After 20 years as conductor of your Dayton Philharmonic, my wife convinced me to ditch my dull standard-issue biography for something more personal, less formulaic.

This is Volume 3 of the “New Style Bio”. In it I’d like to tell you about the most important teacher in my life, Nadia Boulanger. She got one paragraph in Volume 1. But she deserved much more.

I went to France to study with Mlle. Boulanger the summer after my sophomore year of college. I knew I wanted to be a conductor. I also knew there was a lot that I didn’t know. People whose opinion I trusted said that if I was serious about filling in the holes in my musicianship, Nadia Boulanger was the teacher I needed.

They were right!

I spent the summer of 1974 at her school in Fontainebleau. I came back in the fall, finished my undergraduate degree, then hightailed it back to Mlle. Boulanger in the summer of 1975. I was there for two solid years, studying with her in Fontainebleau during the summers and at her home in Paris the rest of the year.

Mademoiselle wasn’t a conducting teacher. She was a Music Teacher. Capital M. Capital T. She had a holistic approach to music that explored everything from technique to the deepest mysteries of the human spirit. There was conducting in there, too. But also much, much more.

Her main tool was traditional four-part harmony. The same kind of dry exercises I’d been doing for years. But she taught it

differently. I’d learned harmony vertically, as a series of chords. She taught it horizontally, as four independent voices moving independently and harmoniously. Your harmony exercises had to follow the rules, of course. But that wasn’t enough. You had to make the line beautiful and as interesting as possible.

That was invaluable to an aspiring conductor. When I lead the orchestra I have to pay attention to every line in the music and to every player onstage. Not just the melody. Not just the bass line. But all the lines in between, too.

Nadia Boulanger instilled in her students a deep sense of responsibility and commitment, a belief that every note of music had value, that finding that value and communicating it to others was the most important, most noble task a musician could undertake. More great preparation for conducting.

I use my experience as a student of Nadia Boulanger every day, every time I conduct the amazing musicians of our DPO. And after every rehearsal, every concert, I ask myself the question she always asked herself—and her students: “Have you done all you could?”

Then I get up the next day and try to do even better. For my colleagues. For you. For myself. For Mademoiselle.

P.S. I’ve got an old-style bio, too: www.parkerartists.com/Neal-Gittleman.html

Neal GittlemanArtistic Director & Conductor, Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra

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No, it’s not another David Bowie show! But there are some changes coming to the DPO.

Things are always changing at your hometown orchestra. A lot stays the same from year to year, so maybe you don’t notice. But change is part of our musical life.

There are repertoire changes. Sure, some favorites and standards come back every few years. But there’s only piece we play every single season: “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

There are personnel changes. Musicians retire or win auditions with bigger orchestras. There’ll be auditions soon for a couple of open chairs, and then you’ll see a couple of new faces on stage next season.

There are programming changes. We’re always working to fine-tune our concert offerings. Programs change in response to budgetary pressures, market forces, and changes (there’s that word again!) in our audience.

As we come to the end of the 2017–2018 season, I’d like to note two important upcoming changes at your DPO.

SPARK

Twenty years ago we launched a new, cutting-edge education program called SPARK (School Partners with Artists Reaching Kids). SPARK was built on the idea that orchestras’ education programs need to serve schools’ curricula. Today that’s a no-brainer. But in 1997 that was cutting-edge theory. Only a handful of orchestras in large metropolitan areas (San Francisco, Baltimore, Milwaukee) were partnering with schools to integrate music into the classroom. We were the first smaller-city orchestra to try. And I think we did it better than anyone else!

SPARK was built on three important ideas:

1. Musicians presenting lessons in schools. Players developed their presentations with classroom teachers and designed them to address specific curriculum areas that teachers found important for their students. It wasn’t just about playing music in the classroom. It was about using music to make connections to language arts, or math, or science, or social studies.

2. Sequential experiences. Students began SPARK in kindergarten and continued all the way through fifth grade. So SPARK kids grew up with music—and the orchestra—as a regular, ongoing part of their life.

