Symphony Sounds

Symphony Sounds th March, 2017 50 Season, Number 3 (Knox) Terri Zinkiewicz th 45 Annual Edith Knox Young Five Finalists Set to Compete April 9 Artists Competition Finals Please plan to join us to hear the five exciting Sunday, April 9, 2017, at 2:00 PM finalists from the 2017 Edith Knox Young Redondo Union High School Auditorium Artists Performance Competition wh o will 222 North Pacific Coast Highway perform on April 9. The first-prize winner will Redondo Beach, CA 90277 be announced at the end of the program and will perform as soloist with the Peninsula PROGRAM Symphony at its June 18 concert. Both concerts Schumann Concerto for Piano and Orchestra are at Redondo Union High School Auditorium, in A minor, Opus 54 and admission is free. Max Hammond, piano There were twenty-four entrants ranging in age Barber Concerto for Cello and Orchestra from 12 to 24 in the preliminary round that was in A minor, Opus 22 held Saturday, March 4 at Harbor College. Nicholas Mariscal, cello Contestants performed a complete work for solo instrument and orchestra from the standard Korngold Concerto for Violin and Orchestra repertoire with piano accompaniment. A panel in D major, Opus 35 of three judges selected five individuals to Heidi Hatch, violin perform in the competition finals. Glazunov Concerto for Violin and Orchestra All finalists will receive cash prizes following the in A minor, Opus 82 concert. Biographical information and photos Tomlin Su, violin will be in the concert program. The finalists are: Arutunian Concerto for Trumpet and Max Hammond, 16, piano, Los Angeles Orchestra in A-flat major Nicholas Mariscal, 24, cello, Los Angeles Michael Harper, trumpet Heidi Hatch, 24, violin, La Crescenta Tomlin Su, 23, violin, Highland Park, Texas Michael Harper, 24, trumpet, Los Angeles CONCERT DETAILS This Symphony Sounds includes program Doors open at 1:30 PM. There will be a question- notes for all five concertos. Three of the five and-answers session with the finalists during pieces have never been played by the Peninsula judges’ deliberations after the last performance Symphony, and all three were written during a of the afternoon. The audience will be able to ask five-year period post-World War II. questions. 2 Symphony Sounds first movement was played the prior year by Music Preview Knox co-winner Carol Carson. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in A minor, Opus 54 minor, Opus 22 Robert Schumann (1810-1856) S amuel Barber (1 910 -1981) The German composer, music critic/journalist American Samuel Barber’s composing and pianist Robert Schumann is most well experience started at age seven. He enrolled in known for his piano music and his songs. He is the first class of the new Curtis Institute of Music one of the most influential Romantic composers. in Philadelphia at age fourteen and studied Schumann often linked his compositions to voice, piano and composition. One of Barber’s characters or scenes in literature. best-known works is Adagio for Strings which is his string orchestra arrangement of the second Schumann married Clara, the daughter of his movement of his String Quartet Opus 11. Barber piano teacher. Clara was a fine pianist with a won two Pulitzer Prizes for Music, the first for concert schedule of her own. He composed the opera Vanessa in 1958 and the second for almost exclusively for the piano from 1832-1839 his piano concerto. and then in 1840, the year of his marriage, he wrote over 100 songs. Barber enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942 and was commissioned to write his cello The piano concerto in A minor began as a one- concerto while still on active duty. He worked movement Concert Fantasy for piano and with cellist Raya Garbousova to understand both orchestra in 1841; the other two movements the cello’s instrumental capabilities and the were added in 1845. It was the only full-length performing style of the artist who would do the piano concerto he wrote. The premiere was in premiere with Serge Koussevitzky and the 1846 with wife Clara at the keyboard along with Boston Symphony in 1946. The composition the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. won the New York Music Critics Circle Award in 1947. It is considered one of the most The first movement begins with one loud note technically difficult cello concertos ever written from the orchestra before the piano enters with and it has not proven as popular with cellists as a series of chords. Then the oboe introduces the some of the other concertos in the repertoire. main theme. Musicologists speculate that the first four notes of the theme could spell an The concerto is written in the traditional form Italian version of Clara’s name. with an orchestral introduction that presents the themes. The second movement, Andante, is a The second movement is slow and more very expressive song. The third movement finale delicate than the outer movements and it is rondo-like and has the cello presenting the proceeds to the