On Sunday, March 17, the Eastern Shore Wind Ensemble will present a program of concert-band music with a theme of “Picture This!” The free concert will be given at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Cross and High streets, Chestertown, beginning at 4 p.m.
All the pieces on the program were intended by their composers to evoke “musical pictures” (and sometimes emotions) in the minds of listeners. Abstract music they are not.
The program will open with an arrangement of “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” the first part of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s most famous large work, the suite Sheherazade (1889), a musical version of fantastical tales from 1001 Arabian Nights, in which a captive princess tells exotic and romantic stories to a Sultan. The Sultan’s and princess’ themes are readily identifiable, and an impression of the waves and swells of the sea with its many changing colors is conveyed as well.
The band will play two of Percy Aldridge Grainger’s best-known (but very different) pieces for band from the early 20th century: the playful, folk-like “Children’s March” (“Over the Hills and Far Away”) and “Ye Banks and Braes O’ Bonnie Doon.” The latter is based on a Scottish folk tune that became paired in the late 18th century with “The Banks of [the River] Doon,” a narrative poem by Robert Burns. Listeners can easily envision the steady, languid flow of the beautiful river past its banks and hillsides (braes).
Franz von Suppé was a Vienna-based 19th-century composer of many types of music, but he is best known today for his exciting and melodic overtures to dozens of operettas. The band will play the overture to Light Cavalry (1866), set in a Hungarian village where a group of cavalrymen try to unite a young couple in the face of adversity and intrigues. The bugle calls, galloping allegros, and even a middle plaintive section are likely to be familiar, especially because of their use in film music over the years.
Born in New York, Ferde Grofé (1892-1972) is known today primarily for his lush evocation of the Grand Canyon (and for his orchestration of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”). The band will play themes from four of the five movements of his 1931 Grand Canyon Suite: Sunrise, On the Trail, Sunset, and Cloudburst.
Kevin Mixon’s “Japanese Pictures” (2012), the only contemporary piece on the program, evokes both bravura and lyrical “pictures” inspired by Japanese traditional and modern music.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) wrote the Mother Goose Suite for two children who were very special to him, and his fascination with the wonder and imagination of childhood are evident in this piece. Listeners will be taken through the enchanted world of French fairy tales—from the reflective “Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty” to the playful “Tom Thumb” and the exotic “Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas,” through the courtship in the “Conversations of Beauty and the Beast,” and concluding with “The Fairy Garden.”
The program will conclude with the exciting “Night on Bald Mountain,” by Modest Moussorgsky (1839-1881). Bald Mountain, near Kiev, was the legendary gathering place of witches from all over Russia on the night before St. John’s Day (June 23); they came to celebrate a Black Mass and dance in wild revelry to gain Satan’s favor. As the dancing reaches its climax, church bells toll the coming of dawn, breaking the spell. A bird sings of the fresh morning while a peasant’s song rises from the valley below. Good triumphs over evil, the sacred over the profane.
Directed by Dr. Keith Wharton (also director of the Kent County High School bands and the Washington College Concert Band), the Eastern Shore Wind Ensemble is an all-ages community concert band that offers area wind and percussion musicians an opportunity to continue or return to the pleasures of playing quality music in a large ensemble. New members are welcome at any time, without audition or fee. For more information, call 410-778-2829 or 410-810-1834. The ensemble is partially supported by the Kent County Arts Council.
The band’s last concert of its 2012-2013 season will be given at Emmanuel Church on Sunday, May 19.
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