Opening Celebrations
Saturday, October 26, 2019, 8pm
All Saints Parish
1773 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02445
Alexander Borodin, Overture to Prince Igor
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as "The Mighty Handful", a group dedicated to producing a uniquely Russian kind of classical music. Although he is presently better known as a composer, during his lifetime Borodin regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practicing music and composition in his spare time.
The opera Prince Igor was written and composed by Borodin in four acts with a prologue. The composer adapted the libretto from the Ancient Russian epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich the Brave against the invading Cuman tribes in 1185. Although Borodin worked on the opera on and off for almost 18 years, it was left unfinished upon the composer's sudden death in 1887. The music was edited and completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov, with its first performance in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1890.
Carl Reinecke, Flute Concerto
Featuring 2019 Concerto Competition winner Kristyn Moore
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a German composer, conductor, and pianist in the Middle Romantic Era. He began to compose at the age of seven, and his first public appearance as a pianist was when he was twelve years old. He studied under Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. Flute Concerto in D major, Op. 283, is a composition for solo flute and orchestra composed in 1908, and was Reinecke's last concerto before his death. It was first performed on March 15, 1909 in Leipzig by the flutist Maximilian Schwedler, to whom the piece is dedicated.
Flutist Kristyn Moore is an active freelancer and educator in the Boston area, maintaining a private studio based in the King Philip Regional school district and performing with such ensembles as the Brookline Symphony Orchestra, Apollo Ensemble, Boston Opera Collaborative, and the Boston Chamber Orchestra. She is also the Direct Sales Specialist and Artist Relations Manager for Verne Q. Powell Flutes, where she works with top flutists around the country assisting them in finding their dream instruments. Kristyn received her Master of Music in Flute Performance from Boston University, and graduated cum laude from DePaul University with a Bachelor of Music in Flute Performance, where she studied under a performance and merit scholarship. Kristyn has given solo performances with the Protege Philharmonic and Aurora Youth Symphony, and is a John Philip Sousa Award recipient. She has had the privilege of studying under Linda Toote, Mary Stolper, and Allison Domanus-Brady, received extensive guidance from Cynthia Meyers and Christina Jennings, and has performed in the masterclasses of Paula Robison, Trevor Wye, Paul Edmund-Davies, William Bennett, Patti Adams, Cynthia Meyers, and Jonathan Keeble.
Johannes Brahms - Symphony No.1
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Brahms is both a traditionalist and an innovator; his music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music.
Brahms spent at least fourteen years completing Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68. Even though Beethoven died six years before Brahms was born, there was an expectation that he would continue "Beethoven's inheritance" and produce a symphony of comparable scope – an expectation that Brahms felt he could not fulfill easily. In September 1868, he sent a card to his lifelong friend Clara Schumann sketching the Alphorn tune which would emerge in the symphony's Finale, along with the famous message "Thus blew the shepherd's horn today!" Despite the evidence of the work's development, the symphony would not premiere for eight more years, in 1876.
The moody atmosphere of the first movement, with short thematic fragments and seemingly endless developments, are all hallmarks of Beethoven’s style. The key of C minor is also closely associated with several of Beethoven’s major works, such as his Symphony No. 5, Egmont Overture, and Piano Concerto No. 3. With the finale we come again to Beethoven: mirroring Beethoven's Fifth, the piece begins in C minor and then forges triumphantly into C major at the end. But perhaps most obvious is that Brahms' melody strongly resembles that of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Despite all these deliberate references, Symphony No. 1 has since become the most performed of Brahms' symphonies and one of the most cherished pieces in the orchestral literature.