Boston University Symphony Orchestra

Leonard Bernstein, Overture to “Candide"

Leonard Bernstein, Serenade (After Plato’s “Symposium”), Peter Zazofsky, violin soloist

Jean Sibelius, Symphony No.5

Bramwell Tovey leads the BU Symphony Orchestra in a concert celebrating Leonard Bernstein’s centennial. Opening the concert is Bernstein’s whimsical 1956 Overture to Candide. Candide was conceived by Voltaire but then intended to be adapted into a play by acclaimed playwright Lillian Hellman. Bernstein was so excited by the work, he convinced Hellman to turn Candide into a “comic opera”. Because of the naturally cinematic quality of Bernstein’s music, audiences can’t help but picture the hapless Candide running into absurd scenario after absurd scenario. The Overture to Candide is sure to be a work that’ll be stuck in your head for days!

In a dramatic departure from the almost frivolous character of the Overture, BUSO will then perform Bernstein’s lesser-known 1954-work Serenade (After Plato’s “Symposium”) for solo violin, strings, and percussion. For the Serenade, Bernstein once again turned to literature, this time drawing inspiration from Plato’s “Symposium”. The work features five movements, each in the voice of a prominent philosopher declaring the virtues of love. The School of Music’s own faculty member, Peter Zazofsky will be playing the solo violin part. As the five-movement work unfolds, Bernstein uses the poignancy of the violin part to capture the passion and drama of five great minds praising the merits of love. The result is an elegant work that will leave the listener reflecting on what true love is: the desire for self-immortalization or the most pure form of selflessness.

Finishing out the concert is Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, completed in 1919. Sibelius’ epic Fifth Symphony has found itself represented in works as diverse as 2014’s blockbuster Interstellar and quoted in the opening of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. So what makes this work so universally appealing? The early 1900s were a time of significant change in the musical landscape, with works such as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra--pieces that took classical composition techniques and burned them to the ground. Sibelius, having achieved popular acclaim in the previous 30 years, found his popularity declining with audiences eager to hear more of these new sounds. (Nothing incites curiosity more than a riot!) Sibelius was driven to crisis and forced to abandon his old ways of composing in favor of more modern techniques. The result is a more human, more vivid, work in which the listener can sense conflicts between the proven and the unknown. It is a struggle for the ages, one that anyone can relate to. Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony is a staple of the orchestral repertoire, as rousing to play as it is to listen to.

This concert is free and open to the public.

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When 8:00 pm on Monday, October 22, 2018
Building 685 Commonwealth Avenue
Room Tsai Performance Center