Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Fabio Luisi music directorTuesday, March 28, 2023 | 7:30 p.m.
Woolsey Hall
Program
Angélica Negrón
b. 1981
Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky
1840–1893
What Keeps Me Awake (2008)
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
I. Andante – Allegro con anima
II. Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza
III. Valse. Allegro moderato
IV. Finale. Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace
As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.
Artist Profiles
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Fabio Luisi, presents more than 150 orchestra concerts at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, one of the world’s top-rated concert halls. As the largest performing arts organization in the Southwest, the DSO is committed to inspiring the broadest possible audience with distinctive classical programs, inventive pops concerts and innovative multi-media presentations. As part of its commitment to the community, the orchestra reaches more than 243,000 adults and children annually through performances, educational programs, and community outreach initiatives. The orchestra offers more than 200 outdoor chamber concerts in neighborhoods throughout Dallas each year, as well as continuing online music lessons to more than 700 students as part of its Young Strings and Young Musicians programs.
The Dallas Symphony has used digital and broadcast media to share music beyond its geographic boundaries and has become a leader among American orchestras in digital distribution. In 2021, the DSO presented a three-concert broadcast series with Bloomberg Media, reaching over 5 million viewers globally. In October 2021, PBS stations across the country began airing One Symphony, Two Orchestras, a program that documented the historic May 2021 performance of Mahler’s First Symphony, a Luisi-led collaboration between the DSO and musicians from The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. That program was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in May 2022. The DSO also captures and streams concert performances for distribution online through its Next Stage Digital Concert
Series, presented by PNC Bank. Programs are available on the DSO’s website at: » watch.dallassymphony.org
The DSO has a tradition dating back to 1900 and is a cornerstone of the unique, 118-acre Arts District in Downtown Dallas that is home to multiple performing arts venues, museums and parks – the largest district of its kind in the nation. The DSO is supported, in part, by funds from the Office of Arts & Culture, City of Dallas.
Fabio Luisi, music directorGRAMMY® Award-winning conductor
Fabio Luisi launched his tenure as Louise W. & Edmund J. Kahn Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) at the start of the 2020–21 season. In January 2021, the DSO and Luisi announced an extension of his contract through the 2028–29 season. A maestro of major international standing, the Italian conductor has embarked on his sixth season as Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and in September 2022 he assumed the role of Principal Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. He previously served for six seasons as Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and nine seasons as General Music Director of the Zurich Opera.
In September 2022, Luisi and the Dallas Symphony released their first recording project together, Brahms’s First and Second Symphonies, which is available through the DSO’s in-house DSO Live label. Fabio Luisi’s ongoing 2022–23 programs in Dallas and for the DSO’s Next Stage Digital Concert
Series will feature performances of the music of beloved classical composers, a continued examination of American music, and largescale choral and orchestral works. Highlights include performance concert program of three female composers—Julia Perry, Clara Schumann and Louise Farrenc—that preceded the fourth annual Women in Classical Music Symposium last fall; Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, which marked the first time during his tenure that Luisi had presented Bruckner; and the upcoming world premiere of DSO composer-in-residence Angélica Negrón’s new work, Arquitecta, featuring Colombian singer Lido Pimienta.
Other highlights of the 2022–23 season include several concerts with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo) in his first season as Principal Conductor; a new production of Verdi’s I vespri siciliani at La Scala (Milan); and the continuation, with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, of his recorded series of Carl Nielsen’s symphonies for the renowned Deutsche Grammophon label.
The conductor received his first GRAMMY® Award in March 2013 for his leadership of the last two operas of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, when Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD release of the full cycle, recorded live at the Met, was named Best Opera Recording of 2012. In February 2015, the Philharmonia Zurich launched its Philharmonia Records label with three Luisi recordings: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a double album surveying Wagner’s Preludes and Interludes, and a DVD of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Subsequent releases have included a survey of Rachmaninov’s Four Piano Concertos and
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with soloist Lise de la Salle, and a rare recording of the original version of Bruckner’s monumental Symphony No. 8. Luisi’s extensive discography also includes rare Verdi operas ( Jérusalem, Alzira and Aroldo), Salieri’s La locandiera, Bellini’s I puritani and I Capuleti e I Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elīna Garanča for Deutsche Grammophon, and the symphonic repertoire of Honegger, Respighi, and Liszt. He has recorded the oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln by neglected Austrian composer Franz Schmidt, as well as that composer’s complete symphonies; several works by Richard Strauss for Sony Classical; and an award-winning account of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with the Staatskapelle Dresden.
