≈ 2 hours and 20 minutes · With intermission
Last updated: April 9, 2024
A Note From the President and CEO of the NAC
At the National Arts Centre, we offer audiences the opportunity to see some of the most exceptional artists from across Canada and around the world perform on our stages. Tonight, we are delighted to present the NAC debut of the legendary Philadelphia Orchestra, led by the incomparable Quebec conductor and international classical music superstar Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
This concert has been sold out since September, a testament to the artistic excellence the orchestra and Yannick represent. None other than Sergei Rachmaninoff called The Philadelphia Orchestra “the finest orchestra the world has ever heard.” As for Yannick, it’s hard to exaggerate his impact on classical music. As the third Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, and the Music and Artistic Director of The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal—he is one of the most exciting classical artists in the world today. His artistry inspires unforgettable performances from the musicians with whom he collaborates in concert halls around the globe. For all of us who work in the performing arts, it has been beyond thrilling to watch Yannick’s career, and to see a Canadian artist reach such heights.
We are excited for you to experience the music-making of The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin this evening. Thank you, as always, for being here, and for supporting the National Arts Centre.
A Note From the Ambassador of the United States of America to Canada
Dear Friends,
I am honoured to welcome to Ottawa the world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra, under the direction of the acclaimed Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It is a special privilege to celebrate the deep and enduring connections between Canada and the United States, and specifically, the great city of Philadelphia, which also happens to be my hometown.
The Philadelphia Orchestra first performed outside of the United States when it travelled to Toronto in 1918, led by Music Director Leopold Stokowski. Now, 106 years later, the Orchestra brings its tour to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, this time under the baton of Yannick, who comes home to Canada for this series of performances.
Tonight’s performance is not only a showcase of classical masterpieces, but also a celebration of diversity in American music, featuring works of early 20-century African American composer Florence Price. In April 2022, The Philadelphia Orchestra won a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance for its recording of Florence Price’s First and Third Symphonies. The Philadelphia Orchestra’s work to champion greater inclusion in the fine arts and classical music is a direct reflection of the values that the United States and Canada cherish.
While in Canada, members of The Philadelphia Orchestra will engage with local community members in all three cities they are visiting as part of the U.S. Department of State’s Arts Envoy Program, a cultural exchange initiative that shares the best of the U.S. arts community with the world. I extend my gratitude to our friends at the National Arts Centre for their continued partnership.
In a letter to the Orchestra, President Biden wrote, “Music has the unique ability to take us back to the most cherished times, places, and memories in our lives. But it also moves us forward—helping transcend language, overcome geography, and unite cultures and communities around the world.”
I hope tonight’s performance leaves you with new memories that will inspire you for years to come.
David L. Cohen
Ambassador of the United States of America to Canada
Program
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Artistic and Music Director
FLORENCE PRICE Symphony No. 4 in D minor (40 min)
I. Tempo moderato
II. Andante cantabile
III. Juba: Allegro
IV. Scherzo: Allegro
INTERMISSION
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 (60 min)
I. Largo – Allegro moderato
II. Allegro molto
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro vivace
Opus 3 Artists is the exclusive representative of The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Repertoire
Symphony No. 4 in D minor
I. Tempo moderato
II. Andante cantabile
III. Juba: Allegro
IV. Scherzo: Allegro
The triumphant premiere of Florence Price’s (1887–1953) First Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933 was fraught with demeaning messages. On the one hand, for anyone, let alone an African American woman, to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra at a World’s Fair with an average of some 74,570 paid visitors per day in 1933 was a major achievement. On the other hand, Price was surely aware that her work was programmed only because African American arts advocate Maude Roberts George and the Chicago Music Association had directly paid the orchestra to perform it. Worse, that program titled “The Negro in Music” began with In Old Virginia, a concert overture that musically celebrated and valorized the Confederacy, written by John Powell, one of America’s most notorious eugenicists and White supremacists.
A lesser composer might have been discouraged—but not Florence Price. She penned three more symphonies over the next 12 years. The last of those symphonic ventures is perhaps the most adventurous of them all. For in it the composer brings together an even wider variety of idioms than she had in her previous symphonies.
