Reflections
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Reflections, both specular and meditative, permeate our final hour. We hear two works titled “Reflets dans l’eau,” Jacques Ibert’s for harp and Claude Debussy’s for piano.
André Previn’s 1981 “Reflections” was commissioned by the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the Philadelphia Orchestra, which gave the first performance. The title connotes not mirror images but simply the thoughtful character of the work, which features the dark voices of the English horn and cello, played this evening by Lelie Ann Resnick and Sophie Shao, respectively. We enjoy two rags on the theme, Scott Joplin’s “Reflection Rag” with guitarist Giovanni de Chiaro, and Judith Lang Zaimont’s “Reflective Rag,” which she plays herself on piano. Rachmaninoff’s “Thoughts, reflection” is sung by baritone Segei Leiferkus, supported by pianist Howard Shelley. Cogito, ergo sum.
In our first hour, Riccardo Muti leads the Vienna Philharmonic in Mozart’s next to last symphony, No. 40 in G Minor. Wolfgang wasn’t much given to reflection, so we are told, but his music reflects both the brightest and the darkest moods of the human spirit, both of which we find here, and the last movement doesn’t resolve in a major key as a Haydn work might have done, but returns resolutely to G Minor.
André Previn’s 1981 “Reflections” was commissioned by the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the Philadelphia Orchestra, which gave the first performance. The title connotes not mirror images but simply the thoughtful character of the work, which features the dark voices of the English horn and cello, played this evening by Lelie Ann Resnick and Sophie Shao, respectively. We enjoy two rags on the theme, Scott Joplin’s “Reflection Rag” with guitarist Giovanni de Chiaro, and Judith Lang Zaimont’s “Reflective Rag,” which she plays herself on piano. Rachmaninoff’s “Thoughts, reflection” is sung by baritone Segei Leiferkus, supported by pianist Howard Shelley. Cogito, ergo sum.
In our first hour, Riccardo Muti leads the Vienna Philharmonic in Mozart’s next to last symphony, No. 40 in G Minor. Wolfgang wasn’t much given to reflection, so we are told, but his music reflects both the brightest and the darkest moods of the human spirit, both of which we find here, and the last movement doesn’t resolve in a major key as a Haydn work might have done, but returns resolutely to G Minor.
