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Music School Festival Orchestra
July 04, 2021
Music School Festival Orchestra

Monday, July 5

Timothy Muffitt, Artistic and Music Director
Joshua Hong, David Effron Conducting Fellow
Diego Diaz,  Concertmaster
Vikram Iyer, Principal Second Violin
John Ryan, Principal Viola
Katsuaki Arakawa, Principal Cello
Danny Sesi, Principal Double Bass

Repertoire

Felix Mendelssohn: Overture to Ruy Blas, op. 95 [8']

György Ligeti: Romanian Concerto [12']

Franz Schubert: Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, "The Great" [48']

This program is made possible by the Lenna Fund for the Performing Arts.

Bios
Timothy Muffitt
Artistic and Music Director
Joshua Hong
David Effron Conducting Fellow
About the MSFO

Comprised of top-tier students from conservatories and universities in the U.S. and abroad, Music School Festival Orchestra members participate in a variety of musical activities during their summers at CHQ including chamber music and private lessons along with their meticulous orchestral training. Alumni from the MSFO can be heard in many of the world’s top orchestras and chamber ensembles and can be found on music faculties worldwide.

MSFO Personnel
VIOLIN

Matthew Adams
Stephanie Bonk
Spencer Day
Diego Diaz
Laura Herrera
Jason Hurlbut
Vikram Iyer
Bright Johnston
Natasha Kubit
Gabriela Lara
Jesus Alejandro Linarez Delfines
Emily Monroe
Katherine Morris
Alexandria Ott
Olivia Taylor
Justine Teo

VIOLA

Ruisi Du
Amelia Eckloff
Sydney Link
Pedro Mendez
Alexis Mitrushi
John Ryan
Lukas Shrout
Kaitlyn Walker

CELLO

Katsuaki Arakawa
Catherine Choi
Omkara Gil Guaraco
Hee Won Jeon
Emma Osterrieder
Rachel Rice
Tanner Rodriguez
Andrew Shinn

DOUBLE BASS

Payton Dziekan
Broner McCoy
Cruise Myers
Jose Saavedra Diaz
Danny Sesi
Corey Watzek

FLUTE

Lauren Scanio
Sunju Kim

OBOE

Donovan Bown
Mia Fasanello

CLARINET

Ellé Crowhurst
Olivia Hamilton

BASSOON

Carlos Clark
Christopher Witt

TRUMPET

Joseph Brozek
Aaron DuBois

HORN

Aidan Alcocer
Gretchen Bonnema
Alex Daiker
Rachel Lauson

TROMBONE

Zongxi Li
Felix Regalado
Marco Gomez (Bass)

PERCUSSION

Liam McManus
David Wang

2021 DAVID EFFRON CONDUCTING FELLOW

Joshua Hong

2021 Faculty and Staff
Manager, Chautauqua Schools of Performing and Visual Arts

Sarah Malinoski-Umberger

School of Music Operations Manager and Director of Arts Education

Suzanne Fassett-Wright

Administration

Megan Stefanik, Office Assistant
Igor Gersh, Resident Luthier

Instrumental Faculty

Timothy Muffitt, Artistic and Music Director
Aaron Berofsky, Chair of Strings & Violin
      Faculty
Kathryn Votapek, Chair of Chamber Music
Richard Sherman, Chair of Winds, Brass
      and Percussion & Flute Faculty
Curtis Burris, Bass
William Caballero, Horn
Eli Eban, Clarinet
Pedro Fernandez, Percussion
Shannon Hesse, Collaborative Pianist
Jan Eberle Kanui, Oboe
Roger Kaza, Horn
Akiko Konishi, Collaborative Pianist
Brian Kushmaul, Percussion
Owen Lee, Bass
Eric Lindblom, Bass Trombone
John Marcellus, Trombone
Anna Mattix, Oboe
Karen Ritscher, viola
Beth Robinson, Harp
Jeff Robinson, Bassoon
Almita Vamos, Violin

Instrumental Guest Faculty

Michael Burritt, Percussion

Voice Faculty

Marlena Malas, Chair
Jonathan Beyer, Instructor
Elizabeth Bishop, Instructor
John Giampietro, Stage Director
Donna Gill, Coordinator of Voice Scheduling
Rhoslyn Jones, Instructor
Jaye Simmons, Assistant to the Stage Director

Voice Coaches

Donna Gill, Head Coach
Julius Abrahams
Michał Biel
Travis Bloom
Martin Dubé
Kanae Matsumoto
Jinhee Park
Katelan Terrell

Voice Guest Faculty

Claudia Catania
Maxine Davis
Mikael Eliasen
Reneé Fleming
Susan Graham
Ben Moore
Craig Rutenberg
Brian Zeger

