While this year’s season has no specific theme to tie it together, I am very excited about our four concerts, each of which will feature music that is beautiful and emotion-driven.
Our opening concert will start off with Finlandia by Sibelius. This work was written at a time when Russia was bearing down on Finland’s independence. Sibelius wrote it as a call to Finnish pride, and it has stood that way for the past 100 years. Strong and stark, with a soft inner section, Finlandia will be followed by Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite. A great contrast, light and airy, even fun, Pulcinella following Finlandia will be like putting fairy dust on an elephant. Then, during the second half, Philip Pan, the concertmaster of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, will perform the gigantic and powerful Beethoven Violin Concerto. This first concert will be varied and moving, with something to feed the mind, heart, and soul.
The Christmas Concert will feature one of the most talented and fun entertainers that I have had the privilege to work with in the recent past. Rich Ridenour plays beautiful piano; is a comedian; lives in Jacksonville, Florida; and has written many arrangements of the classics. This concert will focus on his Christmas arrangements and his fun and unusual ways of doing things. It promises to be a great and entertaining concert, one that everyone in the Golden Isles needs to hear so spread the word.
We will be performing the Brahms Requiem at the February concert. The work will feature the Symphony Chorus, guest soloists Caroline Thomas and Nathaniel Roper, along with the full orchestra. The Requiem is emotive, lyrical, ethereal. Brahms is my favorite composer, and, in my opinion, did some of his best work in this opus. Note that this concert will be held at the First Baptist Church of Brunswick rather than at Glynn Academy Auditorium. The church sanctuary has ample space for the both the chorus and the orchestra, not to mention the audience. Concerts with chorus are always full, so make sure to get your tickets early for this one!
The last concert will be a collection of fun, famous works for orchestra: To begin, Bernstein’s “Candide Overture” provides a musical bumpy ride through New York. Next, the Schubert Unfinished Symphony, two movements that fill the soul followed by Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5” to feed the gypsy in each of us. The second half features Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 —big, bombastic, a fun way to end the season.
Come and join us this season!
Vernon Humbert, Music Director
Concert Detail:
Monday, October 17, 2011
Glynn Academy Memorial Auditorium
8:00 p.m.
Sponsored byHall, Booth, Smith and Slover
Key: The Star Spangled Banner
Sibelius: Finlandia
Stravinsky: Pulcinella Suite
Beethoven: Violin Concerto with Phillip Pan, Guest Soloist
Guest Artist: Phillip Pan started playing piano at age six and the violin at age eight. He received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music from the Juilliard School of Music in New York. A member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1984, Phillip is Concertmaster and is often featured with JSO and has appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops, the Albany and Schenectady Symphonies, and the Bach Aria Festival in Stony Brook, NY. He is one of the founders of Synergy and the St. Mark’s Bach Ensemble and performs in both ensembles. He is a regular performer at both the Amelia Island and Madison Chamber Music Festivals.
Concert Notes:
The lyrics to the national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner originate from the poem “Deference of Fort McHenry” composed by Francis Scott Key in 1814. Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, wrote the poem after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Navy in the War of 1812. The poem was set to the tune of a well-known British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for a London men’s social club.
Rousing and turbulent music describe much of Finlandia a symphonic poem written by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. This turbulence portrays the national struggle of the Finnish people as they faced censorship from the Russian Empire. The piece moves toward a calmness at the end, and a peaceful melody is heard. Finlandia is the highlight of the film score for Finnish Renny Harlin’s 1990 film “Die Hard 2: Die Harder.”
At what is considered to be the beginning of his neoclassical period, Stravinsky wrote: “Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course — the first of many love affairs in that direction — but it was a look in the mirror, too.”
Beethoven composed the Violin Concerto for his colleague Franz Clement, a popular violinist at the time. While it premiered unsuccessfully in 1806, the work was revived in 1844 and since then has become one of the most important works of the violin concerto repertoire.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Glynn Academy Memorial Auditorium
8:00 p.m.
