January/February 2025
Dvořák’s “New World” and Mozart’s 40th
Jan. 3-5
James Conlon, conductor
Sci-Fi Symphony
Jan. 10 & 11
The FWSO’s Michael Shih and DJ Cheek: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante
Jan. 17-19
Raider of the Lost Ark in Concert
Jan. 24 & 25
Musical Storytelling: Spano Conducts Scheherazade and
The Rite of Spring
Jan. 31, Feb. 1 & 2
When it comes to health care, you want the best for you and your family.
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Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
NOVEMBER 10– FEBRUARY 9
Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is supported in part by Frost, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District.
Organized by Promotional support provided by
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Roster
Program 1: Dvořák’s “New World” and Mozart’s 40th
Program 2: Sci-Fi Symphony
Program 3: The FWSO’s Michael Shih and DJ Cheek: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante
Program 4: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert
Program 5: Musical Storytelling: Spano Conducts Scheherazade and The Rite of Spring
EXECUTIVE OFFICE
Keith Cerny, Ph.D. President and CEO
Carrie Ellen Adamian Chief Operating Officer
Jacque Carpenter Vice President of Finance & HR
Mia Curb Executive Assistant
OPERATIONS
Branson White Senior Production Manager
Lacy McCoy Senior Operations Manager
Tim Vinson Stage Manager
Gillian Boley Artistic Services Coordinator
Christopher Hawn Orchestra Librarian
David Sterrett Assistant Orchestra Librarian
Stephanie Moreau Senior Director of Development
Malia Lewis Development Manager, Board and Donor Relations
Courtney Hughey Institutional Giving Manager
Carolyn Hudec Events Manager
Veronika Perez Development Specialist, Operations
Alexia Wixom Development Associate
BOX OFFICE
Tess Todora Director of Ticketing Services
James Alexander Box Office Associate
Veronica Morris Box Office Associate
Patrick Sumner Box Office Associate
Paul Taylor Box Office Associate
Morgan Tingle Box Office Associate
FINANCE & HUMAN RESOURCES
Kenneth Rinehart Director of Accounting
Lucas Baldwin Senior Staff Accountant
ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL & HUMAN RESOURCES
Megan Brook Orchestra Personnel Manager
Araminta Stephens HR Administrator
MARKETING
Monica Sheehan Director of Marketing
Emily Gavaghan Senior Marketing Manager
Melanie Boma Senior Tessitura Database Manager
Josselin Garibo Pendleton Senior Manager, Education and Community Programs
Joanna Calhoun Marketing Communications Specialist
Mercedes T. Bass Chairman of the Board of Directors
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year! I am so thrilled to know that you are starting 2025 with music played by our fantastic FWSO. We have an exemplary programming line up along with world renowned conductors at the helm. We start off this winter with distinguished conductor James Conlon in Dvořák’s “New World” and then welcome back our very own Music Director Robert Spano for a special presentation of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring
Along with this robust programming and star filled conductor line up, the FWSO is pleased to continue offering the “Angel’s Program”. Throughout the season, guests who make a donation of $100 or more in support of our music education initiatives will enjoy a complimentary glass of champagne during the concert intermission. Each gift of $100 allows up to 20 students to participate in one of the FWSO’s music education experiences.
All of us at the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra – musicians, Board of Directors, and staff – are grateful that you are part of the FWSO family. We look forward to seeing every one of you at upcoming concerts and wish you a again a joyous and healthy new year!
With much appreciation and gratitude,
Mercedes T. Bass Chairman of the Board of Directors
Keith Cerny, Ph.D. President and CEO
Dear Patron,
The FWSO continues to scale new artistic heights, and the next set of concerts will be as thrilling as the last. In January, we welcome the acclaimed conductor James Conlon for an all-orchestral program including Dvořák’s iconic New World Symphony. We are delighted that Maestro Conlon has made time in his busy schedule to perform with the FWSO. Next, Principal Guest Conductor Kevin John Edusei returns mid-month to conduct Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante featuring the FWSO’s own Concertmaster Michael Shih and Principal Viola DJ Cheek. At the end of the month, Music Director Robert Spano presents our next installment in the Theater of a Concert Series with a new Choreography of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, with the orchestra and dancers sharing the stage. These unique dance and orchestra collaborations have been audience favorites, so buy your tickets early!
The Pops and Special Series feature some noteworthy projects this month, too. Associate Conductor Michele Di Russo conducts Sci-Fi Symphony, featuring themes from all of your favorite Science Fiction films, including Star Trek and Star Wars. Then, the FWSO will present fan-favorite movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark with live orchestra, conducted by Scott Terrell.
At the FWSO, we are proud of the extraordinary range of types of music and concerts we produce, and grateful for the support of our donors and patrons. We look forward to seeing you in person!
Yours sincerely,
Keith Cerny, Ph.D President & CEO
Robert Spano, conductor, pianist, composer, and teacher, is known worldwide for the intensity of his artistry and distinctive communicative abilities, creating a sense of inclusion and warmth among musicians and audiences that is unique among American orchestras. Spano has been Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra since August 2022 and will continue there through the 2027-2028 season; this follows his tenure as Principal Guest Conductor with FWSO, which began in 2019. He is the tenth Music Director in the orchestra’s history, which was founded in 1912. In February 2024, Spano was appointed Music Director of the Washington National Opera, beginning in the 2025–2026 season, for a three-year term; he is currently the WNO’s Music Director Designate. An avid mentor to rising artists, he is responsible for nurturing the careers of numerous celebrated composers, conductors, and performers. As Music Director of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2011, he oversees the programming of more than 300 events and educational programs for 630 students and young performers; he also directs the Aspen Conducting Academy, which offers participants unparalleled training and valuable podium experience. After twenty seasons as Music Director with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, he now serves as
4 | 2024/2025 SEASON
Music Director Laureate. He was appointed Principal Conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School in 2024, and will transition to Principal Guest Conductor in 2025-2026 following the appointment of their new Music Director.
During the 2024–2025 season — Spano’s third as Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony — he leads six weeks of symphonic programming, conducting works including Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman in concert, and a world premiere by Jake Heggie, in addition to shaping the artistic direction of the orchestra and driving its continued growth. In the Fall of 2024, Spano leads his first performances as WNO’s Music Director Designate, including a new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio. Additional highlights of the 2024–2025 season include a twoweek residency with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and his first appearances as Principal Conductor with the Rhode Island Philharmonic.
Spano made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019, leading the US premiere of Marnie by American composer Nico Muhly. Recent concert highlights have included several world-premiere performances, including The Sacrifice of Isaac by Jonathan Leshnoff with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Steven Mackey’s Aluminum Flowers and James Ra’s Te Deum with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra; Of Earth and Sky: Tales From the Motherland by Brian Raphael Nabors with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Rhode Island Philharmonic; and Voy a Dormir by Bryce Dessner at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor.
With a discography of critically acclaimed recordings, Robert Spano has garnered four Grammy™ Awards and eight nominations with the Atlanta Symphony. Maestro Spano is a recipient of the Georgia Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities and is one of two classical musicians inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
German conductor Kevin John Edusei is sought-after the world over. He is praised repeatedly for the drama and tension in his music-making and the sense of architecture, warmth and insight that he brings to his performances. He is deeply committed to the creative elements of performance, presenting classical music in new formats, cultivating audiences and conducting an eclectic range of repertoire.
Highlights of Edusei’s 2024/25 season include debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Musikverein with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. His return engagements include the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in his final season as Principal Guest Conductor. A strong advocate of contemporary music, Edusei’s carefully
curated programmes across the 2024/25 season include premieres of works by Hannah Kendall, Thomas Larcher, Samy Moussa, Brian Nabors, Derrick Skye and Gabriella Smith.
In Autumn 2022, Edusei made his debut at the Royal Opera House conducting Puccini’s La bohème, which was streamed across cinemas world-wide, and in 2023/24 he returned for a production of Madama Butterfly. Previously he has enjoyed great success with productions at the Semperoper Dresden, English National Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Volksoper Wien and Komische Oper Berlin. During his tenure at the Bern Opera House, he led highly acclaimed new productions including Peter Grimes, Ariadne auf Naxos, Salome, Bluebeard’s Castle, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Kátya Kábanová and a cycle of the MozartDa-Ponte operas.
