Friday, September 16, 8pm @ NNU's Swayne Auditorium
Saturday, September 17, 8pm @ Morrison Center
Tickets off sale as of 2pm Friday 9/16. Plenty of great seats available, please purchase at the door. Box office opens at 6:30pm.
Boise Sponsor - 
Nampa Sponsor - 
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4 Sponsors - C.K. Haun & Karen Ann Meyer
Artist Sponsor - John & Linda Stedman
Robert Franz, music director
Carol Wincenc, flute
Jake Heggie, guest composer
Michael Daugherty
Route 66
Jake Heggie
Flute Concerto: Fury of Light
Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor
One of today's international stars of the flute, Carol Wincenc has appeared as soloist with major orchestras around the world and has premiered works written for her by many of today's most prominent composers.
Carol Wincenc is deeply committed to expanding the flute repertoire. Telarc has released her world premiere recording of a flute concerto by 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winner Christopher Rouse with the Houston Symphony conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, a work written for her which she premiered with the Detroit Symphony in 1994. Ms. Wincenc also gave the world premier of Gorecki's Concerto-Cantata at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw in 1992 and the U.S. premier with the Chicago Symphony in 1995. She has subsequently performed the work in London, France and Poland, and will record it for Nonesuch. To date, she has given over 50 performances of Lukas Foss's Renaissance Concerto. She has also commissioned and premiered concerti by Peter Schickele, Joan Tower, Paul Schoenfield and Tobias Picker, who composed a double concerto for her and soprano Barbara Hendricks entitled The Rain in the Trees, which was inspired by the rainforest poems of W.S. Merwin.
Ms. Wincenc is equally interested in developing new solo and chamber repertoire for the flute. On a Valentine's Day recital in New York's Merkin Concert Hall, she premiered ten short "valentines" written by Gorecki, Schickele, Michael Torke and others. In May 1997, she joined with flutists Linda Chesis and Laura Gilbert for a recital which featured premieres of works for multiple flutes.
But premiering new works is only a part of Carol Wincenc's musical world. She has also lent her personal interpretive voice to the great classics of the flute repertoire from Bach and Mozart to Nielsen and Messiaen. Ms. Wincenc has appeared as a soloist with the Saint Louis, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Houston and Seattle symphonies; the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Los Angeles and Saint Paul chamber orchestras; and the Mostly Mozart, Sante Fe, Spoleto, Caramoor and Marlboro music festivals. The 1997-98 season will be her first with the New York Woodwind Quintet. Equally in demand abroad, Ms. Wincenc has given acclaimed performances with the London Symphony, the English and Stuttgart chamber orchestras, and the international music festivals in Aldeburgh, Budapest, Tivoli and Frankfurt.
In great demand as a chamber musician, Ms. Wincenc has collaborated with the Guarneri, Emerson, Tokyo and Cleveland string quartets, and performed with Jessye Norman, Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma and Elly Ameling. As a result of her fascination with the flute and its family of instruments, Ms. Wincenc created and directed a series of International Flute Festivals at the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul. The overwhelming success of these festivals, which featured such diverse artists as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Herbie Mann and American flutist R. Carlos Nakai, led to a sold-out U.S. tour which included performances in New York and San Francisco. Ms. Wincenc also performs regularly in duo concerts with harpist Nancy Allen.
Carol Wincenc's recordings include an all-American disc on Nonesuch with pianist Samuel Sanders and composers/pianists David Del Tredici and Lukas Foss. Her first solo album, a collaboration with pianist Andras Schiff, was cited by Stereo Review as a "Recording of Special Merit" and was followed by albums in collaboration with guitarist Eliot Fisk and the Muir String Quartet. Ms. Wincenc has recorded the complete Mozart Flute Quartets with the Emerson String Quartet for Deutsche Grammophon. She has also recorded Foss's Renaissance Concerto under the direction of the composer (New World), Joan Tower's Concerto with the Louisville Orchestra (d'Note), and Paul Schoenfield's Klezmer Rondos with the New World Symphony under the direction of John Nelson (London/Decca). Upcoming recordings include: Schoenfield's Slovakian Children's Songs for flute and piano, accompanied by the composer (London/Decca); and a collection of 20th century chamber works by composers ranging from Samuel Barber to Heitor Villa-Lobos with baritone Douglas Webster and the Muir String Quartet (EcoClassics).
