performance CALENDAR
Viva Italia! Opera Beyond Words
February 7 & 9
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
February 15 & 16
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in Concert
February 21 & 22
007: James Bond Forever
February 28, March 1 & 2
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Maestro
March 1
Hilary Hahn Plays Brahms
March 7, 8 & 9
Korngold’s Violin Concerto & Cinderella
March 14, 15 & 16
Fairytales Festival: Fairy Tale Fantasy
March 16
Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody & The Little Mermaid
March 21, 22 & 23
Showstoppers! Celebrating Iconic Women of Broadway
April 4, 5 & 6
Cynthia Erivo with the Houston Symphony
April 9
La Flor: The Music of Selena
April 12 & 13
Sibelius 5 & Stravinsky
April 18 & 19
Cirque Rocks!
April 25, 26 & 27
Cirque For Kids
April 26
Beethoven 7 & Mozart
May 1, 3 & 4
Trumpet Brilliance & Boléro
May 9, 10 & 11
Stayin’ Alive: The Bee Gees & Beyond
May 16, 17 & 18
Chamber Music: Musician Showcase
May 18
Bruce Liu Plays Chopin
May 23, 24 & 25
Juraj Valčuha Conducts Mahler 3
May 30, 31 & June 1
John Williams & Steven Spielberg: Movie Magic
June 6, 7 & 8
Andrea Bocelli In Concert
June 12 • Toyota Center
Mr. Symphonic: Shaggy with the Houston Symphony
June 14
Jaws In Concert
June 20
Disney & Pixar’s Up in Concert
June 21 & 22
The Music of Journey
July 26 • The Hobby Center
ESCANEE AQUÍ PARA VER TRADUCCIÓN AL ESPAÑOL
Juraj Valčuha
Music Director
Roy and Lillie Cullen Chair
COMMUNITY-EMBEDDED MUSICIAN
Lindsey Baggett, Violin
ASSISTANT LIBRARIANS
Ali Verderber
Hae-a Lee
STAGE PERSONNEL
Stefan Stout, Stage Manager
José Rios, Assistant Stage Manager
Nicholas DiFonzo, Head Video Engineer
Justin Herriford, Head Audio Engineer
Connor Morrow, Head Stage Technician
Giancarlo Minotti, Audio Production Manager
Program Notes
PUCCINI
Intermezzi from Manon Lescaut, Suor Angelica, and Madama Butterfly (1893)
Saturday, February 15
Sunday, February 16
Jones Hall
Jones Hall
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About the Music Program Insight
Livestream of this program is made possible by donors to our Livestream and Recording Studio Consortium listed on page 69
Video enhancement of Houston Symphony concerts is made possible by the Albert & Ethel Herzstein Foundation through a special gift celebrating the Foundation’s 50 th anniversary in 2015
The Classical Season is endowed by The Wortham Foundation, Inc ., in memory of Gus S. and Lyndall F. Wortham
7:30 p.m.
2:00 p.m.
The Houston Symphony’s Music Director, Juraj Valčuha, has a penchant for creative and thought-provoking programming. Last weekend, he led concerts featuring enchanting excerpts from the Italian operatic tradition. This weekend continues the operatic theme, but moves beyond Italy to feature 20th-century works by Russian, British, and Hungarian composers, as well as a 21st-century piece by Korean-born, Berlin-based composer Unsuk Chin. Compared with the romantic and supernatural themes of the Italian program, these works explore more intense terrain, from the madcap antics of Chin’s Alice in Wonderland and Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges to the uncanny, yet fascinating, soundworlds of Britten and Bartók. Joining Valčuha are world-renowned opera singers Ekaterina Gubanova and Gábor Bretz, both acclaimed Wagnerians with the powerful voices and penetrating musicality needed to bring Duke Bluebeard’s Castle to life. Part fairytale, part psychological thriller, Bartók’s operatic masterpiece is gripping from its first note to its last—a musical experience not to be missed.
—Calvin Dotsey
Program Notes
U. CHIN
Introduction to Scene V ( A Mad Tea Party) from Alice in Wonderland (2007)
Born in Seoul in 1961, Unsuk Chin was drawn to music from an early age. Initially an autodidact as a pianist and composer, by 13 she had decided to pursue composition as a career. Undergraduate studies with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University opened up the world of the European avantgarde to her. In a 2022 interview for the Aldeburgh Music Festival, she reflected that “immersing myself in European avant-garde music in the early ‘80s was vital, as I had before that known ‘Western’ musical history only until Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto.” She quickly began to integrate contemporary techniques into her own music, attracting international attention in the form of several awards.
Program Notes
U. CHIN
Introduction to Scene V ( A Mad Tea Party) from Alice in Wonderland (2007)
PROKOFIEV
Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, Opus 33bis (1921)
In 1985, she won a grant to study in Germany at Hamburg’s University for Music and Theatre with none other than György Ligeti, a giant of the post-War contemporary music scene. Ligeti challenged her to move beyond “avant-garde dogmas” and find her own voice. “Ligeti [...] denounced the avant-garde, requested utterly original music of excellent craftsmanship from himself and his students, asking me to throw away my prize-winning works,” she remembered. Ultimately, she emerged as one of our era’s most distinctive musical voices. Based today in Berlin, she has received numerous awards and her music has been performed by many of the world’s premier orchestras and conductors. Among her most acclaimed works is her 2007 opera, Alice in Wonderland, adapted from Lewis Carroll’s classics with the help of American playwright and screenwriter David Henry Hwang. “I discovered Carroll’s books in South Korea, as an adult rather than as a child, before I moved to Europe,” Chin explained in a 2007 interview. “My interest was piqued when I read [...] Douglas Hofstadter’s volume, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid: A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll [...]”
The brief Introduction to Scene V (A Mad Tea Party) captures the score’s zaniness and piquant irony. According to the stage directions, we see “a long table, set for a tea party, under a tree. The March Hare and the Mad Hatter sit, elbows resting on a sleeping dormouse. A large watch on the wall stands eternally still at 6 o’clock. Similarly, the Hare, the Hatter, and Dormouse also remain still. Throughout the Prologue, an array of characters parade through, each attempting to remedy the problem of the arrested watch,” including a watchmaker, a mechanic, a scientist, a doctor and nurse, a physicist, a priest, and a demolition worker with dynamite. “None succeeds in affecting the watch whatsoever. One by one, they exit in dejected defeat. During this, Alice enters and watches with much curiosity.”
The work opens with a furious, Bachian perpetual motion idea in the strings, recalling the soundworld of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism or perhaps the duel music from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, albeit with a postmodern bite. This constant whirl of notes is punctuated by dancelike rhythms in a variety of striking orchestral colors. The opening music then reappears, building to a breathless, cliffhanger ending. —Calvin Dotsey
March 14, 15, & 16
March 21, 22, & 23
KORNGOLD’S VIOLIN CONCERTO & CINDERELLA
RACHMANINOFF’S RHAPSODY & THE LITTLE MERMAID
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