Beyond the Forest, Into the Sky by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra

 

Prelude to Hänsel und Gretel (1893)

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)

Run time: Approx. 8 minutes

 

Engelbert Humperdinck is not a name that would appear today on a list of best-known composers. He did not cultivate a large compositional output, instead devoting much of his life to teaching, and as a result, Hänsel und Gretel stands somewhat alone in his legacy, making him a bit of a compositional one-hit wonder.

Though the majority of his small catalog missed out on lasting acclaim, Hänsel und Gretel has carved out a place as a beloved staple in the operatic repertoire. Its success and charm are perhaps a result of the unexpected combination of the whimsical fairytale and the very obvious influence of his idol and mentor, Richard Wagner.

If you’re not familiar with Wagner, there’s much to be said about his impact on theater and the scope of musical drama, but to keep this brief, let’s go with an image: conjure in your mind the most stereotypical picture of opera. Is it a robust woman wearing that quintessential horned helmet? Is she perhaps holding a spear? That unshakable image has come to caricaturize opera thanks to a costume from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. While grandeur is certainly a large part of the composer’s legacy, his most significant contribution lies in the craft of musical storytelling.

Wagner’s fingerprints are apparent in the shape of Humperdinck’s phrases—in the way they seem to go on forever, one connecting seamlessly to the next—the expansive layering of his textures, and, perhaps most importantly, in Humperdinck’s use of leitmotif, a technique Wagner invented to ensure thematic cohesion throughout his stories, even across multiple operas.

Leitmotif, which literally translates to “leading” or “guiding” motive, is a short musical idea that represents a person, place, or theme. One of the elements that makes the film scores of John Williams so effective, for example, is his use of leitmotif. Think of Darth Vader’s ominous march, or those menacing two notes that instantly signal Jaws, or the majestic Force theme that symbolizes Luke Skywalker’s destiny.

The prelude begins with one of the opera’s most significant leitmotifs, the evening prayer music. The wistful chorale appears throughout the opera, most prominently in the aria where the children say their bedtime prayers. It symbolizes the innocence of the children, protected by God.

The prayer is then interrupted by the witch’s theme, sounded in the trumpet with a cackling herald. Afterwards comes a gently meandering melody representing Hansel and Gretel’s journey through the woods and their accidental snacking on the witch’s candy house before they realize what trouble they’re in. Finally, there is the triumphant march heard when the children doom their evil captor to her broiled demise.

Humperdinck deftly weaves all of these themes together, at times layering all four atop one another and creating a delightfully complex musical palette—a masterful tribute to his mentor.

 

 

Symphony No. 40, K. 550, in G Minor (1788)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Run time: Approx. 27 minutes

 

Early in my research on Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, I stumbled upon two quotes that brought my exploration of this beloved work to a standstill. I found myself unable to think past these two diametrically opposed views. The first, from music critic Charles Rosen, aligns with the way I have always interpreted this symphony, calling it, “a work of passion, violence, and grief.” The second, the one that stopped me in my tracks, was from 19th-century composer Robert Schumann, who found the work to be full of “weightless, Hellenic grace.” I was rather puzzled—were we listening to the same piece?

I must admit, I became a bit obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Schumann’s words. Hellenic? Where exactly was he getting classical Greek art from this very German symphony? And weightless? We were, after all, talking about a composer at one of the lowest points in his life.

1788 found Mozart in a difficult position. His public concerts were growing increasingly rare and demand for his music was waning. On top of that, he was in serious gambling debt. He needed money badly, so in the summer of 1788 he produced an astonishing amount of work. His final three symphonies, 39, 40, and 41, were written in quick succession between June and August of that year, likely for a series that would bring him only a small amount of income.

The symphony’s key provides another tick for Rosen’s column. Mozart often turned to G-minor for his most grief-stricken moments, like in The Magic Flute when a brokenhearted Pamina tries to speak to Tamino, whom she does not know has taken a vow of silence, or in Mitridate, re di Ponto, when Aspisia mournfully laments “my heart palpates and greaves within my chest.” Mozart’s only other minor-key symphony, No. 25 from 1773 is also in G-minor, as is his fourth string quintet about which Tchaikovsky later said, ”No one has ever known as well how to interpret so exquisitely in music the sense of resigned and inconsolable sorrow.”

I listened to the piece more times than I can count, searching for its feathers, and still I felt I was looking at the late-period Mozart I knew—the Mozart of Don Giovanni or the Requiem, whose emotional breadth at times borders on ferocity. But I did find a stoic restraint in the pathos of this symphony that did not burden those other works. That constraint is the symphonic form.

