this week’s concert

This week we’re doing an immensely interesting classical series set that features four excellent pieces that I’ll bet you’ve never heard before.  I certainly hadn’t played any of them before, and that’s becoming increasingly rare as I traverse my 13th season in the OSO.

Here’s the lineup:

Classical Bass
January 17, 18, 19, 2009

Charles Ives – Central Park in the Dark
Giovanni Bottesini (ed. Meyer) – Concerto No. 2 in B minor for Double Bass & Orchestra
Edgar Meyer – Concerto No. 1 in D major for Double Bass & Orchestra
Antonin Dvorak – Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op. 6

Edgar Meyer – double bass soloist
Carlos Kalmar – conductor

Charles Ives

The Ives is an amazing, evocative piece of tone-painting, portraying the sounds of a warm summer’s night in New York’s Central Park.  Wikipedia notes:

In 1906 Ives would compose what some have argued was the first radical musical work of the twentieth century, “Central Park in the Dark”.^[12] The piece evokes an evening comparing sounds from nearby nightclubs in Manhattan (playing the popular music of the day, ragtime, quoting “Hello My Baby” and even Sousa’s “Washington Post March“) with the mysterious dark and misty qualities of the Central Park woods (played by the strings). The string harmony uses shifting chord structures that are not solely based on thirds but a combination of thirds, fourths, and fifths. Near the end of the piece the remainder of the orchestra builds up to a grand chaos ending on a dissonant chord, leaving the string section to end the piece save for a brief violin duo superimposed over the unusual chord structures.

Edgar Meyer – Photo: Jimmy Lenner Jr.

Then come two works for the double bass, a long-neglected solo instrument in the classical world.  Renowned virtuoso Edgar Meyer (familiar to Portland audiences from his frequent appearances with Chamber Music Northwest) will play his own edition of the Bottesini concerto, which is very much in the popular verismo style, and features a jaw-dropping cadenza written by Meyer himself.  After this appetizer comes Meyer’s own Concerto No. 1, which is very much in the modern vernacular, with licks for the solo bass drawing from jazz, country, and bluegrass traditions as well as the classical oeuvre.  You have never heard the double bass played the way you will during this series – I cannot recommend coming more highly!

Antonin Dvorak – Image: LIFE

Finally, the Sixth Symphony of Dvorak.  I had heard about this piece, but never listened to it or performed it before this week.  It’s a wonderful piece, and it shows off the common practice of cross-pollination between contemporary composers.  The outer movements of Dvorak’s symphony seem to play homage to Brahms’ Second Symphony, also in D major, which was written three years prior to Dvorak’s symphony.  There are also echoes of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.  For me the highlight is the central dance movement, the scherzo-like Furiant, a whirling, colorful, acrobatic dance.  Why this piece hasn’t been done here since 1995 is a mystery to me!

Here’s a sample of the beginning of the last movement – hear if you can spot the likeness to Brahms’ Second Symphony.

[audio:dvorak6_IV.mp3]

For tickets, click here.