Home > Past Seasons > Fall Concert 2009

October 25 at 8pm &
October 26 at 3pm
at the JDHS Auditorium

Join us for our Concert Conversation before the show on
Saturday at 7pm or on Sunday at 2pm.

The Program:

Mussorgsky - Night on Bald Mountain
Berlioz - March to the Scaffold
Mahler - Funeral March
Elfman - Themes from Batman and The Simpsons
Humperdinck - Hänsel and Gretel: Prelude and Witch's Ride
Schwantner - Chasing Light. . .

March to the Scaffold
An Episode in the Life of an Artist (Symphonie Fantastique)
Hector Berlioz

Excerpted from An Episode in the Life of an Artist, March to the Scaffold is the fourth of a five movement symphony composed by Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is a program piece which begins by attempting to convey the story of a young vibrant musician who feels a wave of passions upon first seeing the woman of his dreams. His thoughts for her are what provide the symphony's idée fixe, the recurring theme representing our artist's intense, perhaps obsessive feelings for his new found love.

During the first three movements we are guided through a landscape colored with aimless joy and outbursts of jealousy wherein the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion. Eventually, in the fourth movement, the love-stricken artist whose emotional tram ride has been the listener's as well, despairs:

Convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow. (Berlioz, Op. 14, program notes)

Although Berlioz, in Memoirs, recognizes his own adolescent works as melancholic and brooding and a reflection of his own state of mind, there can be no doubt that even his own romantic tendencies did not quite gain the emotional momentum of this young artist's episode. But it's only the progressive Berlioz that would pioneer psychedelia by creating intense emotional environments with his compositions.

Hänsel and Gretel
Engelbert Humperdinck

Engelbert Humperdinck. . . I think of Tom Jones and the songs that my dad listened to in the '60's. Why did Arnold George Dorsey change his name to Engelbert Humperdinck and why did he pick that name in the first place?

But, let us not be led astray by a British pop singer. Engelbert Humperdinck, the German composer, is best known for his opera Hänsel and Gretel --the Prelude to which the Juneau Symphony is performing at its October concerts. As a composer, he was influenced by Wagner, working as his assistant and even serving as a tutor to Wagner's son, Siegried Wagner.

Humperdinck wrote Hänsel and Gretel at the request of his sister, Adelheid Wette, as music to accompany a Christmas tale she'd written for her children. The full opera version premiered just before Christmas in 1893, and was an instant hit.

--Michelle Bonnet

Chasing Light. . .
Joseph Schwantner

One of the special pleasures of living in rural New Hampshire is experiencing the often brilliant and intense early morning sunrises, reminding one of Thoreau's words, "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me" (Walden). Chasing Light. . . draws its spirit, energy and inspiration from the celebration of vibrant colors and light that penetrate the morning mist as it wafts through the trees in the high New England hills. Like a delicate dance, those images intersected with a brief original poem that helped fire my musical imagination. (Schwantner, spring 2008)

Schwantner discusses his poem:

Chasing Light. . .

Beneath the sickle moon,
sunrise ignites daybreak's veil

Calliope's rainbowed song
cradles heaven's arc

piercing shadowy pines;
a kaleidoscope blooms

morning's embrace
confront's the dawn

Costume Contest

Wear your costume to the concert and you might win a prize!

Winners will be chosen both Saturday and Sunday. The contest has no age limit so dress up the whole family!

**The Ghoulish Gala Players:**

Music Director: Kyle Wiley Pickett
Rehearsal Conductor: William Todd Hunt

Violin I
Lisa Ibias, concertmaster
Lindsay Clark
Rachel Dzubia
Megumi Fujita
Tamaki Goto
Kathy Maas
Lisa Miles
Kate Walters
Pauline Zheng

Violin II
Franz Felkl, principal
Kayla Boettcher
Clancy Cheeley
Auri Clark
Lael Harrison
Bob King
Nola Lamken
Jacob Sanders
Valerie Snyder
Robin Woodby
Gou Hua Xia
Colin Zheng

Viola
Julia Bastuscheck, principal
Elizabeth Gue
Elizabeth Kohn
Andrew Schirmer
Denali Wentz

Cello
Jared Carlson, principal
Susan Burke
Justine Emerson
Kate Golden
Amy Lujan
David Seid

Bass
Keegan Goodell
Wilson Valentine
Hezekiah Bodine

Piano
Sue Kazama

Flute
Sally Schlichting, principal
Cayleigh Allen
Kathryn Kurtz
Colleen Torrence

Piccolo
Kathryn Kurtz

Oboe
Jetta Whittaker, principal
Elizabeth Agnew
Lorna Mazoff

Clarinet
Niko Hoskins, principal
Bryan Johnson
Beth Leibowitz

Bassoon
Heather Williams, principal
Michelle Casey
William Todd Hunt
Sheryl Wittig

Horn
Bill Paulick, principal
Ian MacDougall
Austin Rickards
John Schumann
Russell Strandtmann

Trombone
Jack Hodges, principal
Michelle Bonnet
Mike Bucy
Bruce Simonson

Trumpets
Rick Trostel, principal
Dale Curtis
Kristin Mabry
Jill Taylor

Tuba
Nathan Bastuscheck, principal

Percussion
Rich Ritter, principal
Peter Anderegg
Mary Borthwick
Shoshanna Seligman

Ghoulish Gala

March to the Scaffold An Episode in the Life of an Artist (Symphonie Fantastique) Hector Berlioz

Hänsel and Gretel Engelbert Humperdinck

Chasing Light. . . Joseph Schwantner