Born in Bielefeld, Germany, Edusei studied sound engineering, classical percussion and orchestral conducting at the University of the Arts Berlin and the Royal Conservatory The Hague with Jac van Steen and Ed Spanjaard. In 2004 he was awarded a conducting fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival by David Zinman, in 2007 he was a prize-winner at the Lucerne Festival conducting competition under the artistic direction of Pierre Boulez and in 2008 he won the first prize of the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition in Athens. Edusei is an alumnus of the Deutsche Bank Akademie Musiktheater heute and the Dirigentenforum of the German Music Council. He resides with his family in Munich.
A graceful yet powerful force on the podium, Argentinian-Italian conductor Michelle Di Russo is known for her compelling interpretations, passionate musicality, and championing of contemporary music. Recently appointed Associate Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony, she will begin her tenure in thew 24/25 season, working closely with Robert Spano. Di Russo is a recipient of the 2024 The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award and a conducting fellow at the Verbier Festival. She is a former Dudamel Fellow with LA Philharmonic, a mentee of the Taki Alsop Fellowship, and a conducting fellow of Chicago Sinfonietta’s Project Inclusion program and The Dallas Opera Hart Institute.
This season’s highlights include guest conducting debuts with Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Calgary Philharmonic, Toledo Ballet, and Fort
Worth Symphony. She will also be returning to conduct the Delaware Symphony and cover conduct for the New York Philharmonic. Di Russo has been selected to lead a premiere of one of the Roche Young Commissions at Lucerne Festival Academy as part of a two-year project.
Di Russo has guest conducted LA Phil, San Diego Symphony, Vermont Symphony, Portland Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, and worked as cover conductor for the National Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, LA Phil, and NY Phil.
During the pandemic, Di Russo co-created Girls Who Conduct, an organization dedicated to bridging the gap between women and men in the conducting field and encouraging younger generations of women and non-binary conductors to overcome any obstacles presented due to their gender.
Di Russo holds a Doctoral Degree in Orchestral Conducting from Arizona State University and a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Kentucky. She completed her degree in Orchestral Conducting and Music Production of Audiovisual Media from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, where she was awarded an Ad-Hoc Diploma for the highest grade in Orchestral Conducting.
6 | 2024/2025 SEASON
Robert Spano, Music Director, Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Chair
Kevin John Edusei, Principal Guest Conductor
Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Music Director Laureate
Michelle Di Russo, Associate Conductor, Rae and Ed Schollmaier Foundation Chair
John Giordano, Conductor Emeritus
VIOLIN I
Michael Shih, Concertmaster
Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass Chair
Mr. Sid R. Bass Chair
Swang Lin, Associate Concertmaster
Ann Koonsman Chair
Eugene Cherkasov, Assistant Concertmaster
Mollie & Garland Lasater Chair
Jennifer Y. Betz
Ordabek Duissen
Qiong Hulsey
Ivo Ivanov
Nikayla Kim
Izumi Lund
Ke Mai
Kimberly Torgul
Albert Yamamoto
VIOLIN II
Adriana Voirin DeCosta, Principal
Steven Li, Associate Principal
Janine Geisel, Assistant Principal
Symphony League of Fort Worth Chair
Molly Baer
Matt Milewski
Gabriela Peña-Kim
Kathryn Perry
Tatyana Smith
Rosalyn Story
Andrea Tullis
Camilla Wojciechowska
VIOLA
DJ Cheek, Principal
Anna Kolotylina, Associate Principal
HeeSun Yang, Assistant Principal
Joni Baczewski
Sorin Guttman
Aleksandra Holowka
Dmitry Kustanovich
Daniel Sigale
CELLO
Allan Steele, Principal
Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass Chair
Mr. Sid R. Bass Chair
Vacant Position, Associate Principal
Keira Fullerton, Assistant Principal
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Foundation Chair
John Belk
Deborah Brooks
Shelley Jessup
Jenny Kwak
BASS
William Clay, Principal
Mr. & Mrs. Edward P. Bass Chair
Paul Unger, Assistant Principal
Jeffery Hall
Sean P. O’Hara
Julie Vinsant
The seating positions of all string section musicians listed alphabetically change on a regular basis.
FLUTE
Jake Fridkis, Principal
Shirley F. Garvey Chair
Gabriel Fridkis, Assistant Principal
Vaynu Kadiyali
PICCOLO
Vaynu Kadiyali
OBOE
Jennifer Corning Lucio, Principal
Nancy L. & William P. Hallman, Jr., Chair
Tamer Edlebi, Assistant Principal
Tim Daniels
ENGLISH HORN
Tim Daniels
CLARINET
Stanislav Chernyshev, Principal
Rosalyn G. Rosenthal Chair*
Ivan Petruzziello, Assistant Principal
Phillip Solomon°
E-FLAT CLARINET
Ivan Petruzziello
BASS CLARINET
Phillip Solomon°
BASSOON
Joshua Elmore, Principal
Mr. & Mrs. Lee M. Bass Chair
Nik Hooks°, Assistant Principal
Nicole Haywood Vera Tenorio°
Cara Owens, on leave
CONTRABASSOON
Nicole Haywood°
HORN
Gerald Wood, Principal
Elizabeth H. Ledyard Chair
Alton F. Adkins, Associate Principal
Drs. Jeff and Rosemary Detweiler Chair
Kelly Cornell, Associate Principal
Aaron Pino
TRUMPET
Kyle Sherman, Principal
Cody McClarty, Assistant Principal
Dorothy Rhea Chair
Oscar Garcia
TROMBONE
Joseph Dubas, Principal
Mr. & Mrs. John Kleinheinz Chair
John Michael Hayes, Assistant Principal
Dennis Bubert
BASS TROMBONE
Dennis Bubert
Mr. & Mrs. Lee M. Bass Chair
TUBA
Edward Jones, Principal
TIMPANI
Seth McConnell, Principal
Madilyn Bass Chair
Nicholas Sakakeeny, Assistant Principal
PERCUSSION
Keith Williams, Principal
Shirley F. Garvey Chair
Nicholas Sakakeeny, Assistant Principal
Adele Hart Chair
Deborah Mashburn
Brad Wagner
HARP
Vacant Position
Bayard H. Friedman Chair
KEYBOARD
Shields-Collins “Buddy” Bray, Principal
Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn & Van Cliburn Chair
STAGE MANAGER
Wilson Armstrong
ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL MANAGER
Megan Brook
ORCHESTRA LIBRARIANS
Christopher Hawn
David Sterrett
*In Memory of Manny Rosenthal °2024/2025 Season Only
The Concertmaster performs on the 1710 Davis Stradivarius violin.
The Associate Concertmaster performs on the 1685 Eugenie Stradivarius violin.
Friday, January 03, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, January 04, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, January 05, 2025 at 2:00 PM Bass Performance Hall Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra James Conlon, conductor
W. A. MOZART Overture to The Impresario, K. 486
W. A. MOZART
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
I. Molto allegro
II. Andante
III. Menuetto: Allegretto; Trio
IV. Allegro assai
DVOŘÁK
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”
I. Adagio; Allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Molto vivace
IV. Allegro con fuoco
Video or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited. Patrons arriving late will be seated during the first convenient pause. Program and artists are subject to change.
James Conlon, conductor
James Conlon, one of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic, and choral repertoire. Since his 1974 debut with the New York Philharmonic, he has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra. Through worldwide touring, an extensive discography and videography, numerous writings, television appearances and guest speaking engagements, Conlon is one of classical music’s most recognized figures.
Conlon is Music Director of LA Opera, where since 2006 he has led more performances than any other conductor in the company’s history, and Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He has served as Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony; and is Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival, where he was Music Director for 37 years.
As a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he has led more than 270 performances since his 1976 debut. He is a noted advocate for composers suppressed by the Nazi regime and is an enthusiastic advocate of public scholarship and cultural institutions as forums for the exchange of ideas and inquiry into the role music plays in our shared humanity and civic life. His appearances throughout the country as a speaker on a variety of cultural and educational topics are widely praised.
Among his numerous prizes are four Grammy® Awards for recordings with LA Opera, a 2002 Légion d'Honneur from then-President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac, and a 2018 Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana from Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic.
OVERTURE
DURATION: About 5 minutes
PREMIERED: Vienna, 1786
OVERTURE: An introduction to a large dramatic work, such as a ballet or opera, that demands listeners’ ears and sets the tone of the evening. Alternatively, these can be standalone concert works written on a subject or theme.
“Music, in even the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear but always remain a source of pleasure.”
