January 20 & 22, 2011
Thursday-7:30pm | War Memorial Auditorium - High School Nite!
Saturday-8:00pm | Dana Auditorium
Roman Holidays
Yura Lee, violin
Dmitry Sitkovetsky, conductor
Gioachino Rossini
Overture to William Tell
Niccolò Paganini
Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 6
Allegro maestoso – Tempo giusto
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro spirituoso – Un poco più presto
Yura Lee, violin
Intermission
Felix Mendelssohn
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, “Italian”
Allegro vivace
Andante con moto
Con moto moderato
Saltarello: Presto
Hector Berlioz
Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9
Encore Performance:
This concert will be repeated on Monday, January 24 at High Point University.
Click to read more about the concert >
January 20 sponsor January 22 sponsors
Violinist/violist Yura Lee, recipient of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has appeared with many prestigious orchestras, among them the New York, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Monte Carlo Philharmonics, the Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Saint Louis, San Francisco Symphonies and the Cleveland, Minnesota Orchestras. In 2000, Ms. Lee made her Carnegie Hall debut with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra.
In 2006, Ms. Lee was the first prize winner in the Leopold Mozart Competition and was also awarded the Mozart Prize, the Mozart Medal, the Jugend Jury Prize, and the Public Prize. Ms. Lee was the fourth prize laureate in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, and the 2nd prize winner in the Premio Paganini Competition in Italy.
Recently, Ms. Lee was nominated and represented by Carnegie Hall for its ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) series with recitals at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, Salzburg Mozarteum, Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Stockholm’s Konserthus, Athens’ Concert Hall and the Cologne Philharmonie.
Ms. Lee regularly performs chamber music at the Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, Caramoor, Ravinia, Kronberg and Aspen Music Festivals.
In 1997 Ms. Lee received the Debut Artist of the Year at the "Performance Today" awards given by National Public Radio. She has been featured on the "Late Show with David Letterman," CNN/fN, "Fox on Arts," WABC-TV in New York, and ZDF Arte in Germany.
Ms. Lee earned her Artist Diploma Degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and the Indiana University. Yura Lee plays the 1778 Joseph and Antonio Gagliano violin, and the 2003 Douglas Cox viola.
Program Notes:
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
Overture to William Tell
Although he lived for forty years after competing it, Rossini’s William Tell (1829) was his last opera. It tells the story of a Swiss marksman set during that country’s struggle for independence from the Hapsburg Empire in the early 1300’s. The complete opera is infrequently presented, but its overture is one of the most popular pieces on the concert stage. It has also been used countless times in other places, such as the Lone Ranger TV and radio shows, A Clockwork Orange, cartoons, even as a song by Glen Campbell.
The overture itself falls into four parts: the Prelude is slow and features cellos and basses; the full orchestra comes in for the “Storm”; the Ranz des Vaches (Alpine melody used to move cows) is the well-known English horn solo; and the trumpets begin the finale with the famous theme.
Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 6
Paginini, born in Genoa in 1782, was one of the world’s most renowned virtuoso instrumentalists. He singlehandedly pushed the evolution of violin technique farther than anyone else in the early nineteenth century. This was especially noticeable in what he could do with his left hand, such as double-stops (playing two notes at the same time) and harmonics (creating a higher pitch that what the string can normally produce). Paganini had extremely long and narrow fingers, and this aided his ability to perform miraculous feats on the violin. A review of a concert in London stated “His violin talks perfectly. It remonstrates, supplicates, answers, holds a dialogue. In a word, we never have heard anything like any part of his performance.”
Most of Paganini’s compositions were written to showcase his ability on the violin. He composed his First Violin Concerto (1817-8) in his mid thirties when his technical prowess had reached its height. The three movements are in the standard fast-slow-fast organization for a concerto. Along with great virtuoso moments, the work has lyrical sections that could be right out of Italian opera.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, “Italian”
Felix Mendelssohn, known as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in his native Germany, only lived 38 years. His musical abilities were recognized as a young child, and he was even called “an heir to Mozart”. Even in his short life, his output was prodigious: five symphonies and other orchestral music, concertos (notable his Violin Concerto), chamber music, choral works, songs, and keyboard music. His premature death is one of the tragedies in music.
Between 1829 and 1831, Mendelssohn undertook a tour of Europe, which turned out to be the inspirations for several of his pieces. His third symphony is subtitled “Scottish” and “The Hebrides” refers to islands of the coast of Scotland, and the fourth symphony, performed tonight, is subtitled the “Italian”. His excitement about this country is apparent in a letter: "This is Italy! And now has begun what I have always thought.. to be the supreme joy in life. And I am loving it.”
The composer began the symphony during that trip, but did not finish it until 1833 when he was in Berlin. Around that time, Mendelssohn received an invitation to compose for the London Philharmonic Society, so the first performance was an international tour de force: a symphony by a German composer, with an Italian inspiration, in an English concert hall! The date was May 13, 1833.
The bubbling melodies and perpetual rhythmic drive has made Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony extremely popular and often performed. The composer knew that he had captured the liveliness of the Italian spirit even as the piece was just taking shape. During his trip, he wrote to his musical sister: “The ‘Italian’ symphony is making great progress. It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done, especially the last movement.”
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9
While many overtures lead into large operas or other stage works, Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture was written to stand alone as a piece for concert performance. The themes in it come from the composer’s opera, Benvenuto Cellini, which, curiously enough, has its own overture. Much of the Roman Carnival Overture has the same lively spirit that Mendelssohn captures in his “Italian” Symphony, with is soaring string melodies and quickly repeating notes in the woodwinds. And like the Rossini’s William Tell Overture, it features an important English horn solo. Its first performance was in Paris on February 3, 1843.
Meet the Artists
Join us after the Thursday
evening concert for a brief question and answer
session held at the front of the stage with our
guest artists and Dima.
Radio Broadcast
WFDD will broadcast this
concert on Sunday, February 20 at 8:00 p.m.
“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”
SERGEI RACHMANINOV
