This program features Philip Glass’s popular first concerto for
violin, with his iconic sound: open, full of motion, and yet
without a lot of tonal changes. The soloist is Chase Spruill,
who is a champion of Glass’s violin music. This contrasts with
Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony: regal and full of dueling themes,
and which also features one of his best waltzes. Also on the
program is the winner of this year’s Concerto Competition,
computer science major Katie Sharp, and the orchestra’s
principal trumpet player. She will perform the first movement
of Haydn’s trumpet concerto.
Philip
Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1
with Chase Spruill
Philip Glass’s First Violin Concerto was his
first piece written for the concert hall. Unlike many of his
previous works—operas, film scores, and more—the piece is
thrilling on its own without added audio-visual elements. The
piece features a moving first movement, a romantic second, and a
rousing finale that fades gently away like a wonderful memory. As
the composer said in a biography, “I composed the piece in 1987
thinking, let me write a piece that my father would have liked. .
. . A very smart nice man who had no education in music
whatsoever, but the kind of person who fills up concert halls.
They’re the people that keep the whole business going.”
Tchaikovsky’s Fifth is—to borrow a phrase from
Star Wars—a duel of fates. In his letters at the time to his
benefactor, Nadezhda von Meck, we might infer the Fifth
Symphony’s duel of two fates might reflect Tchaikovsky inner
conflict between an artist that has no creativity left, and
an artist that still has his greatest work and successes yet
to come.
Franz Joseph
Haydn:Allegro from Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat
Major
Katie Sharp – Winner of the Concerto Competition
and undergraduate major in computer science