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , (Born 1756, Austria; died 1791)
Opera singers’ reputation for drama and vanity is nothing new. So renowned were the idiosyncrasies and demands of some performers that the great Mozart himself — great, yes, but wickedly and irreverently funny — once wrote an aria that caused a soprano to bob her head like a chicken to help hit the right notes. Later, he would write a German opera with the writer Gottlieb Stephanie about a group of singers competing and bickering with one another before realizing that they needed to work together to create great art. The resulting work was The Impresario
The grand irony here is that Mozart composed the work at the “imperial command” of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, an amateur musician himself. (Though the emperor had some formal training, a scornful Mozart once wrote that his majesty “was no great lover of music.”) The opera was for a grand competition in 1786 at the emperor’s palace in Vienna that pitted Italian opera against German opera. Salieri, Mozart’s rival, wrote a comedic Italian opera about the creation of a new opera titled First the Music, then the Words. Mozart wrote a German singspiel, a kind of opera that included spoken dialogue.
Salieri, whose fee was double Mozart’s for this project, soundly thrashed his opponent. Historians attribute Mozart’s loss largely to the poor quality of the libretto, which is quite silly and meanders dreadfully. Modern productions tend to completely rewrite the text.
Regardless, the Overture to The Impresario appears on orchestral programs from time to time as a standalone work. It is a large-scale, sophisticated work reminiscent of the more famous Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, a far more successful opera from Mozart. The Overture to The Impresario begins with a bustling proclamation that suggests high drama and squabbling. There are two contrasting key ingredients: the quick music of the opening, with its sudden shifts from loud to soft and back, and a gentler, more lyrical section. Mozart alternates and blends these themes before building to a rousing, triumphant finish.
As a final note, Mozart and Salieri were competitors but not bitter rivals, as suggested in the film Amadeus. For this competition, Mozart cast Salieri’s mistress as one of the two melodramatic sopranos, as she was a highly regarded singer. Then again, given the parodic nature of The Impresario, perhaps that was merely his way of securing
10 | 2024/2025 SEASON
the last laugh. tradition of motif writing, or repeating snatches of melody, harmony, or rhythm to help listeners identify characters, themes, and emotions. “There’s a consistent bird call motif throughout, with the bird crying out that the relationship is impossible and unsustainable,” he explained.
SYMPHONY No. 40 in G MINOR, K. 550
I. Molto allegro
II. Andante
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Finale: Allegro assai
DURATION: About 30 minutes
COMPLETED: 1788
SYMPHONY: An elaborate orchestral composition typically broken into contrasting movements, at least one of which is in sonata form.
SONATA FORM: A type of composition in three sections (exposition, development, and recapitulation) in which at least two themes or subjects are explored and developed throughout a movement.
“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose, but when it is necessary, speak — and speak in such a way that people will remember it.”
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (Born 1756, Austria; died 1791)
Brace yourself: The Illuminati are real, and Mozart was one of them.
OK, so they weren’t the nefarious cabal of world-controlling megalomaniacs that the conspiracy theories point to nowadays. Historically, the group was an elitist, rationalist faction of the Freemasons active from 1776 to 1785. They stood in opposition to the more occult-obsessed faction of this historic fraternal order, though both of these factions sought to sway political decisions by currying influence among societal elites with debatable levels of success.
Mozart began his apprenticeship at a Freemason lodge in 1784 at age 28 and aligned himself with the rationalists, including masonic themes in famous works like The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute. The operas include numerous references to the rhythm of the society’s super secret triple-knock: short-long — long. (The Masons were a bit obsessed with ritual and secrecy, natural parents of conspiracy theories and urban myths.) More generally, the Freemasons’ musical ideals tended toward straightforward melody and accompaniment rather than dense polyphony or counterpoint, a defining characteristic of Mozart’s famous Symphony No. 40.
Late in life, Mozart composed a trilogy of symphonies, the crown jewel of his symphonic output, the 39th, 40th, and 41st. Mozart’s music tends to have a natural ebullience, a charm and grace that continues to endear it to listeners even centuries
Continued On Page 12
removed. This particular symphony is famously relentless. The first theme in the opening movement is argumentative and urgent, though it soon yields to a softer, sighing second theme that echoes sweetly in the winds. Then it’s back into the storm and conflict.
A sensual second movement provides contrast, much like the principal two themes of the first movement. The Menuetto returns to mood to stately severity, exaggerated to the point of pomposity. The finale is explosive, combative even. An opening statement, a simple rising arpeggio in the strings, is repeatedly ripped apart by the full orchestra before the movement begins cycling through harmonic sequences at a breakneck pace. This movement is rhythmically more straightforward than the opening allegro, though it mirrors the traditional sonata form by positing a kinder second theme.
SYMPHONY No. 9, Op. 95 (“FROM THE NEW WORLD”)
I.Adagio. Allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Molto vivace
IV. Allegro con fuoco
DURATION: About 41 minutes
PREMIERED: New York City, 1893
SYMPHONY: An elaborate orchestral composition typically broken into contrasting movements, at least one of which is in sonata form.
“I called this symphony ‘From the New World’ because it was the very first work I wrote in America. As to my opinion, I think that the influence of this country (it means the folk songs as are Negro, Indian, Irish, etc.) is to be seen and that this and all other works (written in America) differ very much from my other works as well as in couleur as in character, but I will not criticize myself.
— Antonín Dvořák, (Born 1841 in what is now the Czech Republic; died 1904)
Despite not having an American bone in his body, the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák wrote one of the most famously “American” symphonies in the classical repertoire. Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, commonly called the “New World” symphony, assimilates the style of Negro spirituals so well that many assume that he borrowed the tune from “Goin’ Home” for the famous English horn solo in the second movement. (Actually, the symphony inspired the spiritual.) The third movement is original as well, and though it doesn’t directly quote any particular Native American folk songs, it manages to capture the style of such a dance fairly authentically.
And all this after only a few months of living in the States.
Dvořák was a “late-bloomer” compared to classical music’s famous prodigies like Mozart and Bach. It took him until his 40s to make his stamp in Europe as one of the great composers of his day, weaving Bohemian folk tunes and Western classical idioms in inventive, thrilling manners in the concert hall. And when the recently established
National Conservatory of Music in New York City needed a new music director, founder Jeanette M. Thurber — the wife of a millionaire greengrocer — decided that Mr. Dvořák was the man for the job. Dvořák, who loved his home dearly, balked at the idea until Thurber offered him 25 times his current salary to move to New York. (The exact figure was equivalent to $524,000 in 2024’s dollars.)
So he moved. It was during his tenure as director that Dvořák wrote his ninth symphony, his famous cello concerto, and his “American” string quartet, three of his best-loved works.
Dvořák’s compositional idiom already involved blending Western traditions with folk music, and he threw himself into American folk idioms with abandon on his arrival: “In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music,” he wrote at the time. The symphony’s first movement kicks off with a mournful dirge, simple and powerful. Soon, it accelerates into the “allegro molto,” with a fierce solo in the French horn as the main tune and a contrasting quote from “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in the flute as the second theme. These themes and other transition music alternate and blend throughout the movement.
The second movement begins with a brass chorale, or a hymn-like progression, that settles gently into a bed of string sound. And then, plaintively, nostalgically, an English horn, a lower-voiced cousin of the oboe, begins to sing the symphony’s most famous tune, with the orchestra cutting in at times with dramatic chorales and commentary.
Aside from spirituals, “I carefully studied a certain number of Indian melodies which a friend gave me and was truly intrigued by their characteristic traits – imbued with their spirit, in fact,” Dvořák wrote while composing the symphony. This is evident in the third movement, thought to have been partly inspired by the epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which Dvořák would have read in translated form in Czechia. This movement is a traditional scherzo in form, with a fiery first section, a milder, lilting middle section, and then a reprisal of the opening material.
The finale is a raucous, dramatic affair that quotes from previous movements in a cyclic, “summing up” manner before building to an epic conclusion to celebrate Dvořák’s first months in America.
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Bass Performance Hall
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Michelle Di Russo, conductor
VARIOUS arr. Custer
MARK SNOW orch. Sacks
Star Trek Through the Years
Theme from The X-Files
JOHN WILLIAMS Close Encounters of the Third Kind
HANSON End Credits from Alien
MICHAEL GIACCHINO
Music from Star Trek (2009)
JOHN WILLIAMS Flying Theme from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
CRAIG SAFAN
ALAN SILVESTRI
Overture to The Last Starfighter
Back to the Future: Suite for Orchestra
JOHN WILLIAMS Theme from Jurassic Park
KAMEN arr. Lopez
The X-Jet from X-Men
ALAN SILVESTRI Theme from The Avengers
MICHAEL GIACCHINO arr. Holcombe
Music from The Incredibles
JOHN WILLIAMS Rey's Theme from Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
JOHN WILLIAMS
Throne Room and End Title from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Video or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited. Patrons arriving late will be seated during the first convenient pause. Program and artists are subject to change.
