The Promise of Living
March 13, 2021
Dr. Everaldo Martinez & Dr. Natalia Vacarciuc
This concert is sure to lift your spirits. The orchestra will perform Aaron Copland's engaging Tender Land Suite, arranged for 13 instruments by one of Dr. Everett's mentors, Maestro Murry Sidlin. The suite also features soprano Therese Kulas and tenor Cole Giradot and a special appearance by the University of Mary Concert Choir. Our own Dr. Everaldo Martinez and Dr. Natalia Varcarciuc give the midwest preview of Lucas Richman's Concerto for Violin and Cello: Un Pasto con Luciana e Mario. Also joining us for this concert is local news celebrity Marci Narum of the Capitol Gallery narrating The Wishing Tree by Paul Schoop. This is a concert that is sure to leave our audience humming and smiling!
Tickets are now available for our Friday night and Saturday night performance, as well as for the live stream. Click here!
Everaldo and Natalia operate Dolce Vita String Studio in Bismarck, you can find more information here.
The insert for the March program can be found here.
Program
The Wishing Tree....................Paul Schoop (1909-1976)
Marci Narum, narrator
Concerto for Violin and Cello: Un Pasto con Luciana e Mario (Preview performance)...Lucas Richman (b. 1964)
Dr. Everaldo Martinez, violin and Dr. Natalia Vacarciuc, cello
INTERMISSION
The Tender Land (Suite for 13 instruments).......Aaron Copland (1900-1990), arr. by Murry Sidlin
1. Introduction
2. Laurie's Aria
3. Love Duet
4. Stomp Your Foot
5. Daybreak will Come
6. Hire a Stranger
7. Promise of Living
Therese Kulas, soprano and Cole Girodat, tenor
*University of Mary Concert Choir
*Saturday performance only
Program Notes
Please note that these program notes are for the originially scheduled concert. Per the program above, the schedule has been altered, and the Cowboys Overture cannot be performed due to musician availability and spacing concerns.
Three of the composers on tonight's concert, Williams, Richman and Copland, all share the trait of composing for film as well as for classical symphony orchestras.
In 1972 John Williams composed the score for The Cowboys, a Western starring John Wayne. Williams later recalled how his Cowboys film music was transformed into The Cowboys Overture: “The movie required a vigorous musical score to accompany virtuoso horseback riding and calf roping, and when my friend André Previn heard fragments of the score, he suggested that a concert overture lay hidden within the film's music. Several years slipped by, and each time I saw the indefatigable Previn he would ask, ‘Have you made an overture of Cowboys yet?’ He kept this up until 1980, when I finally worked out the piece and played it at a Boston Pops concert. Both the orchestra and the audience seemed to enjoy the music to such an extent that it has been part of our repertoire ever since.”
In The Wishing Tree by Swiss composer/conductor/pianist Paul Schoop, the instruments of the orchestra are introduced in an amusing and whimsical way as the story tells the tale of a tree as it is whittled down into smaller and smaller instruments while unaware of its true destiny. In the 1930s, Schoop was mainly known as a composer of ballet music for the pantomime dances of his sister Trudi Schoop. In 1940 he emigrated to Los Angeles, where he worked as a freelance composer and as a conductor and concert pianist, as he had done in Europe before.
Double Concerto for Violin and Cello by Lucas Richman. Commissioned by an Atlanta-based orchestra, the world premiere was postponed due to COVID but the BMSO was granted permission to give the "preview performance," featuring our amazing concertmaster and principal cellist, Everaldo Martinez and Natalia Vacarciuc. Maestro Richman is the Grammy-Award Winning Music Director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and has guest conducted major orchestras all over the world. His choral/orchestral work, "Symphony: This will be our Reply" was premiered in 2018 by the 3 commissioning orchestras the Los Angeles Jewish Orchestra of California, the Oak Ridge Orchestra of Tennessee and the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra of Minnesota.
Copland's only full-length opera, The Tender Land (1952-1954), tells the story of a young girl, Laurie Moss, who grows up on a Midwestern farm and is about to leave home. In "The Promise of Living," at the close of the first act, three generations of the Moss family and their hired hands sing a hymn of gratitude for life, the land, and the spring harvest. "Stomp your Foot" is a rousing square dance number sung by the entire cast at Laurie's high school graduation party. Following the less than enthusiastic reception of the full opera, Copland arranged an orchestral suite from the score.