DMO’s spring 2022 concert
Sunday, May 1, 2022, at 3 p.m. EDT
Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University

An enthusiastic audience joined us for our joyous return to public performance for the first time in more than two years. An uplifting program reminded us of the simple gifts of music, community, and live performance. 

Watch the concert recording

Download the concert program (PDF)

Program notes
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture

Romeo and Juliet is one of the great works of English literature. The tragic story of two lovers has been told in theater, film, and in many cases, music. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture is one such homage to the work.

Written in 1869, the overture is Tchaikovsky’s first of three adaptations of Shakespearean works, followed later by The Tempest and Hamlet. While already a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky struggled with the composition of a large, unstructured symphonic work. Tepid reception of his earlier work Fatum led fellow composer Mily Balakirev to suggest Romeo and Juliet as a subject. Balakirev went so far as to provide guidance as to how Tchaikovsky might compose such a work, including suggesting Balakirev’s own King Lear as a model. The composition of the piece itself was all but a collaboration between the two composers, with Tchaikovsky frequently sending the work to Balakirev, who would return it with edits. Many revisions, and even premieres of two earlier versions, led to the third and final version known today.

Although not directly telling the story, the overture focuses on three ideas from the play. The slow opening bars form a chorale in four-part harmony among the clarinets and bassoons. The first section is reminiscent of church hymns; fittingly, it represents Friar Lawrence. In the play, the friar serves as an advisor to the titular characters at several turns, including marrying the couple in order to halt the feud between their two families, the Capulets and Montagues. A reference to the theme is made at the end of the work, as the friar recounts discovering the bodies of the two lovers.

The pace quickens with the frenetic theme of the two warring families. The argument is explicit, with melodic lines being traded between the violins and lower strings and later between the entire string and wind sections. In the middle of this section, we hear a sword fight, with the cymbals crashing in unison with orchestral hits, symbolizing the chaotic clash of weapons in the tussle.

We finally hear the third and final theme, the famous love theme. It is introduced here by the English horn and viola and picked up later by other members of the orchestra.

The themes are used multiple times throughout the work, and their stark musical contrast highlights the ideas of war and love. Despite these differences, a single motif ties all three themes together: a seven-note rising and falling pattern found in similar motion, a thread that binds them as Shakespeare’s play bound the two lovers together centuries ago. — Kevin Kauffman

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Appalachian Spring

Aaron Copland was one of America’s foremost 20th-century classical composers, composing many instantly recognizable classics including ‘Hoe-Down’ from Rodeo, Fanfare for the Common Man, and Appalachian Spring (1944). Copland’s writing often focused on American themes, and Appalachian Spring is no different. It was commissioned by Martha Graham (to whom the work’s original title, ‘Ballet for Martha,’ refers) and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge as a ballet with an American theme. In the composer’s own words, the ballet concerns

a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the 19th century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end, the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.

The ballet was originally scored for 13 musicians but subsequently was rescored for full orchestra and reduced slightly in scope. The title of the work was not of Copland’s design, but a suggestion of the commissioner, based on a poem of Hart Crane:

O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge;
Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends
And northward reaches in that violet wedge
Of Adirondacks!

The work is broken into 8 sections.

  1. It starts with a slow opening, as the ballet’s characters would have been introduced.
  2. The work suddenly turns fast and leads into a chorale among the winds, as if coming from an organ, eliciting a religious yet anticipatory mood.
  3. The orchestration becomes more intimate and the pace greatly slows. The bride and groom are together in a moment of tenderness.
  4. The pace quickens once again with the oboe as if to call the other instruments to the dance. While most is excitement, the slower and melancholy wind solos at the end of this section remind listeners of the more challenging parts of life ahead.
  5. A series of punctuated notes introduce an exceptionally quick and yet light and joyful time for the bride. The dance is led by the flute and violins.
  6. A single held note in the bassoon leads us into a much slower section. This short theme is but a transition.
  7. The clarinet introduces the famous Shaker tune, “Simple Gifts.” The variations on the tune are the daily life for the bride and her farmer husband.
  8. The pace slows again with a chorale, starting in the strings before encompassing the winds. The composer’s marking, “like a prayer,” shows the couple is at peace in their new life.

