Season 2014-2015

Friday, November 7, at 8:00 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra

Lü Jia Conductor Yuja Wang Piano

Chen Qigang Wu Xing (The Five Elements), Suite for Orchestra I. Water II. Wood III. Fire IV. Earth V. Metal

Ravel Piano Concerto in G major I. Allegramente II. Adagio assai III. Presto

Intermission

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 I. Andante—Allegro con anima II. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza III. Valse: Allegro moderato IV. Andante maestoso—Allegro vivace

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes.

China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra’s 2014 Tour is sponsored by Bank of China. NCPAO_Ad_letter_Layout 1 10/29/14 12:50 PM Page 1

In Celebration of the 35th Anniversary of China-US Diplomatic Relationship

Chen Ping President, China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Philadelphia On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the diplomatic relation between China and the United States, China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Orchestra sets off for its historic first tour to the United States and makes music in Chicago, Washington D.C., New York and Philadelphia. As one of China’s most dynamic orchestras, the NCPA Orchestra, formed of some of the nation’s finest young musicians, is excited to see their friends and audiences in the United States and celebrate their shared passion for music and friendship. As a great example of China’s renewed effort in culture and arts, the NCPA has created enormous opportunities for artists from around the world to meet each other and their Chinese audiences, and transform artistic aspirations into substantial presentations, and witnessed significant growth of valued partnerships between the NCPA and leading international arts institutions like the Philadelphia Orchestra. Following the huge success of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s NCPA Residency Project in the past several years, I believe that the NCPA Orchestra’s return visit to Philadelphia will undoubtedly reaffirm our unique friendship and continuous partnership. Music knows no boundary, and beautiful melodies will draw our people even closer. I hope we would bring the cultural exchange between China and the United States to a new high, and leave brilliant marks in people’s memories. I hereby would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Allison Vulgamore and her wonderful team at the Philadelphia Orchestra for their great effort to make this tour a reality. I wish the NCPA Orchestra’s North America Tour a complete success. NCPAO_Ad2_V2_Layout 1 10/29/14 4:34 PM Page 1

The Philadelphia Orchestra thanks the sponsors of the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra’s Philadelphia Concert for their support of the ongoing cultural exchange programs between the U.S. and China.

Presenting Sponsor of the NCPAO in Philadelphia

Supporting Sponsor

Media Partner 30 Conductor

Lü Jia is chief conductor of China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Orchestra in Beijing. Born into a musical family in Shanghai, he began studying piano and cello at a very young age. He later studied conducting at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, under the tutelage of conductor Zheng Xiaoying. At the age of 24, Mr. Lü entered the University of Arts in Berlin and the following year was awarded both the First Prize and Jury’s Prize at the Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting Competition in Trento, Italy. Over the past decades he has conducted over 2,000 orchestral concerts and opera performances in Europe and America, becoming the first Asian conductor to serve as the artistic director of a major Italian opera house and the first Chinese conductor to lead the Chicago Symphony. Since his appointment in 2012 as chief conductor and artistic director of opera, the NCPA’s productions of Wagner’s Lohengrin and The Flying Dutchman, Verdi’s Otello and A Masked Ball, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Puccini’s Tosca, and many other works have received glowing reviews from the international press, launching an exciting new chapter in the history of professional opera productions in China. Having directed nearly 50 operas in Italy and Germany, Mr. Lü has been praised by Italian music critics as “a conductor who understands Italian opera even better than the Italians themselves do.” In 2007, in recognition of his important contribution to musical culture in Italy, he was awarded the President’s Prize by President Giorgio Napolitano. The NCPA Orchestra, under Mr. Lü’s baton, has also established itself as one of the leading new ensembles in the orchestral world in China. Mr. Lü was the first Chinese conductor to record Mendelssohn’s complete orchestral works, and he is also the only conductor so far who has recorded the complete works by the Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm. Before taking up his current posts in Beijing, Mr. Lü served as music director at Verona Opera, artistic director at the Tenerife Symphony, and chief conductor at Trieste Opera, the Florence Symphony, the Lazio Chamber Orchestra in Rome, and the Norrköpping Symphony in Sweden. In addition to his NCPA music directorship, he is also currently music director and principal conductor of the Macao Orchestra. 31 Soloist

