The concert opens with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, his imaginative “Pastoral Symphony.” Beethoven was known to love nature and often escaped to Vienna to take refuge in the country. Inspired by the sounds of singing birds, tumbling creeks and rustling leaves, he frequently jotted musical notes to record what he heard. By 1802, he had begun incorporating these sounds into a symphony that would premier in Vienna in 1808 with the title Recollections of a Country Life.
As you listen, you, too, will experience a visit to nature. This symphony contains five movements instead of the more common four. In the first, cheerful music depicts the arrival to the countryside. The second, which Beethoven titled “By the Brook,” creates sounds of flowing water, using muted notes, and a chorus of birds represented by a flute (the nightingale), oboe (quail) and clarinet (cuckoo).
Dancing and revelry in the third movement give way in the fourth to a powerful thunderstorm that gathers slowly, beginning with violins’ staccato raindrops, and builds to a downpour (trombones) with thunder and lightning (timpani and flutes). When it eventually passes, a choral of flutes signals the emerging sun. The final movement is a hymn of gratitude, majestic and simple.
The popularity of Beethoven’s Sixth symphony challenged the convention of the time that symphonies shouldn’t depict scenes or bad weather.
The romantic evening continues with Richard Strauss’ Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare, richly rendered with a brass ensemble and two timpani. The piece premiered at a Mardi Gras ball in Vienna in 1924 and has remained in the Vienna orchestra’s active repertoire ever since.
Three hundred years before Strauss, Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli also was writing for brass. The symphony will perform two posthumous Gabrieli pieces, Canzoni e Sonata XVI and XVII, which premiered in 1615. An organist and principal composer at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, Gabrieli was foremost in the movement to transition classical music from the Renaissance to the Baroque era.
Where is love more emotionally expressed – and often more doomed – than in operas? The symphony will play excerpts from two Giacomo Puccini operas: "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot and “E Lucevan le Stelle” from Tosca. Sacramento tenor Jaeho Lee, in a symphony encore performance, will sing the arias – two of the most beautiful ever written for the male voice – from these two works.
The concert closes with Joseph-Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero,” the composer’s most famous – and most controversial – piece. The music consists primarily of repetitive sounds with no orchestral development, initially drawing some criticism from reviewers. Indeed, Ravel himself once referred to the composition as “trivial.” However, “Bolero” was a smashing success at its premiere in Paris in 1928 and has remained the composer’s most popular work. Listeners may be familiar with the tune as the theme for the movie 10. And what was ever more romantic than that?
Love Is All You Need will be performed 7:30 p.m., February 9 at Three Stages at Folsom Lake College. Buy by calling 916-608-6888, or visiting threestages.com.
For more information on the Folsom Symphony, see folsomsymphony.com or call 916- 357-6718.
Blog Post information and picture courtesy of Folsom Symphony.
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