BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048
I. Allegro – Adagio
II. Allegro — INTERMISSION —
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 8 in C minor
I. Allegro moderato
II. Scherzo: Allegro moderato
III. Adagio: Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend
IV. Finale: Feierlich nicht schnell
CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 54 MINUTES INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION.
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
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PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor
Recognized as a masterful and dynamic presence in the conducting world, Peter Oundjian has developed a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, an eye towards collaboration, innovative programming, leadership and training with students and an engaging personality. Strengthening his ties to Colorado, Oundjian is now Principal Conductor of the Colorado Symphony in addition to Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival, which successfully pivoted to a virtual format during the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021.
Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019. He led the orchestra on several international tours to Europe and the USA, conducting the first performance by a North American orchestra at Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall in 2014.
From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship. Oundjian led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances at the Bregenz Festival, the Dresden Festival as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their Music Director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.
Highlights of past seasons include appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Iceland Symphony, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With the onset of world-wide concert cancellations, support for students at Yale and Juilliard became a priority. In the 2022/2023 season, Oundjian conducted the opening weekend of Atlanta Symphony, followed by return engagements with Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, Colorado and Toronto symphonies, as well as a visit to New World Symphony.
Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, Oundjian regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis and New World symphony orchestras.
An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.
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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048
Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, and died on July 28, 1750 in Leipzig. The Brandenburg Concertos were composed around 1720. Their premieres are unknown. The score calls for three violins, three violas, three cello and continuo. Duration is about 10 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra September 11-13, 2020, conducted by Christopher Dragon at Red Rocks.
Brandenburg, in Bach’s day, was a political and military powerhouse. It had been part of the Holy Roman Empire since the mid-12th century, and its ruler — the Markgraf, or Margrave — was charged with defending and extending the northern imperial border (“mark,” or “marche” in Old English and Old French), in return for which he was allowed to be an Elector of the Emperor. The house of Hohenzollern acquired the margraviate of Brandenburg in 1415, and the family embraced the Reformation a century later with such authority that they came to be regarded as the leaders of German Protestantism; Potsdam, near Berlin, was chosen as the site of the electoral court in the 17th century.
Johann Sebastian Bach met Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1719, during his tenure as music director at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Bach worked at Cöthen from 1717 to 1723, and early in 1719, he was sent by Leopold to Berlin to finalize arrangements for the purchase of a new harpsichord, a large, two-manual model made by Michael Mietke, instrument-builder to the royal court. While in Berlin, Bach played for Christian Ludwig, who was so taken with his music that he asked him to send some of his compositions for his library. Bach lost an infant son a few months later, however, and in 1720, his wife died and he rejected an offer to become organist at the Jacobkirche in Hamburg, so it was more than two years before he fulfilled Brandenburg’s request. By 1721, Leopold had become engaged to marry a woman who looked askance at his huge expenditures for musical entertainment. Bach seems to have realized that when she moved in, he would probably be moved out, so he began casting about for a more secure position. He remembered the interest the Margrave Brandenburg had shown in his music, so he picked six of the finest concertos he had written at Cöthen, and sent them to Christian Ludwig in March 1721 with a flowery dedication in French — but to no avail. No job materialized at Potsdam, and in 1723, Bach moved to Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, where he remained for the rest of his life.
The Third Brandenburg represents a special type of the Baroque concerto grosso — the orchestral concerto. Rather than a specific group of solo instruments being set off against the ensemble, the orchestra is, in effect, a collection of soloists. Each of the nine instruments comprising the ensemble (three each of violins, violas and cellos) may act as soloist, but more frequently a single group is featured while the others serve as accompaniment. The Third Brandenburg also differs from others in the set in that it has only two movements, the usual slow, middle movement being reduced to just two chords occupying a single measure. Bach probably intended that some of the performers improvise in this place (he may well have done so himself on the violin or the harpsichord), but he left no specific instructions.
Lacking, as it does, a slow movement, the Third Brandenburg becomes a virtual dynamo of rhythmic energy. The opening measures not only introduce the movement, but also serve as a storehouse of motives from which the ensuing music is spun. The work’s “conversational” quality
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is much in evidence as the Concerto unfolds, with special care taken to contrast the subtle timbres of the three instrumental groups. The movement bounds along with great good humor and high spirits to its conclusion. After a brief respite of a lone Adagio measure, the whirling motion resumes with a vigorous gigue, the fast, triple-meter dance often used as the closing movement of Baroque instrumental pieces. Like all such 18th-century dances, this movement is divided into two large sections, each of which may be repeated.
