The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of music director Ward Stare, will return to The College at Brockport for a concert on Friday, November 1, at 7:30 p.m. celebrating “An Evening in Paris,” including works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, and Lili Boulanger. The concert will take place at the Tower Fine Arts Center, 180 Holley Street, Brockport. Tickets are $17 general, $12 for seniors, alumni, faculty and staff, and $9 for students. They are available online at fineartstix.brockport.edu, by phone at 395-2787, or at the Tower Fine Arts Center box office.
“A concert that features the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky doesn’t sound very Parisian,” admits Stuart Ira Soloway, the manager of the Fine Arts Series, “but his Firebird ballet, written for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, did have its premiere in Paris.” The ballet put Stravinsky on the map as a composer. The RPO will be playing the 1919 version of the Firebird Suite, one of several suites orchestrated after the ballet’s debut.
Also on the program will be Claude Debussy’s Printemps (“Spring”), a symphonic suite about which the composer himself said “[t]he idea I had was to compose a work in a very special color which should cover a great range of feelings … I should like to express the slow and labored birth of beings and things in nature, their gradual blossoming and finally the joy of being born into some new life.”
Lili Boulanger lived a tragically short life, passing away at the age of 25. She came from a very musically talented family, including her sister, the noted teacher and conductor, Nadia. When she won the prestigious Prix de Rome prize at 19, it made international headlines, as she was the first woman to win it for music. The two works that the RPO will play, “D’un soir triste” (“On a Melancholy Evening”) and “D’un matin de printemps” (“On a Spring Morning”) were the final pieces she wrote with her own hand.
Despite composing such renowned Latin-themed works as Symphonie Espagnole or his famous Boléro, Maurice Ravel was French. After being thoroughly enchanted by Mimi and Jean Godebski, Ravel dedicated this 1910 work, Mother Goose Suite, to the children. Originally a piano work for four hands, Ravel later expanded the work for orchestra. Decades after Ravel’s death, Jerome Robbins adapted the piece as a ballet.
“Music is about communication,” Stare theorizes. So, even if this is going to be your first RPO concert, “there is no right or wrong way to experience” it. Explore, and “go on a journey… relax and let the music take you wherever you are inspired to go.” When asked about his own musical tastes, the maestro admits to listening to “Everything! It’s an oft-repeated quote, but I really believe in it: ‘There are only two kinds of music: good and bad.’ Nothing is off limits in terms of what I personally listen to. I always like to discover new things.”
The wonderful thing about welcoming the maestro to the Brockport campus is that it is as if he is coming full circle. His late grandfather, William Ward, was a member of the College’s faculty, in the Department of Psychology, until his retirement in 1985.
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