In February 2008, Chilean conductor Maximiano Valdés was named Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony in San Juan, a position he still holds today. Mr. Valdés has also been the Artistic Director of the famed Festival Casals in San Juan, Puerto Rico since March 2010.

Recently ending a 16-year tenure as Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain and now the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate, he is also the former Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic. In his native Chile, Mr. Valdes served as Chief Conductor of both the orchestra and opera at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile, where he returns annually for both symphonic and opera performances. He was also the Music Director of the Chilean Youth Orchestra from 2018 to 2022 and made a highly successful tour of Europe with the orchestra with performances in Berlin, Madrid and Morocco.

Mr. Valdés made his American symphonic debut in October 1987 with the Buffalo Philharmonic and was immediately re-invited for the following season. After a successful return to the orchestra in 1989, he was appointed Music Director, a position he held for almost 10 years. In North America he has guest conducted many of the leading orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis, National, Montreal, Baltimore, Seattle, Houston, Dallas and New World symphonies and the Calgary Philharmonic. Summer festival appearances have included engagements at the Caramoor, Interlochen, Grand Teton, Music Academy of the West and Grant Park festivals.

In addition to regular guest appearances with the Buffalo Philharmonic, recent engagements include guest conducting the Indianapolis, Vancouver, Colorado, Phoenix, San Diego, Alabama and Toledo symphonies; the Louisiana Philharmonic; the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; and the Eastern Music and Chautauqua festivals. Equally active as an international guest conductor, he has lead the Dresden Philharmonie, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw, Krakow and Katowice Philharmonics, Nice Opera Orchestra, Lisbon Philharmonic and Israel Chamber Orchestra; all of the major Spanish orchestras; the Malaysian Philharmonic; the State Symphony Orchestra of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo Opera Orchestra and Philharmonica of Minas Gerais in Brazil; the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the Teatro Colon; and in Mexico, the Mexico City Philharmonic, Mexico National Symphony Orchestra and UNAM Philharmonic. In October 2011, Mr. Valdés led the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in a concert for the Pope at the Vatican and he was one of the first international conductors to conduct the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Cuba in Havana in January 2016.
Beginning with the 21/22 season, Maestro Valdes was appointed the Distinguished Professor of Musicology at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan and also received an Honorary Doctorate Degree. And in August 2022, he took the Puerto Rico Symphony to Chicago for a historic performance in Orchestra Hall. Sponsored by the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, the orchestra presented a program of popular and classical works by composers associated with Puerto Rico.

An experienced opera conductor who has led productions in many of Europe’s leading opera houses, Mr. Valdés made his highly successful opera debut conducting La Traviata at the Nice Opera. Since then, he has conducted productions in Paris, Lausanne, Rome, Berlin, London, Barcelona, Oslo, Copenhagen, Bonn, Asturias and Santiago, Chile. Mr. Valdés made his American operatic debut with the Seattle Opera conducting Cosi fan tutti and was re-engaged to lead Gounod’s Faust. Recent and upcoming opera appearances include Katya Kabanova, Samson and Delilah, Ravel’s L’heure Espagnole and Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias in Oviedo, Spain; La Traviata, Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Tosca and Madame Butterfly in San Juan; Lakme, Damnation of Faust, Rigoletto and Rosenkavalier at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile; and Don Carlo in Madrid.

Born in Santiago, Chile, Maximiano Valdés began his studies in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music in Santiago and continued his studies at the Accademia de Santa Cecilia in Rome where he took courses in composition and conducting. Completing his diploma in piano, he decided to concentrate entirely on conducting and enrolled in the conducting classes of Franco Ferrara in Bologna, Siena and Venice, and worked with Sergiu Celibidache in Stuttgart and Paris. In 1976 Mr. Valdés was engaged as Assistant Conductor at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice and the following year was a conducting fellow at Tanglewood, where he worked with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. He won First Prize at the Nicolai Malko Competition in Copenhagen, First Prize at the Vittorio Gui Competition in Florence, and Second Prize at the Rupert Foundation Conducting Competition in London.

