Converse Wind Ensemble & Converse Symphony Orchestra Concert

On May 3, 2018 in Twichell Auditorium, CSO & Converse Wind Ensemble will perform a combined spring concert consisting of Wagner & Dvořák. Guest Artists include Rebecca Turner, soprano. Admission is free!
Wagner, Wesendonck Lieder
Forced to flee his good job in Dresden for having taken the losing side in the uprising of 1848, Wagner ended up in Zurich, where he met silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Mrs. Wesendonck, the young, pretty, and artistic wife of the merchant, quickly fell under Wagner’s spell. Wagner had equally succumbed to Mathilde’s charms, resulting in her becoming both his lover and muse. Mathilde’s poems come from the early days of Wagner’s work on Tristan und Isolde, and his setting of five of them shows the harmonic idiom and philosophy of melody and phrase that were taking shape in his mind at the time. For the publication of the songs in 1862 he marked two of them “studies for Tristan und Isolde”: these were im Treibhaus, with material used at the beginning of Act III, and Träume, reused essentially unchanged at the center of the love duet in Act II. Wagner himself orchestrated Traume to be played by a chamber orchestra beneath Mathilde’s window on her birthday, 23 December 1857.
Dvořák, Legends, Op. 94
“Perhaps this one is the loveliest of the ten Legends, perhaps another; there are bound to be different opinions, but only within one general opinion – that they are all beautiful!” -Brahms
Despite the title, there are no stories attached to Dvorák’s set of ten musical legends – or at least none that he was willing to divulge. Like Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, the Legends began life as piano duets and were later orchestrated in 1881. In many opinions, there are four Legends that have captured our hearts, each filled with a richness of melody and imagination. The sixth Legend is haunting and mysterious, with a hint of drama – it is probably the best known of the ten. The fifth has an intimate character and, like the sixth, includes the harp in the orchestral texture. The ninth adopts a Bohemian dance with a rustic mood suggested by the drone bass. The seventh is more capricious and lively, ending the selection on a graceful and good-humored note. Dvorak’s subtle, imaginative scoring, his unpredictable but engaging harmonic shifts relate a composer’s need to communicate and share. The ten Legends, although not as well known as the two sets of Slavonic Dances, have, in their unassuming way, all the depth of response to be found in Dvorak’s larger musical essays.