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INSTRUMENTALISTS Violin I Paul Navratil, Concertmaster Jennifer Arel Gillian Arnott Kay Berris Kimberly Blair Melissa Colonese-Scutt Susan Cutlip Scott Lehmann Violin II Barbara Horn Cheryl Bayline Brian Frankovitch Michael Geigert Victoria Hervieux Patrick Kmiecik Mary Lou Morrison Justyna Poznanski Viola Selena Roy Barbara Gibson Barbara Glenister Don Shankweiler Cello Matthew Nichols Curtis Barnes Sondra Boyer Ryan Lavallee Solveig Millett Jena Mitchell Jennifer Morenus Charlotte Sundstrom Bass Liz Davis Rob Rainwater Charles Seivard Flute Elise Couillard Joan D’Auria Sandra Smith Rosado Oboe Abby Chien Althea Madigan Clarinet Rick Bennett Shirley Roe Bass Clarinet Joe Tomanelli Alto Saxophone Karen Lendvay Tenor Saxophone Joe Tomanelli Bassoon Bill Clark Peggy Church Horn Bethany Croxton Virginia Eurich Laura Renard Kurt Scimone Trumpet Sam Eurich Bob Lemons Ed Pitkin Trombone Ross Koning Kevin Tracy Bass Trombone Kyle Gagne Percussion John Consiglio Liz Kiebler Ryan Lavallee Jack Summers Piano Liz Kiebler WILLIMANTIC ORCHESTRA David H. Vaughan, Conductor HOLIDAY CONCERT 7:30 P.M., Saturday, 07 December 2013 Shafer Auditorium, ECSU, Willimantic PROGRAM Leroy Anderson A Christmas Festival Antonio Vivaldi Concerto in b for Four Violins I. Allegro II. Largo – Larghetto – Largo III. Allegro Soloists: Paul Navratil, Kay Berris, Barbara Horn, Justyna Poznanski Gustav Holst (arr. Wagner) A Holst Christmas Piotr Tchaikovsky Selections from Nutcracker Suite No. 1 I. Marche (tempo di marcia vivo) II. Danse de la Fée-Dragée (andante non troppo) III. Danse russe Trepak (molto vivace) IV. Danse Chinoise (allegro moderato) V. Valse des Fleurs (tempo di valse) Leroy Anderson Sleigh Ride PROGRAM NOTES A Christmas Festival (1950) & Sleigh Ride (1948) Leroy Anderson (1908–76) Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to parents who had emigrated from Sweden, Anderson studied piano and organ with his mother and began composing in high school. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in music from Harvard, where his teachers included Walter Piston and Georges Enescu. In 1931, after failing to win a fellowship that would have allowed him to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, he began working on a Ph.D. in Scandinavian languages. Music, however, remained Anderson’s passion. In the time his studies left him (and probably a bit more), he tutored Radcliffe students in music, directed the Harvard University Band, served as church organist and choir director, played (piano, double bass, tuba, accordian) in dance bands, and produced arrangements. In 1934 he quit his doctoral program to work as a professional arranger. His big break came in 1936, when the Boston Pops asked for an arrangement of Harvard songs, leading to commissions from Arthur Fiedler for encore pieces: Jazz Pizzicato (1938) and Jazz Legato (1939). Anderson continued to arrange and compose for Fiedler during World War II, when his knowledge of German and Scandinavian languages got him assigned to a desk job in military intelligence. In the decade afterward, he was de facto Arranger and Composer for the Boston Pops. Most of his best-known works— including The Syncopated Clock, Sleigh Ride, The Typewriter, Blue Tango, Sandpaper Ballet, Trumpeter’s Lullaby, and Bugler’s Holiday—date from this time. His light and tuneful pieces, which sound so unlabored, were the product of a good deal of labor; Anderson was a careful craftsman, who often spent several months writing and re-writing a short piece. Concerto in b for Four Violins, RV 580 Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) Born in Venice, where he lived most of his life, Vivaldi learned violin from his father, who played in San Marco’s orchestra, and also studied with its leader, Giovanni Legrenzi (1626–90), a noted composer. Ordained a priest in 1703, he was shortly thereafter excused from priestly duties on grounds of ill-health (probably asthma). For most of his career, he was a teacher, composer, and conductor at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, where unmarriageable girls—illegitimate, orphaned, disfigured—were sheltered and schooled to a high standard in music. Most of Vivaldi’s 