RSS 2.0 FeedMay 12, 2010, City Classics
Music and Dance through May 19
By the time the Kansas City musical calendar progresses to the middle of May, most organizations are wrapping up their concert seasons or have already concluded them. This weekend we have only three classical performances. Thursday evening the Kansas City Wind Symphony wraps up its season with performances of several interesting wind works, including two 20th century compositions and wind versions of a Gershwin favorite and some traditional hymns. Friday, Saturday and Sunday the Kansas City Symphony retakes the Lyric Theatre stage, after having given the stage over to the Lyric Opera and the Kansas City Ballet for several weeks, and continues its classical season with music from four Viennese masters, conducted by the orchestra's energetic young associate conductor, Steven Jarvi. If the music of Mozart, Schubert, Mahler and Strauss doesn't interest you, then romantic music must not be your bag. To most listeners it should be a delight. Sunday afternoon, and also next Tuesday, bring us the final concert of the Kansas City Chorale's season, and it should be something of a departure from the ensemble's usual emphasis on vocal classical music. It features percussionist Valerie Naranjo as a guest artist. She specializes in African percussion instruments and has been the percussionist for Saturday Night Live for twelve years, as well as being the creator of the percussion effects for Broadway's Lion King. It should be ver rhythmic.
Kansas City Wind Symphony
Celebrating Virtuosity
Wednesday, May 12 at 7:00 p.m.
Village Presbyterian Church
6641 Mission Road, Prairie Village, KS
Free admission; donations accepted.
Philip Posey brings his Kansas City Wind Symphony forces to the final concert of their season this Wednesday with a performance of the virtuosic Concerto for Two Clarinets and Orchestra by the Moravian composer Franz Krommer, a contemporary of Mozart, as arranged for wind band by Jeremy Schwinger. Bob Dover and Randall Cunningham will be the two featured clarinetists. According to one writer, this concerto, along with two other landmark Krommer woodwind concertos, "forms a particularly delightful addition to the repertoire of the clarinet and of the late classical concerto."
Other compositions to be performed by the Wind Symphony will include arrangements of Gershwin's An American in Paris, a Korean folk song, scenes from The Louvre by Norman Dello Joio, and two American hymns. The group will also perform Rejouissance by James Curnow.
The Louvre is a five-movement work depicting the development of the famous Louvre museum during the Renaissance. Dello Joio, who died in 2008 at the age of 95, originally composed the work for 1964 NBC television series and later revised it as a stand-alone piece for winds. The Curnow work was written in 1987. "Rejouissance" is a French word meaning "enjoyment" or to be glad or to make happy. The piece was written to honor a conductor whom the composer admired, and it has since become a favorite of small symphonic bands. It has been described as a Fantasia on Martin Luther's hymn Ein Fest Burg (A Mighty Fortress is Our God).
Kansas City Symphony
Mozart, Mahler, Strauss and Schubert
Friday, May 14 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 15 at 8 p.m.
Lyric Theatre
11th and Central,
Downtown Kansas City, MO
And
Sunday, May 16 at 2 p.m.
Yardley Hall, Carlsen Center
12345 College Boulevard,
Overland Park, KS
For tickets call 816-471-0400 or online at www.kcsymphony.org
The Kansas City Symphony concert this weekend is conducted by Bruno Walter associate conductor Steven Jarvi, who has made many appearances with the Symphony in pops concerts and with his chamber music series during the past two years. This is his debut podium assignment as part of the Symphony's classical series, however. The young conductor has proven to be an unusual talent, and this concert should offer Symphony aficionados an excellent opportunity to judge his skill with the standard classical repertory.
Vienna. The city has been home to so many great musicians and is the source of so many great musical traditions that thoughts of the city immediately bring to a classical music fan's mind a wealth of associations.
Four of the major composers to compose within the friendly confines of Vienna's vibrant musical establishment over the past several centuries have been Mozart, Schubert, Mahler and Strauss. All four are represented in this concert.
The Mozart entry is the delightful Piano Concerto No. 21 with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who was featured in a Friends of Chamber Music recital last year. Since her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2005, Dinnerstein has become a champion of Baroque and Classical concertos, and in 2007 recorded a critically acclaimed version of the Goldberg Variations by Bach. Among her recent appearances are the Kennedy Center, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen and Ravinia festivals, and recitals in Cologne, Paris, London, Copenhagen, Vilnius, Bremen, Rome, and Lisbon, among many others.
