under terms dictated by the congress of Vienna more than twenty-five years before. Most Italians desperately wanted to be free of Austrian domination and supported the revolutionary movement known as the Risorgimento (the resurgence of national pride that the descendants of ancient Rome regarded as their long-denied birthright). “Va, pensiero,” the passionate hymn of freedom, became the
movement’s anthem and Verdi, its hero. When Cavour called the first parliamentary session of the newly united Italy in 1859, Verdi was elected to represent Busseto. Though reluctant to enter the political arena, he was sufficiently patriotic and cognizant of his standing with his countrymen to accept the mandate. So great and enduring was the fame of “Va, pensiero” that it was sung by the crowds lining the streets of Verdi’s funeral procession almost six decades after its composition.
catherine likhuta
Born May 28, 1981; Kyiv, Ukraine
Apex Predators
composed
2015
Composer and pianist
Catherine Likhuta wrote that her music “exhibits high emotional charge, programmatic nature, rhythmic complexity, and Ukrainian folk elements,” the last, a legacy from her hometown of Kyiv, Ukraine, where she was born in 1981. Likhuta earned a bachelor’s degree in jazz piano from Kyiv Glière Music College and a post-graduate degree in composition from the National Music Academy of Ukraine before settling in Australia, where she
The overture to Nabucco is a potpourri of three themes from the opera. The opening chorale reflects the faith of the Hebrews and their belief in the eventual release from bondage. The second motif is a tempestuous melody depicting the curses of the Israelites upon the story’s temporarily traitorfor-love, Ismael. The third theme is the flowing triple-meter hymn, “Va, pensiero.” The extended closing section is based on the curse theme, accumulating great energy as the music rushes toward its vibrant close.
completed a doctorate in composition at the University of Queensland. Her compositions, many featuring brass and wind instruments, have been performed widely in Australia and America as well as in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Ukraine, commissioned by prominent orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, universities, and conservatories and recorded on several CDs. From 2005 to 2009, Likhuta lived in Ithaca, New York, and has returned to America frequently for performances, lectures, and residencies. In 2022 she was composer-in-residence at the Ohio State University, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Cornell, and Syracuse universities, and in May 2023,
COMMENTS
she will be composer-in-residence at the Association of Concert Bands Convention in Orlando, Florida. Among Likhuta’s other distinctions are grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and two first prizes in the International Horn Society Composition Contest.
Apex Predators was commissioned in 2015 by the Atlantic Brass Quintet. The composer writes,
Apex predators are creatures at the top of the food chain, those with
enrique crespo
Born October 17, 1941; Montevideo, Uruguay
no natural predators. This work brings these creatures to life using murky colors, extreme dynamics, bitey articulations, compact harmonies, and various extended techniques to evoke stalking, lurking, snarling, snapping, and pouncing. The final trumpet duet brings to mind a chaotic struggle between a predator and its prey, swirling around until the natural conclusion is reached and the prey is silenced.
Died December 20, 2020; Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany
Suite americana No. 1
composed 1977
Enrique Crespo, trombonist, composer, arranger, and founding member of the German Brass Ensemble, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1941. He studied music and architecture in Montevideo and Buenos Aires and at age twenty-one became principal trombonist of the Montevideo Symphony Orchestra, where he developed a parallel career as jazz soloist, arranger, and bandleader.
In 1967 Crespo was awarded a grant for graduate study of trombone and composition with Boris Blacher in Berlin and upon his graduation two years later was appointed principal trombonist with the Bamberg Symphony. In 1974 he was a founding member of the German Brass Ensemble, which has gained international stature, and in 1980 was named principal trombonist of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart. Crespo also continued to play jazz, compose steadily, collaborate with the Bavarian broadcasting company, and establish a private film and recording studio from which numerous productions emerged.
His compositions and arrangements (mostly for the German Brass Ensemble) draw on a range of influences—classical, jazz, folk, and popular music from Latin and South America—and are especially well (and challengingly) scored for brass.
Crespo said that his Suite americana no. 1, written in 1977 for the German Brass Ensemble, was “based on original songs and dances, arrayed as an evocative musical journey.” The suite begins with early-twentieth-century ragtime from north of the border and proceeds through a Brazilian bossa nova with jazz influences and an infectiously syncopated Peruvian waltz. The
closing Zamba gaucha is modeled on a traditional slow, waltz-like dance of Argentina, and Son de México combines a huapango, a lively dance of Spanish origin, especially popular in the lands along the Gulf of Mexico, with a fiery jalisciense from the central province of Jalisco.
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.
Esteban Batallán Trumpet
Esteban Batallán was appointed principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2019 by Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti.
Previously, he was principal trumpet of the Hong Kong Philharmonic during the 2018–19 season and for the Orchestra of the City of Granada from 2002 to 2018. He also served as guest principal trumpet with the Royal Orchestra of Seville from 2010 to 2014 and with the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala and the Filarmonica della Scala from 2015 to 2018.
Batallán has also appeared with distinguished orchestras around the world, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and has worked under esteemed conductors including Jaap van Zweden, Zubin Mehta, Bernard Haitink, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Riccardo Chailly, among others. He has appeared as soloist with the Orchestral Ensemble of Paris, Spanish Radio and Television Orchestra, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Geneva Camerata, and Symphony Orchestra of India, among others.
