The chance to lead an orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is both an honor and a challenge for any conductor.

We're talking about one of the most significant and universally loved works of art in human history.

Even its themes are universal.

It's a musical epic about surviving through a difficult age and coming out the other end with hope for the future.

So what pairs well with something as big as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony?

That's the question we ask ourselves while planning the first half of the concert.

You're about to see, which was recorded live at Miller Symphony Hall on Saturday, April 13th, 2024.

Rest assured, you'll hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety.

But first, we're proud to introduce you to three American composers you might not have heard of who also wrote music inspired by the world around them and focused on the importance of coming together.

Plus, we have a special performance featuring the young musicians of El Sistema, Lehigh Valley, a program of the Allentown Symphony.

Finally, thanks for watching and for supporting the Allentown Symphony Orchestra and PBS 39.

Without you, this performance would never have been possible.

Thanks and enjoy the show.

Beethoven in Allentown is brought to you by the generous support of Bob and Sandy Lovett and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

To.

I'm actually stopping using the term classical music.

I like to refer to music as orchestral music.

It's music that we utilize the orchestra and the sounds of an orchestra because our orchestral musicians, they can play anything.

So we can play jazz, we can play rock, we can play what we have grown up to know as classical, but really is we play good music.

So the chorus is steady.

At 209.

So I'm in my 29th year and next year will be my 30th year with the Allentown Symphony.

When you do a work like Beethoven's Ninth, you really have an opportunity to put other pieces on the program that maybe are lesser known, not as familiar.

And then because the actual text of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony is brotherhood for all mankind, I just felt, how can I bring communities together around music?

In the first half of this concert?

Diane, our music director, is so creative and so she has created almost a little mini symphony as part of the first half with these four different works.

The first three pieces on the program are actually all by African-American composers.

We open with a work by Adolphus Hale Storch the fanfare for Amazing Grace.

What I love about the Adolphus piece is that he doesn't give you blatantly amazing Grace up front.

He uses it, but he doesn't use it in the same ways that you might think.

He uses bits and pieces of it.

In fact, you're hearing it and all you hear is the fanfares.

And then it's only after a while into the piece that suddenly out of this, you really hear the melody.

This is a piece I think, that really also brings people together around music.

Adolphus Hill Storch is still living.

He is now, I think, about 82 years old.

He lives in Virginia and he is a composer who I don't think his music has gotten enough play and people are beginning to discover his pieces.

And then we do a piece by Florence Price.

Her andante cantabile.

She was the first African-American woman to have a piece performed by a major symphony in the United States, as was the Chicago Symphony in 1933.

Her music is becoming popular recently, and part of that is that much of her music before this time period was lost.

And it was recently discovered in around 2009.

And they were box is in the attic of a farmhouse south of Chicago.

And this was where she used to go in the summers to compose and to write.

And people bought this house and they found all these boxes of music and they rediscovered her music.

And music in general of composers tends to get lost very easily unless you have a publisher here in your lifetime that publishes the piece and keeps it on record somewhere.

A lot of great artists get lost.

I mean, we always are led to believe that Bach and his music would have been lost if it hadn't been for Mendelssohn rediscovering his music and championing it.

I love her music because there's so much sort of heartfelt emphasis in her music and also a little bit of a reminiscent of perhaps Dvorak's Music.

I do feel that people are going to be playing more and more of her music in the future.

It's like, it was like so close to being like Lost forever.

And the fact of that family that found it in that summer house were able to like that.

They were they they had they made the conscious choice to say, Hey, I think this belongs to someone like, yeah, let's preserve this.

She was once price And so yeah, it's also an honor to be featured on same programs her.

One sort of 29.

So my piece is called Overture for the 21st Century subtitled Joy of the Soul is my first orchestral and professional orchestral commission.

And having him here, having a living composer to actually offer feedback during rehearsals, while while the orchestra is performing.

To be here to hear the world premiere of his pieces is so special and he is very enthusiastic.

And at the base is going, You understand why I said that?

It was realize that this is going to sound pretty meta, but I realize the piece is actually, you know, so it's subtitled Joy the slow, right?

But it's really, you know, the joy of my soul because it tells the story of me being excited for.

This commission.

when you commission a piece, you never know what you're going to get.

But I was familiar with Joe because I got a recommendation about him from quite a few colleagues.

I stressed to him, this is a commission from a professional orchestra, and I want you to give me your best.

Of course, I, when we first have the calls, like, right.

No pressure, right?

