Program

Conductor

• Roger BAUSIER

Soloist

• Ana Maria BADIA – violin (Spain)

Programme

• Guillaume Tell (Overture) (Gioacchino ROSSINI)
• Concerto for violin in D minor, Op 47 (Jean SIBELIUS)
• Symphonie 2000 (Peter SCHECK)

Organiser

• asbl Presto Vivace

Reservation

• http://www.ticketnet.be 070 660 601 (0,30€/min)
  20€  [15€ - 25 y. or + 65 y.]

Gioacchino ROSSINI (1792-1868) - William Tell Overture
Written in 1829 when Rossini was at the height of his powers and the most famous composer of his generation, William Tell was the last, the largest and the longest of Rossini’s 39 operas, requiring musical and theatrical resources so vast that it has hardly ever been performed in its entirety. The overture, however, has survived to become one of the best known and most loved works in the orchestral repertoire. Consisting of four separate, but continuous movements, it paints a musical picture of life in the Swiss Alps at the time of the eponymous 14th century hero who led a popular revolt against Austrian domination. The Dawn is followed by a violent Storm, which in turn leads to The Calm featuring a cowherd summoning his bovine charges, while the work ends with the famous Gallop, much used and abused in cartoons and commercials and which, for the children of the 1950s, will remain indelibly associated with the cry of The Lone Ranger.

Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957) - Violin Concerto in D minor, Op 47
Born into a Swedish-speaking family in what was then the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland, Sibelius embraced Romantic Nationalism as a young man and devoted himself to the establishment of a distinctively Finnish musical voice. An accomplished violist himself, he completed his only foray into the concerto form in 1904. However, the premiere in Helsinki was a disaster and the composer revised the work significantly, the new version being first performed in Berlin the following year with Richard Strauss conducting. The work is in many ways a summation of Sibelius’s musical personality, being symphonic in form, Nordic in inspiration, rhapsodic in character and romantic in style. Set in a deeply expressive melodic context, relieved by occasional brighter passages, the concerto makes considerable technical demands on the soloist, demands to which the young Spanish virtuoso Ana Maria Badia is more than equal.

Peter SCHECK ( born 1966) - Symphony in C minor 2000
Composer and violinist, Peter Scheck studied music at the Conservatoire of his native Brno in the Czech Republic. He joined the orchestra of the famous spa town of Marianske Lazne where he was inspired to take up composition in the late 1990s, partly as a reaction against what he described as “the incomprehensible creations of many contemporary composers”. In 2008 he moved to Brussels to join his wife and took up a teaching post at the European school. He joined the BPO which in April 2010 premiered another of his works, the Largo Alla Barocco. Composed between 1998 and 2000, and first performed to much critical and public acclaim in Marianske Lazne, his Symphony in C Minor 2000 opens with a welcome to the new Millennium, followed by a slow movement evoking sunrise and an evening landscape. The cheerful third movement includes a description of two men who have overdone the celebrations, and leads directly into the finale which, after a reprise of the opening theme, ends with a rousing dance of victory.

The soloist for this concert will be the very young Spanish violist Ana Maria BADIA. Born in Madrid in 1992, Ana Maria BADIA was a very early musician, with mother and father as first teachers. At 6 she gave her first concert and runs now a well-filled career, with several prices, concerts already throughout the world and courses with the best masters. After her studies in Italy, she now works in Vienna. 

Written in 1829 when Rossini was at the height of his powers and the most famous composer of his generation, William Tell was the last, the largest and the longest of Rossini’s 39 operas, requiring musical and theatrical resources so vast that it has hardly ever been performed in its entirety. The overture, however, has survived to become one of the best known and most loved works in the orchestral repertoire. Consisting of four separate, but continuous movements, it paints a musical picture of life in the Swiss Alps at the time of the eponymous 14th century hero who led a popular revolt against Austrian domination. The Dawn is followed by a violent Storm, which in turn leads to The Calm featuring a cowherd summoning his bovine charges, while the work ends with the famous Gallop, much used and abused in cartoons and commercials and which, for the children of the 1950s, will remain indelibly associated with the cry of The Lone Ranger.