CSO POPS Fanfare Cincinnati - March/April 2023

Sunday • March 26, 2023 7 PM

Memorial Hall

1225 Elm Street •

•Winner of the 2022 German SWR Young Opera Stars Competition

•Awarded the Emmerich Smola Prize, selected by the audience — only six young top-class singers are invited to compete for this award

•Awarded the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Orchestra Prize, selected by members of the orchestra

•2021 prize winner in the singing division of the ARD music competition, Germany’s largest international classical music competition

•Member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein

•Repertoire includes role of Prince Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus), Lisetta (Haydn’s Il mondo della luna), Angelina (Rossini’s La Cenerentola) and Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro)

Silver-Garburg

Sunday • May 7, 2023 3 PM

Anderson Hills United Methodist Church 7515 Forest Road, Cincinnati, 45255

•Have performed and collaborated with orchestras in 70 countries on 5 continents

•Appeared as soloists with the Orchestra of the Americas alongside Yo-Yo Ma and Claudio Bohorquez on their 2021 European tour

•Since 2014, have occupied one of the few extant professorships for piano duo at the Graz University of the Arts

“[The duo demonstrates] lyrical sensitivity and ravishing technical mastery…only rarely does one experience such spontaneous shouts of ‘bravo’ at the end of a concert.”

—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“The Silver-Garburg Piano Duo compels with their superb sound and outstanding ensemble playing…Extremely classy.”

—Concerti

Tickets: MemorialHallOTR.org or 513-977-8838

Over the Rhine

USA DEBUT

Valerie Eickhoff MEZZO-SOPRANO

PIANO DUO

CONTENTS

4 Directors & Advisors

5 Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra “We Believe” 6

8 Welcome from the President & CEO

9 Feature: Premieres, Mermaids and Deafness: Bringing New Works to Music Hall

16 Feature: Film + Live Orchestra: A New Concert Experience

20 Spotlight: Celebrating Women’s History Month

25 Spotlight: Young People’s Concerts: Innovating for a New Generation

29 Spotlight: Meet Our New Orchestra Musicians, Part III

33 Orchestra Roster

34 Artistic Leadership: Louis Langrée, John Morris Russell, Matthias Pintscher, Damon Gupton, Samuel Lee and Daniel Wiley

37 Guest Artist Biographies

43 Concerts and CSO Program Notes: Mar. 4–5: Death & Transfiguration | Mar. 10–12: Marvel’s Black Panther Film in Concert | Mar. 17–18: The Mermaid |

Mar. 19: NIMAN and CSO Side-by-Side |

Mar. 24–26: Beethoven’s Fifth | Mar. 25: Lollipops Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Maestro | Apr. 7–8: Shostakovich Symphony No. 5

73 Financial Support

80 Administration

ALSO look for the Mar/Apr “Of Note” found on p. 56 of this issue of Fanfare Magazine

ON THE COVER: CSO Principal Horn Elizabeth Freimuth. Credit: Roger Mastroianni

All contents © 2022–23. Contents cannot be reproduced in any manner, whole or in part, without written permission from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

MARCH/ APRIL 2023

9 Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performances in March and April offer a delightful mix of premieres, exciting guest soloists, and… mermaids(?). Yes, mermaids! Read about it on pp. 9–15.

16

The CSO and Pops have, in the last few decades, seized the opportunity to present concerts featuring films with live orchestra— including our March performances of Marvel’s Black Panther Feature Film with Orchestra. It’s a marriage of art and technology that has audiences cheering. Learn more on pp. 16–19.

20 March is Women’s History Month, and we celebrate by featuring the CSO’s women in leadership (two pictured here) of the CSO. Read about the women who influenced them and how they, in turn, are influencing others and effecting change, pp. 20–24.

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CINCINNATI SYMPHONY

ORCHESTRA & CINCINNATI POPS

Music Hall, 1241 Elm Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Officers

Dianne Rosenberg, Chair

Robert W. McDonald, Immediate Past Chair

Sue McPartlin, Treasurer and Vice-Chair of Finance

Usha C. Vance, Secretary

Timothy Giglio and

Gerron L. McKnight, Esq., Vice-Chairs of Volunteerism

Anne E. Mulder, Vice-Chair of Community Engagement

Charla B. Weiss, Vice-Chair of Institutional Advancement

Melanie Healey, Vice-Chair of Leadership Development

Directors

Dorie Akers

Heather Apple

Michael P. Bergan

Kate C. Brown

Ralph P. Brown, DVM

Trish Bryan*

Otto M. Budig, Jr.*

Andria Carter

Melanie M. Chavez

Michael L. Cioffi

Andrea Costa

Adrian Cunningham

Gabe Davis

Kelly M. Dehan

Alberto J. Espay, M.D.

Dr. Maria Espinola

Mrs. Charles Fleischmann III*

Lawrence Hamby

Delores Hargrove-Young

Francie S. Hiltz*

Joseph W. Hirschhorn*

Brad Hunkler

Lisa Diane Kelly

Edna Keown

Patrick G. Kirk, M.D.

Florence Koetters

Jonathan Kregor

Peter E. Landgren

John Lanni

Shannon Lawson

Spencer Liles*

Edyth B. Lindner*

Will Lindner

Timothy Maloney

Holly Mazzocca

James P. Minutolo

Laura Mitchell

John A. Moore

Theodore Nelson

Lisa Lennon Norman

Bradford E. Phillips, III

Aik Khai Pung

James B. Reynolds*

Jack Rouse*

Lisa M. Sampson

Patrick Schleker

Digi France Schueler

Valarie Sheppard

Stephanie A. Smith

Albert Smitherman

Kari Ullman

David R. Valz

Randolph L. Wadsworth, Jr.*

Daniel Wachter

*Director Emeritus

BOARD OF DIRECTORS DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION (DE&I) COMMITTEE and COMMUNITY ADVISORY COUNCIL

In May 2020 the realities of systemic inequity, injustice and racism in America were once again laid bare by the murder of George Floyd. That summer, the CSO created a 10-point DEI Action Plan to prioritize the Orchestra’s work to better represent and serve the entirety of the Cincinnati community. Action items included the continued amplification of BIPOC artists on stage and in education programs; a review of hiring and compensation practices; organization-wide implicit bias training; increased mentorship opportunities; and the creation of a standing CSO Community Advisory Council (CAC) to strengthen ties to the community. We thank our many partners on the CAC and on our standing DE&I committee who are helping us with this important work.

CSO Board of Directors

DE&I Committee

Charla B. Weiss, Lead

Heather Apple

Ralph Brown

Adrian Cunningham

Maria Espinola

Delores Hargrove-Young

Lisa Kelly

David Kirk*

Gerron McKnight

Lisa Lennon Norman

Jack Rouse

Lisa Sampson

Stephanie Smith

*Community Volunteer

You are welcome to take this copy of Fanfare Magazine home with you as a souvenir of your concert experience. Alternatively, please share it with a friend or leave it with an usher for recycling. Thank you!

Primary Staff Liaison: Harold Brown

Other Staff Members: Tiffany Cooper, Kyle Wynk-Sivashankar

Community Advisory Council

Desire Bennett, Design Impact

Daniel Betts, Cincinnati Recreation Commission

Jackie Taggart Boyd, Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau/CincyUSA

Alexis Kidd, Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses

Christopher Miller, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Joele Newman, Peaslee Neighborhood Center

Candra Reeves, Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio

Leslie Rich, Ioby

John P. Scott, Community Engagement Partners

Billy Thomas, Cincy Nice

Staff: Tiffany Cooper, Harold Brown

Multicultural Awareness Council

Susan Carlson

Andria Carter

Piper Davis

Dara Fairman

Kori Hill

Alverna Jenkins

Beverley Lamb

Carlos Garcia Leon

Aurelia “Candie” Simmons

Jaime Sharp

Quiera Levy Smith

Daphney Thomas

Alford West

Staff: Tiffany Cooper, Harold Brown

WE BELIEVE

music lives within us all

regardless

of

who we are or where we come from. We believe that music is a pathway to igniting our passions, discovering what moves us, deepening our curiosity and connecting us to our worldand to each other

Representation and visibility matter. As we strive to be the most relevant orchestra in America, we begin with these statements that recognize historical problems in our Organization and industry and define our hopes for the future.

We are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is catalyzed by systemic injustice and inequality perpetuated by individuals and institutions. We believe that reflecting our community and the world around us at every level—on stage, behind-the-scenes, and in neighborhoods throughout the region—is essential to the CSO’s present and future.

We honor the land and Indigenous peoples

We acknowledge that Cincinnati Music Hall occupies land that has been the traditional land of the Hopewell, Adena, Myaamia (Miami), Shawandasse Tula (Shawanwaki/Shawnee), and Wahzhazhe Manzhan (Osage) peoples, who have continuously lived upon this land since time immemorial. We honor past, present and future Indigenous peoples.

COMING UP AT MUSIC HALL

MAR 2023

DEATH & TRANSFIGURATION

MAR 4 & 5 SAT 7:30 pm; SUN 2 pm*

Louis Langrée conductor

Elizabeth Freimuth horn

R. STRAUSS Horn Concerto No. 1

Samuel ADAMS Variations [World Premiere, CSO Co-Commission]

R. STRAUSS Death and Transfiguration

Film In Concert MARVEL’S BLACK PANTHER

MAR 10–12 FRI & SAT 7:30 pm; SUN 2 pm

THE MERMAID

MAR 17 & 18 FRI & SAT 7:30 pm

Kevin John Edusei conductor

Simone Lamsma violin

F. MENDELSSOHN Die schöne Melusine (“The Fair Melusine”)

E. KORNGOLD Violin Concerto

A. ZEMLINSKY Die Seejungfrau (“The Mermaid”)

BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH

MAR 24–26 FRI 11 am; SAT 7:30 pm; SUN 2 pm

Anna Rakitina conductor

Sterling Elliott cello

A. DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto

Richard AYRES No. 52, I.Saying Goodbye

L.v. BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5

Lollipops Concert SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAESTRO

MAR 25 SAT 10:30 am

Concert Sponsor: Cincinnati Symphony Club

CSO PROOF: SURREALIST EL TROPICAL

MAR 29 & 30 WED & THU 8 pm

Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre

Rosie Herrera choreographer

Clyde Scott video and production designer

Luke Kritzeck lighting and production designer

APR 2023

SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO. 5

APR 7 & 8 FRI & SAT 7:30 pm

Louis Langrée conductor

Stephen Hough piano

Daníel BJARNASON New Work, Part I [US Premiere, CSO Co-Commission]

S. RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 1

D. SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5

CLASSICAL ROOTS

APR 14 FRI 7:30 pm*

John Morris Russell conductor

Donald Lawrence featured guest artist

Classical Roots Community Choir

Artist Sponsor: Jeffrey & Jody Lazarow and Janie & Peter Schwartz Family Fund

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

APR 15 & 16 SAT 7:30 pm; SUN 2 pm

Ramón Tebar conductor

Steven Banks saxophone

N. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Russian Easter Overture

Billy CHILDS Saxophone Concerto [CSO Co-Commission]

M. MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Ravel)

MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 7

APR 21 & 22 FRI 11 am; SAT 7:30 pm

Matthias Pintscher conductor

G. MAHLER Symphony No. 7

Concert Sponsor: Peter Landgren and Judith Schonbach Landgren

BEN FOLDS

APR 25 TUE 7:30 pm

Ben Folds singer-songwriter-pianist

RAGTIME In Concert

APR 28-30 FRI & SAT 7:30 pm; SUN 2 pm

John Morris Russell conductor

MAY 2023

SAINT-SAËNS ORGAN SYMPHONY

MAY 5-7 FRI & SAT 7:30 pm; SUN 2 pm

Louis Langrée conductor

Víkingur Ólafsson piano

Friday & Saturday

H. BERLIOZ Overture to Lesfrancs-juges (“The Judges of the Secret Court”)

M. RAVEL Concertoin G Major for Piano and Orchestra

C. SAINT-SAËNS Symphony No. 3, Organ

Sunday

H. BERLIOZ Overture to Lesfrancs-juges (“The Judges of the Secret Court”)

H. BERLIOZ “Marche des Gardes ” from Les francs-juges (“The Judges of the Secret Court”)

C. SAINT-SAËNS Danse macabre

C. SAINT-SAËNS Symphony No. 3, Organ

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

MAY 12 & 13 FRI 11 am; SAT 7:30 pm

Louis Langrée conductor

Courtney Bryan piano and composer

D. MILHAUD La création du monde (“The Creation of the World”)

Courtney BRYAN Piano Concerto [World Premiere (orchestral version), CSO Co-Commission]

D. ELLINGTON Night Creature

G. GERSHWIN An American in Paris (ed. Clague)

Presenting Sponsor: HORAN

FOR A FULL LIST OF UPCOMING EVENTS AND ADDITIONAL INFO

VISIT CINCINNATISYMPHONY.ORG

Louis Langrée Music Director • John Morris Russell Cincinnati Pops Conductor

* For more info on our livestreams visit cincinnatisymphony.org/ live

Music Hall | 1241 Elm St | Cincinnati, OH | 45202

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops!

The level of activity that takes place here is extraordinary. Each time we pause and reflect on the magnitude of programs, innovation, and the people who make it all a reality, the breadth of activity never ceases to inspire us to constantly strive to better serve our community. We owe a great deal of thanks to our audiences and donors, our Board, our staff, our musicians, and our artistic leaders for the momentum we are gathering as we move into a post-pandemic, changed world.

In this issue of Fanfare Magazine, we dive into the stories behind our March and April concerts and learn more about the changing landscape of the concert experience. In Ken Smith’s story, we hear from Louis Langrée, composer Samuel Adams, guest conductor Kevin John Edusei and cellist Sterling Elliott. In Steven Rosen’s piece, he explores the intersection between films and live music and its recent surge in popularity through the perspectives of John Morris Russell, Matthias Pintscher and Keitaro Harada. In Wajeeh Khan’s story, we highlight our Young People’s Concerts and how they inspire the next generation of musicians and fans.

We talk to our newest musicians about their journeys to Cincinnati and our Orchestra in the third and final installment of our new musicians series. In honor of Women’s History Month in March, we feature the women leaders on our administrative team who are changing the face of orchestral administration.

You will also see within the pages of this magazine a special event on March 19 featuring a side-by-side performance of the inaugural National Pathways Festival Orchestra, made up of some of the most talented young musicians from across the country, and the CSO. In 2019, the CSO was the incubator for and partner to the newly-established National Instrumentalist Mentoring and Advancement Network (NIMAN), dedicated to creating a level playing field for BIPOC classical music instrumentalists in the United States. With leaders from American orchestras, professional musicians and educators, we are collectively working on aligning resources and collaborating to strengthen the trajectory of classical instrumentalists of color at all stages of their pre-careers. We are laying the foundation for much-needed change in our sector, and we are proud to host this year’s convening here at Music Hall.

There is much to look forward to in the coming months, and I thank you for joining us.

With gratitude,

Jonathan Martin

©Roger Mastroianni

We owe a great deal of thanks to our audiences and donors, our Board, our staff, our musicians, and our artistic leaders for the momentum we are gathering as we move into a post-pandemic, changed world.

Premieres, Mermaids and Deafness: Bringing New Works to Music Hall

by Ken Smith

onducting a world premiere is always a point of pride for Louis Langrée, but he approaches a premiere with a touch of humility, too “When it comes to bringing a new work into the world, we’re not the parents,” he says. “We’re only the doctors and midwives assisting the delivery.”

That feeling is particularly acute in the case of Samuel Adams’ Variations, since Langrée wasn’t even the original doctor. Written during the 2020–21 season, when Adams had been tapped to be the Concertgebouw’s composer-in-residence, the piece required too many forces for Amsterdam’s legendary concert hall to accommodate safely under Covid protocols. Therefore, the CSO’s performances on March 4 and 5, originally intended to be the U.S. premiere, will now be the world premiere.

“I often have rich and fertile discussions with composers, not just about the music but also the orchestra itself, its history and current personality,” he says. “But with Sam it was different. The piece is dedicated to Karina Canellakis, who was supposed to conduct the premiere with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.”

Even before seeing the score, however, Langrée was captivated by Adams’ “cerebral” music—he compares its “waves and layers” to French spectralists like Tristan Murail—to bookend his piece with two works by one of Cincinnati’s most beloved composers, Richard Strauss. “This is not just juxtaposing a world premiere with classic repertoire, it’s about comparing two totally different languages, two radically different conceptions of orchestral color,” he says.

CSO Music Director Louis Langrée conducts the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, January 2023. Credit: Mark Lyons

Both Strauss and Adams, he adds, strongly convey the sensibilities of youth. Strauss wrote Death and Transfiguration, which Strauss himself conducted with the CSO in 1904, when he was 25. He wrote the Horn Concerto No. 1, which will feature CSO Principal Elizabeth Freimuth as soloist, even earlier as a tribute to his father, who was a leading horn player in his day.

Even before seeing the score…Langrée was captivated by Adams’ “cerebral” music… comparing its “waves and layers” to French spectralists like Tristan Murail…

That family dynamic, Langrée admits, has some bearing on his placing Strauss’ concerto alongside Adams, the son of postminimalist composer John Adams. “Sometimes a parental figure can be so dominant, but in neither example here does that seem to be the case,” Langrée adds. “Sam definitely writes in his own language, but it’s not difficult to hear an occasional nod to his father.”

Slightly more overt themes follow a similar formula in two upcoming CSO programs by guest conductors. On March 17 and 18, Kevin John Edusei makes his CSO debut leading Korngold’s Violin Concerto with soloist Simone Lamsma, bookended by two works inspired by mermaid

legends: Mendelssohn’s concert overture Märchen von der schönen Melusine (“The Fair Melusine”) and Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau (“The Mermaid”), an orchestral fantasy based on Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale “The Little Mermaid.”

The program all started with Zemlinsky, says Edusei, who was taken both by the beauty of the composer’s music and the power of his storytelling. “Die Seejungfrau is full of the most beautiful melodies, but when you dive beneath the surface you discover this intricate counterpoint—inspired by Brahms—that closely follows the plot of the love story.”

There was also the “story behind the story,” where it’s not hard to hear art imitating life. “After his tragic affair with Alma Schindler, who shortly after became Gustav Mahler’s wife, Zemlinsky very much identified with the reflected little mermaid,” Edusei says. “How can you not love this piece?”

A natural pairing came in Mendelssohn, he adds, since his Overture was inspired by the

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto plays Daníel Bjarnason’s Violin Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Louis Langrée conducting, January 2023. Credit: Mark Lyons

same medieval French legend that became the basis for most mermaid stories to come.

“Mendelssohn was looking to write an overture that doesn’t make people shout ‘da capo’ [repeat, “from the beginning”] but rather touches on more intimate feelings,” Edusei explains. “In the first two measures, we already understand that we’re in the water, following the mermaid’s swimming gestures. You sense the male character in the agitated allegro, and the piece ends as softly as it begins, with the mermaid disappearing in the last waves.”

Looking for a fitting concerto to reunite with the Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma, Edusei turned to Korngold, a student of Zemlinsky in Vienna. “This is a great occasion to hear pupil and teacher in juxtaposition,” he says. “It makes you wonder, how much of the often-quoted ‘Hollywood Sound’ so associated with Korngold actually stems from Zemlinsky.”

The next week, conductor Anna Rakitina opens the March 24, 25 and 26 program with Dvořák’s Cello Concerto performed by soloist Sterling Elliott, followed by two pieces that evoke— one conscously, one not—the subject of deafness. Preceding Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the first movement of Richard Ayres’ No. 52, a piece originally commissioned by the BBC in 2020. Opening with a solo cello line gradually augmented by the other strings “appearing like a fog…distorted as a tinnitus,” Ayres recreates a sense of Beethoven’s—and his own—increasing hearing loss.

Such a theme may seem a world away from Dvořák, but for Elliott, who grew up playing collaboratively in his family string quartet from the time he was 5, this is precisely the kind of non-traditional program where teamwork can yield quirky and unusual results. “With most concerto performances, I don’t really concern

Guest conductor Kevin John Edusei. Credit: Marco Borggreve

Looking for a fitting concerto to reunite with Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma, Edusei turned to Korngold, a student of Zemlinsky in Vienna.

myself with the rest of the program,” says the cellist, who will be making his first appearance with Rakitina. “But in a situation like this, Anna may have some aspects that feed directly from the Dvořák as a point of continuity. In any case, it’s considerably more gratifying when a joint effort brings the whole thing together.”

Langrée returns to the podium in early April with another premiere that is less of a singular headline-grabber than a new chapter in an ongoing, fruitful relationship. Back in 2015, Langrée conducted the world premiere of Collider, an orchestral piece by the Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason commissioned for the CSO’s MusicNOW Festival. When Langrée asked to bring the piece back in 2020 for the Orchestra’s 125th anniversary concert, Bjarnason admitted that he “made a few changes.”

“Actually, it was a totally different piece,” Langrée laughs. “And I liked both. At some point, we should perform both in the same concert.” That might take some time, however, since other Bjarnason works keep cropping up. Earlier this season, Langrée conducted the composer’s Violin Concerto with soloist Pekka Kuusisto (for whom the piece was written).

On April 7 and 8, along with

Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with soloist Stephen Hough, Langrée will conduct the first part of a new Bjarnason work co-commissioned by the CSO.

“Daníel is also a conductor, so he knows how to fill an orchestra with idiosyncratic timbres and vibrant textures,” Langrée says. “The sound is immediately recognizable, transparent, tricky rhythmically, but at the same time powerful.”

Premieres always have a lot of buzz around them, but sometimes the subsequent performances are when the piece takes on a new life. “If a performance of a new work is not a world premiere, somehow it seems less interesting,” Langrée says. “Sometimes a first performance is indeed full of shock and beauty, but as a performer I enjoy revivals much more. You don’t have the added pressure of determining whether or not a piece will work. You already know it works. You’re immediately starting at a higher level, so it can only be better.”

He cites the presentation format of Bjarnason’s new piece as the best of both worlds: the CSO and its two commissioning partners will each offer the world premiere of a single movement, as well as a later performance of the entire work. “So many compositions have their premiere and then just disappear,” Langrée says. “This way we each share both the work and the excitement, and it will surely give greater life to the piece.”

Cellist Sterling Elliott

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How a pandemic, Fibonacci, and a desert landscape influenced Adams’ Variations

by KEN SMITH

One of the many ironies of Samuel Adams’s Variations—a piece, incidentally, devoid of any classical “theme and variation” formula—was that it had been written at the behest of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, where Adams had been appointed composerin-residence in 2020. As a result of the Covid pandemic, Adams was “in residence” neither in the Netherlands nor his longtime home in the Bay Area, but rather (as he describes it) in “desert suburbia.”

“Once it became clear that my wife wouldn’t be working for a while—she was a violinist with the San Francisco Symphony— we left for western Nevada,” he says. “I like to say that composers are social distancers by profession, but for about a year and a half we were literally out there by ourselves.”

Well, not entirely by themselves—there were the Canada geese—but the pareddown environment soon took root in his music. “The desert was so unbelievably gorgeous. And for seven or eight months, I was basically stationary and became very sensitized to gradual changes in my surroundings,” he explains. “So these ‘variations’ are really a series of gradually, almost intangibly, morphing environments. Certain themes and core harmonic ideas reemerge as the piece goes on, but the sense of ‘variation’ has much more to do with

kaleidoscopic changes of color and energy.”

Structurally, the six sections expand exponentially—from one minute to two, then three, then five, then eight— mathematically following the Fibonacci sequence but also intuitively reflecting both the expansive nature of the pandemic lockdown and the gradual reopening of space that offered new possibilities.

“This piece, which I started in June 2020 and finished in January 2021, marked the beginning of a whole new chapter where I began reconsidering my priorities as a person and a musician,” explains Adams, who has since relocated with his wife and newborn child to Seattle. The piece’s belated world premiere—the

2021 performance originally set for Amsterdam has been rescheduled for 2024—follows on the heels of his “non-concerto” No Such Spring for piano and orchestra (scheduled for its world premiere in February 2023 with pianist Conor Hanick and the San Francisco Symphony), which he says is an extension of the same sound world.

“I think the change in my music mirrored the change in my emotional state,” he says. “I used to expect audiences to lean in, probably more than they were comfortable with…. Now I feel it’s important to create a sense of immediacy. When I was in my 20s, I used to think that complicated music was by definition complex, but I’ve learned that those are very different things. Mozart is simple, but complex. And a lot of complicated modernism is actually very facile. Now, I’m trying to write complex music, but with many points of entry so that a wide range of people—with their own individual listening histories and variety of personal experiences—can find their way in.”

