WI Philharmonic-Love and Sea

L E T T E R F R O M T H E E X E C U T I V E D I R E C TO R Welcome, everyone, to The Wisconsin Philharmonic’s Tour de France 2011-2012 season opener. We are delighted to be celebrating the beginning of a new season at the beautiful Oconomowoc Arts Center. Tonight, we will take you on an aquatic journey through Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the talented Canadian Mezzo-Soprano Heather Jewson to Debussy’s impressionistic vision of the Mediterranean Sea in La Mer. We are also honored to present our 2011 Chapman Piano Competition Winner, Chelsea Shurilla, to you tonight as she performs Prokofiev’s impressive Piano Concerto No.1. Congratulations, Chelsea, for all of your past achievements and for all of those that are sure to come in your future.

Thank you to everyone who attended the Season Kickoff Tailgate Party on September 24th at Carroll University. Many people came out for a great afternoon filled with music and football --- who ever said those two can’t go together? If you missed it, don’t worry. The Wisconsin Philharmonic can let you know when our next event will be through our e-newsletter. Feel free to stop by the table in the lobby to provide us with an email and you will be well on your way to learning more about what’s happening at The Wisconsin Philharmonic.

Another thank you is owed to everyone who brought nonperishable food items for donation to the Oconomowoc Food Pantry tonight. If you are interested in donating your time, you can reach them by visiting the Food Pantry of Waukesha County’s website at www.waukeshafoodpantry.org/volunteer. Through the League of American Orchestras’“Orchestras Feeding America” program, The Wisconsin Philharmonic, along with over 100 other orchestras across the country, are collecting food items to give back to the communities we perform in. We will be collecting nonperishable food items again at our season finale concert on May 6, 2012 at Carroll University for the Food Pantry of Waukesha County. Help us help those in need.

We would like to thank the Harken Family Foundation and the Oconomowoc Area Foundation for sponsoring tonight’s concert as well as First Bank Financial Centre for sponsoring tonight’s soloists. It is only with community partnerships such as these that we are able to continue to provide Waukesha County with exceptional musical experiences, and for this we are deeply grateful.

All of us at The Wisconsin Philharmonic would like to thank you for attending tonight’s performance of Love & the Sea and look forward to seeing you throughout the exciting season ahead of us.

Andrea Northrop Executive Director

ClASSiCAl SerieS

by at the Wilson Center Presented JoAnne and Don Krause

Fine Arts Quartet Sunday, October 16, 2011, 2:00 pm Prometheus Trio Sunday, January 29, 2012, 2:00 pm

Pallavi Mahidhara Friday, February 24, 2012, 8:00 pm Frankly Music A Night of Tango Monday, May 21, 2012, 7:00 pm

Tickets: $25 (262) 781-9520 wilson-center.com

The Wisconsin Philharmonic 1

Founded 1947

presents

Love and the Sea Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 7:30pm Oconomowoc Arts Center Alexander Platt, Conductor Overture to The Flying Dutchman WWV 63..................................................Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Sea Pictures, Op. 37.................................................................................................... Edward Elgar Sea Slumber Song (1857-1934) In Haven Sabbath Morning at Sea Where the Corals Lie The Swimmer Heather Jewson, Mezzo-Soprano INTERMISSION Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major, Op. 10................................................ Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Chelsea Shurilla, Piano La Mer, L. 109......................................................................................................... Claude Debussy (1862-1918) This concert is sponsored by the Harken Family Foundation and

Ms. Jewson and Ms. Shurilla’s performances are sponsored by

The Country Springs Hotel is the official hotel of The Wisconsin Philharmonic.

The Wisconsin Philharmonic recognizes the generous support of the Friends of Note for orchestra operations.

Please turn off all cellular phones and other digital devices. We respectfully request members of the audience to refrain from the use of camera equipment or recording devices during the performance.

