Concerto No. 1 in G minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 25
I. Molto allegro con fuoco
II. Andante
III. Presto – Molto allegro e vivace
Saleem Ashkar, piano
INTERMISSION
JOHANN MICHAEL HAYDN
Incidental music from Zaïre, MH 255, P. 13
IV. Allegro molto
V. Largo
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Symphony No. 100 in G major, Hob. I:100, “Military”
I. Adagio – Allegro
II. Allegretto
III. Menuet: Moderato
IV. Presto
The 2024.25 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION. The MSO Steinway Piano was made possible through a generous gift from MICHAEL AND JEANNE SCHMITZ
The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. All programs are subject to change.
Guest Artist Biographies
NICHOLAS MCGEGAN
In his sixth decade on the podium, Nicholas McGegan — long hailed as “one of the finest baroque conductors of his generation” (The Independent) and “an expert in 18th-century style” (The New Yorker) — is recognized for his probing and revelatory explorations of music of all periods. Following a 34-year tenure as music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, he is now music director laureate.
Best known as a Baroque and Classical specialist, McGegan’s approach — intelligent, infused with joy, and never dogmatic — has made him a pioneer in broadening the reach of historically informed practice beyond the world of period ensembles to conventional symphonic forces. His guest-conducting appearances with major orchestras — including the New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong philharmonics; the Chicago, Dallas, Milwaukee, Toronto, Sydney, and New Zealand symphonies; the Philadelphia Orchestra; and the orchestras of London’s Royal Opera House and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw — often feature Baroque repertoire alongside Classical, Romantic, 20th-century, and even brand-new works.
Highlights of his 2024-25 orchestral bookings include a return to Disney Hall, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Vivaldi, Haydn, and Mozart; performances of Handel with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; conducting the Indianapolis Symphony in performances of Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky; and engagements with the Chamber Music Society of St. Louis and the Baltimore, Bournemouth, and Milwaukee symphony orchestras.
McGegan is committed to the next generation of musicians, frequently conducting and coaching students in residencies at Yale University, The Juilliard School, Harvard University, the Colburn School, Aspen Music Festival and School, Sarasota Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. He has been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Göttingen, and in 2016, was the Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Harvard.
English-born, McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to music overseas.” Other awards include the Halle Handel Prize; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen; and a declaration of Nicholas McGegan Day by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of his work with Philharmonia Baroque.
Guest Artist Biographies
SALEEM ASHKAR
Saleem Ashkar made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 22 and has since gone on to establish an exciting international career. The 2024-25 season sees Ashkar return to the Orchestre National de Lyon with Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, the St. Louis Symphony with David Afkham, and the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen with Ariane Matiakh, and he makes his debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He will also return for a recital at the Queen’s Hall in Copenhagen for the first of a twopart Schumann Cycle.
Recent concerto highlights include the Bamberger Symphony, Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta de Valencia, Konzerthaus Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Copenhagen Philharmonic. In autumn 2021, he toured Germany with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and the world premiere of David Coleman’s Piano Concerto.
Previous seasons have seen him perform with the Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Detroit, Vancouver, and Tokyo Metropolitan symphony orchestras, and on a three-week tour to Australia. Ashkar has a close relationship with many leading conductors, including David Afkham, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Jakub Hrůša, Pietari Inkinen, Fabio Luisi, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Kazushi Ono, and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider.
A dedicated recitalist and chamber musician, Ashkar has a particularly strong reputation as a Beethoven specialist and has performed the complete sonata cycle in Prague, Duisburg, and at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Recent highlights include recitals at Oslo Opera House, Wigmore Hall in London, Queen’s Hall in Copenhagen, the Milan Conservatory Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Boulezsaal Berlin, and Musikverein Vienna.
Ashkar is the artistic director of the Galilee Chamber Orchestra, formed of young and professional musicians to encourage collaboration between the Arab and Jewish communities in Israel. Ashkar works with the orchestra both as conductor and soloist. In March 2022, they made their debut at Carnegie Hall in a program with Joshua Bell as soloist and at Koerner Hall in Toronto. Recent engagements included a highly acclaimed European tour, which included performances at Konzerthaus Berlin and the Rheingau Musik Festival. This season, they will tour Germany and Spain, including concerts at the Bachfest Leipzig, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and in Madrid.
Ashkar’s most recent recording for Decca Records is the complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle, which spans six discs. Previous recordings have included the Mendelssohn piano concertos with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chailly and Beethoven’s concertos No. 1 and No. 4 with the NDR Elbphilharmonie and Ivor Bolton.
Ashkar is a professor of piano and director of the Applied Music Keyboard Program at Brown University.
