Adam Stern, Music Director and Conductor

Please turn off all cell phones and pagers.No audio/video recording or flash photography is allowed during the performance.

Thursday, October 11, 2018, 7:30 p.m.M E Y D E N B AU E R T H E AT R E

Sunday, October 21, 2018, 2:00 p.m.E A S T L A K E P E R F O R M I N G A R T S C E N T E R

THE INTERRELATION BETWEEN NATURE AND LIFE

Dvořák’s EighthAdam Stern, conductorWilliam Blayney, clarinet

SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981) Commando March CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786-1826) Concerto No. 1 in f for Clarinet and Orchestra, Opus 73 Allegro Adagio ma non troppo Rondo: Allegretto William Blayney, clarinet

I N T E R M I S S I O N

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904) Symphony No. 8 in G, Opus 88 Allegro con brio Adagio Allegretto grazioso — Molto vivace Allegro ma non troppo

2

Orchestra Management

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

FOUNDING DIRECTORJoyce Cunningham

MUSIC DIRECTOR & CONDUCTORAdam Stern

PRESIDENTShelby Eaton

VICE PRESIDENTMark Wiseman

TREASURERMichael Wennerstrom

SECRETARYFran Pope

CONCERTMASTERAllion Salvador

DIRECTORS-AT-LARGEKathy BoudreauHeather Raschko

Linda ThomasMiranda Thorpe

Melissa Underhill

HONORARY BOARD MEMBERSDon Gerend

Council Member, City of Sammamish

Skip RowleyChairman, Rowley Properties

Nancy WhittenFormer Council Member, City of

Sammamish

PERSONNEL

Kathryn Boudreau, Ensemble Coordinator

Armand Binkhuysen, Grants

Adam Stern and Marla Zylstra, Concert Program

Haley Schaening, Librarian

Barbara Ethington, Logistics

Loryn Bortins, Personnel

GFCW Cascade Lobby Management

Renee Kuehn, Ticket Sales

Jayne Marquess, Logistics

Lynne Martinell, Member Communications Liaison

Barbara Ethington, PR & Marketing

Mark Wiseman, Webmaster

Phillip Chance, Sound Recording

Welcome to the 2018-19 season of the Sammamish Symphony, in which we celebrate the finest symphonic music

at every concert — whether light or serious, absolute or programmatic, familiar to you or a potential new musical friend.

The backbone of any orchestra’s repertoire is the symphony, a form brought to perfection by Haydn and Mozart and continually explored, adapted, reconstituted, and rethought by countless composers ever since. We will be playing three of the finest examples in this genre, by three composers determined to bespeak the language, customs, and spirit of their respective countries in music: the Symphony No. 8 by Antonín Dvořák, the Symphony No. 2 (“A London Symphony”) by

Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the Symphony No. 2 by Jean Sibelius. There will also be opportunities to hear a handful of first-rate local soloists in assorted virtuoso works by Brahms, Weber, Debussy and others, as well as relative rarities by Samuel Barber, Richard Strauss, and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose overture to The Impresario isn’t heard nearly often enough.

We appreciate your continued support and patronage, and are confident that our offerings will please, intrigue, and give cause for rejoicing at the perpetual miracles that are music and music-making.

With warm regards,Adam Stern Music Director and Conductor, Sammamish Symphony Orchestra

ADAM STERN, Music Director and Conductor of the Sammamish Symphony, is one of the region’s busiest musicians. Since arriving in Seattle in 1992, he has been active as a conductor, composer, pianist, educator and lecturer. He has been leading the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra since 2003, during which tenure he has brought numerous world, U.S., West Coast and Northwest premieres to the Puget Sound community. Stern’s unique programming combines beloved masterworks with must-hear rarities; his programs are not merely concerts, but true musical events.

Stern was born in Hollywood in 1955. He began his musical studies at age five as a piano student, and began flute lessons two years later. At 15, Stern was accepted at California Institute of the Arts, where he initially majored in flute performance, but changed his major to conducting in his second year at the urging of the late Gerhard Samuel, a noted conductor and educator. Stern was graduated in 1977 with an MFA in conducting at 21, the youngest Masters degree recipient in CalArts’ history.

From 1996 until 2001, Stern was the Associate Conductor of the Seattle Symphony (after having served as Assistant Conductor from 1992-96). He led numerous concerts in all of the orchestra’s series, including the orchestra’s first performances of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 3 and Elgar’s Symphony No. 2. In addition, he led many “pops” concerts and was the happy collaborator of such artists as James Taylor, Art Garfunkel, Judy Collins and Frank Sinatra, Jr.