Maximiano Valdés has recorded with London’s Royal Philharmonic, the Monte Carlo and Nice Philharmonics, and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra and had an exclusive agreement with Naxos to record works by Latin American and Spanish composers with his orchestra in Asturias. His most recent recording is a CD of works by Roberto Sierra with the Puerto Rico Symphony, also for Naxos.

Praised by the New York Times for his “understated but unmistakable virtuosity” and “winning combination of gentleness and fluidity,” Svet Stoyanov is a unique force in modern percussion.

A winner of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, he enjoys a multifaceted career as a performer, music producer, and educator.

Svet’s performing career highlights include concerto appearances with the Chicago, Seattle, Houston Symphony Orchestra, The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and many more, as well as solo performances at the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Verizon Hall, Shanghai Symphony Hall, and Taiwan National Concert Hall, among others worldwide.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Svet Stoyanov has commissioned a significant body of works by composers, such as Mason Bates, Marcos Balter, Andy Akiho and many more.

Recent highlight features “Duo Duel” – a double percussion concerto written by Pulitzer and Grammy winning composer Jennifer Higdon. The concerto was premiered with the Houston Symphony, conducted by Robert Spano. These performances were recorded live, and “Duo Duel” was released on a CD album by NAXOS.

Svet’s next major commissioning initiative is a Concerto for Violin and Percussion – a first of its kind. This imaginative project is a consortium led by the Colorado Symphony and Peter Oundjian, with commissioning partners such as the Seattle Symphony, New York Youth Symphony and The Frost School of Music. The work will be written by Christopher Theofanidis and is scheduled for a world premiere and a recording in early 2026.

As a producer, Svet has worked on numerous projects for The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music during the virtual seasons of 2020 and 2021. Most recently he produced and released the percussion masterworks “Kyoto” by John Psathas, and “Water” by Alejandro Viñao to great critical acclaim, as well as the album “Through broken time” by flutist Jennifer Grim, which was featured in the New York Times.

Mr. Stoyanov is a Professor of Percussion at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami, where he has built one of today’s most innovative percussion programs, creatively bonding orchestral, solo and chamber music. Many of his students hold positions in various prestigious Arts Institutions around the globe.

Svet’s artistic mission is committed to the authenticity, virtue, and transformative power of music.

ROBERTO SIERRA
Born 1953, Vega Baja, Puerto Rico

Sinfonía No. 7

Roberto Sierra’s Seventh Symphony is his most recent. It premiered on June 1, 2024, at the Festival Casals by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maximiliano Valdés. Sierra has had a long and distinguished career as a composer. He trained first in his native Puerto Rico, then went on to study in Europe, some of that time spent as a student of György Ligeti in Hamburg. Sierra has had works commissioned and performed by almost all the leading American orchestras, and he has served as composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Puerto Rico Symphony, and New Mexico Symphony. Sierra’s music has been performed throughout the United States, and it has found international audiences as well: His works have been performed by orchestras in Europe, South America, and Asia. In 2010, Sierra was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, and in 2021 he retired from Cornell University after nearly 30 years on the faculty there. Sierra has composed prolifically in almost all musical forms: in addition to his seven symphonies, he has composed operas, choral and solo vocal works, chamber music, keyboard music (for both piano and harpsichord), and 25 concertos for a variety of instruments.

The symphony is in four movements that span nearly half an hour. Each movement has a title (in Spanish, Latin, or Greek) that make clear that this symphony is the record of a spiritual journey. That journey is often troubled, but the arc of the symphony is from the static darkness of its beginning to the shining strength of its conclusion. The opening movement is marked Elegía, and Sierra stresses that the performance should be played con profuna expresión. We usually expect an elegy to be restrained and heartfelt, but this one is violent and full of tension. It bursts to life on great eruptions of sound that’s dramatic, discordant, and full of the large percussion section. A measure of relief comes in the violins’ quiet theme that yearns upward, but even this remains troubled. The movement alternates these two quite different impulses before coming to a subdued conclusion.