Price’s ingenuity in synthesizing the music of her African American heritage with stereotypically White forms and genres, integrating musical styles that were traditionally kept apart, is well known: Aside from the symphonies, she wrote two string quartets, three concertos, a major piano sonata, dozens of character pieces small and large for piano, instrumental chamber music, art songs, cantatas, and more—all of it in addition to arrangements of spirituals for voice and for piano, and most of it richly informed by Black vernacular styles. Likewise well known is that her post-Romantic language also draws on American Impressionist and other Modernist techniques. But the many solos in the Fourth Symphony, entrusted to virtually every instrument of the large orchestra, transform the ensemble into a brilliantly coloured assembly of soloists, while the scoring for the brass and percussion as sections evokes the military bands that are ubiquitous in wartime. Even more improbably, the work’s references to spirituals and other Black vernacular repertoires are further complemented by references to Anton Bruckner and Duke Ellington.
Composed in 1945, the Fourth Symphony was not performed during Price’s lifetime, and the score was among the hundreds of musical manuscripts and other papers found in her abandoned home south of Chicago in 2009. The work was posthumously premiered and published in 2018, and the premiere recording was issued in 2019. It also is arguably the most important large-scale work fueling the ongoing Florence Price renaissance—the greatest sustained recovery of an individual composer’s musical legacy since the mid-20th-century Mahler revival. But beyond this, the Fourth Symphony stands as a major contribution to the American symphony as a genre—a work that treats Price’s ancestral inheritance and Black vernacular expression as the full equals of White and patently European expressive styles. It is a work that, along with the symphonies of Amy Beach, Leonard Bernstein, George Whitefield Chadwick, Aaron Copland, William Dawson, Charles Ives, and William Grant Still, makes an engaging and brilliant contribution to the quest to formulate a distinctively American musical language that gives expression to musical practices born of American experience and on American soil.
Price’s D-minor Symphony is cast in the traditional four movements, but because the first three movements all end abruptly, the close of the finale is the first emphatic conclusion in the entire work. The short, tense introduction leads to a main theme (Tempo moderato), presented in martial scoring, that quotes the spiritual “Wade in the Water”; this movement’s air of wartime strife is most obvious at the end of the development section, when an impassioned crescendo driven mainly by references to “Wade in the Water” comes to an abrupt halt. The second movement (Andante cantabile) shows us Price in a more intimate mode, contrasting a plaintive pentatonic melody entrusted mostly to solo woodwinds with hymn-like writing for brass choir—and like the first movement, its reprise is preceded by a dramatic crescendo that comes to an abrupt halt (this time with a stroke from the solo gong).
The main theme of the third movement is a light-footed Juba dance (Allegro), but this movement’s heart is its contrasting section, whose syncopated accompaniment, modal melodies, and scoring align it with Ellington’s “jungle style.” The finale, a whirling scherzo (Allegro), includes fleeting but recurrent allusions to the scherzo of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, whose popularity was on the ascent in the United States in the early 1940s. Here, too, we see Price’s dramatic flair, for the movement builds to a climax featuring brass and percussion exclamations with no strings, followed by an abrupt silence. The tension builds through a brooding recitative for the solo bassoon before unleashing the coda, which brings the Symphony to a furious close.
Program note by Michael Cooper
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
I. Largo – Allegro moderato
II. Allegro molto
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro vivace
Many of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s (1873–1943) Russian contemporaries came to music while also pursuing law, medicine, or some other profession. But Rachmaninoff was destined to be purely a musician—his background and connections virtually demanded it. His parents were both musical, and his grandfather had studied with the legendary Irish pianist John Field. His cousin, Alexander Siloti, was a former pupil of Franz Liszt and one of the most important musical figures in Russia at the time. And while Rachmaninoff was still a teenager he became a protégé of Tchaikovsky, who didn’t hesitate to proclaim him an equal.