3. Concerts. In addition to six classroom visits by a DPO musician and one visit by a conductor, every SPARK student would attend a Philharmonic concert each year. The concert themes were grade-specific: Music and Family for kindergarten, Musical Storytelling for first grade, Problem-Solving for second grade, Moods and Emotions for third grade, and Music as Cultural Expression for fourth and fifth grades.

Over 20 years, SPARK has touched the lives of thousands of young people in schools across the Dayton region. Nearly 40 different DPO musicians have participated in the program. I’ve done hundreds of presentations in kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade classrooms. And Associate Conductor Patrick Reynolds spoke to the odd-numbered grades.

SPARK has been a tremendous success. It’s expanded their horizons. And improved their performance in the classroom. But SPARK is ending after this year.

Ending, but morphing into something new.

We just finished piloting a new education program, ArtsConnect, that applies lessons learned and strategies honed in 20 years of

Neal’s Notes CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

Neal’s Notes CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES (continued)

SPARK. SPARK was about using instrumental music to help teachers teach curriculum subjects. ArtsConnect is about helping classroom teachers through music—and dance—and opera. SPARK was a great education program for an orchestra. ArtsConnect will be a great education program for the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance.

Classical Connections

Another DPO flagship program goes away at the end of the 2017–2018 season: Classical Connections. For 22 years (76 concerts in all) CC has been a series where I’d take the audience “behind the scenes” of a great piece of music. We’d take a piece apart, show you how it works, and then put it back together and perform it.

That’s the same kind of thing that we do in our Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts. But Classical Connections was designed for an adult audience and an adult attention span. Over the years we’ve explored the great classics like Beethoven’s Ninth, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, Dvořák’s New World Symphony, and Debussy’s La mer. We’ve also presented challenging works like John Corigliano’s First Symphony, John Adams’ Harmonielehre, and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Stimmen…Verstummen… And we introduced Dayton to brand-new works like Michael Daugherty’s electric guitar concerto Gee’s Bend and Stella Sung’s opera The Book Collector.

No matter what the piece, the idea was always the same—give the audience some extra insight into a great piece of music to foster a more engaged, more active, more involved listening experience. The idea grew out of my frustrations

as a kid being dragged by my parents to concerts. I’d gotten into classical music by watching Leonard Bernstein’s televised Young People’s Concerts, and I was deeply offended by the fact that regular concerts didn’t include Lenny’s engaging commentary and explanation!

Just as the end of the SPARK program is actually a pivot to ArtsConnect, the end of Classical Connections marks the beginning of a new Sunday afternoon offering next season: Sundae Classics. They’ll be Sunday matinees, just like Classical Connections. They’ll be informal, just like Classical Connections. I’ll still do some explanation and introduction, just like Classical Connections. There’ll still be free Graeter’s ice cream afterwards (hence the “-ae” at the end of the word “Sundae”).

If all that’s the same, what’ll be different? Four words: Less. Talk. More. Music.

And I’ll bring the Classical Connections format back from time to time. Like next season’s April 2019 Sundae Classics program with the DPO and the amazing Beatles re-creators Classical Mystery Tour. That’ll be an in-depth look at Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—a true classic if there ever was one. We’ll talk about what “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is really about—musically, that is! We’ll demonstrate how George Martin created the amazing orchestra part in “A Day in the Life” and explore the secrets behind that song’s haunting last chord.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Change is part of life. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of things you’ve done for a long time. But change can lead to newer and better things. That’s the idea behind changing SPARK into ArtsConnect and Classical Connections into Sundae Classics. We keep changing so that the most important thing of all—your enjoyment of your Dayton Philharmonic—won’t change.

SPARK and Classical Connections were ideas I brought to Dayton. They’re close to my heart. But trading each of them in for something new was my idea. They had good, long runs and opened a lot of people’s hearts, minds, and ears. Now it’s time to turn and face the new changes, new opportunities, and new challenges.

