For our 40^th Season, our “Miracle of a Season”, Kyle Smith will be creating a new work especially for the SSO to honor this major anniversary.  A well-regarded Philadelphia composer, Mr. Smith has visited Harford County many times for SSO performances as well as performances by the C. Milton Wright HS orchestra when Mr. Bair was the teacher there.

The concert continues with two great masterworks, one from Haydn and one from Elgar.  Maestro Bair has long been a fan of the symphonies of Austrian Franz Josef Haydn, the father of the Symphony (he was referred to as ‘Papa’ Haydn).   Near the end of Haydn's life he wrote 12 symphonies for London.  The ‘Miracle’ Symphony, No. 96, is one of these works.  Though not a long work, it is bristling with fresh ideas! The ‘Miracle’ refers to an episode during a concert, one of Haydn's own, at which a chandelier fell on the audience without injuring anyone.

The last piece of the evening will be Elgar’s Enigma Variations, one of the greatest works in the orchestral repertoire!  It is a stunningly beautiful piece for full symphony orchestra, and contains the Nimrod section, which is one of the most poignant moments in all music. Musicologists don’t agree on what the Enigma is (is it a Mozart tune?, for instance), but each variation is a sort of caricature or musical portrait of one person from his circle of close acquaintances.