José García-León, Dean
Yale Philharmonia
Peter Oundjian, principal conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Wednesday, January 22, 2025 | 7:30 p.m.
Woolsey Hall
New Haven, CT
Monday, January 27, 2025 | 8:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
New York, NY
Program
Joan Tower b. 1938 arr. Peter Oundjian
Benjamin Britten 1913–1976
Hector Berlioz 1803–1869
Suite from Concerto for Orchestra (2024) World premiere
Violin Concerto, Op. 15
I. Moderato con moto – Agitato – Tempo primo
II. Vivace – Animando – Largamente – Cadenza
III. Passacaglia. Andante lento (un poco meno mosso)
Augustin Hadelich, violin
intermission
Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
I. Rêveries, Passions
II. Un bal (A Ball)
III. Scène aux champs (Scene in the Country)
IV. Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
V. Songe d’une nuit du sabbat (Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath)
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
Peter Oundjian, principal conductor
Recognized as a masterful and dynamic presence in the conducting world, Peter Oundjian has developed a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor, and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, an eye towards collaboration, innovative programming, leadership and training with students, and an engaging personality.
Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring, and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018, and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019. He led the orchestra on several international tours to Europe and the USA, conducting the first performance by a North American orchestra at Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall in 2014.
From 2012–2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship. Oundjian led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances
at the Bregenz Festival and the Dresden Festival, as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their Music Director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.
Highlights of Oundjian’s past seasons include appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Iceland Symphony, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and New Zealand symphony orchestras.
Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, Oundjian regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis, and New World symphony orchestras.
An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Augustin Hadelich has established himself as one of the major violinists of our time. After winning the Gold Medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, concerto and recital appearances on many of the world’s top stages quickly followed. He has been honored with such awards as the Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009), BorlettiBuitoni Trust Fellowship in the UK (2011), and the inaugural Warner Music Prize (2015). His accomplishments were further recognized in 2018 when Musical America named him its Instrumentalist of the Year.
“The essence of Hadelich’s playing,” the Washington Post has opined, “is beauty: reveling in the myriad ways of making a phrase come alive on the violin, delivering the musical message with no technical impediments whatsoever, and thereby revealing some-thing from a plane beyond ours.” The New York Times described Hadelich as a “riveting storyteller” after his world-premiere performance of Yale School of Music’s faculty composer David Lang’s mystery sonatas.
Hadelich’s appearances as a soloist include guest engagements with the most celebrated ensembles in the world, including the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Finnish Radio Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, NHK
Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), Oslo Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, as well as the radio orchestras of Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Stuttgart, among others. Hadelich’s discography includes solo, chamber, and concerto recordings with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. His recording with the Seattle Symphony of Dutilleux’s violin concerto L’arbre des songes won a 2016 Grammy Award in the category Best Classical Instrumental Solo.
Hadelich teaches a limited number of violinists at the Yale School of Music and gives master classes for all YSM string players. He has held residencies at the Colburn School, Curtis Institute of Music, and Kronberg Academy and given master classes at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich.
Born in Italy to German parents, Hadelich earned a diploma in violin from the Istituto Mascagni in Livorno, Italy, and a graduate diploma and an artist diploma from the Juilliard School.
Program Notes
Suite from Concerto for Orchestra tower
Peter Oundjian
The core of the original 30-minute Concerto for Orchestra features three momentous waves, each of which builds gradually and, with extraordinary rhythmic drive, leads to a breathtaking climax. Between these formidable passages are several wonderful episodes that feature virtually every orchestral instrument in its soloistic or chamber element.
The idea for a condensed version came to me after conducting the original piece many times; the excellent orchestral writing could lend itself to an innovative sampling of this masterpiece, shrinking the duration to around twelve minutes and rendering it more flexible to program.