Gustav Mahler was a composer given to long stretches of harmony and melody, making his symphonies among the lengthiest in the repertory. In this concert the Symphony will not tackle a complete Mahler work (most of them take up the entire evening), but will concentrate on just one of the most beautiful movements Mahler ever composed, the Adagio from his unfinished Tenth Symphony. To this listener's ears the slow movements from Mahler's symphonies offer more enchanting music than some of the more dramatic sections, and the Adagio from the Tenth ranks right up there with the Adagio from the Fifth as one of the most beautiful ever composed.
Schubert is represented by his overture to Rosamunde, a stage work in the German singspiel style (a sort of shortened and lightened version of opera). It is a perfect brief introduction to Schubert's wonderful tunefulness and ability to write enchanting counterpoint.
The concert finishes with the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. Strauss, an iconoclastic composer who was the leader of the German "new music" vanguard around the turn of the last century, suddenly turned on a dime in 1911 and composed one of the most tuneful, romantic and traditional-sounding operas in Der Rosenkavalier, a delightful evocation of the Vienna of centuries past, with its (probably overly-romantic) memory of the days of Maria Theresa and the waltz. In this Suite, Strauss extracted all of the best tunes and set them for symphonic orchestra without voices. Der Rosenkavalier is a delight, but if you can't hear the whole opera, this Suite is the next best thing.
Kansas City Chorale
The Rhythm of Life
Sunday, May 16 at 3:00 p.m.
St. Teresa Academy Auditorium
5600 Main Street, Kansas City, MO
And
Tuesday, May 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Asbury United Methodist Church
5400 W. 75th Street (at Nall), Overland Park, KS
For tickets call 816-444-7996 or online at www.kcchorale.org
The Kansas City Chorale, in its season-ending concert, is joined by guest artist Valerie Naranjo.
This columnist has been unable to find out much information about this concert, but Valerie Naranjo is well known in American percussionist circles, having studied music in ten African countries and becoming the first woman permitted to publicly perform Ghanaian gyil and the only Westerner to receive a first prize at Ghana's Kobine Festival. Naranjo performs solo marimba and gyil with her world music group Mandara, and she has been the percussionist for NBC's Saturday Night Live Band for a dozen years. She wrote the percussion arrangements and performed for Broadway's The Lion King. She has performed with Megadrums, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Tori Amos, The Paul Winter Consort, and many more. She has recorded ten CDs, featuring a variety of musical styles, and was twice named "World Percussionist of the Year" by Drum! magazine.
As for the Chorale's role in all of this, you will just have to attend the concert to find out. It sounds like something of a departure from the Chorale's usual classical music fare.
City Classics Music and Dance Columnist; Classical Contributor
A lifelong classical music fan, Don Dagenais is a frequent preview speaker for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and has taught classical music and opera courses at several Kansas City venues. He has served on the boards of directors of a number of performing arts organizations including the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Lyric Opera Guild, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, Opera Volunteers International, the Civic Opera Theater of Kansas City, Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony, Octarium, and the Friends of the Symphony. He has been the past president of most of these organizations and is current the president of the Friends of the Symphony.
Dagenais co-authored a history of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, published on the occasion of its 50th anniversary (2007) and has written books on the histories of both the Lyric Opera Guild and Opera Volunteers International, as well as an introductory book for opera novices (Your Passport to the Opera). He has received several local and national awards for outstanding volunteer work for the arts, including a lifetime achievement award from The Coterie Theatre in 2000, the Kansas City Musical Club's annual award in 2001, a Partners in Excellence Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2002, a Bravo Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2004 and a community service award from the Daughter of the American Revolution in 2008 honoring him for his community service to the arts.
In addition to his music interests, Don is president of the board of directors for the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater and has served on the boards of The Coterie Theatre and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, serving as president of each organization. He publishes newsletters for seven arts organizations. When not involved in the performing arts, Don is a senior real estate attorney with Lathrop & Gage LLP in Kansas City, Missouri, where he has practiced law since 1976 after graduating from the Cornell Law School.
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