ADAM STERN

3

Orchestra MembersFIRST VIOLINJanet Utterback-Peck Guest ConcertmasterTim Strait Associate ConcertmasterDarrin CookKristin EdlundAndrew HuangSarah LintakoonLynne MartinellHeather RaschkoHaley SchaeningKolleen Uppinghouse

SECOND VIOLINShelby Eaton PrincipalMeMe BirchfieldAlan BleischBarbara EthingtonMatthew Guenther (On Leave)Elizabeth HeitkampPaula LibesFran PopeMiranda ThorpeYu Wang

VIOLADennis Helppie PrincipalKathryn BoudreauDan Pope

VIOLA (CONTINUED) Loraine TerpeningBarb ThorneZann Tipyasothi

CELLOShiang-Yin Lee PrincipalJuha Niemisto Assistant PrincipalLoryn Bortins (On Leave)Hannah CherninAndy HillBrendan KelloggMichelle Miller (On Leave)Gail RatleyJoyce SanfordJoan SelvigKathleen SpitzerSandra Sultan

BASSJarod Tanneberg PrincipalJeremy AtkinsNatalie Schlichtmann

FLUTEMelissa Underhill PrincipalTori BerntsenElana Sabovic-Matt

PICCOLOElana Sabovic-Matt

OBOESusan Jacoby PrincipalJim Kobe

ENGLISH HORNDennis Calvin

CLARINETJayne Marquess PrincipalKathy Carr

Eb CLARINETLinda Thomas

BASS CLARINETGreg Rasa

BASSOONBruce Carpenter Principal FRENCH HORNEvelyn Zeller PrincipalDan CherninNels Magelssen

TRUMPETAbram Sanderson PrincipalMichael CroanKevin Slota

TROMBONEJohn Ochsenreiter PrincipalRob Birkner

BASS TROMBONEYuki Inoue

TUBAMark Wiseman (On Leave) PrincipalFrancis Langlois

TIMPANIEric Daane Principal

PERCUSSIONJenna Schroeter

HARPBethany Man Principal

Section members are listed in

alphabetical order.

William Blayney, clarinetWilliam Blayney is highly regarded as a soloist, clinician, and clarinet pedagogue. Mr. Blayney is Principal Clarinet of the Seattle Philharmonic and performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with them at Benaroya Hall in 2016. In July, 2018 he played John Williams’ Victor’s Tale at the International Clarinet Association’s Clarinetfest in Ostend, Belgium. In 2013, Mr. Blayney and Robert Dilutis opened the ICA Clarinetfest in Asissi Italy, with a performance of Ponchielli’s Il Covegno with the Police Band of Rome. In a Kennedy Center performance the Washington Post praised the “expert performances of Debussy’s Rhapsodie and Brahms’ Sonata by clarinetist William Blayney.”

4

“Voted Evening Magazine’s Best of Western WA!”

www.hkbviolins.com 425 822-0717

Third Generation Violin Maker

Sales Appraisals Repairs Rentals

The Sammamish Symphony would like to thank

Gordon Brown and the

Gordon Brown Foundation

for the generous contribution for music to build the Symphony’s library. Gordon has been an

active member and contrabassoon player with the symphony for many years.

Cascade Woman’s Club Living the Volunteer Spirit

The GFWC Cascade Woman's Club is a non-profit charitable organization bringing together women from surrounding areas to promote community service and welfare locally, regionally and internationally. Anyone interested in learning more and contacting us visit our website at: gfwccascadeclub.weebly.com

Start with a smile at smile.amazon.com/ch/91-1643025 when you buy

through Amazon, and Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of your eligible purchases to

the Sammamish Symphony Orchestra.

Are you interested in playing with us?

The Sammamish Symphony Orchestra is composed of adult volunteer musicians dedicated to

performing concerts and maintaining outreach programs serving Eastside communities.

Rehearsals: Thursdays 7:15-9:45 p.m. at Eastlake High School

auditions@sammamishsymphony.org

Samuel Barber

5

whenever it’s scheduled. Too, his lyrical orchestral song-cycle Knoxville: Summer of 1915 has been gaining in popularity amongst listeners, some of whom are not usually known for their kindly dispositions towards 20th-century vocal music.