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THE WISCONSIN PHILHAR MONIC VIOLIN I Robin Petzold, Concertmaster Gerald Loughney, Assistant Concertmaster David Bullock Johanna Bourkova Heather Broadbent Travis Leanna Cynthia Arden JoAnn Haasler Jennifer Wendling Hilary Mercer Mary Haarmann Michelle Pera

CELLO Adrien Zitoun, Principal Braden Flanagan-Zitoun, Assistant Principal Loni Gornick Chris Abbott Alicia Storin Kyra Saltman Roberta Mallmann

VIOLIN II Christopher Ruck, Principal Andrea Buchta, Assistant Principal Kris Hurlebaus Catherine Kolb Emily Stodola Shannon O’Leary Kate Behring Joyce Malloy Steven Friedenberg Karen Schroeder

HARP Kelsey Molinari, Principal Kari Gardner

VIOLA Mary Pat Michels, Principal Marvin Suson, Assistant Principal Andrew Waid Lynne Fields Jennifer Kozoroz Scott Craig Lauren Roznowski Sarah Christie

BASS Charles Grosz, Principal Michael Britz, Assistant Principal Steven Rindt John Babbitt

FLUTE Scott Metlicka, Principal Rosemary Bennett Joanna Messer PICCOLO Joanna Messer OBOE Suzanne Geoffrey, Principal Matthew Siehr Pavel Morunov ENGLISH HORN Matthew Siehr CLARINET Christopher Zello, Principal Dan Roberdeau

BASSOON Robb Seftar, Principal Steven Whitney Andrew Jackson Gerik Fon-Revutzky CONTRABASSOON Gerik Fon-Revutzky HORN Joel Benway, Principal Elizabeth Olson Anne Maliborski Nancy Cline TRUMPET Christian Anderson, Principal Joseph Burzinski Mark Eichner Kevin Wood Justin Olson TROMBONE Kyle Samuelson, Principal Glen Lunde BASS TROMBONE Eric Larsen TUBA Dan Neesley TIMPANI Terry Smirl PERCUSSION Victoria Daniel, Principal Josh Sherman Sarah Basel

For a complete listing of the 2011-2012 Roster, visit our website at www.wisconsinphilharmonic.org

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A L E X A N D E R P L AT T, M U S I C D I R E C TO R Alexander Platt is now serving his 15th season as Music Director of The Wisconsin Philharmonic. Also the Music Director of the La Crosse Symphony in Wisconsin and the Grand Forks Symphony in North Dakota, Alexander Platt has forged a unique career among the younger American conductors, combining a true commitment to regional orchestras and their communities with an ability to lead cutting-edge projects on the international scene. These accomplishments are built on his bedrock experience as the Apprentice Conductor (1991-93) of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera and follow 12 seasons as Music Director of the nearby Racine Symphony Orchestra. In addition to now serving in his sixteenth season as Music Director of the Marion, Indiana Philharmonic Alexander Platt just completed three very exciting years as Principal Conductor and Music Advisor of the Boca Raton Symphonia. An assignment born of his debut with Sir James Galway on 48 hours’ notice at the International Festival of the Arts Boca, Mr. Platt led the ensemble (in the opinion of The Palm Beach Post) into becoming the finest of the orchestras to emerge out of the collapse of the Florida Philharmonic.

Following widely acclaimed assignments with the Minnesota Opera and the Skylight Opera Theatre, Alexander Platt made his debut with Chicago Opera Theater in 1997 conducting Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI and was appointed Resident Conductor and Music Advisor in 2000. Over the following decade, he led the Chicago premieres of such demanding 20th-century masterworks as Britten’s DEATH IN VENICE, the Bizet/Peter Brook LA TRAGEDIE DE CARMEN, and the Britten/Shakespeare A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM; the world premiere of the Tony Kushner/ Maurice Sendak version of Hans Krasa’s BRUNDIBAR; and the world-premiere recording of Kurka’s THE GOOD SOLDIER SCHWEIK—all to high acclaim in Opera News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times of London, and both great Chicago papers. In 2007 he made his Canadian debut at the Banff Music Festival, leading the co-premiere (in collaboration with the Calgary Opera) of John Estacio’s FROBISHER to accolades in Opera Canada magazine.

As a guest-conductor Alexander Platt has led the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Freiburg Philharmonic in Germany and for three years the Aalborg Symphony in Denmark, as well as Camerata Chicago, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Lexington and Hudson Valley Philharmonics, and the Houston, Charlotte, Columbus, Flagstaff, Sioux City, El Paso and Indianapolis Symphonies. Alexander made his New York debut in 2007 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic before thousands in Central Park, the first of several appearances with that orchestra; in 2011 he makes his debut with the Illinois Philharmonic in an all-Beethoven program.

