Jaap van Zweden, Music Director
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 7:30 P.M.
| STEVEN STUCKY | August 4, 1964 |
| Indira Mahajan, Soprano Kristine Jepson, Mezzo-soprano Vale Rideout, Tenor Rod Gilfry, Baritone Dallas Symphony Chorus (prepared by Don Krehbiel) New York premiere Commisioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and first performed in September 2008 to commemorate the 100th birthday of President Lyndon B. Johnson. |
Listen to the concert
About the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s beginnings can be traced to May 22, 1900, when a 40-member ensemble performed under the direction of German-born conductor Hans Kreissig. In the ensuing years, the DSO grew into a major American orchestra under the leadership of such eminent conductors as Walter J. Fried, Jacques Singer, Antal Dorati, Walter Hendl, Paul Kletzki, Sir Georg Solti, Donald Johanos, Anshel Brusilow, Max Rudolf and Louis Lane.
From 1977 to 1993, Eduardo Mata was music director and conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and saw the dedication of the DSO’s permanent home, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, in 1989. Andrew Litton followed Mata as music director and embarked on an ambitious program to raise the orchestra’s international standing. He launched the DSO’s first television venture; made numerous recordings, including the Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice Award-winning Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos; appeared several times at Carnegie Hall, and led the DSO on three European tours.
Jaap van Zweden became the new music director in 2008. Under his leadership, the DSO has established an ongoing residency at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and performed five world premieres as part of the DSO’s Texas Instruments Classical Series. Van Zweden and the DSO are also focusing on music education. This season, every eligible 5th grade pupil in the Dallas Independent School District will attend a DSO concert and a DSO Quartet in Residence is working with students at the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts. The DSO’s successful Teen Council that implemented teen-focused initiatives to enhance the teen concert experience also continues. For more information, visit dallassymphony.com.
About Jaap van Zweden
Jaap van Zweden “knows how to generate tense, tactile excitement in all kinds of music,” Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed wrote, and also named van Zweden one of the “Faces to Watch” in 2010. In addition to the post he holds at the DSO, Van Zweden serves as music director of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and principal conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra of Belgium.
Van Zweden is a highly sought-after guest conductor worldwide. The orchestras he has appeared with include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National du Capital de Toulouse, Munich Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Among the operas that van Zweden has conducted are La Traviata and Fidelio with the Nationale Reisopera in Holland, Madama Butterfly with the Netherlands Opera and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa in a concert performance at the Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
The DSO has released two acclaimed recordings of van Zweden’s live performances with the orchestra on the ensemble’s recording label DSOLive!: Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 5 and 7 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Capriccio italien. They join van Zweden’s large catalogue, which also includes the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague for Philips; for Brilliant Classics, the Brahms symphonies with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, with whom he is currently recording a Bruckner cycle for Octavia; Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic for Naive, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, recorded live at his London Philharmonic debut.
Originally from the Netherlands, van Zweden began his violin studies at the Amsterdam Conservatory before entering The Juilliard School at age 16, as a student of Dorothy DeLay. At 19, he became concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where he spent the next sixteen years. In 1990, Leonard Bernstein asked van Zweden to take over a Mahler rehearsal and encouraged him to pursue a conducting career. He began studying and in 1997 was named the chief conductor of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 2003. From 2000 to 2005, he was also the music director of the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague. Van Zweden is very committed to bringing awareness and acceptance to the cause of autism, and in the Netherlands he has established the Papageno Foundation devoted to bringing music therapy into the homes of autistic children.
About Dallas, Texas
Dallas, the top tourist destination in Texas, inspires big ideas. It boasts the largest urban arts district in the United States, with five cultural venues designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects, among them I.M. Pei’s Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, which is home to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Renzo Piano’s Nasher Sculpture Center, and the new $354 million AT&T Performing Arts Center, which includes buildings by Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas, and which has been called the most significant cultural construction project in the United States since Lincoln Center. The city has a cutting-edge culinary scene, 70,000 hotel rooms, and more than 200 golf courses. In addition, it is home to five major professional sports teams, including the NFL’s storied Dallas Cowboys.
