November 2006 - GVO eNewsletter
Alex Mastrando
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Celebrating Our 20th Anniversary Season
Shostakovich was born in 1906 and the GVO joins the music world in celebrating his centennial this season. He was a composer who spent much of his compositional life under the musical-political attack of Pravda and his music is not usually associated with carefree celebrations. The Festive Overture, written in just 2 days for a last minute commission by the Bolshoi Theater, goes against his usual style. From the opening trumpet fanfares to its virtuoso, circus like themes for the winds and strings, and its bombastic finale, it is a piece brimming with the joyful mood of a great occasion. Last spring at a party, a friend turned to me and said,” I’ve got something you have got to hear.” We slipped away from the festivities to his Honda and he hit play on his car stereo. What I heard was music I didn’t know, but immediately engaged my ear, challenged my sense of metric clarity, and also made it impossible not to grin. The piece had a powerful sense of hope and well being. I thought it was fabulous I brought a recording of the Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for 2 Timpani and Orchestra to a GVO Board meeting. The excitement spread around the room instantly and it was decided that we would perform the work. Philip Glass is considered the father of the 20th century musical movement called minimalism. The term refers to the economy of musical materials in the works but there is nothing minimal about the orchestration or the effect of this music. There are 2 soloists for this work who require 15 kettle drums which will be found, not in their usual spot in the back, but in front of the enormous orchestra. The colors Glass creates are stunning and have ignited audiences world wide. This work was commissioned by Timpanist Jonathan Haas and a consortium of orchestras across the country. It was premiered in NYC in 2000 and the GVO will be giving its second NYC performance. We very proud to have our own GVO Principal Timpanist, Gerard Gordon joined by the Principal Timpanist of the Reading Symphony, Steve Weiser as our soloists. Jean Sibelius did not assume his place in the pantheon of great symphonic composers until he found a champion in Leonard Bernstein in the 1960’s. It is hard to imagine that Sibelius ever lingered in obscurity. Every symphony represents a different stage in his compositional evolution and yet his voice is always present, unique and clear. The 2nd symphony holds a special place in his output as the most often played; the show-stopping finale represents music of extraordinary dramatic power that I have found to reach teenagers raised on hip-hop and rock’n roll. Modern listeners regard the 2nd symphony, with its diverse textures and themes and tempos, as a masterwork of integrated artistic vision. In fact, Sibelius first conceived the work as separate symphonic pieces. Each movement is a world unto itself: the first has a pastoral atmosphere but rumbles with inner angst, the second movement, by far the darkest emotional landscape of the symphony is also visited with moments of innocence and hope and the sparks fly in the scherzo, offset by the tranquility and romance of the trio which leads us directly into the extraordinary finale. The last movement has two themes: one passionate, the other stolid, stubborn and unrelenting. Sibelius is able to weave these disparate themes together into a coherent musical texture filled with triumph. Within the finale is a theme commonly described as a paean to nationalism. Finland was indeed at a turning point in its history while Sibelius was composing this piece, and it is hard to imagine that contemporary political change of that magnitude did not influence and inflame Sibelius, even as is the case in our present day. But Sibelius fought his own demons. His beloved sister had serious mental illness and it is thought that Sibelius’ progressive alcoholism may have represented the effect of a mood disorder from which he himself suffered. His personal struggle to fulfill his promise as the great Finnish composer, his marriage which seemed to threaten his artistic autonomy, and the death of his young daughter; represented problems that likely influence the themes in his music. What matters for me in music is the emotional resonance created by the composer- we all have demons, we are all struggling to conquer something. The GVO has struggled to keep playing concerts for 20 years and the fact that we are still here, still with many founding members, still playing concerts for our loyal audience is for us, a triumph.
Your
support and participation in the Musical Chairs program will make it possible
for the GVO to continue to provide our musicians with an increasingly
exciting music-making environment. This program allows us to use our other
limited financial resources to obtain leading guest artists and offer
complimentary tickets to those who may never experience a live symphony
orchestra performance on stage.
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Next Concert – "Neighbors" Chavez – Sinfonia India For more information: |
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Alex Mastrando
The
Greenwich Village Orchestra
eNewsletter - November, 2006
Celebrating Our 20th Anniversary Season
This
newsletter will regularly bring you insights into the music-making and
activities of the GVO. In this issue, we discuss the upcoming
"Impassioned"
concert on November 19, 2006, 7:30pm at NYU Skirball
Center for the
Performing Arts. For more information as well as directions, log onto our
website at http://www.gvo.org/audience,
or visit the Skirball
Center
homepage <http://www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu/> .
Musical Chairs