march Concert 2024
Sunday, March 10, 2024 | 4:30 pm AND Monday, march 11, 2024 | 7:00 pm
artists:
Program:
Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (selections)……………………………………………………………………Johann Sebastian Bach
On May 7, 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach had a meeting with Frederick II at the king’s residence. The meeting came about because Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty, the fortepiano, which had been invented some years earlier. The king owned several of the experimental instruments being developed. During his anticipated visit to Frederick's palace in Potsdam, Bach, who was well known for his skill at improvising, received from Frederick a long and complex musical theme on which to improvise a three-voice fugue. He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a six-voice fugue on the same theme. Bach answered that he would need to work the score and send it to the king afterwards. He then returned to Leipzig to write out the Thema Regium ("theme of the king”) Four months after the meeting, Bach published a set of pieces based on this theme which we now know as The Musical Offering.
The piece is written in 17 sections. Apart from the trio sonata, which is written for flute, violin and basso continuo, the pieces have few indications of which instruments are meant to play them. Therefore many arrangements exist of this wonderful work. We bring you a combination of small ensembles to play these excerpts.
Intermezzo……………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Kathryn Mishell
Nonet for Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn…………………………………..Bohuslav Martinů
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) was one of the most significant and prolific Czech composers of the twentieth century. His music springs to life with a sunny, exuberant Neoclassicism.
Martinů’s Nonet No. 2 was composed in 1959, the final year of his life. It was commissioned by the ensemble Czech Nonet, an ensemble founded in 1924 by a group of students of the Prague Conservatory. The nine instruments for which it was written interact with one another in a way similar to nine people conversing at a party. Set in three brief and contrasting movements, Nonet No. 2 was written in celebration of the ensemble’s 35th anniversary and was premiered at the Salzburg Festival.
Siegfried Idyll, (chamber arrangement)………………………………………………………………………………Richard Wagner
Wagner composed the Siegfried Idyll as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first performed on Christmas morning, 25 December 1870, by a small ensemble of the Tonhalle Rochester Zürich on the stairs of their villa at Tribschen, Switzerland. Cosima awoke to its opening melody. Conductor Hans Richter learned the trumpet in order to play the brief trumpet part, which lasts only 13 measures, in that private performance, reportedly having sailed out to the centre of Lake Lucerne to practice, so as not to be heard!
Wagner's opera Siegfried which was premiered in 1876, incorporates music from the Idyll. Wagner adapted the material from an unfinished chamber piece into the Idyll before giving the theme to Brünnhilde in the opera's final scene.
Wagner originally intended the Siegfried Idyll to remain a private piece. However, due to financial pressures, he decided to sell the score to publisher B. Schott in 1878. In doing so, Wagner expanded the orchestration to 35 players to make the piece more marketable. The original piece is scored for a small chamber orchestra of 13 players. The arrangement for ten players we present on this concert is by David Walter.
A special thank you to our catering team - Flavor Co!