Carol Wincenc was First Prize Winner of the Walter W. Naumberg Solo Flute Competition and is presently a professor of flute at the Julliard School of Music in New York. Carl Fischer has published the first in a series of Carol Wincenc Signature Editions which will feature her favorite flute repertoire. Ms. Wincenc resides in New York City with her husband Douglas Webster. They have a 4-year-old son, Nicola.
back to top
Jake Heggie is the American composer of the operas Moby-Dick (libretto: Gene Scheer), Dead Man Walking (libretto: Terrence McNally), Three Decembers (libretto: Scheer), The End of the Affair (libretto: Heather McDonald), To Hell and Back (libretto: Scheer), and the stage works For a Look or a Touch (libretto: Scheer) and At the Statue of Venus (libretto: McNally). He has also composed more than 200 art songs, as well as orchestral, choral and chamber music. His recent recording of songs and duets, PASSING BY: Songs by Jake Heggie, (AVIE), features performances by Isabel Bayrakdarian, Zheng Cao, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Paul Groves, Keith Phares, and Frederica von Stade.
Heggie is the 2010-11 guest artist-in-residence at the University of North Texas at Denton, where he will compose his first symphony, based on several Ahab monologues from the novel Moby-Dick. The “Ahab” Symphony will receive its premiere in 2012 with tenor Richard Croft as soloist. Other current projects include song commissions from Carnegie Hall (for Joyce DiDonato), San Francisco Performances (for DiDonato and the Alexander String Quartet), The Dallas Opera (for baritone Nathan Gunn), and Houston Grand Opera (to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks); as well as a one-act opera for chorus for the John Alexander Singers and the Pacific Chorale, and a new version of For a Look or a Touch that features the 200-voice Seattle Men’s Chorus.
Heggie’s operas have been performed to tremendous acclaim internationally in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Austria, South Africa and by more than a dozen American opera companies, including: San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, The Dallas Opera, Seattle Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Austin Lyric Opera and Madison Opera. Dead Man Walking has been performed nearly 150 times since its San Francisco premiere in 2000, making it one of the most performed new American operas. Moby-Dick received its 2010 world premiere at The Dallas Opera and was co-commissioned by Dallas with four other companies: San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Calgary Opera and the State Opera of South Australia.
The composer’s numerous songs and cycles, including The Deepest Desire, Statuesque, Here & Gone, Rise & Fall, Songs & Sonnets to Ophelia, Facing Forward/Looking Back, Friendly Persuasions, and Songs to the Moon, are featured in recitals around the world by some of the world’s most beloved and celebrated singers. Among those who regularly champion Heggie’s works are sopranos Emily Albrink, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Kristin Clayton, Nicolle Foland, Audra McDonald, Emily Pulley, Talise Trevigne, Kiri Te Kanawa; mezzos Zheng Cao, Joyce Castle, Catherine Cook, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Kristine Jepson, Frederica von Stade; Broadway soprano Patti LuPone; tenors Stephen Costello, Paul Groves, Ben Heppner, Nicholas Phan; and baritones Philip Cutlip, Daniel Okulitch, Keith Phares, Morgan Smith and Bryn Terfel.
Heggie is an ardent champion of writers. Most of his operas and stage works feature libretti written by either Terrence McNally or Gene Scheer; while sources for song texts and poetry have also included Maya Angelou, Charlene Baldridge, Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson, John Hall, A.E. Housman, Vachel Lindsay, Philip Littell, Armistead Maupin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sister Helen Prejean, Gini Savage, Vincent Van Gogh, Frederica von Stade, and Eugenia Zukerman, to name a few. The composer has a close association with the conductor Patrick Summers, who has led the world premieres of all the composer’s major operas; and the director Leonard Foglia, who has directed the premieres of Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, and The End of the Affair, as well as the United States national tour of Dead Man Walking.
