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nov 15-17
Momentum
Venue: Overture Hall
Friday, Nov, 15, 2024
7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024
7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024
2:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15-$104
We begin with Michael Stern making his MSO debut as guest conductor leading Jonathan Leshnoff’s Rush for Orchestra, a driving and exciting work that builds a tremendous amount of energy throughout. Garrick Ohlsson, an audience and orchestra favorite, makes his eighth appearance with us performing Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto, a romantic masterpiece infused with the spirit of his Norwegian homeland. Dmitri Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No. 5, which he humbly described as “the practical answer of a Soviet artist to justified criticism” in a subtle and bitter reaction to the Russia of Joseph Stalin, brings this concert to a close.
Michael Stern, Guest Conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, Piano
music
Jonathan Leshnoff, Rush for Orchestra*
Edvard Grieg, Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47
*MSO Premiere
Stern is a dynamic force on the podium, conducting with exaggerated gestures and forceful mannerisms, truly exerting all his energy during the performance. – The Atlanta Journal
I was moved to tears by the end of the performance! So beautiful. – MSO Patron
Garrick Ohlsson’s subtle expressive touch . . . spellbinding! – MSO Patron
Garrick Ohlsson’s mastery could only be described as “sublime.” – MSO Patron
Meet the Artists
Michael Stern, Guest Conductor
Gerrick Ohlsson, Piano
Jonathan Leshnoff, Composer
Presenting Sponsor
Myrna Larson
Major Sponsors
Irving and Dorothy Levy Family Foundation, Inc.
Stephen D. Morton
Fred Mohs, in memory of Mary Mohs
Additional Sponsors
Ronald J. and Janet E. Johnson
Kenneth A. Lattman Foundation, Inc.
with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts
Conductor Michael Stern has long been devoted to building and leading highly acclaimed orchestras known not only for their impeccable musicianship and creative programming, but also for collaborative, sustainable cultures that often include a vision of music as service to the community. He also is passionate about working with young musicians not only in music making, but also to incorporate the idea of “service” into their experiences as they become the artists and advocates of the future who will take classical music into the 21st century and beyond.
Stern currently holds three Music Director positions: with the Kansas City Symphony, where he will be concluding his 19-year tenure at the end of the 2023-2024 season; with the National Repertory Orchestra, a summer music festival in Breckenridge, CO which, for over 60 years, has provided an intensive, unique fellowship program for aspiring young musicians, and whose alumni populate every major orchestra across the United States; and with the newly rebranded Orchestra Lumos (formerly the Stamford Symphony). Stern was recently named Artistic Advisor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, one of Canada’s foremost orchestral ensembles. And, following a 22-year tenure as founding Artistic Director of Iris Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee, he now serves the newly reimagined Iris Collective as Artistic Advisor.
During Stern’s tenure with the Kansas City Symphony, he and the orchestra have been recognized for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational development, stability, and extraordinary audience growth. Under Stern’s leadership, the orchestra explored a wide range of repertoire and commissioned a number of new works. Stern and the KC Symphony also partnered with GRAMMY® Award-winning Reference Recordings for a collection of very well-received CDs that includes commissions by American composer Adam Schoenberg and by Jonathan Leshnoff, whose Symphony No. 3, inspired by World War I soldiers’ letters home, was premiered by the KC Symphony at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. The orchestra’s Reference Recordings releases also include Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”; a pairing of music Elgar and Vaughan Williams; “Miraculous Metamorphoses,” with music by Hindemith, Prokofiev and Bartók; and a disc of works by Saint-Saëns. In 2021, Stern and the orchestra put out another widely praised recording, bringing together three one-movement symphonies by Sibelius, Barber, and Scriabin.
Stern co-founded Iris Orchestra in 2000 and was Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor until 2021-22, when he had planned to step down from his post. With his departure, staff, community and musicians joined together to reinvent the orchestra as the Iris Collective, devising a new way for a 21st-century organization to offer a spectrum of events, from chamber music and smaller ensemble programs to full orchestral performances, while also prioritizing a variety of community engagement initiatives. This new model of the Iris Collective is built on the strong foundation created during Stern’s 22-year tenure, when the orchestra was widely praised for its musical virtuosity; programming that included acclaimed new commissions by American composers; a flexible, non-hierarchical structure; and the active partnership of its musicians. The Iris Collective will team up with a number of creative partners, including Stern, who will also continue his involvement as Artistic Advisor.
As part of his ongoing activities to engage and mentor young musicians, he was asked by Yo-Yo Ma to be the Music Director of YMCG, Youth Music Culture Guangdong, where he and Ma worked with students and young professionals in partnership with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. He has also been invited to the National Orchestral Institute, Music Academy of the West, and has been a regular guest at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he also worked with students at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen.
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Stern’s illustrious American conducting engagements have included the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood; the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia; the Atlanta Symphony; and the Minnesota Orchestra. He debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1986 in a program titled, “Leonard Bernstein and Three Young America Conductors.” He conducted the New York Philharmonic again in 2001, at several NY Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks and at PNC Bank Performing Arts Center with Audra McDonald; in 2018, he conducted the film score to The Red Violin at David Geffen Hall with soloist Joshua Bell. Stern has served as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra for performances at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ravinia, the Napa Valley Festival del Sole and at the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition in China.
Internationally, he has led major orchestras in London, Stockholm, Paris, Helsinki, Budapest, Israel, and Moscow, Taiwan, and Tokyo. Stern has been Chief Conductor of Germany’s Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (the first American chief conductor in the orchestra’s history), Principal* Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille, France.
