Timothy Muffitt

Timothy Muffitt is a conductor appearing with the Canton Symphony Orchestra for its season finale, leading a program that pairs Mozart's opera overture with Ginastera's orchestral showpiece and Poulenc's choral setting of the Stabat Mater text. The concert brings together theatrical drama, folk-inflected orchestral writing, and a large-scale work for soprano, chorus, and orchestra.

This program moves through three distinct sound worlds. Mozart's overture to Don Giovanni opens with dark, portentous chords before launching into music of nervous energy, setting up the opera's mix of comedy and menace in just a few minutes. Ginastera's Variaciones concertantes is built as a theme passed between soloists in the orchestra, one instrument at a time, so listeners can hear a cello, then a flute, then other players each take a turn coloring the same musical idea against a backdrop of Argentine rhythm. Poulenc's Stabat mater closes the evening with a chorus and soprano soloist singing of grief, in music that shifts between stark unison chanting and passages of surprising warmth and tenderness. A conductor leading this combination needs to balance the orchestra's role as accompanist in the Poulenc with its role as featured protagonist in the Ginastera.