Come and enjoy the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra’s final concert this Season!
“Ode to Joy” Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on April 22nd at 8PM at Naugatuck Valley Community College Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Parkway, Waterbury.
This orchestral work is in four movements by Ludwig van Beethoven, remarkable in its day not only for its grandness of scale but especially for its final movement, which includes a full chorus and vocal soloists.
The WSO welcomes the following Choral groups: the Vocal Quartet from the Yale Opera Program; The Connecticut Choral Society and the NJCS Camerata, Eric Dale Knapp, Conductor; and the Naugatuck Valley Community College Choir, Andrew Ardizzoia, Conductor.
“Ode to Joy” represents Beethoven’s final complete symphony, completed in 1824, just three years before his death. Symphony No. 9 premiered on May 7, 1824, in Vienna, to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic audience, and it is widely viewed as Beethoven’s greatest composition. It is considered one of the first examples of a choral symphony by a major composer. Words are sung in the final movement by four vocal soloists and a chorus.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is one of Western Culture’s towering monuments. It is a celebration of joy, composed by a man cut off from the world by deafness. When three monumental movements lead up to a finale with vocal soloists and a huge choir, it feels that the entire world has joined in a hymn to our shared humanity here beneath “the starry realm.”
Purchase your tickets for Saturday, April 22. There will be a pre-concert lecture from 7:00-7:30pm hosted by Vincent de Luise: MD Assistant Professor, Yale University: Cultural Ambassador, of the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra. The concert will begin at 8pm at the Naugatuck Valley Community College. NVCC Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Parkway, Waterbury. Call 203-574-4283 or go online to waterburysymphony.org.
The lecture is titled Beethoven, UnVarnished.
The talk will take a deep dive “behind the varnish” of Beethovenian myth and what has become the “big business of Beethoven,” and discuss the truth: about his childhood issues, his early loves, his life-long cantankerous behavior, his confrontation with deafness, and his last period of genius creativity, in which spirituality was a key factor in the Sound World that he heard only in his mind, and which resulted in the last piano sonatas, the last four string quartets, the Missa Solemnis, and the monument to civilization that is his Ninth Symphony.
Excerpts from the “The Accent” program notes to be discussed at the pre-lecture discussion, written by Vincent de Luise: MD Assistant Professor, Yale University: Cultural Ambassador, Waterbury Symphony Orchestra. Program notes will be published 1 week prior to a concert and posted on the WSO website: www.waterburysympony.org
“Beethoven was one of the most important cultural figures in history. His life, his challenges, and how he surmounted it all with his genius- his powerful, beautiful, textured and sublime music- changed the course of music history.”
“Symphonist, concerto and chamber music specialist, one of the greatest of all composers for piano, his 300 compositions were all crafted out of a crucible of intense reflection and self-criticism. Beethoven was never satisfied, with himself or with his works.”
“Beethoven in love: Beethoven fell deeply in love several times in his life with different women, each of whom was in a different place or station in life – the relationships were doomed from the start, but engenderes his tenderest writing and some of his most sublime compositions.”
“How ironic that a genius with perfect pitch lost his hearing, the one sense that was essential for a composer. Beethoven spent the last decade of his life in silence, hearing in his head some of the most wondrous works of art that have ever been conjured by man. One of these monuments is the Ninth Symphony, ending with the uplifting paean to humanity, Ode to Joy.
Ode to Joy
Saturday, April 22, 2017 at 8pm
Pre-Concert discussion: Vincent de Luise 7:00-7:30 PM
Location:
NVCC Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Parkway, Waterbury, CT 06701
Tickets
$20 $35 and $55 dollars. College student rush tickets (one hour prior to event) are $5.
WSO children are always $5.00 with the purchase of an adult ticket.
Website and ticket Information: www.waterburysymphony.org or call 203-574-4283
WSO is Orchestra-in-Residence at Naugatuck Valley Community College
NVCC Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Parkway, Waterbury, CT 06701
PROGRAM
Ludwig van Beethoven — Symphony No. 9, Op. 125, D minor (Choral),
Featuring: Vocal Quartet from the Yale Opera Program;
Connecticut Choral Society, NJCS Camerata, Eric Dale Knapp, Conductor;
Naugatuck Valley Community College Choir, Andrew Ardizzoia, Conductor
Thank you to our sponsors MacDermid Performance Solutions and Webster Bank.
For more information about the concert or the WSO, please call the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra at (203) 574-4283 or go online at www.waterburysymphony.org.