Rachael Boezi (Dayton Opera Chorus) with students at CF Holliday Elementary School for ArtsConnect

Neal at Cleveland Elementary for a SPARK visit

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Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Personnel

1ST VIOLINSJessica Hung,

Concertmaster J. Ralph Corbett Chair

Aurelian Oprea, Associate Concertmaster Huffy Foundation Chair

William Manley, Assistant Concertmaster Sherman Standard Register Foundation Chair

Elizabeth Hofeldt Karlton Taylor Mikhail Baranovsky Louis Proske Katherine Ballester John Lardinois Philip Enzweiler Dona Nouné Janet George Youjin Na

2ND VIOLINS Kirstin Greenlaw,

Principal Jesse Philips Chair

Kara Camfield, Assistant Principal

Ann Lin Gloria Fiore Scott MooreTom Fetherston Nick Naegele Lynn Rohr Yoshiko Kunimitsu William Slusser Audrey Pride Yein Jin

VIOLAS Sheridan Currie,

Principal F. Dean Schnacke Chair

Colleen Braid, Assistant Principal

Karen Johnson Grace Counts Finch Chair

Stephen Goist* Scott Schilling Lori LaMattina Mark Reis Leslie DraganKimberly Trout* Tzu-Hui Hung

CELLOS Andra Lunde

Padrichelli, Principal Edward L. Kohnle Chair

Christina Coletta, Assistant Principal

Jonathan Lee Ellen Nettleton Mark Hofeldt Nadine

Monchecourt David HuckabyIsaac Pastor-

Chermak Zoe Moskalew

BASSES Deborah Taylor,

Principal Dayton Philharmonic Volunteer Assn./ C. David Horine Memorial Chair

Jon Pascolini, Assistant Principal

Donald Compton Stephen Ullery Christopher Roberts James Faulkner Bleda Elibal Jack Henning

FLUTES Rebecca Tryon

Andres, Principal Dayton Philharmonic Volunteer Assn. Chair

Jennifer Northcut Janet van Graas

PICCOLO Janet van Graas

OBOES Eileen Whalen,

Principal Catharine French Bieser Chair

Connie Ignatiou Robyn Dixon Costa

ENGLISH HORN Robyn Dixon Costa

J. Colby and Nancy Hastings King Chair

CLARINETS John Kurokawa,

Principal Rhea Beerman Peal Chair

Robert Gray Peter Cain*

BASS CLARINET Peter Cain*

BASSOONS Rachael Young,

Principal Robert and Elaine Stein Chair

Kristen Smith Bonnie Sherman

CONTRABASSOON Bonnie Sherman

FRENCH HORNS Aaron Brant,

Principal Frank M. Tait Memorial Chair

Jessica PinkhamTodd Fitter Amy Lassiter Sean Vore

TRUMPETS Charles Pagnard,

Principal John W. Berry Family Chair

Alan Siebert Daniel Lewis*Daniel Zehringer

TROMBONES Timothy Anderson,

Principal John Reger Memorial Chair

Richard Begel Chad Arnow

BASS TROMBONE Chad Arnow

TUBA Timothy Northcut,

Principal Zachary, Rachel and Natalie Denka Chair

TIMPANI Donald Donnett,

Principal Rosenthal Family Chair in Memory of Miriam Rosenthal

PERCUSSION Michael LaMattina,

Principal Miriam Rosenthal Chair

Jeffrey Luft Richard A. and Mary T. Whitney Chair

Gerald Noble

KEYBOARD Joshua Nemith,

Principal Demirjian Family Chair

HARP Leslie Stratton,

Principal Daisy Talbott Greene Chair

*Leave of Absence

Neal Gittleman Artistic Director and Conductor

Patrick Reynolds Associate Conductor and Conductor, DPYO

Hank Dahlman Chorus Director

Jane Varella Personnel Manager

Eric Knorr Orchestra Librarian

Elizabeth Hofeldt Youth Strings Orchestra Director

Kara Camfield Junior Strings Orchestra Director

At the season’s final Masterworks concert, 13 members of the Orchestra will be recognized for their years of service.

