Masterworks IV
Strings Attached
Wednesday
PALM BEACH GARDENS
APRIL 8, 2020
7:30pm
Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College
Program
WAGNER Siegfried Idyll
JOÃO LUIZ Concerto for Harp
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7
Artists
David Amado, conductor
Bridget Kibbey, harp
Ticket Prices
Single Tickets $30 – $90
Subscriptions $90 – $200
Concert Duration
Approximately 2 hours with intermission
Pre-Concert
conversations
Join us before the concert for a fascinating inside look at this evening’s program with Maestro Amado.
Conversations start 45 minutes prior to the concert.
Did You Know?
- On the morning of December 25, 1870, Cosima Wagner awoke to the sounds of music coming from the stairs leading up to her bedroom. Her husband Richard Wagner had written a new work to celebrate her 33rd birthday and the birth of their son Siegfried the previous year. He had engaged an ensemble of musicians (numbering 13-17 players depending on whose account one relies on) to surprise her at their villa at Tribschen (now part of Lucerne), Switzerland.
- Although originally intended for private performance, Wagner had the work published in 1878, expanding the score to 35 players.
- Originally called the Tribschen Idyll, the work eventually became known as the Siegfried Idyll. The reason for the change in title was that Wagner completed the third opera in his Ring of the Nibelung cycle of four music dramas which he called Siegfried (in honor of the opera’s hero named after his son).
- In the third act of Siegfried, the final love duet for the awakened heroine Brunhilde and Siegfried substantially quotes most of the music from the work that Wagner had earlier written for his wife.
- Brazilian guitarist and composer João Luiz Rezende is a two time Latin Grammy nominee.
- Luiz Rezende’s Harp Concerto is the third work he has written for harpist Bridget Kibbey.
- The Harp Concerto is a project involving four American orchestras. Two of those ensembles are Florida based – the Orlando Philharmonic and the Atlantic Classical Orchestra.
- The concerto explores the evolution of Brazilian popular dance forms.
- Beethoven conceived the 7th Symphony in 1811-12 at the Bohemian spa town of Teplice (now part of the Czech Republic) where he had gone to improve his precarious health, marred by increasing deafness.
- On the evening of December 8, 1813, Beethoven produced a charity concert in Vienna for the soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau. The audience had much to celebrate. After the siege and occupation of Vienna in 1805 and 1809 by the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French were finally in retreat.
- For the occasion, Beethoven premiered two new works – the battle symphony Wellington’s Victory (celebrating the triumph of the armies of the Duke of Wellington over Napoleon’s brigades) and the 7th Symphony.
- Upon hearing Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Richard Wagner wrote that the score is the “apotheosis of the dance. It is dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone.” Several choreographers, most notably Leonide Massine, have set ballets to the symphony.
What You Will Hear
Sponsors
CONDUCTOR SPONSOR
STUART TWILIGHT 8PM MASTERWORKS SERIES
CONDUCTOR SPONSOR
PALM BEACH MASTERWORKS SERIES
JOHN & JEANNETTE CORBETT