Rachmaninoff left Russia after the October 1917 Revolution and never returned, shuttling for the next two decades between New York and Switzerland. In 1935 he settled in Beverly Hills, California, and became a United States citizen just before he died in 1943. It was during this post-Russia period that he cemented his reputation as a piano performer, and composed relatively little. Yet Rachmaninoff always considered himself primarily a composer, not a pianist. (He was also a formidable conductor.) As a composer he was completely unmoved by the Modernist musical experiments of the early 20th century, clinging steadfastly instead to the opulent and lyrical Romanticism of the 19th. While this pleased his audiences, it failed to impress the music historians and critics who at first regarded his works as little more than stale, uninteresting echoes of a past era. It was only after his death that Rachmaninoff’s reputation as a composer rose to match his standing as one of the pre-eminent pianists of his day.
Rachmaninoff wrote two of his three symphonies before leaving Russia. The first, a youthful work from 1895, was dynamic and energetic, but failed dismally with the audience and critics at its premiere. This proved a demoralizing blow for Rachmaninoff, whose confidence as a composer remained fragile throughout his career. Although his Piano Concerto No. 2 from 1901 was a stunning success, he still felt anxious about attempting another major orchestral piece. In 1906 he took a leave of absence from his position as an opera conductor at the Imperial Theatre in Moscow and started work on his Second Symphony in Dresden, Germany, finishing it the following summer after returning to Russia. It was premiered in February 1908, with the composer himself directing the orchestra. The score is dedicated to Sergei Taneyev, Rachmaninoff’s composition teacher.
Rachmaninoff unifies the movements of this Symphony by recycling the principal themes and motifs. The first motif, heard in the lower strings at the start of the extended slow introduction (Largo), is recalled throughout the entire work, and its stepwise motion also characterizes the soaring melodic themes that follow. After a solo by the English horn, the movement proper (Allegro moderato) gets under way with a principal theme that refers back to the introduction. A relaxed and expressive secondary theme in G major provides some contrast before solos from the violin and clarinet in the development section expound again on the main theme. The development section builds to a new, dramatic climax, but in the recapitulation it is the more relaxed melody that dominates, heard this time in E major.
Rachmaninoff reverses the Classical order of a symphony’s interior movements by putting the scherzo (Allegro molto) before the slow movement, but doesn’t really break any “rules” by doing so—there are plenty of 19th-century precedents for this practice. Even in this bustling scherzo the composer can’t resist inserting a lyrical, nostalgic secondary theme, which shares many traits with the opening movement’s main theme. A fugue-like trio section in the middle of the movement morphs into a march before the two opening melodies return to complete the symmetrical form.
The yearning phrases of the ultra-Romantic third movement (Adagio) connote the lyricism of vocal music rather than specifically instrumental inspirations. The violins’ opening theme, which returns throughout this movement and again in the finale, was in fact re-used as the tune of a pop song from 1976, Eric Carmen’s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.” (Carmen had earlier used another Rachmaninoff melody, from the Second Piano Concerto, in his hit song “All By Myself” from 1975.) A silent pause after the impassioned development section creates a sense of dramatic expectancy before the solo woodwinds bring back the main theme in the recapitulation.
An Allegro vivace opening to the last movement suggests a vigorous, triumphant finale in E major. Here the composer restates fragments of sumptuous melodies from previous movements, and it is not always quite so optimistic. Sinister moments and intense interludes are interspersed among the recollections, but at the conclusion the arching melodies are combined with vitalizing accompanimental figures, leading to an emphatic, exultant finish.
Program note by Luke Howard
Program notes © 2024. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, Michael Cooper, and/or Luke Howard.
Artists
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is currently in his 12th season with The Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as music and artistic director. An inspired leader, Yannick is both an evolutionary and a revolutionary, developing the mighty “Philadelphia Sound” in new ways. His collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called him “phenomenal,” adding that “the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better.”
Yannick has established himself as a musical leader of the highest calibre and one of the most thrilling and sought-after talents of his generation. He became the third music director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2018. In addition, he has been artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain since 2000. In 2017 he became an honorary member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He served as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2008 to 2018 (he is now honorary conductor) and was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic from 2008 to 2014. He has made wildly successful appearances with the world’s most revered ensembles and at many of the leading opera houses.