Friday, January 17, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Bass Performance Hall
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Kevin John Edusei, conductor
Michael Shih, violin
DJ Cheek, viola
W. A. MOZART
SIBELIUS
Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 320d (K. 364)
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Andante
III. Presto
Michael Shih, violin
DJ Cheek, viola
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82
I. Tempo molto moderato; Allegro moderato; Presto
II. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto
III. Allegro molto; Misterioso
Video or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited. Patrons arriving late will be seated during the first convenient pause. Program and artists are subject to change.
Michael Shih, concertmaster of the FWSO since 2001, has performed throughout the United States and his native Taiwan, as well as on tours of Canada, France, Germany, Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru, China, Japan, and Korea. He has appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Little Orchestra Society at Avery Fisher Hall, the Williamsburg Symphonia, the Abilene Philharmonic, the New York Youth Symphony, the San Pedro Sula Symphony in Honduras, the Taipei Symphony at Taiwan's National Concert Hall, and with the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Fort Worth, Hartford, and New Amsterdam. In 2007, he gave the world premiere of Kevin Puts' Violin Concerto with the FWSO conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and this critically acclaimed performance was released by FWSO Live in recordings titled The Composer's Voice and Take Six.
Currently, he is a Distinguished Guest Professor of Violin at the Texas Christian University and a 2013 Visiting Professor of Music at the East China Normal University.
DJ Cheek joined the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra as Principal Viola in August 2021 and made his solo debut with the orchestra in 2023, performing the Bartók Viola Concerto. This season, he will appear as a soloist in works by Bruch and Mozart. Prior to his current appointment, DJ played Principal Viola in the Jacksonville Symphony.
For the 2024-2025 academic year, DJ is a Visiting Artist/Teacher of Viola at Baylor University. He recently joined the faculty of Kneisel Hall and Texas Chamber Music Institute, and he performs at the Colorado Music Festival and teaches at the Interlochen Chamber Music Camp. He has appeared at festivals such as Music@Menlo, the Perlman Music Program, Lucerne, Sarasota, Olympic, and Yellow Barn. DJ performed as a guest artist with Donald Weilerstein and Kim Kashkashian in support of Music for Food, and he continues to perform with the Music for Food chapter in Fort Worth.
DJ holds a master’s degree from New England Conservatory and a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College-Conservatory, where he studied with Kim Kashkashian and Peter Slowik, respectively. He was further mentored by Beth Guterman Chu.
16 | 2024/2025 SEASON
DURATION: About 18 minutes
PREMIERED: Weimar, 1889
TONE POEM: A piece of orchestral music, typically one movement, based on an idea or story.
“I want to be able to depict, in music, a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.”
— Richard Strauss, (Born 1864, Bavaria; died 1949)
To put it delicately, the German composer Richard Strauss didn’t shy away from composing music for racy scenarios. There’s the sultry, slinking “Dance of the Seven Veils” from his biblical opera Salome, where Salome herself dances to temp King Herrod, and then there’s Don Juan, his first famous tone poem based on the tale of the famous womanizer.
The music of Don Juan begins with a gallant smirk, sheer bravura, and confidence personified in music. Sweeping strings and sharp interjections from the brass and percussion give the opening a heroic flair. Before long, this fanfare gives way to a more intimate tune, a beguiling violin solo that heralds a torrid love scene. The music soon builds to an emotional climax, and then the tone darkens — here, Strauss introduces elements of the play Don Juans Ende by poet Nikolaus Lenau, including the protagonist’s ultimate resignation to his fate: death by the sword of his lover’s father.
As the Don’s life extinguishes, his final, thumping heartbeats can be heard among plucked strings and timpani.
The orchestration of Don Juan is perhaps the earliest example of Strauss’ mature style, with bold, vivid writing that blends numerous instruments into dense layers of sound. His music is quite difficult to perform, with its many moving parts and constant shifts in tempo and dynamics.
Strauss reached the ripe old age of 85, composing nearly to his last breath. His parents were a French horn player and a mother from a wealthy brewer’s family. Strauss wasn’t plagued by the same financial hardships that drove fellow composers to tortured soul searching; his was largely a charmed career that brought him fulfillment, fame, and fortune.
Still, there were shadows, a product of his time. As the Nazis’ power rose, Strauss’ distaste for the propagandist Joseph Goebbels would become legendary: “I consider the Streicher–Goebbels Jew-baiting as a disgrace to German honor, as evidence of incompetence — the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent.”
SINFONIA CONCERTANTE for VIOLIN, VIOLA, and ORCHESTRA, K. 364
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Andante
III. Presto
DURATION: About 30 minutes
COMPOSED: 1779
SINFONIA CONCERTANTE: Sometimes referred to as a “symphonie concertante,” this music form from the Classical period is a symphony employing two or more solo instruments, similar to the concerto grosso of the Baroque era.
“I hope you will be ready to listen to one of the saddest and most painful news and yet remain steadfast … That very day, the third of July, my mother peacefully died in her sleep at 10:21 p.m. … I was very much pained, I cried plenty – but to what avail? I had to comfort myself, do the same, my dear father and my dear sister.”
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (Born 1756, Austria;1791), to his father in 1778
Talk to any orchestral musician — there are stereotypes about every kind of instrumentalist loosely related to the way an instrument sounds or is played. Violinists, for example, are thought to be competitive and a bit showy as the highest string instrument in the orchestra. Violists, on the other hand, tend to be comparatively relaxed and play more supporting harmonic lines with a mellower sound. (Again, these are stereotypes.)
Mozart found a way to even the tonal playing field through his Sinfonia Concertante, literally a symphonic concerto for more than one soloist. Mozart chose to pair the viola with the violin, as he often played viola in string quartets and had a well-known soft spot for middle-register instruments. He requires the viola to tune higher and tighten the strings, a historic technique, scordatura, which brings the viola’s tone closer to the violin’s and helps its rich sonority cut through the orchestral accompaniment during thicker passages.
To open this sparkling work, the orchestra launches and wends through an expansive series of grand, splendidly whistleable melodies. Soon, the two soloists sneak in quietly, singing high above the orchestral texture before falling down the scale and beginning a dialogue with the orchestra, iterating on the opening material with little flourishes, trills, and runs. The viola is very much a partner to the violin in this work and in no way subservient.
The second movement of the Concertante represents another rarity. Mozart wrote most of his concertos in sunny major keys. This middle movement is in a more somber, serious minor. It’s an operatic lamentation, a song of poignancy and loss heard first in the orchestra, then in the solo violin, and then in the solo viola, each repetition adding new color and soul to the music. Some historians have posited that the movement is an exquisite outlet for Mozart’s grief at the death of his mother a year earlier.
18 | 2024/2025 SEASON
To finish, the mood brightens once, a lively, leaping rondo that sends the viola zipping and chasing after the violinists’ technical runs and arpeggios in a delightful game of cat and mouse. Classical music’s rondo form is simple: A main theme is introduced at the beginning of the movement, and then there is a contrasting episode, and then the theme returns, and so on. Here, the movement builds to a brilliant, racing conclusion, with the whole orchestra chiming in to underline the final point.
SYMPHONY No. 5 in E-flat Major
I. Tempo molto moderato
II. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto
III. Allegro molto
DURATION: About 31 minutes
PREMIERED: Helsinki, 1915; 1919
SYMPHONY: An elaborate orchestral composition typically broken into contrasting movements, at least one of which is in sonata form.
“The Adagio of my fifth symphony? That I, poor fellow that I am, can have moments of such richness!”
— Jean Sibelius , (Born 1865, Finland; died 1957)
Before Finland joined the European Union in 1999, the two famous figures on the 100 Finnish Mark bill were the 20th-century composer Jean Sibelius and the Whooper swan. This was no coincidence — the two are intrinsically linked. Sibelius’ music was one of Finland’s premiere cultural exports, and he often found inspiration in his country’s craggy landscapes and wildlife. Among his most famous works is the epic tone poem The Swan of Tuonela, with the English horn portraying the voice of a mystical swan that guards the River of Death.
