MUSIC

The Houston Symphony presents Richard Strauss' Don Quixote (Enhanced with Images), Thursday, March 24 and Saturday, March 26 at 8pm, and Sunday, March 27 at 2:30pm, in Jones Hall.

The color and imagination of Richard Strauss’ music will be celebrated with Music Director Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony in concerts on March 24, 26 and 27 in Jones Hall. The concert will begin with Strauss’s dramatic tone poem, Don Juan and end with his riveting composition of Don Quixote, featuring Principal Cellist Brinton Averil Smith as Don Quixote and Principal Violist Wayne Brooks as Sancho Panza. In the middle of the program, Soprano Erin Wall (pictured) brings her voice to the emotional Four Last Songs – Strauss’s final works before his death.

Strauss’ adventurous Don Quixote was inspired by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes’ fanciful tale, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615). The story depicts a delusional man who believes he is a knight embarking on an imaginary series of chivalric adventures, mistaking windmills for giants and sheep for an army.

For this performance, the Houston Symphony has partnered with Dr. Eduardo Urbina of the Cervantes Project, the largest collection of Don Quixote book illustrations in the world, housed at the Cushing Library of Texas A&M University. The illustrations will be projected onto screens over the orchestra and will depict different scenes from the novel coinciding with the variations in the piece.

Featuring:
R. Strauss: Don Juan
R. Strauss: Four Last Songs
R. Strauss: Don Quixote

Artists:
Hans Graf, conductor
Erin Wall, soprano
Brinton Averil Smith, cello
Wayne Brooks, viola

About Hans Graf
Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, distinguished Austrian Hans Graf – the Houston Symphony’s 15th Music Director – is one of today's most highly respected musicians. He began his tenure in Houston on Opening Night of the 2001-2002 season.

Graf is a frequent guest with all of the major North American orchestras and made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Houston Symphony in January 2006. Since then, he returned in March 2007 leading the Orchestra of St. Luke's and in January 2010 when he and the Houston Symphony were invited to perform their best-selling concert The Planets – An HD Odyssey, featuring exclusive high definition images from NASA's exploration of the solar system accompanied by Holst's famous work, The Planets. Graf and the Houston Symphony will return again in May 2012 to kick off Carnegie Hall’s Spring for Music Festival.

Graf conducts in the foremost concert halls of Europe, Japan and Australia. He has appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, as well as with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. In October 2010, Graf lead the Houston Symphony on a tour of the United Kingdom which included performances in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and two performances at the Barbican in London.

Graf has participated in such prestigious European festivals as the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bregenz and Aix en Provence and appeared at the Salzburg Festival for twelve consecutive seasons. In summer 2010, Graf conducted the opening concert of the Aspen Music Festival and returned to Tanglewood and Chicago's Grant Park Festival.

He was awarded the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria in 2007 and France’s Chevalier de l’ordre de la Legion d’Honneur in 2002. Maestro Graf and his wife, Margarita, have homes in Salzburg and Houston.

About Erin Wall
Soprano Erin Wall has appeared with the San Francisco, London, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver and Nashville symphonies and the Orchestre de Paris, among others.

Her current list of concert engagements this season include: Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (Edinburgh Festival under Donald Runnicles, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, the Orchestre National de France under Daniele Gatti and on tour with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Prague, Hamburg and Hannover under Christoph Eschenbach). Further concerts include Mahler’s Symphony no. 4 and Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock (National Arts Centre Orchestra), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (Nashville Symphony), Schubert’s Mass No. 6 (San Diego Symphony) and a recital with the Aldeburgh Connection in Toronto.

Current opera engagements include: the Countess in Nozze di Figaro and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni (Bavarian State Opera), Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lyric Opera of Chicago) and the title role in La Traviata (Vancouver Opera). She will also create the role of Cecilia in Bramwell Tovey’s new opera, The Inventor (Calgary Opera).

Wall has recorded Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Pierre Boulez and the Staatskapelle Berlin, released by Deutsche Grammophon.