The second movement is titled Cronos y El eterno ritorno (Chronos and the Eternal Return). This is the symphony’s scherzo. Sierra marks it Movido (“active, restless, hectic”), and it rips past, again full of the sound of percussion and brass. The meter here is particularly interesting. The opening meter is 3+2 over 8, and the movement will dance wildly on that asymmetric pulse, but the meter changes constantly, jumping from that opening through 3/4, 2/4, and 6/8, but always returning to that uneven but very dynamic opening meter. The conclusion is violent; Sierra’s marking is quadruple forte.

De Profundis Clamavi (Out of the Depths I Cry to You) is the symphony’s slow movement, but slow, but it is driven by the same tensions that animated the first two movements. The music builds to a great climax full of the sound of pealing brass calls, then falls away, and on quietly rippling harmonics from the violas and cellos it concludes quietly.

The finale, titled Kairós y Apoteosis (Kairos and Apotheosis), is the longest movement. In Greek, kairos is a moment for decisive action. Sierra marks the tempo rápido, and the movement is in whirling motion throughout. The “apotheosis” this movement brings after the varying darkness of the first three movements is a wild excitement. The music may often be dissonant and frenetically violent, but it is also powerfully alive, and on an unending supply of white-hot energy, it powers its way to a shining close.

—Program Note by Eric Bromberger

EMMANUEL SÉJOURNÉ
Born 1961, Limoges, France

Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra

Emmanuel Séjourné studied at the Strasbourg Conservatory, where he specialized in mallet percussion and in new music, improvisation, and jazz; he received the gold medal for percussion there in 1980, when he was only 19. A virtuoso performer on marimba and vibraphone, Séjourné currently teaches at the Strasbourg Conservatory, where he is head of the percussion department. He has performed in Europe, Asia, and North America, and he is also a distinguished theorist: He has written a six-volume theory for mallet percussion as well as a book on his career as a percussionist. Séjourné has made numerous recordings, and he also gives master classes and serves as a judge at percussion competitions.

The Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra was commissioned by the International Marimba Competition in Linz just as that competition was established in 2006 (it is now situated in Salzburg). Séjourné wrote the piece specifically for the Austrian marimba player Bogdan Bacanu, who gave the first performance. As originally written, the concerto was in only two movements (the current second and third movements) but in 2015 Séjourné returned to it and wrote a new first movement, so the work is now in the standard three-movement concerto form. The concerto has proven extremely successful, with more than 800 performances.

Séjourné’s music has been described as “eclectic,” and his idiom here is romantic. The concerto is built on attractive themes, and he gives the soloist ample opportunity to shine. Séjourné takes care never to let the sometimes delicate sound of the marimba be overwhelmed by the string orchestra: He will often alternate passages for the orchestra with passages in which the soloist plays alone. The piece gets off to a vigorous start as the orchestra leads the way to the arrival of the soloist, who enters on a reflective solo. This movement pitches between different moods: It can be inward, quick, melodic, or brilliant by turn, and it drives to a spirited close. The composer marks the central movement Supple tempo, and once again it is introduced by the strings, though this time their music is subdued. And again, the soloist makes an entrance with a solo cadenza of its own. Near the end, there are solos for violin, cello, and viola before the orchestra grows more animated, then breaks off for another extended solo passage for marimba. The finale, marked Rhythmic. Energetic, is built on sharply defined themes and rhythms. Some have heard the influence of flamenco music here, and even this movement’s quiet interludes are full of rhythmic energy. The energy level increases as we approach the end, and the concerto drives to an exciting conclusion.