Born in Genoa in 1959, Luisi began piano studies at the age of four and received his diploma from the Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini in 1978. He later studied conducting with Milan Horvat at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz. Named both Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana and Commendatore della Stella d’Italia for his role in promoting Italian culture abroad, in 2014 he was awarded the Grifo d’Oro, the highest honor given by the city of Genoa, for his contributions to the city’s cultural legacy. Off the podium, Luisi is an accomplished composer whose Saint Bonaventure Mass received its world premiere at St. Bonaventure University, followed by its New York City premiere in the MetLiveArts series, with the Buffalo Philharmonic and Chorus. As reported by The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning and elsewhere, he is also a passionate maker of perfumes, which he produces in a one-person operation: » flparfums.com
Angélica Negrón, composer
Puerto Rican-born composer and multiinstrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordians, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choir, and film. She has been the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence since the 2021–21 season, and this is her final season in the post. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, Prototype Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Louisville Orchestra, and the New York Botanical Garden, among others.
Angélica received an early education in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where she later studied composition from New York University where she studied composition with Tania León. Also active as an educator, Angélica is currently a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program. She has collaborated with artists like Sō Percussion, Lido Pimienta, Mathew Placek, Sasha Velour, Cecilia Aldarondo, Mariela Pabón, and Adrienne Westwood, among others and is a founding member of the tropical electronic band Balún. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at WNYC’s The Greene Space working on El Living Room, a 4-part offbeat variety show and playful multimedia exploration of sound and story, of personal history and
belonging. She was the recipient of the 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize. Upcoming premieres include works with the Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, and NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative and multiple performances at Big Ears Festival 2022. Negrón continues to perform and compose for film.
Program Notes
What Keeps Me Awake negrón
Angelica Negrón (transcribed from a videotaped introduction to the 2020 Canadian premiere, performed by the National Arts Centre Orchestra and conducted by Alexander Shelley)
The Composer Speaks
“What Keeps Me Awake is a highly personal piece inspired by events that happened, keeping me from falling asleep at night. I wrote this piece in 2008, and at that time I was really struggling with trying to find my own voice as a composer, and also trying to figure out what it meant for someone like me to be writing for such a massive medium, like an orchestra. This piece is an exploration of and a reflection on the creative process itself, what it feels like to be staring at a blank page, the vulnerability and the anxiety that surrounds the creative process. This piece is also about my journey of trying to find a balance in this internal struggle of following my intuition with this external pressure of feeling like I need to validate myself as a composer. [When I wrote it] I had just recently moved from Puerto Rico, which is where I was born and raised, to New York, and as a Latina composer, navigating new spaces that have historically mostly excluded people who look like me, I somehow felt the need to validate my presence in these new spaces. That’s something I no longer feel, thankfully, but it felt very real at that time.
“The piece has four main sections that are constantly being interrupted by new ideas, and these new ideas transform and also overlap with the four main sections of the
piece. The ending of the piece is a little bit up in the air, sustaining the idea that there is no definite conclusion or answer, just this inevitable push of moing forward.”
Symphony No. 5 in E minor tchaikovsky
René Spencer SallerTchaikovsky’s fateful Fifth Symphony confronts the Beethovian implications of its number head on. Its structure invites us to feel good, or at least better. Completed in 1888, the four-movement symphony follows the “per aspera ad astra”—“through hardships to the stars”—model that Beethoven had famously used in his own Fifth Symphony: from minor to major, from dark to light (or at least somewhat lighter), from sorrow to celebration (of a qualified sort). Most commentators identify Tchaikovsky’s main theme as a musical representation of fate; the composer explicitly says so in a programmatic outline that he drafted during the early stages of composition and later abandoned. Regardless of what it symbolizes, the theme is tirelessly reiterated, revised, and transformed. Through its many changes the symphony revelas its secret self.
