ATLANTA YOUTH WIND SYMPHONY
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2024 4:00 PM
LAWRENCEVILLE ARTS CENTER

tour d’europe

Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare (1924)
Written in 1924, Strauss penned Fanfare für die Wiener Philharmoniker for the Vienna Philharmonic’s first benefit ball, which raised money for the musicians’ pension fund. The piece was originally performed while honored guests arrived at the event, and the work has subsequently been performed every year since at the Philharmonic’s annual ball.

Joyful Overture (1996)
The Joyful Overture (originally titled Centennial Overture for the Indiana University School of Music’s 100th anniversary of its founding) was composed in 1996 by Czech composer Jindrich Feld. It was premiered in 1997 at the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) National Conference in Athens, Georgia. Dr. Scott Stewart performed on baritone saxophone in the Indiana University Wind Ensemble, conducted by Ray E. Cramer. The overture alternates a cheerful syncopated theme with a darker, flowing melody.

Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordråk (1866)
Edvard Grieg met Richard Nordraak, a fellow Norwegian, in 1863. Together they championed nationalism in their musical activities, a cause which had lain dormant in Grieg's thoughts up until this time. Nordraak already had the Norwegian National Anthem to his credit, composed four years earlier when he was seventeen. From the time of their meeting the two young composers worked closely together until Nordraak's health begain to fail three years later.

In October of 1865, Nordraak suffered a "violent attack of inflammation of the lungs which developed into galloping consumption". Because Grieg was on his way to Rome, Nordraak did not have the solace of his friend's company during the lonely months of his illness. He died on March 26, 1866, in Berlin. Grieg, then in Rome, was ignorant of his death. The very day he heard of it, April 6, 1866, he wrote The Funeral March in A minor for Richard Nordraak for piano, as a monument to the memory of his dear friend.

One year later, Grieg arranged the work for military band, transposing it to g minor. He included the piece in a Philarmonic Society concert in Christiania (Oslo) later that year. In 1878, Grieg made yet another version of the work, this time for brass choir. The existence of this third score went unnoticed until Geoffrey Emerson obtained a microfilm of it from Oslo University.

Paris Sketches (1994)  
From notes by composer Martin Ellery: This is my personal tribute to a city I love, and each movement pays homage to some part of the French capital and to other composers who lived, worked or passed through it -- rather as did Maurice Ravel in his own tribute to the work of an earlier master in Le Tombeau de Couperin. Running like a unifying thread through the whole score is the idea of bells -- a prominent feature of Paris life.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés: The Latin Quarter famous for artistic associations and bohemian lifestyle. This is a dawn tableau haunted by the shade of Ravel: the city awakens with the ever-present sense of morning bells.

Pigalle: The Soho of Paris, this is a burlesque with scenes cast in the mold of a balletic scherzo -- humorous in a kind of “Stravinsky-meets-Prokofiev” way. It’s episodic, but everything is based on the harmonic figuration of the opening. The bells here are car horns and police sirens!

Père Lachaise: This is the city’s largest cemetery, the final resting place of many a celebrity who had once walked its streets. The spirit of Satie’s Gymnopédies -- themselves a tribute to a still more distant past -- is affectionately evoked before what is in effect the work’s slow movement concludes with a quotation of the Dies Irae. The mood is one of softness and delicacy, which I have attempted to match with more transparent orchestrations. The bells are gentle, nostalgic, wistful.

Les Halles: A fast, bustling finale; the bells triumphant and celebratory. Les Halles is the old market area, a Parisian Covent Garden, and like Pigalle, this is a series of related but contrasting episodes. Its climax quotes from Hector Berlioz’s Te Deum, which was first performed in 1855 at the church of St. Eustache -- actually in the district of Les Halles. A gradual crescendo, initiated by the percussion, prefaces the opening material proper, and the work ends with a backward glance at the first movement before closing with the final bars of the Berlioz Te Deum.

Merry Music for Wind Band (1983)      
Hidas composed Merry Music for wind band in 1980; it was published in 1983. This pleasant A-B-A work was premiered at the first WASBE conference in Manchester, England, in July 1981. Hidas justifies the title by incorporating bouncy Hungarian dance and folk-song rhythms with the late romanticism of Tchaikovsky. With his careful scoring technique, including sparse use of percussion, the composer is able to create a feeling of lightness even when played by a large symphonic band. A second unique feature is the use of the conical-bore brass instruments as a mellow-sounding bridge between woodwinds and the brighter-sounding cylindrical brass instruments.

La Procession du Rocio (1913)
La Procession du Rocio was given its premiere in Madrid in 1913. Every year in Seville, during the month of June, there takes place in a section of the city known as Triana, a festival called the Procession of the Dew in which the best families participate. They make their entry in their coaches following an image of the Virgin Mary on a golden cart drawn by oxen and accompanying by music. The people dance the soleare and the seguidilla. A drunkard sets off firecrackers, adding to the confusion. At the sound of the flutes and drums, which announce the procession, all dancing ceases. A religious theme is heard and breaks forth mingling with the pealing of the church bells and the strains of the royal march. The procession passes and as it recedes, the festivities resume, but at length they fade away.

Composer Joaquin Turina (1882-1949) was a native of Spain, but was influenced early in his career by the impressionistic harmonies of Debussy and Ravel while studying in Paris. Upon returning to Spain, he drew inspiration from Spanish folk music with La Procession du Rocio becoming one of his best-known works. The music portrays a festival and procession that takes place in the Triana neighborhood of Seville, and is filled with wonderful idiomatic Spanish musical elements. Alfred Reed’s marvelous transcription created in 1962 remains an enduring staple in the repertoire for wind bands.

English Dances Set II (1951)    
English Dances, Op. 27 and 33, are two sets of light music pieces, composed for orchestra by Malcolm Arnold in 1950 and 1951. Each set consists of four dances inspired by, although not based upon, country folk tunes and dances. Each movement is denoted by the tempo marking, as the individual movements are untitled.

Folk Dances (1942)
Shostakovich wrote the suite Op. 63, Native Leningrad, in 1942 as a tribute to the courage of the citizens of Leningrad. This suite was culled from the incidental music for a "concert play spectacle" entitled Native Country or Motherland. It was scored for tenor and bass soloists, choir and orchestra, and was premiered on November 7, 1942, at the Dzerzhinsky Central Club.

The suite has four movements: Overture – October 1917, Song of the Victorious October (Song of the River Neva), Youth Dance (Song of the Sailors), and Song of Leningrad. The Youth Dance is the movement transcribed as Folk Dances. It first received this name when transcribed for piano by Lev Solin. The name stuck when retranscribed for military band by M. Vakhutinsky. H. Robert Reynolds rescored Vakhutinsky's transcription, making it suitable for American wind bands.

While the melodies used in Youth Dance are reminiscent of folk tunes, Shostakovich's work is original. Considering the programmatic nature of the work, it is justifiable to assume Shostakovich wished to evoke an overt Russian sentiment in the same way that Gustav Holst's First Suite in E-flat and Gordon Jacob's An Original Suite sound and feel distinctly British.