Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season November-December 2017 | Page 23

PRESENTING THE Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two Hillside Homes! We are completing plans to add 52 new homes and fully renovate the amenities on our beautifully scenic campus. Learn more about the area’s only Quaker-guided, not-for-profit, continuing care retirement community. Conceptual rendering Call 443-330-7128 ™ to learn more about the Hillside Homes Priority List. 13801 York Road • Cockeysville, MD 21030 • www.broadmead.org Pending Approval by the Maryland Department of Aging The first movement’s opening is one of the most famous in the repertoire: a series of nine chords in the piano, underpinned by deep tolling, that crescendos from pianissimo to fortissimo and leads directly into the first theme, played low in the strings and clarinets. Surely this is an evocation of the great bells of Russian churches, which fascinated Rachmaninoff. Also influenced by Russian Orthodoxy is the melancholy principal theme, which moves chant-like within a narrow range. The piano introduces the second theme, full of romantic yearning. After a brief development section (announced by a brass fanfare) featuring both themes, the chant theme returns in the strings, but now with the piano providing an incisive march tread beneath. A quiet prelude by muted strings opens the slow movement and moves the tonality from C minor to a very distant E major. The movement’s main theme is oddly introduced: over a piano arpeggio, a solo flute presents a little phrase that turns out to be the theme’s ending. Then the solo clarinet offers the theme proper: a subdued, repetitive tune that will only find passionate release when the piano adopts it late in the movement. Rachmaninoff saves his loveliest music for the close, as the woodwinds singing birdcalls mesh magically with the piano and the violins complete the melody. Another bridge prelude opens the finale. Here in the midst of much bold, aggressive music comes a surprise: the marvelous soaring melody, first heard in the plangent tones of solo oboe and viola, for which this concerto is so beloved. This tune almost lost its dignity forever when Tin Pan Alley hijacked it in the 1940s for the sentimental love song “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” The work ends with one last sweeping statement by full orchestra and soloist of the big tune, then hustles to an exciting finish. NEW Brian Ganz All concerts at Peabody are now FREE! Peabody Chamber Orchestra All-Chopin Recital Saturday, November 11 at 8:00 pm with Joseph Young, conductor Tuesday, November 28 at 8:00 pm with Brian Ganz, piano Johann Sebastian Bach: Including the rarely heard Tarantella, Bolero, Fugue, and Bourrées, as well as the Polonaise in A major, Fantasy- Impromptu and excerpts from the Opus 10 études. Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 Maurice Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) Suite Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 96 in D major trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 2017 Reserve seats at peabody.jhu.edu/events or by calling 667-208-6620. N OV– DEC 2017 / OV E R T U R E 21