Enlighten Me New Century Chamber Orchestra with Simone Porter
About the Artists
Simone Porter
New Century Chamber Orchestra
Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, interpretive integrity, and vibrant communication. She has debuted with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle and Pittsburgh Symphonies and with a number of renowned conductors, including Stéphane Denève, Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot, Donald Runnicles, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Manfred Honeck, Louis Langrée and David Danzmayr. Simone made her professional solo debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13. In March 2015, Simone was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Porter’s recent seasons include extensive US touring with debuts and return visits to orchestras such as Colorado, North Carolina, St. Louis, Oregon, Hawaii, Grand Rapids, Omaha, Quebec, Jacksonville symphonies, Erie Philharmonic, Florida Orchestra and many more. In 24/25 season Porter will return to Nashville and Baltimore symphonies, as well as Santa Rosa, Monterey and Westchester symphonies with a debut with Arkansas Symphony performing Glass’ 1st violin concerto and a visit to Johnson City Symphony in TN. Internationally, Simone has performed with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel; the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro; the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica; the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; the Royal Northern Sinfonia; the Milton Keynes City Orchestra in the United Kingdom; Orquesta Clasica Santa Cecilia de la Fundacion Excelentia in Madrid; the Opera de Marseille and at the Edinburgh Festival performing Barber under the direction of Stéphane Denève,
Recent recital highlights include a tour in Spain with pianist Pallavi Mahidhara and debuts at Celebrity Series in Boston and NY92, both of which featured the newly commissioned piece by composer Reena Esmail. She will return to FL in recital in January of 2025. An avid chamber musician, Porter can be heard at La Jolla Summerfest in August of 2024, followed by projects with Bay Chamber Music, Moab Music Festival and Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival. Together with her colleagues violinist Blake Pouliot and pianist Hsin-I Huang, Porter will present a program at Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth, TX and Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA in spring of 2025.
At the invitation of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simone performed his work ‘Lachen verlernt’ (‘Laughing Unlearnt’), at the New York Philharmonic’s “Foreign Bodies,” a multi-sensory celebration of the work of the composer and conductor. Simone made her Carnegie Zankel Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall followed in November 2016 by her debut in Stern Auditorium. She will return to Carnegie in December of 2024 together with cellist Joshua Roman as a part of their Well-Being Concert. In June 2016, her featured performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network as part of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams.
Raised in Seattle, Washington, Simone studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom she studied at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Summer studies have included many years at the Aspen Music Festival, Indiana University's Summer String Academy, and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.
Simone Porter performs on a 1740 Carlo Bergonzi violin made in Cremona Italy on generous loan from The Master’s University, Santa Clarita, California.
One of only a handful of conductorless chamber ensembles in the world, New Century Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992 and includes 19 string players from the San Francisco Bay Area as well as throughout the United States. Musical decisions are made collaboratively, resulting in an enhanced level of commitment from the musicians and concerts of remarkable precision, passion, and power. British violinist Daniel Hope was appointed as Music Director and Concertmaster beginning in the 2018-2019 season (after serving the prior season as the ensemble’s Artistic Partner), bringing a new era of vibrancy and leadership. Previous music directors of the ensemble include Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (2008-2017), Krista Bennion Feeney (1999-2006) and Stuart Canin (1992-1999).
With a commitment to the virtuosic performance of chamber orchestra masterworks, New Century also expands the genre through frequent commissions of new music and innovative collaborations with artists from other genres. New Century fosters an intimate relationship with music, not only by offering concerts in small, local venues throughout the Bay Area and beyond, but also by connecting our musical history to the work of living composers and the cultural narratives of today. Recently commissioned composers include Tan Dun, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Jennifer Higdon, Mark Adamo, Jungyoon Wie, Jake Heggie, and Nicolás Lell Benavides. Underscoring its commitment to new music, New Century released Music for a New Century in June 2023, its debut recording under Music Director Daniel Hope on the Deutsche Grammophon label with Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov, featuring four works commissioned or co-commissioned by New Century over the last six years: Philip Glass’ Piano Concerto No. 3 (2017), Tan Dun’s Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Orchestra with Percussion (2021), Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Lament for Solo Violin and String Orchestra (2018-19) and Jake Heggie’s Overture (2023).