Above: Amargosa Valley, Nevada—Paiute and Shoshone land (Credit: Deborah O’Grady). The Fibonacci sequence.

Right: Composer Samuel Adams (Credit: Lenny Gonzalez).

Film + Live Orchestra: A New Concert Experience

by Steven Rosen

Credit: Mikki Schaffner

At a Cincinnati Pops concert in late December 2022, Justin and Amanda Eckstein of Bridgetown were sitting at the middle of a center row in the packed gallery section of Music Hall’s Springer Auditorium with a superb view of all the multi-media activity before them. A huge, suspended movie screen was showing Star Wars: The Force Awakens while the Orchestra on the stage below was playing the film’s rousing, exciting score with flair and in sync with the cinematic action.

When the movie’s involving narrative was over and the extensive credits began to scroll on the screen, the young couple didn’t leave. Neither, unusually, did most others in the sold-out concert hall. They were waiting to applaud the Orchestra when the credits ended. “Usually people never sit through the end credits of a movie,” Justin said. “But they absolutely do here.”

…the crowd erupted with the biggest cheering and clapping of the night. The Pops was anything but, excuse the term, “second fiddle” to the movie.

African drum virtuoso Massamba Diop will join the Pops for its Marvel’s Black Panther Film with Orchestra performances March 10–12.

CSO Creative Partner Matthias Pintscher conducts the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for CSO Proof: Sun Dogs, October 2022.

Credit: Charlie Balcom

FEATURE: Film with Orchestra

One reason is that the night’s guest conductor, Keitaro Harada, had earlier told the crowd, which included many young adults and parents with children in tow, to sit patiently so they could heartily applaud the credit for the film’s esteemed composer, John Williams. And they did! But they also stayed seated even after that, until the Orchestra ceased playing. Then the crowd erupted with the biggest cheering and clapping of the night. The Pops was anything but, excuse the term, “second fiddle” to the movie.

“The live music aspect adds so much to it,” Justin said. “There’s so much to see.”

Told later about that comment, Harada—an Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2019 and current Music and Artistic Director of the Savannah Philharmonic— wasn’t surprised. “I think everyone has different reasons for attending, but the common denominator is they want to hear their orchestra play live to a film they love,” he said. “You can’t get that in the movie theater and you can’t get that in your house, no matter how great your sound system is. It’s so different hearing a great orchestra play in front of you. That’s what the draw is.”

The Force Awakens was a smashingly successful example of the Pops’ ongoing presentation of what’s been called “film with live orchestra” locally and “movies in concert” by a website that’s been tracking such events worldwide since 2010. This season, in the months before The Force Awakens, the Pops also presented Disney’s revered 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast in concert. Among the movies in concert that the Pops has previously presented

have been Return of the Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back, Coco, Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and West Side Story (the 1961 film).

The next similar Pops presentation will take place March 10–12, when concertgoers can see Black Panther, 2018’s smash hit from Disney and Marvel Studios, while the Orchestra performs the film’s Academy Award-winning score by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson. Damon Gupton, Pops Principal Guest Conductor, is scheduled to conduct this concert.

“There are so many amazing composers out there, and he’s one for sure,” said Cincinnati Pops

Conductor John Morris Russell of Black Panther’s Göransson. “So much of the score is based on African drumming. Göransson collaborated with one of the great masters of African percussive arts, Massamba Diop, to record this fantastic score.”

In a thrilling move, Diop, a virtuoso of the tama, a Senegalese talking drum, will be performing with the Pops for the Black Panther screenings.

As Russell explains it, pairing movies with live orchestral music goes back to the silent era, but has really taken off in recent years due to John Williams. “Williams’ music is so brilliantly crafted to make the most of the drama inherent in an orchestra,” he said. “So it’s been very exciting to see how this whole genre of concerts has blossomed.’’

Williams, a prolific film composer for decades and still active at age 91 (he wrote the score for Steven Spielberg’s recent The Fabelmans), became widely celebrated in the 1970s and early 1980s for his rousing scores for the first Star Wars movies. Among his many accomplishments, he

From top: Audience members dressed up in their finest Beauty and the Beast costumes, September 2022 (Credit: Tyler Secor). Conductor Keitaro Harada and his wife Yuri Kurashima pose with members of Ohio Garrison of the 501st Legion (Credit: Charlie Balcom).

has continued to pen music for not only Star Wars films, but also other box office hit film series such as Harry Potter and Indiana Jones

Williams also served as principal conductor for the Boston Pops from 1980 to 1993, where he was an early adopter of playing film scores and showing film clips. As Cary O’Dell wrote on a 2022 Library of Congress blog celebrating Williams’ first Star Wars score in 1977, “Williams’s 14-year tenure in Boston was seminal in bringing the best of the film-music repertoire to the concert hall.”

DOGS

Film distributors now have special digital “prints” with the recorded scores removed. Some of those distributors then send technicians on-site to aid an orchestra’s technicians with a presentation. And orchestra conductors receive special monitors that help them keep track of a score’s cues, measures and tempos. (They can also use audio click tracks.) As a result, film scores not originally meant to be performed live from start to finish now have worldwide bookings, just like the biggest classical music soloists.

“There’s so much responsibility in keeping the orchestra together, making sure they sound great and then coordinating with the film at the same time,” Russell said of an orchestra conductor’s responsibilities at a film with live orchestra concert. “You’re always on high alert. It’s kind of ironic because, although this is very complicated to conduct, if you do your job exceedingly well with utmost accuracy and upmost artistry, no one notices what you’re doing.”

The audience, however, may indeed notice how well the film they’re watching looks and its dialogue and special effects sound. That’s important, and the CSO has invested in equipment to make the best impression possible. The orchestra rents two projectors (one is for emergency back-up) and a screen for each film engagement. Depending on the aspect ratio of the film, the screen is either 17-by-30 feet or 15by-35 feet. Speakers are installed on the sides of the stage, under the balcony, and also on the balcony and gallery levels. “Currently, we do not have a permanently installed screen or projector for our film concerts because renting always ensures we have the most up-to-date technology

for these films,” said Director of Operations Laura Bordner Adams.

The pairing of film with live orchestra in Cincinnati isn’t just a Pops thing. Back in 1991, Jesús López Cobos conducted the CSO during a performance at Riverbend, where the Orchestra performed Sergei Prokofiev’s score for Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 Alexander Nevsky while the film was shown without its recorded score.

And, last October, the CSO offered three nights of a daring experiment known as Sun Dogs—part of the Orchestra’s risk-taking CSO Proof programming. Working with Minnesota’s Liquid Music, the Orchestra commissioned several respected, artful filmmakers to work with contemporary composers on three short, adventurous films with music. As the films were projected at Springer Auditorium, the Orchestra under conductor Matthias Pintscher played the composed music. The American director Josephine Decker (Shirley) worked with cocomposers Arooj Aftab and Daniel Wohl on Rise, Again; composer Rafiq Bhatia collaborated with Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria) for On Blue; and French/Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop (Atlantics) and her collaborator, French filmmaker/publisher Manon Lutanie, worked with composer Devonté Hynes on Naked Blue.

“Anything that extends the realm of possibilities that we have is very welcome,” said Pintscher, who holds the position of CSO Creative Partner with the Orchestra. “These are times of innovation, so naturally it’s a requirement that institutions like a symphonic orchestra have a response to that. I think it’s an exciting, beautiful challenge. It keeps us on our toes, keeps us moving forward, keeps our minds fresh and makes us think. I think that’s a most crucial requirement of this art form.”

Rafiq Bhatia composer Apichatpong Weerasethakul filmmaker

SUN

DevontéHynescomposerOumyBruniGarrel dancer MatiDiop&ManonLutanie co-directors SUN DOGS

Producedby Division &

David C. Herriman Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Arooj Aftab & Daniel Wohl co-composers Josephine Decker filmmaker SUN DOGS

Film posters created for CSO Proof: Sun Dogs

Celebrating Women’s History Month

In celebration of Women’s History Month, we hear directly from our female directors, Vice President of Communications, and Chief Philanthropy Officer about the women who inspired them and their advice for the next generation of arts administrators.

Who are the women in your life who have inspired you?

My mother. She is an incredibly hard worker. While my grandmother was developing Alzheimer’s, my mother was a caregiver for not only my dad and I, but served as my grandmother’s primary caregiver, all while working a full-time job. She is one of the most caring and selfless people I know. Also, my very first clarinet teacher, Shelley Roland. As a teacher, she didn’t let me cut corners in my playing and helped me build tenacity, resilience, passion and dedication. She is also one of the strongest women I know. Having been diagnosed with cancer a number of years ago, she hasn’t let it slow her down—maintaining her performance and teaching obligations, traveling across the world, and being a source of strength and positivity for others. —

Michelle Lewandowski, Director of Marketing

My mother. She grew up in Mississippi, got her degree in chemical engineering and yet was told they didn’t hire women in that field. The obstacles she cleared to have a successful career taught me that showing who you are matters far more than what you are. —Mary

McFadden Lawson, Chief Philanthropy Officer

My mom is a fearless trailblazer. When her career began, there were very few women conducting concert band ensembles. She became a mentor for dozens of early career professionals, especially young women entering the field. And, she’s still an in-demand ensemble coach and adjudicator for young musicians. I feel pretty lucky that I get her advice on a daily basis!

Catherine Hann, Assistant Director of Individual Giving

My mom has been a huge inspiration in my life. She was the one who brought classical music into our home, as she was an opera singer early in her life. She performed with the Indianapolis Opera for years, and my younger brother and I were members of the children’s chorus for many productions; I believe that is what sparked my fire for performing.

Leslie Hoggatt, Director of Individual Giving and Donor Services

I grew up in a family full of strong, fiercely independent women. I was fortunate to have three generations of women raising me to be the woman I am today. My mother inspires me to be a better person, mother and professional every day. She was a working mom and really showed me that you can have it all even if there are intense moments of juggling.

Kate Farinacci, Director of Special Campaigns and Legacy Giving

One woman who inspires me is my grandma. She’s no longer here to give advice, which I miss terribly, but she was the hardest working, most loving woman I knew. She taught me to work hard and learn everything I could about the organization you choose to join (preferably one you feel represents your values), and show support and compassion to those you work with. —

Tina Marshall, Director of Ticketing and Audience Services

When I began my journey, there were very few women who were in my chosen field. However, there were two women who inspired me as a child: (1) my paternal grandmother, Ruth Dary, who showed me I could do

From top: Mary McFadden Lawson, Chief Philanthropy Officer (Credit: Mark Lyons). Felecia Tchen Kanney, Vice President of Communications (Credit: Robert Cummerow)

anything that I wanted to do and not let being a woman be an excuse for anyone, and (2) my 6th grade instrumental music director, Barb Kelly, who had a passion for teaching music and inspired me to be the best I could be. —

Carol Dary Dunevant, Director of Learning

All of you are leaders in your field; did you have mentors or role models who helped you along the way?

I have been most inspired professionally by two women in my life. My mentor at my first job out of college was Raye Allen, who is now the Director of Leadership Giving with the Cincinnati Opera. Raye taught me about the philanthropy industry and best practices in donor stewardship and cultivation. She also taught me how to be a professional. Susan Berliant was my supervisor and mentor when I worked for the Contemporary Arts Center. Susan is the person who made me the fundraiser I am today. She guided me, instilled confidence, and taught me to think creatively about how to fundraise in Cincinnati. I am grateful that these two amazing women came into my life, and I will be forever grateful for the indelible mark they have left on me. —Kate

Farinacci

A number of women have had a positive impact on my life, personally and professionally, and have helped me get to this point in my life. Julie Chandler, the former Marketing Director of the National Repertory Orchestra, took a chance on me—a master’s student in orchestra performance with no background in marketing (not to mention I also interviewed for a different position)—and hired me as the Marketing & Communications Intern. She saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself at the time, and she gave me freedom to learn. My experience there was really what set me on this path. I’m also grateful to have worked for three wonderful female supervisors during my time at the CSO—Katie Murry, Amy Catanzaro and Sherri Prentiss. As a new staff member, Katie’s supportive coaching allowed me to build confidence and grow into my own at the CSO. Amy’s mentorship sparked new skills in ticketing and ignited my passion for data; she also nudged me gently out of my comfort zone to present what I’ve learned on a national scale. And Sherri remains one of my biggest role models in leadership, as she herself is a supportive, strong, empathetic, inspiring and service-minded leader who always was an advocate for her team. —Michelle

Lewandowski

Karla Williams was an expert in the field of fundraising, and she taught me how to manage a board room of mostly men (at the time) to achieve stated goals. —Mary

McFadden Lawson

When I was young, my first flute teachers, Karen Whitford and Trudy Daniels Whitford, were huge influences in my decision to pursue a degree in performance. When I got to Butler University, I studied with Karen Evans Moratz, the Principal Flutist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and she helped me excel tremendously; but, ultimately, I realized that I wanted to work on the other side of the stage and Susan Zurbuchen, my Arts Administration professor, is the one who guided me in that decision. Over the years, she has been a guiding ear for me as have mentors Diane Syrcle and Tania Castroverde Moskalenko. All of these women have been strong influences in my life and wonderful role models for me over the years. —

Leslie Hoggatt

I didn’t start my career in Arts Admin, but in corporate retail management. I was looking for something new, and a friend who was a board member at an arts organization and very passionate about what they did, got me excited to look into it. There just so happened to be a position open, an Educational Sales position. I interviewed and got the job. I fell in love with

From top: Michelle Lewandowski, Director of Marketing. Leslie Hoggatt, Director of Individual Giving and Donor Services (Credit: Corinne Wiseman). Tiffany Copper, Director of Community Engagement and Diversity (Credit: Roger Mastroianni).

the idea of bringing the arts to children, especially those who haven’t had any exposure. I was hooked! I learned more about the organization and took on more responsibilities—sometimes not by choice—and haven’t left. I’ve just moved to a different type of art now, from theatre to orchestra. I still have the passion of sharing the arts with our community. Something I hope I’ve given to my children, exposing them to every aspect of the arts and creating new patrons. —

Tina Marshall

When I entered this field, I looked to Tracy L. Wilson with Cincinnati Opera for guidance and support. As the most tenured Black arts administrator in the city, Tracy has paved the way for other arts administrators like myself to enter this field. She continually pours into and mentors those who have come along after her. There are others, including Kathy Jorgenson-Finley who was the first community engagement person at the CSO, and many more who have inspired me and provided a safe space for me to learn and grow in this field. —

Tiffany Cooper, Director of Community Engagement and Diversity

I had the benefit of starting in orchestra administration under a wonderful boss and mentor, Anna Ross, with my hometown orchestra, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. Anna had been the Director of Operations and Education for a number of years when they created a new position of Assistant Operations Manager, which I was fortunate enough to land. Not only did she allow, and encourage, me to continue pursuing my degree while simultaneously working full time for the orchestra, she also taught me so much about the inner workings of orchestras. Her mantra was: In Operations, we have done our job right if the orchestra musicians, conductors, and guest artists are able to walk onto the stage, do their job, and leave without any (major) complaints or issues. She continues to be a sounding board and mentor, when I need it, to this day. —

Laura Bordner Adams, Director of Operations

I am very fortunate to have had a number of mentors and role models in my life who saw something in me at each step of my career. They are my cheering squad of people who support me unconditionally, people who mention my name in a room full of opportunities. Within the industry, they include Kathy Carroll (retired President & CEO, Toledo Symphony), Ashley Mirakian (Vice President of Marketing & Communications, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), and Merwin Siu (Artistic Administrator and Principal Second Violin, Toledo Symphony). They are my brain trust, and I love reconnecting with them. —

Communications

Felecia Tchen Kanney, Vice President of

What drew you to working with orchestras and/or what drew you to the CSO?

As I look back, I can say that LUMENOCITY was what drew me to the CSO and working with orchestras. I had attended the very first year in 2013 when no one really knew what to expect; I remember showing up and barely finding a space to stand on the lawn of Washington Park and there was just a sense of magic in the air. As someone who had studied visual arts, the combination of art, light and music was thrilling, and the number of people who showed up was electrifying. It truly changed my perspective of what an orchestra could be. I would have never guessed that in a few years time I would have the opportunity to join the CSO in 2016 to work on the final year of LUMENOCITY, and to continue working on the Orchestra’s many other innovative projects, such as CSO Look Around, CSO Proof and the Brady Neighborhood Concerts. —Amber Ostaszewski, Director of Audience Engagement

From top: Carol Dary Dunevant, Director of Learning. Catherine Hann, Assistant Director of Individual Giving (Credit: Claudia Hershner). Kate Farinacci, Director of Special Campaigns and Legacy Giving.

I have degrees in clarinet performance, but it became clear toward the end of my master’s program that pursuing the performance track was not the life for me. I still loved the artform though, so it really was my love of the music, of orchestras and of sharing that with people that drew me to working on the other side of the curtain. —Michelle

Lewandowski

I’ve long admired the skill, dedication and confidence of professional musicians since my humble attempts to be a good flute player. I’m hooked on the fast-paced environment where time is not only a valuable resource but also the element by which everything is measured. —

Mary Mc Lawson

I’ve always been involved with music and studied bass trombone in college. After graduation, I started working in nonprofit fundraising and orchestra administration. Years later, a job opened up at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and I eagerly applied. —Catherine

Hann

For personal reasons I needed to make a transition. My husband and I are CSO season subscribers. One evening, he noticed a position open at the CSO. My husband turned to me and said, “This is you. You should apply.” And here I am! —Carol

Dary Dunevant

I have always had a great love for symphonic music and the musicians who bring this art form to life, and I strive to support the musicians of the Orchestra to the best of my ability so they have what they need to focus on creating the music that I love so much. One of my favorite parts of this job is that I am surrounded by exceptional colleagues in the Orchestra and the administrative staff, and it is my joy to collaborate with them every day. We all share a common goal of presenting great symphonic music for the community, and I feel extremely fortunate to be part of this amazing group of people. —

Brenda Tullos, Director of Orchestra Personnel

I am a classically trained dancer, and orchestral music was the backdrop for many memorable moments in my life. I had the opportunity to work for the Cleveland Orchestra early on in my career, and I knew if I ever had the chance to work for my hometown orchestra I would jump at said chance. I knew I had to work for the CSO after I had a conversation with Jonathan Martin during the interview process about the Orchestra’s strategic efforts toward a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive Orchestra. That’s when I knew this was an opportunity to be a part of an orchestra that was positioning itself to be an orchestra for all people. —

Kate Farinacci

I wanted to work at a place where I was proud to be part of the organization. Being in the Accounting/Finance field, it is easy to just be a person behind the scenes and lose connection with the organization. I love how dedicated the CSO is to serving the community. —

Kristina Pfeiffer, Director of

Finance, CSO

I was in graduate school pursuing my business administration degree when my husband and I decided to take an impromptu road trip to either Cleveland or Chicago—we would make the decision once we reached the I-90 Turnpike. In a split-second decision, we ended up going to Chicago and attended the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony. It was at that performance, while reading the program book, that I realized there were opportunities in a field that would put my music and business experiences to good use. My life could be surrounded by music every day, and the thought of that brought the fuzziness of the future into 20/20 vision. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra had been on my radar for a number of years, and I was well aware of its culture and company values. When an opportunity opened up, one of my mentors encouraged me to apply. The domino effect that ensued led me to meet

From top: Amber Ostaszewski, Director of Audience Engagement. Laura Bordner Adams, Director of Operations. Brenda Tullos, Director of Orchestra Personnel.

some of the most interesting, passionate, caring, and down-to-earth people who I now call my colleagues. —

Felecia Tchen Kanney

Do you have any advice for up-and-coming orchestra administrators?

Be a sponge and soak up everything you can learn from everyone you work with, and volunteer for tasks you may not know how to do, but interest you. The Arts Administration world is vast, with many avenues to go down, and you may discover your path at any point along the way.

Michelle Lewandowski

If you find yourself on the path to being on the administrative side of an orchestra, embrace the journey. Bring your passion and vision and be ready to enjoy the results of your hard work. —Carol

Dary Dunevant

Non-profit is a tax status, not a business model. Whatever arts organization you find yourself working for, know that your donors are your shareholders and your colleagues each have a role to bring the mission (business plan) to life. —Mary

Mc Lawson

Be a sponge. The most successful professionals in our field soak up every experience and ask every question. This field exists at the intersection of nonprofit management and artistic excellence, and we can best fulfill our mission when everyone brings their knowledge, lived experience and creative thinking to the work. —

Catherine Hann

Don’t be afraid to show up as yourself. The orchestra field needs more diverse thoughts and perspectives in order to help prepare for the future. The only way to get there is to bring your full self to your role and don’t be afraid to share new perspectives. —

Tiffany Cooper

My advice isn’t necessarily just for orchestra administrators, but I feel like you do your best work when you feel valued by your organization. Find a place that you connect with and, in return, you are valued and people are invested in you and your growth, both personal and professional.

Kristina Pfeiffer

It does help to have a passion for what you’re doing and belief in the organization you’re working for. I believe that for any career. In my experience, learning everything from the starting positions up has helped me understand how the organization works and how the decisions we make affect each group within the organization. Be a support for your team, motivate them, find out where their passions lie, and help support them in their growth. It’s motivating to bring something inspiring to your community. It’s also motivating to support your team and watch them grow. —

Tina Marshall

My advice would be to think on a global scale and know that no matter where you start in the organization you can effect real change in the orchestral world. We are on the precipice of great change and will need future leaders to continue thinking big and moving the industry toward being music for all. —

Kate Farinacci

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with many women leaders in our field, which has been hugely inspirational and allowed me to see a future for myself working with symphony orchestras. If I had any advice for someone starting out in this field, especially a young woman, it would be to make sure your voice is heard and to not be afraid to take risks.

Someone else will, so why not you! —KC Commander, Director of Digital Content and Innovation

From top: KC Commander, Director of Digital Content and Innovation. Kristina Pfeiffer, Director for Finance, CSO. Tina Marshall, Director of Ticketing and Audience Services.

Young People’s Concerts: Innovating for a New Generation

by WAJEEH KHAN

Do you remember the first time you attended an orchestra concert? Or the first time you heard an orchestra live? For many people this influential first experience with an orchestra probably happened at a young age during a school assembly or class field trip.

These important touchstone moments that, hopefully, turn young people into lifelong music lovers continue today. Several mornings a year, young students from the Greater Cincinnati area arrive on buses, walk up the steps into the magnificent Music Hall, and take their seats for their first orchestra concert.

Many may recall (or have seen on YouTube) the iconic conductor and educator Leonard Bernstein’s televised series of Young People’s Concerts (YPCs) with the New York Philharmonic. This series ran for 53 episodes from 1958 to 1972 and helped to popularize and introduce an entire generation to the wonders of classical music. Like many YPCs today, these concerts were approximately an hour long, and they introduced viewers to a wide range of subjects, such as works of great composers, introductory music theory,

and musical philosophies. While Bernstein is often credited with the advent of these concerts, you may be surprised to know that the CSO has one of America’s longest-running YPC programs—in fact, the CSO has been holding YPCs featuring the full symphony orchestra since 1920!

100 years later, the CSO’s YPCs are still critical in establishing musical curiosity, appreciation and understanding in countless individuals—especially within musicians. As CSO violinist Stacey Woolley puts it, “If you go out in the community, most people will say that the first time they ever heard an orchestra was at a YPC.” Woolley, who has been a member of the CSO since 1989, credits YPCs in laying the groundwork for his musical journey. “The first time I heard live classical music was at a YPC, when I was around six or seven,” said Woolley. “After that, I went every year. They opened up a new world for me. I didn’t want them to stop playing! Looking back at it now, YPCs helped to kickstart my love for and association with classical music and Music Hall, which I’ve been going to for over 56 years now—more than a third of its existence!” Over the years, the CSO has continued to make new strides and developments in the presentation and experience of YPCs to further enhance their impact. CSO Associate Principal Cello Daniel Culnan, who has attended YPCs as a child and has been performing in them as part of the Orchestra for decades, notes that YPCs have changed dramatically over the years—

An advertisement in a CSO program book for a February 1920 Young People’s Concert.

Students and teachers take part in the Sonic Architecture YPC. Credit: Charlie Balcom

and have become far more poignant as a result. “When I was a kid, there was not a lot of connection between pieces,” said Culnan.

“Since I’ve been playing YPCs, though, we’ve tended to incorporate a lot more, such as soloists and dancing. It’s not just the Orchestra playing anymore…. It’s a lot more dynamic now.”

