Christmas is one of the most anticipated festive seasons of the year and Orquestra Clássica do Sul loves to celebrate it. Here for the first time in Portugal, Pablo Urbina conductor of the Vitae Orchestra of London will conduct this concert. To celebrate we have prepared a repertoire with some of the most beautiful music of this festive season. It will be a pleasure to have you and your family in our audience.
Programme Notes
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London. In his early years, his father, who was a doctor, was unable to succeed in Britain, and thus returned to Sierra Leone. At the age of five Samuel Coleridge-Taylor proved to be talented with the violin and, in 1890, with the generous support of a Presbyterian choir conductor, entered the Royal College of Music where he studied under Charles Villiers Stanford. Having an enormous potential as a composer, he died in Croydon at the age of 37. The work “Christmas Overture” was published posthumously in 1925.
As a boy E. Elgar composed some tunes for use in a play staged by the young members of the Elgar family. He noted the tunes down in a sketchbook and in 1907, four decades later, he arranged the music as the two Wand of Youth suites.
The creation of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing involved the words originated by the well-known hymn writer Charles Wesley. Just over a century later, Felix Mendelssohn wrote the cantata Festgesang, a paean to Johannes Gutenberg, the man credited with the invention of movable type. In 1856, the British musician William Cummings effected a marriage of Wesley's text, which by that time had evolved into its present form, and the music from the second number (Vaterland, in deinen gauen) of Mendelssohn's cantata.
The Skaters’ Waltz, Op. 183, was written by French composer Emil Waldteufel in 1882. Among all his compositions, The Skaters’ Waltz is the best-known. In this work, Waldteufel set out to capture the atmosphere of a winter day in Paris, with ice-skaters venturing onto the frozen Seine river. In the manner of his older rival, Johann Strauss, Waldteufel’s piece offers a sequence of contrasting waltz themes, rather than just a single melody. A slow opening passage for solo horn is followed by graceful rising and falling lines in the strings and woodwinds that lead to the first waltz theme. There, again, the horn takes the central role. The wintry ambience of the piece is enhanced by the use of sleigh bells in the percussion section.
Adeste Fideles is a Christmas carol which has been attributed to various authors, including John Francis Wade (1711-1786), John Reading (1645–1692) and King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656), believing that the true authorship is of the latter, at least for some.
A selection of Christmas pop songs including Frosty the Snowman; Santa Claus is Coming to Town; I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, with arrangements by composer and conductor John Avery.
Programme
COLERIDGE TAYLOR (1875 – 1912)
Christmas Overture
E. ELGAR (1857 – 1934)
The Wand of Youth, Suite 2
I. March
II. The Little Bells
III. Moths and Butterflies
IV. Fountain Dance
V. The tame bear
VI. The wild bears
F. MENDELSSOHN (1809 – 1847)
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
E. WALDTEUFEL (1837-1915)
Les Patineurs
(The skater’s waltz)
ANONIMO
Adeste Fidelis
J. AVERY (arr.)
Pop into Christmas
Orquestra Clássica do Sul
Pablo Urbina, Guest Conductor
17/11
FUSETA
Igreja Matriz
07.00pm
Free entry subject to room limitation
Informations: T: 289 860 890
União de Freguesias de Moncarapacho e Fuseta, Organization
#OCSorquestra