Name: Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra
Start: 2023-08-09T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2023-08-09T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Benedict Music Tent

Organization

Aspen Music Festival

Orchestra

The Aspen Festival Orchestra

Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra

Aspen

United States

Benedict Music Tent

Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra: Rhapsodies Stucky (+1 More)

Public

Rhapsodies

Concerto for Orchestra in F Minor, Sz. 116, BB 123

Approved

See the conducting stars of tomorrow in these engaging concerts where student conductors rotate between conducting a movement of a work, or playing in the orchestra. Program Director and AMFS Music Director Robert Spano observes the work of his students at this weekly event.

Two works that masterfully display the different colors and capabilities of the orchestra are on this exciting program. You’ll also have a chance to hear this summer’s Brass and Percussion Competition Winner showcase their talent. When Steven Stucky was asked by then New York Philharmonic Music Director Lorin Maazel if he’d consider writing “something rhapsodic,” he ran to the dictionary. Realizing that he would never choose the word “rhapsodic” to describe his music, he used the opportunity to push his own boundaries. The result is a work in a free, improvisational form which develops episodically, as a single instrument inspires its neighbors to create a mass of sound.

Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, his most popular work, was also among his last.. It was commissioned as a showcase for the Boston Symphony Orchestra while the composer was in a New York hospital suffering from leukemia. This opportunity revitalized Bartók, and in only two months, the work was complete. As in Stucky’s piece, individual sections of the orchestra are often treated soloistically. The first movement is heavily influenced by the folk themes and rhythms of Bartók’s native Hungary, which near the end are played backwards, forwards, and upside down. In the second movement, subtitled Presentation of Couples, pairs of wind instruments and muted trumpets are each given their own theme, which later return embellished by additional instruments. A haunting elegy is followed by an intermezzo which is rudely interrupted by Bartók’s thumbing his nose at Shostakovich, whom he considered overrated. The splendid finale with its brass fanfares and intricate fugue brings the work to a thrilling conclusion.

Be swept away by the color and power of the orchestra with this invigorating program!

English

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