UNIVERSITY SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
PRESENTS
SLAVIC SPRING
Timothy Perry, Conductor
Heather Worden, Assistant Conductor
Sunday, May 2, 2010
7:30 p.m.
Osterhout Concert Theater
The Binghamton University Department of Music presents the
University Symphony Orchestra
Dr. Timothy Perry, Director
Heather Worden, Assistant Conductor
Slavic Spring
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
7:30 p.m.
Osterhout Concert Theater
Anderson Center for the Arts
Program
Overture to The Bartered Bride (1863) ...................................... Bedrich Smetana
(1824-1884)
Symphonic Poem No. 3 "Les Preludes" (1850) .................................... Franz Liszt
(1811-1886)
Heather Worden, Conductor
intermission – ten minutes
Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Op. 60 (1880) ................................ Antonin Dvorak
I. Allegro non tanto
(1841-1904)
II. Adagio
III. Scherzo (Furiant): Presto
Trio – poco meno mosso
IV. Finale: Allegro con spirito
Thank You for attending today's concert in support of our student-musicians!
Please join us next year for another season of outstanding music
Note that we will be performing Saturday afternoons
Saturday October 16, 2:00 P.M. Children's Concert "All Creatures"
Saturday, December 4, 3:00 P.M.: All-American Program
Saturday, February 26, 3:00 P.M. Heather Worden Thesis Concert
Saturday, May 1, 3:00 P.M (with University Chorus & Soloists)
Choral Masterworks: Roman Maciejewski: Requiem: Poulenc Gloria
About the Music
Notes from the Conductors
History records no more seminal figure in the musical development
of Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) than Bedrich Smetana:
Organizer of his country's first music school (1848); Conductor of a
prominent national chorus; Founder/director of the National School of
Drama; Respected music critic; and, not least, Composer of a nationalistic
music tradition that survives to this day through his opera The Bartered Bride
and the set of tone poems Ma Vlast (My Country).
This effervescent and wildly popular overture to his second opera,
The Bartered Bride, was the composer's answer to criticism to his first, The
Brandenbergers in Bohemia. The composer, stung by criticism that Czechs
"were simply reproductive artists", resolved to show his compositional talents
in an entirely different stylistic vein.
"I did not compose it from any ambitious desire, but rather as a scornful defiance,
for they accused me after my first opera of being a Wagnerite, someone who could do
nothing in a light and popular style."
The Bartered Bride went through several versions on its voyage from
a play with music to a fully developed opera. In contrast to normal procedure
the overture was composed in 1863, before the rest of the opera. The work is
justly famous for its tremendous energy, recalling in its headlong motor
rhythms Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is among
the most challenging opera overtures for the orchestra, requiring a high level
of rhythmic accuracy and sensitivity to rapidly shifting textures. There are
two fugal passages which presage the comic machinations of the opera's
characters while the lyric themes frequently employ shifts of rhythmic accent
in the style of the various Bohemian folk dances that make up a large and
colorful part of the opera's final score. (T.P.)
The Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) is remembered by
many as a virtuosic pianist who forever changed the practice of piano
playing. For orchestral players, he is celebrated as the composer that created
the symphonic (tone) poem; a single movement work that is based on another
artistic work, like a novel, painting or poem. While it was created by
expanding upon the opera overture, the genre varies in that it has no specific
form; there are no rules on how to write a tone poem. Liszt loved the freedom
that this brought him while composing. He no longer had to worry about
where the development occurred or if he modulated (changed harmony) at
the wrong time. This form quickly grew in popularity and many are regularly
featured in orchestral concerts. Liszt alone wrote thirteen, with the most
famous being his third, Les Preludes, which you will hear tonight.
It is easy to misinterpret the meaning behind Franz Liszt’s
symphonic poem Les Preludes (1854) just by looking at the title. Many
would assume it to be an introduction to another larger work or perhaps the
beginning of a collection. In this case, it is neither. Les Preludes is a poem
from the collection, Nouvelles méditations poétiques, written by the French
poet Alphonse de Lamartine. This lengthy and dense poem is a description of
life which proceeds inevitable death. Liszt put this preface, taken from the
poem in the original score of the piece.
“What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown Hymn, the first and
solemn note of which is intoned by Death? Love is the glowing dawn of all existence;
but what is the fate where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some
storm...”
Although the piece as we know it now is based upon the Lamartine
poem, it started as a piece of choral incidental music which was based upon
four elements: the stars, earth, wind and water (or floods). This original
composition was abandoned after the draft was written but then returned to
when Liszt decided the themes would fit nicely with the poem from
Lamartine. The most recognizable of the themes are the storm/wind (the
storminess of life) and the earth (Spring & love) sections of the work.
Beginning in the middle is the storm, which begins with a low, brooding
passage in the cello section. By using ascending and descending chromatic
lines, Liszt creates the feeling of a storm on the ocean, tossing us back and
forth. The earth, a pastorale, is the calm after the storm. Sparsely scored, this
section features solo French Horn, Oboe and Clarinet players over static
string parts. While listening you can almost see the green countryside. The
piece ends with victory, whether that be victory over life or victory over
death we do not know, but it ends with a triumphant full orchestra. (H.W.)