Mozart was, at heart, a true child of the Classical era, which means he was, by definition, firmly invested in formal perfection. The symphonic form governed everything from the number of movements and their tempos to the harmonic paths available from a given starting key—constraints, yes, but also a puzzle to be solved. As my father, music theorist Gordon Sly, put it when I called him amid my Schumann-induced distress, “Mozart’s concerns about form are different in absolute music (music without narrative) versus texted music. In opera, he has text, he has the story. In a symphony, coherence can only be created by things like proportion, symmetry, and self-reference. Repetition is an absolute requirement for coherence.”

Suddenly, I understood. Proportion, symmetry—the hallmarks of Greco-Roman art. This, I believe, was Schumann’s meaning: not what Mozart said, but how he said it. Symphony No. 40 is indeed exquisitely executed, not only in the way it adheres to traditional symphonic form, but in the elegance of its transitions, the way it transforms the opening three-note motif into the thematic material for the entire first movement, and the way it balances tension with moments of repose.

The more I reflect on the classicism of this work—Hellenic or otherwise—the more I find that listening to it feels akin to looking at a great Greek sculpture. These works are full of power, but their might stems from their formal perfection: the grace of their lines, the proportion and symmetry of their features. Schumann also said, “The Greeks gave to ‘The Thunderer’ a radiant expression, and radiantly does Mozart launch his lightnings.”

 

 

blue cathedral (2000)

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962)

Run time: Approx. 12 minutes

 

In Jennifer Higdon’s mind, Blue Cathedral is a visceral journey through an otherworldly realm. She imagines a glass cathedral in the sky, clouds drifting by, visible through the transparent walls. “In my mind’s eye,” she says, “the listener would enter from the back of the sanctuary, floating along the corridor amongst giant crystal pillars, moving in a contemplative stance. The stained glass windows’ figures would start moving with song, singing a heavenly music. The listener would float down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising towards an immense ceiling which would open to the sky … I wanted to create the sensation of contemplation and quiet peace at the beginning, moving towards the feeling of celebration and ecstatic expansion of the soul.”

Higdon’s search for such a feeling was born from a period of significant personal grief; when beginning work on Blue Cathedral, she had recently lost her younger brother, Andrew Blue Higdon, to skin cancer. In a 2005 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, she described the piece as being about “deciding if life was going to be about living or about death.” There are sections of real turbulence within the music. “I was kind of ticked off,” she explained. “Part of mourning is anger.”

As children, Higdon played the flute and Andrew the clarinet. The two instruments are featured prominently throughout the work. “In tribute to my brother,” she explains, “I feature solos for the clarinet and the flute . Because I am the older sibling, it is the flute that appears first in this dialog. At the end of the work, the two instruments continue their dialogue, but it is the flute that drops out and the clarinet that continues on in the upward progressing journey.”

Jennifer Higdon is one of today’s most widely performed and acclaimed living composers. Perhaps her ability to evoke such vivid imagery is one reason her music is so lauded. The percussion effects in the work’s opening glint and gleam like light reflecting from crystalline windows. Her textures sparkle with the suggestion of stained glass, and as the orchestra builds to an apex, it takes on the breadth of an organ at full tilt.

Suite from The Firebird (1919 version)

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Run Time: Approx. 22 minutes

 

Every young artist needs a big break—someone to take a chance on them, open the door, and put them on the map. For a young Igor Stravinsky, that person was Sergei Diaghilev.

In 1909, entrepreneur and arts patron Sergei Diagalev opened the Ballet Russes in Paris with the goal of introducing Russian art to the cultural centers of the broader world. Diagalev didn’t just want to put on Russian ballet, he wanted to create a convergence of modern art—to commission music from the best composers, sets from the greatest artists, and costumes from the most prominent designers—all to position Russian art at the highest echelon. At the height of its reign, the Ballet Russes boasted a roster of stars like Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova dancing choreography by George Balanchine (later the founder of the New York City Ballet), wearing costumes by Coco Chanel adorned by sets from Pablo Picasso.

The Ballet’s first seasons featured existing music, mostly presenting well-established Russian composers like Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Borodin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. But Diagalev’s ambition was to be at the cutting edge of contemporary art, and he itched to begin commissioning.

Diagalev and his advisors planned their first new piece for the 1911 season. It was to be Russian through and through, so they turned to folklore for their narrative, settling on tales of a bird whose magical feathers glow with a luminous red-orange light. The story, assembled by Diagalev and his creative team from multiple sources, centers on Prince Ivan who in his quest to defeat the evil sorcerer Kashchei and free the thirteen princesses he holds captive, comes upon a Firebird. He captures her, but then lets her go, receiving a magical feather in return. With the Firebird’s help, Ivan defeats Kashchei, falls in love with one of the princesses, and frees the prisoners by breaking the evil sorcerer’s spell.

For this new project, Diagalev first approached more established composers, including Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov, both of whom ultimately withdrew. Eventually, with a recommendation from Glazunov and a bit of a leap of faith, Diagalev turned to the young, relatively unknown Igor Stravinsky. The gamble could not have turned out better. The Firebird became a huge success, launching Stravinsky’s international career and beginning a long and definitive collaboration with the Ballets Russes.

