Melodic Meadows Orchestra comes to Lochgilphead
An Edinburgh orchestra is preparing to delight a Mid Argyll audience with an exciting performance this weekend.
For 40 years, the Meadows Chamber Orchestra, under its principal conductor and musical adviser Peter Evans, has performed regularly and with critical acclaim to audiences in Edinburgh and beyond.
A tradition of imaginative programming and exciting performances has given the orchestra a unique place in Scottish musical life. In recognition of its promotion of contemporary music, the orchestra has received several Awards for Enterprise from the Performing Rights Society.
At its Lochgilphead performance, the orchestra will perform Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Winds in D Minor, Op. 44 and Mozart’s Serenade in B-flat Major, k361 – Gran Partita.
Dvořák’s Serenade, Op. 44 is partly a tribute to Mozart’s Harmoniemusik but especially more so to Mozart’s Serenade in B-flat Major, which he heard performed in Vienna not long before writing this piece.
Possibly inspired by what he heard, Dvořák wrote Op. 44 very quickly, taking only two weeks at the beginning of 1878. The character of this Serenade mixes classical forms with Dvořák’s affection for folk music.
The first movement is a march, a typical introduction for a serenade and the mood is humorous, perhaps mocking the pomposity of the form. The second is a minuet, with a beautiful opening theme first played by the clarinets. The clarinets lead the way into the trio, which takes a much faster tempo and evokes Czech folk music and dance with its use of hemiola, a rhythmic device that displaces the beat in triple meter. The third movement opens with solo statements from the upper winds and although it grows denser, more intense and darker in tone, it is essentially lyrical and even pastoral. The finale also suggests a dance, putting its simple and somewhat sardonic material through four varied segments. The music builds to what seems to be its conclusion but instead up pops the piece’s opening march.
In some respects, Mozart’s Gran Partita is two pieces for the price of one. Its monumental first movement is followed by two contrasting examples of each type of symphonic movement.
The musical ambition of the entire work is proclaimed at the start, with the full sonority of the first four notes answered by an expressive, sweet phrase on a solo clarinet. Immediately the music’s driving principles are sonority, colour, texture, concertante effects, the juxtaposition of contrasting styles and the mutability of musical ideas. This is not one of Mozart’s most learned scores but its sensuousness and variety are unsurpassed.
Lochgilphead Parish Church will be the venue of choice on Saturday February 22, with curtain up at 6pm. Tickets are £12 or £10 for concessions. Entry is free for students.