@ANTON BRUCKNER (1824-1896)
Symphony No. 8 in C minor Anton Bruckner was born on September 4, 1824 in Ansfelden, near Linz, Austria, and died on October 11, 1896 in Vienna. He began his Eighth Symphony in September 1884 and completed the first version three years later, in September 1887. The score was extensively revised between 1887 and 1890, and was given its premiere on December 18, 1892 by the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Hans Richter. The score calls for triple woodwinds plus contrabassoon, four horns, four tenor (Wagner) tubas, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, three harps and strings. This is the first performance by the orchestra in the modern era.
Anton Bruckner was an unlikely figure to be at the center of 19th-century music’s fiercest feud. He was a country bumpkin — with his shabby peasant clothes, his rural dialect, his painful shyness with women, his naive view of life — in one of the world’s most sophisticated cities, Vienna. Bruckner had the glory (and the curse) to have included himself among the ardent disciples of Richard Wagner, and his fate was indissolubly bound up with that of his idol from the time he dedicated his Third Symphony to him in 1877.
While “Bayreuth Fever” was infecting most of Western civilization during the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a strong anti-Wagner clique in Vienna headed by the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick. Hanslick, a virulent spokesman against emotional and programmatic display in music, championed the cause of Brahms and never missed a chance to fire a blazing barb at the Wagner camp. Bruckner, teaching and composing in Vienna within easy range of Hanslick’s vitriolic pen, was one of his favorite targets. He called Bruckner’s music “unnatural,” “sickly,” “inflated” and “decayed,” and intrigued to stop the performance of his works whenever possible. Bruckner felt that much of the rejection his early symphonies suffered could be attributed to Hanslick’s scathing reviews. When honor and renown finally came to the composer late in his life, Austrian Emperor Franz Josef asked the old man what he would like more than anything else. Bruckner requested that the Emperor make Hanslick stop saying nasty things about his music. It is little wonder that Bruckner sent an unusual request to the Vienna Philharmonic Society after they had scheduled his Seventh Symphony for its Viennese premiere in the wake of the work’s success in Germany. He thanked the Society for its kind consideration but asked them to withdraw the performance “because of the influential critics who would be likely to damage my dawning success in Germany.” Though the work received the expected critical battering when it reached Vienna, the public was finally willing to grant the patient Bruckner his due, and
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he was recalled to the stage three or four times after each movement by the applause. Among the audience on that occasion was Johann Strauss the Younger, the King of the Waltz, who desperately wanted to write a successful grand opera and be recognized as a “serious composer.” Strauss sent a telegram to Bruckner with the terse, but meaningful, message, “Am much moved — it was the greatest impression of my life.”
The success of the Seventh Symphony after its 1884 premiere marked the beginning of Bruckner’s wide recognition and gave a long-overdue boost to his self-esteem. He worked with enthusiasm and confidence on the next Symphony in the series, begun in September of that year, though not completed until 1887. When the piece was finished, he sent it to Hermann Levi, the first conductor of Wagner’s Parsifal, who had given a triumphant performance of the Seventh Symphony in Munich and whom the composer respected enough to address as “my artistic father.” Levi, however, though he was an ardent admirer of Bruckner, claimed he could make neither head nor tail of the new work. When Bruckner was informed that Levi had rejected the score for performance, he was shattered. He considered the Eighth Symphony to be his greatest composition, and fully expected that it would follow its predecessor in making the rounds of the world’s music capitals. The rejection plunged him into such a depressed state that he even considered suicide, but his staunch Catholicism prevented such an extreme action. All his self-confidence of the preceding three years vanished, and he went through a period when he lost faith not only in the quality of the Eighth Symphony, but in the earlier symphonies as well.
With the poor advice of well-meaning friends and students who were trying to bring about more frequent performances of their master’s music, Bruckner undertook a series of extensive revisions of most of his symphonies. So time-consuming were these efforts that they prevented him from completing his Ninth Symphony, which was begun in 1887 and taken up many times during the last decade of his life, but left unfinished at his death in 1896. The revisions of the Eighth Symphony were many and were not completed until 1890.
“In the Eighth Symphony is unfolded in full tonal grandeur the sublime Christian epic of human suffering, humility and transfiguration through faith that had been Bruckner’s message from the outset. [No other work] had pierced so deeply into his soul for its roots,” wrote Gabriel Engel. The emotional progression from the somber, mystical beginning, through the galvanic Scherzo and the visionary Adagio, to the exultation of the finale reflects Bruckner’s belief in the movement of the Christian soul through the vale of tears into eternal delight. This musicophilosophical journey is descended from the great symphonies of Beethoven, especially the Ninth, and these two titanic masterworks share a similar conceptual framework.