Piano Faculty

Alexander Gavrylyuk, Heintzelman Family Artistic Advisor and Artist-in-Residence
Nicola Melville, Co-Chair
John Milbauer, Co-Chair

Piano Guest Faculty

Natalya Antonova
Malcolm Bilson
Alexander Kobrin
Jerome Lowenthal
Jon Nakamatsu
Ursula Oppens
Boris Slutsky

Piano Technicians

Robert Bussell, Concert Piano Technician
Bruce Fellows, Service Coordinator and Tuner

Program Notes
Program Notes by Joshua Hong
 
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Overture to Ruy Blas, Op. 95 (1839)
 
Victor Hugo’s tragic drama Ruy Blas was written and premiered in 1838. As productions of the play made their way across Europe, the Theatrical Pension Fund of Leipzig commissioned Mendelssohn to compose an overture and vocal piece to accompany a benefit performance in hopes of generating more excitement for the event and consequently more ticket sales and money. Mendelssohn read the play and described it in a letter to his mother as “detestable and more utterly beneath contempt than you could believe.” He immediately decided that it would be impossible to write an overture, but provided the Fund with a vocal work, the “Song from Ruy Blas,” Op. 77, No. 3.
 
Six days before the benefit, a group from the Theatrical Pension Fund visited Mendelssohn to thank him for the vocal work. One of the group’s members expressed regret that an overture was not composed, and said to Mendelssohn that he “realizes that one needs time to write a piece like that, and that next year they would try to give him more notice.” Mendelssohn apparently interpreted this comment as a direct challenge of his abilities, and he set to work on the overture, finishing the full manuscript in just three days’ time. He wrote in the same letter to his mother that “few of my works have caused me more amusing excitement.”
 
György Ligeti (1923-2006)
Concert Românesc (1951)
 
Ligeti was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Romania. His conservatory training was interrupted by events of the Holocaust which separated his family into various labor and concentration camps and resulted in the deaths of his father and younger brother. After the war ended, Ligeti completed his musical studies in Soviet-controlled Hungary, where he would stay until his escape to Vienna in 1956. It is during this time under strict Soviet censorship that he composed the Romanian Concerto. Though its overall effect is hardly modernistic, especially relative to his output after the escape, the Concerto was nevertheless banned after one rehearsal and not performed in public until 1971. 
 
The Romanian Concerto consists of four highly contrasting movements performed without pause. The first, second, and fourth movements contain the most obvious folk influences. Ligeti did study ethnomusicology like his compatriots Bartók and Kodály and encountered local musicians and village bands as a child in Transylvania. Building on Bartók’s legacy, Ligeti would take these folk elements, synthesize them with complex harmonies, intersperse them with modernist noise-music, and build the work into a compelling combination of old tunes and new sounds. The soundscape of the third movement perhaps most closely resembles the Ligeti we recognize in the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: cosmic string harmonics gently vibrate the air while two naturally-tuned horns echo each other like slow-moving planets in orbit.
 

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No. 9 in C major, “Great", D. 944 (1825-6)

The manuscript to Schubert’s Great Symphony was discovered nine years after the composer’s death during an impromptu visit to Schubert’s brother’s home by Robert Schumann. Schumann immediately sent the work to Felix Mendelssohn, who conducted its first performance on March 21, 1839. 
 
The length of this work proved difficult for early listeners, and many of the first performances were extensively cut. A symphony of epic proportions, it is no accident that the piece was finished a year after Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, at that time the most famous composer alive and Schubert’s neighbor in Vienna. Indeed, Schubert attended the premiere of Beethoven’s work, and the venerable Ode to Joy is briefly quoted in Schubert’s final movement. However, though they composed their largest-scale symphonies around the same time and utilized similar harmonic and structural tools, the language and affect of these two Ninth Symphonies differ drastically. 
 
One significant contrast exists in the composers’ selection and treatment of thematic/motivic material. Schubert generally writes longer themes that do not reappear in wildly different contexts, while Beethoven prefers to take small motives and develop them to their absolute limits. Additionally, many of Beethoven’s themes will relate to one another on a melodic or rhythmic level, but Schubert will frequently and suddenly introduce completely new characters. Thus, Beethoven’s “characters” seem to endure a dramatic tale of turbulent conflict and divine resolution through each performance of his Ninth. Schubert, on the other hand, perhaps wishes for us to simply meet and enjoy all of his Great characters — as they are and shall always be.
Underwriters

The Hultquist Foundation of Jamestown, New York

New York State Council on the Arts
The Music School Festival Orchestra is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Scholarships

The Chautauqua Amateur Musicians Program (C.A.M.P) Scholarship (Thursday Morning Brass and Chautauqua Brass Ensemble)

