My two favorite OHS music events are in March; I will miss both of them. The first one is complete, the Philharmonic playing in the District Festival. The second is this weekend, the Collage Concert. Alas, I will be watching a soccer tournament.
Asked Kevin what they were performing for Districts, and there’s a piece by Suk and a piece by Borodin I’ve never really heard of. And Beethoven’s Egmont Overture.
Probably not number 1 on my all-time classical favorite list (Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is the leader in the clubhouse) but man, this little piece of Ludwig’s might be #2. Seems unlikely that OHS will ever perform Mussorgsky…too much and too many brass instruments for us to pull it off.
But the Egmont?? I was uber-geeked to hear that they were performing that piece. Because it might be the first piece of classical music I ever truly remember; it is the piece I liked the most back in sixth grade when I chose to memorize classical music after school in Mrs. Benso’s class. I remember this piece….I remember almost missing it (mis-identifying it) when the test day came…they played a part I wasn’t all that familiar with and right as it ended they played the two or three notes that are really distinctive and everybody went “Oh!” and started writing down the name, the opus number, Ludwig’s name, his birth year and his death year.
I remember a certain red-haired sixth grader also doing this music memory thing. I think Suzanne remembers doing the activity. I know she couldn’t name any of the musical pieces to save her life.
You can listen to the pieces from this year’s District’s…..click on the links below (the word ‘here’).
The Egmont Overture is here.
The Serenade for Strings by Suk is here.
The Polovtsienne Dances From "Prince Igor" by Borodin is here.
So, I’m happy to have the music, belatedly, and the Egmont Overture pleases me to no end. The Districts were full of controversy though, one of the judges gave the orchestra a II (two). Apparently the judge thought that the brass instruments were ‘too loud’ at the end of the Borodin piece and because he/she was so ‘displeased’ by this two minutes of work he/she went back and lowered the score for the whole orchestra for all of the pieces.
I don’t think the OHS orchestra has ever gotten a II; there isn’t a lot of doubt what the best orchestra in the district is. Period. And so that created a lot of angst, and protests, and general displeasure. There are three judges; the other two as Kevin tells it, were like ‘WTF'?”. Oh well….