The opening movement of the Eighth Symphony is filled with a sense of tragic struggle and somber acceptance. Next comes not the expected slow movement, but rather a scherzo, since Bruckner realized, as had Beethoven in the “Choral” Symphony, that the massive first movement had to be balanced and answered by music of lighter weight. There follows perhaps Bruckner’s most moving and noble Adagio, a transcendent view in which the composer’s inspiration seems to have captured a glimpse of the most exalted celestial regions. The finale is a sublime edifice of musical architecture and a ringing, life-affirming paean that closes with the simultaneous restatement of the principal themes of all four movements.
“The essence of Bruckner’s symphonies,” wrote Deryck Cooke, “is that they express the most
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fundamental human impulses, unalloyed by civilized conditioning, with an extraordinary purity and grandeur of expression ... on a monumental scale.” Bruckner, the simple peasant with his country dialect and his old-fashioned clothes, had seen heaven.
The music of Bruckner is unique in the history of the art. He has been called the “Wagner of the Symphony,” after the mortal whom he revered above all others, but this appellation implies that his work is more derivative than can be substantiated by the musical scores or by his life. Bruckner, scion of generations of Catholic peasants, passed his life in a sort of unending religious ecstasy and fervent humility that held him aloof from the exigencies of everyday life. Even Wagner, who was as mean and self-serving as any musician who ever lived, could not resist the guileless simplicity and utter sincerity of this extraordinary man. Bruckner’s early works were mostly service music, plainly intended to praise God. When he turned to orchestral music later in life — his First Symphony did not appear until he was 42 — the intent and philosophy of his sacred compositions were transferred to the newly adopted genre. Bruckner feared constantly that his work would not please his Maker, that God would catch him lazing about rather than utilizing his time and talent to their fullest capacity. His unsuccessful race against death to finish the sublime Ninth Symphony, which he dedicated simply and appropriately “To God,” is one of the most pitiable episodes in 19th-century music. On many days, he forced himself to take pen in hand when he hardly had strength enough to lift a spoon. Still, he felt he had not completely disappointed the Deity in everything. Bruckner often said (and probably constantly thought), “I will present to God the score of my Te Deum, and he will judge me mercifully.”
The music created by such a visionary as Bruckner needs special care from the listener. His symphonies have often been called “cathedrals in sound,” and the phrase is appropriate both in the mood that it conveys and in its implication of grandeur. Such works by their very nature must be large in sonority and temporal duration if the vision is to be realized — a twenty-minute Bruckner symphony would be as ludicrous as the massive baldachino of St. Peter’s dropped onto the altar of the neighborhood parish church. It is this very striving toward the infinite, toward the transcendent, that raises Bruckner’s best works to a plane achieved by few others in the history of music. Those willing to meet Bruckner on his own terms, to partake of the special hour that he grants the listener in each of his symphonies, find an experience as fulfilling and deeply satisfying as any that the art has to offer. Wrote Lawrence Gilman, “He was and is a seer and prophet — one who knew the secret of a strangely exalted discourse, grazing the sublime, though his speech was both halting and prolix. He stammered, and he knew not when to stop. But sometimes, rapt and transfigured, he saw visions and dreamed dreams as colossal, as grandiose, as full of awe in lonely splendor, as those of William Blake. We know that for Bruckner, too, some ineffable beauty flamed and sank and flamed again across the night.”
COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, MARY LOUISE BURKE, director
Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 7:30pm
Boettcher Concert Hall
JOHN MORRIS
Main Title from The Producers – 1968
MEL BROOKS/orch. Besterman The Producers – 1967/2005 I Wanna Be a Producer That Face Springtime for Hitler
JOHN MORRIS/arr. O’Neil Main Theme from The Elephant Man
BARBER Adagio for Strings
JOHN MORRIS History of the World (Part One) – 1981
J. STRAUSS, Jr. Blue Danube Waltz
MORRIS/arr. O’Neil The Inquisition
MEL BROOKS
Robin Hood: Men in Tights – 1993 Men in Tights
SUESSE/arr. O’Neil The Night is Young and You’re So Beautiful
arr. Chase
SPOTLIGHT 2024/25
The Muppet Medley
MEL BROOKS/ orch. Besterman Young Frankenstein – 1974
The Brain Roll in the Hay
Join the Family Business
Transylvanian Lullaby
Deep Love
JOHN MORRIS
Main Title from High Anxiety – 1977
MORRIS/BROOKS Blazing Saddles – 1974
HARBURG/DUKE/ arr. Sayre
April in Paris
MEL BROOKS/arr. O’Neil I’m Tired
JOHN MORRIS
Main Title from Blazing Saddles
CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 40 MINUTES INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION.
