The Philadelphia Orchestra '23

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SPAC Packs a Punch

It’s not summer in Saratoga until the strains of classical music start pouring out of Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC).

Ballet and classical music enthusiasts will have more than enough to swing their air batons to this season with a sprawling slate of familiars such as virtuosic cellist (and last year’s saratoga living cover star) Yo-Yo Ma; the New York City Ballet (NYCB), which is celebrating its 75th anniversary with an exciting program of crowd favorites and SPAC premieres; and the Philadelphia Orchestra—which will balance spectacular premieres and artist debuts, including that of Emmy-, Grammy-, and Tony-winning Broadway superstar Audra McDonald.

“There’s so much I’m excited about, it’s a little hard to keep it concise,” says Elizabeth Sobol, SPAC President

and CEO. “For the NYCB, the SPAC Premieres program is amazing, but I’m thrilled we’ll also get to see Justin Peck’s first evening-length ballet, Copland Dance Episodes.”

From July 18-22, the NYCB will return with the full company and a roster of more than 90 dancers under Artistic Director Jonathan Sta ord. The season kicks o with “NYCB On and O Stage,” an accessible, peak-behind-the-curtain teaser, featuring the best excerpts from the week’s ballet programs. “[This] has become an important part of our e orts to bring new people to experience ballet in an inviting way,” says Sobol.

“New for this year, the celebratory evening will culminate in a dance party in the Hall of Springs.”

Following this is two nights (July 1920) of “SPAC Premieres,” spotlighting new and contemporary works from

around the globe, such as Play Time by Gianna Reisen, which is set to music by hip-hop icon Solange Knowles, and Love Letter (on shu e) by Kyle Abraham, with music by Grammywinning English singer-songwriter James Blake, among others. There will also be two performances of a di erent SPAC premiere (July 20 and 22): the aforementioned Copland Dance Episodes by New York-based, Tony-winning choreographer, director and dancer Justin Peck. This original “full-evening” work is set to four of Copland’s most famous compositions: Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man and

Rodeo Closing out the dance season (July 21-22) are ballet classics Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky/Balanchine), Fancy Free (Bernstein/Robbins) and Firebird (Stravinsky/Balanchine and Robbins).

“There’s always something special about performing outside at this wonderful venue that has been NYCB’s summer home for so many years,” says NYCB principal dancer Mira Nadon.

“I’m particularly excited to bring Justin Peck’s Copland Dance Episodes to Saratoga. The choreography, music, costumes and lighting have all come together in such a beautiful way, and I’m so excited for the Saratoga audiences to get to experience it.”

Next up, the Philadelphia Orchestra is packing quite a musical punch as well, with homecomings from Music

Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Emmy- and Grammy-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Also returning, for the first time in a decade, is renowned violinist Gil Shaham, who will lead a special SPAC premiere (August 16) of Vivaldi’s beloved violin concerti, The Four Seasons. In contrast, there will be several exciting debuts, including a genre-blending “little orchestra” called Pink Martini with China Forbes (August 4) and theater dynamo Audra McDonald, who’s won six Tony awards throughout her career— more than any other actor. (All she needs is an Oscar for EGOT status.)

“I’m very much looking forward to returning to lovely Saratoga this summer to perform with the incomparable Philadelphia Orchestra led by my dear friend [conductor] Andy Einhorn,” says McDonald, who’s been spotted around the Capital Region in recent years filming for HBO’s The Gilded Age. “SPAC is such a special place in the summer, and I can’t wait to sing my Broadway favorites from Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Sondheim and more.”

In addition to McDonald’s night of Broadway favorites (August 10), The Philadelphia Orchestra will present Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring alongside John Luther Adams’ Vespers of the Blessed Earth (August 12), a new work and another SPAC premiere that, Sobol teases, will “be performed in a unique and nontraditional manner.”

Audiences should also be sure to catch Yo-Yo Ma as he performs Dvořák’s ebullient Cello Concerto with guest conductor Xian Zhang (August 17). The orchestra will round out its wide-ranging season with a couple of films: Earth: An HD Odyssey (August 18) and, the following day, Jurassic Park In Concert, in honor of the classic dino-flick’s 30th anniversary. Velociraptors, ballet and Audra McDonald? Sounds like another unforgettable SPAC summer.

ERIN BAIANO

“I’m very much looking forward to returning to lovely Saratoga this summer to perform with the incomparable Philadelphia Orchestra. SPAC is such a special place in the summer, and I can’t wait to sing my Broadway favorites from Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Sondheim and more.” —AUDRA McDONALD

David Smith, Music, and Dance

Detail: David Smith. Untitled (Piat). 1946. Tempera on paper mounted on Masonite, 23 1/2 x 29 5/8 in. (59.7 x 75.2 cm). The Estate of David Smith, New York © 2023 The Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

THEATRE, MUSIC, AND DANCE

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The Lake George Music Festival is reinventing the meaning of the phrase “cultural destination.”

Experience great music as a resounding “Welcome” to Lake George!

Founded in 2011, the Lake George Music Festival offers performers and audiences alike the opportunity to experience exceptional classical music within a historic and picturesque setting that has inspired artistic luminaries such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Samuel Barber, and Marcella Sembrich.

The two weeks of chamber music and orchestral concerts curated by Artistic Directors Barbora Kolarova and Roger Kalia highlight new compositions and traditional masterworks performed by a core roster of established professionals and emerging artists in the newly renovated historic Carriage House of the Fort William Henry Hotel.

Make the Lake George Music Festival your own artist retreat as you take in all that Lake George has to offer and experience for yourself the twenty-first-century blossoming of classical and new music.

For artist roster, festival passes, and info please visit LAKEGEORGEMUSICFESTIVAL.COM

Dear Friends, W

elcome to our 2023 season! And thank you for being a part of SPAC’s continued transformation here at the nexus of human-made and natural beauty.

Not just an amphitheater, SPAC is a refuge, a place of healing, a place where all are welcome, and all cultures are celebrated. In our mission to connect people to people, and people to our planet, we acknowledge the profound importance of beauty and art in the creation of a just world.

This summer, in recognition of the physical world that cradles us, we celebrate Earth. The Earth not only inspires creators of music, poetry and dance, but literally provides essential elements of creation: the wood and metals of musical instruments, the materials of the amphitheater itself, pigments derived from the earth, paper from trees filled with words and notes, and the very air that is breathed into instruments and, through which, sublime vibration is carried to human ears.

Highlighting this exploration on our stage with The Philadelphia Orchestra, is the SPAC premiere of Vespers of the Blessed Earth, which references humanity’s impact on the natural world by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and environmental advocate, John Luther Adams.  In presenting this thematic strand, we hope to encourage connection, curiosity, and collective reflection on our place in this world.

Elizabeth Sobol President and CEO

Dear SPAC Supporters,

Thank you for joining us for SPAC’s 2023 Summer season. To say we would not be here without you is not an exaggeration. Each year we need to raise half of our budget in addition to ticket sales. Your attendance and support are the life blood that keeps SPAC open.

Under the extraordinary leadership of our President and CEO, Elizabeth Sobol, the SPAC team continues to transform the beautiful grounds, our stages and programming both inside and beyond our gates. With new spring, fall and holiday programming in the Spa Little Theatre as well as expanded offerings in culinary, literary and visual arts, we are thrilled to be able to invite everyone to experience SPAC all year long.

Our commitment to arts education has grown by leaps and bounds with more than 120 partnerships with local schools and non-profit organizations. The School of the Arts in the Lewis A. Swyer studios offers an average of 30 classes each week for students from ages two to eighty! We also provide online programs. Starting with 5,500 students in 2016, we now reach 50,000 students! The number of classes and events offered annually increased from 400 to 1,500 in the past year! Guiding students toward self-empowerment through artistic discovery, the education department continues an intensified focus on inclusive and accessible programs. For the first time this fall, we look forward to collaborating with AIM services and Saratoga Bridges to develop and expand these programs.

With so much appreciation for your attendance and support,

Susan Law Dake Chair SPAC Board of Directors

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SPAC embraces an ever-expanding definition of the Arts

Not only performing arts, but also visual arts, literary arts, culinary arts, healing arts and beyond.

We’re proud to present these initiative-driven programs and special events featuring guest artists and speakers within our year-round calendar of programming.

Learn more and view upcoming events at spac.org/what-we-do.

CulinaryArts@SPAC

Unique culinary experiences with an emphasis on sustainability, held in gorgeous gathering places in our natural park setting. Showcasing the talents of both regional and visiting chefs who partner with area farmers, butchers, distillers and purveyors.

LiteraryArts@SPAC

Inspiring and insightful conversations with renowned authors, journalists, poets and original thinkers. Past guests have included Presidential Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, authors Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Maslin Nir, New York Times columnist Pamela Paul, science writer Dava Sobel, poet Diane Ackerman, and cosmologist Stephon Alexander.

VisualArts@SPAC

Revolving art exhibits in various locations throughout the SPAC campus and via collaborations in the Capital Region. Previous exhibitions include Chromatic Scales: Psychedelic Design in collaboration with the Tang Teaching Museum and Saratoga Arts, Merce My Way in partnership with the National Museum of Dance, and Ageless Dancers in collaboration with Saratoga Arts. Visit this summer’s featured exhibit, Mark Seliger: SPAC Stories, in The Pines lobby.

The SPAC Action Council was established in 1977 by SPAC founders Philly Dake and Jane Wait. The Action Council serves as a community of ambassadors to SPAC, supporting its cultural mission, membership, events, and programming by broadening awareness and promoting development.

The Friends of SPAC Committee (formerly SPAC Junior Committee) is comprised of arts-loving volunteers. As ambassadors, the Committee promotes SPAC membership at all levels. The Committee connects young people with world-class arts events and education, ensuring the vitality and future of SPAC. Activities include community and fundraising events that support SPAC’s mission.

The SPAC Action Council presents: SPAC IN CONVERSATION: JULIE SCELFO formerly known as The Lecture Luncheon

PAULA WILSON TOWARD THE SKY’S BACK DOOR

JULY 15–DECEMBER 30

TANG.SKIDMORE.EDU

• SKIDMORE COLLEGE

THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

The world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust education initiatives, a commitment to its diverse communities, and the embrace of digital outreach, the ensemble is creating an expansive future for classical music, and furthering the place of the arts in an open and democratic society. In June 2021 the Orchestra and its home, the Kimmel Center, united to form The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc., reimagining the power of the arts to bring joy, create community, and effect change.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now in his 11th season with The Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as music and artistic director. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the community.

Your Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, in Verizon Hall and community centers, in classrooms and hospitals, and over the airwaves and online. In response to the cancellation of concerts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orchestra launched the Digital Stage, providing access to high-quality online performances, keeping music alive at a time when it was needed most. It also inaugurated free offerings: HearTOGETHER, a podcast on racial and social

justice, and creative equity and inclusion, through the lens of the world of orchestral music, and Our City, Your Orchestra, a series of digital performances that connects the Orchestra with communities through music and dialogue while celebrating the diversity and vibrancy of the Philadelphia region.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s award-winning education and community initiatives engage over 50,000 students, families, and community members of all ages through programs such as PlayINs; side-by-sides; PopUP concerts; Our City, Your Orchestra Live; School Concerts; the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program; and All City Orchestra Fellowships.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador and one of our nation’s greatest exports. It performs annually at Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The Orchestra also has a rich touring history, having first performed outside Philadelphia in its earliest days. In 1973 it was the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China, launching a five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.

Under Yannick’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording with 13 celebrated releases on the Deutsche Grammophon label, including the GRAMMY Award–winning Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For more information, please visit www.philorch.org

Photo by Dave Bigler

2022–2023 Season

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Music and Artistic Director

Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair

Nathalie Stutzmann

Principal Guest Conductor

Ralph and Beth Johnston Muller Chair

Gabriela Lena Frank Composer-in-Residence

Austin Chanu Assistant Conductor

Tristan Rais-Sherman Assistant Conductor

Charlotte Blake Alston Storyteller, Narrator, and Host Osagie and Losenge Imasogie Chair

Frederick R. Haas Artistic Advisor

Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience

FIRST VIOLINS

David Kim, Concertmaster

Dr. Benjamin Rush Chair

Juliette Kang, First Associate Concertmaster

Joseph and Marie Field Chair

Christine Lim, Associate Concertmaster

Marc Rovetti, Assistant Concertmaster

Barbara Govatos

Robert E. Mortensen Chair

Jonathan Beiler

Hirono Oka

Richard Amoroso

Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair

Yayoi Numazawa

Jason DePue

Larry A. Grika Chair

Jennifer Haas

Miyo Curnow

Elina Kalendarova

Daniel Han

Julia Li

William Polk

Mei Ching Huang

SECOND VIOLINS

Kimberly Fisher, Principal

Peter A. Benoliel Chair

Paul Roby, Associate Principal

Sandra and David Marshall Chair

Dara Morales, Assistant Principal

Anne M. Buxton Chair

Philip Kates

Davyd Booth

Paul Arnold

Joseph Brodo Chair, given by Peter A. Benoliel

Boris Balter

Amy Oshiro-Morales

Yu-Ting Chen

Jeoung-Yin Kim

VIOLAS

Choong-Jin Chang, Principal

Ruth and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Chair

Kirsten Johnson, Associate Principal

Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal

Judy Geist

Renard Edwards

Anna Marie Ahn Petersen

Piasecki Family Chair

David Nicastro

Burchard Tang

Che-Hung Chen

Rachel Ku

Marvin Moon

Meng Wang

CELLOS

Hai-Ye Ni, Principal

Priscilla Lee, Associate Principal

Yumi Kendall, Assistant Principal

Elaine Woo Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Chair

Richard Harlow

Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair

Kathryn Picht Read

Robert Cafaro

Volunteer Committees Chair

Ohad Bar-David

John Koen

Derek Barnes

Alex Veltman

BASSES

Joseph Conyers, Principal

Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair

Gabriel Polinsky, Associate Principal

Nathaniel West, Acting Assistant Principal

Tobey and Mark Dichter Chair

David Fay

Duane Rosengard

Michael Franz

Christian Gray

Some members of the string sections voluntarily rotate seating on a periodic basis.

FLUTES

Jeffrey Khaner, Principal

Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair

Patrick Williams, Associate Principal

Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair

Olivia Staton

Erica Peel, Piccolo

OBOES

Philippe Tondre, Principal

Samuel S. Fels Chair

Peter Smith, Associate Principal

Jonathan Blumenfeld

Edwin Tuttle Chair

Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, English Horn

Joanne T. Greenspun Chair

CLARINETS

Ricardo Morales, Principal

Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair

Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal

Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair

Socrates Villegas

Paul R. Demers, Bass Clarinet

Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Joseph Chair

BASSOONS

Daniel Matsukawa, Principal

Richard M. Klein Chair

Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal

Angela Anderson Smith

Holly Blake, Contrabassoon

HORNS

Jennifer Montone, Principal

Gray Charitable Trust Chair

Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal

Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Chair

Christopher Dwyer

Chelsea McFarland

Ernesto Tovar Torres

Shelley Showers

TRUMPETS

(position vacant) Principal

Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair

Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal

Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair

Anthony Prisk

TROMBONES

Nitzan Haroz, Principal

Neubauer Family Foundation Chair

Matthew Vaughn, Co-Principal

Blair Bollinger, Bass Trombone

Drs. Bong and Mi Wha Lee Chair

TUBA

Carol Jantsch, Principal

Lyn and George M. Ross Chair

TIMPANI

Don S. Liuzzi, Principal

Dwight V. Dowley Chair

Angela Zator Nelson, Associate Principal

PERCUSSION

Christopher Deviney, Principal

Angela Zator Nelson

PIANO AND CELESTA

Kiyoko Takeuti

KEYBOARDS

Davyd Booth

HARP

Elizabeth Hainen, Principal

LIBRARIANS

Nicole Jordan, Principal

Holly Matthews

STAGE PERSONNEL

Dennis Moore, Jr., Manager

Francis “Chip” O’Shea III

Aaron Wilson

OPENING NIGHT: FESTIVE FIREWORKS

FABIO LUISI

Conductor

DAVID KIM

Violin

TCHAIKOVSKY

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

I. Andante—Allegro con anima

II. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza

III. Valse: Allegro moderato

IV. Finale: Andante maestoso—Allegro vivace

INTERMISSION

TCHAIKOVSKY

Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35

I. Allegro moderato—Moderato assai

II. Canzonetta: Andante

III. Allegro vivacissimo

TCHAIKOVSKY

Solemn Overture, 1812, Op. 49

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN E MINOR, OP. 64 Composed in 1888

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840

Died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893

Tchaikovsky’s orchestral works were not always as successful as his elevated position in today’s concert-hall pantheon would suggest. While he may have been regarded as Russia’s greatest symphonist and arguably its most talented composer during his lifetime, his ballet scores, overtures, and concertos often received responses ranging from pedestrian to outright disdain. Tchaikovsky endured periods of crushing self-doubt, exacerbated by the critical responses to his music. It was largely during the 20th century, after the composer’s death, that his reputation as an audience favorite became firmly established.

When Tchaikovsky began composing his Symphony No. 5 in the summer of 1888, it was with a mixture of determination and paralyzing uncertainty. “I want so much to show not only to others, but to myself, that I still haven’t expired,” he wrote to his patron and friend Nadezhda von Meck. It had been 10 years since his Fourth Symphony and he was resolved to prove that his inspiration had not dried up.

The initial sketches for this new work came to him only with difficulty, but he found some creative momentum as he was working on the instrumentation. When the new symphony was completed in August 1888, he exclaimed with some relief, “Thank God, it is no worse than my previous ones.”

At its premiere the following month, the audience and his close friends received the piece enthusiastically, but the critics were harsh at subsequent performances. Tchaikovsky unfortunately believed the critics and concluded after three performances that the work was a failure. “There is something repellant in it,” he lamented, “some overexaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication.” It was not until the following year, when Brahms heard a performance in Hamburg and expressed his admiration for the new work, that Tchaikovsky finally admitted the symphony had any merit. “I have started to love it again,” he wrote to his nephew. “My earlier judgment was undeservedly harsh.”

Tchaikovsky claimed that the Fifth Symphony was not programmatic, but his early sketches included comments about “fate,” “providence,” and “faith.” Perhaps he was thinking of Beethoven’s famous “Fate” symphony—also a Fifth—and had planned a similar symphonic trajectory for this work. Those initial sketches were eventually rejected, though, and unlike a true programmatic symphony the piece holds together well without a specific narrative program when heard simply in terms of its musical discourse and development. And in that regard, it might resemble Beethoven’s Fifth even more closely.

A single theme—perhaps a leitmotif of fate—appears in each of the four movements, suggesting a journey or gradual metamorphosis, culminating in a conclusion that can be heard as either triumphant or ominous. At the Symphony’s opening (Andante), this dotted-rhythm theme is presented in a slow introduction—a mournful funeral march. Then the clarinets and bassoon introduce the Allegro con anima section with a variant on the theme that, while lilting and more animated, even dance-like at times, still bears the emotional weight of the portentous introduction. If this is indeed a “Fate” theme, then the fatal narrative has already been set, and cannot be avoided. A less-troubled second idea only serves to intensify the storm of the contrapuntally dense development, where the dotted-rhythm figure relentlessly reemerges. After the main theme is reprised, the waltzlike second theme is brought back in E major, but the coda re-establishes the funeral-march connotations with a repeated lament bassline and a total dissipation of energy.

Out of the darkness of the low strings, the harmonies turn to D major in the Andante cantabile second movement, a nocturne whose ravishing horn melody was later adapted to the popular song “Moon Love.” This melody is dramatically interrupted by the Fate motif, but gradually regains its composure, reaching an almost-triumph before Fate cruelly silences it once more. The lyrical melody can then only limp to a defeated close. A short waltz (Allegro moderato), instead of the usual third-movement scherzo, transforms the horn melody into an oasis of untroubled delight before the Fate motif returns, again, to shroud the closing.

The finale opens (Andante maestoso) and

proceeds much as the first movement did, with a dramatic dialogue between Fate and Joy, except the Fate theme is now in E major. With repeated references to other motifs from the inner movements, the dramatic momentum

arches toward a seemingly triumphant victory, the Fate motif now an exultant brass fanfare, hammered home with Beethovenian repetitions of tonic major harmony.

