Grace Notes: Chamber Music in Boulder, Tchaikovsky in Boulder and Longmont

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Piano trios, Tchaikovsky 5 and two Romantic piano concertos on applications

By Peter Alexander Feb. 13 at 2:38 p.m.

The Boulder Symphony would be the first of two space orchestras to carry out Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony this weekend, as a part of a program Friday and Saturday (Feb. 16 and 17; particulars beneath) that additionally options Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto performed by Chinese language pianist Jialin Yao.

This system opens with Conga del Fuego Nuevo (“New fireplace” conga) by Mexican composer Arturo Marquez. The son of a Mexican mariachi musician, Marquez studied in Mexico and america, the place he earned an MFA in composition on the California Institute of Advantageous Arts. A Cuban carnival dance, the conga was the supply of the “conga line” made widespread within the U.S. by Xavier Cougat and different bandleaders.

Jialin Yao

At the moment a scholar on the Juilliard Faculty of Music, Yao received the 2023 Worldwide Keyboard Odyssiad® and Competition Competitors. Boulder Symphony’s conductor, Devin Patrick Hughes, was quoted within the live performance press launch: “Jialin is a rockstar! He performs the Rachmaninoff 3 . . .  with ease, soulfulness, and a virtuosity that rivals any of the good pianists.”

Rachmaninoff wrote his Third Piano Concerto, thought of some of the virtuosic and difficult piano concertos, in 1909 and performed the primary efficiency in New York later that 12 months. The preliminary reception was blended at finest, however Rachmaninoff gave a extra profitable second efficiency the next January performed by Gustav Mahler. At this time the concerto is extensively accepted as one of many biggest and most demanding works within the piano repertoire. 

The work that audiences can hear twice this weekend, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, was composed over the summer time of 1888. Despite highly effective emotional currents, the composer didn’t give the symphony any program or specific private which means. After the primary performances, he wrote in a letter “I’ve come to the conclusion that [the symphony] is a failure. There’s something repellent in it . . . which the general public instinctively acknowledges.”

Despite that conclusion, the Fifth Symphony has change into on of Tchaikovsky’s most carried out orchestra works. The coincidence of two performances, by two completely different orchestras on the entrance vary in a single weekend, is a sign of how profitable the symphony has been with each conductors and audiences. 

The Boulder Symphony may also play the Symphony on Sunday as a part of its GLOW Mission, free concert events designed for individuals with dementia, neurological and developmental disabilities. That efficiency will include solely the symphony, performed with no intermission and lasting roughly 45 minutes. 

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Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor
With Jialin Yao, piano

  • Arturo Marquez: Conga del Fuego Nuevo (“New fireplace” conga)
  • Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor
  • Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor

7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 16 and 17
Gordon Gamm Auditorium, Dairy Arts Middle

TICKETS

GLOW Live performance
Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor

  • Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor

2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18
Gordon Gamm Auditorium, Dairy Arts Middle

REGISTRATION

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The weekend’s second efficiency of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony will likely be supplied by the Longmont Symphony (LSO)and conductor Elliot Moore (7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17; particulars beneath).

This system, which incorporates Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet and the Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor performed by Marika Bournaki, is billed as “Portrait of a Composer.” That is an annual sequence for the LSO and Moore, offering a possibility to deal with the life and works of a single composer who’s a part of the orchestral custom.

Marika Bournaki

Bournaki teaches piano as a school member of Shenandoah College in Winchester, Va. She was born in Montreal—resulting in her being dubbed “the Celine Dion of classical”—and obtained bachelor’s and grasp’s levels from the Juilliard Faculty of Music. She was the topic of an award-winning documentary movie, “I Am Not a Rockstar,” that lined her musical research, staring when she was 12 and first took classes at Juilliard, via the age of 20.

She has carried out extensively with regional orchestras in america and Canada in addition to in Switzerland, Russia and Romania. She can be an lively chamber musician who has carried out at Bargemusic in Brooklyn and the Cape Cod music pageant, amongst different venues. Her academic actions have included applications that carry music to underserved populations in Canada.

Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto had its premiere in 1875 in Boston performed by Hans von Bülow. Nikolai Rubinstein, for whom it had been written, was first vital of the piece resulting in the primary efficiency being given outdoors of Russia. Rubinstein later modified his thoughts in regards to the concerto, and carried out it extensively. 

At this time it is likely one of the hottest piano concertos. Along with frequent appearances on orchestral applications, it was used because the sporting anthem for the Russian Olympic Committee on the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, in the course of the time that Russian athletes have been banned from showing below the Russian nationwide flag. American pianist Van Cliburn famously received the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competitors in Moscow taking part in the concerto.

Nearly as widespread because the Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is one in every of a number of works by the composer impressed by Shakespeare. After a stormy starting, the music breaks right into a hovering love theme that has been utilized in movies and tv, from The Three Musketeers to SpongeBob SquarePants

The live performance concludes with the Fifth Symphony, one in every of 4 by two completely different organizations over the weekend—yet one more testomony to Tchaikovsky’s place within the orchestral repertoire and within the hearts of audiences.

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Tchaikovsky: A Portrait
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor
With Marika Bournaki, piano

  • Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture
    Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor
    —Symphony No. 5 in E minor

7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17
Vance Model Civic Auditorium

TICKETS

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The Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO) will current their present artist-in-residence, pianist Hsing-Ay Hsu, in a program of piano trios, performed with members of the orchestra.

The live performance, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (Feb. 17; particulars beneath), is the third within the BCO’s sequence of mini-chamber concert events of the 2023–24 live performance season. The fourth mini-chamber live performance, that includes works together with trios for clarinet, cello and piano, will likely be at 7:30 pm. April 6. (See the BCO Net Web page for particulars.)

Hsing-Ay Hsu

Born in China, Hsu has studied at Juilliard, the Yale Faculty of Music, the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. A Steinway artist, she received the silver medal of the William Kapell Worldwide Piano Competitors and first prize of the Ima Hogg Nationwide Competitors, in addition to a number of artist grants and fellowships. She taught on the CU School of Music, the place she was creative director of the Pendulum New Music Collection.

The piano trio emerged as a definite style out of home music-making within the early classical period, when it was often known as an “accompanied piano sonata.” Initially, the piano half was written for ladies, who have been thought to have time for observe, with males—who weren’t anticipated to grasp devices—taking part in violin and cello components to strengthen the melody and bass line of the piano half. 

It was Mozart who first created piano trios with three equal components, beginning round 1780, adopted by Beethoven. By the point that Brahms wrote his second and third piano trios, within the late nineteenth century, it had change into a acknowledged chamber music style.

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Mini-Chamber Live performance 3: Triptych of Trios
Hsing-Ay Hsu, piano, and members of the BCO

  • J.S. Bach: Trio Sonata in G main, S1039 (arr. from trio sonata for 2 flutes and continuo)
  • Mozart: Piano Trio in G main, K564
  • Brahms: Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, op. 101

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17
Boulder Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 345 Mapleton Avenue

TICKETS

NOTE: Corrections have been made on Feb. 13, clarifying particulars of the performances and correcting typos within the authentic story.

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