Water Music

Additional Info

• Event Tickets:

  January 4 - Buy Tickets

  January 5 - Buy Tickets

• Under 30 Tickets:

  Youth in grades 2– 12 (age 8 and older) can enjoy this Utah Symphony performance for $10. Click here for details on youth tickets.

  If you are 30 or younger, discounted tickets are available for this performance through USUO's Upbeat program. Click here for details on Upbeat.

• Artist Profile:

  Nicholas McGegan is loved by audiences and orchestras for performances that match authority with enthusiasm, scholarship with joy, and curatorial responsibility with evangelical exuberance. Through twenty-seven years as its music director, McGegan has established the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Philharmonia Chorale as the leading period performance ensemble in America - and at the forefront of the 'historical' movement worldwide thanks to notable appearances at Carnegie Hall, the London Proms, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the International Handel Festival, Göttingen where he was artistic director from 1991 to 2011.

  Active in opera as well as the concert hall, he was principal conductor of Sweden's perfectly preserved 18th-century theatre Drottingholm 1993-96, running the annual festival there. And he has been a pioneer in the process of exporting historically informed practice beyond the small world of period instruments to the wider one of conventional symphonic forces, guest-conducting orchestras like the the New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong Philharmonics, the Chicago, St. Louis, Toronto and Sydney Symphonies, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Northern Sinfonia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as opera companies including Covent  Garden, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Washington.

  Born in England, Nicholas McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and taught at the Royal College of Music, London. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2010 “for services to music overseas.” His awards also include the Halle Handel Prize; an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Göttingen; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen, and an official Nicholas McGegan Day, declared by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of two decades' distinguished work with the Philharmonia Baroque.

  But as McGegan himself said when a journalist talked admiringly of his work with an orchestra: 'I'm not working with them. I'm having fun with them'. It makes a difference.

  Visit Nicholas McGegan on the web at www.nicholasmcgegan.com.

  
  Ralph Matson was appointed Utah Symphony Concertmaster in 1985. He began his violin studies in Detroit with Emily Mutter Austin. Mr. Matson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College and a master's degree from the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers were Joseph Silverstein and Steven Staryk. He was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra, and prior to his Utah Symphony appointment, was Assistant Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra.

  Mr. Matson's solo appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Utah Symphony include collaborations with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Neville Marriner, Eiji Oue, Joseph Silverstein, Keith Lockhart, and Pavel Kogan. Since 1996, he has participated in the Grand Teton Music Festival where he is Concertmaster of the Festival Orchestra.

• Program:

  Felix Mendelssohn - Die schöne Melusine, Op. 32
  Jean Sibelius - "The Swan of Tuonela", No. 2 from Legends, Opus 22
  Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto for Violin in E-flat major, Op. 8, No. 5
  Johann Sebastian Bach - Concerto No. 1 in A minor for Violin and String Orchestra, BWV 1041

  INTERMISSION
       
  George Frideric Handel - Suite No. 2 in D major from Water Music
  George Frideric Handel - Suite No. 3 in G major from Water Music
  Benjamin Britten - "Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes, Opus 33a

• Program Notes:

  Mendelssohn - Die schöne Melusine
  Sibelius - "The Swan of Tuonela", No. 2 from Legends
  Vivaldi - Concerto for Violin in E-flat major
  Bach - Concerto No. 1 in A minor for Violin and String Orchestra
  Handel - Suite No. 2 in D major from Water Music
  Handel - Suite No. 3 in G major from Water Music
  Britten - "Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes

• Volunteer: A