Adams, Dvořák, Kreisler, Williams, Gardel & Mussorgsky/Ravel: Jan 27 & Feb 1, 2026 Complete concert guide
- cbeeson69
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
John Adams
Frenzy: a Short Symphony
DIVE IN!
“I find starting a new piece is just always unbelievably frustrating because I think I know what I want to do but then Day 1 comes and I have that horrible sinking feeling that it’s all over and that everything from here on is just gonna be crap. The first hand scratches you put down are always clumsy and I try to console myself and think that what I’m looking for is the DNA. What is this piece about? What’s its genetic makeup? The creative process is so absolutely buried in obscurity and usually it takes me months before I have that first good day and say ‘okay this is bar 1’. It sucks but I’m gonna live with it anyway.”
That quote is from a Toronto Symphony interview with John Adams (1947- ) a multiple Grammy winner, Pulitzer Prize recipient, and one of the world's most performed living composers. The struggle is real!
About the Music:
John Adams composed Frenzy in 2023. It is his most substantial full orchestra work since City Noir in 2009 and is filled with the kind of pulsating energy and languid melodies as his insanely cool 1985 symphonic work Harmonielehre.
Frenzy is still very fresh and has had only a handful of performances since its 2024 world premiere. Colorado Symphony will give its New York premiere Feb 1 at Carnegie Hall and will be the 7th orchestra in the world to perform it.
John Adams, about Frenzy:
"Frenzy is a one-movement symphony that in the course of its 20 minutes encompasses a variegated yet unified symphonic structure. Its title notwithstanding, the piece is generally buoyant and extrovert and postpones its real frenetic energy to the concluding moments. What makes Frenzy unique in comparison to my other works is its focus, almost to the point of obsession, on the development and transformation of small, vivid motives that continue to resurface in various guises throughout the piece. This kind of classic development treatment of motivic ideas differs from the gradual “change-via-repetition” technique in my earlier, minimalist-influenced works. In fact, once completed, Frenzy revealed itself, much to the surprise of its composer, as a melding of the two approaches toward musical form. On the one hand, its rhythmic event horizon is still essentially pulse-driven, while on the other, its melodic world is about shape-shifting and the “spinning out” of ideas.
The opening bars present two contrasting gestures: a punctuated tattoo in the winds and brass and an urgent, muscular theme in the upper strings. Both these ideas reappear throughout the piece, always transformed in one way or another and yet always identifiable.
In place of a “slow movement” the music’s surface simply quiets down; density and forcefulness yield to a feeling of lightness and transparency. The pulse is still there, now carried along by a congenial interplay among the two harps and celesta while the strings limn a lyrical melody that floats above them.
The final section is indeed frenetic, with hard-driven, choppy string figures, tsunami-like waves of brass and madly scurrying woodwinds, all of which come together to earn the piece’s title."
Resources:
So Many Violin solos!
Watch an Interview with Concertmaster Yumi Hwang-Williams, Associate Concertmaster Claude Sim, and Principal 2nd Violin Kate Arndt
Antonín Dvořák
Romance in F minor
About the composer:
Antonín Dvořák (1841 - 1904) was a Czech composer who showed musical talent from a young age. He is one of the most revered and beloved composers in Czechoslovakia’s history, due in part to his elevating folk rhythms and melodies of Bohemia and Moravia into his compositions which supported a sense of cultural nationalism among listeners.
About the music:
Dvořák composed the Romance in F minor for violin and orchestra in 1873. The primary melody was actually taken from the slow movement of his 5th string quartet, a piece he was not satisfied with at all. The quartet was neither performed nor published until after his death, but the slow movement grabbed the attention of his publisher who encouraged him to use it another way.
Romance is a very popular short concert-piece for solo violin and orchestra. The melody is the primary driver but there are plenty of moments for the solo violin to take flights of fancy. Meanwhile the orchestra provides a warm and supportive backdrop with periodic conversational elements.
A typical performance lasts 12-13 minutes.
Resources:
Fritz Kreisler
Schön Rosmarin
Liebesfreud
Tambourin chinois
About the composer:
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler (1875-1962) was an Austrian-born naturalized American violinist and composer. Kreisler is best known as one of the greatest violinists of his time and his beautiful expressive approach to violin playing set a standard for all violinists who followed him. He might not have been known for his composition but for the controversy he created by composing and intentionally publishing multiple works under other well known composers’ names. Eventually in 1935 he came clean about having done that. Critics were outraged, but Kreisler responded “The name changes, the value remains.”
About the music:
Schön Rosmarin, Liebesfreud, and Tambourin Chinois were all published in 1910. Each of them is showy and delightful in their own way, and pack a lot into their 3-5 minutes.
Resources:
It's incredibly wonderful to have a library archive of Fritz Kreisler's recordings available to experience. Find Schön Rosmarin, Liebesfreud, and Tambourin Chinois plus 3 others here.
John Williams
Theme from schindler's list
About the composer:
John Williams (1932 - ) is an American composer and conductor. His output is enormous and covers an extremely broad spectrum of genres. His compositional style blends impressionism, romanticism, and atonality with complex orchestration. In addition to numerous nominations and awards for television and film scores he has also composed 20 classical concertos and 35 works for orchestra and chamber ensembles.
About the music:
The Schindler's List film score, composed in 1993, won an Oscar for John Williams. Itzhak Perlman recorded the now legendary violin solos, and the Theme from Schindler’s List has become one of the most requested short pieces for violin and orchestra by audiences everywhere.
