Music at St. Matthew’s continues its 2012 – 2013 season with a program by the Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s, Thomas Neenan, conductor, and Yi-Huan Zhao, violinist, featuring music by Leonard Bernstein, Edward Elgar, Borodin and Bizet, arranged by Shchedrin on Friday, November 9, 2012 at St. Matthew’s Church, 1031 Bienveneda Avenue in Pacific Palisades.
Based on Plato’s dialogue Symposium, Serenade is one of Bernstein’s most elegantly fashioned orchestral works. Though it features a prominent role for the solo violin, lyricism generally wins out over virtuoso display. In Plato’s Symposium – the title literally means “drinking party†– some of Athens’s greatest minds gather to offer their thoughts on the true nature of love. The Chamber Orchestra’s Concertmaster, Yi-Huan Zhao will be the featured soloist.
Alexander Borodin may be best known for his Gliding Dance of the Maidens from the Polovtsian Dances which became the hit song Stranger In Paradise from the Broadway Show Kismet. Running a close second is the Nocturne from the Second String Quartet, a work that also made its way into Kismet as the song And This Is My Beloved.
Elgar’s delicately scored Serenade for Strings manages to convey both Victorian grandeur and intimate musical conversations between a few friends. Written in 1892 and first performed in pravate by the Worchester Ladies’ Orchestral Class, with Elgar conducting, it is thought to have been a reworking of an earlier work.
For more information: www.MusicGuildOnline.org