Program notes by Elaine Schmidt
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born 27 January 1756; Salzburg, Austria
Died 5 December 1791; Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 33 in B-flat major, K. 319
Composed: Dated 9 July 1779; revised 1782 or 1785
First performance: Unknown; first publication in 1785
Last MSO performance: 9 December 1960; Harry John Brown, conductor
Tourists flock to Salzburg, Austria, today, drawn by its beauty, charm, ties to Mozart, and sites that were used in the filming of The Sound of Music. Mozart, however, called Salzburg his “prison.” Told from a very young age that he was a prodigy, Mozart and his sister Nannerl were presented in performances across Europe, playing for the royalty and the aristocracy, but when Mozart ceased being an adorable child with astonishing musical abilities, he ceased being a fascination for them.
Mozart and his mother toured Europe when he was 22 to find the young man a job, but because Mozart was no longer a novelty, the tour brought no job offers. However, it did bring heartbreak when Mozart’s mother fell ill and died in Paris, and Mozart had to write the sad news to his father and sister. Mozart returned to Salzburg after the tour, where his father found him work, serving variously as concertmaster, court organist, and court musician.
Hating the job and feeling trapped in Salzburg, Mozart yearned to move to Vienna, where he believed he would be respected and appreciated. He wrote and conducted his Symphony No. 33 in Salzburg. Composed in the three-movement Italian fashion, it was lightly orchestrated, largely because his employer didn’t care to spend much money on music. Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, and he added a fourth movement to the symphony, hoping to make it as popular as possible with Viennese audiences. While much of Mozart’s music was well received in Vienna, freelance life was a constant struggle. In addition, the fact that audiences were less impressed by the polished, elegant, and stirring music he was writing as an adult than they had been with music he had written when he was a child was befuddling and soul-crushing. Nevertheless, Mozart’s Symphony No. 33 is an elegantly beautiful, luminous piece of music and decidedly a much more mature work than anything he could have written during his prodigy years.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Born 3 February 1809; Hamburg, Germany
Died 4 November 1847; Leipzig, Germany
Concerto No. 1 in G minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 25
Composed: 1830 – 1831
First performance: 17 October 1831; Felix Mendelssohn, piano; Odeon Concert Hall, Munich
Last MSO performance: 14 June 2008; Alexander Mickelthwate, conductor; Arnaldo Cohen, piano
Composer Felix Mendelssohn wrote about 750 compositions during his lifetime. That sounds like an impressive number, but it becomes more impressive when you remember that he managed to complete those pieces in the 38 years of his tragically short life. Both Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny died in 1847, he at age 38 and she at age 41. Of those 750 pieces, two are solo piano concertos — the more popular of which is his Concerto No. 1 in G minor.
Mendelssohn wrote the piece when he was just 21 years old, and although we think of him as a composer, he was a brilliant pianist as well. In fact, he played the premiere of this concerto himself.
The concerto contains a good deal of improvisation for the soloist, which was one of Mendelssohn’s specialties. Mendelssohn was also interested in connecting the movements of concertos, and you will hear three very connected movements this evening. Mendelssohn said of the piece that he had written it very quickly, in just a few days, almost carelessly. But those who heard it once it was completed loved it. Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt played a great part in promoting the piece and making sure audiences heard it. Hector Berlioz told a story about a piano upon which the concerto had been performed too often. It involved keys moving of their own volition, holy water sprinkled on the piano, and several other bizarre goings-on. Eventually, if his story is to be believed, the piano maker Érard himself chopped it to bits with an ax.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to fathom about Mendelssohn’s short life and career is what he accomplished in that time. In addition to the 750 pieces he composed, he also reintroduced the public to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, ushering in an era of Bach adoration that continues today. He also made several beautiful paintings of the Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, where Bach and family lived, while he was teaching at the school.
Johann Michael Haydn was one of the younger brothers of Franz Josef Haydn, who followed his elder into a life in music. Franz Joseph left his family’s home at age six to study with a relative who taught music. He eventually won a spot in the chorus and school of the St. Stephen’s Cathedral and School in Vienna. He paved the way for Michael to sing and study at St. Stephen’s as well, later doing the same for another younger brother, Johann Evangelist, his parents’ 11th child. Franz Joseph rose to international fame, while Michael built a solid career in Salzburg, and Johann Evangelist had an undistinguished musical career as a singer. Their father, however, a small-town wheelwright, was delighted that three of his sons had the advantages of such opportunities.