—Luke Howard

VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, OP. 35 Composed in 1878

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Although Tchaikovsky ultimately triumphed with his Violin Concerto, which became one of his most beloved and frequently performed compositions, its path to success was unusually discouraging and came during a period of deep personal crisis. The turmoil began with his ill-considered marriage to a student in July 1877, undertaken to quiet gossip about his homosexuality. After a few weeks Tchaikovsky left his wife and fled Russia to spend the next eight months wandering Europe. Intense work on two masterpieces came in the immediate wake of the marriage fiasco: the Fourth Symphony and the opera Eugene Onegin. As Tchaikovsky’s mental state stabilized, however, he found it increasingly difficult to compose and mainly wrote trifles.

In March 1878 Tchaikovsky settled in Clarens, Switzerland, where he was visited by a former student, a young violinist named Iosif Kotek. The two played through some violin literature together and Tchaikovsky was particularly delighted with Eduard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, which inspired him to compose his own Violin Concerto in the space of just some three weeks. What he admired was that Lalo, “in the same way as Léo Delibes and Bizet, does not strive after profundity, but he carefully avoids routine, seeks out new forms, and thinks more about musical beauty than about observing established traditions, as the Germans do.”

It is in this spirit that Tchaikovsky set about to write an attractive concerto that would please listeners, and yet initially the work did not completely please anyone. The first discouraging response came from Kotek and Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest, who liked the first and third movements, but not the middle one. Tchaikovsky decided to write a new slow movement. The next blow came from

his extremely generous patroness, Madame Nadezhda von Meck, to whom over the years he would send most of his works and who usually reacted enthusiastically. In this instance, however, she expressed some dissatisfaction with the opening movement. Tchaikovsky responded by thanking her for her honesty but saying, “I must defend the first movement of the Concerto a little. Of course there is much that is cold and calculated in any piece written to display virtuosity, but the ideas for the themes came spontaneously to me and, indeed, the whole shape of the movement came in a flash. I still hope you will come to like it.”

Things got worse with the scheduled premiere of the Concerto in March 1879. The initial dedicatee, the distinguished violinist Leopold Auer, declared the piece unplayable. Tchaikovsky later recalled: “A verdict such as this from the authoritative St. Petersburg virtuoso cast my poor child for many years into the abyss, it seemed, of eternal oblivion.” There may have been a performance of the recently published violin and piano version in New York in 1879 played by Leopold Damrosch, but no details survive and the real premiere was still nowhere in sight. In the past few years, however, it has come to light that the Concerto was performed in Hanover in March 1880 by an obscure local concertmaster named Georg Hänflein, receiving a negative review. It is unclear whether the composer ever knew this performance took place.

Tchaikovsky eventually found a willing violinist in Adolf Brodsky, who performed the Concerto in December 1881 with the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter. That under-rehearsed performance (long thought to have been the premiere) led to an infamous review from the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick, who condemned the vulgarity of the work, especially its lively folk-like finale: “We see plainly the savage vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell vodka. Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures,

that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.” Modest Tchaikovsky said no review more hurt his brother, who could recite it word for word until his death. Tchaikovsky was often ambivalent about the quality of his compositions, and it did not help when friends, family, and critics were unsupportive. In the case of the Violin Concerto, however, public enthusiasm came quickly and it did not take long for the piece to emerge triumphant in the standard repertoire.

The opening Allegro moderato begins with the violins quietly stating a noble tune that soon ushers in the lilting appearance of the soloist. Both of the principal themes in the

long movement are lyrical, the second one marked “con molto espressione.” Although the themes do not contrast, ample variety is provided by interludes, including a majestic one with a Polonaise rhythm, and by a brilliant coda of virtuoso fireworks to conclude.

The brief Canzonetta: Andante projects a plaintive mood and proves a satisfying substitute for Tchaikovsky’s original thoughts. The energetic finale (Allegro vivacissimo) bursts forth without a break. A brief orchestral introduction leads to the soloist’s unaccompanied entrance in a cadenza-like passage that teasingly tips over into a dazzling rondo theme that keeps returning and gives further opportunities for virtuoso display.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

SOLEMN OVERTURE, 1812, OP. 49 Composed in 1880

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

In 1880 Tchaikovsky was asked to write something for the upcoming Exhibition of Industry and the Arts to be held in Moscow. He was presented with three possibilities: write an overture, or something for the Tsar’s silver jubilee, or a piece to mark the consecration of a new cathedral, “a cantata in whatever form or style you like but with a hint of church music that must certainly be Orthodox.” Tchaikovsky chose to pursue the option connected with the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. As it was built to mark Russia’s victory over Napoleon in September 1812, he decided to write a celebratory orchestral work, which he dispatched in just a little over a week’s time.

The 1812 Overture received its premiere in August 1882 in a new hall built for the Exhibition. Over time the Overture emerged as one of the composer’s most popular pieces, indeed as one of the most familiar works in the orchestral repertoire.

As composers have known for centuries, certain subjects invite musical representation more than others. It is a simpler task to convey associations with birds, storms, water than it is abstract events and emotions. Battles have long proved especially inviting. Beethoven took contrasting approaches in two pieces.

In his history-making Third Symphony, he grappled with issues of heroism, based on the figure of Napoleon. He also wrote a socalled “Battle Symphony,” better known as Wellington’s Victory, in which war between the English (represented by “Rule Britannia”) and the French (“Marlborough s’en va-t’en guerre”) also includes cannons and other effects, leading to the minor mode dissolution of the French music for their defeat and a final set of variations on “God Save the King” celebrating English victory.

Tchaikovsky probably had Beethoven’s piece in mind when he was composing the 1812 Overture. He also calls upon national themes, beginning with a solo sextet of violas and cellos intoning the Orthodox Russian chant “Save Us, O Lord,” which is juxtaposed with the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise.” Tchaikovsky brings in as well the Russian folksong “U Vorot” (At the Gate) and part of a duet recycled from his first opera, The Voyevoda. This all leads up to the grand finale making marvelous use of bells and cannons in combination with the Imperial Russian national anthem, “God Save the Tsar!”

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

Fabio Luisi is music director of the Dallas Symphony where, in his first full season in 2020–21, the orchestra announced an extension of his position through 2028–29. He is also chief conductor of the Danish National Symphony and principal conductor of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony, and emeritus conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and honorary conductor of the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, his native city.

Mr. Luisi made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2011. He has guest conducted the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala, the London Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Saito Kinen Orchestra, and in all the major opera houses worldwide. His work for the Zurich Opera, of which he was general music director, has included new productions of three Bellini operas along with Verdi’s Rigoletto, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Berg’s Wozzeck, and Verdi’s Requiem.

Mr. Luisi received a GRAMMY Award for conducting the last two operas of Wagner’s Ring Cycle when Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD release, recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera, was named Best Opera Recording of 2012. His extensive discography also features operas by Verdi, Salieri, and Bellini; symphonies by Honegger, Respighi, and Liszt; works by Schmidt and Strauss; and Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, which was awarded the 2009 ECHO-Klassik award. In 2013 he won Italy’s coveted Premio Franco Abbiati critics’ award. In 2015 the Philharmonia Zurich launched its Philharmonia Records label with his recordings of works by Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, and Bruckner. A native of Genoa, Mr. Luisi was awarded the Grifo d’Oro for his contributions to the city’s cultural legacy. In his time off the podium, he is a passionate maker of perfumes.

Violinist David Kim (Dr. Benjamin Rush Chair) was named concertmaster of The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1999. Born in Carbondale, Illinois, he started playing the violin at age three,

Fabio Luisi

Photo by Monika Rittershaus

began studies with the famed pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at age eight, and later received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School.

Highlights of Mr. Kim’s 2022–23 season included appearing as soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra; teaching/performance residencies at Georgetown University and the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne; as well as solo appearances with orchestras across the United States. He also continued to appear as concertmaster of the nine-time Emmy Award–winning All-Star Orchestra on PBS stations across the United States and online at the Kahn Academy, as well as present recitals and speaking engagements nationwide.

Each season Mr. Kim appears as a guest in concert with the famed modern hymn writers

Keith and Kristyn Getty at such venues as the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Carnegie Hall. Mr. Kim serves as distinguished artist at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. He frequently serves as an adjudicator at international violin competitions such as the Menuhin and Sarasate.

Mr. Kim has been awarded honorary doctorates from Eastern University in suburban Philadelphia, the University of Rhode Island, and Dickinson College. His instruments are a J.B. Guadagnini from Milan, ca. 1757, on loan from The Philadelphia Orchestra, and a Francesco Gofriller, ca. 1735. He exclusively performs on and endorses Larsen Strings from Denmark. He resides in a Philadelphia suburb with his wife, Jane, and daughters, Natalie and Maggie. He is an avid golfer and outdoorsman.

David Kim

Photo by Allie Skylar Photography

SCHUBERT’S “GREAT” SYMPHONY

FABIO LUISI

Conductor

ISATA KANNEH-MASON

Piano

C. SCHUMANN/orch. Grimm

March in E-flat major

First Philadelphia Orchestra performance

MENDELSSOHN

Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25

I. Molto allegro con fuoco—

II. Andante—

III. Presto—Molto allegro e vivace

INTERMISSION

SCHUBERT

Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 (“Great”)

I. Andante—Allegro ma non troppo—Più moto

II. Andante con moto

III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace—Trio—Scherzo da capo

IV. Allegro vivace

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

MARCH IN E-FLAT MAJOR (ORCH. GRIMM) Composed in 1879

CLARA SCHUMANN

Born in Leipzig, September 13, 1819

Died in Frankfurt, May 20, 1896

The life and career of Clara Schumann fascinate for many reasons: She represents one of the richest cases for understanding both the life of a prodigy guided by an ambitious parent (as with Mozart, her father was a noted musician) as well as the limited and limiting opportunities available to women musicians in 19th-century Europe. She was, moreover, the central figure in the lives of two of Romanticism’s leading composers—for more than 20 years the object of Robert Schumann’s deep love and devotion, and for a much longer period an inspiration and the closest confidant to Johannes Brahms.

Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck, was a respected piano teacher who wrote a how-to book on musicianship. He had many talented students—that is what first brought the 18-yearold Robert Schumann to his door—but most prized was his own daughter. Her gifts were recognized early and widely; while still a teenager she was compared favorably with Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalberg, her older virtuoso competitors. Robert’s infatuation with Clara, and hers with him, took some time to blossom, and eventually caused Wieck enough concern to throw him out of the house. Thus began secret meetings and unpleasant legal proceedings; the couple had to wait until Clara’s 21st birthday to wed.

Clara Wieck gave up many things when she wed Robert. For most of their married life, she was the more famous figure. While Clara continued to concertize, including long and arduous tours, she was also often pregnant; the couple had eight children between 1841 and 1854. Nearly all of her compositions date from the early part of her long career, when she was the celebrated Clara Wieck, not yet Clara Schumann. Her first pieces tended toward the flashy fare expected from virtuosos. She began writing her ambitious Piano Concerto at age 14 and premiered the piece with Felix Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835.

The few works she wrote after her marriage tended to be occasional pieces, usually birthday and Christmas gifts, although in 1846 she produced her magnificent Piano Trio in G

minor. Following Robert’s death, when she was 37, she only wrote one minor piece, a lively march for piano four-hands, which we hear in an orchestrated version on this concert. Her pathbreaking musical activities continued as she went on performing, teaching, tending to her husband’s legacy, and being Brahms’s principal adviser.

Clara composed the March in E-flat in 1879 to honor the 50th wedding anniversary of Julius and Pauline Hübner. She and Robert had become close friends with the couple in Dresden in the mid-1840s when they spent time together discussing music, art, and politics. Julius was a distinguished painter, professor at the Art Academy, and eventually the director of the city’s famous Picture Gallery. Clara wrote that “the most artistically minded here are the non-musicians, but I prefer them to all the Dresden musicians put together.” She wanted to give her friends a special present on their golden anniversary but had no idea what to do until her daughter Marie suggested that she compose a march and include in it Robert’s vocal duet, “Family Portrait,” Op. 34, No. 4 (1840). The song tells of a grandfather and grandmother sitting in a garden and imagining a young couple: “They looked at us and thought of their happy past. We looked at them and thought of distant days to come.” Clara was not at the anniversary celebration but the Hübners were thrilled. Julius wrote “please accept my most sincere and heartfelt thanks for the exquisite festive march that was such a delightful surprise! What an ingenious idea to use the unexcelled song about the grandfather and grandmother as a theme!” Clara also alludes to Robert’s Manfred and has moments that are suggestive of their beloved Schubert’s four-hand music.

The march remained unpublished during Clara’s lifetime (it finally appeared in 1996), as did a two-hand version she wrote. Tonight we hear the piece in an orchestration written in 1888 for Clara’s 60th anniversary concert in Frankfurt. It is by the conductor and composer Julius Otto Grimm (1827–1903), another close friend of the Schumanns. He and Brahms played a crucial role in helping Clara when Robert attempted suicide and was institutionalized in 1854. The six-minute march opens with a trumpet fanfare nodding to Mendelssohn’s famous “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

—Christopher H. Gibbs

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN G MINOR, OP. 25

Composed from 1830 to 1831

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809

Died in Leipzig, November 4, 1847

The 20-year-old Mendelssohn was a fully formed artist when he embarked on what he called his “Grand Tour” of Europe in 1829. In addition to being a virtuoso piano prodigy, the precocious youth had composed operas, symphonies, and concertos, chamber and piano music, and his miraculous overtures to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

Mendelssohn began composing the G-minor Piano Concerto we hear tonight while in Rome in late 1830 and completed it the following October in Munich in preparation for a concert to benefit the poor, which featured him as composer, conductor, and pianist. He was in the best of spirits composing the piece, as he informed his father on October 6: “It is a glorious feeling to awaken in the morning and know that you are going to write the score of a grand Allegro, with all sorts of instruments, and various oboes and trumpets, while bright weather holds out the hope of a cheering long walk in the afternoon.”

After a brief delay due to the October Festival in Munich, Mendelssohn gave his charity concert on the 17th of that month. The event proved an enormous success before a large and appreciative audience that included the king and queen. Mendelssohn wrote to his parents that the concert turned out to be “more brilliant and more fun than I had expected. The whole thing was very animated and everything worked. The orchestra played wonderfully and the poor must have received

a good whopping sum.”

The G-minor Concerto is one of the most vivid representations of Mendelssohn’s fusion of Mozartean Classicism and 19th-century Romanticism, full of dash and passion that is always checked by a sure sense of balance and control. The piano participates from the first measures, asserting the primacy of the soloist’s virtuosity to a degree not found even in Beethoven’s “Emperor”—another piece in which the pianist rushes to the fore in the opening bars. He referred to the work as his Münchener Conzertstücke (Munich concert piece), which alludes not only to its place of origin, but also may register a debt to another Romantic piece: Carl Maria von Weber’s Conzertstück.

Mendelssohn provides his own unique “twist” to the Romantic concerto by linking the three movements into a long, continuous gesture, as he would at the end of his life in his beloved Violin Concerto. In addition, the three movements are connected by a succession of recurring material, particularly the return of the secondary theme from the first movement in the finale.

The fire of the opening Molto allegro con fuoco begins with the first dramatic measures swelling forth from the orchestra and brilliant keyboard octaves that enter a few seconds later. A contrasting lyrical second theme highlights the soloist. The Andante may remind some that this is the composer of so many famous “songs without words,” with the cellos the first to “sing.” The brilliance returns with a brass fanfare to open the final Molto allegro e vivace that concludes with a soaring Mendelssohnian coda.

—Paul J. Horsley/Christopher H. Gibbs

SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN C MAJOR, D. 944 (“GREAT”)

Composed in 1825

FRANZ SCHUBERT

Born in Vienna, January 31, 1797

Died there, November 19, 1828

The popular image of Schubert as a shy, neglected genius who tossed off immortal songs on the backs of menus is finally beginning to crumble. Given the rather limited professional opportunities available to a young composer in Vienna during the 1820s, Schubert’s career flourished and was clearly heading to new heights when he died at age 31, just 20 months after Beethoven. The first of the great Viennese composers actually born in the city, Schubert enjoyed the best musical education available, was a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, studied with Antonio Salieri, and gradually found his music being championed by leading performers of the time.

Yet the older picture of the neglected Schubert did register some realities. He composed many works at amazing speed, and as a teenager might write two, three, or more songs in a single day. And although his music was widely published, performed, and praised, this considerable exposure was generally limited to domestic genres, such as songs, dances, and keyboard music. Only near the end of his life did Schubert’s piano sonatas and substantial chamber compositions begin to reach a larger public and audiences beyond Vienna. With some justification on either account, therefore, one can tell a happy story or a sad one about Schubert’s career. One can speak of a brilliant young composer whose fortunes were clearly ever on the rise, or of a pathetic genius who never received the full recognition he deserved before his untimely death.

So, too, one can tell differing tales about his symphonies. So far as we know, none of them was performed in public during his lifetime. On the other hand, Schubert heard his symphonies played—it was not left for his inner ear simply to imagine what they would sound like in real time and space. If this situation seems paradoxical, it is because Schubert wrote most of his symphonies as part of a learning process and specifically to be played by small private orchestras at school or by what we would consider community

orchestras. They were not for professionals playing in concert halls.

Schubert’s First Symphony dates from 1813, when he was 16, and the next five followed at the rate of about one a year. He later discounted these initial efforts, as he did many early compositions. Around 1823 he was asked to supply a work for performance but responded that he had “nothing for full orchestra that [he] could send out into the world with a clear conscience.” Yet by this point Schubert had written all but his final symphony, the one we hear tonight. Five years later, in a letter to a publisher, he mentioned “three operas, a Mass, and a symphony,” as if all his earlier pieces in those genres did not exist or matter.

And so the Ninth, one might say, is Schubert’s only symphony, the one he felt was fully mature and intended for the public. It was meant to be judged in comparison with Beethoven, the lone living symphonic composer of real consequence for him and the figure who dominated Viennese musical life. Schubert revered him above all other composers.

Schubert prepared a long time to write his last and longest symphony, and not just by producing the six earlier ones (as well as various unfinished symphonies, including the “Unfinished”). In 1824, after more than a year of serious illness, Schubert wrote an anguished letter to one of his closest friends in which he lamented his personal and professional state. Near the end, however, the tone turns more optimistic as he discloses his career plans. Having failed in the world of opera, Schubert decided to turn with new determination to the Beethovenian realm of instrumental music. “I seem once again to have composed two operas for nothing,” he wrote. “Of songs I have not written many new ones, but I have tried my hand at several instrumental works … in fact, I intend to pave the way towards a grand symphony in that manner.”

During the next year Schubert continued to write chamber and keyboard music leading to his grand symphony, and he began to enjoy real professional success at the highest level in Vienna. Then, in the summer of 1825, he made the lengthiest, longest, and happiest excursion of his life. He went to Steyr, Linz, Gmunden,

Salzburg, and Gastein. Schubert informed friends that he was writing a symphony, undoubtedly the grand project for which he had been preparing. One of the most famous of Schubert legends is that this symphony is lost. Yet the so-called “Gastein” Symphony is none other than the “Great” C-major Symphony.

Friends report that Schubert had a “very special predilection” for his “Grand Symphony” written at Gastein. Certainly the scene of its composition was ideal. In the longest letters he ever wrote, he described the inspiring beauty of his surroundings. The work was not premiered until 10 years after his death, when Robert Schumann recovered the work from the composer’s brother and gave it to Felix Mendelssohn to present in Leipzig.

The sights Schubert devoured during his extended summer trip resonate with the majestic horn call that opens the first movement’s introduction (Andante). Lush string writing follows and leads seamlessly into the movement proper (Allegro ma non troppo), which has more than a touch of Rossinian lightness. The opening horn theme majestically returns in the coda, presented by the full orchestra.

The magnificent slow movement (Andante con moto) opens with a lovely wind melody— first heard from the solo oboe—over one of Schubert’s characteristic “wandering” accompaniments. The theme is contrasted with a more lyrical one. As in many of his mature compositions, Schubert eventually interrupts the movement with a violent outburst of loud, dissonant, agonizing pain. Such moments, usually placed within contexts of extraordinary lyric beauty, may allude in some way to the broken health that intruded so fatefully in Schubert’s life and that would lead to his early death.

The Scherzo (Allegro vivace) reminds us that, in addition to his songs, Schubert was one of the great dance composers of his day. The vigorous opening contrasts with a middle section waltz before the opening is repeated. The finale (Allegro vivace) is a perpetual motion energy that only builds in intensity near the end.

— Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

See Fabio Luisi’s biography on page 30

Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason is in great demand internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. She offers eclectic and interesting repertoire, encompassing music from Haydn and Mozart, via Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, to Gershwin and beyond. In the 2022–23 season Ms. Kanneh-Mason was artist-in-residence with the Royal Philharmonic, performing three concertos across the season at London’s Cadogan Hall. She returned to Dortmund’s Konzerthaus as one of its Junge Wilde artists and made multiple visits to both the BBC Scottish Symphony and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Other highlights of the season included recital performances at the Barbican, Queen Elizabeth, and Wigmore halls in London, the Philharmonie Berlin, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Perth Concert Hall, the Prinzregententheater in Munich, and the Sala São Paulo. As concerto soloist, she appeared with the Orchestra of Opera North, the New World Symphony, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Barcelona Symphony, the

Geneva Chamber Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, and the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra. She also returned to the Baltimore Symphony.

Ms. Kanneh-Mason is a Decca Classics recording artist. Her 2019 album Romance—the Piano Music of Clara Schumann, entered the UK classical charts at No. 1. This was followed in 2021 by Summertime, an album of 20thcentury American repertoire featuring Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata and a world premiere recording of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Impromptu in B minor. In November 2021, along with her cellist brother, Sheku KannehMason, she released her first duo album entitled Muse

Ms. Kanneh-Mason was an ECHO Rising Star in the 2021–22 season, performing in many of Europe’s finest halls. She is also the recipient of the coveted Leonard Bernstein Award and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist.

Isata Kanneh-Mason

THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 7:30PM

Photo by David Venni

PINK MARTINI AND THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA FEATURING CHINA FORBES

Tonight’s program will be announced from the stage.

This program is made possible in part with generous support from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

ENRICOLOPEZ-YAÑEZ Conductor

Pink Martini

In 1994, in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, Thomas Lauderdale was working in politics, thinking he would run for mayor one day. Like other eager politicians-in-training, he went to every political fundraiser under the sun… but was dismayed to find the music at these events underwhelming, lackluster, loud, and un-neighborly. Drawing inspiration from music from all over the world—crossing genres of classical, jazz and old-fashioned pop—and hoping to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike, he founded the “little orchestra” Pink Martini in 1994. His aim? To provide more beautiful and inclusive musical soundtracks for political fundraisers supporting causes such as civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, libraries, public broadcasting, education, and parks.

One year later, Lauderdale called China Forbes, a Harvard classmate living in New York City, and asked her to join Pink Martini. They began to write songs together. Their first, “Sympathique,” was an overnight sensation in France and nominated for Song of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique Awards. To this day, it remains a mantra for striking workers: “Je ne veux pas travailler (I don’t want to work)”.

Pink Martini has sold well over 3 million albums worldwide on their own independent label Heinz Records (named after Lauderdale’s dog). In 2016, Pink Martini released its ninth studio album, Je dis oui!, which features vocals from China Forbes, Storm Large, Ari Shapiro, fashion guru Ikram Goldman, civil rights activist Kathleen Saadat, and Rufus Wainwright. The album’s 15 tracks span eight languages (French, Farsi, Armenian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Xhosa and English), and affirm the band’s history of global inclusivity and collaborative spirit. In 2019, Pink Martini collaborated on a new release with the international singing sensation Meow Meow, entitled Hotel Amour, and also released two 5-song EPs, Besame Mucho, featuring regular guest singer Edna Vazquez, and Tomorrow, featuring regular guest singer Jimmie Herrod, a finalist on 2021’s season of NBC’s America’s Got Talent. During their pandemic hiatus, the band released two new digital singles written by Thomas Lauderdale, China Forbes, and producer Jim Bianco, “Let’s Be Friends,” and “The Lemonade Song,” which has over 10 million streams on Spotify alone.

Featuring more than a dozen musicians, Pink Martini performs its multilingual repertoire throughout the world. Says Lauderdale, “We’re very much an American band, but we spend a lot of time abroad and therefore

have the incredible diplomatic opportunity to represent a broader, more inclusive America… the America which remains the most heterogeneously populated country in the world… composed of people of every country, every language, every religion.”

The band made its European debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and its orchestral debut with the Oregon Symphony the following year. Since then, Pink Martini has played with more than 50 orchestras internationally, including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and the BBC Concert Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Other appearances include a performance at the official post-Oscars celebration Governors Ball, four sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, the opening party of the remodeled Museum of Modern Art in New York, multiple sellouts and a festival opening at Montreal Jazz Festival, and multiple appearances, including sellouts, at the Hollywood Ball and Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. In its 20th year, Pink Martini was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. In 2023, the band is celebrating its 29th year of performing.

Enrico Lopez-Yañez is the newly named principal pops conductor of the Pacific Symphony commencing in the 2023–24 season. In addition he is the principal pops conductor of the Nashville Symphony. He is quickly establishing himself as a leading conductor of popular music and becoming known for his unique style of audience engagement. Also an active composer/ arranger, Mr. Lopez-Yañez has been commissioned by the Cincinnati Pops and the Houston, San Diego, and Omaha symphonies, and he has had his works performed by orchestras including the Detroit, Ft. Worth, Indianapolis, Seattle, and Utah symphonies; the Florida Orchestra; and the Rochester Philharmonic. Mr. Lopez-Yañez has conducted concerts with a broad spectrum of artists including Nas, Patti LaBelle, Itzhak Perlman, Stewart Copeland, Kenny Loggins, Toby Keith, Trisha Yearwood, Kelsea Ballerini, Leslie Odom Jr., Megan Hilty, Tituss Burgess, Hanson, and Kenny G. He also conducts the annual Let Freedom Sing! Music City July 4 fireworks show,

which was first televised on CMT in 2019.

As artistic director and co-founder of Symphonica Productions, LLC, Mr. Lopez-Yañez curates and leads programs designed to cultivate new audiences. Symphonica manages a wide breadth of pops and family/education productions. Symphonica Productions is also a sheet-music publishing house representing a diverse offering of genres and composers. Its roster of composers includes GRAMMYnominated composer Clarice Assad, Andrés Soto, Charles Cozens, Vinicio Meza, and more.

Mr. Lopez-Yañez’s work can be heard on numerous recordings including the UNESCO benefit album Action Moves People United and children’s music albums including The Spaceship that Fell in My Backyard, winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, a Hollywood Music in Media Award, and a Family Choice Award, and Kokowanda Bay, winner of a Global Media Award as well as a Parents’ Choice Award.

Enrico Lopez-Yañez

Photo by Dokk Savage Photography

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE™ IN CONCERT

JUSTIN FREER

Conductor

Harry Potter™ is mysteriously entered into the Triwizard Tournament™, a grueling contest among three wizarding schools in which he confronts a dragon, water demons, and an enchanted maze only to find himself in Lord Voldemort’s grasp. All will change when Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave childhood forever and face challenges beyond their imagining.

Produced by CineConcerts

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire™

Directed by Mike Newell

Produced by David Heyman

Written by Steve Kloves

Based on “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J.K. Rowling

Starring:

Daniel Radcliffe

Rupert Grint

Emma Watson

Robbie Coltrane

Warwick Davis

Ralph Fiennes

Michael Gambon

Brendan Gleeson

Jason Isaacs

Gary Oldman

Alan Rickman

Maggie Smith

Timothy Spall

David Thewlis

Frances de la Tour

Music by Patrick Doyle

Cinematography by Roger Pratt

Edited by Mick Audsley

Produced by Heyday Films, Patalex IV Productions

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures

Patrick Doyle is a classically trained composer. He graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in 1975 and was made a Fellow of the RSAM in 2001.

In 1989 director Sir Kenneth Branagh commissioned Patrick to compose the score for feature film Henry V, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, and they have subsequently collaborated on numerous pictures, including Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, As You Like It and Cinderella. Patrick and Branagh’s collaboration within film and theatre has continued to this day, with performances worldwide that include Branagh’s 2015 production of The Winter’s Tale which ran at the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End.

Patrick has been commissioned to score over 50 international feature films, including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Gosford Park, Sense and Sensibility, Indochine, Carlito’s Way and A Little Princess. His work has led to collaborations with some of the most acclaimed

directors in the world, such as Regis Wargnier, Brian De Palma, Alfonso Cuaròn, Ang Lee, Chen Kaige, Mike Newell and Robert Altman.

Patrick has received two Oscar, two Golden Globe, one BAFTA and two Cesar nominations, as well as winning the 1989 Ivor Novello Award for Best Film Theme for Henry V. He has also been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from The World Soundtrack Awards and Scottish BAFTA, the Henry Mancini Award from ASCAP and the PRS Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Music.

In 2015 Patrick completed work on the music for Walt Disney’s live action version of Cinderella, directed by Branagh and marking their eleventh film collaboration to date. Patrick also completed recording a solo piano album, made up of a collection of his film scores to date, which was released by Varese Sarabande in July 2015. Recent films include the remake of Scottish classic ‘Whisky Galore’ and Amma Asante’s ‘A United Kingdom’.

Patrick Doyle

American composer/conductor Justin Freer was born and raised in Huntington Beach, CA. He has established himself as one of the West Coast’s most exciting musical voices and is a highly sought-after conductor and producer of film music concerts around the world. Freer began his formal studies on trumpet, but quickly turned to piano and composition, composing his first work at eleven and giving his professional conducting debut at sixteen.

Continually composing for various different mediums, he has written music for world-renowned trumpeters Doc Severinsen and Jens Lindemann and continues to be in demand as a composer and conductor for everything from orchestral literature to chamber music around the world.

He has served as composer for several independent films and has written motion picture advertising music for some of 20th Century Fox Studios’ biggest campaigns including Avatar, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Aliens in the Attic. As a conductor Freer has appeared with some of the most well known orchestras in the world including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic,

New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is also one of the only conductors to have ever conducted in both the ancient Colosseum and Circus Maximus in Rome.

Renowned wind conductor and Oxford Round Table Scholar Dr. Rikard Hansen has noted that, “In totality, Freer’s exploration in musical sound evoke moments of highly charged drama, alarming strife and serene reflection.” Freer has been recognized with numerous grants and awards from organizations including ASCAP, BMI, the Society of Composers and Lyricists and the Henry Mancini Estate. He is the Founder and President of CineConcerts, a company dedicated to the preservation and concert presentation of film, curating and conducting hundreds of full length music score performances live with film for such wide ranging titles as Rudy, Gladiator, The Godfather, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, It’s A Wonderful Life, and the entire Harry Potter Film Franchise.

Mr. Freer earned both his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Music Composition from UCLA, where his principal composition teachers included Paul Chihara and Ian Krouse. In addition, he was mentored by legendary composer/conductor Jerry Goldsmith.

Justin Freer

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE™ IN CONCERT, PRODUCED BY CINECONCERTS

Justin Freer, President/Founder/Producer

Brady Beaubien, Co-Founder/Producer

Andrew Alderete, Chief XR Officer/Head of Publicity and Communications

Andrew McIntyre, Director of Operations

Brittany Fonseca, Senior Marketing Manager

Si Peng, Senior Social Media Manager

Worldwide Representation: WME

Music Preparation: JoAnn Kane Music Service

Sound Remixing: Justin Moshkevich, Igloo Music Studios

ABOUT CINECONERTS

CineConcerts is one of the leading producers of live music experiences performed with visual media and is continuously redefining live entertainment. Founded by Producer/Conductor Justin Freer and Producer/Writer Brady Beaubien, CineConcerts has engaged over 1.3 million people worldwide in concert presentations in over 900 performances in 48 countries working with some of the best orchestras and venues in the world including the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland and Philharmonia orchestras, and the London, Los Angeles, and New York philharmonics. Recent and current live concert experiences include Rudy in Concert, the Harry Potter Film Concert Series, Gladiator Live, The Godfather Live, It’s a Wonderful Life in Concert, DreamWorks Animation In Concert, Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage 50th Anniversary Concert Tour, Breakfast at Tiffany’s in Concert, and A Christmas Dream Live.

ABOUT WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY GLOBAL THEMED ENTERTAINMENT (WBDGTE)

Warner Bros. Discovery Global Themed Entertainment (WBDGTE), part of Warner Bros. Discovery Global Brands and Experiences, is a worldwide leader in the creation, development, and licensing of location-based entertainment, live events, exhibits, and theme park experiences based on the biggest franchises, stories, and characters from Warner Bros.’ film, television, animation, and games studios, HBO, Discovery, DC, Cartoon Network, and more. WBDGTE is home to the groundbreaking locations of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal theme parks around the world, Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, the WB Abu Dhabi, the FRIENDS Experience, the Game of Thrones Studio Tour, and countless other experiences inspired by the Wizarding World, DC, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Game of Thrones, FRIENDS, and more. With best-in-class partners, WBDGTE allows fans around the world to physically immerse themselves inside their favorite brands and franchises.

WIZARDING WORLD and all related trademarks, characters, names, and indicia are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Publishing Rights © JKR. (s23)

Free ice cream provided by Stewart’s Shops & The Dake Family.

BEETHOVEN’S SEVENTH

RODERICK COX

Conductor

PHILIPPE TONDRE

Oboe

WALKER

Lyric for Strings

MOZART

Oboe Concerto in C major, K. 314

I. Allegro aperto

II. Adagio non troppo

III. Rondo: Allegretto

INTERMISSION

BEETHOVEN

Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92

I. Poco sostenuto—Vivace

II. Allegretto

III. Presto—Assai meno presto—Presto

IV. Allegro con brio

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

LYRIC FOR STRINGS

Composed in 1946

GEORGE WALKER

Born in Washington, D.C., June 27, 1922

Died in Montclair, New Jersey, August 23, 2018

George Walker would admit that he was in no hurry. “I’m not really interested in producing a lot of music,” he said, “just a few quality pieces. I like to take time to write. You can write on an airplane or in a restaurant, but what about the quality?” Despite the rigor of this self-discipline he was one of the most prolific of American composers (“My mind is constantly working,” he said) and a respected one. Among his output are orchestral works (overtures, five sinfonias, a Variations for Orchestra, concertos for cello, violin, piano, and trombone); chamber music (including two string quartets, a brass quintet, Music for Three for piano trio, Perimeters for clarinet and piano, sonatas for violin, cello, and viola); five sonatas and other pieces for piano; extensive choral music (including a Mass, a Gloria, several Psalm settings, a Cantata); and songs, including a cycle on Emily Dickinson poems.

Walker was also an important pianist and pedagogue, having taught at Smith College, the University of Colorado, Rutgers University, the University of Delaware, and the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore. He began his career as a pianist, studying the keyboard first at the Oberlin Conservatory and then with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music; he also studied chamber music with Gregor Piatigorsky and William Primrose. Although Walker made his debut as pianist in New York’s Town Hall in 1945, his interest had turned toward composition by that time. Having already studied with composers Rosario

Scalero and Gian Carlo Menotti at Curtis, Walker went to Paris, where he was a pupil of the great Nadia Boulanger, and also studied piano with Robert Casadesus. He earned his doctorate in 1957 from the Eastman School of Music, where the American composer and conductor Howard Hanson was his mentor.

Walker won many awards and prizes, including a Fulbright Fellowship to France, two grants from the Rockefeller Foundation for study in Italy during the 1970s, and two Guggenheim fellowships in 1969 and 1984. In 1982 he was elected a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. And in 1996 he was the first Black to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music. (He won for Lilacs, a work for tenor and orchestra commissioned by the Boston Symphony and set to excerpts from Walt Whitman’s When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d.).

The composer’s noble Lyric for Strings had its origins in an earlier work. He provided the following commentary on the piece:

The Lyric for Strings was composed in 1946 and was originally the second movement of my First String Quartet. After a brief introduction, the principal theme that permeates the entire work is introduced by the first violins. A static interlude is followed by successive imitations of the theme that lead to an intense climax. The final section of the work presents a somewhat more ornamented statement of the same thematic material. The coda recalls the quiet interlude that appeared earlier.

The piece is a subtle meditation on the lush tones of the orchestral strings.

—Paul J. Horsley

OBOE CONCERTO IN C MAJOR, K. 314 Composed in 1777

WOLFGANG AMADÈ MOZART

Born in Salzburg, January 27, 1756

Died in Vienna, December 5, 1791

Although most of Mozart’s great piano concertos were composed for his own use in Vienna after 1781, the majority of his concertos for strings or wind instruments were written during the years preceding the composer’s permanent move to the imperial capital. Their character is, for the most part, correspondingly different, and not simply because of the composer’s relative youth. One hears more of the Rococo air of the provincial court in the earlier works, which were intended primarily for genteel musical entertainments at the smaller courts of Mannheim or Salzburg—the demands of which were quite different from those of large Viennese public concerts. Furthermore, nearly all of the earlier concertos were written with specific notions in mind about the soloists for whom they were intended; as such, these works appear to have been fashioned for particular styles and tastes of leading players, such as the oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis or the amateur flutist Ferdinand Dejean.

From 1774 to 1778 Mozart composed more than a dozen concertante works for strings and winds, including five great concertos for violin (an instrument he played himself), two for flute, one each for oboe and bassoon, and at least three sinfonie concertante. (This is in addition to many divertimentos and serenades for various wind ensembles.) Each of these works offers rewards; each is full of gentle subtlety and introverted rhetoric that place them in contrast with the flamboyant later Viennese concertos.

The Oboe Concerto in C major was composed in late spring or summer of 1777 for Ferlendis, the virtuoso who was appointed principal oboist at the Salzburg court in April 1777. Doubtless the piece was performed at court there, and it would remain a favorite

of the composer. For many years the work, bearing the provisional Köchel No. 271k, was presumed lost. Then in 1920 the Viennese Mozart scholar Bernhard Paumgartner came across a set of parts in the Mozarteum Salzburg library for a concerto that was nearly identical to the D-major Flute Concerto written for Dejean in 1778—except that these parts were in C major. Piecing together references to Dejean’s commission for concertos and flute quartets—which the dilatory young composer never entirely fulfilled—Paumgartner built a brilliant (and today widely accepted) argument to suggest that the Flute Concerto was little more than a hasty transcription of the previous year’s Oboe Concerto. Thus Mozart’s only complete Oboe Concerto was “found,” not by digging in Salzburg attics but by sheer musicological detective work.

In February 1778, while visiting the great musical establishment at the Mannheim royal court, Mozart made the acquaintance of Friedrich Ramm, one of the finest wind soloists of the day. The composer had brought several recent works along with him, including the new Oboe Concerto; Ramm was delighted with the piece, which Mozart presented to him as a gift. “Herr Ramm played for the fifth time my Oboe Concerto written for Ferlendis, which is making a great sensation here,” the composer wrote after he had been in Mannheim for a while. “It is now Ramm’s warhorse.”

The work is a treasure trove of irresistible melodies. The opening Allegro aperto is a busy and concise ritornello form, in which the oboe enters only after a 30-bar introductory exposition by the orchestra, then remains at the center throughout. The virtually operatic Adagio non troppo brings out all of the young composer’s most poignant melodic lyricism, and the rondo (Allegretto) is full of cheerful energy. The two outer movements each permit the soloist to play a solo cadenza before the final orchestral tutti; Mr. Tondre performs his own cadenzas.

Paul J. Horsley

SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN A MAJOR, OP. 92

Composed from 1811 to 1812

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770

Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

Beethoven called his Seventh Symphony “one of my most excellent works” in a letter to Johann Peter Solomon in London (the same Solomon who, some 20 years prior, had brought Haydn to the English capital and who, like Beethoven, was a native of Bonn). The composer may well be forgiven for this lavish self-praise: Even after the revolutionary accomplishments of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, he had clearly found a new approach to symphonic composition— one in which he had no need of a spoken or unspoken program such as the “fate” or “nature” associations in the earlier works in order to project a high level of dramatic energy. In many ways, the Seventh marks the culminating moment of Beethoven’s “heroic period,” but it manages to be “heroic” without evoking any hero in particular.

One way in which Beethoven achieved this was by having each of the four movements dominated by a single recurrent rhythmic figure, while creating an endless diversity of melodic and harmonic events against a backdrop of those continually repeated dance rhythms. There is a strong drive propelling the music forward creating constant excitement; at the same time, harmony, melody, dynamics, and orchestration are all full of the most delightful surprises, making for interesting turns in the musical “plot.”