His fifth symphony also looks to the swan — while composing this work, he wrote in his diary about seeing 16 swans: “One of the great experiences of my life! God, how beautiful...” He worked tirelessly to capture something about his feeling of majesty and euphoria, introducing a theme in the finale of this symphony in the French horns that vaguely resembles a swan’s call. It is lonely, noble and thrilling all at once, easily the most recognizable moment of the symphony.
To this day, the Whooper swan is also the national bird of Finland. The Finnish government commissioned Sibelius to write a symphony in honor of his own 50th birthday, which the country also declared a national holiday. (His use of national legends and sounds in his music had prompted a positive relationship that included an ongoing annual stipend — talk about government-funded art.) Although he completed the work in time for the national celebrations, he grappled with the symphony for six years, revising it twice and writing: “I wished to give my symphony another – more human – form. More down-to-earth, more vivid.” In 1919, he completed this version. The fifth opens with great swells in the brass, winds, and percussion, tectonic rumblings of epic proportions. Each melody and idea flows into the next, defying traditional analysis — the music lands on the ears as a force of nature, sublimely whimsical and logical, a constant bed of string sound providing texture for rhythmically complex, long melodies.
Continued On Page 20
Still, the work overall is a palindrome. The first movement (originally two distinct movements that Sibelius fused in the revision) begins slowly but accelerates to a more lighthearted scherzo about 10 minutes into the music that is much more rhythmically straightforward and builds to a thrilling close.
The second movement is comparatively serene and simple, a set of variations on a simple tune. Sibelius layers additional melodies and moods atop this uncomplicated opening, providing shifting textures and nuance throughout.
The finale begins quickly, rushing strings introducing an excited, nervous tune that soon gives way to the famous, aching swan calls in the horns. These two elements alternate and combine and yield additional transitional melodies before the pace slows back to the more glacial tempo of the opening movement, the swan call now reminiscent of the symphony’s more optimistic first melodies. To close are great hammer blows of great chords, separated by impossibly loud silences.
Friday, January 24, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Bass Performance Hall
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Scott Terrell, conductor
Starring
Harrison Ford
Karen Allen
Paul Freeman
Ronald Lacey
John Rhys-Davies
Denholm Elliott
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Produced by Frank Marshall
Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
Story by George Lucas
Philip Kaufman
Executive Producers
George Lucas
Howard Kazanjian
Music by John Williams
Video or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited. Patrons arriving late will be seated during the first convenient pause.
Motion Picture & Artwork © 1981 Lucasfilm Ltd. Concert performed under license from Disney Concerts. Disney Concerts under license from Lucasfilm Ltd and Paramount Pictures.
By bringing the arts into the lives of our residents, we connect on all levels using music as a key to successful and personalized dementia care.
As a not-for-profit organization, James L West has been providing expert care for those living with dementia and support for their caregivers for over 30 years.
Until there is a cure, we are here to care.
Scott Terrell has built a major conducting career through imaginative programs, an engaging presence, and a determined passion for artistic excellence, teaching, and viability. An ardent champion of new music and diversity of repertoire, he is a visionary conductor whose artistry and intellect have engaged musicians, students, and audiences. Maestro Terrell is Associate Professor of Orchestral Studies, holding the Virginia Martin Howard Chair, at the Louisiana State University School of Music.
Passionate about working with aspiring musicians and educators, Terrell is an active guest clinician, teacher, and adjudicator. He has been a regular guest conductor and instructor at the Aspen Music Festival, leading various concert programs as well as guiding and mentoring conducting students. In demand as a teacher of young musicians, he has conducted and presented at educational and honor orchestra events in Colorado, New York, Minnesota, Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, and Massachusetts.
Mr. Terrell was Music Director of the Lexington Philharmonic for a transformative decade (2009-2019) in the organization’s history. He re-invigorated and raised the artistic level of the ensemble, diversified programming, expanded collaborations, and increased community support. The orchestra was awarded numerous Copland Awards, highlighting his ongoing commitment to contemporary American composers such as Missy Mazzoli, Jennifer Higdon, Gabriela Lena Frank, Joan Tower, Christopher Rouse, John Adams, Michael Gandolfi, Philip Glass, Mason Bates, Roberto Sierra, Osvaldo Golijov, and Chris Brubeck. The orchestra was also broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today for the first time in its history during his tenure.
Maestro Terrell served as Resident Conductor and Director of Education for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, and prior to that was Assistant Conductor of Minnesota Orchestra. A native of Michigan, Maestro Terrell is a graduate of Western Michigan University and the University of Minnesota in orchestral conducting. Terrell was chosen as a fellowship conductor for the inaugural season of the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival under Music Director David Zinman. He has participated in master classes with such distinguished conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Jorma Panula, and David Robertson. He was awarded the prestigious Aspen Conducting Prize from David Zinman, recognizing exemplary musicianship and promise.
22 | 2024/2025 SEASON
Aaron Howard and Corrie Hood-Howard with additional support from Dr. Jennifer Freeman
Friday, January 31, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, February 01, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, February 02, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Bass Performance Hall Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Robert Spano, conductor glo, dancers
Lauri Stallings, choreographer/director
Alex Mason, lighting designer
Margaret Ann Phillips, costume designer
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Scheherazade, Op. 35
I. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship (Largo e maestoso; Allegro non troppo)
II. The Tale of the Kalendar Prince (Lento; Allegro molto)
III. The Young Prince and the Princess (Andantino quasi allegretto)
IV. Festival at Baghdad - The Sea - The Ship Breaks Against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman (Allegro molto)
STRAVINSKY
The Rite of Spring
Part I:
The Adoration of the Earth
Introduction
Dance of the Young Girls
Ritual of Abduction
Spring Rounds
Ritual of the Rival Tribes
Procession of the Sage
The Sage
Dance of the Earth
Part II: The Sacrifice Introduction
Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
Glorification of the Chosen One Evocation of the Ancestors
Ritual Action of the Ancestors
Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One) glo, dancers
Lauri Stallings, choreographer/director
Video or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited. Patrons arriving late will be seated during the first convenient pause. Program and artists are subject to change.
Lauri Stallings is a Georgia artist who creates both inside and outside of art world institutions through her choreographed landscapes and actions to invoke particular places, collective voices, and communities of movement. Her work has been exhibited and presented nationally and internationally at Creative Time New York, Frac Meca, High Museum of Art, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Florence Biennale, Trinity Laban, Jule Museum, and Marais de Bonnefont.
She is currently a research + process artist at the Center for Civil and Human Rights, culminating in “Singing Sun” in 2025. She is a recipient of an Artadia Award. She is a Rauschenberg Foundation grantee. She is a USA Artist Fellow nominee (2022, 2018). She is a Bogliasco Fellow, and MOCA GA Fellow. She served as Georgia Tech Resident Artist. She was awarded the Hudgens Prize, and is the inaugural artist of Flux Projects. She has collaborated with other artists, most notably Maestro Robert Spano for “cloth,” “Orfeo,” and “JUMP,” a new symphony starring 101 public school children. Stallings will choreograph “Siddhartha, She” for Aspen Music Festival in August 2025. For all her innovation, Stallings’ artistic training was traditional, in ballet. Early choreographic works include Hubbard St. Dance Chicago, Ballet Augsburg, and American Ballet Theatre.
24 | 2024/2025 SEASON
Founded by choreographer lauri stallings in 2009, Glo is an artist - led platform for art, cultural development, and social relations. Glo uses choreography as a tool box to bring together people and pool resources to meet communities where they are at: on Main Street in rural towns, sidewalks in big cities, museum galleries, symphony halls, and preservation landmarks, helping to cultivate artists and make the world better. The Platform is well known for innovative, ambitious, and meaningful initiatives, and projects that amplify and celebrate the history, value, and promise of Southern creativity at local, regional, and national scales.
Glo is located in a 19th-century industrial space of the Goat Farm Arts Center in Westside, Atlanta, and operates a constellation of sites in the rural South, including the long-term project The Traveling Show, The Blooming City in Palmetto, and Tanz Farm at the Goat Farm. Glo Platform is grounded in and enriched by these core values: embody creativity, value place, practice abundance, and dance in love. www.gloplatform.org
I. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
II. The Kalandar Prince
III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess
IV. Festival at Baghdad — The Sea —The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman
DURATION: About 45 minutes
PREMIERED: St. Petersburg, 1888
PROGRAM MUSIC: Music of a narrative or descriptive kind; the term is often extended to all music that attempts to represent extra-musical concepts without resorting to sung words. (Grove Dictionary of Music)
ORCHESTRATION: The arrangement or scoring of music for orchestral performance, i.e., assigning melody, harmony, and other effects to different instruments to achieve a desired sound, feeling, or effect.
