The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences opens its 2006-07 concert season at 8 p.m. Sept. 11 with a performance by the WUSTL Chamber Orchestra.
The performance is free and open to the public and takes place in Umrath Hall Lounge.
The Chamber Orchestra comprises both undergraduate and graduate students and is led by Elizabeth Macdonald, director of strings in the music department. 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 Roman Catholic 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” originally was 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.
For more information, call 935-4841 or email staylor@artsci.wustl.edu.