5 Years: Scott Moore (Violin 2 – Chair 5) is a native of Greenville, SC, and a graduate of Bob Jones University, where he earned a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance in 2007. Graduate studies followed at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where he received a Master of Music in Violin Performance in 2009 while studying with Piotr Milewski.

10 Years: Jessica Hung (our Concertmaster) began college studies at Northwestern but earned her Bachelor of Music with Academic Honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her appointment in Dayton came on the heels of intensive training with the Concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra and its Principal Second Violin. She spent two summers at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she performed major symphonic works with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Joshua Nemith (Principal Keyboard) earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Texas and a Doctor of Musical Arts from CCM. During his doctoral studies, Josh won a fellowship position with the New World Symphony, directed by Michael Tilson Thomas.

15 Years: Richard Begel (2nd Trombone) earned degrees from the Crane School of Music in New York and the New England Conservatory of Music. He teaches at several institutions in the area and is a guest instructor at universities and music festivals in the Midwest as well as Alaska, Colorado, and Massachusetts.

Andra Lunde Padrichelli (Principal Cello) earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Indiana University. Andra was also affiliated with the New World Symphony and has performed concertos with the DPO, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestras. Prior to Dayton, she was Assistant Principal of the Fort Worth Symphony.

20 Years: James Faulkner (Bass – Chair 6) earned a Bachelor of Music Degree from The Ohio State University and a Master of Music from UC-CCM. He currently is a Doctoral candidate at CCM.

30 Years: Nadine Monchecourt (Cello – Chair 6) studied at the Eastman School of Music and earned Bachelor and Master Degrees from UC-CCM. She teaches cello at the Suzuki Cooperative of Cincinnati Public Schools and also the Q the Music program at Ruskin School here in Dayton.

Elizabeth (Betsey) Hofeldt (Violin 1 – Chair 4) earned degrees from St. Olaf College and the University of Illinois. She is a faculty member at Wittenberg University and Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Strings.

Mark Hofeldt (Cello – Chair 5) earned a Bachelor of Science in Music and Pre-Medical Studies from Indiana University and his M.D. from Illinois, where he met Betsey. Mark recently retired from Children’s Medical Center and now teaches at Stivers School for the Arts and hosts a weekly radio show on WDPR.

Mark Reis (Viola – Chair 7) earned Bachelor and Master Degrees from Miami University (Oxford). His day jobs include teaching as an adjunct faculty member at both Sinclair and Stivers School for the Arts as well as his own Street & Reis Violin Studio.

40 Years: Louis Proske (Violin 1 – Chair 7) earned a Bachelor of Music Degree from CCM and taught in the 1980s at Ursuline Academy. For 25 years he provided private violin and viola lessons. Having joined the orchestra in 1978, Lou has played for three of the four DPO Music Directors.

50 Years: Karlton Taylor (Violin 1 – Chair 5) joined the DPO in 1968 while still attending Vandalia-Butler High School. He is a graduate of Miami University (Oxford) and was a student of Adon Foster, former DPO Concertmaster. He is a Master Craftsman and operates the Taylor Bow Shop, where he makes, repairs and restores bows. Karl has played for all four DPO Music Directors.

55 Years: Robert A. Gray (2nd Clarinet) earned a Bachelor of Music in Education and Clarinet Performance from UC-CCM and a Master of Curriculum and Supervision from Wright State. Bob was an elementary, middle school and high school band director until his retirement in 1996, and since 1974 his Bob Gray Orchestra has performed for public and private events. He also has played for all four DPO Music Directors.

