Scott Yoo

American conductor Scott Yoo is the Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Mexico City Philharmonic and the Music Director of Festival Mozaic in California. He’s also the Host and Executive Producer of the PBS series Now Hear This presented by Great Performances—the first show about classical music on American prime time TV in 50 years. He’s the Conductor of the Colorado College Music Festival, and the founder of the Medellín Festicámara, a chamber music program that brings together world-class artists with underprivileged young musicians.

Mr. Yoo has led the Colorado, Dallas, Indianapolis, New World, San Francisco and Utah Symphonies, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in their Elliott Carter Festival and in his Carnegie Hall debut. In Europe, he conducted the English Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, the Britten Sinfonia, L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Odense Symphony and the Estonian National Symphony. In Asia, Mr. Yoo has led the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and the Seoul Philharmonic and Busan Philharmonic in Korea. Mr. Yoo recently conducted the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in recordings for Sony Classical.

A proponent of the music of our time, Mr. Yoo has premiered 76 works by 39 composers. As a violinist, Mr. Yoo has appeared as soloist with the Boston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, New World Symphony, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He’s also made guest appearances with chamber music festivals throughout the United States, including Bargemusic, Boston Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Kingston Chamber Music Festival, Laurel Music Festival, New Hampshire Music Festival, and Seattle Chamber Music Festival.

After beginning his musical studies at age three, he received First Prize in the 1988 Josef Gingold International Violin Competition, the 1989 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the 1994 Avery Fisher Career Grant. In 1993, Mr. Yoo founded the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, conducting the ensemble in its subscription series at Jordan Hall in Boston and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, NY, and on tour at such venues as Avery Fisher Hall and the 92nd Street ‘Y’ in New York and the Library of Congress in Washington.

Scott Yoo was born in Tokyo and raised in Glastonbury, Connecticut. He attended Harvard University, where he received a bachelor’s degree. He studied violin with Roman Totenberg, Albert Markov, Paul Kantor and Dorothy DeLay, and conducting with Michael Gilbert and Michael Tilson-Thomas.

Alice K. Dade

Alice K. Dade enjoys a career of great variety including concerto and chamber music appearances, recording projects, television appearances, and guest principal performances with orchestras in Asia and Scandinavia. As a soloist, Ms Dade is an award winner of the Olga Koussevitsky Wind Competition of the Musicians Club of New York and The New York Flute Club Competition. She has performed with the Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra (Mexico), Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín (Colombia), PRIZM Festival Orchestra, and the Festival Mozaic Orchestra.

Ms Dade has performed chamber music as part of the Busan One Asia Festival, Chestnut Hill Chamber Series, Concordia Chamber Players at The Princeton Festival, Summerfest of Kansas City, and National Flute Association Conventions. As Acting Co-Principal Flute of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Dade performed in concert tours to Russia, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and throughout Sweden. She has also performed as Guest Principal Flute with the Bergen Philharmonic, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, and Seoul Philharmonic, as well as Guest Piccolo with the St. Louis Symphony. In addition, Ms. Dade has performed with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Ms Dade can be heard on Deutsche Grammophon as Swedish Radio’s Acting Principal Flute and on Arte Verum as Swedish Chamber Ensemble’s flutist and piccolist. Her first solo album, Living Music, was recorded at Skywalker sound and released in February 2018 on Naxos. Ms Dade is also a guest star of the PBS series Now Hear This.

Associate Professor Alice K. Dade joined University of Missouri School of Music’s faculty in 2011 and has presented masterclasses at many universities. She has been a faculty member of PRIZM International Chamber Music Festival, Flutes by the Sea Masterclass, and Medellín Festicamara.

A columnist of Chicago Flute Club’s quarterly Pipeline newsletter since 2010, Ms Dade has also been published in Flute Talk magazine, The Instrumentalist, and The Flute View. Alice left her childhood home at 15 to attend Interlochen Arts Academy. Upon graduation, she attended The Juilliard School for undergrad and grad studies, where she studied with Carol Wincenc, Robert Langevin, and Sandra Church. Alice is a Powell Artist and plays a handmade 14K Powell Flute with a platinum headjoint.