“The program I had been guided by in composing Scheherazade consisted of separate, unconnected episodes and pictures from The Arabian Nights, scattered through all four movements of my suite...”
— Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, (Born 1844, Russia; died 1908)
It was only a matter of time before the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov fell prey to a traditional musical fascination: the exotic allure of the East. For centuries, Western artists had viewed the culture and imperial power of the East as both alluring and threatening — some depictions were exaggerated and patronizing, and some were honest homages or fusions of artistic styles.
Rimsky-Korsakov found his inspiration in the famous 1,001 Arabian Nights, and he wrote a blazingly colorful and dramatic four-movement symphonic suite to musically illustrate several of the tales. The resulting work, Scheherazade, named after the heroine in Arabian Nights, is explicitly programmatic. In the original score, the composer wrote an introductory note for the premiere:
The Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, told seriatim, for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely.
The first movement begins with a vengeful, furious melody in the low brass and strings representing the sultan and his murderous plot. Following a series of hushed woodwind chords, a harp sounds, invoking the centuries-old tradition of bards using harps to punctuate their stories. And then, a gorgeous, beguiling violin solo — the voice of Scheherazade herself. This music returns between the different tales to weave them together holistically, just as the Scheherazade weaves each tale together. The individual movements don’t track with individual tales precisely. Rather, they
take thematic inspiration from their narrative elements. “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” has an undulating, wave-like motif that rises and falls in the cellos, perhaps inspired by the composer’s service in Russia’s navy, which took him as far as Niagara Falls and Rio de Janeiro. (The “Kalandar Prince” movement — based on the tale of a medieval Islamic character of a wandering mystic — passes solos around to be performed in an improvisatory style unique to each player and rushes along with a spirit of adventure. The third movement, “The Young Prince and the Princess,” is a distillation of the love stories of the tales, a sentimental tune retaining just a whiff of the original Arabian Nights’ eroticism, with Scheherazade’s theme returning in the middle to interject something of her own passion, perhaps. Finally, the fourth movement references each movement in turn while adding a desperate, careening new melody. The Sultan’s vehement theme returns throughout before blending at the finale with Scheherazade’s music and resolving into harmonic bliss.
Scheherazade is especially famous for its orchestration. There isn’t much thematic material in the work, but the way Rimsky-Korsakov blends instruments and the variety of effects he creates by passing that material to different sections of the orchestra is still admired. (He literally wrote a textbook on orchestration that is still referenced today.) What’s all the more impressive is that he wrote for orchestra immediately from his ear and head — most composers in that day would write music for piano and then orchestrate later. His was a marvelous, instinctive talent.
THE RITE OF SPRING
First Part: The Adoration Of The Earth
I. Introduction
II. Augurs of Spring
III. Ritual of Abduction
IV. Spring Rounds
V. Ritual of the Rival Tribes
VI. Procession of the Sage
VII. Dance of the Earth
DURATION: About 30 minutes
PREMIERED: Paris, 1913
Second Part: The Sacrifice
VIII. Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
IX. Glorification of the Chosen One
X. Evocation of the Ancestors
XI. Ritual Action of the Ancestors
XII. Sacrificial Dance
PRIMITAVISM: In music, primitivism invokes heavy emphasis on rhythm to harken back to ancient times.
“One day [in 1910], when I was finishing the last pages of The Firebird in Saint Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision ... I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of The Rite of Spring.”
— Igor Stravinsky, (Born 1882, Russia; died 1971)
Continued On Page 28
The premiere of The Rite of Spring is the stuff of legend, one of classical music’s most famous tales. The Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had earlier collaborated with Stravinsky for the successful ballets The Firebird and the charming Petrushka, commissioned The Rite of Spring for the 1913 Ballets Russes. Stravinsky’s music illustrating the pagan rites was so fresh and inventive that it provoked an actual riot at its 1913 Parisian premiere. (This is an enduring anecdote and marketing tidbit: “Come hear the magical bassoon solo that offended listeners so much that they rioted with baguettes and whistles,” etc.)
Well, the riot happened. Listeners began jeering from the very first bars, quickly escalating to blowing whistles when the second scene began (here, the music is marked by powerful strokes in the strings with irregular accents and blasts from the brass). Stravinsky then grumpily called the crowd “very naïve and stupid people” to their faces, which probably didn’t help deescalate — but there’s a vein of scholarship that argues that it wasn’t so much the music itself as a rowdy crowd of opposing political factions and classes looking to cause trouble no matter what the piece actually sounded like. This is less entertaining but more plausible.
Regardless, the music opens with a languid bassoon solo before other winds enter, making heavy use of polytonality and polyrhythms, new branches of musical modernism at the time. This creates a raw unpredictability, where rhythm is elevated above melody and harmony, suggesting music of millennia past. The ballet grows increasingly wild and frenzied until the moment of the girl’s death. The Rite of Spring is perhaps the most important and storied piece of music in the 20th century.
The scenario for the ballet The Rite of Spring is simple and evocative. The composer himself explains it thus:
Le Sacre du Printemps is a musical choreographic work. It represents pagan Russia and is unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of creative power of Spring. The piece has no plot, but the choreographic sequence is as follows:
The Spring celebration. The pipers pipe and young men tell fortunes. The old woman enters. She knows the mystery of nature and how to predict the future. Young girls with painted faces come in from the river in single file. They dance the Spring dances. Games start. The Spring Khorovod [a stately dance]. The people divide into two opposed groups. The holy procession of the wise old men. The oldest and wisest interrupts the Spring games, which come to a stop. The people pause, trembling before the Great Action. The old men bless the earth. The Kiss of the Earth. The people dance passionately on the earth, sanctifying it and becoming one with it.
At night, the virgins hold mysterious games, walking in circles. One of the virgins is consecrated as the victim and is twice pointed to by fate, being caught twice in the perpetual circle of walking-in-rounds. The virgins honor her, the Chosen One, with a marital dance. They invoke the ancestors and entrust the Chosen One to the old wise men. She sacrifices herself in the presence of the old men in the Great Sacred Dance, THE GREAT SACRIFICE.
ROBERT SPANO, MUSIC DIRECTOR DESIGNATE
KEITH CERNY, Ph.D., PRESIDENT AND CEO
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Officers
Mercedes T. Bass
Chairman of the Board
Marianne Auld
Chairman of the Executive Committee
Lee Hallman
Secretary
Don C. Plattsmier
Interim Treasurer
Keith Cerny, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Board of Directors
Marianne Auld+
Amy Roach Bailey
Mercedes T. Bass+
Connie Beck+
John Belk
Ashli Blumenfeld
Anne Marie Bratton+
J. Brooks+
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Ervin Cash
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+ Executive Committee Member * Denotes Deceased
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Life Trustee
Rosalyn G. Rosenthal*
Rae and Ed Schollmaier*
ROBERT SPANO, MUSIC DIRECTOR DESIGNATE KEITH CERNY, Ph.D., PRESIDENT AND CEO
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$10,000- $24,999
Carol Margaret Allen
Mr. & Mrs. Tull Bailey
Steve Brauer
James Brooks
John Broude & Judy Rosenblum
Mr. and Mrs. Orlando Carvahlo
Ervin Cash
Mr. John & Dr. Mary Costas, in honor of their grandchildren
Barbara A. & Ralph F. Cox
Dr. and Mrs. Benge R. Daniel, Jr.
Kim & Glenn Darden
Drs. Jeff & Rosemary Detweiler
Mr. Brandon Elms
Dr. Jennifer Freeman
Tera & Richard Garvey
Aubrey Gideon
Gail Aronoff Granek
Gary & Judy Havener
Matthew & Kimberly Johnson
Bob and Katie Karl
Dee Kelly Foundation
Dr. Henry and Mrs. Quynh Lu
Priscilla & Joe* Martin
Deborah Mashburn & David Boddie
Dr. & Mrs. Stuart D. McDonald
Berlene T. & Jarrell R. Milburn
Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Moncrief
Nesha & George Morey
Stephen & Brenda Neuse
Mr. Justin E. Newton
Estate of Virginia & James O’Donnell
Mr. and Mrs. David Porter
Mrs. Susan S. Pratt
Leonard Ryan
Ms. Patricia A. Steffen
Tim and Clare Stonesifer
Mr. Gerald E. Thiel
Charles White
Benefactor
$5,000- $9,999
Elaine & Neils Agather
Drs. Becky Beasley & Roger Gates
Ashli & Todd Blumenfeld
Greg & Pam Braak
Debbie Brooks; DFW Musicians Services LLC
Mary Cauble
Sue & John Allen Chalk, Sr.
