YOUTH ORCHESTRAS OF SAN ANTONIO | FALL CONCERTS
PROGRAM NOTES
compiled by Troy Peters John Caponegro directed school orchestras from elementary to high school for more than 40 years in New York. His work as a composer shows his tremendous experience with student musicians at every level. His 1975 composition Fiddling A-Round is a perfect example of his ability to write tuneful and engaging works for young string players. Michael Story is one of today’s most prolific composers and arrangers for school bands and orchestras, with more than 1,000 published works available. His Classic Bits and Pieces is a rapid-fire medley of some of the world’s best-loved classical tunes, including music by Beethoven, Dvořák, Glière, Handel, Haydn, Offenbach, Rossini, and Tchaikovsky. Because he was nervous about his potential to make a living in music, the young Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov became an officer in the Russian navy. To his own surprise, however, he also became one of Russia’s leading composers, joining the faculty at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory when he was only 27. The rollicking “Dance of the Tumblers,” from his fairytale opera, The Snow Maiden, is based on an energetic Russian folksong. Mark Williams was a longtime elementary school band director in Spokane, Washington. Although most of his output as a composer was band music, he also wrote several notable works for string orchestra. Fiddles on Fire, written in 1996, is his most popular orchestral work, ingeniously giving young string players fast-moving fiddle tunes that lie especially well under the fingers. Deborah Baker Monday teaches cello and bass in the Logan City School District orchestra program in Utah and is widely known as a composer and arranger for young string ensembles. Her 2005 work, Conquistador!, “depicts the life and adventures of the Spanish explorers known as conquistadors.” For three decades, Elliot Del Borgo taught at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York, one of the best-known training grounds for music teachers in the Northeast. His Petite Overture, published in 1987, opens with a slow introduction before moving into more intense and driving minorkey music. Doug Spata lives in Cincinnati, where he is a clarinetist, composer, and orchestra teacher. He writes: “Bold accents, broad contrasts, driving crescendos, and aggressive rhythms give Elementals its fiery sound. Melodies ebb and flow through the piece, building in intensity throughout this dramatic, challenging concert overture.” Adagio Cantabile is the central slow movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor. Written in 1798, when the composer was 27 years old, the “Pathétique” Sonata is one of the most famous works of Beethoven’s early period. This movement is beloved for its memorable
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