Recordings of Heggie’s compositions include PASSING BY: Songs by Jake Heggie (Avie), Dead Man Walking (Erato), Three Decembers (Albany), Flesh and Stone (Americus), To Hell and Back (Magnatune), The Faces of Love (RCA Red Seal), The Deepest Desire (Eloquentia), and For a Look or a Touch (Naxos). Heggie was the recipient of a 2005/2006 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and has been composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Opera, Eos Orchestra, and Vail Valley Music Festival. As a coach and teacher, he has given classes at universities throughout the United States and at summer festivals such as SongFest in Malibu and the Steans Institute at Ravinia. Jake Heggie lives in San Francisco.
back to top
Behind the Music
Route 66
Michael Daugherty
Born April 28, 1954, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
This work was premiered in April 25, 1998, at Miller Hall in East Lansing, Michigan, by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yoshimi Takeda. It is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, percussion, timpani, harp, piano, and strings.
This is the Boise Philharmonic's first performance of Route 66.
Too often we forget that composers of the past, especially of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, strove to connect with their audience in ways that drew from their daily experience – not just providing a social outlet or entertaining diversion with their newest works. Beethoven’s works sometimes reflected current events, notably Napoleon’s military struggles. Over a century later, Shostakovich chronicled the siege of Leningrad in his Seventh Symphony. Popular culture is reflected in the jazz-tinged works of George Gershwin and several other composers in the 1920s and 1930s. When we think of music in the concert hall as a type of sonic museum display, we forget the true context and lose the real meaning.
American composer Michael Daugherty revives this connection with his numerous works, nearly all based on popular culture. His opera Jackie O centers on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, while his bassoon concerto is entitled Dead Elvis. Uniquely American in his approach to his topic, he has taken on the Barbie doll in his cantata What’s That Spell? and has examined extraterrestrials in his percussion concerto for Evelyn Glennie entitled UFO. Daugherty’s first symphony, entitled Metropolis Symphony, derives its subject from Superman comic strips. His second symphony, Motor City Triptych was composed for the Detroit Symphony. Likewise, his third symphony, composed for the Philadelphia Orchestra, is called Philadelphia Stories.
In 1998 Daugherty found inspiration in another American icon – Route 66. Although the road is functionally just another highway running from Chicago to Los Angeles, it is steeped in the legends and lore of the open road. First designated in 1926, this was the highway that shuttled refugees from the Dust Bowl to the West Coast. Portions of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road take place on the “Main Street of America,” and Bobby Troup’s popular song, Route 66, became famous in a version recorded by Nat King Cole. Sadly, Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, but the tourism industry along the now-designated National Scenic Byway continues to flourish. The charm of this piece of Americana is still going strong.
Michael Daugherty felt a strong attraction to this legendary road. He wrote:
“Route 66 (1998) for orchestra was commissioned and premiered by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Yoshimi Takeda, for the opening concert of the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival at Miller Auditorium, East Lansing, Michigan on April 25, 1998. Route 66 is a high-octane nostalgic musical romp from Illinois to California along America’s first intercontinental highway, as seen through my rear view mirror. The music takes off with four trumpets, in musical canon, and a metallic brake drum, pulsating like the yellow painted line that divides the two-lane asphalt highway. As woodwinds, mallet instruments and bongos continue the syncopation, a soaring string melody casts a panoramic soundstage down ‘The Mother Road.’ A lonely tuba solo, which signals the only traffic light of the journey, segues into a breathtaking expansion of the opening tune, punctuated by chromatic scales at lightning speed. Upon the entrance of a syncopated Latin groove on cowbell, we suddenly shift gears into a development section of exciting multilayered twists and turns. The final brassy chord signals the end of our symphonic road trip down ‘Main Street America.’”
©2011 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin
www.orpheusnotes.com
back to top
Flute Concerto: Fury of Light
Jake Heggie
Born March 31, 1961, in West Palm Beach, Florida
This work was premiered on August 14, 2010, at the National Flute Association Convention in Anaheim, California, with Steven Byess conducting and Carol Wincenc as soloist. It is scored for solo flute, piccolo, two flutes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, percussion, harp, and strings.
This is the Boise Philharmonic's first performance of Flute Concerto: Fury of Light.
"I was deeply honored and humbled when Carol Wincenc asked me to write something for her – especially to celebrate such an important event in her life. I had known her work for a long time, but only met her a few years ago. Like the rest of the world, I was immediately in her thrall. Her gorgeous tone, innate musicality, sparkle, sense of humor, heart and curiosity are there when she plays; all anchored by her tremendous humanity.
The piece I have written for her is based on one of my favorite poems: 'Sunrise,' by Mary Oliver. It is a meditation of that timeless quest for happiness and truth that, in the past, led some people to be bound and burned at the stake, creating 'an unforgettable fury of light.' It also asks a question that seems particularly appropriate for a wind player: 'What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us?'
