Windham Orchestra: Legacy & Inspiration
Friday, May 14 at 7:30 pm, Bellows Falls Opera House, Bellows Falls, VT
Saturday, May 15, 7:30 pm, Putney School, Putney, VT
The Windham Orchestra, with guest conductor Lisa Jablow, celebrates its 40th anniversary with a concert that takes inspiration from the legacy of Blanche Moyse. The strings will perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3, honoring Mme. Moyse’s special love of and dedication to the music of J.S. Bach. Violinist and Music School faculty member Kathy Andrew will join the orchestra in a performance of one of the great works of the classical repertoire, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, which was played by 16-year-old Blanche Moyse in her debut performance with L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
Tickets, $15 adults, $7 students and seniors, are available by calling the BMC at 802-257-4523.
Or on-line:
Friday, May 14, Bellows Falls, VT
Saturday, May 15, Putney, VT
STORY:
On Friday, May 14, in Bellows Falls and Saturday, May 15, in Putney, the Windham Orchestra, with guest conductor Lisa Jablow, will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a concert that takes inspiration from the legacy of Blanche Moyse.
The Legacy & Inspiration concert features three pieces that all have special meaning to violinist, BMC Founder and southern Vermont musical pioneer Blanche Moyse. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.3, honors Mme. Moyse’s love and dedication to the music of J.S. Bach; Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, one of the great works of the classical repertoire, was played by 16-year old Blanche Moyse in her debut with L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; and Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave, was played by the Windham Orchestra in 1978 conducted by Mme. Moyse.
The Windham Orchestra is currently celebrating its 40-year history of providing symphonic music in southern Vermont, and will conclude the 2009-2010 concert season in May under the baton of guest conductor Lisa Jablow.
Lisa Jablow holds a D.M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has studied conducting and voice at the Aspen School of Music, the Tanglewood Festival, Westminster Choir College, the Carnegie Hall Conductors’ Workshops and the Conductors Retreat at Medomak under the likes of Pierre Boulez, Robert Shaw, Kenneth Kiesler and Joseph Flummerfelt.
As a vocal soloist she has appeared onstage with organizations ranging from the New York City Opera and the New York Virtuoso Singers to Vermont’s Lost Nation Theater, Opera Burlington, the Vermont Philharmonic, and the Friends of Music at Guilford. In addition, she is an alumna of the world-renowned “Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik” in Darmstadt, Germany, where she was awarded top honors for the interpretation of new music.
Active as a conductor Ms. Jablow has been the music director of the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra and has guest-conducted the Lamoille Choral Society, the Onion River Chorus, UVM’s Catamount Singers and the Burlington Choral Society. In addition to co-directing the Musical Theater program at Johnson State College, where she is the senior member of the music faculty, she has been music director for Lost Nation Theater, Burlington’s Lyric Theater and Lamoille County Players. She has also served as an Assistant Conductor at Opera Illinois and the Green Mountain Opera Festival and is the former Assistant Conductor and Chorus Director of the Pioneer Valley Symphony in western Massachusetts. Currently, she is Assistant Conductor and Chorus Director of the Vermont Philharmonic Orchestra.
The year 1803 was a turning point for Beethoven. Having come grudgingly to terms with his growing deafness, he entered a new period of composition, known as his "Middle" or "Heroic" period, marked by his Symphony No. 3, the "Eroica." According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven said, "I am not satisfied with the work I have done so far. From now on I intend to take a new way.” The next five years were a busy and fertile time for him, yielding a number of his most famous works.
The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was premiered in1806, but was not met with success, and was little performed in the following decades. Not until 1844, when performed by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph Joachim, with an orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn, was the Concerto revived. Since then it has remained one of the most important works of the violin concerto repertoire, exhibiting rich humanity and incredible depth and warmth from the outwardly blustery composer.
Violinist Kathy Andrew will join the Windham Orchestra for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D.
“It is fitting that we perform the Beethoven Violin Concerto as part of the Blanche 100th year, as this was one of her signature pieces as a young concert violinist,” said Andrew. “It’s been a wonderful process to study this concerto, so pure, so wonderful, so idiomatic for the violin. It requires a study in refinement of basic technical principles, and yet it is so deeply beautiful. With this study I have entered into a very special world, a world of endless possibilities, untold beauty, genius simplicity, and technical cleansing. I am completely in love with it.”
Kathy Andrew moved to Brattleboro in 1989 to study with Blanche Moyse, a mentorship that lasted for over ten years. Previously she had received a BA from the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque) and a MM from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. She was an active freelancer in Baltimore before her relocation to Vermont.
Since living in New England, Ms. Andrew has been heard as soloist with the Windham Orchestra and the Nashua Chamber Orchestra, has played numerous solo recitals and for over 20 years performed with the New England Bach Festival. In 1998 she toured the U.S. with Eric Clapton’s “Pilgrim Tour” as a member of his 21-piece string section.
Currently she performs with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, is Assistant Concertmaster of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and is Concertmaster of Opera North. She performs chamber music regularly with colleagues at the Brattleboro Music Center, Dartmouth College, Marlboro College, Middlebury College, St Michael’s College, Keene State College, and Northampton’s Unitarian Society.
Ms. Andrew has taught violin and viola at Bennington College, Keene State College, The Putney School, Northfield Mount Hermon, and has coached chamber music at Dartmouth College. Currently she teaches at the Brattleboro Music Center, where she also conducts the Music School’s Senior Orchestra and is co-Dean of Faculty, and has a private studio in Norwich, Vermont.
The Windham Orchestra’s Legacy & Inspiration program also includes “The Hebrides,” otherwise known as “Fingal’s Cave,” written in 1830 and a product of the Scotland leg of Felix Mendelssohn’s youthful Grand Tour. It is a concert overture, a genre new to the 19th century that grew out of the practice of performing opera overtures in the concert hall independent of the operas they were intended to introduce.
Mendelssohn was also an extremely talented and prolific visual artist and, even before his actual venture out to the island housing the cave for which the overture is named, he began to set down ideas for what would eventually become one of the most inspired sound paintings in the orchestral repertoire. As a Classical-Romantic composer, Mendelssohn “painted” with a 19th-century harmonic color palette, yet he most often worked within the parameters of 18th-century formal structure. The listener is scarcely aware of the sonata form that houses the musical depictions of ocean swells and crashing surf and spray that thunder and echo around and inside the cathedral-like cave. Since there is no written program to accompany the piece, each listener is free to make specific associations with the musical events as they unfold; but there is no doubt of the overall effect Mendelssohn intended to create. We hear it so clearly we can see it.
The Brandenburg Concerto #3 belongs to a set of six instrumental works sent by J.S. Bach in 1721 to the Margrave of Brandenburg in what can only be interpreted as a job application. The dedication accompanying the manuscripts bore the customary “purple prose” expected in those situations and even makes reference to Bach’s wish to be employed by the Margrave.
All six feature different instrumentation and all are based on the concerto grosso model of the early 18th-century: that of a refrain played by the full ensemble alternating with diverse sections featuring one or more solo players. This basic format was established by Corelli and perfected by Vivaldi, but there is no question that Bach took it to greater heights. The third Brandenburg concerto is scored for an ensemble of strings (violin, viola, cello, bass).
The Windham Orchestra’s Legacy and Inspiration concerts will take place on Friday, May 14, 7:30 pm, at the Bellows Falls Opera House in Bellows Falls, VT, and on Saturday, May 15, 7:30 pm, at The Putney School in Putney, VT.
Tickets, $15 adults, $7 students and seniors, are available by calling the BMC at 802-257-4523.
Or on-line:
Friday, May 14, Bellows Falls, VT
Saturday, May 15, Putney, VT
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