Letters From The Earth

The concert was such a success that at the orchestra and myself were invited back to do a new program this Fall.

We have a whole series of upcoming concerts throughout Florida, as well as Alabama, Georgia and in 2007 in New York, New Jersey and the East.

The members of the orchestra are an extraordinary group of young virtuoso soloists and chamber music players who love to play and each get a chance to shine during the concert.

The founder of the orchestra, a 32 year old violist, Amichai Hendel, is not only a world class soloist.

He books the orchestra, does the press, manages the finances, organizes the tours and works with me to assure that we continue to program the treasures of classical music played in the correct traditional styles, along with some of the treasures of contemporary music, including works inspired by Jazz, Latin American influences and elements of what is now called World Music.

Audiences love it and at 75, to become the Artistic Director as well as conductor of a brand new orchestra is really exciting and fulfilling!!

For all my other activities, (the two new symphonic works I am composing, my new book and appearances at all kinds of events) you can check out my webpage www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events and then Personal Appearances) I'll be working on my "Symphonic Variations on a Theme by Woody Guthrie" as well as planning future programs for the Renaissance Classical Orchestra, completing my new book "Nine Lives of a Musical Cat" , creating a score for a major film, as well as a bunch of other projects and appearances, and planning a series of events at Denver University, where I am Distinguished Visiting Professor, from April 11-June 4th, which will be documented by BBC in London and broadcast in English speaking countries around the world. And during my two months in Denver, I will still be able to fly to all my concerts from Denver.

My three kids will also participate with me in some of the upcoming events this year, performing with me. In addition, they each have groups of their own, and sometimes I am lucky enough to be invited to join them, which is the biggest thrill of all!!!

Since my insane (but joyous) schedule doesn't include enough spare time to allow me to age properly, I realize the truth in the old adage from Uzbekistan, where people often live to be 110 years old.......

.........LIFE BEGINS AT 75!!!

I hope you are thriving, and send all good energy and blessings to you and your family until our paths cross again.

With Joy and kicks for this '06

David

P.S.
Below is the concert we just did as well as the program notes which I wrote for it. I wish you could have been there to hear it. Fortunately it was videoed, and eventually will be broadcast.

Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center
Jan. 7th 2005
The Renaissance Classical Orchestra
Amichai Hendel
Founder and President
David Amram
Artistic Director and Conductor

A NOTE TO OUR AUDIENCE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

This evening's concert in Tarpon Springs is a special occasion for our orchestra to celebrate both the New Year and the Hellenic culture which has enriched the loves of all citizens of the United States and the world.

My first musical mentor, Dimitri Mitropoulos, the great conductor to whose memory this concert is dedicated, always treasured his Greek heritage.

He taught all of us lucky enough to know him that we should understand why the ancient Hellenic artists and philosophers changed the world, and that we should apply their wisdom and idealism to our own life's work in music.  He stressed the enduring value of always pursuing excellence, working tirelessly, respecting others and sharing what we learned with the world, in the same egalitarian and gracious way that Socrates and the ancient Greek philosophers did during their lifetimes. He told me all this sixty years ago when I first met him in June of 1946, as a 15 year old kid who dreamed of having a life in music.

He explained to me that we could all make the world a better place by following the example of the ancient Greeks, and made me believe I could dare to pursue my dreams.

He also loved contemporary classical composers as much as he did Mozart and Bach, and also appreciated the innovations of the modern American jazz masters. He always said that true music is built to last, and that every form of great music became a stone in the mountain that we must climb in order to see, when we reached the top, that all these kinds of heartfelt music would make a more beautiful world for ourselves and our children.

We thank all of you for being here tonight.

Eimai efharistimenos pou eimai etho mazi sou.
(I am happy to be here with you.)
Na zisei iEllatha kai Na zisei Tarpon Springs!
(Long live Greece, long live Tarpon Springs!)

David Amram
Jan. 7th 2005

Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center
Jan. 7th 2005

PROGRAM

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY AND LEGACY OF DIMITRI MITROPOULOS

Canon for Strings
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)    

The South German composer Johann Pachelbel was known as one of the leading organists of his time as well as for being a prolific composer. Canon was originally written for three violins and continuo, but in the last hundred years, this work has become a repertoire piece for string orchestra, as realized by Helmut May in this German edition published by Schott. Also a great educator, Pachelbel tutored many members of the Bach family, including the young Johann Sebastian Bach.
Pachelbel was known in his time as the "geistige Stammvater Bach" or the intellectual progenitor of Bach.

