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Home , Jean Sibelius, Karelia Suite

MASTERCLASS WITH CELLIST NORMAN FISCHER UMD REPERTOIRE

UMD School of Music presents UMD REPERTOIRE ORCHESTRA BEETHOVEN’S 7TH Bonnie Alger, Tiffany Lu and Anthony Rivera, co-music directors James Ross, narrator

Wednesday, March 2, 2016 . 8PM Elsie & Marvin Dekelboum Concert Hall 49 PROGRAM

JEAN SIBELIUS Suite, Op. 11 (1893/1906) I. II. Ballade III. Alla Marcia

Tiffany Lu, conductor

AARON COPLAND Lincoln Portrait (1942)

James Ross, narrator Bonnie Alger, conductor

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92 (1812) I. Poco sostenuto – Vivace II. Allegretto III. Presto IV. Allegro con brio

Anthony Rivera, conductor

This performance will last approximately 90 minutes, which includes a 15-minute intermission.

Video or audio recording of the production is strictly prohibited.

50 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Connecticut native Bonnie Alger is pursuing a for Conductors and Orchestral Musicians, serving doctorate at the University of Maryland School as Orchestral Assistant for the past two summers of Music, where she serves as Co-Director of the and studying with Michael Jinbo. University of Maryland Repertoire Orchestra and Cover Conductor for the University of Lu served as an assistant conductor at the Tampa Maryland Symphony Orchestra. Metropolitan Youth (2011–2012) and at Ithaca College (2012–2015), where she also Alger recently returned to the United States earned her master’s degree in conducting studying from Abu Dhabi, where she spent two years as with Dr. Jeffery Meyer. She has also performed in Director of Choral Activities at GEMS American masterclasses led by Carl St. Clair, Larry Rachleff, Academy (GAA). Under her direction, the choral David Effron, Lior Shambadal, Mark Shapiro and program at GAA sent singers to an honor Victor Yampolsky. festival in Stavanger, Norway. Her students have worked with members of the Philadelphia-based Growing up in Tampa, Florida, Lu began studying ensemble Orchestra 2001, and the legendary the violin at the age of three; as a violinist and Quincy Jones. As a violinist, Alger played with violist, Lu has more than 15 years of orchestral, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) National chamber and solo experience. She has performed Symphony Orchestra at such events as the 42nd with the Florida Orchestra, Binghamton UAE National Day celebrations and the Dubai Philharmonic, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, World Cup. Symphoria (Syracuse) and Gadje, a gypsy rock band based in Ithaca. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Alger completed a master’s degree Lu holds a BA from Princeton University from in music education and received scholarships the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and from both the Thornton School of Music and International Policy and a MM in orchestral Rossier School of Education. Prior to her work conducting from Ithaca College. at USC, she earned a master’s degree in orchestral Anthony Rivera is a doctoral candidate in conducting at the University of Northern conducting at the University of Maryland School Iowa, and a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence of Music and serves as Assistant Conductor to University. She has participated in masterclasses the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra led by Kenneth Kiesler, Gustav Meier and her and University of Maryland Wind Ensemble, current teacher, James Ross. and Co-Director of the University of Maryland In addition to her conducting duties at the Repertoire Orchestra. University of Maryland, she sings with the UMD Rivera taught instrumental music for the Chamber Singers and has performed with the Baltimore County Public Schools at Eastern National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Technical High School. During his tenure, the Center and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra band and orchestra performed for the Maryland at both The Music Center at Strathmore and Music Educators Conference and commissioned Meyerhoff Hall. new music from composer David Faleris. He was Conductor and violinist Tiffany Lu is in her named the Essex Chamber of Commerce Teacher first year of doctoral studies at the University of of the Year and received citations for teaching Maryland studying orchestral conducting with excellence from the Maryland Senate and House Professor James Ross. For the past four seasons, of Representatives. Lu has also attended the School 51 ABOUT THE ARTISTS (cont’d)

