Program for Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 12:15 pm, at St. David's Episcopal Church, 14 Jamar Drive. Sponsored by Civic Morning Musicals.
The Lake Effect Winds
Beth Scott, flute Kathryn Dimmel, oboe
Tom McKay, clarinet Audrey Turner, French horn
Jillian Myers, bassoon
Shepherd's Hey (1909) Percy Grainger (1882 - 1961)
arr. William Schmidt (2001)
Wind Quintet No. 1, opus 1 (1979) Michael Kibbe (b. 1945)
Allegro molto
March
Scherzo
Pastorale
Travel Notes 2 (1976) Richard Rodney Bennett (1936 - 2012)
flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon
In an air-balloon
In a helicopter
In a bath-chair
Car-chase
Pastorale (1942) Amy Beach (1867 - 1944)
Wind Quintet in A Flat, op. 14 (1903) Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934)
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Minuet (in Canon)
Air and Variations
George Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Australia and lived parts of his life there, in Europe, in England, and in the United States. While in England, he became interested in British folk music, and several of his best-known compositions, including the Shepherd's Hey, reflect this. Shepherd's Hey is based on a traditional Morris Dance tune, interweaving four different variants of the brief tune. Grainger produced several versions of Shepherd's Hey, for solo piano and for ensembles of varying sizes and composition, though probably his best known are for full band and full orchestra. The version we are playing today is arranged by William Schmidt.
American composer Michael Kibbe (born 1945 in San Diego) has composed over 240 concert works, including fourteen wind quintets, many clarinet quartets, and many other works featuring wind instruments. We are playing his first wind quintet, with four brief movements.
English composer and pianist Sir Richard Rodney Bennett produced over two hundred works for the concert hall and fifty scores for film and television. He also composed and performed jazz songs for fifty years. As a pianist, he accompanied important classical, jazz and cabaret soloists; for example, legendary French horn soloist Barry Tuckwell and jazz singers Chris Connor and Cleo Laine. Three of his film scores were nominated for Academy Awards: “Far From the Madding Crowd” (1967), “Nicholas and Alexandra” (1971) and “Murder on the Orient Express”(1974), which won a Bafta award, the British equivalent of the Oscar, in 1975.
Travel Notes 2 has four movements that reflect the feeling of motion in four different modes of transport. The third movement, In a Bath-chair, refers to a type of one-person carriage with three or four wheels, often used at beach resorts in England. It was invented by James Heath of Bath, England.
Before her marriage in 1885, Amy Marcy Cheney had already begun a piano solo career as a child prodigy. After her marriage, she curtailed that career, at the request of her husband, and devoted herself to composition instead, publishing under the name "Mrs. H. H. A. Beach," though she is generally referred to now as Amy Beach. She became one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era, and she resumed her performance career after the death of her husband in 1910. The Pastorale is her only work for wind quintet, and it came late in her life (1942). We love her rich interplay of melodies among the different instruments in the quintet.
British composer Gustav Holst wrote many choral part-songs, song cycles, operas and orchestral pieces. The quintet that we are playing today was written more than ten years before his best-known work, The Planets (1914-1916). This quintet is one of our favorites; it is fun to perform, and audiences enjoy it as well.