Festival Chamber Orchestra

Alasdair Neale and Principal Horn William VerMeulen both celebrate 25 years with the Festival this season, and this program pairs them up on Strauss’s fiendishly difficult Horn Concerto. Strauss wrote it for his father, who was Germany’s leading horn virtuoso. However, upon seeing the score, Strauss senior pragmatically decided to cede the glory to another player. Providing comic relief to the program, Strauss’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme offers a humorous satire on social climbing.

Welcome the Festival back to live concerts with a beloved tradition, the Star Spangled Banner, and a special appearance from superstar Israeli Violinist Vadim Gluzman. He’ll bring Mozart’s utterly charming and operatic Violin Concerto No. 3 to life with his extraordinary 1690 Stradivarius. The concert concludes with Franz Joseph Haydn’s final symphony, the “London.” It’s a delightful and deservedly popular work, a crowning achievement by the “Father of the Symphony.”

Mozart had achieved rockstar status in Prague, thanks to the adoration bestowed there upon The Marriage of Figaro. He was, therefore, happy to have the nickname “Prague” attached to this symphony at its premiere in that city. It’s a masterpiece, full of sparkling virtuosity, celebration, drama, and humor. The concert opens with the piece that defines the quintessential American Sound: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, composed originally as the score to Martha Graham’s ballet of the same name.

Beethoven’s “Heroic” symphony transformed the genre. It was more massive, ambitious, and innovative than any music that had been written before. In many ways, it represents the turning point from classical to romantic music. Heroism, despair, mourning and triumph are just some of the emotions represented in a piece that uses rhythm and a driving force as an equal partner to melody. Reflecting on “Eroica,” Leonard Bernstein marveled at “the mysterious genius of a man who is capable of uniting all contradictions into one single, perfect entity.”