Holiday Candlelight Concert
Tuesday, December 16, 2025 at 8 pm
Modesto Symphony Orchestra
Holiday Candlelight Concert
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Doors Open at 7 pm
Concert Starts at 8 pm
St. Stanislaus Catholic Church
1200 Maze Boulevard, Modesto
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About this Performance
Digital Program: Holiday Pops!
December 5 & 6 2025
Modesto Symphony Orchestra
Holiday Pops!
Friday, December 5, 2025; 7:30 pm
Saturday, December 6, 2025; 2:00 pm
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About this Performance
Digital Program: Beethoven & Klebanov
November 14 & 15, 2025 at 7:30 pm
Modesto Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven & Klebanov
Friday, November 14, 2025; 7:30 pm
Saturday, November 15, 2025; 7:30 pm
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About this Performance
Program Notes: Beethoven & Klebanov
Notes about:
Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major
Klebanov: Symphony No. 1
Williams: A Prayer for Peace
Program Notes for November 14 & 15, 2025
Beethoven & Klebanov
Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 61
Beethoven composed this concerto in 1806, and it was first performed on December 23, 1806, at the Theater-an-der-Wien in Vienna, with Franz Clement as soloist.
Duration: 39 minutes
Background
Beethoven completed his only concerto for violin in 1806, during a burst of creativity that also produced the three “Razumovsky” quartets, the fourth symphony, the “Appassionata” sonata, and the fourth piano concerto. The concerto was written for Franz Clement, a violinist whose association with Beethoven went back to 1794, when Clement was a 14-year-old Wunderkind. The title page dedicates the work to Clement, while noting his “clemency” towards the composer. (Beethoven’s puns were even worse than the normal lot.) The concerto was premiered at a concert that apparently included some pretty flamboyant showmanship. According to a review of the concert in the Wiener Theater-Zeitung, Clement inserted one of his own violin sonatas between the first and second movements of the concerto—a sonata played on one string, with the violin held upside-down! Perhaps because of this blatant showstopper, reviews of the performance were generally disdainful. (The fact that Clement was reportedly sight-reading the concerto may not have helped, either...)
This was not a work that caught on quickly, and it certainly did not follow the fashion of the time. By 1806, audiences were beginning to demand works that displayed astonishing feats of speed and agility: flash over substance. Even as late as 1855, when a young Joseph Joachim played Beethoven’s concerto for the virtuoso Louis Spohr, Spohr’s reaction was: “This is all very nice, but now I’d like you to play a real violin work.” Beethoven’s concerto is more symphonic in scope, focusing on careful development of his broad and profound themes, and brilliant orchestration, instead of empty virtuosity. The concerto finally came into its own in the later 19th century, as players like Joachim confronted the special challenges of Beethoven’s work: thoughtfulness and musical expression.
What You’ll Hear
The first movement (Allegro ma non troppo) begins with five unaccompanied timpani notes that usher in the woodwinds. The orchestral introduction presents the themes that will provide the raw material for the solo violin’s more extensive treatment. At the close of the introduction, the orchestra hushes and allows the opening violin line to burst forth—a flourish that spans the entire range of the instrument. The body of this movement is based on a set of beautiful hymn-like themes. The violin’s expansion of these melodies is never merely flashy decoration, but instead careful development. A lengthy cadenza leads to a final statement of the second main theme.
The Larghetto is certainly one of the most intriguing and expressive of Beethoven’s compositions. Its form has variously been described as “theme and variations,” “semi-variations” and even “strophic.” In a classic essay, Beethoven scholar Owen Jander suggested that the deliberate ambiguities in the overall theme and variations form of the Larghetto reflect a burgeoning Romanticism—that the slow movement is a musical rendering of a poetic dialogue. In fact, the movement proceeds in a gentle but passionate dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra, culminating in a dramatic cadenza that leads directly into the final movement.
