French Impressions

All the music in this concert is either completely or partly French. Since the seventeenth century, the French style had defined itself as, at least in part, in contrast to the German or Germanic, and Italian or Italianate styles. In the Baroque period (1600-1750 or so), French characteristics included more speech-like (as opposed to song-like) vocal lines; less intricate textures (i.e., more music where everyone is playing more or less the same rhythms); and a fondness for uneven and very sharply dotted rhythms (i.e., longer sounds preceded by extremely short ones, as in the word “because”.) By the turn of the twentieth century, French style was characterized by particularly colorful use of the orchestra and by chords that did not lead inexorably from one to the next, as was the case in much Germanic music. Instead the chords seem more to “wander” than to “lead,” often creating a sort of floating feeling akin to the vaguer outlines of objects in Impressionist paintings.

D’un matin de printemps, Lili Boulanger

Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the famous Prix de Rome composition prize at the tender age of 20: a prize which her father, Ernest Boulanger, had won in 1835; Hector Berlioz won in 1830; and Claude Debussy received in 1884. Because of persistent ill health she studied composition privately. Her music is in the same Impressionist style as that of Debussy and Ravel, with vivid orchestral colors and some experimentation with scales and harmonies beyond the normal major and minor. “D’un matin de printemps” (About a Spring Morning) was written in 1917–18, first for violin or flute and piano, and then arranged for full orchestra. It begins energetically, perhaps evoking the energy of new life thrusting its way out of the ground, then moves to a dreamier, more lyrical phase. Energy and dreaminess more or less alternate for the rest of this short work.

Les Indes Galantes, Suite No. 1, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Arr. Paul Dukas

Jean-Philippe Rameau was the most famous French composer of his time. Although he started life as a church musician and the author of immense music-theoretical tomes, his great fame, then and now, rests on his operas, all written in the later part of his life, all performed at the Paris Opera, and many given performances for Louis XV. His opera Les Indes Galantes enacts a series of amorous adventures in the “Indies,” a term that indicated any exotic non-European locale. These are an Indian Ocean island for “Le Turc généreux,” the vicinity of a Peruvian volcano for “Les Incas,” Persia for “Les fleurs,” and North America (nowhere specific) for “Les sauvages.” The settings are of course wildly inaccurate and exoticized, with the indigenous people of these settings (usually the supposed rulers of their groups) used merely as foils for the hypocrisies and other failings of Europeans rather than as individuals and societies with their own independent characteristics and cultures.

Because French Baroque operas were seriously multimedia events, with elaborate scenery, extraordinary costumes, and professional dancers, as well as singers and orchestra, the suite we play today is made up almost entirely of dances that use the rhythms of courtly social dances of the time. They would have occurred between the sung numbers and would also have been staged to illustrate aspects of the imagined “local customs.”

La Valse, Maurice Ravel

“La Valse” (The Waltz) was written in 1919, just one year after World War I had ended. Commentators have described the work’s extraordinary colors and intermittent hysteria in relation to this cataclysmic world event, but Ravel’s first prose description of it says, “one should only see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage adds light and movement.” “The stage” here refers to Ravel’s evident intention that it should be used as ballet music. He called it a “poème choréographique,” and it has been set for dance by several famous choreographers, not least George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet. However, Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario for whom Stravinsky had already written The Firebird and Petrushka, and on whose prompting Ravel had created it, passed it up, saying “it’s a masterpiece, but it’s not a ballet …it’s the portrait of a ballet.”

Possibly in response to the work’s reception among the critics, Ravel revised his own original commentary and in 1922 wrote, “it is a dancing, whirling, almost hallucinatory ecstasy, an increasingly passionate and exhausting whirlwind of dancers, who are overcome.” This is not at all the only way to hear the work, but it does encapsulate both what Ravel does to the idea of the social dance on which it is based and how that idea progresses over the work’s course.

Pictures at an Exhibition, Modest Mussorgsky

Orchestrated by Maurice Ravel

Modest Mussorgsky was one of the "Mighty Handful" of five self-consciously Russian and modernist composers (Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, and Rimsky-Korsakov in addition to Mussorgsky) in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Having studied piano in his youth (and becoming an accomplished player) he studied composition privately with Balakirev, and then by analyzing the works of many other composers, both Western-European and Russian.

This work was written in 1874, originally for solo piano; like many of Mussorgsky's works it was not published until after his death and was revised (in this instance very slightly) by his mentor Rimsky-Korsakov. Most of the movements are musical responses to pictures by Victor Hartmann, an artist/architect friend of Mussorgsky who had just died. Opening the work, and then linking some of these musical pictures is the "Promenade" refrain, whose irregular meter gives a wonderful sense of a leisurely meander through a museum. Only a few of the relevant Hartmann pictures are still extant, but there have been numerous attempts to complete the set and match Mussorgsky’s music.

Because this piano work is so obviously picturesque, it has cried out to be orchestrated (set for orchestra). The first orchestration, by Mikhail Tushmalov, appeared only five years after the first publication of the piano work. The one we play today, by Maurice Ravel, is the most famous. Not all reworkings of the piece are for classical orchestra; there's at least one electronic version and a rock one by the group Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Ravel's version is an amazing orchestral showcase, especially for the brass and winds. From the haunting saxophone solo in "Il Vecchio Castello" to the galumphing tuba in "Bydlo," (hay wagon), or the brilliant trumpet work in "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle" or the chirping flutes and oboes in the "Ballet of Chickens in Their Shells," the palette of sounds is always changing, but always perfectly calibrated to capture the colors of Mussorgsky's responses to these pictures.

