Many thanks to everyone who helped make our first weekend of Sound Off such a great success. For anyone who wasn’t there, Sound Off is the ISO’s new preconcert event (which I host) for our new concert series, Symphonic Hits powered by Lilly.I’m hoping to see even more of you at Sound Off this coming weekend (6:30pm both Friday and Saturday nights, AKA one hour before the concert) for our second set of Symphonic Hits performances, which feature Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter,” all conducted by Michael Stern, music director of the Kansas City Symphony. Our soloists for the Higdon concerto are none other than Time for Three (or Tf3 for short), the “classically trained garage band” co-founded by ISO concertmaster Zach de Pue.
One feature of Sound Off is a segment I call “The Audience Wants to Know” (yes, cribbed from Jay Leno!), where we answer a question from you about orchestral music. So, please send us your questions – what should we talk about this week? You can submit your ideas by commenting on this blog post.
One thing we’re definitely going to talk about at Sound Off this week is the amazing last movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, which makes incredible use of what we in the music biz call fugal writing. That means that it’s not a full-fledged fugue in a formal sense, but it uses the basic technique. This reminded me of Glenn Gould’s classic vocal fugue, “So You Want to Write a Fugue”:
I also found this clever and funny demonstration of what a fugue is, using the theme from Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again”:
To further whet your appetite, here are a few more videos related to this week’s concerts. First, a video that will give you a sense of the fantastic virtuosity and energy of Tf3, as well as a bit about their background, if you’ve never heard them before.
Second, a clip from NBC where Jennifer Higdon’s collaboration with Tf3 is discussed.
Here’s a very fine performance of the Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3, with Fabio Luisi and the MDR Symphony in
And finally, here’s the last movement of the Mozart, performed by Karl Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic (the other movements from this performance are also available on YouTube).
See you at the Symphony!
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