Description:

Wine Tasting Special Event

The Toledo Symphony and 101.5 The River invite you to an evening of wine and music!  Join Mary Beth and Rick for a pre-concert wine tasting courtesy of The Vineyard.  Then enjoy exclusive concert seating as the Toledo Symphony performs a traditional Viennese New Year program of  enchanting waltzes and polkas including “The Blue Danube”!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Wine Tasting
6:30 p.m. | The Symphony Space
(1838 Parkwood at Monroe, across from the
Toledo Museum of Art)

A Viennese New Year – The Blue Danube
8:00 p.m. | Peristyle Theater

$50.00 special event tickets includes wine tasting, exclusive seating* with Mary Beth and Rick, and reserved parking.*

Reserve your seats now by calling
the Toledo Symphony Box Office - 419.246.8000

*Seating with Mary Beth & Rick and parking is limited

(previously purchased tickets can be exchanged for special event tickets by calling The Toledo Symphony box office 419.246.8000)

 Concert Description

Families pre-register a year in advance just to be entered in a drawing for tickets.  One billion people watch worldwide on television.  A New Year’s concert in Vienna has become one of the music world’s most anticipated spectacles.

Ring in 2008 Viennese-style as Principal Conductor Stefan Sanderling leads the Toledo Symphony in music from one of the world’s most revered cultural capitals.  Enjoy an evening of celebration, and some of the world’s most beloved and familiar melodies – including the instantly recognizable opening of Mozart’s Eine kleine nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) and the polkas and waltzes of the Strauss family.

We’ll put a Toledo twist on this timeless musical tradition.  Two of our clarinet players, Georg Klaas and Jocelyn Langworthy, will make their first solo appearance as husband and wife in a charming concert piece by Felix Mendelssohn.  There will be a touch of Second Viennese School spice featuring our TSO string section in a piece by Anton von Webern, the Langsamer Satz.    And though the evening may have a ‘stormy’ beginning, rest assured that the mellifluous strains of the Blue Danube Waltz will have you floating through the streets in ¾ time.

Our clarinet soloists, Jocelyn Langworthy and Georg Klaas, have this to say about the Mendelssohn Concertpiece:

Felix Mendelssohn wrote the Concertpiece #2 for Clarinet, Basset Horn and piano in 1833 for his good friends Heinrich and Carl Baermann.  Heinrich was a great clarinet virtuoso and had been an inspiration to other composers, including Carl Maria von Weber.  Carl Baermann, Heinrich’s son, wrote instructional clarinet method books that are still used today, and was quite an accomplished performer on the basset horn (a somewhat experimental, lower pitched version of the clarinet, which quickly fell out of use).  Carl was also known as an exceptionally good cook.

While the Baermanns were visiting Mendelssohn, they struck an agreement, or a trade-off of sorts. Mendelssohn agreed to write a piece for the three of them to play together if Carl and his father would prepare their special dumplings (dampfnudel and rahmstrudel).  While the Baermanns worked in the kitchen, Mendelssohn wrote the first Concertpiece.  The result was such a success that the three repeated the process for the second Concertpiece.  Mendelssohn later arranged the piano part for string orchestra, and the basset horn part was later transcribed for two clarinets.

The Concertpiece #2 has three sections, played without pause.  The piece opens with a fiery and dramatic presto.  The final section is an exuberant and virtuosic allegro grazioso.  As for the middle section, a lyrical andante, Mendelssohn must have been inspired by the smells of good dumplings emanating from the kitchen as he was composing, for he later wrote, “the clarinet depicts my feelings of longing while the basset horn adds the rumbling of my stomach.”


Points of interest:

• Mozart’s Eine kleine nachtmusik may have been written as a companion piece to his Musical Joke, which he published two months earlier.  Written for two horns and strings, the Musical Joke satirizes incompetent composers as well as clueless performers.  By contrast, Eine kleine nachtmusik epitomizes elegance, proportion, and ‘right-ness’ in music.
• Norman Gold, in his “Golden Encyclopedia of Music,” writes that Johannes Brahms, asked for an autograph by the wife of Johann Strauss Jr., wrote down the opening bars of The Blue Danube waltz.  Under it, he wrote, “Unfortunately, not by Johannes Brahms.”

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Program:

A VIENNESE NEW YEAR

In memory of Caroline Jobst Reimann

 Sponsored by Columbia Gas of Ohio

Suppé, Franz von ~ Light Cavalry Overture     9’

Haydn ~ Symphony No. 88 in G Major    23’

               Adagio – Allegro
               Andante
               Menuet: Allegro – Trio
               Finale: Spiritoso

 Intermission

 
Strauss, Johann, Jr. ~ Thunder and Lightning Polka     3’

Strauss, Johann, Jr. ~ Emperor Waltzes     10’

Mendelssohn ~ Concert Piece No. 2 in D Minor for Two Clarinets     15’

                          Presto
                          Andante
                          Allegro grazioso

 Intermission

Mozart ~ Eine kleine Nachtmusik     16’

                Allegro
                Romanze: Andante
                Menuetto: Allegretto
                Rondo: Allegro

Strauss, Johann, Jr. ~ On the Beautiful Blue Danube     9’

WGTE -FM 91 broadcasts the Toledo Symphony on FM 91 In Concert. Tonight's concert will be rebroadcast Thursday, May 8, 2008, at 8:00 p.m., through the generosity of the Edward H. Schmidt Musical Arts Fund.

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