Program notes by David Jensen
GABRIELA ORTIZ
Born 20 December 1964; Mexico City, Mexico
Clara
Composed: 2021
First performance: 9 March 2022; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; New York Philharmonic
Last MSO performance: MSO Premiere
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo and alto flute); 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 2 trombones; bass trombone; timpani (doubling on gong); percussion (bass drum, cabasa, claves, crash cymbal, crotales, glockenspiel, gong, guiro, snare drum, suspended cymbals, large suspended cymbals, tom-toms in 3 pitches, triangle, vibraphone, whip, wood block, xylophone); strings
Approximate duration: 18 minutes
The following essay was prepared by the composer. Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.
I cannot begin to discuss Clara without first thanking Gustavo Dudamel for his generosity in having invited me to compose a work based on the relationship between two great artists: Clara Wieck Schumann and Robert Schumann. Thanks to him, I was able to delve into the broad legacy of both more deftly; especially that of Clara who, in addition to being a splendid composer and one of the most important pianists of the 19th century, was the editor of her husband’s complete works, as well as a teacher, mother, and wife.
Clara is divided into five parts that are played without interruption: Clara — Robert — My response — Robert’s subconscious — Always Clara. Except for “My response,” all of these sections are comprised of intimate sketches or imaginary outlines of the relationship between Clara and Robert. My original idea was to transfer onto an ephemeral canvas the internal sounds of each one without attempting to illustrate or interpret, but simply voice and create, through my ear, the expressiveness and unique strength of their complex, but also fascinating personalities.
Clara parts from the idea that music will grant us access to a non-linear conception of time that is more circular, where the past (them) and the present (me) can meet, converse, and get to know one another. During these imaginary dialogues of a poetic and musical nature, an intimate diary began to grow in me filled with nuances, confessions, and internal contradictions that find in music their own reference, significance, and internal coherence, expressing all that which cannot be read or explained, but rather must be heard. I like to think that through Clara, Clara Wieck Schumann is here, in this concert hall with us. In order to clearly identify these sections, I have employed two fundamental musical tools: a brief rhythmic sequence that appears constantly as a leitmotif or idée fixe, acting as a thread to guide me between the sections that correspond to Robert or Clara, and a melodic theme represented by the oboe that, in a more personal way, represents the latter’s private world. At the end of the piece, this leitmotif can be heard as breathing, leaving implicit the permanence and legacy of both figures.
In the central part of the work, “My response,” I seek two objectives: first, to bring Clara and Robert into my own world, one of a rhythmic strength and color characteristic of my language, of the unique vitality born out of the entrails of the land I come from; and second, to explore a quote considered to be very controversial, in which Clara wrote: “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”
Throughout history, women have had to overcome major obstacles marked by gender differences. We have gradually unfolded within the musical arts with great difficulty. However, as is well known, there are many of us who have rebelled against these evident forms of injustice and struggled to gain recognition and a place in society. This piece represents an acknowledgement of Clara, a tribute to her, and my definitive, resounding response to her question. It also signals my gratitude to all the women who, in their time, challenged the society they were raised in by manifesting their artistic oeuvre.
CLARA SCHUMANN/orch. William C. White
Born 13 September 1819; Leipzig, Saxony
Died 20 May 1896; Frankfurt, German Empire
Three Romances, Opus 22
Composed: Summer 1853
First performance: Unknown
Last MSO performance: MSO Premiere
Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; strings
Approximate duration: 10 minutes
One can only guess at what Clara Schumann might have accomplished as a composer had she been unencumbered by the expectations of the men in her life. Her father, Friedrich Wieck, educated her in an uncompromising musical and domestic environment; at his insistence, she came to be recognized as one of the finest pianists of her day, composing and premiering her own piano concerto as a teenager. Renowned for her impeccable technique, discerning interpretations, and superb tone, she earned the admiration of Chopin, Paganini, Mendelssohn, and the whole of Europe, touring through its artistic centers while only a child. In 1838, she was appointed “Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuoso” by the Austrian court and elected to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, one of Vienna’s most prestigious institutions — distinctions which were then practically unheard of for a young woman.
For all of the honors bestowed upon the wundermädchen, her talents as a composer were never entirely legitimized. Her marriage to Robert Schumann, and the attendant responsibilities of raising their children and managing their household affairs, left those ambitions unrealized, though she remained an active performer for the rest of her life. In a century that was pointedly hostile toward women and their artistic ideals, her own prospects remained painfully limited. Robert himself acknowledged that “to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost…”
Relocation to a new home in Düsseldorf in 1853, where Robert had been serving as the city’s music director, at last enabled Clara to work without disturbing him, allowing for a final flowering of her creative energies. The three romances for violin and piano that Clara authored that summer were the last work of chamber music she composed. Robert’s nervous breakdown,
suicide attempt, and consequent confinement to an asylum the following February seems to have extinguished the flame of her creativity. Over the course of the two years in which he was detained there, slipping further into madness, she was not permitted to see him until his final days, at which point he was unable to speak coherently.
Dedicated to the violinist Joseph Joachim, a friend and colleague of the Schumanns, Clara and Joachim are known to have played the romances for King George V of Hanover, Joachim’s patron, who described them as a “marvelous, heavenly pleasure.” This is music of a supremely personal and private character, as implied by the genre of the romance, and each selection is representative of her generation’s emphasis on melodic intrigue and potent harmonic language. The first, with its curling melodic line and richly shaded accompaniment, contains a quotation from Robert’s first violin sonata, while the second’s elegiac quality is realized in its syncopated rhythms, melodic leaps, and silken ornamentation. The longest of the collection, the third returns to the affectionate, untroubled atmosphere of the first, its sentimental melody weaving its way to the suite’s charming conclusion.
JOSEPH JOACHIM
Born 28 June 1831; Köpcsény, Hungary
Died 15 August 1907; Berlin, German Empire
Variations for Violin and Orchestra in E minor Composed: 1879
First performance: 28 February 1880; August Manns, conductor; Joseph Joachim, violin; Crystal Palace, London
Last MSO performance: MSO Premiere
Instrumentation: piccolo; 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings
Approximate duration: 13 minutes
The musical treasures that line the way of Joseph Joachim’s path through life are the stuff of legend. One of the most famous child prodigies of his generation, his natural affinity for the violin earned him a place at the Leipzig Conservatory at just 11 years old. Finding himself surrounded by such luminaries as Robert Schumann, whom Mendelssohn had hired to teach composition, and sharing the stage with Schumann’s wife, Clara, undoubtedly provided the boy with a wealth of inspiration. But it was Mendelssohn’s mentorship that served as the vital force in Joachim’s musical development: then at the height of his powers as a composer, music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and head of the conservatory, Mendelssohn provided the child with the education and practical experience necessary to reach his fullest artistic potential.
Under Mendelssohn’s direction, Joachim’s childhood debut with the Philharmonic Society of London in 1844 famously restored the public perception of Beethoven’s violin concerto (for which he had even composed his own cadenzas) and enthroned the 12-year-old virtuoso as a shining star in the firmament of his generation. He would go on to enjoy a wealth of opportunities: first as a faculty member at the Leipzig Conservatory, then as Franz Liszt’s concertmaster in Weimar, and even as violinist in the court of King George V in Hanover. The most illustrious and welldocumented chapter of his life was written during his time spent in the company of Robert, Clara, and Johannes Brahms — such was his notoriety as the leading violinist of his day that Schumann, Brahms, Max Bruch, and Antonín Dvořák each eagerly consulted him for advice in writing for the instrument.
Like most gifted performers of his time, he dabbled in composition throughout his life. Written at the peak of his career and dedicated to the celebrated Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate, the variations in E minor balance Joachim’s technical mastery against the verdant lyricism that
prevailed in his musical milieu. The soloist’s opening gesture, a melismatic flourish reminiscent of Romani fiddle-playing, is the clearest allusion to Joachim’s Hungarian roots. A lone flute presents the main theme, which the soloist immediately takes up and begins to embellish. Expressed as increasingly minute note values, a written-out accelerando leads into a brilliant solo display before transitioning to E major, ushering in a florid elaboration of new musical material. The program annotations for the premiere at London’s Crystal Palace note that the finale, wreathed with its ornamentation, ricochet bowing, double-stops, harmonics, and blistering runs, is “bristling with the most tremendous difficulties, which, however, it is necessary to say, are no difficulties in the hands of its author.”