Alexander Platt spends his summers in the Hudson River Valley as the sixth Music Director of The Maverick Concerts, in Woodstock, New York—the oldest summer chamber-music series in America. A recent highlight of his achievements there was his conducting the world premiere of his own chamber-orchestra version of David Del Tredici’s FINAL ALICE for soprano and large orchestra(1976). Created under a Rockefeller grant from the New York State Music Fund, his new version was hailed by The New York Times as a workable version of Del Tredici’s masterpiece; in summer 2011Mr.Platt will lead his own official chamber version of another neglected American masterpiece, Leonard Bernstein’s SONGFEST. Alexander Platt has conducted the U.S. premieres of works of Britten, Ned Rorem, Shostakovich, Colin Matthews, Russell Platt, and Judith Weir.

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A L E X A N D E R P L AT T, M U S I C D I R E C TO R ( c o n t .)

A research scholar for the National Endowment for the Humanities before he entered college, Alexander Platt was educated at Yale University, as a conducting fellow at both Aspen and Tanglewood, and then at King’s College Cambridge under a British Marshall Scholarship. At Cambridge he led all of the important musical societies, deputized in the legendary King’s College Choir, and as conductor of the Cambridge University Opera Society led a revival of Britten’s neglected OWEN WINGRAVE that earned him high praise in the London press.

During this time he also made his professional debut at the Aldeburgh Festival, his London debut at the Wigmore Hall, and reconstructed the lost chamber version of the Mahler Fourth Symphony. In addition to recording for National Public Radio, the South-West German Radio and the BBC, his 2004 recording of Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with violinist Rachel Barton still appears frequently on radio stations across America.

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H E AT H E R J E W S O N , M E Z Z O - S O P R A N O International mezzo soprano Heather Jewson continues a successful career on the concert and opera stages of North America and Europe. The 2009-10 season saw Ms. Jewson return to the Aspen Summer Music Festival to sing the title role in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, with acclaimed conductor Jane Glover. She also made her debut with both the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada and Pacific Opera Victoria in the roles of Nicklausse (Tales of Hoffmann), and Flora (La Traviata). Heather ended the season on tour to Nunavik, playing the role of Tisbe in the Canadian Opera Company Studio’s production of Cinderella.

In 2011 Heather will join Maestro Alexander Platt and the Wisconsin Philharmonic for their Season Opening concert with Elgar’s Sea Pictures. Other season highlights include the US premier of Robert LePage’s production of The Nightengale and other short fables (Stravinsky) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Durufle’s Requiem (Toronto) and Madame Flora in The Medium (Northern Lights Performing Arts Pavillion).

Ms. Jewson’s operatic repertoire includes; Tisby in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Aspen Summer Music Festival), Jessica in John Estacio ‘s Frobisher (premier at the Banff Centre Centre for the Performing Arts); Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus (J. Strauss), Frau Reich in Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor (O Nicolai), Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro (W.A, Mozart), Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier (Sheffield Symphony Orchestra,UK), and the Sorceress in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas ( Preston Opera,UK).

Heather is also quite active on the concert stage in both Oratorio and recital.

Highlights include Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Stratford Concert Choir, Handel’s Messiah with the Pax Christi Choral and The Mississauga Choral society and Bach’s Cantata 137 and Cantata 110 at the Toronto International Bach Festival under the baton of Maestro Helmuth Rilling. She has also appeared as a recitalist with the Aldeburgh Connection and The Stratford Chamber Music Society.

Best wishes to the Wisconsin Philharmonic for another successful season from Bill and Michele Holcomb

In addition to a Masters of Music from the University of Toronto, Heather also holds a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, where she was a Major Scholar of the Peter Moores Foundation.

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CHELSEA SHURILLA , PIANO Chelsea Shurilla, 19 years old, was born and raised in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. After showing consistent interest in her family’s 100 year old upright grand, she began piano lessons at the age of 11. Chelsea enjoyed playing the oboe and piano with her high school Wind Symphony, Jazz Band, and in the UWM Youth Wind Ensemble receiving numerous awards and recognition. In the 2009 Menomonee Falls Junior Miss competition, Chelsea won both the Talent and Scholastic Achievement categories. Also selected to attend the 2008 session of Badger Girl’s State, Chelsea was elected to the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction earning her an invitation to speak at the State Capitol.

