Welcome to the Oklahoma City Philharmonic! We are delighted to welcome our loyal season subscribers, our generous philanthropic partners, and our first-time attendees. The magic of tonight’s concert is made possible by year-round effort, dedicated volunteers, and numerous donors. Since ticket sales only cover a portion of our concert expenses, we extend our deepest gratitude to our donors and volunteers for their invaluable support of our mission.
This year marks the 36th season of the OKCPHIL, where we continue to inspire and bring joy to the community through the beauty of orchestral music. We take pride in our legacy and look forward to an exciting future. A crucial part of our vision is to enrich the cultural fabric of our community and to educate future generations about the profound value of music. In pursuit of this vision, the OKCPHIL is more committed than ever to creating programs and concert experiences that unite our entire community.
Thanks to the expertise and passion of our Music Director, Maestro Alexander Mickelthwate, and our dynamic and dedicated staff led by Executive Director, Brent Hart, this season promises something for everyone. Our Classics, Pops, and Discovery concerts are sure to delight audiences of all ages and tastes. We encourage you to invite someone new to join us at a future concert and help us cultivate the audiences of tomorrow. On behalf of the entire Oklahoma City Philharmonic family, thank you for being here. We invite you to say “hello” to someone you haven’t met before and look forward to seeing you again soon!
GEETIKA VERMA, President Oklahoma City Orchestra League
On behalf of the Oklahoma City Orchestra League, we are thrilled to welcome you to another inspiring year of music.
It is an honor to address you as the President of the Orchestra League. Our league is a testament to the power of music to inspire, unite, and elevate the human spirit. As we embark on this new season, we are committed to fostering a community that celebrates excellence, innovation, and passion in orchestral music. Where words fail, music begins. It touches us emotionally and spiritually, uniting us in shared feeling and experience.
We invite you to join the league and support our musicians, promote educational initiatives, and bring the joy of orchestral performances to audiences far and wide. Thank you for being a part of this vibrant community. Let’s create harmonious and unforgettable experiences in the year ahead.
JAMES HULSEY, President Associate Board
On behalf of the Associate Board, welcome to the OKC Philharmonic’s 2024-2025 Season! This season promises a rich tapestry of musical styles that celebrate diverse cultures and geographies, performed by world-class musicians. We are thrilled to present a lineup that ensures every concert is a journey through community and culture, leaving you with a smile each time!
At the OKCPHIL, the Associate Board is dedicated to fostering community, culture, and connectivity, especially among young professionals. We achieve this through the Overture Society, offering concert packages that includes 3-4 concerts paired with engaging social events. Stay connected with us on social media, explore our Overture web page, and join us for what promises to be an exhilarating season!
Thank you for joining us! Your presence and support at our concerts contribute significantly to the vibrant orchestral music scene in our thriving city. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Dear Friends of the OKCPHIL,
BRENT HART
On behalf of the entire OKCPHIL family, welcome to our 2024-25 Season! We are thrilled to present another year of incredible performances and programs as we continue to serve our mission of bringing joy and inspiration through orchestral music to our community.
This season’s Classics Series features an array of inspiring programs, showcasing some of the most beloved works in the classical repertoire. Our concerts will feature a diverse range of instruments, including the organ, bagpipes, and sitar, along with beautiful violin performances by the renowned Midori and Sarah Chang. These compositions draw inspiration from nature, various cultures, and the unique sounds of the instruments themselves. We are excited to welcome Misha Dichter at the piano and Cameron Carpenter at the organ, performing extraordinary concertos. To learn more about the Classics programs, join us in the Concert Hall at 7:00 p.m. before each concert.
A highlight of our season is the World Premiere of American Indian Symphony, a new work by Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate. This symphony introduces native stories from different cultural regions across the country. We hope this piece resonates deeply with you and audiences worldwide. Our Classics Series will culminate with Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, promising a breathtaking musical journey for us all.
The Chickasaw Nation Pops Series offers something for everyone, featuring the iconic music of your favorite artists and blockbuster Broadway musicals. Our cherished holiday tradition, A Very Merry Pops, will feature Ashley Brown and Tony DeSare for a soulful celebration of the season. We are also delighted to welcome back the immensely popular Pink Martini, who last captivated us in 2020!
At the Civic Center Music Hall and throughout our region, OKCPHIL remains committed to making music accessible through our Education and Community Engagement programs. From free outdoor orchestral concerts at Scissortail Park to music education programs and Youth Concerts for elementary school students, our initiatives enrich the lives of thousands of Oklahomans of all ages. Our Society of Strings program supports adult amateur string players, and our Young Musician Competition nurtures the talents of budding musicians.
We are deeply grateful for your ongoing loyalty, support, and generosity, which make all of this possible. Your ticket purchases, season subscriptions, and donations of all sizes enable us to deepen our impact on the community in countless ways.
Thank you for listening to our music, believing in our mission, and supporting us. I look forward to seeing you at our concerts throughout the season!
ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE MUSIC DIRECTOR
As he prepares for his seventh season leading the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Maestro Alexander Mickelthwate has become part of the community.
“It’s amazing, and also quite humbling,” Mickelthwate said. “My morning routine usually consists of studying at a local coffee shop. Quite often customers will approach me and say they saw me on television or on the side of a bus. To me, that signifies what we are doing at the OKCPHIL is resonating with the community, and making everyone feel welcome.”
The OKCPHIL has been a source of joy and inspiration for 36 years, enriching Oklahoma and its communities through orchestral music. When Mickelthwate came on board, he brought with him an eagerness to build on the successes of the past and pave the way for the future.
“Oklahoma City should be known as a breeding ground for fun and creativity,” he said. “That’s my thing. In our first season, we were always surprised how the audiences were really open to the contemporary. It’s crazy how embracing the audience is for adventurous, fun new things.”
Born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany, Mickelthwate grew up in a home filled with classical music. He received his degree from the Peabody Institute of Music, and has worked with orchestras in Atlanta, Winnipeg and Los Angeles. He is Music Director Emeritus of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in Canada, and in 2022, accepted the position of Music Director for the prestigious Bear Valley Music Festival in Bear Valley, California. In early 2023, Mickelthwate traveled to Hanoi where he was Guest Conductor at the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra.
Since he’s been in Oklahoma, Mickelthwate has received numerous awards and honors, including being named three time “The Face of Music” by 405 Magazine. Newspaper OKC Friday named him one of the “Top 50 Most Powerful,” and the Ladies Music Club of Oklahoma City lauded him “Musician of the Year.”
Accolades aside, one of Mickelthwate’s goals is to tell Oklahoma stories through music.
“When I first came to Oklahoma City, I read Sam Anderson’s book, ‘Boom Town,’ and from there I began studying Oklahoma’s colorful history,” he said. “We have so many great stories, and seeing them come to life through music is awe-inspiring. This season, we’ve programmed “World Premiere!” American Indian Symphony by Native American composer Jerod Tate. I want to continue bringing more of these stories to our audiences.”
When he’s not studying music or planning future OKCPHIL concerts, Mickelthwate is Artist in Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma where he enjoys working with the next generation of musicians, and conducting UCO’s symphony orchestra. After the music is over Mickelthwate loves spending time with his two sons, trying to beat them at ping pong, creating adventurous new recipes or improvising together on piano and guitar.
“My personal philosophy is that music has a way of reaching us in a way nothing else does,” Mickelthwate said. “It goes deep inside, creating and facilitating beauty in a harsh world. We want the Oklahoma City Philharmonic to be meaningful, to be fun and a place where we are all one. I have often said we feel the love, Oklahoma City. And we are giving it right back.
DR. SHANTI SIMON ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR
Associate Conductor Dr. Shanti Simon joined the OKCPHIL team in September 2023, programming and conducting the Discovery Family Series concerts. Her engaging personality and lively programming resonate with children of all ages. She also conducts Youth Concerts for elementary school field trips at the Civic Center Music Hall, where thousands of students are captivated by hearing familiar songs performed by a live orchestra. Dr. Simon captures their full attention. This season, she will make her Pops debut conducting “Defying Gravity: Stephen Schwartz & Friends.”
“The OKCPHIL is a world-class orchestra and it is an honor to join this team of engaging professional musicians. We love sharing music with young people in a setting that resonates with their world view. Kids naturally move and engage with music in an uninhibited, inspiring way. They remind us professionals why we got into music in the first place – because music speaks to our souls deeply beyond the boundaries that words can reach. Music makes us want to move, to dance, and to sing. We are looking forward to an exciting season with you and the kids of all ages in your lives!,” said Simon.
In addition to her work with the OKCPHIL, Dr. Simon is the Director of Bands at the University of Oklahoma where she conducts the Wind Symphony and leads the graduate wind conducting program. Prior to joining the faculty at OU, Dr. Simon was the Flight Commander and Associate Conductor with The United States Air Force Academy Band in Colorado Springs. Before moving to Colorado, Simon served as Flight Commander and Associate Conductor with The United States Air Force Band in Washington, D.C., where she conducted performances in the national capital region and around the country including the 2011 National Tree Lighting Ceremony with the Airmen of Note, hosted by President Obama and the First Family. Dr. Simon was on the faculty of Shenandoah Conservatory as the Associate Director of Bands for the 20132014 academic year. In 2016, she deployed to the Middle East with the United States Air Force Central Command bands as the Officer-In-Charge, overseeing musical troop-support, community-outreach and partnership-building missions in seven countries.
Before joining the Air Force, Dr. Simon earned her MM and DMA degrees in conducting from the University of Minnesota where she studied with Craig Kirchhoff. She received her BME and BM degrees from Stetson University with Bobby Adams. Hailing from Florida, Simon served as the Associate Director of Bands at Vero Beach High School for four years, where her ensembles consistently earned top ratings in all areas of district and state assessment. Simon is active nationally and internationally as a guest conductor and clinician.
OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
OFFICERS
Jerrod Shouse
President
Jim Roth
President Elect
Debbie McKinney Vice President
Louise Cleary Cannon Treasurer
Jennifer Schultz
Secretary
Jane Jayroe Gamble Immediate Past President
ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF
Stephanie Aaron Operations Manager
John Allen General Manager
Jose Batty Music Librarian
Blossom Crews Director of Development
Jared Davis Patron Services Lead
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Classical KUCO 90.1 Morningstar Properties
PHOTOGRAPHERS:
LIFETIME DIRECTORS
Jane B. Harlow
Patrick Alexander
DIRECTORS
Tracey Budz
Robert Clements
Lawrence H. Davis
Kevin Dunnington
Joy Hammons
Kirk Hammons
Honorable Jerome A. Holmes
James Hulsey
Debra Kos
Kate Furney Marketing Associate
Daniel Hardt Finance Director
Brent Hart Executive Director
Judy Hill Office Manager
Chase Kerby Education Manager
Oklahoma City Police Association
George Ryan
Kristian Kos
Tom Lerum
Matt Paque
Craig Perry
Sam Rainbolt
Robert Ruiz
Kelly Sachs
Amalia Miranda Silverstein
Doug Stussi
Geetika Verma
Evan Walter
Travis Weedn
Wendi Wilson
Joel Levine Archivist/Historian
Jenni Shrum
Marketing and Public Relations Director
Corbin Taggart
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Valorie Tatge Orchestra Personnel Manager
Michael Anderson, Jesse Edgar Photography, Simon Hurst, and Shevaun Williams and Associates
THE OKLAHOMA PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, INC.
