Dayton Philharmonic - Folk Rhythms, Great Masters
Join Dayton Philharmonic for MENDELSSOHN Ruy Blas Overture - GINASTERA Harp Concerto - BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A major.
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Dayton Philharmonic - Folk Rhythms, Great Masters
Join Dayton Philharmonic for MENDELSSOHN Ruy Blas Overture - GINASTERA Harp Concerto - BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A major.
Take Note pre-performance talk: Neal Gittleman and Leslie Stratton
The motto of this story is “When someone wants you to do something for free, remember that if they don’t pay for it, it’s yours.” Time: 1839. Place: Leipzig, Germany. Occasion: A benefit performance of Victor Hugo's drama Ruy Blas. Local promoters wanted Mendelssohn to write some incidental music—free, of course. Mendelssohn read the melodrama, hated it, and wrote a small chorus piece for it instead. It seems that the promoters (beggars) subtly criticized his work (wanted to be choosers). Upset with the entire thing, Mendelssohn nonetheless wrote an overture in less than three days that remains to this day a favorite of knowledgeable concertgoers around the world.
Considered one of Latin America’s most important classical composers, Argentinian Alberto Ginastera wrote his Harp Concerto in the period between 1956 and 1965, a time he considered to be his period of neo-expressionism. The piece opens with a movement marked allegro gusto (fast, yet exact) that surprisingly concludes with an extremely soft, quiet passage. The second movement, molto moderato (moderately fast), blends the woodwinds and harp (sounding much like a piano) into a reverie-like passage. The final movement, Liberamente capriccioso—vivace (freely, in a whimsical or fanciful style, lively), shows off the entire range of the harp’s versatility. DPO Principal Harpist Leslie Stratton portrays Ginastera's musical vision, especially the call-and-answer aspect of the extremely fast portion of the final movement, with consummate skill and unabated brilliance.
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony has been called joyful, abstract, rhythmic, trendsetting, and even convention-breaking. Wagner referred to it as "the apotheosis of dance." It’s almost as if Beethoven had never heard of Franz Josef Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. With such a marked departure from the comfort of accepted standards, you might think that Beethoven would have thought twice about the idea of breaking new ground. If he had, neither he, the musicians who premiered it, nor the patrons who first heard it performed gave any such indication. Actually, quite the reverse proved true. The second movement proved so instantly popular that the audience called for its encore; in fact, its immediate success and popularity caused the second movement to be performed quite often completely detached from the rest of the symphony as if it were a symphony unto itself. Not surprisingly, Beethoven called it one of his best works. He conducted its premiere in 1813, waving his arms around with great fervor and jumping up in the air at the playing of each forte passage. Had the instrumentation called for a guitar, doubtless the guitarist would have allowed Beethoven either to break it into pieces on the rostrum or burn it. Maybe even both.
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