The Commando March is a product of Barber’s stint in the Army Air Forces. He was 32 years old when he was drafted in 1942, and composed this march within a year of his military attachment, in the hopes that the piece would be of use to American military bands wherever they happened to be stationed and performing. An optimistic, forward-thrusting main theme alternates with some almost comically sinister episodes and several built-in fanfares, and the work concludes — as one would rightfully hope — in a blaze of triumph.

~

For this opening concert of the Sammamish Symphony, we present compositions in three of the most time-honored musical genres — march, concerto, and symphony — by composers who breathed new life into these forms courtesy of their considerable skills, inventiveness, and genius.

~

Program Notes“The Interrelation Between

Nature and Life”: Dvořák’s Eighth

by Adam Stern

Samuel Barber

Carl Maria von Weber

While not quite at the modest level of familiarity to audiences as Barber, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)

Up until fairly recently, Samuel Barber (1910-1981) was essentially an example of the “one-work man” in classical music, a composer who, despite his prolificacy and effectiveness in virtually all musical forms (symphonies, concertos, chamber music, music for solo piano, songs, operas) was known almost exclusively for one work, the searingly beautiful Adagio for Strings. (A list of other “one-work men” might include such diverse creators as Paul Dukas, Gustav Holst and Ferde Grofé.) This has changed somewhat over the last few decades, during which his Violin Concerto has easily become the most-performed and -recorded concerto for the instrument by an American composer, and a piece welcomed by concert audiences

Samuel Barber

6

professionally. It was once said of Dvořák that his only major flaw was his childish petulance when he lost at cards (he would fling a losing hand across the room, said one source); not bad for a practitioner in a field that has yielded some notoriously prickly personalities (Wagner, anyone?).

His Symphony No. 8 (1889), the centerpiece in his great trilogy of final symphonies (No. 7 in D minor on one side and the “New World” in E minor on the other), is a radiant work, bathed in sunshine; the few dark clouds that occasionally hover over it are inevitably cast aside by music of infectious high spirits. Even the G-minor openings of movements I and III seem wistful rather than all-out tragic, and soon thereafter give way to the symphony’s overriding G-major tonality. The finale is arguably the best in any of Dvořák’s symphonies, a theme-and-variations that goes off on a few tangents before returning to the main theme yet again.

A “hit” at its premiere, the Eighth has always been one of the most oft-performed symphonies of the Romantic period. Dvořák himself led its first several performances; the great German conductor Hans Richter was the first to direct it other than the composer. Immediately following the concert he wrote to Dvořák: “You would have been very pleased by this performance. We all felt that it is a great work, therefore we all were enthusiastic.”

is nonetheless known by only a small clutch of his several hundred compositions. His opera Der Freischütz will always be in the repertoire; its fine overture and a few others (Oberon, Euryanthe) are often programmed at symphony concerts; the piano fantasy Invitation to the Dance, as usually heard in its splashy orchestration by Hector Berlioz, is a longtime symphonic “pops” favorite. Himself a splendid pianist, Weber was more than qualified to write works of a virtuoso bent, and not only for his own instrument: various solo works for clarinet, bassoon and horn feature in his output along with two concertos, and the Konzertstück, for piano and orchestra.

Weber is one of three major composers (Mozart and Brahms are the others) to be so bewitched by a clarinet virtuoso that they rewarded their artistry with several major pieces for the instrument. For Heinrich Bärmann, Weber wrote two concertos, a concertino, and a quintet with strings, thus enriching the repertoire and securing the gratitude of clarinetists for all time. The Concerto No. 1 in f, heard at this performance, was premiered by Bärmann in 1811, the year of its composition. Weber’s concertos, while not as well known today, were considered quite influential in their time; Felix Mendelssohn may well have used this concerto as a model when he wrote his two most famous concertos — for piano in G minor and violin in E minor  — which also feature alternately moody and stormy first movements in a minor key, a middle movement of notable poetry and tranquility, and a rollicking finale that dispels the prior atmosphere of gloom.

~“Disliking exaggerated humility, and despite the fact that I have made some strides in the great musical world, I remain what I always was: a simple Czech musician.”

For all of Antonín Dvořák’s (1841-1904) frequent assertions that he was “a simple Czech musician”, there was nothing simplistic about his compositions. One can certainly attest to their emotional directness, but their workmanship and enduring qualities reveal a musician of uncommon sophistication and prowess. Outwardly, his gentle nature and kind ways endeared him to a great many people; Brahms and Tchaikovsky, antipodal towards each other’s music, both adored Dvořák personally and

Program Notes

Antonín Dvořák

7

Program Notes

The title page of Dvořák's manuscript score to the Symphony No. 8.