In his approach to the music, Stravinsky employs a striking juxtaposition of avant-garde, exotic sonorities mixed with more traditional harmony. These opposing aesthetics create a distinct contrast between the story’s principal characters: the supernatural creatures like the Firebird and Kashchei are represented by the unsettling, dissonant harmonies, while the human characters are colored by more typical, grounded ones. Stravinsky refers to this technique as leit-harmony, a cousin of the leitmotif used by Humperdinck in Hänsel und Gretel.

Listen to the stark shift, for example, that occurs when the scene changes from the eerie opening world of Kashchei’s garden, where Ivan first encounters the Firebird, to when he spots the princess. Introduced by the oboe following the fleetwinged episode of the Firebird’s capture, the music turns instantly from forward-looking 20th-century harmony to something altogether more Romantic, only to be mightily disrupted by the entrance of Kashchei and his men in the Infernal Dance.

The fevered bacchanal kicks off when the Firebird casts a spell forcing the evildoers to dance themselves into exhaustion. Even to adventurous Parisian ears, the abrasiveness of the Infernal Dance must have been startling. Of course, we now know this was but a hint of what was to come in The Rite of Spring. Nevertheless, the sting is soothed by a haunting lullaby as the solo bassoon rocks the Sorcerer to sleep, enabling Ivan to find and destroy the egg that holds his power.

From the embers of the Berceuse, a horn signals the rising sun, offering hope and renewal to the freed occupants of Kashchei’s prison. The grounded, folk-like melody of the finale is backed by a continually ascending harmony, suggesting liberation, renewal, and the triumph of light over darkness. At the finale’s climax, Stravinsky uses asymmetrical time signatures to interrupt the melody in unexpected places—a favorite technique of his and one that separates him from the masses. In the hands of a lesser composer, a melody such as this might be trite. But Stravinsky knew that even when offering an inevitable conclusion, there can still be moments of wonder.

 

—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026

 

Heart of a New World by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra

 

The School for Scandal Overture, Op. 5 (1931)

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

Run time: Approx. 9 minutes

 

Based on the 1777 play of the same name by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Samuel Barber’s short concert overture, The School for Scandal, was the composer’s first ever foray into orchestral writing. It’s hard to imagine this being his first try when listening to the lush textures and deft orchestration. Critics at the time seemed to agree; the piece won him the Joseph H. Bearns Prize in Music in 1933.

The overture’s source material is a “comedy of manners”, an absurdist genre that holds a magnifying glass to the conventions of society, often focusing on personal relationships and invented hierarchies within groups. Many consider Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing or Jane Austin’s Emma to be classic examples, but modern comedies like Seinfeld, Mean Girls, or White Lotus also fall nicely into the genre.

Sheridan’s play revolves around the salons (the party, not the beauty parlor) of Lady Sneerwell—delightfully named—which serve as hub for all sorts of scandal and gossip. The wild plot includes all manner of trickery, escapades, and cases of mistaken identity, all very Shakespearean and everything you’d want from such a comedy.

Barber’s music doesn’t put forth any sort of narrative but rather exudes the spirit of the play. The opening theme flits around like gossip at a party, and the whole work is permeated by an air of mischief that undoubtedly inspired John Williams in his scoring of a Hogwarts student creeping around school or an eight-year-old laying traps for intruders.

A comedy of manners is, at its core, about expectations and the boxes people are expected to fit into. Barber’s overture feels a bit like a musical version of this, playing with the conventions of what an overture “ought” to do. He introduces dramatic themes, lyrical themes, and high contrast, but all with a raised eyebrow. The gestures are just a bit too obvious, the contrasts a bit too sharp, the lyrical themes too sweet, and the drama too, well, dramatic—exactly what absurdist comedy does.

 

Cello Concerto (2026, Alabama premiere)

Jennifer Higdon (1962)

Run Time: Approx. 25 minutes

 

Jennifer Higdon is one of today’s most widely performed living composers, known for music that strikes a compelling balance between novelty and approachability. Her work has earned the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2010, and a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Harp Concerto. Higdon has written a wide range of concertos, seventeen in all, but this is her first for cello.

What’s unique about this performance is the opportunity to hear the work performed by Julian Schwarz, the cellist for whom it was written. In getting to know Julian’s playing, Higdon was struck by what she calls his “lyrical gift,” which became the guiding force behind the piece. Melody, in her words, is at the work’s heart.

The work unfolds in four movements, the titles of each forming a kind of poetic thread: Poet; Dances; Fervent; Lines. The phrase gets at something in the way Higdon seems to think about the cello itself. There’s something inherently poetic about the instrument—its warmth, its range, and its vocal lyricism. More than that, this is music written not just for “a cellist,” but for this cellist, a distinction we do not get to experience when playing historical concertos.