Nocturne for String Orchestra from String Quartet #2 in D major
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
(arranged for String Orchestra by Sir Malcolm Sargent)

Alexander Porfyrevich Borodin was not only hailed as a major composer of his era. He was also a renowned scientist. His music, like that of his fellow Russian composers Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, brought a new ingredient into the standard repertoire, with works that reflected pride in their shared rich Russian folk heritage, always brilliantly orchestrated with evocative melodies and rhythmic gusto.

Nocturne has had many incarnations since its inception as a movement of Borodin's String Quartet #2 in D., even being used in musicals, popular songs and a variety of transcriptions. Sir Malcolm Sargent's arrangement is usually the one which sets the standard, maintaining the clarity and purity of the original chamber version

Brandenburg Concerto #3
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

In 2005, Bach remains the master musician whose compositions remain as fresh and vital in this millennium as they were when he composed them three hundred years ago. Like his teacher Pachelbel, Bach was as well known for his skills as an improviser as he was as a composer.

When the Margate of Brandenburg commissioned Bach to write six concertos, the request was for tafle musik, specifically music to be created and played as an accompaniment to outdoor picnic meals. Just as Michaelangelo exceeded the role of a housepainter touching up the Sistine Chapel, Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos remain priceless gems.

The keyboard players in Bach's time were required to play the continuo, which was improvised by whoever performed the part, and always had to fit into the harmonic structure of the composition, with only the bass notes and an indication of the harmonies notated.

In the Brandenburg Concerto #3, the second movement, adagio, only has two chords, an A minor and a B dominant seventh written down by Bach. It was assumed that whoever played the harpsichord when creating the continuo embellishments in the first and third movements would be able to make up something on the spot to serve as a transition between the energetic and impassioned first and third movements. For tonight's performance, the solo cadenza will be played during this brief interlude between the outer two movements by a member of the orchestra, as it was done in Bach's time, constructed on motifs which appear in the concerto, and embellished and developed by the soloist, played over the two chords which Bach wrote in the score.

Viola Concerto in G
George Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Largo
Allegro
Andante
Presto

Amichai Hendel Viola soloist

Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G Major, is one of his most frequently performed works, and one of the first major concertos ever written for the viola. Telemann was even more prolific than Bach, writing an enormous amount of music during his long life.  While he became the most famous composer of his time in Germany, composing operas, cantatas and instrumental music, the viola concerto remains one of his most popular works today.

His mother was against the idea of her son becoming a musician, so he agreed to study law, but as a student made the acquaintance of George Fredrich Handel and they became life long friends. Years later, Handel said admiringly that Telemann "could write a church piece in eight parts with the same ease and facility that someone else would demonstrate when they were writing a letter."

Unlike all the other composers on tonight's program, who struggled from day to day to survive, Telemann became a very wealthy man during his lifetime, through the sales of his compositions, and proved to his mother that the legal profession's loss was music's gain.

INTERMISSION

Violin Concerto in C Major
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Finale (Presto)

Violin soloist  Valentin Mansurov

Haydn is often called the father of the symphony as well as the first master of the string quartet.
Unlike his contemporary and friend Mozart,, Haydn, while being an excellent multi-instrumentalist and equally prolific composer, was a more modest and less theatrical personality.  Mozart's brilliant concertos reflect Mozart's genius as a brilliant performer, Haydn's concertos were never composed to show dazzling displays of virtuosity Haydn once said "At no instrument was I a wizard."
 
Haydn wrote three violin concertos, and the Violin Concerto in C Major was entered in Haydn's private catalogue of his own works around 1765. His two other violin concertos and his trumpet concerto are repertoire pieces today, and remain gems of the classical period of composition which he and Mozart personified.
 
