What about the music?
An inside look with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra
Grieg’s Piano Concerto
March 5, 2027 | 7:30PM | Wilder Performing Arts, Norfolk – Get Tickets
March 6, 2027 | 7:30PM | CNU’s Ferguson Center for the Arts, Newport News – Get Tickets
Thomas Wilkins, conductor
Adam Golka, piano
Hannah Eisendle: Heliosis
Edvard Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor
Antonin Dvořák: Symphony No. 6 in D Major
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.
piano
Adam Golka
Polish-American pianist Adam Golka (born 1987) first performed all of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas when he was 18 years-old, and in 2020-2021 Adam Golka performed the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 Sonatas at the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park (Florida) and at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (NYC), in socially-distanced and live-stream formats. Adam’s performances of each Sonata were complemented by 32 short films he created, known as 32@32 (available on YouTube), documenting his preparation for climbing the Everest of piano literature and featuring an amalgam of distinguished guests, from an astrophysicist to Alfred Brendel.
Adam Golka’s principal teachers have been José Feghali, with whom he studied at Texas Christian University, and Leon Fleisher, at the Peabody Conservatory. Since finishing his formal studies, Adam has continued to develop his artistry through mentorship from Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Mitsuko Uchida, Evelyne Crochet, Ferenc Rados, Rita Wagner, and Sir András Schiff, who invited Adam to give recitals at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr and Tonhalle Zürich, for the “Sir András Schiff Selects” concert series. Adam has also given solo recitals in Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Osaka’s Nakanoshima Hall, Amsterdam’s Kleine Zaal in Het Concertgebouw, Paris’ Jardin du Luxembourg, Berlin’s Piano Salon Christophori, and New York’s Alice Tully Hall (presented by the Musicians Emergency Fund), as well as countless other venues around the US and Europe.
As a concerto soloist, he has appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony, NACO (Ottawa), Warsaw Philharmonic, NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco, Orquesta Sinfónica de Colombia, as well as over fifty orchestras in the US, including such well known ensembles as the San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, New Jersey, and San Diego symphonies. Adam has enjoyed collaborations with conductors such as Joseph Swensen, Donald Runnicles, Pinchas Zukerman, Mark Wigglesworth, JoAnn Falletta, and often with his brother, conductor Tomasz Golka. Adam gave his Carnegie Stern Auditorium début in 2010 with the New York Youth Symphony.
Chamber music is an integral part of Adam Golka’s life, and he has performed repeatedly at the Krzyżowa-Music “Music for Europe” Chamber Music Festival, which has included tour performances at the Penderecki European Music Center in Lusławice (Poland) Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Beethoven Bonn festivals (Germany), as well as Konzerthaus Berlin. He also performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Caramoor chamber music festivals in the US. Adam collaborates regularly with the Manhattan Chamber Players and in recital with baritone John Moore, cellist Jonathan Swensen and violinist Itamar Zorman, with whom he is scheduled for a third recital at the The Wigmore Hall in London 2026.
Adam’s professional life began when he was awarded the first prize and audience prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. In 2008, Adam won the Gilmore Young Artist Award and in 2009, he won the Max I. Allen Fellowship as part of the American Pianists Awards. Adam has recorded works by Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms for London-based First Hand Records, and in 2025 he will release two new albums for First Hand Records: Brahms’ early piano works plus a world premiere recording of a piano work by Brahms biographer Jan Swafford, and also an album named “Chopin Sans Chopin,” a personally curated selection of works inspired by Frédéric Chopin, including a world premiere of an 1894 Mazurka by Natalia Janotha.
As a pedagogue, Adam acted as Artist-in-Residence for six school years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He has premiered works by Michelle Barzel Ross, Richard Danielpour, Michael Brown, and Jarosław Gołębiowski, and most recently Adam also performed and recorded the world premiere of the Piano Quintet by Andrea Casarrubios. Adam currently serves as Artist-Teacher at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA, and is also an Artistic Advisor to the Krzyżowa-Music “Music for Europe” Chamber Music Festival.