424 Colcord Drive, Ste. B • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73102
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
Douglas J. Stussi, President
Charles E. Wiggin, First Vice President
Jeff Starling, Second Vice President
Louise Cleary Cannon, Treasurer
Alice Pippin, Secretary
DIRECTORS
Steven C. Agee
Patrick B. Alexander
J. Edward Barth
L. Joe Bradley
Andre’ B. Caldwell
Teresa L. Cooper
Paul Dudman
Jane Jayroe Gamble
Mischa Gorkuscha
Jane B. Harlow
Jean A. Hartsuck
Michael E. Joseph
Duke R. Ligon
Penny McCaleb Erik Salazar
Patrick E. Randall, II Richard Tanenbaum
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Geetika Verma President
Debra Kos
Immediate Past President
Rachael Geiger President-Elect
Orchestra League Office 424 Colcord Dr., Ste. B
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73102
Phone: (405) 232-7575
Fax: (405) 232-4353
e-mail: league@okcphil.org
OFFICERS
James Hulsey President
Desiree Singer
Immediate Past President
Mady Hendryx President-Elect
Daniel Karami
Secretary
Kelsey Karper
Marketing Chair
Ashleigh Robinson
Social Chair
Members: Piper Allred
THE ORCHESTRA
THIRTY-SIXTH SEASON
ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE, Music Director and Conductor
(open position), Principal, McCasland Foundation Chair (open position), Assistant Principal Seconds listed alphabetically
Sarah Sanford Brown
Paulo Eskitch
Audrey Lee
Corbin Mace
Angélica Pereira
Catherine Reaves, Assistant Principal Emeritus
Sophia Ro
Yajing (Cindy) Zhang
VIOLA
Royce McLarry, Principal
Mark Neumann, Assistant Principal
Joseph Guevara
Kelli Ingels
Steve Waddell
Donna Cain
Brian Frew
CELLO
Jonathan Ruck, Principal, Orchestra League Chair (open position), Assistant Principal
Valorie Tatge
Emily Stoops
Jim Shelley
Angelika Machnik-Jones
Jean Statham
Samantha Kerns
BASS
Anthony Stoops, Principal
Larry Moore, Assistant Principal
Christine Craddock
Mark Osborn
Taylor Dawkins
DoYoun Kim
FLUTE
Valerie Watts, Principal
Parthena Owens
Nancy Stizza-Ortega
PICCOLO
Nancy Stizza-Ortega
OBOE
Lisa Harvey-Reed, Principal
Rachel Maczko
Katherine Casto
ENGLISH HORN
Rachel Maczko
CLARINET
Bradford Behn, Principal
Tara Heitz
James Meiller
BASS/E-FLAT CLARINET
James Meiller
BASSOON
Rod Ackmann, Principal
James Brewer
HORN
Kate Pritchett, Principal, G. Rainey Williams Chair
James Rester*
Mirella Gable*
Matt Reynolds
TRUMPET
Karl Sievers, Principal
Jay Wilkinson
Michael Anderson
TROMBONE
Philip Martinson, Principal
Hope Bellows
John Allen, Bass Trombone
TUBA
Ted Cox, Principal
TIMPANI
Jamie Whitmarsh, Principal
PERCUSSION
Patrick Womack, Principal
Stephanie Krichena
Roger Owens
HARP
Gaye LeBlanc, Principal
PIANO
Peggy Payne, Principal
*on leave for 2024-25 season
PRODUCTION STAFF
John Allen, General Manager
Stephanie Aaron, Operations Manager
Valorie Tatge, Personnel Manager
Jose Batty, Librarian
Ken Dines, Stage Crew Leader
PLANNED GIVING
The Oklahoma Philharmonic Society, Inc. is honored to recognize its EncoreSociety members — visionary thinkers who have provided for the future of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic through their estate plans.
Anonymous (3)
Steven C. Agee, Ph.D.
Linda and Patrick Alexander
Gary and Jan Allison
Louise Cleary Cannon
Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements
Thomas and Rita Dearmon
Dr. and Mrs. James D. Dixson
Dr. Ralph and Lois Ganick
Hugh Gibson
Pam and Gary Glyckherr
Carey and Gayle Goad
Ms. Olivia Hanson
Jane B. Harlow
Dr. and Mrs. James Hartsuck
Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. Joseph
THANK YOU
Joel Levine and Don Clothier
John and Caroline Linehan
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin C, Lunde, Jr.
Mrs. Jackie Marron
Mr. and Mrs. John McCaleb
Mrs. Jean McLaughlin
W. Cheryl Moore
Carl Andrew Rath
Mrs. Cathy Reaves
Mrs. Lil Ross
Dr. Lois Salmeron
Mr. and Mrs. William F. Shdeed
Doug and Susie Stussi
Larry and Leah Westmoreland
Mr. John S. Williams
Mrs. Carolyn Zachritz
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 Philharmonic’s future in your own will or estate plan. For more information on how to become an Encore Society member, contact the Philharmonic’s Development Office at (405) 232-7575.
MEET OUR FAMILY
THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE MUSIC
Megan Freivogel McDonough of Jupiter String Quartet, I recently received my DMA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I previously earned my Master of Music Education degree and received many awards, including the Paul Rolland Memorial Violin Competition Award. Throughout my master’s and doctoral programs, I received full scholarships as well as the Cooke Fellowship.
Along with playing the violin, I am very enthusiastic about teaching and have taught violin, chamber music, and orchestras in diverse settings since 2006. I have intensively studied string pedagogies of Rolland, Zweig, Menuhin, and Suzuki. I completed four years of training in Rolland pedagogy and am currently listed in Paul Rolland String Pedagogy Society. I have published my articles in many prestigious journals, such as String Research Journal and American String Teacher Journal, and I have also presented my research at many conferences, workshops, and seminars.
I am currently teaching at Oklahoma Baptist University as an adjunct professor of violin and a preparatory academy violin instructor, as well as teaching at the preparatory academy of Oklahoma State University.
OKCPHIL Staff
I’m a proud Bartlesville, Oklahoma native who graduated from Southern Nazarene University. I’ve spent the last two decades doing marketing, advertising, and public relations for Oklahoma institutions like The Oklahoman and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Joining the Oklahoma City Philharmonic is a natural next step for me, and I am thrilled to promote such an iconic organization that provides inspiration and joy for the community through orchestral music. Working with others who are as equally passionate about what they do is an absolute honor and privilege. While my own musical abilities basically extend to singing along to the radio in my car, I am already blown away by the staggering talents of every single musician in our orchestra. When I’m not at work, I love working in my garden, reading, traveling, volunteering, and spending time with my family and beloved dogs, Buddy, Baby & Jack and cat, Grayson.
MIN JUNG KIM
JENNI SHRUM
GIFTS TO THE PHIL
The Oklahoma City Philharmonic 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 live orchestral performances and a variety of education and community engagement programs, please contact the Philharmonic’s Development Office at (405) 232-7575.
This Annual Fund recognition reflects contributions made in the 2023-24 season and contributions for the 2024-25 Season made through July 15, 2023.
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!
UNDERWRITER
$25,000 - $49,999
Ad Astra Foundation
E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Foundation
Express Employment Professionals
International
Dr. Margaret Freede-Owens and Daniel Owens
Oklahoma City Philharmonic Foundation
Robert Glenn Rapp Foundation
The Ann Lacy Foundation
Dr. Amalia Silverstein
Susie and Doug Stussi
GUARANTOR
$10,000 - $24,999
Linda and Patrick Alexander
American Fidelity Foundation
Mo Anderson
Lawrence H. & Ronna C. Davis
Jane Jayroe Gamble and Gerald Gamble
Jane B. Harlow
Ed and Barbara Krei
Mr. Albert Lang
Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores
Bill and Sally McNutt
Foundation Fund
MidFirst Bank
Providing leadership support.
Larry and Polly Nichols
OG&E Energy Corporation
Dr. Lois Salmeron
The Crawley Family Foundation
W&W Steel
John Walker
BENEFACTOR
$5,000 - $9,999
BancFirst
Margaret and John Biggs
Dr. and Mrs. L. Joe Bradley
Martha and Ronnie Bradshaw
Clements Foods Foundation
Lisa Carver Collins
Louise Cleary Cannon and Gerry Cannon
Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements
Terri Cooper
Devon Energy Corporation
Mr. David Daugherty
Bryan Garrett Injury Law Firm
Darleene A. Harris
Mekusukey Oil Company, LLC
Ruth Mershon Fund
Dr. and Mrs. Patrick McKee
Glenna and Dick Tanenbaum
Diane and Michael Thomas
CORPORATIONS, FOUNDATIONS & GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Express their enerous commitment to the community.
SUSTAINERS
$2,500 - $4,999
BNSF Railway Foundation
Brewer Entertainment
Oklahoma Allergy & Asthma Clinic
Oklahoma Craft
Omni Hotels
ASSOCIATES
$1,500 - $2,499
AEIOU Foundation, Dr. Elliott
Schwartz and Pam Shanklin
Bank of Oklahoma
The Fred Jones Family Foundation
The Kerr Foundation
FRIENDS
$1,000 - $1,499
PARTNERS
$500 - $999
MEMBERS
$250-$499
Flashdragon Investments
Oklahomans for the Arts
GIFTS TO THE PHIL
INDIVIDUALS
Providing essential support for the Annual Fund.