In the first movement (Poco sostenuto— Vivace), we see how the predominant rhythm gradually emerges during the transition from the slow introduction to the fast tempo. The introduction is the longest Beethoven ever wrote for a symphony. It presents and develops its own thematic material, linked to the main theme of the Allegro section in a passage consisting of multiple repeats of a single note—E—in the flute, oboe, and violins. Among the many unforgettable moments of this movement, are the surprise oboe solo at the beginning of the recapitulation and the irresistible, gradual crescendo at the end that culminates in a fortissimo statement of the movement’s main rhythmic figure.

The second-movement Allegretto in A minor was the section in the Symphony that became the most popular from the day of its

premiere, when it had to be repeated. The main rhythmic pattern of this movement was used in Austro-German church litanies of the 18th and 19th centuries. The same pattern is so frequent in the music of Franz Schubert that it is sometimes referred to as the “Schubert rhythm.” The Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh combines this rhythm with a melody of rare expressive power. The rhythm persists in the bass even during the contrasting middle section in A major. Yet the movement opens and ends on a single long-held chord. In an influential essay on Beethoven’s symphonies, Hector Berlioz described this chord as a “mournful cry” that leaves “the listener in suspense … thereby increasing the impression of dreamy sadness.”

The third-movement scherzo (Presto) is the only one of the Symphony’s movements where the basic rhythmic patterns are grouped in an unpredictable, asymmetrical way. The joke (which is what the word scherzo means) lies in the fact that the listener may never know what will happen in the next moment. Only the trio returns to regular-length periods, though there are some harmonic and rhythmic irregularities that, according to Berlioz, always took the public by surprise. Beethoven expanded the traditional scherzo-trio-scherzo structure by repeating the trio a second time, followed by a third appearance of the scherzo. At the end Beethoven leads us to believe that he is going to start the trio over yet another time. But we are about to be doubly surprised: first when the by-now familiar trio melody is suddenly transformed from major to minor, and second when, with five quick tutti strokes, the movement abruptly ends, as if cut off in the middle.

In the fourth-movement Allegro con brio, the exuberant feelings reach their peak as one glorious theme follows another over an almost entirely unchanging rhythmic pulsation as the dance reaches an unprecedented level of intensity. It is a movement of which even Sir Donald Francis Tovey, the most celebrated British musical essayist of the first half of the 20th century, had to admit: “I can attempt nothing here by way of description.” Fortunately, the music speaks for itself.

—Peter Laki

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

Conductor Roderick Cox made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut this past January. The Berlin-based American conductor is the winner of the 2018 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, given by the U.S. Solti Foundation. Season highlights included debuts with the Berlin Radio, City of Birmingham, and Barcelona symphonies; the Staatskapelle Dresden; and the Royal and Royal Liverpool philharmonics, and returns to the Los Angeles and BBC philharmonics and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. Other recent highlights include his debuts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; the Malmö, Boston, Cincinnati, and New World symphonies; and the Orchestre de Paris.

Mr. Cox recently debuted at Houston Grand Opera leading Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers and at San Francisco Opera with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. He also recorded Jeanine Tesori’s Blue with Washington National Opera. Last season he conducted Verdi’s Rigoletto in a return to the Opéra National de Montpellier, where he is also developing a relationship

on the symphonic platform. With a passion for education and diversity and inclusion in the arts, he started the Roderick Cox Music Initiative (RCMI) in 2019, a project that provides scholarships for young musicians from historically marginalized communities, allowing them to pay for instruments, music lessons, and summer camps. This new initiative will be featured in an upcoming documentary called Conducting Life.

Born in Macon, Georgia, Mr. Cox attended the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University. He later attended Northwestern University, graduating with a master’s degree in 2011. He was awarded the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize from the Aspen Music Festival in 2013 and has held fellowships with the Chicago Sinfonietta and at the Chautauqua Music Festival. In 2016 he was appointed associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and worked under Osmo Vänskä for three seasons, having previously served as assistant conductor for a year.

Roderick Cox

Photo by Susie Knoll

Principal Oboe Philippe Tondre (Samuel S. Fels Chair) joined The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2020. Born in Mulhouse, France, he began studying oboe at age six at the Mulhouse National School of Music before attending the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. He has performed as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Geneva and Munich chamber orchestras, and the Osaka Philharmonic, among others. He is currently principal oboe of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Mito Chamber and Saito Kinen orchestras. He was also previously principal oboe of the SWR Symphony and the Budapest Festival and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras.

Mr. Tondre was awarded First Prize at the 2009 International Double Reed Society’s Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox Competition; Second Prize at the 2009 Tokyo International Competition; Third Prize at the 2010 Geneva International Competition; and Third Prize and the Gustav Mahler Prize at the 2008 Prague Spring International Competition. He also won the 2011 ARD International Music Competition as well as the Audience Prize and the prize for the best interpretation of Liza Lim’s commissioned composition. In 2012 he received the Beethoven Ring, an honor given by the city of Bonn.

Mr. Tondre has collaborated with such artists as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Lars Vogt, PierreLaurent Aimard, Yuri Bashmet, and Nathalie Stutzmann. He has attended the Tokyo Spring Festival, Mozart Fest Würzburg, the Sochi Winter International Arts Festival, and the Besançon and Molyvos international music festivals. He has recorded for BR-Klassik and is currently working with pianist Danae Dörken on three projects for the Klarthe and SWR Classic labels. Mr. Tondre teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music; the Hochschule für Musik Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany; and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England.

Andy PhilippeEinhornTondre

Photo by Nikolaj Lund

AN EVENING WITH AUDRA McDONALD

Conductor

AUDRA McDONALD

Soprano

JEREMY JORDAN

Piano

GENE LEWIN

Drums

MARK VANDERPOEL

Bass

Tonight’s program will be announced from the stage. This program is made possible in part with generous support from Bouchey Financial Group.

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

ANDY EINHORN

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actor. She is the winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two GRAMMY Awards, and an Emmy, and in 2015 she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. She won Tonys for her performances in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, which also served as the vehicle for her Olivier Award–nominated 2017 debut in London’s West End.

On television, Ms. McDonald won an Emmy Award as the official host of PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center and received nominations for for Wit, A Raisin in the Sun, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. She stars as Liz Reddick in The Good Fight on Paramount+ and gueststars as Dorothy Scott in Julian Fellowes’s historical drama The Gilded Age on HBO and

HBO Max Her film credits include Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast and MGM’s Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect.

A Juilliard-trained soprano, Ms. McDonald has performed Poulenc’s La Voix humaine and LaChiusa’s Send (who are you? I love you) at Houston Grand Opera and Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Los Angeles Opera. She has issued five solo albums on the Nonesuch label as well as Sing Happy with the New York Philharmonic on Decca Gold. She also maintains a major career as a concert artist, regularly appearing on the great stages of the world and with leading international orchestras; she made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1999. A founding member of Black Theatre United, board member of Covenant House International, and prominent advocate for LGBTQAI+ rights, her favorite roles are those performed offstage, as an activist, wife to actor Will Swenson, and mother.

Audra McDonald

Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein

Audra McDonald appears through arrangement with Alec Treuhaft, LLC.

Leading Broadway music director and conductor Andy Einhorn most recently served as music supervisor and musical director for the Broadway productions of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler (GRAMMY nomination) and Carousel starring Renée Fleming (GRAMMY nomination). His previous Broadway credits include Holiday Inn, Bullets Over Broadway the Musical, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Brief Encounter, Sondheim on Sondheim, Evita, and The Light in the Piazza

Since 2011 Mr. Einhorn has served as music director and pianist for six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, performing with her and such ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Pops, the Chicago Symphony, and Los Angeles Opera; at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Walt Disney Concert Hall; and in a series of recorded concerts with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. They have also recorded two albums together: Sing Happy: Live with the New York Philharmonic and Go Back Home.

Mr. Einhorn served as music director for HBO’s Peabody Award–winning documentary “Six by Sondheim” and music supervisor for Great Performances Peabody Award–winning special “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy” on PBS. He also music supervised and appeared on camera for the Emmy Award–winning performance of “Eat Sh*t Bob” for HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Upcoming film and TV projects include Apple Plus’s Extrapolations and Cabrini. Recently, Mr. Einhorn conducted the Baltimore, Detroit, Vancouver, and Pacific symphonies; the Cleveland and National Arts Centre (Ottawa) orchestras; and at the Aspen Music Festival, where he is a guest faculty member. He is also a regular music director and pianist for the 92nd St Y’s Lyrics and Lyricists series. He first appeared with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2009.

Andy Einhorn

RACHMANINOFF AT 150

YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN

Conductor

BRUCE LIU

Piano

RACHMANINOFF

Piano Concerto in No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18

I. Moderato

II. Adagio sostenuto

III. Allegro scherzando

INTERMISSION

RACHMANINOFF

Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44

I. Lento—Allegro moderato

II. Adagio ma non troppo—Allegro vivace—Tempo come prima

III. Allegro—Allegro vivace—Allegro (Tempo I)—Andante con moto—Allegretto—Allegro—Allegro vivace

This program is made possible in part with generous support from Jane and John Corrou.

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN C MINOR, OP. 18

Composed from 1900 to 1901

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born in Semyonovo, Russia, April 1, 1873

Died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born to a well-to-do family that cultivated his prodigious musical gifts. His mother was his first piano teacher and at age nine he began studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory but floundered. The family finances were declining, as was his parents’ marriage, and he chose to transfer to the Moscow Conservatory, where he thrived. He met leading Russian musicians, studied with some of them, and won the support of his hero, Tchaikovsky.

Upon graduation in the spring of 1892

Rachmaninoff was awarded the Great Gold Medal, a rarely bestowed honor. His career as both pianist and composer was clearly on the rise with impressive works such as the Piano Concerto No. 1, the one-act opera Aleko (about which Tchaikovsky enthused), and pieces in a variety of other genres. One piano work written at age 18 received almost too much attention: the C-sharp-minor Prelude, the extraordinary popularity of which meant he found himself having to perform it for the rest of his life.

Rachmaninoff seemed on track for a brilliant and charmed career, the true successor to Tchaikovsky. But things went terribly wrong in March 1897 with the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in D minor, which proved to be one of the legendary fiascos in music history and a bitter shock to the young composer just days before his 24th birthday.

Alexander Glazunov, an eminent composer and teacher but, according to various reports, a mediocre conductor, led the ill-fated concert. The event plunged Rachmaninoff into deep despair: “When the indescribable torture of this performance had at last come to an end, I was a different man.”

The Second Piano Concerto came at this crucial juncture in Rachmaninoff’s career, following the nearly three-year period of compositional paralysis in the wake of the failure of his First Symphony. Although he stopped composing, he continued to perform as a pianist and began to establish a new career as a conductor. In the hopes of getting

him back on track as a composer, friends and family put him in touch with Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who was experimenting with hypnosis treatments pioneered in Paris around this time by Freud’s teacher Jean-Martin Charcot. Dahl was a gifted amateur musician who took great interest in the case. According to various accounts (perhaps exaggerated), the two met almost daily, with the composer half asleep in the doctor’s armchair hearing the mantra: “You will begin to write your concerto. … You will work with great facility. … The concerto will be of excellent quality.”

The treatment worked—or at least complemented other factors that got the composer back on his creative track. A close friendship with the extraordinary Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin was encouraging, especially when the two were approached after a performance by the great writer Anton Chekhov, who remarked: “Mr. Rachmaninoff, nobody knows you yet but you will be a great man one day.” By the summer of 1900 he was composing the Second Piano Concerto, his first substantial work since the Symphony fiasco, which he dedicated to Dahl. (This is no doubt the lone instance of a composer dedicating a masterpiece to his therapist.) The second and third of its three movements were completed by the fall and Rachmaninoff premiered them in Moscow that December with his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting. He finished the first movement in May 1901 and performed the entire Concerto in November. The work was greeted enthusiastically and opened the way to Rachmaninoff’s most intensive period of compositional activity.

To begin the first movement (Moderato), the solo piano inexorably intones imposing chords in a gradual crescendo, repeatedly returning to a low F. This evokes the peeling of bells, a preoccupation of many Russian composers and one that had roots in Rachmaninoff’s childhood experiences. The passage leads to the broad first theme played by the strings. The core of the Concerto is an extended slow middle movement (Adagio sostenuto). The pianistic fireworks come to the fore in the finale (Allegro scherzando), which intersperses more lyrical themes—indeed the beloved tunes from all three movements were later adapted into popular songs championed by Frank Sinatra and others.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN A MINOR, OP. 44

Composed from 1935 to 1936 and revised in 1938

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

In the mid-1930s, as he was nearing the end of his life, Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Symphony No. 3, his last work in the genre. In it he wedded a distinctive musical style formed over four decades with an idealized sound he kept in his mind of The Philadelphia Orchestra, the ensemble he loved best and worked with the most. The Third Symphony amply displays the composer’s Russian roots as well as the new possibilities offered by having an extraordinary orchestra at his disposal.

At this point in his distinguished career Rachmaninoff had not written a symphony in 30 years. His first attempt, in his early 20s, had proved one of the traumas of his life upon its disastrous premiere in 1897; the work then disappeared and was thought lost, although it resurfaced a few years after his death. His Second Symphony, completed in 1907, fared much better and would eventually become a signature work for The Philadelphia Orchestra. Rachmaninoff conducted it with the Philadelphians himself on his first trip to America in 1909.

Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, never to return. He split his time between the United States and a lovely villa near Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Most of his energies were devoted to concertizing and he maintained a grueling schedule of orchestral dates and solo recitals. For nearly 10 years he did not compose at all until his Piano Concerto No. 4, which he premiered with the Philadelphians in 1927.

What Rachmaninoff wrote during his American years usually met with less success than his earlier Russian compositions. Audiences seemed to want to hear the old favorites, like his Second and Third piano concertos, and the Prelude in C-sharp minor, while critics tended to disparage the new pieces as out of step with Modernist developments. He enjoyed considerable success in 1934, however, with his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which was premiered with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.

During the following summer in Lucerne Rachmaninoff started to compose a threemovement symphony, using some musical ideas he had written down years earlier. He had not yet finished the final movement when the concert season resumed and returned to the

project the following spring. The Symphony was completed by the end of June for Stokowski to conduct the world premiere with the Philadelphians in November. After attending the first performances in Philadelphia and New York Rachmaninoff remarked that “It was played wonderfully. … Its reception by both the public and critics was—sour. One review sticks painfully in my mind: that I, Rachmaninoff, did not have a Third Symphony in me anymore. Personally, I am firmly convinced that it is a good work. But … sometimes composers are mistaken too! Be that as it may, I am holding to my opinion so far.” Other orchestras immediately took up the Symphony, apparently with mixed results, and Rachmaninoff set about revising the piece. Performances in Europe initially did not fare much better: “It has been heard once in every capital in the musical world,” the composer recalled, “and it has been condemned in them all.” It did not take too long, however, for the Symphony to establish a valued place in the repertory.

Like Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, the piece begins with a short chant-like theme (Lento), a motto of sorts, that recurs throughout the entire composition. In this case it is softly scored for solo clarinet, two horns, and muted cello and projects a Russian religious character with a narrow range of three notes not unlike the memorable opening of the Third Piano Concerto. The motto is quickly set aside as the pace quickens (Allegro moderato), leading eventually to one of Rachmaninoff’s glorious Romantic themes. The expansive movement ends with a reference to the opening chant motto.

While his first two symphonies sported four movements, this one just has three, but the middle one (Adagio ma non troppo) includes a scherzo-like section (Allegro vivace), which provides more variety. The final movement (Allegro) includes an impressive fugue and allusions to the Dies irae chant from the Mass for the Dead that Rachmaninoff used in so many of his compositions. The remarkable orchestration of the Symphony, such as the imaginative use of percussion instruments, is even more “Technicolor” than found in most of his earlier works and a tribute to what Rachmaninoff knew the Philadelphians could do.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. P rogram notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Walter and Lee Annenberg Chair) is currently in his 11th season with The Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as music and artistic director. Additionally, he became the third music director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2018. Yannick is an inspired leader of The Philadelphia Orchestra. His intensely collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling talents of his generation. He has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000, and in 2017 he became an honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now honorary conductor).

Yannick signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2018. Under

his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with 13 releases on that label, including Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3, which won a GRAMMY® Award for Best Orchestral Performance.

A native of Montreal, Yannick studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honors are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada; an Officer of the Order of Quebec; an Officer of the Order of Montreal; an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year; and honorary doctorates from, among others, the Curtis Institute of Music, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, McGill University, the University of Montreal, the University of Pennsylvania, and Drexel University.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Photo by George Etheredge

Bruce Liu, who made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut last month at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, was brought to the world’s attention when he won First Prize at the 18th Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2021. Following this success, he immediately embarked on a world tour, appearing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Bozar in Brussels, Tokyo Opera City, the Sala São Paulo, and Royal Festival Hall in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra; on a United States tour with the Warsaw Philharmonic; and with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Polish National Radio Symphony, the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, and the Seoul Philharmonic. Other past highlights include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Vienna and Israel philharmonics; a United States tour with the China National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra; a European Tour with the Montreal Symphony; his debut with the Royal

Philharmonic; and festival appearances at La Roque d’Anthéron, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Rheingau, Edinburgh, Duszniki, and Gstaad Menuhin. Next month he returns to the Chopin and his Europe Festival in Warsaw for the closing night concert.

Mr. Liu is exclusive recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon. His first album featured the winning performances from the Chopin Competition, which won a Fryderyk Award and was named Critics’ Choice and Editor’s Choice by Gramophone magazine.

Born in Paris to Chinese parents, Mr. Liu grew up in Montreal. His life has been steeped in cultural diversity, which has shaped his differences in attitude, personality, and character. He draws on various sources of inspiration for his art: European refinement, Chinese long tradition, and North American dynamism and openness.

FRIDAY, AUGUST

7:30PM

RITE OF SPRING & BLESSED EARTH

YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN

Conductor

MEIGUI ZHANG

Soprano

THE CROSSING DONALD NALLY

Artistic Director

ADAMS

Vespers of the Blessed Earth

I. A Brief Descent into Deep Time

II. A Weeping of Doves

III. Night-Shining Clouds

IV. Litanies of the Sixth Extinction

V. Aria of the Ghost Bird

INTERMISSION

STRAVINSKY

The Rite of Spring

First Part: The Adoration of the Earth

Introduction—

The Auguries of Spring—Dances of the Young Girls—

Ritual of Abduction—

Spring Rounds—

Ritual of the Rival Tribes—

Procession of the Sage—

The Sage—

Dance of the Earth

Second Part: The Sacrifice

Introduction—

Mystic Circles of the Young Girls—

Glorification of the Chosen One—

Evocation of the Ancestors—

Ritual Action of the Ancestors—

Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One)

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

VESPERS OF THE BLESSED EARTH

Composed from 2020 to 2021

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS

Born in Meridian, Mississippi, January 23, 1953

Now living in New Mexico

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Luther Adams was born in Mississippi but spent much of his adult life in Alaska, where the pristine grandeur of the natural environment exerted a deep influence on his music. After completing composition studies with James Tenney in 1973 at the California Institute of the Arts, Adams became involved in the conservation movement in Alaska, eventually serving for a term as executive director of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, while continuing to compose and teach. “My music has always been profoundly influenced by the natural world and a strong sense of place,” he notes. “I hope to explore the territory of sonic geography—that region between place and culture, between environment and imagination.”

It was Adams’s haunting orchestral poem Become Ocean (2013) that won him the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music, as well as a GRAMMY Award in 2015 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. That same year, he was named Musical America’s Composer of the Year. As he adds to an expansive oeuvre of landscape-informed compositions, Adams hopes his music will alert audiences to critical issues of climate change and environmental preservation, leading Alex Ross of the New Yorker to proclaim him “one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century.”

Adams’s compositions frequently allude to root environmental elements of earth, water, and air in their titles and performance conceptions. As the composer himself observes, “My work calls me to live as close as I can to the Earth, which is the ultimate source for everything I do.” The Earth is, indeed, the foundational and ultimate inspiration for Adams’s latest composition, Vespers of the Blessed Earth, which he considers one of the most ambitious works of his creative life. He includes potent words from the 20th-century Spanish poet Pedro Salinas on the frontispiece of the printed score: “Earth, nothing more. Earth, nothing less. And let that be enough for you.”

In this work, the distant echoes of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 offer a kind of inspirational model, but mostly in the sense that Monteverdi’s piece is also a collection of prayers—night prayers offered for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Adams’s Vespers are prayers for

the Earth itself, not necessarily verbal or vocal, but alluding to sacred words, symbols, and practices, sometimes framed in the form of purely instrumental pleas from the heart. As the composer has declared of these Vespers, “I wanted to give full voice to the grief that so many of us feel today, to see a measure of consolation and solace, and some hope of renewal in the enduring beauty of the Earth.”

