As autumn takes hold, it’s time for fine arts groups to start their 2023-24 seasons. 

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra. Musical Director Andrew Constantine gave Whatzup an extensive interview, running down their seven Masterworks concerts plus a newly announced bonus. 

Throughout the season, Whatzup will also cover their family and children’s concerts, pop and holiday concerts, and something the musicians are particularly proud of — their intimate chamber concerts, known as the Freimann Series.

New Surroundings

This season’s big change is that the Philharmonic will not be performing in their longtime home in Embassy Theatre, with its 2,500 seats, but rather at Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Auer Performance Hall, which seats 1,500. 

The Auer is where the orchestra has been rehearsing in recent years, and Constantine assures us it has excellent acoustics. The Philharmonic will perform Masterworks concerts there entirely without amplification, as is traditional. 

“I love conducting at the Auer,” Constantine said. “It has a very warm sound. It’s a very comfortable hall.”

The Auer’s layout and seats are spacious and accommodating, which a lot of folks will appreciate. Constantine is happy to announce that they have permission to sell alcohol on each concert night, too.

The seven Masterworks concerts will be one performance only, on Saturday nights. 

Masterworks

It all begins on Oct. 7 when world-renowned violinist Gil Shaham joins Constantine and the orchestra to perform Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 (1945). 

Korngold was the first great Hollywood film composer from the earliest years of motion pictures with sound.

“He’s a genius writing down musical instincts in a very exacting manner,” Constantine said. “That sometimes works against great composers like Korngold, because the music is gorgeous. The challenge is how do you get to loosen up and go with the flow. 

“We have one of the world’s great violinists, Gil Shaham, coming back to Fort Wayne. He played with me in my very first concert here as music director (in 2009).” 

That performance will be followed by Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which was written in 1874 as a solo piano piece but will be presented in its most famous orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel, from 1922. 

Over Zoom, Constantine showed me a facsimile of Mussorgsky’s original handwritten piano music, which Constantine has studied to get closer to the composer’s intent, in light of some liberties Ravel took years later. 

“I’d like to think it’s how every conductor approaches it, but I know it’s not true,” Constantine said. “I like having a lot of time in the summer to look ahead into the season, reassess, prepare things. Once the season starts, there’s no time for study.” 

That’s especially true for Constantine, who is also music director of the Reading Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania. He also works globally; he was recently in Glasgow, Scotland, recording with an orchestra for the BBC.

On Nov. 11, the Philharmonic will present Samuel Barber’s Essay for Orchestra (1944) and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Concerto for Oboe in A minor (1944), featuring Philharmonic oboist Orion Rapp. 

“Orion is a sophisticated and elegant player, and he’s very thoughtful,” Constantine said. “He’s got quite a sense of mischief about him and a really clearly identified musical personality. 

“I’m really looking forward to doing this Vaughan Williams with him. It allows him to utilize these really expressive qualities. And again, just to show people in Fort Wayne what wonderful individual players we have in the orchestra.”

They will conclude that concert with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major (1812).

On to 2024

On Jan. 20, the Phil will present a concert featuring young Cuban-American cellist Tommy Mesa, with Jessie Montgomery’s Divided (2022) and Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33 (1877). 

“Tchaikovsky worshiped Mozart,” Constantine said. “And so it’s a very elegant piece, but that doesn’t stop it being quite rambunctious at times. And it’s very virtuosic, very challenging to play.” 

They will conclude with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 (1842).

And now the breaking news: The Philharmonic have just announced an extra concert on an off night, Friday, Feb. 2, called The Romance of Brahms: Part 1. Brahms had a long career but only wrote four symphonies. The Phil will present his first two, from 1876 and 1877. Next season, they will present his third and fourth.

Feb. 17 will be a great night for choral music lovers. First, international piano star Michelle Cann will perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 (1830). 

“This will actually be the first time I’ve conducted one of Chopin’s concertos,” Constantine said.

Then, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Chorus, joined by the chorus from Ball State University and four professional solo singers, will join Constantine and the orchestra for the beloved Requiem (1792), begun by Mozart and completed after his death by his student Süssmayr. 

“I don’t care who wrote it,” Constantine said. “The depth of the expression in this goes way beyond the other choral and orchestral writing of the time. And it’s about time we got our chorus back on stage as well.”

On March 9, the Phil will present violinist Rachel Barton Pine. The night will begin with Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad’s Impressions (2008), then Pine on Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, Op. 14 (1939). 

“This is becoming one of the most requested violin concertos anywhere,” Constantine said. “When we last played it in Fort Wayne, it was Gil Shaham playing it, and the audience response was so intense.

“Rachel is somebody I’ve been looking forward to working with. She’s a tremendous virtuoso and has a number of friends in our orchestra as well. It’s nice to be able to bring colleagues together in this way.” 

The night will close with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, Op. 70 (1885). Constantine explained that he’s engaged the Philharmonic’s bass player Adrian Mann to help make some adjustments to the orchestrations. It turns out that 30 years ago, Constantine was working in Prague, where he spent hours studying the Czech Philharmonic’s earliest engravings of the piece, from 1904. He is assembling the best of the alterations and adjustments he discovered, in order to present a performance that’s subtly different from how other orchestras play this beloved piece.

On April 13, Constantine will finally be able to present a program the orchestra was unable to stage last year: his original program of Edward Elgar’s orchestral tone poem Falstaff, Op. 68 (1913). Constantine recorded it as an album with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in 2019, and you can find it online.

“I incurred the wrath of the Elgar Society (in England), which I was quite proud of achieving,” Constantine told me when I interviewed him last year. “There are four sections in the music, and Elgar is specific about what the narrative is. So I interspersed sections of dialogue from Shakespeare’s plays, with actors.” 

Local theater director Shelby Lewis is coordinating the production.

“It’s got magnificent music in it, but it ends very tranquilly with the death of Falstaff, just these drifting sleepy moments when he is reminiscing about childhood,” Constantine said. “That’s very moving, but not something inclined to get people on their feet, stamping and cheering. Now music moves us in different ways. I felt as though it contextualized the music more by having the actors.”

To end the evening on a more rousing note, violinist Philippe Quint will join the Phil for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 (1813).

The Masterworks series concludes May 4 with William Walton’s Symphony No. 1 in B-flat minor (1935). Then it will get a lot more intense, with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (1901), featuring pianist Fabio Bidini. 

“He’s an extrovert, a passionate Italian musician,” Constantine said of Bidini. “Nothing gets left in the dressing room when he’s out there. The roof will come off when Fabio finishes that concerto with the orchestra.”

Be sure to go to fwphil.org and learn about these and many more concerts this season, as well as going to whatzup.com for upcoming stories.