A Musical World Tour

Join the Tuscarawas Philharmonic on a musical journey around the world with tunes from different countries and continents! The journey will include a stop in Germany and will feature clarinetist Dan Gilbert who will perform the clarinet concerto by Carl Maria von Weber.

Concert Info

Location: PAC
Date: October 07, 2023 - 07:30 PM

  • SELECTED PIECES

  • Program

    Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was born in St. Petersburg on November 12th in  1833. He was the illegitimate son of the Georgian Prince Gedeanov and his 24 year old mistress Madame Antonova, and for the sake of his father’s reputation was registered as the son of Porfiri Borodin, one of the household servants. He showed considerable diverse talents as a youth speaking several languages, and learning the flute, piano and cello. At the age of nine he wrote his first musical composition: a piano duet. In 1850 at the age of 17, he entered the Medico- Surgical Academy at St. Petersburg, where he studied anatomy, botany, chemistry, crystallography and zoology. He developed both his interests in music and chemistry, and qualified in medicine in 1856. On graduation he spent a year as a house surgeon in a military hospital, followed by three years of more advanced scientific studies in western Europe specializing in chemistry.

    Carl Maria von Weber is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of German romantic music. Although now primarily remembered for his development of romantic opera, he was also a prolific composer for the concert hall, writing major concertos for bassoon, clarinet and horn, each skillfully exploiting the full potential of the instruments. Although single reed instruments were known throughout the medieval and baroque periods of European music, the clarinet in its modern form did not evolve until the second half of the eighteenth century. By Mozart's time it had eight finger holes and five keys which enabled the player to play chromatic scales with good intonation and consistent tone. With the success of Mozart's Paris and Haffner symphonies it soon became an established member of the symphony orchestra.

    Aaron Copland was born on the 4th November 1900 in New York City, of Lithuanian Jewish descent. He was brought up in a flat above his father's Brooklyn store in a family of enthusiastic amateur musicians. His composition career began at the age of 15 with a correspondence course on harmony writing, but only really took flight at the age of 21 when he went to the Fontainebleau school to study with the famous Nadia Boulanger. His first major work was a Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, and was dedicated to her. Copland's compositions are typical of the musical melting pot of America in the twentieth century. They use folk and jazz idioms, percussive orchestration, changing meter, polyrhythms, polychords, and the tone rows of Schoenberg. He gained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s by combining these elements in a simple easy to understand musical language. His later works were often more radical and less popular.

    Bedrich Smetana (1824-84) was a Czech composer and conductor, and wrote the symphonic poem Má Vlast (My Fatherland) in 1874. Smetana was well-known for his nationalistic compositions, and was best known for the following two nationalistic works: The Bartered Bride, an opera, and Má Vlast, a cycle of six symphonic poems. Smetana was born in a small town in Bohemia (known today as the Czech Republic), the seventh child of a wealthy brewer (his father was also an amateur violinist). Smetana played the violin and piano from an early age, and began composing when he was eight.
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