GET CLOSER TO THE MUSIC 2021 2022 As the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra enters Since our last live Masterworks concert in our 61st season, I want to thank you for sticking COMING February 2020, a sea change has shifted us all, in with us the past 18 months through a very society, community, and art. Our season reflects challenging time. Your unwavering support and that. We look at each Masterworks season as encouragement have helped us sustain and HOME TO unique, and this season is a mix of the familiar, evolve as a leading arts organization while also the masters, and the unfamiliar finds so worthy fulfilling our mission of enriching communities of illumination. through the transformative power of music. THE CAPITOL Our return home to the Capitol Theater melds new works by the orchestra’s first-ever Composer During the upcoming Masterworks season, in Residence Dr. Bill Banfield, with his impressive we will ensure you have a safe and enjoyable contemporary, Patrice Rushen, to the belated concert experience in the performance hall, birthday boy himself, Beethoven. public spaces, or out of the comfort of your home. The season is filled with world premieres, In his honor, we dedicate our first Masterworks digital performances, local and cross-cultural and our finale to Beethoven’s war horses: collaborations, and a heightened focus on the rarely performed Triple Concerto and the community engagement and education. Emperor. The Triple is a 37-minute feat, the only concerto Beethoven completed for more Thank you for letting us continue to be a part than one soloist. And ours will be performed of your lives. I invite you this season to again by virtuosi as compatible as a hand and glove, get closer to the music with your Wisconsin concertmaster Suzanne Beia, principal cellist Chamber Orchestra. Karl Lavine, and UW-Madison Professor of Piano Christopher Taylor. Joe Loehnis Our second season of the digital Musician Sessions returns this fall with three one-hour CEO programs of chamber music performed by ensembles. Thank you for your support of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, your belief in our work, and for preserving and sustaining this premier ensemble for future generations. Andrew Sewell Music Director 2 3 21/22 CAPITOL THEATER MADISON, WI 7:30 PM PRE-CONCERT EVENT & DISCUSSION I: The Triple MASTERWORKS Enjoy a lively pre-concert discussion January 28, 2022 with cocktails and appetizers held in WCO + UW Soloists | Suzanne the Wisconsin Studio at the Overture Beia, violin, Karl Lavine, cello, and SERIES Center. Maestro Andrew Sewell, Christopher Taylor, piano Wisconsin Public Radio’s Norman Gilliland, and our concert guest artist II: Harp and Haydn will share insights and inspiration for February 25, 2022 the evening’s Masterworks concert Yolanda Kondonassis repertoire. HARP Reservations for the intimate pre- III: Paganini Passion concert event must be made at least March 25, 2022 one week prior to the concerts. Eric Silberger VIOLIN IV: The Emperor Pre-concert event tickets are $45. April 22, 2022 Cash bar is available. John O’Conor To reserve your spot, call PIANO 608.257.0638. Subscribe at wcoconcerts.org/subscribe, by phone at 608.257.0638, or by mail. Doors open at 5:30 PM Discussion begins at 6:30 PM Please Note: We are committed to ensuring the safety of our patrons, musicians, and staff. For Handel’s Messiah in December 2021 and Masterworks I in January 2022, we will be requiring proof of vaccination against COVID-19 and to be fully masked while in the venue. Please visit wcoconcerts.org for more information. 4 MASTERWORKS I: COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE THE TRIPLE Friday, January 28, 2022 Suzanne Beia VIOLIN Karl Lavine CELLO WILLIAM BANFIELD Christopher Taylor William Banfield is an award-winning composer PIANO whose symphonies, operas, and chamber works have been performed and recorded by major symphonies across the country. He is one of the REPERTOIRE most performed, recorded composers of his generation. Banfield’s work to date includes twelve Patrice Rushen | Sinfonia symphonies, seven operas, nine concerti, chamber, as well as jazz and popular forms. William Banfield | Symphony No. 8, Here I Stand (world premiere) Ludwig van Beethoven | Triple Concerto Run Time: 1 HR, 45 MINUTES Photo: Paulius Musteikis Paulius Photo: “ Bill Banfield is one of the most original DIRECTOR’S NOTES voices on the scene today. He tunes us into the conversation happening Opening the season is Patrice Rushen’s Sinfonia. Patrice is a Grammy-nominated musician of worldwide between the notes of the highest caliber straddling R&B, jazz, and classical genres as the triple crown of performer, conductor, and composer. She is the first woman music director and the first African American contemporary musical culture. ” producer of The Grammy Awards. – Henry Louis Gates Composer in Residence Dr. Bill Banfield’s Symphony No. 8, Here I Stand, in honor of the work of Banfield joined the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra for a three-year Paul Robeson, will receive its long-awaited world premiere on January 28. residency partnership starting in July 2021. We are commissioning two major works for the WCO and the greater Madison community Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is one for the record books as we celebrate Beethoven’s delayed 250th as well as significant community outreach while Bill is in residence. anniversary. Concertmaster Suzanne Beia, principal cello, Karl Lavine, and UW Professor and Van Cliburn prize winner Christopher Taylor join forces to conclude our first concert of 2022. 