The last movement is more typical of Classical style—a spirited 6/8 Rondo. Here, it seems, Beethoven made a slight bow to audience demand and gave the violinist some flashier technical passages. There is a brief minor-key episode at the center, but otherwise the mood of this concerto is exuberant throughout. The concerto closes with an extended coda that gives the violinist one more chance at some soloistic fireworks.
Program Notes ©2025 J. Michael Allsen
Dmitri Klebanov
Symphony No. 1 “In Memoriam Babi Yar”
Dmytro Lvovich Klebanov was born in 1907 to a working-class Jewish family in Kharkiv, Ukraine. A musical prodigy, he enrolled at the Kharkiv Conservatory at age 16, where he would later return as professor of composition (and where he would meet his wife Nina, the conservatory director). His burgeoning reputation as a composer in the Soviet Union in the 1930s speaks to his talent and tenacity at a time when Stalin’s government was targeting and disappearing Ukrainian artists and intellectuals—a period known as the Executed Renaissance.
When the Nazi army invaded Ukraine in 1941, Klebanov and his family, along with thousands of other Soviet Jews, were relocated to Uzbekistan; they returned home in 1944 to find horrific destruction and loss of life, including Klebanov’s brother, a soldier in the Soviet army. With this backdrop, Klebanov immediately began work on his First Symphony, dedicating it to the victims of the September 1941 massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews at the hands of the occupying Nazis at the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv (some 17 years later, Babi Yar would also be the theme of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13).
Klebanov’s Symphony No. 1 premiered in 1946 in Kharkiv, and its public success moved it to be submitted for the 1949 Stalin Prize. The score’s arrival in Moscow, however, led not to commendation, but condemnation: Stalin’s cultural authorities connected the symphony’s dedication to its Jewish melodic influences, and claimed that by using such sources, Klebanov had “unpatriotically” and “insolently” dedicated it specifically to Jewish, rather than Soviet, victims of the massacre.
Any additional performances of the symphony were canceled, and Klebanov found himself blacklisted. His wife’s stature as conservatory director likely saved him from deportation or worse, but a ruling by the Union of Soviet Composers stripped him of his titles as Head of the Kharkiv Conservatory’s Composition Department and as Chair of the local Composers’ Union. Klebanov was allowed to remain at his post in Kharkiv, but was he effectively shunned and isolated. He would not hear his symphony again before his death in 1987.
From its first notes, the symphony invokes a curious specter: Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony, with its descending fourths and fifths over a rustling bed of tremolando strings. At the same time, this first theme conjures an image of falling, as if into the Babi Yar ravine itself. A gentler, nostalgic second theme is introduced in contrast, based on the opposite motion of a rising fourth.
The Scherzo second movement opens with mysterious celli and basses and soon becomes a rousing, brutal dance in 3/4 time. A romantic arioso theme for the violins opens the middle Trio section, which slowly builds to a raucous climax and settles back to a softer sequence of yearning woodwind solos.
The third movement, a funeral march, recalls the nostalgic second theme of the first movement with its rising fourth, now a dark and somber solo for the bass clarinet. An animated, ferocious middle section summons the first theme of the first movement once again, before a final, grand statement of the Funeral March theme collapses into the most evocative moment of the symphony: the March theme, sung wordlessly by a contralto vocal solo. The ghost of a synagogue cantor, perhaps—a victim of the massacre.
The Finale erupts in a bombastic paraphrase of the Presto Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, leading to a series of cello-bass recitatives interspersed with recollections of previous movements of the symphony—again, the same architecture as Beethoven’s finale. Klebanov’s recitatives have a singspeak-like intonation that seems to evoke a Hebrew recitation: the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer, perhaps. An English horn solo emulates a shofar, the traditional ram’s horn blown during the Jewish High Holidays.
