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Gulf Coast Chamber Orchestra: Opening Night
Sponsored in part by Andreas Werle
A new season begins! The Gulf Coast Chamber Orchestra performs one of Beethoven’s most celebrated works, the Eroica Symphony.
Program:
- Rossini – Overture to The Barber of Seville
The original Overture for The Barber of Seville was mysteriously lost after its premiere in 1816. However, Rossini, armed with a chest of musical delights not yet used, recycled some of his old opera themes and created what we now know today as the Overture to The Barber of Seville.
Therefore, similarly to that of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro Overture, Rossini’s new opener bears absolutely no musical resemblance to that of any of the opera’s music. This can sometimes prove a hard sell for the composer when the music didn’t represent the product, however the quirky Overture became one of his staple works, with it often being heard as a stand-alone concert piece.
- Haydn – Symphony No. 100
The most popular of all the twelve London symphonies was the one in G major, which received its premiere performance on March 31, 1794. (It is now known as Haydn’s Symphony # 100 according to the compendium compiled by Eusebius Mandyczewski in 1907 which was remarkably complete, omitting only two youthful works, even though the chronology of the earlier works has been corrected by subsequent scholarship.) By tracing watermarks on the pages of the autograph score, Landon found that Haydn wrote the third of its four movements, a menuetto, in Vienna between his two London trips.
The extraordinary second movement is an arrangement and elaboration of a concerto for two lira organizata (a sort of hurdy-gurdy) that Haydn had written in 1786 for the King of Naples. Haydn presumably wrote the outside movements between his second arrival in London on February 4 and the premiere.
- Beethoven – Symphony No. 3
The Symphony No. 3, (Sinfonia Eroica, Heroic Symphony ) is a symphony in four movements by Ludwig van Beethoven.
One of Beethoven’s most celebrated works, the Eroica symphony is a large-scale composition that marked the beginning of the composer’s innovative “middle period”.
About the Composer
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most widely recognized and admired composers in the history of Western music, and served as an important bridge between the Classical and Baroque era styles he admired and the Romantic style his music would come to personify. Beethoven was born in 1770 into a modest family in the small German provincial town of Bonn, where he would study composition and play the piano and viola until moving to Vienna in his early 20’s where he would live the rest of his life.
Read More ››Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as some sacred music, songs, chamber music, and piano pieces. He was a precocious composer of operas, and he made his debut at age 18 with La cambiale di matrimonio. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia), The Italian Girl in Algiers (L’italiana in Algeri), and Cinderella (La Cenerentola). He also wrote a string of serious operas in Italian, including works such as Tancredi, Otello, and Semiramide. The Thieving Magpie (La gazza ladra) features one of his most celebrated overtures.
Read More ››Franz Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn (March 31, 1732 – May 31, 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio. His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets “Father of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet”.
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