Contributed by Dick DeLon, DPAA Honorary Trustee

Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra

Meet Your Orchestra Up Close and “Personnel”

Front Row: Scott Moore, Nadine Monchecourt, Andra Padrichelli, Betsey Hofeldt, Karl Taylor, Mark Hofeldt. Second Row: Mark Reis, Lou Proske, James Faulkner, Joshua Nemith. Missing: Rich Begel, Bob Gray, Jessica Hung

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The Bob Ross Auto Group: Official Automobile Dealership of the Dayton Philharmonic OrchestraMarriott University of Dayton: Official Hotel of the Dayton Philharmonic OrchestraDataYard: Official Data Provider of the Dayton Opera & the Dayton Philharmonic

DPAA Communications Partner: One Call Now Season Media Partner: Discover Classical WDPR & WDPG

Series Sponsor

Friday

June 8,20188:00 PMSchuster Center

DAYTON PERFORMING ARTS ALLIANCEPremier Health

MASTERWORKS SERIESDayton Philharmonic OrchestraNeal Gittleman, Artistic Director and Conductor

The performance of Saturday, June 9, 2018 is the 2017–2018 Season Olive W. Kettering Memorial Concert.

Martinez Plays GershwinGabriela Martinez, piano soloist

Leonard Bernstein Facsimile: Choreographic Essay for Orchestra(1918–1990)

George Gershwin Concerto in F(1898–1937) I. Allegro II. Adagio – Andante con moto III. Allegro agitato

Ms. Martinez

– I N T E R M I S S I O N –

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4(1840–1893) I. Andante sostenuto – Moderato con anima II. Andantino in modo di Canzone III. Scherzo (Pizzicato ostinato): Allegro IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco

Microphones on stage are for recording purposes only.

Saturday

June 9,20188:00 PMSchuster Center

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Gabriela Martinez Biography

Versatile, daring and insightful, Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez is establishing a reputation on both the national and international stages for the lyricism of her playing, her compelling interpretations, and her elegant stage presence.

In November 2016, Delos released Ms. Martinez’s debut solo album, Amplified Soul, which features a wide-ranging program including works by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Szymanowski. She also pays homage to acclaimed composers Mason Bates and Dan Visconti, whose title selection, Amplified Soul (world-premiere recording), was written for her. Ms. Martinez collaborated with Grammy Award–winning producer David Frost on the recording.

Since making her orchestral debut at age 7, Ms. Martinez has played with numerous distinguished organizations including the San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, New Jersey, Tucson, Delaware, Jacksonville, West Michigan, Pacific, and Fort Worth symphonies; the Boulder, Wisconsin, National and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestras; Germany’s Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, MDR Rundfunkorchester, and Nurnberger Philharmoniker; Canada’s Victoria Symphony Orchestra; the Costa Rica National Symphony and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela.

Ms. Martinez has performed at such esteemed venues as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and Alice Tully Hall; Canada’s Glenn Gould Studio; Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus; Dresden’s Semperoper; Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens; and Paris’s Palace of Versailles. As a

chamber musician, she regularly performs in recitals and festivals. Among the musicians and ensembles with whom she has collaborated are violinists Itzhak Perlman and Elena Urioste, cellist Carter Brey, the Diaz Trio, and the Takács and Calder quartets. Her festival credits include the Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, and Rockport festivals in the United States; Italy’s Festival dei Due Mondi (Spoleto); Switzerland’s Verbier Festival; the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier; and Japan’s Tokyo International Music Festival.

Her wide-ranging career includes world premieres of new music, live performance broadcasts, and interviews on TV and radio. Her performances have been featured on National Public Radio, CNN, PBS, 60 Minutes, ABC, From the Top, Radio France, WQXR and WNYC (New York), MDR Kultur and Deutsche Welle (Germany), NHK (Japan), RAI (Italy), and on numerous television and radio stations in Venezuela.

Ms. Martinez was the First Prize winner of the Anton G. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Dresden and a semifinalist at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where she also received the Jury Discretionary Award. She began her piano studies in Caracas with her mother, Alicia Gaggioni, and attended the Juilliard School, where she earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees as a full scholarship student of Yoheved Kaplinsky. Ms. Martinez was a fellow of Carnegie Hall’s The Academy and a member of Ensemble Connect (formerly known as Ensemble ACJW), while concurrently working on her doctoral studies with Marco Antonio de Almeida in Halle, Germany.

