Chamber Symphony: Brahms's Second Symphony

Recognized by Gramophone as “the Heifetz of the flute,” Marina Piccinini first fell in love with her instrument after a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, an experience which led to a life-long love of opera and the singing voice. She announced to her parents “I’m playing the flute.” Still too small for one, she was given a recorder. She hated it, but endured it for two years before taking up flute.

In 2022, she premiered the Theofanidis Flute Concerto in Chicago. She and the composer have had a long friendship, and both share a love of the 13th Century mystic poet Rumi. In her introduction to the piece, Piccinini mentioned that the working title of the concerto is The Universe in Ecstatic Motion, inspired by Rumi’s poem which reads “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” The piece is full of dazzling pyrotechnics for the flute, along with reflective passages, dance rhythms, and a celebratory finale. Chicago Classical Review called Piccinini’s performance of the new work “poised, technically flawless, and even playful in her delivery… her tone rich, pure, and pitch-perfect, impressively resonant even at the highest register of her instrument.”

Beethoven’s mighty Third Symphony with its boundary-bending length, harmonic language, and emotional content, was a landmark in the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era. Beethoven originally dedicated it to Napoleon with “Buonaparte” inscribed on the manuscript’s title page, but when Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven flew into a rage, exclaiming, “So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!” While it’s been generally thought that Beethoven was motivated by a love of liberty, it’s more likely that he removed Napoleon’s name to keep the patronage of a prince who was disturbed by Napoleon’s actions. Many of Beethoven’s letters written even after the Third Symphony praise Napoleon’s achievements, and it was only after he invaded Austria that Beethoven’s support of him to seriously waned.

The concert opens with Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light, inspired by American suffragists. In the composer’s words, the piece “does not attempt to tell the story of the American women’s suffrage movement, but rather to distill the emotional and psychological contours of faith, doubt, and what it means to persevere.” The title is from a slogan made famous by the banner that suffragist Inez Milholland carried while riding a white horse to lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade on March 3, 1913, in Washington, D.C.: “Forward, out of error/Leave behind the night/Forward through the darkness/Forward into light!”

Be wowed by the artistry of Marina Piccinini and inspired by works and events that transformed the world!