Stern received his music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his primary teacher was the noted conductor and scholar Max Rudolf. Stern co-edited the third edition of Rudolf’s famous textbook, The Grammar of Conducting, and a collection of Rudolf’s writing, A Musical Life: Writings and Letters (Dimension & Diversity). Stern is a 1981 graduate of Harvard University, where he earned a degree in American history. In addition to Rudolf, he counts Leonard Bernstein, David Zinman and Charles Bruck among those who have been a major influence on his musical life.
Michael Stern lives in Connecticut with his two teenage daughters.
Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, the most recent being “Oceans Apart” by Justin Dello Joio commissioned for him by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and now available on Bridge Recordings. Also just released on Reference Recordings is the complete Beethoven concerti with Sir Donald Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.
A frequent guest with the orchestras in New Zealand and Australia, Mr. Ohlsson returned for a nine-city recital tour across Australia in June 2023 and will open the Nashville Symphony’s season in September, followed during the season by appearances with orchestras in Atlanta, Sarasota, Rhode Island, Singapore, Prague, Warsaw, Lyon and Oxford (UK). With recital programs including works from Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin to Brahms and Scriabin he can be heard in New York, Seattle, Baltimore, Prague, Katowice, Krakow and Wrocław.
An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo and Takacs string quartets. His recording with latter of the Amy Beach and Elgar quintets released by Hyperion in June 2020 received great press attention. Passionate about singing and singers, Mr. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś.
Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion and Virgin Classics labels. His ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a GRAMMY® for Vol. 3. His recording of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3, with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano, was released in 2011. In the fall of 2008 the English label Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the Complete Works of Chopin followed in 2010 by all the Brahms piano variations, “Goyescas” by Enrique Granados, and music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Most recently on that label are Scriabin’s Complete Poèmes, Smetana Czech Dances, and ètudes by Debussy, Bartok and Prokofiev. The latest CDs in his ongoing association with Bridge Records are the Complete Scriabin Sonatas, “Close Connections,” a recital of 20th-Century pieces, and two CDs of works by Liszt. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Mr. Ohlsson was featured in a documentary “The Art of Chopin” co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations. Most recently, both Brahms concerti and Tchaikovsky’s second piano concerto were released on live performance recordings with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies on their own recording labels, and Mr. Ohlsson was featured on Dvorak’s piano concerto in the Czech Philharmonic’s recordings of the composer’s complete symphonies & concertos, released July of 2014 on the Decca label.
A native of White Plains, N.Y., Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School, in New York City. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal (and remains the single American to have done so), that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Since then he has made nearly a dozen tours of Poland, where he retains immense personal popularity. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI. He is the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music, and in August 2018 the Polish Deputy Culture Minister awarded him with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit. He is a Steinway Artist and makes his home in San Francisco.
Distinguished by The New York Times as “a leader of contemporary American lyricism,” GRAMMY-nominated composer Jonathan Leshnoff is renowned for his music’s striking harmonies, structural complexity, and powerful themes. The Baltimore-based composer has been ranked among the most performed living composers in recent seasons with performances by over 100 orchestras. He has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, and Pittsburgh, among others. Leshnoff’s compositions have also been premiered by classical music’s most celebrated soloists, including Gil Shaham, Johannes Moser, Manuel Barrueco, Noah Bendix-Balgley and Joyce Yang.
Highlights for the 2023-24 season include a premiere of a Violin Sonata written for Gil Shaham and Robert Spano at the Aspen Music Festival. In May, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Choir will premiere Leshnoff’s new hour-long oratorio, The Sacrifice of Isaac. Joyce Yang performs Leshnoff’s Piano Concerto twice this season, once with the Alabama Symphony, under the baton of Carlos Izcaray, and then with the Knoxville Symphony, under the baton of Aram Demirjian. Leshnoff’s fifth oratorio, Saul, will be premiered with the Harrisburg Symphony under the direction of Stuart Malina this April. A new duo for two violins and orchestra will be premiered by the Fargo Moorhead Symphony under the baton of Alexander Zimmerman and his Double Concerto for Two Percussionists and Orchestra has performances with the Baylor University Symphony, under the baton of Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and the University of Michigan School of Music Orchestra, under the baton of Kenneth Kiesler. JoAnn Falletta conducts Leshnoff’s Symphony No. 4 with the National Repertory Orchestra in the summer of 2023.
There are nine all-Leshnoff albums to date. Leshnoff’s Symphony No. 4, “Heichalos” with the Violins of Hope, recorded by the Nashville Symphony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and released by Naxos, was nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY for Best Classical Compendium. Last year, Naxos also released the world première recording of Leshnoff’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic conducted by Alexander Mickelthwate. Also on that album was “Of Thee I Sing,” commissioned by the Oklahoma City Philharmonic to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing. In the fall of 2020, Reference Recordings released a highly acclaimed all-Leshnoff album featuring world premiere recordings of his Piano Concerto and his Symphony No. 3 commemorating World War I. Earlier in 2020, Reference Recordings released an extensively reviewed album by the Pittsburgh Symphony and conductor Manfred Honeck featuring the world premiere performance of Leshnoff’s Double Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon, which made it to the top of the Billboard charts. Other notable releases include a 2016 recording of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performing Leshnoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Zohar oratorio, and three earlier all-Leshnoff albums—of both his orchestral and chamber music works—on the Naxos American Classics label. A album featuring all of his string quartets was also released in August 2020.
Celebrated by BBC Music Magazine as “enchanting” and by American Record Guide as “lyrical, virtuosic, tender, and passionate all at once,” Leshnoff’s music has been lauded by Strings Magazine as “distinct from anything else that’s out there” and by The Baltimore Sun as “remarkably assured, cohesively constructed and radiantly lyrical.” Leshnoff’s catalog is vast, including several symphonies, oratorios, concerti, and solo / chamber music works. Leshnoff is a Professor of Music at Towson University.