Details

This performance will take place at Hawrelak Park. About this Concert Exotic and exciting dance rhythms combine with symphonic splendour to create an irresistible afternoon of music. One of Broadway’s most popular young dancers will perform a Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra, and we’ll close out the festival with the 1812 Overture grand finale. Featured Repertoire RAVEL: Boléro GOULD: Tap Dance Concerto MARQUEZ: Conga del Fuego Nuevo TCHAIKOVSKY: 1812 Overture Tickets available at the box office at Hawrelak Park beginning at noon on September 3rd.

This is the final performance of Symphony Under the Sky 2012. Thank you to our performance sponsor:

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Individual Concerts* Reserved Seating $40 Adult / $20 Child Grass Seating $25 Adult / Children Free *Ticket fees apply to individual concert purchases. Free grass seating applies to children under 12 accompanied by an adult.

Program Info

Program

Ouvertuere solenelle “1812”, Opus 49 (14’)*

Program subject to change.
*indicates approximate performance duration.

Program Notes

It’s certainly fitting that, in this Jubilee year of one British monarch, we recall another jubilee celebration. Cole Porter (1891-1964) and Moss Hart’s 1935 Broadway show Jubilee was inspired by the golden jubilee of George V, though a fictionalized European country featured in the musical. The show was a smash, and featured some great Cole Porter songs, including Begin the Beguine. The beguine is a Caribbean dance form, and combines both Latin and French elements. Porter’s song helped to popularize the dance form outside the Caribbean.

Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier (1809-1865) visited Cuba in 1861, and was inspired to write a song in the style of a Cuban habañera. Unfortunately, he died in relative poverty before the song exploded in popularity. La Paloma (“The Dove”) has been adopted, adapted, and reinvented any number of ways in the last century and a half.

The tico-tico bird is found throughout the Brazil River region. In 1917, the creature was depicted in a song originally called Tico-Tico no Farelo by Brazilian popular songwriter Zequinha de Abreu (1880-1935). In 1942, it was recorded as Tico-Tico no Fubá (“The Tico-Tico Bird in the Cornmeal”). It was shortened to Tico-Tico in North America, and under that name, it has become a standard, popularized by Carmen Miranda – but even quoted in songs by Frank Zappa, no less. Abreu, a child prodigy in his native São Paolo, chose the title because the song’s rhythms imitated the bird’s way of pecking at cornmeal. Tonight’s orchestration of the popular chorinho (a dominant song form in Brazilian music) was done by Clifford Colnot.

Arturo Márquez (b. 1950) is the son of a mariachi musician. He was born in Mexico, but raised in Los Angeles, and it was there he furthered his musical education. He went back to Mexico to attend conservatory there, earning a scholarship that took him to Paris as well. The Edmonton Symphony has made Márquez’ Danzón No. 2 a recent favourite, and this afternoon, adds his Conga del Fuego Nuevo (“New Fire Conga”) to its repertoire. It is thought that the conga was introduced by African slaves in Cuba. It was popularized in the 1940s by Desi Arnaz and others, and enjoyed a second heyday in North American popular culture in the 1980s thanks to Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine’s hit single. Márquez’ orchestral  version begins in a steady simmer, the pulsing, syncopated beat constantly underpinning the music. The work builds in intensity, its pace slowing unexpectedly about halfway through – but only briefly, as the orchestra then whips the dance up to a thrilling finish.

Maurice Ravel’s (1875-1937) most famous work is his orchestral tour de force, Boléro. The musical form known as the boléro, like so many of this afternoon’s works, is a dance, and Ravel’s was commissioned by the famous Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein. It thrilled audiences from its first performances (it premiered in 1928), and its popularity soon drew choreographers to it like moths to a flame. Based on the same repetitive drum pattern, Ravel described his Boléro as, one long crescendo, “a tissue of music” he said deprecatingly, that grows and grows over the course of a quarter of an hour until it bursts out in a fabulous climax.