The concept of a suite is by no means new; think Stravinsky’s reduction of The Firebird or Prokofiev’s distillation of Romeo and Juliet
Thinking carefully about the eruptive power of the grander orchestral sequences, I went to work on a version that can be played as a concert opener. This is not to suggest that the full Concerto for Orchestra is obsolete; it is one of the most dramatic, original, and beautiful works of the last fifty years. I do believe however, that this newly shaped version is extremely compelling and stimulating and I am honored that such a great composer has allowed me to create this new reduction.
Violin Concerto, Op. 15 Britten
Patrick Campbell Jankowski
“Keep calm and carry on.” This now ubiquitous motto of poise amid austerity has come to define the qualities of what it means to be British. It was first used in wide print in 1939, on the eve of Britain’s entry into World War II. In that same year, at twenty-five, Benjamin Britten wrote his violin concerto from the relative safety of the United States. That time was fraught not only because the clouds of war hovered over much of Europe but because the Spanish Civil War, about which Britten had been an outspoken critic, had ended with the rise of fascism under Franco.
Keeping calm and carrying on seems to be imbued into this highly original work, though not in the way you might imagine. Throughout it, Britten juxtaposes grace and freedom against turmoil and rigidity, and it is through that tension that the composer conveys his message, whatever that might be.
The concerto begins unexpectedly, with the stoic beats of the timpani punctuated by a cymbal clash. It starts at a whisper and grows more insistent, ultimately transformed into a repeating motive underpinning the violin soloist’s theme, moving to the bassoon and low strings. With the march-like motive underneath, the violinist seems to be attempting with every phrase to stretch away from this rhythmic rigidity. Eventually, a more energetic theme takes over, echoing Stravinsky’s violin concerto in
its capriciousness and angularity, although with a touch more anxiety.
Later on, the roles will change, with the orchestra playing the lush and lyrical theme with the soloist’s mockingly militaristic “drum taps.” Throughout the entire movement, another palpable source of tension is harmony. Rather than committing to D major or minor, it’s really about those two tonalities pitted against one another. The movement ends with the fragile, transparent chords of D major.
Like one of Shostakovich’s darkly maniacal scherzos, the explosive central movement is sinister and often relentless while also highly virtuosic. Trumpets, snare, and timpani continue to remind us of war, while the violin dances itself to exhaustion.
A (slightly) calmer trio section contains perhaps the most overt nod to a Spanish folk style, though punctuated with unyielding orchestral strikes. Later, a tuba solo accompanied by whistling piccolos is among the most memorably colorful moments in the work, and an extensive cadenza for the soloist is among the most dramatic, leading directly into the final movement.
A passacaglia is by its definition unwaveringly held to the ground, and proves a perfect musical means to depict the “machine” from which the soloist continues to attempt escape. Beginning in the trombone, the harmonic progression repeats eight times with highly varied transformations, the first led by the violin alone, the second by the horns, and on-and-on. At the point of climax,
the trombones take up the bassline once again, while the entire orchestra releases what’s left of its energy. An extensive epilogue carries us through the end, led by the soloist and ever-questioning in its wavering between major and minor. In this enigmatic and powerful work, we are left with as many questions as answers, which may well be Britten’s point.
Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14
Berlioz
Liam Viney, ed. Dana Astmann
Few compositions have come to epitomize the essence of a composer as Symphonie fantastique has come to symbolize Berlioz. Composed “furiously,” with the composer’s mind “boiling over,” the work was premiered in Paris in 1830, only three years after the death of Beethoven. First impressions of Berlioz’s symphony suggest a world of difference between the two composers. Yet Berlioz’s debt to Beethoven was profound, and his most innovative music was made possible by the older master’s legacy. But rather than falling victim to Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence,” Berlioz reacted optimistically, reinterpreting and capitalizing on these aesthetic developments.
