Orchestras kick off concert season with weekend performances

Orchestras kick off concert season with weekend performances

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

The Shepherd School of Music orchestras will open their 2006-07 seasons with a weekend of performances of great composers from the Romantic, Impressionistic and Modern periods.

The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra will open its season Oct. 6 and 7 with works by Berlioz, Ravel and Shostakovich. The Chamber Orchestra opens its season Oct. 8 with performances of Hindemith, Debussy and Schubert.

All concerts will be at 8 p.m. in Stude Concert Hall, Alice Pratt Brown Hall. Conducting will be Larry Rachleff, the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Orchestra Conducting.

The symphony will tackle important works by two Frenchmen and a Russian.

Berlioz’s “‘Roman Carnival’ Overture, Op. 9” became an immediate favorite of audiences in France and abroad after its debute in 1844. It sprang from a failed 1838 opera, “Benvenuto Cellini,” written by Berlioz and conducted — dreadfully, according to Berlioz — by François-Antoine Habeneck. Years later, reportedly to prove the flop had nothing to do with the quality of the music, Berlioz used some of the material for this new overture. Berlioz conducted the first performance himself, and the work was received with praise.

Work by another Frenchman, Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole,” was one of the composer’s first major compositions for orchestra. The piece is a rich evocation of Spain and reflects the influence of Ravel’s Basque mother, who would sing Spanish folk songs to him as a child. Written in 1908, “Rapsodie” is an example of musical impressionism, a style prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in which composers followed the lead of artists like Claude Monet, creating an impression or sense of atmosphere rather than telling a clear story.

While Ravel “paints” for the listener in dabs and mottles, Russian composer Shostakovich presents a seeming puzzle to the audience with his “Symphony No. 15 in A Major, Op. 141,” the final piece of the symphony concert. Characterized by severe changes in mood — from playful and ironic to deeply tragic, from assertive to resigned — his 15th symphony is fascinating and mysterious. Written in 1971, four years before his death, it has been called “the strangest of symphonies.”

On Sunday, the chamber orchestra will perform works by three prolific composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Hindemith brought a neoclassical element to contemporary music, demonstrated in his seven “Kammermusik” compositions, written in the 1920s, including the first selection of the Oct. 8 performance, “Kammermusik No. 3 (Cello Concerto).” These works imitate the Baroque concerto style with jazz and new tonal procedures added in.

Debussy presents one of the most famous examples of music from the Impressionist period with “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” Written in 1894, the work was inspired by a pastoral by Sephane Mallarme and evokes the longings and desires of the half-man, half-goat depicted in the poem. This work secured Debussy’s spot as one of the most important composers of this period.

The final selection, Schubert’s “Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485,” is written in a “magical style” with an optimistic spirit. Schubert wrote the symphony in 1816, a particularly productive time during which he composed more than 175 songs and works for chorus, orchestra, piano and various chamber ensembles. His fifth symphony, an homage to Mozart and Haydn, is considered “one of the brightest spots in his virtual avalanche of music.”

Admission for the chamber concert is free. Admission (reserved seating only) for the symphony concert is $10; $8 for students and senior citizens. For tickets, call 713-348-8000.