Beethoven 7 and Strauss

Stanford: Irish Rhapsody No. 1
R. Strauss: Oboe Concerto
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7

EILEEN WHALEN oboe
NEAL GITTLEMAN conductor
DAYTON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Erma R. and Hampden W. Catterton Endowed Guest Artist:  Eileen Whalen

As a postlude to St. Patrick’s Day, Stanford’s delightful Irish-inspired music weaves its emerald magic around the traditional “Londonderry Air” (a.k.a. “Danny Boy”). Strauss composed his virtuosic Concerto at the end of World War II for the acclaimed John de Lancie—a young U.S. Army corporal and principal oboe of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in civilian life. Then, you may feel like dancing in the aisles when you hear Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, fairly whirling with rhythmic drive, vibrant energy, and uninhibited exuberance Wagner called it “the apotheosis of the dance itself.” Beethoven’s contemporaries wondered: Was he drunk? Has he gone mad? Musicologist Ernest Newman summed it up simply as “a divine intoxication of the spirit.”