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In Reply to: RE: One of my absolute favorite pieces of music!.... posted by TWB on April 20, 2021 at 09:18:52
Comments encouraged!!!
Concert 1
Toru Takemitsu: From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990) (32 min.)
Intermission
Frederick Delius: Piano Concerto (1906) (22 min.)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1919) (14 min.)
TT: 68 min.
Concert 2
Jean Sibelius: Night Ride and Sunrise (1907) (16 min.)
Alexander Glazunov: Violin Concerto (1904) (22 min.)
Intermission
Jean Sibelius: Symphony 7 (1924) (24 min.)
TT: 62 min.
Concert 3
Roy Harris: Symphony 3 (1938) (16 min.)
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs (1948) (26 min.)
Intermission
Howard Hanson: Symphony 2, "Romantic" (1930) (32 min.)
TT: 74 min.
Concert 4
Fikret Amirov: Struggle and Immortality from A Tale of Nasimi (1969) (3 min.)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Concerto 2 (1957) (22 min.)
Intermission
George Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad (1911) (11 min.)
Claude Debussy: La Mer (1905) (24 min.)
TT: 60 min.
Concert 5
F.S. Kelly: Elegy in Memoriam Rupert Brooke for Harp and Strings (1915) (9 min.)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: An Oxford Elegy (1949) (24 min.)
Intermission
Morten Lauridsen: Lux Æterna (1997) (28 min.)
TT: 61 min.
Concert 6
Sir John Barbirolli: An Elizabethan Suite (1942) (11 min.)
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto (1919) (28 min.)
Intermission
Edward Elgar: Symphony 2 (1911) (52 min.)
TT: 91 min.
Concert 7
Modest Mussorgsky: Dawn on the Moskva River, from Khovanshchina (1883) (8 min.)
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 (1934) (25 min.)
Intermission
Gustav Holst: The Planets (1916) (46 min.)
TT: 79 min.
Average TT: 71 min.
My own commentary:
I think this proves that you exclude 12 top-shelf composers, yet still have a captivating symphony season. My season tries to balance pieces most concertgoers may never have heard live (the Khovanshchina prelude) with pieces almost everyone knows (The Planets). And unless I missed something, with only one exception, my entire season is all-20th-century. Yours, of course, does not have to be.
Here are a few observations on how I put together my fantasy season, in hopes that a peek behind the curtain will help you construct your winning entry. Much of the music I program is relatively unfamiliar, and some of that music might be moderately challenging for those stuck in the "Top 100 Orchestral Pieces," but none of my picks are off-the-wall or confrontational. Remember, season has to pull in from audiences whose comfort zone is more likely to be "Your Mozart Minute" or "Drivetime with Dvorák" on their car radio, than Pandora's all-Lutoslawski channel. Assuming such exists.
My season has a definite architecture: it's a big tent, supported by the three "tentpoles" of the piano concerti-simply because piano is by far the most popular concerto instrument. Violin is second, and cello third. Such are the realities. In order to program a season that is not a Quixotic money pit, you have to deal with the realities. One programming goal was to avoid two successive concerts' having the same kind of soloist, i.e., two piano concerti in a row.
The first piano-concerto tentpole is the hardly-ever-heard but very approachable Delius C-minor. The middle tentpole-Shostakovich's second piano concerto-is not heard nearly as much as the purely Mozartean loveliness of its slow movement merits. The third tentpole is the crowd-pleasing Rachmaninoff Rhapsody. That's the payoff at the end of the year for having heard two piano concerti not likely heard before.
Immediately inside the outer tentpoles are the string concerti: Glazunov's warmly Romantic violin concerto, and Elgar's elegiac cello concerto. Bracketing the middle piano-concerto tentpole are works for solo voice-Strauss' plangent orchestral songs-and for choir and orchestra-Lauridsen's Lux Æterna-and for choir and orchestra and speaker-Vaughan Williams' An Oxford Elegy.
In order to keep the audience from fleeing during the first concert's intermission, which would deprive them access to the luminous, floating sound-world of Takemitsu's percussion concerto From Me Flows What You Call Time, I programmed that first, holding the crowd-pleasing Tallis Fantasia until last. Feel free similarly to improvise and to bend the "rules" for the greater good-you will have to think creatively and in such practical and pragmatic terms if you are going to win.
I tried to shape each concert so the pieces would illuminate each other without being clones of each other. Very few people have even heard of Azerbaijani composer Fikret Amirov, but I think the two energetic, bracing brief excerpts from his A Tale of Nasimi make for a perfect curtain-raiser for Shostakovich's second piano concerto, which itself starts energetically. Similarly, George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad rhapsody is a great setup for the opening pages of La Mer, as Kelly's unknown Elegy is for what follows on that night. I think that Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff shed light on each other, and also that the playful scintillation of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini finds pre-echoes in the "Mercury" movement of The Planets.
# # #
john
Follow Ups:
John's list is a bit lacking in "big" works
I was going to have at least the von Suppe requiem and the Jongen Symphonie concertante as showpieces
I would also have at least one concert that featured a Duke Ellington piece connected with other appropriate works (a lot to play with here). a Johann Christian Bach piece and a Weber clarinet concerto.
I would certainly have had Respighi Trittico Botticelliano one night
Didn't know Suppe wrote a requiem. Just listened to it and I rather like it! I guess you learn something new everyday. Thanks guys!
Ms. CfL is a skeptic about the Suppe Requiem. Of course, she doesn't even like Suppe's marvelous Overtures. How can anyone NOT like Suppe's Overtures? ;-)
I just recently figured out that I can play smartphone media over my truck system.
I'll take #3, please, perhaps with a clutch of Barber Songs in lieu of the Four Last Songs to make it all-American (and compellingly viable as a not-fantasy offering by a major American orchestra).A few years back we saw Anne-Sophie Mutter perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto along with a Takemitsu piece in Boston (my only live experience with the BSO). One reviewer called the Takemitsu pairing "incongruous" -- and it certainly felt that way at the time. The pairing of East with West, despite the merits of each, is tricky to say the least.
In Concert #4 you've got Butterworth after Shostakovich...that is RADICAL. Milk after hot sauce radical!:-)
Without meaning to engineer my own list, I will say that I would certainly attempt to include more Scandinavian orchestral works -- a major lacuna in this country, where we cannot look past Sibelius, Nielsen and Grieg to perform works by significant voices including Atterberg, Aho, Kokkonen and a host of others, all of whom get a great deal of attention from me. On my fantasy list, I would also add a splash of Robert Simpson, David Matthews or Richard Arnell to display the sheer power of an orchestra in the hands of composers that are absolutely unknown here in the U.S.
Edits: 04/21/21
Did Dima S. ever write anything more Mozartean (and totally lacking in irony) than the slow movement of Pf Cto 2?
If so, I am all ears.
ciao,
john
.
As I love ALL of those pieces... Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna I love as well! The Sibelius concert would tempt me as well, but the rest of the pieces... I'm not really familiar with the other pieces other than the Debussy and Vaughn Williams.... Listening to Elgar symphonies is on my to do list for sure and I'm happy to take recommendations on which symphonies to start with!
Edits: 04/20/21
There are more than a few works on the list with which I'm unfamiliar and will be added to my "only good reason to stream music list".
Special thanks to John for not adding the other crowd pleasing Albinoni: Adagio To Eat A Bullet By.
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