Learn more about our September concerts

"Apotheosis of the Dance," PBO's first concert of the 2009-10 "Season of the Stars," is less than two weeks away! To help you while the hours away until then, we present below a few resources for you to learn more about the pieces you will hear on September 10-15, as well about their composers, our orchestra and early music.

Listen to the audio preview with Music Director Nicholas McGegan and strings player Maria Caswell:

Click to read our program notes.

Click to read a note from Nic.

You can also listen to a movement of Beethoven's 7th and a selection from one of Haydn's London symphonies on September's concert page. Hint: when you click on "Learn more about these recordings," you can read about these works!

An don't forget: 45-minutes before every concert we offer free lectures to our ticket holders. This month's will be given by members of our Orchestra as well as the New Esterházy Quartet.

Thank you to our volunteers!

PBO subscribers are receiving their tickets in the mail thanks to the valiant effort of a number of folks from our community:

Anna Fu searches for the right sheath of tickets.

c.d. evans divides a perforated sheet of tickets.

Michaela Neville stuffs envelopes.

Patron Services Manager David Challinor (top center) leads volunteers Claudine Torfs, Michele Stone, Harry Howe, Anne-Marie Schmoeckel, and Michaela Neville (clockwise) in the proper first aid treatment of paper cuts.

We also want to thank Jonathan, who was little camera shy.

Breaking news: Mozart not murdered

Researchers have changed their mind... again! Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart certainly had his vices and enemies, but these causes of death no longer seem to be in favor with this never-ending controversy. So forget what you learned from 1985's Best Picture Oscar-winner, Mozart died at the age of 35 from the same genus of bacteria that helped get you out of class for a few days when you were a kid.

Speaking of Mozart (one of our Music Director's favorite composers), Nic conducted an all-Mozart program last week at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Critic Mark Swed of the LA Times praised Nic, calling him "the sunniest conductor in classical music."

Read the review.

Pianist Louis Lortie and conductor Nicholas McGegan walk off stage... possibly with the ghost of Amadeus. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Preview our 2008-09 Season Highlights

What were some your most memorable moments of last season? One of the staff's favorites was hearing how wonderfully different Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 2 in A minor sounded when played by oboe, not flute. Hear it for yourself:Read more about why Gonzalo reconstructed the piece for oboe.

What were your favorite moments from our 28th Season?

*These clips are from our 2008-09 Season Highlights CD, which is made available exclusively to PBO's generous members who made donations last year. Learn more about how you can support our music and education programs.

Part 2: What I did on my summer vacation...

Wonder what else your favorite musicians have done this summer while PBO is on hiatus? Keep reading...

David Daniel Bowes, violist and PBO's Music Librarian, and his partner Brian Haley took a road trip through California and Oregon to visit with friends and "explore the wilds of second-hand shopping without sales tax." Highlights from the belated honeymoon (they were married last November) included a night spent in a refurbished Santa Fe Railroad caboose at Railroad Motel near Dunsmuir and a day of Sunday driving three beautifully maintained cars from the late 40s and early 50s around Eugene (pictured left). An avid gardner, David plans on having a "jam session" with PBO violist Maria Caswell to learn how to make jams and jellies from his abundant harvests of blackberries, peaches and more. He has also been working like mad to acquire sheet music for all seven of PBO's concerts.

This August and September, Stephen Schultz, flutist, will be playing with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra at the Reate Festival in Rieti, Italy, and the Klang und Raum (Sound and Space) Festival in Irsee, Germany. He recently released Rameau: Pièces de clavecin en concert on Reference Recordings with Ensemble Baroque Nouveau along with his PBO colleagues Anthony Martin, Charles Sherman and Josh Lee. Stephen was just reappointed as Associate Teaching Professor in Music History and Flute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and he will debut there a newly commissioned piece written by Nancy Galbraith entitled “Other Sun” in November. Check out his new video made in support of his CD, Boismortier: Concertos for Five Flutes.

