Hill Auditorium
Brno Philharmonic
$12-20 student tickets available
Janáček is to Brno what Mozart is to Salzburg, and this performance by the signature orchestra of the Czech Republic’s second-largest city includes Janáček’s music and a work by U-M emeritus professor and Pulitzer Prize winner William Bolcom, both of which also feature the Hill Auditorium organ.
In 2020, conductor Dennis Russell Davies became chief conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, which was founded in 1956 and serves as a living tribute to Leoš Janáček’s music. Janáček was educated in Brno and spent most of his life there, and his extensive experience working with and composing for choirs was evident in his compositions.
The Ann Arbor-based UMS Choral Union joins the Brno Philharmonic for Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, a patriotic masterpiece and hymn to the Czech nation and Slavic culture. In addition, student members of the U-M Symphony Band will augment the ensemble for Janáček’s Sinfonietta, which calls for military bands and dazzling fanfares performed by an ensemble of 25 brass players, nearly double the typical orchestral work.
PROGRAM (Fri 2/10/2023: Hill Auditorium)
Leoš Janáček Sinfonietta
William Bolcom Humoresk for Organ and Orchestra
Leoš Janáček Glagolitic Mass
Join host Doyle Armbrust for “The Society for Disobedient Listeners” — a special pre-performance talk, 7 pm in the lower lobby of Hill Auditorium.
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- Frances Mauney Lohr Choral Union Endowment Fund
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Dennis Russell Davies’ activities as opera and orchestral conductor, and as pianist and chamber musician, are characterized by an extensive repertory stretching from Baroque to the latest music of our time. Widely considered to be one of the most innovative and adventurous conductors and programmers in the classical music world, Davies has successfully challenged and inspired audiences on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in Japan. He is well-known for exciting, well-structured concerts and for his close working relationships with such varied composers as Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, John Cage, Philip Glass, Heinz Winbeck, Aaron Copland, Lou Harrison, Laurie Anderson, Arvo Pärt, Hans Werner Henze, Kurt Schwertsik, Thomas Larcher, Balduin Sulzer, and Manfred Trojahn.
Since his debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle and at the Salzburg Festival, Christian Schmitt has become one of the world’s most sought-after organists. Last season, he was “Artist in Focus” of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich where he inaugurated the new organ at the Tonhalle with conductor Paavo Jarvi. Schmitt recently debuted at Walt Disney Concert Hall presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed with the Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and recorded Hindemith’s Chamber Music No. 7 with conductor Christoph Eschenbach. He has recorded two CDs for Deutsche Grammophon, and his 2013 recording of Widor’s organ symphonies won a 2013 Echo Klassik, Germany’s major classical music award. Schmitt is on the faculty at Codarts University Rotterdam. He studied organ in Paris, in Boston, and in Saarbrucken and is the principal organist of the Bamberger Symphoniker.
Doyle Armbrust is a Chicago-based violist and co-founder of the three-times Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet. His writing has infiltrated program books at the Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras as well as publications including Crain’s Chicago Business, Chicago Magazine, Time Out Chicago, and The Chicago Tribune.
In UMS’s 2022/23 season, Doyle hosts “The Society of Disobedient Listeners” — an interactive pre-concert experience reconnecting listeners to the subversive, visceral, and even revolutionary elements of the evening’s program. Conceived as an anti-lecture, “Disobedient Listeners” draws the great music of the past into proximity with the felicities and calamities of modern life.