Sponsored by SouthEast Georgia Health System
A special evening of Christmas music featuring Guest Pianist, Rich Ridenour.
Guest Artist: Rich Ridenour. Rich has built a formidable career performing concerts of great piano music ranging from classical masterworks to American pop and jazz favorites. Recent orchestral engagements include concerts in Grand Rapids, Tucson, Charleston, WV and Jacksonville. Each season Rich serves as the Pops Conductor of the Dearborn Symphony Orchestra.
A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rich received a Bachelors degree in Music from the University of Michigan and Masters degree from Juilliard. He has taught piano at Aquinas College, Grand Valley State University, Calvin College, and Western Michigan University. Rich has a special interest in musical outreach and the development of musically aspiring youth. Based in Jacksonville since 2008, Rich mentors young music students in area schools that have no music instruction.
Concert Notes:
Pianist Rich Ridenour will join the orchestra for an evening of pure Christmas joy and fun. Among the things you’ll hear will be a “rock” version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Guaraldi’s It’s Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown, Leontovich’s Carol of the Bells, and a medley of Christmas pops favorites arranged by Rich. Our very own Soprano Rhonda Hambright will join us to end the evening with an International Christmas Sing Along.
Monday, February 27, 2012
The First Baptist Church of Brunswick
708 Mansfield Street
8:00 p.m.
Brahms: A German Requiem
The Symphony Chorus
Guest Artists:
Soprano – Caroline Thomas
Baritone – Nathaniel Roper
Johannes Brahms composed A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45( Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift, op. 45) for chorus, orchestra, and soloists between 1865 and 1868. With seven movements, this sacred yet non-liturgical work is Brahms’ longest composition. Brahms began thinking about such a work after the death of his great friend and mentor, Robert Schumann in 1856. With the death of his mother in 1865 he began working on it in earnest and finished it three years later.
Brahms, a Protestant, did not use the traditional Latin mass for the dead with its strong images of the Last Judgment as the pattern for his Requiem. Rather he seems to have intended the work to be about mourning, loss and, ultimately, the acceptance of death. The first movement opens with “Blessed are they that mourn;” in the last movement, the chorus repeats “blessed are the dead.” Throughout, Brahms strives to console those left behind.
It is the combination of his symphonic and vocal talent in this Requiem that truly established Brahms as a major composer.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Glynn Academy Memorial Auditorium
8:00 p.m.
The Overture to Candide, first performed and conducted by the composer himself Leonard Bernstein in 1957 with the New York Philharmonic, has become one of the most frequently performed orchestral works. The work is comprised of melodies from the songs “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” “Battle Music,” “Oh, Happy We,” and “Glitter and Be Gay.” Candide is an operetta composed by Leonard Bernstein. It is based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman.
Franz Schubert started writing Symphony No. 8 in B minor in 1822. It is known that Schubert wanted to dedicate a symphony to the Graz Music Society in gratitude for giving him an honorary diploma and offered this score to his friend Anselm Huttenbrenner, a member of the society. What remains uncertain is how much of the symphony Schubert composed and how much he did write he gave to Huttenbrenner. The work exists as the first two movements in full score, the first two pages of a scherzo in full score, and the remainder of the scherzo in piano score, and no fourth movement.
Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Johannes Brahms is the most famous of his set of 21 lively dance tunes with Hungarian themes, completed in 1869. Martin Schmeling composed the orchestral arrangement for No. 5. The Hungarian Dances were considered some of Brahms most popular works. Brahms originally wrote the dances for piano four-hands and later arranged the first 10 dances for solo piano. The Hungarian Dances were influential in the development of ragtime.
Antonin Dvorak composed and orchestrated Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, B.163 in less than three months in 1889 in Vysoka u Pribrami, Bohemia. The score was dedicated: “To the Bohemian Academy of Emperor Franz Joseph for the Encouragement of Arts and Literature, thanks for my election.” Dvorak conducted the premiere in Prague in 1890. Dvorak loved Bohemian folk music, which influenced this cheery work.
_color.png)