Saturday’S concert iS SponSored by norma Horner & JoHn eSteS, and KatHie & KeitH Finger
PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
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TAYLOR MARTIN, director designate, Colorado Symphony Chorus
Taylor Martin is Director Designate and Conductor for the Colorado Symphony Chorus and Artistic Director of ELUS Vocal Ensemble. In 2019 Taylor made his debut with the Colorado Symphony conducting their staged version of Handel’s Messiah, titled Messiah: Awakening. Now in his tenth season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus, he has frequently taken the podium during the holiday season for productions of A Colorado Christmas and Messiah. Taylor has prepared the Chorus for productions with the Colorado Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Dallas Symphony, and he recently conducted a concert tour of Austria featuring works for chorus and organ, leading Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum with the Salzburg Domorchester. Known for his musical versatility, Taylor has prepared choruses for Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, Al Green, and Josh Groban, among other critically acclaimed artists. Now in his eighth season with ELUS Vocal Ensemble, Taylor has led performances of great a cappella repertoire through imaginative programming of new music and major works, such as David Lang’s the little match girl passion and Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem to considerable acclaim.
DEVIN DESANTIS, vocalist
Devin DeSantis is a Jeff nominated artist who is regarded as one of Chicago’s leading theatrical vocalists. He has been honored to work with symphonies and theatre companies around the country and the world. And it all began here—at Boettcher Concert Hall, as a member of the Colorado Children’s Chorale. His solo career began with the Colorado Symphony at the age of 11 in Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, conducted by Marin Alsop. He’s a proud graduate of Northwestern University’s School of Music, as well as a proud member of Actor’s Equity on stages in Chicago, New York, and other wonderfully essential Equity houses around the country. Favorite professional theatre credits include: Dr. Pomatter in Waitress, Charlie Price in Kinky Boots, Tommy in The Who’s Tommy, Rapunzel’s Prince in Into the Woods, Marius in Les Miserables, Prince Eric in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Britt Craig/Young Soldier in Parade, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Dr. Madden/Fine in Next to Normal, Anyone Can Whistle starring Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald, and The Most Happy Fella starring George Hearn. He was a singer for 4 years in The Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring The Rockettes at the world-renowned Radio City Music Hall. In between concerts and shows, he is a lead singer with the Bluewater Kings Band, and a member of The Four C Notes: a Tribute to Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. Above all, he is a loving husband and proud father. Have courage and be kind.
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ALLISON SILL, vocalist
Allison Sill is thrilled to be back performing her favorite Mel Brooks pieces with the Colorado Symphony! Allison is a Chicago based artist and a proud member of AEA. Stand out Chicago credits include The Penelopiad (Goodman Theatre), Inga in Young Frankenstein (Drury Lane Oakbrook), Laurey in Oklahoma, Regional Premiere of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Frozen (Paramount Theatre), April in Company (Venus Cabaret Theater) and work at Marriott Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Royal George Theater, Court Theatre, Mercury Theater Chicago, and Theatre at the Center. Allison is a graduate of Ball State University. Endless thanks to the Colorado Symphony for this incredible opportunity and Devin Desantis for his extraordinary collaboration and talent. Love to her family for their constant support. IG @allisongracesill
MARY LOUISE BURKE, associate director and conductor, Colorado Symphony Chorus
Mary Louise Burke is in her 31st season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus. In addition to assisting Chorus Director Duain Wolfe for many years, she has also prepared the chorus for various Colorado Symphony pops concerts and special projects, including Too Hot to Handel. She is the Creative Director of the Symphony’s A Colorado Christmas concerts. In the summer of 2022, she conducted the Symphony chorus on their concert tour of Austria. She has worked as the Associate Director of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, participating in hundreds of concerts and dozens of the Chorale’s regional, national and international tours. She was also Vocal Director of the Children’s Chorale, where she provided specialized vocal coaching and opera preparation. With an expertise in vocal technique, Burke frequently conducts seminars in vocal and choral techniques for area church and community choirs. She is the Vocal Advisor at Montview Presbyterian Church and has taught classes in Find Your Authentic Voice at the University of Denver. She has a Doctorate in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Colorado.
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COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS
The Colorado Symphony’s 2024/25 Season marks the 41st year of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe, our chorus has earned a reputation as one of the finest symphonic choruses in the United States. This outstanding chorus of volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous concerts each year, performing the great Masterworks, as well as pops concerts, movies and special projects, all to repeated critical acclaim.
Additionally, the Chorus has been featured annually at the Bravo!Vail Music Festival, performing with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra or Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of notable conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jaap van Zweden, Alan Gilbert, Fabio Luisi, Hans Graf, as well as 25 years with the Aspen Music Festival.
In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the chorus on a concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi REQUIEM in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl and Prague; in 2016 the chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg and Munich featuring the Fauré Requiem. In the summer of 2022, the Chorus toured Austria, performing to great acclaim in Vienna, Graz and Salzburg.
COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS
Duain Wolfe, Founding Director and Conductor Laureate
Taylor Martin, Director Designate and Conductor
Mary Louise Burke, Associate Director and Conductor
