Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024 • 7:30 p.m.
Weigel Auditorium
Columbus, OH
Wind Symphony Chamber Winds
Russel C. Mikkelson, conductor
Uiliami Fihaki, guest conductor
Program
"Rodrigo and Strauss"
Addis Ababa, from Ciudades
Guillermo Lago (b. 1960)
Saxophone Quartet
Lucinda Dunne, soprano
Cooper Greenlees, alto
Sean Bauman, tenor
Colin Fogerty, baritone
Guillermo Lago is musician Willem van Merwijk’s composing alter ego. At the age of 46 in the midst of a career as a performing musician and arranger, he discovered this new way of expressing his musical ideas and, step by step, composing has become his mainstay. *
Ciudades is a series of musical sketches of cities that have special meaning to Lago. He adds to the collection each time he has an impactful musical experience. "Addis Ababa" is an energetic description of the capital of Ethiopia and inspired by Lago’s collaboration with the Ethiopian singer Minyeshu. They worked together at the famous New Year’s Concert by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in 2007. The piece features an irrepressible groove with syncopated melodies, various extended techniques and solo sections for each saxophonist.
* From Willem van Merwijk's website
Adagio para Orquesta de Instrumentos de Viento
Joaquin Rodrigo (1901–1999)
Uiliami Fihaki, guest conductor
At once mournful and sweet, Adagio seems to reflect on a past event through the lens of three characters: solo flute, oboe and clarinet. As if recalling a distant memory, the characters elaborate on similar themes, without exactly engaging in a call-and-response type dialogue we might expect with repetitive melodic material. This opening scene is patient and not overly nostalgic. An energetic and driving B section seems to be a flashback to that distant event, revealing chaotic turmoil. When the solo characters return, we have a better sense of how they are connected, their memories now more present, front of mind. Another flashback interjects before a stoic, resigned conclusion. Although composer Joaquín Rodrigo did not specify a programmatic intent for Adagio, the moods are indicative of many other compositions from his prolific career. Known largely for contributions to the classical guitar repertoire, Rodrigo’s music is decidedly Spanish. Having gone blind at an early age, he became a national artistic figure, receiving Spain’s highest civilian honor in 1996. There are, however, notable reference to other parts of his biography. In Adagio, for example, the allegro sections are reminiscent of the musical storytelling of Paul Dukas, with whom Rodrigo studied in Paris. Adagio was Rodrigo’s first work for winds.
—Note by David Stanley
— Brief Interval —
Sonatina No. 1 for Winds,
“From an Invalid’s Workshop”
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
i. Allegro moderato
ii. Andante
iii. Molto Allegro
When Strauss turned for one last time to wind music, he was nearly eighty years old and grief-stricken, as the momentous events of history seemed determined to wipe out all that he had sought to create in his lifetime. The final blow came on October 2, 1943, when Munich’s National Theater was reduced by bombing to a shell. Six days later, Strauss wrote to his friend and biographer, Willi Schuh:
“The destruction of the Munich Court Theater, the holy site of the first Tristan and Meistersinger performances, where I heard Freischütz for the first time 73 years ago, where my good father sat in the orchestra for 49 years at the first horn desk... is the greatest catastrophe of my life, for which there is no consolation and at my age no hope... With Capriccio [premiered in Munich one year earlier in October 1942], my life’s work is ended, and the notes that I scribble now for my heirs as ‘wrist exercises’... have absolutely no meaning for music history... It is only a way to drive away the boredom of idle hours, since one can’t read Wieland or play Skat the whole day.”
Unable to face the reality of the present, Strauss retreated into his own past with a series of instrumental works that he probably never expected to hear played. Among these is the Sonatina in F (TrV 288), subtitled by the composer “from an invalid’s workshop.” That three-movement work from early in 1943 was followed in less than a year by a four-movement piece for nearly the same instrumentation. That second work, labeled Symphony for Winds (TrV 291) by his publisher after Strauss’s death, carried a more optimistic subtitle, “Cheerful Workshop,” and an aphorism, “to the spirit of the eternal Mozart at the end of grateful life,” that confirms the inspiration for both of these works.
While the inspiration may have come from Mozart, the sound of these two works is pure Strauss from beginning to end. The opening of the first movement of the Sonatina offers an obvious example. Strauss begins with two ideas in contrary motion, pitting the oboes against the bassoons, and by the end of first measure, he has already fallen out of the key of F through a half-step motion that is a virtual Straussian cliché. A sequential repetition and extension carries the two ideas further afield until the ninth measure finds the tonic F with a jarring V–I cadence. Then a new transitional idea takes hold and Strauss is off once again on another series of sequences and evolving passages. There is an air of spontaneity about the music, which suggests a composer caught in the moment rather imposing a rigorous form on his materials, and the passage ends with an abrupt V–I cadence on the mediant.
—Note by Scott Warfield
Personnel
Rodrigo
Piccolo
Braden Stewart
Flute
Jonathan Mitchell
Lance Korte
Oboe
Lauren Kowal
Sophie Craciun
Laura Pitner
Bassoon
Isaiah Heyman
Bitania Petros
Clarinet
Samuel Langer
Asa Mattson
Joseph DeCillis
Horn
Olivia Boden
Andrew Waite
Paul Bissler
Nora Lemmon
Trumpet
Luke Bingham
Nick Schnitzspahn
Connor McMullen
Trombone
Gavin Abrams
Nik Henderson
Bass Trombone
Shawn Davern
Tuba
Will Roesch
Percussion
Haydn Veith
Matt Hanson
Brody Fogle
Noah Landrum
Strauss
Flute
Katie Sharp
Sofia Geelhood
Oboe
Lauren Kowal
Laura Pitner
Bassoon
Brandon Golpe
Bitania Petros
Contrabassoon
Isaiah Heyman
Clarinet
Bernadette John
Kaleigh McGee
Xinchen Du
Basset Horn
Joseph Zishka
Bass Clarinet
Rachel Weinstein
Horn
Annie Moon
Andrew Waite
Olivia Boden
Cheng Peng
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