SUSTAINER
$2,500-$4,999
Anonymous
Virginia and Albert Aguilar
Dr. and Mrs. Dewayne Andrews
Dr. and Mrs. John C. Andrus
Mr. J. Edward Barth
Mrs. Betty D. Bellis-Mankin
Nels and Donna Bentson
Dr. and Mrs. Charles Bethea
Dr. and Mrs. Philip C. Bird
Mrs. Phyllis Brawley
Mr. and Mrs. Pete Brown
Robert and Karen Browne
Family Fund
Phil G. and Cathy Busey
Mari Cook Medley
Barbara Cooper
Mr. and Mrs. David C. DeLana
Mr. Sidney G. Dunagan
Alisha and Kevin Dunnington
David and Druanne Durrett
Dr. Thurma J. Fiegel
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Fleckinger
Frank Goforth and Nancy Halliday
Kirk Hammons
Dr. and Mrs. James Hartsuck
David and Vicki Hunt
Colonel (ret.) Dean and Mrs. Jeanne Jackson
Tom and Cindy Janssen
Kim and Michael Joseph
Kathy and Terry Kerr
Tom and Jane Lerum
Robert B. Milsten Fund
Mr. and Mrs. Phil Pippin
Jerry and Jan Plant
Mr. H.E. Rainbolt
Mr. Larry Reed
Mrs. Lil Ross
Lance and Cindy Ruffel
Ernesto and Lin Sanchez
Dr. and Mrs. Hal Scofield
Jeff and Kim Short
Rick and Amanda Smith
John and Katherine Spaid
Mr. and Mrs. John E. Stonecipher
John Stuemky and James Brand
Billie Thrash
Janie Pryor Tubb
Mrs. June Tucker
Larry L. and Leah A. Westmoreland
Dr. James and Mrs. Elizabeth Wise
ASSOCIATE
$1,500 - $2,499
Anonymous (2)
Fatima Abrantes-Pais
Nancy and Louis Almaraz
Ms. Beth M. Alonso
Ms. Zonia Armstrong
Dr. Sterling and Cheryl Baker
Dr. Mary Zoe Baker
Dr. and Mrs. William L. Beasley
William Beck
Dr. Jack and Ruth Beller
Nick and Betsy Berry
Bart Binning
Dr. Robert and Kristin Blakeburn
Mike and Dawn Borelli
Mr. and Mrs. Del Boyles
Mrs. Carole S. Broughton
Mr. and Mrs. William M. Cameron
J. Christopher and Ruth Carey
Ms. Janice B. Carmack
Jeff Caughron
Drs. Fong Chen and Helen Chiou
Nancy Coleman
Cynthia Cortright
Patricia Czerwinski
Mr. Charles B. Darr, III
Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Dearmon
Tony and Pam Dela Vega
Ms. Vickie Dennis
Gary and Fran Derrick
Mr. Joel Dixon
Dr. Matthew Draelos and Mrs. Jenie Draelos
Nancy Payne Ellis
Dr. and Mrs. Royice B. Everett
Mrs. Ann Felton Gilliland
Paul and Debbie Fleming
Mr. and Mrs. Kelly George
Natalie Kurkjian and Christopher Geyer
Mr. Kent Graham
Dr. Stephen Hamilton and Dr. Pamela Craven Hamilton
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence K. Hellman
Walt and Jean Hendrickson
Frank and Bette Jo Hill
Mr. and Mrs. Joe R. Homsey, Jr.
Lois and Roger Hornbrook
Thomas and Elizabeth Hrubik
Blair and Maggie Humphreys
Mary Lu Jarvis
Mr. and Mrs. Carlos Johnson
Zach Johnson
Mrs. Margaret Keith
Mike and Kay Kellogg
Drs. Daniel and Diana Kennedy
Aaron and Jennifer Ketter
Ms. Claren Kidd
David Kinnard
Debra Klinghoffer
Debra and Kristian Kos
Mike and Kay Lacey
Richard and Dr. Barbara Masters
William and Oxana Matthey
Mr. and Mrs. John A. McCaleb
Cindy and Johnny McCharen
Mr. and Mrs. Tom J. McDaniel
Debbie McKinney
John and Anna McMillin
Mr. and Mrs. K. T. Meade, Jr.
Robert and Kathy Mendez
Deann Merritt Parham
Sandra Meyers
Tom and Katherine Milam
Tom and Peggy Miller
Betsy Mitschke and Steven Helt
David and Krystal Murer
Dr. Gene L. Muse
Mrs. Jeaneen Naifeh
Steven Newell and Deborah Naylor
Kathleen Oliver
Edward Oliver and Harriet Lord
Richard and Gayle Parry
Mr. and Mrs. Corey Phelps
Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth R. Rees
Tracey Romberger
Donald Rowlett
Larry and Patricia Sanford
Fred and Maria Schmitt
Jeff and Marissa Scott
Mr. and Mrs. John M. Seward
Pam and Bill Shdeed
Emma and John Shelton
Thank you to the following who believed in our mission by supporting the 51st Annual Symphony Show House!
SHOW HOUSE COMMITTEE
Symphony Show House Chair
J. Mark Taylor
Designer Selection Committee
Anonymous
Designer Sales Chairs
Jeannie Drake
Carole Doerner
Inventory Chair
Lois Salmeron
Sponsorship Chairs
Margaret Freede
Maggie Sermersheim
Maintenance Chairs
Ed Oliver
Daniel Karami
Social Media Chair
Rachael Geiger
Front Desk Chair
Carol McCoy
Room Staffing & Training Chair
Dottie Overal
Public Relations Chair
Joan Bryant
Other Committee Members
Dawn Byram
Meg Salyer
Susan Satterlee
2024 SYMPHONY SHOW HOUSE COMMUNITY PARTNERS
David DeLana with Heritage Press
Martin Taylor Creative Group
Julie Ayers with Sevens Photography
Maggie Sermersheim with The Barlor
Lacey Gilliam
Headlining Show House Patrons
Dr. Margaret Freede Owens
Glenna and Dick Tanenbaum
Gold Patrons
Benjamin Moore Paints
Silver Patrons
Express Employment Professionals
International
NvYA Technology
2024 SYMPHONY SHOW HOUSE TOUR BOOK
David DeLana with Heritage Press
Julie Ayers with Sevens Photography
Martin Taylor with Martin Taylor Creative Group
Bronze Patrons
Larry and Ronna Davis
Lance and Cindy Ruffel
Benefactor Patrons
Skip and Joan Cunningham
Sue and John Francis
Jane B. Harlow
Col. (ret.) Dean and
Mrs. Jeanne Jackson
Kings Worldwide Transportation
Dr. Lois L. Salmeron
Joan Bryant
Blossom Crews
J. Mark Taylor
The Kerr Foundation, Inc.
Bob and Tammy Weiss
Friend Patrons
Judy Austin
Ms. Janice Carmack
Marsha Crook
Rita Gunter Dearmon
Carole Doerner
Brent Hart and Matt Thomas
Margaret Keith
Sarah Sagran, CPA, PLLC
Thank you to the Talented Designers and Boutique Owners who made the 2024 Symphony Show House a Reality!
Rosinna Gies - Amini’s Galleria
Tuesday Fay & Halah Songer - Bob Mills Furniture
Phoebe Austerman - Calvert’s Plant Interiors
Shara & Raul Castillo - Castle Rock Countertops
Andrew Moore - Frontier Outdoor
Katelynn Henry, Steve Calonkey, Steve Simpson
– Henry Home Interiors
Holly Flinton - Holly Flinton Design, Inc.
Patty Tippit - Home Dazzle
G. Jason Johnson - Jason George Interiors
Nora Johnson - Johnson Manor
Kimberly Morgan – Kimberly Morgan Arts
Dr. Kari Lopez, Renae Brady, Tracy Knoche - Lorec Ranch
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 may be seated during the first convenient pause, as determined by the management.
ELECTRONIC DEVICES must be turned off and put away during the performance (no calling, texting, photo or video use please).
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.
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 lobby 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 lobby. Please inquire at the Box Office.
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HEARING LOOPS have been installed. Ask your audiologist to activate the telecoil in your hearing aid or cochlear implant. Due to the mechanics of the stage, the hearing loops do not reach the pit section but are available at the Box Office and the Thelma Gaylord Performing Arts Theatre. The copper wire in the floor and telecoil work together to connect the hearing device to the theater’s sound system using a magnetic field which dramatically improves sound clarity for patrons using hearing devices.
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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 first floor of the Arts District Garage at 424 Colcord Drive in Suite B. The Philharmonic Ticket Office is open Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and by phone on concert Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
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ARTISTS, PROGRAMMING, AND DATES SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
CONCEPTS FROM THE Maestro
This season, we’re celebrating our “classical” repertoire—music that is tried and true, resonating deeply with audiences over time and embodying a deeply romantic spirit, cherished by many. Join us as we explore these beloved classics!
OPENING NIGHT WITH MIDORI
This season kicks off with Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, a staple among the top ten violin concertos of all time, alongside Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn. This concerto, Sibelius’ only one, was famously too difficult for the soloist at its world premiere. Its romantic essence and unconventional structure make it a captivating work.
OPENING NIGHT WITH MIDORI
CLASSICS
ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE, CONDUCTOR
MIDORI, VIOLIN
Concerto for Violin in D minor, Op. 47
Allegro moderato
Adagio di molto
Allegro, ma non tanto
Midori, violin
I’m quite excited to work with Midori for the first time. A child prodigy who rose to prominence at just 11 under Leonard Bernstein, she has enjoyed an illustrious international career for over 40 years.
In the second half, we’ll perform Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, another iconic Fifth Symphony that stands alongside Beethoven’s and Mahler’s. Composed in the aftermath of World War II, each movement serves as a personal diary entry, reflecting a range of emotions from deep despair to jubilant exuberance. It’s truly Shostakovich’s most performed work and a quintessential classic.
For a deeper understanding of concert programming, please, join Maestro Mickelthwate for his Preconcert Talk at 7pm in the auditorium. Open seating.
Intermission
0:44 SHOSTAKOVICH . ....... Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
Moderato
Allegretto Largo
Allegro non troppo
THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:
Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Thursday, October 17 at 8 pm and Saturday, October 19 at 8 am on “Performance Oklahoma”. Simultaneous internet streaming is also available during the broadcast. Or KUCO broadcast dates can be found on our website www.okcphil.org.
GUEST ARTIST
MIDORI
Midori is a visionary artist, activist and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience. In the four decades since her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11, the “simply magical” (Houston Chronicle) violinist has performed with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and has collaborated with world-renowned musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, and many others. Midori is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Ravinia Steans Music Institute’s Piano & Strings program, and oversees the program beginning in summer 2024.
Midori celebrated her 40th anniversary last season with Warner Classics’ release of the complete Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and a Beethoven Trios concert tour on three continents.
