Occidental - Caltech Symphony Orchestra
Allen Robert Gross, Director | Amy Lam, Piano
Saturday, February 27, 2010 - 7:30PM | Thorne Hall, Occidental College
Caminos - Silvestre Revueltas
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) was arguably the most brilliant Mexican composer of the twentieth century. Within a short creative span of roughly ten years, he composed film music, orchestral and chamber music of astonishing originality. Much of his music can be characterized as “Mariachi gone crazy”, and Caminos (“Roads”), written in 1934, is a prime example. Revueltas’ musical roots in Mexican folkloric and popular music are readily apparent, but he gives everything a bizarre and surprising twist, from dissonant harmonies to ostinati (short repeated rhythmic patterns) derived from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, with numerous changes of meter.
********* Unfortunately, the Caminos recording is unavailable for this concert. Please download the Ramo Auditorium performance. *********
Variations on a Nursery Song, Op. 25 - Ernö von Dohnányi
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The music of Ernö von Dohnányi is little known in this country, but he was a major figure in Hungarian musical life of the early twentieth century before he emigrated to the United States in 1940. If he is known at all, it is for his Variations on a Nursery Song, written in 1914, a quasi-piano concerto. The “nursery song” is familiar to almost everyone as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and serves as the basis for ten witty variations, plus a fugue. The theme and variations are preceded by a lengthy orchestral introduction of great seriousness, giving absolutely no clue to what lies ahead., In 1914 the variations would have been familiar to knowledgeable audiences as parodies of the styles of Brahms, Richard Strauss, Saint-Saëns, Léhar and Debussy, among others. The orchestral writing is brilliantly colorful.
Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 120 - Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony is really his second in order of composition, first drafted in 1841. He withdrew it and re-published it, with numerous revisions, ten years later. It is a remarkable work, with a highly original way of treating thematic material across the “traditional” four-movement symphony. The presentation of new themes at unexpected moments together with the transference and transformation of these themes from one movement to another, had never been done before in a symphony. To further emphasize the continuity of these musical thoughts, Schumann specifies that the symphony be performed with the tiniest of pauses between the individual movements, and the third movement transitions into the fourth movement in a way strongly influenced by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
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AMY LAM, a senior at Caltech majoring in Applied Physics,, is the first of this year’s winners to be featured at our concerts this year. She grew up in Pleasanton, California and started studying piano at the age of six under the direction of Mila Shakhman. In 2004 she was a Music Teachers Association of California Piano Panelist, and performed at the statewide convention in San Diego; in 2006, she was a Young Artist Guild Semifinalist. Amy also plays flute and piccolo in the Occidental-Caltech Symphony, having begun flute lessons when she was ten. She has played in chamber ensembles and the orchestra at Caltech for all four years that she has been at Caltech.
ALLEN ROBERT GROSS is in his twenty-seventh year as Director of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony. Following an international career as a conductor in Germany, he joined the music faculties of Occidental College and Caltech in 1983. Dr. Gross is also Music Director and Conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra and conductor of the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra. His tours with the Santa Monica Chamber Philharmonia have taken him to Germany, Italy, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Spain. He also teaches conducting and directs the Chamber Music program at Occidental.
The OCCIDENTAL-CALTECH SYMPHONY is a college-community orchestra consisting of students and staff from Occidental College, the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and players from their surrounding communities. To join our mailing list, please email cdemesa@caltech.edu
Program Notes by Allen Robert Gross. Reprinted With Permission.