DON JUAN & BEETHOVEN PIANO

Friday, April 14, 2023 at 11:15 am

Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 7:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Roderick Cox, conductor

Inon Barnatan, piano

RICHARD STRAUSS

Don Juan, Opus 20

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Concerto No. 4 in G major for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 58

I. Allegro moderato

II. Andante con moto

III. Rondo: Vivace

Inon Barnatan, piano

IN TERMISSION

JEAN SIBELIUS

Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Opus 82

I. Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato – Presto

II. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto

III. Allegro molto – Misterioso

This weekend’s concerts are dedicated to the memory of SUSAN LORIS by JULIA AND DAVID UIHLEIN.

The MSO Steinway Piano was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ. The 2022.23 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND

The length of this concert is approximately 2 hours.

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra can be heard on Telarc, Koss Classics, Pro Arte, AVIE, and Vox/Turnabout

Guest Artist Biographies

RODERICK COX

Winner of the 2018 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award by the U.S. Solti Foundation, Berlin-based American conductor, Roderick Cox, has been praised as a conductor who is “paving the way” (NBC News) and recognized as a trailblazer ... a conductor who will be amongst the vanguard” (Minnesota’s Star Tribune).

Forthcoming highlights include debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, RundfunkSinfonieorchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Barcelona Symphony, while he returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, and Philharmonia Orchestra.

Recent highlights include his debuts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Malmo Symphony, Lahti Symphony, Boston Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, New World Symphony, and Orchestre de Paris, as well as returns to Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, and Aspen Music Festival Chamber Orchestra.

In the theatre, Cox has recently made important debuts at the Houston Grand Opera (Pêcheurs de Perles) and San Francisco Opera (Il barbiere di Siviglia), as well as recording Jeanine Tesori’s Blue with the Washington National Opera. Last season, he returned to the Opéra national de Montpellier for Rigoletto, where he is also developing a relationship on the symphonic platform.

With a passion for education and diversity and inclusion in the arts, Cox 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. Cox and his new initiative will be featured in an upcoming documentary called Conducting Life

Born in Macon, Georgia, Cox attended the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and then 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 as part of their Project Inclusion program and at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he was a David Effron Conducting Fellow. In 2016, Roderick was appointed as associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, under Osmo Vänskä, for three seasons, having previously served as assistant conductor for a year.

Guest Artist Biographies

INON BARNATAN

“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (The New York Times), Inon Barnatan has received universal acclaim for his “uncommon sensitivity” (The New Yorker), “impeccable musicality and phrasing” (Le Figaro), and his stature as “a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative” (The Evening Standard).

As a soloist, Barnatan is a regular performer with many of the world’s foremost orchestras and conductors, and he was the inaugural artist-in-association of the New York Philharmonic. Equally at home as a curator and chamber musician, Barnatan is music director of La Jolla Music Society Summerfest in California, one of leading music festivals in the country, and he regularly collaborates with world-class partners such as Renée Fleming and Alisa Weilerstein. His passion for contemporary music has resulted in commissions and performances of many living composers, including premieres of new works by Thomas Adès, Andrew Norman, and Matthias Pintscher, among others.

Barnatan’s 2022.23 season highlights include concerto performances in the U.S. with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and others, and internationally with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, and Philharmonie Zuidnederland. Barnatan will give solo recitals in London, Kansas City, Aspen, and Santa Fe and play chamber music at festivals through the U.S. Barnatan will also tour North America with Les Violons du Roy, performing concertos by C.P.E. Bach and Shostakovich.

A recent addition to Barnatan’s acclaimed discography is a two-volume set of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos, recorded with Alan Gilbert and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on Pentatone. In its review, BBC Music Magazine wrote “The central strength of this first installment of Inon Barnatan’s piano concertos cycle is that, time and again, it puts you in touch with that feeling of ongoing wonderment.”

Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three, when his parents discovered his perfect pitch, and made his orchestral debut at 11. He studied with some of the 20th century’s most illustrious pianists and teachers, including Professor Victor Derevianko, Christopher Elton, and Maria Curcio, and the late Leon Fleisher was also an influential teacher and mentor. For more information, visit inonbarnatan.com.