In five movements, Vespers of the Blessed Earth presents a geological-scale view of the Earth’s history, interspersed with sections that focus on specific examples of endangered environments, fauna, and flora. In the first movement, “A Brief Descent into Deep Time,” the sacred text is the Earth itself. Adams describes the movement as a journey across “two-billion years of deep time through singing the names, colors, and ages of the geologic layers of the Grand Canyon.”

“A Weeping of Doves,” for a cappella chorus, is derived from the call of the beautiful fruit dove (Ptilinopus pulchellus), a brightly colored bird found throughout the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. The weeping of the beautiful fruit dove functions here not only as a symbol of the divine spirit within Abrahamic religions and a representation of lost peace, but also as the direct inspiration for the ritual mourning and weeping practices of the Kaluli people of the New Guinean rainforests. The weeping of doves is a holy lament—across cultures and religions—for the Earth.

The third movement, “Night-Shining Clouds,” illustrates a paradoxical tension between humanity’s disregard for the environment and the Earth’s own response. Adams writes, “Sometimes on summer evenings, bright clouds appear on the northern horizon, pulsing with color as if illuminated from within. As we pollute the atmosphere more and more, these noctilucent clouds have become more widespread, as the earth just grows more beautiful.” In this movement, as in the entire work, the descending lines evoke an austerity and sadness. Here the orchestral strings explore the sub-harmonic series, “spiraling downward in a nocturnal chaconne.”

The allusion to a liturgical Vespers service is most overt in the fourth movement—Adams calls it “the heart of my vespers”—with its title of “Litanies” and the use of Latin text throughout. “Litanies” implies both an act of divine supplication and a list of related items. In the “Litanies of the Sixth Extinction,” the chorus recounts the scientific names of 193 threatened and endangered species of plants and animals, ending (ominously) with Homo sapiens. (“Sixth

extinction” is a term conservation biologists have given to the current Anthropocene mass extinction event in which the disappearance of thousands of lifeforms coincides with climate change and humankind’s accelerated destruction of natural environments.)

The concluding “Aria of the Ghost Bird” revisits the sacred implications of birdsong and spiritual presence, but with a poignant, cautionary tone. In this movement, Adams sets musically the call of the now-extinct Kaua’i ʻŌʻō bird (Moho braccatus) of Hawai’i. The composer transcribed the bird’s distinctive call from a 1987 recording of the last of the species—a

male—singing for a female who would never come, but singing to the end nevertheless.

The warning entreaty of John Luther Adams’s Vespers for the Blessed Earth is both timely and urgent. But he adds a caveat:

No matter what we humans may vaingloriously believe, ours is not to “save the earth.” Without or without us, the earth will endure. The urgent challenge now facing humanity is to save ourselves, to become more fully and deeply human.

—Luke Howard

THE RITE OF SPRING Composed from 1911 to 1913

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Born in Lomonosov, Russia, June 17, 1882

Died in New York City, April 6, 1971

Music connected with dance has long held a special place in French culture, at least as far back as the age of Louis XIV, and there was an explosion of major full-length scores during the 19th century in Paris. Some of the perennial favorites were written by now generally forgotten figures, such as Adolphe Adam (Giselle from 1841) and his pupil Léo Delibes (Coppélia in 1870 and Sylvia in 1876). These composers inspired the supreme ballet music of the late century, that written by Tchaikovsky. With his scores to Swan Lake (1875-76), The Sleeping Beauty (1889), and Nutcracker (1892), ballet found its musical master.

In the first decade of the 20th century, however, magnificent dance returned to Paris when the impresario Sergei Diaghilev started exporting Russian culture. He began in 1906 with the visual arts, presented symphonic music the next year, then opera, and, finally, in 1909, added ballet. The offerings of his legendary Ballets Russes proved to be especially popular despite grumbling that the productions did not seem Russian enough for some Parisians. Music historian Richard Taruskin has remarked on the paradox:

The Russian ballet, originally a French import and proud of its stylistic heritage, now had to become stylistically “Russian” so as to justify its exportation back to France. Diaghilev’s solution was to commission, expressly for

presentation in France in 1910, something without precedent in Russia: a ballet on a Russian folk subject, and with music cast in a conspicuously exotic “Russian” style. He cast about for a composer willing to come up with so weird a thing.

Diaghilev had some difficulty finding that composer. After being refused by several others, he engaged the 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky, who achieved great success with The Firebird in 1910. His second ballet, Petrushka, followed the next season. And then came the real shocker that made music history: The Rite of Spring.

The Russian artist and archeologist Nicholas Roerich, a specialist in Slavic history and folklore, devised the scenario for the Rite together with Stravinsky and eventually created the sets and costumes. Subtitled “Pictures of Pagan Russia,” the ballet offers ritual dances culminating in the sacrifice of the “chosen one” in order “to propitiate the god of spring.” Stravinsky composed the music between September 1911 and March 1913, after which the work went into an unusually protracted period of rehearsals. There were many for the orchestra, many for the dancers, and then a handful with all the forces together. The final dress rehearsal on May 28, 1913, the day before the premiere, was presented before a large audience and attended by various critics. All seemed to go smoothly.

Diaghilev undoubtedly devised the premiere to be a big event. Ticket prices at the newly built Théâtre des Champs-Élysées were doubled and the cultural elite of Paris showed up. The program opened with a beloved classic: Les Sylphides, orchestrations of piano

pieces by Chopin. What exactly happened next that evening, however, is not entirely clear. Conflicting accounts quickly emerged, sometimes put forth by people who were not even in attendance. From the very beginning of The Rite of Spring there was laughter and an uproar among the audience, but whether this was principally in response to the music or to the dancing is still debated. It seems more likely that it was the latter. One critic observed that “past the Prelude the crowd simply stopped listening to the music so that they might better amuse themselves with the choreography.” That choreography was by the 23-year-old dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, who had presented a provocative staging of Claude Debussy’s Jeux with the company just two weeks earlier. Although Stravinsky’s music was evidently inaudible at times through the din, conductor Pierre Monteux pressed on and saw the 30-minute ballet through to the end. The evening was not yet over. After intermission came two more audience favorites: Carl Maria von Weber’s The Specter of the Rose and Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from his opera Prince Igor.

Five more performances of The Rite of Spring were given over the next two weeks and then the company took the ballet on tour. Within the year the work was triumphantly presented as a concert piece and ever since, the concert hall has been its principal home. Yet it is well worth remembering that this extraordinary composition, which some commentators herald as the advent of modern music, was originally a theatrical piece, a collaborative effort forging the talents of Stravinsky, Roerich, Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Monteux, and a large ensemble of musicians and dancers. Leopold Stokowski conducted the American premiere of both the concert and staged versions of The Rite of Spring in Philadelphia.

The Rite of Spring is in two tableaux—“The Adoration of the Earth” and “The Sacrifice”— each of which has an introductory section, a series of dances, and a concluding ritual. The opening minutes of the piece give an idea of Stravinsky’s innovative style. A solo bassoon, playing at an unusually high register, intones a melancholy melody. This is the first of at least nine folk melodies that the composer adapted

for the piece, although he later denied doing so (except for this opening tune).

Some order eventually emerges out of chaos as the “The Auguries of Spring” roar out massive string chords punctuated by eight French horns. In the following dances unexpected and complicated metrical innovations emerge. At various points in the piece Stravinsky changes the meter every measure, a daunting challenge for the orchestra in 1913 that now seems second nature to many professional musicians. If Arnold Schoenberg had famously “liberated the dissonance” a few years earlier, Stravinsky now seems to liberate rhythm and meter.

Although the scenario changed over the course of composition, a basic “Argument” was printed in the program at the premiere, which read as follows:

FIRST ACT: “The Adoration of the Earth.” Spring. The Earth is covered with flowers. The Earth is covered with grass. A great joy reigns on the Earth. Mankind delivers itself up to the dance and seeks to know the future by following the rites. The eldest of the Sages himself takes part in the Glorification of Spring. He is led forward to unite himself with the abundant and superb Earth. Everyone stamps the Earth ecstatically.

SECOND ACT: “The Sacrifice.” After the day: After midnight. On the hills are the consecrated stones. The adolescents play the mystic games and see the Great Way. They glorify, they proclaim Her who has been designated to be delivered to the God. The ancestors are invoked, venerated witnesses. And the wise Ancestors of Mankind contemplate the sacrifice. This is the way to sacrifice Iarilo the magnificent, the flamboyant.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Luke Howard.

See Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s biography on page 57.

Soprano Meigui Zhang made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut this past March. She represented China in the 2023 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in June. In July she made her Boston Symphony debut at Tanglewood as Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and in September makes her Los Angeles Opera debut as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. This season’s highlights included her role debut as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice at San Francisco Opera, her Atlanta Opera debut as Zerlina, and a return to the Metropolitan Opera covering Ilia in Mozart’s Idomeneo. She also appeared in Mozart’s Requiem with the North Carolina Symphony and Bruckner’s Te Deum with the New Jersey Symphony.

Ms. Zhang’s 2021–22 season included Thibault in Verdi’s Don Carlos with Yannick NézetSéguin and Barbarina in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, both at the Metropolitan Opera, and her San Francisco Opera debut as Dai Yu in Bright Sheng’s The Dream of the Red Chamber. She also performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 throughout China with the Sichuan Symphony, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, Bach’s Coffee Cantata with Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival, and concerts with the Xi’an and Shenzhen symphonies.

Ms. Zhang was the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Verbier Festival’s Prix Yves Paternot, a finalist in the 2019 Queen Sonja International Music Competition, took second place at the 2020 Opera Index Vocal Competition, and won the Audience Prize at the 2020 Glyndebourne Opera Cup. She has attended the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, the Merola Opera Program, and the Chautauqua Institute. Ms. Zhang earned her master’s degree from the Mannes School of Music and her bachelor’s degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

Meigui Zhang

The Crossing is a GRAMMY-winning professional chamber choir dedicated to new music and committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir. Many of its nearly 110 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. The Crossing collaborates with some of the world’s most accomplished ensembles and artists, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, the American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Lyric Fest, Piffaro, Beth Morrison Projects, Allora & Calzadilla, Bang on a Can, Klockriketeatern, and the International Contemporary Ensemble; it made its Philadelphia Orchestra debut this past March. The choir collaborates with some of the world’s most prestigious venues and presenters and holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana, where it is working on an extensive, multi-year project with composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison.

The Crossing has expanded its choral presentation to film, working with Four/Ten Media, in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services, visual artists Brett Snodgrass and Steven Bradshaw, and composers David Lang and Mr. Gordon on live and animated versions of new and existing works. The choir has released 21 recordings, receiving three GRAMMY awards for Best Choral Performance and eight nominations.

The Crossing is under the direction of Donald Nally, who has been chorus master for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, the Chicago Bach Project, and the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He has been music director of Mr. Lang’s 1000-voice Crowd Out at Millennium Park in Chicago and 1000-voice Mile Long Opera on the High Line in Manhattan. This spring he concluded a decade as the John W. Beattie Chair in Music and director of choral organizations at Northwestern University.

The Crossing

Katy Avery

Jessica Beebe

Steven Berlanga

Danielle Buonaiuto

Aryssa Burrs

Abigail Chapman

Micah Dingler

Joanna Gates

Dimitri German

Josh Hartman

Nick Hay

Michaël Hudetz

Steven Hyder

Lauren Kelly

Michele Kennedy

Anika Kildegaard

Heidi Kurtz

Fran Daniel Laucerica

Kim Leeds

Maren Montalbano

Benjamin Perri

Jack Reeder

Daniel Schwartz

Rebecca Siler

Julie Snyder

Daniel Spratlan

Christopher Talbot

Daniel Taylor

Alyssa Toepfler

Jason Weisinger

Jackson Williams

Shari Wilson

Photo by Kevin Vondrak

THE FOUR SEASONS WITH GIL SHAHAM

GIL SHAHAM

Leader and Violin

SAINT-GEORGES

Violin Concerto No. 9 in G major, Op. 8

I. Allegro

II. Largo

III. Rondeau

INTERMISSION

VIVALDI

The Four Seasons

I. Spring, Concerto in E major, RV 269

a. Allegro

b. Largo

c. Allegro

II. Summer, Concerto in G minor, RV 315

a. Allegro non molto

b. Adagio alternating with Presto

c. Presto

III. Autumn, Concerto in F major, RV 293

a. Allegro

b. Adagio molto

c. Allegro

IV. Winter, Concerto in F minor, RV 297

a. Allegro non molto

b. Largo

c. Allegro

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 9 IN G MAJOR, OP. 8

Probably composed in the mid-1770s

JOSEPH BOLOGNE, CHEVALIER DE SAINTGEORGES

Born in Baillif, Guadeloupe, December 25, 1745

Died in Paris, June 10, 1799

Joseph Bologne benefited from the opportunities, experiences, and elite education that allowed his multiple gifts, not limited to musical ones, to thrive. He was the illegitimate son of Nanon, an enslaved teenager of African descent, and George Bologne, a wealthy French plantation owner in the South Caribbean. There are many gaps in biographical information about Joseph, among them when he was born, but that is usually given as Christmas Day in 1745 on a small island in the French colony of Guadeloupe. After being accused of murder, his father fled to France, followed shortly by his wife, Elizabeth; his daughter; as well as by Nanon and her young son. George was granted a royal pardon and returned to Guadeloupe for some years before taking his son to France permanently in 1753.

The talent that first brought the teenage Bologne public attention was in athletics, most notably fencing, which proved an entrée into high society; while still a teenager he was dubbed the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Although little is known of the exact course of his musical training, by his mid-20s he was playing in the newly formed Concert des Amateurs in Paris. He soon became its concertmaster and eventually music director, helping to raise the orchestra to be considered one of Europe’s best. In 1772 he was the featured soloist with the ensemble performing his own technically challenging violin concertos, Op. 2.

The pace of Saint-Georges’s composing increased, at first primarily of instrumental music, including string quartets, sonatas, violin concertos, and symphonies concertantes, a new Parisian genre. Pieces dedicated to him

by prominent musicians of the time, including Antonio Lolli, François-Joseph Gossec, and Carl Stamitz, suggest that he was held in high esteem. That Paris was abuzz about him is apparent in a May 1779 diary entry written by John Adams, the future second president of the United States, who had just completed duty as envoy to France: “He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Running, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Musick.”

Saint-Georges began to compose operas, although he faced obstacles due to racist singers who complained to Queen Marie Antoinette about having to take orders from someone of mixed race. After the Concert des Amateurs disbanded for financial reasons, he helped to found the Concert de la Loge Olympique, the orchestra that commissioned Haydn’s six so-called Paris symphonies of which he led the premieres. He most likely met Mozart as in 1778 they lived for some time in the same house in Paris, although nothing concrete is known of any friendship or rivalry. To the end, Saint-Georges’s career mixed athletics and music, amid other adventures including military service during the French Revolution, joining the National Guard, and for some 18 months being a prisoner during the Reign of Terror.

The lively first movement (Allegro) of the Concerto No. 9 in G major, Op. 8, gives an initial taste of virtuoso violin techniques of the time with the composer particularly highlighting wide leaps for the soloist, who plays in very high registers that soar over the accompaniment. The slow movement (Largo) provides a contrast not just in tempo but also its minor key and a Baroque sounding majesty to start, with dotted-rhythms (long-short-long) before the soloist enters with a lyrically tuneful melody. Saint-Georges uses his favored Rondeau form for the brief finale, alternating between the jaunty opening theme and more passionate minor-key episodes.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

THE FOUR SEASONS

Published in 1725

ANTONIO VIVALDI

Born in Venice, March 4, 1678

Died in Vienna, July 28, 1741

The idea of depicting the seasons through music did not originate with Antonio Vivaldi. Spring’s sensuous languor and winter’s icy chill had been favorite topics of the Renaissance madrigalists centuries earlier. But the notion reached one of its most eloquent expressions in the four concertos that constitute what Vivaldi called The Four Seasons. Since 1725, when these works first appeared in print in Amsterdam, dozens of composers have followed suit, not only in works intended to depict all four seasons (an oratorio by Haydn, a piano suite by Tchaikovsky, a ballet by Glazunov), but also in compositions that characterize the mood or activities of a single season (Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Grieg’s In Autumn Overture).

Vivaldi’s set of four concertos remains among the most popular of these—indeed, among the most celebrated programmatic music of all time. They were initially published as part of the composer’s Op. 8, a set of 12 concertos released in 1725 as The Contest of Harmony and Invention. The provocative title hinted at the composer’s challenge of creating works that were musically powerful but also poetically interesting. The concertos bore colorful titles, including not only the names of the four seasons (for the first four concertos), but others such as “The Hunt,” “The Storm at Sea,” and “Pleasure.”

Yet these concertos form but a tiny part of a vast oeuvre. Few composers can begin to

match the sheer volume of Vivaldi’s output, much less its peerless consistency. In addition to 50 operas, 150 vocal works, and more than 100 solo sonatas, the Venetian cleric and composer known as the Red Priest (because of his hair) wrote more than 500 concertos, for all manner of solo instruments. There are also some 80 ensemble concertos for two or more soloists, cast in various combinations. Considering the lightning speed at which they must have been written, it is amazing that so many are absolutely first-rate pieces. Despite the fact that even during his lifetime Vivaldi was criticized for assembly-line-style composition, a large number of these works have durably withstood the test of time.

For the publication of The Four Seasons, Vivaldi appended a poem for each of the concertos; though the verses are not signed, many scholars have assumed that they are from Vivaldi’s own pen, largely because of the meticulous detail with which the programmatic elements of the poetry follow the musical events of the concertos. Vivaldi’s expression of the mood of each season is quite ingenious, in fact, and even led him to a new approach to the ritornello concerto (a term chosen to describe the manner in which full-orchestra material returns again and again, lending cohesiveness to an otherwise fairly fluid design). The orchestral tuttis are often used to depict the overall mood of the season (such as the frozen landscape at the beginning of “Winter,” or the melting heat of “Summer”), while the soloistic passages evoke more specific elements, such as the bird songs at the opening of “Spring,” or the Bacchic harvest-revelry at the opening of new wine, as expressed in the opening solo passagework of “Autumn.”

—Paul J. Horsley

“Spring”

Spring has come, and joyfully the birds welcome it with cheerful song, and the streams, at the breath of zephyrs, flow swiftly with sweet murmurings. But now the sky is cloaked in black and thunder and lightning announce themselves; when they die away, the little birds turn afresh to their sweet song.

Then on the pleasant flower-strewn meadow, to the gentle rustle of the leaves and branches the goatherd rests, his faithful dog at his side.

To the rustic bagpipe’s gay sound, nymph and shepherd dance beneath the fair spring sky in all its glory.

“Summer”

In the torrid heat of the blazing sun, man and beast alike languish, and even the pine trees scorch; the cuckoo raises his voice, and soon after the turtledove and finch join in song. Sweet zephyrs blow, but then the fierce north wind intervenes; the shepherd weeps, anxious for his fate from the harsh, menacing gusts.

He rouses his weary limbs from rest in fear of the lightning, the fierce thunder and the angry swarms of gnats and flies.

Alas! his fears are justified, for furious thunder irradiates the heavens, bowing down the trees and flattening the crops.

“Autumn”

The peasant celebrates with song and dance his joy in a fine harvest and with generous draughts of Bacchus’ cup his efforts end in sleep.

Song and dance are done, the gentle, pleasant air and the season invite one and all to the delights of sweetest sleep.

At first light a huntsman sets out with horns, guns, and dogs, putting his prey to flight and following its tracks; terrified and exhausted by the great clamor of guns and dogs, wounded and afraid, the prey tries to flee but is caught and dies.

“Winter”

To shiver icily in the freezing dark in the teeth of a cruel wind, to stamp your feet continually, so chilled that your teeth chatter.

To remain in quiet contentment by the fireside while outside the rain soaks people by the hundreds.

To walk on the ice, with slow steps in fear of falling, advance with care. Then to step forth strongly, fall to the ground, and again run boldly on the ice until it cracks and breaks;

to listen as from the iron portals winds rush from south and north, and all the winds in contest; such is winter, such the joys it brings.

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time: his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. He is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.