Copland was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, which caused severe memory loss in his 80s. The early stages of the disease forced him to unwillingly give up composing in his 60s, saying, “It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet.” Even as the disease progressed, he maintained a connection with his music and especially to this work. In his later years, collaborating on Appalachian Spring with performers at Tanglewood temporarily brought back parts of his mind that were otherwise unreachable, highlighting the unquestionable and irreplaceable bond between wellness and music that this orchestra takes as its mission. — Kevin Kauffman

Steven Bryant (b. 1972)
Shouting Defiance (2018; arranged for orchestra in 2019)

Shouting Defiance is an emphatic fanfare that bursts forth with a defiant yet optimistic expanding chord progression that repeats and develops throughout the work. Shouting Defiance works as a standalone fanfare but also serves as the first movement of my larger work, Pendulum, commissioned by a consortium led by the University of Illinois Bands Program in celebration of its 150th anniversary. The title is taken from the lyrics for Illinois Loyalty:

Lead on your sons and daughters, fighting for you,
Like men of old, on giants placing reliance, shouting defiance—

The fanfare was adapted for symphony orchestra from the original wind band version. Commissioned by a consortium of Texas orchestras in TMEA Region XIII, and premiered by the TMEA Texas All-Region XIII Orchestra, November 16th, 2019, Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, conducting. — Steven Bryant

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88

Like many modern artists, Antonín Dvořák needed a lucky break to get his career off the ground.

Dvořák’s break came at the hands of Johannes Brahms, who in 1874 happened to be a judge for a composition competition that Dvořák entered. The already well-known Brahms took a liking to Dvořák’s music and had his publisher commission what would become Dvořák’s first major published work and the one that would launch him to stardom: Slavonic Dances.

That work contained a set of eight entirely new dances in the Bohemian style that Dvořák grew up with and adored. Ten years and much acclaim later, Dvořák’s love for Bohemian music had not waned, and while vacationing in his summer home, he wrote his eighth symphony, drawn from the same folk style that influenced Slavonic Dances. Following his seventh symphony, which famously opens with a quote from the Dies irae, Dvořák sought to create a contrasting work, leading to the light and lyrical piece you’ll hear today.

The symphony is believed to be heavily influenced by the environment of the summer home where the work was written. The composer’s biographer, Otakar Šourek, wrote that Dvořák’s private garden there was “a welcome refuge, bringing him not only peace and fresh vigor of mind, but happy inspiration for new creative work. In communion with Nature, in the harmony of its voices and the pulsating rhythms of its life, in the beauty of its changing moods and aspects, his thoughts came more freely. … Here he absorbed poetical impressions and moods, here he rejoiced in life and grieved in its inevitable decay, here he indulged in philosophical reflections on the substance and meaning of the interrelation between Nature and life.”

Such a mindset permeates the work, and the pastoral feeling is apparent throughout.

The first movement is in sonata form and thus in three distinct phases. Listen closely to the melody, which is heard right at the start of the symphony. This melody is heard three times, each time introducing a new section: the exposition (where the other melodies are introduced), the development (where those melodies are combined and changed), and the recapitulation (where the original melodies are restated in their entirety). Note the usage of the flute as a bird call several times throughout the movement, perhaps harkening to the setting where Dvořák was composing. The bold use of timpani is a style that is carried throughout the piece and into the more famous ninth symphony as well.

In the second movement, we hear ties to the first movement, with the flute again being used to emulate a bird call. The opening section of this movement consists of several such calls interjecting into the more lyrical and weighty melody, perhaps as if one needs such nature to balance other parts of life. The second section opens with violins playing a simple descending scale, while the oboe and flute play a gentle melody, almost pastoral in nature.

The third movement begins with a lyrical melody in the violins, but again we hear the flutes fluttering as birds above. When the flutes and other winds take over the melody, the strings provide the auxiliary material, as the flutes did at first, but the mood is exceptionally different. This extreme change in mood is characteristic of the Bohemian folk style. The second section, much like the previous movement, opens with a much simpler and lighter melody with a similar matching hemiola accompaniment. (The hemiola, or a three-to-two ratio in the rhythm, is another characteristic of the Bohemian style.). The first theme is repeated before a very fast and rousing coda closes the movement.

The fourth movement opens with a trumpet call, of which famed conductor Rafael Kubelik once said, “In Bohemia, the trumpets never call to battle – they always call to the dance!” In this case, the dance is introduced by the cellos and bassoon. The remainder of the movement consists of variations on this simple theme. Once again, the flute is featured throughout the movement, singing as a bird above the rest of the symphony. — Kevin Kauffman

Cover art: Lily el Naccash