Daniel Belland (b. 1992) has been composing for five years, and has developed a passion for the endless possibilities of creating new music. As a performer, he has completed his Royal Conservatory Grade 10 Piano and Grade 9 Flute. He is also involved in theatre and musical theatre, as a composer and performer. He recently composed the score to (semicolon) the musical, which ran at Nextfest 2011 and the 2011 Edmonton Fringe Festival. Having been homeschooled for the first eleven grades, Daniel recently completed Grade 12 at St Joseph High School. He will be studying music at Grant MacEwan University this fall.

Of his work Voyage, Mr. Belland writes: “The title Voyage represents the idea of optimistically setting out, overcoming trials, and growing stronger in the process. Whether a physical journey or a personal one, we are familiar with the idea of a voyage, and this piece reflects that process. The primary theme takes the form of a classical-sounding piece, but with a slightly modern edge. This theme is introduced in a jaunty fashion, and dominates the work. It is passed about the orchestra, unfolded, developed, and pushed forward by a strong sense of motion. Occasionally, the movement is interrupted, but the theme pushes through to a triumphant ending.”

Ever one to combine classical and popular music, Morton Gould (1913-1996) was the perfect person to write something as audacious yet pop-appealing as a Tap Dance Concerto. A skilled musician at an early age, Gould rose to prominence in New York as the staff pianist at Radio City Music Hall, and as part of popular radio programs such as The Chrysler Hour. As a composer, he wrote for the concert stage, but also for Broadway and Hollywood. In fact, it was for the 1946 Broadway show Billion Dollar Baby that Gould met dancer/choreographer Danny Daniels, and it was for him that the Tap Dance Concerto was written. “Morton would write sections, with the rhythms noted as part of the musical score, and then play it on the piano for me to see if the rhythms were tap-able,” Daniels said. “I would then take the manuscript score and a tape recording of his playing, and work on the choreography in my basement studio.”

The concerto premiered in November 1952 in Rochester, New York. “It is exactly what its name says it is, a four-movement, formal, jazz-influenced symphonic piece in which the tap dancer has a solo role as virtuosic and important as the piano in a Mozart concerto,” wrote critic Raymond Ericson. This afternoon’s performance includes three of the work’s original four movements: Toccata, Pantomime, and Rondo (the third movement, Minuet, has been cut). Each movement allows the dancer places to improvise, and, according to Daniels, was the highlight of his career. “After the concerto I thought I had done it all and anything after that was gravy,” he said.

The 1812 Battle of Borodino (exactly 200 years ago) proved vital in the eventual Russian repulsion of the Napoleonic army. 70 years later, that victory was commemorated at the dedication of the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. For the occasion, Russia’s leading composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was commissioned to write a suitably reverent yet jubilant overture. Such specific commissions held little appeal for Tchaikovsky, and he chafed at this one too, complaining to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck that, “the overture will be very noisy…It has no great artistic value.” He finished sketching the work in a week, and probably thought it would not have much of a life past that first performance on August 20, 1882.

Several works are quoted throughout the overture, including several traditional Russian hymns and songs, and the 1812 Overture is sometimes performed with a chorus. The work opens with low strings presenting God Preserve Thy People, appealing to the Almighty for help against the French army. The distress and suffering of the Russians is illustrated as the opening measures of Le Marseillaise are heard. Ideas both sentimental and martial combine, building until a cannonade thunders out – the battle has begun. Le Marseillaise is gradually overcome by the Tsar’s Hymn, and at the overture’s climax, church bells peal, a brass band plays, and the victory of the Russian people is portrayed with a grand statement of the main march theme, complete with another cannonade – but this one in celebration and triumph.

Program notes © 2012 by D.T. Baker, except as noted

Artist Info

Robert Bernhardt, conductor

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Ryan VanDenBoom, dancer

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Ravel's Bolero:

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Admission & Seating

The gates to the Heritage Amphitheatre open one hour prior to each performance. Lawn chairs and blankets are allowed in grass seating area. Lawn chairs may be placed on the audience-left side of the amphitheatre, and the audience-right side is reserved for blankets.

Food & Drink

Food vendors will be located in the Heritage Amphitheatre and the Winspear Concession stand will offer snacks, hot and cold drinks, wine & beer. You may bring your own food and non-alcoholic beverages, but all alcohol must be purchased inside the amphitheatre.

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