From 2007 to 2009, Chelsea studied piano at the Saler Piano Studio in Wauwatosa. In 2008, she took first overall in the Milwaukee Area Piano Teacher’s (MAPTA) competition. In 2009 Chelsea placed 4th in the Chopin Youth Piano Competition at Polish Fest on Milwaukee’s lakefront. She was the second place qualifier in The Philharmonic’s Chapman Memorial competition two years ago and with this year’s first place finish, she makes her solo debut.

Chelsea is majoring in Piano Performance, an auditioned program, at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Currently a junior, she studies with Dr. Jeffrey Shumway. She is also a member of the BYU Women’s Chorus and a Resident Assistant in the dorms.

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PROGR A M NOTES Love and the Sea – so intertwined, so French, and such favorite subjects for so many of the greatest artists and composers; and the perfect way to start our Francophile season here at The Wisconsin Philharmonic.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Overture to The Flying Dutchman (1841)

The idea of commencing a season devoted to French music with an overture by that most aggressively German of composers may at first seem strange. However, Richard Wagner, who spent part of his tortured early career in Paris, would have an enormous influence on French artists for all the years up to the First World War, most notably the masters of French Impressionism. No less than the great painter Auguste Renoir who, upon hearing the opening work of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Wagner festival shrine of Bayreuth, left proclaiming Wagner “the first Impressionist in music.” The young Claude Debussy would make two trips to Bayreuth himself in 1888 and 1889. These trips would have a profound effect on the composer who would shake the musical world just four years later with the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

Indeed, by the latter half of the 19th century, Wagnerism in France became something of a mania, most especially in the Paris of the Second Empire and la Belle Epoque, extending to not only music, but with equal weight in art and literature only to be momentarily quashed

by France’s humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. In that regard, the English composer and scholar Robin Holloway showed in his seminal work on the subject that Wagner’s influence on Debussy was indeed all-pervasive.

Die fliegende Hollaender (The Flying Dutchman) was composed by the young Wagner in 1841, and is universally agreed to be his first operatic masterpiece. Wagner wrote in while in abject poverty during his first extended stay in Paris, and it is indeed probable that many of the opera’s thematic ideas originated during Wagner’s sea-tossed voyage to France from Riga, where he worked as conductor at the opera-house. His ship was forced to take refuge from a storm in the Norwegian fjords, explaining the opera’s setting in a little village on the Norwegian coast. Though the setting came from personal experience, the theme of the damned Dutch sea-captain with his phantom vessel and crew searching for a young woman to redeem him through love goes back centuries in European literature. First produced in a three-act version in Dresden in 1843, Wagner went to his grave wishing that producers would perform the opera in its original continuous, one-act conception. As for the opera’s Overture, Robert Roas explained Wagner’s forward-looking path out of traditional German early Romantic opera: “In his overture...Wagner successfully solved the problem, which troubled not a few nineteenth-century composers, of reconciling classical form and romantic content; the music is constructed roughly on sonata-principles, but dispenses with a formal recapitulation of themes. The two most important motives of the opening pages, more or less corresponding to the first and second subjects of a sonata-movement, are those which represent the hero and heroine...The Dutchman’s theme, a rising fanfare on the tonic and dominant notes of D minor, is announced at the outset and, after several subsidiaries, is succeeded by some bars of Senta’s ballad(associated in the opera with the Redemption of the Dutchman by her love)...The music then returns to D minor where a stormy development begins...No formal recapitulation of the material follows, but instead there is a fantasia on Senta’s Ballad, and the overture ends with final statements of the Dutchman and Redemption motives, the latter concluding with an expressive chromatic cadence which would recall the closing bars of Tristan und Isolde and Goetterdaemmerung.”

Sir Edward Elgar: Sea Pictures for contralto voice and orchestra, Op.37

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was Britain’s first composer of consequence since the seventeenth-century genius Henry Purcell. Gustav Mahler liked to say that he was thrice an outcast in the world, and so was Elgar in the conventional pathways of British life. He was a Catholic in an officially Protestant country, a West Midlands provincial in a nation where London, Oxbridge, and the South are the most powerful and sophisticated, and the son of a working-class tradesman in a culture then riddled by a Victorian class-system. The world, by virtue of his hard-earned success, came to see him as the quintessentially stiff Edwardian gentleman with his Knighthood, Order of Merit, handlebar mustache, and bespoke suits. In reality, he was an intensely shy and moody man, always deeply aware of his modest origins 8 The Wisconsin Philharmonic

P R O G R A M N O T E S ( c o n t .) and of the contrast between an artist’s romantic view of himself and the way the world actually is. A hard-working musician from the age of 16 he never took a formal composition lesson in his life and never held an academic post of significance.

