Saturday, February 7, 8:00 pm, Cary Hall
Conductor's talk 7:00 pm
Jonathan McPhee, conductor
Janna Baty, mezzo-soprano
| Puccini | I Crisantemi |
| Lister | Sleeping in Air |
| Barber | Knoxville Summer of 1915 |
| Vaughan Williams | Symphony No. 5 |
The themes of I Crisantemi (“Chrysanthemums”), a brief elegy, are powerfully stirring and indeed transferred easily into Puccini’s later opera Manon Lescaut. Both Sleeping in Air and Knoxville Summer of 1915 suggest dream-states. The first is loosely based on a poem by Randall Jarrell about a baby bat’s night spent clinging upside-down to his mother, witnessing her hectic life from that precarious yet comforting vantage-point. Knoxville is based on James Agee’s prose poem about growing up in the south - Agee’s father was close to death when he wrote this work, as was Barber’s when he set the words to music in this beautifully poignant piece, a coming of age through reminiscence. Serenity is the essence of Vaughan Williams’ pastoral Fifth Symphony, a painting of idyllic sound color.
