Masterworks II: Connections

Sobre

The word connection is both compelling and powerful. It means “to bring together or into contact so that a real or notional link is established, to join together to provide access and communication, to create a link.”  Connections can join two things that might not seem compatible or comparable, but that tell a similar story. Find unique connections – between yesterday and today, between yourself and the music – in the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra’s masterful presentation of Masterworks II: Connections. 

Adolphus Stork’s Three Spirituals may seem very different from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. However, both pieces reveal men with a shared dream to live free of oppression, fear, or discrimination. Although Hailstork is Black and Shostakovich is white, their music embraces stories that speak to the brutality of oppression, the shaping of a just society, and the hope for a better future. 

Hailstork’s Three Spirituals for Orchestra was composed in 2005 and is structured by three movements, each based on traditional spiritual songs, “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” “Kum Ba Yah,” and “Oh Freedom”. 

Navarro’s Connection stirs emotions like curiosity, anger, complicity, humor, and passion into a grand concerto that immerses the listener in the work through a fusion of styles and unique harmonic language. ASO Principal Horn Alex Kovling joins the ASO for the horn solo. 

The most widely accepted interpretation of Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 is that it depicts the Stalin years in Russia when between eight and 20 million people died as a direct or indirect result of Joseph Stalin’s Communist dictator regime. The third movement is notable for a moderate dance-like nocturne. Two musical codes are fundamental to the structure of this piece: the DSCH Shostakovich theme and the Elmira theme. The notes spell out “E La Mi Re A” in a combination of French and German. This motif, called out twelve times on the horn, represents Elmira Nazirova, a student of the composer with whom he fell in love. 

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