La Stravaganza! - String Orchestra of the Rockies

STRING ORCHESTRA
O F
T H E
R O C K I E S
La Stravaganza!
ANDRÉS CÁRDENES
VIOLIN SOLOIST
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2013
CARRIE KRAUSE,
Acting Artistic Director
ANDRÉS CÁRDENES IS LA STRAVAGANZA!
A
s a former student of this exhilarating,
world-renowned artist, it is my pleasure
to serve as Artistic Director for this
February program. A most dear teacher,
Andrés Cárdenes was the best possible
mentor through his tireless work ethic,
exquisite sound, warm familial demeanor
and polished professionalism. It is an
astonishing treat to share the stage this
evening with Cárdenes, a musician who
continues to inspire me on a daily basis,
and a treat to share these gems of the
repertoire with you, our devoted audience.
As former Concertmaster of the Pittsburgh
Symphony, Cárdenes will lead us first in
Elgar’s Serenade for Strings. We invite a
2
LA STRAVAGANZA! Sunday, February 24, 2013
wind section to join for Mozart’s Sinfonia
Concertante, in which mentor and mentee
share center stage in an intimate rapport.
Bloch’s “Nigun,” a musical prayer in
improvisatory style, plumbs the depths
of emotions and gives voice to the ardent
Jewish soul. Finally, two “extravagant”
Vivaldi concertos, with daring harmony
and inventive virtuosity, end the program
in a fiery burst.
The program tonight highlights the
integrity, elegance, and bravura of our
soloist. A sincere thank you to my treasured
colleagues on stage and to Fern Glass Boyd
for her guidance in making this evening
possible. Revel in the extravagance!
TONIGHT’S PLAYERS
VIOLINS
Andrés Cárdenes
Margaret Baldridge
Michael Certalic
Colleen Hunter
Carrie Krause
Loy Marks
Madeleine McKelvey
Rachel Petite
Erika Syroid
VIOLAS
Jenny Smith
Lisa Shull
Amy Letson
Proud to
support the
String Orchestra
of the Rockies.
CELLOS
Fern Glass
Janet Haarvig
Christine Sopko
BASS
Don Beller
HARPSICHORD
Aneta Panusz
WINDS
Jennifer Cavanaugh, Oboe
Susi Stipich, Oboe
Vicki Johnson, Horn
Bob Green, Horn
All of us supporting you.
Southside
2801 Brooks
Downtown
209 East Spruce
Russell Street
1635 South Russell
Hamilton
1265 North First Street
At U.S. Bank, our customers and our communities are always
center stage. We are privileged to support inspiring performances
and programs that enrich the quality of life for everyone.
usbank.com
Member FDIC 090363
Sunday, February 24, 2013 LA STRAVAGANZA!
3
PROGRAM NOTES
ELGAR
E
dward Elgar grew up listening to his
father play the organ in church. He
received violin lessons but no other
formal musical training. Elgar drew his
inspiration from the beauty of his native
Worcester countryside and began as a
free-lance violin instructor until he began
to catch on as a composer. The Serenade
for Strings dates from the early years of
Elgar’s marriage. It is suffused with a
feeling that Elgar himself associated with
the happiness of that union.
The opening Allegro is swept along by
the motor rhythm of the violas and a triple
meter scalar melody in the violins, which
rises and subsides. Within that simplicity
is so much character that could depict a
warm wind blowing leaves or a gentle sea
swell. What is remarkable is the strength
of the evocation. Larghetto is eloquent
in its gravity. The final movement again
has a tune in triple meter, this time a
more gregarious, cosmopolitan one, still
colored by sentimentality that is by turns
noble and intimate.
MOZART
T
he Sinfonia Concertante, the greatest
of Mozart’s string concertos, was
written at a pivotal time in his life. In
1778 Mozart went with his mother on a
cultural tour that included Mannheim and
Paris, hoping he would find employment.
Instead, his mother’s tragic death required
him to resume the onerous duties of his
service to the Archbishop of Salzburg,
in whose orchestra both Wolfgang and
his father performed. From his pen flew
many concerted works involving multiple
soloists. K. 364 was the last and best of
these.
A natural genius, Mozart knew how
to carefully craft solutions to musical
problems. In a concerto for violin and
viola the biggest challenge is balance.
Missoula’s Premier Vocal Ensemble
presents:
Bluegrass&BoBcats
featuring
Minnesota Music Hall of faMe artists
MonroE Crossing
tuesday, March 5 $ 7:30 p.M.
st. anthony church
www.dolcecanto.info
4
LA STRAVAGANZA! Sunday, February 24, 2013
One of his solutions is to have the
viola player read from a part in D
major, playing an instrument tuned up
a half step. The resulting extra brilliance
helps the darker sounding viola compete
with its chirpy relative. The orchestral
opening of this work is one of the most
dramatic launching pads ever written for
a solo entrance. The second movement
is a lovely aria in C minor and the
final movement has the rustic aura of a
contradance.
BLOCH
E
rnst Bloch was born into a Swiss clock
merchant’s family with no particular
musical inclination. He showed early
promise as a violinist studying with the
great Eugene Ysaye. His first success as a
composer was an opera Macbeth in 1910.
