Echoes of Freedom: The American Experience in Symphony – Program Notes written by Patrick Phillips, BSO French Horn player
Listeners need no introduction to the heroic sounds of John Williams. While he is a household name because of his contributions to Hollywood films, his Liberty Fanfare was written for the centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty. Our brass section gets a workout on quintessential John Williams fanfares alongside warm, nostalgic melodies very much akin to his work for other solemn occasions like the Olympics. It is a bold opening by America’s greatest living composer.
Charles Griffes is the name to remember after tonight. While his works are reminiscent of French Impressionists Debussy and Ravel, he was born and spent most of his life in New York. Poem for Flute and Orchestra is a one-movement concerto that fits that Impressionist category with its rhythmic and harmonic ambiguities, lending to the work’s atmospheric and emotionally evocative nature. It is exquisitely and meticulously orchestrated, utilizing in the accompaniment only strings, percussion, and two horns. The work gives our Principal flutist Christina Apelgren the opportunity to show off the flute’s technical felicity and lyrical grace.
If you don’t know the name Samuel Barber, you have still no doubt heard his Adagio for Strings. This work began life as the slow movement of Barber’s only string quartet, written in 1936. The composer rearranged the work for a symphonic complement of strings. That reworked Adagio has had massive cultural impact and has become widely associated with solemn occasions – among them the funerals of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Princess Grace of Monaco. It reached even wider audiences for its use in the film Platoon. The fame of this work falls in stark contrast to its apparent simplicity. The theme consists of simple step-wise scales rising in counterpoint toward an unforgettable climax.
Leonard Bernstein rocketed to fame conducting the New York Philharmonic on November 14th, 1943 when he filled in for a flu-ridden Bruno Walter on short notice (and with no rehearsal). Just over one year later his first Broadway musical, On the Town, opened at the Adelphi Theatre. The comedy concerning three American sailors on a 24 hour shore-leave in New York City became a motion picture starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin in 1949. The energetic and jazz influenced score has proven to be perfectly capable as a stand-alone concert work in what we now know as the Three Dance Episodes. The music aptly reflects the boisterous urban jungle of the Big Apple.
While Bernstein’s music reflects our urban cityscape, Aaron Copland’s music is inseparable from the idea of the American frontier. His music draws heavily on folk tunes and contains stark, open harmonies that evoke the vast open expanse of the American West. Lincoln Portrait was commissioned during World War II by the Cincinnati Symphony as part of a series honoring prominent American figures. It features our good friend Dr. Robert Lamb narrating excerpts from famous letters, debates, and speeches delivered by Abraham Lincoln against a backdrop of American orchestral scenery.
We close tonight’s concert with one of Copland’s most well-known works, Rodeo. Rodeo is often performed as an orchestral work but was originally a ballet. Unlike many of Copland’s works that use folk music as a starting point and involve considerable creative development and interpretation, Rodeo leaves much of the folk songs and fiddle tunes it takes for inspiration intact and presents them in a very unabashed and straightforward way. Fun fact: the well-known main theme of the finale Hoe Down is based on a version of the fiddle tune Bonaparte’s Retreat, which takes its inspiration from the very same historical event that inspired Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – which you may recall was the finale of our last concert on the 4th of July!
