Sinfonia Concert

The PRINCETON UNIVERSITY SINFONIA is a full symphony orchestra that unites eager, music-
loving Princeton University undergraduate and graduate students, as well as community friends, to explore diverse symphonic repertory from four centuries. Its members are passionate musicians with diverse interests and backgrounds who come together for the rich rewards of making music together and for others. Find out more about Sinfonia and ways that you might support our ongoing musical mission at: sinfonia.princeton.edu

CLAIRE DIGNAZIO ’25 is a Junior at Princeton University from Wilmington, Delaware, and she is
pursuing a concentration in Molecular Biology and a minor in Vocal Performance. Outside of class, Claire is a member of the Princeton Glee Club, Chamber Choir, Jazz Vocal Collective, and the Tigerlilies a cappella group. While in college, she has had the opportunity to take part in variety of opera productions, including Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and, next semester, Mozart’s The Magic Flute. She feels tremendously honored and grateful to collaborate with Sinfonia and Dr. Ruth Ochs.

SARAH LEKAJ ’25 is a mezzo-soprano from Kingston, NY, and currently a junior in the Molecular BiologyDepartment at Princeton, minoring in Vocal Performance and Global Health Policy. Prior to Princeton, Sarah studied under Lorraine Nubar at the Juilliard Pre-College Vocal Department and currently studies under David Kellett at Princeton. On campus, she is a member of the Princeton University Glee Club and assistant director/member of the Glee Club Opera Scenes. Sarah is very excited and honored to collaborate with Sinfonia for this concert!

DR. RUTH OCHS is a passionate and sought-after conductor and educator based in central New
Jersey. Since 2002 she has been conducting at Princeton University in various capacities. Soon after beginning graduate studies in the Department of Music at Princeton, she took over directorship of the Princeton University Sinfonia and quickly steered its growth from a chamber orchestra into a full-size symphonic orchestra performing repertory from the baroque to the most recent, including accompanying a fully-staged version Mozart’s Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe in 2019. Under Dr. Ochs’ leadership, the orchestra regularly premieres new compositions by Princeton University undergraduate
composers. She also serves as Associate Conductor of the Princeton University Orchestra and has led the ensemble in a variety of performances, including on its tour of Spain in 2019. Off the podium, her work in the classroom and introducing concert programs puts into action her belief that performers
and audiences alike benefit from a closer understanding of the materials and makers of a musical composition.

Passionate about nourishing and inspiring community and youth musicians, Dr. Ochs also shares her time with local musical initiatives in central Jersey. She is now in her eighteenth season as conductor and music director of the Westminster Community Orchestra, with whom she has led successful opera gala performances, collaborations with youth ensembles from the Westminster Conservatory of Music,
and popular family and holiday concerts. Musical outreach lies close to her heart, and she has taken
small ensembles of Princeton University musicians to perform in Mercer County elementary schools. In 2019 she received the Princeton University Pace Center for Civic Engagement’s Community Engagement Award. Ruth Ochs holds degrees in music, orchestral conducting, and music history, from Harvard University (magna cum laude with highest honors in music), the University of Texas at Austin, and Princeton University, respectively. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied musicology at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, Germany, and, as a student of the Polish language, she studied at the Uniwersytet Jagielloński in Kraków, Poland. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Princeton University’ s Department of Music.

DR. SARAH SHIN is the Lecturer of Flute at Princeton University, a member of the Richardson
Chamber Players, affiliated with Princeton University Concerts, and on the faculty at Rutgers University MGSA Community Arts as a flute instructor and chamber music coach. Sarah can be heard on all streaming platforms with her solo Mozart Flute Concertos CD under Sony Classical with Conductor Christian Schulz and members of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra. Some of her recent performance highlights include performing with Lizzo at the 2023 Met Gala, performing a mini-tour with the Budapest MAV Symphony Orchestra in Klagenfurt and Salzburg, Austria, and performing with the Savaria Symphony Orchestra in Das MuTh Konzertsaal and Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria.

Sarah has performed in Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, Jordan Hall and Symphony Hall in Boston; (le) Poisson Rouge, Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, The DiMenna Center, and Alice Tully Hall in New York City; John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Gewandhaus Theatre in Leipzig, Germany; Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, South Korea, Konzerthaus Klagenfurt in Klagenfurt, Austria; Stiftung Mozarteum: Großer Saal in Salzburg, Austria; Golden Hall at Musikverein, MuTh Concert Hall and Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. She has performed in festivals and with ensembles and orchestras in France, Brazil, Mexico, and nationwide within the United States.

Along with being a soloist and educator, Sarah is an avid chamber musician and collaborator. She is a founding member of the Emissary Quartet, a flute quartet dedicated to new music. The Emissary Quartet won grants from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, NewMusic USA, Avaloch Farm Music Institute and Friends of Flute Foundation to promote new music through performance and education. In 2023, Sarah was honored as a Trailblazing Woman of the Arts by the Martha Graham Dance Company. She has served as a board member for the Ames Town & Gown Chamber Music Association, as President of the New Jersey Flute Society for four years, served in two committees for the National Flute Association, and is the 2024 NFA Convention Assistant Program Chair.

Sarah attended Walnut Hill School for the Arts and is an honorary alum of the Young Artist Program at the Boston Flute Academy. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors in Flute Performance from Carnegie Mellon University School of Music and her Master of Music in Flute Performance from
Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and received her Doctor of Musical Arts at Rutgers
University Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is grateful for her teachers Jeanne Baxtresser, Alberto Almarza, Thomas Robertello, Bart Feller, Judy Grant, Dr. Sonja Giles, and Marianne Gedigian.

Sarah is a William S. Haynes Artist and performs on a handmade custom Haynes 14k white gold flute.

Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) created a unique sound world with each piece he composed for orchestra. With a musical style that bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Nielsen’s harmonies construct dynamic and powerful momentum within his music. His Helios Overture does not depict a specific narrative about the sun or Helios, the Greek god who drove a chariot across the sky each day, but it does derive its essential inspiration from those ideas. While spending the winter of 1903 in Greece, Nielsen wrote these lines to a friend:“Now it is scorching hot. Helios burns all day and I am writing away at my new solar system: a long introduction with sunrise and morning song is finished, and I have begun on the allegro. ” In the published score, Nielsen shared a little more description but offered less specificity: “Stillness and darkness — Then the sun rises to joyous songs of praise – Wanders its golden way – Quietly sinks in the sea. ” Our concert also follows an arc, one that begins and ends with light. We hope you find inspiration in that journey.

Adrian Thananopavarn, who composed “March of Dusk,” shares:

Hello everyone, and thank you for coming to hear my piece! I am Adrian Thananopavarn, a senior (’24) in the viola section of Sinfonia. I am a math major studying graph theory, with certificates in computer science and music composition. Since middle school, I have been composing small projects in MuseScore, and have only shared them with a small handful of people. Now, taking music composition and theory courses, I wish to continue composing and share my work to a wider audience.

One of my favorite things about Sinfonia is how fun and varied the repertoire is, and I love playing music from film scores. In my free time, I listen to music from film and video games, which inspired me to create “March of Dusk, ” a piece that incorporates several themes I have been using in my compositions for years.

I picture it as being a part of the score for either a fantasy-themed movie or video game, but feel free to come up with your own story for the music! While we play “March of Dusk, ” listen for my favorite element in music: a syncopated rhythm consisting of two dotted eighth notes followed by an eighth note, which is found extensively throughout modern popular music.

I would like to thank Ruth Ochs and the Princeton Sinfonia greatly for supporting my composing journey, and I am excited to hear the performance!

The origin of Mozart’s Concerto in G major for flute, K. 313, is linked to the 18-month journey the composerundertook in his early twenties from 1777 to 1778. Eager to land employment at an esteemed European court, Mozart traveled to Munich, Mannheim and Paris; alas, he returned home to the archbishop’s court inSalzburg with no new job. (Moreover, his mother, who traveled with him on this journey, died in Paris on the final leg of the trip.) In Mannheim, friends helped Mozart find commissions for new works. Among themcame an order for flute concertos and quartets from a wealthy Dutch surgeon and capable amateur flute player, Ferdinand de Jean. (The doctor, it should be noted, earned his wealth through the Dutch East India Company – one more example of European music’s historical relationship with systems of oppression and colonialism.) Mozart would never write all the flute works that de Jean requested, and the G-major concerto remained Mozart’s only concerto originally for flute and orchestra. (His D-major concerto is a transcription of his concerto for oboe.)

From the perspective of his entire concerto output, the music of the G-major flute concerto highlights Mozart’ s increasing use of subtle transformations of material. The noble and stately stance of the first movement derives from an underling march-like rhythm interwoven with many, often virtuosic, faster lines. The triumphant closing material of the first section becomes the springboard for the development at the movement’ s center. The second movement’ s suave sound derives in part from its key of D major and how luscious the flute sounds in that key. The third movement is a stylized minuet. Composers of the Classical era increasingly focused on the minuet as their favored dance type in instrumental music. Mozart thwarted any sense of routine repetition with abundant variation of texture and melodic character, a dramatic shift to the minor mode, and many changes of underlying rhythmic energy. Each time the main minuet refrain returns, the music conveys a pleasant sense of homecoming.

Peter Tchaikovsky’ s The Nutcracker—including its plot, music and dance—is a world to itself. The
inspiration for the ballet’ s story was E.T.A. Hoffmann’ s The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King. As with Mozart’ s approach to dance-based instrumental music, no repetition in Tchaikovsky is routine and staid. His remarkable use of orchestral resources is another endearing feature today ’s selections. The “Dance
of the Sugar Plum Fairy ” uses the novel sounds of the celeste and bass clarinet. The “Waltz of the
Flowers ” features an extended harp cadenza that leads into the gentle waves and circles of the waltz.

Jacques Offenbach’ s opera The Tales of Hoffmann is also derived from the fantastic and quintessentially Romantic stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann. The opera creates visions of Hoffmann ’s catastrophic love affairs. Tonight’ s excerpt, the Barcarolle, is a sensual duet between Hoffmann ’s Venetian courtesan, Giulietta, and Hoffmann ’s companion, Nicklausse. The ravishing sensuality of this music celebrates night’s romantic potential. Here is the text of this lavish duet:

NICKLAUSSE
Lovely night, oh, night of love
Smile upon our joys!
Night much sweeter than the day
Oh beautiful night of love!

GIULIETTA, NICKLAUSSE
Time flies by, and carries away
Our tender caresses forever!
Time flies far from this happy oasis
And does not return

Burning zephyrs
Embrace us with your caresses!
Burning zephyrs
Give us your kisses!
Your kisses! Your kisses! Ah!

Lovely night, oh, night of love
Smile upon our joys!
Night much sweeter than the day
Oh, beautiful night of love!
Ah! Smile upon our joys!
Night of love, oh, night of love!
Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!

Amidst the current turmoil and tragedy happening in many corners of our shared world, we hope our program offers an opportunity to relive dear memories and create new ones. We hope that the ever-present inspiration of light – from the sun to the hearth – might continue to nourish and sustain each of you. Mel Tormé’s famous “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is a catalog of holiday traditions that unite us. Our medley of Hanukah songs reminds us, as well: “Nightly, so brightly, the candles brightly glow, shining with glory, retelling the story, the wonders of long ago. ” May light also illuminate the path of hope, nourish our shared humanity, and continue to fuel compassion and community.