With music from three distinctly different eras, composers, and styles, the DSSO entertained its in-person and at-home audiences with a lively and playful concert, perfect for the first day of spring.
Under the baton of Ho-Yin Kwok, DSSO Assistant Conductor, the evening began with Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella Suite.” Stravinsky wrote “Pulcinella” originally for a ballet based on 16th century Italian commedia dell’arte with stock characters and plots in the broadly comic theatrical style.
The ballet was first performed in 1920, and then Stravinsky reworked the music for the “Suite” in 1922, scaling back from 18 movements to eight. Listening to the various musical themes, one can imagine the bright costumes and the vivid, comic characters presented by traveling troupes of vagabond actors.
The orchestra captured the charming, colorful, witty style of the music, with playful solos from several woodwind and brass players, as well as lovely solo work from Concertmaster Erin Aldridge.
Music Director Dirk Meyer took the stage to conduct the second piece, “Horn Concerto No. 1,” written in 1882-83 by Richard Strauss. Strauss wrote the concerto when he was still in his teens, and was inspired by his father Franz Joseph Strauss, a leading horn player of his day., though apparently Richard’s love of the French horn went back further than that.
Strauss once said, “My mother told me that from a very young age, I used to laugh and smile when hearing the sound of a French horn. When I heard the sound of a violin, I cried intensely.”
The soloist was the DSSO’s principal horn player, Jim Pospisil, playing the lyrical horn melody, both without accompaniment, where he had a chance to shine, and with the orchestra leading to the “con bravura,” fiery coda of the final movement.
The prolific Austrian composer Joseph Haydn is often referred to as the “Father of the Symphony,” or “Papa” Haydn, as composer of 104 symphonies. This is a remarkable achievement considering that Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies and Mozart wrote 41.
Closing the concert (also conducted by Meyer) was Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, composed in 1795. Also called the “London Symphony,” it was the final symphony he wrote. Haydn composed 12 symphonies over the three years he lived in England.
It received its first performance in April of that year. A London newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, praised both the composition and it author: “This wonderful man never fails,” the reviewer wrote of Haydn, “and the various powers of his inventive and impassioned mind have seldom been listened to with greater rapture by the hearers, than they were this evening.”
The DSSO was in fine form, starting with the composition’s solemn introduction in slow tempos, moving through to the joyous final movement. The musicians kept the audience on its toes through Haydn’s dramatic twists and turns of sudden pauses, inventive melodies, harmonies, humor, and dramatic surprises. earning them a well-deserved standing ovation.
If You ‘Go’
What: Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra’s concert “Stravinsky and Haydn”
When: Streaming online at dsso.com
Tickets: $10.00 at dsso.com
($10.00 each for two remaining concerts—“Price and Mendelssohn” on April 17 and “From Beethoven to Milhaud” on May 8—both in-person and streaming at “DSSO at Home”
Sheryl Jensen is a former teacher, magazine editor and director. She reviews performances for the News Tribune.
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Review: Spring has sprung at the DSSO with Stravinsky, Strauss and Haydn - Duluth News Tribune
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