Program notes by J. Mark Baker

This weekend, guest conductor Roderick Cox is joined by pianist Inon Barnatan for a showcase of frenzied seduction, serene lyricism, and compelling majesty. The first half includes an early tone poem by Richard Strauss and a beguiling concerto by Beethoven. After intermission, we’ll soak up Sibelius’s natureinfused Symphony No. 5.

RICHARD STRAUSS

Born 11 June 1864; Munich, German

Died 8 September 1949; Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Don Juan, Opus 20

Composed: 1888

First performance: 11 November 1889; Weimar, Germany

Last MSO performance: January 2019; Carlos Kalmar, conductor

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, glockenspiel, suspended cymbals, triangle); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 17 minutes

Richard Strauss was only 24 when he composed the tone poem Don Juan, his first important work. He cited Nikalaus Lenau’s (1802-1850) German verse play as his source of inspiration, but we should also duly note that Strauss had conducted Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Munich not long before he set to work on Don Juan. Strauss prefaced the published score with excerpts from Lenau’s poem; they include such intriguing lines as “The charmed circle of many kinds of beautiful, stimulating femininity ... I should like to traverse them in a storm of pleasure, and die of a kiss upon the lips of the last woman.” Lenau’s verses are more like reflections on amorous pursuits than lists of the titular character’s womanizing conquests.

The swirling, energetic opening theme is meant to portray Don Juan himself. This motif soon yields to a romantic melody, first introduced by a solo violin. A gentle oboe suggests a nighttime assignation. Insistent horns then break the mood as they intone a bold, self-assured theme. Melodies are restated and mingled together, always borne along by the composer’s matchless orchestration.

In Lenau’s poem, Don Juan, tired of chasing women, allows himself to be defeated in a duel. Strauss’s tone poem depicts this with a piercing stab from the trumpets. He drops, trembling, to the ground. The atmosphere becomes quiet and forlorn, signifying the protagonist’s imminent demise; it’s a disconsolate ending rather than a fortissimo finale. The music’s final phrases grow ever softer, concluding with what sounds like the last breaths of a dying man. Don Juan’s life was over, but Strauss’s magnificent career had just begun.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Baptized 17 December 1770; Bonn, Germany

Died 26 March 1827; Vienna, Austria

Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58

Composed: 1805-06

First performance: 6 March 1807; palace of Prince Lobkowitz, Vienna (private)

22 December 1808; Vienna, Austria (public)

Last MSO performance: May 2017; Edo de Waart, conductor; Ronald Brautigam, piano

Instrumentation: flute; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 34 minutes

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 dates from around the same time as the Waldstein and Appassionata piano sonatas, the Triple Concerto, Opus 56, the three string quartets, Opus 59 (“Razumovsky”), and the Violin Concerto, Opus 61. The composer dedicated the work to his friend, patron, and pupil Archduke Rudolph of Austria. Its first public performance took place on a four-hour marathon concert that also included the first performances of Symphonies No. 5 and No. 6, the Choral Fantasy, Opus 80, the soprano concert aria Ah, perfido!, and portions of the Mass in C, Opus 86. At the still-young age of 38, it was the last time Beethoven would appear as a concerto soloist due to his increasing deafness.

In his landmark book The Classical Style (1972), Charles Rosen wryly observes, “the most important fact about the concerto form is that the audience waits for the soloist to enter.” In the exquisitely lyrical opening phrases of the G major piano concerto, Beethoven offers a gentle rebuff to Rosen’s axiom, beginning with the piano alone. The orchestra enters four bars later, quietly echoing the soloist’s motif, but in the strikingly distant key of B major. Only after several pages does the texture grow into a full tutti and a true conversation between the piano and orchestra begin.

The compelling E minor Andante con moto – a literal dialogue between piano and strings – in the 19th century was said to depict Orpheus (soloist) taming the Furies (strings). Beethoven scholar Lewis Lockwood posits an equally intriguing notion, equating the second movement to an operatic scena in which “entreaty is met at first by obdurate refusal … The rhetorical character of the movement, like no other in Beethoven, invites association with tradition, and one of these may well have been that of the expressive aria with strings from Mozart’s late Italian works.”