Fadil Berisha In the years since her 2005 debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, 27-year-old pianist Yuja Wang has performed with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras. This season she returns to the Concertgebouw to perform Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 with Mariss Jansons; tours North America and Europe in a continued collaboration with violinist Leonidas Kavakos; performs in a U.S. tour with the London Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas; and makes her concerto debut with the Berlin Philharmonic. She is also featured as artist-in-residence with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, appearing three times over the course of the season. Highlights of recent seasons include a tour of the U.S. with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields led by Neville Marriner; an appearance as guest soloist with the YouTube Symphony and Mr. Thomas at Carnegie Hall; performances and a recording of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Lucerne Music Festival; and performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on tour in China. Ms. Wang made her Carnegie Hall recital debut in 2011 and regularly gives recitals in major cities throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Ms. Wang is an exclusive recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon. Following her debut recording, Sonatas & Etudes, Gramophone magazine named her the Classic FM 2009 Young Artist of the Year. For her second recording, Transformation, she received an Echo Klassik award as Young Artist of the Year. She next collaborated with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra to record her first concerto album, featuring Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and his Concerto No. 2, which was nominated for a Grammy as Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Most recently she joined Mr. Kavakos to record the complete Brahms violin and piano sonatas for Decca Records. Ms. Wang studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and at the Morningside Music summer program at Calgary’s Mount Royal College before moving to the U.S. to study with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music. She graduated from Curtis in 2008 and in 2010 was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. 32 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra

Established in 2010, China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Orchestra is the only resident orchestra of the NCPA in Beijing. Its current chief conductor is Lü Jia, who took up the post in 2011, succeeding Chen Zuohuang, who now serves as conductor laureate. In just a few years, the NCPA Orchestra has demonstrated an abiding commitment to the highest level of artistic excellence, and takes pride in its collaborations with some of the finest musicians of our time, including Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Plácido Domingo, Leo Nucci, Lior Shambadal, Rudolf Buchbinder, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, and Ning Feng, among others. Mr. Maazel praised the orchestra for its “amazing professionalism and great passion in music.” The NCPA Orchestra balances a busy and distinguished performance schedule, playing for the Centre’s opera productions as well as presenting its own concert season. The ensemble has performed over 20 opera productions, many of them for the first time in China, including Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin, Verdi’s Otello, and Puccini’s Tosca. The quality of these performances has set a new benchmark for opera in China. On the concert stage the orchestra has firmly established itself as a major player with such high-profile projects as the NCPA Gustav Mahler Project in 2011 and the Chinese premiere of Ring without Words under the baton of its creator, Mr. Maazel, in 2012. The orchestra is committed to commissioning and promoting contemporary music. Having presented the Chinese premieres of major works by Tōru Takemitsu and Giya Kancheli in 2013, the ensemble gave the world premieres of 10 works commissioned by the NCPA and written by composers from across the globe, including Michael Gordon, Augusta Read Thomas, and Joby Talbot. The NCPA Orchestra has embarked on a number of international tours. In 2012 the ensemble was invited by the Kissingen Summer Music Festival and the Schleswig- Holstein Music Festival, and its first German tour continued with concerts in Nürnberg, Hamburg, and Berlin, followed by appearances at the Sydney Opera House. In 2013 the orchestra undertook its first Asian tour with concerts in Singapore, Seoul, and Macao. With its commitment to educational and outreach activities, the orchestra has presented a popular series of Weekend Matinee Concerts at its home venue since its establishment, and also frequently initiates wide-reaching educational projects in association with educational institutions across the city. 33 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts

Opened in 2007, China’s National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) has become one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world. Strongly committed to presenting and supporting the highest standards of artistic excellence, the Center is considered the home away from home for many of today’s leading artists and ensembles. Across four stellar state-of-the-art performance spaces, the NCPA presents more than 850 events annually, from classical and contemporary concerts to opera, ballet, and theater productions to education and outreach programs. With a mission to share the transformative power of the arts to as many people as possible, the Center serves a diverse and broad audience spanning all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. The NCPA is not only celebrated as a leading venue for visiting performing artists and ensembles, but it is also home to one of China’s premier orchestras, the China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra. Since its launch in 2010, the NCPA Orchestra has become one of the brightest jewels in China’s artistic crown, performing many critically acclaimed concerts at the venue and abroad. In addition to their main- stage concert season, they are also the resident orchestra for all of the Center’s opera productions. Under the direction of its chief conductor, Lü Jia, the ensemble is composed of some of the world’s finest musicians, who all share in the center’s belief of presenting concerts of the highest artistic quality. To learn more about China’s National Center for the Performing arts, please visit www.chncpa.org/ens/. 34 China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra Chief Conductor Jia Lü Conductor Laureate Zuohuang Chen Assistant Conductor Ding Yuan Guest Concertmaster Xiaoming Wang

Concertmaster Sha Ma Clarinets Harp Zhe Li Renzhu Tang Jaume Sanchis * Li-Ya Huang * Xiaoyu Yang Yini Qiu Yi He † Yiyu Shang Sijun Chen ‡ Piano First Violins Yan Cong Xuechun Bi Min Ding Yu Qin Bassoons Jingjing Zhao Feifei Yuan Jingjing Ji * * Principal Song Liu Guangyuan Shi † Guest Principal Si Li ‡ Cellos Jiatong Han ‡ Associate Principal Oliver Kot Meng Yang * Weijia Ma Feng Yan ‡ Horns Managing Director He Tian Xiao Liang Yi Man † Xiaolong Ren Qian Sun Xiao Dong Yijun Liu † Xiaojing Pu Yiting Yang Xiaowei Ji Deputy Managing Yingxin Guo Tao Song Kuo Wang Director Roujin Chen Ping Liang Gaowa Xuri Hongjie Tu Xiaoxu Liu Rui An Chia-Ying Lee Yu Wang Trumpets Assistant Managing Yilin Shan Zhonghui Dai † Director Second Violins Yubing Wang ‡ Lin Zhang Xian Liu * Basses Xiaohu Xiao Rui Yang ‡ Shiqi Shao † Performance Hongshu Jin Yimei Liu ‡ Trombones Management and Fangfang Yuan Ning Kang Shuang Liu ‡ Administration Chia-Lun Chang Haiqi Zhao Zhiying Wei Jing Zhou Yan Zheng Xiangquan Liu Wei Wang (Bass Enyan Luo Wendan Li Guangyuan Zhang Trombone) ‡ Boyu Lin Chia-Hua Lee Artistic Planning and Zhaohui Liu Mengxi Wang Tuba Marketing Xingya Li Radek Jisa ‡ Ning Tang Bin Wei Flutes Jia Tang Meng Wu I-Jeng Yeh * Timpani Zhen Wang Jiayao Gao Yi Yin ‡ Gang Liu * Wenyu Ji Qian Liu Stage Management Percussion and Production Violas Oboes Heng Liu ‡ Shiyi Wang Ran Zhuang * Sai Kai † Yuan Ma Mudi Yin Jiguang Han ‡ Yang Zhou ‡ Shu Su Miao Zhang Tie Xu Xiaochi Zhang Jing He Yanfeng Xue 35 The Music Wu Xing (The Five Elements)

