The Metro Collection offers audiences fantastic classical music in an intimate setting. Concerts feature smaller scale works from the classical repertoire and newer pieces by contemporary composers. This performance will feature David Lemelin, clarinet.

With works like Music for the Theatre, Aaron Copland paved the way for a truly American “classical” music. In the piece, you can hear the budding nationalism that comes to fruition in Copland’s later works. For the national element Copland turned to jazz, “I was preoccupied with the idea of adding to the great history of serious music something with an American accent, and jazz seemed to be a comparatively simple way of introducing the American note in an authentic way . . . It was an easy way to be an American.”

Schubert began work on his Symphony in C Major when he was only nineteen. The music of Gioacchino Rossini was currently the rage in Vienna and it seems that Schubert modeled much of this symphony on the light-hearted and almost facile style of that Italian composer. The slow introduction to the first movement begins dramatically enough, but soon melts into pure melody. The flutes introduce the main body of the movement with a jaunty little melody and from then on, it is all good-hearted mirth. The slower second movement is as melodic as an operatic aria, and the third movement is a lilting romp. The last movement is a succession of light-hearted tunes in contrasting tempos that eventually give way to a dramatic conclusion.

When Louis Spohr wrote his first concerto for clarinet, the instrument had only five keys, compared to the seventeen of a modern clarinet. He confessed that he really didn’t know what he was doing. Aside from the obvious virtuosic aspects of Spohr’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1, the piece contains some unusual elements. It is in a minor key, and the orchestra plays a slow introduction before fingerwork begins. The slow movement confines the accompaniment to just violins and cellos. In spite of the minor key, the third movement has a jaunty quality to it. Instead of ending with a technical flourish, there is a surprising and sudden fade to nothing.

Learn more about David Lemelin, Clarinet.

Learn more about Chia-Hsuan Lin, Conductor.

Program Notes

 

 

Concert Sponsor:

Mr. Ralph R. Crosby, Jr.