Yannick has shown a deep commitment to expanding the repertoire by embracing an ever-growing and diverse group of today’s composers and by performing the music of under-appreciated composers of the past. In 2018 he signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Under his leadership The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to recording with 13 releases on that label, including Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3, which won a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance in 2022.
A native of Montreal, Yannick studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at Montreal’s Conservatory of Music and continued his studies with renowned conductor Carlo Maria Giulini; he also studied choral conducting with Joseph Flummerfelt at Westminster Choir College. Among Yannick’s honours are an appointment as Companion of the Order of Canada; Companion to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec; an Officer of the Order of Quebec; an Officer of the Order of Montreal; an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year; Echo Klassik’s 2014 Conductor of the Year; a Royal Philharmonic Society Award; Canada’s National Arts Centre Award; the Prix Denise-Pelletier; the Oskar Morawetz Award; and honorary doctorates from the University of Quebec, the Curtis Institute of Music, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, McGill University, the University of Montreal, the University of Pennsylvania, Laval University, and Drexel University.
To read Yannick’s full bio, please visit philorch.org/conductor.
The world–renowned Philadelphia Orchestra strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust education initiatives, a commitment to its diverse communities, and the embrace of digital outreach, the ensemble is creating an expansive and inclusive future for classical music, and furthering the place of the arts in an open and democratic society. In June 2021 the Orchestra and its home, the Kimmel Center, united to form The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc., reimagining the power of the arts to bring joy, create community, and effect change.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is now in his 12th season with The Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as music and artistic director. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the Orchestra, audiences, and the community.
Your Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, in Verizon Hall and around the community, in classrooms and hospitals, and over the airwaves and online. The Orchestra’s award-winning education and community initiatives engage over 50,000 students, families, and community members of all ages through programs such as PlayINs; side-by-sides; PopUP concerts; Our City, Your Orchestra Live; School Concerts; sensory–friendly concerts; open rehearsals; the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program; All City Orchestra Fellowships; and residency work in Philadelphia and abroad. The Orchestra’s free online video series, Our City, Your Orchestra (OCYO), uncovers and amplifies the voices, stories, and causes championed by unique Philadelphia organizations and businesses. Joining OCYO in connecting with the community is HearTOGETHER, a free monthly podcast featuring artists and activists who discuss music, social justice, and the lived experiences that inform the drive to create a more equitable and inclusive future for the arts.
Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the Orchestra is a global ambassador and one of our nation’s greatest exports. It performs annually at Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The Orchestra also has a rich touring history, having first performed outside Philadelphia in its earliest days. In 1973 it was the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China, launching a five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.
Under Yannick’s leadership, the Orchestra returned to recording with 13 celebrated releases on the Deutsche Grammophon label, including the Grammy Award–winning Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3. The Orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For more information, please visit www.philorch.org.
