Teacher's PET (Audio)

Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture," which the composer offhandedly characterized as "a potpourri of student songs," features an unusual treatment of standard sonata form. What emerges is one of those rarities in classical music: a fun piece, full of antic humor, that invites the listener to laugh along with the composer. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35725]

Virtuoso violinist Keir GoGwilt is the featured soloist in Robert Schumann's vibrant "Violin Concerto in D Minor." Once rescued from an early undeserved obscurity, this piece quickly became one of the most popular in the violin repertoire. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35503]

Rossini's 1829 opera "William Tell" is rarely performed today, but its Overture lives on as one of the most popular works in the classical repertoire. The Overture is essentially an instrumental suite written in four parts and performed without pause. The best-known section is the last, the allegro vivace, famously used as the rousing theme music for "The Lone Ranger" radio and TV series (and notoriously so in "A Clockwork Orange). Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35398]

In the 2018/2019 season the La Jolla Symphony performed Florence Price's "Violin Concerto No. 2," and inaugurates their 2019/20120 season with Price's "Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major." Florence Price was the first African-American woman to have a symphonic piece performed in the 1930's by a major orchestra, but her work has been sadly neglected in the decades since. The chance discovery of several scores in 2009, including the two Violin Concertos, has sparked renewed interest in her compositions. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35399]

In this fun and informative program Conductor Steven Schick guides the audience through excerpts from Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and Florence Price's Violin Concerto No.1 as well as the complete William Tell Overture by Rossini. Schick places particular emphasis on the orchestra's organization and how the various sections interact with each other, with each of the musical selections serving as examples. He also invites questions from the audience. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 34845]

Originally written as the second (slow) movement of a string quartet, Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" went on to become one of the most popular symphonic works of the 20th century in its final orchestral arrangement. The solemn character of the Adagio has led to its frequent use as mourning music, much to Barber’s distress since it was not his intention to write a requiem. It was broadcast following the announcement of President Roosevelt’s death in 1945, and performed by the New York Philharmonic to mark Barber’s own death in 1981. Indeed, the Adagio seems fated to be used whenever someone needs music that sounds both “ceremonial” and “American.” Whatever its unintentional cultural accretions, Barber's melody is still both beautiful and powerful after countless hearings. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35009]

A close friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth was a largely self-trained composer who was immersed in English folk music. His works grew directly out of his contact with the English countryside, as exemplified by "The Banks of Green Willow" with its evocation of pastoral life in all its idealized simplicity and tranquility; indeed, the composer characterized it as an "idyll." As was common in his music Butterworth bases this piece on several old English folk melodies, creating a series of brief fantasias on each of the themes before drawing to a peaceful conclusion. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35011]

Though suspicious of German music in general Maurice Ravel was an unabashed fan of the waltz, and wrote several pieces that incorporated that distinctive rhythm. Of "La Valse," the composer wrote that “I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal sort of dervish’s dance.” Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 35007]

As noted by the title, this piece centers on the talents of virtuoso trumpeter Peter Evans in a performance that is largely (though not entirely) improvised in performance. Evans’ tones are manipulated at times by the composer through digital signal processing, in what amounts to another interdependent and improvised performance; indeed, the watchwords for the entire enterprise are exploration and collaboration. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 33855]

Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Wolfe has taken particular pleasure in writing music for film, and we hear her "Fuel" with a film by Bill Morrison. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 34887]