While he was working in Salzburg, Michael became good friends with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was 19 years his junior, as did Franz Joseph. In the spirit of that friendship, Mozart stepped in when Michael was ill and could not complete the series of duos for which he had a commission. Michael had completed four of the duos, but Mozart wrote the last two, allowing Michael to meet the deadline and to collect the fee. Musicologists have found influences of Michael’s writing in several of Mozart’s pieces, not the least of which being his Requiem, which Mozart left unfinished at the time of his death. Michael’s musical influence appears not only in the portions Mozart is known to have written but also in the portions written by others to complete the Requiem. Michael did not have such a congenial relationship with Mozart’s father, Leopold Mozart. Leopold actively campaigned against Michael several times, hoping to secure positions for his son rather than see them go to Michael.
Michael’s incidental music to the play Zaïre, which you will hear this evening, is a testament to the fact that although Michael did not achieve his older brother’s reputation, he did, nevertheless, develop an international reputation of his own. Zaïre is a play written by the famous and astonishingly prolific French author, Voltaire.
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Born 31 March 1732; Rohrau, Austria
Died 31 May 1809; Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 100 in G major, Hob. I:100, “Military”
Composed: 1793 – 1794
First performance: 31 March 1794; Franz Joseph Haydn, conductor; Hanover Square Rooms, London
Last MSO performance: 26 March 2011; Christopher Seaman, conductor
Three of the composers on tonight’s program knew each other well, appreciated each other’s music, and are known to have played chamber music together. Franz Joseph Haydn was taken from his parents’ home at age six by a relative who could provide him both housing and music lessons. He never lived in their home again. In his later years, he was among the most famous, respected musicians in Europe, and he was known as “Papa Haydn” among younger musicians in the Esterházy court, his employer for 29 years. The nickname persisted, as a gesture of respect, when he moved to Vienna after he left the Esterházys. The affectionate nickname became a relatively common one, denoting the admiration his colleagues felt for him, as well as for the mentorship he provided to many younger musicians. He also provided the same educational opportunities he had been given for both his brother, Michael, who became a respected composer in his own right, and his much younger brother, Johann, who became a vocalist. Mozart arrived in Vienna in 1781, hoping to take the city by storm and reclaim some of the adulation he had received as a child prodigy. You might expect Haydn to have received Mozart rather coolly, viewing him as competition, but you would be wrong. Haydn was thrilled by Mozart’s exceptional musical abilities. The two became very good friends. While we do not have a host of letters or much other documentation of their friendship, some of their statements about each other have survived to the present day, giving us a glimpse of their friendship and the very high esteem in which they held each other.
Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 (nicknamed the “Military”) is full of sounds people of his era would’ve expected to hear on a battlefield, such as a bugle call and drumrolls, along with percussion sounds largely reserved for operas at the time. The symphony is part of the last 12 symphonies Haydn would write, cementing his status as the Father of the Symphony. He conducted performances of the pieces from the harpsichord while in London.
2024.25 SEASON
KEN-DAVID MASUR
Music Director
Polly and Bill Van Dyke
Music Director Chair
EDO DE WAART
Music Director Laureate
BYRON STRIPLING
Principal Pops Conductor
Stein Family Foundation Principal Pops
Conductor Chair
RYAN TANI
Assistant Conductor
CHERYL FRAZES HILL
Chorus Director
Margaret Hawkins Chorus Director Chair
TIMOTHY J. BENSON
Assistant Chorus Director
FIRST VIOLINS
Jinwoo Lee, Concertmaster, Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair
Ilana Setapen, First Associate Concertmaster, Thora M. Vervoren First Associate Concertmaster Chair
Jeanyi Kim, Associate Concertmaster
Alexander Ayers
Autumn Chodorowski
Yuka Kadota
Shin Lan**
Elliot Lee**
Dylana Leung
Kyung Ah Oh
Lijia Phang
Yuanhui Fiona Zheng
SECOND VIOLINS
Jennifer Startt, Principal, Andrea and Woodrow Leung Second Violin Chair
Ji-Yeon Lee, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
John Bian, Assistant Principal (3rd chair)*
Hyewon Kim, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Glenn Asch
Lisa Johnson Fuller
Clay Hancock
Paul Hauer
Gabriela Lara
Janis Sakai**
Mary Terranova
VIOLAS
Robert Levine, Principal, Richard O. and Judith A. Wagner Family Principal Viola Chair
Georgi Dimitrov, Assistant Principal (2nd chair), Friends of Janet F. Ruggeri Viola Chair
Samantha Rodriguez, Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Elizabeth Breslin
Alejandro Duque
Nathan Hackett
Erin H. Pipal
CELLOS
Susan Babini, Principal, Dorothea C. Mayer Cello Chair
Shinae Ra, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
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, Acting Principal
Nash Tomey, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Brittany Conrad
Omar Haffar**
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
