Program Notes for Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Water Music Suite (1717) 

George Frideric Handel 
Born in Halle, Germany, February 23, 1685; died in London, England, April 14, 1759 

It was quite a path that brought two sons of Germany to the center of power in England. The composer George Frideric Handel had left his job in the opera orchestra in Hamburg to learn from the best in the business in Italy, and he was so successful there that he got hired at 25 to serve as the head of music for George Ludwig, ruler of the Electorate of Hanover that covered much of Northwest Germany. Meanwhile, because of an earlier British law that resolved a sectarian conflict by banning Catholic monarchs, George Ludwig—the great-grandson of England’s King James I—bypassed 56 closer relatives to become heir to the British throne. 

The future King George I actually fired Handel after three years because the exceedingly ambitious composer was always off in London, where he established himself as the leading opera composer and impresario. But they reconciled after George’s coronation in 1714, and Handel became a trusted source of music for the royal court. In 1717, when a conflict with his liberal-minded son (the future George II) left the king in need of some good public relations, he organized an outing on the River Thames and asked Handel to provide orchestral entertainment. On July 17, 1717, the river filled with boats, including a barge loaded with some 50 musicians. The whole flotilla rode the tide upriver to Chelsea, stopped for supper, and then returned to Whitehall, with Handel’s new Water Music sounding all the while.  

Water Music consists of three separate suites with different instrumentations that each emphasize particular wind and brass instruments, which had the advantage of being able to project their sounds more clearly across the water. The First Suite in F Major starts with an Overture that borrows the ceremonial style of France, along with a dash of Italian concerto grosso style reflected in the emphasis on oboes and solo violins in the fast section. That suite’s Allegro puts the spotlight on the two horns with rollicking music that evokes their traditional role transmitting long-distance communications for hunting parties. 

The Third Suite in G Major features flute in the stately Sarabande, a dance style refined in France after Spaniards brought it back from their American colonies. The selection that hits closest to home is the Hornpipe from the First Suite, with oboes and bassoon approximating a simple reed instrument associated with the dance that shares its name, a staple of British sailors. The Gigue from the Third Suite, featuring piccolo, follows the French approach to a dance that evolved from the earlier jigs of the British Isles. Oboes take the lead again in the Andante from the First Suite that leaves its D-minor harmony hanging on an unresolved chord, leading to a surprise recap of the jubilant Allegro featuring horns. 

— Aaron Grad 

Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595 (1791) 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791 

When Mozart, the former child prodigy, found himself still stuck at home in Salzburg in his early 20s with no suitable job offers, he took the leap of moving to Vienna in 1781 to start a freelance career. He soon attracted a loyal following of subscribers who attended the self-produced concerts that often featured his piano concertos, including the fifteen new ones introduced between 1782 and 1786.  

Mozart completed only two more piano concertos after 1786, when war with the Ottoman Empire scattered Vienna’s elites and put a damper on his concert career. He may have begun the last one, No. 27 in B-flat Major, in 1788, but he only logged it in his catalog of completed works on January 5, 1791, 11 months before his death. Mozart wrote out cadenzas for the outer movements, which supports the hypothesis that his talented student Barbara Ployer gave the first performance at a concert in Vienna on January 9. (For works he was performing himself, Mozart usually improvised the cadenzas.) He did perform the concerto that March at a benefit concert for a clarinetist friend, in what proved to be his last known public appearance as a pianist.     

Mozart, always an opera composer at heart, filled this concerto with sweet and cheerful tunes that simply beg to be sung. When the piano takes over the music introduced by violins at the start of the first movement, it incorporates florid decorations, similar to how a soprano might add flourishes to an aria. To begin the central Larghetto, the soloist enters alone with a theme of child-like innocence. The finale also opens with the piano presenting a disarming melody, one that Mozart reused a few days later in his setting of a poem titled Longing for Spring (K. 596) for an album of children’s songs. 

— Aaron Grad 

Elixir of Life (2026) 

Katie Jenkins 
Born in Pontypridd, Wales, 1999; currently resides in New York City and London 

Katie Jenkins’ early passion and talent for composition brought her from her native Wales to The Juilliard School, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees as a student of Melinda Wagner. In her dynamic career as a composer and producer, Jenkins leans into collaboration with artists from wide-ranging disciplines while maintaining close ties with her own Welsh roots. She wrote the following program note for Elixir of Life, commissioned by Orpheus. 

Elixir of Life traces the idea of transformation—from fragility to strength, darkness to light, and the mortal towards the eternal. What is initially unstable becomes increasingly grounded, radiant and expansive, ultimately becoming an embodiment of hope and a celebration of our capacity to raise up, transform and uplift others. Lilting folk melodies, modal harmonies, fiddle-like gestures, and the rhythmic vitality of South Wales weave through the music, gradually opening into expansive, pastoral landscapes. Against these textures, soaring solo violin lines emerge—at times lyrical and weightless, at others virtuosic and fiercely energetic. 

The warmth and ancient resonance of Welsh folk music meet the groove, theatricality, harmonic color, and restless energy of New York City. These seemingly distant worlds become intertwined, creating a sound that is both intimate and cinematic, rooted and contemporary. Time stretches and contracts, melodies glide freely through moments of rubato, and moments of darkness continually give way to renewed brightness. 

At its heart, Elixir of Life is a celebration of transformation, identity, and belonging. It asks where home resides—not simply in a place, but within the musical and emotional landscapes we carry with us.   

— Katie Jenkins 

Symphony No. 91 in E-flat Major (1788)  

Franz Joseph Haydn 
Born in Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; died: Vienna, Austria, May 31, 1809  

Haydn became a court composer for Austria’s wealthy Esterhazy family in 1761, and four years later he was put in charge of all the court’s vast musical activities. His patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, was an avid musician and a true supporter of the arts, but he kept his Kapellmeister on a tight leash, especially during the long stretches of time spent at an isolated summer palace where the musicians had to produce an endless stream of operas and other entertainment. Under those demands, Haydn later wrote, “I was forced to become original.” 

In 1779, Haydn negotiated a new contract that gave him more leeway to compose and publish independently, allowing him to finally profit off of his widespread fame. A young French count soon commissioned six symphonies that debuted to great acclaim in Paris during the 1785-86 season, prompting the same count to follow up with a commission for three more symphonies in 1788, including this Symphony No. 91 that formed the middle of the set. 

After decades of writing symphonies for the Esterhazy’s small court orchestra, the transition to composing for large ensembles in public venues led Haydn to expand his sonic palette to include trumpets and timpani (and soon clarinets in the symphonies he wrote for London). This Symphony in E-flat Major stands out as the final one to use the smaller configuration of his Esterhazy orchestra as of the early 1780s, with a single flute and pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns augmenting the strings. The musical material matches the intimate scoring, with a first movement that starts with a patient introduction using three very slow beats per measure, continuing into a fast body of the movement that retains the three-beat meter and a focus on themes that slide through off-key chromatic tones as they yearn for resolution. 

The first audience in Paris must have been tickled by the second movement, a set of variations built around the typical rhythm of the French gavotte dance with its two tapping upbeats. The third movement Menuet reflects another tradition from the French dance suite, although in that case Haydn had been incorporating them for so long and had been so widely imitated that it had become a default component of a symphony, supplanting the original Italian format of three movements. The contrasting trio section in the middle has a more rustic character that matches a parallel dance tradition, the ländler of Haydn’s native Austria. The finale begins with one of Haydn’s favorite tricks, where a long passage of quiet music—whispered here by a stripped-down string ensemble—sets up the shock of the full orchestra blasting into action at a forte dynamic. 

— Aaron Grad 

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano