Notes by Philip Carlsen Listen to these notes on Youtube Listen to these notes on Spotify This concert begins and ends with wind quintet transcriptions of organ pieces from the eighteenth century. The six other pieces on the program, from roughly the last hundred years, were all written specifically for winds. In a sense, all … Read more
Notes by Philip Carlsen Listen to these notes on Youtube Listen to these notes on Spotify Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Mikhail Pletnev Tchaikovsky’s two-act ballet The Nutcracker received its first staged production in St. Petersburg in December 1892. Nine months earlier, he conducted a preview with a suite of eight scenes drawn from the ballet, … Read more
Notes by Philip Carlsen Listen to these notes on Youtube Listen to these notes on Spotify Conrad Tao has put together an astonishing, provocative program that dances back and forth across the hazy boundary between notated music and improvisation. It encourages us to think about composing and improvising as a never-ending, wide-ranging conversation that musicians … Read more
Notes on the Program by Philip Carlsen Our soloist, the renowned Chopin interpreter Zlata Chochieva, has prepared a recital with Chopin at its center, framing his music with pieces written in tribute to him by two great Russian pianist-composers of a later generation. It’s worth noting that those composers, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff, had an … Read more
Notes on the Program By Mary Hunter, A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Music, Emerita at Bowdoin College LISTEN to these program notes on Youtube LISTEN to these program notes on Spotify Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata in C Minor, K. 457 Mozart’s C-minor sonata was written in 1784, in Vienna, for the pianist Therese Trattner, … Read more
Dear Friends With 90 years of bringing the finest classical music to Portland-area audiences, who would ever have imagined we’d be doing so virtually? Despite the changes in the world this past year, what hasn’t changed is Ovations’ dedication to classical and other chamber music forms; connecting our audiences LIVE with extraordinary performers from around … Read more
Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) Modest Mussorgsky received musical training as a child but made his livelihood as a civil servant in Russian government circles until his dismissal in 1867 due to alcoholism. As one of a group of prominent nineteenth-century Russian composers known as “The Five” who endeavored to create music with … Read more
By Linda Nelson, Portland Ovations Deputy Director Immigration. It is the hottest and most critical issue of our era. Pianist and Venezuelan ex-pat Gabriela Montero knows this dearly enough to have built a performance around what she called “a very emotional theme.” Montero’s unique program, “Westward,” was presented by Portland Ovations as part of an … Read more
compositions by age six, a rudimentary opera at nine, and his first symphony at ten; he became a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory at thirteen. During his study at the conservatory, Prokofiev gained respect for the music of Haydn and Mozart, for the elegant dance forms of the eighteenth century, and for the transparent sonority … Read more