Sophie Gail Overture Les Deux Jaloux Program Notes Sophie Gail Overture Les Deux Jaloux. Composer Sophie Gail was a well-known opera singer in and around 1790s and early 1800s Paris. She composed her opera, The Jealous Two, after several songs (for voice and piano), and some one-act operas. It’s a Read more…
William Grant Still Patterns Program Notes William Grant Still Patterns. Although the Still family has deep Philadelphian roots, William Grant Still was born in Mississippi, but spent his childhood in Little Rock, Arkansas, in its well-established artistic and intellectual Black community. There, he was a few years younger than his Read more…
Kimberly (Kimmi) Alexandra Adam LSO Young Artist Soloist Instrument Soprano 2023 Winner Ms. Adam performed Bellini – Dopo l’oscuro nembo, Adelson e Salvini.
Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture Tchaikovsky softly evokes Friar Laurence and the chants of the cloister in opening his Romeo and Juliet Overture. After modulations and suspensions (notes that may clash but then give way) suggest Romeo’s early feelings about “love [being] a smoke raised the fume of sighs,” Read more…
Witold Lutosławski Little Suite (Mala suita) Fife (Allegretto) Hurrah Polka (Vivace) Son (Andante) Dance (Allegro molto) Lutosławski’s Little Suite, with its infectious energy and folk-inspired themes, was one of the most frequently performed works in 1950s Poland, and its melodies are drawn the town of Machowa, an hour’s drive east Read more…
Margaret Bonds Montgomery Variations Program Notes Margaret Bonds came from a middle-class Chicago family. She showed early talent as a pianist and composer, and studied with Florence Price as a teenager. Her studies at Chicago’s Northwestern University yielded both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Near the end of her studies, she Read more…
Strauss Fledermaus Overture Program Notes Strauss’s Fledermaus has a convoluted plot with many comedic opportunities. Prince Orlofsky is throwing a ball (in the original version it was to be a New Year’s party), and there are all sorts of ploys at hand. The character Falke is trying to visit revenge Read more…
Strauss Death and Transfiguration Program Notes Three themes of the Romantic era are love, nature or death, and the Romantics focused on creating a personal and subjective response in the audience, to have them feel what they felt. Stunningly, Strauss was 24 years old when he began this piece. (It Read more…
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition Program Notes Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition. Like other members of The Mighty Handful (Rimsky-Korsakoff, Borodin, et al), Modest Mussorgsky aimed to create a Russian musical sound. As a very young child, he’d been drawn to the piano, musically retelling his nanny’s Russian tales. In St. Read more…