Anyone experiencing confusion about Antonin Dvorak's magnificent
Symphony in D Major can readily be excused, for since its premiere this
work has been known variously as Dvorak's First, Fifth and Sixth Symphony.
The composer wrote the work in 1880 just before his fortieth birthday, a
period in which he was fast becoming a star in the firmament of Central
European composers. In 1879 Johannes Brahms, who had become an
enthusiastic advocate for Dvorak, accompanied the Bohemian master to the
triumphant premiere of his Third Slavonic Rhapsody with the Vienna
Philharmonic. The orchestra's influential conductor, Hans Richter,
immediately asked Dvorak for a symphony to play in the succeeding season.
By the end of the summer of 1880 the work was ready to play for Brahms
and Richter, and both men were enthusiastic about the work's quality and
prospects. Then came nothing. Back in Prague, Dvorak waited in vain for the
Vienna orchestra to present the premiere. Richter wrote apologies and
excuses, but could not bring himself to admit that the Viennese had revolted,
refusing to play works by an 'unknown foreign composer' in two succeeding
seasons. The premiere thus took place in Prague in March 1881, and Richter
led a highly successful performance in London in 1882. The haughty Vienna
Philharmonic, astonishingly, did not perform the work until 1942.
The symphony, though not widely performed, is justly styled one of
Dvorak's four 'masterwork' symphonies. In it the composer successfully
synthesizes the influences of Beethoven and Brahms with native Bohemian
folk styles, and just a hint of Wagnerism. Wagner had conducted in Prague in
1863 (with Dvorak playing in the viola section) and Dvorak, impressed, had
applied for a grant to study with Liszt in Weimar. Interestingly – and
fortunately - his failure to get that grant probably helped Dvorak maintain his
independent style apart from the wave of undistinguished Wagner/Liszt
clones. Instead, his 'break' came in the form of a stipend awarded in 1874 by
a jury that included the aforementioned Johannes Brahms. From that point to
the end of his life the German titan proved a friend and mentor as well as a
selfless editor and influence on Dvorak's works (there are many startling
aural parallels to Brahms' Second Symphony from 1877). The award likewise
brought Dvorak to the attention of Smetana, who began to program and
conduct the younger master's works throughout Prague, quickly enhancing
his international reputation.
The D major Symphony is rich in every respect - melody, harmony,
invention, orchestration, and Bohemian color. Its themes derive from the
opening interval of the rising fourth heard in the celli /bass and answered in
the woodwinds. Each of Dvorak's mature symphonies treat the wind choir as
an equal partner to the strings, and no other composer of the era writes more
beautifully and graciously for woodwinds and horns. Formally the work,
being intended for the conservative Viennese, is unremarkable; like Brahms
and Bruckner, Dvorak employs three themes in his sonata expositions, while
his developmental techniques are very much in the tradition of Beethoven.
The second movement song-rondo, dominated by woodwinds, contains some
of the most tender and wistful moments in any symphony. Here the interval
of a fourth is altered slightly to produce a theme (introduced by the violins)
built upon softly cascading thirds. By contrast, the intervening sections are
more powerful, serious and tonally unstable. In the end, however, calm and
pastoral beauty prevails. In the third movement, one of Dvorak's signature
furiants, the boisterous full orchestra palette returns. The furiant is a
Bohemian dance staple that alternates three groups of two beats with two
groups of three beats. Dvorak handles these shifting rhythms with utter
confidence and ease, making a complex system sound completely organic.
The thematic intervals have further contracted to a second, giving an urgent
drive to the music. The middle of the scherzo comprises a lovely trio,
featuring the only bars for the birdlike piccolo. This bucolic respite evolves
into a sweeping concert-waltz before transitioning once more into the raucous
furiant. The fourth-movement finale is again a large sonata form, opening
quietly (again outlining the fourth interval) before stating the theme in full
tutti. The second subject in woodwind triplets brings back to mind folk
ensembles, and, led by the brass, the exposition closes in a hymn-like fanfare
that recapitulates the first subject. After an interesting and artful (but
otherwise conventional) development and recapitulation, a skittering presto
fugato in the coda (reminiscent of the Smetana overture's perpetuum mobile)
comments again upon the first theme. The orchestra rises through a second
development section culminating in a second grand fanfare and a glorious
final plagal ('amen') cadence. (T. P.)