third movement without pause. main theme. The ending is brilliant. The final movement is in A major and is characterized as “robust and joyous but not The concerto lasts approximately thirty minutes, heavy.” The meter is sometimes ambiguous: is it and it has never been performed by the in duple or triple meter? This is achieved via Peninsula Symphony. syncopations and accents in places not expected. Stay tuned for an exciting conclusion Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D to the concerto. major, Opus 35 Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) The full concerto lasts approximately thirty minutes and the Peninsula Symphony’s most Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Austria recent performance was in 1995 with Knox and was Viennese-trained. The composer and winner Angela Wu. Knox co-winner Russell conductor was a child prodigy who began Miller played the third movement in 1978. The composing at the age of seven and wrote a 3 Symphony Sounds successful ballet at age eleven. He was a music complex orchestral scores. His body of works professor at the Vienna State Academy. includes three ballets, eight symphonies, five concertos, seven string quartets and many other Korngold was invited to move to the US in 1934 piano and orchestral works. to write music for the film industry. Most of his Hollywood film scores were for Warner Brothers Glazunov’s violin concerto was dedicated to Studio. He won two Academy Awards, the first Leopold Auer, a fellow professor at the Saint in 1936 for the original score for Anthony Petersburg Conservatory, who first performed Adverse and the second for The Adventures of the solo part in 1905 in St. Petersburg with the Robin Hood in 1938. Korngold considered each composer conducting. The piece is virtuosic for film to be an “opera without singing” and created the soloist and requires fast pizzicato as well as a musical motif for each character. a number of double stops (playing two notes on two different strings simultaneously) and After World War II, he dedicated himself to harmonics. composing pieces for the concert stage and the violin concerto was his first and perhaps his The concerto consists of two sections that are most famous example. Written in the late played without break, with a violin cadenza Romantic style, this concerto is in three connecting them. Similar to the Mendelssohn movements. The concerto was premiered by violin concerto, the solo violin enters only a few Jaschua Heifetz in St. Louis in 1947. seconds after the concerto begins with a haunting melody. The second section is rondo- The violin concerto uses themes from like with different variations on the recurring Korgnold’s movie scores. The lyrical first theme. movement uses material from Another Dawn and Juárez. The second movement, a beautiful, The concerto runs approximately twenty minutes lyrical Romance, borrows from Anthony and it was last performed by the Peninsula Adverse. The third movement uses material Symphony’s Knox winner violinist Kristie Su in from The Prince and the Pauper and is 2009. extremely difficult for the solo violin, particularly toward the conclusion. Much of the concerto is Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra in in the upper register and can highlight a A-flat major beautiful, singing quality of the violin. Alexander Arutunian (1940-2012) The concerto’s duration is approximately twenty- Alexander Arutunian was born in Armenia and at five minutes, and it has never been performed the age of seven became a member of the by the Peninsula Symphony. Yerevan State Conservatory’s children’s group prior to being admitted to the Conservatory at Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A age fourteen. In 1954 he was appointed artistic minor, Opus 82 director of the Armenian Philharmonic Aleksandr Glazunov (1865-1936) Orchestra. He was named a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1970. Aleksandr Glazunov was a Russian composer, teacher and conductor. He began piano lessons Although Arutunian’s music is not very well at age nine and composition two years later, known, he wrote music that sounds late- studying for a time with Rimsky-Korsakov. He Romantic and is considered pleasing to modern had a long tenure at the Saint Petersburg audiences. The trumpet concerto was his sixth Conservatory, initially as a professor of major composition and was written for trumpeter instrumentation in 1899 and then as director Timofrei Dokschitzer, who later immigrated to from 1905 through 1928. He then toured Europe the United States and introduced the concerto to and the United States before settling in Paris. American audiences. Arutunian’s music was influenced by melodic and rhythmic Glazunov was known for having a prodigious characteristics of Armenian folk music although musical memory and for his ability to sight-read 4 Symphony Sounds all of the tunes in the trumpet concerto are original.

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