OKC PHIL program magazine 2014-15 edition 1 by Michelle Winters

2 0 1 4 -2 0 1 5 SIMONE LAMSMA, VIOLIN September 13, 2014 pg. 25

HORACIO GUTIERREZ, PIANO October 4, 2014 pg. 33

classical mystery tour A SALUTE TO sgt. Pepper October 24-25, 2014 pg. 39

PHILIPPE QUINT, VIOLIN November 15, 2014 pg. 43

“Vita è la moda” “life is fashion.”

The Italians would say which means

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WELCOME

JOHN HIGGINBOTHAM, President Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. I’d like to welcome you to the 26th season of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. I am honored to serve the Board in the role of President this year. The dedication of the musicians, staff and volunteers is exemplary and paramount to the success of this organization. Under the artistic leadership of Maestro Joel Levine and caliber of musicians that comprise the orchestra, I believe the quality and repertoire of music performed by the Philharmonic exceeds most expectations for a city our size. I’d like you to be aware of the organization’s community focus to reach students in the public classrooms to introduce the importance of music and arts to our students, as well as the Philharmonic’s Discovery concert series aimed at a younger audience but enjoyed by all ages. We appreciate the loyalty of our patrons, donors, the Associate Board and Orchestra League that continue to make the Philharmonic the great asset to our community that it is and to assure its ongoing success into the next twenty-five years. Thank you for being here with us tonight and at future concerts. I believe you will be touched and awed by the evening you spend with the Philharmonic. Sit back and prepare yourself for a musical journey you won’t soon forget.

Deanna Pendleton, President Oklahoma City Orchestra League, Inc. On behalf of the Oklahoma City Orchestra League, it is a pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the Oklahoma City Philharmonic’s 26th Concert Season! Let the music begin! The Orchestra League, founded in 1948, strives continually to fulfill our mission which in part is to “conduct education activities and provide financial support for the Oklahoma City Philharmonic.” The variety of music education programs we provide touch the lives of thousands of Oklahoma children and adults and have been recognized with state and national awards. The Orchestra League’s fundraising efforts have enabled us to continue our financial donation to the Philharmonic! Each Orchestra League member’s contributions, financial and with volunteer hours, enhance the many facets of the League and is vital to strengthening our presence and recognition in the community. We welcome you to join this dynamic organization!

Cheryl Brashear, President Associate Board Welcome to the 26th season of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. It’s an honor to serve as the President of the Philharmonic’s Associate Board for the upcoming season. My strong appreciation for orchestral music drew me to the group four years ago and I’ve been enchanted, ever since. I’m excited for the chance to build upon everything the Philharmonic community has to offer and hope to share wonderful music with audiences from across the city. The Philharmonic is a great way to expand your horizons while enjoying phenomenal music and events in support of the arts. We have a stimulating schedule for our patrons and our Overture members. I hope to increase the diversity of our newest members and expose more of our community to what the Philharmonic has to offer. Join us for an experience you won’t forget!

MUSIC DIRECTOR -

JOEL LEVINE Beginning his twenty-sixth season leading the Philharmonic, Joel Levine is the longest serving music director in our City’s history. Including his tenure with the Oklahoma Symphony, Maestro Levine is enjoying his thirty-fifth year on the podium at Civic Center Music Hall. Under his leadership, the orchestra has appeared on international, national and local television broadcasts and released several recordings. Maestro Levine’s reputation for exceptional musical collaboration has enabled the Philharmonic to present one of the country’s most distinguished series of world-renowned guest artists. He has collaborated with many of the greatest performing artists of our time and has been called a “remarkable musician and visionary” by Yo-Yo Ma. For three decades, Maestro Levine has conducted many of the city’s historic programs including “Porgy and Bess” with the legendary Cab Calloway, the Paris Opera Ballet starring Rudolf Nureyev, “Rodeo” for Ballet Oklahoma under the direction of Agnes DeMille, the Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary production of “La Boheme,” the State of Oklahoma’s official Centennial Celebration, and the National Memorial Service following the Oklahoma City bombing. He has also conducted Young People’s programs around the State for thousands of children, twenty-four OKC productions of “The Nutcracker” since 1980, and led programs featuring Oklahoma’s celebrated native stars including Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, Jimmy Webb, Patti Page, Blake Shelton, Toby Keith, Kristin Chenoweth, Kelli O’Hara, Megan Mullally, Sandi Patty, and Leona Mitchell. He has received international recognition for performances reflecting many different styles in the classical repertoire. His program of Schubert and Schumann symphonies with Germany’s Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra led the reviewer to write: “Joel Levine proved that he is an absolute master of his profession; the audience honored this impressive performance with much applause.” Engagements in the great European capitols include concerts with the Czech National Symphony in Prague’s Dvorák Hall, and the Symphony Orchestra of Portugal in Lisbon. Other international invitations have included orchestras in Spain, Israel, Belgrade, Bucharest, and an appearance with the Mexico City Philharmonic. Maestro Levine has conducted many of America’s major ensembles including three seasons with The National Symphony

Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the orchestras of St. Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Seattle, Denver, Nashville and New Orleans. The national press has praised his performances: “the orchestra played with clarity and energy” (Los Angeles Times), “fine musicianship” (Washington Post), “Levine brings the needed sheen and rhythmic verve to the music” (Minneapolis Star), “Levine drew a crisp, bold and tonally lustrous account of the varied score from the orchestra and full-throated chorus” (Houston Post). His Detroit Symphony performances received “four stars” - the highest rating from the Detroit News. Known for his work with major artists in the world of classical dance, he has conducted for three of the greatest male dancers: Rudolf Nureyev, Edward Villella, and Peter Martins. For the Kansas City Ballet, he collaborated with famed choreographer, Alvin Ailey and conducted the first contemporary performance of a “lost” Balanchine ballet, “Divertimento.” Maestro Levine’s résumé includes collaborations with many of the immortal names of jazz, musical theater, film and television. Several of his recordings with Mexico’s Xalapa Symphony Orchestra are in international release and have been broadcast on the BBC. Maestro Levine has taken an active role in the cultural life of Oklahoma City since he arrived in 1976 as music director for Lyric Theatre. He worked actively for the passage of MAPS 1 and played a key role in the renovation of our hall. For his work as a founder of the Orchestra, he received The Governor’s Arts Award (1989), was named Oklahoma Musician Of The Year (1991), is a 2008 “Treasures of Tomorrow” honoree of the Oklahoma Health Center Foundation, received the 2014 Stanley Draper Award for his contributions to downtown Oklahoma City, and has received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Oklahoma City University.

“Joel Levine proved that he is an absolute master of his profession...” — Havelstadt Brandenburg

OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC.

P R O V I D I N G

I N S P I R A T I O N

A N D

J O Y

T H R O U G H

O R C H E S T R A L

M U S I C .

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers

Lifetime Directors

John Higginbotham President

Patrick Alexander Jane B. Harlow

Renate Wiggin President Elect

Directors

Teresa Cooper Vice President Mike Dickinson Treasurer Gary Allison Secretary Doug Stussi Acting Past President

Zonia Armstrong Edward Barth Cheryl Brashear Cathy Busey Elliot Chambers Louise Churchill Robert Clements Joseph Fleckinger Debbie Fleming Ryan Free Kirk Hammons Brent Hart

Patricia Horn Dr. Sonja Hughes Julia Hunt Michael E. Joseph Brad Krieger Jean McLaughlin Deanna Pendleton Becky Ross Roten John Shelton Sam Sims, APR Jeff Starling Glenna Tanenbaum Donita Thomas

Honorary Directors Josephine Freede Mary Nichols Richard L. Sias

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF Michelle Ganson Education Coordinator

Janie Keith Subscriber Service Specialist

Judy Smedley Administrative Assistant

Pam Glyckherr Development Director

Kris Markes General Manager

Chris Stinchcomb Concert Operations and P.R. Coordinator

Daniel Hardt Finance Director

Jennifer Owens Annual Fund Manager

Eddie Walker Executive Director

Stephen Howard Customer Service

Elizabeth Shultz Database/Records Coordinator

Michelle Winters Marketing & P.R. Director

Reynolds Ford Ryan Audio Services, LLC. The Skirvin Hotel

Stubble Creative Inc. Tuxedo Junction

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Classical KUCO 90.1 Garman Productions Heritage Press

THE OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC. 428 W. California Ave., Ste 210 • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73102 Tickets: 405-842-5387 • Administration: 405-232-7575 • Fax: 405-232-4353 • www.okcphilharmonic.org

OKLAHOMA CITY ORCHESTRA LEAGUE, INC. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Deanna Pendleton Celia Solomon President Competitions VP Julia Hunt Dr. Ellen Jayne Wheeler/ President-Elect Linda Rowland-Woody, Ph.D. Martha Pendleton Education VP

Debbie Minter Past President & Chairman Nominating Committee Mike Belanger Legal Advisor (Ex-Officio)

Secretary

Renee O’Donnell/Wanda Reynolds Judy Moore Membership VP

Minna Hall Parliamentarian (Ex-Officio)

Treasurer

Joan Bryant Carol Bowman Public Relations VP

Michelle Ganson Education Coordinator (Advisory)

Asst. Treasurer

Yvette Fleckinger Lucy Cheatwood Ways & Means VP

Eddie Walker Executive Director Oklahoma City Philharmonic (Advisory)

Administrative VP

Sarah Sagran Budget & Finance VP (Ex-Officio)

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Jay Bass Margaret Biggs Larry Buss Janice Carmack Judy Denwalt Rachael Geiger Susan Gertson Jean Hartsuck Casey Hasenbeck

Dorothy Hays Cheryl Hudak Sue Jones Cinda Lafferty Carol McCoy, Ph.D. June McCoy Anna McMillin Ann Mogridge Phyllis Morrow JonEvah Murray

Barbara Pirrong Kathlyn Reynolds Jeannie Sanford Kenna Singletary Pam Shoulders Dwayne Webb Cheryl Weintraub Mary Ann Williams Polly Worthington

Mona Preuss Iva Fleck Priscilla Braun Susan Robinson Minna Hall Yvette Fleckinger June Parry Jean Hartsuck Grace Ryan Judy Austin LaDonna Meinders Dixie Jensen

Lois Salmeron Glenna Tanenbaum Debbie McKinney Anna McMillin Sue Francis Peggy Lunde Cathy Wallace Sharon Shelton Rhonda White Cindy Raby Debbie Minter

PAST PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL Mary Ruth Ferguson Katherine Kirk Janelle Everest Lael Treat Josephine Freede Jane Harlow Jane Rodgers Joyce Bishop Ann Taylor Lil Ross Berta Faye Rex Sandra Meyers

ORCHESTRA LEAGUE OFFICE 3815 N. Santa Fe Ave. • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73118 • Phone: 405-601-4245 • Fax: 405-601-4278 Hours: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. • E-mail: orchleag@coxinet.net • Website: www.okcorchestraleague.org

THE ORCHESTRA

JOEL LEVINE, Music Director and Conductor EDDIE WALKER, Executive Director

First Violin

Gregory Lee, Concertmaster Gertrude Kennedy Chair Marat Gabdullin, Associate Concertmaster Densi Rushing, Assistant Concertmaster Sam Formicola Hong Zhu Beth Sievers James Thomson TBA Deborah McDonald Janet Gorton Sophia Ro Tristan Selke Ai-Wei Chang Lu Deng

Second Violin

Katrin Stamatis, Principal McCasland Foundation Chair Catherine Reaves Michael Reaves Principal Emeritus Brenda Wagner James Brakebill Mary Joan Johnston Sarah Brown Laura Young Angelica Pereira TBA Lois Fees June McCoy

Viola

Royce McLarry, Principal Mark Neumann Joseph Guevara Joseph Young Kelli Ingels Steve Waddell Donna Cain Brian Frew Shaohong Yuan Jennifer Scott

Cello

Jonathan Ruck, Principal Orchestra League Chair Tomasz Zieba, Associate Principal Meredith Blecha Valorie Tatge Emily Stoops Jim Shelley Angelika Machnik-Jones Jean Statham Dorothy Hays Rob Bradshaw

BASS

George Speed, Principal Anthony Stoops, Co-Principal Larry Moore Parvin Smith Mark Osborn Jesus Villarreal Christine Craddock Kara Koehn

FLUTE

Valerie Watts, Principal Parthena Owens Nancy Stizza-Ortega

PICCOLO

Nancy Stizza-Ortega

OBOE

Lisa Harvey-Reed, Principal Dan Schwartz Katherine McLemore

ENGLISH HORN Dan Schwartz

CLARINET

BASSOON

Rod Ackmann, Principal James Brewer Barre Griffith Larry Reed

CONTRABASSOON Barre Griffith

HORN

Eldon Matlick, Principal G. Rainey Williams Chair Nancy Halliday Kate Pritchett Frank Goforth

TRUMPET

Karl Sievers, Principal Jay Wilkinson Michael Anderson

TROMBONE

John Allen, Principal Philip Martinson TBA

TUBA

Ted Cox, Principal

PERCUSSION

Dave Steffens, Principal Stuart Langsam Roger Owens

TIMPANI

Lance Drege, Principal

HARP

Gaye LeBlanc, Principal

Bradford Behn, Principal Tara Heitz James Meiller

PIANO

BASS/E-FLAT CLARINET

PERSONNEL MANAGER/LIBRARIAN

James Meiller

Peggy Payne, Principal Michael Helt

PRODUCTION MANAGER Leroy Newman

PLANNED GIVING

NCORE SOCIETY

O F

T H E

O K L A H O M A

P H I L H A R M O N I C

S O C I E T Y ,

I N C .

The Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. is honored to recognize its Encore Society members â&#x20AC;&#x201D; visionary thinkers who have provided for the future of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic through their estate plans.

Anonymous (3)

John and Caroline Linehan

Steven C. Agee, Ph.D.

Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. Alexander

Mrs. Jackie Marron

Gary and Jan Allison

Mr. and Mrs. John McCaleb

Dr. Jay Jacquelyn Bass

R.M. (Mickey) McVay

Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements

Robert B. and Jane H. Milsten

Thomas and Rita Dearmon

W. Cheryl Moore

Dr. and Mrs. James D. Dixson

Carl Andrew Rath

Paul and Donna Fleming

Berta Faye Rex

Hugh Gibson

Mr. and Mrs. William J. Ross

Pam and Gary Glyckherr

Drs. Lois and John Salmeron

Carey and Gayle Goad

Mr. and Mrs. William F. Shdeed

Mr. and Mrs. J.A. Gowman

Richard L. Sias

Carol M. Hall

Doug and Susie Stussi

Ms. Olivia Hanson

Larry and Leah Westmoreland

Jane B. Harlow

Mr. John S. Williams

Dr. and Mrs. James Hartsuck

Mrs. Martha V. Williams

Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. Joseph

Mr. and Mrs. Don T. Zachritz

THANK YOU The Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. is grateful for the support of caring patrons who want to pass on a legacy of extraordinary music to future generations. You can join this special group of music enthusiasts by including a gift for the OKC Philharmonicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future in your own will or estate plan. For more information on how to become an Encore Society member, contact the Development Office at (405) 231-0146 or pam@okcphilharmonic.org.

6471 Avondale Drive Nichols Hills PlazaÂ 405.842.1478 rmeyersokc.com

GIFTS TO THE PHILHARMONIC The Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra gratefully acknowledges the commitment and generosity of individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies that support our mission. To help us provide inspiration and joy to the community through performances and education programs, please contact the Philharmonic’s Development Office at (405) 232-7575. This Annual Fund recognition reflects the two seasons of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. Contributions of $100 and above are listed through August 10, 2014. If your name has been misspelled or omitted, please accept our apologies and inform us of the error by calling the phone number listed above. Thank you for your generous support!

CORPORATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & GOVERNMENT Express their generous commitment to the community.

UNDERWRITER $40,000 & Above

GOLD SPONSORS $5,000 - $9,999

GOLD PARTNERS $1,250 - $1,749

Allied Arts Foundation Anschutz Family Foundation/OPUBCO Communications Group The Chickasaw Nation Devon Energy Corporation Inasmuch Foundation Oklahoma Arts Council Oklahoma City Orchestra League, Inc. The Oklahoman The Skirvin Hilton Hotel

Cole & Reed, PC The Crawley Family Foundation Express Employment Professionals Mekusukey Oil Company, LLC SandRidge Energy

Flips Restaurant, Inc. The Fred Jones Family Foundation The Hertz Corporation Norick Investment Company Oklahoma Natural Gas RealTime Layout Solutions, LLP The Reserve Petroleum Company

PLATINUM SPONSORS $10,000 - $39,999 Access Midstream Partners Ad Astra Foundation American Fidelity Corporation BancFirst Bank of Oklahoma The Boeing Company Chesapeake Energy Corporation Express Employment Professionals International Headquarters Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Mathis Brothers Furniture Co., Inc. MidFirst Bank OGE Energy Corp. Robert Glenn Rapp Foundation Slice Magazine Tri-State Industrial Group, LLC W&W Steel, LLC Wilshire Charitable Foundation

SILVER SPONSORS $3,000 - $4,999 Clements Foods Foundation Garman Productions Gordon P. and Ann G. Getty Foundation Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company Magic Services, Inc. Oklahoma Gazette Rotary Club of Oklahoma City US Fleet Tracking

BRONZE SPONSORS $1,750 - $2,999 Anthony Flooring Systems Inc. Globe Life and Accident Insurance Company Oklahoma Allergy & Asthma Clinic Tapstone Energy Target Testers, Inc. The Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation Tyler Media Co./Magic 104.1FM and KOMA

SILVER PARTNERS $750 - $1,249 Armstrong International Cultural Foundation Garvin County News-Star M-D Building Products, Inc. Charles M. Zeeck, CPM

BRONZE PARTNERS $300 - $749 Business Members $100 - $299

Bright Music Chamber Ensemble Casady School Journey House Travel, Inc.

Special Thanks to: E.L. & Thelma Gaylord Foundation

MATCHING GIFT COMPANIES AND FOUNDATIONS Double the impact of an individual’s gift. American Fidelity Corporation Bank of America Matching Gifts Program

Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Inasmuch Foundation

GIFTS TO THE PHILHARMONIC MAESTRO SOCIETY

Providing leadership support.

MAESTRO SOCIETY

Guarantor $10,000 and above Mr. and Mrs. Gary E. Allison Ms. Mary Lou Avery Mr. Howard K. Berry, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Andrew J. Evans The Freede Family Aubrey K. and Katie McClendon Mr. and Mrs. David L. McLaughlin Mrs. John W. Nichols Mr. and Mrs. George J. Records Mr. and Mrs. John Richels Mr. and Richard L. Sias Mr. and Mrs. Richard Tanenbaum

Benefactor $5,000 - $9,999 Steven C. Agee, Ph.D. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. Alexander Mrs. Betty D. Bellis Mr. and Mrs. Morris Blumenthal Mr. and Mrs. William A. Boettger Dr. Yung Hye Choe and Ms. Caroline McKinnis Molly and Jim Crawley Mr. and Mrs. Douglas R. Cummings Mr. and Mrs. John A. Frost Mrs. Jane B. Harlow Dr. and Mrs. John H. Holliman Mr. Albert Lang Mr. Wendell E. Miles Ms. Veronica L. Pastel and Mr. Robert B. Egelston Mr. H.E. Rainbolt Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Wiggin

INDIVIDUALS Providing essential support for the Annual Fund. Patron $3,000 - $4,999 Priscilla and Jordan Braun Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Davis Mrs. Bonnie B. Hefner Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. Joseph Mrs. Donna W. Miller Mr. and Mrs. Douglas J. Stussi Mr. and Mrs. Richard Young

Sustainer $1,750 - $2,999 Dr. and Mrs. Dewayne Andrews Mr. J. Edward Barth Dr. and Mrs. Philip C. Bird Dr. and Mrs. L. Joe Bradley Mr. and Mrs. Russal Brawley Dr. and Mrs. Robert C. Brown Phil and Cathy Busey Bill and Louise Churchill Mrs. Teresa Cooper Mr. Thomas Davis Mr. James Dubois Mrs. Patty Empie Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Fleckinger Paul and Debbie Fleming Mrs. Justin C. Gardner Mr. and Mrs. George Gibson Mr. and Mrs. Carey Don Goad

Mr. G. Curtis Harris Dr. and Mrs. James M. Hartsuck Mrs. Janice Singer Jankowsky and Mr. Joseph S. Jankowsky Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Joseph Mr. and Mrs. James T. Kerr, III Dr. and Mrs. Patrick McKee Mr. J. Edward Oliver Mr. and Mrs. William G. Paul Dr. Joseph H. Phillips Mr. and Mrs. Jerry W. Plant Mr. Joshua Powell Mr. and Mrs. Robert Prescott Mr. Steven Raybourn Mrs. Susan Robinson Mr. and Mrs. William J. Ross Mr. Donald Rowlett Mr. and Mrs. Patrick J. Ryan Drs. Lois and John Salmeron Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Sanchez Ms. Jeanne Hoffman Smith Mrs. Millicent Sukman Mr. & Mrs. Frederick K. Thompson Mr. Phillip S. Tomlinson Dr. and Mrs. Kenneth and June Tucker Mr. and Mrs. James P. Walker Ron and Janie Walker Mrs. Martha V. Williams Mr. and Mrs. Dick Workman

Associate $1,250 - $1,749 Mrs. Mary Louise Adams Mr. Kenneth Ainsworth Mrs. Ann Simmons Alspaugh Mr. Barry Anderson Mr. Jerald Baldwin Dr. and Mrs. William L. Beasley Mr. and Mrs. William Beck Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Benham Ms. Pamela Bloustine Mr. and Mrs. Del Boyles Mr. and Mrs. William R Buckles Mr. Randy Buttram Dr. Jay Cannon Dr. and Mrs. J. Christopher Carey Dr. John M. Carey Dr. and Mrs. Charles W. Cathey Mr. Elliot Chambers Mrs. Anita Clark-Ashley and Mr. Charles Ashley Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements Mr. Rodney Coate and Mr. Juan Camarena Mr. and Mrs. Jack H. Coleman Mrs. Emogene Collins Dr. Thomas Coniglione Mr. Jim Daniel Mr. and Mrs. Mike Darrah Mr. & Mrs. William E. Davis CONTINUED ON PAGE 53

OPENING NIGHT Friends & Lovers

Overture Season Kicks Off

September 13, 2014 8:00 P.M.

CLASSICS

“Well, this is certainly working for us,” commented a renewing, (and upgrading), Overture member. Simone Lamsma, violin JOEL LEVINE, CONDUCTOR

This year, the Overture membership group for young professionals expands to offer a 5-concert upgrade package for the season, in addition to the regular 3-concert membership. “We had so many requests from Overture members who wanted to expand their connection with the Phil to include the full orchestra concerts,” says Brent Hart, Immediate past-President of the Associate Board. “So, this year’s 5-pack includes 3 Pops concerts and 2 Classics… all those concerts and post-concert parties… for just $180. We think it’s a steal.” Adding Classics to the membership is optional with the original $110 membership still available.

Berlioz ....................... Overture to Benvenuto Cellini

Choose any 3 from the offered concerts and make your own Overture concert schedule. The offer is flexible and the same great benefits apply.

Enesco ....................... Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major, Op. 11

Overture members sit together at the performances so it’s easy to get to know other members. The parties are great fun and members mingle with the Philharmonic musicians and often, the guest performers. Invitations to Happy Hours and the chance to support the arts with volunteer opportunities add to the Overture membership. The Overture season opens with the Classical Mystery Tour concert on Saturday, October 25 and continues throughout the year. Membership is limited to 175 people and details are online at www.okcphilharmonic.org/ overture or call 405-TICKETS (842-5387) and ask for Stephen at the Philharmonic Ticket Office (weekdays: 9AM – 5PM). “Just ask any Associate Board member for details on the Overture packages,” says Cheryl Brashear, AB president for 2014-2015. “We’re so excited to have the chance to host these events and bring new people to the Philharmonic. Overture is simply great fun for everyone!”

Strauss, R ................. Don Juan, Op. 20

INTERMISSION

Lalo ............................ Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 21

Allegro non troppo Scherzando: Allegro molto Intermezzo: Allegretto non troppo Andante Rondo: Allegro

Simone Lamsma, violin

Emerging Artist Series THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, October 8 at 8:00 pm on “Performance Oklahoma.”

GUEST ARTIST C

SIMONE LAMSMA Hailed by critics and audiences around the world for her distinct voice, maturity, technical brilliance and heartfelt musicianship, Simone Lamsma has established herself as one of classical music’s most thrilling stars. Conductor Jaap van Zweden with whom Simone enjoys a regular collaboration, describes her as one of the leading violinists in the world. Simone’s 2014/15 season highlights include debuts with the Oregon Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de RTVE and Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI alongside returns to Cincinnati Symphony, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic and Residentie Orkest. The 2013/14 season marked Simone’s highly anticipated debut with the Chicago Symphony, which was described by the Chicago Tribune as “absolutely stunning”, and saw her making acclaimed debuts with the San Francisco Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Finnish Radio Symphony as well as a “brilliant” last-minute stand-in with the Cleveland Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski, described by the critics as “polished, expressive and intense”. Other highlights included a successful tour of China with the Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden. Simone performs with leading orchestras around the world. In recent seasons she has played with Europe’s London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Lucerne Symphony, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Symphony orchestras, Orchestre National de France and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; Asia’s Hong Kong Philharmonic and Seoul Philharmonic; and with the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Utah Symphony and St Paul Chamber Orchestra in the US and South America’s Sao Paulo Symphony, working with many eminent conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Neville Marriner, Jaap van Zweden, Jiří Bělohlávek, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, James Gaffigan, Sir Andrew Davis, Andrès Orozco-Estrada, Marek Janowski, Kirill Karabits and Yan Pascal Tortelier. As one of the most successful Dutch soloists, Simone enjoys frequent collaborations with all major orchestras in the Netherlands, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra,

Rotterdam Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Simone was awarded the national Dutch VSCD Classical Music Prize in the category ‘New Generation Musicians’ in 2010, awarded by the Association of Dutch Theatres and Concert Halls to artists that have made remarkable and valuable contributions to the Dutch classical music scene. In 2011 Simone was invited to perform during the Queen’s Day Concert, in the presence of HRH Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands — a concert that was broadcast nationally on Dutch television. Also an active recitalist and chamber musician, she has performed in recital throughout Italy, UK, US, The Netherlands and during the Dvořák Prague Festival and the Sala Cecilia Series in Rio de Janeiro with Robert Kulek and Valentina Lisitsa as recital partners. Memorable chamber music projects were, among others, the Verbier Festival at Schloss Elmau, where she performed with musicians as Martin Fröst, Lawrence Power, Denis Kozhukin and Jakob Koranyi, and the IJ-salon in Amsterdam with Emmanuel Ax and members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In January 2015 Simone will be performing during the Winter Chamber Music Festival in Chicago, together with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Simone began studying the violin at the age of 5 and moved to the UK aged 11 to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School with Professor Hu Kun. She continued her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Professor Hu Kun and Professor Maurice Hasson, where she graduated with first class honours and several prestigious awards. In 2011, she was made an Associate of the RAM, an honour given to those students who have made significant and distinguished contributions to their field. Simone’s debut recital recording, featuring works by Elgar (Naxos) was released to great critical acclaim. Her second release, featuring violin concertos by Louis Spohr with Sinfonia Finlandia, was hailed by the Spohr Society as, “one of the finest Spohr recordings ever made and the reason for this is the fact that Simone Lamsma’s violin playing is simply gorgeous.” Simone plays the “Mlynarski” Stradivarius (1718), on generous loan to her by an anonymous benefactor. For more information please visit: www.simonelamsma.com Follow Simone on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/simonelamsma

Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, Op. 23 Hector Berlioz First performance: 10/21/1952 Conductor: Guy Fraser Harrison Last Performance: 11/11/1995 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: December 11, 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France Died: March 8, 1869, in Paris Work composed: Berlioz wrote his opera Benvenuto Cellini in Paris between 1836 and the spring of 1837 Work premiered: At the opera’s first performance, on September 10, 1838, at the Paris Opéra, with François-Antoine Habeneck conducting Instrumentation: Two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (second doubling bass clarinet), four bassoons (or, in straitened circumstances, two), four horns, four trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba (taking the place of Berlioz’ original ophicleide, a keyed brass instrument popular in early-to-mid-19th-century France), timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and strings

PROGRAM NOTES I

award in 1830 in his fourth consecutive attempt, with his cantata La mort de Sardanapale, of which only a fragment survives. To qualify as truly successful, French composers of Berlioz’ day needed to meet a second requirement apart from winning the Prix de Rome: a hit in the opera house. Berlioz never quite managed to achieve that, although he completed three operas. Benvenuto Cellini was the first (a two-act “opéra semi-seria,” he called it) was followed by the immense Les Troyens (1856-58, after Virgil’s Aeneid) and Béatrice et Bénédict (1860-62, after Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing). For the plot of Benvenuto Cellini, Berlioz and his librettists (Léon de Wally and Auguste Barbier, assisted by the poet Alfred de Vigny) went directly to the source: the autobiography, titled Vita (Life), of the 16th-century Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and musician. Cellini’s libertine, sometimes violent, exploits led him through a peripatetic existence that took from his native Florence to Rome, Mantua, and Paris before he died back in Florence, where he dictated his memoirs to an apprentice in his workshop. Cellini was very much the iconoclastic, egotistical artist, and Berlioz viewed him as a kindred Romantic soul, swept up in a rarefied world of art and ardor, a genius forever trying the limits of politics and social propriety. What’s more, they both played the flute. Disappointment lay in Berlioz’ path when Benvenuto Cellini was finally produced. It received only four performances at its initial run in 1838 (conducted by François-Antoine Habeneck), though it did get a second life some years later after Berlioz effected severe revisions. In its revised form it was unveiled in Weimar’s Grossherzogliches Hoftheater on March 20, 1852, and then, with further alterations that

Berlioz in Italy That Hector Berlioz was a genius there can be no doubt, but genius does not always ensure a calm passage through life. Berlioz’ biography makes extraordinary reading, especially when liberally peppered with accounts lifted from his beautifully written and often hilarious Mémoires (which have been vividly captured in English translation by David Cairns). His father was a physician in a town not far from Grenoble, within view of the Alps; and since the father assumed that his son would follow in the same profession, the son’s musical inclinations were largely ignored. As a result, Berlioz never learned to play more than a few chords on the piano, and his practical abilities as a performer were limited to moderate skill on flute and guitar. He was sent to Paris to attend medical school, hated the experience, and took advantage of being in the big city by enrolling himself in private musical studies and, beginning in 1826, the composition curriculum at the Paris Conservatoire. The seal of approval for all Conservatoire composition students was the Prix de Rome, and Berlioz finally won that

Apart from providing a measure of recognition for his skills and a welcome source of income, the award of the Prix de Rome included a residency in Italy, a nation whose ancient cultural lineage was considered at that time to wield an indispensable influence over the formation of the creative intellect. The 15 months Berlioz spent in Italy did not entirely delight the composer, and the grantors were disappointed that he produced rather little serious work while he was actually there. Nonetheless, both the remnants of antiquity and the vivacity of modern Italian life left an indelible imprint on his taste, and depictions of Italian history, art, and landscape would surface often in his music during ensuing decades, as witness such famous works as the symphony Harold in Italy, the “dramatic symphony” Romeo and Juliet, and all three of his operas, including in a most unmistakable way Benvenuto Cellini. —JMK

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turned it into a three-act opera, on November 17, 1852, both times with Franz Liszt at the helm. Of the rehearsal period in the summer of 1838, Berlioz recalled in his Mémoires: “I shall never forget the horror of those three months. The indifference, the distaste manifested by most of the singers (who were already convinced that it would be a fiasco); Habeneck’s ill-humour, and the vague rumours that went round the theatre; the crass objections raised by that whole crowd of illiterates to certain turns of phrase in a libretto so different in style from the empty, mechanical rhyming prose of the Scribe school—all this was eloquent of an atmosphere of general hostility against which I was powerless, but which I had to pretend not to notice.” In fact, the premiere of Benvenuto Cellini was not an out-and-out debacle, though Berlioz would colorfully depict it as one. The work enjoyed something approaching, if not entirely achieving, a succès d’estime. At least the Overture fared very well indeed. Berlioz reported that “it was greeted with exaggerated applause, but the rest was hissed with admirable energy and unanimity.”

Don Juan, Op. 20 Richard Strauss First performance: 11/29/1949 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 1/12/2008 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: June 11, 1864, in Munich, Bavaria Died: September 8, 1949, in Garmisch, Germany Work composed: May through September 30, 1888 Work premiered: November 11, 1889, in Weimar, with the composer conducting the Grand Ducal Court Orchestra Instrumentation: Three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, eight timpani, triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel, harp, and strings

The idea of the symphonic poem may trace its ancestry to descriptive overtures of the early 19th century (such as several by Berlioz), but it was left for Franz Liszt to mold it into a clearly defined genre. This he did through a dozen singlemovement orchestral pieces composed in the 1840s and ’50s that drew inspiration from, or were in some way linked to, literary sources. As time went by, composers might similarly derive depictive influence for their symphonic poems (or “tone poems”) from paintings or other visual artworks, but in every case the music grew from some non-musical germ. The concept proved popular and the repertoire quickly expanded thanks to impressive contributions by such composers as Smetana, Dvořák, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Franck, and—most impressively of all—Richard Strauss, who, being blessed with long life, carried the precepts of Romanticism through to the middle of the 20th century, stubbornly and gloriously. Many lesser figures drawn to the Music of the Future camp (the esthetic circle of Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner) also jumped on the symphonic poem bandwagon. One of them was Alexan-

der Ritter, an Estonian-born violinist and composer who fell in with the forward-looking crowd and eventually acceded to the position of associate concertmaster of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. There he grew friendly with the young Richard Strauss, who had been brought in as an assistant music director in 1885. Strauss would later say that it was Ritter who revealed to him the greatness of the music of Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz and, by extension, opened his eyes to the possibilities of the symphonic poem. In 1886 Strauss produced what might be considered his first symphonic poem, Aus Italien (it is more precisely a sort of descriptive symphony), and he continued with hardly a break through the series of tone poems that many feel represent the genre at its height: Macbeth (1886-8), Don Juan (1888), Tod und Verklärung (“Death and Transfiguration,” 1888-89), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (“Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” 1894-95), Also sprach Zarathustra (“Thus Spake Zarathustra,” 1895-96), Don Quixote (1896-97), Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s Life,” 1897-98), and Symphonia Domestica (1902-03), with Eine Alpensinfonie (“An Alpine Symphony,” 1911-15) arriving as a late pendant to his catalogue of symphonic poems. He was drawn to the idea (as he would recall in his memoirs) that “new ideas must search for new forms; this basic principle of Liszt’s symphonic works, in which the poetic idea was really the formative element, became henceforward the guiding principle for my own symphonic work.”

Don Juan, which falls near the beginning of this procession, is the first of Strauss’ compositions to reveal his distinct personality as a composer. The extramusical impetus for this work was Don Juan, the famous womanizer of legend, whose libertine exploits were apparently born in popular literature of the 16th century and then embroidered through generations of poets, playwrights, and novelists. Strauss based his symphonic poem on a version of the tale that the Austro-Hungarian poet Nikolaus Lenau had produced in 1844. Lenau’s Don Juan is a Romantic dreamer, and his compulsion to seduce and desert an endless succession of women derives not from

PROGRAM NOTES mere male piggery but rather from a deeply Romantic quest for the ever-elusive ideal—in this case, “to enjoy in one woman all women, since he cannot possess them as individuals.”

Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1, Op. 11, No. 1 George Enescu

Strauss traces a series of Don Juan’s exploits in his symphonic poem, with several episodes of love music conveying the disparate characters of the women he conquers. (In a 1904 rehearsal with the Boston Symphony, Strauss stopped the orchestra at one point with the admonishment, “Gentlemen, I must confess that I did not intend this passage to be so beautiful; that woman was just a common tramp!”) Don Juan meets his inevitable doom in the end. A violent crash in the orchestra represents the thrust of a sword being run him through by a father avenging the death of one of the Don’s victims, and his life slips away via a discordant note on the trumpet. Thus the piece achieves its final tableau.

First performance: 1/18/1943 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 3/5/2005 Conductor: Joel Levine

Not a Fan Eduard Hanslick, the generally conservative, highhanded, and greatly feared music critic of the Neue freie Presse of Vienna, encountered Strauss’ Don Juan in 1892 and launched a stealth attack:

Born: August 7(old style)/19 (new style), 1881, in Liveni Vîrnav, near Dorohai, in the Moldavian region of eastern Rumania; like Russia, Rumania used the “old” Julian calendar prior to World War I, when it switched to “new” Gregorian dates. Died: During the night of March 3-4, 1955 in Paris Name: Enescu is the Rumanian form of his name; he is also widely known by the French form, Georges Enesco Work composed: 1901, completed on August 14 (old style) Work dedicated: to Bernard Crocé-Spinelli, a fellow student of the composer’s at the Paris Conservatoire Work premiered: February 23/March 8, 1903 in Bucharest, Rumania, with the composer conducting the Orchestra Filarmonica Instrumentation: Three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, two harps, and strings

The tendency is ... to use purely instrumental music merely as a means of describing certain things; in short, not to make music, but to write poetry and to paint. Virtuosity in orchestration has become a vampire sapping the creative power of our composers. These outwardly brilliant compositions are nothing if not successful. I have seen Wagner disciples talking about the Strauss Don Juan with such enthusiasm that it seemed as though shivers of delight were running up and down their spines. Others have found the thing repulsive, and this sensation seems to me more likely to be the right one. This is no “tone painting” but rather a tumult of brilliant daubs, a faltering tonal orgy, half bacchanal, half witches’ Sabbath. He who desires no more from an orchestral piece than that it transport him to the dissolute ecstasy of a Don Juan, panting for everything feminine, may well find pleasure in this music, for with its exquisite skillfulness it achieves the desired objective in so far as it is musically attainable. The composer may thus be compared with a routined chemist who well understands how to mix all the elements of musicalsensual stimulation to produce a stupefying “pleasure gas.” For my part, I prefer, with all due homage to such chemical skill, not to be its victim; nor can I be, for such musical narcotics simply leave me cold. —JMK

George Enescu, the most famous of Rumanian composers, gained renown as both a performer and a composer. His principal instrument was the violin, which he began studying at the age of four, and he was acknowledged as one of the leading players of his generation. He was only seven when he entered the Vienna Conservatory. He earned his diploma in 1893 and soon was off to Paris, where the Conservatoire put this up-and-comer through its curriculum in the composition studios of both Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré and the legendary counterpoint and fugue courses of André Gédalge. By the time he graduated from the Conservatoire, in 1899 with a Premier Prix in violin, his résumé included an all-Enescu chamber concert in Paris, the premiere of his Poème roumain (Op. 1) in the same city (conducted by the esteemed Édouard Colonne), and his presiding at the podium when that piece was CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

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unveiled in Bucharest two months later, earning him enthusiastic coverage by the Rumanian press. In France his circle of musical friends included Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, and Charles Koechlin. During the early phase of his career Enescu displayed a chameleon-like ability to compose in the various musical approaches prominent at the turn of the 20th century: incorporating folkloric elements into classical works, building on the Germanic tradition of Schumann and Brahms, exploring transparent textures à la Saint-Saëns and Fauré, developing a sort of neo-Classicism some years before Stravinsky and Prokofiev looked in that direction. He flourished as a performer in France and elsewhere in Western Europe—as a violinist, a pianist, a chamber musician, and a conductor. In 1923 he began to make regular concert tours in the United States as well, appearing both as a violinist and as a conductor. It was while on tour in San Francisco in 1925 that he met the youngster who would become his most acclaimed pupil, Yehudi Menuhin. Among the other distinguished musicians to whom he offered important encouragement were the Rumanian pianists Clara Haskil and Dinu Lipatti, and he even stood as godfather for the latter (whose father was an accomplished amateur violinist). Today his most frequently encountered symphonic works are his two Rumanian Rhapsodies, respectively in A major and D major, which were composed in 1901 and published together as his Opus 11. Even during his lifetime they proved so popular that he grew to resent them, complaining that that their prominence cast his other worthy achievements unjustly into

A Foot in Two Nations France and Rumania would exert roughly equal pull on George Enescu through most of his career. In Rumania he was honored by the patronage of the royal family and achieved such eminence as a young man that in 1912 he established the Enescu Prize to encourage emerging Rumanian composers. He helped develop the modest Orchestra of the Ministry of Education into the full-fledged “Orchestra Filarmonica,” and his support helped bring about the establishment of the Rumanian National Opera Company. When the Communist Party took over the Rumanian government after World War Two, Enescu’s relations with his native country took on what his biographer Noel Malcolm termed “an atmosphere of frigid politeness.” He was awarded—and accepted—various honors from the Communist government, but he never returned to receive them in person, protesting that poor health prevented him from making the trip. In fact, he was well enough to tour extensively in Western Europe and America, but he lived his final decade, from 1946 through 1955, in self-imposed exile. —JMK

the shadows. His attitude was surely not helped by the fact that he had long since signed away the royalties for the Rhapsodies and was therefore not earning a cent from their success. They exemplify his early passion for emphasizing folk elements in his music, though that would soon prove to be a passing fancy since he grew to “interiorize” folk influences as his musical language matured. In 1924 he would observe that a pre-existent piece of folk music offered limited material for a composer on its own right; all a composer could reasonably do with it, he said, was “to rhapsodize it, with repetitions and juxtapositions.” Still, his presumed disdain for these pieces did not keep him from championing them. In fact, he conducted commercial recordings of the First in 1936, 1946, and 1952, with orchestras in three countries—respectively with the Bucharest Radio Orchestra, USSR State Symphony Orchestra, and L’Orchestre des Concerts Colonne. The First Rumanian Rhapsody, the more extroverted of the pair, incorporates several Rumanian folk tunes. The piece’s opening theme is the melody of the song “Am un leu şi vreau sǎ-l beau” (“I have some cash and I want a drink”—a leu being the basic unit of Rumanian currency), a tune he may have learned from the Roma violinist Lae Chioru, his first violin teacher. Others of its melodies were drawn from, or at least correspond to entries in, a collection assembled by Grigoraş Dinicu, another famous Rumanian violinist. The national flavor extends to fluidly constructed scales that harbor a flavor that can be both major and minor and to inflections of modal harmony, with the composer always taking care to leave the melodies themselves in the spotlight.

Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 21 (1874) Édouard Lalo First performance: 3/9/1948 VIOLIN: Robert Rudie Last Performance: 10/10/2009 VIOLIN: Corey Cerovsek Born: January 27, 1823, in Lille, France Died: April 22, 1892, in Paris Work composed: 1874 Work premiered: February 7, 1875, in Paris, with Pablo de Sarasate as soloist and Edouard Colonne conducting Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, snare drum, harp, and strings, in addition to the solo violin

After mastering both violin and cello at the Lille Conservatory, Édouard Lalo moved to Paris, where he numbered the painter Eugène Delacroix among his friends and performed in orchestras under Hector Berlioz. His earliest compositions include a pair of symphonies; he apparently destroyed both, perhaps already sensing that his inclination led toward chamber music of the sort that Mendelssohn and Schumann had lately promulgated in Germany. In 1855 he became a charter member of the Armingaud String Quartet, playing viola initially and later second violin. Created expressly to make the masterpieces of German chamber music better known

PROGRAM NOTES What’s more, it was written with a Spanish violinist in mind: the esteemed virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, for whom Lalo had composed his F-major Violin Concerto a year earlier. That earlier work displayed nothing that would be considered Spanish in flavor, nor did it exhibit much else that would ensure it a place in the repertoire. The Symphonie espagnole could not be more different, and Sarasate scored a major hit when he brought his national insight to the interpretation of the score.

in France, the ensemble proved influential in re-establishing chamber music’s prestige in Parisian circles. While relentlessly championing the music of others, Lalo was growing increasingly dispirited by the rejection of his own works. In 1859 he founded his own quartet, and at about the same time he abandoned composition entirely for a five-year period of frustration. Fortunately it proved a temporary hiatus, and in his later years he would produce most of pieces that have kept his name alive. In Lalo’s modest catalogue of only 45 opus numbers, chamber pieces outnumber large-ensemble works. He also produced a good many art songs, inspired in this direction by his second wife, an accomplished contralto. But his reputation chiefly rests on a single work: the Symphonie espagnole (“Spanish Symphony”) for Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1874. It is not Lalo’s only concerted work since it was immediately preceded by an F-major Violin Concerto (1873) and would be followed by such works as an Allegro Appassionato for Cello and Orchestra (1875), a Cello Concerto (1877), a Piano Concerto (1888-89), a so-called Russian Concerto for Violin, and a handful of short works for violin and orchestra. But of all these, the Symphonie espagnole is the only work of Lalo’s to receive regular performances a century and a quarter later, with his Cello Concerto standing as a distant runner-up. It is a well-rehearsed truism that the best Spanish music was written by French composers, and whether or not you choose to agree with that pronouncement you will likely be content to acknowledge that Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole deserves a place near the top of the Franco-Spanish list, along with such ensuing works as Bizet’s Carmen, Chabrier’s España, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole. In fact, the Symphonie espagnole has a good deal of authentic Iberia in its genes. The surname Lalo is itself Spanish, a testament to the fact that the composer descended from an ancient Spanish family, though the family had dispersed to Flanders and northern France already in the 16th century.

Although it is a concerto in the way that it gives virtuosic prominence to the violin and builds on the drama between the soloist and the orchestra, the Symphonie espagnole is not structured as one would expect a 19th-century concerto to be. Instead of the normal three, or maybe four, movements, we have five, each of which is within hailing distance of seven minutes in length except for the Scherzando, which is rather shorter. (The Intermezzo was sometimes cut in times past, but it is normally included in modern performances.) The first movement announces grandiose pretensions, but the remainder tends toward the lightweight and ingratiating, recalling the style of violin concertos by Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps. Rhythms and melodic turns that we are sure to recognize as Spanish pepper the piece once it gets past its preludial movement, and the very famous finale capably infuses the spirit of Iberia into a delightful, quick-paced Rondo.

Appreciating Lalo In 1924 the American francophile composer and Harvard professor Edward Burlingame Hill (whose pupils at Harvard would include Elliott Carter, Virgil Thomson, Randall Thompson, Ross Lee Finney, and Leonard Bernstein) published a book titled Modern French Music, based on lectures he had given a few years earlier in Strasbourg and Lyons. He was unequivocal about his appreciation for Lalo: Lalo brought to French music an ardent temperament, denied to Saint-Saëns, great rhythmical vitality, together with precision and finesse, the suppleness and clarity of expression which are among the essential French traits, an unconquerable leaning toward the exotic, and a strong vein of poetic imagination. … Lalo surely expanded the taste for exoticism which has continued as one of the most marked characteristics of later French music. The Spanish Symphony [Symphonie espagnole], the Norwegian Rhapsody, the Russian concerto and portions of [the ballet] Namouna exhibit a picturesque tendency still further emphasized in various works by Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Albert Roussel and others. Thus Lalo is the direct forerunner of a foremost feature in French music of the generation immediately preceding the present. —JMK

Gutierrez plays Chopin October 4, 2014

Oklahoma City Philharmonic Society, Inc. Associate Board

8:00 P.M.

CLASSICS Horacio Gutierrez, piano JOEL LEVINE, CONDUCTOR

Cheryl Brashear, President Lindsey Marcus, VP of Fundraising Dwayne Webb, VP of Events Jenni Fosbenner, Treasurer Christopher Lloyd, Secretary Brent Hart, Past President Matt Bell Robyn Berko Ebony Dallas Jason Dunnington

Brahms ....................... Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90

Allegro con brio Andante Poco allegretto Allegro—Un poco sostenuto

Cassie Gage Jennifer Godinez Allison Goodman Lindsay Houts

INTERMISSION

Matt Latham Kevin Learned Mike McClellan Mitch McCuistian Lisa Perry MaKaya Saulsbery

Chopin ........................ Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11

Allegro maestoso Romance: Larghetto Rondo: Vivace

Horacio Gutierrez, piano

Michael Thomas Cyndi Tran Long Vu Ashley Wilemon

THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

Howard K. Berry, Jr.

Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, October 29 at 8:00 pm on “Performance Oklahoma”.

GUEST ARTIST C

HORACIO GUTIERREZ Considered one of the great pianists of our time, Horacio Gutiérrez is consistently praised by critics and audiences alike for the poetic insight and technical mastery he brings to a diverse repertoire. Born in Havana, Cuba, his professional debut was in 1970 with Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since then, Mr. Gutiérrez has appeared regularly with the world’s greatest orchestras (including all the major London orchestras) and on its major recital series. Mr. Gutiérrez has given recitals in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Berlin’s Philharmonie, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, as well as in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Cleveland. Mr. Gutiérrez has performed with orchestras on numerous occasions at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall, including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Orchestre National de France, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Dresden Staatskappele. He was a frequent soloist at the Mostly Mozart Festival, appearing on its season-opening Live from Lincoln Center telecast. As a Chamber Musician, he has collaborated with the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Cleveland Quartets, as well as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 1982, he was the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize.

“…he turns on the fireworks with a vengeance…” — Stereo Review

Mr. Gutiérrez is an advocate of contemporary American composers. Of special importance were his performances of William Schuman’s Piano Concerto in honor of the composer’s 75th birthday at New York’s 92nd Street Y, and of André Previn’s Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic with Mr. Previn conducting. On his recital programs, he frequently included George Perle’s Phantasyplay and a set of Nine Bagatelles that Mr. Perle dedicated to him. Mr. Gutiérrez’ Telarc recordings include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerti Nos. 2 and 3 with Lorin Maazel and the Pittsburgh Symphony, nominated for a Grammy Award. Also available on that label are separate discs of the two Brahms Concerti with André Previn and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony. For the Chandos label, he has recorded Prokofiev’s Concerti nos. 2 and 3 with Neeme Järvi and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. His recording, George Perle: A Retrospective, was named one of the ten best recordings of 2006 by The New Yorker. His television performances in Great Britain, the United States and France were widely acclaimed. And, he won an Emmy Award for his fourth appearance with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A great film and theatre fan, he has performed in recital with Irene Worth and Mariette Hartley. Mr. Gutiérrez is an American citizen, and resides in NY City with his wife, pianist Patricia Asher. He will again be on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, beginning in the fall of 2014.

Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 Johannes Brahms First performance: 2/8/1948 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 2/4/2006 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany Died: April 3, 1897 in Vienna, Austria Work composed: 1882-83 Work premiered: November 9, 1883, with Brahms and Ignaz Brüll playing a two-piano reduction for a private gathering of friends in Vienna; on December 2, 1883, for the full orchestral version, with Hans Richter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings

PROGRAM NOTES I

transcendence born of opposing emotions: melancholy and joy, severity and rhapsody, solemnity and exhilaration. Brahms did much of his best work during his summer vacations, which he usually spent at some bucolic getaway or other in the Austrian countryside. The summer of 1883, during which he completed his Third Symphony, he spent in the town of Wiesbaden, a spa resort along the Rhine some twenty miles west of Frankfurt. It is perhaps not coincidental that the opening of the piece seems strongly reminiscent of the corresponding spot of the Symphony No. 3 (Rhenish) that Brahms’ mentor Robert Schumann had composed in 1850 shortly after moving to Düsseldorf, another city on the Rhine. Although Brahms was a widely respected figure by the time he wrote his Third Symphony, he was also fully accustomed

Report from Clara Clara Schumann, the widow of Robert Schumann (Brahms’ most vocal early champion), remained close to Brahms throughout her life, which ended less than a year before his did. She was often the first person to hear his new works as they emerged and was apparently annoyed that the Third Symphony reached several other pairs of ears before they reached hers. Nonetheless, her reaction, conveyed in a letter to Brahms on February 11, 1884, was little short of euphoric:

“I shall never write a symphony!,” Brahms famously declared in 1872. “You can’t have any idea what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you.” The giant was long-departed Beethoven, of course, and although his music provided essential inspiration for Brahms, it also set such a high standard that the younger composer found it easy to discount his own creations as negligible in comparison. Four more years would pass before Brahms finally signed off on his First Symphony. But once he conquered his compositional demons he moved ahead forcefully. Three symphonies followed that first effort in relatively short order: the Second in 1877, the Third in 1882-83, and the Fourth in 1884-85. Each is a masterpiece and each displays a markedly different character. The First is burly and powerful, flexing its muscles in Promethean exertion; the Second is sunny and bucolic; and the Third, the shortest of his four, though introspective and idyllic on the whole, mixes in a hefty dose of heroism. And with his Fourth Symphony, Brahms achieved a work of almost mystical

I don’t know where this letter will find you, but I can’t refrain from writing it because my heart is so full. I have spent such happy hours with your wonderful creation … that I should like at least to tell you so. What a work! What a poem! What a harmonious mood pervades the whole! All the movements seem to be of one piece, one beat of the heart, each one a jewel! From start to finish one is wrapped about with the mysterious charm of the woods and forests. I could not tell you which movement I loved most. In the first I was charmed straight away by the gleams of dawning day, as if the rays of the sun were shining through the trees. Everything springs to life, everything breathes good cheer, it is really exquisite! The second is a pure idyll; I can see the worshippers kneeling about the little forest shrine, I hear the babbling brook and the buzz of insects. There is such a fluttering and a humming all around that one feels oneself snatched up into the joyous web of Nature. The third movement is a pearl, but it is a gray one dipped in a tear of woe, and at the end the modulation is quite wonderful. How gloriously the last movement follows with its passionate upward surge! But one’s beating heart is soon calmed down again for the final transfiguration which begins with such beauty in the development motif that words fail me!

CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

PROGRAM NOTES

to critical disparagement and half-heartedness; and he could count on the fact that his music would not be to the taste of audiences who preferred the “Music of the Future” style of Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, and their partisans. Indeed, the Futurists made their displeasure known at the premiere of the Third Symphony, but on the whole Brahms was quite taken aback by the warmth with which everyone else greeted his latest composition. It was not accepted with mere respect; it scored a palpable hit. Suddenly, orchestras outside Vienna began to clamor for a piece of him, and he had to admit that he now occupied a plateau of higher prestige than he had previously glimpsed in his career. Brahms had an irascible streak, to be sure, and he occasionally expressed irritation over the fact that the Third Symphony was overshadowing others of his compositions that he felt also deserved attention. But on the whole, he accepted his triumph as generally a good thing. Early on, Brahms’ Third Symphony gained a reputation as an equivalent to Beethoven’s Third, the Sinfonia eroica—a comparison that may strike many listeners as odd. According to the powerful Viennese critic and fervid Brahmsian Eduard Hanslick, the idea was planted by Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere. “In a gracious toast,” reported Hanslick, adding an explanation that helps us try to make sense of things by way of Beethovenian comparisons, “Hans Richter recently christened the new symphony ‘Eroica.’ Actually, if one were to call Brahms’ First Symphony the ‘Appassionata’ and the second the ‘Pastoral,’ then the new symphony might well be called the ‘Eroica.’ … The Symphony No. 3 is really something new. It repeats neither the unhappy fatalism of the First, not the cheerful idyll of the Second; its foundation is self-confident, rough and ready strength. The ‘heroic’ element in it has nothing to do with anything military, nor does it lead to any tragic dénouement, such as the Funeral March of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica.’ Its musical characteristics recall the healthy soundness of Beethoven’s second period, never the eccentricities of his last. And here and there are suggestions of the romantic twilight of Schumann and Mendelssohn.”

Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 Frédéric Chopin First performance: 4/4/1950 Piano: Alexis Weissenberg Last Performance: 9/17/2005 Piano: Horacio Gutierrez Born: Probably on March 1, 1810—the register of births said February 22 but was almost certainly wrong—in Żelazowa Wola, 30 miles west of Warsaw, Poland Died: October 17, 1849, in Paris Work composed: between March and August 1830, in Warsaw Work premiered: October 11, 1830, at the National Theatre in Warsaw, with Carlo Evasio Soliwa conducting and the composer as soloist; the work had already been played in a private performance in Warsaw Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, and strings, in addition to the solo piano

There is something patently absurd about feeling the need to defend works as beautiful as Chopin’s two piano concertos. But there is no getting around the fact that they became greatly attacked in the early 20th century, and at some point most of us moderns will have encountered the pronouncement that these concertos do not deserve our admiration. The critic James Huneker’s interesting if wacky book Chopin: The Man and his Music, published in 1900 (it was cleaned up to the point of presentability by Herbert Weinstock when it was reprinted in 1966), gives the concertos scant notice, dismissing them as “not Chopin at his very best”; much of its meager treatment chronicles how pianists of Huneker’s day disguised the works’ deficiencies in performance. That received opinion was consolidated through writings of 20th-century figures who increasingly focused on structural ingenuity as the yardstick of musical integrity, strength, and durability. Those who wring their hands because Chopin’s concertos are not what they are not risk failing to appreciate them for what they are. At the very least, they are remarkable in the context of their time, exhibiting an originality and subtlety that so greatly surpass their immediate predecessors that they almost seem to spring out of nowhere. The piano concerto as a genre had not been enjoying a phase of particular distinction when Chopin penned his F-minor Piano

PROGRAM NOTES Concerto in 1829-30 and his E-minor Concerto in 1830. Of our most famous composers, Beethoven had written his final piano concerto, the Emperor, in 1809 and Schubert had failed to contribute to the genre at all. Mendelssohn began writing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1830; Liszt embarked on his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1835; and Schumann didn’t start working on his Piano Concerto until 1841. Between the last of Beethoven’s piano concertos and the first of Chopin’s the only concerted piano work to have survived in the active repertoire is Carl Maria von Weber’s ConzertStück of 1821. Weber’s two “real” piano concertos are rarely revived, and apart from those we would have to fill in the Beethoven-to-Chopin gap with concertos by the likes of John Field, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, or Frédéric Kalkbrenner. These were worthy composers all, and some of their concertos really do deserve more attention than they get today; but the fact is that their concertos have not found much of a place in posterity.

The Composer Speaks Chopin provided a comment about the second movement of his E-minor Concerto in a letter to his friend Titus Woyciechowski on May 15, 1830: “The Adagio [i.e., Larghetto] of my new concerto is in E major. It is not meant to create a powerful effect; it is rather a Romance, calm and melancholy, giving the impression of someone looking gently toward a spot which calls to mind a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening. Hence the accompaniment is muted: that is, the violins are stifled by a sort of comb which fits over the strings and gives them a nasal and silvery tone— perhaps it’s not a good idea, but why be ashamed of writing badly, against one’s better knowledge, since only the result in actual performance will reveal the mistake?” To which we would only add that the muted violins made a lovely effect and the directive remained in the score when the piece was published. —JMK

Chopin was familiar with some of the works of these predecessors, and his concertos do reflect a goodly measure of the “concerto brillant” esthetic that fueled them. Still, we often sense that pianistic brilliance is the entire raison d’être of the concertos leading to Chopin’s, whereas in Chopin virtuosity is used as a means towards an end rather than as an end in itself. By all accounts Chopin was already a spectacular pianist when he premiered this concerto at the age of 20, and his writing evinces a thoughtful, nuanced command of the instrument’s resources. In an age that had already begun to “rev up” for the supercharged pianism of Liszt and his followers,

Chopin was more drawn to exquisite delicacy in his keyboard textures. Where other composers built up virtuoso effects through thick, repetitive torrents of notes, Chopin generally preferred to enforce clarity by writing widely spaced textures reminiscent of Mozartian Classicism. His virtuoso figuration, rich in fiorature of notes bundled together in odd numbers, invites a subtle, fluid interpretation, and his most impressive technical writing gains in expression from being doled out in a discriminating fashion. Though widely identified as Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, the work played here is in fact the second of his two piano concertos in terms of chronology of composition, and in general it displays incrementally grander scope and aspiration. His F-minor Piano Concerto preceded it by a year but the E-minor was published before the F-minor, with the result that it was designated in print as “No. 1” and assigned a lower opus number. Chopin was all but exclusively a piano composer, to be sure, and we should be neither surprised nor disappointed to discover that his E-minor Piano Concerto harbors its greatest riches in the piano part itself. The orchestra’s role in the concerto is generally stolid, and this has been a further source of criticism over the years. A different composer might have deployed the orchestra differently, but there is not much to be argued in favor of the several re-orchestrations that were put forward as correctives by later editors.

James M. Keller James M. Keller is Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. His book Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide, published by Oxford University Press in 2011, is now also available as an e-book and (as of October 2014) as a paperback. These essays are based on notes that originally appeared in the programs of the New York Philharmonic (Brahms) and the San Francisco Symphony (Chopin), and are used with permission. ©James M. Keller

A Salute to Sgt. Pepper October 24 & 25, 2014 8:00 P.M.

POPS Martin Herman, conductor

Vocalists

Jim Owen (John Lennon), Tony Kishman (Paul McCartney), David John (George Harrison), Chris Camilleri (Ringo Starr)

THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

A special Thank You to Oak Tree Country Club for providing musiciansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; catering services.

PERFORMERS

Jim Owen

David John

(John Lennon)

(George Harrison)

Rhythm Guitar, Piano, Vocals

Lead Guitar, Vocals

Jim Owen was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California. He gained rich musical experience from his father, who played music from the classics for him on the piano and from his extensive library of recordings by the great classical artists. Owen began studying the piano at 6, and won honors in various piano performance competitions through his teenage years. He was 8 years old when he first heard The Beatles, and promptly decided to take up the study of the guitar. His first professional performance as a Beatle was at 16. Then, at age 18, he began touring internationally with various Beatles tribute productions, visiting Japan, Korea, China, Canada, Mexico, and much of South America. In 1996, Owen began working on his idea for a new show with orchestra. It has long been his dream to share with the public live performances of some of the greatest music ever written and recorded. Classical Mystery Tour was the result. Most recently, Jim became associate producer of the dance musical Shag With a Twist, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2005, and debuted in Las Vegas July, 2006.

Originally from Nebraska, but now living in Salt Lake City, Utah, David has been performing in various musical acts since the age of 17. From rock, blues, and country to progressive and orchestra pit, he’s covered it all. David has shared the stage as an opening act with such notables as: Beach Boys, Chicago, Peter Noone & Herman’s Hermits, Young Rascals, Glen Campbell, America, Kansas, Styx, Peter Frampton, Night Ranger, Ted Nugent, Romantics, KC and the Sunshine Band, Hall & Oats, Hootie & the Blowfish, John Waite, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Buddy Guy and the Temptations. But David’s main musical love captured his attention when The Beatles preformed in America for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show. Inspired by what he saw and heard, David focused on singing and studying guitar and feels privileged to portray the “quiet, spiritual” one. Since 1993, he has taken the stage with a variety of Beatle tribute bands and traveled the world, but especially enjoys teaming up with a full orchestra to authentically reproduce the original recordings in a live concert setting. David loves to present George’s guitar arrangements in their articulate detail.

Tony Kishman

Chris Camilleri

(Paul McCartney)

(Ringo Starr)

Bass Guitar, Piano, Vocals

Drums, Vocals

Singer-songwriter Tony Kishman was born in Tucson, Arizona where he began his musical career in the early 1970s. Although he had been playing guitar for a number of years, it was not until age 19 that Tony started performing seriously. Kishman’s early influences included Wishbone Ash, Bad Company and Peter Frampton. Between 1973 and 1978, he played guitar in the group Cheap Trix, a cover band performing Top 40 as well as originals. Starting in 1979, Kishman played bass and guitar for six years as Paul McCartney in both the national and international tours of Beatlemania. He then went on to perform in Legends in Concert and produced shows that ran in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. He joined the classic supergroup Wishbone Ash for a tour of Europe and the recording of the group’s 18th album.

Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Chris Camilleri had a convenient drum teacher; his dad. He started listening to Beatles records at a young age, and for many years played drums and sang along to the recordings. Gradually Chris gravitated to progressive rock bands, but retained a fondness for The Beatles and eventually formed the internationally-renowned Beatles cover band Liverpool, which still reunites to perform at the Fests For Beatles Fans (formerly Beatlefest). Chris has played drums for a variety of touring artists, including Peter Noone (of Herman’s Hermits fame), Badfinger, Micky Dolenz, Joe Walsh, and other Beatles-era bands. He became a good friend and musical associate to Harry Nilsson (who was a contemporary and close friend to all the individual Beatles). In addition to The Beatles, his musical influences include Jethro Tull, Genesis, ELP, and David Bowie. When not playing music, Chris has an active commercial and voice-over career.

Martin Herman, Conductor A resident of Los Angeles, Martin Herman was educated at Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford University. He also spent two years in Paris on a Fulbright Grant where he worked as a composer and conductor with the “New American Music in Europe” and “American Music Week” festivals. Aside from his conducting interests, Herman is an active composer and arranger. He has received fellowships and grants from the American Music Center, the Camargo Foundation, Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has written chamber and orchestral works as well as three operas. He is recorded on the Albany Record label. As a long time Beatles fan, Martin was commissioned to provide the orchestral transcriptions heard on the Classical Mystery Tour show. Recent guest conducting engagements include the Detroit Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Louisville Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, Delaware Symphony, Alabama Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra in Prague, Czech Republic.

Progressive Wildness

Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation Providing Leadership and Annual Support The Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation was established to provide leadership and endowment expertise to help ensure a stable financial base for orchestral music and musical excellence in Oklahoma City for generations to come. Distributions from the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation provide a meaningful and secure source of annual income for the Philharmonic’s operations, continually confirming the importance of endowment in an organization’s long-range planning and overall success. Current officers and directors of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation are: Officers Michael E. Joseph, President Jean Ann Hartsuck, Vice President Douglas J. Stussi, Treasurer Penny M. McCaleb, Secretary Directors Steven C. Agee Patrick B. Alexander J. Edward Barth L. Joe Bradley Teresa Cooper Douglas R. Cummings T.A. Dearmon Paul Dudman Thomas J. Enis Misha Gorkuscha Jane B. Harlow Harrison Levy Duke R. Ligon Michael J. Milligan Patrick J. Ryan Richard L. Sias Richard Tannenbaum

November 15, 2014 8:00 P.M.

CLASSICS Philippe Quint, violin JOEL LEVINE, CONDUCTOR

Prokofiev ...................... Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical

Allegro Larghetto Gavotte Molto vivace

Tchaikovsky .................. Francesca da Rimini, Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32

INTERMISSION Khachaturian ............... Violin Concerto

Allegro con fermezza Andante sostenuto Allegro vivace

Philippe Quint, violin

THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:

Molly & Jim Crawley

Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, December 10 at 8:00 pm on “Performance Oklahoma”.

GUEST ARTIST C

Philippe Quint Award-winning American violinist Philippe Quint is a multifaceted artist whose wide range of interests has led to several Grammy nominations for his albums, performances with major orchestras throughout the world at venues ranging from the Gewandhaus in Leipzig to Carnegie Hall in New York, a leading role in a major independent film called Downtown Express, and explorations of Astor Piazzolla’s music and Nuevo Tango with his band The Quint Quintet. Philippe Quint plays the magnificent 1708 “Ruby” Antonio Stradivari violin on loan to him through the generous efforts of The Stradivari Society®. A recent winner of “Ambassador of Arts” award presented to Philippe by Brownstone and Gateway Organizations at the United Nations last March, his 2013-2014 season included debuts with the London Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, Phoenix Symphony, San Antonio Symphony among others. This season’s highlights include debuts with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vancouver Symphony, Kansas Symphony and returns to Indianapolis, San Diego, Oklahoma City and Santa Barbara symphony orchestras. His recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Sofia Philharmonic led by conductor Martin Panteleev, paired with Anton Arensky’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35 (for violin, viola, and two cellos) featuring cellists Claudio Bohorquez, Nicolas Altstaedt and violist Lily Francis will be released in September 2014 on AvantiClassic. In the summer 2014 Philippe hosted an evening “Philippe Quint & Friends” presented by Russian American Foundation at the New York Times Center that featured John Corigliano, Joshua Bell, Michael Bacon, J. Ralph and Emily Bergl. Along with Lou Diamond Phillips, Darren Criss and Lea Salonga, Philippe appeared at the Kennedy Center’s “After the Storm” Benefit Concert for Philippines and debuted at the Hollywood Bowl as a part of a special “Joshua Bell & Friends” evening appearing along with Joshua Bell, Los Angeles Philharmonic and actor Glenn Close. Philippe Quint is the first classical artist to star in the lead role of a major independent film Downtown Express co-starring Nellie McKay from producer Michael Hausmann (Gangs of New York, Brokeback Mountain and Amadeus) and multi-Emmy winning director David Grubin. This 2012 film premiered in New York and Los Angeles as well as at a number of national and international film festivals including Woodstock, New York, Houston (Opening Night), Mons (Belguim), Cuba, Vermont, and Florida. Philippe Quint’s formidable discography includes a large variety of rediscovered treasures along with popular works from standard repertoire. In November 2013, he released to critical acclaim Opera Breve CD with pianist Lily Maisky, a unique collection of opera transcriptions for violin and piano featuring both popular and rare songs, on Avanticlassic. In May 2014, Quint recorded the Khachaturian and Glazunov Violin Concertos with the Bochumer Sinfoniker and Steven Sloane. Always searching and exploring with genres outside of classical music, in 2015 Philippe will be releasing yet another exciting project of creative arrangements titled “Bach XXI” with Matt Herskowitz’s Jazz Trio as well as a first recording with his Quint Quintet. An active chamber musician and in addition to leading his own Chamber Festival in Mexico City, Philippe frequently collaborates with cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gary Hoffman, Carter Brey, Nicholas Altstaedt, Zuill Bailey, Claudio Bohorquez and Jan Vogler, pianists William Wolfram, Inon Barnatan, Simone Dinnerstein, Jeffrey Kahane, violists Nils Monkemeyer and Lily Francis as well as his esteemed violin colleagues Joshua Bell, Cho–Liang Lin, Vadim Gluzman, Nicola Benedetti, Lara St.

