Sunday, June 23, 2024
PROGRAM
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Carmen Suite No. 1 (1875)
INTERMISSION
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904): Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 (1889)
PROGRAM
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Carmen Suite No. 1 (1875)
INTERMISSION
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904): Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 (1889)
Maestro’s Musings
Welcome to the final concert of the 2023-24 season of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra. While we’re at it, Welcome to SUMMER! Can you tell the days are getting shorter already? Well, please join your CCSO and celebrate summer before Autumn falls! (Pun intended!)
After tonight, we’ll all be ready for a fun summer vacation. We’re going to take you from Shakespeare’s forest filled with scurrying fairies to the gypsy camps and bullrings of sunny Seville in the south of Spain to a carnival for the whole family in beautiful Prague, on the shores of the Moldau River. We might just bring you home to an American summer holiday…
Our musical summer vacation tour guides are all well-known: German-born child prodigy and fan of Shakespeare, Felix Mendelssohn, the tragically disappointed French composer Georges Bizet, who died before his opera Carmen became a huge success, and genial Czech-Bohemian Violist-Conductor-Teacher-Composer Antonin Dvorak.
Felix Mendelssohn and his brilliantly-talented sister Fanny had the good fortune of being the children of a very successful banker in Berlin. Life was good, and their education was excellent, especially in the Arts. As children, the siblings studied music, history, and languages, and would put on plays in the family home. Felix was enamored with the plays of Shakespeare, and in 1826, at age 17, he composed the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is considered to be one of the finest examples of an “Ouverture” which stood alone as a concert piece rather than an opener to a show or opera or play. Mendelssohn waited another 16 years to add to the Overture by composing incidental music for the entire play. Dances, Nocturnes, and the famous Wedding March were written when Felix was a ripe old 33.
The play, a romantic comedy, takes place in Athens and its surrounding forest. In the Overture, listen for the fantasy and fairy atmosphere of the woodwinds’ gentle breeze in the trees, then strings depicting scampering and dancing around the forest, and even the braying of a donkey!
***********************
Georges Bizet is best known for his opera Carmen, a super “hit” about a Spanish Gypsy caught in a love triangle. The settings around Seville range from a gypsy camp filled with singing and dancing to the local bullring to a cigar factory where gypsy women worked rolling tobacco. Bizet tells the story of Don José, a soldier in the Dragoons (cavalry soldiers), Escamillo, a bullfighter, and the title character, a gypsy woman Carmen.
Bizet died at age 36 shortly after his opera’s unsuccessful run. He never knew the tremendous fame Carmen would achieve. A young colleague realized the potential of Bizet’s music and created orchestral renditions of several of the arias and ensemble pieces in a Suite. Brilliantly arranged to musically portray the passion and tension in the Prelude, which flows into the Aragoniase, a famous Spanish Dance featuring exotic rhythms and gently swirling arabesques. The lovely Intermezzo is a moment of peace before the tragedy that follows. A Séguedille is a dramatic and seductive dance, used in the opera when Carmen is jailed, and tries to entice Don José to help her escape. A visiting troop of “Dragoons” from Alcala in the north march past, and then Escamillo celebrates his success in the bullring with the Toreador’s March.
***********************
Antonin Dvorak, born in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, is a familiar name to audiences around the world. He composed 9 brilliant symphonies, several operas and concertos, and much chamber music. His 8th symphony is largely a happy celebration of song and dance, but there are plenty of minor key (Sad? Melancholy?) passages.
In the opening movement, a mournful first theme gives way to cheerful bird calls, and the general feeling we are left with is that the sun seems to shine brighter after the rain.
Second movements are usually song-like, but in this case, a solemn march emerges from the strings. A lovely band concert is depicted, then the solemnity returns before we end peacefully.
Dvorak’s third movement is, true to form, a dance. In this case, it is a waltz - a melancholy Bohemian folk dance in three-quarter time.
In the fourth movement, a Trumpet fanfare calls us not to battle, but to dance and be merry! As before, the finale goes back and forth between Major and Minor for its theme and variations, but the overwhelming effect is that of a happy carnival, and enjoying Dvorak’s Bohemian fields and forests on a beautiful summer day.
***********************
My friends, it is, as George Gershwin wrote, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy!” We hope you have enjoyed this full season of great symphonic masterworks as much as we, the musicians, volunteers and board members of the CCSO have. I have enjoyed getting to know you, and I look forward to bringing Culver City and all our neighbors the very best of live music made by these outstanding professional musicians. We exist to make music for you, our dear friends and loyal listeners. Please feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you’d like to hear - a particular composer, a specific work or instrument or soloist. We’re all ears!
Have a wonderful summer, dear friends, fans, and supporters of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra! Please enjoy the summer concerts at the Burton Chace Park at the Marina, where you’ll see your favorite musicians performing fabulous Pops concerts under the stars!
We look forward to seeing you in the fall as we celebrate our 60th season! We’ill pull out all the stops as we present music from our very first season in 1965! By the way, did you know this is the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s famous “Ode to Joy?” That’s a hint! Do you remember the performance 35 years ago of Beethoven’s 9th commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall? Goosebumps! FREEDOM!
