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2023-2024 Masterworks Concert Series Fall Concert – Evergreen – Virtual Ticket
November 11, 2023 @ 3:00 pm - 5:30 pm
LIVE-STREAM ONLY
2023-2024 Masterworks Concert Series
FALL CONCERT
ECO’s 2023-2024 Season Masterworks Concert Series continues with our Fall Concert!
Looking for in-person tickets to this event? Click here!
Join us at 3pm on Saturday, November 11th, 2023 for a program featuring orchestral suites by Bach and Stravinsky – plus, a very special performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor featuring ECO Concertmaster Katherine Thayer!
Originally written as charming piano duets between Igor Stravinsky and his children, Suites No. 1 and 2 for Small Orchestra are filled with jubilant melodies and witty musical satire. The Polka in Suite No. 2 evokes the image of the Russian music and art aficionado Serge Diaghilev. As Stravinsky recalled, “It is a caricature of Diaghilev, whom I had seen as a circus trainer cracking a long whip.” Other movements pay homage to Alfredo Casello, who requested a dedication for himself, and Erik Satie, the French composer and personal friend of Stravinsky. These charming works were orchestrated in 1921 and 1925, but date from Stravinsky’s “Swiss period”, between 1914 and 1920. Stravinsky’s primary source of income – working with the Ballet Russes in Paris – had dried up due to the First World War, but he maintained a high level of compositional productivity during this self-imposed exile. This will be the first time ECO has performed works by Stravinsky during ECO Music Director William Hill’s tenure.
Johann Sebastian Bach is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time, and his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D Major, BWV 1069, is some of the most joyful and delightful music ever written. Bach composed this Suite in the French style as was common for orchestral suites at the time. We know that Bach himself would use “laughter” and “joy” as the text association for this piece since he would go on to use the opening French overture as the first movement of his 1725 Christmas cantata “Unser Mund sei voll Lachens”, BWV 110, which when translated means, “Our mouths are full of laughter”. If you would like to learn more about this exhilarating piece we invite you to view Netherlands Bach Society Conductor Lars Urik Mortenson’s video review.
During the summer of 1838, Felix Mendelssohn finally wrote to his longtime friend Ferdinand David, who had repeatedly asked Felix to compose a violin concerto, “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace.” It would be seven more years before David premiered Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, in March of 1845 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. This iconic masterpiece – one of the all-time greatest romantic violin concertos – will be performed by ECO’s very own concertmaster Katherine Thayer as the grand finale of our Fall Concerts.
Katherine Thayer is a prominent violinist in Denver and serves as concertmaster of the Evergreen Chamber Orchestra and the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra. She has held positions in the first violin sections of the Kamarata Lysy, the Wurttembergishes Kammer Orchertre and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, touring frequently throughout Europe and the Philippines. Ms. Thayer will be performing on the 1839 Joseph Ceruti Italian violin her friend and violin maker Robert Bigsby gifted her upon seeing her joy and love for the instrument the first time she played it.
PROGRAM
IGOR STRAVINSKY – Suites for Small Orchestra – No. 1 and No. 2
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH – Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D Major, BWV 1069
FELIX MENDELSSOHN – Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
featuring ECO Concertmaster Katherine Thayer – Violin
ECO’s live-stream tickets are offered as “pay what you like”. There is no difference in content between the different price levels – please feel free to pay whatever you think is fair!
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