Department of Music opens 2006-07 season Sept. 11 with Washington University Chamber Orchestra

The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will open its 2006-07 concert season at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 11, with a performance by the Washington University Chamber Orchestra.

The performance is free and open to the public and takes place in Karl Umrath Hall Lounge, located immediately north of the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-4841 or email staylor@artsci.wustl.edu.

The Chamber Orchestra is comprised of both undergraduate and graduate students and is led by Elizabeth Macdonald, director of strings in the Department of Music. The program will focus on the music of two contrasting historical periods — the 18th-century Baroque and the early 20th century — through the work of composers representing the breadth of Europe.

The concert opens with “Concerto Grosso No. 5 in B-flat” by the mid-Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). A virtuoso violinist, Corelli spent his career in Rome (under the patronage of cardinals of the Church) where he composed an important body of instrumental works and established the foundations of modern violin technique.

Corelli’s sonatas and concerto grossi also influenced the late-Baroque works of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), among others. The German-born Handel is represented here by a group of concert arias. Soloist is Amy Bonn, a St. Louis soprano who has sung with Union Avenue Opera and other St. Louis vocal groups.

The 20th-century portion of the concert opens with the “Brook Green Suite” of Gustav Holst (1874-1934). Perhaps best known for “The Planets,” a large orchestra work, Holst often employed folk idioms and composed a number of pieces for school and amateur groups throughout his native England. The “Brook Green Suite” was originally written for the orchestra at James Allen’s Girls’ School, in Dulwich.

The program concludes with five Greek dances for orchestra by Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949). Despite his early death, at age 45, Skalkottas created a large body of work though little of it was performed in his lifetime. Trained in Athens and Berlin, his music reflects a deep affinity to progressive compositional approaches established by Austro-Germanic composers of the early 20th century.