Italian opera and orchestrations combine to make this enjoyable program come to life!  Praised for her “rich and beautiful voice,”  Erin M. Smith is a dynamic performer throughout New England.  Joined by powerful tenor Yeghishe Manucharyan, a performer from the Metropolitan Opera, this magnificent duo performs the finale from Act 1 of La Boheme.  The lovely O mio babbino caro by Erin follows our opening number, Oveture to Barbiere di Siviglia.  Then Yeghishe wows us with Una furtiva lagrima by Donizetti. Our strings shine in Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, and our brass are highlighted in Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien.  Put up your feet and relax!

“This was truly accomplished music-making. There are chamber groups of longtime standing that fail to come close to this ad-hoc group’s sense of shared purpose. Which suggests somebody in Marlboro is doing something right.” —The New York Times 

In 2023, Marlboro Music welcomed Helmut Lachenmann as its Composer in Residence, a rare U.S. visit for this German composer who has shaped contemporary music worldwide. During his time in Vermont, Lachenmann worked closely with the musicians on Got Lost, a uniquely adventurous work for soprano and piano that challenges the physical and mental expectations of the performers. The program also features works by Haydn and Mozart, performed by Elias Quartet cellist Marie Bitlloch and three magnificent emerging string players.

The Musicians from Marlboro touring program was created as an extension of Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival, founded in 1951. Musicians from Marlboro tours are noted not only for their joyous performances but also for offering valuable touring experience to artists at the beginning of their careers and touring with unusual chamber repertoire. Since their inception, the Musicians from Marlboro tours have introduced such great talents as Richard Goode, Yefim Bronfman, Jaime Laredo, Murray Perahia, Paula Robison, Sir András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Richard Stoltzman, and Benita Valente. They have also featured other exceptional artists now heard in the Emerson, Juilliard, Takács, and Dover Quartets and Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. In the words of the Washington Post, “Musicians from Marlboro is a virtual guarantee of musical excellence!”

Cadman, Charles Wakefield – Selections from Daoma
Shostakovich – Symphony No. 10

Guest vocalists: TBA

Our season finale is deeply meaningful to all of us in the Vista Philharmonic. This is a performance about change, about respect, and about standing up for the things we believe in. 

Charles Cadman set out to incorporate diverse influences and build a new American sound for his 1909 opera, Daoma. He used the stylistic language of his romantic classical training alongside elements of Omaha traditional music to compose something simultaneously fresh and reflective. This piece represents a moment in American history where cultural exchange, creation, and recording were all swirling together, and that excitement carries forward to our orchestra today.

Maestro Bruce Hangen was raised in Montana, a state steeped in Native American culture, and has made it part of his lifelong artistic mission to pay homage to people and practices that shaped him as a young man. Hangen last conducted this unique piece with the Omaha Symphony in 1992 after thoroughly researching its fascinating history, performing it just down the road from the Omaha Nation with representatives in the audience. 

We end our evening, and our 50th season, with a big work from a major symphonic composer. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony is all about Stalin’s criticism of his work – and the enduring lesson that artistry prevails. “For the listener of today,” wrote conductor Kurt Sanderling, who was there in 1953 when Shostakovich was composing the symphony, “it is perhaps more like a portrait of a dictatorship… of a system of oppression.” Music encourages us to think and to feel, and whether we’re performing on stage, listening in the audience, or composing deep into the night, it is that transformative power that truly carries us all forward.

Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the New World Chorus and Soloists

Followed by a Birthday Party !

Zeke Fetrow, Conductor

Saturday May 31, 2025 8:00PM (7:15PM pre-concert conductor talk)
Sunday June 1, 2025 2:30PM