Cellist Tanya Tomkins (pictured left with frequent collaborator Eric Zivian) began her summer teaching at the San Francisco Early Music Society Music Discovery Workshop at Sonoma State. While there, she saw the new Green Center, which she described as "one of the most beautiful venues I've ever seen!" She then went to the Oregon Bach Festival and performed all six Brandenburg Concertos under the direction of Monica Huggett. This was a first for the festival – historically informed performance on original instruments – and it was a big success. Tanya played modern cello with Smetana Trio and taught a master class at the American Music Teachers Association Conference in Santa Clara. She also played the Olympic Festival and a solo concert at the Crocker Art Museum, and, of course, she's not done yet with appearances at the Music in the Vineyards and Moab Music Festival coming up.

Strings player Farley Pearce also taught at the a San Francisco Early Music Society Music Discovery Workshop in June. He is also involved in a Clerembeau cantata recording project, has been playing with the Pocket Opera and the San Francisco Opera Merola orchestra, and coached the California Youth Orchestra cellists in Palo Alto.

Douglas Yeo, who joins PBO when we need some of the odder brass instruments played – like the ophicleide used in last February's concerts, recently completed a six month sabbatical from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he plays bass trombone. During that time, he engaged in several events revolving around the serpent: the biennial "Serpentarium" in Cape Cornwall, UK (see picture below), a recording session on several serpents and related instruments for the Bate Collection's forthcoming audio guide, and a DVD project entitled "Approaching the Serpent: An Historical and Pedagogical Overview."

Tune in - Baroque tuning (and the title of this blog) explained

If you are not a musicologist, you might be wondering what A415 is as you read this blog. It's a little complicated, but we promise it won't hertz. Jeff Phillips, our Artistic Administrator, explains:

Readers of this blog may wonder to what our name refers. "A=415 Hz" is one of the first declarations any musician must endorse before performing with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. "A" refers to the note, typically sounded before a rehearsal or concert, to which all instruments are tuned; in Baroque music Philharmonia musicians tune their A to 415 Hz or Hertz, which refers to the number of cycles per second. On a modern piano this pitch would sound like A-flat, or a half-step lower than usual.

Historically there were many different pitches to which groups of musicians tuned, based on local tradition or, in the Baroque era, to the pitch the local organ was set as it was impractical to tune otherwise. This pitch varied from about A=380 Hz to as high as A=480 Hz, based on surviving examples. In the nineteenth century it became clear that settling on a standard pitch across Europe would be a good idea--France even passed a law setting A=435 in 1859--but the standard "concert pitch" was finally set to A=440 only in the mid-1900s. While 440 is still the worldwide standard, among professional orchestras the pitch continued to rise to accommodate larger concert halls, with most settling on 442 or 445; a higher pitch is perceived as brighter, and therefore louder, by the listener.

Since period-instrument makers and musicians needed a pitch standard on which to settle, most period-instrument ensembles, Philharmonia included, use A=415 Hz as their pitch standard for Baroque music, since it's almost exactly a half-step lower than concert pitch. Harpsichords and organs are built with the ability to shift back and forth between pitches easily, strings sound a bit warmer, and singers are generally happier to be able to sing their high notes without strain.

The image is above is a page of George Frideric Handel’s autograph draft score of Messiah, 1741 (The Granger Collection, New York).

Passionate, not pretentious

Why a conductor? This was the question that a recent psychological study posed, the findings of which were published in the Psychology of Music journal this week. The study found that "the motives most strongly evoked were the ones linked with emotions and emotional needs."

And who was one of the 101 orchestral conductors surveyed, none other than PBO's Music Director Nicholas McGegan. Nic is frequently cited by critics and fans as one of the most exciting and passionate conductors in classical music. As Ron Hubbard of the Pioneer Press wrote this year (PDF), "There are few conductors who convey the ebullient enthusiasm of Nicholas McGegan.”

This is how Nic (pictured larger than life above) described his role as conductor: "Compared with, say, a virtuoso violinist, conductors are less concerned with the how of music and more concerned with the why — why the composer wrote it that way, and how best to share what you believe about that piece with the audience, through the orchestra."

Read more here.