John and Chee Yun Kim. Philippe has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Caramoor, Ravinia, Aspen, Rome, Mortizburg, La Jolla, Lincoln Center, and Chautauqua festivals, Kravis Center, UC Davis Presents and at the National Gallery in Washington. Quint’s live performances and interviews have been broadcast on television by CBS, CNN, ABC, BBC World News, NBC, Reuters, Bloomberg TV, as well as by radio stations nationwide including NPR, WNYC and WQXR. His recordings have received multiple “Editor’s Choice” selections in Gramophone, The Strad, Strings, and the Daily Telegraph. His remarkable degree of lyricism, poetry and impeccable virtuosity has gripped the eyes and ears of audiences in Asia, Australia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and the U.S. with what The Times (London) describes as his “bravura technique, and unflagging energy.” Quint’s first album for Avanticlassic, a recording of the Mendelssohn and Bruch Violin Concertos and Beethoven’s Romances with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería led by Carlos Miguel Prieto, was released in 2012. Gramophone described Quint’s performance as “pure sound and refined expression. An account well worth hearing.” His recordings of William Schuman’s Violin Concerto (2007) and Korngold’s Violin Concerto (2009) were both nominated for Grammy Awards. Other critically acclaimed albums include the world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Red Violin Caprices, Ned Rorem’s Concerto, Miklos Rozsa’s Complete Works for Violin and Piano with William Wolfram, Bernstein’s Serenade, and a unique compilation of works by Paganini arranged by Fritz Kreisler, which BBC Music Magazine called “truly phenomenal.” Constantly in demand worldwide, Quint’s most recent appearances include performances with the orchestras of London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Minnesota, Bournemouth, Houston, Weimar Staatskapelle, Royal Liverpool, China National, Orpheus, Berlin Komische Oper, Leipzig’s MDR at the Gewandhaus, He has performed under the batons of Marin Alsop, Carl St. Clair, Daniel Hege, Andrew Litton, Cristian Macelaru, Kurt Masur, Jorge Mester, Marco Parisotto, Martin Panteleev, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Klauspeter Seibel, Christopher Seaman, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Steven Sloane, Michael Stern, Bramwell Tovey, and Martin Yates among many others. Philippe Quint studied at Moscow’s Special Music School for the Gifted with the famed Russian violinist Andrei Korsakov, and made his orchestral debut at the age of nine, performing Wieniawski’s Concerto No. 2. After moving to the United States, he earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Juilliard. His distinguished pedagogues and mentors included Dorothy Delay, Cho-Liang Lin, Masao Kawasaki, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Arnold Steinhardt and Felix Galimir.

The Chicago Tribune proclaimed, “Here is a fiddle virtuoso whose many awards are fully justified by the brilliance of his playing.” Among his many honors, Quint was the winner of the Juilliard Competition and Career Grant Recipient of Salon de Virtuosi, Bagby and Clarisse Kampel Foundations.

Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical Sergei Prokofiev First performance: 3/12/1944 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 11/13/1998 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: Either April 11 (old style)/23 (new style), as he himself claimed, or April 15/27 (according to his birth certificate), 1891, in Sontsovka, Ekaterinoslav district, Ukraine Died: March 5, 1953, in Moscow Work composed: 1916-17, completed on September 10 of the latter year Work premiered: April 21, 1918, in Petrograd (a.k.a. St. Petersburg), with the composer conducting the Petrograd Court Orchestra Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings

PROGRAM NOTES I

in-training were rarely counseled to study the Viennese Classicists as models of style, as they are today. Prokofiev’s conducting professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Nikolai Tcherepnin, was a contrarian in this regard, and he encouraged his students to immerse themselves in the works of Haydn and Mozart to see what wisdom they could extract for their own compositions. A particularly happy result of the exercise was Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, meticulously worked out in 1916-17 and premiered the following year, just before the composer left his politically explosive homeland for a very extended residence in America and Western Europe. (The year of the Classical Symphony’s composition was also the year of the Czar’s abdication, the October Revolution, and Lenin’s ascent to political power.) The symphony would earn an enduring spot in the orchestral repertoire as a compact masterpiece and in the history books as a forebear of the widespread neoclassicism of the 1920s. Prokofiev later explained that his intent in the Classical Symphony was to translate musical Classicism into a specifically twentieth-century idiom: “It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived into this era, he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music. That’s the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the Classical style.” His decision to give the work its familiar nickname seems to have derived from two impetuses: on one hand, it’s a logical reference to its sources; on the other, the composer explained that he “secretly hoped that in the course of time it might itself turn out to be a classic.”

In 1891, when Sergei Prokofiev was born in an obscure Ukrainian village, much of Europe was gearing up to commemorate the centennial of Mozart’s death. By the time the 1991 Mozart bicentennial rolled around, the exhaustive deification of the composer had reached a magnitude that would scarcely have been imagined a century earlier, and universal Mozart mania has remained unshaken ever since. The situation was different in 1891. Mozart was respected by late-19th-century audiences, and certain of his works were performed with some regularity. Especially the “Romantic” or “demonic” Mozart—say, Don Giovanni and the minor-key piano concertos—still enjoyed currency in the repertoire. But by and large it was not an age much attuned to the Classicism of Mozart and Haydn. In Russia, Tchaikovsky’s appreciation for Mozart was an exception rather than the rule. Young Russian composers-

This was the first major work Prokofiev composed without the intermediary of the piano keyboard. A superb pianist, he found it natural to sound out his melodies and harmonies at the instrument as he proceeded, but came to observe that this practice exerted subtle and potentially limiting influences on his work. “Up to that time,” he recalled, “I had usually composed at the piano, but I had noticed that thematic material composed without the piano was often better in quality. When transferred to the piano, it sounds strange for a moment, but after a few repetitions it seems that this is exactly the way it should have been written. I was intrigued with the idea of writing an entire symphonic piece without the piano. A composition written this way would probably have more transparent orchestral colors.” The Classical Symphony is transparent indeed, as transparent as a finely cut diamond. The work is set in the “sunny” 18th-century key of D major, and it employs the standard forces of a Classical chamber orchestra. Following the model of the Mozart and Haydn, Prokofiev casts it in four movements; but each is so compact that the entire symphony adds up to only about 15 minutes—far shorter than most symphonies of Mozart’s or Haydn’s maturity. Of course, Prokofiev builds on his models in original ways. The opening Allegro, for example, may bustle through a Classically precise sonata form (though without a repeat of the opening exposition), but it is filled with crisp irony that evokes later Prokofiev just as easily as it does Haydn. CONTINUED ON PAGE 46

PROGRAM NOTES

The Classical Symphony Becomes a Classic Prokofiev’s wish that this symphony “might itself turn out to be a classic” came true—and quickly. Today it is one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all 20th-century compositions. The third-movement Gavotte proved especially popular, and Prokofiev pressed it into later service by expanding it substantially and inserting it into his Romeo and Juliet ballet score. Despite his protestations about the Classical Symphony’s distinctly non-keyboard character, Prokofiev also arranged the Gavotte for piano. He performed it often and even recorded the arrangement in 1935, yielding a unique “creator’s document” of an exquisite, if Lilliputian, masterpiece. As it happens, it is in this movement that Prokofiev departs most decisively from his models, writing a duple-time Gavotte instead of the triple-time minuet that almost always graces symphonies of the Classical era. —JMK

Francesca da Rimini, Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky First performance: 1/4/1940 Conductor: Victor Alessandro Last Performance: 9/16/2006 Conductor: Joel Levine Born: April 25 (old style)/May 7 (new style), 1840, at Votkinsk, in the district of Viatka, Russia, about 700 miles east-northeast of Moscow Died: October 25/November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg Work composed: October 7 to November 17, 1876 Work dedicated: To the composer Sergei Taneyev Work premiered: March 9, 1877, in Moscow, with Nikolai Rubinstein conducting Instrumentation: Three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two cornets and two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, harp, and strings

The most famous words in Dante’s Divine Comedy are probably those that the poet finds inscribed above the gates of Hell: “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate” (“Abandon all hope, you who enter here”). The Divine Comedy, we will remember, recounts a spiritual journey that begins on Good Friday of the year 1300, and the catalyst is what we might call the mid-life crisis of Dante himself. In Canto III of Inferno (the first installment of the Divine Comedy triptych) he passes beneath that inscription accompanied by his guide, the Roman poet Virgil. The second most famous quotation from Dante is perhaps the poignant maxim uttered in Canto V, in the Second Circle of Hell, where the shade of Francesca da Rimini mournfully muses, “Nessun maggior dolore/ Che ricordarsi del tempo felice/ Nella miseria” (“There is no greater sorrow / Than to recall some happy time / When one is in misery”).

Francesca has indeed abandoned all hope, but at least she’s not stuck very deep down in the pit of Hell, where (Dante discovers) things get progressively worse the farther you get from God. Francesca was a sinner, but her downfall was love—adultery, to be sure, but love nonetheless. Born into the ruling family in Ravenna, she was married off for political reasons to a nobleman from Rimini, Giancotto Malatesta the Lame, and then fell in love with his younger brother, Paolo (who was also married). Giancotto discovered them in a romantic compromise and killed them both, and here they are in the Second Circle of Hell, locked eternally in the simulacrum of a passionate embrace, buffeted by torrential rains and blown about by stormy winds along with such other lustful luminaries as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and Tristan. When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky focused on this story, in 1876, he was 36 years old and gearing up for a mid-life crisis himself. It would arrive the following year with his precipitous marriage (a step he was already considering as he worked on Francesca da Rimini, although by that time he hadn’t started to focus on precisely whom he might marry) and his ensuing homosexual panic, meltdown, and escape to Switzerland with a young boyfriend in tow. Tchaikovsky at first envisioned Francesca da Rimini as an opera and made preliminary plans to use an already existing libretto on the subject by the writer Konstantin Zvantsyev. But when Zvantsyev turned out to be a rabid Wagnerite and started making “music-of-the-future-ish” demands about the opera-to-be, Tchaikovsky, who had had a mixed reaction to Wagner’s music during a recent visit to Bayreuth, re-thought his plans and plotted a symphonic poem instead. It really was a perfect choice for Tchaikovsky, who had already shown his sympathy for literary sources with his Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet and was in any case practically peerless in crafting musical expressions of the

PROGRAM NOTES Tchaikovsky’s Program Tchaikovsky’s manuscript of Francesca da Rimini includes a prose program he wrote to correspond with his music, based on Dante’s poem: Dante, accompanying the shade of Virgil, descends to the second circle of hell’s abyss. The air here is filled with groans, wails, and cries of despair. In the sepulchral gloom a storm blows up and rages. Furiously the hellish whirlwind races along, bearing in its wild whirling the spirits of mortals whose reason in life was clouded by amorous passion. From the countless human souls spinning there, Dante’s attention is specifically drawn to the two lovely shades of Francesca and Paolo spinning in each other’s embrace. Shocked by the soulsearing sight of these two young shades, Dante summons them and asks them to relate the crime for which they have been prescribed so terrible a punishment. Dissolving in tears, the shade of Francesca tells her sad tale. She loved Paolo but was, against her will, given in marriage to the hateful brother of her beloved, the hunch-backed, deformed, jealous tyrant, Rimini. The bonds of a forced marriage could not drive from Francesca’s heart her tender passion for Paolo. Once they were reading together the romance of Lancelot. “We were alone,” Francesca narrates, “and were reading without apprehension. More than once we blanched, and our confused glances met. But one instant destroyed us both. When, finally, the fortunate Lancelot gained the first kiss of love, he, from whom nothing will now separate me, kissed my trembling mouth, and the book that had revealed to us for the first time the secret of love fell from our hands.” At that moment Francesca’s husband had entered unexpectedly and killed both her and Paolo with blows from his dagger. And, having said this, Francesca is again borne away in the embrace of her Paolo by the furiously and wildly raging whirlwind. two principle emotional poles of the Francesca tale: passionate love and hopeless tragedy. It therefore comes as no surprise that the heart of this piece is the central section, which, through Francesca’s narrative, delves into the human drama of the situation. Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky’s depiction of the pelting rain and whirling wind of the Second Circle is also vivid when he trains his attention on scene-setting in an Allegro vivo section near the work’s opening and again at the piece’s conclusion. It was reported that he derived inspiration not only from Dante’s poem but also from Gustave Doré’s famous drawings illustrating that classic.

“I have written it with love,” Tchaikovsky told his brother, Modest, in a letter on October 14/26, 1876, “and the love seems to have come out respectably. As far as the whirlwinds are concerned, it would have been possible to make something corresponding more with Doré’s illustration, but it didn’t come out as I wanted.” From the opening introduction, which Tchaikovsky characterized as being written “under the influence of the Nibelungen,” through to the lovers’ sudden departure at the end, the symphonic poem minutely depicts Dante’s story, which the composer elaborated in a prose program he appended to his manuscript.

