Fall Concert Program

Sunday, November 2, 1997

Colin Holman, Conductor

Concert Notes

The Dance of the Tumblers was composed by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a strong Russian nationalist who held a lifelong interest in the folk music of his native country.   His opera The Snow Maiden was inspired by Alexander Ostrovsky's fairy tale, a work rooted in folk poetry, and was completed in an apparent effortless fashion in the summer of 1880.  The Dance of the Tumblers takes place during an episode in Act III in which acrobats dance for the Tsar, and the excerpt has sustained its popularity far beyond the opera itself.

Philip Sparke is one of Europe's most respected composers for wind orchestra. He was written an extensive series of works and received commissions for ensembles in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, and his music is rapidly becoming known on this continent.   Sparke has won three New Music for Bands awards from the European Broadcasting Union and his music has been recorded by such distinguished ensembles as the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra.  His conducting has taken him around the world and to Chicago where he has been a guest clinician at the Midwest Band and Orchestra clinic held each year here in December.

Jubilee Overture was commissioned for the 50^th anniversary of the GUS band in England and first performed by them in 1983 conducted by Cleveland Ohio conductor Keith Wilkinson.  The work opens with a two-part fanfare: a brass flourish followed by a reflective chorale for the winds.  This builds to a climax as the flourish returns.  A lively allegro follows with several changes of meter and a robust tune from the horns and saxophones.   Eventually, a cantabile tune emerges from the middle of the band which everyone then plays before the opening fanfare returns to conclude the music.

Ronald Binge's Cornet Carillon was composed in 1954; Binge himself was born in 1910 and died in 1979.  He spent the majority of his compositional career as a writer of light music for films and the theater.  This beautiful short work mimics the sound of the carillon through the interweaving of a melodic line that passes equally throughout all four trumpet parts to produce a distinctive and unique effect.

A recent writer describes the music of American composer Norman Dello Joio as "extroverted, colorful and well crafted," and this broad description serves as well as any for the three Satiric Dances.  The dances were commissioned by the town of Concord, MA as part of their Bicentennial celebrations, and were first performed by the Concord Band conducted by William Toland.  Originally intended as incidental music to one of the comedies by Aristophenes, they now form a three movement suite.  The first dance is brisk and biting in character; the second, beautifully lyrical and delicate; the third jaunty and polka-like.

There is a considerable number of composers whose reputation seems to survive on a single work; Pachelbel's Canon in D, Ravel's Bolero, and Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice are all possible examples.  For Mikhail Mikhaylovich Ippolitov-Ivanov it is his Caucasian Sketches, a suite of orchestral pieces that musically illustrate life in Russian Georgia.  One of our bass clarinetists, Dean McMakin, a St. Charles resident and long time member of the FVCB, has a special interest in Russian music and has transcribed the entire Turkish March especially for this concert.  The composer (not the arranger!) was born in 1859 and died in 1935; only after the Russian Revolution did he become interested in the music of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Arabia and Turkey, and so this march almost certainly was composed after 1917.  Most composers whose reputation today stands on one familiar piece of music wrote many other very beautiful musical works, often much better than the piece for which they are now famous.  Ippolitov-Ivanov's Turkish March certainly demonstrates this.

Clifton Williams "Fiesta" is the third of three Symphonic Dances for Concert Band he composed in 1967.   Williams was born in 1923 and was a student of Rogers and Hanson at the Eastman School of Music, becoming a professional French horn player with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra.  He had two extended tenures on the music faculty at the University of Texas from 1949-66 and at the University of Miami from 1966 until his death in 1976.   One of Williams' finest students is the composer of another work on the program: John Barnes Chance, who studied with Williams at the University of Texas.  Chance went on to become an orchestral timpanist with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, to garner numerous composition awards, and eventually to join the University of Kentucky music faculty, where he remained until his death in 1972.

The world immediately beyond our own brings us as much fascination and intrigue today as it did over 80 years ago when Gustav Holst composed his seven movement orchestral suite The Planets in 1918 (without, incidentally, Pluto which had yet to be discovered).  Each movement of the suite has a distinctly different character, that of "Jupiter" being described as 'The Bringer of Jollity.'  The entire movement both encapsulates the best of Holst's musical idiom and dramatically captivates audiences with its rhythmic vitality, tunefulness and overwhelming optimism.  The middle section has been more recently set as a familiar hymn tune used on auspicious occasions, I Vow To Thee My Country, and despite the fact that the suite as a whole has suffered being used as snippets of background music, it has survived all its unwanted associations with the strength of its inventiveness.

Variations on a Korean Folk Song is arguably John Barnes Chance's best known composition for band, and is a work which won the ABA Ostwald Award in 1966.  The pentatonic theme is heard at the outset and is contrasted with six variations: the first is scherzo-like, the second was surely inspired by the French composer Erik Satie, the third is march-like, the fourth is a chorale; variation five is a fugue, starting with the percussion section, and the sixth and final variation combines the fugue theme with the folk song heard in long note values in the brass.

One of Sousa's lesser played marches, but one that deserves to be heard more often is his Belle of Chicago.

Concert notes prepared by Colin W. Holman
Copyright © 1997 by the Fox Valley Concert Band