December 3, 2022: Music for Movies

Saturday, December 3, 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Gershwin Performing Arts Center | Murrieta Mesa High School

Tonight’s Program

Aaron Copland (1900 – 1990)

Music for Movies

1. New England Countryside (from the documentary film The City, 1939)
2. Barley Wagons (from the Hal Roach production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, 1939)
3. Sunday Traffic (from The City)
4. Grover’s Corners (from the Sol Lesser production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, 1940)
5. Threshing Machines (from Of Mice and Men)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, K. 299

1. Allegro
2. Andantino
3. Rondeau – Allegro

Elena Yarritu, flute
Elena Mashkovtseva, harp

INTERMISSION

Pietro Mascagni (1863 – 1945)

Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana

Darius Milhaud (1892 – 1974)

Le Boeuf sur le toit

Thanks to the Murrieta Valley Unified School District for their support of this concert.

Concession sales this evening benefit the Murrieta Educational Foundation for the Arts.

Flutist Elena Yarritu enjoys an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and teacher.  She has earned a MM degree from Yale University School of Music, a DMA from Stony Brook University, and has studied with many distinguished flutists in the U.S. and abroad. She performs principal flute in the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus and records on the MSR Classics Label. Her performance with pianist Gabriel Sanchez on her debut CD Scree has been described as “fearsome and adventurous” by Fanfare Magazine while being “wholesome and jubilantly virtuosic” (American Record Guide). Her second CD, Emigrantes, released in 2015 features arrangements of music by Astor Piazzolla and original works of young Argentinian composer/pianist Exequiel Mantega and a special collaboration with flutist Paulina Fain.

Dr. Yarritu has served as Artistic Director of the Carmel Valley Library Family Music Concert Series and performs with harpist Elena Mashkovtseva as DUO ELENA. Invested in teaching, she currently serves as president of the San Diego North Chapter CAPMT (Ca. Assoc. of Professional Music Teachers) and her pupils are top prize winners in local, regional, and national competitions including the Music Teachers’ Association of California, National Youth Orchestra, Helen B. Goodlin Scholarship, San Diego Musical Merit, San Diego Flute Guild, The National Flute Association High School Soloist Competition, Young Arts, and Spotlight, among others. In the Fall of 2021, she joined the music faculty at MiraCosta College in Oceanside.

Members of the California Chamber Orchestra

All musicians performing in this concert are members of
The American Federation of Musicians, Local 325

Program Notes

The earliest films, known as “silent films” were not actually silent. Theater audiences were entertained by live musicians on piano or organ to help set the mood, further the action, and be a part of the film’s storytelling. These musicians were often improvising, or “making-up,” the music. If you saw a silent film in two different theatres, the musical accompaniment would be different. Each organist and pianist had their own unique musical style.

When films moved into the “talkie” phase, around 1927, music was able to be included in the final product. “Talkie” films relied on actors delivering their lines, and the support of music specifically chosen for a scene. The birth of sound with films also produced a new job category called Film Composer.

Tonight’s concert takes us on a journey into famous classical pieces and their connections to 20^th century films.

Upon returning to America, the young composer’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra was premiered with the Boston and New York Symphonies. This major early success launched Copland’s career as one of the most well-known 20^th Century American composers.

Copland connected with Hollywood in the mid-1930’s, not long after “Talkies” started in theaters. He intended for film composing to be a new way to expand his musical reach. His first film score, written in 1939, accompanied Of Mice and Men.

The arrival of the Great Depression changed Copland’s view of American classical music and its role in society. According to The Copland You Know – And the Copland You Don’t by Canadian musicologist Colin Eatock, Copland believed in creating a new American music sound that would appeal to a broad audience. “I see no reason,” Copland wrote, “why composers any longer should write their music solely with the concert audience in mind. New listeners, such as radio provides, may not be cultivated listeners, but at least they have few of the prejudices of the typical concert-goer.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was commissioned to write the Concerto for Flute and Harp by French diplomat and military officer Duc de Guines. The duke was a flutist, and his daughter a harpist. As part of the contract, Mozart composed the concerto for the father-daughter duo and also tutored the duke’s daughter in composition. Mozart wrote the piece in April of 1778.

Mozart lived long before films, but he was no stranger to another form of visual entertainment that relied on music to set the mood: Opera. Mozart wrote his first opera when he was 12 years old.

A general characteristic of Mozart’s music, and certainly this concerto, is the musical dialogue between solo instruments and the orchestra. Mozart’s concerto balances the brilliance of the flute with the heavenly sounds of the harp, creating different moods and colors through changes in dynamics, musical ranges, and modes.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was one of Les Six (The Six), a group of young French composers who wanted to revolutionize French music. Le Boeuf sur le toit (The Bull on the Roof) was inspired by the composer’s two-year stay in Rio de Janeiro and is named after a popular Brazilian song. The piece is a rondo form of sorts, whereby Brazilian melodies, tangos, sambas, and other types of music are interjected between a recurring main theme.

— Dana Zimbric

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September 24, 2022 — Records

Saturday, September 24, 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Gershwin Performing Arts Center | Murrieta Mesa High School

Tonight’s Program

Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)

Records from a Vanishing City

Strum

INTERMISSION

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

Symphony No. 4 in B Flat Major

1. Adagio – Allegro vivace
2. Adagio
3. Scherzo-trio: Allegro vivace
4. Allegro ma non troppo

Thanks to the Murrieta Valley Unified School District for their support of this concert.

Concession sales this evening benefit the Murrieta Educational Foundation for the Arts.

Members of the California Chamber Orchestra

All musicians performing in this concert are members of
The American Federation of Musicians, Local 325

Program Notes

The California Chamber Orchestra 2022-23 concert season opens with Records, a concert inspired by the records of past and present. The concert features two composers: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and Jessie Montgomery (b.1981).

Strum 

Strum is the culminating result of several versions of a string quartet I wrote in 2006. It was originally written for the Providence String Quartet and guests of Community MusicWorks Players then arranged for string quartet in 2008 with several small revisions. In 2012 the piece underwent its final revisions with a rewrite of both introduction and ending for the Catalyst Quartet in a performance celebrating the 15 annual Sphinx Competition. The string orchestra arrangement represents the 2012 final version.

Originally conceived for the formation of a cello quintet, the voicing is often spread wide over the ensemble, giving the music an expansive quality of sound. Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinato that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.

Beethoven, Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60

Beethoven c. 1805

People familiar with Beethoven’s Symphonies may be less familiar with his Fourth symphony. It never quite caught on like some of his other works– Symphony No. 5 (da-da-da-DUM), Symphony No. 6 (“Pastorale”), or Symphony No. 9 (“Choral”).

Symphony No. 4 highlights Beethoven’s compositional creativity and illustrates his desire to push the classical music envelope. We now look back on Beethoven’s body of work and see a composer prefacing the Romantic period, leading us through history to the music of Brahms and Mahler. Beethoven could not predict who or what would come after his music. He only knew what had come before (Haydn, Mozart), and where he personally wanted to go.

Beethoven also expands the traditional Minuet and Trio form in the third movement. He adds a second reprise of the Trio and main theme, extending the movement. Other composers (Haydn, Mozart, Schubert) were fairly strict about the musical roadmap of the third movement. Beethoven expands on the Minuet-Trio concept, which he takes even further by adding a fifth movement to his Symphony No. 6.

A final note about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4: It was written in a time when aristocratic audiences had deep cultural knowledge of classical symphonic music. They also would have been familiar with Euro-centric folk music traditions, and likely also the music of Beethoven’s earlier works (and those of his predecessors).  His audiences would have noted the fresh timpani passages and expanded Minuet-Trio. They would have recognized the folk music snippets Beethoven includes in his music and appreciated his clever changes.

Much like today’s audiences may easily recognize musical quotes of Miles Davis or Gershwin in Montgomery’s Records from a Vanishing City, Beethoven’s audiences would have been thrilled to hear familiar musical snippets presented in clever ways.

— Dana Zimbric

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