I knew that he was influenced by film music.

It's very American, you know, because John Williams and all these different composers have such a high bar for us to meet with this type of music.

But I also saw something very unique in Joe, in his own musical voice.

He also has done a lot of writing for band, so his writing for the percussion section particularly has a very band feel to it.

And so I really love my percussion on the snare drum.

Writing is definitely an homage to that.

And then we end the first half of the concert with a piece that I actually wrote called The Ode to Joy Fanfare Ready and yeah, okay, one more time.

Let's go for before.

After credit check.

And I wrote this piece because I know when you come to a Beethoven nine concert, you really want to hear that famous melody, the Ode to Joy.

But in the original symphony, you have to wait like 45 minutes before we get to that part of the piece.

So I just wanted to give it to the audience right up there at the very beginning of the concert.

And the great thing is our El Sistema Lehigh Valley students will be joining us for that, and they will be playing the Ode to Joy in that opening work.

We like to welcome.

Our.

Somebody else.

So we have our little.

Elsa El Sistema.

Lehigh Valley is a program of the Allentown Symphony Association.

We have students from over 20 different schools in the Lehigh Valley who all come together after school.

There's about 120 of them in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Today was kind of like the culmination of actually months of working on this piece.

And it's great because, you know, we get to talk about professionalism and what we do on a concert stage and what we do when we are thinking about other musicians time And then for today, they're getting to see all of that, you know, in real time.

To learn an instrument, you have to have a lot of discipline and you have to have a lot of responsibility, not just to take care of the instrument, to bring it every day to school, to class, but also to practice, you know, to achieve something, to work every day, to get better and better and better.

I know that there a little bit in all when they get up on that stage, but I was really proud that they just went for it on that first run through and it's going to get better and better every time they play it.

What I did is I went back to the entire Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and I pulled out and made notes of each of the themes from each movement.

But nobody really gets the full melody.

It's almost like the offstage horn starts, but then they don't finish it.

It's echoed by somebody on stage So everybody only gets a little bit until the El Sistema students play, until the students play.

The mode of the ode to joy all by themselves.

And I wanted it to be as if we have the innocence of the children that are having us look at the world and they're saying, You guys can agree on anything.

Everybody's playing a different mode.

If you're all in different movements of this piece, let's just play this ode to Joy and let's enjoy this beautiful melody.

We have a motto that the kids all know that says, In an orchestra, we do everything together and our students have adopted that and adapted that to their lives, to our program.

And it's really fitting that this is the concert that we are participating in.

Because of that, because it's all surrounding joy and camaraderie and and brotherhood and family.

And it couldn't be more fitting for us to be a part of that.

And now we're proud to present Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as performed by the Allentown Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

I know you're going to enjoy it.

The ninth is a big deal, I think, because it's Beethoven, it's epic.

Everybody knows it.

Everybody has an expectation.

The ninth, it's it's big, man.

It's a big piece.

It's very much an ensemble.

Piece, you know, from the soloists to the chorus to the orchestra and.

All together I call it the Unification Symphony.

And for me as a conductor, I try to ignore all other people's interpretations and come in with my own interpretive portion of what I think Beethoven would have wanted.

Beethoven only wrote nine complete symphonies, but every single one is very different.

I think you have to look at the ninth from a historical perspective.

First, it was a a revolutionary piece.

First of all, it stood out.

The incorporation of chorus and the quartet.

Of fourth soloists.

As part of a symphonic work.

That was something that had not been done in the history of Western music before Beethoven.

The second reason, I think, is how universal it is to all of humanity.

If you just walk down the street whistling the Ode to Joy, which is the main theme of Beethoven's Ninth, probably people will recognize or even turn around.

that's the ode to Joy because of the fact that, number one, it's in the major key, which which people relate very easily to, and also is what we call in music a diatonic melody step wise.

Dee dee dee.

Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee.

And that was the.

Melody is something very accessible, right?

Yeah.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee.

Right.

Moves up by little steps.

Yes, step.

But then it comes down in step, you know, And when you think.

About it, it it it, it it.

De de de de de de de de de de de de de de de de de de.

That's basically it.

For the symphony, though, it's labeled and written in D minor.

This this, this theme is major.

And the whole symphony itself is sort of the sort of the struggle and the fight between the bonds of the past.

And then at the very end, you've got the singers who come in, you have your choir, and then you have the soloists.

And yeah, it's a long time to wait, but it's it's we hope it's worth the wait, you know, let's see.