How About Conducting?
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
We’ve all heard of high-risk professions, but how about conducting? Well, it certainly proved fatal for one of tonight's birthday celebrants. Also, hear how Mozart's papa (Leopold, that is) liked to get an extra "bang" out of his symphonies...
We inaugurate our evening with a classic Chopin Etude, No. 4 in C-sharp Minor, but not on piano (that comes later). Instead, we'll hear a lovely and homespun version for banjo and cello with Bela Fleck and Gary Hoffman. Then it's off to happy birthday land with two celebrants from across the ages: Jean-Baptiste Lully and Anton Rubinstein. Lully, the father of French Baroque, is probably just as famous for how he died as for how he lived (he accidentally smashed his own toe with his conducting staff, leading to a fatal infection). Richard Harvey and the Brass of Aquitaine and London serve up a bit of courtly pomp with Lully's "The King’s Carousel." Even though Anton Rubinstein didn’t have a flamboyant demise like Lully (he died of heart failure in 1894), he certainly knew how to make other hearts flutter when he took to the stage as a concert pianist. We'll hear a virtuoso performance of Rubinstein’s "Staccato Etude" from the Cuban-born pianist Jorge Bolet; as an added bonus, the Minnesota Orchestra (under Eiji Oue) throws a little ballet music our way from Rubinstein’s opera "The Demon."
Pianos and Horns dominate the rest of the program as we turn to Pachelbel's Ciacona in F Minor with the Boulder Brass. After that, celebrated American composer Eric Ewazen accompanies horn player Scott Brubaker in Ewazen’s Horn Sonata. Firebrand pianist Maurizio Pollini throws his hat into the ring with Chopin’s First Piano Concerto, while members of the Concerto Rotterdam under Heinz Friesen fire back (literally) with Leopold Mozart’s “Sinfonia da caccia” (Symphony of the Hunt), written for four horns, strings, and a shotgun tuned to the key of G. No kidding.
We inaugurate our evening with a classic Chopin Etude, No. 4 in C-sharp Minor, but not on piano (that comes later). Instead, we'll hear a lovely and homespun version for banjo and cello with Bela Fleck and Gary Hoffman. Then it's off to happy birthday land with two celebrants from across the ages: Jean-Baptiste Lully and Anton Rubinstein. Lully, the father of French Baroque, is probably just as famous for how he died as for how he lived (he accidentally smashed his own toe with his conducting staff, leading to a fatal infection). Richard Harvey and the Brass of Aquitaine and London serve up a bit of courtly pomp with Lully's "The King’s Carousel." Even though Anton Rubinstein didn’t have a flamboyant demise like Lully (he died of heart failure in 1894), he certainly knew how to make other hearts flutter when he took to the stage as a concert pianist. We'll hear a virtuoso performance of Rubinstein’s "Staccato Etude" from the Cuban-born pianist Jorge Bolet; as an added bonus, the Minnesota Orchestra (under Eiji Oue) throws a little ballet music our way from Rubinstein’s opera "The Demon."
Pianos and Horns dominate the rest of the program as we turn to Pachelbel's Ciacona in F Minor with the Boulder Brass. After that, celebrated American composer Eric Ewazen accompanies horn player Scott Brubaker in Ewazen’s Horn Sonata. Firebrand pianist Maurizio Pollini throws his hat into the ring with Chopin’s First Piano Concerto, while members of the Concerto Rotterdam under Heinz Friesen fire back (literally) with Leopold Mozart’s “Sinfonia da caccia” (Symphony of the Hunt), written for four horns, strings, and a shotgun tuned to the key of G. No kidding.
