The La Mirada Symphony invites you to attend their free concert on Sunday, May 20th entitled “Musical Journey.” This will be their fourth concert of the 2017/2018 season at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and feature the music of Shostakovich and Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as the Young Artist Concerto winners. The event begins with a pre-concert discussion at 2:15 p.m. with the concert following at 3:00 p.m.
Musical Journey will include Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Festive Overture. It premiered in 1954 at a concert held at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The Bolshoi’s conductor, Vassili Nebolsin, found himself without a suitable new work to open the concert, and contacted Shostakovich just days before. The composer set to work on the overture with great speed, completing it in three days. Whilst the style reflects Shostakovich, the piece as a whole uses very conventional classical devices of form and harmony.
The overture begins with a fanfare in the brass, followed by a fast melody in the winds. The strings take up this melody and the piece reaches a climax with a four-note motif. Suddenly, the music reaches a more lyrical melody in the horns and cellos, although the tempo remains the same. Shostakovich develops this material in his typical style, using both themes in counterpoint, before the fanfare returns and leads to a rousing coda.
Musical Journey will also feature Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Scheherazade, a symphonic suite the premiered in Saint Petersburg on October 28, 1888 and based on One Thousand and One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights). This orchestral work combines two features typical of Russian music and of Rimsky-Korsakov in particular: dazzling, colorful orchestration and an interest in the East, which figured greatly in the history of Imperial Russia, as well as orientalism in general. The name “Scheherazade” refers to the main character Shahrazad of the One Thousand and One Nights. It is considered Rimsky-Korsakov’s most popular work.
To continue the La Mirada Symphony’s mission of providing free concerts to the general public, free tickets can be reserved online by those wanting to attend our shows. However, due to the amount of ticket holders not attending past concerts, tickets that have not been picked up by show time will be released and distributed to individuals waiting in the stand by line.
“Our concerts have become very popular this past season and reserving free tickets online has made it easy for individuals to secure seats,’ said David Derks, President of the La Mirada Symphony. “On the day of the concerts, we want to be sure we can accommodate individuals who were unable to secure online tickets by releasing seats so that they have an opportunity to see the show.”
Click here for more information on the concert and to reserve your tickets today.
Source: La Mirada Symphony