March 9 - Exceptional Orchestral Experience

Mar. 9 - Mar. 10, 2016

Victoria Hall and Café Lyrique


Orchestra rehearsal and dinner, followed the next evening by the full Concert. An exceptional orchestral experience.  The Orchestra de la Suisse Romande (OSR) in…






Description

Orchestra rehearsal and dinner, followed the next evening by the full Concert.

An exceptional orchestral experience.

 The Orchestra de la Suisse Romande (OSR) invites AIC members to a rehearsal and dinner with the conductor/composer, the violin soloist,  orchestra members, and partners/sponsors, on Wednesday 9 March 2016, and to attend the full concert on Thursday 10 March 2016 at an attractive price.

 

Orchestra de la Suisse Romande

 Conductor/composer: Matthias Pintscher

Violin: Renaud Capuçon

 Gabriel Fauré Pelléas et Mélisande, Suite op. 80 (1898)

Matthias Pintscher Mar'eh, for violin and orchestra (1210-2011)

Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No. 8 in G major, op. 88 (1889)

 

Wednesday 9 March Rehearsal and Dinner

Rehearsal

Victoria Hall

Please be aware of the House Rules!

19H00. English commentary in the bar area. Seated by 19H30! Open seating.

Rehearsal will include Mar'eh with Capuçon. This is a working session managed by the conductor.

No Limited space but registration mandatory

Note: No applause!

 

Dinner

Lyrique restaurant, OSR reserved section. Latest 22H00

Attended by conductor, violinist, and leading orchestra members.

They will change places during the evening.

Rehearsal and 3-course dinner, wine: CHF 60 members, guest (limit of 1) CHF 100

Limited spaces: confirmed in order of payment!

Deadline to register: February 24th, 2016

 

Orchestra de la Suisse Romande

 Victoria Hall, 10 March 2016

 Conductor/composer: Matthias Pintscher 

 Violin: Renaud Capuçon 

 Gabriel Fauré Pelléas et Mélisande, Suite op. 80 (1898)

 Matthias Pintscher Mar'eh, for violin and orchestra (1210-2011)

 Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No. 8 in G major, op. 88 (1889)

 

  

TO REGISTER FOR THE CONCERT, PLEASE VISIT THE OSR WEBSITE: click here

 Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924): French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. His musical talents was clear early; at the age of nine he was sent to a music college in Paris to train as church organist and choirmaster.

Fauré's best-known orchestral works are his suites. His music links the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the early 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and at his death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were heard.

Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80: Fauré wrote music for the London production of Maurice Maeterlinck's play in 1898. Afterwards, he drew on this music for a short orchestral suite. Fauré was  the first of four leading composers to write music inspired by Maeterlinck's drama, including the Debussy opera of 1902.

Prélude (quasi adagio)

The Prélude is based on two themes; the first is tightly restricted, that may reflect Mélisande's introverted personality. The second theme enters with a romantic solo cello and woodwind; this may represent Mélisande as first seen by her future husband, Golaud. The horn calls near the end of this movement may suggest Golaud's discovery of Mélisande in the forest.

Fileuse (andantino quasi allegretto)

La Fileuse is an orchestral spinning song - Mélisande at her spinning wheel in the play. A gentle oboe melody is accompanied by the strings, who maintain a theme imitative of spinning.

Sicilienne (allegro molto moderato)

Although in the traditionally sad key of G minor, it represents "the one moment of happiness shared by Pelléas and Mélisande".

Mort de Mélisande (molto adagio)

The last movement, in D minor, is inescapably tragic, with a theme of lamentation for clarinets and flutes. There are echoes of Mélisande's song throughout the movement. The opening theme returns fortissimo on the strings. This movement was played at Fauré's own funeral.

Matthias Pintscher (born 1971, Marl, North Rhine-Westphalia): considered one of the preeminent composers of our day and among its most exciting conductors. Pintscher now lives in New York City. As a youth, he studied the violin and conducting. He held a Daniel R Lewis Young Composer Fellowship with the Cleveland Orchestra,  2000-2002. More recently, he has been associated with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble InterContemporain as Music Director, the Cologne Philharmonie, Danish Radio, and the Julliard School, New York, as professor for composition. Several of his orchestral and vocal works have been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.

