Tower, Bruch, Beethoven & Respighi: sep 19-21, 2025
- cbeeson69
- Sep 18
- 9 min read
Updated: Sep 21
Joan Tower
suite from concerto for orchestra
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Joan Tower (1938 – ) is a highly respected award winning American composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. She is considered to be one of the most influential and successful late 20th century American composers, and has continued to produce powerful works for all sizes of ensemble into the 21st century. Tower began writing music in the 1960s during a time when composition standards were still being set in a male dominated field and when American composers were still hewing closely to European styles. She is widely known and credited for paving the path for American composers to create their own styles and use their own creative voices to do so. Concerto for Orchestra is considered a major masterwork of the late 20th century. The Suite had its first performance in January 2025 and by the end of 2026 will have 16 performances in the US and Canada.
HIGHLIGHTS
Composed in 1991 on a consortium commission from St. Louis Symphony, Chicago Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, the original Concerto for Orchestra has a duration of roughly 30 minutes.
In 2024, Colorado Symphony Music Director Peter Oundjian received special permission from Tower to form a suite from the complete work, which had its premiere in January 2025. These September 2025 programs will mark its third set of public performances.
Joan Tower’s explosively powerful Concerto for Orchestra is scored for a large orchestra including quite a battery of percussion instruments. The Suite retains its original instrumentation.
Music critic Peter G. Davis called Concerto for Orchestra “a colorful and engaging piece” and added, "Although it lacks a catchy title, the one-movement score generates a similar sort of musical imagery, even if the basic idea is rather more abstract: a half-hour trip through a large landscape in which constantly changing musical shapes and gestures suggest a time span spent traversing great spaces and long distances.”
Tower initially wanted to title it "Tsunami" after the characteristics of waves and forceful power but ultimately decided it was too destructive a title.
Of the full work, Tower wrote: “In every sense, Concerto for Orchestra is my biggest work to date. It's the first piece purely for orchestra I've written since Silver Ladders in 1986, but it follows three solo concertos — for clarinet, flute, and violin — and reflects that experience, enabling me to take more risks between soloists and orchestra. Whereas Silver Ladders highlighted four solo instruments, here not only solos, but duos, trios, and other combinations of instruments form structural, timbral, and emotive elements of the piece. As in all my music, I am working here on motivating the structure, trying to be sensitive to how an idea reacts to or results from the previous ideas in the strongest and most natural way — a lesson I've learned from studying the music of Beethoven. Although technically demanding, the virtuoso sections are an integral part of the music, resulting from accumulated energy, rather than being designed purely as display elements. I thus resisted the title Concerto for Orchestra, and named the work only after the composing was completed, and even then reluctantly.”
Colorado Symphony last performed the full Concerto for Orchestra in January 2023 with Joan Tower in attendance. In a pre-concert interview I conducted with her she had this to say about being a composer and hearing her music performed for the first time: “Composers are like architects. We have a very specific blueprint. We put our souls into this architectural blueprint and then it comes out - like a building - and you go ‘Oh my God! That’s too big, or that’s too pink, or that’s too loud.’ It’s a very visceral experience.”
Listen to the full 2023 interview with Joan Tower here.
There is no commercially available recording of the Suite yet. Listen to the Part 1 of the complete Concerto for Orchestra recorded by the Nashville Symphony here, with visual images of Kay Sage's architecture inspired artwork.
Max bruch
Violin Concerto in g minor
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Max Bruch (1838-1920) was a German violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer of the Romantic era. He composed some 200 works including Violin Concerto in G minor which is frequently performed as part of the standard violin concerto canon.
HIGHLIGHTS
Violin Concerto in G minor is his first of three concerti for violin. Bruch composed it in 1866 when he was just 28 years old.
Violin Concerto in G minor was very popular during his lifetime and remains so today. Despite this success, Bruch was pretty bent out of shape about the fact that his second and third violin concertos were completely overshadowed by strong public and musician interest in the first. He wrote this deliciously fiery note to his publisher:
“Nothing compares to the laziness, stupidity and dullness of many German violinists. Every fortnight another one comes to me wanting to play the first concerto. I have now become rude; and have told them: ‘I cannot listen to this concerto any more – did I perhaps write just this one? Go away and once and for all play the other concertos, which are just as good, if not better.”
Referring to a visit to Naples in 1903, nearly 40 years after it premiered, where local violinists gathered to honor him. Bruch complained:
“On the corner of the Via Toledo they stand there, ready to break out with my first violin concerto as soon as I allow myself to be seen. They can all go to the devil! As if I had not written other equally good concertos!”
Violin Concerto in G Minor is in three distinct movements, or chapters in a musical chapter book. Vorspiel: Allegro moderato (Prelude: moderately quick), Adagio (slow), Finale: Allegro energico (Conclusion: energetically quick) and is scored for solo violin with a standard Classical to early Romantic size orchestra of winds in pairs, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.