An almost exact contemporary of Claude Debussy, Elgar’s great work evoking the sea also has Wagner as a root influence, though as with La Mer it is an influence that is wholly internalized.

The Sea Pictures were completed in July of 1899, and became so instantly popular that they were included later that year in a Command Performance for Queen Victoria at Balmoral Castle. Written in the same year as his world-famous Enigma Variations, the five orchestral songs of the Sea Pictures represent Elgar as a master of Romantic evocation of love and the ocean (notice the use of the harp) and a skillful, atmospheric composer to a good, solid swath of Victorian poetry.

Elgar’s setting of Roden Noel’s “Sea Slumber Song” conveys a profound calm, in which the evocation of a craggy coast at evening alternates with that of the Virgin hushing her Child to sleep. “In Haven” is a rendering of a short poem by Elgar’s wife, Alice, wistfully remembering their time together on the island of Capri. In his setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sabbath Morning at Sea” Elgar is at his most romantically grandiloquent, impressively showing his musical debts to both Wagner and Mendelssohn; it is Victorian religiosity personified.

The next among the Sea Pictures has been one of the most enduringly popular: “Where Corals Lie”, by Richard Garnett. Maybe not a titanic masterpiece, but a setting, as one critic noted, “of direct and delicate simplicity”; as with “In Haven”, Elgar scales back his Wagnerian orchestration to realize an unpretentious subtlety worthy of the French Impressionists.

A setting of “The Swimmer”, by the Australian poet, athlete, and politician, Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) is the Sea Pictures’ final song. The longest and least popular in the set, it is also the most dramatically interesting. Here the poem’s protagonist struggles against the open sea.

The poem and its musical setting evoke the typically Victorian conflict between “masculine” struggle and “feminine” sensitivity. After the initial violence of its opening, the middle is a

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P R O G R A M N O T E S ( c o n t .) peaceful refuge, in which Elgar skillfully recalls some of the Sea Pictures’ earlier themes. The poetic and musical storm soon returns, to the point where some commentators have detected the suggestion of eventual suicide. This interpretation no doubt is influenced ex post facto by Gordon’s own eventual death by suicide. In Elgar’s music, however, the struggle, both physical and psychological, seems to have been heroically resolved.

Sergei Prokofiev(1891-1953): Piano Concerto No.1 in D-flat major, Op.10

As with Haydn vis-a-vis Mozart, Sergei Prokofiev remains significantly less popular than his comrade and contemporary in 20th-century Soviet music, Dmitri Shostakovitch (1906-1975).

Ironically, it is Shostakovitch who would be in reality the Joseph Haydn of his era, the great Survivor of musical Russia, flattering and cajoling his Soviet commissars to the service of a long and successful career of relative artistic freedom under totalitarian rule. Prokofiev, on the other hand, ever the “classicist” as opposed to Shostakovitch’s post-Romanticism, would meet a more tragic, Mozartian fate. Beginning his career as the quintessential enfant terrible, he left Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution to settle in Paris after stops in New York and Chicago. Lured back to Mother Russia by Joseph Stalin’s cultural terror in the 1930’s, Prokofiev would eventually be hounded to death by the dictator, dying on the very same day as Stalin in 1953.

Prokofiev’s music always retains a dichotomy of expression that, like that of Mozart, ultimately defies any particular movement, or epoch: on the one hand, a hugely emotional Romanticism, and at the same time a structural Classicism of scientific quality. A fine and very early example of this is the very first of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos in the deliciously exotic key of D-flat major, written in 1912 when Prokofiev was still a student at the St Petersburg Conservatory. A unique work, if it were not for the earlier and elegantly inferior examples of his forbears Glazunov, Conus and Aryensky, the Piano Concerto No.1 is cast in a single movement and lasts all of 17 minutes; it is however, a fully satisfying work of art. Its neglect can only be explained by its relative brevity, making it difficult to place on concert programs.

