[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Beethoven – Symphony no. 5, Allegro con brio [opening]
WCFSO – April 2011
This is how we opened yesterday’s WCFSO concerts for nearly four thousand elementary school students. When we stopped I asked our young listeners – many of whom had never been to an orchestra concert – if they recognized Beethoven’s music. Every hand went up.
Classical music, not quite dead yet.
[And for what it’s worth, the kids’ attentiveness during our subsequent performance of this entire movement and the symphony’s three others was on point. Thanks to all of our area teachers for preparing their kids so thoroughly for these performances.]
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Chabrier – España
WCFSO with NE Iowa high school musicians – March 2011
‘One day Chabrier came; and he played his España for me. It sounded as if a hurricane had been let loose. He pounded and pounded the keyboard. The street was full of people, and they were listening, fascinated. When Chabrier reached the last crashing chords, I swore to myself I would never touch the piano again … Besides, Chabrier had broken several strings and put the piano out of action.’
I think we had almost as much fun – minus the broken instruments – last month at the WCFSO performing Chabrier’s irrepressible tonal travelogue with our area’s finest high school musicians.
[Quote from Aline Renoir, the painter’s wife]
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Debussy – Printemps, Modéré
WCFSO – March 2011
‘The slow, laborious birth of beings and things in nature, and then their blossoming outward and upward, and finally a burst of joy at being reborn to new life.’
Music for the arrival of spring, as described by its youthful composer in 1877.