Michael Fine

Michael Fine is widely acknowledged as one of the top producers of classical music recordings in the world and is the winner of a GRAMMY for Classical Producer of the Year. His productions have also won the Gramophone Award, Echo Award, Edison Prize, Indie Award and the Grand Prix du Disque among others. Michael has numerous best sellers to his credit including Gold and Platinum recordings in several countries. Additionally, he has been artistic manager of orchestras including the L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic and the Gergiev Festival Rotterdam as well as being engaged as consultant by several orchestras and festivals. As a clarinetist, Michael is a regular performer at Festival Mozaic in the United States and the Tongyeong International Festival in South Korea and frequently performs chamber music. Michael began composing after age 60, calling it “the natural evolution of everything I have done in music.” His compositions have been performed throughout Europe, North America and Asia.

In 2017, Michael was named Composer-in-Residence at the first edition of Habana Clásica, Cuba’s first international classical music festival, a role he repeated in 2018. In the 2022/23 season, several of his compositions will receive their world premiere including a Trumpet Concerto, two Flute Concertos, and Concerto for Two Cellos. The Flanders Symphony Orchestra with conductor Kristiina Poska will open their season with four performances of Michael’s Suite for Strings. Recordings of his music are available on SONY Classics, Naxos, and Evidence.

Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor, BWV 1067
Johann Sebastian Bach

The Baroque-period orchestral suite developed along parallel lines in several countries. Its principal origins lie in France. The first great figure in its history was Jean-Baptiste Lully, who developed the one movement overture (a name derived from the French verb ouvrir, to open) to introduce performances of other, longer works such as operas and ballets. The combination of the overture and further instrumental pieces extracted from the larger work, mainly dances, made up another form, the suite (from the verb suivre, to follow).

By Bach’s time, virtually every significant Austro-German composer had written independent overture-suites for large instrumental ensemble. (Telemann wrote 600 of them!) Some of Bach’s four surviving examples (it’s likely he composed more) probably date from his years in service to Prince Leopold oh Anhalt-Cöthen, others from the later period in Leipzig. The rather serious and stately No. 2 has two unique features. It’s the only one in a minor key, and the only one with a concertante element: a solo flute is featured throughout.

A weighty, serious Ouverture—quite the longest movement of the Suite—sets the rather sombre tone, even when the tempo increases sharply for the main body. A sequence of six contrasting dances ensues. A moderately paced, wistful Rondeau is followed by the darkest of all the movements, an almost grieving Sarabande. The next two movements (Bouree 1&2; Polonaise) offer increased energy. Bach concludes the Suite with a sparkling Badinerie (“a witty conversation” in music, an ancestor of the scherzo).

Concerto for Flute and Strings
Michael Fine

The composer has provided the following note:

I began to compose at the age of 62 at the urging of my wife who had just been diagnosed with a blood cancer. She suggested that writing down the music that was always running through my mind would be a good diversion, as we faced the medical challenges ahead. The first piece I penned was a sextet for flute and string quintet, Skipping Stones, composed on a broken down train stuck on a bridge in the Netherlands where I live. Despite this inauspicious start, I sent the score to flutist Alice K. Dade, whose playing I greatly admired from the vantage point of sitting behind her in the clarinet section at Festival Mozaic. To my delight and surprise, Alice responded favorably and agreed not only to premiere the work but to record it for her debut CD on Naxos. Not long afterwards, I wrote a Concerto for Flute and Strings for Alice and am delighted and honoured that she will premiere this piece with Scott Yoo conducting the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. The Concerto is a gentle work, owing some musical inspiration to English pastoral composers, in my occasionally more dissonant harmonic language. It opens with a couple of warmly hued chord changes that would be frowned on by music theory teachers. This sets the table for the flute’s entrance over plucked strings. The piece’s concept is the soloist walking through an imaginary landscape, playing a commentary on her surroundings, sometimes ‘chatting’ with the orchestra about vistas only the soloist can see. In the first movement, despite the ‘slow’ tempo markings (Lento-Andante), the flute’s role is very active with arpeggios, trills, roulades—a lot of notes and a lot to say! The second movement is even slower (Lento), a leisurely stroll on an unimaginably beautiful summer day with the occasional stop to enjoy the view. The final movement begins with a flurry of activity and energy. But it quickly wanders through another beautiful landscape, before picking up speed for a jog home. Nine years later, my wife is still alive and active, traveling with me during periods of remission, and still inspiring me to write music.