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born 8 June 1810; Zwickau, Saxony
Died 29 July 1856; Endenich, Prussia
Symphony No. 2 in C major, Opus 61
Composed: 12 December 1845 – 19 October 1846
First performance: 5 November 1846; Felix Mendelssohn, conductor; Gewandhaus Orchestra
Last MSO performance: 22 November 2014; Asher Fisch, conductor
Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; timpani; strings
Approximate duration: 38 minutes
Robert Schumann spent the first five months of 1844 touring Russia with his wife, Clara, in the hopes that his music might find a wider audience. The effort came to nothing, and painfully aware that Clara’s talents as a pianist were the focal point of their appearances there, he was doubly burdened by the knowledge that he had written nothing of substance since the previous summer. Tormented by “fits of melancholy,” Schumann threw himself into his work upon returning to Leipzig. Dithering over his plans to write an opera, he sold his interest in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the publication he had founded a decade earlier, to better devote himself to composition. That Niels Gade, rather than Schumann, was awarded a position with the Gewandhaus Orchestra around this time likely exacerbated his already imperiled state of mind.
By August, he was entirely diminished. Even listening to music, in his words, “cut into my nerves as if with knives.” In a career already inextricably interconnected with nervous instability, it marked one of his most debilitating breakdowns to date. Striking out in search of better employment — he was by then absorbed with the notion of composing and conducting opera — and a more peaceable environment, he relocated to Dresden that December, where insomnia, mental terrors, and auditory hallucinations gradually gave way to rehabilitation. He began working through Luigi Cherubini’s treatise on counterpoint with Clara, producing a handful of fugues in the process, completed his only piano concerto, and began to turn his mind toward his next symphony.
The past twelve months had marked a turning point in Schumann’s compositional technique: he was now able to develop his musical ideas in his mind rather than working them out at the piano, pointing to the newly cultivated polyphonic style heard in the clearly defined textures and interdependent melodic lines that make up his second symphony. After a year spent convalescing, Schumann produced its first draft over the course of about two weeks in December 1845, but suffering the ebbs and flows of his fragile psychological state, it took him another ten months to finalize the details of its orchestration. He produced almost nothing else in the whole of 1846.
As if alluding to the contrapuntal music of the past, a stately chorale tune in the brass and strings provides the material Schumann spins out across the angular rhythmic profile of the allegro. The scherzo — an unstable, lightning-fast revel that plays with the diminished seventh chord — contains not one, but two contrasting trios, the latter quoting the “Bach” motif (B♭-A-C-B♮) that
had been a subject of his fugal studies. Only the funereal adagio gives us any indication that the symphony, which he described as “a work so stamped with melancholy,” is autobiographical in nature; Schumann recounted the “peculiar pleasure” he took in writing out the part for its “mournful bassoon.” “…I sometimes fear my semi-invalid state can be divined from the music.