©Mary Hunter 2022

Hiroya Miura Guest Conductor

Hiroya Miura, a native of Sendai, Japan, has been active as a composer, conductor, and performer in North America. Acclaimed by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times as “acidic and tactile,” Miura’s compositions explore “the continuous change of balance” amongst the traditions, players, instruments, and sound objects. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts and a Literary Arts residency, La Napoule Art Foundation residency, an HB Studio Residency, and a Willapa Bay AiR residency, among others.

Miura composed works for Speculum Musicae, New York New Music Ensemble, American Composers Orchestra, Prague’s BERG Orchestra, Juilliard Percussion Ensemble, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Momenta Quartet, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, members of Reigakusha (gagaku ensemble based in Tokyo), Hidejiro Honjoh, and Yuji Takahashi, which were presented in venues and festivals such as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Yomiuri Hall (Japan), Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), Vacances Percutantes (France), and Havana Contemporary Music Festival (Cuba). He is also a founding member of the electronic improvisation unit, No One Receiving, whose debut album from the Grain of Sound has won critical acclaim in Europe and the United States.

As a conductor Miura has given a number of premieres by emerging composers in the New York area. He has been invited as a guest conductor for Edmonton's Mercury Opera, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, and the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra. In Europe, he has participated in masterclasses and performed with the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra and North Czech Philharmonic Teplice.

He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University and he is Associate Professor of music at Bates College, where he teaches music theory and composition, and directs the college orchestra. He is Artistic Director of Columbia University’s IMJS/Japanese Cultural Heritage Initiatives and serves on the Advisory Board for the Composers Conference.

Special Event: 70s Extravaganza

Classical Night Fever!

Saturday, June 10, 2023

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center

Lewiston

Sunday, June 11, 2023

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center

Topsham

MSO teams up with Motor Booty Affair, Maine’s own 70s disco/funk tribute band. This performance transports you on a journey through some of the best hits of the 1970s— complete with bell-bottoms, stylin’ afros, wild polyester costume changes, and some of the coolest platform shoes this side of the Milky Way.

Not Included in Season Ticket Purcha se

All songs arranged by Terry White

(Program Subject to Change)

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Get Down Tonight

September

Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now

Love’s Theme/Can’t Get Enough of Your Love

70's TV Themes Medley

Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel

Oh What a Night

Disco Inferno

Intermission ––––––––––––––

5th of Beethoven

Chic Medley

Dancin’ Queen

Car Wash

70’s Movie Themes Medley

Night Fever

Stayin’ Alive/You Should Be Dancin’

Village People Medley

Heaven Knows

The Story of Motor Booty Affair

Motor Booty Affair has been lighting up stages across America with their 70s extravaganza for years, continually improving on the show that has been dubbed “The Ultimate Disco Party Band.”

The music is infectious—the most danceable songs of all time. The band is tighter than tight, delivering dance floor classics with confidence, groove, style, and attitude. The show is spectacular—from the afros, bell-bottoms, platform shoes, polyester, and dance moves, to the highest quality sound and light show this side of 1975.

Motor Booty Affair consists of four funkateers straight from the planet Funktar; Superfly, Spanish Fly, Vinnie Boom-Boom Funktonio, and Cyclone Link Skywalker Jr. It is their mission to get the crowd groovin’ as they deliver hits from Earth Wind & Fire, The Bee-Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chic, The Commodores, Barry White, Abba, and more. The songs are authentically reproduced by these top notch musicians with unsurpassed quality and attention to detail.

MBA’s show is energetic and peppered with 70s lingo jive talkin’ and stage antics to make for an event you will never forget.

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth

• Concert Sponsor: WCME Radio

Support Local Arts Organizations

Entertainment on the Riverfront

The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?

International comedy

Thursday, Oct. 6

Echoes of Floyd

Pink Floyd Tribute Band

Saturday, Oct. 8

Fright Night

2022-2023 SEASON

Walk through our creepy crypt

Oct. 25, 26, 27

Magic of the Steelgraves

Family-friendly magic and illusion show

Saturday, Nov. 12

Runnin’

Down a Dream

Tom Petty Tribute Band

Saturday, Nov. 19

Don Campbell Christmas

Festive holiday concert

Friday, Dec. 16

Sights & Sounds of

Christmas

Spectacular light show

Dec. 17 & 18

Schooner Fare

Long-time favorite Band

Friday, Feb. 3

Josee Vachon

Popular French performer

Saturday, March 4

Studio Two–A

Beatles Tribute

The Beatles Before America

Friday, March 31

Silver Circus

Family-friendly magic show

Saturday, April 8

La Rencontre

Lunch & Entertainment

Sept. 8, Dec. 8, March 9,

June 22

Saturday November 5 7:30 pm Sat., Dec. 10 7:30 pm Sun., Dec. 11 3:00 pm

Battle of the & Hope Sat., March 11 7:30 pm Sun., March 12 3:00 pm

Saturday, May 13 7:30 pm Sunday, May 14 3:00 pm 2022

KEITHSPIRO

MSO provides its all-volunteer members with unique music-making opportunities and its audiences with high-quality concerts at reasonable prices. We are committed to reaching out to people beyond our immediate audience to share our enthusiasm for music. None of this can happen without predictable support. A legacy donation from you can offer this kind of resource, and we would be most honored if you would consider it.

Meet the Instruments is a free event where folks of all ages try playing orchestral instruments.

Local music students rehearsed with and then joined MSO sitting side-by-side in a performance. It was a thrilling experience for the students to be a part of an orchestra.

As a part of our Community Outreach and Engagement Events, MSO has performed free outdoor concerts in Brunswick and Bath.

For more information please contact Carol Preston at info@midcoastsymphony.org

Students at the YMCA experienced live music by MSO musicians at an after-school program.