Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite Program Notes Young Clara Stahlbaum, in the story by E. T. A. Hoffman, is given a nutcracker doll with the appearance of a prince, by her godfather (and a magician), Drosselmeyer, at a Christmas party. After midnight, with nearly everyone asleep, the doll transforms into the prince it Read more
Smetana The Moldau Vltava Program Notes Bedřich Smetana wrote the tone poem The Moldau between 1874 and 1879. The Tone Poem (invented by Franz Liszt) is a somewhat free-form piece for symphony orchestra that has a story of some kind. In Smetana’s set of six, My Country, he depicts various Read more
Roberto Sierra Fandangos Program Notes The fandango is a Spanish courtly dance, in three-four time, with a four-measure bass line. Energetic yet simple melodic material completes the piece, likely reflecting the fandango’s Baroque dance origins, with melodies improvised over the repeated bass. In classical music, one of the most famous Read more
Sibelius Rakastava Program Notes This three-movement work for string orchestra, timpani and triangle, began life as an unaccompanied work for men’s choir, entered in the 1893 University of Helsinki choral competition. For a text, Sibelius chose three poems from the Kanteletar, a book of Finnish-language folk poetry collected by Elias Read more
Britten The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell Program Notes Not too long after returning from Lenox, Massachusetts, where he’d workshopped his new opera Peter Grimes with the students at Tanglewood (and their young conductor, Leonard Bernstein), English composer Benjamin Britten was brought Read more
Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Program Notes Bartók Concerto for Orchestra, one of the staples of 20th Century orchestral music, led to wide acceptance of Bartók’s music, following its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on December 1, 1944. The Bartók Concerto for Orchestra evokes the idea, first suggested by his friend Read more