Monday February 8, 2010

Charley talks with music director Michael Butterman about Sunday's Boulder Philharmonic concert.
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Butterman, conductor
Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No.8 in G major, Op.88 38:29 (3/21/09)
Also, Charley talks with Colorado All State Choir board member Will Taylor about this year's concert on Tuesday.
Heinrich Schütz (ed.Nancy Grundahl): Cantate Domino
2008 Colorado All State Women's Choir/ Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt
David Conte: Drinking Song from Carmina Juventutis
2008 Colorado All State Men's Choir/ Dr. James Rodde
NCA CD 1 Track 1 1:51 + 4:12
And, Charley talks with music director Cynthia Katsarelis about the Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra's concert Saturday.
Moreover, Charley anticipates the Ars Nova Singers concerts this weekend.
Leo Delibes: Flower Duet from Act I of Lakmé
Tana Cochran, soprano; Tara U'Ren, mezzo-soprano; Brian du Fresne, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 013109 JP


Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904): Symphony No. 8 in G major, Opus 88
I. Allegro con brio
II. Adagio
III. Allegretto grazioso
IV. Allegro ma non troppo

In August of 1889, Dvořák remarked that his “head was so full of ideas” for a new symphony that he could hardly write them down fast enough. This time, he said, he wanted a work “different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way.” By the following November, his Eighth Symphony was finished. The first performance was given in Prague, under the composer's direction, on February 2, 1890.
The work is sometimes called the “English” Symphony, for a number of reasons. First, during his sixth visit to London, Dvořák conducted it on April 24, 1890. The Musical Times called the piece “generally speaking, of a pastoral character, having been written, like (Beethoven's) Pastoral Symphony, under the influence of rural sights and sounds....All is fresh and charming.” The reviewer detected a story in the second movement, a story which, if it existed at all, Dvořák never revealed. “Wanting the story,” the critic continued, “one must be content with picturesque utterances, a great deal of absolute beauty, and the fresh aroma which the work gives forth.”
A year later, Dvořák conducted the Eighth Symphony when Cambridge University gave him an honorary Doctor of Music degree. “I do not like these celebrations,” he later recalled, “and when I have to be in one of them, I am on pins and needles....Nothing but ceremony, and nothing but doctors. All faces were serious, and it seemed to me as if no one knew any other language than Latin.”
While the composer was in England, Hans Richter was conducting the Eighth in Vienna. “Certainly you would have enjoyed this performance,” he wrote to Dvořák. “We all felt it was a splendid work, and consequently we were all enraptured. Brahms had dinner with me after the concert, and we drank to the health of the unfortunately absent father of No. 8.”
The Symphony was issued in 1892 by the English publisher Novello, as a form of revenge on Dvořák's German publisher Simrock, who would have been content with an unending series of Slavonic Dances. His reluctance to publish Dvořák's larger works irritated the composer, who said he had “a lot of ideas for big works in mind.” Negotiations deteriorated, and Dvořák blandly announced: “I shall simply do what God imparts me to do. That will certainly be the best thing.” He then sold the Eighth Symphony to the English publisher, but with a dedication “in gratitude to the Bohemian Academy of the Emperor Franz Joseph of Science, Literature, and the Arts.”
Despite its English connections, biographer John Clapham notes that “there is nothing in the music itself that by any stretch of the imagination can be described as English. Its spirit and thematic basis are thoroughly Czech....Starting with an expressive funereal melody in G minor, the sunshine suddenly breaks through when the flute plays a light-hearted theme in the major key....In the next movement, it is the Adagio's quiet initial phrase which for a while shatters the idyllic peace. A gracious waltz with a rustic trio takes the place of a scherzo; and the work is rounded off with a somewhat freely organized set of variations.”
The Symphony is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani and strings.