A decade had elapsed since his Fourth Symphony (1878), and although his star had risen during that time, thanks to his opera Eugene Onegin, the 1812 Overture, and other hits, he feared that he was creatively bankrupt. In a letter to his main patron, he admitted, “I want so much to show not only to others, but to myself, that I still haven’t expired... I don’t know whether I wrote to you that I had decided to write a symphony. At first it was fairly difficult; now
inspiration seems to have deserted me completely.” At another point, he confessed that he had to “squeeze it from my dulled brain.”
Despite these difficulties, he was initially pleased with his Fifth Symphony. But when critics and colleagues (even an otherwise supportive Johannes Brahms) advanced any form of criticism, he wrote, “Neither [Brahms] nor the players liked the Finale, which I also think rather horrible.” Not a month later, however, the Fifth was back in its creator’s good graces: “The Fifth Symphony was beautifully played and I have started to love it again – I was beginning to develop an exaggerated negative opinion about it.”
Crisis of Confidence
Tchaikovsky suffered from chronic selfloathing. He channeled his frustrations into his work, but like most relentless perfectionists, he was seldom satisfied. He tried to kill himself at least once, and some research suggests that his sudden death, at age 53, about five years after finishing his Fifth Symphony, might have been a form of suicide. Other Tchaikovsky scholars maintain that the composer was just another casualty of cholera: one unfortunate pathogen consumer among millions whose beverage hadn’t been adequately boiled.
A Closer Listen
The so-called fate theme first appears in the opening measures as a mournful lament sung by the clarinet. In the second movement, in the afterglow of an achingly pretty horn and winds interlude, it barges in rudely aloft harsh brass blurts. (The orchestra stops short for a moment, as if in shocked
silence.) The third movement, an off-kilter scherzo, staggers gamely, like a woozy prima ballerina; the theme sneaks back toward the end, an ominous afterthought muttered by the winds. In the finale the theme blazes out in a major mode and ignites a feverdream march.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra Roster
Fabio Luisi
Music Director
Louise W. & Edmund J. Kahn
Music Directorship
Gemma New
Principal Guest Conductor
Dolores G. & Lawrence S. Barzune,
M.D. Chair
Jeff Tyzik
Principal Pops Conductor
Dot & Paul Mason Podium
Maurice Cohn
Assistant Conductor
Marena & Roger Gault Chair
Angélica Negrón
Composer-in-Residence
Vacant
Chorus Director
Jean D. Wilson Chair
violin i
Alexander Kerr
Concertmaster
Michael L. Rosenberg Chair
Nathan Olson
Co-Concertmaster
Fanchon & Howard Hallam Chair
Gary Levinson°
Senior Principal Associate Concertmaster
Enika Schulze Chair
Emmanuelle Boisvert
Associate Concertmaster
Robert E. & Jean Ann Titus Family Chair
Eunice Keem
Associate Concertmaster
Marcella Poppen Chair
Diane Kitzman
Principal
Filip Fenrych
W. Paul Radman, DDS Chair
Maria Schleuning
Norma & Don Stone Chair
Lucas Aleman
Jenna Barghouti
Mary Reynolds
Andrew Schast
Motoi Takeda
Associate Concertmaster Emeritus
Daphne Volle
Bruce Wittrig
Susan & Woodrow Gandy Chair
Giyeon Yoon
Kaori Yoshida*
violin ii
Angela Fuller Heyde
Principal
Barbara K. & Seymour R. Thum Chair
Alexandra Adkins
Associate Principal
Sho-mei Pelletier
Associate Principal
Bing Wang
Bruce Patti*
Rita Sue & Alan Gold Chair
Mariana Cottier-Bucco
Debra & Steve Leven Chair
Lilit Danielyan*
Hyorim Han
Shu Lee
Nora Scheller*
Aleksandr Snytkin*
Lydia Umlauf
Ordabek Duissen^
Paige Kossuth^
viola
Meredith Kufchak
Principal
Hortense & Lawrence S. Pollock Chair
Matthew Sinno
Associate Principal
Sarah Kienle
Acting Associate Principal
Pamela Askew
Thomas Demer
Valerie Dimond
Dr. James E. Skibo Chair
Christine Hwang
Keith Verges Chair
Xiaohan Sun
Maisie Heiken Chair
David Sywak
Brenton Caldwell^
Eve Tang^
cello
Christopher Adkins
Principal
Fannie & Stephen S. Kahn Chair
Theodore Harvey
Associate Principal
Holly & Tom Mayer Chair
Jolyon Pegis
Associate Principal
Joe Hubach Chair
Jeffrey Hood
Greg & Kim Hext Chair
Jennfer Yunyoung Choi
Kari Kettering
Donna & Herbert Weitzman Chair, in honor of Juanita & Henry S. Miller, Jr.