When Haydn was chosen to work at the Esterházy court, he Esterházy orchestra wasn't large.  It was a chamber string orchestra, the same size as the RCO's orchestra which is playing this evening's concert.  it eventually grew to twenty-five-players, but from the beginning, the concert master was Luigi Tomasini. who began his service for Prince Paul Anton Esterházy as the Prince's personal valet. The Prince soon found Tomasini to be so talented that he was sent to Italy to study music, and upon his return, became concert master of the court orchestra.

Fortunately for the history of classical music, The Esterházy Palace's Prince, Paul Anton was an accomplished musician, who played violin, lute and flute, and kept Haydn employed as a full time composer.

While history honors Prince Paul Anton as the leading arts funder of his day, it is interesting to note that Haydn's yearly salary was one-tenth the amount of money which he allotted to his wife and himself for their royal wardrobe.

While we no longer remember what fashionable clothes the royal couple wore in the 1775s, Haydn's Violin Concerto in C Major, like all his other music, remains a treasure for the world to hear, and sounds as fresh as ever.

The Entertainer and Maple  Leaf Rag
Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
(adapted by William Zinn)

Born in Texarkana Texas, both Scott Joplin and his music are more popular today than ever, thanks to Robert Redford's use of Joplin's music in the film The Sting.
Due to the devotion and painstaking scholarship of Yale's musicologist Vivian Perlis and composer Gunther Schuller, Joplin's music is now being performed in concert halls around the world. Joplin never lived to hear a full performance of his most ambitious surviving work, the opera Treemonisha. Composed in 1910, it was finally premiered January 27, 1970 with Atlanta Symphony conducted by Robert Shaw, and has been performed internationally.

Joplin was a piano virtuoso  confined to the rough and ready world of dance halls in red light districts in the last fifteen years of the 1800s, but always found the time to compose meticulous  well crafted works, using the traditional European classical  system of notation, all of which paved the way for his signature piece Maple Leaf Rag, which became a worldwide hit in 1899 and launched the Ragtime craze. Violinist William Zinn had long been an admirer of Joplin's music, and gave me several of his transcriptions of Joplin's rags, which he adapted for string orchestra.

C Jam Blues
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
(arranged by David Amram)
Adam Amram, percussion and harmonica
David Amram, piano, pennywhistles, and dumbek.

Edward Kennedy Ellington remains one of America's most significant musical giants of the twentieth century, enormously productive as a composer in all genres, as well as a masterful pianist and bandleader. He brought a symphonic concept to the world of jazz from the 1920s until his death in 1974.

When I conducted the New York premiere of the Symphonic version of his "Black, Brown and Beige" orchestrated by Maurice Peress at the Lincoln center in 1972, , Duke told me that in addition to his ballet scores, sacred works and orchestral pieces, he liked the idea of some of his songs being done
where the conductor also performed in the role of soloist and bandleader, bringing the egalitarian and inclusive spirit of jazz into the symphonic arena, much as the Baroque composers and soloists of the 18th Century always included improvising as a part of music making.

"Someday, all musicians will be able to interpret Bach and Beethoven and plays the blues" he told me. "It's all great music. Tell all the young musicians you meet to always listen intently, work tirelessly and be creative."

This version of C Jam Blues is done within the framework of the instrumentation of the RCO. In future performances, I hope to have some of the splendid classical virtuoso artists of the orchestra improvise with me in this wonderful Ellington sketch.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik  K.-V. 525
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Allegro
Romanze Andante
Menuetto Allegretto
Rondo Allegro

One of Mozart's most popular works, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was scored for two violins, viola, cello and bass violin. While many scholars feel that the piece was intended to be played by a string orchestra, others believe that Mozart intended it top be played by a string quartet, with the bass as an extra instrument that was optional. To add to the mystery of this stunning piece, there is a movement that is missing; a second  Minuet and Trio, which was customary in the South German
Serenades written during Mozart's time, a tradition which continued through the years when Brahms composed works using this form.

According to Mozart's own Catalogue, he completed this little masterpiece August 10, 1787, at the same time he was composing Act Two of his monumental opera Don Giovanni. We will never know what the lost Minuet and Trio sounded like, but the four movements that are here set a musical standard for all composers and listeners.
Like most of the other composers on this evening's program. Mozart was also a brilliant performer and improviser, loved music of many cultures in addition to the one he was born into, and created music that has stood the test of time.

Program notes by David Amram