October 1
Sunday, 2:30pm

Dominican University
7900 W Division
River Forest map…

October 2
Monday, 7:30pm

Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center
220 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago map…

Alexander Kobrin, piano
Melissa White, violin
Paul Freeman, conductor

Silvestre Revueltas
Redes

Franz Liszt
Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major

Max Bruch
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor

David Baker
Concertino for Cell Phones and Orchestra

Read the Program Notes…

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Please turn ON your Cell Phones!

Melissa White, violin

Alexander Kobrin, piano

Ring in our 20th Season with the World Premiere of David Baker's Concertino for Cell Phones and Orchestra — bring your phone and play a part in this history-making event!

Then, watch out for these rising stars: Van Cliburn Competition winner Alexander Kobrin performing Liszt's second piano concerto, and Sphinx Award winner Melissa White, performing Bruch's enchanting first violin concerto.

All Artists, Programs, Dates and Locations subject to change.

Alexander Kobrin

Born in Moscow in 1980, Alexander Kobrin completed his studies at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he received his master’s degree. At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Kobrin was awarded the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2005). Along with the medal, he received three years of international concert engagements coordinated by the Cliburn and IMG Artists (Europe) and a compact disc recording of his award-winning Cliburn Competition performances for the harmonia mundi usa label.

First-prize winner of the 1999 Busoni Competition and a top prizewinner of both the 2000 Chopin and 2003 Hamamatsu Competitions, Alexander Kobrin has toured extensively throughout Europe, South America, and Asia.

During the 2005-2006 concert season, Mr. Kobrin’s first as a Cliburn gold medalist, he performed with the Utah Symphony, Fort Wayne, and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras, among others. Recital engagements brought him to audiences in major cities from coast to coast. His 2006-2007 season will be launched by his New York Philharmonic debut at Lincoln Center in July, followed by the Clandeboye Festival (Ireland), La Roque d’Antheron (France), and the Tuscan Sun Festival in Italy. Next season, Kobrin also performs with the Dallas, Nashville, Phoenix, San Antonio, Syracuse, and Tucson Symphony Orchestras, as well as with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Moscow State Symphony. In November, he returns to Japan.

In addition to the Cliburn Competition disc for harmonia mundi including works by Brahms and Rachmaninoff, Mr. Kobrin has started a recording project devoted to Chopin for the King label. He is also prominently featured in In the Heart of Music, the film documentary about the Twelfth Cliburn Competition, which premiered on PBS stations across the United States in the fall of 2005. When Alexander Kobrin is not performing, he teaches at the Moscow State Gnessin Academy of Music. For more information about Mr. Kobrin’s upcoming activities or the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, please visit www.cliburn.org.

Melissa White

Violinist Melissa White is the First Place Junior Division Winner of the Fourth Annual Junior Division Sphinx Organization Competition 2001. She performs with the Chicago Sinfonietta as part of the Sphinx/DaimlerChrysler Financial Services Professional Development Program.

She is a student at The Curtis Institute of Music under the direction of Ida Kavafian. She has been a soloist with many of the nation’s leading orchestras including: Cleveland, Atlanta, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Colorado, New Jersey, Cincinnati, and San Antonio Symphonies. Her 2006- 2007 season opens with her second Chicago Sinfonietta appearance and a return to Carnegie Hall as a guest soloist on the Sphinx 10th Anniversary Gala Concert.

In addition to frequent solo appearances, Melissa is also an active chamber musician. She is a member of the Ritz Chamber Players in Jacksonville, Florida; Jupiter Symphony Chamber Musicians in New York; and the Harlem String Quartet, who will make their Carnegie Hall debut in October. Melissa performed live at the 2006 NAACP Image Awards, which was televised on national TV.

At the age of 14, she made her recording debut with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra under internationally acclaimed conductor Paul Freeman. Her CD recording of “An American Concerto” by Gwenyth Walker is available worldwide on Albany Records.

During the summer she serves on the faculty of the Sphinx Performance Academy on the campus of Walnut Hill and does outreach around the country when she travels to perform with major orchestras.

The Sinfonietta welcomes Melissa upon her return, her first since her debut seven years ago.

Program Notes:

Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Suite from Redes

Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango in December, 1899, and died in Mexico City on October 1940. While Revueltas lived a relatively short life, his contribution to Latin American music was solid and substantive. He has emerged as one of Mexico’s most important symphonic composers. One of his favorite American cities was Chicago.

In 1934, the famous American photographer Paul Strand traveled to Mexico with the intention of producing a photographic book on life in Mexico. Because of the interesting possibilities, Strand decided to extend his work to include a documentary film about the life of Mexican fishermen. Strand wrote the script and Revueltas wrote the music for the film which was originally entitled Pescades (Fish). The film was such a failure at the box office that the name was changed to Redes (Nets) and it subsequently became a classic in the cinematography of Mexico. Much of this success is due to the powerful music of Revueltas.

From the music of the film, the composer created an orchestral suite, which is frequently performed, especially in Latin American countries.

Revueltas wrote a number of film scores, which he states were written mainly under economic pressure. The fact is that Redes as a concert suite has transcended all of them. It works both in its version as a film score as well as a concert suite because of its outstanding musical assets. The work shows strong rhythmic influences by the great composer Igor Stravinsky, whom Revueltas greatly admire. This rhythmic drive is combined with Mexican folkloric elements, which provide a great deal of excitement for the audience.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Piano Concerto No.2 in A major, S.125

The son of a steward, Liszt was born in Raiding, Hungary in 1811 and died in Bayreuth, Germany in 1886. He was extremely gifted on piano as a young boy and often played for the Hungarian nobility. Money was raised to send him to Vienna to study with the great pedagogue Czerny. It was during this time that he met Beethoven, who was very much impressed with his playing. Liszt became one of the most remarkable pianists of his time, fascinating audiences in a way that could be compared with that of a modern-day rock star.

