Ragtime, Brass, Brahms! — Saturday, September 28, 2019

Concert at 8 p.m.
Pre-concert talk at 7 p.m.

• Kodály: Háry János Suite
• Stravinsky: Ragtime for 11 Instruments
• Michael Tilson Thomas: Street Song for Symphonic Brass
• Brahms/Schoenberg:  G minor Piano Quartet

Welcome to the opening concert of Redwood Symphony's 35th season!

Zoltán Kodály's opera Háry János depicts the old soldier entertaining his listeners with tall tales of wartime exploits. The Suite is assembled from musical highlights of the opera.

Igor Stravinsky's Ragtime grew directly out of the "Ragtime" section of his theatrical work A Soldier's Tale, part of a sequence when the princess is raised from her sickbed by dance. It is presented in its scoring for a small chamber orchestra of eleven instruments.

Michael Tilson Thomas is well known in the classical music world for his prolific conducting career, but he has also composed for a variety of musical forces. Street Song is a composition in three continuous parts. The first contrasts loud, fast and "jagged" interruptions with softer, slower and smoother sounds — the music sounds like it is "starting and stopping." The second song has a folk-like main melody, and the third is a kind of dance.

Finally, we hear the Piano Quartet in G-minor, Op. 25 by Johannes Brahms in an arrangement for orchestra. Arnold Schoenberg had declared the quartet "is always very badly played, as the better the pianist, the louder he plays, and one hears nothing of the strings." He was prompted by the conductor Otto Klemperer to produce an orchestral version, which received its premiere in 1937.

For Kodály's and Stravinsky's works this concert, Redwood Symphony is joined by Jay Stebley playing cimbalom, a type of hammered dulcimer popular in parts of Eastern Europe as well as associated cultures.

Redwood Advantage: children under 18 admitted free!
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