Dr. & Mrs. Lincoln Chin
Brenda & Chad Cline
Mrs. Jeanne Cochran
Dean & Emily Crocker
Dr. & Mrs. Atlee Cunningham, Jr.
Dr. Ron & Juana-Rosa Daniell
Asad Dean M.D.; Texas Oncology
Althea L. Duersten
Ms. Willa Dunleavy
Susan & Tommy Green
Ms. Lee Hallman
James & Mary Ann Harris
Ms. Nina C. Hutton
Mr. Maynard K. Johnson
Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Koonsman
L. Lumley
Katherine Lummis
McCallum Family Foundation
Ellen F. Messman
Frasher H. & John F. Pergande
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas B. Reynolds
Jeff & Judy Schmeltekopf
C. Edwards* & R. Schroeder
Dr. & Mrs. Russ A. Schultz
Kal & Karen Silverberg
Ronda & Walter Stucker
Dr. Richard Turner
Mrs. Kristine Williams
Mr. and Mrs. Philip C. Williamson
Mr. & Mrs. Mitchell Wynne
For the full donor listing, please visit fwsymphony.org/support/donor-listing
As of November 13, 2023 to November 13, 2024.
* Denotes deceased
Contributor
$3,000- $4,999
William & Kathryn Adams
Ellen & Larry Bell
Mr. Bill Bond
Judge Tim & Celia Boswell
Daniel & Soraya Caulkins
Gary Cole
Susan Jackson Davis
Dawn Ellison
Doug & Carol English
Mr. & Mrs. Kirk French
Gary Glaser and Christine Miller
Steve* & Jean Hadley
Dr. Christy L. Hanson
Michelle & Reagan Horton
Richard Hubbard, M.D.
Carolyn & Randall Hudson
Mr. and Mrs. Jacob M. Huffman III
Gordon & Aileen Kanan
Ms. Trina Krausse
Mr. Nico Leone
In memory of Laura Elizabeth Bruton
Anonymous
Mr. & Mrs. Omas Peterson
Ms. Jane Rector
Dr. Deborah Rhea & Ms. Carol Bollinger
Rosemary Riney
Jim & Judy Summersgill
Mary & Reuben Taniguchi
Sustainer
$2,000- $2,999
Edwin Augustat, MD
Mary Frances & George Barlow Charitable Fund at the NTCF
Megan & Victor Boschini
Linda Brookshire
Frances Jean Browning
Lowell & Kathryn Bryan
Henry & Diana Burks
Honorable H.D. Clark III and Mrs. Peggy
Sue Branch-Clark
Dr. & Mrs. Martin F. Conroy
Angela L. Evans
Ms. Clara Gamache
Dr. & Mrs. William H. Gibson
Anonymous
John W. Goodwin
Dotty & Gary Hall
Patrick & Kathryn Kinne
Art & Cheryl Litke
Mr. Peter Lyden
Dr. & Mrs. James D. Maberry
Mr. & Mrs. Patrick Malloy
McCraw Family Charitable Fund
Shannon McGovern
Cecile Montgomery Charitable Account
John & Anita O’Carroll
Jeanne O’Connor
Paul & Mary Kay Park
Harris Franklin Pearson Private Foundation
Mary Pencis
Lynne B. Prater
Bill Proenza
Barbara Roels
Jude & Terry Ryan
Punch Shaw & Julie Hedden
Tzu-Ying & Michael Shih in tribute of Mr. & Mrs. William S. Davis
Marilyn Wiley & Terry Skantz
Susan & James Smith
Mary C. Smith; Clark Educational Services
Dr. Mary Alice Stanford & Mr. Don Jones
Dr. Rebecca and Emily Stephenson
Anita Conley and Daniel Stevens
Mr. and Mrs. Craig Stevenson
Mr. Richard Stieber
Sallie & Joseph Tarride
Hon. & Mrs. Chris Taylor
Mr. William Taylor
Dr. Stuart N. Thomas and Bonnie Janzen
John* & Camille Thomason
David Turpin
Rhonda McNallen Venne
Gene Walker and Marianna Smith
Dave & Julie Wende
Laurie & Lon Werner
Mr. John Molyneaux & Ms. Kay West
Suzy Williams & John Williams*
Arthur & Carolyn Wright
Stuart Yarus & Judith Williams
Anonymous
For the full donor listing, please visit fwsymphony.org/support/donor-listing
As of November 13, 2023 to November 13, 2024.
* Denotes deceased
$500,000 and above
Sid W. Richardson Foundation
Amon G. Carter Foundation
$150,000- $499,999
Mary Potishman Lard Trust
$50,000- $149,999
American Airlines Anonymous
Arts Fort Worth
BNSF Railway
Crystelle Waggoner Charitable Trust
Frill Foundation
Adeline & George McQueen Foundation
Leo Potishman Foundation
Qurumbli Foundation
Ann L. & Carol Green Rhodes Charitable Trust
William E. Scott Foundation
Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District
$25,000- $49,999
The Eugene McDermott Foundation
Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP
$10,000- $24,999
Bratton Family Foundation | Mr. and Mrs. Douglas K. Bratton
North Texas Giving Day Fund of the Communities Foundation of Texas
Frost
FWSO Players Assembly
Garvey Texas Foundation
George & Jeanne Jaggers Charitable Trust
Gilchrist Automotive
Helene Bare & W. Glenn Embry Charitable Trust
McCallum Family Foundation
Piranesi
The Roach Foundation
The Thomas M., Helen McKee & John P. Ryan Foundation
Texas Commission on the Arts
$5,000- $9,999
Alcon
Atmos Energy
Ben E. Keith Beverages Hillwood
Marguerite Bridges Charitable Trust
Frances C. & William P. Smallwood Foundation
Symphony League of Fort Worth
Texas Christian University
$2,000- $4,999
Dubose Family Foundation
Jackson Family Foundation
Once Upon A Time...
Robert D. & Catherine R. Alexander Foundation
As of November 13, 2023 to November 13, 2024. For the full donor listing, please visit fwsymphony.org/support/donor-listing
| 2024/2025
$5,000,000 and above
Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass
Mr.* and Mrs.* Perry R. Bass
Mr. Sid R. Bass
$1,000,000- $4,999,999
Lee and Ramona Bass Foundation
Sasha and Edward P. Bass
The Burnett Foundation
Garvey Texas Foundation
Kimbell Art Foundation
Elizabeth H. Ledyard
Rosalyn Rosenthal*
Rae* & Ed* Schollmaier; Schollmaier Foundation
$500,000- $999,999
Mr. & Mrs. John B. Kleinheinz
Mollie & Garland Lasater at the NTCF Fund
The Thomas M., Helen McKee & John P.
Ryan Foundation
T.J. Brown & C.A. Lupton Foundation
$250,000- $499,999
BNSF Railway
Estate of Dorothy Rhea
Qurumbli Foundation
Mr. & Mrs. Mark L. Hart III
Drs. Jeff & Rosemary Detweiler
$100,000- $249,999
Alcon
American Airlines
Amon G. Carter Foundation
Althea L. Duersten
Estate of Peggy L. Rayzor
Mr. & Mrs. Ben J. Fortson, Jr.
* Denotes deceased
Mr.* & Mrs. Dee J. Kelly, Sr.
Mr. & Mrs. J. Luther King, Jr. / Luther King
Capital Management
John Marion
J.P. Morgan Charitable Giving Fund
The Roach Foundation
Anna Belle P. Thomas
$50,000- $99,999
Michael and Nancy Barrington
Van Cliburn*
Mrs. Gunhild Corbett
Mrs. Edward R. Hudson, Jr.
Mr. & Mrs.* Ronald Koonsman
Scurlock Foundation
Symphony League of Fort Worth
$25,000- $49,999
Mr. & Mrs. Jack S. Blanton Jr.
