The terrified 19-year-old Shostakovich could not eat, drink, or sleep the night before his First Symphony received its premiere in 1926. It was a wild success, with the Leningrad audience demanding a reprise of the Scherzo. "When our handsome young composer appeared," wrote his mother, "looking almost like a little boy, the enthusiasm turned into one long thunderous ovation." (Just two years later, Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra presented the work's acclaimed United States premiere.) Maestro Kurt Masur, the much-decorated former music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the London Philharmonic, juxtaposes Shostakovich's exuberant first symphonic effort with Tchaikovsky's last--the somber, hyperbolically tragic Sixth Symphony completed just weeks before the composer's untimely and still-mysterious death.

BRAHMS Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 120, No. 2

Rachel Kuipers, viola 

Elena Jivaeva, piano 

FALLA Siete canciones populares españolas

Rachel Kuipers, viola 

Elena Jivaeva, piano 

SCHUBERT Am Tage Aller Seelen, D. 343, arranged by William Primrose

Rachel Kuipers, viola 

Elena Jivaeva, piano 

TCHAIKOVSKY None, but the Lonely Heart, Op. 6, No. 6, transcribed by William Primrose

Rachel Kuipers, viola 

Elena Jivaeva, piano 

TELEMANN Concerto in G major, TWV 51:G9

Rachel Kuipers, viola 

VILLA-LOBOS Aria from 'Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5', transcribed by William Primrose

Rachel Kuipers, viola 

Elena Jivaeva, piano 

An op-ed columnist for the New York Times since 2003, David Brooks has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly; he is also a weekly commentator on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.Described as a “clever and insightful inspector of the American scene” by the Wall Street Journal, Brooks is the author of the bestseller Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. In The Social Animal, Brooks looks at what leads to human achievement and personal fulfillment at different stages of life, and he illustrates how our decisions are affected by our unconscious minds and the environments we inhabit.

Composed a century apart, Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony both share a sense of pushing the symphonic genre into new areas, in both cases partly through the inclusion of chorus. But while Beethoven's final work in the genre bears an outwardly "symphonic" structure--four movements and a big finale--Stravinsky's from 1930 feels more oratorio-like. "It is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung," Stravinsky said. "On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing." In any event Stravinsky's finale, "Alleluia-Laudate Dominum" delves the same celebratory spirit that made Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" an unprecedented expression of ecstasy in 1824. Maestro Dutoit is joined in this ingenious pairing by renowned soloists and the Philadelphia Singers Chorale.

An accomplished food historian and critically acclaimed cookbook author, Jessica B. Harris has spent much of her life documenting the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. Her books include Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, and Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food From the Atlantic Rim. The culmination of years of research, High on the Hog is an engaging history of African American cuisine that tracks the trials and changes that both the people and the food have undergone along the way.

On March 7, New York Times bestselling author and biographer James Kaplan visits Book Club to discuss his book, "Frank: The Voice."
The story: Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century—infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. As Bob Spitz did with the Beatles, Tina Brown for Diana, and Peter Guralnick for Elvis, James Kaplan goes behind the legend and hype to bring alive a force that changed popular culture in fundamental ways.
		Sinatra endowed the songs he sang with the explosive conflict of his own personality. He also made the very act of listening to pop music a more personal experience than it had ever been. In Frank: The Voice, Kaplan reveals how he did it, bringing deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and tur¬bulent life behind that incomparable vocal instrument. We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in glistening detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra’s journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the apex of celebrity, and his Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity. Here at last is the biographer who makes the reader feel what it was really like to be Frank Sinatra—as man, as musician, as tortured genius.

On April 11, Book Club With Michael Smerconish rolls on with Jane Leavy, New York Times bestselling author and creator of the critically acclaimed comic novel "Squeeze Play." Leavy will visit Philadelphia to discuss her latest book, "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood."
		The story: Drawing on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, Leavy delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

MENOTTI Selections from Canti della lontananza
Elizabeth Zharoff, soprano
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI Cantilena e scherzo
Madeline G. Blood, harp
Ike See, violin
Yiying Julia Li, violin
Marina Thibeault, viola
Gabriel Cabezas, cello

MENOTTI “I shall find for you shells and stars” (“Lullaby”) from The Consul
J’nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI “Ora che siam soli ... Ridi se vuoi” from Goya
Allison Sanders, soprano
Adam Frandsen, tenor
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI “Ah, how fortune waits in hiding to surprise us!” from The Last Savage
Alize Rozsnyai, soprano
Ashley Thouret, soprano
Jazimina MacNeil, mezzo-soprano
Joshua Stewart, tenor
Julian Arsenault, baritone
Allen Boxer, bass-baritone
Thomas Shivone, bass-baritone
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI “See how the dying sun sinks in a sea of green” from The Last Savage
Anna Davidson, soprano
Jarrett Ott, baritone
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI “Monica’s Waltz” from The Medium
Elizabeth Reiter, soprano
Johnathan Ryan McCullough, baritone
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI “Oh, sweet Jesus, spare me this agony” from The Saint of Bleecker Street
Elizabeth Zharoff, soprano
George Goad, trumpet
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI Selections from Five Songs
Joshua Stewart, tenor
Danielle Orlando, piano

MENOTTI Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano
Stanislav Chernyshev, clarinet
Yiying Julia Li, violin
Michelle Cann, piano 

Elizabeth Fayette, twenty-two, from Shoreham-Wading River, N.Y., began studying violin with her mother at the age of two. She entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2006 and studies with renowned violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi and Pamela Frank. All students at Curtis receive merit-based full-tuition scholarships, and Ms. Fayette is the Carrie L. Tolson Memorial Annual Fellow. Prior to entering Curtis, she studied with Shirley Givens on scholarship at the Juilliard School's Pre-College division. Other teachers include Jo Shifter at the North Shore Suzuki School, Brian Lewis, and Lazar Gosman.

Ms. Fayette has appeared as a soloist with the Kenosha Symphony Orchestra, Kammergild Chamber Orchestra of St. Louis, University Orchestra at SUNY Stony Brook, Bach Aria Festival Orchestra, Long Island Philharmonic, Long Island's Sound Symphony, and Symphony Orchestra at SUNY Albany. She also won the Juilliard Pre-College's concerto competition and made her Lincoln Center debut in the Juilliard Theater. She was chosen as a gold-award winner in the 2006 National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Talent Search and is a 2006 Presidential Scholar in the Arts. She has been featured on Robert Sherman's Young Artist Showcase on WQXR.

During her eight years at Juilliard, Ms. Fayette served as concertmaster and principal second violin of the Pre-College Chamber Orchestra and Symphony and concertmaster of the Pre-College Orchestra. She has given solo and chamber music performances in Juilliard's Paul Hall and Morse Hall. Committed to modern music, Ms. Fayette has also premiered several works by her peers, including Christopher Lim's Reflections at the New York State Young Composers Honors Concerts. She received the 2005 Pre-College Achievement Award and graduated with honors.

She has participated in master classes with Federico Agostini, James Buswell, Miriam Fried, Hilary Hahn, Ani Kavafian, Bayla Keyes, Midori, Shlomo Mintz, Mark O'Connor, Christian Tetzlaff, Peter Zazofsky, and members of the T'ang and Muir quartets.

Ms. Fayette has attended the Deer Valley Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, ENCORE School for Strings, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute as a member of both the String Quartet Workshop and the Young Artists Orchestra. While at Tanglewood, she served as principal second violin, assistant concertmaster, and concertmaster of the orchestra. In addition, her chamber music groups were selected to perform in an honors concert in Ozawa Hall, as well as at the Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival and in Tanglewood on Parade.