An active guest conductor and clinician, Rivera has Ross has served as assistant conductor of the served as the guest conductor for the Providence Boston Symphony Orchestra, as William College Honor Band, guest lecturer for the Christie’s assistant to Les Arts Florissants and as Maryland Music Educators Association and was music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra. selected as a conductor for the He has conducted such diverse orchestras as the Temple University Conductors Symposium. He Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Utah Symphony, the was a member of the Handel Choir of Baltimore Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Orquesta and served on the artistic committee and as Sinfonica of Galicia, and the National Symphony conducting fellow under Melinda O’Neal. Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in side-by-side concerts with UMSO. His principal conducting Rivera received a Bachelor of Music Education teachers were Kurt Masur, Otto-Werner Mueller, from the University of Central Florida and Master Seiji Ozawa, and . of Music in wind conducting from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, having As a teacher, Ross has served on the faculties of studied with Harlan Parker. At the University of , the Curtis Institute of Music, Maryland, he studies conducting with Michael Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges, and as a Votta and James Ross. guest artist at the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, Japan. He also teaches conducting each summer James Ross is presently the Director of at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Orchestral Activities at the University of in Santa Cruz and has performed as a one-man Maryland, Conducting Faculty at The Juilliard narrator for Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale at the Curtis School and Orchestra Director of the National Institute of Music. He enjoys hearing the sound Youth Orchestra USA at Carnegie Hall. of his own voice.

52 ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Karelia Suite, Op. 11 based largely on the second Intermezzo, the (1865–1957) march of the 16th-century Baron Pontus De la Gardie, who led the Swedish military to some Jean Sibelius was just at the outset of a prolific of its most resounding victories against Russian compositional career when he wrote and troops in the Karelia region. premiered Karelia Music, which he wrote for a lottery organized by the Vyborg Students’ Association “to promote the education of the people of Vyborg Province.” The name refers to Lincoln Portrait the Karelian isthmus bordering Russia where (1900–1990) Vyborg is located, a historically disputed region Conductor Andre Kostelanetz, to whom Lincoln also known as “old .” Each of the eight Portrait is dedicated, approached American tableaus dealt with various scenes from the composer Aaron Copland about writing a history of Karelia. In its original incarnation the musical portrait of an “eminent American.” piece was 44 minutes, and included an Copland chose the 16th President of the United and two intermezzi for a total of 11 movements. States, Abraham Lincoln, as his subject, and using Initial performances were concluded with material from Lincoln’s well-known speeches, as Sibelius’ arrangement of the Finnish national well as familiar folk songs of the time, created anthem. Later Sibelius published the Overture as an orchestral work that uses narration as well as his Op. 10, and rearranged three of the movements highlights the ensemble’s brass section. into what became one of his most enduring (and, at 12 minutes, much shorter) works, Op. 11, the The work is frequently found on pops and . other American-themed concert programs, and has been narrated by a number of recognized The three movements are characterized by rustic names, including astronaut Neil Armstrong, “naiveté,” folklike melodies and youthful, exuberant musicians and James Taylor, rhythms. These reflect Sibelius’ concurrent study actors Katharine Hepburn and James Earl of Swedish medieval ballads and Karelian rune Jones, and Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack singing (an oral folk tradition based on the , Obama, among many others. Carl Sandburg’s Finland’s central work of epic poetry and the basis for performance with the Philharmonic, much of their folklore and mythology; the original conducted by Kostelanetz, won a GRAMMY first tableau itself included direct transcriptions of Award in 1960, and the composer himself served Kalevala rune singing). as narrator for his 80th birthday concert in 1980 The present suite’s first movement, Intermezzo, with the National Symphony Orchestra, led by is based upon the original first Intermezzo of Leonard Bernstein. Karelia Music. The music is a proud, grandiose Copland includes texts from Lincoln’s 1862 Allegro featuring a soaring patriotic brass theme, Message to Congress, the Lincoln-Douglas debates borrowed from the tableau originally titled and the Gettysburg Address in the piece and weaves “The founding of .” The second in information about Lincoln’s demeanor, physical movement, Ballade, is based on the tableau that description and background in order to create a full depicts the ponderous musings of 15th-century picture of the President. The narrator is cautioned Swedish King Charles Knutson, reposing in against adding undue emphasis to the delivery of the Castle of Vyborg as he listens to the ballad Lincoln’s words, as Copland felt that the words were of a court minstrel. The suite is concluded by dramatic in themselves. a youthful, jaunty Alla Marcia (march) which is — Bonnie Alger 53 ABOUT THE PROGRAM (cont’d)

