Edition 1 | 2019-2020

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RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 1 2 RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA LETTER FROM THE RCO

This first program of the season is especially meaningful, as we feature two talented musicians with roots right here in Northern Nevada. Both our Music Director finalist Donato Cabrera, and soloist Helen Kim, spent part of their childhood here in Reno, benefitting from this rich musical community. Ms. Kim will perform the western premiere of the Chamber Concerto for Violin by her husband, Samuel Carl Adams, a rising star in contemporary classical music.

Please make time to learn more about this weekend’s finalist, Donato Cabrera, by joining us for a pre-concert interview and in the lobby after each performance. You will elcome to the 2019-20 season! On also receive an email after this performance Wbehalf of our musicians, board, and with a survey, which will help our Search staff, thank you for joining us to kick off our th Committee choose the best candidate for 45 season and continue our search for the our community. next Music Director of the Reno Chamber Orchestra. Each finalist brings a unique Once again thank you for joining us, and mix of classic and contemporary works for enjoy today’s program! our ensemble, showcasing their interests with the help of a talented guest soloist. We also celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth with one work by the composer on each program. Today you will hear his lively Seventh Symphony, filled with the infectious rhythm of dance.

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND STAFF

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Amy Booth STAFF Jennifer Smith Kay Dean Thom Mayes, President William Douglass Executive Director Gail McCallister John Tozzi Jane Nichols Erica Schmitt, Vice President Lloyd Rogers Director of Administration Judith Simpson Cleta Dillard Karen Stout-Gardner Joseph Peterson, Second Vice President Holly Walton-Buchanan Artistic Planning & Operations Manager Fred Jakolat Secretary Dustin Budish, Personnel Manager Tasha Reisz Treasurer Sophie Ralston, Marketing & Graphic Design Mark MacDonald Past President Korona Phelps, Bookkeeper

Stuart Murtland Audio/Visual & Operations Support

Reno Chamber Orchestra This project is funded, in part, by a grant from 925 Riverside Drive, Suite 5 Reno, NV 89503 Phone (775) 348-9413 the Nevada Arts Council, Email: [email protected] a state agency, and www.RenoChamberOrchestra.org the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Member of the

These concerts have been made possible, in part, by the support of

The mission of the Reno Chamber Orchestra is to create intimate, inspirational musical experiences by engaging the community through vibrant music-making by the Chamber Orchestra and chamber ensembles. Superb Music. Shared Experience. Enriched Lives.

RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 5 6 RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PROGRAM SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2019 7:30 P.M. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2019 2:00 P.M. WAGNER (1813–1883) Siegfried Idyll 18’ NIGHTINGALE CONCERT HALL, UNR S. ADAMS (B.1985) Chamber Concerto for Violin 32’ Prelude: One by One Lines (After J) Aria: Slow Movements On/Off Postlude: All Together Now

INTERMISSION BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Symphony No. 7 42’ Poco sostenuto Allegretto Presto Allegro con brio

Mr. Cabrera’s appearance is made possible by a generous donation from Jennifer Smith and John Thayer.

Ms. Kim’s appearance is made possible by a generous donation from Gail and Jack McCallister. DONATO CABRERA, Please disable all noise-making devices—cell phones, watches, etc.—during the Music Director finalist performance. Audio or video recording of RCO concerts is strictly prohibited. The mission of the Reno Chamber Orchestra is to create intimate, inspirational musical experiences by engaging the community through vibrant music making by HELEN KIM, the Chamber Orchestra and chamber ensembles. violin Superb Music. Shared Experience. Enriched Lives.

RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 7 MUSIC DIRECTOR FINALIST BIOGRAPHY

and community engagement activities. Cabrera also greatly changed the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s concert experience by expanding the scope and breadth of its orchestral concerts. Cabrera also reenergized the Youth Concert Series by creating an engaging and interactive curriculum-based concert experience.