Minji Kim
Zexun (Jason) Shen
Nan Zhang°
Laurie Arnold^
Marie Thaïs Oliver^
double bass
Nicolas Tsolainos
Principal
Anonymously Endowed Chair
Thomas Lederer°
Co-Principal
Roger Fratena
Associate Principal
Paula Holmes Fleming
Brian Perry
Clifford Spohr
Principal Emeritus
Justin Kujawski^
Tyler Shepherd^
Peter Walsh^
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra Roster cont.
flute
David Buck
Principal
Joy & Ronald Mankoff Chair
Hayley Grainger
Associate Principal
Barbara Rabin Chair
Kara Kirkendoll Welch
Caroline Rose Hunt Chair
James Romeo Piccolo
oboe
Erin Hannigan Principal
Nancy P. & John G. Penson Chair
Willa Henigman
Associate Principal
Brent Ross
David Matthews° + English Horn
Karen & Jim Wiley Chair
clarinet
Gregory Raden
Principal
Mr. & Mrs. C. Thomas May, Jr. Chair
Paul Garner°
Associate Principal + E-Flat
Robert E. & Ruth Glaze Chair
Stephen Ahearn
Second Clarinet + Acting Associate
Principal + E-Flat
Courtney & Andrew Nall Chair
Stephanie Key
Andrew Sandwick°
Bass Clarinet + Utility
bassoon
Ted Soluri
Principal
Irene H. Wadel & Robert I. Atha, Jr. Chair
Scott Walzel
Associate Principal
Barbara & Robert P. Sypult Chair
Tom Fleming
Peter Grenier + Contrabassoon
horn
David Heyde°
Associate Principal + Acting Principal
Linda VanSickle Chair
Alexander Kienle
Assistant Principal + Utility
Haley Hoops
Becky & Brad Todd Chair
Yousef Assi
Kevin Haseltine°
Vacant Principal
Howard E. Rachofsky Chair
Jeffrey Fair^
Shelby Nugent^
Benjamin Wulfman^
trumpet
Stuart Stephenson Principal
Diane & Hal Brierley Chair
L. Russell Campbell
Associate Principal
Yon Y. Jorden Chair
Kevin Finamore
Assistant Principal
Elmer Churampi
trombone
Barry Hearn
Principal
Cece & Ford Lacy Chair
Christopher Oliver
Associate Principal
Brian Hecht
Utility Trombone
Darren McHenry
Bass Trombone
tuba
Matthew Good
Principal
Dot & Paul Mason Chair
timpani
Brian Jones
Principal
Dr. Eugene & Charlotte Bonelli Chair
Robert O’Brien
Assistant Principal
percussion
George Nickson
Principal
Margie & William H. Seay Chair
Daniel Florio
Associate Principal
Robert O’Brien
harp
Emily Levin
Principal
Elsa von Seggern Chair
organ
Bradley Hunter Welsh
Resident Organist
Lay Family Chair
keyboard
Gabriel Sanchez
Classical
Anastasia Markina
Classical
library
Karen Schnackenberg
Principal
Jessie D. & E. B. Godsey Chair
Mark Wilson
Associate Principal
Robert Greer° Assistant
Melanie Gilmore° Choral
* performs in both Violin I and Violin II sections
° Leave of Absence
^ Substitute Musician
in remembrance
Ryan Anthony (1969–2020)
Principal Trumpet Emeritus
Dwight Shambley (1949–2020)
Bass + Young Strings Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus
Ronald Snider (1947–2020)
Assistant Principal Percussion
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra Staff
personnel management
Nishi Badhwar
Olga & Yuri Anshelevich
Manager of Orchestra Personnel
Scott Walzel
Consultant for Orchestra Community
Development & Outreach
Nicole Mendyka
Assistant Personnel Manager
Christopher Oliver
Auditions Coordinator
stage
Shannon Gonzalez
Stage Manager
Alan Bell
Assistant Stage Manager
Kenneth Winston
Lighting Board Operator
Kevin Ealy
Bill White
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