John Williams wrote: “The film’s ennobling story, set in the midst of the great tragedy of the Holocaust, offered an opportunity to create not only dramatic music, but also themes that reflected the more tender and nostalgic aspects of Jewish life during those turbulent years.”
A typical performance lasts about 5 minutes.
Resources:
🤓Nerd Alert!🤓
I found an arrangement for theremin and piano. You're welcome.
Note: Theremin is the only instrument that is played without touching anything!
Carlos Gardel
Por Una Cabeza
About the composer:
Carlos Gardel (1890-1935) was a French-born naturalized Argentine singer, songwriter, composer, and is the most famous popular tango singer of all time. His name and his work is recognized throughout the world.
About the music:
About the music:
“Por una Cabeza” is one of Gardel’s most well known tangos. He composed it in 1935 just before his tragic untimely death in a place crash.
The song compares the addiction and thrill of winning and losing at the horse races to similar feelings about winning and losing at love. The title loosely translates “to lose by a head”.
Gardel himself sang it in the 1935 film “The Tango Bar”. Fans of Al Pacino might recognize it from the famous tango scene in the film “Scent of a Woman”.
🎉FUN FACT ALERT! 🎉
Composer John Williams arranged Por Una Cabeza especially for Itzhak Perlman.
A typical performance lasts about 5 minutes.
Resources:
Modest Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition
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Modest Mussorgsky 1839-1881 was a Russian composer of the late Romantic stylistic era. He is most influential as a member of the Russian composers group nicknamed “The Five” or “The Mighty Handful”, and was known for hyping a Russian national musical identity independent from some of the established practices and traditions of Western European “classical” music. Mussorgsky was especially interested in Russian folk tales and national history and, as with Pictures at an Exhibition, elevating the work of other Russian artists.
About the Music:
Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874. In its original version it is a virtuosic suite for solo piano. It has since been arranged and orchestrated by numerous composers who found it engaging and inspirational.
French Modernist composer Maurice Ravel’s 1922 orchestration is by far the most frequently performed.
Pictures at an Exhibition is a ten movement work with a Promenade theme periodically inserted between movements. Each movement depicts a painting in a special memorial exhibition by Mussorgsky’s close friend and artistic ally, Viktor Hartmann. Paintings from 5 of the ten movements have been identified and still exist. The others are lost or were not identified. The interstitial Promenades indicate movement through the gallery, each at their own pace and with their own mood. In this way the listener is taken on a journey through the exhibition, possibly walking in Mussorgsky’s shoes. The Promenade theme is also woven into some of the movements, with the most famous example being the final movement The Bogatyr Gates of Kiev.
The piece begins with a Promenade featuring solo trumpet and the brass instruments in a proud and welcoming character.
Movement 1 - Gnomus (The Gnome) - is in a lumpy and inconsistent 3/4 time and is quite gruff and occasionally slimy.
The second Promenade is much more tender, beginning with the French horn and answered by the woodwinds.
Movement 2 - Il Vecchio Castello (The Old Castle) - is in a lightly swinging 6/8 and features evocative solos by the bassoon, saxophone, and English horn.
The third Promenade brings back the solo trumpet, this time heralding the engagement of the whole orchestra.
Movement 3 - Tuileries (Children's Quarrel after Games) - is based on a painting of the Jardin de Tuileries near the Louvre in Paris. The music is quick and mocking, focusing on the children’s game play.
Movement 4 - Bydlo (Cattle) - features a plodding orchestra and a beautiful tuba solo which depict a ox drawing a heavy cart from far away, passing close by, and disappearing in the distance. At the peak of this large crescendo the clattering of the oxcart wheel is suggested with the snare drum.
The fourth Promenade is dark and introspective, beginning in the woodwinds and then spreading into the full orchestra. It goes straight into the 5th movement.
Movement 5 - Ballet of Unhatched Chicks - Mussorgsky depicts strange fledgling costumed dancers with humorous cheeps, chirps, and trilling in the higher instruments of the orchestra.
Movement 6 - "Samuel" Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle" - is based on two different portrait paintings. Mussorgsky uses the low instruments of the orchestra to illustrate an imposing figure, and high repeated notes in the trumpet to represent a figure of smaller stature, possibly chiding.
Movement 7 - Limoges. The Market. (The Great News) - is a fast paced piece that whizzes around the orchestra, suggesting gossip in the marketplace. It moves at breakneck speed and smashes right into the 8th movement.
Movement 8 - Catacombs. With the Dead in a Dead Language. - is a two part movement first featuring the brass depicting the Roman catacombs of Paris and then finishing with the use of the Promenade theme for “Cum mortis in lingua mortua” (With the Dead in a Dead Language). The brass chords in Catacombs suggest the vastness and darkness of the spaces, and the use of the Promenade music in the second part brings the observer directly into the painting. This is the only painting in the series that includes a self portrait of Hartmann, making Mussorgsky’s choice to use the Promenade music here even more clever and poignant.
Movement 9 - The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba-Yaga) - is based on a painting of the witch Baba-Yaga’s hut on hen’s legs in a clock shape. Mussorgsky writes an A-B-A form such that the A sections are terrifying and the B section is super creepy.
Movement 10 - The Bogatyr Gates - provides a splashy and triumphant version of the Promenade theme alternating with a Russian Orthodox chant which builds to a massive bright hopeful finish.
A typical performance of the Ravel orchestration lasts about 35 minutes.
Resources:
🎉EXTRAS! 🎉
Colorado Symphony violinist Karen Kinzie shares a personal story about Pictures:
Pictures at an Exhibition is so popular it can be found in the wild... One robust example is the 1971 Emerson, Lake, and Palmer live album of their progressive rock arrangement with lyrics!
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