One of the core elements that has propelled the CSO’s YPCs to new heights is inventive programming that emphasizes audience participation and interactivity. “For a long time, there really wasn’t much audience participation, if at all. We were expected to just sit there and be still,” said Culnan. “Now, kids are so much more involved. They’re clapping, stomping, singing, and actually come

up on stage sometimes! Seeing all of these kids that are involved and genuinely excited can be so rewarding.” Recently, YPCs such as Dots and Lines and Sonic Architecture have really pushed the envelope to move beyond a simple concert format.

YPCs are a project of the CSO’s Learning Department, where the Assistant Conductors work together with Director of Learning Carol Dary Dunevant to ensure that YPCs are meeting educational goals, trends and benchmarks. Assistant Conductor Daniel Wiley, who conducted Sonic Architecture and hosted Dots and Lines, wanted students to see that musical inspiration and understanding can be found in all sorts of mediums. “All of our education concerts compared composers to other disciplines to establish relatability,” said Wiley. “If you can equate elements of music to elements of other disciplines, it doesn’t seem abstract to kids. It establishes a sense of realism—that music and composition is something that anyone and everyone can be a part of.”

For Dots and Lines, students from grades K–3 compared the music of iconic composers, such as Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, to the work of famous artists like Van Gogh and Matisse. Students interacted with Wiley and visual artists to combine and layer “dots” (shorts sounds) with “lines” (long sounds) to explore how composers and painters use similar techniques.

In Sonic Architecture, students in grades 6–12 were able to watch as the Orchestra created visual displays of pitch, duration and amplitude.

SPOTLIGHT: Young People’s Concerts

Assistant Conductor Daniel Wiley conducts the Orchestra for the Sonic Architecture YPC. Credit: Charlie Balcom

Above, from top: CSO Violinist Stacey Woolley and CSO Associate Principal Cello Daniel Culnan

They then compared the architectural elements of Music Hall to the elements of form used to construct the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. “We knew that form was the architecture of the piece, but then we wondered: what about the architecture we perform within?” reflected Wiley. “Cross-curricular connection is at the core of all YPCs, and we wanted to showcase how both of these concepts could be combined to create something special. We ended up piecing together Music Hall in a sort of ABA form—the left side of Music Hall was A; the center was B, which marks the musical development; and the right side was the return of A.” Sonic Architecture was particularly innovative for its use of a live spectrogram—a visual representation of sound that has time on the “x” axis, frequency on the “y” axis and different colors to represent amplitude. This sound blueprint was mapped onto a 3D rendering of Music Hall, adding vibrant color and visuals to an already dynamic and interactive experience.

The CSO’s upcoming YPC, Once Upon an Orchestra, will give students in grades 4–6 the opportunity to explore connections between creative writing and music composition. Literary devices such as settings, characters, conflicts and resolutions, along with their musical counterpoints, are explored in a way that culminates with a reading of John Lithgow’s The Remarkable Farkle McBride set to music by Bill Elliott.

The importance of Young People’s Concerts goes far beyond the preservation of classical and orchestral music. Young People’s Concerts have the ability to establish a foundation for appreciating art and the artistic experience as a whole. “You have to get people while they’re young and provide them with exposure,” stated Woolley. “Even if they don’t develop a deep appreciation for it, they can still have a fondness for the positive memories that was associated with their experience. And that can build recognition for the impact of music and art.” Culnan, who is retiring this season after 41 years with the CSO, echoed this sentiment as he reflected on being on both the listening and playing ends of the YPC experience:

“It’s hugely important, especially as music programs in schools around the country are not thriving. Not only do YPCs build audiences and awareness for classical and orchestral music for the future, they also open up the minds of children. They can get children to see that there are more aspects to music and, more importantly, to being a human being.”

For more about the CSO’s Young People’s Concerts, visit cincinnatisymphony.org/ypc

SPOTLIGHT: Young People’s Concerts

Visual artist Kelly Jo Asbury assists the Orchestra in the Dots and Lines YPC. Credit: Charlie Balcom

Example of a spectrogram.

Meet Our New Orchestra Musicians, Part III

by MEGHAN ISAACS

In this final installment of articles profiling the CSO’s new class of musicians in the 2022–23 season, we meet three string players who all seemed destined to become professional musicians. Not only are bassist Luis Celis, cellist Daniel Kaler and violist Gabe Napoli all just beginning their professional careers, they have each already found a wealth of inspiration during their first few months with the CSO. And, like many of their colleagues, for these three musicians the strong presence of music by Gustav Mahler on the Orchestra’s season programming only sweetens the deal.

Luis Celis, bass

Born and raised in Venezuela, Luis Celis started his journey as a musician in utero, when his father would put headphones on his mother’s belly. Luis started at the local conservatory when he was four years old. At 15, he picked up the bass, knowing he wanted to play in an orchestra as well as have opportunities with other types of music. Luis earned a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston.

He followed his studies at Berklee with a year as a CSO-CCM Diversity Fellow. He also enjoyed a summer fellowship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) at Tanglewood, working with BSO musicians and conductors like Andris Nelsons, John Williams and Thomas Adès. One of the perks for bass fellows is getting to sit in for one week with the BSO. Lucky for Luis, his week of playing coincided with the BSO’s performance of Debussy’s La Mer and the Elgar Cello Concerto with Yo-Yo Ma.

In the BSO audience that night was CSO Principal Bass Owen Lee, who has become one of Luis’ most important mentors. Another mentor has been Benjamin Zander, who conducted an orchestra with which Luis played in Boston. “[Zander] gives assignments at the end of rehearsal, but they are connected with music in ways you wouldn’t normally expect. One was to ‘stand up for something you believe in and be vocal about it.’ Another was ‘Be ambassadors for what the world needs—beauty, civility and connection.’ So we’d be busy getting music ready but, more importantly, we had life lessons,” said Luis. Zander crystalized these concepts in his book The Art of Possibility, of which Luis is a fan.

Another lesson from Zander was to be on the lookout for “shining eyes.” “There’s a look in someone’s eyes after you play something transformational—you can see in their eyes whether they are ‘shining’ or not. So, I keep as many shining eyes as I can in my life,” said Luis.

Luis enjoyed a serendipitous first concert as a member of the CSO, as the program included Mahler’s Second Symphony. Luis recalled the first time he performed the work, as a student in Venezuela. Throughout the months of rehearsal, the country was having electrical problems, so the orchestra members kept fingers crossed that the power would stay on

Luis Celis

for the performance. “We started playing and the lights went off, so we wondered what we were going to do. The conductor just turned to the audience and said, ‘We’re going to play this piece from memory.’ So we played Mahler 2 in a full cathedral from memory,” he said.

When he’s not rehearsing or performing, Luis is likely spending time with his family. He also likes to check out new restaurants (his favorite so far is Pepp & Delores), try new recipes, and keep up with the Venezuelan recipes from his mom. He’s enjoyed the warm welcome from his colleagues and other Cincinnatians: “Coming from Boston, Cincinnati was a downgrade in size, but not in terms of people’s hearts,” he said.

Daniel Kaler, cello

Daniel Kaler was born in Rochester, New York. Both of his parents are violinists, and they started him on violin at the age of three. At the time, Daniel decided he disliked the E-string since it did not correspond to the kind of sound he imagined himself producing. Just before the age of four, Daniel recalls listening to a recording of Jacqueline du Pré performing the Elgar Cello Concerto under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, which sealed his fate: “It took my breath away. I was so amazed at how human du Pré made the cello sound.”

The family eventually moved to Chicago, where Daniel studied for three years with Gilda Barston, Stephen Balderston and Hans Jensen. After graduating a year early from New Trier High School, Daniel continued his education at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Mark Kosower. He completed master’s degree work under Brinton Smith at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Winning an audition for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra immediately after his graduation from Rice University felt like a crowning achievement after many years of hard work.

Daniel’s parents have been some of his strongest supporters along the way, offering specialized insight as fellow musicians. “They’ve given me so much advice that is timeless, no matter the situation. When I’m 40 or 50 years old, it will be as relevant as when I was 20,” he said.

When not engrossed in music, Daniel loves bodybuilding. “I try to train several times a week to build some good muscle,” he said. He finds that weightlifting helps him strengthen the muscles he uses to play cello every day, thus helping him avoid injury. It also has taught him a lot about the importance of consistency, discipline, and having a growth mindset. Daniel relaxes with tea, movies, jigsaw puzzles, and playing with his two cats when he’s at home with his family.

One of Daniel’s mantras comes from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People: “Covey said, ‘Begin with the end in mind.’ I think about that particular habit a lot. When I think of my future, I try to work on building a life with long-term goals in mind,” Daniel said.

Gabe Napoli, viola

Growing up just up the road in Cleveland, Gabe Napoli started playing violin when he was four years old. He played violin throughout his college years at Northwestern, where, at a certain point, he wanted to start a string quartet with his friends. “One of us had to play the viola, and that was me,” he said. Through his love of chamber music, Gabe grew to appreciate the instrument and, thankfully, his teachers Almita Vamos

Daniel Kaler, ©Roger Mastroianni

and Robert Hanford were supportive (in part because of his large hands and arms!). While he finished his violin degree, he decided to take the viola seriously, and he returned to the Cleveland Institute of Music for master’s degree studies in viola with Robert Vernon and Mark Jackobs. After graduate school, Gabe spent three seasons with the New World Symphony before winning the audition here in Cincinnati.

Along the way, Gabe has been fortunate enough to work with many strong mentors, from his youth orchestra coaches all the way through colleagues at the New World Symphony. One of his teachers from his youth, Dr. Stephen Sims, taught Gabe from the time he was nine years old through his formative teenage years. “He devoted so much time to me and gave me multiple lessons a week. I did a lot of growing up during that time,” said Gabe.

Gabe makes time for other art forms as well. “Film, theater and visual art are also hugely inspirational to me as a musician. I love going to museums or going to theaters and seeing actors and different kinds of performers,” he said. Aside from music and the arts, Gabe is working on his cooking skills, and he considers himself an “armchair philosophy student” through reading and taking in podcasts and other media.

While there are several pieces Gabe looks forward to performing one day (including Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde [“The Song of the Earth”], he has also discovered that playing familiar music in a new environment can be just as exciting. “I’m surprised by how I’m never bored by performing, even when it’s the same music. I don’t think that will go away any time soon,” he said.

Gabe Napoli, ©Roger Mastroianni

SPOTLIGHT: New Orchestra Musicians III

May 19-27 • Music Hall

Featuring: Excerpts from Dett’s The Ordering of Moses Mozart’s Requiem Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand Bach’s Magnificat

And the following world premieres:

James Lee III’s Breaths ofUniversal Longing

James MacMillan’s Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia

Julia Adolphe New Work

25 for 25: A New Time for Choral Music

Commissioning Project

+ More

FIRST VIOLINS

Stefani Matsuo

Concertmaster

Anna Sinton Taft Chair

Felicity James

Associate Concertmaster

Tom & Dee Stegman Chair

Philip Marten

First Assistant Concertmaster

James M. Ewell Chair++

Eric Bates

Second Assistant Concertmaster

Serge Shababian Chair

Kathryn Woolley

Nicholas Tsimaras–

Peter G. Courlas Chair++

Anna Reider

Dianne & J. David Rosenberg Chair

Mauricio Aguiar§

Anne G. & Robert W. Dorsey Chair

Minyoung Baik

James Braid

Marc Bohlke Chair given by Katrin & Manfred Bohlke

Michelle Edgar Dugan

Donald & Margaret Robinson Chair

Rebecca Kruger Fryxell

Clifford J. Goosmann & Andrea M. Wilson Chair

Gerald Itzkoff

Jean Ten Have Chair

Sylvia Mitchell

Jo Ann & Paul Ward Chair

Charles Morey†

Luo-Jia Wu

SECOND VIOLINS

Gabriel Pegis

Principal

Al Levinson Chair

Yang Liu*

Harold B. & Betty Justice Chair

Scott Mozlin**

Henry Meyer Chair

Kun Dong

Cheryl Benedict

Evin Blomberg§

Rachel Charbel

Ida Ringling North Chair

Chika Kinderman

Hyesun Park

Paul Patterson

Charles Gausmann Chair++

Stacey Woolley

Brenda & Ralph Taylor Chair++

VIOLAS

Christian Colberg

Principal

Louise D. & Louis Nippert Chair

Christopher Fischer

Acting Associate Principal

Grace M. Allen Chair

Julian Wilkison**

Rebecca Barnes§

Emilio Carlo†

Stephen Fryxell

Melinda & Irwin Simon Chair

Caterina Longhi

Gabriel Napoli

Denisse Rodriguez-Rivera

Dan Wang

Joanne Wojtowicz

CELLOS

Ilya Finkelshteyn

Principal

LOUIS LANGRÉE, Music Director

Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

JOHN MORRIS RUSSELL, Cincinnati Pops Conductor

Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

Matthias Pintscher, CSO Creative Partner

Damon Gupton, Pops Principal Guest Conductor

Samuel Lee, Assistant Conductor

Ashley and Barbara Ford Chair

Daniel Wiley, Assistant Conductor

Ashley and Barbara Ford Chair

Irene & John J. Emery Chair

Daniel Culnan*

Ona Hixson Dater Chair

Norman Johns**

Karl & Roberta Schlachter

Family Chair

Daniel Kaler§

Marvin Kolodzik & Linda S. Gallaher

Chair for Cello

Isabel Kwon†

Hiro Matsuo

Laura Kimble McLellan Chair++

Theodore Nelson

Peter G. Courlas–

Nicholas Tsimaras Chair++

Alan Rafferty

Ruth F. Rosevear Chair

BASSES

Owen Lee Principal

Mary Alice Heekin Burke Chair++

James Lambert*

Thomas Vanden Eynden Chair

Stephen Jones**

Trish & Rick Bryan Chair

Boris Astafiev§

Luis Arturo Celis Avila

Gerald Torres

Rick Vizachero

HARP

Gillian Benet Sella

Principal

Cynthia & Frank Stewart Chair

FLUTES

Randolph Bowman Principal

Charles Frederic Goss Chair

Henrik Heide*†

Haley Bangs

Jane & David Ellis Chair

PICCOLO

Rebecca Tutunick

Patricia Gross Linnemann Chair

OBOES

Dwight Parry

Principal

Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr.

Chair

Lon Bussell*

Stephen P. McKean Chair

Emily Beare

ENGLISH HORN

Christopher Philpotts

Principal

Alberta & Dr. Maurice Marsh Chair++

CLARINETS

Christopher Pell

Principal

Emma Margaret & Irving D. Goldman Chair

Joseph Morris*

Associate Principal and E-flat Clarinet

Robert E. & Fay Boeh Chair++

Ixi Chen

Vicky & Rick Reynolds Chair in Honor of William A. Friedlander

BASS CLARINET

Ronald Aufmann

BASSOONS

Christopher Sales

Principal

Emalee Schavel Chair++

Martin Garcia*

Hugh Michie

CONTRABASSOON

Jennifer Monroe

FRENCH HORNS

Elizabeth Freimuth

Principal

Mary M. & Charles F. Yeiser Chair [OPEN]*

Ellen A. & Richard C. Berghamer

Chair

Molly Norcross**

Acting Associate Principal

Sweeney Family Chair in memory of Donald C. Sweeney

Lisa Conway

Susanne & Philip O. Geier, Jr. Chair

Duane Dugger

Mary & Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Chair

Charles Bell

TRUMPETS

Robert Sullivan

Principal

Rawson Chair

Douglas Lindsay*

Jackie & Roy Sweeney Family Chair

Steven Pride

Otto M. Budig Family Foundation Chair++

Christopher Kiradjieff

TROMBONES

Cristian Ganicenco

Principal

Dorothy & John Hermanies Chair

Joseph Rodriguez**

Second/Assistant Principal Trombone

BASS TROMBONE [OPEN]

TUBA

Christopher Olka

Principal

Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair

TIMPANI

Patrick Schleker

Principal

Matthew & Peg Woodside Chair

Joseph Bricker*

Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair

PERCUSSION

David Fishlock

Principal

Susan S. & William A. Friedlander Chair

Michael Culligan*

Joseph Bricker *

Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair

Marc Wolfley+

KEYBOARDS

Michael Chertock

James P. Thornton Chair

Julie Spangler+

James P. Thornton Chair

CSO/CCM DIVERSITY

FELLOWS

Tyler McKisson, viola

Luis Parra, cello

Samantha Powell, cello

LIBRARIANS

Christina Eaton

Principal Librarian

Lois Klein Jolson Chair

Elizabeth Dunning

Acting Associate Principal Librarian

Cara Benner Interim Assistant Librarian

STAGE MANAGERS

Brian P. Schott

Phillip T. Sheridan

Daniel Schultz

Andrew Sheridan

§ Begins the alphabetical listing of players who participate in a system of rotated seating within the string section.

* Associate Principal

** Assistant Principal

† One-year appointment

+ Cincinnati Pops rhythm section

++ CSO endowment only

~ Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

LOUIS LANGRÉE, Music Director

Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

Louis Langrée has been Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center since 2003, and was appointed Director of Théâtre national de l’Opéra Comique in Paris in November 2021. Two of his Cincinnati recordings were Grammy nominated for Best Orchestral Performance: Transatlantic, with works by Varèse, Gershwin and Stravinsky; and Concertos for Orchestra, featuring world premieres by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian. On stage, his Pelléas et Mélisande trilogy contrasted settings by Fauré, Debussy and Schoenberg. A multi-season Beethoven [R]evolution cycle has paired the symphonies with world premieres, as well as recreation of the legendary 1808 Akademie. During the Covid pandemic, Langrée was a catalyst for the Orchestra’s return to the stage in the fall of 2020 with a series of digitally streamed concerts.

Between the start of his tenure and the conclusion of the CSO’s 2022–23 season, Langrée and the CSO will have commissioned or cocommissioned 42 new orchestral works and he will have conducted 32 premieres from a wide range of composers, including Julia Adolphe, Daníel Bjarnason, Jennifer Higdon, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Kinds of Kings, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, André Previn, Caroline Shaw and Julia Wolfe, and the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 6, Rouse’s final opus.

He has guest conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Orchestre National de France and Leipzig Gewandhaus, as well as Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Freiburg Baroque. He frequently conducts at the leading opera houses, including Vienna Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Bavarian Staatsoper, and at festivals including Glyndebourne, Aix-enProvence, BBC Proms, Edinburgh International and Hong Kong Arts.

A native of Alsace, France, he is an Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier des Arts et des Lettres, and he is an Honorary Member of the Confrérie Saint-Étienne d’Alsace, an Alsatian winemakers’ brotherhood dating to the 14th century.

JOHN MORRIS RUSSELL Cincinnati Pops Conductor

Louise

Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chair

A master of American musical style, Grammynominated conductor John Morris Russell, a.k.a. “JMR,” has devoted himself to redefining the American orchestral experience. In his 11th year as conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Russell continues to reinvigorate the musical scene throughout Cincinnati and across the continent with the wide range and diversity of his work as a conductor, collaborator and educator. As Music Director of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina Russell leads the prestigious Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and as Principal Pops Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra he follows in the footsteps of Marvin Hamlisch and Doc Severinsen. Guest conducting engagements have included many of the most distinguished orchestras in North America: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Pops, National Symphony, and the orchestras of Toronto, Vancouver, Dallas, Detroit and Pittsburgh.

With the Cincinnati Pops, Russell leads sold-out performances at Music Hall, concerts throughout the region, and domestic and international tours— including Florida in 2014 and China/Taiwan in 2017. His visionary leadership at the Pops created the “American Originals Project,” which has garnered both critical and popular acclaim in two landmark recordings: American Originals (the music of Stephen Foster) as well as American Originals: 1918. In 2020 the American Originals Project: The Cincinnati Sound, featuring Late Night with David Letterman musical director Paul Shaffer, celebrated the beginnings of bluegrass, country, rockabilly, soul and funk immortalized in recordings produced in the Queen City. Russell’s other recordings with The Pops include Home for the Holidays, Superheroes, Carnival of the Animals and Voyage Recent collaborations with artists around the world include Aretha Franklin, Emanuel Ax, Amy Grant and Vince Gill, Common, Garrick Ohlsson, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Jon Kimura Parker, Ann Hampton Callaway, Michael McDonald, Cho-Liang Lin, Sutton Foster, George Takei, Megan Hilty, Ranky Tanky, Steve Martin, Katharine McPhee, Brian Wilson, Cynthia Erivo and Leslie Odom, Jr.

©Chris Lee 2021

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

CSO Creative Partner

The 2022–23 season is Matthias Pintscher’s final season as Music Director of the Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC), the world’s foremost contemporary music ensemble, founded in 1980 by Pierre Boulez. In his decade-long artistic leadership of the EIC, Pintscher continued and expanded the cultivation of new work by emerging composers of the 21st century, alongside performances of iconic works by the pillars of the avant-garde of the 20th century.

As a conductor, Pintscher maintains relationships with several of the world’s most distinguished orchestras, among them the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. As guest conductor in Europe, he makes debut appearances this season with the Wiener Symphoniker and Gürzenich Orchester of Cologne, and he returns to the Royal Concertgebouw, BRSO, BBC Scottish SO, Barcelona Symphony, and Berlin’s Boulez Ensemble. In North America, he makes prominent debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kansas City Symphony, in addition to regular visits to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and repeat guest engagements with the Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and New World Symphony. Pintscher has also conducted several opera productions for the Berliner Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper, and the Théatre du Châtelet in Paris. He returns to the Berliner Staatsoper in 2023 for Der fliegende Holländer

Pintscher is well known as a composer, and his works appear frequently on the programs of major symphony orchestras throughout the world. In August 2021, he was the focus of the Suntory Hall Summer Festival—a weeklong celebration of his works with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, as well as a residency by the EIC with symphonic and chamber music performances. His newest work, Assonanza, a violin concerto written for Leila Josefowicz, was premiered in January 2022 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Another 2021–22 world premiere was neharot (“rivers”), a co-commission of Suntory Hall, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Los Angeles Philharmonic. matthiaspintscher.com

DAMON GUPTON Pops Principal Guest Conductor

Damon Gupton is the first-ever Principal Guest Conductor of the Cincinnati Pops. A native of Detroit, he served as American Conducting Fellow of the Houston Symphony and held the post of assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. His conducting appearances include the Boston Pops, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Florida Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, NHK Orchestra of Tokyo, Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM, Charlottesville Symphony, Brass Band of Battle Creek, New York University Steinhardt Orchestra, Kinhaven Music School Orchestra, Vermont Music Festival Orchestra, Michigan Youth Arts Festival Honors Orchestra, Brevard Sinfonia, and Sphinx Symphony as part of the 12th annual Sphinx Competition. He led the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra on two national tours with performances at Carnegie Hall and conducted the finals of the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition and the 2021 Classic FM Live at Royal Albert Hall with Chineke!.

Gupton received his Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Michigan, where he delivered the commencement address to the School of Music, Theatre and Dance in 2015. 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. Awards include the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize and The Aspen Conducting Prize. He is the inaugural recipient of the Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan School of Music and Alumni Society and a winner of the Third International Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition.

An accomplished actor and graduate of the Drama Division of the Juilliard School, Gupton has had roles in television, film and on stage, most recently in series regular roles on the upcoming Big Door Prize for Apple TV, as well as The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey starring Samuel L. Jackson. damongupton.com

©Franck Ferville ©Damu Malik

SAMUEL LEE Assistant Conductor

Samuel Lee, first prize winner of the BMI International Conducting Competition in Bucharest and the International Conducting Competition in Taipei, has recently been appointed Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, beginning in the 2022–23 season.

In addition to several recent guest conducting engagements throughout Europe and Asia, Lee was also a Conducting Fellow with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 2021 and 2022, where he worked with conductors Cristian Măcelaru, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Octavio MásArocas and Marin Alsop.

Since 2016 Samuel Lee has been the chief conductor of the C.P.E. Bach Musikgymnasium orchestra Berlin. He and the orchestra have been regularly invited to the Berlin Philharmonie and Konzerthaus Berlin for subscription concerts. He also served as a viola professor at Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” in Leipzig, Germany until 2022.

As a violist, Lee was invited to perform with orchestras throughout Europe and Asia. From 2009 until 2017, he was the violist of Novus String Quartet, and he was the second prize winner of the 61st International Music Competition of ARD Munich and first prize winner of the Salzburg International Mozart Competition.

Lee is an alumnus of Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin, where he studied viola with Prof. Tabea Zimmermann (BM, MM, Konzertexamen), and orchestral conducting with Prof. Christian Ehwald (BM, MM). Lee completed Konzertexamen in orchestral conducting from Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr).