Violin Concerto Aram Khachaturian First performance: 4/3/1949 Violin: Louis Kaufman Last Performance: 11/18/2006 Violin: Chee-Yun Aram Ilyich Khachaturian Born: May 24 (old style)/June 6 (new style), 1903 in Kidzhori, near Tbilisi, Georgia Died: May 1, 1978, in Moscow Work composed: 1940 Work premiered: November 16, 1940, at the Moscow Festival of Soviet Music, with its dedicatee, the violinist David Oistrakh, as soloist Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, small drum, cymbals, bass drum, harp, and strings, in addition to the solo violin

The son of an Armenian bookbinder living in Georgia, Aram Khachaturian did not display an unusual degree of talent until he was nearly through his adolescence. He dabbled at composing a few piano pieces but in 1921 went off to Moscow to enter college as a biology major. At the same time, however, he pursued private instruction in cello at the Gnesin Instiute of Music, and as his musical expertise developed he transferred to the conservatory’s composition department, where his teachers included Reinhold Glière and Mikhail Gnesin (whose sisters had founded the school). At the age of 26 he gained admission to the Moscow Conservatory, where he remained for six years, completing his graduate education in 1936, the year he unveiled his very popular Piano Concerto. Even eminent figures outside the Conservatory watched his emerging talent with interest; Sergei Prokofiev, for example, was pleased to recommend Khachaturian’s 1932 Clarinet Trio for performance in Paris. CONTINUED ON PAGE 48

PROGRAM NOTES

In 1939, still early in his career, Khachaturian was named deputy chairman of the organizing committee of the Soviet Composers’ Union, a post he held until he ran into official difficulties in 1948. He wrote enough patriotic and propagandistic pieces to keep the commissars happy, but he spent most of his time composing more serious instrumental pieces, including the Soviet Union’s first film scores written specifically for sound movies. On many occasions he managed to balance political and artistic demands with admirable skill. His famous 1942 score for the ballet Gayane, for example, remains popular through the several orchestral suites he assembled from its music, and it contains his most frequently enjoyed piece, the “Saber Dance,” a perennial pops-concert favorite. But Gayane also served an important political function in its day; few modern listeners are aware of the ballet’s plot, in which the title character works in an agricultural collective, her traitorous husband tries to torch the farm, and a Red Commander swoops in to save the day. Lyudmila Polyakova’s undated (1950s-ish) tract Soviet Music gushes of Khachaturian: “His full-blooded music carrying the listener along like a mighty torrent, sings beauty and the joy of life in all its manifestations, variety of color and aspect. Afasyev aptly called Khachaturian ‘the Rubens of our music.’ This is what he says: ‘Khachaturian’s Rubenslike temperament, his gravitation towards the ‘sensuous charms of sound texture’ inherent in his music make him a herald of true hedonism that has nothing in common with the slack modern civilization, but is deeply rooted in folklore.’ ” It is certainly true that Khachaturian’s bent was to compose in saturated colors—vivid reds and yellows rather than subtle ochres and aquamarines. It is also a fact that folkloric elements pervade his oeuvre, whether through exuberant rhythmic energy, obsessively repeated melodic fragments, or scales that encompass intervallic patterns quite different from the familiar major and minor scales of the Western European tradition. Such characteristics are evident practically from the outset of his Violin Concerto, with the soloist spinning a vigorous dance-like tune that includes sinuous chromaticism, in counterpoint to a main theme enunciated by solo flute and bassoon. In Music Since 1900, Nicolas Slonimsky summed up the flavor of this concerto with sesquipedalian precision, describing it as “embodying orientalistic elements of Caucasian melorhythms, ultrachromatic in nostalgic lyrical episodes, diatonic in volitional dramatic passages and orgiastic in the dancing finale.” Structurally, this concerto does not break any bounds, adhering instead to the time-honored format of three movements—fast-slow-fast—with the first unrolling through the familiar contrasts of a sonata form, the second being a lyrical interlude, and the third achieving closure through a brilliant rondo. The violin writing is at once difficult and idiomatic to the instrument; this concerto stands in

the Liszt-Tchaikovsky tradition, exalting virtuosity while harnessing it to musical purpose. The fiddler’s fireworks burn especially brightly in the first-movement cadenza, a highly polyphonic passage in which Khachaturian works in references to the movement’s principal themes and most memorable figuration before bringing the orchestra back for an extended coda.

Music and Politics Despite his political savvy, Khachaturian was not exempt when the Soviet Composers’ Union came under attack from the Communist Party, and specifically from Ideological Secretary Andrei Zhdanov, in 1948. Like every other interesting composer in the Soviet Union, Khachaturian was denounced as a “formalist,” and he “repented” by concentrating on overtly nationalistic pieces. Following Stalin’s death, in 1953, Khachaturian went so far as to plead publicly for less restrictive state regulations on composers, a brave and unusual step at that time, and in 1957 he became influential in the Composers’ Union again, this time as Board Secretary, a position he held until his death. By then he was revered at home as a dean of Soviet musicians, decorated with such honors as the Order of Lenin (1939) and the Hero of Socialist Labor (1973), and was one of the few composers whose renown extended beyond the Soviet bloc. What’s more, he was genuinely admired by serious colleagues throughout his career. He was a lifelong friend of Dmitri Shostakovich, whom he first met on a train in 1934. “We dined together in the restaurant car,” Shostakovich recalled. “I have to say that I liked Khachaturian considerably more than the dinner. … Khachaturian brought some wonderful salami and wouldn’t leave me in peace until I had eaten it.” Wrote Shostakovich, “Khachaturian’s individuality . . . comprises the composer’s outlook, which is a basically optimistic, life-asserting view of our reality.” —JMK

James M. Keller James M. Keller is Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. His book Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide, published by Oxford University Press in 2011, is now also available as an e-book and (as of October 2014) as a paperback. These essays are based on notes that originally appeared in the programs of the New York Philharmonic, and are used with permission. ©New York Philharmonic

Sundays :: 2PM :: OKC Civic Center

NOV. 13

NOV. 21

NOV. 28

THE FRAY

COLLECTIVE SOUL

CASEY DONAHEW BAND

October 5, 2014 :: Cartoon Classics From Bugs Bunny to The Muppets, cartoons have featured music that children love. We’ll pick the best and have some fun with music from favorite cartoons.

February 8, 2015 :: Knights & Princesses Fairytales come to life with the music of Cinderella, Romeo & Juliet and Beauty and the Beast. Kids are welcome to dress as their favorite character.

March 29, 2015 :: A Concert For the Planet We’ll play a salute to the beauty of nature and to Earth Day in a tribute to Mother Nature!

Lobby activities start at 1pm before the hour-long concerts. RIVERWIND.COM • I-35 AT HIGHWAY 9 WEST, NORMAN, OK

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8/27/14 4:25 PM

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ORCHESTRA LEAGUE UPDATE

One of the missions of the Oklahoma City Orchestra League is “to improve the community by stimulating interest in orchestral music through the leadership and development of trained community volunteers who will conduct educational activities.” League members of all skill levels are engaged in this outreach. Our “Instrument Playground” program provides a “hands on” collection of select orchestral instruments for children to explore and “play” at various arts and public venues. The “Musical Stories” program provides narrated stories accompanied by a string quartet. This program is presented in public libraries as well as other places. Our “Sound Images” program is a curriculum provided for 3rd through 8th graders that introduces and compares music and visual art. Inspired by orchestral music, students create artwork for competition and display. “We’ve Got Rhythm” is an introduction for 3rd graders presented in three parts at area schools by Orchestra League volunteers and Philharmonic musicians and ensembles. This prepares students for attending a Philharmonic Youth Concert. Some of the volunteers for these programs last year were: Bjorn Bauer Carol Bowman Kathy Buttram Helen Chiou Rita Dearmon Sue Francis Cassie Gage Michelle Ganson

Sandi Garrett Jennifer Godinez Amanda Harmer Eleanor Harris Casey Hasenbeck Kirsten Hawley Frances Hendrix Cheryl Hudak Jeanne Jackson

Travis Kirk Lindsey Marcus Kris Markes Peter Markes June McCoy Gaye McNish Debbie Minter Ann Mogridge

Phyllis Morrow Deanna Pendleton Martha Pendleton Kathlyn Reynolds Joy Richardson Stephanie Shanor Cecelia Sharp Pam Shoulders Warren Shoulders

Chris Stinchomb Karen Vollbrecht Heather Walter Cheri Weintraub Rhonda White Linda Woody Sue Xu

We invite you to join the Oklahoma City Orchestra League! Check out our website, twitter and facebook locations. www.okcorchestraleague.org I www.twitter.com/orchestraleague I www.facebook.com/orchestraleague I Or call 405-601-4245

GIFTS TO THE PHILHARMONIC

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23

INDIVIDUALS Providing essential support for the Annual Fund. Mr. John Davis Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Dearmon Mr. and Mrs. David C. DeLana Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. Dickinson Dr. and Mrs. James D. Dixson Mr. Sidney G. Dunagan and Mrs. Sherry Wood Mr. and Mrs. Joe Edwards Mrs. Carlene Edwards Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Ellis Dr. and Mrs. Royice B. Everett Mr. and Mrs. Irving Faught Mr. and Mrs. George Faulk Ms. Rebecca Fenton Ms. Carolyn Frans Mr. and Mrs. Gary F. Fuller Mr. and Mrs. Gerald L. Gamble Mr. and Mrs. Jason Garner Mr. Kelly George Mr. Jack Golsen Mr. Gary Gordon Drs. Stephen and Pamela Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Royce M. Hammons Mr. and Mrs. Jim Hatt Mr. and Mrs. Michael Haynes Walt and Jean Hendrickson Mr. and Mrs. John D. Higginbotham Mr. Ivan Holt II Mr. and Mrs. Joe R. Homsey, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. J. Clifford Hudson Mr. and Mrs. George W. James Dr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Janssen Mr. and Mrs. Carlos Johnson Mr. David R. Johnson Mrs. Ruth Ann Kalbfleisch Mr. Dan Kennedy and Dr. Diana Kennedy Mrs. Lou Kerr Gary King Mr. and Ms. Kristian Kos Dr. and Mrs. H. T. Kurkjian Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Lampton Mr. Scott Davis and Mr. David Leader Dr. and Mrs. Jay E. Leemaster Mr. and Mrs. Jason Lees Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Levy, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Duke R. Ligon Mrs. Oxana Matthey Mr. and Mrs. John A. McCaleb Cindy and Johnny McCharen Mr. Ron McCord Mrs. Jean McCown Mr. and Mrs. Tom J. McDaniel Mr. Jeffrey McDougall Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth N. McKinney Mr. and Mrs. Bruce McLinn Mr. and Mrs. John P. McMillin Mr. and Mrs. K. T. Meade, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Herman Meinders

Mr. and Mrs. Ray Merritt Mr. and Mrs. Stewart E. Meyers, Jr. Tom and Katherine Milam Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Milsten Chip and Michelle Mullens Dr. and Mrs. Gene L. Muse Mrs. Robert Z. Naifeh Ms. Deborah Nauser Bill and Tracy Nester Mr. and Mrs. Ronald J. Norick Mr. Chip Oppenheim Mrs. Glenda G. Payne Mrs. Ruby C. Petty Mrs. Barbara Pirrong Mr. and Mrs. Kent Plaster Dr. Gary Porter and Dr. Mary Elizabeth Porter Mr. and Mrs. Ray H. Potts Mr. and Mrs. Lynn Pringle Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth R. Rees Mrs. Berta Faye Rex Mrs. Don Rhinehart Mrs. Ran Ricks Dr. Mel Robison Mr. Lance Ruffel Mr. Christopher Salyer Mr. and Mrs. Rodney N. Sargent Mrs. Sally B. Saunders Mrs. Janet G. Seay Mr. and Mrs. John M. Seward Mr. and Mrs. William F. Shdeed Sharon and John Shelton Mr. Robert Shoemaker Drs. Paul and Amalia Silverstein Mr. John Slupsky Mr. and Mrs. Darryl G. Smette Dr. Richard V. Smith Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Smith Ms. Jane Smythe Dr. and Mrs. Brian E. Snell Mr. and Mrs. John S. Spaid Sr. Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Starling Mrs. Billie Thrash Ms. Betsy Timken Mr. and Mrs. Dale Toetz William P. Tunell, M.D. Mr. John A. Vance Mr. and Mrs. Robert Varnum Mr. and Mrs. John Waller Mr. Robert Weiss Mr. Kenneth K. Wert Mrs. Georgiana Wiesner Mr. John S. Williams Mrs. Carol Wright Ms. Nancy Yaffe Mr. and Mrs. Ron Youtsey

Friend $750 - $1,249 Mr. H. G. Adams Dr. and Mrs. John C. Andrus Mr. and Mrs. Thomas D. Barbour Ms. Suzanne Baxter Mr. and Mrs. B. B. Beals Mr. Michael Belanger and Ms. Sarah Sagran Dr. and Mrs. William G. Bernhardt Mr. and Mrs. John Biggs Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Blumstein Mr. and Mrs. Don C. Boulton Maj. Gen. W.P. Bowden Carole and Deal Bowman Dr. and Mrs. David R. Brown Mr. and Mrs. Barney U. Brown Mr. and Mrs. Bob G. Bunce Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Couch Ms. Barbara Crabtree Dr. and Mrs. Anthony W. Czerwinski Ms. Nancy Dawson Tony and Pam Dela Vega Mr. Joel Dixon Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dugger Mr. and Mrs. Douglas G. Eason Ms. Anna Eischen Bruce W. and Joanne Ewing Dr. Thurma J. Fiegel Mr. and Mrs. John E. Francis Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Free Mr. Jerry A. Gilbert Mr. and Mrs. Don Greiner Mr. and Mrs. Nick S. Gutierrez, Jr. ,M.D. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence K. Hellman Mr. and Mrs. Frank D. Hill Mr. and Mrs. David D. Hunt, II Colonel and Mrs. Dean C. Jackson Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Karchmer Mr. and Mrs. Drake Keith Ms. Claren Kidd Mr. and Mrs. Brad Krieger Mr. Owen Lafferty Ms. Mary Jane Lawson Mr. Joel Levine Dr. and Mrs. Brad A. Marion Ms. Vickie McIlvoy Mr. and Mrs. Jere W. McKenny Mr. and Mrs. Stuart P. Milsten Mrs. Donna Muchmore Dr. and Mrs. William L. Parry Ms. Marilyn Pick Mrs. Donald G. Preuss Mrs. Linda Kennedy Rosser Dr. and Mrs. Carl Rubenstein

