What about the music?
An inside look with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra
COFFEE CONCERT Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Friday, March 27, 2026 | 11AM | Harrison Opera House, Norfolk – Get Tickets
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Elizabeth Coulter Vonderheide, violin
Celia Daggy, viola
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5
By Stella Feliberti
The Performers
conductor
Eric Jacobsen
Already well-established as one of classical music’s most exciting and innovative young conductors, Eric Jacobsen combines fresh interpretations of the traditional canon with cutting-edge collaborations across musical genres. Hailed by the New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” Eric, as both a conductor and a cellist, has built a reputation for engaging audiences with innovative and collaborative programming.
Eric joined the Virginia Symphony Orchestra as Music Director in 2021, being named the twelfth music director in the orchestra’s 100+ year history. Current and recent projects include recording projects of Dvorak and Coleridge-Taylor with Gil Shaham and Rhapsody in Blue (on banjo!) with Bela Fleck.
Eric is entering his tenth season as Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, as he continues to pioneer the orchestra’s programming and community engagement in new and exciting directions. The 24-25 season looks forward to concerts including An Evening with Jamie Bernstein and the World Premiere of Gabe Kahane’s clarinet concerto for Anthony McGill.
Eric is also artistic director and co-founder of The Knights, the uniquely adventurous NYC-based chamber orchestra. The ensemble, founded with his brother, violinist Colin Jacobsen, grew out of late-night music reading parties with friends, good food and drink, and conversation. Current endeavors include a multi-year Rhapsody project as well as a residency at Carnegie Hall. Under Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have developed an extensive recording collection, including albums with longtime collaborators Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Aaron Diehl, Gabe Kahane, and Anna Clyne.
Eric’s musical life started from a very young age surrounded by a musical family, where he discovered his love of pulling a bow across a string as a cellist. He and his brother founded the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and also performed regularly with Yo-Yo Ma as a member of Silk Road, touring around the world. This collaborative spirit and sense of music is something that Eric strives to bring to every concert and project.
A frequent guest conductor, Eric has established continuing relationships with the Colorado Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Upcoming engagements also include concerts with Classical Tahoe and Grant Park Music Festival, and special performances with Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony and Utah Symphony.
Eric brings joy, storytelling, and a touch of humor to what he describes as “musical conversations” that delight audiences around the world, including those who do not traditionally attend classical music concerts. Jacobsen is married to Grammy-Winner singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan and together they have a daughter.
violin
Elizabeth Coulter Vonderheide
Elizabeth Coulter Vonderheide, originally from Lynchburg, VA, began violin studies at age 5. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, studying with the late Franco Gulli, Distinguished Professor of Violin. She received the Master of Music degree from the prestigious Orchestral Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Glenn Dicterow, then Concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. While in New York she served as Concertmaster of the MSM orchestras, and had the opportunity to play under renowned conductors Kurt Masur, David Robertson, Pierre Boulez, and Julius Rudel. She also appeared as soloist both with the Claremont Ensemble, and in a live broadcast on Soundcheck with John Schaeffer on 93.9 WNYC FM.
Elizabeth joined the Virginia Symphony as Assistant Principal Second Violin in 2003, and was appointed Principal Second Violin in 2022. Since 2008 she has been a substitute with the Saint Louis Symphony, joining them frequently, including their 7-week Opera Season, Carnegie Hall tours, and a domestic tour with American Ballet Theater. Beginning in the 2022-23 season, Elizabeth has been a regular substitute with the Pittsburgh Symphony. Additionally, she is often called on as a substitute musician by the Atlanta, Baltimore, and North Carolina Symphonies, and the Florida and Sarasota Orchestras.
Elizabeth has soloed four times with the Virginia Symphony, as well as with the Lynchburg Symphony, the National Repertory Orchestra, and the Wintergreen Music Festival orchestra. She has performed as a guest member of the National Symphony of the Dominican Republic, and with the orchestras of the Spoleto, Italy Festival, the American Institute of Musical Study (Graz, Austria), the Crested Butte Music Festival, The Colorado Music Festival, and the Conducting Institute at Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. Since 2015 she has held a summer position with Wintergreen Music. Elizabeth has also twice toured Japan with the Hollywood Concert Orchestra.
