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Cover Design: Nicholas Surbey | Program Design: Bebe Rogers Daniel Hope Photos by Daniel Waldhecker | Polish Chamber Orchestra Photo by Bartek Barczyk
CANDLER CONCERT SERIES
Daniel Hope
Polish Chamber Orchestra of Sinfonia Varsovia Journey to Mozart
Friday, February 28, 2025, 8:00 p.m.
Emerson Concert Hall
Schwartz Center for Performing Arts
This concert is presented by the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts and is made possible by a generous gift from the late Flora Glenn Candler, a friend and patron of music at Emory University.
Program
“Dance of the Furies” Christoph Willibald Gluck from Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30 (1714–1787)
Concerto No. 4 for Violin and Orchestra Franz Joseph Haydn in G Major, Hob. VIIa:4 (1732–1809)
I. Allegro moderato
II. Adagio
III. Finale: Allegro
Orawa Wojciech Kilar (1932–2013)
Intermission
Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in G Major, KV216 (1756–1791)
I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Rondeau: Allegro
Symphony No. 49 in F Minor ‘La passione’ Haydn
I. Adagio
II. Allegro di molto
III. Menuet e Trio
IV. Presto
Program subject to change.
The 2025 United States tour of the Polish Chamber Orchestra is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland. https://iam.pl/en https://culture.pl/en
Sheldon Artists LLC www.sheldonartists.com
Program Notes
Notes on the Program by
Andrew Stewart
“Dance of the Furies” from Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30
A musical time-traveler would certainly be delighted and doubtless surprised to land in Vienna or any of the other great cities of the Habsburg Empire in the mid-1700s. There they would discover the correspondence between the rapidly evolving forms of the symphony, the concerto, the ballet, and the opera, close not just in terms of compositional styles but also, and perhaps above all, of the vitality and passion embedded in the language of the music itself. The sounds of street songs, tavern dances, fairground troupes, and military bands also filtered into the world of the concert hall and opera house, sometimes used for the sake of irony, sometimes for the sake of wit, often to add aesthetic variety and fresh colors to already colorful compositions.
Empress Maria Theresa was present at the first performance of Orfeo ed Euridice, given at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1762. Gluck’s work marked a root-and-branch reform of the “serious style of Italian opera with which audiences were familiar, stripping away many of its convoluted conventions to uncover the all-too-human drama at the heart of one of the best known of all Greek myths. In keeping with the prevailing attitudes of the Enlightenment, Gluck struck the ideal balance between reason and sentiment, the former applied to matters of form, harmony, and phrasing, the latter to his music’s power to stir the affections. Orfeo ed Euridice soon found favor across Europe; one production, staged for Prince Nikolaus I of Esterházy in 1776, was conducted by Joseph Haydn.
“The Dance of the Furies” was added to the French-language version of the opera that Gluck created in 1774 for the Académie Royal in Paris, where it crowns the dramatic opening scene of the second act. “This opera displays the fine talents of the dancers with lively effect,” noted the Mercure de France after the revised work’s first performance. The piece, which the composer recycled from the final number of his ballet Don Juan, harnesses the energy of the malign spirits, the Furies, who have struggled to prevent Orfeo from entering the Underworld to rescue his beloved Euridice only to be tamed by the eloquence of his singing. Their fleeting display of tender mercy gives way to the quivering arpeggios, demonic descending scales, and blaring horn calls of the Furies’ dance.
Concerto No. 4 for Violin and Orchestra in G Major, Hob. Vlla:4 Haydn was sufficiently competent as a violinist to play professionally for court balls in Vienna in the mid-1750s. Throughout the following decade, having taken up the post of assistant Kapellmeister to the Esterházy family in 1761, he composed little other than instrumental music; he also assumed responsibility for raising the standards of the court orchestra at the Esterházy’s palace at Eisenstadt. Haydn had the good fortune to work with the Eisenstadt band’s concertmaster, Luigi Tomasini, who had been brought to the court from Italy as a page in the early 1750s and later studied violin with Mozart’s father, Leopold. Tomasini and Haydn became close friends, the latter standing as godfather to several of the former’s children. The first of the concertos for violin listed in Haydn’s personal catalog of works was, according to a note in the composer’s hand, “fatto per il Luigi” (“made for Luigi”).
