South Orange Symphony to open fall season with rousing program

SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — The South Orange Symphony presents its first concert of the 2017-18 season at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 5, at South Orange Middle School, 70 N. Ridgewood Road in South Orange. The program features Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with 23-year old pianist Kevin Lee. Susan Haig conducts, and admission is free.

Lee’s accomplishments include first-prize winner in the Festival Musica in Laguna International solo competition, winner of the gold prize in the Young Pianist Competition of New Jersey and first prize in the Greater Princeton Steinway Society Competition. Lee is a 2016 graduate of Princeton University and works in New York City as an engineer.

Like many early 20th-century French composers, Maurice Ravel’s music combines romanticism, exotic colors, and rhythms and harmonies of jazz. The first movement is lively and energetic, sounding in some parts like Gershwin. The second movement is slower, with a long spun-out melody played by the soloist and later the English horn; the third movement is high-speed and edgy, yet with bluesy phases, too.

The concert opens with Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide. A scant four minutes in length, it is the musical prologue to the operetta “Candide,” and a rollicking foot-tapper that sets the tone for the frenetic comedy that is to come. It has been a staple of the orchestra repertoire since it was first performed in 1956, and will be heard often in the upcoming Bernstein centennial year — he was born in 1918.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave was composed for a benefit concert sponsored by the Red Cross to raise money for Serbian veterans wounded in the Serbo-Turkish War, from 1876 to 1879. It is unmistakably martial and patriotic in tone with a strong percussion beat and brass throughout. Its melodies draw on Russian and Serbian folk songs to describe the spirit of the people. Mixed in are rousing renditions of the Russian national anthem to hopefully inspire Russians to give generously.

The concert concludes with a magnificent work: Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F Major. Brahms was a traditionalist during the 19th-century Romantic era. His music has the towering strength of Beethoven combined with emotional melodies, lush harmonies and pastoral qualities. The 2nd movement is marked “semplice,” or simple, yet includes rich counterpoint and complex inner voices. The 3rd movement features the cellos and French horn, and the entire work is a peak orchestral experience.

The South Orange Symphony receives funding in part from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and administered by the Essex County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs and matching gift funds from several New Jersey corporations. The balance of funding comes from generous donations of its members, their friends and families, and appreciative audiences.

For more information, visit www.sosymphony.org or South Orange Symphony’s Facebook page.

Text provided by John Tierney

  South Orange Middle School, South Orange Symphony