Batallán is the winner of several prestigious competitions, including the Jeunesses Musicales of Spain, Jeunesses Musicales of Europe, and the Yamaha International competitions. He was also a prizewinner at
the 2006 Maurice André International Trumpet Competition.
A native of Barro in Galicia, Spain, Batallán began his musical studies at the age of seven. He continued his training at the Conservatory of Music in Pontevedra, the Conservatory of Music of Vigo, and the Galicia School of Musical Studies. Batallán served as coach with the Young Academy of the Granada City Orchestra for sixteen years and has led master classes at Colburn School, New England Conservatory, Conservatory of Paris, and groups from the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, Youth Orchestra of Andalusia, and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Academy, as well as other brass festivals around the world.
John Hagstrom Trumpet
John Hagstrom joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as fourth trumpet in 1996. A year later, he won the Orchestra’s second trumpet position, carrying on the tradition of brass section teamwork for which the CSO is famous.
Previously, he was principal trumpet of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra in Kansas and served as assistant professor of trumpet at Wichita State University.
Hagstrom is the host of Intermission at the CSO, a podcast produced by the CSOA, showcasing the voices of numerous CSO musicians through individual
features or within topical episodes that discuss the dedication of the Orchestra to its mission and listeners. Originally conceived as a way for supporters and students to stay connected to the Orchestra during the COVID-19 pandemic, the podcast additionally features selected moments from many CSO recordings.
A passionate supporter of music education, in 2006, Hagstrom helped initiate Dream Out Loud, a music-education advocacy partnership between the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and the Yamaha Corporation of America. The initiative developed a variety of resources for elementary through high school students, their teachers, and parents to support students’ music education and provide encouragement in times of challenge.
A native Chicagoan, Hagstrom grew up listening to the CSO. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and for six years was a member of the President’s Own United States Marine Band in Washington (D.C.), where he spent three of those years as principal trumpet.
David Griffin Horn
David Griffin was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1995. Upon graduating from Northwestern University in 1987, he began his career with the Rochester Philharmonic and
followed with positions in the orchestras of Montreal and Houston. He has served as guest principal horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Shanghai Radio Orchestra. In September 2017, Griffin traveled to Japan for a solo tour, giving 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, op.86, 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 and Northwestern universities. 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 (VT), 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.
Michael Mulcahy Trombone
Chicago Symphony Orchestra trombonist
Michael Mulcahy appears worldwide as a soloist, conductor, and teacher. He was appointed to the CSO by Sir Georg Solti in 1989, having been principal trombonist of the Tasmanian and Melbourne symphony orchestras and solo trombonist of the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Mulcahy made his solo debut with the Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim in 2000 and subsequently performed as soloist under Pierre Boulez. In October 2016, he gave the world premiere of Carl Vine’s Five Hallucinations for Trombone and Orchestra, and in February 2018, he performed in the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Low Brass Concerto.
Mulcahy is the winner of several international competitions, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Instrumental Competition, the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, the Viotti International Competition in Italy, and the International Instrumental Competition in former East Germany.
He has been principal trombonist of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque and the Grand Teton Music Festival since 1992. Mulcahy is also principal trombonist of the Australian World Orchestra, having performed under conductors Alexander Briger, Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle, and Riccardo Muti. He was a founding
member of the National Brass Ensemble in 2014.
An invitation to direct the West German Radio Orchestra sparked Michael Mulcahy’s interest in conducting. He serves as director of the CSO Brass, conducts annually for the Grand Teton Musical Festival, and makes guest appearances with the Sydney Symphony, Tasmanian Symphony, New World Symphony, and the Royal Danish Orchestra.
Currently, Mulcahy leads the trombone studio at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and is a visiting artist at the Australian National Academy of Music.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Michael Mulcahy began studying trombone with his father, Jack Mulcahy, and completed his studies with Baden McCarron of the Sydney Symphony and Geoffrey Bailey at the State Conservatorium of New South Wales.
Gene Pokorny Tuba
Gene Pokorny has been principal tuba of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1989. He also held principal tuba positions in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Utah Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. While in Los Angeles, he played on the soundtracks
to Jurassic Park, The Fugitive, and other motion pictures.
Pokorny grew up in Downey, California, about a mile from the building site of the Apollo command modules that first took humans to the moon. He studied tuba in the Los Angeles area with Jeffrey Reynolds, Larry Johansen, Tommy Johnson, and Roger Bobo.
When Pokorny isn’t counting rests in the back row of Orchestra Hall, he can be found teaching at music festivals and performing solo recitals worldwide. He has recorded several solo and educational discs and assisted Rolling Stones trombonist Michael Davis in recording several educational workbook CDs. Pokorny received an Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Southern California and an honorary doctorate from the University of Redlands. He currently lectures and teaches at Roosevelt and Northwestern
universities and the Pokorny Low Brass Seminar.
A member of the Union Pacific (Railroad) Historical Society, Gene Pokorny spends time as a “foamer,” watching and chasing trains. He is a card-carrying member of the Three Stooges Fan Club and an avid devotee of his good friend David “Red” Lehr, the greatest Dixieland sousaphonist in the known universe, who passed away in January 2021. Pokorny finds guidance in the overview of life through Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, passion in the music of composers Gerald Finzi and Giacomo Puccini, humility in Carl Sagan’s threeand-a-half minute video Pale Blue Dot, inspiration in listening to his fabulous colleagues onstage, and perspective in all things through the basset hounds with whom he lives; they are always appreciative of a hug.