—Program Note by Eric Bromberger

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Born 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia
Died 1904, Prague

Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, op.95
“From the New World”

When Dvořák landed in America in the fall of 1892 to begin his three-year tenure as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, his new employers tried to turn his arrival into a specifically “American” occasion: They timed his arrival to coincide with the 440th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America, and the composer himself was to mark that occasion by writing a cantata on the poem The American Flag. Shortly after arriving, Dvořák announced his intention to write an opera on Longfellow’s Hiawatha, and soon “American” elements—including Indian rhythms, spirituals, and a birdsong he heard in Iowa—began to appear in the music he wrote in this country.

These elements touched off a debate that has lasted a century. Nationalistic American observers claimed that here at last was a true American classical music, based on authentic American elements. But others have pointed out that the musical characteristics that make up these elements (pentatonic melodies, flatted sevenths, extra cadential accents) are in fact common to folk music everywhere, and that the works Dvořák composed in this country remain quintessentially Czech. Dvořák left contradictory signals on this matter. At the time of the premiere of the New World Symphony, he said: “The influence of America can be felt by anyone who has ‘a nose.’ ” Yet after his return to Europe, he wrote to a conductor who was preparing a performance in Berlin: “I am sending you Kretzschmar’s analysis of the symphony, but omit that nonsense about my having made use of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’ themes—that is a lie. I tried to write only in the spirit of those national American melodies.” Perhaps safest is Dvořák’s simple description of the symphony as “impressions and greetings from the New World.”

Composed in the first months of 1893, Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony had an absolutely triumphant premiere on December 16, 1893, by the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall. One New York critic observed of the thunderous ovation that followed each movement: “The staidness and solemn decorum of the Philharmonic audience took wings.” That occasion has been described as the greatest triumph of Dvořák’s life, and the surprised composer wrote to his publisher, Simrock: “I had to show my gratitude like a king from the box in which I sat. It made me think of Mascagni in Vienna (don’t laugh!)”

One of the most impressive aspects of this music is Dvořák’s use of a single theme-shape to unify the entire symphony. This shape, a rising dotted figure, first appears in the slow introduction, where it surges up in the horns and lower strings as a foreshadowing of the Allegro molto: There the shape is sounded in its purest form by the horns. This theme (actually in two parts, the horn call and a dotted response from the woodwinds) becomes the basis for the entire movement: When the perky second subject arrives in the winds, it is revealed as simply a variation of the second part of the main theme. The third theme, a calm flute melody in G major that has been compared to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” seems at first to establish a separate identity, but in fact it is based on the rhythm of the main theme (although at a much slower tempo). That rhythm saturates the movement: within themes, as subtle accompaniment, or thundered out by the full orchestra. Dvořák drives the movement to a mighty conclusion that, pushed ahead by stinging trumpet calls, combines all these themes.

Solemn brass chords introduce the Largo, where the English horn sings a haunting melody that was later adapted as the music for the spiritual “Goin’ Home.” More animated material appears along the way (and the symphony’s central theme rises up ominously at the climax), but the English horn returns to lead this movement to its close on an imaginative stroke of orchestration: a quiet chord built on a four-part division of the double basses. The Scherzo has sounded like “Indian” music to many listeners, and for good reason: Dvořák himself said that it “was suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indians dance, and is also an essay I made in the direction of imparting the local color of Indian character to music.” The pounding opening section gives way to two brief trios, and in the coda the symphony’s central theme boils up one more time in the brass.
After a fiery introduction, the sonata-form finale leaps to life with a ringing brass theme that is, for a change, entirely new. But now Dvořák springs a series of surprises. Back come themes from the first three movements (there is even a quotation—doubtless unconscious—of “Three Blind Mice” along the way). The movement drives toward its climax on the chords that opened the Largo, and it reaches that soaring end as Dvořák ingeniously combines the main themes of the first movement and the finale. The composer has one final surprise: Instead of ringing out decisively, the last chord is held and fades into silence.

—Program note by Eric Bromberger