October 4, 2008 Program Notes

Tonight the Battle Creek Symphony will introduce a whole new dimension into its music, for all of tonight's selections were inspired by the visual arts: paintings and films.

Ottorino Respighi's "Trittico Botticelliano," or "The Botticelli Triptych," is a chamber orchestra "portrait" of three famous and beloved paintings by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, 1445-1510.
The first painting, "Primavera," or "The Spring," is pastoral and light, with Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, and others all dancing about in nature. The second, "The Adoration of the Magi," features solo oboe and bassoon, in a more somber but still lyrical portrayal of the nativity scene. And the third, "The Birth of Venus," has an air of naiveté, of the freshness of life for the newly born Goddess of Love. Venus is rising up out of the half shell, with graceful angels and a goddess welcoming her to this world. We can hear the water rippling in the string sections, and we are made aware of the sacredness of her birth through the gentle harp passages.

Ray Sprenkle's "Reflections on Titian's Assumption," was commissioned by conductor Anne Harrigan for her Baltimore Chamber Orchestra's holiday concert in 2000. Sprenkle, who teaches composition at Peabody Institute of Music, echoed the "Ave Maria" motet of Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez, even as he created his own musical version of Titian's large portrayal of Christ ascending into the clouds with followers below and angels around and above him.

Next, the symphony will feature Joe Lulloff, saxophonist, playing John Williams' "Escapades," from the Steven Spielberg 2002 film, "Catch Me If You Can." Williams describes the music for this film, his and Spielberg's twentieth collaboration,as "a kind of bonbon," which is light, entertaining, with a jazzy "sixties swagger."

And, finally, "Pictures at an Exhibition" is the consummate example of music which attempts to recreate, through sound, a scene, an image or a mood. Modeste Mussorgsky composed the work in 1874 to offer a musical tour of an exhibition of over 400 paintings by his friend, the Russian artist and architect Viktor Hartmann, who had died just one year before.

Though Mussorgsky had already proven his abilities in orchestral composition through "Night on Bald Mountain" and the opera, "Boris Godunov," he intentionally composed "Pictures" for solo piano. The work seems to cry out for the various timbres of brass, woodwinds, and strings, however, for in the years since its composition, over thirty-five composers and conductors have tried to arrange "Pictures" for orchestra. Many have been successful, but Maurice Ravel's 1922 version for orchestra has become the standard arrangement--and the one you will hear tonight.

Mussorgsky included ten "Pictures," plus an introduction, which he called a "Promenade," and various links (some of which Ravel omitted). The pictures Mussorgsky depicts are the following:

1. a drawing of a gnome-shaped nutcracker
2. a water color painting of a troubadour singing outside a medieval castle
3. a depiction of children vigorously playing and quarreling in a park
4. a drawing of cattle in a Polish village which Mussorgsky explained that he altered slightly to show an oxcart with enormous wheels
5. a design for a ballet costume for chickens dancing as they hatch from their shells
6. two separate sketches of two Jewish men in a Polish ghetto, one rich and confident, the other a groveling beggar
7. a sketch of noisy women and vendors shouting in a crowded marketplace
8. a painting in the ancient catacombs beneath Paris where, as Mussorgsky himself put it, "the skulls begin to glow faintly from within"
9. a picture of a clock face showing the hut of a Russian folk witch called Baba Yaga, whom Mussorgsky depicts on a wild ride
10. a design for a monument to depict the ancient Gate of the Bogatyrs at Kiev.

So, sit back and enjoy tonight's concert with not only your ears but also with your mind's eye.