As Bloch began to study his cultural
heritage closely, he developed what he
would later refer to as his “Jewish style”
following a Hassidic Sabath service he
attended in 1918.
“Nigun” forms the centerpiece of
the Baal Shem Suite. Its inspiration
was the founder of modern Hassidism,
Israel ben Eliezer, better known as Baal
Shem Tov. Traditionally, a nigun is an
improvisatory chant sung without words.
Bloch’s improvisation is a passionate
cry, expressing both Man’s power in
its virtuosity and technique and his
powerlessness next to mortality, infinity
and God. It seems to lament, “God help
me! For all I that can do to create beauty,
yet still I must die and not know the full
meaning of life.”
VIVALDI
L
a Stravaganza, “the extravagance,” is
a set of concertos written in 1712-13
during his employment with the Ospedale
della Pieta. The Ospedale was one of
four institutions caring for orphans that
were supported by the Venetian Republic.
Beginning in 1703, Vivaldi composed,
taught theory and instrumental music,
and eventually was required to write a
new oratorio for every feast day. This left
him no time to compose opera, which
he had began to do at the time the
stravaganza concertos were written.
In the D major concerto, the soloist
gets help from section soloists in the
beginning, but soon it is all his show. The
musical statements come in waves, rising
and falling in pitch at each wave and
with short solo statements answered by
the orchestra. The very intimate second
movement contrasts sharply in mood,
as the stage organ sets the backdrop
supported by a solo cello. The violin
line is highly ornamented. The final
movement is re-energized and suggests
something rustic like a hayride or wind
blowing through fields of grain. The
E minor concerto is more pensive, the
minor key perhaps defining the mood. The
massed forces of the strings punctuate
the second movement at the introduction
and conclusion. The solo then has a sort
of recitative in the middle. The final
movement is full of restless activity, fairly
bristling with variety of texture, melodic
invention and key.
Sunday, February 24, 2013 LA STRAVAGANZA!
5
THANKS TO THE SOR FAMILY
SINGLE CONCERT INSTRUMENT
SPONSOR
ASSOCIATE
Bob & Lani Brewer
CONTRIBUTOR
Richard & Alice Dailey
FRIEND
Nancy Decou
Max Ekenberg
in memory of Don Mizner
Gail Freedman
Anital Milsztein
Fern Blewett
in memory of Don Mizner
Lance Boyd & Fern Glass Boyd
Magda Chaney
Rae Dabbert
in memory of Margrit Syroid
Gay Rushmer
Margrit Syroid
Susan Taleff
in memory of Don Mizner
CONCERT SPONSORS
Missoulian
US Bank
UM Music
Doubletree Hotel
(Donations received August 25-December 31, 2012)
6
music is a
gift for all
mankind
LA STRAVAGANZA! Sunday, February 24, 2013
missoulian.com
Every minute. Every day.
proud to sponsor the String
Orchestra of the Rockies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
MUSICIAN LUNCHEON
Fern Glass Boyd
Scotty’s Table
Two Sisters Catering
SOR LEADER
Margaret Baldridge
LEGAL ASSISTANCE
FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS
Bob Sullivan, Boone Karlberg
Bitterroot Flowers
RECORDING
HOUSING FOR PLAYERS
Rick Kuschel, The Recording Center
Bob and Mary Ann Albee
Jim and Maryann Bell
Sarah and Jeff Buszmann
Betsy Doty
Kevin and Madeleine McKelvey
Frank and Jacquelyn Monroe
Herbert and Mary Lynne Swick
John and Susan Talbot
STAGE MANAGERS
Tom Morrison
ACCOUNTING SERVICES
Elizabeth Oleson, CPA
TICKET SALES
Griztix
PROGRAM DESIGN
PROGRAM NOTES
Joe Jewett
Diann Kelly, Missoulian
Cocktails
on the
Clark Fork
Come as you are.
V E R S AT I L E
CLASSY
AFFORDABLE
Gift Cer tificates Available
100 Madison | 542-4660 | Located in the Doubletree Hotel
Sunday, February 24, 2013 LA STRAVAGANZA!
7
STRING ORCHESTRA
O F
T H E
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2013
7:30pm, UM Music Recital Hall
R O C K I E S
CÁRDENES IN CONCERT:
La Stravaganza!
PROGRAM
Serenade for Strings ..................................EDWARD ELGAR
Allegro piacevole
Larghetto
Allegretto
(1857-1934)
Sinfonia Concertante .................................... W.A. MOZART
for Violin, Viola, and
(1756-1791)
Orchestra in E-flat, K. 364
Allegro maestoso
Andante
Presto
Carrie Krause, violin, and Andrés Cárdenes, viola
INTERMISSION
Baal Shem Suite .......................................... Ernest Bloch
for Violin and String Orchestra
2. Nigun
(1880-1959)
arr. Ellen Taffe Zwilich
Concerto in e minor, from “La Stravaganza” A. Vivaldi
for Violin and String Orchestra, RV 279
Allegro
Largo
Allegro
(1678-1741)
Concerto in D major, from “La Stravaganza” A. Vivaldi
for Violin and String Orchestra, RV 204
Allegro
Largo
Allegro assai
Andrés Cárdenes, violin soloist
8
LA STRAVAGANZA! Sunday, February 24, 2013
(1678-1741)