Coming in October

Join the GSO for its 2010-2011 season premier! The GSO will be performing Grieg's In Autumn, Glazunov's "Autumn" from The Seasons, Vaughan Williams' Tuba Concerto in F Minor, and Brahms' Symphony No. 2 in D Major, to name a few!
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
8:00pm
Patty Granville Arts Center

Coming in November

The GSO will be performing Piazolla's "Otoņo Porteņo" (Buenos Aires Autumn), Mozart's Symphony No. 36 in C Major "Linz", Beethoven's Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano. This performance will also feature Vivaldi's "Autumn" from The Four Seasons.
Friday, November 19th, 2010
8:00pm
Patty Granville Arts Center
October November December January February March April May > This Season
Friday, January 21st, 2011 | 8:00pm | Patty Granville Arts Center

This performance will feature:

Phillip Anderson, violin

Antonio Vivaldi  “Winter (L’inverno)”  from The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni), Op. 8  

Timing:  8’30

The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos by Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music.  The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season. For example, "Winter" is peppered with silvery staccato notes from the high strings, calling to mind icy rain, whereas "Summer" evokes a thunderstorm in its final movement, which is why the movement is often dubbed "Storm."
 
The concertos were first published in 1725 as part of a set of twelve concerti, Vivaldi's Op. 8, entitled II cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest between Harmony and Invention). The first four concertos were designated Le quattro stagioni, each being named after a season. Each one is in three movements, with a slow movement between two faster ones. At the time of writing The Four Seasons, the modern solo form of the concerto had not yet been defined (typically a solo instrument and accompanying orchestra). Vivaldi's original arrangement for solo violin with string quartet and basso continuo helped to define the form.
  • Concerto No. 1 in E Major, Op. 8, RV 269, "La primavera" (Spring)

          1. Allegro

          2. Largo

          3. Allegro Pastorale
  • Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 8, RV 315, "L'estate" (Summer)

           1. Allegro non molto

           2. Adagio e piano - Presto e forte

           3. Presto
  • Concerto No. 3 in F Major, Op. 8, RV 293, "L'autunno" (Autumn)

           1. Allegro

           2. Adagio molto

           3. Allegro
  • Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297, "L'inverno" (Winter)

           1. Allegro non molto

           2. Largo

           3. Allegro

N. Rimsky-Korsakov – Suite from The Snow Maiden

Timing:  13’07

The Snow Maiden was not a great success as an opera, but its music - which combined the ordinary, the magical and the grotesque - has found more popularity as orchestral suites.  This suite’s final section - Death of Fevroniya - is a spectacular and colorful eight-minute tone poem.

P. Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 1 in G Minor (“Winter Daydreams”)    

Timing:  42’30

Pyotr IIyich Tchaikovsky wrote his Symphony No. 1 in G Minor, Winter Daydreams, Op. 13, in 1866, just after he accepted a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory: it is the composer's earliest notable work. The composer's brother Modest claimed this work cost Tchaikovsky more labor and suffering than any of his other works. Even so, he remained fond of it, writing his partroness Nadezhda von Meck in 1883 that "although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works." He dedicated the symphony to Nikolai Rubinstein.

Form

  1. Dreams of a Winter Journey. Allegro tranquillo
  2. Land of Desolation, Land of Mists. Adagio cantabile ma non tanto. This is an essentially monothematic structure, based on subtle gradations and variations on a single melody.
  3. Scherzo. Allegro scherzando giocoso. This was the earliest movement to be written. Salvaged from a piano sonata in C-sharp minor that he had written as a student, Tchaikovsky transposed the movement down a semitone to C minor and replaced the trio with the first of a whole line of orchestral waltzes.
  4. Finale. Andante lugubre — Allegro maestoso. Tchaikovsky uses the folk-song as the basis for both the introduction and the second subject. This song also colors the vigorous first subject.