Among the works radical qualities is an entirely original approach to orchestration. Berlioz’s shift in emphasis towards a programmatic style encouraged him to harness the orchestra’s coloristic resources extravagantly and freely. He also introduced instruments from the opera house and military band that soon became permanent members of the orchestra:
the English horn, E-flat clarinet, harps, bells, and other percussion, not to mention the obnoxious and now largely defunct ophicleide, a kind of keyed bass-bugle whose part is now usually played by the tubas. Most important is the extent to which the programmatic element defines the musical narrative. For the first performance, Berlioz provided an outline of the plot: the lovesick hero is plagued by images of his beloved and troubled by the peculiar spiritual sickness once described as “le vague des passions”. He finds himself in several unrelated settings, including nature, balls, and towns. Yet he is constantly visited by her image, accompanied by various extreme emotional reactions. In the third movement, disillusionment sets in. He poisons himself with opium to assuage the anguish of unrequited love. Delirium sets in, and he descends into the horrific dream world of the fourth and fifth movements.
To create dramatic coherence, Berlioz employs a novel melodic organizing device, the idée fixe. The idée fixe recurs in each movement, transformed according to the changes of mood and character suggested by the program. It begins as a graceful melodic idea, first heard in the soaring violin and flute line immediately after the slow introduction of the first movement. This melody is of vital structural and programmatic significance, the theme that represents Harriet Smithson, the object of Berlioz’s affection.
The first movement is cast in a sonata form with an overwhelming sense of
fantasy. The second movement is a waltz with the middle portion devoted to the idée fixe. This movement functions as the symphony’s scherzo. The slow movement, as in Beethoven’s sixth symphony, is a pastoral setting that includes thunder and shepherd pipers. Here Berlioz represents the dialogue and echo of Alpenhorns using a Swiss cowherd’s horn call. The idée fixe appears in the oboe and flute in this third movement. During the fourth movement, the man dreams that he has killed his beloved, is condemned, marched to the guillotine, and executed. At the conclusion of this “March to the Scaffold,” the clarinet reminds us of the beloved’s theme just before the slam of a guillotine, the thump of a head falling into a basket, and the cheers of a crowd.
The finale is the apotheosis of the work. During this “Witches Sabbath,” the hero envisions his own funeral, with a requiem in the form of a burlesque. The C and E-flat clarinets caricature the idée fixe, representing its satanic transformation in the witches dance. Bells toll solemnly; violas and oboe attempt to start a dance, only to be silenced. The ominous melody of the plainchant “Dies irae” sounds, followed by low strings announcing an ironically academic fugue. These themes ultimately combine in a portrayal of religious alienation and death. The diabolical sounds include the strings playing col legno, a bone-rattling sound that helps evoke a macabre scene. The music rushes headlong to its conclusion as the Dies irae and idée fixe collide and collapse into each other in a bombastic orchestral implosion.
Yale Philharmonia Roster
Peter Oundjian, principal conductor
Violin 1
Julia Hwang
Concertmaster 1, 2
Sory Park
Concertmaster 3
Emma Meinrenken
Inhae Cho
Laurel Gagnon
Dabin Yang
Matthew Cone
Stella Lee
Josh Liu
Minji Lee
Steven Song
Oliver Leitner
Nick Hammel
Violin 2
Haram Kim
Ria Honda
Megan Lin
Miray Ito
Gayoung Kim
Albert Gang
Chaofan Wang
Jeongmin An
Xingzhou Rong
Caroline Durham
Dorson Chang
Viola
Andy Park
Mathew Lee
Julian Seney
Miranda Werner
Ayano Nakamura
Nic Perkins
Abby Smith
Soyoung Cho
Benjamin Graham
Cello
Robin Park
Emily Mantone
Jakyoung Huh
Balder Hella Mikkelsen
Kyeong Eun Kim
Charles Zandieh
