Symphony Orchestra

About the Program

Program notes by Mark Bilyeu except where noted.

Paul Salerni
Upstream/About Two Miles
Born 1951
Composed 1993
Premiered 1993, Schuylkill Symphony Orchestra
Duration 10 minutes

Composer Paul Salerni’s music “pulses with life, witty musical ideas and instrumental color” (the Philadelphia Inquirer), and has been described by the New York Times as “impressive” and “playful.” Salerni is the NEH Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Music at Lehigh University. He received his Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University, where he studied with Earl Kim. Salerni has performed and lectured about Kim’s music in Korea, at the Kennedy Center, the 92nd St. Y, and the Aspen Music Festival. A dedicated educator, Salerni was the recipient of the Stabler Award, Lehigh University’s most valued acknowledgement of excellence in teaching. He served for seven years on the Board of Directors of the Suzuki Association of the Americas, including two years as its Chair. His work Upstream/About Two Miles is a tribute to two important Miles in Salerni’s life: his son, Miles Salerni and the legendary jazz musician Miles Davis. 

Aaron Copland
Old American Songs
Born November 14, 1900
Died December 2, 1990
Composed 1950, 1952
Premiered June, 1950, Aldeburgh, England (Set 1),  July 24th, 1953, Ipswich, MA (Set 2)
Duration 25 minutes

In 1950, as America was entering the Cold War, patriotism was fading into paranoia, and American musical populism was on the decline, Leonard Bernstein asked Aaron Copland to write a set of American folk songs for the Aldeburgh Festival in England. Copland, who at that time noted it was incredibly “stifling” for creatives to work in America, delved into the research library of Brown University, specifically the Harris Collection, to search for material of a simpler time. What he found became the source material for his two sets of Old American Songs: field recordings from the Lomax brothers (“The Little Horses”), political songs from Grover Cleveland’s presidential campaign (“The Dodger”), songs from minstrel shows (“The Boatman’s Dance,” “Ching-a-Ring Chaw”), children’s songs (“I Bought Me a Cat”), and several hymn tunes that Copland would go on to use in other iterations (“Simple Gifts,” “Zion’s Walls,” and “At the River,” which was sung at both Copland's and Bernstein’s funerals). The first set of five was premiered by English tenor Peter Pears with Benjamin Britten at the piano, and the American premiere was given by William Warfield with Copland himself accompanying. "Everyone seemed to enjoy singing and hearing the first set of folk song settings so much,” wrote Copland, “that I decided to arrange a second group of five." The second set was again premiered by the Warfield/Copland duo, and became a calling card for Warfield.

– Mark Bilyeu

Note on Copland's use of Minstrel Material

It is widely known that Copland turned to the minstrel tradition for source material for several songs in the set, even as he modified them to remove some of the more offensive language. In fact, Copland made a point of including minstrel songs in both of his sets as a means of acknowledging the central role that the malicious practice of blackface minstrelsy played in the development of the American musical tapestry.

Copland’s settings do not merely present an unproblematic, idealized, and imaginary folk, they offer contemporary audiences an opportunity to grapple with important questions about American identity and traditions. He does this not only through the choices he makes with respect to musical techniques (blending traditional and modernist approaches), but also through his choice of repertoire.

These repertoires also represented one of the very few pathways to the stage for Black performers, a tradition that has been taken up and reframed by Black art song performers as a means of reclaiming the narrative behind this dubious legacy.

– Charles Carson

 

Johannes Brahms
Nänie, Op. 82
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria
Composed 1881
Premiered December 6, 1881, Tonhalle Gesellschaft, Zurich, Switzerland, Johannes Brahms, conductor
Duration 15 minutes

In early 1880, the leading German neoclassical painter Anselm Feuerbach died at the age of fifty. This news deeply affected Johannes Brahms, who was both an admirer of the painter’s work and a personal friend, as their lives had intersected while both living in Vienna. In response to Feuerbach’s death, Brahms set out to craft a work for orchestra and chorus, setting Friedrich Schiller’s poem Nänie. The title is taken from the German form of a Latin word naenia, meaning "a funeral song,” named after the Roman goddess Nenia. Maybe surprisingly for a poem with title stemming from Roman mythology, Schiller’s poem utilizes Greek mythology as allusions to a universally inevitable death: Orpheus’s attempt to rescue Eurydice from the underworld, Aphrodite's mourning over the death of Adonis, Thetis’ attempt to save her son Achilles. Unsurprisingly, however, it was these Greek characters who often appeared in Feuerbach’s paintings. Brahms himself conducted the premiere, dedicating the work to Feuerbach’s step-mother. The writer Hugh MacDonald calls Nänie “possibly the most radiant thing [Brahms] ever wrote.”

Alexander Borodin 
Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
Born November 12, 1833, St. Petersburg, Russia  
Died February 27, 1887, St. Petersburg, Russia  
Composed 1874  
Premiered November 4, 1890, Mariinsky Theater, St. Petersburg   
Duration 14 minutes    

Alexander Borodin was a renowned chemist and physician, who also happened to study cello and became one of Russia’s greatest composers as part of the “Mighty Handful”—a group of five Russian Nationalist composers that included Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.  Borodin’s opera Prince Igor is based on a poem about Prince Igor Sviatoslavich of Sversk and his campaign to save the city of Putivl from attack by the Polovtsi in the twelfth century. He spent several years studying the music of the medieval Russians and the Polovtsians of what is now southern Russia, in order to include authentic folk music and dances in his opera. He had completed substantial portions of the opera, including the Polovtsian Dances that end Act II, when he died from heart failure in 1887, but it was not finished. Alexander Glazunov was recruited by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to assist in completing the opera, and his arrangement debuted in 1890. The Polovtsian Dances are presented by slave girls, warriors, and young boys as part of entertainment provided by the chief of the Polovtsi for Prince Igor and his son after they are captured by the enemy. Prince Igor escapes, but his son is so enamored by the dancing and singing that he stays and marries the chief’s daughter.  

 – Penny Brandt

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About the Artists

Donnie Ray Albert

Donnie Ray Albert is a regular guest of opera companies and symphony orchestras around the world, including numerous appearances with Opera Pacific, Houston Grand Opera, and opera houses across the U.S., Canada and Europe. He is a resident artist with the Center for Black Music Research at Chicago’s Columbia College. Mr. Albert may be heard on RCA’s Grammy Award and Grand Prix du Disque winning recording of Porgy and Bess, NOW’s recording of The Horse I Ride Has Wings with David Garvey on piano, EMI’s Frühlingsbegräbnis and Eine Florentinesche Tragodie by Zemlinsky conducted by James Conlon, and Simon Sargon’s A Clear Midnight on the Gasparo label.

J.D. Burnett

Dr. J.D. Burnett enjoys a varied career as a conductor, singer, and teacher. In the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, he serves as director of choral activities, conducts the UT Concert Chorale, and teaches courses in graduate choral conducting and literature. Additionally, he is the founding Artistic Director of Kinnara, the premier professional chamber choir in Atlanta, Georgia. In March 2021, he was named artistic director of Orpheus Chamber Singers in Dallas, and assumed the role on January 1, 2022. Formerly, he was associate professor of music and associate director of choral activities at the University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music. He has served as assistant director of the Dallas Symphony Chorus, conductor of the New Jersey Youth Chorus Young Men’s Ensemble, associate conductor of the Masterwork Chorus of New Jersey, and acting director of choral activities at Montclair State University.

Farkhad Khudyev

Farkhad Khudyev is the winner of the Gold Medal “Beethoven 250” at the 1st International Arthur Nikisch Conducting Competition; the Solti Foundation US 2018 and 2022 Career Assistance Award; the Best Interpretation Prize at the 1st International Taipei Conducting Competition; the 3rd prize at the 8th International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition; and the Gold Medal/Grand Prize at the 2007 National Fischoff Competition. Khudyev has worked with orchestras worldwide including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Monterey Symphony, George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, Xi’an Symphony Orchestra and the State Taipei Chinese Orchestra. Farkhad was born in Turkmenistan, where he studied at the State Music School for gifted musicians, and then completed his studies at Interlochen Arts Academy, Oberlin Conservatory and Yale University. Khudyev serves as the Music Director of the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra in Austin, and the Orchestral Institute at the Hidden Valley Institute of the Arts in Carmel, California.

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symphony Orchestra

Principals

1. Salerni
2. Copland
3. Brahms
4. Borodin
 

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Combined Choirs

CONCERT CHORALE 

J.D. Burnett, conductor
Stevie Dugdale, assistant conductor  
Seth Zamora, collaborative pianist

TENOR BASS CHORUS 

Stevie Dugdale, conductor
Tim Liu, collaborative pianist

TREBLE CHORUS 

Eric Newell, conductor
McKenna King, assistant conductor
Steve Carlton, collaborative pianist

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Upcoming Events

Symphony Orchestra
Concerto Competition Winner Concerts

Two unique nights of music featuring winners of the orchestra's concerto competition. 

Saturday, April 26, 7:30 pm 
Bates Recital Hall

Nigel Westlake
Spirit of the Wild 
Jacob Feldman, saxophone

Vincenzo Bellini
Lieto del dolce incarco...Se Romeo t'uccise un figlio
from I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Sophio Dzidziguri, mezzo soprano

Ludwig Van Beethoven
Concerto for Piano, No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
Maria Parrini, piano

Tickets

Monday, April 28, 7:30 pm
Bates Recital Hall

Dimitri Shostakovich
Concerto for Violin No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 77
Yusong Zhao, violin

Tickets

Free Events

University Orchestra
Tuesday, April 22, 7:30 pm
Bates Recital Hall

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