A Romantic Night: Texarkana Symphony Orchestra opens season,
Anight of colorful, vibrant music awaits Texarkana Symphony Orchestra patrons who attend the TSO’s upcoming season opener, “Symphonic Pictures,” at the Perot Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 14.
Starting at 7:30 p.m., the TSO performs selections from three of most beloved Romantic era composers: Tchaikovsky, Respighi and Mussorgsky. The TSO players will be under the guidance of conductor MarcAndre Bougie, who’s entering his final season with the orchestra he co-founded.
“This is going to be one of these majestic, late-Romantic music type of concerts,” Bougie said about the evening’s repertoire. “All the pieces were chosen because of the interrelations they have with each other.”
For example, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky opens the night, but the famous Russian composer visited Italy in the 1870s, and his “Capriccio Italien” was inspired by the visit. It’s a medley of Roman tunes the composer heard and later orchestrated when he was back home, the conductor said.
“And then we follow with the music of (Ottorino) Respighi, who lived in Rome actually. And Respighi, as part of his symphonic poem approach, wanted to depict certain scenes and sights in the city of Rome, so he wrote three sets of symphonic poems.”
The first is “The Fountains” of Rome, which will be performed for this concert. The second is “The Pines of Rome,” which the TSO has performed before, while the third is titled “Roman Festivals.”
“The Fountains of Rome” portrays the major Roman fountains during the day.
“It’s not only the idea of the fountain. It’s how light is reflected in the water at different times of the day and then this impressionistic approach to music where color is of the essence. The way light reflects on water is a concept that’s very dear to people like Respighi or Ravel or Debussy,” Bougie said. That concludes the first part of the concert.
Then, for the second part of the TSO’s twelfth season opener, we head back to Russia for another Romantic work titled “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the Modest Mussorgsky piece.
“This is going to be one of these majestic, late-Romantic music type of concerts.” —Marc-Andre Bougie
It’s a series of piano pieces.
“Basically the story is he had a good friend, Victor Hartmann. They were very close. Victor died unexpectedly and Mussorgsky was met with insurmountable grief. It was very difficult for him,” Bougie said. A year later, another friend organized an exhibit of the late artist and architect’s works.
“As Mussorgsky walked through there, he imagined this suite of piano pieces that would represent different drawings or paintings. And in between these paintings he would have a promenade, a piece of walking music,” Bougie said.
The whole work adds up to about 35 minutes of music. It’s essentially a walk-through of the exhibit with the paintings represented musically. Later, “Pictures at an Exhibition” was orchestrated by various arrangers, such as Maurice Ravel.
Andrew Clark, the TSO’s executive director, said the TSO will add another component to the show during the Mussorgsky piece.
“For the Mussorgsky, we’re again doing something unique with audio-visual. We’re going to have a screen above the orchestra that will come down. We’ll have digital images of the original Hartmann works that still survive. There’s only a handful of those,” Clark said. “And then we have selected other paintings by period artists around the same time to represent those … that have been lost.”
Paintings of people walking through art galleries will also be in the mix of on-screen images accompanying the music.
“This will help to enhance the performance,” Clark said. The TSO has added this sort of audio-visual element in the past, such as a concert with Holst’s beautiful suite “The Planets.”
Clark said “pick three” ticket series are still available. And he said the concert is one that truly showcases the orchestra and its musicians. There’s a lot of brass to be heard, added the conductor.
“These pieces are inspired by sights, colors, the way light reflects on things …. so you’ve got these impressions in all of these pieces,” Bougie said, commenting on the visual impressions all three composers strive to create.
(Tickets: $48, $37 or $25. Get tickets at TexarkanaSymphony.org or call the Perot box office at 903-792-4992.)