2025.26 SEASON
KEN-DAVID MASUR
Music Director
Polly and Bill Van Dyke Music Director Chair
EDO DE WAART
Music Director Laureate
BYRON STRIPLING
Principal Pops Conductor
Stein Family Foundation Principal Pops Conductor Chair
RYAN TANI
Associate Conductor
CHERYL FRAZES HILL
Chorus Director
Margaret Hawkins Chorus Director Chair
TIMOTHY J. BENSON
Assistant Chorus Director
FIRST VIOLINS
Jinwoo Lee, Concertmaster, Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair
Ilana Setapen, First Associate Concertmaster, Thora M. Vervoren First Associate Concertmaster Chair
Jeanyi Kim, Associate Concertmaster
Alexander Ayers
Autumn Chodorowski
Yuka Kadota
Elliot Lee
Dylana Leung
Kyung Ah Oh
Lijia Phang
Vinícius Sant’Ana**
Yuanhui Fiona Zheng
SECOND VIOLINS
Jennifer Startt, Principal, Andrea and Woodrow Leung Principal Second Violin Chair
Ji-Yeon Lee, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Hyewon Kim, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Heejeon Ahn
Lisa Johnson Fuller
Clay Hancock
Paul Hauer
Sheena Lan**
Janis Sakai**
Yiran Yao
VIOLAS
Victor de Almeida, Principal, Richard O. and Judith A. Wagner Family Principal Viola Chair
Samantha Rodriguez, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair), Friends of Janet F. Ruggeri Assistant Principal Viola Chair
Alejandro Duque, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Elizabeth Breslin
Georgi Dimitrov
Nathan Hackett
Michael Lieberman**
Erin H. Pipal
CELLOS
Susan Babini, Principal, Dorothea C. Mayer Principal Cello Chair
Shinae Ra, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Scott Tisdel, Associate Principal Emeritus
Madeleine Kabat
Peter Szczepanek
Peter J. Thomas
Adrien Zitoun
BASSES
Principal, Donald B. Abert Principal Bass Chair
Andrew Raciti, Acting Principal
Nash Tomey, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Brittany Conrad
Broner McCoy
Paris Myers
HARP
Julia Coronelli, Principal, Walter Schroeder Principal Harp Chair
FLUTES
Sonora Slocum, Principal, Margaret and Roy Butter Principal Flute Chair
Heather Zinninger, Assistant Principal
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
PICCOLO
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
OBOES
Katherine Young Steele, Principal, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League Principal Oboe Chair
Kevin Pearl, Assistant Principal
Margaret Butler
ENGLISH HORN
Margaret Butler, Philip and Beatrice Blank English Horn Chair in memoriam to John Martin
CLARINETS
Todd Levy, Principal, Franklyn Esenberg Principal Clarinet Chair
Jay Shankar, Assistant Principal, Donald and Ruth P. Taylor Assistant Principal Clarinet Chair
Besnik Abrashi
E-FLAT CLARINET
Jay Shankar
BASS CLARINET
Besnik Abrashi
BASSOONS
Catherine Van Handel, Principal, Muriel C. and John D. Silbar Family Principal Bassoon Chair*
Rudi Heinrich, Acting Principal
Matthew Melillo
CONTRABASSOON
Matthew Melillo
HORNS
Matthew Annin, Principal, Krause Family Principal French Horn Chair
Krystof Pipal, Associate Principal
Dietrich Hemann, Andy Nunemaker French Horn Chair
Darcy Hamlin
Dawson Hartman
TRUMPETS
Matthew Ernst, Principal, Walter L. Robb Family Principal Trumpet Chair
David Cohen, Associate Principal, Martin J. Krebs Associate Principal Trumpet Chair
Tim McCarthy, Fred Fuller Trumpet Chair
TROMBONES
Megumi Kanda, Principal, Marjorie Tiefenthaler Principal Trombone Chair
Kirk Ferguson, Assistant Principal
BASS TROMBONE
John Thevenet, Richard M. Kimball Bass Trombone Chair
TUBA
Robyn Black, Principal, John and Judith Simonitsch Principal Tuba Chair
TIMPANI
Dean Borghesani, Principal
Chris Riggs, Assistant Principal
PERCUSSION
Robert Klieger, Principal Chris Riggs
PIANO
Melitta S. Pick Endowed Piano Chair
PERSONNEL
Antonio Padilla Denis, Director of Orchestra Personnel
Paris Myers, Assistant Manager of Orchestra Personnel
LIBRARIANS
Paul Beck, Principal Librarian, James E. Van Ess Principal Librarian Chair
Matthew Geise, Assistant Librarian & Media Archivist
PRODUCTION
Tristan Wallace, Production Manager/Live Audio
Lisa Sottile, Production Stage Manager
* Leave of absence during the 2025.26 season
** Acting member of the MSO for the 2025.26 season