Recently she had a summer appearance at the Santander International Festival, followed by fall tours of Europe and North America with Festival Strings Lucerne. Other highlights include performances of Bernstein’s Serenade with the National Repertory Orchestra under Michael Stern, WDR Symphony in Germany under Constantinos Carydis, and Sofia Philharmonic in Bulgaria. She gave two performances of the 2019 Violin Concerto An die Unsterbliche Geliebte (“To the Immortal Beloved”), written for her by Detlev Glanert: with the NDR Radiophilharmonie under Andrew Manze and with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, a co-commissioner of the work. Additional highlights include concerts with the KBS Symphony in Seoul and with Solistes Européens Luxembourg at the Luxembourg Philharmonic as well as guest appearances in Amsterdam, Antwerp, South America and Riga.
Deeply committed to furthering humanitarian and educational goals, Midori has founded several non-profit organizations; the New York City-based Midori & Friends and Japan-based MUSIC SHARING both celebrated 30th anniversaries in 2022-2023
Born in Osaka in 1971, she began her violin studies with her mother, Setsu Goto, at an early age. In 1982, conductor Zubin Mehta invited the then 11-year-old Midori to perform with the New York Philharmonic in the orchestra’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, where the foundation was laid for her subsequent career. Midori is the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Smith College, Yale University, Longy School of Music and Shenandoah University. She plays the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù ‘exHuberman’ and uses four bows – two by Dominique Peccatte, one by François Peccatte and one by Paul Siefried.
PROGRAM NOTES
OPENING NIGHT WITH MIDORI
SIBELIUS
Concerto for Violin in D Minor, Op. 47
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Last Performance: 10/17/2015
Violin: Augustin Hadelich
Born: December 8, 1865, in Tavastehus (Hämeenlinna), Finland
Died: September 20, 1957, in Järvenpää, Finland
Work composed September 1902 through the beginning of 1904; today it is nearly always presented in Sibelius’s revision of 1905. Work premiered: February 8, 1904, in Helsinki, with the composer conducting the Helsingfors Philharmonic and soloist Victor Nováček
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings, in addition to the solo violin
It is rare indeed to experience a concert consisting two works that are both in D minor and are both their respective composers’ Op. 47. Savor the moment.
Asked to use the words “Sibelius” and “violin” together in a sentence, most music lovers would automatically add the word “concerto” to the mix. It’s inevitable, really: Sibelius’s D-minor Violin Concerto towers as an icy summit in the instrument’s literature. But Sibelius and the violin are connected in other ways, too. He aspired to become a violin virtuoso himself but unfortunately fixed on that goal too late for it to be feasible. When he embarked on violin lessons, he was 14 years old. By that age many virtuosos-in-training are already seasoned players, and the provincial instruction available to Sibelius, combined with his tendency toward stage fright, limited his progress. Still, he became accomplished enough to play in the Vienna Conservatory’s orchestra when he was a student there, in 1890-91, and he even auditioned (unsuccessfully) for a chair in the Vienna Philharmonic.
Sibelius enriched his instrument’s repertoire by a quite a few works apart from the Concerto. He worked on a second violin concerto in 1915 but abandoned it far from completion, recycling his sketches into his Sixth Symphony. He composed numerous works for violin and piano, including a Sonata (1889) and a Sonatina (Op. 80, 1915), as well as many items grouped into collections of short movements. He would complete his final composition in 1927 and in his final three decades limited his musical creativity to tinkering with extant pieces and making stabs at works that would never come to fruition. Shortly before he gave up composing, Sibelius was engaged one last time with the violin, although the Suite for Violin and Orchestra he projected remained a fragmented draft.
None of these works rivals the Violin Concerto in combining his unique musical language with the capabilities of the solo instrument. This, in effect, was the central challenge confronting the composer. Already in such works as his first two symphonies and his Lemminkäinen tone poems he had defined his dark, sober sound, and these were not characteristics that would easily be melded with the more extroverted, even flashy tradition that surrounded most violin concertos of the 19th century. Sibelius was not natively drawn to composing concertos at all, and this would be the only one, for any instrument, that he would see through to completion. Still, a concerto needed to have a certain degree of flair or else a soloist could hardly be expected to perform it. Sibelius solved this problem by creating what some historians have viewed as “a deepening of the tradition.” The musicologist James Hepokoski finds in this work “a virtuoso concerto simultaneously affirmed and transcended by a thoroughgoing seriousness of purpose and ‘surplus’ density of compositional pondering.”
The section of a traditional concerto most at odds with Sibelius’s predilection for profundity would be the first-movement cadenza, in which soloists are given the greatest opportunities to demonstrate their technical prowess. Sibelius meets the challenge head-on: he provides a solo cadenza but instead of presenting it as a sort of pendant to the proceedings he gives it immense structural importance, moving it to the middle of the movement and essentially making it fill the role of a development section. (A second cadenza, playing a more traditional function, originally stood at the end of the movement, but Sibelius eliminated it when he tightened the concerto in his 1905 revision.) Also non-traditional is the lack of real dialogue in this concerto, the sort of backand-forth conversation between soloist and orchestra that
PROGRAM NOTES
we are accustomed to hearing in the concertos of, say, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.
The vast breadth of the opening movement is mirrored in the still beauty of the slow movement, melancholy in a way that perhaps recalls Tchaikovsky. Although this concerto is not a prime example of Sibelius’s occasional penchant for folk inspiration, the finale does seem to be a dance of some sort. The musical commentator Donald Francis Tovey called it “a polonaise for polar bears,” a description so perfect that few program annotators can resist quoting it.
Tovey on Sibelius
Donald Francis Tovey’s “polar bear” comment is his most famous utterance on Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, but his entire essay on the piece impresses with its insight. Among his observations:
As with all Sibelius’s more important works, its outlines are huge and simple; and if a timely glance at an atlas had not reminded me that Finland is mostly flat and water-logged with lakes, I should doubtless have said that ‘his forms are hewn out of the rocks of his native and Nordic mountains.’ The composer to whose style the word ‘lapidary’ (lapidarisch) was first applied by the orthodoxy of the [eighteen] ’nineties is Bruckner; and if the best work of Sibelius suggests anything else in music, it suggests a Bruckner gifted with an easy mastery and the spirit of a Polar explorer. ... The real problems of musical form are always, in the last resort, problems of movement; and Sibelius has his own special sense of movement, which delivers him from the need of Bruckner’s desperate and dangerous gesture of ‘I pause for a reply.’ It gives him complete command of the arts of rousing expectation and of slow gradation to a climax.
—JMK
SHOSTAKOVICH
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 Dmitri Shostakovich
First Performance: 10/15/1963
Conductor: Guy Fraser Harrison
Last Performance: 2/4/2017
Conductor: Andreas Delfs
Born: September 12 (old style)/25 (new style), 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russia
Died: August 9, 1975, in Moscow
Work composed: April 18 to July 20, 1937
Work premiered: November 21, 1937, in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic, with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic
Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets and E-flat clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, celesta, two harps, piano, and strings
The biography of Dmitri Shostakovich reads like something out of a particularly nightmarish Russian novel: Dostoyevsky, perhaps, but with even more ironic jokes. His gifts were unmistakable—the world has agreed that, along with Sergei Prokofiev, he was the Soviet Union’s greatest composer—but he spent practically his whole career falling in and out of favor with the Communist authorities and he ended up battered and paranoid in the process.
Only the most perverse novelist could have dreamed up the life that lay ahead following the success of his pert Symphony No. 1 (1924-25): how in 1930 Shostakovich’s satirical opera The Nose would run afoul of Soviet politicos, being denounced by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians for its “bourgeois decadence”; how he would redeem himself through his charming Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1933; how his fortunes would crash again in 1936, when Stalin saw and loathed his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
PROGRAM NOTES
OPENING NIGHT WITH MIDORI
and reduced him to nothingness until the composer contritely offered his Fifth Symphony (1937) as “the creative reply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism” (not really Shostakovich’s words, though often attributed to him).
The adventures would continue through the rest of his life. In the wake of his rehabilitation, he would be awarded the Stalin Prize twice in succession, in 1940 and 1941. In 1945, his star would fall again when his Ninth Symphony struck the bureaucrats as an insufficient reflection of the glory of Russia’s victory over the Nazis. He rebounded with yet another Stalin Prize in 1949, but nonetheless squirreled away private masterpieces in his desk drawer until Soviet cultural policies began to thaw after the dictator’s death in 1953. Only in 1960 would he feel confident enough to hazard the series of searing, poignant works rich in musical autobiography that would characterize the final years of his earthly tragedy.
Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 5 in a span of three months of 1937, at a moment when he was effecting a rebound from official disgrace. Who knows what he was really thinking when he wrote this piece? Lots of people have suggested lots of answers—there is probably no composer about whom musicologists debate with such virulence—but in the end, Shostakovich did an excellent job of covering his tracks. If we choose, we may take at face value the comments he provided in an article published just before the work’s premiere: “The birth of the Fifth Symphony was preceded by a prolonged period of internal preparation. Perhaps because of this, the actual writing of the symphony took a comparatively short time (the third movement, for example, was written in three days).... The theme of my symphony is the development of the individual. I saw man with all his sufferings as the central idea of the work, which is lyrical in mood from start to finish; the finale resolves the tragedy and tension of the earlier movements on a joyous, optimistic note.”
No doubt self-preservation played a role in Shostakovich’s crafting this piece as he did. In fact, the officially sanctioned review of the premiere, in the publication Izvestia, found in it the stuff of a Socialist-Realist program. It identified the opening movement as a depiction of toiling miners and massive factory machinery subjugating nature, the scherzo as a picture of the athleticism of happy Soviet citizens, and so on. Probably Shostakovich had nothing so specific in mind. On the other hand, he didn’t raise his voice in protest, since his making a livelihood as a composer depended to a large degree on the official acceptance of this symphony.
The Fifth has proved the most popular of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies. It provides an excellent introduction to
his sound-world, which in this case is rich in satire and grotesqueries yet taut in its classical formality (or even “neoclassical” formality, in the second movement). The music is propelled with a driving sense of momentum throughout, nowhere more than in the energetic finale, whose pounding impact rarely fails to bring down the house.
The Composer Speaks
In a commentary published on January 12, 1938, in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Shostakovich spoke of his newly premiered Fifth Symphony:
My latest work may be called a lyrical-heroic symphony. Its basic ideas are the sufferings of man, and optimism. I wanted to convey optimism asserting itself as a world outlook through a series of tragic conflicts in a great inner, mental struggle.
During a discussion at the Leningrad section of the Composers’ Union, some of my colleagues called my Fifth Symphony an autobiographical work. On the whole, I consider this a fair appraisal. In my opinion, there are biographical elements in any work of art. Every work should bear the stamp of a living person, its author, and it is poor and tedious work whose creator is invisible.
—JMK
JAMES M. KELLER
Now in his 25th season as Program Annotator of the San Francisco Symphony, James M. Keller is the former Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the author of Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University Press).
