Faculty Guest Artists Ilya Kaler and Stephen Balderston Will Perform Brahms Work

As DePaul University’s School of Music gains national prominence for its academic and performance programs, it has attracted an increasingly gifted student population. That standard of excellence, in turn, is reflected in the quality of the DePaul Symphony Orchestra, a cross-section of the most talented musicians on campus. For almost three decades, the orchestra’s annual Joseph and Marie Grant Spring Concert has been a highlight of the orchestra season. This year, the concert will be performed at 8 p.m. May 19, at Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan Ave.

The program, led by conductor Cliff Colnot, includes three selections: the third movement from Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, Brahms’s Double Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Ilya Kaler, violin, and Stephen Balderston, cello, are the featured soloists for the Brahms score. Both of these distinguished string players joined the DePaul Music School faculty on a full-time basis this season.

The DePaul Symphony Orchestra’s importance as a training ground for students has been greatly enhanced since Colnot’s appointment as conductor of the 90-member ensemble in 1997. Under his stewardship, the quality of the orchestra’s music making has improved tremendously, and the sense of professionalism among its players has been heightened. In his work with professional and student musicians throughout the city, Colnot expects the same musical standards across the board—“I don’t change hats on the taxi ride from Orchestra Hall to DePaul,” he states.

Colnot’s own life in music encompasses the worlds of classical, jazz and pop. With seemingly boundless enthusiasm, Colnot is an artist of many persuasions—conductor, arranger, composer, orchestrator and commercial music entrepreneur. He serves as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNow series and as resident conductor of the Civic Orchestra. He leads the Contemporary Chamber Players at the University of Chicago, and is the assistant conductor for both the Lucerne Academy, founded by Pierre Boulez last year, and Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Workshops.

The May 19 concert program opens with the expressive third movement, titled Elegy, from Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Always one of the most popular works in this composer’s output, the score is characterized by its charm and brilliant string writing.

Brahms penned the Double Concerto in the summer of 1887 in an attempt to reconcile his friendship with the great violinist Joseph Joachim. Although they had been the closest of friends since young adulthood, they had not spoken in almost a decade. It was a peace offering Joachim could not refuse. The idea of writing a concerto for more than one soloist was unfamiliar in the late 19th century, and Brahms’s pairing of the violin and cello was unexpected. The work received only a tepid response at the 1890 premiere; as it turned out, it would be the composer’s last orchestral piece.

The Fifth Symphony is Shostakovich’s “reply” to the criticism he had endured from the Soviet authorities for more than a quarter century. Shostakovich wrote, “the theme of my Fifth Symphony is the making of a man with all his experiences in the center of the composition . . . the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in optimism and joy of living.”

The concert is free and open to the public. For tickets, contact the Orchestra Hall Box Office at (312) 294-3000. This annual concert is made possible through the generous support of the family of the late Joseph Grant, a 1932 DePaul College of Law alumnus and School of Music advisory board member.