Estate of Linda Reimers Mixson
Michael Boyd Milligan*
Garvey Texas Foundation
Colleen* and Preston Geren
Mrs. Adele Hart
Mr. and Mrs. Craig Kelly
Dee Kelly Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Robert D. Krebs
Mr. Eddie M. Lesok
Mr. & Mrs. Duer Wagner Jr.
Laurie and Lon Werner
$10,000- $24,999
Mr.* and Mrs.* William L. Adams
Mr. & Mrs. Malcolm K. Brachman
Mr. & Mrs. Douglas K. Bratton
Mr. Carroll W. Collins*
Mary Ann and Robert Cotham
Mr. and Mrs. Norwood P. Dixon*
Elizabeth L. and Russell F. Hallberg Foundation
Estate of Ernest Allen, Jr.
Fifth Avenue Foundation
Mrs. Dora Lee Langdon
Carol V. Lukert
Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Moncrief
Stephen & Brenda Neuse
Peggy L. Rayzor
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas B. Reynolds
William E. Scott Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas M. Taylor
Donna* & Bryan Whitworth
William S. Davis Family Foundation
$5,000- $9,999
Mrs. Charles Anton*
Ms. Lou Ann Blaylock
Sue & John Allen Chalk, Sr.
Anonymous
Nelson & Enid Cleary
* Denotes deceased
Barbara A. & Ralph F. Cox
Estate of Witfield J. Collins
Francis M. Allen Trust
Mr. and Mrs. Scott Jeffrey Gerrish
Felice and Marvin Girouard
Mr. & Mrs. Ralph J. Green Jr.
Maritza Cáceres & Miguel Harth-Bedoya
Richard Hubbard, M.D.
JPMorgan Chase*
Mr.* and Mrs.* Robert E. Klabzuba
Priscilla & Joe Martin
Miss Louise McFarland*
Karen Rainwater Charitable Fund at the NTCF
Alann Bedford Sampson
Betty J. Sanders
Save Our Symphony Fort Worth
Jerry & James Taylor
The Musicians of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
Mr. Gerald E. Thiel
John* & Frances Wasilchak Charitable Fund at the NTCF
The Board of Directors extends sincere gratitude to the following donors who have demonstrated exceptional generosity and commitment to the FWSO by endowing the following chairs and programs.
Music Director Guest Conductors
Associate Conductor
Concertmaster
Associate
Concertmaster
Assistant Concertmaster
Assistant Principal 2nd Violin
Section 2nd Violin
Principal Cello
Assistant Principal Cello
Principal Bass
Principal Oboe
Principal Flute
Principal Clarinet
Assistant Principal Trumpet
Principal Bassoon
Principal Horn
Associate Principal Horn
Principal Trombone
Bass Trombone
Principal Percussion
Assistant Principal Percussion
Timpani Harp
Keyboard
Great Performance Fund
Pops Performance Fund
Adventures in Music
* Denotes deceased
Symphonic Insight
Nancy Lee & Perry R. Bass* Chair
Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass Chair
Mr. Sid R. Bass Chair
Rae & Ed Schollmaier*/Schollmaier Foundation Chair
Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass Chair
Mr. Sid R. Bass Chair
Ann Koonsman* Chair
Mollie & Garland Lasater Chair
Symphony League of Fort Worth Chair
Marie A. Moore* Chair
Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass Chair
Mr. Sid R. Bass Chair
BNSF Foundation Chair
Mr. & Mrs. Edward P. Bass Chair
Nancy L. & William P. Hallman, Jr. Chair
Shirley F. Garvey* Chair
Rosalyn G. Rosenthal* Chair
In Memory of Manny Rosenthal
Dorothy Rhea* Chair
Mr. & Mrs. Lee M. Bass Chair
Elizabeth H. Ledyard* Chair
Drs. Jeff and Rosemary Detweiler Chair
Mr. & Mrs. John Kleinheinz Chair
Mr. & Mrs. Lee M. Bass Chair
Shirley F. Garvey* Chair
Adele Hart* Chair
Madilyn Bass Chair
Bayard H. Friedman * Chair
Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn & Van
Cliburn* Chair
Rosalyn G. Rosenthal* Chair
In Memory of Manny Rosenthal
The Burnett Foundation
The Ryan Foundation
Teresa & Luther King
Annette & Jerry* Blaschke
Dr. Lloyd W. Brooks
Mr. and Mrs. M. A. Cardona*
Barbara Clarkin
Mr. Carroll W. Collins*
Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Cooke
Juana-Rosa & Dr. Ron Daniell*
Estate of Anna Belle P. Thomas
Miss Dorothy Rhea*
Electra M. Carlin*
Estate of Ernest Allen, Jr.
F. Warren O’Reilly*
Hugh L. Watson*
Estate of Kathy B. Higgins
Estate of Linda Reimers Mixson
Lois Hoynck Jaggers*
Michael Boyd Milligan*
Mildred G. Walters*
Estate of Peggy L. Rayzor
Sylvia E. Wolens*
Whitfield J. Collins*
Tom Gay
Gwen M. Genius
George & Jeanne Jaggers Charitable Trust
Mrs. Charlotte M. Gore
Gail Aronoff Granek
Helene Bare & W. Glenn Embry Charitable Trust
Qurumbli Foundation
Hank and Shawn Henning
Mr. Eric F. Hyden*
* Denotes deceased
38 | 2024/2025 SEASON
Kathleen E. Connors Trust
Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Koonsman
Lewis F. Kornfeld, Jr. Memorial Fund at the NTXCF
Mollie & Garland M. Lasater, Jr.
Elizabeth H. Ledyard
Carol V. Lukert
Marguerite Bridges Charitable Trust
Patty Cartwright Mays
Shannon McGovern
Dr. and Mrs. A. F. Murph
Linda Todd Murphy
Estate of Virginia & James O’Donnell
Harris Franklin Pearson Private Foundation
Peggy Meade-Cohen Crut Charitable Trust
Mr.* and Mrs. John V. Roach II
The Roach Foundation
Jude & Terry Ryan
Jeff & Judy Schmeltekopf
Mr. & Mrs. Grady Shropshire
Kathleen & Richard Stevens
Mr. Gerald E. Thiel
The Walsh Foundation
Peter G. Warren
John* & Frances Wasilchak Charitable Fund at the NTCF
John Wells & Shay McCulloch-Wells
Lynn Wilson
A City Club Social Membership provides access to dining in our restaurants and member event privileges including Wine Tastings, Holiday Brunches and many other Club events. You will have the ability to reserve private rooms for business and social functions.
FWSO Season Ticket Holders receive a discounted enrollment fee
For more information, contact Matt Burrell, City Club Membership Director at 817.878.4000 or mburrell@cityclubfw.com.
The elegance continues at Omni Fort Worth Hotel. Take in the sweeping downtown views from our inviting, western-inspired accommodations, and enjoy clever cocktails, prime aged steaks, and live music at our on-site restaurants.
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Mission/Purpose
Timeless Concerts is unlike anything else in North Texas! Professional musicians perform in a relaxed atmosphere with warmth and humor; classical to contemporary to international music, piano, strings and sometimes vocalists. The hour-long concerts are followed by a party accompanied by our pianist/vocalist, who takes your requests. Dance if you wish to pop standards from the big band era to today’s musicals or jazz. We always provide complimentary wine, soft drinks and a few snack items. BYOB is allowed at the Hickman Center location.
Our mission is to present chamber music of all styles and eras, in a casual and engaging environment, in order to provide education about, plus promote appreciation and support for live classical music performances.
We provide exciting educational programs in elementary schools to encourage students to learn more about music and to encourage those already in the orchestra to continue throughout their K-12 education
Next dates: “Italy to Ireland!” From Neapolitan songs to Vivaldi to Celtic Fiddling! 8 pm Saturdays Nov. 9 (Arlington) and Nov. 16 (Ft W).
Feb. 15 is our Valentines Special (Ft W) with a repeat Feb. 22 (Arlington)
More dates to come on website. Contact us to be included on our emailing list. Follow us on Facebook!
(817) 480-2039
More care when and where you need it most.
At Texas Health, we’re proud to say more North Texans choose us than any other health care system. From heart and vascular care to coughs and colds, we’re dedicated to giving you more ways to access your health care than ever before. With our ever-expanding hospital and urgent care locations to our video visits and at-home care options, we’re dedicated to making your health care more convenient so you can spend less time on figuring out your health care and more time on what matters most. That’s how Texas Health cares more.
Connect with us today at: TexasHealth.org/Connect