Chen Qigang was born in Shanghai and began studying music at the age of six. Like many of his generation, he experienced a traumatic youth during the Cultural Revolution. In 1984, following five years of studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing with Luo Zhongrong, he moved to Paris, where he was Olivier Messiaen’s final and, during that time, only, student for four years. Chen’s honors include the 2005 Grand Prize for Symphonic Music by SACEM, the copyright collecting Chen Qigang society of France, in recognition of his career Born August 28, 1951, achievements, and the 2012 Rossini Award, given by the in Shanghai Academie des Beaux Arts de l’Institut de France. In 2013 Now living in Paris he was named “Most Influential Chinese in the World in Culture and the Arts,” by a consortium of major Chinese media, along with writer Mo Yan (winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature) and pianist Lang Lang, and that same year he was decorated with the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Chen was also music director of the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games. Chen’s major symphonic works include Wu Xing, Yuan, Reflet d’un temps disparu, Iris dévoilée, Extase, Enchantements oubliés, and Er Huang. He has also delved into the world of film music, composing the soundtracks to two films by Zhang Yimou, Under the Hawthorn Tree and The Flowers of War. The integration of Chinese and Western traditions in Chen’s music has earned him numerous prizes and commissions, including one from Radio France in 1998 for the piece we hear tonight. Of this work, he writes: This commission immediately raised all my interest, for the proposition coincided with a period of personal quest. The challenge pleased me and I took it up as a style exercise, supported by the pressure of the duration [limitation]. … Before going further in my process, I undertook to characterize each piece by a different symbol. From there was born the idea of representing the five elements (Wu Xing). Because according to the Yi King, five elements constitute the universe: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. … To 36

Wu Xing was composed in characterize musically a symbol in an extremely short 1998. time and to present a tangible material in an abstract Chen scored the piece for language were my lines of strength. But even more, to three flutes (III doubling establish relationships between the materials so that piccolo), three oboes, three each element generated the next one, as if the last clarinets (II doubling E-flat was the consequence of the first. clarinet, III doubling bass According to the foreword in the printed score, water clarinet), three bassoons (III is the strongest element for Chen, but characterized doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, by calmness. Wood is the richest element, with a lot of three trombones, percussion variations; fire represents life (warm, but not aggressive); (bamboo chimes, bass drum, earth, a generative principle, is the matrix; and metal refers glockenspiel, log drum, to strength and light. marimba, metal chimes, Wu Xing (The Five Elements) was one of five finalists in suspended cymbal, tam-tam, the 2001 Masterprize Award, hosted by the BBC, and temple blocks, triangle, tubular it has been recorded by Didier Benetti and the National bells, vibraphone, wood blocks, xylophone), harp, celesta Orchestra of France. (doubling piano), and strings. Performance time is approximately 10 minutes. 37 The Music Piano Concerto in G major

When Ravel embarked upon his American tour of 1928, his earlier battles for recognition in a hostile Paris were a distant memory. He was a celebrity. “As soon as we arrived in the harbor, a swarm of journalists and cartoonists invaded the boat, with cameras,” he wrote to his brother upon arriving in New York. “In the hotel, the telephone didn’t stop ringing. Every minute they would bring me baskets of flowers, and of the most delicious fruits in the world. Rehearsals, teams of journalists relieving one another every hour, letters, invitations, receptions. In the Maurice Ravel evening, relaxation: dance halls, theaters, gigantic movie Born in Ciboure, Lower houses, etc.” Doubtless Ravel heard a wonderful mix Pyrenees, March 7, 1875 of contemporary jazz and big-band music during these Died in Paris, December 28, 1937 excursions into New York’s night life, and it left its mark—as did the music of Gershwin. Inspired by Jazz The tour, during which Ravel conducted his own music and performed on piano, was also an unprecedented artistic success. Upon returning to France he immediately began work on the Piano Concerto in G, the first ideas for which were conceived in America. His progress was interrupted by an additional commission from Paul Wittgenstein, the one-armed Viennese pianist, for a concerto for the left hand. So during the next two years Ravel wrote two concertos side by side; both are permeated by the rhythms, harmonies, and textures of 1920s jazz. “Each movement of my new concerto has some jazz in it,” he said in February 1932 of the G-major Concerto. “I frankly admit that I am an admirer of jazz, and I think it is bound to influence modern music. It is not just a passing phase, but it has come to stay. Jazz is thrilling and inspiring; I spend many hours listening to it in nightclubs and on the radio.” The lightheartedness of the G-major Concerto was designed as a sort of foil to the more serious Left-Hand Concerto, as well as to excessively serious concertos in general. “I set out with the old notion that a concerto should be a diversion,” Ravel later said of the G-major work. “Brahms’s principle of a symphonic concerto was wrong; the critic was right who said that Brahms had written a concerto ‘against’ rather than ‘for’ the piano.” His goal here, as he himself stated, was virtuosity without 38

