Download WILLIMANTIC ORCHESTRA

INSTRUMENTALISTS
Violin I
Barbara Vaughan,
Concertmistress
Jennifer Arel
Gillian Arnott
Cheryl Bayline
Susan Cutlip
Barbara Horn
Paul Navratil
Justyna Poznanski
Dianne Tewksbury
Violin II
Scott Lehmann
Kimberly Blair
Melissa Colonese-Scutt
Bryan Frankovitch
Michael Geigert
Minal Kadam
Patrick Kmiecik
Uniquewa Knowlin
Laurel Thurman
Viola
Selena Roy
Cheryl Chase
Barbara Gibson
Barbara Glenister
Don Shankweiler
Cello
Matthew Nichols
Curtis Barnes
Sondra Boyer
Robert Jeffers
Ryan Lavallee
John Lenard
Sierra McKercher
Jena Mitchell
Solveig Millet
Patricia Norton
Bass
Liz Davis
Rob Rainwater
Charles Seivard
Flute
Joan D’Auria
Sandra Smith Rosado
Oboe
Abby Chien
Althea Madigan
B Clarinet
Rick Bennett
Carolyn Neumann
Shirley Roe
E Clarinet
Shirley Roe
Laurie Semprebon
Contralto Clarinet
Ginny Gibson
Bass Clarinet
Charles Seivard
Joe Tomanelli
Bassoon
Peggy Church
Bill Clark
Horn
Bethany Croxton
Virginia Eurich
Laura Renard
Kurt Scimone
Trumpet
Sam Eurich
Bob Lemons
Trombone
Ross Koning
Kevin Tracy
Bass Trombone
Kyle Gagne
Tuba
John Leblanc
Piano
Liz Kiebler
WILLIMANTIC ORCHESTRA
David H. Vaughan, Conductor
WINTER CONCERT
3:00 P.M., Sunday, 02 March 2014
Shafer Auditorium, ECSU, Willimantic
PROGRAM
Karl Jenkins
Allegretto from Palladio
Archangelo Corelli
Concerto Grosso in F
Adagio – Allegro – Largo – Vivace – Allegro
Concertino: Barbara Vaughan & Paul Navratil, violins
Matthew Nichols, cello
Richard Strauß
Suite in B
Praeludium
Romanze
Gavotte
Introduction & Fugue
INTERMISSION
Felix Mendelssohn
Gustav Holst
Trauermarsch
St. Paul’s Suite
Jig: Vivace
Ostinato: Presto
Intermezzo: Andante con moto – Vivace – Adagio
Finale (The Dargason): Allegro
PROGRAM NOTES
Palladio
Karl Jenkins (b. 1944)
Born in Wales just over 70 years ago, Jenkins began his musical studies at age
five with piano lessons. At age eleven, he began learning oboe, which he mastered quickly enough to play principal in the National Youth Orchestra of Wales.
Intrigued by jazz, he also took up the saxophone. After studying composition
at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Music in London (1963–
67), he composed, played, and recorded for several influential bands, including
Nucleus (1969–72) and Soft Machine (1972–81).
Subsequently, Jenkins has composed or arranged a great deal of music for advertising, theatre, television and film, often turning music devised for one use to
another. What began as music for a Delta Airlines ad developed into the vocalese
works of the best-selling classical album Adiemus – Songs of Sanctuary (1998),
in which the wordless voice is treated as another instrument in the ensemble. If
the allegretto from Palladio (1993) sounds familiar to you, it may be because you
saw the DeBeers ‘A Diamond is Forever’ TV commercial in the mid 1990s.
According to Jenkins, “Palladio was inspired by the sixteenth-century Italian
architect Andrea Palladio, whose work embodies the Renaissance celebration of
harmony and order. Two of Palladio’s hallmarks are mathematical harmony and
architectural elements borrowed from classical antiquity, a philosophy which I
feel reflects my own approach to composition.” The work’s subtitle “Concerto
grosso for string orchestra” refers to a musical form developed by Italian Baroque
composers like Corelli in which a small solo ensemble (the concertino) plays
against a larger ensemble (the concerto grosso)—the original meaning of ‘concerto’ was contest. However, the concertino is more prominent in the second
movement of Palladio than it is in the first, which is all you will hear today.
