New England Philharmonic Presents "Ancient Sources, New Sounds"

Jan. 23, 2013 - PRLog -- Boston, MA--New England Philharmonic, under the direction of Richard Pittman, will present "Ancient Sources, New Sounds" on Saturday, March 2 at 8 PM at Boston University's Tsai Performance Center, located at 685 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  This intriguing concert of 20th and 21st century music includes a World Premiere by Bernard Hoffer and a Boston Premiere by Michael Gilbertson.  The concert will also feature compositions by Peter Child and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

American, yet Swiss-born composer and conductor Bernard Hoffer, whose Violin Concerto will have its world premiere at this concert, has created original music for a number of films, television series and commercials.  Hoffer is probably best known amongst the general public for his work on American cartoons such as Thundercats and Silverhawks.  In addition, the music he developed for The McNeil-Lehrer Report still used on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, was nominated for an Emmy Award.  He has also won six Clio Awards for his work on commercials.  The dynamic and highly regarded Boston violinist Danielle Maddon, for whom this concerto was written and who was Hoffer's compositional inspiration, will be the featured soloist.

Composer Michael Gilbertson whose Vigil makes its Boston premiere at this concert is currently a graduate student at Yale School of Music yet already, his compositions have earned four Morton Gould Awards from ASCAP, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2007 - 2008 Palmer-Dixon Prize, awarded by the Juilliard composition faculty for the best student work of the year.  His piano trio Fold by Fold received the Israel Prize from the Society for New Music. Gilbertson’s music can be heard in the 2006 documentary Rehearsing a Dream, which was nominated for an Academy Award.  

Gilbertson’s Vigil was composed during the summer of 2007. The work is scored for a large orchestra: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, piano, three percussionists, timpani, and strings.  Gilbertson has been interested in the Vesper services of the Russian Orthodox Church.  While no material in Vigil was drawn from the music of the Russian Church, the reverent nature of the Vespers provided a conceptual basis for the work, and suggested the expansive soundscape the composer tried to create within it.  Vigil is nocturnal and lyrical in character, and is structured in a large arc form.

Also on the program is Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony in E minor, published as Symphony No. 6.  The piece was composed in 1946–47, during and immediately after World War II.   Dedicated to Michael Mullinar, it was first performed by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on April 21, 1948 and within a year it had received some 100 performances, including the U.S. premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky on August 7, 1948. Leopold Stokowski gave the first New York performances the following January with the New York Philharmonic and immediately recorded it, declaring that "this is music that will take its place with the greatest creations of the masters."  However, Vaughan Williams, very nervous about this symphony, threatened several times to tear up the draft!  At the same time, his program note for the first performance took a defiantly flippant tone.  The Symphony is noteworthy for its unusually discordant harmonic language, reminiscent in approach if not in technique of his F Minor Symphony from over a decade earlier, and for its inclusion of a tenor saxophone among the woodwinds.  In several respects this symphony marks the beginning of Vaughan Williams’s experiments with orchestration that so characterize his late music.

Peter Child's Jubal was inspired by John Dryden's Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687, which acclaims the biblical inventor of musical instruments.  Composed for the New England Conservatory Orchestra, Jubal was also performed by the MIT orchestra during a European tour to Prague.  In Jubal, there are plenty of dramatic outbursts following welling climaxes, interspersed by quieter interludes, along with an unusually rich use of contrapuntal textures based on motifs that draw on all twelve tones which transform through a myriad of coloristic guises.  As well as being finely crafted, there is a unifying mood that reaches a peak in an expressive pedal point, sustained dissonance in the horns with side drum interjections, preparing for a pensive conclusion.

General admission tickets for this concert at $25.00 and $5.00 for students with ID at the door are on sale now.  To purchase individual concert tickets, go here: http://www.nephilharmonic.org.

Saturday, March 2, 2013, 8:00 P.M.

Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Ancient Sources, New Sounds
Richard Pittman, conductor
Danielle Maddon, violin
Peter Child: Jubal

Michael Gilbertson: Vigil
Bernard Hoffer: Violin Concerto (World Premiere)
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 6
Michael Gilbertson: Vigil (first Boston performance)

Tickets:  $25.00; $5.00 for students

Saturday, April 27, 2013, 8:00 P.M.

Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Form and Variations
Richard Pittman, conductor
Randall Hodgkinson, piano
Gunther Schuller: Five Bagatelles
Benjamin Britten: Piano Concerto
Steven Stucky: Rhapsodies (First Boston Performance)
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 7

Tickets:  $25.00; $5.00 for students