8

sammamish symphony orchestraadam stern – music director & conductor

Sammamish Bellevue

christmas in

FRIDAY, DEC 7Meydenbauer TheatreBellevue7:30 PM

SUNDAY, DEC 2Eastlake High School

Sammamish2:00 PM

FEATURINGTraditional holiday music,

some favorite symphonic bonbons and a few surprises!

Special Guests The Liberty Singers

Liberty High SchoolRobin Wood, Choral Director

TICKETS & INFORMATIONSammamishSymphony.org

and

9

ContributorsIn addition to the following donors we gratefully acknowledge those individuals and families who purchased

donated goods and services at our Sammamish Symphony Auctions.

PATRONS ($1,000+)

AnonymousSandy Anuras

The Boeing CompanyThe Charles Maxfield and

Gloria F. Parrish FoundationAndrew Coldham

ExpediaMr. and Mrs. Martin Friedmann

Garneau-Nicon Family Foundation

Gordon Brown FoundationAllyn & Pat Hebner

Ruth & Preben Hoegh-Christensen

King County 4CultureKing County Employee Giving

ProgramKevin & Lynne MartinellMicrosoft Corporation

Skip RowleyRowley Properties

City of SammamishHarry & Claradell Shedd

Tim StraitSwedish Hopital

SymetraUniversity House

Mark & Linda WisemanPatty Zundel

BENEFACTORS ($500-999)

Benevity Community Impact Fund

Henry Bischofberger ViolinsShelby EatonCathy GrindleScott Selfon

Dan & Melissa TruaxDavid E. Van Moorhem

SPONSORS ($100-499)

Pete & Andie AdeeArtEAST

Patricia BiceArmand & Claudia Binkhuysen

Verna BorupAva Brock

Daniel & Jan Chernin

Eric & Pat DaaneDon & Sue Gerend

GlassyBabyTodd Gugler

Dennis HelppieRon Hindenberger

Nancy & Paul JohnsonJim Kobe

Shrikant KulkarniShannon Krzyzewski

Victoria LaBergeHelen LauPaula Libes

Nels H. Magelssen & Evelyn M. Zeller

Ted & Lenore MartinellJoan McNeil

John & Sally MorganJuha Niemisto

Thomas Pinto & Vicky KingFran & Dan Pope

Heather & Michael RaschkoGail RatleyMark Rentz

Daphne & John RobinsonJohn & Ruth Rugh

Carl Schwartz & Wilda Luttermoser

The Seattle Foundation’s GiveBIGLinda M S Thomas

Miranda & Dave ThorpeHerman & Myrl Venter

VerizonDebra Williams

SUPPORTERS ($25-99)

Ann & John BackmanTheresa Bosworth

Kathy CarrCindy Jorgensen

Ann KalasDonna Mansfield

Donna Onat in Memory of Ruth & PrebenKimberly Russ

David & Penny ShortKathryn Vaux

SPONSORS ($100-499)Continued

PATRONS ($100-499)Continued

SPONSORS ($100-499)Continued

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FAC I L I T I E SMeydenbauer CenterEastlake High School

R E H E A R S A L S PAC E Eastlake High SchoolDiscovery Elementary

Sammamish Presbyterian Church

LO B BY S E R V I C E SGFCW Cascade

R E F R E S H M E N T S Safeway/Costco

Klahanie QFC/Pine Lake QFC

P E R C U S S I O N E Q U I P M E N TMarianna Vale

Beaver Lake Middle SchoolEric Daane and Craig Wende

R E CO R D I N G E N G I N E E RPhillip Chance

Many people have worked together to make our community orchestra possible. They have given of their time, talent and energy. Thank you!

The Sammamish Symphony Orchestra Association (SSOA) is a Non-Profit Corporation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service. For further information, contact the SSOA:

P.O. Box 1173, Issaquah, WA 98027You can now donate via Paypal on our website at www.sammamishsymphony.org.

10

For more information please visit www.SammamishSymphony.org

Sponsors

The Sammamish Symphony Orchestra would like to thank the City of Sammamishfor their support

Bryce Van ParysGeneral Manager

425.392.3963 | Bryce@HammondAshley.com970 5th Ave NW, Suite 100, Issaquah WA 98027

The Sammamish Symphony Orchestra is grateful for the generous support of the

Garneau-Nicon Family Foundation.