CONCEPTS FROM THE Maestro
This season, we’re celebrating our “classical” repertoire—music that is tried and true, resonating deeply with audiences over time and embodying a deeply romantic spirit, cherished by many. Join us as we explore these beloved classics!
THE
ORGAN SYMPHONY
Our second classics concert of the season will spotlight the magnificent organ. During my teenage years, I had the joy of playing the organ on many Sundays, marveling at its power and rich colors. I was also honored to conduct the inaugural concert of the Walt Disney Concert Hall’s new organ—an unforgettable experience!
We’ll feature the world-renowned organist Cameron Carpenter, performing two iconic pieces for organ and orchestra: Poulenc’s Organ Concerto and Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony. Both composers brilliantly paired the orchestra with the organ, an instrument that closely resembles an orchestra in its rich sound. The key difference, of course, is that the organ’s complex textures are produced by a single player.
Saint-Saëns’ last symphony was composed in tribute to Franz Liszt, who had just passed away. It’s a true classic that showcases the grandeur and versatility of the organ. Don’t miss this exceptional concert!
For a deeper understanding of concert programming, please, join Maestro Mickelthwate for his Preconcert Talk at 7pm in the auditorium. Open seating.
THE ORGAN SYMPHONY
OCTOBER 12, 2024 • 8:00 P.M.
ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE, CAMERON CARPENTER,
0:24 POULENC Concerto in G minor for Organ, Strings, and Timpani Andante—Allegro giocoso—Subito andante modera to—Tempo allegro, molto agitato—Très calme. Lent— Tempo de l’Allegro initial—Tempo introduction. Largo Cameron Carpenter, organ
Intermission
0:36 SAINT-SAËNS... Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, Organ Adagio—Allegro moderato—Poco adagio Allegro moderato—Maestoso—Allegro
THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:
THE SALMERON FAMILY
Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, November 7, at 8 pm and Saturday, November 9, at 8 am on “Performance Oklahoma”. Simultaneous internet streaming is also available during the broadcast.
Cameron Carpenter appears by arrangement with Columbia Artists Music, LLC.
GUEST ARTIST
CAMERON CARPENTER
Born April 17, 1981, Titusville, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.; homeschooled 1981–1992. American Boychoir School (Princeton, NJ), 1993-1995; public performances in USA and Europe as a chorister, accompanist and keyboard soloist. Homeschooled, 1995–1996; University of North Carolina School of the Arts 1996–2000 (high school diploma), The Juilliard School, New York, NY, 2000–2006 (Bachelor of Music in Organ Performance 2004; Master of Music in Organ Performance, 2006). Many arrangements and transcriptions for organ, mostly of orchestral and piano works, from c. 1996. First organist nominated for a GRAMMY TM Award for the album Revolutionary (Telarc®, 2008). Publishing contract with Edition Peters 2009; emigrated to Germany 2010; first concerto for organ and orchestra (The Scandal, Op. 3, premiered 2011 at Cologne Philharmonie by Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Alexander Shelley). Management by Konzertdirektion Schmid and CAMI Music LLC since 2011; global touring, orchestral engagements, media since 2011. Featured speaker at TED, IdeaCity, Aspen Ideas Festival, other conferences; Leonard Bernstein Award (Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival), 2012. First Organist-In-Residence, Philharmonie Berlin, Season 2012–2013; recording contract with Sony Classical, 2013.
Premiere of Terry Riley’s organ concerto At The Royal Majestic in Los Angeles, Geneva, and Berlin, 2014; ECHO Klassik award (If You Could Read My Mind), 2015. Designed and debuted George W. Mergens Memorial Organ at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, Palm Beach, 2016. Creation of organ and orchestra version of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, 2016–2017; Artist-in-Residence, Konzerthaus Berlin, Season 2017–2018. Rachmaninoff Paganini mounted with I.T.O. and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (world premiere Shanghai 2018), Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra Wien, Graz Philharmonic, Bamberger Philharmoniker, Orchestre National du Lyon, Minnesota Orchestra, others.
Rachmaninoff Paganini recorded with I.T.O. and Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Christoph Eschenbach for Sony Classical, 2019. Designed and directed installation of 246 site-specific installations of I.T.O. for approximately 350+ concert events internationally (since 2014). Transcribed J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 and Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Romantic’ (1930); world premieres of same, I.T.O. at Paris Philharmonie; Jongen Symphonie Concertante with Dallas Symphony, Columbus Symphony, 2019. 75 ‘#organtruck’ all-Bach concerts at disabled and elder care facilities across greater Germany; Rheingau Music Festival production with I.T.O. for Deutsche Telekom; Opus Klassik Award (Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini); organ soloist on Epic Orchestra: New Sound of Classical, 2020. Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut, 2022.
PROGRAM NOTES
THE ORGAN SYMPHONY
Born: December 11, 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France
Work composed: Berlioz wrote his opera Benvenuto Cellini in 1836-37
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 (optionally just 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
That Hector Berlioz was a genius there can be no doubt, but genius does not always ensure a calm passage through life. His 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 lessons 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 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 award in 1830 in his fourth attempt, with his cantata La mort de Sardanapale, of which only a fragment survives. To qualify as truly successful, French composers of that time 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,” Berlioz called it), 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 him 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 he effected severe revisions. It was unveiled in its revised form at Weimar’s Grossherzogliches Hoftheater on March 20, 1852, and then, with further alterations that 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 illhumour, 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 of 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
, Op. 23
PROGRAM NOTES
THE
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.”
Berlioz in Italy
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 him, and the grantors were disappointed that he produced rather little serious work while he was 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 the all three of his operas, including in a most unmistakable way Benvenuto Cellini.
—JMK
Concerto in G minor for Organ, Strings, and Timpani
Francis Poulenc
First Performance: 12/13/1955
Organ: Richard Ellsasser
Last Performance: 1/24/1981
Organ: John Wright
Born: December 11, 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France
Born: January 7, 1899, in Paris, France
Died: January 30, 1963, in Paris
Work composed: 1936-38
Work premiered: For a private audience on December 16, 1938, at the hôtel particulier of Princesse Edmond de Polignac in Paris, with Nadia Boulanger conducting and Maurice Duruflé as soloist; the public premiere took place June 21, 1939, at Salle Gaveau in Paris, with Roger Désormière conducting the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, again with Duruflé.
Instrumentation: String orchestra and timpani plus solo organ
POULENC
sober year when the French watched nervously as Hitler unified Germany with Austria through the Anschluss and then began mobilizing his nation’s military forces. By the time the piece was unveiled that December, the German annexation of the Czech Sudetenland and the horrors of Kristallnacht were already history.
Tracing the genesis of the Organ Concerto leads us to Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune, who used her wealth to become an extraordinary music patron. She convened a salon at her Parisian mansion in a 1500-square-foot room, mirrored à la Versailles, in which 250 spectators could be seated comfortably. A separate street entrance led to her “atelier,” which was equipped with a Cavaillé-Coll organ that was pressed into service for gatherings on Tuesday evenings. Her conversations with Poulenc about commissioning the Organ Concerto began in 1934, which is to say at the height of the Great Depression. She explained in a letter that “thanks to Mr. Roosevelt, my musical budget has been very considerably reduced. I can therefore offer you only ... 12,500 francs.” Nadia Boulanger, who was the Princesse’s musical adviser as well as her organ teacher, urged Poulenc on, and in the spring of 1936, he wrote to Marie-Blanche de Polignac (who was married to Princesse Edmond’s nephew): “The Concerto is almost completed. It has given me a great deal of trouble but I hope it is all right as it is now, and that you will like it.
PROGRAM NOTES
It is not the amusing Poulenc of the Concerto for Two Pianos but more like a Poulenc en route for the cloister, very XVth [century], if you like.” But the piece was not almost finished, and that September Poulenc was still, as he wrote to Boulanger, “hoping for some inspiration from above.”
Finally, the piece was ready to be played before an invited audience in the Princesse’s home on December 16, 1938, on which occasion Boulanger conducted (though her friendship with the Princesse had gone somewhat south by then) and the organist was the eminent Maurice Duruflé, who is credited on the printed score for helping fashion the organ registration for the work. La revue musicale immediately praised the concerto for its “exalted and virile inspiration.” “Written in a very forthright style,” the account continued, “it employs technical means drawn directly from the language of J.S. Bach.” Overall, Poulenc’s inspiration seems less drawn directly from Bach than from the neo-Baroque essays of Stravinsky, such as his Octet (1923), Apollon musagète (1927-28), and Oedipus Rex (1926-27). This last seems a particular model for the austere music that immediately follows the organ’s opening blast, with the timpani and doubles basses (pizzicato) intoning ominous minor thirds beneath the organ’s chromatic, serpentine melody. Other thematic fragments are suggested as this slow introduction makes its way to a huge organ chord that, in functional terms, is basically an old-fashioned dominant-seventh chord rendered frightening through the implantation of dissonant fangs.
Dominant-seventh chords, even embellished ones, resolve to tonics, and this one does just that, plunging into scurrying G-minor music launched by the strings. All the sections of this concerto connect continuously though with sometimes dramatic contrasts between them. Danger often lurks in the shadows in this concerto, and listeners sense allusions to other composers: neoBaroque fireworks of a Bachian sort, balletic phrases suggesting Prokofiev, even Tchaikovskian sobs. The pace of the first “fast movement” returns for the final chapter, and with it a considerable transformation of the concerto’s opening theme and remembrances of other music that has played a part before the concerto reaches its final terrifying measures.
Poulenc’s Spiritual DNA
Even when writing explicitly religious works Poulenc did not strike a lugubrious pose. His was a luminous religiosity, a point he underscored in a 1953 interview with Stéphane Audel for Swiss Radio:
Heredity was deeply involved here. If one side of my art can be wholly explained by my mother’s ultra-Parisian descent, you mustn’t forget that my father came from Aveyron, that sturdy, mountainous area between Auvergne and the Mediterranean basin. Poulenc, by the way, is a typical southern name. In architecture, it is Romanesque art—particularly the examples to be found in the south of France—that has always been my religious ideal, whether it’s Vézelay, Autun, Moissac or Vierges du Puy or Conques. I like religious inspiration to express itself clearly in the sunshine with the same realism as we can see on those Romanesque capitals. My father, like all his family, was deeply religious but in a very liberal way, without the slightest meanness.
