Something Borrowed…
Ticketing packages:
This event is included in the following package/s:
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Performers:
Four Winds Festival Orchestra
The individual artists drawn together from across the nation to form the Festival Orchestra will be announced early next year – comprising our nation’s finest talents, the makeup of this group can be subject to change at any time. -
Repertoire:
Appalachian Spring – Aaron Copland
Dumbarton Oaks – Igor Stravinsky
Symphony No. 1 in D major ‘Classical’, Op.25 – Sergei Prokofiev
Something Borrowed…
Four Winds Festival Orchestra
Ease into Sunday morning in the Sound Shell. Enjoy the beauty of Four Winds’ bushland setting blended with the sounds of three composers inspired by landscapes – each borrowing something from composers or musical traditions that preceded them.
Aaron Copland sets an unfolding scene of daybreak sounds, exploring the bonds of people, sounds, and place in Appalachian Spring. The catalyst for this work was a friendship with American dance icon Martha Graham, telling a wedding day story and evoking an idyllic sense of community and landscape.
Just as Copland borrowed the shaker melody Simple Gifts to tell the wedding day story, Igor Stravinsky (a self-styled musical ‘kleptomaniac’) drew from the works of JS Bach for Dumbarton Oaks. Commissioned shortly after he arrived in the United States to compose a 30th wedding anniversary gift for the owners of a 19th century property of the same name, Stravinsky wittily infused Russian folk melodies while modelling the spirit and design of Bach’s works — at times quite close to the musical surface!
Like Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev – also about to depart to the United States – was simultaneously channeling others while taking inspiration from the great outdoors. He headed to the countryside during the Russian Revolution to create a First Symphony with the musical transparency of a finely cut gem.
“It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived into this era, he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music. That’s the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the Classical style.”
All in all, music for the great outdoors!