Dylan Kinneavy
Hayoung Moon
Abigail Leidy
DouBle Bass
Patrick Curtis
Julide San
Yuki Nagase
Josue Alfaro Mora
Arden Ingersoll
Yihan Wu
Joshua Rhodes
PiCColo
Jolie Fitch
Rafael Mendez
Sophia Jean
Flute
Ben Smith 1
Rafael Mendez
Jillian Coscio 2
Jolie Fitch
Michael Huerta 3
Sophia Jean
oBoe
Amy Kim 1
Maren Tonini
Tina Shigeyama
Jacob Duff 2
Gabriela Fry
Annie Winkelman 3
english horn
Tina Shigeyama
Gabriela Fry
Amy Kim
Clarinet
Katelyn Poetker 1
Nickolas Hamblin 3
Alex Swers 2
Juan Pedro
Espinosa Monteros
Nicole Martin
e-Flat Clarinet
Nickolas Hamblin
Bass Clarinet
Alex Swers
Bassoon
Emma Fuller 1
Laressa Winters
Tucker Van Gundy
Darius Farhoumand 2
Kennedy Plains
Davey Hiester 3
ContraBassoon
Tucker Van Gundy
FrenCh horn
Oved Rico 1
Sam Hart
Dylan Kingdom
Cristina Vietez
Braydon Ross 2
Lily Judge
Gretchen Berendt
William Sands 3
1-Principal on Tower
2-Principal on Britten
3-Principal on Berlioz
trumPet
Will Rich 1
Grace O’Connell
Katie Hillstrom
Jacob Rose 2
Jonathan Hunda
Karlee Navarro 3
Cornet
Grace O’Connell
Will Rich
tromBone
Naomi Wharry 1
Jude Morris 3
William Roberts 2
Bass tromBone
Alex Felker
Jeremy Mojado
tuBa
Alex Friedman
Junming Wen 3
timPani
Han Xia
Chad Beebe
Kyle Rapp
PerCussion
Matt Boyle
Jessie Chiang
Judy Hu
Han Xia
harP
Sebastian Gobbels 3
Subin Lee
KeyBoarD
Forrest Eimold
Yale School of Music Production Staff
general manager oF Philharmonia
anD new musiC new haVen
Jeffrey Mistri
Philharmonia ProDuCtion
CoorDinator & liBrarian
Marika Basagoitia
Philharmonia assistant ConDuCtors
Stefano Boccacci
Ezra Calvino
Philharmonia oFFiCe assistant
Abby Smith
Philharmonia stage Crew
Chad Beebe
Alex Felker
Nicolas Garrigues
Nickolas Hamblin
Josh Liu
Juan Pedro Espinosa Monteros
Jude Morris
Joshua Rhodes
Will Rich
Oved Rico
Griffin Rupp
Han Xia
Philharmonia liBrary
Darius Farhoumand
Emma Fuller
Josh Liu
Abby Smith
Ben Smith
Maren Tonini
DireCtor oF oPerations
Laura Adam
ConCert oFFiCe manager
Katherine Ludington
oPerations CoorDinator
Christopher Melillo
Box oFFiCe CoorDinator
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Special Thanks
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marKeting suPPort
Chris Stager, CRStager marketing &
audience development
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horatio ParKer CirCle
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Arthur Rosenfield & Wilma Ezekowitz
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gustaVe j. stoeCKel CirCle
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List as of January 22, 2025
Yale School of Music
Established in 1894, the Yale School of Music holds a position of international leadership in the training of performers, composers, and teachers. A professional graduate school and the only school of music in the Ivy League, the Yale School of Music maintains a highly selective admissions process, admitting approximately 200 students from the finest American and international conservatories and universities to study with a distinguished faculty. The School has one of the highest international profiles at Yale, engaging globally in cooperative partnerships with leading conservatories, schools, orchestras, and opera companies.
Alumni of the Yale School of Music hold major positions throughout the music world. In addition to performing with and conducting preeminent American and international orchestras, many graduates have founded or joined prominent chamber music ensembles. Voice alumni earn renown in professional opera companies, with over a dozen Yale graduates on the artist roster of the Metropolitan Opera. Yale composition alumni enjoy noted success with continual premieres of new music. Along with artistic accomplishment, Yale School of Music graduates provide strong leadership in guiding the course of numerous academic and cultural institutions.
The Yale School of Music awards the doctor of musical arts, master of musical arts, and master of music degrees, as well as the artist diploma and the certificate in performance.
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