When Adam is not making music, he loves to read classic literature, visit art museums, swim, and he is passionate about somatic learning and movement awareness, especially the Feldenkrais Method.
The Creators
Hannah Eisendle
Fast Facts:
- Hannah Eisendle is an Austrian conductor, composer, and pianist born in 1993. Though her parents were not musicians themselves, they introduced Eisendle to classical music young with frequent opera performances and piano lessons.
- When Eisendle first started her musical studies, she originally wanted to become a pianist, leading to her studies at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre. It was here that Eisendle discovered a new passion for composition.
- Eisendle composes in a variety of genres and styles, ranging from solo voice or instrumental works, works for big band, large orchestral works, chamber music, and even electronic music. For her, her works are “always inspired by extramusical impressions, by images and other art forms. [She] usually composes without an instrument and tries to transform [her] impressions into sound structures in a kind of translation process.”
- One of Eisendle’s focuses is on opera, specifically conducting opera productions. She’s conducted productions of Die Fledermaus (Strauss), Tosca (Puccini), Alice in Wonderland (Usuk Chin), Orpheus in der Unterwelt (Offenbach), Jenufa (Janàčeck), and Eugene Onegin (Tchaikovsky).
- As a conductor, Eisendle is also particularly interested in performing works from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Edvard Grieg
Fast Facts:
- Edvard Grieg was born in 1843 in Norway. He grew up steeped in music as his mother gave him his first piano lessons at age 6.
- Grieg was close family friends with violin virtuoso Ole Bull. It was Bull who convinced his parents to send Grieg to the Leipzig Conservatory for piano. However, Grieg disliked his time there and claimed he left the Conservatory “as stupid as when [he] entered it.”
- Grieg is heavily inspired by his homeland of Norway. He often incorporates Norwegian folk tunes, styles, and legends in his works.
- Though after he passed Grieg’s works fell out of fashion, his works still remained influential on the French composers of the 20th century. For French composer Ravel, he felt that outside of Debussy, there was “no composer to whom I feel a closer affinity,” than Grieg.
- Throughout his life, Grieg suffered through many bouts of illness, first stemming from life-threatening lung diseases, pleurisy, and tuberculosis in 1860. He died in 1907 after suffering from heart failure and a long period of illness prior. His final words were “well, if it must be so.”
Antonin Dvořák
Pronounced De-VOR-zhak
Fast Facts:
- Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841 in Bohemia as the first of nine children. He studied music very young and became an accomplished violinist at a young age, participating in amateur music-making that accompanied local dancing.
- Dvorak studied organ, violin, piano, and viola. He played viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre Orchestra but resigned eventually to concentrate on composing.
- Like Brahms, Dvorak was extremely self-conscious of his early works as they received no public performance or acknowledgement. He then burned some of his early works.
- Johannes Brahms and critic Eduard Hanslick were the first people to champion Dvorak for his works. Thanks to them, Dvorak’s compositions started to take flight and gain the acclaim they have today.
- Dvorak was born in a small village in Prague, often visiting the Bohemian countryside of Czechia. These countryside visits inspired many of his works as he incorporated many of the dances and celebrations from the area into his works.
- In 1892, Dvorak visited the United States and became the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. His time in the US inspired many of his most famous works including his 9th Symphony “From the New World,” his Cello Concerto, and his 12th String quartet, nicknamed “the American Quartet.”
The Pieces
Eisendle
Heliosis
Listen to Eisendle’s Heliosis by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra:
- Eisendle’s Heliosis was written in 2021 as a commission by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
- The title comes from the medical term for sunstroke as the piece deals with themes of heat and hot landscape. Eisendle describes this work as “a summer piece, but not the kind with a clear landscape under sky blue and sunshine.” Instead, it deals with imagery of relentless heat in the desert.
- A central part of this work is its focus on rhythm as it is the central driving element in the piece’s development. These rhythms convey “inflamed senses like the wavering between clear wakefulness and exhausted surrender.”
- In addition to rhythm, Eisendle includes many extended techniques, including playing behind the bridge, extreme glissandi, and more.
- The piece aims to sonically illustrate the topography of the desert landscape and the psychological effects of extreme heat. From the beginning, Eisendle hurls us sonically into a dynamic climax with rhythmic material exploding, blurring the lines between clarity and chaos like overwhelmed senses in the heat. Even as the musical intensity lessens, there is a relentless rhythmic drive like a mechanical machine continuing to churn with small eruptions poking through. As the heat continues to beat down, like consciousness, the orchestra splits in two with tempos diverging and some instruments remaining stable while others take off.
Grieg
Piano Concerto in A minor
Listen to Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony:
- Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor was written in 1868 and is now one of his most popular works. He completed the work when he was only 24 years old — though he continued to revise the work until his death in 1907.
- After hearing Schumann’s Piano Concerto in Leipzig, Grieg was inspired to write his own concerto. There are similarities between the two works including the opening flourish in the piano and overall style is comparable to Schumann.
- Grieg’s concerto highlights his growing interest in Norwegian folk music, incorporating styles and genres of his homeland. The piano solo’s opening solo is based on a motif of a descending second followed by a falling major third, which is common in Norwegian folk music. The last movement also bears similarity to the halling, a traditional Norwegian folk dance, and imitations of the Hardanger fiddle.
- The work opens with a cascading flourish from the piano, outlining the central key of A minor and underscores the interplay between brilliance and deeper musical development. The first movement thus explores further harmonic regions while also being rooted in thematic stability. The second movement is centered around smaller lyrical gestures, with intimate colors of muted strings and woodwind solos. When the soloist finally enters, it is first decorative and gradually becomes thematically ingrained into the texture. Finally, the last movement brings in rustic dances with echoes of Norwegian folk dances with lyrical interludes intertwined, featuring improvisatory passages, until the dance takes over again and drives into a dramatic end.
Dvořák
Symphony No.6 in D Major
Listen to Dvořák’s Symphony No.6 by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France:
- Dvořák’s Symphony No.6 was written in 1880, though it was originally published as Symphony No.1 and dedicated to conductor Hans Richter as it was his first published symphony.
- After a local premiere of his Slavic Rhapsody No.3 in Vienna, Dvořák assured the Vienna Philharmonic that he would compose a symphony for their next season after being celebrated by conductor Hans Richter.
- During this period of Dvořák’s life, there was lots of experimentation to develop his own personal compositional style. This symphony highlights Dvořák’s synthesis of Germanic classical tradition, including both styles of Brahms and Wagner, within his developing nationalistic Czech style. The work includes references to Brahms, Beethoven, and Viennese dance.
- The first movement of this work is majestic with its grand and declamatory opening, with echoes of Brahms’s 2nd Symphony intertwined. Yet, the movement is still very much Dvořák’s style with intraconnection between motifs and gestures between members of the orchestra. Through this, the texture thickens until the main theme is proclaimed by the full orchestra. The second movement mirrors the third movement of Beethoven’s 9th but instead focuses on the idealism of pastoral beauty rather than contrast, with singing melodies in the woodwinds, brass, and violins. The scherzo contrasts this serenity with its energetic nationalistic atmosphere full of two-against-three rhythms; however, the trio echoes the pastoral qualities of the second movement with a lyrical tune in the piccolo. The finale closes with a return to themes from the first movement but with a new rustic and dancelike character that churns into an infectious energy that ends the work with high spirits and joviality.
Glossary
Extended Technique
Unconventional methods of playing instruments to create new sounds, noises, and colors.
Symphony
A large four movement work written for full orchestra.
Concerto
A work for a solo instrument accompanied by orchestra, usually in three movements.
Commission
A formal agreement where an individual, ensemble, or organization hires a composer to write an original musical work.
Glissando
A rapid slide or glide from one pitch to another
Motif
A short, recurring musical idea, a specific rhythm, or a small group of notes that serves as the foundational building block of a composition