This month's NSO Showcase reflects the words of maestro Gianandrea Noseda, contemplating on the meaning of compassion. "Life is a journey," he said "and it should be lived with compassion and con passione-- with passion." With music by a wide array of composers, from Mozart and Haydn to Louise Farrenc and George Walker, November’s program covers a whole range of passions, from simple joy to triumph over adversity.
Show Notes
Program
Joesph Haydn
Symphony No.96 "Miracle"
George Walker
Lyric for Strings
Richard Strauss
Duet-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon
- Lin Ma, clarinet
- Sue Heineman, bassoon
W. A. Mozart
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
4 Noveletten
Louise Farrenc
Symphony No.3
Reflections by Nicole Lacroix
On the night of the National Symphony Orchestra’s Season Opening Gala, Maestro Gianandrea Noseda greeted the audience from the Concert Hall stage by riffing on the word compassion. “Life is a journey,” he said “and it should be lived with compassion and con passione — with passion.”
Classical WETA’s NSO Showcase reflects this passionate musical journey in its November 3 broadcast. For example, when British-African composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose 4 Noveletten are featured on the program, was warned of discrimination before traveling to the U.S., he wrote a friend, “As for prejudice, I am well prepared for it. Surely [it] will not quite kill me...I am a great believer in my race, and I never lose an opportunity of letting my white friends here know it.”
And how about Louise Farrenc, whose career defied the patriarchy? As the only woman to teach at the Paris Conservatory during the entire 19th century, she demanded and received equal pay with her male colleagues. Her Symphony No. 3 is a tour de force that transcends gender.
We’ll also hear Mozart’s exuberant Eine kleine Nachtmusik; Haydn’s Miracle Symphony, so nicknamed when Haydn’s fans rushed the stage in Hanover Square, thus escaping being smashed by a falling chandelier; American composer George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, an homage to his grandmother who had suffered the ravages of slavery; and Richard Strauss’ Duet Concertino, which tells the story of Beauty and the Beast just two years after the end of World War II and its beastly horrors.