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, February 18th, 2011 | 8:00pm | Patty Granville Arts Center

This performance will feature:

Paul Silverthorn, viola

Goldmark – In Spring, Op. 36
Charles Ives – Washington’s Birthday from New England Holidays, S. 5 No. 1  

Timing:  10’2 

A winter holiday complete with the festivities of a village barn dance and the contrasting grey bleakness of a February night. Musical quotes from familiar tunes once again trigger vivid images.
Jean Sibelius – Spring Song, Op. 16   

Timing:  8’30

Spring Song, Sibelius' second tone poem (the first was En Saga), is an outpouring of gorgeous melody; although subtitled The Sadness of Spring, it builds up to a big, affirmative climax complete with ringing bells. It’s a lyrical delight that will please people who love this composer's Symphony No. 1 and Finlandia.  Spring Song is a youthful work.
Johann Strauss II – Frühlingstimmen (Voices of Spring)     

Timing:  7’13

"Frühlingsstimmen" ("Voices of Spring") Op. 410 is a waltz by Johann Strauss II that was written in 1882. The work was intended as a waltz with a solo voice accompaniment (as opposed to a choral waltz) of whom the famous coloratura soprano Bertha Schwarz (stage name Bianca Bianchi) was to sing the waltz at a grand matinée charity performance at the Theater an der Wien in aid of the "Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth Foundation for Indigent Austro-Hungarian subjects in Leipzig".

Bianca Bianchi was then a famous member of the Vienna Court Opera Theatre and Strauss was sufficiently inspired to compose a new work for the acclaimed singer as well as to write a waltz for solo voice. The result was his world-renowned "Frühlingsstimmen" waltz which glorified spring and remained one of the classical repertoire's most famous waltzes.

The waltz makes a grand entry in the key of B b Major with loud chords preceded with the waltz's three beats to the bar ushering the first waltz's gentle and swirling melody. The second waltz section invokes the joys of spring with the flute imitating birdsong and a pastoral scene. The plaintive and dramatic third section in F Minor probably suggests spring showers whereas the fourth section that follows breaks out from the pensive mood with another cheerful melody in A b Major. Without a coda, the familiar first waltz melody makes a grand entrance before its breathless finish, strong chords and the usual timpani drum roll and warm brass flourish.
Frederick Delius – On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring               Timing:  5’52

On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring is a tone poem composed in 1912 by Frederick Delius; it was first performed in Leipzig on October 2, 1913.  The work opens with a slow three-bar sequence; its first theme is an exchange of cuckoo calls, first for oboe, then for divided strings. The second theme of the piece is scored for first violins, and is taken from a Norwegian folk song, "In Ola Valley", which was brought to his attention by the Australian composer and folk-song arranger Percy Grainger. (The theme was also quoted by Edvard Grieg in his 19 Norwegian Folksongs, Op. 66.) The clarinet returns with the cuckoo calls before the piece ends in pastoral fashion.
Kenneth Fuchs – Divinum Mysterium, Concerto for Viola and Orchestra           

Timing:  16’02

This concert features the U.S. premiere of Fuchs' viola concerto "Divinum Mysterium". This piece is well-crafted, imaginative, concise, and the most complete work of his that audiences have heard to date.

Meditative in spots, hauntingly beautiful in others, restlessly energetic in still others, the work builds over its 16-minute time frame to an atmospheric climax. As the work opens up and breathes at that point, the overall effect is one of journeying through a deeply spiritual experience into a place of joy and peace.

It will be performed by the musician for whom it was written: Paul Silverthorne, principal violist of the London Symphony Orchestra. Silverthorne's performance of the work, which he had a significant role in helping craft, is nothing short of spectacular. His musicianship is extraordinary and his interpretation of the viola's role in this concerto is quite remarkable.