Highlights of recent years include a recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin and recitals with his long time duo partner pianist, Akira Eguchi. He regularly appears with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphonies, the Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and in multi-year residencies with the Orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart and Singapore.

Mr. Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. His most recent recording in the series 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2 was nominated for a Grammy Award. His latest recording of Beethoven and Brahms Concertos with The Knights was released in 2021.

Gil Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius and performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. He lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.

Gil Shaham

Photo by Chris Lee

YO-YO MA PLAYS DVOŘÁK

XIAN ZHANG

Conductor

YO-YO MA

Cello

PROKOFIEV

Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100

I. Andante

II. Allegro marcato

III. Adagio

IV. Allegro giocoso

INTERMISSION

DVOŘÁK

Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104

I. Allegro

II. Adagio ma non troppo

III. Allegro moderato

This program is made possible in part with generous support from Heather & Jason Ward and Skidmore College.

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 100 Composed in 1944

SERGEI PROKOFIEV

Born in Sontsovka, Ukraine, April 23, 1891

Died in Moscow, March 5, 1953

One is hard pressed to identify positive things associated with the horrors of war. Yet composers, like other artists through the ages, have often used their creative gifts to deal with tragedy and their music has helped others to cope as well. The Second World War inspired an unusually large quantity of significant music and nowhere more so than in the genre of the symphony. Some of them were written in the heat of war, others as the conflict was ending or after victory had been achieved. The emotions exhibited in these works range from despair to hope, from the bitterness of defeat to the exultation of victory.

It is perhaps telling that while no German or Italian symphonies composed during the war are remembered today, many from other countries remain impressive monuments. Aaron Copland’s Third, widely considered the “Great American Symphony,” was premiered in October 1946, after the Allied victory. Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies, and a number of Bohuslav Martinů’s symphonies are among other enduring works that either openly or in more subtle ways engaged with the perilous times.

Which brings us to the Soviet Union, where the relationship between the arts and politics was always complex and where the war extracted the largest number of causalities. The two leading Russian composers of the day both made important symphonic contributions: Dmitri Shostakovich with his Seventh Symphony, the “Leningrad” (1941), and Sergei Prokofiev with his Fifth Symphony (1944). These works were composed in dire times, received triumphant premieres, made the rounds internationally led by eminent conductors, and were enthusiastically greeted by appreciative audiences. Shostakovich was hailed on the cover of Time magazine in August 1942 and Prokofiev appeared on the cover three years later, after the premiere of the Fifth Symphony in January 1945.

For all its success, Prokofiev’s path to his Fifth was an arduous one—personally, professionally, and most specifically with regard to how to write a substantive work in a genre that kept causing him some difficulty. After enjoying a privileged childhood, molded by parents eager to cultivate his obvious musical gifts, Prokofiev went on to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with leading Russian composers

of the day, including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Reinhold Glière. He won early fame with challenging Modernist scores that were unlike what most composers were writing in Russia during the 1910s.

Then came the October Revolution of 1917. Like other prominent figures from similarly comfortable family backgrounds, including Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev left Russia. He made a long journey through Siberia, stopped off in Tokyo, and finally arrived in New York City in early September 1918. He would live in America, Paris, and other Western cities for nearly 20 years. In 1927 he returned for a visit to the Soviet Union and began to spend an increasing amount of time in his transformed native country. In the summer of 1936, with timing that boggles the mind today, he moved back permanently with his wife and their two young sons. He spent the rest of his life there, riding a roller coaster of official favor and stinging condemnation. He died on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin.

Prokofiev wrote some of his most compelling music during the Second World War, including the opera War and Peace, the ballet Cinderella, the Second String Quartet, and three impressive piano sonatas. Given the grim circumstances in the Soviet Union, the Fifth Symphony was born under relatively comfortable conditions during the summer of 1944, which Prokofiev spent in an artists’ colony set up by the Union of Composers at Ivanovo, some 160 miles from Moscow. (Shostakovich, Glière, Kabalevsky, and other prominent figures were also there.) After absolutely devastating years for the Soviet Union in their struggle against the Germans, things were beginning to look more hopeful with the news from Normandy and Poland. By the time Prokofiev conducted the premiere at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on January 13 there was real good news: The day before the Soviet Army had surged forward.

That evening was a complete triumph for Prokofiev, but also an ending of sorts. The concert proved to be the last time he conducted as just a few days later he had a serious fall, perhaps due to untreated high blood pressure, and was ill, although productive, for the remaining eight years of his life.

The seriousness of the four-movement Fifth Symphony is immediately apparent from the spare opening theme of the Andante, played by flutes and bassoon. This builds to a grand statement of epic scope, one that returns in the finale. There is throughout the work a profusion of thematic material and Prokofiev’s prodigious lyrical gifts are fully evident—what sounds like a passionate love theme is followed by a nervous repeated note motif, all of which are seamlessly

integrated. The first movement ends with a bold coda that pounds out the opening theme, now fully orchestrated and at full volume, suggestive of Prokofiev’s comment that he “conceived it as a symphony of the greatness of the human spirit.”

The following scherzo (Allegro marcato) has both light and more ominous elements, showing off the composer’s deft balletic writing as well as his affinity for the grotesque. The following Adagio returns us to a lyrical, even elegiac, tone with soaring themes and a funereal middle

CELLO CONCERTO IN B MINOR, OP. 104 Composed from 1894 to 1895

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841

Died in Prague, May 1, 1904

There is a special quality about the music that Dvořák composed during his three-year stay in the United States that has made it particularly dear to American hearts. From the “New World” Symphony to the Te Deum, from the “American” Quartet and Quintet to the Cello Concerto, these works manifest a unique synthesis of European tradition and American directness that seem to have brought out the best in the Czech-born composer. In part this success was a measure of Dvořák’s ability to reduce the more complex contrapuntal style of his earlier works into a more straightforward texture. But also, this music from the early 1890s lent a new prominence to melodies that for many listeners in the United States had a powerfully “American” character. One view on this is that Dvořák wrote these works under the influence of indigenous melodies of Native Americans he met during his travels here; others point to the similarity of these tunes to the AfricanAmerican spirituals that he studied assiduously while he was here. Whatever the focus, Dvořák’s American period (1892–95) was a crucial moment, both in American concert music and in the composer’s own development.

By 1894 he was up to his neck in administrative duties, as director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music, and he had to struggle for every minute of creative time. The Concerto’s inception was inspired, partly, by another cello concerto—the Second of tunesmith Victor Herbert, the premiere of which Dvořák had heard in March 1894 in Brooklyn. Soon after this performance he began to reconsider the longstanding request of Hanuš Wihan, the best-known Czech cellist of his day, that he write a concerto. He began sketching the piece in November of that year, completing it in February 1895. He sent the solo part to Wihan, who suggested a number

section. Themes from the preceding movements are reviewed in the final Allegro giocoso, which begins with a slow introduction. The music has an inexorable quality of moving forward and reaches a marvelous coda. After all the epic grandeur heard to this point, the texture suddenly shifts to chamber music, with string soloists, percussion, piano, and harp taking frantic center stage before the thrilling final chord for the full orchestra.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

of revisions and rather obtusely wrote out elaborate cadenzas for himself in the first and last movements. Dvořák was incensed, writing to his publisher, “I insist on my work being printed as I have written it.” In the end it was Leo Stern who premiered the work, in March 1896 in London; the composer himself conducted. It scored a huge success, as it did in subsequent performances in Prague. Brahms stood in awe at Dvořák’s achievement, calling it a “great and important work,” and commenting that “had I known that such a violoncello concerto as this could be written, I would have tried to compose one myself.”

The first movement (Allegro) begins with a clarinet statement of the pregnant first theme, leading to the assertive second subject; the orchestral exposition takes us finally back to a rather startling statement of the main theme by the solo cello—in the unconventional major key. The second movement (Adagio ma non troppo) is built from a tranquil subject first stated by clarinets and bassoons; a haunting central section follows, with a tune borrowed from one of Dvořák’s own songs, “Lasst mich allein” (Leave Me Alone), which he interpolated here as a tribute to Josefína Čermáková, a friend who had fallen ill and died shortly after the composer’s return to Bohemia in summer 1895.

The work concludes with a finale (Allegro moderato) of cheerful vigor—”closing with a gradual diminuendo,” as Dvořák wrote of the movement, “like a breath, with reminiscences of the first and second movements.” The composer revised this movement in 1895; among other things he extended the coda by more than 60 measures, bringing back the main theme of the first movement and also adding a reference to “Leave Me Alone.”

—Paul J. Horsley

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

Xian Zhang who made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2012, is currently in her seventh season as music director of the New Jersey Symphony. She is also principal guest conductor of the Melbourne Symphony and conductor emeritus of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, where she was music director from 2009 to 2016. This season, she made guest conducting appearances with the Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle, Boston, and Singapore symphonies; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and the Orchestre National de Lille. Previous engagements include the London Symphony, the Philharmonia and Spain National orchestras, the Orchestra of the Komische Oper in Berlin, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Orchestre National de Lyon, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and she remains a popular guest of the Detroit, Montreal, National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Toronto symphonies.

Ms. Zhang returned to Norwegian Opera for

Puccini’s Tosca, which she recently conducted at Cincinnati Opera; she makes her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2024 with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Previous productions include Verdi’s Nabucco with Welsh National Opera, Verdi’s Otello at the Savonlinna Festival, Puccini’s La bohème for English National Opera, and Verdi’s La forza del destino with National Opera.

Ms. Zhang’s Deutsche Grammophon recording with Time for Three and The Philadelphia Orchestra, Letters for the Future, won 2023 GRAMMY awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition (Kevin Puts’s Contact) and Best Classical Instrumental Solo. She previously served as principal guest conductor of the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales and was the first female conductor to hold a titled role with a BBC orchestra. In 2002 she won first prize in the Maazel-Vilar Conductor’s Competition. She was appointed the New York Philharmonic’s assistant conductor in 2002, subsequently becoming its associate conductor.

Xian Zhang

Photo by Benjamin Ealovega

Yo-Yo Ma multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity.

Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society.

Yo-Yo is an advocate for a future guided by humanity, trust, and understanding. Among his many roles, Yo-Yo is a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the first artist ever appointed to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, a member of the board of Nia Tero, the US-based nonprofit working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and movements worldwide, and the founder of the global music collective Silkroad. His discography of more than 120 albums (including 19 Grammy Award winners) ranges

from iconic renditions of the Western classical canon to recordings that defy categorization, such as “Hush” with Bobby McFerrin and the “Goat Rodeo Sessions” with Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Yo-Yo’s recent releases include “Six Evolutions,” his third recording of Bach’s cello suites, and “Songs of Comfort and Hope,” created and recorded with pianist Kathryn Stott in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yo-Yo’s latest album, “Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 6 and Op. 1, No. 3,” is the second in a new series of Beethoven recordings with pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.

Yo-Yo was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age four and three years later moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at the Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010), Kennedy Center Honors (2011), the Polar Music Prize (2012), and the Birgit Nilsson Prize (2022). He has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration.

Yo-Yo and his wife have two children. He plays three instruments: a 2003 instrument made by Moes & Moes, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice, and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.

Yo-Yo Ma

Photo by Jason Bell

THE EARTH—AN HD ODYSSEY

EDWIN OUTWATER

Conductor

BATES

Philharmonia Fantastique

First Philadelphia Orchestra performance

INTERMISSION

ADAMS

Short Ride in a Fast Machine

STRAUSS

Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30

Dawn— Of the Backworldsmen— Of the Great Longing— Of Joys and Passions— Grave-Song— Of Science— The Convalescent— The Dance-Song— The Night-Wanderer’s Song

The Earth—An HD Odyssey is produced by the Houston Symphony and Duncan Copp.

This program is made possible in part with generous support from Hudson Headwaters Health Network

Free ice cream provided by Stewart’s Shops & The Dake Family.

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

PHILHARMONIA FANTASTIQUE

Composed from 2019 to 2020

MASON BATES

Born in Philadelphia, January 23, 1977

Now living in Burlingame, California

Raised in Richmond, Virginia, GRAMMY Award–winning composer Mason Bates showed an interest in both creative writing and music from an early age. He attended a joint program of Columbia University and the Juilliard School of Music, receiving a B.A. in English literature and a Master of Music in composition, while concurrently studying playwriting. Bates also studied at the American Academies in Rome and Berlin, as well as at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received a Ph.D. in composition. He has composed for symphony, opera, chamber ensemble, chorus, and film and has become known as a diverse artist continually exploring imaginative ways to integrate classical music into our ever-evolving contemporary culture. Most recently he received a GRAMMY Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical, for the 2022 recording of Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra and saw both a new production of the GRAMMY-winning The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs by Utah Opera and the digital release of his a cappella piece “Die Lorelei” by the professional vocal ensemble Chanticleer.

Bates’s compositions and ingenious approach to curating performances have been transforming the way classical music is both created and experienced. During his term as the first-ever composer-in-residence at Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he presented a diverse array of artists through KC Jukebox using immersive production and stagecraft, creating an innovative exploration of music using the wide variety of spaces in the Kennedy Center. This unique series was described as a “diverse use of information outreach through technology, transforming the program book into an immersive combination of video and projections that takes the audience into composers’ and performers’ minds.”

Bates sees the recent trend in orchestral performances of combining music and film as a journey incorporating digital sounds and projection screens to create what he calls the “perfect medium for a kinetic exploration of musical instruments and how they work.” Philharmonia Fantastique is a multi-media concerto introducing audiences to the instruments, sounds, and science of

the orchestra through music and animation. A collaboration among Bates, Oscar-winning director and sound designer Gary Rydstrom, and Oscar-nominated animation director Jim Capobianco, this concerto continues the tradition of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, taking the audience deep into the orchestral ensemble to gain an understanding of how instruments function, separately and together. Premiered in the 2021–22 season, Philharmonia Fantastique was commissioned by a consortium of the Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Dallas, National, and American Youth symphonies, with support from a number of private foundations.

In Bates’s work, each of the four families of the orchestra inhabits its own sound world, forming “four distinct tribes” and creating dramatic tension that can only be resolved when the instrumental families transcend their differences and come together. Bates describes the message as one of unity—the diverse instruments of the orchestra are most powerful when collaborating together as one giant instrument.

As Bates describes the opening, “an orchestra tunes, and immediately, a sense of anticipation and wonder ripples through the room. As this super-instrument brings its marvels of engineering together into a single pitch, we are witnessing both art and science. Guided by a mercurial Sprite, we fly inside a flute to see its keys up close, jump on a viola string to activate the harmonic series, and zip through a trumpet as its valves slice shafts of air.” The Sprite uncovers the unique traits of each instrumental family—the “slinky, sophisticated noir-jazz of the woodwinds; the lush romanticism of the strings; the bold techno-fanfares of the brass; and the percussion section ‘drum circle’ in all its versatility.” The Sprite brings the families together as each learns to play the others’ themes—a key inspiration for humanity as the piece unfolds.

To Bates, “only through learning each other’s languages do the different instrument families—as different as the races on earth— fuse together to resurrect the Sprite and become the Orchestra, one of the greatest human creations. When an orchestra plays, the integration of so much engineering into one giant instrument is a real model of ‘unity from diversity.’ All these different materials and technologies—and people—syncing together to make beautiful music is a real model for how we should all behave as people.”

—Nancy Plum

PHILHARMONIA FANTASTIQUE

Music by Mason Bates

Directed by Gary Rydstrom

Written by Mason Bates and Gary Rydstrom

Animation Direction by Jim Capobianco

Produced by Alex D. da Silva and Mason Bates  Executive Producers Jody Allen, Rocky Collins, Ruth Johnston, and Mary Pat Buerkle

Commissioned by Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and American Youth Symphony

Supported by Sakana Foundation, John & Marcia Goldman Foundation, Paul J. Sekhri and The Sekhri Family Foundation

ONSCREEN MUSICIANS

Courtney Wise Flute

Marcus Phillips Oboe

Carlos Ortega Clarinet

Marko Bajzer Bassoon

Asuka Yanai Violin

Keith Lawrence Viola

Andres Vera Cello

Liu Yuchen Bass

Kristen Lloyd Harp

Margarite Waddell French Horn

Alia Kuhnert Trumpet

Adam Norton Tuba

Felix Regalado Trombone

Noah Luna Perucssion

Mika Nakamura Timpani

ART DEPARTMENT

Concept Art: Louis Thomas, Glenn

Hernandez, Theo Guignard, Lauren

Kawahara, Katia Grifols

Production Design: Louis Thomas, Theo

Guignard

Graphic Design: Susan Bradley

ANIMATION

Animation Supervisor: Hanna Abi Hanna

Animation: Tati Moniz, Stephanie Alexander, Tim Allen

Motion Graphics: Chris Anderson

Additional Motion Graphics: Nick DeMartino

LIVE ACTION

Director of Photography: Donavan Sell

Gaffer: Arthur Yee

Camera Assistant: Leomar Moring

Studio: Ciel Creative Space

MUSIC GROUP

Management: Mary Pat Buerkle

Music Preparation: Noah Luna

Story Consultant: Marguerite Robison

Assistant to Mr. Luna: Jonah Gallagher

Assistant to Mr. Bates: Marko Bajzer

POST PRODUCTION

Color a GoGo: San Francisco, CA

Colorist: Kent Pritchett

Producer: Kim Salyer

On-Line Editor: Loren Sorenson

WORLD’S GREATEST SYNTH

Administrator: Noah Luna

Sales (N. America): Justin Ellis

Sales (rest of world): Kate Caro, Intermusica

Legal: George Sheanshang

PROJECT MANAGERS

Music Productions: Claire Long and Meg

Davies

THANK YOU

Skywalker Sound

Tom M. Christopher

Cecilia Caparas Apelin

Kim and Elodie Collins

Zazie Capobianco

Danielle McLane and Naomi F. da Silva

Taiaferro and Ryland Bates

Set to the timeless music of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and produced by celebrated filmmaker Duncan Copp, The Earth—An HD Odyssey uses striking high-definition imagery of the planet to reveal the world in unprecedented detail and exquisite beauty. As a prelude, John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine sets the tempo for an exhilarating trip into orbit on board the Space Shuttle. Paired with breathtaking NASA film footage, the piece gives a thrilling sense of what it’s like to ride into space. Copp first brought classical music and high-definition imagery together in The Planets—An HD Odyssey, the first installment of the HD Odyssey series. Gustav Holst’s The Planets accompanies a high-definition visual presentation, beautifully uniting the latest images returned from planetary spacecraft with Holst’s music to provide a mesmerizing spectacle. The Cosmos—An HD Odyssey, the final installment of the HD Odyssey productions, marries the most spectacular imagery of the universe with Dvořák’s poignant “New World” Symphony. Captured by some of the world’s leading observatories, The Cosmos—An HD Odyssey reveals the magnetic maelstrom of the sun, the visually striking and turbulent birth and death of stars, and the sheer beauty of the Milky Way galaxy and countless galaxies beyond. The result is a sublime journey to the furthest reaches of the Cosmos and a celebration of one of the most popular pieces in classical music.

SHORT RIDE IN A FAST MACHINE Composed in 1986

JOHN ADAMS

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, February 15, 1947

Now living in Berkeley, California

“Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular,” writes John Adams, “then it begins to atrophy.” Adams is not the first “serious” composer to feel this way. Haydn and Beethoven each composed hundreds of settings of British, Irish, and Scottish folk tunes and considered this activity an essential part of their musical personalities. Mozart devoted hundreds of hours to writing popular canons for mass appeal, and Brahms spent the early part of his career as piano accompanist for a traveling gypsy fiddler. Mahler, the brewer’s son, made frequent use—in the most serious symphonic contexts—of the beer-barrel music he grew up with. Even the staid Schoenberg was no stranger to the cabaret.

But like those composers, Adams has approached the vernacular in music from a background of rigorous training. His involvement with popular styles has, in turn, had a potent impact on his serious music. Born in Massachusetts, he was educated at Harvard in the mid-1960s, and counts as mentors Leon Kirchner, David Del Tredici, and Roger Sessions. His inspirations have included Schoenberg’s 12-tone methods, electronic and avant-garde styles, John Cage, and the music of tough New England composers like Ives and Ruggles. Eventually he began to feel the impact of what came to be called minimalism, and especially the music of Steve Reich, whose consonant harmonies and gradually shifting

ostinatos (short, repeated motifs and melodic fragments) are much felt in Adams’s work.