In recent seasons, Cabrera has made impressive debuts with the National Symphony’s KC Jukebox at the Kennedy Center, Louisville Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco, New West Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, and the Reno Philharmonic. In 2016, he led the Chicago Symphony DONATO CABRERA Orchestra in performances with Grammy Award-winning singer Lila Downs. Cabrera onato Cabrera is the Music Director of the made his Carnegie Hall debut leading DCalifornia Symphony and the Las Vegas the world premiere of Mark Grey’s Ătash Philharmonic, and served as the Resident Sorushan with soprano Jessica Rivera. Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and was the Wattis Foundation Music Awards and fellowships include a Herbert Director of the San Francisco Symphony von Karajan Conducting Fellowship at Youth Orchestra from 2009-2016. the Salzburg Festival and conducting the Nashville Symphony in the League of Following Cabrera’s appointment as Music American Orchestra’s prestigious Bruno Director of the California Symphony Walter National Conductor Preview. in 2013, the organization reached new Donato Cabrera was recognized by the artistic heights by implementing innovative Consulate-General of Mexico in San programming that emphasizes welcoming Francisco as a Luminary of the Friends newcomers and loyalists alike, building of Mexico Honorary Committee for his on its reputation for championing music contributions to promoting and developing by living composers, and committing the presence of the Mexican community in to programming music by women and the Bay Area. people of color. With a recently extended contract through the 2022-23 season, For more information, visit Cabrera continues to advise and oversee www.donatocabrera.com. the Symphony’s music education programs

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Carnegie Hall, BBC Proms, Suntory Hall, and Disney Hall, among others.

Kim has made recent concerto appearances with the St. Louis Symphony and Aspen Festival Orchestra under the baton of conductors Nicholas McGegan and Jun Märkl and performed works for solo violin on San Francisco Symphony’s Soundbox series and the Pulitzer Museum.

Since garnering the top prize at the Coleman Competition in 2011, Kim has performed with preeminent artists such as violinist Midori Goto and members of the Juilliard and Tokyo Quartets. She will be collaborating with the St. Lawrence String HELEN KIM Quartet in the 19-20 season.

iolinist Helen Kim enjoys a multi-faceted Kim is the Associate Principal Second Vcareer, regularly performing across the Violin of the SF Symphony and was Americas, Europe, and Asia. Since her recently appointed Associate Concertmaster concerto debut at the age of eight, Kim of the Seattle Symphony. has performed at the Kennedy Center,

SAMUEL ADAMS ailed for his “personal voice and keen Himagination” by the New York Times, composer Samuel Adams merges classical forms with contemporary media. His music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony and has been performed by Emanuel Ax, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Karen Gomyo, among others. From 2015-2018, Adams served as the composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and in 2019 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 9 PROGRAM NOTES BY DONATO CABRERA WAGNER, ADAMS, AND BEETHOVEN— but, for me, it is simply a musical expression BREAKING THE MOLD of a very joyous and idyllic time between two people who were happy and in love. agner’s Siegfried Idyll, the Chamber WConcerto of Samuel Carl Adams, and Unsurprisingly, Wagner repurposed some Beethoven’s Symphony №7, fit nicely in the of the music from this very private piece current, cookie-cutter format of Overture- into his very public 1876 opera, Siegfried, Concerto-Symphony that most orchestras the third installment of his four opera cycle, follow, as if there’s been an international Der Ring des Nibelungen. The beginning summit on the matter. However, what music of the idyll can be found in Act 3, makes each of these pieces so unique and near the end, when Brünnhilde accepts and special, and why I’ve programmed them embraces her mortal life through her love together, is how these composers use molds of Siegfried. only in order to smash them. She sings: RICHARD WAGNER Ewig war ich, Born: May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany ewig bin ich, Died: February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy ewig in süß Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103 sehnender Wonne, doch ewig zu deinem Heil! Composed: 1869 O Siegfried! Herrlicher! Hort der Welt! Duration: 18 minutes Instrumentation: 1 flute, 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, etc….. 1 bassoon, 2 horns, 1 trumpet, strings There are also embedded melodies within ith Siegfried Idyll, I’m hard-pressed to Siegfried Idyll that Wagner didn’t compose. Wfind another example in all of music The lullaby, Schlaf Kindlein, schlaf, was the quite like it! It was written as a birthday most popular lullaby at this time. present not only to his wife, Cosima (born on December 24), but it was also written in Five minutes into the idyll you hear this honor of their son’s birth, Siegfried, and it tender lullaby clearly quoted. was premiered on Christmas Day, 1870— Siegfried Idyll runs nearly twenty minutes a triple treat! It was played on the stairs and is clearly composed in sonata form. of their lovely Swiss villa in the village of In other words, there is an introduction Triebschen, now a district of Lucerne. of two contrasting themes, a development Performing the Triebschen Idyll, as it was section of these two themes, a recapitulation called before it was published, became an (return) of these same themes, and a final annual Christmas Day event for the Wagners coda that puts it all to rest. However, even and the piece remained a private, family this formal structure of composition is used event for quite a few years. It was not until only to tell the story, rather than adhering the Wagners were strapped for cash that he to any pre-arranged game plan. sold it to the publisher, Schott, in 1878 for In order to make it more marketable, the rest of the world to hear and enjoy. Wagner expanded the piece to 35 musicians. But what is this piece? Is it an overture? However, I feel that this version doesn’t A tone-poem? A symphonic miniature? You capture the intimacy and tenderness that is could easily call it any one of these things so apparent with the original 13 musicians. This is the version that I’ve always preferred and is what you will hear.

