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MTT’s Street Song and Winter Daydreams
ABOUT THE CONCERT
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Parker Van Ostrand, piano
San Diego Symphony Orchestra
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS: Street Song for Symphonic Brass
RACHMANINOFF: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13, Winter Daydreams
Due to illness, Michael Tilson Thomas regrettably has withdrawn from his performances with the San Diego Symphony on February 15 and 16.
Conducting the program conceived by Michael Tilson Thomas will be Teddy Abrams, Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra and formerly a Conducting Fellow and Assistant Conductor under Michael Tilson Thomas at the New World Symphony from 2008-2011.
The concert opens with Michael Tilson Thomas' Street Song for Symphonic Brass, a work reflecting Tilson Thomas’s love for all kinds of popular and street music of the past and especially music connected with his grandparents, the Yiddish theatre stars Boris and Bessie Tomashefsky. Rising star pianist Parker Van Ostrand will join Abrams and the Symphony for Rachmaninoff’s demanding Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, based on Paganini’s most famous and familiar ear-worm, his 24th Caprice for solo violin. The program ends with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1, the Russian composer’s first large-scale orchestral work. Conceived and written when the composer was still in his mid-twenties, this symphony makes delightful use of motifs and phrases derived from Russian village-songs; in the last movement, one whole folk-melody, originally a wedding song for dancing, anticipating the coming of Spring and the resurgence of new young life:
In a dark wood, in the forest,
I’ll go ploughing, my Paulina!
I’ll sow flax-seeds, I’ll sow green ones!
Pre-Concert Talk
Inside the Music
Drinks Status: Enjoy Beverages in the Lobbies
Age and Seating Guideline
Pre-Paid Parking
Come enjoy a pre-concert talk covering highlights and backstories of this program, one hour before concert-time.
Guest speaker for this weekend: Jordan Kuspa, Founding Director of the Del Mar International Composers Symposium.
Composer Michael Tilson Thomas
MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS: STREET SONG
Composed: 1988
Length: 18 minutes
Orchestration: 3 trumpets, flugel horn, 4 French horns, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba (also available for brass quintet)
Street Song is in three continuous parts—an interweaving of three “songs.” The first song opens with a jagged downward scale suspending in the air a sweetly dissonant harmony that very slowly resolves. This moment of resolution is followed by responses of various kinds. The harmonies move between the world of the Middle Ages and the present, between East and West, and always, of course, from the perspective of twentieth century America. Overall, the movement is about starting and stopping, the moments of suspension always leading somewhere else.
The second ‘song’ is introduced by a singsong horn solo. It is followed by a simple trumpet duet, which was first written around 1972. It is folklike in character and also cadences with suspended moments of slowly resolving dissonance.
The third song is really more of a dance. It begins when the trombone slides a step higher, bringing the work into the key of F-sharp and into a jazzier swing. The harmonies here are the stacked up moments of suspension from the first two parts of the piece. By now, I hope these “dissonant” sounds actually begin to sound “consonant.” There is a resolution, but it is the world of a musician who, after many after-hour gigs, greets the dawn. Finally, the three songs are brought together, and the work moves toward a quiet close.
- Program Note by composer Michael Tilson Thomas
For this classical music concert, purchased drinks should only be enjoyed in the lobbies pre-concert or during intermission, and should not be brought inside the concert hall.
For Jacobs Masterworks concerts, only children ages five years and older will be allowed into the concert hall. These children must have a ticket and be able to sit in an un-accompanied seat.
Ace Parking has provided a DEDICATED JACOBS MUSIC CENTER PARKING PRE-PURCHASE PAGE for upcoming events at JMC.
- Jacobs Masterworks
Choose a date below to see details.