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
TIMOTHY PERRY, conductor and clarinetist, is Professor of Music and
currently Chair of the Department of Music for Binghamton University. A graduate
of the Manhattan and Yale Schools of Music, Dr. Perry joined the Binghamton
University faculty in 1986, becoming Professor of Music in 2002, and receiving the
Chancellor’s Award for Creative Activities in 2005. As Music Director, Dr. Perry
has directed the University Orchestra (since 1986), directed the University Wind
Ensemble 1986-2005, and led the Binghamton Community Orchestra from 19942004. Widely known as a clarinetist in virtuoso solo and chamber music, he toured
Latin America and the Caribbean as a United States Musical Ambassador and has
presented recitals at three world conferences of the International Clarinet
Association. In Summer/Fall 2009 Dr. Perry served as Music Director in Binghamton
and Santiago, Chile for a production of the Brecht/Weill Three-Penny Opera and led
the Binghamton University Orchestra in a gala October 2009 program with the Paul
Taylor Dance Company. In addition to his duties as Chair, he currently serves as
New York representative to the National Association of Music Executives of State
Universities (NAMESU), and was past President of the Northeast Division of the
College Orchestra Directors’ Association (CODA).
Assistant Conductor, HEATHER WORDEN, a native of Trumansburg, NY,
graduated from Houghton College in May 2008 with a Bachelor of Music degree in
Music Education. Throughout her time at Houghton she served as Chaplain and
President of the Houghton chapter of CMENC (Collegiate Music Educators National
Conference) and a Province Representative on the statewide board of CMENC. She
is still an active member of the organization. Heather has studied conducting with
Dr. B. Jean Reigles, Dr. Brandon Johnson, Mr. Kenneth Brown, Dr. Gregory Magie,
and Dr. Brian Casey. She has had the privilege of conducting premiere works for the
composer Robert Summers Potterton III, as well as the Frontier High School Wind
Ensemble, the Houghton College Symphonic Winds and the Houghton College
Philharmonia.
Since coming to Binghamton, she has been studying with Dr.
Timothy Perry and is the conductor of the University String Orchestra, a new
ensemble formed this year. She also has joined the Binghamton chapter of Mu Phi
Epsilon, the professional music fraternity. After Binghamton, Heather hopes to
pursue a Doctorate degree and teach at the collegiate level.
University Symphony Orchestra
Timothy Perry, Director
Flute/Piccolo*
Percussion/
Timpani
Viola
Melanie Adler*
Natalie McCreary
Amanda Jacobs
Kevin Christie
Lee Vilinsky
Patrick Hewitt
Mike Longo
Shane Thorn
Oboe
John Lathwell 
Maxim Pekarskiy
William Grandin
Keyboard
Julia Cenzoprano
Alexandra Spadaro
Janet Ievins
Adam Davis
Violin I
Violoncello
Jacqueline Odgis
Ella Serrano
Sangyun Bang
James Wu
Erin Chang
Stephanie Radzik
Matthew Hassel
Jaime MinJeong Jeon
Jennifer Chen
Chris Rogers
Zeno Pittarelli
Bassoon
Richard Law
Eric Wuu
Daniel Bessel
Xiang He
Jin Woo Lee
Paige Elliott
Sara Sunshine
Raeleen Bichler
Imji Choi
Alan Wang
Valerie Hammel
Clarinet
French Horn
Emily Wong
Alexa Weinberg
Gregory Gerald Greene
Contrabass
Diana Amari
Nicole Boucicaut
Rudolf Koegl
Kirstie Cummings
Jane Evans
Stephen Brooks
Robert Muller
Victoria Cheung
Gabriel Felix
Zack Arenstein
Wesley Ha
Christopher Zavala
Trumpet
Violin II
Daniel Fein
Solomon Dawson
Assistant
Conductor
Ryan Levitan
Amy Su
Heather Worden
Ga Eun Kim
Trombone
Nathan Schmaling
The USO employs
Jay Bartishevich
Jenny Raphael
rotating seating:
Rob Menard
Hemangi Shah
Woodwinds, Brass and
William Marsiglia
Gabriella Scull
Percussion rotate by
Andrew Tsai
composition and are
Tuba
Jonathan Back
listed alphabetically.
Matthew Gukowsky
Gözde Yildiz
Strings rotate by concert
and are listed in seating
order.
Congratulations and best wishes to our graduating members!
Binghamton University Music Department’s
UPCOMING EVENTS

Wednesday, May 5th Composition I Class Concert, 2:00 PM – FREE
Casadesus Recital Hall
Wednesday, May 5th Conductor’s Concert, 8:00 PM – FREE
Watters Theater
Thursday, May 6th Student Recognition Mid-Day Concert, 1:20 PM,
Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Thursday, May 6th Harpur Chorale and Women’s Chorus, 8:00 PM,
Anderson Center Chamber Hall, FREE
Friday, May 7th Master’s Recital: Julian Whitley, baritone,
8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Saturday, May 8th Student Recital: Danzhou Li, piano,
3:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Saturday, May 8th Master’s Recital: Jennifer Groves, soprano,
8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Sunday, May 9th Master’s Recital: Jana Kucera, soprano,
3:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE
Thursday, May 13th German Lyric Diction Concert, 8:00 PM – FREE
Casadesus Recital Hall
For ticket information, please call the
Anderson Center Box Office at 777-ARTS
To see all events, please visit music.binghamton.edu
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Binghamton University Music Department