10 RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PROGRAM NOTES BY DONATO CABRERA SAMUEL CARL ADAMS fast movements, and a concerto da camera Born: December 30, 1985, San Francisco, CA (chamber concerto), which was a collection of movements that often started with a Chamber Concerto for Violin prelude, and which was then followed by Composed: 2017 movements that were based on popular Duration: 32 minutes dance forms. A concerto grosso also meant Instrumentation: 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo and alto flute), 2 clarinets that there were usually a very small group (one doubling bass clarinet and contrabass of maybe three or four instrumentalists, clarinet), 2 percussionists, piano (doubling that would play in dialogue with a larger fender rhodes), 2 first violins, 1 second violin, group, often surrounding them. You can 1 viola, 2 cellos, 1 bass) clearly see how this works with this fantastic performance of Händel’s Concerto Grosso, s Adams writes in the program notes for Op. 6, №6. Athe premiere of his Chamber Concerto in May 2018, he finds the idea of a traditional Adams chooses, obviously, the chamber concerto, “a bit suspect.” He goes on to say, concerto format, but with a twist. As he “I am not particularly drawn to lopsided writes, “The result is a contemporary take musical hierarchies, and the ‘hero’ narrative on old ideas, a concerto that attempts found in the standard nineteenth—and to translate baroque formal devices into twentieth-century romantic warhorses psychological archetypes, finding their doesn’t seem altogether relevant in the meaning in the twenty-first century.” While twenty-first century.” Adams keeps the violin as a ‘solo’ voice, it is used more as a spark or, as he puts Fair enough. In this statement, we find an it, a “waking voice” and the ensemble is its artist creating within a structure in which “collective unconscious.” he is consciously working in opposition. Picasso, James Joyce, and Nijinsky quickly For example, the first movement, which come to mind as artists who not only is a prelude, doesn’t begin with the typical thrived creating in a contrarian manner, but grand orchestral introduction that we are led their respective artforms into entirely accustomed to, but with the solo violin new directions. gently and quietly playing the open strings of the instrument. The rest of the However, what is revealed to us in his ensemble slowly joins in, following the lead Chamber Concerto for Violin and Ensemble, of and responding to the solo voice which and perhaps what was revealed to Adams creates a tapestry of sound that is, indeed, as he composed this piece, are the aesthetic like layers of emotion and feeling, rather principles of the compositional form of the than the typical call and response that a concerto grosso, from which the concerto was concerto employs. born, and a form of composition that was found from the era of Bach and Handel— Like Siegfried Idyll, the Chamber Concerto the Baroque. is first and foremost an exploration of expression, deconstructing musical terms What is a concerto grosso? It literally means to their essence in order to communicate big concerto. There were two types, the feeling and emotion, rather than form concerto da chiesa (church concerto), which and function. had a form that alternated between slow and

RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 11 PROGRAM NOTES BY DONATO CABRERA LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN The first movement begins with a stately Born: December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany and noble introduction. There is no melody Died: March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria at all, just very powerful chords, bursting Symphony №7 with energy, followed by solo instruments quietly outlining those chords, which Composed 1811–1812 is called an arpeggio. The next element Duration: 42 minutes Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, Beethoven introduces to these chords and 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, arpeggios are simple scales heading upward, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings first played as softly as possible, then as loudly as possible. ne of the main sources of inspiration Ofor how this program came together is What then follows is something that could this partial quote from Richard Wagner, certainly be called the beginnings of a calling Beethoven’s Symphony №7, “the melody, but Beethoven doesn’t do anything Apotheosis of the Dance.” Indeed, this with it except repeat it four times like a quote is a prime example of someone using broken record. The scales return, then the an entirely different artform—dance—to simple repeating melody, which quickly describe the impression and meaning of a disintegrates into, finally, the lively Vivace, piece of music. To read Wagner’s quote in or fast section, of the movement. its entirety is even more powerful. The rest of the first movement uses similar “All tumult, all yearning and storming of the tactics, with the faster, propulsive dance heart, become here the blissful insolence of joy, rhythm keeping us completely engaged. which carries us away with bacchanalian power It’s a gigue, which was a popular dance from through the roomy space of nature, through all the Baroque era and still very known to the the streams and seas of life, shouting in glad audiences of Beethoven’s day. self-consciousness as we sound throughout the universe the daring strains of this human When listening to the first movement in its sphere-dance. The Symphony is the Apotheosis of entirety, knowing that it’s the rhythm that the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, Beethoven uses to keep our attention, it’s the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated even more remarkable. into an ideal mold of tone.” The second movement, the Allegretto, is an Why was dance the analogy that Wagner even more remarkable achievement. From chose to use? The answer is: rhythm. The the moment it was premiered, everyone entire symphony, from the first note to recognized it was a masterpiece. In fact, the last, focuses on rhythm. He enlivens at the premiere, this movement had to be and energizes these rhythms with simple played twice! In days long gone, when it was yet unforgettable harmonies. He provides acceptable to just play singular movements further excitement by surprising us with from various symphonies, this second his typically extreme dynamics. But what movement was often played on its own. is typically the most important arrow in a composer’s quiver, melody (think It begins with what many have facetiously Tchaikovsky or Dvořák), is practically called the most famously melody written non-existent. on just one note. You don’t even need to read music to realize that there isn’t much happening.