400 concerti and 60 choral works were written for instruction or performance at the Ospedale. At its celebrated public concerts the musically accomplished young ladies performed behind screens, heard but not seen. (What, one wonders, became of them?) Vivaldi also wrote numerous operas, though not for the Ospedale, where they would have been considered inappropriate (Arsilda, Regina di Ponto (1715) was initially banned in Venice; its title character falls in love with a woman who pretends to be a man). In 1740, his music no longer popular in his native city, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping—vainly, as it turned out—for a court appointment; he died there in poverty the following year. This concerto is the tenth of twelve published in 1711 in Amsterdam as Op. 3, a collection (with the intriguing title L’Estro Armonico—literally, “harmonic estrus”) that made Vivaldi known throughout musical Europe as an exciting new composer. Bach made keyboard transcriptions or arrangements of six of these concerti, including this one. Sparely scored by Vivaldi for four violins, two violas, cello, and continuo, it is heard today in an arrangement by Ralph Matesky for solists and string orchestra. A Holst Christmas Gustav Holst (1874–1934) Despite his Germanic name, Gustav[us von] Holst was an English composer, born in Gloucestershire. His father, like several of his forebearers, was a professional musician and taught his son piano in hopes that he might continue the family’s musical line as a concert pianist. Neuritis in Gustav’s right arm put that career out of reach, and he instead turned to composition, which he studied at the Royal College of Music (1893–98). At this time and for several years thereafter, he supported himself by playing trombone gigs. In 1905, realizing that the very modest success of his compositions was not going to pay the bills and finding playing light fare in theatre orchestras “a wicked and loathsome waste of time,” he accepted a teaching position at a girls’ school. He spent the rest of his life as a music educator, composing largely for amateur and school ensembles, while working on more ambitious compositions on the side. A 1919 performance under Adrian Boult of his large orchestral work, The Planets (1916–18), brought him acclaim and more attention than he wanted. Several subsequent compositions were also well received, but Holst’s moment in the sun was relatively brief. Though he thought it his best orchestral work, audiences and critics of the time did not care much for Egdon Heath (1927), a tone poem inspired by Thomas Hardy’s description of this locale in his novel The Return of the Native. As with some other artists, a just appreciation of Holst’s works came only after his death. This piece is an orchestral arrangement by Douglas Wagner of Holst’s settings of Christina Rossetti’s poem “In the bleak midwinter” for the 1906 English Hymnal and (in 1916) of “Lullay my liking”, a 15th century text for a lullaby sung by Mary to the baby Jesus, along with excerpts from his Christmas Day: a Choral Fantasy of Old Carols (1910). Selections from Nutcracker Suite No. 1, Op. 71 a Piotr Tchaikovsky (1840–93) Tchaikovsky’s last ballet, The Nutcracker, was commissioned by the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg in December 1890. Although one would not guess from this music, this was a trying time for the composer. His long-time financial backer and confidant, Nadezhda von Meck, had recently pleaded poverty and broken off the relationship; his sister Sasha died just as Tchaikovsky began working on the ballet; and the ballet’s unsatisfactory scenario (loosely based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”) failed to inspire him, leading the composer to doubt his artistic powers. In May 1891 Tchaikovsky confessed that “writing the ballet has cost me an effort because I could feel a decline in my powers of invention,” adding later that “this work has tired me out (I think the old man is beginning to be played out).” Suite No. 1 was first performed in March 1892 (the ballet itself, delayed by various production problems, premiered in December 1892). This performance of the suite omits its overture and two of the dances. Notes by S. K. Lehmann