Any remaining oppositions are reconciled in the sprightly rondo-finale. It begins softly, with a lively motif in the strings. Then, for the first time in the concerto, the trumpets and timpani make their entrance. The fleet, energetic piano is afforded ample opportunity for virtuoso display as Beethoven’s soulful and captivating Opus 58 dashes to its conclusion.

JEAN SIBELIUS

Born 8 December 1865; Hämeenlinna, Finland

Died 20 September 1957; Järvenpää, Finland

Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Opus 82

Composed: 1915; revised 1916, 1919

Premiere: 8 December 1915; Helsinki, Finland

(original version)

24 November 1919; Helsinki, Finland (final version)

Last MSO performance: January 2013; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 30 minutes

Jean Sibelius was born into a Swedish-speaking family in a hamlet in south-central Finland. The man who would become the most famous Finn in history did not begin to speak the Finnish language until age eight and acquired complete proficiency in the language only as a young man. Though he was closely identified with Finnish nationalism, it wasn’t because he wrote folksy musical bonbons – or even commanding pieces like his well-known Finlandia. No, his stature rests chiefly on his accomplishment as a composer of that most serious of musical genres – the symphony.

Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony – probably the second-most popular, after Symphony No. 2 – dates from the years of World War I, his only major composition during this time. Because of the national hostilities, Sibelius lost revenue from his German publishers Breitkopf & Härtel; his conducting commitments abroad were also curtailed. As a result, he targeted the domestic market, penning a great deal of piano music and of violin and piano miniatures. Originally cast in four movements, Sibelius’s Opus 82 was completed in time for his 50th birthday (8 December 1915) – an occasion that was treated almost as a national holiday; he conducted the work’s premiere in Helsinki. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with his original efforts, however, and over the next few years made revisions. What had been four movements became three, as he linked together the two opening movements, making the work bolder and more confident. There’s a lot a take in: listen for the various layers of orchestral color – strings, brass, winds – and how they both interweave and act separately. In the strings, the timbral qualities of tremolos are also fascinating, as they move back and forth from primary to secondary material. Throughout, the dynamic contrasts range from ppp to fff.

The second movement is a lovely pastoral interlude in G major. Formally, we might think of it as a set of variations on a five-note motif, first sounded by the violas and cellos, pizzicato. Though much of the music is decidedly arcadian, for contrast there is the occasional darkening of both harmony and orchestration. There is also a bit of what Igor Stravinsky, who was fond of some of Sibelius’s music, once referred to as “Italian-melody-gone-north.”

It is no secret that Sibelius was frequently inspired by his native homeland. Indeed, the Finnish landscape is often palpable in his music. Nature thus infuses the most famous motif of his Fifth Symphony, the so-called “Swan Hymn.” He explained this in a 1915 diary entry: “Today at ten to eleven, I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon.” Sibelius depicts this with a swinging, endlessly repeating ostinato in the horns, as a beautiful descant in the woodwinds and violins sails above. In the symphony’s final pages, we’re back in the home key of E-flat major as brass and timpani hammer out the swan theme. At the very end, six decisive chords from the full orchestra bring this powerful work to a stirring conclusion.

2022.23 SEASON

KEN-DAVID MASUR

Music Director

Polly and Bill Van Dyke

Music Director Chair

EDO DE WAART

Music Director Laureate

YANIV DINUR

Resident Conductor

CHERYL FRAZES HILL

Chorus Director

Margaret Hawkins Chorus Director Chair

TIMOTHY J. BENSON

Assistant Chorus Director

FIRST VIOLINS

Ilana Setapen, Acting Concertmaster, Charles and Marie Caestecker

Concertmaster Chair

Jeanyi Kim, Acting Associate Concertmaster (2nd Chair)

