This preview has been provided by the North Carolina Symphony.
Music Director Grant Llewellyn and the North Carolina Symphony will perform Aaron Copland’s magnificent Appalachian Spring in the Southern Pines/Moore County series finale, on Saturday, May 2, at 8 p.m. in Lee Auditorium on the campus of Pinecrest High School in Southern Pines. The concert will also feature a World Premiere Orchestration of the Judd Greenstein composition Change, Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Essay No. 2, and Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to West Side Story.
North Carolina Symphony Scholar-in-Residence William Robin says of Appalachian Spring, “It describes a spring celebration of American pioneers with the hopeful anticipation of a marriage, a powerful sermon from a revivalist pastor and a couple settling into their new lives…. Copland is the quintessentially unadorned composer, and Appalachian Spring the quintessentially unadorned work.”
Barber’s Adagio was well-loved by Copland, according to Robin. “‘It’s really well felt, it’s believable you see, it’s not phony,’ Copland wrote about Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. “It comes straight from the heart.” Given the ubiquity, indeed the inescapability, of Barber’s Adagio — from the funerals of presidents to Platoon to innumerable parodies of Platoon — it’s refreshing to know that the plainspoken Copland held it in high regard. Inspired by Virgil, Barber composed the work as the middle movement of a string quartet in 1936 and expanded its orchestration two years later. Like Appalachian Spring, Barber’s Second Essay has wartime implications… Completed in March 1942, the Essay seems to teem with the sounds of World War II.”
Of Change, Robin writes that it was originally written in 2009 for the NOW Ensemble, a chamber group that Greenstein leads. “The message of Change is Gandhi’s familiar rejoinder: “Be the change you want to see in the world. Greenstein himself has been at the forefront of many recent changes in the classical music world. He curates the prominent Ecstatic Music Festival in New York, which hosts collaborative concerts between artists from different musical worlds, and co-directs New Amsterdam Records, a landmark label that extends the boundaries of music today.” Robin continues, “This orchestral arrangement – a North Carolina Symphony commission and world premiere – transmits that local energy to a grander scale, opening up to a broader community what Greenstein calls ‘my own reminder to myself to always keep that fire lit.'”
Of the Bernstein piece, Robin writes, “Given that West Side Story is famous for having been written by one of the few classical composers to also compose for Broadway, one might be surprised that it did not originally have an overture. After all, wouldn’t the great Leonard Bernstein — conductor extraordinaire, gifted symphonic composer — have wanted to write an overture in the style of Mozart, Beethoven and company? But this brief work was written to introduce the 1961 film version of the musical, orchestrated by Maurice Peress from excerpts from the original musical.”
In addition to stellar performances, North Carolina Symphony concertgoers can enjoy pre-concert talks, post-concert discussions, and “Meet the Artists,” which feature interactive conversations with guest artists and select orchestra members, at many Symphony events. Before the May 2 performance, William Robin will host a Meet the Artists session at 7 p.m. in the Pinecrest High School Band Room.
Tickets to the concert range from $24 to $50. Student tickets are $10. To purchase tickets, visit the North Carolina Symphony website at www.ncsymphony.org or call the Symphony Box Office at 919.733.2750 or toll free 877.627.6724. Tickets are also available at The Country Bookshop, 140 NW Broad St., in Southern Pines, the Campbell House, 482 East Connecticut Ave. in Southern Pines, and one hour prior to the concert outside Lee Auditorium at Pinecrest High School, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines, N.C., 28387.
Partners for the 2014/15 Southern Pines/Moore County series include First Bank, St. Joseph of the Pines, and BB&T Wealth.
About the North Carolina Symphony
Founded in 1932, the North Carolina Symphony gives more than 200 performances annually to adults and school children in more than 50 North Carolina counties. An entity of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, the orchestra employs 66 professional musicians, under the artistic leadership of Music Director and Conductor Grant Llewellyn, Resident Conductor William Henry Curry, and Associate Conductor David Glover.
Headquartered in downtown Raleigh’s spectacular Meymandi Concert Hall at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts and an outdoor summer venue at Booth Amphitheatre in Cary, N.C., the Symphony performs about 60 concerts annually in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary metropolitan area. It holds regular concert series in Fayetteville, New Bern, Southern Pines and Wilmington — as well as individual concerts in many other North Carolina communities throughout the year — and conducts one of the most extensive education programs of any U.S. orchestra.
May 2 Concert/Event Listings:
North Carolina Symphony
Appalachian Spring
Grant Llewellyn, conductor
May 2 Program Listing
North Carolina Symphony
Appalachian Spring
Grant Llewellyn, conductor
COPLAND: Suite from Appalachian Spring (1945 orchestration)
GREENSTEIN: Change (World Premiere Orchestration)
BERNSTEIN: Overture to West Side Story
Adapted by Maurice Peress
BARBER: Adagio for Strings
BARBER Essay No. 2, Op. 17
