Center for the Performing ArtsNovember 12, 2009Thursday Evening8:00 p.m

Dicker, Michael, Bassoon

English

ISU ReD: Research and eData

Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData School of Music Programs Music 11-12-2009 Ensemble Concerts: Chamber Orchestra, November 12, 2009 Michael Dicker Bassoon Illinois State University Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/somp  Part of the Music Performance Commons Recommended Citation Dicker, Michael Bassoon, "Ensemble Concerts: Chamber Orchestra, November 12, 2009" (2009). School of Music Programs. 4899. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/somp/4899 This Performance Program is brought to you for free and open access by the Music at ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Music Programs by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact ISUReD@ilstu.edu. Upcoming Events November    13 8:00 p.m. KRH Jazz Combos *   14 12:30 p.m. KRH Junior recital, Melissa Prusank, flute *   14 2:00 p.m. KRH Senior Recital, Brian Lonegan, tenor *   14 3:00 p.m. KRH Graduate Recital, Geraldo Rivera, guitar *   14 6:00 p.m. KRH Bel Canto Performance *   14 9:00 p.m. KRH Secondary Dominance Concert *   15 3:00 p.m. CPA Symphonic Winds, symphonic Band &      University Band   15 5:00 p.m. KRH Got Rhythm   15 7:00 p.m. CPA Glee Club Concert   16 7:30 p.m. KRH String  Student Chamber Recital *   17 11:00 a.m. CPA Convocation Recital *   17 7:30 p.m. KRH Composition Studio Recital *   18 7:30 p.m. KRH Guitar Studio Recital *   19 8:00 p.m. CPA Gold Series: Wind Symphony   20 7:00 p.m. KRH Senior Recital, Saundra Anderson, clarinet *   20 8:30 p.m. KRH Junior Recital, Kyle Johnson, percussion *    Madrigal Dinners December 02-05, & 10 – 12 6:30 p.m. Alumni Center     * - Free Admission KRH – Kemp Recital Hall CPA – Center for the Performing Arts    Illinois State University College of Fine Arts School of Music          Illinois State University  Chamber Orchestra Glenn Block, Music Director and Conductor  Michael Dicker, Bassoon                     Center for the Performing Arts   November 12, 2009   Thursday Evening   8:00 p.m. This is the seventy-fifth program of the 2009-2010 season. Program    Please turn off cell phones and pagers for the duration of the concert. Thank You.   from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61 (1842) Felix Mendelssohn  Overture, Op. 21 (1826) (1809-1847)  Scherzo     Bassoon Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 191 (1774) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Allegro                 (1756-1791) Andante, ma adagio  Rondo: Tempo di menuetto                                                         Michael Dicker, bassoon soloist and conductor      ~ Intermission ~    Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60  (1806)  Ludwig van Beethoven Adagio—Allegro vivace        (1770-1827)  Adagio   Allegro vivace   Allegro, ma non troppo                Illinois State University Chamber Orchestra  Violin I Andrew Francois, concertmaster  Rebecca Cutler  Michelle Krewer Benjamin Nadel  Stacey Turner  Annelise Wiering   Violin II Robert Reilly, principal  Carrie Schrader  Chloe Hawkins  Brittany Johnson   Viola Marta Hernandez, principal Matthew Harper  Gillian Borth  Mark Wirbisky   Cello Carolyn Parfet, principal Eunkyung Son  Adrienne Boni  Joshua Stewart   Double Bass Michael White, principal  Jeffrey Schaller       Upcoming Orchestra Events  December   05 3:00 p.m. CPA Gold Series:  Music for the Holidays   05 7:00 p.m. CPA Gold Series:  Music for the Holidays   06 3:00 p.m. CPA Gold Series:  Music for the Holidays     Flute Bethany Padgett, principal  Sierra Norris   Oboe Bradley Cardella, principal   Katherine Donnell   Clarinet Beth Hildenbrand, principal Jason Landaiche  Bassoon Ian Phillips, principal  Matt Kowalczyk   Horn Allison Bellot, principal  Amy Vasel   Trumpet Kait Fieldman, principal  Michael Kearney   Timpani Carlos Ávila, principal    performing with the New York Philharmonic, National Orchestra of Portugal, Nordwest Deutsche Philharmonie among others. Numerous former students are engaged in careers as music educators throughout the United States and Europe.  Glenn Block has served as the Director of Orchestras and Opera and Professor of Conducting at Illinois State University since 1990. In addition, he served as Music Director of the Youth Symphony of Kansas City from 1983-2007. Prior to his appointment at Illinois State in the fall of 1990, Dr. Block served for 15 years as Director of Orchestras and Professor of Conducting at the Conservatory of Music of the University of Missouri - Kansas City and Music Director of the Kansas City Civic Orchestra. Born in Brooklyn, Dr. Block was educated at the Eastman School of Music. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego.       