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Program notes |
Program notes, Mother's Day Concerts
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Symphony in the Valley Italian O mio babbino caro
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Translation in English Oh my dear papa
Note: The Ponte Vecchio, or “Old Bridge” is a key landmark in Florence and crosses over the Arno River. |
David R. Holsinger (b. 1945)
Prelude and Rondo (1966)
David Holsinger is an American composer and conductor writing primarily for concert band. He currently serves as the conductor of the Lee University Wind Ensemble at Lee University, Cleveland, Tenn. A wind or concert band is a performing ensemble consisting of woodwind, brass, percussion instruments and often, string bass.
Many of Holsinger's pieces are characterized by a lively and kinetic mood. He frequently makes use of shifts in time signature, with the overall effect of rhythmic richness.
“Prelude and Rondo” was composed in the spring of 1966 and was first performed that December by the Central Methodist College Concert Band, and conducted by the composer.
Holsinger wrote the piece after a life-changing experience. Influenced by the visiting conductor and composer Vaclav Nehlybel, he was inspired to become a composer and immediately went to work on ”Prelude and Rondo.”
“It is interesting to note how ‘intuition’ plays a part in the compositional arena,” Holsinger later wrote. “After years of compositional study about the ‘craft of composition,’ I am amazed that my first piece – probably from sheer naiveté – contained mixed meter, metric modulations, asymmetrical phrases over bar lines, and the beginnings of the “ostinato principal,” which has become one of my signatures. I didn’t plan these things, they just happen because it seemed the right thing to do to put the music on the page.” (Ostinato is a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm.)
“Prelude and Rondo” is modal in nature, using the Aeolian (white keys from A to A), Phrygian (white keys from E to E) and Myxolydian (white keys from G to G) modes. It also contains frequent meter changes, asymmetrical meters, polyphony that has several melodic ideas using different rhythms at the same moment, and hemiolas, in which two groups of three beats are replaced by three groups of two beats, giving the effect of a shift between triple and duple meter.
Holsinger is, to some extent, the modern equivalent of John Philip Sousa (“Stars and Stripes Forever”) and has, with the help of other composers, established the concert band as an ensemble form with musical compositions written specifically for it. With Holsinger’s repertoire, the concert band thus is no longer limited to playing transcriptions of famous works written for other performing groups, such as orchestra.
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
Concerto No. 1 in E minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 11
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, later known as Frédéric François, took his French name after leaving his native Poland and being forced to stay away because of a civil revolution that broke out while he was traveling abroad.
He composed his E minor Piano Concerto between March and August 1830, and it was premiered in a private performance in Warsaw with the composer at the piano. Chopin was also the soloist in this work’s public premiere at the National Theater in Warsaw on Oct. 11, 1830. The first United States performance was given in New York with the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society.
After Beethoven, the piano concerto as a genre was pursued by composers whose works are largely forgotten today. For example, J. N. Hummel’s fine A minor concerto remains little known. It is necessary to skip forward in time to find the next masterwork in the concerto repertoire.
Chopin penned his E minor Concerto in 1830 and it has stood the test of time. The 20-year-old Chopin was by then a spectacular pianist, and his writing, with its clarity and widely spaced textures, recalls Mozartian classicism. His virtuoso figuration imparts energy and momentum and makes use of contrast between lyric and virtuosic sections in the piano writing.
One should not be surprised to discover that his E minor Piano Concerto keeps its greatest riches within the piano part itself. The orchestra’s role is generally stolid, but Chopin provided an orchestra score that functions well to support the dominant piano part, though piano and orchestra don’t “dialogue” in ways we hear with other great composers.
Allegro maestoso is Chopin’s marking for the opening movement of this concerto, and that opening is both majestic and seriously dramatic. Chopin’s principal themes are played twice through -- first in the orchestral introduction, then in a second exposition by the piano -- and the development of the themes involves virtuosic piano figuration.
In the last section of the piece Chopin introduces the unexpected keys of G major and C major, creating harmonic drama. Chopin scholar Jim Samson describes this as “end-weighting” the composer’s musical forms by adding harmonic contrast to surprise the listener near the end of the piece.
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Soirées Musicales Op. 9, (1936)
Lord Benjamin Britten was an outstanding British musician of his generation, contributing as a composer, interpreter and performer. A brilliant pianist and conductor, his supreme gift was in composition. His “Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra,” and other works for children, are most memorable to the public.
Britten’s Soirées Musicales uses a large orchestral score that includes the usual two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, and the not-so-usual xylophone, snare drum, suspended cymbal, crash cymbals, bass drum, glockenspiel, triangle, castanets, plus the classical symphonic timpani, harp and strings.
At a party in the summer of 1930, a precocious British teenager was asked by a fellow guest what he planned to do with his life. “I'm going to be a composer,'' answered Benjamin Britten. “Yes,'' came the response, “but what else?''
This attitude, though perhaps somewhat coarse, was not entirely unreasonable. The great American composer Charles Ives supported himself by selling insurance. Borodin was a chemist, Rimsky Korsakov a sailor, Tchaikovsky a bureaucrat. But Britten was determined to find success on his own terms.
In 1936, Britten was asked to provide music for the documentary, “Men of the Alps.” For this film, he chose to orchestrate five piano pieces by Gioacchino Rossini, the prolific Italian opera composer. Britten later adapted the pieces into the present suite (the title translates as “Musical Evenings''), which was used in 1938 as the score for a ballet, Soirée Musicale. In 1941, Britten orchestrated another group of Rossini pieces, calling them “Matinées Musicales” (“Musical Mornings''). The two suites were then combined into a new ballet, George Balanchine's Divertimento.
Britten would go on to become one of the most renowned composers of the 20th Century.
Soloists' biographies
Pianist Ko-Nung Huang of Highland Park, New Jersey, is the winner in the competition senior division. She is a post-graduate student in piano performance at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where she studies under Paul Hoffmann.
Originally from Taiwan, Ko-Nung, 28, began playing piano at age 5. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music in 2004 from Oberlin College in Ohio, and her master’s degree in music in 2006 from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.
She recently performed the Chopin Piano Concerto with the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra and was the winner of the Rutgers Symphony Concerto Competition. She has performed as a soloist at a variety of Rutgers recitals and performances in Canada, Taiwan and in Cleveland and New York. Ko-Nung attended summer music schools and performed in summer festivals in Nice, France, and Toronto.
This is her first visit to Colorado, and her parents, Huang-Jung Huang and Meng-Chen Huang, have joined her for this trip.
Soprano Nelly Weiser of Snowmass is the winner in the competition junior division. She is a junior at Aspen High School and is a vocal student of Nikki Boxer of Aspen.
Nelly, 17, began studying singing at age 5, and has performed in a long list of local theater productions, starting with the role of Juliet in the Aspen Country Day School’s fourth grade production of Romeo and Juliet.
She has performed with JG Productions, Theatre Aspen and most recently performed and sang in Aspen High School’s production of South Pacific.
She is an active student in dance, singing and acting. Outside of her musical pursuits, she enjoys horseback riding, skiing, snowboarding, hiking, biking, swimming, tennis and creative writing. She is the daughter of Lynda and Doug Weiser.
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