Credits
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Music and Artistic Director
Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair
Nathalie Stutzmann
Principal Guest Conductor
Ralph and Beth Johnston Muller Chair
Austin Chanu
Assistant Conductor
Tristan Rais-Sherman
Assistant Conductor
Joseph Conyers
Education and Community Ambassador
Mark and Tobey Dichter Chair
Charlotte Blake Alston
Storyteller, Narrator, and Host
Osagie and Losenge Imasogie Chair
Frederick R. Haas
Artistic Advisor
Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ Experience
First Violins
David Kim, Concertmaster - Dr. Benjamin Rush Chair
Juliette Kang, First Associate Concertmaster - Joseph and Marie Field Chair
Christine Lim, Associate Concertmaster
Marc Rovetti, Assistant Concertmaster - Dr. James F. Dougherty Chair
Barbara Govatos - Robert E. Mortensen Chair
Jonathan Beiler
Hirono Oka
Richard Amoroso - Robert and Lynne Pollack Chair
Yayoi Numazawa
Jason DePue - Larry A. Grika Chair
Jennifer Haas
Miyo Curnow
Elina Kalendarova
Daniel Han
Julia Li
William Polk
Mei Ching Huang
Second Violins
Kimberly Fisher, Principal - Peter A. Benoliel Chair
Paul Roby, Associate Principal - Sandra and David Marshall Chair
Dara Morales, Assistant Principal - Anne M. Buxton Chair
Philip Kates - Peter A. Benoliel Chair
Davyd Booth
Paul Arnold - Joseph Brodo Chair, given by Peter A. Benoliel
Boris Balter
Amy Oshiro-Morales
Yu-Ting Chen
Jeoung-Yin Kim
Willa Finck
Violas
Choong-Jin Chang, Principal - Ruth and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Chair
Kirsten Johnson, Associate Principal
Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal
Judy Geist
Renard Edwards
Anna Marie Ahn Petersen - Piasecki Family Chair
David Nicastro
Burchard Tang
Che-Hung Chen
Rachel Ku
Marvin Moon
Meng Wang
Cellos
Hai-Ye Ni, Principal
Priscilla Lee, Associate Principal
Yumi Kendall, Assistant Principal - Elaine Woo Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Chair
Richard Harlow - Orton P. and Noël S. Jackson Chair
Kathryn Picht Read
Robert Cafaro - Volunteer Committees Chair
Ohad Bar-David
John Koen
Derek Barnes
Alex Veltman
Double Basses
Joseph Conyers, Principal - Carole and Emilio Gravagno Chair
Gabriel Polinsky, Associate Principal
Nathaniel West, Acting Assistant Principal
David Fay
Duane Rosengard
Michael Franz
Christian Gray
Some members of the string sections voluntarily rotate seating on a periodic basis.
Flutes
Jeffrey Khaner, Principal - Paul and Barbara Henkels Chair
Patrick Williams, Associate Principal - Rachelle and Ronald Kaiserman Chair
Olivia Staton
Erica Peel, Piccolo
Oboes
Philippe Tondre, Principal - Samuel S. Fels Chair
Peter Smith, Associate Principal
Jonathan Blumenfeld - Edwin Tuttle Chair
Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, English Horn* - Joanne T. Greenspun Chair
Clarinets
Ricardo Morales, Principal - Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Chair
Samuel Caviezel, Associate Principal - Sarah and Frank Coulson Chair
Socrates Villegas
Paul R. Demers, Bass Clarinet - Peter M. Joseph and Susan Rittenhouse Joseph Chair
Bassoons
Daniel Matsukawa, Principal - Richard M. Klein Chair
Mark Gigliotti, Co-Principal
Angela Anderson Smith
Holly Blake, Contrabassoon
Horns
Jennifer Montone, Principal - Gray Charitable Trust Chair
Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal - Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Chair
Christopher Dwyer
Chelsea McFarland
Ernesto Tovar Torres
Shelley Showers
Trumpets
(position vacant), Principal - Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest Chair
Jeffrey Curnow, Associate Principal - Gary and Ruthanne Schlarbaum Chair
Anthony Prisk
Trombones
Nitzan Haroz, Principal - Neubauer Family Foundation Chair
Matthew Vaughn, Co-Principal
Blair Bollinger, Bass Trombone - Drs. Bong and Mi Wha Lee Chair
Tuba
Carol Jantsch, Principal - Lyn and George M. Ross Chair
Timpani
Don S. Liuzzi, Principal - Dwight V. Dowley Chair
Angela Zator Nelson, Associate Principal
Percussion
Christopher Deviney, Principal
Charlie Rosmarin, Associate Principal
Angela Zator Nelson
Piano and Celesta
Kiyoko Takeuti
Keyboards
Davyd Booth
Harp
Elizabeth Hainen, Principal
Librarians
Nicole Jordan, Principal
Holly Matthews
Stage Personnel
Dennis Moore, Jr., Manager
Francis “Chip” O’Shea III
Aaron Wilson
*On leave
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2024 Tour of Canada is made possible through the support of its tour sponsors, the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The Philadelphia Orchestra is grateful to its tour partners, the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Canada, and is a longstanding participant of the Arts Envoy Program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
- Official Car of the NAC Orchestra
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees