Preconcert conference: Strauss - Don Quixote

   
Summary

Preconcert conference: Strauss - Don Quixote

Description

The preconference is aimed to offer the public a better understanding on the pieces to be played. It will mainly focus on Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. Strauss was a very well read German composer, who found in Cervantes, Don Quixote’s author, a soulmate. His tone poem Ein Heldenleben (a Hero’s Life) is often considered Don Quixote's complement. Is Don Quixote an autobiographical composition? Impossible ideals, love and transcendence find in Don Quixote and ideal subject.

Music experts: Benjamin Juarez and Steven Ledbetter.

Benjamín Juárez Echenique is a music conductor and scholar with over four decades of experience in the arts. Born in Mexico City, he has conducted and offered master classes on music and the arts all over the world; he was the first Latin American to conduct an orchestra in China. Benjamin won a Latin Grammy nomination in 2001 for his recordings of works of Baroque Mexican masters. He is the artistic and conceptual director of the series of concerts Cervantine Stories, Quixotic Moments to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Part II of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1615-2015). He teaches Fine Arts and Leadership at Boston University, currently on sabbatical, he is researching music and arts festivals around the world. On April 23rd, Cervantes 400th death anniversary he will give a master lecture on Cervantes and the musical landscapes of the Mediterranean at the historic Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City.

Steven Ledbetter was Musicologist and Program Annotator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998, at which time he created his own service, Steven Ledbetter Program Notes, and now writes notes for orchestras, chamber ensembles, opera companies and other musical entities from Boston to Florida to California and for concert venues like Carnegie Hall and the Aspen Festival. He has written the booklet notes for some 300 recordings. His scholarly specialties include the 16th-century Italian madrigal, American music, and musical theater. In 1991 his BSO program notes received an ASCAP/Deems Taylor award, awarded for “distinguished print and media coverage of music.”

Concert program 8PM

Boston University Symphony Orchestra

Tiffany Chang, conductor

Mihail Jojatu, cello (Don Quixote)

Don Quixote, Op. 35 is a tone poem composed by Richard Strauss in 1897 for cello, viola and large orchestra. The work is based on the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. The score is 45 minutes long and is written in theme and variations form, with the solo cello representing Don Quixote, and the solo viola, tenor tuba, and bass clarinet depicting the comic Sancho Panza.

Le Martyre de saint Sébastien is a five-act musical mystery play on the subject of Saint Sebastian, with a text written in 1911 by the Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio and incidental music by the French composer Claude Debussy.

From the series Cervantine Stories, Quixotic Moments to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Part II of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1615-2015).

Starts

7:00pm on Thursday, February 11th 2016

End Time

7:35pm

URL

https://www.facebook.com/events/1678863752327129/

 
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