43
Warren Philharmonic presents ‘Power of Love’
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
WARREN
In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love.
Same goes for the Warren Philharmonic.
On Sunday, the orchestra will present “The Power of Love,” a concert featuring music that captures the emotion.
“Love has so many complex, highly charged emotional dimensions,” said Susan Davenny Wyner, conductor. “I thought it would be exciting to build the program around them.”
The program includes Italian and American music by Verdi, Mendelssohn, Richard Rodgers and Astor Piazzolla.
“The first part of the concert takes us from the exuberance and passion of Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian Symphony’ — written on his first visit to Italy as a 20-year-old — to Verdi’s famous Overture to his opera ‘La Forza del Destino’ [‘The Force of Destiny’],” said Wyner.
“In his famous overture, Verdi depicts the emotional world of the opera’s star-crossed lovers by combining a motive of restless, churning fate with sighing and soaring love themes, dramatic outbursts and Leonora’s great prayer to the Virgin to find peace in death,” Wyner continued. “Even without knowing the opera, we can’t help sensing the disparate states of mind — desperation, yearning, pathos, celebration — as the overture unfolds.
“What most people don’t know is that Verdi’s first version of his opera was not a success. It was so dark and killed off so many protagonists that Verdi struggled for almost nine years to revise it. This overture, which we now adore, is a product of all that struggle.”
The last two works of the program will be dance pieces.
“The first depicts the smoky, sensual allure of the Tango, and I love that we have the whole orchestra turning into Tango artists,” said Wyner. “The piece is a special setting of an Astor Piazzolla 1989 Tango, especially orchestrated for us by violinist David Kempers.”
Piazzolla, known as the “Tango King,” was born of Italian parents and grew up in Argentina. He devoted his life to the Tango and created a style known as nuevo tango that incorporates elements of jazz and classical music.
Sunday’s concert will close with jazzy, upbeat American swing — Richard Rodgers’ famous dance number “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.”
The song was from the 1936 musical “On Your Toes!,” which is set in the dance halls of Manhattan.
“I’m excited about the concert,” said Wyner. “The music presents so many different aspects of love in the way only music can — love of nature, of God, of country, family, culture, dance and, of course, of one another.”