Barber, Chopin & Mendelssohn

Michael Torke’s groundbreaking Ash of 1989 was called “one of the most remarkable orchestral works to have emerged from America in recent years” (Gramophone.)  Torke is an American composer who writes in a jazz and minimalist idiom.  His music has been called "some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years" (Gramophone, August 1996). 

Barber’s haunting Adagio for Strings is famous for its memorable use in the 1986 movie Platoon.  One critic described it as "full of pathos and cathartic passion; rarely leaves a dry eye."  Barber wrote it in 1937 and sent the score to Arturo Toscanini.  He was slightly nettled when the famed conductor returned it without comment; however, as it turned out, Toscanini was planning to premiere the work and returned the score simply because he had already memorized it.   Apparently the conductor didn't even glance at the score again until after the premiere in 1938.  

Formerly director of piano studies at PLU, pianist Regina Yeh has been lauded by the New York press for her “fiery musicality” and “meltingly beautiful” sound.  Chopin’s youthful 2^nd piano concerto features piano writing “of such imagination and beauty that (his) inexperience writing for the orchestra is immaterial.” (Phillip Huscher)  It was written in 1830, when he was just 20, as the vehicle for his rapid and complete conquest of Paris. 

The "Italian" Symphony was written by the German composer Felix Mendelssohn at the youthful age of 21.  The cosmopolitan Mendelssohn grew up in Berlin, started the symphony while on an extensive tour of Italy financed by his wealthy parents, completed it back home in Berlin, and premiered it a year later in London.   The "Italian" Symphony had, ironically, a tremendous impact on British music for the balance of the 19th century.  It is a sunny, joyful work full of youthful exuberance, quite free of the sturm und drang of his contemporary, Beethoven.