Beethoven’s Choice

Event Details:

Location: Paramount Theatre

Date: Friday, March 18, 2016

Time: 8 pm

Program:

Cherubini Requiem
Oakland Symphony Chorus,
Lynne Morrow, Director

Martin Rokeach Piccolo Concerto – World Premiere
(Amy Likar, piccolo)

Beethoven Symphony no. 2

Program Notes

Michael Morgan

Music Director Laureate

Dr. Lynne Morrow

chorus director

Amy Likar

flute/piccolo

Beethoven is said to have preferred Luigi Cherubini’s 1815 Requiem to Mozart’s better-known and more widely performed one. Composed to commemorate the regicide of France’s Louis XVI, it showcases brooding and majestic melodies, smoldering Byronic harmonies and a spectacular, pulse-pounding Offertorium in the form of a fugue. Beethoven’s Second Symphony (1802) bears the marks of the energetic and iconoclastic composer at full stride. Bay Area musicologist Robert Greenberg asserts that the work’s opening bars evoke the composer’s hiccups due to gastric problems, and who but Beethoven could spin a symphony from such humble material? Bay Area Composer Martin Rokeach has been commissioned to write a new piccolo concerto for Oakland Symphony’s own Amy Likar that promises to showcase the instrument’s uniquely beautiful voice and what the composer calls “its haunting low register.”

$10 Student tickets are available in Balcony Rear under Price Level E.

Pre-Concert Activity:

ON STAGE:

7:00 – 7:30 pm
John Kendall Bailey discusses the music on the program.

IN THE LOBBY:

7:05 – 7:40 pm
Lobby performance by Oakland Youth Chorus

Thank you to our Concert Wine Sponsor,
St. Francis Winery & Vineyards in Sonoma,
for providing wine for the Baton Society Wine
Bar and Post-Concert Reception!

Th Cakes Made by ME ank you, also, to our Concert Dessert Sponsor, Cakes Made by M.E. in Oakland, for providing delicious dessert for for the Post-Concert Reception!