A frequent guest conductor, he has appeared in over 42 states with all-state and professional orchestras. Foreign guest-conducting have included concerts and master classes at the Fountainebleau Conservertoire in France, and concerts in Spain, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Russia, Italy, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. He has served on the Boards of Directors for both the Conductors Guild and the Youth Orchestra Division of the American Symphony Orchestra League. The Youth Symphony of Kansas City and Dr. Block made their Carnegie Hall debut in June, 1997.       Dr. Block has served on the faculty of the National Music Camp at Interlochen as Resident Conductor of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra, and at the Interlochen Arts Academy as Visiting Conductor. In addition, he has served as Music Director of the Summer Festival Orchestra at the Rocky Ridge Music Center in Estes Park, Colorado.                       Program Notes   Overture and Scherzo from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Op. 61 Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 61, was completed 16 years after he wrote the Overture, Op. 21. The consistency of style and musical unity between them belie the disparate dates of composition. The overture was by an incredibly musically gifted youth of 17, and the incidental music was by the music director of Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm IV's Academy of the Arts and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. A Midsummer Night's Dream had always been a favorite of Felix and his sister, Fanny. The commission for the remaining music came from the King, for a Potsdam production of the play, one of several commissions for theatrical music Mendelssohn received while in this post. The producer of the play was Ludwig Tieck, one of the translators of the definitive German version of the play, the same version that the Mendelssohns had enjoyed and absorbed thoroughly as their own. The incidental music consists of 14 sections, including the overture.   There are vocal sections and instrumental movements. The instrumental movements, Scherzo, Intermezzo, Notturno, and the Wedding March, are usually excerpted with the overture for orchestral concert performance. The Scherzo appropriately introduces the fairy-world of Act Two with rapid, running passages in the woodwinds, similar to the string passage in the opening of the overture, both set in a minor mode. The rest of the orchestra joins the woodwinds in a Classical sonata-form movement. Several small motives are repeated, up and down, then down and up the scale, to form the development section.  Notes by Patsy Morita  Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191 Mozart’s achievement with the Classical concerto is comparable to what Haydn, his great older contemporary and friend, achieved with the symphony and string quartet—he brought the genre to new heights. His most numerous are for piano and provided dazzling vehicles with which he could show off his compositional powers, his technical virtuosity as a performer, and his amazing capacity to improvise in the cadenzas. Mozart also wrote violin concertos, another instrument he mastered as a performer, even though he actually preferred playing the viola.    In addition Mozart composed concertos for wind and brass instruments: flute, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, and horn. Most of these pieces were inspired by a particular musician who may have given advice about how to compose idiomatically for the instrument. It is not known for certain who was behind the Bassoon Concerto we hear today, a relatively early work Mozart composed at the age of 18. The most likely candidates are the bassoonists employed in his hometown of Salzburg at the time: Johann Heinrich Schult or Melchoir Sandmayr. He may have composed as many as five concertos for bassoon—Vivaldi had written over 40—but only this one survives. It is the earliest of his wind concertos and is dated June 4, 1774.     Even though little is known about the compositional circumstances of the Bassoon Concerto, Mozart clearly thought carefully about the characteristics of the instrument, specifically its dynamic range, its lyrical possibilities, and even its affinity for humorous effects. In sum, Mozart’s writing for wind instruments was one of his great innovations and achievements, and it is abundantly evident not only in his concertos; he often included countermelodies scored for winds in his orchestral works and operas. These account for some of the wonders of his works, although contemporaries sometimes complained that too much was going on, of sensory overload. The charge is summarized in the famous remark Emperor Joseph II allegedly made to him: “Too many notes, my dear Mozart.”    The Concerto is scored for a small orchestra. The buoyant opening Allegro immediately shows Mozart’s concern for the idiomatic qualities of the solo instrument. The second movement carries the rather unusual tempo marking Andante, ma adagio—moving pace but slow—and is one of the many examples of a Mozart slow movement that turns into a sort of operatic aria. Commentators have noticed a particular resemblance to the famous “Porgi, amor” (Oh, love), the Countess’s Act 2 soliloquy in The Marriage of Figaro. The brief finale, Rondo (Tempo di menuetto), combines rondo form with variation technique and the feeling of a polite dance.    