Battle Creek Symphony
Saturday, May 1, 2010, 7:30 pm
W.K. Kellogg Auditorium
Ivan Moshchuk, piano
Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
Unlike the heroes of our earlier concerts, Till Eulenspiegel is a peasant folk hero of the medieval period - he was an impudent trickster figure who played practical jokes on his contemporaries and exposed greed, hypocrisy and foolishness at every turn. Strauss's brilliant orchestration chronicles his misadventures and pranks with virtuosity and panache.
As is tradition, the Battle Creek Symphony will collaborate with the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, the largest gathering of keyboard artists in North America. This year we will present the tremendously talented Ivan Moschuk.
To watch a performance of Ivan playing, click here
artist sponsored by Eleanor and Robert DeVries
Tonight's concert is a youthful one, for Strauss composed "Till Eulenspiegel" when he was just 30, and Chopin his Second Piano Concerto when he was just 19.
The incorrigible rogue about whom Richard Strauss wrote his humorous work, "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," was a fictitious character in Middle Low German folklore.
"Till," who was said to have been born in Kneitlingen, Germany, around 1300, played tricks on everyone from peasants to the reigning pope. He exposed vices of all kinds, and, when he supposedly died in 1350, he was given a gravestone which read, "Don't move this stone, let that be clear; Eulenspiegel's buried here."
In his 1895 many-moods tone poem, Richard Strauss was less charitable to poor Till than German tradition had been, for in the legends, he managed to escape punishment, whereas Strauss finally sent him to the gallows.
Strauss composed two main themes, the first to be played by the French horn to introduce the whole story and the second, by the clarinet, to represent the shrill voice. of Till himself. Later flutes, oboes and clarinets represent a group of women gathered in a market place where Till has caused havoc. Then, after he mocks clergymen and academics, Till feigns piety and puts on holy vestments, only to be exposed by a saucy clarinet theme. At the sound of a violin glissando, he takes off his holy garb and proceeds to fall in love, to the sound of a sweet melody, only to be rejected.
His resulting rage is expressed by French horns. After that he mocks a group of Philistines and then indulges in a peasant dance with young girls. Soon, however, a drum roll asserts that his pranks are over, and, though he tries to protest, a major-seventh interval in the lower basses announces his final beheading. The French horn theme is reintroduced in a distorted variation, and pizzicato strings portray his actual execution.
Chopin composed his Piano Concerto in F minor in 1829, even before what is commonly considered his "first" concerto in E minor. Though inexperienced at composing for symphony orchestras, his melodies for the piano are so beautiful, so virtuosic that they more than compensate for any shortcomings in orchestration.
The first movement, Maestoso, has two expositions, the first played by the whole orchestra and the second by the solo pianist. The first theme is the one developed in the second phase of the movement.
Between the first and second movements, Chopin added a kind of "divertissement" for French horn.
The second movement, a lyrical almost poetic Larghetto, was composed as a response to the young Chopin's frustrated love for a young Polish girl. Its main theme, played by the piano, comes after six introductory measures. Later, the movement becomes more mysterious and foreboding, but it ends with the first theme repeated with great embellishment.
The third and final movement, an Allegro vivace, is showy for the solo pianist, with the fast and fiery character and the fast pace of a mazurka.
This concert will present many moods, many youthful emotions, ranging from silly pranks to the joys but also the frustrations of young love.
Eighteen-year-old Ivan Moshchuk, 2010 Gilmore Young Artist, was born in Moscow, Russia and moved to Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan with his family when he was four years old. He recently graduated from Grosse Pointe South High School and is headed to the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University in the fall. There he will continue studying piano performance under Boris Slutsky.
In the summers of 2006 and 2008, Moshchuk attended the International Music Academy in Plzen, Czech Republic. Moshchuk has had master clases with Dmitri Vorobiev, Ivan Moravec, Miroslav Brejcha, and Arthur Greene. In addition to a rigorous concert schedule, he was chosen to record for Czech National Radio.
Along with other notable prizes and accolades, Moshchuk was the co-first prize winner of the 2007 Arthur Fraser Concerto Competition in South Carolina and was a semifinalist in the Oberlin International Piano Competition in that same year. In addition to numerous solo recitals, Moshchuk has been a concerto soloist with the South Carolina Philharmonic and the Grosse Pointe Symphony, among other ensembles.
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