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Comedy/Tragedy Through
a range of musical intent and inspiration – the Brahms intended purely for
the concert stage, the Rachmaninoff an evocation of a painting by Arnold
Böcklin, the Stravinsky written for the ballet and the Rossini for the
opera – we’ve gathered music for this program that perfectly
balances itself between two classic literary tropes: the comic and
the tragic. Tickets $5/$2 students |
 Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead |
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Northern Lights An
exploration of three giants of Nordic music: the unfairly neglected Dane
Niels Gade, and his atmospheric Echoes of Ossian overture, inspired by
Scottish poems; Gade’s student, the Norwegian Edvard Grieg, whose piano concerto is
perhaps his most celebrated work; and the triumphant Symphony No. 2 of Finnish
national hero Jean Sibelius. We are joined by brilliant young Juilliard-trained
pianist Weiyin Chen, who will perform this very work in her debut with
the Hong Kong Philharmonic later this season. |
 Weiyin Chen |
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Borderland "Ukraine" means borderland, and it has spent almost its entire history ruled by others, viewed as simply a territory of another sovereign nation. It is a testament to the Ukrainian culture’s indomitable spirit, then, that it has managed to survive under such circumstances; but it has done so with limited outside recognition. The KCCO will perform two works that reveal different perspectives on Ukraine, and both invite questions about the misunderstandings and conflations that Ukrainian identity has frequently suffered. Janacek, a Czech composer, wrote his remarkable tone poem, Taras Bulba, based on a story by Nikolai Gogol (a Ukrainian who wrote in Russian). The story concerns a legendary Cossack (a horse-riding warrior) and his sons, who fight to free Ukraine from foreign domination. Tchaikovsky, the son of a French mother and a Ukrainian father, composed his thrilling second symphony (sometimes still bearing the unfortunate tsarist epithet “Little Russian”) using Ukrainian folk themes. Tickets $5/$2 students Dalton Theater in the Light Fine Arts Center, Kalamazoo College For more information, or to reserve seats, please call the music office at 269-337-7070 or email Laurie.Krahn@kzoo.edu Maps and Directions (Will open in a separate window) |
Anatoli Petritsky, Costume design for "Taras Bulba" 1925 |