Ravel composed his G-major profundity. “As a model I took two musicians who, in my Piano Concerto from 1929 to opinion, best illustrate this type of composition: Mozart 1931. and Saint-Saëns. This is why the Concerto, which I The score calls for solo piano, originally thought of entitling Divertissement, contains piccolo, flute, oboe, English the three customary parts: the initial Allegro, a compact horn, clarinet, E-flat clarinet, classical structure, is followed by an Adagio, in which I two bassoons, two horns, wanted to pay special homage to ‘scholasticism,’ and in trumpet, trombone, timpani, which I attempted to write as well as I could; to conclude, percussion (bass drum, a lively movement in Rondo form.” cymbals, slapstick, snare drum, tam-tam, triangle, wood block), He originally intended the Concerto as a pianistic display harp, and strings. piece for himself, in fact for yet another projected concert tour. But by the time he had completed the arduous, The Concerto runs two-year project in 1931, he had grown so ill that the approximately 20 minutes in pianist Marguerite Long was enlisted to perform the performance. demanding solo part. (He did conduct the performance, however.) After the successful Paris premiere, in January 1932, he and Long took the work on an extended tour of 20 European cities. The reception was enormous; in a number of cities the audiences demanded a repeat of the propulsive and jazzy final movement. The presence of jazz elements in the Concerto in G has, however, tended to obscure a view of the work’s debt to tradition and to formal models—and of its meticulous craftsmanship. The first movement, for example, is one of the composer’s most sharply-etched “classical” forms, dazzling in its sheer sonic excitement, yet consistently satisfying in its remarkable logic and symmetry. Ravel was a diligent composer, and a perfectionist; the almost unparalleled “polish” of his scores was the result of meticulous care heaped upon every measure of music. He thought nothing of spending two years on a piece. A Closer Look A crack of a whip and a Basque folk tune in the piccolo begin the opening Allegramente; the piano’s first solo might remind some of Rhapsody in Blue, as will, perhaps, the bluesy clarinet theme that follows. The movement’s pyrotechnics culminate in a twittering, cascading cadenza. The second movement (Adagio assai) is a rare treat in the 20th-century repertoire: a truly lyrical, tonal slow movement with the integrity required by the most rigorous of modernists. It is like Chopin viewed through a Stravinskian lens; its out-of-step triple meter continues to “fool the ear” throughout. The Presto finale is a perpetuum mobile movement that brings the work to a jaunty, inspired close. —Paul J. Horsley 39 The Music Symphony No. 5

When Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his Fifth Symphony in St. Petersburg, the audience responded enthusiastically, as did the orchestra, which struck up fanfares to signal its delight. Critical reaction, however, proved less positive. A particularly damning view held that the “symphony is a failure. There is something repulsive about it, a certain excess of gaudiness, insincerity, and artificiality. And the public instinctively recognizes this.” And who was this disparaging critic? None other than the composer himself, confiding in a letter to his generous Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, after he had conducted Born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, further performances in Prague. Russia, May 7, 1840 Died in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky’s insecurities about a composition that would November 6, 1893 over time become one of his most famous and beloved date back to its inception in the spring of 1888. He had recently concluded a brilliant three-month concert tour around Europe (“Success, which I enjoyed everywhere, is very pleasant”), but had not composed a significant piece in almost a year and not produced a symphony in more than a decade. Returning to Russia in late March, Tchaikovsky informed his brother that he wanted to write a new one, but weeks later could only report, “I have still not yet made a start. … I can honestly say that once again I have no urge to create. What does this mean? Am I really written out? I have no ideas or inspiration whatsoever!” The ideas did begin to come, as he put it, “gradually, and with some difficulty, I am squeezing the symphony out of my dulled brain.” The Fifth Symphony was finished by late August and ready for its premiere in November. Another Fate Symphony In a well-known letter to Madame von Meck a decade earlier, Tchaikovsky had provided an elaborate program for his Fourth Symphony, casting its “central idea” as “Fate, the fatal force that prevents our strivings for happiness from succeeding.” Similar thoughts seem to have been behind the Fifth— and this time they were expressed before the piece was written. (What Tchaikovsky had told von Meck about the Fourth came well after its completion, prompted by her specific request to learn the story behind the work.) In a notebook Tchaikovsky indicated a program for the first movement: 40