Truly expressed in a single, unified movement, the First Concerto’s complex form can be simply summarized as one of “ABACA”, with the “A” idea being the Concerto’s gorgeously soaring main theme, a circular repeat of a single, four-note melodic cell, through a seemingly endless stream of modulations.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): La Mer, trois equisses symphoniques pour orchestre (The Sea: Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra), L.109 (1905)

In celebration of its composer’s sesquicentennial (150th)year, we come to one of the great mysteries of the classical repertoire. La Mer is a work which one could rightly spend one’s whole life in order to fully appreciate. Debussy began its composition in 1903 while still in Paris, but then continued, improbably, on the relative hideout of Jersey (an ancient duchy of the British Empire just off the northern coast of France), and finally in the Grand Hotel at Eastbourne, overlooking the English Channel. His exile was due to Parisian outrage, both legal and emotional, over Debussy leaving his generally-beloved wife, the dressmaker Lily Textier, in order to run off with the wealthy banker’s wife and singer, Emma Bardac.

By then, Debussy, certifiably brilliant, but notoriously lazy and often downright cruel, wrote from his English exile to his friend the composer Andre Messager: “You perhaps do not know that I was destined for the fine life of a sailor and that it was only by chance that I was led away from it. But I still have a great passion for the sea.” Indeed, in this work’s three movements (“From dawn to noon on the sea”,“Play of the waves”, and “Dialogue of the wind and the sea”) Debussy, while continuing the path from his earlier Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun in truly creating a new, modern musical language, also gives us a work at the same time of traditionally symphonic Romanticism. The worlds of Wagner and the Russian masters Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov are never really off the horizon; Debussy ultimately gives us a three-movement program symphony in the tradition of his one-time teacher, Cesar Franck.

The critic Jean-Yves Bras put it best:

“The genius of Debussy is in his ability to give the whole a cosmogonic force. The Sea is immense and powerful; this time the score is animated by the forces of day and not those of night. In spite of all its capricious, spontaneous details, the sonorous ebbing and flowing, 12 The Wisconsin Philharmonic

P R O G R A M N O T E S ( c o n t .)

La Mer releases a dionysiac force whose dramatic character is still indebted to Romanticism.

The listener does not look at the sea, he is plunged into and buffeted by this liquid mass, constantly moving with unpredictable, impressive, and at time distressing energies...This amniotic Sea bears within it the seeds of the music of the 20th century.”

The premiere of La Mer, in a mediocre performance by the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1905 largely bored and enraged the critics, still reeling from the scandal of his private life with Bardac. The very first recording of the work was conducted by Piero Coppola in 1928. Given Arturo Toscanini’s overwhelming predilection for the German and Italian repertoire, it is fascinating to realize that La Mer was his most often-conducted major work.

Written by Alexander Platt

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Getting Better while Growing Older Congratulations to the Wisconsin Philharmonic on 64 Successful Years

Celebrating our 95th year

B OA R D O F D I R E C TO R S 2 011- 2 012 President.................................................................................................................Doug Haag, Hartland Executive Vice President................................................................................Carol Taylor, Waukesha Senior Vice President.................................................................................... John Almasi, Waukesha Treasurer...........................................................................................................Jennifer Hausch, Juneau Secretary.........................................................................................................Nancy Hastad, Waukesha Susan Fobes, Sussex Larry Harper, Waukesha Ruth Harken, Pewaukee Karol Kennedy, Waukesha Gail Lundell, Dousman

Fritz Ruf, Pewaukee Ex-Officio, Non-Voting Andrea Northrop Alexander Platt

S TA F F Music Director.................................................................................................................Alexander Platt Executive Director......................................................................................................Andrea Northrop Office Manager.................................................................................................................David Elbrecht Personnel Manager/Librarian................................................................................ Mary Pat Michels Stage Manager....................................................................................................................... Glen Lunde

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C O N T R I B U TO R S ( c o n t .)

