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Saturday, February 23, 2008, 8 pm
Millard Auditorium, University of Hartford
200 Bloomfield Avenue
West Hartford, Connecticut
Poster

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1
This piano concerto was written in 1830 and was the last score the twenty-year-old Chopin completed before leaving his native Poland for Paris. Although known as his first concerto it was the second of his two concertos for piano to be written. The F minor Concerto known as number 2 was written a year earlier but published later. These youthful concertos may not live up to his greatest solo works but there is great music within them. Brilliant ornamentation, passage-work, and inspired melodies abound. Born within a year of Mendelssohn and Schumann there is no doubt that Chopin’s musical voice was quickly formed and highly original. Like Mendelssohn, Mozart and Schubert, he lived a short life, dying before reaching the age of 40.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5
Shostakovich’s best-known symphony was composed in three months in 1937. A critic at its first performance wrote that it was “a Soviet artist’s creative answer to just criticism,” words now famous as we evaluate the life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers. Shostakovich’s First Symphony was a triumph for the then 19 year-old composer and brought him international attention. Other works followed, including two more symphonies and the critically acclaimed operas The Nose and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. But in 1936 while working on his Fourth Symphony an article appeared in Pravda, the newspaper of the Soviet Union and voice of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, that would change his life. The article, “Chaos Instead of Music,” denounced his music as “formalistic” and further performances of Lady Macbeth were banned. It was under intense scrutiny that he began work on his Fifth Symphony, a work that somewhat restored his position with the authorities.

But despite the success of the work the composer was never free from criticism, most notably in another public attack in 1948. 32 years after his death we are still unsure of the meaning of much of his music and what he wrote in words often seems at odds with what we hear in his music. Many hear the end of this powerful work as exalting but he wrote late in his life that “the rejoicing is forced, created under threat.” However we hear it, it is powerful music by one of the great composers in the symphonic form.