—JMK
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, Organ Symphony
Camille Saint-Saëns
First Performance: 12/11/1949
Conductor: Victor Alessandro
Organ: Ken Wright
Last Performance: 9/28/2003
Conductor: Joel Levine
Organ: Scott Raab
Born: December 11, 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France
Born: October 9, 1835, in Paris, France
Died: December 16, 1921, in Algiers, Algeria
Work composed: April 1886
Work dedicated: To the memory of Franz Liszt
Work premiered: May 19, 1886, at a concert of the Philharmonic Society in St. James’s Hall, London, with the composer conducting Instrumentation: Three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones,
PROGRAM NOTES
ORGAN SYMPHONY
SAINT-SAËNS
tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, organ, piano (twohands and four-hands), and strings
“Monsieur Saint-Saëns possesses one of the most astonishing musical organizations I know of,” wrote the composer Charles Gounod of his fellow Parisian. “He is a musician armed with every weapon. He is a master of his craft as no one else is.” He might also have noted that SaintSaëns was a highly accomplished organist (who for two decades reigned in the loft at the Madeleine), a champion of forgotten earlier music and of contemporary composers, an inspiring teacher (who, as professor of the École Niedermeier in Paris, did much to shape the raw talents of Gabriel Fauré and André Messager), a gifted writer, a world traveler, and an avid and informed aficionado of such disciplines as Classical languages, astronomy, archaeology, philosophy, and even the occult sciences.
He started piano lessons at the age of two-and-a-half, soon began studying piano with a former pupil of Kalkbrenner’s and Mendelssohn’s, and embarked on composition and organ instruction at seven, by which time he was already performing Bach, Handel, and Mozart in public. In 1846, when he was ten, he played his formal debut recital at Paris’s Salle Pleyel, with a program that included piano concertos by Mozart and Beethoven. The applause was resounding, so he topped off the event by offering to play any of Beethoven’s piano sonatas from memory, as an encore. “He knows everything, but lacks inexperience,” lamented his friend Hector Berlioz.
The last of Saint-Saëns’ completed symphonies (not counting an early one not blessed with an opus number), the Third was composed at the behest of the Philharmonic Society of London, which at that time was conducted by Sir Arthur Sullivan (of “Gilbert &” fame). In August 1883, the orchestra’s secretary expressed the wish that Saint-Saëns
might come to London the following year “either to play one of your concertos, or to compose a new one and play it, or to play a concerto by some other master, whichever you prefer; but I need scarcely add, they would prefer you to appear in one of your own compositions.” Talk soon turned instead to the possibility of a new symphony, and by March, Saint-Saëns was far enough along in his planning to inform the orchestra of the new work’s instrumentation (“there are no harps, happily”), that it would be cast in two movements (in that regard mirroring his coeval Fourth Piano Concerto and Violin Sonata No. 1), that the symphony would be difficult, that “this devil of a symphony” had moved up in his mind by a semitone (“it didn’t want to stay in B minor, and is now in C minor”), and that one “aggravation” would be that the piano part would involve one player at first and two later (“Happily, pianists are not rare in our epoch”). On May 18, 1886, Saint-Saëns wrote from London to his publisher, Jacques Durand: “We have sight-read the symphony. I was right: it is really terribly challenging.” But the premiere went well the next day, and the composer followed up with a glowing report: “The Symphony enjoyed a colossal success, spiced up by just enough opposition to make the success more intense.”
A Touching Dedication
Saint-Saëns decided to dedicate his Third Symphony to Franz Liszt, who was by then a grand old man of music. On receiving this information, Liszt responded on June 19, 1886:
Very dear friend,
Happy in the friendship you have so often shown to me, I express to you my heartfelt gratitude. The success of your symphony in London gives me great pleasure, and it will continue in a crescendo in Paris and elsewhere. For any dedication I would ask you simply to inscribe my name. I must content myself with writing just the same thing beneath these lines due to the weakness of my vision. With much devotion and cordial friendship, Franz Liszt
But Saint-Saëns did not follow Liszt’s request precisely. Liszt died on July 31, and when the Third Symphony appeared in print that November, it was instead headed with the words “A la Mémoire de Franz Liszt.”.
—JMK
The prominent use of the organ has earned this piece the nickname Organ Symphony, a rubric never sanctioned by the composer. It is, in fact, a bit misleading, since French composers composed a good many pieces that were titled “organ symphonies”; these were not orchestral works at all but rather big-boned, multi-movement pieces for solo organ. Saint-Saëns recognized that requiring an organ could limit performance possibilities, since many concert halls lacked them, but he was perfectly content with the idea of a small organ being brought in for the occasion—and in fact suggested specifically that solution for a performance by the Concerts Colonne in Paris. He briefly considered allowing the use of a harmonium as an option, but after hearing the organ at the London premiere, he told Durand that such a substitution must be ruled out as insufficient.
JAMES M. KELLER
James M. Keller is the longtime Program Annotator of the San Francisco Symphony and was formerly Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and a staff writer-editor at The New Yorker. The author of Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University Press), he is writing a sequel volume about piano music.
NOVEMBER 1-2, 2024, 8:00 P.M.
ALEXANDER MICKELTHWATE, CONDUCTOR
Program will be announced from the stage
THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:
DR. MARGARET FREEDE OWENS
In loving memory of my parents Dr. Henry and Josephine Freede
GUEST ARTIST
ARRIVAL FROM SWEDEN: THE MUSIC OF ABBA
ARRIVAL FROM SWEDEN THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION EST 1995
The 10-12 piece band ARRIVAL from Sweden in the production THE MUSIC OF ABBA was founded by Vicky Zetterberg-Norbäck and the ABBA original musician Rutger Gunnarsson in 1995 in Gothenburg, Sweden and very soon became one of the world’s most popular and most selling ABBA show bands. Since the start in 1995 the band has toured in over 80 countries, done almost 120 successful USA tours, played with over 120 Symphony Orchestras all over the world and has appeared in several TV and radio shows all over the world. Selling out arenas seated up to 50 000 people. Millions of tickets sold.
ARRIVAL from Sweden in the production “The Music of ABBA” has sold out arenas and venues all over the world since 1995 and is the absolute best and most authentic ABBA show there is. Hits like: “Dancing Queen,” “Mamma Mia,” “Does Your Mother Know,” “Take A Chance,” “SOS,” “The Winner Takes It All,” “Super Trouper,” “Money Money Money,” “Waterloo,” “Honey Honey,” “Fernando,” “Chiquitita,” “Knowing Me Knowing You,” “Thank You For The Music,” “Lay All Your Love On Me,” “Gimme Gimme Gimme” and many more are delivered with such accuracy that it’s hard to believe that it’s not the real ABBA on stage.
ARRIVAL from Sweden is the only group that has been given a previously unreleased ABBA song directly from Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA. The song “Just A Notion” was released by ARRIVAL from Sweden in 1999 and was yet again released by the original ABBA in 2021 on their latest record “Voyage.”
This production has all the features a great ABBA show needs: lovely costumes, extremely talented musicians, and breathtaking singers. Millions of people all around the world celebrate this show as the best ABBA show in the world; in fact, this is the only ABBA show the world needs. This production is the closest you will ever get to see ABBA!
Musical arrangements by ARRIVAL From Sweden, ABBA string arranger and bass player, the late, Mr. Rutger Gunnarsson and the famous arranger Tommy Hansson, made after ABBA original arrangements.
CONCEPTS FROM THE Maestro
This season, we’re celebrating our “classical” repertoire—music that is tried and true, resonating deeply with audiences over time and embodying a deeply romantic spirit, cherished by many. Join us as we explore these beloved classics!
FROM THE HIGHLANDS
Although I’ve never visited the Highlands of Scotland, conducting the BBC Scotland in Glasgow left a lasting impression on me. Descending into Glasgow felt surprisingly like coming home—an unexpected yet profound experience. My family hails from the Sheffield area a bit farther south, but who knows what connections we might share. We’ll kick off the concert with the powerful and popular “Highland Cathedral,” featuring bagpipes and orchestra, evoking honor and ancient traditions.
FROM THE HIGHLANDS
NOVEMBER 16, 2024 • 8:00 P.M.
“Highland Cathedral,” for Bagpipes and Orchestra
Bruce Robertson,
0:30 ELGAR ........................ Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
Adagio—Moderato
Allegro molto
Adagio
Allegro, ma non troppo
Jonathan Ruck, cello
Intermission
Next, we’ll journey to England with Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a piece made famous by Jacqueline du Pré—a true classic. After intermission, we’ll perform Mendelssohn’s dark and beautiful Scottish Symphony. Inspired by his visit to Scotland in 1829, Mendelssohn wrote, “In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved... I think I have found there the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.” It’s a remarkable work that captures the essence of Scotland beautifully. Don’t miss this enchanting concert!
For a deeper understanding of concert programming, please, join Maestro Mickelthwate for his Preconcert Talk at 7pm in the auditorium. Open seating.
0:40 MENDELSSOHN. ...... Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish
Andante con moto—Allegro un poco agitato
Vivace non troppo
Adagio
Allegro vivacissimo—Allegro maestoso assai
[There are no breaks between movements.]
THIS CONCERT IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY:
CLEMENTS FOODS FOUNDATION –ROBERT AND SODY CLEMENTS
OKCPHIL SPOTLIGHT SCHOOL: Putnam City North
Listen to a broadcast of this performance on KUCO 90.1 FM on Wednesday, December 12, at 8 pm and Saturday, December 14, at 8 am on “Performance Oklahoma”. Simultaneous internet streaming is also available during the broadcast.
GUEST ARTISTS
FROM THE HIGHLANDS
JONATHAN RUCK
American cellist Jonathan Ruck maintains a multifaceted career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician and pedagogue. Praised for his “virtuosic command” and “full-bodied tone,” he has performed throughout North America, Europe, Australia and the Caribbean. Festival appearances include recent engagements at the Oregon Bach Festival, Sanibel Island Festival, OK Mozart, Unruly Music, and as principal cellist of the International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico. Jonathan currently serves as the principal cellist of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic.
An avid chamber musician, Jonathan Ruck is a core member of Brightmusic, Oklahoma City’s resident chamber music ensemble. He has performed as a guest cellist with the American Chamber Players and Penderecki String Quartet and given recent world-premiere performances of chamber works by Christopher Theofanidis and Sydney Corbett. As a founding member of the Dubinsky String Quartet, Jonathan was a prizewinner in the Fischoff and Coleman national chamber music competitions.
Jonathan Ruck joined the University of Oklahoma School of Music faculty in 2006. Previous appointments include serving as the teaching assistant to both Janos Starker and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and a visiting professorship at the Depauw University School of Music. During the summer, he has enjoyed teaching on the faculties of the Fresno Summer Orchestra and Opera Academy (FOOSA), the Zodiac Festival in Southern France and the Indiana University Summer String Academy. In 2018, he founded the University of Oklahoma Summer String Academy and continues as its director. Graduates of Jonathan Ruck’s cello studio have been accepted to continue their studies at schools such as Juilliard, Indiana University, Eastman, Oberlin, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and can be found in ensembles and on college and pre-college faculties throughout the world.