DANIEL WILEY Assistant Conductor

Daniel Wiley has quickly become a notable young conductor on the rise, having made guest appearances with ensembles throughout North America, as well as the University of North Florida’s Opera Department.

Beginning with the 2022–23 season, Wiley joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Pops as an Assistant Conductor.

Prior to his tenure in Cincinnati, he held numerous conducting posts, including Assistant Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony, Music Director of the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestras, Associate Conductor of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Youth Orchestras, Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Community Orchestra, Wind Ensemble Conductor at the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor, Education Conductor/Consultant for London Symphonia, Conductor for the Windsor Abridged Opera Company, Music Director of Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science Youth Orchestra, and Assistant Conductor for the Meridian Symphony Orchestra.

In 2019, Wiley was the second prize recipient of both the Smoky Mountain International Conducting Institute and Competition and the Los Angeles International Conducting Competition. He also has spent time conducting new music ensembles, including for the Musicbed Music and Film Corporation based in Fort Worth, Texas, as well as participating in the Composing in the Wilderness program as part of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Alaska.

As a former public school music teacher, Wiley has a unique passion for music education, and he frequently donates his time as a guest clinician to support students and teachers in music programs across North America.

For full-length biographies of the CSO and Pops Artistic Leadership, visit cincinnatisymphony.org/about/artistic-leadership

CSO MAR 4–5: Death & Transfiguration ELIZABETH FREIMUTH, horn

Elizabeth Freimuth is the Principal Horn of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops. Her chair is endowed by the late Charles and Mary Yeiser. Before joining the CSO in 2006, Freimuth was principal horn of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra (2005–06), principal horn of the Kansas City Symphony (2000–05) and assistant principal/utility horn of the Colorado Symphony (1998–2000).

Freimuth has performed as featured soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Butler County Symphony (PA), Johnson City Symphony Orchestra (TN), Overland Park Orchestra (KS) and the Lakewood Symphony Orchestra (CO). She has also performed as a guest principal horn with several U.S. orchestras and the KBS Symphony Orchestra (Korea). She was a featured artist at the International Horn Symposium at Ball State University in 2018 and in Memphis in 2013, and a featured artist at the International Women’s Brass Conference, Northern Kentucky 2014.

Elizabeth Freimuth has taught as Adjunct Horn faculty at the University of Cincinnati CollegeConservatory of Music and at the University of Missouri in Kansas City Conservatory of Music. She has given numerous masterclasses and has done guest teaching throughout the U.S. During many summers, she has been principal horn and faculty member at the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina. Since 2019, she has been a cohost of the Summer Horn Institute at the Eastman School of Music.

Freimuth is a graduate and recipient of the coveted Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music (B.M. Horn Performance and B.M. Instrumental Music Education), where her horn teachers were Verne Reynolds and W. Peter Kurau, and she is a graduate of the Rice University Shepherd School of Music (M.M.), where her horn teacher was William VerMeulen.

POPS MAR 10–12: Marvel’s Black Panther Film in Concert

DAMON GUPTON, Principal Pops Conductor

Turn to p. 35 for a biography of Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton.

MASSAMBA DIOP, drums

Massamba Diop is one the most renowned masters of the tama, a talking drum from Senegal, West Africa, known for its abilities to replicate the sounds of human speech. Before the advent of telephones and radio, it was the tama that was called upon to announce important events and send messages from village to village. Recognizing the central role talking drums play in many African cultures, composer Ludwig Göransson decided to put it, and Diop, front-and-center for his Grammy- and Oscar-winning score for Marvel’s Black Panther and in Avengers: Endgame

By the time of Black Panther, Diop was already a seasoned figure on the music scene. He first came into the limelight as lead percussionist and founding member of Daande Lenol (“The Voice of the People”), the band of Senegalese superstar Baaba Maal. Over the past 40 years, the group has toured the world, working with many notable musicians and releasing dozens of albums, including Firin’ in Fouta, which was nominated for a Grammy in 1996. Diop has also performed and recorded with the likes of James Brown, Mumford & Sons, Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Harry Belafonte, Playing for Change, and Angelique Kidjo. He has been part of many major international diplomatic events, such as the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony and the 2012 Olympics in London, and he joined Stevie Wonder and a star-studded cast in 2009 to perform “Happy Birthday” for Nelson Mandela to close out Mandela Day at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Diop is also a Remo Percussion, Inc. endorsed artist, and in 2016 he helped them design and launch the “Tamani Talking Drum,” the first massproduced tama available to the public.

©Roger Mastroianni

In 1993, Diop and American percussionist Tony Vacca co-founded the Senegal-America project, a grass-roots cultural exchange program that has sponsored various educational, health care and artistic initiatives in Senegal, and has provided an important venue for African musicians in the States. Diop has several other regular collaborators, including Surabhi Ensemble in Chicago, Walo Walo in Portland, Oregon, and Total Rhythm in San Francisco. He currently calls Columbus, Ohio home.

LUDWIG GÖRANSSON, composer

In a career spanning less than 15 years, Ludwig Göransson has amassed an impressive resume in both the recording and motion picture industries, earning an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, multiple Grammy Awards and countless other nominations. After working as an assistant to composer Theodore Shapiro, Göransson got his first big break writing music for the NBC television series Community This led to a friendship and collaboration with Donald Glover, who performs under the stage name Childish Gambino, on several studio albums; Göransson has been nominated for six Grammys with Childish Gambino and won two in 2019 for This is America

While pursuing his master’s degree in film scoring at USC, Göransson met his other longtime collaborator, director Ryan Coogler. Göransson has scored four of Coogler’s feature films, Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

In 2019, Göransson earned multiple awards and nominations for his score for Black Panther, including a Golden Globe nomination, a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack, and an Academy Award for Best Original Score.

Göransson composed the critically acclaimed score and produced the hit song “The Plan” (performed by Travis Scott) for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020) and received many accolades for his score, including a Golden Globe nomination and a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award nomination. Göransson co-wrote and co-produced the songs for DreamWorks’ Trolls World Tour with Justin Timberlake. This follows his unique Emmy Awardwinning score for The Mandalorian on Disney+.

CSO MAR 17–18: The Mermaid KEVIN JOHN EDUSEI, conductor

German conductor Kevin John Edusei is sought after the world over, dividing his time equally between the concert hall and opera house. He is deeply committed to the creative elements of performance, presenting classical music in new formats, cultivating audiences, introducing music by underrepresented composers, and conducting an eclectic range of repertoire from the Baroque to the contemporary.

In the 2022–23 season, Edusei debuts with the London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Hallé, Utah Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony and National Symphony (Washington, D.C.) orchestras, among others, and he returns to the London Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Baltimore Symphony and Colorado Symphony orchestras. With the Chineke! Orchestra he returns to the BBC Proms for a televised performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and also performs at festivals in Snape, Hamburg, Helsinki and Lucerne. He is the former Chief Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, and 2022–23 marks the start of his tenure as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (Texas).

This season, Edusei also debuts with the Royal Opera House conducting La bohème. He recently debuted with the English National Opera and previously has conducted at the Semperoper Dresden, Hamburg State Opera, Hannover State Opera, Volksoper Wien and Komische Oper Berlin. During his time as Chief Conductor of Bern Opera House, he led many new productions including Britten’s Peter Grimes, Strauss’ Salome, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Tristan and Isolde, Janáček’s Kátya Kábanová, and a cycle of the Mozart–Da Ponte operas.

In 2004, David Zinman awarded Edusei the fellowship for the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival; in 2007, he was a prize winner at the Lucerne Festival conducting competition; and in 2008, he won the first prize at the International Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition.

©Marco Borggreve

SIMONE LAMSMA, violin

Dutch violinist Simone

Lamsma is respected by critics, peers and audiences as one of classical music’s most striking and captivating musical personalities. With an extensive repertoire, she has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras and a long list of eminent conductors.

In the 2022–23 season, Lamsma debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, and Gulbenkian Orchestra, and she returns to the Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester, MDR Sinfonieorchester, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. She tours with the NordWest Deutsche Philharmonie and music director Jonathon Heyward and gives the world premiere of a violin concerto by Dutch composer Mathilde Wantenaar as part of the ZaterdagMatinee series at the Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Karina Canellakis.

Lamsma’s most recent recording was released in the spring of 2022 to great acclaim and featured late works by Rautavaara, including a world premiere, with the Malmö Symphony and Robert Treviño (Ondine). Other recordings include Shostakovich’s first violin concerto and Gubaidulina’s In Tempus Praesens with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and a recital album of works by Mendelssohn, Janáček and Schumann, both on Challenge Classics.

In 2019, Lamsma was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, an honor limited to 300 former Academy students and awarded to musicians who have distinguished themselves within the profession.

Lamsma plays the “Mlynarski” Stradivarius (1718), on generous loan to her by an anonymous benefactor.

CSO MAR 24–26: Beethoven’s Fifth ANNA RAKITINA, conductor

Following a series of highly acclaimed appearances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra in the 2021–22 season, Anna Rakitina established herself firmly as one of the most exciting and sought-after conductors of the new generation.

Rakitina remains assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) under its Music Director Andris Nelsons until summer 2023. She is only the second woman in the orchestra’s history to hold this position.

The 2022–23 season sees Rakitina’s muchanticipated return to the Tanglewood Music Festival, as well as to Boston’s Symphony Hall as part of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s subscription series. Further highlights of the season include debuts with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Tonkünstler-Orchester at the Musikverein, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra at Suntory Hall, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Nürnberger Symphoniker, NDR Radiophilharmonie (Hannover), Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Orquestra Sinfónica do Casa da Musica Porto.

Rakitina was a 2019–20 Dudamel Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s youth concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall as well as the LA Phil’s education and community programs.

Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Rakitina began her education as a violinist before she studied conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. From 2016 to 2018 she studied conducting in Hamburg, Germany with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr. annarakitina.com

©Otto van den Toom

©Robert Torres

STERLING ELLIOTT, cello

Acclaimed for his stellar stage presence and joyous musicianship, cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. In his young career, he has already appeared with major orchestras throughout the U.S., with noted conductors Yannick NézetSéguin, Thomas Wilkins, Jeffrey Kahane, Bramwell Tovey, Mei-Ann Chen and others. In the summer of 2022, and he made his Aspen Festival debut and his German debut in Munich in May 2022.

The 2022–23 season sees his debuts with the Colorado Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony and Ft. Worth Symphony, among others, with return appearances including the Buffalo Philharmonic. He appears in recital under the auspices of the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Shriver Hall in Baltimore, the Tippett Rise Festival and Capitol Region Classical in

Albany, New York. In October, he participated in the Caramoor Music Festival’s prestigious Evnin Rising Stars series.

As the youngest of three siblings, Elliott did not want to play the cello; he instead wanted to play the violin like his older brother and sister. After a bit of encouragement, he completed The Elliott Family String Quartet by learning to play the cello at the age of three under the direction of Suzuki cello teacher Susan Hines.

He went on to make his concerto debut at the age of 7 after winning the Junior Division of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition.

Elliott is a two-time alumnus of NPR’s From the Top, where he was named a recipient of its Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. He also performed several concerts in Switzerland at the 2019 World Economic Forum. He is a Young Strings of America ambassador for SHAR Strings.

In spring 2022, Elliott participated in Performance Today’s Young Artist Residency, which featured educational events, interviews and a feature on the nationally syndicated radio program.

Sterling Elliott is a Kovner Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he is pursuing his Master of Music degree, studying with Joel Krosnick and Clara

Queen City Connections

March 19/20, 2023

Renowned pianist Sandra Rivers performs with CSO principals Stefani Matsuo and Ilya Finkelshteyn in a program that features Schumann’s dramatic and triumphant piano trio, a neo-romantic sonata by Barber, and a

New York, New York

April 2/3, 2023

The distinguished New York Philharmonic String Quartet returns to Cincinnati. Opening with Mozart’s innovative Dissonance quartet, this program explores a range of emotions through Thompson’s stream-of-consciousness response to political mayhem and Schubert’s deeply melancholic and powerful work written as he faced his own mortality.

Kim. He completed his undergraduate degree in cello performance at Juilliard in May 2021.

He currently performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization. sterlingelliott.com

LOLLIPOPS FAMILY CONCERT MAR 25: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Maestro

SAMUEL LEE, conductor

Turn to p. 36 for a biography of CSO and Pops Assistant Conductor Samuel Lee.

CHRISTIAN BARE, actor

Christian Bare is thrilled to be working with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra! He has been working as an actor for several years, with his previous credits including A-440 in Symphony in Space, Jetsam in The Little Mermaid, Ren in Footloose, Robbie (swing) in Footloose, and Adam/Noah in Children of Eden

CSO APR 7–8: Shostakovich Symphony No. 5

STEPHEN HOUGH, piano

Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Sir Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. He was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours 2014, and was awarded a Knighthood for Services to Music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022.

In the 2022–23 season, Hough performs more than 90 concerts across five continents. Concerto highlights include returns to the Concertgebouworkest, Detroit, Cincinnati and Washington’s National symphony orchestras; BBC Symphony and Philharmonia orchestras; and the National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan. He is also Artist-in-Association with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with whom he tours the UK in spring 2023.

Hough is a regular guest at festivals such as Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, Edinburgh, La Roqued’Anthéron, Aldeburgh, and the BBC Proms, where he has made 29 appearances. 2022–23 highlights include New York (The 92nd Street Y), Paris, Sydney, Atlanta and Sage Gateshead.

Hough’s extensive discography of around 70 CDs has garnered international awards including the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, several Grammy nominations, and eight Gramophone Awards, including Record of the Year and the Gold Disc. Recent releases for Hyperion include Beethoven’s complete piano concertos (Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Hannu Lintu), “The Final Piano Pieces” of Brahms, Chopin’s Nocturnes, a Schumann recital, Schubert Piano Sonatas, and Elgar’s Violin Sonata with Renaud Capuçon (Warner Classics). His recording of Mompou’s Música callada will be released in 2023 (Hyperion). His award-winning iPad app, The Liszt Sonata, was released by Touch Press in 2013.

As a composer, Hough’s song cycle, Songs of Love and Loss, co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall, The 92nd Street Y in New York, and Tippet Rise in Montana, received its world premiere in January 2023. He wrote the commissioned work for the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and his String Quartet No. 1, Les Six Rencontres, commissioned for the Takács Quartet, received its world premiere in Costa Mesa, California in 2021 and was recorded for release in January 2023 (Hyperion). His music is published by Josef Weinberger Ltd.

Hough’s memoir Enough: Scenes from Childhood will be published by Faber & Faber in spring 2023. It follows his collection of essays Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More (Faber & Faber, 2019) as well as his first novel, The Final Retreat (Sylph Editions, 2018). He has also been published by The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and the Evening Standard. Hough is on the faculty of The Juilliard School in New York. stephenhough.com

©Sam Canetty-Clarke

Bradley J. Hunkler Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Western & Southern Financial Group, CSO Board Member

Kate C. Brown, CFP® Managing Director, Fort Washington, CSO Board Member

John F. Barrett Chairman, President & CEO, Western & Southern Financial Group

Maribeth S. Rahe President & CEO, Fort Washington

Tracey M. Stofa Managing Director, Head of Private Client Group, Fort Washington

SAT MAR 4, 7:30 pm

SUN MAR 5, 2 pm

Music Hall

LOUIS LANGRÉE, conductor ELIZABETH FREIMUTH, horn

Richard STRAUSS Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major for Horn and Orchestra, Op. 11 (1864–1949) Allegro Andante Allegro

Samuel ADAMS Variations WORLD PREMIERE, CSO CO-COMMISSION (b. 1985)

Richard STRAUSS Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”), Op. 24

These performances are approximately 70 minutes long. There is no intermission.

The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful to Paul and Anna Isaacs for their support of the CSO co-commissioned world premiere of Samuel Adams’ Variations

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation and the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and for the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts

Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson

WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust

Steinway Pianos, courtesy of Willis Music, is the official piano of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

Listen to this program on 90.9 WGUC June 11, 2023 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.

Composed: 1882–83

Premiere: March 4, 1885 in Meiningen, conducted by Hans von Bülow with Gustav Leinhos as soloist

Instrumentation: solo horn, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings

CSO notable performances: First CSO Performance: March 1978, Carmon DeLeone conducting and Barry Tuckwell, horn; the Orchestra also performed the work in December 1915 on a Pops concert, with Ernst Kunwald conducting and Gustav Albrecht, horn. Most Recent Performance: November 1992, Jesús López Cobos conducting and Hermann Baumann, horn.

Duration: approx. 15 minutes

RICHARD STRAUSS

Born: June 11, 1864 in Munich, Germany

Died: September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major for Horn and Orchestra, Op. 11

Franz Strauss, Richard’s father, was one of the outstanding instrumentalists of his day. For over 40 years as principal horn he was a chief adornment of the Munich Court Orchestra, a post he held until the age of 69; he was especially renowned for the power and artistry of his solos in Mozart’s concertos, Beethoven’s symphonies and Wagner’s operas. The eminent pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow dubbed him “the Joachim of the horn” (Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto for Joseph Joachim), and Wagner, whose personality and music Franz detested, grudgingly admitted, “Strauss is an unbearable fellow, but when he plays his horn, one cannot be cross with him.” Franz was also a composer, mainly of horn music, as well as the conductor of an amateur orchestra and a capable player of guitar and viola.

The sound of Franz’s horn playing was a fixture in the Strauss household: it is said that Richard as a baby would coo and smile when he heard the horn, but cry at the sound of a violin. It is hardly surprising, then, that the boy wrote for the horn when his talent began to blossom. Two such early works are a song called Alphorn with horn obbligato and the Introduction, Theme and Variations for horn and piano, both with writing difficult enough to give the young composer’s virtuoso father pause. Late in 1882, while he was a student at Munich University, Richard began a concerto for the horn and completed it early the next year. (His Second Horn Concerto came 60 years later, in 1942.) Franz played through the work and found it filled with such difficulties that he refused to perform it in public, though he occasionally tackled the piece for family concerts. The public premiere was given in 1885 by conductor Hans von Bülow and the principal horn of his Meiningen Orchestra, Gustav Leinhos, who, Strauss assured his father, was a player of “colossal sureness,” a mandatory virtue for any performer of this challenging Concerto. The composer could not attend, but his uncle Carl Hörburger reported that the performance was presented and received “obviously with great commitment and interest.” The First Horn Concerto was soon taken up by other performers and remains the earliest of Strauss’ works in the orchestral repertory.

Father Franz saw that Richard was trained strictly in the classical style of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, with Wagner and Liszt treated more like anathema than mere composers. During the time of the First Horn Concerto, Richard shared his father’s reactionary tastes (this changed radically after 1885, when the young musician left home) and the piece is in Strauss’ most untroubled classical vein. The Concerto opens with a brilliant fanfare-flourish from the soloist that becomes the main theme of the first movement. A more lyrical (though, for the soloist, no less demanding) section serves as a complement to the vigorous opening theme. A spirited orchestral tutti, gradually softening, leads without pause to the Andante, a sad, sweet song in three parts, the central section of which is marked by agitated, repeated-note figures in the accompaniment. The finale is a bounding Rondo whose theme is a transformation of the principal melody of the opening movement.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Richard Strauss

SAMUEL ADAMS

Born: 1985 in San Francisco, California

Variations

Samuel Adams is an American composer whose music weaves acoustic and digital sound into “mesmerizing” (New York Times) orchestrations. Adams grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area (his father is the composer John Adams), where he studied and performed improvised and electronic music. In 2010, he received a master’s degree in composition from The Yale School of Music and moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he taught and performed in various contemporary music ensembles before returning to his native California in 2016.

Sought after by orchestras and contemporary ensembles alike, he has received commissions from a broad range of organizations, including the San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Spektral Quartet, and he has collaborated with performers and conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson and Michael Tilson Thomas; violinists Anthony Marwood, Jennifer Koh and Karen Gomyo; and pianists Emanuel Ax, Sarah Cahill, David Fung and Joyce Yang.

The 2022–23 season highlights several world premieres, including Echo Transcriptions, a new work for electric violin and orchestra commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra for Richard Tognetti. The work was presented on a national tour of Australia in late 2022 and will receive its North American performances in California and Toronto this spring. In February, pianist Conor Hanick and the San Francisco Symphony premiered No Such Spring under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, and this weekend, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra premieres Adams’ Variations, a 2020 orchestral work co-commissioned by the CSO and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Other season highlights include a performance of Adams’ 2017 Chamber Concerto with violinist Karen Gomyo and the release of a new record featuring the Chicago-based Spektral Quartet.

Adams was Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2018 and, in the 2021–22 season, he was the Composer-in-Residence with Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri (Umbria, Italy), Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California), Ucross (Wyoming), and Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland, Sweden). He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and lives and works in Seattle, WA. For more information about Samuel Adams, visit samuelcarladams.com.

Of his Variations, Samuel Adams says:

I started work on Variations in the summer of 2020, after briefly relocating to Nevada, and completed the score the following January. It was during this period of isolation that emerged a consistent pattern to my life: starting each day at the piano to compose and ending each day with the same long walk in my temporary desert neighborhood. The only variations during this time were found in my environment: the gradual change in the landscape, the swelling number of migrating birds in the fall, and the angle of light on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.

In many ways, Variations became a mirror of this lived experience. The organic texture and the flow of the music reflect the steely grey expanses of Western Nevada and the rhythmic, almost rippling quality

Composed: 2020, co-commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.

Premiere: These CSO performances are the work’s world premiere.

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (incl. alto flute, piccolo), 3 oboes, 3 clarinets (incl. 2 bass clarinets), 3 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, sandpaper blocks, triangles, crotales, suspended ride cymbal, paper on table, sizzle cymbal, whip, marimba, aerosol can of compressed air, tuned gongs, ratchet, almglocken, tam-tam, 2 pianos, sine wave bass keyboard, strings

Duration: approx. 18 minutes

Samuel Adams, ©Lenny Gonzalez

STRAUSS: Tod und Verklärung

Composed: 1888–89

Premiere: June 21, 1890 in Eisenach, conducted by the composer

Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, tam-tam, 2 harps, strings

CSO notable performances: First

Performance: March 1899, Frank Van der Stucken conducting. Most Recent

Performance: February 2008, John Adams conducting. Other: April 1904, Richard Strauss conducting.

Duration: approx. 25 minutes

of the peaks and valleys as they roll out east. Yet, while composing the piece—as the light gradually left the northern hemisphere, and the world during the first pandemic winter seemed to gradually close in on itself—the music seemed to, conversely, open up. The 18 minutes uncoil like the fronds of a fern. Each variation grows in duration so that the first variation lasts about a minute and the last about seven, and each variation begins with the same ascending Phrygian scale before venturing into increasingly vast landscapes. The final variation reaches a high plateau, with ecstatic waves of sound cresting and falling to the most extreme ranges of the orchestra before arriving at a brief, ringing coda.

This is the first work I’ve written for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and it was a total joy to create.

RICHARD STRAUSS

Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration”), Op. 24

Richard Strauss completed Death and Transfiguration just in time for his 26th birthday. It is a remarkable achievement, both in conception and execution, for such a young musician, especially since composition was really just a second career for Strauss at the time. By 1887, Strauss was one of the fastest-rising stars in the European conducting firmament, having taken up his first podium engagement, at the tender age of 19, as assistant to the renowned Hans von Bülow at Meiningen. Appointments at the opera houses of Munich, Bayreuth and Weimar, as well as a guest visit to conduct the greatest orchestra of the time, the Berlin Philharmonic, all preceded the June 1890 premiere of Death and Transfiguration. Strauss’ schedule was hectic, and it is a tribute to his stamina and ambition that he was able to balance two full-time careers with such excellent success. Throughout his life he remained one of the most highly regarded and sought-after conductors in the world, reaching the pinnacle of his acclaim when he was appointed director of the Vienna Opera in 1919.

It was at his first conducting post that Strauss met Alexander Ritter, an artistic jack-of-all-trades who made his living as a violinist but also considered himself a poet and composer. Ritter introduced Strauss to the operas of Wagner, and Strauss was overwhelmed. Strauss’ training under the watchful eye of his father, an excellent musician and the best horn player in Europe, had been confined to the classic literature of Mozart, Beethoven and the early Romantic composers—Papa Strauss stubbornly refused to let the impressionable Richard investigate the turbulent Romanticism of Wagner and Liszt. Once Strauss made the inevitable discovery of Wagner’s Tristan and The Ring, however, they proved a decisive influence on his work as a composer and conductor. Ritter also convinced the young composer that a literary idea could inspire an instrumental work, and Strauss responded with a series of brilliant symphonic (or tone) poems for orchestra. Death and Transfiguration was the third of these, following Macbeth (1887) and Don Juan (1888).

