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June 11 - August 16, 2025

Welcome

The Grant Park Music Festival is a ten-week classical music concert series held annually in Chicago, Illinois’ Millennium Park.

It features the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus, along with guest performers and conductors, and is one of the only free outdoor classical-music concert series in the US.

C12_Augustin_Hadelich

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

Program


Mykola Lysenko Overture to Taras Bulba (5 mins)


Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (33 mins)

Allegro moderato
Canzonetta: Andante
Finale: Allegro vivacissimo

Intermission (20 mins)


Sergei Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 (46 mins)

Andante
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Allegro giocoso

Featuring

  • Grant Park Orchestra
    Grant Park Orchestra

    Grant Park Orchestra

    Orchestra

  • Keri-Lynn Wilson
    Keri-Lynn_Wilson

    Keri-Lynn Wilson

    Conductor

  • Augustin Hadelich
    Augustin_Hadelich

    Augustin Hadelich

    Violin

Program Notes

Mykola Lysenko - Overture to Taras Bulba

Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912)
Overture to
Taras Bulba (1880)
Scored for:
three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, three clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings
Performance time: 5 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko never got to see his opera Taras Bulba performed during his lifetime. His insistence on using Ukrainian text and folk music prevented its production in what was then the Russian Empire, which sought to suppress the Ukrainian language and culture. Nicknamed “the father of Ukrainian classical music,” Lysenko composed several operas as well as works for choir, orchestra, piano, and chamber ensembles. He also founded the Ukrainian National School of Music, where he taught a generation of Ukrainian composers.

Based on the novella Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol, the opera takes place in 17th-century Ukraine when Poland was fighting for supremacy in the region. In fighting for his people’s freedom, the Cossack patriarch Taras Bulba ends up killing his son for treason after he falls in love with the daughter of the Polish governor. The opera was performed for the first time in 1924 in Kharkiv. After undergoing significant revisions in the 1930s and 1950s, the opera now traditionally closes out each season at the Kyiv Opera House, though it is still rarely performed in the West.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Concerto in D major for Violin & Orchestra, op. 35, TH 59
(1878)
Scored for:
two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo violin
Performance time: 33 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance:
September 5, 1936; Joseph Raffaelli, conductor and Mischa Elman, violin

Just four years after pianist Nikolai Rubinstein’s notorious condemnation of his First Piano Concerto, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky again faced damning criticism for a work that would later become an audience favorite. In the spring of 1878, Tchaikovsky escaped the fallout from his failed marriage by absconding to the Swiss resort town of Clarens on Lake Geneva. There, he composed his Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, with the help of violinist Iosif Kotek, a former student from the Moscow Conservatory. The two had become close friends and collaborators after Kotek’s graduation in 1876. The young violinist proved a useful resource not only in helping Tchaikovsky workshop the Violin Concerto but also in connecting the composer with his future patron, the reclusive widow Nadezhda von Meck. Her patronage would give Tchaikovsky the financial security to quit teaching and compose full-time.

Tchaikovsky dedicated the Violin Concerto to violinist Leopold Auer, a colleague at the conservatory who had lobbied to premiere the work. However, Auer was not exactly thrilled when Tchaikovsky presented him with the completed score. In an interview in 1912, Auer said, “I regretted that the great composer had not shown it to me before committing it to print. Much unpleasantness might then have been spared us both.” According to Tchaikovsky, Auer said the concerto was “impossible to play” and “a mockery of the public”—much like the comments he had received from Rubinstein on his Piano Concerto. Auer insisted his criticism was more measured, his main complaint being that certain solo passages were not idiomatic for the instrument. Regardless of what words were actually exchanged, Tchaikovsky was hurt and the situation got messy. Auer’s lack of support meant the concerto was not performed until 1881, when it premiered to an unsympathetic audience in Vienna. Auer eventually came around to the Violin Concerto after making some edits to the violin part. He not only became a celebrated interpreter of the work but also taught it to his many illustrious students, including Jascha Heifetz.

The first movement begins simply with a minimally accompanied melody for the violins. A suspenseful dominant pedal in the low strings anticipates the solo violin’s entrance with a quiet iteration of the noble first theme. This melody alternates with a more sinuous second theme. These two themes are developed throughout the movement, with transitional passages providing the soloist ample opportunities for virtuosic display. Tchaikovsky did make one substantial edit after Auer’s comments: completely rewriting the slow movement. (He would recycle the original Andante in his suite for violin and piano Souvenir d’un lieu cher.) Titled “Canzonetta,” the movement’s sorrowful song-like melody is first presented over muted strings, then in duet with the flute and clarinet. A transitional cadenza flows straight into the spirited finale. Recalling the violin’s roots as a folk instrument, the rondo-form finale evokes a Slavic dance, again allowing the violinist plenty of opportunities for soloistic bravura.