'Fury of Light' is a response to this poem: an exploration of its fire and essence. It is dedicated lovingly to the great Carol Wincenc."
Sunrise
Mary Oliver
You can
die for it --
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
Fury of Light is cast in an untraditional movement structure, eschewing the standard three-part framework for one consisting of several shorter sections. Heggie coaxes a huge variety of timbres from the solo instrument and orchestra. Of particular interest is the large variety of percussion instruments – including the metallic sounds of the bowed vibraphone, glockenspiel and crotales – that add an otherworldly coloration. This important new work, in turn lyrical and virtuosic, displays an immense amount of variety and ample opportunity for all performers to shine.
©2011 Orpheus Music Prose, Craig Doolin & Jake Heggie
www.orpheusnotes.com
back to top
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia
Died November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg
This work was first performed on February 22, 1878, in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein. It is scored for piccolo, woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, percussion, timpani, and strings.
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor was first performed by the Boise Philharmonic on April 13, 1970. It was most recently performed on November 19, 2004.
An overwhelming belief in the power of Fate has influenced some of the most profound works of music. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana celebrates and laments the fickleness of the Wheel of Fortune. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony opens with a theme that is often said to represent Fate knocking at the door. Tchaikovsky, in his many bouts of depression, certainly felt as if Fate was a driving force in his life. Suffering from Bipolar Disorder with its characteristically elevated ‘highs’ and profound ‘lows,’ Tchaikovsky walked a very thin emotional line. When Tchaikovsky married a former student, Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova, who had become obsessed with the composer while in his class, he hoped Fate would shine upon him in the guise of domestic bliss. He proposed to Antonina, although he was secretly homosexual and feared professional rejection if he was found out. Instead of bringing happiness, the disastrous marriage lasted all of nine weeks.
The Fourth Symphony, one of his most soul-searching scores, is perhaps most accurately described in a letter Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck shortly after the premiere. This description was never meant to serve as a program for the work, but the insight it provides to his mindset at the time is unparalleled. Tchaikovsky wrote:
"The introduction is the kernel, the chief thought of the whole Symphony. This is Fate, the fatal power that hinders one in the pursuit of happiness from gaining the goal, which jealously provides that peace and comfort do not prevail, that the sky is not free from clouds -- a might that swings, like the sword of Damocles, constantly over the head, which poisons continuously the soul. This might is overpowering and invincible. There is nothing to do but to submit and vainly complain. The feeling of desperation and loneliness grows stronger and stronger. Would it not be better to turn away from reality and lull one's self in dreams. Deeper and deeper the soul is sunk in dreams. All that was dark and joyless is forgotten...
"No -- these are but dreams: roughly we are awakened by Fate. Thus we see that life is only an everlasting alternation of somber reality and fugitive dreams of happiness. Something like this is the program of the first movement.
"The second movement shows another phase of sadness. How sad it is that so much has already been and gone! And yet it is a pleasure to think of the early years. One mourns the past and has neither the courage nor the will to begin a new life. One is rather tired of life. One would fain rest awhile, recalling happy hours when young blood pulsed warm through our veins and life brought satisfaction. We remember irreparable loss. But these things are far away. It is sad, yet sweet, to lose one's self in the past.
"There is no determined feeling, no exact expression in the third movement. Here are capricious arabesques, vague figures which slip into the imagination when one has taken wine and is slightly intoxicated. Suddenly there rushes into the imagination the picture of a drunken peasant and a gutter song. Military music is heard passing in the distance. There are disconnected pictures that come and go in the brain of the sleeper. They have nothing to do with reality; they are unintelligible, bizarre.
"As to the finale, if you find no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity. The picture of a folk holiday. Hardly have we had time to forget ourselves in the happiness of others when indefatigable Fate reminds us once more of its presence. The other children of men are not concerned with us. How merry and glad they all are. All their feelings are so inconsequential, so simple. And do you still say that all the world is immersed in sorrow? There still is happiness, simple, naive happiness. Rejoice in the happiness of others -- and you can still live.
"There is not a single line in this Symphony that I have not felt in my whole being and that has not been a true echo of the soul."
© 2011 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin
www.orpheusnotes.com
back to top