My concert for tomorrow evening (10/24/15) is called The Stars of Tomorrow, and features young, talented musicians in the area who are invited to play a solo piece with the orchestra backing them. It's quite a lot of fun. The information about the pieces is transcribed from the program. Links are in the titles of the pieces.
Egmont Overture - BeethovenThe year 1809 found Vienna occupied by the French. As many of the elite had fled, Beethoven was forced into an uncomfortable sort of seclusion. Near the end of that troubling year, he received a commission to write incidental music for a theatre production of Egmont. This must have come as a refreshing diversion from his sadness and solitude. Not only did the opportunity provide a chance to deeply connect with the words of his most favorite writer Goethe, the subject of the drama was particularly poignant for Beethoven. In the play, Count Egmont is a Dutch resistance fighter bent on the liberation of his country from Spanish occupation. He dies heroically while making his stand. It is impossible to not draw a parallel betwen the character of the Duke of Alva, and the real life Emperor of France. Beethoven had long since lost his admiration for Napoleon, and the bombardment of Vienna would certainly have confirmed his worst fears about the man. Goethe's play, and the honor of providing it with some suitably powerful incidental music, was perfect medicine for the composer after such dark, lonely months. The score of Egmont was completed in 1810 and performed in its entirety that June. Only the overture still receives frequent performance attention as a stand alone concert piece. It is a wonderfully intricate wold in miniature, one that successfully samples all the coming drama of the story.
Dvorak - Concerto in B Minor"I have written a cello-concerto, but am sorry to this day I did so, and I never intend to write another," said Antonin Dvorak to one of his composition students. "The cello is a beautiful instrument, but its place is in the orchestra and in chamber music. As a solo instrument, it isn't much good". These comments may surprise music lovers, who revere Dvorak's cello concerto as one of the finest works in the orchestra repertoire and the standard by which all subsequent cello concertos have been measured. Although the cello concerto, like Dvorak's New World symphony, was also written while Dvorak lived in America, it has no obvious American flavor. Instead of the New World's extroverted and profoundly American energy, the cello concerto is a deeply person Slavic work, full of beautiful and well crafted melodies.
Grieg - Concerto in A MinorGrieg was motivated to further Norwegian music by focusing on folk song. He expressed himself most successful in song and brief piano works, such as the many books entitled Lyrical Pieces. His only significant large scale composition is this concerto. The first movement boasts one of the most familiar openings in the entirely concerto repertoire. Much of its memorability springs from its simplicity. The movement proper wears a rather melancholy expression, although warmth is amply present as well, concluding with a long, taxing solo cadenza near the end.
Prokofiev - Concerto in D flat MajorProkofiev premiered his own 1st piano concerto in the summer of 1912 whiel still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Though he was an excellent pianist, the premiere of his own 1st Concert was Prokofiev's first appearance with an orchestra. He understood the stakes, both as a composer and performer, when he admitted that he would need to "know it cold" before the expected huge audience. The crowd loved it, even if the critics did not. One proclaimed Prokofiev "ride for the straitjacket", while another stated that he lacked the capability for "novelty" in the inner depths of his nature, and wondered if the piece even deserved "to be called music". Brutal to be sure, but rthe composer's incisive playing won over the audience and in all the ways that mattered to him, won the day. Like the 1st Violin concerto, Prokofiev originally planned the piece as a more modest Concertino but decided en-route to give it more weight and significance. The composer later stated that he regarded the 1st Piano Concerto as his first full mature work and it undoubtedly signaled his arrival as a talent that could not be ignored.
Stravinsky - The Firebird Suite (I love this version because the composer is conducting his own work)
Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird belongs to his first creative period, when his music still showed the influence of the colorful, folk-based style favored by his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. For the second Parisian season of his celebrated company, Les Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev envisioned a lavishly mounted new dance production, its plot adapted straight from Russian fairy tales. When his first composer was judged too slow to complete the score on time, Diaghilev offered the 27 year old composer a tentative commission for The Firebird. The premiere on June 25, 1910 achieved a glittering triumph, launching Stravinsky into the front rank of contemporary composers. The orchestra suite contains roughly half the music of the complete score. It followers the sequence of the original scenario. With the help of a magic Firebird, the hero, Prince Ivan, rescues a group of spellbound princesses from the clutches of an evil magician, Kastchei. Stravinsky's music is highly atmospheric, colorful, imaginative and melodious. It includes two Russian folk songs, one a lyrical tune for the princesses, the other the majestic hymn that closes the score. The whirling nightmarish Infernal Dance performed by Kastchei and his monstrous subjects is a tour de force of orchestral brilliance.
