CWO Concert Tickets

40th Anniversary Gala Concert

Sunday, May 18, 2025 at 4 PM

First Presbyterian Church of Oakland (in the Sanctuary) • 2619 Broadway

Folks Songs of the Four Seasons

Overture to the Wreckers, Dame Ethel Smyth

Idyll, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Summer Evening, Frederick Delius

I N T E R M I S S I O N

Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, Ralph Vaughan Williams:

I. Spring

Prologue: To the Ploughboy

Early in the Spring • The Lark in the Morning • May Song

II. Summer

Summer Is A-Coming In - The Cuckoo

The Sprig of Thyme • The Sheep Shearing • The Green Meadow

III. Fall

John Barleycorn • An Acre of Land

IV. Winter

Children’s Christmas Song • Wassail Song • In Bethlehem City • God Bless the Master

featuring Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus

The audience is cordially invited to our gala reception with beverages and snacks following the concert.

A Message from our Conductor

Welcome to our 40th Anniversary season!

I am thrilled to welcome you to the final performance of CWO’s 40th anniversary season! Today’s program is a celebration of our orchestra’s history, our mission, and our excitement for the future. To honor the cornerstone of our mission, today we will be joined by the Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus, an organization that shares our goal of uplifting women in classical music.

Our 40th anniversary season celebrates the mission of CWO and what it has achieved over the last four decades: creating a welcoming environment to engage, inspire, and celebrate women in classical music. With pieces by living and historical female composers, guest artists from our local community, and an exciting collaboration with the Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus (BWCC), this season highlights the many ways that CWO uplifts women in classical music. I am so proud of what the orchestra has accomplished this season.

—Samantha Burgess, 40th Anniversary Music Director

Program Notes

For our last concert of this important season, I wanted to do a program a little outside the box. I first approached Julia Morris—our Chorus Master for today’s concert, and a dear friend of mine—about collaborating with BWCC last summer. We were excited about bringing our organizations together, as both celebrate the spirit of community music making and specifically aim to create opportunities for women musicians. It was Julia who suggested we perform The Folk Songs of the Four Seasons—she is really the choral expert! Pieces for SSAA (all-treble/women’s voices) are far less common than standard SATB four-voice choral repertoire, and pieces for SSAA chorus and orchestra are even rarer still. The Four Seasons had everything we were looking for: it was a good fit musically for both the orchestra and the chorus, and we liked that this piece was written specifically with community musicians in mind. The rest of today’s all-English program coalesced around The Four Seasons. Though CWO has performed with choruses in years past, this is the first time BWCC has performed with a full orchestra.

As I mentioned, Ralph Vaughan Williams was a great champion of English folk music. He collected many folk songs himself, and often wrote or arranged them with amateur ensembles in mind. The Folk Songs of the Four Seasons was commissioned by the Women’s Institute and premiered at the Royal Albert Hall on June 15, 1950—quite notably with 3,000 singers in the chorus! The full orchestra version, which we will be performing today, was arranged by Roy Douglas in 1952. While many of Vaughan Williams’ works are very popular—he is perhaps one of the most recognizable British composers—this work is relatively little known.

The Folk Songs of the Four Seasons takes the listener on a musical tour of the English countryside, as you’d expect—one season after the other. Starting with Spring, we journey through Summer, Fall, and finally Winter. Each seasons features three to four well-known traditional English songs, including acapella movements for the chorus. More information about the text of each individual movement can be found by scanning the QR codes below—I highly recommend doing so, because you will come to appreciate, as I have, the nuanced and often quite witty humor woven through some of the songs! What I love about this piece is how each song has its own distinct personality. The folk music elements running throughout make each movement feel familiar and friendly, while Vaughn Williams’ arrangement breathes new life into traditional songs.

