January 11, 2026: The Titan
Northbrook Symphony
Mina Zikri, Music Director and conductor
Robbie Ellis, host, singer and arranger
This concert will be approximately 1 hour 45 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.
Tom Lehrer (1928-2025) arr. Robbie Ellis (1984-)
The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz
Tom Lehrer arr. Robbie Ellis
Alma
Alma Mahler (1879-1964) arr. Robbie Ellis
Laue Sommernacht
Robbie Ellis after Johann Strauss I (1804-1849)
Radetetetetzky March
These four items are grouped as “A Taste of Vienna”. Tom Lehrer, who recently died at the age of 97, was most active as a piano satirist in the 1950s and 60s, though he made his career as a mathematics professor. He left behind a small but wickedly biting catalog of songs alluding to current events, politics, academia, and arts and culture; and a few years before his death he released all of his creative works into the public domain. Two of his numbers fit nicely alongside Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1: The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz is an absurd depiction of a glittering ball evoking Mahler’s time, while Alma is a portrait of the strong-willed woman who became wife to Gustav Mahler and two other notable creatives, architect Walter Gropius and author Franz Werfel.
Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel was also a composer in her own right - an activity that her husband Gustav discouraged for many years before a marital crisis forced him to relent and help her find a publisher. Many of her manuscripts are now lost, but among the her published songs is Laue Sommernacht, a short and exquisitely slinky setting of Otto Julius Bierbaum’s poem about falling deeply in love on a balmy summer night.
“A Taste of Vienna” concludes with a nod to one of that city’s most well-known traditions: the playing of Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March to finish the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day concert, with the audience clapping along. I encourage you to clap along just the same, though I’ve mucked with Strauss’s original, stretching it into what I call the Radetetetetzky March.
Program note by Robbie Ellis.
—Intermission (15 minutes)—
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 1 in D major, “Titan”
I. Langsam, schleppend. Immer sehr gemächlich
II. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell
III. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen
IV. Stürmisch bewegt - Energisch
Mahler spent roughly 15 years perfecting his Symphony No. 1 from his very first ideas until the current version we are now familiar with. Considering its long gestation, this symphony can be viewed as something of a creative summary of Mahler’s early career as he was becoming the monumental artist we know him as today. This symphony, as with practically all of his works, draws from diverse inspirations with the goal of treating the composition as a universe unto itself.
We see Mahler re-imagining themes from his song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in the first and third movements, and we see evidence in earlier drafts of extra-musical programs drawn from both literary and visual sources. Mahler was inspired early on in his composing by the authors Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann, as well as the woodcut The Hunter’s Funeral Procession by Moritz von Schwind. The third movement, a funeral march, uses a minor-key version of the well known children’s song “Frère Jacques”, and the final movement was even subtitled “Dall’inferno al paradiso” after Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
Though he ultimately decided to remove direct references to these sources and programs in the final version, it is clear Mahler was thinking very much about depicting the natural world as well as a some sort of transcendent spiritual journey.
Program note by Thomas Nickell.
Mina Zikri
Music Director and Conductor
Mina Zikri was appointed Music Director of the Northbrook Symphony and assumed his artistic leadership duties in the 2019-20 season. As founder, music director, and conductor of the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago, Zikri uses his considerable talents to forge relationships with artists and musical organizations throughout the world, all in the name of developing new audiences for classical music. As a violinist and assistant conductor to Daniel Barenboim, he travels with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra on their annual tours to major music festivals and concert halls around the world. He returns each season to his native Egypt to guest-conduct the National Symphony.
At a time when even some of the greatest orchestras in the United States are falling under the pressures of financial and cultural uncertainty, Zikri believes that the future of symphony orchestras can, and must, venture beyond traditional expectations.
As a faculty member of the DePaul University Community Music Division, his career distinctions include being named one of 12 finalists in the 2007 Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition, where he was chosen from 223 candidates from 40 countries. He was awarded a fellowship to the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen, Colo., where he studied with Hans Graf, Hugh Wolff, Christopher Seaman, Robert Spano and Larry Ratcliff. He holds a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Performance Certificate in violin from DePaul University.
Zikri has been the resident conductor for the Lira ensemble since 2011. In 2018, Zikri made his conducting debut at Carnegie Hall with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago, with a return performance in June 2019.
Robbie Ellis
Host, Singer and Arranger
Robbie Ellis is the General Manager of the Northbrook Symphony. Prior to taking up the General Manager role, he worked for the NSO as their Pre-Concert Speaker and as a host, entertainer, composer and music arranger for fundraisers.
Robbie began his career in classical music radio at RNZ Concert in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand. He hosts Sunday Afternoons with Robbie Ellis on WFMT Chicago, and for five years he was the host and producer of Introductions, a weekly feature of pre-college musicians. He is a regular pre-concert speaker with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Grant Park Music Festival, Apollo's Fire, and the Rush Hour Concerts. He has also hosted events for Third Coast Percussion, Cedille Records, Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, and the Auckland Philharmonia.
A composer by training, he has performed as a musical comedian soloist with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago and the Chicago Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. He has also had works performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia, Orchestra Wellington, Auckland Youth Orchestra and more; and he has co-created comedy classical concerts with Fourth Coast Ensemble and the Lake Effect Clarinet Quartet. He held the 2012 Mozart Fellowship, a composer residency at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Robbie has a long background as a music director for improv, sketch comedy, and musical theater. He regularly performs at the Chicago Magic Lounge as a music director; and has worked for all of Chicago's major comedy theaters including The Second City, iO, and The Annoyance. His music director work has also taken him into Chicago Public Schools as a teaching artist with Chicago Opera Theater.
He sings his own comedy songs from the piano and has released two albums, Pumpkins and Metric System. Robbie is a graduate of the University of Auckland School of Music and lives in Chicago with his wife, son, and cat.