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A Symphony of Thanks with Katharina Wincor

Saturday, November 29, 2025 | 7:30 PM
Symphony Hall

Reserve Your Complimentary Seat

The Phoenix Symphony invites you to a special performance featuring the return engagement of renowned conductor Katharina Wincor – traveling to Phoenix for this one-night only concert of gratitude for YOU, our donors and subscribers. Celebrate the season of gratitude with music that uplifts and inspires.

Katharina Wincor, Guest Conductor

PROGRAM

Richard Wagner     Overture to The Flying Dutchman

Zoltán Kodály         Dances of Galánta

Antonín Dvořák     Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88

The concert brims with drama, dance, and delight:

  • Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman sweeps you into storm-tossed seas and surging passions — music that crackles with fate and triumph.
  • Kodály’s Dances of Galánta whirl with rustic charm, painting a picture of swirling skirts, quicksilver fiddles, and jubilant celebration.
  • Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 bursts with sunlit melodies, bird-song themes, and joyful exuberance—an autumn feast of sound to send you home smiling.

About Katharina Wincor

Austrian conductor Katharina Wincor is a force on the podium and has quickly established an international reputation.

In the 2025/26 season, she debuts with the hr-Sinfonieorchester, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, The Hallé, Milwaukee Symphony, Bremer Philharmoniker, Jenaer Philharmonie, Sinfonieorchester Biel Solothurn, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and returns to collaborate with the Sarasota Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Altomonte Orchester St. Florian, and the Upper Austrian Youth Orchestra. Wincor also makes her debut at Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich with a new production of Hans Werner Henze’s Die Englische Katze to mark the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Highlights include guest conducting engagements with the SWR Symphonieorchester, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Bamberg Symphony, Wiener Symphoniker, Detroit Symphony, National Symphony (Washington, D.C.), Tucson Symphony, Utah Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (OSESP), Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE Madrid, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, and Queensland Symphony Orchestra. She has also been re-invited to work with the Museumsorchester Frankfurt, Bruckner Orchester Linz, Cincinnati Symphony, Romanian Radio National Orchestra, Ensemble Reflektor, Klangforum Wien, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM. Recent and upcoming collaborations with soloists include James Ehnes, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Daniel Müller-Schott, Julian Steckel, Alexander Malofeev, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Rafał Blechacz, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, David Fray, and Anna Lapwood.

In 2024, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg’s birth, Wincor conducted a concert at the Arnold Schönberg Center, with a chamber orchestra comprised of members of the Wiener Philharmoniker.

Wincor first gained international attention as assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Fabio Luisi. In 2020, she was a prize-winner at the Mahler Competition in Bamberg and was invited to the Ammodo Masterclass with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Iván Fischer, who subsequenly engaged her as an assistant for several projects with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Her early experience with the Arnold Schoenberg Chor in Vienna shaped her natural approach to working with singers. After conducting Bernstein’s Candide at the 2022 May Festival with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, she also led a production at the Salzburg State Theatre and a children’s opera at the Salzburg Festival.

Born and raised in Upper Austria, Wincor studied conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Zurich University of the Arts. She has participated in masterclasses with Riccardo Muti, Jaap van Zweden, Robert Spano, and David Zinman.

PROGRAM NOTES

Richard Wagner — Overture to The Flying Dutchman

From the very first crashing wave of sound, Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman plunges us into the stormy seas of legend. The piece captures the tormented spirit of the ghostly sea captain, condemned to roam the oceans until redeemed by love. The tempestuous opening evokes the ship battling furious winds, while haunting horn calls suggest the Dutchman’s cursed solitude. Amid the turbulence, a tender, soaring melody—the theme of salvation—emerges, hinting at the possibility of redemption. In this overture, Wagner distills the drama, passion, and spiritual yearning of his opera into a single, electrifying symphonic journey.

When Wagner composed The Flying Dutchman in 1841, he was living a precarious, debt-ridden life as a young conductor in Riga and Paris, still searching for his artistic identity. A perilous sea voyage through a North Sea storm—one that nearly killed him—became the seed for this opera about fate, redemption, and eternal wandering. At the time, Europe was brimming with Romantic fascination for myth and the supernatural, and Wagner’s musical language began shifting from the bel canto style of his early works toward the richly dramatic, leitmotif-driven storytelling that would define his later operas. In the Dutchman’s lonely struggle, Wagner found a mirror for his own restless ambition and the spirit of a turbulent age.

 

Zoltán Kodály — Dances of Galánta

Kodály’s Dances of Galánta bursts with color, rhythm, and the intoxicating spirit of Hungarian folk tradition. Drawing on the dance tunes of Galánta, a small market town where he spent part of his childhood, Kodály transforms village melodies into a dazzling orchestral rhapsody. Clarinet flourishes recall the improvisations of a gypsy band, while sweeping string themes and fiery rhythms celebrate the Magyar dance known as the verbunkos—originally used to inspire military recruits. The result is both nostalgic and exhilarating: a portrait of Hungarian life that glows with authenticity and joy.

Composed in 1933 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society, Dances of Galánta reflects Kodály’s lifelong mission to elevate Hungarian folk music to the level of high art. Alongside his friend Béla Bartók, Kodály had spent decades traveling the countryside, recording and cataloging thousands of authentic folk songs. This work emerged during a period of growing nationalism in interwar Hungary, when artists sought to define a distinct cultural voice amid political uncertainty. Kodály’s music blended scholarly precision with emotional warmth, creating a style that honored the Hungarian people while affirming the enduring power of cultural identity in a rapidly changing Europe.

 

Antonín Dvořák — Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88

Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony is a radiant hymn to the natural world and to the composer’s Bohemian homeland. Written in 1889 at his country retreat, the symphony overflows with sunlight, birdsong, and rustic vitality. Its opening movement sings with lyrical warmth, while the slow movement shifts between melancholy reflection and pastoral serenity. A graceful waltz follows—part dance, part dream—before the finale erupts in jubilant fanfares and folk-inspired exuberance. Throughout, Dvořák’s gift for melody and orchestral color creates a sense of open air and unguarded joy, making the Eighth one of the most beloved of all Romantic symphonies.

By the time Dvořák composed his Eighth Symphony, he was at the height of his international fame, celebrated throughout Europe and soon to embark on his landmark journey to America. Yet rather than grandiosity, he turned inward—toward the nature, folklore, and humanity of his Czech roots. Living under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Dvořák’s embrace of folk-inspired melodies carried quiet political weight: it was a celebration of national pride and cultural resilience. Composed in a single season at his countryside home in Vysoká, the Eighth radiates the peace and optimism of a man grounded in his homeland’s beauty and buoyed by his own creative freedom.

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