Although he performed extensively throughout Europe, he lived for many years in Paris, which in some ways he regarded as home. The Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, was the mother of his three children, which because she remained married to another man, often created social problems. After their separation in 1848, he settled into a distinguished position in Weimar where he concentrated on the development of a new form: the orchestral tone poem. It was during this period that he completed his two piano concertos. Subsequently sketches for a third piano concerto have been discovered.

The Piano Concerto No.2 in A major was written in 1839 but not performed until 1857, after several revisions over the years by the composer. The first performance took place at the Weimar Court Theater on January 7, 1857, with Liszt conducting and his pupil Hans von Bronsart as the piano soloist.

Liszt’s Second Concerto is quieter, more introspective than the First Concerto, partly because of the ravishingly beautiful opening for woodwinds, in which the sweet song of the clarinet generates many of the ideas that follow. Among the diverse musical ideas to come, we shall hear a good bit of a march theme in a sharply marked rhythm and also of a galloping figure first heard in an orchestral tutti. These last two ideas generally return together, with the galloping figure serving as a bass to the march. Like the Piano Concerto No.1 in Eb major, the Concerto No.2 is written in one continuous movement, but with several sections.

Liszt’s legacy as a composer is also quite remarkable. His influence on his contemporaries was considerable, to such an extent that he and Richard Wagner are often credited with having changed the direction of composition in the 19th century.

Max Bruch (1839-1920)
Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, op.26

Born January 1838 in Cologne, Bruch is best known today for this beautiful Violin Concerto, although he has to his credit many other works. The Violin Concerto No. 2 is seldom played and few people are aware that he wrote three symphonies, three operas, over a dozen choral works, chamber music, songs and a variety of works for solo instruments. He lived a long life, having died at the age of 82 in his native Germany.

Bruch was a child prodigy and began jotting down ideas for the G-minor Violin Concerto when he was only 19. It was, however, several years before he shaped these ideas into a unified whole. In April, 1866, he conducted the first performance himself in Koblenz, but was unhappy with many things in the music. He revised the work immediately and sent a copy of the score to the great violinist Joseph Joachim. Both of them worked on the Concerto together and finally presented the version that we know today in 1868 (two years after the premiere).

The composer had difficulty trying to decide if the work should be called a "Fantasy" or a "Concerto". After much debate with his colleagues, he decided to call it a "Concerto”. And, rightfully so, since like most concertos it is written in three movements. The concerto's first movement is an extended prelude. The solo part is highly virtuosic. After an opening timpani roll, a chorale of strings and winds prepares the soloist's first entrance. It is a bravura journey from there to the end. Indeed, the first movement does not conclude, but segues into the adagio. The second movement's opening theme is a richly melodic line from which the soloist spins out further embellished lines of exquisite intricacy. The rousing finale will be recognized by many from its introductory gestures before the theme even enters.

David N. Baker (1931- )
Concertino For Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra

This composition was commissioned by the Chicago Sinfonietta and Maestro Paul Freeman and will have its premiere opening the Chicago Sinfonietta’s 20th anniversary season. The work is interactive in nature, and in combination with the orchestra under the direction of Maestro Paul Freeman, the audience and members of the orchestra's percussion section will utilize their cellular phones at various points throughout the piece to produce a shared participatory performance experience.

Cellular phones are a fact of life in today's world. They provide convenience and service extending far beyond the scope of conventional landline telephones. One of the drawbacks, however, is that these wonderful technological devices can be maddeningly intrusive.

One of the most egregious breaches of cellular phone etiquette occurs in the concert hall, where the ring tones and beeping of incoming calls to concertgoers who have neglected to silence their phones prior to the performance often cause their fellow listeners as well as the performers to be alternately amused, annoyed, and downright infuriated. When Maestro Freeman asked me to write a piece for orchestra that would actually incorporate cellular phones producing these intrusive sounds, I was admittedly quite surprised at the concept, but intrigued with the possibilities.

I began with the idea of creating an environment of sounds representing situations we find ourselves in every day, for example in an airport or other public space where many different cellular phone ring tones can be heard simultaneously, with certain rings coming to prominence as others recede while a recognizable melody blares from a loudspeaker, a radio, a boom box, or a bar.

I chose to contrast chaos and structure in a constantly shifting orchestral scheme, as a representation of how cellular phones create both order and chaos in our society. Throughout the piece there are times when many cellular phones are sounding different ring tones simultaneously, producing chaos; however, as all but one of the ring tones are silenced and the orchestra picks up on the melody of the remaining ring tone and works with it, order is exemplified by showing how the cellular phone and the orchestra connect. This is done a number of times, creating a dialogue between the cellular phones and the orchestra.

As you, the members of the audience, are both listeners and participants in this piece. Randomly increase and decrease the volume of your ring tone, and change to different ring tones whenever the spirit moves you. Listen to this piece as you might listen to a work by Charles Ives. Listen to the silence. Enjoy the orchestra enjoying you. Above all, have fun!!! – David N. Baker

David N. Baker is one of America's most talented composers who has written over 2000 compositions. He is a distinguished professor at Indiana University and head of the jazz program at Smithsonian Institute.

Program Notes by Peter Fodor, except as noted.