Yet he worked out a strikingly individual synthesis of all these strands, and today Adams is the most frequently performed living American composer of concert music. His music has had enormous impact the world over, partly because of the way it took the creative spark of the minimalists and imbued it with greater variety of gesture, texture, and familiar idioms. Among his major works are Harmonielehre for orchestra; the string septet Shaker Loops; the Violin Concerto; El Niño for vocalists, choruses, and orchestra; and On the Transmigration of Souls, his commemoration for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, for choruses and orchestra, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. His 1987 opera Nixon in China brought world politics onto the musical stage with transcendent aplomb, and the subsequent The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic confirmed Adams’s place as one of the most original voices of the century.

In the concert hall Adams is best known for his Chairman Dances—which includes material later formed into music for Nixon in China— and for his two orchestral fanfares, Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Tromba lontana, both composed in 1986. Short Ride in a Fast Machine was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony to commemorate the opening of Great Woods, in Mansfield, Massachusetts. It was first performed on June 13, 1986, by that ensemble and Michael Tilson Thomas. It is an exhilarating four-and-a-half-minute fanfare in which orchestral colors shimmer and intermingle in a fabric of austere motivic material and potent musical ideas.

—Paul J. Horsley

ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA, OP. 30 Composed from 1894 to 1896

RICHARD STRAUSS

Born in Munich, June 11, 1864

Died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, September 8, 1949

Many people’s first musical association relating to the eminent German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) would be his relationship with Richard Wagner, which was initially worshipful and inspiring but eventually turned confrontational and damning. In fact, Nietzsche was himself a knowledgeable musician and amateur composer. (Some of his compositions are available online.) He once remarked—or rather boasted—that “there has never been a philosopher who has been in his essence a musician to such an extent as I am.” And perhaps he was right: Philosophers since antiquity have been fascinated by music and felt compelled to muse about it, but few had much technical command either to play or compose themselves.

An enduring part of Nietzsche’s musical legacy is the inspiration his writings provided for marvelous music. The year 1896 proved especially important as two composers, who were friends and rivals, set to music Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Gustav Mahler used the “Midnight Song,” which begins with the refrain “O Man! Take heed!,” as the basis for the fourth movement of his monumental Symphony No. 3, sung by a mezzo-soprano soloist. Richard Strauss went even further when he wrote a massive tone poem “freely based on Friedrich Nietzsche,” as he announced on the title page.

Nietzsche’s extraordinary Also sprach Zarathustra, written between 1883 and 1885, unfolds as an aphoristic poetic narrative. It was his most famous and popular book, an elusive philosophical piece of literature. It consists of some 80 titled proclamations, each ending with the words “thus spoke Zarathustra,” the Greek name for Zoroaster, the ancient Persian mystic. Strauss was deeply drawn to Nietzsche’s book, which is in various respects itself musical. (So the philosopher claimed in his autobiography.) Strauss admired this musicality, understood Nietzsche’s sense of irony, and shared his disdain for religion. (“God is dead!” is Zarathustra’s most famous pronouncement.)

When Strauss began composing his sixth tone poem he wanted to depict man’s search for knowledge and at one point realized that Also sprach Zarathustra would serve him well. He

worried, however, that the composition might be misunderstood, informing a colleague: “if it comes off I can think of a lot of people who will be annoyed.” Strauss indeed encountered a fair amount of resistance along the way. One newspaper warned that the project was “an act of enormous daring, for the danger of writing philosophical music for the intellect, capable of being understood only with the aid of didactic program notes, is all-too-present.”

Strauss made various attempts at damage control. He explained that he “did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically. I meant rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman. The whole symphonic poem is intended as my homage to the genius of Nietzsche, which found its greatest exemplification in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.” In addition to some ironic comments (at one point he thought of subtitling the work “Symphonic optimism in fin-de-siècle form, dedicated to the 20th century”), Strauss offered various explanations to the press, colleagues, and performers.

In November 1896 Strauss conducted the premiere in Frankfurt and was enormously proud of the work. After the dress rehearsal, he wrote to his wife:

Zarathustra is splendid and by far the most important piece I have ever written—the most perfect in form, the richest in content, and the most distinctive. The opening is capital and the many string quartet passages have come off to perfection; the theme of passion is exhilarating, the fugue gruesome, the dance tune simply delightful. I am as happy as can be and only sorry that you cannot hear it. The climaxes are powerful and the instrumentation—flawless.

As a further aid, Strauss prefaced the score with the opening of Nietzsche’s book, the Prologue, which recounts the 30-yearold Zarathustra leaving his homeland to philosophize in the solitude of a mountain cave. After 10 years he awakens one morning and addresses the rising sun, believing that he has achieved wisdom and that it is time for him to descend to rejoin humanity. Strauss brilliantly captures the Dawn in one of the most effective openings in all of orchestral music, made only more famous after Stanley Kubrick used it in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Four trumpets solemnly sound the primal nature motif of an ascending octave (C-G-C), answered by pounding timpani,

before returning to the trumpet motif. Double basses, contrabassoon, and organ provide a foundational pedal point on C. Strauss acknowledged that the piece “is laid out as an alternation between the two remotest keys,” namely C, representing nature, and B, representing man.

There follow eight continuous parts with titles taken from the book: Of the Backworldsmen depicts primal man using the key of B minor and alluding to religion through horns playing a plainchant Credo melody, which turns to an organ Magnificat theme in the next section, Of the Great Longing, with its aspiring upward phrases. Of Joys and Passions contrasts two intense themes before the subdued GraveSong, featuring solo violin. The “gruesome” fugue used for Of Science begins with the C-G-C motif and is further complicated by

employing all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale as well as contrasting the keys of C and B. The fugue dissipates in The Convalescent, with a loud and climatic return of the C-G-C motif for full orchestra, leading to The Dance-Song, a joyous waltz with a Viennese flair worthy of Johann Strauss, Jr. (no relation to Richard), and the concluding Night-Wanderer’s Song in which we hear 12 strokes of midnight before a quiet ending, in two keys at once, B in the upper woodwinds and C plucked by the lower strings, an unresolved oscillation between man and nature.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Program notes © 2023. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association and/or Nancy Plum.

A visionary conductor, curator, and producer, Edwin Outwater regularly works with the world’s top orchestras, institutions, and artists to reinvent the concert experience. His effortless ability to cross genres has led to collaborations with a wide range of artists, ranging from Metallica to Wynton Marsalis, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma. Mr. Outwater is music director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, overseeing its ensembles, and music director laureate of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Recent appearances include performances with the New York and Royal philharmonics, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago, San Diego, Houston, Seattle, and New World symphonies. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2019. Since 2021 he has been the main conductor for Stewart Copeland’s “Police Deranged for Orchestra” concerts. Last October Mr. Outwater premiered his newest production, Symphony of Terror!, with the Vancouver Symphony and co-host and collaborator Peaches Christ. Their festive collaboration Holiday Gaiety received its United Kingdom premiere in 2022 and is a recurring event with the San Francisco Symphony.

Mr Outwater’s recordings include Mason Bates’s Philharmonia Fantastique with the Chicago Symphony, which won a 2023 GRAMMY Award. He was also associate conductor for A Gathering of Friends with John Williams, Yo-Yo Ma, and the New York Philharmonic. He features prominently in Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett’s solo debut EP, Portals, as co-songwriter, arranger, orchestrator, and keyboardist.

Edwin Outwater

Photo by David J. Kim

A native of Santa Monica, California, Mr. Outwater graduated cum laude in English Literature from Harvard University, where he was music director of the Bach Society Orchestra and the a cappella group Harvard Din and Tonics, and wrote the music for the 145th annual production of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. He received his degree in conducting from UC Santa Barbara, besides studying music theory and composition.

Duncan Copp has worked as a freelance producer-director for over 20 years, specializing in popular science and culture, history, and film for symphonic performances. His first documentary, Rocket Men of Mission 105, followed the astronauts of the STS-105 shuttle mission, during which he was granted access to film extensively at the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers. He helped conceive, produced, and directed Hunt for the Death Star (Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival), Magnetic Storm, and Global Dimming (both winning Wildscreen awards).

Mr. Copp series-produced Moon Machines, winning a Grand Remi at WorldFest Houston, and Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant. His films Secrets of the Sun, Doomsday Volcanoes, and Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon

were screened on PBS’s NOVA. He conceived, developed, and produced the feature documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, the intimate story of the Apollo astronauts. Distributed worldwide as a theatrical and television release, it garnered over 15 international awards, including the 2007 Sundance Audience Award. In 2008 he was the recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Distinguished Public Service Medal.

Mr. Copp has collaborated with a number of ensembles, producing high-definition films to accompany live orchestral and ballet performances. He helped conceive and produced the Houston Symphony’s HD Odyssey film trilogy, which includes The Planets, The Earth, and The Cosmos. Recent documentary credits include Comet Encounter (National Geographic), Mankind from Space (Discovery Canada), and Survival in the Skies—The Ejection Seat (Smithsonian Channel). He series-produced and co-directed America’s Secret Space Heroes for the Smithsonian Channel and Speed for CuriosityStream. In 2019 he produced the Discovery Channel’s documentary special Apollo: The Forgotten Films for the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing.

JURASSIC PARK IN CONCERT

CONSTANTINE KITSOPOULOS Conductor

A STEVEN SPIELBERG Film

and RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH BOB PECK MARTIN FERRERO

B.D. WONG SAMUEL L. JACKSON WAYNE KNIGHT

JOSEPH MAZZELLO ARIANA RICHARDS

Live Action Dinosaurs STAN WINSTON

Full Motion Dinosaurs by DENNIS MUREN, A.S.C.

Dinosaur Supervisor PHIL TIPPETT

Special Dinosaur Effects

MICHAEL LANTIERI

A UNIVERSAL PICTURE

Music by JOHN WILLIAMS

Film Edited by MICHAEL KAHN, A.C.E.

Production Designer RICK CARTER

Director of Photography DEAN CUNDEY, A.S.C.

Based on the Novel by MICHAEL CRICHTON

Screenplay by MICHAEL CRICHTON and DAVID KOEPP

Produced by KATHLEEN KENNEDY and GERALD R. MOLEN

Directed by STEVEN SPIELBERG

This program runs approximately 2 hours, 30 minutes, including one intermission.

Tonight’s program is a presentation of the complete film Jurassic Park with a live performance of the film’s entire score, including music played by the orchestra during the end credits. Out of respect for the musicians and your fellow audience members, please remain seated until the conclusion of the credits.

© Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Please turn off cell phones and disconnect electronic signals on watches or pagers before the start of the performance.

SAM NEILL

LAURA DERN

JEFF GOLDBLUM

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Jurassic Park in Concert is produced by Film Concerts Live!, a joint venture of IMG Artists, LLC, and the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency, Inc.

Producers: Steven A. Linder and Jamie Richardson

Director of Operations: Rob Stogsdill

Production Manager: Sophie Greaves

Production Assistant: Katherine Miron

Worldwide Representation: IMG Artists, LLC

Technical Director: Mike Runice

Music Composed by John Williams

Music Preparation: Jo Ann Kane Music Service Film Preparation for Concert Performance: Ramiro Belgardt

Technical Consultant: Laura Gibson

Sound Remixing for Concert Performance: Chace Audio by Deluxe

The score for Jurassic Park has been adapted for live concert performance.

With special thanks to: Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, John Williams, Michael Silver, Patrick Koors, Tammy Olsen, Lawrence Liu, Thomas Schroder, Tanya Perra, Chris Herzberger, Noah Bergman, Jason Jackowski, Shayne Mifsud, Darice Murphy, Mike Matessino, and Mark Graham.

www.filmconcertslive.com

“A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER

In his highly successful book Jurassic Park, author Michael Crichton enabled us to imagine what the return of the great vertebrates of 150 million years ago might be like. In his thrilling 1993 film adaptation, Steven Spielberg brought these fascinating and terrifying creatures to life, and in so doing captivated movie audiences around the world.

I must say that I greatly enjoyed the challenge of trying to tell the film’s story musically. And while we can luxuriate this evening in the magnificent sound produced by The Philadelphia Orchestra as it performs the entire score live to the picture, it’s nevertheless tempting to imagine what the trumpeting of these great beasts of the distant past might have been like.

I know I speak for everyone connected with the making of Jurassic Park in saying that we’re greatly honored by this event … and I hope that tonight’s audience will have some measure of the joy we experienced while making the film more than 20 years ago.

In a career spanning more than six decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. He has composed the music and served as music director for more than 100 films, including all nine Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Far and Away, and The Book Thief. His nearly 50-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones films, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, and War Horse. His contributions

to television music include scores for more than 200 films as well as themes for NBC’s Nightly News and Meet the Press and PBS’s Great Performances. He also composed themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic Games and the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.

Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and 53 Oscar nominations, making him the most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. He has received seven British Academy Awards (BAFTA), 25 GRAMMYS, four Golden Globes, five Emmys, and numerous gold and platinum records. In 2003 he received the Olympic Order for his contributions

to the Olympic movement. He received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors in December 2004. In 2009 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and received the National Medal of Arts. In 2016 he received the 44th Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In 2020 he received Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, and in 2022 he was awarded an honorary knighthood, one of the final awards approved by Queen Elizabeth II.

In January 1980 Mr. Williams was named 19th music director of the Boston Pops Orchestra; he currently holds the title of laureate conductor, which he assumed following his retirement in December 1993. He also holds the title of artist-in-residence at Tanglewood. He has composed numerous works for the concert stage, including two symphonies and multiple concertos commissioned by several of the world’s leading orchestras. In 2009 he composed and arranged “Air and Simple Gifts” for the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama.

Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos is equally at home with opera, symphonic repertoire, film with live orchestra, musical theater, and composition. His work has taken him all over the world, where he has conducted the major orchestras of North America as well as the Hong Kong and Tokyo philharmonics. In addition to his engagements as guest conductor, he is music director of the Festival of the Arts Boca

and general director of Chatham Opera. He is also general director of the New York Grand Opera and is working with the company to bring opera—free and open to the public— back to New York’s Central Park. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2011.

During the 2022–23 season Mr. Kitsopoulos made his debut with the Chicago Symphony and returned to the New York Philharmonic and the Detroit, Phoenix, Vancouver, San Francisco, Houston, and New Jersey symphonies. Highlights of previous seasons include return engagements with the Dallas and Toronto symphonies and the Louisiana Philharmonic. He also conducted Leonard Bernstein’s MASS at Indiana University Opera Theater. He has developed semi-staged productions of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, for which he has written a new translation; Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and Puccini’s La bohème. He has conducted IU Opera Theater’s productions of Verdi’s Falstaff, J. Strauss, Jr.’s Die Fledermaus, Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge, Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, Rodgers’s South Pacific and Oklahoma, Willson’s The Music Man, and Menotti’s The Last Savage

Mr. Kitsopoulos was assistant chorus master at New York City Opera from 1984 to 1989. On Broadway he has been music director of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, A Catered Affair, Baz Luhrmann’s production of La bohème, Swan Lake, and Les Misérables.

John Williams

Constantine Kitsopoulos

Photo by Xanthe Elbrick

Photo by Lefteris Photo

Angela Bostick

James P. Brandau

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Ralph W. Muller, Co-Chair

Michael D. Zisman, Co-Chair

Matías Tarnopolsky President and Chief Executive Officer

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Music and Artistic Director, The Philadelphia Orchestra

Patrick J. Brennan, M.D.

Jeffrey Brown

Elaine Woo Camarda

Sara Cerato*

Joseph Ciresi

Michael M. Cone

Robert R. Corrato

Rev. Luis A. Cortés, Jr.

Sarah Miller Coulson

Robert J. Delany, Sr.

Mark S. Dichter

Jeff Dittus

Alexandra T. Victor Edsall

Anne C. Ewers

David B. Fay*

Joseph M. Field

Mark J. Foley

John Fry

Lauren Gilchrist

Donald A. Goldsmith

Juliet J. Goodfriend

Julia Haller, M.D.

Robert C. Heim

Joe Hill*

Osagie O. Imasogie

Patricia Harron Imbesi

Erika H. James, Ph.D.

Philip P. Jaurigue

Juliette Kang*

Bennett Keiser

Christopher M. Keith

Michael Kihn*

David Kim*

Neal W. Krouse

Joan Lau

Kelly Lee*

Brook J. Lenfest

Jeffrey A. Leonard

Bruce G. Leto

Tod J. MacKenzie

Joseph M. Manko, Sr.

Sandra G. Marshall*

Jeffrey P. McFadden

John H. McFadden

Jami Wintz McKeon

Stan Middleman

Dara Morales*

Ralph W. Muller

Elizabeth Murphy

Yannick Nézet-Séguin*

Roberto Perez

Nicole Perkins

William Polk*

Sulaiman W. Rahman

Jon Michael Richter

Caroline B. Rogers

Nancy Rogers

Michele Kreisler Rubenstein

Charles E. Ryan

Adele K. Schaeffer

Dianne Semingson*

Peter L. Shaw

Adrienne Simpson

Matías Tarnopolsky*

Matthew A. Taylor

Jennifer F. Terry

Sherry Varrelman

Laurie Wagman

Rob Wilson

Dalila Wilson-Scott

Richard B. Worley

Alison T. Young

Joseph Zebrowitz

Bin Zhang

Michael Zisman

*Ex-officio

As of April 2023

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF

Matías Tarnopolsky President and Chief Executive Officer

Ryan Fleur Executive Director

Mitch Bassion

Chief Philanthropy Officer

Ashley Berke

Chief Communications Officer

Crystal Brewe

Chief Marketing and Audience Experience Officer

Tanya Derksen

Chief Artistic Production Officer

Judia Jackson

Chief People and Culture Officer

Mario Mestichelli

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Doris Parent

Chief Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Strategies (IDEAS) Officer

Jeremy Rothman Chief Programming Officer

Pilobolus

October 8, 2023 | 2PM & 7PM

Avi Avital & Hanzhi Wang

October 19, 2023 | 7PM

Chamber Music Society

October 28, 2023 | 7PM

säje

November 11, 2023 | 7PM

Kings Return

December 2, 2023 | 7PM

Time for Three

December 9, 2023 | 7PM

Kat Edmonson

December 17, 2023 | 4PM

Chamber Music Society

March 9, 2024 | 7PM

BalletX

March 16, 2024 | 7PM

March 17, 2024 | 2PM

TISRA: Zakir Hussain with Debopriya Chatterjee and Sabir Khan

March 23, 2024 | 7PM

Chamber Music Society

May 11, 2024 | 7PM

Avi Avital & Hanzhi Wang Kings Return

BalletX

Zakir Hussain

SPAC’s Holiday Programming

THE PRIDE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

As a 501c3 nonprofit, SPAC depends on the generous support of members, corporate and institutional partners, and philanthropic gifts.

Your donation is critical to the vibrancy of our beloved residencies, year-round programming, newly introduced initiatives in the culinary, literary, visual, and healing arts, and growing arts education programs including the new SPAC School of the Arts.

Thank you for being an integral part of SPAC’s continuing transformation.

SPAC Evergreen Society Planned Giving

Your first ballet, a thrilling rock concert, that family feeling at Jazz Fest, romantic dates in the amphitheater, or grandchildren dancing on the lawn are moments at SPAC that will always hold a special place in your heart.

What better way to honor your memories than with a gift that will support SPAC for generations to come?

Your path to a legacy gift to SPAC can be as simple as:

• Adding SPAC as a beneficiary to your will or trust.

• Naming SPAC as a life insurance beneficiary

• Donating a gift from your IRA

The Evergreen Society recognizes those who have made a commitment to support SPAC with a gift from a will or trust, beneficiary designation, or another planned gift.

SPAC was born in 1966 thanks to the philanthropic support of its community. The Evergreen Society, thanks to people like you, will ensure this legacy continues.

For more information, please contact Christine Dixon at 518-485-9330 ext. 112 or cdixon@spac.org.

PLATINUM PARTNERS

GOLD PARTNERS

SILVER PARTNERS

BRONZE PARTNERS

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

For details on how to partner with SPAC, please call Heather Varney, Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships at 518.584.9330 ext 122 or hvarney@spac.org.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

CHAIR PERSON

Susan Law Dake

VICE CHAIR

Charles V. Wait, Jr.

SECRETARY

Eleanor K. Mullaney

TREASURER

Sean Leonard

MEMBERS

Raimundo Archibald

Sonny Bonacio

Sally Bott

Sujata N. Chaudhry

Carl DeBrule

C.J. DeCrescente

Keeley Ardman DeSalvo

Geraldine Golub

Judy A. Harrigan, Ph.D

George R. Hearst III

Richard Higgins

Anthony Ianniello, Esq.