Klebanov then builds a tightly-constructed fugue, its boisterous subject built around the intervals of the recitative motif, which leads to a reprise of the opening Presto. What follows can only be described as a satire of the Ode to Joy itself, introduced with soft celli and basses in the same way Beethoven presents his famous melody. Klebanov’s mock-Ode theme undergoes a series of dramatic variations before ending up a militaristic trumpet duet punctuated by orchestral cannon fire. The recitative returns, now in an aggressive, off-kilter ostinato, which leads finally to the coda: the return of the first movement “Babi Yar” theme, now rising victoriously as an exuberant brass fanfare, in conversation with the Hebraic recitative in the low voices below.
It does not strain the imagination to interpret these references to Beethoven as an act of defiance against Ukraine’s erstwhile invaders, holding up a mirror to the Germanic music the Nazis once touted as proof of their own superiority while juxtaposing it against Jewish-inspired melodies. “Despite their atrocities against our people,” the subtext might read, “we are still here.”
Program Notes written by Music Director Nicholas Hersh
Digital Program: Williams & Rachmaninoff
October 10 & 11, 2025 at 7:30 pm
Modesto Symphony Orchestra
Williams & Rachmaninoff
Friday, October 10, 2025; 7:30 pm
Saturday, October 11, 2025; 7:30 pm
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About this Performance
Program Notes: Williams & Rachmaninoff
Notes about:
Williams: Concerto for Cello & Orchestra
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor
Program Notes for October 10 & 11, 2025
Williams & Rachmaninoff
John Williams
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Composer: born February 8, 1932, Flushing, Queens, NY
Work composed: 1993-94. Commissioned by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony and composed for cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
World premiere: Williams led Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony on July 7, 1994, at Tanglewood, to mark the opening of Seiji Ozawa Hall.
Instrumentation: solo cello, 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets (1 doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, timpani, bass drum, chimes, glockenspiel, marimba, mark tree, small triangle, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, triangle, tuned drums, vibraphone, harp, piano/celesta, and strings
Estimated duration: 30 minutes
“Music is our oxygen.”
Composer John Williams is synonymous with movie music. He became a household name with the Academy Award-winning score he wrote in 1977 for Star Wars, and he has defined the symphonic Hollywood sound ever since. In addition to the Star Wars films, Williams composed the music for Jaws, the Raiders of the Lost Ark films, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., the Jurassic Park films, Schindler’s List, the Harry Potter series, and many other films.
Williams has also composed a considerable body of concert works, including six concertos. Like his scores, Williams’ concert music also features his masterful orchestration and dramatic flourishes, and his concertos are designed to showcase the unique qualities of both the solo instrument and the soloist.
Williams and Ma have been good friends and collaborators for decades. “Given the broad technical and expressive arsenal available in Yo-Yo’s work, planning the concerto was a joy,” Williams writes. “I decided to have four fairly extensive movements that would offer as much variety and contrast as possible but that could be played continuously and without interruption.
“The Theme and Cadenza, after an opening salvo of brass, immediately casts the cello in a kind of hero’s role, making it the unquestioned center of attention. It’s a movement that attempts to put the cello on display in the time-honored sense of ‘concerto,’ and as the hero’s theme is developed, it ‘morphs’ into a cadenza in which I tried to create an opportunity for exploration of the theme that would be both ruminative and virtuosic.
“The second movement I call Blues.… In my mind, and without any conscious prodding on my part, the ghosts of Ellington and Strayhorn seemed to waft through the atmosphere. Invited or not, this was for me very welcome company. I set up clusters in piano and percussion that form a frame within which the cello unveils its misty quasi-improvisations.
“The Scherzo is about speed, deftness, and sleight of hand. The music romps along in triple time over a treacherous landscape where athletic exchanges are periodically and suddenly interrupted by a series of fermatas, as the orchestra and cello try to dominate and outdo each other. There’s a short tutti where it appears that the orchestra might prevail, but the cello outwits and outlasts it.
“In thinking about the finale of the concerto, I was always aware of the fact that Yo-Yo’s ability to ‘connect’ personally and even privately with every individual in his audience is perhaps the greatest of his abundant gifts. I therefore tried in Song, the concerto’s finale, to create long lyrical lines that would give the cello the opportunity to address the audience in the manner of a clear and direct soliloquy.