 

Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” (1893)

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

Run Time: Approx. 44 minutes

 

Audience members who have been with us for much of this season might recognize an ongoing discussion about the American musical sound—the Great American Symphony as keenly desired as the Great American Novel. Copland, Gershwin, Bernstein, and Russian visitors like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff; we’ve heard from them all this season. Another major player in the search for the American sound was Antonin Dvořk, a Czech composer who had made a name for himself in Europe by blending classical tradition with the folk music of his native Bohemia.

Uniquely, Dvořák was brought to the United States for the express purpose of helping to develop an American sound. Jeanette Thurber, founder of the then-prestigious National Conservatory of Music, brought him on as the school’s director. “The Americans expect great things of me,” he wrote, “and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music. If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people are so immense?”

Thurber, a wealthy philanthropist, had opened the school to both women and black students, nearly unheard of in 1892. Dvořák chose as his assistant Harry T. Burleigh, a talented black baritone who was known to sing in the halls of the conservatory. Burleigh introduced him to the folk music of America, especially African American Spirituals like “Deep River” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. And like many Europeans, Dvořák was enamoured with tales of Native American peoples. He had become obsessed with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Song of Hiawatha, which follows the life of the eponymous Ojibwe hero, his battles, and his tragic love with the Dakota woman, Minnehaha.

Dvořák was convinced that the future of American music lay within these inspirations. He was partially right, of course: while Indigenous music has remained largely marginalized, Black music has dominated American culture for generations. Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, R&B, Soul, Funk, Hip Hop, Gospel—today we can thank Black Americans for nearly every popular genre.

Dvořák was heavily criticized for his assertions, but this was nothing new for him; the use of Bohemian music in “high art” was not always lauded in Europe either. But the traditions he learned in America eventually made their way into several important compositions, most prominently the New World Symphony.

Throughout the work, Dvořák refuses to couch his reliance on spirituals. The first movement in particular, boasts a theme based quite unabashedly on “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” said to be inspired by Burleigh’s rendition. It appears for the first time about four minutes into the piece as the contrasting lyrical melody first played by the solo flute. It follows the spiritual’s contour exactly, beginning with downward steps, followed by an upward arpeggio. Sung side-by-side, the comparison is undeniable.

Dvořák himself stated that the inner two movements were inspired by Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha—the second by Minnehaha’s funeral and the third by a native ritual dance. But the second movement’s famous English Horn solo that was later turned into the song “Going Home” is also Dvořák’s direct attempt at mimicking Spiritual. The simple, touching melody gets so close that many people think he stole it from an existing song.

Today, we think of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as an obvious staple of the American Orchestral oeuvre, but it wasn’t always that way. Upon the work’s premiere in 1893, audiences were wary, and many felt that his “American” inspiration didn’t count as American at all. As Joseph Horowitz wrote, “The issue of whether this music sounded ‘American’ instantly ignited fierce debate. At stake were delicate issues of national identity—in particular, whether the African-Americans and Native Americans from whose music Dvořák drew inspiration could be considered representative or emblematic ‘Americans’ in the first place. In New York, a city of immigrants, Dvořák’s method was taken to heart. In Boston…[it] was termed ‘barbaric.’”

I can’t help but notice that this debate feels familiar. The question of what it truly means to be American is on our minds today as much as it was in 1893, and is an unavoidable part of this Symphony’s history. Dvořák believed that what is unique to a place is fundamental to its identity. He saw the people and cultures intrinsic to this country in the same way he viewed his Bohemian roots—an essential part of the culture. Over the years this work has become one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire and an emblem of American music. But can we listen without considering the question of what it means to be American and who gets to claim that title?

 

—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026

Overview

On the heels of our previous Masterworks concert highlighting some of America’s most definitive composers, A London Landscape of English composers in the modern era is a look now across the pond at their English counterparts. Many of the works on this program are contemporary to those from the previous concert, making this a unique opportunity to compare how orchestral writing developed in each nation during the modern era, particularly as they emerged from disruption of the world wars.

Just like the Americans, British composers turned to the natural world for solace and inspiration. Nature has always gone hand in hand with the development of positive national identity. How could it not? If we find hope and meaning in the natural world by going outside and, to borrow a phrase from the kids, touching grass, then the particular grass we touch is as intrinsic and fundamental to our identities as any other part of our culture. Just as the American landscape was reflected in the music on our previous program, here we encounter the exquisite character of the English countryside: fecund meadows, lush forests, crags and cliffs, and, of course, the perilous splendor of the sea.