CONTINUED ON PAGE 54

GIFTS TO THE PHILHARMONIC CONTINUED FROM PAGE 53

INDIVIDUALS Providing essential support for the Annual Fund. Dr. and Mrs. Olaseinde Sawyerr Todd and Melissa Scaramucci Ms. Madeline E. Schooley Mr. and Mrs. Don Sherman Mr. Frank J. Sonleitner Dr. and Mrs. James B. Stewart Mr. and Mrs. John E. Stonecipher Mrs. Dorothy J. Turk Mrs. Donna Vogel Mr. and Mrs. Tom Vollbrecht Dr. and Mrs. Larry L. Westmoreland Dr. James B. Wise Mr. and Mrs. Denver Woolsey Colonel and Mrs. James G. Young Ms. Laura Young Mr. and Mrs. Don T. Zachritz

Partner $300 - $749 Dr. Gillian Air Ms. Lois Albert Mr. and Mrs. John C. Alsup Ms. Zonia Armstrong Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Ayres Ms. Sherry K. Barton Ms. Karen J. Beckman Jackie and Jerry Bendorf Mr. and Mrs. G.T. Blankenship Mrs. Mary C. Blanton Harry and Elaine Boyd Mr. and Mrs. Fred M. Buxton Vikki Ann Canfield, M.D. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ciardi Mr. Donald Clewell Ms. Annette Clifton Nancy Coats and Charlie Ashley Mr. and Mrs. E.G. Colton, Jr. Ms. Carol Combs Mr. and Mrs. Richard Creech Mr. and Mrs. Ed Cunningham Dr. Shirley E. Dearborn Mr. and Mrs. James H. Everest Ms. Melinda Finley Mr. and Mrs. Jack R. Foster Mr. and Mrs. John E. Frank Mr. and Mrs. Keith G. Golden Mr. Herbert M. Graves Mr. and Mrs. Maynard Greenberg Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Greenberg Mr. and Mrs. John T. Greiner, Jr. George M. and Jo Hall Mrs. Elfriede Hansen Mr. and Mrs. George C. Hoebing Mr. Roger Farrell and Mrs. Trish Horn Dr. Sonja Hughes and Mr. Willie Hughes Ms. Judy I Johnson Gregory W. and Mary Joan Johnston

Mr. and Mrs. Peter Markes Mr. Joe A. McKenzie Mr. Robert A. Moore Mr. and Mrs. Dorman Morsman David Miller & Barbara Neas Mr. and Mrs. Michael R. Perri Dr. and Mrs. Morris Reichlin Dr. and Mrs. Laurance Reid Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon M. Reznik Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Rick Ms. Carolyn Sandusky-Williams Mr. and Mrs. Ben Shanker Mr. and Mrs. Rick A. Smith Mr. and Mrs. Paul A. Specht Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stover, Jr. Mrs. Evelyn Margaret Tidholm Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Towell Mr. Curtis VanWyngarden Mr. Kip Welch and Mr. Kyle Rogers Mr. John M. Yoeckel

Member $100 - $299 Leigh Ann and Paul Albers Dr. and Mrs. Henry M. Asin Judy and Sanford Austin Mr. and Mrs. Earl Austin Mr. Paul D. Austin and Jane Ford Austin Mr. and Mrs. Van A. Barber Ms. Judith A. Barnett Mr. and Mrs. Marion Bauman Ms. Aleta Biddy Larry and Phyllis Boone Mr. and Mrs. Bill D. Broughton Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Calvert Mrs. Jo Carol Cameron Ms. Kathryn Carey Mr. and Mrs. Jack Carpenter Mr. and Mrs. M. E. Carpenter Dr. and Mrs. Don R. Carter Mr. and Mrs. David Casper Mr. Michael P. Cassidy Mrs. Nancy G. Cheek Ms. Henrie Close Mr. and Mrs. David O. Cordell Ms. Madeleine W. Cunningham Ms. Martha A. Custer Mr. and Mrs. Kevin M. Davis Ms. Carol A. Davito Mr. James DeWarns Mrs. Carole J. Drake Mr. Richard Dulaney Mr. W. Samuel Dykeman Mr. David W. Echols Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ehlers Ms. Elizabeth K. Eickman Dr. and Mrs. Robert B. Epstein

Mr. Sam Escobedo Mrs. Edward Eskridge Mike and Deb Felice Ret. MSGT and Mrs. Andres E. Flores, Jr. Dr. Athena Friese, M.D. Ms. Carol M. Hall and Mr. Sam Gann Mr. and Mrs. M. Charles Gilbert Ms. Sarah Jane Gillett Colonel and Mrs. Alvin L. Ginsberg Mrs. Pam Glyckherr Mr. Barry Golsen Mr. and Mrs. M. H. Gragg Mr. Steven Graham and Ms. Vicky Leloie Kelly LTC and Mrs. Walter A. Greenwood Mr. and Mrs. Barre Griffith Mr. and Mrs. John Gunter Mr. Allen K. Harris Mrs. Diane Haser-Bennett and Mr. Ray Bennett Gretchen and Morris Hatley Major and Mrs. John M. Heitz Robert and Jan Henry Mr. and Mrs. Jim H. Holden Mr. Jerome A. Holmes Mr. and Mrs. K. R. Hornbrook Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Hummel Ms. Mary Lu Jarvis Mr. Kent Johnson Ms. Mary Ella Kidd Ms. Young Y. Kim Mr. and Mrs. Michael S. Laird Mr. and Mrs. David W. Levy Bob and Kay Lewis Mr. and Mrs. Paul Lewis Mr. and Mrs. Roy Love Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr. Ms. Princes Faye Mandrell Mr. and Mrs. Roy Matthews Mrs. Marcia Matthews Hutton J. Thomas and Anita R. May Gerry Mayes Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth R. McAlister Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. McClintock Mr. and Mrs. Mark McCubbin Mr. Don McDonald Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. McKown Mr. and Mrs. Ason McLain Ms. Ann McVey Lt. Col. Terry L. Mock Ms. Cheryl Moore Mr. Jerry E. Murphy Mr. Robert G. Oltmanns Mr. and Mrs. William H. Orr Mr. and Mrs. Tom Pace Mildred B. Parsons Mrs. Olga Pellow Mr. and Mrs. Paul Pettigrew

SPECIAL GIFTS

Dr. and Mrs. Marvin D. Peyton Ms. Harriette Porter Dr. and Mrs. Roger D. Quinn Mr. and Mrs. Jack B. Rackley Dr. and Mrs. Gary E. Rankin Mr. and Mrs. Paul Risser Mr. and Mrs. Tom Roach Dr. and Mrs. Michael Fred Robinson James and Sherry Rowan Col. and Mrs. Warren M. Schaub Gayle Scheirman Mr. Fred Schneider Mr. Kurt Schroeder Mr. and Mrs. A. Lee Segell Fred and Carolyn Selensky Mrs. A.J. Shafer Mr. Robert R. Shaw Dr. and Mrs. Richard Shifrin Mr. and Mrs. Richard Shough Mr. Robert E. Simmons Mr. H. F. Singleton Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Smiser Dr. Jerry Neil Smith Mr. and Mrs. Lee Allan Smith Mr. Jay Smith Mrs. Carol K. Sokatch Mr. and Mrs. Earl Statton Ms. Judie Steelman Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Stice Mr. and Mrs. Richard Strubhar Mr. John Stuemky Ms. Xiao-Hong Sun and Mr. Xiaocong Peng Mr. and Mrs. Sammy Todd Charles and Carol Jenkinson Topinka Ms. Janice L Townsend Juan and Elvia Vazquez Mr. N. Blake Vernon Mr. Rodney Wall LTC Ret. and Mrs. George B. Wallace Ms. Jean M. Warren Dr. and Mrs. Dennis A. Weigand Mr. and Mrs. Albert Weise Mr. and Mrs. Ted Wernick Mr. Don Wester Mr. E. Michael Whittington Ms. Ghita Williams Ms. Lonnie F. Williams Mr. and Mrs. R. Deane Wymer Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Youngheim

Honor loved ones, celebrate occasions, recognize achievements and support the Philharmonicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission.

In Memory of William and Helen Cleary Bill and Louise Churchill In Memory of Marge Duncan Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr. In Memory of Steve Garrett Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr. In Memory of Dr. Donald F. Jensen Gretchen and Morris Hatley Ms. Judie Steelman In Memory of Orley Jones Ms. Teresa Rasco In Memory of Dr. and Mrs. Philip Joseph Kim and Michael Joseph In Honor of Maestro Joel Levine Mr. J. Edward Barth Mrs. Susan Robinson In Memory of Seymour Levine Bill and Lil Ross In Honor of Ken and Debbie McKinney Ms. Sarah Jane Gillett In Memory of Bill and Jessie Pequignot Kim and Michael Joseph In Honor of Quail Creek WGR Mr. and Mrs. David Casper In Memory of Jeannette Sias Mr. J. Edward Barth Dr. and Mrs. L. Joe Bradley Priscilla and Jordan Braun Dr. and Mrs. David R. Brown Mr. and Mrs. David O. Cordell Mr. and Mrs. Douglas R. Cummings Mrs. Carole J. Drake Mr. Richard Dulaney Mr. and Mrs. Theodore M. Elam Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Ellis Mr. and Mrs. James H. Everest Mrs. Josephine Freede Mr. and Mrs. Gary F. Fuller Ms. Carol M. Hall and Mr. Sam Gann Mr. and Mrs. M. H. Gragg Mrs. Jane B. Harlow Mrs. Nadine Holloway

Mr. David R. Johnson Mrs. and Mr. Judy Jordan Mr. and Mrs. Don J. Leeman Mr. and Mrs. Duke R. Ligon Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Luke Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr. Aubrey K. McClendon and Katie McClendon Mr. and Mrs. Mark McCubbin Mr. and Mrs. Jere W. McKenny Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth N. McKinney Mr. and Mrs. Ason McLain Mrs. Rita King Moore Mr. and Mrs. Ray H. Potts Mrs. Donald G. Preuss Mr. H.E. Rainbolt Mr. and Mrs. Roy A. Reeves Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Rick Mr. and Mrs. William J. Ross Mr. and Mrs. Lee Allan Smith Ms. Jeanne Hoffman Smith Mr. and Mrs. Douglas J. Stussi Mrs. Millicent Sukman Mr. and Mrs. Richard Tanenbaum Mrs. Billie Thrash Ms. Janice L Townsend Mr. N. Blake Vernon Ms. Jean M. Warren Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Wiggin Mrs. Martha V. Williams Mr. and Mrs. Dick Workman Mr. John M. Yoeckel Armstrong International Cultural Foundation Bright Music Chamber Ensemble Casady School Inasmuch Foundation Journey House Travel, Inc. MidFirst Bank In Memory of Joan L. Smith Dr. Jerry Neil Smith In Memory of Jack Taylor Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C. Lunde, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth N. McKinney In Memory of Karen Vollbrecht Ms. Connie M. Bryan

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HOUSE NOTES

Restrooms are conveniently located on all levels of the theater. Please ask your usher for guidance. Latecomers and those who exit the theater during the performance will be seated at intermission or during the first convenient pause as determined by the management. Electronic devices must be turned off and put away before entering the theater (no calling, texting, photo or video use please). Cameras, recording devices and food are not permitted inside the theater. Food and Beverages: Bottled water is permitted in the theater at the Classics Series concerts. Beverages are permitted in the theater at the Pops Series concerts however bringing coffee into the theater is discouraged due to the aroma. Snacks, drinks and desserts are available at the Civic Center CafĂŠ and snack bar on the main floor. Smoking in the Civic Center Music Hall is prohibited. The Oklahoma City Philharmonic promotes a fragrance-free environment for the convenience of our patrons. Fire Exits are located on all levels and marked accordingly. Please note the nearest exit for use in case of an emergency. Elevators are located at the south end of the atrium of the Civic Center Music Hall. Children of all ages are welcome at the Philharmonic Discovery Family Series and Holiday Pops performances; however, in consideration of the patrons, musicians and artists, those under five years of age will not be admitted to evening Classics and Pops concerts unless otherwise noted. Booster seats for children are available in the Civic Center event office. Please inquire at the ticket office. College Student Rush Tickets are $5 each and available with a college or university I.D. and email address at the box office 30 minute prior to the start of each Philharmonic performance. Tickets are offered based on availability only and seats are located throughout the theater. Video Monitors are located in the lobby for your convenience. Wheelchair Available Seating: Persons using wheelchairs or with walking and climbing difficulties will be accommodated when possible. Those wishing to use the designated wheelchair sections may purchase the wheelchair space and a companion seat. Please inform the Philharmonic Ticket Office staff of your need when ordering tickets so that you may be served promptly and appropriately. Please request the assistance of hall ushers to access wheelchair seating. Lost & Found is located in the Civic Center Office (405-297-2584) weekdays 8:30 a.m. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 5:00 p.m. Philharmonic Ticket Office may be contacted by calling 405-TIC-KETS (405-842-5387) or you can visit the Philharmonic Ticket Office located on the second floor of the McAlpine Center at 428 W. California in Suite 210. The Philharmonic Ticket Office is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and concert Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The Ticket Office at the Civic Center Music Hall (405-297-2264) will be open 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on performance evenings. Concert Night Phone: Call 405-842-5387 Civic Center Ticket Office hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., weekdays. Programs and Artists are subject to change without notification.