2025 Concert Programs

The overture to the opera Le nozze di Figaro, composed in 1786, the first of Mozart's three collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte begins with a busy whispering and buzzing that develops quickly into a short-breathed little theme that might just slip by the less than alert listener.

Then, bang!, comes a tutti with trumpets and drums, the music subsequently driven by scampering violins, flutes, and oboes in a succession of hectically upbeat figurations, the whole accomplished in four minutes. The Figaro overture gives us a delectable foretaste of the mood of its opera: fleet, witty, often acerbic in its humor.

The overture, it might be noted, originally contained a slow middle section with a melancholy oboe solo. But contrast be damned, Mozart wisely decided, and maintained the swirling, manically jolly mood throughout.

Figaro was first presented on the stage of Vienna's Burgtheater in May of 1786. The opera was then presented in Prague in December of 1786.  Mozart himself conducted in Prague on January 22, 1787.

The Imperial Italian opera company paid Mozart 450 florins for the work; this was three times Mozart’s meagre yearly salary when he had worked as a court musician in Salzburg. [adapted from Herbert Glass, Los Angeles Times]

Hector Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture was first performed on February 3, 1844 at the Salle Herz in Paris. The Overture had a resounding success at its concert premiere and was encored.

It immediately joined the Symphonie Fantastique as the most popular of Berlioz’s music, and it was one of the works he programmed frequently in the concerts he conducted.

The two large formal sections of the Roman Carnival Overture are based on melodies from Berlioz’s opera Benvenuto Cellini. The first, presented by the solo English horn, borrows Benvenuto’s aria O Teresa, vous que j’aime (“O Teresa, whom I adore”). The other theme is a bubbling saltarello reminiscent of the folk dances Berlioz heard in Rome. 

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Festive Overture in 1954.  It was composed in a matter of hours for the celebration at the Bolshoi Theatre of the 37th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution. Shostakovich's friend, musicologist Lev Lebedinsky, later described the scene:

The speed with which he wrote was truly astounding. Moreover, when he wrote light music, he was able to talk, make jokes, and compose simultaneously, like the legendary Mozart. He laughed and chuckled, and in the meantime, work was under way and the music was being written down.... Two days later the dress rehearsal took place. I hurried down to the Theatre and I heard this brilliant effervescent work, with its vivacious energy spilling over like uncorked champagne.

The Festive Overture was one of only two works which Shostakovich ever conducted himself during his lifetime. It was chosen as the signature musical theme of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. [adapted from an article by Harlow Robinson, Distinguished University Professor, Northeastern University].

Joan Devoe is a composer and cellist with the Stockbridge Sinfonia.  She retired in 2011 as a speech-language pathologist at the Mount Greylock Regional School District. 

Her symphony, Insidiodyssey, in three movements, reflects the feelings of many of us before and during the Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020.  The first movement, entitled Chaotic Mindlessness is intended, she writes, to evoke “the pre-Coronavirus experience of daily chaos at an unconsciously, fast moving pace.”  The second movement, entitled Amorphous Challenges, makes us feel the “uncertainty, anxiety, and never-ending isolation” we were forced to endure during the first years of Covid-19.  The final third movement, entitled Reverent Gratitude asks us to pause, “in memory of those whom we lost during the Covid pandemic and in tribute to our courageous healthcare workers.”

Antonin Dvořák composed and orchestrated his Symphony No. 8 in two and a half months from August to November, 1889.  He conducted the orchestra of the National Theater in Prague in the first performance on February 2, 1890. His Eighth is cheery and lyrical and draws its inspiration more from the Bohemian folk music that Dvořák loved. Despite occasional dramatic outbursts, the predominant tone of the Eighth Symphony is one of bucolic euphoria, the sheer joy of being alive in a world of natural wonders.

Dvořák, it could be said, was reflecting a worldview in which “intelligent design” is the source of both wonderment and woe. The opening of the Eighth Symphony’s first movement, a serious and rather somber chorale for low strings, gives way quickly to an audacious flute solo. Without ever subduing the dramatic element, Dvořák gives free reign to the poetic side of his nature through the ensuing movements of this beloved score, from the often melancholy rhetoric of the Adagio to the folk-flavored, waltz-like Allegretto grazioso and the invigorating theme and variations of the rousing finale. [adapted from Dennis Bade’s program notes for the LA Philharmonic.]