Notes by Christopher H. Gibbs   Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60  Biographical and historical accounts often tend to skip over the Fourth Symphony and jump ahead to the famous Fifth. Indeed, Beethoven’ Symphony No. 4 is arguably the least known and performed of all of his symphonies (of course, one of the nine has to be) and would probably turn up even less were it not for the sake of completeness on recordings and in performance cycles.   The relative neglect of the work began in Beethoven’s own time. In 1814, when he was at the height of his popular fame and success, a critic for the leading music journal in Europe commented that there were available extended discussions of many of his works, adding “the master’s [Fourth] Symphony in B-flat major has certainly already been briefly and strikingly described several times, but has never been exhaustively reviewed. Does it deserve less than any of the others?” It seems that then, as now, the Symphony No. 4 was overshadowed. As a perceptive critic remarked in 1811: “On the whole, the work is cheerful, understandable, and engaging, and is closer to the composer’s justly beloved First and Second symphonies than to the Fifth and Sixth. In the overall inspiration we may place it closer to the Second.”   Beethoven wrote the Symphony No. 4 during the late summer and fall of 1806, while staying in the palace of Count Franz von Oppersdorff in upper Silesia, far away from the bustle of Vienna. The Count employed his own orchestra, which performed the Second Symphony for Beethoven. The composer soon agreed to write a new symphony for the Count, to whom it was eventually dedicated. The Symphony No. 4 was premiered at a private concert in the Lobkowitz Palace in Vienna, in March  1807, on a program that also included the Fourth Piano Concerto (with the composer at the keyboard) and the Coriolan Overture.   Although Beethoven had not used a slow introduction in the Third Symphony, for the Symphony No. 4 he returned to one (Adagio), as he had in his first two symphonies and as were often found in the later symphonies of Haydn, his former teacher. (The introduction in this case is particularly similar to Haydn’s Symphony No. 102, in the same key.) An example of the kind of feature some critics found “bizarre” was the jabbing dissonances that build up in the introduction before a rousing Allegro vivace, rich with melodies. The second movement Adagio is an expressive and relaxed rondo in E-flat major. The third movement (Allegro vivace) combines elements of scherzo and minuet and has the trio section played twice, which creates a five-part structure instead of the usual three-part form. The Symphony concludes with a dazzling perpetual motion Allegro, ma non troppo that nods again to Haydn.    Notes by Christopher H. Gibbs   Biographical Notes  Michael Dicker has earned degrees in music from UCLA, University of Michigan, and the Juilliard School.  His teachers were Norman Herzberg, Harold Goltzer, Mitchell Lurie, and Mehli Mehta. He has performed as first bassoonist with the United States Military Academy Band of West Point, the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, Gelsenkirchen (Germany) Philharmonic, Deutsche Bach Solisten, the Belgian Radio Symphony, the Essen Philharmonic, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Orvieto Musica.  Before moving to Illinois Mr. Dicker served as bassoonist with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, where he was also the orchestra’s director of chamber music ensembles and conductor of Toledo Symphony Chamber Orchestra.  Since 1988 he has been first bassoonist of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra.  He also serves as first bassoonist of the Heartland Festival Orchestra.  As a chamber musician Mr. Dicker has been a prize winner of the Coleman Chamber Competition.  He has performed as a member of the Lincoln Center Foundation Woodwind Quintet, the Lieurance Quintet. Currently he is a member of Sonneries Quintet (Illinois State University Faculty Woodwind Quintet) with which he has toured Austria, Japan, and the midwest.  As a representative of bassoon maker Fox Products, Mr. Dicker has presented clinics at conservatories in Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and throughout the United States.  Mr. Dicker has served as bassoon instructor at Wichita State University, Musikschule Bochum, and has been on the faculty of Illinois State University since 1986 where he is Professor of Bassoon.  Among his former students are bassoonists  

Ensemble Concerts: Chamber Orchestra, November 12, 2009

https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5826&context=somp

Ensemble Concerts: Chamber Orchestra, November 12, 2009

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ISU ReD: Research and eData