The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in G major appears in the thematic catalog of compositions issued in 1769 by Breitkopf, the Leipzigbased music publisher. While the work’s absence from Haydn’s own catalogue and certain anomalies in its earliest sources have prompted some scholars to doubt its authenticity, the music’s strength of invention and wit present a cast-iron case for attributing it to the composer. Judged not least by the formal simplicity of its outer movements and want of technical fireworks, the work perhaps pre-dates Haydn’s early years at Eisenstadt, possibly written in the late 1750s for the concert master of Count Morzin’s court orchestra; it is likely, however, that it was performed by Tomasini, who would have graced the work’s flourishes with his refined artistry.
The concerto opens with an extended orchestral introduction, the elegant principal theme of which is taken up and embellished by the soloist, before serving as a ritornello for the full ensemble. Haydn spices the movement’s pleasing galant style with brief diversions into the minor mode and passages of spirited dialogue for soloist and orchestra. Melody rules the work’s Adagio. Here the solo violin sings an exquisite aria-without-words, its line reinforced by a sonorous accompaniment forged within the movement’s home key of C major or its near-relatives. Haydn’s studies of counterpoint in the stile antico, the “old style,” left their mark on the G-major Concerto’s irresistible finale; likewise, his fascination with the expressive power of folk music to conjure familiar images or emotions associated with popular entertainments registers in the little drone effects he adds to the solo part. The movement unfolds as a study in the art of repetition, simple in its raw material yet rich in the variety of its melodic gestures.
Orawa
Repetition and the subtle development of rhythmic patterns are central to Orawa, Wojciech Kilar’s symphonic poem for string chamber orchestra. The work, written in 1986 for the strings of the Polish Chamber Orchestra, draws its inspiration, and much of its vibrant energy, from the traditional dances of the Tatra highlanders from southwest Poland. It takes its title from the dialect preserved in the village of Orawka and surrounding settlements near the border of Poland and Slovakia. Best known for his soundtrack scores, including those for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Kilar, who studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the early 1960s, was equally at home (and imaginative) in writing for the concert hall. Orawa captures the generous spirit of Tatra folk music and of the people who created it. “It is pretty much a piece for a magnified folk band and one of the rare examples where I’ve been happy with my work,” the composer confided in a collection of conversations published posthumously in 2014.
Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra in G Major, KV216
Mozart’s all-round early education was provided by his father, the violinist, composer, and music theorist, Leopold Mozart. In addition to learning the skills of literacy and numeracy, and receiving moral and religious instruction, the boy’s tuition included comprehensive training in the performance and composition of music. He began playing the keyboard at the age of four and added violin and organ to his studies two years later. According to Leopold’s colleague, the Salzburg court trumpeter and violinist Johann Andreas Schachtner, writing in January 1763, the five-year-old Wolfgang was able to play the second violin part in a trio for two violins and viola before he had received a lesson on the instrument: “You don’t need to have studied to play second violin,” he said, before proving his point. A near-contemporary report from Salzburg, published in the German city of Augsburg, recalled how “the boy can now not only play from the violin clef, but also from the soprano and bass clefs, and takes part in everything on a small violino piccolo made specially for him, having already appeared with a solo [piece] and a concerto at the Salzburg court. Has he then learned this since the New Year?” Many years later Mozart’s father, a stern critic, expressed frustration that his son, universally feted as a keyboard player, could be the “premier violinist” in Europe, “if only you will do yourself credit and play with energy, with your whole heart and mind.”
It is possible that Mozart composed his five violin concertos, the last four of which were written between June and December 1775, to demonstrate
his solo artistry as incumbent concertmaster of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg’s court orchestra. The Violin Concerto No.3 in G major KV 216, created in September 1775, heralds a remarkable development in the quality and maturity of Mozart’s music. The work’s melodic invention, rhythmic elan, and emotional intensity, especially but not exclusively in the central Adagio, echo the expressive language of its composer’s recent stage works, La finta giardiniera and Il rè pastore among them. Indeed, it begins with a ritornello constructed from music originally composed for the aria “Aer tranquillo” from Il rè pastore, first performed in Salzburg in April 1775. The deftly crafted, often dramatic interactions between soloist and ensemble in the first movement underline the concerto’s theatrical, heart-on-sleeve character.
Mozart changes scene in the Adagio, softening its mood by introducing two flutes in lieu of the opening movement’s pair of oboes and sustaining the soloist’s sublime melodic line above a bed of gently pulsating triplet figures. In the spirit of opera, the work delivers a surprise midway in its lively rondo finale: rather than make a decisive final return to his tripletime main theme, three orchestral chords raise the curtain on an Andante episode, a beguiling gavotte cast in duple time, which in turn gives way to a new tune based on “The Strassburger,” a popular hit of the day. Mozart allows the music to meander towards a solo cadenza and the celebratory return of the rondo theme.
Symphony No. 49 in F Minor
Haydn’s Symphony No.49 in F minor projects the fluid nature of musical categories during the mid-1700s. The work, written for the Esterházy court orchestra and dated to 1768 in the composer’s autograph manuscript, follows the traditional form of the church or ‘da chiesa’ symphony. Scholarly consensus suggested that the symphony was conceived for performance during Holy Week, a proposition supported by its early acquisition of the name La passione and an anecdote that it received its first performance on Good Friday. Recent research, however, raises the prospect that it was inspired by a German translation of a French comedy popular with Viennese audiences, concerned not least with the antics of a “good-natured” English Quaker, all far removed from Christ’s suffering on the cross.
Each of the symphony’s four movements, cast in the same key of F minor, opens with an idea based on four notes (C, D-flat, B-flat, and C), possibly derived from an ancient plainsong melody. Haydn opens with a solemn Adagio, the fluctuating rhythmic energy and momentary pauses of which would certainly suit the ritual recollection of Christ’s Passion.
The symphony’s emotional intensity has been likened to the expressive movement in German literature known as Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), an analogy that works well in the case of La passione. The wild energy of the work’s second movement, for instance, appears to project a vivid tone-painting of the earthquake that struck upon the instant of Jesus’ death. Haydn heightens the music’s expressive turbulence by confronting the listener with sudden repetitions of his thrusting main theme which he punctuates with foreshortened, anxious-sounding developments of the movement’s thematic material.
The Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon aptly described the Minuet and Trio of La passione as “a kind of oasis between the quick movements.” The Minuet’s noble bearing, however, is depressed by its unsettling shifts between the minor and major modes; only the Trio, with what Robbins Landon calls “the gunmetal gleam of its high horn notes,” offers respite from the symphony’s prevailing melancholy. Haydn’s four-note unifying motif returns in the Presto finale, albeit disguised by its absorption into a modified melodic line, serves as the monothematic idea that binds the movement together and propels the work to its emphatic close.
Performer Biographies
Daniel Hope, violin
Violinist Daniel Hope has been performing worldwide as a soloist for more than thirty years. He is celebrated for his musical creativity and his commitment to humanitarian causes.
An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2007, Hope travels the globe as both chamber musician and soloist, collaborating with leading orchestras and conductors. Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra since 2016, in 2018 he took up the same position with San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra. In 2019, he became Artistic Director of the Frauenkirche Dresden, and he has been President of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn since 2020, succeeding Joseph Joachim and Kurt Masur.
Hope is a welcome guest in famous concert halls and at renowned festivals from New York’s Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House, from Salzburg to Aspen and Tanglewood, from Schleswig-Holstein and Gstaad to the BBC Proms in
London. He works regularly with conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Iván Fischer, and Christian Thielemann, as well as with the major symphony orchestras in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, and many others. He works closely with the leading composers of our time, such as Alfred Schnittke, György Kurtág, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Tōru Takemitsu, and Tan Dun.
His discography includes more than thirty albums, which have received awards including the German Record Critics’ Prize, the Diapason d’Or of the Year, the Edison Classical Award, and the Prix Caecilia, and are regularly acclaimed by the press (New York Times: “one of the best albums of the year”; Gramophone: “top choice of all available recordings”).
Hope is a passionate chamber musician and was a member of the Beaux Arts Trio for several years. His artistic versatility is also evident in projects with artists such as Klaus Maria Brandauer, Zakir Hussain, Sebastian Koch, Iris Berben, Mia Farrow, and Sting, and as a radio and television moderator. A documentary titled Daniel Hope: The Sound of Life was released in North America, Australia, and Europe in 2017.
Every week since 2016, Hope has been presenting the radio show “Personally with Daniel Hope” on WDR3; he has also written four books, all of which have been published by Rowohlt Verlag and have become bestsellers. He writes for the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, and for his series “Hope@9pm” invites guests from culture and politics to a salon at the Berlin Konzerthaus.
In support of other artists, Hope created and presented over 150 episodes of music and talk in the Hope@Home livestream series broadcast by ARTE during the 2020 lockdown, hosting artists from Robert Wilson to Lang Lang. With the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, he initiated several benefit concerts with pianist Alexey Botvinov.
Hope studied violin with Zakhar Bron, Itzhak Rashkovsky, and Felix Andrievsky, and completed his training at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He worked closely with his mentor Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he gave numerous concerts. Hope holds the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and was awarded the European Culture Prize in 2015. He lives with his family in Switzerland and plays the “Ex-Lipiński” Guarneri del Gesù from 1742, which is generously made available to him.
“A thriving solo career…built on inventive programming and a probing interpretive style.”
New York Times
Polish Chamber Orchestra
The Polish Chamber Orchestra was formed in 1972 as a group of twentyfour musicians from the Warsaw Chamber Opera’s ensemble who had a desire to perform chamber orchestral repertoire away from the theatrical stage. Led by a young charismatic conductor, Jerzy Maksymiuk, the orchestra spread its wings and became recognized as the Vistula Strings, performing on international tours, with renowned soloists, and receiving great critical acclaim and international recognition as an ensemble with “sculpted, strongly-contoured playing” and “glistening dynamism.”
The Orchestra has performed at venues such as Barbican Center and Albert Hall in London, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Kennedy Center in Washington, and Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York City. It has showcased many distinguished soloists including Gidon Kremer and Yehudi Menuhin. It performed under such conductors as Charles Dutoit, Yehudi Menuhin, and Mstislav Rostropovich. The ensemble’s breakthrough moment came when its 1977 British tour resulted in a multi-record contract with EMI. The Orchestra won multiple awards, including the Wiener Flötenuhr for best Mozart recording.
In 1983 Jerzy Maksymiuk parted ways with the Polish Chamber Orchestra. This decision was the catalyst from which Sinfonia Varsovia emerged in 1984. The impulse for expansion was provided in 1984 by the arrival of the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin who took over as the first guest conductor. “Working with no other orchestra gave me as much satisfaction as my work, as soloist and conductor, as with Sinfonia Varsovia,” he said in interviews.
Soon after, Sinfonia Varsovia began international touring, performing in the world’s most prestigious concert halls such as Carnegie Hall (New York), Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (Paris), Barbican Centre (London),
“I am thrilled to perform this profound program with the Polish Chamber Orchestra. I am excited for US audiences to experience the unparalleled musicianship of this fantastic orchestra with whom I have had a long-lasting artistic relationship. Making music with them is an absolute joy.”
—Daniel Hope
Wiener Musikverein (Vienna), Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), and Herkulessaal (Munich). Sinfonia Varsovia has performed under the baton of such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Witold Lutosławski, Lorin Maazel, Emmanuel Krivine, Jerzy Maksymiuk, and Krzysztof Penderecki (who served as musical director and afterwards the artistic director of the Orchestra between 1997 and 2020), as well as with soloists including Mstislav Rostropovich, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Alfred Brendel, Martha Argerich, and Piotr Anderszewski.
Sinfonia Varsovia reactivated the Polish Chamber Orchestra in 2002, when the artistic directorship was taken on by the famous violinist Nigel Kennedy. At the time, the ensemble gained enthusiastic reviews and prestigious prizes thanks to extraordinary performances of music by Vivaldi and Polish composers. It culminated in the CD Polish Spirit which gained excellent reviews in publications including Gramophone, and was awarded an Echo Klassik in 2008, when Kennedy’s tenure ended.
In the following years the PCO has focused on international concerts performed under the leadership of eminent soloists such as Maxim Vengerov, James Galway, and Daniel Hope—the latter of whom it has a long-lasting artistic relationship and with whom it has most recently toured internationally. With these artists Polish Chamber Orchestra has given concerts in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Spain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Switzerland, Turkey, Oman, and the United States.