Jonathan Ruck currently lives in Norman, Oklahoma with his wife, violinist Katrin Stamatis, and their two daughters, Arianna and Galia.
BRUCE ROBERTSON
Bruce Robertson is a native of OKC having been born a first generation American after his parents immigrated from Glasgow, Scotland. Bruce began learning the bagpipes at age 6 under the tutelage of his Father, John Robertson and then received extensive tuition from top instructors from Canada and Scotland. Having been a successful soloist, Bruce began concentrating his efforts on the arena of pipe bands, having played with the most successful pipe band in the United States for the last 30 plus years out of Houston, TX, during which time they achieved most of the top prizes in pipe bands, including numerous U.S. Open Pipe Band Championships, North American Championships and continued successful trips to Scotland culminating in a World Pipe Band Championship. Bruce is also founder of Westminster Pipe Band in OKC, which has also been very successful throughout the US & Canada and continues to this day. Bruce is an attorney in Oklahoma City with the firm Hall & Ludlam. Bruce’s wife Laura and daughters Ally and Claire have been supportive of his piping over the years in spite of enduring endless late night practice sessions.
PROGRAM NOTES
“Highland Cathedral,” for Bagpipes and Orchestra
Michael Korb and Uli Roever
First Performance on this series
Michael Korb, Born: 1957, Residing: Berlin, Germany
Ulrich (“Uli”) Roever, Born: 1934, Died: 1997
Work composed: 1982
“Highland Cathedral” is a cultural phenomenon—or a feallsanachd cultarach if you speak Scots Gaelic, or a kulturelles Phänomen if you are German, both of which are relevant in this case. Although the melody has grown immensely popular in Scotland—and, indeed, far beyond Caledonian borders—it was composed in 1982 by two Germans, Michael Korb and Ulich (“Uli”) Roever.
Korb was drawn to the sound of Scottish bagpipes while growing up in Germany. After graduating from high school, in 1975, he moved to Berlin and immediately signed up for lessons from a pipe-master associated with a Scottish regiment based in that city. Before long, he headed to Edinburgh to take daily lessons from Paddy Atkinson, at that time an 80-year-old luminary among pipe-masters. Practicing the bagpipes has some built-in challenges, and Korb explains on his website that his work took place “during the day in his gazebo and in the evening (because of the neighbors) in the forest.” After achieving impressive virtuosity, he returned to Germany, “tried to make experiments with the bagpipes,” and made the rounds of televised talent shows. In 1979, under the name “Mike Korb,” he released a bagpiping disco-style single of the songs “Dancing Queen of Aberdeen” and, on the B-side, “Happy Scotch-Man.”
About that time, he met Uli Roever, a much-respected German composer, arranger, and sound engineer who had
founded the Compost Tonstudio Berlin, the city’s leading recording studio. “We wrote a lot of tunes but ‘Highland Cathedral’ was a fantastically successful tune,” Korb said. “We were surprised every year about the things that happened with ‘Highland Cathedral.’ A lot of people think that it is a Scottish tune—we had to create a website to let people see that it was not. And a lot of people think that it is traditional, but it’s actually quite new. ... We were looking for a title of the tune, and I thought ‘Highland Cathedral,’ because Scotland is very beautiful, and it’s like the majestic landscape and so on.” In fact, that was not always the piece’s name. When Korb and Roever released it as a recorded single, again with a disco beat, it carried the title “By the Right-Quick-March.”
From there it set out to conquer the world. It was first performed by a pipe-and-drum group by the Royal Highland Fusiliers in Berlin, but it was quickly taken up by similar ensembles in Scotland and elsewhere. Its fame was boosted immeasurably when it was featured in the 1994 movie Four Weddings and a Funeral and when pop star Madonna selected it to be performed at her wedding at a Scottish castle in 2000. It became a favorite number at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the ne plus ultra for bagpipes aficionados, and a stand-by for performance at athletic events, community gatherings, weddings, and funerals. The Scottish Rugby Union floated the idea of having it replace “Flower of Scotland” as its unofficial song. Inevitably, its title began to circulate in Scotland’s unending debate about selecting a national anthem.
There being no official national anthem, the songs “Scotland the Brave” and “Flower of Scotland” are regularly used on requisite occasions, but the latter is viewed as problematic due to its anti-English lyrics. Of more traditional numbers, “Scots Wha Hae” is widely viewed as too aggressive and “Auld Lang Syne” as specific to moments of farewell. In
PROGRAM NOTES
FROM THE HIGHLANDS
2006, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted an online opinion poll in which 41% of 10,000 voters did support “Flower of Scotland,” followed by “Scotland the Brave” and, in third place, “Highland Cathedral.” But “Highland Cathedral” was working with a disadvantage; it had no words. That was quickly remedied, and by now various competing lyrics have been proposed by poets in Scotland and in Germany— though the national anthem question remains undecided. “We would certainly give our blessing to this becoming the national song of Scotland,” said Roever’s widow, “because it has touched so many people in so many ways. I think that is the great legacy of my husband—his music was capable of moving people.”
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
First Performance: 2/7/1967
Cello: Jacqueline du Pré
Last Performance: 2/7/2015
Cello: Julie Albers
Born: June 2, 1857, at Broadheath, Worcestershire, England
Died: February 23, 1934, in Worcester, England
Work composed: From March 23, 1918, to August 3, 1919
Work dedicated: To the composer’s friends Sydney and Frances Colvin
Work premiered: October 26, 1919, at Queen’s Hall, London, with the composer conducting the London Symphony and Felix Salmond as soloist
Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo (the last ad. lib.), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba (ad. lib.), timpani, and strings, in addition to the solo cello
Edward Elgar is an essential representative of the Edwardian Era, the late-Imperialist moment of British
history named after Edward VII, who on July 4, 1904, turned the composer into Sir Edward. The son of an organist in Worcester, Elgar deputized for his father in church lofts, picked up a bit of instruction on violin, served as bandmaster at the Worcester County Lunatic Asylum, and, in 1882, acceded to the position of music director of the Worcester Amateur Instrumental Music Society. By the mid-1890s he was deemed a name to reckon with, and in 1900 his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius established him as Britain’s leading composer, a perfect embodiment of the comfortably plush, vigorously healthy spirit of the Edwardian moment.
That world effectively ceased to exist by the end of World War I, and Elgar spent much of the War years in neardepression, mourning not only the devastation that had overtaken Europe but also how far his sympathies lay from the world as it had evolved. By 1919, when his Cello Concerto was unveiled, such new names as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartók had displaced Elgar’s as the flashpoints of musical excitement, and he had become politely tolerated by the British concert world as little more than a relic. He was regarded as so irrelevant that even as major a work as his Cello Concerto, which he would conduct himself, was accorded only a modicum of rehearsal time before its premiere. Elgar stood waiting as the orchestra’s new music director, the 37-year-old Albert Coates, spent nearly all the rehearsal time ironing out the kinks of the pieces he would lead in the concert. Elgar did his best to ready the orchestra for his new work, and although his wife urged him to simply withdraw from the concert (and take his piece with him), Elgar insisted on following through for the sake of the solo cellist, Felix Salmond, who had labored diligently to prepare his part. The performance went poorly, as could have been predicted, but at least the audience gave Elgar a warm ovation, if only out of respect for his status as a senior eminence. Just days after the concert, Elgar’s wife fell gravely ill. Following her death five months later he found it impossible to complete any more major works, although he did carry out a good deal of work on a Third Symphony, enough to allow its sketches to be filled out into performable shape long after his death.
With the passage of years it becomes less important to listeners that Elgar’s scores of this period stood so far from the cutting edge of their time. In fact, he enjoyed an extraordinary surge of creativity as the War reached its conclusion, and in a very brief span of time he achieved not only the Cello Concerto but also three of his other greatest works, all in the minor mode: his E-minor Violin Sonata, Op. 82 (1918); E-minor String Quartet, Op. 83 (1918);
PROGRAM NOTES
FROM THE HIGHLANDS
and A-minor Piano Quintet, Op. 84 (1918-19). As it happened, Salmond participated in the premieres of the Quartet and Quintet, as well as serving as soloist in the Concerto. One of the most distinguished cellists of his time, he was especially noted as a chamber music interpreter; and after settling in the United States in the 1920s he taught at both Juilliard and the Curtis Institute, numbering among his pupils such notables as Bernard Greenhouse (a member of the Beaux Arts Trio for 32 years) and Leonard Rose (who played in the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1951, serving as principal cello beginning in 1944).
Despite the failure of its premiere, the concerto became appreciated as one of the finest cello concertos ever written. The conductor Sir Adrian Boult rightly observed that in this piece the composer had “struck a new kind of music, with a more economical line, terser in every way” from the effusions of his earlier years. One wonders what might have lain ahead if Elgar had continued composing as industriously as he did in 1918-19.
From the Premiere
The critic Ernest Newman, writing in the London Observer, presented a review of the concert in which Elgar unveiled his Cello Concerto. Although he was miffed by what he considered the defective quality of the orchestra’s playing, he discerned much beauty in the concerto, and particularly noted the care Elgar had taken to balance the solo part against the orchestra, even if that aspect had failed in the performance:
This scale of colour it has obviously been Elgar’s preoccupation to achieve. Some of the colour is meant to be no more than a vague wash against which the solo ’cello defines itself. On Monday the orchestra was often virtually inaudible, and when just audible was merely a muddle. No one seemed to have any idea of what it was the composer wanted.
The work itself is lovely stuff, very simple—that pregnant simplicity that has come upon Elgar’s music in the past couple of years—but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity ... the realization in tone of a fine spirit’s lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of earth.
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish Felix Mendelssohn
First Performance: 11/10/1968
Conductor: Ray Luke
Last Performance: 11/21/1982
Conductor: Jorge Mester
Born: February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, Germany
Died: November 4, 1847, in Leipzig, Germany
Work composed: Mostly from late 1840 to January 20, 1842, then revised slightly after its premiere
Work dedicated: To “H.M. Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland” Work premiered: March 3, 1842, with the composer conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; the next performance, on March 17 under the direction of Karl Bach, included Mendelssohn’s revisions and was therefore the first airing of the work in its final form, Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings
Felix Mendelssohn grew up in the most fortunate of circumstances. Thanks to his family’s wealth and its penchant for attracting an entourage of intellectual and creative types, the budding composer enjoyed such amenities as a string orchestra that could try out his new compositions when he conducted them during at-home musicales. Before he reached his 15th birthday, he had composed 12 so-called String Symphonies (plus a single movement of a 13th), delightful pieces that served their purpose and were then largely forgotten, remaining unpublished until after his death. Mendelssohn was no beginner when he embarked on his first full-scale symphony, in 1824—a Symphony in C minor (Op. 11) that was soon overshadowed by his later symphonies: his Symphony No. 5, Reformation, in 1830 (revised in 1832); Symphony No. 4, Italian, in 1833 (revised in 1834);
PROGRAM NOTES
FROM THE HIGHLANDS
Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang (Song of Praise), in 1840; and Symphony No. 3, Scottish, in 1842.