The literary inspiration for Death and Transfiguration originated with Strauss himself, as he noted in a letter to his friend Friedrich von Hausegger in 1894:

It was six years ago when the idea came to me to write a tone poem describing the last hours of a man who had striven for the highest ideals, presumably an artist. The sick man lies in his bed breathing

heavily and irregularly in his sleep. Friendly dreams bring a smile to his face; his sleep grows lighter; he awakens. Fearful pains once more begin to torture him, fever shakes his body. When the attack is over and the pain recedes, he recalls his past life; his childhood passes before his eyes; his youth with its strivings and passions; and then, when the pain returns, there appears to him the goal of his life’s journey—the idea, the ideal he attempted to embody in his art, but which he was unable to perfect because such perfection could be achieved by no man. The fatal hour arrives. The soul leaves his body, to discover in the eternal cosmos the magnificent realization of the ideal that could not be fulfilled here below.

Strauss’ composition follows his literary program with almost clinical precision. It is divided into four sections. The first summons the vision of the sickroom and the irregular heartbeat and distressed sighs of the man/ artist. The second section, in a faster tempo, is a vivid and violent portrayal of his suffering. The ensuing, slower section, beginning tenderly and representing the artist’s remembrance of his life, is broken off suddenly when the anguished music of the second part returns. This ultimate, painful struggle ends in death, signified by a stroke of the gong. The final section, hymn-like in mood, depicts the artist’s vision of ultimate beauty as he is transfigured into part of “the eternal cosmos.”

At the end of his long life, Strauss looked back to Death and Transfiguration and borrowed one of its themes for inclusion in the last work he wrote, Im Abendrot (“In the Twilight”) from the Four Last Songs

Only a few months later, on his deathbed, he whispered, “Dying is just as I composed it in Death and Transfiguration.”

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Check out our NEW DIGITAL PROGRAM! For even more enriching content including full-length biographies, digital content and more, text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*, visit cincinnatisymphony. org/digital-program, or point your phone’s camera at the QR code. *By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.

KNOWN, NURTURED, AND INSPIRED.

We ensure that each child, 18 months to 18 years, will be known, nurtured, and inspired. Few schools are better equipped to connect students both academically and personally. Whether in the classroom or on our 62-acre campus, we are designed to help cultivate a passion for learning, independent thinking, and self-discovery that guides students to be scholars, athletes, artists, innovators, and leaders.

Country Day is The Place to Be

BECAUSE WHO THEY BECOME IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT THEY LEARN.

Celebrating the arts and the joy they bring to life every day.

PNC is proud to be the Pops Se Sponsor and to support the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops. Thank you for helping to make the Greater Cincinnati region a beautiful place to call home.

MARVEL’S BLACK PANTHER: FEATURE FILM WITH ORCHESTRA

2022–2023 SEASON

DAMON GUPTON,conductor

FRI MAR 10, 7:30 pm

SAT MAR 11, 7:30 pm

SUN MAR 12, 2 pm

Music Hall

There will be one intermission

Starring

CHADWICK BOSEMAN • MICHAEL B. JORDAN • LUPITA NYONG’O

DANAI GURIRA • MARTIN FREEMAN • DANIEL KALUUYA

LETITIA WRIGHT • WINSTON DUKE with ANGELA BASSETT • with FOREST WHITAKER and ANDY SERKIS

Music by: LUDWIG GÖRANSSON

Executive Producers

LOUIS D’ESPOSITO • VICTORIA ALONSO • NATE MOORE JEFFREY CHERNOV • STAN LEE

Produced by: KEVIN FEIGE, p.g.a.

Written by: RYAN COOGLER & JOE ROBERT COLE

Directed by: RYAN COOGLER

This film is rated PG-13. Today’s performance lasts approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes, including a 25-minute intermission.

The performance is a presentation of the complete film Black Panther with a live performance of the film’s entire score. Out of respect for the musicians and your fellow audience members, please remain seated until the conclusion of the end credits.

DOLBY® IMAX®

Original Score Album available on MARVEL MUSIC/HOLLYWOOD RECORDS at Disneymusicemporium.com.

Presentation licensed by Disney Concerts in association with Marvel Studios. All rights reserved. ©2021 MARVEL.

The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra is grateful to Pops Season Sponsor PNC

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation and the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and for the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust Steinway Pianos, courtesy of Willis Music, is the official piano of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

THE MERMAID | 2022–23 SEASON

FRI MAR 17, 7:30 pm

SAT MAR 18, 7:30 pm

Music Hall

KEVIN JOHN EDUSEI, conductor SIMONE LAMSMA, violin

Felix MENDELSSOHN Märchen von der schönen Melusine (“The Fair Melusine”) (1809–1847) Overture, Op. 32

Erich Wolfgang Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 35 KORNGOLD (1897–1957)

Moderato nobile

Romance: Andante

Finale: Allegro assai vivace

INTERMISSION

Alexander Die Seejungfrau (“The Mermaid”) Fantasy ZEMLINSKY Sehr mässig bewegt (1871–1942) Sehr bewegt, rauschend Sehr gedehnt, mit schmerzvollem Ausdruck

These performances are approximately 105 minutes long, including intermission.

The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation and the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and for the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts

Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson

WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust

Steinway Pianos, courtesy of Willis Music, is the official piano of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

Listen to this program on 90.9 WGUC April 30, 2023 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Born: February 3, 1809 in Hamburg, Germany

Died: November 4, 1847 in Leipzig, Germany

Märchen von der schönen Melusine (“The Fair Melusine”) Overture, Op. 32

The story of the “Little Mermaid,” which received the full-blown tragic treatment in Alexander Zemlinsky’s tone poem Die Seejungfrau (heard after intermission), has roots in European literature going back all the way to the Middle Ages. The figure of a woman caught between the human world and a mystical parallel universe, hidden in the depths of the sea, captured the imaginations of several early 19th-century writers, including Hans Christian Andersen, Franz Grillparzer and others. Grillparzer, the most celebrated Austrian poet of his time, originally intended his opera libretto about the mermaid, whom he called Melusine, for Beethoven, but nothing came of the project. A minor composer named Conradin Kreutzer picked up the libretto and wrote a three-act opera based on it. Felix Mendelssohn went to see this opera but was less than enthusiastic. As he told his sister Fanny in a letter, he liked the overture least of all. He decided that he could do much better and composed his own overture on the subject. Unfortunately, he stopped there and did not rewrite the entire opera.

Grillparzer based his Melusine on an old French legend in which the protagonist is married to Raimund, a handsome knight who is utterly unaware that Melusine had been born a mermaid. She marries him on the condition that he must never enter her room on Saturdays—on that day she disappears to visit her father’s underwater kingdom. The day Raimund breaks his vow marks the end of their marriage, and Melusine is forced to give up her human existence and has to return to her native realm forever.

The first section of Mendelssohn’s overture depicts the water with a musical figure that was later appropriated by Wagner to serve a similar purpose at the beginning of Rheingold. (The entire Melusine story has a Wagnerian parallel in Lohengrin, where Elsa is similarly prohibited from inquiring about her spouse’s origins.) A second, stormier motif represents the fundamental conflict between the two people and their respective worlds, while a third theme, more lyrical, portrays the doomed love between Raimund and Melusine. The water theme returns at the end, as Melusine disappears beneath the waves for good.

—Peter Laki

ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD

Born: May 29, 1897, Brno, Czechia

Died: November 29, 1957, Hollywood, California

Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 35

When Erich Wolfgang Korngold was nine years old, his father—who happened to be Julius Korngold, the most influential music critic in Vienna—showed the boy’s first compositions to Gustav Mahler, who exclaimed: “A genius!” Mahler’s reaction was understandable. The young Korngold was a unique composing prodigy who had an instinctive grasp of the most modern musical styles of the day. He grew up to be an extremely successful opera composer—he wrote his most talked-about work, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”), when he was 20. Yet, he was equally attracted to operetta and was considered an expert on Johann

Composed: 1833–35

Premiere: April 7, 1834, London Philharmonic Society, Ignaz Moscheles conducting; revised version—November 23, 1835, Gewandhaus Leipzig, C.G. Miller conducting Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings CSO notable performances: First Performance: December 1902, Frank Van der Stucken conducting. Most Recent Performance: April 1934, Eugene Goossens conducting. Other: This piece was played on a May 2000 Lollipops Concert conducted by Alastair Willis.

Duration: approx. 10 minutes

Felix Mendelssohn, painting by Eduard Magnus

Strauss, Jr. His involvement with new productions of Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”) and other Strauss operettas (as arranger and conductor) became legendary and brought him into contact with Max Reinhardt (1873–1943), the foremost German stage director of the time. This meeting literally saved Korngold’s life, as it was with Reinhardt that Korngold first went to Hollywood, where he soon became the star among film composers. After the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, Korngold lost his original home base and settled permanently in Los Angeles.

His father, music critic Julius Korngold, who in his 70s was forced to flee Austria and joined his son in Southern California, was deeply disappointed that Erich had given up “serious” composition in favor of the movies. To his last day, the old man kept exhorting his son to return to concert music. His advice went unheeded for years, yet toward the end of Julius’s life, Erich wrote a string quartet (his third) and, after his father’s death, he returned to a project started years earlier but never completed: a concerto for violin and orchestra.

The great violinist Bronislaw Huberman—an old family friend since Vienna days—had long been asking Korngold for a violin concerto. When the work was finally completed, however, Huberman found himself unable to commit to a performance date. (The Polish violinist was in poor health and died in June 1947 at the age of 64). Korngold showed the concerto to Jascha Heifetz, who learned it within a few weeks and, with Huberman’s blessing, gave the world premiere in St. Louis on February 15, 1947.

At this point in Korngold’s career, the two aspects of his creative world—concert and film music—had become completely intertwined. His movie scores (of which the most famous are Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood) were symphonic, even operatic, in their scope. The Violin Concerto, conversely, owes much to Korngold’s work in the film industry. Many of the major themes were taken over from movie scores, and there are moments where the instrumentation and the thematic development also bring back Hollywood memories.

The opening theme of the concerto comes from a score written for a film that failed and was quickly forgotten (Another Dawn, 1937), the second from the historical movie Juarez (1939). The folk-dance theme of the last movement originated in the film adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (1937) and became the starting point for a set of brilliant variations. These different sources come together to form a completely new entity in the Violin Concerto, quite independent from the screen originals. (The beautiful melody of the second movement “Romance” seems to have been written especially for this concerto.)

In Korngold’s personal style, elements inherited from Mahler and Richard Strauss are treated with the light touch perfected at the Warner Brothers studios. This approach brought Romantic concerto-writing to new life at a time when most modern composers and critics were ready to bury it. Korngold himself never had any doubts about the vitality of this tradition. His rich melodic invention, his “spicy” harmonies that nevertheless remain firmly anchored in tonality, and his perfect understanding of the virtuoso violin idiom enabled him to make an important contribution to the repertoire. Yet at first, the concerto found little favor with violinists, despite Heifetz’s strong advocacy. (Heifetz recorded the work twice: once with the New York Philharmonic and once with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.) Since the 1970s, Korngold’s Violin Concerto has enjoyed a spectacular comeback, with numerous recordings and frequent concert performances all over the world.

—Peter Laki

Composed: 1937–1945

Premiere: February 15, 1947, St. Louis, Vladimir Golschmann conducting the St. Louis Symphony; Jascha Heifetz, violinist

Instrumentation: solo violin, 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes (incl. English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, timpani, bass drum, bell, crash cymbals, glockenspiel, suspended cymbals, tuned gongs, vibraphone, xylophone, harp, celeste, strings

CSO notable performances: First Performance: February 2000, John Morris Russell conducting with Timothy Lees, violin. Most Recent Performance: February 2015, Han-Na Chang conducting with Simone Lamsma, violin.

Duration: approx. 24 minutes

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Composed: 1901–02

Premiere: January 25, 1905 in Vienna, Alexander Zemlinsky conducting the Wiener Konzertverein Orchestra

Instrumentation: 4 flutes (incl. 2 piccolos), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 6 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, chimes, crash cymbals, glockenspiel, suspended cymbals, triangle, 2 harps, strings CSO notable performances: These performances are the CSO premiere of Die Seejungfrau

Duration: approx. 40 minutes

ALEXANDER ZEMLINSKY

Born: October 14, 1871 in Vienna

Died: March 15, 1942 in Larchmont, New York

Die Seejungfrau (“The Mermaid”) Fantasy

Composers after Mendelssohn discovered many additional layers of meaning in the Melusine story. In Antonín Dvořák’s opera Rusalka (1900), a late Romantic treatment of the topic, it is only a small step from the fairytale to the passions of mad love, jealousy and betrayal. A couple of years later, Alexander Zemlinsky could identify with some of these emotions on a personal level. After all, he had been in a passionate relationship with the beautiful and gifted Alma Schindler, who left him to marry the powerful director of the Court Opera in Vienna, Gustav Mahler. Zemlinsky was ready to write a “symphony of death,” as he confided to his friend Arnold Schoenberg, formerly his pupil and now his brother-in-law. He poured his most personal feelings into this lushly romantic, 45-minute score, his most important artistic statement to date.

In his early 30s, Zemlinsky was already a noted presence on the Viennese musical scene. He had earned Brahms’ approval with an early string quartet; the old master even offered him financial support. His Symphony in B-flat won the prestigious Beethoven Prize in 1897; his opera Es war einmal (“Once Upon a Time”) was premiered at the Court Opera under Mahler’s direction in 1900. Yet, in Die Seejungfrau, based on the Hans Christian Andersen version of the tale, Zemlinsky wanted to try something he had never done before (and would never do again), namely to write a symphonic poem in response to Richard Strauss. Zemlinsky had been studying Strauss’s recent Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life”) and was fascinated, but he thought Strauss had gone too far. He felt that the violently dissonant section of “The Hero’s Adversaries” could “no longer be taken seriously.” His approach was to be different. The harmonic language had to be less extreme, and the thematic unity of the work much stronger. Therefore, Zemlinsky organized the entire composition around a few recurrent themes that gave the symphonic poem a clear sense of form.

In his sketches, Zemlinsky labeled these themes by descriptive names (a practice inspired by Wagnerian leitmotifs) like “Home,” “World of Humans,” “Pain, Despair,” or “Man’s Immortal Soul.” Zemlinsky’s intended program has not come down to us in its entirety, and we only have a brief summary that he gave in a letter to Schoenberg.

Considering how much this composition meant to Zemlinsky, it may come as a surprise that he withdrew it after only a few performances, and the score was lost to the world for decades. One reason for this may be that, at the 1905 premiere, Die Seejungfrau shared the program with Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande and, although Zemlinsky’s work was better received that night, it was soon overshadowed by his brother-inlaw’s bolder vision. In a way, the two works are very similar: both are huge, post-Wagnerian tone poems; even their subjects are related. Melisande, the heroine of Maurice Maeterlinck’s drama and Debussy’s opera of the same name, is, like Melusine, a young female of mysterious origin who meets a prince, with equally disastrous consequences.

Having put his Mermaid to sleep in her palace deep in the ocean, Zemlinsky started a new life in Prague. For unknown reasons, he detached the first movement from his manuscript and gave it to his friend Marie Pappenheim, who had written the libretto for Schoenberg’s one-act opera Erwartung (“Expectation”). This movement is in the possession

Alexander Zemlinsky

of Pappenheim’s heirs to this day. Zemlinsky kept the second and third movements and brought them with him when he immigrated to the United States in 1938. After the composer’s death in 1942, these untitled pages ended up at the Library of Congress with the rest of his papers. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that researchers examined the manuscripts in Vienna and Washington, D.C. They established that the two belonged together and formed the symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau. (There were many telltale signs, but the most direct evidence is found at the very end of the third movement, which contains a literal repeat of the first movement’s opening theme.) This musicological detective work made it possible for the piece to come back to life; it has been performed with increasing frequency since 1984.

There was one passage in the piece, however, which was still unknown: the scene where the Mermaid visits the Sea Witch to ask for her help. This scene had been cut by the composer and was restored only recently. The full original version of the piece was not performed until 2013. The publisher has written about this fuller version: “[It] builds to a wild climax, bordering on hysteria, and disrupts the formal balance of the work.” Although the new passage is rather brief—about two minutes long—it adds significantly to the overall effect and makes this lush late Romantic masterpiece sound even more powerful.

—Peter Laki

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Of Note

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Multicultural Awareness Council (MAC) awarded four Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra (CSYO) members with the Norman E. Johns Chair Award.

Established in 1995 in honor of Norman E. Johns, the award is given annually to support African American, Latine and Native American students in their pursuit of music and to cover the cost of their tuition in the CSYO. This year’s winners are:

Gabriel Caal, viola

Gabriel is a senior at Mason High School and is a member of the CSYO Philharmonic and Nouveau Chamber Players. Gabriel studies viola with Dylan Firlie. Gabriel plans on majoring in viola performance at The Ohio State University.

Christina Lehmann, viola

Christina is a homeschooled senior and is a member of the CSYO Philharmonic and Nouveau’s Apprentices. Christina studies viola with Rebecca Flank at Immanuel School of Music.

Ari Peraza-Webb, cello

Ari is a senior at Wyoming High School and is a member of the CSYO Philharmonic and Nouveau Chamber Players. Ari studies cello with Dr. Sarah Kim and Alan Rafferty. Ari was the winner of the CSYO Concerto Competition and will perform on the annual Side-by-Side concert on April 23. Ari plans on majoring in cello performance.

Adolphus McCullom II, percussion

Adolphus is an eighth grader at SCPA and is a member of the CSYO Concert Orchestra. He is also a Carlson-Berne scholarship recipient. He studies percussion with John Gardner.

Left to Right Christina Lehmann, Adolphus McCullom II, Andria Carter (MAC Chair), Norman E. Johns, Ari Peraza-Webb and Gabriel Caal. Credit: Mark Lyons

SUN MAR 19, 7 pm

Music Hall

KEVIN JOHN EDUSEI, conductor

NATIONAL PATHWAYS FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA

CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Brian Raphael NABORS Pulse (b. 1991)

Antonín DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, (1841–1904) From the New World Adagio. Allegro molto Largo Molto vivace Allegro con fuoco

There is no intermission.

NIMAN and the CSO are grateful to the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation for their ongoing support and sponsorship of the National Pathways Festival.

Special thanks to the National Pathways Collective for their partnership and continued support for pre-college musicians of color.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation and the Nina Browne Parker Trust and for the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust

Steinway Pianos, courtesy of Willis Music, is the official piano of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

FRI MAR 24, 11 am

SAT MAR 25, 7:30 pm

SUN MAR 26, 2 pm

Music Hall

ANNA RAKITINA, conductor STERLING ELLIOTT, cello

Antonín DVOŘÁK

Concerto in B Minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 104 (1841–1904)

Allegro

Adagio ma non troppo

Allegro moderato. Andante. Allegro vivo

INTERMISSION

Richard AYRES “Saying Goodbye” from No. 52: Three Pieces (b. 1965) about Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 (1770–1827)

Allegro con brio

Andante con moto

Allegro

Allegro

These performances are approximately 105 minutes long, including intermission.

The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation and the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and for the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts

Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson

WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust Steinway Pianos, courtesy of Willis Music, is the official piano of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

Listen to this program on 90.9 WGUC May 7, 2023 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Born: September 8, 1841, Nalahozeves, Bohemia

Died: May 1, 1904, Prague

Concerto in B Minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 104

During the three years that Dvořák was teaching at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, he was subject to the same emotions as most other travelers away from home for a long time: invigoration and homesickness. America served to stir his creative energies, and during his stay from 1892 to 1895 he composed some of his greatest scores: the “New World” Symphony, Op. 96 String Quartet (“American”), E-flat major String Quintet, and Cello Concerto. He was keenly aware of the new musical experiences to be discovered in the land far from his beloved Bohemian home when he wrote, “The musician must prick up his ears for music. When he walks he should listen to every whistling boy, every street singer or organ grinder. I myself am often so fascinated by these people that I can scarcely tear myself away.” But he missed his home and, while he was composing the Cello Concerto, eagerly looked forward to returning. He opened his heart in a letter to a friend in Prague: “Now I am finishing the finale of the Violoncello Concerto. If I could work as free from cares as at Vysoká [site of his country home], it would have been finished long ago. Oh, if only I were in Vysoká again!” The Concerto might just as well have been written in a Czech café as in an East 17th Street apartment.

Elements of both Dvořák’s American experiences and his longing for home found their way into the Cello Concerto, the last of his works composed in this country. The inspiration to begin what became one of the greatest concertos in the literature was a performance by the New York Philharmonic in March 1894 at which Victor Herbert (the Victor Herbert of operetta fame, who was then also teaching at the National Conservatory) played his own Second Cello Concerto. That work convinced Dvořák that the cello was a viable solo instrument, something about which he had been unsure, despite the assurances of Hanuš Wihan, cello professor at the Prague Conservatory, who had long been urging his fellow faculty member to write a piece for the instrument.

(Apparently Brahms, Dvořák’s friend and mentor, had a similar mistrust of the cello as a solo instrument. When he first saw Dvořák’s score he wondered, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one can write a violoncello concerto like this? If I had only known, I would have written one long ago!”) Dvořák had tried to mollify Wihan in 1891 with two recital numbers—the Rondo in G minor and Silent Woods, an arrangement of a piano piece from 1884—but the cellist continued to pester him for a full-scale concerto until his request finally bore fruit four years later. Dvořák asked Wihan for his comments on the score (which Dvořák largely ignored) and they read through the piece together privately in September 1895, soon after Dvořák had returned home, but Wihan, despite the composer’s pleading, was unable to give either the work’s world or Prague premiere because of already-scheduled conflicts. Those privileges fell instead to the young English virtuoso Leo Stern, who introduced the work on March 19, 1896 with the London Philharmonic and gave its first performance in Dvořák’s home city three weeks later with the Czech Philharmonic, both conducted by the composer. Wihan first played the Concerto publicly at The Hague in January 1899 and regularly thereafter, including a performance in Budapest under the composer’s direction on December 20, 1899.

Composed: 1894–95

Premiere: March 19, 1896 in London, conducted by the composer with Leo Stern as soloist

Instrumentation: solo cello, 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, strings

CSO notable performances: First

Performance: March 1911, Leopold Stokowski conducting with Boris Hambourg, cello. Most Recent Performances: (CSO subscription)

September 2008, Paavo Järvi conducting with Gautier Capuçon, cello; (CSO special, Taft Theatre)

October 2016, Louis Langrée conducting with Yo-Yo Ma, cello. Other: Pablo Casals played this concerto twice with the CSO—November 1915 (Ernst Kunwald conducting) and January 1928 (Fritz Reiner conducting).

Duration: approx. 40 minutes

Antonín Dvořák

Composed: 2019

Premiere: September 10, 2020 during the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Nicholas Collon conducting the Aurora Orchestra

Instrumentation: bass drum, sampler, strings

CSO notable performances: These performances are the work’s CSO premiere.

Duration: approx. 7 minutes

With its wealth of melodic ideas, glowing orchestration and emotional immediacy, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto occupies the pinnacle of the solo literature for the instrument. The opening movement is in sonata form, with both themes presented by the orchestra before the entry of the soloist. The first theme, heard immediately in the clarinets, not only contains the principal melody but also serves to establish the importance given to the wind instruments throughout the work, their tone colors serving as an excellent foil to the rich sonorities of the cello. “One of the most beautiful melodies ever composed for the horn” is how Sir Donald Tovey described the D major second theme. The cello’s entrance points up the virtuosic yet songful character of the solo part. The effect of the music for the soloist is enhanced by the use of the instrument’s burnished upper register, a technique Dvořák had learned from Victor Herbert’s concerto.

Otakar Šourek, the composer’s biographer, described the second movement as a “hymn of deepest spirituality and amazing beauty.” It is in three-part form (A–B–A). A poignant bit of autobiography is attached to the composition of this movement: While working on its middle section, Dvořák received news that his beloved sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová, who had aroused in him a secret passion early in his life, was seriously ill. He showed his concern by using one of Josefina’s favorite pieces as the theme for the central portion of this Adagio—his own song, “Let Me Wander Alone with My Dreams,” Op. 82, No. 1. She died a month after he returned to Prague in April 1895, so he revised the finale to include another reference to the same song in the autumnal slow section just before the end of the work.

