Italian Serenade
Saturday 18 September 2010
With The Irish Chamber Orchestra & Katherine Hunka
CANIS MAJOR – THE CLARION HOTEL – SLIGO 8PM
Concert was hugely successful. Full House and great music!
Programme
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) – Tempesta from Sonata No. 6 in D major
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) – Le Quattro Stagioni, (The Four Seasons – Spring)
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) – Italian Serenade
Antonio Vivaldi – Le Quattro Stagioni (Summer)
Interval
Elaine Agnew (b.1967) – Twilight (new commission 2010)
Antonio Vivaldi – Le Quattro Stagioni (Autumn)
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) – Crisantemi
Antonio Vivaldi – Le Quattro Stagioni (Winter)
The welcome return of the ICO to Sligo features music with an Italian flavour
Rossini’s La tempesta is part of six string sonatas which were written when the composer was just twelve years old and which display his compositional genius. The inspiration for Vivaldi’s Le Quattro stagioni was probably the countryside around Mantua.
The four concertos (part of a set of twelve) were a revolution in musical conception:
in them Vivaldi represents flowing creeks, singing birds, barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties from both the hunters’ and the prey’s point of view, frozen landscapes, children ice-skating, and warming winter fires. Each concerto is associated with a sonnet, possibly by Vivaldi, describing the scenes depicted in the music.
Puccini’s Crisantemi is a single, dark-hued, continuous movement. Puccini found his two liquid melodic ideas worthy enough to re-use in the last act of his opera, Manon Lescaut, of 1893. It was originally written in 1890 in a single night in occasion of the death of Amedeo, Duca di Savoia. Written for string quartet, the most popular version nowadays is for string orchestra. Chrysanthemums in Italy are the symbolic flowers of the dead. Puccini himself acknowledged that his true talent lay “only in the theatre”, and so his non-operatic works are understandably few.
Hugo Wolf had a short and tragic life marred by syphilis: he is remembered as one the best composers of Lieder. His most famous instrumental piece is the Italian Serenade originally written for string quartet.
The ICO is Ireland’s premier chamber orchestra. Based in the University of Limerick it is internationally recognized and respected and tours all over the world.