Dame Ethel Smyth was a renowned British composer, conductor, and Suffragette. She lived her life ungoverned by the polite rules of society—an openly queer woman in the early 20th century, she was also an avid cyclist, golfer, mountain climber, sheep dog owner, and smoker of cigars. She has affairs with notable women such as Virginia Woolf and Emiline Pankhurst. After being arrested for property destruction with many other suffragettes, she spent two months in Holloway prison, where, upon being visited by her friend Thomas Beecham, she was found conducting her fellow inmates through suffragette songs from the prison window with a toothbrush. In addition to being the first female composer to receive a damehood, she also was the only woman composer to have an opera produced at the Metropolitan Opera from 1906, when she became the first, until Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin was performed there in 2016. In today’s terms, she is nothing short of what we would call an “absolute legend.”

The Wreckers is one of Smyth’s best-known works. Originally written in French, the composer rewrote the libretto in English. Interestingly, the original French version was not ever performed until 2022, at the Glyndebourne Opera in the UK. The work was inspired by 19th century tales of Cornish villagers luring ships to run aground on the dangerous southeastern coast of England and pillaging their cargo. In this rugged setting, and true to the operatic form, a fateful love triangle unfolds. The overture, which opens our concert today, contains myriad folk-like melodies evoking the work’s seaside setting, and contrasting hymn-like sections underscoring the role of the church in the opera’s story.

The middle of today’s program pairs Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Idyll with Frederick Delius’s Summer Evening. Both ballads in the pastoral style, these pieces tie together thematically while highlighting each composer’s individual style. Coleridge Taylor was a well-known composer in his day, but his works were not often performed after his death, until recent years when efforts to republish them have made his music more widely available. Idyll develops one long melodic idea in a meandering, 9-minute musical exploration. The piece premiered at the Gloucester Festival in 1901 to mixed reviews.

Idyll remains one of Coleridge Taylor’s lesser performed pieces, and has yet to be commercially recorded. However, its beautiful, relaxed melody contrasts nicely with the fiery Smyth overture, while also pairing well with the closing piece on the first portion of today’s program—Delius’ Summer Evening. Scholar William Salaman notes that Delius was a contemporary of Debussy, and his works, including Summer Evening, bear similar marks of the impressionist style. However, if one thinks of Debussy’s music as being distinctly French, then so too is Delius’ music distinctly British. Part of a short suite of programmatic works, Summer Evening develops a short theme with rich chromatic harmonies.

Preparing this program, and our collaboration with BWCC, has been an absolute pleasure and delight. I hope you enjoy the performance.

—Samantha Burgess, 40th Anniversary Music Director

Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus

In response to the overwhelming interest in Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, which has a full membership, a new women’s chorus was developed and directed by Debra Golata. After 10 years leading Berkeley Women’s Community Chorus, Debra retired in Spring 2024. BWCC began its Fall 2024 semester under new music director, Julia Morris. The repertoire is classically based but varied. We hold to the high standards of BCCO — singing in 2 to 4 part harmony, in a variety of languages, and with a focus on the development of vocal and musical skills. BWCC is particularly thrilled to join CWO on this historic collaborative project, celebrating our shared mission of elevating and engaging women in classical music.

BWCC is seeking additional singers for all sections. We are a friendly, non-auditioned choral ensemble for female-identifying treble voices and we love singing and making music with others in our community. Rehearsals for the next concert set will begin Fall 2025. They take place Saturday mornings at Northbrae Community Church.

For more information, visit us at bcco.org/womens-chorus/

Julia Morris

BWCC Artistic Director and Conductor

Samantha Burgess

CWO Interim Music Director and Conductor

Please Support Us!

We are excited to celebrate our milestone 40th Anniversary Season with you this year! CWO proudly continues our mission to engage, inspire, and celebrate women in classical music. Thank you for your support of CWO!

Thanks to our sponsors!

John and Barbara Burgess

Thank you to Richard Colton and Hidden Frog Vineyard, Anderson Valley Mendocino, for the wine donated for today’s reception

Thank you to the Cheese Board Collective for the cheese donated for today’s reception