The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra presents Beethoven’s epic Ninth Symphony on a special concert program—"A Midsummer Celebration"—on Thursday, July 23, at Richardson Auditorium in Princeton.

Mark Laycock conducts a program that features Smetana’s Three Dances from The Bartered Bride alongside Beethoven’s final and most powerful symphony. Furthering a partnership between the NJSO and Opera New Jersey, vocalists from the opera company join the NJSO for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: soprano Sharon Cheng, mezzo-soprano Ellen PutneyMoore, tenor Jonathan Boyd, bass-baritone Matthew Burns and the Opera New Jersey Chorus.

This concert is presented through the generosity of Princeton residents William and Judith Scheide. "Together, the Scheides have demonstrated a broad commitment to all facets of the musical art, from the individual instruction and training of musicians to performances of the highest caliber to the historical preservation of rare musical manuscripts," said NJSO President & CEO André Gremillet. "Clearly, the outpouring of Judith and Bill’s munificence has heightened the quality of life in Princeton and the entire State of New Jersey. Our lives are enhanced and enriched by their generosity."

Through the Scheides’ generosity, all tickets for this performance are $20. For additional information or to purchase tickets, visit www.njsymphony.org  or call 1.800.ALLEGRO (255.3476).

The Program

Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (1865) is an opera that rings of national pride. The composer penned the work after hearing a visiting conductor suggest that Czech composers failed to carry their country’s national flavor into their music. Determined to prove the detractor wrong, Smetana crafted The Bartered Bride as a celebration of ordinary Czechoslovakian citizens. Though the work was not an immediate success, upon revision, it spread in popularity worldwide and helped establish the Czech national opera.

The three dances from the opera that begin the NJSO’s "Midsummer Celebration" concert each showcase a different Czech dance. The first, a polka, closes the opera’s first act with great merriment, as a host of villagers dance outdoors in the green. The Furiant that opens the second act is a rousing tavern ode to beer, love and money. The dance uses alternating 2/4 and 3/4 meters, shifting the accented beats, and slips into a waltz in its central section as the tone of the conversation shifts. The "Dance of the Comedians" is a skočná, a fast dance in duple meter, that makes use of perpetual motion. The Act III dance heralds the arrival of a boisterous traveling circus.

Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon wrote that "the Ninth Symphony is a symbol whose referents cannot be completely known and whose full effects will never be experienced." Indeed, Beethoven’s final symphony is revered as an epic masterpiece, a groundbreaking work with grand themes of triumph over darkest drama.

A hallmark not only of the composer’s entire output but also that of Western music, the Ninth’s iconic "Ode to Joy" finale is but the final revolutionary move Beethoven makes in the symphony. Before the finale introduces the choir and vocal soloists into the traditionally instrumental symphonic form, the last movement opens with a "symphony within a symphony"—an orchestral recap of each preceding movement. The first movement begins with a series of open fifths that sound like an orchestra tuning before the main theme thunders through the tremolos. Beethoven inverts the symphony’s inner movements; a second-movement scherzo precedes the third-movement adagio. The second movement prolongs the pounding drama of the first, with a layered fugato that brims with intensity. The third movement gently begins the symphony’s move towards a triumphant resolution, offering a lyrical reprieve from the first- and second-movement drama. But a regal horn entrance interrupts the final variation, perhaps indicating the rousing finale that will follow. At the opening of the fourth and final movement, the entire orchestra starts playing the first movement’s open-fifth melody instead of proposing a new theme. In a musically comedic dialogue, the cellos and basses halt the orchestra’s repetition with a unison line.

Twice more the orchestra presents phrases from earlier movements. Each time, the cellos and basses intervene, finally presenting a new melody—which will become the "Ode" melody—in unison. A solo bass recitative emerges out of the exuberant orchestral variations that follow, and as the choir enters, presenting verse from Friedrich von Schiller’s "An die Freude," Beethoven’s triumph is complete.

For more information about the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, visit www.njsymphony.org  or e-mail information@njsymphony.org.

Tickets are available for purchase by phone 1.800.ALLEGRO (255.3476) or on the Orchestra’s website.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s programs are made possible in part by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, along with many other foundations, corporations and individual donors.