New Century’s live performances have continued to explore new ground. The 2024-25 season expands the orchestra’s profile with performances of iconic works for string orchestra like Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen, Bartok’s Divertimento, and Max Richter’s Vivaldi: Recomposed—The Four Seasons. New Century will be joined by major guest artists like pianist Inon Barnatan and trumpeter Brandon Ridenour for Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, and jazz harpist Brandee Younger in New Century’s first-ever collaboration with SFJAZZ: a program of original music inspired by the late Alice Coltrane. The current season also celebrates the work of Music Director Daniel Hope and his prolific recording career with Deutsche Grammophon, culminating in a program of works from his chart-topping DANCE! album. Other recent highlights have included collaborations with Stanford Live, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus and SFMOMA; major works by Leonard Bernstein, Nico Muhly, Igor Stravinsky, and Caroline Shaw; and appearances by acclaimed guest artists such as Kelley O’Connor, Alexi Kenney, Nicholas Phan, Sterling Elliott, Awadagin Pratt, and trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary in her US Debut. The centerpiece of the orchestra’s 30th anniversary season in 2022-23 was Berlin 1938: Broadcasts from a Vanishing Society, an innovative musical radio drama created by Music Director Daniel Hope and baritone Thomas Hampson that explored the disappearing freedoms and growing threats of violence in German society leading up to World War II, as characterized by the songwriters of the era.
Beyond its regular season concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area, New Century under Music Director Daniel Hope has expanded its touring profile, embarking on two European summer tours in 2019 and 2023, performing across Germany and Poland, at the Leonard Bernstein-founded Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Festival, and the Philharmonie Essen, among others. New Century’s domestic performances have included coast-to-coast tours in 2011 and 2013, and an expanded portfolio of presentations across the state of California, including Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center, Stanford Live’s Bing Concert Hall, Vallejo’s Empress Theatre, and a May 2023 debut at San Diego’s La Jolla Music Society.
The orchestra has released eight albums including the aforementioned Music for a New Century. Prior releases include From A to Z: 21st Century Concertos, a 2014 compilation of four of New Century’s live world premiere performances of newly commissioned works by William Bolcom, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Clarice Assad and Michael Daugherty. New Century significantly increased its video offerings over the past few years, including six episodes of Daniel Hope’s internationally acclaimed television series Hope@Home – Next Generation. Filmed in San Francisco, each half-hour episode was streamed to an international audience of over 400,000 viewers and comprised of solo and chamber music featuring Daniel Hope, musicians of the orchestra and Bay Area guest artists pianist Garrick Ohlsson, composer Jake Heggie and percussionist Zakir Hussain.
Program
ANDREW NORMAN:Sabina
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9
JOHANNES SEBASTIAN BACH: Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042
Simone Porter, violin
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN: O virtus sapientiae (Oh Divine Wisdom)
JUHI BANSAL Cathedral of Light
HEINRICH BIBER: Battalia à 10
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Divertimento in F major, K. 138
Program Notes
ANDREW NORMAN (b. 1979)
Sabina (2006/2020)
As a 2006 Rome Prize Fellow, Los Angeles-based composer Andrew Norman (b. Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 31, 1979) spent a year living and working at the American Academy in Rome, immersed in classical antiquity, Renaissance art, Baroque architecture, and an unusually close interdisciplinary community. One musical result was a nine-movement “collection of portraits of my favorite Roman churches,” shaped by their proportions, surfaces, floor patterns, artworks, and the legends of the saints they honor. A morning mass at Santa Sabina on Rome’s Aventine Hill proved decisive. As the sun rose, Norman watched “luminous designs appear all over the church’s marble and mosaic surfaces,” struck by both the light’s enveloping golden warmth and the delicacy of its shifting effects. “I sketched the material for this piece soon after that unforgettable experience,” he recalls. Sabina has since taken on a life of its own, including as a solo-violin meditation (in Simone Porter’s repertoire) and the ten-minute tone poem for strings heard today.
HEINRICH BIBER (1644-1704)
Battalia à 10, C. 61 (1673)
Sonata [Allegro] –[Allegro]: The dissolute company of all sorts – Presto – The march – Presto – Aria: [Andante] – The battle – [Adagio]: Lament of the wounded musketeers
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (b. Wartenburg, Bohemia, bapt. August 12, 1644; d. Salzburg, May 3, 1704) rose to the peak of a generation that
pushed the violin to unprecedented technical extremes. “Biber seems to have been the best,” wrote 18th century historian Charles Burney. Known for vivid sound-painting – including croaking frogs, clucking hens, and slinking cats – Biber put pictorial effects front and center in his flamboyant 1673 battle piece Battalia. Scored for nine-part strings and continuo, the suite calls for col legno bowing, snap pizzicato to suggest gunfire, paper placed over the strings to mimic a snare drum, and both right- and left-hand pizzicato. One movement layers eight folk songs in clashing keys – a 17th century mashup portraying a drunken “dissolute company of all sorts.” The work closes with a darkly comic lament for their wounds.
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN (1098-1179)
O virtus Sapientiae, arr. string orchestra
Hildegard von Bingen (b. Bermersheim, nr Alzey, Germany, 1098; d. Rupertsberg, nr Bingen, September 17, 1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, visionary, writer, and composer whose legacy spans theology, literature, and music. Remembered two centuries later as the “Sibyl of the Rhine,” she was widely consulted for her prophecies and corresponded with popes, emperors, and religious leaders across Europe. Her music is monophonic, highly individual, and inseparable from her poetry. 77 songs survive in Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum – an editorial title. The solemn O virtus Sapientiae (Oh Divine Wisdom) is one of 43 antiphons – short songs to be to be sung before and after psalm readings.