About Brinton Averil Smith
American cellist Brinton Averil Smith has won rave reviews throughout the United States and in Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and New Zealand. North American engagements have included collaborations with esteemed chamber ensembles; at the Marlboro, Brevard, Mainly Mozart, Texas and Aspen Music Festivals, among others; and concerti with orchestras in Detroit, San Diego, Houston, New Jersey, Fort Worth, San Jose, Las Vegas, Tucson and Phoenix.

His recordings of Miklos Rozsa’s Cello Concerto, Fauré’s Piano Trio and Après un Rêve, and the chamber music of Steven Gerber have received widespread critical acclaim and recognition by Gramophone Magazine, BBC Music Magazine, the American Record Guide and Strings Magazine. His performances have been broadcast on CBS's Sunday Morning and on radio throughout the U.S., including NPR’s Performance Today.

Before joining the Houston Symphony as principal cellist (2005), Smith was a member of the New York Philharmonic and principal cellist of the San Diego and Fort Worth Symphony orchestras. He is a faculty member at the Shepherd School of Music (Rice University) and co-founder and artistic director of Restoration Chamber Music, a festival that pairs historic Galveston buildings with relevant classical concerts to benefit the island’s preservation efforts.

Smith was a prize-winner in the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition and in several consecutive Juilliard and Aspen Music Festival concerto competitions. He received the Melini Award for excellence in performance and was invited to perform at the American Cello Congress.

The son of a mathematician and a pianist, Smith began his musical studies at age five. At 10, he was admitted to Arizona State University and completed a B.A. in mathematics at 17. Smith completed his M.A. in mathematics at 19 (USC), while a scholarship student of Eleonore Schoenfeld, and then studied with cellist Zara Nelsova at The Juilliard School (New York), where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Smith resides in Houston with his wife, pianist Evelyn Chen, and their daughter, Calista.

About Wayne Brooks
Wayne Brooks has served as principal violist of the Houston Symphony since 1985. Born in Los Angeles, Brooks joined the orchestra in 1977 as associate principal violist after graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia).

In addition to solo appearances with the Houston Symphony, he has appeared in chamber music performances with Joseph Silverstein, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Garrick Ohlsson and Christoph Eschenbach. He has participated in concerts of chamber music in the Houston Symphony’s INNOVA series; in performances with Da Camera of Houston, Greenbriar Consortium, Mukuru “Arts for AIDS” Series; and in chamber music festivals in Crafstbury, Vermont and Lake City, Colorado.

As violist of the Houston Symphony Chamber Players, he served on the faculty of Japan’s Pacific Music Festival, toured Japan (1993-1995) and Europe (1994, 1997), and recorded works of Webern and Berg. He has appeared at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival (1996, 1997).

Brooks also served as an associate professor of viola at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music (1985—2001), teaching both solo and orchestral repertoire. His former students perform in the New World, Charlotte, Richmond and Detroit Symphonies; the Hong Kong Philharmonic; and the Chiara, Arianna and Borromeo quartets. He currently serves as an affiliate artist of viola at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.

In 1995, Brooks gave the Houston premiere of Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach (Houston Symphony). In 2001, he performed Frank Martin’s rarely heard Ballade for Viola and Orchestra with Larry Rachleff (Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra). Recent solo appearances with the Houston Symphony include Berlioz’ Harold in Italy (Christoph Eschenbach) and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, with associate concertmaster, Eric Halen and again with Concertmaster, Frank Huang.

About the Cervantes Project
The Cervantes Project is a research initiative dedicated to the development of a comprehensive digital archive based on the works of Miguel de Cervantes, with a particular focus on the study of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Cervantes is the cornerstone of Hispanic letters and his novel the world’s most influential work of fiction. In partnership with the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries and the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives – a division of the Texas A&M University Libraries – the project has created an online repository of textual, documentary, bibliographic, and visual electronic resources to serve the needs of students and scholars interested in Cervantes’ life, time and work (http://cervantes.tamu.edu).

About the Houston Symphony
The Houston Symphony has played a central role in Houston’s cultural and civic life since 1913. Each year, the Houston Symphony performs more than 170 concerts for approximately 350,000 people, featuring an innovative and broad spectrum of classical, popular, education and community-based symphonic programming.

For tickets and more information, please visit www.houstonsymphony.org or call 713-224-7575.