June | Legends

Our finale, and the biggest orchestral work of the season, will be Ottorino Respighi’s colossal tone poem, The Pines of Rome. He illustrates four scenes with pine trees in Rome; a park in the Villa Borghese where hundreds of children are laughing, shouting and playing, pines overhanging the entrance of a catacomb, pines at night on Janiculum Hill, a beautiful viewpoint outside the old city (with a solo clarinet and an avian accompaniment), and finally, ancient pines along the Appian Way, guarding and guiding the slow marching triumphal return of the victorious Roman Legions back into the city. 

He accomplishes this with a huge orchestra, augmented by grand piano, organ, celeste, harp, a large percussion section, and six extra brass players on flugelhorns, mellophones, and euphoniums, all placed in the far corners of the auditorium. Since Verdi and Berlioz had done something similar in their Requiems, Respighi needed to somehow top them. He did this quietly by adding a recording of a Nightingale to the nocturnal third movement. 

The concert will also feature the victorious return of Kitsap County native Adrian King performing Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto #1. 

Liszt, already famous in 1848, decided to move to the relatively small city of Weimar. He had two goals. With the great music patron there, the Grand Duke Carl Alexander, he hoped to co-found an intellectual “Athens of the North” He also hoped to marry Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. Of course she was still married to a Russian military officer, but he was back in Russia. Neither of these goals were attained.

It was during these years that Liszt completed his first piano concerto. His sketches for this work go back to the 1830’s and he continually revised this for over two decades. Robert Schumann had told him that the old 3-movement formula consisting of an allegro, a slow movement and some type of rondo, was now old and stale and advised Liszt to invent a new form. This is something he did accomplish, but it took many years. Liszt worried that this completely new concept for a concerto would not be understood by the public or critics. Musicians tell the story that Liszt and his son-in-law Hans von Bülow put secret words to the opening notes “Das versteht ihr alle nicht, haha!” which is translated as “None of you understand this, haha!” It was definitely the first concerto to require a solo triangle player. Liszt gave the premiere in Weimar with no less a personage than the great Hector Berlioz conducting.

Rienzi is the first great dramatic opera overture written by Richard Wagner. He already had two operas under his belt when he started work on Rienzi. Die Hochzeit and Die Feen had been miserable failures, but Rienzi took the opera world by storm. The story included forbidden love, dueling families, corrupt government officials, a burning city with angry mobs of citizens, and the music had tunes that the patrons could memorize quickly and leave the theater singing. Of course it was a hit. You may recognize hints of The Flying Dutchman in various passages, because that opera was written only one year later. This overture will be conducted by Dr. Thomas Cameron.

 As a short prelude to The Pines of Rome, twelve of our musicians will perform the finale of Dvorak’s delightful Serenade Opus 44. This is a light tuneful piece that one might enjoy on a Sunday afternoon in Prague with the musicians playing in one of the city’s many parks or squares.

This concert will be dedicated to the memory of Mr. Ken Davis, our stalwart Bass Trombonist for more than 40 years.                                                                                         See you at the symphony!