 

 

Orb and Sceptre (1953)

William Walton (1902-1983)

 

Run time: Approx. 8 minutes

Orb and Sceptre, written by William Walton for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, is the successor to his earlier coronation march, Crown Imperial, composed in 1936 for the coronation of her father, George VI. For both works, Walton took their titles from a speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V, and he once remarked that he was reserving the phrase “bed majestical” for King Charles III, though he may never have imagined how many years it would be until the monarchy next changed hands. The speech reads as follows:

I am a king that find thee, and I know

‘Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

The farced title running ‘fore the king,

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp

That beats upon the high shore of this world,

No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,

Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave.

 

The orb and the sceptre are references to two key pieces of the Coronation Regalia, part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. The Sovereign’s Orb and the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross were both made in 1661 for the coronation of Charles II and used in every coronation since. The sceptre contains the largest colorless cut diamond in the world.

Orb and Sceptre was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and Walton obtained permission to dedicate the piece to the Queen, a considerable honor, as such permission was rarely granted.

Musically, the piece is exactly what one would want in a coronation march. It’s celebratory, poised, and joyful, but never over-excited. The structure is straightforward, with a brisk opening, a stately middle section, and a return to a triumphant conclusion.

 

 

The Lark Ascending (1914)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

 

Run time: Approx. 13 minutes

 

The Lark Ascending

By George Meredith

 

He rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound,

Of many links without a break,

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

 

For singing till his heaven fills,

‘Tis love of earth that he instils,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup

And he the wine which overflows

to lift us with him as he goes.

 

Till lost on his aerial rings

In light, and then the fancy sings.

 

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending is a single-movement work for violin and orchestra, inspired by the poem of the same name by George Meredith. In his poem, Meredith describes the unique visual and auditory experience of a lark taking flight, while also capturing the sense of awe inspired by witnessing such a scene.

Larks, which are ubiquitous throughout the United Kingdom, possess one of the most unique songs of any bird. Their bright, high-pitched, fluttering sounds as they hover in the air like a helicopter, unlike most birds, which sing from a perch. Remarkably, they can continue for up to fifteen minutes seemingly without pause for breath. As Meredith wrote, they “drop the silver chain of sound, / Of many links without a break.” Sometimes they hover so high that they are almost invisible. For many, the skylark’s song is the quintessential sound of the English countryside.

In his lyrical interpretation of the poem, Vaughan Williams captures all the elements Meredith extolls: the lark’s song and flight, the beauty of the pastoral English landscape, and the well of emotion stirred in the observer of this small miracle of nature. The violin begins as the bird itself, rising from the earth and gradually ascending into its high register, where it hovers before descending again. Just like the lark, the violin plays extended passages without pause. Vaughan Williams captures it without resorting to mimicry, ebbing and flowing seamlessly between soaring lines evoking its majestic ascent, and fluttering passages that echo its song. Gradually, the scope of the music opens to include an English folk song, evoking a sense of place and reflecting the lark’s intrinsic connection to the English countryside.

Vaughan Williams wrote a great deal of music that we might call pastoral, and at a time when many of his contemporaries were becoming increasingly avant‑garde, he held true to more traditional styles. The music critic John Alexander Fuller Maitland remarked that when listening to his music, “one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new.” Witnessing scenes of nature can evoke a similar suspension of time—the sense that what is happening now could have unfolded in exactly the same way a hundred years ago; that hearing a lark today is much the same experience as it was when Vaughan Williams heard one in 1914. The Lark Ascending captures something of that experience.

 

 

Symphony No. 104 in D major, “London” (1795)

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

 

Run time: Approx. 28 minutes

 

By the late 1700s, Haydn, now in his 60s, was enjoying the rewards of a fruitful career. He had become quite well-known, and though his long-time patron, Prince Esterházy, had died, he had left Haydn a generous pension. The new prince was wholly uninterested in music, so the court musicians were dismissed, leaving Haydn with fame, money, and quite a lot of free time.

Requests for commissions were coming in left and right, but the most interesting was an offer from conductor and music impresario Johann Peter Salomon, for not one, but twelve symphonies. Salomon was a significant player in various European music scenes. He was born in not just the same city as Beethoven (Bonn), but the same house! It’s also believed that he provided Haydn with the original model text used for The Creation, as well as bestowed the nickname “Jupiter” onto Mozart’s 41st symphony.

Haydn accepted the offer and set out for London, where he composed most of the works, and oversaw their premieres. The public adored him, and his time in the English capital was both well received and well compensated. In his journal he wrote that he made 4,000 gulden from the concert, saying, “such a thing is possible only in England.”

Though all twelve symphonies are collectively known as the “London Symphonies” (sometimes also called the “Salomon Symphonies”), Symphony No. 104 is the only one that today bears the official subtitle London, possibly because it is the final installment of the set and was used for the grand celebratory concert honoring Haydn’s time in the city. It’s unclear whether he knew this would be the last symphony he ever composed, but he certainly knew this was his grand adieu to London. He delivered a farewell for the ages.

