John De Main will step down as music director of Wisconsin’s Madison Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2025-26 season.
In Saturday’s (9/23) Cap Times (Madison, Wisconsin), Noah Fellinger writes, “The Madison Symphony Orchestra’s first show of the 2023-’24 symphony season, ‘American Rhapsody,’ is a love letter to some of the most renowned composers in the U.S. musical canon as well as the beginning to an ongoing farewell from artistic director John DeMain. As the MSO recently announced, DeMain will end his now thirty-year-long tenure in the position following the conclusion of the orchestra’s 2025-26 centennial season…. DeMain opened ‘American Rhapsody’ with Aaron Copland’s seminal work of Americana ‘Appalachian Spring.’… The MSO outdid themselves … the highlight of the night, however, came in the form of George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ which served as the breathtaking MSO debut of pianist Terrence Wilson…. Wilson’s performance was magnificent just for the unmatched dexterity and musical prowess on display, but also for its sincerity…. Following the final note of the rhapsody… the entire auditorium leapt to their feet for a standing ovation.” Also on the program were John Adams’s “The Chairman Dances” from Nixon in China, and Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2.