Sergei Prokofiev – Symphony No. 5

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, op. 100
(1944)
Scored for:
three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, four clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings
Performance time: 46 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance:
August 9, 1961; Irwin Hoffman, conductor

Just as Sergei Prokofiev took the stage on January 13, 1945, to conduct the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, news reached Moscow that the Red Army had crossed the Vistula River into German-occupied Poland, marking the beginning of the defeat of the Nazis on the Eastern Front. In the silence of the auditorium, celebratory gunfire could be heard outside. Pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who was in attendance, recalled the scene: “When Prokofiev mounted the podium and silence set in, artillery salvos suddenly thundered. His baton was already raised. He waited, and until the cannon fire ceased, he didn’t begin. There was something very significant, very symbolic in this. It was as if all of us—including Prokofiev—had reached some kind of shared turning point.”

The tide was already starting to turn in favor of the Allies when Prokofiev set to work on his Fifth Symphony, hope for the war’s end in the air. Prokofiev composed the symphony—his first in 16 years—while staying at the Composers’ House in Ivanovo. Established by the Union of Soviet Composers, it was designed to give artists a quiet place to work away from the war-torn cities. This symphony ended up being one of his finest creations, with Prokofiev calling it “the culmination of an entire period of my work.” The Fifth Symphony marked the pinnacle of both his career and his standing with the government, earning him the Stalin Prize, First Class, in 1946. It was soon recorded and adopted by orchestras around the world. He was even featured on the cover of Time Magazine shortly after the American premiere by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in November 1945.

Prokofiev said his Fifth Symphony was “a hymn to free and happy man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.” While this statement was likely curated to appease Soviet officials, the work does carry an air of defiance and celebration. The opening melody of the Andante, presented with austere accompaniment at first, eventually builds in confidence, prevailing in hulking fortissimo by the end of the coda. Two other themes feature in the first movement: a more lyrical theme with sumptuous chromatic inflections, introduced by the flute and oboe, and a jittering theme of leaping and repeated 16th notes. The Allegro moderato is a witty scherzo and trio. After the scherzo’s jaunty clarinet theme, the clarinet and viola offer a snaky, sinuous melody in the trio, punctuated by snare drum and tambourine. When the scherzo returns in tiptoeing brass, it takes on a more sinister quality.

The following Adagio is dense and somber. A long-lined woodwind melody emerges from hefty bass chords and triplet string arpeggios. The lyrical melody swells in full strings before a funereal march takes over in the dark middle section. After a tortured climax of percussive bombast, the opening material returns, the movement ending gently with an ascending clarinet arpeggio. The finale begins with a graceful yet curious wind melody. Divided cellos soon restate the opening movement’s first theme. After this quiet introduction, the musical material becomes more excited, living up to the movement’s “giocoso” (or “playful”) marking. Prokofiev continually ratchets up the intensity, the coda spinning into a dizzying frenzy and ending with a bang.

—Katherine Buzard

Event Sponsors

The appearance of Augustin Hadelich is generously underwritten by Jeannette and Jerry Goldstone.