An enthusiastic chamber musician, Elizabeth is a founding member of both the Hampton Roads-based New Commonwealth Quartet, and the Surf and Sounds Chamber Music Festival in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. With NCQ, she has performed with Feldman Chamber Music, on the Virginia Wesleyan recital series, for Christ and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space”, for the Graif Foundation, and in a chamber music series the quartet created in East Beach, Norfolk. They also recorded a recital for WHRO public media that was live-streamed during the pandemic. The quartet has twice been a featured ensemble at Bruce Hornsby’s Funhouse Fest, and can also be heard on Mr. Hornsby’s album Absolute Zero, on the track “White Noise”. As a solo recitalist, Elizabeth has appeared as a guest artist at Old Dominion University, Randolph College, and Madison (Indiana) Performing Arts.
Elizabeth is on the Instrumental Faculty at the Governor’s School for the Arts and The Academy of Music, and is a regular coach with the Bay Youth Orchestras of Virginia, and the Heart Strings Program. She maintains a private teaching studio in Portsmouth, where she lives with her husband, VSO Principal Trumpet David Vonderheide, and their Border Collie Indy.
Viola
Celia Daggy
Hailed as “glittering, beautiful and memorable”, Celia Daggy joined the VSO as Principal Viola in 2022 at the age of 24, making her one of the youngest principal violists in an American orchestra.
Raised in a musical family in sunny Santa Monica, California, she studied piano and violin, eventually picking up the viola as a teenager. In high school, Ms. Daggy performed for John Williams with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the American Youth Symphony, competed in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and toured China with the National Youth Orchestra of the USA.
She completed her undergraduate in 2020 summa cum laude from Boston University, where she studied with Boston Symphony principal Steven Ansell. She was a Tanglewood Music Center fellow for three years, during which she won their annual mock-audition, and was a guest of the Boston Symphony in the Leonard Bernstein Centennial Gala Concert. She also attended the New York String Orchestra Seminar and Spoleto Festival USA. Throughout her college years, she was a guest of numerous New England chamber music societies, performing from Rhode Island up to Maine. In 2018, she gave the world premiere of Stephen Baillargeon’s viola concerto, written for her, as a benefit for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Frequently traveling around the United States, Ms. Daggy has performed with the Boston, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and North Carolina Symphonies. She has toured New England with the Boston Pops, and also joined the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in Los Angeles for a PBS broadcasted event celebrating Henri Mancini’s 100th Birthday. She can be heard around Hampton Roads in the internationally-renowned Candlelight quartet series. In the summer, she is the Assistant Principal Violist of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra, and participates in the Wintergreen Music Festival in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Prior to joining the Virginia Symphony, she was an acting member of the North Carolina Symphony during the ‘21-’22 season. She was also a principal fellow of The Orchestra Now at Bard College, where she can be heard on an album released by Bridge Records playing extensive solos in George Bristow’s Symphony No. 4 “Arcadian”.
She plays on a 2016 viola made by Andranik Gaybaryan in Northampton, Massachusetts. Outside of the musical world she enjoys running, learning about fine wines, and is an avid Los Angeles Dodgers fan. She currently lives in Chesapeake.
The Creators
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Fast Facts:
- Beethoven started composing around age 9 and published his first compositions in 1783.
- Beethoven learned how to play violin, viola, and piano from a very young age. He got his first job as a musician as the court’s organist under Christian Gottlob Neefe.
- Beethoven started to study under Franz Joseph Haydn in 1792 where he took counterpoint lessons and studied violin. Though he studied with the great Haydn, Beethoven aspired to meet and study with Mozart. However, the two never met despite their efforts to connect.
- Beethoven is known for writing masterwork Symphonies but is also highly regarded for his chamber music, especially his string quartets.
- Beethoven is known for leading the transition from the Classical Era into the Romantic Period, leading to his high regard as one of the most famous composers of all time.
- While most consider Beethoven to be completely deaf by his later symphonies, including the 7th Symphony played on this concert, he did not lose his hearing completely until 1826 when his String Quartet in B-flat Op.130 premiered.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Fast Facts:
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 in Salzburg. He was the youngest of 7 children. He wrote his first composition at 4 years old.
- Mozart was known as a jokester, both in and outside of his compositions. His Divertimento from two horns and string quartet is thought to be intentionally humorous as it is clumsy, mechanical, and over-repetitive at times.
- Mozart composed a plethora of pieces. By the time of his death, he composed over 600 works, including symphonies, concerti, operas, chamber music, and choral works.
- Mozart was fluent in many languages, including German, Italian, French, and Latin. He learned all these languages to be able to compose and perform across Europe with diverse audiences.
- Mozart has the unique ability to compose complete works in his head before writing them down. It is said that he would envision complete scores with multiple instruments and unique harmonies, without the need for extensive revisions.
The Pieces
Mozart
Sinfonia Concertante
Listen to Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante from the Manchester Camerata:
- Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante 364 was composed in 1779 while he was still under the employment of the Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg. During this time, Mozart was longing for artistic freedom to explore new sound combinations and possibilities after his tour in Mannheim and Paris. This piece is one result of this interest in new sounds.
- The genre of this piece is a hybrid of a symphony (an elaborate musical work for full orchestra, typically in four movements) and concerto (a musical composition for a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra). Through the double soloists of violin and viola, Mozart exploits the musical possibilities of a full orchestra as well as virtuosity of both soloists — fulfilling this blend of symphony and concerto.
- Though Mozart wrote 5 violin concertos, he loved to play viola in string quartet ensembles, hence the violin’s viola partner in this piece. One of the most remarkable parts of this piece is the brilliant partnership between violin and violas to create a beautiful shared sound.
- The concertante starts with an orchestral exposition full of effortless and brilliant themes that seamlessly flow from one to the other. Over top of this, the soloists first enter on a high sustained E-flat, then take over with the most glorious theme yet. From there, the soloists entertain conversation with each other and the orchestra, often echoing passages. The second movement is one of emotional depth and tenderness as musicologist Maynard Solomon speculates that this movement reflects Mozart coping with the recent loss of his mother. Throughout this movement, the violin sings an aria of grief while the viola provides consolation. Later, Wagner would call this seamless song an “infinite melody.” The finale returns to the joyfulness of the first movement. Musicologist Alfred Einstein describes this movement as its “gaiety results principally from the fact that in the chain of musical events the unexpected always occurs first, being followed by the expected.”
Beethoven
Symphony No. 5
Listen to Beethoven’s 5th from the Concertbouworkest:
- Beethoven’s 5th Symphony was written between 1807 and 1808, and is now one of the most famous pieces of classical music. He wrote this work shortly after he finished his monumental 3rd symphony “Eroica,” only pausing to write his 4th symphony, 4th piano concerto, the violin concerto, the Triple concerto, the Mass in C, and his sole opera Fidelio.
- While Beethoven’s 3rd symphony exploded the symphonic genre with its expansive length and compositional content, the 5th does the opposite. The entire symphony is composed of minute themes, or motifs (a brief melodic or rhythmic formula out of which longer passages are developed), that connect each movement of the work to the next. This produces a compact yet unified symphony.
- The symphony opens not with a memorable theme but a simple four-note motif: the infamous dun-dun-dun-duuuun! Today, we see this motif as an iconic piece of classical music that almost anyone can recognize, but to Beethoven this motif was an obsession that some believe he wrote to represent fate.
- The first movement starts ambiguously with no clear key signature (a set of sharps or flats to indicate the central note in which the piece is based around) or theme — rather starts with the iconic four note motif that would appear throughout every movement. From that germinal seed, the entire first movement enfolds with extreme passion and energy. The second movement turns to a sweet theme and variations with two themes: one is lyrical and rich, contrasted by another march and majestic theme. Next is an ominous Scherzo that opens with in low register of the cellos and bass but soon turns into a militaristic march with the brass introducing a variation of the first movement four-note motif. Contrasting this militaristic theme is a cheerful trio, which eventually turns back to the first theme. As the final iterations of the first Scherzo theme fade, Beethoven seamlessly and astonishingly transitions into the glorious and victorious finale — as if beating the torments of fate that plagued the first movement.
Glossary
minuet and trio
a ternary A-B-A form that starts with a dance movement in 3 and a contrasting section, returning back to the original dance
concertante
a piece of music for orchestra with more than one soloist, typically from the 18th century.
motif
a brief melodic or rhythmic formula out of which longer passages are developed
Discussion Questions
How does Mozart highlight two soloists in front of the orchestra in the Sinfonia Concertante and how is it different from a Concerto?
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 starts with an aggressive four note motif. What feelings or emotions does it conjure within you and how does the emotion change throughout the movement?