NEC Philharmonia + David Loebel: Making Choices
Anthony Davis is best known for his operas, including X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Amistad, and The Central Park Five, works that boldly face America’s fraught racial history.
Like a character in one of Davis’ operas, the hero of Beethoven’s dramatic Coriolan Overture faces a life-altering conflict between his duty as a military leader and his love for his family.
Completed shortly before Beethoven’s death, Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (known as “The Great C Major”) expanded the model of his revered predecessor’s symphonies into harmonically daring, ever-songful music of “heavenly length.”
This performance is open to in-person audiences, and can also be viewed below via livestream.
Watch livestream from Jordan Hall:
- NEC Philharmonia
Ludwig van Beethoven | "Coriolan" Overture, op. 62
Anthony Davis | Notes from the Underground (1988)
Shadow
ArtIn Notes from the Underground...I was interested in creating rhythmic drama, using polyrhythmic structures to articulate expanses of time. The nodes of conjunction of the polyrhythms help create occasions for change as well as dramatic action. This became a compelling musical device in my operas as well as my earlier orchestral works. Rhythmic ostinatos, repeating structures of varying lengths and contrasting tonality have a similar function as leitmotifs in Wagner’s operas. The vamps or ostinatos delineate time and space, providing a subtext in the music that is both conscious and subliminal, embodying forward motion and giving the music the inevitability of groove.
Notes from the Underground debuted in 1988 with the American Composers’ Orchestra. The work has been performed by a number of orchestras in the United States and Europe including performances by conductor Lorin Maazel with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Pittsburgh and at Carnegie Hall. The piece riffs on Duke Ellington’s seminal work Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, transposing Ellington’s imaginative sonorities of woodwinds, trumpets, trombones and rhythm section into antiphonal orchestral choirs. The work is dedicated to the novelist Ralph Ellison and is conceived in two sections, “Shadow” and “Act” after his collection of essays.
– Anthony DavisFranz Schubert | Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 "The Great C Major"
Andante - Allegro, ma non troppo
Andante con moto
Scherzo: Allegro vivace
Allegro vivace
Personnel
First Violin
Passacaglia Mason
Liyuán Xiè
Justus Ross
Hannah O’Brien
Bree Fotheringham
Caroline Jesalva
Evan Hjort
Bella Hyeonseo Jeong
Evelyn Song
Louis Liao
Chae Lim Yoon
Ruoran Yu
Xiaoqing Yu
Second Violin
Aidan Ip
Yebin Yoo
Nikki Naghavi
Jason Qiu
Seunghee Lee
Isabella Gorman
Natalie Boberg
Yulia Price
Jimmy Wang
Qiyan Xing
Bo-Wen Chen
Viola
Kwong Man To
Elton Tai
Joy Hsieh
Steven Tse
Anna Mann
Ayano Nakamura
Wonjeong Seol
Hyelim Kong
Karlie Roberts
Cello
Jiho Seo
Yi-I Stephanie Yang
Eva Ropero
Adithya Muralidharan
Emma Fisher
Cheyoon Lee
Josephina You Kyung Kim
Bass
Misha Bjerken
Chiyang Chen
Alyssa Peterson
Daniel Slatch
Flute
Jeong Won Choe*
Anna Kevelson
Hui Lam Mak
Chase McClung^
Yeyoung Moon
Nnamdi Odita-Honnah‡
Piccolo
Yeyoung Moon
Oboe
So Jeong Kim‡
Nathalie Graciela Vela*
Kip Zimmerman^
Clarinet
Ching-Wen Chen‡
Kevin Lin*
Soyeon Park
Erica Smith^
Bassoon
Delano Bell^
Chaoyang Jing‡
Miranda Macias*
Daniel McCarty
Julien Rollins
Richard Vculek
French horn
Alex Daiker
Hannah Messenger‡
Tess Reagan*
Paolo Rosselli^
Tasha Schapiro
Trumpet
Michael Harms^
Sarah Heimberg‡
Qiyu Liu
Ryan O’Connell*
Alex Prokop
Alex Tung
Trombone
Lukas Helsel‡
Quinn McGillis^
Matt Vezey
Bass Trombone
Ki Yoon Park
Tuba
Colin Benton
Timpani
Pei Hsien Lu^
David Uhlmann‡
Tennison Watts*
Percussion
Stephanie Nozomi Krichena‡
Pei Hsien Lu
Tennison Watts
Yiming Yao
Piano
NAMEPrincipal players
*Beethoven
‡Davis
^Schubert