The finale is a rondo of dance-like nature. Following the second reprise of the theme, in B major, an Andante section recalls both the first theme of the opening movement and Josefina’s melody from the second. A brief, rousing restatement of the rondo theme led by the brass closes this majestic Concerto.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

RICHARD AYRES

Born: October 29, 1965, Cornwall, England

“Saying Goodbye” from No. 52: Three Pieces about Ludwig van Beethoven

Richard Ayres, born in 1965 in Cornwall, England’s southwestern tip, studied composition, electronic music and trombone at Huddersfield Polytechnic and during the summers participated in American composer Morton Feldman’s classes at Darmstadt and Dartington. After graduating in 1989, Ayres moved to The Hague for postgraduate study in composition with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire, graduated in 1992, and taught at that school from 2004 to 2006 before joining the faculty of the Amsterdam Conservatoire. He still makes his home in The Netherlands. Ayres’ prominence in Dutch music has been recognized with two of the country’s most prestigious music awards—the International Gaudeamus Prize for Composition (1994) and Vermeulen Prize (2003). His works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and opera have also been commissioned and performed across the U.K. and Europe and, increasingly, in America; he was Featured Composer at both the Aldeburgh Festival and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and is Visiting Professor at the Royal Conservatoire in Birmingham.

Ayres began suffering hearing loss before he was 40, a condition that has worsened as he ages. Of his No. 52: Three Pieces about Ludwig van

Richard Ayres, ©Hanya Chlala

Beethoven (2019; Ayers numbers his works consecutively instead of giving them traditional opus numbers), he said:

More than other pieces of mine, this one is all about hearing loss. I have focused it on Beethoven’s hearing loss and its effect on him. Writing it was a kind of therapy for me and a way for me to understand Beethoven, how he suffered so much and had such a hard time…. [That realization] has given me a stronger sense of urgency and purpose, since every sound has to be special because it might be the last I create. Like Beethoven, I have to rely on my imagination to understand what I’m doing. It becomes much more vivid, much more three-dimensional and lively in my mind, but I also realize I’m not going to hear all that in performance. I made the piece in three movements. Saying Goodbye is a melody played by a solo cello but gradually amplified by strings and distorted as a sort of tinnitus [ringing or other noise in the ear], appearing like a fog.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN

Born: December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany

Died: March 26, 1827, Vienna

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67

Surprisingly, for this Symphony that serves as the locus classicus of orchestral music, little is known about its creation. There are vague hints that it may have been occasioned by an aborted love affair with either Therese von Brunswick or Giulietta Guicciardi. The theory has been advanced that it was influenced by a surge of patriotism fueled by an Austrian loss to the Napoleonic juggernaut. Even the famous remark attributed to Beethoven about the opening motive representing “Fate knocking at the door” is probably apocryphal, an invention of either Anton Schindler or Ferdinand Ries, two young men, close to the composer in his last years, who later published their often-untrustworthy reminiscences of him.

It is known that the time of the creation of the Fifth Symphony was one of intense activity for Beethoven. The four years during which the work was composed also saw the completion of a rich variety of other works: Piano Sonatas Op. 53, 54 and 57; Fourth Piano Concerto; Fourth and Sixth symphonies; Violin Concerto; the first two versions of Fidelio; Razumovsky Quartets, Op. 59; Coriolan Overture; Mass in C Major, Op. 86; and Cello Sonata No. 3, Op. 69. As was his practice with many of his important works, Beethoven revised and rewrote the Fifth Symphony for years.

So completely did composition occupy Beethoven’s thoughts that he sometimes ignored the necessities of daily life. Concern with his appearance, eating habits, cleanliness, even his conversation, all gave way before his composing. There are many reports of his trooping the streets and woods of Vienna humming, singing, bellowing, penning a scrap of melody, and being, in general, oblivious to the people or places around him. (One suspects that his professed love of Nature grew in part from his need to find a solitary workplace free from distractions and the prying interest of his fellow Viennese.) This titanic struggle with musical tones produced such mighty monuments as the Fifth Symphony. With it, and with the Third Symphony completed only four years before, Beethoven launched music and art into the world of Romanticism.

In the history of music, Beethoven stands, Janus-faced, as the great colossus between two ages and two philosophies. The formal perfection of the preceding Classical period finds its greatest fulfillment in his works,

Composed: 1804–1808

Premiere: December 22, 1808 in Vienna, conducted by the composer

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings

CSO notable performances: First

Performance: February 1895 (the CSO’s first season) at Pike Opera House, Anton Seidl conducting. Most Recent: March 2020, Louis Langrée conducting as part of the re-creation of the Beethoven 1808 Akademie program. Other: This symphony has been conducted by every CSO Music Director and Pops conductor; also, March 1955, Herbert von Karajan conducting.

Duration: approx. 31 minutes

Ludwig van Beethoven

This Symphony was the work that won for Beethoven international renown. Despite a few early misunderstandings undoubtedly due to its unprecedented concentration of energy, it caught on very quickly, and was soon recognized in Europe, England and America as a pathbreaking achievement. Its popularity has never waned.

which at the same time contain the taproot of the cathartic emotional experience from which grew the art of the 19th century. Beethoven himself evaluated his position as a creator in the following way: “Music is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life...the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.” The Fifth Symphony is indeed such a “mediator.” Its message of victory through struggle, which so deeply touches both heart and mind, is achieved by a near-perfect balance of musical technique and passionate sentiment unsurpassed in the history of music. This Symphony was the work that won for Beethoven international renown. Despite a few early misunderstandings undoubtedly due to its unprecedented concentration of energy, it caught on very quickly, and was soon recognized in Europe, England and America as a pathbreaking achievement. Its popularity has never waned.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the archetypal example of the technique and content of the form. Its overall structure is not one of four independent movements linked simply by tonality and style, as in the typical 18th-century example, but is rather a carefully devised whole in which each serves to carry the work inexorably toward its end. The progression from minor to major, from dark to light, from conflict to resolution is at the very heart of the “meaning” of this Symphony. The triumphant, victorious nature of the final movement as the logical outcome of all that preceded it established a model for the symphonies of the Romantic era. The psychological progression toward the finale— the relentless movement toward a life-affirming close—is one of the most important technical and emotional legacies Beethoven left to his successors. Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler—their symphonies are indebted to this one (and to the Ninth Symphony, as well) for the concept of how such a creation could be structured and in what manner it should engage the listener.

The opening gesture is the most famous beginning in all of classical music. It establishes the stormy temper of the Allegro by presenting the germinal cell from which the entire movement grows. Though it is possible to trace this memorable four-note motive through most of the measures of the movement, the esteemed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey pointed out that the power of the music is not contained in this fragment, but rather in the “long sentences” Beethoven built from it. The key to appreciating Beethoven’s formal structures lies in being aware of the way in which the music moves constantly from one point of arrival to the next, from one sentence to the next. It is in the careful weighting of successive climaxes through harmonic, rhythmic and instrumental resources that Beethoven created the enormous energy and seeming inevitability of this monumental movement. The gentler second theme derives from the opening motive and gives only a brief respite in the headlong rush through the movement. It provides the necessary contrast while doing nothing to impede the music’s flow. The development section is a paragon of cohesion, logic and concision. The recapitulation roars forth after a series of breathless chords that pass from woodwinds to strings and back. The stark hammer-blows of the closing chords bring the movement to its powerful close.

The form of the second movement is a set of variations on two contrasting themes. The first theme, presented by violas and cellos, is sweet and lyrical in nature; the second, heard in horns and trumpets, is heroic. The ensuing variations on the themes alternate to produce a movement by turns gentle and majestic.

The following Scherzo returns the tempestuous character of the opening movement, as the four-note motto from the first movement is heard again in a brazen setting led by the horns. The fughetta, the “little fugue,” of the central trio is initiated by the cellos and basses. The Scherzo returns with the mysterious tread of the plucked strings, after which the music wanes until little more than a heartbeat from the timpani remains. Then begins another accumulation of intensity, first gradually, then more quickly, as a link to the finale, which arrives with a glorious proclamation, like brilliant sun bursting through ominous clouds.

The finale, set in the triumphant key of C major, is jubilant and martial. (Robert Schumann saw here the influence of Étienne-Nicolas Méhul, one of the prominent composers of the French Revolution.) The sonata form proceeds apace. At the apex of the development, however, the mysterious end of the Scherzo is invoked to serve as the link to the return of the main theme in the recapitulation. It also recalls and compresses the emotional journey of the entire Symphony. The closing pages repeat the cadence chords extensively to discharge the work’s enormous, accumulated energy.

Concerning the effect of the “struggle to victory” symbolized by the structure of the Fifth Symphony, a quote that Beethoven scribbled in a notebook of the Archduke Rudolf, one of his aristocratic piano and composition students, is pertinent:

Many assert that every minor [tonality] piece must end in the minor. Nego! On the contrary, I find that…the major [tonality] has a glorious effect. Joy follows sorrow, sunshine—rain. It affects me as if I were looking up to the silvery glistening of the evening star.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Check out our NEW DIGITAL PROGRAM! For even more enriching content including full-length biographies, digital content and more, text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*, visit cincinnatisymphony. org/digital-program, or point your phone’s camera at the QR code.

*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.

CHERRY CORDIAL

GREAT NOTES, GREAT FLAVORS.

SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAESTRO | 2022–23 SEASON

SAT MAR 25, 10:30 am

Music Hall

Samuel Lee, conductor Christian Bare, Actor

Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla

Sherlock’s Entrance

Mikhail Glinka

Douglas A. Richard

“Superman March” from Superman John Williams

Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Felix Mendelssohn

Theme from The Pink Panther Henry Mancini

Waltz from Serenade for Strings Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

El Cumbanchero Rafael Hernández

“Dance of the Hours” from La Gioconda

Thunder and Lightning Polka

Amilcare Ponchielli

Johann Strauss, Jr.

Allegro con fuoco from Symphony No. 4 Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The Cincinnati Pops is grateful to Series Sponsor United Dairy Farmers & Homemade Brand Ice Cream and Concert Sponsor The Cincinnati Symphony Club Lollipops Family Concerts are supported in part through the Vicki & Rick Reynolds Endowment Fund and through the George & Anne Heldman Endowment Fund

a proud sponsor of Lollipops presents

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF HARMONY

APRIL 13, 2023 | Kenwood Country Club

This year 2023, The Cincinnati Symphony Club is celebrating our 100th Anniversary!

On April 13, our annual fundraiser will be held at the Kenwood Country Club to raise funds for Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra

For more visit bit.ly/CSC_100

SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO. 5 | 2022–23 SEASON

FRI APR 7, 7:30 pm

SAT APR 8, 7:30 pm

Music Hall

LOUIS LANGRÉE, conductor STEPHEN HOUGH, piano

Daníel BJARNASON New Work, Part I (b. 1979)

Sergei RACHMANINOFF Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor (1873–1943) for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 1

Vivace

Andante

Allegro vivace INTERMISSION

Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47 (1906–1975) Moderato. Allegro non troppo. Largamente. Moderato

Allegretto

Largo

Allegro non troppo. Allegro

These performances are approximately 120 minutes long, including intermission.

The CSO is grateful to CSO Season Sponsor Western & Southern Financial Group and CSO Show Sponsor Thompson Hine

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful to Ann and Harry Santen for their support of the CSO co-commissioned U.S. Premiere of Daniel Bjarnason’s new work.

The appearance of Stephen Hough is made possible by an endowed gift from the Fund for Great Artists by Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the support of the Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation and the Nina Browne Parker Trust, and for the thousands of people who give generously to the ArtsWave Community Campaign. This project was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts

Pre-Concert Talks are made possible by an endowed gift from Melody Sawyer Richardson

WGUC is the Media Partner for these concerts.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in-orchestra Steinway piano is made possible in part by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust Steinway Pianos, courtesy of Willis Music, is the official piano of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops.

Listen to program selections on 90.9 WGUC May 28, 2023 at 8 pm, followed by 30 days of streaming at cincinnatisymphony.org/replay.

Check out our NEW DIGITAL PROGRAM! For even more enriching content including full-length biographies, digital content and more, text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*, visit cincinnatisymphony. org/digital-program, or point your phone’s camera at the QR code.

DANÍEL BJARNASON

Born: February 26, 1979 in Iceland

New Work, Part I

Among Iceland’s leading musical figures is conductor, composer and curator Daníel Bjarnason, born in 1979 and trained in Reykjavík before taking his advanced studies in conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany. Bjarnason’s compositions—works for chamber ensembles and for orchestra, songs, choruses, film scores, music for dance, and the opera Brothers, based on Susanne Bier’s 2004 film—have been performed by the major Scandinavian orchestras and in London, Paris, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Ottawa, Hamburg and other music centers across Europe and America. Bjarnason has had an especially close association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose “Reykjavik Festival”—an eclectic, multi-disciplinary, 17-day event in which he was featured as conductor and composer—he curated in 2017.

This season sees the premiere of his Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, written for Martin Grubinger, presented by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Last season saw the world premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Feast, written for Víkingur Ólafsson and performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles by Ólafsson and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

The new work to be performed this weekend was co-commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and is the first part of a multi-year work by Bjarnason.

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born: March 20 [April 1, New Style], 1873 in Oneg, near Semyonovo, Russia

Died: March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California

Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 1

In Russian schools, the highest grade a student can receive is a five, to which, in exceptional cases, a plus sign can be added. Therefore, the incident that took place at a harmony examination at the Moscow Conservatory in 1887 can certainly be called unusual. The committee, which included Piotr Tchaikovsky, had just heard a 14-year-old student named Sergei Rachmaninoff who had by far exceeded the requirements of the class. In addition to the simple harmonic exercises called for, the boy played some original compositions he had written. Professor Tchaikovsky took the examination book and added three more plus signs to the “5+” already there—one on top, one below, and one behind.

“My fate as a composer was, as it were, officially sealed”—Rachmaninoff recalled many years later. The youngster entered Sergei Taneyev’s class as a student of composition and soon became the star of the conservatory, even though he had the equally brilliant Alexander Scriabin as one of his classmates. The year Rachmaninoff graduated with the highest honors (1893), his one-act opera Aleko was performed in a double bill shared with Tchaikovsky’s Iolantha. Having his work on the same program with the leading Russian composer, at the Bolshoi Theater no less, was enough to launch the 20-year-old’s career. The former star student soon became the most prominent Russian musician of his generation, much sought after as

Composed: 2022–

Daníel Bjarnason, ©Saga Sig

*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel.

a composer, pianist and conductor until his departure from Russia in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917.

The First Piano Concerto was Rachmaninoff’s first large-scale work, and the first composition he deemed worthy of an opus number. It was written while Rachmaninoff was still a student at the Conservatory, in 1890–91. Rachmaninoff performed the first movement with the school orchestra in 1892, but there is no evidence that he ever played any part of the concerto again until he revised it in 1917, although others did so over the years. In fact, in 1899 Rachmaninoff turned down an invitation to play the work in London as he thought it was not good enough. (Henry Wood, the director of the Proms, disagreed and performed the work anyway with another pianist.)

For his part, Rachmaninoff preferred to write two more concertos in 1900–01 and, in 1909, his universally popular Second and Third. Yet he did not forget about the First and continued to entertain plans of revising it. On April 12, 1908, he wrote to a friend: “I have three pieces that frighten me: the First Concerto, the Capriccio, and the First Symphony. I should very much like to see all these in a corrected, decent form.”

The Capriccio on Gypsy Themes is a weak and now entirely forgotten work, and the premiere of the First Symphony was a fiasco that left deep scars. Rachmaninoff never touched these two works again. He did eventually get around to revising the First Concerto, however. The moment came 26 years after the original version, during the politically turbulent and artistically fallow year of 1917. This revision, his last major undertaking before he left Russia for good at the end of the year, was rather extensive, involving recomposition of a large portion of the work, partial reorchestration, and a great many changes of detail. In the new version, the youthful energy of the 17-year-old is combined with the experience of a mature composer whose catalog had in the meantime reached Op. 39. The writing, although clearly influenced by the concertos of Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Grieg, nevertheless bears the unmistakable stamp of Rachmaninoff’s own personality. Virtuoso brilliance and lyrical expansiveness go hand in hand in this concerto. Rachmaninoff is usually described as a conservative composer, yet innovation is not entirely absent, as in the changing meters of the last movement, introduced in the 1917 revision.

Rachmaninoff hoped that, in its revised form, the concerto might share in the success of his Second and Third concertos. As he later wrote in a letter to Alfred Swan, a musicologist and friend:

I have rewritten my First Concerto; it is really good now. All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third.

Still, as Rachmaninoff biographer Geoffrey Norris observed:

The First is a very different piece [from the Second or the Third]; the characteristic melodies, if less remarkable, are there, but they are combined with a youthful vivacity and impetuosity which were soon to be replaced by the more sombre melancholy and wistfulness of the later works.

—Peter Laki

Composed: 1891, revised

1917

Premiere: November 9, 1901 in Moscow, with the composer as soloist and his teacher and first cousin Alexander Siloti conducting

Instrumentation: solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, crash cymbals, triangle, strings

CSO notable performances: First

Performance: January 1950, Thor Johnson conducting with Benno Moiseiwitsch, piano. Most Recent: January 2002, Jun’ichi Hirokami conducting with Cristina Ortiz, piano.

Duration: approx. 22 minutes

Sergei Rachmaninoff, ©Library of Congress

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Born: September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Died: August 9, 1975 in Moscow

Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47

Shostakovich wrote the Fifth Symphony in what was certainly the most difficult period in his life. On January 28, 1936, an unsigned editorial in the Pravda, the daily paper of the Soviet Communist Party, brutally attacked his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, denouncing it as “muddle instead of music.” This condemnation resulted in a sharp decrease of performances of Shostakovich’s music for about a year. What was worse, Shostakovich, whose first child was born in May 1936, had to live in constant fear of being deported to one of the infamous, deathly labor camps in Siberia. These were the days of the “Great Terror” that claimed the lives of some of the country’s greatest artists, such as the poet Osip Mandelstam, the novelist Isaac Babel, and the theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold. It is said that Shostakovich kept a suitcase with a change of clothes under his bed, in case they would come for him in the middle of the night.

Yet the composer was miraculously spared: the Party decided that the country’s musical life couldn’t afford to lose its greatest young talent. Shostakovich was granted a comeback. Less than a year after being forced to withdraw his Fourth Symphony, he heard his Fifth premiered with resounding success in Leningrad on November 21, 1937.

Could it be that the qualities in the Fifth Symphony that are so admired today were the same ones that saved the composer’s life then? Shostakovich clearly made a major effort to write a “classical” piece here, one that would be acceptable to the authorities and was as far removed from the avant-gardistic Fourth as possible. Whether that makes it “A Soviet Artist’s Creative Response to Just Criticism,” as it was officially designated at the time, is another question. The work is so profound and sincere as to transcend any kind of political expediency. The symphony was definitely a response to something, but not in the sense of a chastised schoolboy mending his ways—rather as a great artist reacting to the cruelty and insanity of the times.

The energetic dotted motif at the beginning of the Fifth Symphony is, no doubt, dramatic and ominous. A second theme, played by the violins in a high register, is warm and lyrical but at the same time eerie and distant. The music seems hesitant until the horns begin a march theme that leads to motivic development and a speeding up of the tempo. It is not a funeral march, but it is not exactly triumphant either. Reminiscent of some of Mahler’s march melodies but even grimmer, its harmonies modulate freely from key to key, giving the march an oddly sarcastic character. At the climactic point of the march, the two earlier themes return. The dotted rhythms from the opening are even more powerful than before, but the second lyrical theme, now played by the flute and the horn to the soothing harmonies of the harp, has lost the edge it previously had and brings the movement to a peaceful, almost otherworldly close.

The brief second movement Scherzo brings some relief after the preceding drama. Its Ländler-like melodies again bespeak Mahler’s influence, both in the Scherzo proper and the Trio, whose theme is played by a solo violin and then by the flute.

The third movement is an expansive Largo in which the brass is silent and the violins are divided into three sections, not the usual two. After an espressivo melody, scored for strings only, two flutes and harp transform the first movement’s march rhythm into a lament. The oboe, the clarinet and the flute intone desolate solo melodies, interspersed with a near-quote

Composed: 1937

Premiere: November 21, 1937, Evgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad

Philharmonic

Instrumentation:

2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, crash cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, xylophone, 2 harps, celeste, piano, strings

CSO notable performances: First

Performance: October 1942, Eugene Goossens conducting. Most Recent: September 2016, Louis Langrée conducting.

Duration: approx. 44 minutes

Dmitri Shostakovich

from a Russian Orthodox funeral chant played by the strings. The tension grows and finally erupts about two-thirds through the movement; the opening melody then returns in a passionate rendering by the cello section in a high register. At the end, the music falls back into the lament mode of the earlier woodwind passages.

Generally accepted as the emotional high point of the symphony, the Largo was widely understood as a lament for the Soviet Army marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who fell victim to the Stalinist purges in 1937. Tukhachevsky had been a benefactor and a personal friend of the composer’s. At the first performance, many people wept openly during the Largo, perhaps thinking of their own loved ones who had disappeared.

The last movement finally resolves the tensions that have built up in the first three movements (or so it seems at first) by introducing a march tune that is much simpler and more straightforward than most of the symphony’s earlier themes. Yet, after an exciting development, the music suddenly stops on a set of harsh fortissimo chords, and a slower, more introspective section begins with a haunting horn solo. The late musicologist Richard Taruskin pointed out that this section quotes from a song for voice and piano on a poem by Alexander Pushkin (“Vozrozhdenie” or “Rebirth,” Op. 46, No. 1) Shostakovich had written just before the Fifth Symphony. (“Delusions vanish from my wearied soul, and visions arise within it of pure primeval days....”) This quiet intermezzo ends abruptly with the entrance of the timpani and snare drum ushering in the recapitulation of the march tune, which is played at half its original tempo. Merely a shadow of its former self, the melody is elaborated contrapuntally until it suddenly alights on a bright D-major chord in full orchestral splendor, which then remains unchanged for more than a minute, until the end.

—Peter Laki

INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

Local and national foundations, businesses, and government agencies are integral to the Orchestra’s vibrant performances, community engagement work, and education activities. We are proud to partner with the following funders.

SERIES SPONSORS

PLATINUM BATON CIRCLE ($50,000+)

ArtsWave

Charles H. Dater Foundation

The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation

Hamilton County

David C. Herriman Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Carl Jacobs Foundation

H.B., E.W., F.R. Luther Charitable Foundation

The Mellon Foundation

Dr. John & Louise Mulford Fund for the CSO

National Endowment for the Arts

Louise Dieterle Nippert Musical Arts Fund of the Greenacres Foundation

Ohio Arts Council

PNC Bank

Margaret McWilliams Rentschler Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Nina Browne Parker Trust

Harold C. Schott Foundation / Francie and Tom Hiltz, Trustees

Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation

The Louise Taft Semple Foundation

Skyler Foundation

US Small Business Administration

Western & Southern Financial Group

Anonymous

GOLD BATON CIRCLE ($25,000–$49,999)

City Of Cincinnati

Coney Island

The Cincinnati Symphony Club

Fifth Third Bank Foundation

Jeffrey & Jody Lazarow and Janie & Peter Schwartz Family Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation

George and Margaret McLane Foundation

The Ladislas & Vilma Segoe Family Foundation

United Dairy Farmers & Homemade Brand Ice Cream

The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation

SILVER BATON CIRCLE ($15,000–$24,999)

Drive Media House

HORAN

The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati

The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati

Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial

Johnson Investment Counsel

League Of American Orchestras

The Rendigs Foundation

2022 ARTSWAVE PARTNERS

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

Scott and Charla Weiss Wodecroft Foundation

CONDUCTOR’S CIRCLE ($10,000–$14,999)

Bartlett Wealth Management

Chemed Corporation

The Crosset Family Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Kelly Dehan and Rick Staudigel

Graeter’s Ice Cream

Peter E. Landgren and Judith Schonbach Landgren

Mariner Wealth Advisors

Messer Construction Co.

Ohio National Financial Services

Oliver Family Foundation

The Daniel & Susan Pfau Foundation

The Procter & Gamble Company

CONCERTMASTER’S CIRCLE ($5,000–$9,999)

Levin Family Foundation

Metro

The Willard & Jean Mulford Charitable Fund

Pyro-Technical Investigations, Inc.

Queen City (OH) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated

Thompson Hine LLP

ARTIST’S CIRCLE ($2,500–$4,999)

d.e. Foxx and Associates, Inc.

