New England Philharmonic Opens 2012-2013 Season With Atmospherics Saturday, October 27

Concert at Tsai Performance Center in Boston features soprano Sarah Pelletier and the World Premier of "Scare Quotes" by composer-in-residence David Rakowski
 
 
Composer David Rakowski
Composer David Rakowski
Oct. 17, 2012 - PRLog -- Boston, MA--Following a very successful 35th anniversary season and capped by acclaimed Boston and Providence performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, the New England Philharmonic begins the 2012 - 2013 season with Atmospherics on Saturday, October 27 at 8:00 P.M. at Boston University's Tsai Performance Center located at 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.

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 tickets to this concert or a full season subscription, go here:  http://www.nephilharmonic.org/tickets/.

The program will by highlighted by New England Philharmonic's Composer in Residence and Brandeis Faculty member David Rakowski who will build on “Current Conditions” with the world premier of his commissioned fourth symphony, Scare Quotes.  Each movement in the symphony are using titles taken from The Weather Channel website--Waning Crescent, Current Conditions, Ice to Rain and finally, Double Shot, written on a day when two storms were merging!  Each movement "quotes" musical themes from pieces by other composers--the first of them quotes the third and fifth Brandenburg Concertos of Bach while the second movement "responds to jazz" with a quote from the Oliver Nelson jazz standard "Stolen Moments."  The third movement, Ice to Rain is a slow movement that quotes the fifth movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and finally the fourth movement, Double Shot quotes both the first and last movements of Mozart's 40th Symphony.

Rakowski is most widely known for his ever-expanding collection of piano études (currently numbering eighty-eight) but he has also written three symphonies, five concertos, three large wind ensemble pieces, a sizable collection of chamber and vocal music, as well as incidental music.   He has received numerous awards--among them are the Rome Prize, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the 2006 Barlow Prize, and the 2004-2006 Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Tanglewood Music Center among many others.

Also featured in this concert will be Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave's composition Rainbow.  Musgrave describes this piece:  "The work is a soundscape in both a literal and figurative sense.  In nature, of course, a rainbow heralds the end of a storm and the reappearance of the sun.  Here the rainbow is also intended to be a metaphor for a bright future which, hopefully, befitted the exciting occasion of the opening of Glasgow's new Concert Hall as well as celebrating the City as Cultural Capital of Europe."

Richard Strauss's meditation on nature and the seasons of human life in his Vier letzte Lieder were his final completed works composed in 1948, when he was 84.  The four songs deal with death and were written shortly before Strauss himself died however, instead of the typical Romantic defiance, these Four Last Songs are suffused with a sense of calm, acceptance, and completeness and the lyrics speak of gardens with cool rain seeping into flowers as well as the peacefulness of starry nights.

Finally, the program concludes with La Mer, Claude Debussy's fine painting of the sea in three contrasting moods.  Influenced by the impressionist painters of his time, La Mer is one of the supreme achievements in symphonic literature.  The sea Debussy knew, from his childhood visits to Cannes and later travels in Italy, was the Mediterranean.  It's a civilized sea, and Debussy caught its moods in all their richness.  He subtitled La Mer "Three Symphonic Sketches," and the names of the movements provide listeners with verbal suggestions to stimulate our own sense of imagery.

2012-2013 SEASON SCHEDULE:


Saturday, October 27, 2012, 8:00 P.M.
Tsai Performance Center
685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Atmospherics
Richard Pittman, conductor

Sarah Pelletier, soprano

David Rakowski:  Scare Quotes (World Premiere)

Richard Strauss: Vier letzte Liede

Thea Musgrave: Rainbow

Claude Debussy: La Mer


Sunday, December 9, 2012, 3:00 P.M.
Tsai Performance Center
685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Family Concert: Beats and Beasts
Richard Pittman, conductor

PALS Children’s Chorus, Andy Icochea Icochea, Director

Silvestre Revueltas: Sensemaya

Aaron Copland: Buckaroo Holiday and Hoedown from Rodeo

Aaron Copland: Old American Songs, Part 1

Concerto TBD, Featuring the Winner of the NEP Young Artist Competition


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

Bernard Hoffer: Violin Concerto (World Premiere)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 6

Michael Gilbertson: Vigil (first Boston performance)


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
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