Artistic Leadership

  • Giancarlo Guerrero
    Welcome Letter from Giancarlo

    Giancarlo Guerrero

    Conductor

  • Christopher Bell
    Christopher_Bell

    Christopher Bell

    Chorus Director

Support The Festival

Grant Park Orchestra

* denotes leave-of-absence † one-year position

Violin I

Jeremy Black, concertmaster

Trista Wong, acting assistant concertmaster

Zulfiya Bashirova

Jennifer Cappelli

Laura Park Chen†

Injoo Choi

Dima Dimitrova

Erica Hudson

Hyewon Kim*

Matthew Lehmann

Jayna Park

Rika Seko

Karen Sinclair

Bonnie Terry

Krzysztof Zimowski

Violin II

Liba Shacht, principal

Laura Miller, assistant principal*

Ying Chai

Ran Cheng

Karl Davies

Likai He

Ann Lehmann

Cristina Muresan*

Kjersti Nostbakken

Irene Radetzky

Jeanine Wynton

Thomas Yang

Bing Jing Yu†

Viola

Terri Van Valkinburgh, principal

Yoshihiko Nakano, assistant principal

Elizabeth Breslin*

Beatrice Chen

Amy Hess

Christopher McKay†

Edwardo Rios†

Rebecca Swan

Chloé Thominet

Cello

Walter Haman, principal

Peter Szczepanek, assistant principal

Calum Cook

Larry Glazier

Steven Houser

Eric Kutz

Eran Meir

Double Bass

Colin Corner, principal

Peter Hatch, assistant principal

Andrew Anderson

Christian Luevano

Samuel Rocklin

Chunyang Wang

Chris White

Flute

Jennifer Lawson, acting principal

Jennifer Clippert†

Alyce Johnson, acting assistant principal

Piccolo

Alyce Johnson

Oboe

Mitchell Kuhn, principal

Alex Liedtke

Anne Bach, assistant principal

English Horn

Anne Bach

Clarinet

Dario Brignoli, principal

Trevor O’Riordan

Bassoon

Eric Hall, principal

Nicole Haywood Vera Tenorio, assistant principal

Contrabassoon

Juan De Gomar†

French Horn

Patrick Walle, acting principal†

Stephanie Blaha, assistant principal*

Neil Kimel

Brett Hodge

Paul Clifton

Trumpet

David Gordon, principal

Mike Brozick, acting assistant principal

William Denton*

Rebecca Oliverio†

Trombone

Daniel Cloutier, principal*

Jeremy Moeller, acting principal

Lee Rogers, acting assistant principal†

Bass Trombone

Alexander Mullins

Tuba

Andrew Smith, principal

Timpani

Daniel Karas, principal

Percussion

Josh Jones, principal

Joel Cohen, assistant principal

Doug Waddell

Harp

Kayo Ishimaru-Fleisher, principal*

Keyboards

Christopher Guzman

Orchestra Librarian

Eliza Bangert, principal

String Fellows

Javier F. Torres-Delgado, violin

Maria Gabriela Mendez Martinez, violin

Joshua Thaver, viola

Manuel Papale, cello

Grant Park Chorus

* denotes leave-of-absence † 2025 Vocal Fellow

Soprano

Laura Lynch Anderson

Kristina Bachrach

Madalynn Baez

Megan E. Bell

Alyssa Bennett

Tamara Bodnar

Kylie Buckham

Anna Joy Buegel

Laura Bumgardner

Katherine Buzard

Bethany Clearfield

Nathalie Colas

Carolyne DalMonte

Megan Fletcher

Kaitlin Foley

Saira Frank

Julia Frodyma

Katherine Gray-Noon

Kimberly Gunderson

Alexandra Ioan

Alexandra Kassouf

Darlene Kelsey

Olivia Knutsen

Marybeth Kurnat

Katelyn Lee

Kyuyim Lee+

Rosalind Lee

Veronica Mak

Hannah Dixon McConnell

Marie McManama

Kathleen Monson

Susan Nelson

Evangeline Ng

Máire O'Brien

Alexandra Olsavsky

Laura Perkett

Angela Presutti Korbitz

Alexia Rivera

Veronica Samiec

Emily Sinclair

Molly Snodgrass

Tiana Sorenson

Christine Steyer

Sarah van der Ploeg*

Lydia Walsh-Rock

Sherry Watkins

Vocal Fellows

Kyuyim Lee

Isabel Yang

Opal Clyburn-Miller

Matthew Dexter

Alto

Emily Amesquita

Melissa Arning

Christina Bernardoni

Angela Born

Bethany Brewer

Julie DeBoer

Leah Dexter

Katrina Dubbs

Stacy Eckert

Margaret Fox

Catarine Hancock

Ruth Ginelle Heald

Sophia Heinz

Miya Higashiyama

Carla Janzen

Amy Allyssa Johnson

Kathryn Kinjo Duncan

Amanda Koopman

Anna Laurenzo

Jeannette Lee

Thereza Lituma

Chelsea Lyons

Victoria Marshall

Jessica McCarthy

Quinn Middleman

Ella Peters

Sarah Ponder

Emily Price

Stephanie Schoenhofer

Suzanne A. Shields

Marissa Simmons

Cassidy Smith

Aidan Spencer

Alannah Spencer

Margaret Stoltz

Carolyn Sundlof Boudreau

Gabrielle Timofeeva López

Elizabeth Vaughan

Corinne Wallace-Crane

A.J. Wester

Debra Wilder

Isabel Yang+

Tenor

Charles Anderson

Enrico Giuseppe Bellomo

Justin Berkowitz

Madison Bolt

Hoss Brock

Steven Caldicott Wilson

Opal Clyburn-Miller+

John J. Concepción

Micah Dingler

Jared V. Esguerra

Alec Fore

Ace Gangoso

Klaus Georg

Tejas Gururaja

Paul Hunter

Garrett Johannsen

William Johnson

James Judd

Tim Lambert

Tyler Lee

Stephen D. Noon

Marcos Ochoa

Brett Potts

Nicholas Pulikowski

Peder Reiff

Samuel Rosner

Matthew W. Schlesinger

Joe Shadday

Aaron Short

Brian Skoog

Michael St. Peter

Ryan Townsend Strand

Alan Taylor*

Sean J. Watland

Nate Widelitz

Bass

Walter Aldrich

Evan Bravos

Matthew Brennan

Michael Cavalieri

Ryan J. Cox

Ed Frazier Davis

Lifan Deng

Matthew Dexter+

Chris DiMarco

Christopher Filipowicz

Dimitri German

Dominic German

David Govertsen

Spencer Greene

Brian Hupp

Jan Jarvis

Jess Koehn

Eric Miranda

Ian Morris

Ian Murrell

John E. Orduña

Wilbur Pauley

Douglas Peters

Jackson Pierzina

Martin Lowen Poock

Ian Prichard

Dan Richardson

Stephen Richardson

Benjamin D. Rivera

Scott Uddenberg

Schyler Vargas

Vince Wallace

Aaron Wardell

Ronald Watkins

Jonathon Weller

Peter Wesoloski

Jonathan Wilson

Staff and Board