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stands still. The two contrasting sections of this movement are, nevertheless, incredibly complimentary and fit hand-in-glove with How does Beethoven make this “the crown one another. of modern instrumental music,” as one music critic of an early performance called The last movement, marked Allegro con brio it, so thoroughly beguiling and timeless? (fast, with life), has been described more Through a persistent rhythm that never than once as Bacchanalian. Once again, no stops, this is called an ostinato by the way, melodies to speak of, but just wonderfully simple harmonies, and surprising dynamics. electric rhythms, repeated scales, and stark dynamic contrasts. It’s just simply a frenzied The third movement, the Scherzo, is marked dance from start to finish! Presto which means very fast. It is, in fact, the fastest scherzo that Beethoven wrote In hearing these three pieces together, it is in all of his symphonies and it just flies by! my hope that you will not only appreciate For this movement and the last, he uses the idiosyncratic nature of each composer, various forms of the contradance, which was writing in three different styles from three an unrefined but very popular dance style. distinct time periods, but because they share The middle section of this scherzo, marked the same desire to communicate their truth Assai meno presto (rather less fast), is a very at all cost, breaking free of convention, special moment and sounds to me like time if necessary.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

his program is yours with our compliments, thanks to the businesses whose advertisements are Tincluded and whose services to the RCO are cited throughout the program. Please give our business supporters an opportunity to serve you when you next need their products or services, and be sure to tell them you saw them mentioned in the RCO program! WE ARE GRATEFUL TO OUR LIFE MEMBERS: THE RCO ALSO EXTENDS ITS THANKS TO: Yvonne and Allen Brady All of the RCO’s great volunteers. Lynn Bremer Tanglewood Productions for making Susan Cadena* our archival recordings. Marsha* and Les Cohen Kathy and Fred Jakolat RCO photographer Stuart Murtland. Cleta and Walter* Dillard David Lan and Focused Computing for Trudy Larson maintaining our office computers. Elizabeth and Gilbert* Lenz Barbara Long* The Reno Philharmonic, for sharing its music Nancy and Jack* Rose stands and other equipment for RCO rehearsals. Vera Stern Gary Inouye and MidTown Printing for local Toni Tennille and Daryl Dragon printing services. Sue and Dieter von Hennig Robbi and Jim* Whipp Jill M. Winter PRE-CONCERT TALKS *In memoriam The RCO invites you to attend pre-concert talks prior to each of this season’s programs. These informative and entertaining presentations start 45 minutes before each of our performances— Saturday at 6:45 p.m. and Sunday at 1:15 p.m. —and take place inside Nightingale Concert Hall. The pre-concert talks provide an excellent introduction to the music you’ll hear played by the RCO.

PLANNED GIVING

HELP ENSURE THE RCO’S FINANCIAL HEALTH There are other possibilities as well. Always Your investment in the Reno Chamber Orchestra consult your attorney or tax advisor to discuss helps ensure continuing funding for our concerts any effects your gift may have on your personal and programs. Including the RCO in your tax or estate situation. financial and estate planning may also provide tax advantages and/or a regular income stream. If you have already made arrangements concerning the RCO, we kindly request that you let us Your gift can take many forms: know. Your information will be held in strictest • Securities confidence, upon request. • Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust • Bequest through a will, estate plan, or For more information, call the RCO at family trust (775) 348-9413. • Life Insurance • IRA or retirement plan assets

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