American Symphonies and Serenade
Thu Feb 23 — Sat Feb 25, 2023
Orchestra Hall
Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska makes her Minnesota Orchestra debut in an all-American program featuring the Orchestra’s own Concertmaster Erin Keefe. Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute alumna Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) opens the concert with enchanting music that churns and roils. Then, Keefe leads the way through a witty dinner table conversation set to music in Bernstein’s Serenade, after Plato’s “Symposium.” Finally, the Orchestra brings William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony—a remarkable work of art and story of true perseverance, inspired by African American spirituals—to the Orchestra Hall stage for the first time.
A Few Things To Know
- “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) is music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit,” says composer Missy Mazzoli.
- Raised in Finland, but born in Kyiv to Finnish and Ukrainian parents, Dalia Stasevska feels strongly connected to Ukrainian culture; one of her two brothers is currently on the ground in Ukraine documenting the ongoing war.
- Stasevska holds the positions of chief conductor of the Lahti Symphony and chief guest conductor of BBC Symphony Orchestra.
- Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony received great critical acclaim after its premiere by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934. Soon after, it dropped off the radar and wasn’t performed for decades; some claim this was due to poor readability of the parts, but many now credit it to a reluctance of orchestras to program music by a Black composer.
Program
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MAZZOLI
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
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BERNSTEIN
Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium”
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DAWSON
Negro Folk Symphony
Artists
Minnesota Orchestra
Dalia Stasevska
conductor
Erin Keefe
volin
The Grammy Award-winning Minnesota Orchestra, founded in 1903 and led since its centennial by Music Director Osmo Vänskä, is recognized for distinguished performances around the world, award-winning recordings, radio broadcasts, educational engagement programs, and commitment to building the orchestral repertoire of the future. The Orchestra tours regularly throughout Minnesota and nationally, and has toured abroad in Australia, Canada, East Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and South Africa. Recording has been an important part of the organization’s mission since the 1920s. During Vänskä’s tenure, the Orchestra has undertaken acclaimed recordings, including complete cycles of symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven, Jean Sibelius and—now underway—Mahler.
American violinist Erin Keefe, who became concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra in September 2011, has established a reputation as an artist who combines exhilarating temperament and fierce integrity. At Sommerfest 2012 she made her concerto solo debut with the Orchestra, performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. She has since been featured as soloist in two concertos by Mendelssohn—the Violin Concerto and, in May 2022, the Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra—as well as the violin concertos of Brahms and Kurt Weill, and Dvořák’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra. Keefe joined the violin faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2022.
Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Pro Musicis International Award as well as numerous international competitions, she has appeared as soloist in recent seasons with the Minnesota Orchestra, New Mexico Symphony, New York City Ballet Orchestra, Korean Symphony Orchestra, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic, Sendai Philharmonic and the Gottingen Symphony and has given recitals throughout the United States, Austria, Italy, Germany, Korea, Poland, Finland, Japan and Denmark.
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