Mar’eh for violin and orchestra (2010/11) 

“ ‘Mar’eh’ means face, sign. The Hebrew word can also mean the aura of a face, a beautiful vision, something wonderful which suddenly appears before you.” With Mar’eh, Matthias Pintscher has composed a violin concerto that was premiered at the Lucerne Festival with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski and violinist Renaud Capuçon. “I came across this word when I thought of the fine lines which she can spin with her instrument, this very intensive, but light play.” The “wonderful appearance” is a metaphor for the sound aura of the whole concerto. A constant materialising of new sounds out of nothing, with the violin as protagonist. “I have tried to shape the whole in a very songlike fashion, so that the violin starts at the beginning and draws a line – or its vision – through to the end, in the most varied registers, often quite high, where it can only be continued in harmonics. I wanted this continual pacing out of a line. In the attempt to create horizontal arcs of sound, I was concerned with always giving the sound a direction in perspective.”

The orchestra is part of the transparent sonority, it answers in the gesture which the violin evokes and realises its own form of Klangfarbenmelodie [tone color melody]. “There are three flutes which have a prominent position....... They comment throughout on the violin part, constantly answering the violin in chamber music style. This then spreads further into the broken, spectral sonority of the orchestra. The texture is always light, never compact or violent, but transparent, answering in perspective the fine drawing of the violin in this sound space.”

The continuous movement of c. 22 minutes incorporates concentrations and culmination points: it interprets Schönberg’s term of Klangfarbenmelodie [tone color melody] as a continuum of sound: “My wish was to allow these many small particles to come together in the illusion of a large, light, transparent mass which permeates from the beginning to the end. It is about the fact that the sound has a direction, not in the melodic sense, but in that the sound always continues, is never interrupted. It is about the direction of sound in space and time.” ….. “The piece is high, fast, filigree, but it is not about an extrovert or exalted virtuosity, but about introspection, which can perhaps be called ‘concentric virtuosity’”.

Bärenreiter: The Musicians' Choice. Marie Luise Maintz  (Translation: Elizabeth Robinson)

Antonín Leopold Dvořák  (1841 – 1904): Czech composer of orchestral music and nine operas, including Rusalka. Following the nationalist example of Bedřich Smetana, Dvořák frequently employed aspects, specifically rhythms, of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia..

The Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, B. 163,  composed in 1889 on the occasion of his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts. Dvořák conducted the premiere in Prague in February 1890. In contrast to other symphonies of both the composer and the period, the music is warm, cheerful and optimistic. Along with the Seventh and the Ninth, this symphony is regarded as one of his major achievements. A typical performance of the Eighth lasts about 36 minutes, making it one of Dvořák's shorter symphonies. The orchestration of piccolo and English Horn is unusual in this symphony.

The symphony is in four movements:

1        Allegro con brio (G minor – G major)

2        Adagio (E-flat major – C minor – C major)

3        Allegretto grazioso – Molto vivace (G minor, ending in G major)

4        Allegro ma non troppo (G major)

Dvořák kept the typical format of a symphony in four movements, but structured them in an unusual way. All movements show a remarkable variety of themes, many of them based on Bohemian material. Occasionally the development of the themes seems like improvisation. "Dvorák's handling of form is indebted to Beethoven and Brahms, but he filled out the form with melodies of an unmistakably Czech flavor and a joviality few composers at the time possessed.............. The music is always cheerful and optimistic."

The first movement is a powerful and glowing exposition characterized by liberal use of timpani. It opens with a lyrical G minor theme in the cellos, horns, clarinets and bassoon with trombones, violas and double basses pizzicato. This gives way to a "bird call" flute melody, reaching the key G major. The recapitulation plays the second main theme by the English horn two octaves lower.

Despite a mark Adagio, the second movement moves along at a reasonable speed. It begins with a beautiful clarinet duet and ends quietly, but contentedly. Like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, the music is inspired by tranquil landscapes, depicting a summer's day, interrupted by a thunderstorm.

The first theme of the third movement is a melancholy waltz. In contrast to the "sweet and languid waltz" of the first theme, the second, functioning as a "trio," sounds like a Bohemian folk dance.

The finale, formally a "complex theme-and-variations," is the most turbulent movement. It begins with a fanfare of trumpets. (Conductor Rafael Kubelik: "Gentlemen, in Bohemia the trumpets never call to battle – they always call to the dance!") The melody is first played by cellos, then a cascade of instruments triumphant. After a tempestuous middle section (several major-minor shifts), and return to the slow, lyrical section, it ends in a chromatic coda of brass and timpani.

Source: wikipdia unless indicated



Date and Time

Wed, Mar. 9

-

Thu, Mar. 10, 2016

7 p.m. - 11 p.m.
(GMT+0100) Europe/Paris

Location

Victoria Hall and Café Lyrique



Event has ended