“Whatever virtues the concerto may have can never surpass, for me, the experience of knowing and working with Yo-Yo Ma. Happily, and with complete justice, the world loves and reveres this man, as do I, and working with him is always a joyous journey to be treasured.”
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
Composer: born April 1, 1873, Oneg, Russia; died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, CA
Work composed: 1906-07. Rachmaninoff dedicated it to his composing teacher, Sergei Taneyev
World premiere: February 7, 1908, in St. Petersburg, with Rachmaninoff conducting
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, and strings
Estimated duration: 43 minutes
Artists of all types have a love-hate relationship with critics: they need the exposure criticism brings to their work, but often scorn the critiques themselves. Other artists take criticism too much to heart and let it affect them to a debilitating degree, which was the case with Sergei Rachmaninoff. After the premiere of Rachmaninoff’s first symphony, he was so savaged by critics that he did not dare compose a note for three years. Eventually Rachmaninoff consulted a doctor, Nicolai Dahl, who used hypnotism to bolster Rachmaninoff’s flagging confidence. Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto was dedicated to Dahl, and it vindicated Rachmaninoff as a composer by becoming one of his most popular works.
After the success of the Second Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff felt ready to tackle another symphony, and in 1906 he began work on his second. The writing was difficult for him, as he reported in a letter to a friend, and the work proceeded slowly. The final version lasted over an hour, although Rachmaninoff later suggested a number of performance cuts that shorten it by as much as 20 minutes; these cuts have become standard when programming this symphony today. Although Rachmaninoff, out of necessity, agreed to the cuts, which amounted to some 300 measures of music, he later confided to conductor Eugene Ormandy, “You don’t know what cuts do to me. It is like cutting a piece out of my heart.” Rachmaninoff might have appreciated the words of one critic, who wrote at the symphony’s premiere, “After listening with unflagging attention to its four movements, one notes with surprise that the hands of the watch have moved sixty-five minutes forward. This may be slightly overlong for the general audience, but how fresh, how beautiful it is!”
The symphony opens with a darkly murmuring theme played by the lower strings, a theme that forms the basis for the remainder of the first movement, as well as much of the rest of the symphony. The violins contrast with a lyrical melody, followed by a plaintive solo for English horn. Throughout this movement, Rachmaninoff uses solo instruments as structural signposts, indicating changes of mood or harmonic foundations.
The horns launch the Scherzo with a bold, energetic theme, and the strings continue with a bouncier, skipping melody. These are contrasted by a series of interludes, one unabashedly romantic, and others feverishly intense. As was his wont in many of his orchestral works, including the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Rachmaninoff includes the Dies irae melody (Day of Wrath) from the Requiem Mass; it appears here in the coda to the trio.
In the Adagio, Rachmaninoff’s signature romanticism is heard in the violins’ opening melody, which could easily serve as the love song in a cinematic romance. In fact, 1970s pop singer Eric Carmen wrote a hit song based on this theme, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.”
For the Finale, Rachmaninoff unleashes a whirlwind of vibrant joy. Buoyant strings recall the Scherzo, but this music is abruptly interrupted by the stark call of muted horns. We then hear snatches of music from previous movements, especially the Scherzo and the Adagio. The strings, playing in the style of the Italian tarantella, are the foundation for this movement, and its energy drives the symphony forward to a triumphant conclusion.
© Elizabeth Schwartz
NOTE: These program notes are published here by the Modesto Symphony Orchestra for its patrons and other interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may be contacted at www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com
Picnic at the Pops! The Music of Queen
September 6, 2025
Modesto Symphony Orchestra
Picnic at the Pops!
Windborne’s The Music of Queen
Saturday, September 6, 2025
Grounds Open: 5:00 pm
Concert Starts: 7:30 pm
GALLO Grounds
Program
All selections will be announced from the stage.
There will be one intermission.
About this Performance
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