Alexanders Ayers, Acting Assistant Concertmaster

Yuka Kadota

Ji-Yeon Lee**

Dylana Leung

Allison Lovera

Lijia Phang

Margot Schwartz*

Alejandra Switala**

Yuanhui Fiona Zheng

SECOND VIOLINS

Jennifer Startt, Principal, Andrea and Woodrow Leung Second Violin Chair

Timothy Klabunde, Assistant Principal

John Bian, Assistant Principal (3rd Chair)

Glenn Asch

Lisa Johnson Fuller

Paul Hauer

Hyewon Kim

Shengnan Li*

Laurie Shawger

Mary Terranova

VIOLAS

Robert Levine, Principal, Richard O. and Judith A. Wagner Family Principal Viola Chair

Samantha Rodriguez, Acting Assistant Principal, Friends of Janet F. Ruggeri

Viola Chair

Alejandro Duque, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd Chair)

Elizabeth Breslin

Nathan Hackett

Erin H. Pipal

Helen Reich

CELLOS

Susan Babini, Principal, Dorothea C. Mayer Cello Chair

Nicholas Mariscal, Assistant Principal

Scott Tisdel, Associate Principal Emeritus

Madeleine Kabat

Peter Szczepanek

Peter J. Thomas

Adrien Zitoun

BASSES

Jon McCullough-Benner, Principal, Donald B. Abert Bass Chair

Andrew Raciti, Associate Principal

Nash Tomey, Assistant Principal (3rd Chair)

Brittany Conrad

Peter Hatch

Paris Myers

HARP

Julia Coronelli, Principal, Walter Schroeder Harp Chair

FLUTES

Sonora Slocum, Principal, Margaret and Roy Butter Flute Chair

Heather Zinninger, Assistant Principal

Jennifer Bouton Schaub

PICCOLO

Jennifer Bouton Schaub

OBOES

Katherine Young Steele, Principal, Milwaukee Symphony League Oboe Chair

Kevin Pearl, Assistant Principal

Margaret Butler

ENGLISH HORN

Margaret Butler, Philip and Beatrice Blank English Horn Chair in memoriam to John Martin

CLARINETS

Todd Levy, Principal, Franklyn Esenberg Clarinet Chair

Benjamin Adler, Assistant Principal, Donald and Ruth P. Taylor Assistant Principal Clarinet Chair

Taylor Eiffert

E FLAT CLARINET

Benjamin Adler

BASS CLARINET

Taylor Eiffert

BASSOONS

Catherine Van Handel, Principal, Muriel C. and John D. Silbar Family Bassoon Chair

Rudi Heinrich, Assistant Principal

Beth W. Giacobassi

CONTRABASSOON

Beth W. Giacobassi

HORNS

Matthew Annin, Principal, Krause Family French Horn Chair

Krystof Pipal, Associate Principal

Dietrich Hemann, Andy Nunemaker French Horn Chair

Darcy Hamlin

Kelsey Williams**

TRUMPETS

Matthew Ernst, Principal, Walter L. Robb Family Trumpet Chair

David Cohen, Associate Principal, Martin J. Krebs Associate Principal

Trumpet Chair

Alan Campbell, Fred Fuller

Trumpet Chair

TROMBONES

Megumi Kanda, Principal, Marjorie Tiefenthaler

Trombone Chair

Kirk Ferguson, Assistant Principal

BASS TROMBONE

John Thevenet, Richard M. Kimball Bass Trombone Chair

TUBA

Robyn Black, Principal

TIMPANI

Dean Borghesani, Principal

Chris Riggs, Assistant Principal

PERCUSSION

Robert Klieger, Principal

Chris Riggs

PIANO

Melitta S. Pick Endowed Piano Chair

PERSONNEL MANAGERS

Françoise Moquin, Director of Orchestra Personnel

Constance Aguocha, Assistant Personnel Manager

LIBRARIAN

Paul Beck, Principal Librarian, Anonymous Donor, Principal Librarian Chair

PRODUCTION

Tristan Wallace, Technical Manager & Live Audio Supervisor

Paolo Scarabel, Stage Technician & Deck Supervisor

* Leave of Absence 2022.23 Season

** Acting member of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra 2022.23 Season