The Art of Defiance Program Notes
Concert info: https://philharmonianw.org/concert-1-2026-27/
Joan Tower: Made in America
How many times have you heard the opening notes of America the Beautiful? Today, you’ll hear them again—but transformed, reimagined, and placed in a very different musical world. In Made in America, Joan Tower takes our familiar anthem and builds something new from it. The melody appears alongside driving, industrial rhythms and powerful dissonances, creating music that can feel both forceful and unsettling. Yet moments of the original tune emerge with surprising serenity, offering glimpses of calm amid the larger, more turbulent soundscape.
The result is music about creation itself: inspiration mixed with struggle, compromise, persistence, and hard work. The familiar melody is never simply presented; it is challenged, reshaped, and ultimately allowed to emerge in new forms.
Commissioned by the American League of Orchestras, Made in America was written for 65 orchestras across the United States, from professional ensembles to community orchestras. Tower was especially inspired by the enthusiasm of amateur musicians. Of one performance, she recalled being deeply moved by the passion and energy of the players: “I walked in the hall, and the orchestra stood up and yelled and congratulated me—that never happened in the professional world, ever.”
Although Made in America has received major recognition—including a Grammy Award for the Nashville Symphony’s recording—at its heart it remains a piece about people coming together to make something. Philharmonia Northwest is a mixture of professional and amateur musicians, but above all, we are friends and neighbors who share a love of making music. We are proud to share this music with you.
Program notes by Mary Bush, First Violin
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58
In his Fourth Piano Concerto, Beethoven created a work that is deeply introspective yet full of experimentation. Composed in 1805–1806, during his prolific “middle” period, the concerto was written against a backdrop of war and political upheaval in Europe, while Beethoven himself was confronting his rapidly deteriorating hearing.
Unusually, the concerto begins quietly with the piano alone, introducing a gentle theme before the orchestra enters in a surprising and seemingly unrelated key. The first movement unfolds as a journey between mystery, conviction, and exploration, with the piano and orchestra continually developing and responding to one another. Listen for occasional echoes of the famous “three-and-one” opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which he was composing at roughly the same time. The movement ultimately builds towards a cadenza and a lush, almost pastoral conclusion.
The brief “Andante” movement is darker and more dramatic. Aggressive, confrontational statements from the strings alternate with quiet, dignified responses from the piano. Neither side seems willing to yield, creating a powerful musical dialogue that has often been heard as a struggle between anger and grief, or between tyranny and resistance.
From this tension emerges a joyful and energetic finale. Piano and orchestra trade ideas, playfully developing the movement’s themes, while moments of lyricism and reflection interrupt the exuberance. Listen for a secondary theme that bears a striking resemblance to the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. After a final cadenza and brief moment of reflection, the concerto surges toward its exhilarating conclusion.
Taken as a whole, the Fourth Piano Concerto moves through an extraordinary range of emotions: warmth, darkness, conflict, longing, contemplation, and celebration. It was surprisingly overlooked during Beethoven’s lifetime, receiving only two performances before Felix Mendelssohn helped bring it back to prominence in 1836. Today, it is recognized as one of Beethoven’s most profound and inventive concertos.
Program notes by Jacob Warwick, Principal Viola
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70
When Dmitri Shostakovich began writing his Ninth Symphony in 1945, expectations were enormous. The Soviet Union had just emerged victorious from the Second World War, and a grand symphony celebrating that victory seemed inevitable. After the monumental scale of his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, many expected another towering musical statement, perhaps in the tradition of Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony.
Instead, Shostakovich gave them something altogether different. His Ninth is one of his shortest symphonies, and it begins almost like a joke: a light, jaunty theme in the strings, followed by a playful little melody in the solo violin. Soon the music is full of dancing rhythms, unexpected turns, and flashes of humor. The first movement feels almost deliberately modest—hardly the triumphant monument that might have been expected.
The middle movements reveal a darker side. The brief second movement is nervous and brittle, its relentless rhythms creating an unsettling sense of motion. The third bursts into a wild, almost grotesque dance, with prominent solo trumpet and percussion. Then, unexpectedly, the music stops.
What follows is the heart of the symphony: a haunting dialogue between a solo bassoon and the orchestra, recalling in some ways Beethoven’s slow movement from the concerto heard earlier. The bassoon’s long, mournful melody seems to step outside the absurdity and frenzy of what has come before, creating a moment of extraordinary intimacy and vulnerability. The finale brings the humor back, with the orchestra rushing into a sparkling, almost circus-like conclusion. But by this point, the laughter has become complicated. Is this celebration? Satire? Defiance? Perhaps all three.
Shostakovich’s Ninth premiered in November 1945 and was quickly criticized for failing to provide the expected musical monument to Soviet victory. The composer had instead responded to enormous expectations with something deeply personal, irreverent, and impossible to categorize. The symphony’s defiance lies not in grand gestures, but in its refusal to become what others demanded of it. That may be the most fitting way to hear this extraordinary little symphony: as music that meets the weight of history with humor, imagination, and the freedom to say something unexpected.
Program notes by Michael Wheatley, Music Director