Triumphant Return of NH Soloist

The NH Philharmonic continues its 106^th season with an upcoming concert featuring a renowned New Hampshire musician and Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five. The concert is led by music director Anthony Princiotti, now in his 11th year at the podium of the Philharmonic and featuring native cellist Bonnie Thron. (Continued below)  

Reached at his home in Walpole, Princiotti spoke about the appeal of Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five. He noted that its fame sometimes gets in the way of hearing the composition as a finely crafted piece of music.

“The incredibly concentrated nature of the musical material Beethoven fashioned and the way he deploys it are as fundamental to the work's power, as are the dramatic, rhetorical gestures that have become iconic in this symphony.” 

Princiotti, a graduate of Juilliard, Tanglewood and Yale, studied conducting with both Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. He is also the principal guest conductor of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. Well known for his ability to conduct significant works from memory, Princiotti is likely to bring a strong sense of structure to the performance. 

The concert will see the return to the stage of New Hampshire native Bonnie Thron, eminent cello soloist, and principal cellist of the North Carolina Symphony. Thron is featured in the cello concerto of Dmitri Shostakovich, a searing statement of hope against all odds. 

Princiotti first met cellist Bonnie Thron while the two were students at Juilliard. He is glowing in his praise for her playing.

“To achieve a performance that will realize the composer's vision, the soloist has to be someone whose collaborative skills and musical curiosity are extraordinary.” Given their long and fruitful musical relationship, Thron was Princiotti’s first choice as soloist for the work. 

Thron recently spoke from her home in North Carolina about the upcoming performance of the Shostakovich.

“It is an intense, personal work,” she says, “that is imbued with the kind of terror and suppressed grief that was omnipresent in Stalinist Russia. Shostakovich lived in fear that he would get a knock on the door in the middle of the night from the KGB and would disappear like so many of his friends and artists.” 

The New Hampshire native last performed with the Philharmonic in 2002 when she thrilled audiences with her presentation of the Dvorak cello concerto. Thron is eager to revisit the collaboration with Music Director Anthony Princiotti.

“I have played a lot of chamber music with Tony, and when he is on the podium it feels just the same. I feel we have a lot of dialogue and that the orchestra is his instrument the same way the violin is.”  

Cellist Bonnie Thron grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire, and as a youth was a regular at New Hampshire all-state orchestra, before moving on to studies at Juilliard. As a chamber musician she has worked with Orpheus Chamber Ensemble and Apple Hill Chamber Players, and as a member of the Peabody Trio she won the Naumberg chamber music competition. Thron became principal cellist of the North Carolina Symphony in 2000. Ms. Thron also received a BSN from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and worked for several years as a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital and as a case manager in home care nursing. Ms. Thron has performed concertos with the North Carolina Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Panama National Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and the New Hampshire Philharmonic. 

Also on the concert, the orchestra will present music of Bach, in his concerto for violin and oboe. Princiotti views Bach as perhaps the greatest composer of Western classical music.

“The comprehensiveness of Bach’s art is truly staggering; his ability to write music that is at once technically transcendent, intellectually rich and deeply passionate is something so rare that its appearance is the type of thing that could well be counted on just one hand.” 

The performance of the Bach features two long-time members of the orchestra – concertmaster and violinist Elliott Markow and oboist Amy Dinsmore. Markow has soloed on numerous occasions in major works with orchestras around the region, including the Philharmonic. This will be Dinsmore’s first appearance as a soloist with the Philharmonic. 

The concert takes place Saturday evening, March 12, at the Palace Theatre Manchester. The performance is part of the Philharmonic’s 106^th season, a four-concert series of classical and pops works, presented at the Stockbridge Theater Derry and the Palace Theatre Manchester. 

Later in the season the orchestra will present Spring Pops, an evening of romance and enchantment. The evening will feature medleys from Phantom of the Opera and The King and I, and a unique performance of Prokofiev’s Cinderella, as illustrated by the schoolchildren of New Hampshire. The presentation is the high point of the orchestra’s ongoing, collaborative arts project Drawn to the Music. Spring Pops will also feature violinist Laurel Gagnon of Hooksett, the student winner of the Philharmonic’s state-wide concerto competition (now in its ninth year).

About the organization  

The New Hampshire Philharmonic connects people to the emotional power of classical music through compelling, live performances and engaging educational programs. The New Hampshire Philharmonic is the state’s premier civic orchestra, and the state’s oldest, tracing its roots to 1905.  

The orchestra weaves together the finest student, amateur and professional musicians from around the state in dynamic performances of the core repertoire. Thousands of area schoolchildren reach a deeper understanding of the emotional expressiveness possible in classical music through the orchestra’s collaborative arts program Drawn to the Music.  

Complete information about the Philharmonic’s performances and educational programs are available at the Philharmonic’s Web site.