eke Fetrow, Conductor

Saturday March 29, 2025 8:00PM (7:15PM pre-concert conductor talk)
Sunday March 30, 2025 2:30PM

Ravel, Maurice – La Valse
Ravel, Maurice – Kaddish, from “Deux Mélodies Hébraiques”
Ullman, Viktor – Slavonic Rhapsody
Hailstork, Adolphus – Survive (Symphony No. 4)

Special guest:
Kenneth Radnofsky, alto saxophone

This concert’s composers all have different stories to tell, and our orchestra is grateful for the opportunity to perform these deep, meaningful, and introspective meditations. For example, Maurice Ravel’s moving work Kaddish includes a prayer for universal peace. Czech / Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann met his death in Auschwitz, but wrote in his journals, “By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon. Our endeavour with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live.” His melodious Slavonic Rhapsody (1940), featuring guest soloist Kenneth Radnofsky on alto saxophone, is a testament to endurance in a turbulent time. And, in our closing work, Adolphus Hailstork’s recently completed Fourth Symphony, the composer asks us to consider the roots of American music and the evolution of civil rights.

We explore “Romantic Riches” with music by Mendelssohn (two movements of his beautiful Psalm 42) and Brahms – the great motets “Nanie” and “Schicksalslied” (Song of the Fates). Neither Mendelssohn nor Brahms ever wrote a musical line that was not wonderful to sing; these works explore the eternal quest for meaning and reassurance in the midst of the uncertainties of the human condition. In addition, we will revisit his “Four Songs for Women’s Chorus, Two Horns and Harp”( Vier Gesange), the epitome of Romantic expression.