Celebrations

Sunday, Oct 18, 2026 at the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture

Michael Lewanski, conductor

Zachary Good, clarinet

Program Notes by Hannah Edgar

Festive Overture

William Grant Still (1895–1978)

In 1944, the Cincinnati Symphony—long an intrepid engine for new orchestral music—solicited scores to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Thirty-nine composers submitted works before an intimidating panel of judges: Eugene Goossens, the orchestra’s music director; Pierre Monteux, conductor of the San Francisco Symphony; and Deems Taylor, a composer and critic. The winner would walk away with a titled prize and $1,000 war bond.

The judges unanimously named this Festive Overture the winner. When William Grant Still was unveiled as the composer, his name preceded him. He had become a leading voice in American classical music since his Afro-American Symphony of 1930 swept the U.S. and Europe. At the time, the symphony was an all-too-rare example of Black musical vernaculars entering the concert hall through the

handiwork of a Black composer, rather than a white colleague. (One illustrative example: When the Afro-American Symphony debuted, its third movement melody was immediately recognizable to listeners as George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”; in truth, testimony suggests Gershwin based “I Got Rhythm” off an improvisation he’d heard Still play in a pit orchestra years before.) He is still affectionately dubbed “the Dean of African-American Composers.”

The Cincinnati Symphony premiered Still’s Festive Overture in January 1945. As Goossens wrote in the concert program, the overture “has a definite American flavor”—today, we may even recognize it as cinematic, with the same lively, lush strings associated with Hollywood’s Golden Age. Befitting its anniversary occasion, the overture is indeed very festive, kicking off with a brass fanfare and moving through big-hearted writing for the whole orchestra. Lakeview plays it here to celebrate our own landmark occasion: the ensemble’s first “passing of the baton,” from founder Greg Hughes to our new artistic director, Michael Lewanski.

The Gathering Grounds

Carlos Carrillo (b. 1968)

Like Still’s Festive Overture, The Gathering Grounds could be considered meta-music. Just as Still was thinking about how to

celebrate the orchestra itself, Carrillo was inspired by the mechanics of musical performance when he wrote The Gathering

Grounds:

"We come together to listen to music in a unique place, the concert space. The Gathering Grounds serves as a celebration

of this moment. Musical ideas flow in and out, meeting and separating in rapid succession, always full of energy, preparing

the space for this gathering to take place."

Now teaching in the University of Illinois’s prestigious music program, Carrillo maintains close ties to musical institutions in Puerto Rico, where he was born. The Gathering Grounds was commissioned and premiered by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico (OSPR) in 2012, and conducted by its dedicatee, retiring music director Roselín Pabon. Carrillo further revised the piece in 2018.

Like Carrillo’s other music, The Gathering Grounds uses its ensemble beguilingly. As the many orchestral lines “gather,” some sound in

unison. (Listen for a fascinating blend of trumpet, bass clarinet and piccolo—the very highest woodwind—within the piece’s first minute.) Others sound in close echoes, giving the work a forward-moving, cascading quality. A lone triangle carries the pulse for much of the piece, pinging away insistently.

Though much of The Gathering Grounds carries a mysterious air, it is roughly structured in the three-part sonata form standard in classical music: an exposition, a roving middle section, then an ending which revisits the exposition. At beginning and end, the sonic swirl erupts into an all-orchestra outburst, with galloping brass and ecstatic strings.

Clarinet Concerto in B-flat Major

Johann Stamitz (1717–1757)

Much of our program can be traced back to Johann Stamitz, whether directly or indirectly. Despite his immense influence on classical music, he remains a name more commonly encountered in music history classes or—because of this concerto—among clarinetists.

Born in modern-day Czechia, Stamitz made his career as the leader of the court orchestra in Mannheim, Germany. During his tenure, the ensemble would become synonymous with polished, exciting playing and musical innovations that inspired composers like Mozart and defined the burgeoning Classical period. Among them is the standardization of the four-movement symphony, setting the mold for generations of composers—including Johannes Brahms, whose Symphony No. 2 ends our concert.

Just as Brahms later harbored a soft spot for the clarinet, Stamitz was also drawn to the versatile woodwind instrument. Under his leadership, the Mannheim court orchestra adopted clarinets as a standard section of the ensemble—a move that would only be broadly adopted near the end of the century. Mozart, who would also have a late-in-life clarinet kick, was bowled over when he heard their sound as part of the 50-piece Mannheim orchestra. “Oh, if only we, too, had clarinets!” he swooned to his father in 1778.

