Meet the conductor at Philharmonia Northwest's concert February 4, 2024 at Shorecrest Performing Arts Center

Meet the Conductor: Stephen Rogers Radcliffe

As part of our ongoing Music Director Search, Philharmonia Northwest's 2023-24 Season will feature each of our Music Director Finalists in concert with the orchestra, conducting a program and guest soloists of the Finalist's choosing. 

Our February 4 concert, Symphonic Dances, features the third of these outstanding conductors: Stephen Rogers Radcliffe.

CONCERT INFO

Sunday, February 4 at 2pm

Shorecrest Performing Arts Center

15343 25th Ave NE, Shoreline, WA 98155

PROGRAM

• Engelbert Humperdinck: Overture to Hansel and Gretel
• Frederick Delius: Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
• Jessie Montgomery: Hymn for Everyone
• Edvard Grieg: Symphonic Dances, Op. 64

Join us for a FREE pre-concert chat at 1:15pm with Music Director Finalist Stephen Rodgers Radcliffe and soloists Hal Grossman and Walter Gray!

A familiar face to Puget Sound audiences and music students, Stephen Rogers Radcliffe served as Staff Conductor for the Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet, and for over a decade as Music Director of both the Marrowstone Music Festival and the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras. 

He has also acted as Principal Guest Conductor of the Hungarian Virtuosi, and from 1987 to 1997 was the Music Director of the New York Chamber Ensemble. 

Maestro Radcliffe has worked with a long and varied roster of internationally acclaimed artists, including pianists Van Cliburn and Andre Watts; opera stars Frederica von Stade and Dawn Upshaw; pop acts The Moody Blues and Blood, Sweat, and Tears; and composers John Corigliano, Aaron Jay Kernis, and P.D.Q. Bach. 

A prize winner of the 1988 Arturo Toscanini International Conductors' Competition, Stephen Rogers Radcliffe was a student of Leonard Bernstein, Franco Ferrara, and Gustav Meier.

Maestro Radcliffe shares these notes about Sunday’s program:

"Few aspects of concert planning give conductors as much joy as the 'discovery' of an unjustly neglected work written by a well-respected composer. Edvard Grieg's Symphonic Dances is one such work. 

"While Grieg's Peer Gynt and Holberg Suites are crown jewels in the symphonic repertoire, the composer's Symphonic Dances has received far less attention in concert halls. 

"Nominally a set of four 'dances' written originally for piano and later transcribed for orchestra, the rhythmic, dance aspects of the four movements all surround sections of lyrical folksong melodies.

"Indeed, the juxtaposition of 'song' and 'dance' lies at the heart of this program. Engelbert Humperdinck's Prelude to Hansel and Gretel contains lyrical sections from the famous children's opera such as the Evening Prayer, along with sections of the witch’s dance pantomime or 'Hexenritt.'

"Similarly, Frederick Delius's Double Concerto (another unjustly neglected work!) combines endless strands of lyrical writing with passages of intense virtuosity for the violin and cello soloists. 

"Even Jessie Montgomery's Hymn for Everyone spreads layers of soaring melodies in the winds and brass over rhythmically punctuated pulsations in strings. 

Learn more about Maestro Radcliffe at his website

Tickets: $30 Adult, $20 Senior/Student; Children under 18 free

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