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Béla Bartók

For many reasons, Bartók may be considered the most important of all Hungarian composers. His chief predecessor, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) did much to promote what he believed to be his country’s musical culture. As has later been demonstrated, however, Liszt based several of his practices on questionable principles, his chief error being his confusion of Gypsy/Romani melodies with authentic Hungarian folk music. Bartók, on the other hand, based his approach on firsthand knowledge.

As a young man, recurring bouts of poor health turned him into a social introvert. He used the time these illnesses afforded him to develop his skills as both composer and pianist. For some years he seemed destined for a career as a concert soloist. Then shortly following the turn of twentieth century, two developments changed the course of his career forever.

The first was his exposure to the music of Richard Strauss—a concert performance of the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra to be exact. Overwhelmed by what he heard, Bartók made up his mind to make composing the focus of his career. The second crucial incident was his first encounter with authentic Hungarian folk music. This earthy, rhythmically complex tradition showed him both his past and his future.

His immediate reaction was to head for the Hungarian hinterlands, primitive recording gear in tow, in order to set down and preserve even more of his nation’s musical heritage before it disappeared forever. Much of what he and his colleague, Zoltán Kodály, collected was published and circulated internationally.

Not content with merely gathering this material, Bartók began to use it in some of his compositions, and to create original themes in similar style for other pieces. Gradually working through his earlier influences—Strauss, Liszt and Debussy among them—he developed a unique musical language, one blending Hungarian folk elements with the contemporary techniques of his day.

A modest and retiring person, he did not actively seek fame. For more than 30 years, he earned a living by teaching at the Academy of Music in Budapest. Occasionally, he would embark on tours as a concert pianist, or travel abroad to attend important performances of his music. Yet recognition did come to him, though far more after his death than during his lifetime.

Bartók composed the remarkable work you will hear at this concert on commission from Paul Sacher, Music Director of the Basle Chamber Orchestra of Switzerland, to celebrate the ensemble’s tenth anniversary. In the course of Sacher’s lengthy career, this enterprising maestro requested works from many illustrious composers, including Igor Stravinsky (Concerto for Strings), Richard Strauss (Metamorphosen), and Paul Hindemith (Harmony of the World Symphony). He would go on to commission Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings in 1939.

Sacher conducted the premiere of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta on January 21, 1937. It is one of Bartók’s most immediately engaging works—rigidly organized, yet still spontaneous in feeling. Firmly rooted in eastern European folk rhythms, it is as polished and sophisticated as any music of its time.

He provided exact timings for each movement, and a detailed physical layout for the instruments. He situated the members of the percussion section between the two identical bodies of strings, the better to emphasize the score’s directional elements—making it a natural for stereo recording!

The music charts a satisfying emotional progression from severity to exuberance. The first movement is both a slow, intricate fugue and an exercise in controlled dynamics. It rises gradually, sinuously from a quiet start to a searing central climax, then dies away to resume the mood of the opening. Bartók gave the entire work a sense of continuity by quoting the fugue theme in each of the three subsequent movements. The second movement unleashes an explosion of dynamic, frequently irregular dance rhythms. The percussion section, piano included, comes much more strongly into play than before.

The third movement is an eerie, atmospheric night piece. Bartók filled it with unusual sonorities, among them the brittle click of the xylophone, the unsettling ‘slides’ between notes on the timpani, and the eerie rippling of the celesta (lying at vast distance from Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairy). Master film director Stanley Kubrick made effective use of this movement on the soundtrack of his 1980 horror film The Shining. Bartók’s finale matches the second movement in drive, but its syncopated, almost jazzy rhythms give it a warmer, more humorous personality.