Alexander W. Bouchal Memorial Scholarship

Ann and Isidor Saslav Violin Scholarship in Honor of Mischa Mischakoff

Anna Mary and Richard M. Maddy Music Scholarship Fund

Barton Family Scholarship

Bennett and Mary Jo Burgoon Memorial Scholarship

Beverly and Bruce Conner Scholarship Fund

Burden-Staples Music Scholarship

Charles John Petre Memorial Fund Trombone Award

Chautauqua - NFMC Dorothy Dann Bullock Award

Chautauqua General - NFMC Directors

Chautauqua General Scholarship

Chautauqua Women's Club Scholarship for MSFO

Dave and Diana Bower Scholarship

David Effron Conducting Fellowship

Dietrich Family Endowment for Music at Chautauqua

Dr. Stephen Fudell Memorial Scholarship Endowment

Elmer S. and H. Lorraine Sachse Scholarship Fund

Everett and Sarah Holden McLaren Scholarship

Frederick Percival Boynton Scholarship

G. Thomas & Kathleen Harrick Music Scholarship

General Chautauqua Scholarship for MSFO

George E. and Susan Moran Murphy Scholarship

Glenn G. Vance Music Scholarship Fund

Harris Scholarship for Performing Arts

Hebrew Congregation Music Award

Hilda Jo Anne Milham Scholarship

Jack I. and Barbara J. Morris Memorial Cello Scholarship

Joseph Clarke Scholarship Fund

Konneker Scholarship

Marianne Elser Markham Endowment Fund

Milks Family Scholarship for Brass Music

Morton and Natalie Abramson Scholarship for Cello

Morton and Natalie Abramson Scholarship for Viola

Morton and Natalie Abramson Scholarship for Violin

Mr. and Mrs. Sanford Nobel Scholarship

Ms. Izumi Hara and Mr. David Koschik Scholarship

MSFO Brass scholarship in memory of Robert Vitkowsky

MSFO Scholarship in memory of Allen and Elizabeth Wood

Mu Phi Epsilon Scholarship

NFMC-New York Federation Award

NFMC-Ohio Federation Award

Peggy and Andy Anderson Family Scholarship Fund

Rebecca M. and Dr. Alan Kamen Cello Scholarship

Robert and Joan Spirtas Scholarship

Robert and Mary Pickens Scholarship

Robert D. Hiller Scholarship Fund

Robert D. Redington Memorial Scholarship

Ronald Perry Smith Scholarship Fund

Ruth Higby Haver and Della and David Higby Music Scholarship

Ruth M. Skinner Hutchins Scholarship Fund

Samuel R. McClure II Brass Scholarship

Shreveport Friends' Music Scholarship

The Arlene Hajinlian Music Scholarship

The Bettsy and Ellis Cowling Scholarship for Music

The Chuck Berginc Scholarship

The Craig J. Luchsinger Memorial Scholarship for Violin

The Daley Family Fund

The Teresa M. Joyce Ph.D. Scholarship

The Dr. William T. and Virginia W. Smyth Fund

The Edna Posner Music Scholarship 

The Elizabeth & Jack Gellman and Deborah & Allen Zaretsky Scholarship Fund

The Ernest W. and Jeannette McClure Polley Scholarship

The Erroll & Elaine Davis Scholarship

The Fayette S. Olmstead Foundation and Pittsburgh National Bank Charitable Trust Fund

The Henrietta W. Schlager Scholarship

The Honorable and Mrs. W.F. Clinger Scholarship

The Howard G. Gibbs Scholarship Fund

The John B. Yoder Music Scholarship

The Kaylor Family Scholarship

The LaPenna-Koch Scholarship

The Lucille J. McClure Memorial Music Scholarship Fund

The Marilyn G. Levinson and Nathan Gottschalk First Chair Award for MSFO Endowment

The Marsha J. Alico Memorial Music Scholarship

The Michael L. Barnett Scholarship Fund

The Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Ivers Music Scholarship

The Nancy and Norman Karp Scholarship Fund

The Penrose-Mahaffey Scholarship Fund

The Ralph J. Miller and Florence L. Miller Memorial Scholarship in Music

The Reed Family Scholarship

The Richard and Eleanor Aron MSFO Scholarship

The Robert Hunt and Mary Campbell Eckhardt Memorial Scholarship

The Sal & Kay Marranca Music Scholarship

The William Cole/King Scholarship

The William F. Northrop Memorial Music Scholarship

Thomas E. Kaufman Memorial Music Scholarship

Virginia Cox Scholarship for MSFO

Ward T. Bower Memorial Scholarship

William and Jane Pfefferkorn Scholarship for Music

William and Pauline Higie School of Music Scholarship