Leonard Bernstein Facsimile

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, strings

This is the first time this work has been performed by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra.

Bernstein wrote the ballet Facsimile in 1946 in collaboration with the renowned American dancer and choreographer, Jerome Robbins, with whom he would later work on West Side Story.

Bernstein had worked with Robbins previously on another ballet, Fancy Free, in 1944. Fancy Free told, through music and choreography, the story of three sailors on leave in New York City during the latter part of World War II and their encounters with some of the metropolis’s colorful citizens. Fancy Free was an instant success, so successful in fact that Bernstein and Robbins decided to expand it into a full-blown musical. They worked quickly, and in less than a year they premiered the refurbished ballet under the title On the Town. On the Town was in its turn so enthusiastically received that it eclipsed the already brilliant success of Fancy Free, and it was later recast in 1949 as a film musical, a version directed by Gene Kelly.

Both Fancy Free and On the Town are almost relentlessly chipper, and the only reference in either work to the bloody conflict besetting the world is the three sailors’ becoming uniforms. But Facsimile, premiered a year after the war’s end, has an altogether different, dark, and

lonely quality. Where Fancy Free was set in a bustling, brightly lit metropolis, Facsimile is set on an empty beach at night; where Fancy Free is filled with crowds, Facsimile has only three characters; while the characters of Fancy Free engage in romantic adventures, the characters of Facsimile pursue empty eroticism.

Facsimile consists of four sections played without a break. Jack Gottlieb, a composer and Bernstein’s longtime assistant, provided a useful summary of the action and the musical elements that underscore the action. At the opening of the ballet a Woman (all the characters are given these generic titles) is dancing by herself to slow, restless music. She then meets the First Man and together they dance an angular waltz before removing themselves from each other, a removal reflected in solo violin and viola standing out against the quiet accompaniment of the string section.

The next part of Facsimile is much more lively, with an angular rhythm that lends the music a scherzo-like quality. In this section of the ballet, three characters now interact, with the Woman now playing the First and and another, Second Man off each other, flirting and teasing. The music builds up with a driving, syncopated rhythm that leads to an abrupt, awkward pause. The last section echoes the music of the opening, the Woman again by herself.

–Dennis Loranger, Lecturer in Music, Wright State University

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Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings

This work was last performed by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra in March 2009 with Sara Jobin conducting.

The symphony, as a form, was initially an introductory piece, usually preceding an opera. During the eighteenth century, as the form was developed by Haydn and Mozart, the symphony detached itself from the opera, developed a multi-movement form, and became an important means of musical expression. By the early nineteenth century, and chiefly through the influence of Beethoven’s work in the genre, the symphony came to be seen as much more than way to pass the evening—rather a way to express profound truths about humanity’s place in the world.

Beethoven’s influence was somewhat baleful, however; his achievement was so highly regarded that composers began to feel that what opportunities were availed by the symphony had already been thoroughly explored by Beethoven. The most any composer could hope to do was provide a pale imitation of something that had already been done surpassingly well.

Nevertheless, in the 1840s a renewed interest in the form was evident, particularly in the German-speaking countries, where composers like Schubert and Schumann took up the form. At the same time, composers began writing concert overtures, pieces that used the symphony orchestra as the performing medium but expanded the musical subject matter by attaching a program to the music. These two developments—renewed interest in the symphony and a new interest in music’s ability to express nonmusical material—led to such works as Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony with its avowed intent both to work as a symphonic music and to depict “an episode from an artist’s life.”

Tchaikovsky’s own development as a composer of symphonies at least initially looks like another episode from Berlioz’s work. In letters to his brother Modest, he described the pains he underwent to write his first symphony. He

struggled to stay at the task, despite flagging inspiration, insomnia, and, by his own account, hallucinations. He only managed to stay on track by dosing himself repeatedly with cigarettes. No account remains of what means he used to aid in composing the rest of his symphonies.

His first three symphonies were not overtly programmatic and followed the general formal outline of the nineteenth-century symphony. Tchaikovsky did, however, incorporate folk tunes into several of the movements of these works; the Second Symphony famously concludes with a movement based on a popular melody, “The Crane.”

