Program
(1899-1963)
I. Allegro Moderato
II. Andante
III. Rondeau
(1912-1970)
(1810-1856)
I. Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
II. Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
III. Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
– Bewegter – Tempo I
IV. Mit Feuer – Nach und nach schneller
Musicians

Mark Givens

Brendan Grzanic

Talon Smith

Christina Lee

Jessica Harned

Heidi Nagel

Del Parkinson

Katherine Dickeson

Stephen Mathie
Sponsors
Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone
Written by the Honorable Stephen S. Trott
Concerto a Tre for Clarinet, Violin, and Cello
Dahl settled in Los Angeles. In 1945, he joined the music faculty of USC where he taught for the rest of his life. His most famous student? Michael Tilson Thomas. In 1957 he co-directed with Aaron Copland the acclaimed Ojai Music Festival. But that was just the beginning of a great ride. Along the way he toured as a pianist accompanying the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, and his dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Dahl produced arrangements for Tommy Dorsey and Victor Borge, and he gave lessons in classical music to Benny Goodman. In the film industry, he played the keyboard on many soundtracks – including the epic Spartacus – for Fox, Columbia, Universal, MGM, and Warner Brothers. His most well-known TV show was The Twilight Zone. But my favorite is that Dahl played both the second and third movements of Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata in the 1969 animated movie A Boy Named Charlie Brown. (And I thought it really was Schroeder on his toy baby grand!)
This concerto is lots of fun, with some moments tinged with a sense of sadness. Dahl left us a program note probably for serious musicians, but here goes. “The basic thematic idea … consists of six notes: E-flat, B-flat, B-flat, C, F, F. The character of the work is concertante [a piece with multiple solo parts] and playful but at the same time very strictly organized on the basis of the previously stated ‘thematic germ.’ These notes are almost ever-present in harmonic guises too numerous to mention: they are contracted (as at the very end) or expanded (as at the beginning). They are transposed, inverted, telescoped, and also hidden under elaborate melodic designs. It is not the composer’s intention that the manipulation of the ‘thematic germ’ be consciously experienced by the listener. They are just a means to an end, which is the expressive and intellectual musical whole.” Okay Ingolf, I won’t listen for them, I promise. You shouldn’t either. Just enjoy this delightful piece.
Jewish by birth, can you imagine what Dahl’s fate in Germany would have been had he not come to the U.S.? Like Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Eric Korngold, Arnold Schoenberg, and Paul Hindemith, Dahl flourished under freedom – to our lasting benefit.
Written by the Honorable Stephen S. Trott
Piano Trio No. 1
Schumann developed into an arch-Romantic. He ardently embraced the idea that music was above all a subjective medium of personal expression. His own words illuminate his art: “I am affected by everything that goes on in the world. I think it over in my own way, and then I long to express my feelings in music.” A poem he composed as a teenager gives us a window into his persona: “Yea, might I be but a tear. I would weep with her, and then, if she smiled again, how gladly would I die on her eyelash and gladly, gladly be no more.” We find this hypersensitivity expressed everywhere in his compositions. “What I really am,” he wrote, “I do not know myself.If I am a poet – for no one can become one – destiny will decide one day.”
This trio is pure music. It has no extramusical pictorial or verbal content. That said, it boils over with compelling high-octane emotion, starting with the first bar of the opening movement. Yearning, resignation, resolve, anger, it’s all there. It conveys a free passionate spirit engaged in animated wanderlust, only to be consumed at the end of the movement by despair. Movement two is a peppy scherzo.
The third movement is the trio’s center of emotional gravity. It is the sound of alone. All of a sudden the music attempts to shed its melancholia, only to be jerked back to the slings and arrows of fate and fortune, ending with an inconclusive chord.
Taking a page from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the model of the triumphant finale, the fourth movement finally breaks through the gloom and soars to a jubilant conclusion.
When I was listening to this marvelous piece for the first time, it dawned on me that it has the power and the impact of a full orchestra! Schumann’s skillful scoring is truly amazing.
Written by the Honorable Stephen S. Trott
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Mission
The Boise Phil reflects the energy and heartbeat of our communities through invigorating musical experiences that touch the human spirit.