Beethoven, is virtually another development, and Beethoven heaves it to a tremendous climax by Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92 making a crescendo across a tenfold repetition of (1770–1827) an obsessive, harmonically off-balance bass. The Seventh Symphony is Beethoven’s last word There is no slow movement. The Allegretto for quite a few years on the subject of the big style that the first audiences — indeed audiences he had been cultivating since the early 1800s. The throughout the — liked so much concert at which the work had its premiere — it is relaxed only by comparison with what comes was a benefit for Austrian and Bavarian soldiers before and after. A subtly unstable wind chord wounded at the then-recent Battle of Hanau begins and ends the movement. It is a chord of A — was probably the most wildly successful of minor, the home key, but with a “wrong” note — his career. What caused the excitement was not, E instead of A — in the bass. When we first hear it, however, Opus 92, the new symphony, but Opus it sets up the “walking” music of the lower strings; 91, Wellington’s Victory, or The Battle of Vitoria. To when it reappears at the end, it is not so much Beethoven’s annoyance, the critic of the Wiener a conclusion as a slightly eccentric preparation Zeitung referred to the Seventh as having been for the F major explosion of the scherzo. That composed “as a companion piece” to Wellington’s scherzo’s contrasting trio, which may or may not Victory. But the public liked the “companion be a quotation of a pilgrims’ hymn, is marked piece” too, and the composer , one of to go “very much less fast.” As in many of the the violinists in the orchestra for the whole series big works of this period in his life, including the of concerts, reports that the second movement Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven makes the journey was encored each time. through the trio and the reprise of the scherzo A semi-slow introduction, the largest ever heard twice, though with amusing variants. in any symphony until then and still one of the The finale is fast, too, but the sense of pace is largest, defines great harmonic spaces, first A quite different. The scherzo, sharply defined, major, then (the gently lyric tune), moves like a superbly controlled machine. The then F major (the same tune on the ). The finale carries to an extreme point, unimagined excursions to C and F are entered upon with before Beethoven’s day and rarely reached since, startling bluntness. Obviously Beethoven’s aim a truly wild and swirling motion adumbrated in is to draw attention not only to these shifts but the first movement. Here, too, Beethoven builds also these new harmonic areas, and in fact every the coda upon an obsessively repeated bass — just one of the symphony’s journeys is foreshadowed a pair of notes grinding away, G-sharp/A at first, here. So important are these journeys that then working its way down through chromatic Frederik Prausnitz, in his wonderfully stimulating degrees until reaching the dominant, E, and its book Score and Podium, refers to the Seventh neighbor, D-sharp, the whole inspired and mad Symphony as a “Tale of Three Tonalities.” The process being spread across 59 measures. Of material — scales, and melodies that outline course, to sound wild it must be orderly, and common chords — is of reckless simplicity. rhythmic definition is everything, here as in the Gradually, with a delicious feeling for suspense, notoriously difficult first movement. Beethoven draws the Vivace from the last flickers of the introduction. Having done so, he propels — Michael Steinberg us with fierce energy and speed through one of those movements of his that are dominated by a single propulsive rhythm. The coda, as so often in 54 UMD REPERTOIRE ORCHESTRA

Bonnie Alger, Tiffany Lu, and Anthony Rivera, co-music directors

VIOLIN I BASS HORN Zaynah Ahmed Nathan Durham Matt Baugher James Chen Darien Fearon Laura Bent Samuel Han Sahil Kulgod * Lea Humphreys Jackson Hensley Ian Sanders Chun Mun Loke Tejah Lee Matthew Kamens Aviva Mazurek PICCOLO Eric Kuhn Kevin Moy Maya Keys Savannah Williams Enidris Rodriguez Alisa Oh Richmond Wang * Oscar Velasco Carolyn Worden Ryan Crother FLUTE Louis Levine VIOLIN II Maya Keys Christine Schroeder Maddy Garey Alisa Oh John Walden Keely Hollyfield * Maggie Yuan Kristin Kerns Samantha Litvin OBOE Nicholas Hogg Tiffany Lu Stacia Cutler Rich Matties Tula Raghavan Michael Helgerman Peter Sheu BASS TROMBONE Christine Shi ENGLISH HORN David London Abby Stauffer Angela Kazmierczak Julia Wagner Nick Obrigewitch Marcus Fedarko Edward Borders Gabriel Ferreira Danny Hoffman Alex Gehring Laurin Friedland Miles King * Anya O’Neal BASS CLARINET PERCUSSION Cheungxu Pang AJ Layton Devon Hunt Jenna Wollney CELLO Lucas Cheng * Principal Alexander Brunmayr* Alexander Devereux Amy Hao Jonathan Hyon Hadjira Ishaq Kyle Pett Devin Porter 55