Intr[oduction]. Total submission before Fate, or, which is the same thing, the inscrutable design of Providence. Allegro. I) Murmurs, doubts, laments, reproaches against … XXX. II) Shall I cast myself into the embrace of Faith??? A wonderful program, if only it can be fulfilled. The meaning of “XXX,” which also appears in Tchaikovsky’s diaries, has traditionally been deciphered as referring to his homosexuality, although biographer Alexander Poznansky has recently suggested that it may refer to problems with gambling. Fate was a familiar topic in music long before Tchaikovsky. In the realm of the symphony, it extended back at least as far as that most famous of Fifths, Beethoven’s, the opening of which allegedly represented “Fate knocking at the door.” Perhaps even more common are Fate themes in operas, as in Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny), and Wagner’s Ring. In such orchestral and dramatic works “Fate” provides not only a narrative thread, but also something to be represented musically. A Closer Look There is no certainty, of course, that the slow opening theme of Tchaikovsky’s first movement (Andante), played by the clarinets in the “chalumeau” (or lowest) register, represents Fate, even if that is what the early sketches suggest and what most commentators have heard for well over a century. The melody itself is drawn from Mikhail Glinka’s great opera A Life for the Tsar (1836), where it sets the words “turn not to sorrow.” Tchaikovsky casts a far more expansive melody than the well-known Beethoven Fifth motif, although, as in Beethoven, the theme appears not just at the opening, or only in the first movement, but rather in all four movements. Thus “Fate” twice rudely interrupts the lyrical second movement (Andante cantabile), with its famous slow horn melody opening, in ways that suggest catastrophe. As the Symphony progresses, however, Fate seems to be tamed, or at least integrated with its surroundings. The theme also reappears near the end of the third movement waltz (Allegro moderato) and it forms the basis for the major key finale, from the slow introduction (Andante maestoso), to the fast core (Allegro vivace), and finally to its apotheosis in the triumphant coda. 41

Tchaikovsky composed his In his Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky, like Beethoven, Fifth Symphony in 1888. seemed to shake his fist at Fate—the music is angry and The score calls for three defiant. The mood in his Fifth Symphony is quite different: flutes (III doubling piccolo), Here Tchaikovsky dances with Fate. An early critic two oboes, two clarinets, two disapprovingly called it “the symphony with three waltzes,” bassoons, four horns, two reflecting not only the waltz replacement of a traditional trumpets, three trombones, scherzo in the third movement, but also the waltz episodes tuba, timpani, and strings. in the opening two movements. Over the course of the Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 Symphony Tchaikovsky appears to become reconciled runs approximately 50 minutes with Fate, perhaps under “the embrace of Faith” that he in performance. anticipated before beginning the composition. And in time, his attitude about the quality of the Symphony also changed. After enjoying another great success with the work in Hamburg, at a performance attended by Brahms, Tchaikovsky wrote to his nephew: “The Fifth Symphony was beautifully played and I have started to love it again.” —Christopher H. Gibbs

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Janáček Jealousy Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 Dvořák Symphony No. 8 The November 13 concert is sponsored by MEDCOMP. The November 15 concert is sponsored by the Capital Grille. Brahms and Stravinsky Friday, November 21 2 PM Saturday, November 22 8 PM Susanna Mälkki Conductor Juliette Kang Violin Respighi Botticelli Triptych Stravinsky Violin Concerto Brahms Symphony No. 4

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