Concerto Grosso in F, Op. 6, No. 6
Archangelo Corelli (1653–1713)
Corelli was born near Bologna into a well-to-do family with no known proclivity for music. His early career is a matter of speculation, but by the late 1670s
he had established himself as one of the foremost violinists in Rome. There he
enjoyed the patronage of Christina, former Queen of Sweden (who, having had
enough of governing, Lutherans, and Scandinavian winters, retired to Rome in
1654 with a good deal of money) and, after her death in 1689, that of Cardinal
Ottoboni (who, having been appointed to that office at age 26 by his doting uncle,
Pope Alexander VIII, used its resources to indulge his passion for painting and
music). Six widely-published collections of instrumental works made Corelli
famous throughout Europe from the 1680s until long after his death.
The 12 concerti grossi of Op. 6 (1712) were probably written earlier and polished up for publication. Composer Georg Muffat, who visited Rome in 1682,
later wrote of having “heard with great pleasure and astonishment, several concertos . . . composed by the gifted Signor Archangelo Corelli and beautifully performed with the utmost accuracy by a great number of instrumental players.”
Richard Strauß (1864-1949)
Suite in B , Op. 4
Strauß was born in Munich, where his father Franz was principal horn player
in the court orchestra. Richard was musically gifted, and Franz’s connections
and support assured that he received thorough musical training in piano, violin
and composition. Two early works written for winds launched his career as a
composer: Serenade (1881, Op. 7) and Suite in B (1884, Op. 4). Both of them
were probably inspired by Mozart’s Serenade, K. 361, for thirteen winds, the
piece that drives Salieri to “ire, envy, and despair” in Peter Shaffer’s fantasy
Amadeus. The musical forces employed are the same, save that flutes replace
Mozart’s basset horns. Premiered in 1882, the Serenade came to the attention of
Hans von Bülow, famed conductor of the court orchestra in Meiningen, who was
sufficiently impressed to commission another wind piece from Strauß. The 1884
premiere of the resulting Suite coincided with Strauß’ debut as conductor. Bülow
included the piece in a special concert by his orchestra in Munich, informing the
composer that he, Strauß, would conduct its performance, but adding: “There
won’t be any rehearsals. The orchestra has no time for that on tour.” Strauß
would later recall that “I conducted my piece through something of a haze; all I
can remember is that I didn’t make a complete mess of it . . . .”
Trauermarsch, Op. 103
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
In 1835, after two years in Düsseldorf, Mendelssohn moved on to become
Leipzig’s municipal music director and conductor of its Gewandhaus Orchestra, an association that continued until his death. In November, his father died,
and Mendelssohn worked through his grief by finishing the oratorio St. Paul, a
work that his father had particularly looked forward to hearing. It was premiered
in May 1836 to great acclaim at a music festival directed by Mendelssohn in
Düsseldorf. While there he learned of the tragic death of Norbert Burgmüller
(1810–36), a talented young composer he had befriended during his tenure in
Düsseldorf: he’d apparently suffered an epileptic seizure while taking the waters
at Aachen and drowned. (In his memorial notice, Robert Schumann would write
that “since the early death of Schubert, nothing more deplorable has happened
than that of Bergmüller.”) Mendelssohn quickly composed this solemn march
for Bergmüller’s funeral. Some of the instruments for which he scored the piece
are now obsolete, and David Vaughan has transposed it from A- to G-minor to
make it accessible to modern wind ensembles.
St. Paul’s Suite
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
Despite his German name, Holst was thoroughly English. Born in Gloustershire, he studied piano as a child; his father, a professional musician, imagined
he might become a concert pianist. When neuritis in his right arm put that career out of reach, Gustav turned to composition, which he studied at the Royal
College of Music (1893–98). While at school and for several years thereafter, he
supported himself by playing trombone, which he’d taken up as an antidote to
asthma. Wearying of this in 1903, he took a job teaching music at a girl’s school,
and spent the rest of his life as a music educator who composed on the side. His
seven-movement orchestral tone poem The Planets (1914–17) brought acclaim
but disappointingly little interest in his other works.
Like his good friend Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Holst incorporated English
folk music into many of his compositions, including this one. St. Paul’s Suite
(1912–13) is named not for Christopher Wren’s vast London cathedral but for
St. Paul’s Girl’s School, Hammersmith, where Holst taught from 1905 until his
death. It was composed for the school’s orchestra in gratitude for the soundproof studio St. Paul’s had provided for Holst, where he was able to compose in
peace on Sundays. “Ostinato” refers to a musical figure repeated—obstinately—
over and over, here by the second violins. The finale is an arrangement of the
last movement of Holst’s Suite No. 2 for Military Band. The Dargason is an English country dance, included with music in John Playford’s The English Dancing
Master (1651); here the relentless Dargason tune is overlain with the serene and
Notes by S. K. Lehmann
traditional Greensleeves.