See you again soon at the Symphony!
Clyde
Welcome to the final concert of the 2023-24 season of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra. While we’re at it, Welcome to SUMMER! Can you tell the days are getting shorter already? Well, please join your CCSO and celebrate summer before Autumn falls! (Pun intended!)
After tonight, we’ll all be ready for a fun summer vacation. We’re going to take you from Shakespeare’s forest filled with scurrying fairies to the gypsy camps and bullrings of sunny Seville in the south of Spain to a carnival for the whole family in beautiful Prague, on the shores of the Moldau River. We might just bring you home to an American summer holiday…
Our musical summer vacation tour guides are all well-known: German-born child prodigy and fan of Shakespeare, Felix Mendelssohn, the tragically disappointed French composer Georges Bizet, who died before his opera Carmen became a huge success, and genial Czech-Bohemian Violist-Conductor-Teacher-Composer Antonin Dvorak.
Felix Mendelssohn and his brilliantly-talented sister Fanny had the good fortune of being the children of a very successful banker in Berlin. Life was good, and their education was excellent, especially in the Arts. As children, the siblings studied music, history, and languages, and would put on plays in the family home. Felix was enamored with the plays of Shakespeare, and in 1826, at age 17, he composed the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is considered to be one of the finest examples of an “Ouverture” which stood alone as a concert piece rather than an opener to a show or opera or play. Mendelssohn waited another 16 years to add to the Overture by composing incidental music for the entire play. Dances, Nocturnes, and the famous Wedding March were written when Felix was a ripe old 33.
The play, a romantic comedy, takes place in Athens and its surrounding forest. In the Overture, listen for the fantasy and fairy atmosphere of the woodwinds’ gentle breeze in the trees, then strings depicting scampering and dancing around the forest, and even the braying of a donkey!
***********************
Georges Bizet is best known for his opera Carmen, a super “hit” about a Spanish Gypsy caught in a love triangle. The settings around Seville range from a gypsy camp filled with singing and dancing to the local bullring to a cigar factory where gypsy women worked rolling tobacco. Bizet tells the story of Don José, a soldier in the Dragoons (cavalry soldiers), Escamillo, a bullfighter, and the title character, a gypsy woman Carmen.
Bizet died at age 36 shortly after his opera’s unsuccessful run. He never knew the tremendous fame Carmen would achieve. A young colleague realized the potential of Bizet’s music and created orchestral renditions of several of the arias and ensemble pieces in a Suite. Brilliantly arranged to musically portray the passion and tension in the Prelude, which flows into the Aragoniase, a famous Spanish Dance featuring exotic rhythms and gently swirling arabesques. The lovely Intermezzo is a moment of peace before the tragedy that follows. A Séguedille is a dramatic and seductive dance, used in the opera when Carmen is jailed, and tries to entice Don José to help her escape. A visiting troop of “Dragoons” from Alcala in the north march past, and then Escamillo celebrates his success in the bullring with the Toreador’s March.
***********************
Antonin Dvorak, born in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, is a familiar name to audiences around the world. He composed 9 brilliant symphonies, several operas and concertos, and much chamber music. His 8th symphony is largely a happy celebration of song and dance, but there are plenty of minor key (Sad? Melancholy?) passages.
In the opening movement, a mournful first theme gives way to cheerful bird calls, and the general feeling we are left with is that the sun seems to shine brighter after the rain.
Second movements are usually song-like, but in this case, a solemn march emerges from the strings. A lovely band concert is depicted, then the solemnity returns before we end peacefully.
Dvorak’s third movement is, true to form, a dance. In this case, it is a waltz - a melancholy Bohemian folk dance in three-quarter time.
In the fourth movement, a Trumpet fanfare calls us not to battle, but to dance and be merry! As before, the finale goes back and forth between Major and Minor for its theme and variations, but the overwhelming effect is that of a happy carnival, and enjoying Dvorak’s Bohemian fields and forests on a beautiful summer day.
***********************
My friends, it is, as George Gershwin wrote, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy!” We hope you have enjoyed this full season of great symphonic masterworks as much as we, the musicians, volunteers and board members of the CCSO have. I have enjoyed getting to know you, and I look forward to bringing Culver City and all our neighbors the very best of live music made by these outstanding professional musicians. We exist to make music for you, our dear friends and loyal listeners. Please feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you’d like to hear - a particular composer, a specific work or instrument or soloist. We’re all ears!
Have a wonderful summer, dear friends, fans, and supporters of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra! Please enjoy the summer concerts at the Burton Chace Park at the Marina, where you’ll see your favorite musicians performing fabulous Pops concerts under the stars!
We look forward to seeing you in the fall as we celebrate our 60th season! We’ill pull out all the stops as we present music from our very first season in 1965! By the way, did you know this is the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s famous “Ode to Joy?” That’s a hint! Do you remember the performance 35 years ago of Beethoven’s 9th commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall? Goosebumps! FREEDOM!
See you again soon at the Symphony!
Clyde