Mayerson Jewish Community Center

Charles Scott Riley III Foundation

BUSINESS & FOUNDATION PARTNERS (up to $2,499)

African American Chamber of Commerce

Visit Cincy

Classics for Kids Foundation

Albert B. Cord Charitable Foundation

D’Addario Foundation

Earthward Bound Foundation

Susan Friedlander

Hixson Architecture Engineering Interiors

Integrity Development

Robert A. & Marian K. Kennedy Charitable Trust

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

The Voice of Your Customer

Toi and Jay Wagstaff

Join this distinguished group!

Contact Sean Baker at 513.744.3363 or sbaker@cincinnatisymphony.org to learn how you can become a supporter of the CSO and Pops. This list is updated quarterly.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops acknowledge the following partner companies, foundations and their employees who generously participate in the Annual ArtsWave Community Campaign at the $100,000+ level.

$2 million+

P&G

$1 million to $1,999,999

Fifth Third Bank and the Fifth Third Foundation

$500,000 to $999,999

GE

$300,000 to 499,999

altafiber

Western & Southern Financial Group

$100,000–$299,999

Cincinnati Business Courier

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

The Cincinnati Insurance Companies

Cincinnati Reds

The E.W. Scripps Company and Scripps Howard Foundation

The Enquirer | Cincinnati.com

Great American Insurance Group

The H.B., E.W. and F.R. Luther Charitable Foundation, Fifth Third Bank, N.A., Trustee

The Kroger Co.

Messer Construction Co.

Ohio National Financial Services

PNC

U.S. Bank

Duke Energy

PERMANENT ENDOWMENTS

Endowment gifts perpetuate your values and create a sustainable future for the Orchestra. We extend our deep gratitude to the donors who have provided permanent endowments in support of our programs that are important to them. For more information about endowment gifts, contact Kate Farinacci, Director of Special Campaigns & Legacy Giving, at 513.744.3202.

ENDOWED CHAIRS

Grace M. Allen Chair

Ellen A. & Richard C. Berghamer Chair

Robert E. & Fay Boeh Chair

The Marc Bohlke Chair Given by Katrin & Manfred Bohlke

Trish & Rick Bryan Chair

Otto M Budig Chair Family Foundation Chair

Mary Alice Heekin Burke Chair

Peter G. Courlas–Nicholas Tsimaras Chair

Ona Hixon Dater Chair

The Anne G. & Robert W. Dorsey Chair+

Jane & David Ellis Chair

Irene & John J. Emery Chair

James M. Ewell Chair

Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair for Assistant Conductor

Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair for Assistant Conductor

Ashley & Barbara Ford Chair for Principal Tuba

Susan S. & William A. Friedlander Chair+

Charles Gausmann Chair

Susanne & Philip O. Geier, Jr. Chair+

Emma Margaret & Irving D. Goldman Chair

Clifford J. Goosmann and Andrea M. Wilson Chair for First Violin

Charles Frederic Goss Chair

Jean Ten Have Chair

Dorothy & John Hermanies Chair

Lois Klein Jolson Chair

Michael L. Cioffi & Rachael Rowe— the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer

Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr. Chair

Harold B. & Betty Justice Chair

Marvin Kolodzik and Linda S. Gallaher Chair for Cello+

Al Levinson Chair

Patricia Gross Linnemann Chair+

Alberta & Dr. Maurice Marsh Chair

Stephen P. McKean Chair

Laura Kimble McLellan Chair

The Henry Meyer Chair

Louise Dieterle Nippert & Louis Nippert Chairs

Ida Ringling North Chair Rawson Chair

The Vicky & Rick Reynolds Chair in honor of William A. Friedlander+

Donald & Margaret Robinson Chair

Dianne & J. David Rosenberg Chair+

Ruth F. Rosevear Chair

The Morleen & Jack Rouse Chair+

Emalee Schavel Chair

Karl & Roberta Schlachter Family Chair

Serge Shababian Chair

Melinda & Irwin Simon Chair+

Anna Sinton Taft Chair

Tom & Dee Stegman Chair+

Mary & Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Chair+

Cynthia & Frank Stewart Chair

The Jackie & Roy Sweeney

Family Chair

The Sweeney Family Chair in memory of Donald C. Sweeney

Brenda & Ralph Taylor Chair

James P. Thornton Chair

Nicholas Tsimaras–Peter G. Courlas Chair

Thomas Vanden Eynden Chair

Jo Ann & Paul Ward Chair

Matthew & Peg Woodside Chair

Mary M. & Charles F. Yeiser Chair

ENDOWED PERFORMANCES & PROJECTS

Eleanora C. U. Alms Trust, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee

Rosemary and Frank Bloom

Endowment Fund*+

Cincinnati Bell Foundation Inc.

Mr. & Mrs. Val Cook

Nancy & Steve Donovan*

Sue and Bill Friedlander

Endowment Fund*+

Mrs. Charles Wm Anness*, Mrs. Frederick D. Haffner, Mrs. Gerald Skidmore and the La Vaughn Scholl Garrison Fund

Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Fund for Musical Excellence

Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Fund for Great Artists

Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Trust

Pianist Fund

The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation Endowment Fund

Anne Heldman Endowment Fund**

Mr. and Mrs. Lorrence T. Kellar+

Lawrence A. & Anne J. Leser*

Mr. & Mrs. Carl H. Lindner**

PNC Financial Services Group

The Procter & Gamble Fund

Vicky & Rick Reynolds Fund for Diverse Artists+

Melody Sawyer Richardson*

Rosemary and Mark Schlachter

Endowment Fund*+

The Harold C. Schott Foundation, Francie and Tom Hiltz

Endowment Fund+

Peggy Selonick Fund for Great Artists

Dee and Tom Stegman

Endowment Fund*+

Mr. & Mrs. Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Fund for Great Artists

U. S. Bank Foundation*

Sallie and Randolph Wadsworth Endowment Fund+

Educational Concerts

Rosemary & Frank Bloom *

Cincinnati Financial Corporation & The Cincinnati Insurance Companies

The Margaret Embshoff

Educational Fund

Kate Foreman Young Peoples Fund

George & Anne Heldman+

Macy’s Foundation

Vicky & Rick Reynolds*+

William R. Schott Family**

Western-Southern Foundation, Inc.

Anonymous (3)+

OTHER NAMED FUNDS

Ruth Meacham Bell Memorial Fund

Frank & Mary Bergstein Fund for Musical Excellence+

Jean K. Bloch Music Library Fund

Cora Dow Endowment Fund

Corbett Educational Endowment**

Belmon U. Duvall Fund

Ewell Fund for Riverbend Maintenance

Linda & Harry Fath

Endowment Fund

Ford Foundation Fund

Natalie Wurlitzer & William Ernest Griess Cello Fund

Fred L. & Katherine H. Groll Trust

Music Director Fund for Excellence

William Hurford and Lesley Gilbertson Family Fund for Guest Pianists

The Mary Ellyn Hutton Fund for Excellence in Music Education

Josephine I. & David J. Joseph, Jr. Scholarship Fund

Richard & Jean Jubelirer & Family Fund*

Elma Margaret Lapp Trust

Jésus López-Cobos Fund for Excellence

Mellon Foundation Fund

Nina Browne Parker Trust

Dorothy Robb Perin & Harold F. Poe Trust

Rieveschl Fund

Thomas Schippers Fund

Martha, Max & Alfred M. Stern

Ticket Fund

Mr. & Mrs. John R. Strauss

Student Ticket Fund

Anna Sinton & Charles P. Taft Fund

Lucien Wulsin Fund

Wurlitzer Season Ticket Fund

CSO Pooled Income Fund

CSO Musicians Emergency Fund

*Denotes support for Annual Music Program Fund

**Denotes support for the 2nd Century Campaign

+Denotes support for the Fund for Musical Excellence

by Simon Stephens

by Torie Wiggins

HONOR ROLL OF CONTRIBUTORS

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops are grateful to the following individuals that support our efforts by making a gift to the Orchestra Fund. We extend our heartfelt thanks to each and every one and pay tribute to them here.

You can join our family of donors online at cincinnatisymphony.org/donate or by contacting the Philanthropy Department at 513.744.3271.

PLATINUM BATON CIRCLE

Gifts of $50,000 and above

Mr. and Mrs. Frederick E. Bryan, III §

Michael L. Cioffi

Sheila and Christopher C. Cole

Susan Friedlander §

Healey Liddle Family Foundation, Mel & Bruce Healey

Patti and Fred Heldman

Harold C. Schott Foundation, Francie & Tom Hiltz

Dr. Lesley Gilbertson and Dr. William Hurford

Florence Koetters

Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. McDonald

Jo Anne and Joe Orndorff

Marilyn J. and Jack D. Osborn §

In Memory of Laura Gamble Thompson

Vicky and Rick Reynolds

Dianne and J. David Rosenberg

Mike and Digi Schueler

Irwin and Melinda Simon

Tom and Dee Stegman

Jackie and Roy Sweeney Family Fund*

Mr. Randolph L. Wadsworth Jr. § Scott and Charla Weiss

GOLD BATON CIRCLE

Gifts of $25,000–$49,999

Dr. and Mrs. Carl G. Fischer

Karlee L. Hilliard §

Edyth B. Lindner

Calvin and Patricia Linnemann

Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Maloney

Mrs. Susan M. McPartlin

G. Franklin Miller and Carolyn Baker Miller

Moe and Jack Rouse §

Ann and Harry Santen §

Mrs. Theodore Striker

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Ullman

Nancy C. Wagner and Patricia M. Wagner § Anonymous (1)

SILVER BATON CIRCLE

Gifts of $15,000–$24,999

Michael P Bergan and Tiffany Hanisch

Dr. and Mrs. John and Suzanne Bossert §

Mr. and Mrs. Larry Brueshaber

Mr. Gregory D. Buckley and Ms. Susan Berry-Buckley

Ms. Melanie M. Chavez

Robert and Debra Chavez

Stephen J Daush

Dianne Dunkelman

Mr. and Mrs. John C. Dupree

Mrs. Charles Fleischmann

Ashley and Bobbie Ford §

L. Timothy Giglio

Tom and Jan Hardy §

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Hirschhorn §

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Isaacs

Patrick and Mary Kirk

Marvin P. Kolodzik §

Mrs. Erich Kunzel

Peter E. Landgren and Judith Schonbach Landgren

John and Ramsey Lanni

Will and Lee Lindner

Alan Margulies and Gale Snoddy

Joseph A. and Susan E. Pichler Fund*

Elizabeth Schulenberg

Kelly Dehan and Rick Staudigel

Sarah Thorburn

Dale Uetrecht

Mr. and Mrs. JD Vance

DeeDee and Gary West §

Mrs. James W. Wilson, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. James M. Zimmerman §

CONDUCTOR’S CIRCLE

Gifts of $10,000–$14,999

Mr. and Mrs. Lars C. Anderson, Sr.

Martha G. Anness §

Robert D. Bergstein

Mrs. Thomas E. Davidson §

Dr. and Mrs. Alberto Espay

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Evans

CCI Design, Molly and Tom Garber

Anne E. Mulder and Rebecca M. Gibbs

Mrs. Michael H. Giuliani

Mr. and Mrs. Scott Gruner

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hone

Whitney and Phillip Long

Mark and Tia Luegering

Holly and Louis Mazzocca

In memory of Bettie Rehfeld

Mr. Bradford Phillips III

Mr. Michael E. Phillips

David and Jenny Powell

Bill and Lisa Sampson

Mark S. and Rosemary K. Schlachter §

Mr. Dennis Schoff and Ms. Nina Sorensen

In memory of Mary and Joseph S. Stern, Jr

Ralph C. Taylor §

Tomcinoh Fund*

Mr. and Mrs. David R. Valz

Anonymous (1)

CONCERTMASTER’S CIRCLE

Gifts of $5,000–$9,999

Drs. Frank and Mary Albers

Heather Apple and Mary Kay Koehler

Thomas P. Atkins

Mrs. Thomas B. Avril

Joe and Patricia Baker

Kathleen and Michael Ball

Robert and Janet Banks

Dava Lynn Biehl §

Louis D. Bilionis and Ann Hubbard

Mr. Henry Boehmer

Robert L. Bogenschutz

Dr. Ralph P. Brown

The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

Gordon Christenson

Sally and Rick Coomes

K.M. Davis

Dennis W. and Cathy Dern

Laura Doerger-Roberts & Peter Roberts

Jean and Rick Donaldson

Nancy and Steve Donovan

Connie and Buzz Dow

Mrs. Diana T. Dwight

In Loving Memory of Diane Zent

Mr. Shaun Ethier and Empower Media Marketing

Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fitzgerald

Marlena and Walter Frank

Dr. and Mrs. Harry F. Fry

Kathy Grote in loving memory of Robert Howes §

Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Hamby

John B. and Judith O. Hansen

Ms. Delores Hargrove-Young

William and Jo Ann Harvey

Dr. James and Mrs. Susan Herman

Mr. and Mrs. Bradley G. Hughes

Mr. Marshall C. Hunt, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Keenan

Mr. and Mrs. Lorrence T. Kellar

Michael and Marilyn Kremzar

Richard and Susan Lauf

Mrs. Jean E. Lemon §

Adele Lippert

Mrs. Robert Lippert

Elizabeth and Brian Mannion

David L. Martin

Mr. Jonathan Martin

Mandare Foundation

Barbara and Kim McCracken §

Linda and James Miller

James and Margo Minutolo

George and Sarah Morrison III

Mr. and Mrs. David W. Motch

David and Beth Muskopf

Mr. Arthur Norman and Mrs. Lisa Lennon Norman

Dr. Manisha Patel and Dr. Michael Curran

Ms. Thienthanh Pham

Drs. Marcia Kaplan and Michael Privitera

Mr. Aftab Pureval

Terry and Marvin Quin

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Quinn, Jr.

Melody Sawyer Richardson §

Ellen Rieveschl §

Elizabeth and Karl Ronn §

James and Mary Russell

Dr. E. Don Nelson and Ms. Julia Sawyer-Nelson

Martha and Lee Schimberg

Brent & Valerie Sheppard

Sue and Glenn Showers §

Rennie and David Siebenhar

Elizabeth C. B. Sittenfeld §

Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Skidmore §

Michael and Donnalyn Smith

Dr. Jean and Mrs. Anne Steichen

Nancy Steman Dierckes §

Brett Stover §

Christopher and Nancy Virgulak

Dr. Barbara R. Voelkel

Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Wachter

Mrs. Ronald F. Walker

Mrs. Paul H. Ward §

Jonathan and Janet Weaver

Donna A. Welsch

Cathy S. Willis

Andrea K. Wiot

Irene A. Zigoris

Anonymous (2)

ARTIST’S CIRCLE

Gifts of $3,000–$4,999

Dr. Charles Abbottsmith

Mr. and Mrs. Richard N. Adams

William Albertson

Mr. Nicholas Apanius

Mr. and Mrs. Gérard Baillely

Ms. Marianna Bettman

Glenn and Donna Boutilier

Thomas A. Braun, III §

Peter and Kate Brown

Janet and Bruce Byrnes

Susan and Burton Closson

Dr. Thomas and Geneva Cook

Peter G. Courlas §

Mr. and Mrs. John Cover

Mr. and Mrs. James Dealy

George Deepe and Kris Orsborn

Bedouin and Randall Dennison

Jim and Elizabeth Dodd

Mrs. Jack E. Drake

Patricia Dudsic

Dr. and Mrs. Stewart B. Dunsker

David and Kari Ellis Fund*

Ann A. Ellison

Hardy and Barbara Eshbaugh

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Fencl

Yan Fridman

Frank and Tara Gardner

Naomi Gerwin

Dr. and Mrs. Ralph A. Giannella

Thomas W. Gougeon

Lesha and Samuel Greengus

Dr. and Mrs. Jack Hahn

Dr. Donald and Laura Harrison

Mr. and Mrs. Robert R. Heidenreich

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hicks

Ruth C. Holthaus

In Memory of Benjamin C. Hubbard §

Mr. and Mrs. Michael C. Hughes

Karolyn Johnsen

Dr. Richard and Lisa Kagan

Dr. Robert W. Keith and Ms. Kathleen Thornton

Don and Kathy King

Lynn Keniston Klahm

Jeff and Mary Ann Knoop

Marie and Sam Kocoshis

Mr. Frank P. Kromer

Mr. Shannon Lawson

Dr. and Mrs. Lynn Y. Lin

Merlanne Louney

Mr. and Mrs. Donald Marshall

Allen-McCarren

Ms. Amy McDiffett

Mary Ann Meanwell

Ms. Sue Miller

Mrs. Patricia Misrach

Mr. and Mrs. David E. Moccia §

Jennifer Morales and Ben Glassman

Ms. Mary Lou Motl

Phyllis Myers and Danny Gray

Mr. and Mrs. John Niehaus

Dr. and Mrs. Richard Park §

Poul D. and JoAnne Pedersen

Alice Perlman

Alice and David Phillips

Mark and Kim Pomeroy

Michael and Katherine Rademacher

Beverly and Dan Reigle

Sandra Rivers

James Rubenstein and Bernadette Unger

Mr. & Mrs. Peter A. Schmid

Brianna and Stuart Wilkins, and their children, Franklin and Molloy, meeting Santa and Mrs. Claus during the Merry & Bright event on Dec. 10.

Photo by Claudia Hershner

Rev. Dr. David V. Schwab

Sandra and David Seiwert

Mr. Rick Sherrer and Dr. Lisa D. Kelly

William A. and Jane Smith

Elizabeth A. Stone

Margaret and Steven Story

Mr. and Mrs. J. Dwight Thompson

Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Tinklenberg

Neil Tollas and Janet Moore

Dr. and Mrs. Galen R. Warren

Jim and George Ann Wesner

Jo Ann Wieghaus

Sheila Williams

Ronna and James Willis

Matt and Lindsay Willmann

Steve and Katie Wolnitzek

Carol and Don Wuebbling

Anonymous (2)

SYMPHONY CIRCLE

Gifts of $1,500–$2,999

Jeff and Keiko Alexander §

Dr. Rob and Ashley Altenau

Beth and Bob Baer

Mrs. Gail Bain

William and Barbara Banks

Mr. Randi Bellner and U.S. Bank

David and Elaine Billmire

Mr. and Mrs. Rodd Bixler

Dorothy Anne Blatt

Towne Properties

Dr. and Mrs. William Bramlage

Mrs. Jo Ann C. Brown

Ms. Jaqui Brumm

Rachelle Bruno and Stephen Bondurant

Chris and Tom Buchert

Dr. Leanne Budde

Ms. Deborah Campbell §

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Carothers

Tom Carpenter and Lynne Lancaster

Dr. Alan Chambers

Catharine W. Chapman §

James Clasper and Cheryl Albrecht

Carol C. Cole §

Dr. George I. Colombel

Randy K. and Nancy R. Cooper

Ms. Andrea Costa

Marjorie Craft

Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Curran, III §

Mr. Louis M. Dauner and Ms. Geraldine N. Wu

Mrs. Shirley Duff

Mr. and Mrs. John G. Earls §

Barry and Judy Evans

Gail F. Forberg §

Dr. Charles E. Frank and Ms. Jan Goldstein

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Fricke

Linda P. Fulton §

Kathleen Gibboney

Mrs. Jay N. Gibbs

Donn Goebel and Cathy McLeod

Dr. and Mrs. Glenn S. Gollobin

Drew Gores and George Warrington

Mr. and Mrs. Gary Greenberg

Jim and Jann Greenberg

Bill and Christy Griesser

John and Elizabeth Grover

Esther B. Grubbs §

Mr. and Mrs. Byron Gustin

Mrs. Jackie Havenstein

Donald and Susan Henson

Mr. Fred Heyse

Mr. Joe Hoskins

Mr. Bradley Hunkler

Heidi Jark and Steve Kenat

Barbara M. Johnson

Ms. Sylvia Johnson

Holly H. Keeler

Mr. and Mrs. Woodrow Keown, Jr.

John and Molly Kerman

Bill and Penny Kincaid

Juri Kolts

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kovarsky

Carol Louise Kruse

Mrs. John H. Kuhn §

Jo Ann and George Kurz

Evelyn and Fred Lang

Charles and Jean Lauterbach

Mary Mc and Kevin Lawson

Dr. Carol P. Leslie

Mr. Peter F. Levin §

Elizabeth Lilly*

Drs. Douglas Linz and Ann Middaugh

Mrs. Marianne Locke

Mr. and Mrs. Clement H. Luken, Jr.

Edmund D. Lyon

Mr. Gerron McKnight

Stephanie and Arthur McMahon

Stephanie McNeill

Becky Miars

John and Roberta Michelman

Terence G. Milligan

Dr. Stanley R. Milstein §

Ms. Laura Mitchell

Mrs. Sally A. More

Susan E. Noelcke

Rick Pescovitz and Kelly Mahan

Sandy Pike §

James W. Rauth §

Drs. Christopher and Blanca Riemann

Stephen and Betty Robinson

Ms. Jeanne C. Rolfes

Nancy and Raymond Rolwing

Jens G Rosenkrantz

Marianne Rowe §

Nancy Ruchhoft

Dr. and Mrs. Michael Scheffler

George Palmer Schober

Tim and Jeannie Schoonover

James P. Schubert

Jacqueline M. Mack and Dr. Edward B. Silberstein

Stephanie A. Smith

Stephen and Lyle Smith

Albert and Liza Smitherman

Bill and Lee Steenken

Christopher and Meghan Stevens

Mrs. Donald C. Stouffer

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Stradling, Jr.

Rich and Nancy Tereba

Linda and Nate Tetrick

Susan and John Tew

Janet Todd

Mr. William Trach

Barbie Wagner

Dr. and Mrs. Matthew and Diana Wallace

Michael L. Walton, Esq

Ted and Mary Ann Weiss

David F. and Sara K. Weston Fund

Virginia Wilhelm

Rev. Anne Warrington Wilson

Robert and Judy Wilson

David and Sharon Youmans

Andi Levenson Young and Scott Young

Mr. and Mrs. Dan Zavon

Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Zierolf

Ms. Nancy Zimpher

Anonymous (12)

CONCERTO CLUB

Gifts of $500–$1,499

Christine O. Adams

Judith Adams

Romola N. Allen §

Mr. and Mrs. Jay Allgood

Lisa Allgood

Mr. Thomas Alloy and Dr. Evaline Alessandrini

Paul and Dolores Anderson

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Andress

Dr. Victor and Dolores Angel

Nancy J. Apfel

Mr. and Mrs. Keith Apple

Judy Aronoff and Marshall Ruchman

Ms. Laura E. Atkinson

Mr. David H. Axt and Ms. Susan L. Wilkinson

Ms. Patricia Baas

Dr. Diane S. Babcock §

Nate and Greta Bachhuber

Mrs. Mary M. Baer

Jerry and Martha Bain

Mr. and Mrs. Carroll R. Baker

Mr. Sean D. Baker

Jack and Diane Baldwin

Peggy Barrett §

Mrs. Polly M. Bassett

Ms. Glenda Bates

Michael and Amy Battoclette

Ms. Shirley Bear

Dr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Bell

Mr. Oliver Benes

Ms. Doris Bergen

Fred Berger

Dr. Allen W. Bernard

Dr. David and Cheryl Bernstein

Glenda and Malcolm Bernstein

Melanie Garner and Michael Berry

Sharon Ann Kerns and Mike Birck

Randal and Peter Bloch

Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Bloomer

Ava Jo Bohl

Ms. Sandra Bolek

Ron and Betty Bollinger

Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Borisch

Dr. Carol Brandon

Marilyn and John Braun

Briggs Creative Services, LLC

Robert and Joan Broersma

Marian H. Brown

Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Brown

Jacklyn and Gary Bryson

Bob and Angela Buechner

Alvin W. Bunis, Jr.

Donald L. and Kathleen Field Burns

Daniel A. Burr

Jack and Marti Butz

John J Byczkowski

Ms. Cindy Callicoat

Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Canarie

Dr. Julia H. Carter

Mike and Shirley Chaney

Dee and Frank Cianciolo Fund*

James Civille

Bob and Tisha Clary

Mr. David Clodfelter

Beverly Kinney and Edward Cloughessy

Mr. Robert Cohen and Ms. Amy J. Katz

Fred W. Colucci

Dr. Pearl J. Compaan

Marilyn Cones

Dr. Margaret Conradi

Janet Conway

Jack and Janice Cook §

Robin Cotton and Cindi Fitton

Dennis and Patricia Coyne

Martha Crafts

Bev and Bob Croskery

Tim and Katie Crowley

Jacqueline Cutshall

Mr. and Mrs. Henry F. Dabek, Jr.

