Dayton Philharmonic plans two-night celebration of classic composer

How to Go:

What: Brahm’s Festival Evenings 1 and 2, featuring guest pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi

When: 8 p.m. Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7

Where: Schuster Center, 1 W. Second St., Dayton

Also featuring: DPO Concertmaster Jessica Hung, DPO Principal Second Violin Kirstin Greenlaw, and DPO Principal Cello Andra Padrichelli . A pre-concert talk given by Eric Street will take place each evening at 7 p.m.

Tickets: Range from $14 to $61 and are available at Ticket Center Stage (937) 228-3630 or online at www.daytonperformingarts.org. Senior, educator, and military discounts are available at the box office. For more information, visit www.daytonperformingarts.org.

Ask Neal Gittleman to name his favorite composer, and the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra’s conductor doesn’t miss a beat.

It’s Johannes Brahms.

“He’s not just a convenient answer to a perennial question,” Gittleman explained. “I think what I find most fascinating about Brahms is how he straddles the Romantic and Classical aesthetics. He was definitely a romantic composer, but he still cared about the fundamental things at the heart of the classical style — balance, proportion, restraint.”

Romanticism with restraint may sound like a contradiction, Gittleman said, but for Brahms, it wasn’t. “And I think that makes his music fascinating as well as beautiful.”

While Brahms may be best known for the lullaby that soothes our babies to sleep, Gittleman and his orchestra are preparing two evenings designed to do just the opposite — to awaken and engage the senses. They’ll showcase the famous composer’s music at a Brahms Festival on Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7 at the Schuster Center. Two different programs have been slated for the first and second events of the special weekend.

Special guests

Guest pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, DPO Concertmaster Jessica Hung, DPO Principal Second Violin Kirstin Greenlaw and DPO Principal Cello Andra Padrichelli will be featured.

Pompa-Baldi, born and raised in Foggia, Italy, is on the piano faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music and has performed at many of the world’s most renowned venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Paris’ Salle Pleyel, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and Boston’s Symphony Hall.

“I love traveling and discovering new places, near and far,” Pompa-Baldi said. His favorite city at the moment is Cape Town, South Africa. “Aside from being an incredibly beautiful place with fantastic people, I also became very fond of the Philharmonic there, with which I performed all of the Rachmaninoff Concertos, as well as Brahms Second,” he explained. “The whole Country of South Africa, which I have toured several times, is fascinating for its incredible contrasts, wild beauty, but also wonderful audiences.”

The well-known pianist is looking forward to his Dayton concerts. “This is music I feel very close to me — like old friends — and the joy of spending time with them is greater every time I return to them,” he said. “Brahms is a composer I love deeply.”

Pompa-Baldi agrees with Gittleman that Brahms is the perfect balance between the rational and the emotional. “Everything he writes is so full of pathos, and so utterly profound,” he said. “It is astonishing that the First Concerto was composed when he was so young. It bespeaks maturity, and Brahms was only 25. When he composed the Second, 22 years later, he created perhaps an even bigger masterpiece, this time infused with wisdom, with the serenity of an older age. It contains the life journey of a beautiful soul.”

He’s most looking forward to collaborating for the upcoming concerts. “Every time you play with a conductor, an orchestra, new chamber music partners, it makes for an exciting time because everybody filters the music through their own sensitivity and background,” he said. “It makes it come to life, every time, but always differently. It is a wonderful process.”

Why two different programs?

Gittleman said it’s obvious why two different programs are required. “Brahms wrote only two overtures and only two piano concertos, but that’s too much music to play on a single program,” he said. ” So we’ve built two programs by combining those orchestral works with two great pieces of Brahms chamber music — a piano trio and a violin-and-piano sonata. Six great pieces played over two evenings.”

Brahms once described the contrasting overtures to one of his friends: “One of them weeps, the other laughs.”

Gittleman said it isn’t the first time the DPO has staged such a festival and that the programs have always been well received. “The first time was with Janina Fialkowska in 2010 — two programs of “Chopin and His Circle” built around the two Chopin piano concertos. In 2014 with Norman Krieger, we presented two all-Beethoven programs, each consisting of an overture, a chamber work with piano, and a piano concerto.”

The two-day format, Gittleman said, is especially taxing for the guest artist. “Playing just one Brahms piano concerto on a weekend is a challenge. Playing both, back-to-back, with chamber works, too, is verging on superhero territory. But in each of these weekend mini-festivals, we’ve designed the repertoire with the soloist. So Antonio Pompa-Baldi knows that his fingers will be tired on Sunday morning!”

It’s a challenge for the orchestra as well. “The musicians are preparing two programs in the time we usually devote to one,” Gittleman said. ” But it’s great music and they’re pieces we all know very well and love very dearly.”

Concertmaster Jessica Hung

One of those who is thrilled to be performing Brahms compositions is Jessica Hung, now in her eighth season with the DPO. She began learning to play piano at age seven and by age eight was playing the violin. She made the decision to pursue music professionally while in high school, thanks to experiences with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the pre-professional training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony.

“I still use the fundamental skills I learned in Civic and hold the philosophy that every single musician’s contribution is vital to the success of the performance,” she said.

Hung said she’s looking forward to Brahms Festival because of its unique hybrid orchestral/chamber format through which the audience will hear a full-orchestra overture, an intimate chamber piece with only two or three players, and a solo piano concerto with orchestral accompaniment all in one evening.

“I’m also honored to have the opportunity to work closely with the award-winning pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, who is also a professor at my alma mater, the Cleveland Institute of Music,” she said.

On the Saturday night program, Hung will perform a chamber piece, the “Brahms Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor.”

“It requires a lot of artistic maturity that also creates technical difficulty — not in the sense of being flashy — but because there are so many nuances and subtleties to discover in the shapes of the phrases and the sound colors,” Hung said. “It’s my favorite Brahms piece to play, which is why I selected it.”

Gittleman said when the orchestra has performed two different programs in one weekend in the past, many patrons have come to both. He’s hoping that will be the case with the Brahms Festival. “I hope lots of people will decide to come both nights,” he said. ”That is, after all, the idea.”