Food for thought on the power of expression in today’s world
It’s worth noting that Bruch’s music was largely forgotten in Germany after the Nazi Party banned performances of his works. In their weak bid to extend power they couldn't gain organically, they judged Bruch “possibly Jewish” based on a single composition for cello and orchestra in which he made a fantasia on the Kol Nidre melody used in Yom Kippur services. Bruch was not Jewish, although that hardly matters when the State has decided to make some kind of example of a person, their work, and their philosophy in order to control people through fear. Censorship of Bruch's music over his Kol Nidre Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Cello and Orchestra only served to hurt their own culture and heritage. That work, along with Violin Concerto in G Minor and many others, has continued to survive today around the world in spite of the self hate of Germans and German values espoused by the Nazi Party during their disastrous and destructive 12 years.
ludwig van beethoven
romance in g major
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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a German composer who was born into the Classical Era, broke open those conventions during his middle compositional period, and paved the way for the Romantic Era in his late compositional period. He's like three composers for the price of one! Beethoven is one of the most instantly recognizable composers of Western European classical music, and together with Franz Josef Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, templated the compositional style known as the First Viennese School.
Highlights
Ludwig van Beethoven composed Romance No. 1 in 1801 and published in 1803. It is technically his second of the two Romances for violin and orchestra but since it was published first it retained the designation “No. 1”.
Although Beethoven was only 31 years old when he composed it, he was already struggling with his increasing deafness. This was a stressful time for him, just as he was coming into what would later be categorized as his middle compositional period. This was the dawning of the Romantic era in which his “Eroica” Symphony No. 3, written just two years later, would signify a stylistic shift away from the restraint of the Classical era.
Beethoven composed both Romances not long after studying composition with Franz Josef “Papa” Haydn. These studies, however brief, formed a foundation from which Beethoven could establish his own compositional voice.
In Romance No. 1 we experience Beethoven pushing at the traditionally simplistic Romance structure with a more conversational style between soloist and orchestra, and the use of the rondo structure which allows for variation throughout the piece rather than holding to one single melody. In some ways this is a preview of his monumental Violin Concerto of 1806.
The Romance, Op. 40, is scored for violin solo and an orchestra of strings, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and flute.
A typical performance lasts about 7 minutes.
For you super nerds 🤓🎶😎
Ottorino respighi
pines of romes
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Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) was an Italian violinist, educator, musicologist, and a star Italian composer of the early 1900s. He composed works for large and small ensembles including for opera and ballet, and made transcriptions of Italian compositions from the Renaissance through the Classical eras. By far his most well known works are the trio of pieces that include Pines of Rome. Enjoy getting to know a bit more about the piece and have a great time listening!
highlights
Ottorino Respighi composed Pines of Rome to be played by a large orchestra. It is a tone poem, a work meant to convey a story or other narrative through sound.
Respighi completed Pines of Rome in 1924. It’s the second tone poem in a set of three about Rome, preceded by Fountains of Rome (1916) and followed by Roman Festivals (1928).
Pines of Rome is in four sections which flow directly from one to the next, each with its own subtitle describing what the music is meant to depict. A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.
In the first section, The Pines of the Villa Borghese, we hear children playing among the pine trees of the Villa Borghese gardens, dancing and marching and playfully mocking each other.
In the second section, Pines Near a Catacomb, we are transported to pine trees at a Roman catacomb with haunting hymns including an off-stage trumpet and chanting from the low brass instruments that spreads through the orchestra.
The third section, The Pines of the Janiculum, is a depiction of moonlight shining on the pines of Janiculum Hill. It features a velvety clarinet solo which seems to be a shimmering improvisation. Near the end of this section you will hear trilling in the violins along with recorded birdcalls. Respighi was the first composer to utilize the gramophone in an orchestral work, and he even went so far as to specify that it be the first commercial recording of a live bird - “Song of a Nightingale”. You can listen to the full track here, and you can hear a couple ‘behind the scenes’ stories about the nightingale recording in the interview I did with Colorado Symphony Principal Percussionist John Kinzie below.
In the final section, The Pines of the Appian Way, Respighi channels the Roman Empire with a long building crescendo representing a military march on the Appian Way past all the pines there from early dawn to bright sun. This music features a lengthy evocative solo in the English horn followed by a buildup that includes offstage brass and the organ rumbling away on exceptionally low notes as the orchestra sound builds to a huge climax.
Respighi calls for a large orchestra including a very large and colorful percussion section. The use of keyboards and harps are substantial, but the richness of expression from the rest of the percussion section adds an undeniable layer of magic to the piece. Watch my interview with Principal Percussionist John Kinzie to learn more about some of the instruments Respighi uses and the way they’re played. You’re in for a few surprises!
Nerd ActivitY
Pines of Rome has a title that could inform the sounds we might hear. On your own or with a group of friends, suggest a title for a short musical ‘poem’ or ‘painting’ for symphony orchestra. How might it sound? What instruments would you choose and why? What sort of tempo or movement or mood might it need to display? Get creative! You could make this into a journaling game by taking turns coming up with titles for everyone else to jot down their ideas in a 3 minute thought shower, then read them aloud, and choose a winner. WHO NEEDS TIKTOK WHEN YOU HAVE MUSIC NERDERY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS???
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