JUHI BANSAL (b. 1984)
Cathedral of Light (2020)
“I write music to try to understand the unknowable, to grapple with ideas too large to put into words, to bring people together by reminding us of the things we hold in common, says American-Indian composer and teacher Juhi Bansal (b. India, October 17, 1984). The Los Angeles-based composer works across many genres of music and combinations of instrumental and vocal resources, including an orchestral work inspired by humpback whale song, another imagining Hindustani rain-invoking tradition, and a song cycle on Afghan women’s poetry. An opera about Ada Lovelace (Enchantress of Numbers) is in progress.
Bansal’s short Cathedral of Light has become one of her most performed works, in its original string quartet version and as a piece for string orchestra. The music explores how light defines space and how shifting illumination of simple melodic fragments can transform stillness into a quietly radiant experience.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
Violin Concerto in E, BWV 1042 (before 1730)
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro assai
“From his youth well into advanced age, he played the violin with purity and a penetrating tone, and by this means kept the orchestra in far better order than he could have done from the keyboard,” C. P. E. Bach said of his father, Johann Sebastian Bach (b. Eisenach, Germany, March 21, 1685; d. Leipzig, July 28, 1750). “He understood perfectly the capabilities of all stringed instruments.”
Three violin concertos by Bach have come down to us, all staples of the modern concert hall. The Violin Concerto in E, BWV 1042, opens with a rising major triad and its related ideas – material that supplies the building blocks for the entire first movement. Three rising chords, followed by a pause already belonged to the stock-in-trade of the Italian concerto. In Bach’s hands, however – while not afraid to borrow Italian ideas and structures with forensic intensity (think Vivaldi, Corelli, Torelli) – soloist and orchestra immediately enter a contrapuntal dialogue. Italianate gestures then serve both as accompaniment to the violin’s elaborate figuration and as agents of structural unity each time they return.
The slow movement shifts to the relative minor. Expressive and inward, the solo violin spins a rhapsodic line over a gentle, recurring bass pattern – sometimes clearly stated, sometimes only implied.
The finale returns to the ritornello principle of the opening in a movement of striking symmetry. Each of five buoyant orchestral refrains is exactly sixteen measures long. They are answered by solo episodes of equal length and mounting brilliance, until a final excursion ranges far from the home key, doubles in span, and drives the music back to a resounding E major.
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959)
Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9, W. 449 (1945)
Prelúdio: Vagaroso e Místico
Fuga: Pouco apressado
Heitor Villa-Lobos composed Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 at the end of a series that occupied him intermittently 1930-45. The Bachianas (Brazilian Bach–style pieces) were his most sustained attempt to reconcile two musical worlds – the rhythmic, melodic, and expressive language of Brazil with the contrapuntal discipline of Bach. As Villa-Lobos famously put it, Bach was “a universal folklorist,” a figure whose music transcended nationality and time.
No. 9 was conceived first for string orchestra, and later successfully arranged for a cappella choir. Villa-Lobos explicitly cast the work as a Prelude and Fugue, the most overtly Bachian design in the cycle. The two movements are tightly linked, both drawing on the same thematic material, transformed from the Prelude’s austere mysticism into the Fugue’s vigorous, searching counterpoint.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-91)
Divertimento in F, K. 138 (1772)
[Allegro]
Andante
Presto
By the age of sixteen, when he wrote the F-major Divertimento, K. 138, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b. Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756; d. Vienna, December 5, 1791) had already spent more than two years away from his native Salzburg. He had lived in London and Paris and traveled widely through Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. Along the way he played at court – earning the family a steady stream of gold rings, snuffboxes, and watches – and, more importantly, encountered leading composers and absorbed their music at first hand.
Musical styles differed sharply from country to country, and Mozart’s early works often register where he had been most recently. The three Divertimentos, K. 136–138, were written in Salzburg in 1772, after his second extended Italian journey, with a third already being planned. The Italian influence is unmistakable. We do not know the occasion for which these works were composed, and even the title Divertimento was added later, probably by Leopold Mozart. Although they appear in the complete Mozart Edition as appendages to the string quartets, performance by larger string ensembles is entirely appropriate. One-to-a-part chamber music was rare in Salzburg in the 1760s and 1770s, and there is little evidence that string quartets were commonly played at court or in private homes. The Italian sinfonia stands behind the music. K. 138’s singing violin line, poised slow movement, and buoyant finale have led some – without firm proof – to call it one of Mozart’s “Salzburg symphonies.”
— Program notes copyright © 2026 Keith Horner.
Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Acknowledgements
The Iconic Women Across Generations Series including this performance is generously sponsored by: