What about the music?
An inside look with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra
Strauss & Mozart for the New Year
January 15, 2027 | 11AM | COFFEE CONCERT | CNU’s Ferguson Center for the Arts, Newport News – Get Tickets
January 15, 2027 | 7:30PM | CNU’s Ferguson Center for the Arts, Newport News – Get Tickets
January 16, 2027 | 2:30PM | Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Beach – Get Tickets
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Minha Kim, flute
Johann Strauss II: Perpetuum Mobile; Musikalischer Sherz (Musical Joke)
Johann Strauss II: Overture to Die Fledermaus
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Concerto No. 1 in G major for Flute & Orchestra
Paul Hindemith: Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter)
Johann Strauss II: An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube)
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.
Flute
Minha Kim
Minha Kim joined the Virginia Symphony Orchestra as Principal Flute in 2024. Previously, she was a fellow at the New World Symphony and a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
Minha has appeared as guest Principal Flute with the Chicago Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and Victoria Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, she has performed with the Baltimore Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. In 2023, she joined the Chicago Symphony’s North American Tour with Riccardo Muti.
She has participated in renowned festivals such as the Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival USA, the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Orford Music Academy.
As a soloist, Minha has performed across the United States and Canada. She has won first prizes at the New York Flute Club, Atlanta Flute Club, and Seattle Flute Society’s Young Artist Competitions. She is also a prize winner of the Evanston Music Club Scholarship Competition, Canadian Music Competition, Performing Arts BC Provincial Festival, and Vancouver Women’s Musical Society Competition. She was featured as a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony after winning the Burnaby Clef Concerto Competition.
Minha earned her bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory, her master’s degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and a post-master’s certificate from DePaul University School of Music. Her primary teachers include Paula Robison, Leone Buyse, and Mark Sparks.
The Creators
Johann Strauss II
Fast Facts:
- Johann Strauss II was born in 1825 in Austria. He came from a musical family as his father was famed composer Johann Strauss I. However, his father did not want him to become a musician but rather a banker.
- Strauss II was known for his light music that consisted mostly of dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, and marches, leading to his nickname “the Waltz King” as he popularized the dance in the 19th century.
- In addition to being a composer, Strauss II grew up as a violinist, secretly studying violin with the first violinist of his father’s orchestra though his father did not approve.
- Strauss II’s “Blue Danube Waltz” is one of his most famous works. It is now even regarded as Austria’s unofficial national anthem.
- Strauss II was close friends with fellow German composer Johannes Brahms. Stories say that Brahms once autographed Strauss’s wife’s fan, which usually entailed the composer inscribing a few measures of his best-known music. Yet this time, Brahms inscribed a few measures from “Blue Danube Waltz” and wrote “Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms.”
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. In opera rehearsals, there are stories of the composer/conductor growing bored of conducting and began imitating a cat at the podium, often meowing and turning somersaults.
- 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.
Paul Hindemith
Fast Facts:
- Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist, and conductor. He was born in 1895 in Hanau near Frankfurt.
- As a child, Hindemith was taught violin. After returning from serving in World War I, Hindemith switched to viola, playing the instrument into his own quartet, the Amar Quartet that toured Europe with a focus on contemporary music. Towards the end of the 1930s, Hindemith made several tours as a viola soloist across America.
- Hindemith originally established his reputation as a composer through his chamber music and operas, but later turned to neo-classicism that paid homage to older composers and bygone eras (most notably J.S. Bach). With this, he also blended in modern musical elements including jazz.
- Hindemith composed a variety of genres including lieder (songs), music for amateurs, operas, chamber music, concerti, and symphonies.
- In addition to his musical works, Hindemith was also known for his unique musical language, leading to his work as a teacher and music theorist. His musical system was tonal yet non-diatonic where it is centered on a specific key and moved to other key centers but had “the free use of all twelve tones of the chromatic scale” instead of relying on a diatonic scale.
The Pieces
Strauss
Perpetuum Mobile: Musikalischer Sherz (Musical Joke)
Listen to Strauss’s Perpetuum Mobile: Musikalischer Shez by the Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra:
- Strauss’s Perpetuum Mobile: Musikalischer Sherz (Musical Joke) was written in 1861 with the subtitle “a musical joke.”
- The musical joke of the work is that the accompaniment is over repetitive, meaning the piece can be repeated without a proper end. The work usually ends until the conductor says “un so weiter” or “and so on.”
- This work consists of variations on a singular theme that is only eight bars long, yet continues on and on as the nature of the genre. Even with this repetitive nature, the work is virtuosic and playful, fulfilling the joking atmosphere of the work’s subtitle.
Strauss
Overture to Die Flerdermaus
Listen to Strauss’s Die Fledermaus by the Vienna Philharmonic:
- Die Fledermaus (The Bat) is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II, written in 1873 over a 42-day period. The piece is based on a popular French comedy, tidied up for the elevated taste of Vienna.
- The original literary source of the work was Das Gefängis (The Prison) by German playwright Julius Roderisch Benedix. This work was transformed into a vaudeville play (comedic variety show popular in the last 19th century) in France called Le Réveillon, which is what inspired the libretto for Die Fledermaus.
- Filled with mistaken identities, seduction, flowing champagne, and endless parties, Die Fledermaus is an infectious work that brings an escape from harsh realities into the glittering atmosphere of a bygone times of champagne and ballrooms.
- The title of the work, Die Fledermaus (the Bat), does not refer to the animal. It instead refers to an incident that occurred before the comedy began where a drunken notary, dressed in a bat costume, awakens the morning after a party lying in a park and is ridiculed by local children. This leads to a revenge plot, a masked ball, and humorous incidents that make up the work.
- Between the arias, Strauss seamlessly flows from various dance forms that dominate the work. The overture reflects this with a patchwork of dances from the operetta that are effortlessly sewn together including waltzes, polkas, and more.
Mozart
Concerto No.1 in G Major for Flute and Orchestra
Listen to Mozart’s Flute Concerto No.1 by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra:
- Mozart’s Flute Concerto1 was written in 1778 as part of a commission by a Dutch physician and amateur flute player. This commission was meant to include “three short, simple concertos and a couple quartets for the flute,” but Mozart never completed all the works requested.
- There is speculation that Mozart disliked the flute despite writing for the instrument. Some scholars cite Mozart’s letters written to his father to explain this sentiment while others note that Mozart likely disliked how the flute was played since the instrument was hard to play in-tune outside of professional flautists at the time.
- Despite being written for an amateur player, this concerto demands virtuosity and technical mastery of the soloist, hence its status as an essential work for the flute repertoire.
- The first movement is spirited and virtuosic, showing off the flautist’s technical skill with rapid figures and brilliant leaps into the upper register. The second movement imitates the operatic aria with the flute as the soprano soloist, singing with tenderness and lyricism. The concerto ends with a rondo, returning to the flashy elegance found in the first movement, ending with a graceful close with the orchestra.
Hindemith
Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter)
Listen to Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler by Frankfurt Radio Symphony:
- Hindemith wrote this symphony in 1934, later reworking and incorporating elements of the work into his opera Mathis der Maler in 1935.
- Mathis der Maler is loosely based on the life of artist Mathias Grunewald who lived during the Peasant’s War in Germany. Inspired by Grunewald’s famous paintings and his life, the opera follows the painter’s rejection of a comfortable life as a court painter to join the peasants’ struggle for justice. Yet, the painter is disturbed by the peasants’ violence and takes refuge in the forest. Here, he dreams that he is St. Anthony where St. Paul tells him that he must not turn back on his God-given talent and must humbly offer his holiest creation to his brothers, reflecting the subject of two of Grunewald’s real paintings.
- Each movement of the symphony is based on the artist’s vivid and at times grotesque Isenheim altarpiece paintings, which inspired the story. The symphony musically illustrates scenes of Mary and infant Jesus, Jesus’ crucifixion, and Grunewald’s dream of St. Anthony meeting St. Paul — the climax of the opera.
- Within these illustrative musical scenes, Hindemith also reflects the artistic elements of the artworks, using bright harmonies and splashes of sound to emulate the brightness and the paintings. He also includes musical allusions of medieval German songs with his own version of the song Es sungen drei Engel (Three Angles were singing)
Strauss
An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube)
Listen to Strauss’s An der Schönen Blauen Donau by the Bandung Philharmonic:
- An der schönen blauen Donau by Strauss II was composed in 1866 as a waltz for orchestra. It is Strauss’s most famous work.
- After the original music was written, words were added by poet Joseph Weyl. Yet, Strauss adapted this version into a purely orchestral form for the 1867 Paris World’s Fair, which is the version most commonly performed today. Alternate text was also written by Franz von Gernerth.
- The work consists of various waltz themes through different keys and moods as the music flows down the Danube River. Characters range from a shimmering introduction, to a genial, to a sullen, to a climatic character before a flourishing coda where the music returns to the various waltzes developed.
- Though initially a mild success, today the “Blue Danube Waltz” is a staple of the repertoire. Yet at the time, Strauss is remarked to have said, “the devil take the waltz, my only regret is for the coda — I wish that had been a success!”
Glossary
Concerto
A work for a solo instrument accompanied by orchestra, usually in three movements. Concerti is the plural of concerto.
Diatonic Scale
a seven note musical scale consisting of a set of specific whole and half steps. Major diatonic scales include 5 whole steps and two half steps arranged in a W-W-H-W-W-W-H ordering.
Key
The musical home base or center of harmonic stability.
Neo-classicism
Musical movement in the 20th century that revived earlier period styles from the Baroque and Classical era but reworked them through modern harmony and rhythm.
Operetta
A short, lighthearted theatrical piece that includes singing, instrumental music, dancing, and spoken dialogue.
Perpetuum Mobile
“Perpetual Motion,” referring to a piece that features a continuous stream of uniform notes without interruption.
Rondo
A cyclical musical form consisting of a recurring theme that alternates with contrasting sections, returning to the original theme after each contrasting section.
Symphony
A large four movement work written for full orchestra.
Vaudeville Play
A late 19th century genre that included short comedic acts featuring music, dance, singers, and other various acts.
Waltz
A ballroom dance in 3 with an emphasis on one to create an “oom-pah-pah” rhythm.