So, given that Tchaikovsky seems to have eschewed programs in his previous symphonies, we could certainly listen to the Fourth Symphony as absolute music if we wished; certainly Tchaikovsky himself attached no program to it, overtly. However, in a letter to his friend and benefactress Nadezhda von Meck, he argued that the brass theme of the first movement was “fate: [the] force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal . . .” Other themes from the movement depict our delusions of freedom, but, as the first movement shows, we really never are free, since the fate theme keeps returning.

The remaining movements continue, in Tchaikovsky’s gloss, to depict the workings of fate. The second depicts another “phase of sadness,” when in a wistful mood one remembers the past. The third movement, to the composer, seemed to depict no one specific thing but instead disparate images: “strange, wild, and disjointed.” The fourth movement is actually based on a folksong, and Tchaikovsky wrote von Meck that the use of this particular tune signified the indifference the merry-making and thoughtless peasantry feels towards the suffering soul. But, he also argues that this indifference is perhaps salutary, since the miserable sufferer can “rejoice in the rejoicing of others.” And to do so may make that sufferer feel that “it is still possible to live.”

–Dennis Loranger, Lecturer in Music, Wright State University

George Gershwin Concerto in F

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings

This is the first time this work has been performed by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra.

Like Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin moved with facility between two musical worlds: the popular and the classical.

When a young man and just beginning to play the piano, Gershwin took lessons from a classically oriented teacher, went to classical concerts, and studied the music of Chopin and Liszt. But he loved popular music as well, and when he was barely 16 years old, he decided that popular music was the more congenial medium for his work. He became a “song plugger,” a salesman promoting sheet music, for the publishing firm Jerome H. Remick & Co., a company located right on Tin Pan Alley and far removed from the slopes of Parnassus.

Gershwin continued to work in other popular media. Not long after he was hired by Remick, he moved from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, initially working as a rehearsal pianist but soon graduating to writing songs and then full shows. This meteoric success culminated with the recording of his song “Swanee” by Al Jolson, a recording that netted Gershwin, in the first year alone after its release, a cool $10,000 (approximately $130,000 in 2018 dollars).

Gershwin’s abilities as a performer and composer came to the attention of the dance band leader Paul Whiteman. Whiteman had the ambition to bring together popular and classical styles and so recruited Gershwin to write and play a new work at a concert Whiteman called “An Experiment in Modern Music.” It was at this concert that Gershwin premiered his Rhapsody in Blue, a work that was an instant success and solidified Gershwin’s reputation as a composer of both popular and “serious”

music. Afterwards he continued writing musicals—Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy were among the most popular—yet he continued to perform Rhapsody in Blue with Whitman’s band.

Among his classical pieces the Piano Concerto is perhaps his most fully realized work. His other orchestral pieces—Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris—while attractive, and filled with catchy melodies and infectious rhythms, remain essentially collections of beautiful tunes, lovely but not necessarily coherent. As the music historian Richard Crawford says, works like the Rhapsody in Blue depend on the contrast between piano and orchestra, between popular and classical idioms. As Crawford puts it, the essence of Rhapsody “lies more in these contrasts, and in the strength of Gershwin’s melodies, than in its overall shape.”

With the Piano Concerto, Gershwin achieved a much more coherent style, one that integrates the various themes of the work together.

Gershwin himself wrote a useful précis of the work. He points out that the first movement has, like many classical concertos, two themes. The first theme is “announced,” in his words, by the bassoon, while the second is introduced by the piano, and the whole movement uses the Charleston rhythm, “quick and pulsating, representing the young enthusiastic spirit of American life.” The second movement, again like many classical concertos, is slower and more lyrical. Gershwin says that it has “a poetic, nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they are usually treated.” The last movement is a thrilling allegro, “an orgy of rhythms,” that brings the work to a brilliant conclusion.

–Dennis Loranger, Lecturer in Music, Wright State University

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