Polish Chamber Orchestra operates under the auspices of Sinfonia Varsovia and is both a stand-alone orchestra and a cultural institution administrated by the capital city of Warsaw, focusing on the chamber orchestra repertoire, maintaining the highest quality of performance, precision, and vividness for which it has become known.
Polish Chamber Orchestra of Sinfonia Varsovia
First Violin
Adam Siebers, concertmaster
Artur Gadzala
Karolina Gutowska
Magdalena Krzyzanowska
Krzysztof Oczko
Second Violin
Kamil Staniczek
Olivia Bujnowicz-Wadowska
Ewelina Misztal
Artur Konowalik
Viola
Mateusz Doniec
Tomasz Rosinski
Jacek Nycz
Dariusz Kisielinski
Staff
Janusz Marynowski, Director
Cello
Krystyna Wisniewska
Mateusz Blaszczak
Jan Lewandowski
Double Bass
Karol Kinal
Mateusz Wadowski
Oboe
Paulina Sochaj
Adam Szlezak
Horn
Pawel Pietka
Roman Sykta
Blanka Golaszewska, Touring and Artistic Manager
Mirosława Wachowska-Nowak, Assistant Touring and Artistic Manager
Tomasz Nowakowski, Stagehand
Tour Direction
Sheldon Artists LLC
R. Douglas Sheldon, Managing Partner
Karen Kloster, Tour Coordinator
Jonathan Wintringham, Manager & Marketing
Suzanne Neely, Manager & Administration
Ryan Brideau, Project & Production Manager
Roxanne Layton, Tour Manager
Road Rebel, Hotels
The Flora Glenn Candler Concerts Committee
Elena Cholakova, Committee Chair | Department of Music
Rachael Brightwell, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts
Greg Catelier, Emory Dance and Movement Studies Program
Joseph Crespino, Department of History
Stephen Crist, Department of Music
Sara Culpepper, Theater Emory
Patricia Dinkins-Matthews, Department of Music
Allison Dykes, Vice President and University Secretary
Rosemary Magee, Member Emeritus
Bethany Mamola, Department of Music
Pablo Palomino, Oxford College, Department of Humanities
Emorja Roberson, Oxford College, Department of Humanities
Upcoming Schwartz Center Concerts
Visit schwartz.emory.edu to view complete event information. If a ticket is required for attendance, prices are indicated in the listings below in the following order: Full price/Emory student price (unless otherwise noted).
Sunday, March 2, 7:00 p.m., Emory Wind Ensemble, Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall
Thursday, March 6, 8:00 p.m., Emory University Symphony Orchestra, Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall
Friday, March 14 and Saturday, March 15, 8:00 p.m., Pathways, Atlanta
Master Chorale, Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall, $42/$10 (all students)
Wednesday, March 19, 6:00 p.m. and Thursday, March 20, 2:30 p.m., Vocal Symposium, Performing Arts Studio
Thursday, March 20, 8:00 p.m., Emory Department of Music: An Evening with Music of Philip Glass, Performing Arts Studio
Schwartz Center Staff
Rachael Brightwell, Managing Director
Terry Adams, Box Office Coordinator
Kathryn Colegrove, Assoc. Director for Programming and Outreach
Lewis Fuller, Associate Director for Production and Operations
Jennifer Kimball, Assistant Stage Manager
Jeffrey Lenhard, Operations Assistant
Brenda Porter, House Manager
Bebe Rogers, Communications Specialist
Alan Strange, Box Office Manager
Nicholas Surbey, Senior Graphic Designer
Alexandria Sweatt, Marketing Assistant
Mark Teague, Stage Manager
The Schwartz Center for Performing Arts offers a variety of classical, jazz, and crossover music each season. Visit schwartz.emory.edu for more event details and up-to-date information.
Next in the Candler Concert Series
New York Voices
Friday, March 21, 8:00 pm | Schwartz Center, Emerson Concert Hall
Award-winning New York Voices has collaborated with institutions including the Count Basie Orchestra, Paquito d’Rivera, and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band. With selections from the quartet’s latest release, Reminiscing in Tempo, this concert takes a deep dive into the jazz canon, surfacing with standards by Cole Porter and Al Jolson, alongside gems from Chick Corea, Fred Hersch, and Duke Ellington.