When Stamitz wrote this concerto, some 20 years earlier, the clarinet wasn’t on anyone’s radar as a solo vehicle. This is the earliest clarinet concerto that we know of, and the only one by the elder Stamitz to have survived. (Stamitz’s sons, themselves composers, also wrote for the clarinet—especially Carl Stamitz, who has 11 concertos for the instrument under his name.) Unlike many genre “firsts,” Stamitz’s effort handily became part of the standard solo repertoire once it was rediscovered in Regensburg, Germany in 1933. Clarinetist Frederick Thurston gave the concerto’s modern premiere three years later, in London. 

Stamitz’s hallmarks—and thus, hallmarks of the early Classical period, which he helped to forge—are on display in this short concerto, cast in a conventional fast-slow-fast form. Harmonic suspensions and resolutions frequently lend the music a “sighing” gesture. The Baroque tradition of quasi-improvised accompaniment has been dispensed with, as has the once-usual harpsichord. The orchestra and soloist largely trade off, with the orchestra’s accompaniment becoming feathery and minimal whenever the soloist takes over. 

In Stamitz’s day, artists would have written or improvised their own cadenzas. Our soloist, Zachary Good, follows in that tradition: His self-written cadenza incorporates multiphonics, or multiple notes played at the same time, on the typically single-voiced clarinet. (Good has explored multiphonics in his solo career for over a decade, including on his recent album, Lake Heritage.) Stamitz likely would have never imagined such a thing would be possible when he wrote this concerto. Three centuries on, the clarinet continues to surprise, and inspire.

Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120

II. Andante un poco adagio 

III. Allegretto grazioso 

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), orch. Luciano Berio (1925–2003)

Just as Brahms was thinking about retiring, he fell in love. The object of his infatuation was not a person but an instrument: the clarinet, as played by his friend Richard Mühlfeld. Brahms had written for the clarinet before, in the context of broader orchestral works—like the Symphony No. 2, which concludes our program. But he had never considered it as a solo instrument until he heard Mühlfeld’s luxurious, lyric sound. In letters, Brahms teasingly referred to his friend as “Fräulein Klarinette”—Little Miss Clarinet. 

In 1891, Brahms wrote two chamber works for Mühlfeld, which he considered “twins”: a trio for clarinet, cello and piano, and a clarinet quintet, the finest in the repertoire since Mozart’s. Three years later, two clarinet–piano sonatas followed.

We hear the first of these in this concert, orchestrated nearly a century later by Italian composer Luciano Berio. A Brahms arrangement may seem like an odd fit for Berio, whose music incorporated electronics, theater, chance elements, and extended techniques (non-conventional ways of using one’s instrument or voice). Then radical, such innovations would come to define 20th-century music and beyond. 

However, like fellow avant-gardist Arnold Schoenberg, Berio never shed his fascination with the musical canon. He often placed that fascination front and center in his music, like this orchestration. One of his most famous works, Sinfonia (1968), brims with recognizable musical quotations by other composers like Igor Stravinsky and Gustav Mahler. When he released a series of lectures at Harvard University as a book, Berio tellingly called it Remembering the Future—itself a line from one of his earlier compositions.

“Except when there are specific practical or personal reasons, my transcriptions are invariably prompted by analytical considerations,” he said in one of those lectures. “As Heraclitus said, ‘it is not possible to go into the same river twice.’ … Awareness of the past is never passive.”

Berio’s Brahms arrangement effectively turns the clarinet sonata into a concerto, for solo clarinet and orchestra. That’s not to say the writing is always one-to-one. Berio writes short, original introductions to the first and second movements, and you’ll hear much give-and-take between the solo clarinet and orchestra, which often share the melody.

Most of all, the arrangement is an intriguing glimpse into how one great composer views and venerates the work of another. As Berio himself said in his Harvard lectures, “The best possible commentary on a symphony is another symphony.”

Symphony No. 2, Op. 73

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Though every bit as musically precocious as many great composers before him, Brahms demurred when it came to writing a symphony. He had been hailed early on in his career as German music’s next great talent, and listeners hotly anticipated his debut in the genre. But Beethoven’s legacy cast a paralyzingly long shadow. “You have no idea how it feels to hear such a giant marching behind you,” Brahms griped to a friend.

Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 took him almost fifteen years, on and off, to compose. But once the Band-Aid was ripped off, it was gone for good: His Second took him just four summer months to compose. With all four movements cast in major keys, the symphony seems to bottle up those months’ sunshine. The conductor Hans von Bülow dubbed the symphony “Brahms’s Pastoral,” in reference to Beethoven’s similarly blissed-out Sixth Symphony. (Apparently, Brahms wasn’t the only one who viewed his symphonic output in relation to Beethoven’s.) 

The symphony’s elegant construction only amplifies the impression that it sprung from Brahms’s head fully formed. The very first three notes we hear, played by the low strings, will tee up the entire symphony: a three-note wiggle on a half-step. This simple theme will appear again and again in various guises, whether moving down then up—as it does in its first appearance—or up then down.

But is this symphony really so cheery? Some listeners harbored doubts. So did Brahms himself, who was coy as ever about the symphony’s true motivations. At turns he called it a “lovely monstrosity,” his saddest and most “minor-ish” symphony (as in a minor key), and “no symphony, but merely a sinfonietta”—none of which seem to describe the finished piece.

They do, however, capture an uneasy detail: the grumbling trombones and tuba, who scowl through much of this symphony. When Brahms wrote the Symphony No. 2 in 1877, the low brass section was not yet solidified in the standard orchestra—particularly the tuba, which still competed with other instruments as the lowest voice of the brass choir. That would change in a few short decades: By the end of the 19th century, listeners would hardly bat an eye at three trombones and a tuba in a symphony. But together, the low brass’s presence and prominence would have taken some contemporary listeners aback.

After hearing the Second live, an acquaintance wrote to Brahms inquiring about “the gloomy lugubrious tones” of the trombones and tuba throughout the symphony. Brahms responded by confessing that he was “a severely melancholic person” who felt that “black wings are constantly flapping above us.” “It casts the necessary shadow on this serene symphony,” he wrote.

The first “shadow” appears in low brass and kettle drums just a minute into the symphony, interrupting a flowing line in the strings. But it doesn’t last long: Daylight breaks in the strings and woodwinds, mounting into an exuberant outburst for full orchestra. After this quiets again, the cellos, then violins step forth with a melody which sounds an awful lot like the most recognizable tune Brahms ever wrote, his “Lullaby.” (You have probably heard it with a variety of English lyrics. The most common starts with “Lullaby and good night…”; some may have grown up with the variant “Go to sleep / Go to sleep / Go to sleep little baby…”) 

The first movement follows standard sonata form, the tripartite structure discussed earlier, plus a short coda at the end. Whenever the music intensifies, listen closely: those foreboding low brass are usually never far behind.

The second movement might be the most serious in tone of the entire symphony. It elaborates on a descending, singing line in the cellos before giving way to a tumultuous middle section with agitated violins. When things calm, they do so rather quickly, woodwinds and strings taking over the cello line before exhausting themselves into silence. 

The third movement is a scherzo—classical music’s standard, jocular middle movement—in all but name. This is some of the cheekiest music of all Brahms’ symphonies, off-kilter and rambunctious. Still, because it’s Brahms, even this frothy movement reflects serious craft. The opening oboe solo gets adapted into the strings’ fast-paced titters at the Presto (the much faster section about a minute into the movement) as well as the coasting ⅜ of the coda. 

Many have taken the symphony’s finale to be a sort of Kehraus—the last, boisterous dance of a ball, literally translating to “sweep-out” in German. Haydn was a fan of concluding his symphony with such high-stepping energy. Brahms follows in his footsteps here, but fakes us out with 22 bars marked piano (quiet) and sotto voce (soft-voiced), flowing and muted as a murmuring brook. Then comes an all-orchestra explosion, and the Kehraus begins. 

After a minor-key patch, the forward momentum is halted by a section marked “Tranquillo” (tranquil), but which seems more uneasy than calm. But the music seems to shake off the malaise more decisively than it had in previous movements. In a move musicologist Donald Tovey dubbed “the blast of the trombones,” the low brass join the romp to the end, in one of the most glittering orchestral celebrations Brahms ever wrote.

This movement would worm its way into the psyches of symphonists to come. An ethereal chord progression in the Tranquillo foreshadows the opening of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, written 10 years later (and concluding our season). A brief clarinet flourish early in the movement also anticipates a nearly identical solo in Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, composed 20 years later. To invoke Berio again, that great musical quoter: “Great works invariably subsume an incalculable number of other texts, not always identifiable on the surface—a multitude of sources, quotations, and more or less hidden precursors that have been assimilated, not always on a conscious level, by the author himself.”

With this symphony, Brahms didn’t just outrun the giant. He became one. 

- Hannah Edgar, Program Annotator