Heather Mabee

Chris Mackey

Donald J. McCormack

Bill McEllen

Norma Meacham

Sharon Hiter Neble

Chet J. Opalka

STAFF

Elizabeth Sobol President & CEO

Leslie Collman-Smith General Manager

Zack Ashcraft Box Office Assistant, and Group Sales Manager

Adrienne Atiles Director, Grants & Development Communications

Brogan Barker Operations Associate

Austin Bayliss Senior Director, Events & Special Projects

Jess Bien Director, School of the Arts

Eric Brower Senior Director, Ticketing, Data and Analytics

Andreya Cherry Artistic Administrator

Jeff Conkey

Director, Facility Management

Marcel D’Aprile Marketing Associate

Christine Dixon Senior Director, Individual & Planned Giving

Brittany Kendall Director, Marketing

Gilles Lauzon Controller

Jay Lafond Chief Financial Officer

Cynthia Madcharo Senior Accountant

Maddie McCarthy Development Associate

Dennis Moench VP, Education

Jill Moffett Administrator, School of the Arts

Tom O’Handley SVP, Development

Linsey Reardon Education Events Coordinator

Jeffrey R. Ridha, M.D.

Dr. L. Oliver Robinson

Andrea Spungen

Stephen C. Verral

Jason C. Ward

TRUSTEES EMERITI

William P. Dake

Charles V. Wait

TRUSTEES OF COUNSEL

I. Norman Massry

John J. Nigro

Hon. Susan Phillips Read

Edward P. Swyer

Linda G. Toohey

Emilio Roberts Director, Venue Operations

Timothy Roylance Manager, Box Office

Christopher Shiley VP, Artistic Planning

Scott Somerville Director of Creative Services

Frank Tessier Manager, Member Services

Heather N. Varney Senior Director, Corporate Partnerships

Kristy Ventre Senior Director, Marketing and Communications

Jill Zygo Director, Arts in Education & Community Programs

Mike Zygo Arts Educator

Imagine Your Next Event at SPAC

SPAC’s newly renovated campus boasts two unique rental spaces including The Pines@SPAC which features both the Nancy DiCresce Room and The Pines Terrace, in addition to the Julie Bonacio Family Pavilion.

Host intimate and large-scale gatherings, including business meetings, company outings, life events, milestone celebrations, and more!

The Pines@SPAC

Welcome your guests to the Nancy DiCresce Room, a state-of-the-art indoor multi-purpose room, and The Pines Terrace, an impressive second floor balcony overlooking SPAC’s iconic amphitheater.

The Julie Bonacio Family Pavilion

Take your event to the heart of the campus under the open-air pavilion, a versatile space offering a wide variety of options from a simple covered reception area to an elegant event space.

For more information visit spacrentals.org or contact rentals@spac.org

Nancy DiCresce Room

The Pines Terrace

The Julie Bonacio Family Pavilion

LIVE PERFORMANCE, in your home.

THE WORLD’S FINEST HIGH RESOLUTION PLAYER PIANO

Imagine hearing—and seeing—every keystroke of a world-class piano performance in your own home. With spirio , you can enjoy music captured by renowned pianists, played with such nuance, power, and passion that it is utterly indistinguishable from a live performance. Thousands of recordings by living and immortal steinway artists are available at the touch of a button on the included iPad.

STEINWAY & SONS IS PROUD TO SUPPORT SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

LEGACY

Stacie & Michael Arpey

Diana Ryan

Deborah & Dexter Senft

Stewart’s Shops & The Dake Family

Andrea Spungen

Linda & Michael Toohey

HERITAGE

Sally Bott

Marybeth & C.J. DeCrescente

Lois & Matthew Emmens

Geraldine Golub

Jane Sanzen & Richard Higgins

The Swyer Family Foundation

CHAIRMAN

Anonymous (1)

Gary DiCresce

Judy A. Harrigan, Ph.D.

George R. Hearst III

Teresa A. Kennedy

Rebecca & Sean Leonard

Mackey Auto Group

Michele & Anthony Manganaro

Micki & Norman Massry

Norma Meacham

Lisa & Robert Moser

Sharyn & George Neble

Jeffrey R. Ridha

Stephen Verral & Susanne D’Isabel

Heather & Jason Ward

MAESTRO

Anonymous (1)

Kristin & Dennis Baldwin

Shannan & Dave Carroll

Jane & John Corrou

Terry & Carlton DeBrule

Thomas Caulfield & Sandra Eng-Caulfield

Linda & Bernard Kastory

Steve A. Lemanski

Mary & Leland Loose

DIRECTOR

Anonymous (3)

Judy & Grady Aronstamm

Laura & Adam Bach

Shelley & Jim Beaudoin

Claudia & Kevin Bright

Elizabeth G. Brown

Zane & Brady Carruth

Noreen & Richard Coughlin

Joan Dash

Keeley Ardman DeSalvo & Stephen DeSalvo

Kenneth Ellis

David Terrence Engels

Kristen & Matthew Esler

Doris Fischer Malesardi

Mary & Richard Flaherty

Neil Golub

Carol Hammer

Jane & Thomas Hanley

Anthony R. Ianniello, Esq.

E. Stewart Jones & Kimberly Sanger Jones

Amanda & Tim Luby

Judy & Don McCormack

LouAnn & John McGlinchey

Francine & Robert Nemer

John J. Nigro

Bill & Linda Nizolek

Karen & Chet Opalka

Marjorie R. Philips & Henry Fader

Hon. Susan Phillips Read & Howard J. Read

A.C. Riley

Jessica & Yli Schwartzman

Rylee & Keith Servis

Brandy & Richard Simmons

Jane & Peter Smith

Frances Spreer Albert

Lew Titterton

E. Richard Yulman

Thalia & John Zizzo

PREMIERE PATRON

Bart & Jeff Altamari

Leona & Tom Beck

Jill & Jonathan Gainor

Suzanne & Stuart Grant

Maureen Lewi

Heather Mabee

Ann Seton Quinn

Carla H. Skodinski & Michael M. Fieldman

Lisa Sternlicht

Natalie & Charles V. Wait, Jr.

Donna E. Wardlaw & Robert F. Bristol

Andrea & Michael Zappone

GOLDEN PATRON

Anonymous (1)

Pam Abrams & Paul Kligfield

India & Ben Adams

Linda & Larry Ambrosino

Gail G Anderson

Susan G. Anderson Limeri

Michelle Annese

Raimundo Archibold

Lee L. Auerbach & Leah Leddy

Maureen & John Baringer

Ruth Ann & Bruce Beers

Shawna Miller

Michael Bergman

Patricia Bruder

Nicole & Jason Buck

Patrick Burns

Maryellen & Nelson Carpenter

Sujata N Chaudhry

Kate & Ben Clark

Rhea P. Clark

Jonathan Coffey

Dale & Jack Cohen

David & Stephanie Collins

Gabrielle & Scott Conklin

Ellen-Deane Cummins

Brigid & Charlie Dake

Jennifer & Ed Degenhart

Susan K. DePaula

Jean & Paul DiCaprio

Christopher Dolinsky

Barbara & David Edelheit

Lee Einsidler & Aimee Brisson

Emily Farnham Mastrianni & Timothy

Cartwright

Jeannie & Timothy P. Fontaine

Erica & Scott Fuller

Stephanie Gardner & David Ingraham

Jerry Goldstein

Eudice & Jay Grossman

Jim Hakewill

Brian Hall

Frieda Hammond-Carmer & Britt Carmer

Evelyn & Ken Hefner

Paul T. Heiner

Joy & Steven Heyman

Beth Ann Hutcherson

Ellie & Michael Ingalsbe

Becky & Greg Kern

Kyle Kinowski

Brenton Koch

Doug Kolk

Stephen Kurr Sussman

Beth & John Larow

Jessica & Gregory Longo

Andrea Longoria

W. Bruce Lunsford

Brian D. Lussier

Jon Paul Mahar

Kate & Marco Mancini

Andrew Marsh & Kathy Mattes

Cathy DiMiceli Masie & Elliott Masie

James & Christine Mastrianni

Jennifer & Steven Meglio

David Merwitz & Crystal Ayers

Lisa Morgan

Donna & John Moroney

George & Anne Morris

Eleanor K. Mullaney & Robert H. Coughlin, Jr.

Nancy Mullen - In memory of

Virginia & John Flagg

Marianne A. Mustafa

John L. Myers & Christine Ames

Jessica Niles

Jeffrey Oskin/Forcivity

Talia & Marc Pallozzi

Scott Peterson

Marci & Michael Phinney

Kathleen M. Pierce

Todd Plemenik

Scott D. Powers

Erin & Charles Pritchard

Christopher & Sue Ford Rajchel

Dr. L. Oliver Robinson

Dale & Charles Roemmelt

Dennis, Jane, & Ryan Rose

Mark Rosen

Christine Rowe-Button

Jennifer Schannault & Scott Strazik

Holly Shishik

Edith K. Simpson

Theresa & Richard Sleasman

Margaret Smith

Gail & Nick Spampanato

Disha & Josh Spath

Karen Squires

Christine & David Stack

Sonya A. Stall

Ilene & Chip Stein

Matthew Stein

Martha S. Strohl

Patrick Szurek

Hon. Ann Marie Taddeo

Jim Taylor

Amy Jun Tian & Paul Yung

Konstantin Tikhonov

Laura Tilton

Rosemarie Tobin

Caryn & Robert Tyre

Anne Van Acker

Matt Wallen

Eileen G. & Donald J. Whelley

Kelly & Jay Woods

John Zanetti

PATRON Anonymous (5)

Joseph Abed El Latif

Chris Abildgaard

Adam Abrams

Donna & Donald Adam

Michael & Lisa Akker

Mylea & Buzz Aldrich

Arnold Alfert

Kelly & Rick Alfred

William J. Allerdice, Jr.

Susan K. Arehart

Patricia & Thomas Auer

Joanne Avella & Peter Bernstein

Sheelagh & Frederick Baily

Jane L. Baker

Cindy & Duane Ball

Mary Jane Baumback

Ms. Mary Becker

Sarah E. Begley & Herv Glavota

Darla J Belevich

Diane Benton

Stephanie & Harald Berge

Mr. Clinton Binley

Renee & Eliot Birnbaum

Michael R. Bishop & Pauline M. Holmes

Susan & Richard Blanchard

Betty & Bill Blume

Kristen & Daniel Bobear

Patricia Bokan

Susan Bokan

Marianne Bokan-Blair & David Blair

Nicholas H. Bomba

Joyce Hunt Bouyea

Cheryl & Barry Boyd

Arthur Zobel & Ginny Brandreth

Michael & Linda Breault

John Broderick

Erika C. Browne

Raymond Bryan & Hillary L. Swithers

Linda & Ted Bubniak

Maria & Harry Bucciferro

Jean & John Buhac

Susanne Buhac

Clarissa Bullitt

Ann & Bob Bullock

Nancy & Tom Burkly

Thomas F. Burleigh

Sara & Aaron Bush

Gina Butera

Christy A. Calicchia

Nancy Carey Cassidy

Michael J. Carpenter

Jeanine & Martin Caruso

Janet G. Casey

Leslie & John Cashin

Jack & Siobhan Celeste

Bruce Cerone

Nora & Jeffrey Cheek

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center is grateful for the contributions of the following individuals, corporations, foundations and government agencies. As of June 15, 2023

& David Fusco Anne & Thomas Gaughan Mary Gavin & Jim LaVigne

& Eric Geckler Lynne L. Gelber Stuart L. Ginsburg

Glaser & Paul Zachos Jon D. Globerson & Tina Facteau Carol & Dave Godette Laura M. Goldberg

& Joe Goldsmith Jerel Golub Peggy & Rich Greenawalt Mr. & Mrs. Philip M. Gross Miss Margot David Guillet & Debra Mailberg Rick Guior & Barbara Frank

Gurga Mona & Jon Haas Ann & Dick Haggerty James & Mary Elizabeth Hall Jessica Hall Pauline & Henry Hamelin

Maria Harrison

Joanne & Roscoe Haynes

Mr. Jason Hellickson

Martin Hellwig

Mary Hendrickson

Jessica & David Hennel

Mrs. Nancy Hershey

Joseph A. Hinkhouse

Ms. Felicia Hoffman

Kathy & Stu Hoffman

Tim & Libby Holmes

Leslee & John Honis

Laurence & Angelique Horvath

Jon Hosler

Junko Kobori & Louis Hotchkiss

Robert & Mary Hoyer

Mary Huber

Nancy & William Hunt

Elaine & Peter Hutchins

Sara J Jackson

Anne & Arnold Jaffe

Paul & Anastasia James

Susan & Bill Jeffreys

Lynn & Lawrence Johnson

Julie & Scott Johnson

Josh Jonas & Jill-Morrison Jonas

Patricia Joy

Marilyn Kacica & Joseph Dudek

Harriet J. Kalejs

Molly & Shane Kalil

Grant Kamin

Allison & John Karcher

Ruth & Douglas Karrel

Jordan Kassoff

Aaron Kassoff

Gail & Alexander Keeler

Mara King

Richard C. King & Gail Grow

Sally & Larry King

Shaun Kippins

Rod Klassovity

Tricia Fullerton & Kevin Kleis

Erin K Koenen

Vincent & Milly Koh

Maryann Kopack

Agatha & John Koziarz

Thomas J. Kubisch

Jan McCarthy Kurposka

Greg J. Kutzuba

Dr. & Mrs. Dale Lange

Michael Lanides

Sara Lee & Barry Larner

Gloria M. Lawrence

Darryl Leggieri

Lesa Levin

Barbara & Andrew Levine

Jeannette & Eddie Liebers

Lori & Robert Liebert Van Vranken

Hilton Garden Inn Saratoga Springs

Oscar & Kathryn Lirio

Chris Litchfield & Seth Yates

Kelly & John Lizzi

Anna F. Lobosco

Andi & Phil Lodico

Meredith & Jon Loeck

Tiina Loite & Fred Conrad

Steve Greenblatt & Catherine LoMonico

Susan A. Lucente

Ginny & Paul Lunde

Marcia MacDonald

M. Lynne Mahoney

Susan G. & Louis R. Malikow

Kathryn Manning

Ruthann Marcelle & Paul Gozemba

Sandra L. Markatos

James Markwica/LaMarco

Physical Therapy, PC

Peter Martin & Christine Alexander

Dawn & Mario Martinez

Louise & Lawrence R. Marwill

Michele Massiano

Joe Mastrianni

Mike Mauriello

Maryellen Maxwell

Michael & Cory McCarthy

John Mccomber

Patricia McKay/Celtic Counseling Services

Susan & John McPhillips

John E. Meczynski, Jr.

Virginia L. Mee

Linda & Peter Meenan

Lisa S. Mehigan

Grace Frisone & Michael Metzger

Allison & David W. Meyers

The Miller Family

Marcia R. & Robert C. Miller

Carissa Mina

Mr. Charles Monson

Carissa & Scott Morganstein

N.J. Morris

Hilary Moynihan

Paul J. Mulholland

Kathleen & Michael Mullins

Kevin & Linnea Murphy

April S. & David R. Murphy

Jamie Neverett

Pamela Nichols & Dennis First

Victoria Niles

Marilyn S. Nippes

Sally & Dan Nolan

Georgie Nugent & Eric Miller

Liz & Chris O’Brien

Brendan O’Hara

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In memory of Alan Emil Steiner

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SPAC Packs a Punch

THIS YEAR’S CLASSICAL SEASON IS HIGHLIGHTED BY THE RETURN OF SARATOGA FAVORITES SUCH AS YO-YO MA PLUS FAMOUS NEWCOMERS LED BY AUDRA MCDONALD. n BY

It’s not summer in Saratoga until the strains of classical music start pouring out of Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC). Ballet and classical music enthusiasts will have more than enough to swing their air batons to this season with a sprawling slate of familiars such as virtuosic cellist (and last year’s saratoga living cover star) Yo-Yo Ma; the New York City Ballet (NYCB), which is celebrating its 75th anniversary with an exciting program of crowd favorites and SPAC premieres; and The Philadelphia Orchestra—which will balance spectacular

JEFF DINGLER

premieres and artist debuts, including that of Emmy-, Grammy-, and Tonywinning Broadway superstar Audra McDonald.

“There’s so much I’m excited about, it’s a little hard to keep it concise,” says Elizabeth Sobol, SPAC President and CEO. “For the NYCB, the SPAC Premieres program is amazing, but I’m thrilled we’ll also get to see Justin Peck’s first eveninglength ballet, Copland Dance Episodes.”

From July 18-22, the NYCB will return with the full company and a roster of more than 90 dancers under Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford. The season

A scene from Justin Peck's Copland Dance Episodes

PHOTO BY ERIN BAIANO

kicks off with “NYCB On and Off Stage,” an accessible, peak-behind-the-curtain teaser, featuring the best excerpts from the week’s ballet programs. “[This] has become an important part of our efforts to bring new people to experience ballet in an inviting way,” says Sobol. “New for this year, the celebratory evening will culminate in a dance party in the Hall of Springs.”

Following this is two nights (July 19-20) of “SPAC Premieres,” spotlighting new and contemporary works

AUDRA MCDONALAD BY ALLISON MICHAEL ORENSTEIN

“I’m very much looking forward to returning to lovely Saratoga this summer to perform with the incomparable Philadelphia Orchestra. SPAC is such a special place in the summer, and I can’t wait to sing my Broadway favorites from Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Sondheim and more.”

—AUDRA McDONALD

from around the globe, such as Play Time by Gianna Reisen, which is set to music by hip-hop icon Solange Knowles, and Love Letter (on shuffle) by Kyle Abraham, with music by Grammy-winning English singersongwriter James Blake, among others. There will also be two performances of a different SPAC premiere (July 20 and 22): the aforementioned Copland Dance Episodes by New York-based, Tony-winning choreographer, director and dancer Justin Peck. This original “full-evening” work is set to four of Copland’s most famous compositions: Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man, and Rodeo. Closing out the dance season (July 21-22) are ballet classics Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky/ Balanchine), Fancy Free (Bernstein/ Robbins) and Firebird (Stravinsky/ Balanchine and Robbins).

“There’s always something special about performing outside at this wonderful venue that has been NYCB’s summer home for so many years,” says NYCB principal dancer Mira Nadon. “I’m particularly excited to bring Justin Peck’s Copland Dance Episodes to Saratoga. The choreography, music, costumes and lighting have all come together in such a beautiful way, and I’m so excited for the Saratoga audiences to get to experience it.”

Next up, The Philadelphia Orchestra is packing quite a musical punch as well, with homecomings from Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Emmyand Grammy-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Also returning, for the first time in a decade, is renowned violinist Gil Shaham, who will lead a special SPAC premiere (August 16) of Vivaldi’s beloved violin concerti,

The Four Seasons. In contrast, there will be several exciting debuts, including a genre-blending “little orchestra” called Pink Martini with China Forbes (August 4) and theater dynamo Audra McDonald, who’s won six Tony awards throughout her career—more than any other actor. (All she needs is an Oscar for EGOT status.)

“I’m very much looking forward to returning to lovely Saratoga this summer to perform with the incomparable Philadelphia Orchestra led by my dear friend [conductor] Andy Einhorn,” says McDonald, who’s been spotted around the Capital Region in recent years filming for HBO’s The Gilded Age. “SPAC is such a special place in the summer, and I can’t wait to sing my Broadway favorites from Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Sondheim and more.”

In addition to McDonald’s night of Broadway favorites (August 10), The Philadelphia Orchestra will present Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring alongside John Luther Adams’ Vespers of the Blessed Earth (August 12), a new work and another SPAC premiere that, Sobol teases, will “be performed in a unique and nontraditional manner.” Audiences should also be sure to catch Yo-Yo Ma as he performs Dvořák’s ebullient Cello Concerto with guest conductor Xian Zhang (August 17). The Orchestra will round out its wide-ranging season with a couple of films: Earth: An HD Odyssey (August 18) and, the following day, Jurassic Park in Concert, in honor of the classic dino-flick’s 30th anniversary. Velociraptors, ballet and Audra McDonald? Sounds like another unforgettable SPAC summer. n

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been leading innovation at the intersection of the arts, sciences, and technology for nearly 200 years in the Capital Region.

We are proud of our continued partnership with SPAC and the region.