Mr. Joseph and Mrs. Lori Dattilo

Diane and Wayne Dawson

Loren and Polly DeFilippo

Stephen and Cynthia DeHoff

Robert B. Dick, Ph.D.

Ms. Rhonda Dickerscheid

John and Maureen Doellman

Drs. Gerald Dorn and Deborah Hauger

Robert W. Dorsey §

George Dostie

Jack and Diane Douglass

Meredith and Chuck Downton

Mr. James Doyle

Jim and Karen Draut

Emilie and David Dressler

Ms. Andrea Dubroff

Tom and Leslie Ducey

Tom and Dale Due

David and Linda Dugan

Mr. Corwin R. Dunn

Michael D. and Carolyn Camillo Eagen

Joseph and Kristi Echler

Mr. and Mrs. Dale Elifrits

Mr. Daniel Epstein

Barbara Esposito-Ilacqua

Walter & Mary Ann Feige

Ms. Barbara A. Feldmann

Mrs. Michelle Finch

Richard and Elizabeth Findlay

Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Fischer

Michael and Bonnie Fishel

Anne and Alan Fleischer

Ms. Nancy B. Forbriger

Janice and Dr. Tom Forte

Mr. and Ms. Bernard Foster

Susan L. Fremont

Mr. Gregrick A. Frey

In memory of Eugene and Cavell Frey

Mr. and Mrs. Fred Friedman

Michael and Katherine Frisco

Mr. and Mrs. James Fryman

Marjorie Fryxell

Dudley Fulton

Guests of The Willard & Jean Mulford Charitable Fund with Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton and guest artist Quiana Lynell after the New Year’s Eve concert. Credit: CSO Staff

Cincinnati Symphony Club members meet guest conductor Michael Francis after the Oct. 29 CSO performance. Credit: CSO Staff

Ms. Bianca Gallagher

Christophe Galopin

Mrs. James R. Gardner

Ms. Jane Garvey

Mark S. Gay

Dr. Michael Gelfand

David J. Gilner

Dr. and Mrs. Charles J. Glueck

Mr. and Mrs. Jim Goldschmidt

Ms. Arlene Golembiewski

Robert and Cynthia Gray

Carl and Joyce Greber

Dr. Anthony and Ann Guanciale

Dr. Janet C. Haartz and Kenneth V. Smith

Alison and Charles Haas

Mrs. R. C. Haberstroh

Mary and Phil Hagner

Peter Hames

Ham and Ellie Hamilton

Walter and Karen Hand

In memory of Dr. Stuart Handwerger

James and Sally Harper

Dr. Catherine Hart

Mariana Belvedere and Samer Hasan

Mr. John A. Headley

Amy and Dennis Healy

Kenneth and Rachel Heberling

Mrs. Betty H. Heldman §

Howard D. and Mary W. Helms

Mrs. E. J. Hengelbrok, Jr.

Michelle and Don Hershey

Janet & Craig Higgins

Kyle and Robert Hodgkins

Ms. Leslie M. Hoggatt

Mr. and Mrs. Sam R. Hollingsworth

Richard and Marcia Holmes

Ms. Sandra L. Houck

Melissa Huber

Deanna and Henry Huber

Mrs. Carol H. Huether

Dr. G. Edward & Sarah Hughes

Mr. Gordon Hullar

Dr. Maralyn M. Itzkowitz

Mrs. Charles H. Jackson, Jr.

Mark and Caitlin Jeanmougin

Marcia Jelus

Linda Busken and Andrew M. Jergens §

David & Penny Jester

Mr. and Mrs. Paul H. Johnson

Mrs. Marilyn P. Johnston

Elizabeth A. Jones

Scott and Patricia Joseph

Lois and Kenneth Jostworth

Jay and Shirley Joyce

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Judd

Dr. Jerald Kay

Dr. James Kaya and Debra Grauel

Arleene Keller

Dr. and Mrs. Richard Kerstine

Mr. and Mrs. Dave Kitzmiller

Georgianne and Tom Koch

Paul and Carita Kollman

Carol and Scott Kosarko

Mr. Robert Kraus

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Kregor

Kathleen B. and Michael C. Krug Fund*

Matt & Diane Krumanaker

Mark & Eliisabeth Kuhlman

Patricia Lambeck

Asher Lanier

Karen Larsen

Ms. Sally L. Larson

Mrs. Julie Laskey

Mr. and Mrs. John C. Layne

Mr. Alvin R. Lee

Mrs. Judith A. Leege in memory of Philip B. Leege

Patricia E. Leo

Mr. and Mrs. Lance A. Lewis

Mrs. Maxine F. Lewis

Iris Libby

Ms. Presley Lindemann

Mr. Arthur Lindsay

Paula and Nick Link

Mr. Ajene Lomax

Mr. Steven Kent Loveless

Dr. and Mrs. Robert R. Lukin

Timothy and Jill Lynch

Mrs. Mary Reed Lyon

Marshall and Nancy Macks

Mr. and Mrs. Julian A. Magnus

Jenea Malarik

Dr. and Ms. Mark Mandell-Brown

Ms. Cheryl Manning

Andrew and Jean Martin

Ms. Cynthia Mason

David Mason §

Mr. and Mrs. Dean Matz

Tim and Trish McDonald

Robert and Heather McGrath

Mr. Bernard McKay

Mark McKillip and Amira Beer

Mrs. Karin McLennan

Charles and JoAnn Mead

Ms. Carol M. Meibers

Ms. Nancy Menne

Dr. and Mrs. Richard A. Meyer

Michael V. and Marcia L. Middleton

Rachel and Charlie Miller

Mr. Roger Miller

Sonia R. Milrod

Mr. Steven Monder

Eileen W. and James R. Moon

Regeana and Al Morgan

Vivian Kay Morgan

Mrs. Ivan Morse

Mr. Scott Muhlhauser

Miami University College of Creative Arts

Mrs. and Mr. Katie Murry

Kevin and Lane Muth

Alan Flaherty and Patti Myers §

Mr. William Naumann

Mr. and Mrs. Norman Neal

Mr. Ted Nelson and Ms. Ixi Chen

Mr. Gerald Newfarmer

Jim and Sharon Nichols

Jane Oberschmidt §

Maureen Kelly and Andrew O’Driscoll

Mr. Gerardo Orta

Nan L. Oscherwitz

Elizabeth Osterburg

Ms. Sylvia Osterday

Eric Paternoster

Don and Margie Paulsen

The Pavelka Family

John and Francie Pepper *

Mr. Mark Phillips

Ann and Marty Pinales

Patsy & Larry Plum

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Post

Mrs. Stewart Proctor

Mr. Robert Przygoda

Dr. Aik Khai Pung

Ms. Mary Redington

Mrs. Angela M. Reed

Dr. and Mrs. Robert Reed

Mrs. Hera Reines

Dr. Robert Rhoad and Kitsa Tassian Rhoad

Stephanie Richardson

Mr. David Robertson

Laurie and Dan Roche

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Rodner

Mr. and Mrs. Ian Rodway

Dr. Anna Roetker

Stanley & Shannon Romanstein

Bob and Mary Ann Roncker

Dr. and Mrs. Gary Roselle

Amy and John Rosenberg

Mr. and Mrs. G. Roger Ross

Patricia Rouster

Dr. Deborah K. Rufner

J. Gregory and Judith B. Rust

Dr. Richard S. Sarason and Ms. Anne S. Arenstein

Mr. Christian J. Schaefer

Mr. Joseph A. Schilling

Ms. Carol Schleker

Jane and Wayne Schleutker

Dr. and Mrs. Michael Schmerler

Frederick R. Schneider

Glenda C. Schorr Fund*

Carol J. Schroeder §

Mary D. Schweitzer

Joe Segal and Debbie Friedman

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Semancik

Drs. Mick and Nancy Shaughnessy

The Shepherd Chemical Company

Michael Shepherd

Hal and Sandy Shevers

Alfred and Carol Shikany

Ms. Joycee Simendinger

Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Skirtz

Ms. Martha Slager

Susan and David Smith

Ms. Margaret Smith

Mark M. Smith (In memory of Terri C. Smith)

Phillip and Karen Sparkes

Mrs. John A. Spiess

Paula Spitzmiller

Marian P. Stapleton

Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Stautberg

Ms. Ruth M. Stechschulte

Susan M. and Joseph Eric Stevens

Mr. Jason V. Stitt

Stephanie and Joseph Stitt

Nancy and Gary Strassel

Ms. Susan R. Strick

Mr. George Stricker, Jr.

Mr. Mark Stroud

Patricia Strunk §

Ms. Judi Sturwold

Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Sullivan

Dr. Alan and Shelley Tarshis

Mr. Fred Tegarden

Carlos and Roberta Teran

Dr. Rachel Thienprayoon

GIFT OF MUSIC: November 15–December 31, 2022

George and Pamela Thomas

Pamela and Paul Thompson

Dr. Ilse van der Bent

Mr. D. R. Van Lokeren

William and Bonnie VanEe

Dr. Judith Vermillion

Ms. Barbara Wagner

Mary and Jack Wagner §

Mr. and Mrs. James L. Wainscott

Jane A. Walker

Sarella Walton

Mrs. Louise Watts

Mr. Gerald V. Weigle, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Welsh

Maryhelen West

Mr. Donald White

Ms. Elizabeth White

Janice T. Wieland

Ms. Desiree Willis

Mr. Dean Windgassen and Ms. Susan Stanton Windgassen §

Craig and Barbara Wolf

Mrs. Ann Wolford

Don and Karen Wolnik

Rebecca Seeman and David Wood

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wylly III

Mr. John M. Yacher

Jeff Yang

Mrs. Darleen Young

Judy and Martin Young

Mr. David Youngblood and Ms. Ellen Rosenman

David A. and Martha R. Yutzey

Dr. and Mrs. Daryl Zeigler

Meg Zeller and Alan Weinstein

Ms. Joan Zellner

Moritz and Barbara Ziegler

Thomas and Joyce Zigler

Mr. Richard K. Zinicola and Ms. Linda R. Holthaus

David and Cynthia Zink

John and Mary Ann Zorio

Ms. Jayne Zuberbuhler

Anonymous (22)

GIFTS IN-KIND

Mrs. Katherine Anderson

Ms. Melanie M. Chavez

Drive Media House

William & Anna Fluke

Graeter’s Ice Cream

Harris Media Co.

Jones Day

The Voice of Your Customer Wegman Company, Inc.

List as of January 10, 2023

* Denotes a fund of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation.

§ Denotes members of The Thomas Schippers Legacy Society. Individuals who have made a planned gift to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Pops Orchestra are eligible for membership in the Society. For more information, please contact Kate Farinacci at 513.744.3202.

The following people provided gifts to the Gift of Music Fund to celebrate an occasion, to mark a life of service to the Orchestra, or to commemorate a special date. Their contributions are added to the Orchestra’s endowment. For more information on how to contribute to this fund, please call 513.744.3271.

In Honor of Betty S. Glover

Ms. Marie Speziale

In Honor of T. Douglas Mast

Astrid R. Mast

In Honor of Michael Schmerler

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Ziggler

In Memory of James Baldwin Pamela Daniels

In Memory of Bettylu M. Bryan Douglas Flaker

In Memory of Dr. Felix Canestri Belle Tire Purchasing Team

In Memory of Sue Friedlander

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph W. Hirschhorn

Mr. and Mrs. Douglas M. Magenheim

Alfred Cohen and Ann Pappenheimer

Gary and DeeDee West

In Memory of Theresa and John Holubeck

Bruce and Deborah Humphrey

In Memory of James R. Peacock Ann Peacock

THE THOMAS SCHIPPERS LEGACY SOCIETY

Thomas Schippers was Music Director from 1970 to 1977. He left not only wonderful musical memories, but also a financial legacy with a personal bequest to the Orchestra. The Thomas Schippers Legacy Society recognizes those who contribute to the Orchestra with a planned gift. We thank these members for their foresight and generosity. For more information on leaving your own legacy, contact Kate Farinacci at 513.744.3202.

Clifford J. Goosmann & Andrea M. Wilson

Mrs. Madeleine H. Gordon

J. Frederick & Cynthia Gossman

Kristin & Stephen Mullin

Christopher & Susan Muth

Patti Myers

Susan & Kenneth Newmark

Bill & Lee Steenken

Tom & Dee Stegman

Barry Steinberg

Nancy M. Steman

Mr. & Mrs. James R. Adams

Jeff & Keiko Alexander

Mrs. Robert H. Allen

Paul R. Anderson

Mrs. Charles William Anness

Carole J. Arend

Donald C. Auberger, Jr.

Dr. Diane Schwemlein Babcock

Henrietta Barlag

Peggy Barrett

Jane* & Ed Bavaria

Dava Lynn Biehl*

David & Elaine Billmire

Walter Blair

Lucille* & Dutro Blocksom

Rosemary & Frank Bloom

Dr. John & Suzanne Bossert

Dr. Mollie H. Bowers-Hollon

Ronald Bozicevich

Thomas A. Braun, III

Joseph Brinkmeyer

Mr. & Mrs. Frederick Bryan, III

Harold & Dorothy Byers

Deborah Campbell & Eunice M. Wolf

Myra Chabut

Catharine W. Chapman

Michael L. Cioffi & Rachael Rowe

Mrs. Jackson L. Clagett III

Norma L. Clark*

Lois & Phil* Cohen

Leland M.* & Carol C. Cole

Grace A. Cook

Jack & Janice Cook

Mr. & Mrs. Charles Cordes

Andrea D. Costa

Peter G. Courlas & Nick Tsimaras*

Mr. & Mrs. Charles E Curran III

Amy & Scott Darrah, Meredith & Will Darrah & children

Caroline H. Davidson

Harrison R.T. Davis

Ms. Kelly M. Dehan

Amy & Trey Devey

Robert W. Dorsey

Jon & Susan Doucleff

Mr. & Mrs. John Earls

Barry & Judy Evans

Linda & Harry Fath

Alan Flaherty

Mrs. Richard A. Forberg

Ashley & Barbara Ford

Guy & Marilyn Frederick

Rich Freshwater & Family

Susan Friedlander

Mr. Nicholas L. Fry

Linda P. Fulton

H. Jane Gavin

Mrs. Philip O. Geier*

Kenneth A. Goode

Kathy Grote

Esther Grubbs, Marci Bein & Mindi Hamby

William Hackman

Vincent C. Hand & Ann E. Hagerman

Tom & Jan Hardy

William L. Harmon

Bill Harnish* & John Harnish

Dr. & Mrs. Morton L. Harshman

Mary J. Healy

Frank G. Heitker

Anne P. Heldman

Betty & John* Heldman

Ms. Roberta Hermesch

Karlee L. Hilliard

Michael H. Hirsch

Mr. & Mrs. Joseph W. Hirschhorn

Daniel J. Hoffheimer

Kenneth L. Holford

Mr. George R. Hood

Mr. & Mrs. Terence L. Horan

Mrs. Benjamin C. Hubbard

Susan & Tom Hughes

Carolyn R. Hunt

Dr. William Hurford & Dr. Lesley Gilbertson

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Isaacs

Julia M. F. B. Jackson

Michael & Kathleen Janson

Andrew MacAoidh Jergens

Jean C. Jett

Frank Jordan*

Margaret H. Jung

Mace C. Justice

Karen Kapella

Dr. & Mrs.* Steven Katkin

Rachel Kirley & Joseph Jaquette

Carolyn Koehl

Marvin Kolodzik

Randolph & Patricia Krumm

Theresa M. Kuhn

Warren & Patricia Lambeck

Owen and Cici Lee

Steve Lee

M. Drue Lehmann

Mrs. Jean E. Lemon

Mr. Peter F. Levin

George & Barbara Lott

Janice* and Gary Lubin

Mr.* & Mrs. Ronald Lyons

Marilyn J. Maag

Margot Marples

David L. Martin

Allen* & Judy Martin

David Mason

Mrs. Barbara Witte McCracken

Laura Kimble McLellan

Dr. Stanley R. Milstein

Mrs. William K. Minor

Mr. & Mrs. D. E. Moccia

Dr. & Mrs. Theodore Nicholas

Patricia Grignet Nott*

Jane Oberschmidt

Marja-Liisa Ogden

Julie & Dick* Okenfuss

Jack & Marilyn Osborn

Dr. & Mrs. Richard E. Park, MD

Mr. & Mrs. Charles H. Pease

Poul D. & JoAnne Pedersen

Sandy & Larry* Pike

Mrs. Harold F. Poe

Anne M. Pohl

Irene & Daniel Randolph

James W. Rauth

Barbara S. Reckseit

Melody Sawyer Richardson

Ellen Rieveschl

Elizabeth & Karl Ronn

Moe & Jack Rouse

Marianne Rowe

Ann & Harry Santen

Rosemary & Mark Schlachter

Carol J. Schroeder

Mrs. William R. Seaman

Dr. Brian Sebastian

Mrs. Mildred J. Selonick

Mrs. Robert B. Shott

Sue & Glenn Showers

Irwin and Melinda Simon

Betsy & Paul* Sittenfeld

Sarah Garrison Skidmore

Adrienne A. Smith

David & Sonja* Snyder

Marie Speziale

Mr. & Mrs. Christopher L. Sprenkle

Michael M. Spresser

Barry & Sharlyn Stare

Cynthia Starr

John and Helen Stevenson

Mary* & Bob Stewart

Brett Stover

Dr. Robert & Jill Strub

Patricia M. Strunk

Ralph & Brenda* Taylor

Conrad F. Thiede

Minda F. Thompson

Carrie & Peter Throm

Dr. & Mrs. Thomas Todd

Nydia Tranter

Dick & Jane Tuten

Thomas Vanden Eynden and Judith Beiting

Mr. & Mrs. Robert Varley

Mr. & Mrs. James K. Votaw

Mr. & Mrs.* Randolph L. Wadsworth Jr.

Jack K. & Mary V. Wagner

Nancy C. Wagner

Patricia M. Wagner

Mr.* & Mrs. Paul Ward

Jo Anne & Fred Warren

Mr. Scott Weiss & Dr. Charla Weiss

Anne M. Werner

Gary & Diane West

Charles A. Wilkinson

Susan Stanton Windgassen

Mrs. Joan R. Wood

Alison & Jim Zimmerman

* Deceased

New Schippers members are in bold

CSO Death & Transfiguration: Mar. 4–5

Ludlow High School

Murray State University

Pops Black Panther: Mar. 10–12

Cincy MENtors

Friends & Family of Analise Ingraham

Friends & Family of Jasmine Artikova

Friends & Family of Jennifer Palmer

Friends & Family of Laura Borsky

Friends & Family of Michael Charnay

Hanover College

Mount Washington Schools

Springboro High School

Waynedale High School

CSO The Mermaid: Mar. 17–18

National Instrumentalist Mentoring and Advancement Network (NIMAN)

Ohio Christian University

CSO Beethoven 5: Mar. 24–26

Barrington of Oakley

Bellevue High School

Breathitt County High School

Christian Village at Mason

Gamble Montessori High School

George Rogers Clark High School

Gray Middle School

Luda Gikhman and Friends

Maple Knoll Village

Otterbein Retirement Community

St. Ursula Academy

The Kenwood by Senior Star

The Knolls of Oxford

Twin Lakes at Montgomery

Wyoming Middle School

Lollipops Family Concert: Mar. 25

Cincinnati Boy Choir

Daisy Troop 4048

Friends and Family of Amanda Olton

Friends and Family of Ashley Knollman

Friends and Family of Caroline Streicher

Girl Scout Troop 4436

Witt Family

ENJOY

• Groups of 10+ save 25% on most concerts and seniors and students save even more!

• Curate your own event with a private reception, guided tour or meet and greet—the possibilities are endless. Contact

ADMINISTRATION

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT & CEO

Jonathan Martin President & CEO

Andrea Maisonpierre Hessel

Executive Assistant to the President and CEO

ARTISTIC PLANNING & PRODUCTION

Robert McGrath

Chief Operating Officer

Shannon Faith Assistant to the Chief Operating Officer

Artistic Planning

Nate Bachhuber

Vice President of Artistic Planning

Anthony Paggett

Director of Artistic Planning

Laura Ruple

Assistant, Artistic Planning and Music Director

Nick Minion

Artist Liaison

Sam Strater Senior Advisor for Cincinnati

Pops Planning

Shuta Maeno

Artistic Planning Intern

Production

Paul Pietrowski

Vice President of Orchestra & Production

Brenda Tullos

Director of Orchestra Personnel

Naomi Sarchet

Orchestra Personnel & Operations Manager

Laura Bordner Adams

Director of Operations

Alex Magg

Production Manager, CSO & May Festival

Carlos Javier

Production Manager, Pops

Digital Content & Innovation

KC Commander Director of Digital Content & Innovation

Lee Snow

Digital Content

Technology Manager

Corinne Wiseman

Digital Content Manager

Kaitlyn Driesen

Digital Production Manager

Learning

Carol Dary Dunevant Director of Learning

Kyle Lamb

Learning Programs Manager

Hollie Greenwood Learning Coordinator

Ian McIntyre

Sound Discoveries

Teaching Artist

Emily Jordan

Sound Discoveries

Teaching Assistant

Jaysean Johnson Education Programs Intern

Elizabeth Reyna

CCM Arts Administration

Graduate Assistant

COMMUNICATIONS

Felecia Tchen Kanney

Vice President of Communications

Tyler Secor Director of Publications & Content Development

Charlie Balcom

Social Media Manager

Wajeeh Khan Communications Intern

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT | DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION

Harold Brown

The Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones

Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer

Tiffany Cooper Director of Community Engagement and Diversity

Amanda Franklin Community Engagement Manager

Pamela Jayne Volunteer and Community Engagement Coordinator

Nicole Ortiz

Community Engagement Intern

PHILANTHROPY

Mary McFadden Lawson, CAP® Chief Philanthropy Officer

Sean Baker

Director of Institutional Giving

Bhavya Nayna Channan Corporate Relations Manager

Kristin Hill

Institutional Giving Coordinator

Leslie Hoggatt, CFRE

Director of Individual Giving and Donor Services

Catherine Hann, CFRE Assistant Director of Individual Giving

[Open]

Individual Giving Manager

Emma Steward Donor Engagement Coordinator

Penny Hamilton

Philanthropy Assistant

Kate Farinacci

Director of Special Campaigns and Legacy Giving

Ashley Coffey

Foundation and Grants Manager

D’Anté McNeal

Special Projects Coordinator

Quinton Jefferson Research Grants Administrator

Patrick Koshewa

Philanthropy Intern

FINANCE & DATA SERVICES

Richard Freshwater Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Finance

Kristina Pfeiffer Director of Finance, CSO

Elizabeth Engwall Accounting Manager, CSO

Judy Mosely Accounting Clerk, CSO

Laura Van Pelt Accounting Clerk, CSO

Judy Simpson Director of Finance, MEMI

Marijane Klug

Accounting Manager, MEMI

Deborah Benjamin Accounting Clerk, MEMI

Matthew Grady

Accounting Manager, MEMI

Sydney Mucha Accounting Clerk, MEMI

Data Services

Sharon D. Grayton Data Services Manager

Tara Williams

Data Services Manager

Kathleen Curry Data Entry Clerk

HUMAN RESOURCES

Kyle Wynk-Sivashankar

Vice President of Human Resources

Jenny Ryan

Human Resources Manager

Megan Inderbitzin-Tsai Payroll Manager

Natalia Lerzundi

Payroll Specialist

MARKETING

Michael Frisco

Vice President of Marketing

Michelle Lewandowski

Director of Marketing

Jon Dellinger

Copywriter/Marketing Manager

Alexis Shambley

Marketing & Audience Insight Coordinator

Carmen Granger

Subscriptions Marketing Manager

Stephanie Lazorchak

Graphic Designer

Amber Ostaszewski

Director of Audience Engagement

Abigail Karr

Audience Engagement Manager

Tina Marshall

Director of Ticketing & Audience Services

Nic Bizub

Group Sales Manager

Elaine Hudson

Assistant Box Office Manager

Hannah Kaiser Assistant Box Office Manager

Djenaba Adams Marketing Intern

PATRON SERVICES REPRESENTATIVES

Rebecca Ammerman, Lead

Ellisen Blair, Lead

Drew Dolan, Lead

Wendy Marshall, Lead

Erik Nordstrom, Lead

Craig Doolin

Mary Duplantier

Ebony Jackson

Grace Kim

Hayley Maloney

CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA & CINCINNATI POPS

Music Hall, 1241 Elm Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Administrative Offices: 513.621.1919 |

hello@cincinnatisymphony.org