Roots! presented by the Georgia State Symphony Orchestra

Wednesday

November 20, 2024

7:00 P.M.

KOPLEFF RECITAL HALL

The Bamboula; Rhapsodic Dance, Op. 75 (1911)

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR | 1875-1912

Garrett Clay, graduate conductor

This work was first played in America by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in June, 1910, and was the result of a commission from Mr. Carl Stoeckel, to whom the work is inscribed. The four bars beginning from letter B are identical with a well-known West Indian Negro Dance called "The Bamboula," the tempo of the original "Bamboula" being quite fast throughout. No other subject matter is used throughout the composition, which is merely a series of evolutions of the phrase mentioned.

Of mixed-race descent, Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white musicians in New York City as the "African Mahler" when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s. He was particularly known for his three cantatas on the epic 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor premiered the first section in 1898, when he was 23. He married an Englishwoman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers. Their son, Hiawatha, adapted his father's music for a variety of performances. Their daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor, became a composer-conductor.

Trumpet Concerto in Ab major (1950)

ALEXANDER ARUTIUNIAN | 1920-2012

featuring 2023 Brumby Concerto Competition Winner

Fish Brosmer, trumpet

Arutiunian conceived the main theme for this concerto in 1943. Like most of his themes, it first came to him while he was asleep. He was encouraged to complete the work by a longtime friend, Zolak Vartasarian, who was principal trumpet in the Yerevan Opera Orchestra. Unfortunately, Vartasarian died in the war that same year, and the concerto was not completed until 1950. It was premiered then by Timofei Dokshizer in Moscow. The movements are Andante, Allegro energico, Meno mosso, and Allegro. A long virtuoso cadenza brings the concerto to an abrupt but stylish close.

Since Arutiunian composed this work (also known as Concerto in A flat), it has continued to grow in popularity. In 1990-1991, for example, it led a list of eighty-two solos performed by approximately 150 professional, faculty, and student members of the International Trumpet Guild.

- Program Note from Program Notes for Band

Arutunian often incorporated melodic material reminiscent of the ashughner (Armenian poet musicians and minstrels). Amid the vibrant, rhythmic, and downright catchy themes of his trumpet concerto, Arutunian intersperses long, melodic, near-improvisatory sections hearkening back to the ashughner. Aykaz Messlayan was the first performer of the concerto, but it was the Russian virtuoso Timofei Dokschitzer whose recordings and international performances of the work cemented it as a staple for trumpeters around the world.

- Program Note from University of Texas Wind Ensemble concert program, 9 February 2022

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, B163 (1889)

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK | 1841-1904

IV. Allegro ma non troppo

In 1889, Dvořák had two more symphonies left to write, plus a cello concerto and a series of symphonic poems. Twelve years earlier, Brahms had championed Dvořák’s music (especially the Moravian Duets), leading to the international success of the Slavonic Dances and securing Fritz Simrock as the publisher for the Czech composer’s music. Ironically, the G-major Symphony was not published by Simrock, whose insulting offer of merely one-sixth of the fee paid for the D-minor Symphony (No. 7, Op. 70) was refused by the composer. Dvořák had recently become quite popular in England, and the G-major Symphony was published in that country by Novello in 1892.

Despite occasional dramatic outbursts, the predominant tone of the Eighth Symphony is one of bucolic euphoria, the sheer joy of being alive in a world of natural wonders. The composer’s biographer Otakar Sˇourek explains that Dvořák had “[h]is own garden in Vysoká [the state-sponsored retreat in southern Bohemia], which he loved ‘like the divine art itself’, and the fields and woods through which he wandered…. [These were] a welcome refuge, bringing him not only peace and fresh vigor of mind, but happy inspiration for new creative work. In communion with Nature, in the harmony of its voices and the pulsating rhythms of its life, in the beauty of its changing moods and aspects, his thoughts came more freely…. Here he absorbed poetical impressions and moods, here he rejoiced in life and grieved in its inevitable decay, here he indulged in philosophical reflections on the substance and meaning of the interrelation between Nature and life.”

Dvořák, it could be said, was reflecting a worldview in which “intelligent design” is the source of both wonderment and woe. The opening of the Eighth Symphony’s first movement, a serious and rather somber chorale for low strings, gives way quickly to an audacious flute solo. Without ever subduing the dramatic element, Dvořák gives free reign to the poetic side of his nature through the ensuing movements of this beloved score, from the often melancholy rhetoric of the Adagio to the folk-flavored, waltz-like Allegretto grazioso and the invigorating theme and variations of the rousing finale.

Over the course of his career, Dvořák composed in many genres, although it was as an opera composer that he most wished for success. Having earlier turned from his overtly Wagnerian sympathies to a more “absolute” formal path, Dvořák had, by the time he was about to produce his G-major Symphony, entered another new phase. In this work, he relied less on structural rigor and more on the immediate appeal of more “pictorial” elements, making eloquent use of the regular juxtaposition of contrasting sections in major and minor keys. This new approach to musical form would lead eventually to those symphonic poems that capped his orchestral catalog in 1896.