Symphony No. 104 exudes the spirit of a composer who has made his mark and has nothing remaining to prove. It also joyfully capitalizes on the fact that London orchestras were larger than the troupes Haydn was used to writing for as a court composer. The piece is dramatic and experimental, full of exuberance, and most of all, shows off one of the things Haydn was best at—the element of surprise.

It begins with a big, dramatic opening, the orchestra playing declarative chords in unison, alternating with a more somber passage. Haydn writes a substantial introduction in this manner, long enough to convince even the most seasoned concert-goer that this will be a dark and angsty work. But just as you think you’ve got it pinned down, the music gives way to an easy going melody. Fooled you. And before there’s even time to finish a second phrase, it erupts into a triumphant, full-throated statement of the theme. Fooled you again. Here we have finally arrived at the true character of the first movement—lively, proud, and absolutely victorious. The crowd must have been delighted.

The second movement adagio is delicate, courtly, sweet, and unassuming, until—I almost feel a spoiler alert is warranted—the orchestra suddenly explodes in a great rapture. Where did this come from? It’s reminiscent of the fiery, thunderous passages of sacred oratorio; one almost expects a 300-piece chorus to appear. Then, just as quickly as it began, everything stops, and the music goes right back to its charming dance, like nothing ever happened, but only for a moment before another burst of energy takes hold. He got you again.

I won’t spoil every unexpected twist and turn, but the roller coaster ride continues all the way to the end. The exuberant third movement would be incomplete without a few unexpected halts, and the joyous finale meanders from its whirl once or twice to offer some rather poignant asides, echoing the disquiet of the work’s opening.

All of this points to a man who, nearing the end of a prolific career and having earned the full trust of his audience, was simply taking a victory lap. It also lays a trail of breadcrumbs that we can follow directly to Beethoven, who was profoundly influenced by the great composer. Consider all those Beethoven slow movements suddenly interrupted by an opening of the heavens—a strike of Zeus’s thunderbolt. One can imagine Haydn looking down from his eternal rest and saying, “He got that from me.”

 

 

Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes (1945)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

 

Run time: Approx. 16 minutes

 

In the east of Suffolk, along the North Sea and some 87 miles from London, lies the small fishing village of Aldeburgh. Home to approximately 2,200 people—a population that has remained largely unchanged since the postwar years—the village is widely accepted as the setting for Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. It was also home to Britten himself, as well as to George Crabbe, the 18th-century author of The Borough, the poem on which Benjamin Britten based his tale. Britten settled in Aldeburgh shortly after completing Peter Grimes. He first encountered Crabbe’s poem whilst feeling rather homesick in America during World War II, and later recalled that upon reading it, “In a flash I realised two things: that I must write an opera, and where I belonged.”

Peter Grimes is, at its heart, a story about otherness and the danger that can arise from fearing what we don’t understand. Peter is a fisherman whose volatile temper and antisocial ways have made him an outcast in his community. When his apprentice dies from harsh conditions at sea, he is put on trial, and the townspeople grow increasingly suspicious, eventually hunting him down in an angry mob and driving him to commit suicide by sinking his ship in the ocean.

Britten himself knew a thing or two about being an outsider. He was a gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. Though his relationship with well-known tenor Peter Pears was something of an open secret amongst their artistic community, and the pair performed together extensively, they could never speak publicly of their relationship. The couple was together from 1939 until Britten’s death in 1976, but only nine of their 37 years together were spent legally. Britten was also a staunch pacifist. He and Pears officially registered as conscientious objectors during the war, a decision that was not altogether applauded by the British public.

Peter Grimes has essentially four principal characters. There is Peter, who wishes to be accepted by his community but cannot amend his volatile nature nor his isolationist tendencies. There is Ellen Orford, the schoolteacher whom Peter hopes to marry and the only member of the village who is sympathetic to him. There are the townspeople, whose fear of Peter leads to blame and hysteria. And then there is the sea itself.

In the opera, the sea is portrayed by the orchestra, which plays a series of interludes that Britten cleverly composed to cover scene changes, allowing time for the sets to shift while musically establishing the tone of each new day. Britten fashioned four of these interludes into the orchestral suite, offering short vignettes that encapsulate the turbulent story even without the text and actors.

In addition to providing an omnipresent and malevolent backdrop, the sea offers a metaphor for Peter himself—both his inner turmoil and his contradictory character. In the words of Peter Pears, who originated the character, Grimes is “neither a hero nor a villain,” but “an ordinary, weak person who, being at odds with the society in which he finds himself, tries to overcome it and, in doing so, offends against the conventional code, is classed by society as a criminal, and destroyed as such. There are plenty of Grimeses around still, I think!”

Just as people often contain contradictions, the sea has many conflicting characters: tranquility, violence, beauty, abundance, power. And like the inexorable resolve of the angry mob that ultimately seals Peter’s fate, a tide, when it has gathered enough force, can rarely be overcome.