The numbering of Mendelssohn’s symphonies confusingly reflects their publication dates rather than the order in which they were composed. The Scottish was therefore the last of the five “mature” symphonies he completed. Though he did not embark on its composition in any sustained way until 1840, he first thought about writing such a piece in 1829, when he toured the British Isles in the company of Karl Klingemann, a friend who had left Berlin for London to serve as Secretary to the Hanoverian Legislation. On March 26, 1829, Mendelssohn wrote him a breathless letter announcing that he expected to arrive in London in less than a month and proclaiming in capital letters, “NEXT AUGUST I AM GOING TO SCOTLAND, with a rake for folksongs, an ear for the lovely, fragrant countryside, and a heart for the bare legs of the natives.” Following a stint in the cultural swirl of London, Mendelssohn and Klingemann left in July on their journey to Edinburgh, a long and sometimes arduous trip by stagecoach that Mendelssohn documented through adept pencil drawings and penand-ink sketches. On July 26 they arrived in Edinburgh, and a few days later they set out on a tour of the Scottish Highlands, which took them as far west as the town of Oban and the Atlantic islands of Staffa and Iona, and then brought them south to Glasgow and back to Cumberland, England on August 15. They reached London again on September 6.
His letters home were filled with wonder. His report from Birnam Wood, on August 3, was typical in its almost painterly description: “Yesterday was a lovely day, we passed from rock to rock, many waterfalls, beautiful valleys, with rivers, dark woods and heath with the red heather in blossom.” Or from Inverary, on August 9: “Our host’s beautiful daughter in her black curls looked out like a sign over the signboard into the harbor, in which the newest herrings are swimming about all alive at nine o’clock in the morning, and at a quarter past nine are served up fried with the coffee. ... The Duke of Argyll’s castle proudly looked forth from between the lofty trees; and from the tops of the surrounding hills the green trees held a colloquy with their relations below, who were already appointed to the navy and swam about in the water.”
Though the composer would visit England ten times counting that first trip, he would never again go to Scotland. But the three-weeks he spent there in 1829 left a deep impression which was made most immediately evident by his composing the concert overture The Hebrides (also known as the Fingal’s Cave Overture).
Already during the trip he had fixed on the idea of commemorating Scotland through a symphony, and a decade years later he set about making good on his plan. Though Mendelssohn does not draw on Scottish melodies in his score, listeners have been happy to hear its flavor as authentically Scottish in spirit, replete with pentatonic melodies, sparkling rhythms, and, in its fast movements, an infectious warmth of heart.
Mendelssohn Finds his Inspiration
On July 30, 1829, Mendelssohn visited the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh and wrote this account to his family back in Berlin:
In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved; a little room is shown there with a winding staircase leading up to the door: up this way they came and found Rizzio in that dark corner, where they pulled him out, and three rooms off there is a dark corner, where they murdered him. The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.
At that point he jotted down 16 measures of music; and though he set them aside for another decade, they would indeed serve as the eventual opening of his Scottish Symphony.
—JMK
JAMES M. KELLER
James M. Keller is the longtime Program Annotator of the San Francisco Symphony and was formerly Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and a staff writer-editor at The New Yorker. The author of Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University Press), he is writing a sequel volume about piano music.
GIFTS TO THE PHIL
Robert and Susan Shoemaker
Jamie and Jerrod Shouse
Donald J. Smock, M.A.
Reta and Richard Strubhar
Susan Sutter
Michelle Tompkins
Robert Varnum and Sharon Varnum, LCSW
Ms. Judie Webb
Robert and Tammy Weiss
Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth K. Wert
Dr. Ryan Williams
Rainey and Casey Williams
Mrs. Carol Wright
Ms. Jeanise Wynn
M. Blake and Nancy Yaffe
FRIEND
$1,000 - $1,499
Hugh G. and Sharon Adams
Glenn and Debra Blumstein
Rev. Dr. Carl Bosteels, D.Min.
Maj. Gen. William P. Bowden, Rt.
Mrs. Barbara J. Bunce
Louise Cheek
Dr. Thomas Coniglione
Dr. and Mrs. Ralph G. Ganick
MH &BL Gragg Family Fund
George M. and Jo Hall
Mr. Mark Harder
David and Sandra Haskett
JoAnn H Holden
Mr. Kent Hornbrook
John and Janet Hudson
Brenda and Kent Johnson
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Johnson
Mr. Christian K. Keesee
Mary Jane Lawson
Sharon and Ken Lease
Brad and Janet Marion
David and Virginia Marshall
Dr. Scott McCalla and Ms. Leslie McCalla
Jason Milner
William and Marilyn North
Charles L. Oppenheim
Patrick and Amy Randall
Jim Roth
Dr. Carl Rubenstein
INDIVIDUALS
Continued from page 21
Elizabeth Ryan
Kelly and Andy Sachs
Erik Salazar & Christopher Lloyd
John and Hattie Santore
Mary Sherman
Chris and Lisa Steves
Dr. and Mrs. James B. Stewart, Jr.
Jonathan and Andrea Stone
Bo Taylor
Mr. Phillip S. Tomlinson
PARTNER
$500 - $999
Dr. Gillian Air
Ms. Lois Albert
Mr. and Mrs. Van A. Barber
Mrs. Arden Barrett
The O.K. Detrick Foundation Fund
Ms. Pamela Bloustine
Ms. Susan Coatney
Joseph and Valerie Couch
Ms. Betty Crow
Patricia Edwards
Bruce and Joanne Ewing
Melinda Finley
Mr. and Mrs. Keith G. Golden
Sam and Joy Hammons
Brent Hart and Matt Thomas
Dr. Nancy and Capt. George Hector
David and Marilyn Henderson
Mr. and Mrs. Joe A. McKenzie
Mr. William McNeese
Ms. Rebecca L. McNeese
Virginia Meade
Annette Munson
Jim Murtaugh
Michael and Ginger Penn
Carol and Gary Sander
Jody and Pat Smith
Lee Allan Smith
Jeff and Sally Starling
Janet Viseur
Dick Wegener
Dave Wilson and Karen Ross
Wendi and Curtis Wilson
Linda and Mike Zeeck
MEMBER
$250 - $499
Anonymous
John and Nancy Alsup
Judy Austin
Nina and Kash Barker
Judy Barnett
Sherry K. Barton
Brent D. Bell, D.O.
Jerry and Jackie Bendorf
Dr. and Mrs. Harry Boyd
Joan Bryant
Ryan Bunyan
Cable Family Charitable Foundation
Ms. Carol Combs
Merle and Elizabeth Davis
Jenny Davis
William E. Davis and Margaret H. Davis
- Charles and Libbi Davis Legacy Fund
Mark Doescher
Audie Dorrough
Elizabeth K. Eickman
Mr. John Esche
Arnold and Mari Fagin
Mrs. Betty Foster
Mr. George R. Francis, Jr.
Carolyn Golden
Steven Graham and Vicky Leloie Kelly
Mr. Herbert M. Graves
Marsha and John Greiner
Judy Hill
Lauren and Rich Johnson
David Lynch
Allison Matoi
Mr. and Mrs. Ray Reaves
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Rus
Eric Simson
Rick Spence
Xiao-Hong Sun
Greg Taber
Ken Thiele
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Towell
Mrs. Anne Workman
GIFTS TO THE PHIL
SPECIAL GIFTS
Honor loved ones, celebrate occasions, recognize achievements, and support the Philharmonic’s mission.
In honor of Brent Hart and Matt Thomas
David Styers
In honor of Emily Stoops
Betsy Banks
In memory of Billy Maddox
Jerry Thompson
In memory of Patrick McGinnis
Rita McGinnis
In memory of David McLaughlin
Mrs. Jane B. Harlow
Susie and Doug Stussi
In memory of June Parry in support of We’ve Got Rhythm program
Anonymous
Ad Astra Foundation
The Good Gravy Group
Judy Austin
Nick and Betsy Berry
Margaret and John Biggs
Paul and Debbie Fleming
Kim and Michael Joseph
Mrs. Margaret Keith
Mr. Arthur Miller
Linda Paschal
Mr. H.E. Rainbolt
Susie and Doug Stussi
In memory of Ray Potts
Inasmuch Foundation
Latino Community Development Agency
Oklahoma Partnership for School
Readiness Foundation
Queensberry Club
Dr. and Mrs. L. Joe Bradley
Sharlene Branham
Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Clements
Mr. Sean S. Cummings
Tony and Pam De la Vega
Mrs. Carla Ellis
Ms. Adrienne Hogan
The Honorable Jerome A. Holmes
Mr. and Mrs. K. T. Meade, Jr.
Mr. H.E. Rainbolt
Susie and Doug Stussi
Ms. Lisa Synar
Mr. Tim Tippit
Mrs. Carolyn Zachritz
In memory of Malcolm Robinson
Susan Robinson
In memory of William Ross
Inasmuch Foundation
Ross Family Foundation – Lil Ross, Becky Roten, Molly Fuhrman, and Bob Ross
In memory of Dr. Irvin Wagner
Colonel (ret.) Dean and Mrs. Jeanne Jackson
Mrs. Margaret Keith
In memory of Renate Wiggin
Mr. J. Edward Barth
Nick and Betsy Berry
Dr. and Mrs. L. Joe Bradley
Mr. Spence Carson
Louise Cleary Cannon and Gerry Cannon
Christiane Faris
Mr. and Mrs. John E. Frank
Kirk Hammons
Jane B. Harlow
Brent Hart and Matt Thomas
Kent and Liz Hoffman
Kim and Michael Joseph
Mrs. Margaret Keith
Ms. Melinda Lyon
Arthur and Esther Oppenheimer
Alice and Phil Pippin
Mr. H.E. Rainbolt
Susie and Doug Stussi
Dale Toetz and Charlotte Gibbens
Mr. Donald Wiggin
GIFTS TO THE PHIL
THANK YOU!
The OKCPHIL gratefully acknowledges the generosity of individuals who have chosen to return concert tickets as a donation. This recognition reflects contributions made for the 23-24 season and are listed through July 15, 2024.