6 7 MASTERWORKS II: MASTERWORKS III: HARP AND HAYDN PAGANINI PASSION Friday, February 25, 2022 Friday, March 25, 2022 Yolanda Kondonassis Eric Silberger HARP VIOLIN REPERTOIRE REPERTOIRE Sergei Prokofiev | Sinfonietta Christopher Blake | Kotuku (world premiere) Alberto Ginastera | Harp Concerto Niccolò Paganini | Violin Concerto No. 1 Joseph Haydn | Symphony No. 88 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor | Petite Suite de Concert Run Time: 1 HR, 30 MINUTES Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Symphony No. 34 Run Time: 1 HR, 50 MINUTES DIRECTOR’S NOTES DIRECTOR’S NOTES We welcome the return of harp virtuoso Yolanda Kondonassis to perform Alberto Ginastera’s It is with great pleasure to introduce violin phenom Eric Silberger. This is our third attempt Harp Concerto of 1965, written for the great harpist of the twentieth century, Nicanor Zabaleta. at a concert date as with many of our guest artists, the pandemic has forced us all to be Written in an idiomic style for the harp including many special effects, it is a spectacular work to very patient. The wait has been worth it with Paganini’s tour-de-force Violin Concerto No. 1. enjoy live. The program opens with a world premiere performance of Christopher Blake’s Kotuku, commissioned by Andrew and Mary Sewell in 2019, and featuring an original lament with Prokofiev’s Sinfonietta is an early work from 1909 and was dedicated to his conducting teacher, indigenous flute. The work tells the story of the native white heron of New Zealand and its Nikolai Tcherepnin of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Following further revisions, this version spiritual significance to Maoridom. from 1930 shows a lighter, more humorous side to Prokofiev’s nature. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor has been featured on numerous Concerts on the Square for Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 from 1787 follows his six Paris Symphonies and is one of his more larger orchestra forces. We welcome his four-movement Petite Suite de Concert for popular symphonies with an exciting moto perpetuo finale. Combining two twentieth century chamber orchestra. Mozart’s Symphony No. 34 in C major has just three movements yet works and finishing with Haydn is classic WCO fare, inspiring our musicians to come alive with packs a punch, as C major was considered a triumphal key in classical psyche. spectacular vitality. 8 9 MASTERWORKS IV: THE EMPEROR Friday, April 22, 2022 John O’Conor SPECIAL PIANO REPERTOIRE PERFOMANCES Leoš Janáček | Suite for Strings Luigi Cherubini | Symphony in D major VERONA AREA THE NUTCRACKER PERFORMING ARTS WITH MADISON BALLET Ludwig van Beethoven | Piano Concerto SERIES No. 5, Emperor December 17–26, 2021 November 20, 2021 at 7:30 PM Overture Hall Run Time: 1 HR, 45 MINUTES Verona High School Performing Arts Center FAMILY SERIES I: REPERTOIRE “EL SALÓN MÉXICO” Tchaikovsky | Souvenir de Florence April 2, 2022 at 10 AM A Set of Popular Songs with Sarah DIRECTOR’S NOTES Lawrence, Soprano Schubert | Octet John O’Conor’s gift for Beethoven never disappoints. Loved by our orchestra and audience MOZART’S REQUIEM Copland | Appalachian Spring for 13 alike, O’Conor is a statesman and musical icon. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor is Instruments May 21, 2022 gargantuan, so named for its grandeur and highly sophisticated form. This is Beethoven at his Hamel Music Center most intense, personal, and sublime. So much so that in this capacity we are treating it as the main course or the steak, putting it in the second half, more like a symphony, with Janáček and Cherubini as appetizers and a salad. HANDEL’S MESSIAH Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s Suite for Strings (1877) was inspired by his friendship with December 8, 2021 at 7 PM Dvořák. A work in six movements, it joins a growing list of forgotten yet brilliant string First Congregational Church, Madison compositions performed by the WCO in recent years. Luigi Cherubini’s Symphony in D was commissioned by the London Philharmonic Society in 1815. A composer mainly of operas, he was well respected in Paris and other world capitals and was in the employment of Napoleon while in Vienna. Cherubini’s symphonic literature reveals much more about this often overlooked composer. 10 11 Concert II: Bohemian Blueprint THE MUSICIAN February 18–20, 2022 Bohemian Blueprint takes its title from two works PRICING on this program which features three living women SESSIONS 3-Concert Pack: $75 composers.