James & Elizabeth Chermark Ronald & Jane Darling N.J. De Meyer Elizabeth S. Dinsmoor Joanne Crooks Phyllis Flory Eileen Gardafee Gerald & Donna Gerndt Dennis & Patricia Griswold Elaine Haberichter Mr. & Mrs. Russell Hanson John & Sue Hoaglund Richard & Jeanne Hryniewicki Dennis & Kathy Hulen Richard & Juleen Jaeger Mary Jervis Ed & Ann Johnson Ruth Page Jones Elizabeth Jones Bob & Jackie Kastengren Thomas & Jean Klein Ramon & Doris Klitzke Nancy Klug Mary Knudten Dale & Gay Knutson Armenta Kolkoski Ena Mollie Lantz Tom & Sharon Leair Robert & Donna Lucht Chris & Gail Lundell John Macy & Sandi Brand Robert Malm Michael & Mary McCormick Thomas & Patricia Miller Cathleen Morris Robert D. Muehlenkamp Doris Murphy Lisa Nevins Jean O’Donnell Illingwoth Elizabeth Orozco

Dale & Barbara Pforr Mark Potts Nancy Rice Robert & Connie Schuett Donald Tewes Betty Lou Tikalsky Jim & Pat Toft John & Darlene Trotter Joe & Ellen Turzynski Robert Vrakas Tom & Laura Wanta Allen Weidler John Wellford Rev. & Mrs. Theodore Youngquist Friend Up to $49 Anonymous Eileen Alm Robert Breese Alan & Carol Carlson Terrence Cerni Patricia Hetznecker David & Ann Lang Cheryl Matteson Phil & Cie Motelet Mark & Angela Penzkover Robert Radtke Paul & Cathy Riedl Cheryl Scheurman Paula Slesar Carrie A Studnicka Mr & Mrs William O. Vebber Barbara Woerner In Honor of Mary Korkor Tom Snyder

In Memory of Richard F. Alexander George & Edith Love Marty Frank Suzanne R. Frank James L. & Dorothy Goff Frisch Charles McIntosh John B. Seel Geth Galloway Joan Newman Jean Kennedy George & Edith Love Mudi Klumb Ellen Strommen Angeline Lunde Andrea Northrop Rosemary Melmariak Ellen Strommen Fred Portz JoAnn Portz Ed Radi Ellen Strommen Keith Rand Sune & Jean Ericson Clara Saler Richard Saler Deborah A Seter Ken & Jeanne Menting Robert Smart Anita Ransome Kuchler Rev. Patricia Sutton Ellen Strommen Hans Weinandt Sune & Jean Ericson In Kind Steve Dombrock & Co. S.C.

The Contributor Listing includes all contributions from the last twelve months received through September 12, 2011. Those who contributed after that date have our thanks and the assurance that your names will appear in the November 13, 2011 program. If you note an error in this list, please contact The Wisconsin Philharmonic at 262-547-1858 so that we may correct it for our next program. #74558 Northcote Estate, North Lake $3,490,000

The entire property has been tastefully expanded, updated and restored over the past several years. The main home has recently been enhanced with the seamless addition of a professional dream kitchen and casual dining area. There is a fully equipped guesthouse, chauffeur’s quarters, tennis court, petanque court, Flora Cameron pond, gazebo, vineyard and nearly 15 262-853-7119 (cell) wooded acres, plus 145 feet of western 262-646-6800 fcameron@firstweber.com facing North Lake views.

16 The Wisconsin Philharmonic

WISCONSIN PHILHAR MONIC : GIVING OPPORTUNITIES Frugality and creativity have always been part of The Wisconsin Philharmonic’s history. The Board and Friends of Note have created superb fundraising events that have held the organization above water during especially challenging times. Special efforts like the Annual Gala generate substantial funds which are deeply appreciated by the Board of Directors. In addition to special events, other fund development efforts add pivotal revenue to The Wisconsin Philharmonic’s bottom line.

Sponsorships are now part of almost every performance. Businesses donate to The Wisconsin Philharmonic and sponsor a performance or soloist and receive prominent placement in programs or signs among other benefits. Media sponsors donate specific marketing services that help the organization reach as many audience members as possible with no charge to The Wisconsin Philharmonic.

The Individual Campaign is conducted primarily in the fall of each season. It is an opportunity for individuals to support The Wisconsin Philharmonic at a level that is meaningful to them. Contributors receive valuable benefits based on the level of their donation. For a complete list of donor levels and benefits, visit The Wisconsin Philharmonic’s web site (www.wisconsinphilharmonic.org).

The Wisconsin Philharmonic also offers Planned Giving Programs, designed to ensure that The Wisconsin Philharmonic will continue for future generations. Options include Wills and Bequests, Trusts (like a Charitable Remainder Trust), Insurance (an old cash value policy), Appreciated Stock and Retirement Plan Proceeds.