 

—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026

Overview

For better or worse, the orchestra and orchestral music are fundamentally European inventions. Symphonic practice and styles were developed over hundreds of years in Western Europe where audiences were well educated in musical practice and held strong, often rigid opinions about what was acceptable and what was not. When symphonic music spread to Eastern Europe and eventually to the United States, it brought with it those well developed practices. But over time, freed from centuries of expectation, it was allowed to absorb new influences, mingle with emerging cultural identities, and gradually evolve into something distinct from its European parentage.

American composers were not the only ones to benefit from a more open-minded audience. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought a kind of artistic Russian invasion to the United States. Composers such as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff all spent significant time in the United States, often finding American audiences more receptive to their music than those in Western Europe. In fact, Americans loved the Russian sound, favoring its lush romanticism and emotional depth. That affinity has endured. These composers played a major role in shaping the sound of early film music, writing some of the earliest film scores, and leaving a lasting mark on what we now recognize as the cinematic sound.

Two American composers who played central roles in shaping the American symphonic sound were Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. Copland’s distinctive voice came to define what we now think of as Americana through works such as Appalachian Spring and Rodeo, while Bernstein’s influence—both as a composer and as a conductor—profoundly shaped the American orchestra, and bridged the worlds of classical music and popular idioms. For Russian music, one of the earliest works to capture American audiences and establish a lasting appetite for that repertoire was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

There’s more to the story than just these three composers, of course, but this concert offers a glimpse at how the apple fell from the tree, tracing symphonic music in America from around 1875, when Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers first made their mark on American audiences, to the 1950s, by which time American orchestral music had arrived at a voice entirely its own.

Overture to Candide (1956)
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
Run Time: Approx. 5 minutes

Leonard Bernstein’s Candide somewhat defies categorization. Most often labeled an operetta, it is lighter fare for the opera stage, yet more classically rooted than a Broadway musical. Its roles, like heroine Cunégonde, have been played by both soprano Renée Fleming and Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth. How, then, to categorize it? Perhaps the ambiguity is part of its charm, and apt for a composer who so deftly straddled the worlds of classical music stardom and popular culture.
The story comes from Voltaire’s 1759 satire which savagely rebukes the philosophy of blind optimism. The idea—popularized by Leibniz and touted throughout the play by Candide’s tutor, Dr. Pangloss—insists that we live in “the best of all possible worlds” and therefore everything that happens, no matter how horrific, must be for the best. Candide earnestly tries to take this to heart, but over the course of the story he faces all manner of evils, including war, greed, earthquakes, shipwrecks, and even slavery, all while Pangloss tirelessly explains why each humiliation was necessary. Voltaire’s point is merciless: abstract optimism is grotesque in the face of real human suffering.
It is not hard to see why this story resonated with Bernstein. For a Jewish man barely ten years after the end of World War II, the idea of human cruelty made acceptable by ideology, prejudice, and willful blindness was no abstraction. Candide is not the only of Bernstein’s works to grapple with themes of violence and hatred, but where works like West Side Story and Mass face them with solemnity, Candide approaches them with manic absurdity.
Bernstein’s music meets Voltaire’s barbed satire pound for pound, and the overture offers an excellent snapshot of the antics to come. There’s something quixotic about the music’s exuberance: bright, brash confidence offset by chirping woodwinds, strange percussion sounds, and an undercurrent of insidious mockery. Even the radiant love theme between Candide and Cunégonde feels deliberately exaggerated—valiance teetering on parody.
And yet, at the conclusion of the story, Bernstein allows himself a measure of sentimentality that Voltaire does not. Both endings find the characters disillusioned and withdrawn from the world, settling on a small farm to live a simple, practical life. But where Voltaire’s final line is curt and unsentimental—“il faut cultiver notre jardin” (“we must cultivate our garden”)—Bernstein, ever the humanist, transforms this resignation into a warm and hopeful call, set to one of the loveliest ensemble pieces in the repertoire, “Make Our Garden Grow.” Just try to get through it dry-eyed. Candide is a fairytale indeed, but not one about happy endings. It’s a fairy tale about how to live in a world of injustice and horror and build something anyway.

Piano Concerto No. 1 (1875)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Run Time: Approx. 38 minutes

American audiences love Tchaikovsky. There’s something about his particular brand of Romanticism, with its soul‑bearing directness and obvious melancholy that just speaks to us. The love affair all began with his First Piano Concerto, the work that introduced the composer to U.S. audiences and went on to have a rich history in this country. It was premiered by Hans von Bülow and the Boston Symphony on October 25, 1875, after being initially rejected by Nikolai Rubinstein, who deemed it poorly written and unplayable. The audience rather disagreed with Rubinstein. They went wild for the work, welcoming Tchaikovsky immediately, and never looking back.
Just 16 years later, Tchaikovsky himself conducted the work for the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891, and in 1958, the concerto took on a new kind of cultural significance when Van Cliburn, an American, won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition performing it. Upon his return to the United States, Cliburn became a national figure—an American winning a Russian competition during the Cold War was something of a coup—and his recording of the concerto was the first classical album ever to go platinum. Today, it remains one of the most performed piano concertos in the world, ranking as the fourth most frequently performed piano concerto at Carnegie Hall, according to their website.
It’s easy to see why this concerto was met with such enthusiasm. Filled with dazzling virtuosity, powerful chords, and captivating melodies, it demonstrates both the excitement and virtuosity of a great piano concerto as well as Tchaikovsky himself at his very best.

