![]() ![]() #PROGRAM NOTES SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY 6 FULL#The whole suite is full of memorable tunes and colorful orchestration, the progressively accelerating “Danse Bohême” bringing it to a whirlwind finish. In tonight’s selection, the only movement that was originally a vocal solo number is the “Séguedille,” where the low register of the oboe stands in for the sultry voice of Carmen. I’m not a fan of “opera without words,” but luckily Bizet composed many instrumental preludes, interludes, and occasional pieces that are part of the Carmen. I’m grateful that we’re still able to present him this season.īizet died believing Carmen to be a failure, but it eventually enjoyed so much success that his friend Ernest Guiraud compiled several orchestral suites from the opera. When we engaged our violin soloist for this performance, Randall Goosby, he was fresh off his 2018 success in the Sphinx Competition, but in the two Covid-delayed years since, his career has taken off and he is now in demand internationally. I think Bruch hit on the perfect balance between solo virtuosity and memorable melodies, between the focus on the orchestra and on the soloist, and between the minor-key turbulence of the first movement, the serene lyricism of the second, and the fresh major-key exuberance of the third, and perhaps never hit that sweet spot again. Max Bruch was frustrated later in life that his first Violin Concerto, written in 1866, continued to eclipse the popularity of anything he wrote later. I first heard the orchestral version of this infrequently performed suite back in the mid 1970’s and didn’t realize at the time that Dolly herself was still alive (she died in 1985). The final movement connects Fauré to many other French composers (including Bizet) who made Spanish dance rhythms part of their music. Meltingly beautiful melodic lines spin out over lush harmonies, even in the two playful waltz-like movements. ![]() The movement titles are child-like but the music isn’t. Fauré’s Dolly Suite is a gathering of piano duet pieces the composer gave on birthdays and other occasions during the late 1890’s to Dolly, the daughter of his mistress Emma Bardac. This concert is framed by the works of two very different French composers- Gabriel Fauré, with his pastel musical colors and mostly introverted expression, and Georges Bizet, with his red-blooded operatic style. The final movement incorporates themes from the other movements in a kind of chaotic depiction of a whole bank of azaleas. The inspiration for the five-movement suite was the many forms that azaleas take- each of the first four movements is based on one or two varieties and my subjective reaction to their differing characters. I’m thankful to the Festival and grateful that two years later we’re finally able to give the first performance. The orchestral parts were copied and slipped into the musicians’ folders in anticipation of the first rehearsal when North Carolina was shut down due to coronavirus. My Azalea Suite was commissioned by the 2020 North Carolina Azalea Festival and was intended for a spring 2020 Azalea Festival Pops Concert. The combination of Shakespearean drama with Slavic rhythmic elements and a generous helping of unabashed sentimentality has made this work a perennial favorite. Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture is one of those “guilty pleasures” many of us share. The final two works on the concert were rescheduled from two previous pandemic-canceled concerts. Not everything he wrote was gauzy and rhythmically vague, and in his Petite Suite (originally written for two pianos) there are many dancelike moments and some extroverted festivity. We tend to form impressions about composers based on their most oft-performed works, and so when Debussy is mentioned his slow, dreamy “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” comes to mind. She was completing the work in her last days, and her sister Nadia (the famous teacher of many American composers like Aaron Copland) had to write in the final editorial details. “D’un matin de printemps” (“Of a spring morning”) is a brief but dramatic tone-poem combining sparkling “awakening” music with two slower, more languorous sections. Lili Boulanger (1893 – 1918), like Mozart and Schubert, represents sadly unfulfilled promise in that she died at age 24, having already written a number of significant works. ![]()
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