In-kind donations are also accepted. For more information about any of these options, contact The Wisconsin Philharmonic office at 262-547-1858.

T H E W I S C O N S I N P H I L H A R M O N I C : E N D OWM E N T F U N D S The Wisconsin Philharmonic offers four Endowment Funds that are open and accept additional donations.

The Wisconsin Philharmonic Endowment Fund provides income to support general operations. Contributions to this restricted fund are invested to preserve the principal in perpetuity. Earnings and fund corpus may be used to support The Wisconsin Philharmonic operating needs at a rate of no more than 5% of the fund balance as of the calendar year end annually. Gifts to this permanent fund help to preserve the future of classical music in our communities.

The James and Dorothy Goff Frisch Endowment Fund was created to honor these founding members of The Wisconsin Philharmonic. Contributions are invested to preserve the fund principal; earnings are used to sponsor a soloist during the season.

The Wisconsin Philharmonic Education Investment Fund provides funding for the educational programs of The Wisconsin Philharmonic. The programs include the Shining Stars Scholarship competition for middle and high school students, the Chapman Piano Competition, Masterworks Chamber Ensemble Coaching, the Middle School Orchestra Workshops, and Major Classics for Minors, which bring The Wisconsin Philharmonic musicians into local schools for an interactive presentation about sound and music.

The Anthony W. Bryant Scholarship Fund honors businessman and philanthropist, Tony Bryant, who has been an advocate of The Wisconsin Philharmonic for many years. The scholarship is awarded by competitive audition to a graduating high school senior who declares an intention to major in music while in college.

The Wisconsin Philharmonic 17

T H E W I S C O N S I N P H I L H A R M O N I C E D U C AT I O N P R O G R A M S The Wisconsin Philharmonic education programs are an example of the Orchestra’s steadfast commitment to providing programs that serve the entire community and provide opportunities to help students achieve success and enrichment through classical music.

Chapman Piano Competition. This biennial piano competition is open to all Waukesha County piano students age 14 through 20. The student prepares a selection from the repertoire list to perform by memory. The award to the winner includes cash and an opportunity to perform with The Wisconsin Philharmonic as a featured soloist.

Shining Stars Scholarships. Annual auditions each March are open to string, wind and percussion Waukesha County students. The students play before Philharmonic musicians and receive the judges written evaluations. Winners are presented to the audience at The Wisconsin Philharmonic’s Season Finale concert and receive a cash award to be used for continuing music studies.

Masterworks Chamber Music Coaching. This project promotes the study of chamber music by assigning a Wisconsin Philharmonic musician to a high school as an ensemble coach. The coach, high school string teacher and student musicians decide what repertoire to study during the year. The group spends five sessions with its coach and is expected to practice outside classroom time.

At the end of the program, groups perform their works for the entire high school orchestra and in a concert setting. Additionally, students are given a writing assignment that can vary from self-reflection to a music critique.

Middle School Orchestra Workshops. A new program for this season, the Middle School Orchestra Workshops open with a performance by a Wisconsin Philharmonic string quintet. Following the performance, students are split into sections to receive coaching from the professional musicians. The workshop ends with the Philharmonic musicians listening to a concluding performance and offering suggestions for improvement.

Major Classic for Minors. Chamber ensembles from The Wisconsin Philharmonic present programs in elementary schools throughout Waukesha County. Each presentation is about 45 minutes long and includes a demonstration of the instruments and their unique sounds, themes in music, styles of composition, conducting, and a question-and-answer period. For many students, this is the first experience with classical music and up-close exposure to musical instruments and performers. These programs are offered free to the schools.

VISIT OUR OFFICE The Wisconsin Philharmonic 234 W. Main Street Suite 9 PO Box 531 Waukesha, WI 53187-0531 Phone: (262) 547-1858 Fax: (262) 547-5440 Website: www.wisconsinphilharmonic.org Email: info@ wisconsinphilharmonic.org

18 The Wisconsin Philharmonic

PLEASE HELP US THANK OUR GENEROUS SPONSORS

Concerts Harken Family Foundation

Guest Artists James and Dorothy Goff Frisch Endowment Fund Don L. & Carol G. Taylor Family Foundation

Season Partners

The Wisconsin Philharmonic 19

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