Program Notes

The Empire Strikes Back John Williams

                                                                                                            Arr. John Whitney

Ask the average American to name a composer of film music and the chances are overwhelming that they will say John Williams. The sheer number and variety of films he has scored, and the continuing popularity of scores written twenty or more years ago, attest to his great talent for this genre. The Cowboys, ET, all of the Star Wars movies….the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, his work in other areas is completely overshadowed by his cinematic efforts. For example, he wrote a virtuosic concerto for the New York Philharmonic’s principal bassoonist, Judy Leclair, Five Sacred Trees, based on the mythological importance of trees in five cultures.

Nevertheless, it is probably his scoring of Steven Spielberg’s epic series of Star Wars films that has earned him the widest recognition. Each one of us who has seen the movies in the series can surely recall one of the memorable themes that accompany and intensify the stunning imagery of each scene. Good movie music does that in a way that complements and enhances the visuals and story line without drawing undue attention to itself. Yet, the greatest scores can stand on their own in very many cases, becoming viable artistic works in the concert hall, without the visual world of cinema to make them credible.

In The Empire Strikes Back, the rebel forces are confronted with the daunting might of the Empire, wielded by the consummately evil Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leah, Obi Wan and Yoda and their allies wage what may be an allegorical battle against the crushing weight of a ruthless, centralized, super-galactic state. Heroism, doubt, cowardice, nobility and so many other human traits are thrown into clearer relief by the music of John Williams. Like any good dramatic composer, he has the sense to never subordinate the drama to the music, or let the music degenerate into merely “sonic scenery.”

We are extremely proud of our Eastern Idaho Youth Symphony and its conductor David Burger. Our young musicians not only perform wonderfully, but also receive additional music education from Maestro Burger. Each musician deserves to be congratulated for their dedication and hard work and we all salute these talented young people as they perform on the stage of the Colonial Theater. It is a pleasure to have them join us in this concert.

Romanian Folk Dances                                                                     Béla Bartók

                                                                                                            (1881-1945)

Bela Bartók was one of the foremost composers of the twentieth century, a gigantic figure who, in person, was shy, retiring and quite modest. Yet, he combined the talents of an absolutely first-rate pianist, composer and folk musicologist into an impressive and fruitful career. An often daring and somewhat controversial composer, due to his highly complex and somewhat dissonant musical language, he could be disarmingly tuneful and approachable on many occasions. As a pianist, he was considered a prodigy and matured into a concert artist of great promise. The three piano concertos he wrote certainly attest to his intimate knowledge of the instrument and his consummate skill as a performer. Yet, it was composition that claimed his greatest effort.

Close behind, was his intense interest in the vanishing folk music of Central Europe. During the years immediately before World War I and afterward, Bartók and his comrade, composer Zoltan Kodaly, traveled throughout Hungary and the surrounding lands with primitive portable recording devices, making countless disc and cylinder recordings of humble peasants singing and playing the music of their everyday lives. Carefully turning the recorded sounds into musical notation, they preserved a rapidly vanishing legacy of music that stretched back to early Medieval times and had been a continuous part of village life ever since.

Portions of the nation Romania has been a part of the Kingdom of Hungary and later the Holy Roman Empire. The connection was still close when Bartók and Kodaly toured the area, since many German speaking Romanians and people of Hungarian ancestry remained. Nevertheless, the music they encountered was different than that which they had encountered in their Hungarian researches. The movements of this suite of folk dances are: Joc Cu Bátâ (Dance with Sticks); Brâul (Sash Dance); Pe Loc (Dancing in Place); Buciumeana (Hornpipe); Poargă Românescă (Romanian Polka) and two Măruntels (Fast Dances). The setting is for small orchestra – strings, flutes, clarinets, bassoons and horns. A setting for solo violin and piano also exists.

Peter and the Wolf                                                                              Sergei Prokofiev

                                                                                                            (1891 – 1953)

Of all the compositions written by Prokofiev in his very productive career, Peter and the Wolf is, hands down, the most well known. Full of innocent charm, it belies the difficult lie Prokofiev led, first as a refugee from the Russian Revolution and then as a composer living in the Soviet Union. Born in the Ukraine, young Sergei showed early musical talent, completing his first opera, The Giant, at age nine. In 1904, he was enrolled in the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where at the age of thirteen, he was by far the youngest student in all his classes. Always something of an iconoclast, he was not pleased by some of the curriculum and later regretted his failure to learn more from Rimsky-Korsakov.

His music earned him the reputation as something of an enfant terrible, and he also established himself as a formidable pianist, especially performing his own music. Some caused raised eyebrows because he would use his forearm to strike a number of keys simultaneously, creating quite a dissonant sound. A critic thought perhaps Prokofiev ought to sit on the keys because that way, he could play more notes at one time. His increasing acceptance and stature earned him public favor while he was yet a student and he also graduated at the head of his class in 1914.

The horrors of the Revolution drove him abroad in 1918 and after spending some time in America, he moved to Paris. There, his career blossomed into a truly international one and he enjoyed increasing success. A longing to return to Russia finally resulted in his moving to Moscow in 1934. While hailed as a composer, he was, at the same time, subjected to the increasingly paranoid and reactionary control exerted on musicians by the official Composers’ Union. As a result, he was in and out of favor, much like Shostakovich. The results took their toll on his health, although he continued to compose and eventually completed seven symphonies, five operas, two ballets, a number of solo concertos and some wonderful film music.

Peter and the Wolf was written during his time in Paris and reflects much of his nostalgia for his homeland. Scored for a small orchestra, with narrator, it is a charming piece that evokes vivid and innocent pictures of a child’s fairy tale. Prokofiev’s musical portrait of the courageous Peter, his animal friends, his grandfather and the hungry wolf has delighted audiences in all countries and earned its place as one of the most popular and well written pieces of music for young people – or older people. We are so pleased to welcome Mayor Jared Fuhriman as our narrator for Peter and the Wolf and hope it will delight you, as well.

An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise                                                     Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

                                                                                                            (1934 - )

Born in Lancashire, England, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has achieved a position as one of the United Kingdom’s leading composers. He attended the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music, where he was part of a group of avant-garde student composers, forming a performing group dedicated to contemporary music, called New Music Manchester. After study in Rome, he secured a Harkness Fellowship at Princeton, with the help of Aaron Copland and Benjamin Britten. Subsequent to his graduation, he was Composer in Residence in Adelaide, Australia for a year.

Sir Peter returned to the United Kingdom and took up residence in Sanday in the Orkney Islands. The Orkneys lie to the northeast of Cape Wraith, Scotland and halfway to Norway in the North Sea. As you can imagine, it is a place of hardy folk who make their living from the sea and from raising sheep. Windswept, with some of the harshest climate in Scotland, the Orkneys and its hardy inhabitants have proven to be a place of inspiration for the composer. He has written an several operas, including one about St. Magnus, the patron saint of the islands, as well as ten Strathclyde Concertos, in homage to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise is notable for featuring a bagpipe solo and is one of the composer’s most colorful, humorous and descriptive pieces. It portrays the all-night celebration after a wedding on Orkney and the adventures and misadventures of some revelers as they make their way home. Davies describes the entry of the bagpipes at the conclusion of the piece as symbolic of the sun rising over Caithness. The piece was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and premiered under the direction of John Williams on May 10, 1985.