The JSO will begin its 2001-2002 season with a tribute to its distinguished concertmaster Philip Mason, who is retiring after forty illustrious years with the symphony.

Great musical leadership and a generous, encouraging spirit have earned Phil Mason admiration and love from his colleagues and former students, many of whom are taking part in this musical tribute. My own growth as a composer has been enriched and aided by his wise mentoring spirit. His many years of excellent teaching at Albion College and his unswerving dedication to the JSO will never be forgotten!

For many years the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was overshadowed by the masterworks of Handel and Bach. This other Baroque master was rediscovered in the 20th century, and his popularity has soared. He is especially well known for the set of four concertos known as "The Four Seasons."

Vivaldi, a clergyman, was known as "The Red Priest" because of his bright red hair. He was the maestro of the Conservatorio Del’Ospedale della Pieta, a school for orphaned girls famous throughout Europe for its musical peformances.

The flamboyant and vain Vivaldi once boasted that he could write a complete concerto faster than it could be recopied in ink. Biographer Michael relates that in spite of his flaws "The sheer zest of the man compelled admiration."

Vivaldi's concertos are very imaginative and always sparkle with energy and vitality. He took great care, especially for his time, with the fine points of instrumental technique, articulation and bowing.

A new style was developing as musicians realized the potential of purely instrumental music, and Vivaldi proved to be a brilliant and prolific master of this new approach.

Few composers of any era have been as highly individual as the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945). Bartok was famous as a concert pianist, but his compositions received little attention during his lifetime, especially in his homeland. Like so many others, he was forced into exile during World War II. He died in New York not long after the brilliant success of his Concerto for Orchestra, which the JSO performed in 1997.

Bartok believed that folksongs were the "wellsprings" of music, and his meticulous compositional style grew out if his exhaustive studies of folk tunes. At times his music sounds highly dissonant, even chaotic, but few composers in any period organized musical materials as thoroughly or carefully.

In the apt words of Halsey Stevens, Bartok’s Portraits "represent two aspects of one subject: the first an ideal rendering, the second and ironic distortion." Both movements are based on a single melodic fragment that Bartok described to his violinist friend Stefi Geyer as "your own Leitmotiv."

The serene and soaring first movement was originally written in late 1907 and early 1908 as part of a violin concerto that wasn't performed in its entirety until several years after Bartok's death. The second is an adaptation of the Last of Bartok's Fourteen Bagatelles (Op. 6). This sarcastic portrait, more like a caricature, inspired poet Amy Lowell to write a famous bit of verse called After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok which begins "But why did I kill him? Why? Why?"

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) dazzled the musical world with his richly orchestrated tone poems and operas. By his 25th birthday his music was being performed all over the world.

Strauss was a colorful character, known as a skilled card player as well as a great musician. His approach to life was relaxed, but he was very exacting in his work. He labored mightily over detailed sketches for his works, then he wrote the final score in ink, as he himself said, "straight through and without effort, working up to twelve hours a day."

Bartok once wrote that he was inspired by Strauss at a particularly difficult time in his career. "From this stagnation," he said, "I was aroused by a flash of lightning, by the first Budapest performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra. ... This work, received with shudders by musicians here, stimulated the greatest enthusiasm in me; at last I saw the way that lay before me. Staightaway I threw myself into the study of Strauss’s scores, and began again to compose."

Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) is a sort of musical autobiography in which Strauss himself may be considered the "hero." Strauss completed the composition in 1899, and conducted the first performance in Frankfurt am Main on March 3rd of that year.

The tone poem consists of six sections in a single, continuous movement. The first section introduces the hero with a bold theme in the horns and strings. The hero's critics and adversaries appear in the second section and struggle ensues! In the third and fourth segments the hero finds love and overcome his foes. The fifth section sums up the hero's life and accomplishments with quotes from some of Strauss's greatest works including Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration and Don Quixote. In the final passages the hero leaves this world and he is laid to rest with music of great beauty and power.