Symphony No. 3 (1946)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Run Time: Approx. 42 minutes

To today’s ears, there is no composer that more readily personifies the American symphonic sound than Aaron Copland. From Fanfare for the Common Man to Appalachian Spring, his sensibility seems to capture something intrinsic about the United States, from its spirit to its diverse landscapes. But what is it about his music that sounds so American? Is it just that we’ve come to associate it with Americana because of the many patriotic, military, and western films that have so effectively utilized his music? Or is there really something about it that speaks specifically to this land?
It’s easy to forget that barely a century ago, the United States was still unsure of its artistic identity. The country was still young, and its artistic life was still largely shaped by European imports, while the traditions of Native peoples and other non-European cultures were overlooked. As Jeff Counts has written, “Much like the search for the Great American Novel, the Great American Symphony was an aspirational mid-century dream for a country that longed to compete credibly with the Old World.”
Copland himself explored many different styles and voices throughout his career. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jewish immigrants, his formative musical studies took him to Paris where he studied with renowned composition teacher Nadia Boulenger. Later, he traveled extensively throughout America, Africa, and Mexico, where he formed an important friendship with composer Carlos Chávez. He experimented with various genres, moving from avant-garde compositions to an appreciation for the music of the American Southwest and Mexico. Late in his life he delved into serialism, a modernist technique that rethinks the treatment of pitches entirely. But the works for which he is most beloved are the ones hailing from his middle period, where his personal style culminated in the sound perhaps best personified by the 3rd symphony: Americana.

If you Google the characteristics of Copland’s Americana period, the words you’ll most often find are things like “open,” “broad,” and “simple.” Though these words may seem metaphorical, they actually do reflect real musical traits Copland used to create his sound. The types of intervals he favored, fourths and fifths, are less definitive than the usual building blocks of the Western canon. They do not have major or minor qualities; you need 3rds for that. In the absence of this defining quality, they have a sense of possibility. There are fewer rules governing how they might function harmonically. They can be anything. What an impeccable allegory for the American dream. And the harmonies, uncomplicated and widely spaced, give such a sense of scale as to evoke a great expanse. How could we not see this as the perfect backdrop for a scene depicting the Great Plains or the Mountain West?

Besides the pure musical qualities, Copland is not withholding in his titles, particularly when it comes to music of this period. Rodeo; Billy the Kid; Fanfare for the Common Man—these are American stories, and he’s made sure we know it.

The Third Symphony is built from precisely these qualities, but don’t take openness and simplicity to indicate a lack of drama. The first movement offers all the might, and perhaps menace, a brass section can muster, before yielding to an austere lullaby in the strings and winds. If the first movement evokes the natural world, the second is much more urban—bustling even, featuring shorter spurts of melody that buzz hurriedly around the orchestra like a busy cosmopolitan scene. Here, the influence of jazz as well as the avant-garde contemporaries like Stravinsky can really be heard in the snappy articulations and syncopated rhythms.
The lush, but angst-filled third movement offers a sharp turn from the excitement, reminding us that this work was premiered just one year after the close of World War II. But halfway through the movement, Copland revisits material from the second, perhaps nodding to the persistence of the human spirit.
In the transition from the third to the fourth movement, Copland arrives at perhaps his most salient point. Here he inserts the Fanfare for the Common Man—written just 3 years prior in fulfillment of a commission for uplifting and patriotic music to bolster the war effort—in its entirety, before continuing with his joyously hopeful conclusion.
If readers will indulge a bit of a leap: the placement of the Fanfare for the Common Man in this symphony reminds me very much of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9th—a defining melody placed late in the work and carrying with it a philosophical message. If Serge Koussevitzky, who commissioned the work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was indeed searching for the “Great American Symphony,” he certainly got it. And if Beethoven’s Ninth serves as a totem for European artistic and philosophical achievement, then one might make the case that Copland’s Third Symphony occupies a similar symbolic space for American music, offering a message of hope and forward looking optimism for the country amidst a time of darkness.
Finally, because it’s too wonderful a full-circle conclusion to resist, I’ll end with a bit of trivia: this work received its European premiere in 1947, conducted by none other than Leonard Bernstein leading the Czech Philharmonic.

—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026